Low (Live @ Spaceland, 10/31/98 aka The Misfits Show) “Words/Turn/Over The Ocean”
(all three as one file)
“Over The Ocean” (album version)

Here’s a little seasonal post with a dash of “I was there” egotism. Halloween, fast approaching, got me thinking about the Misfits, maybe my favorite punk band. And naturally, the Misfits got me thinking about Minnesota’s glacially-paced Low.

Make sense?

Eight(!) years ago, rather than doing the typical Halloween party thing, my g/f-at-the-time and I went to see Low play Spaceland. I can’t remember much about their main set, mostly that we found seats in order to fully enjoy it. They make pretty music, but their spare, slow, pristine style doesn’t make for dancing. It’s tough to even sway.
By 1998 they hadn’t really diverged much from their signature refinement of Galaxie 500, and you sort of wondered whether was the only kind of music those three people could make together.

So their encore was one of the most memorable concert experiences of my life.

The band-members turned their backs to the audience and… did each other’s make-up? We couldn’t really quite tell what they were doing. The bassist helped the guitarist clip a Danzig-style devillock onto his bangs–things were starting to become clearer; the Sharpie tattoos of stuff like the Black Flag logo were starting to make sense. Then the group reached into a bag and started chucking pieces of candy, rather aggressively, out into the audience, screaming, “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!” (Unfortunately not captured in today’s mp3s.)

And then the slowest band in the world played a revved-up, messy five-minute encore as the Misfits.

And it was good.

These were not Misfits covers, but the band doing their own songs as the Misfits. Three adults rocking out with the abandon of hyped-up children and poking a little fun at their own collective persona. Conceptually brilliant, and much more fun than a Low show is supposed to be. I apologize a little for the crappy quality of the mp3s I found, although the low (oops) fidelity might complete the impersonation.

They bring back a great memory for me. I hope they capture, and this post communicates, a little bit of why.

I Could Live In Hope (home to “Words”) at Newbury Comics.
Long Division (home to “Turn”) at Newbury Comics.
The Curtain Hits the Cast (home to “Over The Ocean”) at Newbury Comics.

,or Defenestrating Credibility

Sebadoh “Skull (Remix)”
Lou Barlow “Skull (Live at WMBR)”

This, one of my favorite Lou Barlow songs, came up on the old shuffle recently.

It’s on Sebadoh’s 1994 record, Bakesale, but presented here in solo acoustic version via MIT’s radio station, as well as the shorter, possibly superior take that appeared on the Hotel Massachusetts comp.

(I guess I should warn here that I’m one of the last living Sebadoh devotees, and I may dedicate virtual ink now and then to some sort of futile advocacy campaign on the group’s behalf. Lou and Jake were raised around where I was raised, and that hometown pride may be part of the appeal, but it’s mostly the plain-spoken/heartbroken lyrical bent and great melodies I think.

It feels like they’ve been long overshadowed by Pavement, who were sort of their homeboys/indie rock opposite numbers during the 90s, if anyone remembers that far back. Not sure if that’s smugness trumping sincerity or the triumph of the oblique over the straightforward.)

If it’s not embarrassing enough of an admission that I’m a Sebadoh fan, there’s something else around this song that leaves me sorta red-faced.

“Skull” was among the reasons I fell in love with Sebadoh as a freshman stranded on the West Coast, homesick for my familiar Western Mass stomping grounds.

The ebb and flow of the mood, the feeling of silvery chrome to the sonics, the creeping howl of carefully-deployed distortion, those lyrics about “chasing dragons through the snow” and the invitation to “gently take my skull for a ride”… Speaking of false nostalgia, in my sunny new home, I came to associate the song with home, and with some idealized scenario of the very start of falling in love, the promise of snowbound adventure; all the stuff I wasn’t experiencing in L.A.

I was pretty damn naïve at 19 I guess. I heard a rumor that made sense, years later, that “Skull” is about doing speedballs with Evan Dando. Still love the song, but every time I hear it I get that wave of false nostalgia followed by a tinge of embarrassment.

Funny what a song can do to you.

Hotel Massachusetts at Gemm.
Pipeline! Live Boston Rock from WMBR at Newbury Comics.
Bakesale at Newbury Comics.

Rebecca Gates “Greetings From The Sugar Lick”

I wanted to share with you a solo performance of my favorite Spinanes song off my favorite Spinanes record, provenance unknown. On 1998’s Arches and Aisles, “Sugar Lick” is just this side of soul, organ-drenched and scorching. This version is stripped down, all ringing chords and husky fuck-offs/come-on. I’ve said before that Ms. Gates is incapable of the trite, and that idiosyncratic air, call it mystery, adds immeasurably to the feel of this song. All these years into my love for this track, I still can’t quite parse the plot at work here–it’s sad sacks, cheating hearts and maybe sex as weapon. There’s something heavy and just plain adult about the way she reads off her list of accusations against a faded barfly, then flips the script, proposition as defiant dare: “We’ll meet at yr house/have it all out/pull yr clothes off/let’s get this over with.”

Arches and Aisles at Target.

Chris Dye “End Of My Rainbow”

What strikes me here is the palpable sense of disappointment, from someone who’d caught a heavy dose of it. Angeleno Chris Dye’s¹ alt-rock band, Dashboard Prophets², recorded one album in the mid 90s, only to have their label fall apart shortly after its release. Seems that no one involved fully recovered, and this cut from his 1997 home-recorded solo album, 11 Strings 4 Tracks and the Truth, lays out the bile and the resignation in jangly acoustics and cigarrette-stained throat, in jaded puns, exploded clichés and dessicated aphorisms. It’s sort of “Welcome To The Jungle” via Sebadoh.

I’m not going to fuck around. I relate pretty heavily to this song. You don’t need to know about the ideas never brought to fruition, the people I’ve let down–you can just look at the gaps between posts on this site. I worry sometimes I’ve gone around the bend, age-wise, even creatively, and pissed away one too many years. Sometimes you blame it on the L.A. air, the lotus-eating atmosphere. It might not be exactly what Dye put into the song, but it’s what I get out of it.

And to hear someone take his bad fortune and make something beautiful out of it, well, it’s pretty comforting. Inspiring even.

11 Strings 4 Tracks and the Truth at Big Rig Records.

The Hold Steady “Southtown Girls”
Lifter Puller “4 Dix”

The new Hold Steady record has been a matter of contention in the indie kid blogiverse. There’s the “best eva” contigent. There’s the “disappointment of the year” crew. And then there’s a large posse of “wtf is up with this dude’s voice”/”wtf is up with this cock rock”/”these guys are old and their lyrics suX0r” people.

I’m a fan, and on first few listens Boys and Girls in America doesn’t hit me as hard as Separation Sunday, a concept record about the ravages of drugs and redemption in faith. Mostly because it doesn’t feel as narartive or cohesive, maybe partly because I’m a lapsed Catholic. But the new album seems at least the equal of their debut, Almost Killed Me.

The band tries a handful of new things, or at least things that singer Craig Finn hasn’t tried since the days of Lifter Puller, the previous group featuring him and guitarist Tad Kubler. Some of them work. The countryish harmony vox on “Southtown Girls,” for instance, really befits the hugeness of the song.

Other ideas fall flat. I mean, having Dave Pirner sing anything, even a little, on yr record is simply strange. (OK, there’s the Minnie connection, and at least a small chance that it’s some sort of tip-of-the-hat/flip-of-the-bird to Gerard Cosloy for semi-famoulsy describing the Hold Steady as “Soul Asylum fronted by Charles Nelson Reilly” or whateva.) (But still.)

Overall, though, I don’t think that much has changed. For better and worse.

Most of the indictments of B+GiA reiterate the complaints that stuck to Lifter Puller–mainly Finn’s nasal squawk of a voice and too-writerly, drugsploitation lyrics. I mean, here’s a guy who’ll write a song about the Horsemen of the Apocalypse attending a pill party. His delivery and concerns have been relatively constant in the past decade or so. It’s just Craig being Craig, to coin a phrase.

What did change between bands was the musical context. Lifter Puller’s instrumental axis churned out, at worst, generic, sorta sexless indie rock in the atmospheric/angular distorto mode. The Hold Steady traded that in for classic licks, heavy riffs and Southern rock wheedle, daring the ironic/sincere divide with music largely designed to approximate, yes, the thrust of a cock. So yr enjoyment will depend upon yr appetite (or stomach) for such an endeavor.

I like AC/DC. I love the Hold Steady, at least as much as I loved Lifter Puller. To me, sounding concretely like AC/DC feels like an upgrade from sounding vaguely like the Archers of Loaf.

Boys and Girls in America on Artist Direct.
[Soft Rock is apparently out of print and ridonkulously expensive, but I remember hearing something about a forthcoming reissue on Frenchkiss, so sit tight.]