A 1995 Conversation about Trip Shakespeare's Volt

I talked to this dude one time at a GUH show who was, like, the booker for that venue and I told him how much I was into Trip Shakespeare's latest album, Volt. He laughed a bitter laugh and said he was at the sessions for that album trying to help them pull it together and that "they should have called it 'Floundering'!"

I guess those sessions were fraught, and indeed the band immediately went on a hiatus that never ended, but that's not what I took away from that conversation. What I took away from that conversation was that that dude was a douchebag. He was less interested in what that album meant to me and more interested in showing me what a totally superior music industry insider he was.

Did I then go on and tell him about the hours I spent in practice rooms emulating the Trip version of "The Ballad of El Goodo"?

Did I tell him how, on multiple recordings of my own, I imitated John Munson's enthusiastic "Let's go!" that kicks off "Dead Set on Destruction"?

Did I tell him how just hearing the 3-4-5 bass walkup that starts album closer "Helpless" took me back to the final song of the final Trip show I saw on December 15, 1992 and, more importantly, made me feel like all my intense young adult emotions were manageable and surviveable?

Nope. Did we play at his venue again? Also nope.

The point is, don't be that guy. Maybe he wasn't even usually that guy (but I'm pretty sure he was) and he was just triggered into a trauma dump by memories of those sessions. I fully understand how tempting it is to be that superior guy, but no one will actually be impressed and people will just not tell you things.

Also, Volt is an amazing album and you should totally check it out. I'm about to listen to it right now! Hooray!

It's Wild To Be Young (Alex Chilton, part 3)

Did you miss part 1 or part 2?

It's wild to be young, isn't it? You can actually fall fully in love with stuff without thinking about it. Someday, if I keep borrowing their albums from the library and listening to them once in a while, I might like Yo La Tengo a lot, or any of these other bands that smart people recommend to me. But I can't remember the last time I really fell in love with a band the way I did with Big Star or Trip Shakespeare or...that's it really. Oh, and They Might Be Giants. And kind of Ben Folds Five, but I was still only like 26 when I heard Whatever And Ever, Amen. And I still haven't bought every single thing he's done and seen him live every chance I could since then like with Alex Chilton or Matt Wilson.

Which reminds me. I can stop looking at the bar/band/show schedules in the back of City Pages now. Matt Wilson has an online presence and an active band and notification of upcoming shows again (finally!) and Alex Chilton, the only other name I was ever really searching for, is gone.

Thanks, Andy (Alex Chilton, part 1)

The fall of 1993 was a good time to become a Big Star fan for a few reasons. Logistically, Rykodisc had just issued the first complete, good sounding CD editions of the Third album, a live radio show, and Chris Bell's complete solo work. The previous year had seen the band's other two albums, #1 Record and Radio City, released on a single disc.

Personally, I was not doing so well. I may or may not have been suffering from what scientists today call clinical depression. Also, there was a girl. I thought about death a lot. I needed something to make me feel like I wasn't alone. Big Star music was that something.

Like most people who love the band, I did not hear about them from the media. I heard about them from other people who loved them. Trip Shakespeare, a band equally deserving of greater acclaim but which has received even less, covered "The Ballad of El Goodo" on their final album, Volt, which I loved. I did not know anything about the listed authors Alex Chilton and Chris Bell. If you can, try to imagine a world in which information about these mysterious people was not immediately available to me. There was nothing about them at the college libraries. If there was such a thing as searching the internet I was not aware of it. I had to actually ask people!

I asked the most knowledgeable music guy I knew, Andy Honigman. He provided me with a tape of a record of Third and his CD of #1 Record/Radio City, which, oddly, was signed by the drummer from Walt Mink. (Oh, by the way, which one's Mink?)

The Third/Sister Lovers album spoke to my emotional state like no other music ever had. I shortly thereafter bought the CD myself, along with all the rest of the band's music. I listened to it a lot. Along with Trip Shakespeare and R.E.M.'s then-new Automatic for the People album, this music and my own emerging writing and playing gave me a reason to get up in the morning. The music gave me a sense that other people had felt the way I felt. All this music was important to me, but Big Star was the most.

I learned the Big Star songs The Ballad of El Goodo, Thirteen, Give Me Another Chance, I'm In Love With A Girl, Blue Moon, Way Out West, In The Street, and the Chris Bell songs You And Your Sister and I Am The Cosmos. Except for the Beatles there is no other band whose songs I've put more effort into and had in my playing repertoire for longer. I'm being intentionally dramatic and overstating the case just a little when I say slightly (but only slightly) disingenuously that Big Star's music saved my life. Certainly it strengthened my friendships as I played those songs with people I loved and began to get the idea to name myself after the band's home town.

Go to part two.

Ten Albums

Tagged by Scot Ninnemann, I now add my list of ten albums that have meant the most to me. I have somehow inserted this blog into my facebook profile, or so I have been led to believe by a series of clickings with words that seemed to contradict one another. Anyway, if you're here, enjoy this if you wish:

Junior High and High School:

The Beatles:
1. Abbey Road
2. The Beatles (White album)
3. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
4. Let It Be
These four LPs belonging to my parents brought joy to hundreds of hours of homework and established the standard by which I judged any music that I have listened to later in life. It's so weird to think that the Beatles were only as long gone then as Nirvana is now.

5. Born In The U.S.A. Bruce Springsteen
Listening to this album led to his better albums like Greetings and The Wild, The Innocent, then every other Springsteen album up to and including Tunnel of Love, for which I saw the tour. Stuff after that, not so much.

6. The Other Side Of Life The Moody Blues
First arena rock show I ever saw. I was blown away. They had lights that went across the stage as the drum fills played on the title track to that album and I was hooked. I still love that album and many other Moodies albums, my latest fave being Strange Times. Fascinating trivia: The drum technician for this very tour later ran sound for Justin Bell and Lazy Susan (including me) at Decoy's in Hopkins! We had a long conversation about it and I know he wasn't lying because he is actually in the "Your Wildest Dreams" video.

7. Greatest Hits Volumes I & II Billy Joel
Not a particularly hip list so far. Just awesome, popular music. Listening to this led me to every other Billy Joel album up to and including The Bridge and then Storm Front, for both of which I saw the tour(s) Also I played these songs hundreds of times (ask my sister) on the piano, developing whatever rock piano chops I may or may not have on a given day (ask Justin).

College:

8. The Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3 Bob Dylan
Nothing further needs to be said about Bob Dylan. Assume that I bought most, if not all of the other albums by the bands on this list, saw them live at least once, and tried to be more like them.

9. Complete Collected Words Simon & Garfunkel
Really great. The amazing guitar playing is what people don't necessarily immediately think of.

10. Worker's Playtime Billy Bragg
The strange and mysterious accent. The insight into the human heart. The spare yet warm production. The colorful artwork. It is that rare thing - a perfect album. (So are 1, 2, 3, 11, 12, 13, 16)

11. Flood They Might Be Giants
This has probably been THE single biggest impact album on me as a songwriter. The "I didn't know you could do THAT!" factor was the biggest thing about it for me.

12. Across The Universe Trip Shakespeare
Such harmonies! Such melodies! Such feeling! Such poetry! And a great live show at First Avenue.

13. Blue Joni Mitchell
You know. Sad. Happy. And every other shade.

14. Automatic For The People R.E.M.
Led to earlier R.E.M. which had previously just annoyed me (courtesy of roommates) but later totally ensnared my mind and my soul.

15. #1 Record/Radio City/Third Big Star
I learned to sing and play more songs from these albums than from any other three albums except the Beatles.

Adult:

16. Whatever and Ever Amen Ben Folds Five
A legitimate new thing under the sun. Virtuosic piano, which is all too rare in popular music, meets really, really great lyrics and brilliant Queen-sounding harmonies.

17. Galore Kirsty MacColl
Now I'm getting a little bit hip I think. Catchy songs, emotions, witty lyrics, harmonies, you know me. Pretty much everything I try to be.

18. Guitool Flip Nasty
Leader Cody Weathers is the ultimate DIY band/person. He's the label, he's the drummer, he's the webmaster, he's the interviewer of himself, he's the songwriter, he's the singer, he writes the hilarious liner notes, etc.

19. Keep It Together Guster
So great. Seen them twice. Clever, catchy, etc. Normal people writing about stuff normal people think about, plus other things. Lots of positive associations with their music now.

Tag!
(Oh, was that more than ten? I couldn't cut it back and in fact keep thinking of others. I'll stop now though.)