Ten From the '90s Part Ten (1999) - Superchunk's COME PICK ME UP (Merge)

There weren’t many things that remained with me through the entirety of the 1990s, but Superchunk was one of them. As I exited my teen years and continued into that second and in some ways more difficult next wave of maturity (once arrived at adulthood, one must come to terms with it), gaining experience and perspective all the while and shedding folly and nonsense in favor of assorted cold hard realities, the music of this modest Chapel Hill NC quartet was a constant soundtrack. Every time I fell hard the band was there to ease the experience. Every time I attained a momentary high or streak of good favor, there they were, helping to accentuate those minutes and days into the permanence of memories. It may sound like blatant romanticizing, but damn it if it doesn’t feel isn’t true. Superchunk’s steady stream of albums and singles were both foreground and background music to my first serious relationships with the opposite sex, they assisted as a salve and a guide in my growth as a writer, aiding me somewhat surreptitiously in throwing off the self-doubt inherent to fluctuating levels of self-esteem (if these plain-living dudes and a chick can pull it all off so well, just why in the hell can’t I?), and the tumultuously melodic strains of their work has remained soundly in my possession up to this very second as the lingering reminder of a slowly decaying broken friendship. In addition, the band serves as a pointer to the difference between the amorphous nature of Personal Favorites and the often stark hardness of more or less canonical and essentially communally shared All Time Bests. Claiming that Superchunk is anything close to the greatest rock band in history will likely inspire mostly strange looks and cold stares, if not some outright mocking laughter, and those few in agreement are the makings of a tight, passionate posse. Some of those looks would probably come from the band members themselves. Self deprecating almost to a fault, they make no bones about their self assessment falling far short of anything even remotely resembling a big deal. If praised in person as a great or important band, the members would no doubt politely disagree (and indeed they have), deflecting the honor to maybe suggest that their overexcited booster spend a little more time listening to some other people’s records, following that up with direct recommendations. Now it takes a certain base level of ego and an at least tenuous handle on the volatile nature of that horny interior beast (and the often even crazier collective monster that can be the band ego) to release eleven full length albums worth of titanium hard and massively melodic post-hardcore contemporary rock that never ceased to evolve over roughly fifteen years. But there is a big difference between self-effacing confidence in action and the blustery arrogance of talking a lot and making people wait five years or more for an album.

Laura Ballance's artwork for the FOOLISH LP

With all this in mind, the new millennium has seen a major slowing down of Superchunkian activities, though that shouldn’t infer that the members haven’t been individually busy; vocalist/guitarist Mac McCaughan has his excellent and always evolving solo project Portastatic along with the full time job that is co-running Merge Records along with ‘chunk bassist Laura Ballance (who is hopefully keeping up with her excellent skills as a painter), and drummer Jon Wurster took on the status of an in demand free-agent sticksman, playing with a batch of worthy names and landing what looks like the permanent drum spot in the Mountain Goats. The guy also finds time for performance comedy as half of a comedy team with WFMU’s Tom Scharpling. I’ll confess to having no idea what guitarist Jim Wilbur does with his non-‘chunk time. I could maybe investigate, but I dunno. I’m sure it’s something of substance. Many things even.

Mountain Goats with Jon Wurster

The point is what was once a copious stream of Superchunk records big and small (they have three superb collections of singles, one a 2CD set) had slowed over the course of the last decade into little more than an uncertain trickle, a comp track here, a live date there, a seven inch in 2007, and in the gaps was the increasing nagging feeling that Superchunk might’ve reached the end of their fantastic ride. And if that had been the case, well how could I complain? But it turns out it wasn’t the end, for 2010 saw the release of MAJESTY SHREDDING, the twelfth LP and first of new material since ‘01s HERE’S TO SHUTTING UP. And it’s a dilly. I rocked it, am still rocking it in fact, and every time I do it makes me feel like a benevolent millionaire. But there is this small thing. It seems that the gap of activity really allowed the band time to reflect back on their collected work and then assess exactly where on that timeline they achieved their apex.

Mac playing with Portastatic

From the evidence of SHREDDING, it seems obvious the group’s perceived pinnacle was in the mid-‘90s. This is more than just supposition on my part. In at least a few interviews band members have stated that the music moved a bit too far away from its strongest elements in a desire to experiment and keep things fresh. And overall that determination is cool by me, for the mid-‘90s were the period where Superchunk did some of their most glorious throwing down, bringing pogo frenzy and shout-along choruses to stages all across the globe. I must admit however, that I ultimately don’t agree it was the locale of the bands’ best work. For me the absolute tip-top of the Superchunk spectrum is contained in the grooves of 1999’s COME PICK ME UP, a record that finds them heavily testing the boundaries of their sound with the aid of producer Jim O’Rourke, thirteen highly toiled over tracks that paint me as a bit of odd duck in ‘chunk fandom terms. For while there is surely a devoted core of band partisans that love the late period, the most vocal emoting from the bleachers seems to champion the groups’ earlier material, with special pockets of devotion for each of the bands’ first four albums, and an underlying attitude that Superchunk then began releasing discs that while too good to ignore were not up to the quality of the ’88-’94 period. Well, that’s just faulty theorizing. What began on 1995’s HERE’S WHERE THE STRINGS COME IN was effectively a restatement of purpose, a reevaluation and deepening of their songwriting dynamic coupled with the maturity of the lyrical focus, with a gradually increasing flirtation with an added instrumental palate thrown in for good measure. The writing was already on the wall with ‘94’s FOOLISH, which many people pick as their favorite Superchunk LP (and in fact it’s my pick for second), but the remodeling really began in earnest with STRINGS, and the ball was seriously ran with on ‘97’s INDOOR LIVING, which for a long time was the least of the bands’ records in my estimation (Not anymore. Suffice to say it’s a grower. The dubious honor goes these days to the first self-titled LP). If they were running with the ball on LIVING, it was with COME PICK ME UP that they found clear daylight to the end zone. Right from the processed drum opening and the keyboard effects at the ending of the brief and euphoric first track “So Convinced”, it’s clear something very different is happening with the band.

Jim O'Rourke

On their previous couple records when they integrated additional sonic elements it normally came later in the sequence and generally served as accenting; it was a fine additive but there was no denying that (at least to me) it felt a little tacked on. “So Convinced” makes it clear that they were grabbing the bull by both horns in their desire to embrace new ideas. But the choice of Jim O’Rourke as producer should’ve been a dead giveaway. This was before his most famous work with Wilco, but the guy was already a studio wizard of long standing. Across the course of the whole album, O’Rourke steadily transforms Superchunk’s established sound into previously uncharted territory while never bastardizing it. The lessons learned from The Buzzcocks (adherence to melodic riffs), Husker Du and hardcore (density, simplicity and focus) are still here, but this time they’re stretched almost to the brink in thrilling fashion. O’Rourke does so many little things that in the end add up to a wallop: on “Hello Hawk” when the guitars drop out and Mac sings the first chorus, he’s joined with a majestic accompanying whistle that’s just electrifying. This minute but powerful touch is followed up directly with a swell of strings, an additive that is conveyed to feel rather synthetic, perhaps like the work of a Mellotron but is in fact the contribution of real players Suzanne Roberts and Chicago free-improv vet Fred Lonberg-Holm. “Cursed Mirror” features a pleasantly strumming acoustic guitar darting in and out of the mix. “Pink Clouds” ends with a display of R&B-ish saxophone vamping from Windy City jazz titan Ken Vandermark that would be ridiculous of it weren’t so expertly executed. “Smarter Hearts” finds Mac’s excellent vocals multi-tracked to wonderful effect.

vampin' saxman Ken Vandermark

And all over the place O’Rourke really messes with two of the bands’ default positions, that of guitar roar and workmanlike, dead-solid bass. In contrast, much of the six-string action is occasionally thin or placed at a distance in the mix, where it attains an edgy, buzzy beauty that’s very specific to their discography (there are hints of it on HERE’S TO SHUTTING UP as well), as is Ballance’s bass playing, which feels much more focused on non-traditional melodic ideas and sonic shading in addition to her usual well employed rhythmic role. And this element helps to clarify that the overall success of the album rests not on O’Rourke’s shoulders, but should indeed be credited to Superchunk for bringing a set of such progressively realized songs to this session, and again for their willingness to document them in such a risky fashion. Whether it’s the flashes of Mac’s yearning falsetto elevating from the position of his well-seasoned rasp and bark, or his and Wilber’s guitars expertly intertwining and dueling, or the borderline scientific precision of Wurster’s drumming landing solidly between heaviness and finesse, or everyone’s contribution to the acerbic melancholy of the record’s final track “You Can Always Count On Me (In the Worst Way)”, this is simply a fabulous document, and maybe one that’s essence is ultimately nonreplicable, being one of those mixtures of chance and good fortune that frustrate attempts at recreation, the results instead falling into the diminishing rewards of formula. Lastly, a few thoughts are due regarding the record’s superb vocal/lyrical landscape. One of Superchunk’s grandest tricks was how their lyrics broached topics of very commonplace human feelings, reactions to the predominant lows and fleeting highs that life deals out, and how this gushing purge combined with the blitz of well calibrated musical motion, forming a dependable tension and release between thoughts and sound over the course of their development. The twist is that ‘chunk’s vocals were mixed largely equal to every other instrument in the band, so that while much of Mac’s shouting could be heard loud and clear, at other times, often very crucial ones, his voice was swallowed up in the abandon with the result that precise language was up for grabs. Go to the lyric sheet? Well, you get bupkus, for Superchunk doesn’t indulge in printed lyrics (and remember that for much of the ‘90s the consulting tool that is the internet was a luxury). What resulted were fans making approximate determinations as to what was being sung, and if that couldn’t be sussed out well then fuck it, just yell along and get carried up in the spirit of the whole thing. This is simultaneously a shared and personal experience (and one of the most vital attributes of small-scale rock music through its history); the listener absorbs and responds to a shared explicitness in the music and then adapts the strands of implicitness to their own ends, filling in the gaps with unique shards of individual experience. There are Superchunk lyrics that I gave up trying to decipher over fifteen years ago, replacing them not always with what I think is there, but with what I feel sounds best. And sometimes I just shout along. Rarely have I ever consulted a website in curiosity, not wanting to be disappointed. Well, in contrast to this state of affairs, COME PICK ME UP’s stanzas are for the most part very easily made out, and that fact might just be due to their rank as some of the finest lines Mac’s ever penned. Perhaps this turn of events was self-realization, the result of band discussion, or guidance from the hand of O’Rourke. Maybe it was a combination of all three. What I know for sure is when his words combine with the music, the finished whole absolutely soars. And as my listening tally settles into the triple digits, it doesn’t just sound like a favorite. It feels like the best.

Superchunk

Ten from the '90s Part Eight (1997) - Myra Melford & Han Bennink ELEVEN GHOSTS CD (HatOLOGY)

Pianist Myra Melford has been on the scene for quite some time, but due to a limited amount of hours conflicting with countless other activities, some desired and others unwanted, I mostly know her by reputation and not by ear. A Windy City gal, she’s also identifiable as an element in the long march of post-Downtown NYC goings-on (working with Dave Douglas, Cuong Vu and others) as well as professor at UC Berkeley. It can certainly be daunting when a musician amasses a large body of unheard work, but the best thing to do when that situation arises is to simply open the lobes and jump on in, and ELEVEN GHOSTS, her 1997 duo release on HatOLOGY with drummer Han Bennink is a great place to start. On the disc’s opener “The First Mess”, Melford plays around with a tense, dark melodic line, adjusting the speed and tone of her playing while Bennink indulges in a spacious progression of blustery clatter. It’s a fine racket and one that’s not initially recognizable as jazz: slip this track into a long playlist of early ‘80s avant/industrial splut and I’m uncertain if it would raise an eyebrow, since it simmers like a soundtrack snippet from an under seen arts-grant-funded black and white film that concerns a woman in a log cabin who dreams she’s being pursued through the woods by an ominous Jean-Claude Brialy lookalike - a bit scary, but also rather swank. The pair doesn’t hover for long in this territory, however. “How Long Blues”, a classic tune of 1920s vintage from the masterful blues pianist Leroy Carr is celebrated, examined, deconstructed and then briefly brought back into something resembling its initial form. Along the way Melford flirts around and finally hits a groove that gets right up close to the sound that Roland Kirk goosed out of Horace Parlan in the mid ‘60s. And just as quickly she diverts from that cozy agreeability and dives headfirst into hot flurries of Taylor-esque energy runs. But where some post-Cecil keyboard maulers are uncomfortable or unable to redirect the explosiveness of their playing into quieter, more reflective places, Melford shows her Chicago roots and reins the music back to a calm abstraction that subtly nudges into a culmination of overt bluesy business. And of course she interacting with Bennink as well, who’s thundering along like a champ. Anybody who digs the Art Ensemble’s playful and loving shake-ups of tradition should welcome this warm and soothing lozenge. “Frank Goes To” is credited to Melford but is very much a showcase for Bennink’s ability to combine an abstract sensitivity with an almost haywire thunderous approach, essentially integrating Gene Krupa, Max Roach and Sunny Murray into one manic yet disciplined sensibility. He does lay-out though, and Melford’s playing is reminiscent of Don Pullen at his most angular.  Jazz duos are quite often engaged with space, placing the players in a silent field where the connection to their respective instruments is greatly magnified and deep listening can occur.



As a solo turn for Bennink, “Another Mess” illustrates this quite well, and he percussively skitters anxiously all over his instrument, his sonic rumination including what sounds like the bowing of probable cymbals. Along the way he’s inspired to vocalize a very pertinent question, addressing the notion that avant-garde music is created in an intellectual vacuum, an idea that Bennink’s dynamic and engaging personality easily frustrates. “Which Way Is That?” begins with more solo meditating from Han, but when Melford enters a sound is conjured that reminds me very strongly of the stripped down advanced studies of Cecil’s Feel Trio or even his very great 1989 A&M CD IN FLORESCENCE with William Parker and Greg Bendian. It’s not long before Melford is resembling something like a very charged up and enthusiastically free version of mid-‘60s McCoy Tyner, but then she shifts gears into very melodic and approachable territory, recalling the very underrated and knowledgeably inside work of John Hicks. She returns seamlessly to more Taylor-esque explosiveness, and it’s readily apparent that Melford’s intense mastery of styles is devoted to examining the beauty inherent in the long history of jazz while keeping it focused on the future. Indeed, this is the concern of most avant-gardists, but Melford’s approach is quite individualistic and as such is worthy of deep salutation. It’s admittedly really difficult for the discourse on her pianistic ability to not almost continually reference Taylor, who along with Ornette simply looms like a giant as one of the last remaining free masters of the original wave and an obvious deep influence on Melford’s playing. But there were other players approaching the instrument in a free context in the ‘60s and ‘70s: curiously her hometown predecessor Muhal Richard Abrams doesn’t immediately spring to mind except in their shared non-coastal approach to tradition. Frankly, I hear more Pullen and Dave Burrell, and “Three Ghosts” does sound like a passage from a fictitious Actuel due session between Burrell and Andrew Cyrille. Much of this is due to Bennink’s shift into identifiably late-‘60s American free drum mode, which isn’t surprising since as mentioned elsewhere on this blog he contributed to Marion Brown’s rip-roaring expatriate masterpiece PORTO NOVO. The track is one of the few on ELEVEN GHOSTS that’s entirely outside, and it contrasts well with “Some Relief”, which is just the opposite in its brief nod back at Jelly Roll/stride/boogie-woogie exaltedness. It’d work great as a moldy-fig fake-out. But watch it, for those cats are fierce. “And Now Some Blues”, even though it opens with a burst of drumming in line with vintage Blakey, is quite abstracted for most of its duration, only showing a short glimpse of high barrelhouse atmosphere as it nears the end. It’s enough though, showing that the idea of “inside/outside” can prove incredibly successful beyond just the context of free-bop. It’s tempting to credit Melford as the one woman realization of the goals attempted by the late ‘70s summit meeting of Mary Lou Williams and Taylor (see what I mean about how he dominates the discourse?). The fruitful results of ELEVEN GHOSTS show that unlike many duos, the results of which present contrasting styles mingling into new sonic ventures, Melford and Bennink are likeminded collaborators with a combined eye on the past that develops extremely well as a study in contrasts since they often express themselves in different ways. “Now” is a great example of Han’s individuality. In the course of its two minutes the drumming never overtly references precedent, the spirit of Baby Dodds remaining implicit. Did I say spirit? These two really know how to title a CD. Like a commentary on Bennink’s work on that piece, “And Now” is packed with full on Taylor tilting, building with dense intensity toward an abrupt end that gives way to the record’s excellent coda, a lovely rumination on Scott Joplin’s timeless “Maple Leaf Rag”. This points her firmly back to Chicago, but not in the expected way, recalling Anthony Braxton’s DUETS 1976 with none other than Muhal Richard Abrams. So Abrams and Melford appear close than I thought. How shifty. ELEVEN GHOSTS is eleven tracks of expertly delivered improvisation and is a fantastic doorway into the work of this world class composer/pianist.

Ten from the '90s Part Seven (1997): The Joel Futterman/'Kidd' Jordan Trio with Alvin Fielder - SOUTHERN EXTREME CD (Drimala)

Pianist Joel Futterman was originally a Chicagoan, but he’s been a Virginia guy for a long time now. His roots are in the Windy City’s AACM (the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), and it certainly shows, though the immediate influence that impresses through his improvisational attack would be Cecil Taylor. The biggest noticeable difference between Futterman and many of the other Taylor-ite players on the scene is that he feels less like an exponent of a conservatory environment and more rooted in a classic jazzic “live-music” tradition: the club/rehearsal space as sound lab. This isn’t to infer that Futterman’s playing isn’t academically challenging (and rewarding), it just feels more descended from the hotspot that produced Taylor’s masterpiece NEFERTITI, THE BEAUTIFUL ONE HAS COME than the perhaps safer shelter of the accelerated learning atmosphere that’s aided the work of Anthony Braxton and the late Bill Dixon. I’m not proposing that the academy is inferior to the club stage (especially since there isn’t a player that ranks higher for me personally than Brax), I’m just observing. Futterman’s great gush is very much in the grand stream of “excellence through performance”, which is where the AACM influence really comes into focus. Having a founding AACM member to join the proceedings on SOUTHERN EXTREME gets those fine roots showing even more. Alvin Fielder is one of the lynchpin names in the history of the ‘60s Chicago avant-garde movement. He played on SOUND, Roscoe Mitchell’s essential Delmark release and then disappeared from the recording scene for a couple decades, moving to Mississippi and working as a pharmacist. In the ‘80s he reappeared through the indie-label jazz renaissance, hooking up with Futterman and others and thankfully insuring that his legacy would be something other than another lost name. Fielder is one of many underappreciated guys from the original avant-wave that learned and played extensively in an “inside” context” before satisfying the urge to head into fresh territory. He’s quite an expert on the subtleties of assorted modern jazz masters that proceeded and inspired him in the drum seat, and the deep effect that his knowledge and influence of history has on his playing makes him a fine partner not only for Futterman, but especially saxophonist Edward “Kidd” Jordan, a New Orleans legend whose profile has risen over the last few decades due to his deep connections with some long standing greats like William Parker, Hamid Drake and the late Fred Anderson. Jordan’s recorded pedigree is notable for its R&B sessions, including backing the great Professor Longhair, so it should be no surprise that his playing is infused with a sharp bluesy edge that could surely be described as Coltranian. Certainly Jordan was touched by the influence of John, and that certainty is quite pronounced at times in his work on SOUTHERN EXTREME, but it’ll probably be a bit more useful to describe his playing on this disc as remindful of the late Taylor collaborator Jimmy Lyons. Some may consider that a stretch since Lyons played alto and Jordan, a multi-instrumentalist, sticks to tenor on this date. A few of Futterman’s earliest recordings included work with Lyons (stuff I REALLY want to hear), so I’ll admit to that knowledge possibly influencing the above comparison. But only a little bit. Because there are long passages on this live recording that boil like a smaller group version of Taylor’s amazing UNIT STRUCTURES. There are also extended spots that don’t sound like that at all, including the end of track two, where Jordan works himself into a scorching lower-register frenzy that collides with Futterman, who appears to be channeling McCoy Tyner under the influence of trucker speed. When the pianist really connects with Fielder’s percussive abilities he can briefly summon a similarity to the great Muhal Richard Abrams (more Chicago), and furthermore occasionally tosses out ideas that seem inspired by players as diverse as Paul Bley, Andrew Hill and even Jaki Byard. He has a wide ranging conversational strength in his fingertips, but doesn’t stop there, also blowing a couple of fine horns, namely the soprano sax and Indian wood flute, and when he steps away from the keyboard to flex his lungs the sparks do indeed fly. The segments where wood flute and drums mingle and stretch out are a bit like falling through a time-hole to find Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell playing on a Copenhagen street corner for the sheer love of it on a cool overcast day in 1970 (or thereabouts). And the fine saxophone tussles with Jordan are some of the disc’s highlights.

In comparison to the late Richard Grossman or John Blum, Futterman’s done a whole lot of recording, appearing on over sixty releases. In spite of his prolific output, he remains terribly underappreciated as a top-rank post-Taylor improviser as vital to the continuing progress of the music as Marilyn Crispell, Matthew Shipp, or Myra Melford. Where Grossman’s neglect is comparable to the master pianist Herbie Nichols and Blum’s relative lack of opportunity thus far feels similar to the early portion of fellow piano great Horace Tapscott’s career (this of course is subject to change), Futterman’s lack of recognition seems to stem in part from his geographic circumstances, and the artist that I can’t seem to shake in relation to his work isn’t a pianist but a writer. Objectivist poet Lorine Niedecker spent the majority of her life in rural Wisconsin, and the largely posthumous interest in her outstanding work has revealed that her lifestyle was inextricably linked to her creativity. It seems incorrect to opine that the factors necessary for artists like Niedecker and Futterman to flourish also works against their best interests somehow. One surefire obstacle for creative minds is recognizing the environment that best suits their endeavors, and the notion that artists thrive on the often erratic pulse of the urban milieu is true for many, but obviously not for all. Joel Futterman is proof of that, as are Jordan and Fielder. If the trio on SOUTHERN EXTREME suffers a lack of recognition, the fault lies not with them or their outstanding work but with their potential audience’s lack of diligence. Seek and ye shall find, you know?

 

Along the river
      wild sunflowers
over my head
       the dead
who gave me life
      give me this
our relative the air
      floods
our rich friend
      silt
          -Lorine Niedecker

Ten from the '90s Part Six (1995): The Blue Humans- INCANDESCENCE CD (Shock)

INCANDESCENCE was released in 1995 on writer and Skullflower guitarist Stefan Jaworzyn’s Shock label, and it documents a particularly noteworthy and vital trio formation of guitarist Rudolph Grey’s post-No Wave/improv-rock outfit, featuring legendary and late jazz drummer Beaver Harris and longstanding skronk-noise-agitator Jim Sauter from New York’s notorious behemoth sax/guitar trio Borbetomagus, recorded live at CBGB in an opening slot for Sonic Youth in 1988. Music recorded in the ‘80s and released in the ‘90s to be (hopefully) savored until the end of all time. Blue Humans (along with Grey’s solo work) has been generally uncelebrated within the wide-open range of the post-’77 underground, even though he’s collaborated with a bunch of major names, outsider jazz giant Arthur Doyle and top-notch experimentalist Alan Licht among them. If Grey’s name rings a bell for many it’s in relation to his exceptional oral biography of sui generis American filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr. And yeah, that’s one whopper of a book. Grey’s strength as a purveyor of molten improvisational scorch is a whole other basket of steaming bagels, though. Without explicit debts, Blue Humans launch from the same pad that hosted the ecstatic eruptions of late era-John Coltrane. But where lots of artists more deeply connected to jazz tradition became (maybe at times too) concerned with relating /continuing the spiritual element of ‘Tranes’ late sound, Pharaoh Sanders springing to mind first and foremost, Grey’s various groups start with the glorious sonic extremity inherent to LIVE IN SEATTLE or OM and jump with calibrated intensity into a new territory that falls between out-(noise) rock and unapologetically full-on improvisational scorch without ever feeling like a studied attempt at fusion style grafting, ultimately registering as far more organic and intuitive than either Last Exit or the unjustly neglected SST act Universal Congress Of (as great as both of those bands certainly were, and more on UCO later). Of course, Grey’s No Wave roots are a big part of the picture. His late ‘70s band Red Transistor is one of the key lost groups of the genre (one essential 7” posthumously released on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! label), and Blue Humans can be looked upon as the template for the sort of aggressive and extended non-commercialism that No Wave really should have developed into. This very brief CD is evidence of the quite frequent gestures toward unbridled creativity that occurred during this era of supposed horrid conformity (the ‘80s only sucked for people who didn’t look or couldn’t find hep sounds), and I feel safe in surmising that at least one person that unknowingly stumbled in front of the exquisite explosiveness of this trio had their life permanently altered for the better. Sauter’s delivery here is looser and more identifiably jazz-like than his deliberately pummeling attack in Borbetomagus and Harris’ drumming throws aside any explicit ties to jazz tradition, instead opting for an explosive and rock-aligned forward motion (still abstract as all hell) that shows how deeply simpatico he is with Grey’s sensibility. That sensibility, in something close to a nutshell, is a free flowing yet thick and abrasive mass of sound surely influenced by but ultimately not classifiable as jazz. The music here, even with its roots in Coltrane (and Albert Ayler), owes far more to Jimi Hendrix at his most sonically extreme. Most casual listeners might miss this since Hendrix was nearly always somehow connected to song forms and Grey most assuredly is stridently the opposite, his work often feeling instead like one of Jimi’s typically great solos turned inside out and reshaped into something seemingly new yet secretly familiar, or possibly like a brief segment of The Experience at their most outré being looped, examined and expanded like a mind-bendingly beautiful Technicolor balloon. There are certainly still ties to the assaultive core sensibility of No Wave and also to free jazz, but Blue Humans were simply born of the former and borrowed from the latter. And just like it would be a huge fallacy to categorize AXIS: BOLD AS LOVE as a blues record, to call INCANDESCENCE late period No Wave or contempo free jazz is just as largely off the mark. Instead, this document is a core example of one of the rarest of forms: Free Rock. Now, one thing INCANDESCENCE does share with free jazz is the harsh fact that it is best experienced in the live context. To quote the great master Eric Dolphy: “When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone, in the air. You can never capture it again”. The recordings of improvisational, cathartically abstract expression have always been attempts to capture the incendiary essence of this wide-ranging and inexhaustible form, and even the greatest examples have ultimately failed to grasp the sheer life-altering power of witnessing the sweat roll from the brow of a player while standing in the midst of a cloud of collective creative abandon. INCANDESCENCE does a damn fine job trying to harness the force of the fervor, though. It’ll never match being there, but it can make being wherever the hell you are infinitely more interesting. And that’s the whole point, I think.

Grey with sax master Arthur Doyle and Beaver Harris

Ten from the '90s Part Five (1993): Unrest- PERFECT TEETH CD (Teen Beat/4AD)

Unrest’s development from smart and arty ‘80s post-HC upstarts into arguably the best guitar-pop trio of the ‘90s was a fascinating thing to hear as it happened. I can’t brag that I was there from the very beginning mind you, but I wasn’t that far behind, doing mail-order from Mark E. Robinson’s Teen Beat label when a large portion of that imprint’s discography was homemade cassette releases. And in my opinion there is a plurality of approaches into the vast worthiness of the band’s legacy: maybe the easiest way is to engage with their existence in two parts. The first found Robinson and drummer Phil Krauth interacting with a progression of third members (Tim Moran, Chris Thomson, Dave Park, Justin Chearno) in a sustained attempt at romancing a mind-bogglingly diverse assemblage of influences into something roughly approximating a focused aesthetic. That they were so successful at this unruly endeavor gets more impressive as time slouches forward. UK prog, Kiss covers, Kenneth Anger, shards of DC-post hardcore, choppy acoustic wrangling, unusual but surefooted instrumental passages, sincere post-punk appropriation and flashes of unadulterated pop brilliance all combined to somehow sound downright logical. Any of the band’s early recordings showcase this sonic coup to fine effect, though MALCOLM X PARK is probably the best example. The culmination of this first part saw the band undergo a subtle refinement that avoided downplaying their wide ranging nature, with KUSTOM KARNAL BLAXPLOITATION evidencing this shift. And that was cool, but where do you go from there? In Unrest’s case, you move on to the second part of their lifespan, often called the “Bridget Cross-era”. Cross had already made some serious waves as a member of Velocity Girl, contributing in a very key manner to that DC-area group’s outstanding debut 7” before bailing and hooking up with Robinson and Krauth in 1990. Her contribution to Unrest was immediately felt as they kicked out a couple of classic short players, “Yes She Is My Skinhead Girl” and “Cherry Cherry”. Listening to both it was plainly clear that further refinement was taking place. Specifically, deep attention was now being paid to the post-punk and guitar pop elements in the band’s arsenal, and they quickly attained an overt yet non-slavish Anglo-ist minimalism that was equal parts arty and catchy. At times insanely catchy. IMPERIAL F.F.R.R. is often thought of as the go-to release for this era of the band, since it solidified them as a main attraction of the ‘90s indie heyday (Spin Magazine articles and all that). And it is a masterful record, but as much as I’m smitten with that one (and smitten I most assuredly am) I rank their final album PERFECT TEETH as both my sentimental favorite (by a nose) and this incarnation of Unrest’s qualitative high note. It’s the release that hits the perfect synthesis of their late fixations and is also a monument to how deep study of musical precedent can meld with imaginative inspiration to reward the listener with a profoundly personal collective voice. It opens with a nice passage of guitar and vocal fragility from Bridget and Mark (“Angel I’ll Walk You Home”) before exploding into the precise pop heaviness of “Cath Carroll”. You may recognize that name as belonging to a certain Factory Records artist of notable cult renown (she was in Miaow, one of the best late ‘80s Factory groups). Deliberate hommage was a major element in the Unrest (and Teen Beat) attack, often visually (that’s Cath’s striking image gracing PERFECT TEETH’s cover above). They titled another tune “Winona Ryder”, penned “Isabel” in tribute to painter Isabel Bishop and named an early cassette LISA CAROL FREMONT (identify the reference and make this middle-aged auteurist happy). This practice surely gives off a nice post-Godardian whiff, something they share with fellow DC resident Ian Svenonius. The song celebrating this particular Brit-pop muse is just brimming with elements that basically define late-period Unrest; guitars hyperactive and chiming (with occasional helpings of judicious distortion), vocals soaring and joyous (when they weren’t magnetically melancholic), drumming complex and forceful (yet wildly, indefatigably direct in a manner that’s kinda post-Motorik). The tune gallops, it freefalls, it explodes, it repeats. And repeats. Sweet and glorious. From there the record moves into Mark’s mid-tempo jangle comfort zone (“So Sick”), finds Bridget conjuring a very UK rainy day-ish spirited mopery (“Light Command”), lands on one of Mark’s alternate-universe karaoke belters (“Soon It Is Going To Rain”), and sees Phil sing (and drum) a pretty and picturesque love ditty, the kind of tune that’d sound flat-out euphoric on headphones from an airplane seat while traveling to reengage the warm embrace of a lover long missed (“West Coast Love Affair”). Yeah, there is also some Tommy Tutone if he recorded for Sarah Records tomfoolery from Mark (“Six Layer Cake”), and Bridget’s closer has the sort of bold bass playing and airy downtrodden vox that screams out Rough Trade circa 1980 (“Stylistic Ampersand”). The centerpiece of the whole disc though is “Make Out Club”, which sounds like some dastardly rouge cooked down the choppy jangle-rifics of the early Wedding Present, sucked it up in a big-assed cartoon syringe and shot it into a throbbing mainline that leads to a furiously beating heart muscle energized not by blood (no way) but by the myriad and eternal beauties of love (sorry Scientists). If you’ve ever passionately kissed someone in a field on a blanket in late spring until it felt like you had just exchanged tongues, you’ll understand the greatness of this song. If you haven’t, it’ll make you want to. Please proceed.

Ten From the '90s Part Four (1993 [sort of]): KMD- BLACK BASTARDS CD (Sub Verse)

Lots of folks like to fetishize the ‘80s as the classic locus of hip-hop grandiosity, “old school” authenticity and all that, and I’ll certainly agree that there was a surplus of major creativity and rapid fire evolution in hip-hop during that era, but I tend to think of the ‘90s as an epoch of constant rap innovation, the decade where it no longer had to answer questions of musical validity and also produced records at a high frequency that could stand toe to toe qualitatively with the best from any contemporaneous genre. It was also the period where underground hip-hop really began to exert itself as a deep, sustained counterpoint to the more commercial manifestations of its form. In 1993, this writer was neck deep in the assorted permutations of the indie-rock scene, and when I wanted a momentary respite from that environment, I almost always turned to two things: jazz and rap. Gang Starr, Souls Of Mischief, Beatnuts, Del the Funky Homosapien and numerous others formed a powerful, diverse, and still relevant sonic labyrinth that is/was secure from ever running dry. Much of this movement was in fact many different smaller and often geographical scenes, with quite a few reacting to and extending the funky intellectualism of the A Tribe Called Quest/De La Soul/Jungle Brothers/3rd Bass axis, so in turn it was indirectly related to earlier heavies from the ‘80s like Boogie Down Productions and the Ultramagnetic MCs and the Def Jam scientists. It was an extremely fertile stream of sound, a landscape that eventually sent both Outkast and Nas into the larger public consciousness. So, am I going to enthuse on any of the abovementioned names that happened to release a record in 1993? Nah, how ‘bout we talk about BLACK BASTARDS by KMD, a record slated for public consumption in that year only to hit a stumbling block (brick wall, more like it), not becoming legitimately available until 2001, and if you drink in the cover above, I’ll doubt you’ll have any difficulty gleaning why. KMD’s first record, MR. HOOD from ’91, is an outstanding mixture of De La Soul’s deceptive surface lightness and a deeper, well pronounced black consciousness that was just beginning to really articulate itself, largely due to Public Enemy’s righteous clamor. Many people today recognize the name KMD, if at all, as the place from whence came MF Doom, but back in the day (as they say) MF Doom was known as Zev Love X, and KMD were just one group amongst many populating a culture that was dedicated to promoting hip-hop as something other than a string of one-hit wonders and flashes in the pan. If BLACK BASTARDS had actually seen release at the time of its completion (which means that Elektra would’ve momentarily had to act as something other than an ass-sucking corporation), I have no doubt it would now be recognized as the equal of any rap disc released in the first half of the ‘90s. But reality stinks in this case (Elektra unable to be anything but what it was), so this amazing record now needs as much posthumous advocacy as it can get. Where MR. HOOD was the kind of fun-flowing jam, full of good humor and Sesame St. samples, that you could play while yr Mom grilled shish kabobs and you played chess with yr Uncle, this follow up was a noticeably darker affair, at times bordering on angry, though it is always coherent and in firm command of its intentions. In some ways this progression is comparable to the big jump Public Enemy made from YO! BUM RUSH THE SHOW to the gargantuan follow up IT TAKES A NATION OF MILLIONS (I’m sure you know the rest), but KMD weren’t militant in delivery (while being tight with Brand Nubian). Instead, on their second record, KMD were concocting an extremely varied sound. Some of it sounds like a pissed off Tribe (and can you ever recall Q-Tip sounding pissed off?), other parts examine cyclical loops of acoustic bass that boom large without any self-congratulatory back-patting, and there are additional passages that present a sustained dexterous elasticity full of ragged intensity that sits in contrast to the deliriously smooth sonic flow promoted by DJ Premier on records by Gang Starr, Jeru the Damaja etc. I’m notoriously a guy far more concerned with the creativity of DJ’s and producers in the hip-hop scheme of things, quite often caring less about the constant stream of verbiage that spouts from the mouth of an MC, indeed not connecting so much with what the words are saying (the content), instead absorbing the sound and unbroken extendedness of the vocalization (the form). All that explained, both Zev Love X and Rodan excel at being fully formed rappers; I’m quite confident they’d sound fantastic if I didn’t understand a word of English, though their command of the language is admirable. And the late DJ Subroc (Zev Love/Doom’s younger bro, felled by a reckless New York motorist) integrated a raw, sample heavy density that never once feels like it’s recycling itself. His astute ability at weaving a funky progression of cleanly picked guitar samples is the sort of thing that’s been almost entirely left behind in hip-hop’s current more technocratic state. BLACK BASTARDS might have been temporarily sidelined by the bottom-line assholes at Elektra, but its subsequent release establishes a deep corrective to that bad major-label mojo, so do please search it out if it sounds like yr sort of rafter shaking ruckus. It’ll blast grand between STEP INTO THE ARENA and I WISH MY BROTHER GEORGE WAS HERE. It also sounds sweet three times in succession, and that’s a sure sign of a truly great record.

Ten From the '90s Part Three (1992): The Dead C- HARSH 70S REALITY (Siltbreeze)

Some adjectives that apply to the aura that surrounded The Dead C’s subterranean existence at the dawn of the ‘90s: mysterious, dark, foreboding, shambolic. At this current time the band are justifiably legendary (if still underappreciated) in u-ground music circles, but in their earlier days as a very left field New Zealand low-fi noise-rock trio they flew under the radar of all but the most discerning listeners. Previous to The Dead C’s tenure on U.S. label Siltbreeze, if you came across a review of one of their releases in the fanzine press it was almost certain to be a glowing notice of admiration, not due to any sort of consensus from the field but instead because the only scribes actually writing about them were the few people who simply couldn’t resist searching for the band’s output, of which many were cassette releases that frankly felt quite indifferent toward the idea of self promotion (in contrast to the deliberate purposefulness of documentation): releases dribbled into the States and could be procured with a little luck through mail order channels or from the racks of clued in shops, and along with a distinct and raw visual aesthetic that often drew upon guitarist Michael Morley’s woodcut artwork came the lingering aura of a reversal in the modern consumerist norm. The Dead C didn’t come to you hoping for acceptance; instead, if you were intrigued by their existence, finding them required some searching, a little effort. And joining up with Siltbreeze increased the band’s visibility only somewhat. HARSH 70’S REALITY was issued as a double-LP in ’92, and didn’t get a truncated CD release until around five years later. While it is tempting to say that hard line adherence to the varied qualities of format limited their popularity, with some consideration I feel that line of thinking is folly. The marriage of Siltbreeze founder Tom Lax’s defiantly and pleasantly screwed vibe and The Dead C’s uncompromisingly abstract free-rock was a shrewd intertwining of sensibilities. It would’ve done nobody any favors to have used CD bins clogged with the fallout of the overzealous promotion of their music to an always unpredictable indie marketplace. And the stature of this record slowly rose to masterpiece levels in the annals of noise-rock anyway, indeed becoming a cornerstone of the sort of organic, flowing formlessness that’s been a major component in much of the new millennium’s noisy goings-on. There is probably no better bathe-in-it-or-reject-it statement of purpose than the opening side long excursion of “Driver UFO”. Sounds drift in like storm clouds, threatening and unpredictable, with both feedback and distortion asserting and retreating, rising and falling, fading away or abruptly stopping, creating a loose and fascinating tapestry where the rain ultimately never bursts forth but a strange fog rises instead and envelops the surroundings, becoming incredibly dense before eventually dissipating into the ether. What a grandly twisted twenty-two and one-half minutes. Not everything included here is that shapeless and huge, though. Side two begins with “Sky”, and ragged bit of rocking that could be mistaken for some lost demo track from ‘80s subterranean Cleveland. “Love” basically lands between the two extremes, with string damage and brittle drumming slowly cohering into an almost groove, and it’s here that the occasionally cited comparisons to early Fall border on the explicit. The 2nd LP begins with “Sea Is Violet”, where the levels of guitar overload reach mind-melting highs and the drums attain a stunted, staggering momentum, and based on the primal thrust of this track if the agreement with Siltbreeze hadn’t happened, The Dead C could’ve just as easily fit on the Massachusetts label Twisted Village (who also released an LP by Gate, another of Michael Morley’s bands, so maybe I’m just stating the obvious). “Baseheart”, the middle of Side D’s three tracks, opens with a guitar riff so ominous it begins to feel like the soundtrack to the climax of an ultra low-budget action movie flickering on the backside of my eyelids: slow motion like Peckinpah, but tight, direct, energetic and sleazy ala early Ferrara, you know? Along the way it adds some wickedly broken Jandek-ian vocals, spectacular bursts of knotted and frayed guitar splatter, and a splendid slow build from the drums. This leads into “Hope”, where the music continues in a Corwood-like vein, combining the bent vision of outer-Texas with a hazy slumbering gait that, to me at least, approaches the far-left end of the early ‘80s UK DIY spectrum in its strung-out bedroomy density. The attention to texture is severe, though thoroughly appropriate, and is a well-considered conclusion to a lasting, uncompromising work. This is probably my favorite release by The Dead C, though the various editions of DR503 and TRAPDOOR FUCKING EXIT aren’t far behind, and those unfamiliar with the expanse of their maw that are attracted to the untiring candle flame of Sonic Youth’s experimental side should step right up to the plate and swing. Free-rock doesn’t get any more major than HARSH 70S REALITY, and as time hurtles forward and more bands shake off a slavish reverence to structure, the status of this masterwork has nowhere to go but up.

The Dead C live at Johnny Brenda's Philadelphia, PA October 12 2008

Ten from the '90s Part Two (1991): Love Child- OKAY? CD (Homestead)

It’s interesting to consider the bands/artists that get anointed with immortality and those that suffer the fate of being forgotten (if they were indeed ever known). To wit, 1991. Of all the bands in my personal heavy rotation that year, it was Pavement that has most impacted history. And that’s cool. PERFECT SOUND FOREVER was/is a flat out beauty of a 10 inch EP. The “Summer Babe” 7" was a stone gas as well. But two groups that were beating out Stockton's finest in my personal sweepstakes of the constant spin were Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, a bent and comely post-avant-garage group from San Fran that will no doubt eventually get their own post in this space, and Love Child, a complex New York indie-trio that I felt at the time were poised to rise to the top of a bursting bullpen of bands (though I probably played SEBADOH III more than any other record that year, but everybody loves that one, right? Right?). Thinking Fellers have a deep discography and are pretty entrenched in the lore of post ’77 US art-damage, but Love Child has been sorta kicked to the curb of history, or more to the point they are a footnote in the twisted geography of Alan Licht’s snaky list of recordings. In this regard, they suffer next to Run On, a Matador act that were kinda looked upon (by me, anyway) as an indie-supergroup (for the record, Rick Brown ex-Fish & Roses and Les Batteries, Sue Garner of the Shams and Licht of, well, Love Child, and also very fine solo releases and his shit-hot participation in Ed Wood-biographer Rudolph Grey’s mammoth no wave/free jazz project Blue Humans). One reason I thought Love Child were all set to conquer the scene (so to speak) was due to the way they were such a swell collusion of seemingly irreconcilable influences, convulsed in a specifically Noo Yawk way. Let’s run down the list: an approach to stripped-down sonics that was similar to the at-that-point very much in vogue K records’ sound, which was justly amplified by the bands’ multi-instrumental attitude (Never mind that Licht titled a solo release CALVIN JOHNSON HAS RUINED ROCK FOR AN ENTIRE GENERATION). Male sung lyrics that at times come off like a passive aggressive Jonathan Richman and at other moments lash out from the hypothetical psyche of a love-wounded schmeedle. Much of the proceedings are related to post-power pop happenings to varying degrees. Female vocals courtesy of the much missed Rebecca Odes generally detail lovey-dovey goings on in a grandly smart and detached manner (Oh so sweet). Licht’s guitar playing (soloing) depicts an alternate universe where Eddie Van Halen is actually Thurston Moore. I even hear echoes of post-Ubu Cleveland and a Frankensteinian sewing job of early Television and early Feelies. How east coast. In a sense Love Child was a perfect band for 1991, a period where the indie scene had reached a boiling point, Nirvana and to a lesser extent Pavement tearing the roof off the sucker. But Love Child was in no way a schizophrenic band. Nah, they seemed totally simpatico, with the necessary frictions and individualistic tendencies. They were riding a blazed trail into wide open territory, just one piece of a nationwide under-the-radar grid. Another reason I thought Love Child would succeed in contrast to (for example) the great but quite obscure Royal Trux (who inexplicably [to me] ended up on a major label and lasted into the 21st century) related to the trio’s pop sensibility, which at this point was more explicit then that of Unrest or for that matter Pavement. Ultimately, you never know how things are going to shake out. OKAY? really shook the peaches from my proverbial tree for a few years and has been in semi-frequent rotation over the last twelve months or so since I copped a download to replace my beat-to-shit vinyl. I never located the follow up LP WITCHCRAFT, though I’d love to hear it since it’s rumored to be in a more Yo La Tengo direction (It featured new member Brendan O’Malley replacing Will Baum, who left to head out west. He formed the band 9 Iron. Never heard them). I do own the debut 7” on Trash Flow and the Moondog covers 7” on Forced Exposure. Both are dandy. But I’ll let you in on a secret. If some enterprising and cutting edge label (say Merge, who’re getting a rep for righteous indie collections/reissues, Honor Role and Dino Jr. and Volcano Suns and Destroyer to name four) decided to compile the entire output of Love Child into a jam packed 2CD set, I don’t think I could resist picking it up, largely because they were such an aesthetically solid and purely rewarding band. They are always at the top of my coulda-shoulda been contenders list, a group that was clearly tailor made for my mindset (then and now), so any motion in the contemporary marketplace toward justifying their too brief existence would seem to require a reciprocal gesture on my part. The least I could do, essentially. What’s that? My favorite tracks? I’ll type this slowly, so nobody misses the point. Every fucking one. OKAY?’s landscape ranges wildly from start to finish, but every second is essential. Until somebody with the wherewithal to make waves wakes up and smells the caffeinated breeze, I guess it’s up to me to light a candle for these three. If you stumble upon them and find yrself similarly impacted, perhaps you might do the same.

Alan Licht playing No Fun Fest NYC

(any idea how hard it is to find a pic of Love Child online?)

Ten from the 90's Part 1 (1990): Daniel Johnston- 1990 CD (Shimmy Disc)

It seems a bit odd in retrospect, but 1990 was the first gospel recording to enter the hallowed confines of my record collection back in the year of its release. What’s even odder is how, even though the record far from resembles a traditional gospel album, it took me over a decade to recognize it for what it clearly was. This largely speaks to my (former?) knuckle-headedness and lack of maturity, but it also (just a little bit) points to how aberrant was the concept of spiritual music in the scene that then embraced, with varying degrees of ironic distance, Johnston’s work. There was such a range of appreciation from the guy’s fans (along with naysayers who harrumphed that his popularity was just one big hipster put-on, though happily this has largely subsided), from borderline exploitative (curiosity seekers) on one side to naively adulatory (“outsider genius”) on the other. In the days before Cobain donned a HI HOW ARE YOU? T-shirt there was much debate over Johnston’s underground popularity. One odious line of thinking accused his musician collaborators and the wealth of his fans of using Daniel for credibility and cool-points. Time has proven this to be nonsense, of course (IMHO there were undoubtedly higher percentages of phonies professing to love Sonic Youth during this same period, but that’s another story). 1990 has moments of sheer beauty, but it’s also a troubled, rough, and at times difficult record to listen to, and I can sorta see it from this distance as a goad to those who were suspicious of the Johnston phenomenon. The original LP release featured eleven songs, six produced at Mark Kramer’s Noise New York studio, four live and one non-Kramer recording of a Beatles’ song. Six of the tracks are overtly spiritual in content, a couple more are ambiguously so. An additional few touch on the familiar Johnston themes of love and pain. But the whole damn thing feels like the testifying of a tortured man desperately in need of salvation. The studio cuts work best, stripping Daniel’s music of the tape hiss and “amateur” status that previously adorned so much of his work and in turn adjusting/sharpening the focus. It enriches the acapella opener “Devil Town”, making it sound huge where on a home-tape it would likely be quaint. And the studio really becomes an additional instrument on “Spirit World Rising”, where moments of intense quiet and the resonating of guitar strings combine most excellently with the booming yet adenoidal echo of the voice. Both “Held the Hand” and “Lord Give Me Hope” benefit mightily from the crisp studio atmosphere and how it not only captures the mood of injured desperation but also the later song’s sharp shifts in dynamics. Johnston’s piano playing displays incredible musicality (though he’s no virtuoso), even when the instrument sounds out-of-tune and possibly broken: “Got To Get You Into My Life” becomes deluged in cascades of rumbling low notes and the song is cagily transformed from The Beatles’ ode to sexual yearning into one of religious need. But it’s the pristine rendering of “Some Things Last a Long Time” that provides the album’s highlight. A haunting tune of love and loss, it’s one of Kramer’s strongest productions and really shows how adept Johnston is at interpreting other’s material (words are by Jad Fair). The live tracks all pass muster at differing levels, though “Don’t Play Cards with Satan” and “Funeral Home” both sound superior on the Mike McGonigal compiled long OOP Atavistic Video MOUTHFUL OF SWEAT. And “Funeral Home”, recorded live at Jersey record store Pier Platters (RIP), gets us back to the opprobrium of the naysayers. As a lazily strumming Johnston encourages a sing-along, it’s difficult to swallow the laughter of some attendees, which definitely feels aimed “at” the performer not “with” him, because the player clearly ain’t laughing. This contrasts sharply with “Careless Soul”, an acapella cover of a fire and brimstone gospel chestnut where the crowd is so quiet you can hear a pin drop between the anguished, emotionally distraught verses (I can positively feel the tears on his cheeks) and the dissonance between one believer and a room full of probable cynics is thick as George Steele’s neck. Yes, I’m inferring some of this, but only because on more than one occasion I witnessed folks become uncomfortable with “Careless Soul” (as well as other parts of 1990). Once a house guest asked me if the song was “some kind of fucking joke”. Um, no. The joke is on you I’m afraid. What’s also interesting is how I feel quite different about Daniel’s getting into the emotional deep weeds on MOUTHFUL’s organ drenched version of “Don’t Play Cards with Satan”. I can clearly see the tears on that clip, but in this case my heart swells up with empathy (instead of concern) since he’s being taped not in a club but in a house and is clearly amongst friends. I’ve felt for a while that the inclusion of “Careless Soul”/”Funeral Home” on 1990 was an attempt to delineate between the listeners who truly accepted and embraced the full range of Daniel’s artistry and personality from those who perceived it as some sort of yuk-it-up eccentric fun-fest (I can’t help but view the lingering notoriety of the late Wesley Willis through this lens. If this makes me a killjoy, I’m sorry to leave that impression. I’m really a fun loving person. Honest injun. Equal to a barrel of monkeys, in fact). I think Kramer (who ran Shimmy Disc, still does I think) largely succeeded in separating the lovers from the fakers, so to speak, and he surely had a helping hand from the advocacy of Kurt: three years later, Daniel would release another studio album, this time on a major label (Atlantic), the far more fine-tuned and stable FUN, with production from longtime friend and Butthole Surfer-member Paul Leary. Its title was accurate and fitting, but it was also more than just that. It deserves a separate post for ample discussion. These days, Johnston’s songs have been covered by dozens, he’s collaborated with just as many, his art’s been bound in books and displayed in New York galleries, and he’s the subject of a great, loving documentary. Success is surely sweet, particularly when it’s so hard fought. 1990 is an unflinching portrait of the trouble along the way, but it’s also a fine study of the work’s severe quality and the sincere beauty of the man. As such, it’s one to cherish.

photo by Michael Macioce