The straight man
Microphobes – Launch pad part 3
Gimme indie rock
Long story
short, it all happened in a matter of days. One day I rode around
town listening to Slanted & Enchanted and I felt a burning
conviction my next musical step was to build a song-by-song answer
record to this totem.
Long story, I
can remember when I first heard Stephen Malkmus' voice and guitar (in
my mind very much entwined. I can't imagine the voice without the
guitar). It was december 24, 1994. Christmas Eve. On the radio was
the voice of host Chantal Pattyn, who at this point in time seemed so
in tune to the tides of cultural life, she may as well have been from
another planet. Then again, most people seemed like they were from
another planet. At least Chantal beamed back weekly reports from this
other world in a voice that made me want to understand. I had found
temporary refuge from the Christmas dinner and on the radio Chantal
talked to Mauro Pawlowkski and Tom Barman. My heroes. Just out of the
arms of obscurity they were full of life. They wore too many t-shirts
at the same time, but made it look stylish. Did impossibly unkempt
things to their hair. I dyed my hair dark red in tribute, but no
luck. My hair remains impervious to change. I thought they knew it
all. And what they both agreed on this Christmas eve was Pavement's
Crooked Rain Crooked Rain. I didn't lodge the band name immediately,
but the title of the record fascinated me. The word repetition set up
a nursery rhyme rhythm, the physical impossibility of the idea
pointed to absurd possibilities, 'crooked' seemed plucked right out
of some ancient hardboiled short story. In those brief second between
hearing the title and actually hearing the band, my mind sparked. I
believe I was halfway sold already. And then I heard the song.
To say it poured
out of the speakers would not be right. Remember, I was hiding out
from a family situation, so it must've been a very silent pouring,
but it struck me right away. It was a very joyous riff. There was
something free about it. You could tell it could go off the rails at
any moment. Later on in the song it did. My initial impression was
that the playing somehow sparkled. There seemed to be more in it than
in comparable riffs I'd heard in indie rock singles of the time. Over
many years I've come back time and again to that sparkling feeling
and now I'm almost sure it has to do with a very free intermingling
of the lead guitar – rhythm guitar divide. Though I love the
Stones, when rock tomes tell me Keith plays a lead – rhythm hybrid,
I don't really feel it. But I feel it in Pavement. Listen deep to
that riff in 'Elevate me later' (that was the song I heard) or many
other Pavement songs. It's like staring up at the sky on a clear
night. It's sparkling with lights. Listen intently to 'Elevate me
later' and the same effect occurs. Tiny plucked or implied notes
appear, like melodies and fills that never sound rehearsed. Just the
way the player happened to feel like playing in that moment. There's
a layering of guitars on many Pavement records. But not layers that
smother over each other like shoegaze. More like questions and
answers, or conversations. Pavement was a conversational band. Not
shouting, not stuck in some soma sleep drone. Talking.
And then the
voice. I had never heard a voice like that on a record. Not even
Dylan in the mid-'60s went out on a limb like that, turning the way
he talked into a singing style. It was daring you to turn away and
say 'this can't possibly be singing'. And yet it was capable of
carrying all the meaning and more of ordinary singing. The speech
inflections, the casual use of imperfect falsetto, the imagery, lines
tumbling over lines, each one setting up new associations, full of
one liners, commentary both endlessly applicable and appealingly
non-specific. It was free.
If you know the
song, you know they tumble down a rabbit hole after the second verse.
As struck as I was with what I'd only just heard at the song's start,
imagine how this made me feel. Noise as pure joy. Camaraderie. I fell
down the rabbit hole with Pavement. Followed them through the ups and
downs of their career. Then Stephen's solo career. It saw me through
many years. But that could fill another book. You know how it goes.
As my interests widened, some deep fascinations turned shallow. By
2007 I was barely paying attention. Not just during the synthpop
period. Before that it was the early '70s period. Before that the
soul phase. The Brazilian fascination. The Christian rock episode. As
a listener I was on a journey and that means losing sight of familiar
vistas.
All of it came
crashing back in during 2007. The musical trigger was a recording of
Malkmus & the Jicks' january 2007 show in Portland, where they
premiered most of what would eventually become Real Emotional Trash,
one of the early shows with Janet Weiss on drums. All of it, a
lifetime of records, reissues, Peels sessions, unauthorized concert
recordings, it sounded more alive to me than even before. I'll not go
into the minutiae of the months of binge listening that followed.
Comparing notes on all 21 recorded shows from the 1997 tour.
Identifying all known Pig Lib outtakes from concert tryouts. Just a
sample of the meaningful endeavours that filled those days. I sucked
the well that seemed incapable of running dry, turned into a fullblown Malkhead (i.e. a person with more than passing fondness for the work of 20th century composer/performer Stephen Nathaniel Malkmus) overnight. I wonder what was it
in me that made me susceptible to this trick of memory, just at that
moment? Late 20s crisis? Did I feel the jaws of adulthood closing?
Consolidate my career or finally admit defeat, close shop and start
again? (Of course, in the end it was the second option. It usually
is.) End this string of temporary housing situations and settle down?
Have a bunch of kids that call me pa? That must be what it's all
about . Did I feel the sands in the hourglass run out ever so slowly
on my musical 'career', just now in the midst of our greatest time?
Did I sense this was the highpoint and there was nowhere to go but
elsewhere, out of music? All of this I'm sure. I had some hard years
of transformation ahead and I felt them coming. I'd already
overstretched the college student years of my life by quite a
stretch. You can't wear sneakers forever. The music of my youth was a
refuge. But it wasn't just a trick of memory. It was also some of the
greatest music ever made – to me. And what it said to me, and why
it speaks to me, I had abandoned for too long. At times life is like
what conventional wisdom tells us, it takes a long journey to find
out home is where you started from.
I could've written a feelgood TV movie about it. As it is, I turned it into more music.
https://soundcloud.com/user-560432285-452933133/sets/microphobes-launch-pad-disc-2
Next: Between thought and expression
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