A brief history of lo-fi... part 4

Ask Motorpsycho’s Bent Saether – author of such early works as ‘Lobotomizer’ and ‘Fleshharrower’ – and he’ll tell you there always was a sweet side to the band. ‘That’s why we covered that Mamas & Papas song ‘California dreaming’ early on.’ But what about the distinctly heavy metal vocals on that cover, Bent? ‘Yes, not sickly sweet like you lovey-dovey temperate climate people. Sweet like the eternal snow of the arctic tundra, like bathing in a boiling geiser and rolling amid the frozen pine twigs.’

‘Demon Box’ is Motorpsycho’s valentine album – a love letter to the ancient demons haunting the deserted halls of the WWII submarine base they use as a rehearsal space. It starts off deceptively innocent with fiddle-and-flute enhanced folk singalong ‘Waiting for the one’ (reprised later on the record as a screaming punk track). But further songs like ‘Feedtime’, ‘Come on in’, ‘Step inside again’, the Moondog-via-Janis Joplin pagan ritual ‘All is loneliness’ and the record’s two epics ‘Demon box’ and ‘Mountain’, make clear exactly what disembodied presence they’re waiting for.

All recorded with the best production Norway could offer in 1992 (at least at this volume), which qualifies for lo-fi anywhere else. Bent has grown increasingly in touch with his feelings since then. Recent albums like ‘Little fluffy death unicorn’ and ‘Heavy metal fruit’ with the cover showing him biting the head of a teddy bear, are proof of that.

Proof there really is something special about Scandinavia, ‘Demon box’ was reissued as a 4CD+DVD box set on Rune Grammofon. Now that’s sweet.

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No one knows Beck Hansen. Not really. Even after all these years, it’s still unclear whether he was really a government mole in the lo-fi scene. What is clear, is that sax loving president Bill Clinton just couldn’t get along with lo-fi. ‘They never even heard of Teddy Wilson, I bet’ is just one of his disparaging remarks. On another occasion: ‘No one’s going to have sex to static.’ (Strangely, this did not lead to rapprochement between lo-fi and the republicans.) But did he really order a covert FBI operation to smoke out sex-hating lo-fi radicals?

‘Maybe there’s nothing to it,’ says author Nick Broomfield, ‘maybe Beck was just the John Fred and his Playboy Band of the early ‘90s. But there’s something just a little too pat about his story. Like he was grown in some sick lo-fi plantation or something. What’s clear is Beck suddenly sprang up seemingly out of nowhere and became the crown prince of lo-fi, releasing a raft of albums ‘Mellow gold’, ‘One foot in the grave’ and the truly incomprehensible ‘Stereopathetic soul manure’. Where did he come from? How did that happen? Something’s not right with this picture.’

In the following months the state cracked down on lo-fi. Calvin Johnson was arrested for washing his clothes too often. Scott Kannberg for owning illegal blues magazines. Smog’s Bill Callahan pulled a gun on a cop who asked him if he was having fun. (His defense of police solicitation did not stand up in court.) ‘The disappearance of Kurt Cobain’s Daniel Johnston t-shirt was not an accident, believe me. Courtney knows what I’m talking about,’ claims Broomfield, who has a movie on the subject coming out, ‘Who killed Kurt Cobain’s t-shirt’. ‘The truth will astound you.’

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1994-95 was lo-fi’s Indian summer. The hard work of the pioneers paid off for some, while others were left in the dust. As Wayne Coyne trod the hallowed boards of the stage at the Peach Pit, Beverly Hills 90210, a thought flashed in his head. ‘Work now before the long night of death.’ ‘I was doing it for all of them’, says Wayne, ‘for Daniel and Lou and Spiral. It was the culmination of something or other…yadda yadda…cosmic balance…fleck of dust in the machine of creation.’

In truth, the seeds of lo-fi’s dissolution were already present. When Sebadoh’s ‘Bubble and scrape’ overtook Pearl Jam’s ‘Ten’ at the top of the Billboard top 100 it felt like the end of an era. MTV’s David Fricke: ‘It was probably the last real rock and roll social revolution. One generation of indulgent, decadent poodle rockers was superseded by this radical, post-feminist, individualist movement. A changing of the guards. Suddenly everything was either before or after.’

But the old guards –the Nirvanas, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees- did not feel like going quietly in the night. ‘Suddenly you had this weird motion of reappropriation,’ says Fricke, ‘Nirvana wanted desperately to play with the Meat Puppets which obviously turned out disastrous.’ Curt Kirkwood recalls with horror: ‘I sat down with [Nirvana manager] Danny Goldberg to discuss their ideas and all I heard was they wanted to play ‘Lake of fire’ with a cello amid a field of graveyard flowers and incense candles.’ One night a drunk Mike McCready turned up backstage at a Palace Brothers show and wanted to jam. ‘It turned ugly,’ says Fricke.

Not as ugly as the old guard’s desperate attempts to adapt to the new musical trend. Health nut and Red Hot Chili Peppers auxiliary John Frusciante’s ‘Niandra Lades and Usually just a t-shirt’ was a brave leap into the unknown, according to Jann Wenner’s rave review in Rolling Stone. No one else ever heard the record [I certainly did not, ed.]. Scott Weiland’s ’12 bar blues’ was filled with Linda Perry co-writes. Nirvana transitioned smoothly into post-lo-fi hit machine Foo Fighters with three minutes of your life you’ll never get back ‘Marigold’. Best of all fared Pearl Jam whose singer Eddie Vedder was a real fan of lo-fi at least, later inducting Beat Happening into the Rock&Roll Hall of Fame. He pushed and prodded the band to include ‘Bugs’ on their third album ‘Vitalogy’ – the only example of a classic rock band successfully reappropriating lo-fi principles into their sound?

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‘Does anyone remember Lou’ was the appropriate title of MTV’s 10-years-on special reuniting the stars of success series ‘How Lou can you go’. There were happy stories and less happy stories. Mike Diamond had found himself in the Beastie Boys, despite a first round elimination in Lou’s show. ‘I didn’t fit the lo-fi pitch,’ he remembers, ‘I had friends, a social life, a purpose, some motivation… It was a mismatch.’

John Darnielle had made it to the final three, primarily on the strength of how much he creeped out the other contestants, but it proved a hard-to-commercialize asset. He drifted into the financial sector and finally fulfilled his potential as one of the instigator of the 2008 market crash. ‘The greatest pop art happening of the 21^st century,’ he asserts.

Others fared less well. People really took to Omaha’s precocious lo-fi toddler Conor Oberst. He spent the next decade in Bright Eyes. ‘I wouldn’t wish it on anyone,’ he admits.

But what of legendary coach Lou Barlow himself? Curiously absent citing ‘other responsibilities on his turkey farm’, it wasn’t long before rumors swirled out of control. His former bandmate J. Mascis issued a reluctant statement: ‘Now that I think about it – I didn’t get any turkeys these last three Thanksgivings either. It’s a shame. He was a funny fella.’ Paul McCartney: ‘It’s a drag. Does this mean I get my copyrights back?’ Courtney Love: ‘It’s not what you think it is, and I assure you I’m not involved.’ Nick Broomfield: ‘Has anyone considered the possibility that Courtney Love may be involved?’

Remember him at his height.

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‘Timothy’s monster’ dares to be sentimental for real, where ‘Demon box’ was just plain paranoid.’
Tommy Olsson

Their last album ‘Demon box’ had been an overwhelming success upon release in february 1993, shipping more than twice the total sales of their previous release during the first week. The band all of a sudden found themselves the darlings of the press, a favourite on the live circuit, and actually selling records for the first time. This was the height of the ‘grunge’ era, and all of a sudden there was fame to be enjoyed and money to be made by young men with guitars if they played their cards right: the world wanted scuzzbags with long hair, and every indie-label in the universe was looking for the next Seattle-ish scene and hoping to become the next SubPop.
Bob LeBad

So Motorpsycho left their label, cut off their golden locks for a clean cut boy next door look, said goodbye to band member DeathProd (aka Helge Sten, cause even in Scandinavia that’s not a real name) – the Throbbing Gristle presence who memorably coloured ‘Demon box’’s sound – but kept him on as a studio auxiliary, and made a warm, friendly, part lo-fi, part hi-fi, triple record (actually five sides of vinyl) that was a real step in the unknown. Fortunately it turned pretty darn amazing.