The anti-Daniel Johnston, Bill Callahan’s earliest, late ‘80s efforts (‘A table setting’, ‘Cow’, ‘Sewn to the sky’) were self-released cassette albums. Unlike Johnston, Callahan refused his tapes to those that wanted them and chucked them at passersby avoiding eye contact. Just the kind of visionary Dan Koretzky was on the lookout for to complete the Drag City roster.
It took much haggling. Callahan wanted the Smog records to be released in sandpaper sleeves. Koretzky: ‘They’ll be ruined before anyone can hear ‘em.’ Callahan: ‘The records suck and it serves them right for being Smog fans.’ Finally a deal was agreed upon. In the meantime Callahan recorded a heartfelt goodbye to his tape machine (‘Tired tape machine’) which he immediately disowned as sentimental mush. ‘Sentiment has no place in music.’
Drag City debut ‘Forgotten foundation’ was recorded with Kenny Buttrey on drums and cuddly-misanthrope-for-hire Jim O’Rourke. Buttrey: ‘After working with Dylan and Jimmy Buffet this felt like a vacation with the happiest campers I ever met.’
Then came the incidents. Backstage at Monsters of Rock, Callahan pulled a gun on a cop who asked him if he was having fun. His defense ‘What did he expect? It was a total set-up’ only made sense to lo-fi aficionados. The judge was not one. Callahan used his prison experience as inspiration for lackluster comeback ‘Macrame gunplay’ and – after a falling out with Koretzky - ‘Julius Caesar’.
Callahan pulled it all together for triumph ‘Wild love’, containing amongst others the definitive Prince/self-portrait ‘Prince alone in the studio’ which analyses an artist lost in creation as clinically as anyone ever managed.
Callahan is still on the road, but after Smog reunited without him, he’s out under his own name, still chilling the heart of true believers.
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Birth place of the saxophone, US president Clinton had always had a soft spot for the kingdom of Belgium. With concern he noted the mid-90s evolution in the local music scene, which reflected the lo-fi underground in the States.
Antwerp band dEUS were at the center of a new vibrancy in continental Europe’s alternative rock scene. Their 1994 debut album ‘Worst case scenario’ and attendant underground hit single ‘Suds & soda’ had catapulted them into the role of press darlings, proud ambassadors of a new surrealist movement. Great things were expected. Then they went a little weird, announcing their next project would be an improvised soundtrack to a porn movie.
Except the porn movie didn’t exist, there was no soundtrack, the band was really working on a disjointed lo-fi mail-order mini album called ‘My sister = my clock’, the product of five days of unprepared mayhem in a local studio, all band members contributing compositions and ideas.
Beck passed by and heard an advance tape. Two days later Clinton was informed. He took a firm stand: ‘This is not the way forward for our befriended state. Lo-fi ends here. Not one domino shall fall. Except for the label Domino which I will topple personally.’
The movement was outlawed immediately by the Belgian military dictatorship. Artists were forced to ‘clean up or clear out’. Two of the scene’s figureheads – dEUS singer Tom Barman and guitarist Rudy Trouvé – were effectively banned and exiled to the UK. They eventually returned and dEUS continued on a slightly less weird path. Times change – Tom Barman is now the country’s minister of culture.
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‘Awful things were about to happen,’ remembers Robert Pollard, ‘I had to get it all out on tape before it would be too late.’
Hence 28-song Guided By Voices magnum opus ‘Alien lanes’ (1995). ‘I was reading about what was happening over on the continent, in Belgium. I thought, they’re never going to get away with that over here. But I was wrong. I didn’t realize how hostile the general population had become to the lo-fi scene. They wanted us gone.’ In winter 1995 Clinton announced a recording tape moratorium. Henceforth tape would only be made available to selected studios of impeccable standing. ‘It was Prohibition all over again. Like they took away our beer,’ recalls Pollard.
Normally not one for political commentary, ‘Alien lanes’ is filled with protest songs like ‘They’re not witches’, ‘Evil speakers’ and ‘Big chief Chinese restaurant’ (with its incisive chorus ‘Excuse me Napoleon / But I gotta know / Where I gotta stand’). The album was sold under the counter, so no official statistics are available, but sources speak of sales in the hundreds.
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It had been a rocky trail for Pavement after the initial lo-fi success. Spiral’s blues purism drove a wedge between him and the more ‘rockist’ side of the band. ‘They said I was like a museum guard,’ says Kannberg. When Spiral got arrested during the initial lo-fi crackdown the band used his absence to record a radio-friendly country rocking second album ‘Sweet California rain’. Then they accepted a lucrative offer to support the Eagle on their ‘Hell freezes over’ tour. Spiral, just released, joined them but upset the sponsors. When he mooned Glenn Frey, Pavement was thrown off the tour. That same night, in a Scandinavian hotel room, he gave the band his ultimatum. They refused and he left the band. ‘Oh well, it all turned out for the best,’ says Kannberg, who switched to bass and together with saxophonist James Chance, formed narcoleptic groovers Morphine, a favorite of president Clinton.
Pavement scraped together whatever recordings they had for third album ‘Wowee zowee’. ‘With our connection to the Eagles, we managed to get at least some recording tape, but it was tough. We had to compromise and record in a studio, and we included a lot of older recordings, just making up the difference.’
‘It wasn’t comfortable. Now that Spiral was gone, no one felt up to filling that hole. You know, who’s going to do quality control, who’s going to write the lyrics? A lot of the songs have almost no words, just screaming and moaning,’ says Stephen Malkmus, now de facto head of the band. ‘Also, I was smoking a lot of grass at the time. Thank God that wasn’t illegal yet.’
Nevertheless, ‘Wowee zowee’ is a truly majestic album. ‘Everything said and done, it might even be my favourite,’ admits Kannberg, 'I taught them well.'
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With the spectacular success of the ‘Kids’ soundtrack the final rot set in. Under attack from the political establishment, re-appropriated by older musicians, without access to recording tape, and now, as some would allege, betrayed by one of their own, the lo-fi scene suffered an internal feud that would lead to the genre’s demise.
The choice of Lou Barlow as musical director for such decidedly mainstream entertainment as Larry Clark’s ‘Kids’ may seem counter-intuitive but Lou was riding high as a reality show host and anyway, he could always charm the pants off any industry big-wig. The movie chronicles Michelle Pfeiffer’s efforts as an inner-city school teacher and follows four focused and motivated students who have sex and volunteer in local animal shelters. Results don’t lie, Barlow’s groove experiments and selected tracks from the lo-fi canon (Daniel Johnston, Slint) complemented the movie beautifully. The public agreed and sent the soundtrack and theme song ‘Natural one’ (a Stevie Wonder sample) up the charts. Even the president had nice things to say about its ‘Oval Office groove’.
In the lo-fi scene reactions were mixed, often hostile. Daniel Johnston felt typecast: ‘People may think Casper the friendly ghost is all I write about. I’ve got many strings on my bow. I also write about King Kong, Captain America and Bambi.’ Bill Callahan rejected the movie’s ‘lewd and lascivious’ portrayal of young people motivated to build a better society. ‘It’s disgusting,’ he added, threatening to picket the movie. Palace’s Will Oldham: ‘I protest strongly to that song [‘Natural one’] which has the singer stating repeatedly ‘I am the one’. There is no room for two lo-fi artists with messianic pretenses. That’s my schtick, so back off, Lou!’ Scott Kannberg: ‘Lou should use his money and influence to improve the situation for all of us lo-fi artists, not make multi-platinum selling hit songs that mock the principles of the blues.’
At the heart of the dispute was the fact that fame and fortune gave Lou access to all the recording tape he craved. Instead of sharing the wealth he was stockpiling the scarce commodity up in his turkey farm, indicating he planned to control the world’s supply of recording tape. All lo-fi recordings would henceforth be at his mercy. Rumours circulated Lou was in cahoots with the president to control lo-fi and snuff out all radical recording.
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