Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks: 87/88 - 2009

87
2009/02/25, Great hall, SF
Harness your hopes
Us
Blue arrangements
Starlings of the slipstream
Pink India
Spit on a stranger
Fin
Range life
Real emotional trash
Loretta's scars
We have laid here
Lions (Linden)
Freeze the saints
Shoot the singer
Zurich is stained
Heaven is a truck
Vanessa from Queens
Here
Love train
Emotional rescue
Summer babe

You wanna know off the cuff greatness – check out the way Stephen perfectly fits the lines 'I broke a string / I didn't bring any' into the metre of 'Real emotional trash'. That's victory from the jaws of defeat. After an excursion through 'Loretta's scars' – 'see, in my nervousness, I put the wrong string on' – fortunately the matter's settled when someone hands him a replacement guitar 'but what if it sounds better than mine?'

Considering my next sentence is gonna start 'Part of Stephen's genius...' I'd better define what I mean by 'genius'. I'm not claiming Stephen as one of the leading intellects of this or the last century. He can beat me at Scrabble all day, he can probably beat me at Dutch Scrabble, but still. I don't know that any 20th century (or later) musician was that kind of a genius. No, I'm talking 'genius' as containing a creative essence unique to itself, some spark of something (some idea, some stance, some sound) that didn't exist in the world before. Stephen's got some of that genius, I think so. So, here we go...

Part of Stephen's genius is to effectively mine a lot of performance handicaps (being unprepared, breaking strings, forgetting lines, not knowing how to end songs, seemingly being completely aloof to his own songs – you get that feeling that Stephen's playing certain songs against his better judgement as a gift to his audience – who else gets away with that?) and yet what would be indefensible in most artists, it's part of Stephen's performance greatness. Of course, it doesn't always work, it's a knife's edge. He's going for that knife's edge deliberately, but he can really bend those accidents into 'the moment'. You know those moments...goose bumps.

That's the essence that I take from listening to this very satisfying solo set, where he's merrily tapdacing on the knife's edge whistling his tune. He ends up on both sides and he shrugs it off and hops back on for more.
'I'm sorry I fucked that up.'
'This song is so iconic. I didn't even practice it and I know it.'
'It's hard to end these songs.'
'Oh...that one...hang on.'
'This one's probably the worst one to do acoustic. We'll see how it goes.'
It's kinda hard to distill the set for highlights, it's so ramshackle. But it always cheers me up.

88
2009/03/30, Daytrotter session
Funk #49

Back in october 2008 at the Gothic the Jicks -aided by Blitzen Trapper- launched into an inspired jam on this James Gang song, so it's not surprising they decided to pull it out again for a Daytrotter session. In the cold light of the radio studio, and without the extra personnel, they can't locate the rumble and fun of those times. It was magic in a bottle, can't be replicated on demand. Still a quality take but the jamming never gets off the tarmac.

In the grand scheme of things this is the last radio session I've got that is anything other than the Jicks playing a song from their latest album. No covers, no unreleased songs.

No, wait, there's one exception – the fantastic early version of 'Surreal teenagers' on Jimmy Fallon in 2011.

It's been a long while though. Or am I missing things?