Wretched Records and Crappy Covers: Both Sides of the Covenant Four

And the Grammy for Most Laughable Use of a Picnic Tablecloth on an Album Cover goes to...

Wretched Records and Crappy Covers No. 89

"GOODBYE, JANNA."  - Jesus

Fat Stevens

Following the photo shoot for Swedish folk singer Cornelis Vreeswijk’s homage to Evert Taube, the six-string acoustic cradled in the sweaty embrace of Cornelis’s ample, unburdened loins required months of intensive counseling and a full refinish. So traumatized was the guitar, nicknamed “Raggmunk” after Cornelis’s favorite potato pancake recipe, he (yes, it's a he) never played the same again. Some say that the humiliation Raggmunk was forced to endure at the hands of a hack photographer bent on transforming his subjects into steamy sex symbols caused Raggmunk to lose his will to carry a tune. Nevertheless, the guitar remained close with his owner, Vreeswijk, often spending many hours with him on the couch—not playing, though, but watching their favorite films, Lee Hazlewood’s Cowboy in Sweden and Torgny Wicket’s Anita: Swedish Nymphet. And when Vreeswijk succumbed to liver cancer in 1977, Raggmunk mustered the strength to perform an elegy to his mate at his funeral. Appropriately, it was a meditation on the song “Nudistpolka” (no translation necessary) from the infamous Cornelis sjunger Taube LP (“sjunger” means “sings”). It was also Raggmunk’s last performance. As he downstroked the final chord of his poignant tribute, Raggmunk did so with such cathartic force that his strings snapped, filling the mouse-quiet cathedral with a ringing cacophony of profound sorrow. Raggmunk then collapsed on the altar, just a few feet from Vreeswijk’s coffin (a reinforced refrigerator box), his neck breaking off in the process. Sobbing, Cornelis’s brother, Gard, scooped up the broken and now deceased Raggmunk and placed him tenderly in the cardboard casket atop the corpse of his brother. Luckily for Raggmunk, this time Cornelis was wearing pants.

Yes, this is a work of fiction. No need to get upset.

Cat Fancy!

Wilco dropped a surprise free album last week to the delight of dad-rockers everywhere. I love the band's choice of cover art, although I don't love it as much as the cover of Gas Huffer's Just Beautiful Music from 17 years ago. I prefer the music on Gas Huffer's record, too, but I've always been partial to this defunct Seattle garage-punk band, plus I only just started listening to the Wilco album. (I'll give Wilco's latest opus some more time to make itself at home in my fatherly middle-aged brain.) Anyway, seeing Wilco's new Cat Fancy-approved record only makes me miss Gas Huffer even more. Perhaps one of these days I might work up the energy to pen a fitting tribute to the band. I doubt I will, though. I have a hard time writing about the things I love; my mind just gets constipated with incoherent thoughts that never quite mature into anything of use. So for now I'll just say that if you haven't huffed from the potent catalog of Gas Huffer, there's no time like the present now to start. Begin your journey with 1991's Janitors of Tomorrow (Empty) and keep right on trucking all the way through the band's final album, 2005's Lemonade for Vampires (Estrus).

Wretched Records and Crappy Covers: Summer Sausage Edition

Summer is here, ladies and men! And Michael Henderson (known for his electric bass work with Miles Davis, among other more notable accomplishments) has waxed up his ... um ... surf board and is expecting you to join him (and his junk) for a little summer frolic and fun on the beach of Lake Flaccid. Won't you come? I love that this masterpiece is titled Slingshot. I guess it could have alternatively been called Packin' Heat or Holster or Banana Hammock or Summer Sausage Fest or Low-Hanging Fruit Cocktail or Love Cradle or P-Junk or Strapped On. Yeah, Slingshot seems to do the trick. By the way, there's a tune on this record called "Geek You Up." Not quite sure what to make of that. I suppose I could have listened to the song, but why spoil the mystery?

Digging into the Past: My Stephen Malkmus Profile

I wrote this story a little over 13 years ago for a music website that lasted all of three months. My reason for posting it today is simple: I’ve been listening to Stephen Malkmus’s solo output quite a bit lately. And his self-titled debut has long been a summer friend. So there. Please enjoy, my three loyal readers.

THE SOLO YEARS

Stephen Malkmus Finds New Life After Pavement

By Joe Ehrbar

During a recent phone interview, Stephen Malkmus confesses to me that he’s watching “The Dating Story,” listening to Bach, and strumming a guitar “all at the same time. And I’m talking to you.”

So I’ve got your undivided attention, I joke.

“Yeah, I’m paying attention,” he assures me, though his tone suggests otherwise. This, after another Malkmus confession: he’s sick of talking to reporters. “I don't know if [giving interviews] sells records,” says the former Pavement singer gone solo. “If it does, that’s good, but I don't think it does. Do you think it does?”

Um … no? (Not that I care about helping Malkmus hawk his new record, although I’m well aware that he wouldn’t be talking to me otherwise.)

“I’ve done so many of them already,” he says wearily. “I’ve been in like every single magazine." Some might think his complaints to be trivial and vain. Malkmus himself might even agree—if he didn’t have to discuss Pavement’s break-up or the possibilities of a Pavement reunion every time the phone rings. Such is the case when the singer of the one of the 1990s’ most beloved and important rock bands dissolves the group and goes solo, as Malkmus has done with the release of Stephen Malkmus, an album recorded with fellow Portlander musicians drummer John Moen (Maroons, Dharma Bums) and bassist Joanna Bolme (Minders, Jr. High), also known as the Jicks.

Pavement’s break-up isn’t broached during the 20 minutes of this particular interview partly to spare the singer from having to repeat himself. But if you haven't heard already, the Pavement split was caused by a combination of strained relationships among band members, withering enthusiasm and cooperation, and poor communication. With regard to a future Pavement reunion, Malkmus says anything’s possible. “I’m not saying that we won’t reunite for a ‘Monsters of Indie Rock’ stadium tour in 10 years,” he recently told Revolver magazine.

Obligatory interviews aside, Malkmus has taken to his solo career a rejuvenated man. He’s all grown up and able to articulate his vision just fine on his own. This couldn’t be more obvious on his self-titled debut. Loose, airy and seemingly more direct, Stephen Malkmus recalls the spirited recordings Malkmus made with Pavement circa Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994). The difference is that songs are shorn of their scruffy lo-fi curls; they're spiffed-up and polished. Yet, even with the semi-glossy new look, the music is no less compelling.

There’s room for everything under the radiating sun of Stephen Malkmus. It has its straight-no-chaser rock (the Lou Reed-esque “The Hook”), its tender ballads (“Church on White”), and its daydream musings (“Trojan Curfew”). Best of all, it’s rife with that wry Malkmus nonsensical wit served up on a deadpan, as exemplified in “Jo Jo’s Jacket,” where Malkmus sings, “I’m not what you think I am/ I’m the king of Siam/ I got a bald head/ My name is Yul Brynner/ And I am a famous movie star….”

One of the album's highlights, “Jo Jo’s Jacket” nearly got the ax, says Malkmus. “I wasn’t going to put that song on the record,” he explains. “I just started babbling in the studio. Then I had that first line, and we came back a month later and I’m like, ‘I still like that,’ you know? Those lyrics are definitely made up on the spot; they’re not changed. Normally, a lot of things are made up on the spot, and then you alter them. But I sort of like how it sounds—yeah, it’s a cool song.”

Indeed, Malkmus is in a playful mood throughout the album, taking risks with his singing, guitar playing and arranging, and having fun with some of his most inspired narratives yet. And it all had to do with recording an album under the right conditions.

Unlike Pavement’s studio finale, Terror Twilight, whose sessions were fraught with intra-band tension and had the band paired with fastidious studio wiz du jour Nigel Godrich (Radiohead), the conditions under which Stephen Malkmus was written and recorded were much more casual and relaxed—in spite of the fact that his first record post-Pavement has subjected him to more scrutiny by fans and critics than ever. “There was no pressure,” Malkmus insists. “It was great.”

Malkmus attributes much of his studio triumph to bandmates Moen and Bolme and producer Jeff Saltzman—all of whom played a tremendous role in the album’s creative process. “You have to make sure you’re around the right people,” he says, “because the wrong people can lead you astray. You get soft.” The fact that all parties involved reside in the same city as opposed to being scattered across the country—which was the case with Pavement—also helped matters. “That’s why this one feels this way,” Malkmus says. “It helped that everybody knew the songs [before recording them].”

Stephen Malkmus only showed up in record stores a month ago, and yet the singer/guitarist is already eager to start working on new material with the Jicks. He’d also like to resume work with the Silver Jews, a band led by Malkmus’s long-time friend writer/poet David Berman. According to Malkmus, working on the last Silver Jews album, 1999’s American Water, was what initially inspired him to abandon Pavement. “American Water is a great album and that was one of the reasons I wanted to get out of Pavement,” he says. “I had so much fun doing it that I wanted to do something like that, you know. Not that my album is like that, but I wanted to get on a roll sort of like that. It was done fast and furious. There’s talk of doing something in August, but we’ll see.”

Until then, Stephen Malkmus expects to spend the next several months on the concert trail performing songs from his debut. And if you must know, Malkmus says Pavement songs will indeed be on the set list. 

Pin the Singer on a Pinto

You know you’re in trouble when your record label believes so much in your new album that they slap a Ford Pinto on the cover. Named for the Jim Croce hit song that country singer Tony Booth turned into a hit of his own, Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues may not have been the product of Booth's actual experience slathering suds on Pintos, Pacers, Gremlins, and the like; however, Booth was no doubt singing these blues for real after this 1974 album stalled in the bargain bin.