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.

Reggae Fever

I’ve always been fanatical about music, and that fanaticism goes way back—all the way to when I was a toddler and my parents would send me off to slumberland to the Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road.” When I was 4, I remember sitting at the breakfast table anxiously waiting for Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy” to come galloping from single-speaker kitchen radio. A few years later, I pestered a radio station’s request lines with pleas for the Knack’s “My Sharona.” (That power-pop juggernaut had me so spellbound that I vividly recall a fourth-grade me weeping in the “way-back” of the family station wagon because my dad swiftly changed stations when the emphatic opening chords and funky bass line of “My Sharona” announced themselves on the radio.) When I was 11, I slept almost every night with my Sears radio-cassette player beneath my pillow and recorded broadcasts in hopes that when I woke the next morning, sore neck and all, the tape would contain “Back in Black” or “Crazy Train” or “Stairway to Heaven” or even “Heaven and Hell.” Shall I go on? Sure, it’s my blog….

As I grew older, my passion for music only intensified, and the lengths to which I would go to hear or acquire new music only grew more extreme—even ridiculous. Remember that in the ancient times of the mid to late 1980s, when I was coming of age, discovering or getting your hands on music could not be done instantaneously with a simple mouse click or tap on a phone screen. So imagine the challenge a teen with no money or driver’s license faces when he’s bewitched by a song he heard on a scratchy-sounding radio broadcast and there’s no easy way for him to get his hands on a recording without resorting to some pretty comical measures. And in 1988, this is exactly what I had to do to track down a fairly obscure album by a local reggae band called Boom Shaka. (Silly name, I know.)

I became enamored of reggae music as a high school freshman, and for the ensuing four years it served as my everyday soundtrack. I was introduced to the genre by my friend Tim, a high school junior who drove the neighborhood carpool to and from school, Pasadena to Los Angeles—a 36-mile roundtrip in gridlock traffic; plenty of time for reggae's deep bass vibrations and soulful melodies to assuage the anxieties and insecurities of my high school existence. Tim had a sizable record and tape collection—and the taste, knowledge, and zeal to go right along with it. I had no older brother, so for the next two years until he graduated, I adopted Tim as mine. Every day, Tim’s brown VW Rabbit rattled with rhythmic pulse of everything from Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, and Steel Pulse to U-Roy, Dillinger, Ini Kamoze, and Yellowman. While I suffered through high school to get the education I needed, in Tim’s Rabbit I relished the musical instruction I sorely wanted.

In Southern California, where I grew up, reggae music was more accessible than it was in most places. Half the record stores had dedicated, albeit small, reggae sections; public/college radio stations aired weekly reggae music programs; and the midsize venues and amphitheaters in the L.A. area (I was too young for clubs) regularly stocked their summer lineups with some the genre’s bigger names and festivals (UB40, Steel Pulse, Burning Spear, Jimmy Cliff, Reggae Sunsplash, et al.). Tim exposed me to all this. He also told me about KCRW’s Sunday afternoon reggae show, “The Reggae Beat,” hosted by the legendary DJ Roger Steffans, and showed me copies of a magazine by the same name, also founded by Steffans.

Best of all, Tim introduced me to Poo-Bah Records, a record shop housed in a tired-looking dirt-brown bungalow in a gentrification-neglected part of Pasadena. Since its opening in 1971, Poo-Bah’s had been an institution, an indie record store that was close to everything and near nothing at all, a hidden gem in plain sight (on the corner of Walnut and Wilson), a dilapidated sanctuary for various species of music lover—hippies, punks, jazz freaks, rockers, etc. In these waning days of the vinyl record, Poo-Bah’s bins overflowed with just about everything, except the crap you’d hear on mainstream pop radio. Which meant Poo-Bah also had a fat, thoughtfully curated reggae section. Anytime I had some money, you would find me there thumbing through the stacks.

Following my freshman year of high school, I got my first summer job, pushing papers (and removing staples) as a file clerk for $4.50 an hour. At last, I had some disposable income, income I could happily dispose of toward amassing my own reggae record collection (records, by the way, I still own today). Every Wednesday—pay day—my work buddy, Tony, would drive us to Poo-Bah during lunch so that we could dutifully surrender our paychecks. Eventually my mom tried to bar me from bringing new reggae albums into the house (my theory at the time was that she was either frightened by the sight of dreadlocked Rastafarians adorning their covers or worried that I’d end up selling pot from my bedroom; really she just wanted me to save my money), so I would stash my new LPs in the garage until it was safe to retrieve them later. When that tactic ultimately failed, I switched to cassette tapes, which, while not as appealing as records, could be easily concealed in my pants pocket.

More often than not, I was broke, but I could still satisfy my jones for new reggae sounds by taping the local radio broadcasts. One show I never missed was “Reggae Revolution,” which aired Tuesday nights (or Wednesday mornings) at 1 a.m. I preferred this show to KCRW’s “Reggae Beat” or KPFK’s Saturday afternoon show, “Sounds of Jamaica,” because it was on KROQ, and KROQ was a commercial station. Meaning, its transmitter was a blowtorch to the public/school stations’ matchsticks—meaning, I didn’t have to keep messing with the antenna for static-free reception. I also favored “Reggae Revolution” because I had a connection, albeit a tenuous one, to the host, having met him when he DJed my friend Tim’s high school graduation party (Pato Banton was also there). “Reggae Revolution,” whose name I would later crib for my own college radio reggae show at Gonzaga University, was an hour-long program that featured a mix of classic roots reggae, the latest dancehall sounds, as well as tunes from the area’s local talents.

As you might imagine, one in the morning is a long time to stay awake for the opportunity hear a dozen or so songs. I was not a night owl, so to keep from dozing off, I’d swallow a handful of No-Doz, which would wreck my stomach well into the next day and obliterate all chances of getting the rest I might have gotten between the show’s conclusion and my alarm clock’s rude intrusion four hours later.

So there I’d be, just like the 4-year-old me, listening to “Reggae Revolution” in the dark of night, nervously anticipating the hour’s 12 songs as the rest of the house lay silent with sleep. If just one song reached through my crappy headphones and rattled my eardrums with its sublime frequencies and fat-bottom bass, it would all be worth it. Sometimes that song would never come. You’d hear the requisite Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, ’80s production Steel Pulse, crossover hits from Pato Banton and Aswad, a dancehall track or two, and some American-made crap with phony Jamaican accents. But sometimes Roberto would spin a song so incredible it would stir me from my groggy state and trigger a welcome jolt of adrenaline. Sometimes its origins would not be from Jamaica, or Birmingham, England (another reggae stronghold). Sometimes it would come from a local singer or band. At the time, Babylon Warriors and Swelele ranked among my favorites.

Then one September night in 1988, along came a rockers-style song called “Wicked Man” by an L.A. band dubbed Boom Shaka, whose singer bore a distinctive baritone both biting and smoky-smooth, somewhat reminiscent of Gregory Isaacs. Who the hell was this? I wondered, a surge of caffeinated excitement coursing through my body. His was a voice that cut through the din atop a vibrant laid-back sound unmoored to the lyrical clichés of genre (i.e., obligatory references to ganja, generic complaints about Babylon/“the system,” love for Jah). Or maybe it was, but to my naïve ears Boom Shaka sounded authentic, unique. So much so that I was already mentally filing their debut LP, Creation, between my Black Uhuru and Burning Spear records. Now if I could only get my hands on the actual record.

Eager to hear the song again, I rewound the tape as soon as the broadcast concluded. “Wicked Man” still captivated me. Again I rewound the tape. A few hours later as I lay on my bed in the jittery netherworld of No-Doz semi-consciousness, my feelings for the song remained undiminished. Armed with the knowledge that the band’s album had just been released, I had to get it—and fast. That same day, preferably. And I knew exactly where I could find it.

This is where my music obsession takes an even tighter turn toward the ridiculous.

It was the middle of September, which made it cross-country (running) season. Which meant practice every day after school—long, punishing runs in the late-summer Southern California heat and smog. Coming on the heels of an all-nighter, that afternoon's practice would be its own special hell. But, as luck would have it, it would be a city run from my school’s L.A. campus west along Venice Boulevard. And up that road a few miles away sat Ashantites, a tiny record store that dealt exclusively in reggae music. If any shop in L.A. had Boom Shaka’s Creation, it was this one.

Getting to my destination wouldn't be easy. Besides exhaustion, I was nursing a painful abdominal muscle pull. Also, we runners weren’t allowed to deviate from the route to, say, take a shortcut … much less shop for records. But I was determined to get my record and would use my ailing physical condition to unhitch myself from the pack: I’d let my fellow runners drop me so that by the time we were a few miles in I could duck into Ashantites undetected. After, LP securely in my possession, I’d link back up with the team a couple blocks north as they made their eastbound return along Pico—albeit keeping a safe distance behind so that I wouldn’t be seen schlepping a record as I ran.

My plan worked. Hot, hurting, and gasping for breath, I stammered up to Ashantites’ storefront and hustled inside—lest I be spotted by any stragglers who may have gotten a late start or by my coaches trailing behind in a van (which they did periodically to safeguard us from the “mean streets” of Los Angeles). Inside, before I could be soothed by the air conditioning and perfume of incense, I made a beeline for the counter, behind which the owner, a diminutive woman whom I would later befriend, sat reading. “Boom Shaka. Album. Creation,” was all I could muster. She pointed over my left shoulder to the spot on the wall where it stood prominently displayed on a shelf along with the other new releases. I grabbed it, handed her a sweat-dampened wad of cash, apologized, and then hurried out, prize in hand.

The whole transaction took less than a minute. 

Outside, I cut up a side street and stood for a few minutes, watching for my returning teammates to intersect a block up as they raced back along Pico. When runners finally started crossing, they were no longer a pack, but a stream of smaller groups and lone suffering souls who had been thinned out by the withering pace and heat. After about five minutes, I started my limping, lopsided run back to campus. Unpleasant as it was to run with an aching side and a 12-by-12-inch cellophane square of hot sweat beneath my arm, I was stoked. I had my record.

When I got home that evening, I tore off the cellophane, pulled the black shellac from its sleeve and dropped it onto the turntable of my cheap Emerson stereo. There Creation remained, in heavy rotation, for the weeks that followed. 

Today, I’m hardly as obsessive about acquiring new music, although I do hit up the same Goodwill store a couple times a week in search of discarded treasure. I still own that Boom Shaka album, as well as the second version issued soon after the original with extra tracks. But until recently, I hadn’t listened to the album since spinning it on my college radio show more than 20 years ago. While I was pleasantly surprised by the undeniable catchiness of its songs—chief among them, the aforementioned “Wicked Man,” “Never Be Alone,” and the title track—I was disappointed to discover how dated and overproduced it sounded—which was characteristic of 1980s reggae. That’s not to say the record doesn’t hold up; it just doesn’t hold the same appeal. But how could it? My tastes have changed, my ears have changed, I have changed. Still, I must admit that I was a bit bummed: I guess I was naïve to think that listening to Creation all these years later would rekindle some of that magic I felt all those years ago, lying in bed, when I heard Boom Shaka for the first time.

Note: Events detailed in this post are as I remember them; I make no claim to historical accuracy. But it's all true.