kick-ass songs of the '90s: wilco, "misunderstood" (the '90s, pt. 3)

For a while, Wilco was my favorite band.

REM had held that position from 1983 on, but 1998's Up, the first in a series of snoozefests, left them vulnerable. In '99, Wilco released Summerteeth, their third long-player. Wilco's first two albums were terrific, especially 1996's double-disc Being There. But Summerteeth not only represented continued growth and exploration from an already-stellar band, there was something about the way Jeff Tweedy was expressing his own struggles with identity and adulthood that resonated deeply with me. "A Shot in the Arm"'s refrains of "something in my veins / bloodier than blood" and "what you once were isn't what you wanna be / anymore" hit me right where I was living.

It was a symbolic moment of the first order when later in '99, I saw Wilco open for REM at northern Ohio's Blossom Amphitheater, a coincidental passing of the "Miles' favorite band" laurels. As if that wasn't enough, during Wilco's set, the band brought out a birthday cupcake for Jeff Tweedy, and someone onstage - Jay Bennett, John Stirratt? - said it was his 32nd, which meant that he was a fellow 1967 baby. Yup, me, Tweedy, and Kurt Cobain - bumper crop, eh?

Not that sharing the same year of birth ensures fellowship; if it did, school would have been a lot easier. But knowing this small fact about Mr. Tweedy made me feel like it wasn't coincidence that Jeff was feeling the same things at the same time I was feeling them, or, from what I could tell from interviews and the music itself, that he seemed to have a lot of the same experiences and perspectives as me.

Even though Summerteeth was and is my pick of the Wilco litter, I'm reaching back to Being There for the song that belongs in the "kick-ass songs of the '90s" series: "Misunderstood."

The leadoff track of Being There, "Misunderstood" begins with 45 seconds of instrumental mayhem: Nashville's Own Ken Coomer driving the drumkit forward as an ominous undertow of guitar feedback emanates from Tweedy and multi-instrumentalists Jay Bennett and Max Johnston.

Then, almost abruptly, it's piano, acoustic guitar, and Jeff Tweedy's voice, solemn, wistful:

When you're back in your old neighborhood
The cigarettes taste so good
But you're so misunderstood
You're so misunderstood

A lot of Being There is about being a music fan, and/or maybe a musician (later on the album, "The Lonely 1" captures the fan/musician relationship in exacting, heartwrenching beauty). It's hard to tell what's going on lyrically sometimes, as Tweedy cagily shifts perspectives, not just from song to song, but within an individual song. "Misunderstood" is no exception:

It's only a quarter to three
Reflecting off of your CD
You're looking at a picture of me
You're staring at a picture of me

Is the "you" a fan of Tweedy's? An old friend or lover? Is Tweedy narrating this song, or a character? Like a lot of my favorite music and art, the ambiguity forces the listener to do some interpretation of their own, which also results in the listener investing in the song in a way that wholly straightforward narration can't match.

After Tweedy quotes some telling Peter Laughner lines ("take the guitar player for a ride / 'cos he ain't never been satisfied"), the feedback, which has been bubbling under the acoustic interlude all along, surges front and center, threatening to tear the song apart. But after a few seconds, it recedes, leaving Tweedy' plaintive voice once again exposed:

There's a fortune inside your head
When all you touch turns to lead
You think you might just crawl back in bed
With the fortune inside your head

I know you're just a mama's boy
You're positively unemployed
So misunderstood
So misunderstood

As that last "misunderstood" slips out, now the song cashes in the tension that's been building for over four minutes: Coomer's drums roll and cymbals crash, the electric guitar trio reconvenes, and as the crescendo mounts, Tweedy has to shout to be heard:

I know you've got a god-shaped hole
You're bleeding out your heart full of soul

And then the third-person narration turns into something crueler and uglier, a messy explosion that's equal parts anger at the world and self-loathing. And guess what? It's not third-person any more, no sirree.

I'd like to thank you all for nothing
I'd like to thank you all for nothing at all
I'd like to thank you all for nothing

And then the whole band hits each of the next words in unison, drums and vocals and guitar and god knows what else all punching together, each "nothing" a sledgehammer blow, pulverizing everyone and everything in their path:

Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing at all
Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing at all

And then there's nothing at all, or nearly so: nothing but ruins anyway, shards of feedback falling to the floor, as the wounded basic riff of the song somehow still is ticking along somewhere in the wreckage.

Wilco's live performances of this song were often exercises in confrontation between artist and audience. The raucous feedback and Tweedy looking dead at the audience, screaming "I'd like to thank you all for nothing!" - and often extending the number of "nothing!"s far beyond the studio version - created a palpable tension in the room, providing a direct challenge to an audience that seemingly was expecting something more convivial. And when the band performed in front of half-indifferent audiences, as was more common before their Yankee Hotel Foxtrot / I Am Trying To Break Your Heart canonization, those bracing "nothing! nothing! nothing! nothing at all!"s carried extra venom.

I wanted to link a YouTube performance of the Bennett / Johnston / Coomer lineup doing "Misunderstood," but all the ones I could find are from the more recent Nels Cline / Pat Sansome / Glenn Kotche era. While all three of the latter-day gentlemen are probably better musicians than the guys they replaced, I think Wilco was more ferocious and raw in its prior lineup.

Nevertheless, I'm linking a "Misunderstood" from a 2007 show, and it's a good performance which will get across some of what I'm talking about. (And the guy singing along at the beginning either shuts up or gets drowned out pretty quickly, never fear.) But to me, this is a shade too smooth and ornate, and, as my friend doug might opine, "needs more demons."



[edit as of 7/11/2009]
Just found this version of "Misunderstood" on YouTube, posted after Jay Bennett's death. While this version doesn't have the three-guitar gonzo finale that I remember from the '99-'02 shows, it's splendid, it's got the right lineup and it's far more what I was after. Hopefully it also illustrates some of the aforementioned differences between that Wilco and present-day Wilco.

kick-ass songs of the '90s: curve, "faît accompli" (the '90s, pt. 2)

I inaugurated my '90s series last week with this way too long introduction to the subject. Between its premise (which is mostly "the '90s sucked musically compared to the '80s") and my Jay Tarses(es) series this weekend, I've gone on too long about things I don't like. It's time for some positivity about things that I love.

So today, we're gonna talk about one of the greatest songs of the '90s, Curve's "Faît Accompli." This 1992 single from their debut album, Doppleganger, is one of the most badass things I've ever heard - or in the case of the video, seen. The opening electro-percussive twitchery immediately intrigues the listener, and then - vroooooom! - there's the whole band, led by Dean Garcia's giant wall of guitar. But instead just raining a hail of feedback through the whole song, as fun as that would have been, the band immediately displays a sense of dynamics by having the guitar drop out.

What comes to the fore then is ominous low-end that was there all along, a bassline that sounds less like a bassline and more like something cold and evil rumbling up through the earth. And then Toni Halliday starts singing:

Every day, there is some kind of darkness
That just won't go away no matter how hard I try

As Toni intones that last line, the guitar reengages, and though the tone's already set, the pivotal line's next:

It crawls into your system while your guard is down

The first few times I heard "Faît Accompli," I heard this as "while your God is down," which I also like. But either way you hear the line, the same thing's happened: God, or one's guard, like a firewall, has crashed, and something cruel and evil exploited the gap immediately.

By the time Toni sings the last line of the chorus, she's either shifted perspectives or become fully possessed. Because when she sings

My name is Fate

it's not her anymore. It's something ancient, powerful, dark, and deep that's speaking, something older than the Christian God and Lucifer - something like, well, Fate.

And when Fate speaks its come-on in the song's bridge - and by now the low-end menace has congealed into a pulsing, primal rhythm - you can't turn your head away, you can't refuse:

I've come to crush your bones
I've come to make you feel old
I've come to mess with your head
Cos it'll make you feel good
I've come to make you feel good

Few songs conjure up this kind of primal power for me - P.J. Harvey's Rid of Me and "Down By the River" (contenders for this series within a series) and Shriekback in the days of Jam Science and Oil & Gold. Even the darkly punning title of the song is perfect: Fate is a done deal.

I enjoy the rest of the Curve catalog, but nothing they did before or since has matched "Faît Accompli"'s impact on me. This thing is a sonic tour de force, and if it's not the best song I heard in the '90s, it's damn close.

It's a rare thing for a video, but the one for "Faît Accompli" actually adds to the experience. It's sort of a performance clip, as the band is playing instruments in it, with smoke and wind machines aplenty. The choice to have the camera thrust up into the band creates motion and energy, and the perspective helps unsettle the viewer - guitarists everywhere but with the instrument centered in the frame and heads and feet often cut off, and often the only visible face is Halliday's sultry visage, at the height of its full "my name is FATE!" power.

Despite the band playing their instruments for the length of the video, it's less like we're seeing Curve play a song, and more like we've intruded on a ritual. There's a group of ominous hangers-on in the wings who appear to be waiting for something besides the load-out. The most prominent one among them is a Jean Kasem-like blonde woman, whose purposeful arm gestures and dancing lend a cult feel to the proceedings. But even more disturbing to me is the presence of the sheep - I immediately wonder if he or she is going to survive the evening, and several times later in the video, the hangers-on appear to be wrestling it to the ground. The sense of power and menace is just as keen in the video as in the song, and I highly recommend both.

If you want this song and video to crawl into your system, let your guard down here:



By the way, the best mix of the song, in my opinion, is the one used in the video. It's neither the album version on Doppelganger nor the long mix on the Pubic Fruit compilation; instead, it's the punchier Flood mix that, as far as I know, was only on the Faît Accompli EP. So if you really like this song as presented here, that's the version you should seek out.

i didn't die, i got old (the '90s, part one)

In a recent entry in his "Music: What Happened?" series, Scott Miller of Game Theory/Loud Family renown^* leads with the following sentence: "The nineties were better than the eighties."

Scott's argument is typically erudite, and I get what he's trying to say, especially when one considers his heavy engagement with the biz itself during the '80s, when Game Theory was trying to eke out a career.

But oh how I wince when I read and reread that statement. "The nineties were better than the eighties." Oh. my. God.

This is not my experience at all. Not even close. For me, the '80s were vibrant, teeming with ideas and energy and an abundance of spectacularly great albums (including at least one all-time classic from Scott himself). In my ultra-geeky yearly best-of lists, 1985 alone has twenty-five (twenty-five!) albums to which I'd give four and a half or five stars, and some other '80s years (1980, 1984, and 1988 in particular) were in my estimation almost as grand.

But something happened in the '90s. Whether it was to me or to the musical world, I'm not sure. I suspect that the "has the world changed or have I changed?" blame game probably should be scored 50/50. It's my hope that my upcoming blog entries^** get me closer to answering that question.

Nevertheless, I know this for sure: what happened in the '90s wasn't good. For me, musically, the '90s don't come close to the '80s in either quality or depth. And this change, which has in many ways persisted for me into the 2000s (as per this earlier entry, we haven't Named That Decade yet), continues to distress me on a number of levels.

Like with most sea changes, there wasn't a convenient marker or milestone that I perceived at the time (though Kurt Cobain's April 1994 suicide was part of the fabric of the decade and saddened me deeply). To put it in baseball terms, it's not a slump when a guy goes 0 for 4 in a single game... but a week later, when it's up to 1 for 32, it's a slump.

And speaking in non-parenthetical terms about Cobain and 1994, it was 1994 when I realized that yeah, it was a slump. At that point, there hadn't been a year since 1988 that overflowed with great music. In fact, in the '90s, I often struggled to come up with 20 albums I actually liked for my year-end lists. (You can't tell by looking at the lists now; retroactive discoveries have upped the quantities.)

Through '94, my tastes were more or less in sync with the music press, college radio, and like-minded friends. My favorite band in the '80s was R.E.M., and just like most fans of "underground" or whatever you want to call it before the early-'90s rise of the "alternative" label, my collection had many beloved entries from folks like Robyn Hitchcock, Julian Cope, Husker Du, the Minutemen, XTC, Elvis Costello, the Clash, Prince, X, Sonic Youth, the Smiths, and most of the usual CMJ / OPtion / Trouser Press suspects.

Perhaps not liking some of the early '90s darlings - My Bloody Valentine and Pavement, to name my most prominent misses of the day - should have tipped me off that something had changed. But at the time I perceived them not as harbingers of a drought but as the occasional whiffs that one encounters in any matter involving subjective taste.

Also, in '88 I at last gained true college radio when I moved to Nashville. WRVU, Vanderbilt's venerable station, entertained me to no end in those days, and my tastes and collection continued expanding thanks to things I heard there for the first time. They even caused me to reevaluate some previously-held dislikes. For instance, hearing "A Forest," "Charlotte Sometimes," and "The Hanging Garden" for the first time courtesy of WRVU completely reversed my opinion of the Cure.

And when friends who liked the same kind of stuff recommended other artists I didn't know, those recommendations usually paid off, be they from Danny Cantrell when I was at Concord College, or, from 1982 on, then-Welch Daily News sports editor Dan Stillwell. That world of like-minded friends expanded greatly when I got a modem in 1993 and discovered BBS message boards. Shortly thereafter, I "found" the proper Internet itself, and suddenly it was a whole new ballgame. It wasn't just me and fewer people than I can count on one hand who knew who Robyn Hitchcock was; I was on mailing lists with dozens and even hundreds of people who were just as knowledgeable, if not more so, then me.

Many of my dearest friends of today are folks I met during my early days on these lists. And these new friends and acquaintances had heard lots of music that I hadn't yet encountered, so my world was awash in recommendations. And since we all had so much in common musically (particularly from the 1977-1990 punk/post-punk/underground/indie world from which we'd just emerged), I fully expected to like the new names I was hearing about.

So I bought albums by newish artists that lots of my friends were way into. Albums by Guided By Voices. By Stereolab. By Elliott Smith. By the High Llamas. By Richard Davies and Eric Matthews, together and separately. By Belle and Sebastian. And I fully expected to love them.

I didn't.

Some of it was the growing popularity of Pet Sounds overorchestration and the baleful influence of soft pop, which began dominating the indiepop world from the mid-'90s on. Soft not only became the new loud, but midtempo became the new rocking. And for a song or two, surrounded by contrasting material, I'd be fine with midtempo con strings e vibraphone. But we're not talking a song or two, we're talking whole albums permeated by a sound that I never came around to enjoying, all played at torporiffic speeds. Sean O'Hagan's Banjo of Doom might as well have been the battle-cry of the Valkyries, because once I heard those string-plucking strains, I knew my enjoyment didn't have long to live.

But even the more rocking things left me cold, too. For instance, Guided by Voices was never shy about inheriting the loud, drunk, brash rock tradition. The music press always compared them to Wire, which gave me high hopes for GbV since Wire is one of my all-time favorite artists. However, that turned out to be a facile comparison based on GbV's proclivity to pack a lot of short songs onto an album. This is something that Wire did only once (their 1977 debut, Pink Flag), and GbV didn't really sound like Wire in any meaningful way.

None of that is GbV's fault - rather, it's the fault of lazy journalists - and I promptly adjusted my expectations once I heard the actual music. Unfortunately, I didn't like the actual music. It's tough for me to explain it, but the combination of low-fi with bombast and Bob Pollard's voice never clicked for me. And while something like "Portable Men's Society" was an achievement for evoking Rush, the epitome of "hi-fi" sound, in a low-fi context, well, I never cared for Rush.

Stereolab at least invoked the cool sounds of the Velvet Underground, and when they most veered into Velvetsy rhythms, I did actually enjoy them. But they also were about incorporating lounge and easy listening (albeit the hipper stuff like Escovel) into their sound, and that half of the equation was a turnoff for me, evoking memories of my mom listening to Sergio Mendes and the Brasil '66 on her reel-to-reel.

Even old favorites became unreliable. My most beloved artists of the '80s, R.E.M., Prince, and Robyn Hitchcock, models of consistency in the '80s, turned into hit-or-miss acts as far as their new releases went. I was a huge fan of Husker Du and of Bob Mould's initial post-Huskers solo forays, but his new band Sugar completely bored me. Morrissey's '90s offerings were so dull, aside from the glam-rock trappings of Your Arsenal (1992), that it was easy to forget that he'd ever been any good at all. My interest in hip-hop, which peaked with Digital Underground's wacky P-Funk vibe and musically rich 1990 album Sex Packets, waned as the genre gravitated toward the opposing poles of New Jack Swing and gangsta.

I don't want to make it sound like I didn't like anything in the '90s. Each year of the decade brought a slew of new releases that pleased me greatly, and some of those albums (off the top of my head: Nirvana's Nevermind, Wilco's Summerteeth, R.E.M.'s New Adventures in Hi-Fi, the Loud Family's Interbabe Concern) spoke as directly to my soul as anything I'd heard with a 197* or 198* date.

And yes, since the turn of the millennium, things have picked up for me, but only somewhat. Loud and fast made a comeback around 2000, which was a welcome turn of events after being stuck in Midtempoland for at least a half-decade. However, a lot of the new artists purveying that music were so derivative that the only thing I could think about while listening to them was, "well, I already have Stooges albums."

And I also realize that many of my favorite new artists of the last few years - Interpol, Editors, Goldfrapp, Spoon, the New Pornographers - strongly evoke the '80s music I love, so I can't help but think that I'm still failing to go - or grow - with the times.

Back in the '80s themselves, I used to make fun of the guys I knew whose musical worlds ended in 1977 even though they were only a little older than me. They hadn't liked anything since Skynyrd's plane crash, and they bitched over beers and joints while a 8-track of Paranoid crossbled in the background about how the new music of that day sucked. You couldn't even talk them into giving Van Halen and Cheap Trick a shot, much less something more adventurous like the Clash or Talking Heads.

I never thought I'd become one of those guys. I thought my mind would remain flexible, vital, open to new sounds and new artists.

Instead, substitute "1989" for "1977" and there I am, a coot before my time. Like the title says, I didn't die, I got old.

*There's another musical Scott Miller that I love, and I'm sure you'll be hearing about him in this space too.

**I do envision this as a series about the '90s - more specifically, of my struggle to come to grips with the '90s on a personal as well as musical level - of which this will be by far the longest post. Think of this as the two-hour pilot with lots of explication. I'll be serving up punchier, more concise one-hour episodes afterwards. Everyone exhale, ok? It'll be fine.