Hard Like Algebra

I’m really happy to see them resurrecting this phrase for the end-of-an-era R.E.M. collection.

This post started as a thought for tumblr, something I’d dash off, up up and away, another in a series of things up for attention in a place where I’m not sure anyone pays attention. But I realized I had more to say, more to think about, and saying it here somehow fits.

***

I mention that this phrase, this Part Lies, Part Hart, Part Truth, Part Garbage is a resurrection, and that’s because it is. The first time I encountered it, I saw it on a t-shirt.

You see, I had won first in line at Sears, and with that prize came the ability to purchase the best public seats– 19th row, floor–for R.E.M.’s Monster Tour. Greg and I freaked out so much that we tried to pool our cash together to buy an extra ticket, and of course we ended up selling that one to Candy, the girl we had both “gone out with” in middle school, just a few years prior.

So there we were, at the Rosemont Horizon, and there it was:  a long sleeved t-shirt, dates on the sleeve, and this phrase–Part Lies, Part Hart, Part Truth, Part Garbage–on the back.

[And Hey, this link will eventually break, since ebay is dumb like that, but here it is.]

The show was great. We had fun.  I think it was one of the rare times when Greg and I weren’t crushing on Candy, so we were just kids who had known each other for a long time (I’d known them since 6th grade, they probably knew each other since first or something) sharing a great show.  I actually don’t remember much of it aside from how high and black the ceiling was before the show, and how excited I felt.

That shirt has been one of my go-to travel shirts for years. It’s separating on the neck, as they do. It’s been in the rotation for cold-apartment pj’s and “I need a layer” Homecoming trips.

I love that it says LIES TRUTH HEART GARBAGE on the front, but on the back, they acknowledge, yeah, all of that is in there.

I love that I am rambling because I can’t find the words but I want to find the words.

***

A few weeks ago, I got an IM from one of my friends that knew me back then, a guy who bops in and out of my gchat, who made something of himself by being a hacker and learning the internet ropes back when you could do that just because you liked Industrial and piercings and messing with people on IRC. He was important during one of the more challenging times in my life, long distance relationship #1, a relationship where R.E.M. and the Cure and Counting Crows really became this thing, a shared language, the common words of romantics at the end of their teen years figuring out what to do with all of that feeling.

So I got a random IM that said, “hey man, R.E.M. broke up.” And first I thought, “huh.” And then, “why did he tell me this?”

And then I realized that R.E.M. and “Nightswimming” and crushes and relationships and all of that junk had been such a big part of the time we spent the most together.

Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage.

It was nice to hear from him, and to think about things.  It was nice to think about how much R.E.M. had meant, for a time. I liked being back there. I liked that it was nice to know that I was here, now.

This album reminds me of driving. It was one of the first I listened to in my 5+1 disc changer in my 2002 VW Beetle, and the first album I loaded onto my Kubrick-style 3rd gen iPod. In that car, turned up, CD sound–it just filled the space, in the car, between my ears. It gave me a lot of heart, too. I’d listen to “I don’t know how a man decides what’s right for his own life” as I drove 45 minutes each way to a job I really needed to leave, and I’d drum that unbelieveable drum beat from “In the Morning of the Magicians” on the steering wheel while I sped down McCormick Boulevard. I remember a New Year’s Eve show with this, the ultimate New Year’s Eve band, and how still we found confetti in our apartment from that show in April of the new year. These guys knew how to bring it and they also knew how to dial it back, and I really think this album did an excellent job of curtailing the jammy weirdness and promoting the songcraft, themes of love and of actively living, and that incredible drumming of Drozd, into a poppier album than most of their career. Some of my favorite events growing up were things that I referred to as “pep rallies for yourself,” and this album really does make you reflect but eventually celebrate, a process I’d say that Coyne pushed–for a while at least.

It’s amazing what near-death can do to creativity. Here’s a man who made this weirdo freakout music and who also would tell you about the time he almost died at Long John Silver’s. He nearly lost a bandmate to a spider bite and another (or maybe the same one?) to heroin, and came back with two albums’ worth of clarity before heading back into overmuddled, extra dense work. Yoshimi is nearly 10 years old now, and listening to it makes me think about how much this band meant to be for a period there, and how they just sorta…faded from my view. Many of their fans would not think of Yoshimi as an important album; some might even say it’s not even a good one. But that’s also the beauty of music, and maybe one of the reasons I always wanted to be in a band: even if only a few people, even if only five hear it, and one of those people have a really intense experience with it, it means something.

Cameraphones were made for bloggers: Pavement, September 3, 2010

Impressions after seeing Pavement play at Edgefield last night

Maybe I missed this very obvious point, but Pavement’s songs are pretty sad. I dunno, I suppose I knew that the “slacker” label never really meant anything (and there was proof of that last night: Malkmus can clearly play the hell out of the guitar. Sloppy is an affectation, and he wears it well, but it’s a choice in his world), but last night we heard these songs back to back to back.  So the set kicked off with “Gold Soundz,” a song off the same album that spawned “Cut Your Hair,” and it’s crazy to think of these guys in their 20s/30s writing this stuff:

Go back to those gold sounds/And keep my advent to yourself
Because it’s nothing I don’t like/Is it a crisis or a boring change
When it’s central, so essential,/It has a nice ring when you laugh 
At the low life opinions/And they’re coming to the chorus now

And then you’ve got one of the best “dammit, this hits me in the head at the wrong time” lyrics ever in “I’m flat out./You’re so beautiful to look at when you cry” from “Shady Lane.” And let’s think about “Spit on a Stranger,” which gives us this beautifulness:

I’ve been thinking long and hard about the things you said to me
like a bitter stranger
and now I see the long, the short, the middle and what’s in between
I could spit on a stranger

Okay cool. No wait, that last song was from their last album, but here’s something from the first, from “Here,” and seriously, I almost didn’t post these lyrics because they are awesome and something you should discover while listening to a mixtape someone gave you, or at the very least, when standing outside on a perfect oregon night watching the least likely reunion show since the pixies or soomething:

I was dressed for success, but success it never comes
And I’m the only one who laughs
At your jokes when they are so bad
And your jokes are always bad,
but they’re not as bad as this

…and so I’m wondering: was this a band that stopped playing because “Cut Your Hair,” which along with good old “She Don’t Use Jelly” arguably iced the “novelty pop songs of the mid nineties” cake, but also didn’t at all reflect the sort of corporate what the fuck and genuine “jeez, this stuff all kinda sucks and it’s really getting to me” vibe* that we are seeing above?

I mean, I guess I am saying that I always thought of them as the cool older brother to Beck in his “Loser” stage, but they are more like Radiohead’s dreamy good looking cousin who, instead of raging about corporations, instead tries to act either uninterested or uncaring, but fails at both.

All this from a reunion show, folks.  Go see these guys.

*admittedly, this might just be why my brain is at lately

I searched for years for a vinyl copy of the first R.E.M. LP, Murmur, on vinyl. My requirements were: I wanted it to be cheap, and I wanted the original release (partly because of my Hi-Fidelity-style collector’s mentality). Or at least not a remastered or fancy resissued version (though, y’know, the recent fancy reissue was something that I put on my Amazon Wish List. I don’t mind if other people spend that kinda money for me!), because I’d read so many reviews to know that part of the early-R.E.M. charm was that the vocals were buried/oddly mixed, and I wanted the Authentic Experience.

So after two years of striking out and a few months of eyeing that there fancy re-issue, I finally just hit up ebay, bid on the thing, and got it for about $15.

And it’s great.

And no only is it great, I am finding myself absolutely unable to get Catapult out of my head. And I’m thinking that “Shaking Through” might shoot to my top ten all-time R.E.M. songs, just on the basis of the catchy, goose-bump-inducing, absolutely-built-for-singing-along chorus.

And I love this. I love that this album is from 1983, and it’s from a band that I love, but about 10 years prior to the R.E.M. period that I know. I love discovering this stuff. I love hearing “Talk About the Passion” and “Radio Free Europe” in their original context.

It’s just really great. I don’t know what took me so long.

*I am probably at least a 65% proponent of the “hey, the internet is great and all, but it kinda ruined the hunt for things, especially music” theory. I can remember trying for years to find a copy of the ska version of “The Freshman,” but once I was able to start downloading music, I nearly instantly looked for, and found it. It’s still good, but I still look for the 7″ now and again. I suppose I could find it on eBay.

I finally got my copy of the re-issue of the incredible Ben Folds Five album Whatever and Ever Amen the other day, after watching it rot on my Amazon Wish List for years. It’s so cheap now that it’s insulting, for such a great album to be bargain-binned out like this.

This album exists on a tape that was so beloved that even my good buddy Nate talks about it. One side had this album, the other had the Promise Ring’s Nothing Feels Good. I flipped that shit into the Ford Tempo so many times. I remember entire moves—from college to the “home” that was my mom’s new apartment, back again—where all I did was throw this in my old stereo and flip it over and over. I still don’t know the full lyrics to “Evaporated,” because the song always cut off during one of the “oh God, what have I doooone” lines. It always trips me up.

Whatever and Ever Amen also has “Brick,” the biggest Ben Folds song until “Landed” became an unlikely 2005 hit. I go back and forth about finding out the origins of lyrics to my favorite songs. One side of the coin is that knowing The Sunset Tree is heavily autobiographical makes it even more powerful of an album—the best of the Mountain Goats catalog, in my opinion. On the other hand, songs like “Brick” make me not want to compare the narrative to real life events; maybe I’m stupid and that’s why I didn’t know what he was getting at in the song, but really, I think it’s more that the song can mean a lot of things and I hate singing it and thinking of what it’s supposed to be about.

I remember that moment in 1997 when this album and this band was everywhere. It spread around campus so quickly, seemingly coming out of every dorm room that fall of my sophomore year of college. Musical theater majors would bring the house down by covering “Selfless, Cold, and Composed.” My closest friend would baffle me by being someone who listened to them when he was still in high school. I wonder if bands can do this anymore; are there albums that just blow up like that now, or is it all just singles and Gaga and BitTorrent on campuses now?

I’ll always love this one. “Kate” will forever make me laugh about using the words “cake” or “Nate” instead; “Battle of Who Could Care Less” will always be catchy as hell; and this will always, always be one of the best albums ever to sing along to in the car. And that needs to be the barometer for more good albums: driving away, wind in your hair, friends singing along, who the hell cares where we are driving?

***

One album a day says it better in three words: “plonky piano pleasure”

Read part of a 1997 review of the album on my new “reviews from when they came out” tumblr

“1 Samuel 15:23,” the first track on the Life of the World to Come, exemplifies what we stand to lose in the age of digital music.

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Avoiding listening to anything else but this album has been one of the more fun/kinda silly conventions I’ve set up for this week.
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There’s a lot about home on The Life of the World to Come.

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SOME BULLETS IN WHICH I FIRE OFF SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS HERE THE LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME BUSINESS

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So it’s not every day that your favorite band puts out a new album, and the real truth is that I am typically pretty on top of these things in the manner of anybody who grew up claiming that music changed his life and is now thirty-one and would still probably hold on to this fact.  So it was strange to the point of feeling disconcerting when I got the Insound newsletter today and it mentioned that yes, that crazy* bible-themed new Mountain Goats album, The Life of the World to Come, came out today.

Needless to say I have never been more on time as far as leaving for lunch break in my life.

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