But is that enough reason to care? I realize I'm having (self-amused) fun by bringing up these points, but still, I seem to have moved from a point last year where I believed people really did care about the MFs to now, where I'm actually not so sure about that anymore. I don't doubt anyone's sincerity here, I should note, but there's something odd about this debate that seems to be focusing less about Merritt and his work and more about how to read him. And surely the answer to that question is -- however the hell you want to.
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 30 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
But what I was about to post was this:
Actually, the more I think about it, part of the thrill of his material is that it essentially dares you to reject his texts, dares you to assume he's kidding -- much of the enjoyment I take from his lyrics lies in the fact that his authorial stance allows him to lay out lines of such straightforward clarity that they seem almost taboo if interpreted as "sincerity." (The taboo, of course, being the long-running post-Elvis "Thou shalt not employ formal rhetorical devices in popular music.") I'm not levelling this charge at anyone here, but I feel as if I've met quite a few people -- Mag Fields fans and haters alike -- whose opinions on Merritt are solely based on their inability to take certain tropes seriously: they either find him wonderfully funny/clever or insufferably funny/clever because it's not occurred to them that his more surprising metaphors may not be intended as humor. But I'm going to resign from this thread and take that thought home to work on it some more, because I feel like there's something to it -- some sort of rebellion-through-structure thing -- that is key to my appreciation of a whole lot of different bits of music.
As a specific response to the standard lyrical criticisms, I'd submit 69 Love Songs' "Meaningless," one of the finest fuck-you songs I've heard in years. But then again, this thread is tending toward a "Lyrical Aspects of 69 Love Songs" classic or dud rather than an actual Mag Fields classic or dud, so . . . let's talk about old stuff.
― Nitsuh, Tuesday, 30 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
*adopts Bugs Bunny voice* Ain't I a STINKER? (As opposed to a Sinker, natch.)
some sort of rebellion-through-structure thing
"Hey hey, you think it's a puncture/Turning rebellion into structure."
*pause*
Er, anyway. A rebellion through structure? *considers* ...I'm leery of such approaches, or rather the way of phrasing that, seems to be the eternal problem of exchanging one ideology for another and back again.
Among some folks I know, that is precisely the answer. ;-) But that's your point as well, natch. I guess anything could be rebellion, but that implies there's something to rebel *against* -- and with me and my r.s. nature, I'd argue that's chasing at shadows. I wouldn't so much see it as rebelling against something as reacting to it -- the idea of rebelling being a self-contained construct.
Musician to self: "Lo! I respond to the tyranny of presumed unfettered emotion!"
Outside viewpoint: "A tyranny existed?"
Maybe i'll post something longer tomorrow. i'm lost for words, all you dud-sayers.
― Alan at home, Tuesday, 30 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
We're evil that way. Death to consensus! ;-)
It might be me, but from what I can tell from a lot of lines being quoted here in Merritt's defense, *they're* pretty melodramatic as well.
Well, yeah, that was sort of my point. That once you get past the concept and the cleverness it's the same old same old.
― sundar subramanian, Tuesday, 30 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
So your article rebelling against the 'indie consensus' on Merritt was what, exactly? ;)
― Tom, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
P.S. Mark, the third disc is almost certainly the weakest.
P.P.S. I can't recommend Merritt's Future Bible Heroes side-project highly enough; I actually like their album Memories Of Love as much as 69 Love Songs and more than any of the other MF albums.
― Tim, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
I was briefly elated to see all the attention that 69 got, but it soon became apparent that the gushing press was just pissing people off. This is why i rarely read music press any more. listen to the bloody music. mp3 and internet wins.
I couldn't get past disc 1 of 69 for ages because it was so wonderful. then weeks later i tried the second disc -- also wonderful. third disc turned out to be a bit wobbly. (seems to be the conventional view too, huh?)
I'm still looking forward to the first time i hear "Take Ecstasy With Me" in a club. stomping! (despite sounding a bit like a raved-up z-cars theme tune)
― Alan Trewartha, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Well I prefer it to the second one... Come on, it has 'Meaningless' (which tears me up ever time, or does it put me into a state of 'no one touch me' catatonia? I forget which), 'Yeah! Oh Yeah!' (melodrama par excellence - the best duet of its kind since the Specials' 'I Can't Stand It') and 'Queen of the Savages' (ridiculous, possibly offensive lyric, but I can't help loving it. I think it's all about the TUNE, shock horror!). Yeah, it's bollocks that lyrics are Merritt's only gift. Magnetic Fields melodies reverb around my head all the time.
― Nick, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― m jemmeson, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Disc 3 is the worst, yes. Bringing up a few good tracks (they're all good, in their ways) doesn't affect that judgment.
>>> Merritt taking utterly seriously what others would assume to be a joke. On 69 Love Songs the magic within the songs is not lyrical, but rather the mediation between the song as an intensely formal structure and equally intense, heartfelt performances of those songs.
I *kind* of agree with all this... but the trouble is the rhetoric of inversion: the MFs are *either* ironic *or* heartfelt. In fact, I think, they are sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both or undecidable, sometimes You, The Listener, Decide - ie;. we don't need an all-embracing description of the tone of *every* MFs moment, cos they're not all the same.
>>> Songs like "Book Of Love" or "Papa Was A Rodeo" would be completely naff in the hands of anyone else, but Merritt and his helpers invest them with such feeling that they transcend their own sense of craft. It's the transcendance that makes it such an emotionally affecting album - it often feels like the Fields are *covering* the songs as opposed to merely performing them, reimagining them as something grander than what they were on the page and layering them with new, almost unbearably personal resonances (the rostered vocalist policy doesn't hurt in this regard).
Sure, this covers idea is great, very suggestive. But there are still two different kind of 'sincerity' at work in your argument: 1) = 'emotionally sincere about the lyrics, etc'; 2) 'sincere craftsmanship - taking "The Song" very seriously - being serious (but also funny) about an investigation of pop history'. They're both fine, and both present at different times, but interestingly different (and I hadn't quite identified 2) until you brought it up).
I'm looking for a concluding thought (for me, not for everyone else, of course) on this, trying to sum it up... I think it's that 69LS suggests that there are many ways to one's heart - through the head, through the feet; through musical texture, through lyrical subtlety; through complexity and wryness, but also through simplicity amidst that ('I love it when you give me things'). And those many ways are (possibly) only multiplied by the many things that many listeners can do with the songs. The record is so big that it doesn't need to be about intellect *or* emotion - it can be about both at different times, and about their interrelations and occasional identity.
― the pinefox, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
*chuckle* Something I probably wouldn't write now. Individual statements that say or imply musical truth is nonexistent seem much more to my taste at present...
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Upon reflection, what I find most interesting of all was that most of the press seemed to salute him for his influences rather than his results. I mean, it's great that he obviously likes a lot of different music, that's completely up my street, but there's no automatic corollary saying that therefore his music must by virtue of that succeed. This wasn't a universal approach by writers, of course, but I saw it more than once, and struck me as a strange sort of wish- fulfillment.
I always liked "Meaningless" as one of the best songs on the set but it never struck me as more than cruelly funny.
Re old stuff: Get Lost is the only SM I don't feel a little embarrassed about now. Even at my most 69LS-infatuated I always preferred it. I still don't ever play it though. Nice tunes and arrangements. The first two songs are especially good. The lyrics are simpler and don't dominate the music. I never really liked Charm of the Highway Strip that much other than "Born On a Train."
It might just be that the MF are dealing in statements I don't really need to hear at the moment, as Sterling feels. In retrospect, it seems a little strange that I would have made that big a deal over what is essentially a retro-80s project.
― sundar subramanian, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Oh, you should hear Stevie T sing it. People still weep at the memory.
Good thread, this.
― Michael Jones, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
It wasn't just the press - I noticed a lot of my friends and acquaintances doing it (and by "a lot" I mean the 5 people I know who like Stephin Merrit). It was like, "Oh, you should like it, he takes influences from this this and this!" And I'm like, yes, well, Limp Bizkit take influences from this this and this that are all good but I think that Limp Bizkit are shit, why is this different? They never had much of an answer besides "But he's so clever!" which isn't an answer at all.
― Ally, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Sean, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
1. Merritt
2. Dudley Klute
3. Shirley Simms
5. Claudia Gonson
4. LD Beghtol
Favorite of alltime would be Susan Amway.
― Jeff, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
i forgot this song was at the end of disc 2 today, and it made me feel more messed up than i thought that i was.
I still very much enjoy the album but noticed that many of the ones that seemed more enjoyable today were novelty songs, and wondered if this is a less chemically tolerant, fragile Ween for a moment, despite all of the writing about craftsmanship and history.
― badger, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
$70 Can. on sale seems like he was screwed, though. Considering when I'm in Ottawa and I shop at Organised Sound (a store Sundar should be familiar with, as they sell his tape), Merge CDs are $19.99 each, he should've been able to walk off with them for individually for $60 (and usually bundled packs are slightly cheaper than individual releases in general).
― Vic Funk, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Wheeler, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
It's the fact that most of MF's witticisms are self-puncturing that makes them so insightful, so persuasive, so raw and personal; as someone who tends to overanalyse myself to extremes, I can sympathise with Merritt's refusal to divorce his intellect from his emotion - is "World Music" a meta-joke or plain heartbreaking? It's both, and all the better for being so.
I know what you mean, Otis - anyone who's ever been in the same room as me when I've played Magnetic Fields has used it as an excuse to complain about my music tastes ("You've got so many cds - how none of them are any good?").
Wheeler, maybe if you stopped listening to the MFs, you wouldn't be a moron anymore. Did you ever think about that?
When I bought the set at Record Runner 2 years ago, Organised Sound didn't stock it yet (usually go there before RR) and I don't think anyone else in Ottawa did either. I think it was still an import at the time. Don't know if it still is now.
I'm guessing that $32 * exchange rate + shipping + taxes (?) would still come out to at least $50.
Am I acquainted with you offline Vic?
Wheeler, believe me, the improvements have been vast and numerous. I mean, in the past six months, you've gone from your Potion Lounge performance to the way you behave now, which is lots better - I mean, you are the King of Hampshire College. AND your taste in music has improved, you now carry around those great mix CDs we listened to on the way to Orient Point, whereas just a few months ago it was that godawful Turbonegro CD all the time. If you stay off the Mags long enough, you might become like the next Derek Jeter or something - all your life problems, solved.
Though not listening to the Mags has added a disturbing tendency to ditch me and Ramon to hang with Stephanie, who is moving into an artist wherehouse full of weird diaper wearing freaks and mannequins.
― Ally, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Nitsuh, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Sterling Clover, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
But this has nothing to do with Stephin Merrit!
― ALly, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
That said, I was a much happier person back when I was a more frequent Mag Fields listener (although you probably would have said I was a "sadder" person in your opinion -- but then again, you'd probably still do that now). Come to think of it, I can't think of a single Mag Fields song that I've ever interpreted as "sad."
I don't mean sad like necessarily actually miserable or sad...It's hard to define, maybe "wanker" is a better term. I fully acknowledge the possibility that this is merely because the people I know are wankers and nothing to do with the Magnetic Fields.
I.e., they're sort of like really huge They Might Be Giants fans -- people who could never make any serious emotional connection to music, and therefore only like music that's deliberately self- conscious and jokey and awkward about the fact that it even is music.
I saw the first of their 69-song Chicago shows, and there were a number of people like this in the audience, who seemed to expect that the show would be, like, comedic or something. They somehow thought Mag Fields were joke-rock.
"'69: Judy Garland" is great; I play it for my Gay Life & Culture class when I cover Stonewall.
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Wednesday, 9 March 2022 20:36 (two years ago) link
Had a blast seeing them in Amsterdam yesterday. Claudia isn't there for this tour and that did feel like a gap on stage but the instrumentation was excellent nevertheless. They played 30 songs in one and a half hour (obviously including several short songs from Quickies, but most of their songs aren't long anyway), I was pleasantly surprised with some excellent picks from Holiday: Desert Island, The Flowers She Sent & The Flowers She Said She Sent; Take Ecstasy With Me - so good!
― Valentijn, Monday, 12 September 2022 11:26 (one year ago) link
Someone posted their first show from 1990 recently (as well as another from 1990 on their channel)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn8OrCNapZQ
― city worker, Friday, 30 September 2022 12:34 (one year ago) link
Wow, thanks!! Other early live TMF videos from that same uploader:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvRRPNhkKo4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0hcyZ0ep0w
And there's even a little TMF after this Swirlies show (the link brings you right to the TMF stuff):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-N73NEMlAc
So in addition to Stephin, Claudia and Sam, I think that's Johny Blood on tuba (only in the "first show" video), Nell Beram on guitar, and Phylene Amuso on bass.
― ernestp, Saturday, 1 October 2022 03:25 (one year ago) link
Ah that last video (Swirlies) should've started at 38:58 - so just go to that time for the TMF content.
― ernestp, Saturday, 1 October 2022 03:27 (one year ago) link
!!!
EXCITING NEWS! In celebration of the 25th anniversary of 69 Love Songs, we'll be doing a limited run of shows next year in which we will perform all 69 songs in order over 2-night residencies in March-April 2024. Sign up for the presale now: https://t.co/IDdshJvOVQ pic.twitter.com/yFBO1n99v0— The Magnetic Fields (@TheMagFields) June 22, 2023
― ludicrously capacious bag (voodoo chili), Thursday, 22 June 2023 17:49 (eleven months ago) link
Sadly no LD Beghtol, who died in 2020. Did they ever say what happened, Covid or something else?
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Friday, 23 June 2023 00:25 (eleven months ago) link
Never saw cause of death spelled out
https://www.chickfactor.com/rip-ld-beghtol-splendid-butterfly/
― curmudgeon, Friday, 23 June 2023 15:39 (eleven months ago) link