American Music Club: Classic or Dud?

There's a few things I'm not sure about how high a priority or how available they are.

AMC - Atwater Afternoon
AMC's singles, EPs and compilations

Lover's Leap USA
Words and Music
Brannan Street
Glory
The Konk Sessions

Those are all demo recordings iirc? You might be able to order some directly from the Eitzel site but I can't vouch for them myself

I think Brannan Street was a proper album and a lot of fans were saying it was better than Klamath.

it's a proper album of leftovers iirc

I...obviously need to hear that one, then cause Klamath has some amazing high points

honestly as much as I love him I do find the 90s solo albums really patchy, he only gets consistently great again starting with The Invisible Man.

hmm, I love "If You Have to Ask" and "then It Really Happens" but I've always found that one a bit monotonous. happy to give 'er another try though

Not one of my favourite albums but "Helium" is brilliant

I find it amazing that as recently as 2008, Pitchfork could refer to AMC by their acronym in an Eitzel review blurb and there was a reasonable expectation that readers would know what that referred to.

brannon st is not a proper album. it's kind of a demos companion to klamath. it is not better than klamath.

AMC - Atwater Afternoon: demos to go along with golden age. never listen to this.

AMC's singles, EPs and compilations: if you want mp3s of all of this let me know

Lover's Leap USA: mark's second 'solo self release' (after Mean Mark Eitzel gets Fat which was a cassette in the 80's), this has a few extraordinary things on it and as a venture at home recording and weird electronics stuff, it worth finding. you can't find an original though you should be able to find mp3s easily.

Words and Music: this is just him and Peter Buck talking

Glory: kind of a demos follow up to Don't Be a STranger, has a song or two that are on the new album, worth giving a listen to

The Konk Sessions: these are tracks recorded with the band that backs him in the UK. good.

'if you have to ask' and 'live or die' are the best songs on West, partly because Buck didn't cowrite them

Mark's solo 'real' release catalog, ranked IMO:

1) 60 Watt Silver Lining. An incredible album, and an amazing follow up to AMC's San Francisco.

2) Caught in a Trap... backed by James McNew and Steve Shelley, Mark's "matador lo fi indie rock album", has some of his most gut wrenchingly depressing songs

3) Hey Mr Ferryman. I love this

4) Don't be a stranger. I also love this

5) invisible man. I love all the songs on this, I wish Mark had had a real producer for it.

6) Candy Ass. A failed experiment that none the less has two brilliant songs on it

7) Music for courage and confidence. I forgot about this. He played a lot of these live for a while and they were a good time.

8) Ugly American: This is a really interesting take on AMC songs. Probably deserves to be higher, I just don't listen to it much

oh I forgot about West. I guess I'd put that after invisible man.

The best thing to search out is "superhit international' which is an album he recorded (quickly) as a demo for a label and was rejected everywhere, but is nonetheless better than everything but the top 4 on this list.

Ugly American is gorgeous imo

I would love to hear that singles/ep comp

Oddly there is two totally different versions of Superhits International.

there is the actual superhits international and there is something else that ryko publishing put together which is just a compilation and they used that name for some weird reason

(superhits international was the name he gave that band at the time)

where's the compassion
to make your tired heart sing?
because i'm tired of being a spokesman
for every tired thing

"Blue and Grey Shirt" is indeed one of the most beautiful songs ever written. but then I would have a hard time making a top 10 most beautiful eitzel tracks.

The new Eitzel album produced by Bernard Butler is becoming one of my favs of the year

"I spent the last 10 years
Trying to kill half an hour"

Is sort of haunting in the smartphone era

I just saw his Glasgow gig, it was good. Bought Hey Mr Ferryman and Don't Be A Stranger there but I wish I brought more money for the other 3 discs of live stuff and demos.

Anyone else been to his recent gigs?

Going to the one in Jersey City pretty soon... looking forward to it!

Eitzel kept saying he was going to finish early because his voice was nearly done but he kept going with more and more songs than he promised and he sounded good to me.

I don't like dissing venues, it sounded fine and I'm not someone who needs to see everything onstage but when the majority of the audience can't even see the band... It's a little weak for my taste.

in touch with many friends and mark's manager in the UK who attended the whole tour, sounds like it was thrillingly successful this time; been a while since he had a very successful tour. He also played the biggest show he's played in London a few weeks ago (at bush hall). Butler was kidnapped for most of the tour as well; what I heard of it he really added a lot to the texture the way Vudi used to.

the album is wonderful of course

Robert, I was at the Glasgow gig too. I thought the venue was awful - ceiling about 7 foot high, impossible to see the band, and the sound was just OK. But Eitzel was in good form - so well worth it.

I was unexpectedly in London last Tuesday but too late to get a ticket for Bush Hall and I was stricken with man flu at the weekend or would have attended the Hebden Bridge gig - sounds like I missed out! Ferryman is the best thing he's done in years.

Really? I bought it and Don't Be A Stranger on the same day and whilst I like Ferryman, I find it to be a patchy affair whereas I love DBAS throughout.

That said, Eitzel has always made albums that sneak up on you, so I may well change my mind in the future!

"Laughingstock" knocks me out every time I hear it. In a good way!

in touch with many friends and mark's manager in the UK who attended the whole tour, sounds like it was thrillingly successful this time; been a while since he had a very successful tour. He also played the biggest show he's played in London a few weeks ago (at bush hall). Butler was kidnapped for most of the tour as well; what I heard of it he really added a lot to the texture the way Vudi used to.

― akm, Wednesday, March 15, 2017 11:05 AM (one month ago)

does he generally draw larger crowds in the UK than in the US? there were maybe 75 people in the audience when I saw him at a small club in Boston last week. no Butler and no full band (just Mark and a keyboardist) but the performance was as amazing and spookily intense as I'd hoped it would be. Mark seemed weirdly passive-aggressive about performing, though, apologizing for his (witty, well-received) between-song banter, saying the show was almost over 30 minutes into the set, and claiming he didn't want to do an encore because he was disappointed that the assigned seats in the front row were empty (he relented when some people stepped up to sit in them). I'm sure a lot of of this was tongue-in-cheek sad clown theatrics, but I wonder how much he actually enjoys performing these days.

Howe Gelb was the other headliner at the show (which seems to be the case for many of their other US dates), and to be honest his idgaf cowboy jazzman shtick did absolutely nothing for me. maybe you have to be a longtime Giant Sand fan to appreciate his recent direction...

Did Howe play any guitar at your show? I thought his set was very nice, but the shorter guitar portion stood above the lounge piano player material. His poetry and "character" is kind of distant and unfeeling, especially vs. Eitzel's intense and emotional material and performance. It's hard to imagine him communicating straightforwardly to such a degree I wonder how he orders a sandwich at a deli.

He literally is Chester Cheetah at this point.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/714549398915694595/c-BRMJ8l.jpg
http://www.cuttingedge.be/sites/default/files/styles/carousel_medium/public/Howe-Gelb-credit-Daniel-Diaz-still1.jpg

yeah, Gelb played a few songs on guitar, and that part of the show was much stronger (which makes me want to properly listen to Giant Sand at some point). my problem with the piano bits is that he didn't fully commit to the role of jazz crooner (by playing it straight) but he also didn't commit to deconstructing it (by going full-on over-the-top drunken Tom Waits), which left him in a '90s slacker middleground where he dabbled with the form without really engaging with it emotionally. at one point he played a few bars of "Cry Me a River", interrupted himself by saying, "nah, why don't we play something a little more modern...why don't we play a...Future Standard?" before launching into one of his new songs. it was all too meta/ironic for me, primed as I was for a night of weepy earnest catharsis. the audience seemed to like him though, so it was probably just me. I think I would have loved Eitzel's performance even if hadn't been familiar with his work, whereas Gelb's set seemed much more in-jokey and "strictly for the fans".

(guilty lols at the Chester Cheetah comparison)

I was at that same show, at Once in Somerville. At one point Eitzel announced that only 18 tix had been sold for the next night's show in Buffalo, which is kinda sad. He really does deliver the goods.

Gelb did the same schtick four months ago in SF. I found it amusing anyway since I hadn't seen him or Giant Sand in years and years and years

"does he generally draw larger crowds in the UK than in the US? there were maybe 75 people in the audience when I saw him at a small club in Boston last week."

yes, and he pretty much always has. Part of it is that the music press there is more receptive (and there is no real music press in the US that compares) and has been for a long time so he's built up more of a fan base. part of it is that his only real manager, my friend Chris, lives in London, and also manages Ray Davies/ the Kinks, and others, and is just better at dealing with things in a smaller country. Mark has no management per se in the US.

I dunno about this list at all and am already second-guessing. and I've left out 'I'm In Heaven Now'.
These first 4 are indispensable though:
California-(Probably the only album behind New Day Rising in terms of records I would love to see remastered, and never will.)
Everclear (Demos) (There are generally problems with the production in most of Eitzel's catalog, but this is the one that I find unlistenable at times. Fortunately, a few years ago Mark put out the demos of this record and it now may be my AMC, nearly every song is much more energetic than the languid version in the official release. Chanel #5 too!).
60 Watt Silver Lining (the exception to the above rule regarding production, but hey, WB).
Mercury (Interestingly the demos to this are fairly awful and cast Froom's kitchen sink production in a more flattering light).

Generally all subject to change at any time
Love Songs for Patriots
Caught in a Trap and I Can't Back Out 'Cause I Love You Too Much, Baby
Engine
Superhits International
United Kingdom
Songs of Love

Listening to Don't Be A Stranger.

Like how there's two songs in a row about him participating in a "fake good time". "If pixie dust is not in your heart, it becomes the dirt that buries you" is a great line.

In the first song when he sings about controlling all his body parts like a gun in a videogame is an extremely weird lyric.

"But in your snake eyes everything dies And makes a costumes seem tragic"

Pretty solid album.

Every time I listen to an AMC record or one of the latter-day Eitzel solo records, it makes me a bit sad to think that AMC still haven't gotten the appropriate reappraisal/reissue treatment basically every other band from that era has already received, including a whole lot of much less significant/worthwhile ones. I'm increasingly convinced Hey Mr. Ferryman is a low-key masterwork; I'd have never in a million years picked Bernard Butler as a collaborator but they complement each other splendidly - glam meets glum.

reissue plans for the first 4 albums are in the works. getting a hold of the master tapes (both while Tom Mallon was alive, and after he died) has been the hold up. Things are moving.

Mark is going to do his next album with Butler as well, probably; maybe more in person this time (the last one was basically recorded, then handed over for Butler to mix and track on top of). I was told it might be more acoustic this time.

Is 4 lps up to United Kingdom or is that seen to be a full lp?

stranger through UK. getting the rights to reissue everclear is a pain in the ass because Alias are a pain in the ass (who knew they even still existed).

Thanks for the updates akm! Very appreciated.

update today actually, tapes are now sorted so we should see some kind of movement on reissues for these within the year. desire has always been to rescue the hours and hours of outtakes and other stuff Mallon had in his possession (like, the entirety of the show excerpted for United Kingdom; there are also lots of things recorded around Restless Stranger that were never released though Mallon leaked a few before he died). whether that all comes out on official releases or some kind of bandcamp thing dunno.

the entirety of the show excerpted for United Kingdom

woah!

tbh I'm not _that_ personally excited for a deep dive into the Restless Stranger / Engine era since those albums were already pretty patchy but I'm certainly excited for the rest

honestly it will just be nice to get the main albums out again, even to streaming services. that's where everyone listens now and when they're not available it's a bit of a shame.

man I hope California gets remastered.

Good news regarding the reissues, would be awesome to see some AMC shows to go with them as was briefly alluded to upthread.

what Simon said above (all his posts!)

Am super excited for this.

Saw an amazing Mark/Vudi acoustic set at a record store here in ATL in the mid 90s and it was recorded on DAT, transferred...and the guy who did it won't give me a copy.