slint -- _spiderland_: classic or dud

And they show footage of them slowly and awkwardly tuning and tinkering!

There are a lot of reasons Slint made for a compelling documentary, but one of them is it combines the "band makes visionary record" narrative with the fact that this was a teenage band, and as a result there are a number of hilarious high school band stories.

Re the battle of the bands thing, this zine from the era corroborates the story too. There's a review of that concert on p. 2

http://www.louisvillehardcore.com/zines/Conqueror%20Worm/conquerorworm_issue_three.pdf

Oh yeah also two more Slint live reviews deeper into the zine - one was a show with Big Black and Urge Overkill, the other was with Killdozer.

Wasn't Drew Daniel there? Is he in this doc?

can someone explain the exact origins of the chicago-louisville pipeline/relationship?

xp yes he is!

there were four bands at the St. Francis High School battle of the bands. one was called Potential energy, another was mine, called Gil Thorpe: These two were very shitty cover bands. and there was a stevie ray vaughn style band with two guys that had been in a hardcore band with ethan buckler called Dot 39. Then there was slint.

Not to blow my horn unduly, but I had seen their first show opening for Killdozer a month or so prior: everyone was expecting, based on their prior bands Maurice, Squirrel bait and Solution Unknown, the meanest hardcore/metal band to have ever been— but man was it ever a shock to see what they did instead. I told my pals booking the BoB that they should get those guys.

the footage encompassed all four acts: I cannot express how glad I am that no one will ever me prancing around in ball-hugging shorts singing bad CCR and James Brown. It is true that they took 1 1/2 hours to tune: the parents, regular school kids and hardcore kids were annoyed as such, and then when the Tweez shit went down it was absolutely "what the living shit is this?" but yeah me, Drew, my pals and like five other kids were dumbstruck. After I had done like really really shitty covers, I felt like a gnat observing celestial beings creating events of inscrutable majesty.

Conqueror Worm was drew's zine. I wrote something for it once.

I would take that over being at the first Suicide practices.

haw haw haw…hadn't looked at that issue of Conqueror Worm in a couple of years…drew was being ludicrously generous to the stupidly dubbed Gil Thorpe: if a band not comprised of me and two other of his buddies did the same things we done, he woulda shat down our necks. same thing for

and yeah, therein is my review of Pleased to Meet me, which was much much too conventional for Drew. just chuckled when I read that lil jibe: ultimately, I was probly a bit too conventional for him. he and I were in school together and thus close from grade 1 to senior year: I drove him to school sophomore through senior year. his evolution since the 80s is quite poignant for me.

upthread there's more shit from me re: slint and 80s Louisville.

Wow that's awesome Thx for sharing

Really enjoyed this. Laughed stupidly hard at some of the anecdotes. I've read the Britt house sitting for Albini story a half dozen times, but it was great to see him actually telling it. Probably totally fucked up paraphrase: "I guess Britt... never really lived in a house by himself before and didn't really know how a house worked..."

Love the deadpan way Albini says that too; he sounds completely serious, and not at all like he's joking.

It seems a questionable decision by the Wire to let Drew Daniel review the box set, although it was an enjoyable piece to read.

I kinda tried to acknowledge my speaking position with the "i can be honest but not objective" line- I thought that was making clear that I have some bias- I see what you're saying tho.

happy to see that this movie is making the rounds, stoked to see Slint play in Baltimore on the 2nd

I learned a lot from veronica moser about music and how to care about it and how to talk about it, more than I ever let on at the time certainly- hello again! xxoo

Probably the most surprising takeaway from the doc: Steve Albini wears an earring?

Was he wearing his wolf T-shirt?

about the doc:so much talk about Will Oldham and no interview or something?!

Further I get from my teens less I feel the need to ever hear this, am I wrong

I only ever listen to "Washer" and "Good Morning Captain" #emo

And "Nosferatu Man" sometimes. I can't remember what the other tracks sound like.

xps

Will Oldham was thanked at the end, so he definitely contributed in some capacity. I was hoping he'd show up too, but I guess talking head in a doc doesn't really fit into his MO.

I am fascinated by this album, I like the dynamics, I like the sense of foreboding, and the musicianship is great... but the more I listen to it, the less I actually like the songs.

...but strangely, i'm still compelled to put it on fairly regularly.

will oldham is in the "quarry" bit on the dvd. he is wearing purple crocs.

sund4r way upthred

and there's something else to it at the root of my distaste for post- rock, something bigger, an emotional quality i have trouble articulating. in a weird way, despite its lesser attachment to pop song convention, the music strikes me as more "conventional" in a bad way on some level than the husker du or sonic youth that preceded it. i don't know how to put it any better right now. i'm still trying to figure it out since i really like a lot of classic postpunk and indie/alternative rock and even enjoyed a fair bit of emo and hardcore. i'm probably always harping on this but it's a sense of alienation from a culture and aesthetic tradition that i thought i could relate to at one point.

for some reason i never managed to hear slint during the late-90s post-rock boom even though i was all over everything else at the time and was fully aware of slint's reputation. so i'm only just now hearing spiderland. weirdly, after just the other week digging up an old june of 44 record and being kind of bored by its loping plodding austerity.

and what i notice on a first listen is just how little difference there was between that later stuff and this record. like, no one added much, no one took away much. there were variations in style, somewhat limited by faithfulness to the austerity of the original. so, like, the variants that were a bit more screamo. or a touch jazzier. and the variants that were ok with being more grandiose or romantic or whatever ended up sounding like mogwai or gybe! or whatever, also it seems by being ok with different rhythmic bases. and you can hear how suitable this base is for more metallic variants (it would be funny if the bosse-de-nage upthread went on to be the post-rock-black-metal bosse-de-nage!), where a thicker sound would sort of make good on the deadened chug.

but hearing the original, it makes it seem like there wasn't much there to begin with—that it wasn't as much of a fruitful template as a lot of the next ~15 years of imitators and indie rock followers supposed. else they wouldn't have ended up all sounding so much like 'museum rock' (bob standard upthread). they also seem kind of academic in that way, in the painters' sense of 'the radicals are holding their own exhibition to protest the academie'—of adhering to a standard of correctness subscribed to by a closed circle of authorities in which originality is controlled by a very strong sense of decorum. which is maybe what sund4r was feeling?

i wonder if this record is WAY different for people who heard it close to 1991 and imagine it in the context of the underground rock of the time?

you've only listened to it once?>?????

the basic idea is pretty obvious

try listening to it again

I'm obviously somewhat biased here, but I think there is a much stronger emotional core at the heart of Spiderland than there is in a lot of what would come later. I too was into all the post-rock stuff of the late 90s, most of which has not held up too well in retrospect. (I agree re June of 44, for instance.) But there is a world of difference between Slint and all the bands Slint influenced--not least being that those later bands were taking cues from a post-rock playbook that had not been written when Slint were making Spiderland. I think you're right that there was something almost rote about a lot of later bands' application of this style; but there was nothing at all rote about Slint doing it. I think if you are not sensing a difference between Slint and June of 44 (or Mogwai or whoever), then you should try sitting with Spiderland for more than one listen, ideally free of distraction. Even more ideal, but probably impossible by now, would be to listen to it without thinking about how your "supposed" to feel about it.

xp

oh God. "you're."

adhering to a standard of correctness subscribed to by a closed circle of authorities in which originality is controlled by a very strong sense of decorum

there is something to this. not as re: slint but other, later practitioners. It's vexing to me because I like music which does not do as much as you expect it to but there was a feeling of reserve as a safety from exposing one's gristle...

reserve as a way of keeping safe from etc etc i should have said

i agree it really needs to be heard in the context of what surrounded it actually. like in a playlist with whatever else was happening in 'alternative' at the time.

i do agree that it set a _lot_ of the template for would would come, so if you burned out on that, then this sounds less special.

but also it is way more heart on sleeve than lots of later stuff. rodan also feels that way to me now -- everyday world of bodies, which i remembered for the explosiveness i now notice more how emo it is.

one thing I have concluded is that it would be better as an instrumental. i think they should release an instrumental version.

no way

The pictures and stories that the music paints are better created by the listener's imagination, I find. Now that I think about it, it might actually be the vocals that are making me like this album less every subsequent listen.

Steve Albini also suggests that the vocals were ill-advised in the documentary, but he says he's glad he overcame that. It wasn't clear to me whether he came to appreciate the vocals or whether he's glad he didn't completely dismiss the album because of them.

i can hear the difference, arrogantly telling me to or suggesting that i listen again is pointless. i didn't say i wouldn't listen again. it's obviously a subtle record. and perceiving its emotional core obviously depends on getting familiar with those subtleties. but it seems like coming to see them is not going to change the world or anything.

i think your phrase 'supposed to feel' is a good one, scott. not so much in connection with the received critical wisdom, but with the record's peculiar emotional profile, which like i was saying about its musical aspects, i think it shares a lot with what came later. i would understand it in terms of feeling -this-, feeling this specific way that's expressed in this specific music, against an expectation of feeling other ways or against a proscription of feeling that way at all, of expressing it. at least that's how i understand the combination of austerity, moodiness, the specific contours, the quietness, etc. it seems like the criticism of that you could make, more on the basis of the imitators, is something like, yes, ok, but that abstracted angsty reverie is not as profound as you feel it to be. it's a thing. but.

for some reason i'm of a mind to listen to gastr del sol. different things, but their range was greater and their emotional texture more complicated.

Gastr on crookt, mirror repair and upgrade are p much my favorite US post rock.

Especially mirror repair, a perfect EP

used to love mirror repair, but it's not got much in common w/ spiderland

As much as I love this record, it doesn't exactly seem like something that each new generation discovers anew. Not that it matters.

really? wasn't the whole thing about this record that it sold steadily year after year?

I'll stick up for the vocals on this record as adding a crucial texture to the music. I see the argument against, say, "Washer," but the talking/whispering that's on most of the other tracks really adds a certain darkness to the songs, and makes them all the more disconcerting.

What exactly is the argument against Washer's vocals? I mean, I see that they're weak, but I feel that the weakness is completely justified in the songs mood. So much so that I didn't even notice that they were "techinically bad" until watching this documentary and hearing them outside the context of the album.

That being said, I think I might be a little too for weak vocals as a way to justify my own. I don't know.

Hey guys I still like A Minor Forest

Randy: yo, dawg, that was kinda pitchy
Brian: (quivering lip eyes brimming)
Randy: but it was the best performance we've seen all day, you're going on to boot camp w/ brian paulson !
AFTER THE BREAK
Paula: so who're you two?
Al Johnson: I'm Al
Jamie Stewart: and I'm Jamie
Paul: and whatchy'all gonna sing for us today?
Al: we're gonna do "it takes two"

Polvo did an album last year that was good

really? wasn't the whole thing about this record that it sold steadily year after year?

for a while, yeah. don't think that's really been true for a decade plus

I don't have any sales figures in this record, but decade-plus seems like a stretch in my experience. Definitely feel like this record was still "cool" and being discovered when I was in college in the mid 2000s. Maybe in 2006 it totally fell off the radar or something, but my guess is that any drop-off it had was more gradual than that

I mean, I'm sure it was at peak popularity around 1998, but it definitely had a certain cachet well after that.