slint -- _spiderland_: classic or dud

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.

xp I like Washer's vocals a lot, actually. I was just saying I could understand someone hearing them and not liking them, thinking they somehow subtracted from the mood. Whereas for all the other vocals, I actually have trouble grasping the argument that the album should have been instrumental.

in my experience Slint are still reasonably well known amongst kids who are into post-hardcore

idk why their exposure would have dropped dramatically during a decade when they reformed and played quite a few concerts and in some reasonable size venues if london is anything to go by

because someone is strawmanning

For the record, I don't actually think that its popularity did drop dramatically. I was just trying to point out that this was still treated as an important record by youngish people as late as 2006, and that the earlier argument about its popularity could only be remotely true if it had an unlikely steep drop-off in the middle of the last decade.

The cover photo was taken 24 years ago today.

oh i didn't mean you, intheblanks

when I went to see 'em in Louisville in 1990, they played the Spiderland shit, and "Washer" stood out for the milquetoast manner of the lyrics and BM's vox: me and my friends straight up laughed, under the impression that they were making fun of…someone? or a wimpy sensibility? the idea of folks obsessing over the lyrics "what do they mean/were they losing their minds"-style is one I can't relate to…those guys did not care about lyrics meaning anything in particular in my experience, although that might have changed for the Spiderland era…

their performances in 1987 were notable for the lack of singing: I think "don't worry about me, i've got a bed" etc etc was the only vocal on any of the songs; it's clear to me that voice/lyrix is completely inessential/incidental to Tweez: after watching the footage that's included in the box set over and over in 1987/1988, it was weird to buy the record two years later and hear these non-sequitors all over the songs…also, neither "Carol" nor "Rhoda" were part of the initial repertoire…

quite odd that Will O, who was best friends with those guys and obviously cares about words and singing, wasn't in the band in the first place. but then, it was Will's brother Ned, not will, that was in bands in the 80s; will did not perform as a musician per se until the 90s.

They said in the movie that they tried Will out but rejected him because he could barely play guitar.

What's the song playing over the end credits?

Is this it?

http://youtu.be/RaMTyEG2Zew

Yep, that's it, thanks! Fuck, what a great song.

Yeah King Kong are great

King Kong are definitely not great (not even good) but that is I believe the only song post-Tweez that has Ethan, Britt, Brian and David playing together.

quite odd that Will O, who was best friends with those guys and obviously cares about words and singing, wasn't in the band in the first place. but then, it was Will's brother Ned, not will, that was in bands in the 80s; will did not perform as a musician per se until the 90s.

― veronica moser, Tuesday, April 22, 2014 9:52 AM (1 hour ago)

At the time of Tweez, Will had already co-starred in Matewan and by Spiderland he had played Jessica McClure's father and worked on another Chris Cooper film and I'm pretty sure was living part-time in NYC and Hollywood so I don't think he was as involved in the Louisville scene as his brothers until after all that was over, whereupon he drafted Slint as his backing band.

Reference:

I am a cinematographer
I am a cinematographer
O, I am a cinematographer
O, I am a cinematographer

And I walked away from New York city
And I walked away from everything that's good
And I walked away from everything I leaned on
Only to find it's made of wood, made of wood

And I was a big ol' bear once
O, I was a big ol' bear once
O, I was a big ol' bear once
O, I was a big ol' bear once

And I walked away from California
And I walked away from everything that's shown
And I walked away from everything I lived for
Only to find everything had grown, everything had grown

Now, I am a cinematographer
O, I am a cinematographer
O, I am a cinematographer
O, I am a cinematographer

If you were alone
You could walk away from Louisville alone

a few other things:

Will asked not to be included in the film, but invested a lot of time and attention in the film being made and provided a lot of rare source material for Lance Bangs.

Not sure that Albini's sentiment is being taken away from the film is that Albini was disappointed in the vocals on first listened and quickly realized his mistake (uh... you have read his 1991 NME review by 2014 right?). Why so much stock is being weighted on his admitted mistaken brief first impression is weird imho.

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?

― j., Monday, April 21, 2014 2:03 PM (Yesterday)

yes, and I won't fall for your other trollbait comments, although I did find them funny!

man this thread revive is really bringing out the fmbb indie bro clods huh

have you listened to it again yet

also bringing out the guys who've found the 755th-most interesting way to say they've decided that post-rock is boring

it's hard for me to imagine what satisfaction you get from your belligerent, ungenerous posting style, waterface. i can only suppose that offline you masturbate compulsively but derive only grim intermittent pleasure from it.

how is me asking you to listen to something twice bellibgernts?

also i post one handed, fyi.

thats why spelling eyrros i have

i've listened to your precious classic a few times. do you have anything more to say on its behalf besides the blank insistence that whoever plays it enough will—what? you need to bring something to the table.

brief beef interruption

i continue to wonder where the girls were in louisville -- aside from jennifer hartman (who was not interviewed - is she still alive? she was praised by albini, but who is she?), the bald college roomie (who may have had one sentence + a laugh?), and britt's mom (no explanation required) this movie was an island of boys. it's not that i demand gender equity in my documentary filmmaking, i was just bummed because i'm only a little younger than they are and i know i existed at the time, so i know there had to be girls around. i wanted to see what the girls they hung out with looked like, to hear from them about the scene. maybe i was hoping for less yow/mackaye and more ordinary people? i don't remember m/any female people in "you weren't there" either.

never said it was a classic. just suggested you listen to it more than once before making a judgment. don't see how that's a big deal, or makes me a compulsive wanker

tara jane?

xpost

was she in the movie? i don't remember seeing her. also she is only one person. did girls not go to shows? hang out? what were they doing? why was jennifer hartman not in the movie if she paid to release their first record? why listen to steve albini tell us how much he respects her but not talk to her? just a bunch of questions i have, maybe because i was hoping to see something that i guess wasn't really there.

still haven't seen the documentary but that is a huge bummer.

also mia zapata was from louisville?

i haven't seen the movie yet, just naming women from louisville. maybe they didn't want to be in the movie?

If none of them wanted to be in the movie, I'd ask myself why not.

Why not email lance and find out? Seems like a nice, reachable dude.

Kim Deal has some great Britt stories but she is neither from Louisville nor part of the Spiderland story so I can see why she is not included in the documentary.

W.O. was around Louisville during the genesis of the band. Matewan was shot at least a year before (I tried out for the part he got). during the Spiderland time he was indeed elsewhere.

were you in Louisville at time, Mr Al? if you were, it would be highly idiosyncratic to not like King Kong…that band pretty much ruled the town in the 90s, although no one woulda guessed it from the initial version in '89, which was like Jonathan Richman plays the blues or somesuch unpromising premise…

Probably the woman who loomed largest in the scene was a gal who went to my high school, who was not a musician and thus maybe I shouldn't name her but she was impressive charismatic and intimidating. and hot. Girls would go to all ages shows, but I do not remember any females in bands to speak of. I didn't know ms. Oneil at that time.

do we know that jennifer hartman actually existed?

Dang, there is some serious butthurted trolling going on. Sorry for liking music you don't, good luck with your Dianogah vinyls I guess.

To vm: not from LKY, but spent some time there in the mid-90s after all this had passed for the most part.

Not interviewed in the documentary, but there was a girl in the pre-Slint band Languid and Flaccid:

http://louisvillepunk.awardspace.com/Photos/LanguidFlaccid00.html

I did not know Jennifer hartman, but the name BW used for the Breeders was a gal who I knew, although I knew her sister a lot better, as she was part of the same "young people's theatre" program that WO, his brother and me were involved with.

the gal I mention in my last post was alleged to have inspired a Squirrel bait song. quite striking that the influence of SB seems to withered away in the shadon of Slint. SB was the act that everyone outside of Louisville knew about. but it's well known that there were two factions therein that pretty much never dug each other. Bastro and BM were the guys that went to Chicago, but Peter Searcy and ben daughtrey stayed in Louisville and did a funk band called Fancy Pantz. They had mainstream aspirations that the other faction probly looked down on. shortly after Searcy got involved with a quasi-fratty band called Big Wheel (they played my prom), and Daughtrey did the Lemonheads and then Love Jones, a "lounge" band that included another guy who was friends with all these guys named Chris Hawpe that went to LA, got signed etc…someone once told me that Atlantic had their eye on Searcy, to turn him into a ROCK SOLO ACT like —and this is a direct quote and I'm curious if anyone will remember this name without googling— Robert Tepper. amused the fuck out of me at the time.

of all the things evidently mentioned in the doc —which I have not seen— that amuses me the most is the "talking anus" trick or whatever its called therein. so I don't know who's identified as such as having done it, but once one of those guys got on his shoulders in front of me, like you would do a handstand, pulled his ass apart and sucked air into his asshole. It was…something.