slint -- _spiderland_: classic or dud

also thanks for the deets CAD! it's about like i expected. also smh @ the dork who shouted ten fucking stars. my god.

soooo much dorky crowd shouting, it was terrible. the '05 shows were in much bigger rooms, but this time they were in a small club which i guess invites that bullshit.

oh also LL as you are a budding drummer i would say try to go if for no other reason than to watch britt, he is amazing

the "ten fucking stars" call out's a reference to Albini's review in Melody Maker. more jokey than worshipful i would think.

yes, i know, it's still lame

it's like congratulating an actor for their movie grossing boffo box office
it's embarrassing for everyone

even in jest

re KIDS: Lou Barlow put "Good Morning Captain" on the soundtrack, but it does not play during the film.

man i am so confused.

i would like to have a conversation with britt about drumming pretty badly but i'm sort of amazed at a base level by how intimidated i still am by these dudes. how stupid. and yet so real!
maybe it's best if i just sit back and wonder to myself instead of trying to figure all of this out. i need a muzzle.

also seeing them for the first time tonight

you guys let us know how the ball-murrr show went tonight…

La Lechera: maybe he's changed, but in my experience, BW was not terribly articulate about what he did. Like, I think one time I told him that he was unlike any drummer to have ever walked the Earth, but he was uninterested in the topic. Show, not tell…etc etc…

The Baltimore show was so great. I spent the last half of it on the side of the stage behind an Australian dude who was losing it like it was a hardcore show. Almost got kicked in the face several times. Pajo was hanging outside smoking afterwards and I talked to him for a bit. Sweetest guy. Caught Britt and Brian briefly too. Such an awesome time all around.

fuckin circle pit at the slint show wtf

it was cool. i dont know their music well at all. it was heavy. don aman with pajo and the other guy facing each other. other guy was shirtless via hot ass stage lights

intense as hell

I filmed the entirety of Don Aman on my phone from pretty close. Shirtless Britt facing me, Pajo with his back to me. Always been my favorite Slint song. Might upload later. It looks gnarly. Bathed in red light.

Eh? Not really an outrageous claim. Also, what is that, one sentence? I appreciated that the article dug deeper into what was going on with Brian. Feel like they just skimmed the surface of that stuff in the doc.

― circa1916, Friday, May 2, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It only takes one - it leaves a bad taste.

A lot of the time you can tell there is anguish in a singer's voice - not a must to know what exactly is behind that. I got the feeling that the accident did trigger a breakdown but also that he was growing-up. Those pains were there, more felt and present in Brian.

The documentary kinda makes vague reference at the origins of the Nosferatu Man lurching beat:

“One night I had been out. When I came home, Britt was hunched over his guitar and playing Rachmaninoff, a three- or four-second little clip. He’d play it, rewind it, play it, rewind it, and then he’d work on the guitar a little bit. I think he did that for hours and hours.”
-Ben Johnson, brother of Clark Johnson and Northwestern roommate of McMahan and Walford

Maybe when this goes from 6/4 to 5/4?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbbtmskCRUY&feature=player_detailpage#t=529

Tix still avialble btw
http://www.thewicknyc.com/event/540587-slint-brooklyn/

went to see them last night. some observations:

* lots of their fans are really young, like early 20s (these people were generally friendly and nice)
* some of their older fans must not get out much because wow were they super drunk and irritating. one guy wouldn't shut up about weezer and then tried to recommend that i read nick hornby :-/
* britt hid behind the drums most of the time, did not remove shirt
* they had a mystery dude in an accept tshirt on guitar when brian wasn't playing and a guy i recognized from a local band playing bass -- has this been the case elsewhere?
* doors at 11, show started at 11:45, was fully over by 1
* overall, it was alright and i'm glad i went to see for myself but i would posit that they weren't having very much fun at all. this is disappointing, but understandable.
* nosferatu man was my favorite song to hear live
* brian reminds me of brad dourif <3

also - no opening band (maybe this was the venue which is not one of my favorites tbh)

"they weren't having very much fun at all"

saw them in 2006 and it felt the same. it's just their relaxed characters i think.

they were like that in 2004 too, and in 2008, they are just not a v engaging live band once you get past the spectacle of "omg look it's slint playing slint songs on stage"

Agree. I did not feel that their hearts were in it, but Brian showed genuine effort and the bass sub was good.

isn't that kind of ~the aesthetic~ with this pre-95 style of post-rock, though - the idea that just playing the music should be enough, that there's an almost chamber-music vibe of "we are going to play these compositions"? I think when synths and Post-Rock Proper becomes a thing people start throwing a more performative aspect in but I feel like along the Chicago/L'ville axis there was a sort of "Just Play The Songs" dictum

i guess it is, and i remember it being so back then too. i guess i just don't dig this particular approach to music performance. i don't even expect a performance in that it's aimed at the audience. i just hope for a little genuine enthusiasm for playing to be visible, in a head nod or something done with just a hint of relish. as i said, it was mostly britt and pajo who seemed lackadaisical; the sub, brian, and the other guy seemed pretty into it (appropriately understated but present)

also it wasn't some huge deal, just something i noticed because i went there in part with the intention of seeing what the performance itself would be like

it was definitely worth seeing

one guy wouldn't shut up about weezer and then tried to recommend that i read nick hornby :-/
hmm that sounds like a nightmare

at least w/pajo, having seen him perform his solo stuff, he's just kind of always like that

that there's an almost chamber-music vibe of "we are going to play these compositions"?

― Now I Am Become Dracula (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, 11 May 2014 19:22 (Yesterday) Permalink

I saw them last night and it struck me, esp during "Don, Aman" how chamber music-like both the music and performance was.

I don't think you can really judge how invested in the performance a musician is or isn't based on their onstage body language. I have plenty of friends who play and barely even move onstage but I know they are deeply invested.

That said I was struck by how really strange Slint were (and are), they are truly a singular entity. The show was good. The venue in Mpls was lame. McMahan spoke basically twice, once to say "the last time we were in this town it was 1989" and the second time to name check Man-Sized Action, which always brings a smile to my face.

I saw one of the NYC shows, at the Wick in Bushwick. it was cool, definitely better than the last time around when they were in bigger rooms. unlike what LL described I didn't feel like there were many younger fans there at all but the older fans were cool and the vibe was good.

it also solidified my opinion that Breadcrumb Trail is my favorite Slint song.

some good photos here

http://www.imposemagazine.com/photos/slint-at-the-wick#1

wow, great photos! i'm glad brian got some suspenders. he had to keep hiking up his pants. also spires played with them? did they move to NYC or traveling from Chicago? i have seen them as the opening act for so many different bands, but slint takes the cake. we didn't get an opening band :(

btw if y'all have never heard implodes, i can recommend wholeheartedly -- that's the band i recognized the slint bass player from. they're great.

I didn't watch Spires much. the recordings I had heard by them were like pastoral psych but their set was a super in your face sax and drum blast. I don't know where they live, they opened all three Slint shows in New york though.

shocked by dave pajo's lack of good taste in clothing... though the crass slogan on his shirt is consistent with his brilliant Papa M lyric 'there was something like a wall between us / that stopped your going down on mah peeenus,' a line that my then-girlfriend earnestly described as 'heartbreaking.'

xp they're from Madison, WI I believe.

thoroughly enjoyed spires' set in boston, just good old-fashioned weirdo psych music

they have been totally different every time i've seen them -- i like kathleen baird's traveling bell stuff a lot.
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Traveling_Bell/

one of them was playing mostly flute and the other was playing mostly sax, they were making a lot of loops with a little stringed lap instrument of some kind and some other stuff i couldn't see.

sort of like a freer take on some canterbury type stuff, it was good

Whoa, every guitar Slint used on those photos has lace sensor pickups (or ones that look exactly like them). Just a nerdy weird side-note, as it is not something you see very often.

yeah i noticed that at the show!

it made me think of zwan lol

god i wanted someone to shout zwan or something so bad

Whoa, was Zwan an all lace-sensor band too? Or just Pajo?

Slint - Washer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yEgcb167k4
this is the only track of theirs that i like from either album.

The recording sessions for Spiderland are reputed to have been difficult for the members of the band and were, according to AllMusic, "intense, traumatic and one more piece of evidence supporting the theory that band members had to be periodically institutionalized during the completion of the album." Rumors circulated that at least one member of Slint had been checked into a psychiatric hospital. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiderland#Context

good post

lol

excerpts from
Melody Maker (Breeders cover: Kim, Tanya, Jo)
May 26, 1990

This January the three women teamed up with homegrown Kentucky drummer Shannon Doughton (Brit) who travelled to Edinburgh to record the album "Pod". It took just 21 days to rehearse and record 14 tracks, at a rate unheard of in these days of World Party or Tears For Fears album schedules.

The band attracted their fare share of attention from the normally reserved Scottish capital. The first night they went to the local pub there were three or four people in what Tanya describes as "someone's tiny living room". On the second night, the place was packed with 75 men, most offering to buy drinks.

"When we ordered pints of lager or committed the ultimate sexual sin by ordering Guinness, they cooled off," Jo explains. At the end of their first week, the studio roof caved in, soaking half the equipment and ruining a new carpet. The following evening, their hillbilly drummer Brit, who'd never been out of Kentucky before, found the Edinburgh nightlife all too dazzling and spent his first big night out dancing with "some really hot babe" who turned out to be a local transvestite. He's now delivering pizzas for Domino's back in Kentucky.

It was drummer Brit who experienced first hand Jo's new found freedom of expression. Kim describes how he was riding in a cab, out of his head, begging Kim to hit him.

"He kept saying, 'Kim, Kim punch me, punch me'. I wouldn't do it. Then, all of a sudden, Josephine did. She took an almighty swing at him. I've never been that close to someone being punched and it was like this dull thud. I was amazed she did it. So was Brit, but he enjoyed it."

I ask Kim to tell me the story behind her stories and she obliges, eventually. One song, "Opened", was based on their drummer's recurring dream of flying with his cousin.

"I'm not sure how much of this you can print," Kim says, "but he's this 19 year old teenager who picks his nose and burps and stuff like that. Anyway he was telling me this dream and using words like boobies and titties and using the same language that old men do in porno films. I thought it was so weird. The song is his dream, verbatim."

The Breeders – Opened (1990)

Walking on his highways
We leave the land
And float inside the dark, black water
Robin flies again

She flew low over the highways
And I saw the wind
Blowing back her barbie doll hair
Robin flies again

And in a kitchen in Kentucky
She thinks she's Peter Pan
And in the bottom of a concrete basement
Robin flies again