American Music Club: Classic or Dud?

@yugi ex you gotta hear The Golden Age!! xp lol

Great seeing all the comments and the new love for the band here. With Mark, learning about lyric origins only adds to my appreciation of the songs: the Kathleen songs, Nightwatchman, Why Won't You Stay, and so on. The Decibels and the Little Pills, for taking a girl dancing on stage topless at one of their European shows, and writing with empathy: "And he pulled off your blouse, went girls gone wild / for a crowd that just didn't want to know / … / oh and the crowd is proud to look away / like they've never been desperate or lonely / ... No one here is going to save you". One of my favorite AMC tracks, though that'd be a VERY hard POX list. Lyrics would be even harder, though #1 would be "I'm as priceless as a brass ring / That's losing the heat from your hand".

I do wish he'd release another with the 60 Watt Silver Lining vibe.

If I were to retool San Francisco, I'd dump Six Packs and add Sleeping Pills, and that's pretty much it; I'd also move Hello Amsterdam to before Cape Canaveral so the whole album ends on a pretty, reverb heavy slide.

I'll ask about remastering today. Im partly avoiding talking to people because I was meant to retrieve and get a digital copy of a rehearsal cassette from Engine from a drummer who only played a few rehearsals and I have not yet done this. Oops.

I have very little concept of any of the inspirations behind any AMC/Eitzel song except for the ones that explicitly name Kathleen and "Blue and Grey Shirt".

You could write a book (or at least a very long essay) comparing/contrasting Koz and Eitzel and their respective relationships to their muses, were you so inclined. xps

I do wonder what makes his/their music consistently a tough sell. I bought Hey Mr Ferryman from a clearance bin - there were multiple sealed copies.

pretty much all of eitzel's muses were Kathleen. Rise was about a friend who had AIDS. Nightwatchman, Blue and Grey Shirt, Hula Maiden, Xmas LIghts Spin are about his mother's death.

Thought I read an interview way back where he described Hula Maiden as being about his father's death, as in the two of them had planned a trip to Hawaii to patch things up between them. The old man passed just prior but Eitzel decided to take the trip anyway?

oh that's right. It was one or the other.

Just checked! It was an old Uncut piece - and the stuff about the dad was described by the interviewer as "legend has it", not words directly from Mark himself. So who knows? In any event, it did allow me to appreciate another level of pathos in that song.

Right. I'm putting on United Kingdom. The second AMC album I heard / owned.

uk is very underrated imo

not sure where it falls in my ranking

not even sure i can put together a ranking lol

basically every song on UK is perfect, it just feels a bit short/slight and the hopping btwn studio and live recordings is a little odd. "here they roll down" one of the coolest openers of any album and "heaven of your hands" is unbelievable

the hopping btwn studio and live recordings is a little odd

my feeling about this is essentially: if it works for neil young,

Engine is still and forever my AMC #1 but it's not like they ever made a bad record (SF being the closest I guess, time to revisit maybe).

"here they roll down" one of the coolest openers of any album

― intern at pepe le pew research (Simon H.), Thursday, April 15, 2021 6:39 PM

Agree with this a lot. UK is maybe my third favorite after Mercury and Everlclear.

Is there plans for the non-album tracks? I never got any b-sides or EPs.

yes the plan is to get all of those out (plus outtakes and other things) somehow, either as bonus tracks on cd reissues or just on bandcamp. you can hit me up through here if you want a slew of b-sides and stuff and I can send you a .zip file.

Cool, fingers crossed for CDs

The rocking/country hick dual recordings of "Art of Love" on Engine is also very Neil Young.

California is my favorite of theirs, but UK is right up there, and the CD that combines the two should be on everybody's desert island list. "Laughingstock" is the subtlest song that can (and always does) stop me dead in my tracks.

"it's not like they ever made a bad record (SF being the closest I guess)"

as much as it pains me, I'd rate Love Songs for Patriots below SF, mainly because I am not fond of the production on LSFP; it's recorded the way lots of things are recorded, digitally, with songs evolving from demo to finished, and the end result sounds mushy and weird to me, and Tim's drumming is way too mechanical. In other words, it sounds labored over, and it was; but SF was labored over more, but doesn't sound that way. Dunno. I still like it obviously. There is a pre-final mix version that bounces around that has earlier vocal tracks; it's not better, on the whole, but it does have two songs that were cut out of the final running order, Good For YOu and two versions of Team USA, one of which is amazing and the other sucks. It also has 1000 Miles on it, which was only on the vinyl release, which as a song dated back to the Invisible Man days.

oh, and Good for You was one of my favorite songs from those sessions so it's annoying that they didnt 'finish' it for the album. They played it live a few times around then as well; well, at least once.

I hadn't heard their contribution to No Alternative, which is weird and serpentine even by their standards

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q3ccndtevc

Weird that I'm In Heaven Now, one of their best songs imo, never even made it onto an album. In fact I only ever knew it in demo form on a Homestead Records compilation.

they recorded that twice, theres a more raw version of it on the Restless Stranger WB release CD from the late 90's (it was not recorded for that album though, that recording is from later). Another song that got multiple recordings and never got released officially was Love Connection NYC

huh i really love mooney's drumming on lsfp

never had a problem with mooney's (co-)production on LSFP...I guess it might sound a bit fussy here and there but it sounds dynamic and spacious to me

i think the sound is really right for the material. of course, it was my first amc record

"I used to think I was bi" might be the only outright laugh line in the Eitzel discography

This thread is making my day. Really great to see this amount of discussion.

Re. San Francisco, I've always felt the flow to be weakened by a hetereogenous mix of songs. Even just the opening of Fearless > Birthday seems jarring. I'm really not that taken by the more upbeat tracks. I picked up the vinyl when it was first released and I recall feeling quite underwhelmed, esp after the awesome Mercury. A friend taped me the tracks that weren't included on the vinyl, which prompted me to trade it for the CD version. When I saw Mark play live on the 60 Watt tour, I actually questioned him about the SF track selection for the vinyl release and he just shrugged, seemingly unaffected by the choice. (I probably sounded like a dick but I'll blame that on my youth.)

For my alternate track listing, I've settled on Fearless > Sleeping Pills > Love Doesn't Belong > Cape Canaveral > The Revolving Door > Shadow of the Valley > What Holds The World Together > Broke My Promise > I'll Be Gone > Fearless (Reprise) > California Dreamin'. The result is more concise and consistent although the vibe might be a bit too downbeat for some.

What's the latest on Mark's new solo album? He scrapped it after recording and that's it gone?

First time I saw Eitzel solo a few people were laughing out loud at some lyrics. "My Pet Rat St. Michael" in particular, one of my favorite songs.

I've seen him a few times live and mostly he's been in great spirits and hilarious between songs. But one time he struggled through the first couple of songs against some loudly chatting parts of the audience and just turned completely stony faced and pissed off. Which is a fair reaction, but made for a different gig experience. I did my best to hush these people, but that rarely works.

i love how puckish eutzel often is on live recordings I've heard

Songs of Love Live is perhaps a bit patchy, as referenced above. But it's also one of my favourite live albums ever. An amazing performance on a guitar borrowed from Sean O'Hagan, IIRC. I remember reading the Melody Maker review which is printed on the sleeve. It's worth noting how much love the UK "indie" press gave to AMC and Eitzel. I remember the rave reviews. AMC attracted their biggest crowds in British cities. But just fell short of mainstream success.

"What's the latest on Mark's new solo album? He scrapped it after recording and that's it gone?"

as I understand it he had one mostly recorded but didn't like it and started over. from what I was told by someone who heard it this was the right decision.

live: Ive seen Mark a trillion times and it can be great, transcendent, a shit show, a titanic disaster, or the best thing ever. You never know. Sometimes it starts one way and then heads in another direction.

so would you call him......mercurial

Shoutout over here to Dan Pearson, Vudi and Bruce Kaphan for their often superb contributions.

yes they are the best. I do think LSFP would have been better if Bruce had been involved. NOt sure that Golden Age would have happened with Danny though (that album was written as a solo thing, mostly, then it was planned to be a different band; the name MacArthur Park Music Club was being used but Merge said wtf).

I just found a RYM list Tom Mallon made of all the records he worked on: https://rateyourmusic.com/list/tkmallon/tom_mallon_recording__1978_present_/

That's a hell of a list. Is the Toiling Midgets' album 'Son' unique in that it was issued with different cover artwork for the Matador and Hut versions and both are bloody awful?

Haha. I own that Midgets album, cos Eitzel. It is pretty poor

I love that album!

Bit about Jodie Foster is so odd to hear somehow

I assumed that the song was from the perspective of John Hinkley Jr, hence the Jodie Foster reference and "if my aim had been straighter".

sounds like it.
I thought it was great. Sounds like the mental machinations of an obsessive.
I liked the lp Have meant to pick up other things by them since and not chanced on them when i had the spare cash.
Did pick up a Sleepers compilation since Ricky who had been in Crime was also a singer with them for a while I think.

If you're looking for Toiling Midgets spin offs, I recommend the self titled album by Wade from 1993(?). It's an amazing album featuring members of Toiling Midgets and Red House Painters. I'm not sure if they recorded anything else?

Aforementioned Wade:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfXzgi2u0vk

wow, nice to see someone else push that album. I really liked Wade, and saw them a handful of times. I'd long since lost the CD, but was happy to run across the LP a couple of years ago at Amoeba. Tom Mallon recorded this as well (Anthony, who was the drummer in RHP, was the drummer here). Karl Joe Goldring was associated with the Midgets and played with them from time to time, as well as lots of other bands later, probably most notably the Enablers; he and Eve were married, I believe. Eev is still around SF and plays in a band with Tom's widow who I still have not gone and seen (Macerator). No idea what happened to Mary Redfield.

Announcement on the AMC facebook page saying that "most everything on the AMC pages will be taken down in a few months." Why would they deliberately make stuff unavailable after it's been remastered and all?