POO: Red House Painters

For me, I'd likely say Katy Song, Michael, Summer Dress, and Uncle Joe (sorry, can't pick just one). Oh, and I highly recommend you all try to track down the demo version of Smokey, which was on that Shanti Project CD. Far superior to the Old Ramon version, imho.

I think I'm gonna do a google search to see what I can find about Sun Kil Moon's current activities.

SKM is up to nothing right now. Kozelek was playing solo in the States, but just cancelled his UK tour for "personal reasons."

http://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_thefreelancementalists_archive.html

oh, and cuz i like spreading the love.

Oh! An interesting bit of RHP trivia I noticed. The bridge verse of "Uncle Joe" always struck me as oddly-phrased. Til I worked out why:

And I am not very well read
And did you say that I will lose my house
And can you spare me of my pain?
And can you spare me of my tears
Oh Uncle Joe...

Re(a)d House Pain-tears. Har har! That card Kozolek.

RHP were very, very important to me for a while; I still love them but listen to them less often these days. Drop is a masterpiece though, a resonant well of horrifying beauty I don't Kozelek ever really matched again. Old Ramon gets a bad rap (even from me), but it has a couple of great tracks alongside some songs that just didn't work at all. the SKM album (which may as well have been an RHP album, it at least has Jerry and Anthony on it, which is more than you can say for Blue Guitar) was a massive improvement.

I used to go see RHP all the time, they would play forever, they were usually amazing. Koz solo can get dull; but the "SKM" show I saw (Koz with Phil and someone else on guitar, and two violin players) was astounding.

Good individual songs and moments, though. "Michael" probably my choice, though "San Geronimo" would be the followup.

This song has always gotten me; it starts off sounding like one of the band's usual slow, spooky wanderers, but somewhere along the way it blazes up into something full of drama. How? It's a loss-of-innocence song, or a coming-of-age song, and maybe it really is drawn in emo terms. But there's also something incredibly un-emo about it, something almost literary: Kozolek manages to come at the thing from two different perspectives, even using different parts of his vocal range to delineate different points of view. It's very nearly a short story, and it's through that approach that he gets to capture both sides of that loss-of-innocence: at moments it seems like a kindness ("the good things that we've done for you" / "show you life"), and at moments it seems violating and cruel ("we know who you are / I read your palm while you were sleeping").

It's hard not to imagine that the "new kid" in this song is Kozolek, whose backstory seems to have had him troubled and drugged-up by the age of 13. The low voice at the opening comes from that point of view, and sets him apart: he sits listening to the kids drink in the next room, "lose control and get louder," thinking of the one girl out there who might worry about him. Sure: emo. But then the voice shoots up an octave, and we're out there, louder, in the other room, talking about the new kid; "he's not like us," "he says nothing," "he's afraid to drive a car." These aren't kind voices, and in the second verse they border on assault. That high Kozolek voice is the perfect vehicle for their taunts -- they know his secrets, they've read his diary. Just imagine: they sing "We know who you are" and it sounds like the scariest thing in the world. The kid is quiet and frightened and they barge in and shout: We know who you are.

But there are those "good things we've done for you," and it's in the chorus that both sides come perfectly together. The chord structure goes from spooky to anthemic, nearly a hymn: "It's our duty," they sing, "as Californians ... to show you life." And just check out the literary value of the arrangement! Suddenly overdubbed voices swim in around the central one, and it's like actually being surrounded by these kids -- maybe frightening, maybe bullying, but right about to take you out and show you the world.

I can't think of many songs where the progress of the music is quite so perfectly and subtly geared to drive home the text of the story; I can't think of many songs that have a "story" on this level in the first place. Emo? No. Emo-as-badthing is one-sided, self-absorbed, personal, solipsistic; this song is none of those. This song, no matter how much the lyrics wander freely into opacity, is a snapshot of something weirdly universal. Who hasn't gotten that mix of fear and excitement when someone grabs you roughly and thrusts you out into a world you don't feel ready for -- whether it's older friends or the "cousins from L.A.?" Who hasn't had some variant of the Kozolek story that seems to be on show here -- going somewhere new and falling in with people who scare and excite you and are ready to drag you out?

So on the train this morning I finally noticed just how well the elements of this song pattern into that story, and I'm absolutely floored.

Also: is it me, or is there a rich history of new-kid-in-California stories that work a lot like this song? Something about it feels very, very Californian, but I can only come up with three referents for what I mean -- something like The Lost Boys, the Karate Kid, and every Coloradoan friend of mine who spent summers in LA with divorced parents and went through exactly all of this.

Incredible note gathered from Kozelek: "The chorus of Strawberry Hill ... was sung by a group of strangers we gathered from outside the Divisadero Street studio where we were recording."

faves right now. picking one...probably Katy's Song b/c its nearly perfect lyrically and pop-wise (and still obsessed with the "rad da ta ta" at the end.) Medicine Bottle and Down Through...cannot believe the lyrics on those. wow. almost makes you wince but its pretty darn amazing at same time.

anyone else think he sounds sooooooooooooooooooooo bay area?

chris (upthread), i was listening to one of his songs in the dark deep woods northern calif and nearly had a panic attack. totally ruined my vacation. m.k. be makin us crazy.

This version of Smokey. Jeesh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUjVspW4kvQ

whereas his new music transports me to some suburban mall of hell where there is nothing to eat but cold Sbarro (this is the name of his next album)

― akm, Tuesday, January 7, 2020 5:57 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yup, or a poorly formatted blog by that annoying guy at all the town hall meetings

This thread and the mention of Old Ramon remind me that I ought to finally check out that album and Songs for a Blue Guitar. In spite of being a RHP fan for twenty-odd years now, I've never gone beyond the 4AD years, since Ocean Beach seemed like such a fitting capstone to the albums that came before it.

it's kind of funny bc he definitely reached a sort of pre-peak prior to GotGH i think w some of his records that got relatively little attention att (old ramon i guess for the obv label fallout reasons, the ac/dc/john denver ep's, bc they were seen as oddball side projects). Old Ramon is incredible. I was going to look at his website the other day to look at what he's been up to or what his end of the year favorites were or whatevr, but I think it would just kind of bum me out

his transition seemed so extreme and dramatic that I almost want to attribute it to some neurological diminishment or something, but i guess he just got bored of doing whatever he had been doing w rhp and earlier skm. oh well...

Yeah I've said this before but I really wish, and it would have made no sense from a marketing standpoint given the success of Benji, that at that point he changed to a new moniker. I hate having to say one of my favorites is SKM but with a flashing red asterisk. It's just so much different but has been so consistently THAT ever since Benji. This project should have had its own name. I don't think he's even capable of doing anything different, which kind of plays into your neurological diminishment theory but we shouldn't go there.

"His transition seemed so extreme and dramatic that I almost want to attribute it to some neurological diminishment or something."

^ I've had this thought about Morrissey.

Old Ramon grew on me; it was mythical for a few years there and then someone slipped me a tape of it before it finally came out and I was pretty disappointed and it took a long time to get over that. I preferred how those songs sounded live, etc. But I like it a lot now.

Songs for a Blue Guitar is magical, one of his best albums. Maybe it shouldn't have been called RHP since none of them are on it but you wouldn't really know that from listening to it.

(GotGH has more RHP members on it than Songs)

huh i wonder who on earth plays on songs for a blue guitar beyond koz

occurs to me that altho i love RHP i think I've only heard the first 3 albums

Songs for a Blue Guitar has Michael Urbano on drums and Davey Faraghar on bass; Bruce Kaphan played pedal steel on Have You Forgotten. I'm not sure if there was another guitar player, probably not, doesn't sound like it. Anthony and Jerry both played on GotGH.

Dan Barbee was also thanked but I don't know if he played keys or something, or just worked on engineering.

Yeah I've said this before but I really wish, and it would have made no sense from a marketing standpoint given the success of Benji, that at that point he changed to a new moniker. I hate having to say one of my favorites is SKM but with a flashing red asterisk. It's just so much different but has been so consistently THAT ever since Benji. This project should have had its own name. I don't think he's even capable of doing anything different, which kind of plays into your neurological diminishment theory but we shouldn't go there.

i remember reading some interview w todd rundgren in which he said he got "bored" of writing perfect pop songs (e.g. I Saw The Light) and that prompted his divergence(?) into prog and whatever. my working theory is something like that w koz. got bored of doing really pretty guitar things and neil young-ing poignant lyrics about love and love lost and life and life lost, and became fixated on the modest mouse guy and goodness knows who else's approach to doing music/vox. i guess he's always been super-contrarian and whatever, so in a sense it's on brand? He wrote/sang a bunch of stuff about hating touring, being in the "indie" musician ghetto etc. i think at some point, or still he really wanted to pursue acting. i mean, God bless him, and I feel bad for speculating about his career path or being annoying guy posting on a message board about his choices... just confusing to me. Benji was awesome of course, but it's not something that you can listen to repeatedly obv. But I also don't want to listen to someone's audio diary about eating drunken crab at his favorite thai restaurant.

I think I said this elsewhere, but if feels to me like he was experimenting with looser/less fussy songwriting and arranging on Benji, and its success made him realize he could invest way less sheer effort into a given song and be equally or more rewarded commercially, especially since he can be a lot more prolific that way.

one thing is that there are signals of that shift in direction as early as "wop a din din," a song about how much he loves his cat and hates going on tour bc he has to leave his cat behind

overall i think he should've written more songs about cats though

kozelek can have a little cat

I guess we've all got bored of something? Or found that we couldn't do something that we previously could?

I haven't listened to anything since Perils and don't feel the need to at the moment. I think it's worth taking the long view though. The Dylan comparison is fraught and lazy but who knows what it's like up there. He might have a New Morning moment, work this out and find a new space.

I think 'Blue Guitar' and 'Old Ramon' are my favourite RHP albums. I always liked how they sound, and I think 'Old Ramon' was the first RHP studio album I bought.

I started to drift away from Sun Kil Moon when the nylon strung guitar took over. I wish Mark well as he follows his instinct.

leaves are turning brown
all over the ground