Songs: Ohia - Magnolia Electric Company...any good? [EDIT: RIP Jason Molina -- March 2013]

sad. glad i got to see him play once.

The detail about his not having health insurance and his family having to ask for donations towards medical bills really gets to me.

this is just too much for me. i was just listening to the magnolia electric co. demos on a drive in the rain last night. devastating news :/

Reposted: http://www.chunklet.com/index.cfm?section=blogs&ID=743

Knowing alcoholism was the cause is just so heavy.

Just...fuck. RIP.

This, from a little over a year ago, is some sad reading: http://www.chunklet.com/index.cfm?ID=707§ion=blogs

http://www.chunklet.com/index.cfm?ID=707

looks like he took the post down to add a live performance link

fuck, i knew when this thread had 23 new answers something bad had happened. Had no idea about his issues, seemed like a guy who could be prolific forever. RIP, will spin a couple of his records tonight

I know this is a somewhat petty request in light of the circumstances, but can the title of this thread be changed? Answer is and will always be yes.

Fuck. Thought about him just the other day, hoping it wouldn't end like this. RIP, good man. You fought.

"No Limits on the Words" hitting so hard right now.

Damn... This is so sad...

"We get no second chance in this life."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paIV1hPihtE

Jason Molina wrote some of my all time favorite songs, and "Goodnight Lover," which would be one of my favorite songs if I could listen to it without crying. So so sad. Such a terrible way to die.

oh my god, this is terrible. I had no idea. does his family still need money?

heartbreaking. rest in peace jason

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=malJUMz2A9Y

This song is one of my all time favorites. It's so dark and beautiful, but sounds even darker now.

oh fuck, this is really sad. rip jason, you seemed like a good guy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c9lHmvbsdQ

I knew Jason a little in college -- my band and him played on the same bill. He didn't go to Oberlin, but was from nearby Lorain -- there's just something about that area, so many talented people are from there. Jason's success struck me funny -- his songs seemed so...little when I knew him, and I always felt like he had a little chip on his shoulder, which in retrospect makes a lot of sense. But I clearly was missing something -- bc he obviously meant a lot to a great many people.

Terribly sad.

little songs mean a lot

I posted about this on facebook and mentioned collaborating with Jason on a Songs:Ohia show poster. That was for that show you played on, the bill was Nozzle, Tel Aviv (Andy Comer has a new record out on Teen Beat) and Songs:Ohia.

Looking at the people responding to that facebook post and thinking about Jason has me thinking about Oberlin. How much I hated the classes mostly, and mostly hated everything else, and yet the collection of people I met there and through there, and there was a whole society of people who didn't go to Oberlin officially but were part of the community, like Jason, or WFMU's Dan Bodah who I think followed his girlfriend there. So many interesting and talented people. I was at MOMA yesterday and saw a piece by Cory Archangel printed by Kayrock. I hated Oberlin but it made me who I was and I certainly continue to benefit from the connections made there.

Anyway, I was pretty close with Jason junior year and a bit less senior year. At the very end of the year a good friend of mine kissed his ex-girlfriend and I remember freaking out and thinking Jason was going to be mad at me by proxy. That was the very end of the year and I saw him once or twice after that.

He used to play George Jones records all the time and we'd drive around lorrain county going to the record exchanges. I think he lived in our attic rent free, while another student friend lived in the basement rent free, and that didn't seem to bother those of us who actually paid rent, because it was a shitty party house and the attic and basement were especially not great. The guy in the basement had a tent, but Jason had a mattress and a lamp and an old suitcase up in the attic.

We had one of those old timey sideboards with an old record player in it, the kind that let you play 16rpm records because those existed in the 50s or whatever. We had some sludgy indie-rock 7", I can't remember the band. Something with "Dog" in the title. Jason would put that 7" on and play it at 16rpm and scream "SLOW DOG". Over and over again. Really, we listened to that a lot.

damn

One of the very best of the '00s.

RIP

http://content.magnoliaelectricco.com/

final bit of "i was there" nostalgia. I was with Jason when the guys from Secretly Canadian came to Ohio to meet with him and offer to put out his records. I just vaguely remember these two nice dudes, then a few years later being blown away by the empire they built.

saw them a few times, but only time i met jason was at Primavera where we had a great chat about similarities between the shitty industrial parts of the respective cities we're from, and the next day they played a glorious set in the sunshine. he seemed like a really good guy. it's a lovely memory i'll never lose and i'll never stop listening to those records. awful awful news.

i saw MEC play in los angeles 7-8 yrs ago. great show. rip jason.

Only 39 years old.

The first time I saw MEC was at the first Pitchfork festival (then Intonation) in 2005. They had a kinda shitty set early in the day on Saturday, but they really sounded great. I got to the grounds early specifically to see them and was one of the first people lined up along the fence when they started their set. Afterwards he came down and thanked some of us for getting up so early to see them, he was really friendly.

The impromptu second set at lunchtime on the foyer stage the Dirty Three's Minehead weekend was one of my favourite ATP things ever.

apparently his family does still need money from medical things. donate here:

http://secretlycanadian.com/blog/2013/03/jason-molina-of-songs-ohia-and-magnolia-electric-co-passed-away-saturday/

can't stand this news.

Jason's music was such a companion to me in hard times. I wish I could have somehow been a companion to him.

fwiw, seeing some articles saying he did graduate from Oberlin. I didn't remember either way.

Once drove from Toronto to Boston area to see him play in a shitty dive bar. Worth every minute of the drive.
Magnolia Electric Co. (self titled record) is a stone cold classic.
Very sad news. Very sad.

I am absolutely shocked by this news and immensely just sad as hell. His work meant a ton to me during a very difficult period of my life and I'm not sure I'd be entirely the same had a couple of his records not held my hands through those periods.

Sorry it got so hard for you, Jason. Farewell, transmission.

Gutted... though I hoped he would pull through and beat his addiction, there was a small part of me that thought this might happen sooner or later. Used to check his webpage every month or so to see if there was any update..

RIP Jason - your music meant so much to me...

for a guy who could really own a lyrical cliche (and i say that with nothing but love), he also wrote some amazingly weird and wonderful and striking lines. the first big chunk of "farewell transmission" is just a tour de force, every image just kills:

The whole place is dark
Every light on this side of the town
Suddenly it all went down
Now we’ll all be brothers of the fossil fire of the sun
Now we will all be sisters of the fossil blood of the moon
Someone must have set us up
Now they’ll be working in the cold grey rock, in the hot mill steam… in the concrete
In the sirens and the silences now all the great set up hearts - all at once start to beat

After tonight if you don’t want us to be a secret out of the past
I will resurrect it, I’ll have a good go at it
I’ll streak his blood across my beak and dust my feathers with his ashes
I can feel his ghost breathing down my back

100% otmfm. The first time I heard that song I was just like "wait, what? blood across my beak? dead moon in its jaw? hold up this is amazing."

I listened to his records a lot. RIP

saw him in 2009 with magnolia electric company, in a small kind of shitty bar in reno. it was a time when i was listening to nashville moon a lot, getting really attached to that central vibe of desolation and swing, played it often while driving from reno to vegas, which is mostly two-lane highways and variations of desert. it was a great show, and i was feeling good enough that i decided to shake his hand and tell him "thank you, your music has really helped me." he smiled, looked down for a second and said, "me too."

Thanks to everybody who's sharing their more private stories. I'm a little shell-shocked and it's super appreciated

I spoke with Jason once outside Holocene after a show in 2006, the only time I saw him play. I bummed him a smoke and asked him what they'd been playing in the tour can which led to us getting nostalgic about 90's trance of all things and briefly lending me a window into the inner-goofball he's consistently described as.

I remember his band was really vamping on some extended solos that night. Between songs he leaned into the mic and said "thanks, classic rock," with the timing of a master.

We are deeply saddened to announce that Jason Andrew Molina passed away in his home in Indianapolis this past Saturday, March 16th of natural causes at age 39.

No one dies at 39 of natural causes. :(

What is the medical fund they're soliciting for?

He was a brilliant musician who will likely never get the accolades he deserves; pity, yet a bit of a secret garden at the same time. The Magnolia Elec Co website has a particular apt perspective on his passing.

The medical fund is presumably for past bills -- the above site was asking for donations over a year-and-a-half ago.

Molina's lyrics on the hidden Amalgamated Sons of Rest album...

if i am bad it's in the modern way
i might have said too much, i might have
done too much
i been looking at the stars in the sky tonight
and it looks like there's room for mine
so i will be good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQsL8GxdvUw

just dug out The Magnolia Electric Co, this is going to be hard to listen to.

RIP

"honey, watch your ass" off pyramid was one of my favorites for a long time. kinda scared to dig that out anytime soon but i really have should. xp

I mourn the loss regularly.

Posthumous album of solo songs recorded in 2008 due in August, Eight Gates. Sounds like mostly solo acoustic songs mixed with field recordings from his time in London. Torn between really wanting to hear anything new from Molina and wondering if he wanted this stuff released...

https://secretlycanadian.com/record/eight-gates/

Eight Gates:

01 Whisper Away
02 Shadow Answers the Wall
03 The Mission’s End
04 Old Worry
05 She Says
06 Fire on the Rail
07 Be Told the Truth
08 Thistle Blue
09 The Crossroad + The Emptiness

The track thus far released is really doing it for me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZLrnk0h8nE

Torn between really wanting to hear anything new from Molina and wondering if he wanted this stuff released...

I'm very ambivalent about this as well but this track is really nice.

I'm on a Molina binge rn and was thinking about whether I should get this.

I'd say that if you've got any interest at all in JM then you should definitely get it.

"New Arriver album, awesome metal band featuring three members of the Mag. Elec. Co. band:

https://arriver.bandcamp.com

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 10 May 2017 16:34 (three years ago) bookmarkflaglink"

Josh (or anyone) - this record is amazing. How did you find out that some of the ME Co. folk were involved? I've done some cursory searching but can't find anything.

Better searching reveals " Rob and Dan Sullivan on bass and guitar/vocals paid their dues in the late Jason Molina’s indie/alt. country outfit Songs: Ohia, even playing on the now-classic Magnolia Electric Co., which also featured McAdam."

https://ninecircles.co/2016/11/29/album-review-arriver-emeritus/

Rob and Dan Macadam both went to Oberlin with us. Dan runs the amazing Crosshair silkscreen company.

Dan M. is an old friend and neighbor (two blocks away) married to another old friend of mine from college. Coincidentally, Rob and Dan Sullivan are old friends of *another* really old college friend of mine, who also knew them from Maine (!). Dan S. btw is an incredible woodworker: http://www.navilluswoodworks.com Adding to the mix, Jeff, who played drums in the The Magnolia Electric Co. band, is married to a *different* old friend of mine.

This Arriver album is great, thanks

I am super curious to hear Eight Gates, but I can't bring myself to do it just yet. As I mentioned earlier, I really struggle with the thought of him not wanting this stuff out there in this form.

I bought Eight Gates, on my third trip to the record shop. I had to, somehow. But I've yet to play it...

Just discovered Eight Gates and was unnerved by that snippit at the start of "She Says" where they have Molina on tape saying "the perfect take is--just as long as the person singing is still alive..."

10 years gone.

actually can't believe i'd written the man off as a palace copycat years ago. i listened hard this year and he's a completely different kind of writer. knowing so many of the songs were knocked out with one take is just phenomenal. as my mate put it: "never has someone made so much meaning out of such a minimal vocabulary". reading his biography rn...

so Fall Out Boy stole the "why put a new address on the same old loneliness" line? that's fucked up

interestingly enough:

We have a picture of @petewentz in the Magnolia van to celebrate this fact. It was placed there by Jason Molina himself. I'll try to get a picture while we listen to the record today. #TimsTwitterListeningParty

— Jason P. Evans Groth (@groakus) July 2, 2020