The Magnetic Fields: Classic or Dud?

We're evil that way. Death to consensus! ;-)

It might be me, but from what I can tell from a lot of lines being quoted here in Merritt's defense, *they're* pretty melodramatic as well.

Well, yeah, that was sort of my point. That once you get past the concept and the cleverness it's the same old same old.

So your article rebelling against the 'indie consensus' on Merritt was what, exactly? ;)

P.S. Mark, the third disc is almost certainly the weakest.

P.P.S. I can't recommend Merritt's Future Bible Heroes side-project highly enough; I actually like their album Memories Of Love as much as 69 Love Songs and more than any of the other MF albums.

I was briefly elated to see all the attention that 69 got, but it soon became apparent that the gushing press was just pissing people off. This is why i rarely read music press any more. listen to the bloody music. mp3 and internet wins.

I couldn't get past disc 1 of 69 for ages because it was so wonderful. then weeks later i tried the second disc -- also wonderful. third disc turned out to be a bit wobbly. (seems to be the conventional view too, huh?)

I'm still looking forward to the first time i hear "Take Ecstasy With Me" in a club. stomping! (despite sounding a bit like a raved-up z-cars theme tune)

Well I prefer it to the second one... Come on, it has 'Meaningless' (which tears me up ever time, or does it put me into a state of 'no one touch me' catatonia? I forget which), 'Yeah! Oh Yeah!' (melodrama par excellence - the best duet of its kind since the Specials' 'I Can't Stand It') and 'Queen of the Savages' (ridiculous, possibly offensive lyric, but I can't help loving it. I think it's all about the TUNE, shock horror!). Yeah, it's bollocks that lyrics are Merritt's only gift. Magnetic Fields melodies reverb around my head all the time.

Disc 3 is the worst, yes. Bringing up a few good tracks (they're all good, in their ways) doesn't affect that judgment.

>>> Merritt taking utterly seriously what others would assume to be a joke. On 69 Love Songs the magic within the songs is not lyrical, but rather the mediation between the song as an intensely formal structure and equally intense, heartfelt performances of those songs.

I *kind* of agree with all this... but the trouble is the rhetoric of inversion: the MFs are *either* ironic *or* heartfelt. In fact, I think, they are sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both or undecidable, sometimes You, The Listener, Decide - ie;. we don't need an all-embracing description of the tone of *every* MFs moment, cos they're not all the same.

>>> Songs like "Book Of Love" or "Papa Was A Rodeo" would be completely naff in the hands of anyone else, but Merritt and his helpers invest them with such feeling that they transcend their own sense of craft. It's the transcendance that makes it such an emotionally affecting album - it often feels like the Fields are *covering* the songs as opposed to merely performing them, reimagining them as something grander than what they were on the page and layering them with new, almost unbearably personal resonances (the rostered vocalist policy doesn't hurt in this regard).

Sure, this covers idea is great, very suggestive. But there are still two different kind of 'sincerity' at work in your argument: 1) = 'emotionally sincere about the lyrics, etc'; 2) 'sincere craftsmanship - taking "The Song" very seriously - being serious (but also funny) about an investigation of pop history'. They're both fine, and both present at different times, but interestingly different (and I hadn't quite identified 2) until you brought it up).

I'm looking for a concluding thought (for me, not for everyone else, of course) on this, trying to sum it up... I think it's that 69LS suggests that there are many ways to one's heart - through the head, through the feet; through musical texture, through lyrical subtlety; through complexity and wryness, but also through simplicity amidst that ('I love it when you give me things'). And those many ways are (possibly) only multiplied by the many things that many listeners can do with the songs. The record is so big that it doesn't need to be about intellect *or* emotion - it can be about both at different times, and about their interrelations and occasional identity.

*chuckle* Something I probably wouldn't write now. Individual statements that say or imply musical truth is nonexistent seem much more to my taste at present...

Upon reflection, what I find most interesting of all was that most of the press seemed to salute him for his influences rather than his results. I mean, it's great that he obviously likes a lot of different music, that's completely up my street, but there's no automatic corollary saying that therefore his music must by virtue of that succeed. This wasn't a universal approach by writers, of course, but I saw it more than once, and struck me as a strange sort of wish- fulfillment.

I always liked "Meaningless" as one of the best songs on the set but it never struck me as more than cruelly funny.

Re old stuff: Get Lost is the only SM I don't feel a little embarrassed about now. Even at my most 69LS-infatuated I always preferred it. I still don't ever play it though. Nice tunes and arrangements. The first two songs are especially good. The lyrics are simpler and don't dominate the music. I never really liked Charm of the Highway Strip that much other than "Born On a Train."

It might just be that the MF are dealing in statements I don't really need to hear at the moment, as Sterling feels. In retrospect, it seems a little strange that I would have made that big a deal over what is essentially a retro-80s project.

Oh, you should hear Stevie T sing it. People still weep at the memory.

Good thread, this.

It wasn't just the press - I noticed a lot of my friends and acquaintances doing it (and by "a lot" I mean the 5 people I know who like Stephin Merrit). It was like, "Oh, you should like it, he takes influences from this this and this!" And I'm like, yes, well, Limp Bizkit take influences from this this and this that are all good but I think that Limp Bizkit are shit, why is this different? They never had much of an answer besides "But he's so clever!" which isn't an answer at all.

1. Merritt

2. Dudley Klute

3. Shirley Simms

5. Claudia Gonson

4. LD Beghtol

Favorite of alltime would be Susan Amway.

i forgot this song was at the end of disc 2 today, and it made me feel more messed up than i thought that i was.

I still very much enjoy the album but noticed that many of the ones that seemed more enjoyable today were novelty songs, and wondered if this is a less chemically tolerant, fragile Ween for a moment, despite all of the writing about craftsmanship and history.

$70 Can. on sale seems like he was screwed, though. Considering when I'm in Ottawa and I shop at Organised Sound (a store Sundar should be familiar with, as they sell his tape), Merge CDs are $19.99 each, he should've been able to walk off with them for individually for $60 (and usually bundled packs are slightly cheaper than individual releases in general).

It's the fact that most of MF's witticisms are self-puncturing that makes them so insightful, so persuasive, so raw and personal; as someone who tends to overanalyse myself to extremes, I can sympathise with Merritt's refusal to divorce his intellect from his emotion - is "World Music" a meta-joke or plain heartbreaking? It's both, and all the better for being so.

I know what you mean, Otis - anyone who's ever been in the same room as me when I've played Magnetic Fields has used it as an excuse to complain about my music tastes ("You've got so many cds - how none of them are any good?").

Wheeler, maybe if you stopped listening to the MFs, you wouldn't be a moron anymore. Did you ever think about that?

When I bought the set at Record Runner 2 years ago, Organised Sound didn't stock it yet (usually go there before RR) and I don't think anyone else in Ottawa did either. I think it was still an import at the time. Don't know if it still is now.

I'm guessing that $32 * exchange rate + shipping + taxes (?) would still come out to at least $50.

Am I acquainted with you offline Vic?

Wheeler, believe me, the improvements have been vast and numerous. I mean, in the past six months, you've gone from your Potion Lounge performance to the way you behave now, which is lots better - I mean, you are the King of Hampshire College. AND your taste in music has improved, you now carry around those great mix CDs we listened to on the way to Orient Point, whereas just a few months ago it was that godawful Turbonegro CD all the time. If you stay off the Mags long enough, you might become like the next Derek Jeter or something - all your life problems, solved.

Though not listening to the Mags has added a disturbing tendency to ditch me and Ramon to hang with Stephanie, who is moving into an artist wherehouse full of weird diaper wearing freaks and mannequins.

But this has nothing to do with Stephin Merrit!

That said, I was a much happier person back when I was a more frequent Mag Fields listener (although you probably would have said I was a "sadder" person in your opinion -- but then again, you'd probably still do that now). Come to think of it, I can't think of a single Mag Fields song that I've ever interpreted as "sad."

I don't mean sad like necessarily actually miserable or sad...It's hard to define, maybe "wanker" is a better term. I fully acknowledge the possibility that this is merely because the people I know are wankers and nothing to do with the Magnetic Fields.

I.e., they're sort of like really huge They Might Be Giants fans -- people who could never make any serious emotional connection to music, and therefore only like music that's deliberately self- conscious and jokey and awkward about the fact that it even is music.

I saw the first of their 69-song Chicago shows, and there were a number of people like this in the audience, who seemed to expect that the show would be, like, comedic or something. They somehow thought Mag Fields were joke-rock.

Best exemplified by someone I know's reaction to a sort of house-y track on the new TMBG album, which involved a lot of amazed giggling: "Whoah, check it out, they're doing a dance track!" To which I wanted to reply something like: "You know, there are thousands of whole albums that are entirely house music, but you won't dream of listening to any of those." It's this weird "I only listen to music as parody" kind of phenomenon, but I don't think it should reflect too poorly on the bands involved, and only covers a limited portion of their fanbases.

The whole comic / pastiche etc thing, this convinces me, is *one aspect* of the MFs, which is really mainly a 69LS issue. (TCotHS = staggeringly significant LP, as Steady Mike has been insisting for ages before I went near the thing.)

Sadly no LD Beghtol, who died in 2020. Did they ever say what happened, Covid or something else?

Never saw cause of death spelled out

https://www.chickfactor.com/rip-ld-beghtol-splendid-butterfly/