American Music Club: Classic or Dud?

Yeah that album rules

I enjoyed Songs Of Love. That version of "Western Sky" is amazing. "Crabwalk" works surprisingly well without a band, still amuses me when he goes "ooh-oohhhh"

I have that one on LP. the number of times he apologizes never fails to crack me up.

Forgot to mention "Nothing Can Bring me Down" (an early version of "What Godzilla Said...") is quite special too, I cant quite describe the difference, perhaps a little more mysterious?

Mark is playing a living room show in Detroit in mid-April for 25 ppl btw. I really wish I could go

https://undertowshows.com/collections/mark-eitzel/products/detroit-mi-april-17

His solo performances are very emotionally intense

I'm still bummed about him saying he won't tour canada due to (perceived?) lack of demand :( :( :(

I've never been to an AMC or Eitzel show that was particularly well-attended.

He'll play in Canada if he's invited, the issue lies with local promoters. xp

all london shows have been small but packed. and yes, always intense. which is good!

His current live shows are pretty amazing, he really throws himself into his songs with an emotional intensity that I didn't detect when I used to see him with AMC back in the day.

I am going to see a living room Eitzel show next week and goddamn I am excited...been listening to AMC and his last solo album a lot, I kinda forgot how big of a thing they were for me at a certain point in time

this really holds up well

extremely jealous. I actually pondered making a road trip to one of those gigs but I just couldn't make it work w my schedule+budget.

I've got two coming up in the bay area; maybe a third as well. feeling spoiled again as I used to when he still lived here and actually played out.

Any news on those AMC reissues, akm?

Where is Eitzel based these days?

Went last night, so amazing

Was sitting about 10 feet from him

Opened with Western Sky, did pretty much everything I wanted to hear

Mark lives in LA with his soon-to-be husband.

I'll follow up on the reissues. I know they got all the tapes transferred.

extremely jealous, ums

He plays Seattle tonight at Boeing's Museum of Flight. Cool switch for a 'living room' tour. Bummed that I'm elsewhere, as the location doesn't get much more convenient for me.

without going into too much detail on the reissues, I can say: tapes have all been transfered but there are further bumps with contracts and ownership and some disagreements and lawyers giving poor advice.

This is probably what will happen:

https://futureofmusic.org/article/fact-sheet/right-terminate-musicians%E2%80%99-guide-copyright-reversion

So the re-releases will be 35 years after the first release? Or am I being stupid? California in 2023?

Would fully welcome this if the band finally seems some reward for their work.

THast's what I was hoping not to be true from what was being said. Hoping things would be coming a bit faster, BUt at least that would be a finite time.
JUst hope to get it in decent sound on a medium I can play. & not 4 years from now.

Or taht is to say, the heavy delay.

I've all the early releases on both LP and CD. I'm also not unhappy about how they sound. So I can wait. But I'm still excited by the prospect of reissues. Such an important band to me.

the albums will either come out 35 years after their first release or Mark will bit the bullet and just put them out and then deal with whatever blowback occurs.

"if the band finally seems some reward for their work"

"the band" at this point is just Mallon's estate, Danny, and Vudi. Mark is giving up his share of whatever these make from sales the them. But there are still some feelings somewhere that this isn't good enough and some thought that these albums are worth more than we know they are on the marketplace. Anyone who has released an album on this board knows the reality of the marketplace is that there is shit little money in physical releases now and streaming revenue doesn't bring in very much either. Mark will always own any royalties for the actual licensing of the songs should that ever happen (which he says it never will; in his words, "when I die it's not going to be Pink Moon in a VW commercial, it just isn't") because he was the songwriter. So in a rational world this is easily solved but there are some irrational feelings at play. My recommendation has always been to self-release this and don't take it to a label because what good is a label at this point for something like this? We can put some money toward PR when they come out to help sales. But a label is just going to siphon off money frankly.

Well shit, I guess I have to give up on my dream of hearing "Patriot's Heart" used as the theme song for my favorite NFL team.

revision on all of this though: I think things are moving along better than how Mark portrayed it to me the other night. So fingers crossed this stuff will be happening soon(ish)

Chanel No 5, hello?

Headed to the UK in a week to do another recording with @Bernard_Butler Looking forward to it!

— Sir Arthur Palgrove (@MarkEitzel) June 6, 2019

hell yeah

Nice piece, don't think it's been posted here before:

https://www.toppermost.co.uk/american-music-club/

Fantastic!

any word on whether we should expect a new Eitzel/Butler joint this year?

an album has been recorded, I'm not sure if Butler worked on it or not. if anyone follows Mark on social media you'll know that he loudly proclaimed his album terrible and stated he was quitting music then deleted all his social media accounts. I think he's calmed down about it now.

I saw a bit of that, yeah. I hope he's alright.

he's playing SF next week but I'm already busy so I can't check in on how that goes. He played LA the other week but didn't get any reports on it. FWIW his complaint about the album was solely around the mix of two songs.

Ditto. Someone should give him Kozelek's latest albums for perspective on terrible.

Re: LA, think someone gave a short review on the Facebook Firefly page.

I hope the next one gets him some new fans. He's way overdue a proper rediscovery, and despite v good reviews, Ferryman didn't appear to do the trick.

...yeah, Eitzel/AMC have 4k/8k monthly listeners on Spotify. I know some of the albums are missing but that's still tragic.

But most of the good albums only recently added? Maybe word hasn't gotten around?

well hopefully the reissue campaign will bring some more attention. that said obviously the market for this type of music is what it is.

xp

those are only availble in the EU and UK, not the US for whatever reason I haven't pressed anyone on.

Any news on the mooted AMC reissues?

xp lol

lucky us in the UK and EU then

So the versions of the first four albums that are currently on Spotify in the EU, have they been remastered?

no, they're the old versions. Remasters are still being finalized.

there is some chance there may be a (probably one off) reunion show in SF in the coming months. Can't say much more because I don't know much more.

The bankers, the liars and the thieves
They want to sell you into a life of fear
They call it a plan that will make you free
But nothing's free
You taught me that, my dear

I notice date of previous info and wonder if anything changed since then. Since pandemic probably hadn't quite hit by then.

The first time I saw Eitzel live, The Invisible Man had come out the year priot and he was doing a set of dates opening for Low, who were about to release Trust. I was a prospective student at a college and it was my 18th birthday. Needless to say, my mind was sufficiently blown and I ended up a student at said college the next fall.

Anyway, I still don't think I'll ever get over how much I loved the first few songs on The Invisible Man, and still kind of wish he'd done more weird folktronica stuff...if he has, I've missed it.