Silkworm: C/D?

planning on it!

oh to stand on the Higgins bridge

I managed to find myself in Missoula today and I walked across the Higgins bridge and I looked northwest across the Clark Fork River and I saw this dude surfin it and I took a picture of it

Silkworm rules

https://i.imgur.com/amrKXwy.jpg

kind of a weird show, there were only about 12 people watching them play, with the loud bar talkers overpowering the beginning of andy's set. but it was nice, andy played some new songs and/or songs i didn't recognize but also played "severance pay" and "summerwind," as well as covers of "warm machine" by bush and "if you want blood (you got it)" by ac/dc. andy and tim played "ooh la la" together in between their sets, a highlight. i had to leave during tim's set but he seemed to playing mint mile and newer songs, and the baritone guitar sounded great.

it did remind me how good the bottomless pit albums are. listened to those this morning for the first time in a while.

That show sounds so much like the time I saw Bottomless Pit. If I recall correctly there were maybe 20 people. In a town of 595,141 people, 20 people coming out to see living rock and roll legends rock and roll just didn't make sense. What is wrong with people. I guess if they don't want to see the stage lights reflecting off Tim's shiny Travis Bean baritone, that can be their problem.

the bottomless pit/mint mile shows i've been to here in chicago were generally well-attended. this bar show just wasn't really promoted much i don't think, i saw it bounce around on twitter but it wasn't listed on the free weekly's website of music happenings for example

The attendance for just about every SKWM/Bottomless Pit show (other than a few notable exceptions) I saw was had..."exclusive" or maybe "elite" is better, turn out

this one was "intimate"

If I'd had known about this, I totally would have gone to this - I had lunch today with a buddy that bought Andy's old house in Chicago some years back and he said he was too Father's Day tired to go, and then I gave him grief for a few minutes for not letting me know! Long Room, I'm guessing was a bad venue, though.

Wow this is great. Debut album coming out

https://mintmile.bandcamp.com/track/likelihood?mc_cid=2fb893e4d0&mc_eid=7756ac9c75

all the Neil Young Homegrown anticipation energy made me put on the greatest classic rock album of all-time: Marquee Mark

had never noticed til now the lil stage banter part between "Never Met a Man I Didn't Like" and "Heard it Through the Grapevine" where I believe it is Andy who says "no we're not playing any fucking Wallflowers songs, who told you that?"

and "Don't Look Back" is the greatest anti-classic rock song of all time.

Absolutely fantastic piece over at Magnet in honor of the 15th anniversary of Dahlquist's death:

http://magnetmagazine.com/2020/09/15/do-look-back-a-brief-history-of-silkworm-one-of-90s-indie-rocks-most-underrated-bands-essential-playlist-included/#more-245353

Thanks for posting that. Thought the track selections were excellent choices.

I thought it was a solid list but Treat the New Guy Right and I Hope U Don’t Survive need to be on any top Silkworm songs list imo

Comedy Minus One recently uploaded a Silkworm show from the Empty Bottle in 2000 that rips:

https://youtu.be/b5AgRFZoM9o

I was at that show and recorded it - need to get it up on dime.

Tim is playing in Sunn O))))) far out. First time I saw Silkworm was at the Butchertown Pub in Louisville with Engine Kid opening, so I dig the connection.

Somehow I'd never heard the electric version of "Couldn't You Wait". This is totally an Albini production if I were to guess, but sounds a little sloppy compared to the acoustic version... which hits harder imho.

Feels like it has more of a Flying Nun/Go-Betweens edge to it.

(the acoustic version id est)

what a band

i think i also heard the acoustic version first. they're both great.

whoa, 'libertine' is incredible. first listen tonight, enjoyed it so much that i spun it a second time. i only had 'firewater' and 'lifestyle' in my library for the longest time.

Firewater for ever

that's the one i started with, it will always be a special one for me

but we met with even greater misfortune/
in the Armpit of the Americas

some of the lyrics on 'lifestyle' were incoherent to my ears for years, but i looked some up tonight and the calibre is off the charts, occasionally hilarious, though i'm not even sure what the joke is, i laugh.

I listened to "Contempt" recently and thought Lana Del Rey could do a good cover of it.

haha that’s a great idea

disturbing lack of silkworm tabs on this cursed internet. currently trying to work out tim's part in "wet firecracker" (on a bass rather than baritone guitar).

Tweet him -- he might help out!

i had a very loose method for playing wet firecracker back in the day, but uh, it's been a few years

I was listening to Firecracker this morning on the way into work to psyche myself up for a board meeting and I was reminded the sound of the bass drum on Tarnished Angel is one of my favorite in all of music. The sound of the guitar firing up on the chorus is just so viciously anthemic.

Got robbed in the recent 90s lists, as per

Criminally underrated then, criminally underrated now

Bottomless Pit criminally unknown, too

all three posts extremely otm

Maybe they need a lavish Numero Group reissue campaign or something to finally get some attention.

It's a little funny since it isn't like they were on labels in the 90s that didn't have high-prtofiles, Matador & Touch & Go, and they were/are close bros with bands with a much higher profile (Pavement, Bedhead, etc) but for whatever reason they never seem to crack into that next level and I've never been sure why. People I know who I always thought should really like them never did and people I wouldn't guess would be fans were crazy fanatics.

I saw them a ton in the 90s/00s and while there weren't always huge crowds if there were 20 in Mpls, probably ten of them had driven 5+ hours to be there.

People seem to either not like them or not know anything about them or they feel like they are the greatest/most underrated band ever and there is no in-between.

Eh I kind of get it... They don't have an identifiable "sound" like Pavement (slacker rock with catchy and/or memorable beautiful melodies) or Bedhead (tasteful slowcore that swells and unfurls). Comparatively it's more of just a straightforward "rock" sound. More dedicated listening is needed for them I think.

as much as i love the sound of their records, i feel like their pop sensibility / popularity may have been stunted by albini at times... underneath that buried vox and abrasion there's some charming lyrics, but they're indecipherable at best half the time...

It's a little funny since it isn't like they were on labels in the 90s that didn't have high-prtofiles, Matador & Touch & Go, and they were/are close bros with bands with a much higher profile (Pavement, Bedhead, etc) but for whatever reason they never seem to crack into that next level and I've never been sure why. People I know who I always thought should really like them never did and people I wouldn't guess would be fans were crazy fanatics.

the press department at T&G were some of the best and sweetest people ever to work in the business but T&G's entire approach to press was radically different from what was then becoming indie industry standard. Pavement, inside Matador & with -- what was it? Atlantic? money in the background, had people consciously thinking "weirder things have happened in recent years than for these guys to get really famous." At T&G fame / the next level / breaking through was not a concern; putting out good records and having them be part of the conversation was. AFAIK that was the sum of Silkworm's interest, too; the whole T&G scene was deeply suspicious of mainstream acceptance, and they weren't alone in this sentiment, but I think an an exponent of it they were certainly the biggest player to hold onto it.

I think that's a pretty apt description from what I understand.

For me, as a big fan, it's more of a feeling of, damn, look at all of the love Pavement is getting right now. Silkworm absolutely deserve to be getting at least half of this shine, they've earned it.

i think there's another thing about silkworm that was true for me at least and may be true for some of you guys--i first heard firewater in high school and did not get it *at all* unlike pavement or any number of other bands of that era and ilk. for me to actually get silkworm, i needed to be in my early 20s, dealing with a recent breakup and some related ennui, needed to have started drinking and going out and wondering why things weren't always as fun as it seemed like they should have been. when i was feeling that way and started listening to developer, it instantly clicked, the rest of their albums clicked, and i never looked back. basically without a certain small amount of lived experience tim and andy's lyrics just don't land, but once you've had that they land harder than almost anyone's.

i bought firewater when i was 16 based on a review in puncture magazine and i didn't get it at first either. the albini "live" production was weird to me, there are a lot of songs on that album, etc. i think it was just that physical media era thing of "well i bought this CD, i guess i should keep listening to it even if it doesn't make sense to me" where i kept putting it on until it stuck with me. i'm sure i still wasn't connecting with the lyrics on an emotional level as a teenager but i came to love the sound of the album and the songs.

the first time I put on developer I rolled my eyes and thought it sounded like a parody of monotonous 90s indie. it was the darker songs like “don’t look back” and the poppier stuff on lifestyle that pulled me in

https://thecrustbrothers.bandcamp.com/album/fight-songs

unreleased crust brothers? five "fight songs" for NFL teams, around 10-20 seconds each

bizarre, never heard the Cars covers either.

Fun. Comedy Minus One is great but I really wish they didn't change the artwork for their Silkworm reissues. I don't like when album art is just basically a press photo, especially when it's needlessly replacing something recognizable and inspired. Not worth the only benefit of immediately knowing it's NOT an original.

i'm guessing the remaining band members had some input tho

Fun. Comedy Minus One is great but I really wish they didn't change the artwork for their Silkworm reissues. I don't like when album art is just basically a press photo, especially when it's needlessly replacing something recognizable and inspired. Not worth the only benefit of immediately knowing it's NOT an original.

― Evan, Friday, 3 February 2023 18:18 (twenty-three minutes ago) link

I believe in the cases of In The West and Libertine it had to do with not having access to the original artwork and jah I'm sure the band had input. The reissue artwork of Chokes! is the same bar the label logo.

Curious about the Firewater and Developer reissues coming sometime in the future...