|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 31, 2021 7:00:36 GMT -5
I do wanna clarify that I absolutely think there's more to Mission Viejo than just a cover for sure! just was always fascinating to see how newcomers judge their music. We often talk about that aspect of peeling back layers, making new discoveries, etcetera, so that initial reaction is always interesting to me. No, I totally got you! I was falling asleep when I wrote all that, sorry if it came out muddled. It's just a weird experience to recognize the craftsmanship in something to the point of being dazzled by the details of its construction, and at the same time to be basically unable to get others to look at it. Been there more than once, and it's fine of course, but I always wonder.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 30, 2021 22:47:57 GMT -5
#24: MANPARKI tend to think of Fiestas And Fiascos as this one specific thing, this hectic, buzzing vibe that Pitchfork once described as “the feeling of now-fucking-what panic”. And while I intellectually know that the album is so much more than that, that’s the sound I hear in my head when I read the album title. That’s pretty much the sound of Manpark. Crushing guitars, that eager synth and Craig just barking out one drunken line after another, topping it off with an anthemic and quote-friendly chorus, not any lesser than anything Hold Steady later would do. Still, even inside this breathtaking and frantic buzz, they take their time to take everything down, in the dream-like sequence where Nightclub Dwight tells us when he last saw The Eyepatch Guy. When the band winds it up again, it sounds like ascending sirens, like the cops finally have caught up with all of them, before Craig deliver one of my favourite lyric couplet in the entire catalog, so wired in all it’s weirdness: “Katarina, this is serious/ Juanita, eat the evidence”. Manpark is pretty much a perfect album track. As a stand-alone song, I think it’s pretty great, but not all the way up there. The hectic vibe lends a lot of energy to the album, as a part of three buzzing songs just split up by Lake Street Is For Lovers. But I rarely put it actively on as a “single”. Yes, but to me Manpark is where "the feeling of what-fucking-now panic" is at its absolute peak (well, Manpark and TFatBR). The shrubs; the pied piper; "power to the people making money with their mouths"; "hadn't seen the eyepatch guy since the LBI"; 1999 and the corvette; the cigarette and the tourniquet and 15th and Franklin; Juanita/Katrina; and finally, the manhunts --- non-stop, and insane from beginning to end. Love it. All the way up at #6 on my list.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 30, 2021 22:38:34 GMT -5
But as a general rule, I tend to find more small easter eggs, WTF moments and revelations in Lifter Puller, even after spending well over a decade with their music. That's what really did it for me all those years ago. I'm still a huge THS fan as anyone here, but one day it hit me that nearly every track on Soft Rock was getting better and better as I drove back and forth through the snow on my ways to and from work that semester. I'd sit and re-play the same moments over and over again, including the intro to MV, just to hear those little sounds I was talking about. "Damn, this is really fascinating shit." And it was easy to get looked at like "man, you're just a hipster" but I was always genuine about how I felt, and I still am. I can never tell if it all is that "mythos" of the band. Maybe it's because they broke up at their "peak," so we'll always just be wondering "what if?" Can that really affect the way we interpret and listen to the music? I'd like to say no, because again, Lifter Puller is probably the only band in my collection I can say that I love every damn song they did, to one degree or another. Perhaps only having 53 tracks to count is what makes that possible. I think you're right about the 53 tracks of exceptional quality having a lot to do with it. It's an incredibly spare body of work, not a wasted word or note, and all of it part of a bigger picture guaranteeing the "truth" of what we're hearing, even if it's obscure. No shortage of WTF moments. Makes a lot of sense. Even though I knew for sure Craig was always inflicting his own personal feelings and emotion into the writing and performing of every song his bands have done, there was something about this first record that I always felt was more like an insight to the kind of people they really were, rather than the characters they'd be writing about later on. Stories about nightlife, out-there characters and locales, etc. are all fascinating, but is that somehow antithetical to that more emotional side of indie rock? Is it "relatable?" Or is it noir/fantasy? It's fantastic music either way. At risk of appealing to the (I presume) not-widely-shared narrative account of things, my reaction to the early tracks is the opposite --- I see Craig going waaay out of his way to reframe the stories as relatable college indie material, when in reality they're precisely about the out-there characters (just look at Emperor: a song that's all about Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor with the throne and crown and gloves and robes and holy war, but that's dressed up as the saga of a girl dropping out of school). 100% on the fantastic music, though. quick little anecdote: I recall sharing a video of the band playing a few years back, and I typed up a little description and linked MV as an example track, talking about all of these unique qualities and mentioning much of what you both said. The only response at all on the thread was "They sound like a Dinosaur Jr cover band in that song." I listened to some Dinosaur Jr to get a bead on "In a Jar" [Rental] and "Forget the Swan" [TPatP], and I know I'm a philistine, but it just does nothing for me; whereas I can't imagine anyone hearing Craig's lyrics and not being instantly hooked. Big world, and it takes all kinds, for sure. Meantime, good on you for at least trying to give people some exposure. For possibly obvious reasons, I gave up trying to convey my enthusiasms to innocent bystanders a long time ago :-)
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 30, 2021 21:55:34 GMT -5
#25: THE CANDY MACHINE AND THE GIRLFRIENDMan, I have a soft spot for Entertainment And Arts. It’s crept up on me over a span of several years, and I’ve come to love it as a release, as a singular piece of art. And it’s increasingly amusing to me to think about how they just put out this batch of songs as an EP, in between two albums, and at the same time they scrapped amazing songs like The Langelos, Pirate And The Penpal, Mick’s Tape and 11th Avenue Freezeout. I guess this is the way it goes when you dig deep into a band: You hear these different phases as small and underrated masterpieces, secretly wondering how this didn’t conquer the world - or at least feeling a little bit sad that they didn’t. I can't help but notice, too, that the higher we get into the chart, the more our rankings are diverging all over the place ... I think we'd need a bigger sample size before concluding objectively that there's a real anti-consensus; still, this seems right in keeping with your point. I love pieces of the song: "it's 20 if i'm supposed to tell the truth/ and for 40 then i'll wipe down all your wounds with scotch and soda" is great; "credit card chicks takin cash advances" would be a world-class line even if we knew nothing else at all about Lifter Puller; and for the sake of the narrative, I'm very grateful for the lines about jenny and the glove compartment. But, maybe thanks to the music, none of it seems that serious ("heshers hangin on the hoods of their cars"!), and for me at least it doesn't build up to the heights reached by a lot of other songs on the later albums. #36 on my list.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 26, 2021 22:57:22 GMT -5
#26: MISSION VIEJOSo, we’ve already touched on what criterias we lay down to rank the individual songs. And Mission Viejo is an outlier for me, in the way that a very recent version of the song is the main reason it features so high: This is one of two (I think?) Lifter Puller songs still played frequently live by Craig Finn. And the sore, naked version of Mission Viejo sounds so beautiful. It’s also the version who inspired me to make my own version of the song, with Norwegian lyrics (and that’s of course led to my relationship to the song growing even stronger). The original song is a different beast, but it’s also really, really good. I’ve talked so much about the s/t debut in this thread, and in a way it keeps surprising me how much different stuff they crammed into it. This is maybe the straightest, most rock-ish song on the entire album, a soundwise full and meaty song built on a simple but good riff. No bullshit, no compromises, no second thoughts. And while it’s not as exciting and multi-layered as other songs, it sure does the job. I could have ranked it a little bit lower on the list, but pretty close to the middle sounds about right, all things considered. Mission Viejo is a song that's hit me pretty hard more than once, and I'm going to have a hard time justifying my ranking without getting more personal than I'm really prepared to do. But here goes. I haven't heard any recent version of it except yours, so this is based on the original (although when I hear the final lines in my head now I hear the harmony from your "en ukes tid til skolestart," rather than the melody from Craig's; yours is, really, amazing). I admit that what gets me about this song has a lot to do with the context. It's the one look we get at the world of Craig Finn before The Story, before "such bang-up fun" gets burned forever into consequences that you can't just shake by quitting. At the same time, the foundations of what's to come are all there and plain to see: it's the old mission, a stripped-down pilot for the new one (the one called by that name in both Esther and Confusion in the Marketplace). And he did it when he was 21, with a fine lyrical feel that's impressive for that age. But it's not only the context; the song itself is great. In the Back To The City podcast interview (at around 15:50: link), Steve called it "the strongest song" on the first album, and they don't call the man the Pop Music Genius because he has a tin ear. After the dissonance and struggle of most of the album up to that point, the warmth and fullness of the opening always gets me; the drum and bass here really do sound a lot like rolling thunder, like we've broken through to something less guarded and more real. (The BAGIA rerelease demo version of Chillout Tent has a rainy warmth that's very similar; I think it's a genuine quality of the song, and not just something that appears by contrast with the rest of the album.) That gives you an idea; I like it a lot. Way up at #4 on my list.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 25, 2021 18:51:14 GMT -5
When I saw them open for Atmosphere in 2016, there was a part of me that was really, really hoping Slug would come out and they'd do this track together. Killed me when it didn't happen I saw THS open for Frank Turner *on Landsdowne*, the actual street, in the only venue on the block, a one-in-a-zillion chance ... no LDoL though
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 25, 2021 18:38:44 GMT -5
#27: MATH IS MONEY... I get that this counterfactual historical exercise is pretty flawed, but it’s by no means unthinkable. And it’s really interesting to hear late Lifter Puller in this perspective. To me, they’ve always sounded unique, and a little bit outside of space and time. But there’s plenty of bands emerging in the early 00s who have lots of similarities to the core identity of Lifter Puller too. And especially in these latest songs, the batch of songs who sounds finished, ready for release, but instead of being a part of a LP4, ended up as singles spread out on various compilations and seven inches. Math Is Money is really a masterpiece, in its own way. And it marks a pretty big leap forward, even from the close-to-perfect Fiestas And Fiascos. It’s a great song, musically, but for me, this is the grand Craig Finn show at display. There’s few songs where he sounds so damn confident, so in sync with his own vision, just blasting out these intricate, well-formulated and rap-like lines, like he knows he’s the master of his game. The drum machine and the guest appearance from Slug from Atmosphere just adds to the vibe. Craig is fucking Jay-Z here, on the top of his game, and in total control of it all. I love it. It’s also a song who could have been pushed 20 places up the list. When I put it here in the middle of the list, it’s because this is a song who’s more impressive and powerful than straight up lovable - for me, at least. Intellectually pleasing, jaw-dropping, a demonstration of power. But still pretty cold and harsh. I hope this text serves it justice, and that you guys get how good I think it is - even with a pretty low ranking. Your counterfactual is pretty compelling. I don't know enough about the 2000's New York music scene to judge their appeal in that environment per se, but everything I've read about the end of Lifter Puller is about their burning out from trying, and failing, to achieve real ex-Twin-Cities escape velocity; it's hard not to think that starting from NYC might have been enough to put them over the edge. Fiestas & Fiascos is right up there with Sep Sunday as an integral masterpiece, and the leap in quality from there to the final 7-inches is scary. Not unthinkable at all. As for Math Is Money itself, to your point about being in command, the way Craig slides out of the narrative and straight into hellfire preaching ("this is sonic economics and i'll put it on a graph for you to prove") is impressive. Love that berserker overdrive. Lots of key narrative bits tucked into this one, too, and even without them the surface-level "story of the kids called the crabs" is engrossing and memorable. #23 for me.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 24, 2021 21:33:50 GMT -5
#28: BLOOMINGTONIf I was to make one change on the now (pretty much) final list, it would probably be to push this a few places down the list (sorry, thrasher9294 ). Revisiting these songs, and especially opening up my thoughts on the songs from the self titled debut, have made me reconsider a few things. One of them is that Bloomington might not be a standout track from that album. Still, it’s a decent tune! I absolutely love that obscure (I would guess, though I don’t really know if this is familiar stuff for people following the sport) reference in the intro, who at a pure how-it-sounds level, sounds damn good, and still carry so much meaning. And I think it’s pretty great how the gritty and distorted intro turns into a steady and sweet indierock vibe. From that point, I think the songs lose a little momentum. There’s plenty of cool lyrical turns here, and the general mood of the song is pleasant. It just doesn’t quite deliver on the build-up the intro suggests, and it sort of ends abruptly. A good idea, a little underdeveloped. Still, there's an inventiveness and energy here, not just from the music, but (again) from the general vibe or sense of Craig's mental approach to the material. I guess you could say it's always interesting, and that's a big deal for me, listening to music. But, yeah, I’ll keep it at #28, with the disclaimer that a revision of this list probably would push it 12-15 places down the list. I really don't want to make this thread into a meta-discussion of my own rankings, but I keep coming back to how hard I find it to compare some of these songs. This is exactly what happened to me --- Bloomington started up in the mix with Double Straps and Jeep Beep Suite, and then I started having to make hard choices. In the end, I think it gave more ground with respect to its initial rank than any other song except Plymouth Rock and Lonely In A Limousine; I've got it at #44. The opening line is, in fact, a mindblower, and ties directly into the setting of the Megamall, which is built on the site of the old Metropolitan Stadium where Killebrew hit the slam off Blue (the Megamall/Metrodome parallel shows that this mall/stadium link is intended). This internal lyrical complexity is gripping in its own right; but what really gets me is the narrative complexity --- already, at this incredibly early stage of the game, Craig set out to write a song from the POV of Juanita, with enough reflections from the other side in Star Wars Hips to let you know that it's her speaking. Talk about swinging for the fences. I can understand that, for sure. Much of what you said for Sublet apply to Bloomington for me as well, and your mention of "gritty and distorted intro turns into a steady and sweet indierock" is a big part of why I love the music in it. The first cymbal crash around 1:15, and that descending bassline is one of my favorites in the genre. ... The music is what really makes it though, something about that guitar line throughout... After I found that I'd knocked it down all the way to #44, I convinced myself that the two-chord seesaw was the reason for the song's low ceiling; then I read what you wrote here, and had to go back and listen to it all over again. And you're right --- both the opening swell, and the cymbal crash after the bridge, are really dramatic stuff; there's a lot more going on in the song than just the two chords. But I also think muzzleofbees is right about the loss of momentum, especially from the bridge through to the end. So after all that, I'll stick with my ranking. I've still got it above Hardware, The Bears, and Plymouth Rock --- hardly faint praise. Just too many good songs to choose from!
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 23, 2021 20:37:02 GMT -5
#29: SUBLETA few posts ago I said that there’s not that many Lifter Puller songs I have this clear and evocative real-life time-and-place connected to them. But this is actually one of them, and it’s a) tied to the lyrics, b) to Alright Alright and c) how that lyric oriented rollercoaster have changed my relationship with Lifter Puller in general and the self titled debut more specifically. Those lines about “two at the times through the turnstiles” sends me right back to my parents in law’s kitchen, where I remember reading a long and elaborate e-mail from skepticatfirst about that line, and so many other things. I think it was the summer of 2019, and that gives the rest of you a hint of how long in the making that incredible thread really were. But that’s not the main reason this song features so high on this list. I just think it’s a damn fine song, so well-written, balanced and cool, in all its mid 90s indie-clothings. Where other (early) Lifter Puller songs grab me by one single part or -feature, I think every single part of Sublet have something special to it. From the a capella opener, the almost grungy little riff, the way Craig goes down in a deep register halfway through, and the more dream-like part about the incredible-looking city slickers at the end, and the grit that comes with them. It's sweet, in a way, empathetic and close, while rocking. Close to how I like my 90s indierock in general. It makes it a little bit generic, in the sense that it could have been written by a lot of great bands, but that's not a bad thing either. It’s not huge in any sense, it’s just a very good song. That's funny! I have the same email exchange burned into my head from your figuring out the "Greece" [Sublet] -> "greasers" [BBender] solution to the Pantheon (Parthenon?) mystery. That puzzle, in the front row of LP cruxes, is just one of the reasons why I like Sublet as much as I do. There are others: Craig Finn has a shit-ton of "it started" lyrics, some of which ("ice cream social nice") are among my very favorite lines of his, ever. But none of them ever felt as much like the true, here-we-go-kids beginning of the story as the opening of Sublet. Which, for the rest, is followed --- something that doesn't happen very often in the Lifter Puller world --- by a rush of pure happiness when those guitars kick in, and then again when they walk out of the party, leaving the roommates and the tangle of the subway fare behind. Sublet is by far the most accessible of the songs on the first album, and by that I mean something more than that it's catchy and poppy: without presupposing a single external data point, it treats us to this instantly intriguing sketch of a guy picking up a girl in contested circumstances, one that alludes to far more than it says outright while yet being totally believable. A favorite listen, and #13 on my list.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 22, 2021 17:19:44 GMT -5
#30: THE BEARSFrom the gritty mess of The Mezzanine Gyp to the fuzzy indiepop perfection of The Bears - it’s quite a jump. Lifter Puller have a few of these very poppy songs, and even though there’s pretty much always some darkness lurking around in the subtext, this is one of the poppiest. So much stuff to tease out of this song --- reference to the Wizard of Oz, football, Bear culture, and that enigmatic "i know that you're scared/ but i suggest you go back to the bears, the bears, the bears" line near the end; as a text, I like it a lot. As a song, this one too doesn't do much for me: #46 on my list. The fact that they snuck it onto the Jenny Jones show after Roaming The Foam was deemed too hard is legendary, though, for sure.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 22, 2021 17:13:47 GMT -5
#31: THE MEZZANINE GYPThis feels very much like the earliest song who puts Lifter Puller’s core identity as a band on display. It’s surely not the only song eligible for a status like that, but it has this very clear and focused style and presence, the gritty underground stuff paired up with emotional despair and questionable moral judgements. ... In some way, I feel like I should say something more about this. It feels heavy, meaningful, in a way I can’t really put into words. It’s this vague feeling of importance, of gravitas, that make it stick out from similar songs from the same era. It feels very complete, as an idea and a work of art, but it’s a little too gritty for me to really, really love. That's an interesting take, and actually pretty hard to argue with. There are definitely things I like about the song --- the intricate Wall Street/Main Street/inside trading/mezzanine capital/gyp-plus-ripoff metaphors, the hammerhead shark with his eyes two miles apart, and the whole aha-moment with "a little situation went down and now ..." But it's not a song I'm psyched to hear; this was my #53. Your argument makes me want to rethink that, but it's going to end up way down there, no matter what.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 19, 2021 20:29:28 GMT -5
#32: BACK IN BLACKBEARDI’ve described quite a few tracks in this countdown as bridging devices on their respective albums. Back In Blackbeard is pretty much the opposite. Not only is it an outtake not tied to an official long player release (it was one of the songs intended for a hypothetical 4th album, if I remember correctly), it also sounds very much like a single, in every sense of the word. The beefy opening riff turns into a very melodic verse, who most definitely points toward stuff that would eventually become Hold Steady. That aforementioned mix of rough edges and punky rock’n’roll, and sentimentality, romanticism, empathy. There’s also a slight shift of perspective here, with Craig seemingly watching it all from the outside, like a commentator to the scene rather than a participant in it, and this is embedded in the music too, I think. Not to mention the entire guys vs girls-theme that’s so present in his latter stuff. Yeah, this is pretty much a Hold Steady precursor. It’s also really, really catchy. Not exactly deep or profound, but certainly a lot of fun. And the slightly weird bridge, where Nancy Seward enters to give Jenny a voice, is pretty awesome. After reading this I had to go back and think about the rank of BiB among its near neighbors all over again ... it's a tough call. As an aside, those 5 late tracks were deliberately released as 7-inches; from Mike Daily's amazing 2000 "All The Right Moves, All The Wrong Notes: The Lifter Puller Story" interview ( link); Anyway: of those five amazing tracks, one of them has to be your least favorite; for you and me both, it's Back In Blackbeard. For the nth time, I feel like I have to apologize for having it down at #31. There are three things I love about this song: - above all, the title: it's great in a vacuum; it's also [narrative alert] probably the single most convincing proof of the fact that the Eyepatch Guy is the Narrator come back for revenge --- and, as such, one of the purest aha-moments --- in the whole canon.
- like you say, the bridge. "and i still ain't died. or have i?" could come off so weak, and instead (with the d-line, and the sunrise) just makes you that much keener to understand wtf happened.
- the "and the maple leaf rag" tag ... there are four or five things going on here, and only Craig Finn could pull them all together, let alone slip them in like a casual afterthought. Incredible.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 18, 2021 21:44:39 GMT -5
#33: KATARINA AND THE K-HOLE... Which brings me to Katarina And The K-Hole, who’s one of the songs who make up a very well planned and exectued ending of the album, with a near-perfect balance of engaging and fast tracks where the band rock out, and more subtle breathers. This is in the latter category, and it makes the latter part of the album so damn good. The sweeping intro, the birds singing, the cut-up conversation who sets the scene, adds mystery, but also calmness, it anchors the final part of the album in such a good way. This is amplified by the guitars crushing in, and the conversation taking another direction. Like other songs, it feels like an important moment, frozen in time, but painted out in broad strokes in a song. All this suggest it might should’ve been higher on the list, but as a stand-alone song, there’s plenty of others I put a little higher. I just wanted to aknowledge its importance in the flow of a pretty perfect album. Everything you say is an essential argument for the song's importance, but for me there are two more factors in play. One, it's one of the few slow songs I really like in its own right (I mostly go for the other end of the spectrum, but there are exceptions; the majesty and internal variety that you point up --- intro, birds, guitars, conversation --- is a big part of why I like this one). Two, where most of the songs consist in a whiplash view of surrounding chaos, this one's a simple slice of the narrative, just a quiet conversation between the Narrator and one of the other chicks at the parties. Very unusual, and very nice. I think my ranking here is more influenced by the narrative-interpretation side of things than I'd like for the purposes of this list, but I can't help it. A deeply complete song, and all the way up at #8 for me.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 18, 2021 8:36:40 GMT -5
#34: PRESCRIPTION SUNGLASSESIt’s always something special about going back to the very first song of a band’s catalog. I wouldn’t know for sure if this is the first song they recorded, but the first release is always interesting anyway. I could add more weight to it than it deserves, simply because of this, but I really think it’s a damn fine rock’n’roll song. It has a lot the same vibe as the songs who ended up on the debut album, the slightly subdued and muted feeling, but it’s also pretty catchy, there’s some dark pop in here somewhere. And I think the simple chorus (which I think it’s fair to call it) carries an emotional weight, a coolness with substance, that pushes it a few places up this list. The image of hearing someone’s name getting drowned in the sound of a jet engine, coupled with “pretty little overdoser” is pretty explicit, yet vague. Even down to the title, it’s cool and laid back, I can envision the band playing this with an adolescent coolness, with sunglasses physically present. And there’s some lines to be drawn to Milkcrate Mosh here too: An opening single not that representative of what was to come, but still with identity and attitude who sets a path. My first experience with Prescription Sunglasses came after my first, and difficult, experience with the self-titled album; going back in time another year, I expected something in the same vein but less polished. So it was a real surprise to encounter, just as you say, a damn fine rock'n'roll song. I actually put it on several times after that, just to try to recapture that "holy shit they did this in 1994" feeling. And "they," of course, was just Dave Gerlach on drums and Craig on guitar/bass/vocals, meaning that Craig wrote the music. What's interesting to me about that is not just the legitimate complexity of what he's doing (multiple instruments, multiple sections), but the way in which the musical composition and the narrative composition work together so closely. Both Prescription Sunglasses and Emperor feature a similar progression: the song starts out in a major key, then shifts to a minor key (Prescription Sunglasses does this twice, in the two verses/two choruses you mention), then moves into a bridge that's got some uncomfortable tension in it, and finally modulates up into a dissonant higher key before ending on an unresolved note. And the narratives of both songs follow a parallel course: the early verses describe a complicated alpha girl situation with attempted detachment and self-possession, then move on to reveal that the underlying problems are persistent and aren't getting solved, and then finally pull back the curtain on a vista of plain dysfunction and frantic hints of worse. The difference between the two is that Prescription Sunglasses is a much rounder, fuller song than Emperor --- as you say, both catchy and cool. And with all that said in its favor, I still have it at #39 (I have Emperor at #52). Final thought: the leaky guitar notes in the intro are kind of great, a foreshadowing almost of the way the song will break down in the final minutes. There's really a lot to observe here.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 17, 2021 7:31:44 GMT -5
#35: DOUBLE STRAPSI admit I was a little bit uncertain if Double Straps deserved to be this high on the list. It’s a song pretty representative for the self-titled album, in the way that it’s a bit half-baked and lacks some confidence. But after spending quite some time with the album the past months, I’ve grown to like it a lot. It’s a pretty great opener, realy, a bit muted, but with intensity and aggression lurking just beneath the surface. There’s also a pretty perfect interplay between the music and the lyrics. I feel that “I came in to the city…” 100% in the tip-toeing indie rock. The latter part of the song seems almost dream-like, as Craig add more and more words, just letting it flow. He sounds like he gets lost in the groove, and just keep spinning out his memories of events who once unfolded. And it sets time and space in a great way. It could have ranked a little bit lower, but the way it works as an opening track and a scene-setter makes me appreciate it a whole lot. Emphatically agree with everything you say here. You've written before about how different songs are indelibly connected to different locations for you; for me, Double Straps will always be associated with this one spring morning at around quarter after 5... It was barely light, I was in the car driving down to the gym, the only car on the road, and I had the back half of Soft Rock on, listening to Let's Get Incredible and trying to wake up. I hadn't been listening to Lifter Puller long, and I'd probably only listened to the first album twice, not really being interested in it for its own sake. And then Double Straps came on, with those wicked drums announcing what's to come, and the opening lines, and it hit me: this is actually a pretty great song. I got to my destination, parked, and just sat in the car listening to the rest of it. Always think of that corner down in Central Square whenever I hear it in my head. That was a watershed in my appreciation of the first album, and in the end I have Double Straps as just the fifth-highest-ranked of all the songs on it. But I still have it pretty high, up at #28.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 17, 2021 7:00:23 GMT -5
#36: HARDWARE... It’s one of the song who showcases how Lifter Puller were growing as a band, adding more layers in both sound and mood. The way they suddenly are able to dispense energy, dripping it out in a controlled but engaging way, is really something to pay attention to. Not a favorite song by any means, but 1) the interplay of music and lyric is pretty great, throughout the middle of the song especially: the staccatos of "with a head full of amyls and a gun full of ammo," or the internal rhymes of "viking" and "biking," "metaphor" and "quick divorce" ... really impressive construction. 2) even making allowances for the "thinking things are funny when they really ain't that funny" quality of Craig's stuff, it's a really funny song. The "that dint seem like fifteen beers" ending, with the full-bore Minnesota dint, still makes me laugh. #45 for me.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 17, 2021 6:48:28 GMT -5
#37: MICK'S TAPEMick’s Tape is of many west coast themed songs in the catalog, a motif who would be continued in Hold Steady, and even finding some new prominence as late as Open Door Policy (with Lanyards as the prime example, and maybe the song (on the surface level, at least) most lyrically connected to this song). I like how it musically plays this up, or at least that’s what it sounds like to me. Maybe not west coast in the traditional musical sense, but there’s a light, holiday-like hum throughout the song, who alludes “jetting off to the coast” in some way. It’s a light song, in the way that it doesn’t bring the drama or the high stakes, it’s sound wise more of a postcard, an apostrophe to the more dramatical turning points in this tale. I like how they turn it up a little notch in the very last part of the song, with the quite simple stop/start thing who backs up “Twin cities, they’re…”. And it’s generally a pleasant song, poppy and bright, with a little fuzz on top of it. Your last observation is a great point: the way the poppiness of "twin cities ... ganging up on me lately" maps directly onto the naked distress of the end of Math Is Money is kind of a sentimental ambush, a reminder that you can never relax in Lifter Puller world, even when things are at their most cheerful and sunny. (That the revelation of this distressed reality comes in a song that was only recorded several years later is just extra fun.) Apart from that, it's a super catchy tune and a nice change of pace from the heavy surrounding material. I have it --- second-highest of the four "Half Dead Demos" after 11AF --- at #25.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 17, 2021 6:32:00 GMT -5
#38: CRUISED AND ACCUSED OF CRUISINGOf all the songs in the catalog, this is a contender for the best match between music and lyrics, in the sense that the music so heavily reflect the mood and themes of the lyrics. ... And it fits perfectly in on the otherwise pretty hectic Fiestas And Fiascos. These are both really good observations. Leaving aside all the questions of narrative interpretation, what I love about this song is the narrative *excitement*; a brief window opens up in the middle of the album and there's this casual vignette, dissipated, funny, bored, and then things get kinda strange, and then things get suddenly menacing. I can't think of anything in the world like it: it starts off, maybe, like the punk answer to talking blues, but it heads straight out into its own single-minded style and never looks back. #17 on my list. It's also true that that little window turns out to be the entrance to Hades: the connections of CaAoC to The Flex And The Buff Result and To Live And Die In LBI are the first aha-moments, the first steps out of the sunlight into the unfolding Labyrinth of the story, and I love it for that reason too. But I've tried to ignore that perspective for the purposes of my ranking, to just weigh the thrill you get from hearing the song and the strange tale it tells for the first time.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 16, 2021 8:20:23 GMT -5
So cheers to skepticatfirst, and a big, big thank you. I can't wait to meet up at a show again, once we're able to. Thanks for sticking with this all the way through, man. I realized at some point about two-thirds through that it was starting to be a lot even to read regularly, let alone think about critically, so I really appreciate your hanging on throughout. Anyway, it's all out there, now, for anyone who finds their way to it and is interested. It's looking like 2021 won't be the year, but likewise, I'm really looking forward to meeting up again (New York, London, or who knows!). I also wanted to express my massive appreciation for the insane amount of thinking and writing that went into this project. Although I didn't chime in all that frequently, I was definitely following along and enjoying the journey! Thanks man! I saw that you were following, and again I appreciate it. Working with Skeptic's idea that -- "at some level this really is just a fresh look at the same events from another perspective" -- makes me consider if we have any parallels in the rest of the entertainment and arts. I think it's safe to say the achievement is unprecedented in rock music. But in cinema (which we know inspires Craig) there is a minor tradition of directors remaking their own films. That's what this reminds me of. He was still interested in telling these types of stories, wanted to build on the musical/lyrical chops, but present these ideas with a new cast of characters, new motifs, and bigger budget. That's a really interesting question, and one I want to think about some more. The only other narrative example I can think of offhand is Joyce continually reworking, and expanding, the autobiographical account of his own youth (from the 1904 short story A Portrait of the Artist, to Stephen Hero, to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man + Ulysses); but in his case, the end he's aiming at doesn't change the way Craig's does. Or, you could look at Rembrandt self-portraits and maybe get something of the same change in emphasis and approach, but of course the subject there is changing too. I can't think of anyone, in any medium, who's taken a story that they've written and deliberately turned it on its head like this. But I'll keep thinking about it. There are a few elements here of which I remain slightly wary. I don't want it to seem like I'm nit-picking, especially because I don't really have alternate solutions, but just for the sake of discussion, here are two: 1) Based on the time and place, the relative lack of stigma (on the gangsters' part) regarding the homosexual rape/coerced sex scenes seems unusual to me. I grew up midwest-adjacent (Pennsylvania) and during the 1990s, there was a ton of bigoted stigma around anything gay-adjacent; you'd get called slurs for glancing at someone accidentally in the locker room, etc. Yes, sex and power are always linked, but I have some difficulty imagining these tough, image-conscious gangsters (Dwight, Shepherd, et. al.) hanging out in the same room, fucking other men, and not being concerned about their tough-guy reputations. Especially when this doesn't seem to be the "last resort" for junkies paying their debts, but more or less the goal of these parties. To be clear, it's not the homosexuality that bothers me -- rock & roll needs more queerness! -- it just doesn't match how I imagine those characters and their understanding of sexuality in the 90s. But maybe I'm off base, or maybe Craig was just imagining relatively queer-positive gangsters. 2) Both of your interpretations prominently feature periods of time during which characters are unrecognizable to friends based on relatively minor cosmetic changes. This feels a little bit like the Shakespeare comedies where a guy puts on a dress and suddenly his buddy falls in love with him. It's a little sitcom-ish and (to me) doesn't seem to fit with the otherwise serious, dangerous world of the gangsters. You've made the case that the disguises are more effective due to these characters frequently being incredibly fucked-up, which does help. But I've been pretty fucked up a lot (albeit not on meth) and I think I would still recognize a friend or former lover under an eyepatch and different clothes, if not immediately, at least after having a conversation. Just my $0.02. Yep. I think the Lifter Puller takes on these are more believable than the THS versions, but I can't argue with you about either point. I have a recollection that one of the solo songs about what appears to be the jeep encounter suggests, in kind of a stripped-down "only the girls know the whole truth" moment, that the girl thinks she might know him but chooses not to make up her mind about it --- something that I actually found pretty subtle and believable, for what that's worth. I have to get to work so I'm not going to look for it now, but will try to find it later if I can summon the energy to dive back in. :-) I'll be taking in this thread after having not been here in a while, and this may have been mentioned elsewhere, but until I'm able to really take in all the writing here (and we better goddamned archive this somewhere, this is fucking fantastic stuff), I thought I'd note this article as well: Now I don't think that this takes the place of the meaning behind the title that you've explained up above, just a little interesting note on where he might have first heard the name. Hey man, nice to hear from you too! That's a great story --- I don't think it can be true in exactly this form, since the Farm Accident gallery closed when Craig was 11, plus it comes after paragraphs detailing how you had to be super-connected, or a visiting New York star like Robert Mapplethorpe or David Byrne, to talk your way in. But I wouldn't be surprised if Craig heard about that piece later, or if there were some other significance of the name to add to the double entendre; that seems to be how most of his titles work.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 9, 2021 6:22:43 GMT -5
#39: ROAMING THE FOAMI think of this as a The Mezzanine Gyp v.2.0, or a more focused version of The Gin And The Sour Defeat. Sure, there’s differences here, but they belong to the same aforementioned cold, hard, gritty group of songs. This is one of the most postpunk-y songs Lifter Puller made, and the rawness and direction in the song gives it a great and hectic intensity. Where I have ranked a few songs a bit low cause of how they feel a bit scrambled together, that’s not the case of Roaming The Foam. Like so many other songs on Entertainment And Arts it sounds like a natural stop between the raw, thumping rock’n’roll on Half Dead, and the almost machine like buzz of Fiestas And Fiascos. And I think this is the point where they became a REALLY good band. I like many songs from Half Dead way better than what came after it, but there’s a sense of the band members hitting the right groove here. This song also contains a few of the greatest and most cathartic parts and lines, lyrically. The “you’re in the jungle baby, you’re gonna die!” is always mesmerizing (and I don’t know if it’s intentional, but I always think of it together with the whistle on To Live And Die In LBI, which also sounds like a throwback to Apetite For Destruction). And of course, the came/kiss/kiss/came pairing, later referenced by Atmosphere, is classic stuff. Still, it’s this synth heavy, gritty and cold track that I’ll never love. I have a fair amount of admiration for it, though. Your characterization of it as the next stage in the TMG->TGatSD trend, appearing on A&E as the point of transition into becoming "a REALLY good band," is sharp; the TMG comparison especially hits home. For the rest, I have it about the same, lower than anything else on E&A or F&F, at #37. Cold and unlovable, but holy shit the way Craig works around the beat is incredible ("THESE YA YO HOES they TAKE OFF THEIR CLOTHES," "NA-A-sal DRUGS," "a BIN gy BAS ket BAL ler ON a BEAR SKIN RUG RIGHT," etc.). The fact that he can call it "An ode to foam dancing" ( link) with a straight face is just gravy.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 9, 2021 6:09:54 GMT -5
#40: SLIPS BACKWARDSThere’s some of these early songs who sounds very teenage-y. I can’t quite pinpoint why, but I think it’s a mix between Craig’s softer, tender, less confident voice, and that the lyrical universe is seemingly grounded in younger experiences than the ones coming later on. The explicit mentions of car sex, references to skate punk and hiphop dress, the sincere apologies. I’m not sure if you catch my drift here, but that’s the impression I’m getting. In Slips Backwards, this is backed up by quite straight-forward and streamlined indierock. It’s a nice tune, almost catchy in some sense, with some dirt around the edges, but it feels a little minor. Like an underdeveloped indierock hit with pop sensibilites. Right in sync here: I have it at #41. There are three things about this otherwise OK song that I actually like: - the Kerouac stuff in the second verse, especially "these denver slums they look so good in text," which is a subtle and worthy bit of standalone preaching.
- those opening lines where the song kicks into a higher register: "thought you said that you were gonna get some zest soap/ and i thought baby nice, nice, that stuff gets your skin slick." It's poppy, creepy, unembarrassed (handclaps!), but also mysterious (nice nice?) and hard to get out of your head.
- the fact that the song, like the end of Most People Are DJs, is apparently meant to flow backwards in time from an argument at a party back to the point at which the Narrator originally meets the alpha girl. I'm not sure it works, but I love the fact that Craig's not afraid to try crazy shit with like the third song in the catalog.
The thing that makes me doubt whether I'm equipped to appreciate what Slips Backwards has to offer is the uncommonly high opinion of Patrick Costello, who knows a thing or two about kickass music. This bit, from Kate Silve's article "The Mystification of Lifter Puller," in the June 2003 issue of Lost Cause, is totally worth a read ( link):
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 6, 2021 16:53:50 GMT -5
#41: BRUCE BENDERBruce Bender could easily have fallen into an interlude category, but it feels like someting different. Bigger, more grounded, like a fully developed idea, though rather short. I love the internal drama in this one, the difference between what’s felt and what’s said, and how the dark, majestic (as much as Lifter Puller can be “majestic”) music plays along with that feeling. It starts off like a song you might expect to pick up pace, to find another gear after the initial intro. Instead it descends into something grittier and heavier, and the repeated “Love is…” lines from Craig feels like a chant from someone stuck in something he can’t (or won’t?) get out of. It’s like time has stopped here, and that Bruce Bender is a report from an isolated capsule, where the narrator is reflecting over a pivotal moment. It’s also a precursor to what Lifter Puller would do a lot more on subsequent records, especially Half Dead And Dynamite: Put in these little showstoppers that change the pace and the mood of the album as a whole. Where some of the self-titled debut feels a little too stacked with (in a lack of a better word) non-important songs, just songs put together, one after another, the opening stretch (from Double Straps to Jeep Beep Suite) is pretty well sequenced. This is a song that reminds me of Knuckles, in that it punches way above its narrative weight --- at first, second, third, fourth glance it seems to be just what it is, and you kind of forget about it as a source of story material; but then you keep coming back and noticing little gems of information buried in it ("Love is just keeping a tab/ Love is just sharing a cab" being an amazing example). There aren't many songs that can match this one for density, if it's the narrative you're after. The difference, though, is that Knuckles is a great fucking listen even if you don't care about what's going on, and Bruce Bender isn't. Here again I'm kind of embarrassed to say so, but I've got it all the way down at #50.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 6, 2021 16:41:06 GMT -5
#42: HALF DEAD AND DYNAMITEAs in the Hold Steady thread, I’m gonna repeat myself a bunch of times in this countdown. And here we are again at a song in the same vein as The Gin And The Sour Defeat, and also a couple of others to come: The hard, gritty, rytmic type of songs, cold and unwelcoming, with semi-futuristic synths making everything metallic and chromed. It’s a pretty perfect backdrop for Craig to go full-on manic street preacher, and it certainly adds something to Lifter Puller as a band. But, again, I’m more drawn to the somewhat more rounded-off stuff, the songs with a few drops of sentimentality and warmth in them. The pure rawness in these tracks are cool, but difficult to really enjoy. That’s not the case with the lyrics, though. This frantic ride through the underworld is filled with evocative images, barked out like they’re prophecies. This is Craig FInn, alright. HDaD is one of my favorites --- I have it at #12. So, so many great things about this song, but just to name three: 1) the commanding entrance of Katrina, queen of the clubs. A narrative thrill, and awesome drama. 2) the backhanded Finnian irony of "here's everything I remember" followed by total and merciless recall all the way through "that's everything I remember" at the end. 3) one of the lyrical highlights in the entire catalog, shouted at the top of Craig's lungs: Guess it all started with some guy walks into the bar And always ends up fucked up in some barfly's car
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 6, 2021 12:28:53 GMT -5
#43: LAZY EYEFor all the sprawling uncertainty on the self titled debut, there’s moments that shine with confidence and ambition. And while this doesn’t always translates into big songs, big art, big concepts, the look behind the curtains is intriguing in its own right. Lazy Eye is that kind of song to me. Slow, dark, stretched out, but it’s building a subdued momentum in the way few other similar songs on the debut does. When the songs opens up and intensifies with the great “Let this be a testament…” part, it feels like a proper release, something coming into frutition. It’s still disjointed and murky, but there’s a vibe here that points forward not only to the v.2.0 of this style in Nassau Coliseum, but also to Hold Steady, and the way they constructed their best slow burners. That forward-looking take is interesting. Now that you frame it that way, it's a look ahead at the intimate right-here-right-now relationship conversations like Almost Everything, too. The thing about Lazy Eye that most stands out to me is that of all Craig Finn songs, it's the one that feels most like it was written as a poem rather than a song. There's no verse/chorus/bridge structure, just four perfectly regular stanzas, with formal parallelism "(1) Let ... (2) Let ... (3) Let ... (4) Let ...," an almost quaint progression from (1) baseline 1 (2) baseline 2 (3) dramatic turn (4) aftermath, and expertly turned internal rhymes (the constancy of "clean/me/queen/esteem" reinforces the baseline across stanzas (1) and (2), letting "bomb" hit much harder than its volume would warrant). The language is uniformly subtle, speaking of bigger things from quiet angles. It's pretty impressive in that regard. Having said all that, for me personally, it's not a great *listen* ... just too slow, too subtle, too quiet. I'm almost embarrassed to say so, but I have it down at #47.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 6, 2021 6:44:18 GMT -5
GIDEONOf the six THS characters, we've shown - that Holly, Mary, and Jesse all reflect aspects of Juanita;
- that the THS Narrator is the successor to the LP Narrator;
- that Charlemagne is essentially Dwight rounded out with sympathies of the LP Narrator.
To end on another positive note, let's look at the genesis of the character of Gideon. ***At first blush, Gideon seems to have been invented by Craig from whole cloth. There are many motivations, narrative and thematic, for adding him to the story: - he's the third figure needed to complete the reconciliation of the Narrator, Dwight, and the gangsters ("unified/ the punks, the skins, the greaser guys" [JaJ]), and to round out the THS Trinity in token of that natural unified order ("We didn't see the holy ghost/ But the father and the son they seemed like regular folks" [SM]).
- he provides a figure to advocate non-violence against the Narrator and Charlemagne's shared desire for revenge.
- he provides a figure to expiate the sins of the story --- the introduction of Mary to hard drugs [ASD], the drowning of Juanita/Holly, the killing of Dwight/Charlemagne, and even the betrayal of Juanita/Mary --- in a way that leaves Charlemagne and the Narrator behind to either learn their lesson, or not, and to spread the gospel.
But where did the material for such a memorable character come from, if, in stark contrast with the others, it wasn't taken from the LP story? ***We've taken note of Craig's statement that he builds his characters out of people and things he's "been around ... It might be half one person from eighth grade and one from college in two different states" ( link; see UNIVERSES & CHARACTERS above). It turns out that that "one from college" hits close to the mark, in this case. Most of the material for Gideon doesn't come from Lifter Puller, the *story*; it comes from Lifter Puller, the *band*. Gideon is fundamentally based on Steve.In what respects is Gideon patterned after Steve? It's a long list ... ***1) Visuals In the 2005 Tim Scanlin interview ( link), Steve is described by Craig as bringing "a cool visual element" to Lifter Puller. Not only does Craig use the same language in the THS lyrics to describe Gideon --- "Strung out on residuals and visuals and laser shows" [SPayne] (compare "we can use a couple visuals" [RfLB]) --- but, from Simon Calder's epic Back To The City interview, we learn (beginning at 35:30 [ youtube]) that *Steve actually had a smoke machine and a strobe light,* which he brought along for The Hawaii Show performances when Lifter Puller went on tour. The real-world inspiration for Gideon's "special effects" [HM] is Steve. ***2) Into the speaker Gideon is not only described as "Reaching out to try to touch the special effects" [HM], but specifically as "Reach[ing] into the speaker [to] try to hold on to the quarter notes" [SPayne]. This image too is owed to The Hawaii Show. Steve built a foamcore 8x8-foot-high Marshall amp stage prop which he would *physically enter* for The Hawaii Show costume changes (see Back To The City interview link above. The amp can be seen in the videos that come with the self-titled The Hawaii Show CD --- still available and worth the money many times over [ link] --- as well as in a stage plot from the band's shows [ link]). *** 3) Psycho eyes Gideon has "psycho eyes" [Swish], and so does Steve; see, for example, in Mike Daily's famous photo: ***4) Stovepipe hat & magic wand Gideon has a "stovepipe hat" [Swish], and so, in the person of Mr. Hawaii Dude, does Steve, as seen in the clip accompanying the second verse of Hawaii Rocks in the official video (available on the CD): The hat that Steve's ghost is wearing here is, like Gideon's, a magician's hat, as the lyrics accompanying this image make plain: Redheads are on a diet So the brunettes thought they would try it That's when I busted out with my magic wand And turned them both into beautiful blondes In other words, Steve, in the person of Mr. Hawaii Dude, brandishes a dick-joke cigarette "magic wand" that he uses to transform girls from A into B --- foreshadowing both Gideon's more sinister magic wand: Waving Marlboros like magic wands. Listen up closely to the lit tips of your cigarettes. Can't you hear the serpent hiss? Saying, sweet baby, suck on this [MM] and his magic-trick transformation of Mary into Holly during the THS Crucifixion ( heregoes). We know that Craig had already developed the Juanita-becomes-Katrina story for Lifter Puller; it's plausible that, being repeatedly exposed to The Hawaii Show music and videos over the same timeframe, and not missing the irony that the Hawaii Rocks dick joke was literally applicable to the Juanita-Katrina transformation, he already had this material front of mind when writing Gideon's part in the THS story. (The same material may also have served to bolster Gideon's identification with the Holy Ghost [SM, A&H, GoaH]; but that's speculation.) ***5) Cape Besides the stovepipe hat and magic wand, Gideon's magician costume also includes a cape. This is described in the lyrics as a magician's cape (via the combination of MM, SN and R&T: heregoes); in view of his membership in the vampire Skins, it's also suggested that it's a Dracula cape (via the combination of BCamp, Jester And June, TMIT and HSL; for gangsters as vampires, see BREWERY BAR: THE VESTIBULE above). I haven't been able to locate evidence of Steve wearing a magician's cape, but I did find an image of him wearing a Dracula cape --- check out the fangs! --- in the thumbnail for the lost "Blood Brita Filter" video, deep in the bowels of the Wayback machine (this is from a Flash version of the site that was barely viewable before, and is no longer runnable at all as of Jan 2021, but nevertheless existed: link): (That's Craig stooping in the foreground of the picture; the image is a crudely photoshopped version of the Lifter Puller cartoon that appeared in the New Yorker in 2002, when the band reunited to play at Brownies.) That barely-surviving image is just the tip of an iceberg of evidence that *hasn't* survived, but that certainly existed. Youtube has a Minnie Indie video of Steve wearing a Superman cape ( youtube): The Mashed Potato Wrestling Federation website has a photo of four-time Universal Champion "Steve O'Gratin" wearing an American flag cape ( link): These images are variations on an uninterrupted theme. The Hawaii Show ran for years as a live show with lip-synch band costume changes; in the Back To The City interview, we're told that it was involved in fashion shows (including an occasion when Steve rented Revolutionary War costumes for the entire troupe from the Guthrie Theater for Bastille Day). We have photos and videos of Steve in robes, tasseled jackets, turbans, you name it; we see him wearing a Jedi cloak at the end of the Hawaii Wars video; we learn that he was the author of a fashion advice column ( link). In short, we can be confident that Steve is the source of Gideon's cape, as well as his wand and hat, and that this was Craig's reason for naming THS' Gideon-in-his-long-black-shawl song **Stevie** Nix. Craig took Tad and Jessica Hopper's overheard trash-talk ( link) and turned it into an homage to Steve, changing "Nicks" to "Nix" either by way of canceling the part that's irrelevant to the tribute, or else in description of Gideon's role, at that point in the THS story, as an interloper among his former friends ( ondcp): Nix − Stranger among the group ***6) Crust punk In the 2000 Mike Daily interview, Steve jokingly describes himself and The Hawaii Show as “huge with the crust punk scene in Cleveland” ( link), going on to explain that crust punks are the ones who go around with their dogs and girlfriends, and have dreads. Gideon too is described as a "crust punk" [BBlues], with dreads that get shaved off when he gets jumped in [BBlues, GLS, CatCT] ( heregoes). ***7) Can't stand it when the banging stops In the same interview, Steve describes himself as "sexually crazy"; Gideon too (not that the fiction reflects on real-world Steve) is portrayed as sex-crazed, leading him to drown Holly when she stops fucking him: "And I can't stand it when the banging stops" [BCamp] ( heregoes). ***8) Raise up a giant ladder In the same interview, Steve is described as "scaling the sides of buildings." There's lots of evidence in interviews and videos of him climbing equipment, including scaffolding, on stage, and I haven't read the Lifter Puller vs. the End Of ... book, so I can't say which particular incident or incidents are referred to. But the graphic description of Gideon's use of ladders to scale the water tower in the Party Pit [CSummer] appears to relate to this habit. In general, Gideon's capacity for crazy plans is a faithful reflection of Steve's talent; see for example in the 1999 Halloween interview ( link): ***9) We make our own movies Gideon's idea of filming Charlemagne and projecting the film as a means to saving his life is the origin of the THS "we make our own movies" [SA] theme. From the Back To The City interview, we learn that The Hawaii Show started as a "video project" after Steve and his friend Taavo Somer learned to edit VHS at the St. Paul Neighborhood Network cable access station (this information is delivered in two parts of the interview, one around 38:15 and the other around 49:00). In an epic "full circle" moment, Steve is actually pictured shooting video on the cover of the self-titled Lifter Puller album: Compare Steve's T-shirt in the image below, taken from the fourth photo here ( link): ***10) Didn't really die Of all the ambiguous deaths of the characters in THS, Gideon's is the most real ( heregoes), but even so it's ambiguous ("Cause the last guy didn't really die, I just lied" [Knuckles]). One of the jokes of The Hawaii Show, playing off the Beatles' famous "Paul is dead" legend ( wikipedia), was that "Steve is dead" ( link). ***11) Friend from the tire shop Gideon works at the Michelin tire shop (he's "your friend from the tire shop" [Ambassador] who's been "working at the Michelin" [SPayne]). A few years ago, Steve wrote a song called Jeeter & Jenny, about a guy who works at Tires Plus and is in a band called Burnt Rubber (see the Back To The City interview [ youtube], with detail at about 1:17:15, and Steve's Facebook page [ link] ).
In the same interview, Steve makes a point to the effect that he has to deliberately avoid writing things that would make him appear to be "ripping off Craig" (youtube); the fact that Jeeter & Jenny passes the not-ripped-off-from-Craig test in the face of Gideon's prominent tire shop resume suggests, conversely, that the tire shop is another fixture of Steve's world that Craig borrowed for Gideon. ***12) Don't got time to mix it all together In Banging Camp, Gideon is bizarrely but memorably described (in Charlemagne's imitation) as touting the virtues of pre-mixed black and tans: When they say black and tans You know they mean the kind from the cans We don't got time to mix it all together I'm a very busy man, man [BCamp] The point of this is clearly to work in a reference to the Skins as militiamen like the historical Black and Tans ( heregoes); but why would Craig use the pre-mixed beer cocktail, besides the fact that it's self-evidently a funny concept, to convey such an elaborate allusion? It turns out that enthusiasm for premixed comestibles is one of Steve's things, too: as he told Oren Goldberg in a 2001 interview for the Minnesota Daily ( link): ***13) France Ave & Lyndale South The interrogation-session answers delivered (again in Charlemagne's imitation) in Gideon's voice include two specific locations: I was France Ave when they came out dancing I was Lyndale South, I was kicking it with cousins [HSL] Both of these locations were addresses of Steve characters. The address of Mr. Hawaii Dude (and, for a time, of Steve himself) was on Lyndale South ( link): Shaved Ice and Southdale Super Singer were both from Edina, and hung out on France Ave (at the Southdale Mall and the intersection of 50th and France, specifically). These facts are documented in the lyrics of "Shaved Ice" on the The Hawaii Show self-titled album, and on the Press page of the old website ( link): Images from the old website also document this location ( link): ***14) Hard CoreyGideon's use of insane nicknames --- Hard Corey, Freddy Knuckles, Sunny D, etc. --- is also based on Steve, who invented dozens of these for himself and other members of The Hawaii Show: Estee Louder, Dr. Strange Pockets, Vinny Testosteroni, Faux Pas "pronounced FOX PAUSE," The Afro-Disiac, Princess Layus, Cousin Brad, Janie Guns, Honolulu Higgins, Evel Knutdsen, Osama Ben Affleck, etc. etc. (see the "list of performers" document that comes with the CD, and assorted content from the old website, e.g. the Flash version under 'characters': link). ***Steve's had an influence on Craig's material in both Lifter Puller and The Hold Steady that extends well beyond Gideon, too. Examples include: - Star Wars: the Hawaii Wars epic postdates Star Wars Hips, but Steve's obsession with Star Wars goes back at least as far as his own Boston College "band," called Boba Fett (link).
- the Jeep: from the Mike Daily interview (link), we know that Steve drove a Jeep Wrangler, like the one pictured on the cover of the self-titled Lifter Puller album (see above) with Dave Gerlach at the wheel. Is that Steve's Jeep, with Dave in the driver's seat because Steve, directing a video shoot, put him there? Did the Jeep as an element of the LP story come from him?
- The LBI: we've already documented that "The LBI" concept came from Steve (see AIRPORT & LBI above). But the repercussions of this idea are surprisingly far-reaching, through not only the East Coast beach party spots of the LP story, but Pensacola and Ybor City in the THS story as well. Even details like "jetskis" in MPADJs (following the first Ybor City reference) appear to have a precedent in "we partied apres-jetski" [Hawaii Rocks] from the beach-party lyrics of The Hawaii Show.
- cowboys and indians: as already documented, this too is owed to Steve (see ORIGINS OF IMAGES above).
- Flex And The Buff Result: We already noted that the "flex" references are allusions to the Hulk as a figure of violent revenge (see CHARLEMAGNE above); but the odd expression "flex and the buff result" itself seems very likely to come from Steve, who was big into the idea of pumping iron. Check out the videos from his weightlifting project "Muscle Beach DVD" (youtube version1; version2) and various posts about getting buff ("getting a post practice pump on": link; "curls for the girls": link).
***These things bring us around to a final bit of speculation. As a band name, "The Hold Steady" is awkward. The motivation for it isn't hard to see: Craig's express purpose in rewriting the LP narrative for THS (see POSITIVE JAM above) was to reframe it as a positive story; in alluding to the LP Narrator's performance as the "steady type" [TLaDiLBI], he's chosen the most positive aspect of the old world as his foundation for the new one. But why "The Hold Steady"? We're told the name was taken, maybe offhandedly, from the phrase "hold steady" that appeared in several of their early songs [PJam, Swish, Knuckles, and maybe particularly MPADJs]. Which is fine, as far as it goes, but still doesn't account for the "The." Why this weird combination of definite article and imperative verb? We know that Craig pays close attention to initials in formulating names (linking the C.F. of "Clear heart/Full eyes" to his own initials: youtube). While this is pure speculation, my guess is that he named The Hold Steady in deliberate symmetry with the other positive THS to come out of Lifter Puller, namely, The Hawaii Show. Whether that's true or not, I don't expect ever to know for sure; but as a positive note on which to end this thread, I like it a lot. Thanks for reading along.
|
|