Hung on Every Word

Destined to Be Remembered?

2008-05-12T07:09:00.003-05:00

Well, Flozzies, it seems our journey has reached its end. I hope I have succeeded in my original goal to create the definitive web resource of this band, and that even though I won’t be adding to it anymore, random Googlers will be able to find this place when they try to find out something about that one band who played “Record Player” and “Vegetable Garden” all those years ago. I’m still amazed at how many searchers from all over the world still specifically seek out Fluid Ounces-related material through their internet searches.

Here’s hoping that YouTube, Blogger, SnoCap, and Brian’s mp3 server stay up and working forever too, so that anyone wanting to find out more can have a permanent place to discover these little pop gems for years to come, and that maybe this music we all cherish can continue to expand its audience. I will apply what they say in the movie Dig about an inferior act to Fluid Ounces,

“The music’s strong enough that that there probably will be a generation that discovers them like this rare, fossilized gem and mine it for all it’s worth.”

Here's hoping.

With this ending, I’d also like to acknowledge a few individuals without whom I would/could never have begun, maintained, or completed this undertaking:

To Seth Patrick Timbs—for the music that has inspired this blog and me and the plethora of people who have stopped by over the past few months to learn more. I hope I’ve done the songs justice in my moment-by-moment commentary. After 33,000 words, it hopefully goes without saying here and now how much I love the music.

To Jakob Dorof—whose blog “Crimes on Paper” made me realize that I could and should do this, and for commenting on almost every post, just like you said you would at the outset.

To Justin Meyer—for helping out with histories and giving us the perspective of both a former band member and a fan of this great music.

To Brian G. Pitts—whose blog inspired me to make the shift from simple journal-keeper to the blogoshpere in the first place. And for getting me into Gillian Welch and surf music in the meantime.

To Jeremy and Kelly—for the hours upon hours spent discussing this body of music, much of which created the fodder for these blog entries, especially Kelly’s numerous conversations with Seth.

And finally, to Brian Rogers, Tha B, for the videos and the mp3 server, without which this blog wouldn’t have gotten near the attention that it has, as well as for the little factoids sprinkled throughout the comment sections that give us a little “behind-the-scenes” glimpse into the band’s history. Your support early on was the determining factor in making this blog a reality. Fluid Ounces has become synonymous with Seth Timbs as his music and his project, but the last few years have taught me that you are the other driving force in it, to the point that the times the band functioned without you should have perhaps called itself something other than Fluid Ounces.
And it is to you that I dedicate this blog.

Peace,
Juan Horsetown
Bokwokwok [a-t] hotmail [d-o-t] com

Have Fun

2008-05-10T09:33:00.001-05:00

From In the New Old-Fashioned Way

This song was the first song that I really obsessed over after discovering this band. The first show I attended ended with Seth Timbs doing an encore of the song solo on piano. The crowd began singing along, and the words resonated with me in a new way that would soon become all too familiar as I listened more to the band’s music. For the next two weeks, as I waited to get my mail-order copy of In the New Old-Fashioned Way, I would stream Spongebath radio while working as a college computer lab assistant just because it would play “Have Fun” once about every hour or so.

On the surface, the song is simply an invitation. The speaker paints a scene of any college or sports bar in America as men and women check each other out and make moves to seduce one another while keeping their cool and playing carefully-acted roles to keep the other side in check.

The deeper subtext of this song is why someone would even want to have fun in the first place. We live in a culture that glorifies having fun and deifies those who are best at having it, whatever the fun may be, as if twenty-somethings living it up in bars every night of the week have achieved some higher plane of existence than the rest of the working world who dedicates itself to careers and/or our families. The final verse shows this when the speaker exclaims, “Don’t you wanna have fun? I thought it might be what I needed, and it turned out to be a gimmick!” Once identified as simply a gimmick, if you watch closely when people, your friends included, are out on the town, how deeply they are trying to find this fleeting thing called “fun,” something to hearken back to their childhood when it came so naturally, something they have to work so hard for now, thus strangely extinguishing this thing they want so badly. And somehow you know that they know that none of you will ever find it, not there anyway, but we keep coming back because this elusive thing called fun is the closest we can come to feeling alive and free. Normally we’re the sad clowns, but when we go out to play, troubles are pushed away. There’s nothing to worry about.

Musically, this song has been mentioned by many band members as being one of the most difficult to play on any instrument, rocketing through chord changes, throwing in “ha ha ha”’s to tell the story. It’s short solos are quick, first a guitar, then a piano solo that’s ragtime in the first half and Thelonious Monk in the second. It’s ending is equally memorable, with a shouting match between Brian and Seth (or is it Seth and Seth on the record? I can’t tell) ending on an almost whispered breath, still reaching for the fun with the last and dying breath.

If you could ever somehow get a copy of Spike and Mallets’ CD, Peep, Jr., it features a song called, “The Fun,” which is a wonderful companion to this song, thematically at least, lamenting how “the fun never lasts” in its waltzing refrain.

I don’t think any top-five list of Fluid Ounces songs would be complete without this one in it (though I’m sure the comments section will produce a chorus of dissenters…). It was never the screamed-about casual-fan-fave like “Record Stack,” but instead was and is the song in which everyone can see themselves, if only in a line or a couplet, desiring a little something more out of life, finding something amazing within a pop song, and this, my final song entry (but check back Monday), is the other song I would argue to be Seth Timbs’ crowning achievement in songwriting.

The video here is from October 10, 1997.

Stark Raving Mad

2008-05-08T07:25:00.001-05:00

From Foreign Legion

When I hear the opening line, “I’m leaving before anyone arrives,” it makes me think of the many nights when I’d arrive very very early to Fluid Ounces shows only to find me, the bartender at the Boro, and Seth there as he was setting up his piano. “Stark Raving Mad” would have been the optimal choice of Fluid Ounces songs to play over the PA at the Boro before those shows (along with “Last Goodbye” by Jeff Buckley and Self’s “Sassy Britches,” both of which seem to get played every time Fluid Ounces have played the Boro since I’ve been seeing them there).

As I stated long ago in this blog, Foreign Legion tells a story. At its end, we are given the final resolution to the story, “Stark Raving Mad.” Another favorite record of mine, Willie Nelson’s The Red-Headed Stranger, actually follows the same outline of Foreign Legion, only with a murderous preacher in the Old West. Red-Headed Stranger ends with the song, “Hands on the Wheel,” in which Willie sings of the lessons to be learned from his story of love, loss, and redemption.

But this song isn’t about that, it tends to focus more on life itself. “Smitten” lifts the mood and tone of the album into stellar bliss, accentuated by the next two songs, and while “Stark Raving Mad” does not exactly kill that momentum, nor does it kill it either. Instead, it somehow grounds what I am feeling in reality, making me feel something I only feel when I hear this song. I don’t know if the song itself created this feeling, mind you. The feeling lies somewhere between a redneck screaming from his back porch to the pits of hell, from Mr. Wrong on my radio to the chorus of over-dubbed Seth Timbs vocals that close out the song.

I should note that as complete as this song is as it completes this most under-rated Fluid Ounces record, I don’t see how it is about madness, whether of the stark-raving variety or not. I associate it with sane-ness (which is referenced once in the song right where “stark raving mad” had been said before). It balances itself on a razor-thin high wire between the two extremes, as well as between sadness and elation, joy and misery. I guess if it you can balance yourself there for very long at all, it doesn’t make much difference whether you’re stark raving mad or completely sane.

Poor Man

2008-05-05T07:12:00.001-05:00

From Big Notebook for Easy Piano and Remember Cassettes, Vol. 1

To the casual listener, the same one who can’t get past comparing Seth Timbs to Osama Ben Folds, the five Fluid Ounces records might sound somewhat alike. For those of us who have spent some time with these records, each one begins to stand out and seem so much different from the rest. As bouncy and happy-sounding as Big Notebook is, it’s like there’s a dark cloud looming over all the songs that only settles in for the darker-sounding tunes.

“Poor Man” is the last song on the record beyond its secret track, but it is the true ending as it talks of leaving one place for another place as the dark cloud looming over the whole record clears as we approach a place where things are, “happy ever after,” and, more importantly, it is the start of what would become the toe-tapping sound that was made into an art form for In the New Old-Fashioned Way, the types of songs that have become the bread and butter of the band’s catalog. Musically, this song is the same chord progression as “Have Fun” in the key of D instead of E-flat, and it swings in a very similar fashion to “Drought.” It features Ben Morton wailing away on bass through the verses, Seth Timbs beautifully accenting the words, “Everything is stereo,” with a beautiful piano run up the keyboard, and Brian Rogers giving us a solo that jumps out from the arrangement that could not work anywhere else or any other way than exactly as we hear it there.

As it breaks loose, it pulls several wonderful pieces of imagery with it: “burning all the files and the videos,” destroying things as almost a creative force; empires rising and falling; contrasting monotone and stereo as well as black-and-white with color; and one last autumnal reference on the record when Seth sings, “Now the summer air is turning cold.” The lead-in to the solo carries my favorite image to the song,
“All jaded hearts won’t find their peace,
While my true love presides as queen
Over lands where a peasant can’t afford to sleep
So a poor man I will…”
The song ends with a cacophony of shouting snippets of lines from throughout the song before one little piano coda and a single person clapping.

The video is from October 10, 1997, from Main Street.

Get Yourself Gone

2008-05-03T07:00:00.001-05:00

From Awkward Middle Phase: Seth Timbs' Home Demos, Volume One

Debuted when Doug Payne joined the band and retired when he left, I think of this song as the quintessential song of the Doug Payne era, as I always associate this song with the dozens of endless nights that I’d spend at the Boro seeing the band play there.

Given that Seth Timbs’ songs mostly have autobiographical undertones to them, I always wondered what conditions caused him to write this song. It was added just after Ben Morton had left the band to join the military and Brian Rogers had left to seek his fortune, and I wonder if Seth wrote it about their need to move on from Fluid Ounces. At Justin Meyer’s final show, Seth pointed out vehemently that it was not about Justin, making me question if he felt the song had an insulting tone to it or if it was about the departing band members.

At any rate, this song introduces us to someone stuck in a rut in his life, caught in a cycle of partying and staying out late, essentially going nowhere in achieving whatever goals he’s set for himself in his life. Our speaker is this person’s friend, and he gives a wake-up call, showing true friendship, and saying, “Hey! Get up! Get going! Get started with this thing you call life!”

The video presented here is from August 24, 2001, on the porch at the Red Rose Coffee House. It is surprisingly the only video I had of this song, and it clears up after the first few seconds.

Drought

2008-05-01T07:43:00.002-05:00

From In the New Old-Fashioned Way

“Drought” is a gospel song, both in style and content. When I hear it played live, I imagine holy rollers jumping around with arms raised while tearfully shouting for glory in tongues as the band plays those soulful sounds. All the rest of us should stand up and clap. Seth Timbs then ascends to his pulpit behind the keys and delivers his sermon. His text is all the movies and TV we’ve seen too much of anyway, and his message is to put away thoughts on love and money in order to survive the metaphorical storms of life. Given the rest of the album in which this song lies near the center, our preacher stands before us as a repentant sinner rather than a hypocrite, pouring out his all on his black-and-white altar of 88 keys. Seth brings us hope that we can rise above the prevailing philosophies of our day, be it through the media (“TV talk”), kitschy belief systems that are constantly going in and out of style in America’s tireless search for meaning (“casoulastry” is a word Seth made up to illustrate this), or so many of the other pitfalls that have eaten away the soul of our generation referenced through the song.

When I first started listening to this song in 2000, I was obsessed with James Joyce’s collection of short stories, Dubliners, which frequently uses the old English term “draught,” which means to take an alcoholic drink from a keg. I used my own interpretation to link the two together, as in, “What this drowning man needs is a drink.” (That was further validated when I found out the mysterious opening sound of the song is Ben Morton opening a beer.) Unfortunately, this led to more lyrical changes to run through my mind. People who talk to me frequently will still hear me say every once in a while, “What this tired man needs is a nap,” or something to that effect.

This song has amazing versatility in Fluid Ounces sets, equally effective as opener, closer, or anywhere in between. It was very effective when it would be paired with “Poet Tree,” with only a two-count drum beat to launch into “Drought.” The best innovation to it was when the final chorus would launch into “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love,” previously covered by oh so many people (Who initially recorded it? Whose version is the definitive one? I have no idea), which follows the exact same chord progression as “Drought.” That chorus, before playing the song’s closing riff, says, “I need you you you,” which leads us to believe that our contrite singer will be back in front of us again someday with another tearful apology, but that’s OK--we’re in it for the ride with him, accepting him for who he is and loving the music all the way back to hell.

The live mp3, which will be this blog's last, will be up soon...

Private Hell

2008-04-28T07:09:00.001-05:00

From Instant Nostalgia

I’ve intentionally steered clear from the circular discussion of which songs would have been the single to make Fluid Ounces “make it” if it had been pushed properly by the different powers that be. It just seems moot now. The saddest commentary of all is that Instant Nostalgia produced this powerful pop song that, yes, could have been the one to help the band “break out,” instead being released to deaf ears with no label interest or hope for radio play as the band prepares to call it quits. Seriously, did The Rage actually listen to the record before they reviewed it?

As if the whole record isn’t powerful enough or good enough, hearing “Private Hell” is the one that inter-weaves so many of the classic elements of a song that turns it into perhaps the crowning achievement in the Fluid Ounces canon. It expertly weaves through the psychological hang-ups that drive so many people to either desperately seek out or, later, to give up on relationships (as the song implies by admonishing its listener to “put that property [in your own private hell] up for sale”). Yes, so many classic caricatures are painted of the desperately-seeking, painting a very bleak portrait of humanity and then even having them interact in a “quickie in the car outside.” All of this is wrapped up perfectly and succinctly in the endlessly catchy chorus that anyone can sing along to by its second appearance in the song. It is the last to capture the trademark happy-sounding-but-really-sad Fluid Ounces sound, accomplishing this most expertly and most poignantly.

Yes, Seth Timbs out-did himself with this gem, and has he prophesied so long ago, it is as if he “never made a sound ‘cause there’s no one there to hear it.”

So Far, So Good

2008-04-25T07:46:00.001-05:00

From Foreign Legion

I remember well the night that I was given a copy of Foreign Legion several months before its release. I was sitting in the balcony at 12th & Porter, and I used a cigarette lighter to read its track listing in the dark. There was excitement. There was disappointment. After all, lots of my favorite songs from that era did not make the cut—there was no “Melissa’s Birthday” or “Amount to Something.” And what? “Show on the Road”? There was one song on there that I had never heard, and when I actually listened to the CD the next morning, “So Far, So Good” immediately became my favorite cut on the CD, and it has remained among my all-time favorite songs, not just Fluid Ounces songs, ever since.

“I have no regrets” gets thrown around a lot by people, but I have lots of trouble believing it when anyone says it. That’s just a hard sell to me. Plenty of perfectly avoidable situations have stumbled into people’s lives, and those events have little bearing in life lessons learned. There’s an arrogance inherent in that statement that makes it sound almost adolescent, denying the full weight of bad things that happen in people’s lives. And from that angle, this song can have some holes poked into its argument. I guess that even so, it’s the word play that sells me on this song. Unpacking the broad general statement, it comes across instead as bold, acknowledging personal shortcomings and accepting hyperbolic hypothetical situations, saying that in spite of it all, even if the mistakes are regrettable, the end product out-weighs instead of negates the past. Its boldness exudes a confidence un-characteristic of any Fluid Ounces song, perhaps making it the single most positive and up-lifting song in the catalog.

To me, listening to this one is like a freight train that runs me over every time, always picking me up in its momentum and taking me with it wherever life takes me. And that’s always a good ride.

Lend Me Your Ears

2008-04-24T07:21:00.001-05:00

From In the New Old-Fashioned Way and The Vegetable Kingdom EP

In the New Old-Fashioned Way would not be complete without this track, which I believe was added as an after-thought since it was not included on the promo version of the record. Likewise, I think that it loses power if its only place had been in the center of The Vegetable Kingdom EP. Placed at the beginning, as the lead-in to the band’s masterpiece, Seth Timbs steps out of his usual role of himself and becomes like a Greek chorus, setting the stakes and giving us some thoughts on love and life that are separated from the confines of any particular relationship. He calls us simply to listen as he puts some perspective on existence, with lessons gleaned from Father Time and Vincent Van Gogh no less, before we embark together on our journey. This one song unwittingly adds a whole different dimension to the record as it points us toward universal truth before sending us on to songs about the Earthly and mundane: driving, dying, drinking, sleeping and hurting.

The live mp3 presented here if from July 3rd, 2004, when Seth Timbs played a solo set before bringing up a full band. I love this performance because of the speed with which he’s playing it, and the way he sounds like he’s truly having a good time while playing it.

Download Live mp3

Lazy Bones

2008-04-21T07:54:00.001-05:00

From The Whole Shebang

Many Fluid Ounces songs reference working jobs (“Amount to Something” and “Tokyo Expressway” immediately come to mind), but “Lazy Bones” is the only one in which it is apt to say the song is about working. It is about a lot of other things as well, but its central theme is working.

This gives it a unique perspective among many rock songs anyway, since most Americans spend the majority of their adult lives at some place of employment, and few songwriters, especially in the mainstream, seem to tackle this subject in their songs. The song masterfully interweaves notions of relationships and friendship into the song, seamlessly encompassing both into a day of work just like we all do every day, so effortlessly that we don’t realize it happens, either in our lives or in the recording. Beyond that, the song’s title and refrain reach out to us, to that side of ourselves that never wants to go to work, that just wants to sleep in every day and lie about every afternoon, forcing ourselves to instead gather up our lazy bones. I’ll spare you by not re-printing all the brilliant imagery of this song and instead just ask you to give it another listen if you haven’t heard it in a while.

“Lazy Bones” was the first song written or performed for The Whole Shebang, performed only once or twice with Justin Meyer on drums while they were still doing guitar sets. He left the band, and I was sure that song had gone the way of “Out of Your Element” and “Cops and Criminals.” I would have had little recollection of since I had no recording of it, except that the demo for it turned up for download on mp3.com (I am presenting that recording here in all its glory). I played that recording endlessly, and to this day I prefer it over what we hear on TWS—I always thought Kyle Walsh’s drums were a little over-the-top, both in production and in notes played, on that track. Regardless, I was elated when I was handed an advance copy of that record and saw that it was actually on there. The song was resurrected when the band re-formed in 2004, but its tenure was short-lived as Brian Rogers vetoed playing that song, much to the chagrin of everyone who sees the band regularly. I’ll allow him to beg our forgiveness and attempt to explain himself in the comment section…

Download mp3

Amount to Something

2008-04-19T10:30:00.002-05:00

From Awkward Middle Phase: Seth Timbs' Home Demos, Volume One

At some point, we have to wake up from our slumber and ask, “When will it amount to something?” And then we must step up and strive for the lives we once dreamed we were destined for. The song speaks of people whose lives are lived as a series of accidents, with the speaker aspiring to live beyond the mundane and hoping to become something more. The song implies a link between loneliness and this trend, declaring, “Thank God!” as the vanquishing of lonely days can set one free and allow oneself to “amount to something.” At its end, the song invites the listener to put away his or her cares in order to declare that the lonely days are gone, and that this declaration can free the person, not from finding someone who makes all the lonely feelings go away, but instead overcoming those feelings and recognizing how detrimental they can be in one’s personal journey.

For this reason, this song quickly became a highlight for me as I began attending Fluid Ounces shows. The beauty of its melody, the intensity with which the message was delivered, and the message itself were just what I needed at that point. And sometimes its worth giving it a close listen to remind myself of something I may have forgotten. Thank God, indeed.

This song was performed throughout the Doug Payne era. Jason Dietz stylized the song with a certain panache it never would receive again, playing the catalog’s only true bass solo in the outro. The song was released on Awkward Middle Phase as one of the handful of songs recorded by Seth Timbs, Doug Payne, Trev Wooten and Sam Baker as a band. Its epic piano intro could have made it a fine choice for the opening track to The Whole Shebang, but it was left off and unreleased until the demo vaults were first opened for us.

The video here is from the July 7, 2001, performance at the Boro.

The Beginning of the End, Indeed

2008-04-18T07:16:00.000-05:00

Early on in the writing process of this blog, I realized that I could not use the phrase, “This is one of Seth Timbs’ greatest achievements in songwriting,” (or any other phrase that seeks to commend the individual songs) as I would be using it in so many entries that you would grow tired of reading it, ultimately making the phrase lose its meaning entirely.

We are now nearing the end of our journey together, dear readers, and I’ve saved ten of my very favorites to wind it all down and bring it on home for everyone, having set these aside since very early in the process and carefully constructing these entries over a long period of time. This isn’t to say they’re my absolute “Top Ten,” as I’ve sprinkled several of the best throughout the blog to keep both your interest and mine in the project, but each of these final ten is a favorite of mine and of many fans, even going as far as to that each and every one of them is one of Seth Timbs’ greatest achievements in songwriting.

The Beginning of the End

2008-04-17T01:07:00.001-05:00

Unreleased Track

With an uncharacteristic synth intro, Seth Timbs carries us into his vision of the future, doubly ironic to use a synthesizer instead of a piano and considering that his own musical future has been based on the electric guitar and playing oldies-inspired songs. The picture painted for us of the future is more in line with the feelings of despair from Big Notebook, with vocal stylings hearkening back to that era more than we’d heard in many years.

The bleak portrait presented is of a sister planet where, “everything’s so good, it’s boring.” Its goodness does nothing to make people happy. With the sun freezing as our planet is burned away by something, and many people getting into a space vehicle to escape, some apparently choose to stay and face their destiny while others set themselves “free” into “pre-determined routes” in carefully construction lives. This sci-fi allegory is more typical of Flaming Lips, though it would need a more random mentioning of robots or something to fully count as an homage, more closely referencing a more Star Trek philosophy that those staying behind come into a new realization of their humanity as they embrace certain doom instead of giving up their freedom in some kind of mass-produced style culture.

Being a home demo, this song does not get to portray the epic nature of its scope unlike a more produced song like “Downscope, the Boat Captain.” Its message provides a finality to where Seth stands, so to speak, that there is a vague romantic hope in humanity to stand and fight against adversity (in this case, a dying planet), in spite of the hopeless portraits he’s sometimes painted for us, especially on earlier recordings.

Download mp3

Killjoy

2008-04-14T07:21:00.001-05:00

From Big Notebook for Easy Piano and Remember Cassettes, Vol. 1

This song immediately lets you know that you’re in for a strange ride from its opening percussion. This is nowhere that Fluid Ounces had ever been before or would visit again, with sparse piano and guitar skronk closing out their first record with this unique piece.

I like to think of a “kill joy” as anything, but most often a person, who, you guessed it, somehow manages to ruin a good time for me, not necessarily because of they complain or ruin things for everyone, but just because they get on my nerves specifically because of some personality quirk.

It’s always funny to me that Amazon.com lists this CD as having 24 tracks, making potential buyers think they’re getting something of a double album. Instead, tracks 13-22 as well track 24 are each six seconds of silence, with “Killjoy” being track 23. Apparently this was a random way of making it a “secret track” at the end of the record that was conceived by Richard Dortch. It works though because this track needed to be completely separate from the rest of Big Notebook.

Seth says in the video of this song from October, 1997, that they play this song differently every time they play it. I have no idea to the truth of that statement, but it is markedly different from the recorded versions and is the only live recording I’ve ever encountered.

Notice how excited they are that their CD is released on Spongebath Records. My how things change.

Songs Covered by Fluid Ounces

2008-04-12T09:39:00.003-05:00

I decided to mention all the songs Fluid Ounces have covered in one quick stroke. All of these are covers performed by actual line-ups, not counting solo sets or guest bands. Many are one-offs, and I’m suspicious that there are a few more (maybe some other band members reading this can fill in some I may have missed). Seth filled in a couple I didn’t know about.

Sir Duke (Stevie Wonder)
This cover suited the Fluid Ounces set, sounding surprisingly full even in the absence of horns.

El Scorcho (Weezer)
I never would have thought this would be a song Fluid Ounces would cover, mainly because it doesn’t seem like a great fit. I know they’re early Weezer fans and all, but this is one of the last songs I would have ever guessed they would have covered. It works well enough, though, as you can see from this video from the Chukker show.

Ride a White Swan (T-Rex)
From Awkward Middle Phase: Seth Timbs' Home Demos, Volume One

This song was included on Awkward Middle Phase, and is easily the least-listened song of the lot on my player. Not being familiar with the source material limits what I can say about this one.

I Am the Walrus (The Beatles)
This was performed for a John Lennon tribute. The band played at more than one of these, and I’m suspicious that there are more songs than this and Instant Karma!

Aqualung (Jethro Tull)
Not being familiar with the source material limits what I can say about this one, but it’s hard for me to imagine Fluid Ounces covering this one, and I have no recording of it.

Synchronicity II (The Police)
Not being familiar with the source material limits what I can say about this one, but it’s easier for me to picture this one than the other.

She Blinded Me with Science (Thomas Dolby)
From the Japanese release of Foreign Legion

They played this one to close out the first Fluid Ounces show I ever saw, and I considered it the perfect cover to close out the perfect night. It is just obscure enough and just recognizable enough, not to mention danceable and random. It was played for two or three or more shows and never done again. I was given an advanced copy of Foreign Legion a year later and very surprised to find this song tacked on the end. It was also included in the Japanese release of FL.

Charlie Brown (Boo Boo Bunny)
It was implied that Fluid Ounces shared a Halloween show with Murfreesboro shock rockers Boo Boo Bunny for more than one year, but I don’t know for sure. I only caught the one in 2000. Billed as a “versus” show, Fluid Ounces taunted their opponent by covering one of their songs. I didn’t stick around to see if Boo Boo Bunny reciprocated by covering a Fluid Ounces song because the Features were playing across town at Sebastian’s that night, and well, you know.

Anyway, I was happy to acquire the video of that night’s show with this interesting cover along with it.

Good luck finding copies of either Boo Boo Bunny album. I’m not sure which one carries the original of this tune, Guitar Case Full or Porn or Prom Queen of Auschwitz.

Moby Dick (Led Zeppelin)
This instrumental tune was played once at Justin Meyer’s final show to showcase his fine drumming skillz as the rest of the band set down their instruments to let him bash out his solo for a couple minutes before they returned to finish the song.

Rock the Casbah (The Clash)
The band worked this one up for the Japanese tour in February, 2002. The genius part was a segue into The Police’s “King of Pain” using the same chord progression as sort of a bridge to the final chorus.

It’s Not My Birthday (They Might Be Giants)
From Hello Radio: The Songs of They Might Be Giants

I always liked this home demo as it is the most prominent accordion used on a Fluid Ounces recording, which in and of itself is a tribute to They Might Be Giants. Not being familiar with the source material limits what I can say about this one.

Pretty Ugly Before (Elliott Smith)
From A Tribute to Elliott Smith

Dave Dickerson was helping along with Fluid Ounces quite a bit when The Whole Shebang was released, maintaining their website and such. He also was running a record label at the time, and he put out a tribute to Elliott Smith on that label in the wake of Smith’s death. Fluid Ounces contributed this song that they may have played live at the record’s release. Not being familiar with the source material limits what I can say about this one.

Short People (Randy Newman)
The influence of Randy Newman on Fluid Ounces is obvious, and this song in particular obviously informed the quirkiness of Seth Timbs’ songwriting career. It was covered a few times in early 2005, and last played at the Basement in January, 2006, with Mike Grimes singing back-up from the sound board.

Everything Is Free (Gillian Welch)
I wasn’t surprised to see the band cover a Gillian Welch song since Seth and Brian Pitts are such big fans of hers (and possibly Tha B, too). I’ve seen Seth cover her rock-a-billy tune “Honey Now” numerous times in solo sets and with Moonie and the Johndogs. This song would be the only thing at the Mike Mahaffey Benefit Show that night to have a somber tone to it, singing about musicians willing to play for free.

Download Live mp3

Instant Karma! (John Lennon)
This was a fitting cover performed at the very beginning of 2005. It only lasted a couple of times as the set closer, which is understandable since the screaming chorus would wreck Seth’s voice every time.

Sledge Hammer (Peter Gabriel)
The “Half Ounce” set in January, 2007, debuted this one that the full band picked up, with Brian Rogers adding a wah pedal and superimposing the lead part from “Tokyo Expressway.” I thought it over-stayed its welcome and was played a few too many times at most sets in 2007, but I accepted it as it unanimously united crowds and gave me one more song to hear before the night of music would end.

Sitting Beside Myself

2008-04-10T07:21:00.001-05:00

From The Vegetable Kingdom EP

This is perhaps the most autumnal of all Fluid Ounces songs, referring to falling leaves and dying insects, but strangely not as autumnal as the shades of gray experienced in “Kept Alive by Science.” This image is important in that links the nostalgia of the song to death and dying as the speaker is sitting beside himself, a clever twist of words for a title and chorus—juxtaposing being “by oneself” as in alone, with being “beside oneself,” as in a state of confusion.

We are then swirled into a whirl of memories and senses as our speaker says, “And the last time I was here/ It must have been about this same time last year,” perhaps referring to a physical place or the same situation in a love relationship, probably in the wake of a break-up. He is quick to point out the shortcomings of this past relationship, referring to himself as “hen-pecked” among other things, but he still finds himself alone, again, trying his hardest to “smooth things over.” In all the metaphorical references, we get a sense of a cyclical aspect to the way he feels, going back to being a “classroom misfit,” kissing on field trips. The memories and details are blurred in the passage of time, but the cycle and the feelings are all too relevant and pertinent as he finds himself in this same place yet again.

Seth Timbs throws a wink at us in this song, saying, “Stream of consciousness / Heads are talking to themselves,” in perhaps the most stream-of-consciousness song in the Fluid Ounces catalog.

The song closes with a pretty big solo, especially live, with guitar and piano playing complementary leads together at the same time in a jazzy outro, like you see in this video from July 7, 2001 at the Boro.

There Ought to Be a Law

2008-04-07T06:55:00.000-05:00

From Instant Nostalgia

Sometimes the band will debut a new song, and it just seems from its immediate presentation that the band knows they’re putting a good one out there. Not to say they’re not all good, but some are just presented with a slight hint of pride in knowing that this one is a cut above. I got the impression of that from “There Ought to Be a Law” from the first time it was played in October, 2005.

The song is about growing up. Its broad stroke on the matter can be applied to any aspect of coming-of-age experienced in our culture for people aged twenty-two to thirty-three (or so).

As this is the third-to-last Fluid Ounces song added to their catalog, written one year before Seth Timbs told me he was thinking about ending Fluid Ounces to start a new band, I can’t help but think that this song is about the band itself, whether that was Seth’s intention for it or not. They had been through the excitement of a promising formation and received media attention, both on national and international levels, and now here they are, winding down a career, much older and wiser, resisting the temptation to want to slip into some nostalgic state about “the good old days,” instead mustering up the courage to keep rocking and see everything through to its completion. Or, more likely, it’s about girls—particularly the once-overweight-now-runway-model variety.

The video presented here is one that I actually made myself on my digital camera—I hope that it’s not too shaky—on March 14, 2008, at the Basement. Finally, a video of the current/final line-up!

Shady Acres

2008-04-05T07:33:00.001-06:00

Unreleased Track

Even though they don’t sound much alike, I consistently get “Shady Acres” mixed up with “Overlong,” and that’s because they are both demos released on a previous Fluid Ounces website. They don’t sound that much alike, except that neither of them employ much piano, and both include Seth Timbs singing with whispery vocals, but the fact that I got both of them at the same time and never really listened closely to either of them has me perpetually getting the two confused. I believe this one was co-written by Mac Burrus, and I always imagined the collaboration happening while Seth lived in Los Angeles.

The song focuses on a journey to a place called Shady Acres. This place can be reached by relaxing for the journey on a bus or plane, mentioned twice in the song’s structure of playing through two nearly identical segments, but we are not hearing about a place where one will go to stay permanently (as referenced by telling the neighbors that the invitee will be coming back). On the one hand, there are inviting aspects to this place, talking of greener pastures and diamonds on horizons, but on the other hand seeing a sinking ship coming up one last time to say good-bye before it sinks for good. The second segment provides little more light to the situation, saying that one must slip away when leaving, and then saying that once the invitee is there, he or she will experience both feelings of regret and contentedness.

This place referred in this song, obviously not a physical place, is a bit of a mystery for me. I presume, as always, it is being addressed to a lover, but its mixed message about its destination make it a little less stellar than the other big romantic invitations, “Come On Out,” and “Burning Daylight.” It was suggested to me that the rest-home-like title of the song could make it about being in a nursing home and possibly even euthanasia, which I guess is possible, though I don’t see how all the pieces of this little riddle of a song fit together for that one.

Here’s the mp3 of this one so you can decide for yourself.

Download mp3

Shamrock

2008-04-03T06:22:00.001-06:00

From Big Notebook for Easy Piano

If I’m ever out anywhere, and I see a piano just sitting somewhere, it’s my secret wish that I could just sit down at that piano in the middle of the mall or at someone’s party and slam out “Shamrock,” if only the opening lick. It is the perfect plunge into Big Notebook, and it received quite a bit of attention from reviewers for sounding so upbeat, yet being about a small plant about to be run over by a lawnmower. It is perhaps the most accessible of this type of song, serving as the template for all the others on Big Notebook as well as setting the tone for the rest of the record. I would have liked to see it pushed as a radio single in ’97, especially in contrast to that year’s piano-pop radio hit, “Brick,” which won mainstream acclaim for Osama Ben Folds, despite its monotone yet hipster-friendly feelings of being depressed.

Here we hear Fluid Ounces at their sonic best, running through very fast verses to get to choruses that are actually slower, yet somehow more epic in production—thanks in part to all four Ounces plus Matt Mahaffey grinding out the guitars on the chorus standing in a circle and creating a large wall of sound behind Seth Timbs’ vocals. It is always fun to hear its insane tempo jumps, which are even more pronounced in live performances. The beginning of each verse sounds like the thunderous start of a race, as Ben, Brian, Seth and Sam are standing behind gates with their respective rock instruments, waiting for the starting gun of the last beat of the chorus to take off running in a blur of one of the best melds of rock and jazz ever produced.

The video presented here is from October 10, 1997, started off with yet another instance in which Seth Timbs introduces the band and does not give his own real name.

Smitten

2008-03-31T06:28:00.001-06:00

From Foreign Legion

Ahh, that playful feeling of just embarking on a relationship, the moon hitting your eye like a big pizza pie, yadda yadda yadda.

If you catch this song listening to Foreign Legion, you find it right at the “elbow” of the record, with it the turning point of the whole record. All the sad and depressing songs have come before, culminating in “The Last Thing,” and just a breath after its final chord, this song opens in the elated, “My God, she’s cute…” With that, our protagonist is free from all that has shackled him before, free to run and live and pursue. All the songs that follow are of a happier fair on the record, focusing on love and happiness.

I always saw that if this song was next in succession after “The Last Thing,” then followed by a succession of other songs, its final counterpoint would be “To Cure the Lonely,” unified mostly by the lyrical reference to “puppy love” in both songs. While “Smitten” invites the newfound lover to forget the puppy lovers et al from her past, “Lonely,” a few years and thousands of miles later, undoubtedly referring to the demise of the same relationship, says, “Your puppy love grows up/ but can’t leave its home/ and remains just a flightless bird.”

Live, this song was always dedicated to the person about whom it was written, sometimes being played just after “The Last Thing,” with Seth Timbs introducing it by saying, “Here’s a song about a radically different subject.” It was permanently replaced in live sets by “Make It Through,” and the dedications then shifted to “Crazies,” which debuted a few shows later.

Ambiance

2008-03-29T08:31:00.002-06:00

From In the New Old-Fashioned Way

With words written by Seth Timbs and music by Brian Rogers, this cozy little rumba cools things down a bit on In the New Old-Fashioned Way just before the last two songs bring the record to its epic climax and coda.

The essence of this song is time. It centers around two people sitting across from each other in conversation, and I’ve found equal weight in two interpretations of the setting described—perhaps because I’ve been in both and thought of this song in each case.

On the on hand, two people are deeply in love with each other, and they are enjoying each other’s company so much that they never want the conversation to end as they are discovering new things about each other and themselves as they really talk things over, wishing that they could just stay and occupy that space and time forever.

The other interpretation is more likely, given the tone of the whole record, the song’s placement on said record, and the pensive performance of the vocals that almost keep it from being something else. In this case, the song is about two lovers whose relationship has reached its bitter end. They know that once that conversation ends, that’s it. They get up from that table and walk out of each other’s lives (it does reference sleeping in separate beds) forever, and they are holding on to that last moment when they hesitate. Time spins out of control as they wish to dwell there forever, but they know that the relationship is over and that it’s time to move on.

My interpretations have been shot down enough by Seth to expect that there’s some separate explanation from what I’ve provided that makes all the more sense, and I always welcome what actually inspired the story. But as I post this one, I’ll cop out just a little and use Robert Browning’s quote on his own poetry that has been in the back of my head since I began this project, “When I wrote that, only God and I knew what it meant. Now only God knows.” Sorry to throw two cop-outs at you in a row like this.

Here's a video from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which looks the perfect lounge setting for this song.

40 Pints to Brooklyn

2008-03-27T06:13:00.002-06:00

From Awkward Middle Phase: Seth Timbs' Home Demos, Volume One

This song is one of the few among the throngs that has never been played live and only exists in demo form. I think this is important for this song, as its perfect performance is captured here in this home recording, and, in this commentator’s opinion, it remains too perfect to be either re-recorded or performed live.

This most epic of home recordings incorporates foreign language tapes—presumably Japanese—as well as words spoken by Seth Timbs as the band performed on a road trip of sorts through New York and Virginia in 2001, part of which I mentioned in the “Record Stack” entry. In light of the Remember Cassettes demos that have been released, this recording is a stepping stone on the way to Instant Nostalgia, showing just how far Seth has come in the realm of home recordings. I mentioned this one specifically to him as a fine example of his home recording prowess, but he dismissed it as sounding like it was recorded in the Well of Souls (referring to the hiss of home recordings and how it sounds like a snake pit).

Still, the blend of guitars and synth and miscellaneous recorded elements (again, used much more effectively than they were on the earlier demos), making for a strangely beautiful song that I have no idea what it’s about. Brooklyn? Beer? New York City and/or road trips? Probably. Girls, somehow? Very likely. How that ties into the climactic refrain of, “All in good time,” has left this song in the “question mark” stack for this blog since pretty early on. I am nearing the end and forced to write about some of these, so maybe somebody can shed some light on this one.

To that I’ll add a little bit about the process of writing this blog, and that’s to add that, hands down, the most difficult songs to write about have been the unreleased tracks and the Awkard Middle Phase tunes I’d never heard played live. The rest have been played over and over again in my car or at my home for years. I’ve had plenty of time to digest those. I spent forever trying to work on “Rest Stop” and some others, finally just letting them go with what I’d written, hoping for something a little more epic for each one. I guess they can’t all be “Sugar Mama,” now can they?

Bombardier

2008-03-24T06:20:00.001-06:00

Unreleased Track

This most epic of Fluid Ounces’ epic rock songs is a piano-less answer to the “shock and awe” campaign launched by George W. Bush in 2003, though the song came much later. To this I’ll add that this song rocks, and I mean it really ROCKS. It starts with its riff, and then it kicks in with more sheer power than you’ve ever heard in a Fluid Ounces song. The drums and guitars are blinding through the loud choruses and solos before its finger-picked acoustic guitar outro, laden with feedback as a B-52 flies off into the sunset. Realizing that this is the heaviest rock song in the Fluid Ounces catalog, it proves how diverse Seth Timbs is in his styles and how effectively he can move from piano pop to Smashing Pumpkins.

The subject matter of this song is atypical for Seth Timbs, reaching into political commentary (thus making a Smashing Pumpkins comparison seem to fall short). The song itself is about an airplane pilot and a person launching bombs (a “bombardier”) as they fly over enemy territory. You imagine them in different compartments of their large plane, filled to the brim with bombs, unable to see each other as they talk back and forth. In their faceless conversation, we hear about the facelessness of modern warfare, dropping bombs on men and women and then flying away to safety—“just pull the switch and run”—without really experiencing the bleak consequences as the enemy becomes so faceless.

This song was only played two or three times before it was shelved, and all the band would ever say about it was that it needed to be “re-tooled” before they would play it again. I seriously can’t imagine what could be done to make this raw rock song any better, though they may have wished to make it sound more like a Fluid Ounces song or just shorten it. It never re-surfaced though, with the band staying true to form and choosing to work up new material instead of re-treading old songs. When I heard that Seth’s next songwriting project would be entirely guitar-based, it immediately crossed my mind that “Bombardier” would make a comeback. But when Hot New Singles took shape, it was obvious that it would fit in less there than it did with Fluid Ounces.

So on the shelf it remains, and the best I can offer is the mp3 of the demo.

Download mp3

Paperweight Machine

2008-03-22T07:29:00.002-06:00

From The Whole Shebang

In the tradition of “Record Stack,” “Paperweight Machine” draws heavily on Eastern European grooves. But whereas “Record Stack” is one of the easier Fluid Ounces songs to play, every member to whom I’ve talked mentions this as one of the most difficult Fluid Ounces songs. I can’t help but wonder if that has led to the curious evolution for the song, getting faster and faster over the span of live performances since its debut in December, 2000, at Sebastian’s. The demo for it was pretty slow, and it had grown faster by the time the Sam/Trev/Doug/Seth line-up worked it up in summer of 2001 (as you can see from the video from the Boro on July 7, 2001—which begins with Doug Payne paying tribute to a spider crawling on his amp). When I heard the song as the opener on The Whole Shebang, along with noticing that it sounded like something Matt Mahaffey would have produced, was that this song had reached new roaring heights with this light-footed tempo. The final line-up would maintain this tempo and eventually speed it up a little more as they grew more comfortable with its difficult music (as you can hear in the live mp3 below from December 9, 2005).

I have thought for the past few years that The Whole Shebang was a couple of tracks short of being good enough to stand alongside the other CDs. There were just too many good tracks that I knew were written that could have cohesively fit on the record and made it soar all the more. The most glaring thing to me was the choice of “Paperweight Machine” as the opening track. I always felt that “Amount to Something” or “Mountain Man from Mole Hill” would have been the perfect track to say “hello” and introduce the record, leaving “Paperweight” to come in right after and take things up a notch from there. It works well enough the way it is, but that’s one change I would have made if I were in a position to be asked about such things when this record was made.

Download Live mp3

Kept Alive by Science

2008-03-20T09:20:00.002-06:00

From Big Notebook for Easy Piano and Remember Cassettes, Vol. 1

“Unfortunately, he was kept alive by science and the drugs of men,” the song opens.

Unfortunately?

Unfortunately.

How sad of a life can one person live that it should be said it’s unfortunate that he was kept alive? Or is it unfortunate that science is keeping him alive instead of giving him a natural death? Either way, strictly in terms of mood, Big Notebook hits bottom with this eulogy of sorts, finally bringing the most down-tempo music to the darkest of subjects: the end of life. It always makes me think of gray autumn skies with bare trees just after all the leaves have fallen.

The song keeps the “he” in this story a mystery, but I always imagine it being a father figure of some sorts to our speaker as he prepares for the person’s final exit. The song’s somber tone leads to desperation, making it easy to picture the speaker trying to hold back tears, regardless the reason those tears are there. This is one song I like to keep mired in ambiguity, like most of them on Big Notebook, as it then can lend itself to whatever I'm feeling. A bad day at work? It makes me feel better somehow. There's just something in the way he sings, "Unfortunately," that makes me feel.

People argued that “Daddy Scruff” was the song on Big Notebook to establish the band as something more than a simple piano pop band when I suggested the CD would have been better without that song. I would now submit that this song is both the better song and the one to really show the listener the depth of the band.

A Comment on the New Demo Releases

2008-03-20T09:15:00.001-06:00

Seth Timbs has graciously gifted us ravenous fans with a new group of demos from his home collection, this time focusing on material from 1990-1996. Although they are not quite set up for order just yet, you can read the track listing and Seth’s liner notes for them here. I will post a link to notify you when the demos are available for purchase. I had originally planned to include all twenty-four tracks here in this blog, but I have decided that since only the tunes that were features on Big Notebook for Easy Piano were actually performed by the band Fluid Ounces that I will not include them. I have created a label for all the songs, but I have not altered the actual entries.

On another note, it’s good to be back for the final stretch with this blog. I am going to attempt to post three times per week again to help re-energize our readership after the hiatus, so that means you can expect about six more weeks before I run out of songs.

Hiatus

2008-02-23T09:32:00.002-06:00

Hung on Every Word will return on March 20th, when we'll (hopefully) delve into the two new demo releases that are going to be released soon as well as all the fan favorites I've been saving up for the last innings.

Until then, listen to Instant Nostalgia a whole lot!

Overlong

2008-02-21T07:39:00.001-06:00

Unreleased Track

The magic of Seth Timbs, shown very clearly in this song, is the way that he can add so much complexity to something that could be just as simple as another three-minute rock song. “Overlong” is like an anti-“Love Me Do,” in which a dense home recording sings of love and devotion with dense piano-less instrumentation with some great lyrics.

The title refers to the time before the speaker’s current relationship, in which he said his “heart was wasted and stayed alone for overlong.” He adores her through verse after verse, concealing the central concept in floral language. He twice mentions “blues,” a sad feeling of discontentedness or dissatisfaction or something, first saying that this feeling would gladly destroy everything, but happy that it won’t bother him anymore. At the close of the song, he returns to this concept and says that in spite of these feelings that may come, it won’t be that bad if his lover is with them. Given this, I must say that the slight gray cloud over these beautiful melodies cries out for the coming song, “How to Be Happy.”

Thinking Cap

2008-02-18T07:03:00.004-06:00

From the Japanese release of Foreign Legion

“Thinking Cap” was written in early 2000, but the song was shelved until it became part of the band’s live set in the summer of 2001. Stylistically, it was written as a kiss-off song to Spongebath Records and the sound that Fluid Ounces was creating during that time, though I would argue that its chord-style is decidedly in the style of Foreign Legion. Its longevity, being included in setlists up to now, leads me to believe that Seth must be rather proud of this one. I like Kyle Walsh’s contribution of tapping out the song on the side of the snare drum as soon as the previous song ends, but overall, I’m pretty lukewarm on this song. I think its lyrics about deathrays are villains in smoking jackets, along with a chorus that includes, “Bless my soul,” and the title itself, are all a bit too far into the clever side, crossing the fine line into cliché. Even so, I enjoy the energy and piano lines, so I won’t say that I wish it banished from future setlists.

I believe it was treated somewhat like a single once Foreign Legion was released in Japan, based on a few comments I heard Seth make in 2001, and also on the fact that its lyrics were incorporated into the t-shirt design that you can see below (modeled by Tom Foolery):

Just before I started recording the Fluid Ounces show at the Boro on February 2, 2002 (one of the best live recordings I’ve ever made), Seth said that actually the shirt should read, “We Would Like for You to Put On Your Thinking Cap If You Want To.”

The video is from August 24, 2001, from the porch of the Red Rose.

1,000 Ships

2008-02-14T07:23:00.001-06:00

Unreleased Track

This song is a Fluid Ounces song in name only. It was played heavily by Spike and Mallets when Seth Timbs was a member, and always a crowd pleaser I might add, and was released on the many incarnations of Greetings from Spike and Mallets, the free CD they’d give away at their shows. The only time it has actually been listed as “Fluid Ounces” is when the same download that was available on the Spike and Mallets mp3.com page showed up on the Fluid Ounces official website.

But it’s a good song, and I think it’s worth some attention, both on this blog and through everybody’s ears.

Comparing his love to the beauty of Helen of Troy as, “the face that launched a thousand ships,” our Faustian lover narrating the song gives us the feeling that he is at his wit’s end as he searches out, “a place where old habits go to die hard.” I would say that its only shortcoming in its endless metaphors and imagery with infinite possible interpretations is the one that says,
“The girl that drove her car into the wall
Just trying to get inside the mall
Her windshield covered with unfolded maps
Busts through the concrete
and drives through the Gap.”
A reference to the Gap tethers this song to the year 2000, but this is only a minor flaw for such a great song.

The pallet of the song is changed in the demo with the presence of a slide guitar, which we haven’t heard on a Seth Timbs recording since “Record Stack.” Live, Elliott Currie, wearing his guitar-player hat (which was a much better fit, if you ask me), would add his own touch of blues to the song, though carefully remaining as understated as the lead guitar on the demo.

Download mp3

Melissa’s Birthday

2008-02-11T07:13:00.000-06:00

Unreleased Track

I have a love/hate relationship with this song. On the one hand, it’s a bit juvenile to sing about a drunken birthday party in which, as Seth and Doug were always so quick to point out, “the names have been changed to protect the innocent.” It gives it a little bit of a one-dimensional feel, but I guess what makes it work is that the story is cleverly told, making it more like an amusing tale to tell later.

A rowdy party is broken up by the cops, who take away a bag of pot and some fake IDs. The party doesn’t slow down as they roll the neighbor’s house and continue to dance and drink until the speaker passes out while the party is still going on. Somewhere along the way, they discuss a trip to Florida, featuring Jason Dietz’s “Happy Trails” bass line before going into a fancy free piano solo.

Today’s video is October 27, 2000. All of the live versions I have of this song leave something to be desired, so I figured I’d offer the one video I have of it.

Grown Men Crying

2008-02-07T07:38:00.000-06:00

From Instant Nostalgia

Seth Timbs’ return to Tennessee in 2004 was followed by a long series of solo appearances in Nashville and Murfreesboro, sometimes even opening up with a solo set before bringing out the full band to play with him. With these came playing more than one of the Nashville staple, “songwriters’ night,” in which all aspiring songwriters, for better or for worse, gather with their acoustic guitars and play songs about being songwriters. And although this song didn’t appear in Fluid Ounces sets until 2005, I am almost sure that its inspiration came from the writers’ nights from 2004.

In it, we meet a man, yes indeed a grown man, whose lip quivers as he hears one songwriter’s tune one at a “piss-swillin’ bar.” The song touches on our need to hear heart-wrenchingly sad songs, especially while we are at our most vulnerable after a relationship’s end, finding comfort in having our “insides twisted apart” by others’ similarly sad stories, even if they’ll deny it and say that it’s just something in their eyes.

The song even offers its own glimpse of such a sad affair, the best as it reaches its climax,
“And we had big plans to get married
Sweet lady and I
Build a house on the mountain
Sit around and get high.”

This third waltz on the record was intentionally placed on Instant Nostalgia as a continuation of “Private Hell.” The recorded version features a great swirling synth in its epic bridge, but I think my favorite performance of this song is from December 9, 2005, available here for download. Pay attention to the piano work during the second half as well as the way that Tha B’s backing vocals seem to snuggle up to Seth’s vocals to perfectly accentuate certain words and phrases throughout the song.

Download Live mp3

Comfortable

2008-02-04T07:10:00.000-06:00

From In the New Old-Fashioned Way

This anthem for insomniacs is Fluid Ounces at their most playful, either on In the New Old-Fashioned Way or anywhere else. The movement of the song is fun and bouncy with Sam Baker’s marching drums holding up a simple-sounding piano line that is the farthest cry from the heavier chords of later years. The song is effectively a comedy piece, in which the speaker muses about using elephant tranquilizers or anything else to get sleep, still unable find any peace as the night drags on and his partner sleeps soundly throughout. I heard that it was in direct reference to the experience of touring and trying to sleep at odd times on that schedule, but the song camouflages this by referring to his bed partner as “baby.”

Today’s video is still another from October 10, 1997.

I can't decide whether the person providing "back-up vocals" near the camera in the video adds to or takes away from the song, especially knowing I'd be that person had I been there.

Cops and Criminals

2008-01-31T07:18:00.000-06:00

Unreleased Track

A song of opposites, “Cops and Criminals” was only played live a few times in 2000 before being retired. It mostly just names a series of opposite things, from the mundane (“cops and criminals”), the clever (“iceberg lettuce or crystal meth,” “Dorothy Parker or Danielle Steele”), the prophetic (“terrorists or Presidents”—twenty-one months before September 11th) to the instantly dated (“neither send the Ku Klux Klan to the Million Man March”). Interspersed throughout are some skewed proverbs, such as, “Do unto others / Just do whatever works” before the song concludes with the closing lines, “Cops and criminals / Are one and the same.” This ending is a reminder that so many things, as different as they may seem and as opposed to each other as they may become, are, in the end, made of the same stuff. This is a ho-hum ending to a song I would just label as “OK” among the better songs that were springing up at the same time.

The live mp3 is from January 29, 2000.

Download Live mp3

Eight Years of Bliss

2008-01-29T21:37:00.000-06:00

A re-post from my personal blog.

Tonight marks the anniversary of the first time I ever heard the band Fluid Ounces live. I had been seeing a band called the Features around Murfreesboro and Nashville for the four months before, and I had bought my first Fluid Ounces record, Big Notebook for Easy Piano, a couple of weeks before since the Features were opening for them on January 29, 2000. The record was okay on first listen, but seeing them live was what really made the difference for me. I had really fallen for the piano songs in my two favorite bands at the time, the Beatles and R.E.M., and there I was being smacked by a band that employed that as its sound the whole time.

What I was not prepared for was the change that it would bring about for upon discovering the band. In college, I had largely tried to base my identity on being “the music guy:” you know, that guy who can always recommend the cool band that no one has ever heard of, collects vinyl, goes to hear live music all the time, puts down others’ music, etc. etc. etc. (see High Fidelity). Finding Fluid Ounces changed all that because I couldn’t be that music guy any more. You know why? I suddenly had no desire and no need to find any other music than what I had right there. To use the rock cliché, the songs were fun, the lyrics were good, and those guys could really play! But more than that: every song, in usually deceptive or metaphorical ways, felt like it was about me. Every single song resonated with me in such weird ways as I began to purchase their other records and hear the new ones as they were written and debuted on the live stage. I had always wanted to be a songwriter before that, but in addition to my utter failure at writing verse, I felt like this guy up there singing about a whole bunch of the stuff that I was going through, had gone through, or had felt for quite some time. He had effectively already used everything I would have had or wanted to write a song about (except for the opposite end of the rock spectrum on which the Minutement operate), all the while doing it better than I could. I suddenly didn’t care to find other bands since I found a band that sounded like they were writing every song about me personally, just down the street in Murfreesboro, instead of doing stadium tours around the country or living far off in Liverpool.

I ran from the show that night and purchased two more CD’s, the best of them all being In the New Old-Fashioned Way (until the recent release of Instant Nostalgia, which I consider to be a tie with it until further notice…). That one CD would stay in my player for months to come, as I was unable to listen to anything else for a very long time. I would see the band every time they would play, inviting all my friends and anyone who would come and hear them. Their interest waned though, and it took a while for me to come to terms with the fact that I was the only person reacting so personally to it all. I continued to see them and see them, listening to them far more than any other music. Their singer went through a divorce in 2004, a bit over a year before mine, and the songs that followed would serve as a great source of help as I went through the most difficult time in my life. He had already fallen in love again and was almost married again by the time I was actually divorced, and his subsequent songs were a great source of hope and inspiration for me that things would and could get better for me.

True, my musical tastes have evolved, and I’ve started listening to lots of new acts since that discovery, but Fluid Ounces has shifted to the center of it all. It doesn’t feel quite the same to listen to it now, since I don’t feel like I did when I was twenty-one anymore. But with all media, the more times you experience those things you love, the more that past experiences with them inform the present and call to mind previous experiences with them, as if a flood of nostalgia with each (in this case) song is recognizing and enjoying the sum of all the times I’ve listened to and enjoyed it, augmenting the experience for the better.

For posterity’s sake, that night’s setlist was as follows:
Life of the Party (intro)
Vegetable Kingdom
Melissa’s Birthday
Cops and Criminals
Encyclopedia Brown
Amount to Something
Get Yourself Gone
Eleven:Eleven
Sugar Mama
Out of Your Element
Record Stack
The Last Thing
Smitten
Poet Tree
She Blinded Me with Science
Have Fun (Seth solo encore)

I have just posted two songs from this show in the last week, and I’ll post another song and a live mp3 from that very show on Thursday.

Record Stack

2008-01-28T07:10:00.003-06:00

From Big Notebook for Easy Piano and Soaking in the Center of the Universe, Vol. 2

So the story goes that the band in its shortest official line-up (Seth Timbs, Doug Payne, Trev Wooten, and Elliott Currie—Jason Dietz had just left, and this line-up played two shows before Sam Baker resumed the drum duties) went to New York City in spring of 2000 to play in a showcase for the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame and could only play two songs. The people initially took no note of the little piano band from Nashville, treating them with the curt uppitiness of big-city folk seeing another in a long of line of country bumpkins playing for their “big break” in the big, scary city. The story goes that the band played “Make It Through” first, and then a band member, presumably Doug, turned to Seth and insisted they play “Record Stack.” The people there had never heard the song before, and although Seth was tired of it from playing it at every show since he was in Ella Minopy, he conceded. The crowd went crazy, and the band was treated very well after that. So the story goes, at least.

This is easily the single most memorable song in the entire Fluid Ounces canon. It leaps out from among the throngs, whether sitting in the middle of the record on which it was released or in the middle or at the end of a Fluid Ounces live set. There are other Fluid Ounces songs that infuse an Eastern-European groove, but none that execute it so accessibly. And more than that—it’s just so catchy! For these reasons, it has always been a crowd pleaser, and it has been a standard in the set for every line-up of Fluid Ounces and almost every show before 2006.

As Seth once said, he compacted a long, mostly bad relationship into a one-night stand and subsequent “month in sin,” to describe this song that uses rhyme as its strongest component in its lyrical tango. The chief image defining the song is when he sings, “I had her in the sack / But just that once.” Attaching anything that rhymes with “sack,” we are given the song’s title; the line, “she smoked the last in the pack;” and the high-point of the song, when Seth sings, “So I got my records back / I smashed my Marshall stack,” followed by a loud thunder of discordant piano and guitar. The chorus is the unforgettable singing-borderlined-on-shouting of “La da da da da da,” which is perhaps what makes this song both so catchy, so easily (probably too easily) accessible, and so memorable. (Using the same chords, the Features would later modify this chorus into their classic, “Thursday.”) You can hear Seth scratch his throat numerous times during the recording, giving it a remarkable intensity that is a counterpoint to the Robin Wilson comparisons that his voice would get, especially after the release of the second record.

The song goes into its final chorus after a brief pause on the recording, which Seth would turn into a moment to add something surprising to each live show—a random saying (“this song has been brought to you by chicken tenders”) or, more often than not, a snippet from a random song—from random Irish drinking songs to Self’s “Better Than Aliens” to whatever strikes Seth’s fancy when the song is performed.

By the summer of 2005, as the song was at least nine or ten years old, Seth and Brian Rogers were tired of playing “the hit,” tired of it getting yelled out by show-goers and tired of practicing it, and so it gradually fell on the back-burner, not having been performed, to my recollection, since December 9, 2005. My official prediction is that this song might get played one additional time before the band calls it quits for good.

I understand why the band is tired of it. I’m tired of it too. I’ll admit it was the first song to leap out at me when I first heard Big Notebook on the first night I ever listened to the band, and I was elated a few weeks later when I heard them live for the first time and they played it (if the recording wasn’t such low quality, I’d post that cut of it because Justin’s drumming on it is sooo tight with the band!). But as the Doug Payne era went on, I began to feel like Fluid Ounces was becoming a shadow of its former self, re-treading In the New Old-Fashioned Way songs a little too much, and this song was among those I became tired of. It was performed once with horns, at The Whole Shebang release party, which is the mp3 I’m providing here for download in all its epic glory. With the final line-up, I accepted this song as a necessary evil in each set. Now that it’s been gone so long, I find myself wishing they would rock it out one more time for a random encore some night. Here’s to hoping, I guess.

Download Live mp3

Here's a video where it is paired with "Ambiance," which I never would have put with this song and am happy to discover this new cohesive live moment.

The Last Thing

2008-01-24T07:08:00.000-06:00

From Foreign Legion

I am expecting as much dissension to this post as when I said that “Daddy Scruff” should have been left off of Big Notebook, but here goes—I love love love “The Last Thing.” I think it is the point when most people lose their taste for Foreign Legion, but to me, being a bigger fan of that record than most other Fl. Oz. fans, every song before it on the record leads us to it, with each one pulling us closer on the emotional trip. The song itself is about hitting bottom. Of all the break-up songs, of all the heartache we’ve heard about, “The Last Thing” shows us what life is like at its worst after a break-up: you can’t work, you can’t think about anything else, you can only drink.

This song’s closest companion, in feel and subject matter at least, is INOFW’s “Bigger Than the Both of Us,” and in many ways, the songs are almost inter-changeable. “The Last Thing” is set apart from its predecessor because of its epic bridge that pulls open the shades and lets a ray of beaming sunlight in the form of hope juxtapose against the dreary tone of the record up to this point. “Keep up your spirits, boy / There’s too many fish in the sea!” The speaker knows that there is a brighter future ahead of him; he knows it and hopes for it. But in this stage of grieving, this “last thing,” he must dwell on it and truly hit bottom. He can’t help the way he feels, and as the song seamlessly returns to its sad feel, he acknowledges that time will heal the wounds…eventually.

This song’s other companion piece would be “Smitten,” which the band would play directly after “The Last Thing” on more than one occasion, with Seth Timbs saying, “Here’s a song about a radically different subject.” The two were rightfully placed together on Foreign Legion, and in the over-arching story of the record, serve as its turning point, the elbow of the record if you will. The protagonist hits bottom in the one, and his glimmer of hope from before remains and pays off with his elation in “Smitten.”

I think I have some fond memories of this song that help to aid in my love for it. First off, all of the songs of Foreign Legion hold a place in my heart as they were what were being performed when I first began seeing the band. It was the record I hadn’t heard yet since it wasn’t even finished, and so I often went to the shows to experience a different set of songs (and a different line-up) from what I was hearing at home on Big Notebook and INOFW. The last night that Matt Mahaffey lived in Murfreesboro, Fluid Ounces played, and during the bridge of this song, he ran in from the Boro’s back entrance and danced around the room a la the Scarecrow in the “If I Only Had a Brain” sequence before rushing out, all during the bridge. I remember a soothing feeling of hearing this song on the same day I’d just broken up with my girlfriend that same year, which turned out to be the song’s last performance. The band did not play it again, notably at Justin Meyer’s final show, which I thought would have been a shoe-in for a dedication to him before he left town.

Fool Around

2008-01-21T08:05:00.000-06:00

From The Whole Shebang

“Fool Around” roared its way into Spike and Mallets sets sometime in 2001, with Seth Timbs hopping up from behind piano, placing Jeff Keeran there so he could rock out on guitar. Trev Wooten gave it a slightly more funky edge with his bass line than you’ll hear on the record or from Brian Pitts, and Tony Keats’ note-for-note precision lead-guitar work that always reminds me of David Gilmour laid the groundwork for this firecracker to become a classic rock tune (in both senses of the term). I can understand why Jeff and Seth chose not to include any of Seth’s songs on Peep, Jr., Spike and Mallets’ full-length record, as each needed his own avenue to showcase his songwriting exclusively, especially with Seth moving to the West Coast and preparing a record for Japanese release.

It became quite the crowd pleaser once the final Fluid Ounces line-up got underway in 2004, having received its most widespread recognition on The Whole Shebang. The youthful exuberance that this song both conjures and requires became the focal point of the guitar set, which was then augmented by the bluegrass speed of “Selma Lou.” The song requires a big sound, with roaring, stadium-rock drums like you’ll hear at Exit/In (like you’ll hear in this live recording from August 19, 2005, featuring Matt Mahaffey on drums), but in contrast, it requires a garage band feel with its energy and countless phallic references to paint a picture of two adolescents making out at her parents’ house, yet still requiring a skilled guitarist to pull off the larger-than-life leads that complete it so nicely.

Somewhere along the way, it was realized that the crashing G-chord at the song’s finale allowed room for a brief quote of Led Zeppelin’s “Over the Hills and Far Away” opening riff, which became a standard feature to its ending, as well as Tha B sometimes parodying the opening of the lyrics by singing, “Hey Sether, you’ve got that love that I need.”

Download Live mp3

Finger on the Button

2008-01-17T07:24:00.000-06:00

Unreleased Track

It would be much more effective to have his exact quote, but Sam Baker once said something to the effect that Los Angeles is an experiment, and the experiment has failed. In exclaiming, “The experiment has failed!” Seth Timbs both references this quote and declares his independence from the city that took him from his native Tennessee home for two years. When I listened to this song at its lone performance on July 3rd, 2004, I liked it, but when I listened to its words more closely after I heard the live recording (available below), I was encouraged that Seth Timbs would indeed be returning here from Los Angeles.

The song fantasizes about destroying the city of Los Angeles, with the speaker’s finger on the button that will launch the attack, musing about armies and aircraft and missiles poised at the ready. Its refrain says, “Because it’s beautiful, it must be destroyed,” which is a curious description of an odious city that was “born without pity or shame.” This refrain could refer to its “perfect little place on the map” that will soon be demolished, or it could be a nod to the attitude of the city itself, treating anything good or worthwhile as something to be exploited.

The shocking thing about this song is that even though it is written in a time when America is so dead-set against war, it is so uncharacteristically violent! It does mention that the attack will not begin until “all the good folks” have made it out, then speaks only of the destruction of the geographical destruction—except for a brief mention of some group of people (sorry, I can’t make out exactly what he’s saying in the recording—“soul suckers”?) sleeping in a coked-out stupor while the invading armies come in. Declaring that, “In the later years, they’ll say that we were visionaries,” Seth Timbs becomes like a James Bond villain out of Moonraker or something, driving the point how dead-set he is on getting out of that city. Perhaps it’s best that this one didn’t get out too far, as it could have easily stirred up a back-lash among those who cannot see it simply as the musing of a fed-up Tennessean displaced from his home.

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Millionaire

2008-01-14T07:06:00.000-06:00

From Instant Nostalgia

Seth Timbs left for Los Angeles in the spring of 2002. I was sad that I would no longer get to see Fluid Ounces live sets, but I somehow knew that I hadn’t heard the last of it. A year went by, and all I’d heard was a rumor that Seth was performing in Los Angeles as Fluid Ounces with Mac Burrus and Justin Meyer. Then, on March 31, 2003, a friend of mine on the Features’ (now defunct) message board posted a message with the headline, “Seth Timbs Solo Show Tonight at Slowbar, 9:30,” after reading it in the Nashville Scene. The message itself, directed toward me, just said, “Bitch.”

Flabbergasted, I grabbed my recording gear, and off to Slowbar I went. The opening song was, “Millionaire Meets Millionaire,” (whose title was shortened with the release of Instant Nostalgia to just “Millionaire”) about the marriage and divorce of two very wealthy people, a clash of titans if you will. In a world where they do not have to work to earn a living, where “money is the only object,” these two people come together with enough money to change the weather, and their marriage is a lucrative business deal. Then things turn sour. Their businesses get locked up as they fight to divide them, with the little billionaire they created their only reason to stay together.

“Millionaire” would be played again at the release of The Whole Shebang and remained in heavy rotation at Fluid Ounces shows, most often as the opening song, for all of 2004 and for many of the sets in 2005. As it was played more, it became more orchestrated, as it was mostly bare piano even after the long intro for the first few times it was played. Its heavy play insured it a place on Instant Nostalgia, where it logically serves as the opening track.

Run, Rabbit, Run

2008-01-10T07:30:00.000-06:00

From In the New Old-Fashioned Way

I always considered this song among the most Beatle-influenced moments, if not the most, of all the Fluid Ounces songs. I think it reminds me just enough of “Cry Baby Cry” (if only because of the same structure in both titles) and texturally of “Sexy Sadie” to make me think that it could work on the second disc of the White Album, although its title could be more directly linked to the single line in Pink Floyd’s song, “Breathe,” where the title is actually sung.

Even the most amicable of break-ups will require a time apart to lick wounds, gain perspective, and sort out the complex feelings that come with a relationship, amplified by its demise. “Run Rabbit Run” explores this space in a relationship, when our speaker laments the speed in which his former partner has taken refuge after their break-up, sharing his tender side that he is not happy with the new arrangement. Referring to her as a rabbit, then, hints at the resentment toward her that he feels at the same time assuming both parties are “reminding ourselves / How we love you so.” The song closes with asking her to come back around, in hopes that he might have some chance to learn how to treat her, reminding himself how he loves her so. The final line, “Everything is allowed,” gives this song a surprisingly open end and room for infinite interpretations of what exactly that means in light of the rest of the song. Your guess is as good as mine.

The video presented here (yes, we are still doing videos!) is from June 15, 2001, and it features a brief commentary on the collapse of Spongebath Records at the end, followed by a hearty stretch by Sam Baker.

Ambition to Love

2008-01-07T07:30:00.000-06:00

Unreleased Track

This is the only Fluid Ounces song I can name for sure to have never been demoed, meaning that the live mp3 presented here, another from July 3rd, 2004, is the only recording of this song that exists (too bad it is mired so badly by crowd noise). Perhaps the fact that it was never demoed is why it was never explored in a full band setting.

The song itself is the first to come from Seth Timbs in his jaded view of love in the wake of his first marriage. Singing, “When people talk about falling in love / They just make up shit,” is his most singular assault on love that he will ever make in the canon, as all the songs to come before and even after it remain unwavering (well, there are a couple of exceptions mentioned below) in their hope for a brighter future. I would wager that the reason this song was never played again is that Seth chose instead, upon further reflection, to retract this statement, in lieu of “To Cure the Lonely” and “Private Hell,” which focus more on individual solitude than outright despair about love itself.

It should also be noted that this song is a stark contrast to “Come On Out,” which also debuted that night as the opposite extreme of “Ambition to Love,” a romantic invitation, and it would become a standard in full-band sets, going so far as to earn a space on Instant Nostalgia. “Ambition to Love” sounds much more like a standard Fluid Ounces song than “Come On Out,” which may have been another reason to discard it in lieu of a more experimental song.

Whatever the reason, I’m thankful to have documented this show and this song for the rest of us to consume.

Download Live mp3

Birdbrained

2008-01-03T09:15:00.002-06:00

From Big Notebook for Easy Piano and Remember Cassettes, Vol. 1

More ambiguously religious than other songs on Big Notebook, “Birdbrained” reflects the theme of coming of age and coming to terms with one’s religious upbringing in the form of discussing Darwinism and evolution. Paradoxically, this song discusses both the evolution and devolution of mankind, as our speaker refers to his youth as swimming in, “Edens of amoebas on a planet same as this one / With the spineless and the miserable,” only to stand up on dry land in the form of a bird and, “join the upright and the uptight and the miserable.” The song then paints a bleak portrait of living in a disillusioned state, both in religious terms, in which the speaker is “gnarled like Nicodemus,” and in need of some counsel, asking for it outright, and in a broader sense, stating in the bridge that, “the world’s a worm and the beak at best.” The speaker then describes his wings molting off, implying a further evolution into something else, coupling this image with a “sense of dread,” and “waddl[ing] in disgrace, back towards my nesting place / Join the spineless and the timeless and the cynical.”

This intense moment of Big Notebook is easily one of the darkest on the record, with the only glimmer of hope hooking on the end of two refrains and stating, “The world is old and still naïve, the way I try to be,” which is both a reference back to Evolution and to a person aging and coming to terms with his coming of age.

Hung on Every Word

2007-12-31T14:03:00.000-06:00

From The Whole Shebang

An interesting premise for a song, the song whose name I gave to this blog is about the treacherous effects of the rumor mill as our speaker hears that a certain someone harbors certain feelings about him. Upon hearing that she can’t get enough of him, the speaker vows to make her prove that this is true. He says that if the rumor is not true, it should mean nothing to him, but he finds himself too excited about the possibility to just let this rumor be “a lot of noise in [his] periphery.” And so going on a simple rumor, he rejects logic and anything telling him to restrain himself, only to plunge into a situation that probably does not end favorably, hence the imagery of being executed, as the song ends in a cacophony of guitar walk-downs and shouting, “hung on every word.”

I will confess that I thought this song was the low point of The Whole Shebang from my very first listen to the record. I became a fan of it in the summer of 2005 when the live band began playing it, adding its energy and power to the guitar set. It was short-lived in the set, and its last performance that I can recall is from January, 16 2006, from which this recording was taken.

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Invincible Boy

2007-12-27T16:32:00.000-06:00

From Instant Nostalgia and the Japanese release of Foreign Legion

This song started out as one among the throngs of Seth Timbs demos, but among the few that has actually surfaced. I believe I heard it said that Mac Burrus had requested to Seth that he write a song called, “Invincible Boy,” and Seth was obliged to do it, penning words about the youngsters of today and their detachment from reality as a result of being so engulfed in technology and media (for a similar theme, see “Twenty-First Digital Boy” by Bad Religion*). A demo was made, and the song was performed live once in 2000 or early 2001 in one of Seth’s acoustic appearances (which I wish I could access so I could post it). The demo was released on the Japanese version of Foreign Legion, and very few of us in this country got to hear it.

It features one of those melodies, the “make way” part (perhaps a reference to the H.M.S. Makeway, the name given to Fluid Ounces’ touring vehicles), that you’ll swear you’ve heard some at point before (the Beatles hold the copyright on most of those melodies, but occasionally other people stumble across another one). Like the vocal melody of “How to Be Happy,” it just makes so much sense that those sounds should come together!

Anyway, this song lay fallow for years before it did something that no other Fluid Ounces song has ever really done. It evolved. When the final live band began playing together, they were mainly showcasing tunes to promote The Whole Shebang. Interludes in the set in which Seth played guitar have come and gone as long as Fluid Ounces has been around, but with hits like “Selma Lou” and “Fool Around” being so guitar heavy, it was necessary to include a guitar set in every Fluid Ounces show for 2004 and 2005. They began to include other guitar songs, and around the time Brian Rogers vetoed playing “Lazy Bones” live anymore, the band pulled this one out of its collective hat.

The new live version was heavier than the original demo. Kyle Walsh used a shaker with one hand and played the kit with the other, adding backing vocals to emphasize the word “way” every time it appears in the song. With two electric guitars, a jamming solo was added to the end of the song, during which Tha B rocks out while Seth sets down his guitar, only to sit down at the piano and finish up with a solo to make a smooth transition to the rest of the set (the live version I’m including here is from May 27, 2005—not my best live recording of the song, but the only version I have of this particular way of performing it). Sometimes, with almost no pause, Seth would immediately count off and then launch the band into “Paperweight Machine,” which made for an exciting musical moment for those of us in the audience.

Recording began sometime in the summer of 2005 with drums and bass, and then it continued to evolve to what I think is its quintessential version for Instant Nostalgia once Seth and Brian re-vamped it in early 2006. A drum machine was used, and the solo became a freak-out jam between an electric piano and an electric guitar, filled with too many cool parts to mention.

Download Live mp3

*The song I mentioned above is the only Bad Religion song I’ve ever heard.

Best of Everything

2007-12-23T08:07:00.000-06:00

From Awkward Middle Phase: Seth Timbs' Home Demos, Volume One

This song was played live a few times at the very beginning of 2005 as the band was experimenting with several other new songs in order to break new ground after The Whole Shebang, the best of which was kept and became Instant Nostalgia. This one and “Bombardier,” another of my favorites, didn’t make the cut. Fortunately, we were given a copy of this song for Awkward Middle Phase.

Seth Timbs said this one was retired because of its “Foldsness,” which, not having heard enough of Osama Ben Folds to know one way or another, I could not distinguish in this song or any other. It features a great piano line as its intro and reaches toward “Smitten” in the way that it celebrates two people being together and feeling on top of the world just because of they’re together. It also has traces of “Make It Through” as it compares walking a high-wire to the earlier song's flying trapeze.

Eleven:Eleven

2007-12-20T07:35:00.000-06:00

From In the New Old-Fashioned Way

Eleven reasons why “Eleven:Eleven” would have been the perfect leading single for In the New Old-Fashioned Way:
1. Its infectious catchiness will stay in your head for hours on end.
2. Which part is the verse, and which part is the chorus? Only a large-scale vote could resolve this.
3. At the time, the band’s best bet to break free of the chains of Ben Folds comparisons was to embrace the jazz that soaked what they were doing around this time. This song is the closest the band sounds to being a jazz combo aside from “Sucker” and “Lend Me Your Ears.”
4. The solo, complete with the easily identifiable quote from Tholonious Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser,” is perfectly accentuated by a single note by Tha B, attracting fanboys the world over.
5. With its pensiveness played in such a fast and clever manner, it would attract music lovers to listen so closely to it to detect the subtleties of its story.
6. This song is surrounded by all of the best songs on In the New Old-Fashioned Way, so casual listeners who would have bought the CD just for this song would have likely found the other songs to branch them out to the awesomeness of this record.
7. The old saying is to make a wish whenever you see a clock that reads, “11:11,” and even though this song doesn’t reference this directly, it’s almost like a wish to cure some relationship woes.
8. “Vegetable Kingdom” had already been shopped on college radio stations months before, and with the new CD coming out, Spongebath set out an online vote among fans to decide whether “Drought” or “Luxury” should be the first single. I believe “Luxury” won, and I never thought it held the strength to be any type of single. And as for “Drought,” well, it would be my distant second choice after “Eleven:Eleven.”
9. I would have loved to have seen “11:11” shirts with a Fluid Ounces logo and a clock on them with the simple statement, “The Time Is Now…”
10. Did I mention how hard it is to expunge “The time is now 11:11” from your head once it gets there?
11. Irony: a three-minute song about a single minute in time.

The video presented here is from Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1999.

Sick

2007-12-17T07:31:00.000-06:00

From Soaking in the Center of the Universe, Vol. 1

This song was originally written and performed with Ella Minopy, but Seth Timbs brought it with him to help beef up the fledgling Ounces’ sets in the early days. One of the lyrics says, “You’ve known my kind to write god with a lower case g,” which is a reference to Lower Case G’s, Ella’s only studio (or perhaps semi-studio?) release. As to whether this song appeared on that EP or if this is a pre-Ounces recording, I don’t know. (Tha B, can you help us out with that one?)

The other songs around this time focus either on love gone wrong or the ills of religion exclusively, but this song blends the two together so seamlessly that it could be about either one. Either way, we know that Seth Timbs was about to be sick!

The song is filled with brilliant little lyrical moments, so many that I won’t list them here as I’d be printing the whole song, but I’ll mention that my favorites are in its contrasts (“from my Superman heart/ to your Kryptonite eyes”) and one of my single favorite religious references in any Fluid Ounces song (“from my Mennonite heart/ to your Baptismal eyes”).

Many confused this lone b-side from Big Notebook as a live track because it ends with some raucous Ounces shouting at what sounds like some sort of drunken party, but this was obviously grafted onto the studio recording as the quality is too good to be a live recording.

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Big Empty

2007-12-13T06:52:00.000-06:00

From Big Notebook for Easy Piano and Soaking in the Center of the Universe, Vol. 1

This song begins in utter silence, with just Seth Timbs alone in the studio asking, “Is it rolling?” (Those words are not on the Soaking in the Center of the Universe version.) A single acoustic guitar then begins to lead us into a very mysterious place as whirling guitars and sustained, reverberated piano notes join it, and we hear Seth’s quietly strained words leave lots of space to breathe and think within the microcosm of this song. (It reminds me of Self’s “Placing the Blame,” only Matt Mahaffey says the word “man” at the end of a few lines, making me always think that extraneous word would work at the end of every line or every other line here.) “I’ve got bigger fish to die for,” rings out from among all the descriptions, beginning to align the many images filling the great big empty that is this relationship coming to a bitter end.

I think what makes this one jump out as a bona fide epic is when they change things up for the amazing bridge, when quietly moving along turns into shifty rhythmic piano moves as Seth begins,

“I packed my bags for a lengthy stay in a tropical place
I couldn’t keep myself contained
So, it’s official we’re ignoring monumental consequences
We just can’t erase
I love you more when you’re away
And when you’re gone I walk the floors’
I’ve got duties to ignore”

The fast delivery is juxtaposed against the space of the rest of the song, with breaking free of the “big empty” of this relationship and setting us up for “Poor Man,” the next track on the record. But the seamless transition into the end of the second half of the song shows our narrator is not quite finished with toils he’s experiencing with this relationship.

Brian Rogers has alluded to this song being a live favorite early on, describing it as both an “epic” and a “hit” (which probably explains its inclusion on the Spongebath compilation). It never emerged again on any of the line-ups I’ve ever seen, as much as I’d love to see this one performed some day.

Crazies

2007-12-10T07:09:00.000-06:00

From The Whole Shebang

On one of the many incarnations of the Fluid Ounces message boards that have come and gone, amid many discussions of what songs people wanted Fluid Ounces to revive at their live shows, I steered one such conversation toward songs that I hope I never heard played live again. Most were songs that I’m still tired of from before Seth Timbs moved to Los Angeles (“Marvel Girl” and “Luxury” come to mind—because they always seemed like easy songs added to live sets as throw-aways to add length and song-recognition to the sets), and the only one I listed that they were actually playing at the time was “Crazies.” They never played it again, and I take credit for the demise of this song, whether I had anything to do with it or not.

It’s not a bad song, but I tend to associate it with past relationships, and I think it was given too prominent a place with its frequent plays, and I just got tired of it. It does a lot of things right, though with the nice, “La da da da da da da, la da da da da da”-ing and a great piano outro.

I guess, and maybe this is brought on by the fact that I’ve done a lot of “growing up” since this song was debuted in 2001, that my chief problem is how the song flaunts its naïveté and boasts of a love that “couldn’t work out better in the movie,” yet in the end, the “love so simple it was made to go on and on and on,” for both Seth and me, proved not to be that at all. Thinking specifically of having this song played at my wedding reception, it seems to embody pride coming before a fall to me. I guess Seth doesn't feel that way about it. That is why I was surprised that it stayed in Fluid Ounces sets as long as it did, on through 2005, before I killed it.

Mountain Man from Mole Hill

2007-12-06T06:43:00.000-06:00

From Awkward Middle Phase: Seth Timbs' Home Demos, Volume One

Written on guitar and first performed at the first of two of the band’s only piano-less sets, this one in the summer of 2000, “Mountain Man from Mole Hill” essentially takes its premise from the Beatles’ “The Fool on the Hill” and runs with it, fleshing out the ideas into a more fully realized vision of what Paul McCartney was trying to say and do.

The song begins with a marching drum intro and then ascends into a high place in which the mountain man can see the world below, comparing the people in the world below to ants as they busy themselves with making mountains out of mole hills. The song has no true chorus to speak of, using the spoken title as the refrain to punctuate each verse at the beginning and the end. Its bridges then serve as the two haiku within the song that almost show us what sets the mountain man apart from the ants as the first one says,
“And the ladder to heaven
Climbs only halfway,
But it’s over the weather
And the sun shines all day,”

while the second one says,

“And the sooner or later
Gets closer each day.
But it’s just human nature
To sit and watch and wait.”

The second of these then goes into a blistering Doug Payne solo as the song then leads back into a third verse amid some very Brian Wilson-esque backing vocals. It then cools down as it brings us down from its higher place and coasts us back into a station to go forth and work among the ants, hopefully to fight against their industry and ability to turn mountains into mole hills, whatever they may be.

Out of Your Element

2007-12-03T06:40:00.000-06:00

Unreleased Track

It may be low quality of this recording (from January 29, 2000, my first Fluid Ounces show—though I’m not the moron recording this and asking why the minidisk player is still on “track 1” in the first few seconds of the song—I was lucky enough to find and trade for this recording), but “Out of Your Element” is not a song I reach for when looking for my favorite Fluid Ounces songs. But if I could name an anthem to concisely sum up my experiences with both college and marriage, “Out of Your Element” is it:
“When I was out of my element
I did the strangest things.
So I’m compiling up the evidence
And it doesn’t add up to anything.”
For the immediate sense that this song is about me, I do consider among my favorites, and the fact that few of you have heard this forgotten tune (until now, at least) has always kept it close to my heart as a song about me for me. It has a certain accessibility to it since it is written in “the people’s key of G,” and features one of the simplest guitar riffs for novices to emulate, unlike the rest of the catalogue entirely. The lyrics in it are ambiguous enough to be applied to anything (i.e. one’s experiences with college or marriage), making it one that I wish had caught on more so that I could hear others’ interpretations of it.

The song was among the many that debuted with the new line-up the night mentioned before, and it was because of it that the band would include guitar sets for the next six months until Justin Meyer left the band that summer. The band would not have any more guitar sets until the final line-up debuted in 2004, and it was necessary to showcase the guitar songs from The Whole Shebang. But this song never re-surfaced, and I’ve since been given the impression that Seth Timbs prefers it that way.

Maybe the demo will turn up someday anyway.

Download Live mp3

Available!!

2007-12-01T09:21:00.000-06:00

That's right, friends! Fluid Ounces finally have Instant Nostalgia available for sale online. Download it at their website!

www.fluidouncesmusic.com

Seriously, this is the one that gives In the New Old-Fashioned Way a run for its money as the best record! You've read the blogs, and now you can hear the songs!

Come On Out

2007-11-29T07:22:00.000-06:00

From the yet-to-be-released Instant Nostalgia

While most dismiss this song as their least favorite in current Fluid Ounces live sets, (a “go to pee” song is another name), as well as on the new record, “Come On Out” has remained among my favorites since Seth Timbs debuted it in 2004 at The Whole Shebang Release Show. First off, it’s a romantic invitation, a call out to a special someone to leave with the speaker, conjuring images of moonlit summer nights, running and dancing through open fields.

Structurally, this song is very unique. The rhythm is set up by three chords, each played for one beat in three-quarter time, creating a waltz without being an all-out waltz like “To Cure the Lonely.” On top of the chords, the guitar and piano play dreamy leads, with delicate chord voicings and sometimes Seth uses more of a vibraphone sound on the keyboard. The chords provide the rhythm structure so soundly that it gives Kyle Walsh a chance to add color to the song like a guitar or piano usually do. They even gave him a drum solo—think more Elvin Jones on Coltrane’s Crescent than John Bonham on “Moby Dick.” Seth described the solo as making “your heart swell up and burst.” I only wish there would have been more of a drum solo for the final recorded version.

December 9, 2005, was my favorite performance of this particular song. Seth had just acquired a new keyboard for playing live, and he was experimenting with different voices for several songs, and Kyle Walsh was really starting to get comfortable and push on the drum solo, as you'll hear. I also make a rare appearance in one of my live recordings by yelling "Woo-hoo!" as soon as they start playing this one.

Download Live mp3

Bigger Than the Both of Us

2007-11-26T06:57:00.000-06:00

From In the New Old-Fashioned Way

Human beings are the most complex living things alive on our planet. When two of them come together, especially in a loving, physical relationship, the result can only be more complex. And so that relationship becomes bigger than the sum of its parts, as this song discusses in its title and very straightforward lyrics about the bitter end of a relationship.

Even though this is far from my favorite Fluid Ounces song, it illustrates very well how the words and music of Fluid Ounces have impacted me. When I found this body of music, it seemed to express the way I was feeling thematically with words I hadn’t yet imagined and to massage thoughts I’d been thinking on my own (like the previous paragraph--whether I just filled in some blanks and interpreted it a certain way to suit me, I don’t know).

This is one of two tracks from In the New Old-Fashioned Way that I have never heard performed live, and so there is no recording to pass along.

Back to Two

2007-11-25T07:32:00.000-06:00

Having exhausted most of the pool of songs I have pre-written, I'm going to slow down this blog a little here around the half-way mark to only two posts per week: Monday and Thursday. I'll probably pick it up again in the new year.

Tokyo Expressway

2007-11-24T15:10:00.000-06:00

From The Whole Shebang

The funny thing about “Tokyo Expressway” is that it’s probably the most singularly autobiographical song that Seth Timbs has written, and even though few people can relate to its storyline of traveling to Japan and being dragged from performance to party on a rigorous schedule while completely unable to sleep, many people see this as one of the most affective songs on The Whole Shebang. I think the reason is that here we see a side of Seth that is a different kind of insecure from what we’ve heard him before. Yes, we’ve heard about the toils of his love life, and we’ve sympathized with him, but here he sings about his own career and his own fears, including his insecurities regarding a love relationship that he is already involved in (whereas he usually sings about relationships in their sad demises), and I think that resonates with most people who hear things in this song presented in a new way we hadn’t heard before.

I try to subtly praise this song when I communicate with the band in a one-man effort to keep it alive at the band’s live shows. I wondered if its mentioning of Seth’s ex-wife by name has anything to do with it, though I thought it was interesting that in a few performances he sang, “Thoughts of Malin and mother and father,” instead, heralding his new love interest that would become his wife. And even more strangely, after a few times, he went back to singing the original lyric.

Expect the Worst

2007-11-21T06:54:00.000-06:00

From Foreign Legion

When I feel my absolute worst, when something is really really bothering me, I usually pop in Foreign Legion before too long. I may even skip the first two tracks. The first I’ll hear is “Metaphor,” and then I’ll hear “Expect the Worst.” Why? “Expect the Worst” sounds like it was written and recorded in the pits of hell itself, and when I’m feeling my worst, it feels like I’m in good company to listen to this song.

Here I will add that the story line featured in Foreign Legion that I mentioned in the “Sugar Mama” entry shares a lot in common with Weezer’s sophomore album Pinkerton in that both follow very similar storylines of terrible feelings of loneliness to meeting someone with whom the two protagonists can find love and understanding. I’ve come to realize this as I tend to listen to both of these recordings when I’m feeling my worst, and like “Expect the Worst,” there are a couple of songs on Pinkerton, occurring at about the same place on that record, that sound as if they too were written in the pits of hell as well. But I digress…

I work with lots of pessimists, and I’ve noticed a small point that this song makes. It is one thing for a pessimist to expect the worst because he or she will always assume he or she is right. But anyone who can expect the worst because he or she knows other people will know he or she is right, that’s really saying something.

Ushuaia

2007-11-19T09:28:00.000-06:00

From Awkward Middle Phase: Seth Timbs' Home Demos, Volume One

Ushuaia is the southern-most city in the world, and Seth Timbs had a very vivid dream about living there, strangely, before he even knew anything about the city itself. He did a little research after the initial dream and used it to concoct a story about the city. Seth then added delightfully clever little zingers throughout, particularly “the bastard sons of dead explorers” and, “fell into the crease of their maps.”

Crossing the finish-line at just over six minutes, this longest Fluid Ounces song has an epic feel to it that reminds me of Smashing Pumpkins, primarily because of the long outro that ends the song and adds at least another minute to its running time. I think its length takes away from my enjoyment of it, along with its falsetto chorus whose words I don’t entirely understand to this day. This song only had a brief stint of being played live in early 2001, debuting the same night as “Paperweight Machine” in December, 2000, before it was retired when Jason Dietz left the band, taking his unmistakable lead bass with him.

One Tough Customer

2007-11-17T07:40:00.000-06:00

Unreleased Track

One of the two known Fluid Ounces songs to be written in Los Angeles about Los Angeles, “One Tough Customer” is about a young biker covered with tattoos, trying at a young age to show the world how tough he is despite his young age.

I somehow doubt that he’s earned his Red Wings though.

The song was debuted in 2004 at The Whole Shebang record release party during Seth Timbs’ solo set, and it was given the full-band treatment in early 2006, though only for a couple of shows. It is debated by all of us who know about both versions as to which is better, but I always thought Tha B’s guitar intro that drives the song throughout was more appropriate to the song’s subject matter than the piano. I’ll allow everyone to decide now by providing both versions here for download, with number one being solo from July 3, 2004, and the second being the full band from January 19, 2006, at the Basement in Nashville.

Download Live mp3 (solo)

Download Live mp3 (full band)

Ultimately, I was glad that it was retired and, more importantly, not given a slot on the valuable real estate that is Instant Nostalgia, which is the first record to be released since I’ve been a fan that has all the songs I wanted on it and none of the songs I hoped would be omitted.

How to Be Happy

2007-11-15T07:10:00.000-06:00

From Instant Nostalgia

“This one’s for Malin,” says Seth Timbs before playing this song, referring to his wife, whom he met while playing with the Secret Commonwealth.

As one of the last Fluid Ounces songs written, we get a snapshot of a very different Seth Timbs from the one we’ve gotten to know through the years listening to all the records. We’ve gotten to know him through his largely autobiographical songs about the ills of love and relationships as a fun, sensitive guy with his heart on his sleeve. Suddenly though, erased like sand castles on the beach are “Bigger Than the Both of Us” and “The Last Thing.” All the “Record Stack”s, “Private Hell”s, and other songs are still with us to enjoy, but Seth has moved on to a new phase in his life.

I’m not sure if happiness is the supreme state of human emotions as so many advertise it and still others strive for it with such great desperation, but I do know that truly and deeply experiencing happiness is indeed something to treasure. As I have listened to this song, it has occurred to me that it is truly an amazing thing to find someone who can teach one how to be happy, and that it is a wonderful compliment to pay someone to acknowledge that they he or she provided a person with such a rare and wonderful gift. Its bedroom setting makes it the most intimate Fluid Ounces song (even though others, like “Burning Daylight,” may have a more romantic feel), especially in its beautiful second verse, which is my favorite part of the song.

It reaches its crux, and perhaps the denouement of all things Fluid Ounces as the lesson of all the years rings out when he says at the end of this song,
"We should know by now
it's enough, just to love and be loved
Ev'rything else is gonna slip through your fingers."

“H2BH” also features dual guitar solos, the first being Seth’s, probably his best lead guitar work ever, followed by Tha B’s, which is played to close out the song. The recorded version of the solo closely resembles the one on the live mp3 presented here from December 9, 2005, with the primary difference being that we can actually hear Brian tear his guitar a new one as he beats out a three-peated chord in the middle of the solo as the band pauses to bow down to him in perfect time.

Download Live mp3

Liquorish Vampires

2007-11-12T08:31:00.001-06:00

From Big Notebook for Easy Piano and Remember Cassettes, Vol. 1

In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a college town full of aspiring musicians and recording industry majors, it always seems like a good idea: a local, independently-owned coffee shop that caters to local hipsters, giving them a place to study, socialize, or just hang out and look cool. To make the place even cooler, have live music. Sounds like money in the bank, right? Then why have so many sprung up in Murfreesboro, only to close their doors after a short time, while simple beer holes like the Boro and Gentleman Jim’s can stay in business forever? I don’t think there is an answer.

But one such place was called Java, and it was open in the early to mid-nineties. There, the Features would play their first show. Seth Timbs and the Mad Hatters would play their first few shows there as well. Seth Timbs was employed there around that time. In fact, one night, apparently while he was working, his friends Matt Mahaffey and Richard Williams met there and the three of them discussed starting an independent label based in Murfreesboro to showcase the local talent, especially Matt’s new band Self and Seth’s new band, Fl. Oz. Without deliberation, Seth suggested that it be called Spongebath Records, and a local legend was born. So the story goes, at least.

“Liquorish Vampires” was written about Seth’s experiences working there, with people coming in at all hours of the night and the strange hours they would keep to study.

Beyond that, I don’t really know what this song is actually about. Being schooled in lyrics by R.E.M., I too easily accept the lyrics as lines completely independent of each other that only work together to create a feeling in its listener (I know, I know, then why am I of all people writing a blog about interpreting the lyrics of others?). With this song and “Daddy Scruff,” I simply enjoy them and interpret them based on the feelings they convey rather than their intended themes. Sorry to cop out on you like that.

The live mp3 is the last one that surfaced from the 2005 radio performance.

Download Live mp3

Downscope, the Boat Captain

2007-11-10T14:13:00.000-06:00

From In the New Old-Fashioned Way

In an epic tale reminiscent of Colonel Kurtz, Emperor Palpatine, or George W. Bush, a military leader, drunk with power and sure that his twisted and insane vision is the only way to achieve true world peace (and in this case, probably more than a little bit bitter that he’s “the last sea dog to sail under water”), runs his submarine aground, causing a fire (“with oil from the engine and bits of propeller”) that burns away the ocean, leaving the sea bottom “as dry as the desert/ and the last pools of water were baked by the sun.”

Live, this song is among the shortest songs in the Fluid Ounces catalog, finishing up at two and a half minutes. In the New Old-Fashioned Way would not have been complete without this song, but the only place where it could work was sort of separate from the rest. So it was tacked on the end. In order to become the kind of epic closer the CD needed, an additional two-minute instrumental was added to give the dramatic ending a haunting coda, featuring Brian Rogers’ quirky guitar and Seth on accordion with Sam Baker playing with the dial on a short-wave radio. The sounds you hear as the frequencies shift were just what happened to be broadcast as Sam was doing so, including the “I tell you something, I’ve never felt so much love in my life,” which he serendipitously stumbled upon.

The live mp3 presented here is from the In the New Old-Fashioned Way CD release party from 1999 and features a wonderfully quiet first chorus to contrast the epic second chorus (whereas they’re both equally epic on the studio version).

Download Live mp3

Encyclopedia Brown

2007-11-08T07:20:00.000-06:00

From Foreign Legion

When you’re a kid with an older brother, it’s almost assured that the music that he likes is the music that you like. In the late eighties and very early nineties, my brother was into monster ballads a la “November Rain,” and “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” and so was I. I was always the one listening to music: I always had a record player and a tape deck while he usually didn’t. Even though we didn’t own copies of these songs that he liked so much, it was still our favorite. When I actually started listening to rock radio in 1993 and started to begin to form my own opinions, my older brother steered me in the direction of R.E.M., U2, and Smashing Pumpkins. These bands would be my favorites throughout most of high school, and the opinions of bands I’d later encounter were all ultimately based on how they compared with these three acts. By the time I went to college, my musical tastes had shifted dramatically. Although I still loved the bands that then formed the center of my listening (though U2 was faltering, driving their last nail in the coffin when they released Pop), I had branched out into the Beatles, Sonic Youth, Self, and many others that my brother didn’t get into, no matter how much I played them for him.

When I went to my first Fluid Ounces show in January of 2000, I was fairly new to the scene of hearing live music in local bars, but it was starting to feel like old hat. I was loving it immediately, and when they played “Encyclopedia Brown,” a song about a book character whom my brother had read about when he was in middle school, early in the set, I thought he might enjoy hearing this band. I saw them again when they played their next show the following month, and this time I had my brother in tow. I was worried that he would be uncomfortable in the setting of a smoky dive-like bar like the Boro. His love for the music over-shadowed the setting, and I then had someone to attend shows with me, which I’d never had before. And what’s more, I finally recommended a band to him that he liked! Through this, I’d introduce him to other bands he’d like, such as the Features and De Novo Dahl, but Fluid Ounces’ prominent place in his listening repertoire was a crowning achievement in giving back to him what he’d given to me when I was younger (and thus saving my impressionable mind from liking Aerosmith and Meat Loaf).

Like my brother, Seth Timbs was a fan of the Encyclopedia Brown book series when he was younger, and this song pays homage to the prepubescent detective by crossing the mystery of a teacher’s stolen grade book with that of a young temptress who charms our hero as a ruse so that she can commit her terrible crime. Hit by a BB gun, our hero is hurt and realizes that he has been out-smarted by this middle-school femme fatale. Ultimately, he manages to solve the case and recover the grade book from a secret place, making the neighborhood safe for middle America once again.

The live version presented here, with a solo every bit as magnificent as the one on the recording, is from February 2, 2002, at Seth Timbs’ last Tennessee show before he shipped of to L.A.

Download Live mp3

And for those of us who teach nowadays, we have police officers posted in our schools to drag grade book thieves downtown to juvi if they don’t come quietly or fess up to their crime in a timely fashion.

What the Hell?

2007-11-05T06:15:00.000-06:00

From Awkward Middle Phase: Seth Timbs' Home Demos, Volume One

Many songs have proven that Seth Timbs is a romantic at heart, but this song stands out to me as it is the only Fluid Ounces song that takes that romanticism to the level of being—get ready for it—conservative. Normally we find Fluid Ounces songs to feature a moral ambiguity to them, but here is a song taking the moral high road.

This is one of many Fluid Ounces songs in which we are shown scenes from a party for college-aged people. This “army of Katies and Heathers” is wowed by any cute boy who can play a few guitar chords (a little bit wrong) as they,
cling to the wall like Helen Keller,
wondering which lucky boy’s gonna be their
Anne Bancroft
And teach them all that they know.
(in a delicious double reference to both The Miracle Worker and The Graduate, though the second may have been unintentional). The song laments their laissez-faire attitude toward new-found college freedom in a sexually-charged world they may not be ready for. It even takes a step further in mentioning their haste to dismiss church as a time for luring boys (“Sunday go to meet in dresses/ open button for playfulness”). The closing lines best sum up the whole song as a girl asks a frat boy/douche bag,
“Play me a song that makes a girl into a lady
I know the image won’t portray me well
It’s nice to think it’s true
There’s nothing to lose
So what the hell?”

The song was written as Seth Timbs was pulling double duty in both Fluid Ounces and Spike and Mallets, and I always thought this one sounded more like a Spike and Mallets song. I don’t know what factor made it a Fluid Ounces song. It was played during Sam Baker’s second stint with the band and retired when Seth left for Los Angeles. The live video is from the porch of the Red Rose Coffee House on August 24, 2001, and it features one of the most hilarious examples of classic Fluid Ounces stage banter afterward as Seth discusses on of his first trips to Japan.

Burning Daylight

2007-11-03T07:55:00.001-06:00

Unreleased Track

Situated at the Eastern edge of the Central Time Zone, Middle Tennessee, for all of its richness with autumn colors, becomes a dark place to live after switching to Standard Time from Daylight Savings Time, with dusk occurring around 5 o’clock at first and 4:30 by the time we get to the shortest day of the year on December 21st. Although “Burning Daylight” does not specifically reference either of these events, its delicate sound always conjures images of the yellow, orange and gold of both the warm October sunlight and changing autumn leaves as they quietly whisk us away to a quiet place where two lovers can spend a day alone together, away from all that distracts them, where they can simply enjoy each other and do absolutely nothing else. And in those perfect and unending moments, where nothing is happening except the passing of time, the sparse percussion reminds us of the sound of color-changing forests as the “ooh la la”s mimic the birds just before they migrate to warmer climates. The words themselves are a romantic invitation to a lover to leave and come away with the speaker that echoes the more recent “Come On Out,” and the sheer beauty of the sound makes it hard to believe that anyone could resist, especially since the music alone draws so many of us in so quickly and thoroughly.

Download mp3

To Cure the Lonely

2007-11-01T06:13:00.000-06:00

From the yet-to-be-released Instant Nostalgia

When Fluid Ounces began performing live again in 2004 with what is probably its final line-up, they mostly played songs that showcased the fantastic The Whole Shebang. They played two songs that had been played a couple of months before at the record release party, “Come On Out” and “Millionaire Meets Millionaire,” both of which made it onto the yet-to-be-released Instant Nostalgia. The third song that made its true debut during this time was “To Cure the Lonely.”

Seth Timbs had just moved back to Tennessee in the wake of his first marriage, and the songs that he wrote during the time that followed were often a dramatic return to songs of heartbreak and despair. “Private Hell” and “Oh, Tatiana” are two of the bigger “hits” to come out of that time. This downbeat waltz asks as its central question, “If truth is stranger than fiction, then why can’t we all have someone with us to cure the lonely affliction?” I went through my own divorce in 2005, and I found a soothing sense of familiarity in hearing these songs during that time, that someone else had gone through something similar and had felt the way that I was feeling.

Seth had played this song with Brian Pitts on the radio on Steve Cross’s show that summer before, and when I downloaded the song, it quickly became the most-played song in my iTunes collection. The full-band version from Instant Nostalgia is very good as well, but I haven’t had quite the love for the song since the wake of my divorce, and therefore haven’t listened to it as much. The live version is currently sitting at #2 in my total number of plays, and it has still been played over 80 times on my iPod. I'm presenting the live acoustic version here.

Download Live mp3

Make It Through

2007-10-29T06:00:00.000-06:00

From The Whole Shebang

This song debuted in March, 2001, and has the distinction of being by far the most-performed Fluid Ounces song over the last six years. Its up-beat nature would have made it feel right on the yet-to-be-released Instant Nostalgia, but it works very well on The Whole Shebang. Despite being played at nearly every show (I can only think of about two in which it hasn’t been played), I’m not quite tired of hearing it. I still love the lines, “After winter comes spring.
After summer comes fall.
You gotta rob Peter to pay Paul.
You gotta get paid and blow it all.”
Its solo is very scripted, but I find it one of my favorite moments in the live set to see in what ways Brian “Tha B” Rogers is going to find to add subtle changes. And I also love when Seth adds “Da da da”s to the solo like he does so very quietly on the record.

The stuttering drumbeat that gives this song its signature makes it almost impossible to dance to it (to do a dance that has a name, at least), but it isn’t uncommon for a few people to get up and shake it a little when this song gets played live. And though definitely debatable, I might consider this the quintessential Fluid Ounces song of the late era (though “Private Hell” gives it a run for its money).

The live version I’m presenting here is probably the most energetic performance I remember hearing, which is from the first Mike Mahaffey Tribute show, and it features Seth, Brian G. Pitts, Brian Rogers, and Matt Mahaffey on drums. A testament to all of their musicianship is that they had only held one brief practice with Matt and came out playing amazingly tight together.

Download Live mp3

Daddy Scruff

2007-10-27T08:29:00.000-05:00

From Big Notebook for Easy Piano

I am typing this entry behind considerable shielding as I am preparing for slings and arrows to be launched in my general direction for what I’m about to say.

“Daddy Scruff” should have been left off of Big Notebook for Easy Piano. As a stand-alone song, perhaps released on Soaking in the Center of the Universe, I might have liked it better. But as it stands, we get just under six plodding minutes of vague lyrics near the middle of the record that nearly ruin everything that comes before it and after it in the track listing. “Shamrock” and “Tricky Fingers” launch the record and set its tone: fun-sounding songs about darker subject matter. “Birdbrained” cools things off a bit as we have a more intense number that is decidedly less upbeat as the previous two songs, and then we get an even more downbeat number with “Liquorish Vampires.” The momentum of the record and the tone established in the first two songs is teetering as we’ve just had two numbers in a row that have deviated from what they’ve done. Then comes “Daddy Scruff,” sticking out like a sore thumb from the rest. When “Record Stack” begins five minutes and forty-six seconds later, it seems off kilter as it returns to the original sound and tone set by the first two songs on the record and allows us to finally start listening to a cohesive record. I put lots of thought into how the tracks could be readjusted to not kill the momentum of the record, but in the end, the removal of “Daddy Scruff” is all I can come up with to give Big Notebook a chance to compete with In the New-Old Fashioned Way and Instant Nostalgia as my favorite Fluid Ounces record.

Sucker

2007-10-25T06:49:00.000-05:00

From The Vegetable Kingdom EP & the Japanese release of In the New Old-Fashioned Way

Relationships are funny things. It’s funny how people can overlook so much because of what they call “love.” The fear of being alone again, that dreaded condition in the unknown, will push too many people into terrible places. In this song, our poor speaker is in such a relationship, willing to put up with his lover’s extra-curricular activities because, as he says,
“I’ve been around before;
I’ve seen the good and the bad.
I’ve been around before,
And this is the best I’ve had.”

This song stands out among the rest as it has the most outright jazz feel to it of any Fluid Ounces song. The vocal melody is as poppy as the rest, but the sparse piano against the rest of the instruments playing like an all-out jazz combo (including an upright bass) make for a fresh feel to the song. Add Brian Rogers’ lovely harmonies to the top on the final chorus, and I might even go so far as to call this song a masterpiece.

Metaphor

2007-10-22T07:20:00.000-05:00

From Foreign Legion

As I teach the concept in my middle school reading class, a metaphor is a comparison that does not use like or as. Seventh graders can use that as a simple definition to distinguish metaphors from similes. That’s all they need it for, that’s as far as they think about it, and that’s as far as their minds can take it because they’re still developing their ability to process abstract concepts.

As we get older, some realize that our entire method of conceptualizing the world around us is steeped in metaphors. Whether it’s, “Life’s a bitch,” “Everything is Free,” or, “God is Love,” all of these, for better or worse, are metaphors, not to mention how American dialect is full of idioms, all of which are technically metaphors as well. Sometimes I wonder if we are even capable of completely extricating metaphors from our perception of the world around us.

“There is a metaphor to explain it all,” sings Seth Timbs as this song opens, brushing by this notion. He then unleashes a slew of intentionally cliché metaphors to describe a relationship gone awry. The second verse attempts to find a more suitable metaphor to specifically describe the speaker in his present situation (including a “pensive drag left holding the bag,” the last time in which Seth Timbs referred to himself as a “drag” was in Ella Minopy’s song, “Science Fiction”).

The most clever twist thrown into the whole thing is when we hear the lines, “I should be over it by now/ I should be happy as a clam/ My metaphor’s a simile,” then altering the final chorus to a series of similes before returning to the intro melody and ending this song with a series of loud sighs.

Joao and Latin Playboys @ Baird Lane

2007-10-20T07:20:00.000-05:00

From Awkward Middle Phase: Seth Timbs' Home Demos, Volume One

Two for the price of one today. Both of these are short instrumentals from volume one of the demo collection, which it now seems may become a multi-volume set after all, and neither demo really sounds like Fluid Ounces.

The title, “Latin Playboys @ Baird Lane,” puts a name to the feel of this track: that of Euro trash in off-white suits and pink shirts with large lapels and no tie, swilling frou-frou drinks from martini glasses as they try to impress large-breasted, WASPy American girls with their expensive European convertibles against an orange and pink sunset at some California mansion (more than likely located on Baird Lane). As they are running combs through their greasy, black pony-tailed hair, this is the music playing through the bass-heavy custom sound systems in their cars.

The most funk-infleunced Fluid Ounces moment, titled “Joao,” (no, I don’t know how to pronounce it either) reminds me of the short instrumental throw-aways that can sometimes be found between tracks on R.E.M. records. After a short bass solo, the song ends, and there’s nothing else I can think of to say about it.

Selma Lou

2007-10-18T07:03:00.000-05:00

From The Whole Shebang

I may be the only one who thinks this, but I think Fluid Ounces could become a country act with only slight changes made to the way many of the songs are played. The wordplay is cleverer than anything you’ll find in country music, but it is a lyrical structure used in country much more than the pop rock world. Early favorites like “Drought,” “Comfortable,” and (dare I say?) “Record Stack” could become country music without too many changes, as “Poet Tree” and almost any song from The Whole Shebang or Instant Nostalgia could definitely qualify. I’ve often wondered why Seth Timbs hasn’t tried shopping these songs among the suits on music row (especially while he was working for them) to see if any larger country act might use the songs, creating a new way to breathe life into the tunes, earning some money for his efforts from days of yore, and helping to create more of a name for himself simply as a songwriter.

It took Seth Timbs moving to Los Angeles to finally write and record an all-out country song (after seeing too many Felix Wiley shows, as he said when I first heard this song performed in 2003), and I think it could be the front runner for his attempts at marketing his music in Nashville’s big business. The band has gradually increased the tempo of this number as they’ve performed it over the last few years, making it even easier to imagine a bluegrass band picking up this song and making a radio hit of it.

The story is entirely fabricated, perhaps a little inspired by the film Cool Hand Luke, in which prison workers stop and salivate as an attractive female sexily washes her car while they are forced to watch and continue their labors. The version we get is that of a laborer working for the local Southern aristocrat on an expansive farm who meets his boss’s daughter and has a short-lived affair with her. He simultaneously revels in feelings the playtime sparked in him and laments that it was meaningless to her, with its good-as-gold chorus, “Selma Lou, this whole world’s gonna fall in love with you/ and I think I might do it too.”

The live mp3 is another performance from Steve Cross's radio show in which Seth Timbs plays acoustic guitar and Brian G. Pitts plays bass.

Download Live mp3

Go Lucky

2007-10-15T06:27:00.000-05:00

From In the New Old-Fashioned Way

There are lots of songs pertaining to a break-up on In the New Old-Fashioned Way, but “Go Lucky” stands alone as the one coming closest to celebrating it. This kiss-off song kind of meanders through a lot of emotions, from wanting to pin her down and not let her go to saying, “Don’t come crying to me.” The details of the relationship are no longer important (“Who got forgiven, and who got the business, and who just got the silent treatment?”), and our speaker is hearing about his lover second-hand (“Someone sent a letter…”). He hears she is going through similar stages, as she is going through a drinking phase while he is getting drunk watching sixty minutes alone. In the end, “don’t come cryin’ to me,” is a good maxim for our newly freed speaker, since time and wisdom have taught so many of us that staying away from exes for a long time after a relationship’s end is a good thing.

This song features the line, “Might be the new thing getting older each time,” which is the closest reference to the CD’s title, In the New Old-Fashioned Way that we’ll hear anywhere on the record. I have often wondered if this line is what caused the band to reference Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” for the title of their most monumental record.

“Go Lucky” was another frequent set-closer for the band with the original line-up and again in 2001. As much as I have always loved this song, I was usually sad to hear it because it meant that the set was over.

The first video is a fan-made video that uses the song with footage from the science fiction show Firefly, and the second is yet another from October 10, 1997. You can’t miss it, but I love when Seth Timbs stops playing in between couplets to take a swig of beer before jumping back into the song.

Master Plan and Pet Rock

2007-10-13T07:22:00.000-05:00

Unreleased Track

A metaphor for the music industry, “Master Plan and Pet Rock” is the story of two rappers who embody the great divide between business-savvy acts who tirelessly work to push their *usually* less-inspired work to as wide a demographic as possible (and I’m not just talking about the concept of “selling out” here either—most people who are successful are genuinely trying to make original music that they truly love) versus the myriad of talented, inspired musicians who have little to no concept of how to market their often ground-breaking music, especially against a resistant major label system that wants all music in neat piles of pigeon holes to maximize profits and create a profitable (and predictable) music market.

For example, the Kings of Leon hail Nashville as their hometown, but they are often scorned for doing so because they only played about two shows here before circumventing the local music scene and acquiring international success. They cozied up to major-label suits, and within two years they were “indie rock” darlings opening for U2.

Meanwhile, the Features, a band whose former employees claim that anything good that happens to them happens accidentally due to gross mismanagement, played locally for ten years and fought hard to get a record released on a major label, only to become the opening act for Kings of Leon before being dropped by their label shortly thereafter.

The biggest difference? Business savvy.

Come to think of it, anyone ever involved with Spongebath Records probably falls into the latter category.

The first rapper we meet in the song is Master Plan, whose name sounds like that of a successful rapper. He has his business degree and is entirely uninspired in all that he raps about, spewing clichés but still categorized as “promising.”

Then we meet Pet Rock, whose name is terrible in any music circle, who knows how to rap. People can’t get enough of him, even if he’s working a day job and living in a trailer park, probably signing away some of his profits by becoming a “registered trademark of Master Plan, LLC.”

Departing from the typical Fluid Ounces song structure, this demo features a keyboard and some very un-Seth guitar leads, and I think its biggest shortcoming is the way that it fizzles out at the end, simply repeating, “Why don’t you throw that demo on after this song?” I often wonder what would have become of this song if it had gotten the full-band treatment in any Seth Timbs project (though I’m not sure with which, if any, of them it would have fit at all).

Download mp3

Spill Your Brains

2007-10-11T07:13:00.000-05:00

From Big Notebook for Easy Piano

I was a bit disappointed when I found out that this song was about Alanis Morissette. Seth Timbs was obviously singing about someone he didn’t like, but finding out that it was her took a lot of the fun out of it, especially compared to Self’s “Moronic,” which did a much better job of putting that hack in her place. But, to be sure, this is a much better song than “Moronic.” In fact, it has been my favorite song off of Big Notebook since about the second time I heard the record. Finding out that it was about Alanis took a song that seemed so big and fun and placed an expiration date on it, putting it into a small little cubby hole reserved for “Peaches,” “Today,” and a slew of other songs dated specifically to the mid-90s.

I can’t put my finger on exactly why this song is such a favorite of mine, but I know a lot of people who really like it. I guess it’s because there’s a certain familiarity, and maybe even a little flirtiness (“you’re made of Estee Lauder,” “and getting prettier by the moment’s notice”) with the subject that made the relationship seem more complex than just someone who got played waaaaay too much on the radio.

It remains one of the few Fluid Ounces songs which I’ve never heard performed live in any capacity, recorded or otherwise, so there’s no download for this one.

Oh, Tatiana

2007-10-08T06:03:00.000-05:00

From the yet-to-be-released Instant Nostalgia

A song about yearning for a lover with the Eastern European feel (slowed down, this one would be a great tango, but they play it too fast to be a tango) similar to what we hear in “Paperweight Machine” and “Record Stack.” My initial distaste with this song was simply in the choice of the name of its subject: I thought that “Tatiana” was just too obvious of a choice for an exotic-sounding foreign name that’s four syllables long. As I listened to it more on live recordings, I started liking all the lyrics other than when it refers to the lover in question. It just seemed too easy to fit that generic name in there! Meanwhile, I discovered another one of my all-time favorite passages of Fluid Ounces lyrics in this song:
“Cause if one don’t get you
Then the other one will
In a major motion picture
or a rocking chair
You gotta land somewhere
It’s always sooner or later
Hither and yon
One minute you’re here
And the next you’re gone
You gotta be someone
You gotta love someone
You gotta know the end
Before it’s even begun
And be glad
Life is long
Yes, life is long
Say good-bye
But not for long”

Like “Vegetable Kingdom,” this song ambiguously addresses a very raw form of human longing, one that goes deeper than just a man loving a woman: more of a feeling that humans are somehow searching for a sense of becoming complete, most often attaching that feeling to loving another person. The delivery of these lines is the most frantic you’ll ever hear a Fluid Ounces song, begging for life itself to slow down to take stock of everything around.

The conclusion I reached is that in the end, Tatiana is like Don Quixote’s Dulcinea (another four-syllable, exotic name, though only slightly better than “Tatiana”), that she is more of an idea than a person, that she has a greater impact on the human psyche as an idea of inner peace than as just a woman, and that maybe, just maybe, she’ll only be found in death.

Courtesy of Steve Cross’s website, I’m posting an amazing acoustic performance of this song, with Seth Timbs on guitar and Brian G. Pitts on bass, from a radio appearance on WMTS on July 24, 2005.

Download Live mp3

You can hear the studio version over at the band’s MySpace page since we’re still waiting on the release of Instant Nostalgia.

City Lights

2007-10-06T08:24:00.000-05:00

From the Japanese release of Foreign Legion

I decided early on that I would not ask Seth Timbs about songs for this blog, instead relying on my own interpretations and my uncanny ability to remember what has already been said about them at past live shows. But “City Lights” baffled me, appearing as a demo on the Japanese release of Foreign Legion, never being played live, and sharing the writing credit between Seth Timbs and Tomoyuki Tanaka.

So the other night after the show, I asked him.

Tanaka is known in Japan by the moniker Fantastic Plastic Machine, and he mostly remixes the works of others for his own releases. When Seth was making regular trips to Japan, Tanaka contacted him and presented him with the song “City Lights” on which they could collaborate. Seth liked the changes and some of the lyrics that Tanaka had written in somewhat broken English. Once back in the states, Seth created the demo of the song that would later appear on Foreign Legion with his own similar lyrics. He presented the demo to Tanaka, and later yet another version of the song was created for release on Fantastic Plastic Machine’s 2001 CD titled Contact that featured Seth singing considerably different words over very different bossa-nova-styled music.

Contact is only available in Japan (and even I haven’t forked out the money to get that one), but you can hear the Fantastic Plastic Machine version, with Seth Timbs singing, through the video below, the discovery of which was what initially caused me to ask about this song.

Now we'll talk about the demo version. While many songs by the band Self get compared to Fluid Ounces and Seth Timbs’ style, this is the only Fluid Ounces song that really sounds anything like Matt Mahaffey’s work. I think it’s the layered vocals, sparse piano (in a sense that it isn’t the driving force to the song) and a more vibrant rhythm track than normal that lends its feel to Self more than anything, though it’s really only just a hint of Self.

To that I’ll add that Seth is most often applauded (understandably) as a piano player, and he often gets overlooked as a guitar player (which is also understandable in the ocean of guitar players that is Nashville). But here Seth shows off his bass chops like I’ve never heard! I’d love to see Seth play bass in a live band just for the change—as if seeing him play guitar in Hot New Singles for entire sets is still not strange enough.

Destined to Be Forgotten

2007-10-04T06:30:00.000-05:00

From The Whole Shebang

This remarkable song has only been performed live once (to my knowledge, at least), and its history is a twisted one. Produced by Matt Mahaffey, both he and Seth Timbs discussed this song in separate interviews, the former for Ink 19 and the latter for Popmatters. I have placed the two parts together for you here:

Seth: “I could never get the band to play it. They all thought it was too dismal. And one of the times I went out to visit California before I moved there, I saw Matt Mahaffey, and we had a whole day off, and he said, ‘We're gonna record "Destined To Be Forgotten" today. It pisses me off that you've never done that song.’ I'm like, ‘Okay! I love that song.’”

Matt: “It's one of his many songs that would have stayed in his closet for the rest of his life, so I said 'let's record it and you let me do whatever I want to on it,' since he's known for being very particular in the studio. So we finished it and he said it was one of the best songs he's ever recorded.”

The song was written sometime in the late 90s when the original line-up vetoed working it into their live sets. After being recorded later, it was initially considered for release on Foreign Legion, and I’m glad it was left off as its production style would have clashed with the rest of the record. I had heard rumors of the song since reading the Mahaffey interview in 2000, and was initially disappointed when it wasn’t on Foreign Legion, but equally excited when I saw that it had made its way on to The Whole Shebang, where it is the perfect closer for that record.

The subject matter of the song is another eulogy of sorts, this time for a relationship that is either long ended or coming to its bitter end. The speaker is lamenting the good times of this relationship, sad that the happy memories are now locked away in soon-to-be-forgotten history book as he knows both parties will be moving on with their lives and on to other relationships.

Being entirely produced by Matt Mahaffey, who added backing vocals (his first appearance on a Fluid Ounces record since his guitar offerings on “Shamrock” from Big Notebook), with bass provided by Mac Burrus, who collaborated with Seth in the first line-up of Moonie and the Johndogs as well as on the writing of a couple of songs, “Destined to Be Forgotten,” has a unique sound to it, not even mentioning the drums provided by Kelly Scott, who played with Failure and Tool, whose style is heavier than the drummers we’ve heard on Fluid Ounces records before.

Luxury

2007-10-01T06:25:00.000-05:00

From In the New Old-Fashioned Way

I had just started dating someone when I purchased and became obsessed with In the New Old-Fashioned Way, and she came from a family with a lot more money than just about anyone I know. She told me about how her parents celebrated her sister’s wedding by renting a large house for a week and throwing a continuous alcohol-drenched party the entire time. She wasn’t pretentious, mind you, but instead one of the last people you’d ever think came from a wealthy family. If George Harrison had ever showed up at one of her house parties, none of them would have made a big deal about it, probably not even mentioning it later on. She might have mentioned it very matter-of-factly, the same way she told me she’d acted in movies or been a model. Surprises like that keep a relationship very interesting. I think of her every time I hear the recorded version of this song about going to a party where everyone was very pretentious.

“Luxury” is one of three album releases by Fluid Ounces that does not credit Seth Timbs as the sole composer. Curiously, it is credited to all original band members, making me wonder if the song initially developed out of a jam during rehearsals. Filled with pauses for individual instrumental riffs throughout, it has more of a jam nature to it than any of the songs on the record. My favorite moment in the song was developed long after the song was recorded (and after this video from 10-10-97). After Seth sings, “A cousin Alice in Vermont,” in subsequent live performances, the whole band would pause while the drummer hits two roaring beats before the band kicks back in and the lyric finishes, “has got a husband who’s a general.”

Rest Stop

2007-09-29T08:29:00.000-05:00

From Awkward Middle Phase: Seth Timbs' Home Demos, Volume One

A song about an epiphany. The end of a movie told in a song, with its own soundtrack included.

A man wakes up, at a rest stop in Carolina, after the worst day of his so far (which reminds me of the joke in The Simpsons Movie, though the song was written much earlier, in which “so far” is used to imply that things could easily get much worse for the person). He hasn’t hit bottom in his life because of “drugs or addiction, or anything promiscuous,” he’s just down on his luck, a situation that most people with middle-class values have trouble accepting.

And in some moment of clarity, the man drives away into the sunrise, remarkably discarding all of the problems behind him to start his life over again. You’ve only met him for two minutes or so, but you can’t help but wish him the best as the music swells. You can almost see the end credits roll as the car drives off into the horizon.

Role Call

2007-09-27T07:13:00.000-05:00

From Big Notebook for Easy Piano

“Everyone’s a theologian,” a college professor once told me, “some are just better than others.” If understanding God is indeed learning to ask the right questions, perhaps asking, “What are we going to do if there is (or isn’t) a God?” is a better question than simply asking, “Is there a God?” “Role Call” is the culmination of all the religious imagery that buzzes around on Big Notebook and its only b-side, “Sick,” and it asks the former, perhaps more important question.

Throughout all his writings, Seth Timbs so fluently uses a familiarity with the vocabulary of Christian religion that I’ve always wondered exactly what kind of background he has with it, sometimes hearing hints of high church and other times noticing references more reminiscent of country churches and gospel music. He explored the topic of religion extensively when he was younger and playing with The Mad Hatters and before, as if struggling to come to terms with what he had been raised to believe, culminating in the hilarious, “Religious Interpretations,” with its chorus,
“Jesus lives in me
But I don’t know where he’s hiding
No, I don’t know where he’s hiding
Jesus lives in me
But I think he’s playing racquetball today.”

Older and wiser, Seth more seriously (but not too seriously) tackles the subject throughout Big Notebook, with “Role Call” at the center. Its title itself is a play on “roll,” as in a list of people belonging to a certain group, whereas “role” is a part played by an actor—the Greek word from which we derived the word hypocrite. With its countless metaphors, the song refers to dying and reaching the afterlife, being somewhat uneasy of what the outcome might be when it comes time to settle up accounts with “the boss upstairs.” And so he says, “I wish I wasn’t me” (another reference to being an actor and the title “role”), wishes he was lost in the mountains of paperwork (likening the inner workings of heaven to an elaborate bureaucracy), or would happily accept the “combo plate” at the expensive feast for all the honored saints in the afterlife.

There is no clear resolution to the plight in this song, but the chorus seems to come the closest to the heart of the matter,
“Where the Angels fear to tread,
Where it goes straight to your head,
And you’re left for dead,
where I wish I was.”
Put simply, he would prefer for death to be the end of it all as opposed to going through with the mind-games of religion (“Where the angels…to your head”) in hopes of finding some eternal reward or punishment after this life.

The live recording presented here is from The Whole Shebang CD release party on July 3, 2004, performed during Seth’s solo set. To this day, my favorite part of this entire show’s expansive recording is in this song, about two minutes and five seconds in, when you hear a sorostitute exclaim, “Damn! He’s good!” while standing in front of the microphones I was using to record the show. The piano interludes and speed with which he plays this truly sounds like he’s having a good time up there, making for a pleasant listening experience.

Download Live mp3

Sugar Mama

2007-09-24T07:14:00.000-05:00

From Foreign Legion

In my mind, Foreign Legion tells a story: it starts out in exposition about a musician and then descends into a story of his terrible break-up. Just when things look their worst, the protagonist meets a great girl and reaches a state of contentment, ending the story on a high note. Then, as the denouement, he goes stark raving mad. There are two interludes in the story, however, when the songs move from first to third person, and we are introduced to some completely separate characters in their own strangely-related narratives. The second interlude is “Encyclopedia Brown,” whose story loosely parallels a lesson that our protagonist has perhaps learned as he has been hurt by a beautiful woman and learned to be more careful with the fairer sex.

The first interlude in the overall story is “Sugar Mama,” a “torrid, torrid song,” as Seth Timbs once described it, which hints at a sense of desperation in both of its characters that parallels the story arc of the entire record. The song starts out with one of the jazziest moments on the record, which is indicative of the shift in sound following the previous two records, which were laden with lots of jazz-influenced moments and arrangements, moving toward the heavier chord structures and fewer toe-tapping moments of the last three records, as the rest of this song exemplifies, especially in its bridge.

In “Sugar Mama,” we are introduced to a college-aged pizza delivery boy from a “bong and basement world,” who has a chance encounter with a middle-aged woman to whom he delivers a pizza and ends up having a Mrs.-Robinson-type affair. Our awkward delivery boy is “young enough to please her lonely curiosity,” while she is, “old enough to be his every dream.” The song climaxes (literally) during the magnificent and epic bridge, when sexual tension gives way to coitus for our star-crossed lovers, both asking themselves,
“Was it as good as you’d have it to be?
Was it as good as that?
Was it as good as you thought it would be?
Was it all that?
Was it as good as you’d have it to be?
Was it all that?”
The layered vocals, piano solo, and lead guitar doubled with “doo doo doo” slow down as we return to a pensive reality, jarred back into it with a “jiggle and slap,” and the realization that there may be ulterior motives involved on the part of the unknown partner.

This “scene from a spring break movie,” and later, “b-grade movie,” treats its subject matter like American Pie in some places, with some of the most crude sexual references you’ll ever hear in a Fluid Ounces song. On the other hand, the song is oddly sympathetic toward the older woman, who has no husband (anymore) and no children. She wants to be a girl again, understanding the plight of so many single, middle-aged women in America. The story here is morally ambiguous, but even though we presume the relationship ends as the delivery boy “leaves the apartment with a complex,” and probably never sees the older woman again, the outro of the song, which reprises the musical theme from the bridge, implies that this experience was a positive one, somehow rejuvenating our middle-aged heroine into feeling, “twenty-one again,” with its ambiguous coda, “and that’s old enough.”

This song was played live in 1998 and ’99 (the video is from spring of 1999 in Grand Rapids, Michigan) and was already regarded as a “semi-old tune” when the Doug Payne era began in January, 2000. It was retired and never played live again after Justin Meyer left the band in the summer of 2000. I was sad to see it go when the next line-up emerged a few months later, but I knew it was not gone forever since I’d heard the recorded version of the song over the PA at Sebastian’s while attending the final Self show before Matt Mahaffey moved to Los Angeles (and boy, did it make me want to get a copy of it!).

I have always really liked when songwriters make it a point to give you a sense of place in their songs. With bands like the Minutemen and Sonic Youth (as different as I know they are from Fluid Ounces), I love that they repeatedly make it a point to remind us the listeners of where they live and how it influences them. Mentioning that, “this only happens in California/ this never happens in Tennessee,” gives us a little sense of that, although I think Seth better accomplishes this same point in his music by referencing several phenomena that could only occur in the Bible Belt (“potato salad days,” “Sunday go to meet in dresses/ open button for playfulness,” etc.).

Long Weekend

2007-09-22T06:53:00.000-05:00

Unreleased Track

A break-up song that sounds more bittersweet than most break-up songs, I wasn’t even sure if it was a break-up song (as opposed to a “take-a-break” song or a song about a lover just being gone for a weekend) until I’d heard it many, many times. I guess that it threw me off since it debuted and was performed when Seth Timbs was immersed in a relationship with his first wife, a time when writing songs about heartache reached its career low, at least until the last batch of Fluid Ounces songs and first batch of Hot New Singles songs.

The song opens and closes with the lines,
“Blue skies in your eyes
As you said [later, “sang”] your good-byes
And I tried to lie and say I wouldn’t miss you
But I’d have to be more dead than alive
And up until now that’s been easy.”
I have discovered this concept to be true as soon as any major change occurs in life: that when sudden change strikes, you look back to just days or hours before the event and simply ask, “Was I asleep?” Whether it’s a break-up or a terrorist attack, life is filled with little wake-up calls that cause us to return to vigilance. And even if our speaker wishes he could go back (when he says, “And up until now that’s been easy”), he’s still implying that he has had just such a wake-up call.

I have always been disappointed that this song didn’t last longer being played live and that it never made it to an official release. It was written in time to have appeared on Foreign Legion, and is the only song I can think of that could have fit into that record’s near-perfect cohesion if it had been sandwiched between “Poet Tree” and “Metaphor,” throwing an actual break-up song in before a series of songs about misery and heartbreak. It could have also worked on The Whole Shebang, a record which I thought needed another track or two to nudge it over the top.

But alas, it has remained unreleased…well, until now.

Download mp3

Happy Birthday, Seth Timbs!

2007-09-21T07:11:00.000-05:00

Have a good one!

And while I'm at it, congratulations on being a new dad.

It All Looks Good to Me

2007-09-20T07:26:00.000-05:00

From the yet-to-be-released Instant Nostalgia

Another feel-good hit off from the album that’s coming out (hopefully soon). It’s a short little rocker that starts out with an almost generic rock intro that quickly goes into one of the most danceable songs in the Fluid Ounces catalog. While it is too bad that one can only get about five under-arm turns in a swing dance before the song ends, the fact that it is concise keeps it fresh.

If you look at my blogger profile, you’ll notice that I use the lines, “The strain of livin’ is a terrible thing, but it does somethin’ wonderful and strange to me.” These lines were lifted from this song, and I’ve used them as a personal motto of sorts (Latin translation pending) over the last couple of years. I like the optimism presented in this song, especially in the way it presents how loving someone else can overcome the bad situations life throws at us, a theme often sought after in Fluid Ounces songs but rarely expressed so explicitly. I also love the way the rhythm of the words in the verses seem to just dance on top of the music, almost as if they are completely independent of the song, yet inextricably connected at the same time.

The live mp3 presented here is from the song’s debut at the 5 Spot on May 27, 2005.

Download Live mp3

And, for the record, I think this song is the best candidate to make the leap and become a Hot New Singles song, though it would take some considerable re-tooling to play it without the piano leads that make it pure Fluid Ounces.

Stick in the Mud

2007-09-17T07:49:00.000-05:00

From The Vegetable Kingdom EP

The five tracks on The Vegetable Kingdom EP were recorded at the same time as the tracks that would go on In the New Old-Fashioned Way. Two of them would appear on the full-length, and three would only be on the EP. When INOFW was released in Japan, “Sucker” was attached to the end of the record, and as much as I love that song, I found that it upset the perfect balance and cohesion on what is considered the band’s masterpiece. To add anything else after the haunting, instrumental close of “Downscope, the Boat Captain” could only hurt the original track listing.

So that leaves the other two songs on the EP, “Stick in the Mud” and “Sitting Beside Myself,” which are the band’s biggest forays into “prog rock.” Of these two, “Stick in the Mud” is my lesser favorite, one of my least favorite in the Fluid Ounces canon actually. I call it “half a good song” since I like the intro and the verses, which have very nice melodies and piano parts, I but have always felt that the pre-chorus and chorus, especially the shouting of, “No more!” is one of the few moments when the song almost falls flat.

The video presented here is another from October 10, 1997, and the performance was dedicated to Nashville jazz diva Annie Sellick, who puts on an awesome show herself, and who was dating drummer Sam Baker around that time (not Tom Sellick, as the band reports in the video).

Nobody Loves You (Like You Do)

2007-09-16T13:38:00.000-05:00

From The Whole Shebang

“When that song started out,” Seth Timbs recalled in an interview with Pop Matters, “it was meant to be a joke. I came up with it at work one day, and thought, 'Well, that would be a funny title.' But then I started writing it, and it started getting really serious and personal, but I kept going with it.” This song could have easily been an up-beat number, using that strange sense of humor and using a happy feel to describe a sad situation, sounding like “Spill Your Brains” or “Milk Moustache” if it had been on the first record, but as Seth has matured as a songwriter, he has actually grown to a point where he could write a song like this, where he can take a sad idea and put it into a sad-sounding sad and create something beautiful, even if it doesn’t include a glimmer of hope in its lyrics.

There are times, good times, when I think that in a world where husbands love their wives and parents love their children, this song doesn’t hold much truth to it.

But then there are other times, when I think of all the loneliness and misery in the world, and this song feels so true. American culture makes it so easy to become detached from any sense of community, to cut off contact with those around us or minimize it to shallow relationships and online prattle. In those times, this song has a soothing quality to cuddle up with until I feel better.

The song shares a prominent vocal line with the Beatles song, “Don’t Let Me Down,” which I think everyone, myself included, took it upon themselves to inform Seth about when this song was being played heavily at the live shows in 2004 and early 2005. He was aware of it when he wrote it. It’s funny how he can be praised in critical circles for “quoting” Thelonious Monk in the piano solo on “Eleven:Eleven,” but won’t be treated so well when “borrowing” a vocal line from John Lennon. The recording is the only song on all of the official releases in which Seth plays the drums. Kyle Walsh played on most of the rest of The Whole Shebang, but I guess Seth felt confident enough on this number to tackle the drums himself.

This song debuted on February 2, 2002, when the band played one last show in Murfreesboro before touring Japan and “breaking up” as Seth moved to Los Angeles. Knowing that they had taken the time to work up a new song gave me hope that I wasn’t hearing the last of Fluid Ounces, that there was hope that the project would continue to live on in spite of what turned out to be a two-and-a-half-year hiatus.

The live mp3 presented here is from Exit/In in 2004.

Download Live mp3

Happy Birthday, Brian Rogers

2007-09-14T07:18:00.000-05:00

You are the man, man. This site would suck (even worse) if it weren't for you.

If you're in the Nashville area, wish him well by being at the Fluid Ounces show tomorrow.

Milk Moustache

2007-09-13T07:11:00.001-05:00

From Big Notebook for Easy Piano, Soaking in the Center of the Universe, Vol. 2, and Remember Cassettes, Vol. 1

Cigarettes. Drugs. Caffeine. I think there are more references to drugs in this one song than the entire rest of the canon combined. Everywhere else, the references are kind of in the background, but here the speaker relishes in all of them as only a student (or former student) at a party school in a college town could.

And what’s more, this song is fun, like more-fun-than-“Have Fun” fun. We get a quick piano intro, and then the bass exclaims, “Whoopee!” as we dive in for a three-and-a-half-minute romp that includes some of my favorite vocal harmonies to be heard on Big Notebook. In between references to various vices, we get a glimpse of a common relationship trap to plague kids in high school and college: the relationship fueled by substance abuse. From chorus to chorus, the speaker goes between wanting company and not wanting the company of his girlfriend, as if the amount of alcohol or weed or mixture thereof determines his tolerance of the girl and his willingness to pursue the relationship.

The video is from the porch of the Red Rose Coffee Shop from August 24, 2001. After the song is finished, there’s a fine example of how to conduct a sound check at a venue where you have to bring your own PA system.

Marvel Girl

2007-09-10T07:13:00.000-05:00

From In the New Old-Fashioned Way

If you’ve ever scanned the internet for Fluid Ounces or Seth Timbs-related material, you may have noticed that it seems like nearly every review from the era of In the New Old-Fashioned Way seemed to make a point of prominently mentioning this song. I know of a couple of fans who place this song in their “Top 5” lists for the band, and although I really like the song, I can’t say I’d place it as high as they do or that I’d consider it one of the two or three most-mentionable songs on what is generally agreed to be the band’s pop masterpiece. It is another in the long line of songs that seem to hop out and greet you as only a track one song can, and I think it was entertained as being the opening track to In the New Old-Fashioned Way since it actually is the first song on the promo versions that were released.

But it is a very clever song about a comic book hero (who is also known as Jean Grey, the one played by the white Bond girl, for those of you who don’t know the X-Men beyond the movies—I always hoped this song would make it onto the soundtrack of one of the films…) with the clever lines, “Marvel Girl’s origin will be explained in the bridge,” pause, then whispers, “bridge.” Seth also exclaims, “Cities fall to rubble as her power unleashes,” which he later mentioned as fitting among the black-listed lyrics after the events of September 11, 2001. But they continued playing the song regularly anyway.

This one was played live regularly up until the latest (and probably final) line-up was christened, and it seems to have fallen permanently to the back-burner with all the new songs that Seth wrote and the large number of songs being considered for revival. Personally, I heard it live too many times and am happy that it’s strictly enjoyed at the beginning of In the New Old-Fashioned Way and remembered on live recordings now (like the video below, another from October 10, 1997, at Main Street).

Till the Danger's Past

2007-09-08T07:15:00.000-05:00

From the yet-to-be-released Instant Nostalgia

This is my current favorite Fluid Ounces song.

Following the footsteps of “Record Stack,” “Fool Around,” “Big Deal (Out of Nothing),” and a few others I’m sure, Seth wrote this song and initially performed it in another band before assimilating it to the Fluid Ounces canon. I first remember hearing it sometime in 2005 as one of two songs Seth would sing while playing keys for Brent Baltzer’s alt-country outfit Miles of Clear June. I never paid much attention to it until the fall of 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when Seth almost apologized for its lyrics as they seem to have been specifically written about that terrible natural disaster, the government’s mishandling of the affair, and the subsequent exodus from the ruined city. The fact that the song is so prophetic speaks volumes of Seth’s imagination that he employs in his songs. I can vouch for hearing it before Katrina, which is hard to believe when you read the words:

“I heard that air raid siren blare
Before the storm blew through the air.
You can’t shoot it down.
You can’t fight it back.
You just hunker down
Till the danger’s past.

And I saw the fool sittin’ on the throne
Like some idiot boy Caesar
In an ancient Rome.
He is a coward,
puffin’ out his chest
Just struttin’ around
Till the danger’s past.

Here comes the rain,
Here comes the flood.
Guess we’ll build a great big boat
And put the pets on board.
Live under water
For the rest of our days
Drink like a fish, anyways.

We’ve got a home
Up in the sky sky sky.
It must be like the perfect drug.
Wake in the morning
feeling fine fine fine,
So happy to see
There’s no damage done.
…
Fire up your engines
Get behind the wheel.
Let that kick drum
Shake your rear view mirror.
Get all your good times
While they last.
Just shine it on
Till the danger’s past.”

This country two-step song got a wonderful make-over in 2006 when Fluid Ounces absorbed it after Seth left Miles of Clear June, mainly because Brian Rogers is a much better guitar player than Brent, and Tha B infused a new sense of life into the number with lots of lead guitar, making it one of my favorites in a Fluid Ounces show where it was not among my favorite Miles of Clear June songs.

Let Him Go (Hats Off to Harrison)

2007-09-06T07:23:00.000-05:00

From Awkward Middle Phase: Seth Timbs' Home Demos, Volume One

One of Seth Timbs’ many songs that doubles as a eulogy of sorts. I remember hearing about the death of George Harrison in December, 2001—it’s one of the few times in my life that I’ve felt truly affected by the death of a celebrity. I was in my last week as a college student and working in a public high school. I heard the news on NPR as I rode in, and remembering that all schools are wired in with cable TV (which I never have at home, btw), I tried to see as much rare interview footage that they would milk out of it on every network as a way to deflect the undertow of emotion I was feeling.

This song was one of the few cuts from Awkward Middle Phase that I didn’t already have when it was released in 2006, but it quickly took me back to that deeply affecting moment when I realized that soul, that presence, that force, was not on Earth with us anymore. And even if George Harrison wasn’t really writing music anymore, and I wasn’t buying it if he was, a voice of understanding, love, and compassion had left us for good. We didn’t fully appreciate its presence since it had been singing “Here Comes the Sun” to us since our infancy, but as soon it was gone, it was a blow to us all.

And speaking for the generation of us born after the break-up of the Beatles, Seth finds the words to help us say good-bye, “Let him go. You know it couldn’t last forever.” And then he plays one of the longest guitar solos of any Fluid Ounces recording as if he is single-handedly playing George into the next life as we all tearfully realize that we have to move on in this life without him. It also should be noted that the solo is decidedly in the style of George Harrison, not a balls-to-the-wall McCartney solo like “Taxman,” or an over-the-top Clapton blues solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” but a melodic solo reminiscent of the decidedly Harrison “Octupus’s Garden” (minus a leslie cabinet) or maybe something off of All Things Must Pass.

I think it speaks to the power of the song that I have re-visited it every time death has visited me since then. Of all the eulogies of different types that Seth has written, I think this one is the strongest as it is the most uplifting.

Poet Tree

2007-09-03T08:32:00.000-05:00

From Foreign Legion

It may have been this song that inspired this, but I’m going to share my ultra-super top secret plan with you, dear readers. I want to start a band that only plays songs by Nashville/Murfreesboro pop bands from the last ten years, only play them as a completely commercial country band. I want to see if we can attract major label attention from Music Row (preferably Sony Music, because there’s something about being signed to a company that has both Michael Jackson and Blu-Ray DVDs), before anyone can realize we’re actually playing the wonderful music that’s been under their noses for years. Who’s with me?

Nashville has achieved the title of “The Music City” for God-knows-how-long, and in this dense forest where it seems everyone is a songwriter or a guitar player, where even the cop who pulls you over has a demo tape, Seth Timbs dares to make the poignant observation, “If a tree rocks in the forest, and there’s no one there to hear it, it might be the coolest thing that never reaches your ears.”

At the release party for In the New Old-Fashioned Way, Seth said that the story behind the inspiration of this song was too convoluted to explain, and he would later in an open letter describe the song simply as “a song about a tree who’s into gangsta rap. And the hits keep comin’!!” But the song serves as a eulogy for so many great bands (and dare I say, for Fluid Ounces itself) that have tried to make a name for themselves in the “Music City,” which feels a lot more like “The Musicians’ Graveyard” as I’ve lived here almost ten years and seen the rise and fall of so many amazing acts. Especially since the Features have fallen off the major label circuit, I’m still waiting to see a band come out of Nashville and actually “make it.”

I think this song turns off some listeners because of its use of the blues boogie made cliché during the rock-a-billy era. The other turn-off for some listeners to this song is that the lyrics are almost too clever, the double entendres a little too numerous and over-the-top, starting with its pun for a title. For a while, I’ll admit, I thought that saying, “So put your branches in the air/ And wave them like you’re apathetic,” was going a little too far. I got over that.

This was the first completed track I heard from Foreign Legion since it was available for download some two years before the record came out, and I was all too excited to get it. Once the record was released, I was surprised to find this song as track two, since it is usually played in the latter half of the live sets. I still love the piano solo on the recording, which uses a delightfully dissonant ending, which I wish Seth would utilize sometime when playing this song live. He has over time developed a somewhat scripted piano solo for the song that’s quite different from the recording, as you’ll hear in the live video, and I’ve noticed that the more energetic shows I’ve seen are usually topped off with a more aggressive piano solo on this song.

Speaking of live performances, this song is one of the most famous and energetic set-closers, and ever since Sam Baker re-joined the band in 2001, it seems like it’s the goal to see just how fast they can play it and hold it together. (It has gotten faster than the video presented here, which is from July 7, 2001. Note that during the pause toward the end, you can hear Tom Foolery imitating the woodland noises that you hear on the record.) It has gotten faster and faster over time, just like “Selma Lou” and “Oh, Tatiana,” and I’m always amazed to see Tha B still shred that solo in perfect time despite the tempo. It blows the mind!

I’m also including a live mp3 from The Whole Shebang Record Release show from July 3, 2004, when Popular Genius served as Seth’s backing band. Their horn section even joined them for the end of the set, including this song. You can really hear how much fun Seth is having when they start playing along with him.

Download Live mp3

Big Deal (Out of Nothing)

2007-09-01T08:52:00.000-05:00

From The Whole Shebang

This song (sans sub-title) was immediately a crowd pleaser when Seth Timbs added it to the roster of Spike & Mallets songs as he was playing keys and some guitar for that band in late 2000. At the time, the only other song Seth sang lead for Spike & Mallets was “1,000 Ships.” I was very surprised in 2003, upon being handed an advance copy of what would eventually be called The Whole Shebang, that this song had become a Fluid Ounces song.

I’ve always wondered what elements Seth considers when he’s contributing songs to other bands while keeping his own, what would make him decide that one was more suitable for another band than Fluid Ounces, his main song-writing outlet. For example, I don’t know why “What the Hell?” was played live by Fluid Ounces when it sounds more like a Spike & Mallets song both in its instrumentation and subject matter. “Big Deal” fit very well as a Spike & Mallets song, and could have worked well on their CD, Peep, Jr., which featured no Seth songs. It was a welcome addition to The Whole Shebang, and overall serves to improve the record, and I’ve since become accustomed to it as a Fluid Ounces song. Sometimes I’m a little slow in adjusting to change.

This is another song filled with religious imagery, focusing on the parable of the foolish man who built his rock upon the sand, whose house was subsequently destroyed in a flood, versus the wise man who built his house upon the rock and lived happily ever after in his superior choice of building sites. In the tongue-lashing the song gives its addressee, it then goes on to call him or (presumably) her a Philistine, which makes me wonder just how much Bible Seth was reading before penning the words to this one.

The live mp3 presented here is from December 9th, 2005, at Liquid Smoke on the square in Murfreesboro.

Download Live mp3

Vegetable Kingdom

2007-08-30T07:18:00.000-05:00

From The Vegetable Kingdom EP and In the New Old-Fashioned Way

I’ve heard many writers say that it is among their most gratifying moments when people come to them with completely viable interpretations of their writings that were unintended when the work was originally written. Although Seth Timbs probably grew tired of being asked if this song was about growing marijuana when it became a very minor radio hit in some places, I’ve always felt he wrote so much more than he was aiming for when he penned this opus that would get its own EP to help secure some radio play while the record, where it had a prominent place in the track-listing, was facing all the slow-downs that mire every record that I’ve known to be released out of Nashville.

One night at the Boro in 2000, Seth introduced it as, “a song about love and death down on the farm.” (In the video below, from 10-10-97, Seth says it’s about unrequited love.) He later told a friend of mine that it was in fact about a farmer whose wife had died, and the man couldn’t remember whether he had killed her or not. I was always pretty sure of this, as it is stated plainly, “Up on the weather vain/ down in the well/ Maybe you drowned there/ Or maybe you fell.”

But this song always resonated with me as it covers so many universal human feelings so ambiguously in just four minutes and sixteen seconds. Within that short time, we hear about love, life and death (and the circle of life implied within a kingdom of vegetables), memory, loneliness and alienation in such a way that the song could really be about any one person at some point in his or her life. The best part of the song, like so many Fluid Ounces songs, is the bridge, which includes some of my all-time favorite Seth Timbs lyrics:
“I wish the rain would come
And wash this dustbowl town away
Leaving rock and clay
A place to build the interstate.
The trees are bare
The crops have shrunk
Afraid to show their face in podunk.”

These uniquely American lines give a sense of longing and detachment like something out of a Steinbeck or Hemingway novel, the kind of strange things one’s mind can dream up while staring out the window of a car on a long road trip. And how many times have you heard the word “podunk” used in a pop song?

This song is also among the many “say hello” songs in the Fluid Ounces canon, and as many times as I’ve heard it, I still stop and think of the first time I heard it most every time. I knew the song existed because I frequented the Spongebath Records website throughout 1998-99, but I never stopped to listen to it. Instead I went to see the band on January 29, 2000, since they were sharing the stage with my then-favorite Spongebath band, the Features. I had bought and listened to Big Notebook for Easy Piano the week before to acquaint myself with the band, but sadly all I really remembered about them was the song “Record Stack” and that I liked the CD well enough to stick around after the Features played. After a brief intro, the band went straight into “Vegetable Kingdom,” and as Seth was welcoming us all into the Vegetable Kingdom with the debut of a new guitarist and bassist that night, it was like he was personally welcoming me into the most affecting music I’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing in my life. Never have I reacted so personally to a body of music as I have to Fluid Ounces, and I credit “Vegetable Kingdom” as the song to truly pull me into these wonderful musical places.

Three Times a Week

2007-08-29T07:49:00.000-05:00

For the next few weeks, I've decided to bite the bullet and put out a blog entry three times a week as I am wanting to go ahead and build up an archive here and while we are still building an audience. So expect another post every Saturday for the next few weeks.

Not One Reason

2007-08-27T07:27:00.000-05:00

From the yet-to-be-released Instant Nostalgia

As a contrast to “Tricky Fingers,” I wonder if Seth Timbs knew he was giving the world what seems to be its last Fluid Ounces song on April 8th, 2006, when the band debuted this song at the Boro on a warm Saturday night.

With its piano intro that would mislead the un-trained ear to believe the band’s about to start playing “Vegetable Kingdom,” Seth then belts out, “Iiiiiiiiis theerrrrre” (live, Kyle Walsh then taps out one of the catalog’s fastest four-counts to align the band as Seth finishes his question) “not one reason I can give to show my love is real, my words are heartfelt?”

In the song, “Make It Through” (which appears on The Whole Shebang), the lines are sung, “There’s nothing of me that isn’t yours/ Still tryin’ to find a little bit more.” “Not One Reason” seems like an off-shoot of that lyric as Seth sings, begging and pleading, “What more can I give?” The song employs lots of court room imagery, including, “I knew a girl just like you/ who played the judge and jury,” and “so take me off this witness stand.” The speaker can give no reason to show that his love is truly genuine, and even though he speaks of it with conviction, he can do nothing to prove it beyond what he’s already offered: himself.

What I love about this song is that it exudes a playfulness, a flirtiness, even though the speaker is “hanging by this thread.” I also like that it still seeks to ask questions about love itself rather than define what the love is in songs like “Crazies” or “Smitten.” It’s fast, it’s spilling over with good feelings, and it’s danceable and fun, with a toe-tapping quality reminiscent of In the New Old-Fashioned Way and the earlier Fluid Ounces songs.

If the final score were tallied in the now-completed Fluid Ounces canon, songs of heartbreak and despair would probably out-number songs of contentment and happiness by about 3:1, but I think Seth and Tha B leave the faithful followers with the best feeling possible when they close the canon with a record that has as many upbeat, happy songs as Instant Nostalgia, including this one, “How to Be Happy,” “It All Looks Good to Me,” and “Till the Danger’s Past,” which over-shadow the sadder songs on the final record to end it all on a good note.

And who knows? Maybe thinking that this song is the last is a bit premature…

Tricky Fingers

2007-08-23T06:57:00.000-05:00

From Big Notebook for Easy Piano

If a pianist were to describe the sound of a car wreck or a person falling into deep water in the most consonant way possible, the opening lick to “Tricky Fingers” would be how I’d imagine it would sound (though I’m definitely not a pianist). And with the jarring urgency of a car accident, Seth Timbs baptized us all into the world of Fluid Ounces with this being the first song that he actually wrote for the project.

True, “Sick” and “Record Stack” are older songs, written and played for Ella Minopy, the fore-runner to Fluid Ounces, but they are songs arranged on guitar. Seth had developed some great chops over the years, but it seems he tried to keep the piano equal with the guitar in arranging everything for his songwriting ventures before Fluid Ounces. But with “Tricky Fingers,” it’s like we’re being smacked in the face with the piano, as if Seth is telling the world, “We’re a piano band, dammit!”

Seth has maintained an amazing consistency in the tone of his voice since recording the band’s second album. Anytime I see them live now, I could swear he could go right back into the studio and re-record the vocals to all of In the New Old Fashioned Way exactly the same as the first time. But what amazed me when Seth and Brian Rogers broke this song out in their “Half Ounce” duo set in January 6th, 2007 (presented below for download, though performed sans the record's classic intro), was how easily Seth could turn on the exact same tone to sing this song very close to the way he did when Big Notebook was recorded. He was just a kid back then, and he sang it like a kid. If you compare it to the three Ella Minopy mp3s that have surfaced, or if you’re lucky (or un-lucky?) enough to hear the Seth Timbs and the Mad Hatters demos from ’91-’93, you’ll find that “Tricky Fingers” is a bridge between vocal stylings of the past and the piano-based future that would define the sound for his next ten years of song writing.

The other standard established here that is a hallmark of Fluid Ounces’ music is the idea of the up-beat song that does not necessarily reflect happy subject matter. Exclaiming that, “Life is such a permanent gyp!” and pointing out that, “Everybody seems to be too drunk, so everybody stays…” could never have been said with more excitement in such a seemingly feel-good song. And even though Seth goes as far in the upbeat direction to sing, “If you’re happy and you know it/ it just gets better from here,” it almost feels like a death sentence in light of the rest of the song.

On the other hand, stating that, “It just gets better from here,” also serves as a great jumping-off point for a great band and so many great songs that would follow this one.

Download Live mp3--courtesy of Fluid Ounces! (but recorded by yours truly)

Show on the Road

2007-08-20T07:36:00.000-05:00

From Foreign Legion

Looking over the enormous canon of both released and un-released Fluid Ounces songs, there are so many that leap out and say, “Hello there!” With only five full-length records, one B-side record, and one EP, they all seem to say hello over and over again with so many songs on each that could easily be the intro track to its own record. I decided that the journey I’m embarking on of writing about each and every Fluid Ounces song is best represented by “Show on the Road,” though.

Probably written in ’98 or ’99, but most certainly before the release of In the New Old Fashioned Way, this song is about the band at its most optimistic point in its career, building a local following and at the same time turning toward the possibility of national success with a tour including Chicago and South by Southwest during the spring of 1999. The band was getting its first real radio play with “Vegetable Kingdom,” and everything seemed to be looking up.

Starting with a strong guitar riff, “Show on the Road” quickly warms up to a good temperature of rock. I’ll admit that it’s not my favorite Fluid Ounces song: I usually don’t like songs in which singer/song-writer Seth Timbs sings falsetto, and I never really liked the melody of the chorus. It’s an extremely rare moment in the Fluid Ounces canon when the rhythm of the lyrics, the melody, and the musical structure don’t exemplify a perfect cohesiveness, as if any other note anywhere in the chord would bring it all down like a deck of cards. “Show on the Road” has a few of those moments when it doesn’t seem to work so perfectly.

But what this song does better than any other Fluid Ounces song is to capture the spirit of so many young men setting out to make a name for themselves by playing music in local scenes across America. (Witness Seth’s more typical view on the subject in “Poet Tree,” the song immediately after “Show on the Road” on Foreign Legion.) “Are we covering ground, or is the world moving under us?...Are we the kings of the Earth/ Or will the world make fools of us?” are lines that hint at the truth for all the musical acts I’ve seen venture beyond the Tennessee state lines: that the feeling of having conquered Nashville or being really good performers or songwriters determines little in the long and rocky road to fame or even recognition, that it seems to be little more than a crap shoot as to whether a capable act can actually “make it.”

I’ll also add that the classical-esque piano lick just after Seth sings, “getting smaller in the distance,” was the first thing I found to celebrate when I first listened to the record (and it was only three minutes into it).

I felt this song was the best to inaugurate what I hope will be a regular feature (I already have the next 19 or so entries well under way) to incite discussion about my favorite band of all time. The video below was recorded at the Boro on October 27, 2000, and is followed by the band giving a brief commercial for Miller High Life beer. Sorry that the video quality is so low: I PROMISE I have much better goodies to come (this was the only video of this song I had).
And so, fans and other interested parties, “Let’s get this show on the road!”

And with much better quality, here's a better live version from '99!