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.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Role Call
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
“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
Monday, September 24, 2007
Sugar Mama
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.).
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.).
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Long Weekend
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
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
Friday, September 21, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
It All Looks Good to Me
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.
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.
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