Stark Raving Mad

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.

So Far, So Good

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.

Songs Covered by Fluid Ounces

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.

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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.

Smitten

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.

Thinking Cap

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.

The Last Thing

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.

Invincible Boy

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.

Expect the Worst

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.

Encyclopedia Brown

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.

Metaphor

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.

City Lights

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.

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.).

Poet Tree

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

Show on the Road

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!