Doom & Gloom Dispatch #21: What Does It Mean, A Mistake Or Two?

Magic Tuber String Band, Pavement, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, The Feelies

Magic Tuber String Band - Tarantism

Several years back, I used the term “rusticosmic” in an Aquarium Drunkard review. A quick Google search tells me that this amazing (or amazingly bad) coinage did not catch on. But I’m going to use it again to describe the rusticosmic stylings of the Magic Tuber String Band. On Tarantism, their latest LP for Feeding Tube, MTSB continues to plow the fertile, morel-strewn middle ground between ancient Appalachian folk modes and the “eternal music” of La Monte Young, et al. It’s a similar project to what Pelt and their cohorts have been up to for the last few decades — and I love it. Droning fiddle and cello, fingerpicked acoustic guitar, shruti box and more blending together into a deep, absorbing whole. It’s magic.

Pavement - Glad I’m Not Dead

Pavement recently wrapped up a tour of Japan/Australia/New Zealand — and the reunion rolls on, with some festival dates coming up and a residency in Iceland. Not sure if they’ll make it out to my neck of the woods in 2023 (who wants to pay for me to go to Iceland though???), but I’d love to catch them again — the Denver show was incredibly fun.

In the meantime, let’s dig into this fantastic Anazgnos compilation “personally selected from favorite performances via fan-sourced, freely shared audience recordings.” The entire repertoire — 59 songs! — is represented here. What didn’t they play this time around? I feel like “Rattled By The Rush” is one of the major missing tunes, but you gotta appreciate that Pavement really dug deep into the catalog this time around.

And hey, as I mentioned last year, I was honored/privileged/shocked to be asked to contribute a little essay to Pavement’s official tour program. Since that piece of merch appears to be sold out, here’s that little essay …

“What does it mean, a mistake or two?” Stephen Malkmus asked in the dead center of Slanted and Enchanted, Pavement’s 1992 debut LP. Thirty years later, it still feels like the defining question of the band’s career. From their scratchy early singles to the more polished surfaces of Terror Twilight, Pavement’s albums and live performances were filled with what, for other groups, might be called mistakes. Think of how 1994’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain kicks off: a cacophony of jumbled notes, off-kilter rhythms and room noise — all before launching into the majestic preamble of “Silence Kid,” the pieces magically falling into place. Think of how that same LP ends, cutting off abruptly mid-verse, incomplete but somehow completely satisfying. Pavement famously called one of their first EPs Perfect Sound Forever, but perfection was never the point. A mistake (or two) could be just as beautiful.

“Honor thy error as a hidden intention” was one of those semi-mystical koans found in Brian Eno’s legendary Oblique Strategies way back in the 1970s. In some ways, it’s an artist’s “Get Out Of Jail Free” card, saying that an accident can be framed in any he or she likes. But over the course of a decade, intentionally or not, Pavement went even further, building an entire aesthetic identity around finding the meaning in mistakes, in seemingly random lyrical connections, in opposing impulses. After all, this is a band whose breakthrough hit — “Cut Your Hair” — was a song that dealt honestly (and humorously) with the fear of having a breakthrough hit. Contradiction and complexity are the hallmarks of our age — why shouldn’t they be reflected in our music? It might be this tension that keeps Pavement relevant after all these years, with new audiences falling in love with the group, and a hotly anticipated 2022 reunion tour that sees them playing on larger stages than ever before. (Well, that and all the sweet guitar action and impossibly hook-y choruses that send you ba-ba-ba-da-ing into the night.)

“They need to try harder!” complained one of our finest music critics — a cartoon teen known only as Butt-Head — about Pavement. It was a common assertion back in the 1990s, especially when it came to the band’s live shows, with the dreaded “S” word being thrown around liberally. And sure, if you talk to anyone who caught them during their initial run, they’ll tell you about the false-starts and fuckups, the time original drummer Gary Young stopped the show to perform a drunken headstand, or the unpredictable technical difficulties that might have arisen. (True story: the first time I saw Pavement — the Hollywood Palace, September 15, 1994 — curls of ominous smoke began rising from Malkmus’ amp in the middle of the set. It was hard to tell whether SM thought this gear malfunction was frustrating or hilarious. Probably both.) But don’t be misled. Amidst the hijinks, a Pavement gig was, much more often than not, a glorious thing, offering an openness and pure flow that most bands of the era lacked entirely. Here was a rock band that eschewed rock god moves and poses, instead casually inviting fans into a musical universe that could be heavy as a thundercloud or as fun as the most fun day of your life — sometimes within the space of a single song. That welcoming spirit can still be found whenever and wherever Pavement steps onstage. The opening line of “Grave Architecture” said it all: “Come on in.”

Miles Davis Sextet - San Francisco Civic Auditorium, San Francisco, California, March 4, 1960

One of the more sought-after jazz holy grails is the 1961 tape of Wes Montgomery and Eric Dolphy sitting in with John Coltrane’s band at the Monterey Jazz Festival. This ain’t it — though I’m under the impression that it’s not just a pipe-dream. Instead, we’ve got an acetate of Coltrane playing about a year earlier with Wes Montgomery’s brother Buddy on vibes. Oh yeah, there’s also some guy named Miles Davis onstage, too.

It’s a 20+ minute audience tape of middling (but not terrible) quality that emerged on eBay sometime in the last few years. This is JC at the tail-end of his tenure with Miles, taking the then-fairly-new “So What” into the stratosphere. New sounds from Trane, but the SF audience seems pretty into it. How do the Montgomery vibes work? Pretty nicely, even in this abbreviated context. Though maybe the taper disagreed — he stops recording somewhere in the middle of Buddy’s solo! Rude. Did Miles ever employ a vibesman after this? Not sure. But maybe he should have!

John Coltrane Quartet - The Jazz Gallery, New York City, June 27, 1960

Since we just checked out a 1960 audience tape of Miles and Coltrane, let’s hang out back there for a little while longer. Another audience tape! A pretty listenable one, all things considered. Thank a taper, for heaven’s sake. By June, Coltrane had left the Miles Davis group for good and quickly set about forming his own unit. This isn’t quite the classic quartet yet — McCoy Tyner is firmly in place on piano, but drummer Pete LaRoca is behind the kit instead of the soon-to-join Elvin Jones. And then there’s the somewhat shadowy bassist Steve Davis, who would play on some of Coltrane’s classic Atlantic LPs and then more or less vanish, only appearing on a handful of other sessions. Mysterious …

Anyway! This Jazz Gallery performance is, as far as I know, our first glimpse of Coltrane live and on his own in the 1960s. He sounds ready to go, kicking things off with a long, wild “Liberia” before sliding smoothly into a gorgeous “Every Time We Say Goodbye.” The band, especially Tyner, follows their new leader fearlessly. Interestingly, if the date of this tape is right, Coltrane would go into the studio the next day — but not with this band. Instead, he’d be playing with Ornette Coleman’s group: Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell. The results wouldn’t be released until 1966.

Coltrane says: I’ve got to keep experimenting. I feel that I’m just beginning. I have part of what I’m looking for in my grasp but not all. I’m very happy devoting all my time to music, and I’m glad to be one of the many who are striving for fuller development as musicians. Considering the great heritage in music that we have, the work of giants of the past, the present, and the promise of those who are to come, I feel that we have every reason to face the future optimistically.

The Feelies - Maxwell's, Hoboken, New Jersey, October 16, 1989

I’ve got another Feelies-adjacent thing in the works, so I’m listening to the Feelies, naturally. This semi-recent addition to the voluminous McKenzie Tapes archive was new to me — a covers-heavy late 80s set at the band’s home-away-from-home. A benefit to improve Maxwell's ailing sound system, apparently. Regardless of the state of the PA, the Feelies sound typically magnificent here. We’re gonna have a real good time together, indeed.

And a real good/cool time will be had in Bethlehem, PA and Baltimore, MD, this weekend, when the Feelies play their first shows of 2023! As I've mentioned over and over again, I finally got to see the band late last year and it was as great (if not greater) a night than I imagined. And I’ve got a good imagination. The show I saw included an absolutely incredible Willies opening set — and hey, the Willies will return this summer! Will I be there? God, I hope so. (And since we’re on the subject, let me plug my lengthy Willies feature for Maggot Brain one more time.)

From The Doom & Gloom Archives

Lou Reed - KVAN Interview, Portland, Oregon, November 1969

Lou Reed – occult prophet?! Maybe. This late 1969 radio interview features Lou holding forth on Alice Bailey, yoga, third eyes, reincarnation, meditation and other esoteric topics. You know, all that White Light. It’s an interesting late 1960s artifact, recorded right around the time of the VU’s famed Matrix Tapes. The KVAN interviewer is well-informed and insightful, too – he’s clearly spent a lot of time with the first three Velvets records, and doesn’t stick to the basic stuff … it works out well; the notoriously prickly Lou really opens up in a way that’s pretty rare for him. 

Currently Reading: The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin