Wes Anderson

I watched Moonrise Kingdom and The Fantastic Mr. Fox with my kids in the fall, which spurred me to revisit all of Wes Anderson's movies. I am a big fan, but I'm not sure that I love all of his movies the same way. Both The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited left me cold when I saw them in the theater. But his recent run of films won me back over. Anyway, revisiting his movies left me with a few thoughts, but listicles being what they are, let me also rank his films while I am at it.

1. Moonrise Kingdom: Bringing all of Anderson's obsessions to bear in a perfect package of nostalgia, regret, and danger, Moonrise Kingdom's greatness comes from taking the emotional life of its protagonists very seriously, even as it admits that there is a lot of absurdity here. The beating heart of the movie is the love between the kids at the center of the story, but it's also in the way that the adults around them, especially Bruce Willis's policeman and Edward Norton's scoutmaster, come to realize how all of the institutions and authority figures around them have failed them. This movie is, in short, a masterpiece.

1. The Fantastic Mr. Fox: Instead of pretending to be a lost children's classic like so many of Anderson's other films, Mr. Fox is actually an adaptation of a children's classic. Anderson pours his visual style into it, and it captures the main theme running through all of his movies: the refusal of exceptional people to be mediocre. Sure, Mr. Fox's bid for greatness endangers his family and puts his entire community at risk, but he also rages against the dying of the light better than just about any other middle-aged protagonists in a story for children. The movie is, in short, a masterpiece.

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel: The apex of Anderson's craft and a tour-de-force racing through Anderson's pet obsessions: impeccable visual style, the imposition of history into literature, the self-styled great man raging against the tides of both institutional indifference and mediocrity, intergenerational friendships, the delicate and precise art of creating an experience, all with deep wells of love and loss. The movie is breathless throughout, but bursting with life, even with a cast this large. Every character has clear motivations, and Anderson's bench is deep enough that dozens of his stable of talented A-list actors make what are essentially walk-on performances, each imbued with enough material that they tell little micro-stories. The movie is, in short, a masterpiece.

1. Rushmore:  Right out of the gate, Anderson's second film introduces Anderson's primary theme of the great person struggling against authority and mediocrity. While Max Fischer may not be quite as amazing as he thinks he is, his creative talent is a delight and the fun of his character struggling to be taken seriously because of his age and inexperience (shades of Moonrise Kingdom) meets up with his deadly-serious emotions. The movie is, in short, a masterpiece. (OK, I'm going to stop this now, but a post about Wes Anderson calls for a little self-indulgence.)

2. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou: I really disliked this movie when it was released but now I think it is a only a second-tier Anderson film by a thin hair. Zissou is much like Mr. Fox but without the happy ending. The only thing keeping this film from being another number 1, really, is that it doesn't breathe life into the supporting cast the way that the above films do. However, there's some genuine pathos and danger in Zissou's reckless mid-life crisis, and the weird beauty of this film is both wholly an Anderson-style composition and yet unlike any other Anderson film. Additionally, contrary to his usual adoration of his iconoclast heroes, Anderson is aware of how irresponsible Zissou is and how this leads to the deaths of his best friend and his maybe-son. It's hard to call a film mature that explicitly idealizes the mind of an 11-and-a-half year old, but if any Anderson film can be called an examination of maturity and loss, it is this one.



3. The Darjeeling Limited and Hotel Chevalier: This movie, a distant third, wants to be an examination of maturity and loss, but it just doesn't work. Anderson is trying his damnedest to honor Satyajit Ray, but the movie lacks Ray's appreciation of sheer ordinariness. It comes across as mildly racist exotica, as the wealthy white explorers try to find themselves amid the backdrop of India's strange foreign ways. The character beats (the oldest brother's suicide attempt, the middle brother's fear of paternity, the youngest brother's recent break-up) seem more like tics than anything lived in or experienced. When the brothers finally literally let go of their father's baggage, it does not feel like an earned moment. That's my problem with the film - the central conceit just doesn't work for me. The movie is beautiful, though. The scene where the brothers rescue the kids from drowning is also among Anderson's best. The short released along with this film, Hotel Chevalier, was significantly better, with Schwartzman and Natalie Portman playing recognizable people with a difficult past and no idea about the future.



4. Bottle Rocket: I may have this one too low. I mean, I like it and it mostly works. But it also feels like a debut movie and the effort to make it shows. The quirky parts are too quirky, the composition style is not yet there, and the plot mechanics are a little too obvious.



5. The Royal Tenenbaums: I did not think that this movie would be so low on my list before I re-watched it. When it came out, I was blown away. I think of it as a gauntlet that Anderson threw down, an epic of composition and characterization built on classics of young adult or children's literature and a marriage of soundtrack and image that redefines the use of non-diegetic movie music (well, to be fair, Anderson had already hit those notes with Rushmore). And it is those things, but it is ultimately emptier than Anderson's subsequent revisiting of those same themes. The characters come across as jerks, not because of their losses and failures, as the movie would ask you to see them, but because they are just written as basically selfish jerks. When Nico's "These Days" erupts in the film, I was in tears during my original viewing in 2001, but in 2017 it seemed like a shortcut establishing a mood that has not quite been earned. Maybe I'll eventually come back around to seeing it as a masterpiece, but right now, it seems like the least of Anderson's work.

Yes, I Am Alive, Thank You

So it has been a while since I've had much energy for this blog. Figured it's been about a year, so I should write an update that I continue to listen to music, old and new. I play in a band called Rapture Clause, which is fun. Build guitar pedals when I have time. Just finished a Tube Screamer clone and am almost done with three Klon Centaurs. Currently listening as of this moment: Guy Clark - Cold Dog Soup.  Don't much feel like writing anymore, not just as a statement on the brevity of this blog post, but as an existential situation of how my life has changed. I don't read much these days, either, which is a shame. Just finished The Collected Stories of Bryce D'J Pancake, which was excellent and moving. I can think of a number of writers who are similar (Madison Smartt Bell leaps to mind), but I think Pancake's fiction came first. I have a large stack of books vying to be next. Maybe I'll drop back by before the year is out to update this again.

I do want to mention this series at the AV Club, which already, in its third installment, seems as bereft of ideas as I was at my nadir of my eight-year-long quest to listen to my entire music collection. There's no real wrestling with the music in this series, just a kind of perfunctory acceptance or rejection and reportage of same. My project was based on Noel Murray's similar run through his music collection in 2008, but Noel gave it an effort to listen and then decide. I also thought I should spend some time with each album before rating it or just deleting it, and I didn't even think much about the physical object of the CD or the record, but instead about the digital music. Modell's goal is different, but his decision-making process appears to be more reactionary than any sort of real consideration. The whole process is just a confirmation of his most conservative aesthetic tendencies, which is a conversation that would be deathly dull with even my most interesting friends, and Modell's tastes - which, to be clear, I often share - just aren't that interesting. Who knew that 40-something rock critic types love Belle & Sebastian and Bedhead? I mean, besides everyone.

Music Library: The Velvet Underground plus Notes On The Third Album

The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967) and The Velvet Underground & Nico 45th Anniversary Edition (1966-67). I picked this up with the Verve reissues in 1987 because of Kurt Loder praising it on MTV. I'd also read about them in the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, which quoted the familiar line about how only 5,000 people bought this album when it came out and they all went on to form influential bands. And my mind ripped open. There was so many types of music! But they all were served up in a drone-y faux-primitive style. The songs were perfect. The Super Deluxe 45th Anniversary Edition has versions of the album in stereo and again in mono, then a copy of Nico's Chelsea Girls, which the album rightfully claims is pretty much a VU album, then a bunch of demos, then a cleaned-up copy of the 1967 Valleydale Ballroom show from Columbus OH, which is also a part of the Caught Between The Twisted Stars four-disc bootleg set, reviewed below. You already know if this is something you must have. I'm sure everyone reading this has heard "I'll Be Your Mirror," but there's never a bad reason to listen to it again. Even the most emotionally direct country song can't light a candle to this: "I find it hard to believe you don't know the beauty you are/but if you don't, let me be your eyes/a hand to your darkness/so you won't be afraid." I mean, dammit, that's gorgeous.



White Light/White Heat (1968), White Light/White Heat Super Deluxe (1967-68), and Live At The Gymnasium, NYC (bootleg, 1967). Just as legendary as the first one, WL/WH is a blast of noise that takes the screech of "European Son" and amps it up. Or, at least, part of it is. The opening song is really more of a boogie song built on John Cale's piano rolls. "The Gift" is a fusion of the instrumental track "The Booker T," which is a grungy take on Memphis soul, with Cale's chilly-comic tale of poor Waldo Jeffers. "Lady Godiva's Operation" is not too different from the two-chord drone-art of "Venus In Furs." "Here She Comes Now" is utterly gorgeous, showing the way to the dreamy third album. Then side two, with the frenetic and loud "I Heard Her Call My Name" and the furious 17-minute bashathon "Sister Ray," is where WL/WH gets its reputation. The Super Deluxe version adds both stereo and mono mixes of the album, a bunch of single mixes and outtakes, most of which appear elsewhere, and a cleaned-up version of the 1967 Live At The Gymnasium bootleg. It's a killer bootleg, and the cleaner version well worth the price.



The Velvet Underground (Valentin Mix) (1969), The Velvet Underground (Closet Mix) (1969), and La Cave 1968: Designs In Urban Living (bootleg, 1968). The two mixes of the VU's third album are significantly different in places. In fact, I've worked up a long blog post about them, which I'll append below instead of leaving a separate piece. While all four of the VU's proper albums are essential, this is my favorite. It's not perfect - I mean, after about a million listens, "The Murder Mystery" gets on my nerves a bit now - but that may be why I love it more. I assume that whenever they make the Super Deluxe version of this one, the La Cave bootleg, which is pretty good and features early versions of these songs, will be included. See below for lots of videos.

Bootleg Series Vol. 1: The Quine Tapes (recorded 1969), The Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes (bootleg, 1969), "Sweet Sister Ray" (bootleg, 1969), 1969: Live With Lou Reed, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (1969, natch). The Quine Tapes consist of three concerts recorded by superfan Bob Quine, who was also one of the greatest rock guitarists ever. Excellent all around, capturing the VU's less arty and more rocking live show. The Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes is a bootleg that sounds like it was recorded from the inside of Lou Reed's amp with the rest of the band much diminished in the background. It's interesting, but falls flat over the course of the album. "Sweet Sister Ray" from a bootleg called The Wild Side Of The Street is a recording of the long jam that the VU would use to warm up for "Sister Ray." The Live With Lou Reed albums are from shows in Dallas and San Francisco, and they're cooking.



Loaded (1970), Loaded: Fully Loaded Edition (1970), and Live At Max's Kansas City (1970). Loaded with hits, in Lou Reed's words, but still unable to find a mass audience, the VU's last proper album gets short shrift from some fans, but I think it's fantastic. The Fully Loaded Edition adds a bunch of outtakes, demos, and alternative mixes, many of which appear elsewhere. Max's Kansas City is a great live show from the period.



Peel Slowly And See (1965-70). This five-disc box set came out in the 90s and included all the album (with the Closet Mix of The Velvet Underground) and a bunch of demos and outtakes from all the way back to a very early practice tape of Lou and John with their first drummer Angus MacLise. Many of the outtakes were from VU and Another View, and few of the other tracks don't appear elsewhere. When I bought it back in the 90s, I had all four of the album on vinyl but no digital copies, so this helped out, but I can't see any reason to own it if you already have the other stuff. The early recordings are interesting to hear once, but that's about it.

Squeeze (1973). Ugh. This is the rightly-reviled rock album made by Doug Yule and three other people after Lou left the group. Anyone trying to tell you this is good is a contrarian who is trolling you and you should feel free to ignore that person thereafter. Consider:



VU (1985) and Another View (1986). VU consists of a bunch of tracks that might have been the follow-up to WL/WH. Even though it's more garage-y than their eventual third album, it is freakin' excellent. Another View is a bunch of other demos and outtakes that's pretty rough outside of "Hey Mr. Rain" and the extraordinary "Ride Into The Sun."



Caught Between The Twisted Stars (bootlegs, 1966-91). This is an odd four-disc bootleg box set that unfortunately mixes up recordings for no clear reason. Disc one is mostly the Valleydale Ballroom show, but the final "Nothing Song" is too long, and is moved to the start of disc two, while the rest of the tracks are a grab-bag of bootleg tracks from many different sources, such as La Cave and The Gymnasium, plus--oddly--a few from the ill-fated 1993 VU reunion tour. Then there's a couple of remixes and "A Short-Lived Torture Of Cacophony," which is "Melody Laughter" backwards. Weirdly chosen.

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Notes On The Velvet Underground:

I bought a vinyl copy of the 80s Verve re-release with the mix by engineer Val Valentin mix when it came out, and this was the version that I became intimately familiar with as a teenager. Then I bought the VU's Peel Slowly & See box back in the mid-90s, which came with the so-called "closet mix" by Lou Reed himself, so named because Sterling Morrison quipped that it sounded as if it had been recorded in a closet. Since I had a digital copy of that, it was only recently that I got around to picking up a digital version of the Valentin mix.

This is a track-by-track comparison. I knew going in that each has a completely different version of "Some Kinda Love," and that "What Goes On" had vastly different mixes. I didn't appreciate that every song except "That's The Story Of My Life" has different mixes that subtly (or not-so-subtly) affect the listening experience.

"Candy Says": Each version has a vastly different drum mix, not to mention that the tonality of the guitars is also different. The closet mix uses brighter, more trebly filters on the whole track, so the snare snaps more in the left ear, giving the song more movement, and while both guitars are louder and clearer on the closet mix, this is especially true for Sterling's guitar on the left, which is quiet enough to be barely distinct through parts of the song on the Valentin mix. The backing vocals are also louder. The Valentin mix, though, rides more on the bass and, by muting the snare, gives the tap-tap-tap of the high hat more emphasis, which is also appealing.

This is the closet mix. I can't find a copy of the Valentin mix on youtube.



"What Goes On," of course, is all about the organ. The Valentin mix pushes it and Lou's guitar into the red and rocks significantly harder. The closet mix has the organ much quieter and Lou's stellar rhythm guitar with a less-trebly filter. However, the drums on the closet mix sound great, maybe the best that Mo ever sounded. Notice the snare in your left ear in the closet mix below.



Here's the Valentin mix for comparison:



"Some Kinda Love," as I mentioned, has two different versions of the song. The Valentin version has a great performance from the whole band, but Lou's vocal performance is maybe a little too cool. The closet mix has only one guitar rather than the killer interlock of the Valentin version and Mo's drums are about as minimalist as possible (hitting on each beat of the 4/4 with a bass drum and woodblock and that's it), but Lou's vocal may be a career best. Here's the Valentin mix version:



And here's the closet mix version:



"Pale Blue Eyes": The closet mix again turns the treble up. Mo's playing a tambourine that is brighter and mixed all to the left in the closet mix, making it more snare-like. The Valentin mix has her darker and in the center, which gives the song more propulsion. In the closet mix, Lou's guitar is almost inaudible, as is the organ. This pushes Sterling's guitar part - one of my all-time favorites - further out front, which is a lovely effect. The more muddled Valentin mix has a better band sound, though.

This is the closet mix:



And this is the Valentin mix:



"Jesus" has the bass much louder in the Valentin mix. Sterling's guitar (the one with the high part) is quieter in that mix, though, and Lou's acoustic guitar pushes the song along. In the closet mix, Lou and Doug's vocals switch sides, and Doug's vocals are much louder in the closet mix, which sort of dampens how shockingly well Lou sings this song. No, I take that back. Lou's performance is a different in each take. His voice cracks more in the closet mix, and he goes falsetto more often in the Valentin mix.

Here's the Valentin mix:



And I think this is the closet mix:



"Beginning To See The Light" switches the pan on the guitars for some reason and does the familiar treble filter. On the Valentin mix, the acoustic rhythm guitar is on the right and the electric is on the left, but the closet mix reverses them and cranks the electric. I could be convinced that the closet mix is a completely different take on the electric because the bassiness and thicker tone on the Valentin mix suggest humbuckers or P-90s while the closet mix sounds thinner and more pointed like a Strat. Both guitars are quite loud in the Valentin mix. The closet mix pans the drums all the way to the left, making it sound less like a conventional rock song. I could be convinced that Lou's vocal is different on each, too. There's little subtle differences that might be my mind playing tricks on me at this point.

Here's the Valentin mix, but I can't find the closet mix on youtube, unfortunately:



"I'm Set Free": GodDAMN, what a song. The Valentin mix has drums and Lou's vocal in the center and both guitars panned all the way out on either side. The closet mix turns up Sterling's guitar a lot on the right and moves Lou's rhythm to the center, but turns it down a lot. Mo's drums are panned a little left, but she's almost inaudible until about a third into the song. Both vocals are louder in the closet mix. The solo is treated differently in both. In the Valentin mix, the solo is a little muddier with medium-dark reverb. In the closet mix, it's pushed up in the mix, brightened considerably, and the reverb is different - more small-room than dark-ampitheater. Both versions are absolutely fucking brilliant.

Unfortunately, again the only one on youtube is the Valentin mix:



"Story" is the same in both.



"The Murder Mystery" is different only in that the Valentin mix pushes the drums and rhythm guitar and dampens the vocals. There may be other differences, but I have a maximum of two listens per day on that song.

I think this is Valentin. They're very close:



"After Hours" puts a little more reverb on Mo's voice and turns the bass down a lot while panning it to the center. It's very loud and distinct (in the left ear) in the Valentin mix and so quiet in the closet mix that I thought it was a bass drum through most of the song. The closet mix also puts those neat deep reverb echoes on Mo's voice when the song rests, while the Valentin mix has a short repeat reverb instead.

Valentin mix:



Closet mix:

2013 Favorites + 2008 Faves Reconsidered

I haven't listed my year-end faves in a while, but if there's one thing the nation is clamoring for, it's the half-baked opinion of an old white guy. Anyway, the only film release I saw was Gravity, which looked great, but did not have much to say beyond pointing out that in space no one can hear you scream. So I'm going to list my favorite albums and then go back and reassess my favorites from five years back to see how they've held up.

1. Superchunk - I Hate Music. This is my favorite album of the year because I am nothing if not predictable. And I love this video because old.



2. Earthless - From The Ages. I don't know why it took so long for Earthless to make their third studio album, but I'm really glad they did. Their instrumental guitar-god psychedelic metal is almost the exact opposite of Superchunk's tight indie-pop gems, but I love this album almost as much as I Hate Music.



3. Hookworms - Pearl Mystic. Do I like retro-fuzz psychedelia with krautrock influence? Yes I do! So much so that I'm listing this album right after the Earthless one, even though they share a certain mentality. I found this band thanks to KEXP and they work for me like gangbusters.



4. Mavis Staples - One True Vine. She has marched on Washington, loved Bob Dylan, revitalized secular gospel, been in the business for more than 60 years, and she still has it in her to come up with something interesting and fun. Jeff Tweedy's production is sympathetic, too.



5. My Bloody Valentine - m b v. This album appears to be a time machine to my 20s.



6. Thee Oh Sees - Floating Coffin. Perhaps not quite as fantastic as the last few, but still very, very, very good.



7. Kurt Vile - Wakin On A Pretty Daze. I love Vile's music, but he's basically the hipster Jack Johnson, right? I mean, there's all this good-time/lazy-time vibe to all of his music. I like that he lets loose on the guitar on this album.



8. Wire - Change Becomes Us. I've run hot and cold on the third (or is this the fourth?) incarnation of Wire, but I really like this album, which mostly consists of rewrites of unrecorded tracks from the late 70s/early 80s.



9. Run The Jewels - Run The Jewels. This album from El-P and Killer Mike is excellent all around. And hilarious.



10. Darcy James Argue's Secret Society - Brooklyn Babylon. Argue's big band-free jazz society made a fantastic concept album.



Special Mention: Sally Crewe - "Making Plans For Nigel." Excellent new single from Ms. Crewe.

Other albums I liked:

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away

Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
The Dexateens - Sunsphere EP
The Fall - Re-Mit
The Flaming Lips - The Terror
Melvins - Everybody Loves Sausages
Pink Avalanche - Wraiths
Richard Thompson - Electric
Yo La Tengo - Fade

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In 2008, I had a Top 20 list, but here's the top 10 of those for consistency.

1. Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life/Year of the Pig EP
2. Boris - Smile
3. Oneida - Preteen Weaponry
4. The Instruments - Dark Småland
5. Why? - Alopecia
6. Robert Forster - The Evangelist
7. The Hold Steady - Stay Positive
8. Black Mountain - In The Future
9 (tie). The Dexateens - Lost & Found
9 (tie). The Distant Seconds - Spectral Evidence
10. Earth - The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull

Five years later, I would change this list up only a little bit. While I still like the albums by Oneida, The Instruments, Why?, Robert Forster (which was the toughest to move down, actually), and Black Mountain, the Harvey Milk, Earthless, Torche, and Benko albums are so great that they need to be on this list. I had heard the TV On The Radio and New Year albums that year, but I ranked them too low. There were a lot of other albums I have subsequently heard and liked a lot, too, and the ones that were real contenders were by Atlas Sound, James Blackshaw, Sally Crewe and the Sudden Moves, Fennesz, and Jay Reatard. All in all, though, not too bad a report card. I'll give myself a gentleman's B. Maybe a B-.

1. Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life
2. Boris - Smile
3. Harvey Milk - Life... The Best Game In Town
4. Earthless - Live At Roadburn
5. TV On The Radio - Dear Science
6. The Hold Steady - Stay Positive
7. The New Year - The New Year
8. Torche - Meanderthal
9 (tie). The Distant Seconds - Spectral Evidence
9 (tie). The Dexateens - Lost & Found
9 (tie). Benko - Welcome To The Follow Through
10. Earth - The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull

Beeswing: On Not Liking A Popular Song By A Favorite Artist

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When I posted the second part of my review of Richard Thompson's oeuvre, there was some discussion on FB about whether the lady love of the singer of "Beeswing" was a junkie, as I described her, or a drunkard, with most of the commenters preferring the latter. Basically, I don't care whether her white horse/White Horse was Keith Richards' one favorite intoxicant or Keith Richards' other favorite intoxicant. Either way, I don't really like the song. Yes, it is pretty, but that is true of many of Thompson's songs. My problem is that it is, to borrow from Manny Farber's intentionally non-categorical categorization of art, his most white elephantish song.

In Farber's famous essay, one of the sins of white elephant art is its insistence on stuffing the canvas with meaning and thus robbing it of any organic life of its own.  "Beeswing," starting with its title, tries to cram significance into every verse but essentially devolves into an audience-pandering cliché. Its melody is intentionally designed to sound like an old English folk song, which is a trick that Thompson achieves to much better effect with his ever-popular "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," a song that, as I have written elsewhere, Thompson surely despises now. Anyway, the first verse of "Beeswing" goes:

I was nineteen when I came to town, they called it the Summer of Love
They were burning babies, burning flags. The hawks against the doves
I took a job in the steamie down on Cauldrum Street
And I fell in love with a laundry girl who was working next to me

There are a couple of moments that are interesting here, mostly related to the jargon. Burning babies? Steamie? I assume the former is a reference to Vietnam. The latter is Scottish slang for a wash-house. But it's the manic pixie girl love story that Thompson's after here.

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child, oh she was running wild
She said "As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay.
And you wouldn't want me any other way"

The bee's wing analogy is sharp, but not so sharp as to justify the missing apostrophe in the title. With the missing apostrophe, the title "Beeswing" sounds as if it means to suggest a second interpretation of "bee swing," but the term is meaningless for this song. The only bee is in the analogy to this girl (who is both physically and mentally delicate, I assume?) and the song doesn't swing. "Al Bowlly's In Heaven" swings, but "Beeswing" has neither the propulsion nor the rhythm. As a name for Thompson's publication company, though, Beeswing works well, but it feels shoe-horned in here. The line about the breath of wind is fine, neither great nor lousy. The "lost child/running wild" line, though, is Bon Jovi-worthy, and her demands for free love seem very specific in a "Me and Bobby McGee" way to the boomer audience to whom this song is clearly meant to appeal. This sentiment and the way that it is worded wouldn't be out of place in a song by Donovan or Cat Stevens, which is to say that it is somewhat beneath Mr. Thompson's usual standards.

In the next verse, we have:

Brown hair zig-zag around her face and a look of half-surprise
Like a fox caught in the headlights, there was animal in her eyes
She said "Young man, oh can't you see I'm not the factory kind
If you don't take me out of here I'll surely lose my mind"

Now this is up to Thompson's usual lyrical panache, at least in the first two lines. Farber's other category of art (and these were not meant to be conclusive, by the by, in that Farber describes them as two categories without closing the system to further categories) was termite art, by which he meant that the art was so alive and unfettered with portent that it eats it own frame. Those first two lines, with their immediacy and specificity that calls to a quality that is difficult to name but easy to visualize, are excellent examples of termite art. The second two lines only push along the plot, though.

We busked around the market towns and picked fruit down in Kent
And we could tinker lamps and pots and knives wherever we went
And I said that we might settle down, get a few acres dug
Fire burning in the hearth and babies on the rug
She said "Oh man, you foolish man, it surely sounds like hell.
You might be lord of half the world, you'll not own me as well"

But we're back with the white elephant stuff right away. Thompson's singer and his manic pixie lady become abstract people meant to flatter the hippie nostalgia of the audience. They're living by their wits off the land! He wants to settle down, but she's too free, man! She even specifically ties her hippie dude to white male privilege! I mean, even the reference to Kent is more of a placeholder to make a rhyme than anything particular to the town of Kent. While there's nothing specifically wrong with going abstract in a song to make the people seem more relatable to the audience, in this case it feeds the grand overarching narrative.

We was camping down the Gower one time, the work was pretty good
She thought we shouldn't wait for the frost and I thought maybe we should
We was drinking more in those days and tempers reached a pitch
And like a fool I let her run with the rambling itch

Oh the last I heard she's sleeping rough back on the Derby beat
White Horse in her hip pocket and a wolfhound at her feet
And they say she even married once, a man named Romany Brown
But even a gypsy caravan was too much settling down
And they say her flower is faded now, hard weather and hard booze
But maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains you refuse

This is ostensibly more her story than his, but she isn't real in it. She's a flibbertigibbet, a manic lady who ditches her hippie man over an argument about migrant labor, who married a gypsy (which is more Gregg Allman than the usually literate Richard Thompson), and who has now become an ugly homeless lady. But, as the chorus reminds us, she was this other special thing. And the singer, by being her hippie man for a time who could see her for the special thing she was, is the element of the song who is more real. Her post-singer history is condensed into four lines.

There's an element of the song that is meant to be feminist to some degree, as the singer clearly finds her demand for free love and free agency to be two of her aspects that make her special to him. But the song itself judges her harshly for these very things in the last two verses. Her independence and strongheadedness leave her homeless and drunk (or strung out on heroin, which is a drug that many users can actually put in their hip pocket before it is heated into liquid and put in a syringe, but whatever, this isn't the point) and that's the price she pays for being free, says the song. The suggestion is that if she'd consented to the hippie singer's domestic proposal, she wouldn't be drunk and homeless.

Consider "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" as an alternate. Like "Beeswing," it is written as a modern take on an old English folk song, but unlike "Beeswing," it tells a specific story about specific people with specific traits and it doesn't try to make them particularly likable or universal, but instead hangs the story on a powerful emotion and a weirdly specific metaphor for freedom. People like the song because it eats its own framing device.

"Beeswing," instead, idolizes a manic pixie love interest, judges her harshly for abandoning the protagonist, and flatters the audience with silly hippie nostalgia that most of the audience probably never experienced firsthand, but nevertheless knew from the movies and music of the time. It attempts to create a universal feeling out of a clichéd story, and the central metaphor is ultimately crushed by the weight of its trappings. It is a white elephant. You can hang it on your wall if you like, but it seems cynical to me.

A Man, A Plan, A Soldering Iron, Pt. 2: The Fuzzening

When last we checked in, I was yakking about my first few projects, which culminated in a buffer-the-tone-vampire-slayer pedal. With that pedal working like gangbusters, I tackled my next two projects: a CS-3 mod and a few Fuzz Faces, two of which would be Christmas gifts.

My Boss CS-3 compressor/sustainer was a gift from my buddy Mike Nix, who is, I should say, a hell of a guy. He knew I was down in the dumps and sent me the pedal to cheer me up. I'm saying now, in this public-ish forum, that I will build him something cool to say thanks.

Compressors, for those who may need a refresher, squeeze the sound to flatten the volume. An uncompressed guitarist can play quiet or loud based on how hard he or she hits the strings, but a guitarist playing through a compressor plays every note at the same volume. This produces a sharp and clean effect, one often used by country guitarists. A compressor also sustains each note by raising the volume on the note's usual decay, which can give the guitar a pleasant overdrive effect.

The general consensus on CS-3s is that they are the most inferior compressor that Boss has produced, but there was a wealth of information online to how to tighten up the sound. I made a workplan based on a number of sources:

• Ovnilabs;
• Brian Wampler (his mods have been taken down from indyguitarist, but can be found, along with some other recommendations here);
• a helpful guide from Lone Phantom;
• Recommendations in the Ultimate Guitar forum;
• Some that popped up on DIY Stompboxes from a guy calling himself Sava.
• More on Sava's stuff here.

Here's the technical side of what I replaced. Please feel free to skip this if you have no interest in pedal modification.

1. LED Mod: I switched out the LED and R35, which Sava had incorrectly listed as R33 somewhere. That was a little tight.

2. Wampler/Fat Body/Ovnilabs Mods. I switched out:

• C1 (was a .027uF cap, is now a .22uF cap)
• R5 (10k to 470 ohm)
• R36 (10 k to 100 ohm)
• R32 (220 ohm to jumper)
• D10 (1N4148 to jumper)
• C2 (.022 to .1uF)
• C13 (.047 to 2uF [two 1uF caps wired in tandem, which is too big for the board, but barely fits, so there])
• C4, C6, C14, and C17 (1uF to 1uF film cap).

These changes made the pedal sound much, much better. Highly recommended.

3. Ultimate Guitar Mods:

• D2, D3, and D6 (didn't record what the diodes were, but I switched them for 1N34A)
• C10 and C16 (.047uF to .1uF)
• C9 (didn't record what it was, switched for .047uF
• IC1 and IC2 (used a stacked board from Monte Allums to lift the dual stacked opamp daughter board over the main CS-3 board and switched the DIPs for a RC4558P and a BBOPA2134PA) 

I didn't hear much different from the capacitor changes. The diodes gave the sound a little more clipping. The major thing was the op-amps. The new ICs took the sound from great to AWESOME.

4.  Sava Mods:

• C7 and C15 (.01uF to the same in metal film)

Heard no difference. If I were to do this again, I'd leave all the capacitor changes from the last two mods out. Here's an image of the board. Note Monte Allums's boards sticking up on the right side. One is folded partly down, but the other has room to stick straight up on the board. I added all the reddish brown caps and the jumpers, but I'm too lazy to figure out what else.

Here's how it looks. I painted an infinity symbol over the 3 in its title, but that's pretty silly in retrospect. Here's a video of someone playing a CS-3 with the Wampler/Full Body mod. Mine sounds sort of like this, but it pops more.



Feeling pretty good about the success of the CS-3 mod, I decided to tackle the traditional first pedal build of the nascent pedal hacker: the venerable Fuzz Face. One of the earliest guitar pedals, the Fuzz Face uses positive ground germanium transistors to distort the heck out of the sound. Discerning fans will recognize this as the key component of Jimi Hendrix's tone. Here's a demo:



After some discussion with my wife, I decided that a household with two curious kids was no place to keep the kind of chemicals I would need to make my own PCBs. Probably a good idea for the time being. This time I bought materials from two of the best vendors out there:

• Mad Beans Pedals: Brian at Mad Beans makes some of the best available PCBs for hobbyists. As I intend to document, I've bought from him pretty much every time I've built a pedal. I bought Mangler boards from him. 
• Small Bear Electronics: Steve at Small Bear was one of the first online hobby shops to provide high-quality components for pedal builders. He offers parts that no one else can touch. I bought enclosures and components from him, especially the germanium transistors I needed.

I decided to build three. One for me, one for my brother-in-law Jeff, and one for my pal Matt. The transistors at the heart of the pedals must be paired together, one with a high output within certain restrictions and one with a low output. Also, since these are vintage components that have hardly any uses outside of pedal building, they are quite scarce. I intended to buy three pairs of tested and paired transistors from Small Bear, but he wrote me that his stock was too depleted for that. Instead I wound up buying one set of paired transistors and about ten untested and unpaired ones. Using information from a handful of websites (this one was the best), I learned how to test these transistors and pair them myself.

I also decided to add a dying battery simulator directly into the pedal using the crystal-clear instructions from Dano of Beavis Audio Research, which is, flat-out, one of the best damn sites out there for pedal hobbyists. Dano, if you ever read this: thanks, man. You are the best.

So I populated the board and drilled out the enclosures. As the photo on the right shows, I used Hammond 1590BB enclosures and drilled them out with the idea of putting the footswitch on the right and an extra potentiometer, which I'll always call a pot from now on, on the left. I used MXR-style knobs and put a rubber MXR-style foot control on the dying battery pot. Here's what they looked like with the knobs attached before being painted.

And here's what they look like when painted. Matt got the red one and Jeff got the yellow one. The green one lives on my pedalboard. When I want Stooges tone, that's where I go.

Next time: The Rat and how to fuck it up.

A Man, A Plan, A Soldering Iron, Part I: The Why

I am a guitarist of the indie-rock/anything-goes school. Although I’ve been playing for 27 years, I’m pretty much resigned to maxing out as an okayish player, which may even be a generous self-assessment. Despite my limitations, playing music and being a part of bands have been an important part of my life and I don’t really want to quit just because I’m, y’know, old and busy with other things and not that great of a musician. In recent years, I’ve become more interested in tone, which is an aspect of music that comes with a price tag attached.

For most of the time I’ve played electric music, I’ve played fairly clean. Guitar, cord, amp. No pedals. I spent money on the best guitar and amp I could get at the time, and if I had any other cash, I spent it on different instruments. I’ve lacked confidence – justifiably – in my guitar playing, and through most of my 20s, I played bass, mandolin, a smattering of other instruments, and only occasionally guitar in bands. In my 30s I started taking the guitar more seriously, mostly under the influence of my friend Matt, who is a very good guitarist. Matt encouraged me to invest in a few pedals for added grit and to think about my tone. Recently I’ve gone far past the tasteful few pedals that Matt surely meant.

So, first off, I play through a vintage 1965 Princeton Reverb. I’ve replaced the speaker twice, once with a Weber 10” alnico and, more recently, with a Weber 12” alnico. I have held onto a number of guitars that show off my financial limitations: a Tokai Strat copy, a Tokai Telecaster copy, an Epiphone Sheraton that I modded into a Casino with some mini-P-90s, and, within the last three months, a J. Mascis Squier Jazzmaster, which is now my main axe. All of which is to say that I have decent enough equipment. The Princeton breaks up beautifully when overdriven (starting at about 5 on the volume knob) and has top-notch chorus and reverb settings built into it. My guitar has excellent tone, and as long as I'm happy with the straight guitar to amp sound that I have, everything is fine. But I'm not satisfied with a single sound.

Last summer I had some severe medical problems that damaged my right leg, and I've been a lot less active since. I was also unemployed for about 18 months that included all of 2011. Towards the end of the year, with too much time on my hands and not a lot of money, I decided that I was try my hand at modifying my meager guitar pedals.

The pedals I'd been carrying around for years were a Catalinbread Chile Picoso clean boost, a Danelectro (Dano from here on out) Daddy-O (which is pretty much the same thing as a Marshall Guv'ner overdrive), a beat-up MXR Distortion + from the 70s, a Dano Rocky Road rotating speaker simulator, all of which were offset from the main line by a Loooper loop pedal, and a Boomerang 2 phrase sampler. Here's a post from 2005 that included my brief flirtation with running the phrase sampler through a cheap-o Sunn 0))) 112. I believed that the Catalinbread was true-bypass (meaning that my signal was unaffected by the electronics inside the pedal when it was off), and the other pedals were branched off of my main line by the Loooper until I wanted them, so I had a pretty clean line, or so I thought, from guitar to amp. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The first modification ("mod," from here on) was to the Rocky Road pedal, and I did this back in 2003 or 2004. Those pedals came with a gain issue, so they were super-loud when switched on. Danos are not true-bypass pedals, meaning that they always affect your signal, which is why I had it on one of the Loooper loops, but the gain issue made it an unusable pedal. However, with a quick jumper between two pads, I had a fine, cheap, although unbypassed pedal.

The second modification: So when I decided to start messing around with pedal mods last September, I started with my other Dano, which was sounding duller and duller over the years. I bought a kit from Monte Allums, the Tri-Gain TNT mod. The Dano now sounds much better than it did, although I never use it anymore for other reasons, mainly because it, too, is unbypassed. Just writing about this makes me realize that it is probably time to learn how to bypass a Dano pedal. Anyway, I took no pictures of either of these modifications, but here's someone else's modded Dano. Mine looks much the same.

The third, fourth, and fifth projects were in mid October of last year. After reading about the importance of buffering a long pedal chain, I bought a pre-printed buffer board from General Guitar Gadgets (on the left) and a bunch of components from Pedal Parts Plus. With the board I built my first handmade pedal, a buffer, which is shown at right. I let my kids decorate it with me. It has an utterly superfluous 3PDT true-bypass switch, which it doesn't need because it is an always-on pedal. At the same time, I pulled out the old legacy switch from my MXR Distortion + and replaced it with a 3PDT switch for true-bypass. I also added in jumpers around the input resistors in my Boomerang because it had gotten quite hissy over time.

I built a pedalboard out of an old suitcase around the same time, so my pedal rig as of October 18, 2011 looked like the following picture. Note that I had added a few other pedals over time: a Boss CS-3 compressor/sustainer, a Barber Direct Drive overdrive pedal, an Electro-Harmonix Memory Boy analogy delay pedal, and an ultra-shitty autowah that came with a bass I bought from Eastwood Guitars.

This is where I'll leave my story today. Next time: I mod out the CS-3 and build three Fuzz Faces!