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This is more crucial than anything I’d have to say…

Pitchfork.tv: TAD: Busted Circuits and Ringing Ears (One Week Only)

Seattle’s legendary TAD, a band that was heavy in every conceivable sense, is the subject of the documentary Busted Circuits and Ringing Ears, playing on Pitchfork.tv for the next week. Sometimes overlooked when the story of Seattle music is told, TAD were there almost from the beginning, releasing their first single on Sub Pop in 1988. Producers Ryan Short & Adam Pease track their story all the way through and talk to key players along the way, interspersing choice live footage with the interviews.

Once again, big thanks to our friends at Music Video Distributors, whose archives also include films like LoudQuietLoud and the incomparable GG Allin: Hated, for helping us to share these documentaries. These and hundreds more are available for purchase at their official website SeeOfSound.

Link to video: http://pitchfork.tv/week/tad/chapter-1

Killer Filler

Filler songs have historically received a bad reputation as being actively less spectacular than the rest of an album. They don’t pull their weight compared to the “real” numbers and are generally seen as keeping a collection of songs from reaching its maximum potential. Now that may be true in a lot of circumstances. Cases of one-hit wonders and lazy songwriters are like the Styrofoam packing peanuts of music history - largely ignored but more plentiful than what’s remembered. But what I propose to you, gentle reader, is to think of how difficult it is to pay complete devoted attention to every second of a record. Sure there may be a few in your life that you’ve listened to backwards and forwards, have memorized every second, have developed strong emotional bonds with specific drum fills, etc. You might even be the type of music fan that seeks out records that encourage these types of attachments. But to me it’s rare that I find an album that’s heady and dense that I can put on anytime. I NEED that filler in there as background music sometimes.

However, the main reason to reconsider the filler songs in your collection is many of them aren’t filler at all. I love songwriters that structure records with pauses like these. They give the listener time to process the denser songs without breaking up the mood by pausing the album. What’s more is repeated listens reveal these moments to be just as noteworthy as the more noticeable ones. Examples to watch out for are short instrumentals (90 Day Men’s “Sequel”), sudden shifts in style and intensity (Oneida’s “Dead Worlds”), comic departures (Pavement’s “Brinx Job”), etc. Great filler is a confirmation of great conscientious songwriting and a desire to explore types of writing while acknowledging the demands of the listener. Hell, some bands have done records that could be defined as nothing but this type of songwriting (Alien Lanes, Exile On Main Street, every Need New Body record)

The problem is filler is one of those things that’s defined by the ear of the beholder. I guess a general definition is it refers to place marker songs. Tunes that create some breathing room without breaking up the tension. That would be good filler. Bad filler would be those songs that sound like weaker variations of the better songs and awkward half-assed genre experiments. I could cite some examples, but chances are you can find your own by picking up any record by a famous band that seems to only get airplay for the same two songs it debuted with.

The last thing I’d like to point out is that there are many excellent songs out there undervalued as filler. Here’s a quick YouTube roundup of tunes I feel fall squarely into that category. Feel free to add your own.

Velvet Underground, “Black Angel’s Death Song”

The Police, “Miss Gradenko”

Unicorns, “The Clap” (some dork posted this as the soundtrack to a bunch of Doctor Who clips)

and quite possibly the greatest “filler” song of all time,

Happy Birthday Thomas Pynchon!

The Elusive One turned 70 today. Let’s hear it for him!

 Perhaps history this century, thought Eigenvalue, is rippled with gathers in its fabric such that if we are situated, as Stencil seemed to be, at the bottom of a fold, it’s impossible to determine warp, woof, or pattern anywhere else. By virtue, however, of existing in one gather it is assumed there are others, compartmented off into sinuous cycles each of which had come to assume greater importance than the weave itself and destroy any continuity. Thus it is that we are charmed by the funny-looking automobiles of the ’30’s, the curious fashions of the ’20’s, the particular moral habits of our grandparents. We produce and attend musical comedies about them and are conned into a false memory, a phony nostalgia about what they were. We are accordingly lost to any sense of continuous tradition. Perhaps if we lived on a crest, things would be different. We could at least see.
–from V, 1963

Loudon Wainwright III, “Attempted Moustache”

Loudon Wainwright III strikes me as a habitual goof. He seems to be one of those good natured guys that promises great things and never delivers them. Whether that makes him a romantic idealist or a wishy-washy mess is up to the listener, and it makes his 1973 anti-classic Attempted Moustache very frustrating.

Simply put, Wainwright doesn’t take himself very seriously. Several of the songs are jokes that run on too long. The novelty isn’t bad but there are moments on the record of truly poignant universal folk music that take your breath away. It’s heartbreaking to be impressed by the poetry of Swimming Song and then have to sit through a fake coctail-jazz number driven by the assumption that hearing the phrase “bell-bottom pants” over and over is hilarious. And then sit though some obnoxious a-cappella chanting about Liza Minelli. And then a fratboy-esque redo of Woody Guthrie’s New York Town to half-ass a joke about Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene making out.

Between the highs and lows, there’s a lot of bland music with painfully unclever lyrics. Want to hear what a stock 70s studio band sounded like? Imagine a mix of unspecific country and roots rockplayed by guys hired by a label to go through the motions. And then put the sloppy booziness of Wainwright’s personality on top. Tracks like Clockwork Chartreuse and Nocturnal Stumblebutt tempt one into writing him off as selfish, sexist, baselessly angry, and just plain unfunny. The Onion AvClub once commented that Nocturnal Stumblebutt is an excellent instance of a man coming to grips with the realization that his alcoholism has made him pathetic. I don’t think they were talking about the actual content of the song though, which sounds like it was scribbled seconds before recording. Lines like, Eureka! I’m in luck/Found some matches and a crumpled butt, leave you shaking your head in exasperation.

The album’s most cringe-inducing moment, however, is Lullaby, where Wainwright takes his frustration out on someone keeping him awake. He has later revealed that the song is about himself, but that didn’t stop him from making it clear in the printings of the lyrics he’s pronouncing “ruthless” as “Rufus”. If anyone wants to know why the Wainwright kids are so crazy there’s your reason.

Most albums with lows that low are irredeemable, but part of the drama of the record is the soaring highs of tracks like Swimming Song, Come a Long Way, and The Man Who Couldn’t Cry. Alternating between these moments of supreme lucidity and the other tracks make this an album with which you can have a fruitfully dysfunctional relationship. The Man Who Couldn’t Cry is a bitter epic that gives worth to all the other middling ideas heard up until then. Wainwright flexes his narrator muscles and successfully assumes the voice he’s been hinting at all over the album to tell of a Job-like figure persecuted by others and by life itself for his inability to show sympathy. The story ends with the death of our hero and his satisfaction at seeing ruin come to those who wronged him. Come A Long Way is one of those classic folk songs that exists to give wisdom for when you need it. Penned by Wainwright’s then-wife Kate McGarrigle, the song lists some bittersweet truths in the form of a reconciliation between two people coming to the end of a grudge.

It’s the opening track, Swimming Song, that is the clearest reason for the necessity of this record. The twin banjos of the intro greet the listener into a deceptively cinematic production of a full country band in action. The music rises and falls in waves and effectively evocates images of Southern US lakes and rivers. Wainwright complements it with one of the greatest sets of lyrics ever put on tape. You see, this summer he went swimming. This summer he might have drowned, but he held his breath and kicked his feet and he moved his arms around. The symbolism is striking.

Those three tracks are absolutely essential, the rest of the album not so much. It’s worth a listen though, especially if you enjoy psychoanalyzing folks based on their writing. Wainwright was going through a difficult period then and it shows. Artistic or not, it’s can be a rewarding study in a volatile personality trying to keep his priorities in line despite his tendency to self-sabotage.