An Eulogy to Jay Reatard
01/14/2010

I walked away from my first meeting with Jay Reatard unsettled. It was early 2000 in Memphis – Oneida was playing a one-off festival for reasons I’ll let Bobby tell his grandchildren someday. But the point being – my good friend John Garland introduced me to Jay as the leader of the Reatards. They were about to go to Europe – I think for the first time but that’s not really an important detail. Anyway – I was standing outside this downtown Memphis show space, chatting with a young guy with an enormous personality, a visible chip on his shoulder while feeling his subtle emanations of ungovernable menace. From the first – Jay presented the not unusual combination of insecurity and confidence.

Jay was nothing if not provocative. Here was a teenager, fronting a band called The Reatards, who had a chunk of Europe in thrall (as many of the excellent Goner/Memphis crew did and still do) and was already infamous for his outrageous performances – both on and off stage. To my discredit I wrote him off after that first meeting – but less than a year later Oneida was back in Memphis and Garland played us The Lost Sounds’ caustic debut “Memphis Is Dead.” What’s so special about so much Memphis indie music (for want of a better word) is present here. Classicism and respect for the city’s rich musical legacy is smashed rudely with the Lost Sounds’ parallel universe of humiliating desire and longing. Their songs were bleak and full of rage, but in their genesis was an urge for the uncomplicated connection; the simple human desire which generates much of our bewildered fury.

Seeing The Lost Sounds live was never less than transcendent. They touched me with an immediacy that laid waste to my previous ambivalence. Jay was always a discomfiting and exciting presence on stage. There’s reams of evidence out there if anyone reading this never got to see him perform. Beyond some of the most extreme examples that landed in the indie tabloids, he was a truly rare and gifted performer. He navigated his sets as a whip in the midst of flight; fully enlivened and ruthless. This was a dude who embodied the true brutality of rock and roll – the stuff that melody, personality and technique package into something palatable to a puritan nation. Jay was an artist who brought that vehemence keenly to the surface.

Which brings me to his craft – the craft which delivered him some of his recent acclaim and a place on the Matador roster.

While I wasn’t shocked when I heard Jay’s post-Lost Sounds solo work, I was gratified at the realization of complexity. Or let’s say a different kind of complexity. Even The Reatards’ I Gotta Rock and Roll is slippery. Let’s look at All Over Again – it’s at once a break up song, a classic piece of pop relationship advice, and a witty play on words i.e. the relationship is over – which is a familiar state of affairs (so to speak) – he’s breaking up “all over again.”

But clearly this new wave of songwriting touched a lot of people – and hinted at a rich and widening palette that could only expand on the ground he’d already covered. The records are there for you to explore if you missed them. I believe they will hold up for a long time.

I did not know Jay well, but our paths crossed many times over the last ten years. I was in the audience for a number of his shows and Oneida was lucky enough to share a couple of bills with him recently. We had some conversations about collaborating down the line which came to naught.

Jay was a guy who incited. He wasn’t really one for the straight “bro down” – and that was one of the things that made him stand out. But all that aside he was always a pleasure to be around when we got to see him, and always a supportive friend. Behind the bluster and the “total asshole” persona (as he announces brazenly on his Twitter page) was a sensitive person and a dedicated craftsman whose music affects me deeply. “Rest in peace” has hardly been more apt.

Mott The Hoople's Brain Capers
02/22/2009

I wrote about Mad Shadows a number of years ago when it seemed to me the British equivalent of Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night – an expression of triumph in despair or a perfect spark in complete desolation. I still love that album – nothing’s changed in that account. Today I want to talk about Mott the Hoople’s forth album, “Brain Capers – featuring the Brain Caper Kids” an album that is littered with the same chaos and bizarre disregard for conventional professionalism that it seems endeared them to almost no one.

I feel a lot of people have misunderstood this album – even the people who praise it highly and wonder aloud how the world could have missed the boat on this masterpiece. It comes as no surprise to me that this album ended the band’s career until David Bowie came to the rescue with the song “All The Young Dudes.”

The obvious starting point to explain the haphazard performances on “Brain Capers” would be the producer Guy Stevens – a British music wizard who shows up at the conception of a lot of disparate “big bang” (and seemingly inevitable) moments in the UK’s musical history. The story goes that he supplied the Stones with cover song ideas before they started writing their own material, he named the album “Sticky Fingers,” he produced “London Calling” and he produced “Mad Shadows” – the only Mott album that resembles the ambition of “Capers.” It should also be said that he was instrumental in forming the band and named them after a book (Mott the Hoople by Willard Manus) he read in prison serving time for a drug related charge.

When Mott entered the studio to record “Brain Capers” they hadn’t had much success selling records and Island was on the verge of dropping the band. They had just released the self-produced Wildlife as an antidote to the unhinged craziness of “Mad Shadows” and no one cared. I find “Wildlife” dull – they tried to be a respectable band and in the process became a boring one. With Capers they repeated the live-in-studio recording technique they applied on “Mad Shadows” and banged it out in 5 days.

The more I listen to “Brain Capers” the more I feel like it’s an astonishing failure. A lot of times artists will liken a recording to a photo album; snapshots of their band at a particular time in their lives. Brain Capers is the perfect album of the death of a band. It’s truly a “last gasp.” Yes – a band with the name Mott the Hoople released a number of albums after Brain Capers but this one clearly captures a group of musicians who don’t have a future in mind. That this album is an explosion and not a whimper is a testament to the fury and righteous indignation with which the band faced the world’s indifference. Island did end up dropping them after its release and it was only through David Bowie’s advocacy that Mott’s second wind came with All The Young Dudes and Mott – but that stuff isn’t so interesting to me so we’ll leave that for another time.

Guy Stevens and engineer Andy Johns arrived for the first day of the recording session dressed as highwaymen with black Zorro-style eye masks. That this black mask makes an appearance on the transcendentally terrible album cover got me thinking its significance in the wider palette of the band’s story. Zorro is an outlaw who defends the common folks against the oppressive status quo. He also enjoys publicly humiliating the oppressors. . .OK. Lyrically throughout Brain Capers Ian Hunter rails against people who just don’t understand him (and the band by extension). In the first track, the oddly named, “Death May Be Your Santa Claus” (there’s nothing about death in the lyrics and an early, tighter and shorter version recorded for “Mad Shadows” is titled “How Long”) Hunter screams “How long? How long? Until you realize that I’m strange?!”

I have to interject here for a moment – Oneida learned and covered this song for the Yo La Tengo Hanukkah shows last year and all the lyrical interpretations I found on the net are wildly incorrect. So don’t go pointing them out to me. . .cool?

The song begins with about a minute of burgeoning studio jamming; a guitar does some scratching, the drums lay down a sloppy mid-tempo beat and some hollering and keyboard stabs are heard. It is not a confident beginning – in fact when the rest of the band finally comes with the main riff the rhythm section speeds up perceptibly. This, along with some clacky stick work, does not assure the listener of the band’s competence. So things don’t start so well – or do they? Certainly the band had another version of this song in the can from an earlier session – it’s more compact, more “professional” sounding and the rhythm section actually performed their proscribed duties.

So who is he talking about with the title anyway? There is no clear person to whom Hunter is addressing his rant – sometimes it seems like it’s a woman he’s trying (unsuccessfully) to get into bed, other times it’s a wider public who’s prudery is getting him riled up. Perhaps he’s just referring to the entire world. . .it’s an animosity that jibes with the characters of the songs. The album is the rage of the losers and the whole Zorro motif is at best a self-delusion – a mockery of the very idea of rage. It’s all pointless.

But this begins a series of snapshots of the band in its present incarnation, and it’s one in which Ian Hunter does little more than bellow incoherently about being misunderstood and not caring about it anyway. It’s the perfect encapsulation of the ambivalent stance of this album. It’s performed at full bore, but with limited success; it’s infused with negativity and death but speaks about new beginnings and compromise. In short – it’s true to life and that’s where its strange triumph lies.

The next song, “Your Own Backyard” is a Dion penned song about losing everything to dope and then getting sober. It’s pretty faithful to the original but Mott’s version is more shambolic, more on the edge of chaos and more suggestive that perhaps everyone is performing wasted. I don’t know if it lends a cynical edge to the proceedings but Ian Hunter ads a small tag to the final chorus of the song:

I said it’s gotta start
Right in your own backyard
You know everybody has
Their own beautiful backyard

You might have oil wells
In your own back yard
Yeah, your own backyard…
You might have mad shadows
In your backyard

Bringing “Mad Shadows” into the fabric of this album is perfect continuity – the two albums are of a piece, recorded with the same maniac at the helm and both sound as recklessly unhinged as the other.

Perhaps to expand the mood of the first two songs, guitarist Mick Ralphs sings “Darkness Darkness” a Jesse Colin Young tune (from the Youngbloods) of suicidal fantasy – likening death to peace and light. . .the ballad-style beginning morphs into a typical Mott-style heavy-riff stomp. So they want to end it all huh?

What follows is an Ian Hunter 9+ minute power ballad about a dude’s brutal trip through loss and destruction, “I know I lost just a little bit on the journey!” There’s something perverse about taking nine minutes to impart this simple piece of information – but that’s Mott’s way – never play a five minute ballad when you can roll nine minutes of tape. It’s at the end of the song when Hunter screams, “Everybody’s got a journey!” that their choice of “Your Own Backyard” starts to take focus. Life is hard, life is fucked, don’t judge – we’re gonna lay it down for you.

Sweet Angeline starts off the second side with an astounding sloppiness even for this band – the lyrics are oppressively confused and the band barely finishes the song. There is absolutely no finesse in this band! It’s not really accurate to say that this album “rocks” – though this word means a lot of things to a lot of people. I think “self-destructs” is more apt. There are so many forms of self-loathing and self-sabotage on display here – from the terribly executed cover to the collapsing performances and half-baked lyricism that I’m starting to doubt my own sanity. I wanted to hold this album up as a triumph of the elevated flaw but now that I’ve spent the last few hours listening to these songs I can’t think straight. This band is fucking terrible! Just terrible.

There is a school of thought that calls Mott proto-punk” – and if you examine their limited instrumental technique and rage I think you can make a case.

We ain’t bleeding you, we’re feeding you
But you’re too fucking slow!
And to those of you who always laugh
Let this be our epitaph!

This is the final quatrain of the final full song on the album, The Moon Upstairs a song that the drummer seems to still be learning when they recorded it. It’s telling that Hunter starts bellowing “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,” as drummer Dave Griffin drops his final stick. Hunter is not only telling off the world, he’s also playing the part of the doubter. In the midst of their performance they rage against indifference and also embody it. It’s tough to find a performance like this on a major label album. It’s more suited to a talentless garage band.

The album ends with a chaotic minute tag from a different take of “The Journey” called “The Wheel of the Quivering Meat Conception” – a final fuck off.

I don’t know what to tell you about this album. I think you should check it out and see what it does to you. It captures that ineffable side of rock that embodies all-consuming rage – but it’s a suicidal rage that would drag the rest of the world down with it.

I don’t think a person who spends a lot of time with this album can truly be it’s advocate – it does not withstand a close and careful reading. Instead it’s adolescent in its rage and appetites – soft to reason and attention and contemptuous of one who would bother to take it seriously. For this I think it’s rare and deserves a listen – maybe not for the reasons why I originally wanted to bring it your attention. I thought I would be praising a triumph in the face of adversity – this would be something you could do with “Mad Shadows” or maybe one of Mott’s more accomplished (but more sterile) later albums that have some joy in the grooves.

“Brain Capers” was dedicated to James Dean so I’ve got to be right.

There's a New O in Washington
11/10/2008

There has been a lot of confusion flailing around the internet these last few days. You heard it here first: Obama won the presidential election. But many Oneida fans have been lighting up the phone bank here at enemyhogs (multitasking with their J’s most likely) with excitement over the media’s embrace of all things O. We are all of a sudden “Generation O,” the “Opulent Ones,” the best band in the world with O in their names aside from Oakley Hall and Oasis. Before we get carried away with our feelings of vindication I would like to be first to say that most of the references to O currently making the rounds are not referring to Oneida (or even overstock.com) but actually are referring to Barack Obama, our 44th president.

Let me make this as clear as possible – Oneida was founded in 1997. In 1996 Obama was elected to the Illinois state senate. To be fair to the O (Oneida) – two members of Oneida (myself and Jane) released a single (Super Hussy – We Are the Best b/w Cut My Hair – Corporate Records) in the same year that Obama published “Songs of My Father” – that was in 1995.

In the ensuing years both O’s have pursued ambitious agendas in their respective fields – occasionally crossing paths in notable ways. We have both reached high levels of success. We have both inspired countless individuals. I think we both have something to teach the other. I would humbly like to offer some O experiences here for the new O to chew on as he enters higher office.

Oneida probably played in Chicago when Obama lived there. Most definitely we did. One of those shows was sold out. That was in 2004 I think at Schuba’s (capacity 175). We did not let that adulation go to our heads. We kept it real. We released a Grateful Dead covers single after most merchants of cool had given reluctant approval to a small sliver of the Dead’s gargantuan output (the fact that we forgot to credit the song writers anywhere on the package is neither here nor there). Lesson? Give credit where credit is due unless budget, time or laziness does not permit.

The O (Oneida) has also spent some time in Washington, DC! In fact we played an almost capacity show in 2005 at a venue called The Warehouse Next Door (currently closed). What capacity you ask? Let’s just say that when we were handed our money at the end of the night, we were told that approximately 60 people crossed the threshold (incl guest list and other band members – The Apes and Awesome Color – what’s up dudes?). We are not strangers to an exciting reception in the nation’s capital. Lesson? A big crowd in Washington, DC is quite small.

In fact – we performed a three song set on NPR (heavily edited) to Scott Simon the day before. In the hard glare of the media spotlight perhaps we stumbled when asked tough questions about band policy (we all have kept our day jobs) and maybe the drummer came across as lacking a certain sense of humor. It’s not easy having the world hanging on your every word (or beat). Lesson? Be careful what you say when you are interviewed by NPR for the first (and last time).

The final thing I would like to impart to the new O is one of a more personal note. I understand that today is the first day that the O has visited the Oval (oh damn! get it?) Office (oh man. . .that’s good stuff). . .I remember the first time I set foot in the Oval Office. This was before Oneida, before even our first “effort” (A Place Called El Shaddais) – in fact it was during the short, perhaps “unsuccessful” Jimmy Carter presidency. I think it was the late 70s. I was most likely in 1st grade. Tammy Paine figured heavily in my crush column (she was a farm girl who loved Little House on the Prairie books). My aunt Linda, a government employee who bought and sold energy or $1000 hammers, worked for the administration (still does!) and arranged for me to actually see the O’val O’ffice. The windows were tinted green b/c they were bullet proof. Some people do not love our president – so that was to protect him. I think I had eaten some Spaghetti O’s earlier (for real!). . .I was heart broken when Carter lost to Ronald Reagan. Lesson? Reading all the Little House books will not get you the girl and some of those later books are super boring.

So in conclusion – the old O would like to offer the new O our services during your time in office. As long as it does not fall on a school night (Bby is a teacher) or during a previously scheduled engagement (perhaps at Trash Bar or the WFMU record fair) Oneida would be happy to play an abbreviated set for you and your family once you’ve settled into the White House. Our next album is funnily enough entitled “Rated O.” I thought you might get a kick out of that.

Sincerely – Kid Millions (drums, vocals)/Oneida

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