From: owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org (support-system-digest) To: support-system-digest@smoe.org Subject: support-system-digest V6 #153 Reply-To: support-system@smoe.org Sender: owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk support-system-digest Tuesday, June 17 2003 Volume 06 : Number 153 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Bounced message [owner-support-system@smoe.org (by way of Jase ] Why can't I on VH1 [robert joyner ] liz on salon.com [Valerie ] Shatter [Al Madrid ] SF Weekly review [Emil Breton ] Bounced message [owner-support-system@smoe.org (by way of Jase ] Airplay in Detroit ["J. Alan Doak" ] Re: Airplay in Detroit ["trent \[Grr, Arg\]" ] Video for "Extraordinary" [Charles M ] Bounced message [owner-support-system@smoe.org (by way of Jase ) Subject: Bounced message From: "Mike Gaughan" To: support-system@smoe.org Subject: Providence Phoenix Review of new CD Hey I saw this today on the Providencephoenix.com site. I have not seen the paper version, so I don't know if Liz is on the cover. The ProvidencePhoenix is a free weekly paper- its ok, but since they now own radio stations from Maine to Conn. it seems a little self serving. (They have free papers in Worcester, MA and Portland, ME I belive). Maybe Liz will play a WFNX event. Welcome to Girlville The new, improved Liz Phair BY FRANKLIN SOULTS - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Put on "Extraordinary," the opening cut to Liz Phairs homonymous June 24 release on Capitol, and you may have to brace yourself as the ground shifts under your ears. The song opens with a heavy rock-guitar riff, but thats not where the vertigo hits: after it repeats for two bars, Phair steps up to the mike to banish every hint of heaviness for the remainder of the 14-cut album. Heretofore an infamously pitch-challenged singer, she now sounds the way a liquid-screen TV looks disconcertingly smooth and luscious, so vivid it feels fake. In fact, as the song goes on, it becomes clear that everything about the 36-year-old singer-songwriter has been polished and brightened, turned into 3-D Pixar animation. "Extraordinary" rolls across a sunny plain with music as clean-scrubbed as anything by the latest crop of tough-chick popsters, like Pink or Shakira or maybe Avril Lavigne. As it turns out, thats because "Extraordinary" and three other tracks were produced and co-written by Lavignes team of production pros, the Matrix. Even so, the wooziest jolt comes from the shift in something that remains Phairs own creation: the words. Theyre uncommonly uncomplicated for Liz Phair lyrics, edged with a new brazen smugness. Theyre not just in your face, the way shes always been, but facing you, talking directly to you, as she plays the extraordinary rock star that she really is. "See me jumping through hoops for you, you stand there watching me performing," she sings, climaxing the verse with a long, derisive "Who the hell are you?" A full decade ago, Phair was equally brazen, but in a totally different way. Her celebrated 1993 debut, Exile in Guyville (Matador), challenged indie rocks macho conventions with a startlingly explicit and disarmingly intimate dissection of heterosexual female desire and boy/girl politics. And yet she didnt storm the ramparts of patriarchy, like Bikini Kill; or rally a radical community, like Sleater-Kinney; or flip the psychosexual tables with man-sized rock, like PJ Harvey; or, like Hole, just flip the bird. Even when declaring herself a real "cunt in spring" or some guys blow-job queen, Liz Phair remained conventionally feminine, almost demure. That was an essential part of her liberating thrill she wasnt Lydia Lunch redux, she was Joni Mitchell gone post-punk and feminist (finally!). The distinction probably helped her, too, as she amassed critical acclaim and reached a cohort of educated, liberal-minded rock fans that was broader, if not absolutely bigger, than anything her louder female peers had achieved. It wasnt enough, however, to make her a star. Joni Mitchell had platinum albums and Top 10 hits. Liz Phair has never broken the Billboard Top 20 albums, and it took Exile in Guyville five years just to go gold. Even so, her traditionalism was still enough to provide the singer-songwriter an escape route from alterna-rocks collapsing building. After two wider-ranging Matador albums (1994s merely very good Whip Smart and 1998s masterful Whitechocolatespaceegg), it was only logical that her next move would be to try to become "Extraordinary" in commercial terms as well as artistic ones. "That was a conscious decision to survive right now," she says over the phone from Capitols New York offices. "Like, part of the four-year hiatus [after Whitechocolatespaceegg], there was a part in which I waged a campaign to get off my major label. And thats because its frustrating in the business as it is right now. You get paid in a very weird system thats not in the artists favor, really. Then Andy [Slater, Capitols new president] came in, and I saw a chance. And Im like, okay, this is the guy who produced and managed Fiona Apple, the Wallflowers, and Macy Gray, all for their first records, which I loved every one. And I thought, Jesus Christ, this is it. This is the wave. If there has ever been a wave that I can take in the major-label arena, that would work, it would be this one. So instead of trying to get away from that, I decided, Okay, Im going to give them a record that is strongly me, but that they will be excited by. You know what I mean?" But why, then, does she again rip fissures in the ground, seeming to challenge her listeners very right to exist in the first cut? "No, Extraordinary is not to my fans at all," Phair says slowly, with a hint of disbelief, as if she were trying to assure me that Alaska is indeed a state. "Its to a particular guy." "Oh," is all I can muster in reply. Its true that, for most of our brief, strictly timed interview, my repartee is hardly more articulate. From the first question, Phair dominates the conversation with a cool condescension that makes me think of a stereotypical hyper-professional female boss which is exactly what a man might think when hes being bested. As Vic Chesnutt suggests on his new "Girls Say," women have lots of different stock lines when talking to the opposite sex, but men always end up with just one: "Why you wanna be a bitch?" Phairs persona is so powerful, its no wonder that Ive sensed that attitude in numerous guys when they dismiss her music. But Ive never sensed it as pungently as I do in the rising chorus of complaints against the pop "sellout" of the new Liz Phair. Chuck Klosterman eventually spins away from it in his Spin review, but he opens by disapproving of Phairs libidinal homage to younger men, "Rock Me," and suggesting that her new songs are barely even catchy. Stephen Thomas Erlewine lets his disgust fly in his review for allmusic.com, damning every song with adjectives like "insipid," "banal," "condescending," and "painfully trite." Now when arguing about a subject as slippery and subjective as popular music, its always tempting but rarely constructive to impugn a critic for his supposed internal motives rather than attack his stated reasoning. But Liz Phair is such a daring and disorienting album that it seems to leave us clutching at little more than our prejudices. "Even when I made Guyville, I was hating indie then," Phair told Entertainment Weekly recently. "The whole album was about how much I hated indie. You know I liked radio hits my whole life, including when I was cool. When Shakira goes [she sings], Underneath your clothes, that works on me." It works on me, too, as does almost every song on Liz Phair, not despite the unabashed shallowness but because of it. Avril Lavigne has always struck me as a cheesy mall-punkette-by-committee. But Phair agreed to use the Matrix because they were old friends whose presence would ensure a larger budget for the album. The music they wrote for "Why Cant I?" might be pop-by-numbers obvious, but the lyric belies its romantic chorus "Why cant I breathe whenever I think about you?" with a gritty back story: she and the guy are both cheating, and doing it to escape failing relationships. As it turns out, Phair tells me, that song is about the same guy as "Extraordinary," but given that almost every song is about sexual matters, it seems obvious shes been more busy than that of late. And why not? After all, she recently divorced film editor Jim Staskausas, to whom she was married for five years and bore a son, Nicholas, now six. "I think Ive just been writing more sexual stuff lately because Im single again," she confirms. "When youre single, that whole dynamic between men and women becomes pertinent again. Youre having to encounter yourself through the eyes of different people, encounters that make you look at yourself and be, like, Oh, I guess Im this way and other people arent. "I dont think people on Guyville gave me the credit for being capable of doing anything more than diary entries. What I think is scary is that the new album, quite a bit of it is very real to what my life is. I dont know what to make of that. Because people feel that Guyville is more true, and Im looking at the new record seeing how true each song is and thinking, Well . . . " This autobiographical collection is, then, almost by definition narrower than Guyvilles feminist portrait of contemporary bohemia. Yet Phairs model here is no longer Joni Mitchell but Madonna, the last artist who really challenged pops limits with frank sex talk. Both come off in their art as extroverted sexual omnivores. (Phair insists, "Im not sexually aggressive at all. In no way if you knew me would you ever find me being like, Hey buddy, lets hit it. I just happen to have enjoyed the attention.") Both demonstrate an intense concentration on detail and clarity in their music that often creates a breathtaking combination of the obvious and the revolutionary. Both have a pliable talent that shines through their musical collaborations. Both risk ridicule as they assert prerogatives that men have resented in women since the dawn of time. And both are, without a doubt, total bitches. If you cant understand why theyd wanna be, the key to Guyville is yours. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 21:32:39 +1000 From: "Derek McGough" Subject: Australian Release The Australian release date of "Liz Phair" has been moved again, this time to July 7.This is on the EMI website as "confirmed" but this has happened before. It definitely will not come out on the 30th June, but at least it's not too long a wait. The details for the release come with the following blurb: 14 New songs, They are all cool and they rock. - - Album contains online link for downloadable EP of un-released tracks. - - Her 1st Studio album in 5 years was produced in part x Michael Penn (Aimee Mann, the Wallflowers), R. Walt Vincent (Pete Yorn) and the Matrix (Avril Lavigne) - - Features guest appearances by Dr. Dre bassman (co-writer/producer of 50 Cent's smash "In Da Club") Mike Elizondo, Smashing Pumpkins/Zwan drummer Matt Chamberlin, Prince and the Revolution/Wendy and Lisa bassist Wendy Melvoin - - 1st single 'Why Can't I' at radio & TV 9\6 - - Major press pieces coming. - - Street press advertising in all states - - Possible tour late 2003 I guess the online link means that it won't be one of EMI's infamous copy-controlled discs, unless the technology has developed. And I don't know how excited to get about the "possible tour" as they usually say this when any album is released. Or it will be a promo tour of Sydney and Melbourne only. Oh well... Derek ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 07:42:47 -0700 (PDT) From: robert joyner Subject: Why can't I on VH1 saw the video for Why can't I? on vh1 just a moment ago. Came on at about 10:30am. Was on their show "Inside Track". Directed by somebody called Phil Harder Had a cd jukebox motif to the video. Shows all the cd covers moving around inside the jukebox. On the covers of the cds are Liz and some anonymous band members playing out different cd cover scenarios, giving Liz many excuses to look all glammed up. (There was an L Phizzy sighting- there is one shot where she is rolling around and you can see her with four or five gold chains around her neck, working the bling-bling). My review: Bleh!!!! check the listings for inside track at the vh1 website, it may be on again today. robert ===== - ------------------------------------------------------------ Nashville - A Liz Phair Web Site http://www.geocities.com/robnashville - ------------------------------------------------------------ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 11:09:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Valerie Subject: liz on salon.com http://www.salon.com/ent/music/feature/2003/06/16/liz_phair/index.html i didn't want to paste the whole article, so follow the link. if you're not a salon premium member, go through the "free day pass" process to access the article. you'll have to view a 10-15 second ad, then the content is all yours, baby. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 08:20:01 -0700 (PDT) From: Al Madrid Subject: Shatter It's cool Emil, I just couldn't remember if I made that statement. Yes, Shatter is one of my all-time favs but It's Sweet is by far one of them. Maybe you're thinking of Red Light Fever. While I think RLF is a beautiful song, it isn't comparable to Shatter. Her guitar playing at the beginning of Shatter is just soooooo awesome. Al Al: > Emil, I never said this. Please refresh my memory. Ack! sorry, sorry, sorry. I was paraphrasing (badly, apparently). I made this mental connection, in that you get a similar(?) reaction from "It's Sweet"; it speaks to you on the same sort of emotional level that "Shatter" does or so I thought.. I always remembered you saying "Shatter" was your favorite song, and then you talked about how "It's Sweet" really gets to you (as well), or something, and voila -- Emil fucks up. Forgiveness please. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 13:33:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Emil Breton Subject: SF Weekly review A little late on forwarding this one (it's from late May), but it's so mean and right-on, I just had to: http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2003-05-28/reviewed.html/1/index.html __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 18:11:37 -0400 From: owner-support-system@smoe.org (by way of Jase ) Subject: Bounced message From: "Heather Larson" To: Subject: Liz Phair article on Salon Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 10:54:03 -0700 http://www.salon.com/ent/music/feature/2003/06/16/liz_phair/index.html Exile gone mainstream With her fourth album, titled simply "Liz Phair," the erstwhile queen of nasty indie rock grows up (sort of) and plays radio-friendly pop (mostly). She says that's always where she was headed. - - - - - - - - - - - - - By Hillary Frey June 16, 2003 | For 10 years, critics and members of the indie rock faithful have been waiting for Liz Phair to make an album that sounds like, well, Liz Phair. That is, the old Liz Phair -- the one whose screwy guitar chords, lo-fi sound and fuck-you (or, rather, fuck-me) lyrics made her 1993 debut "Exile in Guyville" a veritable alt-rock blockbuster that sold more than 200,000 copies. With 1994's follow-up "Whip-Smart" and 1998's "Whitechocolatespaceegg," Phair left behind the four-track, the dirty talk and the exhausted take on relationships that made "Guyville" so powerful, in favor of a slicker, more conventional pop sound both musically and lyrically. Where "Guyville" had Phair angrily declaring, "I wanna be mesmerizing too!" over hand claps and guitars, "Whitechocolatespaceegg" had her feeling "the sun on my back" and smelling "the earth in my skin" over a backing band -- keyboards and all. With the release of this month's "Liz Phair" -- reaching stores on June 24 -- she's gone even further. Upbeat and scrubbed almost clean, "Liz Phair" is actually radio friendly -- so much so that you might be inclined to pass it on to your Christina-loving teenage sister rather than file it between Pavement and Polvo in your own record collection. But don't. At least not just yet. "Liz Phair," produced in part by the Matrix (i.e., the folks who've brought us Avril Lavigne), may sound at first like a disc for the sub-17 set, but there are traces of the girl who made "Guyville" all over it. Phair's been taking a pre-release beating for this record, and not just from my boyfriend but also, and probably more important, from actual rock critics. In Spin, Chuck Klosterman gave the new record a B-minus and put it this way: "[On 'Guyville,'] Phair deconstructed relationships with an insight that didn't seem mortal. Now she plays videogames with some slacker dude." But "Rock Me," Phair's song about hanging out with the cute kid and his Xbox, isn't that simple. Shouldn't she get some points for subversion? Admit it: An empowered, 36-year-old, divorced single mom who picks up a guy nine years younger and uses him for sex kinda rocks. Speaking with Phair by phone on the eve of the scaled-down Field Day Festival (originally planned for eastern Long Island, the festival was moved at virtually the last minute to Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.), I ask what she makes of people who continue to lament that she hasn't made another album like "Guyville." "I don't know what to say," says Phair, with a trace of irritation. "I'm really happy that I made 'Exile in Guyville' -- I love that record. But I don't know that it's possible for me to go back and make a 'Guyville.' That was really a product of me being 20 and having nothing else to do but sit around and get stoned and play guitar all day long." After her annoyance subsides, she adds, " I think people who choose to keep one thing that they do and just circle it again and again -- that's valid. That's great, but that's just not the kind of person I am." Besides, she notes, "I like big sounds." Although "big sounds" came through on "Whip-Smart" (think of "Supernova") and "Whitechocolatespaceegg" (the title track, or "Polyester Bride"), this remark still comes as a bit of a surprise. It's been easy to assume all along that Phair's steady drift toward the mainstream came from an impulse outside herself -- from some corporate pressure to capitalize on the success of "Guyville" by producing songs that are attractive to millions rather than thousands. In fact, Phair explains, each of her subsequent records has come closer to the way that she wants her music to sound. "I used to feel afraid of being in a room with 'real musicians,'" she confesses. "I didn't feel like I had a voice enough to say what I wanted or to get to a place where the song felt like what I wanted. As I've been working, I've become more comfortable in those environments -- and they're less lo-fi and more hi-fi. I feel comfortable experimenting." It's hard to believe, but the same woman who redefined bedroom politics with songs like "Guyville's" "Flower" ("every time I see your face/ I get all wet between my legs") and "Whip-Smart's" "Chopsticks" ("he said he liked to do it backwards/ I said that's just fine with me/ that way we can fuck and watch TV") was actually afraid of calling the shots in the studio. Phair's present self-possession was hard-won. Her marriage, subsequent divorce and newfound single-mom status, she says, have all made her tougher: "Going through what I went through was really difficult, and coming out on the other end OK made me feel pretty powerful as a person," says Phair, now 36. And the same experiences that differentiate the old Liz Phair from the new have also defined "Liz Phair." Where "Guyville's" appeal resided in its universality -- whoever you were, there seemed to be a song on that record that described your feelings about relationships -- the new record's strength lies in its intimacy. That the record is self-titled is no coincidence: These songs are Liz Phair. Take, for example, "Red Light Fever," a track about a relationship that stalls because the guy won't commit. "That was about a really intense relationship that I had right after my marriage. I thought we were going to get married," Phair says. "It was very messy but very passionate. I watched him being really self-destructive and really torn -- he couldn't decide which way to go. He couldn't move ahead with me in his life and he couldn't just stay where he was. I couldn't help him." Then there's "Friend of Mine," a slower, sorrowful description of post-breakup exhaustion. ("I don't have the heart to try/ one more false start in life/ It's been so hard to get it right.") When I ask Phair about it, she says ruefully, "That was also about the relationship after the divorce." "Little Digger," about Phair's six-and-a-half-year-old son, "is me imagining," she says. "It's me giving him a voice. The hardest thing about divorcing was that he had no say in the things that were happening to him. What I do will affect this person forever. It's his life, and that's what this song is about." Still, for all the emotion underpinning what are, for the most part, upbeat pop anthems, Phair insists that everything is going pretty well. "I have a million things to do. I don't have this uninterrupted freedom and I can't get stoned all the time anymore," she says, "but I'm really more enjoying my day-to-day moments. I'm really in them as opposed to standing outside myself going, 'What if you do that? What will happen then?' I think I'm much happier." It shows. Songs like "Why Can't I?" and "Favorite" are positively ecstatic -- to the point that they practically sound as though they're by someone else. In a more familiar vein, there's "H.W.C.," a chipper paean to "hot white cum" -- the "fountain of youth" and "the meaning of life," in Phair's formulation. Still, just as "Divorce Song" from "Guyville" perfectly described the common early-adulthood experience of corrupting a friendship with sex -- "It's harder to be friends than lovers/ and you shouldn't try to mix the two/ 'Cause if you do it and you're still unhappy/ Then you know that the problem is you" -- so a handful of Phair's new tracks capture the tensions in more mature relationships nearly as well. We shouldn't write Phair off because she became a well-adjusted adult. We should congratulate her instead. salon.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 17:47:48 -0700 (PDT) From: Emil Breton Subject: free "H.W.C." download If you can't wait 7 days (or several weeks, depending on your global positioning), download "H.W.C." at www.alldanzradio.com. Before you can play it, an "optional survey" pops up, but you can just leave all entries blank and hit 'Submit', no problem. my initial thoughts: Hilariously sincere delivery, inoffensive "big" sound (but WHY is her electric guitar dwarfed and exiled to the far left of the mix?), stupid harmonica, hardly "brilliant" but perhaps the least embarrassing of the 5 tracks I've heard so far. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 19:11:30 -0700 (PDT) From: "J. Alan Doak" Subject: Airplay in Detroit I heard "Why Can't I" on the radio today - 96.3 DVD. I normally listen to CDs plugged into the CD player on the computer at work, but it took a dump. The backup doesn't have a sound card, so I flipped on the radio. :-) ===== This "Ad" belongs to me - J. Alan Doak Visit my website: http://www.its-official.com The following "Ad" belongs to somebody else, and may not be endorsed by me. -j. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 19:49:43 -0700 (PDT) From: "trent \[Grr, Arg\]" Subject: Re: Airplay in Detroit i was equally surprised to finally hear Liz on 96.3 in detroit ... she came on right after Jewel's new song ... funny ... "J. Alan Doak" wrote: I heard "Why Can't I" on the radio today - 96.3 DVD. I normally listen to CDs plugged into the CD player on the computer at work, but it took a dump. The backup doesn't have a sound card, so I flipped on the radio. :-) - --- remember, always be yourself. unless you suck. -- joss whedon ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 00:02:01 -0400 From: Charles M Subject: Video for "Extraordinary" Just saw the video -- it's stark and direct (Liz, a spotlight, and a brick wall, all in B&W) and gives her absolutely no room to showcase her talents (short outfit aside). Liz just doesn't look comfortable or convincing.... It might work if she were a Material Girl -- but, then again, Madonna would have demanded a concept and better production values. Charles - ------ Latest add: Liz Phair test pressing http://mywebpages.comcast.net/discographer/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 00:31:29 -0400 From: owner-support-system@smoe.org (by way of Jase ) Subject: Bounced message From: "Katie Roper" To: support-system@smoe.org Subject: Liz on the radio in DC Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 21:37:45 -0400 Heard "Why Can't I?" today on my way home from work on 92.5 FM which is a mix station here in the metropolitan DC area. Have to say I was really shocked to hear her on the radio! And as much as I go back and forth with my opinion on the new album - I was really happy for her today. Katie ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 21:58:56 -0700 (PDT) From: April Haitsuka Subject: One Way Magazine copies up for grabs I snagged a few copies of One Way Magazine from Borders. It includes a very brief description of the new album (at least partially taken from that infamous EMI press release) and "Why Can't I" is featured on the CD sampler. If you're interested, I'm giving away my extra copies to the first five people who respond. I've spun the song a couple of times, and my thoughts are "pleasant, but not memorable." I wish the music industry was chasing after Liz Phair's sound, instead of the other way around. April ------------------------------ End of support-system-digest V6 #153 ************************************