From: owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org (support-system-digest) To: support-system-digest@smoe.org Subject: support-system-digest V6 #159 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 Monday, June 23 2003 Volume 06 : Number 159 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Mini-rant ["Daaaaan Theman" ] Re: Mini-rant [TitleTK@aol.com] amazonians ["Headache79" ] here it comes.... ["dana p." ] liz in interview [LULU428@aol.com] nytimes.com article ["over pavema" ] Liz cd from Best Buy [Easter ] Bounced message [owner-support-system@smoe.org (by way of Jase ] From 1998-WCSE essay [AWeiss4338@aol.com] Re: nytimes.com article [AWeiss4338@aol.com] Bounced message [owner-support-system@smoe.org (by way of Jase Subject: Mini-rant Ok, so shoot me for saying this, I don't care. But for those of you who hate the new album/ the new Liz, just shut up already. Most of you who don't like the new album didn't like "wcse" either, which means Liz hasn't released an album you liked in almost 10 years. Don't you think that's kind of pathetic? Don't you think it's time you moved on? I honestly do like the album, it isn't "exile", but I love it. It's a perfect summer record. the lyrics are different, but everyone (including critics) only focuses on the matrix songs. What about "firewalker"? "My hopes are like embers lying around a... firebed/ Your mind is a firewalker, it steps on them like they are dead". That is one of the best images of any song she has ever written. I admit I am not crazy about the way she is being marketed, or even what she is saying in her interviews. Hell, on both album covers for "Liz Phair", her hair is completely covering her face, and what you do see is airbrushed beyond oblivion; obviously so 14 year olds don't realize she's actually 36. But that's beside the point. Just get over it and get a life. - -dan _________________________________________________________________ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 07:55:43 EDT From: TitleTK@aol.com Subject: Re: Mini-rant In a message dated 6/22/03 1:33:24 AM Eastern Daylight Time, idolizethis@hotmail.com writes: << Most of you who don't like the new album didn't like "wcse" either, which means Liz hasn't released an album you liked in almost 10 years. Don't you think that's kind of pathetic? >> I've been quiet for a while, but these e-mails really piss me off. I kind of like the new album now, so I'm not really the one who should be offended here - -- but you are making quite a lot of assumptions about people that you don't even know. Those of us who have criticized the new album, have done so in a way that may have been critical of Liz but not to anyone on this list. I highly doubt that any of us sit in our rooms devising ways to knock down Liz Phair all day. Liz is a very special artist -- possibly THE most special artist to me and to a lot of people, Exile in Guyville changed a lot of lives and the way we look at the world and did so in a way that pulled no punches. People on this list really care about music (ALL of us), and I think to call one "pathetic" for being physically and emotionally moved by an artist and wanting to discuss and criticize their work/career at length is a big mistake. This type of criticism harkens back to the old punk days of zines where people were much harsher than we will ever be. This doesn't really exist anymore, and I've always loved that Jase has kept up a list that is not just a fan list but a true discussion (argument?) about this absolutely amazing, frustrating, and controversial artist. People don't care as much as they used to about music -- Liz fans should be happy that people continue to care, so that more people can discover Liz's work. james P.S. I think WCSE is amazing!! ============================================================= James E. Place TitleTK@aol.com Days until the new Liz Phair album is released: 02! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 13:11:12 -0400 (EDT) From: "Headache79" Subject: amazonians hey all, for those of you who ordered the new record through amazon, expect them soon. just got my shipping confirmation late last night, meaning it should go out monday... so, not same day maybe as the stores will be getting them but wednesday at the latest. have a great day, paul "As I got older I had to step out of the lines. And make up my own mind. As I got light as a feather they got stiff as a board. I can't feel any more, but I can fake it forever." Liz Phair, "Bionic Eyes" The most personalized portal on the Web! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 10:37:27 -0700 From: "dana p." Subject: here it comes.... wow; i thought that review that robert posted was a fucking riot. yikes! i laughed hard several times. very succinct. in other, non-liz, news, i just got turned on to this band called the faint. they're from omaha, NE, and i LOVE them. their sound is everything i miss about 80s "alternative" music; i think i'm hearing some elements of ministry and romeo void in their sound. they remind me of the british invasion bands of the 80s, but better writing. i am so happy right now.... on the one disk, the one guy's voice sounds like elvis costello. anyway, i've been digging the sound, but as it's been on nonstop for several days now, i'm listening to the words. these guys are *great*! it's, like, nostalgia, but better. check 'em out! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 14:20:00 EDT From: LULU428@aol.com Subject: liz in interview wow, can't believe i may be the first to see this one too- liz interviewed by ben lee in this months interview mag. good interview, a bit short. also in letter from the editor, ingrid sischy has some pretty cool comments about liz. there was nothing on the cover that said anything about liz so i was pretty surprised when i opened up to it. the picture is eh- she looks good, all leg- but when you turn it over to really look at her face, she looks weird. anyway- back to lurking. Lani ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 21:08:57 +0000 From: "over pavema" Subject: nytimes.com article couple of things regarding this article... first, andrea's typo was obviously inadvertent, but sort of important, in that the article is titled 'exile in avril-ville' (not avail-ville, although, actually, that's a good word, too!). second, the article basically calls the record 'career suicide'. and third, it can be found at the ny times site at: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/22/arts/music/22OROU.html interestingly, many of the points raised (or lowered) in the article have been made here on this list first (although not with universal agreement from everyone on it). for the sake of encouraging hit counts on the site, so the times will continue to post its content on the web for free (you have to register, but you can enter any old damn thing, and there's no fee), i'd recommend everyone visiting the link or buying the paper (though there are no new photos in the printed copy). but, just as a teaser: >>Ten years later, having put out two albums, "Whip-Smart" (1994) and >>"whitechocolatespaceegg" (1998), that were both greeted with mixed praise, >>she is now releasing her fourth ? the eponymously titled and much >>anticipated "Liz Phair." It is, Ms. Phair has suggested, her bid for >>center stage ? the moment when she will finally make the leap from >>indie-rock quasi-stardom to teen-pop levels of superstardom. Instead, she has committed an embarrassing form of career suicide. The album introduces a new Phair: a divorced, 36-year-old single mom who nonetheless gushes like a teenager through relentlessly upbeat songs with bland choruses like "Rock me all night!" and "I am extraordinary/ If you'd ever get to know me" ? ironic, yes, but somewhat limply and shallowly so. You half expect the "i's" in her liner notes to be dotted with little hearts. In place of a sometime feminist icon, we have a woman approaching 40 getting dolled up in market-approved teen gear (the bad schoolgirl look, recently embraced by Britney Spears). She's junked her oddball, sui generis eccentricity for songs about thirtysomething traumas wrapped up in bubble-gum pop that plays off a cheap dissonance: underneath this sunny soundscape lies the darkness of life's hard-won lessons. This is a superficial way of jolting us, and the result is that Ms. Phair often sounds desperate or clueless; the album has some of the same weird self-oblivion of a middle-aged man in a mid-life crisis and a new Corvette.<< my true hope is that things go well for liz, not because she deserves it but just because it's a good thing to wish others well, even when you think they've messed up. but, i also hope that if it doesn't do well, that she'll bounce back with a much better, stronger record that capitol might not release, but which is more in line with what she's capable of and something she can really be proud of. not another 'exile' or anything remotely similar. just something unpredictable and excellent, brilliant and indescribable. is that too much to ask? (i'm just kidding with that last part) o y vay... >Subject: The Sunday NY Times > >Has the biggest slam I've ever seen of Liz, and in awhile for any artist >period. It's in their Arts&Leasure section, and it not only is front page >news, >but is titled "Exile In Avail-ville." It's as annoying as it is funny, even >those who don't like the album may not like the cattyness of the peice. >it's a little too long to transcribe, but someone who has a scanner may >want >to. >Andrea _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 14:19:36 -0700 (PDT) From: Easter Subject: Liz cd from Best Buy Best Buy is selling Liz's cd for $9.99 this week. They also advertised that the cd has a "key" or something that will give you access to unreleased songs online. Katie (); ) ===== ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ "My love belongs to who can see it." George Harrison ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 19:30:24 -0400 From: owner-support-system@smoe.org (by way of Jase ) Subject: Bounced message [Quite a few people posted the NY Times article, all of which bounced to me - -- the server doesn't like messages over 7000 characters long. I'm forwarding only one of the posts, so that multiple transcriptions of the article don't appear on the list. - JL] From: BobDsn@aol.com Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 15:15:59 EDT Subject: Liz Phair's Exile in Avril-ville / Sunday NYT To: support-system@smoe.org CC: kenmlee@ix.netcom.com I thought I'd save folks the trouble of accessing the New York Times website (especially the overworked Ken Lee!) and post Meghan O'Rourke's dead-on review of _Liz Phair_. For me, O'Rourke hits the nail right on the head. I wasn't expecting another _Exile In Guyville_, but I wasn't expecting a bubblegum pop, dumbed down "Liz Lite" either. Where's the soul in this CD? IMHO, it's missing in virtually every track save "Little Digger" which stands out like a sore thumb-- much the same way "Only Son" did on _whitechocolatespaceegg_. I'll go see Liz in concert in a heartbeat, but her new CD-- which I've been listening to on and off for several weeks now-- won't even make my Top 50 for 2003. We waited five years for this marketing plan disguised as an album? Sigh . . . Bob K. - ------------------------------------------ June 22, 2003 Liz Phair's Exile in Avril-ville By MEGHAN O'ROURKE In 1993, the year Liz Phair's "Exile in Guyville" came out, legions of young, middle-class, well-educated women found in her lo-fi debut a kind of all-purpose autobiography, and a template -- smart, deadpan, but also earnest -- for making sense of their own experience. Within a year Ms. Phair went from being a 26-year-old singer-songwriter who had performed live some half-dozen times to the woman on the cover of Rolling Stone with the headline "Liz Phair: A Rock and Roll Star Is Born." The obvious question was: Would Ms. Phair be able to sustain her success? Ten years later, having put out two albums, "Whip-Smart" (1994) and "whitecho colatespaceegg" (1998), that were both greeted with mixed praise, she is now releasing her fourth -- the eponymously titled and much anticipated "Liz Phair." It is, Ms. Phair has suggested, her bid for center stage -- the moment when she will finally make the leap from indie-rock quasi-stardom to teen-pop levels of superstardom. Instead, she has committed an embarrassing form of career suicide. The album introduces a new Phair: a divorced, 36-year-old single mom who nonetheless gushes like a teenager through relentlessly upbeat songs with bland choruses like "Rock me all night!" and "I am extraordinary/ If you'd ever get to know me" -- ironic, yes, but somewhat limply and shallowly so. You half expect the "i's" in her liner notes to be dotted with little hearts. In place of a sometime feminist icon, we have a woman approaching 40 getting dolled up in market-approved teen gear (the bad schoolgirl look, recently embraced by Britney Spears). She's junked her oddball, sui generis eccentricity for songs about thirtysomething traumas wrapped up in bubble-gum pop that plays off a cheap dissonance: underneath this sunny soundscape lies the darkness of life's hard-won lessons. This is a superficial way of jolting us, and the result is that Ms. Phair often sounds desperate or clueless; the album has some of the same weird self-oblivion of a middle-aged man in a mid-life crisis and a new Corvette. Not only will Ms. Phair alienate her old fan base, as she has defensively acknowledged in recent interviews, but in trying to remodel herself as a contemporary Avril Lavigne or Alanis Morissette, she's revealed herself to be astonishingly tone-deaf to her own strengths. Lyrically, this album has little of the potent acuity of her early deconstructions of relationships, and musically it has none of her tactile immediacy. "Exile in Guyville," a song-for-song answer to the Rolling Stones' "Exile on Main Street," seemed shockingly new not only because Ms. Phair, in her cracked, monotonous voice, sang about sex so diffidently and explicitly but because Guyville was such a recognizable, ordinary place -- a collective village of young Americans whose defining idiom was ironic detachment. Ms. Phair's particular gift lay in her sharp-tongued charting of everyday emotions. Nearly all the songs were about romantic yearning, getting together, breaking up; the album was like a sophisticated self-help manual, whether you heard her songs as cautionary tales or as encouragement to take more risks. She wittily nailed the sulky disagreements of relationships, how quickly the trivial could provoke a sour truth: "And it's true that I stole your lighter/ And it's also true that I lost the map/ But when you said that I wasn't worth talking to/ I had to take your word on that." Her voice always held a back-story of suppressed emotions, the kind it's hard to get into a pop song; when she said "That's just fine with me" in response to a sexual proposition, you heard everything that wasn't fine, and also all the reasons she didn't want to get into it. She repeatedly leveled her straight-talking sensibility at men who said "things I wouldn't say/ straight to my face, boy" while expecting her to be a kind of sexy, game compadre. On a good day, Guyville was a place where women feistily, happily flaunted their sexuality. On a bad day Guyville was a place where one woke up with a man and "almost immediately . . . felt sorry." But where P.J. Harvey's wailing or Courtney Love's anger were shamanistic and almost feral, Ms. Phair was reassuringly human in her appetites, her arrogance, her fear, her inability to quite hit that high note. Her sexual frankness went hand in hand with a recorded-in-the-garage immediacy. The songs were spindly and moved in an odd, lopsided manner -- parts were always coming loose, and who knew if Ms. Phair was going to hit the next note as she crashed her way through the chord progressions. Her signature style of drawing a word out across several notes in a kind of dull trill made a mockery of all that was feminine about singing. It seemed aptly to capture a generation's uncertainty about what might come next in the sexual game during a permissive era shadowed by anxieties about AIDS and date rape, culminating in Antioch College's prescriptive sexual code. Living up to her debut would have been nearly impossible, and the critical consensus was that "Whip-Smart" and "whitechocolatespaceegg" didn't. While "Whip-Smart" didn't have the same singularity of theme as "Guyville," it embroidered on Ms. Phair's interest in American mythologies in songs like "Shane" and "Go West." "Whitechocolatespaceegg" was more explicitly driven by songs about characters (several narrated by men) and eccentric wit (there's a very funny song about a family portrait of her Uncle Alvarez). Neither album was a breakout success. And so Ms. Phair has decided to reinvent herself. For the new CD, which took her five years to put together, she had come up with an album's worth of songs (a handful produced by Michael Penn, which explains why she sometimes sounds like his wife, the singer Aimee Mann), but still felt something was "missing," as she told Entertainment Weekly. So she teamed up with the Matrix -- the songwriter/producer masterminds behind the teenybopper Avril Lavigne's recent top- 40 hits "Complicated" and "Sk8er Boi" -- in search of a radio hit. The Matrix are now writing songs for everyone from Britney to Ricky Martin, and they're not exactly in the business of making a singer sound more like herself. Yet Ms. Phair's appeal has always lain in her idiosyncrasies. When it comes to rock, we're used to wincing at stars dressed up in packaging that masks a lack of talent. Here, the wince comes instead from watching a genuine talent dressed in bland packaging. The album lacks the distinctive flair and sass of Ms. Phair's earlier work, and has little of its savvy insight. The songs are catchy, replete with pop hooks, but they're relentlessly peppy, and often Ms. Phair sounds as over-carbonated as a 13-year-old full of Diet Coke and Pop Rocks. The slick production diminishes her boldness the same way those child-size T-shirts emblazoned with the word "Sexy" always seem to make a mockery of their wearers. Her fantastically expressive diffidence has been replaced with a smooth and characterless tunefulness, pitch-corrected all the way through. In the world of "Liz Phair," banality wins the day, and intimacy is undermined by full-throttle presentation; the pleasingly goofy, outsize metaphors from "Guyville" and "Whip-Smart" about eyelashes that "sparkle like gilded grass" have devolved into hoary allegories in which relationships are compared to roadside accidents; life is a series of red and green traffic lights, and a woman is "like a wild flame." Throughout, the singer studs her verses with soft clichC)s like "too scared to commit" and "it's a war with the whole wide world" and moments of "lying awake in the dark/ trying to figure out who you are." Ms. Phair is still, at times, fearlessly and bizarrely outspoken -- consider "H.W.C.," an ode to the beauty benefits of semen. In the first song, "Extraordinary," she offers a characteristic skewering of the contemporary male's fetishization of psychotic women -- "So I still take the trash out/ does that make me too normal for you?" But the album's sporadic ironies ("I'm your average everyday sane-psycho supergoddess") are robbed of context and lost in all the sugar-coated guitar joie de vivre. The overall effect is of spending an afternoon with a once sardonic best friend overdosing on mood enhancers. You wait for the wink to come -- the flaw, the crack in her voice, the weird minor note -- that signals that Ms. Phair knows what she's up to (and that she knows we know too). But it never does. In doing advance publicity for the album, Ms. Phair has repeatedly said she wanted to explore new musical avenues, and noted that she wouldn't know how to write "Guyville" today even if she wanted to. But no one expects her to. The newly divorced Ms. Phair could have written a record that captured the experience of women like her, women who may not have a husband to bring home a second check, but still want an active sexual life and maybe a child, and also want the means to raise that child. Music, after all, is a cultural arena that's somewhat safe for older women. Patti Smith, Lucinda Williams, Kim Gordon and Chrissie Hynde -- all of whom have something in common, in terms of personality and audience, with Ms. Phair -- are doing fine. So it's not exactly clear where the desire to infantilize herself comes from, unless it's that Ms. Phair, perennially willful, wants to buck expectations and write home about it. On only two songs on the album does Ms. Phair's impastoed, cheery smile crack, and both get under your skin. "Little Digger" tries to explain to her 6-year-old son why his father is gone and she's dating other men, and "Friend of Mine" tells of an old lover drifting out of reach. It captures something you may have heard your own single friends say -- namely, that at a certain point they just don't want to keep getting seriously involved ("I don't have the heart to try/ one more false start in life") because the adult toll of losing not only a lover but also a friend -- the person you talk to every day -- is too formidably high. Like so many of Ms. Phair's early songs, "Friend of Mine" begins in medias res, with a wistful but wry plan for recovery: "Gonna take a vacation/ stop chasing what I lack." Of course, plans for recovery are quickly undermined by woe: "It's been so long/ since you've been a friend of mine," she sings, before saying "I miss you" -- and for the first time on the record you hear an emotion more complicated than stage-lit optimism or empty irony. It makes you want to play the song again. Meghan O'Rourke is a senior editor at Slate. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 19:33:28 -0400 From: owner-support-system@smoe.org (by way of Jase ) Subject: Bounced message From: "trent [hardcore since '74l]" To: Subject: Entertainment Weekly on Liz Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 16:41:26 -0400 Not sure if this was posted yet ... An article on Liz. They reviewed her new album (likened the release of Michelle Branch and Liz's albums to a Freaky Friday type scenario ... Michelle acting grown up and Liz acting like a kid) and gave her an A- The review isn't on the website yet but will try and post it when it goes online; in the meantime: Sells Like Teen Spirit What alt-rocker is behaving like an Avril wannabe? Thirty-six-year-old Liz Phair's fans aren't liking that she's trying to act like a pop star by Rob Brunner VANITY PHAIR Liz tells EW why she doesn't want to go belly up in this business The aspiring pop starlet knows what she wants, and like most aspiring pop starlets, she's got a plan for how to get it. First of all, she wants to be famous. That's a given. To do this, she's tapped the Matrix -- the production trio behind Avril Lavigne -- who've come through with roll-down-the-windows sing-alongs that are begging to get blasted out of the car stereo all summer long. Right now, however, what she most wants is lunch at the Santa Monica annex of the Ivy, L.A.'s famous celebrity dining establishment. She knows how to get that, too. ''How's your expense limit?'' she asks. Reassured that her aspiring-pop-starlet needs will be met, she hops into her BMW and heads toward a plate of poached salmon and -- so the plan goes -- multiplatinum superstardom. Nothing unusual about this picture, right? After all, those chirpy teen-poppers panting on your radio -- What were their names again? -- occupied the same starting gate not long ago. But this aspiring pop starlet, well, she's different. For one, she's a 36-year-old mother. She's been making music for over a decade. And she's responsible for one of the most celebrated documents of female empowerment and indie-rock songcraft ever recorded: 1993's ''Exile in Guyville.'' So what the hell is Liz Phair thinking? Quite a bit, it turns out. ''I didn't want to be some '90s act that was great in my 20s and never did anything else,'' says Phair, tackling an appetizer of crab claws. ''People are like, 'Don't be commercial, then. Just be...Wilco.' And that's one way to live. But even when I made ''Guyville,'' I was hating indie then. The whole album was about how much I hated indie. I was sick to f---ing death of that snobbery. You know, I liked radio hits my whole life, including when I was cool. When Shakira goes [sings]'Underneath your clothes...,' that works on me. So here's your question in life: Do you acknowledge who you are even if people don't like you for it? Even if people say, 'That's so lame'? Should I pretend to be cool so that you will approve of me? After I had my kid, the revelation I had was, Life is incredibly short. I like who I am. And I'm just gonna like what I like and go for what I want to go for. It's simple.'' The result of this epiphany is the brazenly glossy Liz Phair (due out June 24), a naked bid for mainstream airplay that's such a radical departure from her previous albums -- ''Guyville'' and its slightly less raw follow-ups, ''Whip-Smart'' (1994) and ''whitechocolatespaceegg'' (1998) -- that it's guaranteed to alienate a large chunk of her fan base. ''I think it's better to be talked about and hated and embraced -- because a lot of people do love [the new album]. I like to be noticed. I don't like to be boring. So it's better to have people up in arms about it. I don't like not being liked, but...I really like my record.'' It's been five years since her last album, a delay caused by many factors: Phair's breakup with film editor Jim Staskausas, the father of her 6-year-old son, Nicholas, after five years of marriage; a subsequent move from Chicago to L.A.; and a significant regime change at Capitol, her current label. Mostly, though, the struggles were creative. Phair had recorded far more than an album's worth of tracks during three sessions over several years, including stints with producers R. Walt Vincent (Pete Yorn) and Michael Penn. Though Phair was, for the most part, pleased with those recordings -- many of them ended up on Liz Phair -- she felt as though something was missing. ''[Label execs] were like, 'It will be a nice record. It will be critically liked and it will be fine,''' she remembers. ''I'm like, 'It's way too much work to go out and promote a record to hear only that. I'm not leaving the box until you're more excited than that.''' Enter pop gurus of the moment the Matrix, who crafted Avril's radio smashes and are now working with everyone from Britney to Bowie. They co-wrote and produced four tunes for Phair, including the first single, ''Why Can't I?'' Their mandate was simple: Create hits. Guyville and Whip-Smart had both gone gold, but Phair was angling for a more explosive breakthrough. ''Our manager met with her A&R people,'' recalls Lauren Christy, whose Matrix cohorts are Scott Spock and Graham Edwards. ''She had this beautiful record that she'd done with Michael Penn. It was stunning. But I think Liz felt it was just a little mellow; it didn't have anything that would grab you by the throat.'' ''Oh, oh, evil! Go get a radio track, how awful!'' Phair says in mock horror at the idea of turning to the Matrix. ''May I say how great it was to work with them? They weren't this faceless group of people who were going to do something to me that I didn't want. I was looking for help. I was like... What's a good analogy? What's an environment that you need the appropriate ship to travel in?'' Um, scuba gear? ''They're your scuba gear for going diving. And you can say, 'I'm not diving. I obviously don't breathe underwater, I will not be diving.' But I'm a real seeker of that nature, and it was a choice I made long before I met the Matrix. This is my thing: If I make mistakes sometimes, they'll be my mistakes. My whole career up until now, I let other people make the business decisions. One of the biggest changes for me -- which I think is a political act but you may see as a cop-out -- is I've taken more business control. I've educated myself. As a woman who's basically been cared for by her father and then her husband and then her boyfriend, never really being independent, I think it's important. I was talking to Pete [Yorn] at a party and he was like, 'Well, isn't it just about the music?' I looked at him and I'm like, 'Not for me anymore. It's not.''' And what happens if she does become a pop star? ''That's a good question,'' Phair says. ''What if it works? What if I become a platinum artist and everyone knows who I am? I like the fact that I can be normal during the day and watch the world, and then when I want to turn it on I can be the one who's being looked at. But I want the other things that go with [stardom]. I want the financial security to stay in California. I'm responsible for my son. I want artistic leverage so if there's cool stuff I want to do, people will greenlight it. I want a ticket to ride so that I can be creative for a lot longer. Otherwise, honey, I'm back in Chicago living with my parents.'' Spoken, oddly enough, like a real grown-up. (Posted:05/30/03) - --- "frankly it's ludicrous to have these interlocking bodies and not interlock please remove your clothing now." anya -- buffy the vampire slayer ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 19:35:27 -0400 From: owner-support-system@smoe.org (by way of Jase ) Subject: Bounced message Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 15:40:59 -0400 From: "Christopher K. Fisher" To: support-system@smoe.org Subject: RE: support-system-digest V6 #153 So I just got back from Bonnaroo! I have not checked the list but did anyone else get to see Liz? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 20:28:58 -0700 (PDT) From: robert joyner Subject: jim dero review in sun times Exiled from Chi-ville, Liz Phair goes for the score June 22, 2003 BY JIM DEROGATIS POP MUSIC CRITIC Since we last heard from Liz Phair, circa her third album, the awkwardly titled "whitechocolatespaceegg" (1998), Chicago's alternative-rock ingenue has weathered the end of her marriage to filmmaker Jim Staskausas, moved to Los Angeles and largely devoted herself to raising her 6-year-old son, Nicholas. Many in the Wicker Park music scene that spawned her assumed that Phair had abandoned her musical career, which started as a lark when the onetime Winnetka resident and visual artist began making four-track recordings of smart and sassy songs about the plight of being a smart and sassy woman in a male-dominated rock world. Those tunes first won attention on the D.I.Y. "Girlysound" cassette, which led to a deal with Matador Records and a brilliant and audacious debut, "Exile in Guyville" (1993), a double album that Phair portrayed as a song-by-song "post-feminist response" to the Rolling Stones' decadent classic, "Exile on Main St." (1972). The disc was hailed as the album of the year in the Village Voice's annual poll of American rock critics, and it paved the way for a wave of imitators, from Alanis Morissette to Tracy Bonham to Fiona Apple. But Phair, now 36, has yet to match that accomplishment, either in the studio (where subsequent efforts have suffered from a lack of focus) or onstage (where she remains a reluctant and hesitant performer). Now, with the self-titled "Liz Phair" (Capitol), the singer-songwriter is devoting herself to scoring the mainstream hit that has so far eluded her. She yearns for a feel-good ditty as ubiquitous and innocuous as "Soak Up the Sun" by her friend Sheryl Crow, which found Phair adding backing vocals, and she proves that she's willing to pander to sexism (she appears naked on the cover but for a guitar) and the demands of the pop mainstream (parts of the disc were produced by The Matrix, the platinum-selling production team behind Avril Lavigne's "Let Go") in order to get it. Phair is no Crow (she lacks the sophistication) and she's certainly no Lavigne (she's never been that naive, energetic or blissfully bubblegum). The result is one of the most tragically compromised records that a once-uncompromising artist has ever made. When The Matrix isn't polishing the disc to an overproduced sheen that makes the music so slippery that it's nearly unlistenable, L.A. rock stalwarts Michael Penn and R. Walt Vincent (producer of Pete Yorn, who makes a guest appearance playing all of the instruments on the disc's most controversial track) are simply boring us with that California folk-rock sound that was a cliche when Linda Ronstadt was still at her peak. Phair is still capable of crafting memorable melodies (witness "Little Digger," a tune that finds her showing a rare flash of that old blunt honesty as she tries to explain to her son why Mommy is dating a new man). And her singing has greatly improved since "Exile" (somewhere along the way, she accepted the frequent criticisms of her limited, monotonous vocals and took singing lessons). But on songs such as "Rock Me," "Bionic Eyes" and the single "Extraordinary," you can hear the artist crassly calculating her moves, listening to how the lyrics and the arrangements will sound on the radio (which has never supported her, anyway) rather than giving it to us straight from the heart. The nadir is the Yorn-driven track "H.W.C.," a reference to a bodily fluid that can't be named in a family newspaper. This risque celebration of fetishistic behavior attempts to out-scandalize Madonna, but it winds up sounding like a desperate bid for attention from the leering Howard Sterns and Mancow Mullers of the world. In interviews, Phair claims that she was reinvigorated by the challenge of attempting to broach the pop mainstream, and that she made exactly the record she wanted to make. But the fact is that longtime fans won't find much to embrace in this *1/2 effort. ===== - ------------------------------------------------------------ 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: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 23:51:43 EDT From: AWeiss4338@aol.com Subject: From 1998-WCSE essay From Robert Christgau, cheif critic for the Village Voice (NYC). If this is already known, sorry, I just found this today. Interesting what he has to say about WCSE. http://robertchristgau.com/xg/rock/phair-98.php Andrea ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 23:56:29 EDT From: AWeiss4338@aol.com Subject: Re: nytimes.com article In a message dated 6/22/2003 5:10:33 PM Eastern Standard Time, overpavement@hotmail.com writes: > couple of things regarding this article... first, andrea's typo was > obviously inadvertent, but sort of important, in that the article is titled > 'exile in avril-ville' (not avail-ville, although, actually, that's a good > word, too!). Yes it was an accidental typo. AL is someone who I try to avoid, so i can't spell her name for anything. Not that I want to usually:-). Glad you liked it anyway. Andrea ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 00:13:29 -0400 From: owner-support-system@smoe.org (by way of Jase ) Subject: Bounced message Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 20:33:05 -0700 (PDT) From: robert joyner Subject: jim dero interview with liz To: support-system@smoe.org (same piece) Several weeks after Phair did a public interview before several hundred fans at the South by Southwest Music & Media Conference in Austin, Texas, last March, I had my own, more intimate conversation with the artist. Here are some of the highlights: Q. I saw the interview you did at SXSW with Neil Portnow, the head of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, and the questions were just terrible. You had to do all of the work. A. Yeah, it was like someone just went through the press clips and was paraphrasing--like back in junior year of high school, when you didn't want to really do the work. Q. So what's the toughest question you would have asked yourself if you were conducting that interview? A. What's the toughest question I would have asked myself? "What are you planning to do about alienation of past fans?" Q. That's a good one, because some people are going to damn you for working with The Matrix, or because you moved to L.A. A. The L.A. thing--don't you think that's a little much? That's the psycho fringe. Right before I left, I was in I forget what bar--like the Zebra Lounge or something over on Western--and some woman nearly punched me for leaving Chicago! She was drunk, but she wanted to really pick a physical fight. And I just thought, "Oh my f---ing god! You're crazy!" Q. Billy Corgan doesn't get that kind of crap. A. Yeah, but he was so troubled. He was kind of all f---ed-up or whatever. [Laughs] Q. Does your former producer Brad Wood, who also moved to L.A., get that, too? A. Well, Brad is kind of like Grandpa, so he has a lot to complain about at different times. But he said he was so tired of being in Chicago because he felt hated in Chicago while he was there. He felt like he was constantly being approached while he was out at night to justify himself. He was like, "I'm just sitting here drinking, I don't want to take on some sort of philosophical thing with someone about why I work the way I work." I think Chicago has that, though, and I have a theory about it. Want to hear my theory? Q. What is your theory? A. My theory is there is not enough money being put into middle- to high-level creative endeavors other than advertising. There's a tiny little pie to go around, and if you're like young and just starting out, it's kind of a Mecca. You're not really using that much money, so it's kind of what makes it culturally interesting and an embraced part of Chicago, even by the mainstream. But once you get to a certain point and want to build, like in New York or L.A. ... Everything about L.A. here, you can have like the Rick Rubins of the world with massive houses, you can meet people who are artists and weird who have a lot of money, and there's all these different opportunities. You can bring a film thing in, or there's just so many people who can make money here that it's not so tight-fisted in terms of, "Will I help you get to the top" or "Will you help me?" or "If you get to the top, are you taking all the rest of our spaces?" It's like an NBA team: If one person's getting paid a lot, no one else gets any money. Q. But it also keeps you honest. In New York and L.A., you're constantly surrounded by people in the industry. Here in Chicago, you can't possibly avoid your fans, and they don't hesitate to tell you what they think of your work. In L.A., if you play a small club like the Viper Room, everybody who's there is "somebody." A. But that's because you're in L.A.! Q. But isn't that artificial? A. But it's a home base. It's like playing inside the house. I mean, the same band that is having this artificial environment in the Viper Room makes an hour drive to Santa Barbara, and it's straight fans. Every time I go to the grocery store, I meet [real fans]. You don't just play in L.A. Pretty much you're playing 95 percent of the time in markets where you are in contact with the fans for real. And there's a lot of people in L.A. who are fans themselves who may or may not work in the industry. It's like, no one's being protected here because we don't do our work here. We do the business work here, but when we do the real stuff we're out on the road, anyway. It just allows you a place where you feel like you have more peers. I felt like a freak, Jim, in Chicago because I could either be a housewife or this slut. There was no integration. I felt really split, and I always felt guilty if I dressed weird or sexy because, you know, "Ooh, she's that dirty slut who sang those dirty lyrics." Or if I went to Wicker Park and I looked cute and like "Mommy," it was like, "Oh, my god, she's so lame." There was no integration of artist and normal person, whereas here everyone gets it. I always thought the only thing wrong with Chicago is that it didn't promote itself. It kind of kept that "keepin' it real" mentality, but if Chicago took the wild artists that it certainly has and put them on a platform and said, "These are our valued citizenry, come to Chicago and check out the arts festivals," there would be more people bringing money in, there'd be more tourism, there'd be more just appreciation around town. It wouldn't be so sanctified. Q. This brings you back to your own toughest question: The people who say you're alienating your old fans are going to say you're no longer keeping it real. A. We'll see. When I listen to the record, I feel like I'm hearing myself. It's a part of myself, and there are a lot of songs that are a really big part of where I am as an artist that didn't make the record. Some I want to put on the Web site, and those are a different kind of more challenging songwriting. So that in my mind is still a whole big part of this "campaign," so to speak, that's part of who I am now and it's going to come out. The record is designed to work for a major label. It's consciously designed to be something that can go through that avenue and hopefully do it well, while at the same time kind of bringing self-esteem stuff to women and just letting me be kind of brash and outspoken the way I like to be. You know what I mean? It's a good question, though. Q. Why does broaching the mainstream and succeeding in the major-label world matter to you? When I first talked to you 10 years ago, you never talked about how many copies "Exile in Guyville" would sell. It wasn't even on the agenda. A. Now music has become something that I've invested my competitiveness in. It doesn't mean--and this is the God's honest truth--when I write a song, I'm never thinking about how people are gonna receive it, because I can't write songs that way. They just come out. They're still very true and pure that way. The ones that I tried to write a certain way, they're not on the record, and they're not something that I'm going to release, because they're bad. I feel it. But I think music, because of the attention and the interest that happened with the first record, there was no way to be innocent again. There was no way not to feel that you were in an arena that was different from the one you'd been in before. Q. You've said that you had 40 or 50 songs to choose from for this record. What's the wildest song that you left on the cutting-room floor? A. The wildest songs are actually on the record--the kind of biggest, brashest, coolest moments. I think of this record as being a lot about music. What I like about it are the musical moments; it's very much about music to me. It's like we should have called it what my son told me to call it: He wanted to call it "Rock Band." That's sort of what it's about to me. It's like I'm pretending to be in a rock band. A lot of what I love about it, why I chose the songs I chose, is because of the music--the guitar moments and the energy in the drums and whatever coming together at different points. The stuff that didn't make the album tends to be slower, more depressing, and not necessarily conflicted, to be honest. Some of the stuff that's on here is the conflicted material. And a lot of the stuff that didn't make it is the kind of songs you write that are kind of slow and kind of sad. Q. So do you think you're going to have a multiplatinum pop hit? A. Who knows? [Laughs] But the only thing that's OK about it, Jim, is like, I don't know if it's gonna sell records. We're gonna try. But I put the songs on the record that I wanted because I just wanted them there, because this one, I just felt like making a really rocking record. I wanted that kind of strong persona, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but I'll never look at the album I made this time especially and go, "God, I shouldn't have tried to do that." I'll have no regrets, and that's one of the things that I always want to make sure. Sometimes when you listen to other people and you do what they think you should do, you end up learning from their mistakes, and it's not the same as learning from your own mistakes. ===== - ------------------------------------------------------------ Nashville - A Liz Phair Web Site http://www.geocities.com/robnashville - ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------ End of support-system-digest V6 #159 ************************************