From: owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org (support-system-digest) To: support-system-digest@smoe.org Subject: support-system-digest V8 #143 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 Saturday, October 22 2005 Volume 08 : Number 143 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [support-system] Somebody's Miracle review (Richmond.com) [Kenneth Lee Subject: [support-system] Somebody's Miracle review (Richmond.com) From Richmond.com: (http://www2.richmond.com/ae/output.aspx?Article_ID=3944422&Vertical_ID=3&tier=2&position=1) In Tune Liz Phair's new release ain't no miracle John Benson Never before has such an overt attempt at commercial success been so readily accepted by the mainstream than that of Liz Phair's fall into banality. The beginning of the end for Phair started in 2003, with the milk toast-sounding, Avril Lavigne-inspired single "Why Can't I," and continues with her recent album release "Somebody's Miracle". Considering this erstwhile indie rocker created some of the most notable albums from a decade ago, including 1993's "Exile in Guyville", the transformation from trashy co-ed to mini-van driving soccer mom is despicable. Putting a face on Phair's egregious journey is the mid-tempo track "Wind and the Mountain", which finds the 38 year old repeating "Sometimes I'm too tired." While her vocals do sound weary, perhaps "Sometimes I'm too bored" would be more apropos with the Chicago native's enthusiasm level falling somewhere between going to the dentist and going to the proctologist. Maybe "Somebody's Miracle" will indeed become a musical inspiration, but you can be assured that person wasn't around for "Supernova" and "Flower". This miracle is nothing special. - -Ken kenmlee@ix.netcom.com MeSmErIzInG - AnOtHeR LiZ PhAiR WeBsItE http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/2471/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 22:59:01 -0700 From: Kenneth Lee Subject: Re: [support-system] Billboard/Toronto show At 08:07 PM 10/20/2005, you wrote: >Does anyone know where _Somebody's Miracle_ placed on the Billboard 200 >chart this week? I just checked the Billboard site, which only publishes >the top 100 positions, and didn't see it listed. Am I just blind? I can't >imagine it dropping out of the upper half of the chart in only its second week. I'll look into that... >Also, it seems that the Montreal show on Saturday night has been >cancelled. Does anyone know if the Toronto show has been cancelled as >well? The date is no longer listed on Liz's site, but it's not showing as >being cancelled on ticketmaster.ca. The show has been postponed. No date has been set for rescheduling as of yet. The reason for the postponement is that Liz will be in Chicago Saturday night to perform "God Bless America" during the 7th inning of the Chicago White Sox - Houston Astros World Series Game 1... - -Ken kenmlee@ix.netcom.com MeSmErIzInG - AnOtHeR LiZ PhAiR WeBsItE http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/2471/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 06:48:17 -0700 (PDT) From: Gabriel Peterson Subject: [support-system] Re: Montreal Show I'm really annoyed that the Montreal show was cancelled. I was really looking forward to it since that's the city that I saw her first in back on her first tour (and got to have drinks with her after the show before she went out the front door and caught a cab to her hotel). It looks like it's cancelled because she's singing "God Bless America" during the seventh inning stretch on Saturday. I totally understand that more people will get to see her doing that and it's probably a better business decision, but it sucks to get blown off. I live a ways from Montreal so it was scheduling luck that my wife and I were going to be able to make the show. Jase, my guess is that the Toronto show is still on since the Montreal show was the actual night she was performing at the World Series. Hopefully that's the case, anyway. Especially for those who haven't gotten to see her perform during the acoustic tour, check out the videos that rolling stone has of her playing: Soap Star Joe Somebody's Miracle Everything To Me Why Can't I? May Queen They all sound good but the newer ones sound great compared to their album tracks IMHO. Gabe __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 10:11:30 -0500 From: "Michael Kaufmann" Subject: [support-system] Re: support-system-digest V8 #142 Finally a critic's who has actually listened to the cd--and agrees it actually has something to offer. As I've been listening to it over the past week, Why I Lie is fast becoming a favorite. It's prime liz sonically and lyrically. I think it's one of the songs that make reviews note her return (usually as a knock) to offkey singing. To me it reminds me of at times (at least in sound--and a bit in tone) of Divorce Song or Cinco de Mayo. Most of the reviews note teh cowbell hommage to Honky Tonk Woman but it sounds much more like the Liz of yore once it gets rolling (get it rolling). Mike >>> owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org 10/21/05 12:15 AM >>> From The Village Voice: (http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0543,christgau,69144,22.html) Ms. Liz to You Liz Phair discovers that there are other ways to be honest than taking your clothes off by Georgia Christgau I bet Liz Phair long ago identified with the girl whose tits were too big in fifth grade just as she did with the one who was good at math. She internalized the threat they posed and enjoyed the way they messed with other people's expectations. That they were often the same girl was a female epiphany of my generation. Phair in turn invented a protagonist who could fuck and run at age 12, be bored with the process by her early twenties, and live to tell about it-all in a guitar-strummed plaint with a hook. Disgust was her artistic capital; tormented by roommates, she prayed they would help her "breed my disgust into fame," and they did. Phair's privileged background in Winnetka, Illinois, and the unconditional love of her adoptive parents tempered the nail-biting urgency of her persona. Even though song after song trashed the eons-old myth that a well-fucked female kept her mouth shut, their anger was grounded in a vision of equality that promised better sex and more love. For a while she got off on this: "I totally fed off the whole idea that I had done something brash that was hard for a woman to do. My little tail wagged." But soon it got old, and she went after the "Shitloads of Money" she'd never denied wanting. For the first time, she was willing to risk a one-night stand where she wasn't in control. On "Somebody's Miracle", Phair is more confident than on her previous mass-appeal bid, 2003's "Liz Phair". She's split the difference between the Matrix and Michael Penn by working with John Mayer/Jason Mraz producer John Alagio, and along the way she's discovered that there are other ways to be honest than taking your clothes off-although when the subject calls for a cock tease, she's ready. Guitars humping, her voice at its best sexy growl, she's a temptress for a sucker who doesn't know what's coming: "I've got my own thing/Feel it, it is strong/As short as people think/But really it is long." But at least two other strong tracks convince because they lack resolution: the loving look back at an extramarital affair in "Leap of Innocence" and the Stones send-up "Why I Lie." Phair passes off this nasty retort as a love song, reveling in the naked truth of her motives, "predatory instinct and simple ill will." Repeat after me: The man she lies to isn't good enough for her anyway. And while we're on the subject, would the self-professed blowjob queen consider resurrecting Joan Jett's hilarious "Coney Island Whitefish," or is it beneath her to acknowledge such common origins or admit that she wasn't the first pissed-off chick on the block? Although there are two saccharine pro-happiness songs I'd just as soon never hear again, there's also "Giving It All," a rave-up that seems to liberate Phair. No longer married to the gloomy, grainy sound that defined her, she's also stretched the singer-songwriter values that have inspired this divorced mom pushing 40 to pen tunes ever since she was little. As with the last record's "Little Digger," the civility of the defeated alcoholic in "Table for One" puts the listener up close and personal with a subject too many of us would rather pass off as someone else's problem. But the gem is "Closer to You." No wonder Phair prefaced her current tour with an acoustic go-round of small houses. Unlike the sweeter title track, which poses Ms. Liz as an outsider looking in on happy couples, this one plants her firmly mid-relationship, both wanting more and admitting that intimacy can be off-putting. She believes that mutual respect provides love its essential balance: "I don't need your ock and roll to stay in tune." Meet Liz Phair. She knows who she is. Do you? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 09:27:49 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: Christine Hademan Subject: Re: [support-system] Re: support-system-digest V8 #142 *standingovation* That is a great article! - -----Original Message----- From: Michael Kaufmann Sent: Oct 21, 2005 8:11 AM To: support-system@smoe.org Subject: [support-system] Re: support-system-digest V8 #142 Finally a critic's who has actually listened to the cd--and agrees it actually has something to offer. As I've been listening to it over the past week, Why I Lie is fast becoming a favorite. It's prime liz sonically and lyrically. I think it's one of the songs that make reviews note her return (usually as a knock) to offkey singing. To me it reminds me of at times (at least in sound--and a bit in tone) of Divorce Song or Cinco de Mayo. Most of the reviews note teh cowbell hommage to Honky Tonk Woman but it sounds much more like the Liz of yore once it gets rolling (get it rolling). Mike >>> owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org 10/21/05 12:15 AM >>> From The Village Voice: (http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0543,christgau,69144,22.html) Ms. Liz to You Liz Phair discovers that there are other ways to be honest than taking your clothes off by Georgia Christgau I bet Liz Phair long ago identified with the girl whose tits were too big in fifth grade just as she did with the one who was good at math. She internalized the threat they posed and enjoyed the way they messed with other people's expectations. That they were often the same girl was a female epiphany of my generation. Phair in turn invented a protagonist who could fuck and run at age 12, be bored with the process by her early twenties, and live to tell about it-all in a guitar-strummed plaint with a hook. Disgust was her artistic capital; tormented by roommates, she prayed they would help her "breed my disgust into fame," and they did. Phair's privileged background in Winnetka, Illinois, and the unconditional love of her adoptive parents tempered the nail-biting urgency of her persona. Even though song after song trashed the eons-old myth that a well-fucked female kept her mouth shut, their anger was grounded in a vision of equality that promised better sex and more love. For a while she got off on this: "I totally fed off the whole idea that I had done something brash that was hard for a woman to do. My little tail wagged." But soon it got old, and she went after the "Shitloads of Money" she'd never denied wanting. For the first time, she was willing to risk a one-night stand where she wasn't in control. On "Somebody's Miracle", Phair is more confident than on her previous mass-appeal bid, 2003's "Liz Phair". She's split the difference between the Matrix and Michael Penn by working with John Mayer/Jason Mraz producer John Alagio, and along the way she's discovered that there are other ways to be honest than taking your clothes off-although when the subject calls for a cock tease, she's ready. Guitars humping, her voice at its best sexy growl, she's a temptress for a sucker who doesn't know what's coming: "I've got my own thing/Feel it, it is strong/As short as people think/But really it is long." But at least two other strong tracks convince because they lack resolution: the loving look back at an extramarital affair in "Leap of Innocence" and the Stones send-up "Why I Lie." Phair passes off this nasty retort as a love song, reveling in the naked truth of her motives, "predatory instinct and simple ill will." Repeat after me: The man she lies to isn't good enough for her anyway. And while we're on the subject, would the self-professed blowjob queen consider resurrecting Joan Jett's hilarious "Coney Island Whitefish," or is it beneath her to acknowledge such common origins or admit that she wasn't the first pissed-off chick on the block? Although there are two saccharine pro-happiness songs I'd just as soon never hear again, there's also "Giving It All," a rave-up that seems to liberate Phair. No longer married to the gloomy, grainy sound that defined her, she's also stretched the singer-songwriter values that have inspired this divorced mom pushing 40 to pen tunes ever since she was little. As with the last record's "Little Digger," the civility of the defeated alcoholic in "Table for One" puts the listener up close and personal with a subject too many of us would rather pass off as someone else's problem. But the gem is "Closer to You." No wonder Phair prefaced her current tour with an acoustic go-round of small houses. Unlike the sweeter title track, which poses Ms. Liz as an outsider looking in on happy couples, this one plants her firmly mid-relationship, both wanting more and admitting that intimacy can be off-putting. She believes that mutual respect provides love its essential balance: "I don't need your ock and roll to stay in tune." Meet Liz Phair. She knows who she is. Do you? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 15:10:04 -0700 From: Kenneth Lee Subject: [support-system] Somebody's Miracle review (Globe and Mail) From The Globe And Mail: (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051021/CARL21/TPEntertainment/Music) GOING OUT: MUSIC By CARL WILSON Arising young songwriter recently told me that non-musicians didn't get it: "They think you're plotting out your whole career when actually you're spending hours searching for a rhyme for 'hat rack.' " I recalled those words as I combed through a dozen years of clippings about Liz Phair. She's just released her fifth album, "Somebody's Miracle" -- or, as journalists subtitle it, The Follow-Up to Her Controversial Bid for the Mainstream. Among many fans and critics, 2003's "Liz Phair" met with the sort of heckling that dogged Bob Dylan's "gone electric" tour: "Judas!" Or rather, "Jezebel!" Some said the Technicolor production on songs such as minor hit "Why Can't I?" proved the artist who made 1993 alt-rock landmark "Exile in Guyville" had mortgaged her soul. Others clucked that the salacious lyrics and risqui cover shot were unseemly for a lady of 36, even though those were the elements most similar to a decade earlier. This is the special flavour of venom spat at women who set their own courses in male-dominated genres. Witness current sniping at British rap upstart M.I.A. But it's particularly reserved for Phair, who's never been willing to pick a side, as either vixen or waif, arty recluse or ambitious careerist, raw memoirist or myth-making manipulator. That refusal may be a privileged one, but so is the cult demand that she remain rigidly faithful. The indie diehards remind me of her son pouting at her suitors in the song "Little Digger", "My mother is mine." Except that they're not toddlers. Chronologically. They forget that 1993's Liz Phair was sneered at for being an upper-class schoolgirl from the Chicago suburbs who couldn't play live and was not from the music scene. (All basically true: "Guyville" was her attack on that world, particularly an alt-rocker ex-boyfriend.) They also seem to have missed the pop leanings of the albums between her debut and her big-budget rebirth. Phair always had a slippery sense of humour. By giving her last album her own name, was she identifying it with her "true self," or referring to her public image in the third person, as she often does in interviews? Few noticed that in her scantily dressed cover photo she held her guitar so that it formed a slash in her name: "Liz/Phair," as in "Either/Or." I thought the album a grand romp, second only to "Guyville" itself. "Why Can't I?" brashly swiped the sound of Avril Lavigne's teen hit "Complicated" to address something genuinely complicated, adultery. (After all, Lavigne's persona came down from "Guyville", via Alanis Morissette, in the first place.) My first reaction to "Somebody's Miracle", with its more "organic" adult-rock sound, was that it was a failed triangulation, straining to win over both old and new fans. I blamed the backlash for the wall of clichi that is lead single "Everything to Me", her blandest song ever. (The band-in-rain video says it all.) But what if Phair was just trying to find rhymes for hat rack? The muted tone might merely reflect her current state of mind as a divorced Los Angeles mom. And some of "Miracle" makes me gasp. In the title track, she despairs: It seems I may never know how/ People stay in love for half of their lives./ It's a secret they keep between the husbands and wives:/ There goes somebody's miracle, walking down the street. Being close to Phair in age, I find her passage from the overly knowing cynicism of "Guyville" to this unsteady humility all too familiar. The dirty talk and production styles never really mattered. But neither Phair nor her critics seem to see clearly enough that her songs win or lose on distinct melodic hooks and uniquely telling lyrical details. Period. Take the perfect Liz Phair twist midway through "Leap of Innocence", a thumping ode to lost love: "And my mistake/ Was being already married." Or the acoustic "Table for One", which rummages through an alcoholic's bottles, hidden in holes in the walls. Such moments don't quite rescue "Miracle" from its weaker half. And Phair is at the end of her famous five-album record deal -- what if it's not renewed? She has expressed envy for self-employed artists such as Ani Difranco, an option cut off mainly by her early stage fright, which limited her touring. She has beaten it now, so maybe the straight-A student will risk the entrepreneurial route at last. Meanwhile, the catchiest chorus on the new album is on "Stars and Planets", ananti-celebrity anthem that (sounding like John Lennon's "Instant Karma") astronomically observes, "Stars rise and stars fall/ But the ones that shine the brightest aren't stars at all/ They're planets, just like us." That is, they're vast unknown spheres, whose orbits happen to catch the light. I'll mind that thought before I second-guess Liz Phair again. Liz Phair plays the Phoenix on Sunday, $20; 416-870-8000. - -Ken kenmlee@ix.netcom.com MeSmErIzInG - AnOtHeR LiZ PhAiR WeBsItE http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/2471/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 15:19:33 -0700 From: Kenneth Lee Subject: [support-system] Somebody's Miracle review (Minneapolis Star Tribune) From The Minneapolis Star Tribune: (http://www.startribune.com/stories/457/5682828.html) Liz Phair unrobed Chris Riemenschneider, Star Tribune She used to make you feel guilty about having the hots for her. Nowadays, though, Liz Phair hopes we geeky male rock fans with whom she toyed on her 1993 album, "Exile in Guyville", won't take our eyes off her. She's in various stages of undress in every photo shot for her new CD, "Somebody's Miracle". Her new video, "Everything to Me," shows her getting hit by rain and wind in a dress that, gosh-darnit, has lost a few of its buttons. It's the kind of stuff you should probably not think too much about, but -- A look at her backside, er, story: The sexing-up of Phair, 38, wouldn't be a big deal if it didn't seem to violate what "Exile in Guyville" was all about. Greeted with more fawning reviews than any other release of 1993 -- proving once again that too many rock critics are male -- the raw and edgy album flipped rock 'n' roll sexism on end. In songs like "Stratford-on-Guy" and "Girls Girls Girls," Phair's sharp tongue undercut Rolling Stones-style libido-rock. The Chicago indie-rocker played a bad girl who had little need for the bad boys except to laugh at our lust. Oh, you saucy thing. Staying abreast: Phair performs Thursday at First Avenue in Minneapolis in support of Somebody's Miracle, which follows her hotly debated self-titled album of 2003. For that one, she called on Avril Lavigne's producers and made an obvious pitch for Top 40 radio, releasing the sugar-coated, high-gloss singles "Extraordinary" and "Why Can't I?" The ploy worked, but a lot of old fans fled in horror. Miracle has a little less sonic polish, but it's no less light and fluffy -- as the lyrics printed in the CD sleeve will attest (if you ever notice them amid all the half-nude photos). The skinny: Of course, just because Phair shows off her goods doesn't mean she's bad at what she does. But issuing yet another terrible record does. Her songwriting now is all purr and no bite. There's nary a hint of irony or wit in it. And all that digitalization and polishing of her sound ironically seems to enhance her obviously flat voice, which was more par-for-the-course on the rawer rock albums. Or do the emperors need new clothes? Maybe instead of Phair -- who some dissenters believe has always been a well-marketed prefab star -- the music industry is to blame here. In 1993, female rock acts such as Hole, L7, Belly and the Breeders were getting record deals and radio airplay without playing the babe role. Phair also found a home on Lilith Fair in the late '90s, the first major all-female pop and rock concert tour, where any slinky clothing was due solely to summer heat. No question, the '90s died even before Paris Hilton shot her first home video. However, Norah Jones, Gwen Stefani and now even Fiona Apple -- none of whom would get turned away from a beauty contest -- are doing fine with their pants on and without any rain machines. LIZ PHAIR Opening act: Matt Pond PA When: 7 p.m. Thu. Where: First Avenue, 701 1st Av. N., Mpls. Tickets: $25. 21 and up. 612-338-8388. Web: See that rainy video at www.lizphair.com. - -Ken kenmlee@ix.netcom.com MeSmErIzInG - AnOtHeR LiZ PhAiR WeBsItE http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/2471/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 15:26:15 -0700 From: Kenneth Lee Subject: [support-system] Somebody's Miracle review (Times Herald-Record) From The Times Herald-Record: (http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2005/10/21/lps21.htm) Liz Phair  "Somebody's Miracle" (Capitol): No one should expect Liz Phair to make another "Exile in Guyville", her 1993 magnum opus of tart and explicit observations about gender roles and sexual dynamics. And no one should deny the 38-year-old mother the right to pursue her explicit desire to make money from radio-friendly singles, as she did successfully with 2003's self-titled album. But it's not too much to expect a little consistency. On much of "Somebody's Miracle", Phair looks for a hit follow-up to "Why Can't I" with innocuous and cliched junk such as the title track and the Madonna-lite ballad "Everything to Me". But on a few songs  often distinguished by her naturally off-key (rather than pitch-adjusted) vocals  she tells sharp and discomforting tales: "Table for One", a description of an alcoholic's humiliation, ranks with her best. Steve Klinge - -Ken kenmlee@ix.netcom.com MeSmErIzInG - AnOtHeR LiZ PhAiR WeBsItE http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/2471/ ------------------------------ End of support-system-digest V8 #143 ************************************