From: owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org (support-system-digest) To: support-system-digest@smoe.org Subject: support-system-digest V10 #38 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 Wednesday, May 7 2008 Volume 10 : Number 038 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [support-system] RollingStone.com interview [Jase ] [support-system] Steve Albini on Liz Phair [Mark Dittmer Subject: [support-system] RollingStone.com interview Here is an interview with Liz that was posted on rollingstone.com earlier today. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/20696130/liz_phair_fifteen_years_in_guyville Liz Phair: Fifteen Years in "Guyville" The indie rock icon talks about her complicated relationship with her debut and its reissue Fifteen years ago, Liz Phair turned the indie rock world inside out with Exile in Guyville, her abrasive, aggressive and accomplished debut. Having survived many bumps along the road, including major label woes and harsh critical backlashes, she will reissue _Guyville_ (complete with a DVD documentary on the album's creation) next month via her new home, ATO Records. We caught up with Phair as she was on her way to therapy, and she talked about feminism, Dean Wareham and her difficult relationship with Guyville. You recently reviewed former Luna and Galaxie 500 frontman Dean Wareham's autobiography for The New York Times. How did that come about? I had a really good time writing that. They approached me, and I have no idea how I got the gig. But I wasn't going to pass it up. I think because I mention Galaxie 500 in [Exile in Guyville's] "Stratford-on-Guy." Did you approach that book differently, considering you had your indie rock coming of age at about the same time? I was very interested in how Dean looked at it and how I looked at it. He remembered exactly where he was, what he was eating, what bands were passing through town. He was highly aware of being in the middle of an indie scene. Sometimes he didn't like it, or he didn't like the people, but he was definitely conscious of it all. Whereas I was always so overwhelmed by what was going on that I didn't pick up on the same things that he did. He was always aware of his place in history. Did you ever consider yourself a part of any scene? Going back and doing the documentary [on Exile in Guyville] reminded me of how much I was a part of that Chicago scene at the time. That's when it ended for me, because after that I was busy working and got caught up in business, and I got married and got pregnant. So I was sort of a mom and sort of a rock star, and I couldn't really figure the two out. But I think that's the only time I ever felt like I was part of a scene. But I've always been like that. Even when I was younger, I always had one or two good friends in every social circle but I?ve never been a part of any one thing. I'm just an outsider. It seems like the music you've made in the past few years doesn't have much of a relationship to the music on Exile in Guyville. What's your relationship to that record now? It's coming back around again, and I don't think it's an accident. For the first time in 15 years, I'm not on a major, and the forces around you are different. If you asked me to do this reissue five years ago, I don't think I could have. For a while, Exile in Guyville was something that I was running away from. When I got bashed for my pop period, it was almost like that album belonged to critics and not me anymore. They used it against me, in a weird way. I couldn't figure out how I felt about it or how I should feel about it. Now because I feel a tremendous sense of freedom for the first time in a long time, I said, "I'm going to find these people and bring that moment back." If you told me five years ago that I was going to hunt down [Feel Good All Over label head] John Henderson, I would have laughed in your face. No fucking way! But I did. I found Steve Albini and all these people I had issues with in the past. It was so good for me. I was able to remember who I am  not just who I was. If you don't ever deal with your past, you don't even know half of who you are, and that's what I was suffering under. You've been critically attacked for most everything you've done since Exile in Guyville. How have you dealt with it? It did bother me. I stopped reading press because I couldn't write. I couldn't deal with reading about what people thought about me all the time. But how could I escape it? Everyone was like, "You suck! You don't just suck, you really suck!" They were so angry, and I couldn't understand what made them so angry. I reserve fits of anger for people that I know who might have done something mean to me personally. I got into it with one writer who was like, "Do you know how personal that record was to everyone?" And I was like, "Do you know how personal it was to me?" Do you consider yourself a feminist icon? I don't think of myself as an icon, but I think of myself as interested and can get ruffled at gender inequality. I still get touchy when people say that guys are interested in sex and girls are interested in love. It's bullshit. Do you think you were treated differently as a woman in the business? I think the inequality extends everywhere. I think it's also a drag to be a guy in a lot of situations. We have trouble with differences, and I think we're approaching it the wrong way. But I think we can evolve as a species. Did you gain anything from your major label period, or was it all a disaster? I enjoyed a lot of it. I enjoyed having a Rolling Stone cover. I enjoyed having a radio hit. I think people who loved Guyville didn't understand this, but I'm a lifelong radio listener. My experience with music my whole life has been finding music I like on the radio. I loved making expensive videos and going on fashion shoots, and there was a lot of stuff about business that fascinated me too. I felt good about a lot of the major label experience, but it's not where I really shine. I'm so much more passionately involved when I get to do it my way. But I still love singing those pop songs. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:18:58 +1200 From: Mark Dittmer Subject: [support-system] Steve Albini on Liz Phair This may be old for some of you, but I thought I'd post it anyway. Steve Albini, the legendary engineer on Nirvana's 'In Utero', has been answering fan questions on a Poker forum he frequents. As you have probably guessed, Liz and Brad Wood came up in the discussion. In response to the question, "what is the general perception of Liz Phair in Chicago, both now and at the height of her Guyville/Whipsmart phase?" Steve said: "Liz Phair was quite popular in Chicago both from the time of her first album and the cassettes she released earlier. It wasn't music meant for me, so it's no surprise that I didn't appreciate it, but plenty of people thought she was great. The shine came off around the time of her second album, and subsequent records haven't been received too well. While she has always been a bit of a nipple exhibitionist, she reached "dirty mom" status recently. MILF-aspiring but still MINLF. Also, what's up with her lifting her chin so we look up her snout in her photos?" When asked, "What you think of Brad Wood as a producer/engineer?" Steve said: The old Idful studio was a valuable resource for bands in Chicago, and a lot of good records came out of there. Brad went to some lengths to get a "real" career with a big record label, and in so doing kinda took himself out of the loop with regard to local bands, and he sealed the deal by moving to California, but while he was here he did a bunch of good records with a bunch of bands and was well-liked. Engine, the studio he was last associated with before he moved, has ties to some of the real creeps of the Chicago music business oligarchy, and I've never been there. He is no longer involved in it, as far as I know, but the studio is still open for business. You can read it for yourself here: http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=0&Number=11269854&page=0&vc=1 Oh, and according to another poster, he once said that Liz Phair was the "least terrible alternative rock act in Chicago"... See here: http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/printthread.php?Board=Laughs&main=11164559&type=post Hmmmm.... ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 22:11:39 -0400 From: Jase Subject: [support-system] Liz in Carrie Brownstein's "Monitor Mix" blog Carrie Brownstein from Sleater-Kinney now writes a blog for NPR.org. One of her entries last week was about the upcoming reissue of 'Exile in Guyville' and her thoughts about the album. There is also a stream of the remastered version of "Divorce Song" from the reissue at the link below. http://www.npr.org/blogs/monitormix/2008/04/return_from_exile.html Exiled, Again In June, ATO records will release a special 15th Anniversary edition of Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville. Originally conceived as a response to The Rolling Stones' Exile on Mainstreet, Phair's Exile became something of a classic in its own right. In 1993 I moved to Olympia, Washington to attend college. The Northwest was full of incendiary bands in the early 1990s. Some of the sounds were heard around the globe, others remained stubbornly underground, festering and smoldering, creating an incognito hysteria and inspiring offshoots. There was twee and lo-fi, angular post-punk, emo, metal, riot grrl, noise--most of it eager, breathless and frenzied. For months, I rarely saw or listened to a world outside of Olympia. If I wanted to see bands from London or DC, New York or LA, they would play in basements and be sucked into the smallness of the town, if only for a night. Olympia was part of a series of remote satellites sending signals back and forth, sharing information and secrets. It was within this context, this feeling that everything important had a line drawn around it and that my town was inside that imaginary border, that I first heard Liz Phair. She crashed through the insularity, with no clear alliance to one music scene, writing from the periphery of her own. I was at a friend's house, he was making us dinner and he put on the album. The fact that I remember any details at all about what my friend was cooking, what we wore, the layout of this small apartment--those memories only exist because of Exile in Guyville. Otherwise, it would have been just another night. I was 19. The first thing I noticed about Liz Phair was the voice. She wasn't screaming, she wasn't being cloying, she wasn't an amazing singer, but there was something serious about the vocals, something deadly. Part of it was the flatness; the strange deadpan delivery, like someone is singing on their back, like they woke up one night and decided they'd had enough and so they made an album. But the songs weren't victim anthems just like they weren't merely come-ons; they spoke of the fine lines between power and powerlessness, autonomy and isolation, they depicted epiphanies and the subsequent letdowns. The album was a journey vacillating between interior and exterior landscapes, the lyrics evoking halcyon moments always on the verge of implosion, either by the author's own hand or by someone they loved. And the album was drenched in desire, of wanting and of wanting out. Exile in Guyville was a brave and gutsy album and Liz Phair made herself an island out of it. Some critics and fans dove in to the waters, swimming to save her, to woo her, to worship her, while others hung her out to dry. Maybe it was the sheer audacity of the album, coming at a time when many indie music statements--particularly those being made by women--were more strident, they clawed out a space with volume and rebellion. The sphere Phair created was murkier, it was inviting but also treacherous. I don't know if it was the weight of the endeavor, or the fact that those of us over a certain age couldn't escape this album if we tried, but Exile in Guyville's presence is still felt after all these years. I admit to not having followed Phair much since the mid 90s, but listening to Exile again, I think it just might qualify as a monster of rock. ------------------------------ End of support-system-digest V10 #38 ************************************