Iowa: A Musical Wasteland?

In many ways, Iowa enjoys an outsize role in American life. Incredibly, the first Democratic and Republican caucuses remain in Iowa, which demographically resembles mostly itself and the Dakotas. The state is a shorthand for pleasant, uncosmopolitan Midwesterness (this pops up in The New York Times often). The first electric computer, the Atanasoff-Berry, was invented in Ames. Even culturally, Iowa is kind of important: the Writer's Workshop is in Iowa City, and the state was home to John Wayne and Johnny Carson, among others.

But musically, Iowa has always been a wasteland. Or a graveyard--the most important musical events to occur in the state were both deaths. The first was "the day the music died," when a plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper crashed outside Clear Lake. You can blame that one on the Iowa weather and Roger Peterson, a 21 year-old pilot from Mason City. The second event occured when Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off an already dead bat at Veteran's Memorial Auditorium in Des Monies.

Not exactly edifying stuff. To be fair, Iowa was home to Bix Beiderbecke, a mysterious Dixieland musician who played clarinet and piano. However, I have never really felt like Beiderbecke's hometown of Davenport was really a part of my home state, so I'm not sure how Beiderbecke fits in. I'll confess that I'm mostly ignorant about his music, but it doesn't help the state's case that he was born 108 years ago.

On the other hand, tiny Shenandoah, hidden in the state's Southwest corner, can claim a couple impressive musicians: The Everly Brothers and Charlie Haden. Neither of the Everlys was born in the state, but they spent a decade in Iowa during their youth, and went on to record the epochal "Bye Bye Love." Haden was born and raised in Shenandoah, and has impressive pedigree as a jazz bassist, having played with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett, and in his own Liberation Music Orchestra. You can also throw in Meredith Wilson, of Mason City, who wrote The Music Man and set it in fictional River City, Iowa. If I remember the plot of the musical correctly, it concerns a con man who dupes a bunch of foolish Iowans, and then relents.

But that's a pretty small imprint.* Where are all of Iowa's musicians?

Not in the Iowa Rock n' Roll Music Association, the group who run something resembling an Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. If you visit the Association's website, you'll notice that the organization seems to cling onto any group from the 50's or 60's with an Iowa connection. I won't pretend like I'm familiar with many of the Association's inductees, but those names I do recognize do not belong to Iowans, or people with meaningful connections to the state. Examine the Class of 2000, for example. Inducting Buddy Holly just seems cruel, and the Association fails to present a real reason that The Trashmen count as Iowans.

So, aside from a couple jazz greats, and some guys who died or passed through Shenandoah, is Iowa a musical wasteland? Not entirely. For one, Bob Nastanovich lives in Des Moines. Nastanovich was a member of Pavement, probably the greatest band of the nineties, and also played with the Silver Jews. Nastanovich's role in Pavement is limited, musicially speaking. Sometimes he plays a small drum set, or a few synthesizer notes, or shouts backup vocals. But he's been a full member of the band since 1990, and his joie de vivre makes him Pavement's second-largest stage presence. I saw the band on their reunion tour last year, in St. Paul and Nastanovich asked if anyone in the audience was from Des Moines. A few hands went up, and he shared his verdict on the city: "it's getting better." He works just outside of town, at the Prairie Meadows horse racetrack. Of course, the Iowa Rock n' Roll Music Association has ignored the chillest guy in indie.

The IRNRMA haven't enshrined Ames' Poision Control Center either--it seems there's an aversion to, or ignorance of independent music. I saw a fantastic PCC show last summer in Athens, Georgia. I chatted with the band after the show--Ames had just endured its worst flood in a century, so I asked if their homes were OK. But those guys are lifers--they didn't have homes, they were on tour.

Worse yet, the IRNRMA has neglected an Iowan musician who is an innovator and genuine legend. I'm talking about Arthur Russell, a cellist and songwriter who grew up in Oskaloosa. He's best-known for his avant-garde disco work, which was released under names like Dinosaur L and Loose Joints. Russell was an important figure in the New York art scene during the 70's and 80's, doing things like composing 48 hour orchestra pieces and playing cello on a discarded version of "Psycho Killer." Russell died in 1992, of AIDS-related complications.

Like most Iowa musicians, Arthur Russell didn't leave much of a footprint during his lifetime. But that has changed since 2004, when Audika mounted a reissue campaign spotlighting Russell's work. A prolific songwriter, much of his work went unreleased, but Russell's music has connected with many people in recent years (the Soul Jazz compilation The World Of Arthur Russell has been particularly influential). Russell's "mutant disco" and cello pieces have been rhapsodized about and discussed elsewhere. I'll accept that at face value--it's not my favorite work he made--and instead nominate his country album, Love Is Overtaking Me, as the greatest Iowa album of all time.

These 21 songs, recorded between 1974 and 1990, are lovingly crafted, simple, and full of heart. Russell's compositions--even standards like "Good Bye Old Paint" sound like originals here--have a homemade warmth. The plaintive Russell is not a born singer, but his unassuming voice fits the material. Despite the modesty of his approach, Russell's lyrics will tear your heart out. You'd have to be inhumanly stoic--even for a midwesterner--not to be moved when he sings "I couldn't say it to your face/but I won't be around any more." In Russell's hands, small details--orange birthday cakes, putting records back in their sleeves, the warmth of a friend's arm--lend the songs their lived-in feel. He seems to draw on his Iowa roots often, writing about love and uncertainty in a way that recalls Big Star, but with a more rural bent. This is most evident on "What It's Like"--the album's centerpiece, almost Southern rock--where he sets the scene: "In Iowa/In the tall grass/there's a couple."

It makes sense, then, that Love Is Overtaking Me's cover features Arthur Russell standing in a cornfield. This is the best Iowa Album there is, proof that there's life, even brilliance, among the cornfields.


*Compare this to neighboring Minnesota and Missouri. Even when you factor in a per-capita offset (both states are roughly twice as populous as Iowa), the Hawkeye State's imprint doesn't come close.

Great Guitar Solos #2: Pavement, "The Hexx" (Stephen Malkmus)

Available On: Terror Twilight (1999)
Solo bits: 3:36-4:28

I like to think that Stephen Malkmus became a great lead guitarist and soloist without even realizing it. In several interviews, particularly in Pavement's early days, Malkmus would talk about how the majority of guitarists he most admired were rhythm guitarists, and he felt his own inner jamminess was unremarkable by comparison. Of course this didn't stop Malkmus from playing extended guitar solos that became longer and more conventional as his career progressed (his recent solo album Real Emotional Trash is the culmination of all these disparate Dead and Television influences manifesting themselves in long, awesome yet empty guitar solos). This mirrored Pavement's rise from Fall-influenced indie stalwart to modern classic rockers. Malkmus was always in charge of Pavement (really, someone try to convince me that Spiral Stairs did anything), and by acting as the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter, he set himself up as a Hendrix type as opposed to, say, a Mark E. Smith.

Malkmus was also, of course, way too laconic and guarded onstage to act as if he was the guitar genius that he was. As a result, he's not generally thought of as a guitar hero, at least not compared to other 90's stalwarts like Kurt Cobain, Graham Coxon, Jonny Greenwood, Kevin Shields, Doug Martsch, and a few others. What these guitarists all have in common is that they all tried in different ways to act like they weren't guitar heroes--but really, they probably knew they were, and took their role as an opportunity to fuck with audience expectations of guitar heroics. In terms of sheer ability, Malkmus could play as well as any of them, save perhaps Coxon and Greenwood. There are many cases of Malkmus' guitar genius at work on even the earliest of Pavement albums, but for me his crowning achievement is the second-to-last song on their last album Terror Twilight, which is entitled "The Hexx."

"The Hexx" stands out, as the title might suggest, as Pavement's spookiest song, a swirling dirge with an odd riff at the center that transforms into a righteous if obscure chorus. Placed as it is on Terror Twilight, it has an odd cleansing effect, given how tuneful and even pleasant the rest of the album sounds (Pavement was in full-fledged pop mode by this point). In fact, I'm surprised that this song even exists, given how puzzling and atonal the main riff is. However, several listens have confirmed to me that it works perfectly within the context of the song, and is in fact a very good example of Malkmus transforming odd noodlings into beautiful songs that automatically strike the listener as classic tunes. This is a gift that few possess.

The song starts out with the aforementioned riff, played by Malkmus, who also starts off singing about "Capistrano swallow" and God swallowing peoples' radars and stuff like that. Eventually the drums and bass kick in, as well as another guitar, although its purpose in the mix is negligible in my opinion until the very end of the song. After working through some very Pavement-sounding lyrics, the riff dissolves into some delicious chord changes, wherein Malkmus aches, "but I...I, I...saw you...reeling in the parking lot," with the "parking lot" part being reinforced by a sharper, more typical riff. After that business is done, Malkmus whispers something that sounds like, "for the pauper's grave," and the chords disappear into the stratosphere, leaving the arch-angular riff to fend for itself again. More nondescript noises are piled on. The drums come back, and finally, out of the ether, Malkmus plays his solo.

The first thing one will notice is that this is a remarkably bluesy solo for a song whose structure seems so ostensibly anti-blues: there's no real tonal center to hold onto, but Malkmus somehow manages to fit in a whole minute of perfectly-controlled blues playing. It sounds like he is playing laconically at first, and he never really gets around to building up speed, but somehow he manages to bypass that and ratchet up the tension simply by playing tiny, perfectly considered groups of notes that never really overlap with each other. Malkmus isn't afraid to wail on the same note over and over, nor is he really concerned with going up and down the fret board. He finds a happy medium, and plays his heart out without coming across as either showy or bored. The end of the solo is really nothing more than an arpeggio that remains constant through the growing sea of noise, and even as it changes around him, he once again finds the tonal center before breaking with it altogether and leading to the triumphal finish.

It's possible with solos like "The Hexx" that you won't really get it the first time you hear it. I know I didn't. It's such a small work of art that it's barely noticeable, especially on an album so full of good moments, but if you pay attention long enough, you see that Malkmus managed to challenge the entire entire idea of what a solo must sound like and where it should fit in, and for this, someone must recognize this beautiful moment for what it is. Listen to it five times in a row, and I guarantee you will know what I mean. Sometimes great expression means facing the challenges your own work faces in a way people won't immediately recognize.

Feel The Paean

I've been listening to 1993's No Alternative compilation recently. It's hit and miss, and outtakes and live versions make up a third of the comp, but mostly it's pretty sweet: The Smashing Pumpkins' "Glynis" reminds you how actually really talented Billy Corgan used to be, bands I wasn't familiar with like The Verlaines and Barbara Manning and the San Francisco Seals turn in good work, American Music Club further convince me I really need to start listening to them and Nirvana's "Verse Chorus Verse" is Nirvana's "Verse Chorus Verse".

The undisputable highlight, however, is Pavement's "Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence." In an ealier attempt to write about NA from a slightly different angle, I noted that the track

might be the single best song the band ever did, a paean to R.E.M.'s Reckoning so good it bests nearly everything on that album. You haven't lived until you've heard S.M. shout "'Time After Time' was my least favorite song. 'Time After Time' was my least favorite song!"

And I stand behind that. I've listened to a lot of M.B.V., but I don't think I've ever heard guitars woozier than the ones that open "Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence," all metallic clang and hazy swoosh. Malkmus' vocal performance is pretty restrained, really stoned-sounding, and he never really betrays his love of Reckoning in his straight-faced yelps (we know of course that SM adored R.E.M. and especially Reckoning, from the lyrics but also from the fact that his band would cover "Camera" in 1994, albeit somewhat poorly). The song trudges forward, its rhythm section barely discernible as Malkmus narrates the R.E.M. story confusingly, mentioning Chronic Town but omitting Murmur and listing about half the songs on the record. In the next part--you could hardly call them verses and the song's structure eludes me--Malkmus describes the band in a way that does his (and Stipe's) lyrical elusiveness justice while succinctly capturing at least three-fourths of R.E.M.:

The singer, he had long hair
And the drummer he knew restraint
And the bass man he had all the right moves
And the guitar player was no saint

From there, the song evokes William Tecumseh Sherman and launches into a coda featuring what would appear to be Civil War Soldiers shouting to one another about wagons and artillery. At this point the metallic sounds pulsate dissonantly, a weird but convincing evocation of Sothern Gothic. It's its own beast; nothing even Pavement did has ever sounded like "Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence."

I've been thinking about the track recently, partly because I think about it a lot, partly because it was the first Pavement song I ever heard, but mostly because I've been listening to another love letter to an album in song form, The-Dream's "Kelly's 12 Play."

I should say that I think Love Vs. Money, the album which features "Kelly's 12 Play" as its last track, is easily one of the best albums I've heard in 2009. I haven't been obsessing over new releases lately, but the only discs I've heard this calendar year that I've liked as much are Morrissey's pissed yet stately Years Of Refusal and Amadou and Mariam's incredible Welcome To Mali (nerds may quibble that Mali was released in the Old World last year).

The song is a sultry R&B jam about how Dream and his lady enjoy doing the nasty to R. Kelly's much-loved sophomore album 12 Play (the disc features such classily-titled jams as "Freak Dat Booty," "I Like The Crotch On You" and "Sex Me Pts. 1 & 2"). The lyrics are nothing special--the rote loverman persona The-Dream adopts is the most boring thing about his album--but the production buzzes and whirrs magnificently. It sounds sexy and sterile, a thoroughly chopped and screwed affair probably too weird to release as a single. But it's great, and I'm happy to know that the kids are still paying respect to the old masters.

[stream] The-Dream "Kelly's 12 Play"
(I can't find a video or stream of "Unseen Power"; both No Alternative and the much-expanded L.A.'s Desert Origins reissue of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain contain the track)
***
Earlier in the post, I mention that I already tried to write about No Alternative. I was trying to compare the superior NA to 2009's inferior Dark Was The Night. It came of as rambling, but I would still like to make the following point about the latter compilation, lifted from those ramblings:

Pitchfork, among others, has taken pains to stress that the album represents a survey of indie in 2009. I've been offended because the compilation highlights indie's often boring but very popular folk-pop strain. It also hurts that the tracklisting leaves out nearly ever artist I enjoy and respect in the underground. Still, it's weird that nothing even vaguely resembling punk rock, the music that birthed and has often sustained the underground, makes an appearance. That Beach House (covering Queen!), were relegated to the digital-only version of the album is another slap in the face.