Purple Mountains (RIP David Berman, August 2019)

Caution to anyone clicking on circa1916's poemhunter link upthread! It's full of poems from a David Berman other than our David Berman.

$2 is a tough price to beat. Free is also good, but you know if they could, they'd sell the Air.

I'm so happy to still have my '99 Open City Actual Air, even though the pages are stiff from being waterlogged in some long-forgotten beverage that spilled on it some night many nights ago. I lent my little hardcover reprint edition out to some girl named Deborah that I hung out with twice in 2003, and now I'm starting to worry I might never get it back.

Deborah F from Manhattan Beach, California: if you're reading this I hope you at least read the book, you scoundrel!

Oh are there bogus poems in that link? My bad.

It's cool. We were warned of impostor Davids. The premonitions never ceased with the guy.

http://mentholmountains.blogspot.com/2019/05/fyi-other-david-bermans.html

cvilleweekly also had some nice memories.

https://www.c-ville.com/words-music-and-wit-indie-rock-icon-david-berman-touched-local-lives/

That article is good, though this is an odd remark (at least given the circumstances):

And of that Purple Mountains record, Hlad says, (...) “It’s so personal, and so revealing. It’s like Blood on the Tracks, but a much better record. And I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table and tell him that.”

Well, at least when he did it, it was funny.

e.g. "NIRVANA: BUSH:: REAGAN: BUSH"

Kind of a riff on Steve Earle’s old line “Townes Van Zandt's the best songwriter in the world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.”

Ah, I didn’t know that reference.

no wonder dylan gets so grumpy, look at this shit his coffee table has to deal with

and i'll stand on bob dylan's coffee table and look him in the eye and say that

Lookout Mountain is probably my favorite and most listened to, but I feel like Tanglewood & American Water are definitely his twin masterpieces, everything you need to know about him & Silver Jews is in those records.

The night before news of his death broke, I saw a gig by NYC antifolk/cartoonist guy Jeffrey Lewis and bought one of these delightful SilverJewsLand
prints that he was selling, framed & hung it in my kitchen as soon as I got home. Woke up the next morning, saw the news, and thought I cant handle looking at this over morning coffee every day and took it right down. Maybe someday it'll go back up but I dunno when.

I'm envious of people that have been able to listen to the albums since his death, I just dont feel like I'll be able to handle engaging with any of the material for a while.

many, many xps but the other gothy guy on the right in that old UVA pic is Rob Chamberlain who I met when he was working at Strand Books shortly after he was replaced by Mark Ibold as bassist in Pavement.

He's one of the many obscure members of Pavement that not many people know of, others being early drummers Jeff Doyle, Kelly Hensley & Jason Fawkes (all early drummers).

Wow, I’ve never heard of any of those guys. When were they members — like before Steve & Spiral even recorded with Gary?

The early Pavement show I saw (at the Uptown bar in Minneapolis) had a drummer both the door and making toast.

*both working the door

This is Rob's band, they were great live... much better than this. They were at the time contemporaries of the Silver Jews & Pavement if you could believe that lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WId0rLAItJo

Those other guys were Stockton dudes who drummed on the early stuff (not to say Gary didn't either, but Gary was more of the engineer in the very beginning but sort of became the drummer by default). I think Perfect Sound Forever was the first Pavement record where the lineup was just SM/Spiral/Gary.

I remember reading somewhere that Scott had a different band called “Pavement,” and wondered if there was any bleedover.

Yeah, Scott's ASU band was named Pavement briefly (in '87):

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DyXheS4UcAEeGkU?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

2/3rds of The Silver Jews (Hazel Figurine & DCB) at Steve Keene's studio in 1991 circa Dime Map Of The Reef:
https://i.imgur.com/peWdS9I.jpg

In Portland, late 2018 post Bejar-sessions:
https://i.imgur.com/OMwrp2Z.jpg

one of DCB's last short form broadcasts (trigger warning: embedded "indie" tweet):

"Albania..." pic.twitter.com/zGf3msItmi

— purple mountains (@prplmtns) July 27, 2019

This scanned interview from 2003 is really good.

“Out of James Tate and Charles Wright I got to meet grown dignified men who play with fucking words all day. They gave me permission to believe I could try for that in life.”

Back in 2003, as a grad student at @EmersonCollege I got to interview David Berman for Beacon Street Review (now @redividermag). I could not believe someone so talented (Actual Air from @dragcityrecords is actually perfect) would say yes, but he did: https://t.co/MOtQa6EfYo

— Kathleen Rooney (@KathleenMRooney) August 12, 2019

Re the American Water talk up above, I was surprised by the prices it's going for as well - even the CD copy. I could have swore I had a copy, but I guess I never did upgrade my old cassette. Hopefully Drag City gets more in some day soon. I also never got around to getting Tanglewood either and it's out of stock.

just dug up a copy of Minus Times from 2003 with a Berman poem called "The Irish Space Program."

I vaguely remember that one. It was from around the same time as "The High Numbers." https://believermag.com/the-high-numbers/

If you want to post it here, I for one would be much obliged.

I'll have to transcribe it later when I'm less busy, but will do. A friend of mine got a story published in the same one.

David Berman, “The Irish Space Program,” published in the Minus Times. pic.twitter.com/iilqtWUTq9

— William Boyle (@wmboyle4) August 8, 2019

go raibh maith agat!

drag city eulogy up

https://www.dragcity.com/news/2019-08-12-call-me-from-albemarle

I stopped by Amoeba earlier; the Silver Jews section was entirely cleaned out (no copies of Purple Mtns, either).

Snow Falls in Manhattan is just so warm and wonderful, A writer's song. The hopeful heart of the album.

xp from the 2003 interview linked above:

”The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is like the “Stairway to Heaven” of twentieth-century poetry.

so this is a knock and not a compliment then ?

Just now from Lloyd Cole.

You know the father. You know that haircut. He spent almost 40 years tilting against it, and we can be thankful for the spoils. It clearly wasn't all fun for him. I was a big fan. Recently, I was really happy to find that he enjoyed my stuff, too.

— Lloyd Cole (@Lloyd_Cole) August 13, 2019

DB told me that the time he was in Dallas, which inspired my favourite of his songs, they were listening to Rattlesnakes. Neil and I will figure a way to play Dallas on this upcoming tour.

— Lloyd Cole (@Lloyd_Cole) August 13, 2019

Another remembrance, from one of the publishers of Actual Air:

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2019-08-12/david-berman-appreciation-thomas-beller

the setback can be a setup for a comeback line is apparently from a self-help book.

https://www.amazon.com/Setback-Setup-Comeback-Willie-Jolley/dp/0312267738

that la times thing is like thomas-beller-appreciation-thomas-beller

i'm having such a laugh listening to joos. so many funny moments. the seagulls and horns on 'party barge'. i still can't really stomach purple mountains, but my god, what a swan song.

my ex bandmate would sometimes play SJ albums - after picking up bright flight just because he liked the cover art, he became quite the fan. i'd listen casually, though somehow DB mostly flew under my radar all these years. i guess you can't always discover everything. i clicked on this thread last week as ned posted the news, but i didn't scroll to the most recent post -- i only saw the record cover. i thought that it looked like a cool album, and got listening - then read the news. i've been rinsing the catalogue since; reading poetry, his reddit ama, email screenshots, and i already feel so familiar - not to mention inspired. the songs are so effortless, simple, so much fun. he seemed so charismatic for a deep introvert. i hope actual air is reprinted.

the setback can be a setup for a comeback line is apparently from a self-help book

Ah, good catch! He at least made it his own by grafting on the "if you don't let up" part, which allows the whole line to pass a google purity test, technically.

This reminds me, sometime around 2002 I was reading "The Wild Palms" by William Faulkner, and I happened upon the phrase "actual air" on page 161.

and now he knew it was not the same deer because he saw three at one time, does or bucks he did not know which since they were all antlerless in May and besides he had never seen one of any land anywhere before except on a Christmas card; and then the rabbit, drowned, dead anyway, already torn open, the bird, the hawk standing upon it - the erected crest, the hard vicious patrician nose, the intolerant omnivorous yellow eye and he kicking at it, lacking it lurching and broadwinged into the actual air.

I emailed David to ask if that's where he borrowed it from, and he said he might've, but if he did it wasn't intentional. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but the fact that The Arizona Record had a song called "The Wild Palms" can probably be introduced as evidence.

Hey Del G., do you remember what year we saw him give a reading at St. Mary's?

xp I always assumed the title "The Wild Palms" had something to do with the TV series which aired a few months before The Arizona Record came out; but I guess a Faulkner novel seems like a more likely source.

that reading at Saint Mary's must've been 2002? 2003? I'm having no luck googling for a trace of it.

How have I never heard of the 1993 teevee Wild Palms? It sounds totally badass!

In the United States in the year 2007, the right-wing "Fathers" dominate large sections in politics and in the media. A libertarian movement, the "Friends", opposes the government, often making use of underground guerrilla tactics. The Fathers' leader is California's Senator Tony Kreutzer, who is also the leader of the religious sect "Church of Synthiotics" (similar to Scientology) and owner of the "Wild Palms" media group. Kreutzer's TV station "Channel 3" is about to start a new television format, "Church Windows", which creates a virtual reality on the basis of popular shows like sitcoms, using a new technique called "Mimecom".

Harry Wyckoff is a successful patent attorney on the brink of becoming a partner in the legal agency where he works. He has two children with his wife Grace, a perfect housewife who also moonlights as a boutique owner: 11-year-old Coty, who has just been cast for the new "Channel 3" series, and the ever-silent 4-year-old Deirdre. His mother-in-law is the impossibly chic socialite and interior decorator Josie Ito, a woman of strong will and numerous connections. At night, Wyckoff is plagued by strange dreams of a rhinoceros and a faceless woman who has palm trees tattooed on her body.

Lol, I think I watched that entire show and was very into it, but my recollection is quite vague (I.e I had to click the link to even recall it).

Snow is Falling is so comforting tonight. I still haven't processed this and how sad am I about someone I never met.

I started a trip the morning I heard the news. Just digesting now from home. Lots to read in this thread, for which I'm grateful.

the penultimate verse of snow is falling, the "songs build little rooms in time" one, struck me as being too perfect to exist when i first read it on the lyric sheet, it just hovered an inch above the paper. A couple of days later it was still beautiful but a lot more concretely sad.

Yeah party barge is a riot, i feel like if i had ever made a silver jews c90, i would bookend it with that and silver pageant off starlite walker. the joos gave you the full emotional spectrum.

Does anyone have the DCB's favourite chords insert that came with (i think) Bright Flight (or maybe tanglewood numbers?) I spent many happy hours mangling away inchoate SJs numbe

...rs to that. i think it said "put your fingers on the polar bears noses" if anyone has it and could scan it i would be eternally grateful.

That's the insert with Lookout Mountain... I can't scan right now, I'm afraid.

I noticed he gave the chords on the lyric sheet to the songs on the Purple Mountains album. But sometimes they were not quite right. And he wrote "Fm7" for F7.

This reminds me, sometime around 2002 I was reading "The Wild Palms" by William Faulkner, and I happened upon the phrase "actual air" on page 161.

and now he knew it was not the same deer because he saw three at one time, does or bucks he did not know which since they were all antlerless in May and besides he had never seen one of any land anywhere before except on a Christmas card; and then the rabbit, drowned, dead anyway, already torn open, the bird, the hawk standing upon it - the erected crest, the hard vicious patrician nose, the intolerant omnivorous yellow eye and he kicking at it, lacking it lurching and broadwinged into the actual air.

I emailed David to ask if that's where he borrowed it from, and he said he might've, but if he did it wasn't intentional. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but the fact that The Arizona Record had a song called "The Wild Palms" can probably be introduced as evidence.

― del griffith, Tuesday, August 13, 2019 2:41 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This reminds me of when I was visiting a friend in Virginia and happened to see her utility bill from the water company - it was called American Water! Probably not a coincidence.