Smog - "Teenage Spaceship"

Flying around
The houses at night
Flying alone

A teenage spaceship
I was a teenage spaceship

Landing at night
I was beautiful with all my lights

Loomed so large on the horizon
So large, people thought my windows
Were stars
So large on the horizon
People thought my windows
Were stars

A teenage spaceship
A teenage spaceship

And I swore I'd never lay like a log
Bark like a dog

I was a teenage smog
Sewn to the sky

There's this great (roughly) alternating pattern to Knock Knock which is (roughly) 'fast' (active?) song, slow song, fast (active?) song etc.

Teenage Spaceship: I suppose this and "Cold Blooded Old Times" represent the middle of the narrative-arc/relationship.

Smog reminiscing about his teenage dreams. Flying around the houses at night= an active social life? fits of actual fantasy flying (i.e. the teenage invicibility clause)?. The second line: “flying alone”.

He swore he’d never lay like a log (a metaphor for settling down? which allows him the wincingly bad follow-over pun in the next line); bark like a dog. A teenage smog; an indefinable flurry of mystery, unpindownable… Sewn to the sky (a star – a “patchwork” sky: a patchwork of...?)

Yeah i think this is my favorite Smog song on my favorite Smog album.
But my favorite song with him is Your wedding.

My top 50 smog songs:

Cold Blooded Oldtimes
Chosen One
Teenage Spaceship
I Was a Stranger
When You Walk
To Be of Use
Hit the Ground Running
Bathysphere
Renee Died
Red Apple Falls
No Dancing
Held
Dress Sexy at My Funeral
Strawberry Rash
Blood Red Bird
Bloodflow
River Guard
Let's Move to the Country
Ex-Con
Justice Aversion
All Your Women Things
37 Push Ups
A Hit
Your Wedding
Be Hit
Came Blue
One Less Star
Real Live Dress
Distance
Spanish Moss
Connections
Lize
A Jar of Sand
Little Girl Shoes
Dirty Pants
Coacheecayoo
Wild Love
I Break Horses
Permanent Smile
Floating
Drunk on the Stars
Stick In The Mud
Keep Some Steady Friends Around
It's Rough
Natural Decline
Hitman
White Ribbon
Strayed
Orion Obscured by Stars
Stalled on the Tracks

excellent, excellent tune.

And I swore I'd never lay like a log
Bark like a dog

might well just be red herrings. And there ain't nothin wrong with that.

(not really)

this song is so fucking great

bootleg nerds should be checking out the conway hall version for some variation. such a great song.

Ha, I was rereading this thread and saw the post where someone was ranking smog songs and thought "who would do that?" and then realized it was me.

Regardless, still a fantastic song.

Teenage Spaceship is amazing. Knock Knock is amazing. Smog is amazing.

http://devonrecordclub.com/2013/11/10/smog-knock-knock-round-57-toms-selection/

Agree. Knock Knock is one of my all time favs.

I realised after writing my blog that other than Teenage Spaceship and Held which, for me, are amazing, ranking the other tracks is nigh on impossible!

Ha, I was rereading this thread and saw the post where someone was ranking smog songs and thought "who would do that?" and then realized it was me.

― Jeff, Saturday, 27 March 2010 13:51 (3 years ago) Permalink

also I don't wanna be too literal but whenever I picture the "teenage spaceship" of the title I see one or more kids getting stoned in a car

also also, far be it from me to stand in defiant and pointless opposition to the entire ILM hivemind on a (smog) thread, but: "Hit the Ground Running" (which I *still* occasionally slip up and call "I Had to Leave the Country", a la "Teenage Wasteland") was always the one that made me tear up :\

I should re-read threads before posting opinions, because I would hate to contradict myself from 10 years ago. Good to see I've stayed relatively consistent on this topic throughout the years.

great record great song

great record great song

― i wish i had a skateboard i could skate away on (Hurting 2), Tuesday, November 12, 2013 9:35 AM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes! as someone who got into bill callahan at "apocalypse" it's been so much fun working my way back through his career and finding that it's pretty much all really, really good. red apple falls is about the furthest back i've gone though apart from snippets here and there.

I like everything from Doctor Came at Dawn on, which is most of his career. Red Apple Falls is great. Not so into the early "lo fi" stuff, reminds me too much of college friends fucking around with a tape recorder.

Interesting to see him getting what seems to be broader exposure after such a long string of albums.

Yeah I think I talked about that on the thread for his new album. It seems like over the past 3-4 albums he's been getting a lot more press, a lot more discussion of him as a long-lasting, evolving performer.

I like bits and pieces of the earlier albums but I think I would pick Red Apple Falls as the point where he gets a lot more consistent.

I always figured the song was partly a play on old b horror movies like "I Was a Teenage Werewolf"

well, the climate for his sort(s) of music has changed over time, but surely exposure has a lot to do with the npr-ification of indie music (or the indie-fication of npr).

right, his fan base aged and grew into part of the NPR demographic, and meanwhile the broader NPR demographic increasingly embraced that kind of music

i was thinking economics backing that but yeah

I think we decided it was a combo of just him being around a long time and thus more people being aware of him, but also his songwriting/production becoming a lot more "traditional" and accessible, esp since the switch from Smog to Bill Callahan.

i have a couple friends who got into bill callahan from one of the last few records, and none of them have really thought to go much farther back in his catalogue.

which is weird to this bill/smog fan since... the doctor came at dawn. i think it was that one. yeah.

anyway one of said friends is really into singer-songwriter stuff, stuff like jackson browne, dan fogelberg (!), but also the eagles, etc. i keep recommending earlier bill/smog records (supper, red apple falls...) but he's worried they are too "noisy"

it's weird to think that bill has this whole new fanbase that may or may not have the slightest interest in what i consider when of the best bodies of the work of the 1990s/early 2000s.

whatever the deal this, it's great that he's still on drag city and hasn't switched to nonesuch or lost highway or something. for all of the "rootsiness" of his recent stuff it's still plenty weird and idiosyncratic and occasionally off-putting (in the best way).

ONE of the best bodies of work

can't type

in terms of critical attention and approval it seems like a natural evolution to me. his LPs always got consistently good notices (except for robert christgau who for some reason thought red apple falls was trash and then hasn't bothered since). he's just gradually expanded the circle of positive reviews. and of course his fan base (or potential fan base) is aging into the NPR demo (or has long since aged into the NPR demo).

Apocalypse wasn't a far cry from his earlier stuff imo.

there are a lot of drag city albums with posters that are better than the covers of the album they promote (so many that i thought about starting a thread), but Knock Knock takes the cake
http://thumbs4.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mZAEYCBqBd0Acyd19GMMQmg.jpg

i have that poster somewhere.

idk, the knock knock cover is one of my favorite album covers

ha, i think it's terrible, but it's probably because i can't see it without thinking of bad internet memes

tbh i think smog/callahan cover art is pretty hit or miss throughout. highs for me are the paul ryan paintings on apocalypse and dream river.

huh, never occurred to me that it's like a proto-lolcat

also as a newcomer to callahan, my reactions to early smog (the snippets i've heard, anything pre-doctor came at dawn) isn't that it's too noisy, but that it's kind of... i don't know... bleak? at this point in my life, i really have to get into a certain headspace in order to feel open to music that dreary. i can do it but it's pretty rare. used to be easier ages 18-20. there are exceptions for sure but it really feels like the work of a different person.

but yea anybody who likes the current music callahan is making shouldn't have too much trouble liking supper, or anything going back as far as knock knock imo.

yeah i didn't mean i'd try to turn my newly-minted bill callahan fan friends onto forgotten foundation or whatever, just the "big" smog albums from mid-90s to early-00s.

i guess i feel like the stuff bill is doing now is already on the kind of outre edges of their tastes, so maybe even dongs of sevotion or whatever would seem avant-garde to them.

which kind of makes me as a longtime fan feel a bit possessive but that's a stupid thought.

Smog was hitting his pre-NPR peak during my college years, and it definitely seemed like he was big among my circle of friends, although probably below Oldham on the Drag City totem pole. I eventually came to like him a lot better than Oldham.

oldham's peaks are wonderful but there's so much mediocrity to sort through in the past decade. i can listen to any of the last 10 callahan albums without having to skip a single track

i guess i feel like the stuff bill is doing now is already on the kind of outre edges of their tastes

yea, even as bill has become more accessible it's still pretty different than a lot of the americana/country/indie singer-songwriter stuff on npr. my local public radio that plays NPR-ish folk would never play anything like callahan

not even 'river'?

now which river are you talking about

the one

that ain't too much

to love

oldham just puts out too much material. i can't keep up, and i get kind of weary of sifting through it. actually i got weary long ago. and honestly there's something really arch about oldham that prevents me from appreciating him whole-heartedly.

He's almost James Franco-like in his capacity to think everything he thinks of is interesting, and yes, the "arch"ness is offputting I agree.

i think he's become a lot less arch in the past decade

but there is a lot. the 'darkness' self-cover from a year or two ago inspired me to dig back into what i'd missed (like 'the letting go'), but i lacked the patience to sit with it all.

strangely i bet if you compared he wouldn't have made that much more than callahan has putting out an album every 1-2 years.

do you mean made money or records?

my guess is that oldham makes a lot more money. his songs get licensed to TV and films, he has a level of exposure (national TV etc.) that bill is only just getting now. he tours a ton, and his collaborations with johnny cash etc. have brought him to the attention of a vast number of people--nigh on 15 years now. it's probably true that the sheer amount of product diminishes the sales potential of each release, but it's clear that Drag City/Oldham choose which of his LPs to push hard and those probably do pretty good.

What are people's thoughts on Wild Love? It's the only pre Knock Knock Smog album I own and I really liked it at the time but rarely go back to it these days. I don't find it particularly bleak though, in fact I always found songs like Prince Alone and Be Hit funny...he obviously doesn't really mean it!

I doubt either of those guys make a huge amount of bank on album sales anymore.

i meant records.

i often feel that oldham is more of a persona than a songwriter of any note, but i give him a lot of credit for becoming a much better singer over the course of his career. the last time i saw him was unamplified in a small room and he sounded great.

Didn't we have a Callahan vs. Oldham vs. David Berman thread at some point?

I guess not but we have had two (2) Callahan vs. Oldham threads.

And I posted this in one of them so I'm not totally crazy:

there are two threads comparing callahan and oldham, but i feel like david berman might be a better comparison for callahan? or like callahan is the intersection between oldham and berman?

― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, April 12, 2011 10:53 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Silver Jews v. Smog?

I think Bill has handily triumphed at this point

Let's move to the country

just you and me

i give him a lot of credit for becoming a much better singer over the course of his career

yea, even the leap in singing from say, viva last blues and other palace stuff to i see a darkness is really huge

Is it Knock Knock that has the inner sleeve picture of Bill shaving? I like that better than the comedy hospital picture - which is a better poster than an album cover anyway.

I think Knock Knock has a picture of him with an older guy bc I used to be confused and think Smog was the older guy. He just sounded old.

listening to this now. what a record. he is indeed shaving on the insert.