Will Oldham/Palace/Bonnie Prince Billie: S&D

But who invented chocolate? God, that's who. Advantage: Bonnie Prince Billy.

A friend of mine saw an early Oldham show in NYC at some small place and was impressed when Oldham went around the room and handed everyone a photocopy of a typed lyric sheet for all the songs he was going to play

tbrr i cherish the memory of the time i sneezed at a show (bert jansch!) and someone behind me put a hand on my shoulder and said "bless you" i turned around to say thanks and it was will oldham

― cross over the mushroom circle (La Lechera), Tuesday, November 11, 2014 3:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whaaat that is so awesome

yeah it was pretty awesome
i wish i were like 10% as confident as will oldham
dude is a weirdo but he seems to have it figured out

for himself at least
he also doesn't seem like a prescriptive person

however i do worry a little when he veers too far in the self-baconing direction

yes you are very right about all of this

huge regret I never saw him dancing with mark e smith at ATP because I was too busy vomiting, but friends I was there with did.

marcos
Posted: November 12, 2014 at 10:29:10 AM
tbrr i cherish the memory of the time i sneezed at a show (bert jansch!) and someone behind me put a hand on my shoulder and said "bless you" i turned around to say thanks and it was will oldham

― cross over the mushroom circle (La Lechera), Tuesday, November 11, 2014 3:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whaaat that is so awesome

lol

new vid released today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIWWsreneG8

good song

but lol does he have tusks in that video

He transforms into a werewalrus.

it does not take much to make a noticeable slip into parody
that's the problem

"come in" from lost blues is just destroying me. it's so brutal. i can't quite pin down exactly what the scenario is he's singing about but it is just so powerful.

always figured the subject of that song was a still-pined-over ex that'd come back to town out of some necessity and had nowhere else to stay but is only in town for the night, and all the possibilities therein.

ooh la la
is that the emo stuff men write songs about?!

idk it fits the weird obtuse lyrics of that song!

or it's as literal an interpretation as ever made sense to me for a song about cooking a final time for someone leaving for "Egypt" while implying a bunch of long lost intimacy.

yea that's a fine interpretation!

it's about oral sex song iirc

definitely had that feeling for me xp

lol xp

tbrr i cherish the memory of the time i sneezed at a show (bert jansch!) and someone behind me put a hand on my shoulder and said "bless you" i turned around to say thanks and it was will oldham

so Oldham is obviously the indie rock Bill Murray right

i went to a fair in a small and quaint english town once & all the villagers were wearing costumes & among them walked bonnie prince billy

i have a picture somewhere

it was nice because there was a moment when we pointed across the harbour while we were eating at a man with a big beard wearing all denim, & said that he looked like bonnie prince billy, this amusing because bonnie prince billy's look is that of the strange man of the village, probably at least approximately replicated in most small and quaint villages

but it was bonnie prince billy

o hey

http://i.imgur.com/LfATSmo.png

I'm pretty sure I saw him on the street in Chicago with a large Jamba Juice. At the time I thought can't be but of course it could have been.

Oh, and I'd forgotten but I did meet him at a Blowfly show. He recommended a taco place down the street, a shack that was thick with pot smoke and good tacos, forever after known to me as the "Will Oldham Taco Place."

Meanwhile, a new interview:
http://bombmagazine.org/article/2000011/will-oldham

fiddle does wail in that new black rich vid.. striking lead, 2 minutes in

I've seen him in Louisville bars, but never felt like disturbing him. I thought of posting that Bomb interview: given how often writing about BPB lingers on his eccentricities, the most interesting part of the interview for me was his stress on decentering the performer's emotions for the sake of the song (shades of the way Bresson used actors):

At that point, your body has learned to do this thing, the releasing of the song out into the world, which is not about what the performer feels, but what the listener feels. The performer at some point will feel that they failed to make a point because they are not doing their best to communicate the power of the song, but it might be best when all of the emotional baggage is out of the way and the performer just plays the song. In the same way, a director might make an actor do a scene thirty, forty, or fifty times, if they want them to get the technique out of the way and have it all be second nature.

that's probably an allusion to bresson (ozu also did that btw)--oldham's a major cinephile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_Music_%28horse%29

That's interesting; I think Oldham's said that his project was named after the Palace Flophouse in Steinbeck's Cannery Row, but it seems possible that he could have also been aware of the racehorse.

Bob Nastanovich moved in to a house across from the Downs in 1992 and Will was a one time roommate of his.

can't help repeating myself but I love "Whipped". as funny as it is affecting, like much of w.o.'s best stuff

the new LP versh is great but I still prefer the bombast of this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vSvyxlUdb8

"it's valentine's day / and i'm catatonic" is such a great line

i really like the album he did w/tortoise too

https://soundcloud.com/temporary-residence-ltd-1/bonnie-stillwatter-the-devil-is-people

Will backed by Britt Walford on drums and Zac from Grails on guitar.

and here is the b-side remix by Bundy K. Brown:
https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/202066152%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-ruIxW&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true

*imagining a 'conceptual collaboration' between Will Oldham, Stephen Stills, & these guys
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5d/Sweetwater_sm.jpg*

finally picked up ease down the road, it is pretty good

i like it way better than master & everyone

i could imagine it being a letdown after darkness but 15 years later when it is just another title among oldham's 20-odd albums it is very good

kind of reminds me of "joya", mid-period oldham that is somewhat minor but still interesting and pleasant

wasn't joya the first lp under the will oldham name? it felt momentous to me (at 16) for that reason and so looms large in my personal palace cosmology. really good record still i think. i need to revisit ease down the road.

I like both Joya and EDTR. They're records that could only have been made by a guy in his thirties. Anyway, that's how I like to think of them.

The s/t album from 2013 is, I think, his strongest work in years.

I went back to Master & Everyone a few weeks back and found it really dull. I always confuse that one with Beware (which iirc is pretty good)

oldham sounds so good on this new joan shelley song: https://soundcloud.com/noquarterrex/stay-on-my-shore-by-joan-shelley

He did a low-key show in Louisville the other night, would have been great to be there.

Ease Down The Road is my favorite. And perfect one to listen to this time of year. Pajo's Allman-y solo on "May It Always Be" followed by the line "And in the morning we'll wrestle and ruin our stomachs with coffee."

The only blight on that record is "Just To See My Holly Home." I always skip that one.