Lifter Puller, Rock and Roll!

'romanticizing': trying to make the gutter seem appealing _because of_ its idealized baseness. (hard-boiled style is regularly in the service of a romanticized view of its subject matter, isn't it?)

you say they're an immersion band - immersing yourself in that squalid lifestyle. now, it seems to me common sense that you wouldn't WANT to do that UNLESS it had been romanticized some, as per above. (imagine I give you a pile of trash, and I tell you to roll around in it. you say no - of course. but then I tell you a story about how really fucking awesome it is to be caught up in just how awful it is to roll around in trash, and then you jump right in.)

there's something to do here with one strain of rock music's image of itself, I think. what I don't understand is why people who are presumably aware of it would be so happy to buy in and pretend as if old rock myths and cliches are true after all.

I know this is all contentious but I don't think it's at all knee-jerk.

I think gff said above that their records sound anemic. from the one I've heard I couldn't agree more.

I think gff said above that their records sound anemic. from the one I've heard I couldn't agree more.

he’s referring specifically to them vs. their live shows, but either way, Magnetic Fields to thread!

no one said you had to; I was explaining the group’s m.o.

you say they're an immersion band - immersing yourself in that squalid lifestyle

no, immersing yourself in their stories of that lifestyle. Probably should’ve made that a little plainer

Sonny A is otm about the characters being ravers, not rockers

I certainly didn't mean the actual lifestyle. I was talking about just what you go on to say: 'we as listeners go through that with them'.

I question whether it IS like people liking the sopranos - typically it seems as if there's a much greater degree of identification with the world made by music. or at least, it happens more often. maybe that's not happening here - I can't tell from the way people praise the band.

if it's just some kind of narrative/dramatic deal (say like cathartic crime drama) - well, the reason I'm making these posts is that I just don't like the tone of the band's fans. crazy superfandom is fine, but there's something about 'criminally ignored', that kind of thing, that riles me. so I want to hear more about what it is I suspect could be a critical blind spot - a plenty good reason that people could just not want to hear lifter puller, despite whatever rhythmic etc etc or dramatic yadda yadda. (put the short way: 'storytelling', big deal - what if you don't care about what the stories are about?)

I certainly sympathize with not being able to write about what you love most - but I find it interesting how little lifter puller fans seem to talk about what the songs are about. (I also recognize how the style of the lyrics might make this hard.) but then what does john talk about in his lptj review? a drug song. hmm.

I'm talking about what's evoked, in the background, called upon, leaned on, gestured at, whatever. 'seedy underbelly' set to music.

I realize that I am eerily like ned here insofar as I get tired of him hating on superfans elsewhere.

fair enough. I think the sopranos comparison is pretty good but quite inexact, because as much as I extol Finn's narrative sense he's also not writing straight-line stories a lot of the time--re: the reoccurring lines/phrases thing I mention above, he'll often revisit certain settings and situations and tweak them a little. you can basically play the songs in any order and they'll make sense as a microcosm rather than a straight-up narrative. it's more like an altman movie.

part of what impresses me about them most is that they deal with what in most hands IS very tired subject matter and inject it with a lot more vividness than you'd necessarily expect to hear. and because there's so many fucking words--finn-as-rapper isn't much of an exaggeration on that level--it becomes almost an all-or-nothing situation when you're writing about them; the temptation is to just quote and quote and quote, or else not quote at all and try and get at what they're doing yourself.

the reason I'm making these posts is that I just don't like the tone of the band's fans. crazy superfandom is fine, but there's something about 'criminally ignored', that kind of thing, that riles me.

what, you knee-jerk?

I certainly sympathize with not being able to write about what you love most - but I find it interesting how little lifter puller fans seem to talk about what the songs are about. (I also recognize how the style of the lyrics might make this hard.) but then what does john talk about in his lptj review? a drug song. hmm.

so are you asking for some kind of exegesis of something specific here? if so, happy to provide, just want to be sure

'knee jerk' is dismissive and unresponsive and that's why I don't care for the way you've been using it. the fact that my response is reactive, not very considered, doesn't immediately invalidate it. (I certainly didn't START with the tendency to have this kind of reaction, I think - it's developed over time, which is some kind of sign that I'm not just knee-jerking.)

I don't know what I want. I don't understand the sensibility I felt in the songs and I don't get why so many people who are in other ways not apparently very tied up in the rock-via-the-gutter mythos (I don't totally understand what I mean by that, either, but I keep hoping sterl will come along and recognize what I mean - and actually a review I remember but can't find of vollmann's 'the royal family' came to mind - the author made some kind of criticism like, vollmann is in love with the idea of degradation-as-salvation, redemption-in-misery whores-and-death kind of shit that has been old since rimbaud's time - and no I'm not saying the same thing about LP, it just came to mind) can go for it wholesale.

Zing. But as far as I'm concerned you could hate away about my MBV love and while I'll grouse a touch at most I won't do anything more (Calum's attempt to bait me there constantly was in retrospect hilarious), so I suppose it's all down to how one feels at the time. In this case I haven't heard anything by Lifter Puller yet so I'll just read the thread contemplatively.

I think I understand exactly what you mean by that mythos, Josh--you mean "why do smart people want to front like they're the morons in Please Kill Me?" what you seem to be saying is that therefore a story that contains those ignorant, non-self-reflexive elements (in the characters, usually) is somehow ITSELF ignorant and non-self-reflexive. How many species of bullshit is that? Answer: lots and lots.

right now I'm reading Frank Owen's Clubland, the story of how NYC clubs in the mid-'90s were full of drugs and this yelping club kid named Michael Alig killed a drug dealer associate of his and lots of gangsters were involved and almost everyone who didn’t overdose or get whacked first went to jail. There are almost no likable people in this book. Yet it’s a really gripping read, because the characters are interesting and Owen makes the activities vivid. Does that mean I condone them? well, some of the drug parts--I like taking drugs sometimes--and the dancing in the clubs, yeah. but for the most part, no. but it’s a terrific book. Does it mean I have to buy into some lifestyle mythos in order to enjoy it? Of course not.

Now I’ll fess up--and I’ve written about this before elsewhere--that LP grip me particularly hard because I recognize a lot of the milieu they write about--I’m from Minneapolis, worked at the nightclub First Avenue for 2 1/2 years, went to raves and basement parties for a long time. LP do romanticize nightlife, absolutely; they blow up its details to such extremes, while keeping things recognizable (“She says she’s waiting on the steady type/Then she disappears with the Eyepatch Guy,” sure, we’ve been there) and within the realm of possibility (there are a LOT of shady types running nightclubs, as Clubland attests), that they create a kind of hyperreal version of it. Degradation happens in the songs but it’s not all that happens, unless you happen to be the Moral Majority. And if you want to say I unthinkingly get off on degradation-in-itself, well, I'll happily call you an asshole right back.

Momus stole your girlfriend?

As far as I know, Craig is from a well off family, and met [gtr player] in college (Boston?) and they decided to start a punk band, so they came back to Mpls (I don't remember which of them was from here). I don't think it's possible to even BE IN a band and not have heavy heavy contact with the nighlife, even if you didn't want it.

Anyway, I think his day job is now in finance somewhere. So he stands in the same relation to the 'k-hole' (ie the gutter-rock-drug-sex-loser halfworld) as, I would think, Brian Wilson did to the 'beach,' ie always looking in no matter how in he gets.

And I think the connection btw those two is important; LP do a kind of loser-pastoral. It's a stretched connection bcz LP is so much more WORDY than the Beach Boys, lyrical content counts for much more of what LP were than what the BBs were, but it's the same artistic strategy: find a little corner and make the world out of it. (a good enough reason not to like Wilson either, really.)

And unlike Wilson the k-hole IS ridiculous (the beach is pretty ridiculous too, but less intentionally so), far too detailed and amplified to be read too seriously. I don't know how much of an 'indie-beaudelaire' act they were trying to do, they were always way too FUNNY. (one thing I don't like abt LP is how reliant their schtick is on schtick: their riffs often didn't stand up to the weight of the spiel)

(I don't think they ever made enough money to afford not being anemic on record. I guess that's still their 'fault,' I'm sure there are other cheap engineers out there who know how to mic a bass cabinet, but hey their uh historical record is imperfect.)

I'm not saying that. but suppose it's something like what you describe in that book. the way you put it, it's sort of like, 'this really held my interest and was enjoyable'. I can understand reasons like that given that you talked about the vivid writing, etc. (bad people make for good characters, sure.) but people seem to talk about lifter puller a lot giving reasons like that, sort of music criticy, materials-of-songwriting and canons-of-rock kinds of things, while acting and sounding like they are far more committed to... something, I don't know what, thus my talk about myth, sensibility, etc. above - way more into something, more moved by it, whatever, than people tend to get by 'mere' good or innovative songcraft, etc. (I know it's not you, but: a guy with lftr pllr tatooed on his knuckles?)

I'm not sure what you're talking about re: "music criticy, materials-of-songwriting and canons-of-rock kinds of things"--I've probably written about them more and more prominently than anyone else, and I don't seem to recall doing any of that, though maybe I'm too close to it to know better--but as far as "[getting] way more into something, more moved by it, whatever, than people tend to get by 'mere' good or innovative songcraft, etc." goes, (a) there's nothing "mere" about them in terms of craft etc. and (b) as my personal examples above help illustrate, LP get to something pretty deep in the heart of why people go clubbing et al; there is a romantic aspect to nightlife and there are, believe it or not, intelligent people who are drawn to that.

I don't think he's pastoralizing something he's moved on from (especially if the stuff he's doing w/the Hold Steady, which is even grimier subject-wise, is any indication), I think he found it fascinating and wanted to explore it. CF told me once that he was trying to create a Pynchon-esque world w/his characters, and the whole seamier-than-you-first-suspect underworld is a tribute in particular to The Crying of Lot 49. I try not to mention any of this generally because I artists' intentions generally mean bubkes, plus having never read Pynchon myself I couldn't necessarily draw any parallels anyway. but it resonates w/people for lots of different reasons, not just my personal ones above, and while obviously having a nightlife background helps me get to it faster I was a fan even before I deduced that was what was going on lyrically.

I must ask, though, Josh, why the incredulousness for the guy w/their name tattooed on his knuckles? you just sound like you're totally afraid of anything that excites people when you say stuff like that, and I really hope that's not the case. I mean, why wouldn't someone do that? and what does it matter whether he did or not?

(also, I gotta ask: when would you prefer I be at my rudest? when people wear plaid after labor day? how can any of this surprise you, really? all this time after you first read me on this board and elsewhere, you have to know that I'm really fucking argumentative?)

no, I'm not afraid. but do a thought experiment: a LP fan with the tattoo, and a bedhead fan with a bedhead tattoo. (the results? I don't know. but they seem different.)

I can't really speak to the lot 49 bit either, from the other end (though at first hunch I would say, before getting LP, that maybe they got some of the cast-of-characters sort of stuff, but that that's not what's key abt pynchon). yo what up sterl though.

going now, will think about the other part later.