Hippies vs. Punks: The Lemonheads' Lovey (1990)

In all of Robert Christgau's vast trove of criticism on his excellent web site, www.robertchristgau.com, I could find only one review of a Lemonheads record:

Come On Feel [Atlantic, 1993]
Evan Dando is a good-looking guy with more luck than talent and more talent than brains who conceals his narcissism beneath an unassuming suburban drawl. Twenty years ago he would have affected an acoustic guitar and acted sincere; now he affects a slacker-pop band and acts vulnerable. His songs don't bite, they sidle over and nibble your ear when you're not looking, and if you throw him a withering glance, no problem--he'll just move on to someone else. Exception: the one about drugs. C+

Brutally dismissive as it is, and applied to an album that most of us who were Lemonheads fans at the time would freely admit as proof that the band had lost its purpose (the dividing line for Taang!-era Lemonheads devotees like myself was Dando's cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" on the album that preceded Come on Feel the Lemonheads, 1992's It's a Shame About Ray), it is pretty much how I felt about Lovey (1990), The Lemonheads major-label debut on Atlantic Records, when I started listening to it again this week.

But after only a couple of days, I changed my opinion. There is no indication that Christgau had anything more than a superficial familiarity with Taang! bands such as The Lemonheads, Bullet LaVolta and Moving Targets, bands that were powering the Grunge revolution before it turned into a Grand Barbecue the summer of 1990 when Sonic Youth released Goo on Geffen Records.

What is not readily recalled is that Lovey was released in July shortly after Goo. Considering that it would be another year before major-label honchos would bring Nirvana to market, not to mention Hardcore founding fathers fIREHOSE and Meat Puppets, we have to ask ourselves the question, What did the corporate recording industry power brokers see in The Lemonheads to put them in the same bracket as Sonic Youth?

And here is what I concluded: The Lemonheads were not signed by Atlantic to be the equivalent of a Grunge Bobby Sherman act; if that were the case, the label would not have allowed Dando to make "Ballarat," an homage to Charles Manson's Helter Skelter eschatology, the first cut on Lovey. And while "Ballarat" might not be the equal of Sonic Youth's "Tunic (Song for Karen)," I would argue that it is of a piece (and that is not pretty boy Grunge).

The next clue is that of all the Taang! back catalog songs selected to appear on Lovey it was "Left for Dead," a re-titled "Clang Bang Clang" from Creator (1988), that made the cut; it is a truly great song that points clearly to what Atlantic had planned for The Lemonheads -- a chick-friendly Hüsker Dü.

The fact is that Lovey is loaded with grand gesture Grunge statements like "Li'l Seed" and "(The) Door," both of which are powered by the superb "guitar hero" playing of Corey Loog Brennan, filled out with an uptempo number like "Stove" and a Grunger, "Year of the Cat." As Brennan says in an interview that appears on the English fan web site devoted to Dando and The Lemonheads, "I thought that Lovey was going to sell a million copies. Then I was devastated when it semi-flopped."

But what Lovey did do is turn Dando into a Grunge heartthrob (see the video for "Half the Time" at the top of the post). I can bear witness. In last week's post I described seeing The Lemonheads at CBGBs the summer of 1989 and the only women there were the dates of the record industry guys at the back by the bar. I saw the band again at CBGBs the winter of 1991, seven or eight months after Lovey's release, and rather than being deserted, as it was the time before, the place was packed. So packed that it was difficult to move about. And most of the people at the front near the stage when Dando appeared in a 1960s-era red nylon windbreaker with racing stripes, his beautiful long blonde tresses catching the spotlights, were young middle-class women. The only explanation, given Brennan's assessment that the album semi-flopped, is that video for "Half the Time" found a passionate audience on MTV.

Hence, The Lemonheads coming pop flame-out, casually derided by Christgau as narcissistic, is set in motion by Lovey. Which is too bad because Lovey is an excellent album, one that was important to me and that I played a lot. Hearing it again repeatedly this week -- that and the fact that light is already starting to return at the end of January -- I started to feel not so bad about myself. I realized that at 26 years of age I was a solid householder, but one who nonetheless was hounded by the troika that has felled many a man -- work, women and alcohol. Maybe to become who we are we need to go back and figure out who we were.

The Colt 45 Chronicle #6

As I completed the Lake Union Loop this morning, the sun punching through the chilly fog, Femi Kuti's "Beng Beng Beng" shuffled on my iPod:

Fitting since the letter below, number six taken from a packet of epistles pried out of storage during the second half of the Seahawks-Falcons playoff game last month, is a paean to music and sex.

Stacey was my last Berkeley girlfriend prior to my marriage (in Reno on our way across the country to New York City and the married student housing located at 60 Haven Avenue). I conceived of the idea of a Reno marriage thanks to a trip I had taken there with Stacey, at her suggestion, a couple months before; in fact, we flirted with idea of getting married there ourselves (I remember being more up for it than Stacey). We got a room at Circus Circus; made love fully clothed on top of the bed; showered; saw a real life dog and pony show in the theater downstairs; walked the main drag downtown; watched people gamble; bought some drinks at a bar that had a wonderful old mural and a Dallas Mavericks playoff game on a TV mounted high up on the wall. We returned to our room early after Stacey started to feel sick. She woke up a couple of times during the night to go to the bathroom and puke. She communicated to me the next morning that she was upset that I had slept through her illness and hadn't got up with her. I apologized. We drove back to Berkeley a roundabout way that took us through Carson City.

I had met Stacey the previous winter at a hipster hang out in the Lower Haight one night on the town with the boys. It was a Saturday and everyone was drunk. The guys danced with each other and the girls did likewise, but we all were really dancing together. It was one of those rare perfect evenings. I drank with Stacey at the bar until last call when she wrote her telephone number with lipstick on a cocktail napkin and gave it to me.

I never called, but I did run into Stacey walking her ten-speed bike one afternoon a month or two later near the Class of 1914 Fountain. I had been working on my honors thesis on the analytic a posteriori (which now describes this blog). I was jittery from too much espresso and too little to eat. We decided to go to "Cafe Be Seen" on the corner of College and Bancroft; I called her many times after that. Our spring romance had begun.

Stacey was the apotheosis of undergraduate cool -- an art history major who had been a drummer in a short-lived garage band; an aspiring writer (now published with a couple books under her belt) who had transferred from Wesleyan. Our romance was leavened by Stacey's concern that she might be HIV-positive due to the obligatory hipster ritual of shooting smack (which she blamed on the influence of her last boyfriend). I loved Stacey (part of the reason I decided to get with my last girlfriend, the predator, was she was named Stacy -- without the "e"). One of the best things I ever did was to wrap up my university career by being Stacey's lover. She didn't want me to leave. But I left. I had to get to the metropolis.

This letter is addressed to my friend Oliver, who was not only a partner in 49ers fandom but a music aficionado who taught me a lot about listening to bands.

Summer 1989

Get this Oliver -- I too am now a proofreader at a law office. And you know what? It's the best job I've had since I've been in New York. My supervisor, who is twenty-six year old paralegal, is a true music "liver" (we exchanged MEAT PUPPETS II quotes my first day: mine was: "Holy ghosts and talkshow hosts lie planted in the sand"; but the deal is, now that I look it up at this very moment, the deal is that it is not "lie" but "are," and I kinda secretly suspected this, or some such aberration, the whole time; his was: "And an illustrated book about birds" -- from the same tune; and even though mine is embellished and therefore fucked up and his is A-1 absolutely correct, I still think mine is tastier than his, but probably and only because I snatched thebest one first). Anyway, he was shocked that I didn't know The Stooges. So he lent me two of their albums for the weekend, along€ with HUEVOS, which is one of those Meat Puppett albums we never bought. The "Dog" song -- "I'll be your Dog" or "I Wanna be Your Dog" -- on the first album, THE STOOGES, is truly great, and side two is also very good -- Iggy sounds a lot like Jonathan Richman; but I don't like the second one that much, FUN HOUSE -- they're trying to be The Doors, too muddled long and boring; as for the Meat Puppets, well, that's why I gave up on them after UP ON THE SUN -- no three-cup-of-coffee burn, none of those long & waving & scratchy licks, just that burbling Chick Korea jazz-fusion guitar and that jig step drum beat, boring -- it misses the mark; you know, and I know, that Curt Kirkwood is an asshole; oh hell, it happens everywhere, 3-WAY TIE (FOR LAST) was a piece of shit too.

But the reason why I write this now is something that doesn't have a whole helluva lot to do with that preceding paragraph other than that tonight was the night that I made my supervisor (the aforementioned) a tape. He wanted GENERIC FLIPPER (by all means an excellent album), and after I finished that I had a whole B side of quality Maxell left to fill. I ran out of the Coors and headed into the Gordon's gin. The gin was warm and tasted like puke but it was all there was in the apartment. Anyway, the song I finished the tape with was a song I heard over at a girlfriend's apartment (the girlfriend who wasn't Maura) one morning when the Oakland sun came powering its way through a second-story kitchen window on 63rd Street (I always used to say to myself  when I was over there, "My, how close I am to Oliver and Lyn's"), and I was just rising from sordid beermares. She had one those Murphy beds, those beds that collapse back into a closet, except this one didn't collapse because she had it nailed to her wall. The bed itself was nothing but a bunch of metal coils. So I got up and trotted into the living room and she was already up and sitting on the couch in one of those 1940's housewife flower-patterned dresses. She was drinking a mug of coffee and was smiling big and heavy. On the stereo she had this song -- "Start The Clock" by the Silos -- and though it couldn't've been past Eight in the morning the stereo was blasting like I was at a DAY ON THE GREEN back when who knows what. I was still dizzy from the previous night's beer and pussy eating, and I said: "This is a great morning song." And she replied, with a cherished beauty, "You're right, it is." I sat down and listened, right next to her. And I wrapped my arm around her hip -- a waist as soft and as warm and well-slept as a favorite bedtime pillow -- and I smelled flapjacks with syrup and clean sheets after a hot shower. Oh God, the sun was pouring through the window and Ashley was alone somewhere and I was in love and dizzy hungover and the music was so fine. And tonight brought it all back.

There was a time when Bob Dylan and the Minutemen solved all my problems and I was on track. -- Thanks for listening Oliver, you're the only one who could.