The Steve Reynolds Program - Before I Lose My Style
Hi Menschen!
These are getting easier to write. It's a good morning exercise to get the mind going. In fact, I've been busting out prose like Irving Wallace this last week. I should apply this principle to actual physical exercise, and I'd have more energy than the country hip-hop lady.
I did dust off the bicycle and rode it a couple of days. Of course within 48 hours, I hit a curb where I thought there was a ramp and bit it. Got to walk the bike to the bike shop for repairs. I'm bruised and achy, but don't fret my dear friend. I will survive.
(obligatory link to the Top 100 Songs List)
Song #6
Before I Lose My Style
by Space Needle
1995 found indie rock going in many directions: shoegaze and experimental, complex grunge, Oasis shit, electronica, what have you. One subculture going full force was lo-fi. Loosely defined (by me) as mainly four-track recordings on old Tascams with a little bounce or reverb on vocals plus low end guitars in and basic drums, the genre put the focus on other factors of the music than the pristineness of the production (fidelity). 1995 may be the height of lo-fi since it saw the release of Alien Lanes by Guided by Voices (they come up several times on my list) come out, maybe the best lo fi album there ever was.
Some acts raced to being the lowest fi of the lowest fi. Lou Barlow’s solo stuff would win that contest, but Space Needle comes close. A duo (at time of BILMS’s recording) from Rhode Island I don’t know much about, because next to the Presidents of The United States of America and Oklahoma’s own Student Film, they have the most ungoogleable name of any band. Still, it has the best drugged-out name for a band ever. A needle to send you to space –I mean, come on!
First hearing "Before I Lose My Style," tracked late in their debut album Voyager, was a relief from the tape skips and hiss, fuzzed guitars, cheap mic vocals and Casio keyboards all cranked up on the equalizer for distortion’s sake on the songs before. The spartan arrangement is downright pleasant after that. It’s almost the "My Sweet Lord" to the "He’s So Fine" of a lo-fi forebearer that was huge in the late 80’s, but now near-obliviated, the cover of Sweet Jane by Cowboy Junkies.
That cover seems a great reworking of Velvet Underground’s classic on Loaded until you hear VU’s live version from 1969 and find out how close the Junkies (speaking of drugged-out band names) adhere to it. I had the same experience with Kim Deal and Bob Pollard’s Love Hurts where I thought it came out of left field until I heard the Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris version and learned it was a faithful cover.
What happens on this song is what made lo-fi an effective moment in music. The riff is simple, the drumming is simple—why not make the recording bare bones too? And the lyrics are nice vague ones open to interpretation. What is this “style” the singer/drummer (maybe the only song on my list with the drummer singing) holds on to for the present moment?
He sings to a “you,” as Lou Reed sings to that pronoun in Sweet Jane, but Lou talkss about other people to his messengee. Jud Ehrbar (who may be housebound with MS now) has a you that may be the reality of life offstage, when not making music.
you can take me outside
before i lose my style
make the white sheep think twice
before i lose my style
The "white sheep" could be those conformists, the people not using, who could be afected by this music Space Needle records and performs. Their style seems brief, fleeting. As this band has disappeared without much of anyone noticing, objectively it was. I’m glad to have heard it and still am affected when that arpeggiated keyboard and guitar feedback enter into that chorus at the end.
Other Stuffs
I forgot to do the Song I’m Mad I Forgot To Put On The List so here are two.
For the Beercan one, I thought of another goofy rap. Dr. Octagon's Earth People
For this one, I'll salute the classic singing drummer and say The Carpenters - Yesterday Once More