No, unfortunately, not that hall of fame. The other one. Yes, they’re both in Ohio, but that’s where the similarities end. While Pollard’s output and the quality of his work with Guided by Voices et al more than qualify him for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, it is his exploits in another field — or rather, on another field — that led to his induction this weekend into the new Northridge High School athletics hall of fame in Dayton.

Pollard and his brother, Jim, another former member of Guided by Voices, were among the inaugural induction class in the hall thanks to their athletic prowess while at Northridge.

Most of the things you read about Pollard are rather fawning when it comes to his music, so it is amusing to see how the “straight” press deals with hit. here is how the Dayton Daily News describes Pollard: “Another inductee making it big on a national level after a colorful NHS career is Bobby Pollard, (’75) a pop-rock artist from Clayton who heads up the group Boston Spaceship, previously known as Guided By Voices.”

That is so small-town newspaper that it’s actually pretty cute. Never mind that it gets wrong the name of Pollard’s latest band and the evolutionary arc between that and GBV, but I’ve never thought of Pollard as a “pop-rock artist.”

Regardless, the honor is clearly justified. As the Daily News goes on to explain, Jimmy is the “high-scoring ‘Ridge basketball whiz,” while Pollard’s claim to fame “was pitching the first no-hitter in Wright State history in ’78. He was the Bears’ quarterback on the gridiron.”

Seeing the Pollards and their parents (photo from the Daily News above) makes Robert seem aged and mortal, when his career has been all about (intentionally or not) making him seem ageless and super-human. It’s nice to see him humanized, but I’ll take it for what it is, a blip in the narrative that supports the theory that Superman was a rocker.

OK, so I had good intentions of doing daily reviews/wrap ups of the Mission Creek Music Festival. Thing is, staying out until 1 a.m. five nights in a row does something to yours truly. So, you instead get this post after the last show closed and I squeezed in a nap. Kiss always said if it’s too loud, you’re too old (more on that later); Gene Simmons didn’t have any sort of nap-related slight against aging rockers, so I guess I’m still in good stead.

Starting with the oldest show and working my way back to the present, we’ll begin with Thursday night’s panel discussion of Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet. The album was released in March 1990, so this April 1 panel was a few days off from being the official 20th anniversary. No matter, by bringing together Chuck D, the Bomb Squad’s Keith and Hank Shocklee and “Media Assassin” Harry Allen, the panel brought the noise. Allen began by sharing some photos of his three fellow panelists in their earliest days, pre-PE, when they were known as the Spectrum City DJs. From there, the discussion, led by University of Iowa professor Kembrew McLeod, was wide ranging. They discussed technology, the racial climate, the way sampling laws (or the lack thereof) made it an album of its time and more. It was illuminating, entertaining, funny and even heart-warming to see these four men still sharing the bonds that helped to create one of music’s best albums.

From there I took in a little of Caroline Smith and Headlights, and would have a hard time distinguishing the two in a blindfold test. Each offered pleasant female-fronted indie rock with most of the edges polished. I had grand plans of somehow balancing the desire to see a Bomb Squad DJ set, Pedro the Lion’s David Bazan and Acid Mother’s Temple, all booked at the same time. All I caught was AMT, which was (sorry, Gene) too loud at that late hour. I caught one song and then headed out (I’ve seen them twice before, so my indie cred is still secure).

Friday brought a rousing set from the improbably still strong Meat Puppets. Curt Kirkwood began the set on acoustic guitar, but thanks to his chops and a few pedals, there was no lack of fireworks. They opened with “Plateau” from Meat Puppets II, and the response from the young crowd had me wondering if they knew it wasn’t a Nirvana cover. The Kirkwood brothers (whose Cris Kirkwood looked a good two decades older than he ought to chronologically, more on that later, too), played a nice cross section of their back catalog, and sprinkled in some well-chosen oddities like Freddy Fender’s “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.”

I next caught VV Brown, a British R’n'B/dance pop singer that I had never heard of before this week. I have a feeling she’s going to be big. Little Dragon followed, but their empty dance pop lost me quickly, and I headed to see electronic artist Tim Hecker. I have and enjoy his albums, but was not at all prepared for the onslaught that awaited. The bar where he performed has a front room with a stage and a back room with the bar. The only lights in the place were in the bar room, meaning the stage was completely dark. For all I know, Hecker pressed “play” on his laptop and then went to dinner. I was physically unable to go check to see what he was doing because of the sheer noise. It was a wonderfully enveloping sound, like what it must be like to be dropped into the world’s most tuneful bit of manufacturing equipment, but as with AMT, it was too loud.

I’m glad I saved my hearing, for Saturday was the best night of the festival. It began with Camera Obscura playing to a packed house (side note: I find the older I get, the less of a grasp I have on an act’s relative popularity). It was a good set that got better as it progressed. I left halfway, content to be left wanting more (and wanting to more fully explore the band’s catalog) so I could catch Iowa City legend Greg Brown.

Brown is a favorite, and he didn’t disappoint. He started out solo acoustic, playing songs new and old. He then was joined by longtime foil Bo Ramsey on guitar and an out-of-town bass player, who gave the second half of his set a little kick. He played old favorites like “Your Town Now” and some new tracks that bode well for what would be his first new album since 2006′s The Evening Call. He was joined for the encore by his wife, singer Iris DeMent, and his daughters, which include songwriter Pieta Brown, who opened the show.

Another local favorite, the Diplomats of Solid Sound, offered a lesson in the perils of taking things for granted. I’ve seen the band dozens of times and am friends with a couple of the guys. Seeing them in a packed, sweaty club was a revelation. This is like a Stax soul review brought to life, and I was glad for the chance to be reminded just how good they are. One song from Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons showed that there there is no end to the ways a singer-songwriter can play earnest folk-rock, and that was enough (I’ve heard he can be a soulful performer, so I’m willing to give him another chance soon).

He got short shrift because Husker Du’s Grant Hart was playing down the block. At one time, Hart’s band would fall into the “too loud” category, but not this night. Like Cris Kirkwood, he looked a good 10 years older than he is, and seemed to be a thread or two this side of crazy. Though his newest album is a pretty straight up garage-rocking affair, he instead played mid-tempo tunes that seemed more twisted Brill Building. It felt as if he was channelling Alex Chilton, indulging some personal passion while raising a middle finger to the kids who just want to hear “Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill.” Then he said, “What would you like to ignore next?” by way of asking for requests. Someone asked for “She Floated Away” from Warehouse: Songs and Stories, and he indulged it. It was ragged, but nice to hear. He then went back to lesser-known work before closing with “Never Talking to You Again” from Zen Arcade. It seemed like a nice nod to old fans until one realizes that the song ends with the line, “I’m tired of wasting all my time, trying to talk to you.”

So, it was a great fest overall, with some great new discoveries (Dinosaur Feathers), some pleasant reminders (Meat Puppets) and some truly strange fare (Hecker and Hart). My one beef: the scheduling could have been better. Camera Obscura and Greg Brown were the two big draws Saturday night, for instance, and they were scheduled within 10 minutes of each other. I know it’s a headache to schedule 50-plus bands at six venues over five days, but I’d like to see more done next year to address this.

That aside, it was a rousing success for Mission Creek no. 5. Looking forward now to no. 6.

I had been curious about, Potato Hole, Booker T. Jones’ 2009 album with the Drive by Truckers and Neil Young, but had never bothered to do anything to satisfy that curiosity. With plans to catch him at the Mission Creek Music Festival on Wednesday, I decided it was time to seek it out. I’m glad I did, for the songs from this pummeling disc would otherwise have been a jarring introduction to the show.

As it was, I fully anticipated it (and having seen a setlist from a September 2009 show, I knew, it seems, exactly what to expect) and enjoyed it. For those in the audience expecting some polite organ-based soul music a la “Green Onions,” however, it must have been a shock. It was the loudest show I’ve seen in Iowa City’s Englert Theatre, an energetic blast that could have used a larger crowd made up of people with more energy to feed off the band.

Jones started with three tracks from that new album, with his band doing a capable, if too-polished job of recreating the bombast of the DBTs. Jones seems to know intuitively how much is too much, because after that he shifted into more of what people likely expected. That part of the show began with “Green Onions,” and then shifted into a vocal showcase for Jones. Hearing his pleasant voice, I wondered why he hadn’t sung more in his career. He handled “Born Under a Bad Sign,” a song he wrote for Albert Collins, ably, then even shifted to guitar for a couple of tunes. Hearing his very mannered, tame version of Sam & Dave’s “Hold On (I’m Comin’)” explained why he didn’t sing more. It was fine, but the song begs for a belter, and Jones’ delivery was too polite. The band also tackled “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay,” and Jones voice, though no match for the mighty Otis Redding, was a better fit here. He and the MGs played on both songs, giving him a chance to indulge in a bit of history.

He returned to the organ then offering hits like “Hip Hug Her, “Hang ‘Em High” and “Time is Tight.” The later “Melting Pot,” gave the band the chance to really stretch out, with his two guitarists playing some blistering solos. They closed with the cover of Outkast’s “Hey Ya” found on Potato Hole, a nice rave-up to send people out into the night, but one that probably fell flat with an audience that skewed older and likely didn’t know the source material, no matter its ubiquity a few years ago.

It was a satisfying, long set from a veteran who is rightly known as a legend. The only drawback is that his set was so long that I missed Tune-Yards, whose last note rang out as I made my way down the street to that venue. The capacity crowd was raving about the set as they streamed out for fresh air, so here’s hoping they make it back.

Next up: A discussion of Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet featuring Chuck D and the Bomb Squad, David Bazan, Acid Mother’s Temple and more.

So, the annual Mission Creek Music Festival in Iowa City is ramping up, and a couple of shows on Tuesday helped to set the stage for what promises to be a memorable four-day stretch from now through Saturday. I caught two shows and the result was pretty much what I expected.

First up, Dinosaur Feathers, a fantastic new Brooklyn combo that earns some comparisons to Vampire Weekend thanks to its jaunty, poppy sound. But what sets DF apart is a lot of great harmony singing. The band’s songs are tight and sprightly, with solid melodies and simple instrumentation. The harmony singing, however, elevates what might otherwise be fairly standard songs. All three members sing, often tackling countermelodies that add some texture. Musically, the band’s set up of bass strummed more like a guitar, finger-picked acoustic guitar and keyboards is augmented by rather elaborate drum-machine beats. That worked fine for this very small, laid-back venue, but the lads will need a real live drummer if they expect to get anywhere. That said, the songs from the group’s debut, Fantasy Memorial, were very nice, proving they can do more than record.

That show wrapped up in time to go catch a few songs by the Cave Singers. I had heard of, but not heard the band before seeing the show, and that left me with a strange reaction. Had I heard the band’s two solid albums beforehand, I likely would have been disappointed in the lack of nuance in its live sound. As it was, I was simply surprised at the descriptions I’d read, which seemed to be for a different band. The room was packed, which didn’t help my reaction, and the awful sightlines led me to expect a different setup than I eventually spied when I moved off to the side of the stage. One guitar, one part-time drummer and a singer were kicking up a lot of racket. It wasn’t bad, but I prefer the albums I hunted down today than the live version.

Next up: Tonight brings Booker T, Tune-Yards and more. Check back all week for updates.

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
-Leonardo DaVinci

“Time and time again I knew what I was doing
And time and time again I just made things worse.”
-Richard Hell, “Time”

Painters are allowed to endlessly touch-up their canvases, novelists can update and revise their writing in subsequent editions and classical composers often issued numerous versions of their works as they tinkered with and refined them. Popular music, for whatever reason, is often the exception. When the record button is released and the tape goes in the can, save for overdubs and mastering, the final document is just that — final. Many artists have taken a second crack at an early song, often trying in vain to improve something ragged with ill-conceived polish. But an attempt to completely re-do a completed album? That is an extremely rare exercise.

Richard Hell not only took on the challenge, he succeeded. I’m the rare fan who prefers his sophomore album, Destiny Street, to his debut, Blank Generation. That initial shot is bracing, with high points unequaled in the rest of his brief catalog, but Destiny Street is the more complete package, an album with more consistently good songs and a more mature focus. That said, it is a flawed album, though the flaws were not necessarily discernible until Hell decided to “repair” the songs.

“At the time of the original recording I was so debilitated by despair and drug-need that I was useless,” he has said. “The record ended up being a high-pitched sludge of guitar noise. It was a shame because the songs were clean, simple, and well-constructed, but those values were sabotaged by the inappropriate arrangements and production.” He acquired rights to the album in 2004, then let it go out of print. In 2006, he came across a two-track tape of the original rhythm parts and decided to use that as the basis for a re-recording. “I couldn’t resist trying to use them to fill and patch up the sinking feeling that the thought of the record had always produced in me,” he added.

“Only time can write a song that’s really really real
The most a man can do is say the way its playing feels
And know he only knows as much as time to him reveals.”
-Richard Hell, “Time”

What time has revealed is a Hell that is, if anything, more well-suited for this music than the Hell that originally wrote it. The music is, to borrow his description, cleaner, simpler and better-constructed on the new Destiny Street Repaired. Hell recorded new vocals and enlisted the help of guitarists Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell and original Voidoid Ivan Julian (who did not play on the original release) to redo the guitars. The original guitar work by Robert Quine and Naux is at times spectacular, but it does, as Hell says, tend to get lost in the overall sludge of the recording. In contrast, the lines of Ribot, Frisell and Julian positively crackle, giving these already propulsive songs additional lift. And Hell’s vocals, though he is singing lyrics now nearly 30 years old, seem more simpatico; where he sang the lyrics in 1982 as if he was trying at times to convince himself of their veracity, here he puts them over as a sage imparting wisdom. The result is a clutch of songs that are at once immediate and lived in.

Destiny Street Repaired was clearly a risky experiment. Had Hell simply found a way to remaster the original album and reissue it, he would have been guaranteed coverage and hosannas from critics. Instead, he decided to attempt the nearly unheard of feat of rebuilding a structure on its foundation (occasionally knocking out a closet or staircase in the process), and offering it as the new-and-improved version to supplant the original. That it worked, creating what is to these ears the essential long-playing Hell document, is testament to his talent and vision.

The new version of the album is available from Insound.com in a deluxe vinyl package for $29.99 with a poster and a CD with the 10 original tracks and two never before released tracks: “Smitten” and “Funhunt.” These are in a signed, numbered edition of 1,000. A CD-only version for $16 also will be available that lacks the two extra tracks. Hell has both editions for sale on his excellent web site as well.

In what I believe is the longest interview Hell has granted about the project, he talks here about the process of repairing the album,

TIRBD: Your answer is likely summarized in your chosen title for this release, but how do you see Destiny Street Repaired? Is it a completely new, separate album, DS 2.0 or something in between?

RH: I’ve been surprised to see how the new version’s impact keeps morphing for me since its release, and so does its relationship to the original Destiny Street keep changing. I shouldn’t have been surprised because I’ve seen over and over how works always keep transforming in meaning and quality over time. One of the specific surprises was that it gave me a new respect for the original album.

My original plan was to release the two albums together in one package, but I realized that that would encourage the cheapest shots from writers. (I’d hoped writers and listeners would treat the new record as distinct, on its own merits, without perpetually comparing it to the old one.) There are a few ironies about how reviewers reacted to the new record, but the biggest one is that until I did this hardly anyone gave any respect to Destiny Street (the original). Whenever I was written about I was treated as essentially a one-album guy: Blank Generation. I’ve always thought that Destiny Street was a better collection of songs than Blank Generation. But when I brought out this new version so many writers acted all outraged that I’d tampered with the sacred Destiny Street. Where were they when Destiny Street could have used some respect? Most of the objectors are just inane and irresponsible.

So, to answer your question, my original purpose when I decided to do this was to replace the original version, because I had problems with the original for all the reasons that I’ve s
tated over and over in the record’s press releases and in interviews, though I intended to keep the original available. Now I see the two versions more as complementary, a chance to get an unusually multi-dimensional take on a release. Though, as I said, in my opinion the new version succeeds in being a better presentation of the material, overall.

I feel kind of stupid giving all this dry attention to the thing here. I’ve moved on since the new album came out. I guess that’s part of the reason this is dry — it’s just intellectual, not something I get all worked up about. I’m just analyzing because you asked…

You took some heat from some fans when you announced you would be erasing Robert Quine‘s work on Destiny Street. Given where your relationship was with Quine when he died, would you have sought him out for this project? Would he have agreed? Have the catcalls abated now that people have heard the finished product?

Yeah, you are misrepresenting this. I didn’t “erase” Quine. I wish that the original multitrack tapes with Quine on them had been available to re-mix and mess with. But they were lost by the same guy who had been illegally offering territories around the world licensing “rights” to the original record. It’s because he was doing that illegally that I was able to sic lawyers on him and get myself full ownership of the performances. I’d always hoped I could do something to improve the original record, but without the original multitracks I had no raw material. I couldn’t even do a proper “re-master” since all we got from Marty Thau (“Red Star” Records) was a copy of the CD itself — not even a flat two-track tape. I spent a year or two searching for the studio twenty-four track that had been Thau’s responsibility to preserve but couldn’t find it.

Then I found the tapes I ended up using as the basis for Repaired. There’s something I didn’t reveal about those rhythm tracks I used on the Repair versions. I didn’t reveal it because I knew that it would lead reviewers (or listeners in general) to find much more fault with the new versions than if I kept it to myself. (The same way I knew they’d take advantage of knowing that the songs are resung by the 59-year-old me — and they did take advantage. But the re-singing was too big a change to try to hide (though maybe I should have tried)). Reviewers/interviewers who somehow missed the info that I’d resung the songs invariably commented on how well the singing worked. They thought it was just different takes or mixes from 1982! But half of the others, who’d read the press release carefully so knew I’d redone vocals, got really sarcastic and sneery about the geezer’s pathetic attempt to match his punk youth, as I expected. Nobody at all, not one person, complained about the inferior production of the bass/drums/rhythm-guitars, though I guarantee you a large number would have been offended and mocking if they knew they came from an unproduced direct live two track cassette that’d stretched out of tune in the 27 years it’d been in the bottom of a bag in a closet.)

So, what I’m getting to is that the core rhythm tracks I used for Repaired were NOT the original rhythm tracks. Some of them were the same takes that went on the record, some were not, but more to the point, the rhythm-tracks tapes I found were raw un-”produced” cassette tapes run off in the studio while we played live (bass, drums, two rhythm guitars). The playing went right to cassette just for my reference, for me to take home and listen to overnight and judge where to go next. The tapes had no post-production and no mixing, they were run directly to cassette without any trouble taken with them except to assure that every part was audible and on the correct channel(s) (as I recall–drums and bass in the middle and a guitar on each side). That’s what I had to work with last year. The instrument tracks could not be altered individually at all: they were already mixed onto the two cassette tape channels. I couldn’t isolate a snare or a bass drum for instance to beef it up, or change the relative volumes of the rhythm guitars. Furthermore the tapes had stretched in the intervening years, so that the pitch (and speed) of everything had slightly changed. Ribot, et al, had to change the tuning on their guitars to play with the tapes (and I had to do my best as a singer to be in the vicinity of the pitch even though I’d had the songs in their original rock-solid keys in my head forever).

So that’s what I had to work with to make the new version. I loved that the tapes existed and that they made possible this fun plan, but they had their limitations too. Anyway I did talk to Quine about it. I assumed from the beginning that Bob would do all the new soloing and when I asked he committed to it without hesitation. He often thought some of my ideas were eccentric but he always trusted me and always agreed to do any studio playing I asked him to. And he agreed to do this. But then he offed himself. (Ed: Quine committed suicide in 2004)

What are your thoughts about this now being the only version of the album available? Would you ever consider releasing the original for an exercise in compare/contrast to bolster your stand that this version is superior?

As I wrote above, my original plan was to release the two versions together as a double album. But since my personal concept and intention in making Repaired was to improve on the original by keeping it clean and clear and doing some editing, I realized it would be a bad idea to bring them out together. It would just have encouraged people to compare the two versions rather than take the new one on its own merits, as if it was a simple re-release, which is how I conceived it and hoped it would be received. (Also it would have been a bit pretentious and self-important, wouldn’t it? Two versions of one album as a single release? The present plan is more natural and self-consistent–bring out Repaired as the equivalent of a re-release-with-bonus-material, and eventually return the original package to print for anyone who’s interested.)

As I said above, while I do regard the new version as having successfully achieved a better representation of the songs, altogether, the whole experience of doing this has given me a greater respect for the original. There are definitely two or four cuts out of the ten that are better on the original than on Repaired. In fact I knew that going in–I originally planned to keep the original versions of the first two songs (“Replaceable” and “Gotta Move”) and only work on the remaining eight. But it was clear pretty quickly that that wouldn’t work–there would be such a schism in the sound that it would ruin the whole effect of the record. That schism was created by the difference in the production of the original and the Repaired. That difference being what I described above–the original is actually produced, with a strong snappy and booming drum sound, and care taken with the vocals in an excellent recording environment, whereas I was working with plain, direct, unproduced rhythm tracks from a 27-year-old cassette, so that it was impossible to work on their sound at all, and my new singing was in a different off-center pitch and recorded in a
closet-sized digital studio really meant only for computer-mixing.

It’s true, too, that Quine’s solos are treasure and matchless in the original, even though they’re often bobbing in and out of a morass of overdubs, and they appear in badly constructed songs. On the new version, one song is greatly improved by radical editing (“Downtown at Dawn”) and another gets an ineffable extended outro that was curtailed on the original (“Destiny Street”).

Anyway, I intend, as I did from the beginning, to get a handsome new release of the original album arranged to come out once the first strong demand for the new one fades, in a year or so.

You have been writing your memoirs. Have you had any realizations about this time that were revealed to you by the process of reworking this album?

I’m not really writing memoirs — it’s an autobiography, a straight autobiography. The story of my life from childhood in Kentucky through about age 34, when I left music. And, nah, working on the album didn’t really play into the book at all. The book is just about finished. I feel pretty good about it.

You’ve said about the recording of Destiny Street that “I was so debilitated by despair and drug-need that I was useless.” Does that only apply to your performance? You didn’t change the song structures or the lyrics in any discernible way, so you must be happy with them — why weren’t those faculties as compromised by your state as your ability to perform?

But, as I said above I did change the song structures. The worst mess was “Downtown at Dawn.” I consistently cut out measures from every go-round of the verses. The new version is way streamlined and concise compare to the original. The original ran 5:55, the new one 4:28. A minute and a half has been cut and that’s all editing of the structure, not paring the outro or anything. Also the new “Destiny Street” song is 7:13, which is about two and a half minutes longer than the orig (4:42). I love the extended moronic-guitar duel between Marc and Ivan on the new one. If it had been possible I would have written some bridges for the songs on the new one too, but there would have been no way to match the rhythm track sounds.

Another way in which I altered the recordings, improving on the neglectful originals, was to add some backup harmonies, namely on “Lowest Common Dominator” and “Staring in Her Eyes.”

But as I’ve said over and over, the main defect, that came from my 1982 laziness and inattention, is the way the overall production is an undifferentiated muck of piercing guitar layers. Rather than attend to giving the songs their due in appropriately thought-through kick-ass guitar arrangement, I just had the players throw in the kitchen sink. It’s like a diversionary tactic. Or Woody Allen leaping around like he knows king fu. Well, not that bad. Those guys could play, but all the backwards guitar and multi-effects from strings of boxes, in dub on top of screeching dub, sabotage these songs.

It’s the playing of the new soloists that really knits the release together. I didn’t bring this up with them, but I know that they all knew the album well, and had all played with Quine, and admired and fully appreciated him — and I think that in a way their playing is a kind of salute to Bob. In spots I think they refer to him. But it didn’t even have to be conscious, and it is most certainly not imitation — they play differently than Bob — but they have similar values. Bob respected and appreciated all three of them too. Anyway their playing is great and everything I had any right to hope for. It’s the consistency of their fluent and perceptive participation in the songs that makes the album into what I hoped it would be.

In doing this, you were singing lyrics written nearly 30 years before. This is different from live performance, where it is acknowledged that the artist has aged and grown. In this case, you are recreating something from another time. Did any of the lyrics strike you differently in this context? Did you consider any changes or updates?

I didn’t think of it as recreating something from another time. The songs, and their performances as caught on the rhythm-section tapes I used, were good and the performances were faithful to the songs. I never thought twice about singing them last year. It didn’t require any conceptual leap or any unusual mental framework — I just sang them as well as I could, just as I’d played them and music-directed them as well as I could on the 1982 tapes. I neither tried to imitate the 1982 vocals, nor to deliberately depart from them. I just tried to be true to the songs. No contortions were required whatsoever. It was a pleasure to do.

You said before the release of Destiny Street Repaired that “there are a few qualities of the original that this version couldn’t better.” What are those and why wasn’t it possible to improve upon them?

Quine’s and Naux’s guitar solos of course. I truly believe Quine is the best soloist in the history of rock & roll. Unfortunately, he’s not given his best presentation on Destiny Street. I could have made an amazing Repaired, though, rearranging the mixes to highlight his playing, and having him add new solos is other spots. But Marty Thau lost the original multitrack (and the original two-track mix!), and Quine killed himself before we could go back into the studio.

Then there’s the matter of the impossibility of getting a professional production on the rhythm tracks because they came from a raw live performance on cassette (as detailed above). The subtleties of mix variations and the basic competence of the production as in getting a strong drum sound were unavailable to me on the new version (though as I said no one noticed!)

Also, I did have a more flexible wider-ranged voice with more depth at the age of 31-32 than I did last year at 59. As said above, the recording conditions were also better in 1982. Though I believe I managed well enough to compensate with other qualities in the singing on Repaired, so that overall the new vocals — all or nothing — are better.

But I still have no doubts whatsoever that I was justified in making Repaired and that the record is a success, accomplishing what I intended. The two versions don’t mix, and taken as stand-alone albums, as song suites, as sequences of material on disk, the new version is superior to the old.

You have focused more on writing in the past several years. Did this process reignite any desire to make music on a more regular basis? If so, what form will that take?

I’ve always loved making albums and that hasn’t changed. Unfortunately that wasn’t and isn’t enough to justify the expense of rehearsing and paying salaries and for recording time and for the manufacture and distribution of records. If
it were possible for me to take off six months (or even two months) every two or three years to write and rehearse and record an album’s worth of material, and then return to writing books or whatever, I’d love it. But each time that would cost $150,000 and who’s going to pay for it? Especially now when listeners just steal music rather than pay the musicians anyway.

What is the status of the memoir and your other writing projects?

The autobiography will be a big book, well over 300 closely-packed pages, and I’m on the last chapter. I’ll start showing it to publishers by the summer I expect. I would think it’d be published in 2011.

Let me add one last thing to this ponderous (sorry!) interview. Namely that I’m really gratified by the reception of Destiny Street Repaired altogether. It might have sounded like I was being pretty cutting about the reviewers, but actually I feel great about the record’s reception. The proportion of positive to negative has been about 50/50 or maybe 60/40 in favor, but, seriously, the positive reviews have been so much more intelligent and accurate than the negative ones (I mean in obvious ways!), that it ends up feeling more like 85/15, since most of the negative ones are just mean-spirited and had obviously made up their minds before they listened. Ultimately, I got a better reception with this than I expected. And regardless of any of that it’s been a great experience.

Two disparate acts came to mind when I heard that OK Go had extricated itself from its recording contract with EMI and planned to go it alone. Neither would probably make Damian Kulash and Co. giddy with excitement, but they certainly serve as a cautionary tale.

In the late 1990s, cosmic country singer Jimmie Dale Gilmore left/was let go from Elektra Records and signed with much smaller Rounder Records. It wasn’t a big deal at the time, but I remember thinking that it was a good move. Gilmore would likely never sell more than he did on Elektra, but having used that major label’s resources to build a fan base, he probably wouldn’t sell a lot less, either.

The Posies were in a similar place at the exact same time. As with Gilmore, their last major label album was in 1996, followed by a 1998 album on an indie. I interviewed the band’s Ken Stringfellow around that time, and he articulated what I had been thinking about Gilmore: Why not use the major label to record good sounding albums and promote them like crazy, then walk away and take a much larger piece of the pie on your own?

The cautionary part of the tale is obvious enough. Neither act came anywhere close to the (relative) heights scaled in the early 1990s. Now, you could blame that on a significantly slower pace (Gilmore) or a fractured band (the Posies), but it’s also clear that it’s certainly harder than it looks to duplicate the multi-pronged efforts of a major label.

OK Go has a leg up on both. Nobody noticed or cared in those pre-Internet days when Gilmore or the Posies parted ways with their labels. OK Go, meanwhile, has write-ups all over the place and its lead singer, Kulash, penned an op-ed for the New York Times shortly before the split about the band’s quarrel with its label. The band also has viral marketing on its side, with its self-produced videos earning it millions of hits.

Still, the band had all of that before splitting with EMI, and while it could be argued that the label’s archaic ideas about embedded videos likely hampered promotion somewhat (a hurdle more than compensated for by the press the band earned by bringing those policies to light), it also spent money on ads and other promotions. Result? Less than 25,000 albums sold in about two months. While most bands would kill for those figures, a major label can’t tolerate that total.

So, for OK Go, the future is entirely reliant on mediated expectations. If the group is content to sell 25,000 albums every couple of years and supplement its income with live shows and merchandise, it should be fine. If it takes on a huge staff, attempts make it big and throws a lot of money at the challenge, it won’t last long. I’d predict the former course rather than the latter, which then puts all of the pressure on the band’s music. Thus far, it has been solidly unremarkable, it’s music no better or worse than that of hundreds of other bands. Stripped of the clever videos, there’s not much there. Progress is being made (new single “This Too Shall Pass” is definitely a creative step ahead), and that must continue apace while now also running their own label, promotion, distribution, scheduling, etc. Stay tuned.

The progress reports from the Baseball Project camp have been disappointing in only one respect: we’ll have to wait until 2011 to hear the crack of the musical bat… or will we?

The group — Scott McCaughey (The Minus 5, R.E.M., Young Fresh Fellows), Steve Wynn (The Dream Syndicate, Gutterball, Miracle 3), Linda Pitmon (Miracle 3, Golden Smog) and Peter Buck (R.E.M.) — is working on the official followup to Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails, which isn’t scheduled until next year. However, the foursome recently announced that they would be doing some musical baseball blogging, so to speak, writing, recording and releasing in quick succession a series of songs during the coming big league baseball season, dubbed Broadside Ballads.

“The band will be providing tuneful commentary on baseball events big and small, recording them in magical bi-coastal fashion (Linda and Steve in New York City, Scott and Peter in Portland and Seattle, respectively) and putting them up online while the ink is still wet,” they report on Steve Wynn’s web site.

The first track already is available: “All Future and No Past.” Written by Scott McCaughey, it deals with the fact that before the first pitch is tossed, every team is full of promise. “I’d been reading all the pre-season reports and realizing that this is the time of year when every team has high hopes, no matter how unrealistic. Then I stumbled upon a saying from the great Indians player/manager Lou Boudreau: ‘On opening day, the world is all future and no past’. And for me that really sums up the beautiful feeling that comes with spring training each year.”

Wynn reports that the song was “written, recorded and mixed in Portland and New York City, all in the space of about a week, setting a template for regular dispatches throughout the season.”

The songs will be available on ESPN’s “The Life” section. The second song, already in the can, will be released in April around opening day.

“I think it will be a lot of fun just to kind of see what’s going on and get fired up about something,” Wynn writes on his blog. “And instead of just writing bemused e-mails to each other, we’ll put chords behind it and call it a song.”

You’ll read plenty of tributes, analysis and speculation about Mark Linkous’ suicide today. I’ll leave that to others. What it made me do, I’m sad to say, was pull out his music for the first time in a long time. Save for a couple of spins through his Danger Mouse collaboration, Dark Night of the Soul (prescient title now, that) last year, I haven’t sought out Sparklehorse music in a long time. I would put Linkous’ music in the “to be admired more than listened to” category along with many others. I appreciated his artistry, but I was rarely in the mood for it.

I came across Linkous’ music early and incongruously. He was the guitarist and songwriter for Dancing Hoods, a New York foursome that trafficked in college rock (for you young’uns, that’s what we called indie before it was called alternative). The band appeared on one of my favorite MTV shows of the mid-1980s, “I.R.S.’s the Cutting Edge,” hosted by the Fleshtones’ Peter Zaremba. Johnette Napolitano came out and sang with them (this was loooong before the schmaltz of “Joey”… before Concrete Blonde had a record out, I believe). It wasn’t bad, a step up from bar band flannel rock. A couple of weeks later, perusing the used CDs in a Des Moines record store, I came across Hallelujah Anyway, the Dancing Hoods’ second album. A huge sticker on the cover touted it as the first CD picture disc. That’s a laughable concept now, but at the time, the few CDs in circulation (this was 1988) all looked alike, with black letters on silver discs, and that coupled with that MTV appearance was enough to convince me to part with $5.

That marketing ploy obviously tanked with everyone but me, as the band split up not long after. Several years later I heard about Sparklehorse, connecting it with the Dancing Hoods (Linkous’ name is rather notable). It was a shock to hear such different music coming from the same guy. I liked some of vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, but rarely listened to it. Same for Good Morning, Spider, his second album. After that, I would acknowledge but not pursue his new releases.

I saw Sparklehorse open for someone around the time of Good Morning, Spider. It was a good set, though predictably melancholy. There have been times in my life where I have looked to music as a way to sooth the soul, seeking the sounds of someone who has it worse than me. But usually I’m looking for uplift, and Linkous rarely offered that.

Now, he’s gone, and people will parse his music looking for cues that signaled what was to come. There seems to be plenty of fodder there. But regardless of what he was saying, his music spoke to a lot of people, and they’ll always have that. I rarely needed it, but it was always nice to know it was there when I did.