Without Correction

The second in a series of post concerning my favorite records.

 

Eggleston

Reviewing Alex Chilton's Like Flies on Sherbert for Allmusic, David Cleary tells us...

"...this release is a dreadful disappointment. Production values are among the worst this reviewer has ever heard: sound quality is terrible, instrumental balances are careless and haphazard, and some selections even begin with recording start-up sound."

Then, horror of horros...."Chilton's false-start vocal on "Boogie Shoes" is simply left in without correction".

"Without correction"? It wasn't left there on purpose for a purpose beyond Cleary's capacity or willingness to accept. There is a proper way to do things and this was not it...it was an error left uncorrected. I guess Jim Dickinson just didn't know what he was doing.

 

Cleary is well within his duties to point out the haphazard nature of the record. Let 'em know that if they're looking for The Ballad of El Goodo...it's not here. As for what's correct or incorrect Cleary can stick it above his collar...right up his butt.*

I wonder if he bothered with Bach's Bottom...surely his head would have exploded at Free Again (version 1)..."Put some kung fu on it this time"...or if he heard Chilton's sessions from 1970, before Big Star...



Throughout the sessions Dickinson would record players while they were warming up and use those takes. There's the oft reported anecdote that Chilton wanted Dickinson to play guitar because he still played like a teenager. The illusion created by crafting is removed. The false starts and uneven mixes...the overdubs to hide blank spots...it creates a level of uncertainty for the listener and when the whole thing comes off it is exhilarating.



I don't think there's any irony in the record...even the cover of Boogie Shoes sounds like earnest fun. How many songs have buried..."trampled" on even...by well crafted, precise production? Still, the potential for a meta reading can't be denied. They knew, Jim Dickinson certainly knew, what they were doing. Others got what they were doing too. It's impossible, at least for me, to see Slay Tracks hit with the impact it did and not think of Like Flies on Sherbert.**

Finally, one reviewer complained that they all sound drunk and high.

Playing rocknroll while drunk and high on the dope. Well...I swanny!

That's Memphis David...it may not play in Cincinnati, Oh-hyy-o but, nobody gives a damn.



*I've got the Trouser Press Record Guide from the 80's and the one they published in the 90's. In the 80's, Trouser's take on Bach's Bottom and Flies is as vitriolic as Cleary's...accusing the records of "trampling" on Chilton's songs. By 95, Bach's Bottom was an "intriguing stop/start" record.
** I think this is what they call foreshadowing.

Muck Raking.

From local Memphis TV in 1979 we have Straight Talk With Marge Thrasher...and she is having none of this nonsense. In fact, she's in a right tizzy about it. The Regal couple just seems confused.



Tav handles himself like the consummate Southern Gentleman that he is.

More important for our purposes here...are the "invisible performers" he's talking about. He's almost certainly talking about people like Charlie Feathers and his mentor Junior Kimbrough, Othar Turner, Jim Dickinson, Jessie Mae Hemphill and even our very own Alex Chilton there...and I have no doubt that R.L. Burnside was on his mind.*

 ** Snake Drive written by R.L. Burnside

It should be pointed out that Panther Burns is covering R.L. Burnside more than a decade before Bad Luck City and almost 15 years before Fat Possum Records.

Behind the Magnolia Curtain was released in 1981...the same year, you will of course remember, that The Fall were touring the US behind Grotesque and Slates...while also running through songs that would appear on Hex. You will also know that one of the greatest moments in the history of sound occurs on this tour...Winter..."that's an alcohol free lager...well, anyway I digress."



It was recorded at a show in Memphis, Tennessee...where Mark E Smith met our man Tav. Both were on Rough Trade and The Fall Online is convinced that Mark E Smith was introduced to the song Bourgeois Blues through the Panther Burns cover on Behind the Magnolia Curtain. If he owned that record...he heard Snake Drive.

This proves, beyond all reasonable doubt, that Mark E Smith was indeed completely obsessed with Hill Country Blues.

Here's where I drop the mic...wipe my hands of this nonsense and leave the room a champion.

ALL I DO IS WIN WIN WIN NO MATTER WHAT...

*If you're a little confused by the geography...Memphis is in the extreme southwest corner of Tennessee bordered by Arkansas to the west and Mississippi to the south. The reason that everybody in Mississippi ends up in Memphis instead of Jackson is that The Delta and the Hill Country are within Memphis's sphere of influence. When they go to town...they don't go to Jackson they go to Memphis.

 

Special Thanks to Gronmark for the Hasil Adkins reference...which reminded me of Panther Burns...which led to me uncovering this fascinating rocknroll artifact.

 

** If Mississippi was a sound it would be this song...here's Jim Dickinsons boys, and Burnsides and Kimbroughs...burning Bonaroo down with it. Bonus Track.

 

 

Why'on't y'all deal with it!