In a recent entry explaining how the upcoming Indoor Condor show (at the Outpost with Organically Programmed, Kyle Gordon, come, and Mountain Medicine) came about, that road—the road of that explanation—led to the Olivia Tremor Control. Since that band came up, I thought I would do a “For Good and All” brief playlist/post combo to serve as an idiosyncratic overview of a band that means a lot to me. This is what I do after all: Interrogate my relationship with the cultural products I love. If I don’t, who will?
Here’s the playlist—six-ish songs because rules are rules! A reflection and some photos follow. Then a track-by-track playlist commentary, and we close out with wholly unrelated collages. Settle in.
OTC Overview
Olivia is a fairly well-known band—though not nearly as well known as they should be, but recently a book and a movie have contributed to the story of this, and other associated bands, being told. Olivia made two landmark double albums in the late-90s, and made headway on a third after a 10-ish-year hiatus. Progress on the third album came to a tragic halt when a key member of the band, Bill Doss, died.
Those two Olivia records are a big deal to me, and have been dating back to my college / Athens, GA days. Plus back then, Olivia was my favorite live band—by a long shot. To this day I know of no other band that is as consistently mind-blowing. It was actually bands of Olivia’s ilk that motivated me to move to Athens, GA, and going to UGA was my means of doing that. But little did I know the depth and variety of bands I would find in late-90s Athens. To be clear, I didn’t move to Athens because of any specific bands, but because it was a music town. No disrespect, but I’ve never been that into REM, though I do love the B-52s.
Music has always been important to me, but I had never lived in a place with anything like a music scene, much less a town that was the home of a dozen or more great bands that I loved. In fact, the idea of local music was more or less an abstraction until I got to Athens. I had read about the 70s NYC punk scene and the more contemporary Olympia and Seattle scenes, but those were long ago and/or far away. I played in garage bands in high school, and some other kids managed to play local gigs, but it all felt not real somehow. I don’t mean to say I judged it harshly; it just didn’t register as something that counted.
Olivia, in contrast, I processed—then and now—as a world-class band, just one that happened to live in the same town as me, which was lucky—for me. They were among a slew of acts I became familiar with pretty soon after arriving in Athens. Their second album, Black Foliage, was either just out or was about to come out when I started clocking them. There were several bands I saw frequently in those days and loved. Two others high on that list of favorite bands are Elf Power and of Montreal, but Olivia were in their own category.
I saw them a lot. Below are pictures from a few different shows from that period taken by my then-girlfriend, Natalia Ferrando. All these shows were at the 40 Watt.
I don’t know how to tell you what these shows were like. They were loud. They were chaotic. They were magical. But that doesn’t begin to cover it. I remember struggling to explain what Olivia meant to me back then, and the best I could ever do was something like, “they’re really doing something,” which is woefully inadequate, but points to the fact that that “something” was an incredible band at the height of their powers—but was also, ineffably, more than that. I could never do justice to them in writing.
I’m not super spiritual, but if anything has ever felt sacred to me, it’s this band.1
This was probably during “I Have Been Floated,” which features vocal performances from Jeff, as well as Kevin Barnes from of Montreal. All the pictured guys are in numerous wonderful bands: the Gerbils, Neutral Milk Hotel, Frosted Ambassador, Organically Programmed, on and on.
Years later, Julian’s band, The Music Tapes, played at my house in Chicago, and I’ll surely write about that at some point.
See that look in his eyes? That’s how you could tell an Olivia show was going well. It was like Will was channeling something. I used to say it was like he was about to transmogrify into a monster—in a good way. I also love his post-Olivia band, Circulatory System.
Obviously I was and am in awe of these folks. I interacted with them only briefly (and nervously! on my part) back then, and they were invariably kind to me. When I sent copies of my album to a handful of people I admire and who helped make me feel like I could/should make a record, John Fernandes was on that short list. To be clear, musically my band is pretty distant from Olivia. (I also love it when people call them “the Olivias.”) They play lush yet jaggedly psychedelic pop masterpieces; I play short, usually simple, frantic songs. But they were totally DIY, home-recording sprawling epic records and “really doing something.”
They were an example, one of several I’ve benefited from, that you can do your thing, and you can do it yourself; no one has to give you permission. And if you’re not asking permission, nothing is off limits, and you can do the thing the way it needs to be done. And in that way, doing it yourself increases the magic of the thing. It’s more magical because it’s more the thing it needs to be, uncompromised. Add to that, the production of the recordings and the infrastructure of performing and touring—they all become part of the art, when they’re done by the artist.
The Tracks on my Playlist
The premise is that these are six favorite songs, not top songs, not “best,” not most popular, not necessarily. The cap is supposed to be six, but there’s a blurriness here as one track is a live-recorded suite that contains multiple songs, so we have five tracks in all, but arguably more than six songs.
The Opera House - The first song on the first album, and the first Olivia song I recall hearing. Every single time I have listened to this song, I have turned it up at least once before it’s over, and I’ve listened to it a lot of times. That’s my highest possible endorsement.
Suite Two: Frosted Ambassador / Green Typewriters / The Princess Turns the Key to Cubist Castle / Looking for Meaning - This is a live-in-studio recording done for the only BBC DJ anyone has heard of, John Peel. It’s fun because “Frosted Ambassador” is the second track on the first album after “Opera House,” but we veer off from there. This track gives a hint as to what Olivia shows were like. You don’t get the raucousness or the wild abandon, but you get the crispy bits that survive translation from performance to recording, and those are damn good.
The Sylvan Screen - There’s a long ambient intro that may not work for all comers, but when the song proper emerges, the build-up to that point is integral to the whole. I fucking love how a lawnmower sound comes in on the lines “mowing their lawns and raking leaves like you wouldn’t believe.”
California Demise 3 - Real toss up between including this one and Holiday Surprise. (Because both song titles end in “-ise,” of course.) Love the tight harmonies. Beach Boys comparisons tend to fly about too freely for my delicate sensibilities, but they wouldn’t be out of place here.
Hilltop Procession Momentum Gaining - The title alone is euphonious and enigmatic enough to suffice for a lifetime of contemplation and enjoyment. I’ve been playing this one to myself on my acoustic guitar lately. I’m that disgustingly head-over-heels in love with this song.
End transmission. I’m now abruptly switching gears to share collages that have nothing to do with OTC.
Collage of the Day: Who Answers the Call?
Paid-subscriber Barely NSFW CotD: Snuggle Your Wheaties
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