I came across this article about Built to Spill, more this quote, talking about his wife, who’s a poet, makes sense because his songs are so much like poems:
“She’s a poet. She’s just sharp and has the same sort of sensibilities as me and sense of humor. We work different methods. Sometimes I’ll use things she said without it being a lyric suggestion. Sometimes she’ll jot down a bunch of stuff. Sometimes I’ll have the song and I’ll just record myself playing it and just mumbling words. Or she’ll listen to it and write down what she thinks I’m saying or what I should be saying.” Source
I recently saw Built to Spill in San Francisco, at the Independent, here’s a few lines about it.
At a show, I love seeing people right in front, eager, maybe even enduring the first few bands just to hold their spots. At the Built to Spill concert that was the case, a few kids plastered up to the stage early on. If everyone at the show is open, open to an artist opening up, the show is just going to be better. One fan stood out at the show, a young kid with a pirate like earring dangling down from his shorn head. He sang all the songs and threw his fist up in the air when a verse held more steam. He wasn’t look at me but just into it.
At times the songs were played so well and smoothly, nearly like you’re listing to a record, that you want the lead singer to say something, to do something to let you know he was playing right then and there in front of you. Not just the thanks after each song. I almost wanted Built to Spill to smash all of their instruments after that busted through a song.
But just as I thought that, he unleashed himself into a song, and the pirated earning fan in the middle of the crowd sang along—you say his mouth mouth the words, his fist pumping along, puncturing the lyrics, ‘Nowhere nothing fuck up’. ‘Nowhere nothing fuck up.’
say a word for Jimmy Brown
been nowhere he’s done nothing
probably not even a shirt on his back
ain’t got nothing at all
I’ve always been curious about the lyrics to the Built to Spill songs. Something behind the music and the words that underlies a pain. We all do and will experience pain, friends die and loved ones, but there’s something about the words and the music that tell of some time of loneliness or need to escape. Or is that too just as equally shared and parsed out and why we like Built to Spill because the songs help ease that. I think so. ‘Make this apartment a home’. ‘Got me out of Twin Falls Idaho‘.
Do you have to dig into it? Can’t you just enjoy it? I guess I really respect how he does it and that’s why I want to dig into. And his even keel quality—both releasing pain via his songs and letting others feel less alone by hearing them. It’s a great art.
At times Doug is like a good politician, hate the reference but just use it because he stays on message so Buddha like. Whenever I read or hear him talk in an interview, he always maintains humbleness and says he just pieces together the songs based more on if a word goes well with the music, the lyrics don’t really have any meaning. That’s what art is or poetry is—precisely describing something and letting others in on it. That’s why I like slang, because it encompasses so much in such a short phrase and when you usually use it it unleashes something—it’s got a lot going on behind it. ‘No where nothing fuck up.’
I also ran across a paragraph from Joan Didion, it was mentioned in an interview, from a book called ‘Where I’m From’. But it too talks about ‘home’, where you’re from and how strong that connection is.
Flying to Monterey I had a sharp apprehension of the many times before when I had, like Lincoln Steffens, ‘come back,’ flown west, followed the sun, each time experiencing a lightening of spirit as the land below opened up, the checkerboards of the Midwestern plains giving way to the vast empty reach between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada; then home, there, where I was from, me, California. It would be a while before I realized that ‘me’ is what we think when our parents die, even at my age, who will look out for me now, who will remember me as I was, who will know what happens to me now, where will I be from.