So we're watching the first season cliffhanger episode the other night -- there's gonna be a second season sometime this year, I'm happy to say -- and this song, with which I was previously totally unfamiliar, comes on the soundtrack. And I flipped out over how cool it is.
Uh, hello -- why did't I get the memo? 😎
True confession -- back in the mid-90s, when Ms. Phair was at her peak, I really didn't pay much attention to her, or her alleged masterpiece (from whence that song derives) Exile in Guyville.
Although I was deliriously thrilled with this collaboration she recorded around the same time (with Chicago power pop band Material Issue) on a fabulous tribute album to Saturday Morning kids shows.
No fooling, I used to blast that at full volume over the sound system in my office at Stereo Review at all sorts of inapropriate times (I'm pretty sure I also raved about the album in print). And I was delighted to discover I still loved it. But in any case, that Phair song above is just great; I'm obviously going to have do a retrospective re-examination of the Guyville album.
P.S.: I was a huge fan of Material Issue, who were one of the fewer-than-you-might-suspect 90s bands I actually was nuts about.
In fact, I recall being far more upset over MI frontman Jim Ellison's suicide than by Kurt Cobain's. For the simple reason that -- unlike most his of contemporaries during the Grunge Era -- Ellison always projected the attitude of somebody who really, really enjoyed being a rock star.
I should add that I just discovered there's a Material Issue documentary movie available for streaming (1 dollar -- cheap!) over at Amazon Prime HERE. Gonna watch it tonight; I'll get back to you if it's worth the price of admission.
5 comments:
I could have told you Liz Phair's first album is spotty at best 30 plus years ago! Why didn't you ask?
Captain Al
BTW -- the Material Issue doc is kinda depressing (no surprise) and also not terribly interesting. For one thing, there seems to have been no extant interview footage of Ellison, who comes across as sort of the ghost in the movie.
My thoughts on Exile: The first 4 songs are OK, but nothing special (and on my first listen all those years ago, I thought "well, this is overhyped...") -- but then everything kicks into high gear after that. It's a favorite these days along with whitechocolatespaceegg
Whitechocolatespacecapsule is my favorite Liz Phair album.
Captain Al
about liz phair's [adoptive] father john phair (1932-2024) , from grok:
Phair spent much of his career as a professor of medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, where he became emeritus.
He emerged as an early pioneer in HIV/AIDS care and research during the 1980s epidemic, treating patients compassionately when many providers hesitated due to fear and stigma. From 1987 to 2012, he chaired the executive committee of the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS), one of the largest and longest-running investigations of HIV infection, which provided critical data on the disease's natural history and progression. His work earned recognition as a leading figure in public health efforts against HIV.
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