Spencer Tweedy

The garageband champions beat Wilco again

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:06:00 -0600

Back from the Grammys. It was a nice getaway. Short, and not very relaxing, but a vacation nonetheless. Seeing my uncle, Danny, aunt, Kendall, and cousins, Leah and Charlie, is always refreshing. (I hate that word, but it was.) With all due love to said family members, Charlie remains the most refreshing factor of our trips out there. There’s nothing like a one-year-old to shove aside teenage doom. Look at this video of him opening a gift from my family last Chanukah:

I needed a lot of angst-shoving, especially after Foo Fighters beat Wilco to a dad-rock pulp during their five-Grammy rampage. Our hopes were high, because after we found out that Wilco’s nomination, Best Rock Album, was no longer going to be televised, we figured that could only mean Wilco won and they didn’t want to televise it because they’re not famous enough. I guess it actually meant that Foo Fighters won and they didn’t want Dave Grohl to have to make too many appearances. I don’t mean to sound snarky, but he showed up on screen so many times, they might as well have just thrown Best Rock Album in, too. After they performed twice, and Dave Grohl got to solo-duel with Paul McCartney, it really felt like they were the centerpiece of the whole thing. Maybe that’s just the loser’s sensitivity talking.

We were thankful just to be there as the lowly posse of interlopers, but you can be thankful and annoyed. It was annoying that Jack Black introduced Foo Fighters as the only band retaining their “indie cred” that night, especially now that Wilco is literally indie. But none of it really matters. I think I’m the first person that ever said that about award shows.

My highlight was that at a party after the show, Paul McCartney told John (Stirratt) that he stayed up to watch Wilco on Austin City Limits the other night and loved it. That was insane and, in all the Wilco-ites’ eyes, I think, more meaningful and encouraging than a Grammy.

Back to school.

Grammys!

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:20:30 -0600

Headed to LA for the Grammys! This is the fifth year Wilco’s been nominated but it’s my brother Sammy’s and my first time coming along. They’re making us sit in the back away from all the important people, but it’s okay because our uncle, Danny, and cousin, Leah, are going with us, too. (They’re not important either so they can keep us company.) I’m happy just to be getting away from Chicago for awhile because something about being geographically, physically far from the place where you primarily experience your angst makes it all… far away. I’m also excited to see famous people.

We found out yesterday that Wilco’s category isn’t televised, which is a big let-down because my dad was ecstatic at the idea of giving a speech to millions of people (not). Normally when he speaks on stage he ends up telling a story about one of the strangely-many times he’s crapped himself in a hotel room. He’ll probably lose to Foo Fighters (or as we in the Tweedy household call them, Poo Fighters) again, anyway.

I saw this letter written by Nick Cave on one of my favorite blogs, Letters of Note, the other day and it really put me in the Grammys spirit. I’m an avid supporter of personifying intangible stuff and also of thinking about music in this wholesome, roots-y way. It was a pretty classy, benign yet striking, “Thank you! You shouldn’t have! No, you really shouldn’t have!” Maybe a little classier than some others…

21 Oct 96

To all those at MTV,

I would like to start by thanking you all for the support you have given me over recent years and I am both grateful and flattered by the nominations that I have received for Best Male Artist. The air play given to both the Kylie Minogue and P. J. Harvey duets from my latest album Murder Ballads has not gone unnoticed and has been greatly appreciated. So again my sincere thanks.

Having said that, I feel that it’s necessary for me to request that my nomination for best male artist be withdrawn and furthermore any awards or nominations for such awards that may arise in later years be presented to those who feel more comfortable with the competitive nature of these award ceremonies. I myself, do not. I have always been of the opinion that my music is unique and individual and exists beyond the realms inhabited by those who would reduce things to mere measuring. I am in competition with no-one.

My relationship with my muse is a delicate one at the best of times and I feel that it is my duty to protect her from influences that may offend her fragile nature.

She comes to me with the gift of song and in return I treat her with the respect I feel she deserves — in this case this means not subjecting her to the indignities of judgement and competition. My muse is not a horse and I am in no horse race and if indeed she was, still I would not harness her to this tumbrel — this bloody cart of severed heads and glittering prizes. My muse may spook! May bolt! May abandon me completely!

So once again, to the people at MTV, I appreciate the zeal and energy that was put behind my last record, I truly do and say thank you and again I say thank you but no…no thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Nick Cave

I think we can all agree that there’s nothing wrong with honoring hard work, but to quantify it with something that isn’t explicitly subjective (like a blog post on Joey Pfeifer’s and my new blog, Unrequired Listening!) is just silly. I like to think that a lot of people feel like Nick Cave, but are just less noble, or at least more tolerant, or a little bit of both and just think it’s fun to go along with the award show ride.

We’re going along for the ride. Exclusive photos of Blue Ivy Carter later!

Elizabeth Cotten & Good Ole Music

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:06:00 -0600

Watch “Freight Train” by Elizabeth Cotten on YouTube

This is Elizabeth Cotten. When she was a teenager, she bought herself a guitar. It was a right-handed guitar, but she was left-handed, so she taught herself how to play it. Not restrung. Upside down. She invented a style of fingerpicking, now known as “Cotten picking” (and played by people who use rightside-up guitars), and then, on the counsel of her church, gave up guitar.

Many years later, Cotten found herself working in a department store, where, one day, she found a lost little girl and returned her to her mother. The little girl’s name was Peggy Seeger. As in the legendary Seeger family. She became the Seegers’ maid.

Eventually, she played guitar for them, they realized her talent, she played shows, and became very accomplished. She won a Grammy in 1985 at age 90. When I was twelve, I watched this clip on a DVD with my dad and cried.

Indie is silly

I don’t like cynicism. I think it’s for turds (misguided turds). But, in the past 100 years, we have seen music mutate from a way to share feelings and be connected together and just have fun and “get things out” into a way to do all of those things and also make money. And then, in the past thirty-or-something years, we’ve seen it be that and the first thing and, sometimes (just sometimes!), a hollow quasi-art with close to no trace of the first definition. I’m not saying music’s doomed, and I’m not saying that making money from music (or in general) is bad. I’m actually very optimistic about music right now, in addition to its future, and I’m definitely a fan of making money.

I am saying that we see a lot less of Elizabeth Cotten these days. There’s so much Ke$ha, there’s hardly any room for this poor, old (metaphorical) woman. And Ke$ha is fine; she entertains people. She makes her fans feel connected through each other. And, in some weird, gross, glittery, drunk-vomit-stained way, I’d bet that she is really expressing herself, underneath that robotic production. But she’s just not simple like Elizabeth Cotten. Pop music (and dubstep and whatever) is music. In my opinion, it’s not as music-y. In my opinion, the first definition—to make noise just for the sake of being a human—is the most music-y. I might even say it’s the most honest.

I try to listen to music that’s as honest as it can be. I’ve been happy to find that I really like listening to music that’s as honest as it can be. So many records that get blasted on “indie” music blogs seem a little bit dishonest. They’re fine—still music—just not close enough to the Cotten caliber. It makes me feel like the snobbiest snob; if I’m a “hipster”, who are already snobs, then I’m a meta-hipster snob-snob, because I’m really snobby about hipster music. Who gives a shit whether you produced it in the least-corporate-big-label way imaginable, or if you refuse to play the Grammys because they wouldn’t let you decide what song to perform? I feel like a lot of these bands care more about their indie identity than making unique records.

When it comes down to it, though, I guess I just like to hear an old black woman sing more than I do a twenty-year-old angst-romanticizer. I just really like Elizabeth Cotten.

I wrote this post for Unrequired Listening.

Video re-found via Kimya Dawson’s great blog.

Unrequired Listening

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:10:06 -0600

Unrequired Listening:

My friend Joey Pfeifer and I have started a weblog about music called Unrequired Listening. We don’t aim to be the next Pitchfork, Stereogum or whatever. It’s more just a personal journal, about music, that we share. I hope you like it.

"I'm proud of you, Spencer"

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 22:21:00 -0600

At the start of this school year—my sophomore year—I began receiving dozens of emails a week from colleges that seem pretty, pretty torqued at the notion of my attendance, despite their having no clue who I am or what my qualifications are. They’re form emails that emulate a genuinely interested, “proud” human on the other end, which I find manipulative and gross. It makes me wonder whether the schools that send these are an educational institution that happens to have a goal of making money, or a business that happens to educate people. Here are some actual subject lines from emails that I (and every other high schooler that I’ve talked to, although theirs feature their own name) have gotten:

“You’re one of the Best and Brightest”
“Students of your caliber…”
“Hoping to hear from you, Spencer!”
“Spencer, is this you?”
“Is this Spencer’s e-mail address?”
“You’ve been selected”
“Is this Spencer?”
“Spencer, I’m already impressed”
“I’d like to hear from you, Spencer”
“Trying to reach Spencer”
“I’m proud of you, Spencer”

There’s a point where “marketing technique” crosses into immoral territory, especially when it’s executed by what are universally considered the pinnacles of intellect. Maybe I shouldn’t be talking, since I spelled “intellect” wrong twice when writing this, but I think that it’s wrong to play on the emotions of sweet, innocent, naive little high schoolers, excited and wide-eyed, whose hearts ache to go to college—myself included. I’m exaggerating (duh) but these are seriously no lower to me than those “You’re our 10,000,000th visitor! You won!” banners that pop up when you visit a crappy website. Makes me feel like these are from crappy schools.

A video I made for The Whole Love last summer that slipped...

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 19:56:28 -0600

A video I made for The Whole Love last summer that slipped through the cracks. Featuring my little brother, Sammy, his best friend, Joey, and my friend, Tavi.

I wrote a post about growing up, depression, and an emo...

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 20:44:00 -0600

I wrote a post about growing up, depression, and an emo pterodactyl for my dear pal Tavi’s magazine, Rookie. Read it here.

“One Day” — {Formerly The Blisters} My band recorded...

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 13:17:00 -0600

“One Day” — {Formerly The Blisters}

My band recorded a song! Henry, our frontman, wrote/sings it. I play drums (and a dollop of mellotron strings and a tad of background vocals). We just “hired” a new kid to play with us, and we haven’t played any gigs in a really long time, so we’re still getting our act re-together, but it feels good to have something down finally. Gonna mail out a bunch of cassettes today.

P.S. The Blisters chapter has ended. What should we call ourselves?

Photo

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:08:42 -0600

Went to see Kanye West and Jay Z at the United Center last...

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 18:17:39 -0600

Went to see Kanye West and Jay Z at the United Center last night. The tickets were a Chanukah present for my inspiringly hip little brother, Sammy. He’s gotten super into rap this past year and had been begging my parents to go to this show for months. It became a sort of family joke for awhile because we thought it’d be hilarious for us, the Tweedys, dorky, Jewish, white folk, to go to a rap show. And, uh, it was. It was also a lot of fun, though. Crazy, foreign fun. If I were to break my impenetrable hipster guise of jadedness and superiority, I would even say that I really enjoy their music. Mostly Jay Z’s; Kanye is unique and talented, and seems to be some sort of a visionary, but ole Jigga’s tracks are raw (if rap can be raw). We had a good time.

Goodbye, Cutty.

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:06:50 -0600

Goodbye, Cutty.

"In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain..."

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 16:53:19 -0600

“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson on art

Just starting to cover transcendentalism in my American literature class and it’s really interesting. I’m a full-fledged believer in modernism and innovation, but that doesn’t stop me from finding ole Ralph, Walt n’ Henry admirable and their work romantic. I love anything that helps me to better understand creativity.

Might as well post this one, too. No vocals.

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 10:12:50 -0500

Might as well post this one, too. No vocals.

Yet another demo. Bad vocals.

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 21:30:00 -0500

Yet another demo. Bad vocals.

A demo from my avant-garde, turtleneck-wearing, mumbling...

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 16:18:49 -0500

A demo from my avant-garde, turtleneck-wearing, mumbling bohemian side.

The Fear of Missing Out

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:48:59 -0500

I am uncomfortable very often. It’s something that I’ve talked about a lot before. It’s that notorious “creative itch,” that infamous, insatiate hunger that drives people to make beautiful things and some things that are only beautiful to them and sometimes gamble their chance of a conventionally successful lifestyle to pursue the passion that was birthed out of that itch. Believe it or not, I think about it more than I blog about it.

I’ve been thinking about it even more than ever these past weeks because of Steve Job’s death. My mom told me about it as my band finished up practice Wednesday and I surprised myself (and my nonjudgemental, but nonetheless entertained bandmates) by crying. His illness and imminent fate had been on the minds of so many of us for awhile, and I had thought about how I might feel when the inevitable takes him away from us. I never thought I would cry.

But I did and all the photos and quotes and chuckle-worthy-but-borderline-rude one-liners poured into the digital receptacles (that were created in-part by Lil’ Stevie) of millions of people. Pee Wee Herman paid his respects. So did mobs of grief-stricken fans at Apple stores around the world. The instantaneous mourning of his death and the subsequent celebrations of his life, on blogs, Apple.com, tweets, could not be more appropriate for the man which they honor.

One passage poked out at me through the newly-viral body of Jobsian scriptures surfacing in a somewhat redundant fray. It’s his 2005 Stanford commencement speech.

The gist of it is of passion, the itch’s more sanely-described, albeit identical twin; “the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

And then, this nugget. On death:

You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

His speech is so reassuringly fatalistic, so raw, and that line has close to epiphanic meaning. But I am still so afraid of not being able to “follow my heart,” to do what I love. I’ve had so many opportunities already at the ripe young age of fifteen to begin doing what I love and I still feel afraid I won’t be able to do it in the future. Sometimes I feel guilty to have those opportunities at the ripe young age of fifteen. I want to do great work so hard and I feel lucky to have found something that I love but it’s not easy to do great work for the thing that I love right now, or ever. I am absolutely terrified of the possibility that what I love to do might not be what I love to do in the future, even if that means doing great work for something else that I would then love to do. Even if what I love to do now is what I love to do in the future, what if that gamble—the gamble on the itch—is a bust?

Don’t you know you’re naked, Spooncer?

There’s a book by Studs Terkel called Working. I’ve never read it, but judging by Mandy Brown’s reading notes at A Working Library, I think it falls in line with this whole mess of livelihood and FOMO. From her marginalia:

I’m always struck by those who claim “creatives” are a different kind of people; as if some of us need creative jobs, while others do not. A bigger pile of bullshit I’m not sure I’ve seen. Being creative is a basic human need.

For me, reading this note was like looking down and realizing for the first time that I have been riding a moderately high horse. What makes us artistically crafty folk so special? Can’t you love to balance checks or save lives or be a janitor? Can’t you do what you believe is great work doing those things? This “creative itch” business is definitely real, but it’s not some sort of exclusive ailment catchable only by those of the making-things or fine arts flavor. If ninth grade health class taught me anything, it’s that every human needs to do great work. If Steve Jobs’ speech affirms anything from Working, it’s that every human needs to do great work. It’s just the “human itch”; some, less stoic, just feel it more outwardly than others. In other words, some, less stoic, just blog about it more than others.

Where does nakedness fit in there? (Funny, that’s the same question I imagine Rob Delaney asks himself daily/obsessive-compulsively.) Let us look to Brown’s blurb for Working:

Each of us wants to work and work hard, but so much of modern American life thwarts that simple need.

Ah. Thwarting. It’s more than a fun word to say. So much more.

But my particular fear of being thwarted has a particular, somehow more fortunate twist to it, as I’m sure that of many others’ does. I think I’m afraid of thwarting myself. Forget modern American life. I have me to fear. What if I lose faith? In Jobs’ terms, what if I “settle”? The fact that settling is even a conceivable course of action is reason enough in my mind to fear that it will happen. For the sake of mentioning nakedness one more time, and being consistently analogous, the fear of auto-thwarting makes me blind to my birthday suit.

It’s a cliché admission that life can shaft you like no other. As Steve said, so eloquently, in his speech, “sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.” But if you thwart yourself and settle, you’ll get hit in the head with a brick, and you won’t even have the love of your work to nurse your concussed, passionless self back to health. Or maybe you won’t even get the chance to get hit in the head by a brick. And that would be a life unlived. That would be missing out.

Thank you to Liam Finn for the record that helped inspire this post.

I love my fake family.

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:57:36 -0500

I love my fake family.

Great weekend.

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 18:09:01 -0500

Great weekend.

Pretty sure I made this last spring during the end of the school...

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 20:23:00 -0500

Pretty sure I made this last spring during the end of the school year. A little bit “you’re going to look at that in a significant number of years and make such a powerfully disgusted facial expression, it might get stuck that way,” but, what isn’t?

Jello and Juggernauts — Unknown Mortal Orchestra Just got...

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 19:56:04 -0500

Jello and Juggernauts — Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Just got Unknown Mortal Orchestra by Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Definitely going on the fave fall records list (Awesome Autumn Albums). Sounds like Avi Buffalo meets The Go! Team.