Merge Records

MRG333BONUS | Release Date 2008

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Extended Liner Notes

Disc One Notes

1. Starter - listening to this compilation i think a lot of things, one of which is "why did it take me 10 years to get a bass?" but on this song i think the sparse thing actually works. definitely only had one mic at this point and probably recorded drums first by themselves (with no click track as you can tell -- i wouldn't have known how to create one and probably thought it was cheating anyway), and the distortion on the solo guitar sounds like the Bricks distortion sound i had become attached to, created by plugging the guitar into the amp and then going out from the back of the amp directly into the 4-track. this is the first song on the first portastatic release, so i put it first here, but after this there's no chronological bent to the tracklisting.

2. Sandals with White Sox - the heavy brown Casio was in full effect by this point...purchased at a thrift store in Greensboro, the drum machine and many of its sounds became staples of portastatic songs.

3. Oh My Sweet Carolina (ryan adams) - Gerard Cosloy recommended Heartbreaker to me and we were at Brownies and a band was playing so it was loud and i thought i mis-heard him...i thought the first couple Whiskeytown efforts were so slick, i wasn't sold, but Gerard did not misspeak and the album is a classic and this is my favorite song on it. i wanted Superchunk to cover "Come Pick Me Up" on our 2001 tour but we never learned it, so here's this number. i played the acoustic guitar and sang the track live while Zeke played the drums in the next room, i think this is first or second take with no rehearsal. because Zeke is a professional. Greg Humphrey lends his unique voice as well.

4. Lousy Penpal was recorded at Duck Kee for Brittle or Slow Note but didn't make the cut, possibly due to the awkward chorus and strange production.

5. A Cunning Latch - recent acoustic version of the song from Slow Note, recorded at our friend Tricia's house for a web thing called Wood Floor, i love Margaret's additions to the song in this setting.

6. Teenage Kicks - at the time it really did seem novel to take a punk song and turn it into a slow acoustic thing.

7. Too Trashed To Smoke - when Jim Wilbur first moved down from CT in 1990 to join Superchunk we spent many an evening just making shit up and recording it on the spot in my little house on McDade St. this song is a product of one such debauched evening, though the "Trashed" in the title describes a cigarette that had been "riding around in somebody's back pocket" and hence is all mangled and un-smokable. technically pre-Portastatic but i think this song is funny and have thought of it often since we recorded it even though i haven't listened to it in 15 years (until now).

8. Skinny Glasses Girl - never played this song live until around the Summer of the Shark tour in 2003 and when we finally did it seemed like a whole different song so we recorded the band version during the Autumn Got Dark sessions. the "Marilyn on a horse" line is a reference to watching some shitty VHS version of the movie The Misfits...

9. Trajectory - written and demoed in about an hour, the original demo is really distorted and good sounding so we tried to recreate that at Tiny Telephone and almost got there with Paulson during mixing...

10. Power Supply - written and recorded on the couch in our living room, it's basically about the grip of malaise following the 2004 election...amazing how much better a one-mic home recording done in 2004 sounds than the one-mic recordings from 94.

11. Josephine - b-side to the Naked Pilseners single on Matador, performed through the years by both Portastatic but also Superchunk as a "someone broke a string" song to fill some time...

12. Race You Home - though these songs aren't in any particular order (other than an order i thought most listenable) you can trace the time period of the song by the instruments that appear over the course of time, this song for instance featuring the nice round tones of a Korg Micro-synth found at a pawn shop in Indiana on the Foolish tour. i'm surprised i recorded a song with this much space in it.

13. Make You Up - previously unreleased, until i was going through all the old 4-track cassette masters for this album i had completely forgotten about this (and a bunch of other) song(s)...someone turn down the synth!

14. Your Own Cloud - possibly written and recorded the day that Kurt Cobain died, mainly just acoustic guitar and the "banjo" setting on the Casio, this appeared only on the LP version of Slow Note.

15. When Love Breaks Down - before i saw the light, i put in years of giving Jim Wilbur shit for having his favorite band be Prefab Sprout. this song rules, we had to straighten it out considerably just to play it, and ironically, Jim Wilbur does not play on it.

16. Portraits from Before the War - one of the odd instances where the lyrics came first and were written over the course of about two weeks, in the shower. each morning i'd think of a few more lines. also one of those songs that you think is definitely going to be "on the album" (Bright Ideas) but then it just comes out kinda weird and doesn't make it...it's not Jason Borger's fault, his piano is great here.

17. Gray Robins - more cod reggae from the bedroom, this is the first song i recorded using my reel-to-reel 8-track.. i've been told the organ is too loud on this song, it does take up a lot of space now that i think about it. i wish i had girl back-up singers on this number...the ghostly sample you hear occasionally is a de-tuned snip of a flute solo from an old jazz record.

18. Easily Aroused - humorous lyrics based on overheard conversations at the smokiest bar in Chapel Hill (at the time), Henry's, synths, backwards piano, amateur violin plucking and cod flamenco guitar solo equals one odd stew. perfect compilation fodder as it doesn't have to fit in with any other songs.

19. Guessing - from the second single for Tom Scharpling's 18 Wheeler Records; apparently the pressing was bad and distorted sounding, but who could tell?

20. Little Fern - not intended as a demo for the album version, this was originally the main version until we decided to amp it up for Bright Ideas. possibly the only Portastatic song featuring an Mbira.

21. All I Need Is You - i'm a big Sandy Denny fan but was unaware of her album with the Strawbs until i heard this on the radio one day and sought it out, what a great song. could only approximate the harmony arrangements they had going on.

22. You Love to Fail - i'll take any excuse to record a Magnetic Fields song and a split 7" that comes with a Japanese fanzine is the best excuse of all. the distortion is partially what happens when you put everything through a tape delay, but also a result of this track being taken from the vinyl itself as no other copy existed...


Disc Two Notes

1. Some Small History - recorded for the Merge 15-yr comp, i did it in the manner of most of Summer of the Shark: recording bass and drums to the 8-track reel-to-reel, then dumping that into the 16-track digital to add rest of the stuff...sitting out back at the Orange County Social Club one night after the last night of the Merge 15-year celebration, Kurt Wagner said of this track "that song on the compilation is really good, if only someone else were singing it..." or something to that effect! i think it was a compliment.

2. San Andreas Crouch - the first, scrappy 4-track iteration of this song. we played it live after this and it was fun rocking it out, so we re-recorded it for Slow Note. when i went back to mix this version down from the original 4-track cassette, i discovered it has a weird bridge i had completely forgotten about and that we never played in the live version.

3. Not the Same - the mid-90's were a prolific time for me and my 4-track; 7" vinyl was alive and well and there were lots of compilations and split 7"'s that needed songs, and i was happy to record them. turns out recording the vocals directly through the Space Echo does not mask irregularities in the vocals.

4. And I Was a Boy from School - Hot Chip was so hyped that i put off listening for a long time until i did and loved The Warning, maybe my favorite record that year...New Order is no more but i feel like Hot Chip manages to capture some of that magic, and Boy From School is a great song.

5. Spying on the Spys - in its original acoustic incarnation it's a bit thin compared to the orchestrated Nature of Sap version but i still like the idea of a 7" with two acoustic songs on it, even if the b-side (Do You Want To Buy a Bridge) is slightly juvenile and embarrassing -- emo even -- and hence didn't make the cut on this comp. We couldn't find a DAT of this and rather than try to re-mix it, took it from the vinyl for that authentic experience....

6. Too Close to the Screen - recorded for the Trash Heap fanzine put out by Andrew Kuo (now you may know him from such fanzines as The New York Times), it's got a lot of my favorite things about making Portastatic records -- putting drum machines through distortion and effects boxes, casio organ sounds, the "Voice" setting on the Korg Micro-preset synth, not to mention the fake Tuba solo at the end.

7. Weighted Raft - something about "Sign me up for Summer!"...speaking of distortion, it's cranked up a bit on this song, i think everything went through the Boss DS-1 orange distortion pedal, including the Casio "mandolin" sound. i would play songs like this live if they could ever sound as raw as this, but they don't.

8. Dragging a Crow - a shambling little epic about watching a dog drag a dead crow through the field across the street from Laura Ballance's house, this is was the b-side to the first single on 18 Wheeler.

9. Soft Fruit - i wish i could play reggae but i can't, so the bassline here is as close as it gets for us. i thought i would eventually re-write and re-record this but typically never did.

10. I Wanna Know Girls - the demo of this song, which was the last one written for the Bright Ideas album. sometimes if you de-tune your guitar it gives you new ideas and that's what i did here. i had the first line already in a notebook and then the music and the rest of the words were written and recorded in about 2 hours, and that's the version here. i didn't think the bridge would need words! but later it got some.

11. Feel Better - distorted notes to self on shaving your head, destroying things, sanding off your fingerprints, etc...apparently in a mood to start over.

12. Useless Switch - when i sent this off to Scott at Speed Kills i remember him saying "i was really worried when i heard the first few seconds..." of course then it settles into a more relaxed situation, achieving a balance between melody and distortion that a lot of these older recordings do not manage.

13. Had - i had a memory of recording this version of Had but couldn't find it until we started digging through boxes for this compilation. then i was convinced that it was already released somewhere, but if it was i can't find it so here you go. features the live band of a certain era - Jennifer Walker (now Barwick) (synth), Claire Ashby (drums), Ash Bowie (guitar), and sometimes Ben Barwick and Jon Wurster (though not on this track i don't think)...an all-star lineup as far as i was concerned.

14. Secret Session - i think it remained secret, as this record came out on a tiny label from New Zealand in a pressing of 3, or 300, or something. non-judicious use of the pitch knob on the Tascam here.

15. Tugboat - this Galaxie 500 song is so classic, when we were asked to do a song for a tribute album i couldn't believe it wasn't taken already, i guess we got lucky. we also recorded it in an unusual fashion for us - live, in the studio, including the vocals, which due to my inaccuracy are almost never done live. the lineup was me on organ and synth, matthew on drums, ben on guitar and jen on bass. we had been doing this live and somehow got it together for this performance. the song is so simple and perfect it lends itself to jamming, for better or worse....

16. Codes Runes Dunes - a song about the inscrutable and ancient ways of the residents of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and about the invasion of trespassers from the mainland via a bridge they built to Hatteras back in 1964.

18. Firefly - one of my favorite AMC songs, again it's kind of a blessing and a curse to get your favorite song for a tribute comp because there's no way to better the original. then again it's hard to ruin a perfect song...so i thinned it out and went lightly electro with it, still leaving room for some guitar solos of course. when in doubt, stop singing and play a solo.

19. La Pelicula is so titled because it's instrumental and sounds like an odd film soundtrack, i think. i can't remember but my brother or Ben Barwick came up with that name and i think we wrote this song all together at practice.

20. Look, Honey, Peaches - on the way to the coast you see lots of hand- painted signs for fruit stands selling corn, tomatoes, peaches, honey, boiled peanuts, lots of good things. but growing up i always thought the signs were funnier than that, and that they meant "Look, honey: peaches!" as though that's what one person in a passing car would be saying to the other person in the car.

21. Replacement Parts - this song was written and recorded for the I Hope Your Heart is Not Brittle but never made it to the record. then it was listed as a bonus track on the Japanese version, but it wasn't actually this song! So here it is, for real.

22. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue - we've covered other dylan songs, but something about this song, perhaps the line "strike another match, go start anew", particularly resonated after the 2004 election. i recorded it solo and then it only took us 4 years to learn how to play it live, which we did recently. it's got a lot of words. so do these notes. that's all for now!


Disc Three Notes

1.Slant Roof - i used to crank out lots of little instrumentals like  this on this old Gretsch New Yorker hollow-body, with a little casio thrown in for good measure. this and Flat Roof were made to bookend  the "Hello" CD series EP that i did....Laura Cantrell's CD in that series was really good.

2.Weed Hopper - from the same lineup that brought you such oddities  as "La Pelicula", this is a new wave number that features Ben Barwick (of Ashley Stove fame) on vocals and guitar. i'm playing the Farfisa.  what's it about? mowing the lawn? soccer? i can't tell!

3.A Faithless Auld Lang Syne - first appeared on the Looking for a  Power Supply EP that came out in Spain, i always forget about the  horn part until it arrives somewhat shakily halfway through. recorded  in a little office above the Orange County Social Club in Carrboro, NC.

4.Books for Any Occasion - a Jim Wilbur-penned number recorded  probably 1990. i'm playing percussion and noodling on the lead  guitar. great
lyrics!

5.Clean Barrell - you can hear the end of some other forgotten  number as this one starts...probably supposed to be a noise rocker  but it never quite achieves full momentum in that direction.

6.Following Footprints - there was a cassette label in Richmond, VA  called Tenderette, this recording of one of my favorite Honor Role songs was for them. the original riff as played by Pen Rollings  kills, as does Bob Schick's delivery, though you'd never know it from  this version.

7.Echoes Myron - a jangly version of one of my favorite GBV songs,  complete with harmonies sung slightly out of my range and the odd  synth line.

8.Duck 96 - an instrumental recorded during the Nature of Sap  sessions at Duck Kee Studios (by this time relocated from Raleigh to  Mebane, NC)...features a song-long timbale solo from Matt McCaughan  and absolutely no vocals.  there were going to be vocals originally,  i just couldn't figure out where to put them, which left me with a  really long instrumental.

9.Peace, Love, and Understanding - this is what Bricks would have  sounded like covering this song, in fact i'm not entirely sure that  Andy Webster wasn't around when we did this at my house. i think it's  mostly me and Wilbur (on percussion). i had the pleasure of seeing  Nick Lowe play a lovely solo version of this recently.

10.Jetlag - a Jim Wilbur song from the same era as "Too Trashed to  Smoke", actual drums played by me i think, it's about what it sounds like, Jim getting sick on whiskey at his brother's wedding, though  it's probably also about so much more.

11.Flat Roof - the companion to Slant Roof. love that Casio kick drum.