Comments on: SWINGING MODERN SOUNDS: On Being Unprofessional

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:11:07 +0000

Hey there–just stumbled on this while googling Tim Bracy to see if he had come up for air anywhere yet. I do this every couple of months when I’m bored and listening to The Mendoza Line. Apparently Collection Agency played a show at Cake Shop in NYC a couple weeks ago where they were the last band billed for an 8 dollar show. The other three bands were mentioned in the TimeOut blurb, but Bracy was not, which is just sad as fuck.

“30-Year Low” came out the year I turned thirty and went through one of those gradual erosion breakups, so it was certainly the right album for me at the right time. But I still think that it is, objectively, a jaw-dropper. Most friends on whom I push it really like it. It goes 15 rounds with “Shoot Out the Lights” and probably loses on a close split decision.

Ever since I stumbled on “Doug Yule” a few months back, it has become my favorite song of the past year or two. You don’t even quote my favorite lines: “I’ve rehearsed and rehearsed but my life was a curse,/ I’ve been driven away in an engineless hearse/ I’ve made things that were merely awful much much much much worse.” The “Mingus Dynasty” line is also great. Holy shit I love this song.

Anyway, sorry for all this three-month late gushing, but I’m a Mendoza Line fan out in rural Missouri and it is exciting to find that someone out there heard this stuff and thought it was as sad and beautiful as I did. And I really do hope that the intimated Collection Agency album comes to pass, and I hope they tour within, oh, 500 miles or so of where I live. Hopefully it isn’t quite so dire a situation as you suggest, Rick (Mr. Moody?), and he’s just taking his time to get it right.

By: Rick Moody

Rick Moody — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:33:23 +0000

Rose, thanks for the note, and I don’t forget Pete, whose songs I admire a lot, in fact. But for the purposes of this post I was trying principally to deal with Tim and with the Tim-n-Shannon period of the band, but you are absolutely right. Pete more than deserves his own post, and perhaps some day I will get to it. And Jon: Bracy himself, in responding to this, has indicated that he admires “I’m On Fire,” so that’s where you get with interpretation. Myself, I resist “Tougher Than The Rest,” but I do appreciate the Mendoza cover. And Doc: I agree with everything you say. Especially “reverb-drenched.” I blame Kramer for some of that. Kids hiding behind the effects pedals, or lysergic nonsense lyrics, or too much sampling. Life is short, and if can’t change it, you should, as Mike Chapman once said: “Fuck off and go chop meat somewhere.”

By: Jon berry

Jon berry — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:30:58 +0000

So I loved the blog, went out and bought “30 Year Low” and they do a Bruce Springsteen Cover of “Tougher than the Rest”.

By: Rose

Rose — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:03:48 +0000

Don’t forget that Pete Hoffman wrote a lot of the Mendoza Line songs too, and in fact, he and Bracy were really the primary songwriters in the first years of the band.

By: Doc Holiday Inn

Doc Holiday Inn — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:17:02 +0000

You took the words out of my mouth re: Bracy, and this was damn good to read. It’s a sad state of affairs that such an obvious talent can be so overlooked. Easly one of the best writers of his generation, could have easily contended with the Costellos, Westerbergs, and Hitchcocks if he’d been born 15 years sooner. And now, with the myopic post-Pitchfork generation clinging so tenaciously to the shallow, twee adornments of talentless, joyless, reverb-addicted charlatans, he has even less of a chance at owning his own island off the spoils of record and ticket sales, which is an absolute shame. Even his good reviews damn him with faint praise – ‘consistently overlooked,’ etc. When he’s 65, some douchebag with an over the shoulder bag and a lilting way of speaking that renders everything a question will come and try to ‘reissue’ and anthologize Tim’s work, and I certainly hope at that time Tim’s response is to release the hounds.

By: Rick Moody

Rick Moody — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:39:29 +0000

Uh, I think I did say THE WILD, THE INNOCENT, AND THE E STREET SHUFFLE was a masterpiece, right? I mean, I know it’s a long post and everything, but if you read down a little further, you might have got to that graph. I love the first four albums, THE WILD, THE INNOCENT best of these, and after that I like much of Nebraska, and I like the song “The River.” After that, excepting the song “Born In the USA,” and maybe that unreleased song “Seeds” and the single of Waits’s “Jersey Girl,” I like very little, TOM JOAD included. After that, it is all “Dancer In the Dark” to me. But this is an interpretation of the truth, you know? Not the truth itself.

P.S. Sorry for typos everyone! This is not being turned out on my usual leisurely production schedule!

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:17:35 +0000

Hmmmm. Yes, “I’m On Fire” was shallow, aimed at MTV, which sucked in most of the icons (see “Dancing in the Streets” featuring Bowie and Jagger). And I must beg to differ that “Born in the USA” is among Springsteen’s best compositions. That tune, like the aforementioned, was tailored for the masses. Bruce even transformed his body back then, pumping up to look better dancing with Courtenay Cox in the video version of “Dancing in the Dark.” He was very much a poet of spectacular verse well before that, penning beautiful, dreamlike stuff like “Spirit in the Night,” “The Angel,” “10th Avenue Freezeout,” “For You,” and “Blinded by the Light.” He did ultimately rebound, coming back down to earth, and breaking from the Hollywood wife. “The Ghost of Tom Joad” was a return to a more introspective Springsteen, when he is at his creative best.