Chit-Chat Check-In #161 Transcript
Hello, this is your Captain speaking. I have a Swell Maps song to share with you. If you’re not familiar, it’s a band from the late 70’s and early 80’s—I think the last record was in 80, maybe. The most famous members would be Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks, who went on to make a lot of records. Solo records. But everybody in Swell Maps, I think there were six people, made a lot of music. And continue to make music. Including a brand-new Swell Maps record, I think, came out in April with at least one of the original members. And some other people who have a pedigree of English punk rock bands. Members of Television Personalities and stuff like that.
I was really skeptical about that record, because to me the ... I always thought the heart and soul of the band was Nikki Sudden and his brother Epic Soundtracks. But it’s pretty interesting. I don’t know if I’d put it on par with the early records, but I don’t know if that’s fair to weigh it against the early records. I enjoyed it and you should check it out. It’s called Swell Maps C21.
That record coming out and listening to it made me think about Nikki. And how I actually got to meet Nikki and become friends with him. He was on the same label when he was in the solo phase of his career as Uncle Tupelo was signed to, originally. Or least a part of the same family of labels from Dutch East India. Our A&R person was friends with him, she introduced him to us. He would come to see us play, he would see Wilco play. He lived in Berlin. He was what you would call a gentleman junkie. Very dapper, very ... more velvet and ruffled shirts ... he never stopped dressing like a rock star. And he was a rock star, even if you’ve never heard of him. Kind of like the best rock stars, in my opinion, are the true believers that, I don’t know, get themselves put together for the sheer joy of inventing themselves.
So I sang on one of his solo records, and played a little harmonica and some other stuff, on a record called Red Brocade. It came out, I don’t know, a pretty long time ago. Nikki is no longer with us, neither is his brother Epic Soundtracks. Which is often the case with gentleman junkies who succumb to their—I would call it an illness. Succumb to their addiction. They left behind a lot of inspiring music and, umm, just such a sweet person. He was always really friendly and supportive and I felt very validated to have someone who made so much music that I really admired. He made really great records with Jacobites, also. Check those out.
But anyway, I’m in a hotel room and I have a little practice amp. And I started thinking about one of my favorite singles of all time, by Swell Maps, called “Let’s Build a Car.” I think you should check the original out because I just took it as a challenge to see if I could get anywhere near the excitement of that record with just my phone and a little practice amp. Because I think that’s kind of the spirit of the original recordings, to me, and maybe the original spirit of punk rock, is being thrown in the deep end of the pool or something ... make a record without having any gear, or musical ability, you know. Basically, using your imagination, your creativity, to come up with something.
So for me, it’s not the creativity of making the song or the original recording, but to deal with the limitations of what I have in front of me and try to make that song happen in an exciting way for me. Which I kind of did. It’s worth sharing, I thought, just because I think that’s a good way to remind yourself of the notion that almost anything can be a record. And almost anything can be a song. And the Swell Maps records are some of the best examples of that, in my opinion. It’s like those cooking shows where they give you a table full of weird ingredients and tell you to make something. And there’s a liberated positivity to that. It’s always felt that way to me, that that seems right. That seems like the right way to look at it. You shouldn’t necessarily weigh yourself against other things and whether you can recreate something that someone else has made. Which is an odd thing to say, considering what I just did.
Anyway, I just think it’s a cool song. And I wanted to say that I miss my friend Nikki. It’s not like we were super close, but I have really, really warm feelings when I think about him.
“Let’s Build a Car.” It kind of seems like that’s almost like the point. You have all of the stuff to build a car in front of you. So you write a song.
Carry on.