Every Band Is a Miracle

Celebrating Steve Albini with a Magnolia Electric Co. cover + "Forever Paradise" by the Undertones

Chit-Chat Check-In #93 • Transcript

Hello, this is your Captain speaking. I have returned to the helm. And I just wanted to say thanks for being patient. I didn’t put anything up last week, so this week, I’ve decided to share a couple of songs. One that I wrote about in my most recent book, with the text included below.

And the second one is a song I was reminded of by some friends playing it at Steve Albini’s memorial this past weekend, a song by Jason Molina recorded under the name Magnolia Electric Co. Jason is also no longer with us. And whenever one of his beautiful songs comes up, I think about how much I wish I had been able to offer him my full embrace when I had the chance. Listen above and below for more.

OxO—Jeffy

P.S. In the spirit of Steve, these songs are not behind a paywall. If you have cash burning a hole in your pocket, Heather, to whom Steve was married and devoted, produces Letters to Santa for Poverty Alleviation Chicago which helps families facing urgent financial hardship. You can donate here.

Photo by Sammy Tweedy.

This Week in Wilco, Etc.

2023 / August 1: “Evicted,” the first single from Wilco’s 13^th studio album, Cousin, is released.

1997 / August 2: Wilco plays a 10-song set at Molson Park in Barrie, Ontario, Canada as part of the Another Roadside Attraction Tour. Also on the bill: The Tragically Hip, Sheryl Crow,  Ron Sexsmith, and Los Lobos.

1992 / August 3: The Uncle Tupelo album March 16-20, 1992 is released on Rockville Records.

Forever Paradise (The Undertones cover)

In the late seventies the Undertones were thought of as the Irish Ramones. Checks out. Their members came from places with names like Bogside and Creggan. They formed in Derry. And if you’ve ever listened to their first record, you know the Ramones inspiration is an undeniable shoe that fits. They were a great band. Bright, tuneful three-chord punk rock. Catchy melodies. Nowhere near as lyrically demented as their New York counterparts, but still in the general ballpark of the Ramones.

A lot of classic angsty pop subject matter. Boy/girl troubles. Girl/boy/other boy troubles. Not much about “the Troubles” troubles, but who can blame them for craving a little escape. It was energetic kid stuff. Wildly effective, simple broken-heart cures in the form of two-minute-thirty-second blasts of bummed-out joy. They had the hooks for hits too. In the UK they got on the charts with their first single, “Teenage Kicks.” It didn’t go to number one, but legendary BBC DJ John Peel did claim it was his all-time favorite song. They did crack the top ten in the UK with a single off of their second record, the utterly charming “My Perfect Cousin.”

In the States nothing ever really got going for them. I knew about them because I used to read the imported British rock tabloids (NME, Melody Maker, Sounds) cover to cover at my local record store. Occasionally, I’d buy an issue just to re-up the record clerks’ tolerance of my loitering. The music press in the UK was incredibly fickle. They fully embraced the role of tabloid journalism. The pressure to sell a new issue every week—find new bands, create new sensations, generate fashion crazes—made them insane. They made it sound like the British bands were reinventing the concept of music hourly.

At some point I figured out the fever pitch of excitement surrounding every new band they championed was a bit of a scam. I think it was reading a headline calling the band Haircut 100 “exciting” with a cover photo of six guys with cable-knit sweaters tied over their shoulders, James Spader-style, that finally allowed the penny to drop on what was really going on with these mags.

But once again, I have to acknowledge the good with the bad. Because the Undertones went on to make one of my favorite albums of all time. These sleazy rags with their questionable motives hipped me to the Undertones. And by the time they were no longer the hot new band gracing their covers, I happened to still care about them enough to buy their third album, Positive Touch. I also liked their second album, Hypnotised. Similar to their first lyrically, but musically searching and hinting at a sophistication far beyond the three-chord structures of their debut. But nothing could have prepared me for the quantum leap that Positive Touch represented when it came out in 1981.

Positive Touch has been my constant companion since then, even though it quickly disappeared from even the UK charts, never mind never making the US charts. I can think of no other pop record quite like it. I’m always inspired by the inventiveness of its arrangements. Bands are human-scale miracles. Any band that sounds good playing together has created magic. But when a band throws away a formula as sturdy and true as the one the Undertones were so good at, and believes in themselves and each other enough to find a way to sound like only themselves—to create a music that only exists because they looked for it somewhere inside of themselves—knowing that there’s a record they want to hear and that the only way they’ll ever get to hear it is to make it themselves . . . Well, that’s a miracle made of miracles.

“Forever Paradise” is the last song on side two. The preferred last song of the evening on school nights. It’s a bit eerie. Piano notes sleepwalking into the mist. Beautiful androgynous vocal. Fractures into an extended backward sound collage that puts itself back together for the last chorus:

Forever and ever

Forever and ever

Forever and ever

Forever and ever

Paradise

My dreams often play this song in the background.

At a time in my life when everything felt like forever but not much resembled paradise, this song was a comfort. And falling asleep to it was as perfectly content as I ever got in those days.

Doing Something Wrong (Magnolia Electric Co. cover)