boy's got space, girl's got time
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Album:Stull
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I was a freelancing bum when I started Mogging and have long since waited to resume posting long and nerdy again. Here's me and a warmup.
In the music magazine of heaven, Steve Albini and Butch Vig share a glossy spread for entitling a single rock band that entitled a full decade in rock history. In the fringes, you should find Mark Kramer. He elevated the grayscale newsprint with defining moments you seldom read of (pre-internet), prefixing the Nineties - post, anti, proto, and all that hyphen - across avant-garde, alternative rock, dream pop, slowcore. Not that this eclipses Albini's and Vig's other feats as, you'll see, they never left the picture.
^ Kramer, no versus
For a bit of back story, Kramer had his start in producing music in the early Eighties for Shockabilly, in which he played bass and the organ. By the decade's turn, he owned Noise New York and Noise New Jersey, and then Shimmy Disc that he later sold to Knitting Factory. Shimmy introduced America to Boredoms. With Ann Magnuson in '85, he founded Bongwater.
King Missile, New York. John S. Hall was the mouth that launched the missile, and Kramer was the biz around the mouth. Hall took off with guitarist Dogbowl as King Missile (Dog Fly Religion) and, after Dogbowl left, Hall got replacement Dave Rick from Bongwater, who got multi-instrumentalist Chris Xefos, and altogether they reincarnated King Missile (minus the parenthetical). Kramer produced all the albums, for Shimmy. He foreshadowed post-folk in the debut Mystical Shit, with minor hit Jesus Was Way Cool scoring the band a stint with Atlantic, and next in Happy Hour, with MTV hit Detachable Penis.
Urge Overkill, Chicago. What happened, you ask? Urge Overkill perhaps never did but its producers made it like so. Nash Kato's roommate, Steve Albini, gave the debut EP Strange, I... and debut album Jesus Urge Superstar their noise rock, and Butch Vig gave the follow-up Americruiser its punk on the way to alternative rock. In the Stull EP for Touch and Go, Kramer gave rock more atmosphere than arena, and mega-spawned the Neil Diamond cover Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon. Score! Geffen came knocking. The rest was history that, long after these producers and Pulp Fiction have left the building, ended unfortunately.
Ergo, A: Rock be airy with Kramer's hand in production for King Missile's and Urge Overkill's categorically hugest charters, moving both to a major label, for better or worse.
^ King Missile - Martin Scorsese
Galaxie 500, Cambridge, Massachussets. The dreamsome threesome had help in making music to space out to. While Harvard students, they sent out a three-song demo to Shimmy, which got them a signing and all their three studio albums produced by Kramer. His vision of depth of sound circa post-punk was nowhere more realized than there: Today, for Aurora, On Fire and This Is Our Music, for Rough Trade. Kramer, whose name is most attached to Galaxie 500, also provided live sound production for every show the band ever did.
Low, Duluth, Minnesota. Kramer is credited for discovering this duo and a bassist who waxed sad and slow before it had a name. For the Virgin imprint Vernon Yard, he reprised post-folk atmospherics in the debut I Could Live in Hope, with its light-as-drizzle cover of You Are My Sunshine, and the sophomore Long Division. Low's succeeding records sounded noticeably less "created in a huge, empty room" sans Kramer. As an aside, the equally glorious Things We Lost in the Fire was produced for Kranky in 2001 by Albini.
Ergo, B: Spacey meant a world of difference between Galaxie 500 and Luna, and Low's albums, with and without Kramer's handle in production.
To end, the above four bands and moments benefitted from a distinct air-to-breathe sound that, indicating Kramer knew what he was doing, could best be called shimmy (as in understatedly shimmery, to my ears).
Comments (15)
King Missile side notes: Kramer produced for B.A.L.L. and Phantom Tollbooth, both bands including Rick; When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water, including Xefos; and Hall's first solo album, Real Men, in which he also played. He performed with Dogbowl as Dogbowl & Kramer.
Kramer of course records solo and also played in Butthole Surfers, Half Japanese, Ween, and with John Zorn, among others.
Low - Slide (from I Could Live in Hope)
and for the perfect ending...
Galaxie 500 - Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste (Jonathan Richman cover) (audio only)
I was a bit informed about Kramer, but really had no idea how much influence he had in early-90's indie rock. Fantastic, well-researched piece here, Ilay. Merci beaucoup! :)
Really, I had no idea about this man Kramer, you rock historian you. Amazing post ilay, thank you. I've only read the first half & will come back later to finish the rest. Interesting stuff. . . .
If that's a warm-up, I'm just gonna turnoff the heat for the winter right now. At least you touch on a few points of familiarity, so my head doesn't just spin off. Too cool.
Side note: I have not been able to listen to red buttons at work for over a year now. I was showing a buddy how to navigate around mog, and yours was the first "mogs only" post to pop up. My friend was able to play the red button, and now so am I, but I get a virus warning everytime I click a youtube vid now. ahhh, technology...
First time hearing Urge Overkill...good stuff!! Now I have to go check out some of their othert stuff...thanks poe!
Great music and greater post. Thanks.
I may not always comment, but I always find your posts interesting.
Wow One of the treaures in my collect is Shockabilly Heaven, which I found due to my fondness for Eugene Chadbourne. Kramer wrote a fair piece of that album and one track "Tau & The Soldier", is in my top twenty songs ever. You have jarred my memory Illay, and once again proved your value as a friend, observer & reviewer.
BTW; "Instant Karma" is worth the price of the album. You've not heard the like before.
I can't remember the name of it, but there's an album out there under the name "John S Hall and Kramer" that gave me endless hours of fun during college.
excellent read.
August nailed it, "rock historian", indeed. You'd be the marvel of that field.
Very impressive, poe! Thank you for gathering this info and sharing it with us. Knowledge is gold, so you made me a very rich girl today :)
hi, everyone. the thing is my internet's been down for two days, since just shortly after this post, actually, and shows no signs of getting fixed soon enough. so i'm in a WiFi zone with my Mac and, as soon as the cafe crew start acting like i'm overstaying, well, i'll have to go. anyhoo, on to the comments.
Dale and August, i thought Kramer's a dude you two would dig. i listened repeatedly to the above bands' albums he produced, before writing this post, and i really hear the "huge, empty room" airiness compared to the ones of theirs he didn't produce.
Scott, someone hates you in that office. on another side note (this post of full of side notes!), i did not realise until today that YouTube's embedded-video interface now comes with a search field. which means nothing to me for now.
GarageRock, that's great, do try to start with all the pre-major label stuff, from Strange, I... to Stull. their work with Geffen (last 2 or 3 albums) kind of remind me of when Spoon went major label with A Series of Sneaks and just got disoriented for a while there.
levek and Pat, Kramer's proggy avant-garde solo work under John Zorn's Tzadik label might interest you. the Wiki entry on him would actually be a good starting point. it also includes his work with Penn & Teller, Penn Jillette, Second-Shimmy, et cetera.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kramer
Chuck, you may be referring to Hall's solo album Real Men, where "John S. Hall & Kramer" were credited as the artists. Kramer is among the producers who, being a musician himself, like to play in his produced artists' albums.
Jeff, that's awesome, yo! Eugene Chadbourne is another fella that should have a MOG post all about himself, if there isn't one already.
while familiar with some songs, i don't own any Shockabilly album myself. i'll get with it when my internet's fixed. hope you can post some Shockabilly one of these days.
Anna, aw i'll take it, i have alternate universe dreams of being a historian, although, lordie, what a timesuck that would be.
btw, i forgot to mention that Kramer really encouraged Damon and Naomi to get back to recording, and produced their first two albums, maybe others but i didn't check.
NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERD!
(Oh, all right, Super penpics and killer song choice. But I'm still taking your lunch money.)
hahahah. sooooooooooooooooowhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat??? ;d