beautiful, funny, sad & true

Five years ago today, Elliott Smith died.

It was officially considered a suicide, but the possibility of ‘foul play’ was never really ruled out.  I’m here today to pay a small tribute to someone whose music has moved me more than almost any other.

Although he had been living in L.A. for many years, those of us from Portland will always consider him one of our own, because Portland plays a large part in his songs, and there are a multitude of locations and references to the time he spent living here.  He wrote very dark and honest songs, in a way that very few other people are brave enough to do.  He’s most famous, probably, for his music being featured prominently in the movie Goodwill Hunting, and that early-to-middle period of his songwriting is my favorite.

The album “XO” was the first one that I bought.  I heard the song Waltz #2 (XO) on the radio, but didn’t catch the name of the artist.  The next time I heard it was about a month later, in Seattle.  I was in the back seat of a car, riding around with two of my friends, and the song came on.  I said, “I love this song. . .turn it up; I need to know who this is.”  That afternoon, I drove straight to a record store in the University District and picked it up.  I will always remember driving around Seattle in my little green Toyota truck, with the windows down, listening to that CD.

Elliott recorded many of his early songs and albums at Jackpot! Studios here in Portland, and his piano was at the studio for years after he had moved away, but it has since been donated to the Experience Music Project museum in Seattle.  At the time he died, the band I was in (listen to the songs “Please Let Me”, “Shadow” and “Windows Down”) was in the process of recording our album at Jackpot, and all of the piano tracks were recorded on that piano.  It was a haunting and surreal honor to be playing it, even moreso in retrospect.

Here’s one of Elliott’s earliest songs, “The Biggest Lie”, the video for which was filmed the day after he died.  The location is the Solutions Wall in a neighborhood of L.A., which was the backdrop for Elliott’s album “Figure 8.”

Miss you, Elliott.  This planet isn’t quite the same without you on it.

OneYearAgo

Today is my birthday.

I’ve been so busy these last two weeks that I’m very far behind on blogging.  You’ll be glad to know that I have a ton to write about, but you may have to make do with a quick little entry like this, or a YouTube video, or something like that before I can start to deal with the backlog.  Tonight is the final play-reading group, tomorrow is a small (but fun) gig with IrishBand, and Friday night is a huge talent show/contest involving IrishBand and a bunch of the funniest and coolest acts in town.  We like our chances for winning, but the competition is so funny and unusual and entertaining that it doesn’t even matter, really.

And I still haven’t even written about the trip to Port Townsend yet.   There are lots of pictures and videos to come in that story.

And there was the contest that IrishBand was in LAST weekend, which we shouldn’t have even entered to begin with, but that’s another story; hopefully a funny one at that.

I’ll be back soon. . .

This is going to be one of those dreams that makes less and less sense as it goes along.  You’ve been warned.

* * * * *

I’m in Portland, and I’m hanging out with Justin and Lara, two musician friends who are also from Portland.  I’m driving the three of us to see the Dandy Warhols in a little tiny club that is in the upstairs of a weathered three-story house, above a tax place and a living space.  I have my huge cello case in the front seat, and Justin and Lara are sitting in the back seat.  I park the car outside a nearby house, and we run into a drummer friend (not anyone I know in real life) who lives in the building.  We talk for a while, and I ask him, “Is it okay if I bring my cello inside?”  He agrees, and I take the cello out of the front seat, put the seat back into its normal position, and shut the car door.  DrummerGuy unlocks the front door of the building and leads us upstairs into his apartment.

The apartment is a very clean old three-bedroom place with hardwood floors, a sofa and chair that are olive green and look extremely comfortable, and a large bookshelf filled with books and CD’s and various other things.  He shares the apartment with four other people, one of whom is a drummer too, because when we walk in, the door to the bedroom on the right is open, and the light is on, despite the fact that no one is home.  A set of drums is clearly visible in the middle of the room.  The guy leads us to the left, into his enormous room.  His drums are in the middle of the room, and he has about ten little tiny splash cymbals of different sizes.  I’ve never seen someone use so many (one or maybe two is what most people use) so I set my cello case down, grab a drum stick and start playing them all to find out what they sound like.  He says he’s thinking about selling some of them, and asks if I’m interested in buying one.  I say I might be.  Lara says she wants to get going, so she and Justin and I say our goodbyes to the drummer and go for a walk through the neighborhood.

The so-called neighborhood is really an insular collection of houses and tiny businesses.  [It’s similar to the real-life clump of houses and apartments in southwest Portland that is on the hillside across Interstate 405 from the university, and is only accessible from one street.]  We are a bit early for the show, so we step into a record store and look around for a while.  I walk to one of the corners of the room, to find that the room actually connects to a larger department store, so I walk through the small door and step into the store.

This appears to be an employees’ entrance or a fire escape route or something, since it puts me into the very back corner of the department store.  There are rugs and bath towels, and various home decorations on the shelves.  I’m taking a look around at the layout of the store, when someone calls me by my middle name.  I turn and see a man in his fifties pushing a sort of homemade wheelchair, which is a large, gray plastic milk crate on wheels.  It is stuffed with pillows and blankets, and there is a small, slightly deformed black and white cat who is propped up vertically, reclining on a pillow against the side of the crate.  The man gestures toward the cat, to let me know that the cat is the one who had spoken to me.  I walk over to where they are.

The cat repeats my middle name and says, “Do you remember me?  Andrew Fischer.  We were in middle school together.  I have Down’s Syndrome.”  [For the record, I did know someone by that name when I was in school, but he didn’t have Down’s Syndrome, and he most assuredly was not a talking cat.]  I tell him it’s good to meet him, but that I don’t remember him from school, and that to my knowledge, no one in my school had Down’s Syndrome.  He seems quite certain that he knows me, though, so I decide to stay.  He has a sweetness about him that is apparent from the first moment I meet him.  His wheeled crate is large enough for me to sit in, so I climb into it, facing him.  His blue cat eyes are extremely large, and one of them is quite misshapen, and looks very different than the other eye.  He has mucus dripping from a place on his forehead, and looks a bit grotesque.  It seems that movement is quite difficult for him.

He has a very clear speaking voice, and he asks how I’ve been, and what I’ve been up to “since middle school.”  He is particularly interested in hearing about my musical endeavors, and when I tell him that I’m with a couple of my musician friends to see the Dandy Warhols, he mistakenly assumes that I am a member of the band, and he gets very excited.  I ask how he’s been.  I forget his name and call him Ross by accident.  He gives me a strange look and says, “It’s Andrew.”  “Sorry,” I say uncomfortably, “I know someone named Ross, and it just slipped out.”  He smiles and says, “That’s okay.”  He starts to become tired, and I look at his caretaker and ask if I should leave.  The man doesn’t answer, but I can see that Andrew the cat is becoming very weary from the effort and excitement of a conversation.  His eyes are almost closed; poor little guy.  I tell him I’d love to have his address, and I reach into my shoulder bag for a pen and notepad.  I can’t find them, so I stand up and climb out of the crate.  His caretaker asks me something, and I find the notepad.  I turn back toward Andrew and say, uncharacteristically loudly, “Okay, buddy, lemme have your address.”  He had fallen asleep, and when I spoke so loudly, I startled him awake.  I lean in closer and say quietly, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry to scare you.  But I want your address so that we can write to each other.”  He smiles slightly, and says, “That’d be really nice,”  and then falls back asleep.  I turn to his caretaker, with the notebook open and the pen ready.

Lara and Justin return at that moment, and I introduce them to my new friends.  We all stand and look at the sleeping cat, and that’s when I wake up.

Saturday I got up early to drive to tiny little Welches, Oregon to see my friend Andrea play and to hang out with my recording friend Jim.  (He and I produced Andrea’s CD.)  Since she’s living in Europe now, we’ll take any chances we can get to hang out with her.  Jim and I talked over breakfast, and she arrived while we were finishing up.  Huge hugs all around.

She played her set and sounded awesome.  There were a few songs that were new to me.  One in particular (which I don’t remember the name of, but I do remember that it was in E minor!) was especially stellar.  At the end of her set, I stood up and clapped, and then motioned with my arms for everyone else to stand up and join me, and we all gave her a nice, big ovation.  It was a great way to welcome her home and send her off again, all at the same time.

Tonight she and I got together for dinner at Queen of Sheba, one of the better Ethiopian restaurants in town.  Portland is known for, among other things, being a very ‘white’ town (to put it kindly), but for some reason we have a plethora of Ethiopian restaurants here.  In fact, another new one just opened up recently, and it’s not even very far from where I live.  Must. . .investigate. . .

After we were done with dinner, she asked if we could drive down to EliteHippieCollege.  She had just finished reading a book called ‘Blue Like Jazz’, the author of which had gone to that college, and had written movingly about a park with a little bridge.  She wanted to find it.  I said, “Let’s go.”

We drove all over and found nothing until we went around to the back side of the campus, and sure enough, we came to a large, forested area, replete with two bridges.  We parked the car and walked across one of them, and found a slightly overgrown path to walk down along the pond at the bottom of the ravine.  We ended up here:

The picture quality isn’t the greatest because it was starting to get dark, which meant that my poor little camera was trying to compensate, and it was hard for me to hold it still while the shutter was open.  (Have I mentioned how much I want a better camera?  And a tripod?)  But the place was beautiful, the conversation was great, and the mosquitoes weren’t too bloodthirsty.

It really started to get dark quickly, so we headed back up the forested path.  We stopped under the bridge to take more pictures, and here’s the best one:

It was just. . .an excellent evening.  I don’t want to trivialize it any further by reducing it to mere language.

OneYearAgo

Friday night was a gig with Breanna and Justin down in Salem.  Every time we play there, we play at a place called the Blue Pepper, which is a brilliant little music venue/coffee shop/lounge/internet cafe/art gallery where we love to play.  I arrived with my cello at a little bit before seven o’clock, put the cello inside, and went outside to talk on the phone.  I didn’t see Justin or Breanna, but there were two guitars set up on stage, so I didn’t think much about it.  I went back out to make a quick phone call, and a guy with bleached blonde hair came out and said, “Is that a cello in the case?”

‘Yup.”

“Are you playing tonight?”

“Yeah, with Justin and Breanna.”

“That’s interesting, because I’M playing from seven til nine.”

“Oh really?”  I laughed.  “Looks like I have some phone calls to make, then.”  I called Justin and said, “I’m at the Blue Pepper.  Are we playing elsewhere this time?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “We’ll drive around and meet you, and show you where the place is.”

So we caravanned over to a cool new venue called The Space, which wasn’t open when we arrived.  Turned out we were almost an hour early, so Justin & Breanna got out their guitars and sat on the sidewalk to sing and play.  I called J, and we talked on the phone for about half an hour, then I walked over to eat (since JustBre had already eaten) at McMenamin’s.  I had a surprisingly awesome combination of salad, tater tots and red wine.  Incidentally, that seems to have been a good recipe for better-than-average cello playing, because I really felt like my playing was ‘on’ all night, which happens every once in a while.

Inside, the Space is what I imagine the love child would look like if the Blue Pepper and Seattle’s Sunset Tavern ever hooked up for a steamy night of forbidden passion.  The walls are painted red with white trim, there’s a cobalt blue curtain covering the window behind the stage area, and there are large, colorful paintings everywhere.

Insted of playing until nine like we normally do, we finished at almost eleven.  The three of us were invited to get taken out somewhere afterwards, but I’d come straight from work, and I had an early morning on Saturday (more to come about that later), so I decided to ‘peace out’ and drive back up to Portland.

Suffice it to say that at first the evening seemed like a bit of a disaster, but it ended up being really great.