Have you got a minute? Have you got a year?
Have you got an ear? Have you lost your sight?
Have you lost your strength, just to prove your might?
Do not pass me, just to slow down.
I can move right through you!
Do not pass me, just to slow down.
I have precision auto.
I see you way too slow, I see you in slow motion.
You've got muscles -- use them!
Do not hand me a chapter, do not hand me a story,
I will only lose them.
"Precision Auto" by Superchunk (1992)
Merge Records has played an important role in my musical life, an independent record label that represents the "indie" in my indie rock music interests better than any other label out there today. Merge is based in Durham, NC, and began as a label back in 1989, to distribute the records of Superchunk and Merge c0-founders Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance. So it is now the 20th anniversary of the label, and it's gotten much bigger over the past decade, having released two of the biggest albums in indie rock history -- Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane over the Sea (1998) and The Arcade Fire's Funeral (2004). Other bands under the Merge label have included Spoon, The Magnetic Fields, ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, The Clientele, Lambchop, Destroyer, M. Ward, Conor Oberst's solo work, Lou Barlow's solo work, Camera Obscura, Shout Out Louds, Caribou, and of course, Mac's two bands, Superchunk and Portastatic. It's been quite an impressive 20 years.
The label's first release was MRG001, a cassette album of a Mac and friends band called Bricks, and their debut album Wintersleep. After a slew of 7" singles by Superchunk and other Mac-related bands, the label released their first CD with MRG020, the Superchunk singles collection Tossing Seeds, in 1992. Portastatic's debut came on Merge in 1994, with I Hope Your Heart is Not Brittle (MRG051), while The Magnetic Fields' Charm of the Highway Strip (MRG055) was their first non-Mac band major CD release. It's interesting that The Magnetic Fields were the first big non-Superchunk band on the label, since their song "Born on a Train" off that album was a later favorite of The Arcade Fire's Win Butler and led directly to his signing with Merge (or so the story goes). Funeral (MRG255), in 2004, became the label's first album to chart in the Billboard top 200 and the band's followup Neon Bible scored a #2 debut on the chart in 2007 and soon became the label's biggest selling record. Their biggest selling record before that had been the indie rock touchstone In the Aeroplane over the Sea (MRG136), released on February 20, 1998.
Superchunk and The Arcade Fire are #6 and #13 on my list of all-time favorite bands, and Neutral Milk Hotel and Portastatic are #26 and #30, respectively. But the influence of the label on my life goes beyond my love of everything Mac and Laura have ever done. Back in the late '90s and into 2001, my interest in music was at a crossroads. The bands I'd grown up loving in high school and college were now all retired (The Smiths, New Order, Psychedelic Furs, Pixies, The Replacements) or turned into sad excuses of former greatness (R.E.M., U2). And the genre I'd once lived to listen to (alternative) had all but disappeared from the radio, replaced by hybrid rap-rock (Limp Bizkit) and cheap, unlistenable pseudo-"alternative" acts like Matchbox 20 and whatever Goo Goo Dolls had become. And that was on the supposed alternative or rock stations. Boy bands and hip hop dominated mainstream radio, but I was never into mainstream radio. My last bastion of independent music -- local NJ shore radio station FM106.3 -- went belly up around this time and I didn't think there would ever be new music for me to love anymore. In fact, most of the "new" music I listened to around this time were back catalog records of bands like Superchunk, whose early single releases like Hyper Enough (MRG089) and Driveway to Driveway (MRG069) became purchases of mine just to complete my catalog of every song they'd ever released. And with every Chunk album mailed to me from North Carolina came a small catalog of Merge's records, and in every catalog they highlighted Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane over the Sea, including the rave reviews that touted the album as a seminal musical moment. I eventually ordered it -- sight (or sound) unseen. I'd never heard a single chord from the band before. But I was desperate for new music at the time, and since FM106.3 had disappeared, there was nowhere for me to hear it. This was in March 2001. I hadn't yet gotten into the file sharing era of the Internet, and this was pre-music blog indie rock posting.
So of course, I fell in love with In the Aeroplane over the Sea as much as anyone and it's since become my #2 favorite album of all-time. In subsequent months, I searched for the rave reviews that Merge touted that I had come to agree with (I mean, really, "seminal" does not even begin to describe the experience of listening to this album the first few times -- it really is a historic undertaking). And I discovered Pitchforkmedia during that search. And then I discovered Modest Mouse. And Grandaddy. And Death Cab for Cutie. And Built to Spill (who I kind of knew before). And Bright Eyes. And Mogwai. And the rest as they say, is history. Wonderful, brilliant music was being created in the late '90s by bands on little, independent labels. It just wasn't getting played anywhere people could hear it. Thanks to Merge, I discovered Neutral Milk Hotel, and thanks to In the Aeroplane over the Sea, I discovered the full breadth of indie rock, a genre that has exploded in recent years thanks to the Internet and the blogs and the sorry ass state of mainstream "rock" -- which I have no idea what is even popular today. So thank you, Merge, and thanks for 20 wonderful years
For their 20th anniversary, the label has released a compilation album of covers titled SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records. It was released last Tuesday, under the radar (as Merge is wont to do), and it is absolutely brilliant. Below is the tracklisting, along with the original song artist -- all songs originally released on an album by Merge. Just look at the bands that recorded the covers (none of them Merge artists themselves). An amazing records. All proceeds for the limited collection go to charity.
| 1. Beautiful Things (Quasi)-- originally by The 3Ds (MRG043) |
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2. Precision Auto (Les Savy Fav)-- orginially by Superchunk (off On the Mouth, which was actually a Matador Records release, but went out of print and got re-released in 1999 as MRG170) |
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3. Plenty Is Never Enough (The Shins)-- originally by Tenemant Halls (MRG261, a spinoff of Merge band Rock-A-Teens) |
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4. Sleep All Summer (St. Vincent and The National)-- originally by Crooked Fingers off Dignity and Shame (MRG248) featuring Eric Bachmann of late great Merge artist Archers of Loaf |
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5. Complications (Broken Social Scene)-- originally by The Clean off Getaway (MRG188) |
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6. Like A Fool (Ryan Adams)-- originally by Superchunk off Foolish (MRG060) |
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7. Papa Was A Rodeo (Bright Eyes)-- originally by The Magnetic Fields off 69 Love Songs Part 2 (MRG167) |
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8. New Ways of Living (Lavender Diamond)-- originally by Destroyer off Notorious Lighting (MRG258) |
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9. King of Carrot Flowers Pt. Three (The Apples in Stereo)-- originally by Neutral Milk Hotel off In the Aeroplane over the Sea (MRG136) (Apples in Stereo were part of the Elephant 6 collective that NMH were also part of, but they were not a Merge band) |
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10. Cowboy On The Moon (Laura Cantrell)-- originally by Lambchop off I Hope You're Sitting Down (MRG070) |
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11. Santa Maria (Bill Callahan)-- originally by Versus off Afterglow (MRG156) |
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12. Through With People (Barbara Manning)-- originally by Portastatic off Bright Ideas (MRG263) |
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13. Drug Life (The Mountain Goats)-- originally by East River Pipe off What Are You On? (MRG271) |
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14. Don't Destroy This Night (The New Pornographers)-- originally by The Rock-A-Teens off Baby, A Little Rain Must Fall (MRG140) |
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15. Yeah! Oh, Yeah! (Tracey Thorn & Jens Lekman)-- originally by The Magnetic Fields off 69 Love Songs (disc 3) |
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16. My Noise (The Hive Dwellers)-- originally by Superchunk off Tossing Seeds (MRG020)-- the label's first CD release! |
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17. The Numbered Head (Ted Leo)-- originally by Robert Pollard (formerly of Guided by Voices) off From a Compound Eye (MRG272) |
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18. All You Little Suckers (Okkervil River)-- originally by East River Pipe off The Gasoline Age (MRG164) |
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19. Kicked In (Death Cab For Cutie)-- originally by Superchunk off Foolish (MRG060) |
| 20. Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) (Times New Viking) -- originally by The Arcade Fire off Funeral (MRG255) |
- Buy SCORE!
- Download Les Savy Fav - "Precision Auto (Superchunk)".mp3
- Download Superchunk - "Precision Auto".mp3
- Download The Apples in Stereo - "King of Carrot Flowers Pt. Three (Neutral Milk Hotel)".mp3
- Download Neutral Milk Hotel - "The King Of Carrot Flowers Parts 2 & 3".mp3
And here's some more of the originals...
- Merge Records SCORE! site
- Download Arcade Fire - "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)".mp3
- Download Superchunk - "My Noise".mp3
- Download Superchunk - "Like a Fool".mp3
- Download 3D - "Beautiful Things".mp3
- Download Portastatic - "Through with People".mp3
- Download Destroyer - "New Ways Of Living".mp3
- Download The Magnetic Fields - "Yeah! Oh, Yeah!".mp3
And while you're at the Merge website, checking out all the wonderful bands and records, be sure to check out two great current and future releases -- Superchunk's return from an 8-year hiatus with the wonderful Leaves in the Gutter EP, and a second album by Conor Oberst! (of Bright Eyes fame).
- Download Superchunk - "Misfits and Mistakes".mp3
- Download Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band - "Nikorette".mp3
And here's a bonus, unrelated Merge track -- another great cover, Calexico doing The Arcade Fire from the top-selling Merge record of all time (Neon Bible). You can buy the new Miroir Noir DVD about the making of the album at Merge.
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Posted by: acaiberrytrial.org | March 18, 2010 at 09:49 PM