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I remember the precise moment when my perspective on music changed forever. It was March 25th, 1994 at the Palladium in Toronto. I would hazard to guess that it was in the neighbourhood of 9:30 p.m. Codeine was opening for Pavement on select dates of the Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain tour and the Sub Pop band's masterwork, The White Birch, was still two weeks away from release. I had heard of the band, but I had never actually heard them. They opened their set with "Loss Leader", and a few moments later, during a roar of distortion, the crashing of drums and brown-out within the venue caused by the sheer volume that announced the song's chorus, my interest in music and my ideas about what it could do became expansive.
To celebrate Thrill Jockey's tenth anniversary and one-hundredth release, label-head Bettina Richards set out to document and archive precisely this sort of remembrance by approaching the artists on her roster, their colleagues, and a rich network of musicians, writers, engineers, filmmakers and genuine alt-celebrities. The aim: to have these individuals share a personal moment about a defining musical moment of inspiration. Needless to say, the project grew immeasurably in its scope and when all was said and done, filmmaker Braden King (Dutch Harbour, the forthcoming 1000 Miles: Dirty Three Live) has produced a five hour-plus collection of interviews that touches on every aspect of being a fan of music and art. The all-star cast of 112 is too large to name here but especially noteworthy is the participation of Björk, filmmaker Jem Cohen, Touch & Go's Corey Rusk, Ian MacKaye, Lambchop's Kurt Wagner, Mudhoney's Mark Arm, Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan, Mouse on Mars's Jan St. Werner, and Boredoms' Yoshimi (who explains that his favourite album is comprised entirely of test tones).
A unique menu interface allows viewers to watch the five hour collection in its entirety or to select collections of interviews organized by artist, the instrument they play, and the theme or object (i.e. record album, film) of the inspirational moment. Shooting on digital video (occasionally in less than ideal locations), King does his best to keep the footage interesting with digital effects and creative sound-image relationships. John McEntire, for example, is allowed to deliver his remembrance through a vocal effect that makes his comments barely intelligible, while Casey Rice's final thoughts are diced-up and re-delivered in a mashed-up form that references the audio editing suite he sits alongside. Ian MacKaye, standing on the lawn outside of his high school, tells us about his first hardcore show. Yo La Tengo's James MacNew explains how the hefty Minutemen made him realize that chubby guys could rock too, and Steve Albini explains what it was like to be a Ramones fan in Montana. Needless to say, Thurston Moore's story about an early Suicide shows establishes that he was in attendance at yet another definitive moment in alt-music history.
Ranking highest among the participants' shared inspirational moments is the life and work of Sun Ra (Sheila Cronin wins the derby with her story of engineering a Sun Ra concert and being rewarded with a bottle of Black Magic perfume and a set list containing only the words "This world is not my home."), while Björk's selection of the sound of a car alarm is not only compellingly explained but lovingly supported with an anecdote about her young son. Bettina Richards offers a humorous look into her earliest years of record-collecting and points towards The Contortions' Buy, explaining that it "solidified all of my spazzy energy, all of the things that are dorky about me." Jem Cohen illustrates how the edit between "The Needle and the Damage Done" and "Words" on Neil Young's Harvest changed his view of how music (and ultimately film) was put together, and Corey Rusk delivers his inspirational moment using only album covers and typed commentary laid-out on a hardwood floor. But the crown jewel and the most rewarding moment is Niles Covington's discussion of jazz and Thrill Jockey's misapprehension of what music really is. With all the stuffiness and pomposity befitting a jazz musicologist, Covington challenges the interviewee to name the key of Led Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker" and then wonders out loud why Bettina Richards and the Thrill Jockey roster don't include time signatures, tempos and key changes within liner notes or acknowledge the influence of "the late great jazz greats". As Covington's chest-thumping, beat-boxing, Bobby McFerrin histrionics slowly take over the interview, viewers will realize they've just witnessed Saturday Night Live comedian Fred Armisen perform perhaps the greatest send-up of the music expert-as-talking head ever committed to tape.
To this day a glossy white piece of paper, edges torn and surface scarred with cigarette ash and globs of black paint, rests on my bookshelf. On it, red marker scrawls list the songs that scored the night that in so many ways changed my life. It's hard to believe that this Codeine setlist is barely eleven years old. It's equally hard to believe Thrill Jockey has only been around for ten. But in Looking for a Thrill, I now have an archive of the little glossy white pieces of paper that forever changed the lives of so many musicians and artists I respect and admire. The anthology's greatest thrill is the reminder that these individuals were fans first, and that somehow makes being a fan seem all the more significant.
-- Mike Baker
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