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September 23, 2004

Paul Westerberg Likes to Smoke Cigars - Parts 2 and 1

By Kevin Hillskemper

Let me explain. Part Two is a review of “Folker”, the latest album from Paul Westerberg. As of this writing, I haven’t written it yet. Part One is a review of the two albums and one DVD that he released last year. I wrote it last year but it didn’t get posted. The title that I intended for Part One has nothing to do with Part Two but it really doesn’t matter. Let’s get on with it. Here's Part Two:

folk_pop_pic.jpg

Paul Westerberg
“Folker”
Vagrant Records

This is either the fourth or fifth album from the newly embiggened Paul Westerberg. He seems to have come to terms with his status as a cult artist and is comfortable with it. As long as he keeps cranking the literate low-budget rock out of his basement studio, the same people will keep buying it.
I like this one better than the last one or two. The sound and the feel of the songs are more consistent and less ramshackle than before. “Folker” achieves a good balance between funny/sad, quiet/loud, ugly/pretty, and I will stop before get to black/white or good/evil. I will not use any two-bit, wanky words like “dichotomy”.
In short, the funny songs aren’t too goofy and the sad songs are not too depressing. If you are seriously bi-polar, you will have to wait until the next Grandpaboy album.
When I throw around words like “consistent” and “balanced”, I am not using them as euphemisms for “boring” by any means. Maybe he’s just discovered subtlety. Or maybe he’s been using it all along and I haven’t noticed until now.
“Jingle” is goofy. I lied. Sue me. I like it.
“$100 Groom” has a memorable line in “I promise not to leave the room even if I have to vomit” which only proves that I am very simple and easily entertained.
“Folk Star” is the least folky song on the album and I’m sure that was intentional.
For fans of the sensitive side of Paul Westerberg we have “My Dad”, “Lookin’ Up In Heaven”, “23 Years Ago”, and pretty much everything else here.

For those who want to go backwards in time, I suggest
The Replacements
“Sucking Wax”
Lady Butcher Ltd. (bootleg)
This is a compilation of demos, rehearsals, and other rare unreleased goodies from 1980-1986. There are a couple b-sides like “If Only You Were Lonely” that have been released, but are pretty hard to find legitimately. The sound is cruddy in places, but you would expect nothing less.

Part One (from 2003)
Paul Westerberg Likes to Smoke Cigars

“Come Feel Me Tremble” DVD (Redline Entertainment) and CD (Vagrant Records) by Paul Westerberg
“Dead Man Shake” CD by Grampaboy a.k.a. Paul Westerberg (Fat Possum/Epitaph)

I liked the Replacements. So what? A lot of people liked the Replacements. But instead of setting the world on fire like they were supposed to, they just fizzled out in 1991. After that, Paul Westerberg did a few albums, a few tours, and then disappeared. In the past couple of years, however, he has been quietly flooding the market with some pretty good albums and now a feature-length DVD.
“Come Feel Me Tremble”, the DVD, is a non-narrative documentary following his solo mostly-in-store-appearance tour of 2002. It is inter-cut with interviews, performances, backstage rituals, and no-budget homemade videos shot by Westerberg himself. There are over thirty songs, including a bunch of Replacements songs, featured – mostly performed live and taken from audience videotapes. The production values are by no means slick but they really capture the intimate feeling of the performances (I was at the first show in Seattle and it was pretty darn good). Overall, the live footage is great but some of the other stuff, like scenes of him walking along the sidewalk, crossing the street, sulking, creeping through alleys, smoking cigars, mumbling, trying on shoes, flossing his teeth, smoking cigars, fixing a toaster, changing his oil, rescuing kittens, smoking cigars, solving crimes, and organizing his sock drawer drag on along like this sentence.
Did I mention that Paul Westerberg likes to smoke cigars? During the course of this DVD, he smokes approximately 426 cigars, some of them the size of a horse’s leg. He smokes more cigars than Ulysses S. Grant, George Burns, and the Buena Vista Social Club. I realize that it’s his only remaining vice but, cinematically, it’s a distraction.
One technical criticism: The DVD does not have chapter breaks and it’s a lot to take in one sitting.

Now for the Paul Westerberg/Grandpaboy split personality thing,
It’s getting harder to tell where Paul Westerberg ends and Grandpaboy begins. It used to be that Paul was the sensitive singer/songwriter and Grandpaboy did the sloppy, home-brew, funny rock songs. On the 2002 double album “Mono/Stereo”, it was simple Jekyll and Hyde act with Paul doing acoustic and Gramps doing electric (for the most part). It was all recorded mad scientist style in Dr. Westerberg’s basement studio/laboratory. “Mono” was actually released as a single album months before “Mono/Stereo” came out. Confused? It gets worse.
Now it’s seems that Paul Westerberg is the rock guy, Grandpaboy is a blues guy, and they’re even on different labels. But they still both record in the same basement, which is good.
“Come Feel Me Tremble”, the CD, continues along the same lines as “Mono/Stereo”. If you liked that, you’ll like this but maybe not as much. It covers both the sensitive singer/songwriter side (“Soldier of Misfortune”, “Crackle and Drag”) and the sloppy rock side (“Dirty Diesel”, “Hillbilly Junk”). I think he’s onto something here.

I like “Dead Man Shake”, the Grandpaboy CD, better. The songs are more basic and the sloppy lead guitar playing fits a lot better in a blues style suit. Westerberg’s guitar playing has always been more emotional than technical and it’s about time he did something like this.
About one third of the songs on “Dead Man Shake” are covers and they are good ones. “Take Out Some Insurance” and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” are done fairly straightforward and are quite effective. The real revelation here is “What Kind of Fool Am I”, which was made famous by Sammy Davis Jr. Instead of trying to fit into Sammy’s tux, Paul/Grandpaboy-or-whoever-the-hell-he-is takes this big overblown lounge classic and re-interprets it as one of the saddest, most depressing, miserable things ever recorded. Of course I mean that in the best possible way.

One more thing: Is it me or does the fold out cover of “Dead Man Shake” look like an homage to “Frampton Comes Alive”?

In conclusion, four cigars for the “Tremble” DVD, three cigars for the “Tremble” CD, and fifteen men on a dead man’s chest for “Dead Man Shake”.

I don’t believe that Freud ever said anything about the phallic symbolism of cigars, but he might have said something about 4x4 monster trucks.


Posted by Big Kev at September 23, 2004 8:59 PM