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July 30, 2004
Pogo In Your Head, Everybody
At last night's Merge 15th Anniversary show, Superchunk finished off their reverse-chronological-order setlist with a smoking version of "Precision Auto", the venerable "Throwing Things", and a few of their early 7-inch classics: "Fishing", "Slack Motherfucker", and "What Do I". Unless I was hallucinating, "Fishing" seemed to feature some additional and very timely "dirty little war" lyrics borrowed from John Prine's "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore"! But the biggest surprise was getting to see the Chunk do covers of two other very memorable songs from that same 1990-91 era...featuring the original vocalists, no less! Superchunk started their first encore by bringing Ash Bowie on stage for a rousing rendition of Polvo's "Can I Ride". And they closed that encore off with their patented rocked-up cover of Sebadoh's "Brand New Love", with new Merge signee Lou Barlow doing the vocal honors on the very song that he wrote.
The Merge anniversary celebration setting and the fun of the surprise covers had me reminiscing about Polvo's amazing 1994 show during the 5-year anniversary Merge It Up showcase. Exactly 10 years ago today (7/30/1994), Polvo capped off the night and the festival with Husker Du's "What's Going On"....but their set-opening versions of Steve Miller's "Fly Like an Eagle" and Erectus Monotone's "Hummus" were the real mindblowers. A couple of years ago while browsing a filesharing network, I stumbled upon a live mp3 capturing this magic moment. Since there may be some Polvo fans out there that would love to hear these covers for either the first or second time, I've uploaded the mp3 here.
While I'm talking about Superchunk and dabbling in the art of Merge-inspired mp3 blogging, I might as well go ahead and share an mp3 of that infamous Superchunk bonus track for which I am partially responsible. Over 8 years ago, a couple of other WXYC DJs and I got on the air and jokingly took the art of deconstruction and lyrical overanalysis to absurd new heights by talking about Superchunk's "Hyper Enough" single for an entire hour. We had a really enjoyable time doing it, and the band thought the show was funny enough to warrant tacking it onto the end of their next EP, titled "The Laughter Guns EP" in reference to our mistaken version of the lyrics. This one's a really huge file because it's 42 minutes long.
Interestingly enough, things came full circle with this incident earlier this week. During the special 3-hour Merge feature on WXYC this past Monday, one of the trivia questions that Spott asked was "What was the name of the WXYC radio show where the DJs talked about 'Hyper Enough' for an entire hour?". "Into the Ground" was the answer that they incorrectly gave, but our show had actually been called "Into the Groove" in reference to its music talk show nature and as a play on the very different WXYC show "Into the Ground" (off the air by that point). Spott had called into that "Laughter Guns" show to let us know that we were getting certain Superchunk lyrics wrong...so it was only fitting that I finally got to return the favor by calling up the Merge feature and clarifying certain words on WXYC's behalf. Lofty currents, indeed...
Posted by Tim at July 30, 2004 04:53 PM
Comments
Shit. I missed Can I Ride.
That Polvo Mergefest show could quite possibly the best rock show I've ever been to. That night they had this angry/cocky swagger like they were fully aware of how great they were and how completely they were gonna kick our asses. Hard. And, of course, they were absolutely right on both counts.
Is the whole show available somewhere Tim?
Posted by: Anonymous at July 30, 2004 07:24 PM
tim, when did you graduate from unc as an undergrad?
Posted by: justin at July 30, 2004 09:57 PM
I don't have the whole Polvo show but when I found that mp3 I also found one other one from the same set:
http://www.tubafrenzy.org/weblog/mp3/Polvo_FracturedLikeChandeliers.mp3
Enjoy!
Tim Ross
UNC-CH c/o '95
Posted by: Tim at July 31, 2004 12:44 PM
I remember that Polvo show at the first Mergefest - I saw all the bands play at that one, fewer at the 10-year, and then just last night, for this one. Although it was a fine show and I really enjoyed it.
If there's a Merge 20, I trust the bus will be taking me directly from Carolina Meadows to the Cradle.
Posted by: pinky at July 31, 2004 12:57 PM
I think I'm hyper enough as it is!
Posted by: toby wong at August 2, 2004 02:35 PM