August 6th should have been his 44th anniversary but it was not the occasion for tears and sadness, on the contrary it was a fun fun night, with the right amount of laugh, smile, and moving moments.
I respond very badly to such authority, if you tell me I can’t use my phone because you, people in the band, are soooo important right now, I certainly will use my cell
It is interesting that this series of benefit concerts is spreading over seas, may be it is the beginning of more of these events, as Elliott Smith’s music becomes more and more influential?
Smith communes very well with troubled souls; his is the music for the emotionally disenfranchised as surely as Strummer is the music for the politically disenfranchise -tickets go on sale Monday at noon
‘Well I’m just over here to do a few shows and really say hello to England, then I’m going back to Seattle on Tuesday and then I’m going on a tour in America with this kid called Elliott Smith who sings with a sort of punk band called Heatmiser and he’s got a seven inch out on Kill Rock Stars and we’re going to do like a two month tour of the States…’
There is also an astonishing long list of short movies and TV series that have used one of his songs, and there are actually a lot of them I have never seen! But among the TV series, I have just noticed two of them concerning crime investigations
It is very hard to write about the music you like the most, or to express what you feel about your favorite musician. We asked a few fans to write about what Elliott Smith mean to them and here are the results, combined with a few others found on the internet.
I remember having this weird vision of this odd Elliott statue in front of the wall,…Elliott, the last person on earth who would have wanted to have a statue erected for him…Today, I have the feeling we will never see this sculpture.
All the drug references in the song have nothing to do with his own addiction since he was not taking any drugs at that time, many people could confirm this. But the myth will persist forever,…
‘I liked the idea of a self-contained, endless pursuit of perfection. But I have a problem with perfection. I don’t think perfection is very artful. But there’s something I liked about the image of a skater going in this endless twisted circle that doesn’t have any real endpoint
The video is hard and very comforting to watch at the same time, observing up close the friendship between Brion and Smith, their real complicity through music while joking about TV interviews… There isn’t a lot of talk, but a lot of music
“I think Ian was hoping to encourage Elliott to make a simpler, more stripped down, organic (Ian’s words, not mine) record than Figure 8, which was his previous recording. Figure 8 (which I love) had a very far-reaching, ornate, psychedelic presentation.”
‘Everyone gets bummed when they pass the Figure 8 Wall on Sunset and it has been yet hit again by a tagger. Originally our idea was to just restore the mural with paint. But we got talking to Stephon at Solutions and Bart at Malo– and other people– and we decided to do something cooler.
I have read that the more we remember an event, the more we try to assemble this little movie of what happened in our head the more our memory of it drifts away from reality. Memory is a strange animal, it actually doesn’t work like a movie, more like a puzzle we try to put together each time we remember an event, and we don’t necessarily get the same assemblage each time.
The truth is what counts. Elliott, especially being a philosophy major, would tell you that is what matters, not what you or anyone else would like to believe or like not to believe, as the case may be.
Larry Crane, who worked on ‘New Moon’, the posthumous album released in 2007, and on ‘An Introduction to Elliott Smith’, released two years ago, has declared he was now working on an extensive essay/liner note about Elliott’s recording career. I am sure a lot of fans will be interested!
I am a pre-op transexual female who never even heard of Elliott Smith when he was alive, but his essence is firmly ensconsed within my heart and always will be, so much so that when I chose my new name I felt compelled to recognise his effect by using his chosen name as my middle name.
Maybe it is like a Mom who lets go of her sons and in a shopping mall, turns round and he is gone never to be seen again. The mother is left to relive the moment only this time she doesn’t let go of his hand.
I have always loved this song but honestly you can think for hours and conclude whatever you want to about the lyrics; but soon, with their subtle drug metaphors and their apparent nihilistic meaning, you will get stuck with some idea of doomed freedom and delusional liberty.
His new version is more stripped down, with less instrumentation, focusing on Elliott’s naked and fragile vocals, as if he was playing in the same room, right in front of you
Because she witnessed so many strange and disturbing things at the time, we wanted to talk to her, and it may happen a little bit further during this week.
If ‘Needle in the Hay’ and ‘Alameda’ were alt-releases still close to the original songs, this new one is quite different from the version we all know, featured on ‘Either/Or’. I would even say that it is a totally different song, the music and the lyrics are totally reworked and the ‘new’ song (to us) has taken another direction around the traditional puppet show characters, the violent Punch beating his wife Judy.
I think it’s great, but once a song has been featured on Glee it’s no longer right for True Blood end credits.’ Luckily, there was an easy ‘plan B’: ‘I knew this great song by Elliott Smith with the same title. We gave it a try and it worked beautifully.’
Go buy this alternate version of ‘Alameda’ here, and if you sign up for the Kill Rock Stars email newsletter here, you will also receive a free unreleased track, the alternate version of ‘Needle in the Hay’ with trumpets.
Just to clarify, it’s not just Elliott’s death. The film’s about an hour and a half, but I would say about fifteen minutes is dedicated to his death. Chiba’s not in the entire film. Most of the film is about his life and his friend’s reactions to his successes and his personality.’
Since then, I can’t read the guys name without rolling my eyes. If Reyes was half as good a director he is a self-publicist, if he had actually done some work (need I remind you: it was Alyson Camus who interviewed the doctor who performed the Smith autopsy), he might have a useful product to push.
think about it, does it make sense to write a suicide note addressed to a person who is just there, behind the bathroom door? Is there even another case when someone committed suicide in the presence of another person and nevertheless wrote a suicide note? So weird.
If I was bartending on a Monday night and there wasn’t a lot of people there, that’s when Elliott would come in. We remembered each other from Portland and still had a lot of friends and music in common.
They only should have repeated that the incorrect spelling on the supposed suicide note was a mistake done by the police to clarify any other false theories, but beside this, it’s quite good,… Is Spinner reading rock nyc?
If Bruce Springsteen and President Obama got together and insisted the case be refreshed by the LAPD IT STILL WOULDN’T BE SOLVED. The initial incompetence destroyed it. And if LAPD fessed to the mistakes, they could well be sued by Smith’s family.
Jennifer Chiba says “she heard a terrible noise coming from the kitchen.” In the police report, she said that it was a scream she heard. On other accounts, she called it a “thud.”
I have to repeat it: he had a normal dose of prescribed meds the day he died, hadn’t drunk any alcohol nor taken any street drugs,… no cold turkey, no overdose and all other stories you may have read or heard are lies.
I know that someone’s story is not someone else’s story, but this is too bizarre, the stormy relationship, the couple’s fight the day of the accident, the stabbing with the kitchen knife, the girlfriend calling 911, helping her boyfriend, then telling to the cops he had stabbed himself,… this is too eerie
They even had a poll with ‘Would You See a Dead Artist’s Hologram Concert?’, and when I looked at it, ‘No Way. They’re Gone’ was winning so it was reassuring, but it was by such a small margin (39.1% against 35.7 % for ‘Absolutely, The Technology Is Amazing’, leaving 25.2% of undecided voting ‘Depends on the Band’) that it made me wonder.
It is a little bit like when I discovered that James Mercer of the Shins had bought this old house in Portland, without being aware of the fact it had belong to Elliott! What are the odds that two songwriters I really like have lived in the same house? This case is pure serendipity, but it’s different for Gotye since I don’t particularly like him
The Hotline gives free access to lawyers (First Amendment and government access specialists) in California at Bryan Cave, LLP, a major San Francisco-based law firm, ‘for questions about access to government records, to agency and local government meetings and to court documents and proceedings.’
So nobody wants to distribute his documentary? What a surprise! But it is in fact strange he cannot find anyone interested by an Elliott Smith project, he was definitively not a huge star, but he has a strong cult following
Elliott’s afterlife has never been so uneasy. How many articles do I read which are mentioning his death? A lot! I should say all the articles about Elliott Smith mention his death.The authors talk about ‘murder or suicide’ in the best-case scenario….
Among the 58 and plus tracks, there will be an exclusive alternate version with vocals of Deerhunter’s Grayscale, debuts or exclusives from Throwing Muses, The Night Marchers, Zoë Keating, Hurry Up, Hungry Ghost, Brute Heart, rarities and live tracks
You can find the whole story if you just read a book or go on the internet. It is a very transparent story. There is no real hidden thing in the Elliott Smith’s story. It is a very short story with a very limited cast of characters
I think the place to begin is an FB page and a contest to choose the song. Whoever wins will get some form of gift. So, that’s where we will start… Soon.
we were trying to get a song by Elliott Smith on the UK and US Charts, what would be your best bet? Which song could actually make it? It is a tough choice
The problem is not necessarily in getting 50,000 to buy a song but in getting 50,000 people to buy the song in the same week. So how do we plan to do it? I don’t have the slightest idea but, hey, that’s no reason not to try.
He was SHOCKINGLY shy and it became clear he had on air jitters. he pretty much locked himself in the promotion office – alone – to tune and practice. he was super nice, but very sullen and soft spoken.
The song, unfortunately incomplete, was a warm-up during a 1997 live session that had been forgotten in the vaults of the college radio station WMUC.
Nevertheless, two weekends in a row, Brandon Ferguson of the OC Weekly and I tried to enter the house where Elliott Smith died, but we were unfortunately not successful. The bungalow is a unit, part of a four-unit complex, located up in the hills of Echo Park, with a really nice view of downtown Los Angeles
‘If anything, his statements over those days, several weeks apart, offered the first evidence that Smith had turned a corner on years of substance abuse and depression and made a place of sobriety and stability for himself in the modest Echo park bungalow he shared with his girlfriend.’
making movie, moving tribute
a death as complex as Elliott was
Contradictions not conclusions
