LIVE FROM MEMPHIS

Yesterday, I was sitting in front of my keyboard trying to figure out what to write about the Oblivians. This weekend, the legendary garage rock band is getting back together for two shows that will kick off a tour with similarly reformed Detroit band The Gories that will ultimately take them to Europe, where they are much better known than here in the States. 

Today, the three proper albums and handful of singles recorded during their mid-90s heyday sound like blueprints for the dozens of other drunken, bluesy punks that followed. Yes, White Stripes, I'm looking at you. It's no coincidence that Jack White bought a guitar from Jack Oblivian that he still plays to this day. But back in 1995, their first album Soul Food sounded like a transmission from another, more rocking world. 

And in a way, it was. Two things came together in the mid-90s to produce the Oblivians. First was the consumer-level four-track recorder. In this age of bedroom laptop pop and MySpace, it's hard to remember what it was like before every fuckup teenage kid had Garage Band and a synth. Back then, the fuckups only had guitars and dreams of trying to get someone interested enough in their music to pay to get them into a studio. The best you could do on your own was set up a jam box in the corner of your practice space and hope it captured something like what you thought the song was supposed to sound like. But the advent of relatively cheap four-track cassette recorders changed that. For the cost of an hour or two in a real studio, you could buy a machine that, with a little care and ingenuity, could make decent-sounding demos or even, in the case of the Grifters One Sock Missing, whole albums. This was the beginning of lo-fi, an aesthetic that survived into the digital age, that celebrated things like static and track bleeds that would have (and did) given professional recording engineers fits. The Oblivians trademark huge, overdriven sound had as much to with cheap microphones and inadequate soundproofing as it did amps driven to the outer realms of their performance envelopes. Soul Food, recorded at Easly Studios, sought to emulate the blown-out sound of their early demos. It carries more punch than the cleaner-sounding follow-up Popular Favorite, even though the second album's improved songwriting produced classics such as "Bad Man".

^{Eric Oblivian}

The second factor was mid-90s Memphis' almost total cultural isolation. The Memphis music industry, as chronicled in this excellent piece by the Commercial Appeal's Bob Mehr, had hit the bottom of its two-decade death spiral. Memphis was not even on many touring bands' radar, and the Midtown rock scene consisted of Shangri La Records, the fabled Antenna club, and Barrister's, a rock club which was located in what was then an eerily deserted Downtown. I almost wrote that none of the dozen or so scene bands such as Impala, The Simpletones, Cornfed, Audios Gringo, and my own band Pisshorse could even get arrested anywhere else in Memphis, but then I was struck with memories of scraping up money to bail bandmates out of jail. Suffice it to say that, after the demise of the Antenna, there was nowhere else but Barrister's that would have bands like the Oblivians on their stage. But those shows were epic, even when the entire audience consisted of people who were in other bands. In art, as in biological evolution, isolation encourages mutation. And that's what the Oblivians were: a terrible mutation of punk, blues, and elements as disparate as the Cramps and novelty German minimalists Trio. Their last, and greatest, mutation was 1997's Oblivians Play 9 Songs with Mr. Quintron, a collaboration with the New Orleans organ maniac that secured their place in Memphis musical history. I don't know how many people told me, when the album came out, "It's like gospel, but good." 9 Songs, recorded in one sitting, goes straight for the secret nexus of Pentecostal worship beat and decedent revelry that has underpinned rock and roll since Jerry Lee Lewis. The step away from punk nihilsm—the admission that yeah, maybe all this noise meant something—served as comfort in the years that followed. In the matter of a few months in late 1997 and early 1998, Barrister's closed; first the Grifters then the Oblivians, then, seemingly, everybody else broke up. 

^{Jack Oblivian}

Greg Cartwright, Jack Yarber, and Eric Friedl all went on to make great contributions to both the artistic and business end of Memphis music. Back in the day, I loved the Oblivians, but I don't recall feeling that, of all of the bands playing in the Memphis scene, they would be the ones with the most lasting impact. I mostly remember just being pissed that they were getting all the girls. But here we are, more than a decade later, the recordings sound as fresh as ever, and people are flying in from all over the country to see them get back together to play two shows. As I sat here in front of my keyboard yesterday trying to figure out what the hell to say about the greatest Memphis band since Big Star, I got a message from my friend Jeff Pope saying the Oblivians were playing a surprise show at the Buccaneer. I was convinced Pope was bullshitting me, but I couldn't take the chance of missing it, so I hightailed it over to the bar, arriving just in time for the opening chords of the first song. Hoping to get the interview I had been bugging Jack and Eric about for months, I grabbed my digital voice recorder on the way out the door. Well, needless to say that in the chaos of the Bucc I didn't get my interviews. But what I did get was better: the sound of the return of the Oblivians. If you're headed to one of the shows this weekend, here's a little preview of what you'll hear. If not, here's what you're missing. Sure, it sounds like it was recorded in a crowded bar, but how clear do you want the Oblivians to sound, anyway?

Vietnam War Blues

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!

Do the Milkshake

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!