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Results for Exile in Guyville

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Touch and Go Records

This week Jim and Greg wanted to take a look at one of the music industry's most important independent labels: Touch and Go Records. Touch and Go recently turned 25 and celebrated with a three-day bash at Chicago's Hideout Block Party. Over the course of the show, you‘ll hear why Jim and Greg wanted to focus on this modest Chicago label. You’ll also hear from the founder himself, Corey Rusk, and a number of the label's artists, including Scott McCloud from Girls Against Boys, Janet Weiss from Quasi (and formerly Sleater-Kinney), Ted Leo, David Yow from Scratch Acid and The Jesus Lizard and recording engineer and musician Steve Albini of Big Black and Shellac fame.

Touch and Go's founder Corey Rusk is known not just as a tastemaker with an incredible ear for talent, but also as one of the most honest businessmen in the biz. This is what separates Touch and Go from other labels, major and independent alike. Rusk's business model, which doesn't shy away from the Internet and which relies merely on trust and a handshake, has kept it going for 25 years, helping it to outlive its peers. Labels like Twin/Tone in Minneapolis, which launched The Replacements, SST in California which launched Black Flag and Hüsker Dü, and I.R.S. in which launched R.E.M. and The Go Go's, all emerged in the early '80s after punk's mainstream explosion and before alternative's reign. However, Touch and Go is the only one of the bunch not only to stay in business, but to do so successfully and independently.

The best way to understand the label's significance is to sample some of the music. You'll hear these songs in our short-but-sweet montage of Touch and Go music:

  1. Killdozer, "Hi There"
  2. Girls Against Boys, "Kill the Sexplayer"
  3. The Dirty Three, "Doris"
  4. Jesus Lizard, "Mouth Breather"
  5. TV on the Radio, "Dreams"
  6. Butthole Surfers, "Fast"
  7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "Art Star"
  8. Calexico, "Cruel"

Touch and Go has put out a lot of music over the past quarter century, but Jim and Greg both manage to pick their single favorite T&G tracks. Greg goes first and chooses "Stage 2000" by Seam. Touch and Go is often thought of as the place to go to for loud, hard-edged punk music, and that is certainly true. However, their roster is actually quite diverse, and there are a number of bands like Seam, who are making beautiful, soft, melodic music.“Stage 2000”is on Greg's favorite Seam album, The Problem With Me. That album was recorded with Chicago producer Brad Wood, best known for producing Liz Phair's classic Exile in Guyville.

Jim's Touch and Go pick is "Kerosene" by Big Black off their 1985 album Atomizer. Though Atomizer was initially released by Homestead Records, Big Black moved to Touch and Go a year later, and the label reissued the band's entire catalog. So we'll let Jim slide on this one — especially since no one has been as closely associated with Touch and Go as Big Black founder Steve Albini. Albini came to Chicago to study journalism at Northwestern, and Jim can hear this sensibility in his lyrics. Songs like "Kerosene" are essentially sensationalistic tabloid stories backed with thrashing noise-rock.

Go to episode 43
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Exile In GuyvilleExile in Guyville available on iTunes

Liz Phair Exile in Guyville

This month, Liz Phair's debut album Exile in Guyville will be reissued to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its initial release. This reissue will include the complete Girly-Sound tapes, which will be the first time that material will be released on a label for purchase. Back in 1991, Greg says that everybody in Chicago who cared about music had“a dub of a dub of a dub”of the tapes (which were recorded in Liz Phair's bedroom and released independently.) Many of the tracks evolved into material on Exile in Guyville. Jim and Greg agree that the album is a anthemic counter statement to Chicago's“Boy's Club”music scene. They both thought the album was great in 1993; and Greg says the recording "stands the test of time." Jim thinks that the idea that Exile in Guyville is a track by track response to The Rolling Stones' classic Exile on Main St. is strictly positioning, and“doesn't hold up.”Greg thinks that with the creation of that myth she was“playing the critics”and she was being "very tongue in cheek." 25 years later, Both Jim and Greg give Exile in Guyville a Buy It.

JimGreg
Go to episode 649
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Off the Rails

Sound Opinions is a show that celebrates music. But, once in a while we have to get a little negative and call out artists that disappoint us. In particular, there's a crop of singers and musicians who began as great talents with promising careers, but ended up breaking our hearts by going "Off the Rails." Think of it as the musical answer to“Jump the Shark.”Jim and Greg think these career wrong-turns are too big to ignore.

Go to episode 242