Our big, fat tour bus was sitting in highway traffic somewhere in the South. The kind of traffic jam where people get so bored and hot that they spill out of the cars to share cigarettes, conversation and thermoses full of Kool-Aid. We spilled out of our bus and parked ourselves on a guard rail to talk about endings. “We live in our future, so do we have a future?” etc.
You never know. A death doesn’t often announce itself, especially not the death of a band. When the Muses died, it was after a series of small moments: symptoms of impending doom, a closing door. Music didn’t care if nobody showed up at an in-store, but we did. Music didn’t notice a half-full club or a pathetic record company meeting, but we did. Music didn’t bother to show up for interviews anyway, so when there were no longer any interviews, music didn’t care. But we did. Like many people, entities, movements and energies, we had to go away before we were done. The music kept playing even after we’d stopped playing it.
Nothing’s ever perfect anyway; it never was and it never will be. How many eggs did you put in that basket? Well, who’s fault is that?
This song used to make me teary ’cause at one time, I had all my eggs in the Muses’ basket. Today, it makes me happy because I know the Muses will make it their own.
Love,
Kristin
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50FOOTWAVE
books
Kristin Hersh
Paradoxical Undressing
Throwing Muses
I remember the last Muses show I saw in the *historical* era…It was probably late 1990, early 1991. It was at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston. I brought some friends along and promised them a great show….It didn’t turn out that way. The band was different, Leslie was gone and it seemed more like a rehearsal for a Real Ramona tour…It seemed like they didn’t care, even then….. Yeah the music was playing but it was mechanical and sloppy…Was this that “jump-the-shark” moment? After that, I bought Red Heaven and that was that….Until last March…Yeah Tanya was gone (which I missed) But Bernard, Kristin and David delivered a passionate performance that brought me back to 1988…and yes, they were *playing*.
Thats lovely
i don’t know, i think you just saw a *difficult* show from a *difficult* era.
i understood something different from what kristin wrote about caring/not caring, not what you point about them being not passionate, specially when they released such intense albums as “University”, “Limbo” and “Throwing Muses” after the first line-up was no more (too bad you missed them, maybe you’ll appreciate them after seeing them last year).
i don’t think Kristin has ever released an album or even written a song in which she didn’t put her whole heart.
Kristin, the part of the essay in which you describe how things stopped happening has moved me and stirred up this feeling of impotence i’ve had in the past when i’ve read about the band’s break up and its circumstances.
‘Terra Nova’ (its chord progressions, it’s beautiful development) is terrific
It’s possible they were having an off night, and Bernie was, maybe, still learning his part/role.
I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Just wondering.
Anyway, Terra Nova is my fave of these demos so far. I love its quirkiness, and I love the lyrics to this one. I love, “what kind of loser chooses a swan dive over a swan song?’. To me it denotes the difference between how an ending means a new beginning rather than ‘the end’ if you let it.
I think I’ve been misunderstood…My first introduction to Throwing Muses was in 1984.. and I have a *very* nostalgic attachment to the band. This particular show at the Paradise was with Fred, not Bernie, and it wasn’t just a bad night… Up to that point, I had seen plenty of very good nights and some bad nights but this was different…Different in a way that you wish you weren’t there to witness it…. It’s like the end was coming for the Throwing Muses *I* knew. I did eventually buy University and Limbo and the former ranks as one of my favorite albums… The point I want to make is that through it all and over a span of 20 years, It seems like the joy of Throwing Muses has resurfaced and just listening to the three cuts, I recognize the Muses of those far off days. Yes, the quirkiness and changes… Some say you can’t recapture magic…But just maybe you can.
Please come up to the Canada! We won’t bite! (The mosquitoes might, but WE won’t!)
I’m pretty sure I *didn’t* care about anything on that tour except the music itself. “The Real Ramona” was hellish to make–so much so that the band broke up during the recording session. I have always loved and will always love every member of Throwing Muses, but I could no longer stomach the notion that a band must grope for pop stardom in order to matter. My thinking has always been the opposite; that a band should only be about the next song.
So it was a sad, hopeless time that was turned on its heels by the next chapter: the trio Muses who worked only for the work, unapologetically admitting that we were unambitious, a band who didn’t give a shit about anything but music. I just want to differentiate between “jumping the shark” and solving a problem. It was ironic that the next few years of the Muses were to be our most commercially successful ever, but that music *business* success was not due to our shifting from substance to style–what is generally asked of a major label band–but of Warner Brothers deciding to push the records we made.
throwing muses at the el rey theatre in albuquerque 1995/96, somewhat fuzzy without digging out the ticket stub, was the greatest show i have ever seen, sincerely. maybe it was my age 26-27, that fantastic gypsy age, i don’t know. what i do know is twice i had near religious experiences watching johnny cash once in 1984 and again in 1998; when i saw the dead sing imagine was goose-pimply; U2 i danced my ass off; pearl jam in ’92; rev. horton heat @ the el rey, wynton marsailles, dylan and many of his romping bands, etc… i could go on, but the night the muses played albuquerque, hands down, the best. i don’t lament the passing of the muses (although i’d definitely love to see whatever incarnate they might re-materialize as, if ever they did). i’m just happy i was there.