Songs That shaped Us–The Goldberg Sisters

Welcome to Adam Goldberg’s Songs That Shaped Us feature, with some very impressive song picks, not too surprising perhaps; but with a new   ‘Stranger’s Morning’ album coming out next week under the moniker The Goldberg Sisters, WithGuitars got lucky.   In fact, The Goldberg Sisters release Stranger’s Morning LP Out Digitally (today) August 20 On Apology Music, physical LP/CD Out September 17 2013, just so you know.

A black cat must have wandered crossed our path as Adam’s sister was seemly pushed into action, WG leaves it to the one who knows.

My name is Celeste Goldberg.  I have been enlisted and grudgingly have accepted the duty of introducing or reintroducing you to my brother, Adam Goldberg, and his current musical endeavor: the second Goldberg Sisters record, his third record in all. It should be known upfront that while we have our differences (i.e. I write the songs, he gets the credit) I am being paid by the compliment. So I figured it was worth a whirl.

My brother is known, if at all,  largely to the Western world–and Turkey, inexplicably–as that guy from Dazed and Confused, Friends, Entourage, Saving Private Ryan, The Hebrew Hammer, 2 Days in Paris, etc.  Oh also he as been anointed “King of Vine” recently. So he is the king of a phone app. Well, good for him I suppose. Some may also know, but I doubt it, that he is also the writer/director of two films–Scotch and Milk (1996) and I Love Your Work (2003) and the author of a third he will direct later this year.  He also directed this meta, farcical quasi documentary thingie for IFC, called Running with the Bulls,  as well as several music videos, for “his” music as well as other artists. His inability to live in the present tense has lead to a rather prolific photography habit consisting largely of film photography with an emphasis on instant film. He is commercially represented by Weiss Artists in Los Angeles. I, on the other hand, do not need commercial representation to validate my passions.
So, the music. Okay. His version….Although Adam first began making home recordings on his (my) Tascam 4-track in the early ’90s and continued to record and play in bands throughout the decade, it wasn’t really until I Love Your Work that he came out as a music maker. He composed the bulk of the score and collaborated with Flaming Lips wunderkind Steven Drozd on other compositions for the picture.  Adam would also later appear in the Lips’ Christmas on Mars, and if you ask me I’d say its his best performance (because it lasted only 5 minutes). Steven and Adam would later record three of Adam’s compositions for our, er, his first record, under the LANDy moniker.

While his second record, the eponymous The Goldberg Sisters, was made the summer of the LANDy release in a conventional studio setting, the current album was in a sense born on Adam’s Tumblr blog, which has served as his visual and aural journal for the past 3 years. The 14 tracks were culled from hundreds of demo recordings, amassed  since he began the blog and then recorded in a 6 week burst  burst in the garage downstairs. Arguably this one is the most homespun record in some ways but in still others our most “bandy.”   The model in many ways was the classic ’70s L.A. studio sound onto which we would pile our signature effusion of layers and gear freak jetsam.  More cowbell yes, but more Space Echo, yes please.

Having collaborated with several musicians over the past many years, this time Adam would play every instrument (biting lip) on the record.  He felt that given the personal nature and origin of many of the songs, it was appropriate to play them all himself. (I, on the other hand, think he was just being cheap). We (I simply can’t with the “he” any longer) enlisted the remarkably talented Andrew Lynch,  a solo artist as well as a musical and engineering collaborator from our other projects,  to record and mix the record — while we moonlighted, recording our vocals upstairs in the office. And so it was, Andrew and Adam (and I) in that cobwebby garage from December of 2012 through January of this year who ground out these 14 songs before you. (Well, 15 if you count the hidden track I made with a loop pedal while he slept. It’s hidden even from him.)

This album in many ways is  a testament to the virtues of personal evolution, executed in as personally a way as possible — by one’s self in their shitty garage and, sometimes,  upstairs office.
Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoy our offering as well as having a better sense of Adam,  the all around artist.  And I hope I never have to do this again
Adieu, C.G.
Stranger’s Morning Track Listing:

1.  Would You Know
2.  Dark Won’t Shine
3.  York
4.  It Can Get You Down (Listen Via The Onion)
5.  Slapback
6.  Wandering I
7.  While You Were Out
8.  Locked
9.  Once I Was Found
10. Artbreaker
11. What
12. As You Fall
13. Stranger’s Morning (Watch via Noisey)
14. Night Note

Watch the first single also titled “Stranger’s Morning”

More we think on The Goldberg Sisters soon on WithGuitars we think, but to satisfy your need, here are Adam Goldberg’s selections for Songs That Shaped Us.

1. Jimmy Scott: “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”

I saw Jimmy Scott, unsung then sung again jazz legend, rediscovered in the ’90s, at Catalina’s Bar and Grill in L.A.  in 1993. It was a transcendental experience.  I had heard Jimmy was a favorite of American Music Club’s Mark Eitzel’s,  with whom I was obsessed at the time.  This song in particular just knocked me off my stool. When I wrote my first film,  Scotch and MIlk, I wrote a scene where this group of guys goes to Catalina’s and sees Jimmy perform this song. It was fantasy writing. But he agreed to do it. And as insane as that night was, tiny budget, my first film as director, lots of pages to shoot, when it came time to shoot Jimmy I was transported. Time stopped. Actually it didn’t. The song clocked in at about 8 minutes. We didn’t have the budget or time to pre-record him, so he was actually playing live and we just filmed him doing two passes of the song. I was so taken, I neglected to ask the to do a time friendly version of the number and eventually had to cut the song down, making a stylized edit in the edit room. Anyway, god bless this man. Yeah, he makes me a little religious.

2. Neil Young: “Cowgirl in the Sand”

When I first began to really play guitar and write songs, late really, in my early ’20s, I was heavy into Neil And this song, those two note guitar solos, that tone, was a huge inspiration. It simply sounded like I felt or wanted to feel. His playing contains so much humanity and lyricism. When I was doing Dazed and Confused, and preparing to do the big fight scene, I had this blasting in my trailer as I downed my orange juice laced with vodka (shhh). It got me good and gassed to give and take one for all the scrawny outcasts out there.

3. John Lennon: “God”

I was a huge Beatles fan growing up. That’s a pretty risky musical stance to take. But fuck it yeah, I had the balls to be a Beatles fan. Anyway, it wasn’t really until much later, not really maybe even until Yoko released that box set with all the alternative versions, outtakes, etc., from his solo career, that I really began to get deep into the solo stuff.  There’s nothing and will never be nothing like that first Plastic Ono Band record. I respond to deeply personal art, self-reflexive art — in music and in film particularly. So this blatantly autobiographical album, with my favorite drum sound, stripped clean of any psychedelia (ironic, given my penchant for uncontrollable layering) just touches me deeply. And the notion of a song called “God” — the greatest, most unfathomable entity — being about the love for himself and his wife….that’s just chillingly moving.

4. Chet Baker: “Blame it On My Youth”

I saw  Let’s Get Lost,  Bruce Weber’s elegiac, hip, pretentious, beautiful, black and white documentary featuring an aging Chet Baker when it first came out in New York, in 1988. It was one of my first trips into the city from upstate, where I spent a year at college before dropping out. I grew up a huge jazz fan and loved films like ‘Round Midnight.  But this film was sort of all things to me at the time. I was a kid dying to be hip, to absorb all things hip, to live in a black and white world, filled with smoke, and muted trumpets — and this fetishistic document of a beautiful jazz musician’s decay and his lispy and listless renderings of jazz standards really fit the bill. Years later I would put this soundtrack on in my one room apartment to set the mood for a certain lady with whom I would henceforth spend a couple years, then write a film about having lost her, Scotch and Milk, then cast her in it as herself, and re-create that first date in the film, replete with Chet scoring the scene with this song. My second tattoo is a heart with script that says “Blame It On My Youth.” I got it after we split up, when i was 23. “What happens when you get old?” I’d get asked. “Well, it will be ironic. Not unlike an aged,  smacked up  Chet singing his wispy rendering of it in Let’s Get Lost.”  

Now, old-ish, I blame that tattoo and that line of reasoning, on my youth

5. Elvis Costello: “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea”

Before I was a grumpy middle aged man, I was an angry young man,  and this song, well all of Elvis’ stuff, was really the most pervasive soundtrack throughout many years. No matter what phase I was going through musically, Elvis remained an essential component. And if even I took a break once in a while I would always come back to him,  especially if the shit hit the fan. It’s impossible to pick one song and here I am picking one song I don’t even know what the hell he’s singing about (although I read years ago, he likened it to snapshots from a movie, maybe Blow Up?). But this song to me represents the pinnacle of that particular phase with The Attractions. They’re just a great fucking band, straddling the line between a lot of the reggae infused punk, like The Clash, of the era, and the whole pub rock, literate angry young man, power pop thing, but kicking its own particular brand of ass.  I’ve blown off immeasurable steam (and smoke when I smoked) to this track.

6. David Bowie: “Moonage Daydream”

I don’t know how to pick one Bowie song. He’s arguably my biggest influence — which is funny because he represents so many musical sensibilities. It just so happens I agree with most of them.  I guess that’s the point, since my taste and musical style, arguably, is a bit of a hodgepodge. I mean, the German albums are among my favorite records of all time, Station to Station was the album I spent my early teenage years practicing drums to, Honky Dory is the quintessential  pre-glam psych-folk record, but I guess when I’m in a mood or even looking for certain guitar sounds to reference — or just sounds, violins, drums, backing vocals — I turn to Ziggy Stardust and to this song in particular. And I guess I also just like to listen to it after I’ve had a couple drinks — Mick Ronson’s, violin fueled guitar freakout.  Yeah.

7. Nick Drake: “Fruit Tree”

Five Leaves Left was the first Nick Drake album I bought when they were being re-issued in the ’90s. I’m not sure if I responded so deeply to this song because of my infatuation with fame, my obsession with its allure and curses, or simply because it’s just a stunningly beautiful, confessional, and wrenching song — made all the more so by the knowledge that this man was so abjectly unsung in his day and how that affected this man. His music was a revelation and opened my ears way way up.

8. Big Star: “You Get What You Deserve”

I’m fairly sure I got into Big Star because the inner sleeve of my Nick Drake tapes told me to,  as both artists were re-released by Rykodisk. Anyway, that was another one of those, what the fuck, why haven’t I been listening to these guys my whole life? moments. This song in particular, again, lending itself to the angry young man blowing off steam theme that I’m starting to think has influenced most of these choices, definitely  became a go-to anthem for me at the time. My dear friend, John Glick of the Chicago band The Returnables, who passed away in 2005, and I recorded this song for fun before I knew what the fuck I was doing, at a rehearsal studio on a 4-track. I played drums and “sang” if you want to call it that and John played guitars. Pretty sure, that took care of the 4 tracks. Anyway, hard not to hear this song and think of dear John.

9. The Beach Boys: “Surf’s Up”

I mean, we can call it The Beach Boys, and it all depends on the version. I’d like to go with Brian’s solo piano version (from a ’60s tv doc hosted by  Leonard Bernstein (above), which the rest of the “Boys” cannibalized for one of their albums while Brian was largely out of commission after they helped kill his spirit and the Smile record on which this song was initially meant to appear. I was late to The Beach Boys game. It’s such a confusing saga. The Beach Boys can mean so many different things. I guess I’m largely a Brian Wilson fan though I actually dig some of that ’70s stuff Carl was doing and Dennis’ “Little Bird” among others just knocks me out.

And the vocals, all the boys, those harmonies, those backing vocals…I love to listen to just the A Capella stuff on the Pet Sounds box set.

But “Surf’s Up,” man it’s such a rich composition and I’m quite sure some of its seeds have found their way into my approach to writing music on the piano, though the genius it contains has yet to make its way on over with them.

10. Midlake: “Roscoe”

I was a huge fan of their low fi, warbly psych-rock album, Banman and Silvercork, so I was eagerly awaiting the follow-up — the also quasi-unsayable The Trials of Van Occupanther.   And I was fairly shocked. They had made a decidedly not psyched-out,  fully fleshed out ’70s-like roots rock long player laced with Fleetwood Mac bass lines (at least in the opener, “Roscoe”). Once I adapted to the new sound this became my favorite record for like years. Literally I just played this record. A couple others here and there, but this one stayed at the top of this list. The harmonies, the hooks, the acoustics, the whole thing. This was the album I wished I had made but didn’t know I had wanted to make it until I heard it.

11: The Flaming Lips: “Race for the Prize”

These guys. I mean, they’re pals now, so it’s strange , kind of, to write about them in a vaguely sycophantic fashion. I eventually would come to — in some kind of parallel fantasy world that actually existed —  meet and collaborate with Steven Drozd on compositions for my second feature as director,  I Love Your Work. And we collaborated on three songs from the ground up and he added drums to two others on my first album —  under the LANDy moniker. Wayne does a little background vox on one of those. Anyway, before we ever crossed paths, this record, and this song in particular, changed my concept of what modern rock could be and what it should be, for my money anyway. Sounding like some kind of Pink Floyd, Odessa-era Bee Gees, Beach Boys, Bert Bacharach  freaked out film score,  this song really did redefine my sensibilities as listener and as musician.

12. Elliot Smith: “Alameda”

It’s hard to pick on of his. But this is from the first album I heard. My pal Rio put it on the hi-fi one late night when it came out and that was that. I can vividly recall the panning of his double vocals, really clearly panned when you listen on a home stereo where speakers are actually on either side of the room. I thought, I’d like to do that. But mainly I thought it was the about the saddest most honest unpretentious thing I could ever hope to hear,  never hope to bother aspire to. And I have walked down Alameda. So there’s that.

13. Karen Dalton: “In the Evening (It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Gonna Love You the Best)”

I’m over my quota but had to mention Karen Dalton. I first heard her on a scratchy LP in the cold cold New York winter after 9/11, in the wake of yet another breakup. Yep this did the trick. I was already heavy into Leonard Cohen and other “alt-folk”  for years that but this turned me into a folkie pretty hard at least for a while and at least by half forever more. Plus she sounded like another idol of mine, Billie Holiday, but was doing her own very particular ting. I looked everywhere for her record. I went to every store in New York city. Literally. I finally found it on a trip to L.A. at Ameoba Records and bought like 5 of them

She’s an enigma and at the time,  with what internet there was, I only knew she hated performing and recording and made only 2 albums, this one apparently grudgingly, kind of tricked into it by Fred Neil. I knew she brought her daughter to NY from Oklahoma and fell in with Dylan and Neil, and those folks. I knew she died of AIDS in the early ’90s.  She was my soundtrack for those long lonely months after that cities’ catastrophe which happened to coincide with my own personal crisis. I moved back to Los Angeles a few months later. And took her with me.

With thanks to Adam & Celeste Goldberg. Find more on The Goldberg Sisters via facebook and twitter