Revenge Is Show Business and So Are You
By: Frank Portman
Tags: History, Songs, Music, Memoir, Punk Rock

Revenge Is Sweet and So Are You (LK-180)

Now: Revenge is Sweet… Conflicted about this one. Pro: best collection of songs of them all, hardly anything I’d want to change in the lyrics except for a few of those fancy Cole Porter/Irving Berlin type rhymes that don’t always work in the context. Surprisingly good vox. Pretty decent, if overly-compressed, sound. [Ha! See below as well — ed.] Con: generic, uninventive arrangements on around 75% of it. I recognize that generic arrangements are what people like, though, I really do.

— My main reservations about the album all boil down to how it could have been so much more than what it was. But I fully realize, if it had wound up more like I’d wanted it to be, everyone would have hated it!

— I don’t think the arrangments have to be clever in a hit you over the head kind of way, but that they should be determined by the song. My criticism is that we had this way of doing it that we were comfortable with, and the tendency was to do everything that way, and it was occasionally to the detriment of the songs.

— It’s really amazing to listen to six songs in a row and not feel like changing any lyrics.

— on the “interesting chords” (in response to a comment now missing): Thanks, Christian. And it is nice you noticed the interesting chords, because I tried hard there. But I think it is kind of hard to notice them, and in fact, you’re the only person I can recall ever having mentioned it.

— “Who Need Happiness” is one of those songs where the cool chords are totally squashed by the heavy-handed arrangement and production. You can hardly hear that they’re there.

But: “me on assistance and you on the pill…”

Sentimentally Retarded was one album title idea that was kicked around.

From Ben: “Nobody in the audience got the joke when I read ‘Who Needs Happiness (I’d Rather Have You)’ as my wedding vows.”

— “Knock Knock…” was meant to be on there [RISASAY] but got the drummer’s veto. “Thinking of You”, too. I wrote it on that toy keychain thing at the studio, but no one seemed to get it. [See below — ed.] I really wanted “Thinking of You” to be a hidden track, but there was literally no time left to do it even quickly.

— At the time, Nancy, there was no thought of a solo album. It was only afterwards, realizing that I had songs I’d never be able to do with the band, that I started to think of doing them on my own.

— Of course, criticism aside, it really is all about the songs, and I do feel I can stand behind them all pretty squarely.

— I am so self-consciously trying to be the 30s lyricist here (“Love is Dead” at the moment but throughout) It shouldn’t work at all, but I guess the saving grace is that I really meant it.

It sometimes works, and it sometimes doesn’t. Worst offender is the ecstasy line in “You You You” — one of the few lyrical regrets here. [Many people, I’ve learned, when I express this self-criticism, really, really like that line/rhyme. And Joel points out that I was uncomfortable with it even at the time of recording. Still seems like too much of a good thing to me, but I get why people like it. — ed.]

— “Here She Comes”: "…savoir faire and joie de vivre and je ne sais quoi like you wouldn’t believe…”

“Her eyes are saying yes, but her nose are saying no.” Goofy works.

— on “The Weather Is Here…”: “Here She Comes” works great just as it is. But playing “The Weather Is Here Wish You Were Beautiful” as though it were “Here She Comes” wasn’t so successful. If you listen to the guitar bits there is a kind of “swingy” feel to them thatthe arrangement just kind of squashes. It should have been done with more of a British Invasion style feel, which is how I imagined it when I wrote it, but we were incapable of executing that, so we just reverted to the tried and true.

1st bridge of “The Weather is Here” is great; second bridge, not so much. But the feat of having two bridges in a 2 1/2 minute song is still something.

Oh and I meant to mention, the line that cracked me up the most that I’d forgotten about was: “every time you miss the boat you try to kiss the boat one more time.”

— The bridge of “She’s Coming” is maybe my best bridge.

— Man, this is an album of decent bridges.

— “Swiss Army Girlfriend” is one of those songs where extending a metaphor into absurdity comes off pretty well. And that is one sweet bridge, too. The basinet line still kills me

— “I Don’t Need You Now” is probably the song I receive the most mail about, by a wide margin. People using it as break-up therapy. [And also trying to figure out how to play it — maybe I’ll do a tutorial some time — ed.]

Whatever works. “You’re moving to the bottom of a pretty, long list.”

— On “When I Lost You”: “Freedom, freedom, you’re just gonna be dumb…”

Kevin successfully vetoed the line “pretty sleaze with sugar on it.” He was probably right. But that’d be a hell of title if anyone wants to use it for anything.

“…to make it through this fog that I’ve been lost in, that we had our love holocaust in…” I wrote this song in my head while standing off in the side stage area at one of those big Green Day Euro-shows. Then I went to the dining area and ate fried flowers. True story.

— I have seriously said “will you waste your life with me” before.

— on “Hell of Dumb,” in response to a comment from Ben who said it’s “a bit too country-sounding for my taste”:

Well Ben, it is a country song. I’ve always thought we should have played it more that way, though listening now it works better the way it is than my impression was.

The pedal steel on “Hell of Dumb” was meant to wake people up, and it does do that. and the punk rock playing heightens the surprise. I wish there had been more moments like that.

— Yodeling is fun.

— “Lawnmower of Love” is maybe the WORST metaphor anyone ever came up with, which is why it is great. The Cosmo verse still cracks me up.

— “Our Love Will Last…” is in the top five of my favorite songs I’ve written. “…so if we’re not vaporized in world war three, and if there’s nothing good tonight on tv, and if you don’t meet somebody with more money than me…”

— Before there were lyrics to what eventually became “.. and I will be with you” it was known as “A Rat on a Bun” because someone had a T shirt depicting a rat on a hot dog bun. And that’s why set lists from that era always listed this song as “Rat.”

— comment from Angela: “This album prompted me to ask you in a zine interview if you found smart women unattractive or something along those lines. I think your response was something like “it’s often overrated”! Love love love this album.”

— “I Was Losing You All Along…” [an unfinished out-take from the sessions] was one of my best songs that is kind of a classic example of a song that we were just not good enough as musicians to play. It was planned to be the finale, and just came out so awkward and stilted (because we tried to play it with the same beat and same everything as all the other songs) that it would have had the wrong effect. I tried to jazz it up after the fact with overdubs and stuff, but it really taught me that that is not a solution to a song that is basically just not played properly. You have to start with it being played properly. And to do that, you need to understand what playing it properly takes. It killed me not to be able to put it on the record, but it was a real “learning experience” more than any of the others. So we ended on abrupt note instead. “You You You” is not a typical album ending track. To me that symbolized what was missing, what was unfinished.

— I had big plans for the post production on this, but never got the chance to try them because we ran out of money. And honestly, because no one was really interested in them.

—on not being able to make the record you wanted to: in response to Jittery Jeff Gammill (of the Capitalist Kids) who said: “I’m sorry you didn’t get to make the album you may have envisioned, but, as you said, we like this one better. So, thanks.”

Jeff, that is indeed the way to look at it. At some point, a record no longer belongs to the person who made it but to the people who listen to it. It is just interesting to revisit it as a listener and reflect on it.

— One thing that used to irritate me quite a bit was this one thing people always used to say when they were trying to make the point that, when you’re recording an album you should stick to what you know, do what works, not deviate from the formula, etc.: “no one wants to see Jackie Chan doing Shakespeare.” and Jackie Doing Shakespeare was an original idea for the title of the solo album, but of course that would have been too abstruse.

— Most of the studio time was spent on the basic tracks leaving the vox and guitars to be rushed and crammed into a couple of days, and you can really tell.

— on the guitar sound: a lot of the guitar was done with this old (56?) Les Paul, that had once been a gold top but had been refinished by some idiot hippie in the 70s to a woodtone, hard-wood floor-like finish (presumably so it match his deck and hot tub.) Nevertheless it sounded great. I think the soap bar pickups were original. We had borrowed it from Univibe, but I seriously considered trying to come up with the money to buy it, despite the atrocious look. I think it was $1000, quite a lot for an old guitar in those days.

— This band had reached the “fader wars” phase of a band’s existence where everyone wanted their own parts turned up to eleven in every mix, which sure didn’t help!

— on the compression/loudness: Yeah, Joel, I’m with you on the loudness/mastering. it was definitely the right thing to do with this. [wow — hard to believe this was genuinely my opinion back then! How things change (though it’s very possible I was dissembling, going along with the crowd…)— ed.]

— It’s the only one that was all recorded in a single studio. REM had been there just before!

(Original post/thread is here.)