Liz Phair: When I left the rock world after Whip-Smart, I really didn't think I'd come back. I made the album because, after the baby -- even before the baby -- I really wanted to make an album the way I made Guyville. Because I love music. It's kind of magical to make albums. I like making the art, and I was really conscious of saying, "Screw what everybody else thinks! I'm gonna make songs that excite me and feel experimental to me." That's all I cared about. I knew that the label would want it a different way -- they'd want me to work with Brad [Wood, Guyville's producer] and do the same thing, but I really didn't care. Believe me, this is not what they had in mind.
Narrator: While Liz was on hiatus from the music industry, Atlantic Records severed it's distribution deal with Matador. Matador was able to get another distribution deal with Capitol Records.
One of the first new collaborators/producers that Liz worked with was Jim Ellison of the band Material Issue. Liz recorded several tunes with Material issue that definitely were a departure from her earlier work. "Rocketboy", "Turning Japanese", and "The Tra La La Song" were all song that were recorded in collaboration with MI.
These duets with Material Issue seeme to cause a divide between Liz fans. While some loved them, there was a sizeable number of fans who were turned off by the tracks.
Liz Phair website owner Matt George : I have to say though, that I don't particularly care much for the few songs that Liz recorded and produced with her Chicago area buddies. It's just that overproduced, annoying sound of Material Issue's songs, that are SOOOO horrible to hear. It's especially evident on the cover of "Turning Japanese," which is amusing the first time you hear it, but almost impossible to listen to after that. If you hear the Shelved Demos version of "Rocket Boy," it sounds like it has the makings of an okay song, but Elison's terrible production tries to turn the song into a "rock anthem," when it would be better served as a sweet little song. The Banana Splits' theme song cover is a little bit of fun, but it would be kind of hard for even Material Issue to screw up a classic song like that :) Where's Brad Wood when you need him ?
Ellison was in the Chicago Trax studios with Liz, tracking their song "Rocket Boy" for the movie Stealing Beauty immediately before his death. Ellison committed suicide on June 20, 1996 of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Liz spent time demo-ing tracks at home before finally deciding to go into the studio with highly regarded producer Scott Litt, best known for his production of most of REM's albums.
Liz: I had always loved R.E.M.'s albums, in particular the way they sound. And I liked [Litt's] way of capturing a pop sensibility without being unoriginal. The things he does sound great. He makes vocals sound fantastic.
Narrator: After a month straight of 16 hour days, six days a week, during which Phair and Litt completedat least 12 tracks Phair then bolted for Chicago with the tapes and planned to start over again, sort of.
Liz Phair: "Right now I've got this Mackie board, which is basically an 8-track studio that can be bounced back onto 2" tape and a Tascam DA-88 DAT recording device, all in boxes upstairs, unopened. Scott set me up with all this stuff before I left L.A. and now I'm just waiting to get an engineer over here to put it all together. Scott took the 12 songs that we tracked and I'm going to put them on my board, and then on top of this, which feels too organized for me now, too clean, I will overdub experimental stuff. It went form rough and sloppy to too clean and now I'm going to try and rough it up again and then clean it up after that. I'm not re-recording the whole thing, just building new layers on top, because, in a way, I always thought that what would be really good for my music would be a very structured bed, which Scott is good at creating, overlaid with my more sloppy tendencies. Everyone is trying to make their vision happen and I'm trying to get to the point where I can do that. I desperately want to do something new that sounds different for me, and so does Scott, we just couldn't agree on what that was. For a while we had a guy come in to do my guitar parts, which didn't work out at all because it just doesn't make sense, and I didn't like it anyway.
(When asked at the time about possibly collaborating with Brad Wood once again, Liz seemed hesitant) I want to do something different. I worked with him as much as I wanted to and by the end we were grumbling anyway. To me it seemed totally natural to call it quits. Look, I have an finite number of people I can be committed to for a long period of time and when it comes to work, I want to make sure I'm expanding. I was a working artist before them and I don't see them as the people. Everyone else does because no one knew of me before I worked with them, but I was making all the demos that got me the Matador deal before I even worked with Brad.
Scott and I did really well in the studio when we were sort of creating stuff ourselves, when we were being experimental without utilizing a bunch of extra musicians. But when we tried to record the bigger rock-song sounding stuff, it really didn't work that well. We both got very frustrated, and we didn't know what to do. We kind of stopped and started, and stopped and started. He got frustrated with my vocals and we started arguing a lot. Finally it was suggested that I work on my own for a little bit, to kind of flesh out the songs arrangement-wise.
I was only unhappy in the sense that both Scott and I got to the point where we didn't have a clue about what to do next. I was frustrated with him, he was frustrated with me. And I felt like I wasn't able to provide enough for him to work with. He's used to working with a band, and he can take songs that they've already arranged and then rearrange them. With me it was like taking nothing and building something from scratch.
It's also a feature of how we work. I like to work spontaneously. The way I'd worked with Brad Wood, we'd have instruments laying around, and he or I would suggest something. And we'd say "Hey, that's a good idea. Let's try that!" So, with Scott, the stuff that made the album was the stuff where he and I sat in his studio and kind of created something from scratch. "Fantasize", "Headache", "Ride", "Perfect World" - things like that were very spontaneous. He wrote parts and I wrote parts, and it was like being in a lab. The stuff that didn't go well was when we had a bunch of hired musicians trying to play like a band for the big rock stuff.
Brad Wood's take on delays with WCSE:
Brad Wood:"I don't know. I think Guyville is a great record and Whip-Smart is a good record -- they set the bar pretty high. If you don't respect Liz's previous work, you're gonna be in trouble with her legion of fans. You have to be a fan of Liz Phair to make a great Liz Phair record. She's a phenomenal guitar player and a good singer. If you take the guitar out of her hand and start messing with that you get the new Coke and then everyone screams for Classic."
Liz Phair: This is so sad, but someone likened [early cuts of the album] to music housewives would clean house to -- wafty, softy, and peppy. Though the lyrics were tough if you looked really close, I wasn't bringing forth that persona. My manager was like, 'I appreciate where you're going, but there's no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Get a little more involved. We need a little more from you.' I hadn't done that. I had made everything pretty and touched-up.
Matador spokesman Nils Bernstein had this to say about the delay at the time.
Matador spokesman Nils Bernstein: "She has kind of rejected her own record. People assume that when she takes her time, it's: 'A-ha! Matador signed a deal with Capitol, and now [the label's] telling her she doesn't have a single!"
Matador co-president Gerard Cosloy : "There are a number of conspiracy theorists who would like to believe that Matador and/or Capitol have some hand in the creative process, but nothing could be further from the truth."
Liz played the early version of WCSE for then-Capitol Records president Gary Gersh, who told her that it "lacked hits." (Capitol distributes Phair's records for Matador.)
Liz Phair:"I turned it in, and they were like, 'That's great. But we need you to write two hits.' I don't seem to have the knack.
Gary Gersh: "There has never been a rejected record. We sat down with Liz and said, 'Listen, is this everything you want it to be? Because we aren't sure it is what we were hoping it would be.'
Liz Phair:And together we made the decision to work on it more. I'm like, 'What's a hit?'. He said, 'Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, double-chorus, out.' So I transformed all the songs that I had half-finished into that. And I'm like, 'Did I get any? Did I get any?'
My manager really wanted me to work with Brad Wood. He thought I'd thrown out the baby with the bathwater, and begged me to listen to the old records. I'm so much better for having gone back, and bringing that stuff with me.
So I did that, and then when it came to recording again, everyone wanted me to try to work with Brad. It so happened I had reacquainted myself with my earlier work, and had re-appreciated all that [Wood] had done. I saw its merit, and what his genius is. Which is to take small songs that I create, and help realize them, or give them a lot of instrumentation without losing that core "Liz Phair" sound. As it turns out, that's much harder to do than I had originally thought.
Real Movie of Liz in the studio working on the egg
I've given this some thought and what it is about Brad is that he has all of his own ideas, and his areas of expertise do not overlap with mine. He wouldn't have all the tools, ideas I would have. The way I like to write songs in my room, very quietly -- he maintains that all the way through, in production. Somehow they're still Liz Phair songs. I did so many recordings over the past four years, I really realized that Brad must understand me or have respect for me and the songs and songwriters.
When I listen back to those old records, I'm like, 'Fuck! He was the shit!' Brad hears things. I used to think I had that myself, until I tried to do it. It's amazingly impressive to me what he does. I can't believe it took me so long to appreciate it, because he always appreciated what I did."
Narrator: Cue the chorus. Hallelujah!!!!! Hallelujah!!!!! Hallelujah!!!!!
Liz Phair: I don't look back very often, and that's a fault, because it would behoove me to re-examine my previous work more often. What it did was really shock me, because I realized just how much that was special about it was owed to Brad. I had always assumed I had all these great ideas -- and I did -- but a lot of it was him, in terms of how things sounded, and the way he miked the instruments, or the way he mixed it. And I was just flabbergasted at how much of his talent had maybe been taken for granted. As I listened, I just sat there and thought, "Oh my God, pleeease will you work with me again?" He has a way of taking my personal slant, and allowing that to live and breathe all the way to the finished product. As it turns out, that's something that isn't very common with a producer and a songwriter. I had to go and explore and work with other people in order to learn that.
I was completely petrified (about approaching Brad), but when we talked, it was so natural, so nice.
Narrator: Liz Phair and Brad Wood entered the studio in January of 1998. These sessions were recorded at Velvet Shirt Studios in Chicago and yielded five songs that would be included on the album WCSE. The tracks he oversaw this time around were "Polyester Bride" (the first single), "Johnny Feelgood," "What Makes You Happy," "Uncle Alvarez" and "Go On Ahead."
Brad Wood: We just sort-of picked up where we left off three years ago. Our problems were never in the studio. In the studio, it's always been a real pleasure.
Liz Phair: When I got to work with Brad, I was like, "Let's do all new stuff," and that's how I feel all the time. It's like, if it isn't working, I'd rather go and do all new material. That tends to be my way of doing things in general,. Which worked out fine, because with Scott we had gone over and over the same songs -- recording them a million times, it seemed -- and it never got better. I'm talking now about the big, "rock-oriented" stuff. With those, I just kind of put it all behind me. What I did with Brad was demo a whole bunch of new songs on tape -- like, twelve new songs. He and I kind of tentatively agreed on what was good, and we went from there.
Tom Lord-Alge mixed the whole thing. I mean, you could say a lot of that has to do with my feisty ways, too, since I picked the songs where I really felt myself to be present, personality-wise. But I think a lot of the credit (for the album's cohesiveness) goes to the way Tom Lord-Alge mixed it. He has a very personal sound. What he did with some of the songs we had already finished was one of the most educational parts of making this album -- watching him work, and watching songs that I thought I knew upside-down and inside-out being turned into something new and really cool. He would give songs like "Big Tall Man", for instance, an entirely different flavor. I was so impressed. If you have a good mixer, it's a whole other ball game. I have to say I laughed when I first started hearing mixes of the songs; with 'Love is Nothing,' I just burst out laughing. I said, 'This is way better than this song ever deserved to sound!' I feel like I pulled something over on someone.
I got to work with great people on this album, people who I really admire and respect. And I learned a lot. This four years [between albums] wasn't just about, "Oh, can we squeeze something else out of Liz Phair while she's busy having a baby." It was about me wanting to grow, and wanting to get a sense of what other bands get at the beginning [of their careers], just by virtue of having already worked at it for so long. I became famous much sooner than I should have, from an experience standpoint. I was totally inexperienced, I didn't know anything about the business, and everything happened just like that. So this time -- between Whip-Smart and whitechocolatespaceegg -- was my time to actually learn what it's like to do all these different things, to try different things and to appreciate what all you have to do.
"'Big Tall Man', the (planned) second single off the release was written when I was pregnant. I was reading all these books, because you can't drink coffee, you can't do drugs, you can't do anything. You are so sober it hurts. I got into this intuition book, trying to channel your deeper self and dreams and stuff, 'cause you have all these dreams when you're pregnant. The book said to channel someone and write down all these exercises. So I channelled Scott Litt, my record producer, and read him the poem and he's like, 'there's your song right there.'"
"Go On Ahead" and "Only Son" and stuff like that, everyone who knows me personally knows what that stuff's about. It's one of those things that you do because you have to do it, because artistically, it has to be there. It's a lot scarier, and it took a long time. It's very real and very personal. If you read the lyrics and understand them, you can see that, to a great extent, this is probably not what the people in my life wanted to hear. But I think it's really important when you're putting albums together to have stuff that really gets to the truth of things.
The song "Only Son" is most likely about her brother Phillip Phair. In the space between whipsmart and wcse, Phillip Phair was essentially disbarred from dealing in securities due to alleged improprieties. The following is taken from the National association of securities dealers website.
January 1996 -- Phillip B. Phair (Registered Representative, Chicago, Illinois) was fined $120,000, barred from association with any NASD member in any capacity, and ordered to pay $71,480 in restitution to a member firm. The sanctions were based on findings that Phair obtained from public customers $71,480 in checks and wire transfers with instructions to use the funds to purchase securities. Phair failed to follow the instructions in that he used the funds for some purpose other than for the customers' benefit.
No doubt this illegal activity brought much consternstion to the Phair family and seems to be at least on the surface some of the impetus on Liz's part for the song "Only Son". I'm not really privy to any information about other possible Phair Family squabbles that may have served as motivation or material for the song.
(Johnny Feelgood) is a more aggressive song, which makes you think of Guyville, but that was actually written very recently. I think the song's protagonist is a little more in control of getting what she wants. On Guyville, even on "Girls, Girls, Girls", there's that sense of "Yeah, I could get what I want," whereas "Johnny Feelgood's" past trying to prove that. It's almost going against what convention would approve of and saying, "This is what I want. This is what I'm going for. And this is what I'm getting. You make your own choices." I think a lot of Whitechocolatespaceegg is about that, and that's a lot of who I am now. Things that I want are what I want because I want them, and it doesn't have to be what everyone else wants. That's always a tough thing, because we'd rather fit in. But I think getting older gracefully is about accepting that you don't always fit in, and enjoying life in spite of this.It's not about an abusive relationship. It goes back to something I felt when I went to Oberlin College, which is this very sensitive, very bohemian place, where everyone is incredibly careful with everyone's feelings. At the end of four years, I was so sick of everyone pussyfooting around everyone else.
"There were all these guys who were so wimpy. It's like they'd go, "Excuse me, would you mind terribly if I took this moment to, ah, kiss you?" It's about being strong enough to want an equal, someone to show passion . . . . But not someone hitting you.
"The thing with my lyrics has always been that I'm hyperbolic in them. I am dramatic in them. I take small experiences, and I fictionalize the circumstances. In a three-minute song, I'm kind of ruthless. I'll use whatever words I can to give you the point. A lot of people then get ruffled by it . . . but that's all right. I want you to feel something -- the emotions that are at the center of all our lives.
("Go On Ahead") is (autobiographical), very much so. I knew if I included that one, I'd get nailed for it... it's so hard to talk about. It's about the feeling you have when your relationship with your husband is strained to the max because of all your other responsibilities. It makes me cring -- I fast-forward through it when I play the album. I'm really lucky that (Jim) doesn't listen much to lyrics, and when he does, he doesn't pay attention to them. Or rather, he does pay attention, but he's a mellow guy. I think he understands what a lot of people don't; namely, that this is a creative expression. He understands that there's a lot of imagination going on, although a lot of it might be drawn from our life.
"I love it when a song just flows out all at once and takes you by surprise. It's almost like recording a dream while you're awake! 'Girl's Room' happened in two seconds, as did 'Perfect World'. When a song comes to me all at once -- that gift from the muse -- I have a tendency to leave it alone and not try to polish it too much. "Then, there are songs such as 'Big Tall Man' that are an amalgam of different songs. The bridge on that song, for example, is from an earlier, much slower song that I recorded on a 4-track. I just stole the riff! I wrote the verse chords while I was in the studio, and the first verse has five lines, while the last verse has four lines. I have a really strong tendency to disobey structures. "'What Makes You Happy' was written in pieces too. There was a verse, a chorus, a verse, a pre-chorus, a chorus, a different bridge -- I swear, there were like 17 different parts to that song! Over the years, I kept changing it and trying to edit it and get to the essence of the song. By the time I got around to recording it, I had remade the song entirely from what it was originally about. It took about six years to finally find that song!"
'Go On Ahead,'" says Phair, "was really hard to put on the album. Now that I'm married arid have a child, I don't want to rock the boat as much, or hurt people. At the same time, I wanted this album to be entirely authentic."
The thing about (WCSE) that really strikes me is that it combines the person I am now with the person I was throughout my whole life, rather than just being indicative of a two-year or a three-year period. It really felt the way Exile did, in that it encompassed my whole lifetime. It's similar to Exile in a lot of ways, in terms of how I recorded it, and in the way I drew from my past and my present.
Once you have kids you look at the bigger picture. The finger-pointing seems pointless and shallow. And that's the way I've been turning -- looking at myself, pointing fingers almost back at myself, confronting myself more than other people on this record. I'm not working at staying tough and frosty.
I had a very vivid dream while I was pregnant that I had an album out called whitechocolatespaceegg. I was sitting down at a table to sign copies of it, and people were lined up. They kept saying to me, 'I really like your album.'
It was a strange dream for me because I usually have very active dreams, like I'm fighting in a war or something. But this dream wasn't about action. It was about a state of mind. It was all very soothing. I was impressed with this dream, but I didn't push whitechocolatespaceegg as the name of the album. I renamed it many times, but people kept saying to me, 'What was that name you had before?'
There were a lot of songs that didn't make the album. Some of them were really bad, and some of them were good. It's like seating a dinner table -- there's only room for two insurance salesmen. You can't have three. That's how we ended up sorting out the album -- we went through and paired everybody up. It was interesting to see that we'd have two songs like this, two songs like that, and so on. The balance of the songs on an album has to be maintained, and by doing your 'seating chart', you can tell if someone doesn't belong at the table.
But sometimes you play a song and feel it so strongly that you go, 'God, this has to be on the album!' And that emotional attachment usually works for determining whether a song is good enough or not. You have to go through all your songs and decide if you still feel anything for them after a number of months -- or a number of years. The ones that don't make it are probably duplicates or triplicates of things you've written since. And they'll seem like a letter you received from someone a long time ago that doesn't affect you anymore.
An excellent histroical artifact that covers the time of the Wcse is a bootleg known widely as The WCSE Sessions. The two CD set give a terrific view into the evolution of the album, but first let me give you a little back stiory on how the WCSE Sessions CD came to be.
A well known fan of Liz's on the net received an email from some person who said he was roommates of Blast and Stoley from the Lupins (Blast being Jason Chasko, who produced some of the songs on whitechocolatespaceegg). He said that they moved out and left behind a bunch of original studio tapes from Trax Recording Studios as well as a cassette of Liz and Scott Litt alone in studio (this turned out to be the fabled '96 Shelved Demos/Studio Recordings tape). Since they weren't coming back for the tapes, he offered them to this Liz fan.
With the help of several people (and many members of the 6'1" (now known as Support System) Liz Phair mailing list digest), this person raised enough money to purchase these tapes. He then burned cd copies of the best of these tapes for the members of the list that helped purchase them. I think that these cd's are a testament to the depth of passion that many of Liz's fans have for her music. Liz's fans were pulling together to make sure that some bootlegger didn't get these tapes and rip off her fans.
There were a total of seven different cassettes received from this friend of Jason Chasko. Here is an analysis of the seven cassettes:
tape one (dated 4-9-97):
1. White Chocolate Space Egg - early version
completely different from the album version
slightly different instrumentation, lyric
arrangement and alternate lead vocal
obviously a working version (lyrics flubbed)
2. Big Tall Man - the instrumental track,
similar to the album version (sans the
vocal, of course)
tape two (dated 5-1-97):
1. Tell Me You Like Me - different lead vocal
and lyrics than the version on Shelved
Demos / Studio Recordings
2. What Makes You Happy - rough mix NOT the
Brad Wood, produced by Scott Litt?
incomplete (it appears Tell Me You Like
Me was taped over this song)
tape three (dated 5-20-97):
1. Bars Of The Bed - an unreleased recording
that was originally on the WCSE running
order (more later). It's a sped-up, rock
rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner.
tape four (undated):
1. Blood Keeper - an unreleased recording
it's a slow rock number with chords similar
to Nirvana's "Come As You Are" (at least to
my ears). Lyrics include: "I'm obsessed,
I'm a wreck, I'm insane / Isn't that what
you want me to say? / Don't you need to
feel my blood on the tracks again?"
(This track was intended for the "Scream 2"
soundtrack, but was ultimately shelved.)
tape five (undated):
1. What Makes You Happy - apparently a Scott
Litt production, different arrangement
than the released version.
2. Big Tall Man - similiar to the version
released, save for the ending.
tape six (whitechocolatespaceegg - undated):
this is the original running order that was
presumably presented to Capitol Records exec
Gary Gersh (who rejected it):
1. White Chocolate Space Egg - slightly different
mix than the released version
2. Fantasize - alternate mix with more instrumentation
3. Headache - alternate mix with sleigh bells (!)
4. Big Tall Man - slightly alternate mix and more
at the end (instrumentation break up)
5. Baby Got Going - alternate mix with quicker fade
at end. This is fun because you can hear Liz
laughing and talking.
6. Only Son - alternate vocals. Lyrics different.
Instead of "So long, goodbye, I'm gone already"
it's "Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy".
7. Bars Of The Bed - similar to the version mentioned
above, only there is dialogue in the background.
Apparently, it's a little story about an affair.
8. Oh My God - same as the Shelved Demos / Studio
Recordings version
9. Ride - only difference between the released
version and this one is that this one features
Liz saying "I need a ride..." at the very beginning.
10. White Bird Of Texas - same as the version found
on the Polyester Bride Japanese CD single (more
production)
11. Perfect World - same as the released version
except for you hear Liz set up her guitar at the
beginning
12. Desperado Theme - more overdubs, etc.
13. Tell Me You Like Me - similar to the version
described in tape two.
14. What Makes You Happy - Scott Litt (?) produced
version -- different (see tape six)
15. Freak Of Nature - same as version from Q101
Local 101 CD (anyone want to sell me their
copy of this CD???).
16. Girls' Room - same as released version
17. Russian Girl - double tracked vocal. Liz sounds
more confident. And she doesn't flub the lyrics.
tape seven:
no dialogue tape, but the Shelved Demos / Studio
Recordings tape:
1. Oh My God
2. Headache
3. Desperado Theme
4. Ride
5. Hurricane Cindy
6. Rocket Boy
7. Perfect World
8. Fantasize
9. Russian Girl
10. Stuck On An Island
11. Tell Me You Like Me
12. Girls' Room
13. I'm Like That
14. Waiting For The Bird (White Bird Of Texas)
15. Freak Of Nature
16-30. same titles as 1-15
The Shelved Demos / Studio Recordings tape was a tape that made it's way into the hands of Liz's fans back in 1996, (origination unknown). On side one of the tape were the orignal four-track demo's of the 15 songs listed above in their most embryonic of stages. Side Two of the tape gave the first efforts at fleshing out the songs in a full studio environment with more instrumentation.
From this array of demos and master tapes came the double-disc set that became (aptly) known as WCSE Sessions.
Here are the contents of those two discs:
Disc One 1996 Studio Recordings (taken from tape 7) 1. Oh My God 2. Headache 3. Desperado Theme 4. Ride 5. Hurricane Cindy 6. Rocket Boy 7. Perfect World 8. Fantasize 9. Russian Girl 10. Stuck On An Island 11. Tell Me You Like Me 12. Girls' Room 13. I'm Like That 14. Waiting For The Bird (White Bird Of Texas) 15. Freak Of Nature Sidenote 1: only the Studio Recordings portion of this tape was used. 1997 Studio Recordings 16. White Chocolate Space Egg (tape 1) 17. Big Tall Man (tape 1) 18. Tell Me You Like Me (tape 2) 19. What Makes You Happy (tape 2) 20. Bars Of The Bed (tape 3) 21. Blood Keeper (tape 4) 22. What Makes You Happy (tape 5) 23. Big Tall Man (tape 5) 1998 whitechocolatespaceegg Rough Mixes 24. Johnny Feelgood 25. What Makes You Happy Sidenote 2: tracks 24 and 25 are not from the tapes acquired from the roommate of Jason Chasko. This is is from a different tape. This tape from the summer of 1998 was an advance preview cassette that an engineer acquired who in turn dubbed for a friend. Well, there are few differences between this tape and the official whitechocolatespaceegg album. Save for these two songs. Johnny Feelgood features a slightly different mix. What Makes You Happy is a features a few more differences. The intro guitar part is missing and the song has a complete ending and doesn't loop to fade. Disc Two 1997 whitechocolatespaceegg Running Order (tape 6) 1. White Chocolate Space Egg 2. Fantasize 3. Headache 4. Big Tall Man 5. Baby Got Going 6. Only Son 7. Bars Of The Bed 8. Oh My God 9. Ride 10. Waiting For The Bird 11. Perfect World 12. Desperado Theme 13. Tell Me You Like Me 14. What Makes You Happy 15. Freak Of Nature 16. Girls' Room 17. Russian Girl Bonus Tracks 18. Blood Keeper (tape 4 - same as disc 1 track 21) 19. Greased Lightning (from Japanese Polyester Bride CD EP) 20. Hurricane Cindy (from Japanese whitechocolatespaceegg CD) Sidenote 3: the last two tracks were added for the benefit of those who couldn't find those Japanese imports.
Listening to the full two cd set along with the final WCSE release, we see the evolution of the album from the earliest form to finished product. You are able to hear the changes that a song can go through before it finally ends up being pressed and sold in the record stores. There are numerous nips and tucks the songs go through before getting the seal of approval. Take a track like 'What Makes You Happy' for example. We are able to see the song evolve from a straight ahead rocker into the more electronica version that ended up on the final album. The differing versions also show how the guitar intro at the beginning morphed from a slow accoustic bit into the gimmicky speed banjo like intro that appeared on the final product.
Listening to the 97 running order for WCSE, I tend to agree that Gary Gersh sending her back into the studio wasn't such a bad idea. The Cd at that point would have been an extremley mixed bag. The additional work that was done with both Brad Wood and Jason Chasko as producer added greatly to the album and provided some punch on what was previously a somewhat listless album.
Listening to the out-takes you sometimes wonder what criteria went into selecting tracks for the album. It is hard to belive that a track like 'Bloodkeeper' could be left off the final album. In my book it is one of the better songs that she has ever produced. With a spiraling guitar hook, acid-spewing lyrics, and Liz's voice dripping with emotion, this song just screams instant classic to Liz fans. Maybe it wasn't radio-friendly enough or harkened back too much to her earlier Guyville-type work that she was trying to move away from. Thank god for this boot, otherwise this great song would be buried away in a vault somewhere never to be heard.
Upon coming back to the Music scene with WCSE, Liz also came back with a much more business-like approach to her singing career. One of her first steps towards this end was hiring AMG as her mangement company, and Scott McGhee as her personal manager. AMG was founded by Hollywood SuperAgent Mike Ovitz and has much pull in Hollywood circles and beyond. Scott McGhee (along with his brother Doc) has managed some of the biggest rock bands in the US. A couple of true heavyweights that had the connections to raise Liz's profile.
One of the first overt signs of Liz as Businesswoman was the way she handled the rejection of her 97 version of WCSE. Instead of waging war with her record label (ala Aimee Mann, Prince, etc.) and getting dropped, she went back into the studio and worked at presenting a more 'conformist'(trademark Steve Kisko) album.
Many steps were taken to try and raise the public profile of Liz. In the months prior to the relese of WCSE, Liz toured on the high profile 1998 Lilith Fair tour, appearing on the cover of Entertainment weekly with her tour mates. A move that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier, Liz seemed to greatly appreciate the experience of participating in the tour.
Liz Phair: At first I was terrified that I didn’t fit in and that the words I sang were too abrasive or confrontational and I was like, ‘Oh, shit.’ Towards the end of it, after I’d seen so many different acts come and go, it was really a whole new world. It was like girls’ camp in a way: you totally fit in and you didn’t have to feel the way you did when you were just on the road in the rock world. For the first time I felt like I had a context, because I never felt at home in the whole male rock world.
It wasn’t until I saw myself juxtaposed with my peers, with all these other female songwriters, that I realized how shocking it is to stand up there onstage and sing these things to people. With Lilith, a lot of people who were there to see Sarah [McLachlan] or Natalie [Merchant] or someone else just weren’t that familiar with my work. A lot of times I was performing for a kind of neutral audience, so to hear something like '6'1"' [from Exile in Guyville] was an affront, in a way, to the audience. I was totally surprised -- it wasn't until I played to those audiences that I understood how I came across.
I had one of the best summers of my life. That’s the first time I’ve ever had friends in the business. There was this vibe, this Lilith vibe, and I wanted to fit in. I got to know it and I learned about it and it was so amazingly freeing.
I really like performing now. I'm not so completely baffled by insecurity. I can kind of like realize what an electric moment it is. I really dug Lilith Fair because it's a singers' concert and those women, I just stand in awe of their voices and the way they can use them and the control they have over their instruments.
I finally accepted that I want to sing. I was so embarrassed by my voice when I was younger. I don't know why that happened, but I would hide it and pretend to barely sing and I never really worked on it and I wished I'd spent all those years working on it instead of hiding it... Right now, it brings me a lot of happiness. You can't get me off a microphone once you get me on it.
Narrator: Their was a significant effort by Liz and her management to generate buzz about herself and the album. Liz did several print ads with both Levi's and Calvin Klein cK jeans around this time. In additionally, Liz's new management was successful at placing her music in many TV and Movie Projects. Liz's music appeared in such TV shows as Party of Five, Felecity, Dawson's Creek, and Charmed as well as appearing in the movies She's All That and High Fidelity.
The first single to be released from WCSE was "Polyester Bride". Depsite the usual talk show circuit of performances and a exposure from her dates on the Lilith Fair Tour, the single never really caught on in the radio formats it was aimed at, namely Modern Rock, Adult Alternative and Adult Contemporary radio. Capitol decided to not release a second single to radio, cutting their losses in some respects. Liz would tour through out the fall of 98 in support of the album. Despite these efforts, the album would quickly fall from the Billboard 200 album Charts.
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whitechocolatespaceegg stayed on the charts for nine weeks, peaking at #35. (credit to Ken Lee and Billboard)
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After taking a small break after her Fall 1998 headlining tour in support of WCSE, Liz was then enlisted to open up several dates for Alanis Morissette on the Supposed former infatuation junkie tour. Liz played 13 dates with Alanis that stretched over a three week period in Febuary of 99. The dates with Alanis allowed Liz exposure to new listeners that would most likely be receptive to her songs. It was a bit of an ironic twist that the two would tour together. The two were basically flip sides of the same female angst coin. On one you have Liz Phair- perhaps the most intelligent and earliest of the female angst rockers of the 90's. And then you have Alanis- who was to build upon these themes and make them consumable for a mass market (MTV and Radio). Liz seemed to enjoy her time touring with Alanis.
Liz Phair: "It was awesome. Really a challenge. We were such a small band compared to hers and she gives such a really intense performance. I mean, you wouldn't expect it from the album. You have to see it to believe it."
"But I learnt two things. Watching her shows I learned how to perform. I can say I have opened for Morissette with an audience that was mostly hers and - without sounding pompous - they were blown away by our performance. And we leaned how to build our set. That sounds nothing but it takes learning. I actually enjoy live performance now whereas before I used to hate it; I'd rather get shot in the foot. I was deadly afraid of being in front of people, at all."
Narrator: Liz followed up her tour with Alanis with a College tour of the US covering 17 dates over April and early May of 99. The tour saw varying levels of success, drawing sell-outs in some cites while barely drawing flies in others. The tour was likely at least break even, mainly due to the guarantees paid by the Universities for the concerts. Liz would also play several dates on the third and final Lilith Fair tour. After playing the seven dates with Lilith in July and August of 99, Liz would vacation in the Carribean and then take a break from the recording industry.