A merry Christmas to everybody
01.
Interview
02. Jimmy Silva & The Goats - City of Sisterly Love
03. Young Fresh Fellows - Fear Bitterness And Hatred
04. The Kinks - Harry Rag
05. Interview
06. Jimmy Silva & The Goat 5 - And That's Fine
07. The Minus 5 - Worse
08. The Who - Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand
09. Interview
10. St. Catherine's Statue -Scott McCaughey LIVE at KEXP
11. Interview
12. Jimmy Silva & The Goats -Lathe
13. The Young Fresh Fellows -When The Girls Get Here
14. Interview
15. Jimmy Silva Sextet - Pammie's On A Bummer
16. The Boatrampmen - What I Wont
17. Interview
18. Telephone Tree - Scott McCaughey LIVE at KEXP
19. Interview
20. Jimmy Silva & The Goat 5 -Grease The Wheel
1. Wilco - A Ghost Is Born
2. Brian Wilson - SMiLE
3. The Sadies - Favourite Colours
4. Elliott Smith - From a Basement on the Hill
5. Polyphonic Spree - Together We're Heavy
6. Drive-By Truckers - The Dirty South
7. Robyn Hitchcock - Spooked
8. The Thrills - Let's Bottle Bohemia
9. Ken Stringfellow - Soft Commands
10. Mendoza Line - Fortune
We also seem to experience some trouble with the message board, we are working on that. Sorry for the trouble.
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Scott Leaving the Studio
(Photo by Bill Rieflin)
Fiddeling around on the guitar
(Photo by Bill Rieflin)
MP3.com / By Charles Hodgkins;Associate Editor
Seattle music scene veteran. R.E.M. sideman. Wilco collaborator. Leader of the Young Fresh Fellows and The Minus 5. For as many hats as multi-instrumentalist Scott McCaughey wears, you'd be forgiven for thinking he keeps a few extra heads on the shelf of his hall closet.
McCaughey's formal association with R.E.M. dates back 10 years, when he was asked by friend and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck to help beef up the band's live sound for an appearance on Saturday Night Live. A decade later, McCaughey remains an unofficial official member of the college-rock progenitors' recording and touring brigade.
With the Fellows on hiatus -- "I don't see a big increase in activity in the near future," McCaughey admits -- the man who's been a walking Wayfarers ad for the better part of his career has shifted his focus, even if he still sees himself as an accidental tourist.
"I'm pretty damn unorganized, and not very career-minded," McCaughey says from an R.E.M. tour stop in St. Louis. "Basically, what determines my schedule now is R.E.M. Everything else that comes up -- or that I'm driven to do -- I try to squeeze in between R.E.M. recording and sojourns."
Ken Stringfellow also got the call from the Athens, Georgia, legends around the same time as McCaughey, but according to the self-deprecating McCaughey, former Posies front man Stringfellow isn't the laggard McCaughey sees himself as.
"Stringfellow also has to work around R.E.M., but he's probably more committed to seeing through his other projects, whereas I tend to be pretty half-assed and prone to procrastination."
Minus 5 Plus Wilco Equals Inspiration
McCaughey's track record indicates otherwise. After helming the Young Fresh Fellows full-time for more than 10 critically acclaimed, yet cultishly appreciated years, McCaughey began to branch out in earnest. First came the R.E.M. assignment. Not much later, McCaughey jump-started The Minus 5, a revolving, ramshackle collective of characters anchored by McCaughey and Buck, who by that point had relocated to Seattle. A debut album, Old Liquidator, and an inclusion on a high-profile John Lennon tribute compilation both came in 1995.
Last year brought Down With Wilco, a well-received studio scrum with guess-who that ostensibly gathered some new Minus 5 fans, even if it may have sailed right by a number of Wilco followers. Although most of the songs were written by McCaughey -- a tunesmith if there's ever been one -- the vocal duties were spread around, and the arrangements didn't skew too much toward either band's usual aesthetic. As a result, Down With Wilco sounds like a true merging of ideas, rather than the sonic checkerboard that usually stems from such collaborations.
McCaughey, for one, thinks all the praise heaped upon the Chicago band is justifiably deserved.
"My respect for them as a band is unparalleled," McCaughey says. "I recently saw them at Radio City Music Hall, and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. I'm extremely proud and fortunate to have worked with them, and they inspire me to no end."
The Minus 5's At the Organ EP, featuring a number of tracks recorded during the Down With Wilco sessions, was released last week on Yep Roc Records.
What's Ahead
As popular and well positioned as McCaughey is in the rock community, he admits he's still prone to being starstruck at times. A stint on the recent Vote for Change tour drove this point home more than ever.
"Every night watching Springsteen, and actually performing with him, was an eye-opener," he says. "The guy is just inspiring as hell, and he and the E-Streeters are just so damn nice. John Fogerty's voice still sends chills up my spine. And when Neil Young dropped in on us in Minneapolis and played lead on 'Country Feedback,' I was pretty much in heaven."
When asked what project he plans to tackle next, the affable McCaughey again downplays his industrious nature.
"Surviving is foremost in my mind," he says. "Trying to make people happy. Trying not to be a jerk. That kind of stuff. Actually, I'd like to do a collaborative record saluting the songs of my late, great songwriter friend Jimmy Silva.
"Oh yeah, and complete the next Minus 5 album on days off from R.E.M."
McCaughey, Wilco/R.E.M. buds turn Minus 5 into plus
Orlando Sentinel / Sentinel Staff Writer
**** The Minus 5, At the Organ (Yep Roc): All the guys in the loosely organized collective known as The Minus 5 are involved in more "important" bands, if you'd consider Wilco and R.E.M. worthy of that description.
But even those groups would be hard-pressed match the spontaneous spirit, accessible songwriting and sheer fun that The Minus 5 has produced on a handful of less heralded releases such as 2003's Down With Wilco.
The Minus 5 is the brainchild of Scott McCaughey, whose résumé includes work with Seattle indie outfit the Young Fresh Fellows and a long-running sideman role with R.E.M. His rotating cast of bandmates through the years has included R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard and singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding.
Sometimes, albums such as last year's In Rock might have benefited from pruning a few of the less stellar tracks, but generally a release by The Minus 5 is a freewheeling good time.
That's the case on At the Organ, a seven-song EP that includes a few new songs and alternate versions of "The Days of Wine and Booze" and "The Town That Lost Its Groove Supply," a pair of Down With Wilco tracks.
Along with Buck, Tweedy is back for At the Organ in a band that also includes Wilco compadres John Stirratt on bass, Glenn Kotche on drums, Leroy Bach on guitars and Mikael Jorgensen on keys.
Together, the musicians skillfully cover terrain that's familiar but not without its charms. "(I've Got a) Lyrical Stance" opens with good-humored punk explosion anchored by buzz-saw guitars and an exuberant "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" refrain.
"Hotel Senator," dedicated to a favorite spot in Hamburg, Germany, contrasts McCaughey's innate knack for a hooky chorus with subtle lo-fi verses. "Formerly Hail Centurion" channels the Beatles with its energetic harmonies but carves a unique identity with a warm background of marimbas. "Film of the Movie," a story song with pedal steel guitar, rumbles happily along a country road.
There's such an effortless charm to those songs, that alternate versions of "The Town That Lost Its Groove Supply" and "The Days of Wine and Booze" seem like filler by comparison. Neither is different enough to make the repetition worthwhile.
However, there is added value in the bonus video for "Groove Supply" that's a dreamy pastiche of floating TV sets, hula girls, ballerinas and flying architecture. Like so much created by The Minus 5, it's groovy indeed.
Reviewing key: ***** excellent; **** good; *** average; ** poor; * awful.
rollingstone.com
If Young Fresh Fellow, R.E.M. sideman and Minus Five mastermind Scott McCaughey didn't know exactly what he was doing with the world's longest-running side project/joke, it might come across as a worthless vanity act. It isn't. The loosely proficient assembled players (R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, Wilco, the Posies' Ken Stringfellow and Rebecca Gates of Spinanes) combined with McCaughey's indefatigable gift for inanity ("Lyrical Stance") and wonky melody (the de facto title track, "Days of Wine and Booze") showcase his insider, super-rocker status and make you wonder, is everyone enjoying the challenge of recreating Kinks-style village greenery ("Hotel Senator" with Wilco) and smiley art-rock ("Formerly Hail Centurion" and "The Town That Lost Its Groove Supply") or are they just wanking on this seven-song collection of outtakes and remakes? Who cares! Minus Five make music for music's sake; that it's turned out to be McCaughey's most enduring contribution to his own vast catalog is probably as big of a surprise to him as it is to anyone. (DENISE SULLIVAN)
Our story begins, as always, at the Feghorn public house near Clerkenwell Green, London. It was there that various leaders of the Minus 5 convened to discuss the group’s perilous future. With a surprise hit record under their collective, expanding belts, a record that a year later could still be seen flying off the shelves, this brain trust felt the enormous pressure of following up the masterful Down With Wilco.
Over a sickly sausage roll and a pint of bitter, Cranky The Orchestrator popped in with the first viable suggestion. “What about those songs that we didn’t use on the last album?”
“Actually we used that lot on the double vinyl version as bonus tracks, didn’t we?” reminded the sarcastic sonof-a-bitch trombonist Raoul.
“Yeah but nobody buys vinyl anyway. Just in case though, we could spruce those up, do some remixing, refurbishing, renovating. And then we’ll add some brand new tracks and a video”
This outburst from vocalist (and Audubon Society member) Scott “Vauxhall” McCaughey took the other knobs by surprise. “What video?!?” they cried, as one.
McOi explained to the adoring throng that famed Replacements drummer and monster of the arts Chris Mars, along with his pal Scott Ferril, had long been secretly toiling in a Minneapolis bunker, crafting images to compliment the sounds of “The Town That Lost It’s Groove Supply.” “I didn’t ask them to do it, or offer them any money,” McCaughey added smugly. “And they got Jessy Greene to appear in it in a black leather jacket and a pink tutu. That can’t be bad.”
Upon hearing this, all naysayers succumbed to the obvious necessity for such a project. Ned The Pistol insisted that a new rock version of “Groove Supply” be recorded in Seattle. Odd Tom reminded all of the recent one-day session with Wilco in Chicago that could provide two songs for the EP, and two for the next Minus 5 long-player, due in 2005. That seemed fair.
And thusly did a bedraggled group of gentlemen raise their glasses in harmony. “AT THE ORGAN” they cried, and tears were shed, amongst grown men, and the goats that wandered amongst them...
At The Organ Is out on Yep Roc Records Today, story copied from the YepRoc press kit