Breakfast in cemetery...

December 15, 2013 10:34 PM

We'll come back for Indian Summer / And go our separate ways
posted by Going To Maine (16 comments total)

Awesome!!
posted by wemayfreeze at 11:05 PM on December 15, 2013

classic
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 11:10 PM on December 15, 2013

Two tracks from the album, "Bewitched" and "Indian Summer," were listed as essential listening in Pitchfork Media's 2005 article on Twee Pop entitled "Twee as Fuck."

Thanks to Wikipedia I know that and that this song, which I can honestly say I have never heard before is "indie's 'Knocking on Heaven's Door'-- everybody's done it.
posted by Mezentian at 11:15 PM on December 15, 2013 [3 favorites]

This is what the lead singer, Calvin Johnson, does now: Sitting Alone at the Movies. It is incredible. Although when I saw him perform he did it a cappella, an intense experience that really put me back to that time in the spring of 7th grade, a few months after I'd moved to a new town in New Hampshire, when I discovered the joy of going to a movie by myself after church and getting a donut and reading Zits at the bookstore, until I happened to go to the same fucking film that all the popular kids at my new middle school were going to that Sunday and endured 90 terrifying minutes a few rows ahead of them, peaking with a couple minutes wherein Sara came up and sat next to me and put her arm around me.

It was to be the last time.
posted by Corduroy at 12:07 AM on December 16, 2013 [2 favorites]

Ah, I love this. I was at Evergreen in the 80s when Calvin was there (first time I met him he was driving the campus shuttle van) and I have many fond memories of Beat Happening.

I recorded "Indian Summer" myself (and made a video) for a Facebook group music challenge a couple of months ago. The theme of the challenge was Dada and so I made the song by pulling together samples of old recordings of mine, and sampling my voice. Here it is, for those who are interested. (It wasn't on YouTube until tonight but I guess I might as well upload it.)
posted by litlnemo at 2:40 AM on December 16, 2013 [3 favorites]

Cool! Bonus insider points for posting the Captain America version instead of the Eugenius version (even if they are exactly the same).
posted by Drab_Parts at 5:01 AM on December 16, 2013

Now a major motion picture!
posted by Sys Rq at 6:09 AM on December 16, 2013

Fantastic post. I ♥ Luna forever and ever. Dean Wareham makes me a happy camper still.
posted by PuppyCat at 6:23 AM on December 16, 2013

Thanks to Wikipedia I know that and that this song, which I can honestly say I have never heard before is "indie's 'Knocking on Heaven's Door'-- everybody's done it.

Finding good citations about Indian Summer that I could link from the web was surprisingly difficult - my google-fu is weak. For more, I'd generally point you to some things I mentioned in the AskMe that inspired the post: part two and three of the old Pitchfork article Twee As Fuck and the Beat Happening chapter of Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life. The Shield Around The K, a documentary about K Records from which the "Knocking on Heaven's Door" quote comes might be good, but I haven't seen it.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:36 AM on December 16, 2013

You're missing my favorite version: Eugenius.
posted by dobbs at 7:19 AM on December 16, 2013

My mistake. Ha! You've got the Captain American version. Neat. They went on to become Eugenius.
posted by dobbs at 7:21 AM on December 16, 2013

I totally thought this was a Luna song. And after listening to all these covers, that version us still my fave...
posted by Diablevert at 7:29 AM on December 16, 2013 [2 favorites]

This is probably some sort of heresy, but the Ben Gibbard version really is my fave. I think it's that his voice is the most pleasant... maybe that subtracts from the gravelly simplicity of the some, but on the terrible computer speakers at work, his version was the only one that didn't make be cringe at some point.

(Maybe I'm just a sellout. I quite liked the REM version too. Oh, wait, no, I'm safe, I like The Manhattan Love Suicides one too.)

(The Internet: Where liking Ben Hibbard and REM covers of semi-obscure indie songs makes you feel like a sellout.)
posted by maryr at 4:13 PM on December 16, 2013 [1 favorite]

OMG. I just watched the Beat Happening video. I'd never seen the actual video. All of that footage of 1980s Olympia... it hurts my heart. Wow.
posted by litlnemo at 5:48 PM on December 16, 2013

And now back, in book form.
posted by Apocryphon at 6:20 PM on December 16, 2013

> All of that footage of 1980s Olympia...

That video was filmed on Super 8 by Pat Maley. He's got a lot of great footage from that era.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:44 PM on December 16, 2013 [1 favorite]