60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “F--k and Run”—Liz Phair

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

Rob looks back at ‘Ferris Bueller's Day Off’ when diving into Liz Phair’s “F--k and Run” and the rest of her career. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Sam Lipsyte Producer: Justin Sayles Associate Producer: Jonathan Kermah Additional Production Support: Abou Kamara Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody? It's Austin Rivers from the Minnesota Timberwolves. It's a new year and I have a new podcast here at the Ringer, Offguard, hosted by me and my guide, Pasha Higigi. Austin and I go way back and talk so much hoop already that we figure those time to fire up the mics and let you in on all of these conversations. Every week, Pasha and I will hit on the biggest stories happening in the league.

And get Austin's perspective of someone currently hooping in the NBA. Tap into Offguard every Friday on the Ringer NBA show feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. All right, we got two teenagers, a girl and a boy, sitting at opposite ends of a powder blue couch in a police station in Winnetka, Illinois. He's on the right, red eyes, black leather jacket, insusient poof of jet black hair, a queasy zen sleeves vibe. She's on the left, preppy, infuriated, pink sweater, multiple additional layers, suspenders for some reason, it's a confusing outfit to me. They're supposed to be teenagers. Or at least she's supposed to be a teenager.

Really, they're both in their late 20s. What are you going to do? She's seating in silence. He's serenely cracking his knuckles. He breaks the ice. Drugs? Thank you. No, I'm straight.

I meant, are you in here for drugs? Why are you here? Drugs. That is almost a haiku. I checked. I thought it was a haiku at first. I got all excited. Two syllables.

off. I'm so mad. It's almost a palindrome. Also, not really. Winnetka, Illinois, frequently cited as one of the richest towns in America. Median household income is well north of $250,000, but that's in 2021. This is 1986. Suburb of Chicago, Winneca is 16 miles north of Chicago. Jump in your dad's Cherry Red 1961 Ferrari GT. You can be downtown in, what, 20 minutes? Maybe 10 minutes if you don't mind possibly winding up in a police station. I don't know why I'm here. Why don't you go home? Why don't you put your thumb up your butt?

Listen, I'm all for cleverness, for wordplay, for lacerating wit, for self-congratulatory literary references, but I'm here to tell you that why don't you put your thumb up your butt is the greatest comeback of my lifetime. Simple, elegant, devastating. Surgical precision. Put that shit in the Louvre. Put it up the Louvre's butt. The look on Charlie Sheen's face. This is Jennifer Gray and Charlie Sheen, acting in the 1986 comedy Ferris Bueller's Day Off,

recently named the greatest film of all time by voters in the 2022 Site and Sound Magazine poll. That's a joke. The serene look on Charlie Sheen's face as he processes, why don't you put your thumb up your butt is just absolutely sublime. Then he makes an extremely crude remark about his sister's eye makeup, because this is a 1986 teen comedy.

Then she explains to Charlie that her suspiciously popular brother ditched school, and she ditched two to rush home to bust him. But then she high-kicked their school principal in the face repeatedly in her kitchen, and one thing led to another, and she wound up in a police station instead. What do you care if your brother ditched his school? Why should he get to ditch when everybody else has to go? You could ditch.

Yeah, I'd get caught. This is the second episode of this show to begin with a lengthy dissection of a minor scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I can't explain this. Great movie. A crucial suburban teenager text, but I'm not even a Ferris Bueller guy like that. It didn't make my sight and sound ballot, put it that way. Gross Point Blank totally did, though. John Cusack, Mini Driver, high school rebuttal.

Union, professional killer. Ten years! Fantastic movie! I'm just kidding. They didn't ask me to vote. I totally would have voted for Gross Point Blank if they'd asked, though. So you're pissed off because he ditches and doesn't get caught. Is that it? Basically. And your problem is you. But I do return often to the Ferris Bueller police station scene, primarily for why don't you put your thumb up your butt.

Okay, like 99% of the appeal here is why don't you put your thumb up your butt. But Jennifer Gray and Charlie Sheen, right before they start making out, they do beautifully illustrate, however briefly, one of our most vexing societal conundrums, the glaring difference between what boys can get away with and what girls can get away with. Excuse me. Excuse you. You ought to spend a little more time dealing with yourself, a little less time worrying about what your brother does. That's just an opinion. And then he says there's someone you should talk to and she says, if you say Ferris Bueller, you lose a testicle. And he says, oh, you know him and she cracks her knuckles. It's a palindrome. Forget everything I just said, actually. Forget it. Let's start over. We got a girl and a boy sitting at opposite ends of a powder blue couch and a police station in Winnetka, Illinois. He's on the right. Rockstar, dazed expression, totally serene. And of course, he's getting away with everything all the time, present circumstances, exclusion. She's on the left, preppy vibe, radiating exasperation, because of course she can't get away with anything.

The boy is Mick Jagger. The girl is Liz Fair. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 85th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s. And this week we are discussing fucking run by Liz Fair. From her 1993 debut album, Exile in Guyville. Most episodes these days, it takes me way longer to introduce myself, but I guess I didn't feel like fucking around this time. Or I felt like fucking around less.

Fucking run. Even when I was 12, we'll just slap you right out of your seat. Slap you right off that couch every time. Won't it? Let's continue not fucking around, shall we? Let's experiment with not. fucking around. Liz Fair was born in New Haven, Connecticut, bounced around a bit as a kid, but was mostly raised by her adoptive parents in Winnetka, Illinois. At six years old, as she'll later explain in

her memoir, quote, I really need magic to be real, and I live in a state of quasi-denial, where flowers have faces and inanimate objects can communicate. Everything I know, I gleaned through signs and symbols. I think thunderstorms can see me." End quote. At 12 years old, she went to summer camp with Julia Roberts. This will eventually come up in one of Liz Fair songs. When Liz makes the cover of Rolling Stone in 1994, she will describe her old friend, Julia Roberts, as, quote, tall and bossy and fun. I always had tall bossy friends. Sadly, Liz goes on to report, we stopped speaking because she was always calling me collect and it pissed me off. I'm like, what are you fucking calling me collect for?

Your parents are rich enough, end quote. All right, I'm not explaining what calling collect means. If you're too young to be familiar with that term, keep it to yourself. Liz studied art at the super liberal Oberlin College, the least Ohioan physical location in Ohio. It's like a portal to Narnia and graduated in 1990. She spent a little time in New York City, spent a little time in San Francisco, but she winds up back living with her parents in Illinois, a little aimless, a little exasperated. She falls in with some affable Chicago rocker bros, for example, the great power pop band Material Issue.

Here's a material issue song called What Girls Want. They're just speculating. That's an obnoxious way for me to bring up material issue. Sheesh, those guys kick ass. That song actually kicks ass. I love that band. Calling them bros is pushing it. Super obnoxious of me.

Matter of fact, as Penance, let's play another material issue song that also kicks ass. I do apologize. Urge Overkill, too. Liz starts hanging out with the dudes in Urge Overkill. Those guys kick ass as well

and will be medium famous in a year or two. A sister, Hamanca, and girl, you'll be a woman soon and whatnot. But here's a less famous urge overkill song from 92 called Goodbye to Guyville. We need to get away from now.

Fantasizing about waitresses, fantasizing about rescuing waitresses from all the affable bros, fantasizing about them. This is the very essence of the abstract, pervasive, super macho, suffocating, condescending, and maybe inescapable sociocultural phenomenon known as Guyville. And it's the stuff power pop dreams are made of. And I love it. And I can fuck around talking about that stuff all day. But Liz Farr is writing songs as well in recording them on a four track in her bedroom, late at night, very quietly, so as not to disturb anyone sharing a bedroom wall with her. And the Herculean, the Aphroditean effort she makes, not to disturb anyone, her natural impulse the whole time she was growing up, not to disturb anyone.

The exasperated strain of this effort, not to disturb anyone, animates the song she's writing, to put it mildly. destined to disturb some people. Word gets around. A few tapes of these songs get around. Liz gets signed to the fabled Matador Records. Liz starts working on her debut album, To Be Called Exile and Guyville, which will come out in 1993 and endure, very much to her benefit, of course, but as her career progresses, also very much to her detriment, as one of the most shocking, most cataclysmic, most influential, most violently beloved, most hard to live up to debut albums in pop music history. Exile and Guyville is the stone created by God that's so heavy, God himself cannot lift it. Usually I say the burrito microwave by God that's so hot God himself cannot eat it,

but I have used that stupid line way too many times. God himself can't eat it. Or God herself, you don't know. Shout out dishwala. Exile and Guyville is the impossible idea. The proverbial rock-critical albatross. It's a record so good that many proud residents of Guyville has spent the rest of Liz Faire's career lambasting her

for never, in their collective opinion, making another record worthy of it. Exile and Guyville is the illmatic of indie rock, if you will, and if you won't, then too bad, here is Liz Phair in 2010, talking to Karen Gans and Rolling Stone and explaining her mindset, while making exile in Guyville.

Quote, I was so disrespected. Being a woman in music back then, at least the level I was, was like being their bitch. Sit there, look pretty, bring us drinks, and we'll talk about what music is good and bad.

And it was almost understood that women's taste in music was inferior. I was so angry about being taken advantage of sexually, being overlooked intellectually, A lot of exile in Guyville was about and I'll show them. That was a major emotion in my life, pent up for a long time. Even when I was young, at dinner tables with the extended family, listening to the men argue and the women sort of sit there, that's just the way it was back then. End quote.

Liz Fair in the early 90s. Maybe she still thinks thunderstorms can see her, but she still can't get those thunderstorms to listen to. her. Also, she has decided to format her debut album as a track-by-track response to the 1972 Rolling Stones' mega-classic exile on Main Street, one of the most deified and brood out rock and roll records ever born. So her song, Fuck and Run, for example, slots in at track 10 and directly mirrors track 10 on exile on Main Street, a song called Happy, in which Keith Richards voices his desire for a girl who will sit there look pretty, bring him drinks, and listen to him talk about what music is good and bad. I'm projecting a little bit,

perhaps. I am putting words in Keith Richards' mouth here in the 85th episode of this podcast where I talk to you about what music is good and bad. But projecting the whole point, right? Concocting your own personal version of Keith Richards or Mick Jagger to talk to or or yell at is the whole point. In 2010, when the journalist and author and filmmaker Jessica Hopper did an oral history on exile in Guyville for Spin Magazine, Liz talked about the Stone's record. She says, I listened to it over and over again, and it became like my source of strength. My involvement with exile was like an imaginary friend.

Whatever Mick was saying, it was a conversation with him, or I was arguing with him. and it was kind of an amalgam of the men in my life. That's why I called it Guyville. Friends, romantic interests, these teacher types, telling me what I needed to know, what was cool or wasn't cool. End quote. Actually, here's how Ferris Bueller's sister

would summarize all that. Why should he get to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants? Why should everything work out for him? What makes him so goddamn special? Screw him. Actually, just screw him is a perfectly coherent way to summarize all that. Liz talking to Rolling Stone says, I remember telling my boyfriend I wanted to write a record, but I didn't know how.

I was a visual arts major, and I concocted the idea that I needed a template, learn from the greats, end quote. So she starts zeroing in on the Rolling Stones on exile on Main Street, and she's asking her boyfriend if that's, That's a good pick, if that's a big, important record. And he's like, yeah, sure, but it's a double album. It's 18 tracks. Liz says, I can remember him sort of joking.

You should totally do that, but being sarcastic, as if I couldn't possibly. And I remember in that moment being like, really, end quote. Put it another way. Liz Faire's boyfriend's being a dick, and he goes, you can totally do that. No problem. Why don't you do exile on Main Street? and Liz Fair goes, why don't you put your thumb up your butt? All right, but let's start at the beginning with the four-track solo action, the bootlegs, essentially, three full cassettes of Liz Fair songs that start getting unofficially passed around in 1991 under the name Gurley sound, Gurley-hyphen sound.

The first Gurley sound tape, and I think you know I wouldn't make this up, is called Yo, Yo, Yo, Buddy, Y, Yup, Yup, Whop. Word to your mother. That's M-U-T-H-U-H-M-A-Mother. Our dear friend Yossi-Sahlex, she of the Bansplaine podcast. She did a whole episode on Liz Phair with the writer Niko Stratis. That's excellent, of course. And they observe that the title, Yo-Yo, Buddy, Yup, Yup, Word to Your Mother gives you a pretty good idea of how seriously Liz Phair was taking this. And how many people she thought were listening to her at this point.

I believe she thought zero people were listening or would. listen to her at this point. Anyway, this first tape is 14 tracks long and ends with a cute little ditty called Fuck or Die. I am not going to get in the habit here of repeating Liz Fair lyrics back to you. This is for your own protection as well as mine, but I will cautiously observe that the condom on your dicks, the tie that binds is quite a gnarly and vivid turn of phrase. The girly sound tapes were not officially released on streaming service. and whatnot until 2018 for Guyville's 25th anniversary. And so you had to be super, super cool to have heard any of this shit in the 90s. But even now, the song Fuck or Die is still not officially streaming

for one presumes Johnny Cash related reasons. Also, this is one of the relatively few girly sound songs where Liz stops playing very quietly and very much seeks to disturb anyone sharing a bedroom wall with her. But Liz Fares' die. dominant vocal style throughout the girly sound tapes is this sardonic, elusive deadpan tone that makes her sarcasm sound sincere and makes her sincerity sound sarcastic. Plus, her voice mixes wonderfully with her guitar playing, right? The dense, nervous, blurry furtiveness of it. But the absolute confidence, too. She knows exactly what she's doing. And she knows that you don't know exactly what she's doing, even if you love what she's doing. She's the thunderstorm now. Maybe you can see her, but probably you're not really listening. I'm quite fond of a song called Money. It's nice to be right, but it's better by far to get paid. Plenty of splendid early 90s indie rock type songwriters would sing these lines with a little more pizzazz, right?

A theatrical bitterness, a palpable smirk, an audible wink. They'd make it more of a joke. and a joke you're in on. Of course I don't want to get paid for this. That's ridiculous. But Liz Fair will spend the next 25 years and counting, trying to convince everyone who fell in love with her that she maybe kind of sort of possibly means this

and means everything she says and does even when she's seemingly contradicting herself. Really, she'll spend the next 25 years illustrating that critical adoration often isn't worth the paper it's printed on. And if you get too many rapturous reviews, then you somehow wind up in debt. I know that most of the friends that I have don't really see it that way. Liz Pharre will load up her first three official albums with reworked and sweetened and fleshed out and legitimately improved versions of girly sound songs.

This one included in 2018, talking to the New York Times when these tapes finally came out, She didn't renounce them exactly, but, quote, I can't listen to the way I'm singing. I do this thing with my voice. It's like she lets out a screeching sound. It's like nails on a chalkboard. I just want to reach through the laptop and punch myself in the face. There's a lot of stuff in girly sound that is just humiliatingly bad.

What I'm going to do on stage is obviously not sing it exactly that way. She laughs. But I think it's an interesting. story about how things evolve, the artistic process. End quote. Money is not a nails on a chalkboard song in any vocal or musical sense, but this song is a gleeful punch in the face to a certain dominant 90s rocker mentality. Seriously, while we're talking money, how much would you pay to hear Fugazi's cover? of this song.

When Liz re-recorded this song for an album later, she'll retitle it shitloads of money. It's a good edit. There are tons of bluntly spectacular moments across the three tapes and two-plus hours of girly sound that allow us to witness the messy and visceral and glorious birth of one of the best songwriters of her generation. What you hear through her bedroom wall is Liz Fair developing that sardonic but I mean this voice but mixing it with other tones

an eerie and vulnerable falsetto an extra melancholy croon the very occasional Courtney Love adjacent Howell the third girly sound tape is called Sooty S-O-O-T-Y That's a much less laborious title And I'm quite fond of a song called

Slave Because I'm chase You wanna feel It makes you want to cry. It makes you want to tear the stars from the sky. The wordier Sardonic Liz voice there, as you may have noticed, is borrowing

a melody from the song Head On, a 1989 tune by a band of rad, Scottish Ultra Guyville, sensual dirtbags called The Jesus and Mary Chain. Head on, a song so rad and cool and instantly iconic that the pixies covered it. For God's sake.

Girly sound is loaded up with semi-cover versions. Johnny Cash Ring of Fire type hijack situations. She'll hijack Wild Thing. She'll hijack the Shoup-Soup song. She'll hijack the stones, naturally, shattered. She'll hijack fucking chopsticks. She borrows from all across pop history, but bends all of it to her own ends. She interrogates all of it.

She interrogates the rock star myth with such mesmerizing verb that she becomes a rock star herself. but she suspects it's not worth it. And listening to Slave, once you've grasped that she's grasping that, that's when you ought to start focusing on the other Liz. And sometimes a dream, her own, and sometimes a dream doesn't set you, her melodies, her gets her guitar riffs, her sentiments. They all might not immediately strike you as pretty in the conventional pop music sense until suddenly a switch flips and all of it is unbearably pretty.

And that's the precise moment when you're permanently in her debt and she maybe is permanently in yours. I will concede here that for myself, as a thoroughly alt-rock teen and a snooty indie rockin college doofus and a bumbling young professional rock critic I always thought Liz Fair was cool and respected the tremendous power

she exerted on seemingly everyone in my disreputable line of work rock critics fucking love exile on Guyville dude you don't talk about this record not really you just genuflect but as a younger bumblier man I felt like I never quite crossed the divide between respecting her power and submitting to it myself, the boundary between digging something

and truly loving it, truly getting it. I feel like this song is the song that finally pushed me into the truly loving zone. The unbearable prettiness of both hooks here, the high one and the low one, the ethereal Liz, and the deadpan Liz. The way sometimes a dream is what makes you a slave clashes so perfectly with Baby, it's all right. You decide which one of these she truly believes. You decide whether it's possible to truly believe both. You decide if these two sentiments are even clashing at all.

The middle girly sound tape is called Girls, Girls, Girls, Preferably in all caps. It's the longest tape and the best one. It includes the long. line, free love is a whole lot of bullshit. It includes the opening line, he's just a hero and a long line of heroes looking for something attractive to save, which is still my favorite Liz Phair opening line. It's got a song called Ant in Alaska, as in I'm just an aunt in Alaska to you. That relationship is not going well. But most importantly, Girls, Girls, Girls is where this song first

pops up. The first thing you notice about the song Fuck and Run is that it is called that. The second thing you notice, when I say you, I mean me, but it sounds cool to me when I say you. The second thing you notice is that even the skeletal girly sound version already feels a touch more straightforward. Feels breezier. Feels, forgive me for saying this stonesier. We are rocking out somewhat on fucking run. The third thing you notice is that I woke up in your own.

arms is a lovely line, a classic pop song sentiment, and all the more lovely for that. The fourth thing you notice is that you might have not paid enough attention to that word, alarmed. almost immediately I felt sorry I didn't think this would happen No matter what I could do or say Listen this is uncouth But I'd like to think Liz would appreciate My Being direct

Fucking Run is way more about the running Than the fucking Right The song takes place post-fucking And immediately pre-running The gentleman In whose arms Liz awoke We'll be doing the running

The girly sound tapes are well worth your time They'll set aside sometimes It takes a couple days to really wrap your head around all two plus hours. Plus, don't play this stuff around your kids. You don't need the song title six dick pimp popping up on your laptop screen or whatever. But nonetheless, we might ought to jump to the Ex-Ireland Guyville version, in which we start rocking out for real. Yeah, the girly sound tapes get Liz Phair signed to the fabled Matador Records.

Indie Rock Valhalla, though, arguably Liz Fair is one of the primary reasons I feel compelled to describe this label as the fabled Matador records. Liz Fair co-produces Exile and Guyville in Chicago with a guy named Brad Wood, who also plays bass and drums and various other instruments, with Casey Rice off and on lead guitar. Brad Wood's drums are key on Fuckin' Run in particular, but Bradwood's drums are key because they do not draw attention to them steles. They stay out of the way. Exile and Guyville as a whole gives us. Liz Fair space, gives her sardonic singing voice space, gives her

anxious and flinty guitar space. This record gives you space to really wrap your head around the line. I heard the rest in your head, the empathy, the vulnerability, the telepathy, even. Liz Phair is always listening to what's in your head,

and you're not going to like what she hears you thinking any more than she does. Letters and sodas would be a great title for this song if Liz had any aspirations towards sneaking this little dude on the radio. And maybe our hypothetical splendid early 90s indie rock type songwriter would have called this song Letters and Sotas for the irony value, right?

The pizzazz, the bitterness, the smirk, the wink. But nope, it's called fucking run. Let me tell you how I first encountered this record. Exile and Guyville. It's not my finest hour. I tend not to talk on this show about any of my finest hours, which I've had, FYI, I've had all sorts of fine hours. Thank you very much. My finest hours

are private. So I'm in college. And I pull this CD from the stacks of my college radio station and I scan the track list for the dirty songs. My understanding, gleaned most likely from Rolling Stone or Spin or perhaps even Magnet magazine, is that Liz Phair is a dirty talking lady. And this interests me intellectually. as an intellectual 19-year-old Yutz. Somehow, Rob, the 19-year-old Yutz is aware that the song Flower has the line about being queen,

and I'm aware that the song Dance of the Seven Veils has the line about spring, and I'm aware that fucking run is called that. I do not play fucking run on the air in my college radio station, because playing songs with 200 pounds swears in them is against the rules, and I follow the rules. in any way I'd rather play soul coughing or cake or whatever because I am an intellectual, but from this moment forward, exile and Guyville takes on this illicit forbidden quality for me. And imagine my surprise.

When I do finally get around to listening to Fuck and Run, when I realize it's a song about rejection, about mortification, about loneliness, about the fear that you'll be a Yutz forever and you'll be alone for a long, long time. Liz Fair talking about this song in Rolling Stone in 2018, she says, I'm always interested by the way I used my voice back then. It's just so laid back. I almost feel like fucking run has a bit of spoken word to it in a funny way. It's a classic pop song, but the things I'm saying are so nakedly emotional, and I'm saying this in this deadpan delivery. It's just such a strange contrast. The song to me is probably the most emblematic,

of what made people like my music in the first place. With these stories that you wouldn't think that you would be privy to, or that you wouldn't expect to hear, or just absolutely laid down in a kind of classic rock or pop song format. Like, there you go. Yep, just sat up in bed. I'm not quite sure who this guy is, but, like, I don't think I'll be seeing him again.

You never hear those stories in popular culture. End quote. 50 seconds after singing, I'm going to spend the next year alone. Liz Fair modifies her prediction. Liz Fair published a memoir in 2019 called Horror Stories. It will not shock you to learn that as memoirs go, it is neither linear nor conventional.

She jumps around. She likes vignettes, minor incidents, random-ass incidents rather than the usual album-by-album, pop star autobiography racket. So one not-so-miner incident, she's a year out of college and she's standing in a kitchen talking to her old college friend Peter and one of his friends. And Peter, for some stupid reason, is ill-advisedly waving around a meat tenderizer,

one of them old giant wooden mallets. And Liz says, wouldn't it suck if that hammer flew out of your hand and blinded me? And then the head of the mallet flies off and cracks Liz in the nose. This freak accident. She all but passes out. She's collapsed on the floor. She's gushing blood. Peter and his friend are like, holy shit, are you okay?

And she is, eventually, other than her nose being. little crooked, but now here she writes that she and Peter drifted apart after this incident. They were no longer friends. Not out of any animosity or bitterness. This shocking, awful moment just kind of ruined them. And then Liz writes, Everybody thinks my song, fucking run is about sex,

and on one level it is. But it's also about these moments when real connection and feeling is abandoned in favor of self-preservation. We come together and fly apart like colliding billiard balls, because, for whatever reason, we sense annihilation. End quote. One can also sense annihilation in the song called Divorce Song, one of Exile and Guy Fills' other laid-back rocking-out moments.

The physical details here, boy and girl on a trance road trip, awkwardness, misunderstanding, imminent disillusion, are precise and evocative, but they're less important to me than what Liz Phair sings here in the quaver in her voice when she sings it. But if I'd known how that would sound to you, I would have stayed in your bed. But if I'd known how that would sound to you, the empathy, the vulnerability, the attempted telepathy of that. She's still trying to get in your head.

She wants to hear herself the way you hear her. She would like it, of course, if you returned the favor. But if you'd know how that would sound to me, you would have taken it back. Never mind what he said to her. People are always saying wildly out-of-pocket shit to Liz Fair about Liz Fair. People are always writing wildly out-of-pocket shit about Liz Fair. Even glowing reviews of Exile and Guyville can be super gnarly, dude.

Let's not do the thing where I disapprovingly read you excerpts from wildly out-of-pocket Liz Fair reviews. Me doing that would get to feeling pretty self-congratulatory. Why don't you just trust me and stay out of it? But whole new Guyville sprout up around Liz Fair wherever she goes. To praise her often, but just as often to control her, to define her, to opine on what she should do next to stay in our good graces. Exile and Guyville becomes a sort of self-perpetuating Guy Ville. generator. It's suboptimal. Guyville attracts all this attention because it's a singularly fantastic, momentous era and genre defining album. Yes, but it also attracts all this attention because,

okay, yes, Liz Fair is a dirty talking lady and society tends to respond very poorly to dirty talking ladies. And chaste, I want to fuck you like a dog. I'll take you home and make you like it. This is flower. We've got ethereal Liz hooked up with sardonic Liz. Again, flower on Exile in Guyville corresponds to let it loose on the Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street.

If you're playing long at home, Mick Jagger's like, let it loose. Let it all come down. And Liz Fares like, you asked for it. I saw Liz Fair Live in 2004, I think at the Fillmore. In San Francisco, classic, storied, venerable rock and roll club, deep red curtains, all these portraits and old posters and photos hanging on the wall, Janice Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, The Dead. There's got to be some stone shit hanging somewhere, right? And there's five foot one Liz Fair.

Her height comes up immediately on Exile and Guyville. Liz is up on stage at the Fillmore singing Flower. this astoundingly pretty and super lewd song. And what I remember about this moment is the disorienting sense of scale in terms of both physical size and rock mythology. She is surrounded in this moment by ornate monuments to the rock and roll gods we've all been taught to revere. She is conversing with them, flirting with them, arguing with them, perhaps even joining them. Great show. I grabbed an apple from the barrel on my way out.

That's a famous Fillmore thing. It's unsanitary. I'd never really questioned why the apples. I'd never realized it might be a Garden of Eden in-joke sort of thing. Liz Fair probably got that immediately. Liz, explaining this one to Rolling Stone, she says, What's beautiful about this is the contrast, like the menacing sound. like the menacing sound of the guitar.

I mean, it sounds like the guitar, the electricity is turned up so high through this. It sounds like it's crackling on the edge, like a transformer blowing up outside your house or something. It sounds that menacing. Then you have this little tiny girl voice singing these blue filthy lyrics about wanting to give blow jobs and stuff.

That encapsulates the girly sound project that came before Guyville. That was all about how the young, female voice carries the least amount of authority of any voice in society. What does it take before you listen to what she's saying? What is she allowed to say? End quote. I jump when you circle the cherry. I sing like a good canary. This song is called canary. She's allowed to say that, apparently. The resignation in her voice there, the exasperation.

If I'd play this one on the air at my college radio station as a 19-year-old yutz, I don't know that I'd have grasped all the nuances there. But who did? Really? One of the other scenes in Liz Faire's memoir that really struck me, she goes to her best friend's wedding. Exile and Guy Ville is out. She's a rock star.

She's a provocateur. She's a lightning rod. And now she's at a wedding, catching shit from a random indignant older women. She says, Another quaffed matron in a Chanel Buclée suit loomed over me, brandishing her wealth and power. What's wrong with you? Do you have a split personality? You're dressed so prim and proper, but I've read about you. I don't know, God damn it, I wanted to scream. I don't know what's wrong with me, but something is definitely wrong with me because I can't stand to keep my thoughts and

feelings bottled up like you ruthless doyends of propriety. Maybe I overshot the mark. And yes, I expect to be run out of town, tarred and feathered, a crimson letter stitched across my chest for saying fuck and cunt and talking about my sex life in public. But lady, I'm only 26 years old and I've known three friends who killed themselves, a dozen girls with eating disorders, seven guys who went to rehab and more people than I can count who've been sexually assaulted and never talk about it. I want to hear the truth. I want to feel solid ground beneath my feet. End quote. I'm quoting her a lot here, but I figured this was an instance where you'd rather hear a little more from her and a little less from me. And I have my reasons. Here's a reason. The other

day my wife and I were watching the Netflix show Wednesday. That's Wednesday from the Adams family. It's a goth teen mystery situation. She dances to the cramps and went viral on TikTok. She's a bad friend, man. I don't know why anybody hangs out with her. Not the most highbrow thing we've ever watched on television, but the highbrow stuff we watch is, you know, private. So at one point, Wednesday sneaks into the back of the police chief's car, right? She's spying on him and she just climbs into his car without him seeing and he gets in. And he gets in. drives off oblivious. And my wife goes, that would never happen. He would notice. He would check the car before he drove off. And I'm like, really? And my wife goes, don't you check in the back of the car every time you get into it before you drive off just in case there's somebody hiding back there?

My wife says, I do that every time I get in the car. All women check every time just in case some creep is hiding back there ready to kill you, etc. You don't do that? And I go, no. and my wife just gives me a look like Guyville. They played that one on the radio,

at least. Never said. A less memorable song title than fucking run, but more radio-friendly, certainly. This one too, sort of Supernova from Liz Phair's second album, Whipsmart out in 1994, is my favorite of Liz Phair's radio-friendly songs,

specifically because of the 200-pound swear that we've got to inelegantly work around there. loved that line as a teenage yutz and you like a volcano delightful subversive she's a dirty talking lady i heard supernova on the radio a ton before i ever heard the whole ex-isle and guyville record i read a ton about exile and guyville before i ever heard it i read about how it was the greatest record ever made more or less i read about how whip smart was okay but it was definitely not as good as ex island guyville i read about how liz fair should feel bad about that. Liz owes all the Guyville's inspired by exiling Guyville in apology. Guyville is that kind of record. And it sets up that kind of career. The stone created by God that's so heavy God herself cannot lift it. The kind of situation where Liz Faire's biggest fans decide that everything that Liz Faire does in the future is an affront to what she'd done in the past. Let me play you a future Liz Faire song that I did get around to playing on college radio. And I'm glad I did because I'm here to tell you,

it's her best song. Now let me assure you that my sincerity is never sarcastic. I love this song. This song is called What Makes You Happy? From Liz Faire's third album, White Chocolate Space Egg from 1998. The narrator is telling her mother about her new boyfriend. This album is way spacier, way gauzeier, way fancier,

is the professional rock critic term, than Ex-Illon Guyville, and also the title, White Chocolate Space Egg, was maybe a reference to Liz Faire's newborn son's head. And there is overall a more domestic and mature and settled down type vibe to this record with Nari a fucking run in sight. And not everybody dug this. Obviously, Spin Magazine had this to say, for example, this maturity, scare quotes, isn't a surprising development. Fair recently got married and had a baby.

But her brainy slut persona was much more compelling than her new role as, as a sincere adult." Okay, so I read you just one out of pocket line from a Liz Fair album review and a slightly self-congratulatory gesture. Nobody's perfect. Here's why this song is my favorite. Listen to the way the bass and the drums rev up here.

This right here is my single favorite moment in the Liz Fair canon. I love that so much. To my mind, she's never written another song quite like it, but I love it all the more for that, for its singularity. for her unpredictability, for the fearless way she just moves on. The 90s end and Liz Fair rolls on.

She makes some more albums. She tries a little harder to get on the radio. Not everybody's into it. Let's leave it at that. She writes some more wild songs. She does some more wild interviews. She confounds people. She pisses people off.

How could it have been otherwise? In 2008, she tells the village voice, Do you think that the person who would have known what to tell you in an interview could write exile in Guyville? Do you think the person would know how to send a polished image out into the world would fucking write that thing? I'm a messy, crazy, do what I fucking want, pain in the ass. And like, I will be forever. And hopefully one of these days I'll do something that people are grateful for again.

But like, I cannot be two things. I cannot be this polished person that does what's right and does what I'm supposed to that I'll make everyone feel good and do the work that says, as fuck you with the double guns, end quote. Liz Fair writes in her memoir about her divorce. About other heartbreaks she's endured since. She writes, in the weirdest and maybe most uncomfortable, and therefore maybe the most Liz Fair chapter, about how she goes through a terrible breakup,

and then she develops a weird crush on a cashier at Trader Joe's, the grocery store, like she overdresses to go shop at Trader Joe's, just go flirt with this guy. This is longtime rock star Liz Fair at this point. And they do finally go on a quasi-date Liz and the Trader Joe's cashier. And then things take a series of very strange and dark turns. And the whole time you're reading this, it's awfully hard not to flash all the way back to fucking run. But mostly my inclination is to leave fucking run where it is and leave the Liz Fair who wrote fucking run where she is.

And let the current Liz Fair do whatever the fuck she wants. There's an interview she did with Spin Magazine with Chuck Clostriman in 2003 when she put out her self-titled album, the really poppy one, the really polarizing one, the really great one, if I'm totally honest. And they're arguing a little bit, Liz and her interviewer about her decision to change her sound, change her lyrical approach, change your attitude toward writing about sex, change her whole musical philosophy. And Liz says, quote, you keep saying this was my decision. It wasn't a decision. Those songs. just aren't there anymore. I'll let you go through my demos and look for them if you want. I think this record is depressing to you because it makes you feel that you've lost part of your own childhood and you realize you can't get that back. But I can't make a 25-year-old's record at the age of 36. For me, it boils down to this question. Do I want to seem authentic or do I want

to feel authentic? And I chose feel. She also says, talk to talk about. She also says, about this new polarizing self-titled record. This is still the albatross of exile in Guyville. That was a really profound album, and I've tried to capture that again, but I can't do it. I'm incapable of writing that kind of album again. This record isn't on par with Guyville. Whip Smart wasn't on par with Guyville, and Space Egg wasn't on par with Guyville either. I can't make that genius thing again. But this record, the new self-titled one, still moves me. It's profound to me. I think you and I might have been at the same point when I was 25, but we have diverged. And then she laughs and says, I think maybe it's time for us to break up. You get the feeling

Liz Ferris thought about saying that a lot to a lot of people who fell hard for exile in Guyville and fell so hard they never got over it and won't let her get over it either. You got to let it go. You got to let her let it go. Because if you don't, eventually, Liz's is going to tell you what to do with your thumb. Our guest today, we are so honored to welcome the novelist Sam Lipsight. His latest novel is called No One Left to Come Looking for You. Sam, thanks so much for being here. Yeah, my pleasure. I'm a huge fan of yours, and I heard that your new book is set in the 90s. Broadly, it's about a punk rock band in New York City and the East Village in the 90s, and I really wanted to have you on the show. And I set you this really arduous list of songs that we could

talk about and you picked Liz Fares fucking run and I would absolutely love to know why. Yeah, I mean, I was wondering that today myself, but actually I remember when I got the list and I was looking at it and there were some great things on it, you know, Nirvana was on it, Fugazi was on it. I don't know if I'm allowed to say what was on it. That's fine. It's fine. Yeah. It's a decoy list. That's a trick list. Don't worry about it. And I was in a pretty punk mood, but, you know, that song just stuck out at me. It just popped out. You know, I remember, I remember it well. I've always loved it. And I just said, why not? Yeah. What was your first exposure to Liz Phair? Like, how did she strike you when you first heard her? Was it this song? Was it Guyville? It was Guyville. It was back when that came out. And, yeah, I remember, I remember hearing it. And especially,

this song really loving it and thinking it was just this tough, weird, very honest song, played in this cool way. And people slagged on her at the time, I remember. But I always was a huge fan. Yeah. We rock critics love to overuse the word novelistic, right, when describing any songwriter uses a lot of words. But I was really curious what you make of her as a lyricist, like her imagery or storytelling, you know, her turns of phrase. Like she's apparently writing a novel and I would love to read that, which is not necessarily the case with a lot of rock stars. Like, what do you hear in her songwriting?

That's, I think I hear the voice of a writer. I would agree with that. And that's really pretty rare. I think you don't find a lot of people that can write great songs and write, you know, stories or novels you'd want to read. I was just celebrating the birthday of the late David Berman at a reading of his poetry actual air. So I think of someone like Liz Phair and someone like David Berman is rare people who can really write. And so, yeah, in this, even in the song, it's really about the details, you know.

I think that's one of the things. So, you know, a line about letters and soda, you know, for letters and sodas. that to me uh it's it's landing with a very with specificity like that that makes a writer i think it makes a writerly song yeah i never thought to think of her and dave burman you know in the same breath but i can see that now that you say that you know like we're drinking margaritas at the mall you know it's a very david burman line that could also very conceivably be a liz fair line like there's a lot of connectivity there that i hadn't really ever thought about too much i think we've struck onto a new

category of criticism, which is a... There we go. You said you remember people slagging on her, which I think was the case. Like, this was a very polarizing record for people, you know, and it was hard for me. You know, I was 14, 15 at the time, and it sort of completely went over my head at the time. Why? But, like, what do you remember about sort of the debate, I guess, that people sort of immediately started having about this person?

Well, yeah. I mean, I'm trying to remember. Partially I remember it as a Chicago thing. Right. For some reason. And it was, you know, she was friends with fans like urge overkill. And then there were, you know, other, you know, there was like the Albini crowd. The Albini crowd, yes.

And, you know, I was a huge fan of both of those scenes. I didn't have much connection to it just from afar. But, yeah, I didn't really understand, like, why people were coming down on her except for kind of pretty sexist reasons probably. But I saw it as people not kind of wanting to allow her into this space that was kind of, you know, tough singer, songwriter space that, you know, and I didn't, you know, I think she was kind of breaking some ground there and that would that bothered some people. Absolutely.

Yeah, it felt like gatekeeping. You know, once I got a little more distance from it, like it seemed pretty clearly just gatekeeping and like exile in Guyville. from the title on down is sort of aware of that, right? Like, it's deliberately pushing back against that, and that's what rankles them even more, right? Like, it's a sort of this loop of grievance that she causes immediately. But it's just hard for me to think of a 90s figure that was more maligned,

like more praised in the press, but in the same breath also more maligned, right? Like, the more people loved her, the more people turned on her. I mean, when I think of it, you know, it was definitely a time when, you know, Everyone was trying to kind of, you know, deconstruct or ironize, you know, cock rock or the old kind of patriarchal poses and music. And yet, you know, this and her, yet her taking on the stone's mantle in this way and playing with it really bothered people, which seems contradictory to me. It was almost as though, you know, you know, we were going to replace Sammy Hagar with, you know, sensitive nerds, but they still had to be guys, you know.

That really was the transaction that took place. We just swapped out Sammy Hagar, you know, for a more sensitive guy who couldn't drive 55, I guess. No, he could. He could. He wouldn't drive. That's right. I'm sorry. Excuse me.

Important clarification there. The Rolling Stones come up briefly early in your book. I think you refer to the mythic fibbing of Mr. Jagger. I really like that phrase. Like, you grew up in New York City. Like, what did 90s New York punk rockers make of the stones? Like, Liz Fair explicitly modeling. Guyville after exile on Main Street. At the time was that thought of as like sacrilegious or

uncool or the coolest thing imaginable? Well, I thought it was pretty cool. And I also was kind of interested in, I felt there were bands that were sort of rediscovering something with the stones and some kind of bringing blues into punk in some ways that mirrored what the, you know, stones had been doing. And, you know, the band that the title of the book, the band, the band, that had a song from which I took the title of the book was the band Come, who, weirdly enough, I think Chris Brokaw, who was in Come, had some friendship that was fair early on in her career. Very early on. He was a big part of getting her going, I think, yeah. But so Come was a band that I think was also sort of taking on the stones in an interesting way.

Chris Brokroa and Talia Zedek had this band that was sort of, you know, really digging into blues, but from a punk perspective. And it was, you know, I love that. especially that record 1111, which I think a lot of people love. But I thought that really was some really interesting stuff. So I think, like, for people that I was interested in talking to about it, you know, there was nothing sacrilegious or uncool about dealing with the stones unless it was just kind of, you know, classic rock block worship, you know, unreflective. But if you were kind of coming out with an interesting angle, it was great stuff.

Yeah. Fuck it run the song. Like, it's called that, right? she repeats that line several times. This is a very sad song, a very vulnerable song, you know, a very astute song about the way that lovers communicate or don't. Like, does the title and the chorus fucking run, like disguise that sadness and that vulnerability?

Like, does it work for Liz Fair or against her that some people sometimes reduce her songs to just the dirty parts, I guess? Well, I mean, maybe this would have been a big radio hit if it wasn't called fucking run. A little bit of a impediment there, yes. But kiss and run would have been horrible, right? It doesn't work at all. So, yeah, I mean, I think that, I think that like the poignancy and the crudeness and

all add to the devastation and the kind of, and there's something great about that sort of counterbalance of a kind of rousing chorus that's speaking to, you know, trauma, basically. Right, right. And, you know, that's what I think makes. the song. And, you know, that swerve from, you know, even when I was 17 to even when I was 12, I mean, that's like horrifying and comic and tough and crazy all at once. I think it's just like, that's, it's beautiful. Yeah. You were in a band yourself in New York in the early 90s, a noise

punk band called Dung Beetle. In terms of being a punk band, an independent band, like not a mainstream band, and like 91, 92, 93, like, that's a mentality. I have trouble, like, even attempting to describe now, like the idea of not selling out and all that shit. Like, what was it like to be a young person in a band in 1991? Did you explicitly dream of being famous or being a rock star? Was the whole point that you didn't want any of that at all? No, I think that the dream was to get signed to an indie label like Sub Pop or Matador or Matador, right. Or Touch and Go or one of those. And be able to pay your rent and not have to work that much, if at all. And, you know, we had friends who signed to Subpop and quit their jobs for a while and just practiced and wrote songs.

And that was to us, like, the pinnacle of it all. Then you'd go out and go out on a tour and come back. And then maybe you'd have to get your old jobs back for a little while. And then you'd go, you know, quit. And so we kind of, that was a life that we aspired to that we didn't reach. But that was the sort of, we were not shooting for the top of the charts. We didn't really hear the kind of music we liked and the bands we worshipped. were not on the radio and we knew that.

And so, or not on the mainstream radio and not on TV and so forth. And so we didn't expect that or want that. And then, of course, Nirvana happened and that sort of changed the story for a lot of people. And then you had to sort of dig in and say, fuck them and hold and cling to your mediocrity. And realize that, you know, you never had anything to sell. in the first place. But, you know, there we go.

Clinging to your mediocrity. That's such a beautiful, terrible phrase. I was reading an old interview with you. I think it was 2013 where you said, I'm probably one of the last people that still believe you can sell out. And I was curious, if you still believe that, and like, is the way you'd sell out in 2023

different than the way you'd sell out in 2013 or 1993? Yeah, I guess all I really mean is just at this point is sort of altering, first of all, I think it's selling out if you're making something that you think is garbage just to get paid, that you don't really. And so that's, you know, that's sort of baseline. And then it's sort of all of those, you know, all those inches you give sort of to please other people to change what you think is fundamentally right about what you're doing, to, you know, alter your sound. And it never really, whether it's your sound or, you know, whatever. medium you're in and ultimately it never really works because right you can't you can't you know it's

it's the old thing you can't you know in my world you can't like cynically sit down and bang out a james patterson novel it just doesn't work that way and so so it's really just about you know recognizing what it is you want to do and sticking to that right because you know Liz Phara obviously it was the self-titled record you know where she sort of went for a popier sound you know and people were aghast. You know, the more you loved Exile and Guyville, the more you hated that record, because you thought it wasn't her. You thought a lot of people, I think, thought that she was doing something she didn't really like, you know, just to get, just be a pop star. But like, I think she believed in that stuff, that music, those songs, every bit as much. Yeah, you have to allow an artist to,

yeah, you have to allow an artist to try to try out new things and new sounds and new personas. And I think, you know, we never, we never, we never said David Bowie had sold out when he's kept changing his, you know, his whole schick. So, I mean, again, I think, I think we were holding her to a different standard. I don't know. I mean, I think at the time you could, I think, you know, a lot of people felt

righteous about it, but looking, look, or self-righteous about it, but looking back, you know, you see an artist trying to figure out what, you know, where she fits in and what she can do and what she might sound like now. Yeah. You know, Guyville is such a huge beloved album that critics are still mad at her, you know, just for not making that record over and over. You know, you've got like eight novels now. Like, do you ever feel like your newest book

is being unfairly compared to your older work? Like, as an artist in general, how do you deal with critics or fans who just want more of exactly what they've already gotten from you? Well, that used to really bother me in the past, but after this many books, you begin to meet people who, you know, they like this one book and they don't like the others or they like these three and they don't like those four or, you know, they feel you lost your way and came back or they feel you currently have lost your way, you know, and everyone's got in a different opinion. And so you then realize that you, you know, you go crazy thinking about it too much and you just try to, you know, follow your own path and see where, you know, see where the art form takes you.

Yeah. I really love this book and I, this new book and I love it because it's very profanely. but it's also very sweet in its way. Like the band is called The Shits, right? But it's a very sweet book to me. And I wonder if you, consciously or subconsciously, you may have ever learned something from Liz Phair,

you know, the way that she balances like profanity or even obscenity with like a sweetness or at least a vulnerability. Like is there a trick to using dirty words, you know, but retaining like a certain humanity, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I think,

I don't know if I learned it from Liz Phair, but it's something I recognize in her. and it's something that I recognize in most of the art I care about it. And I think that, you know, a songwriter like Liz Phair and others, you know, inspired me, especially when I was first writing my first book of short stories called Venus Drive. And I really was thinking of those stories as kind of like songs. You know, we have to move at a certain pace. They have to have this certain kind of momentum.

They have to gather up in a way that a good song does and kind of deliver a moment. moment and sort of balance out exactly that kind of raw honesty and even, you know, possible affront and aggressiveness with an underlying, you know, humanity and tenderness. And because that's what I think life is about is those forces at play all the time. And so I think that I am very much informed by the music that I grew up listening to and even wanting to play when I was in bands. That music informed the way I approached writing, fiction. Who was it for you in the early 90s?

What were you listening to primarily? I was listening to, I mean, the bands that I loved back in the early 90s were bands like the Jesus Lizard, the Laughing Hyenas. Chicago, yeah. Six-finger satellite, who were friends of ours. and then Sonic Youth and all of those, you know, and bands like that. But, and also urge overkill. You know, I liked what they were doing sort of aesthetically and also with, you know,

some of their songwriting. I mean, I didn't have one. I wasn't that narrow in my taste, but those were kind of the bands I was listening to. Yeah, I guess a lot of Chicago now that I think about it. Yeah. When you set out to write a novel in the 90s, like what are the 90s cliches that? that you're especially eager to avoid. Like other new books, movies, TV shows set in the 90s.

Like, typically, what do they get right about this decade and what do they get kind of hilariously wrong? I don't know. I was so in my own little world in the 90s. I don't even, I'm not even exactly sure, like, what the 90s officially were. Like, I didn't even really see friends until, you know, decades later. Sure. And I know that there were people that, like, think of the 90s as friends or,

you know, these kinds of tropes. I don't, you know, so I don't really know exactly what they're getting right or wrong. I do think that we were, it was, I think of it as a time when we were, it was kind of the, people look at it now, sort of this innocent time or something or this more naive time. I'm not sure how they think of it, but we were coming out of the 80s, which had all of this 50s nostalgia. We were coming into the 90s. the 90s really felt to me like the first time where we kind of run out, it was the beginning

of the running out of new ideas and the beginning of the curation and the recycling that's been going on for 30 years since then. So in the 90s, we were very much interested in the 70s. And, you know, to the point that Mike Watt even wrote a song protesting that, you know, against the 70s. So it's a great song. So, I mean, I think that, you know, it was sort of felt like the beginning of like, oh, we're going to look back and pull some stuff forward because we don't know what you know what to do right now there was a little bit of that i remember feeling and how can we kind of pull what's useful from the past forward and then we were kind of being told the story of you know the end of the it was the end of the cold war it was you know the packs americana there was all this other stuff happening that

didn't really like at the time it all felt like some kind of, you know, propaganda floating around wasn't really, no one was really sure what to do with it all. But we were just sort of plotting along. That's how it felt to me. I, listen to you say that, it's wild to think that Liz Phair, like, explicitly drew from the 70s, right? Like, she reached back, she took a quintessential rock record from the 70s, but, like, made the quintessential 90s record from it. She made something completely new, you know, where you can hear the stones in it, but you hear her, and you hear, you know, her generation, her era so clearly. Yes. Now, I mean, I don't know, maybe artists have always done that to some degree, but it just felt very explicit starting around then.

Yeah. This has been great, Sam. Thank you so much for talking. We really appreciate your time. Oh, thank you. I really loved it. Thanks very much to our guest this week's Sam Lipsites. Thanks, as always, to our producers, John.

Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sales. Additional production support provided by Abu Kumar. Thank you very much. And thanks very much to you, of course, for listening. And now, without further ado, it's time for you to go listen to fucking run by Liz Fair.

We'll see you next week.