On The Phonograph... Chavez.

Chavez

Better Days Will Haunt You
(Matador, 2006)


File under: Music

The liner notes for Chavez' career-encapsulating retrospective Better Days Will Haunt You, provided by Matador Records' co-founders Chris Lombardi and Gerard Cosloy, begin like this: "The moment. Do you know it? The moment in every music lover's life when you realize that nothing will ever be the same. Ever." That's some pretty intense rhetoric, isn't it? I happen to know The Moment, and I'll never forget it. Early June 1994, on the way to practice with the band I had just joined. Our drummer put in a tape of the just-released debut single “Repeat the Ending" b/w "Hack the Sides Away".

Four minutes later, I was a changed man. Bombs had been detonated inside my head. This was some heavy stuff. Everything I had wanted in rock music but had been unable to articulate had just been spelled out for me. I spent the next three years in thrall to this band's dizzying marriage of Clay Tarver and Matt Sweeney's twin-guitar-heroics and Scott Marshall & "The James" Lo's drum-and-bass-bombast, with (most of the time) a very well-written pop tune underneath, things that were slightly more incongruous then than they are now. And perhaps we have them to thank for that, but probably not -- you see, they never really "made it", and by the end of the century they were long gone. Their output was a mere two albums, one E.P. and a few compilation appearances, all of which are out of print. So when this collection was announced, this fan was understandably excited.

The good news, obviously, is that everything is now available again, and with just one purchase you'll get everything they ever released. The bad news is that, for completists like me, there's not much that is new. The bonus DVD boasts a "documentary", the charmingly titled "Boys Making Music... Music Making Men", but this turns out to be a paltry 29-minute video diary of a 1995 European tour with label-mates Guided by Voices. Ultimately disappointing, but worthwhile for the rare footage of "Classic Lineup" GBV performing their "new" stuff. Another band's rarities should not be a selling point for a band's retrospective, but in this case, for better or worse, it is. Also included in the DVD are their only two videos: "Break Up Your Band", a send-up of mid-80's MTV excess featuring more than a few exotically clad male strippers, and "Unreal Is Here" - their prettiest song - cleverly presented as a "Bon Jovi" style world-tour video, complete with screaming fans, oversize charity checks (made out to "Chavez Kids") and a performance at the (noticeably empty) Hollywood Bowl. These two award-winning videos are worth the price of this collection, if only for their ingenious lampooning of the medium.

As for the music they made, if it were any other band at any other time, it would be described as "genre-defying". But for the 17-year old hearing this stuff for the first time, it can only be called "genre-defining". I'm still trying to make music the way they did, but I can't. No one but them ever could. Bombastic. Majestic. Just listen to "Repeat the Ending" (CD 1, track 1) or "Wakeman's Air" (CD 1, track 10) for absolute proof. And they sounded exactly the same live as they did on record, something that is truly rare. The absence of live recordings is probably the only thing that keeps this from being a perfect retrospective. For the uninitiated, though, this is something you should get right now. This music changed my life forever. Matador's helmsmen said as much themselves. What better recommendation do you need?

P.S. Chavez was the 90's answer to prog rock.