Friday Night Music Club
Grammy nominee Jon Brion indulges in the eternal experimentation of the musical mind.
BY Antero Garcia
You’ve got to be careful when you talk music with Jon Brion; the guy is a pop encyclopedia. Ask a simple question on changes in pop music, you’ll get a 10-minute history of the word "pop," starting with Gershwin and Porter in the ‘20s, flying past the Beatles, and not stopping for a breath of air until the White Stripes, grunge, and "Hey Ya." It’s this kind of unrelenting enthusiasm for pop – the same feeling evoked as his fingers itch toward various instruments every Friday night – that makes Brion one of the most compelling musicians to not merely hear, but to experience in Los Angeles.
"I love the fact that I don’t know what I will do next week and won’t know when I walk onstage," Brion explains. "It will just happen and I’ll have fun and there will be enough good moments in the evening that people leave feeling like they got something. The fact that that is a complete circuit is bewilderingly beautiful to me."
Maybe that’s what’s so alluring about Brion’s Largo residency year after year: his ability to surprise not only the audience but also himself every week. For the past eight years, Brion has held a Friday-night residency at the Fairfax District venue. The weekly show is less of a concert than a madman on display. Brion shuffles restlessly among his myriad of instruments, effects pedals, and microphones, muttering to himself, hoping to find an instrument that will call to him. He frequently relies on audience requests to propel the set. Compelled and drawn toward songs and motifs, Brion leaves the set, like the direction of his work, entirely up to mood and innate feeling.
His non-Largo work includes film scoring, record producing, and a library of solo material that runs the gamut of the pop canon. Most recently, Brion penned the scores for both "I Heart Huckabees" and Michelle Gondry’s feature "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," which, just last week, earned Brion a nomination in the category of Best Score Soundtrack Album For A Motion Picture. Brion’s penchant to encompass a film’s main theme in two- to three-minute pop songs is epitomized in the Huckabee’s tune "Knock Yourself Out." Brion also worked with P. T. Anderson on "Magnolia."
Brion appreciates the versatile and collaborative opportunities these directors offer. "When they see that I can execute any left turn they want at any moment, they then want to exercise a certain amount of choices," Brion explains about the painstaking process of creating an enriching film score. "That can be time- consuming and frustrating, but I’ve got to believe that if this person made some big piece of creative work that interested me, they know something that I don’t."
Like his wildly collaborative experiences with film, Brion’s constantly confronted with requests for either playing on a peer’s album or producing someone’s record (past artists include Aimee Mann, Rufus Wainwright, jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, and Macy Gray).
"I’m like a therapist saying, ‘Did you know every time this subject comes up, you say this,’" Brion says wryly. "That’s what a producer is doing: ‘It’s funny, you keep telling me how aggressive you want your music to come off as and yet every time it has an aggressive element you take it out. What’s that about?’ That’s the real value of the producer. None of us can really see what we look like on the outside."
Perhaps it’s Brion’s inability to see his own music from the outside that finds such a slight discography at present. Aside from numerous appearances as a guest musician, Brion’s own musical output is basically film scores and a stellar collection of pop songs found on "Meaningless."
Brion’s own melodies are of the stuck-in-your-head-for-eons variety and the production playful, upbeat, sunny. On the other hand, the lyrics are a dark stew of rejection, loneliness, and misery.
The blending of dismal lyrics with baroque, ‘60s-influenced pop is a sublime combination, a blend as deliberate as it is off-kilter.
His Largo shows are intended as experimental juxtapositions and combinations. To wit: "Moon River" as a Nirvana homage, Outkast’s "Roses" as a soul song, or Radiohead’s "Creep" reborn as a ragtime ditty sung a la Tom Waits.
Of the many releases Brion’s helped produce recently, Elliott Smith’s posthumous "From A Basement on a Hill "has garnered some of the most attention. A close friend of Smith’s, Brion sounds detached as he speaks of Smith’s final album.
"A lot of my favorite things on that record were recorded years ago, finished years ago. I think the classic, ‘recently deceased artist’ myth is going to take over. People who are misty-eyed are going to go, ‘This is what he was doing before he departed us,’ but a lot of those songs have been around for years."
Then there’s the eagerly anticipated third work from Fiona Apple, largely produced by Brion as well. Though in the can for months, the record is currently shelved by Sony Records.
Though the album has yet to see a release date, already two of its songs are being shared all over the world via the Internet.
"Eventually all that stuff is going to leak out," Brion says. "I feel bad for Fiona. You have to remember that a few years ago she was all but ready to quit the business, and if they keep making decisions like this, who would blame her?"
The business side of music is a beast that constantly burdens an artist like Brion. Ultimately, his chance to unwind from such mishaps and frustrations is readily available to him every Friday night.
"I’m just grateful to do it," Brion says of his weekly gig. "It’s my therapy and my meditation. No matter what I’m doing in the week for other people this is my time to do something. The fact that people continue to show up and are interested is so heartening."
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