| The Greenhouse | |
|---|---|
| Studio album by A Murder of Crows | |
| Released | 1988 (US) |
| Recorded | June-August 1988 |
| Genre | Indie |
| Producer | A Murder of Crows, Mark Johnson, Tony Lash |
The Greenhouse is the debut album by A Murder of Crows, released in 1988. A Murder of Crows was a musical project of Elliott Smith (billed as Elliott Stillwater-Rotter) and Garrick Duckler. Duckler and Smith had previously played together in Stranger Than Fiction, Smith's high school band, which released three limited-edition cassettes.
The album was recorded after Smith's first year at Hampshire College (before he formed Heatmiser with Neil Gust)[1], and had a limited release, sold at local record stores such as 2nd Avenue Records in Portland, Oregon[2]. "Coraliza" was recently featured on the Oregon Public Broadcasting show Think Out Loud, for a program examining Elliott Smith's legacy entitled 'Elliott Smith, Five Years Later'. It is thought that Plastic Cactus and Piano Wire are not real studios, as the album was most likely recorded and mixed at friends' houses, as Elliott Smith would continue to do later in his solo career.
The tape is divided into two sides, O'Larry and O'Reilly. The names are referenced by a poem:
O'Larry is dead and O'Reilly doesn't know it
O'Reilly is dead and O'Larry doesn't know it
Both of them dead in the very same bed
and neither one knows that the other is dead
The other poem on the cassette cover:
takemeback thingtosnap
deep-end upinprovidence
whipplow laststop lastdance oakdaleridge
wordofmouth
scissors nscotch lineoffire
sundaydrive
rollover
danceofelection
ontothebed pointblank
The cassette cover also features a picture of Duckler and Smith, and their mailing addresses: Smith's at Hampshire College, and Duckler's at Reed College.
Collin Oldham recalled the sessions for the album:
"Well, that was a long time ago, but I can tell you what I remember. My friend (now sister-in-law) Sara Harris, was a violinist and friend of Garrick [Duckler] at Lincoln High School. She had played on some earlier Stranger Than Fiction thing, and she got us together. No, wait there's another connection! Garrick and I were camp counselors together the previous summer (1987) so he may have just called me himself. Anyway, the session itself took place in a basement of a house up in Portland Heights, near Ainsworth School. A 'basement on a hill', as it were. It was probably Jason Hornick's parents' house. I remember meeting Steve [Smith] (not quite Elliott to the real world yet) and he was kind of quiet and intense with a dry and opaque sense of humor. He was serious about the music, though, even though he didn't really have all the tools yet. And as you can hear from the tape, neither did I! I only played on one track, 'Chinatown'. I listened to the mix they had, which was pretty much everything but the cello, a couple times and then went into the recording room, which was a little closet under the stairs. There were no charts, and I just had to figure out it was in C minor. I just improvised over the song 2 or 3 times, and they used what they wanted. I guess they didn't have very good editing tools, because they didn't do much to save me from embarrassing myself with wrong notes and aimless noodling, but I guess there are one or two good ideas in there. And that was that. One footnote: after graduating from college in 1991, I moved back to Portland for a year, and got a job selling bread and coffee at Le Panier in Old Town. Elliott was making sandwiches in back. I remembered him as Steve, and he told me he was Elliott now, and he really did seem to be much more comfortable with himself. We'd sometimes hang out on break, and he'd make humorous references that would blow right by me. It's a real shame he's gone now. Good for him for getting some good music together before he went."
Note: The individual songwriting credits of each song are not certain, the cassette cover noting "All words by Garrick Duckler and all music by Elliott Stillwater-Rotter".
Side A: O'Larry
Side B: O'Reilly
Note: The song "Condor Avenue" is an early version of "Condor Ave." from Elliott Smith's first album Roman Candle. An excerpt of "Take a Fall" was used as the instrumental outro for the single version of the Elliott Smith song "Happiness".
The cassette cover
"Elliott Smith, Five Years Later" on Oregon Public Broadcasting's Think Out Loud, October 22, 2008
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