A few weeks ago I wrote a piece about my experience getting into the music of Elliott Smith, specifically how I was afraid of approaching his art through the veil of his legacy and the heartbreaking end to his story. I was able to get past the fine details, unfocusing on the personal and trying to just let his songs surround me so they’d seep in slowly. My relationship to music is a tough one. Getting into a band or an artist is a long process of dipping my toes in. It’s rare that a song or an album just crushes me, though it does happen. Weezer, Ween and Marcy Playground were like that for me. The Blue Album and Pinkerton were instant, love-at-first-sight love affairs. But then a band like Pavement was way more complicated. I needed an “in” with them, something stronger than the Cut Your Hair single off of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. I kept trying, going on dates with their albums, but never made it to first base, at least not until they split up for awhile and Stephen Malkmus released his first solo album. That record knocked me off my feet and it was a Rosetta Stone that helped me decipher Pavement. Now all of their main albums are no-skip affairs that live in my head daily.
With Elliott Smith, I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into, but as I wrote on that first piece, after a few listens to Either/Or I was hooked. That album in particular became my in to his music and pretty soon I was getting into the follow-up XO, and his break-though, the Self-Titled record that featured Needle int he Hay. But, try as I might, I had a much harder time getting into his other albums. Figure 8, for all of its major label production and iconic imagery, just did not land for me. Weirdly so. I can’t put my finger on it, but that album felt like it was made by a different person. And it probably was. The more I learned about Smith after watching Nickolas Rossi’s documentary, or reading through Autumn de Wilde’s photo chronicle/interview book, it was clear that as he moved through working on his albums he started becoming a nomad. He’d pick up intending to temporarily relocate as he wrote for a new album, but would make al new friends and change as an artist. By the time he was working on Figure 8 he’d left Portland for New York, and then moved again across country to Los Angeles, one of the last places he seemed to envision himself living. Even knowing this, the album was a hard nut to crack for me.
Similarly, his first solo debut album, Roman Candle, was hard for me to get into. Whereas Figure 8 was almost overly-produced, Roman Candle was too raw and unpolished. I mean, there are four songs on the album with basically no titles (No Name #1, 2, 3, and 4) and it was just one more barrier between the magic of the music and my appreciation for it. Try as I might, the tracks just felt so far away, hard to grasp.
My sweet spot was his run from 1994 to 1998, and I’ve found myself listening and re-listening to all three of these albums at least once a day for the past month. I tend to go though these phases in life, moments where some piece of art or pop culture starts to infuse into my personality to a point where I make a conscious decision to integrate some aspect of it into my day to day. Back in the late 90s for instance, I was living on my own with a room mate and for the first time I started to feel more like an adult. I’d left home a few years earlier, right after high school, but my first few apartments (and roommates) were so unhinged and chaotic that they just felt like never-ending hangouts. But in this new place I was starting to take control. I’d quit my job working nights at a grocery store, secured a day job that was adjacent to working an office job, and I could finally afford to buy stuff like a TV and my first used car. It was one of those moments in life where I could almost step outside of myself and witness a change happening. I had a routine at the time where I’d get home from work, make an early dinner, do some chores and then veg out to watching syndicated television until my eyes felt numb. Part of this routine was getting heavily into an odd show called Due South, an action comedy series set in Chicago where a Canadian Mountie named Constable Benton Fraser (player by Paul Gross) teams up with a squirrel-y Police Officer named Ray Vecchio as they look for the man that murdered Fraser’s father. For some reason this show just hit me square in the feels at the time and something about Benton’s over-the-top politeness really rang true for me, so I purposefully started to work some of his character affectations into my routine. Specifically, I started adding “kindly” to the end of all of my “thank yous”. It became a part of my own speech to the point where I still use it to this day though I rarely, if ever, think about the television show where I nicked it.
As I was wading into Elliott’s music every morning while starting work, I could feel the pull, a desire to abscond with a bit of Smith’s look or personality. These days I tend to try and ignore this vampiric need as I’m old enough and set enough in my ways that why even bother. But I have been trying to solve a very tiny, and very inconsequential wardrobe issue for the last decade, and saw an opening where I might try and riff on Elliott’s style a bit. Going all the way back to that time when I’d left home and struck out on my own, it was a very transitional period for me. I was a fairly sheltered kid who leaned towards punk rock, but between severe feelings of insecurity and a monumental case of imposter syndrome, I never dressed (or accessorized) the way I really wanted. But leaving home at 18 did wonders for me in terms of finding some level of confidence in myself, so started playing around with trying things out. I worked a chain wallet into my repertoire, and started wearing wristbands. At first I tried the very cringe, and very “punk”, spiked leather cuffs, but these never worked out for all of the reasons you might imagine. Not only were they ostentatious as hell, but they’re just really fucking impractical, especially for a dude working stocking shelves in a grocery store. Next I tried out homemade bands made up of linked key-chain rings, but that just got caught up in the hair on my wrists; I’m not quite Robin Williams level hairy, but I’m close enough for it to be a pain. The third time was the charm as one night while stocking the dog-food aisle of the store I worked at I kept eying the nylon dog collars and wondered if that would work. Testing out the different lengths and widths on my break that evening, I found out that the 5/8th’s inch-wide by 16″ collars where perfect to wrap around my wrist twice creating a fun wristband that didn’t hinder my work at all. So from 1995 until the present day I’ve been wearing nylon dog-collar wristbands. Each one lasts a few years before it gets too tattered, and then I pick up a new one and so one and so forth.
Lately though, the world has changed and one of the things that has been phased out of existence are nylon, buckle-based dog collars. When they do make them, they aren’t just a strip of nylon with a metal, loop buckle anymore, they usually have plastic interlocking clasps or break-away clasps and they’re made so you can’t over-tighten them. This makes total sense for dogs as I hate the idea of folks using them as choke-chains. But for this dude, it royally sucks. The newer collar designs just do not work as a wristband it’s becoming next to impossible to find old-stock collars online or out in the wild. I never anticipated something so basic as a nylon dog collar being phased out of reality, but here we are. As of right now, I have two of these collars left and at some point I know I’m going to have to change up my left-wrist accessorizing. The forefront of my brain knows that this is not a problem. On the list of things I should be worrying about, this shouldn’t even rank. But the animal part of my brain, that prehistoric, neanderthal/lizard part of my brain that deals with addiction and needs constant comfort, that part of my brain is freaking the fuck out. Every time I’ve ever been in a rush and forgotten to put on my dog-collar wristband, it ruins my day. The entire time I feel like I’m missing a limb or are walking around without pants. So I have to figure out a “next step” for my left wrist.
Enter Elliott Smith.
If you take the time to peruse photos of the artist or watch any of his videos or interviews, two things become very apparent. He liked to thrift his clothes (or at least look like he did), and he was almost always wearing this very particular, and particularly striking wide, double-buckle, leather wristband. Being a wristband guy, my eye goes right to that whenever I see a picture of him. So this set me off on a quest to try and figure out if I could find something that was similar enough, so that I could buy one and see if it’s something I could work into my daily wear. Of course that meant checking out Reddit threads, joining r/ElliottSmith, looking through a bunch of Etsy stores, etc. Apparently, according to some of his friends, the wristband was purchased at an Army/Navy store at some point after he saw All that Jazz (Roy Scheider wears a watch with a similar thick leather band in the film), and it was explained that it was some kind of functional wrist brace for bowling. But it looks badass and I really wanted one. I started searching for vintage bowling braces and came up empty…
But I finally found an Etsy shop that makes leather wrist-cuffs/wristbands that has something that approximates the one Elliott wore. Though they’re located in Russia, shipping was free and the wristband itself was only $20, so I took a chance and ordered one that just came in this weekend…
I think it looks pretty good, but there were two size options (in metric!), so I guessed and the one I got was a tad too small. So I bit the bullet and ordered the larger version. Luckily, my son saw me trying this wristband on and he really wants one, so this one is the perfect size for his growing wrist (it clasps at the tightest hole now, so he could wear it for years before he grows out of it.) Still not sure I can pull off a wristband like this (that’s the ever present Imposter Syndrome kicking in), but I think I’m gonna try anyway…
