Still no second single (five months after ETM was released), no news on a second leg of the tour, no new podcasts (capitol may own the rights to these), and no promotions/ interviews of any kind. I think this is pretty suspicious.

On the other hand, the Julie Johnson songs have really grown on me! "Faded" is so good. And I really think "Apple Tree" was the basis for "Rock Me". Whoever said that if these songs were released, maybe Liz would have gotten that whole silly "rock me" thing out of her system was so right on.

I'm wondering the same thing? She said she was supposed to be touring again this month and all of 2006? No announcements. Most ominously, no second single( not yet ). Not sure if she has been dropped or not, but maybe no one ( Capitol ) is putting up the bucks for another leg of touring. It seemed real odd to me that she played little if anything off the new album on her fall tour? Yeah, it seems she's fallen off the face of the earth. However, if Liz was dropped from the label would this forum, her website, and the Guyville website still be up and operating? I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Perhaps this album is Liz Phair's attempt to deliberately get dropped from her label, so as to attain freedom from the charty pressures of Capitol Records. Wouldn't that make sense? And wouldn't it be nice to see her turn into a self-producing art-making podcasting quirkoid?

To digress for just a moment... Does anyone else get the feeling that Liz Phair might be quietly turning into a Christian? Beyond the casual use of concepts like "miracles" and "faith" and "praying for it" on her new album, there are also smaller things. For instance, the fact that she often proclaims that she listens to NPR on Sundays (all day). To whom does Sunday really mean a day of rest, beyond the Christian person, or the avid bruncher? Then there's that contented serenity she seems to possess lately, so distinctly Christian somehow. I've got nothing against Christianity, so long as it isn't used as an excuse to be a hater. That said, it is from the perspective of sheer observation and curiosity, that I wonder about Liz Phair's spirituality.

It just could be that she's finally "backing out of the [corporate music] driveway and into creation", whether it's part of her own master plan... or "someone" else's.

Liz is definitely not christian. She talked somwhere about writing "wind and the mountain" and how it is a response to a Stevie Wonder song about talking with god, and since she isn't religious, she kind of sees a higher power as a wind that comes in and out or something like that.

NNDB has her listed as a Scientologist. She may want to rethink that one – I wouldn’t want to belong to any group that Tom Cruise belongs to.

She's not a Scientologist.

I hope not – all the celebs that are Scientologists are freaks.
Ravolta, Alley, Lewis, that hag from King of Queens, etc.

Don't forget Beck! He's a big Scientologist.

It has been a long time since the site has been updated...And no Podcasts for quite sometime...If she got dropped from Capital I wonder what would happen...

about the scientology thing, liz isn't a scientologist. here is a a quote explaining this misconception.

"My own life is just one long thread of mischievousness," adds the Chicago-based Phair, who giggles easily and often. Especially when divulging that her official Matador bio -- describing a skin-diving neurologist dad, a mom in the diplomatic corps who read aloud to her daughter from Henry Miller's "Sexus", and Liz's own rebellious involvement with both Scientology and a beau who was a hazardous waste engineer -- is "all made-up garbage I got talked into!"

the bio in question:

Born and raised in one of the most upscale parts of Chicago, Liz Phair’s parents brought up their daughter in a home with a serious liberal arts approach in child development. Says Liz Phair:

“There was really no way for me to rebel against my parents. My father provided me with my very own subscription to the Evergreen Reader by the time I turned ten. My mother used to read aloud from Henry Miller’s ‘Sexus’ and the Victorian erotic magazine ‘The Pearl’ when I brought boys over during my teens. My form of teen rebellion— which incidentally took a while for me to perfect — was to get heavily involved with the scientology group at my high school. I moved out of my parents’ house the same day I turned 21 to join my boyfriend at the time, a Canadian hazardous waste engineer, when his job relocated him to San Francisco.”

Ms. Phair likes to refer to her Bay Area stay as her “lost years.” When push came to shove during the phone conversation I had with Liz Phair to prepare this bio, she refused to go into detail about the time in San Francisco. “Just tell them that I experimented with a lot of different lifestyles, OK?” Further inquiries revealed nothing. This woman literally has no recorded past. No bank account, no credit card, no old friends (or none willing to speak).

After her return to Chicago circa Christmas of 1990 (exact dates are kind of muddy and Liz won’t help me at all), she immediately got heavily involved in music. On a dare, she began producing a string of cassettes under the moniker Girly Sound, which circulated through the efforts of Tae Won Yu (Kicking Giant) and Chris Brokaw (Come), who were the only two direct recipients of the tapes. These two gentlemen started dubbing copies for their music-industry weasel friends, which stirred up a barrage of hype that resulted in Gerard Cosloy of Matador approaching Liz with a recording contract. After lengthy negotiations, she agreed to come out of her basement and actually meet him over coffee. The contract was signed the same day, but only after Ms. Phair’s wish to receive all of the advance money in cash was fulfilled.

The album ‘Exile in Guyville’ was recorded at Idful Studios in Chicago in the summer of 1992, co-produced with her drummer and bass player Brad Wood. Guitarist Casey Rice throws in a riff or two. “The guys just fuckin’ rip,” says Ms. Phair.

It could just be that Liz took time off at the end of the year, probably to simply enjoy the holidays.



I would be more inclined to believe that Liz had turned to organized religion if she said she spent her Sundays in Church rather than listening to NPR. And plenty of people use Sunday as a "day of rest". I know I for one get absolutely nothing done on Sundays.

And Liz's "serene" disposition may have more to do with the fact that things are going her way in her life. Well, except for the lack of record sales, but otherwise, things are going good.

She seems to be very much in love with Dino, her music career is back on track after years of inactivity (again, excepting the fact that her sales are low), and she seems to have gained the confidence in her live shows that had eluded her for years. And, as she said in Harp magazine, 2004 was one of her most financially successfull years. (again, despite low album sales)

But who knows, maybe she has accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior. If she has, I say good for her.

what's with all the "liz being dropped" stuff? just because there's been no recent news?

She is at the end of her infamous 5 record deal.

dropped or not, they sure seem to have given up on the album. Poo. That was a short era.

Well what did they expect?

Capitol hasn't done shit promoting SM since Liz's fall tour ended. Maybe the reason for them doing nothing was directly due to their planning on dropping Liz anyway. Capitol did an absolutely craptastic job from the very beginning in their promotion of this album. Even from the earliest Promosquad days! The songs they featured on Promosquad where some of the weakest on SM. People getting an early listen to Liz's new material had to make a judgement on what SM was going to sound like based on "Lost Tonight", "ETM"and "Somebody's Miracle", tunes I have grown to like but did little if anything for me upon first listen. GIATY and "Part Of Me" aka "Count On My Love" were the only two of the five that had any punch at all! Why wasn't "Got My Own Thing", "Why I Lie", "Leap Of Innocence" and "Everything (Between Us) featured?? IMHO, these tunes are far superior to what was first featured!! "ETM" was a terrible choice for a first single. Don't get me wrong, I have grown to really like this song, it's very sad and pretty, but as a first single?? They should have gone with something that rocked at least a little bit! GIATY and "Count On My Love", although I believe the latter is REALLY bubble gummy, would have easily been better choices. I honestly believe the early Promosquad selections and ETM as the first single helped doom SM from the start. I think alot of people wouldn't give the new album a chance based on the extremely mellow AC sounds of ETM and Promosquad. That is a shame, because, at least IMO, SM is a very decent album. It took several listens for this album to grow on me, but I honestly like every tune on it now. A few like "Got My Own Thing", 'Why I Lie", and "Leap Of Innocence" I consider on par with the best stuff Liz has ever done. People just didn't give it a chance. It also didn't help that Liz herself did virtually NOTHING to promote it while she was on tour. She didn't play ANY of SM with the exception of SM and ETM, IMO, two of the weakest tracks on the album. I believe she played "Stars And Planets" and "Lazy Dreamer" once or twice. It's almost like she was purposely sabotaging herself and SM by not playing any of its' songs?? Who knows, maybe she saw the writing on the wall with Capitol ( getting dropped ), said fuck it, and bagged any effort promoting it too. She kept mentioning how she started off patterning this album after Stevie Wonder's "Songs In The Key Of Life" and how that idea went by the boards because it would have taken at least another year to finish writing songs and recording them. Capitol bitched about how expensive that would be and shot down her idea. I also believe they wanted new Liz material now and not a year from now. The whole thing seemed kinda rushed to me. IMO, this is NOT the album that Liz ideally wanted to make. SM was a compromise between her and Capitol, something that I believe Liz was never totally confident or happy with, hence the lack of SM songs in her tour playlists. If she has in fact left Capitol, she's probably looking for a label that will allow her to experiment with ideas like the Stevie Wonder one ( duh!). Just rambling thoughts. One last thing, I hate to say this and I PRAY I'm wrong,, but IMO, there will probably be no other singles from SM, I doubt she will tour any time soon, and we MAY have heard the last new Liz music for quite a while (maybe years)??

^sadly, a lot of that makes sense. at least i got to see her live during the era. btw when i saw her she didn't even do ETM, she did Lazy Dreamer (one of my favorites on the album) and SM (not one of my favorites...) still, i would have loved to have heard her do Leap Of Innocence, Got My Own Thing, Closer To You, Can't Get Out, and other songs of that ilk from the album.

it's sad, because her enthusiasm in promoting her 2003 record was contagious, and she ended up with new fans of not just the 2003 record but of her entire body of work--which seemed to be part of her m.o.... An 'educational' attempt, if you will, to expand the repertoire of radio-pop fans. Maybe i'm reading too much into it, but the fact that she DID do that with a few converts was admirable to me. This time it seemed like she didn't really care about any of that--she just dropped off the record and left.

Oh, well, I hope she ends up doing a few acoustic shows here and there. I'd hate to think that this is IT for the next few years.....

Thanks for the insight, it all certainly seems to correlate.

that all seems to make some sense, but did liz really not want to promote this album? it seems like once the album came out she was everywhere doing all kinds of t.v. apperances and magazine interviews.

Liz probably wants to make albums full of her quirky songs, etc, like when she was planning her monthly song subscription thing just so people could hear the songs she was most proud of from the last 5 years.

I hope without Capitol those quirky songs will come back.

Without the record label's backing, it's pretty difficult if next to impossible for an artist to promote themselves.

I'd say Capitol are behind all this silence, probably working their way down to Liz on their list of priorities.

i'd say the silence is due to the fact that christmas just happened and the new year was just rung in. liz probably wanted a break for the holidays and such, but no need to announce it. as it probably in her eyes wasn't news worthy.

I'd like to believe that. I honestly think Liz has been dropped. Good or bad, I think Liz can score another (and better) record deal.

Capitol is crap, to simply put it.

I don't want her to score a better record deal per say. Not monetarily anyway. I want her to get a record deal that lets her do whatever she wants. I would be more than happy if she could release a record every few years and tour small clubs. It would be interesting to see if she would still aim at Top 40. What would rule is if she put out something old skool and it went Top 40 anyways. There are tons of singles in all her albums if you think about it - look at all the weird crap that have been hits?

“Just tell them that I experimented with a lot of different lifestyles, OK?”

So little revealed...So much revealed

Once again I bow to Robnashville

I have a few friends who were artists that "made it" in the entertainment industry around the same time Liz Phair did, and they, like Liz, have been forced to straddle the worlds of artistry and entertainment. By now, a lot of them have gotten fired or dropped, or turned into alchoholics and drug addicts, or have become haunted by the commercial successes of their own shallow creations. I just see it as a sign of great artistry and mental health.

Note to self: Don't mistake people who are in love with Dino Meneghin for Christians (or Scientologists).

After the performance of the self-titled album, Capitol won't put the money into promoting liz to get even middling success for the new album. The reason that Why Can't I got so much video and radio airplay had little to do with whether or not it was a good song. It got played because Capitol was paying shitloads of money in record promotion to get it played. That's the way the radio game is played (been that way for a long time). Capitol spent a crapload of money getting the single played hoping that this would lead to significant highly album sales (where the profit is), which just didn't happen. That invested all that money to sell only about 100,000 more copies than they would have if they would have just put it out there like past Liz product.

I think Capitol probably started cutting back on promoting liz during her last album. Without the sponsorship money from Maybelline, I doubt we would have seen the second leg of touring behind the LP album. That apathy just carried over into the new album, causing it to stiff so horiffically.


ps.

@ Brynn

Not really. Tori did it with Choirgirl, Venus and Strange Little Girls. They didn't back her at all with those records, because they wanted to drain her of a fan base so when she got another record deal, she wouldn't sell.

Now is that really true, or fan conspiracy theory? I used to like Tori way back when (can't stand her now), and I remember all the albums being promoted, talk show appearances, etc. Strange Little Girls has four different covers for fuck's sake, that's the most obvious marketing ploy. I specifically remember choirgirl having some promo where if you buy it you could download a b-side or something.

back to Liz...another indication of trouble in Somebody's-Miracle-land is her choice of covering 'Free Man In Paris' during the last tour...a Joni Mitchell song that basically expresses disillusionment with "the star maker machinery behind the popular song"....

Now that's a great point. I think Liz definitely wasn't feeling Capitol anymore. It kind of seems that she wanted out. She was a lot more open in interviews about the real reason why she ever worked with the matrix on LP (more recording money), and was openly upset about Capitol not letting her finish the Stevie Wonder album. And there's the whole thing about her not performing SM songs.

Tori wrote about it in her book Piece by Piece. Basically she says;
"After the release of her album From the Choirgirl Hotel in 1998, she had a meeting with the heads of the label. Amos questioned why her work was not being promoted properly. Atlantic revealed that they preferred to spend their capital trying to break newer artists, who they felt would make them more money. Amos demanded to be freed from her contract, but the label refused. Instead, they chose to exercise their option to keep Amos on board until she had released an additional three albums, as stipulated in her contract. According to Amos, they felt their power had been challenged and intentionally would do as little as they could do (legally speaking) to promote the works so that her career would be decimated by the time she had a chance to switch to a new label.
The label fully followed through on their threat. For example: artists usually provide the label with a section of seats to each of their concerts that can be given to local radio honchos in exchange for the promise that the artist's new work would be heavily played. Atlantic Records gave Amos' tickets while requesting that other artists on the label be played as a return favor. As a result, Amos' album sales steadily declined."

Atlantica are horrible people though, look what they did to POE.

I think Liz would be best on the "Super Ego" label, with Aimee Mann, etc.

Or she could do an Ani Difranco.

Thanks for the enlightenment. Atlantic is a horrible, horrible label. If the dropped rumour is true, let's hope there aren't any contractual things like with Poe, who isnt allowed to use her name, or perform any of her songs for 7 (?) years. That would suck. Damn record industry.

I was so shocked at Poe not even being able to sing her own songs for 7 years thing (Though that was in 2003, so now she only has 4 years to go!).

I thought when you left a label or were dropped, then if the songs still belonged to the label, you could peform them live but not release them/publish them by making any offical recordings of the songs or dvd recordings, etc.

If all this conjecture about Liz being dropped is true and the working relationship between Liz and Capitol has disinigrated to such a low point, then adios Cap and good for you Liz. I hope leaving them will aid and promote your career better as well as give you the artistic freedom you are seeking. On the down side however, I certainly do not look forward to a prolonged abscence of any new Liz material or touring! I'm also going to miss those podcasts ALOT. As far as more touring, like Rob posted earlier, maybe someone like Maybelline can step up to the plate and provide the sponsorship and bucks needed to get her back on the road. Liz and another strong all female lineup ala CWA could be the answer. Just a thought, Missy Higgins, Anna Nalick, Rachel Yamagata, or Charlotte Martin all on tour with Liz???? That, IMO, could bring out some fans!! Ah, I know, just daydreaming!

Liz got dropped. It's official.

Where?

Yea, Atlantic tried to destroy her during the "from the choirgirl hotel" era.

They did almost no promotion for the album; but she had a large cult fan base and that is actually one of her best selling isn't it?

Oh yea, and Duncan Sheik.

He was on atlantic; but apparently he hated it because they wouldn't let him make the music he wanted.

He made a sort of "last deal" with the label. He got to make his folksy Nick drake inspired "Phantom Moon" on nonesuch records (the indie label that stems from atlantic) in exchange for a very radio friendly album (which would turn out to be Daylight.)

After that he was liberated and now owns and runs Sneaky Records.

At any rate: Laura Veirs is on nonesuch which is technically Atlantic.

Where did you see or hear this "official" announcement??

Aye.

Spill the beans.

my money would be on the voices in Nova's head.

unless i hear it from ken lee or ray lew i'm gonna have leave this one in the rumor column.

Yeah, But Laura Veirs is a critic's darling.

No, Her best selling is Pele.
Either UTP, LE or Scarlet's Walk follows.
Atlantica's ideas worked, and From The Choirgirl was a big drop from Pele.

Scarlet's Walk is the album that really brought her back, as it was her highest selling album since Pele and as A sorta Fairytale is her biggest hit yet.

Well that's cool I guess.

Scarlet's Walk and Strange Little Girls are my "hatiest" Tori albums.

Least favourite, would seem better.

Well I love both. I love all her albums. *shrug*

How can you not love Scarletts Walk?
Hate The Beekeeper if you must hate.

I think Scarlet's Walk is a complete masterpiece.
I love The Beekeeper too.

as it turns out that rule doesn't exist. if it did than poe is in trouble. as artmetis recently re-released her last cd haunted. actually both of poe's cd were re-released recently. well back in 2004, which is not too long ago. i can't speak for atlantic, as i don't know anything about them. but i do know that atlantic is/was home to phish and tracy chapman. and as far as i know they didn't push or prod tracy. and phish had good things to say about them. of course this could 2 in a million sort of thing. anyway, back to liz. i really am not sure she got dropped. there's been no news but then that's the record industry for you. if the labels would keep rufus wainwright, who sells nothing compared to liz or poe for that matter, then they would probably keep liz. captiol's home to radiohead who hasn't sold well really since their ok computer days. i don't think all labels are bad. they are actually a necessary cog in the machine. they do all the grunt work so all the artists has to think about is making music. sure some suck, but that is the way it is with almost any business. as for liz i think a wait and see approach is good. we don't know if she's been dropped, but we want so bad to believe because we all seem to hate the labels and hate capitol. i, myself, am for anything that makes liz happy. if she wants to stay with capitol then fine. they're not attrocious. if she wants to leave that's fine too. whatever makes her happy.