Elliott Smith - Live at The Black Cat
April 17, 1998
Washington, DC.
Soundboard @flac
No one could honestly claim to be surprised when they heard Elliott Smith had committed suicide. Plenty of folky singer-songwriters have a reputation for making introspective, melancholy music, but none quite like Smith's. To some critics he was Mr Misery - a pun on Miss Misery, the song from the soundtrack of Good Will Hunting for which he was Oscar-nominated in 1998. He was the "unhappiest man in the land", a singer you didn't so much listen to as commiserate with.
According to his friend, singer Mary Lou Lord, Smith was the heir to the tragic mantle of her former boyfriend, Kurt Cobain: he was making records for "the sad kids". His gloom was more than sulky posturing: when Smith sang about heroin addiction or alcoholism or depression, he was singing about things he had experienced first-hand.
The cover of his second, eponymous solo album, released in 1995, features a grainy image of bodies falling from a high building. Another, 1996's Either/Or, was named after a book by Kierkegaard, in which the philosopher posited that the aesthete would eventually find himself in a state of despair. As one tribute article wryly noted, you couldn't say that Smith didn't warn you.
That is not to say the circumstances of his death were not shocking. Last year, just before lunchtime on Tuesday, October 21, Smith apparently had an argument with his girlfriend, fellow musician Jennifer Chiba, at their home in Silverlake, Los Angeles. As the row got worse, Smith threatened to commit suicide.
Like most of Smith's close friends, Chiba was used to him making melodramatic threats about ending his life. After all, this was a man who, when he decided to relocate from Portland to Brooklyn in the late 1990s, bade farewell to his Oregon friends by informing them that it was likely he would never see them again because he was "probably going to kill himself".
Chiba ignored him and locked herself in the bathroom. She then heard a scream. Returning to the living room, she found Smith standing with his back to her. When he turned around, she saw a kitchen knife sticking out of his chest. Smith had stabbed himself in the heart. Despite emergency surgery, he was pronounced dead 20 minutes after arriving at hospital. He was 34 years old.
~
Alexis Petridis - The Guardian
Set List:
angeles
division day
clementine
waltz #2 (xo)
between the bars
southern belle
jealous guy (john lennon cover)
say yes
oh well, okay
no name #4
rose parade
alameda
pictures of me
some song
biggest lie
st ides heaven
care of cell 44 (zombies cover)
speed trials
thirteen (big star cover)
no name #3
pass = fbsvw
Black Cat '98
