ld beghtol gabs with the master's favorite living vocalist about 69LS, lazy susan and panties.
chickfactor: when did you meet our lord stephin merritt?
shirley simms: more than a quarter century ago when I was a wee little thing, he appeared and saved me from suburbia. sort of like the apparitions of the blessed mother, but not in lourdes.
cf: people in boston certainly need saving. how did you actually meet him?
shirley: it was in newton [mass.]. he was with his mother visiting one of her friends whose son I was friends with and I happened to stop by. fortunately for me.
cf: for all of us! so how and when did you start making music with him?
shirley: stephin actually gets credit for my voice because he shaped it into being when we started recording—on a cassette recorder back when I was about twelve or so.
cf: you're being too modest, dear. you've a tremendous natural gift. was this pre-magnetic fields?
shirley: this was pre-puberty!
cf: what was the first song you recorded with him?
shirley: I don't remember. but we wrote "beach a-boop-boop" around that time. it was before he had the 4-track. were slightly obsessed with frankie and annette movies at the time.
cf: as we all were, because we didn't have access to beyond the valley of the dolls yet.
shirley: exactly! commercial television didn't air half the smut it does now, so we had to make our own fun—which was mostly music.
cf: I read a lot of victorian novels and made drawings. so you were 12 and stephin was like 15 or 16?
shirley: no, it was a month before I turned 12 and he was already 13.
cf: did you know he lies about his age now? so really you're "older" than he is, according to certain press releases.
shirley: well, if I had a good reason to lie about my age, I would too.
cf: I always tell people I'm much older than I am—like andy [warhol] did so they'll say, "gosh, ld, you look great for 47!"
shirley: I still get the "I thought you were still in your 20s!"—mostly from people trying to butter me up for something.
cf: tell us about your band with stephin, buffalo roam.
shirley: I was 15 or so, and stephin loved the fact that my mother worked for the priests at the neighborhood rectory as a cook, which is how the tape came to be called, cooking for the priests. god, he's always had such great songwriting instincts.
cf: and such an absurdist wit, too. so you made a record as buffalo roam, which has never been released.
shirley: oh, yeah. it was great fun and we did it really just to pass the time. once we got into an argument over my not wanting to sing the line, "whale embryos filled your enormous room" because I lacked vision back then. he's also the reason I can double and triple and quadruple-track myself perfectly. I did it all the time.
cf: I'm glad you got over that. I mean the whale embryos part. your multi-tracking abilities are legendary.
shirley: it took me years and years, unfortunately—the getting over the "whale embryos" thing, I mean. the multi-tracking was just conditioning. pavlov had his dogs, stephin had me!
cf: I bet you look terribly smart is a rhinestone collar, my dear.
shirley: yes—but then again, who doesn't?
cf: so will the buffalo roam album ever be released? a little birdie told me claudia has a copy.
shirley: yes, but can she find it? that's the real question.
cf: I hope so. let's talk about what you did from the late '80s when stephin & claudia moved to nyc and the late '90s when we started making 69 love songs.
shirley: I was in the much (retrospectively) beloved boston band, lazy susan. not to be confused with the new york band, lazy susan.
cf: your lazy susan also featured claudia (gonson, magnetic fields manager drummer singer pianist). what was it like? who was in it? where'd you play? what were your fans like?
shirley: claudia, in fact, was the reason lazy susan even existed. if left up to my bandmate therese and I, we never would've left the living room of her apartment. claudia and therese's old boyfriend basically pressured us into playing out. he'd come home early from his band practice and sit in the hallway listening to us for months because we clammed up the second he'd walk in the door. claudia hung out with us one night and then told us a couple weeks later that she'd booked us at a club, which is why we made her play drums for us. eventually we played everywhere and with the strangest assortment of bands.
cf: what's the r.e.m. connection i've heard rumors of?
shirley: we played with linda stipe's band, hetch hetchy, one night and she grabbed a tape and said her brother would love to hear it because he was working with some girls down in athens...
cf: by whom you mean those indigo girls?
shirley: [.]
cf: who henceforth shall remain nameless. so what happened?
shirley: we started getting looked at by labels who said "we want to sign you as a copycat band." which was completely unacceptable to all involved.
cf: that's dreadful. so of course you ended up not making a lazy susan record—much to everyone's horror.
shirley: yes. so then we went electric, but by then claudia was a fulltime college girl in new york, so we had no drummer. just a bunch of guitars and a bass.
cf: then what happened? you started doing graphic design?
shirley: I got sucked into the whole corporate-greed, desk-job crap in the early 90s, but I got out when my head felt like it was going to explode, which lead to the design thing.
cf: you weren't in close contact with stephin and claudia for a while, where you? I'd always been told by stephin and claudia how fabulous your voice and songs were, and that one day we had to sing together, but I never knew if that would happen.
shirley: I kinda suck at staying in touch with anyone, even my own siblings. if there's an event worthy of mention, I'll get in touch with people. if not, I just do my thing and assume that no one else has had an event, or they'd get in touch with me.
cf: so claudia contacted you and stephin sent you demos. then you appeared in new york one weekend and made the magic. what was it like recording with stephin after all these years?
shirley: the same as it always was. remember the pavlov comment?
cf: his little studio in the east village was sort of an nightmare unto itself—all that stuff in that tiny, tiny apartment. you did your songs really quickly, if I remember. do you want to tell us about it?
shirley: it's not that interesting, really. stephin told me the approach he wanted me to take and he knows my voice so well that that's all he had to do to get what he was looking for. when we did "kiss me like you mean it," he said one word: "wynonna." which I understood meant "early judds."
cf: you're way too modest, shirley simms! your songs on 69 love songs are everyone's favorite.
shirley: I'm not trying to be modest, I really just did what he asked me. even though we hadn't recorded in years, he'd hardwired that stuff into me when my brain was still young and squishy, so it was automatic.
cf: what're you working on now?
shirley: well, funny you should mention that...
cf: you're so easy to work with. when you were down this spring to record the ld & the new criticism record with me, it was a total pleasure. you're so fast and accurate. as a producer I really appreciate that. that and your terrific enthusiasm. anything else you'd like to tell the cf readership?
shirley: well, apart from the fact that the new criticism stuff is so hooky you'll never get it out of your head once you hear it—but in a good way—I think I'm tapped out.
cf: thanks, miss shirley!
shirley: thanks, love. now back to work. I'm off like a new bride's panties...
shirley recorded the duet "too old to die young" with ld (as well as many sublime backing vocals) on the upcoming tragic realism cd, by ld & the new criticism disc. she'll begin recording her debut solo cd this winter in new york at the fort (brooklyn) featuring some of her own classic unreleased tunes, as well as new songs by stephin merritt and ld beghtol.
