You are Liz Phair. You are now feeling creative for the first time in 15 years, which is why re-releasing and performing live your debut album makes sense (doesn't make sense). But what do you do with all that extra inspiration you're not utilizing because revisiting an album doesn't require, well, any? That's easy: create the musical score for Swingtown, CBS's new drama about couples in the '70s taking ludes and smoking pot and hosting key parties. It's called Occam's Razor, everybody. Actually, it's called Liz grew up in the same town as the show's creator, and they have shared anecdotal experience of some of the town's extramarital hijinx. The Chicago Tribune's The Watcher blog spoke with Liz about how it all sounds and feels:
"I don't know how organized it was, but there's this sense that there was some swapping of partners," says Phair, who, with her music partners Evan Frankfurt and Doc Dauer, created the instrumental score for "Swingtown."
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It's the first time she's worked as a composer, but she's enjoying it, she said.
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"I'm cannibalizing a lot of the songs I'm writing now, and I'll go in and rip off some three-chord thing from a song I've written before," Phair said. "It comes out sounding totally different and it's a lot of fun."
Swingtown premieres tomorrow night. Here's a trailer:
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FYI the dude with the moustache is Grant Show aka Jake the leather jacket and t-shirt guy from Melrose Place, and the part of Innocent Wife #1 is played by Molly Parker aka Alma Garrett from the great Deadwood (aka the one who loved Seth Bullock and drank all the opium and damn I watch a lot of TV). Anyway, there was absolutely a point during that trailer at which I expected Paul Rudd to pop up and start naming his testes. Thought you'd like to know that.
