Notes
The Mess That Money Could Buy: Brian Lisik and the art of screwing up with confidence In a recent facebook posting of a video filmed at a Canton, Ohio venue more resembling a loading dock than a nightclub, Brian Lisik commented thusly on his performance: "'Passenger Side': A Wilco classic about being drunk. I messed up most of the chords. I was sober." The irony of the posting is that the largely unappreciative crowd gets treated to one of the most appropriately fragile-yet-defiant versions of the song this side of Jeff Tweedy himself. "I don't really set out to be a screw up," Lisik says. "It just seems very natural for me sometimes." That supreme, yet genuinely self-deprecating confidence is rare in artists. John Lennon, Lenny Bruce, and Harvey Pekar had it; Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan and Paul Westerberg still do. "I basically live with creative people, but I find most 'artists' to be insufferably boorish and self centered," says the Akron, Ohio-born singer-songwriter and author. "I am too, mind you, but I don't have to talk to myself if I don't want to." The dichotomy of seeking recognition and yes, even fame, while simultaneously running from it as fast as possible has permeated Lisik's work since his days as founder and frontman of self-proclaimed "slop rock" band The Giants of Science in the late 1990s. A psychologist would likely have a field day dissecting what fears, insecurities or simple dissatisfaction with life that may mask, but all we have as sure evidence is two blistering Giants of Science Eps (Hang Ups and All and A Minor Disturbance), two more albums of the solo variety (2004's Baggage and 2006's Happiness Is Boring), and Lisik's most recent offering, The Mess That Money Could Buy, each released on the singer's own label, Cherokee Queen Records, "because nobody else has really wanted to deal with us." It would be tempting to chalk up the cheeky title of Lisik's latest disc, and the six-year span between it and it's processor, to that aforementioned artistic dichotomy. But the singer himself disagrees. "No, I actually wasn't trying to take nearly a decade to make a record," Lisik says. "And we actually had 90 percent of it done in about six months. Then we began the process of trying to make it sound good, which was probably a mistake. In the end though, it does sound really good. It just took us forever to finish and pissed off a whole bunch of studio engineers along the way." While Mess is alternately balls-out rocking ("Small Town Royal Family" "Five Other Rooms", "A Mess"), surprisingly tender ("Nights In Shining Amore", "Last Words") and mightily frustrating to pop music perfectionists (check the botched count-off on "I'm Satisfied"), it is ultimately real - which all Lisik is ever looking for. "I've been at this a while - both as a performer and someone who has analyzed and written a lot about performers - and in the end, forming some sort of bond, or communion, with an audience is really what it's all about," he said. "Minus that, it doesn't really matter how much time or money you spent - or didn't spend - on your piece of art; or whether or not you spent someone else's money. All those things help when it comes to getting people to know you exist, but if it isn't genuine, your piece of art is basically a piece of...something else."
![Brian Lisik,The Mess That Money Could Buy [Explicit], - (Compact Disc) - Picture 1 of 1](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/HxgAAOSwlJVghuYY/s-l500.jpg)
