Game Theory "Supercalifragile" to be released "early 2017"

Hi everyone,

Scott Miller's final Game Theory recording "Supercalifragile", which he was working on at the time of his passing, will be completed and released in "early 2017".

Ken Stringfellow (Posies, Big Star) has assumed executive production duties along with Scott's wife Kristine. Mitch Easter will provide final mixing. Final funding of the album was provided via Kickstarter, which is listing a July 2017 date.

Songs include:

• "No Love" (by Scott Miller and Aimee Mann)
• "Time Warner" (by Scott Miller and members of Game Theory)
• "All You Need Is White" (by Scott Miller and Stéphane Schück)
• "I Still Dream of Getting Back to Paris" (featuring Anton Barbeau)

There's a lot more information about this on the Wikipedia page - including the list of all of his friends who are helping complete the album: Supercalifragile - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia »

Personally - I can't tell you how happy this news has made me. I still treasure my original copy of Lolita Nation, and the memories I have of seeing Game Theory live during their Tinker To Evers To Chance tour.

Cheers,
Paul

 

Wonderful band. Scott Miller is someone I miss.

 

I remember the local "alternative" station here played "Erica's Word" pretty regularly for awhile. I bought Big Shot Chronicles and found it maddeningly erratic: some very catchy tunes with lyrics so opaque I wondered if they'd been too thought-out, if that makes any sense.

 

It totally makes sense - Scott played with lyrics like other folks played with guitar solos.

I've always recommended that newcomers start with the compilation "From Tinkers To Evers To Chance" - it really is a great primer assembled by Scott himself. Once I had familiarized myself with the songs on that album, I was able to dive into the deeper cuts on the individual albums.

Cheers,
Paul

 

Here's a 33-second teaser video of a track for "Supercalifragile" being recorded at Sharkbite Studios in Oakland.

 

Wow, weird. Maybe I misread it, but I got the impression from forum member Brett's Scott Miller bio (Don't All Thank Me At Once) that work on the record hadn't really begun before Scott deep-sixed the project......


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The Game Theory album had a title, Supercalifragile; it had a registered URL and it had a chosen producer, Allen Clapp of the Orange Peels (who’d had some production success with the Ocean Blue). But that was about as far as it got. None of the prospective players heard any demos, only some rough ideas about musical direction. And though Scott was thinking of reuniting some of the old band—maybe including some longtime fans he’d never played with, like R.E.M.’ s Peter Buck—all of this remained hypothetical. Nan Becker says that Scott also talked to her about contributing but never followed through. “He told me about a new direction that he wanted to explore in songwriting,” Gil says. “He tried to explain it to me, but I couldn’t really follow it. I do remember that he talked about the importance of the bassline—naming the Beatles’ ‘Come Together’ as a song you hear and don’t think of the guitar or the piano, you key right into the bass. That was the direction Scott wanted to go in.” Joe Becker also talked to Scott about playing some of the drums. “It was just sketches at that point. I talked to him in January and he was listening to a lot of jazz, and he said he was interested in going in more of a jazz direction and away from pop. I’m sure it would have turned out a pop record anyway.”

In early March Scott had a meeting with Sue and Joe Mallon at Peet’s Coffee in San Mateo to discuss the album. Sue says that she was struck by Scott’s energy at this meeting, a type she’d never seen from him before. “He was saying he had some ideas for the album that were going to change the way people view albums; almost being that grandiose about it. He wanted to do some viral videos like OK Go [a pop group who had garnered major success in that format] did, something that was going to get a million YouTube views. And he was talking about getting some major names to play on it. I remember him mentioning Jody Stephens [the drummer who was now the one surviving original member of Big Star]. We talked about doing a Kickstarter as a way of pulling the fans in, but Scott was adamant that nobody would hear anything until it was absolutely done; he wanted to record it and drop it. He seemed almost manic that day, but at the time we were glad to see the enthusiasm.

But Scott began losing heart before the project even started, a change of attitude that unsettled his potential collaborators. “There were some emails after that first meeting, and they got more and more disturbing,” Gil recalls. “I was saying ‘Hey, we’re into this—come on over and we’ll do some demos, we’ll make a great record.’ And Scott was saying things like, ‘I don’t know if we should do this. I’d hate to waste everybody’s time, take everybody’s time away from them.’ He wasn’t just getting cold feet about the project, it seemed he was almost apologetic about it.” There was a second meeting three weeks after the first, with Allen Clapp at his home studio on Easter 2013. But by now Scott seemed convinced that the album wouldn’t be worth making, and work was effectively called off. “This was something I’d never heard from him before, an uncharacteristic concern that what he was doing was good enough,” says Dan, who wasn’t at that meeting but in touch around that time. “He was clearly having some kind of crisis in that last month, and none of us could have anticipated the extent of it.”
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Update: it's done!

Shipping as we speak:

Update 18: It's happening... · Supercalifragile by Scott Miller's Game Theory

Cheers,
Paul

 

Can't wait!

 

Yes, most of this album was produced after Scott's passing. His widow Kristine provided everything she had-- lots of demo bits that he had recorded. Ken Stringfellow oversaw the sessions and many GT/LF members were involved (including the late Gil Ray whose heart was really in it). Songs were finished to different extents by the collaborators; many of the people Scott hoped to work with, including Peter Buck, are on the finished product.

This of course is not the album Scott would have made, only he knew what that was. It's as close as anyone will be able to get. Some of the songs are older, "No Love"is from the collaboration he'd intended with Aimee Mann in the '90s.

I have my copy and am a little too choked up to actually play it yet.

 

I get that.
Looking forward to my own copy.

 

Somehow I missed the news that Supercalifragile project was happening, and now of course the Kickstarter is done. Any hope of this getting a release outside of Kickstarter, or are the rest of us SOL?

 

I sent an email to B.J. at the Kickstarter site, and he gave me a link to the album site and when it's going to be released. It will be available for purchase soon.

 

There's contact info here:

Supercalifragile

Poking around here and there, it definitely seems like they are aiming for a wider release. I'm staying tuned.

Cheers,
Paul

 

The album is now available on Bandcamp. If you purchase the LP or CD, you get an instant digital download in the format of your choice (mp3, flac, Apple Lossless, wav, etc.).

 

I haven't read Scott's bio, and I didn't realize that those early meetings about the album were public knowledge, but I can maybe shine a tiny flashlight on what happened at the Easter time meeting at the studio. The Mallons contacted me originally about the idea of Scott making a new album at Mystery Lawn studio a few weeks earlier, and I invited all parties to come to the studio shortly thereafter. It was kind of unexpected, but it wasn't totally out of left field. Scott had said some nice things to me about the production of The Orange Peels' "2020" album after it came out, and he wrote about the title track in "Music: What Happened?" He subsequently joined us on stage at a San Francisco show to read the excerpt from the book as well as make a cameo on guitar. So back to the meeting. We had tea in the house and talked generally at first about the use of different rooms in the house for different acoustic ambiences. Then we moved out to the studio, and he was really animated. He seemed really excited and positive -- bubbling with ideas. We talked about microphones, preamps, compressors, synthesizers, tape echo machines, and electric and acoustic pianos. At one point, he spotted a vinyl copy of "Nursery Cryme" by Genesis sitting among some albums I had scattered around, and he lit up like a Christmas tree -- full of insight and enthusiasm. We talked about our common prog rock influences for a few minutes, and then moved on to talking about how he envisioned the album happening. He had ideas for who would play, and who he would ask. Peter Buck's name definitely came up. A lot of ideas were flying around. He said he wanted to call the record "SuperCaliFragile" and he wanted it to be a Game Theory album. This was all preliminary. We never set a start date, although I sensed he wanted to start soon. We didn't discuss a project budget, or scope -- but it was mentioned that a Kickstarter campaign was a possibility. And then he said something with that apologetic tone, which was described in the book excerpt in the above post. It was something along the lines of . . . "I don't know if it's worth all the time, energy, money, and effort it's going to require." At the time, I didn't take it as being anything I hadn't heard from hundreds of other artists who are weighing the pros and cons of putting their art out into the world. When you're an indie artist taking a cold hard look at what it costs to bring an album to market vs. what you're going to get in return from sales, that's a sobering thought -- especially with the rise of music streaming services and the continued devaluing of music by market forces. So, he said something along the lines I describe, and it occurred to me that this is a totally normal thought for someone embarking on a new music project, especially one who had experienced the support of record labels during the indie heyday of the mid-80s through the early 90s. But in light of what happened a couple weeks later, it could have been just the tip of the iceberg. Hindsight is 20-20. I can't remember what else happened at that meeting, but we said we'd follow up in a week or so, and that he would send some demos over at that point. I emailed him about a week later, and never got a response. The rest is a mystery. When I heard the news of his death, I was pretty shaken up. Having shared the hope and promise of working on a new album with Scott, and having a sense of what could have been, there was just a profound sense of confusion and loss. Such a loss. So the album got made posthumously, and I think it's wonderful that so many of his friends and collaborators got to participate in it. Is this version of Supercalifragile like the one we would have made? No, probably not. But if the sessions that happened around the world for these songs were anything like the one Alison, John and I had while making "It's a Wonderful Lie," it was worth it. It was a way for everyone to collaborate with him one last time, remember him, and honor his unique gifts.

 

Very good story Allen, thank you. The part about Nursery Cryme made me smile.

 

I don't have my physical copy yet but I listened to the downloads. It's a very good album, but I hesitate to even try to compare it to any other GT album because it is a different thing altogether. I think Scott would appreciate all the effort that went into it. I recommend it very strongly.

 

Ordered!

 

Allen - thank you so much for sharing your story and insights. It definitely made me a little misty eyed. (I'm not crying - I swear. It's the pollution - yeah that must be it. )

I can hardly wait to hear this album - sounds like a labor of love all the way around.

Cheers,
Paul

 

Thoughtful touch to add the rubber-stamp "SUPERCALIFRAGILE" on the outside of the shipment packaging.

 

I kept the box it was sent in. Nice touch.

 

I got to see Ken Stringfellow's current project, Tears of Silver, play a couple of weeks ago. I had not heard about Supercalifragile, but Ken had some as part of his merch for sale and I spotted the GT logo and quizzed him about it. Ken was really enthused about the record and I was happy to buy a copy from him. Really glad I did as I am enjoying it immensely.