Phone message

After 8 years or dormancy, it was time to get the old phone message back out of retirement. Couldn't find the original so I had to recreate it from memory. I think this was roughly it.

Phone message by user5836174

A rant about one of my favourite album covers.

Figure 8 was the first Elliott Smith album I ever listened to and I fell in love with it immediately. It's still my favourite of his albums and I've always thought that the album cover was one of the best. This is the album cover:

I was always intrigued by the swirl design in the background and, after a bit of internetting, I found out that the wall Elliott is standing in front of still exists and is located at 4334 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles.

Recently I was in the US and on my last day in LA I made my pilgrimage to see the wall and pay my respects.

I got there and this is what it looked like:

It's actually the wall of a independent "Audio, Video and Speaker Repair" shop called Solutions!.

I stood around for a while taking photos of the wall and me in front of it:

In the picture above you can see the McDonalds next door, the American flag and, if your eyes are good, the Hollywood sign on the hill. LA is an interesting place.

It was weird cos on my other pilgrimages to musically significant locations (see my Abbey Road post) there were loads of people hanging around and taking photos. But here at the "Elliott Smith Wall" it was just me. It was nice actually. People walking past must have wondered what the hell I was doing. Meh.

There was evidence all over the wall that a lot of people still visit the wall though. This was in the form of messages and lyrics such as these:

Anyway, so I'd been there for a while and then I was just about to make my way off when the door of the Solutions! opens and out comes a middle-aged man who asks me if I realised that the shop was open and if I'd like to come in. Surprised at this, I just kind of followed him in and admitted that I was really only there to look at the wall. He jokingly replied “What wall?”

Turns out that he, Stefan, this lovely, middle aged, Asian-American man who runs the store, is actually also the person who designed the wall! He told me that Elliott used to come in to the store to get things fixed. One day Elliott had come in and sheepishly asked Stefan if he could take a photo in front of the wall the cover of his new album. He also said that he remembers the day that Elliott’s music video for the song ‘Son of Sam’ was filmed – some of it being filmed outside the

store. In the music video, Elliott follows a red balloon that eventually leads him to a strange door - the door being the one in the wall of Solutions!. Stefan told me that the whole inside of the room behind the door had to be cleared out of the way so that the door could open. The doorway is never actually used regularly as behind it is a wall full of Stefan’s record collection. He said he clearly remembers the huge cooler of beer that the crew and Elliott had just outside to drink in between shooting.

I asked as humbly as I could if I could get a photo of Stefan in the shop but he politely declined saying that he wasn’t famous so doesn’t want a photo. Stefan took me around his shop and showed me what he did. He fixes Audio and video gear and speakers.

We talked about the wall itself and the graffiti that always covers up the design on the wall which he happily refered to as art. He said that he thinks it inevitable as people will always think that their art is better than the design so will put their “art” over the top. After having it repainted once/twice(?), he has decided that what he is going to do is cover the whole wall with a new design entirely made up of circuit boards. He said he would still incorporate the original design of the big “S” pattern. He chuckled as he thought of how Elliott called the album Figure 8 but actually the pattern is a big “S” for the start of the name of the shop (Solutions!). He laughed and said that Elliott must have been drunk. I could tell from the way Stefan talked about Elliott that he was quite fond of him. How could you not be, right? Elliott Smith! Sheesh!

So that was that.

So anyway, while I was in the U.S. I bought a copy of Figure 8 on vinyl...

...which I've been listening to as I've been writing this post. <3