Day 26: "Last Splash" - The Breeders (1993)

It probably shouldn't surprise me that, on going through the albums in a collection that I created, I should continually come across albums I really like.  If I didn't, that would be extremely odd.  Today's entry represents another stone cold classic in the Record Reconstructor pantheon.

Listen to me here

Despite what a casual snapshot of the recent Record Reconstructor blog posts might indicate, I wasn't entirely a musical philistine when I was in my adolescence.  Almost universally amongst my peer group,  The Pixies were greatly admired;  I remember hearing Doolittle for the first time at my friend Hado's house back in what must have been 1991, at the age of 15.  By the time 18 rolled around and we were all adult, at least by a legal definition (there's an argument to be had that I'm still not an adult at the tender age of 41), The Pixies had gone on hiatus, and following in their wake, Kim Deal formed The Breeders.

While I've been listening to this album for over 20 years, really the person I associate it with most is my Brother-in-Law;  no, not the indolent waste of skin who was formerly married to my sister, but the endlessly fascinating, if not slightly unhinged gent who is married to my partner's sister.  

It's strange to think that I've probably known Jim for almost a decade now.  Me and Catherine got together in December of 2017, and it was probably only a few months later that I met his sister and what was then her very new husband, as Frankie and Jim were married only a couple of months before Catherine and I met.  I've always found interacting with the partners-of-relatives a tricky road to navigate; when you're in a relationship, you can generally be sure that person has a number of characteristics you are fond of; with their relatives it's less sure, but you hope for some kind of familial similarity to get you through.  But the kind of person who is right for a relationship with one sibling might be very different to the person who is right for another, and suddenly at these meetings you can find yourself thrust into social situations with someone with whom your only connection is "so, you're dating someone from this family too?  Weird huh?".

And in truth, Jim and I are very different in a lot of ways.  Jim likes to build and fix things, he's outdoorsy, and he can be relentlessly and effortlessly reckless in the pursuit of 'funny'.  His hobbies involve driving a 40 ton military utility vehicle around a farm, or through the streets of Manchester.  He's basically single-handedly rebuilt his family home from scratch, and while I can paint a wall or build IKEA furniture, rewire a plug or hang a curtain rail, Jim is the kind of person who has rebuilt the plumbing, laid foundations, and built walls in his home.  With the exception of "hey, you're dating someone from this family too?", we might have nothing much in common.  With one exception.

The first time I visited Frankie & Jim's house in Salford, I did what I always do when I get the opportunity;  I looked through their CD collection.  Jim is older than me by a few years (3-4 I think, I don't remember), but when I looked through his bookcases there was a lot of familiar album spines there.  I felt instantly better able to relate to him;  a test had been passed somehow, common ground found, and sometimes, all it takes is one thing for you to be able to build a relationship from.  

Now I don't get to see Jim very often, and almost never outside the context of a get-together of the in-laws.  Twenty years after the release of Last Splash, The Breeders reformed, announcing a tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary re-release of their seminal record, and they would be playing it live in it's entirety.  As an admitted junkie for live music, and this album being one of my favourites, it wasn't a very hard sell for me to pick up some tickets.  And without really thinking about it, because the gig was in Manchester, I bought one for Jim as well.  Scanning his CD collection I hadn't seen it, but I'd seen plenty of Pixies and other early 90's alternative and grunge bands, so I figured it would be a slam dunk.  

He'd never heard of them.  He was keen to go, especially because it meant he got a night out away from his two young daughters at the time, but somehow I'd misjudged and bought him a ticket to see a band he'd never heard of perform an album he had no familiarity with at all.  So I did the only thing I could under the circumstances - Amazon Primed a copy of the album to his home address and set a date and time for us to meet up.

Remember when I said I buy a shirt for every gig I go to if I can?  Here's the one from this gig.

To my recollection, this was the first time we'd done something together that didn't involve our respective wives and girlfriends.  Through this gig somehow, the level of our relationship had a reached a point where instead of being two people who kind of knew each other from family gatherings, we were people who would hang out together deliberately, despite our many differences, and still enjoy each other's company.  We became more than the sum of our partners, if you will.

Since that night, me and Jim now make it a requirement each year to at least have an afternoon or an evening together without our significant others.  Our little two-person support group for men in relationships with people from Catherine's family has been really helpful, and fun.  Jim's love of music persists as well;  like me, he's a frustrated singer and musician.  Last year I gave him my very first electric guitar as he'd expressed an interesting in learning (and I had just got a new one).  I'm curious to see what, if anything, he's done with it next time we meet up.

So, should you find yourself in a similarly awkward position with someone, maybe find a gig, and buy them a ticket.  You might get more out of it than just a great live band experience.

Postscript:  It was driving back from this gig, at midnight, that I got my one and only speeding ticket in my life; doing 33mph on a 30mph road on the outskirts of Sheffield.  I had to pay £95 for a Speed Awareness Course and take a day off work to sit in a lecture room for 6 hours and be told not to go too fast.

On balance, it was probably worth it.