When I originally reviewed To Live and Shave in LA’s debut cdr in 2000, the write-up ended with a mention of a legit release, “coming soon on X+Z=0 records.” Well, it turns out that “soon” meant more than five years, but, at last, The 300 Dollar Silk Shirt has arrived, including the original cdr release, as well as a chunk of “new” recordings, made by a band that’s long dissolved and, for many, an almost forgotten seizure of musical energy. When TLASILA2 first surfaced, I opined that Kill Misty was on par with the best work of Tom Smith’s original troupe…more than half a decade later, it’s interesting to revisit my opinion, though, truth be told, The 300 Dollar Silk Shirt isn’t wholly a reissue, with a whole new album’s worth of material, recorded in 2001, added to the tracks that originally appeared on the cdr.
The history behind To Live and Shave in LA 2 is, at its core, the old tale of artistic differences, namely between Tom Smith and the cohort that made up the rest of the original To Live and Shave in LA. In his liner notes, guitarist Weasel Walter cites a litany of reasons for the schism, but it seems, at its core, the split was mainly over the issue of control. Subsequently, a mutiny occurred, and the (at the time) final line-up of To Live and Shave in LA (sans Smith) added a “2” and struck out on their own. Rat Bastard, a loyal shaver from years gone by, was part of the defection, as well as Weasel Walter, Misty Martinez, and Nondor Nevai, and the new quartet was quick to book a tour and put out a few cdr releases, only to quietly dissolve . Smith, not long, after, reformed To Live and Shave in LA, with Rat Bastard back in the fold, though none of the other Shave 2 personnel have stayed with the band. The 300 Dollar Silk Shirt is a classic case of something being better late than never; by this time I had forgotten that the album was ever slated to come out, so news of its release was a happy surprise, as was the word that unreleased material would appear on the disc.
There’s a distinct divide between the two phases of TLASILA2 presented on this disc, both in biographic and aesthetic terms. The older material is a severely mangled recording of one of a recording made before Shave 2 had even been born; those who would come to make up the band were still, at the time, members of the original group, and Tom Smith's distinctive vocals are all over the music. Both sections of the album display a technique heavy on chaotic improvisation and disorienting studio rearrangement, though the newer material seems more haphazard and insistently unhinged, conceptually equal to its predecessor, though perhaps not in its realization. Shave 2's mantra of stream-of-consciousness, everything-goes performance made for some exhilarating live shows, but the recordings on the disc don't always seem to play by the same rules. Tracks like "Bandeth a Current Eyeliner" feel far too self-conscious, and while the Kill Misty side of the proceedings exudes a certain purposeful arrangement, the later material is spotted with the telltale fingerprints of human reconfiguration where something more indicative of the explosive quality of the group might have been more powerful, for TLASILA2 were truly a spectacle to behold, and while a track like "There is a Dishonest Record Label" might have the confusing chutzpah of their performances down pat, it feels too obvious a studio pastiche, more like a parody of the original Shave methodology than anything half as riotously cathartic (and genuinely humorous) as Shave 2 were onstage.
The Kill Misty material, while also wrought with the twisted logic of the ensuing studio material (and equally indebted, at times, to the distinctive aesthetic of the original band's compositional tendencies), feels less random, which, perhaps counterintuitively, leads to a more powerful exhibition of the group's disorderly panache. Walter terms his treatment of the material psychedelic, a characterization that goes a long way in describing the layered and disorienting atmosphere of the music. And while the tracks are rife with controlled chaos and unpredictability, the orchestration of the mess is performed with an unobtrusive vision, cohesive and concise without betraying the pandemonium of the proceedings.
To Live and Shave in LA 2 were a band who, as Weasel admits in his notes, had a purpose whose time has come and gone. And six years on, The 300 Dollar Silk Shirt, blast beats, orgasmic moans, shredded guitar, and all, might be a tough introduction for those who missed the band. To the uninitiated, the whole idea of Shave 2 might seem even more absurd now than it did to countless listeners back in 2000, but this disc shows, in part, that there was a method to the madness, or at least a conceptual drive behind what might have come off to most as a most public performance of an inside joke.
