Things I Will Keep #17: THE MUFFS, Happy Birthday to Me

The Muffs
Happy Birthday to Me
1997, Reprise Records (original vinyl on Telster Records)

The news of Kim Shattuck’s sad and unfair death at age 56, due to ALS complications, knocked all of the wind out of me last week.

I first saw it on Twitter and I couldn’t believe it (“Huh, Kim Shattuck is trending? I wonder wh–OH, FUCK!”). Total punch in the gut. Her illness was kept private. It was a complete surprise to us in the peanut gallery. At the moment, other people were around me and I had to walk away from them and find a quiet place to sit and think.

The deaths of musicians rarely get to me like that. Even if I liked them. For the most part, I tend to figure that they made their mark and will live on through their work. I might get a little wistful and misty, but I don’t feel hurt.

But Kim Shattuck’s passing hurt. 

Beause she didn’t seem done. Because she didn’t get to show us yet how one of the coolest women in the world settles into old age. Because we still need more great pop songs that bash the hell out of stupid guys and stupid girls. Because she was a killer songwriter and a powerhouse presence who never took herself too seriously–and we can never have enough people like that.

I shed some tears that night and I’m still not done crying. I did it all over again this morning after reading Muffs’ drummer Roy McDonald’s terrific LA Times article about the recording of No Holiday, the band’s last album (out next week, as I write this), while Shattuck’s health deteriorated. She was determined to get it done, though. It’s heartbreaking and inspiring to read.

So, what’s the next move? You put on The Muffs’ music, of course–and then a funny thing happens.

You’re lifted right up. You get caught up in the energy. The perfect pop songs light a fire under you.

And it becomes impossible to feel sad. The message of Shattuck’s songs becomes clear and that message is to LIVE. Even when the world lets you down. LIVE. Even when you let yourself down. LIVE.

I don’t know what I’d say is the best Muffs album. They’re all great. Happy Birthday to Me is as good a choice as any.

In a way, The Muffs have always been an anomaly. After a few terrific independent 7″s on Sympathy for the Record Industry and Sub Pop, the band got picked up by Warner/Reprise smack in the middle of the alternative rock boom. They had great songs and a great look. The mainstream would have to be idiots to not embrace The Muffs.

Guess what happened? The mainstream were idiots and didn’t embrace The Muffs.

The band spent three albums and about five years on the verge of breaking big, but it never happened.

Luck plays a big part in this, sure, but I also think that they simply didn’t fit in with what was going on in the 90s. Kim was gorgeous, her songs were brilliant and they even had a producer for the first two albums who had his finger on the pulse (that would be Rob Cavallo, who would shortly hit the jackpot with Green Day and The Goo Goo Dolls). The Muffs seemed to have everything, but they lacked one very important thing.

They weren’t miserable douchebags.

EVERY popular American guitar rock band in the mid-90s was miserable. They were either committing suicide or thinking about it. A razor at your wrist was a fashion accessory every bit as hip as a tattoo or a body-piercing. Nirvana was miserable. Pearl Jam was miserable. Alice in Chains was miserable.

If you were a new rock band at the time and you WEREN’T miserable, you better at least PRETEND to be or you were nowhere, baby doll.

Meanwhile, The Muffs didn’t even try to do that. They not only didn’t fit in with the whiners, the slackers, the victims, the co-dependents, and the bellybutton-ponderers of the day, but Shattuck screams her head off about people like that. On the very first Muffs album, on the very first song (“Lucky Guy”), Shattuck smashes a shiftless boyfriend to pieces–and she would never stop writing kiss-offs. She would never stop writing songs about picking up and walking out the door.

Shattuck’s songs are angry, for sure. She’s angry all over the place. Sad sometimes, too.

But she never lets it consume her. She’s always looking up and moving on. There’s always more to life.

Happy Birthday to Me was the band’s last major label gasp. Things were stripped down at this point, but in a good way. “Produced by The Muffs”, says the credit on the back of the sleeve. The band did everything themselves. It makes for a slightly more raw sound (the credits boast that Shattuck recorded all of her vocals on her own at home), but they wear it well. Real rock ‘n’ roll bands always sound better with rough edges. Meanwhile, the songs are sharper than ever. Everything is breakneck. Even the slow ones aren’t so slow.

“That Awful Man” is Shattuck’s blunt and incredulous reaction to any woman who stays in a relationship with a complete asshole. “Honeymoon” and “All Blue Baby” are pure heartache at 100 mph. “Pennywhore” is a vicious putdown behind a singalong melody.

Then there’s “Outer Space”, which should have been a huge hit. In 1997, we should have all been sick of “Outer Space”, but no. It turned out to be just your regular crushing piece of pop genius buried in the middle of a major label’s write-off.

In “I’m a Dick”, Shattuck looks at life from the jerk’s point of view and finds another perfect melody in the process. Either it or the luscious “Upside Down” should have been the second single (after “Outer Space”) and been just as big.

Muffs songs all have the same simple arrangment. Every now and then, a keyboard might show up to add a quick flourish, but otherwise they’re all guitar-bass-drums forever and ever and in the same tight and sturdy style. The songs are all that matter and The Muffs always give them to us in raw form. They never get fancy.

That leads some people to hear these records and think that they all sound the same (or people will reach for a lazy Ramones comparison), but when Shattuck’s personality grabs you, with all of her screams and sneers and rage and humor, these melodies bloom forth like roses. Each one is a classic. Surfing on the constant guitar buzz, each song sounds like every old British Invasion band should have done it. The Muffs sound like stars.

None of the big prizes came though and the band went indie after this. They never broke up, but let’s just say that they took their time putting out stuff in the new millennium. They even went a full decade between albums at one point. My impression is that they’d had enough of the music business and wanted to live their lives and do other things for awhile.

And it looks like all of that worked for them because every Muffs album is great. There’s never any rust on the machine no matter how many years passed. They’re consistent as hell. If you like one Muffs album, I see no sane reason why you wouldn’t like all of the others. Even on their later releases, they always sound refreshed from the long break. The Muffs always sound like they’re the same age on every record, equally energetic, equally inspired.

So, R.I.P. Kim Shattuck.

Also, long live Kim Shattuck.

I never forgot The Muffs, even when they took that decade-long break–and I certainly won’t forget them now or ever.

As I’ve gotten older–just turned 43 this week–I cling to a small and eccentric collection of role models for how to age well. And Kim Shattuck was, and still is, among those.

You’ve gotta age well. You don’t want to be one of those angry old people who walks through life as if they got cheated out of something. You don’t want to be a crank fighting with kids on the internet about how the good ol’ days are gone. You don’t want to be one of those older people who thinks that everyone respects you and then the moment you leave the room, everybody just talks about what an unpleasant jackass you are. No, nope, nyet, nein. 

Kim Shattuck was never going to be like that. You can hear it in her songs and in her voice and in every interview. She didn’t know how to be pretentious. She didn’t know how to be dishonest. Kim Shattuck knew herself and she didn’t know how to be anything but herself.

And lucky for her, and us, that person was devilishly funny and real and had an ear for slam-bang pop songs that are built to outlive all of us.

I usually end these articles with a track straight from the record, but I’m gonna change it up here and post the first time that I knowingly heard The Muffs. It was on a Drew Carey variety show on HBO in 1997. Why was I watching this? I don’t remember, but I do remember seeing The Muffs on it, performing “Outer Space” from Happy Birthday to Me, and then NEEDING to buy the album right away if only so I could hear that song again. In ’97, that’s what you had to do.

Twenty-two years later I still think it’s a great performance and it still makes me want to dig into the album. Only this time, I already have it and I will always have it. When you find a lifeforce like this, you hold on to it. It keeps you going, gets you over the losses and dries those tears.