Talking to Marshall Crenshaw about the recent reissue of Miracle of Science, his 1996 album on Razor & Tie, and his first away from the major labels, and you hear the word "control" a lot. That shouldn't be a surprise given the legendary status of the musician. Pegged as a sort of Buddy Holly-type figure in the early Eighties, Marshall Crenshaw emerged with his self-titled debut in 1982 and that record remains one of the best American pop records ever. I say "pop" without any shame, mind you. Over a series of albums in the Eighties and early Nineties on Warners and MCA, Marshall Crenshaw redefined American pop. In 1996, he jumped ship to Razor and Tie, leaving the majors behind so that he could have more control over his output.
Marshall Crenshaw's 1996 album, Miracle of Science, has just been reissued on Crenshaw's own recently-created Shiny-Tone imprint -- "They said we had to have an imprint so..." -- on the Megaforce label. Marshall Crenshaw, fresh from gigs with The Smithereens recently, has been busy prepping this reissue and he sat down and talked to me about it today.
"We got our hands on the tapes and decided to do something special with this," avoiding just turning this first in a string of reissues of his Razor & Tie releases into a Record Store Day project, or something. "I think we're going to do these Razor & Tie albums sequentially, and each will have one new song, on a vinyl single, tucked into the sleeve with the reissued album. On this one, it's 'Misty Dreamer', a cover of a song by a guy called Dan Wiley, and its flip is 'What the Hell I Got' by Michel Pagliaro."
Apart from those two newly-recorded cuts, the original Miracle of Science remains a record with a surprising amount of variety on it for a guy who usually gets labelled as a power-popper. When I asked if Marshall used the 1996 release as a vehicle to show off his talents in other genres, almost as a way to push back against those power-pop tags, he said, "No. That would be the wrong approach. It's just stuff I felt like was always what I was interested in doing,", including a spry cover of 'The In Crowd' by Ramsey Lewis. "It's just a song I was into, and here I was recording it by myself, essentially, in a room by the highway, not really 'in the crowd', you know?". That cut, one of the highlights on Miracle of Science (1996), feels like the type of thing that was only included because, away from the majors, Marshall Crenshaw finally was able to say, "I had more control."
Naturally, talk of this record, his first after a string of albums on Warner Brothers and MCA, pushed the discussion towards his other albums. Field Day from 1983 got unfairly treated by critics at the time. "Yeah, there was this idea that I was being pulled around and forced to do things,", an accusation that then made it sound as if he was a pawn of producer Steve Lillywhite. "No, it's a great album, one of my best, definitely." Hearing Marshall himself say that sort of re-affirms my love for that record, and it remains one where the actual release has been overshadowed by the unfair press it received in the era.
On 1985's Downtown, Marshall Crenshaw worked with T-Bone Burnett, "Yeah, before he was very famous. I was a fan of a record of his on the Tacoma label and he was a really good person, and a good producer." As the discussion covered those Warner Brothers albums, and choices being reconsidered on some of them, Marshall apologized for his honesty, "I don't want it to sound as if I'm bad-mouthing Warners, as I'm not." Acknowledging animosity between label folks and his manager at the time, Crenshaw remains genuinely proud of what he accomplished then, despite the difficulties in getting that material out to a larger audience. "This radio station in D.C. got us into the Top 40 on their station, this big one," he remembers, recalling how it felt as if Field Day was going to be the one to "break us", but it wasn't enough to push Field Day and Marshall Crenshaw towards more mainstream audiences in 1983.
Still, Miracle of Science from 1996 seems to be the start of where Crenshaw took control. The record is clearly one he's proud of, and the variety on the release reveals his continuing comfort with the pop form. In that sense, the variety there echoes his love for music, a love that was birthed in the Seventies. "Yeah, I gave up on FM radio in about 1972. Back then I would rather have heard Aretha, Sly Stone, Gamble and Huff stuff any day over, Foghat or whatever." His love of the pop song was honed then, a love that's illustrated by the Abba cover on his live album, Live...My Truck is My Home (1994). "Yeah, 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' is a great song, and while some of the Abba stuff can be teeny-bopper or whatever, lots of it, like that cut, and 'Dancing Queen', are great songs, and I've always been about finding the great song. I love that stuff."
Miracle of Science (1996) is out now in a spectacularly-sounding new edition from the Megaforce label, and Marshall Crenshaw's own Shiny-Tone imprint. When not touring with The Smithereens, Crenshaw's going on the road again. "Yeah, I'm heading out with The Bottle Rockets soon, and sharing vocals in Smithereens, as you may have heard, with Robin Wilson from Gin Blossoms." When not doing that, he's prepping the next in the series of the reissues of the Razor and Tie albums. "Yeah, the next one is #447, another great one, one of my best, I think. And I'm working on the bonus cut now and what that will be."
More details on Miracle of Science and the reissue series, and future tour dates, can be found at MarshallCrenshaw.com.
[Photo: Al Pereira]