Chris Slusarenko
Colonel Jeffrey Pumpernickel: A Concept Album
Off Records

Guided by Voices, Creeper Lagoon, Minus 5, and guests
Showbox, 628-3151,
Fri March 30.

Quasi, Lou Barlow, Ann Magnuson and Dave Rick, and guests
Showbox, 628-3151,
Sat March 31.

If you're into rock music, there will have been a time when the concept album seemed like the greatest thing ever. It's a seductive form, full of ambition but tending inevitably toward a grandeur that can only age into--at best--sublime ridiculousness. Still, even after plumbing the depths of rock operas like SF Sorrow, Tommy, The Wall, Dark Side of the Moon, Kilroy Was Here, Tarkus, and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, neither musicians nor listeners seem to be able to shake the appeal of the concept album. I know I can't: I still dream of hearing, or writing, the greatest album of all time--you know, an album in which every song strains toward orgasmic, mind-shattering revelation, somehow containing the musical truth of human misery and redemption.

Portland indie rock veteran and devoted record collector Chris Slusarenko, better known locally for his stints in Sprinkler and Cavemannish Boys, has spent the last 13 months quietly pursuing his own elliptical version of this slippery medium. Colonel Jeffrey Pumpernickel is Slusarenko's first release on his own Off Records label, and proudly announces its purpose on the cover's subtitle: A Concept Album. But Slusarenko's "concept of the 'concept,'" as Richard Meltzer calls it in the liner notes, is just as fascinating: Slusarenko wrote the album's narrative, divided it into chapters, and handed each song off to a different band, which then wrote its own lyrics and music. An amazing assortment of indie rock stars--including Stephen Malkmus, Guided by Voices, Mary Timony, Quasi, the Minus 5, Lou Barlow, Ann Magnuson, Poster Children, Grandaddy, and Macha--fashion a sprawling account of the life and death of the Colonel, a character Slusarenko invented specifically for this project. As if that weren't ambitious enough, the double album also features full-panel artwork by some of underground comics' best artists: Joe Sacco (Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde), Jim Woodring (Frank, Jim), Adrian Tomine (Optic Nerve), Kim Deitch (Waldo World!), and Peter Bagge (Hate).

With so many unique voices, it's no surprise that for the first couple of listens, Pumpernickel operates more like an all-star compilation album than an opera: Guided by Voices' "Titus and Strident Wet Nurse" is as joyful and mangled as the band's best anthems; Malkmus' "Blue Rash Intact" sounds nothing like either Pavement or his new album, but more like a cartoon discotheque. Timony's "Doom in June" has a sinister feel; "The Great Divider (My Ruffled Sleeve)" is one of the Minus 5's finest psychedelic-'60s recordings; and Macha's "He Remembers His Burial at Sea" stands completely on its own as a beautiful song of longing. Ann Magnuson and Dave Rick are the only musicians who head full-throttle into rock operatics, with huge power chords, spoken vignettes, heart-machine beeps, and the smothering coo of a mother at bedtime.

Only gradually, after studying the artwork, liner notes, CD face, and various scattered clues, do the songs assemble into a narrative arc, involving some crazy stuff: an underwater fire-battle, robots versus animals, sinister caterpillars, and most specifically the allergies from which the Colonel suffers. It's Magnuson and Rick's "Dr. Mom" that really asserts the narrative. From there, Quasi's fantastic "Which Side Are You On, Colonel?" Sentridoh's "Morning's after Me," and Grandaddy's dreamy "L.F.O." begin to fill in the larger plot line.

"By putting 'A Concept Album' on the cover, I purposely set people up to dwell on this," says Slusarenko. "But I think that was the right, cocky thing to do. If I hadn't done this project, I'd be going nuts anticipating it. I'd just be like, 'Oh my God, Jim Woodring and Guided by Voices, Stephen Malkmus....'" It is all a bit breathtaking. Besides the sheer talent of the participants, this may be the first ever collaborative concept album: certainly the first one to feature comics as an integral element. "I'd been thinking about it for a while--not conceptually, but the idea of having bands create separate songs for a larger, communal piece," he says. "It seemed like it would be a task to convince people, and what I found out is that, actually, people were really super-intrigued by the idea."

Slusarenko attributes the surprising willingness of the musicians and artists, many of whom he'd never met, to the fact that "everyone's threatened to do a concept album; but when you do, you put yourself on the line--you set yourself up for failure because you have to create a world all by yourself. In giving people just slices of the narrative, there's a safety-in-numbers factor. Everyone could see the whole scope of the story but also concentrate on the things they wanted to express with the pieces I gave them."

Probably because it's a project built by a dedicated music fan, Colonel Jeffrey Pumpernickel ends up functioning as a paean to "The Golden Age of Murk," a phrase coined by Meltzer in the liner notes to describe the last 15 or so years of indie music. "I thought that was a great phrase to sum up a lot of my favorite sounds in music," Slusarenko says. He calls musicians on the album indie rock warhorses. "I went for longevity: I wanted to do it with bands whose records I have in my collection. I had such loyalty to those artists, in a weird way, before they even committed to the project. They're classics."

To celebrate the release of his dream project, Slusarenko decided to put on a little show. It quickly blossomed into two separate, impressive events, in Portland and Seattle. "I just wanted to have a show where, by the end of the night, I was shitfaced and happy," Slusarenko says. "'Cause, you know, it's been such a sobering thing to have to be so professional about [the project]. I contacted a bunch of the bands, thinking they're going to be busy... and too many of them said yes! So we had to spread it over two nights." Robert Pollard of GBV reported to him recently that the band has been opening shows on its tour with "Titus and Strident Wet Nurse," and Ann Magnuson and Dave Rick are making the trip out to the Northwest specifically to get a chance to play "Dr. Mom" live, as well as some Bongwater compositions. Even Lou Barlow will be there, despite the fact that he and the Northwest never seem to hit it off.

Also, the vinyl version of the record will be available for the first time at the shows, with full-color, double-gatefold artwork, as befits a concept album. "I couldn't have, like, a near-'70s kind of CD with all this great art and not have it come out on vinyl," Slusarenko says. "It smells really good. The sleeve just smells like music.

"It was my gift to myself, in a way," he admits. "Like, 'Okay, I know that everyone says you lose money on vinyl, but I gotta do it--it's a concept album.'"