In honor of Amy’s recent graduation, let us talk a quick look back at some of her most sterling contributions to the life of Titus Andronicus.
Firstly, here is a world premiere music video for the song which shall tragically stand as the totality of Amy’s contribution to the Titus Andronicus canon of recordings as guitarist and vocalist. It isn’t even our song! It is Nirvana’s “Breed,” recorded at the request of Spin magazine for their 20th anniversary celebration of Nevermind. In this video, you’ll also get to see Amy’s talent as an extra, in her scene-stealing performance as “The Ghost.”
In our live set, Amy would occasionally sing the lead vocal on a cover song when the feminist content of the lyrics would suggest a woman’s touch to be prudent. Here we are playing “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” by X-Ray Spex at the Black Cat in Washington, DC this past April.
This video, filmed in Chicago in the summer of 2010, should do much to display Amy’s skills on both the guitar and violin. Playing the harmonized guitar solo at the end was always a favorite of mine during our time together. The song is “The Battle of Hampton Roads.”
Something a lot of people don’t realize is, while Amy did not play on the Monitor, she did play on The Airing of Grievances, contributing her distinctive electric violin to two tracks. Sounds like a good enough reason to reinvest in the video for “Upon Viewing Brueghel’s ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,'” and keep an ear cocked for that high and lonesome fiddle.
As I said yesterday, when there was business to be done, Amy would let nothing stand in the way of her smacking it down. Watch the music video below and marvel at Amy performing through a recently-sustained concussion. The song is “No Future Part Three.”
I wanted to embed a video from Amy’s second show (and David’s, for that matter), an office party at Pitchfork headquarters in Brooklyn in February 2010, but the embed code is sassing me and I don’t really know anything about HTML. UPDATE: Here’s the video.
Lastly, it’s another world premier. Earlier this year, when we toured as the opening act for Okkervil River, Amy would sometimes join the bosses on stage to play her fiddle on their song, “The Valley” (funny, isn’t it, that Amy has a song of her own with that same name?) Her is that very thing going down on the last night of the tour, at Jake’s in Lubbock, TX.
Yeah, we really did have some good times. Obviously, I could go on and on, but now is the time to look into the future! For punks, the past is prologue, and I am already late for the first practice of Titus Andronicus 6.0. Let’s get it!
Yr friend,
Patrick