“I only ask because I’m a real cunt in Spring / You can rent me by the hour.”

And then there was “Dance of the Seven Veils”, the gobsmacking fourth track on Exile in Guyville, and our first taste of Liz Phair’s unparalleled ability to be haughty, naughty, playful, and pernicious all in the same breath. It is also serves as our introduction to Phair’s more abstract tendencies, stringing together erotic and vaguely menacing imagery in deceptive lullaby rhyme. It’s an apt successor to the pseudo-sexual-spiritual interlude “Glory”, but “Veils” seemingly forgets all the gentility of its predecessor; here, rather, Phair is at her wryly seductive best, disingenuously self-flagellating as she voices her demands and desires so her male subject needn’t do the dirty work (and is perhaps is robbed of his own sure to be underwhelming response).

That Phair marries a relatively straightforward plea for her rocker lover to quit being such a bastard (“Johnny my love / Get out of the business / It makes me wanna rough you up so badly”) with overt references to the Salome / John the Baptist beheading myth / Biblical passage / whatever veracious weight you prescribe it (“I have got a bright and shiny platter / And I am gonna get your heavy head”) is testament to the cunning complexities of Phair’s composer mind. Phair cherry-picks her allusions here, making substantial use of sparse ingredients, and sets a peculiar—but purposeful—tone by invoking a provocative cultural signpost and pairing it with what would otherwise be a pedestrian tale of romantic frustration.

Mendelsohn: It finally happened, Klinger. Disco. Disco on the Great List. I didn’t think it was possible. But there it is. The list does not lie. The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack is the 129th most acclaimed album of all time. On a no less interesting note, this album is also the first soundtrack to make the Great List—one of only five we will ever have to talk about, should we make it that far (the other four are, The Harder They Come at 213; O Brother, Where Art Thou? at 1592; West Side Story at 1632; and The Sound of Music at 2305).

The truth is, I had spotted this album a long time ago and have been waiting eagerly to actually listen to it. I have never seen the movie and probably should have watched it as research for this piece, but I understand it is pretty much just one long rape scene and not the feel-good dance picture I always thought it was.

I first became aware of Davis Fetter when he opened for Black Francis in March of 2013. Fetter appeared onstage with his Buddy Holly glasses, wife-beater, motorcycle jacket and pompadour (shaved on both sides for an edgier, punk-a-billy look) and might have fit in with some strange recast version of Happy Days if not for his blue Gibson Archtop and friendly, ernest introductions to his his songs and greetings to the growing crowd.

The scene opens up, focusing on a picture frame containing a photo of a young man holding his infant son. Children are joyfully chattering in the background. The camera pans out to reveal those children playing with instruments and curiously manipulating a record, rotating it back and forth. A voice is heard, asking “So, you’re a philosopher?” A question to which the reply, mixed in with a series of scratches, is “Yes.” A VHS cassette is popped into a VCR and the program starts to play. After a brief on-screen countdown, a teacher emerges from a diagonally-parked Jeep and begins to speak.

The man in the picture frame is Scott La Rock, the program is “My Philosophy”, and the teacher is rapper KRS-One.

“My Philosophy” was a Stanley Turrentine-sampling single released from Boogie Down Productions’ sophomore album, By All Means Necessary. It was their first album following the violent death of Scott La Rock, who was shot in the neck and behind the ear during the summer of 1987 in the aftermath of trying to diffuse a volatile situation that involved D-Nice. Determined to keep moving forward, KRS-One soldiered on his own and eventually secured a deal with Jive/RCA Records after a first deal with Warner was revoked when Scott was killed.

In preparation for this Between the Grooves series, I held a number of conversations about Exile in Guyville with fellow listeners and writers. During one of these chats, friend and essayist Suzanne Richardson noted—with affection—that the opening notes of “Help Me Mary”, Guyville’s second track, are curiously reminiscent of your standard early ‘90s sitcom theme-song. It was a comparison I’d never considered, but after a few recent spins, the observation feels oddly spot-on. There’s a boppy bounciness about the tune, a merry completeness to it that feels as though it is introducing and framing a familiar, digestible narrative. This is not to diminish the song’s power, mind you; on the contrary, it highlights Phair’s supreme ability to blend tones and moods, to have the music tell us one thing while the lyrics shrewdly convey another.

The story here is simple—hit up Google and you’ll find dozens of variations on it, either courtesy Phair herself or the countless critics who have taken the opportunity to seize on what feels like one of the most literal, autobiographical moments on the album to angle their analyses (alongside later track “Divorce Song”, also often reduced to its easiest rhyme): Phair sings of having to endure a shitty roommate and his revolving door of too-cool Chicago rocker buds (a bit of research reveals them to be the Urge Overkill “guys”, and that they actually assisted in coining the album’s title) who intimidate to her to the point where she confesses a survivalist need to “practice all [her] moves” and “memorize their stupid rules”. It’s a universal roommates-from-hell tale, a twisted take on a Real World scenario: this is the true story of a girl who lives in a loft with a rude jerk and his gang of grody, grungy friends who “bully the stereo and drink, [and] leave suspicious things in the sink”.