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Trivia / Spiderland

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  • Absurdly Short Production Time: The album was recorded in just four days, the maximum amount of studio time they were given. To accomplish this, the band members pulled all-nighters, subsiding entirely on energy drinks and producer Brian Paulson's strict regimen. The stress of doing so much intense work in such a short amount of time led to vocalist Brian McMahan being institutionalized for a few weeks, leading to rumors that the album was cursed.
  • Creator Breakdown: Spiderland's stressful recording caused Slint to break up before the album was even released. There's also the "band member got institutionalised" rumour, which was later confirmed to be Brian McMahan.
  • The Production Curse: There's a very prevalent theory that Spiderland is cursed, for a number of reasons. Of course, it all adds to the mystique.
  • Throw It In!: The final spoken segment of "Good Morning, Captain" was ad libbed by Brian.
  • Troubled Production: Spiderland is known for being the first and sometimes best Post-Rock album ever created. It's also known for its freakishly stressful recording. The band only had four days to do the recording and had to pull all-nighters, only having energy drinks to keep them awake. The songs were originally written as instrumentals, but they were pressured into adding vocals and lyrics at the last minute (hence the spoken word throughout the album). Brian McMahan, the band's lead vocalist, threw out his voice after the take of the final track "Good Morning Captain", which may explain why Britt Walford performed the vocals and guitar on "Don, Aman". The producer that worked on the album, Brian Paulson, was also brutal, demanding absolute perfection on the takes, exhausting the band even more. The worst part is that two of the members were institutionalized for a few weeks due to the intense stress and pressure that was placed on them for this album. To this day, many rock historians believe it to be one of the harshest recordings in history. This is all believed to have been caused by the odd composition of Spiderland, leading many to believe it to be cursed. Paulson himself described the album as "fucking weird".
  • What Could Have Been:
    • There were two songs planned for the album that were eventually cut: "Pam", which sounds like it came straight off of Tweez, and a slower version of "Glenn", which would have fit into the album much more nicely.
    • Slint were planning on touring Europe to promote Spiderland's release, but they broke up before it came into fruition. They also began to work on new material, and recorded a rough take of two tracks: "Todd's Song" and "Brian's Song".
    • The sleeve has a note asking "interested female vocalists" to write to the band. Brian McMahan has stated that the offer was sincere and the group listened to demos that were submitted, but "that idea of adding someone sort of fell by the wayside."

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