{"id":173,"date":"2019-12-27T22:38:51","date_gmt":"2019-12-27T22:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/?p=173"},"modified":"2020-04-25T21:54:27","modified_gmt":"2020-04-25T21:54:27","slug":"oh-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/oh-death\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cOh, Death\u201d \u2013 Game Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe style=\"border: 0; width: 350px; height: 470px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=1398474137\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/tracklist=false\/track=1409565097\/transparent=true\/\" seamless><a href=\"http:\/\/gametheory1.bandcamp.com\/album\/supercalifragile\">Supercalifragile by Game Theory<\/a><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>I wasn\u2019t familiar with Scott Miller\u2019s music during his lifetime. The first time I visited his website, this note from webmaster Sue Trowbridge appeared at the top of the homepage: \u201cI wish it weren&#8217;t true, but as much as it pains me to write these words, Scott passed away on April 15, 2013. He was a wonderful, loyal friend as well as a brilliant musician, and I will miss him for the rest of my life. Scott had been planning to start recording a new Game Theory album, <em>Supercalifragile<\/em>, this summer, and was looking forward to getting back into the studio and reuniting with some of his former collaborators.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Trowbridge briefly made the entire then-out-of-print Game Theory catalog available to download, and this is how I first listened to Miller\u2019s music. At that point Game Theory hadn\u2019t been a band in almost 25 years. They were a critically lauded Bay Area power pop group with a small but dedicated fan base in the \u201880s, and for whatever reason they never achieved wider fame. In the \u201890s, Miller opted to reboot under a new name, The Loud Family. That group somehow managed to get even less attention, and by the \u201800s Miller decided to call it a career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In both Game Theory and The Loud Family, Miller made some of the smartest pop music of his or any generation. It\u2019s possible a new record under the Game Theory name could have brought fresh attention to his criminally overlooked oeuvre. Sadly, he committed suicide at the age of 53, leaving behind a wife and two young daughters. Work on his <em>Supercalifragile<\/em> LP had not begun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Miller may not have had many fans, but the fans he did have include some notable figures in indie pop. Initially an album of covers was considered, but Miller\u2019s widow and The Posies\u2019 Ken Stringfellow decided to attempt something much bolder: making <em>Supercalifragile<\/em> a reality, using every recorded fragment, lyric and melody scrap available.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Kickstarter-funded project was completed in 2017, so amazingly, <em>Supercalifragile<\/em> now exists. Recorded Miller vocals are present on several songs, while others were completed and recorded entirely by other artists for this album. The Miller-sung tracks vary in quality, with some sounding surprisingly polished and others clearly not ready to be heard. The songs without Miller vocals are uniformly brilliant though, the result of talented songwriters working to complete Miller\u2019s work out of pure love and respect.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ken Stringfellow, Will Sheff and Matt LeMay particularly excel on three tracks, \u201cKristine,\u201d \u201cValerie Tomorrow\u201d and \u201cAlways Julianne,\u201d songs Miller wrote for his wife and two daughters, respectively. But the most powerful may be \u201cOh, Death,\u201d co-written and performed by Ted Leo.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOh, Death\u201d begins with a verse about a frightening medical episode involving Miller\u2019s wife, and ends with what I assume is a Leo-penned verse that acts as a meta-assessment of this project in the wake of Miller\u2019s own tragic end. I asked Ted on Twitter how much material he\u2019d had to work with on this song. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/tedleo\/status\/900894926665375744\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">He responded<\/a>: \u201cScott left a voicemail of the chorus melody and some lyric fragments. It all sang to me, though.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The album barely got any attention, but it\u2019s a Game Theory record, so of course it didn\u2019t. Regardless, that we have <em>Supercalifragile<\/em> at all is an incredible testament to the love for Scott Miller that endures in the pop community he inspired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Supercalifragile by Game Theory I wasn\u2019t familiar with Scott Miller\u2019s music during his lifetime. The first time I visited his website, this note from webmaster Sue Trowbridge appeared at the top of the homepage: \u201cI wish it weren&#8217;t true, but as much as it pains me to write these words, Scott passed away on April&hellip; <\/p>\n<div class=\"readmore-wrapper\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/oh-death\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[32,33],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-201x-favorites","tag-game-theory","tag-ted-leo"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Oh, Death - Game Theory | Rich Bradley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"That Supercalifragile exists is an incredible testament to the love for Scott Miller that endures in the pop community he inspired.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/oh-death\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Oh, Death - Game Theory | Rich Bradley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"That Supercalifragile exists is an incredible testament to the love for Scott Miller that endures in the pop community he inspired.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/oh-death\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"RB.org\/songs\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/richlbradley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/richlbradley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-12-27T22:38:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-04-25T21:54:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/scott3icon.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rich Bradley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@rlbradley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@rlbradley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Rich Bradley\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/oh-death\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/oh-death\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Rich Bradley\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/#\/schema\/person\/20a932bf4ce1b2724037a850355d507c\"},\"headline\":\"\u201cOh, Death\u201d \u2013 Game Theory\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-12-27T22:38:51+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-04-25T21:54:27+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/oh-death\/\"},\"wordCount\":581,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/#\/schema\/person\/20a932bf4ce1b2724037a850355d507c\"},\"keywords\":[\"Game Theory\",\"Ted Leo\"],\"articleSection\":[\"201X Favorites\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/oh-death\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/oh-death\/\",\"name\":\"Oh, Death - 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