Elliott Smith - Ocean - Rare - Unreleased
16,281
Published 2015-02-10
"It's a song I don't think anyone has ever heard before. ... It's from his Texas days. At the very beginning of the film, we show Texas and his good friend Pickle, Steve Pickering. And it's basically Elliott when he's young, before he came to Portland, these guys, they got together and they were playing music for the sake of playing music. They were doing Led Zeppelin songs and covers, stuff like that. I think it was a group: Steve Pickering, Steve Smith (who was Elliott before he changed his name), a girl named Kim and another guy named Kevin and a guy named Mark, I think. Different variations of these kids would get together at Steve Pickering's house and play music and make music.
"Then Elliott moved and he came to Portland, and he wasn't coming back. He was not going back to Texas. But he would come back to visit, and when they would visit, they would get together and jam. So what started as kids getting together and making music started to turn into actual songwriting, and I think it's the very start of Elliott writing his own songs.
"So this song is something from 1984. Elliott was 14 years old. ... It's interesting because it's one of the first songs that as they were writing, Elliott would make lyrics for it. It's keyboards, guitars, and Elliott singing. They did the keyboards and guitars first, and the Elliott came back and Steve Pickering convinced him, for demo purposes, to sing. I don't think Elliott was a singer at that point, but they kind of pushed him to sing it, and he did. It's probably one of the first songs that they did that actually has lyrics."
All Comments (21)
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I'm so glad there's more of Elliott's work still getting released today, he will always have a huge impact on my life.
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Kinda odd that uploader included quote in description but didn’t say who / where it was from. well, I can confirm this is Elliott because this came from me. I played this on public radio around the time of the Heaven Adores You film release and we requested that the audio only be shared intact with the interview leading up to it, so that the proper context and explanation was there, to avoid this exact thing, oh well. maybe the uploader can fix so that proper info is shared? anyways, yes it’s Elliott and he’s obviously very young here, this is perhaps the first time he put vocals to a song. it’s endearing IMHO
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I'm 14 year-old songwriter/singer/guitarist too, so this is really inspiring!
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Goddamn love this Elliott Smith x Daniel Johnston crossover
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omg I can't believe this thank you so much I dream of hearing new stuff everyday Theres gotta be more out there This is so delicate just as the nature of him
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reminds me of his singing in "I love My Room" his voice is too young haha it's not bad but I like his matured voice better, don't we all?
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such a good song for 14 ridiculous.
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this is great
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Absolutely crazy find! He was a wunderkind.
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Legend
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luv dis
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1:19 I got mad Donovan vibes!
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This is Elliott
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omg! where did you got it from?
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I can't believe how many questioned this being Elliott and wanting more proof. What losers - of COURSE this is Elliott, duh! (Just kidding about the losers part, just a snotty figure of speech....I temporarily regressed into 1984 mode so I was thinking like 13 year old self ; ))
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No way this is Elliott?!?
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Any way to confirm this?
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where did you get it from ? are you sure it's Elliott ?
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I stand corrected..I was just reading it's a recording from when he was 14 years old..
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If it’s unreleased then it probably was t finished yet, making his voice sound like that
