Scott Miller (pop musician)
Scott Warren Miller was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist, best known for his work as leader of the 1980s band Game Theory and 1990s band The Loud Family, and as the author of a 2010 book of music criticism. He was described by The New York Times as "a hyperintellectual singer and songwriter who liked to tinker with pop the way a born mathematician tinkers with numbers", having "a shimmery-sweet pop sensibility, in the tradition of Brian Wilson and Alex Chilton."
A biography of Miller by Brett Milano was published in October 2015, and Miller's posthumously completed final Game Theory album, Supercalifragile, was released in a limited first pressing in August 2017.
In 2014, Omnivore Recordings began releasing a series of reissues of Miller's entire Game Theory catalog, which had for decades been out of print. Omnivore concluded the series in 2020 with Across the Barrier of Sound: PostScript, an album of previously unreleased Game Theory material recorded in 1989 and 1990.
Early life
Scott Miller was born in Sacramento, California in 1960. He was of Scottish and Irish ancestry, and his mother's family had lived in the Sacramento area since at least the 1850s California Gold Rush. His father, Vaughn Miller, was an Army veteran of World War II who had a long career working for the state of California.Miller was an only child whose musical interests began "sometime as a six or seven year old, listening to the Monkees and the Beatles." However, his earliest musical influences were wider-ranging, springing from his father's "immense record collection – lots of Broadway show tunes. But the things I was really interested in were these New York folk scene records ... the Womenfolk being really prototypical. And after that it was the Beatles all the way. They were gods walking the earth to me."
At age nine, while taking folk and classical guitar lessons from Tiny Moore, Miller was writing "little albums' worth" of derivative songs, and started his first band, innocently calling it the Monkees. He later noted, "We were really little kids, and we didn't realize you had to have your own personality... I was Mike Nesmith, of course." By 1971, Miller began to learn rock guitar and "had pretty serious bands from seventh grade on."
While attending Rio Americano High School, Miller and his longtime friend and bandmate Jozef Becker formed bands called Lobster Quadrille, Mantis and Resistance, as well as the first version of Alternate Learning. Miller began recording his music at age 15, when he obtained his first TEAC multitrack recording machine. He reminisced in 1993: "Writing songs like the Beatles and trying to obtain real equipment – that's been my goal in life since I can remember." Some of Miller's early recordings from 1975 to 1979 were released in the 1990s to his fan club as a cassette titled Adolescent Embarrassment-Fest; several others appear as bonus tracks on the 2014 CD reissue of Blaze of Glory.
Another passion of Miller's youth was art. He noted that, until college, "I was extremely serious about being a visual artist, and only so-serious about doing music. I was producing really bad music and really good art."
Musical career
Alternate Learning (1977–1982)
Miller's first band to release commercial recordings, Alternate Learning, released its self-titled seven-inch EP in 1979, and a full-length LP called Painted Windows in 1981, on Rational Records. Alternate Learning was formed in 1977 in Sacramento, moved in 1978 to Davis, California, and performed frequently at UC Davis and in the Bay Area until the group was disbanded by Miller in 1982.Game Theory (1982–1990)
was formed by Miller in 1982 in Davis, California, and moved its base to the Bay Area in 1985. From 1982 to 1990, Game Theory released five studio albums and two EPs.The early Game Theory was described as a "pseudo-psychedelic pop quartet" for which Miller sang and wrote "almost all of the material." The group, a college-rock favorite associated with the Paisley Underground scene of Los Angeles and Davis, developed a strong cult following.
The Davis-based first lineup of Game Theory featured Miller on lead guitar and vocals, with keyboard player Nancy Becker, bassist Fred Juhos and drummer Michael Irwin. This lineup released the group's debut LP, Blaze of Glory, in 1982. With new drummer Dave Gill, two EPs followed: Pointed Accounts of People You Know and Distortion. The group's second full-length album, Real Nighttime, marked the entrance of producer Mitch Easter, who continued as producer for all of the group's subsequent releases.
Miller recruited a new lineup of members based in San Francisco to tour after the 1985 release of Real Nighttime. During that tour, the new quartet of Miller, Shelley LaFreniere on keyboards, Gil Ray on drums and Suzi Ziegler on bass recorded The Big Shot Chronicles. Ziegler left the group shortly afterward. For the band's national tour in late 1986, supporting the release of The Big Shot Chronicles, Miller, LaFreniere and Ray were joined by two new members, bassist Guillaume Gassuan and guitarist/vocalist Donnette Thayer. This lineup recorded the double album Lolita Nation and the group's final studio album, Two Steps from the Middle Ages.
Despite [|favorable critical response], Miller was unable to achieve commercial success with Game Theory. According to Rolling Stone, the group "never garnered more than a cult following through its six-album run."
Among the practical obstacles that stood in the way of the group's success, Game Theory experienced substantial turnovers of personnel after three of their five studio albums were recorded, which disrupted promotional plans and concert tours following the releases of Real Nighttime, The Big Shot Chronicles and Two Steps from the Middle Ages. The release of Two Steps from the Middle Ages was said to be plagued by difficulties, which included Miller's breakup with Thayer. After Thayer left to form Hex with Steve Kilbey of the Church, LaFreniere and Gassuan also left the group. In addition, Enigma Records, which distributed Game Theory's records, folded in 1989 soon after the release of Two Steps.
Game Theory continued to tour in 1989 and 1990, with Michael Quercio of the Three O'Clock joining as a member, along with Jozef Becker. Prior to the 1989 tour, Ray sustained a serious back injury that left him temporarily unable to play drums. He switched to guitar and keyboards but left the group in 1990. In 1990, Miller recruited original member Nancy Becker to rejoin the group for its final released recordings, in which new versions of three songs were recorded for Game Theory's best-of compilation CD, Tinker to Evers to Chance.
Game Theory's releases had long been out of print and difficult to find, contributing to the band's inability to transcend what Miller described as "national obscurity, as opposed to regional obscurity."
After Miller's death, surviving members of Game Theory reunited on July 20, 2013 for a memorial tribute performance in Sacramento.
The Loud Family (1991–2006)
With a new lineup in 1991 and a new recording label, Miller retired the name Game Theory and chose to call his new group The Loud Family. Rolling Stone described this name as both "a hip allusion to the mid-Seventies PBS series An American Family" and "a clever way to describe the sound and feel of the band. Either way, it's a great hook—smart, funny and instantly memorable. All of which, appropriately enough, are qualities shared by Miller's songs." Miller later described his intended reality-show metaphor: "Going through life is a lot like having cameras on you and you have to perform, but there's no script; you just have to do the normal kind of bumbling thing. Besides, it had the word 'loud' in it."Stereo Review, introducing the Loud Family and eulogizing Game Theory, called Miller "an entity unto himself, taking dictation from a mind working overtime without stopping to consider the possibility of success or banishment. Problem is, others have squeezed through the needle's eye to varying degrees ... Miller still labors in semi-obscurity, his back catalog bulging like Ph.D. theses interred in some musty corner of a rarely visited library." Assessing Miller's prospects of success, the article continued:
Let's face it: Smart rock doesn't sell. Despite the best efforts of critics, despite the support of introspective, collegiate humanities majors who have assimilation problems, even despite the soft spot certain record companies occasionally show for music with a brain, the market share is marginal. Therefore, to persevere at making hyperliterate music that has complex motives and is densely constructed—relative to the immediate sparkle and shine of mainstream chart music, that is—is an act of bravery, commitment, or lunacy.
The Loud Family debuted on Alias Records in 1993 with Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things, produced by Mitch Easter. The album was later acclaimed by Aimee Mann as "one of the five best records ever made."
From 1991 until Miller's death in 2013, the Loud Family released six studio LPs and one live LP. They were also the subject of a concert video documentary, released on DVD in 2003, that chronicled the group's final concert tour in 2000 in support of the album Attractive Nuisance.
In the 2003 book Sonic Cool: The Life & Death of Rock 'n' Roll, the Loud Family was cited as "perhaps the most sophisticated 'pop' band that ever lived." According to author Joe Harrington, "the songs are beautiful, but they inevitably lampoon some aspect of the culture with biting accuracy. It's the perfect juxtaposition between old/new Pop/Punk that makes The Loud Family simply too good to be true in this day and age."