Uncle Alvarez

I hate to be "that" person, but you're all terribly mistaken. For Liz's sake - just listen to the chorus! "Oh, oh, oh, IMAGINARY accomplishments..." Liz is mocking a tall tale-teller. Further evidence: "He's NOT really part-Cherokee Indian He DIDN'T fight in the Civil War."

Don't believe me? Take it from Liz. I own a beautiful mp3 of her playing "Uncle Alvarez" live in 1998 in which she states about the song, "...Stems from a lot of dinner tables where a lot of men expounded at great length about anything they wanted to (laughs) and a lot of the women just sat there and smiled."

Essentially, the song mocks men who fabricate grand tales of their success - rather, the success they would like to have accomplished. Feminist though she may be, Liz doesn't let their wives get away - they are guilty in their deliberate ignorance (perhaps not ignorance, but deliberate submissiveness?) to their husbands' faulty tales.

By far the cleverest song on Whitechocolatespaceegg - and admittedly cleverer (though not more honest) than anything on Exile.

sounds like uncle alvarez told a lot of lies and went through a lot of trouble to give the family a name, and they don't seem terribly appreciative, being ashamed of having his picture on the wall, and trying not to think about him and all

This song has two parts - the first part is very critical of uncle alvarez. A couple of people have said that Liz is saying that the family is ashamed of uncle alvarez because he told lies. I don't think that's why they are ashamed of him. Here is a story of a man who traded his role as a father and a husband for the role of a provider. He travelled the world doing amazing things - but, there is irony in this song, just like there is most liz phair songs - the reason she calls these "imaginary accomplishments" is not because they weren't real, but because how can anyone observe, or experience an accomplishment if they aren't there - i.e. if a tree falls over in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? That's why she uses that description. Imaginary because Uncle alvarez was gone, and the accomplishments were always conveyed via phone or post cards.

Then the song starts becoming sentimental and more understanding of uncle alvarez's plight. She feels bad that he gave up so much to be a good provider. Basically a sweet, talented, hardworking man who made a choice that caused alot of loneliness and pain and this was the price that uncle alvarez had to pay.

The next part of the song she is addressing someone teetering on the brink of making the same choice as uncle alvarez and so the song becomes cautionary as she sings with the message that any accomplishment is meaningless if you don't have anyone to share it with.

Its really a sad song - one of my favorites for sure.

I always got the impression that he was a good man who did a lot for the family, but because of his heritage (obviously with a name like Alvarez he was Mexican or Latino) the family was ashamed of him. All the "imaginary accomplishments" were made up about him BY the family to somewhat justify the fact that he was not a WASP. (Liz Phair's adoptive parents were originally from New Haven, a very WASP area.)

Lyrics should be:

Your beautiful wife keeps your life on a shelf for you Safe in the bedroom Where there's no dust or mildew and...

This is a powerful, poignant song. It's third person until near the end when "as you write your resume" pops us out of a woman's thoughts about her uncle and we realize what the moment is: She's writing a resume, thinking of elaborate half-truths that she can use to make herself sound better, when the dishonesty of that reminds her of Uncle Alvarez, who told elaborate self-aggrandizing lies.

There's an error in the lyrics above: It should be "We feel sorry for the wall." Uncle Alvarez is dead and only his portrait remains. The family never thought much of him, due to his confabulations, and their dismissal of him extends to feeling sorry for the wall that has to put up with him.

His lies seem to go beyond exaggeration, however, and straight on to delusion. Anyone who fought in the Civil War would have been dead long before Liz's generation could remember them. And so, she looks back on him not with disdain so much as pity, and you hear the affection several times in her singing.

Finally, she sees him as a cautionary tale. All of his lies and delusions made others look down on him and isolated him from them. And at the moment she considers a few embellishments on her resume, she wonders if that would put her on the path to being like Uncle Alvarez, and she decides to be truthful instead.

To me it's about how little of life consists of the 'great accomplishments' that get attached to other people. It seems to say that you shouldn't judge people by that, and also that you shouldn't try to be judged like that. If you try to make a name for yourself, you end up bending the truth, and paying your old college, and glorifying yourself in postcards to your family.

I think the song is actually quite fond of Uncle Alvarez - but fond of aspects of him that won't be remembered in the family history. He's used to dance, and he's the one whose life has been messed up by the need to do things for the sake of posterity, or family glory, or whatever it is.