An Interview with Paul Scheer

Actor/comedian Paul Scheer is a funny man known for his appearances on 30 Rock, Yo Gabba Gabba and as a member of the Human Giant trio, among other haha-rife programs. He was so kind as to do an email interview with us about flatscreen rollerblading, dogs in strollers, Piranha 3D, swine flu and other forms of enlightenment.

Roswell Motorpark: You’re using the expansion of the internet and social networking sites to great advantage; Human Giant with viral video, ‘Twitflix’ with Twitter, and Facebook giving back to the stage with the Facebook sketch series. How has the internet affected comedy? Is it easier or more challenging to find good comedy acts in the ballooning variety?

Paul Scheer: Human Giant was definitely helped by the internet, not so much in getting the show sold to MTV but in getting the word out about the show. I think if you see something funny on the internet you're more likely to find it on TV. It's also kept the show alive even though we aren't currently on TV. People still find clips on You Tube and Funny or Die and that's better than having a DVD out because it feels like it's still fresh.

Technology I think has made it easier to interact with everyone, so using it to talk to fans or peers has become so easy that I feel like it's just a naturally evolving process. We aren't trying to do anything that no one else has thought of.

What comedians and shows are you most excited about right now?

I always feel like I have so many people I love, it's hard to narrow it down. So here's a very incomplete list. I'm a huge fan of The Mighty Boosh, I think they do some of the greatest original comedy I've ever seen. As far as TV shows, I love 30 Rock, The Tonight Show with Conan, The Office, and Tim and Eric Awesome Show. Danny McBride, Ben Best, and Jody Hill are just the best, I'll see anything they do. I'm also into Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's stuff. In addition to the whole Apatow crew.

Are there any comedians you’d like to collaborate with? You’ve mentioned in interviews that the audience you’re approaching is very connected to the same sort of music/arts and that’s one of the things that make festivals so satisfying for both the performers and the audience. If you did more sketch comedy shows, are there non-comedic acts that you’d like to work with?

There are so many people that I'd love to work with and working in comedy it's really fun because you cross paths with so many talented people all the time. It was a blast getting to work with Harold Ramis, one of my all time heroes, on Year One. You never know when an opportunity like that will open up.

Right now I think that Human Giant is my only sketch group, I can't see myself doing that without the other 3.

Are you musically gifted?

I wish I could play an instrument. I wish I got a job where I'd have to learn something because I feel like that's the only way I'd really master an instrument this late in life.

Who were some of your earliest comedic influences?

Eddie Murphy definitely had the biggest effect on me when I was a kid. I remember watching Delirious on cable, and it was scrambled because my parents didn't have HBO. I just listened to it and laughed so hard. I remember crying because it was the funniest stuff I'd ever seen. I also think Ghostbusters and The Jerk were really influential films for me. I loved watching The Muppets and You Can't Do That on Television too when I was young.

Outside of comedy, what are some of your biggest influences?

Wow! These are tough questions. I'm a big reader so I've been influenced by the books I've read. Some of my favorite authors are Hunter S. Thompson, Nabakov, Michael Chabon...it's so hard to narrow them down. I also love Walt Disney World. I mean, really any theme park is right up my alley (especially when they get haunted for Halloween). Magic is also a guilty pleasure (to watch, not perform). I belong to Magic Castle. Wow, I sound like a real nerd.

Human Giant signed for a third season but was complicated by Aziz’ commitment to Parks and Recreation and has now turned into a movie project. Will the movie be a series of sketch vignettes, or a normal full-length comedy? Does the contract mean that you guys will eventually do another project on MTV?

We have thought about doing a special for MTV, but we are still trying to figure out the right time to tackle it and the way we want to do it. As far as our movie ideas, it will definitely not be a sketch movie. All the ideas we have so far are full stories. We'll hopefully have more to report on with that real soon.

In the meantime, we are working with MTV to release Season 2 of Human Giant. We have a real full package of extras and we're waiting for the green light.

On the IMDB cast page for Piranha 3D, you’re ‘rumored’ as Andrew (right above Bria Roberts, who is ‘confirmed’ as Wet T-Shirt Victim). Can you put these rumors to rest? If this is a truth, can the cast of Richard Dreyfuss, Ving Rhames and Christopher Lloyd also be confirmed? Please let these be truths.

It is a truth. I'm in Pirahna 3-D. It's going to be great. The title says it all. It's boobies, blood and Ving Rhames. What else can you ask for? The movie is directed by Alex Aja who is amazing and the cast is really cool and eclectic. Everyone else you mentioned is in the movie in addition to the amazing Elisabeth Shue.

You’ve done a lot of big projects (Human Giant, 30 Rock) but you consistently do local shows in LA. What do you find most satisfying?

I love doing live shows. Especially Improv shows. It's fun because it's a one-time event; only the people in that room get to experience it. I know that sounds very "arty", but there is nothing that compares to creating a one-time show; I'll always want to keep performing as much as I can. However, it's really fun working on bigger projects. Neither one is better than the other. I just think one is immediate gratification and the other is a much slower burn because it goes through so many stages before the audience sees it.

You’ve appeared on Yo Gabba Gabba three times now. How sweet is it to film a show with huge monsters?

Yo Gabba Gabba is the best place in the world. It makes Sesame Street feel like a ghetto. When Jack McBrayer and I visited it was junk food Friday, which means they had the most amazing snacks (like gummy bears in cupcakes) and everyone was in some sort of costume. It was a real party, although I think I offended Plex because he wouldn't come out of his trailer after I told him the best robot ever was the Johnny 5 from Short Circuit.

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?

When I was in NYC I worked for an internet company passing out free CDs to people on rollerblades with a huge flatscreen TV strapped to my chest. It was painful, hot and to make matters worse I didn't know how to rollerblade. Thank God I didn't break that TV cause we signed a contract that said we'd have to buy it if we did and obviously if I had enough money to buy a flatscreen TV I wouldn't have been doing the job.

You come across as a pretty nice guy. Is there anything that you’re secretly very angry about?

I don't like people who treat their dogs like humans. I saw a woman with a dog in a stroller and that really made me angry. A Baby Bjorn is one thing but a stroller is just ridiculous.

Who do you predict will be the next celeb death?

Why? Are you creating a Dead Pool? If you are, Dirty Harry will find you and deal with you.

What was the first album you ever bought?

I bought 2 cassette tapes at Sam Goody with my hard-earned allowance. Huey Lewis and the News "SPORTS" and Weird Al Yankovic "In 3-D" - Both still hold up.

Any advice for coping with the seemingly ever-present anxieties of swine flu, the economy and the extended period of mourning for the King of Pop?

Yeah, lock yourself in a house and never come out. Don't turn on the TV or radio, just play Jenga till you master it and when you hear those damn kids in front of your house, bang a big stick on the porch and say GET OFF MY LAWN YOU DEGENERATES! Then go back inside, look at a photo of your dead wife and cry.

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An Interview with Brandon Drake

Hello again our non-existent readers (we're working on this). Just completed an interview with Brandon Drake, the writer and creative minds behind the new movie 'Visioneers.' Zach Galifianakis plays George in this somewhat Dystopic, Terry-Gilliam-Brazil-esque satire about what it means to care in our modern world.

I met Brandon Drake at a screening of Visioneers at the Gene Siskel Film Center this past Thursday, the 18th. I talked to him a little bit that night, and interviewed him by phone the next day (June 19th, 2009). What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation. Some language we use in the interview is taken from the film, so if you don't follow exactly, don't worry - the movie will be out for release sometime in July.

Roswell Motorpark: So everything went well last night?

Brandon Drake: Yeah, some people liked it for the reasons we hoped they would like it. Some people don't like it for the reasons we thought they wouldn't like it. And some people love it, so it's great. We're just glad people showed up.

RM: I was pretty impressed with the amount of people who showed up. I got an e-mail from the Zach Galifianakis mailing list a few months ago offering 500 free passes to stream the movie online, but I missed that.

BD: I think they're going to announce on Zach Galifianakis' newsletter the whole screening program. Zach fans are just awesome.

RM: Is that how you're getting the attention for the movie? Do you think you would have gotten any attention without Zach Galifianakis?


BD: I think we would have had another somewhat known actor play the role. I think we probably would have had some kind of following depending on the actor. What the film ended up being, I don't think we would of had the online presence that we have and I don't think we have the kind of really dedicated fan support. It worked out really good.

One of the big compliments my brother and I get from the movie is from people who've seen it who are fans of Zach's humor commenting on the similarities. We didn't know Zach when we started. It feels like it was kind of a perfect fit. I hope a lot of Zach fans see the movie as Zach fans and then become Visioneers fans.

RM: I think that's a good way to approach it.

BD: We're really happy that it worked out the way it did.

RM: Let me take a step back here. I contacted you guys because I was interested in your self-starting process. I read an interview with you guys - I can't remember what website it was on - but it was you and your brother. I wanted to ask you about your education, or how you got into film, how you went to film school, how you decided to write this script, and so on.

BD: We were 12 or 10 and all we wanted to do was make movies. Jared got into photography and started doing a documentary for a friend of his who was struggling to pole vault, which besides Visioneers was one of the coolest things Jared ever made. It got him into the film program. I think it was kind of one of those things for him where, we discovered talent we didn't know we had, and it opened doors and that just went from there. All he was trying to do was do something for fun that he enjoyed with his friend.

The story for me is somewhat similar. I've always been a reader and I knew I always wanted to write. I found out through experiments that, when I wrote, sometimes, good things would happen to me that wouldn't normally happen in my life when I wasn't writing. I was actually a science major in college. I was going to go into environmental science and go live in the south Pacific and save the turtles and whatever. But I wasn't very happy leaving behind what I should do. So I was walking down campus one day, I was kind of miserable, and I saw this ad for being a newspaper editor. And I really liked writing in high school so I went to this meeting and I ended up getting the job and ended up spending all of my time working two or three page news stories for some podunk university paper but I just got lost in it. I worked my butt off and I loved them.

I actually ended up meeting my wife that way. She read one of my articles and she became a writer and there's this whole long story where I faked a meeting to meet the writers of the paper, because I never saw them face to face. My friend was like, 'Man, just don't try to date a writer from the university paper, they're all dogs.' But I faked this meeting to meet her and we ended up getting married.

RM: Nice.

BD: In my opinion, she's out of my league. So things like that just kind of happened. For me, the question was, when I got out of college, how am I going to write? A lot of people have ability and have talent and you gotta find a medium. I was in journalism and I hated it.
There's the ability to write well - the ability to craft sentences well; and there's 'do you actually have anything to say?' I had a job working at a newspaper magazine that was a really secure job and had a future where I could be an editor one day. But the things that I wrote about were like, flower shows and it was a travel magazine. I was going nuts.

RM: Is that Jeffers, a little bit?

BD: It was Jeffers. It's where Jeffers came from. I worked for nine months. I worked on Level Three in San Francisco. In the movie, George goes out to the Undeveloped Area. There's no guarantee that he's not going to explode. I had that job - this was when Jared got out of film school - he was really great at directing actors, and he needed a writer. So there was this new opportunity to write scripts, and I was looking for a way to express myself, working my ass off at a travel magazine. I'd go to work and it was Jeffers and I'd just sit there. It was ridiculous, the deadlines, the work they'd give you for two weeks that I could do in a half a day. You're just supposed to sit there and pretend you're working. So I would write scripts while I was at work. I'd do research on characters and whatever else. I'd go home and write at night and I did that for nine months and then, kind of at the jumping-off point - I entered a lot of screenwriting contests. I was going to find the standard for good screenwriting and I'm going to force myself to get criticism. My first scripts were horrible and then my third or fourth one won a contest and that's when I got pretty serious about it, so (this was kind of my Jeffers moment), I took a job at a dog kennel. I had an honor's degree from a university. This was 2003, so the economy was still in pain, and San Francisco was competitive for writing. And I'm like 'well I'm gonna go work at a dog kennel because nobody there's going to fuck with my head.'

There's a way I can hang out and read half the day and then go home and write and work, just spend hours uninterrupted making the same amount of money.

Anyone who has a passion for screenwriting or any creative thing, you really need to say 'I really want to do this.' You need to get through the hard times. For me, it was going, trying the other mediums, knowing they're not for me. It was either, write novels, or do this screenwriting thing. Write novels? Good luck. I want to write a novel one day, I'd love to, but there's a process.

RM: The big cities for film are obviously New York and L.A. Did being in California contribute to you actually getting a foot in the door in the film industry? Did it have to do with your geography or was it by your work alone?

BD: I'll finish my little story and I'll answer that. So I took this crap job and I made the same amount of money and I signed up for an online writing program through UCLA that was kind of the same program they did for their Masters screenwriting program. It only cost 800 bucks. A nine month education in screenwriting structure and craft and writing the screenplay. So I did that. I wrote two scripts in nine months, and that's where I got the bare bones work habits and that was essential. So anybody can do that, you know?

You can go online and find a program like that. I recommend that one, absolutely. Because out of that I won the award at the end of the year. San Francisco is not L.A., and it's not going to be. I won that award and that's when people started to pay attention. It was just an online program.

At the same time, Jared's short won, so people started to pay attention. But they payed attention for about a month and then they didn't care. So Jared and I were back in a place where we were like, 'Man, we really worked hard and got some recognition, but if we get jobs at all, it's not going to be much different from the Jeffers crap we've been doing.' So that's when we decided. I know I could write something well, I know he could direct something well. Let's go do our own work.

For me, I moved to Seattle to save money, to live much more cheaply and keep writing. That's where Visioneers came from. I wouldn't have written that script if I had moved to L.A. I would have probably tried to write something a lot more commercial. It was crucial for me to be in my home where I had my voice and I felt really comfortable to lay it out there. That's why I still live in Seattle because I could work really well there.

If you're a writer, that's what matters most. If you don't do the work, then it doesn't matter. Nobody's going to care. I believe anyone who writes well, someone will pay attention to you. Somehow, someone will find it. Even after going to UCLA and going to these people. Jared lived down there for five or six years. It doesn't matter unless you have something. And when you do - it took ten days to go from finishing the script where I lived to getting our first producer signed. We did the work. You do need to know somebody, but I think most people can find somebody.

What bothers me is how most people tend to get hung up on 'how do I get my foot in the door?' and they do things like save all of their money and move to L.A., go out to bars, and try to meet someone. What they should be doing is just working. And with my brother, it worked out. That's sort of our story.

Everybody want's to know 'how did you get an agent?' You kind of get one when you deserve one. That sounds kind of crappy, but it's true. You don't get an agent by going around looking for agents. You should be working. Anybody who's interested in learning the craft, I think it's a really good time. And all of the answers are kind of out there where you live. I was working at a dog kennel. Just some guy who had quit this job. I was working with this girl, I don't even know if she finished high school. It was crap. But I was able to work. I think I wrote like three scripts in four months. I found this online program that was available to anyone and I'd put it up there with any masters program because there was no ego involved.

This will be my short film school rant: You get into a film school and everybody thinks you're a genius because you're part of the film school. So they all treat each other like they're geniuses. It works the other way. If you know how to do something really well, you have to work really hard at it, because it's do hard to do something that good, and you have to push yourself really hard. And if you do something well, people think you're a genius, but you really just worked hard. I think a lot of people get shredded in film school because they assume they're talented. And people's voices get destroyed, because they're really original writers, and they walk out and they don't want to work anymore.

But if you're just getting started for five or ten scripts. I had four years of work before something clicked.

RM: So can you tell me - this is kind of an unrelated question - but I was interested, while watching the movie, to figure out what your influences are on the script. Besides written or literary influences or movie influences, I would also like to know what, in your life, lent to some of the jokes in the script.

BD: I was always a big Kurt Vonnegut fan. Huge Kurt Vonnegut fan. I read a lot of the dystopian novels in high school. You know, 1984, Brave New World, that stuff. But I've always just really lived comedies. Jared and I both grew up watching Ghostbusters and Dumb and Dumber. I think we actually watched The Burbs like ten times one summer, as kids. The movies that I watch at home with my wife, like Best in Show, all the Christopher Guest stuff. Whenever there's a good comedy that's well written. I love Dumb and Dumber. People are like 'you love Dumb and Dumber?' And I love Dumb and Dumber. It's a simple idea, but the material is fricking classic. When it comes out when I'm 18, it's hilarious.

This movie was definitely meant to be a comedy first, not a dystopian... whatever it's been characterized as.

RM: When I was watching it, I was thinking a weird marriage of Brazil and Office Space. But maybe with different themes. But I could see how some people might get confused.

BD: Especially because it goes against the grain of the genre of those types of movies. It's a satire. Satire is kind of weird in movies. There isn't a lot of satire that's been done well. Network was a really great satire, but we're doing it through sort of this sci-fi element, so it's a weird combination.

Ours is a story of this guy just trying to get through. I think all of the work we do and all of the things I'm doing now and in the future, it's just simple ideas, how hard it is to be human. So it's just a struggle to be human in a world where we don't care much anymore. Visioneers really emphasizes the human life not being worth very much part of it and so it's a struggle against that. I think most movies we're doing now are just people struggling with people.
I think that's kind of where I'm at now, just writing Visioneers. That's been my experience over the past few years, just being around people. So that's kind of where that comes from. What was the other part of the question?

RM: Yeah, I just think some of the jokes in the movie were obviously inside jokes, and I forgot what else you were talking about last night.

BD: Well one thing was, in order to raise the stakes between George and Michelle, we wanted to have this kid, Howard, who kind of had it all figured out. I don't know how well it comes through in the movie, just because of production design, we didn't have a whole lot of room to do stuff, but Howard was kind of the kid who at the end of the movie goes to run with the wolves and he's not going to be like George, the next generation of Washingtonwinsterhammermen. He's going to go do something else. And he comes out of this world which says a lot about how he views George.

But, there's no way you could have a kid, because they're expensive to have on set. In the film, there's no kid, we just shut the door and said that I'm going to write this so you have to shut the door and you never see Howard.

RM: I thought it was funny in that way, but I also thought it was funny because I couldn't imagine Zach Galifianakis being a father, either.

BD: (laughs) Well, that depends on how you read the situation.

The whole pole vaulting thing [in the movie] was because my parents have a pole vaulting thing in their backyard and we had to use it somehow.

And when I left San Francisco, I got a job in the school district where I grew up, so we moved back my parents little guest house, to live there for free, so I can keep writing. I actually still live in the pool house. So maybe this script will get me out of there.

And the whole hippie movement in the movie, was little bit like some of the production stuff that went on. A ton of people in my backyard - not all of them really had to be there. There's a lot of stuff that Jared threw in there too. I can't remember though.

RM: I was also interested in you guys talking about your "production company." Your brother said that it kind of reveals the smoke and mirrors of the film world, where you guys kind of put on a ploy to get attention but then it actually became true.

BD: It's totally how it works. A lot of people don't want to stick their neck our, they're so afraid of failure that they kind of get paralyzed. So when somebody has anything - there's two ways, you either have a script or you have money. When someone has a script - you just have that attitude of 'we're gonna do this.' People decide so quickly what success means - maybe they never knew what it meant to them that they just never end up doing it. They're so passive. It's understandable, because it's a totally brutal industry and a lot of people don't have the support that Jared and I were able to give each other. The minute that we just said 'okay, here we are, we're gonna do this, and we have a tiny little bit of money and we can do it.' People felt like, 'what do we have to lose?'

So, people got involved, and that kind of attitude is what it took for us. Even now, we're the guys who made Visioneers. But some people will look at it and say that it's not a success, it didn't go to theaters, it's not doing that well in the box office, so 'who are those guys?' Other people will go 'what a cool movie! Your first time effort!' So we still kind of have to just keep going. My next script is going to be very ambitious, in a different way, but in order to write it, but in order to write it, I still had to go 'somehow, we're going to do this.' We're going to have to have that attitude. I think people get shredded up somewhere along the line. I've seen people who have so much potential, but they're just scared shitless.

People have money and people have tons of connections and people who have been successes in the past, they see themselves as failures, and it's kind of a mindfuck. When you start to realize that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you've done or who you know or how many critics you have or even if your movie is one of the biggest ever. If you're a mess personally, or if you don't trust yourself or want to take a chance, nothing is ever going to happen.

We had huge nightmares on our film. Every indie film does. We almost ran out of film halfway through. The list goes on of things we had to overcome. Some attitudes just say 'well, that's just what happens.' It's tough.

RM: The Film Center gave you guys an award. Have you gotten any other similar attention? Just selections, that kind of thing?

BD: We won the Vegas Audience Award, which was a big deal for us. Hollywoodreporter gave us a good review. Slashfilms gave us a good one. Variety slammed us, but the critics have been pretty good. E-film Critic gave us a good review. Independent Film Directives gave us a good review.

In general, except for the people who don't get it, who don't like it. I think some critics want George to explode at the end, or want Brazil - it's not really innovative. It's a pretty simple story. We're not trying to do anything really profound. At the end it's just a very simple, efficient movie. One guy hopes for a better life. It's really straightforward. We're trying to tell a simple truth in a really complicated world. Some people are turned off by that. They want to see something more profound. The arthouse, intellectual crowd.

[Voice Recorder made section here indistinguishable.]

But the middle road, your average viewer, has responded really well. That's what's guiding our movie. We sold out almost every screening we had. In Seattle we had 600 people. We had the biggest theater at the screening and we sold it out twice. I think we had the most attended film event of any of the films at the festival. I think a lot of those were Zach fans. But also, people are intrigued by the concept. It's very topical, especially for the times we're living in.

We're really happy with the product we've made overall. The people we made the movie for, we hoped the average would be Tunt [general type of person in Visioneers] trying to not be a Tunt and that's who we're trying to speak to. That's our audience, we don't have a problem with that. That's enough for us.

RM: One final question. You mentioned you were working a script, can you talk any more about that, or are you a writer who doesn't like to talk about a thing until it's finished, for fear of ruining it?

BD: You know, I can't say too much.

[Voice Recorder made section here indistinguishable.]

All I can say is, we really fell in love with the character of George.

[Voice Recorder made section here indistinguishable.]

There's lots of funny things out there. I like to write what I think is funny. George is a comic strategy, kind of the straight man who doesn't really speak but everyone else around him does. We want a new character one, because we've already done that and two, because the kind of character we'd fall in love with now wouldn't be that kind of guy. We found it, so that's good. We found it about a year ago. He's there, the story. We're just very excited to introduce him (laughs). That's all I'll say for now.

RM: Yeah, I think that's enough. It was good talking to you man, thanks for your time.

BD: Take care.
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An Interview with Joshua Marie Wilkinson

Joshua Marie Wilkinson was born and raised in Seattle, and he is the author of four books: most recently, The Book of Whispering in the Projection Booth (Tupelo 2009). An edited collection, 12x12: Conversations in 21st Century Poetry & Poetics, is just out from University of Iowa Press, and a new chapbook, Until the Lantern's Shaky Song, is also just out from Chicago's own Cinematheque Press. He lives in Andersonville and teaches at Loyola University Chicago. This interview originally appeared in The North Branch.

JEM: What authors or movies do you come back to most often? What have been most foundational for your creative development?

JMW: There’s an old Joseph Cornell film (collaged together from another film he found) called Rose Hobart. I’ll return to that forever. Fassbinder’s short film (I only have it on VHS, and I no longer have a VCR) Germany in Autumn. I adore that film. Antonioni’s work from the mid 60s; his film Red Desert. Authors: Blanchot, Niedecker, Stevens, Davenport’s translations of ancient poets, Giscombe, H.D., Notley, Ceravalo.

Are your undergrad literary influences still just as important to you? If not, how have they changed and who has taken their place?

No, not at all. My favorite poets in undergrad were Michael S. Harper and, later, Yusef Komunyakaa. It was formative, you know, but sensibilities change. When I found certain other poets (Dickinson, Celan, Bunting, Elizabeth Willis, Jay Wright, Blaser—lots of others), new curiosities were formed.

What are some of your biggest non-literary influences? Are there any that you are surprised or embarrassed by?

My non-literary influences are mostly painters and visual artists—and especially musicians: Memphis Minnie, Gordon Matta-Clark, Blind Willie McTell, Richard Diebenkorn, Joel R.L. Phelps, Yoshitomo Nara, Damien Jurado, Nina Nastasia, Califone, and Neko Case to name a few. As for embarrassment, there’re a few, but I’ve left them off the list.

You grew up in Seattle, now teach in Chicago, and have lived a number of places in between; has your work changed significantly based on where you’re living?

I think it has. When I was younger, I had a fairly classic case of wanderlust. I spent months in Turkey, in Czech Rep., in Spain, and I lived for longer periods in Slovakia and Ireland, Arizona and Colorado. The places—landscapes, faces, train stations, markets, languages—all filter into the work in unexpected ways, mostly without warning.

Which house/apartment from your past has been your favorite and does your experience there have an effect on the poetry that you’re writing now?

The worst place was this little tiny room I rented in Dublin, in graduate student housing, and I had five roommates. But I got so much work done in that room—drafted much of my second book and wrote my film thesis on the movie Festen. It had a big window onto a vast green pitch with woods beyond it. It was like a tiny college dorm room; totally uninspiring, but I work in caves—light is of no use to me, and though it lacked character it was a great cave.

What in film influences your writing? Are you drawn more towards one than the other?
Everything in film: how the titles roll, how images click into each other, how characters move, how the camera moves—or doesn’t—there’s no aspect of film that bores me. Somehow, I’m drawn more to poetry. Most everything I do, it seems, is scored by poetry. It’s woven into nearly each part of my day—reading, writing, teaching, commenting on students’ work, my editorial projects, the presses I work with, the journals I read, the correspondences I keep, the book projects I’m working on. It has sort of taken over my life. Going to readings, setting up and hosting readings, even walking to work, I often listen to poets in conversation or reading their work on my headphones.

Your Rabbit Light Movies are a series of videos of poetry readings. What made you want to start this series?

I started RLM in early 2007 on a lark. I made a little poemfilm of me reading one of my new poems dubbed over traffic lights of a street (Colfax) in Denver, where I used to live. It was about a minute and clicked together in a matter of minutes; and I liked how it looked and sounded. So I called up my friend Julie Doxsee and took my camera over to her house to have her read from her new chapbook and film it. That was it. I burned the first few episodes onto DVD just to add to the landscape of poetry—there’s nothing like hearing it in the poet’s voice. It moved to the internet when burning the dvds became too cumbersome—and I like people being able to access it from anywhere there was an internet connection.

As paper press dies, do you feel that poetry will eventually become a mostly digital medium? What would you most like to see happen?

I hope I’m dead before poetry becomes “mostly digital” as you say. My hope is that more and more fine art (and even slapdash) book-making comes into the fold, in the vein of Flood Editions, Ugly Duckling Presse, Corollary Press, Effing Press, Braincase Chapbooks, Black Square Editions, Kitchen Press. I’m bored by digital chapbooks, e-books, kindle—all that. Without the physical object to hold—to carry with me on the train, to pull out of my bookbag, to hand to a friend or student, to open and close, to place on a shelf to admire the little spine—I feel like I’m just clicking around on a screen, and not engaging with the work in a material way—even if the screen is comprised of more materials than a chapbook! I think (or, I hope) that poets will always take interest in the materiality of the word, the materials of the object that doesn’t just house the work, but is formed along with it. There are a few online journals that I think are great—and I edit one myself—but there’s nothing like getting the new copy of Chicago Review or Conjunctions or 6x6 or The Denver Quarterly and paging in and out of till the next one comes…

What do you hope to accomplish in future work? What would you most like to see your students and other writers accomplish in theirs?

I hope to complete a big long poem that’s in progress. As for students, just that they learn to love poetry and seek it out on their own and redirect their lives around it—no small task!—that’d be enough. Other writers are fine with out my meddling.

jem.
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An Interview with Mark Prindle

We are proud to announce the first Roswell Motorpark interview! We have several more on the way, but the Mark Prindle interview is the first that we have successfully posted. More to come soon.

Mark Prindle is an American and a music critic. His website, http://www.markprindle.com/, is home to boatloads of album reviews, from the Monkees to Slayer to Pavement, and interviews with rock legends and comedians. He can also be seen on Fox’s Red Eye occasionally. He was kind enough to do a phone interview. The call dropped halfway through and the data file I had been recording got corrupted. Prettay, prettay frustrating/embarrassing. I kept mum about it until near the end of the second half of the interview when I tried to ‘subtly’ mention that things had gone awry. The first half of the interview is a combined effort to recollect the corrupted half of the interview; the second half is transcribed verbatim. Portions of this interview originally appeared in The North Park Press from April 2009.

JEM: Markprindle.com has been up for 13 years now. Are you surprised it’s lasted as long as it has? How did it start?

MP: No, I’m not surprised. Not really. I took a break for about a year at one point, but it’s something I love doing. It gets me writing and I feel like if I wasn’t writing I wouldn’t be doing anything creative. It’s something I love, and I’m always going to be writing. It started because my brother and I moved to New York together in early 1996 and were talking one night, and he asked me, “If you were going to write a book, what would it be about?” I answered that I’d like to review every album I owned, and he said, “Oh, you could do that on a web site.” And I said, “What’s a web site?” He designed the original website layout, coded the HTML and everything, and that’s the way it’s stayed. That’s why it looks like it does, because I don’t know how HTML. I wouldn’t know how to update the design! But I keep doing it because it’s fun for me, and people seem to enjoy it.

Are you still making music?

No, not for awhile. There seems to be more attention and encouragement for my website rather than my music, so I mainly invest myself in my site these days.

Did you used to play shows when you did?

My high-school band the Low-Maintenance Perennials played three or four shows, my college band Lima played maybe three or four times, and then one time I did a solo show. But I haven’t done any since I moved to New York.

When did you start doing interviews?

About five years ago, when I lost my last job. I had more free time, so I decided to try to spruce up the site a little bit. I’d been corresponding with some artists through my web site over the years, so I started with them. Then I had some old interviews I’d conducted for my college paper, so I re-inputted those, and it grew from there. One of the interviews I was most excited about was my recent one with Ian MacKaye. I’d tried contacting him several times over the years with no success, but he apparently read the Black Flag interviews I conducted for Citizine – Greg Ginn, Kira, Henry Rollins, Chuck Dukowski and Keith Morris - and liked those enough to let me interview him.

Who have been some of your favorite interviews?

Well, I get excited over small things. For example, I loved interviewing the two guys from DRI. But one of the best is the one where I interviewed Billy Zoom, because I was really drunk when I called and got even drunker as it went on. So I kept repeating things and apologizing and forgetting what we’d already talked about, but he was really polite the whole time. Sometimes he’d poke fun a little bit, but he was just really nice. The David Yow one was awfully funny too. I don’t know; there are a lot of good ones! Even people who hate my writing style seem to enjoy my interviews.

Is there anyone that you’ve wanted to interview that you haven’t been able to yet?

Jello Biafra. I was actually all set up to interview him for a Canadian metal magazine, but when he found that it would be me conducting the interview, he told my publisher to re-assign it to a different writer or he wouldn’t do it. Apparently he’d seen my interviews with the other ex-Dead Kennedys, and was pissed off that I kinda sided with them. I apologized to him, but it’s pretty hopeless. He doesn’t trust me. Actually, a few years ago the Dead Kennedys got back together with a guy named Jeff Penalty singing for them, but apparently he eventually quit too. It turns out that he had a lot of the same problems with them as Jello had had!

Do you go to shows often?

Not really anymore. I just burned out on it because during college I would go to two or three a week. Once I got up here and had to start getting up early for work, I just lost all patience for it. I got sick of the heat, the crowding, and having to sit through boring opening acts. My wife and I will occasionally go see somebody if it’s at a sit-down place. We saw Norm MacDonald doing stand-up comedy not too long ago. That guy’s hilarious. His delivery is perfect. And we’ve seen Henry Rollins do spoken word, and Sarah Silverman. As for music, we saw Nick Cave maybe five years ago, and then Morrissey after that, which was actually pretty good. And I saw the Van Halen reunion show at Madison Square Garden, which was wonderful.

Did you get a chance to see My Bloody Valentine on their reunion tour?

No, though I did see them in college back when Loveless was released. They were playing with Dinosaur Jr. My wife was actually at that show too, though I didn’t know her at the time. I heard that the reunion tour was painfully loud, like you could feel a wall of sound waves wash over you.

Did you see the Pixies when they were still together?

Yeah, actually it’s interesting that you mention that because there was a place on campus – an actual campus building – that would occasionally host a rock performance. And the only two shows I ever saw there were My Bloody Valentine/Dinosaur Jr. and the Pixies! It was the Trompe Le Monde tour, with Pere Ubu opening. I remember a lot of people being really disappointed because they played so many songs from Trompe Le Monde, but I love that album so for me it was great. But I also remember Kim Deal looking extremely bored the whole time, so I guess their breakup shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Pere Ubu was really boring though. It was during that point in the early ‘90s when they were playing really streamlined, boring music. I had listened to some of their earlier stuff that I liked, but I don’t think they played any of it because I just remember it being boring.

Do you ever update the reviews that are already on the website?

Sometimes I do, like I rewrote most of the Rush page a few years ago. But there are so many things I’d like to change about those old reviews, and who has the time? Unfortunately a lot of my early reviews are the bands I love the most, like the Ramones, but there’s just too much on there to go back and edit everything, even if the older reviews don’t do service to the bands. So I keep forging ahead. I guess it’s good that my old writing bothers me now; it means I’m growing!

Have you reviewed any Guided by Voices yet?

No, not yet. I’m working on getting through the Gang of Four stuff right now; Guided by Voices is next. The thing with Guided by Voices is, well, on my own albums I’ll have a lot of different songs, but I try to make sure each one sounds distinct or different or something. But Guided by Voices put out all these albums with like 30 songs, where every song is just a basic pop rock song! How much effort could they possibly have put into making sure that each song was as good as it can be?

What were the first bands reviewed on the website?

AC/DC was the very first band on the website, and then Pink Floyd and some others. The way you can tell which ones are the oldest is by looking at the url – if there’s an out-of-place ‘a’ at the end, like www.markprindle.com/pinka.htm for Pink Floyd, then that means it’s from the first couple years of reviews. I may have added additional reviews to that page over the years – like the AC/DC site when a guy sent me something like 30 bootlegs for review – but the main entries on those are pretty old. I wrote them when I was in my early ‘20s.

Any bands that everyone tells you to review that you refuse to?

There are none that I’ve refused, per se. But if people expect me to spend my money on the full discography of a band I don’t even like, then forget it. If someone sends me the full discography of a band, there’s at least a chance I’ll review them some day, but probably not any time soon. There are just too many bands I already want to review. Also, I’ve been getting rid of a lot of CDs I never listen to – selling them on ebay because I’m out of work, and I’m glad because now there are certain artists I don’t even have to consider reviewing. Like Elvis Costello! I sold my entire Elvis Costello collection. I don’t know why I had those albums in the first place. Some of the music’s good, but I can’t stand that fucking voice.


Do you feel like websites like Pitchfork Media or Myspace have a positive or negative effect on music?

I wrote something about Pitchfork in one of my Hip Micro-Reviews recently. Let me see if I can find it. Ahh, here it is: “Shame on Pitchfork Media for influencing so many young people to play music with no guts or energy at all.” I was just joking though. Really, I think that the most negative effect on music right now is just the fact that the music coming out now isn’t very creative, but it doesn’t matter because it’s being pushed to kids who weren’t born until like 1996. So it’s easy for bands to just copy the sounds of earlier generations – like ‘60s r’n’b, ‘70s disco and punk, ‘80s new wave and ‘90s indie rock – because kids don’t know that they’re just getting cheap copies of music that was already ground into the dirt by weak imitators decades ago. Another problem is that there either there aren’t very many creative people in the world, yet they’re making music anyway because it’s so easy to make your own music and put it out yourself these days – or that there are a lot of creative people in the world, but they haven’t been introduced to enough different types of music for them to put it all together into their own unique sound. I was talking to another interviewer about this recently. I consider myself a fairly creative songwriter. Not everybody likes what I do, but it at least doesn’t sound like anybody else. However, when I first started playing the guitar, I was listening only to punk music so that’s all I was writing. So I was still the same ‘creative’ person as I arguably am now, but I hadn’t heard enough different types of music to inspire me to create my own sound. Incidentally, on the topic of my Hip Micro-Reviews, I’ve really been enjoying doing those and people really seem to like them. And it’s good because now I can open a Spin magazine or something and know all these bands they’re talking about, which I honestly haven’t been able to do in like 15 years. Some people ask how I can write off new bands after only hearing four or five songs by them, but look – I’ve heard over 20,000 albums. At this point, if I hear four songs by a band and they all sound similar and I HATE all of them, then there’s a pretty good chance I’m not going to like the rest of their discography. If I hear four songs and they all sound different from each other, that’s one thing, but that rarely ever happens. And there are some genres that just don’t appeal to me – like alt-country and alt-folk. I’m sorry, but no amount of listening is going to make me suddenly start liking somebody like Bon Iver. At least not until he loses that fucking falsetto and starts writing less boring songs.

Here begins the actual interview transcription. The following statement was in response to comments about the new nostalgia bands and high-school music trends:

But a good way to put it actually, is that, if you go back through time, you find that in the seventies music was all really mellow and relaxed and laid back, and then the punk rockers -- I mean a lot of people came along, the disco people came along, but punk came along and became more and more aggressive, and then Green Day came along and said “Well, okay, we like punk rock, but we’ll make it a little more accessible,” and they weren’t the only ones that did it, a lot of bands did it, but they were the ones that hit it big. They hit it big with this thing on the radio with people who didn’t know punk rock, so it made people think that punk rock is this thing ‘dun-du-dun-du-dun-du-dun’, a little simpler, a little choppier, and the guy sings with a snotty voice. So then a whole bunch of those bands came out, so the kids at that age, that’s what they were listening to on the radio, was the Green Day and Blink 182 or whatever, and those kids grew up and formed these new emo bands; at least I have to assume that that’s the problem. Like Fallout Boy, that kind of music. Which, it sounds like to me, when they were young they heard Green Day and said, “I’m going to do something like that, but, you know, a little more mainstream.” So we’re to the point now that this music that once started off so aggressive, in response to wimpy music, or what was perceived as wimpy music, is now wimpy music. But if you see these quote emo people, they’ve got really dark hair and dark eyes. Like, before I’d heard these bands, I assumed that new emo was either this ‘screamo’ stuff, you know, guys screaming and wailing, or maybe an even more depressing goth. You know? Just from their looks. And then I started listening to these bands, on Myspace, and was horrified because I had no idea that emo now means pussy pop music. I just couldn’t believe it! Because emo, to me -- I wasn’t into punk rock at the time emo started, but retrospectively I thought it meant Rites of Spring, and Embrace, and Dag Nasty, you know, really intense, fast, energetic music that was emotional. This new stuff is just bad pop music!

I think that’s why it’s been able to overtake the mainstream of what most high-school kids listen to is, because it is bad pop music. Because if it was something that still had some kind of countercultural, subversive sound to it, it wouldn’t be able to gain as much widespread popularity as it has been. I think it’s overrunning what most high-school age students listen to. And even into college age students still.

Really?

Yeah, not the majority, but it’s still present. A lot of college-age kids are listening to things like Radiohead and Coldplay and Dave Matthews Band, but it seems like there’s still lingering effects of emo music from high-school that transfer to these college age kids.

What year are you in college?

I’m a senior this year.

Oh, okay. So I was going to ask you, you haven’t been in high-school in a few years, but still, what were people listening to when you were in high-school? Obviously there are different groups. When I was in high school, I hung out with people who listened to old sixties music, or punk rock. But there were also little groups of metalheads who listened to really intense metal, and then there was the normal people, who listened to, in my day, it would be…Phil Collins, or that kind of thing I guess. But that was before Nirvana hit, basically. Really before Nirvana hit. So Guns ‘N’ Roses was popular, you know, that kind of thing. When you were in high-school, what were people listening to?

I guess a lot of girls were listening to Beyonce-type stuff, maybe Jack Johnson and I think a lot of guys were listening to things like Linkin Park…oh, who was the other one that I was thinking of that’s really awful?

Limp Bizkit? Staind?

Yeah! And Nickelback, Dave Matthews Band. And then a lot of my friends, we would listen to Radiohead, Pixies, and there were a lot of people that I knew that were really into pop-punk stuff, like Anti-Flag and Less than Jake.

Were there people, and when I ask ‘were there people,’ I’m kind of also asking ‘are there people,’ who were really into older music, be it eighties hardcore, or seventies punk, or sixties music, or were people mostly listening to their generation’s music as it were?

In my group of friends, some of us were really into sixties pop music like The Zombies and Donovan um, and…

Were you considered weird for it? Or do a lot of young people still listen to older music?

No, I think it was getting more popular. I mean, this was like when I was 15 or 16, so a lot of people were listening to The Beatles and stuff and warmed up to the idea. Because before, like in middle school or something, that stuff is something that your parents listen to, but in high school you kind of go through this process where you start to warm up to it. So there were a lot of people who were listening to The Beatles, and then there were people that I knew that really liked Velvet Underground…

See, that’s interesting to me because I was born in ’73, and you’re talking about people who were born in the eighties? The early eighties? When were you born?

’87.

So the sixties were a really long time ago for you guys.

Yeah, and for a while that was really some of the only stuff we were listening to. And a lot of it had to do with we were all kind of going through our parent’s possessions, like record players, and going through their old records, so we would get informed through that. My dad was really good about opening me up to a lot of old music that I hadn’t heard before, from the seventies, sixties, eighties. I grew up listening to a lot of Pink Floyd and Yes around the house, but I would listen to a lot of Radiohead that my dad would bring home, or Meat Puppets, Nirvana. I grew up in Seattle, so a lot of this stuff was very regional for me.

Oh, yeah!

And Screaming Trees and stuff like that.

Hey are—okay, sorry, I should quit asking you questions I guess.

No, no. It’s cool. Were you going to ask something else?

I was just going to ask if the Screaming Trees were any good because all I’ve heard by them is Uncle Anesthesia, which I wasn’t really too fond of. Have you heard their stuff before that, like their SST stuff or whatever?

No, I haven’t really listened to them since I was pretty little. The stuff that’s carried over from what my dad played a lot when I was younger is like Meat Puppets and Nirvana and Radiohead and Pink Floyd.

Here’s something I want to throw out there. This was something my brother mentioned to me a long time ago, so it really came from his mind, and I think I mentioned it somewhere on my site because I thought it was really insightful, and I should’ve thought of it on my own. It’s that, if you go back to that sixties and seventies stuff like Pink Floyd and Yes and uh…well, I’ll just start with those two. Even like Led Zeppelin or whatever. You’ve got to remember that these are people who grew up before Rock and Roll was even invented, or when it was just starting to be invented. So they all have backgrounds in different kinds of music, whether their families played classical music around the house, or played jazz around the house, or blues or whatever they played. All we have now is kids who have grown up on recent rock music. So, their influences are just not…their music isn’t going to be a conglomeration of different things, like you would get in the old days. Which is why…I really like Radiohead, I think they’re great, great songwriters, but quite frankly, Pink Floyd kinda did what they did, but with less pretty vocals. At least you can tell that they’ve heard Pink Floyd. I really do think that one of the big problems is that Clear Channel took over so many stations and made them where they played ten songs and that was it; ten songs over and over again, all day. I think that was a big issue. Another big issue was that MTV died. Because when MTV was around, they had to fill their programming with videos, before they started doing all the shows. So there was just tons and tons of stuff being played on MTV -- probably only about forty percent of it was any good, but at least it got played. Nowadays, where do you go to hear music? You go, uh…well, where do you go? Oh, they must read about it and then download it. Right?

Yeah.

They read about in Pitchfork and then go download it. That makes sense.

And it’s different too, because there’s such an emphasis on only digital music now, as opposed to actually having something tangible to pass around.

Yeah. And that’s another thing that my brother and I were talking about, or thinking about separately, just recently is how I still have all my dad’s old albums, and his old 45s, as well as strange records I’ve bought on my own over the years. You know, they’re these really old things that were never put out on CD that I have on album, and they’ll never be put out on CD. They’re just weird -- weird old sex records or weird old comedy records, or whatever, just weird old records! And, you know, unless there’s a fire or something, I’ve got this stuff. These are my possessions. Just like anything else I have as a possession, like chairs or computers. People who have their entire music catalog on MP3s, or computer-type stuff, what happens when we go to the next level and you can’t even play MP3s anymore because they’ve moved on to some better technology? Do they have to repurchase their entire stock? Like thirty years ago, thirty, forty years ago, you could get a turntable anywhere. These days, it’s harder to find a turntable. I mean, you can still find them, but you’ve gotta work for it. Same with VHS. If you’re still buying VHS tapes used like I do, it’s harder to find a VHS player. But my point is, twenty years from now, are people going to be going and buying really old iPods so they can listen to their really old MP3s, or are they going to have to repurchase their entire collection, or is it even going to matter because nothing goes out of print anymore?

I was going to ask you about exactly that, actually. Because The Beatles collection was just re-released on CD and the Pixies discography is going to be re-released on CD, but these are seen as some of the last CD releases, before everything goes entirely digital (though I don’t know how factual this is). But basically, I was going to ask what your thoughts were on all of this.

Man, I hadn’t even heard about that.

I was just reading about it the other day. I was talking to a guy, I volunteer at a home for the blind, and there’s a guy that I work with there who’s been really freaked out lately because he’s afraid he’s not going to be able to buy CDs anymore, and because the CDs are gone he’ll have to buy them digitally and that’s something he’s not able to do. And so I just heard about this extinction for the first time yesterday, and I researched it a little more after I talked to him. It’s pretty crazy.

Yeah, I know they’re not making any money on CDs…yeah, that’s sad, but one thing of interest though…well, for me, it’s kinda unfortunate because I would much rather listen to music on my stereo than on my computer, but that’s really just a matter of me getting better computer speakers. That’s really interesting. So that’s gonna make music a completely audio thing. There’s not going to be any visual.

That’s the thing, though. Because as I hear about CDs going out of print, vinyls seem to be becoming more and more popular.

Yeah, because the sound is supposedly better.

Yeah, that’s the big thing. And I think that people also just like having physical proof of bands that they like, and buying a record is the biggest and most aesthetically pleasing way to do that, I guess. But it’s been really great with the boom in vinyls, because a lot of them are the same price as CD, and then you can also get a copy of a digital download.

Oh! You buy an album and you can get a digital download for free? That’s nice.

Yeah, there have been a lot of record companies, well Touch and Go is gone now I guess, but I think they were one of the labels that started doing it, and then there have been others.

See, this is hilarious to hear you say that about CDs -- how they’re going to get rid of them completely -- because there was such, such pushback from people when vinyl was replaced by CDs. You know, there were artists saying, “Don’t buy my stuff on CD. CDs suck, vinyl rules.” Even recently – well, not recently, but more recent than that, when Shellac put out one of their albums, they put it out on CD and on album, and they didn’t announce this, but if you bought the album, there was a CD inside. So basically there was no reason to buy the CD. Which is…interesting. You know, there’s that new Neil Young song, that I just reviewed actually, where he says, “Download this, it sounds like shit,” which is probably a good point if you’re an audiophile and you want to have the best sound possible. But then again, I have two Gang of Four albums that are -- I bought them used, and I also have the same albums on CD-Rs, made from somebody else’s CDs, and those sound much better than my used albums. My used albums just seem to have been mixed too quietly, so maybe the CDs were re-mastered. I have to turn the vinyl up really loud and still the quiet moments are buried under even just really light *krsshhh*, you know that sound? It really buries the quiet parts of the song! So maybe vinyl sounds better than CD, but if so, it only does so for two or three listens before it starts deteriorating. And obviously the people that owned these things before I did listened to them like ten times, so now it’s just like, it’s not horrible, but the CD really enables me to really hear what’s going on. Which, with the vinyl, you know, it’s just harder.

They’ve been making a lot more 180-gram pressings, this super sturdy vinyl; with this, they’re supposed to be built to last and have the strongest vinyl sound.

Well, I do have plenty of albums that sound really good too, but they tend to be newer ones. Or newer reissues. Albums bought used and stuff, I mean, I’m not a huge audiophile. I have no problem listening to albums that go *krsshhh,* but it’s harder as a reviewer to tell what’s going on in the quieter moments, if they’re buried under *krsshhh*.

Are you excited about any of the three upcoming big releases? The Meat Puppets’ new album, the new Sonic Youth, and the new Bob Dylan?

Well, I downloaded the new Bob Dylan last night. On first listen, it wasn’t too impressive. But first listens can be deceiving. All I can remember about it was that one song sounds exactly like Tom Waits. Like, it’s unbelievable how much it sounds like Tom Waits. The voice and the music. The Sonic Youth album, I’m not thrilled or excited about it, but I liked their last album a lot more than I expected to. So, yeah, I’m looking forward to hearing that one. I didn’t know the Meat Puppets had a new album coming out.

Yeah, it’s called Sewn Together and I think it’s coming out in May or something.

That last album I liked but it was very, very slow.

That was Rise to Your Knees?

Yeah. What’s the name of this new one?

It’s called Sewn Together.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I’m going to pull it up on Amazon so I can add it to my wish list. Oh wow, yeah, the album cover looks like one of their old album covers.

Yeah, and they’re going to be on tour pretty soon to promote it.

Let me see…because there were a few other upcoming releases. Oh, the upcoming release that I’m looking forward to most is that Coalesce has a new album coming out. They’re a pretty neat band and they broke up several years ago, so the fact that they got back together and made an album is pretty exciting to me. It’s going to be called “Ox”. So that’s one I’m really looking forward to.

What’s Coalesce like?

I reviewed them on my site. It’s a combination of like metalcore and seventies rock and deathmetal, and they just a mix a bunch of different things up in their sound and they’re really good. I’m also looking forward to…The Meatmen have an album of covers coming out called “Meatmen Cover the Earth” and the cover is a cartoon drawing of the entire band ejaculating onto a globe, so that looks nice.

(laughs)

I’m looking forward to the new Iggy Pop album, which is supposedly a jazz album inspired by a French book that he read. I’m semi-looking forward to it anyway. And there’s others that I’m looking forward to for review purposes, like CKY has a new album comin’ out, the New York Dolls, or what’s left of them, have a new album coming out, and Eminem has—boy, his last album sucked total ass. But hopefully this new one won’t be quite as bad, although I am pretty sick of that guy. I’m doubtful that I’ll like his new album, but I’ll give it a chance. And both Tori Amos and Dinosaur Jr. have new albums coming out soon. Also there’s apparently another new live Yes album called Symphonic Live; I need to get that at some point. And I want to get those new Pavement reissues with the bonus tracks, I’ve gotta get these at some point.

Oh yeah! The last one was Brighten the Corners, right?

Yeah. I haven’t gotten either of the last two, the Wowee Zowee or the Brighten the Corners. But I love the two before them, so I’ve gotta get these…once I have a job and can spend money again. There’s a great site called Did it Leak, it’s diditleak.co.uk and it’s just a list of albums, and people get on their twitter and type in if an album leaks. So that’s how I got the Bob Dylan yesterday. And I also want to say something: I download these things, I listen to them for review, I put them on a disc, and I never listen to them again. If I really like an album, I want to get it on CD so that I’ll actually listen to it, because I never listen to my MP3 discs. So if what you’re telling me is true and stuff’s never going to come out on CDs, then I either gotta start listening to my MP3 discs or just stop…I don’t know. You know what I mean? For fun and good times I play music on my stereo, so…

Yeah, and don’t take everything I say as the gospel truth because I’ve only looked into it a little bit, so there could still be hope. But it does seem like CD production, and CDs in general, are kind of dwindling. And they’re getting a lot more expensive too, I’ve noticed. I was looking at some store the other day where I had remembered the CDs always being around 13 or 14 dollars, but now they were mainly around 18 or 19 dollars.

Seriously???

Yeah.

I thought they had lowered them! Nobody’s going to pay that much! You know, the only time I can imagine anyone paying that much is at a holiday, because at a holiday you just want to get this shit done. ‘Oh, I’ll get the new Springsteen for Dad. I’ll get the new U2 for Mom. Oh, twenty dollars? I don’t care.’ You know you’re going to spend 100 dollars on your mother, 50 dollars, ‘Okay, there’s twenty dollars for that, I’ll get a book, 200 dollars.’ That’s the only time I ever pay full price, and I rarely do even then, quite frankly. But you know, hopefully the rest of the world—see, people like me are the problem, not the solution. First of all, I never, ever buy CDs new. Ever. Even before downloading I would buy them used. Especially when you started being able to use eBay and Amazon and Half.com—you can always find stuff used for a better price in those places. Record companies aren’t sending out promo CDs anymore. That’s another way you used to be able to get so many of them used, because people would get the promo for free and then sell it. Well, that’ll be interesting. I’m kind of treating this whole “Hey! New album! Free download! New album! Free download!” thing as a temporary thing, because eventually they’ve gotta find a way to stop it; there’s just no way something this illegal can keep going for so long. But I’m just treating it like that. It really helps, as a reviewer, especially as a reviewer who has stuff on their website of bands I don’t like at all—you know, Tori Amos is going to keep putting albums out; I’m not going to be spending money on them. They better leak, or my site’s just going to fall into disrepair.

It’s been good for me as an occasionally unemployed college student, because I haven’t been able to afford buying albums, but being able to download them has allowed me to get informed about a lot of new bands that I’m able to support later when they come to town and tour; I feel kind of justified.

You should, because apparently it’s always been the case that they make most of their money on shows and merchandise. Like T-shirts and stuff. From what I understand, album CD sales are just for the record companies. They’re the ones that make the money, I think, generally. Unless it’s like a trillion, trillion seller. Like Nirvana got rich off of that album, but I don’t think it’s generally like that. For bands at our level. For bands we listen to. Britney Spears? Yeah, sure. Alright, well, did you have any other questions? I know I’ve kept you longer than you wanted.

No, no. This is great. Actually, I have some bad news…

At this point in the interview, I reveal that the first half of the interview has become corrupted because of a data file error and only the past half hour has been recording successfully. I will not post this portion here for the sake of brevity and pride. Needless to say, it was pretty embarrassing.

What five essential albums would you recommend to every college-age person? This is pretty much as broad as possible.

A college…well, geez…am I assuming these people don’t own any records? What level should I assume they’re at in listening?

I would say…

Actually, y’know what? Fuck ‘em! I’ll just say five albums I love and they better buy them. How about that? (laughs). Let’s see…the first Dirty Rotten Imbeciles album, that says college. Okay. You gotta have The Dwarves, Blood Guts & Pussy. Gotta have that. The Cows…actually, let me think about it. Don’t put those down. Every college student should own…what level do you think I should I say? ‘Well, yeah I want some Beatles?’ Y’know.

For people who have some working knowledge of music history, sixties, seventies, eighties. People who are more informed about music.

Oh, okay. Well I will go ahead and say The Cows, Cunning Stunts, because I love that album. Wire, Pink Flag. I’m really racking my brain here trying to…The Fall. What album though? You know what, forget The Fall. God, this is too hard!

Sorry, sorry. A few is fine.

No, no, no. I want to do this, because it’s an interesting question. Okay, let’s see. Forget what I said before. These are the real ones. I’m going to say five albums that I love, and other people can love them or hate them, I don’t care. I love the first Dirty Rotten Imbeciles album. I love Charged GBH, City Baby Attacked By Rats. Slayer, Reign in Blood. Oh, I gotta put The Cows on there. They’re too good. Put The Cows, Cunning Stunts. And how about Yes, Fragile.

Are there any so-called essential albums that you see as completely overrated?

Yeah, I can name some of those! Neutral Milk Hotel, under the whatever, the aeroplane or whatever. And Patti Smith, Horses. Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde.

(ten second silence)

I haven’t died. I’m thinking. I want to get a couple more good ones, even though you said just a few. That’s a really good question.

You’re not as big on Velvet Underground, right?

Oh!!! Perfect! Thank you! Velvet Underground & Nico. That’s enough. You nailed it on that one. I’ll also say this: I really like Television’s Marquee Moon, but I don’t know why it is so beloved, because it’s not that interesting a record. I think it’s really good, but I don’t see why so many people love it so much.

I like some of the Richard Hell & the Voidoids stuff better. Blank Generation.

Yeah.

I like Marquee Moon a lot, but Blank Generation’s way weirder.

Yeah.

I think that’s about all the questions I had really.

But that’s…you know…I’m just really, there’s this question about the five albums for college students. I thought of a new way to answer. I’ll answer as five bands that I didn’t get into until college. So, some of them will remain the same, but others will change. So my five now, will be: Wire, Pink Flag. That’s one. The Fall, Early Years 1977-79. Go ahead and put The Cows in, because I love ‘em. The Cows, Cunning Stunts. Ooh, ooh, ooh! Ween! Put Ween in there. Put The Mollusk. I’m in college now…who am I listening to? Ooh, Meat Puppets II…no, no. People would know that actually from Nirvana. Dump that and put The Jesus Lizard, Goat. You know, what you may want to do is just put every single one because I couldn’t decide. (laughs).

Yeah, I might do that.

That’s just too good a question.

Hey, thanks! I think that’s about all the questions I have. This interview will be greatly shortened for my school’s paper for space, but I was wondering if I could post the transcription on my website as well?

Absolutely. That’ll be good. That way you’ll definitely be able to get all my albums in. “No, no! I changed my mind again!”

(laughs)

You know, I really, really wanted to put Killing Joke in there, but I couldn’t decide on an album. Because it’s kind of like I love their whole catalogue, but on every album there’s one or two songs that aren’t as good as the others. Alright, well I better take the dog out.

Thanks so much.

Mmhmm. Thank you!

jem.
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