INTERVIEWS

Q&A With Versus

August 30, 2010
In the '90s, most indie rockers were white males who cultivated a cool, detached image. New York-based Versus stood out from its contemporaries for many reasons. Its lineup included two (and sometimes three) Filipino-American brothers, it had a female bassist/singer, and the band gleefully professed its love for sports, meat and classic rock. After several albums and lineup changes continuing through 2001, the group went on a recording hiatus, only occasionally performing live. However, a reinvigorated Versus returned two years ago, and the band has just released On The Ones And Threes (Merge), its first full-length in a decade. Now consisting of singer/guitarist Richard Baluyut, drummer Edward Baluyut, bassist/singer Fontaine Toups, plus live violinist/keyboardist Margaret White, Versus picks up where it left off sonically: hypnotic melodies, male/female vocals and the occasional heavy guitar squall. MAGNET recently caught up with Richard Baluyut and Toups. Versus will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "Gone To Earth" (download): [audio:GoneToEarth.mp3] "Invincible Hero" (download): [audio:InvincibleHero.mp3] MAGNET: On The Ones And Threes is your first new album in 10 years. Do you think your sound is significantly different than it was in the 1990s? Has your songwriting and recording process changed? Richard: We still make our songs the way we always have, writing the music together in the practice space, then coming up with lyrics at the last possible instant, usually while recording the vocals. Recording is basically the same. But I do think the sound is different, just because there's a different atmosphere now. We used to navigate in a happy sea of like-minded bands and friends. Now the air we breathe is rarefied, and we are alone. Richard, do you feel your Filipino-American heritage has influenced your music? Richard: I have played a Filipino folk song solo, but other than that I'd say not. However, I've been told we are a very musical people. Usually any band on a cruise ship will be comprised of Filipinos. And growing up, many of my parents friends had karaoke machines; before I realized that was a Japanese word, I thought it was a Filipino invention. Edward left the group in 1996, but he has returned for the current lineup of the band. Why the departure, and what did he do in the ensuing decade-plus? Richard: He had a four-year old son, and one year we did 120 shows, including two jaunts to Europe, so it got to be too much for him. But I also think he missed playing guitar and wanted to work on his own project, the Pacific Ocean, which put out two records on Enchante Records and one on Teenbeat. There has been some membership turnover among the Baluyut brothers. Is James still involved with Versus? Does the strain of performing together affect your familial relationship at all? Richard: I look at the brothers as interchangeable at this point. James wasn't as involved on this one, but he may be more so on the next, if there is a next. Ed was gone, came back and probably will leave again. As long as Fontaine and I are both still here, Versus can continue. Being in a band with brothers can be difficult, but because we can play together somewhat innately, it's worth it. You've released records with Teenbeat, Caroline and Merge. What is your relationship with your record labels(s) like? Fontaine: It is very amicable, at least with Teenbeat and Merge. We didn't have much of a relationship with Caroline I suppose, other than with Glenn Boothe, and we still communicate with him. Mark (from Teenbeat) is great, and Laura and Mac (from Merge) as well. These people are incredibly genuine, and I am honored that they would even consider releasing any of our records. You are touring with Polvo and Superchunk. Have you noticed a resurgence in interest for ‘90s indie-rock groups like Versus? Richard: Not really. A band like Arcade Fire will get a surge of interest because they're on TV, covers of magazines, etc. Bands like Polvo, Superchunk and Versus get interest purely for writing good music. In fact, as a backlash to the unfortunate trend of bands reuniting, I would say there is a surge of disinterest. What’s it like touring again after such a long time? Do you have any funny stories from the road? Richard: Does two days count as a tour? It's actually great; I missed the minutiae of touring (like driving around in a van) as much as playing to audiences. My favorite pastime is staring at a map. You won't hear complaining about touring from me. I don't know if this counts as "funny," but on our first trip to support the new record, Ed found out his new kid was about to arrive prematurely. We put him on a bus back to N.Y.—he made it in time—and we kept on to Toronto, resigned to playing as a drummerless trio. Luckily the drummer of one of the other bands is a fan, volunteered to play with us and did a great job. Quite an ominous omen for On The Ones And Threes! On new songs like "Into Blue," you touch on sad issues like death. Has the band been affected by anyone passing away? Lyrically speaking, why do you cover such dark material? Fontaine: "Into Blue" is retrospective of my life in NYC. It may seem dark, but in fact is hopeful of a better way of life for me, and for the world. It's also about the need to change and move forward. I don't really know why my lyrics are so dark. I've always gone to the darkest places to see what's there, and that's when I usually turn around running full speed back to the light. It helps put things in perspective, I suppose. But here is also a sense of humor lurking if you listen long enough. Fontaine, your early image could be considered dark or goth. Would you agree with that assessment? Have you lightened with time? Fontaine: Sadly, yes, I've lightened up. I just couldn't master the goth look. It was too difficult, so I decided dark was good enough! Although, I am really having a hard time letting it go. Who wants to wear white when you can wear black? You recorded your first full-length album, The Stars Are Insane, in just one weekend. What was that process like? Would you attempt to make another album like that? Richard: No, we couldn't do that again. Now we're lucky if I can play a guitar part correctly in a weekend. After the band went on hiatus, each member worked in some type of other project. How were those different musically, and did your experiences with them inform the new Versus sound? Richard: I think all of the splinters and incarnations are different and interesting in their own rights. And they all relate back to Versus to varying degrees. Fontaine was a little bit country, I was a little bit rock 'n' roll. I don't know what Ed was. Having a new band made it more difficult to get shows and to get people interested in general, and that took a toll. Fontaine and Ed weren't even playing music when I came a-calling. But it was pretty natural to write songs together after that time off. I think we sound better together than apart. When you started the band, did you think that you would still be touring and recording as Versus 20 years later? Richard: No, but I also thought the World Trade Center would still be standing. And that Times Square would never be Disneyland. And that the Cedar Tavern, Florent, Downtown Beirut, La Chinita Linda, Joe Jr., CBGB, etc., would still be open. My point being, I stopped trying to look into crystal balls a long time ago. I'm happy to be here and right now.

—Danielle Bacher

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Q&A With Cowboy Junkies’ Margo Timmins

August 23, 2010
When Margo Timmins strolled up to the microphone in her low-cut black cocktail dress, wrapped in a scarlet shawl, with a rusty shock of hair draped over one eye a la Veronica Lake, even if you'd never seen Cowboy Junkies before, there was no mistaking her star power at the Villa Montalvo's Garden Theatre in the summer of '09. Timmins and two of her brothers, Michael on guitar and Peter on drums, along with bassist Alan Anton, have been doing the slow boil as Cowboy Junkies since 1985. As its name implies, the Toronto-based quartet specializes in quiet, ultra-slow tunes that might sound comforting to strung-out cowpokes hunkered down around a campfire after a long day rounding up stray dogies. MAGNET recently spoke to Margo, who, along with her band mates, will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "Stranger Here" (download): [audio:StrangerHere.mp3] MAGNET: You told a good story at the Cowboy Junkies' show at Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, Calif., about taking your son, Ed, out on the road. He ran into a piece of luggage and cut his head open, and you got blood on your face while bandaging him. He looks up at you and says, "Mommy, you look like a vampire." How was it taking your son on tour? Timmins: Oh, it's the worst, really. It's like taking your kid to work with a split brain. They know you're not giving them 100 percent attention, and you know you're not giving 100 percent to your band. And you're the one at the end of the day who doesn't feel that you've done anything wrong. Do you ever get crackpots calling you at home? Rock fans gone amok, stalkers? No, no, I've been pretty lucky that way. When I lived downtown, I used to have a few people jump over my fence. But now I live out in the burbs, and nobody knows me. I was in the country for a while. I have a farmhouse. But now with my son in school, I have to be in town, so I moved closer to my parents for the better schools. It's another lifestyle, but I don't mind it at all. I kinda like it, quiet. So, you never thought about home-schooling him while on the road? [Laughs] I can barely get through his homework. It's a lot tougher to be a kid nowadays. My mom just let us out of the house after breakfast and expected us back for dinner. Now it's all structured. Yeah, I'm one of these parents who says, "He's old enough to walk to school by himself." And the other kids' mothers look at me like I'm really a bad mother. It's crazy, it really is. And I don't think it teaches the kids anything. Here's one for you. Any idea why there are so many great Canadian musicians? Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, the Band, Arcade Fire, right off the top? Well, you know what my theory is? In order to become successful you have to be accepted by the Americans, right, because it's a bigger audience. So, I figure you guys, out of all the Canadian bands, pick the better ones, which makes it look like all the Canadians are really talented. Maybe so, it's natural selection. We only get the cream of the cream. Exactly. But I also think our tradition of music is based on a folk scene of singer/songwriters. Which, of course, you guys have in spades. When we write, we're often writing about you guys and your life. "American Woman" by the Guess Who, as an obvious example. As Canadians, we're quite fascinated with what's going on in America. We have this big, huge neighbor that we have a lot of things in common with and a lot of things that aren't in common. Did you ever see the 1982 Canadian indie movie called Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, about an all-girl punk band trying to survive? It starred Diane Lane and Laura Dern when they were teenagers. Some of their problems are the same old sexist trip: You're girls, you can't be any good, that kind of thing. Have you experienced much of that in your career? I can't say I have. But I have to say, I've had the security of being protected by my brothers, Mike and Pete. Not that they've made a show of it, but they've always been there, and our bass player, Alan, too. I've known him since I was a kid. A long time ago we played a motorcycle club in Barrie (Ontario), and there I was, onstage singing my songs in front of a bunch of motorcycle boys, yelling whatever they had to yell. I was like a mess, I didn't know how to deal with this. It was not my lifestyle. My brothers didn't like it, either: This was their sister. They could see that I was upset and rattled. They quickly closed ranks and told me to turn around and look at them and just focus on the music. And when we've seen inappropriate things in magazines, they've laughed it off and made me laugh at it and not take it seriously. It's not just the sexist stuff but also the negative stuff. Sure, you've gotta have a tough hide to be an entertainer. As a woman, when critics write about your show, they tend to discuss your looks, your outfit. I mean, they don't discuss Mick Jagger's looks. Especially nowadays. I don't know if it was stage fright, but I've read that when you started singing with the band, you didn't want to face the audience. Yeah, that's how I started off, for sure. I never was a shy person, but the idea of standing onstage was a place I'd never imagined myself to be or even wanted to be. I wanted to have six children like my mom and make beds. Is it true you wanted to be a go-go dancer, as a kid? [Laughs] Yes, I was very young, before I realized what it really meant. I think I liked the boots. I didn't realize you got ogled by a bunch of men. That was the beauty of being in a band like Cowboy Junkies. My brothers knew my personality right from the beginning and sort of knew that I had to grow into this onstage person. And they allowed me to. I've interviewed both Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks, who, reportedly, have had pretty good dust-ups onstage, although I've never seen one. Have you ever had problems like that with Mike and Pete? Well, not onstage. Never fist-fights. I would think with the Davies brothers, there was probably some alcohol involved. I think being in a band is like a marriage. You're living close together in very awkward circumstances, in a tour bus. You're not sleeping, not eating. You're making decisions that affect your career, and like in a marriage, you don't always agree on how things should go. Everybody has their own needs. We've definitely been mad at each other. But we've never had a big fight on the bus in front of anybody. There's never been anybody losing it and having a dramatic scene. We certainly have not liked each other backstage and snarled. But, even when we were little, I've always been the nurturer. I seriously did want to have six kids. Also I think having three of us makes a difference. When I'm mad at Mike, I can go to Pete and tell him what an idiot Mike is, and vice versa. There's always somebody to complain to and get it out of your system. We have three other siblings, my parents are still together. We have always been very aware if Mike and I or Pete and I aren't talking, and we allow ourselves to get to that point where we destroy our relationship, we would destroy if for a lot other people. It would just be terrible. So, we never let anything get too stupid. Tell me what your parents thought when you told them what the name of the band was. My parents were before the hippie generation, but I don't think they were shocked at the name. They had listened to all our crazy music for years and watched us go through our punk stage with our awful hair and awful makeup. I think they were more worried about having half of their kids in a van that was driving across the country for long, long distances, late at night on icy roads and exhausted. We would drive from Toronto to Montreal to do a gig, then turn around and come back to go to work. We were young and had no idea of our mortality. How did you evolve the slow, slower and slowest sound of the band? [Laughs] I'm not a big loud singer, and I'm not a big loud person, so that helped keep it quiet. I think with slow music there's more space. When we started out, we weren't very good musicians. We like the space. The space was something that all of us could hear as part of the music, as opposed to, "Oh my God, the space, we've got to do something there, put a horn in." The tempos allowed us to think of what we were going to do next. We always wrote songs by jamming, right from the very early days. Then listen to the tapes and say, "Well, this part's sort of cool, let's work on that." Fill me in, if you would, on the back-story of the new album, Renmin Park. Your family spent three months in China? How long ago was that? No, it wasn't me. It was Mike. He has three children, two of which are adopted girls from China. He wanted to go to China to show his daughters their roots. He really wanted to experience the culture as much as he could. His wife is a second-language teacher, so she got a job in a school. They really were the only white people in their village. Obviously, it was life-changing. Michael was really taken with the sounds of everyday life. He emailed us to send him a digital recorder. He went around taping everything, people doing their tai-chi in the parks, playing badminton. The parks are their playgrounds, so they're huge. Every city has a Renmin Park, which translates into "people's park." And they go there to do everything, not just picnic. That's where life happens. The whole album is a love story with China, a complicated situation. A lot of the sounds he taped are used on the album as background loops. The three of us who didn't go were easily led by Mike, because we've always trusted his musical vision, but from Mike's perspective it was daring. I have to say, I'm quite proud of that album. I saw the band back in the '80s at the Fillmore, but when you walked onstage last summer at the Montalvo estate, with your shock of red hair and wrapped in a scarlet shawl, even if somebody didn't know who you were, the star-power was overwhelming. You said somewhere that you think your hair is just as important as your music. Is that true? [Laughs] I must have been in my assertive mode that night. I think my hair has been written about more than anything else. For me personally, there are moments in the show when things are going well when I have hidden behind my hair, like the curtain closes for a moment. Being aware of the quiet nature of your music, I was surprised you were so chatty last summer. If I had never seen you live, I'd have thought you might not say anything onstage. It depends on the night. If I'm in the mood, I do. I'm not a shy person. If there's a story at hand, I'll tell it. The next night I might not say anything except to introduce the songs. There are nights when I'm missing home, I'm sadder or not feeling well. Or I don't have a story. And again, the boys have always allowed me to play it the way I feel it. I always go out after the show and speak with people. The material also changes from night to night. If I'm not feeling out there and bold, then it might be a softer version of the same song tonight. There are bands that play their set note-for-note the same every night, which I imagine could become a big bore. Yeah, totally. For us, we love playing live, because we never know what the night is going to bring. And when it's good that way, it's really good. Well, that's it. You still get that buzz when you get offstage. Even though I'm 50 years old now, I just feel invincible. That's what keeps you out there.

—Jud Cost

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Q&A With Rasputina’s Melora Creager

August 16, 2010
For almost two decades, Rasputina has carved out one of the most interesting niches in contemporary music. Melora Creager founded the cello-based ensemble in Brooklyn in 1992, and although the band has gone through numerous lineup changes, it continues to produce its distinctive, heavy-yet-haunting sound. Despite near-constant performing, Creager, fellow cellist Daniel DeJesus and percussionist Catie D’Amica have managed to release two LPs a month apart: live album The Pregnant Concert (so-named because Creager was pregnant with her second daughter at the time) and sixth studio full-length Sister Kinderhook (both on the Filthy Bonnet label). Rasputina even found time to be the subject of a documentary titled Under The Corset, which chronicles its tour experience on the West Coast. The group has been crisscrossing North America all summer in support of the albums, giving its rabid fanbase more chances to party like it’s 1799. Creager will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "Holocaust Of Giants" (download): [audio:HolocaustOfGiants.mp3] MAGNET: You've had nearly 20 members/touring musicians in your history. Why do you think so many artists are eager to play with Rasputina? Creager: Some have been sure we were about to "hit it big.” Most have been somewhat inexperienced coming into the band. It doesn't take long to tire of touring. Most people have their own project that is their true love. How do you think the band has changed over the past two decades? I've gained so much skill and confidence over the years. That changes the presentation and increases the fun. You are touring extensively and you have a baby daughter at home. How do you find a good balance between your music and your family responsibilities? I can't and don't waste time, but even if I catch a moment to daydream, that's still working for me. My schedule is pretty free form, so I can focus properly on my daughters. In some ways, art suffers. I haven't written a book or made elaborate staging. But I know I'm doing my personal best for family and music. How is the tour going so far? Really well! I have a sweet, fun group, and it's cool how we get tighter from playing every night. Your band has been credited with being one of the musical focal points of the steampunk scene. Do you embrace that description, or do you find it limiting? No, I don't get into those genre labels. They pass quickly by, and they're more about style than substance. Too bad that a couple of quick words can't describe us, but it's better in the end. New member Daniel DeJesus has his own project called DeJesus and is a visual artist, as well. How does his aesthetic fit in with the Rasputina vibe? Daniel has a lot of creative energy to put into the group. He has fun with costumes and knows a lot about art history. He knows what I'm trying to say and can add more to it. Your daughter sings a song on your album Frustration Plantation. Does she plan to follow in your footsteps to be a musician? Hollis is not so into making music. She has a darn good mind for management, however. She's always got my back. Sister Kinderhook was officially released in June, but it had been made available online for streaming for months. Do you think this increased interest in the album? The streaming album may have whetted fans' appetites some, but it was intended as a convenience for the press. Hopefully, it's mostly hardcore fans that listened to the streaming, people who will buy it later and have a basic understanding of how free downloading hurts artists. You've worked with musicians like Nirvana, Marilyn Manson and Chris Vrenna of Nine Inch Nails. What about your music do you think appeals to other artists with very different styles? Those are people from long ago who each had different reasons for being interested in me. Nirvana needed a good cellist who wouldn't get a big head, Manson liked my aesthetic, and Chris got his start producing. Under The Corset, Dawn Miceli’s documentary about your group, was just released. How did you feel about being the subjects of a film? Was the process difficult? Not difficult at all. Dawn is the kind of person you feel like you've known forever. I like the movie she made, how she presented us and for people to know that we're humble folks who are working really hard. You had a track featured on Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Album. How did that come about? Are you a fan of the show? That darn vampire song got used for all kinds of things lo, those many moons ago. The song was used in a scene in the show where Drusilla does a little dance. I’ve heard you are a big history buff, and you reference many historical events in your lyrics. What about the past inspires you to write? I get inspired by how people have remained basically the same emotionally over vast amounts of time. I like to describe details and to share weird knowledge with people through music. It's like a note from me to you. Many people find the cello to be the most beautiful-sounding of all musical instruments. What about the cello makes it so evocative? The cello has the same range as a human voice, so that affects us. It sounds like one of us! And it's capable of such sadness. Who are your biggest musical influences? Which classical/Baroque artists do you enjoy most? I like some modern minimalists like Michael Nyman, Arvo Pärt and Gavin Bryars. There have been issues with carpal tunnel syndrome in the group. Is everyone healed up right now? I've corrected my grips and posture. Yoga helps. I'm wearing an elastic shoulder-puller-backer right now! What goals have you yet to achieve with Rasputina? Alarmingly, we haven't played in Europe yet. What is special about your hardcore fans? The personal connection they feel—how they link parts of their lives with different Rasputina songs.

—Danielle Bacher

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Q&A With Trans Am

August 9, 2010

Trans Am walks the same line between substance and style that its namesake car model did in its heyday. Often considered the leading light of the '90s post-rock scene, the Maryland-based trio switches between big, loud rawk riffing and spacey, experimental ambience, sometimes within the same song. Criticized (or celebrated) as a bunch of arch ironists, Trans Am gleans imagery and sounds from the synth- and vocoder-heavy music of decades past, but also informs its songs with a detached, millennial indie attitude. Nathan Means, Philip Manley and Sebastian Thomson also have a tendency to refer to themselves in the collective third person and to assume unusual, even bizarre positions about music and society. Similarly, the group shifts gears from album to album, and this intellectual restlessness continues with the atmospheric, trippy Thing (Thrill Jockey). The LP should appeal both to new-school stoner-metal fans and the hippie oldheads at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, where Trans Am will be playing a free show on August 18. Means will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "Apparent Horizon" (download): [audio:ApparentHorizon.mp3] MAGNET: In the mid-1990s, you were lumped into the post-rock scene. Did you feel that you were part of a fraternity of like-minded musicians then? Manley: We lived in Washington, D.C., and were kind of on the periphery of that scene. Most of those bands were living in Chicago or Pittsburgh. We were not really fraternizing with any scene in earnest. The D.C. hardcore scene definitely wouldn't have us as part of their scene. I guess you could say we were scene-less, more or less. Thomson: We were a little bit clueless about scenes back then. Maybe it was partly intentional? Means: I think we felt more like we were in a college fraternity. Do you know how amazing it is for three 23-year-olds to get a free case of beer every night? But as far as your actual question goes, I think we definitely liked certain bands. Among our early touring partners were UI and Tortoise, both of whom fit into the “post-rock” genre. It was fun to watch them; they are all great musicians and were certainly doing something a little out of tune with then-current trends, which made it exciting. But I don't think we completely identified with them. We probably identified more with another early touring partner, Six Finger Satellite, who were not post-rock. But they rocked harder and definitely knew who Chrome was. In a way, it's contextual. I remember indie music in the mid-‘90s as a lot of horrible noise made by people who couldn't sing, play their instruments or write songs. It was cool to be out of tune, not that much fun and kind of suck. (Exception: Polvo was a magnificent band that was frequently totally out of tune). But this memory may also be affected by living in D.C. then, which was suffering from a post-hardcore hangover. That scene had burned pretty bright in the ‘80s, but by 1995, Dischord was putting out some really awful music. So, we just wanted to not be those bands and we stopped singing and started playing keyboards and tried to do something fun and interesting that fit in with our affection for Kraftwerk, Manowar and Deep Purple. What were your favorite records by other post-rock bands during that time? Manley: Tortoise’s self-titled album and Don Caballero’s II. Means: I have the strongest memory of listening to Tortoise's Millions Now Living Will Never Die, and there's a part where the dub bass line wanders off in to this new world. There are only a few moments when you actually feel your mind opening. That was one of them. Your music references both late-'70s rock like Boston and REO Speedwagon and arty synth pop of the same era like Kraftwerk. What is it about this period that influenced you so much? Means: Well, Phil and I came from a blues background. I learned how to play bass with friends doing lot of pretty basic 16-bar blues progressions. Of course, a lot of '50s and '60s music pretty obviously came from the same place. We were (and are) into a lot of that music, but it was just sort of the foundation for what was coming, like heavy metal and beyond ... The 1970s were an awful time in many ways, but there was a sort of celebration of weird space freaks; you could see it from David Bowie to Funkadelic. There were new keyboards and effects and electronics available, and generally, shit was falling apart. By the end of the 1970s, that sort of experimental aesthetic was being pushed really hard, even by groups with commercial ambitions. I loved that. Of course, we still like plenty of '80s acts, but I think that might be why we liked the period immediately earlier better. Or it could be because it was the era just before we started listening to pop radio in our teens. Manley: Growing up with this music, I guess it becomes part of your subconscious. These influences might be more obvious on our first couple albums, but I can't say I hear any Boston or REO influence on our newer records. Do you? Kraftwerk will always be an influence as long as we're playing synthesizers. Thomson: I personally only hear this supposed Boston/REO influence in a handful of our early tracks. What surprises me is that critics rarely mention the much more obvious influences: the Police, Chrome, the Jesus Lizard, DAF, PiL. It's like this ‘70s AOR meme got inserted in some early reviews and writers have been regurgitating it ever since. The band was founded in Washington, D.C., yet never had much to do musically with the punk/hardcore scene based around Dischord. Do you feel that the city influenced your musical style? Manley: The city definitely did influence our music style. We were big Fugazi fans. Thomson: I would say that Fugazi and Bad Brains were pretty huge influences for us when we started playing together. By the time the first album was released, we had assimilated other music. Means: We moved from blues stuff in our early teens to heavier music influenced by Dischord and funk metal. We also played with Dischord bands like the Holy Rollers and Shudder To Think at local benefits and stuff. But obviously, we never really fit in, and Dischord never released any of our records. Phil met with Ian (MacKaye) once about an early demo, but nothing happened. Manley: I guess the Dischord DIY thing has always stuck with us. DC has a very rich musical history beyond Dischord. Marvin Gaye and Funkadelic lived there, and the go-go scene in D.C. was also an influence. Means: To this day, I am a bit puzzled by how completely we were written out of the "D.C. scene," even in retrospectives that include the 1990s. We were definitely there, people came to see us, we had friends in the scene, and we had a much bigger national profile than all but a few bands like Fugazi and the Make-Up. But we somehow didn't make the cut. Of course, we didn't really want to fit in since a lot of that music was inexcusably bad—maybe people clued into that. You’ve been together for 20 years. What do you think has changed musically and what has remained the same within the band? Manley: That's a hard one to answer. I think the little bit of hardcore music that you could hear in our earlier work has long since evaporated. The simplicity of the songwriting has stayed the same. We do have more of a vocal element to our sound these days than we did to start. The keyboards we use now are a bit more sophisticated than the Casios we were using to start with. We had to ditch those because they were unreliable on tour. Thomson: The songwriting/recording process has changed a lot. Most of the tracks on our early records were performed in one take, but now we also build songs bit by bit in the studio. We also now know how to sequence synths. We're finally catching up to 1980s technology. Means: I think we are more focused. I think we can do what we want in the studio more easily. This is good and bad; sometimes the best stuff happens when you have no idea what's going on. Also, our live show is a lot more consistent since we learned to either not drink beer or drink most of the beer after the show. A lot of our early shows were trainwrecks. You guys seem to have a fascination, perhaps even an obsession, with outer space and sci-fi themes. Where did this originate? Means: That's a crazy question! I can't speak for the other dudes, but I think lots of kids are really into outer space and rocket ships and robots and sci-fi. And lots of adults are, too. Was it a trip to the planetarium? Was it when I saw Dune? Was it when I started taking Kraftwerk seriously? Was it academic theorizing about cyborgs? I can't really say. It's just fun and expansive and cool. Manley: From smoking pot and watching Star Trek. Your new album Thing has some spacier, prog-sounding tunes. Do you go for a conscious vibe on each record? Manley: We started that record as a soundtrack for a film that got canned. We were partway into making the record when we heard that it had lost its funding. We decided to carry on recording it as a soundtrack anyway. The idea of making a movie soundtrack helped give us focus and direction. Some of our records have a conscious theme. For instance, TA was the party record and Liberation was the political record. We don't assign themes to all our records. Sex Change is theme-less, I would say. Means: Well, this last album began as a sci-fi soundtrack for a film that lost funding, so yes on Thing. Sex Change had a developed method for writing but maybe no "vibe." I find that the vibe normally develops when we are in the studio mixing. At some point I think, "Oh, that's what this record does." And, hopefully, it is good. Thrill Jockey has released all of your records. What about the label appeals to you so much? Means: Well, Thrill Jockey gave one of the only real offers we got for the first album. That was in large part due to John McEntire, who recorded it and who was in Tortoise. I don't know that we ever seriously considered going anywhere else with an album for a while, although we did put out some 12-inch releases on other labels. Like any long-term relationship, we've had our ups and downs. But at the end of the day, Thrill Jockey lets us do what we want musically, they generally appreciate it, and they do a good job on the business end. Lots of labels, even equally high-profile and respected ones, don't do as good a job and/or pay their bands as well. So, that's more or less what we want in a label. Manley: It’s a great label. We've all had dealings with other labels over the years, and I can say that we're lucky to be on Thrill Jockey. They are reliable, fair and our friends. Also, they are big fans of our weird music. Often, the band has performed or been photographed in costumes. Do you enjoy playing with your image visually? Manley: Yes. It's show business. It's fun to perform and entertain. Dressing up in costume is part of this show-business tradition. Means: Again, it comes back to having fun, being a little playful and not taking yourself too seriously. We're three dudes in a rock band! How fucking stupid and trite is that? We better be having fun! Thomson: One of the attractions of being a musician is the license to live outside of "normal" society and its norms. Why not take advantage of that? To bore people should not be part of a musician's job description. Like Nate, I'm also suspicious of musicians who take themselves too seriously. If you want to prove how smart you are, get a Ph.D.; don't play in a band. Last year, you released an album of live recordings compiled over the course of 15 years. What would a listener experience through your live music that they wouldn't through your studio work? Manley: Excessive volume and sweat. Possibly getting spit on by Seb, the drummer. Means: Well, lots of people have told us that we are much better live. I think they like the visceral impact and musicianship on display. That's probably it. How do you feel about playing at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame this month? Do you think the crowd will be significantly different from your usual concertgoers? Manley: It's a free outdoor concert. Possibly more families will come out? Maybe more homeless Trans Am fans? I'm not too sure. We like playing in Cleveland generally, and it's been a while since we played there. We're all looking forward to it. Means: Yeah, a free show at the Hall Of Fame should be a little different. We're excited. Will you be playing North American dates besides the Hall of Fame soon? Manley: Yes, we'll be doing a West Coast tour in November. Means: The dates should be up soon on our website. In the past, you have played Creedence Clearwater Revival songs live. Are they a favorite band of yours? Manley: I guess you could say that they're up there among our favorite bands. We’ve covered Foreigner more than any other band, though. Means: CCR were a pretty good band. I wouldn't say I like them more than, say, the Eagles, but they have some good, basic tunes. John Fogerty has the right voice for that. However, why they covered "Heard It Through the Grapevine" is beyond me. I wouldn't touch anything that Marvin Gaye had performed. You've recorded soundtrack music for the PSP game After Burner: Black Falcon. Have you played the game yourselves? Are you planning on doing a soundtrack for another game anytime soon? Means: It wasn't actually a special soundtrack; they just used some of our old songs. But we would definitely record a soundtrack for a video game if asked. I'd also like to actually finish a movie score. Manley: I have not played the game, but we’re always open to doing more video-game soundtracks.

—Danielle Bacher

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Order Celebrex

August 2, 2010

Few indie artists have influenced as many musicians as Stuart Moxham Order celebrex, has in his career. Whether as a member of Young Marble Giants, the G!st or solo, the Cardiff, Wales, native has produced one of the most distinctive catalogs of the past 30 years. His latest release, Personal Best (hABIT), comprar celebrex baratos, is a 20-track compilation of solo material from 1981 to the present. The album is sequenced non-chronologically and kicks off with “Vampire Of Love,” a jaunty tune with intricate classical guitar and handclaps. “Save It,” from 2007’s The Huddle House collaboration with Louis Philippe, is a mournful highlight and proves that Moxham’s post-YMG output has been criminally overlooked by countless fans. The oldest track here, 1981’s “Settled Hash,” is actually one of the most forward-looking; its bleeps and whooshes remind one of the indie electro that’s become popular in music-geek circles over the past few years, order celebrex. Billige celebrex Apotheke, Moxham and the other members of YMG have performed together again recently, and many longtime fanatics are hoping the group finally records a follow-up to 1980's Colossal Youth, its sole album. Personal Best, however, proves that Moxham has turned out plenty of worthy music on his own. Moxham will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week.

"Autumn Song" (download):
[audio:AutumnSong.mp3]

MAGNET: Young Marble Giants never sold a ton of records, ordering celebrex, but they influenced many later bands such as Nirvana.  What about YMG do you feel inspired so many other artists.
 Order celebrex, Moxham: I beg to differ. We reached the top of the indie chart back in the day, and we have sold consistently for 30 years with a huge surge since the Domino re-release in 2007. Don't forget that the indie sector had the majors on the ropes for a spell, with "our" chart needing more sales to get to number one. Those were the days. Celebrex online kopen, As for influence, it’s not for me to say. I can never recognize YMG influence in other people until someone points it out, order celebrex.

You grew up in Cardiff.  Do you feel part of a lineage of Welsh musical and literary artists.
 I don't, sadly. Until very recently, Wales was totally ignored, as were all provincial places, Køb discount celebrex, by the mainstream music biz. It was only because Geoff Travis, Rough Trade and their like were music-oriented, as opposed to money-oriented, that bands like us got a break. Order celebrex, I would love to be proud of feeling part of a glorious Welsh lineage, but we were hardly recognized in Wales until the BBC did a radio documentary in 2007. We came to attention before Wales did, Om celebrex online, musically speaking. It was too early to be included in the limelight now being enjoyed there. I did a solo gig at the Laugharne Festival in Dylan Thomas' home village, though, and that was a thrill.

What led to the demise of Young Marble Giants, and why did you decide to reunite.
 The demise, order celebrex. The usual crap, order celebrex c.o.d.. The reunion. To write a new album but definitely not to do gigs as an ‘80s comeback.

Before YMG, you performed in a cover band called True Wheel. Order celebrex, What type of songs did you cover.
 True Wheel covered "Superstition," “Sweet Jane, Pharmacy celebrex, " “Black Magic Woman," etc. Not my choices. The band was Matthew Davis' vehicle, but I enjoyed it.

Was it difficult performing in a band with your brother Philip. Was the fact that he was dating YMG singer Alison Statton at the time an issue.
 Good question, order celebrex. Phil and I have an intuitive, brotherly musical connection that is tacit, celebrex sale, as you can imagine. It's a major strength. And let's not forget that he and I arrived at the YMG sound/style together. His aesthetic filtered into and my influenced my writing. Order celebrex, Their dating per se was not an issue for me. It was more that I didn't have plans for anyone else to be in the band as I had imagined it. They presented me with a fait accompli: "It's both of us or nothing." As I was planning for failure anyway, Order celebrex online cheap, I accepted, and the demise of the band was therefore incorporated, as the rigors of relationships dissolving (mine with Wendy Smith at the same time) and touring in a fierce and totally unexpected spotlight, along with the added mayhem of Olympian ganja intake, took their toll. We had no plan-b for success, either, let alone plans for a second record, comprar en línea celebrex.

There were plans for a Young Marble Giants tribute album in the early 1990s, but it never materialized. What happened, order celebrex.
 I have no idea.

You have said that you managed to record Colossal Youth in five days and mix it in about 20 minutes. Was that out of necessity, or were you so inspired that it came together quickly. Connecticut CT Conn. , I felt the project was doomed to failure, given its Welsh context. Order celebrex, I didn't want to waste any time, so we were super-efficient: one hour of music, all playable by three people and one cassette player, whether live or in a studio. We were inspired. I definitely pulled out all the stops, because I was 25 and had no future but felt like songwriting and playing guitar were my only chance.

Your early musical influences included artists such as Kraftwerk, Iggy Pop, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, comprar celebrex. Which newer artists are influencing your solo material.
 Phew, that's so difficult, order celebrex. It's only in retrospect, when listening to a Cat Stevens or Ultravox album, that I realize how they influenced me. You can't tell at the time. I guess I admire people like Prefab Sprout and Fleet Foxes, Celebrex online kaufen, but I see us as kind of stablemates. I think it's people who do something radically different than one’s self who actually influence, and to be honest, I'm not really aware of anyone like that. Order celebrex, As you get older you realize that music is all mathematics anyway. Ha.

How did the G!st differ in style and content from Young Marble Giants.
 YMG had a cast-iron formula, if you like, cheap celebrex tablets, for the style and sound of the music we made. The G!st's was experimentation. Having been released from the lovely strictures of YMG's aesthetic, it was inevitable that, in lieu of a solid idea about how to proceed and with technology replacing band members, I turned to free-form noodling, order celebrex.

You just released a compilation of your solo work, Personal Best, on your own hABIT label. What prompted you to collect these songs. Buy celebrex, If you mean why those particular songs, well I couldn't think of a better criterion than choosing the stuff I personally like the most. I think it gives a good sample of what is a large catalogue. Order celebrex, I couldn't include any YMG or G!st stuff, because it's all out there on Domino and Cherry Red, respectively. However, I am planning a live YMG record and DVD based on our recent gigs. There is also quite a bit of unheard G!st material for a future compilation to be called Musical Headstone.

When do you plan to release a new solo album of all original material.
 The Devil Laughs will be my next new full-length solo album of all original material (I'm recording it now), celebrex prices, but there will be a six-track mini-album, Six Winter Mornings, coming out meanwhile as a taster and to keep the flag flying while the full album is in production. Dates, order celebrex. Well, probably September for Six Winter Mornings, and The Devil Laughs should be early 2011. Florida FL Fla. , You were diagnosed with clinical depression as a young man. How has that affected your recording career.
 I did what doubt allowed. It's very interesting how one copes with depression and how one lives with it. Order celebrex, I think depression is mental growing pains; we get it when we are ignoring a need to change. Depression is there for a reason, and like any negative, finding the reason for it turns it into a positive. It's not a meaningless plague, despite the way it may feel, Alaska AK . Depression has made me careful with myself, made me parent myself, take responsibility for myself, look after myself. Part of that is, paradoxically, Pennsylvania PA Penn. , giving up the impossible fantasy that one is omnipotent. True peace comes from accepting the love of your higher power, order celebrex. I read something in The Guardian today about how a long-term lack of love makes men destroy the world. Our Creator loves us all always, equally and without distinction. I've learned, from bitter experience, from counseling and from loving friends, to be completely honest always, Nebraska NE Nebr. . Or at least to try. Order celebrex, Honesty becomes habitual and builds on itself, making mendacity irrelevant. Most importantly: Do it now—don't procrastinate! I think the depth and intensity of thought that accompanied my determination to understand my mental anguish contributed hugely to the content of my material. Also, I'm an indefatigable optimist, and as lovely Babs Manning said, “Optimism is its own reward.”

What was it like recording music with both your father and your daughter. Celebrex without prescription, Truly wonderful. It was the first time my dad (at 81, a lifelong singer who has membership of the BBC Welsh Chorus in his CV) had ever sung solo into a microphone!  He was a true pro, and it was a delight to produce him. It was similar with my daughter Melody, who was so attuned to the music and even contributed harmony ideas of her own, order celebrex. She will be featuring regularly on my recordings.

What prompted The Huddle House with Louis Philippe. Do you plan to work together on another project in the future.
 I met Louis (and Ken Brake, celebrex, the third member of the team) in 1993, when I was looking for a studio to make Random Rules. Order celebrex, He's very proactive (I call him Louis "Action Direct" Philippe) and he got involved in that session to good effect. Over the intervening years, we have enjoyed working together both live and in the studio. His contributions to my projects became greater with time; we made "You Built A Path" from Personal Best together in my attic one day when he visited. He actually took charge of what became The Huddle House project, Cheap celebrex online without prescription, getting it up and running on my behalf. It was the culmination of our long musical courtship and the pinnacle of my recording career so far in terms of performance, arrangement and production values. I'm currently waiting for him to come to my new studio, The Signal Box, to contribute to the Devil Laughs sessions.

What are your musical goals for the next year, order celebrex.
 So many. To utilize the excellent new people I'm working with: Charlie Rose, Melody Moxham, order celebrex online, songwriting/guitarist partner Ken Brake and another beautiful singer (to be announced). Our first collaboration, "East," will feature on TDL, as well as my trusty posse of musical compadres. Also, to grab current opportunities and make the most of them. Order celebrex, Apart from the two records amply plugged above, I am a bass singer (like my father) in a local choir, Maxwell's Silver Hummers, doing Bacharach, Abba, Leonard Cohen, etc., and loving it. I will take the time to practice and gig with them. I’ve also just bought a drum kit on eBay this very evening, and I will joyfully get back into audible dancing. I am also preparing to record an album by a singer/songwriter called Jim Driscoll in my studio and want to develop that strand of my endeavors, as well as hABIT and my own songwriting and gigs. My dream is to quit the day job, of course. Young Marble Giants are on very good form, and I'm still trying to realize my conviction that we can make more exceptional YMG music. I have a new song for the band, which none of them have heard yet. I want to play it to them live, in a room full of instruments and a recording device.

—Danielle Bacher

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Buy Adipex

July 26, 2010

Talking to Apples in stereo frontman Robert Schneider is something like sitting around the kitchen table with a few friends and a six-pack while knocking out the screenplay for a new episode of Seinfeld Buy adipex, . OK, give me four totally diverse topics and that will be a new show: Muffin tops, a kid in a germ-proof bubble, going out with Marisa Tomei and poisoned glue on envelopes. With Schneider at the controls of this magic-bus ride, he pulls the topics he likes out of thin air like some deranged conjurer, instantly discards and modifies them, apologizes for going off the tracks, osta alennus adipex, backs the engine up to the starting point, begins talking about something entirely different, then excuses himself to take brief notes on some future project while humming a melody that's just popped into his head. He's easily the most dynamic, fascinating interview subject I've ever encountered—and I've done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of 'em. He's also one of a handful of great songwriters to emerge over the past 20 years, a psych/pop genius whose knack for addictive melodies and memorable lyrics is perfectly obvious on Travellers In Space And Time (Simian/Yep Roc). To no one's surprise, he's also been discovered by nationally focused advertising agencies for high-profile TV ad campaigns, buy adipex. Online adipex, Schneider "relaxed" for as long as he could to speak with MAGNET from his home in Lexington, Ky. Schneider will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week.

"Dance Floor" (download):
[audio:DanceFloor.mp3]

MAGNET: What are you doing right now, Robert.
Schneider: I'm watching a butterfly on a flower on my back porch. Buy adipex, It's quite idyllic. Maybe you should interview the butterfly. It would be very psychedelic. Oh, Alaska AK , oh, I have a friend in Lexington who's a follower of Baba. He went to India for a year to the hometown of Baba. He's the grandfather of a kid who's on my son Max's elementary-school basketball team, so he and I got to be friends, buy adipex. He grew up in New Jersey, but he lived in New York City when the whole Village scene was happening. He saw Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett. He saw the Velvet Underground with Nico, Order adipex online, all in small clubs. He was a teenager at the time. Buy adipex, And then he moved to San Francisco and was a total hippie with a huge afro. He was there for all the free concerts in Golden Gate Park. He went to Woodstock. He was walking back to crash in his van when Jimi Hendrix played "The Star-Spangled Banner." He's in the Woodstock movie because a friend of his was on the crew, so they let him watch most of the concert from the side of the stage. He passed out against one of the speakers when the Who played. If you look in the movie you can see this hippie lying against the speaker, buy adipex. He was friends with Abbie Hoffman.

Wow, Kjøp Discount adipex, he's like Forrest Gump.
 It's exactly like that.

Did you have any thoughts about going to the World Cup, back to re-visit your South African roots.
 Buy adipex, I'd love to go. I don't really follow soccer that much, so of all possible times to go, I think I wouldn't have gone during all that mass of people descending upon the country. Um adipex online, I moved to America right at the time that one would get into sports, so I didn't ever get into any sports from any country. I'm a man without a sport. But Max likes basketball and that's awesome. He's the man with a sport, buy adipex. I really wish we could tour in South Africa. I went back as a kid on vacation in 1981 or something. But I haven't been back since the country became free. In my little-kid world over there, I never noticed any lack of integration, North Dakota ND . Buy adipex, Then when I was a teenager or in my early 20s, I was afraid of flying. So when I might have hitched a ride back there with my parents, I was terrified of flying. Even in the early days of the Apples, we turned down tours overseas. Now I'm kicking myself for that. I do want to go back to South Africa. I have a grandmother over there who's, like, a 101, buy adipex.

I have to tell you about playing Apples albums, Cheap adipex, especially your new one, Travellers In Space And Time, and your previous one, New Magnetic Wonder. Your songs are so hypnotic, so instantly memorable, that I have to stop playing the records. I can't get the damn songs out of my head.
 [Laughs heartily] Well, ordering adipex no prescription, that's a good sign. Buy adipex, That really means a lot to me. Thank you so much.

The first thing you hear on the new album is the sound of a stylus being dropped on an LP on a turntable. Most kids in the digital world wouldn't even know what that was.
 It had to start like that. I want records to be preserved in the future, buy adipex. Records are the most durable and simple-to-use sound format that's ever been invented. It's really too scary to think that in 50 years you won't be able to decode a CD. Where to buy cheap adipex, There won't be the hardware available to decode something as primitive as a CD. But you could still play a record with a record player. Buy adipex, That's why they sent records into space.

Yeah, you could probably stick your fingernail or your claw into an LP and hear something, it's so simple.
 Exactly. And the concept of the LP spinning like a wheel is almost universal, to people anyway. I wanted the new record to be futuristic, adipex pedido en línea, that we were making music for the future. On one hand, of course, we're copping lots of influences from the past, buy adipex. But the main thing was to imagine what our style of baroque-pop music would sound like in 50 years. A lot of that had to do with stereotypes of the future that I grew up with, like from sci-fi and stuff. In that way, it ended up being more retro than futuristic, really. Cheap adipex online cheap, The vision of the future that I really love is the retro-vision. Buy adipex, It's not a really dire vision.

Like that movie The Road or even District 9. Neither one paints a very pretty picture.
 I'm 100-percent certain that the world and humanity will evolve toward a positive future. By necessity, it has to happen. That things will somehow force the right kinds of changes and decisions to be made, buy adipex. But even destruction, if that happens, it'll be more like a reduction in the life as we know it with the sparking of some kind of new balance, acquistare online adipex. Not the extinction of all life. It's kind of like The Time Machine where he goes 100,000 years into the future and finds this utopian world with huge fruits and vegetables hanging from the trees, but it turns out to be dark and scary, too. At that point we'll be able to decode our digital compact discs.

Buy adipex, Unfortunately, if they don't work, good luck cashing in on any warranty.
 We were also referencing our first album, Vermont VT Vt. , Fun Trick Noisemaker. I collect sound-effects records and old spoken-word records. I'm sure lots of people like you or me enjoy grabbing those things when you find them. Like, 1,000 lion roars of Mexico. I found that one record we used on the new album about Morse Code that says, "This is how you learn to speak the Code." It blew my mind: The Code, on its own it, sounded so mysterious, buy adipex. And he never says Morse Code on the whole thing.

Maybe it's like how references to the Super Bowl these days are subject to licensing by the NFL, so they just refer to it in vague terms as the Big Game, Michigan MI Mich. .
 The outro to the album uses a hypnotism LP made in 1959. I wanted it to be like a time capsule for the future but also a time capsule from the past. Buy adipex, I think you have the right to be a custodian of recordings as a recording artist. You can pull these little pieces from the past and re-work them. You keep that stuff alive. The grandkids of the guy who made that record in 1959 can now hear their grandfather's voice. His voice has the chance to live again and be contemporary. I like that concept, using found sounds, buy adipex.

Here's what I hear on the new Apples album. Cheap adipex overnight delivery, Definitely a big Jeff Lynne/ELO thing going on. Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." Joe Meek's space music. Cheap Trick.
 Buy adipex, Definitely Cheap Trick. I met Rick Nielsen between the last record and this one. They were a big influence.

And the cowbell intro to the song "Do Ya" by the Move.
 Our song is not a direct rip, but it's definitely a direct reference to "Do Ya." In fact, I wanted to cover "Do Ya, Montana MT Mont. ," but then I figured it would be better if we could just made our song sound more like it.

And the vocals sound like what the Stones were doing in the '80s, that Some Girls LP, buy adipex.
 Thank you. We were trying for that. That album had lots of "who-who"s on it.

I've never downloaded a ringtone in my life, but if I did, it would be "C.P.U." Great song that would startle the hell out of everybody in the check-out line at my local Nob Hill supermarket.
 Buy adipex, Is that the one that they made into the ringtone. Generic adipex, I don't know. Have they already done it.
 I'm gonna suggest that, because what a cool thing to have a ringtone with a futuristic sound. I've never downloaded one either, but having those non-Pythagorean ringtones is actually a really good idea. Maybe I should generate a few of them, compose a few different little melodies and turn them into ringtones, buy adipex. I'm gonna do that. I've gotta remember that. Do you mind if I write that down real fast, Jotta adipex verkossa. Good idea, Jud.

Buy adipex, I love the artwork on the new album, kind of a futuristic take on M.C. Escher.
 Definitely, definitely. Jimmy Mitchell, the guy who did our artwork, Adipex online kopen, is a genius. He's heavily influence by architecture in general. He's a draftsman who's designed furniture in the past, buy adipex. He lives down the street from me. Just in general in life, with no particular belief system in place, I like to take on different systems for a few days just to see how they feel. How you might see the world differently. I like to go by my gut. Buy adipex, Follow the threads, like finding silver in the rock. I tend to operate on synchronicities, buy adipex online legally. Not that I believe in them. I'm a reverend in the Church of the Subgenius. It's a dada, surrealist kind of—and the funniest and most truthful religion on earth. The central concept is that you seek slack, just like what it sounds like, buy adipex. You want things to go easily for you.

Like, cut me some slack. Buy adipex online cheap, Right, and the point of the thing is when you seek and you find slack, the whole thing multiplies so you try to follow coincidences and conspiracies and all sorts of funny stuff that comes up in the world. When you find the thread, you follow it. Buy adipex, They told me in Taiwan that I was a philosophical Taoist, not a religious Taoist. And that's how it's happened. Any person who's come into my life, anybody I've worked with, anybody in my band, New Mexico NM N.Mex. , it always happens by these lucky series of events. And I always follow them.

And you make your own luck. You're the kind of guy who would see luck and grab it while others would stand around scratching their heads, buy adipex.
 I think you follow the luck when you notice it. It's like the fact there are probably four-leaf clovers in every patch. You just have to look for them. I tend to find four-leaf clovers everyday, Acheter adipex bon marché, almost. Buy adipex, I think it's because I stare at the ground while I'm thinking. I was walking down the street in winter, the holiday season. And these new neighbors had moved in, one of the kids was in Max's class. And their house had this beautiful, illuminated light-art in the windows. A couple of the windowpanes it looked like Frank Lloyd Wright had taken a spaceship ride and come back to earth and very quickly made some art for these people's windows. It blew my mind. I was asking them about their windows, and the husband said , "Oh, I did that part." So he brought me in and showed me these amazingly detailed, painstakingly rendered drawings, buy adipex. He's obsessed with perspective by distorting it, Connecticut CT Conn. . And he knows how to do that M.C. Escher thing of bending the lines of perspective so everything connects. Then there's this wiggle room so you can make these illusions. Buy adipex, I never could quite grasp how people did that, but seeing him do it, I sort of get it. You can make an impossible shape happen.

There's no denying the guy's art certainly belongs on one of your albums.
 It reminds me of (Marvel comics artist) Jack Kirby crossed with M.C. Escher crossed with Frank Lloyd Wright. So everything he showed me was fucking, mindbogglingly incredible, buy adipex. I couldn't believe it. It's exactly the kind of art I like. At the time, we were beginning to record the new album, and I know this has to be the album art. I didn't tell him, I didn't ask him. Buy adipex, I didn't want to put any pressure on him. But I started to keep my eye on which drawings he was doing would work for Travellers In Space And Time. So the whole time we were recording I already knew what the art was going to look like. It sorta influenced how I wanted the album to sound like. Same thing happened with New Magnetic Wonder. This kid who was a fan of the band just sent me some collages in email form, buy adipex. It just dropped into my lap from heaven. This is slack. So I made New Magnetic Wonder sound like the artwork. All my friends from Elephant 6 were always inspired by art as a musical reference. Buy adipex, Usually, when we're in the studio, we'll bring up art and artists more than other bands as far as trying to describe what we're trying to go for.

Did you ever hear the unreleased-at-the-time album by Joe Meek & the Blue Men. All instrumentals in the vein of Space Age-era "Telstar," only much weirder, like if the Tornados actually came from another planet. Pretty strange stuff.
No, I've never heard of it. I've got to get that. Do you have The Ventures In Space. Is it beyond that?

Yeah, definitely weirder than that. I think it'd be right up your alley.

—Jud Cost

.

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Buy Modalert Online Cheap

July 19, 2010

Buy modalert online cheap, How do you best the anti-guitar-god bluster of arguably the most sonically bold and melodically sophisticated band of England’s shoegaze era. If you’re Swervedriver’s unflappable former leader, Adam Franklin, Louisiana LA , you don’t even try. You simply work off the various templates for greatness set forth by your former outfit, which, quite frankly, ordering modalert online cheap, spewed out enough novel ideas to sustain a half-dozen indie-rock careers. Which brings us to Franklin’s latest, Oklahoma OK Okla. , I Could Sleep For A Thousand Years (Second Motion), whose initial tracks were hammered out in New York late last year with his newly minted backup outfit, Bolts Of Melody. Sleep is Franklin's most well-rounded collection to date, South Dakota SD , balancing the more laid-back guitar balladry and pop sensibilities of his last two solo albums with the ornery, volatile spark of vintage Swervedriver largely missing on those efforts. Franklin will be guest-editing magnetmagazine.com all week, buy modalert online cheap. Billiga modalert apotek, Read our 2009 Lost Classics post on Swervedriver's Mezcal Head.

"Yesterday Has Gone Forever" (download):
[audio:YesterdayHasGoneForever.mp3]

MAGNET: With I Could Sleep For A Thousand Years, you continue that obscure tradition of naming backup bands after former albums. How did you go about assembling this latest group, Maine ME Me. .
 Franklin: Really. Buy modalert online cheap, Who else has done that. That's actually quite a good game: Stevie Wonder & The Innervisions, New Jersey NJ N.J. , Meat Loaf & The Bats Out Of Hell, Jimi Hendrix & The Are You Experienceds. They say a rolling stone gathers no moss, but I’ve gathered the Bolts Of Melody over time, Montana MT Mont. . They’re mostly in New York now, although there is a London wing. Ostaa halvalla modalert, The Americans call them the Brits Of Melody.

As we grooved to “I’ll Be Yr Mechanic” in the car the other day, my seven-year-old daughter offered this critique: “I like it, dad, but I can’t understand what the guy is saying.”
 I knew I didn’t enunciate the line “and as the eagle flies” clearly enough, buy modalert online cheap. I hope the album passed the seven-year-old test in all other respects, though—that’s a crucial age. I can still smell the T.Rex vinyl when I hear “Jeepster, modalert generic,” man.

Where do you stand on your singing these days. Online modalert, I don’t always stand while singing, actually. Buy modalert online cheap, Sometimes lying on your back in a hammock is the way to go. I haven’t always been comfortable with my vocals, no, order modalert pills. I certainly don't have a pick-up-an-acoustic-at-a-party-and-belt-it-out kind of a voice, but I’m quite happy with that, Pennsylvania PA Penn. , as I’ve never been so crazy about those kinds of situation anyway, to be honest.

Sleep may be your most grownup-sounding album to date, with numerous, purchase modalert, somewhat obvious references to ’60s rock and pop icons like the Velvet Underground and Brian Wilson. Could this newfound refinement and penchant for ballads possibly be a symptom of getting older.
 I’d have said that the new album is less grown-up than the previous album, Spent Bullets, so maybe I’m retarding, buy modalert online cheap. Comprare modalert sconto, I think one symptom of getting older is finally not really giving a crap what people think anymore, which is probably a good thing.

Then again, “I’ll Be Yr Mechanic” sounds like it could’ve been on Raise, αγοράζουν φτηνά modalert. And would you be offended if I said “Yesterday Has Gone Forever” reminds me of Teenage Fanclub.
 I couldn't possibly be offended. Buy modalert online cheap, Teenage Fanclub is probably the band I’d join if I were offered any group in the world to muscle my way into. Nevada NV Nev. , Not only would I be playing with three great songwriters and harmony vocalists, I’d only have to write three killer songs per year. A couple of times, back in the day, buy modalert c.o.d., Swervedriver played the same city on the same night as the Fannies. So we staggered our stage times so we could catch each other’s set. Louisiana LA , When you look back on Swervedriver’s ’90s heyday, what’s the first thing that comes to mind.
 Dreadlocks, Jazzmasters, songs about cars … We played some great shows, buy modalert online cheap. Quite often, we'd do things like play pool with the punters before the show—I think people quite liked that, order modalert.

I realize this is a longshot, but do you recall playing a ridiculously cheesy club in Tempe, Order modalert without prescription, Ariz., called Chuy’s while touring behind Raise. I covered the show for a local newspaper, and we spoke briefly, modalert online kaufen. You looked exhausted.
 Buy modalert online cheap, No recollection, I’m afraid. In my defense, Michigan MI Mich. , it was probably very hot. Did we play pool.

Nope, there wasn’t a pool table to be found in that dump, cheap modalert online cheap. What was the first introduction to the U.S. like for you guys, buy modalert online cheap. What are your thoughts on how you were marketed here by A&M. Ordering modalert online, Our first time in the U.S. was in New York City, which seems appropriate. We played at the now-defunct Marquee. Buy modalert online cheap, We were very loud due to nerves, and by the end of the set, just one guy remained down the front—and it was Bob Mould. I think A&M probably did a decent job; it was all very grungy back then. Sometimes though, as the sun set over the A&M lot in Los Angeles at the end of the working day, you could hear the mournful sound of Herb Alpert’s trumpet parping away as he finally got sick of his paperwork, which was really rather lovely.

Mezcal Head: overrated or underrated.
 Underrated, I suppose. I only tend to get to the end of side one, but I probably don’t count, buy modalert online cheap.

More to the point, most critics cite Mezcal Head as the definitive Swervedriver album. Me, I’m partial to Raise. Which is your favorite and why.
 Raise is supposed to have this hazy kind of sound, as if the record’s warping in the sun—although, when I listen to it, it doesn’t sound like that. I’m still trying to write that one, actually. I’d probably select Juggernaut Rides ’89-’98, the “hits” album, as that’s the one that just keeps on giving.

—Hobart Rowland

.

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Keflex Over The Counter

July 12, 2010

No one can call Brooklyn-based rockers We Are Scientists Keflex over the counter, one-dimensional. The band has engaged in extracurricular activities ranging from creating a comedic TV series to self-improvement seminars. However, singer/guitarist Keith Murray and bassist Chris Cain have returned to their day job to release fourth album Barbara (PIAS/Masterswan). WAS, Discount keflex, who were without a drummer since the 2007 departure of Michael Tapper, have added former Razorlight skinsman Andy Burrows to the lineup, and Barbara features a more eclectic sound, with the often-brash group experimenting with slower tempos and fuller arrangements. Lead single “Rules Don’t Stop” is vintage Scientists, though; it’s a nervy power-pop song driven by a thumping bass line, Delaware DE Del. . The single debuted at number 14 on the U.K, keflex over the counter. indie charts, and it’s already an anthem for mustachioed hipsters everywhere. Murray is guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week.

"Rules Don't Stop":
[audio:RulesDontStop.mp3]

MAGNET: The group originally met in Claremont, αγοράσετε keflex έκπτωση, Calif., but moved to Berkeley and then to Brooklyn. What precipitated the moves. Keflex over the counter, More importantly, which is the better coast: East or West.
 Murray: The moves were largely your standard post-collegiate wanderings. For professionally bound, West Coast kids during the late-‘90s dot-com boom, Kaufen keflex, San Francisco was a good place to look for a job and a burrito. Once we got tired of excellent Mexican food, though, we decided to take the plunge and move to NYC. Tennessee TN Tenn. , For the pizza, mainly. I'd say that, overall, the West Coast is probably superior to the East, keflex over the counter. California is awash in great cities and greater margaritas, and Portland and Seattle are top-tier towns as well. On the other hand, New York is far and away the finest city in the world, παραγγείλετε online keflex, and I should know: I've seen almost 10 cities worldwide.

You were initially the drummer for the band, but you switched to vocals and guitar. Were you a drummer out of convenience, Massachusetts MA Mass. , or do you still play/identify as a drummer, too.
 Keflex over the counter, I was mainly a drummer out of desperate aspiration. Initially, We Are Scientists was largely a way for Chris and me to learn new instruments. I took up drums while he learned bass. We were a brutally tight rhythm section, ordering keflex online, but when our guitarist/vocalist left the band, I took one for the team and switched instruments. Drums are still my favorite instrument to play, and most of our songs still start out simply as drum-and-bass compositions, Louisiana LA , with the guitar part coming very late in the game, generally after even vocal melodies and harmonies have been written. So, yeah, guitar is the least-favored instrument in We Are Scientists, keflex over the counter.

Your new album features some songs with soul influences and more intricate harmonies. Do you purposefully stretch out your sound on each successive release, or do your influences just come out in the course of writing the songs.
 I don't think any preconceived influences ever actually rear their heads in our songwriting, köpa keflex, although we do spend a lot of time talking about the bands we'd love to rip off before we start writing. I think the "soul" you're referencing can probably be more accurately identified as "blue-eyed soul.” Hall & Oates are personal favorites, and their harmonies drive me mad with envy. Keflex over the counter, Their influence has popped up before, most obviously in "That's What Counts" from our last record, but I think I'm getting better at nailing the harmony arrangements.

Barbara is only 10 tracks long and under 32 minutes. Order keflex no prescription, That is Green Album Weezer-level short. Was the briefness a conscious decision.
 We specifically wanted to make the album as short and sweet as possible, and the Green Album was actually the template we used: 10 songs, all of which sound like singles, delivered in something like 31 minutes, buy keflex online. That record is a model of melodic efficiency; it's just hook after hook, and it goes down so stupidly easy that the brevity of the record makes it compulsively listenable, keflex over the counter. Nothing makes me sadder than imagining people growing weary of our records before they’re through.

Drummer Andy Burrows performs on your new album, but he has his own solo project, as well. Buy keflex without prescription, Will he be touring with you this summer.
 Unfortunately, the demands of promoting a major-label release such as his means that, for the most part, he won't be playing with us very much at all this summer. Keflex over the counter, We just did Glastonbury Festival together, and we're hoping he'll be able to play with us at Reading and Leeds as well, but his schedule is so malleable and unpredictable that it's impossible to say where and when he'll appear with us. There's a chance he may tour with us in the autumn, order keflex no rx, after his promotional schedule (theoretically) cools off, but who knows. Until then, we're lucky as hell to have landed a fantastic touring drummer, Buy keflex cod, Danny Allen, whose main band, Youth Group, is currently on hiatus. The shows we've just done with Danny in the U.K. have been some of my favorite WAS shows ever, Mississippi MS Miss. , so I think we've got a good thing going with him.

How was the Glastonbury Festival experience for you, keflex over the counter. What is the weirdest thing that has happened to the group while you have been on tour in Europe.
 Glastonbury, as with most festivals for me, Buy keflex cheap, is always way more fun offstage than on. There's something about the distance involved in festivals that really makes me feel segregated from the crowd, so those sorts of shows always feel slightly sterile to me. The show this year was great—the weather was a tremendous boon—but I had a much better time just running around the site watching other bands and gulping pear cider.

Keflex over the counter, Which band member can go the longest without sleeping.
 I'm not sure, really, keflex discount. I tend to party harder and more frequently than Chris does, but he has a four-year-old son, so I think he's far more used to having his sleep interrupted on a regular basis. My tendency, Cheap keflex online, though, is to power through a long night of revelry, then follow that with 20-odd hours of hard sleep.

Often We Are Scientists perform comedy routines and have created and appeared in a series of MTV U.K. comedy shorts called Steve Wants His Money, keflex over the counter. Do you have any aspirations to act or write professionally in addition to your band duties.
 I wouldn't call them "aspirations, acquistare online keflex," as that would indicate some sort of proactive intent, which we sorely lack. We love doing that kind of stuff, for sure, Alaska AK , but we really only do it when we're forced to (i.e., when MTV commissions a six-episode series of shorts from us). We've spoken to them about doing some longer shows, and hopefully, that will happen, but the band is really our main focus, cheap generic keflex.

Keflex over the counter, You guys are popular in the U.S., but rock stars in the U.K. Why do you think that the Brits have embraced you so warmly.
 I think it's largely based on the fact that, when our first record came out, mainstream British radio was pretty focused on music that sounded a lot like ours: guitar-based dance/indie stuff, Cheap keflex from canada, and so we received a lot of airplay on major radio and television stations. It's as simple as that, really. We got an early foot in the door over there that never really happened over here. We're pretty pleased with the way it's gone in the U.S., though, considering our relatively limited media presence, keflex over the counter.

In your video for “Nice Guys,” you take a few nasty spills while skateboarding, order keflex c.o.d.. Did you get hurt during the filming of the video. What is your philosophy on skaters being allowed to skate wherever they want.
 I logged a few scrapes and bruises that day. Keflex over the counter, I certainly don't subscribe to the idea that skaters should be given the freedom to employ all of humanity's creation as their skate park; it seems like the civilian casualties in that scenario would be shockingly high. As a former skater myself, Purchase keflex online, I can state confidently that many skaters aren't the most responsible or considerate citizens. A little third-party legislation is probably a good idea.

Both of you share a love for books, especially pulp detective novels. How does literature inspire your music, if at all.
 I think literature just sort of infuses our lives in general, and although noir fiction is our current genre of choice, we tend to be the biggest fans of authors who balance humor with a nagging pathos—David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut—and I do think we try to incorporate those duel sentiments in our lyrics, keflex over the counter. It's no accident that we named our first album after a J.D. Salinger story. His pitch and tone incorporate what is pretty much the perfect fusion of hope, humor and melancholy.

There are so many great bands coming out of/moving to Brooklyn nowadays. Keflex over the counter, Who are your favorite musical neighbors.
 We're big fans of Rewards, a new project that's risen from the ashes of Chairlift, as well as Bad Girlfriend, an all-girl quartet that's been tearing Brooklyn up for about a year or so. In terms of the older titans, I pretty much crap my pants every time I spot James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem out on the town.

I saw a picture of both you and Chris in a record store and you were sporting a Philadelphia 76ers hoodie. Are you guys basketball fans.
 Not at all, keflex over the counter. Neither of us really follows sports, although Danny is pretty much obsessed. About an hour ago, he actually made us listen to a sports-talk radio show in the van, so he could catch up on the World Cup scores. It was perhaps the most excruciating three minutes of broadcast entertainment that I've ever been made to endure. I just like that hoodie.

What do you want fans to take away from a We Are Scientists performance.
 Lots and lots and lots of valuable We Are Scientists merchandise, ideally.


—Danielle Bacher

.

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Q&A With Stars’ Evan Cranley

July 5, 2010
Stars If there’s one thing Canadian quintet Stars has been able to do for the entire duration of its 10-year run it’s make us sigh wistfully over beautifully crafted lyrics and gorgeous, blooming melodies. Since 2007’s In Our Bedroom After The War, the band members (many of whom moonlight as Broken Social Scene players) scattered for a while to work on some very un-Stars-like solo and side projects. However, rest assured that just-released fifth full-length, The Five Ghosts (Vagrant/Soft Revolution), is Stars still being heartbreakingly Stars, with an underlying theme of mortality featuring lyrics that focus on love in a “til death do us part” kind of way. Prepare to swoon when you see them play the album live on their tour of Europe and North America this fall. Evan Cranley, Torquil Campbell, Amy Millan, Chris Seligman and Patrick McGee will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "Fixed" (download): [audio:Fixed.mp3] MAGNET: You guys have been together for 10 years, and The Five Ghosts is your fifth album. Does it get easier writing and working together as a band after all that time? Cranley: We are all quite familiar with each others' styles by now. And the chemistry is still there. The important thing for me is not repeating ourselves. I try to avoid that at all costs. The thought of it terrifies me. Is it easier? No. When you start a new process, it's like everything you created as a band before disappears. You're only left with a fresh sheet of paper. So it becomes more of a challenge starting anew. What led to the decision to release The Five Ghosts in Canada on your own record label, Soft Revolution Records? It's nice to have a home base, a place where your aesthetic can live. I think of it as a self-imposed cureation. Also, you returned to producer Tom McFall, who produced Set Yourself On Fire, for this album. How come? Is it easier to work with someone you’ve worked with before? In this case, absolutely. Tom was like a sixth member in the band. We felt so comfortable with him. He acted like a creative filter for us. Not only is he a great engineer and producer, he's a gifted musician. And that combo is hard to find. We love Tom McFall! How has audience reception been to The Five Ghosts, since you’ve been playing it in its entirety on tour? It's been very interesting and challenging. We essentially leaked the record live onstage. And you can tell right away that it's the fans out in the audience. It's been amazing watching the reaction to the tunes. You can tell what people like/dislike right away. It's like the band is being reviewed. Only with love, of course. You’ve also been taking audience requests for shows. What have been the most requested songs so far? "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead." Some of you have embarked on solo jaunts and side projects between Stars albums. How does that affect the songwriting dynamic in the band? Much more country than usual. Speaking of other projects, you recorded a cover of the Smiths' “Asleep” for Sing Me To Sleep: Indie Lullabies. Can you tell us a little about that album and how you got involved. They wrote to us. "Asleep" is a natural suicide anthem for four-year-olds. What could be more appropriate? Does it ever get difficult to get the band back together with all your other commitments? You do what you have to do, but yeah, it can be complex.

—Emily Costantino

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Q&A With Joe Pernice

June 28, 2010
PerniceBrothers For more than a decade, the Pernice Brothers have mostly made plush, romantic orchestral pop that doesn't gild the lily once tended by the Zombies, Walker Brothers and Elvis Costello. Despite the band's refined sound and frontman Joe Pernice's delicate vocal delivery (not to mention his MFA-in-poetry credentials), he's from a blue-collar Boston background and more likely to be sporting a ballcap, T-shirt and three days of stubble than a blazer and button-down Oxford. The Pernice Brothers' sixth and latest album, Goodbye, Killer (Ashmont), does away with the sighing string section and goes straight for the guitars, from the mod-rock riffing of "Jacqueline Susann" to the Teenage Fanclub power pop of "Something For You." Flanked by guitarist James Walbourne (Pretenders, Son Volt) and drummer Ric Menck (Velvet Crush, Matthew Sweet), Pernice even pulls off a serio-comic country weeper titled "We Love The Stage," an ode to the hopeless allure of being in a rock band, which includes playing to six people and having a kid yell "Freebird!" in your face. After a four-year spell between albums—Pernice published the novel It Feels So Good When I Stop last year and recently issued a volume of his conversations with manager Joyce Linehan titled Pernice To Me—the Pernice Brothers return with their leanest and most efficient effort to date. Pernice will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "Jacqueline Susann" (download): [audio:JacquelineSusann.mp3] MAGNET: It took me a long time to realize the theme running through your last Pernice Brothers album, (2006's) Live A Little. A lot of the songs are about letting go of life's little worries and being comfortable with who you are. Is that an accurate read on it? Pernice: Honestly, I have no idea. I had no theme in mind. Honest to God. Really? Because (the songs) "Somerville," "PCH One" and "How Can I Compare" are all about relaxing a little and not letting the little stuff bother you. Maybe it speaks to my limited vision. I'm not saying the theme is not there, but honestly, it was not my intention. It's been a long time since I listened to that record, so I'd have to go check. So I guess it's safe to say the songs on Goodbye, Killer aren't held together by any common thread. Not so much. And it was written over a longer period of time, so even less I'd say. I checked in and out of making that record over the years. Inevitably, if you write songs in proximity to one another maybe they sound alike or there's a theme, but I don't really work that way. I guess by nature the songs come from me, so probably they'll be similar. I noticed there are no strings on the new album. Except guitar strings. Were you trying to get away from the more orchestral sound of a lot of the Pernice Brothers albums? Yeah, I wanted to strip it down. There's more space on this record than any of the others. Ric Menck plays drums on this record, and I don't think there's a drum fill—there might be one drum fill on the whole album. I know there's not a single cymbal, because I insisted on it. There are hi-hats, but I wanted no cymbals. He had no problem accommodating that. Whenever there was an urge to add another guitar on the left or right, we just asked "Why? What's it gonna add to the song?" Almost every time we said, "Don't put it in." It was much, much more subtractive than any other record. I heard that Goodbye, Killer was originally not going to be under the Pernice Brothers name. What changed? When I started, I put out records (under different names) but maybe the Pernice Brothers music fell into a category: There weren't any country songs, the tunes were all kind of a pop thing. When I wrote songs that fell outside of that or maybe needed a couple different people to play on it, I would do a different project. I started out this record that way, too, and just finally said, "This is ridiculous." I'm just gonna release everything under one name from now on and hopefully people are smart enough to understand that it's all just music from the same guy. And if that's too complex for people to handle, then that's too bad. I just get tired of parceling out tunes. So I'm not doing anything except the Pernice Brothers unless it's a band where I'm just one of the guys who maybe cowrites something and doesn't sing all the songs. But if I wrote the song, I'm putting it out as the Pernice Brothers. Done. Well, that should settle things for a while. Until the next interview. Until I put out another record and call it Joe Pernice. Of all the records, though, this is probably the most Pernice Brothers. My brother (Bob) was more involved in this record than anything. He did all the recording and engineering on the record. "We Love The Stage" is a song that probably hits close to home for a lot of people in bands. You think? Same here. Closer than I'd like to think. It's one of my favorites on the record. The song mentions the band opening for a Welsh singer from the '80s—who did you have in mind? Just pulled out something absurd. I thought, "Who would be absurd?" Like some Welsh singer. I didn't have one in mind. So it's not Bonnie Tyler. No, but if someone thinks of a good one, I'll take it. How about Shakin' Stevens? That's good. I like Bonnie Tyler, though. It's not the guy from the Alarm, either. I bought an Alarm album in high school and was so disappointed by it. I think it was the tail end of their career. I saw the Alarm play a couple times. I was out of my mind on performance-enhancing drugs so I don't recall it all that much, but I was probably cheering. It was outside, and it was a million degrees out but they were wearing all that leather and had super-moussed hairdos. They looked like a bunch of wet dogs by the end. The first EP they put out I liked a lot. Everyone thought they were the next U2. Former Pernice Brothers drummer (and MAGNET contributor) Pat Berkery recently staged a tribute to Fleetwood Mac's Tusk; he assembled a band and performed the entire album. But the funny thing is that even Pat would probably admit it's not Fleetwood Mac's best album. You wrote a book about Meat Is Murder and I was wondering if that was your Tusk: maybe not the Smiths' best album but the one that affected you the most. Oh, I think it's the best Smiths album. I always thought the recording sounded thin. Oh, I love it. I like the first one but it all came together on Meat Is Murder. When I was asked (by the publisher) to write the book, the editor actually had The Queen Is Dead in mind. But I wouldn't do it because that record isn't that big for me. That one got a little too sparkly or polished; I love that album, but Meat Is Murder has it all. I love the acoustic sound with the bass. "The Headmaster Ritual" is probably my favorite song of the decade. Maybe I dislike the way "How Soon Is Now?" is stuck in the middle of the record and doesn't sound like anything else on there. It wasn't on the original, though. I didn't care. It does stick out a little bit, though. Is there still a screenplay in the works for Meat Is Murder? Yeah, but it's like one step forward, three steps back. The guy I'm writing it with (Neal Huff) is an actor and is pretty busy. I don't know what's going to happen with it. You write in a lot of different formats: the novel, the screenplay and songs, obviously. It seems to me that song lyrics are the most unforgiving—if you write a clunker, you end up singing it over and over. And there's not as much text surrounding it to cover it up. For me, a song isn't done until I record it. And once I record it, I move on from it. So I tend to not commit until I'm OK with it. Certainly a bad line you can't get out of your head—I've had that happen. Like, "Why do I keep returning to this?" It takes a lot for me to sign off on a song and say I'm done with it. But writing the book was less about a bad line. I found it a lot more difficult writing prose because of having to get into the zone and write every day. You can get into the zone and write a song in one sitting and then you're done, but with a book you're creating people and getting back into the same mindframe where you left off the day before is a big challenge.

—Matthew Fritch

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Q&A With Balmorhea

June 21, 2010
Balmorhea While discussing his collaboration with famous 21st-century modern composer Philip Glass on the 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi, director Godfrey Reggio invoked Sergei Eisenstein, stating, "One should be able to see the music and hear the image." In perhaps no musical act is this adage currently more resonant than Balmorhea, a classically influenced troupe of Texas musicians who create musical vignettes so penetrating that we music writers can't help but abuse literary devices to depict the band's pastoral sound for our readers. To some extent, this is rational (they're contracted regularly to compose for film and TV) and relevant (2009's All Is Wild, All Is Silent is loosely a concept record based on the very illustrative and emotional experience that Texas frontiersman William B. Dewees went through when he discovered the Lone Star State). But where much of the music that's written for film only dispenses its desired affect within a moving-picture context, Balmorhea's work goes a great step further, operating on that cherished emotive plane where the absence of words is a mere afterthought in the face of such accomplished, honest composition. Sit in a quiet room with All Is Wild or the band's latest, Constellations (Western Vinyl), percolating the air around, and you might catch a glimpse of how baroque-period society types must've felt in the presence of the latest Bach or Handel piece. Though Balmorhea would be the first to assuage my comparison to these iconic composers—I don't know anyone, musician or not, who would willingly invite that kind of pressure—it's worth painting the metaphor to drive home this point: Rarely do bands create as deliberately and with humility as when Rob Lowe, Michael Muller, Travis Chapman, Aisha Burns and Nicole Kern pick up their instruments and quietly escape the hurried world around them. Balmorhea recently returned from a month-long trip through mainland Europe and the U.K., a tour that provided the band with some of its most memorable experiences to date. Fortunately for us, the band members were kind enough to jot down their impressions and share a few photos of the journey with MAGNET, in addition to letting us pick their brain about the tour, their hectic writing schedules and the impact of the web on instrumental music. "Bowsprit" (download): [audio:Bowsprit.mp3] MAGNET: The band toured Europe for the third time in two years, this last time alongside noted German pianist and composer Nils Frahm. Do you find that European audiences are any more or less attracted to Balmorhea's music and overall aesthetic than those in the U.S.? Muller: The European audience is generally attending our concerts under a cultural pretense rather than a social one. Moreover, the venues are set up as listening rooms in contrast to a bar-based venue. There just aren't as many venues in the U.S. that are solely sanctioned as strictly music-based concert spaces. We have learned to adapt and make the most out of either situation, morphing our set as a result of the room or crowd demographic. So we are OK with either, though we have preference to the quieter environs. Almost as soon as you returned from a lengthy jaunt overseas, you headed to the West Coast with the Japanese experimental band Mono. How was the idea hatched to spend some time on the road together? We were asked to support the Austin show for Mono by their agent, and I thought it strange they weren't touring with support for the entire tour. Upon inquiring, it came to pass that the band originally slated to fill this spot couldn't do the first leg of the tour. Balmorhea was submitted to Mono and their management and they invited us for the first week. We actually just returned a day ago, and it was indeed a nice fit and there are some similar listeners, but it seemed advantageous for both parties in playing for a decent-sized sliver of a new audience. Thanks to Balmorhea's Tumblr feed, fans are regularly given a visual glance into the band's travels, including "secret" shows in Germany, for instance. Are there any moments that stand out the most from your most recent trips to Europe or the West Coast? That secret show in Germany was by far a stand-out of any tour we've done yet. But overall, any time we come to a city we've never played in and find the room full of people waiting for our music, it is a truly wonderful moment. Each night is different in terms of the surroundings and the culture, so touring in this theme of "constant adventure" is a welcomed and exciting embrace. Between touring, scoring films and releasing two critically-acclaimed full-lengths, the last two years have been very busy for Balmorhea. What keeps you creatively inspired given your hectic schedules? In the past year or so, it somehow felt empty or strange to not be working on something. All of those projects fell totally and organically together and fit in the days and months perfectly. The music that was produced seemed to come forth without too much effort. We realize this may not always be the case, so we let it happen as it did and have been blessed for doing so. In addition to writing a prolific amount of original music in a short amount of time, Balmorhea worked with some of the biggest names in modern classical and ambient genres on the All Is Wild, All Is Silent remixes album in 2009, which is a fairly novel concept in the instrumental genre. Artists such as Eluvium, Peter Broderick, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Machinefabriek and Helios reworked the record's tracks in very diverse ways. Did you have relationships with the artists before concepting the album? What criteria, if any, did the band use to discern which artists should be included? I agree that these artists' names next to one another on the LP sleeve still baffles me. And knowing they are there because they all re-worked our own music is simply flummoxing. We did know all of the artists personally in some capacity or another. Some we had played and even toured with and others merely friends via email and music swaps. We didn't really use any filter or gauge to choose them, other than just emailing all our friends that happened to be making amazing music. To our amusement, all but a couple said yes with no hesitation. It is a very special collection in our minds, and we treasure it as such. In previous interviews with the band, it's been said that Rob and you came from two pretty different points-of-reference musically, eventually bonding over classical and experimental records after college. Does that stark taste dynamic from your upbringings still exist or are you two more consistently attracted to the same types of music these days? We still have some overlap, but the predominant listened-to music on our own is a little different. Rob, I believe, listens more to country, rock and Americana, whereas I listen to more ambient and experimental music on any given day. The crossover between those is where, I suppose, our subconscious inspiration is birthed out of for our own music. Given how the process of discovering new music (viz. blogs, digital retailers, social media and file-sharing sites) has evolved in our digitally obsessed culture, do you find that people are any more or less open to instrumental music than when you initially started Balmorhea? There are certainly more instrumental acts in comparison to when we began, and we've also seen the drastic rise in popularity in predominantly instrumental music in such acts as Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, etc., on a national and, ultimately, global level. So yes, I think the general public that might not have been immediately driven to these types of genres is more open and has easier access to listen, perhaps almost solely by the myriad of social media and web-based technology delivering music to them. Despite how busy you've been recently, your website indicates there are still many irons in the fire. What's next for Balmorhea? We have a few new tunes in the works we are excited about fleshing out in the studio as well as a couple original music compositions for some TV and films. We will take a break from live performances until the fall, when we will do a headlining U.S. tour in September with stops for Raleigh's Hopscotch Festival as well as a couple other one-offs before heading to Europe again in late October.

—Ryan Burleson

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Q&A With OK Go’s Damian Kulash

June 21, 2010
OKGo This past winter was an eventful time for OK Go, between the release of third album Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky, disputes with EMI over its YouTube videos and an eventual split with the label and the creation of Paradacute Records. But even after all the dust settled, the music is still stuck in our heads—because OK Go definitely still has it. Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky brings us little nuggets of unbridled optimism set to catchy pop beats with Damian Kulash’s funky falsetto soaring overhead—and, in typical OK Go fashion, some of the most awesome videos ever made. OK Go is taking time between dates on its worldwide tour supporting the LP in order to guest edit magnetmagazine.com all week. "End Love" [audio:EndLove.mp3] MAGNET: Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky is really dance-y and funky compared to your last two records. What were the major influences on this album? Kulash: When we first started writing this album, we did what we'd done in the past: imagine a song, then try to write it. It's sort of like how you speak: There's an unstructured thought that comes first—presents itself as an endpoint—and you then grope around for words and grammatical logic for them, and eventually you piece together a sentence. We'd have this hazy but stable idea of what we were trying to make, and we'd try to connect the dots to get there. That kind of writing has a lot of room for conscious influences; how would Cheap Trick or Pixies or Elvis Costello do this? But it just didn't work for us this time around. The endpoints we set for ourselves were too reflective of how we saw ourselves already, and there was sort of a self-image feedback loop where we were writing songs we thought we'd be good at—basically trying to sound like OK Go—and it all wound up flat and disingenuous and soulless. So we started working from the other direction; instead of writing toward a goal, we just played with building blocks until something unexpected and greater than the sum of its parts happened. It was trial and error, playing with sounds until emotions emerged. We'd add a drum beat and a synthesizer sound together, and most of the time what we'd get was what you'd expect: a drum beat with a synthesizer sound. But every once in a while, it was melancholy or lust or fury or hope, and we'd chase those little glimmers of alchemy—those places were sounds turns into emotion—and we'd try to tease songs out of them. Writing this way meant the songs came out more reflections of how we respond to music than of how we've learned to write or play. And the influences that surfaced were surprising because we weren't consciously thinking about them on the way into the process. The obvious one is Prince. I've always been a huge Prince fan, but it's taken him a long time to weasel his way to the surface of my songwriting. There's also a vein of more classic soul running under everything on the record. I don't hear specific moments of Al Green or Sly And The Family Stone or Roberta Flack, but I listen a lot to records in that family, and I think there's some of that bubbling underneath. The title comes from an 1876 book by A.J. Pleasonton, The Influence Of The Blue Ray Of The Sunlight And Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky, which argues the benefits of exposure to blue light. Why did you choose this as the name of your album? The US Patent Office gave Pleasonton a patent on blue light. He got a patent on a fucking color. Turns out, he was wrong: Blue light doesn't heal all of humanity's ailments, and it doesn't make crops grow triple speed or livestock get hardy and hale. But when I read the essay, which introduced me to the book (from Paul Collins' Banvard’s Folly: Thirteen Tales Of People Who Didn’t Change The World), I was moved by Pleasonton's obstinate optimism. And his being wrong only makes his project more beautiful. "Listen up, everyone, we can save the world ...with a color!" A lot of the songs on our record felt like they were groping for the same absurd hope. I was writing things like "all is not lost," "this too shall pass" and "maybe it's not so bad," when, in fact, I'm not sure any of that is really true. The cover art for the album is actually data visualization of our lyrics as compared to Pleasonton's book. The CD booklet is all geometric images that illustrate the similarities and differences in the texts: themes, rhythm, word choice, writing style. You guys recently split from EMI and formed your own record label, Paracadute. Can you discuss that decision? We just aren't a good fit for the traditional recording industry. Record companies have built their whole business around the basic building block of record sales, of getting people to pay for access to the strings of ones and zeroes that they own, and these days that building block is harder to control and monetize than ever before. It doesn't mean music itself is in danger, but the part of the industry based on record sales certainly is. When digital cameras came along, people didn't stop taking pictures, they just stopped buying film. From our perspective, along with the bad—there's no tried-and-true formula for making a living off of music anymore—there is a lot of good. All sorts of creative barriers and restrictions that came with the old system are now crumbling. If you don't need commercial radio for people to find out about you, then your music doesn't need to fit into a commercial-radio format. If you don't need MTV to play your videos, then your videos don't have to be glitzy and fast-cut and aimed at a specific demographic. If you don't need Tower Records to distribute your albums, then your albums don't have to meet any of the norms that Tower Records used to rely on: a certain length, a certain price, certain packaging, etc. The most exciting thing for us is that there are whole new expanses for creative play and exploration, mediums and creative forms that don't really have names or categories yet. This year we've had the best time imaginable collaborating with designers, technologists, writers, artists, physicists, filmmakers, dancers and creative people of all stripes. And collaboration can take so many forms: audio, video, performance, live events and a whole array of digital forms emerging too fast to even have real names yet. From the record label's perspective, all these exciting creative ideas are, at best, untested marketing ideas. The end goal for them is record sales, so anything that doesn't directly induce someone to go download us from iTunes is a waste of time and money. And even if we could convince them that all these new ideas are good for their bottom line, they still have to stick to business models that can be generalized and replicated for each of the artists they work with. It doesn't much matter, for instance, if free and embeddable videos are demonstrably good for their OK Go business (and exciting! and fun! and less creatively exhausted than affecting cool in exactly the same way that rockers have since 1965!) unless it's clear that free and embeddable videos will also make more money for their Beatles and Coldplay and Snoop Dogg businesses. So actually, it was very good of our label to let us leave without much of a fight. We made money for them, but not enough money to really matter much in the big picture, and I think they were nice enough to see that we were headed a different direction and that it wouldn't benefit anyone to keep pretending we all had the same end goals. By the way, don't get me wrong, we very much want people to buy our recordings. But the recordings are just one of many creative projects and one of many business models for us. Now that we are in charge of selling them, they just have to make enough to pay for making more of them. What are your plans for the future, now that you’ll have more creative freedom under your own label? The label never really tried to exert creative control over us, so it's not like we'll suddenly be a wildly different band. We just have the freedom to do business in different ways and to do what we want with the things we make. Here's a good example of how things have changed. We record every show, and five minutes after the show is over, fans can get the live recording on a USB flash drive (it looks like a domino) from our merch table. The drive has the full show along with our whole new album, some photos and a little thanks video we made at soundcheck that day, and the whole thing costs the same as a CD. If we were still on a label, they'd technically own any recordings we make, and they'd want a lot of money for what is essentially a double or triple album (one-and-a-half hours of live recordings plus the studio record). If we could even wade through all of the necessary logistics and approvals, we'd have to charge an arm and a leg, and no one would buy them, and we'd just give up on the whole idea. An interesting factoid, here: Before splitting with the label, when we sold CDs at a show or through our website, we were selling copies we bought from the label at wholesale prices, not unlike a store. And if we wanted to sell a digital download, we had to "buy" it from the label as well, which is to say we had to pay a wholesale rate to them each time it got downloaded. The weird thing is that, despite the fact that our digital downloads incurred exactly zero incidental costs (unlike a CD, which has to be manufactured and shipped, etc.), the wholesale rate we were charged for digital downloads was about 20 percent higher than the wholesale rate for physical CDs. Emailing mp3s to someone cost us more than mailing them a CD, and selling a USB drive would have been astronomical, because we'd have to pay the higher digital wholesale rate and also pay for the USB drive itself. Since splitting with EMI, you are now able to embed videos. Have you seen an improvement in digital sales since this change was made? Our digital sales have been way up, but it's impossible to tell why. In fact, that's another way of looking at the problem with the traditional model. Big recording companies tend to rely on input being very directly correlated to output; if you spend 10 bucks on promotion, you need to see 15 bucks in sales. But over the past two months, we've performed on four national TV shows, played about 40 club shows, four festivals and about a half dozen colleges; done interviews with perhaps 100 blogs, radio stations, TV shows and magazines; performed underwater at Maker Faire; thrown out the first pitch at a Dodgers game; lobbied the White House and the FCC; tweeted a few hundred times; sent two or three email newsletters; posted to Facebook the pictures of the audience that I take from stage every night; uploaded a couple non-musical things to YouTube; got a big shout out from Weird Al during a high-profile interview; and presented an award at the New Jersey HallOf Fame. And yes, as of a couple days ago, the YouTube postings of all the videos from this album are now embeddable, but I think it would be jumping to conclusions to say that the embeddability is clearly driving sales at this point. The music industry is pretty up in the air right now, which you guys are obviously aware of. Where do you think the future of music is headed? Who knows. I think there'll always be people who want to spend their lives making music, and there'll always be people who want to hear it, but I think we're going through the a shift in how the world thinks about what music is. On the scale of years or decades, musical style shifts. Disco or grunge or babershop come or go. But on the scale of generations or centuries, the whole concept of what music is also fluid. A hundred years ago, a recording of a musical performance was a technological novelty. By the '60s, an artist's recordings were viewed as their central work, and bands are remembered first and foremost for their albums more. Now, live performances are often judged by how accurately the recordings can be recreated. Some live performances are, in fact, just listening parties for the recordings, and I'm not just talking about pop stars lip synching. Daft Punk puts on the best live show I've ever seen, but I'd be surprised if whoever's onstage (which probably isn't even them) is doing more than just pressing start on the computer. Recordings essentially are the music. If someone asks if you've heard a song, they're not asking if you know the melody or the lyrics in the abstract, they're asking if you've heard that exact audio file. Our band is in a kind of weird position with regards to this, because for a lot of people, "knowing" our songs isn't just the melody or the lyrics, and it also isn't just hearing that audio file, but it is actually watching the video. I've been surprised, for instance, how few people seem to differentiate meaningfully between the marching band and album versions of our song "This Too Shall Pass." They have different videos, but they're also wildly different recordings: One is a blown-out, distorted-drums studio rocker and the other is a live recording featuring marching xylophone and no traditional rock instruments or distortion at all, but people seem to to notice only that there are two videos for the same song. Anyway, I'm certainly not saying that the world will wind up following the same path we have, but I think the radical change in how music is distributed and how it's listened to will fundamentally change how we think of what music is. In the short term, social networks and interactive distribution and collaboration and the equipping of everyone everywhere with an audio/video recording device on their phone will shift how we see the basic parameters of creativity and songs and experiencing music. Where we'll be in 20 or 30 years, who knows. OK Go will be touring the world this summer and hitting several music fests. Do you have any big plans for your live performance? Our live performance is always changing, but the goal that doesn't shift much is our desire to get the crowd into a mass, collective, conjoined emotional state. When we first started playing shows, years ago, we basically just tried to whip the crowd into a frenzy. Nowadays, there are more peaks and valleys in the energy of the show, but the hope is still that we can get everyone resonating together. Everyone goes on the emotional roller-coaster ride together. What we want to see from stage is people sweating along with us and laughing along with us and going dark or melancholy with us and smiling with us. It's like "suturing" is in narrative film. We just want people to get lost in it with us. This wouldn’t be a proper OK Go interview if we didn’t address your music videos. What’s your process like for coming up with ideas for videos? There's no systematic approach. We just chase good ideas when we have them. I guess the process is to think of projects that sound like awesome ways to spend a few weeks or months. Wanna direct a marching band? Yeah! Wanna play with marbles and pulleys and physics in a warehouse? Yeah! Wanna collaborate with someone you admire? I think our videos also come out like they do because they're not advertisements. Traditionally, videos have been commercials funded by labels to promote their recordings, but we see them as creative projects, as challenging and thrilling as writing songs, recording albums, playing shows, designing album art, etc. So when we're planning them, rather than ask ourselves what's going to make us look cool or what will get played the most by MTV, we ask ourselves what three-and-half-minute film we want to make, given that we already have the soundtrack. A lot of your videos have to be taken in a single shot (“Here it Goes Again,” “A Million Ways,” “This Too Shall Pass,” etc.). On average, how many times does it take until you get through the whole thing perfectly (specifically, the “This Too Shall Pass” video)? The Rube Goldberg machine video for the album version of "This Too Shall Pass" took 85 attempts over two days, but we'd been planning and building it for nearly six months with something like 60 other people. The live version of "This Too Shall Pass" was recorded with about a third of the Notre Dame marching band, and we got about 20 takes done in a single day. It took a week of advance work in South Bend, plus months of planning and set up before that. The kaleidoscopic video for "WTF?" took two days of shooting plus about four hours of tests and a couple weeks of working with Jasmin Shokrian (the fashion designer) and buying and dying clothes and shopping for stuff at the dollar store. The most recent video, the time-warp one in the park, was done in just two takes, but each take was about 21 hours long. The intensive work schedule was about 10 days, and there was a lot of advance work before that. The wallpaper video for "Do What You Want" was shot over two days after about a month of non-stop work getting the costumes and the people lined up. The treadmill video for "Here It Goes Again" was shot in just under 20 takes, although we only got through the whole routine two or three times. There were eight 10-hour days of choreography and practice leading up to the shoot. The backyard dancing video for "A Million Ways" was shot in about 20 minutes. I think we ran through the dance three or four times. The dance itself took about a week to choreograph and learn. Is there pressure to keep outdoing yourselves with each video? I guess that depends what you mean by "outdo." We don't feel pressured by numbers. View counts and marketing metrics rarely correspond with our sense of creative satisfaction, and they don't even correspond very directly with our income. So when we're writing songs, we're not thinking about whether KROQ will play them, and when we're shooting videos, we're not wondering whether your grandma is going to forward them to her whole email list. But we do try to push our creative limits, and when things succeed (and, in fact, even when they don't), the parameters shift. Five years ago, we certainly couldn't have gotten a few dozen top-shelf engineers to volunteer their time to work on our massive Rube Goldberg project, but with the treadmill video as a calling card, it didn't seem so crazy. The marching-band video required me and Brian (co-director and longtime collaborator) to direct nearly 200 people, which would likely have overwhelmed us three or four years ago. So yes, we are always trying to challenge ourselves, but no, we don't judge success by external benchmarks.

—Emily Costantino

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Q&A With Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake

June 14, 2010
TeenageFanclub It's dead easy to list the most obvious influences of Scotland's Teenage Fanclub. He's read them so often, founding band member Norman Blake can rattle them off at the drop of a tam: Big Star, Byrds, Beach Boys. Pigeonholing the Fanclub's melodic-yet-rocking sound becomes a little more dicey. Though most of the cornerstones of power pop—Posies, Flamin' Groovies, Matthew Sweet, Velvet Crush, Tommy Keene, Alex Chilton—don't think much of the label, it seems to be the only one that's stuck. If they keep this up for another five years or so, Teenage Fanclub, which opened for business in the mid-'80s when Blake met fellow Scots Raymond McGinley and Gerard Love, might surpass the Groovies for career longevity, a career award that usually precedes only the obit in a band's publicity dossier. And yet, the group's new album, Shadows (Merge), is as vital as anything TFC has ever cut, adding fuel to the proposition that some artists come up with their best work after turning 40. Blake and Love will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "Baby Lee" (download): [audio:babylee.mp3] MAGNET: Where are you living these days, Norman? Blake: I'm in Edinburgh today. We played Glasgow last night. I'm looking forward to the upcoming tour (of North America). It will be like a home date for me, because I've actually moved to Canada about six months ago. My wife's Canadian. It's gonna be great not having jetlag when you start the tour. I've been enjoying it, apart from the snow. The snow's been a shock to the system, but I'm getting used to it. Have they turned you into a hockey fan yet? I'm not a big fan, but I suppose I'll have to learn, because, of course, you have to have a sports conversation with the public. I'm gonna have to start reading the back pages (sports section). Well, I can give you the simplest possible explanation of hockey. It's very much like your football, only it's on ice and they use sticks. Yeah, it really is, and you get the odd fight thrown in there, too. Are you excited about the World Cup in South Africa? Yeah, I'm looking forward to that, actually. Something I always enjoy. I haven't really picked my club. We didn't make it. It's a shame. Scotland don't get in there very often. I haven't picked who I'm going to support yet. I think I'll go for someone like Brazil. Well, you can't go wrong there, since they seem to win it about every other time. I like Spain, too. Spain's a country that's been very good to me over the years. Yeah, it's definitely Spain this year for me. I like the culture there. I like the way they have dinner at eight o'clock in the evening. The band has had some fabulous nights there. I really do love the Spanish way of life. You're never onstage before midnight. And festivals are always good. The lineups are always great. I've read articles about Teenage Fanclub where they try to describe your music and usually get it all wrong. Somebody called it grunge. Another one referred to it as shoegaze. [Laughs] We always get the same influences listed, what we're about: Big Star, the Byrds, the Beach Boys. And, of course, these are things we like. But those ones always crop up, like you don't listen to anyone else. You get to see a pattern develop. But we're influenced by many, many other things. For (1991's) Bandwagonesque album, we were listening to Exile On Main St. And, of course, we got to meet and work with Alex Chilton. We had a good relationship with him. I don't know if he saw something of the young Alex in us, but we certainly got on well with him. Alex's widow, Laura, is spending a couple of weeks in Scotland, and she was at the show last night in Glasgow. It was great to have her there. Have you ever wondered if old geezers might buy your new album, Shadows, thinking it's something new from the Shadows and Hank B. Marvin? Well, there's not much wrong with the Shadows. [Laughs] I'm a big fan of the Shadows. I've heard the young Neil Young really liked the Shadows. You've recorded the new album with backing vocals by Euros Childs from Gorky's Zygotic Mynci? Yeah, he's a good friend of mine. We toured with them years ago. Me and Euros just struck up a friendship. He was up staying with me a year and a half ago. We ended up writing little songs together, recorded 10 of them about six months ago and made an album. We go by the name of Jonny. From something that was just a bit of fun, really, it's great that we've put out a record. Did you ever see the Skids, a great late-'70s punk band from Dunfermline? I never saw 'em, but we met Stuart Adamson through a few charity events that happened in Glasgow. Also, we were recording in a studio in Scotland that he happened to be working in, too. And we had a couple of games of soccer with him, as you do in summer. We played against a wall, you know. You can imagine it like kids playing basketball in the U.S. How did you first meet Raymond and Gerry? Well, myself and Raymond used to go to a club in Glasgow called Splash I, named after the 13th Floor Elevators song. We were playing them on the bus today on the way to the show. It was probably around '85 when we met. The club was run by Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream. They played great music there, and they put on great bands: Wire, Felt, the Jesus And Mary Chain, all the early shows were there. So, we met there, and I'd met Gerry also, and that was the nucleus of the band. Why did you call your band Teenage Fanclub? We thought there were a lot of pretentious band names around at that time, so we liked the idea of having something that was the antithesis of that. Something that was completely dumb and meaningless. We liked the ridiculous idea of that. Have you ever had second thoughts about using the name? Not at all. I'll tell you why. It's always been an ironic name, because none of us were teenagers when we started the band. Actually, I tell a lie: Brendan, our drummer, was 17. But I was 21, Raymond was 22 and Gerry was 20. So it was even ironic then. We got stopped at a border crossing a while ago and they asked who was in the van. And the guy driving said, "A band called Teenage Fanclub." So the guy opened the door and he was nonplussed: "Teenage Fanclub? These guys are all pensioners." Well, there are precedents to taking a name like that. There was a famous vocal group from the '50s called the Four Freshmen, who are not only no longer freshmen, but most of them are no longer with us. With an arbitrary name like yours you can follow in the grand tradition of the Bay City Rollers, who I happen to like a lot, actually. Well, there you go, yeah. I don't know if you've seen the clip of them that's going around at the moment. It's a clip of the Bay City Rollers with Ann-Margret singing "Saturday Night" on Irish TV to a roomful of geriatrics. It's really fantastic. How was it working for Alan McGee and Creation Records, one of my favorite labels? We'd known Alan, again, since the days of Splash I. And he'd liked what Raymond and I did in one of our previous bands. After we made our first Teenage Fanclub record [1990's A Catholic Education], he came along and said he'd love us to sign to Creation. We kinda felt it would be a good place to go, and we liked a lot of the music that was done there: My Bloody Valentine and Felt. So we started making an album. We didn't have a contract. Alan just started paying for us to go in the studio. Before you knew it, we had finished the Bandwagonesque record. It was a really great label for us because they allowed us to do what we wanted to do, total artistic control. He would always say, "You know what? It's your record." We always thought that was pretty great. I like to get tips on films I may not have seen. I've always been a fan of Scottish Cinema: Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar, Hallam Foe, Trainspotting, Gregory's Girl, Red Road, Shallow Grave, Restless Natives. Anything I might have missed? There's a really good one by Bill Forsyth called Local Hero. It's about an American guy sent here by a big oil firm to buy a beach because they've discovered oil just off shore. It's kinda like a modern Brigadoon in a way. He kinda falls in love with the area and reacts against his own company. And he becomes a local hero. The head of the company is Burt Lancaster, who comes over here to find what his young guy is doing. And then he falls in love with place, too. It's a nice gentle sort of movie, a lot of fun. I've interviewed most of the people labeled, for better or worse, as power pop: the Flamin' Groovies, Velvet Crush, the Posies, Matthew Sweet. And most of 'em don't like the term. Tommy Keene told me it was like having a bullseye painted on the back of his shirt. How do you feel about it? That's the perfect answer, actually. It's difficult to define what it is. It's kind of like that song "Hanging On The Telephone" by the Nerves. I suppose that would be the perfect power-pop song. That's a really great song. But there are a lot of people out there trying to write melodic songs with fuzzed-up guitar, and they don't have very good songs. That's why power pop isn't a great term, because it sorta lumps everyone in together, all the bad writers with the good ones. It's a term I don't really recognize and fancy in our music. So, it's a funny thing, that, isn't it? It is a funny thing, something that's stuck around for a long time for lack of a better name. I think that's what it is. Melodic pop music with an edge has to be redefined in some way.

—Jud Cost

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Q&A With Erasure’s Andy Bell

June 7, 2010
AndyBell Oh, l'amour! Andy Bell is back with a brand new solo offering. The Erasure frontman is releasing the techno-tinged Non-Stop (Mute) this week. The LP was co-produced by Bell and Pascal Gabriel (Kylie Minogue, Ladyhawke, Miss Kittin, Little Boots). Gabriel also helmed Bell's previous releases as Mimó. Non-Stop's first single, “Call On Me,” pulses with a glittering electronic beat and features heavily processed vocals with an Italo-disco flair. It’s quite a departure from the romantic, falsetto-driven synth pop of Erasure, drawing inspiration from soul, techno, Tin Pan Alley and even opera. MAGNET caught up with Bell to discuss the new album, computer games, palm healing and celebrity crushes. Bell will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "Will You Be There (Seamus Haji Big Love Remix)" (download): [audio:WillYouBeThereSeamusHajiBigLoveRemix.mp3] MAGNET: You are just releasing your second solo album. What do you feel you explore solo that you do not with Erasure? Bell: When you have been in a band like Erasure for 20-something years, it's a bit like being a married couple. You bring all of your experiences with you to the music. Then, when you go off to do a solo record, it's a bit like being single for a year or so. You can pretend to be whomever you want to be! Therefore, my disco-diva/soft-punk persona comes out a bit, like being onstage. You also released music as Mimó. Why a second solo persona? It was really to get an unprejudiced chance of being played on increasingly ageist radio. Newer tracks like "Running Out" have more of a European techno vibe. Have you been listening to much modern electronic music? It's hard to remember, but I always love a bit of of Giorgio Moroder for inspiration. I've been discovering some Italo disco from 1985 by a band called Kano, as well. I do like a bit of Robyn, too. At the moment, I'm listening to Kelis. Which artists inspired you to begin singing? I would have to say mostly the Ronettes, and then Elvis and Buddy Holly. When I was a teenager, I loved to sing along to Siouxsie And The Banshees, Japan, Yazoo and, of course, Blondie. You have one of the most distinctive falsettos in music. How do you keep your voice in top condition? By trying not to smoke for extended periods and making sure you do lots of warm-up exercises a couple of weeks before a show. Also, a good steam bath always helps and lots of honey for the throat. Which of your songs is the most personal/difficult for you to sing? I think maybe a song like "Home" on the Chorus album, only because you need to bring a certain amount of pathos to what you are singing. You have to connect to some kind of subliminal scar, but it gets slightly more healed every time you go to that place. You were one of the first openly gay pop musicians, and you announced your HIV-positive status some years ago. Do you consider yourself an activist, or is it just a matter of being honest about yourself? Basically, I wear my heart on my sleeve. What you see is what you get! I hate prejudice in any form whatsoever, so it was just my way of firing first. I'm quite a peaceful person and it takes a lot to get me riled, so I'd rather do things in a quiet but effective way. You practice the Buddhist palm-healing technique of reiki. How has reiki helped you physically/mentally/musically? I think reiki is pretty amazing, really, but it's all to do with angelic energy and putting positive vibes out into the world. It's amazing what things can happen; it's like prayer. So, I can say it has helped me in my music and darker periods. Who is your music celebrity crush? Debbie Harry and Brandon Flowers. Mmmmm ... Erasure's 1994 hit "Always" was used as the theme song for the flash game Robot Unicorn Attack. How did that come about? Have you played the game? I don't have much patience for those kind of games, but it must have come about through Sony, our publishing company. The Tories have just formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats as a result of the U.K. election. Are you active politically, and how do you feel about this development? I voted for Labour and the Green Party, but you have to give everyone a fair chance. I'm open to newly reformed parties, etc., but I don't think it'll be too long before they revert to their wicked ways. It's a dirty game. When can we expect a new Erasure album? And will it be the concept album of nursery rhymes Vince Clarke has claimed you are recording? A brand new Erasure is on the way for 2011, and the nursery-rhyme project is waiting for my warbles. What is the biggest goal that you have not yet achieved? I wouldn't mind doing a bit of opera (Threepenny or otherwise). And maybe be a killer in a horror film!

—Danielle Bacher

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Q&A With Del Amitri’s Justin Currie

May 31, 2010
JUSTINCURRIEQA1 There will always be a small bunch who will never forgive Justin Currie for the sins of his former band, Del Amitri. Namely, the speed and vigor with which the group abandoned the angular new-wave-ish promise of its 1985 self-titled debut for more conventional pop inroads. Currie makes no apologies for the 17 years and five albums of smart, well-executed, comparatively middle-of-the-road Brit Invasion melodies and country-rock yearnings that followed. It even netted him and his Scottish bandmates an American hit, “Roll To Me,” in 1995. Nowadays, Currie is still living in Glasgow while nurturing an intermittent solo career that now includes The Great War (Ryko). Coming eight years after Del Amitri’s last album, it resurrects the reassuring jangle of that band as it continues Currie’s middle-age explorations of the darker recesses of the male love muscle (i.e. the heart). Currie will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "A Man With Nothing To Do" (download): [audio:AManWithNothingToDo.mp3] MAGNET: Del Amitri never officially broke up, correct? What is your current relationship with the other members, in particular co-founder Iain Harvie? Currie: No, we didn’t ever “break up.” We just stopped doing Del Amitri things. Iain and I still write every couple of years and will have an album finished by the end of this year, hopefully. He lives in Oxford, England, and I live in Glasgow, so we only see each other once a year or so, but we’re brothers and we love each other. I see (keyboardist) Andy Alston a bit more. He lives close by, and we do some hill walking together. The three of us were the only permanent fixtures in the group between the mid-’80s and the early zeros. I was struck by the transformation of the group in the four years between Del Amitri and Waking Hours. Was that more—dare say—mainstream sound what you were after from the beginning? We always said that our “transformation” from indie art pop to mainstream pop/rock was a natural thing. None of us ever suddenly stood up in a rehearsal and said, “Do you know what? Fuck this post-punk indie shit—let’s rock.” Iain and I started writing separately instead of with the rest of the band, and our stuff sounded much more accessible and probably Americanized. Iain’s guitar playing loosened up, started embracing blues and rock. We were also getting into the new country stuff at that time: Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett. And we then brought in a famous Glasgow guitarist called Mick Slaven, who plays like Robert Quine meets Nile Rogers meets Marc Bolan meets Jimi Hendrix. That we should sound a little different from before was inevitable. I recall being shocked when I interviewed Iain after Waking Hours and couldn’t make out a word he was saying through that thick Glaswegian brogue. How did a bunch of guys from Scotland sound so Americanized? To what extent were you modeling yourself after the music of the U.S. bands you grew up with? We were massively influenced by our trip to the U.S. in 1986, when we were on our last legs financially. We started to realize that the whole alternative credibility thing was a trap that the songs we’d started writing needed to break free from. Just being in the U.S. for a couple of months and absorbing classic-rock radio and meeting college radio people really shook us out of our ghetto-ized attitude to music. We started listening to Creedence, John Mellencamp’s The Lonesome Jubilee, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers. Before that, it had all been the Fall, the Smiths, R.E.M., the Feelies. Do you feel that Del Amitri could’ve made more of an impact in America? Did you feel misunderstood here? Quite the opposite. We were always staggered that anyone there dug us at all. If a band feels misunderstood, they are in the wrong business. What is this? Avant-garde theater? Just be grateful even one member of the audience applauds. To me, Del Amitri was defined by a decided lack of trendiness in a sea of trends. I listen to my favorite albums now—Waking Hours and 1997's Some Other Sucker’s Parade, in particular—and it’s surprising how timeless they sound. We generally hated what was going on around us. You have to remember that, after the incredibly rich "Cambrian explosion" of 1976 to 1981, music in the ‘80s was fucking awful. Genuinely interesting things were so rare. Thatcherism ushered in a long period in which style was hugely more important than content. Groups like the Smiths and R.E.M. really had no peers. You had to go and do it yourself. So in Glasgow, we certainly felt like no one else was on our planet. It should probably be admitted that we were pretty ambitious. We wanted to be the best, not the most goddamn cool. As Del Amitri often did, you take your time between albums. What’s the creative process like for you? Is it arduous? Is it safe to assume you’re a perfectionist? Del Amitri took all that time for various logistical reasons—no deal, years of touring one album, not being allowed into the studio by the company, stupid delays of release dates by years in some cases. Me? I just sit and wait for the next collection of songs to accumulate before I go and make a record. If they don’t come, I wait some more. What are your other interests? I’m no great fan of staying busy for its own sake. My job is to sit tight and wait for an idea—in an empty house with a loaded gun. The Great War is a bit of a mixed bag. In some spots, it sounds a lot like Del Amitri (“A Man With Nothing To Do,” “At Home Inside Of Me,” “Ready To Be”). In others, there’s a near-theatrical quality that emerges (“The Fight To Be Human”). And there are also moments that are pretty dark. Where were you emotionally while writing these songs? What was going on in your life at the time? I don’t think my life is relevant to listeners. Would it make a difference if I’d survived a 300-foot fall from a rocky ledge, had TB, watched all my friends die in a burning tent? Songs are independent entities that live inside you and eventually demand to be delivered into the physical world. I could spend a year on a beach drinking cocktails and having my feet massaged by a Greek goddess, but if the song says, “Life is a bucket of shit,” then that’s what I’m going to write. You’re just hitting the road. What can fans expect from your solo acoustic sets? If they expect the worst, they can’t fail to be moderately surprised. Exactly who are Justin Currie fans these days? A 15-year-old blind boy and a very old woman in an inappropriate hat.

—Hobart Rowland

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Q&A With Bettie Serveert’s Carol Van Dyk

May 24, 2010
bettieSERVERT550 The members of Bettie Serveert are alt-rock survivors. They have been performing in various incarnations since 1986, and they released critically acclaimed debut album Palomine in 1992. Joining the core lineup of vocalist/guitarist Carol van Dyk, guitarist Peter Visser and bassist Herman Bunskoeke on new album Pharmacy Of Love (Second Motion) is drummer Joppe Molenaar (of fellow Dutch band Voicst). The group recorded the LP in relative isolation in Waimes, Belgium, in order to better concentrate on honing its sound, and the result is a mix of the classic Bettie Serveert vibe with new modern-rock flourishes. MAGNET discussed the particulars with van Dyk. Bettie Serveert will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "Deny All" (download): [audio:DenyAll.mp3] "Semaphore (Acoustic)" (download): [audio:SemaphoreAcoustic.mp3] MAGNET: Bettie Serveert was poised to make it big in North America in the alternative-rock era of the mid-'90s, but never quite broke through. To what do you attribute this? Van Dyk: Back then, we were terribly naïve. Well, maybe it was a lack of hits, stubbornness, franticness and stress around the endless touring after Palomine. We started out having no plan at all, except maybe play a couple of gigs. Imagine our surprise when people started buying our album. On the other hand, we know a lot of bands that did break through after their first successful album and then split up after their second. And we’re still here! How was the recording experience for Pharmacy Of Love? You were quite isolated in Waimes, Belgium. The recording was great! Isolation makes for a great bonding. We were prepared and knew the songs well. It was basically a holiday camp with the joy of playing. We recorded most of the album in four days. There was a house that came with the studio, so every night we would have home-cooked meals made by Herman, who happens to be a great chef. Pharmacy Of Love is your first album in four years. How does it feel to release something new after a few years off? Well, we did two tours in the U.S. after the last record. Then, three theater tours in the Netherlands and some shows in Belgium, Germany and Spain. We also recorded an entire album late 2007 that we shelved. So it didn’t really feel like a layoff. The new album has a slightly more modern, dance-punkish sound. Have you found yourself influenced by new bands of the past decade? There are a lot of influences on this album, from old and new bands, like Blood Red Shoes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Ramones, Dinosaur Jr, a Dutch band called Moss (we covered their song "Previously Unreleased" and re-named it "Mossie"), Broken Social Scene, Brain Eno, Sonic Youth, to name a few. Bettie Serveert has gone through several lineup changes. Now, for the new album, you added drummer Joppe Molenaar. Is it difficult, creatively, to gain and lose band members with frequency? Sometimes it is hard when someone leaves for whatever reason. Friendships may be bruised. Creatively, it can be good as well. You will get new approaches, and you can try different stuff. And it keeps you fresh and alert. We already knew Joppe, because his band Voicst supported us on their first Dutch tour a couple years ago. He’s great to work with; some people have compared him with drummers like Dave Grohl or Keith Moon. He’s coming with us on tour in the U.S. and Canada. You have recorded many covers, such as the Velvet Underground’s “Venus In Furs,” Bright Eyes’ “Lover I Don’t Have To Love” and Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It With Mine.” Do you enjoy reinterpreting other musicians’ songs? Every once and a while, it can recharge your musical battery, especially when you’re stuck with your own songs. But most important, the lyrics/songs have to appeal to my heart. It can be fun to look at a song and say, "Let’s try a different approach." We later heard that Sebadoh and Bright Eyes did "our" version of their song when they played it live. Last year, you and Peter did a project called Me & Stupid with members of You Am I and the Gin Club. Did you feel inspired to just do something different? Are the songs from that recording session going to get a wide release? Peter and I had this idea to let go of the usual verse/chorus/verse/middle-eight/solo/chorus/end ritual of the pop song and make a collage of parts of songs and glue them together. We wanted to try and have a more natural flow in the music itself. Russell (Hopkinson) and Matt (Wicks) totally understood the music, and within two days we had most of the CD done. Andrew (Morris) and Ben (Salter) also came up with songs, and we wrote some new stuff on the spot. Great time, especially on the beach. The plan is to have it released later this year as a free download and also as a physical CD. Not sure yet in which countries it will be released, but we’ve been playing one of the songs at our live shows with the Betties. What’s it like being a female-fronted indie-rock band? Did you have many female rock idols growing up? Mostly when we play at a festival, I’m the only female singer who also plays guitar. Female indie-rock singers/guitar players are still a minority, most certainly here in the Netherlands. But the boys in the band are really nice to me; they’re like my brothers, so to speak. My female rock idols include Debbie Harry, Kim Gordon, Kim Deal and Joan Jett. Both your sound and music style are so eclectic. People wouldn’t immediately associate your sound with the Netherlands. How does being Dutch affect your identity as an artist? Being Dutch in the international music scene means that we more or less operate in quarantine. So we can allow or block any influence at any time. Also being our own record company means we can do what we want! Not sure there is such a thing as Dutch pop music. Most Dutch pop music has its roots in the American and/or English music scene. On the other hand, I’m Canadian, and English is my first language. It might be one of the reasons why some people don’t see us as typical Dutch. I noticed you’re not touring in America behind your new album. What were your impressions of American fans when you toured in the U.S>? There is a North American tour in the making. The plan is to start touring on September 23 until the end of October, that is, if we get a work permit. American people can at times be very emotional, as they focus on the lyrics way more than the Dutch, which is understandable. And they are also more vocal and respond more to comments we make onstage. They sing along when they know the song. Yep, we like the American audience.

—Danielle Bacher

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Q&A With The Blues Explosion’s Jon Spencer

May 17, 2010
JSBXQA2 There comes a time when nothing else but a brain-hammering session with Pussy Galore's 1989 album Dial M For Motherfucker will do. And not just to clear the house of your so-called friends who've been sloshing cheap wine on your expensive new carpet all night. (Although it might work for that, too.) Jon Spencer, the man who shocked and awed the world with the noisiest band in the history of rock 'n' roll, went on to form three more exhilarating combos: Boss Hog (with his wife Cristina Martinez), Heavy Trash (his most recent band) and, of course, the stunning Blues Explosion, whose recent career-spanning compendium, Dirty Shirt Rock 'N' Roll (Majordomo), tells you plenty about the DNA of the man in charge. (The label is reissuing expanded versions of out-of-print Blues Explosion albums Now I Got Worry and Controversial Negro tomorrow.) Also out tomorrow is Amsterdam Throwdown King Street Showdown (Bronze Rat), the new album by Spencer, Martinez and Solex's Elisabeth Esselink. In case you need more, Spencer leapfrogs through his musical career as a tune-up for his week-long guest-editing stint at magnetmagazine.com. "Buscemi" (download): [audio:Buscemi.mp3] MAGNET: Where did you grow up, Jon? Spencer: I was born and raised in Hanover, N.H., a small town in the middle of the state. My father taught chemistry at Dartmouth College. I had older siblings, but neither of 'em were too crazy about rock 'n' roll. There was a lot of opera and classical music in my house. My mother was a big fan. I listened to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones when I was a kid. But I didn't start seriously buying stuff until I was an adolescent. I was born in '65 and grew up in the '70s. The stuff that really had an attraction for me was what was called new wave at the time. I was really into Devo, Kraftwerk and the Residents. Rock music just sounded awful, a real turn-off, all through the '70s. I come from a small town. There is such an easy access to music these days that just didn't exist then. There was no cable television, no internet, no compact discs. I don't think we got cable TV until '83. And that was a big thing because there was this program called Night Flight on the USA Network. It went from midnight to four in the morning, and I could see things. It was very hard to find out about music where I grew up. Dartmouth was not a very wild and loose place. It's not like I was hanging out. I was a very straight, good kid. Were you into the New York punk stuff, like the Ramones? You heard about punk stuff, maybe, but information slowly filtered through. I won a subscription to Heavy Metal magazine as an art prize. I'd read about some bands in a column, then start sending away for records. When I finished high school, I went away to Brown in Providence, R.I., for a couple of years. But that was the stuff I was into then, kind of futuristic, science-fictiony, a little strange. Then I slowly got interested in rock 'n' roll and really discovered what true rock 'n' roll is: very strange music. It's not something that seems to be celebrated in this country. It's a shame. This is one of the great contributions we've made to the world. We seem to be a little bit ashamed of it. So how did you get from that upbringing to Pussy Galore, one of the weirdest, craziest, loudest bands ever? I just began to move to more extreme groups and sounds. I became very much into straight-up industrial noise, bands like Throbbing Gristle, early Einstürzende Neubauten. Also the Swans and Sonic Youth were just starting. And the no-wave stuff from New York. I was really into noise and into confrontation. I was very angry. I then got into '60s punk and the thing that started me down that road was the Back From The Grave series on Crypt Records. When I was at Brown, I started playing in bands. Played bass for a pretty straight-up garage group and was banging on pieces of metal for an industrial-noise group. Then somewhere we put the two of 'em together and started Pussy Galore. It was a very cool band. We were a cool band. We made some records and put 'em out ourselves. Hardcore taught me a lot; one of the things was if you want to go on tour, go ahead, book a tour. You could put out a record, make a fanzine, do it yourself. It was a feeling that I still carry with me to this day. Pussy Galore, we played around, went to Europe a couple times. It was always a bit volatile. We were young, and you're still trying to figure out how to get along with people. It was still quite new, the whole underground scene. Things were still coming together. You had all these electric bands like Electric Eels in Cleveland, the Replacements in Minneapolis. Weird bands inspired by the Stooges or the Velvets that were springing up. There wasn't really this tour network set up, but it started happening, thanks to bands like Black Flag, who laid the groundwork. That Michael Azerrad book, Our Band Could Be Your Life, is an enjoyable book to read. It was an exciting time. You'd go out to Chicago and get to meet Big Black. You'd go to Detroit and meet the Laughing Hyenas. I felt very connected to a scene. People ask if I ever felt connected with the Blues Explosion, and no, I didn't, not really. Any particular crazy nights on the road with Pussy Galore that stick out? We weren't hell-bent on destruction or anything. We weren't shooting up dope. Not all of us were. The wildest night? There's no stereotypical, clichéd rock 'n' roll groupie story. First of all, I can't remember much of it. The classic story is when we did the very last tour with Pussy Galore after Julie Cafritz had left the band, right after Dial M For Motherfucker. It was the lineup with me and Bob Bert, Neil Hagerty and Kurt Wolf, the four guys. We did four weeks in August, not the best time to tour, all through the south and southwest. The whole tour, Neil had a Samsonite piece of luggage, a big old-fashioned suitcase. But he always wore the same clothes. He'd change his clothes when somebody gave him a T-shirt or he got something at a Salvation Army. We were coming back into the U.S. from playing Montreal going to Boston. And we're getting stopped at the border and they're going through our stuff. We're getting tossed. So, they go to open Neil's bag, and we're all standing around. And the only thing that's in there is a deflated basketball. Neil says his father suggested it might be a good way to stay in shape, to shoot a few hoops. Did he have a pump, too? No, that wasn't in there. There were things like people breaking the windshield of the van. A lot of the shows weren't at professional rock clubs. They'd be at the Elks Lodge or wherever hardcore shows were held. Or we'd play somebody's house. But it was terribly exciting, making connections with like-minded artists all over the country. Why break up the band? We had said our piece, and it was a good time to stop. And I think I had grown up a little bit and changed. I wasn't quite as angry anymore. I also wasn't just angry with myself and at the world, but not so angry and frustrated with rock 'n' roll. So what about Boss Hog with Cristina? It was more structured than Pussy Galore and definitely not so angry. We're still sorta going. We played a bunch last year. We were invited to do both the All Tomorrow's Parties in the U.K. and the one in upstate New York. They're really well run. I think Boss Hog was an opportunity to do something with Cristina. And it was a way to explore a male/female dynamic. Ike and Tina were a big inspiration. Boss Hog was always a casual thing, especially at the start, hanging out with friends. It continues to be an easy-going band. We did a little tour last year and are playing the Amphetamine Reptile 25th anniversary party in Minneapolis. No matter what band you're in, I always hear some Iggy Pop in there. Oh sure, big Iggy Pop fan. The Stooges were huge and the Dolls, they were like gods, such touchstones. And it was hard to find out information before YouTube and the Internet. You had to look for the records and hear stories. And it was before anybody did it again. I have mixed feelings about the Stooges reunion. Tell me how the Blues Explosion came about. Well, Pussy Galore had been done for about a year, and in that time, Boss Hog had already been going. Also during that time, I'd done some playing with another New York City band called the Honeymoon Killers that Cristina had been in, as well. Through the Honeymoon Killers, I met Russell Simins, who became the drummer for the Blues Explosion. We hit it off personally and musically. I think, at the time, Russell was living with Judah Bauer, who'd come to New York on a bus from Wisconsin. I certainly didn't put an ad in the paper for musicians. It kinda fell together, it clicked, it felt good, and it was a lot of fun. So we kept doing it. How did you wind up recording with Rufus Thomas, the maestro of "Do Funky Chicken" and "Walkin' The Dog," down in Memphis? We were out touring in 1996 and working on the Now I Got Worry album, and we stopped to record some tracks at Doug Easley's studio in Memphis. We had this instrumental called "Chicken Dog," and Stax was a huge influence on the Blues Explosion. Robert Gordon was hanging out at the session, and I'd heard that Rufus Thomas had done a guest vocal with another young indie band. So I mentioned this to Robert Gordon and asked whether he'd come in and do something with the Blues Explosion. Robert Gordon said, "Yeah, sure, just give him a call." So Rufus Thomas came down to the studio. That was a huge thrill for me. He came by, listened to the song and just did it in one take. [Laughs] He just made it up on the spot. To meet the guy and have him sing on that song was something very special. Since we keep returning to one of my favorite cities, Memphis, have you ever bumped into Jim Jarmusch? Your music and his films would be a natural fit, I'd say. Sounds like a good idea to me. But it's not up to me. It's up to the maestro. [Laughs] I met him for the first time ever at the ATP festival last fall. He was there presenting one of his films. No, I've never worked with him, but I'm his fan. In particular, I really loved Mystery Train. I was already interested in Sun and Stax, and that movie is such a funky and beautiful valentine to the city of Memphis. That really pushed me further down the road. How was it working with Calvin Johnson and Dub Narcotic Sound System? I can't remember when I first met Calvin, but I was a fan of Beat Happening. I do remember the Blues Explosion being on tour in Germany, and there was a disco after the show. Russell and I were hanging out, and we heard this crazy song and it turned out to be Dub Narcotic's "Fuck Shit Up," one of their first singles. We asked the DJ what it was and started covering the song. Eventually, that led to some kind of collaboration in Calvin's studio, which was in his living room at that time. Some of the that stuff the Blues Explosion took and used for some songs on (1998's) Acme; for instance, that song "Talk About The Blues," which is built on a loop from one of the jams that came out at that session. I assume your song "Buscemi" is about one of my all-time favorite actors, Steve Buscemi. Sure, that's an instrumental written in this weird, funky little studio in Dallas. We were on tour with the Beastie Boys, supporting them. It was a weird thing, playing these big arenas. We got to be real friendly with their keyboard player, Money Mark. I think we had day off, and he asked if we wanted to go a session at this funky little eight-track studio. That was one of the improvisations that just sort of happened. There was a lot of Money Mark on Now I Got Worry. He had a real influence on that record. I really like that film that Buscemi did where they're making a movie about making a low-budget movie called Living In Oblivion. Yeah, that's pretty good. I also like the episode of The Sopranos he's in where they go out to whack somebody and they get lost in the woods. Yeah. And, of course, Fargo, where he's last seen being ground up like hamburger in a tree chipper. Not to mention dying of a heart attack in a bowling alley parking lot in The Big Lebowski. How about Steve Albini? You've worked with him. I saw Big Black back in the '80s and recently caught Shellac. Albini was one of those people I met early on with Pussy Galore. Was a big fan of Big Black and hired him to do part of (Pussy Galore's) Right Now! album. Also worked with him on Boss Hog and the Blues Explosion. I've learned a lot from Steve; not just recording techniques but the philosophy of engineering. He's a real individual, a guy who believes in making his own path. Tell me about Heavy Trash. Haven't heard it yet. We played the Strictly Hardly Bluegrass Festival (in San Francisco) recently. We've been doing Heavy Trash for five or six years. The band is me and Matt Verta-Ray, another New York City guy. We started the band to play rockabilly. Over the course of three albums, it's become less so, and it was never really pure rockabilly. Of these four bands, Heavy Trash is the most traditional and a partnership with Matt. He has a classic, almost sweet, pop sensibility that provides some contrast to my more nasty stuff, my mean tendencies.

—Jud Cost

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Q&A With Crash Test Dummies’ Brad Roberts

May 10, 2010
CrashtestQA Crash Test Dummies are best known for their 1993 worldwide hit "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm," yet the Canadian band put out six more albums after that before going on hiatus in 2005. CTD is back this week with Oooh La La (Deep Fried) but in a brand new incarnation. Mainman Brad Roberts (now based in New York City) wrote and recorded the album with producer/engineer Stewart Lerman (Antony And The Johnsons, Marshall Crenshaw, Roches) using '70s musical toys such as the Optigan for the majority of the LP. (The two were joined on Oooh La La by longtime CTD backing vocalist Ellen Reid.) The result is the happiest-sounding record of Roberts' two-decade career. MAGNET caught up with him as he was rehearsing for CTD's current tour. Roberts will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. “And It’s Beautiful” (download): [audio:AndItsBeautiful.mp3] MAGNET What did you do during your five-year writing hiatus? Roberts: During this period, I read hundreds of books, I started incorporating serious physical exercise into my routine, I tried and failed at voiceover work, and I ran a songwriting summer camp for kids. I also got into baking bread and cooking more at home, generally. I really just wanted to live a normal life for a while. By "normal," I mean not living out of a suitcase. Where did your fascination with vintage toys come from? I was once paired off with another writer who had an Optigan. It was love at first sight. That was at least 12 years ago. During my time off, I decided to buy one. I fell in love with composing on it. I had grown tired of my own writing results on the guitar, and the Optigan opened up brave new worlds for me. The same goes for my partner in this musical crime, Stewart Lerman. How much of the album was made on toys such as the Optigan compared to “normal” instruments? I think only two songs were written on guitar. The rest came from either the Optigan or an old '80s Omnichord, which I vastly prefer to the new ones. How did you hook up with Stewart Lerman? I am acquainted with Suzzy Roche (the Roches were a huge early influence for me), and she introduced me to her partner, Stewart Lerman. He loved the Optigan and promptly had two of them (I own three) moved from my apartment to his recording studio, where we began to compose on it. Upon writing our first song together, we resolved to continue. Which we did, sporadically, for the last four years. As you can see—or, rather, hear. Oooh La La is a Crash Test Dummies album in name only. Why did you choose to release it as a CTD record rather than one credited to Brad Roberts & Stewart Lerman? There would be no point in releasing such a record, because no one knows my name! I do own the name Crash Test Dummies, however, and it is at least marketable. And, let's not forget I made sure to have Ellen sing the backups on the record. Further, when we tour, I will be joined not just by Ellen but also Dan Roberts (in Canada) and even Mitch Dorge (in Winnipeg). Besides, when I founded the Crash Test Dummies, I chose the people I wanted to play with; I wrote and sang all the songs, fronted the band and did the vast majority of press, as I am now. From that perspective, things haven't changed much. This album seems much happier than the majority of your past work. Why is that? Because I'm happier is the simple answer. And my last album (2004's Songs Of The Unforgiven) was deeply pessimistic, so I didn't want to do the same record all over again. Live, you are playing these songs in a straightforward, stripped-down manner, rather than using toy instruments. How is that coming along? We'll be doing the songs with an acoustic trio. To try and bring the Optigan, the primary instrument on the record, would be a total nightmare. They are very fragile creatures. And the trio sounds great. Totally different ball of wax. Very intimate and, in that way, more powerful than a fuller band, we're finding. It's going to be a sweet set. You wrote on your blog last year that you believe there will be no CDs or record stores by 2015. Do you still think that? Yes. Physical distribution to retail cannot survive the increasing dominion of the digital format. I imagine there will come a time when there are no paper books anymore.

—Eric T. Miller

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Film At 11: Hurricane Bells

May 6, 2010
Steve Schiltz, longtime singer and guitarist of Longwave, has cooked up new band Hurricane Bells, a bourgeoning side project that's earned him a spot on the Twilight: New Moon soundtrack with b-side “Monsters.” Schiltz wrote, played, recorded and mixed every piece of his debut album, Tonight Is The Ghost (Vagrant), with little more than a guitar and a MacBook to create the array of ghostly hymns and clanging lighthearted pop that's led to Hurricane Bells’ first-ever headlining tour. MAGNET is proud to premiere the new video for “The Winters In New York,” in which the turn of spring reveals the sad and fleeting reality of the life of a snowman. Reverberating guitars wail over melancholic vocals, evoking a musical grayscale in this chilly requiem to East Coast winters. In celebration of HB’s first appearance as headliner beginning tomorrow, we’ve included a Q&A with Schiltz below. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/11436971[/vimeo] MAGNET: You moved from a decade-long stint in a four-person band with Longwave to creating a one-man recording with Tonight Is The Ghost. What was it like making that transition? Schiltz: It was fun. I had a good time, recording drums by myself, recording guitars in my living room. I did play the stuff for the other guys in Longwave when it was nearly done.  What drove you to start a project of your own? With Longwave, I always made demos of the songs I'd write, and lots of times we'd work off of those. The Hurricane Bells record was made from the same kind of demos. At some point, I decided to finish them. I decided it'd be fun to try and do it myself. How has your incredible tour of India prepared you for your first headlining tour? Well, we can play all the songs now! And we've added a couple more to fill out the show. India was incredible, just an amazing experience. What is the craziest, most bizarre, most amazing thing you experienced in India? Many things. Cows in the street. No traffic laws in most places. The Taj Mahal was breathtaking. The music was interesting; besides Bollywood and traditional Indian music, there was a lot of heavy metal. We'd see live reviews that'd say, "Hurricane Bells is not your average metal band but still very good nonetheless!" I read that your touring band has grown to a healthy six members. Who are the contributors, and how is it performing your solo album with a well-sized band? The band is still changing. On this upcoming tour, there will be four. That's me, Ashen (Keilyn) from Scout singing, Jason (Molina) from Longwave playing drums and Todd (Dahlhoff) from the Dead Trees on bass. On the last batch of shows, it was a few guys from Blue October and Dan (Orvik) from Stars Of Track And Field helping out. What was your best meal at SXSW? There was a Thai/pan-Asian place around the corner from Emo's that I loved. I don't remember the name. It was a nice alternative to the Stubb's/BBQ. Which is also great. Oh, and Torchy's Tacos, obviously. Did you get a chance to catch any good acts in Austin? I mostly went and saw my friends' bands. The Candles, Reno Bo, Adam Green, Minus The Bear, who played after us at one of the shows. What do you think of the current vampire phenomenon and the fact that your music is now part of it? It's only been good for me. As far as I am concerned, they can use anything of mine that they like. I have my stake at the ready. Do you feel any obligation to like the Twilight movies just because you’re on the soundtrack? Wow, this is a loaded question! I saw the movie at the premiere in L.A. Again, there was nothing bad about that. What do you hope to accomplish with your music from the level of the listener to that of your personal success? If the person listening enjoys it and wants to hear it again, that would make me happy. Considering the success of Broken Bells and Sleigh Bells, how good are you feeling about your choice in band name? Who the hell are Sleigh Bells? The original bells are Howling Bells in the U.K. and School Of Seven Bells. After that was us. Then the broken, sleigh, submarine, etc., variety. I like our name the best, by the way. What are your plans for the year to come? New Hurricane Bells EP coming out in early summer, coupled with a digital remix EP of songs from Tonight Is The Ghost and a few shows. Meanwhile, as soon as I am off tour, I am going to start on the next record. It's gonna be called School Of Broken Sleighs.

—Julia Friedland

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Q&A With Jason Falkner

May 3, 2010
JasonFalknerqa Even though he likes to pick and chose his projects carefully, Jason Falkner has had an amazing run of recording dates—both on solo albums and as a sideman with the likes of Beck, Air and Paul McCartney—that would turn most musicians pea green. And Falkner has also been a crucial part of critically lauded releases by '90s indie-rock heroes Eric Matthews, the Grays and Jellyfish, as well as getting his feet wet with original Paisley Underground cult combo the Three O'Clock. Falkner has a stellar solo set due out this summer called All Quiet On The Noise Floor that threatens to pass his previous solo release, I'm OK, You're OK (from February), like a slow runner being lapped on the bases by a real speedburner. Falkner is guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "The Knew" (download): [audio:TheKnew.mp3] MAGNET: I'd forgotten you were in the last incarnation of the Three O'Clock. I have a copy of their 1988 LP Vermillion in front of me, the album with you on it. Falkner: Wow, one of the few. I was just a kid—19—when that record came out. I had been a huge fan in high school of all the Paisley Underground bands: the Last, Rain Parade. I'd seen the Three O'Clock maybe five times. In fact, my high-school band in Agoura Hills covered "With A Cantaloupe Girlfriend" and "I Go Wild." It must have been a trip, playing in a band you'd revered as a kid. Yeah, I'd put an ad in L.A. paper The Recycler for my own musicians to start a band. I got a copy the week my ad came out, and I looked down a little further to "Bands Seeking Musicians" and there was an ad from the Three O'Clock. To be honest, I'd moved on to other stuff so I hadn't really been paying attention to the Three O'Clock for a couple of years. So I called the number, and it was (the band's drummer) Danny Benair's home phone. We spoke for about three hours. I was really into the Scottish pop scene at the time, the Postcard bands, like Aztec Camera, Josef K and Orange Juice. Danny was like, "Just judging from our conversation, you're probably a shoo-in." They auditioned a crazy number of guys. And I got it. Then my first meeting was with the manager, who says, "First of all, Jason, there's no money." So, there goes that part of the dream. [Laughs] After the demise of the Three O'Clock, Roger Manning talked you into joining Jellyfish? Oddly enough, he was the one person who called me from that Recycler ad. We had met a year earlier, before I moved up to San Francisco to start Jellyfish with those guys, Roger and Andy Sturmer. They were still called Beatnik Beatch when I joined, one of the all-time worst names ever. Frankly, I wasn't a big Jellyfish fan. I thought the first record was OK. But I played it this morning, and it sounded pretty good. Well, I was really proud of that record. I think we had a good team working on that. We were all really young, so there was a kind of sophistication to that record in contrast to our age and experience. Andy's a great songwriter and singer. I wanted to contribute more to the band than they kind of wanted me to. They had a real stranglehold over the songwriting. Is that why you left? That's exactly why I left. All right, next up was something that I really loved: the album by the Grays. What do you think of it nowadays, or have you even listened to it lately? It's kind of filed away. But I pull it out every once in a while and listen to it. That's another record I'm really proud of. That was made when I had just left Jellyfish and was doing a bunch of demos. Jon Brion called me and said, "Hey, man, you probably haven't been in a room in a while, just playing a bunch of Kinks songs. You want to come down to this rehearsal studio in Hollywood?" So, yeah, that sounded like fun. It was these three guys from Boston: Jon, Dan (McCarroll) and Buddy (Judge). And this other friend of theirs who was there held up the pay phone connected to somebody from Capitol. And the guy from Capitol left a message that night to say he'd sign us, sight-unseen. You know, "I love all you guys independently and can't believe you're a band" kind of thing. Pretty hard to turn that down. I'd been vowing for months that I'd never join another band. But offers were being thrown at us and money. And they asked, "Who do you want to produce you?" And I said, "I have this great relationship with Jack Puig because of the Jellyfish record." So it just kind of snowballed into this thing where we were a band. And I don't think any of us, especially me, really wanted to be in a band. I was just on fire because I'd been under the thumb in Jellyfish, so I kind of led that band. I'm playing the majority of the instruments on everything. It was really fun record to make, a kitchen-sink kind of thing. Just any idea, just try it, and we'll put it down. To me, it sounds like a blend of the late-period Beatles and Todd Rundgren. Yeah, that's fair enough. I'd been listening to Todd Rundgren all my life. And you'd have to be living in a cave to not be influenced by the Beatles—or you have no musicality. Or you're stupid. Yeah, or you're probably stupid. We were always influenced by the bands who were influenced by the Beatles, like XTC and Elvis Costello. Has anybody ever told you that you have the exact same speaking voice as Matt Piucci of Rain Parade, a good friend of mine. It's almost creepy. I feel like I'm talking to Matt. Wow, no, I've never heard that before. What's he doing these days? He's actually thinking of putting Rain Parade back together with Steven Roback and John Thoman. Awesome. I'll be there if it happens. Tell him I said hello. So, next on your agenda was working with Eric Matthews from Cardinal. How did that come about? Eric came up to me at a Grays in-store in Portland, Ore. There was this weird-looking guy lurking in the corner where we were playing. He gave me a cassette tape with this hand-drawn artwork and told me I was one of his favorite musicians. And he had all these plans laid out right on the cassette artwork, like a crazy to-do list. He was talking to Sub Pop. I put the cassette on in the van, and I was really into it. We started talking on the phone and writing letters. And he was like, "It would be my dream to have you involved in any way." So that's the way it happened, pretty organic. That first record had this unique momentum. Certainly nothing else on Sub Pop sounded like that. It wasn't credited that way, but I kind of co-produced with him. Almost all the electric, a lot of bass and almost all the piano are mine. That was really cool. In '96, you released your first solo album. How did that come to be, and what did it do for you that other projects hadn't? My first solo record, recorded in '95, was probably the most exciting time of my life. I got a solo deal with what I perceived to be a cool, boutique major label, Elektra. l certainly loved their lineage. I got signed by this charismatic dude, and the week I started my record, he got fired. I was like, "Oh no, another brick in the wall." But making that record, I was finally free from anyone else's opinion, something I had been trying to do for a long time. Unless I ask, I don't want to know. Oh man, that first record just represents me completely unleashed. It was also the first time I played every instrument on a record, always my dream. It would be frustrating for me to play with other people, because sometimes I can play drums better than the drummer. That's what I've been doing ever since. I did a couple of interviews with famed guitar session man Jerry Cole, who played on practically everybody's records back in the '60s. Is that the kind of thing you'd like to become? I'm pretty picky and finicky about what I want to work on. I get calls to do stuff all the time of things that you and I know very well but might not really like that much. And I just don't do it, even though I need the money. I work with Beck a lot. Yeah, tell me about that. Love the guy. He's a friend of mine, known him for a long time. He was asking me to be in his band all the time, right after Smokey Hormel. I was always like, "Dude, I'm flattered, but I do my own stuff." However staggered, it's still my own. So, finally he started working on records with me and gave up on the me-being-in-his-band thing. I worked with him on Sea Change. I don't really enjoy being a guy who's called in to play on records that much. But for certain people like him and when I worked with Paul McCartney, that was ridiculously cool. The envy of every musician. How did that happen? My friend Nigel Godrich, a Radiohead guy, was producing, and he called me. He said that Paul has so many yes-men around him. I mean, what else are you gonna be? He told me he needed me to help him because I have great taste. He wanted me to come in and help do all the skeletal rhythm tracks for Chaos And Creation In The Backyard. It would be Paul on bass, this wonderful drummer named James Gadsen who was in Bill Withers' band, and then myself on guitar. The first day we started working, I was setting up my gear. And, not being some slick kinda session guy, I'm thinking, "Shit man, I don't even know if all of my stuff works." I'm looking at my '50s Fender amp when I realized I hadn't turned that on in six months. I'm getting nervous because I'm looking over at the guys setting up Paul's stuff, and it's really pro. Then I'm looking at my thing and all the cords are different. I don't even have a tuner because I usually just hit a note on the piano and tune the guitar to that. So, did Paul arrive in a flaming pie? Well, somebody taps me on the shoulder, and I turn around. It's Paul, and he's standing right in front of me. And he says, "You must be Jason." I never get this way, but immediately my knees got really wobbly, and I almost fell over. But he's so cool. Obviously, he's aware that everybody who's talking to him is freaking out, but he's very very good at defusing that and making you feel comfortable. He was an absolute prince. So you got to cut the entire album with him? I did, but the understanding was—and this was totally fine with me—that he was gonna end up playing almost everything on that record like he did on his early solo stuff. I think I'm on, like, three songs on that record. But it was cut as a trio with James the drummer in a different room. So the only people who could see each other were me and Paul, and we're looking right at each other. He must be a pretty damn fine bassist to play with. [Laughs] Yeah, he's the best. And at one point, it was really funny because Nigel goes, "Hey, Jason, you want to try playing bass on this song?" And I was like, "Uh, wait a minute, you've got Paul McCartney playing right here." Tell me about playing with French duo Air. That was super-cool. I've always enjoyed doing different things. Something on my solo albums might sound like a Cole Porter song, weird torch/string ballad kind of thing, and then there's other stuff that sounds kind of like the Damned, quite a cross-section. My friend Brian Reitzell was starting to play with Air, and he called me one day and asked if I'd be interested in going up to Sundance to play with Air for the Sofia Coppola movie they did the soundtrack for. Yeah, The Virgin Suicides. That's my favorite Air album. Very moody stuff and perfect for the film. It's an addictive record. Yeah, it's a cool little universe they created. So that's when I started with them. Then up in Sundance, they asked me if I'd like to sing on the new record. And I said, "Yeah, for sure." So, I sang a bit on the next record, 10,000 Hz Legend. Then they asked if I would ever consider being in the band to tour. They were about to tour the world. Man, we toured for two years. We went to Japan and toured all over Europe twice. And then twice in the U.S. It was a shitload of touring. Every show was fun, just an amazing event, even when I was sick. And they were even paying me really well, which made it really hard to leave. I'm a little confused about your current release. I think I read that it was cut some time ago but is just getting a U.S. release. Here's where it gets confusing. What's called the new record here, I'm OK, You're OK, has been out in Japan for three years. That came out here in February. Then there's a brand new record (All Quiet On The Noise Floor) that's been out in Japan since November that will come out here in the summer. I ask a lot of my fans.

—Jud Cost

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Q&A With Shout Out Louds

April 26, 2010
SOLqa Not long after the release of their second album, 2007's Our Ill Wills, and months of relentless touring, Sweden’s Shout Out Louds decided to take a six-month break, and its five members—frontman Adam Olenius, bassist Ted Malmros, guitarist Carl Von Arbin, drummer Eric Edman and keyboardist Bebban Stenborg—spread out between Melbourne, Los Angeles and Stockholm. However, despite the distance, it wasn’t long before Olenius was writing new material and sending it out to his bandmates, who all contributed from their remote locations. As a result, the quintet has returned with a fresh, simple sound on third full-length Work (out now on Merge), which the band is currently supporting on a tour of North America and Europe. Shout Out Louds will be guest-editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our 2007 feature on the band. "Walls" (download): [audio:Walls.mp3] "Fall Hard (Passion Pit Remix)" (download): [audio:FallHardPassionPitRemix.mp3] MAGNET: After the release of Our Ill Wills, you all took a six-month break and scattered around the globe. Were you just sick of each other by that point? Olenius: No, sick of following a tour schedule. To make your own plans and be an individual, not a band, all the time. We did realize that being in a band wasn't that bad, so the break didn't last that long. Most of Work was written while everyone was separated. How do you think the long distance affected the making of this album? Writing most of the songs in Melbourne gave me more time to think about home (Stockholm) and what we wanted with the band. It gave the songs a little bit more freedom, and I felt less pressured. But we arranged and added everything at home in Stockholm, so it was also a homecoming album. Had you been planning to write while you were technically on hiatus? I write all the time, but I tried not to the first week. But then I wrote "Walls" and started working again. That song was sort of a starting shot. How does it feel to be back together now? Good. We've just finished our European tour, and everything feels really great. Less drama, more fun. We bought bikes in Hamburg and got in a fight in Copenhagen. All good. Work is simpler and more stripped-down than your previous albums. What inspired that change? We talked about it during the last tour, and we wanted to focus more on our own instruments, so every part becomes clearer. John Cale, the Velvet Underground and Fleetwood Mac played a big part, too. What’s the story behind the album’s title? So many things: Passion, friendship, Andy Warhol, isolation, Irving Penn, finalizing. Making it work. How did you join up with producer Phil Ek? What was it like working with him? Phil is grand. He pushed us to make that special take and is a good listener. I sent him three crappy demos, and he liked them. Our people called his people, and here we are. Seattle was great, too. We had Campari and juice in a bar that someone from Soundgarden owned or something. Shout Out Louds have fans all over the world. Why do you think your music resonates with such a wide variety of people? It sounds like a bad cliche, but we've always aimed for a timeless sound and lyrics. We're also a band that is still curious and doesn't mind playing for 25 people in Salvador. Do you have a favorite country for touring? We're a little bit tired of German sausages and cold Sweden, so let's go with America. Speaking of touring, since you’re on the road a lot, what are the essential items you always bring along with you? A lot of Swedish music. (Buy the new Radio Dept.!) We have Ikea everywhere, so food is not a problem. All the seasons of Top Chef and The Wire. And NyQuil.

—Emily Costantino

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Q&A With Sweet Apple’s John Petkovic

April 19, 2010
SWEET-APPLEqa2 Sweet Apple is more than just a question of Cobra Verde's John Petkovic and Tim Parnin having some teenage kicks with Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis and Witch's Dave Sweetapple. It's the answer to the heartache, grief and depression that led Petkovic to drive from Cleveland to Vermont, where he rediscovered the healing powers of rock 'n' roll with some help from his friends. Love & Desperation (Tee Pee) isn't a fountain of youth, but it'll do in a pinch: a combination of stomping '70s arena-rock riffs, Petkovic's well-honed T Rex swagger and Mascis' hard-wired guitar leads servicing lurid tales of sex, drugs and vampires. (Appropriately, the video for Sweet Apple's "Do You Remember" was conceived as an homage to Porky's, and the cover of Love & Desperation parodies the art for Roxy Music's Country Life.) MAGNET spoke to Petkovic about bars, basketball and the chance that this new band might have been named Gong Bag. The members of Sweet Apple will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "Do You Remember" (download): [audio:DoYouRemember.mp3] MAGNET: First of all, I think it's funny that you are in a band with J Mascis. You're very talkative, and J is ... not. Petkovic: Yeah, on the surface we’re very different—like the Beauty and the Beast, except that we’re not exactly beautiful or beastly. But we have a lot in common. We both got into music at an early age and for the same reason: because we both just love it, from the sound of guitars to the idea that a good song can take you away from the drab soundtrack of life’s routines. And we both had parents that expected different things out of us in life and, early on, couldn’t grasp how much of a role music played and would play in our lives. But there are similarities beyond that: We like to tease one another—about those differences, especially. As in, me talking too much and him not talking enough. But we’ve also been able to talk about just about anything, the good, the bad and the mundane, and laughing about it all. J has a great sense of humor that gets lost on people sometimes. And he can laugh at himself, which is something I’ve always admired in people. Last time we talked was around 2008, when Cobra Verde's Haven't Slept All Year was coming out. As that album title indicates, you were coming off a year of insomnia and caring for your mother, who passed away from bladder cancer. And one day you started driving east from Cleveland ... It’s crazy, but I had no idea what I was going to do. I just ended up at Dave Sweetapple’s house and, honestly, I felt a little weird there at the time. I was so lost and confused and dead inside that I had no idea what to say or how to express it. My mom had died a really terrible death. It was the culmination of a number of things that had hit me all at once. I felt so alone in the world and totally lost. As a kid, I used to watch these Ingmar Bergman films about people in deep despair and, while I could appreciate them as films, they were just stories, character profiles. And yet I felt like one of those people. Dave was really sweet and so was J—he showed up the next morning and we all hung out. It meant so much to me. We were at the food co-op in Brattleboro, Vt., and I stepped out for a cigarette. (I was smoking three packs a day at the time.) I just started crying uncontrollably. I didn’t know what to say and just had to go. But I also felt this urge to play guitar. I can’t even explain it. When I got back to Cleveland, Tim (Parnin) called to see how I was doing and I told him I was working on some tunes. He said he’d like to getting together to jam. It’s so weird how everything came together. How did Dave feel about being the namesake of the band? Does it entitle him to special privileges? Well, I think he’s going to have to change his middle name to “From.” Because it’s really funny hearing him talk to people about this and say he’s “Dave from Sweet Apple.” Especially when they respond, “I thought you were Dave Sweetapple.” As for special privileges, Dave thinks that J wanted to call it “Sweet Apple” to make Dave feel self-conscious and uncomfortable. As Dave says, “J just wants to call it Sweet Apple so he can torture me!” I wasn’t sold on the name at first—that is, until Dave and J started throwing out other band names. J wanted to call it Heavy Blanket or Gong Bag. Then Dave suggested Christ. I’m not trying to sound like John Lennon and I know Sweet Apple will never be “bigger than Christ.” But I can definitely say that “Sweet Apple” is better than “Christ.” You referred to this Sweet Apple record as a bookend for all the personal grief you went through. And it sounds like you're getting your rock 'n' roll sea legs under you—it's got some swagger to it. Tim and Dave and J have a lot to do with that. They all have a deep understanding about rock ‘n’ roll—not just the sound of it, but the attitude. When we recorded it, we all threw out ideas and everyone was open to them. Some people would say that’s being on the same page, but most of the time we didn’t even have to finish what we were going to say. The other person already knew what we were thinking. The lyrics on the first song, "Do You Remember," read like a postcard from a dusty record player: People drift away from listening to music sometimes and need to be reminded how just listening to rock 'n' roll transforms you and informs your whole lifestyle. That’s a great way to sum it up. I came up with that tune in five minutes. And I’m not saying that to make it seem like there was some inspiration or anything behind it. I just started thinking about the idea of a break-up song. Usually, it’s about and between two people. In this case, it started with that premise. And it got me to think about the idea of a “break-up song.” Do we ever really break up with people or places or are they ghosts lodged in our memory? Do we break up with ourselves when something happens to change who we are? Do we ever really break up with some song that was stuck in our heads? I just wanted a simple song that said, "Do you remember.” As in, do you remember the life you had before this all happened? Do you remember the person you were? Do you remember people you cared about, loved and lost? And, yes, do you remember music? The needle in my record player was fucked up, and I just needed a new one. I’d lost my mom and two good friends—all of whom had passed away within three months. I’d lost other people around me and myself. I’d lost music, because I barely even played the guitar, because I had problems with my hand. I just wanted a song that was simple and fun and dealt with breaking up by appreciating the living with a chorus that made you want to sing along. And the video for "Do You Remember" is great: It has tennis and a locker-room dream sequence in which Dave hooks up with some ladies in towels. Kind of like an old Van Halen video from the '80s. Man, we all love films. But seeing some video that aspires to cinema usually makes for the lamest viewing. We just wanted something ridiculous and fun. We thought it would be funny to have a guy getting fired from some boring job because he just “wants to play” and then carrying his guitar case down the street, like the musical extra from The Warriors. Except that he has a tennis racket inside the guitar case, because he wants to play tennis. The locker-room scene was funny to shoot. We shot it in this tennis club on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and the people there were like, “Wait, we thought they were here to play tennis, not hang out in the ladies' locker room.” The video directors, Seldon Hunt and Jimmy Hubbard, wanted these fog machines blasting away to give it a “steamy” look. But every time the door would open, all this fog would come out. The people at the club were very confused. But if it makes Dave, the star of the video, into the next David Lee Roth, then it was worth it. It was even funnier listening to Seldon, who’s Australian, speak in dramatic tones about doing an “homage to Porky's.” Which, in Australia, is considered a foreign film. You've always seemed to have a positive mental attitude (PMA) about being in a rock band. I think a lot of people—even those in the most insignificant of indie-rock bands—look at it as a career and have expectations of success or financial reward or something. What makes you different? I’ve heard so many people talk about “making it in music.” It’s one of the funniest things you can hear, especially when it comes from some indie-rock elitist. I always thought this kind of music wasn’t supposed to make it! As for me, my parents always made fun of me for even playing music and said I had no talent. So the fact that I could be in a band and just get to play places all over is a treat. Just being in a band with people who want to be in a band with me is a gift. People who can write or paint or play music are lucky. We all have an imagination and we all love to daydream and escape in make-believe worlds. But being able to create something out of that is a gift. Since this is MAGNET and all, I have to ask you about the time you spent in Guided By Voices. Any regrets? Do you still talk to Bob Pollard or Doug Gillard? Ha ha ha! I didn’t talk with Bob or Doug for a while, but I keep in contact with both of them regularly. Bob is a really talented singer and songwriter. And Doug is a great guitarist and songwriter. I learned from both of them and I’m lucky that I got to be in bands with them. Now, would I ever want to be in a band with them again? Fuck no! Just kidding. It would be great to play with them again. As long as I don’t have to hang out with them. Again, just kidding. At one point you were traveling the country, working on a book about the best dive bars you could find. What's the status of that? Any particularly good adventures come out of that experience? Yeah, I was basically driving to a different city every night and going to five bars a night in that city. Sometimes more. That is, until my life was put on hold with my mom and a bunch of other things. I’ll revisit the book at some point, but I just have too many things going on now. It was really fun doing that and I definitely wanna get back to it. I almost got my ass kicked in a trucker bar in Atlanta because I was taking photos and some guy thought I was a private investigator that was working for his wife. It was really weird, the guy had a posse that had encircled me. Then he bolted outta there and I ended up partying with the lady he’d been hanging out with—this crazy-looking woman covered in chains and mascara and lipstick, wearing a way-too-tight T-shirt and a huge cowgirl hat, named Georgia Peach. Another time, in Baltimore, at this crazy bar where John Waters had based his characters on for the movie Pecker, I met a bartender who was telling me about her son being popular with the ladies. The reason: He was well-endowed, since the age of 14. (She had been tracking his progress.) I ended up passing out in the bar that night. That’s a long story. And finally, I know you're a big Cavs fan, which seems like an agony/ecstasy experience these days. It seems like this is the Cavs' year, but you always have the LeBron "will he stay or will he go?" thing in the back of your mind. Does that trouble you? It might bother me if people were saying he’s going somewhere other than NYC. Why would anyone leave Cleveland for New York? It makes no sense.

—Matthew Fritch

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Q&A With BoDeans’ Kurt Neumann

April 12, 2010
BoDeansQA While the BoDeans have built a loyal fan base over the course of the 24 years since the release of their T Bone Burnett-produced debut, Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams, the duo—Kurt Neumann (vocals, electric guitar) and Sam Llanas (vocals, acoustic guitar)—is best known as the band whose "Closer To Free" became the theme song to '90s TV show Party Of Five. But the BoDeans are fine with that and instead focus on making the kind of music they want to, then bringing it to their devoted followers. New album Mr. Sad Clown (429) was recorded in Neumann's Texas home studio (Llanas still lives in the band's native Wisconsin), and it features more of the duo's trademark roots-based rock and intricate vocal harmonies. MAGNET caught up with Neumann while he was on his way to Chicago to promote Mr. Sad Clown. Neumann will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "Say Goodbye" (download): [audio:SayGoodbye.mp3] MAGNET: With you in Texas and Sam still in Milwaukee, describe the process of writing and then recording an album. Neumann: I have a studio off my house in Texas. Typically, Sam will come down for a couple of days, and we will try to make sense out of any ideas he or I will have for songs. I tend to write a lot on the road. Sam doesn't. So I tend to have my songs more structured. We will put some stuff down, and Sam will go home. I then start throwing all kinds of different colors at the stuff and see if anything happens. After a month or so of me fooling around, Sam will come back down to Austin. I'll play the stuff. Usually he likes it. Sometimes not. My favorite track of Sam's didn't make it on this record because I shot in a direction he couldn't get his head around. As well as another track of mine that he liked but I thought could be better. It happens. Anyway, we come to a consensus on, say, 18 or 20 songs and try to focus on a group that work together. Then I'll finish up parts. We will finish up singing. And send it out. You guys decided to make an album more from the perspective of adults. How did that influence the way you wrote songs this time out? Do you think you will continue in this vein? Well, speaking for myself, I would say yes. Life seems very different now as an adult. Meaning over 30. Having kids. Living with the perspective of taking care of others, instead of yourself. That's who I am now, and that's not gonna change. It's very different than being 20 and staring at girls' bodies and thinking, "I'm gonna hit that.” I mean, really, who thinks like that? At my age? Right? Why is it called Mr. Sad Clown? It's one of the lyrics from the bridge of the song "Today." When Sam and I were in high school, we went to a party one night. I was a social misfit; Sam wasn't. While he moved from person to person talking about "high school stuff," I planted myself in the corner by the stereo speakers. Pink Floyd, Jackson Browne. After a few hours, a large, very drunk girl came walking up to me and stood there staring and swaying. Finally she says, "What's the matter, Mr. Sad Clown?" I laughed. She had me pegged. A social misfit who turns to music to relate. That's Mr. Sad Clown. Are you guys gonna tour at all? Yes. BoDeans tour as much as possible. It's how we've survived for this many years. In fact, I'm on a plane right now. On my way to Chicago for the first promo shows. Now that you are approaching 25 years in the music biz, what advice would you have given the BoDeans circa 1986? What mistakes are you glad you guys made along the way? Our advice to younger acts is to do what you do, what makes your sound your sound. Now that's not great if you wanna be the pop sensation of the moment, but if you wanna hang around a while ... Our goal was to keep on making records. But instead of trying to sound like radio-friendly music, we set out to build a loyal fan base by giving them everything we had as performers every night. And in time, our fans came to know that they could count on us for a great time, a great show. Well worth their hard-earned dollars. I think many of the younger acts found they could make great-sounding computer records, but they didn't know how to really perform. Or they didn't understand the importance of a great performance. Who do you consider to be your peers these days? I don't know. Anyone who's been around as long as we have and are still out there going door to door trying reach people. It has been great to be around T Bone. Not sure he's a peer, but he has given me a wealth of knowledge about music and making records. And it's always a pleasure to be around him and the stuff he's working on. What kind of impact did Party Of Five using "Closer To Free" have on the band, if any? It taught us that a top-10 audience wasn't for us. It was nice to experience it, but we want people to know our music. Not just a song. Maybe we're spoiled that way. You two broke up in the '90s for a few years and reunited to record the theme song to (short-lived Party Of Five spinoff) Time Of Your Life. Had you not done that, do you think you two would be back together now? We never broke up. Sam stopped us from recording for a few years so he could put out a solo record. While it was a bad time for the band, we never stopped doing BoDeans shows. Since 1983, we've never had a year or two off. It's how we survive. So is there ever a time you play acoustic guitar and Sam plays electric? Well, actually, I've always played 99.9 percent of the acoustic guitars on our records. In fact, throughout our history, I've tended to play most of the music. It's just how Sam and I started doing it in the beginning. As far as Sam on electric, well, early on he tried, but he broke a lot of strings. He's just not an electric player. He doesn't like it. You did the soundtrack to The Godfather Of Green Bay. Is soundtrack work something you would like to do more of? Well, yeah. I did the soundtrack just for the experience. Since I live in the studio, I'm always recording something. So it's really nice when you can find somewhere to use it. And, I truly love movies. When the music is just right it can tear your heart out. So you know, I feel like I would love to do more.

—Eric T. Miller

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Q&A With The Wedding Present’s David Gedge

April 5, 2010
DavidgedgeQAOver the course of a quarter of a century, Wedding Present and Cinerama auteur David Gedge has consistently documented the intricacies of interpersonal communication, mostly of the romantic kind. (Representative sample: “Was it really too hard to tell me to my face that you don’t long for my embrace?”; “Be Honest,” from 1989’s Bizarro.) While currently writing new tunes in his tradition of celebrating romantic bliss and bemoaning lost love, Gedge is also revisiting some old flames. His label, Scopitones, last week released Live 1988, a double album of concert recordings from—you guessed it—1988, the second in a series of LPs (2007’s Live 1987 was the first) collecting live cassettes that were sold at gigs and through their fanzine in the late ’80s. (The record will be available only in stores and at shows for the time being.) The band is also playing Bizarro, arguably the best Wedding Present effort, in its entirety during a tour that kicked off April 1 in San Diego. MAGNET talked to Gedge while he was taking a break from rehearsing and building up his cardio endurance. Gedge will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our 2005 career overview of the Wedding Present. "Kennedy (Live In Valencia)" (download): [audio:KennedyLiveInValencia.mp3] MAGNET: I hear you have an amazing memory. I interviewed you for MAGNET back in 1995. You probably remember it as a great one, right? Gedge: [Laughs] Yes, of course! That interview was legendary. We still talk about how momentous it was in the Gedge household. At that time, we talked about how your lyrics generally involve relationships. Since you're on Twitter, what is your take on how Facebook and Twitter affect interpersonal communication? Well, they're obviously useful in keeping in touch with people who you wouldn't normally keep in touch with. But, as a result, I think people are speaking to each other less now. Nowadays, everyone seems to have their head continually buried in a laptop or iPhone updating their chosen social-networking site. It’s incredible how rapidly the changes have taken place, too. It was only a few years ago that I was the only person in our entourage with a mobile phone. Now everybody is on Wi-Fi and has about half a dozen different ways of keeping in touch with each other. Was it your idea to play Bizarro in its entirety live, or did you have to be convinced? If it's the latter, how much convincing did it take? It was my idea to play Bizarro live, yes, but it's a bit more complicated than that. In 2007, the idea of playing our first album, George Best, was put forward to coincide with the 20th anniversary of its release. I was actually not in favor of the idea because I was more interested in working on new songs and new recordings than looking back, but everybody I spoke to—fans, band members, friends—thought it was too good an idea not to pursue, so I kind of reluctantly went along with it. But then in the end, I was glad that I did because I found it a fascinating project and quite strange to revisit a period in your life that you'd forgotten about. I think Bizarro is a better album than George Best, so having enjoyed doing it with our first album, I decided that we should do the same with the follow-up. There's a lot of frantic guitar strumming on Bizarro, songs like "Kennedy" in particular. Twenty-plus years later, how worried are you that you might need frequent breaks during the shows? I'm not going to deny that it's a challenge! With Bizarro, we took the original idea of the Wedding Present—namely, to play songs as fast and for as long as possible—to its logical conclusion. As a result, it's a collection of fairly extreme recordings, and obviously, we've never played them back to back like this before. Rehearsals have been more like training sessions for a marathon, but I have no doubt that we'll get there in the end. Bizarro is probably my favorite Wedding Present record. Do you think it’s the band's best LP? I find it impossible to compare Wedding Present albums because they all really have their own personality and style, and there've been so many different lineups now that it really is like trying to compare chalk with cheese. I think as an artist you're obviously most happy with the work that you've just produced, because that's closest to your taste at the moment, so I would have probably said that (2008’s) El Rey is the best Wedding Present record—except that we've just started writing some new songs which are exciting me even more. After Bizarro was released, or even during its recording, what sense, if any, did you have of what you accomplished? We just set out to make a record that solved some of the problems we'd had with our first album. So we had better songs, better equipment, better studios in which to record, more of a vision of what we wanted, and also we obviously had the experience of having been in the studio before. So we achieved our goals, yes. You're playing in Japan in May. How well-received is the Wedding Present over there? I'm wondering because, unlike some bands, your lyrics are probably as integral to the band's appeal as the music. We have a decent following over there, yes. I often wonder how much of the text that they actually understand, but it really doesn't seem to dilute their enthusiasm for the group. It’s very common for lyrics to be translated into Japanese and included in the LP sleeve, so maybe that helps. How do you feel about the label selling the Live 1988 record only in stores, though I assume they'll be available at shows? Does it matter? Well, seeing as I own the label and it was my idea, I feel happy about it! I just decided that it would be nice to make a little contribution to help record shops, who are obviously struggling more and more these days. I'm just such a giver! It will be available at the shows, though, yes. Oh, it’s your label. Sorry about that. Anyway, you had that roughly nine-year period between Wedding Present records, when you did the Cinerama stuff before returning with the Wedding Present on 2005's Take Fountain. Why did you put the band on the shelf and why re-start it, especially since Cinerama is still active? I started Cinerama because I felt like I needed a little break from being in the Wedding Present and I had some musical ideas that were very different from what we were doing in the band at the time. I didn't want to drag the other members of the Wedding Present with me, so I decided to start my own project. I didn't envisage that I'd be doing Cinerama for nine years, though. At the time, I thought it would be something like nine months, but it took me longer than I thought it would to acquire the skills of writing and arranging what was a very different type of music for me. Getting my head around the technology of working with computers and samplers took a while, too. But then I discovered that I quite enjoyed the freedom of having my own way all the time, and so Cinerama went on to record three albums. Over those nine years, though, the Cinerama recordings began more and more to sound like the Wedding Present, which was I suppose was down to my love of guitar music, so ultimately we completed the circle and found ourselves back where we started. At that point, it felt like time to do the Wedding Present again. You curated the At the Edge Of The Sea festival last year that featured the Wedding Present, Cinerama and other bands. Apparently, it went well enough that you're doing it again this year in August. What was that experience like? It was a lot of work! [Laughs] But I've got to say it was one of the most enjoyable days I've had in all the years I've been working with music. It was basically just a Wedding Present concert, but we managed to extend it throughout the day and throw it open to either favorite bands of mine or friends of ours. We were very lucky with the weather, and everything just clicked on the day. It was a great place to be, and the atmosphere was fantastic.

—Matt Hickey

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Q&A With The Whigs

March 29, 2010
whigsqa Like most bands, the Whigs—guitarist/vocalist Parker Gispert, drummer Julian Dorio and bassist Tim Deaux—have had to endure their fair share of rough patches during their eight-year existence, including major-label troubles and lineup changes, but perhaps these bumps in the road were merely the stars aligning for the Athens, Ga., trio. The label issues prompted them to record and release their debut album, 2005's Give ‘Em All A Big Fat Lip independently, earning them the title of “the best unsigned band in America” from Rolling Stone. It wasn’t long before they were signed to ATO Records—which issued the band’s critically acclaimed second release, Mission Control, in 2008—and playing high-profile shows at festivals and late-night talk shows and touring with some really famous names. New album In The Dark is the Whigs' grittiest and most explosive album yet. Ever the kings of the road, the Whigs are currently on tour in support of the release, but they’ll also be guest-editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our 2008 feature on the band. “Hundred/Million” (download): [audio:HundredMillion.mp3] "In The Dark" (download): [audio:InTheDark.mp3] "Kill Me Carolyne" (download): [audio:KillMeCarolyne.mp3] MAGNET: In The Dark seems to be a bit different from your previous works, which is mostly credited to the addition of Tim. How did he join up with the Whigs? Dorio: We were already friends with Tim before he joined, so he knew we were in need of a multi-instrumentalist. Getting someone we genuinely liked and someone we knew understood the band was important. It's tough to fill a position that's already been filled by someone else. We auditioned so many people but couldn't quite figure it out until Tim played with us. How did your songwriting process change with the new lineup? Since we had a full band again, Tim and I were able to write songs from a drum-and-bass perspective in addition to Parker writing songs on guitar. So we doubled our productivity. Usually, Parker is writing songs and bringing them to us. This time around, we were also handing Parker verses, choruses, bridges, grooves, beats or whatever we had to let him react with melodies and guitar lines. It came naturally to us while also taking us out of our comfort zone. I understand that you and Ben Allen, who produced In The Dark (and also Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion), go way back. Is it helpful to have an old friend involved? What did he add to the process? Working with Ben was very exciting for us. He has known the band since our first shows and demos so we were able to get right to work without explaining ourselves, our goals, our past. He is a complete and total profession who happens to also be an old friend. Ben had a way of pushing us to run with our strengths but also work on our weaknesses. The fact that we trusted his opinion made it easy to follow his lead and end up with some nice surprises in the studio. You’ve toured a lot with big-name acts like Kings Of Leon and Drive-By Truckers. How has that influenced your music and live performances? We're influenced by everyone we share the stage with, and it was a privilege to learn from such pros as KOL and DBT. Of course, musically we've been fans for years, but there is so much more that wears off on us. Those bands' generosity has had as much of an impact on us as their songs. And never for a minute do we think we'd be where we are today without their endorsement. It means the world to us. Do you ever get tired of being on the road so much? We definitely love touring! It's never-ending, but that's why we started a band in the first place: to play for a live audience! How have fans been reacting to the new songs when you play them live? The fans' reaction has been great. It's always exciting to premiere new songs. And if we're opening up for another band, their audience may not know which songs are old and new, so it's cool to see them respond to the new material and ask which CD it's on. Until now, it hasn't been available! You recorded and released your debut album independently, but Mission Control and In The Dark were released through ATO Records. What do you think you learned from the DIY experience? It reminded us that even though the music business had grown and grown, the music is still number one. We couldn't do a lot of what we do without the help of ATO. It has been a great home for us, but bands shouldn't wait on record contracts before writing, recording and releasing songs they believe in. Has being involved with a label affected how you create music? Sure it does. We made sure to work with people who we like and trust, and as we make the music we want to make we also welcome their feedback. It was important to us that ATO loved the music we were making before working together. There's a difference between a label trying to change a band and a label simply encouraging us to be the best we can. From a band that’s played its fair share of shows on the late-night talk show circuit, I have to ask: Who’s cooler, David Letterman or Conan O’Brien? Hmmm. That's tough. It doesn't get much cooler than Letterman, and that was the first late-night show we ever played. And we really enjoyed chatting with Conan after our performance. Both rule!

—Emily Costantino

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Q&A With Dengue Fever

March 22, 2010
DengueFeverqa Dengue Fever is anything but your average indie-rock combo. Based in Los Angeles, the exotic six-piece outfit is fronted by Chhom Nimol, who sings in her native Cambodian dialect, backed by guitarist Zac Holtzman, his brother Ethan (keyboards), Senon Williams (bass), David Ralicke (horns) and Paul Smith (drums). Some photos of the boys in the band from their three previous albums look like they've come from Homeland Security's no-fly list. In reality, Dengue Fever may be the best U.S. cultural ambassadors to Southeast Asia since the glory days of jazz stars Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane 50 years ago. The band's "new" album, Dengue Fever Presents Electric Cambodia (Minky), spotlights vintage performances by its favorite Cambodian artists from the late '60s/early '70s. Dengue Fever will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "March Of The Balloon Animals" from 2009's Sleepwalking Through The Mekong (download): [audio:MarchOfTheBalloonAnimals.mp3] "Sober Driver" from 2008's Venus On Earth (download): [audio:SoberDriver.mp3] MAGNET: I spoke to you briefly after the live soundtrack show you guys did for The Lost World at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco last year. Zac Holtzman: That was incredible. I've always loved the Castro Theatre, and then just getting to score that film, it was amazing. It was like having another member of the band that we need to pay close attention to and follow and work with. That was really fun. And there was such great claymation going on that it was insane. (The original) King Kong was one of my favorites, the first film I ever saw, when I was three years old. It was made by the same crew. Tell me about how you score a film, since the prime objective is to arrive at certain cues with the appropriate music. Well, here's the way I did it. I started by sitting down and watching the film with a guitar in my hands, then taking notes and writing down how different parts would feel. Like hectic dinosaur chase, then a particular jam. Then I'd see that this part is really similar to that part, so we'd have to link-up thematically different parts of the film, so we didn't have a hundred different parts. We narrowed it down to about 20 different pieces: romantic pieces, violent pieces, incidental stuff where not too much is happening and we'd just kinda lay low, depressing sort of heavy-thinking kind of music. Were you a big fan of Cambodian music before you put the band together, before you found Chom Nimol? We met Chom Nimol in Long Beach when we were searching for a Cambodian singer and going down to various nightclubs. My brother Ethan traveled in Cambodia and started collecting tapes, and I had some of my own Cambodian music that I was listening to. We thought, "Man, wouldn't that be cool to base a band on this music." So, that's how it all started. As soon as we saw Nimol singing, we asked her if she'd come to an audition. And after that, it's been just the six of us. She's like a reincarnation of all the artists that were killed (by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge). They were all from the same city as her. Your compilation of classic Cambodian rockers is really a trip. Any trouble licensing that stuff? My brother and I were the ones who pulled that together. No, Cambodia never signed a universal licensing agreement. It's all public domain. We put money aside just in case any family member says anything. And we also donate a whole bunch of the album to this group called Cambodian Living Arts. They teach underprivileged kids how to do traditional dance and play some of the old traditional instruments. We're going to hook up with them in May when we go back to Cambodia. I thought the DVD of your first tour of Cambodia was terrific. Oh, thanks. We're going to be playing with Kong Nay again, the blind chapai player with the smallpoxed face. Right, the Ray Charles of Cambodia. You must get some weird crowd reactions, playing areas in the U.S., where they've never heard this stuff. Well, one night in San Francisco at the Rickshaw Stop we got these guys from San Jose who started break-dancing and everybody went crazy, spinning on the cement floor. Mostly it's just really good, positive reaction. Well, what I was trying to get out of you was some hayseed sheriff pointing a shotgun at you and saying, "You boys better not let the sun set on you in this county." That's never happened. Well, something happened. It was this Australian guy in Cambodia, and he had a club. I was warned about him. He was a speed freak. He was charging people to get in the show. We told him the equipment we needed, and he didn't line up any of it. Then he freaked out on us when we got there. And he threatened to take us down for skipping out on his show. But he was kicked out of the country, and everybody knows what kind of a person he was. Some of the band photos on your albums look like mug shots from Homeland Security's wanted list. Ever have any trouble boarding a plane these days? They dig into my pedal board a lot. They don't really like that. They've wiped that for explosives many times. Once my pedal board case had a lock on it, and right by the lock I wrote, "To open do 999." So, I get this announcement over the airport intercom, "Zachary Holtzman, please come to the security desk." They had my case, and they couldn't open it to search it. And I was, like, holding up the plane. And once Nimol got lost in the airport and had to catch another flight. Some of the hardest places to get into and out of are our neighbors, like Canada. Yeah, MAGNET's Jonathan Valania once had a major problem at the Canadian border involving porn on his laptop and the New Pornographers. Sometimes it takes us four or five hours to get through. They do body-cavity checks. They caught my brother with Xanax and said, "What's this?" Any other exotic music that tickles your fancy? I like a lot of the Sublime Frequencies stuff. It's a label that puts out all these different compilations, including one of music from Iraq. They also put out this one called Shadow Music Of Thailand, all these Thai bands that were influenced by the British surf band the Shadows. We toured with this band called Chicha Libre who play Peruvian psychedelic music. They're all French guys from Brooklyn. Chicha is a drink from Peru that they make with fermented corn. Old ladies chew it up, and the saliva mixed with the corn turns it into alcohol. What was the best reaction you had to the band when you first played Cambodia? The best reaction was the kids on the beach after we did that performance on their main television station called CTN. They played that four times a day the whole time we were there. We'd be out on the beach and these kids would come up and try to sell us trinkets or bracelets. And they'd say, "I know you. You sing Khmer. Sing for me! Sing for me!" Then we'd sing a song together. It was so cool, man. I was instantly accepted, not as a tourist, but totally there. And getting to enjoy the culture more than NGO guys who'd been there a year and were hiding out in ex-pat places. We instantly got to jump in and have a good time with all sorts of people. Good for you, man. The world could use a helluva lot more stuff like that and a lot less shock and awe.

—Jud Cost

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Q&A With Miles Kurosky

March 15, 2010
MilesKuroskyqaPortland, Ore.-based Miles Kurosky is what old-time journalists used to call a "great quote." He's one of the few interview subjects you'll find in the music biz these days who's totally unafraid to step on a few toes to get his point across. And he's got the musical chops to back up his shoot-from-the-hip posture. Kurosky's previous band, Beulah, was a true California original, good enough to catch the ear of pop genius Robert Schneider of Apples In Stereo, who released the first Beulah album under the banner of the Elephant 6 collective. As is the case with other creative one-man shows (Grandaddy's Jason Lytle, for example) the transition from band to solo career is as simple as painting a new name on the office's glass door. The Desert Of Shallow Effects (Majordomo) is every bit as exhilarating as anything Kurosky has ever cut. Read more about Beulah. "Dead Language Blues" (download): [audio:DeadLanguageBlues.mp3] MAGNET: "An Apple For An Apple," from your solo debut, details health problems. Are you feeling OK these days? Kurosky: Yeah, the apple of science versus the apple of religion. Adam and Eve versus Newton. I had some shoulder problems in one of my arms, had a few surgeries on that. Then my tendons were getting caught on screws and the surgery didn't take. They had to go back in and do it again. That took about a year and a half to rehab that arm. But I couldn't play guitar very well because I couldn't open the wing of my arm enough to put the guitar underneath. Like the story where the guys comes out of surgery and asks the doc, "Will I be able to play piano?" The doctor says, "Of course." And the patient says, "Great, I never could before." Then I got diagnosed with an intestinal disease, which led to kidney problems. I had chronic kidney stones that would get stuck in my ureter. And if it gets stuck, you can't pee, which is very dangerous. In the space of a few years, that was my life: five, maybe six, surgeries, I can't remember. Getting old is a bitch, isn't it? It's crazy. My body just fell apart all at once. I'm starting to tour tomorrow and I have a cold. Well, at least that's fairly pedestrian, unless you have to do a lot of flying. Do you still play some of the Beulah songs live or just the new stuff? I'll play a few of the Beulah songs because it seems the kids want 'em. I have no problem with that. It's not like they're asking me to do a cover. I see you recorded some of your new album in Eagle Rock in Los Angeles. I've done some work in a studio in Eagle Rock. Are there a lot of studios in Eagle Rock? I don't know about proper ones. This was sort of this guy's house. This was a place called Penguin that specializes in working with vintage material. Oh yeah, I've heard of that. Too bad it's in such a shitty city. I grew up there. I just don't like the sort of general disposition. I think Los Angeles belongs to the triumvirate of evil in terms of cities along with Miami and Las Vegas. A lot of the stereotypes and the clichés about L.A. are absolutely true, you know. People are not as nice. They're caught up with a bunch of superficialities. For lack of a better word, they're a bunch of douchebags. What I like about Portland is people are nice. People are friendly. People are helpful. People are kind. Whereas you just feel everyone's aggressive in Los Angeles. People think that people in L.A. are laid back. That is not the truth. I've never met a more aggressive people. I think they're more aggressive in L.A. than they are in New York. Have you run into this thing in L.A. where people are categorized as either winners or losers? Nobody in between. See, that's just it. And not only that, most of the losers think they are somebody. And the way they show they're somebody is just by buying things, like having rims on their fancy car. These people with shitty apartments with tinfoil curtains will have a Porsche, you know? They're an odd people. Almost like on American Idol, just a bunch of delusionals. I hate that place. I'm sure the last good era was checking out the '60s, the Whisky and the Sunset Strip. And the '70s were kinda OK, but after that ... What I remember most about the '80s in L.A.—and I spent a bit of time down there—were good bands like Rain Parade and Dream Syndicate at Club Lingerie, then all this endless parade of horrible hair bands playing places like Coconut Teaszer. That's when I think it all started going to hell. Yeah, hair bands, and also in the '80s they started destroying their architectural heritage, which was really unique. Really interesting buildings that just made way for mini-malls. It's just a sprawl, just a mess. Tell me why Beulah rode off into the sunset. The reasons why all bands break up. Or a guy and girl break up. We'd run our course. You grow up and realize you can't always be in a band. Sometimes breaking up is one of the best thing that happens for some bands. We'd done what we'd done. I couldn't see us going into our 50s or 60s and playing in a band. And most people don't. They go on with life. That's the thing about rock 'n' roll: You have a lifespan, you die, and your bones fertilize the next bands that come along. That's how it works. We're probably both big fans of Love, and seeing Arthur Lee come out and play a few times, it's cool. The Zombies, too, when they had their reunion—fantastic musicians. But you get the sense you can't go back and relive stuff. It's just not the same. There's a real fine line between that and those oldies shows they do on PBS. Yeah, old guys who can barely get up onstage. I've seen Steppenwolf trying to rock it out. If that's what you want ... But it seemed silly to carry on and make a solo record and keep the (Beulah) name. I like the tracks on your new album with heavy instrumentation, using a big group of players. Yeah, it kind of has a modern psychedelia to it. I know a bit about big bands, and I couldn't even tell what you were trying to do. Yeah, I don't know what I was trying to do, either. I just put stuff in. I wanted to make it really exciting, like a mini White Album. I was going for something really eclectic that kept your interest. No matter how many times you listen to it on headphones, you hear something different. That's probably the best thing about the White Album: It's all over the map. Yeah, sure, it's one of the Beatles albums that's gotten the most grief. I remember watching that Anthology documentary and Paul McCartney saying, "It's the Beatles. It's the White Album. What are you complaining about?" I think it's one of their best records because it is so odd. My wife and I recently took just the Paul tracks and made a record and just the John tracks and made a record. I'm a John fan, but if you take John's best songs from that album and Paul's best songs, Paul's stand up better. I always thought Paul could hold his own with John. John's all get very similar. They're cool because they're great songs, but they're all the same tempo. Paul's are like "Blackbird," "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?" and "Helter Skelter." And the pop stuff, like "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" and "Back In The U.S.S.R." Exactly. That would have made an amazing solo record for Paul. I'm familiar with Motown and Stax, but recently I've really gotten into African soul music from the '60s or Cambodian soul. It's like they all had one James Brown record and a bunch of broken instruments. That's my favorite thing about music: You'll never run out. There's always something out there you haven't heard, even if you stay up all night. Why The Desert Of Shallow Effects for your album title? It's a quote from Frank Lloyd Wright about Los Angeles. He called it a "desert of shallow effects." When I was living there making the record, there was a grander quote about how we live our lives. You have to add up your sum, your worth. It seemed perfect at the time because I was getting into Buddhism. My wife grew up as a Buddhist, and I got into it. Then her uncle is the Buddhist minister of Palo Alto, he married us. Her family helped build the Oakland Buddhist temple. As I got into it, I thought, "Wow, this makes sense to me." At least you should recognize your life as a desert of shallow effects and then, hopefully, do something worthwhile and substantial. The last Beulah album I got was (2001's) The Coast Is Never Clear. I totally missed the fourth one, (2003's) Yoko. Are you a big fan of Yoko Ono? Yeah. I mean, I was. I'm a fan of certain things. Anyone with as big a discography as hers, you like certain things, right? She's an interesting character. Made a name for herself, musically, but in some ways she's more a cultural icon. Did you see her tour last month with the Plastic Ono Band? I saw her play in Oakland and was kinda disappointed. Maybe I was expecting too much. It just seemed a little on the safe side. She started out trying to do some funk. And it wasn't quite happening. I'm a bigger Beatles fan. I like more what she represents. She's bemoaned by all those Beatles fans out there, but the story wouldn't be complete without her. She makes the story far more provocative and interesting. Obviously, Beulah weren't the Beatles, but I thought that's what I wanted to do, go out before people stopped caring and we started playing smaller places. Ever see Robert Schneider anymore? The first Beulah album came out on Elephant 6, and I saw you play with the Apples In Stereo once. I haven't seen Robert in a while, but he sent me a text recently, just telling me how much he liked the new songs. He's fantastic. He's actually one of the true good guys of rock 'n' roll. There are plenty of people in this industry who get tagged as good guys. But I know some of these people, and they're just complete fakes. There are plenty of schmucks who people think are nice, but Robert's the real deal. We used to say that Robert has love Tourette's. It's unabated, and he has no filter. He can't help himself from hugging you and showing that he cares about you.

—Jud Cost

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Q&A With Emma Pollock

March 8, 2010
emmaphotoqa To those who loved them, Glasgow, Scotland's Delgados were the near-perfect blend of churning, indie-rock edginess and stirring, girl/boy vocals, wrapped in gasp-inducing orchestral arrangements that made time stand still. A tough act for vocalist/guitarist Emma Pollock to follow, you might think, when the band split amicably in 2006. And yet, Pollock's '07 solo debut, Watch The Fireworks, wasted no time in identifying how crucial she had been to the unique sound of the Delgados. Three years later, the former physics major returns with The Law Of Large Numbers (Chemikal Underground), which goes down like a couple of dry martinis after a savory meal, welcoming you to Pollock's expanding universe of sound. She graciously spoke to MAGNET twice when the recording hardware malfunctioned on the first attempt. Pollock will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "Hug The Harbour" (download): [audio:HugTheHarbour.mp3] MAGNET: Why has it been three years between solo albums? Pollock: To be honest, the way it's gone. The first one was done in 2007. Then the next year I did a bit of touring, so I didn't really start writing for the new record until halfway through 2008. So, by the time 2009 rolled round, I was actually starting to record. Even though, yeah, it does feel like a long time since the last record, to me, you shouldn't put out a record until it's ready. That's funny, because I remember when the Beatles used to put out a new album every six months. I do know people who feel if you haven't done something every 18 months then you're not working hard enough. But I was trying to do something that was a little bit of a progression, if you like, from the last record. Because the last record was definitely made with the Delgados. But this one, I like to think, is me, working out what to do on my own. I think the last one is a lot sweeter, more songs-based, whereas this one is edgier. And more abrasive, which I really like. It's more jagged than the first one, which was smoothed out quite a bit. I really love the new record for its diversity. It's quite eclectic. That's the truth. You have one song with some unexpected New Orleans-style jazz accompaniment. Who's in the live band? Do you use any of your old pals from the Delgados? No, the new one is not connected to Delgados, at all. We have Jamie Savage, who is (Pollock's husband) Paul's younger brother, and he plays guitar and piano. Then a couple of guys, Jonny Scott and Graeme Smillie, who play drums and bass. And they're fast becoming the busiest rhythm section in Glasgow because they've been playing with the people in Idlewild. Have you ever considered using Dave Fridmann as a producer? I love what he did to The Great Eastern by the Delgados. I'd love to, but I don't think my budget can stretch to that. But who knows? Maybe the opportunity might present itself one day. It'd be a dream come true if Paul and I could both go over there and make a record. Did the Delgados split amicably because Stewart Henderson decided to go his own way? [Laughs] Yeah, the funny thing is Stewart has gone his own way, but he hasn't really moved very far. He's still managing (Delgados-run label) Chemikal Underground. I still see him virtually every day. I'm still part of Chemikal Underground and do jobs for it every now and again. It's funny because Stewart is no longer the bass player. He's the guy at the other end of the room, putting out my record. He plays a very different role now with me. I go to him to come up with ideas to get across whatever I do. All these different experiences we've had and yet we're all still very much together. We are a really odd group of people in that respect. In fact, you and Paul have been together since before the Delgados. Yeah, we went to university together. Since you brought it up, I read in Wikipedia, that well-known source for never getting things wrong, that you studied physics and archaeology in university. Now, this is a rumor that's fast becoming an urban legend. I did physics. Somebody wrote in Wikipedia that I also did archaeology. I keep thinking I should have it removed, but, naah. Well, as long as you're a physics whiz, can you tell me something about the law of large numbers, which is the title of your new album? Scott Miller of Game Theory once tried to explain string theory to me, and that was a complete waste of his time. Oh, dearie me. Well, the law of large numbers is a real law. I'm really fascinated by numbers and science in general, which is not surprising because I'm a physics graduate. As is Paul, by the way. [In the style of John Cleese's Basil Fawlty fawning over two hotel guests who are both doctors] Oh, you're both physics graduates? This is nowhere near as complicated as string theory. Imagine you have an experiment that involves results of equal probability. With a dice, you have six possible results, as long as the dice isn't loaded. So, the bigger the sample you take—i.e., the more times you roll the dice—the closer the results will tend towards the theoretical results of rolling the dice. If you roll that dice to infinity, each of the sides will come up a sixth of the time. In practice, if you roll that dice only 60 times, you won't get 10 ones, 10 twos, 10 threes. You might get eight of one, 15 of another, nine of another. They won't be distributed evenly. The bigger the sample, if you roll that dice 600 times, the results will tend more and more towards 100 of each side. That's where the crapshooters run into trouble. Yeah, it's what gamblers run afoul of all the time. They think if you hang about long enough, the odds will balance themselves out and turn in your favor. But it doesn't work like that. If you walk into a casino and watch the roulette wheel, there's no way of knowing when those numbers are going to kick in and things will start to balance themselves out. It's fascinating to me that people are so dissatisfied with the fact that you cannot predict. So, this obsession with fortune tellers. We spoke briefly last time about Scottish film. I haven't seen many, but the ones I've seen have been terrific. In the past few years, Hallam Foe and Red Road, in particular. Can you pick a few favorites? Well, I did really like Red Road. When you know a country and a city and a culture as well as you do when you've lived there pretty much all your life, you know when someone captures that in film. The Red Road flats, I don't know that area very well, but it's always utterly compelling to watch your city onscreen. And there's no romance in that film. It's just telling it like it is. And also Ratcatcher, I really liked that one, too. That's when the new flats were being built. It's been a long time since I've seen that one. Scottish film does tend to present the bleak side of life. You don't get many Scottish films about wealthy families living in the West End. That doesn't seem to be what makes Glasgow tick. Ratcatcher has wonderful direction. The young boys were really great. It's an accurate portrayal of life at that time. It was pretty funny, too. I heard something about humor recently, about why we all feel quite homesick when we leave our home country. Everybody assumes that there's a certain consistency in conversation style and humor, certainly in the Western world. But in actual fact, I heard this woman from the Netherlands commenting on how vicious and raw and aggressive comedy is in Britain. That would never happen in the Netherlands, she said. I thought that was an acute observation. When people here want to make their true feelings be known, they'll do it through comedy, through satire. Hey, I grew up idolizing the Monty Python guys who held nothing back in that regard. What was the BBC show where they did the oversized plastic pantomime caricatures of political figures? Oh, that would be Spitting Image. It's all that type of thing where people are not afraid to rip a politician apart. We may be all part of the Western world, but when you get right down to the nuts and bolts, the cultures are all really quite different. Well, you know what Dorothy Gale said, "There's no place like home."

—Jud Cost

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Q&A With Adam Green

March 1, 2010
Adamgreenqa New Yorker Adam Green started out his career as one half the Moldy Peaches, who had a surprise retroactive hit when Michael Cera and Ellen Page sang “Anyone Else But You” in 2007 film Juno. But by that time, Green was already a well-established solo artist, veering away from his old band’s endearing anti-folk territory with a style characterized by vulgar and cheeky lyrics (“Jessica,” for example, is a particularly scathing number about Jessica Simpson) while keeping listeners at an arm’s length. That’s not to say Green’s music (and life) hasn’t undergone its fair share of turbulence and change in the ensuing years, however. And he is certainly in a different place from the last time we spoke with him, as evidenced by his sixth solo album, Minor Love, released in February on Fat Possum. Recorded while living in an L.A. pool house (dubbed the Lake Room) in near-isolation, Minor Love shows us a more stripped-down, intimate side of Green. Despite currently being on tour in support of the new record, Green will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "What Makes Him Act So Bad" (download): [audio:WhatMakesHimActSoBad.mp3] "Castles And Tassels" (download): [audio:CastlesAndTassels.mp3] MAGNET: Lyrically, Minor Love seems to be a bit more personal than your previous works. What brought about that change? Green: I got schooled on the art of storytelling by these two Frenchmen who live in Colonial Williamsburg. They said my songs are too abscract and that being abstract is just kid's stuff. They said Jackson Pollock was just a baby who liked to play with his own feces. So I started thinking about my emotional connection to the fourth Velvet Underground album and how it made me feel. I wanted to be more a goth-type person who has a lot of feelings. What’s your deal with the word “flatulent”? It seems to show up a lot on this album. I like how it sings. It just carries a tune in a special way. That is my favorite word. Why do you like magnets so much? What's your deal? How do you manage to maintain such an upbeat sound for an album that’s said to be heavily influenced by fatalism? I've always been the kind of guy who whistles past the graveyard. During the recording of the album, I was in good spirits. I make a life-affirming tea sometimes on tour, which helps. I could have made the music more bleak. I want to record a heavy-metal album next. How do you feel about being labeled “emotionally unavailable” up until now? Is that how you consciously chose to be? No, I've never had a lot of control over the way I act. As my friend Dima said, "I'm very generous with my faults." Being in a long-term relationship changed the way I talk. Having intimate conversations and things. I had never done that when I was in my early 20s. You were pretty isolated in making this album and played most of the instruments yourself. How come? Nonetheless, you allowed some people to help out including Noah Georgeson and Rodrigo Amarante. How did they get involved with Minor Love? I played most of the instruments on the album, but Noah and Rodrigo tracked a lot of stuff on there as well. A lot of the weird sounds on the album are made by putting a Casio keyboard through different guitar pedals. I wanted to do the album like a four-track record. I wanted it to be a collaboration with Noah more than a full-band situation. I was isolated because I was in this lonely house with no car, so it wasn't so much my choice. I met Rodrigo through Fabrizio Moretti. We've never ran out of things to talk about ever since the first second that we met. You’re currently supporting Minor Love. How does it feel to be back on the road? I've already been on tour for about seven weeks. Dima Dubson has been filming the tour, so I just sort of feel like I'm in a movie. My legs hurt, I'm coughing up weird shit, but I'm doing pretty good. To change the subject, it seems like you are becoming a bit of a style icon, between recently posing for Vogue and being labeled as “the Jewish James Dean.” Do you have an interest in fashion? Yeah, I like to wear only bellbottoms. I like Lou Reed's style back when he was gay. I like Serge Gainsbourg's style. I'm not so much the Jewish James Dean as much as I'm the Woody Allen Of Music. Speaking of other endeavors, there are pictures of some crazy papier-mâché sculptures on your blog. Can you tell us a little bit about that project? I'm doing an art show in March of paintings and papier-mâché sculptures. For the last six months, I've been doing only visual art. The sculptures make it impossible to walk in my apartment. The paintings have lots of cartoon elements. I'm pretty much directly inspired by whatever exhibits come to New York City. A couple years ago, you told MAGNET: “I was walking down 14th Street the other day and just realized that I was full of shit and that I’ve never done anything close to what I wanted to do in my life.” Do you feel more comfortable with where you are artistically now? I feel not so negative as that statement. I'm not interested in my artistic legacy. I just want to enjoy my life.

—Emily Costantino

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Q&A With Clem Snide’s Eef Barzelay

February 22, 2010
ClemSnideQAWhen Clem Snide began recording albums more than a decade ago in New York, the band's clever alt-country songs often came across as an ironic take on Americana. Everyone knows you can't do country music in the big city, and where did Israeli-born singer/guitarist Eef Barzelay get that twang from, anyway? After years of slogging through the indie-rock touring circuit, a band breakup (from 2005-2009, during which time Barzelay issued a pair of solo albums and scored the film Rocket Science) and a move to Nashville, Clem Snide has earned the all-American desperation and heartbreak that lies in the marrow of its latest album, The Meat Of Life (out this week on 429 Records). From country weepers ("Denver") and power pop ("BFF") to the rangy, almost prog-like title track, Barzelay is now surveying the modern heartland with all the acumen and authenticity of peers such as Bill Callahan and Jason Molina. Barzelay chewed the fat with MAGNET about The Meat Of Life, ukuleles and the day that he and Ben Folds each wrote separate songs about Normal, Ill. Barzelay will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com this week. "The Meat Of Life" (download): [audio:TheMeatOfLife.mp3] MAGNET: The day after J.D. Salinger died, I read an obituary-type piece on Slate that referenced your lyric in "End Of Love": "The first thing every killer reads is Catcher In The Rye." Did you happen to see that? Barzelay: I did see that, and a few other blogs and such made mention of it—the Google alerts lit up like a Christmas tree. I was flattered that people would reference that song after five years. It means I have successfully seeded the collective unconscious and now, I shall sleep. After I heard about Salinger's death, I had that kind of moment when you realize that—for me, at least—the world had changed somehow. Has that ever happened to you? I felt that way when George Carlin died. I've loved him ever since I was 13 years old. He was always touring, which I now greatly respect. I mean, he did a show at Fairleigh Dickenson University in Teaneck, N.J. That is a tertiary market if ever there was one. And it was maybe the most I'd ever laughed out loud in my short life. The Meat Of Life's opening track, "I Got High," reminds me of the Ben Folds song "Effington." Not only because both reference the town of Normal, Ill., but also because they both seem to embrace some basic aspects of American life. I was wondering if you were familiar with Folds' song. Dude! That's amazing that you would connect those two songs because Folds and I were on tour together when we both wrote our respective songs—on the same day, no less. I've never even spoken to him or anyone about it. I remember watching his show that night, in Normal, Ill., when he and the band started fucking around and just made "Effington" up on the spot. I wrote mine alone in a motel room, as God intended. The song starts out with the excellent lyric "I got high with a Sufjan Stevens fan in Normal, Ill." I think for me "I Got High" was a way to alchemize some nasty old-man bitterness I was starting to feel playing alone in boomy gymnasiums to mostly indifferent college kids. But the show that night in Normal was one of the best I've ever had. It was in a beautiful theater with great sound and the crowd just hung on my every sweet and tender note. Also, some local Sufjan fans may have hooked me up with a smoky treat that night as well. I secretly want "I Got High" to play like a classic-rock anthem, cell phones waving the air. It seems to me that Meat Of Life is one of Clem Snide's most "American" albums; there are so many sounds and images that make it heartland-y: the songs with girls' names in them (Anita, Denise, Mary), a sunrise in a Wal-Mart parking lot, etc. It seems that you are interested in exploring what happens in American lives, whereas before I think Clem Snide albums tended to get attention for being clever or witty. I'm heartened that you would say that. Maybe it's because I'm an immigrant that I tend to look at "America" a little different—or at least little harder. Touring is a big part of it in that I'm not only traveling all around these United States (which I've been doing off and on for the last 10 years) but also there's an overall out-of-body feeling to it. Being in constant motion and cut off from normal day-to-day life inspires empathy in me and I feel like I can step into random strangers' lives and see through their eyes. Like, just what is that Denny's waitress on the outskirts of San Antonio really feeling? The messy byproduct of it all seems to be some songs. I've drawn inspiration more and more from this act of channeling people and just getting out of the way when they come. When I was in my 20s and writing those first Clem Snide records, it was more introspective and labored. I was still anxiously stumbling around the suburban pop-culture junk logged in my post-adolescent brain. My parents got cable in 1979. But it's always been just about people and the conflicts and struggles therein. Maybe because of this "outside looking in" aspect to it, some critics questioned my sincerity or dismissed it as "irony," but I'm still not sure what irony even is. Thanks a lot, Alanis! I love that the protagonist in "Denver" is confessing an affair to his spouse/girlfriend and, over the course of the song, just keeps digging himself a deeper hole: Oh, by the way I got this girl pregnant. She's really young. And she's keeping the baby. You don't hear that much outside of old country music. Ain't it the truth! I do love that old country music. New country still does it, too—I think just with more lifestyle branding. I picture "Denver" as a cowardly note or a postcard left on the counter or even an email, and I know it works because people have come up to my wife after a show and offered condolences. I'm just a vessel. I'm not sure of the circumstances of the recording of Hungry Bird—I believe it was started, maybe partly recorded and then resurrected after your solo albums? But I was wondering why it was important for you to complete that album as Clem Snide. That record was very much a Clem Snide collective effort. I used the guys (Tony Hamil and Roy Agee) that I rounded up for the Rocket Science scoring session only to fill in some of the blanks. It began very much as a group effort that just went sour when me and Pete hit upon some major creative differences. I get that question often as to what is the difference between Eef Barzelay and Clem Snide, and I just don't have an interesting answer. I really want to keep it interesting, for the sake of the children. Meat Of Life seems to be a reassurance that Clem Snide is back and shiny and ready for another few rounds. What, if  anything, do you think has changed—or what do you want to be changed? I would for sure say Clem Snide is back and shiny. I'd like to think I've gotten a little wiser about how to handle it all especially the business side of things. But really, I just take it one record at a time and hope I can keep on truckin' with it. You spoke to our pal Josh Modell very openly about your career and life circa Hungry Bird, and you talked about the challenges of being a guy in a band but also owning a house and being a father and husband. How are things on the homefront in Nashville these days? Josh Modell is a great guy. I went to a sleepover at his house once and we watched backyard wrestling videos and drank soy milk. Through no fault of his, though, I kind of regret doing that interview because I didn't like how I came across. I certainly don't want to seem whiny or resentful for the way things have turned out for me in the music business. Really, it's all gone down just as I had suspected. I would like/need to get my stock value up a bit, but really the most I ever hoped for was cult status. Everything is well and good on the homefront. Lastly, I recently bought a ukulele for my toddler son, and I know you play it. To my child's displeasure, I've been hogging the instrument somewhat. Why is the ukulele so much more fun to play than the guitar? The ukulele is so much more fun! It's because the guitar has too many strings. Four is more than enough. And girls just love a ukulele, especially Hawaiian ones.

—Matthew Fritch

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Q&A With Fred Schneider

February 15, 2010
FredSneider550Fred Schneider has been partying out of bounds as the male mouthpiece of the B-52s since the late '70s. To put it in perspective, Andrew W.K. would have to party for two more decades—and invest in a more adventurous and colorful wardrobe—just to catch up to Schneider. Even then, it would be difficult to match Schneider's originality: a goofy, new-wave jester shtick that—through the B-52s' commercial success and longevity—evolved into an iconic voice that's now an inspiration to younger artists. Schneider's latest project, the Superions, showcases both his supreme silliness ("Who Threw That Ham At Me?" is one of his most riotous efforts) and influence (the Superions' debut EP, Totally Nude Island, features remixes by four Athens, Ga., bands). Along with fellow Superions Noah Brodie and Dan Marshall, Schneider has delivered a handful of songs that combine sex, sci-fi, shoplifting and a dance called the Disco Garbage Can. MAGNET spoke to Schneider about the Superions, the early days of the B-52s, Just Fred (his cult-classic, Steve Albini-recorded 1996 solo album with backing bands Six Finger Satellite and Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet) and dirty jokes. Schneider will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "Totally Nude Island (The Lolligags Remix)" (download): [audio:TotallyNudeIslandTheLolligagsRemix.mp3] MAGNET: I have to start by asking about one of your new songs, "Who Threw That Ham At Me?" I get the feeling its lyrics were inspired by real-life events. Schneider: Well, it's kind of an urban legend. Supposedly people have seen this in all different parts of the country, so I'd have to say take it with a grain of salt. I heard the story years ago from my friend down South. He said he was in a grocery store and this overweight lady was walking out and a canned ham fell out from under her coat. She quickly turned around before anyone would notice she'd been shoplifting and said, "Who threw that ham at me?" And for the version of the story in your song, the grocery store is the Piggly Wiggly. Are the Superions based in Orlando? I'm in New York, but I go down there and work. It was very productive last time I was there. That's when we recorded the EP. I love how it sounds like you just strolled into the studio and did the vocals. "Oh, hi there ... " I actually sort of did it like that. In [Noah and Dan's] old house, the bathroom had a good sound to it. Plus, they have an azure lovebird who makes so much noise when I'm in his room because he knows I'll let him out of his cage. He just squawks and rattles his cage. And so you can't really do any recording in there. So I did the vocals in the bathroom. I talked to some people who did remixes for the Superions EP and asked them about you. Jason NeSmith from Casper And The Cookies says he met you at a dinner party and that you told some really filthy jokes. Well, yeah. [Laughs] Anything that's dirty enough for the Internet? Um ... We can come back to it. Yeah, the jokes I know are pretty filthy. If I go to the gym, it makes it real tolerable if everyone's telling dirty jokes. Ryan Breegle from the Lolligags said something that rang true for me: that your life and music tends to stick to the idea of "Be yourself." Not to sound too high-school guidance counselor about it. With the Superions, it just started out as us having a good time. I had turned Dan and Noah on to lounge and tiki music—they just went whole hog for it. I stay with them when I'm in Orlando, when the band plays, and one time when I went down there, they said, "We have a track we wrote. Would you put words to it?" And I said sure, so I went in the bathroom and came up with the lyrics for "Totally Nude Island." And then we did one more take, and friends who heard it suggested we put it out. We started out as the Del Morons, actually; "Sexy Saucer Gals" is from the Del Morons period. But a friend of mine said, "No one's going to take you seriously if you call yourselves the Del Morons. They might just think you're a joke." So we changed it to the Superions. [Laughs] Letting loose and having fun has really been the cornerstone of your whole career. When the B-52s started, we'd jam. We might have an idea or a title, but it's a collaboration. Keith does the music and Kate, Cindy and I do the lyrics, and we all put it together. That's what I'm doing with the Superions, too. It all came together so easily. One of my favorite things you've done is the 1996 solo album Just Fred. It put your vocals in a whole new context. What made you want to go out and do a heavy guitar-rock album with Steve Albini? I was in a weird space. The B-52s were working on something without me, so I said, "Well, hell, I'm going to do something on my own." Their thing never came about, but I committed to doing this solo album and I was in an angry mood. Working with Steve Albini, who's a great guy and someone I really admire, put the groups together for me and I wrote the songs. The mood was pretty intense. "Sugar In My Hog" was spur-of-the-moment. They were having biker wars in Montreal, and they had somebody on the radio saying, "Yeah, he put sugar in my hog." So I said, "Hey, that's a great idea for a song." So Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet just launched into it and I jammed on it and we laughed. So was Just Fred something you and Albini cooked up together, or was he just wrangling the backing bands for you? We would record the songs with different groups. So I have tapes of me doing the songs with the other bands, too, a bunch of them. I can do shouty, punky stuff. I started out pretty punk—people forget that. The first time I interviewed you, I expected you to be more outrageous or something—just based on your vocal work. Do you find that people expect you to be this life-of-the-party guy? Yeah. People expect that I walk around in DayGlo clothes. A walking party. I mean, I like to go to parties. And I'll definitely dance on a table if I have enough champagne or liquor in me. But I'm pretty quiet. Unless the dirty jokes are flowing. I know you do some DJing. I'm doing a benefit for the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in Atlanta on March 5. And I'm doing another benefit for the Visionary Arts Museum where I'm going to perform my own stuff live for the first time in 14 years. "Sugar In My Hog" and all that—that's April 9. I was a DJ on Sirius for three years but I guess they thought I was too expensive, even though they pay Howard Stern half a billion and god knows what they pay Martha Stewart. Who wants to listen to her for an hour? While talking to some of the Athens guys who did remixes for the Superions, it struck me how much of an influential figure you are in that town, which is still a vibrant place for music. Well, it wasn't that way when we were there, boy. When the B-52s started, it was dead as a doornail. All they had were fraternity bands and there was a folk club and the big concerts at the Georgia Coliseum. We just all hung out together and played house parties. Someone said, "You know, you're as good as a lot of the bands that play Max's Kansas City," and we thought, "Wow. That's where Patti Smith and the Ramones and the Velvet Underground play." They booked us for a Monday night in December. We thought we'd made it. What was that show like? We were paralyzed with fear because we'd never played in front of a paying audience before. The curtains wouldn't open, so we had to throw them open. Everyone in the crowd was sitting there smoking cigarettes and leaning against the wall in black leather. And there we are in seersucker, purple and orange and wigs. By the way, feel free to improve upon my [guest editor] posts. I don't know why I ended up talking about Marcal paper products. Maybe to give a household hint. Maybe you could be a guest on Martha Stewart's show. Well, they're trying to get me on Paula Deen. It turns out our song came out the day before she got hit in the head with a ham, so people either thought that I threw it or that we wrote it on the spot after we heard she got hit by a ham. So how about that dirty joke? I have a cassette by a comedian named Bebe Benson, and all her jokes are silly and filthy. She had this one: A couple goes to a costume party out in the country, and they go as a cow. The husband is in the front, and the wife's in the back, and they're at the party and the wife says, "This is boring. Why don't we go outside and have a little fun?" So they trot out and all of a sudden the wife says, "Oh my god. There's a bull about to charge us. What should we do?" The husband says, "Well, I'm going to pretend to eat grass but you better brace yourself."

—Matthew Fritch

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Q&A With Juliana Hatfield

February 8, 2010
julianaqaBy the time Juliana Hatfield had reached her mid-20s, she'd become the poster girl for '90s indie rock. She was looked upon as the thinking person's alternative to the riot-grrrl phenomenon, and the future seemed rosy. Hatfield had formed revered combo the Blake Babies, launched a red-hot solo career, played bass on the breakthrough Lemonheads album and gained national attention when she told Interview magazine she was still a virgin and wasn't too worried about it. The backlash from those without much of an attention span was inevitable. In the ensuing years, Hatfield has honed her art and produced a wealth of stirring, self-confident albums. Peace & Love, out next week on her Ye Olde label, is an utterly sincere revelation that proves well worth the wait. Hatfield will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our exclusive excerpt from her 2008 memoir. MAGNET: Howe Gelb once told me about an ad hoc band you, Evan Dando, John Convertino (Calexico) and he had back in the early '90s called Fruit Child Large. I don't think I ever saw you play, though. Hatfield: Yeah, that was hilarious, this weird thing we threw together and somehow we pulled it off. It was Howe's genius idea to incorporate something from the Lemonheads, which was the "Fruit," something from my band, the Blake Babies, which was the "Child," and then Giant Sand was "Large." Howe sent me some great photos from a European tour. Yeah, that's all we did. I'm glad he kept a record of it, because I sure didn't. I think it was my first time in a lot of those places in Europe. I remember this dark tiny town in Bavaria, and we just had the best time. The club was packed with people, and it had this low ceiling. People were buying us tequila shots. It was just a really, really fun night. Did you play songs by all three of you? Yeah. Then we did a bunch of covers also, and we kind of improvised. We did some jamming. I remember we did a really slow version of a Blondie song. I think it was "Shayla" from Eat To The Beat. She was a great singer. Tell me about playing the first Lilith Fair. I thought that was a great idea. I've always hated to see rock as an exclusively guy thing. How do you feel about that? I don't know. I just think the best female rockers have a lot of testosterone. Like Courtney Love has this great rock 'n' roll voice, and it's very low—and also Brody Dalle from the Distillers, another really low voice. They're just really powerful rock singers, and I think it's partly because they sound like men. I hate to sound sexist, but I think rock 'n' roll is kind of a male art form. There are exceptions, of course. Some of the great rockers of all time—like Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde—but they're sort of in a class by themselves. They've set a very high standard that few measured up to. I've been doing this for so long I did a great interview with Grace Slick, certainly one of the great rock singers from the '60s. She set the bar pretty high for rock vocals. Yeah, she's great. But in terms of rock 'n' roll with guitars, it's male-dominated, I think. Well, frankly I think that's a drag. Me, too. But when we did Lilith Fair, there wasn't a lot of rock 'n' roll going on. Let's see, I was only on the tour for 10 dates, I think. It was Sarah McLachlan, of course, and there was Fiona Apple, the Cardigans, Tracy Chapman, Victoria Williams and Jewel. OK, good stuff, but definitely not Sleater-Kinney, Hole or the Breeders. No, no one was bleeding onstage. Your mom was the fashion editor for the Boston Globe. Any interest in fashion? Do you ever watch Project Runway? That's my favorite TV show. No, I don't have cable television. Of course, I've seen the show, but I don't like it all that much. The older I get, the more I'm interested in fashion, the aesthetics of it. I'm definitely more into it and more aware now than then, but when I was younger, I didn't care. When my mother was the fashion editor, I didn't really have any interest in fashion. What do you not like about Project Runway? What's not to like about Tim Gunn? I find some of the characters to be really grating. Yeah, but probably on purpose. I'm sure they pick 'em that way. Well, sure. But I find a lot of 'em unlikable. They're in a very harsh, competitive environment, and that can bring out the worst in people. I don't know. I feel the pressure they're under, and it makes me uncomfortable. It makes me anxious. And a lot of really ugly clothes come out of it. There's a lot of bad fashion. I'd rather look at the European fashion magazines. Why did you decide to become a singer in the first place? I never decided to become a singer. Singing was just something I always did. From the time I could make noise come out of my mouth, I was singing. I made up songs in the car when I was three or four years old. My mother always told me I used to make up songs about the scenery we were passing by. And I'd sit in the back seat and sing. I started writing songs at an early age. I wanted to be a writer of prose, first. Then when I was in high school, being a professional singer was kind of out of reach for me. I'm really good at staying in tune and really good at making up melodies, but my voice is not a strong, technical instrument. So, I never believed it was something I could do until I discovered punk rock. Certain bands like X were great. Exene Cervenka was a big inspiration for me. Before that, it was all band with guys in them: the Police and the Replacements. I didn't really have any role models I could relate to. I loved Olivia Newton-John, Karen Carpenter, Chrissie Hynde, Blondie, Pat Benatar. But they were all out there on a different stratosphere than me until X came along. Exene is not like a great technical singer, either, but she's creative and original and totally cool. Sure. I asked Exene about her unique sense of harmony. She just hears it and sings it. Yeah, what she's doing is something you can't learn in school. She's probably breaking all the rules of musical school. It's an instinctive thing that makes her an original. Were you a Joan Jett fan? I didn't have any of the albums, but I loved the singles on the radio. She's an icon. Loved the Runaways. There's a film in the making about the Runaways. That should be good. When you and John Strohm formed the Blake Babies, you had a boy/girl vocal thing. Was that because of X? No, we both wrote songs and we both wanted to sing. He sang the songs he wrote and I would harmonize. And I sang the songs I wrote and he would harmonize. We didn't have as unique a sound as John Doe and Exene. I have my own esthetic, and John Strohm had his. How many songs have you had placed in films? I know I heard one recently. A bunch. Every time I hear them, it's really weird, exciting and shocking. Last year, I had a couple songs placed in TV shows, and it's like they don't tell you when it's going to happen. So you sit down and watch, and you don't know when your song's coming on. The suddenly it comes on and it's really exciting. Why break up the Blake Babies? Lots of reasons. I was the instigator. I wanted to go off and do my own thing, play with other people. John and Freda (Love) wanted to grow as a band, but I was pretty set on the idea that we'd done all we could musically. I felt we had these limitations. Plus they wanted to move out of Boston and move back to Indiana. You were born in Maine. Did you spend a lot of time there as a kid? No, my parents moved to Massachusetts. My father always loved Maine, so we spent many summers up there. He'd sail us up there on his boat, and we'd tool around up there. My wife and I spent some time up there on our way to Prince Edward Island. I loved Maine. Maine's amazing. It's so special. It's not like any other state. If you were to drive the coastline, it would take so long. It's so vast. If you stretched the Maine coastline into a straight line, it would probably go halfway across the country. My dad always had a boat that was big enough for a family of five to sleep on it. Every summer, we'd take off for about two weeks and just sail. Sometimes we'd go down to the islands, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Or we'd sail up to Maine and anchor off little islands up there. We'd see Maine from the coast in. Last time I saw you play was in '03 with Evan Dando and Chris Brokaw. That was a kind of weird tour. I think I was kind of in a bad mood on that tour. It reminded me, "Oh, yeah, I don't really like playing bass." Cobra Verde also played on that tour with J Mascis on guitar. Did you talk to J? As much as one is able to talk to J. I don't know him very well, because I'm kind of shy and he's really kind of hard to talk to if you're shy. I didn't really know how to talk to him. We never really got to know each other. I like him, though. It's good to be around Evan, because Evan can talk to anybody. It's always great to watch J play guitar. He's one of the greatest guitar players of my generation, if not the greatest. Is this true, or is it an urban legend: You're part of the Hatfield clan from the Hatfield-McCoy feud? My dad claims that he traced his side of the family back to the West Virginia Hatfields. There really was feud. It started with a pig. One of the McCoys accused one of the Hatfields of stealing one of their pigs. It was right there on the border of West Virginia and either Tennessee or Kentucky. You made a big splash with your quote in Interview magazine that you didn't care much about sex. Is that what I said? I think I said that I hadn't gone all the way yet. I couldn't find my old copy of the mag. As I recall, it caused a big hoo-hah at the time. Do you remember? Sure, I remember. I was really annoyed by it and surprised that people made such a big deal out of it. I didn't think it was a big deal. I don't know why people sensationalize certain things. I guess most people have had sex by the time they're ... I think I was 23 at the time. And that was shocking because in this country, most people have had sex by then, a lot. I guess I was an oddity, especially because people always assume that people in the rock world are living these dissolute lives of sex and drugs. And I didn't fit the mold of a rocker doing sex and drugs, so people thought it was shocking that I was a virgin. There was a time back in the '90s when, for want of a better term, you were the It Girl. How did that feel? Did you feel like you were It at the time? No, I just felt like a loser, and why was anyone paying any attention to me? I didn't understand it. I felt that my music wasn't that great. I was just beginning. I hadn't perfected my art yet, I hadn't come into my own as a person. And I was aware of this. I was aware that I'm just this young, immature loser who's trying to figure stuff out. And people were giving me attention I didn't really deserve at that point. Now I deserve the attention. Now I'm making really good music, and I'm much more confident. But now people aren't as interested in a sensationalistic kind of way. People who notice what I'm doing now can understand what I'm doing. And they can see the quality, if they're paying attention.

—Jud Cost

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Q&A With Los Campesinos!

February 1, 2010
Los-Campesinos!As evidenced by both their music and exclamatory band name, the seven members of Cardiff, Wales' Los Campesinos! are excitable boys and girls. The group's third album, Romance Is Boring (Arts & Crafts), is an energetic, all-hands-on-deck dash through the pantheon of sharp indie pop and sloppy post-punk, gathering steam from Bright Eyes' sense of emotional catharsis and Art Brut's wry take on modern love. Try to gather all the influences brought to bear on Romance Is Boring by LC!'s seven-member army, however, and we'd be here all day. MAGNET spoke to songwriter Tom Campesinos! and guitarist Neil Campesinos!—all members (Tom, Neil, Ellen, Gareth, Harriet, Ollie and Kim) have taken the band's surname—about the new album. Los Campesinos! will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. "There Are Listed Buildings" (download): [audio:ThereAreListedBuildings.mp3] MAGNET: Really enjoyed seeing all the members of Los Campesinos! do their lists of favorite records of the decade on your website. A lot of my favorites were in those lists, and some that were not too obvious: Life Without Buildings, Menomena, Mull Historical Society. Los Campesinos! seems to enjoy mentioning the records they love, yet many bands tend to be really guarded about citing their influences or are coy about them. Why is that? Neil: I think it’s because we are genuinely massive music fans. The blog serves as a great platform for us to champion our favourite bands. If people haven’t heard some bands before and they subsequently become fans then that is surely only a good thing. I don’t see why people should hide their influences or even their favourite music. It just makes them seem odd. Or embarrassed. Tom: Hmm, I couldn’t really say why other people are guarded. Maybe there’s some sneaky plagiarism a-happening that they don’t want to give away. We’ve always been blatant about our plagiarism, though, and worn our influences on our T-shirts, and I think that’s basically because we’re music fans and we like talking about music. But I guess the idea of citing influences can also be useful for providing listeners with a context and letting them know how you arrived at whatever sound you’re making. Or maybe it’s just an attempt to appear cool through association. And related to all those records beloved by you and other band members: The songs on Romance Is Boring are packed with different sounds and energies, and it almost seems like everyone in the band is putting their own voice into the compositions. Is the songwriting process a smooth blend of everyone's ideas, or does it get crowded in there? Tom: We have a songwriting process, but it always feels like there’s the opportunity for everyone to express themselves, as the songs are constantly being discussed and evolving as a result of that. We definitely don’t have a shortage of ideas, though, so there’s often a lot of decision-making when it comes to the mix. You worked with John Goodmanson (who's also produced albums by Sleater-Kinney, Blonde Redhead and many others) on Romance Is Boring. Was part of his job to sort out all the ideas, or was he just there to make sure it all sounded good? Tom: Yeah, John’s great, because he’s very open with us and we can be equally open with him. Because of that comfort level, too, I also feel like he gets good performances out of us and recording can become an enjoyable experience rather than a toil. A lot of the songs are pretty fully formed by the time he gets to hear them, but he adds loads more ideas to our already weighty pile. He’s great to bounce ideas off, though, and is often crucial in making decisions when it comes to what songs do or don’t need; he’s an excellent mediator. But, obviously, he’s great at getting good sounds, and an amazing mixer, too. When it comes to Cardiff, most Americans could probably only name your band and Super Furry Animals as representatives, music-wise. What else should we know? Tom: Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci were one of the most underrated bands about, and Euros Childs’ solo work continues to be equally brilliant. Future Of The Left released one of last year’s best albums, too. All three of them are MAGNET favorites, too. There are so many of you in the band. Ever accidentally leave someone at a highway rest stop or at baggage claim? Tom: We’ve tried really hard, but we’re a tenacious bunch. Neil: Try as we might, we have not yet left a member behind. We’re fortunate to have a tour manager who looks after us. He holds our hands when we go to scary places like airports and rest-station bathrooms. How'd the girl on the cover of Romance Is Boring nick her leg? Neil: Probably shaving. For four months, MAGNET's editor/publisher had been able to avoid learning who makes the surprise cameo in Zombieland, but the one-sentence write-up of the movie on your website ruined it for him. Should he still see the movie? If so, will you guys buy the popcorn since you spoiled it for him? Neil: He had better ask Ellen about the popcorn. I haven’t seen the movie. I’ll tell her that she ruined it for him and most likely millions of others.

—Matthew Fritch

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Q&A With Sam Phillips

January 25, 2010
Sam-PhillipsIt's not as much of a journey from religious music to Jerry Lee Lewis and the Die Hard movie franchise as you might think. For someone who began her recording career as a Christian artist, Sam Phillips has had a very secular professional life. Born Leslie Ann Phillips in 1962, she cut her last album of religious music, produced by future husband T Bone Burnett, in 1987. (Phillips and Burnett divorced in 2004.) Phillips then jumped ship to the Virgin label in 1989 and began recording albums of thoughtful-yet-stirring music to document her new life as Sam Phillips. Critics' fave Fan Dance, her 2001 debut record for Nonesuch Records, featured lovely string arrangements by the legendary Van Dyke Parks. Phillips is currently in the middle of a year-long multimedia project called Long Play and also has a tune placed in Oscar-contending film Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges. In addition, Phillips will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. MAGNET: Has L.A. been getting rain of biblical proportions for the past week like we have in San Francisco? Phillips: It's so weird for us. It's been raining nonstop. I feel like it's Blade Runner now, without all the crazy space things to get around. Maybe it's never gonna stop. Maybe it'll be like this for the rest of history. Yeah, where's Harrison Ford when you need him, right? It'll be a vertical world from now on. We'll go up instead of sideways. That's one of my favorite movies. Before you called, I was communicating with my publisher about this Long Play web project of mine. We were trying to find out what to do for this contest for our subscribers. I was thinking I'd make valentines for the prizes and to win you'd have to tell your worst Valentine's Day story. They both wrote me back: "Aaah, I hate Valentine's Day." I know that's more typical for guys, but I have to weigh in as a female. It's not my favorite day. It's this phony, superimposed romance. Just like the diamond commercials. Chocolates for your friends—that's OK. Maybe we just don't have to have all the romance involved in it. Seems like everything just gets messed up that way. Are you a chocoholic? You know, I'm not. I could probably live without it. Cookies, probably not. My weakness is food from the deli. I've never met a deli sandwich I didn't like. So, when you go to New York, you're in heaven. No, actually, they put way too much meat in their sandwiches in New York, enough for about six people. I like a pastrami sandwich with two or three slices of pastrami, not half a pound. Give me the California deli, any day. So, tell me about your Long Play project. Part of the reason for Long Play is for me to be on my own schedule and not have to work around a record company and press. To be able to do half a record with a string quartet as the band or half a holiday EP. Releasing a record even now with no record business is still difficult. It requires even more shouting from the publicity people. I felt there was an opportunity to jump in and do a year-long project of music and art on the web. Seems to me the playing field has been leveled between major and indie labels. Speaking of pastrami and chocolate, somebody should do a book on what do great musicians eat? Oh, it's the new year and I live in California, so I'm gonna eat the greens, the nuts and the juices. But wait a minute, the Beatles when they wrote all those early great songs were living on butty sandwiches, basically french fries and butter and white bread. Well, maybe I'd better rethink that. And Elvis with his banana-and-chocolate sandwiches? Actually, I've tried it once. I did the banana-and-peanut-butter sandwich, and it was really good. I thought that sounded terrible, but it's really good. I couldn't finish it, but a couple bites—ummm. Pretty darn good. Maybe you should be asking people in interviews, "What do you eat before you sing?" It's like the baseball movie, Bull Durham, where all he ballplayers have their superstitions. And it's kinda what's your ritual before a show. Some people it's hard drugs or they smoke something, or it's whiskey. I've seen people steam, I've seen tea with a certain kind of honey. All kinds of power bars. Crazy things that people do before they go onstage. Like ballplayers who don't step on the foul line before they take the field. Do you have any superstitions? I don't think I do. It's more boring than that. I think I'm just a creature of habit. One thing I've tried was I was hungry, and I was opening a show for Elvis Costello quite a few years ago, and I ate crackers. Don't ever do that. It dries up your throat. I didn't have a good show that night. But I learned. Don't have fettuccine Alfredo. Right or peanut butter, either. Sticking to your vocal chords. I have to tell you, I'm on the board of directors of the San Jose Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame. And two years ago we inducted Larry Norman, the father of Christian rock. Are you familiar with him? I met him years ago. I understand he passed away recently. He was a very eccentric person. That's what I remember most about him. He was kind of a funny dude. Before I'd ever met T Bone, my ex-husband, Larry thanked T Bone in some of his liner notes. And T Bone didn't even know who he was. I heard from people that Larry used to do his own interviews; he'd interview himself. It's sort of ahead of his time, in a way. I just met him briefly. I think it was at a friend's recording session. He played live at the induction, maybe for the last time before he died. And I thought it was pretty cool stuff, kind of like Neil Young. I had a vinyl copy of a bootleg he put out that was really interesting. One side was live. He had this crazy rhyming long poem, done in an East London accent, about how church was middle-class. It was wild. He really was doing some creative and odd and different things. That would be part of the reason why I got involved in Christian music at that time. Now, it's very different. It's heavily connected with the Republican party and the South. When I knew it, it was really on the piggyback of the counter-culture. It was really coming out of that, including Bob Dylan. That's very interesting about doing that in the Bay Area. There is a great history of music up there. And the hall of fame makes complete sense. Why did you change from Leslie to Sam? Sam was one of my nicknames growing up. I had quite a few. At the time, I had come to the end of my journey through Christian music. A lot of the politics had changed. The anti-abortion people were coming on very strongly. I didn't agree with that. A lot of people trying to become famous any way they could. I basically wanted to quit. I met T Bone at the time, and my record company, the A&R guy said, "Do whatever record you want to do, and I'll cover you." Which you never hear an A&R guy saying. Somebody actually sticking their neck out for an artist, for art's sake. T Bone and I just did an honest record and it caused quite a stir. And after that I left. And that was your first album as Sam. No, that was my last album as Leslie. I left the label and started over as Sam. People told me, "Take all your fans with you when you cross-over. It'll be better business." You know, my conscience tells me I need to put a period here at the end of the sentence. I need to start a new chapter in my life. I need to go on and start from the ground up and  win people's trust. I thought it had become a pretty terrible landscape of phoniness and bad politics and just pinheaded thinking. I felt it didn't have much to do with God or real spirituality or love or the things I was interested in. That's why I went as Sam, to mark that time in my life. And then there's the original Sam Phillips, the one who recorded Elvis Presley. Sure. How much trouble have you had there? Any confusion? Any time anybody would send me something for him, I'd just forward it on. Basically, I've met his son Knox, and he was very sweet. And I did not put my name on a record as a producer until [the original Sam] passed away. Which was my last record. I tried to stay out of his hair completely. Have you visited Sun Studios? I can't imagine any musician not going there, it's such a great place. Oh yeah, I have a crazy memory of Dennis Quaid (starring as Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls Of Fire) sitting in the control room with lingerie models walking around the room with T Bone trying to get him to do some vocals. Then with Cowboy Jack in the lobby asking me to dance. It was a three-ring circus, doing the Jerry Lee Lewis story when I first met T Bone. We were camped out in Memphis there for a quite while. And there was (costar) Winona Ryder, who was scared of Dennis Quaid at the time. You have a tune in Crazy Heart, which I just saw last week. I loved Jeff Bridges in that. I'm a big fan of The Big Lebowski. I thought he should have gotten an Oscar for that, but they don't give Oscars for comedy. I hope he wins the Oscar for this, because for me it's secretly hitched up to The Big Lebowski. He's a lovely human. I've known him for a long time. Also, just one of the best actors that we have. It's a crime that he hasn't won yet. Nice to see him win a Golden Globe. Did you watch the show? I didn't. I was recording at the time. Did you hear about Meryl Streep saying, "I'm gonna change my name to T Bone." I know. We'll see what happens come Oscar time. I'm crossing my fingers for all of them. It almost went straight to DVD. I don't know if you know the story. Pretty remarkable that people are even seeing it, let alone it winning awards. And I was very proud to have a song in it. I wouldn't have called that one, I've gotta tell you. But T Bone fought hard for that. He felt that [Maggie Gyllenhaal's character's] moment needed to be more tender and not like the rest of the score. It was her moment, not his moment. For that, it worked well. My only complaint (about the film) was that I wish there had been more. Maybe that's the sign of a good film. I wanted to see what happened to those characters. My only complaint was that something more should have happened to him before he went into rehab. It needed one more big incident, like losing the kid in the shopping mall, before he changed his life. Yeah, I felt compelled to simplify the lyric to that song just because of the kind of genre. I was thinking of the early '60s ballads. I know they were pointed toward the '70s movies that were slower paced, that don't have quite as much drama. And I wonder if that realism dictated some of that. And movies are so hard because they're made by committee, too. I would never be good at making movies, because I'm so bullheaded. I always want to do what I want to do. How was it working with Bruce Willis in Die Hard: With A Vengeance? I only saw the first one. He was so very sweet to me. There was one scene where I had to get up on a crane above ship deck, and they gave me stunt pay that day even though I was chained in up high. When I got down from doing the shoot, he gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, "Thank you so much." He was such a good host for the movie. So, how did I repay him? One of the crew had a potato gun, and we were shooting bits of potato at his trailer. But, I mean, how often do you get to fire a home-made potato gun? You were mute in that film? I was relieved. It was either mute or do a German accent and cut all my hair off, too. I escaped both. The director had mercy on me. You worked with German director Wim Wenders in The End Of Violence. One of my all-time favorite movies is his Paris, Texas. How was that experience working with Wim? I loved Paris, Texas, too. He was beautiful. He'd come to my show and see this little thing I do with a dictaphone. I sang with it. It's kinda hard to describe, but it's in there for a few seconds in The End Of Violence. He was like a big kid—so quiet but really enthusiastic about so much of life: cartoons or photography. And really gentle. Have you ever tried to get into a Jim Jarmusch film? I think you'd be a good fit. Oh my god. A musician I've worked with, Marc Ribot, did the score for Mystery Train. When I met Jim Jarmusch, I think I was with Syd Straw and she was friends with him. I probably ruined my chances by doing a Die Hard movie, but that's OK. I'd love to aspire to it. I haven't seen these, but I see you've done some song videos in the style of Super 8 films? They are Super 8. I just fell in love with that format. Even if they're too light or too dark, which is easy to do. Yeah, especially if they're too light or too dark. I think it's beautiful. In such a short time, I've gotten so used to looking at digital. But I think there's something winsome about silent film. They're scrappy and they're lo-fi. And I felt they matched the music. They're very off the cuff. I just go out for a couple of hours with a filmmaker friend of mine, and we just kind of take pictures. I grew up with that stuff. Give me the grainy Super 8 look any day. I made a western film a la Gunsmoke when I was a kid with my brother getting hanged for his crimes in the final scene. I just don't want film to go away. There's a big push to bring Polaroid film back. I know it's toxic and it's not green, but it's just so charming. I was alarmed the other night when somebody on a talk show said that every movie will be 3D some day. I hope I never see that day. Can you imagine anything scarier than that? A horrible idea. Well, I hope that was the 3D company talking. That sounds like a really awful idea. That's really all our kids need is more excitement. More jolt, more YouTube videos, more cuts per second. I just think, "Wow, maybe we ought to give 'em a break and go back to Crazy Heart, take things a little slower." Have you ever watched commercials lately from when we were kids? They were so slow. One last question, tell me about working with Van Dyke Parks. I loved his solo work and his collaborations with Brian Wilson. I have a real regret that every time I've worked with him, I have not had tape rolling constantly. He's one of the funniest, one of the wittiest guys ever. He says such strange and smart things. And they just keep on rolling. In my world, he would be the greatest talk show host in the universe. Have you seen him live? I feel like I have, but maybe not. I know he recorded recently with Inara George, and I saw her play. But no, he wasn't with her. He doesn't get out much. But you'll find him around Los Angeles playing a little bit. Somebody really should do a documentary on his life. He is charming and has quite a story. He's brilliant; there's nobody like him. He came in and arranged three cellos for a record I did called Fan Dance that came out in 2001. I think he and the cello player embraced at the end of the session. He played it exactly as Van had heard it in his head and written it, and the cello player was so happy to play something so beautiful. My song paled in comparison. I like being shown up like that.

—Jud Cost

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Q&A With Everclear’s Art Alexakis

January 18, 2010
ArtAlexakisQA Regrets—Art Alexakis has had more than a few. And he's had his share of losing, too. But the Everclear frontman has always done it his way. While far too many of his '90s Pacific Northwest brethren (Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley, Andrew Wood, et al) ended up six feet under, Alexakis has been a survivor, enduring arrests, attempted suicide, drug abuse, divorce, depression, bankruptcy and much more. Despite being dubbed Nirvana lite by music critics, Everclear soldiered on, becoming a platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated, hit-making band, and Alexakis used this success to champion causes close to his heart. The revolving-door group's latest release, In A Different Light (429), is a collection of (mostly) older Everclear songs reinterpreted in a stripped-down manner. Alexakis is guest editing magnetmagazine.com all this week. MAGNET: What made you re-record older Everclear songs for the new album? Alexakis: I’ve always wanted to document the way the songs have progressed over the years, and fans were requesting acoustic versions of the songs and a live album. I don’t like live albums, and I don’t think they sound very good. Most of them aren’t even live anyway, so I wanted to document the progression of the songs. So we went into the studio and recorded all of the songs live with a few vocal and instrumental overdubs. But basically, it’s a live studio album. What can you tell me about the two new songs on In A Different Light? I thought these songs fit the theme of the music on In A Different Light. "Here Comes The Darkness" was recorded and written for the last record, Welcome To The Drama Club, and it just didn’t fit the record. Has been around since 2007, but it didn’t fit that record. "At The End Of The Day" was a song I wrote for another band in 2004, written when I was going through a divorce and my mother was dying. I didn’t feel like that fit the record, either, and let someone else record it. In 2008, I went to Iraq right after the election to play for the troops, and I got an idea of what longing and heartbreak is from a different point of view, and this song kept coming back in my head. I went back and revisited it and rewrote a couple lines and recorded it for In A Different Light. I thought these songs fit the theme of the music and the record. The album before In A Different Light was 2008's all-covers The Vegas Years. Are you planning to make an Everclear record of all new material any time soon? All new songs. We plan on recording in February, March and April and releasing around August. I’ve been writing for two years and have a bunch of songs. The new record is going to be a rocker! Everclear's lineup seems to always be changing. How come? Do you prefer it that way? Everclear has always been my band. I like to change up the lineup every few years. You seem to still have a really hardcore bunch of fans. Why do you think that is? Do you think people feel an attachment to you because of the personal nature of your lyrics? Not sure if they have an attachment to me, but the fact that I write in first person tends to grab people. I write in more of a storytelling point of view, just like the Beatles did, like the Stones did. I love storytellers. My songs are stories. Even though they might be dark, they have a light at the end of the tunnel, and people can relate to that. That appeals to the general Everclear fan. Plus I think they like my hair. For a guy who has had more than his fair share of personal problems, you seem to have a nice "normal" life now, with a wife and kids. Are you happy at this point in your life? If so, what role has music played in it? I don’t know what role in my life that music hasn’t played. It’s been a part of my life that has influenced everything I’ve done. I always wanted to make music and films. From the age of four, my letters to Santa have been always included electric guitars, drums and an organ. I am the happiest right now than I’ve ever been. I have a better idea of who I am, what my place in the world is and what my priorities are—all of which revolve around family. As far as music fitting into it, I can't see a world of mine without music. You achieved a big amount of success when the music industry was booming. Do you think the excesses of the major labels in the '90s have led us to this current unhealthy state of the music biz? Or do you think it's the ever-evolving technology that's done it? Or maybe you think it's some combination of both. Little bit of both. I definitely think there were too many bands and acts being signed—too much filler. I think this happens in all aspects of human life. We get too fat, things slow down, we find something that reminds of what it's all about, then it circles again. Like the Beatles, Nirvana, hip hop—something will come along and show us the way, people will make money exploiting it, we’ll get lost again, and we’ll come right back. The music industry made a lot of mistakes not knowing what to do with downloading, and Napster was the ultimate death of the industry. Right now, it's more about the music and less about the huge incomes. People are still getting rich, just not as much as they used to. Ten years ago, A&R guys were signing the biggest acts, and now their selling Starbucks. I know this for a fact. I think it's good to get a humbling ass kicking every now and then. It keeps us honest. You have been an outspoken Democrat for some time. After a year in office, how do you think Obama is doing? Do you think people are being unfairly harsh on him, given the mess he inherited after eight years of Bush? Do you think the Democrats can keep control of the House and Senate after the midterm elections next year? Yes, I do believe the Dems will keep control of the House and Senate. They might lose some seats, but I'm not sure. I think that people are smarter then we give them credit for. The same scams that worked in 2000 and 2004 will not work today. After a year in office, I think Obama is doing a great job. There is no way to prepare for the job as president, even if you were vice president before—there’s no way of know until you get into the seat. It's like being famous or getting pregnant or having a kid. You don’t know what it's like until you’re in the seat. I have criticisms of him, like anyone. I think he’s heard all the right criticism from the right people. He needs to get back to being himself. Let the bipartisan shit go away, because it’s not going to work. It was noble move, but it’s not ever going to work. He needs to solidify his base and be the president.

—Eric T. Miller

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