Coco is 11 years old now, right? Does she have any kind of impact on the household’s listening habits?
Yeah. We don’t change ... I mean, we talk about music the same. I certainly don’t sit around in the morning making her pancakes listening to Whitehouse or anything. [Laughs] She won’t allow it, you know. She’ll take it off, and put on The Best Of Blondie or something. Which I don’t mind. And I try to brag to her about how I used to be a teenager back in the ’70s and going to see Blondie at Max’s Kansas City when they were opening for the Ramones or whatever and she’ll say, “Yeah, whatever, Dad. Can you sit down, please?”

She does really like Lucinda Williams’ Essence, and she likes some classic Pavement. As far as new stuff, all her friends listen to Usher and she’s not really into that. She doesn’t go out looking for that kind of contemporary mainstream, “super-entertainment” stuff, that’s on the radio all the time. She’s not asking for 50 Cent records or anything like that. Now she’s kind of listening to that “tween pop,” Hilary Duff and all that. I got really curious and interested in that stuff because it’s all kind of charging, overproduced punk rock with teenage girls singing on top of it. It’s interesting that kids listen to that, because when we were kids, there wasn’t that kind of aggro/saccharine thing going on at the same time. There was a soundtrack to the Powerpuff Girls movie, music inspired by the characters, and all these songs by Frank Black and other contemporary alternative-rock people. And it was great: super-bubblegum punk songs, and I really loved it, it was a guilty pleasure for me. So my hat’s off to tween pop.

What can you say about the Goo reissue you’ve been working on?
It’s a whole extra CD of Goo demos, a couple of loose tracks that didn’t make it on that, and then some weirdo rehearsal jams that are really sort of cosmic that we found and put on there, too. A booklet with good liners, Byron Coley wrote them again; he wrote the whole series, actually. It’s really cool how the record label came to us and said they were interested in doing the reissues. It’s one of the best things that’s happened to us being on a major label, that you have the ability to do stuff like that. I think we have one more record to go. [Aside] Hey, Moby, what’s up, dude? That was my man Moby walking by. Heh heh, Moby. [Laughs]

So what’s it like being an American working musician traveling in Europe right now, given how tense things are politically between the U.S. and pretty much the rest of the world?
Well, America is held in such low regard across Europe—like we’re the buffoon aggravators. It’s sort of like the Vietnam syndrome, people never maybe “hated” Americans; they felt more sorry for Americans, getting involved in something that was totally wrong, a complete disservice to their country. There’s more pity than anything else. Obviously, the band has a liberal philosophy about things, that’s sort of a given. I try to tell family members and people I know who live in the U.S. and toe the line that you have to entrust yourself to the authorities; “overseas, they don’t look at it like that.” They think we have a pathetic situation with our administration and think people are blind to it culturally. But it’s hard to sling mud at people who don’t really go abroad or have that perspective. The way they look at it is that “we’re kicking ass, we don’t take any shit.” And that’s not at all how it’s seen over here.

You and Kim (Gordon) both had parents who were professors. Has this had a big impact on the band’s creative quest?
Anyone who grows up with parents who are very influential, there are cases where people run away from that if they have parents who are really lame. But that was the thing about Iggy Pop; he was this feral, primal performer, but he was very informed by his parents. His father was a literary professor, and it sort of gave credence to these minimalist lyrics he wrote. He wasn’t just this blues, punk guy. It had a whole new angle.