Interview with Flansburgh, part 2
Jesse Fuchs
But you do have your cult, just like Tori Amos or trent reznor - there are people who are really intense about you guys.
Sure - I don't mind that, but I'm more interested in people who don't know who we are checking us out. That's maybe the booster in me. I appreciate having that steady an audience, and it's kind of fascinating in a weird, personal way, to have people
become that obsessed with minutiae.
Your cult is very intellectual - have you ever seen the "They Might Be Giants and Bachelard and the Pathology of the Image" paper out of Stanford?
Uh, no.
I found it on the web - it's about nine pages long, and is pretty recondite. Does it kind of freak you out that somebody could get course credit for listening to your albums?
It's fascinating in an absurd way...I don't know. I don't feel like we're working out of
that high a tradition. We write pop songs - a lot of times when they succeed, it's with the most modest setting, and it's not that self-aware or even purposeful. Our best songs are usually the simplest, and just try to put out an odd thought in a unique way. I feel like it would be really overintellectualizing things to think it has something to do
with Bachelard. I don't feel like we're in any great tradition. We're coming out of a culture that's a real mixed stew of things. There's a lot of people who come out of the same kind of cultural background as us - they've experienced a lot of different kinds of music and really take it all to heart. To a large extent, they just dig music. That's
where we're coming from. I don't feel there's traditions that far beyond the general trends of popular music. It's really hard to read critiques of your work and feel like your being understood. When somebody says something good about us I tend to feel
good about it - and no matter how accurate or qualified somebody might be critiquing us, it still hurts my feelings. We're not for everybody - that's the thing about popular music is that it's supposed to be for everybody. you're somehow breaking the rules if you say that you're going to do something a little extreme, and that you're not
reaching out to the biggest audience you could. It's an interesting paradox about popular music - it is this populist form, created by some really anti-social people. It's
really the cult of the individual as an entire subculture.
What inspired the Hello CD club? Did people keep sending you tapes of stuff, and you said this has to be released?
Really just the opposite - I knew a bunch of people that I worked with
professionally that were doing work that wasn't really radio bound or commercially viable that would work for a major label. But I though had interesting material. And I knew a lot of people that had other musical careers going, and had a lot of other ideas and interests, and to create a platform that would welcome side excursions a established artists. The split function of Hello is to expose people to groovy new
bands, and also let people in more established bands too do side projects that won't be perceived as an alternate career move, but instead be just something they're doing for kicks We've been pretty successful. A lot of cool bands have done things that are beyond their regular thing. We're about to put out this Soul Coughing EP, and it's
mostly instrumental and very psychedelic. It's much deeper into the groove - which exists in all of Soul coughing's songs, but their regular releases are more pop song oriented. This is more the total free jam that you won't hear on their major label
release
It ties into the songwriting in TMBG - there's a very particular sensibility working of...I wouldn't go so far to say the destruction of identity, but you listen to one of your albums, and it could almost be 20 different bands in a sense. They're always being
sung from different characters point of views, and then you get to something like fingertips. With the label, it seems like it's trying to answer the question, what
happens when Andy Partridge wants to do something that doesn't sound like - big capital letters - Andy Partridge?
Right. Well, the thing about rock music that's both it's greatest strength and its greatest downfall is that it's really persona driven. And you can get people who are tremendous characters, whether it's Trent Reznor or little Richard, there's this great
tradition of people who are total oddballs, foisting their personal obsessions on the world. It's a great thing in that it's totally unfettered personal expression that you don't experience in a lot of other places in culture. At the same time, you get people
being locked into this one way of presenting themselves, and then they just become this one thing. And you get to levels of weird mannerist self-parody, that a lot of bands fall into. I think for me and John, we've always felt like, the lest we've sold the band as John and John - even though that's a very effective way of putting the band
over - and the mope we just try to put our songs forward, the more effective the actual statement can be, and the more the bands can stand on their own. and...that's a totally personal thing and I don't want to start naming names, but there are people
who have entire careers based on people sitting down, listening to the records, and saying "Gee, I wonder what they're really like?" And I find that to be such a total
gross-out.
The personality cult thing - the reason that Pere Ubu won't put pictures on
their web page, because David Thomas thinks it smack of personality cult.
Well, he's a really good example of somebody who can work the...he's a total superstar - his whole thing is about his persona. And it's not a bad thing, if
somebody's really got oodles of charisma and personality. I mean, Prince is a really sexy guy, it's not an accident he's a superstar. He's monstrous, he's superhuman - he's like an action figure. I completely understand how it happens, but there's a kind
of very standard way of putting an artist forward, where the obvious goal is to create an enigma. Whether the enigma is somebody being like a drug addict, or somebody
being..."oh, they're sooooo irresponsible!" It's so tired - you want to meet somebody really irresponsible, go down to the end of the block and find the guy working I the
mini-mall who's, like, doing glue - that guy is irresponsible.
But it's not nearly as romantic. Is that one of the reasons for the Mono Puffs -
are you worried that you're getting trapped in the image of the two hyper nerds? Like on the Mono Puff CD, you've got "The Devil Went Down to Newport," which has
got you chanting "Go Satan Go!" and then a song about Dock Ellis pitching a no-hitter on acid.
I don't think there's a song on any TMBG album where you couldn't wonder if it
isn't about LSD. But people don't think of us in those terms. I'm not dissatisfied with the way that we're perceived anymore than anybody in any other band is. Part of it is just labeling somebody is a limiting thing. It's very hard for it not to happen. For me,
whatever I can do to free myself from that, the more I'll like it. Basically, I've got the most excellent career - when I'm not recording with my band, I can make rock
videos. It's really okay.
You've lept on every opportunity available.
I totally dig this rock thing.
Have you ever written about rock?
I wrote this essay once for CMJ, about my fake ID. But I've never..I spend a lot
of time sitting around talking about rock music with my rock musician friends. It probably is about the same...some of it...on any given day, I have really contradictory
opinions about a lot of things, depending on how much MTV I've watched that day. You can definitely OD on it. But the state of the whole rock music thing is
remarkably good now - ever since the 90s started, I've felt way better.
You mean, no more Warrant?
People don't realize...people really villainize major labels, but they were so much
worse in the 80s than they were now. It's great when the general feeling in the culture is that nobody knows what's going to happen next. It's much healthier atmosphere for record companies to be working out of. At the end of the 70s, it's
almost like 6 coke-addled guys had some international summit to nail down rock music and not let it move one iota from whatever the template they've established
was. You think about how good the Replacements or husker Du were, I mean, even
more marginalized characters from the 80s who were doing interesting work - they
didn't have any of the shot that bands have now.
So you think that if Paul Westerberg was at his prime today making "Let It Be," he would have had more of a chance?
Definitely! I think if you could transport that band 10 years later, they would be
multi-platinum. the radio is much more open to things. It's still a stinky world in a lot of ways, but....I just feel like having seen how stagnant it can be, there's so much
excitement about things that are new in general. 10 years ago, if there was something new, record companies were like "do I have to?" It just amazes me how much more
interest there is in the margins of the culture - it's not about superstars as much any
more.
The Hello CD is kind of a leader in the multi-tiering of rock music, of it being less
centered around superstars. In the sense that Weezer is a platinum band, and then the bassist decides he wants to do his own thing. And so he has his own band with
people from that dog, which is still pretty big, but not as big as Weezer, and it wouldn't really affect them that much if it didn't take. And then Beck has his major
label album, releases some weirder stuff on minor labels, and then goes back and releases another major-label release.
It's really great, and it's really respectful of people's ability to do more than one
thing, and it's a more creative way of having a career. And it sort of recognizes that people can work on different levels and do good work on different levels. It's definitely a better thing. It's really refreshing to me to see people work on more than
one level. I'm amazed by how many positive responses I get from people on doing Hello Club stuff, because I'm basically just cold calling them. I don't have a million show business friends. I have to call up management people and be like, "Um, I run
this really small thing, and we do this thing that, uh, nobody knows about, and uh, do you want to do it?" And more often than not, people are like "Yeah! It sound slike a lot of fun!" And you can tell that it's very exciting for them to be involved in
something that isn't about a press release, or spearheading some campaign. Most people get into music because they like playing music. It's not some sort of ego ride,
where they like seeing their pictures on magazines - obviously, some people, that's their total goal. But for a lot of people, it's really about the music.
And you're able to take away that fear...
Well, that fear of the marketplace. I mean, nobody's going to say, "I heard your new Hello release, and I think you really sold out." The Andy Partridge thing is total
excitement - people love that disc.
In a sense, you can get around people having to plot every move, but do you ever worry about the multi-tiering turning into Balkanization? You know, there's the
Weezer level, and then there's the Rentals level, and then there's the Beck level, and then there's the indie Beck level, and then there's the Hello level.
I don't want to marginalize myself - I have full respect for the awesome power of Time/Warner. The thing about subscription, is that it allows us to work with a lot of people that we couldn't work with otherwise. If it's not in the stores - people sign
contracts that tie them up for long periods of time, but that's about retail avaialbility in stores. I couldn't get frank Black to do this otherwise - he just signed a big deal with
Interscope - I can't sell something that would compete with them, they wouldn't let me.
Was that part of the idea from the beginning?
Yeah - TMBG has a pretty big mail-order business - it's a real cottage industry. So having done that, I knew it was something that kind of existed, and that I could
operate reasonably well.
What do you think about using the internet and such as a form of marketing?
Well, it's interesting...you can turn off your tape recorder, you're never going to want to write about this - but within the record industry, there's a lot of gladhanding and happy talk about how much the companies need retailers, but in fact, record companies would like nothing more than to annihalite the retail level of the business.
Because they're the middlemen between them and what they percieve as their market. They're trying to maximize profit - they see something for sale in the store for 15 bucks, and they're only getting nine of that, well, they want that other six, too.
So, they jsut feel whatever the retailers getting is just money that they're being chiseled out of. And the internet for huge companies provides this opportunity to not just circumvent retailers, who they secretly loathe, but to create a product that has no
product. You'd have a master tape, and then a delivery system that doesn't involve actually having the hard manufacturing of anything. It's incredibly lucrative - you're
selling intellectual property, instead of an actual item that has manufacturing costs.
but on the other hand, they want to crush the retailers, but what's their use?
Well, let's say that you're Trent Reznor Jr., and you haven't signed your deal with TVT yet, but you've got these techno songs that everybody's dying for, and there's a huge cult audience that's gone crazy for what you do, and they're all on the internet
and computer literate. It would seem like you'd jsut go on the internet and put it out there yourself - if you want to download my most excellent tunes, jsut send 5 dollars here, and you'd make a lot of money. But in reality, the people who run the record companies would figure out exactly how much you would make, and they'd offer you
exactly that amount more, and would get you to change your mind and do it their way.
That'll be their orientation - they understand that controlling the means of
production is of trememndous value in the marketplace. It's not just about selling the popular records, but it's also about controlling how records are sold. It's like being in
publishing - there's a value to just holding on to your properties. If you control the marketplace,...you look at the hits of 20 years ago, you look at the hits people have
now - Neil Sedaka isn't on the top of the chars, but Warner Brothers is.
There are times when it's even a loss leader situation, which is what I was talking about with the Reznor Jr. example - they'll actually lose money to just hold on to their market share. There are all sorts of examples of it, all the way down the line. When ZZ Top gets signed for $40 million dollars, it's really doubtful that they're
going to make that up. But by having the ZZ Top album available, that means that the publicist can get the rock critic who's a big ZZ Top fan free tickets to their concert, which means that they can get them to go and review the new Superjumble band that they've signed. There's a push/pull - it's very subtle. You can't just read it on the
surface - it's not just about "we sold a lot of records today." It's about maintaining access and control.
If people could figure out a way to work independently that would blow the doors off of the record companies - if the net could somehow become more autonomous in the culture - but I don't think that's going to happen. and the key
ingrediant isn't the sort of the coffers of the companies as much the mentality of the culture. People are more interested in successful weirdos than unsuccessful weirdos. People aren't curious about things that aren't shrouded in the mystique of success,
and the things that say that and telegraph that idea are things like being signed to a major label. It's a big prt of it - it's a weird situation - people are interested in things that are new and exciting, but they also need a certain amount of validation - that this
is the thing that they need to know about. If you want to find out about new bands, you can pick up the new issue of Option, and there's 500 new bands that are
available. Or you can be like a lot more people and pick up Rolling Stone, and open to the "What's New" page, and find about the three.
It's cultural overproduction - there's more music than there is people to listen to it.
It wouldn't mean much if people started paying attention to 500 bands instead of
1. I don't even know if it's a bad impulse to just pay attention to specific trends or individuals. It's natural.
It's sort of like the local band phenomenon - you know, everybody loves their local punk band, even though they sound exactly every other local punk band. But
because they have that local validation, they're a big deal. But with the Hello Club...
I really started that as a hobby - I'm fully aware of how unoverthrowable record companies are. In a lot of ways, I have a very idealistic view of what people can do,
and I saw I had the ability to do something that very few people could do, because I have access to people and I'm a musician, so it's easy to figure out what my motivations are. If I was just Joe Guy, there's no way I could convince anybody of
what my intentions were. That I wasn't trying tyo use them - they know my commitment to TMBG, and they know that's my primary thing, and this is
something that I'm do9ing because it's an itneresting project. In a way, by having announced my lack of ambition for the project, it's allowed it to be successful and
self-sustaining, and it takes the pressure off the artist. While if somebody had gone in with the intention of making it work on a commercial level and be really viable, it not only would have failed three years ago, but it would never have been able to get
access to the people I've been able to work with.
Have you become friends with the people you've recorded?
Not really - Frank Black was one of the first people who did one, but I was friends with him before. I knew charles back in the Pixies days, that's just a
long-standing thing. But by and large, my affilliations with people in Hello is from doing shows and getting out to festivals. People I've pursued on a professional level are just people I've found interesting - like Soul Coughing opened for us on the tour
right after their record came out, just because I liked them and thought they were a good local band, and now they're on Lollapalooza and they're officially happeneing.
At any given moment, though - it's not like New York is filled with great bands - when a good band comes along, you notice.
You have the CDs available in perpetuity, or is it a first-come, first serve kind of deal?
It's like subscribing to the New Yorker, although we do have some of the backlog avaialble...we're almost out of 1993 right now, though. We have all the back stuff
available because we order them in lots of 1000, but it's not going to last forever. And it's not that profitable to keep it all in print endlessly, and technically, our license to
manufacture them runs out six months after the calendar year, so it would be in bad
faith to keep re-printing them. I've gotta go now - I was supposed to call Linnell
about a half-hour ago about the sequencing on the new album.
Well, thanks for your time!
It's been a pleasure. Thanks for the interview.
chuss,erik j
In article <blitzer-1107...@p02.pm-1.pm.dimensional.com>,
Jesse Fuchs <bli...@dimensional.com> wrote:
That was a great interview! It answered alot of questions about
the various roles of JF, Mono Puff, and TMBG. It sure as hell is better
than the "When is you're next album coming out....Why are you're
songs so funny...blah, blah" type interview. Thanks!
--
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* Erik Chuss | "And the sad little cross-eyed bear's *
* Bellcore, Inc. | been put to sleep behind the stairs *
* Piscataway, NJ | and his shoes are laced with irony" *
* ech...@notes.cc.bellcore.com | - They Might Be Giants * *
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