So one of my favorite Producer/ Musical Wizard combos, The Intervales created an infectious passage awhile back called "Crystal Lake". Just for fun they gave it to the Brooklyn music collective known as the Nuclear Family, who then used it for their side project Iller Than Their's as the backbone for their new single: Check it out:
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- Best Live Songs of 2008 Part Three
- Top Ten Songs Experienced Live in 2008 Part Two
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September 26, 2007
June 11, 2007
May 31, 2007
May 07, 2007
April 30, 2007
?uestlove, The Roots drummer gets Buffaloed
It seems Sweet Talks favorite personality in the world of music had some problems leaving Buffalo, NY recently. After you read this you will know why the publisher of PASTE Magazine said, "makes me even more proud of our Roots cover." Me too.
If you wanna read my ?uestlove story, click HERE: ?UEST FOR A CHANGE
Here's what ?uest had to say under his blog about the incident.
remember all that drug czar joking i was doing on the last blog?
funny what can happen in a lil town called buffalo. what shoulda been a harmless trek to gate 26 in the buffalo airport wound up being possibly the most humiliating hour of my life.
every cop cliche that ANY comedian has ever uttered (and i dismissed --not because of lack of truth but its like "ok mike epps, we know cops be fucking with us WHAT ELSE IS FUCKING NEW?!?!")
but sure enough.....all those comedy albums i am addicted to was slowly channeling in and coming to life.
you see, post 911 if you purchase a plane ticket 24 hours before the flight leaves you automatically get checked in the special security line (to me this is all bullshit for i believe our government orchestrated 911--not no damn civilians!--but eff it. wag the dog is wag the dog)
thing is i absolutely forgot that i was carrying around all of my post roots show dj ?uestlove gig money. what was once just a little side money has damn near turned into a even more lucrative deal for me as time has gone by and my value has been upped. so as a result since this is a transitional period i have yet to stop the regular small cash pick ups i do after i dj (roots show money is deposited in bank account before we even hit the town.)
now back in the day that petty cash would be gone in about 10 days: i'd cop some sneakers, buy mad records, get crazy gadgets....well today is a different story: i no longer have to pay for sneakers that much, and i think that 60,000 records are enough records to have in this lifetime. i get VIP status with apple so if the timing is right and i don't abuse my status---i pretty much dont have to come outta pocket for the gadgets.---
well with the 3 main passions of my life at my disposal that pretty much means that i don't have to spend that much money (this is how real wealthy people stay wealthy: someone else pays the bill!)--so for some reason...shit just started adding up. i'm sure shawn gee is laughing as he reads this cause he knows that when it comes to spending money? i am kid (smack) dy-no-mite!
but i had plans. plans to have at least 5 kickass cookouts at my new home. this basically means that i was waiting for the prime opportunity to go to home depot and get all the ill shit i needed to make my barbeques the jump off. night heaters here, chairs there, weather proof speaker systems so i can dj from the room here, mosquito lamps there...that is what i was planning on saving for.
problem is i have yet to run to philly to bank my loot up.
enter the DEA.
my life is an ongoing see saw series that refuses to settle on one side. on one hand i think that constant balance is what keeps me humble (or from being a total asshole to those snickering "humble? bah!...just cause you talk proper english don't mean you humble ahmir"). personally i wish god would make up its mind on what side of the fence imma be on. if its meant for me to be a real celeb can we let it happen already so i can friggin be more prepared for the dumb shit i got to encounter in life? case in point:
because of the SSSS on my ticket i had to go through the "special security line". and it was there they discovered my dj money stash from countries all around the world. the tsa (who resembled the chuby white dude from the office) starred me up and down and made his decision: "drug dealer"
this motherfucker called the feds.
i went from security to cops to feds/dea. in 20 mins.
soon i was in the scenario all my favorite comedians riffed about.
chris rock: yo nypd made me believe that i stole my own shit!!!
they were like there are too many red lights: "you carry two computers, these orange things (external hard drives), this louis vuitton bag (no one gave me the memo that louis bags are suspect on TWO levels for men) you carrying all this money from different countries, you have a passport, and you fit the description with this knitted rasta farian hat"
i wore this hat to conceal the afro that could be the difference between the autograph/photo pause i have to take while going to plane and just maybe an extra 6 mins at starbucks concealed enjoying a muffin and coffee before the flight. i know i joke with the "disguise" kit hat but it does buy me minutes. i have nothing against taking photos. its just one photo leads to another photo and then 4 photos and then there goes 10 mins and then "final call for USair flight passenger thompson!!!!!"
its confusion all around. i have yet to name drop or brag. i just sat there on my most dipset. me and this one cop.
then two.
then 5.
and they all doing that bullshit ass "small talk" shit that i fucking hate. its like come on now. you aint all that interested in all my life and i dont feel like tomming it up today.
dave chapelle: oh yeah...with police you gotta do your best job interview voice. be as non threatening as possible.
nice bag you got there. men carry louis bags?
so why are you carrying 100,000 in china money?
how many pairs of pants do you have on?
we are going to ask you once, please tell the truth: are you carrying any kind of drugs on your person?
so a grammy huh?
can you sing on of the songs you sing?"
(picks up the many magazines i have and picks XXL and hip hop weekly) "where are you in this magazine? huh? you said you were in a rap group. huh? how can a rapper not be in a rap magazine? is your rap different than regular rap? (pulls the rolling stone and spin out) are you in here then? im confused. you are in a rap group that play for 7000 students last night. you been out for 15 years. you say you have 3 grammies. you travel coach with all this money on your person. and you can't produce your face in none of these books you have?"
"remove your pants please"
this was singlehandedly the most embarrassing moment of my career. i've gone through worse with the cops in my career (summer of 1995 in italy the fbi version of italy busted in on a tip they got from someone that reported suspicious activity on the block...which in truth means that we were using our day off to wash clothes. and our crime was that...well...we were black?. that same year in austria the cops harassed hub after he came to the defense of our pre kamal keyboard player nikki yeoh. i dont think they took too kindly to the site of her in "our" company and they did their best to make their displeasure known. and of course the infamous roach found in the ashtray of our band landcruiser which led those cats in the 48 hour hell ordeal for everyone but me and hub.
best believe today i got mine.
it was just so fucking degrading man. that is all i can describe it as. i'm sitting there like how am i gonna convince these guys that this dude with 30 dollar old navy jeans (white boy shit) and a 3000 dollar louis bag (nigga shit) and 5 figures in cash (white boy shit) and a coach seat (nigga shit) and a story of stadiums sold out across the world (nigga shit) but can't name a hit song of his (white boy shit) (and what the hell is you doing in buffalo of all places (white boy question) followed by my "shrug" (nigga response). add on top of that my cd collection: the sly and the family stone box set and ladies of the canyon (joni mitchell) what kind of mofo is this? and 6 books all of connundrums and riddles?
something aint right here.
i took another half hour before the dea came. and questioned me all over again.
"now mr thompson says he is a recording artist with grammies and once sold out radio city music hall...but doesn't have a private plane yet carries enough cash to own one."
assholes.
i barely made the fight. i was just in time for the asshole flight attendant to announce "and a round of applause for the young man who decided to grace us with his presence ladies and gentleman!!!"
i can't describe the feeling here. its like i know mofos have gone through way worse with the police. and this aint even no thing im blogging to get you guys to bandwagon the hate machine on cops. but i am angry right now. im angry cause im letting this effect my self worth and my esteem. im beating myself up cause i really shoulda insisted that i get paid direct to my bank account instead of cash in hand. im angry cause i let these pigs echo their snide remarks to me ("you mean to tell me you can carry all this cash and sit in coach?" "sing one of your songs!" "where did you get that bag?" "how come you are not in this magazine?" all of that shit is just reading "loser". and i KNOW im not a loser. but the echoing of it just rings and rings and rings. again i can't describe it. im walking round all paranoid and shit. feeling like some drug cartel who escaped from the man. fuck them two times.
Post Script: Here is a picture of Sweet Talk and ?uest taken at one of his "lucrative" Dj gigs, which he basically did as a favor to me and the mag.... he also left Al Green and Pharrell in the studio to do it... CLASS Act
i aint too angry to take them two kudos though.
March 30, 2007
Deerhoof Talks about Radiohead, Roots, and The Flaming Lips
In keeping with theme of unfiltered Q&A's , here is the unedited transcript from a fun phoner I did with top five favorite drummer, Greg Saunier of Deerhoof. This was originally done for EMUSIC's amazing Q&A section (here is the LINK You'll LOVE the site DEERHOOF EMUSIC INTERVIEW)
If you are not an Emusic devotee use this link to sign up for 25 free tracks!!! (Sweet Talk's eMusic Link )
Here is what was left out:
Deerhoof: Friend Opportunity
The Deerhoof album you always wanted/feared lands face down into your soup. You sniff and paw at it to make sure it’s real, when it suddenly screams “MANGIA!”
This is how it works. You don’t listen to a Deerhoof record you stuff yourself, unbuckle the belt three notches and digest it. Luckily Friend Opportunity leaves you so sated it should come wrapped with a minty toothpick. By continuing their sonic strafing of joyless dystopias, Deerhoof manages to evade the shoe gazing irony of postmodern gluttony. Bouncing musically from delicate nuggets of polyphonic euphoria to Zappa style sucker punches to the solar plexus, the band has birthed its defining album. It should not come as a surprise that by returning to a trio, Matsuzaki, Saunier, and Dieterich are able to serve up such bold and satisfying fare. Just when you think you can’t handle anymore, go for seconds or at least ask for the recipe from drummer Greg Saunier:
eMusic: What goes into making a delicious Deerhoof record? Do you write on the road, do you woodshed, do you start with music or lyrics?
GS: Well we have three songwriters, so that’s the first thing that tends to remove any formula for how a song gets written, and between the three of us, a song could be written in any sort of way. Such as, the whole song comes to you, music and lyrics, in a flash walking down the street; to you had a vague dream with a couple of melody ideas and you write them down and compile them later; to one person writes the music on guitar and another writes the music and melody which becomes a collaboration. For example, this one song on Friend Opportunity, “Matchbook Seeks Maniac” I just figured out I have been working on for fourteen years!
eMusic: It’s funny because I thought it was so “Deerhoof” to go from the accessibility of “Matchbook Seeks Maniac” to the dark corners of the end song “Look Away” and have them seem so compatible. To make the mega leap between those two would be the true essence of a Deerhoof fan, right? Is there a story behind that sequence?
GS: We do end up having themes and stories on our albums for people who care to look for that sort of thing. I mean I am not going to say that someone who doesn’t see a story or doesn’t see a concept in our CD is somehow wrong. You know, I’m happy for people to use our music in any way they wish. But for people who like looking for hidden themes or lurking stories that keep coming back from song to song, yeah; we always try to have that in there. Strangely and usually, it doesn’t really come together until the very end of the process. We are 80% done with an album and feeling like, you know what these songs do not go together at all! They’re all totally different styles; some of the lyrics aren’t written yet; we don’t have a title yet; we don’t have the artwork yet; we don’t know what we are doing. And, this has happened EVERY single time since 1995. We are pretty much ready to just cancel the whole thing, start over from scratch and just say forget it when something will happen; somebody will say something. We’ll be on tour and every single car ride for hours and hours is taken up with nothing more than, “Hmmm how about this album title or this tile”? Just trying to think how in the world are we going to tie this all together? In the case of Friend Opportunity, Satomi was talking about somebody we were vaguely acquainted with who recently moved to San Francisco with his Japanese wife. Satomi was thinking, “Wow, maybe this could be a friend opportunity”. In other words, this was an opportunity for her to meet somebody and make a new friend in San Francisco or an opportunity for them to have a friend since they just moved. When she said ‘friend opportunity’, I thought that was a funny way of putting it and immediately that was it. That is what this album is about; it just nailed the feeling. I said “Stop! Wait! Don’t say anything for a second. What about that as the title?” Then we realized all the music we had done so far seemed to fit with that idea really well. Then with the lyrics that remained to be nailed down, suddenly it was clear this concept was what we needed to focus on in order to be finished and make sense. All the songs have something to do with that opportunity of reaching out to people when you are alone. I think of the first song, “The Perfect Me”, as a very lonely song, although it’s energetic.
eMusic: I saw it as a special invitation to new listeners.
GS: Yes, an invitation
eMusic: Yes it’s dark, but it seems like an invitation to come into this world. John’s guitar work is extremely engaging and there seems to be this golden thread you paint up and spotlight.
GS: Well “Look Away” was the first music written for the album. John had actually written almost all of that music for a silent movie soundtrack we basically created at the beginning of 2006 and which we performed at the San Francisco International Film Festival in March. It’s an hour long movie but we condensed the music down to this approximately twelve minute song which didn’t have any lyrics. Yet, once we had the album title and had the idea of what we wanted the album to be, I started thinking of that song as about this person that had failed to create relationships with other people and who was sort of lost in their own deluded lonely fantasy world. But “Matchbook Seeks Maniac” is concerned with maybe the last throes of somebody pronouncing something to the world. It has to do with someone obsessed with their own power, and maybe having power makes them more insane. In fact their being crazy gets them more power. If you look at real life examples from the world of politics there seems to be this weird, cyclical relationship between power and insanity. They just seem to feed off each other. Yet, any glory that might have been in this over endowed person’s fantasy fades away and the person ends up lonely, stuck in their room, living out the same fantasy over and over again. I see it as kind of a depressing end. (laughs)
eMusic: You opened for The Roots, Radiohead, Flaming Lips and Wilco before this album. By musical osmosis did any of their sonic qualities bleed into your writing or playing?
GS: To call it osmosis would make it sound a little too accidental. Even before we played with any of those bands we were huge fans.
eMusic: I remember receiving a call from ?uestlove asking me to put you in touch with the Roots regarding opening for them and thinking that seemed like an odd pairing. However, in a way it makes perfect sense.
GS: You might not even be aware of how much of a thrill or full circle feeling was happening there for us. Satomi and I first saw the Roots in 1996 in San Francisco and basically we were totally devastated, just blown away. So for Deerhoof opening for the Roots didn’t seem weird at all. I still have this vision in my mind of hearing and seeing him play and the way he tuned his drums and attacked them and how simple his kit was and using that as some kind of standard or benchmark. It’s the same with The Flaming Lips; it’s the same with Radiohead, and it’s the same with Wilco. When we hear their music it’s not necessarily that we want to imitate any of those bands, but when we recorded Friend Opportunity we were trying to create a response to their music. As if the Roots concert was the question and now we have to try and come up with an answer, a response to their call. The same is very much true with Radiohead. We were actually mixing Friend Opportunity while we were on tour opening for Radiohead, so literally we would play a show in a soccer stadium in front of twenty thousand people somewhere. Then go out in the audience, stand there and watch the greatest concert you’d ever seen in your life. You know shedding tears with everyone around you, total strangers, with everyone’s jaws on the floor saying “I can’t believe a concert can be this good” and then going straight back to our room, sitting down at the computer and saying, “okay, let’s do our album now” while just feeling like, god this pales so miserably in comparison. I mean all these bands are just so ambitious. They are all popular but they’re also extremely artistic. I mean the Flaming Lips’ At War with the Mystics was a deliberate model we chose for this album. We were constantly comparing the mixes we were doing to say, “Free Radicals” and wondering why doesn’t ours sound as good? We were amazed just how close up everything sounded and how everything just had so much punch, while sounding funny and surprising. So with any of these bands if you are doing a response to their call you can imagine the thrill of then realizing they not only heard our response and must have heard something in it to reach out and ask if we wanted to play together. It is mind blowing. Once you’ve put these people up on pedestals, you know, here’s my hero ?uestlove, here’s my hero Wayne Coyne, or here’s my hero Thom Yorke and then to meet them and find them to be real human beings who don’t disappoint you in the slightest, it’s just mind blowing Emusic: How did returning to a trio effect the album musically? Was it a natural evolution? GS: Well it didn’t change the evolution of the band because I don’t think Deerhoof has ever had anything firm enough from which to evolve. Evolution also implies getting better or going higher up the chain and rather I feel we always just done something different each time like starting from scratch. In a way it’s like we started over the band every time we started an album. Even when we haven’t had line-up changes, every time we sit down and play something new it’s like we are just starting from zero. It’s not as though we necessarily try to do that, it’s just that we can’t think of anything else. When somebody thinks of a new song we don’t have any control over what that song is going to be beforehand. I can’t plan out and say, “okay, I’m going to write a ‘rage-rock’ song now. I mean it’s just as hard to predict what you are going to write as it impossible to predict what you are going to dream about tonight.
Emusic: Isn’t that just a matter of being open to the muse? If you are really and truly receptive to the powers that be when looking inspiration, when the inspiration tells you to play a Motorhead riff than if you’re truly open you should play a Motorhead riff even if it doesn’t fit in with your scene…
GS: or target demographic
eMusic: Then that’s not really art; you are simply fabricating instead of being a vessel right?.
GS: Yet, I don’t want to put it down and make that sound awful, because my point is I actually admire and envy the talent of people who are able to do that, but we just aren’t those people. We don’t know how to do anything according to a system, formula, or plan, so even when we did three different albums with four people in the band there still is total upheaval every time we sit down to record something because we find ourselves saying, “How in the world are we supposed to play this! We’ve never played anything like this before. I don’t know the first thing about trying to play a song like this.” But, we teach each other how to do it as if total beginners with almost every song.
eMusic: After thirteen years as a band is being an independent curator of your own career a boon or a bane? Do you ever wish Clive Davis would call?
GS: Hmm that a good but tough question. For us it’s worked out amazingly well. I really don’t wish to be on any other label, although I think there may be times our label wishes we were on a different label. (laughs) In a way I can’t answer the question because we have never been in any other situation, but in a way I feel like with the digital distribution now available to bands like us, we’re really on the Itunes label, the eMusic label, or even just leaking stuff you are on the Internet somewhere, it’s all your label and I think that has been amazing for us. Every time we travel to a new city where we have never played or some small town where there is no uber hip record store, people still come to the show and say they found us online somewhere. In other words we are totally into ANY format that music can take be it an MP3, an LP, or a tape, and any use that our music can be put to is okay by us.
March 19, 2007
Excuse Me Mr. Sweet, but Jeff Tweedy of Wilco is on the phone...
It’s always a little unnerving when a hush falls over a conference room and all sets of eyes fall of you. With a nervous throat clearing, mock cough, I ask the other people if I could have the room to take the call. Thankfully everyone is okay with the interruption. In the middle of a very in depth and intense business meeting, it’s not every day one is paged from the receptionist in some one else’s office in someone else’s city with a call from the ring leader of Wilco.
Luckily I had forewarned the others at the meeting of my pending deadline and the chance that such a call might arrive. Yet, it still caught everyone a bit off guard, especially me. Working on four hours sleep (new born son) and still shaking from our “landing” at JFK, my thought process is a bit, shall we say, off.
While I’ve withheld almost all the meatier and more interesting chunks of this quick phone interview for the upcoming MAY issue of PASTE, I thought I would put all the excess fat that fell on the cutting room floor up here for display, comment and ridicule. While the interviewee never has a chance to edit his words, interviewers have the magic of hindsight and spell check. Therefore in a show of fair play, and with the implicit understanding being no matter what it tastes like you’ll still eat the whole story in print next month, here’s what was left on the plate, corn dogs and all. Bon Appetite.
ST: Hey Jeff, thanks for the call. I think the new album (Sky Blue Sky ) is fantastic, an excellent, how do I put this… return to form, if that makes any sense. (ummm no, it doesn’t dumbass) Not saying the last two albums weren’t great, they’re some of my favorites (full force backpedaling, but gravity is too strong) I was just hanging with your old buddy Jay Farrar (what am I doing?!?) I’m one of those guys (???!!!) I’m an Uncle Tupelo, A.M. fan so you can probably imagine why this new album is completely in my wheelhouse? (Somebody pull the trigger; I’m in free fall)
JT: Um, I guess so.
ST: What I mean is lyrically (wake up, you are on the phone with Jeff Tweedy not some patient bartender) some of the best lyrics I’ve heard in a decade (true). Where one might call Summer Teeth and amazingly crafted and cunning pop album, I hear this album as more of its pastoral cousin. Can you find Sky Blue Sky in between any of your past albums or is it a new outgrowth? (Please save me Jeff until common sense kicks in)
JT: It’s a first record for me in all kinds of ways in terms of where I am in my life; I’m much healthier than I have ever been, so in a lot of ways this feels like a beginning for me. If I had to compare it to anything, just in the way this record goes in between a couple of different vibes, to me, it feels a little closer to Being There in that there seem to be some really broad stroke influences peering out here and there as part of the landscape. I don’t think we tried to do that intentionally but it was more of us finding our common ground and that’s what Being There was all about.
ST: I was listening on the way down to NYC this morning and I wrote a little note on my hand while looking down from 30,000 feet and it said this album is a shuttle between ‘the beautiful melancholia of suburbia and metro angst.’ Lyrically that’s the way I was feeling. Listening to “Hate It Here”, while I know there is some love in there, at the same time the domesticity that permeates it…
JT: I just laugh when I hear that song. I think it’s funny. My wife calls it one of my “liar songs”. ‘You don’t know how to work the washer dryer, what are you talking about?’
ST: Exactly, having a three year old and a 14 day old baby, my home life is exponentially crazier. Just trying to start the dishwasher while trying to burp a baby…
JT: You have a fourteen day old baby?
ST: Yeah
JT: Wow, I can hear it in your voice actually. (Laughs) You haven’t been getting much sleep lately, have you? (Thanks for noticing; now you know why I sound like Keith Olbermann on an Ambian jag)
ST: No.
JT: Kinda like being on and off crack or something.
ST: Yep, and in the same way it’s in that natural sleep deprivation where some of the most beautiful moments happen when your guard is completely shot.
JT: Right.
ST: That’s why it was a good time for me to listen to the record, because I think I was ingesting it with such a stripped down feel; it was touching me off emotionally. I was just riding this roller coaster listening to it three times in a row during my whole little travel session again this morning. So congratulations, you made me close to tears while at the same time giggling.
JT: Well that’s good. I’m very happy to hear that. I think it is an emotional record.
ST: Last time I saw you guys play it was at Bonnaroo and you had been sober….
JT: Not that long.
ST: You could tell your new found energy and life you put into that show translated to 88,000 people, which I guess you could say is tough to do. Not that you had to win them over but you did. Listening to the new record I’m really excited to here “Side with the Seeds” live; I think it’s going to translate extremely well.
JT: We played it twice at the last two shows we did before we took a break in Chicago at the Auditorium Theater.
ST: But that’s cheating, that’s home town turf.
JT: Yeah but in some ways it’s more difficult.
ST: More jaded?
JT: Yeah, they’re harder to impress sometimes. But, I think almost everything on the record other than “Please Be Patient with Me” and some of the quieter songs are going to work well.
ST: I think “Shake it Off” with it’s staccato gun shot style and “body full of holes…” BANG, BANG will work. I hope the guy in the way back can handle it.
JT: Oh man, trust me that one’s going to be monstrous live. (Laughs) I can’t wait.
ST: You’re returning to Bonnaroo and I know it’s hard to encapsulate an experience like Bonnaroo in a thirty second sound bite, but how did that scene… I don’t know if you had a chance to golf cart around, see any other bands, or where you stuck backstage? What was it like for you last time?
JT: I think I got really REALLY hot that day. It was super hot. But I got to meet Dylan. (Breaks into a hysterical Dylan story, but you are going to have to wait and read about that one in the MAY issue, but it’s a classic. Suffice it to say there are some funny references to various historical figures including Walt Whitman, Jesus, and Chris Farley.)
ST: Speaking of literary giants, I am a huge Steinbeck guy. I don’t know if you read him at all.
JT: Yeah, of course!
ST: Stylistically your lyrics somehow jump between Burroughs and Steinbeck sometimes. Where at one point there’s a Naked Lunch type feeling and at the same time there’s a Grapes of Wrath vibe…most people might think that’s a completely wide spectrum but at the same time I think there is a beauty in Terra Firma and the staining of the actual earth…. not wanting it go to your head that I think you’re somewhere between Burroughs and Steinbeck…
JT: That’s okay; I’m already calling a carpenter to widen my house for my ego. Seriously, that’s very sweet of you but I understand what you’re saying, not about me, but those two “things’. As one who has worked really hard in life to try and be expansive and inclusive at the same time, I don’t see that much of a difference between those two guys in spite of all the obvious stylistic differences. I am really comforted by the idea… just picturing two guys putting pen to paper you know? And the same feeling goes for music. I don’t know why you can’t be both complex and simple. I don’t know why people feel they have to make a choice.
ST: I don’t think they are mutually exclusive, but I think that’s a testament to a maturity and growth. Because, to make it seem lyrically effortless but at the same time… when you listen to Sky Blue Sky three times in a row, you can listen to it the first time and say, ‘that was a nice simple song with sunbursts and 70’s sounds,’ which I think you are going to get a lot of …
JT: Yep, you’re right.
ST: But at the same time it’s like ‘yeah I hear the BJ Thomas/ Karen Carpenter vibe but the baklava levels of meaning as you peel back the philo dough are pretty remarkable; it just has so much depth. Which is good because it let’s anyone bring their own baggage to the table or just enjoy it on a very surface level and that’s a testament to the growth of Wilco.
JT: I hope so, because that’s what we set out to do, just sit down and play together and like I said that’s always been good enough… (The full answer is very nice, and you’ll enjoy it on a nice spring day in May while smelling flowers or watching a ball game) …. In the past I’ve made it not good enough just because I took other things from it and in order to finish it, I’ve hung some sort of Baroque structure on it or something like to that effect.
ST: Anything you’re looking forward to seeing at Bonnaroo?
JT: Festivals are always kind of weird but hopefully we’ll get to catch some other stuff and that’s always fun. It’s always an easier day than a normal show because you don’t play as long…
ST: There’s not any time for sound check.
JT: No, you don’t soundcheck; you just walk around all day and eat corn dogs.
ST: This year I’ll be your tour guide and take you to all the best food stands.
JT: Absolutely. Until then take care of that new baby.
ST: Thanks Jeff
JT: Good luck and take care
February 01, 2007
January 22, 2007
Loney, Dear
Loney, Dear is an exquisite addiction. I have been using it as headphone kindling since New Year's Eve. While some may coin Emil Svanangen's baklava layered master work as a cold fusion of Belle & Sebastian and Kelley Stoltz served with Swedish meatball, this is selling his joyous confessional short. Pile on the merits; they are all deserved.
Here is what I scribbled on the back of my drink coaster, after accidentally falling into a vat of dirty martinis on a Tuesday night: "I Am John" is basement pop perfection. Somewhere far, far away, Brain Wilson's muse and Barry Gibb's Voice coach are jealous. If I had this track in my eight-track quiver during my first co-ed slumber party I would have been much luckier. If only sucking helium could make me sound that good. The first great close eyes, shake head and smile song of 2007. I wonder if the waitress will notice if I pilfer an extra clip of olives.
Album comes out Feb.6 but check out "I Am John", the best song performed at CMJ this year by far: "I AM JOHN"
Above photo by the talented Peter Beste
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