Today's interview features two stars of the indie and crossover charts. They're part of a growing contingent of music personalities who are biting the bullet and facing the facts of the American music industry, breaking through on the radio, charts and even licensing music to chain stores for use in advertisements, causing much consternation among their indie fans. We have agreed to identify them only by their initials, so that they might speak freely.
T.P.O.: Guys, pleasure to have you. So there's this debate about whether or not each of your bands have sold out for success, obviously. Something about your new records, or career path, or tone, or something, really seems to have shifted, and some people are unhappy. What is so different now? What is it in your old...
IB: I know I'm still not going to fucking talk to any dickhead reporters about any fucking old records. Talk to me about the shit I do now, the shit that made me a multimillionaire.
KB: My older records are a panoply of ecclesiastical carnivals. They were made by a young man who was intent on walling up his Oresteian frenulum in a rocky Alcatraz, you know? I don't want to dwell on times when I worried every day if I was insane. Forgive me, Buenos Aires, but I don't have your Agamemnon.
T.P.O.: It's fine. I'll move on, no problem. So, K----, you seem to be newly converted to, shall I say, a frontier mentality with regard to not only the music business but life itself, society itself. Is that right?
KB: Yeah, I think there are two types of people in this world, those who decide to kill, and those who decide to be killed, by deciding to alienate themselves from the system. There are those who handle all the cocks and get them stuck up their asses are the ones who fail to figure out the workings of it. The fascists who spend their time hating capitalism are the ones who get killed out in the wild. I just got sick of being fucked by the giant dicks and kept isolated in the wilderness in hiding from menacing cocks.
IB: I mean, I grew up on the West Coast but I just want to make sure I say I don't really agree that it's necessary to handle dudes' dicks, necessarily, in the first place. So I can't, like, say I agree with K---- on all of that, but yeah. You are either the predator or the prey. You figure it out and do it or you lose.
KB: Well, it's just the image, but I think that it's, if you want to try to constrain your male sensuality, well, I don't know if you've ever read The Fountainhead...
T.P.O.: Well let me ask, I----, your point all along has been that you can't argue with success. What has been different for you since you became a breakout success?
IB: Now, if I wanted to, I could fuck any girl on any college campus in the U.S.? I'm kidding, of course. I love where I'm at right now. You know what they say. Go ahead and switch the style up. I used to think "fuck the world, fuck these people." Now it's more "fuck everybody who doubted me." I am in a great place, and my music takes people to a good place.
KB: I made a Asklepius Ascending the Venusian Bluff of myself and came out with these records that some people loved so much. But I was always upset that I didn't have any savings. I realized how much I envied those who had a lot of money in the bank and didn't have to worry about that. The truth is, the only truly happy people are the ones with all kinds of extraneous money to spend on whatever they want. I decided no longer to try to pull the ultimate balancing act. I was tired of trying to suck the dicks and then cut them off, so to speak. I decided to allow myself to become commercialized, and not to remain confused and isolated on the paranoid perimeter... Pericles...
T.P.O.: It's like there is a new you, a totally different shift in attitude. Both of you seem to be really getting away from the reputations you'd acquired in your early careers.
KB: And that's because it is an inevitable thing. Everybody gets jealous of a life of wealth and economic success. People thought I was insane, like, I was diagnosed with psychological problems. I thought my life was over. I wasn't getting a lot of what I wanted. The desire for wealth, like, to pass along to your children, to buy nice things for yourself and others, it's a universal human trait, and you can't feel bad about it. Money is and always will be the most important thing. End of story. And rich guys don't have, like, women thinking or saying that they are psychotic and weird. Or any of that.
IB: Yeah, people used to tell me I sounded lonely. I had bad posture and shit. Now, it's like, if you just saw all these beautiful girls trying to grab on me at every show. And of course I am with someone, so it's all just so absurd. Sometimes it is hard to even fucking get away from people who want to hang out with me. I play rugby with one of the local leagues, incognito, like, I just run around try to truck people, like I'm the man, not some kind of scrub. I carry myself straight and wear a watch. I walk into a bar like I own the place and then I only have one drink.
T.P.O.: And both you guys have really been helped by cutting down on the partying and taking antidepressants, am I right?
KB: Yeah, all the time, it's the only way for me to keep from being bitter about having to tone myself down and think about simple things, such as success. Surprisingly... see, I find myself doing things like alliterations, in my head, it's like my mind is wandering away. Probably to start thinking of what someone else wants from me, what someone would prefer that I do. But I can't let it. I need my mind to be focused on me, getting me what I want, doing what I have to do. That is what you call maturity.
IB: Stop asking me about drinking. I'm past that. Yeah, I used to agonize over metaphors. Until they were just so. Like I really worried about making sense to all the people who listened to my music, getting across to them. You know what? Now that I take some medications to calm me down, I don't have to think so hard, I can relax and let it come to me. If I happen to thinking of a ship I'm going to write about something nautical, or water. Fuck what people want to hear me say. Let's say I want to talk about the ocean, or crabs and scallops. People will respond to it, because we make great rock music that sounds good to them, and they like hearing it on the radio. Everything should be this easy.
T.P.O.: So I assume you guys had your idols in the rock world. Now you guys are, to some degree, rock stars yourselves. Do you still have idols?
KB: Back in the day I would have said something about, like, David Bowie. But David Bowie lives in a tax shelter. The social order is capitalism, and it is beautiful, and it's important that we show respect for it. Artists and fans alike. You as an artist have to be an adult, and so do your fans. So I identify myself now with all artists who are fiscally responsible, really, not just Bowie. And the great artists who believe in American capitalism more than in pleasing some unappreciative hypercritical losers. Gene Simmons is a great guy.
IB: My answer was always The Pixies, or The Smiths. And it just so happens that now I have J---- M--- in my band, and K-- D--- texted me one time and said if I ever wanted to get together she was down, I don't know if she meant to fuck or to make a record or what. So I don't have idols anymore so much as people I admire as distinguished peers. My ship sails fast. There are no holes. In the hull! And that's ALL! RIGHT! BY! ME! You see what I mean. And think about that with two drummers.
TPO: So, this question is for both you guys, if there was one thing you could say to the fans who have been complaining that your old records were better, you used to have more to say, and so on.
KB: History is fleeting buffet of Pompeiian parquetry. Some people try to tell me that my lyrics suck now that I have decided to be as honest as I want. They can tell me that I've become blunt and tiresome since I decided I had to grow up and face the facts. They'll never know how awful it is when people think you are bizarre. I used to be so hard to get along with, when I was sucking the twin freakish cocks of alienation and confusion and trying to stab the ones that would have made me happy, the time-honored kind of dicks our parents used to suck. And to anyone who says I have blown my load, just wait until you see what I'm cooking up for my next release.
IB: I'm different now. I don't try to have grudges and problems with people anymore. My music isn't about condemning shit. Life is much better when you don't think about things bothering you. If you're always checking for leaks, you will have nightmares about taking on water, and wake up with an inch of water in the lifeboats.
T.P.O: Thanks again, guys, for your time. It's been great.
1 comment:
EXCELLENT
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