Write faster

"when you say X, in your most recent single, did you mean Y? because in 1992, on your debut EP, you said Z. and that's not cool."

One thing about music journalism:

it’s interesting and easy as long as you can have good conversation with your subject: be it Bono or Cher's boyfriend. (nobody)

I am here in Buenos Aires in an ostensible way. Ostensibly, that is to say, because I am supposta' be a writer for a magazine. Ultimately, I would hope, because I want to live in New York, and write pretty things.

Last Friday I started emailing the organizers of this big electro rave - a one day huzzah with artists who own names that are important. One of the bands sounded familiar, Fischerspooner, so I focussed my emailing efforts on them. I sent out about three messages, all pleading with whomever it was to help me get in the festival, for free, for an interview.

With only limited response - a few passive-aggressive reply-alls, that still left me wondering if I had made it to The List - the next day "I set out" with my two best pals, Jose and Pedro. We got to the big club, called Costa Salguero, on the waters of the rio plata. A huge complex, big enough to be a sports stadium it seemed, protected by about 54 armed guards wearing beige and neon vests. (‘beige and neon’ - see earlier motifs). Big guns, brown dudes, big smiles, smokes.

The night had started poorly: my camerawoman had to cancel last minute, so it would be impossible to shoot video of the event. Left a little dismayed I decide it’s better to go and just get some audio or words down than nothing at all. And things only got worse.

At the main entrance, they don't have my name on the list and say we should mosey to the backstage entrance and talk with the guards there. Here similar problems arise. They write my name down, and the name of my publication, and speak personally with the organizer - a Mr. Garrat - who was said to have talked with the band, and the band said that I didn't exist, or that they wouldn't talk to me, so essentially we were out of luck.

Anyway, I figure I am not giving up so easy. So I re-mosey back to the main entrance, and say to the two young door-women: "hey so I just spoke Garrat, and he said it's cool. Entiendes me?.. no? yo udon’t understand.. Todo esta bien. THIS IS MY JOB....I mean, estoy fucked if I don't get this entrevista , hoy noche! ENTIENDEME?"

This didn't work, not right away. They wanted my name again. At this point I start getting very worried. The security guards had all taken a big interest in me, with their shiny greasy guns secure in their belts: "You! Where you from. De donde sos? What's your name?" Everyone wanted to help, but I didn't want the help. No no no. (I'm going to get arrested). Deep breaths. Ask Jose for a smoke so I look music-journalistic, and proceed: "listen, let me talk to your manager" I say to the young woman behind the barred counter, exhaling in a music-journalist kind of way (I write for Rolling Stone, bichas, is my attitude). She writes my name down and sends out a text message.

"You wait here. The promoter is coming."

Jesus. This might be working. I barely know what the hell I am doing here. I don't even want this to ... scary because I should know more. I should know more about this band if they are gonna let me talk to them. I should know what their first and second albums are called. I should know their names! (I’m not even sure if I know their names and faces. Crissakes. Maybe I’ll be fine. )

A tall, dirty-blonde, blue-eyed Florencia, wearing a tight leather jacket and tight blue jeans approaches, smoking and talking on her cellphone. She is a promoter. "Hi. You are allowed in, but we have to wait till the band is done to see if they'll talk to you. How many tickets do you need?"

Jeezus, heart stiff, we’re going in. "Well just one for me and my camera man, but if you're nice, I need three." I point to Pedro, the third.

"I don't need to be nice," she says, putting away her phone. She pulls out a stack of tickets and rips out three.

Inside, Flor and I determine a place to meet after the band finishes their set. I give her my number to text me for a meet up. This place is huge, packed and busy.

This place huge, gigantic, electric, noisy, packed, and it's just 11 pm. Bam. Bam. Later thousands more will pack it more, more, thousands of hipster-sardines on ecstacy, cocaine and champagne, shades and Barbie legs. So much dancing, so much fun.

This place is electric and astounding. Huge and crazy. I have never seen anything like it. We have just been granted free access to what I’m sure is our first rave. Bump bump. We dance, it's amazing.

I'm in the washroom washing the sweat off my face when I get the call. It's Florencia. My heart, my slowing pulse, I’m nervous! I can't do this. I turn off the ringer, ignore the call, and plan on avoiding her the rest of the night: I can't do this! She calls back instantly, clik, once more. I look at myself in the mirror, this is one of those football movie moments, the pump up scene. "You can do this." (Can you really do this?) Ra, ra, ra, ra , ra. She texts me: "they will see you, come now to the stage!".. Something comes over me, almost like confidence. OK. Fuck it. “I'm doing this,” to myself. “I'm coming, see you at the stage," I text to Flor.

That's that. I pour water on my hands, and brush it through my hair, and slick it back. One final look at self, and out.

Plan! Plan, I need a plan. No idea, what the fuck I'm about to talk about. I have no camera man, and I have no microphone or tape recorder. I am the least prepared I have ever been in this situation. I decide to go with an idea that came to me a bit earlier: focus on one thing, a theme.

A theme! I pick "change". We will talk about change. Simple. (Change sounds so perfect when you think of it. So musical, so astoundingly simple and interesting. Like symphonies of chaos and logic, like giant trumpets and cymbals crashing, these are the bouncing feelings of enormous joy that shatter through me when I hear the words exceed my lips: Change change change change. The thought is an orgasm. Splash, listo.)

I'm let backstage and I come to a bright white room. Here a young woman whose name I should know offers me champagne, I refuse and ask for water. I light a cigarette: "Casey is coming soon." Good tip, I write CASEY in capital letters down on my notepad. "Good show tonight really great; you were up on stage weren't you?" She smirks, mutherfucker, "Yeah, I am THE Dj!." She's Lauren, I think, FLEX.

Anyway, it was rocky at first but we talked about Toronto a lot and she's gonna be there this week. She had nice tattoos, long curly brown hair, and was super nice. I'm conscious of self, of me, placing camera on table, smoking twice more, choosing words, writing down extra questions, all plans, my mind in two spots. Trying to be friendly, liked, but trying to be professional;


We wait for too long and eventually she figures we just go to the stage and get Casey. We go and I wait around with my arms crossed for a minute until he comes. We shake hands and I am so gracious for him to speak to me(I mean this), I smile, pat him on the back, and we go back to this square white dressing room behind the stage.

We sit we talk. That's how I get here, to this point, the interview. It went well.








Spin Earth Television: First of all, thank you very much for talking to me. Since Spin Earth is a more TV-based website, and I can’t have a camera, I’m going to make this short and sweet. I’m going to ask you all about one thing: Change.

C Spppppppp: Sounds great, let’s do it.

SETV: Alright. Here we go. At first I thought the new album’s name was Entertainment, and then, at least in the Internet world, people started saying it changed to Between Worlds. What’s the deal?

CS: Between Worlds! No! The album title didn’t change, somebody didn’t read the press release. The album title is Entertainment and then we named the performance (the tour), “Between Worlds”.

SETV: Oh, so it’s still Entertainment…

CS: Yeah yeah, yeah. Someone didn’t read the press release talking about the show, and the name of the tour is “Between Worlds.” So there was no change! But I don’t mind, it’s kinda nice, I like that there can be more than one title.

SETV: Ok, well let’s talk about the title you did pick, Entertainment. In a few words, your reasoning for the choice . . . because I could tell you what I think…

CS: Well you know I’m dying to know what you think!

SETV: You know, it doesn’t really matter though, everyone wants to know what you …

CS: I just like how simple it is.

SETV: Well… I guess I thought way too deeply into it then. I thought, you know, we were selling “entertainment,” putting a title on it, commodifying it.

CS: Well there is that, there’s that too. That’s what’s nice about it, is that it’s simple . . . there was a lot of deliberation because we were worried about the Gang of Four title, but there wasn’t an exclamation point, so it was OK.

SETV: And punctuation is so important nowadays, some bands are entirely punctuation…

CS: Exactly, punctuation is so important! It just seemed to be a nice sort of simple clear title and it feels like it’s in quotation marks. Which I think is what your getting at.

SETV: Yeah, exactly. It’s pointing at the fact that you are buying entertainment.

CS: Exactly. You know, like #1, the record, I can’t even remember if we had a name for it. It was kind of an accident. I mean we were calling it “number one,” we were gonna call our records, “number one, number two, number three.” There was no title. It was like a series. But then there was sort of a typo somewhere and someone made it look like, NUMBER ONE! [here he points his finger in the air and makes his voice real authoritative] and it was kind of funny, like “OK that’s a funny pun because we are making this record.” And then it would be funny because you’d go into the music store and it would be up on the board and they would have “#1” next to it. So it would be kind of confusing because we’d be like number 15 but it would say number one, so people were like “well which is it?”. And then [Dj] Hell put a sticker on it that said “Best Album Ever” which we never had anything to do with… I never saw it until it came out, and then everybody thought it was called Best Album Ever. Which was somewhat embarrassing…

SETV: So how do you feel about not having hardly any control, it seems, over what your albums end up being called?

CS: You don’t worry about it. You go with the flow.

SETV: But it’s your baby!

CS: Yeah, but. It’s kind of nice, you put something out there and it’s interesting to see what sticks. Different things … stick! And so it’s less about you and more about how the world responds.

SETV: Ok, there’s my segue to the number two question about change…

CS: Number two! Change!

SETV: Exactly. What has changed about how you’ve been received in the last ten years?

CS: Oh my God! I don’t know. I think we’ve been loved, and then hated, and now: we are loved and hated. So, I like that. I think if you are just loved it’s boring, and so I’d rather kinda be divisive.

SETV: Divisive…

CS: Yeah, no. You don’t want to be in the middle. It’s a little bit what #1 is about.

SETV: Music is divisive!

CS: Well I mean I think if something is interesting then it causes people to make a choice or have a reaction. So I’d much rather people have strong reaction one way or the other. So when someone really hates us, it doesn’t hurt my feelings.

SETV: Can I ask you a question about that?

CS: Yeah.

SETV: Because I hear that a lot. People say: “I’d rather my music be hated than forgotten.” People seem to think there’s some benefit to riling up people. But why should we care what kind of impact it has on someone’s emotions? Is there a stage after that emotion that will change the world? “Then what?” That’s my next question.

CS: Then what….?

SETV: So you rile them up, now why do you care?

CS: Yeah. . . why do I care? I don’t. I think in a way you can’t care. You just have to make what you make. And you have to be strong enough to accept however people react to it. I mean that’s kind of the challenge of being creative and being public is that you are and you are not defined by the way people perceive what you do. So I just have to be invested in the idea and believe in it and be excited about it to such a degree that I’m impenetrable. So in a way there is no “Now What?”

You know, unfortunately I have to make myself so strong that it cant matter to me. It’s tough though, because of course you fall for the adoration. That’s the difficulty. If you can’t be hurt by the hate, then you can’t really accept the adoration. Which is really tough, because everybody falls for it!

SETV: So, then, how have you changed in the last 10 years, because of the music?

CS: It feels like I got something out of my system. You know, I toiled away in the underground for a decade, and at a certain point I just didn’t feel like I was making an impact. At a certain point you can feel like you are almost too pure. You know, you are working away in obscurity, so what’s the point? If you are so erudite, if you are so … almost like aesthetically pure, then there’s no point in doing it because no one can attach any meaning to what you are doing.

So when we did our first show and it was in a Starbucks, that was revolutionary: these were people coming to a cup of fucking coffee, they didn’t even give a shit about performance art, then all of a sudden, if you put a beat to it, and then if you made it a song, all of a sudden they give a shit.

SETV: Ok, so last question, and sorry but it’s really cheesy: If you could change one thing, anything, in world (this interview, your hair, war, etc…), what do you change?

CS: … Well, I guess it’s simple… hunger, health care … genocide? The things that are important. Eating and living….eating and living! That’s about all, that’s what’s really important.