Ladies and Gents-era interview with Jason Pierce

[slowcloud]

Hello, there! As I promised earlier in this message board, I have posted part 1 of my 1997 interview with Jason Pierce. It is timed ahead of his performance this coming Friday. You will find it goes deep into his creative process, at least back in those days. Part 2 of the interview will by up tomorrow morning. Here is the link:
http://indieethos.wordpress.com/2010/07 ... rt-1-of-2/
Your comments on my blog are appreciated!

[TheWarmth]

Very nice. Looking forward to part 2.

[toomilk]

You don't happen to have the audio of the interview in a digital format, do you?

[slowcloud]

You don't happen to have the audio of the interview in a digital format, do you?

Sorry, it was cassette tape back then! I am hoping to one day get a tape to digi converter. Besides interviews, I still have lots of concerts and exclusive tracks on tape from an array of artists.

[slowcloud]

OK, part 2 is up:
http://indieethos.wordpress.com/2010/07 ... rt-2-of-2/
Enjoy! Again, any comments/questions/clarifications on the blog are welcome!

[TheWarmth]

We pretty much refuse to compromise the music for radio and do edits. We’re now refusing to do singles in the sort of contemporary sense. I don’t want to do that kind of thing.

This is a classic Spaceman contradiction. They did a radio-friendly recording of Come Together without the cursing and released it as a single.

[slowcloud]

We pretty much refuse to compromise the music for radio and do edits. We’re now refusing to do singles in the sort of contemporary sense. I don’t want to do that kind of thing.

This is a classic Spaceman contradiction. They did a radio-friendly recording of Come Together without the cursing and released it as a single.

And I think, over the years Spiz has grown increasingly radio-ready in their songs. They're not as progressive and space-rocky as back in the 90s, when I fell in love with the sound.

[toomilk]

We pretty much refuse to compromise the music for radio and do edits. We’re now refusing to do singles in the sort of contemporary sense. I don’t want to do that kind of thing.

This is a classic Spaceman contradiction. They did a radio-friendly recording of Come Together without the cursing and released it as a single.

As well as "I Think I'm in Love" without the long, drugged-out intro or references to "spikes" or "spoons" (though 'dope' is included) and the 6 to 1 ratio of verses to refrains in the second part of the song is cut to 4 to 1 so the listener doesn't get caught up in such savagery........And "Electricity" with the freakouts missing.

They should have done a radio-edit for "Cop Shoot Cop." It would start where the vocals come in, go through two choruses, have 15 seconds of white noise (a la Nina Simone's "Revolution"), and into the 'desert' section for a fading 20 seconds. One of you pro-tools wizzes out there needs to make this dream a reality....

[alan_cohaul]

Excellent interview! That's one of the best ones that i've read from Pierce from the interviews around that era. I thought it was cool that he'd said that most of the actual takes are first take--to keep the spirit and spontaneity high--but that the mixes are laboured over, instead. I know how he feels about mixing--that's where I think that everything really comes together, where you can tighten up an already good vision to make it brilliant; it's also where a great intention and a great vision can be lost and can slip away. Pierce's quote of where he talked about making the album for two years and then mixing the album two years after you wrote the songs is spot on--after you've heard those songs that many times, and with that many additions and changes to them, it can be easy to lose or forget what inspired you to write and play those songs in the first place. Lots of people take lots of time on records that don't end up that great (Guns n' Roses "Chinese Democracy", for example), but sometimes that extra time and extra effort really just makes an already great idea and album that much better.

However, I don't really understand how he can say that he's not a perfectionist, and then go into detail about how much time was spent making the album. Brain boggler, that one is.....

[slowcloud]

Excellent interview! That's one of the best ones that i've read from Pierce from the interviews around that era. I thought it was cool that he'd said that most of the actual takes are first take--to keep the spirit and spontaneity high--but that the mixes are laboured over, instead. I know how he feels about mixing--that's where I think that everything really comes together, where you can tighten up an already good vision to make it brilliant; it's also where a great intention and a great vision can be lost and can slip away. Pierce's quote of where he talked about making the album for two years and then mixing the album two years after you wrote the songs is spot on--after you've heard those songs that many times, and with that many additions and changes to them, it can be easy to lose or forget what inspired you to write and play those songs in the first place. Lots of people take lots of time on records that don't end up that great (Guns n' Roses "Chinese Democracy", for example), but sometimes that extra time and extra effort really just makes an already great idea and album that much better.

However, I don't really understand how he can say that he's not a perfectionist, and then go into detail about how much time was spent making the album. Brain boggler, that one is.....

Thanks a lot for the kind words. If you can add this comment to my blog, even if it's just a copy and paste, it would be appreciated! I came into writing about music as a fan, so I like to pull things out of my subjects who I really admire (I often had my choice who to interview back in the day).

I think you are so right to echo Pierce's comments about what it means to take time to produce an album. 'Chinese Democracy' was in no way labored over across a span of 10 years. It was abandoned and then rehashed and recycled for some over-hyped phony commercial comeback, sucking the soul out of any work involved in the genesis of that album.

Speaking of the soul of music, I think Pierce recognizes not to mess with the beauty of serendipity that can come from the freestyle manner he composes music. You just can't control that sort of thing. It's counter-intuitive to how a perfectionist works. However, once it comes to tweeking in the studio, that's where that obsessiveness of the perfectionist comes out in him.