Sunday, January 6, 2008

IMPENDING DISTORTION

When it comes to the silver hammer of wit, Stephin Merritt can nail like no other.

MJ: Sasha Frere-Jones has implied that the fact that you don't like hip-hop music is racist. That got a lot of media play. What was the worst part about that whole debacle for you?

SM: I actually don't talk about that. I don't feel like publicizing him or her.

Zing!
MJ: What were some of the first bands you got into?

SM: One of my earliest memories is going to the Jefferson Airplane and Odetta concert with my mother. My primary impression was fear. Grace Slick at one point said from the stage, "They're killing children over there." And she obviously meant in Vietnam, but I was too young to understand that, and I thought she meant, "They're killing children over there," meaning that side of the stage. So I thought Grace Slick was going to kill me.

Full Mother Jones interview here.

Until Distortion comes out (January 15), "Too Drunk To Dream" can be found at RCRDLBL, and "Old Fools" at Said the Gramophone, for starters. Side note: that's how STG writes all the time--wildly earnest prose-poems/flights of descriptive fancy that make Pitchfork seem positively Carveresque. ("I'm well-supped beside this sad beast"...?) Read aloud in a dramatic voice. Very open-mic. Check out their top-whatever lists of the year for choicest nuggets.
(They do post great songs though.)

I'm can't wait for the album, and for these shows and seeing long-lost-far-flung friends.

Polaroid, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 2002.

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