nota bene

Etc :: 'Supporting Guest' to BUZZCOCKS

2009-11-10T11:17:43Z

How space-age it felt to ~~log on~~ jack-in at the airport before shipping out to ~~Indonesia~~ the Interzone and first thing seen on the screen: a copy of the poster below (first time we knew about it) - sent from our old pal, Dong-member and former Etc-drummer, Harold the Great, who commented on how it looked like EIC was on the bill (meaning the not-beloved-by-me local lounge act E.I.C.). He must have sussed it was not them though. So, lest you don't know: like it says on the Facebook Event page here...

Our next show is a quickie for the Etc duo.

Then comes the fab Thai threesome, Abuse the Youth.

And then the main event: deservedly beloved pioneering punk-pop quartet: Buzzcocks.

This happens on 27 November, 2009. And the poster looks like this:

Has anyone else ever made the observation that Shelley is a Romantic Poet?

Unpacking (unfinished)

2009-11-10T10:18:49Z

Indonesia was great. Thumbs-up and smiles

despite nearly fainting onstage - it weren't half hot Mum; despite bewildering currency conversion maths;
despite deadly silence at the end of songs we played - apparently we stunned them or they just wanted to be sure the songs were done; and -it was explained- people aren't used to hearing originals and don't know how to react;
despite exhaustion not helped by lack of sleep after underestimating the strength of their coffee,
despite exhaustion not helped by trying to kip in a room located under a function hall where a Christian service started early morning (just after I got in?) with much shouting, powerful keyboards and terrible drumming, and then a game of hide & seek for the restless shrieking kids afterwards - with my hotel room's door as base. Thud thud up and down the corridor. And oh-no, the fat brat has found the drum kit unattended and it's that familiar beat-less lark-around sound I need never hear again... It's ok, I tried to find it funny.

Harvey took me some places too. As in: wow, some place this is. One was club complex that never closes except for 3 hours mid-week to clear out the dead and the people who've taken up residence. No lights in the huge main room. I mean: nearly none. It's as if someone was shining a few coloured torches from 50 or 100m above. But that's it. It was like wearing sunglasses in the dark. Which people were actually doing there too. It was absolutely jam-packed. Pick-pocket paradise and I think possibly every activity known to man was going on there - even if you couldn't see it. Births and deaths and the stuff inbetween. Quite hellish, but amazingly met nice people and had normal conversations midst all this madness. I am expecting to revisit the venue in lurid dreams. I forgot the nickname of that one. Everywhere seemed to have one. As do the extravagant nationalist statues that old Presidents had a yen for. I had 'The Last Erection' and 'Pizzaman' pointed out to me. Forgot the rest and the nickname given to my hotel - needless to say it suggested seedy deeds. Indeed a lot of things suggested -or actually were- seedy deeds everywhere we went.

Misc: one of Harvey's tattoos brought a street to a standstill. The tough guys who had been fronting, were suddenly reduced to awed fanboys hoping to cop a feel / see the bodyart for themselves. It's like he was adorned with the birthmark or symbols of some chosen one they'd been waiting for. Well, it WAS a masterfully done (probably very expensive?) depiction of an Indonesian god. And our Harvey knew more about them than the tattoo-ed guru who seemed to be king of the scene. I loved the way everything got friendly at the drop of a hat. Same thing w/ the other bandidos. Aside from the venue and the bars and the swanky shopping centre, I didn't notice any other foreigners in the n/hood I was staying. Harvey picked it. Not a place his wife approves of.

Misc: people who shriek about aspects of globalisation (and that might include me)... are they really fussed that Starbucks and McDonalds and Nike and Coke are going to kill the essence of the places they pitch their camps? Or are they being foot-stampy because it might spoil their holidays? They feel less like explorers w/ all these familiar symbols on display innit. Utterly subjective passing thought that came to me as I gazed out at Jakartan chaos: it's 24½ years since I first went to Indonesia - big changes might have taken place, but I don't see any change to the CHARACTER of the place or the people. Hey, but what do I know?

This is not what I thought I was going to write about.

shh

2009-11-10T09:21:24Z

Every time I try to post something about encounters with undercover special ops types: the entries erase themselves. That's the kind of technology they have these days? But we all know it's the guys on the ground that really count.

You didn't read this here.

tajmall @ 2009-11-10T16:59:00

2009-11-10T09:17:25Z

Monkey Heaven is Somewhere in Indonesia? Bali I thought

2009-11-05T06:16:18Z

Been sent a flyer for one of this weekend's shows. The Deniros really ARE a Pixies tribute. It says here that they will be "bringing you a full double set show of PIXIES classics such as Where Is My Mind, Here Comes Your Man, Gouge Away, Debaser, and much, much more -- including some fresh new songs that we've never performed before! But that's not all! Veteran Psychopop Rockers ETC will be opening up the evening's festivities with a daring, innovative fusion of alt-rock, pop, and psychotic sounds in the vein of The Replacements, Sonic Youth and The Bad Seeds".

In the vein of who? Talk about giving us a lot to live up to! But at the moment I will just be relieved to get there in one piece. And making it out alive will be good too.

Etc :: INDO-A-GO-GO :: Dangdut Hanyut this weekend

2009-11-03T02:21:19Z

I was awoken by a phonecall from Jakarta last night (9pm-ish... yes I was knackered), saying all-systems-go for Etc's 90-minute (ugh!) gig there; so, like is says on the Facebook event page (here):

Etc's plans go south -literally- because we're bound for Jakarta where we hope to continue our happy tradition of playing our songs to people who have never heard of us; and where Harvey will also bash the skins for SONGS FOR THE DEAF playing songs you will know at their farewell show.

6 Nov (Fri):
SONGS FOR THE DEAF - Farewell Show

7 Nov (Sat):
Etc
MR JASON BLAIR & THE DENIROS

Venue: EASTERN PROMISE Kemang Raya 5, Kemang, JK, Indonesia.

Thanks to Lens of THE MISKINS for making this happen

"ma'af untuk rosak-bahasa saya (tapi saya fikir saya mesti cuba): SAYA GEMBIRA BERMAIN DANGDUT HANYUT KAMI UNTUK SAUDARA DI NEGARA SAUDARA. SAMPAI JUMPA!"

And the logo: Some playful bahasa on an Indonesian flag background. Dangdut is a form of music that's popular in the region. Hanyut is a word that can be translated as 'adrift'. I got that from a Joseph Conrad. Probably Lord Jim.

Am dreading the mental arithmetic challenges ahead. All I know so far is the taxi from the airport is $150,000.

twin peaks

2009-10-16T10:06:33Z

At some point in the last 24 hours I finally had the long-shirked injection required by the Govt to test my HIV-free status (and other things?). As a result I've felt all sorts of inexplicable symptoms -before and after- but I think I am over the worst of the pins & needles, flu, lurgee, scurvy, malaria, drunkenness, walking-like-Nosferatu and frostbite... so don't mind me (although how different tea tastes when drunk from a cup in a hand different to the one I would normally use to sup from)...

But wait! are you trying to tell me that the following things have no relationship whatsoever to my being injected:

- the woman who inordinately wears black in the office is wearing pink today.
- the chap who almost-always wears pink polo shirts: today is in a black polo shirt.
- a man smiled and nodded a farewell to me as he disembarked (Singlish: 'Got down the bus') from the 64 bus today (unusual in itself for some folk in Singapore, I hasten to add). as he got off, i noticed the passenger then getting on ('going up the bus') seemed to be HIM too. impressively in two places at once. sufficiently taken w/ this David Lynch/PKD state of affairs I asked the boarding man: Your Brudda, he...? 'Heh? Oh... yah yah yah.' Then it was my stop. He got say: 'Seeeyou'
- and then the first people I saw once I was off the bus: two young female twins
- At the x-ray place, the granny next to me pointed out the amazing similarity of the man on the TV screen (channel 8 was showing Chinese Opera and a man with a long long beard and yellow outfit was in full-flow) with a man before us being instructed to 'pass urine and come back'. Indeed he WAS the man on screen -in the same colours, but more contemporary garb- or perhaps his twin.

Maybe MY twin will be at the studios tomorrow. That would make recording much easier, especially as I worry about my guitar dexterity w/ this hole in my arm and the apparent wind-tunnel therein. AND we could record live. And if can type this, then I reckon I can handle the required bass parts. In my current state it'll probably come out better than when I thought I was fit to play before.

My Own Private Patrick Swayze

2009-09-15T04:49:23Z

Never seen 'Ghost' or 'Dirty Dancing'. Not even 'The Outsiders'. But I have listened to and enjoyed this song by Scotland's Male Nurse many times (but not as often as my David Brent-like superior has played a version of 'The Man in the Mirror' this morning... I think we're on the 60th play - am I twitching?)

Family Lingo Heirlooms

2009-08-24T10:50:50Z

Letter in the post from my Mum, complete with mention that she and Dad recently dropped in on my beautifully chuckling Great Aunt Mabel (one of my Gran's younger sisters). The visit led to the remembering of more phrases from the family vernacular that I wouldn't want to be lost:

Pin your neck your neck to your collar (so as not to lose anything)
Too posh to push

This last one delights me. It's got some We don't take kindly to fancy folk bite, but goes beyond simple discrimination, thanks to the added good reason as to why derision is deserved: because they don't muck in. Adding these to list with aforementioned lingo heirlooms:

Put the pig on the wall to watch the band (to imply wasting effort / casting pearls before swine).
Chilly in the Wind, Elsie
Crack on daft and I'll buy you a coal yard

Psyychic Dancehall, Lancs

2009-08-19T13:13:52Z

It's not surprising that I am not chuffed to be staying late in an industrial estate for the third night in a row. And no sign of the Local Retard of the Week who condemned me to this fate either (she's utterly unqualified for the job - not her fault that they chose to hire her though; but does she need to be quite so mean-spirited and suspicious and ungrateful despite my covering her ass [admittedly to prove a point and have one undebatable blazing example of her ineptitude]?).

What might be weird is that now is the moment that I suddenly remember something and decide to take a break from writing about an innovation in reinforced polymer (civil engineers look out!) to quickly recount the one time I saw THE FALL group play. It was at Preston Polytechnic. Christmas Holidays. Was expecting the audience to be made up of daunting chaps (and maybe some delightful Anglophile yank women with superb record collections). But now all I remember was dyed-and/or-dreadlocked hair-do'ed students (I presume) who were drunk, and in DMs and leggings and Levellers tops (long-sleeved type), and who seemed indifferent as to who was playing. It might was well have been Jesus Jones or something. And I think it was a bit disappointing. The Fall didn't sound particularly good in this instance. A bit sad for me considering they would probably have counted as my nominee for best group in the world at one point...

But there was one real psyychic dancehall moment worth reporting. True story. As they played their cover of The Kinks' song 'Victoria', Mark E Smith -lead singer of The Fall- looked directly at me and pointed at me when he delivered the word 'SINGAPORE' in the song. It was the only point where I remember him engaging with the audience in any way.

If it's a coincidence, it's a good one. My friends (not Fall fans) were quite freaked out by it and I realise I could have made a bigger thing of it - after-all this was the year I read unhealthy amount of Philp K Dick books - but it didn't particularly bother me at the time. Maybe I just thought it was par for course.

Back to the polymer.

tajmall @ 2009-08-18T17:59:00

2009-08-18T11:02:53Z

It pains me to admit it, but I have just been recently very uncharitable and put forward a nomination for my Retard of the Day. It's someone who handles events listings for a large-circulation magazine in Singapore. I forwarded them an email about an upcoming concert. They wrote back (in LARGE COMIC SANS), saying: "Pls check dates again.". I checked again. The information tallied. What was the problem?

"Pls see subject heading: dates given 9-11, or should it be 11/9?? Confusing."

The gig (called PEACE OFF :: LOVE ON) is scheduled for the eleventh day in September (11 Sept 09 / 11-9-09). I think this date was deliberately chosen. It's a significant date in world history - like it or not. However I am not sure if the nominee took this into account as to why the phrase "nine eleven" had come up in the related correspondence. They did point out that -in Singapore- "9/11" refers to the ninth day of November. Thanks. Same thing where I come from. Oh, I suppose they were only trying to be helpful. I withdraw the nomination... Besides, I now have them to thank for reminding me of an ex-colleague who once used the image of the Twin Towers (after the event) in the context of a competition to win a holiday in the USA. When I tried to explain her choice of imagery was inappropriate, she replied: 'I don't know about such things'. She won Retard of the Day on that particular day.

And Memory Man of the Day goes to Terence. When I shared the above tale with him I was amazed that he should immediately recall -and quote- an old old tajmall LJ posting re: a former Boss who proposed -straight-faced- the headline: GET BLOWN OFF AT OUR SALE! (sic)

I will now remind myself that at least I am not at that place any more. It will be some consolation to bear in mind because once this cathartic little vent is posted online I have to return to stay-late/miss-dinner work. And it was assigned to me by the most consistent Retard of the Day / Horrible Jobsworth of my recent weeks.

tajmall @ 2009-08-07T15:12:00

2009-08-07T07:14:39Z

ken·speck·le [ kén spèk'l ] adjective
Scotland well-known: easily seen or recognised, or well known

[Mid-16th century. Probably < Old Norse kennispeki< kenna "know" + spak "wise"]

Etc :: (How to) Singapore Idle 123456789

2009-08-05T10:28:33Z

'Never Mind the Taufiks... Don't Stop Till You Hady Enough!'

Etc gets out of the traction and into the action, after recent their brushes with the grim sisters of Illness and Accident.

Etc :: (How To) Singapore Idle One
Thursday, August 6, 2009 :: 9:00pm
P.O.W :: The Prince of Wales
101 Dunlop Street
Little India (between Sim Lim and Serangoon)
Singapore

Join the two-man power-duo of Etc as they dust themselves down to shack off the shackles that recently kept them off the road. Harvey Etc celebrates surviving lurgee, man-flu & jetlag; while Ben Etc is over the worst of the bloodloss, bruising & abrasions of the horrific crash-landing that ended his recent unscheduled and involuntary trip through space.

They're probably just as dazed & confused as they usually are, but that's not to stop them shaking off the maladies and bringing back the melodies as they unveil their Summer Collection of old favourites and new would-be classics for all your Singapore Idle psychopop & bop needs.

And if you want to join the Facebook's Etc Enthusiasts United clicking here should get you there.

Be happy. Be well. See you soon.

tajmall @ 2009-08-04T16:40:00

2009-08-04T08:41:28Z

Doctorin the House

2009-07-30T02:23:16Z

Tajmall has been asked to edit yesterday's Blur-related posts so as not to reveal that Damon Albarn was behind 1992's international mega-hit, "It's My Life". Tajmall assumed it was common knowledge that "Dr Alban" was the first of Damon's anagramic alter-egos. And the success of the "Doctor" financed the second Blur album. Orchestra and all.

The reported recent activity of the "Doctor" only compounds Albarn's genius. See Wikipedia:

"In 2007 Dr. Alban has released new album Back to basics. It is sold only on the Internet through official website, with exception for Russia where CDs and cassettes were issued.

"In 2008, he released a single with Haddaway, entitled "I Love The 90's". Alban proved that he did not forget his fellow artists of the last decade and he mentions in the lyrics some of the best hits of the Euro years: "Rhythm Is a Dancer", "What Is Love", "Scatman", "All That She Wants" and his own "It's My Life"."

The secret King of Pop?

You can't make this stuff up can you?

Going Blur Again

2009-07-29T12:44:01Z

There's an old English band called Blur who recently regrouped to play some concerts. And I get the impression we're meant to be jolly delighted about their return. But is this a surprise? Not if the UK music writers who hail this second coming are anything like I imagine them: clean white folk who've had some sort of relationship with Blur in the past - whether this meant rubbing shoulders and/or noses with the band in the scenery of '90s London (for the older hacks); or -for the younger ones- having Blur as a soundtrack to adolescence and young adulthood - the times when music has its best chance of reaching you, and then never quite leaving.

The music you did your homework to (with or without Smash Hits pin-ups of Damon on your bedroom wall), and the tunes that were there during your first experiences with heartache, booze or sex: this is Special Music . So Blur probably couldn't have chosen a better time to launch a surgical strike on the heartstrings of their old target market - a polite bunch who are now all grown-up and with the means to do some spending as a receptive audience for a band they remember fondly.

Just in time for summer (and in the wake of a practically tuneless Oasis album), a great escape into nostalgia is exactly what Dr Albarn ordered for this sector modern life of Albion. And I've always had the impression Albarn likes to think he knows best. How can I forget him telling me all about what it was like to live in Singapore? Not sure if he'd been here before, but somehow he knew. And don't get me started on when he whips out his melodica to parp some meaningless notes to his recordings of matchless Malian musicians like Afel Bocoum and Toumani Diabaté. He might have footed the bill, but even so...

And by now you might have guessed that the prospect of the Blur reunion didn't set my heart a-racing. For me it's soiled by a caricature Damon wondering what to do next after the hits of his very successful Gorillaz project, his all-star supergroup ('But Mummy, I WANT Tony Allen AND the bassist from the Clash in my gwoop'), the aforementioned Malian stuff -oh- and don't forget the frickin' opera he did. IN CHINESE! Whatever next? Call his spiffing old chums perhaps?

In fact the only upshot of the reunion that occurred to selfish me was that BigO Magazine might mark the occasion by republishing an old Blur interview I once did. And this would spare me having to retype it.

But they did no such thing on the occasion... instead it turns out they already ran the story a few months back! Naturally they didn't tell me about this. Nor did a recent phonecall from a meek member of their politburo explain why they refuse to acknowledge the existence of anyone making music in Singapore at the moment. Odd, secretive folk. And so I don't feel compelled to tell them I am going to post my old Blur interview here. These is rotten days. Those were different times.

BLUR THE FOCUS :: BLUR INTERVIEW

2009-07-29T12:23:26Z

(first appeared in BigO #145 - January 1998)

As Blur come to the end of their world tour, Ben Harrison finds himself welcomed into the insular world of one of the most important British bands of the Nineties, and then makes a few great escapes with guitarist Graham Coxon and a whole lot of alcohol. He lives to tell the tale and gets Blur into focus. Pictures by Little

There was a time when Blur seemed to be anything but. That is to say -for the benefit of readers that don't speak Singlish- you couldn't describe the British group called Blur with the Singaporean adjective, 'blur'. It wasn’t applicable because here was a band that appeared so self-assured and focused that the members often came off as being downright arrogant.

At first their cockiness was only partly justifiable because -despite showing they had a knack for vibrant pop tunes like There’s No Other Way- Blur’s 1991 debut album, Leisure, didn’t really fulfill the band’s potential.

The following year, Blur then appeared to be floundering when it came to maintaining their initial impact on the British music scene - especially when compared to the much-hyped arrival of Suede. Not that any of their lippy-ness abated as they went into a boozy slump because singer Damon Albarn could always be counted on to provide a scathing soundbite, even when he and cohorts Graham Coxon (guitar), Alex James (bass) and Dave Rowntree (drums) were supposedly at their lowest ebb.

But then the band began to live up to its own acclaim with a trilogy of pristine albums, Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife and The Great Escape. Each was more successful, both critically and commercially, than its predecessor and confirmed Blur as bona fide pop stars. Blur were unashamedly at the vanguard of the “Britpop” phenomenon, and you’ve probably heard enough about the time they went head-to-head with arch-rivals Oasis in ‘95 and bookies took bets on which one of the two would be the first to top the chart.

It wasn’t until early ‘97 that the public got to see the “blur” being put back into Blur. Their moniker became appropriate when they released a self-titled album that boasted a fuzzy logic not normally associated with the group. The band had never sounded so unrestrained, or, as Alex James now puts it, raising a bottle of red: “unshaven.”

For guitar wunderkind Graham Coxon, an appropriate gesture that marks this transition could be how he adapted the logo painted on the head of his Marshall amplifier. It used to read “Mod”. Now it says “Moo.”

++++++++++

Notions of blurriness also seem to be part-and-parcel of almost any band’s touring experience, and Blur were no exception on their world tour last year. When we hooked up last October (1997), Coxon really did sound as if he was talking from the other end of the world. Granted, I was in Singapore and he was in a hotel room in Houston, Texas at the time, but the sense of distance had nothing to do with the quality of Telecoms. Across a crystal clear phone line, Coxon’s staggered -at times virtually whispered- delivery, measured up to his reputation for being the quiet one of the band.

Despite his initial diplomatic claim that “usually we mostly have a good time touring America,” the disorientation of the whole experience was definitely in full effect. Although he was excited by the promise of “some decent veggie food there,” his upcoming date in Singapore seemed a long way down the road for Coxon.

By the time we’d fixed a date for “a bit of a natter and a few beers,” he’d also made disconsolate confessions about “not feeling hugely happy with myself" and how "It’s hard to get motivated.” Although he still had his habit of rounding off with a self-effacing laugh and the typically English pronouncement of “Mustn’t grumble,” his sentences were become punctuated by huge gaps of uncomfortable silence. Obviously his claim of having “a good time” in America wasn’t ringing true. But it wasn't as bad as Blur’s earlier American tours.

Coxon: “We were quite angry at the time (on those earlier tours). Our impressions of the States had been coloured pretty nastily by bad experiences which were mainly due to bad touring and being on a record label that had no understanding of anything except Vanilla Ice. It was very difficult. We did a two-month tour when Smells Like Teen Spirit was huge, so it was a waste of time. No one was going to listen to us, so we got pretty screwed-up about it for a while.”

You have a whole continent’s-worth of dates ahead of you - something other bands would dream about. Where would rather be?

“Oh God, I’d rather the studio right now - but that’s the old cliché as I’m on the road right now, so the studio seems more attractive... Actually, I’d like nothing at the moment. I’d like to earn my crust by doing nothing. I don’t want to go into a studio. I don’t want to be on the road. I just want a year off or something - just see what my life’s doing. I’ve just been touring quite a lot this year.

“Mostly on our last American tour I didn’t even want to go home. It was really weird but I was quite frightened of going home. And now I don’t know whether I miss England anymore. This time I’m not really going home anyway. I’m going to be staying in California until we go out to Korea and Singapore, so that’s strange.”

A few weeks later the British music press seemed to be reacting to similar statements from the Blur camp which meant -when coupled with the band’s announcement that they won’t be playing any more live dates in the “foreseeable future”- that they had enough material to begin colourful speculation about “tension” within Blur.

And then there was the bit about how Coxon was no longer refusing alcohol after a valiant attempt to stay on the wagon. At least, I thought, this meant we might get to catch up in style when he got to Singapore. And we did.

+ + + + +

“Every band hates each other to some degree at the end of a world tour,” Damon Albarn says with a glint in his eye as he holds court in the band's Singapore hotel. But even when they’re quibbling over the punk-rock merits of Coxon’s beloved Minutemen versus Albarn’s preferred Wire, the scene is now the antithesis of anything remotely connected to “hate”.

It’s several weeks since we last spoke, and whether we're sprawled in Coxon's hotel room floor listening to the latest BigO Singles Club CD (Etc's Adolesce is his "cheers" pick); having a marathon session of listening to Coxon's demos and Red House Painters, Nick Drake, Yo La Tengo and Happy Go Licky CDs, or chowing down aloo gobi before grooving to live Bhangra in Little India, he’s in considerably better spirits than he was in Texas. This is understandable as all of Blur are probably buoyed by the knowledge they’ve got to the end of the world tour.

Coxon: “I was expecting Singapore to be quite exciting, quite crazy and quite hefty on the sensory department. I heard about some crazy fires and some bad, bad air (ie. the 1997 Haze); so I was wondering what’s going on: ‘Why isn’t anybody stopping the fires? Is it just going to burn until the planet’s burnt out?’ I was just hoping that we’d be equipped for everything mentally because we’ve been going through all sorts of weird stuff, so we’re all pretty knackered. It’s just been… mentally… weird.”

And this comes after one of the unexpected events of the American leg: the sudden departure of the tour manager. When we first spoke, you were unnervingly deadpan while sitting at the eye of an on-the-road storm.

“Yeah, the tour manager just left the tour when we were playing. He just kind of… quit! (short, unhinged chuckle) Disappeared! So we felt like the cat’s away...”

How do you deal with something like that?

“I usually spend a lot of time on the phone and listening to music in my room, stuff like that. And now I’m writing a lot of stuff myself… something just to record on my own; my own songs that I’ve been writing. But I don’t know if anyone gives a **** about that.”

Coxon’s song, You’re So Great, is one of the highlights of the last Blur album, and many of the audience had hoped to hear it as part of the set at Blur’s Singapore show. However, Coxon sighs they’ve only performed the song live in Japan “because there are so many ‘Graham obsessives’ over there.”

Not only is You’re So Great the first song totally written and performed by just one member of the band (he recorded the vocals hiding under a table in the studio), it’s interesting because it presents something more far personal than the Damon Albarn songs which make up the vast majority of their catalogue.

Coxon: “Damon usually writes the lyrics to his songs, and when there’s a tune that I want to do something with, he has said: ‘If you like this tune so much, you write the bloody lyrics to it, because I can’t’. So I am writing lyrics. I’m writing them every day. But they’re for my own things - not for Blur things.”

So, honestly, what do you make of Damon’s lyrics?

“I like his nonsense lyrics the best. I like it when he’s sad. I like his melancholy stuff more. When he likes to get clever it gets a bit weird. He gets to be bit of a smarty-pants about it.”

Don’t you find a lot of those “smarty-pants” songs patronising?

“A little bit maybe. That’s why I like his personal stuff better… like the Blue Jeans (from Modern Life Is Rubbish) kind of things. It’s more interesting to me hearing what’s on people’s minds rather than hearing smart-arsed comments about where they live.”

Having been in the company of your bandmates for an extended period, it’s inevitable that cabin fever should set in...

“With these shows, I’m really just a bit tired of the songs at the moment… Even the new stuff that we’ve been playing. I really just want to improvise for an hour.”

So Blur don’t “road-test” new songs that might get written as you tour?

“Damon is writing new songs, but no, we don’t; except we’re playing this song called Swallows In The Heatwave, which is one we wrote recently. But that’s just a kind of slow spaz rock song. I’d like to change the set quite radically, but there’re bass-players to please. And our bass-player just likes playing crappy pop music.”

One thing that Coxon will enthuse about is playing at last year’s benefit concert for a Free Tibet, an experience he describes as being “great…,” and not just because it meant he got to hang (albeit nervously) with heroes like Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth.

Coxon: “It was very spiritual. It seemed very special to be there and to be involved. I enjoyed it and it gave Damon a chance to say he likes Tibet. There was a lot of good feelings happening and a lot of different music (being played) with a really good cross-section of everything. But it was also quite a freaky concert though as there were a lot of people I quite admire around, watching the show. So it was very scary for a while.”

So despite being a recognisable “pop star” yourself, you still feel daunted by people you’re into and admire?

“Yeah. These people are so nice, I shouldn’t be like that. But I always feel like a dork. That’s just the way it is.”

Coxon reaffirms this when we talk about how audiences differ in different parts of America. For the most part he reckons he has no understanding of the audience there, while Washington DC stands out for being “dangerous… very dangerous. There’s a lot more crazy punk kids there that don’t know if they’re going to survive another week.”

Talkin’ DC then leads us to raving about Fugazi and he shudders to think of the prospect of actually being in the same place as them.

Coxon: “I imagine it’d be really stressful for me meeting them. I mean Guy (Picciotto)… He’s fantastic. As a guitarist and as a performer, he blows my mind, he does. I’ve seen them quite a lot. And super records they make, by golly.”

Are you in a position where you’d consider any other musicians to be your peers?

“I don’t feel part of any gang. I’d quite like to have a few friends but not really have a ’scene.’ There’s a severe lack of friends and too much ’scene’ going on in this crappy business. I suppose some friends would be quite good. A lot of people I feel closer to musically maybe are American, but I can never really be part of that. Maybe people like Radiohead, I guess I’ve got empathy, sympathy, or some kind of ‘…thy’ with.”

Two other bands that Blur have been spuriously connected to are Oasis and, more recently, Pavement. All three of you have released albums this year. Which would you rate as the best?

“Um… ours because I can just about listen to it all. I think Pavement’s and ours are pretty good. I don’t think it’s Pavement’s best and the Oasis one is CRUD (loudly)… But that’s just a matter of opinion.”

The Oasis one is shite. And it’s made worse by the fact that I’ve not seen a bad word against it, anywhere. What’s going on? Do you think journalists are scared, intimidated by Oasis?

“I think people are just waiting for someone else to say, ‘Look, this is crap. What are we talking about?’ Then everyone’ll do it. I was really ****ed-off in England ‘cos it went on sale and it was all about how many people bought it. It’s just like: ‘What’s this country coming to?’ It’s just a ****ing great, big lie - egocentricity on a huge, vast, scale. I don’t understand it. I just can never understand it - their attitude towards themselves; their attitude towards their music and their audiences. They’re complete… I dunno. It’s supposed to be rock and roll, but it’s just styleless and… ”

It’s like the Emperor’s New Clothes.

“Of course it is. I reckon any minute everyone is going to start laughing their heads off.”

Another thing the press cooked up is that the latest Blur album is a big departure for the band. But was it really? Weren’t a lot of the things that people have picked up on this time round already there in the first place?

“Yeah. I don’t think it is much of a departure. I just think it’s all rubbish to say it’s a huge departure and that it’s all influenced by American music or whatever. Anyone who knew our stuff wouldn’t be so freaked out by it… if people knew the group. I know not everyone can be obsessed with Blur and our b-sides and everything and shite like that, but this new record seems to have confused people even more.”

But when you came to release something like For Tomorrow in 1993, the first single off your trilogy, did that feel like a departure?

“Yeah, it was the first time we were using strings and stuff like that; expanding the sound in that way; and getting influenced by other more grander things like Scott Walker, Jaques Brel, Francoise Hardy and people like that. We mellowed out a lot more too. I think we’re super mellow now. We have crazy, spazzy half hours, but we’re much more quiet these days.”

When each new Blur album comes out, are you able to predict what people are going to pick up on about it?

“Not really. I don’t think we even have a clear idea what it is so I don’t think we can really know. Like after we played MOR on the road, it turned into something a bit different to how we recorded it for the album. So we re-recorded it for a single. It’s just natural. We recorded it off-the-cuff in the studio - it wasn’t really ‘written.’

“That’s what changed for this record - we improvised a lot more and jammed. Essex Dogs was like a jam which I started up and Dave joined in. I was messing round with delays, echoes and stuff on pedals, and we cut it all up and put it together. I think Theme From Retro was the same.

“For me that’s some of the most interesting stuff on there, like the end section of -what’s that song?- Strange News From Another Star. I had a weird idea we should have two drummers, so me and Dave played drums on two different kits and I had this little tune which I played over it. I think we had more confidence to just go with ideas like that, see if they worked, and go with them until they worked. That’s the difference with this record.”

Do you think you’ll maintain that direction now, for your next album?

“Maybe. I suppose the next record will be even weirder. Once we recorded it, the last one didn’t seem very weird at all. But I think we’re going to make a weird record next because - if what we’re listening to is anything to go on - it’s going to be really strange… But it’ll probably end up being pretty Blurry.”

So what music are you listening to?

“Well, Damon’s listening to Lee Perry - a lot of dub stuff. And I’m listening to a lot of free jazz - Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman. I like a lot of old blues stuff. Music that makes me feel good. I like Yo La Tengo a lot - I kind of wiggle around my room to that, don't I? I’m actually enjoying listening to music a lot more these days.”

(With dubbier and freer influences creeping into Blur’s music, it should come as no surprise a remix album is to be released -although only in Japan- including recent mixes by Adrian Sherwood, William Orbit, Moby, even Tortoise’s John McEntire and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore.)

You’ve referred to this “white-coatey” approach you have when it comes to recording. It makes sense with earlier albums because they do have such high production values. But did that approach really go out the window this time round, as it’s been made out?

“I’m into it as far as doing things so I’m not staying up all night. I like getting in at a reasonable time, having lunch at lunchtime, having cups of tea and being quite civilised; and not getting stupidly off your head and thinking you’re going to create genius because you’re stoned, because that’s a load of crap. Thinking, using your brains and experimentation - I suppose we think more in that way in terms of our music now.”

Before this some of Blur’s priorities were obviously different, and not all of them were musical. When you first started making records did you feel an opposition to everything else at the time? I remember Jonathan Ross (British TV presenter) being sarcastic about how you looked in your debut video, She’s So High. Did that rile you up?

“Well, we were being the Stone Roses. Every time I see Jonathan Ross now I bait him about it. It’s been about three or four times, and every time he creases, crumples up, apologises, and is very embarrassed. But it’s just fun, isn’t it? He was probably off his head on what he suspected we were off our heads on anyway. Who knows?”

Then, a few years later, the Anglocentric side of Blur was played up, which is when Parklife was a triumph at the Brit Awards. How important was that kind of public recognition?

“No one liked English music you see. So we were determined we’d make people -in England, in America, wherever- like English music for a while.

"And we made people like English music.

"And English music has now turned into crap so we’re doing something else.

"We’re not exactly a loyal bunch of people with any kind of music. If I was that, I’d still be listening to my Smiths records.”

Going Blur Again

2009-07-29T12:09:19Z

And by now you might have guessed that the prospect of the Blur reunion didn't set my heart a-racing. For me it's soiled by a caricature Damon wondering what to do next after the hits of his very successful Gorillaz project, his all-star supergroup ('But Mummy, I WANT Tony Allen AND the bassist from the Clash in my gwoop'), the aforementioned Malian stuff -oh- and a frickin' Chinese-language opera. Call his spiffing old chums perhaps?

Etc :: (How to) Singapore Idle One

2009-07-23T11:09:59Z

'Never Mind the Taufiks... Don't Stop Till You Hady Enough!'
Etc gets out of the traction and into the action, after recent their brushes with the grim sisters of Illness and Accident.

Etc :: (How To) Singapore Idle One
Thursday, August 6, 2009 :: 9:00pm
P.O.W :: The Prince of Wales
101 Dunlop Street
Little India (between Sim Lim and Serangoon)
Singapore

Join the two-man power-duo of Etc as they dust themselves down to shack off the shackles that recently kept them off the road. Harvey Etc celebrates surviving lurgee, man-flu & jetlag; while Ben Etc is over the worst of the bloodloss, bruising & abrasions of the horrific crash-landing that ended his recent unscheduled and involuntary trip through space.

They're probably just as dazed & confused as they usually are, but that's not to stop them shaking off the maladies and bringing back the melodies as they unveil their Summer Collection of old favourites and new would-be classics for all your Singapore Idle psychopop & bop needs.

And if you want to join the Facebook's Etc Enthusiasts United clicking here should get you there.

Be happy. Be well. See you soon.

A Michael Jackson song called "Ben"

2009-07-01T11:16:33Z

Rats, Nazis, Crispin Glover and Lingerie. I never managed to stomach the original the few times I was aware it was on the radio or whatever. But could there be a more fitting MJ tribute? And what lyrics.

"They don't see you as I do; I wish they would try to; I'm sure they'd think again if they had a friend like Ben"

Nam-Nam + Cham-Cham #1

2009-07-01T08:49:07Z

drawed by tajmall

A Musical Great - No Longer With Us

2009-06-26T06:58:59Z

You probably already heard the news. About the death of musical icon in an American hospital.

I saw the sullen faces of those around me and realised they might know too. I asked.
So you've heard? Nod.
A sad loss? Yes.
Do you think that Today will remembered forever as a sad day in Music History? Indeed.

Amazing. I had no idea Sky Saxon was even known round these parts.

"Sky Sunlight Saxon passed over to the other side 6/25/2009 at 9:10am."

2012 - party over oops out of time?

2009-06-25T09:19:59Z

Richard Stanley once made a film called Hardware that became something of a sensation in the UK in the early 90s (I think) thanks to its popularity as a VHS title to rent. It's a low-budget, sci-fi, cult classic that's probably bound for reappraisal now that it's going to be released on DVD. And here's something potentially reassuring Richard Stanley said in a recent interview (as seen here):

Do you buy into that stuff about 2012 being the end date of the Mayan Calendar and therefore the end of the world?

No. Their culture never invented the wheel, and they didn’t even come up with conjunctions like ‘and’ or ‘of’ in their language . . . they certainly never had a Cervantes or Shakespeare. I can’t see how they could create an accurate date for the end of the world.

tajmall @ 2009-06-25T16:26:00

2009-06-25T08:47:36Z

Dear LiveJournal,

I get it now. It was you that killed my Facebook wasn't it? You were jealous. You thought I abandoned you. And you reported me on some shoddy pretext didn't you?

I wonder what reason you gave. It couldn't have been because I was trying to share to share unmissable content relating to Singapore's best-selling 'ghost writer', Russell Lee (who just wrote to me). Content like this, or the vaguely upsetting / potentially Japanese fetish material of this ... and -wow- how about the stunning aesthetics of a 'True Singapore Ghost Stories' fan who made this?

And I never even got to the Russell Lee fanclub blog at http://tsgs-rl-fans.blogspot.com where "you can add Fellower at this blog to show supporting True Singapore Ghost Story Russell Lee! To be the first to get the Early News/Informations/create event for fans/disccuss Idea/ share Disccussion topics of Russell LeE Fans Club"(sic). And of course I love the photo at the top of the page. I'd write my phd on it if could. But I have to go now. And curses, now I can't save it for later on my Facebook.... and it's all your fault. Maybe.

HOPE FLAMES ETERNAL :: FLAMING LIPS INTERVIEW

2009-06-24T08:59:28Z

Here's something I did a decade ago, that recently appeared online elsewhere --- on a site where it's policy to ALWAYS spell 'Singapore' as $ingapore ... yawn. I managed to spot and amend three instances of this. Forgive me for any more that slipped through.

The Flaming Lips were always hot stuff. Ex-BigO Magazine astroboy Ben Harrison reckons he probably first read about them in the ’80s via an old photocopied issue of BigO (their pre-internet incarnation). And then, over a decade later, the Lips hit a new level of success with the release of their brilliant 1999 album, The Soft Bulletin, making them an even hotter commodity… and even harder to reach on the phone. But Ben persevered, battled the robots, and eventually got Lip-synching with the bands’ main spaceman, Wayne Coyne, when he called the Witchita line, man.

(This article was first published in BigO #168 (December 1999). The Soft Bulletin was BigO’s Album of 1999).

Wayne Coyne, a traveller of outer and inner space, is getting closer to his home ground. He’s on the road - quite literally - with his band, The Flaming Lips, as they drive towards a gig in Witchita, Kansas, before heading for their hometown of Oklahoma City. [Ed: The lineup at that time included Michael Ivins (bass) and Steven Drozd (drums). Kliph Scurlock joined the group in 2002.]

And Coyne’s doing something the un-jaded 38-year-old has done on every Lips Inc release since 1985’s self-titled debut. He’s expressing wonder. “It’s crazy,” he guffaws. “Don’t you think it’s amazing that I’m here driving down the road and talking to you in $ingapore… and that it works?!”

When he then discovers that it’s early morning on my side of the planet, and I’ve yet to have my breakfast, it’s cool to hear him re-phrasing lines from one of his biggest hits to date, Bad Days: “Who wants to wake up early if you don’t have to? Sleep late when you can!”

Coyne seems so affable it’s as if he’s about to suggest we postpone the interview till I’ve “at least had some coffee and all that,” but this idea is lost in his next animated volley of super-elongated sentences which come as rich as his band’s music, and where my chuckles are reciprocated with a louder laugh from him. When he’s told of $ingapore bands like Rocket Scientist covering The Flaming Lips, he peaks with an exclamation of “Wow! Woah! Alright!!” before the rapid-fire speech suddenly stops dead.

I fear the line’s been cut.

Hello?

“I’m here,” Coyne says eventually, breaking his uncharacteristic silence. “I’m just amazed.”

Way back when (from left): Wayne Coyne, Richard English and Mike Ivins… when they were with Pink Dust Records.

I would have first heard about The Flaming Lips when they were profiled in BigO in the ’80s. Would you have been able to envisage people in Singapore listening to your band at the time?

Without thinking about it much, I guess I always think of how universal music is because I travel all around the world and I see how everybody likes music and, to some extent, I always hope we can be accepted in an universal way. But actually… no. The probability of people in $ingapore hearing thoughts that were in my head did seem like a long shot. I can’t even picture what Singapore must be like. And it does seem surreal to think that there’s people down in $ingapore, not just listening to our music, but doing cover versions of our songs.

What got you into music when you were growing up?

I have three older brothers who were listening to music all the time and I was exposed to it all… so, it was probably through that. It’s a great way to get exposed to music. They seemed to have good taste. It never occurred to me that the music they were listening to was good or bad, but through their record collections I heard all kinds of great music that otherwise an eight-year-old would never hear on his own. And the culmination of the trends of the time, the music, drugs and all that - I think it’s hard not to be attracted to that.

So what sparked you off and made you want to play your own music?

I simply started doing it because I liked it. I really didn’t have any skill at all. I think I didn’t realise how much skill and talent people really have in music. I figured you must need to have some sort of skill and some sort of desire to do it, but I just started to make records and stuff simply because I just always liked music. It wasn’t really till much later on - probably as much as 10 years after we started to make records - that I realised just how hard it is and how much skill, talent, drive and all that, it really took.

You suggest this in your sleevenote for the compilation covering The Lips’ indie years. I find what you wrote ridiculously self-effacing. I know people, myself included, who were blown away by a lot of that stuff. Just as an example, Telepathic Surgery was - and still is - unlike anything around.

I hope I don’t paint it so we look like idiots, but I realise that at the time, what we thought we were doing and what we really were doing were worlds apart. But what we always did have, and still do have, is a bunch of energy and enthusiasm for exploring - if not new ideas - at least, our own ideas. I think the compilation’s title - A Collection Of Songs Representing An Enthusiasm For Recording By Amateurs… The Accidental Career - says that.

Amateurs don’t have the same pressures to conform that “professionals” might have. As a result they’re more open to having fun…

And you can probably tell this by talkin’ to me. Sometimes it feels like if you have enough desire to do something, you’ll end up doing it. I think because we were so talentless and so skill-less, in some ways it comes across as being very original because we don’t sound like anybody else as most other bands can play better than we could.

I still think you’re being modest. I guess there was a lot of hardcore going on when you first started out. Did you feel as if you had any peers at the time?

Oh totally… Everybody. The Minutemen stayed at my house. We were fans of all styles of music. We could be fans of the Minutemen, Black Flag and the Meat Puppets at the same time as being fans of The Beatles, Echo And The Bunnymen. We never had any boundaries of what we liked.

Echo And The Bunnymen? I was wondering if your song, Bagful Of Thoughts (recorded in 1984), was intentionally Bunnymen-esque?

I think the band we thought we were sounding like was The Chameleons to tell you the truth.

Like thinking of The Flaming Lips being heard in Singapore in the ’80s, it’s strange to picture how such a relatively obscure British band like the Chameleons could have reached you in the American mid-west.

The first record has five amazing songs on it, but if you don’t get the right record you’ll be sorely disappointed… But that’s what we would do: We’d hear these bands and go “Oh, we want to make a song like that.” And since we had no abilities whatsoever…

But you can’t really be embarrassed by those early records? You actually called your album, Oh My Gawd…, “unpleasant.”

I think it’s just mixed very badly. It has no low end. I have to turn the low end up as far as it will go on every stereo I played it on. That’s mostly what I mean by unpleasant - not unpleasant as a creation, but unpleasant aesthetically as the sound coming out of the speakers is in the wrong phase sometimes. I don’t really feel embarrassed by them. Actually, I feel I can hardly relate to them. I can hardly think of how we did the records - mostly because it (was) a long time ago, and mostly because they were done in such a freakish kind of environment.

We’d literally spend days and days - up all day, up all night… sleeping on the studio floor for an hour and then waking up for the next day. They’d be these blurs of us trying to cram all these ideas into these sessions that we called “albums” at the time. And when we got done, that’s what the album would be; we really had no luxury of remixing or rethinking it or anything. I am quite proud of them really. I don’t know if I’m proud of them for what we intended to do. I see them as unique, but sometimes what we intended to do and what we ended up doing was completely different.

Were you making the music mostly for yourselves or did you consider an audience when you were making it?

At the time we’d hoped to gain an audience, but I really think the only way that people can really pursue music without having a bunch of rewards is because you like it. What I mean by “rewards” is things like fame, money and acclaim. You have to do it because you like it if don’t get those things. And I truly do think I’d do this even if no one cared. I wouldn’t be given as much money and I wouldn’t talk to as many journalists, but I’m sure - well, I know - I would really do it anyway.

I’m in one of those lucky positions where I do what I must do; and I do what I love to do; and I do get money, and all that stuff, for it. So at the moment it’s a good spot to be in.

When were you able to quit your day jobs?

I think it was around 1992 or 1993.

Really? So that would mean you were still working when you made records like In A Priest Driven Ambulance?

Well, we were touring then so we didn’t necessarily have full-time jobs. We toured all the time but we only made just enough to make our records and to live very badly. We all lived in the same side of a duplex which would be like a living room and a bedroom that would sometimes have as many as five grown men living in evil conditions. We were in our 20s, I was 28 or something, and we would probably have preferred to have day jobs to be able to live a little better, but our schedules didn’t permit.

Then luckily, after we did In A Priest Driven Ambulance, we got signed to Warner Brothers in, what still seems to me to be, some sort of bizarre accident. They gave us an insane amount of money for the way we were living at the time. So it was around the beginning of 1990 that we began this other side of our lives with Warner Brothers.

I have worked jobs here and there since then - I think in the summer of ‘92 I spent mowing lawns - but I think it’s been about six years since I’ve had to do anything other than just be in the band because since about ‘93 we’ve sold lots of records and made a lot of money playing shows. So it’s been quite easy to just be in a band and pursue music.

Was having all of you living together in the same place fractious? Some people couldn’t deal with it.

I don’t think we had a choice. And we were really immersed in exploring new ideas. If we thought that was the way we’d live from then on, we probably would have not have done it. (But) somewhere in the deeper recesses of our rational minds we felt we could probably make some money doing it, eventually.

I think we thought of it as just a temporary phase of poverty, and we would soon be out of that. We never thought we’d be rich. We thought we’d be a little bit above poverty or something. Luckily we jumped out of something I’d consider a stifling-poverty-sort-of-life to something that’s actually pretty comfortable.

Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue was your guitarist around this time…

Yeah. Me, him and Michael (Ivins - Lips’ bassist)… and even (producer) Dave Fridmann, would all play guitars on our records per se… But Jonathan definitely would be considered the fourth member of the band for Priest Driven Ambulance and Hit To Death In The Future Head.

Were The Rev already going when he left Flaming Lips?

I believe his band was going as early as 1986 or ‘87. I remember staying with them in Buffalo where Jonathan and all of them went to school at. Jonathan was a kind-of promoter that’d bring rock bands to play at his college. So if you went up there to play it was kind of obligatory that you’d stay with him at his place. That’s how we got to know him, Sean (Rev guitarist, aka “Grasshopper”) - even Dave Baker (original Rev vocalist). They were all making music even together back then.

How did you hook up with Dave Fridmann? As well as playing for Mercury Rev he must have been a particularly valuable friend to the Lips - producing nearly all your records for the last decade.

He was a mutual friend of Jonathan and Sean, who had done some recording with him. I think it was the summer of 1988 that we finally thought we should get a soundman to travel with us and he volunteered his services. And we’ve been joined at the hip ever since.

Is there much interaction between Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips now?

Not really any interaction, but not because we don’t like each other. I’ve seen Jonathan quite a bit this year because we played a bunch of shows with them and hung out quite a bit. I think that even when we were working together within the Flaming Lips framework, I knew he had his own ideas of what he wanted to do and I had mine.

One of the initial reactions to your Soft Bulletin seems to be to relate it to Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs. Isn’t that irritating for you?

Oh no, not at all. In some ways it’s good to have a comparison because sometimes I think we live in a nothing where there’s no other band that does anything remotely close to what we do. Sometimes that’s more frustrating than having a comparison. There are so many bands out there that I don’t think of as peers, but I love what they do.

I definitely respect and like what Jonathan does. He really pursues his own thing. I actually don’t think he listens to Flaming Lips music at all. I know for a fact that I listen to Mercury Rev stuff, but I would preface that by saying I listen to everything, so it wouldn’t surprise anyone to say I listen to Mercury Rev and I listen to other records at the same time.

To say that we influenced each other isn’t true but you can see where people would think that one record was made because of the other. I think we both actually think we’re doing something totally unique, but sometimes it ends up being something that’s quite similar.

And you share the same producer…

Yeah, working with Dave Fridmann ends up being we’re both pursuing things both through him. Discoveries I make get funnelled though Dave Fridmann… discoveries that Jonathan makes get funnelled though Dave Fridmann - so it doesn’t surprise me that there are some similarities.

Do you bother anticipating how people will regard your records? Do you guess what the reactions will be?

Not with “music people” like you yourself. Music people are interested in what we do because we do try very hard to be inventive. I worry about trying to sell records… fooling the public out there so we can keep getting enormous amounts of money.

I don’t know how comfortable you are with the idea of the “concept album,” but The Soft Bulletin could be seen as being one.

I would agree. It certainly isn’t by design. I say that because there were five or six other songs that we made but we didn’t put on there - not for any particular reason, it’s just that we weren’t happy with the mixes and we thought, “Well, we’ll finish those later on.” So we threw this batch together not thinking there was a particular concept.

But when I step back and listen to it now I hear these dramatic themes of love and death; and hopefulness; isolation; a borderline insanity idea… without it purposely being an identity we put into it. I hear it now and I think (the songs) definitely help each other out. I can see themes running through them definitely.

About the theme of love, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys said that with his Pet Sounds album, he experimented with “sounds that made the listener feel loved.” Were you aware of that with your song, Spoonful Weighs A Ton? It could be taken as a tribute to the Beach Boys, especially with the last line, “the sound they made was love.”

Oh boy, when you say it that way it sounds better than I could do myself. The whole song sounds like an analogy about what he was going for.

You met him, right?

I did meet him. I did actually do a pretty long interview with him to tell you the truth.

Was it good for you? He has something of a reputation…

Well, I was warned that he does not do interviews very good. You can see the way me and you say something and we bounce ideas back and forth and it becomes a conversation… this doesn’t happen with Brian Wilson. I thought I asked him some good questions that I wanted to know some answers to. He couldn’t say anything.

I asked him why he never used distorted guitars because he’s such a big Beatles fan and all that. I thought, “Well hell, you know, when they started using feedback and stuff like that, why didn’t you start doing that?” And his answer was: “Oh, because it had already been done, why should I bother?” My unspoken reply to that - I didn’t say it, but I should have - was: “Well, harmony vocals have been done and people have played pianos and vibraphones for 30 years now, but you do that.”

I found it to be kind of frustrating even though I was very pleasant with him. I didn’t walk away knowing anything about him that I didn’t know before. I guess the one thing I walked away knowing was that he’s genuinely very apprehensive and shy about his own music.

He should dig the positive vibes of The Flaming Lips. The aura is so strong on The Soft Bulletin. It seems to have a sense of intent - transmitting a manifesto of a Flaming Lips psyche.

I agree. I think it’s the most clearly-realised idea that I think I’ve ever had - even if it’s by accident. I hear it now and we even superseded our expectations and intentions with some of it and the things we intended to do. I do agree that some of it is like a glowing light of optimism sometimes. I think it’s based in a kind of realism, but a realism that’s lit up with optimism.

There never seemed to be much room for cynicism in The Flaming Lips…

Well, I think we tried! One example of that is when we were recording Wonderful World - which is a beautiful, beautiful, optimistic song… we were trying… and I don’t know why - we were trying to make it a cynical, sarcastic song. And whenever people hear it, even immediately after we did it, people would just glow they’d go, “Oh, it’s such a great song. It makes me happy…” And secretly we were going, “It’s not supposed to make you happy. It’s supposed to make you pissed off… supposed to make you mad.”

So we knew even back then. Even when we’re trying to be sinister we don’t pull if off very well, no matter how hard we try. I think that when we work on something to the extent we do, we inject our personality into it and get this thing across that is more optimistic and happy. So I have more or less surrendered to that.

When I do songs I do see that in the end I always manage to twist it so that even if it is tragic, at least there is some hope in it. Sometimes it’s just plain silly and you don’t need to inject any of that; but even when they’re serious, they feel positive.

But it’s not infantile or stupidly optimistic. You don’t shy away from reality. The lyrics of The Spark That Bled (from The Soft Bulletin) actually came as a shock. There’s a very Lips-style scene building up as you describe this positive “chain reaction,” but suddenly reality bursts in when you sing: “Too bad… in reality there was no reaction.”

I think that’s kind of what happens when you get engulfed in your imagination and your imagination has built everything up around you in such a good way. It is a shock when you have to realise this is the way the world is and we’re floating in outer space, and life is short, and death is sad. I agree that when you’re thrown back into reality it is a shock - but a good shock in a way.

I think the best way you can be is to be happy in a realistic way. I run into a lot of people who want to live in an un-livable bliss where they just want be happy all the time. This isn’t good. You have to have a wide range of emotions and reactions. You don’t want to walk around saying everything is groovy… especially when everything isn’t groovy.

I think with our songs you can tell we experience all that. Sometimes we’re very happy; sometimes we’re even depressed. But hopefully it’s based on realistic things that are happening in our life - and it’s our real life that’s making us happy, or sad, or bored, or any of those things.

Maybe that’s what makes The Soft Bulletin feel mature. I’m encouraged that a sense of mortality you develop as you get older doesn’t have to mess with the morality you construct when you’re younger. Songs like The Gash don’t pretend it’s not a struggle, but somehow the album is still like a rallying call that says it’s worth fighting the good fight.

I think I’ve always had some of that morality, it’s just I’d never been able to clearly communicate it. On some of our earlier records I was trying to be poignant and serious about things like love, and even the relationship with the universe and how confusing that can be, and I simply wouldn’t say it very well. But I am curious about those sort of things.

Sometimes I’m glad when I can communicate that to people as it lets them know what I’m thinking as opposed to them thinking I’m some nut who takes drugs and doesn’t know what he’s sayin’. I try to be as clear as I can. I think I just got lucky on The Soft Bulletin. With the sounds that we used, and the words that I used, sometimes they go together and it makes such a grand, cinematic almost, statement.

How do you pull it off live? You’ve said that you’re a recording artist rather than a performer now.

Well, we take our recordings with us. We bring some of the string sections, some of the drum sections and some of the stranger, un-reproducible elements with us on a backing tape and we play on top of them.

I hate to say it, but I think some of the songs actually come across as even more powerful when you see us play. They don’t lose any of their impact, they seem to gain this thing you can communicate when an audience is right in front of you. Sometimes I think records take longer to give you the impact. I think the way we’re doing it really complements the record.

How do audiences react?

So far I am utterly amazed that they seem to love it. We have people who’ve seen us for 10 years and they come and… I’ve actually seen grown men in the audience crying.

Well, it’s beautiful music.

But you don’t expect that at rock concerts. Especially with people who’ve seen thousands of concerts.

Ah, you’re being modest again…

Well, I expect them to be cynical and not react to these things… But I’ve seen it happen. So I’m encouraged that music really can touch people if it’s presented in the right way. I’ve seen it happen.

Note: Blast From The Past Message From Wayne Coyne (1999): Wayne Coyne would like to say thanks to all the people who say they like The Flaming Lips: “I’m glad if it’s moving them in any way at all.”

2009 UPDATE: Ben and Wayne later met in Paris where Ben gave Wayne the good news that Soft Bulletin was BigO’s album of the year and Wayne gave Ben passes for the Lips’ sold-out show with Pavement, also featuring Radar Brothers and an up-and-coming British act called Muse. The Flaming Lips went on to even more acclaim and success, winning Grammy’s and finally releasing Wayne’s long-awaited - and literally home-made - movie, Christmas on Mars, in 2008. Ben Harrison continues to keep it real, off-the-cuff and straight-from-the-heart with the psychopop and bop band called Etc. Visit their myspace page here (free downloads galore).