Update on Kinsella Interview

Though I had some technical glitches, my interview with Tim Kinsella with an introduction and a few edits has now appeared on the TC Daily Planet. I'm very glad I was able to get this out before his show tonight!

Tim Kinsella Interview

Well, I'm in a little bit of a pinch here. A few days ago, I had the opportunity to interview Tim Kinsella before his upcoming show with Make Believe here this Saturday. I thought I'd be able to post the interview on the TC Daily Planet since I'm a registered user and I thought they offer open uploading. But apparently that's not how the Daily Planet works, or at least I haven't been able to figure out how to get my interview uploaded. So while I try to find a way to publish it, I thought I might as well at least post the interview here. I sure enjoyed this conversation. . .

Tony: First, I just heard that you were leaving Make Believe. Do you know if the band is going to continue to record and perform without you?

Tim: That’s the plan, yeah.

Tony: Do you know if they will have vocals at all?

Tim: I don’t know if they know what they know exactly what they are going to do yet. I mean they’re at practice right now, and I’m at home, so . . . .I don’t know what the plan is. Now is a good time for me to quite because we have the new record mostly written, too much to throw away. But the songs still aren’t developed enough, so [Make Believe] can figure out a way, if they want them to be instrumental or bring in someone new or something.

Tony: And will your vocals appear on the new album?

Tim: No, no. That’s what I’m saying that they have time to re-write, minus that aspect.

Tony: Are you going to be coming to the show in Minneapolis?

Tim: Yeah, I’m going to play these last two shows.

Tony: You just finished producing a film?

Tim: Yeah, I wrote it and directed it, and my wife and I produced it. She edited it. Our friend Chris Strong shot it. W have a premier August 15^th at this theater here [Chicago’s Chopin Theatre]. We’ve just been working on it all the time this last year. We shot it last August. So we’re very close now. We’re about 98% there now.

Tony: This is your first filmmaking experience?

Tim: Yeah, I’ve made a couple shorts before. And my wife works as an editor and has made a few documentaries and I’ve helped her with stuff. But this is the first feature.

Tony: Have you felt there is any similarity between filmmaking and musicmaking?

Tim: Oh, very much, yeah. I mean, the few people who have seen it are kinda shocked how much it has reminded them of a Joan of Arc record. I took that as a good sign. I’m not trying to make Joan of Arc records in a certain way, and I’m not trying to make this film in a certain way. I took it as a sign, I must have been able to express something true to myself clearly, if that same quality comes across.

Tony: Are there any particular filmmakers who have been influential to you in terms of filmmaking or general perception?

Tim: Yes, sure. I had a film minor in college. Not with Make Believe, but with other records I’ve been involved with in the last few years, I’ve felt like a lot of film theory was influencing the dynamics and pacing of how records were coming together, sorta the whole approach, having a lot of collaborators. . . . That’s been true a couple times in records.

I’ve really enjoyed that I’ve been totally immersed in this film for the last year except for when we go on tour. Other than that it’s all day, every day. It’s been a few years since making a record has felt like that for me. So it’s very exciting for me.

Tony: You are still planning on making music with Joan of Arc? According to a press release Joan of Arc has two albums in the works, is that correct?

Tim: Once, twice a week, I’ll be playing and something will sound good to me, and I’ll go in my little room and hit record. Then I forget about it, and I just have this pile of songs sitting around without any sort of ambition for when the record will get made. It’s just sort of a natural thing. This is how Joan of Arc records have come together for a while, I just get to point where I’m like – wow, there’s 60 songs here, let’s check them out. Without keeping count or anything, I just move some into a folder, some good, some throw away. And then there’s 25 songs that sound okay to me, and within that folder, it’s just weeding out.

Tony: Do you conceive of songs first more abstractly or mentally then move to a point where you can make it into something that’s made out of actual sound?

Tim: I think it’s more of a matter of trying to stay out of my own way. And trying to dig deep without any sort of editing or self-censorship, without – how should I say this? - any sort of logic. I don’t want my rational mind involved in it. My rational mind has enough preoccuptions, with going to work, and trying to make rent, and remembering to pay car insurance bills and stuff like that. Ideally music will be this liberating force. I think the greatest potential for those moments is actually in performing when you can sorta tap into a shared mind, with the performers and the audience.

Tony: I know that Make Believe played for a while on an all Christian venue tour. I was wondering whose idea was that, what were the motivations behind that, how did you feel about it?

Tim: You know how Christian culture sorta appropriates things that they think might corrupt the youth, then defangs it , and makes a Christian version. We were vaguely aware of there being a Christian indie rock scene but didn’t really have any interaction with it. Then this band, Me Without You, asked us to go on tour with them. At first we were like - no way, we’re not going do some Christian tour. But then we talked about it for a couple days and we realized it would be an incredible opportunity to have access. . . I mean that’s sorta like the whole idea of punk rock, to be able to go into different contexts and drop some kind of bomb. In general at Make Believe shows, people show up knowing what they’re getting into and just having their expectations satisfied. We decided that we could do the tour and go out there sort of being confrontation towards people’s assumptions.

Tony: Yeah, I really wish I had been able to attend one of those shows, not impurify the rest of the audience. But it definitely reminded me, hearing about that, of the Sex Pistol’s tour of the South.

Tim: Yeah

Tony: That sort of clash being the performer and the audience.

Tim: Yeah. There was definitely a small group of people there for us every night who seemed more excited than more because of the strange context and the confrontational aspects of it. I should say Me Without You are some of the coolest guys ever, and they’re our friends now. There were certain days we hung out. I think they are frustrated with Christian culture and how it operates. They were frustrated enough with Christian culture to ask us to do the tour.

Tony: Right now, do you think the indie rock scene is part of countercultural movement? Do you think rock music is part of any sort of subversion or break with more commercial culture?

Tim: I think there will always be a countercultural scene. But I don’t think it’s very related to “indie rock” as a style. I think indie rock as an infrastructure or like a business model, might the way that bands like that exist. Like I said before, music is just a means of communication and it could be anything. There’s definitely a lot of bands that I’m very excited about, that seem very vital and engaged in the present, finding new connection between neurons. But I don’t think of indie rock is a social force, I think it’s more lifestyle music.

Tony: You’ve been involved in indie rock infrastructure for a long time. Have you felt many changes in the indie rock infrustructure since the early 90’s?

Tim: Many. There were incredible changes since the early nineties. There’s sorta like two camps. There’s the indie rock bands who are there because the ideas they are trying to express aren’t represented anywhere within the dominant culture and this is an infrastructure that will allow these more subversive ideas to be shared. And then there’s sort of the indie rock camp that are just like the farm league to the major labels. I mean potentially millions of teenagers could love it, and it would satisfy the same sort of nostalgia, or whatever popular music satisfies in someone. They could potentially satisfy the same requirement in anyone who hears it; it’s just people haven’t heard it yet. Like a band like Postal Service, I’ve never heard them, but I have a sense that they are not very subversive. That’s indie rock, right?

Tony: Yeah, I certainly think that’s what would go under what a lot of people would conceive of indie rock or what comes to mind first often with that phrase.

Tim: Yeah, I don’t feel a connection to that.

Tony: Do you read reviews or other sorts of music journalism about your own stuff or other stuff you listen to?

Tim: Yes. When Joan of Arc first started, in the early days of Internet music journalism, I was really totally stunned by the response. The totally vitriolic response. It had never really even occurred to me to read the reviews, it wasn’t something I thought about. But then I remember getting a press kit from Jade Tree (a Joan of Arc label), opening it, and just reading something on the front page about what a horrible person I was, all this stuff. I read the whole packet. It was like all this hateful stuff that seemed to have little to do with the music. I was really shocked. So I had to purposefully not read stuff for a while. But I occasionally read stuff now. I think I’m over letting it affect me. The me that I’m most in the habit of being every day feels very little connection to guy that I read about in most of the reviews. So it doesn’t really phase me.

Tony : I don’t know if you’ve thought much about this or if you really want to answer this. But I’m wondering if you’ve thought about what about some of your work did produce such a vitriolic response in certain parts of the indie rock community?

Tim: Well. When Joan of Arc started, there was a real self-consciousness about it, a self-conscious confrontational aspect. We didn’t we know what we really wanted to sound like. But we were away there were these sort of micro-scenes that I felt a part of, and detached, from all over Chicago. There were all these no-wave bands, free jazz bands, and all these emo bands, all these hardcore bands. I was really engaged in all of them, and I could see these communities that were specific to certain genre expectations. I think really our only goal as a band when we set out was to be sure we couldn’t really be embraced to any one of these little micro-scenes that we all sorta felt a connection to. Like, I feel a real connect to no-wave bands, but I don’t want to just be ghettoized to only being part of this or that. So I think we sorta frustrated people in that way, I guess. I don’t know.

In defense of the journalists, I was probable a bit cocky at 23. I’m not super hung up on it or regret it or anything. I don’t remember specific stories of - Oh god, was I an idiot! But I imagine that if I now met myself as a 23 year old, I would maybe be annoyed by that guy. I thought I had things figured out a lot more than I think I do now.

Tony: Do you feel your disposition as performer has changed that much, or is this more of outside of the stage that you’re talking about these changes happening?

Tim: I don’t know. I try not to think of my disposition as a performer. There was maybe more of a self-conscious confrontational aspect back then than there is now. And I think that confrontational aspect faded, then was rekindled at the first immediate thrust of Make Believe. At that point, this was before the 2004 election and before even John Kerry represented some sort of alternate voice. I was just really overwhelmed by this fascistic, single monotone voice of power everywhere. There was no voice of dissent anywhere in popular culture. I was very aware of wanting to be confrontational and trying to shake people out of some comfort zone. Whereas, now I don’t feel that being confrontational in public toward an ambiguous mass of people is the most effective means of protest for me these days.

Tony: I saw some of those early Make Believe shows, and I thought that sense of confrontation was what made it so memorable

Tim: Thanks. It’s also something you’re bound to get tired of. And it’s not something I would want to fake. I’m kinda tired of it. I like the idea of being in a band and playing a lot. But it would need to be a band with wider parameters of what it could be. I couldn’t do it as just a singer, I’d need to play guitar too. (Unlike many of his other bands, in Make Believe shows, Kinsella would sing without playing an instrument).

Tony: One last question. You’ve been such a prolific songwriter for so long now. I’m wondering if you ever go through any sort of songwriter’s block, or if you go through any periods where you just don’t have anything you can materialize into sound? Or does it just keep on coming?

Tim: I don’t know. Like I said about how Joan of Arc records come together, I don’t really put any effort in to it. Not to say it’s an effortless thing that just comes to me, I just mean I don’t worry about it.

Tony: So you don’t really set aside certain times of the day and say, this is my song writing time - or anything like that?

Tim: I used to be far more disciplined in that way. I definitely feel that to-whom-much- is-given, much-is-expected kind of responsibility. I feel like I am really luck. I mean, I work, I’m a bartender. I’m not really getting away of anything. But on a global scale, in a global context, I feel so lucky. I’ve been able to travel and do what I love. But I definitely feel a responsibility to work harder at it. But I don’t care if I’m not ever able to write another song. I don’t care, it doesn’t really matter. I guess that’s why I don’t get writers’ bloc, because I don’t care if I do.

Short Stories

I have had ambitious goals for summer reading, thinking I would make a whole syllabus for myself. But I’ve been jumping around different projects and ideas too much to really attain this goal.

Besides for finishing Marylin Robinson’s Housekeeping, the only fiction I’ve been reading has been short stories. There’s a lot I like about this form, particularly the time it takes to complete a work. Whereas novels can do a lot with change over time and different sorts of development, short stories can provide very interesting perspectives on particular moments and states. Yet it’s been hard for me to find the kind of short stories I most enjoy. Basically, I’m looking for short stories offer some sort of radical perspective or perspectives on some aspect of life. My favorite examples are just about anything David Foster Wallace has written. He’s able to do all sorts of things to cut into a scene from different angles to make it fresh and provocative. Yet, I also like more traditional narratives that usually rely on the thinking of thoughtful and original character’s to complexify and turn over their realities into something interesting. A good example of this that I picked up recently was the neurotic minds in Richard Ford’s Women With Men, a collection of three long short stories (an awkward phrase, I know, but I think that’s the language of the trade these days).

But I’ve been trying to get away from the old standbys and seek out some new writers. Since I don’t have many fiction-reading friends now (except you, Dave, who I should turn to), I’ve just been searching for new writers that literary magazines or other authors have named as good ones. I checked out a couple of short story collections based on Granta’s list of Best of Young American Novelists. I read a smattering of stories from writers on this list, and so far didn’t find anything close to what I was looking for.

Another tactic I’ve tried is reading stories from the collection Best New American Voices 2007 guest edited by Sue Miller. This is an anthology that every year selects stories solicited only from writing programs, from summer programs to M.F.A. programs to more community-based classes like Boston’s Grub Street or The Loft in Minneapolis. This year, and perhaps every year for all I know, both the series editors forward and the guest editors introduction begins with a defense of M.F.A. writing programs. One interesting observation made in both pieces is how writing workshops and small literary journals (often associated with academic institutions) have come to exert a much larger influences on the short story scene as general interest magazines publishing fiction have declined. Sue Miller makes the argument that with the new diversity found among students in these programs, American short stories have become more “multifarious, stranger, richer . . . less responsive to any particularly aesthetic.”

I’m not so sure. I think many of these stories do have a “workshoppy” quality, though I don’t know if this says as much about the students in writers workshops or the editorial regimes. More than anything, in these sorts of collections, I feel like I read a lot of good writing without insight. Certainly, I recognize that kind of insight I’m looking for only represents one way of making a good story (I also really like many stories without this quality), I just don’t know why this kind of writing is so hard to find. It seems to me that there’s a real fascination with what I might call, very cautiously, simple-minded characters in short stories. These characters might be portrayed as having complex lives, ambivalent feelings, etc. Some represent sophistication in an urbane sort of way. But rarely do writers tap into the struggling minds of the characters to flesh out original or jolting ways of perceiving the world.

If anyone has some suggestions for contemporary books that might fit what I’m looking for, drop me some recommendations.

Another Threat to Net Neutrality: Copyright Cops

It sounds like AT&T is cooking up a new plan to get Internet users, media activist and media scholars all hot and bothered. It’s a new front against Net Neutrality both on an ideological and technical level. The plan is that AT&T will somehow create a technology to monitor their mammoth network, searching out copyrighted material uploaded to the Internet. According to a good article by Geoff Duncan at Digital Trends, this is the first time a large Internet provider has assumed the role of “copyright cop.” Because such a move will mean AT&T will creep into and discriminate against the content of Internet users’ traffic, this plan raises all sorts of ethical concerns as well as questions about what the unintended technological effects could be (Duncan suggests a new round of technology wars between providers and uploaders and problems uploading copyrighted material even when its legal) . Net Neutrality, Digital IP Rights, Surveillance . . . if AT&T continues to pursue this plan I suspect all these hot themes might help awaken some media theorists from their activist slumber.

AT&T and other big telecommunication companies clearly seem to be losing the battle of minds in their fight against net neutrality. Every segment of the public, once aware of the issue, seems to strongly favor an Internet in which all users can access any startup webpage creator’s site just about as easily as big corporate sites. The arguments offered by the telecommunication companies in their astroturf faux-populist campaign against Net Neutrality (Hands Off the Internet) have been glaringly pathetic: the smokescreen claim that Net Neutrality laws would be a layer of bureaucracy, the spurious claim that telecoms need to charge content providers for a new sources of revenue to build network infrastructure up and out, and, my personal favorite, the if-there-ain’t-a-problem-yet-why-fix-it argument. But now they’re trying to tap into an issue that the public seems more genuinely conflicted about – intellectual property rights and piracy.

In addition to Duncan’s article, you can find out more about AT&T’s plan on a Huffington Post entry by Josh Silver. It looks like this idea first surfaced to the public at large through an interview with AT&T Vice President James Ciccino printed in the L.A. Times. More general info on Net Neutrality and the campaign to keep can be found on the Save the Internet homepage.

Make Believe

I still enjoy going to music shows much of the time, but there are only a few bands that really I count on to give me a visceral sense of engagement, especially: Faggot (http://www.myspace.com/aidsfaggot), the Knotwells (http://myspace.com/theknotwells), and Har Mar Superstar (www.harmarsuperstar.com). More than anyone, I remain admittedly obsession with the otherworldly performances of Tim Kinsella. My anticipation will begin to swell weeks before a show, and it will usually leave me with unshakable visions and fantasies for weeks afterwards. That’s why I’m overjoyed to hear that one of his bands, Make Believe, will be performing at the Cedar Cultural Center on June 30^th. Get tickets right away!

Tim’s performance often have the feel of something important, of some kind of transformational experience. A contortion of body, facial expressions and, on a more abstract level, emotion itself. My reaction, of course, may be a bit idiosyncratic. I’m not claiming any sort of transcendental sublime to Make Believe, tho the only reason I feel the need to make such a qualification is because I know my enthusiasm for him will make me sound like an adolescent extolling a pop messiah. Tim’s music is one of those rare glimmers of inspiration that unleashes a hyperbolic response in me.

Save Small Magazines!

In the midst of hundreds of cable channels, a full dial of radio stations, and maybe billions of webpages, investigative journalism and thoughtful cultural and political analysis still thrives more in small magazines and newspapers more than in any other medium. I'm thinking of magazines ranging from Mother Jones to The Nation to Bitch to the International Socialist Review . Yes, blogs too can be good spots for analysis but not much yet in the way of investigative journalism and blog posts (like this one) are usually whipped out with much less care than a well-written magazine article (not that speed is always bad, but it has its disadvantages for sure).

Whether such magazines, or newspapers, are in danger of becoming obsolete in an Internet age, I really don't know. Certainly, such a dodo bird fate does not seem imminent just because of the net. But there's a new threat on the horizon for small magazines in the U.S. - a proposal for post rate hikes that will hit small publishers especially hard. The postal service initially proposed a plan for an across-the-board rate hike of 11.5% for all magazines, which most magazines had been prepared to accept. But then instead of accepting this plan proposed by the postal service itself, the Postal Regulatory Commission (a separate entity in charge of determining rates) decided to accept a modified version of a proposal put forward by media giant Time Warner. Time-Warner, of course, happens to own Time and People, two of the highest circulating magazines in the U.S.

The Time-Warner plan is very complicated and has all the smacks of neoliberal paternalism, rewarding publishers for good behavior, like bundling mail to be sent in particular areas, generating their own special labels, etc. But what these rewards end up doing is none other than providing further advantage to corporatization and large-scale operations. The complexity of the calculations makes it hard to know exactly what the hike will be for each magazine, but a study by McGraw-Hill estimated that many small magazines would see a 20-30% hike instead of the 10-12% that that they expected (see a press release from Sen. Sanders: http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/0501-03.htm). Presumably, Time and People would do rather well under the new plan. Small magazines had very little time to comment on this plan before it was accepted; it is set to go in effect July 15th. Now, magazines across the political spectrum from the National Review to The Nation are banning together to fight this hike. Many magazines are saying these rate hikes will force them to fold. The best site for information about this issue and ways to get involved is the Free Press's page: http://action.freepress.net/freepress/postal_explanation.html.

As media activist and historian Robert McChesney reminds us, it's important to remember than from the beginning of the U.S. postal system, postal rates for small magazines and newspapers have always been subsidized. The need for this is to foster a public sphere and the circulation of diverse views and information. Let’s not give up on print culture just yet!

I've cross-posting this entry on Matt May's Socialism for Gunslinger:
http://democraticgunslinger.blogspot.com/.

Hopefully, I'll soon figure out how to get my links back up!