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Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Britt Daniel Interview

The Onion AV Club rules. They have good, short reviews for music, movies, books, DVDs, and video games. More often than not their judgments are correct in that, they agree with me.

Just kidding, sort of. Over the past six years or so I've looked into many of the books/bands/movies they were high on and agreed with them, after the fact.

They also have the Tolerability Index, which is funny, as well as Savage Love. They've added Random Rules lately, and a bunch of other shit that amuses me.

Today they posted an interview of Britt Daniel of Spoon that was really interesting (as were the comments after). Some tidbits:

  • On "The Underdog": "...it seemed like a Van Morrison song to me and then later a Paul Simon song..." (in the comments, one commenter notes that he left out Billy Joel, which is accurate).
  • On being a big rock star: "It surprises me when people expect me to be anything other than just a dude. I'm just a dude."
  • On his current playlist: "King Tubby. The Kinks. A.C. Newman. LCD Soundsystem."
  • On Spoon: "I think we're one of the best bands making records today, and do I think we should be selling more records than Maroon 5? Yeah, because I think we're better. That's if it were a just world. It's not a just world. Actually, why don't we put The Bravery in there instead? No, let's not use The Bravery. Who's a good band to use? [Interviewer]: Linkin Park? "Yeah! You can't get any worse than Linkin Park. Let's use that."
I agree, and I said as much at the show. I can't think of any other band that has consistently released as many high-quality albums--not singles, but albums--as Spoon has over the past decade.

Read the interview here. Also, here's the bio on King Tubby. I'd never heard of this dude, but he merits a War and Peace-sized bio on AMG, so he must be legit.

5 comments:

Chip Chanko said...

Did you guys see them in Chi?

As for the Billy Joel influences...he's also a chameleon of sorts pulling from different places "in the style of" so maybe better to go straight to the sources.

cc

Anonymous said...

remember when they opened for harvey danger and creeper lagoon at the 930 club back in '98? they had just been dropped by elektra that week and britt was all surly and then he broke a string on his acoustic during "waiting for the kid to come out" and just didn't feel like playing anymore after that. it was still a really good set.

we can all agree that "soft effects" is still the best spoon release, right?

--dm

Jimbromski said...

We missed them in Chicago, it was Jumbo Slice's fault, let him tell you the sordid story.

I haven't heard Soft Effects, I'm a johnny-come-lately fan from the Gimme Fiction era. I've listened to the stuff from Girls Can Tell onward, so I'll have to check it out. If I had any sense I would have seen them in 98 but I'm always a few yrs late to the party.

BTW the link to the interview went to page 2, I fixed it now. Sorry.

Chip Chanko said...

My favorite will always be Kill the Moonlight until they do Kill the Moonlight 2.

Jumbo Slice said...

I loved Telephono back in the day, but then I didn't pay much attention to Spoon until Kill The Moonlight. It's really tough to pick a favorite though. If forced, I'd choose Gimme Fiction but it's like having to choose my favorite niece (Lauren) or nephew (Caden). Oh wait, I guess it's not that hard.