Fluxblog Interview With Rob Sheffield, Part Three

Previously on Fluxblog: Rob Sheffield wrote a great memoir called Love Is A Mix Tape, and I’m talking to him about that, and some other things. Here’s part one and here’s part two.

Rob Sheffield: “International Airport” is very Charlottesville. When I moved there James McNew had the only fanzine in town, And Suddenly.

Matthew Perpetua: I wish that I could read a lot of those old fanzines. It would be great if there were books reprinting them, like big telephone book sized things, sorta like the zine equivalent of those Hyped2Death compilations.

RS: I don’t understand why those don’t exist yet. Somebody could scan them into a website, I guess. Did you ever read Conflict, Cosloy’s ’80s zine?

MP: Only fragments that I’ve seen reprinted here and there. I really like Cosloy’s writing.

RS: The entire run should be a DVD or something. No, a book’s better, more fun to read on the subway or under a tree, the way I used to obsessively read fanzines.

MP: Yeah, there’s a limit to the length of something that I can comfortably read on a computer screen.

RS: Phil Dello’s Radio On, in the 1990s… literally the best zine ever. Reading computer screens is more like watching TV, less like reading.

MP: Since you have the frame of reference, how do you think music blogs rate compared to that scene?

RS: Well, I’m from a fanzine frame of mind so I’m definitely biased. I liked reading them over and over, and blogs aren’t meant to be read twice. Not putting them down or anything — they’re supposed to be immediate, like the UK pop press or something. I’m always surprised how little fanzine stuff gets reprinted now. It amazes me so many people haven’t had the chance to read Conflict or even Forced Exposure. Why Music Sucks, Chickfactor, Teenage Gang Debs, Swellsville, Too Fun Too Huge…those were different times.

MP: I mostly just know Gerard Cosloy from Matador, and Forced Exposure as being these nice people who send me weird records.

RS: Before Cosloy was a mogul or a sports writer, he was the funniest writer-about-music ever. He compared Jandek’s harmonica solos to watching a man with no arms climb a hill in a wheelchair…and MEANT THAT AS A COMPLIMENT, which is why it works.

MP: Did you ever make one yourself?

RS: I never did a zine. I wrote for friends’ zines. You would wait six months for the new one, and then spend six months reading it. The type was always too small to save on Xerox costs.

MP: Did you use a magnifying glass?

RS: I will probably need glasses someday because of the zines. Frank Kogan’s book has amazing stuff from his zine, and other people’s zines. Usually with blogs I like, I print them out and read them at a coffee shop. Life’s short. “Eyesight is precious,” as Gert Stein used to say. Blogs can do stuff zines couldn’t do… like move fast.

MP: Yeah, I think I would never have lasted long in zines because to me, the thing I enjoy is the daily routine, and moving on through things and not lingering on anything for too long. I like the challenge of having to constantly find new things.

RS: You write like a zine guy. (That’s meant as a compliment.) You know the Great Plains song “Letter to a Fanzine”?

MP: Nope.

RS: “Isn’t my haircut really intense, isn’t Nick Cave a genius in a sense…” Source of the eternal question: “Why do punk rock guys go out with new wave girls?”

MP: Who do new wave guys go out with?

RS: Lydia Lunch.

MP: Man, who is the modern Lydia Lunch?

RS: Chrissie Hynde…is she a punk rock girl or a new wave girl? Not that any new wave guy would ever get to go out with her. The modern Lydia Lunch, that’s a tough one.

MP: I’m thinking that Chrissie Hynde is ultimately just the Rocker Girl, which transcends punk or new wave.

RS: True that. I love Karen O because she has the new wave heart and the punk rock voice. “Cheated Hearts” proves that “Pretty Vacant” is the same song as “Into the Groove.” I never noticed that before. She is Lydia’s Lunchbox.

MP: I like Karen O the best when she’s comfortable enough to just be herself. I feel like she’s too often trying to impress us with antics and she never gets that people like her for stuff like “Maps” and “Our Time.”

RS: She kills me. See, “Maps,” that proves that Jerry Butler’s “For Your Precious Love” is the same song as Siouxsie’s “Spellbound.”

MP: “Maps” sounds like a song that was written especially for mix tapes.

RS: Yes yes yes. It would be the first song on Side 2, right?

MP: It’s the kind of song that says the kind of thing people feel like they can’t verbalize.

RS: Funny, though, it says it with the guitar and the voice, not so much the words.

MP: Yeah, the lyrics are like subtitles. I mean, that’s really the job of artists, but especially musicians. To provide that service, to express those things we just can’t say.

RS: I have no idea what I would do

without them to provide that service for me. I feel like I’m still learning how to talk from musicians. James Honeyman-Scott’s guitar, you know? It always sounds like his guitar is calling and her voice is responding. I always wished I had a cool name like James Honeyman-Scott. Rob Honeyman-Sheffield.

MP: Is his name actually Honeyman?

RS: It was his middle name I guess?

MP: People always ask me if my surname is real, and it is.

RS: Perpetua’s a righteous name. Catholic much?

MP: Thank you for catching that! Most people are not up on their Catholic saints.

RS: Perpetua was hardcore.

MP: I should marry some girl named Felicity.

RS: My God, that would be great. Or maybe some girl named Help, Our Lady Of. The record collector/taper/blogger mentality is really close to Catholicism in many people. Collecting relics, obsessing over hagiography. Show me an altar boy and I’ll show you a potential record geek. Isn’t doing a music blog kind of a pastoral calling? You’re offering up daily bread! The text is like the parish newsletter. You get the regulars who come every morning, then the casual ones who just show up on your blog for Christmas and Easter.

MP: I never really had any strong Catholic upbringing — I went through religious instruction and got confirmed, but my family wasn’t especially religious, and I didn’t go to Catholic school. I don’t have a Catholic Block inside of my head.

RS: But you had all those years of CCD, right?

MP: Yup. I played CYO basketball, the whole thing.

RS: You can still say the Act of Contrition, I bet. Do you cross yourself on planes?

MP: Nope.

RS: Me neither. Why ask for trouble? But I do cross myself in mosh pits, that shit’s just scary.

MP: I’m such a wuss, I’ve never really been in one. I just get out of the way. I saw the Blood Brothers last year and just moved to the side.

RS: Ok, shit, I loved that Blood Brothers show. What would go on the other side of the Blood Brothers album? Drum’s Not Dead?

MP: Mmm. Probably something really intense that I don’t listen to. Lightning Bolt? Something to make the Blood Brothers sound poppy. Wolf Eyes?

RS: Morrissey.

MP: That works!

RS: It’s funny, I remember my Pazz & Jop ballot in 1988, I had the Pet Shop Boys number 1, followed by Morrissey, Public Enemy, Sonic Youth, Scritti Politti… and the weird thing is all 5 of them had new records LAST year! That’s just strange. The rest of my 1988 top ten is harder to remember…EPMD, Stetasonic, a Fairport Convention BBC thing, and I’m also pretty sure I voted for a bloody-curdlingly awful Brit-psych record by the Bounty Hunters, who were a spin off of a Swell Maps spin off. Or a spin off of a spin off of a These Immortal Souls spin off. I was a barrel of laughs back then. I’m accustomed to being the only Scritti Politti fan in the room (or the area code), now they’re so huge!

MP: They have a nice little cult now.

RS: Maybe it’s that great Simon Reynolds book…it made me play my old Pop Group tapes! It’s funny, Scritti Politti went through all these principled contortions to finally decide, hey, you know what? Indie rock! I’m gonna play indie rock! Wry, literate, rueful indie rock! Kind of like…Aztec Camera?

MP: And do a bit of rapping, on the side.

RS: Cupid & Psyche taught me so much about pop, about the connections between disco and eros. Now he’s worked hard to forget everything he taught me! And of course more respect to him for trying something different, but it’s funny he was so into the tawdry disco and now it’s just fingers strumming catgut.

MP: When you first heard that, were you totally aware that was what the songs were about? I came to those records having read about the content and ended up wanting more from the songs.

RS: Lucky me, I loved the Scritti songs first. “Perfect Way” was an actual radio hit. Better than R.E.M.’s “Perfect Circle,” maybe even better than Husker Du’s “Perfect Example.” Definitely better than Talking Heads’ “Perfect World” or Jermaine Jackson’s theme from “Perfect.” That Cupid & Psyche album is just like honey.

(Click here to buy a Great Plains retrospective from Amazon, and here to buy Scritti Politti’s Cupid & Psyche 85 from Insound.)