Fluxblog Interview With Rob Sheffield, Part Two

Previously on Fluxblog: Rob Sheffield has a lovely new book called Love Is A Mix Tape, and I’m talking to him about it, and other things. Here’s part one of the interview.

Matthew Perpetua: How did you get into writing about music?

Rob Sheffield: I always wrote about music, even when I was a little kid. I started sending out clips and freelancing. My first published piece was a Spin review of the second Tiffany album in 1988, in an issue with Nick Cave on the cover. Not as good as the first Tiffany record, but still pretty great.

MP: Was Renée also doing this, or did you encourage her to get into that game? I remember you both being in the Spin Alternative Record Guide, which was a big deal to me when I was a teenager.

RS: Renée caught the cooties from me, I’m afraid. Poor girl. She was a fiction writer, she was also a huge music fan, so it came naturally for her. She was a much better writer, funnier, she had that “casual easygoing” vibe. She did a lot more writing on the West Coast, something about her southern sensibility, I guess. She wrote for Option a lot, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

MP: Is this the first time you’ve written a full book?

RS: Yes. The Spin guide was the first book project I was involved in, and it was loads of fun. Renée did a particularly fine essay on Everything But The Girl, and MC Lyte too, and Marshall Crenshaw. It’s probably weird for somebody who didn’t grow up in the ’80s to realize how much we all loved Marshall Crenshaw. The dB’s are like that too. Everybody had their minds blown by the dBs, and today nobody under 35 has even heard of them. “Wine in plastic cups, listening to the wind, I would tell you everything, where do I begin…”

MP: See, that’s how I think a lot of bands from this era are going to be. “Really, you all loved the Decemberists?” Not that the Decemberists totally suck, but it’s hard to make a strong argument for them being this great band.

RS: Last fall I walked into a friend’s room and said, Why are you playing Emerson Lake and Palmer? It was the Decemberists.

MP: Oh wow, it must have been the new one, right? “The Island.”

RS: Yes indeedy.

MP: I always feel like the people I hate are the ones I’m doomed to live with forever. I’ll be hearing all about Sufjan in the afterlife.

RS: It’s surprising how temporary some of the people you hate are, like Wilson Phillips. I assumed those girls would be annoying me the rest of my life, but they were gone in two years. And I missed them! If I knew how temporary they were gonna be, I would have enjoyed them more. You know, this might sound weird, but the Talking Heads were in that Wilson Phillips category too.

MP: How so?

RS: In the mid ’80s, when the Heads were running out of ideas, we all figured they’d hang around and keep annoying us forever. If I knew how temporary they would be, I would have enjoyed them more, but they were so inescapable.

MP: I remember being sorta surprised when I first found out that the Talking Heads were this critically respected band. I always thought they were this corny 80s pop group, at least until I was 14 or 15. I think I found out in that Spin book. I just knew that I liked “Once In A Lifetime,” “Psycho Killer,” and “And She Was.”

RS: Well, on behalf of the Spin book, let me apologize for your having been recommended to purchase Naked. Or Little Creatures.

MP: I never did, no worries.

RS: But Fear of Music and Remain in Light? BEYOND GREAT.

MP: Definitely those two. I like the live record a lot. I bought a tape of that when I was 14 and that was good enough for me until I was 20.

RS: The live record is phenomenal. And it is SUCH a tape. Everybody had that on tape. It SOUNDS like a tape. Everybody had a tape with Remain in Light on one side and Fear of Music on the other. Everybody in 1985 had a tape with Little Creatures on one side and Fables of the Reconstruction on the other. In 1983 it was War and Murmur. You always like one side better. Summer ’83, everybody had a tape with Speaking in Tongues/Synchronicity. In 1986, everybody had a tape that was split Lifes Rich Pageant and True Stories, but everybody taped over it with Raising Hell and Licensed to Ill. In 1988, it was Nation of Millions and Lovesexy. I taped a Sonny Rollins record over Lovesexy, it just didn’t fit. You’re Living All Over Me and Sister, that was another universal one. I miss that–like, what would be the right album to put on the other side of Boys and Girls in America?

MP: There’s a few songs that you mentioned in the book that you sent over — how did you first get a hold of that Grenadine song, “In A World Without Heroes”?

RS: It was the “slow one at the end of Side 1” A million times better than the rest of the album.

MP: Those are the best songs for mix tapes! You’ve got to give those orphans a good home.

RS: They came up with this brilliant, breathtaking, mind-crumplingly great song and they had NO IDEA, they didn’t even give it a real title. They had no idea. Grenadine wasn’t even their real band. We went to see Mark Robinson play and yelled for it and he had no idea what we were talking about. So you DO have to give those orphans a home. I am Angelina Jolie, this song is Maddox. Mix tapes, like blogs, are perfect for rounding up strays. As Uncle Jesse would say “shepherd to lost sheep.” I put “In a World Without Heroes” on a million tapes for people, and never got a single person to like it, or even pretend.

MP: How did you find Dump’s “International Airport.” You say that it’s your favorite song. It was a lot…longer…than I had expected.

RS: I first heard “International Airport” driving in the hills, late at night, summer 95. Most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. I wanted it to NEVER END, and it didn’t! It sounds like somebody compressed Pet Sounds and Wild Honey into one song. Everybody tries shit like that but nobody, NOBODY gets it right — the way it builds from tender little jangle strums and then gets monstrously loud and noisy without ever losing that tenderness.

MP: Where do you normally sequence it when you put it on tapes for people? It sounds like one of those songs that only work at the beginning, or the end.

RS: First song on Side 2, definitely. Easy to skip!

MP: That makes sense. First song on side 1 should be really accessible. Something that says “hey, welcome to the show!”

RS: “International Airport” answers the question, what would Pet Sounds sound like as a guitar solo. Not Pet Sounds with a guitar solo, but what if the guitar solo WAS Pet Sounds? Kind of like “Marquee Moon.” I’m always obsessed with that song because it answers the question what would “Visions of Johanna” sound like as a guitar solo? Not a guitar solo in the middle of “Visions of Johanna,” but what if a guitar solo had all the emotional chill and sinisterness and twistiness of “Visions of Johanna”? “International Airport” is like that for me — what if a guitar solo had all the emotional range of Pet Sounds?

MP: I’ve put “Marquee Moon” on so many mixes. It’s such a staple. I remember this one that I made that I liked a lot, I made a bunch of variations on it, and it was called “The Darkness Doubled.”

RS: “Marquee Moon” is maybe the only song where you can fill a whole tape with different versions! I have never heard a version I didn’t love. The Portland ’78 version, 18 minutes long, just builds and builds…

(to be concluded…)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Lemon Party, Calvin Johnson, and Lee Hazlewood.