Fluxblog Interview With Mark Richardson!

Mark Richardson is the managing editor of Pitchfork, and in my opinion, one of the site’s best writers. He’s consistently fair and thoughtful, and has a gift for writing about complex, arty works in layman’s terms, both humble and erudite. In other words, he’s the polar opposite of the worst stereotype of a “Pitchfork writer.” Mark’s first book, a volume about the Flaming Lips’ 1997 album Zaireeka for the 33 1/3 series, was just recently released. It’s one of my favorite books in the series, in part because it gets to the heart of what makes the Flaming Lips such a special and inspiring band, but also in that Mark goes on some very thought-provoking tangents about the way we engage with recorded sound as technology advances and how we are conditioned to listen closely to music alone. We get into some of that in this interview, but rest assured that this conversation only scratches the surface of what’s in the book.

Matthew Perpetua: Early in the book, when you’re explaining what Zaireeka is and why you’re discussing it, you focus on how the album was designed to be inconvenient. It’s 4 cds intended to be played simultaneously. Why did that interest you?

Mark Richardson: I am drawn to experiences that take some work to make happen, because, since they require work, they will inevitably not happen as frequently. I remember reading a book once about rituals involved with initiation ceremonies, from frat hazing to tribal cultures, and one thing I took away is that part of the reason that hazing takes place is because it makes membership in the organization seem more special once you’ve gone through it. I think for me, though that’s an extreme and goofy example, the fact that there is some work involved inevitably made it seem more special. Which is not to say that I don’t appreciate convenience, and prefer most of life to function that way. Does that make sense? Basically delayed gratification.

Matthew Perpetua: Right, or just a different kind of experience. There’s definitely a way of listening to music that is convenient, and with the way technology is now, pretty easy and customizable, but there’s room for these other sorts of experiences that are more demanding, or call for a specific context.

Mark Richardson: Yes, absolutely. Context is everything, especially with an album like this.

Matthew Perpetua: It’s like “set and setting” with psychedelics, I imagine. I’ve never done psychedelics or properly heard Zaireeka, though!

Mark Richardson: Ha, yes, that it is — in what situation are you experiencing it? That means a lot.

Matthew Perpetua: What was your first Zaireeka party like?

Mark Richardson: The first one I attended, this is before I had the album, or even knew much about it, was at the Bottom of the Hill, which is a well known club in San Francisco, where I lived at the time. It was a Sunday afternoon, in researching this, it was amazing, I was able to find the blurb in the SF Bay Guardian that I saw that alerted me to this event, so I could find the exact date and time. But it was a Sunday afternoon, and it was in the middle of the main floor, next to the stage. They had four PAs, four CD players, and the people running them, it seemed like they had practiced. There was a small handful of us sitting in the middle of the floor. I was there with my friend Josh, we had a few beers, and sat there and listened. The rest of the people were strangers.

Matthew Perpetua: So this is a fairly idealized version of it, at least in terms of equipment.

Mark Richardson: Yes, it was. The synch was probably as good as I’ve ever heard it, and it was very loud, great sound. They had the lights kind of dim, it couldn’t have been any better.

Matthew Perpetua: Were you a Flaming Lips fan at the time?

Mark Richardson: Yes, I was, I got into them through “She Don’t Lose Jelly” like many people and I had Transmissions From The Satellite Heart and Clouds Taste Metallic, and I think that was it at the time, but I loved them both. In 1996 I had seen them at an amazing show in SF, which cemented my fanship I guess, it was one of the best rock shows I had ever seen at that point.

Matthew Perpetua: Right, you saw one of the shows with the Christmas lights.

Mark Richardson: Yeah, the Christmas lights, which has always been kind of hard to explain, in terms of its impact. You hear “Christmas lights, big deal”, but it was a complete shock. As they had been doing for some time, they opened with “The Abandoned Hospital Ship,” the stage was dark, there was a spotlight on Wayne, and Steven played that opening piano part, and when Ronald’s guitar kicked in, first it was obscenely loud, like way beyond the point of being safe, and then right at that instant they flicked on the lights, which you couldn’t really see before, and it seemed like millions of them. I remember in the crowd, it like lifted people off the floor. I had loved their music, what little I knew of it, but that was the first moment where I was like, “These guys are doing something amazing.”

Matthew Perpetua: Right, and part of what was impressive was how simple it was. It wasn’t some technological marvel, just an artful use of something ordinary.

Mark Richardson: Absolutely, yes.

Matthew Perpetua: I saw some footage of it on YouTube, and though it wasn’t the best footage, you totally get the buzz from it. You hear the audience get so excited.

Mark Richardson: Yeah, I have seen some too, and that gives an idea of the general set-up. For me, it was a complete surprise, because of the times I suppose, no real internet to speak of, I knew nothing about this, though they’d been doing it for at least a year.

Matthew Perpetua: One of the nice things these days is that more of this stuff gets documented online. But there is the flipside — people get wind of what to expect much easier. Everyone knows the Flaming Lips are going to have the bubble now.

Mark Richardson: Yeah, although I knew they used confetti, but the scale of it at Pitchfork fest was still surprising to me, didn’t expect that much!

Matthew Perpetua: What got me at that show was how the little things worked so well on the big scale, the balloons and the confetti. I was off to the side at a distance for the second half of that show, and it was so pretty to watch it, especially during “Do You Realize??”

Mark Richardson: Agreed – I was pretty blissed out, but I hadn’t seen them for a long time, since The Soft Bulletin in fact.

Matthew Perpetua: Same here. The only other time I’d seen them was when they were doing the thing with the headphones, broadcasting the show in stereo from the venue.

Mark Richardson: Yeah, I saw that same tour. Music Against Brain Degeneration.

Matthew Perpetua: I wish I could see that again. I know they played stuff from Clouds Taste Metallic, and I didn’t really know those songs back then. If I saw them play “Lightning Strikes The Postman” now, I’d flip out.

Mark Richardson: Yeah, I have a clear memory of them playing “When You Smile” at that show, which is one of my favorites, and it sounded pretty good.

The Flaming Lips “When You Smile”/”Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus With Needles” (Live in 1996)

Matthew Perpetua: You spend some time in the book going into how Zaireeka was this sort of transitional project, as they moved away from being a rock band after Ronald Jones left the band. What did the band lose when he departed?

Mark Richardson: Going back to that show I saw in 1996 — I was again with my friend Josh, who later was at that Zaireeka party with me, and afterward, he said something like, “I think there is something wrong with that guitarist, he seemed like he was on another planet.” His guitar sounded brilliant, and it was a huge part of the show, but at the same time he was definitely off in his own world, he never looked at anyone in the band or the crowd. For me, since I first started listening to them in 94, 95, the guitar sound on Transmissions and Clouds is something I internalized as the essential Flaming Lips sound. Ronald Jones has a genius for guitar texture, he absolutely has his own sound which is really loud and distorted and machine-like but can also be twinkly and delicate.

Matthew Perpetua: Really good with melody too.

Mark Richardson: Yes, absolutely. Especially when he does things with slide, you noticed that he plays against and around the melody, and leads the melody. I don’t know the details, but apparently he tinkered with electronics, made or modified his own pedals.

Matthew Perpetua: He had really great chemistry with Steve Drozd, who was the drummer back then. They just complemented each other perfectly.

Mark Richardson: Yes, there was a line, I think it made it into the book, from an interview with Wayne where he said that once they joined, he felt like he was leading the JBs or something, he couldn’t believe how it all came together immediately, and he couldn’t believe the level of musicianship he was involved with.

Matthew Perpetua: Yeah, he just kinda lucked into them both around the same time.

Mark Richardson: Right. And of course, the Flaming Lips, they had been through other guitarists. Jonathan Donahue, this guy John Mooneyham for a short while, and early on Wayne played lead, but Ronald was another level, and brought so much. So when he left, the idea of just finding another guitarist and continuing was not very appealing. Wayne was definitely glad that Ronald was gone, no two ways about that, he was relieved.

Matthew Perpetua: He was pretty difficult.

Mark Richardson: Yes, he was apparently a troubled guy, very ill-suited to being in a rock band, and having to be around him for months at a time was tough.

Matthew Perpetua: I remember reading that he was an agoraphobe, which would kinda explain a lot of this.

Mark Richardson: Yeah, that was definitely part of it. In interviews Wayne (who is not a psychiatrist) described it as a mild form of schizophrenia, because Ronald was paranoid and had some hallucinations about things here and there. But the upshot was, to be in a band, you have to make decisions together and depend on each other, and with Ronald they couldn’t do that at all, even though musically, he brought so much to the band. So once he was gone, there was both a sense of relief and a sense of “What do we do now?”

Matthew Perpetua: Losing Jones was a benefit too, because it pushed them to go really far out with their ideas, like with Zaireeka, which ended up becoming a part of what made them a more popular band.

Mark Richardson: Yes, all of a sudden, they could be something other than just a rock band, and that opened up things.

Matthew Perpetua: It’s like it pushed them into a wide open niche, instead of being one more psychedelic rock band.

Mark Richardson: Yeah, they were creative all through the 90s, but I think Zaireeka kicked off a period where their creativity went into overdrive. You just didn’t see many alternative rock bands trying all these things — headphone concerts, shows without a drummer but with a video of the drummer playing, props, fake blood. They had the Christmas lights, of course, and early on they lit things on fire, and they were very loud, but I think Zaireeka really kicked the door open where they felt like they could try anything.

Matthew Perpetua: I feel like they opened doors for other bands too.

Mark Richardson: Who are you thinking of specifically?

Matthew Perpetua: Well, you see more theatrical things in indie shows now. I’m not sure if Kevin Barnes is directly influenced, but the sort of spectacle you get at an of Montreal show is related.

Mark Richardson: Yeah, I could definitely see that.

Matthew Perpetua: The Knife have a performance art quality to their shows.

Mark Richardson: Decemberists, the rock opera, it did bring back this idea that shows could go into these areas that had previously been considered uncool.

Matthew Perpetua: Yeah. I mean, these are all strains of culture that go back a long time, but it’s more of an option now. And I think in the cases of all these artists, it’s something that helped build their careers and artistic reputations.

Mark Richardson: Yeah, I could see how that was an influence, not just on the bands but on the perception of the audience, what kinds of things can be done.

Matthew Perpetua: I think for a lot of the 80s and 90s, these kind of huge gestures were a lot less cool. Being an “entertainer”.

Mark Richardson: Yes, one thing that separated Flaming Lips from the other alt-rock bands (which is really what they were at the time, they might have played he same places as Pavement, but they seemed more alt-rock than indie, not least because being on a major label was a bit deal then) was that they never had that grim sense of seriousness that was so in the air with grunge. It was colorful, it tried to entertain, Wayne had a huge smile on his face the whole time when they played.

Matthew Perpetua: Yeah, I recently saw the footage of them on Letterman doing “She Don’t Use Jelly,” and he basically looks like a happy 18 year old, though he’s actually in his mid 30s.

Mark Richardson: Right. That’s one thing I mentioned in the book, which I think is an important part of why they took their risks. They were older, Wayne was five years older than Kurt Cobain, had been playing in this band since 1984, so that gives you more perspective, you’ve lived a little, done other things, seen people come and go. Who knows if something like Zaireeka would have come to mind at 25.

Matthew Perpetua: Yeah, or to have the discipline necessary to execute it.

Mark Richardson: Right, with all of these things, so much of it is follow-through, the grind of getting there.

Matthew Perpetua: Or to luck into a corporation backing the project in the first place.

Mark Richardson: Yes! That too.

Matthew Perpetua: That’s actually one of the most amazing things about Zaireeka, that a major label would sign off on it.

Mark Richardson: Yes, absolutely. The timing was very unusual, in that it was a time of label upheaval, but at the same time, there wouldn’t have been anyone near the money pressures that there are now. Records were still selling in huge numbers, and in a couple of years, it would be the biggest year for records of all time.

Matthew Perpetua: Is that true, 1999?

Mark Richardson: Either ’99 or ’00, I believe.

Matthew Perpetua: Wow. So it’s like a rollercoaster, hitting the peak then going waaaay down.

Mark Richardson: Yeah. So there was chaos at the label, because people had been fired, and it was a bit of a contraction after the signing frenzy of the early ’90s, and the way Wayne tells it, they didn’t really have an A&R rep who was keeping tabs on them, so they got one lump some to make an “experimental album” plus their next “real” album. Which was $200,000.

Matthew Perpetua: It’s hard to imagine labels going for that now, even some of the bigger indie labels.

Mark Richardson: Yeah, absolutely, there was still a lot of money around, and not a lot of financial discipline, which worked to the band’s advantage.

Matthew Perpetua: Do you have any idea how much Zaireeka has sold?

Mark Richardson: I couldn’t get an exact number, but I think it’s somewhere between 50k and like 80k, it apparently still sells steadily, and they have made a point to keep it in print.

Matthew Perpetua: One of the things I really liked in the book is how you write about how we listen to recordings, and how that’s transformed over the years with technological advances. But one thing never really changes — we tend to listen to music alone. Listen, as in focused listening, not just being in a room while music is on in the background. Do you think Wayne et al were thinking about this when they were making Zaireeka, since the record is something that can’t be heard alone?

Mark Richardson: Yes, I think the social aspect of it was there from the beginning, as it grew out of the Parking Lot Experiments. That was always to be a “happening” of a kind with multiple people there. The genesis of Zaireeka was, “How could we make a recorded version of this?” Had the technology existed then to make it 8 channels that you could listen to yourself, I am not sure they would have gone that way, because the idea of getting together with friends was really important.

Matthew Perpetua: Can you think of any other records that have a mandatory social element? I think this could be the only one, really. I mean, a lot of music is made expressly for dance floors.

Mark Richardson: Right, yes, but even that, you *could* at least get the audio through your headphones if you wanted.

Matthew Perpetua: Some music is made for installation art.

Mark Richardson: Yes, that’s true. That has actually been an interest of mine for a long time too, sound installations, although it was interesting, I didn’t get the idea that Wayne knew much or cared much about that world.

Matthew Perpetua: He’s a pretty pop guy when it comes down to it.

Mark Richardson: Yeah, and though he likes the idea of trying all these crazy things, he wants to connect with people in a big way.

Matthew Perpetua: Yeah, so it makes sense for them to be the people to do a project like this. They put so much of themselves into connecting with audiences, communicating ideas.

Mark Richardson: Yeah, they definitely want people to be moved, they’re not a “We do what we like and if others like it, it’s a bonus” kind of band.

Matthew Perpetua: How do you think Embryonic fits into their narrative now?

Mark Richardson: Ha, well, this past year has been very interesting for me in that regard. First, one thing that I regret a little bit, is that in the book I talk about the Flaming Lips as being in cruise control since the Soft Bulletin/Yoshimi era, like “This is the Flaming Lips as we know them,” because I wrote the whole book before Embryonic, and I was pretty disappointed with Mystics, and they hadn’t changed things up all that much in a long time. Obviously, this album changes that completely. If anything, Embryonic confirms that they are still evolving, ready to go somewhere new; however, the live show is still pretty much the same, interestingly enough, there was a question as to whether they would go into this crazier place live but they really haven’t, and they don’t play a ton of the album live either from what I understand. The other interesting thing this year is that I talk a bit in the book about Dark Side of the Moon and, to a lesser extent, the Wall, because Dark Side of the Moon in my mind represents a “You just sit and listen to this one” kind of immersive LP experience from a different era.

Matthew Perpetua: And then they went and covered the entire album! Speaking of the concerts, I was also disappointed that they’ve only been doing four or five songs from Embryonic. I know I’d rather see them do a show heavy on that material, with some hits as well.

Mark Richardson: Yeah, I think they are still figuring that out, or maybe they are still afraid of losing something there, I don’t know.

Matthew Perpetua: I know they like to be crowd-pleasing, but I feel like people really like Embryonic!

Mark Richardson: Yeah, and it has definitely won them back fans who had tuned out for years.

Matthew Perpetua: I feel like a lot of people would be more into hearing something like “Worm Mountain” or “Watching The Planets” than At War With The Mystics album tracks.

Mark Richardson: Absolutely, there’s some force and mystery to them.

Matthew Perpetua: They’ve kinda circled back to being a rock band again.

Mark Richardson: Yes, in some ways, but my sense is that the instrumental part of it is something they don’t really have figured out right now, how to do these aggressive jams, I think that stuff was pretty heavily edited, and obviously live, there is a lot going on other than just what they are playing.

Matthew Perpetua: Right, they need to know how to get it across visually too.

Mark Richardson: Right, it could almost use a re-think from the ground up, and they have a lot invested, literally, in their current live set-up.

Matthew Perpetua: Yeah, and it works well. It really gets people going.

Mark Richardson: Yeah, they have built this huge machine pretty steadily over 10 years so I can see why they stick with it. I mean, especially in a festival setting, what could be better?

Buy Mark’s book about Zaireeka from Amazon.