📖
As entertaining as you think it would be, and more. (Dude is a fantastic and funny conversationalist; even better over a Spanish coffee or four).
One snippet I fully support (ha) --
Stephen, you’re a pretty beloved figure at this point—does that annoy you at all?
Malkmus: No way. For all that shit, I still wouldn’t want to be taking strays from people, or if it got back to me that there’s people saying I’m a dipshit or I don’t tip well enough or whatever, just this internet world. If people are like, “I met that guy, he’s a fucking dick,” that shit hurts. I’ve had people come to me with preconceptions occasionally, and it was no fun. Not like I needed a bodyguard or anything, but still, it’s just like, Dude, you don’t even know me. You want to have a clean record if you can, unfortunately. [laughs]
Maybe another reason why [being a big-headed rocker] doesn’t completely work now is that musicians get more rapid feedback, and sometimes it can be beneficial. In the ’80s, some musicians made these bloated albums that just them and their seven friends thought were brilliant. But now people are instantly like: “You’re old and you suck,” or, “Your jams are flaccid”—and it can help! I’m not saying [the Rolling Stones’ 2024 album] Hackney Diamonds is a genius record or anything. [laughs] But I bet Robert Plant’s new music is better because of the internet.
Sweeney: Because it’s keeping him in check?
Malkmus: Yeah, or he’s listening to younger artists. I mean, Robert Plant seems to be genuinely interested, and he’s a fan of bands like Low—unlike Eric Clapton, who just says he likes the newest guitarist, and then his records sound awful.
Feb 1, 2025
Related Recs
“It’s not much fun to be the guy by yourself,” Malkmus explains. “You start feeling selfish, like a Scientologist or something."
See what I mean tyler? SM was funny with a few Huber's Spanish coffees in him.
Mar 1, 2024
📖
Apparently he tweeted then deleted the below:
When people say ‘surreal’ they mean ‘real’, it’s just most of your life is not very real, just repetition and routine. I went to his house and I met him. Only musician I’d ever met was one of my best friends, Billy Joe Shaver, and I told Dylan and he laughed and said he loved Billy Joe. Then he left and came back with an old vinyl of ‘Honky Tonk Heroes’ and put it on and we listened to it, all the way through, and didn’t talk. Then he talked to me at length. At length.
When Bob Dylan speaks, his words seem chosen long ago, his sentences are spare, and he looks right at you, and his countenance is stone. He spoke to me for many hours over two days. There was no alcohol or drugs consumed. He was interested only in writing. I remember wishing I had secretly recorded him, and I remember trying as hard as I could to remember every word he said. I remember he talked over and over about verbs and about ‘verbifying’, how anything could be ‘verbified’. He asked me my favorite book of the Bible and I said Job, and he said his favorite was Ecclesiastes. He then told me that the book of Job I was familiar with was not the original, and then he told me the original.
I began to notice his speech was naturally rich with imagery, and that listening to him had a mesmerizing effect. I noticed when looking at his face while listening to his words that it was like looking at an impressionistic painting. I cannot repeat any of what I heard that evening, but he invited me to stay the night and we ate dinner in silence. A girl cooked a beef stew and there were three other men, who I later learned were musicians. When Bob Dylan retired for the evening, I spoke freely with the three men. They took me to a recording studio in a guest house and I listened to them play. I asked them for their favorite Dylan stories. They told me, and the night happened and i didn’t sleep. I was very unknown at the time and asked why Bob Dylan had summoned me for this visit. One of the men told me.
The next morning, when Dylan reappeared, the big house seemed full again. He told me he wanted me to meet someone. He took me to the guard shack and I met the guard and Dylan told the old man to tell me ‘the story’. He did and it was very funny. While the old man was telling his funny story, Bob Dylan kept looking right at me and he was laughing hard and I was too. It was very funny. We went back to the house and Dylan poured two cups of black coffee and we each drank coffee. And that is when Bob Dylan began speaking about being a writer.
He said most ‘writers’ were what he called ‘stenographers’. He would put a record on his player and have me listen to it. He would have me silently read a passage from a classic book. Then Bob Dylan would explain why this was not writing, why it was stenography. One piece of fiction he had me read was one of my favorites. I saw that I had been wrong about one of my favorite pieces of fiction. Bob Dylan showed me how I had been deceived. I told him that I understood, but I did not, and I lied to Bob Dylan.
A week later, I understood, and phoned him and explained and he laughed. I don’t want to say what Bob Dylan said to me but one thing that he gave me permission to tell my friends was, ‘Don’t be fooled by typists.'”
Sep 28, 2024
Hard to believe it's nearly twenty years old now.
Three things stand out for me, reading it again today. Took like 3 months of reporting, or so, to get it all done.
1) The Courtney Love vignette from the Shins' show at the Hollywood Bowl (it was all very Ab Fab and unintentionally hilarious). She is every bit the piece of work she was described to be.
2) James was living in a house in Portland, OR that Elliott Smith used to live in. We smoked pot in the basement and he showed me the washer/dryer that was basically where Elliott four-tracked the "Roman Candle" album.
3) He had a guitar hanging in his home studio that had "You'll be Dead" spray painted on it -- a line from Star Wars (I think his brother, an artist I worked with at Starbucks, did that). I used to have a photo of that but IDK what happened to it.
It was a fun era to be writing about rock music.
Apr 5, 2024
Top Recs from @coreydubrowa
Hey tyler hopefully this doesn’t violate some PI.FYI golden rule
But after nearly two years of writing, editing and arguing, my book about the EP is coming out in May and can be preordered here:
https://hozacrecords.com/product/aifl/
The book is about the origins, history and cultural impact of the EP since these little objects first started coming out in the 50s.
Over 50 of my music biz friends then helped me shape the list and review the top 200 ever released, according to us (ha).
For those of you who are into this kind of geekery/snobbery, I can’t wait to hear what you think. A labor of love, as all books are! ❤️
Mar 27, 2024
“Songs Of a Lost World” coming to a goth listening station near you Nov 1 🖤
The fr FW Me Friday the 13th the world was looking for
Sep 14, 2024
I will fail to explain just how much this band meant to me in the 90s.
So I will borrow from AV Club who did a fine job of distilling it:
“Unwound is the best band of the ’90s. Not just because of how prolific, consistent, and uncompromising it was, but because of how perfectly Unwound nested in a unique space between some of the most vital forms of music that decade: punk, post-rock, indie rock, post-hardcore, slow-core, and experimental noise. That jumble of subgenres doesn’t say much; in fact, it falls far short of what Unwound truly synthesized and stood for. Unwound stood for Unwound. But in a decade where most bands were either stridently earnest or stridently ironic, Unwound wasn’t stridently anything. It was only itself. In one sense Unwound was the quietest band of the ’90s, skulking around like a nerdy terror cell. In another sense it was the loudest, sculpting raw noise into contorted visions of inner turmoil and frustration.”
R.I.P. Vern Rumsey.
This is their finest song, from their finest album.
I really can’t say enough about the sheer bloody minded genius of this group. 🖤
Mar 23, 2024