Stop Smiling

I've had the link to Stop Smiling magazine on here for a while now. You can't get it in the UK, I don't think. Here are the archives which I'm trawling through, slowly. Here's an interview with Brian Wilson by Wayne Coyne. Scrolling down the contents of the magazine just stun you: Matthew Shipp, Ian Mcewan, Lou Barlow, William Parker, Christopher Hitchens, Saul Bellow, John Fahey, Robert Altman, Son Volt... This interview with Wayne Coyne (solo) is a must-read:

(On Brian Wilson) I think he can be a fool, because he needs people to pay attention to him. He’s got the Elvis Presley syndrome. He wants everyone to say, “You’re great! You’re great!” I think he surrounds himself with people who are like, “Brian, the way you eat cereal – you’re a genius. Brian, the way that you wipe your ass, it’s genius.” I’ve found it off-putting at times.

But later on, I was like, “Well, if he’s such a genius, why can’t he… talk.” He’s been asked about his music, like, everyday of his fucking life, so you’d think that he’d have something to say about it, besides, “Well, the Beatles are great.” I know they are, Brian. Now, do you remember any of the ideas that you put into your music?

SS: What do you think of some of these newer bands out there that seem to emulate Wilson in every which way? And not just the Beach Boys, but the entire sound of the 1960s: Phil Spector, George Martin, etc? I don’t wanna name names, but you know who I’m talking about, right?

WC: It’s lame. It’s ridiculous. I mean, here’s an opportunity to talk about your music and to be original and all you wanna do is talk about your record collection. I’ve got no time for that. I’ve got records, too. But I don’t think you can judge a human being by their record collection. A lot of people do that. This sort of stuff is ridiculous and it is the sort of thing that people like to do when they’re young because there’s no gauge on what makes a person cool or not. They could kick your sister’s teeth out, but as long as you have the first R.E.M. B-side record, you’re all good.

When you get a little bit older, you realize how stupid all of this stuff is. Plus, anyone who wants to use equipment that was made in 1967, thinking that it’ll apply today, is ridiculous. If Brian Wilson used equipment in 1968 to record a record that was 30 years old, he’d be using recording equipment from 1938! It would be like one track. My point is this: these people [Brian Wilson, the Beatles] were thinking past their time, and that’s why we’ve applied them at all, especially in art. I can go and buy the Beach Boys records on my own, I don’t need all these bands to tell me about them.

Yes, and no one wants to ever talk money, either. It heightens the drama for these bands. Everybody says it’s for “the art,” because they wanna change the world because it’s fucked. Well, let me tell you something: The world isn’t that fucked. The world is fine without rock ‘n roll; the world wouldn’t be very much different, I think. Your world might be and my world might be, but we would adapt, we’d be fine in no time. It’s something that everyone indulges in. It’s entertainment, really. I don’t see myself as being any different than a guy at a traveling circus: people come, they pay money, good, hard-earned money, to see you, and you should entertain them. And then they can go home, and that should be it.

I’m glad that my audience has a life. Sometimes people go to shows and then they’re like, “God, this band changed my life.” Well, if you’re 14 –that’s fine. But if you’re 24, I hope you are stable enough and secure enough with your fucking identity that a rock band doesn’t change your fucking existence.

You don’t need to emulate these people. Go to your job, listen to music. I don’t think that a guy that works at a bank is any less important than a guy that’s in a band is. He likes banking; this guy likes music. We all have to have something that we enjoy.