happy birthday, do fun stuff!
My friend Ryan has a little boy. And a girl, too, but he made an album for his boy, because in his boy's head is a mystery that needs to be solved. Do Fun Stuff will give money to medical mystery-solvers. And it's good music, but if you know Ryan, you know that already. You can trust stuff he likes.
Ryan asked me to interview RickoLus, one of the musicians on the album. I said sure. I yawned. I said I guess so. Then I checked out RickoLus. Now I'm all blushy.
Buy Do Fun Stuff. Help wade through the mystery of Ryan's boy. It's sweet music that'll make you and your kids smile. ~ Kate
Hey, RickoLus. You're one of those starving creative types. So am I. When I treat myself it's with beer, parmesan cheese, and time away to write. What's your indulgence? You know. That stuff that makes you feel like you shouldn't do because you're an artist, and parmesan cheese makes no sense for artists. Unless you're Heidi Montag.
Cigarettes, beer, coffee, good conversations. Sometimes all of those at the same time. They're all pals anyway, and are terribly hard to turn down.
What's the best show you've ever been to? Tell me about it.
Three way tie. Jonsi this year in Denver, CO. Really never seen anything like it. All around. Tom Waits last year in Jacksonville, FL. I don't think there is anyone who can run a ship like this man. I've never felt so close to someone and so far away at the same time. The Flaming Lips during the Soft Bulletin tour in Atlanta, GA. It felt like a giant birthday party for everyone there, I've never felt anything like it since.
What's the best show you've never been to? Tell me about it.
When I was 13, Nirvana came to Jacksonville and played at the Moracco Shrine Auditorium. My folks didn't let me go. That was in 93'. We all know what happened the year after that.
Your music and videos are dreamy. Literally dream-like. This makes me wonder if that's what your life is like all the time. That aesthetic has to bleed into how you cook supper and how you get around from place to place. Do you dream about stuff like tax accountants and paperclips?
I guess it's part of the romantic disposition to be a bit more dreamy then usual. I have that condition. I don't know exactly where it comes from, but it colors everything. I pay attention to combinations of aesthetics and sometimes change those things to make whatever it is I'm doing seem more romantic from my point of view. Or sometimes choose to go to certain places because I think the aesthetics work better with the dream I want to dream when I get there. How this looks to a spectator may be nothing like it looks to me, but that's not important, everyone is responsible for their own dreaminess.
You don't usually make music for kids. How did you approach it?
I tried to make the least amount of sense as possible, because kids don't make any sense, that's my favorite thing about their perspective.
Creativity is this massively pregnant woman who wants nothing but porridge porridge porridge all day long. Then no more porridge, dammit. Then it's malteasers. Bag after bag after bag. What are you craving right now? What are you obsessed with that's feeding the massively pregnant woman in your brain?
Ancient Greece, sea shanties and cassette tapes.
You wrote a song for 'Do Fun Stuff' called 'Adventure'. Here's the deal. You have six hours to experience any adventure you want. Money is irrelevant. So is geography. So is other stuff like death or danger or the likelihood that a dead or dangerous person might join you. What do you do?
I would find a time machine and travel back to 1918 and get on a ship heading for Antarctica.
Do you remember the moment that it dawned on you that you could make your own music?
I don't think I ever thought I couldn't, but I'll tell you, it really took hold was when I was introduced to recording. I got a Tascam four track when I was fourteen or fifteen, worked a landscaping job for two weeks during the summer to get the money for it. My friend had let me borrow his before that and I knew I had to do whatever to get one, hence the landscaping job. But that really opened the idea up for me, when I could record my own music. I think it was the fact that I could finish something myself, and listen to it, hold the tape in my hand and say "I made this". There is something to that. A certain validation.
How is creative work possible when you have bills to pay? Not that I'm assuming that you pay your bills. I only pay my bills in the parallel universe I've invented, in which creative people bathe in imported venetian milk. I just want you to tell me how you do fun stuff in a world that's fun-averse.
I pay bills, but I don't know if the world is necessarily fun-averse, that seems more dependent on perspective. The creative stuff is just something you have to make time for, and if you're really in deep you never really completely stop doing it. You're always working in a sense, just to get that one moment of pure intangible whatever. After doing it long enough it becomes almost automatic, like breathing... or defecating may be more accurate.
What's the worst thing to happen to popular music in the last ten years? AUTO-TUNE crap. I just answered for you. Ignore that. I'm not the musician. You are. What's the worst? What's the best?
The worst and best thing to happen to music in the past ten years is the internet. It's taken what was once an lake and turned it into an ocean. It's cool because it's so vast, and it's boring because it's so vast. Funny thing is, it's the same as it ever was.
The other song you wrote for 'Do Fun Stuff' is called 'Imagination'. Has your imagination ever made you feel weird or apart or lonely? Like the rest of the world is all made up of tax accountants? What do you do about that?
Sometimes I'll see something and feel like everything in the universe is coming together right where I'm standing and it's so beautiful I feel like my chest is going to explode (in a good way). Then I tell someone about it and they're like, "I have no idea what you're talking about." I get bummed for a second then think, Oh well. your loss.
The universe is coming together right where you're standing. Listen to Do Fun Stuff here. Then buy it. It might make your ears explode. In the good way.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Reader Comments (11)
Thanks for the introductions
And I now want tea in the Sahara with Rickolus
Do Fun Stuff. Buy it and be awesome forever.
Rene