Interview Avec Hype
Hypebot is running Part 1 and 2 of an interview with me, the first I’ve done since moving jobs.
In the interview, which I think will be three parts, I touch on a lot of aspects of what I do day to day, and my thoughts on how technology and music intersect.
One of the fundamental things about how I view the space I work in, and live in is that the work I do with technology is impacting something that is far more important than just my “job.” It’s people’s lives, both as fans and as artists. I have been a fan most of my life, intensely. I’ve never been a recording artist.
However through being a fan, I’ve come to befriend the band that took up most of my fandom attention, R.E.M.
That story is for another day, and I started using it as the root of my conference talks, as its somewhat compelling, in an Almost Famous/rose colored way.
What I will post about today is a note about artistry, as its the root of what I do, not technology.
A few weeks ago I was in Nashville to visit R.E.M. in the studio, where they were in the final week of finishing the record that I can now say will be called “Collapse Into Now” (their manager just spilled the beans to the BBC yesterday).
I won’t say a word about the record (it’s amazing). Beyond what I heard, it’s what I saw that really cemented the interesting place we are in in the music business, and why you can’t remove artistry from technology.
Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills (and Bertis Downs) have been doing what they do for 30 years. On April 5, 1980 they launched a career on a mushy stage in an abandoned church, playing for a friends birthday. 30 years and a few months hence, they are all sitting in a really nice studio in Nashville, each with a Mac laptop in front of them, listening to music that they just worked on for over a year played back, from another Mac. Their producer sits at the board, which is covered with plywood to act as a platform for a keyboard and a mouse as hey adjusts mixes and tones on two studio monitors.
A photo from Joseph Beuys’ performance of “I Like America and America Likes Me” from 1974 is on the desktop.
I was not at their show in 1980. I was not even a year old at the time. I don’t know how the guys were after the show, or how they were when they first sat together and jammed out what would become Radio Free Europe or Gardening at Night. If you believe the legends, 1500 people were at that show.
I had the privilege on the last record to see them in the studio twice, at the beginning and at the end. And on this record, I saw them right at the tail end. Now understand, they have come a long why since 1980, and a long way since Radio Free Europe. There were bumps, digressions, near breakups and reconciliations along the way. Some records were amazing, some not so.
But I wager that one thing hasn’t changed.
The look on three faces as I turned around after hearing a half dozen new songs, one of the first outside the band to do so.
It’s a look of naked honesty, insecurity, confidence and guardedness. And glances between them, a knowing sense of accomplishment.
At the end of the day, no matter how much I espouse on data, technology, the deference of representation and other academic concepts I use to apply what I do technologically to what I do to represent our artists, nothing ever comes as close to illustrating the why behind “what I do” than the look on three faces when I can say with confidence,
“That was fucking amazing guys. Amazing.”
The smiles returned confirm my motto: This is my job, this is their lives.
Technology does a lot of things, but it can never replace what music does to those that create it, and those that appreciate the creation.
