Something different: an interview

I've deliberately misspelt the man's name in question because once, a long time ago, this was destined for some newspaper pages (suffice to say it is a j and it is ph). It never made it. Perhaps I shall elucidate the frustrating reasons why or perhaps some of it will make it in a different form. Also this was before he went to such places as Chicago and Springfield *nudge nudge* and read really shit Carl Sandburg.

A Year or More Ago in the Garden
Sufyan Stephens weaves in and out of the Covent Garden shrubbery, and greets me by putting me right on the pronunciation of his name: “Hi I’m, Soofyan”. He is wearing enough clothing to cope with any weather system, and with his ugly cross trainers, he has the powerful hint of the American tourist. It is, however, a stereotype he is all too aware of: "I didn't wear my baseball cap because I knew you would laugh at me".

Stephens is the newest pretender to the folk-rock throne; another delicate troubadour obsessed with broken hearts and relationships. But with four albums in the bag, he has already vaulted over any difficult second or third album syndrome, and seems almost brand new and proven at the same time. When Rough Trade’s Geoff Travis watched him a year ago, he believed he saw the future and signed him up: releasing his last two albums Greetings from Michigan and Seven Swans in reverse order, the latter in April and the former this month (June 28th).

Michigan was the surprise stateside hit that attracted the hawk-eyed tastemakers. This Detroit-born twentysomething had been living in New York for five years and had been gathering material, which looked back at how his own life had been entwined with the history and geography of Michigan. “Before I knew it I had quite a few songs, so it was a sentimental leaning that turned into a concept record,” he says.

The "leaning" became an album dedicated to the state he grew up in: a stream of imagined narratives, from the unemployed of Flint to melancholic widows living in towns called Paradise and girls in broken down Chevrolets travelling to places called Romulus. It is steeped in a genuine affection and deep respect, although he cannot deny there is also “a little bit of irony”. It will find a happy perch in a climate that has begun to swarm with concept records like A Grand Don’t Come For Free and Magnetic Fields’s I. Alongside them, Michigan is fighting the long-player’s battle against the tyranny of the iPod random play button, and is fighting it well.

But Michigan triggered something else in Stephens. He thought, why do one when you can do all of them? Thus, he has vowed to immortalise all fifty states in the USA on record. He admits it is a pragmatic, possibly crazy, undertaking: “It was really a promotional gimmick. We just wanted to sell records so we proposed this project, then people would be like 'oh I really need to invest in this record because it's the first in a series'". Although his tone veers towards the facetious, you can see he has laid down the gauntlet and there is no backing out. "Now I've cornered myself and I have to do it," he says in almost grim fashion. The last state, he believes, will be Hawaii when he is 77 and senile. Future highlights include the Vermont Christmas record, a Rhode Island split 7" and California "sometime in 2020". Yet you have to concede that as a promotional gimmick, it has worked beautifully.

If he has unconventional and arduous career, then it will be entirely congruent with his past. Stephens's upbringing was filled with macrobiotic food and hippy ideals, with his free -thinking mother and father applying "trial and error" parenting techniques and interesting names to their rampant brood. He is not sure if his Bongo-playing, Motown-loving father instilled a love of music in him, but he feels he had an inclination to music from birth. His first performance might have been more auspicious, however. He lip-synced the theme tune to the Karate Kid II in front of a school audience in full costume. Stephens calls it "the real low point in my musical career".

But while others might have embraced a succession of bad teenage bands, he embraced the oboe, musical theory and baroque composers. It was only in college that he dumped the aforementioned instrument because "oboeists are unhappy, never get married and are suspicious of everyone". He then took up the guitar," an instrument of real expression and affection" and discovered he had quite a pleasant singing voice too. He also became something of an instrument addict, as evidenced by the "onslaught" of twenty instruments on Michigan, all played to an "adequate standard".

His fourth album Seven Swans showed another side of Stephens's talent, and also the part of him that embraced the rock-solid certainty of the church that he felt he needed when he was growing up. He admits, however, he is “uncomfortable” talking about his Protestant faith. He says relationships with friends and lovers are what he mainly interested in, and the one he has with God is no different. He is careful to add: “I’m definitely not interested in proselytising principles or having a religious doctrine at all.”

Although he thinks of himself as a composer and arranger above all, he knows everyone is fawning over his voice. "I'm always surprised that people are drawn to my voice and I think that's why I get compared to Elliott Smith, because I'm so softly spoken. I think it's funny that it has become my most convincing instrument after I discovered it so late in the game." Stephens is adamant he feels no real kinship with that singer-songwriter crowd because he "feels more vested in narrative and storytelling”.

He isn’t afraid to admit his favourite ever song is Nick Drake’s From the Morning, even though it is really the "interesting chords and picking patterns" that inspire the drooling fan in him. And, perhaps, literature excites him even more than music. He is a devotee of the Romantic poets: especially Wordsworth and William Blake, a man who was not averse to having visions of the kind Stephens delineates on Seven Swans. He has his own literary ambitions, fostered by creative writing courses in college, and hopes to finish a collection of short stories in the next year. "My first love is fiction and I am a fiction writer first and foremost. Music is my natural conviction so I feel like I'm telling stories through my music anyway," he says.

It is difficult to imagine that Stephens has only been a full-time musician for just under a week. He has only just quit his job as a graphic designer for Time magazine and children’s schoolbooks. Before he knew it, he found himself on a plane over the Atlantic, filling in the occupation box of some form with the word 'Musician'. He felt both weird and proud. "Can you believe it?" he asks, like a child who has embarked on an amazing adventure. Then again, you think he already has. If all goes well, Sufyan Stephens has a whole continent to conquer and countless stories to reap.  ¶ 10:33 AM

  The only 15 per cent dishonest Reading Top 20

1. The Arcade Fire - Power Out/Rebellion (Lies)
2. The National - Mr November
3. Foo Fighters - Best of You
4. LCD Soundsystem - Daft Punk is Playing at My House
5. Dinosaur Jr - Raisans
6. The Futureheads - Hounds of Love
7. Iggy and the Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog
8. The Killers - On Top
9. Maximo Park - Graffiti
10. Pixies - Bone Machine
11. British Sea Power - Remember Me
12. Kings of Leon - King of the Rodeo
13. Sons and Daughters - Ramayana
14. Bloc Party - Banquet
15. Turbonegro - Party Animals
16. Queens of the Stone Age - Feel Good Hit of the Summer
17. Arctic Monkeys - Fake Tales of San Francisco
18. Hot Chip - Playboy
19. The Duke Spirit - Lion Rip
20. Nine Black Alps - Not Everyone  ¶ 4:43 PM

  Reading (silent A, double D)

Reading was great this year. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I arrived at 6pm on Friday and hadn't done the whole Thursday get-fucked-up-completely thing so I didn't spend the next day feeling as if my brain had been torn out and been replaced with a cactus. In fact, I left early too. I departed the campsite at 4.30 on the Monday morning in the midst of many an Apocalypse Now recreation. I had tried to sleep in a warzone, with small explosions going off every five minutes due to gas canisters being roasted, while people screamed "Trolley! Trolley!" in the distance. The cry "Burn it, burn it" rang out constantly. As I slung my rucksack on for my frosted jaunt to the station, someone said to me give us an "emo pose". I declined. Somebody said: "We should call our band Heroin and Jez. Yeah, Heroin and Jez!" I love it all really.

As it is, I am still too exhausted to do anything. Like write a proper blog post. And mention stuff like bands. But can I give out a shout-out to the Littlehampton or LA Punks (as in Little 'Ampton) who once again tried to be the rudest fuckers on site. The peak of their debauched activity saw someone write ADAM IS COOL in somebody else's faeces on some stranger's tent. Absolutely, fucking filthy disgusting behaviour, far worse than even a prison rioter, but fucking hilarious whenever I recall it. Ha-ha hee-hee.  ¶ 10:13 AM

  Five songs I’m digging
My dad Ben W. asked me to do this...

1. Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight – Whiskeytown
2. Daft Punk are Playing at My House – LCD Soundsystem
3. California – Low
4. Mr Brightside – The Killers
5. This Sporting Life – The Decemberists

Tagged sort of randomly
Wan
Chris
Tara
Anna-Marie
Alex

Gag Gig
Went to Kasabian last nite at the Astoria. I sent a photo-message to a friend that said “Kasabian are messianic shit”. It’s this outstretched arms, worship me like I’m your fucking god attitude that sticks in my craw as a large twig would do. Kasabian are all widdly keyboards and compulsive basslines and non-words like “Nanana-Boommmm!” As if engaging in an anthropological experiment I spent much time looking back at the audience, most of whom had their arms up in their air as if they were expecting to have the manna of heaven delivered to them. I’ll credit KSBN this much though: they sure have a huge sound that verily engulfs the gig-goer; they filled the venue with it with ease, and they had better lighting technicians than either of the support acts. But it is all a swaggering, cock-waving sound that is ultimately empty and futile. Moody bollocks for moody car adverts played by Prada models. The way they look is 23 per cent of their appeal. I still think there’s no there, there. People think they’re cool even though they are certainly not cool. They’re very good at maintaining the illusion, however. And I laughed when my guestlist-self heard tickets going for as much as £70. If only everybody else in the place knew how little I cared about this music that was sending them into a mindless frenzy.

The State I was In
I was also quite fucked actually.

Finally
I’ll see yer in the fields of Berkshire, me hearties. The allegedly muddy fields that is.  ¶ 10:05 AM

  Actualites

(Forgive the lack of an accent but I've never learned how to manipulate this screwy keyboard)

I'm going to Reading tomorrow. For sentimental reasons. Not because I like the smell of burning toilets and wet cow shit and the snot of youngsters trying to out-sick each other.

I'm seeing Kasabian tonite. Against my will. Kinda. Sorta.

I went to see an agent yesterday. This means I almost have an agent. But not quite. I shan't count that chicken yet.

By this time next week I will be free as a poverty-stricken bird.

I had two Big Macs for lunch. Granted it cost me £2, but yet again I feel the Macdonalds food cling to my insides as if it was seeded with small vicious, greased hooks.

I have to stop checking my gmail every 20 minutes. It only invites disappointment.

Yesterday's weather really did depress me. Ugh. The oppression.

Goodbyee.

(That was a pop cult reference there)  ¶ 12:37 PM

  Last Nite
Oh melancholy Sunday is here again. The sabbath of laundry, train journeys and French tourists taking the piss out of maps of my home town has come and gone. Sundays always look the same to me. Like bleached out grey. Or something blanched or faded. I think it's also time to give up the alcohol (you don't believe me? Well, watch me never buy a round again, you say, but you never did yadda yadda), it makes me wake up at 4 in the morning then stay up, so that by the time I end up at an indie rave (last night at The Scala - The Grates were bouncy and Australian; this other band, basslines blah blah), unable to get up, dance and talk properly as I am so zombified by alcohol and sheer lethargy. Which then made me get a minicab for £12 at 3.45am, thus emptying my wallet of all its funds after the horrendously priced bar (£3.80 for a can of Red Stripe, yes, £3fucking80p) succeeded in almost entirely demolishing it, to Oxford Street because I could not be arsed working out nightbuses other than the 25. So I got home and sat outside the flat on a recycling box as I chained three cigarettes and wrote doleful haikus on my mobile's Create Messages and used unfortunate phrases like 'discordant crows' (that is surely the true essence of evil in alcohol, is it not? Crapulous poesy), while scaring the shit out of my flatmate who thinks that a burglar is having some unsuccessful congress with the frontage. It was 5.30 when I flopped on to my duvet like a dead thing (I was thinking a whale perhaps, but that's just silly) and I was still pissed, hnurr hnurr. Thought I'd get some sleep did you? I got up two hours later. I still haven't drifted off.

So apologies if you thought I might have done something weird during the last few days, like not think that bags printed with the legend "we are indie" are a great idea. Drink is bad.

But this is all smoke and mirrors. I'm thinking about something else.

I have to admit I feel I am actually paralysed by the amount of stuff on my plate at the moment: meetings, proposals, applications, championships, festivals, rendezvous after rendezvous (how do you pluralise that? Let's not chance it). Can't I just curl up in a ball and forget about all these important, life changing/enhancing matters. I want to be a Lotus Eater again. Or at least that's how I feel at 10.30pm on a Sunday.

Sorry, if what I have written is uninspired, but that's what you get when you realise that you have watched three films accidentally (Birthday Girl, The Longest Day, The Count of Monte Christo) in one day. The brain may be going. On holiday?  ¶ 9:20 PM

  Dead Time

Sometimes I wake in before 9am, my normal reveille. I can kill ten minutes pretty quickly, but an hour invites abject directionless. This is strange because I came back at midnight last night after many hours travelling, having popped home (that's home, home) for exactly half an hour so I could retrieve all my new PIN numbers. The problem is I have no idea which one goes with which card; three of them being Halifax-related. It's bankcard lottery. Look, it's only 8.25am. I can't think of anything to write...

Apart from this
I've been reading Harry Thompson's biography of Peter Cook. Of course, the man was brilliant, a genius, a cruel bastard with the manners of a Georgian gentleman, but the one thing that stands out is that he went to St Bede's prep school in Eastbourne. Hey, I went to St Bede's in Eastbourne. How did this nugget of information pass me by? In eight years at the school how come nobody mentioned that the greatest comedy genius of all time learned, ate and played the footer some forty years there before? Why wasn't there a statue of him? Somewhere? Even behind a hedge or down by the tennis courts? In one of the draughty toilets? I don't get it. The only previous famous alumni I can remember in this early morning state is Ed 'cocaine nosejob' Giddins. But then again, he played cricket and didn't make comedy so funny that it loosens your bowels.

Cook was also addicted to amphetamines for a few years. But then isn't everybody? No? Okay, I'll just shut up then... wow, I've just remembered that I've got a Ginsters Buffet Bar in the fridge.  ¶ 7:13 AM

  In a Room
(Hey, Dodgy! reference ahoy ... man, I really liked that song ... TEN YEARS AGO - apologies so many conflicting and stupid emotions in that sentence)

I was going to clear my slum/room up tonite but then I actually had a fight with my Powerbook which involved lots of pushing and pressing for an hour. The silver bastard refused to cooperate, had a strop and switched off the screen. So I gave up and decided to type this. The act of hygiene would have cleared up my Sunday-stressed mind (lots of things are happening and colliding and making my heart sink into my diaphragm at the moment), but instead I have decided to stare at the stuff on my floor in the hope that they will reveal themselves as a rather genius Magic Eye puzzle that has the message: HELP IS ON THE WAY (hey, Juno reference ahoy!... man, I really liked that song).

Floor contents: My nice umbrella (so that's where the fucker is), Two Legs t-shirt, advance copy of Jasper Ffforde's The Big Over Easy, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - The Lyre of Orpheus CD, June copy of The Guardian Guide, crumpled striped Topman polo shirt, a Boots receipt, a blank TDK CD, a Selfridges shopping bag, an empty 500ml Coke bottle, a pair of grey Gravis trainers, an empty case of The Book Group DVD series 2 (hey Jim Butler who gave it one star - up yours!!!!), one rolled up black sock, some green Rizlas, a Screen Select DVD prolly In America, If They Move Kill 'Em by David Weddle, a Muji patterned white collar shirt, an empty bottle of Omega-3 oil pills, a bulldog clip, a Soul of Springfield green shoulder bag that should have contained my wallet (ohgod, I've just remembered ... ouch), an April copy of The Evening Standard, Brian Jonestown Massacre - Give it Back! CD, a full box of Oreos I bought in Spain, Germolene with local anaesthetic, a free Word CD, a bottle of anti-perspirant - Lynx, khaki Carhartt hoody .... of course, I could go on.

Only petrol or my industry will solve this. Neither is at hand at the moment.

A friend asks "Are you hard yet?" and I am sickened to my core
I really really hate the way my head looks from the side, as well as the way it makes my nose look beaky. Can someone just club it into a less cuboid shape next time they see my face in profile? Such an act of mercy would be much appreciated.

Right now
My CD player is refusing to play my Sufjan Stevens' single The Dress Looks Nice On You. But I thought it did.  ¶ 8:48 PM

  Look

Famous ... in a rubbish way

Bought a new wallet. For some reason this happened in Topman on Oxford Street. Thankfully, it wasn't a Union Jack influenced design. And of course I'm still paranoid about swarthy Spaniards using my identity to buy designer clothes and cars that I could never actually afford to drive.  ¶ 11:01 AM

  Recap

I still feel permanently drunk. I woke up at 4pm yesterday groaning like a spectacular cliff-face in a particularly harsh storm then listened to lots of CDs I hadn't heard for ages. I then went to Victoria to pick up (How come every time I have a photobooth picture done, it is always of a different person?) a new railcard - "You can only have one replacement!" - , smothered my brain in some much needed Omega-3 fats courtesy of some M&S salmon, and came home where my cards have not arrived and my 12-year-old sister wondered why I hadn't bought here any Marlboro Lights. Cheeky bitch.

Fortunately, my vision is no longer blurred and I didn't even have a cigarette yesterday.

Memory was another matter though. I couldn't even say goodbye properly to some of the people at Stansted because I could not even remember their names - "Bye, errr" - so I just slinked away with a rather distraught expression on my face. I even kept on thinking someone was called Simon. I don't know where that came from.

Spaced out? You should have seen me try to find Brick Lane after I got off the bus.

For some godawful reason I also decided to watch the director's cut of Alexander today before I came to this lovely provincial library. Boringgggggggggg. But I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind a few hours before and proceeded to cry just when Clementine suggests "So go". I get a bit emotional at times like this.

Gah.  ¶ 3:00 PM

  Between the mountains and the sea

Apols for the lack of posting. But fuck it, it's an arse when something as anonymous and depersonalised as this to the strange visitor can't really go anywhere. Also I have been to Benicassim where the sun was merciless. Spain burnt my arms and face a caramel smudge. The music was great. The people (95% of whom were complete strangers) were great. Really really. I even started to believe that LCD Soundsystem weren't completely, utterly, butterly overrated.

But GODDAMNIT. I lost my fucking wallet. Some fucker picked it up off the ground and ran away. Some fucker probably ransacked the cards and dumped the rest down a foul shit-piss cocktail toilet which was standing only ten metres away. This doesn't excuse the fact that I am a complete fucking tool for forgetting to put it in my bag. The policia were kind of helpful, if owners of stony faces as hardy as the surrounding ranges, and I'm sure they'll phone me in Spanish because as everyone on this earth believes if we just speak our first and only language to each other, then some fucking meaning must come through. Oh wanker.

Fuck it I'll say it again. My wallet has vanished. Credit cards, work ID, railcards, sentimental mugshots, etc etc are, at least to me, nevermore. I have been brooding (in various ways and states for the past 29 hours) and tomorrow I have to tour our dour capital visiting various institutions and asking for their sympathy (and additional £5 charges). I am not a complete idiot, I am the fucking idiot, more idiotic than Dostoevsky's and Iggy Pop's Idiots combined in their imperial idiocy. Man oh shit fuck. No wait a minute: FUCK!

Christ I'm fucking knackered. Excuse the snarkiness (at myself), I got back three hours ago and have been on the net ever since. Bathwater goes tepid when you realise you have not looked at the web for six days (especially when it is your current job) and have not indulged in countrywide ecstasy by beatin Australia (heeeee-heeee).

And I think my neuroses weigh a ton.

Well, wasn't that a wonderful festival review
The result is that I am putting an end to this blog and starting a new one next month called, hmmm, let me think ... The New Solution. It might have pictures of stuff such as orange soled feet and people sleeping on coaches. Who knows. Actually I know that I have made people paranoid by launching a 'surprise' photography spree. Hey. (Gap for witty rejoinder, but fuck it the sun is almost up and I'm going to sleep.) But I promise it will be fun. However, this is not to say of the two regular other blogs I currently do that are shit in their loveable way, but which I promise you will NEVER EVER SEE. Yes, I have been cheating on all those who know me, by projectile vomiting bloggery into the world which only some poor other unfortunates will ever be subject too. The name of my newest one (started in May) is the greatest in the history of the universe despite the appallingly distasteful content.

Let's do this avantgarde stylee
Bleaarrrrggghhh.

Murrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Silly word. Bollocks filler. Jismed flaps. White chasms of guano. Clatterbucket fuckweeeeeddsss.

(This is my freak out post. Everyone has been doing them while I'm away, so why not j
oin in.)

Look what festivals and dreadlockedgypsies do to you. Mad dogs and Englishmen in the midday sun. Of bloody course.

Ringstumps

Plop.

XXXXXXXXXXX  ¶ 4:27 AM