Top down or bottom up?

Peter K. peterk at enteract.com
Thu Nov 1 17:17:16 PST 2001



>Hmm, seems to me debauchery and working are harder to mix than war and
>justice. See also O. Wilde: work, curse of drinking classes.
>
>Carl

You can have hard-working debaucheurs though. Speaking of which, _The Onion_ has a mind-blowing interview with the folk-metal band Tenacious D (Jack Black and Kyle Gass):

http://www.theonionavclub.com/avclub3739/avfeature_3739.html

a snippet:

O: One of the striking songs on the album is "City Hall," where you talk about fucking things up in City Hall for the man in the street. Have you gotten a lot of feedback about that?

JB: You mean has City Hall called us?

O: Yeah. Has City Hall struck back at your attacks?

JB: The thing about City Hall, they never do a public strike-out. They just keep tabs on you.

KG: Or they give you parking tickets.

JB: I'm sure they've got someone across the street watching us with the binocs, and making notes on our every move.

O: Is that something that you're going to pursue more on your second album? Is it going to be more political?

JB: I think it'd be cool if the second album was all one story, like a musical.

KG: Like Tommy.

JB: Yeah, like a Tommy.

KG: Rock opera.

JB: That'd be cool. Of course it won't be.

KG: We have a working title for it right now.

O: What is it?

KG: It's just one that you use until you have the real title. It could actually be the real title.

O: What would the working title be?

JB: Oh, it's Unicorns And Rainbows.

O: So it's going to be about unicorns and rainbows?

KG: It's just what might be inside the music. More of a feel-good thing.

O: This is a question that you're probably tired of answering, but why do you rock so hard?

KG: I think it's just sheer talent.

JB: The truth is, we only rock hard half of the time. The other half, we actually do rock extremely softly. I don't know if you can call it rocking when we get really soft.

KG: We're serenading, or soothing.

JB: But when we rock, extremely hard.

KG: That's what it is.

JB: The reason that we do it is, it feels good.

KG: Maybe we only appear to be rocking too hard because of the softer stuff. It's relative.

JB: Rocking. Why do we rock so hard?

KG: I think since we picked the rock genre, we almost felt obligated to rock. If we were doing jazz, we'd want to swing.

JB: You're not saying how do we do it; you're saying why do we do it?

O: Yes. Why do you rock so hard?

JB: Why. Oh, I'm sorry. It's just a weird question. Why do you rock so hard? See, "why" is always a more difficult question than "how" or "what." Why is like, you have to get to the reason: Why do we exist? Why do we rock so hard? Because we're raging against the dying of the light, as Dylan Thomas would say.

O: Who are your peers in rocking? Who rocks nearly as hard as you?

JB: I would say Mandela rocks really hard. Did it have to be music?

O: No, it could be anything or anyone.

JB: I think that Muhammad Ali rocks, or rocked, extremely hard. And he may still rock. I think he still does rock hard, in his mind.

KG: That's what they say. [etc.]



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