It's cool because you don't know how certain songs are going to go over until you play them live. For some reason, "Shivers" gets a huge response. I was not expecting it. When I start singing in the middle of "Baby Get Worse", they go nuts. Just little surprises like that.
My problem was never with the major label, it was with the guy who we put our trust in and then wouldn't take my phone calls once we'd signed to a major label, who then quit.
It's hard being the guy that brings in a song, because you're very, you know, it can be something that you get too sensitive about.
I sometimes feel like I need to pinch myself. I feel extremely fortunate.
I don't have any intention to stop. Rock 'n' roll is my main concern.
If I was talking about making a song special, I probably meant getting the lyrics and arrangement together, or getting some instrument that's going to tie the whole thing together. That can take months, or it can happen really fast.
I think there are lots of people that believe in rock 'n' roll. It's real easy. You just find some friends to play with and then you can feel it. I think that happens all the time. To be in a band and be playing in a room really loud, even if you never play a show, that feeling is really addictive and pure.
The idea that somebody out there is that eager to hear my music in advance can only be a good thing. But growing up, I always liked that system where "release day" was a big thing, and for bands I really liked, I'd know that date. It'd be on my calendar, and I'd go to the record store that day. Sitting down and listening to the record for the first time was a real event. I wish it was still that way, but that's not the way the world works any more.
Sometimes to get in the "musical mood," I'll just turn on music really loud, or go drive around and listen to music, or learn a song that I really like on guitar or piano. That gets me in the right frame of mind to proceed.
I had some really great experiences doing overdubs.
I'm usually way more pleased with the stuff that just kinda happens by accident and is no way a pop song. But sometimes the easiest thing for me to write is pop songs.
The fastest I ever did that was when Kill the Moonlight came out after Girls Can Tell, and I remember both labels I was working with at the time saying, "If this was any other period, I would probably say this is too fast, but because this is first time anybody has ever paid attention to Spoon, let's keep it on an upward trajectory. "
You definitely get more of a band feel to a song if you've been playing a song live a bunch.
I'm not the underdog, but - Well actually, I guess I've been the underdog. To me, it always felt like I was talking to "the big guy," you know, the big guy in the government, and trying to tell him about some things he didn't seem to be aware of. I just think that's a pretty arrogant group of liars we've got up there, and they don't really consider the abilities of their opponents.
My song titles have different reasons for the mistakes. "Don't You Evah," that's just the way that I've always said it, and I just thought it was funnier. "Yr. " in "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb", it's that punk-rock way of writing "your," like "Kill Yr. Idols. " And "Rhthm And Soul" was just an actual typo that someone pointed out, and I just said, "Well, I guess that's the way it's gonna be. "
There's no way to replicate a really great vocal sometimes.
I'm never trying to be commercial or accessible, or saying "let's do this weird stuff, but at the same time we gotta do this safe stuff".
I guess if we do enough shows and keep doing it long enough, then people will get the picture. But I can't really be bothered if they don't get the picture. That's not my concern.
I don't wanna keep playing the same song over and over again. It's just thinking about "what's going to be the coolest thing to play on this particular show?" The easiest thing to do is to play the single over and over again.