|
PRELUDE
It’s
1993, and a twenty-five year old self-described
“total longhaired hippie punk freak” from St. Louis
has just started a video company in Southern California.
He
has been there for about ten years, and found himself
in his first nine jobs doing things like helping
out behind the scenes of a game show, and working
as a producer and an anchorman at a television station.
A
SWELL HANG
 Shirley:
We both had moved to Los Angeles after college to
pursue careers in film. We hit it off right away,
a great spark. AJ has quite a sparkle in his eye,
and we haven’t looked back since.
 AJ:
For me it was that when I was in college I was really
curious about finding music I had never heard of
before. I was going into record stores, and basically
there was a section that was “Employees’ Suggestions,”
or something. I would be really intrigued and pick
stuff up.
So,
I had picked up [TMBG’s] first record, out of a
shop in Urabana, IL, when I had gone to visit a
friend at the University of Illinois. I listened
to it on my way home, and just really liked it a
lot. I thought it was a strange record, very different
from anything that I’d ever heard before. And then
they just became one of the bands that I enjoyed
listening to. When they started coming to Columbia,
MO, where I was going to school, I would go see
them play at this really great alternative rock
club that was in town. This was about 1986-87.
Their
work was discordant. I really liked them, as one
of the other bands I’d really been into was the
Talking Heads, and I also loved Laurie Anderson
when I was in high school. I was interested in all
the stuff going on at that time: Husker Du, the
Replacements, REM, a lot of underground rock, college
rock, whatever it was called. Melody is big to me,
and there are a couple of songs on TMBG’s first
record that are experimental, and I appreciated
them, but I wasn’t sure how to take it as an album
as a whole. But there were certain songs on the
record that I was really, really into, that became
favorites—I really wanted to see what they were
going to do next.
Shirley:
I grew up in very small agricultural towns in California
and Arizona. I was Miss All-American—straight A's,
drama club, school newspaper, varsity volleyball,
student council. I think I expressed my alternative
nature in overachievement and an overabundance of
energy. I was always maybe a generation behind in
my music tastes, and was listening to my aunts’
and uncles’ records—Beatles, Joan Baez, Simon and
Garfunkle ... and my mom’s favorites—Hank Williams,
Charlie Pride, Johnny Cash ... AJ broke the world
of alternative rock wide open for me. And of course
I eventually got to work with great bands producing
their videos.
 John:
John [Linnell] and I became friends in high school
in the mid-70s when, to paraphrase Frank Zappa,
“high school spirit was at an all time low.” And
I mean, like, our prom was cancelled due to lack
of interest. It was the total arc of the 60s and
70s teen drug culture at its high water mark. There
was no inside or outside crowd. It had fractured
away and a lot of kids were completely stoned, and
there weren’t a lot of traditional, “uptight” people.
It was a very rough time for the social institutions
of our teen years. It’s funny, because it’s the
years I grew up in, and my wife is just a few years
younger than me, but I realize there’s something
very generationaly different—things had gotten really
derailed, in a very basic way. I don’t think that
we felt like outcasts at all, I think everybody
in high school felt like, "You know, a lot
of things are over.”
John
and I worked on the newspaper together and we had
a group of people that we hung out with, that really
shared the same sensibility—we saw a lot of things
together, experienced a lot of things together.
It was sort of a social clique, boys and girls who
worked for the paper—but in some ways I feel like
the way we talked about how shitty the drum solo
was at the Wet Willie concert forever influenced
the sort of band that we have. You just can’t have
that conversation and be in a band and have a really
long drum solo so we can mop down our brows! Which
was basically the function at the Wet Willie concert,
so the band could primp themselves....
 Sarah:
I’m not saying I didn’t sow wild oats when I was
younger, but mostly—I was born to be quiet. I like
silence. I like solitude. I like sentiment and warmth
and manners. I’m wild about manners. My mother raised
me properly, to be a kind person. I don’t know if
I live up to that, but I do try. And I enjoy songs
in 4/4 time with a backbeat. I like electric guitars.
And the thing I always appreciated about TMBG is
that they seemed like me, like people I would like
to know. I have a lot of rock and roll heroes. And
I couldn’t say that about most of them.
For
example, I love Jerry Lee Lewis. This guy is maybe
the most self-absorbed, arrogant weirdo alive. I
have no desire to meet him or be around him. I just
love his voice and the way he bangs on the piano.
Or Lou Reed. I would cross a street not to make
eye contact with him. He scares me. I adore the
way he—well, “sings” isn’t the right word—sounds.
I
don’t need to identify with the people I look up
to. But it’s nice when I can. Besides the fact that
John and John are good people—kind friends, thoughtful
husbands—they are a swell hang. I love listening
to them talk. I love knowledge and facts, and so
do they. A goodly number of their sentences begin
with the phrase: “I saw this documentary.”
|
