Weisbard: On the one hand, you hear this and it sounds really almost—it's great music, but you can hear it as very generic, sort of strummy indie-pop. On the other hand, Robert Ray, who's about 60, 65—his mission was always to combine the music of the '50s and '60s with the bands he loved when this one started in the '80s, like New Order and the Feelies. The reason this is such great driving music is he was trying to combine a '50s and '60s sense of road music with that kind of minimal post-punk. And Dale Lawrence last year presented a paper on mash-ups. So many things that seem to be a single, solid form are really mishmashes that keep, because they were the right thing to make.
Mekons: "Thee Olde Trip to Jerusalem" (2002) from OOOH! (Quarterstick)
Courtesy of Eric Weisbard
They just want some of your extra time; Ann Powers, two doppelgängers, and Eric Weisbard.
Courtesy of Eric Weisbard
They just want some of your extra time; Ann Powers, two doppelgängers, and Eric Weisbard.
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Weisbard: Finally!
SW: When you started guessing Langford right away, I was glad I put this last, since you'd just be crowing about it the whole time if I hadn't.
Powers: The Mekons are our band as a couple.
SW: How did you get Langford involved this year—and last year?
Powers: We met him years ago. We bought the painting in the other room from him.
Weisbard: I think there's a moment when you've been a rock critic long enough that you have to know Jon. The first time I really met him, I was assigned by Spin to write a feature story on the Mekons in 1993, about the I [Heart] Mekons record that never came out the first time around on a major label, and finally came out on Quarterstick, after the major label had screwed the band over. Not the first major label to do so, but I guess the last one. I was in Chicago, slept overnight at Langford's apartment, had to catch a flight the next morning at 5 a.m. I remember him pulling me awake off the couch in the living room. The fact that I even ended up on that futon is so typical of the man.
Powers: That's not the first time you met him, because actually the Mekons were your first interview. He interviewed him on WKRV, the Princeton radio station, and didn't you talk so much he didn't get to talk at all? [laughs]
SW: Langford is going to be backing Sarah Vowell at the Pop Conference keynote. I grew up in Minneapolis, where she published a lot of her first writing, and she started out as a rock critic.
Weisbard: The presentation is called "Songs of the Assassinations of American Presidents." It's gonna be Sarah's take on political songs in the whole scheme of American history, from "John Brown's Body," the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," Stephen Sondheim's Assassins. Jon will go wherever Sarah goes, and probably tweak her six or seven times. They've done portions of this before on This American Life.
Powers: Then everyone meets Jon in the bar afterward.
mmatos@seattleweekly.com
The Experience Music Project Pop Music Studies Conference begins Thurs., April 15 (welcoming reception at 5:30 p.m., keynote address by Sarah Vowell and Jon Langford at 7:30 p.m.), and goes through Sun., April 18 (conference wrap-up session, 9:30 a.m.). A full schedule can be viewed at www.emplive.com. Full conference pass: $35 members and students/$55. Friday and Saturday one-day passes: $10 each (panels only). Keynote address: $6 members and students/$8. Box office: 206-770-2702 or 1-877-454-7836.
