There aren’t many people in this world of Gucci-stank and lost hobo dreams that have earned my unadulterated respect, and in my rock musician pantheon, Mark Prindle stands as high as any. Not only is Mark a staggeringly creative musician (in both the legitorious noise punk band the Low Maintenance Perennials – the LuMP, as the kids know them – and on his three guitar-interplay centric solo LP’s – Nature’s Smelly Ass, Keep On Zaccin’!, and Stop, Drop And Roll: A Musical Celebration Of Smoke Inhalation), but he’s also among the wittiest, most insightful rock critics alive today and a damn fine human being. It’s been pointed out to me that I can be a bit intimidating and overwhelming in my goofiness, but to his credit, Mark held his own, not even flinching at my constant stream of comments about being covered in goose jism and other such nonsense. Though he created one of the most popular web review sites on the net and has crafted some of the last decade’s most entertaining and exciting music, Mark seems downright puzzled as to why anyone would want to thrust the spotlight on him, and was absolutely thrilled when I told him that his second album (Keep On Zaccin’!) is one of my favorite albums of all time. He’s a dang nut, but also has a charming humility that musicians without a tenth of his talent lack.
I caught up with Mark at New York’s famed Comrade Assholenstein’s House Of Ass Porn for what must be considered a landmark meeting of the two most important people alive today.
GOM: I’m ordering Stevey Malkmus tickets. Have you heard that solo album of his?
Mark Prindle: Nope, but I’m going out on a limb here to assume that it sounds like Pavement?
GOM: Oh, and how! A bit more silly and fun than Pavement, though.
Mark Prindle: I’m so over Pavement. I’m far too cool for such indie rock fare. I’ve moved on to intelligent music like Nazareth.
GOM: I’ve noticed… You seem to have gotten kind of disenchanted by the time Terror Twilight came out.
Mark Prindle: The band didn’t get any worse – I just got much cooler. Goddamn am I cool – holy shit! I’m just cruisin’ around with the top down and a huge pair of ridiculous rainbow-colored Oakleys… and a mullet.
GOM: If mullets ever went out of style, I don’t wanna hear about it. Are you wearing one of those backwards visors right now? Now THOSE are cool! And those wallet chains? Don’t even get me fuckin’ STARTED, dude!
Mark Prindle: I said I was cool, not gay.
GOM: Is there a difference? How’s your new album coming, and what does it sound like?
Mark Prindle: Is this the actual interview now?
GOM: It’s always the actual interview… the interview is inside us, not an independent entity. Think outside the BOX, man!
Mark Prindle: I just want to be sure that if you’re printing my words, I adhere to the orthodox Christian dogma for which I am known in the community.
GOM: I’ll just use my formidable editing skills to change this into a Puff Daddy interview anyway, so in essence it doesn’t matter what you say. Be free – like Jeff Lynne’s semen filled ass.
Mark Prindle: Fantastic. Okay, ask me my first question and make it a good one because I’m an important man.
GOM: Alright… what do you see as the most important influence on your records today?
Mark Prindle: Today? Like right this second? Probably my dog. I haven’t even started the new CD yet because I’m not sure how he’ll react to it.
GOM: So are we to expect a lot of poop cleaning songs?
Mark Prindle: No no! Not at all. The next CD is going to be a concept CD about the obsessive-compulsive disorder I have – and how wacky it is!
GOM: Oh, it’s wacky!!!! I’m on paxil right now, which is fairly wonderful… though I’m planning to start drinking again, which just might cancel it out.
Mark Prindle: My psychiatrist is a piece of shit. She totally doesn’t listen to anything I say and keeps prescribing the wrong drugs. But I have a good therapist! His name is Roy Shapiro – ask for him by name! So far, I have a short intro by [comedian] Neil Hamburger, a hilarious “Weird Al”-Yankovic-like parody of The Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time”, and a song performed entirely by my dog. Do you think that’s enough for a cd? should I just go ahead and hand it over to Capitol?
GOM: I think your new CD might be more of a Geffen thing. How well do you know Neil? Is he actually a real person? How’d you get the intro?
Mark Prindle: Of course he’s a real person! He’s been touring worldwide! You haven’t seen his shows?
GOM: No sir! I’ve heard rumors ranging from Neil just being [former Amarillo Records chief] Gregg [Turkington] to Neil being real to Neil being Freddy Prinze Sr. An Andy Kauffman dynamic for our wackass generation.
Mark Prindle: I got the intro by working it out through his friend and producer Gregg Turkington. Gregg is a friend of mine that I met through email back when he ran Amarillo Records.
GOM: What do you think your new record will sound like? An extension of the Zaccin’ style or all over the place like Smoke Inhalation?
Mark Prindle: I don’t know what my new album will sound like, but I hope it will be good for a change. I’m assuming it will be guitar-heavy with lots of guitar interplay. That seems to be par for the course for me. I also like vocal harmonies. I’m actually listening to the Beach Boys right this second! The songs will likely be very short as usual – and all of them will feature a full gospel choir.
GOM: Your records all have this “ironic yet not ironic” quality… kind of like early Unrest does. It’s a bit like saying, “I know this is stupid, but I love it” rather than “Hey, isn’t this moronic!”… What kind of recording setup are you using in these sordid days?
Mark Prindle: Same as always. 4-track recorder with guitar plugged straight through some fancy effects processor thingy that makes it sound like a bass or a distorted guitar or whatever. Drum machine. I wish I could afford better recording equipment but this is a recession! And for the vocals, I use a microphone. One that captures the sound as it leaves my mouth. And in the 4-track recorder, I use Maxell Audiocassettes, my sponsor.
GOM: I’m always impressed that you’re able to do as much with your equipment as you can.
Mark Prindle: I think the new cd might be called “Calvin Klein’s Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder” – do you like that name at all? Or a friend suggested “The Oh! CD” – I like that one too.
GOM: Hmmm… I think you can do better. #2’s not bad, though.
Mark Prindle: Okay, I’ll come up with something better. How about “Calvin Klein’s Obsessive-Compulsive Disordeq”? Why do you like Zaccin’ so much?
GOM: I like Zaccin’ because it’s a 75 minute album that stays interesting the whole way through… I love guitar interplay, and you’re a much better songwriter (perhaps this has to do with a good set of priorities) than you seem to think you are. By making all the songs short and economical, you sort of attach a punk ethic to every kind of style you do (punk-jazz, punk-blues, whatever). Do you do this on purpose, or is it just laziness, or what?
Mark Prindle: Neither – if you’re playing in a band, it’s fun to “jam” on a riff or whatever but this is just me in my back room. I get very, very bored playing the same thing over and over again. By keeping them short, I can cram more onto a CD and I don’t have to ask myself the question, “Why the hell am I doing three verses, three choruses and a middle-eight? This is stupid!” For example, that song about “separating the components of a mixture” [“Components Of A Mixture”, from Mark’s album Keep On Zaccin’!] is just too goddamned long!!!!!
GOM: Oh, I disagree… I don’t think it’s any longer than it needs to be.
Mark Prindle: It was meant as a parody anyway. I love that bit near the end when I totally screwed up the lead guitar line and didn’t bother fixing it. Such amateurishness!
GOM: My roommate and I get a kick and a jew-oller out of that bit. Your approach is actually kind of like the first thing I said (“punk-ethic”).
Mark Prindle: Well, I love punk rock – I’ve loved it since I was 15 and I’m 27 now. Supposedly you’re supposed to outgrow it, but I never did. That’s a complaint somebody had about my site once – I’m too attached to generic hardcore punk. Well, SOMEBODY has to be!
GOM: Most of the bands you review aren’t TOO generic, anyway. Not that I have a problem with generic punk (it’s too fast to be boring)…
Mark Prindle: That’s what I think – too fast to be boring. I mean there are lots of shitty hardcore bands – but there are a lot of great ones, too.
GOM: I was at a club in Detroit a little while back and saw five shitty hardcore bands… IN A ROW! And then I fucked five shitty five-year old whores… IN A ROW! Was punk the catalyst that kept you involved in music, or do you think you would have stayed at it anyway and sounded more like BTO [Bachman Turner Overdrive]?
Mark Prindle: Interesting question… without punk, my music would probably be somewhat similar to stuff like “Components of a Mixture” – all the songs would have 3 verses and choruses and a middle part. I think they’d still be catchy – just not anywhere near as interesting.
GOM: Some people seem to think you need a producer. What would you think about working with someone to help you sift through those sixteen million songs of yours?
Mark Prindle: If they worked for free and their goal was to make me a big rock star without me having to put forth any effort, I’d be all for it! I am by no means a supporter of the lo-fi ethic. I wish my stuff sounded better than it does, but recording equipment costs a lot of money.
GOM: Which producers would you like to work with? Why?
Mark Prindle: Producers, huh? I’d like to work with Iain Burgess – he made the Cows sound even more awesome than they were. REALLY loud guitars.
GOM: Agreed. How about bitchmaster Steve Albini?
Mark Prindle: I like how Albini produces as a producer, he being a producer who produces and all, but he just seems like such a self-righteous little asshole. I wouldn’t want to give him the pleasure of working with a genius like Mark Prindle.
GOM: I think he’s a hoot! I saw him on VH1 once talking about Cheap Trick, and had to drink a whole bottle of Nyquil to feel right about the world.
Mark Prindle: I think Albini is for college students. Once you enter your early 20s, you realize exactly how full of shit he is. He’s still a good producer though, and one who produces.
GOM: Well, I’m in my early 20’s, so I guess that works. What process do you generally go about in order to write songs?
Mark Prindle: It differs, believe it or not! When I was in high school, I would spend all day at school writing stupid lyrics, then the Low-Maintenance Perennials (my old “band”) would get together on weekends, share the music we’d written during the week and throw my words on top. But that was then….
GOM: And now?
Mark Prindle: Nowadays, I tend to come up with a neat guitar line or bass line and record it with drums, then do the same each day…. then when I have enough material, I go back and add the rest of the elements to the song, make up lyrics and add those and vwahla! That’s how I did Zaccin’ anyway, and how I’ll do the next album. Stop Drop and my first solo album were done where I’d complete a whole song in the same hour. But I prefer the “come back a month later and add a new element to it” way of working – that’s why Zaccin’ has so many clashing guitar lines that seem weird together. I would be in a different mood the second time I heard the original music. See? But I’m not getting any better. I spend 3 months on a CD and then don’t touch the guitar for the next 9 months. I recorded the last two albums with the same set of strings on my guitar, even though they were recorded a year apart!
GOM: Johnny Ramone syndrome… Do you think there could be a LuMP reunion at some point? I know you’re all spread across the world and all…
Mark Prindle: It will never happen. Neither [ex-LuMP member] Christian nor I have spoken to Matt in three years. We don’t even know where he is or even if he’s still alive.
GOM: Not even if you got Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne to “pick up the slack”?
Mark Prindle: Christian and I collaborated on a “best of the LuMP” re-recordings CD a couple of years ago though. Nobody has heard it yet because it’s part of our 9-cd box set that nobody has ordered yet. Ha! We made it 9 cds because at 74 minutes apiece, that’s 666 minutes. Aren’t I clever? Yes. Yes I am.
GOM: How much are you charging for that crazy thing? Is there really anything worthwhile on it?
Mark Prindle: I think it’s all great! There’s a ton more boring material that we did NOT include. This is the stuff that’s so bad, it’s great. Plus lots of live material, solo stuff from each of us, side projects, early stuff that was great, etc.
GOM: Mark Prindle – always thinkin’ about the fans.
Mark Prindle: “Fans”. I hardly think we have any fans, but thank you for the nice thoughts.
GOM: What’s the first band you really loved? Any genre.
Mark Prindle: When I was a really little kid, I loved the album The Spirit Of ’67 by Paul Revere and the Raiders (still do actually, sadly enough). But the first band I loved enough to save up and buy all their albums was the Beatles – 5th grade. That was when I switched over from spending all my allowance money on videogames to spending it all on music.
GOM: And you haven’t lost any of that Beatle love over the years?
Mark Prindle: I still like the Beatles, but I’ve heard all their songs way too many times. How popular is my web site? Do you have any idea? Sometimes it seems like only about 4 people read it.
GOM: It seems to me that it’s the most popular review site on the net. But I wouldn’t have any way to prove that.
Mark Prindle: REALLY?!?!?! Dig this, Jack – I was in a car on Saturday with Gregg Turkington and Brandan Kearney, two members of Faxed Head (great band everyone should try out) — they played me their new unreleased CD and I loved it. Then we put in Stop, Drop and Roll, and I was so embarrassed by how shitty it sounded. I wanted to jump out the window. The lyrics are so childish and gross. The mix is pathetic.
GOM: What did they think?
Mark Prindle: They both laughed a lot at “Surfin’ Taps,” “Hot Rockin’ 2Nite” and Gregg laughed at “Mee Mi Mee Mee Mo Mo Mee”. Gregg has told me that he thinks it’s my best so far, but he’s not really into “rock” music anymore. he doesn’t even really like Faxed Head, I don’t think! He made me sick, the fuck. I’m sick now. I feel terrible. Got some cold or something from him. Here’s the thing — I think Stop, Drop and Roll would be a great record for a college student to make, but I’m TWENTY-SEVEN. That’s the age Hendrix and Cobain were when they DIED.
GOM: It seems to me that it’s the most popular review site on the net. But I wouldn’t have any way to prove that.
Mark Prindle: REALLY?!?!?! Dig this, Jack – I was in a car on Saturday with Gregg Turkington and Brandan Kearney, two members of Faxed Head (great band everyone should try out) — they played me their new unreleased CD and I loved it. Then we put in Stop, Drop and Roll, and I was so embarrassed by how shitty it sounded. I wanted to jump out the window. The lyrics are so childish and gross. The mix is pathetic.
GOM: See, that’s one thing we never seem to see paw to paw on – I don’t mind a shitty mix, as long as there’s enough going on to interest me. That might be why I love your albums so much. I like your solo ones more than any given Hendrix or Nirvana record. And I LIKE both of those guys!
Mark Prindle: That makes me feel really good – thank you! I think Zaccin’ is a really interesting CD. I like it a lot. Stop Drop and Roll is just chockfull of stuff I should have fixed though.
GOM: Such as?
Mark Prindle: Like where the hell are the drums in “Lonesome As A Colored” and “Loving To Love With You”? They’re gone!
GOM: Both lovely songs, though. I think every “indie rocker” should have to listen to your albums before they’re allowed to make a record, in much the same way that every rock band should have to listen to the Cows.
Mark Prindle: Hee! I’m certainly not trying to argue that my cds aren’t any good. I enjoy the hell out of them. I just hate feeling like somebody could listen to them and say, “where the hell does this guy get off reviewing other people’s work? He sucks!”
GOM: I had more respect for you as a critic AFTER I heard your cds. There’s more merit in your criticism now because you’re BETTER than most of the artists you review. I’m sorry, Mark, but it’s true.
Mark Prindle: WOW! Thank you!!!!! Even Bad Company?
GOM: Maybe not Bad Company, but you get the gist.
Mark Prindle: Ask me some more questions – this is fun! Whee! Like a roller coaster! God my face hurts. Fuckin’ Gregg Turkington. I’ve only met the guy in person three times and he’s been sick as a dog all three times.
GOM: Don’t have TOO much fun, Mark… Remember what Sammy Davis Jr. said about fun: “Don’t have too much fun, Mark”. Any chance you could tell me your five favorite records of all time? I knows it’s tough…
Mark Prindle: Instead of trying to figure out what they actually ARE, which would take forever – I’m going to just name the first 5 that popped into my head in response to your query.
GOM: Fair ‘nough!
Mark Prindle: The first Dirty Rotten Imbeciles record, the first Ramones record, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, the Cows’ Sexy Pee Story, and… hell I forgot the other one. I like the Fall a lot! What was the other one? The first Suicidal Tendencies? No! I remember – Slayer’s Reign In Blood.
GOM: Aha! Any particular Fall album? I’ve really gotten into Cerebral Caustic lately.
Mark Prindle: Right now I’m really into their newest one – it’s a hella lot of fun, though it falls apart at the end. Oh man, another of my favorite albums – GBH’s City Baby Attacked By Rats. AWESOME three-chord punk rock.
GOM: GBH? Really?
Mark Prindle: I’m not saying GBH are a great band – they’re NOT – but that album is awesome. Kinda like 7 Seconds – two great albums and then a mountain of shit the rest of their career.
GOM: Hmmm…. a few great albums, a mountain full of shit… kind of like Sonic Youth
Mark Prindle: Sonic Youth – there’s a band I go back and forth on like the days of our lives.
GOM: Me too… I look at Thurston and just want to punch him in the nose! And how did Kim convince anyone that “Swimsuit Issue” wasn’t a piece of pigeon crap she found on her shoe?
Mark Prindle: Sometimes I really like them. But how much can you like a band made up of such irritating human beings?
GOM: I was really surprised by your lackluster reaction to the Flaming Lips’ Soft Bulletin… were you just disappointed that they didn’t try something off-kilter?
Mark Prindle: It has some good songs, but I definitely think it has more bland soundalike songs than any other record they’ve ever done.
GOM: I felt that way at first, too, but it’s grown on me.
Mark Prindle: I can’t stand how “serious” it sounds. It does have some great tunes though – “Waitin’ For Superman”, the bumblebee song or whatever [“Buggin’”]. I keep going back to it expecting to be blown away, but I’m always only blown away for 3 or 4 songs… then it gets really hit-or-miss! I’m so out of touch with “today’s music” – I have no idea if there are any good new bands. That’s one thing college did for me – working at the radio station kept me abreast of all underground musical developments. Now I hear about bands like June of 44 and I’m just like pblleeeaahh. I’d rather buy up the back catalog of a band that has proven themselves to be enjoyable to me personally. Like D.I.! Or the Minutemen! Or Chrome!
GOM: The Cows/Jesus Lizard/Pavement breakups have made me lose a lot of interest in new stuff… but in my line of work I still find a good one every once in awhile.
Mark Prindle: What is your line of work? Dentist?
GOM: I’m a doctor of journalism, man!
Mark Prindle: Have you heard the Heroine Sheiks? That’s a good album.
GOM: I’ve wanted to for awhile… Once you live off the cheapy bins for a few years, it’s tough to pay full price. But that’s one I might just do it for!
Mark Prindle: Don’t spend too much on Heroine Sheiks – it’s only half an hour long. This is kind of pathetic, but I really want the new Aerosmith album. No matter how ungood they are now, I still enjoy them! I’m also trying to get copies of the Raiders’ Country Wine and The Guess Who’s It’s Time, so if you could make CDRs for me that’d be great. Where are we? I’m getting ahead of you.
GOM: [Crumbs falling from chin] Wha-? Oh, I was just eating bagel bites. My apologies.
Mark Prindle: Are we still doing a interview? I love leaving “n”s off like that.
GOM: Sure! I like it casual, and later I’ll edit out all the stuff no one cares about, which will leave us with only that bit about cleaning up after your dog.
Mark Prindle: I didn’t even mention that! That was you! Aaahhhh, Jesus.
GOM: Now you see how it works…
Mark Prindle: My dog is mostly housebroken now. We taught him to pee and poop in the bathtub. So he just runs in the bathroom, hops in and WHAMMO! Easy cleanup. Sometimes we leave it in there so we can enjoy a nice poop bath.
GOM: “Mark Prindle: Why in God’s Name Does He Talk About Dog Poop So Much?” By Dave Wagner
Mark Prindle: [maniacal laughter] You made me LOL! I LOLed! I totally LOLed! Lol Tollhurst! The real question is why all of my reviews are so obscene? The answer is of course that I’m showing my support for the first amendment.
GOM: I thought your reviews were obscene because it’s entertaining.
Mark Prindle: Good. A guy called me racist a few weeks ago because I used the term “niggerknockers” in one of my reviews. Personally I think the word is hilarious and much more condemning of the rednecks I heard it from than black people, but I guess that wasn’t made clear.
GOM: [still coming to grips with “niggerknockers” being introduced to my vocabulary] By using so much pointless cussing, you devalue the words… I wish people could see that. I write my stuff with that intent, and people don’t seem to get it.
Mark Prindle: I can’t believe he didn’t remark about the REALLY racist thing I said in one of my Black Crowes reviews. But whatever. I’m not racist. I like black people – I mean, in theory. I’ve never actually met any of them. Bill Cosby seems nice though.
GOM: He’s got a lot to say about pudding.
Mark Prindle: Pudding his dick up that little girl’s ass?
GOM: And then filming her taking a poop with Chuck Berry, right. A professor of mine once called him “the non-black black comedian”.
Mark Prindle: Your professor is a racist – get him fired. Last night I used a banana-flavored condom. Make sure your readers know about that [Dave’s note: done and done!]. It was great because when I was done “making love,” I just ate it.
GOM: I think that’s what you’re supposed to do. Do you enjoy a wide variety of condom flavors?
Mark Prindle: No, I don’t like condoms at all. But my fiancée is off the pill, darn it. We made a list of songs we want played at our wedding reception and WAY too many of them were punk rock songs. Whoops!
GOM: What’s going to make the final cut? “My Sharona” and “Rock Lobster” are generally good choices. Kick out the jams!
Mark Prindle: We’re actually going to play “Who Wants A Filbert?” by the Low Maintenance Perennials. Do you have that one?
GOM: Naah. Is it a winner?
Mark Prindle: Yeah, it’s ridiculously catchy – here are the complete written lyrics to “Who Wants a Filbert?”: “who wants a filbert? I’ve got plenty!” (repeat). And it goes on for like 2 minutes.
GOM: What the hell’s a filbert? Or a night goat, for that matter?
Mark Prindle: A filbert is a type of nut.
GOM: The things I’ve learned… You’re better than the dang TV guide, Horshack! Tell me a little about your days in college radio. What were some of the highlights?
Mark Prindle: Some of the highlights? I enjoyed playing the Ramones on every show. One time I pretended the station had turned into a classic rock station and I played nothing but awful classic rock (Eagles, Billy Joel) for 3 hours – got lots of angry calls. Fun! Also I made illegal cassette copies of about 5 trillion albums. That’s how I got into the Cows, the Fall and tons of other bands!
GOM: Did you get to interview people for your show?
Mark Prindle: Yep. I interviewed Mark E. Smith and the Cows. I got to interview more people for the school newspaper though, like Pavement, Juliana Hatfield, the Jesus Lizard, the Thinking Fellers, Sebadoh, etc. I interviewed Juliana Hatfield having never heard a note of her music. Classy! It was probably for the best though, or the whole interview would have been questions like “When did you start sucking so bad?” and “What are your shitty influences that make you suck so much ass?”
GOM: “What do you see as the catalyst to move you from merely sucking ass to sucking low-grade midget ass?” What was the strangest interview you did?
Mark Prindle: They were all pretty strange for different reasons. The Pavement guys just lied to me for 20 minutes, thinking they were getting away with something. I knew they were lying and thought it was pretty weak.
GOM: I’d expect no less of them. Who was it – [Pavement guitarist] Scott [Kannenberg]?
Mark Prindle: The Pavement interview was with the bass player and the non-Malkmus guitarist. The Lou Barlow interview was good because I didn’t get to a single one of my questions. I immediately made him paranoid and then we just chatted about that for 15 minutes.
GOM: Is Lou a pretty paranoid guy?
Mark Prindle: He sure seemed like it in that interview! Very overly concerned about being thought of derogatively as a “rock star”. He was really friendly though. Is “derogatively” a word? Hard to say.
GOM: Yeah, it’s a word!
Mark Prindle: Is anyone missing a pair of womens’ “Guess” sunglasses? I have them if you’d like them back–stop by–I’m sitting across from Camille’s cube on 12 today… I cut and pasted that from an email! I’m a master of cut-and-paste art. Just like John Cage! I bought a John Cage CD once. Boy was it “interesting.” And by putting the word interesting in quotes, I’m of course suggesting that it was so boring I wanted to throw the fucking thing out the window. Are you enjoying how incendiary I’m being? Your readers are gonna DIG me!
GOM: That is awfully incendiary. I think this interview will open you up to a whole new audience… On a scale of 1-10, how smug do you think you are (1 being Jesus, 10 being “Brandon the Smug-God Bob Evans Waiter”)?
Mark Prindle: What does “smug” mean? Like cocky?
GOM: Yeah!
Mark Prindle: Self-loving?
GOM: Like James Garner in The Great Escape, for example.
Mark Prindle: On my web site, I put forth this ridiculous front but it’s not cockiness – it’s just ridiculousness. I’m really not very confident so I guess I’d say around a 5?
GOM: Why, that’s not very smug a’tall! I’m at least an 8.
Mark Prindle: I don’t like myself enough to be higher than a 5. But then I go through these phases where I think my songs are really great, so I know I can’t be lower than a 5.
GOM: Do you think that the days of artistic musical “trends” (i.e., punk, post-punk, post-punk-post) are over? Or does pop music just need a shot of mescaline?
Mark Prindle: You know… I’m really tired of everybody saying that rock is dead. I certainly don’t feel dead. There are plenty more ideas out there – there just need to be more intelligent people involved. I realize that, due to my poor production and fake drums, my music doesn’t “rock” but it’s guitar-oriented and interesting, so I know that there are more ideas out there.
GOM: I think there are lots of intelligent people involved, but all of them seem to be doing widely different things. There doesn’t seem to be much independent music consensus out there.
Mark Prindle: The problem is that there are too many stupid people involved in the genre. If you listen to modern rock radio, of COURSE you’d think that rock was dead. Because idiots like Limp Bizkit and Third Eye Blind don’t have any ideas. “Everything has been done before” – well yeah, if you stick to playing nothing but chords, everything HAS been done before. But there are a heck of a lot of other things you can do with traditional rock instruments. Ever thought of playing in a non-4/4 beat? You fucking idiots?
GOM: Third Eye Blind do what they do reasonably well… at least they’re trying. But I don’t really see the point, y’know?
Mark Prindle: But then again, I’m so out of the loop, I wouldn’t know if there was a great new group or not. Godspeed You Black Emperor seem to be interesting, but it’s not rock music. I saw a band in NYC that were pretty neat. I forgot their name though, so sorry about that. It’s their own fault – it was a difficult-to-remember name.
GOM: Thanks for that! (mumble mumble mumble cock mumble)
Mark Prindle: Everybody else I like is really old – Fugazi, Flaming Lips, Fall, AC/DC, Motorhead – that kinda crap! Even having said that, I STILL don’t believe that rock is dead.
GOM: Fugazi must be in their 70’s by now…
Mark Prindle: I am a bit concerned however with the fact that young people don’t know much about rock history. Which means that they think what they hear on the radio is the best that rock has to offer. No wonder they’d turn to hip-hop and electronic music! I’d hate rock music too if I thought that Tool and Korn were representative of the genre as a whole.
GOM: It seems like everyone eventually starts to take that stance (today’s music is mediocre), regardless of how they felt in college… is it really a reflection of current music’s quality, or are we all just turning into our parents?
Mark Prindle: No, I think we all just get way out of the loop. in high school and college I was really hungry for new music so I actively seeked out alternative radio stations and weird new records. Nowadays I don’t look. I tend to look for OLD bands that I may have missed. I hate going to shows now so I never hear new bands. I never listen to the radio. This is just me describing me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it applies to other people too. I hope there are some good bands out there! I don’t know whether there are or not.
GOM: You really embraced the whole original grunge genre. What is it about grunge that you like(d) so much?
Mark Prindle: At the time I thought it was cool how incredibly noisy and filthy it was. It was the dirtiest, scummiest, most distorted rock music I had ever heard. COMPLETELY unpolished – until Butch Vig and Andy Wallace came along and cleaned it up for [Nirvana’s] Nevermind!
GOM: You can’t really completely blame Butch for how Nevermind sounds. It seems like Nirvana shifted their songwriting WAY more center, too.
Mark Prindle: That’s very true. It’s a really simplistic record.
GOM: And yet I was still driven to distraction by college dorm guys fucking up the Teen Spirit riff endlessly during my freshman year. How do you feel about Molly Ringwald, and/or men that dress up as Molly Ringwald?
Mark Prindle: I’ve always considered Molly Ringwald really ugly, but her movies were great.
GOM: Thin Molly certainly has an edge over chubby Molly. What are some of your favorite movies from the last year or so? Did you see [Cameron Crowe’s] Almost Famous?
Mark Prindle: Haven’t seen it. But everybody tells me it’s awesome! Everybody, that is, except Mr. Cynic Gregg Turkington who says it’s one of the worst movies he’s ever seen.
GOM: Gregg’s a fool! A FOOL!
Mark Prindle: I didn’t see too many movies this past year. I saw Quills and the Blair Witch II movie and liked them both. What else came out this year?
GOM: Wonder Boys was excellent and so was O Brother Where Art Thou (the new Coen Brothers flick). Blair Witch 2 didn’t get quite the reception they were hoping for.
Mark Prindle: I’m the only person in the world who liked that movie.
GOM: I liked it more than the original!
Mark Prindle: You liked it too? Cool! I thought it was creepy as heck. Great ending, too.
GOM: Yeah! It was way more of an endearingly entertaining movie than the first one. I enjoyed the hell out of it.
Mark Prindle: We’re right and the world is wrong.
GOM: Exactly. And lastly, Mark, why DON’T we do it in the road?
Mark Prindle: Because the gravel would scrape up your ass, Dave.
– Dr. Dave B Wagner, esq National Affairs Desk
Buy any of Mark Prindle’s three solo LP’s by sending a request to such an effect at [email protected] Dude, it’s totally worth your while. His review site, Mark’s Record Review Site, is at http://www.geocities.com/markprindle.
