| non li ho ancora ascoltati, ma già il titolo dell'album ispiri: V is for Vagina...
comunque...in un intervista su BEAT dichiara che Mike e Josh homme sono sue fonti di ispirazione....
"Maynard James Keenan, revered vocalist for prog-metal heroes Tool and defunct supergroup A Perfect Circle, has a reputation for being a tetchy if not downright recalcitrant interview subject. With this in mind, while it may not necessarily be a wise move to initiate our conversation about his experimental Puscifer project with a light-hearted question about the dubious marketing behind the new album, V Is For Vagina, it seems nonetheless appropriate. After all, giant posters that boast some smirking dude in a cowboy hat and read in big capital lettering ‘THE VAGINA IS COMING!’ must deserve a mild query, surely?
“It’s just a statement of fact,” comes the reply, with perhaps the suggestion of a snigger. Can he elaborate a little? The gynaecological reference is a metaphor for what exactly? “Uh…” A sarcastic pause. “That my album is coming out?”
Of course! Silly me. Now I get it… not. I persevere, making the stretch that the title V Is For Vagina is maybe an analogy for… I dunno, giving birth to the album?
Another laboured sigh. “It just seemed appropriate.”
In what way? “In an all-round project kinda way.”
I see… So starts my illuminating interview with Maynard, the enigma.
Tricky beginnings aside, as far as side-project albums go, Puscifer’s V Is For Vagina is cool. Damn cool, in fact. A slickly produced pastiche of slinky grooves and trip-hop beats, with a cinematic cyber-western edge, Maynard sing/speaks throughout in deep baritone. Tracks like the opener Queen B possess a canny sense of jazz-phrasing in parts, the lyrics lolling and laconic, while multiple layers of Eastern-edged vocal harmonies and soundscapes combine to make a very interesting and unexpected listen. Puscifer is Maynard as we’ve never heard him before. I like it a lot, and tell him as much.
“Oh?” comes the response.
I qualify it as my humble opinion, of course. Being a bottom-feeder and a music journalist, I’m aware that’s not worth much. “No, not at all,” he says quickly, perhaps sensing that whatever boredom he might feel as the subject of an interview is on the verge of being surpassed by my irritation at his abruptness. “I very much appreciate it. I put a lot of work into this album.”
So then, why such a smutty title? Doesn’t it undermine the artistic merit of the project? “Not really,” he says. “Not if you look at the whole project. You see, at the moment all the press that I’m doing at the moment, is specifically music press. And they are all looking at just the music. But really, there are so many facets to this project. And the title of it draws on those facets which haven’t even been looked at yet.”
Does he want to elaborate on that a little for those of us who don’t quite get it yet? “Not really, there’s a lot of discovery in it,” he says in a surly tone. “This whole project started in the comedy arena, onstage in a comedy club with a variety show. So all the things that went into that show over the last ten years, is what this project is about. Not just music.”
Rrright… Maynard, the comedian. In fact, the singer is referring to HBO’s Saturday Night Live sketch comedy series Mr Show, written by comedy actor Bob Odenkirk and stand-up comedian David Cross, in which Puscifer was an imaginary project that featured himself and fellow Tool guitarist, Adam Jones. It was here, that Puscifer had its genesis.
So, I ask, should we totally discount Puscifer as a continuation of Maynard’s past fixation with the body’s cavities and fluids (ie. Tool’s litany of titles: Stinkfist, Hooker With A Penis, Sweat, Salival, etc)? Isn’t it all a little, well, juvenile? “Not really,” he demurs, before adding cryptically. “This whole album is about a creative process, that’s it.”
Maynard the artiste, then. ‘Art’ for art’s sake, and be damned with trying to deconstruct the thing. If that is his position, has he considered his multitude of fans out there that might actually hope for a little more explanation from the music’s creator? “Uh….nope.” A chuckle. “Well, maybe they want it, but the fans want a lot of things. Like the music for free, you know? And I can’t really give them that… otherwise I wouldn’t be able to make it anymore, would I?”
At a loss to see how avoiding questions on the minutia of his new album, has anything to do with certain fans downloading it illegally, I prompt for more. “There’s a lot of things I can relate this album to,” he says finally, before asking me a question: “Have you ever taken a martial arts course?”
No, I reply. Although, I’m definitely sensing a certain pugilistic slant to this interview.
“If you’ve ever been in class with a sensei or martial arts master, they can only show you so much. Then there’ll be this moment when you get it, and your eyes meet in a roomful of people, and it’ll be like ‘alright – you got it.’” Maynard pauses. “So there’s only so much I can do to lead you there, the rest you gotta figure out for yourself. And it’s much much more satisfying when you haven’t been pulled the whole way. Okay?”
Rrright…it’s Maynard the karate kid, now. So, by enveloping this project in such a mystical cloak, does he by extension believe V Is For Vagina, artistically, inhabits a position of ‘high art’ above more conventional music and us mere mortals? “Not at all,” he says. “I’m inspired by writers like Shakespeare who have an equal amount of comedy and tragedy within their work. It’s very complex and there’s all this …stuff … wrapped up into it. There’s a lot of the comic and the tragic in this project, and you just have to discover it.”
I take another slant, and refer Maynard to an earlier interview I had with one of his peers, the experimental music auteur and multi-faceted vocalist Mike Patton, who said that the most rewards he got from his art these days were collaborative affairs, working with musicians he respected and arriving at musical results he had never originally envisaged. Is it the same for him? “Absolutely,” agrees Maynard, enthusiastic all of a sudden. “And people like Mike Patton and Josh Homme are a major source of inspiration to me, the way they can wear many hats and do all these things. Both of them were a huge nudge for me to get this thing going, for sure.”
In the case of Puscifer, some of the musicians the singer enlisted included Danny Lohner (ex-NIN), Brad Wilk and Tom Commeford (RATM, ex-Audioslave) and Tim Alexander (Primus) to name a few. Maynard says sourcing his main collaborators was simpler than one would think. “Sometimes it’s a case of looking in your backyard, quite literally,” he conveys. “Tim Alexander is a neighbour of mine and he’s got a studio set up. Sometimes it’s just a convenience. This person is there, you get a long with them, and all of a sudden all this music starts coming out, and you’re like ‘wow, this is fun!’ Also, seeing I’m on the road with Matt Mitchell (Tool’s guitar tech and co-producer of Puscifier), on our days off we were able to slowly put this thing together. It’s been a very rewarding process, and I’m really happy to be doing it.”
Any plans to take Puscifer live? “No. There’s a lot of ideas I’d like to present first. Taking it on the road with a whole bunch of musicians interpreting it would put it too much in the band realm, and I don’t want that,” he says. “If I did do it, then I want to do it in a small theatre for a week of shows, with different musicians each night, and have it involve film, cabaret and dinner. Something totally out of the ordinary.”
Hmmm… Maynard, the Broadway musical, perhaps.
Recently, the singer was quoted in Rolling Stone, where he said: “Heavy rock is sinking” and the Puscifer project was his way of stepping away from it and deliberately trying to make a “fun project”. Does he still feel like that? “Yes. It has stagnated, it’s no longer moving anywhere,” he says bluntly, speaking of the genre. “Part of it is large labels signing stuff they think is easy and a quick buck, but I also think it’s the bands who aren’t evolving their ideas or stretching their legs musically. And the ones that are, you don’t hear about – they’re overlooked ‘cos they’re not moving units. The independent stuff is out there, bubbling underneath, but no one’s giving it a chance ‘cos they’re all scrabbling for the next Linkin Park or Backstreet Boys style band.”
He gives a small snort. “I just think it’s one-dimensional, I’m sorry. Or maybe, that really is the best that they can do!”
Speaking of lowest common denominators, was the singer gutted over the farcical decision to award the Grammy to Wolfmother (and their derivative single Woman) over Tool for ‘Best Hard Rock Performance? “Well, you and I both know exactly where that song came from,” he laughs. “But never mind all that, because it was a catchy feel-good song, which is kind what we all need right now. Forget the depth of it. If rock is dead, and nobody knows where to go and they’re not moving forward, what else are they gonna do except go back and look at stuff that’s been done. They want to rekindle that feeling you got when you first heard soul-inspiring rock.”
This is more of a diplomatic response than I hoped from him. “Of course, that song won the Grammy! It’s a great song.”
Do I detect a certain pragmatism having crept into his well-documented contempt for the music industry, then? “Well, Wolfmother hit the nail on the head, and that’s the feeling we’re all looking for with music,” he continues. “For me, I’ve been listening to old Jackson 5, The Temptations, and Motown stuff because nothing is really presenting that now.”
If anything though, he says, his healthy cynicism has been accentuated by the dearth of solutions to illegal downloading. “I keep going around in circles over it with my friends,” he comments grimly, at a loss to grasp the concept that many people now regard music as free commodity – something you take because you can. “I can’t do this for free. It’s ridiculous and insulting,” Maynard says passionately. “There’s so many costs involved in recording and making it right. The goal of every musician is to achieve the pantheon of writing songs…and that requires skills, tools, focus. And all that requires financing.”
At that moment, the teleconference woman interrupts asking to wrap the interview up. “Give us five more minutes,” says the singer, before continuing. “I acknowledge I am one of the winners of the lottery. Around the time Nirvana came out, labels were out there looking for something different. Tool got lucky, we got a record deal…but we were also smart and planned to do as much as we could to take advantage of it. But there’s a lot of young bands out there where that $1000 in record sales could be the difference in them going on the road or recording their next record or not, you know? So kids out there need to understand that if they dig a band’s music, then they have to find some way to get compensation to that band for their art so that they can ensure the band can keep making it.”
One of the clever ways Tool succeeded in ensuring fans fork out for the music is by making their cd artwork worthy collection in it’s own right. Indeed, the psychedelic nature of Alex Grey’s art has become synonymous with the band. The Puscifer project takes a different slant – a series of fold-out cardboard cards assemble into a black humoured and subversive how-to instruction guide for emergency aeroplane procedures aboard Maynard’s ‘Vagina Airlines’. Naturally, the fine print is as misanthropic as we’ve come to expect from the vocalist. “I made sure I went to this really amazing printer in Los Angeles that has this advanced press that no one else has,” he relates. “You always have to go the extra effort to have something that you want to hold in your hand.”
Maynard, the perfectionist. Indeed, going the extra bit for V Is For Vagina included recording and mixing the album both digitally and on analogue 2” tape. With two final mixes, one digital, one analogue, Maynard and Mitchell experimented by bringing into the studio fellow musicians to see which one they preferred and if they noted any discernible difference. “Hands down, the analogue sounded and felt the best ,” gushes the vocalist. “I think, eventually people are going to rediscover that. I mean, I don’t want to sound like the guy trying to bring back Beta-Max, but I really think analogue and vinyl sounds great, and that’s something I can see myself doing with Puscifer by putting it out on vinyl.”
As the teleconference girl interjects a final time, I admit relief at the turn the interview eventually took. Even still, I suggest to the singer that he sometimes projects a certain disdain or arrogance, not only to music journalists with predictably dumb questions, but also to his fans. How does he defend his occasional, well, rudeness? “I think I expect a lot from people,” he considers. “I expect them to be adults, and some of that creepy fan stuff really gets under my skin. It doesn’t make any sense. It would be like if you really liked tomatoes, and so you went looking for the guy who grew the tomatoes and were staring at him from behind a fence, and then showed him the tattoo of the tomato you got on your arm…” the singer chuckles. “It’s just weird!”
Yes, I say. I suppose we should all be grateful we can’t download tomatoes, then?
“Right!” He starts laughing hard. “Yes, we should!”
Maynard, the cool guy after all."
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si puo' dire?
