Jon Brion, "Dead To The World"
JC: Great, great record. I only came across [Meaningless] in the last year or two.
AVC: How did you happen upon it?
JC: Well, I actually performed with him—let's back up. That's not exactly true. I performed at the same event as him. I didn't jam on the stage with him.
It was this McSweeney's event. I was accompanied by John Hodgman, and I sang a silly song, a fake folk song about a furry lobster, and then Jon Brion was there because between readings, he had a guitar onstage, and he would come up and just play whatever came to him. It was amazing. I had never seen his show, which people think is astounding. He's obviously a genius. He has this relationship with music that 99.999 percent of the world will never understand. The fact that he knows so much and can play everything so fluidly and easily makes me so jealous. Anyway, I met him and gave him a copy of my CD, and it felt like I was handing a piece of poop to an angel. I have no idea if he listened to it, and I'd almost would prefer that he just threw it away and forgot all about it.
No, he was really sweet. He was very nice, and it was really the first night I had come across his music. I had heard of him before, but never really listened, and then I went out and bought this and just loved it.
OK Go, "Don't Ask Me"
JC: These are guys are awesome; I've played "Here It Goes Again" on Rock Band.
AVC: Isn't one of your songs on Rock Band?
JC: The song I wrote for the videogame Portal is now on Rock Band.
AVC: How good are you at playing your own song on it? JC: I'm okay. It's actually a pretty easy song. It's funny: The difficulty of playing it in Rock Band will give you some sense of how talented or not talented I am as a guitarist, because the easiness of the gameplay reflects the simplicity of the song. That said, it is pretty fun to play. It's not like, "Whee, it's me!"
AVC: So you should be able to kick that song's ass on expert mode, right?
JC: Yeah, I can kick its ass on expert, because every song on expert is like Bon Jovi's "Dead Or Alive" on easy. You know what I'm talking about.
I actually ran into OK Go in the basement of the Senate building in Washington D.C. I was being walked around to various congressional staffers to talk about digital freedom. I was there on behalf of the Digital Freedom Campaign, and they walked me around. We had a bunch of meetings, talked to Congresspeople about what they could do to keep the bits flowing as easily as possible, and why it was important to independent musicians like me. OK Go was there because they were also speaking as part of some hearing, and I ran into them in the basement of the Senate building. I'm such a huge fan of theirs, and I panicked. I pretended I didn't know who they were.
AVC: I'm sure that made them feel really good.
JC: I don't know why I panic when I meet people I like. The same thing happened when I met They Might Be Giants. I met them a couple times, and I haven't brought myself to really talk to them. Now I'm all depressed.
AVC: Where did you meet They Might Be Giants?
JC: John Hodgman has a connection with them, so actually, it's been a couple times. John Flansburgh got to play at a reading series that John [Hodgman] did that I was the in-house musician for. Flansburgh [and I] actually did play something together, which was his "Dr. Evil Theme."
I didn't have a guitar-tuner, and my guitar was out of tune. I think he was angry at me for that, as was I. And later I met them because I was out backstage with John [Hodgman] when he was for doing an event for them, and John [Flansburgh] was coming out and reading text from their Venue Songs collection, and I was sort of hanging back onstage as his entourage.
AVC: That's too many Johns in one place.
JC: That's three Johns in one place. And really, I couldn't even look him in the eye. I'm such a coward.
The Beatles, "I Want You (She's So Heavy)"
JC: Hey, The Beatles! I'm sure I have The White Album, Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road. I don't think I have Help! on here. I like their middle period. I'm not a huge fan of their last one, Let It Be, and I never liked when they got all rock 'n' roll.
The Abbey Road stuff, it's where the Lennon-McCartney thing comes down for me. I much prefer McCartney's operatic, well-constructed craziness on the second side to John's long-and-ponderous, heavy-metal bullshit, like "She's So Heavy." I know it's loud and everything, but… [Snores.]
Steely Dan, "Reelin' In The Years"
JC: Steely Dan is another huge part of my childhood. When I stopped listening to just The Beatles and Billy Joel exclusively, I branched out into Steely Dan and XTC. I think they're great. I'm a sucker for complicated pop, and I think a lot of times they go there, and they're such great musicians all the time. I saw that video of them doing "Peg" in the studio; they were talking about what it was like doing it and putting it together. They were writing this solo; they called in 10 different writers to basically audition a solo, and they listened to 10 different solos. They heard this one and were like, "That's it!" They didn't give many other instructions but just to play a solo and, you know, that's a unique kind of arranging, that random-shotgun approach.
Flash And The Pan, "Hey St. Peter"
JC: Oh, I love it. I don't know where my dad came across [Lights In The Night]. He bought it and liked it, and I was just a kid and I listened to it and liked it, and I wore it out, I listened to it so much.
It's disco-ish rock, but the awesome thing about it is, the lead singer is not singing. There are backup singers, but the lead vocal is a dude talking into a megaphone, doing this laid-back poetry-club reading of the lyrics. The last lyrics of the song are, "The honky-tonk called the stranger / The stranger couldn't pay the bill." You look at the whole song, and you're like, "I don't know what the hell you're talking about." But it's great, because I never heard anything like it, and I wasn't old enough to be obsessing about who they were and what they were about and what they were going to do next. I just listened to this record and never heard about them again, and I don't think they were particularly famous. [Laughs.]
Billy Joel, "Laura"
JC: Again, this is a big Coulton influence. Billy Joel, I think, has been unfairly treated by the very people who enjoy his songs. [Laughs.] I feel bad for the guy, because people snicker when they say his name, and he certainly has put out some clunkers of late. Maybe not "of late," but his last few records probably could've not been released, and that could've been better for everybody. But he had a long stretch of writing such great music, and "Piano Man" is probably not the best example. It's probably been overplayed, but he had so many hits, and people really do like them, even if there are people who snicker when they say his name.
There's this great essay that Chuck Klosterman wrote about Billy Joel, and he said that the amazing thing about Billy Joel is, the things that make him awesome have nothing to do with whether he's cool. The fact is, he's not cool, and he's still awesome. That combination is sort of amazing, considering that he's a rock star. And he writes about alienated geekery. I love this song in particular, because I think he was very consciously trying to emulate The Beatles in his songwriting and arrangements, and you can really hear it. I love it; I love that kind of derivative pop. I think it's great. And this song particularly—great chord changes, and I love the background vocals.
AVC: If The Beatles can be credited for "creating" rock 'n' roll, can Billy Joel perhaps be credited for creating the spirit of geek-core?
JC: [Laughs.] Yeah, he writes about being kind of messed-up and sad. He doesn't write a lot of songs about him being great or feeling good. It's just like, "I'm a loser and I can't talk to girls at parties."
AVC: So, he wouldn't make a good rapper.
JC: No, he wouldn't. I hope he doesn't try to do that, but I wouldn't put it past him, the kind of mistake I think Billy Joel would do.
Now I have a question: Who else were we talking about who was sort of washed-up? Oh, Paul McCartney. Washed-up is the wrong word, but like, incredible output at a certain point in their careers, but then this downward spiral near the end. Do they know? When Billy Joel puts out Storm Front, is he like, "This is the best record I've ever done," and he's just out of step with the rest of the world? Or is he like, "This isn't as good as my old stuff. What's wrong with me?" Same question with Paul McCartney. What does he think of the work he's putting out today? Is he as proud of it as he is the stuff he did in his earlier career?
AVC: I doubt they'd admit it, even if they question it or think about it.
JC: Because thinking long term, I don't want to make the Jonathan Coulton-should've-stopped-making-records-before-this-record record. So I just hope that everyone tells me when the time comes to hang it up, because maybe I won't know. Maybe I'll just blithely go on making mediocre songs and thinking they're awesome, although I don't think I've ever made a song that I think is awesome. I always think that I'm washed up. [Laughs.] I always feel like I've been teetering on the brink of the end of my career, even when I was just starting, so maybe that won't be a problem.
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