AVC: Is it that pervasive in Canada, or is it much worse in America?
WB: It's definitely its own thing, but it's in the same boat. I feel like Canada, the States, and England are partners in a sense, heading in a similar direction even though there are pretty significant political differences. Quebec is pretty different from the rest of Canada.
AVC: You mention MTV in "Windowsill"—"MTV, what have you done to me?"
WB: I haven't really watched MTV in a long time, since it kind of stopped relating to music. I feel in a way that it's kind of sold out a generation of kids. It's really powerful to youth culture. I found out a lot of stuff through MTV, and I didn't even have cable, I just saw it at friends' houses. But my culture in junior high was totally influenced by it. The thing that's a little depressing to me are these reality shows, like Laguna Beach. I think they're supposed to be kind of tongue-in-cheek, like "laugh at the rich people" shows. But I think the effect that it actually has is that kids emulate it. I don't think they're necessarily getting the ironic level, it's just "I want that, too." It's not that I'm like Tipper Gore, that I want to outlaw stuff. It's just a little sad to watch, because it's so easy for 90 percent of your brain to be filled with things that have absolutely no meaning. If you don't shake out of it, it's just a sad scene.
AVC: My Super Sweet 16 may be the purest expression of evil.
WB: It's insane. I get that it's a joke, but kids really eat that shit up, like, "I want Jay-Z at my birthday party! Fuck you, mom!" [Laughs.] It's pretty dark. We never really license anything for TV, and my joke is that any show that wants to play "Antichrist Television Blues," I will license it to, because I think it'd be so funny to hear in that context. As a performance-art thing.
AVC: Is it true that you refused to license a song for NBC's The Black Donnellys even though Crash director Paul Haggis asked you personally?
WB: That was actually a tough decision, because that's a pretty good show, compared to most of the crap on TV. We watched the pilot, and for primetime TV, it's actually quite good. The whole conclusion was completely built around "Rebellion," and I was like, "Oh no, you guys are fucked! What are you gonna do now?" Every cut was lyrically tied. The whole premise of the show gets revealed in the last four minutes to "Rebellion." We all kind of liked the show, but at the same time, it's still our song, and the song doesn't have anything to do with that. It'd be kind of depressing to have one of my favorite songs of ours be associated with this thing it's completely unrelated to. It's more about the context. This show was like a really good TV version of Goodfellas. If it was actually Goodfellas and that hadn't come out yet, I might've said yes. If it was the fucking Godfather, the best film I've ever seen, of course they could use our song.
AVC: The album isn't named after John Kennedy Toole's novel, right?
WB: No. It's kind of a coincidence, but I have read the book.
AVC: Why did you choose the title, then? What's the significance?
WB: I just jotted it down in my notebook and kept coming back to it. The song was very much off-the-cuff, written in one night and recorded the next day. Lyrically, there's a lot of stuff dealing with religion and culture, which I'm really interested in. It's an image that I kept coming back to that really felt like it was the title of the record. And everyone else in the band agreed. I loved A Confederacy Of Dunces.
AVC: Toole's The Neon Bible is always referred to as a lesser work that wasn't really intended for publication.
WB: I could see that. It's more inspiring that he wrote it when he was 16 than the book itself. I don't think I could've done that when I was 16.
AVC: But you were pretty young when you wrote the bulk of the songs on Funeral? Like, 20 or so?
WB: Something like that. But 16! That's when all the bullshit that ends up consuming most people's lives—that's when they start laying it on heavy. I remember having to buy Nikes, or else my life would be a living hell. I had these shoes called Turntecs, like no-name brand Wal-Mart shoes, and every day it was like [mocking voice]: "Turntec, Turntec!" I still remember thinking, in like fifth or sixth grade, that this was going to consume half my life. Like, I was going to cry at Christmas if I didn't get the right brand of jeans. It can take up a lot of mental space for kids. Kids are brutal.
AVC: It's strange that it can seem so funny now.
WB: It's so funny, and I felt so passionately about it. And not because I cared about it, because initially I was like, "Fuck that!" But kids would get tormented. There's a great story about Tim [Kingsbury, multi-instrumentalist]: His mom finally let him buy an Ocean Pacific shirt, because he always had these no-name clothes. He was so proud, and he went to school, and the asshole in school came over and pulled up the tag and said, "It's a fake!" [Laughs.]
AVC: It's got to be 10 times more intense now.
WB: Now it's taken on this Christina Aguilera porn edge, like super-sexualized. It's pretty extreme. I don't envy the junior-high kids.
AVC: Did it make you cynical at all?
WB: It's hard not to be cynical about certain things. I just finished reading this George Orwell book, Why I Write, and he's talking about England during World War II, the political culture. There are some criticisms he had of the left that hit me pretty hard. Not that I really consider myself left or right or whatever, but he was criticizing people who put down bravery. It really made a lot of sense to me. There's this negative approach to the world, and I definitely find myself falling into that at times. He was just saying that patriotism and intelligence need to coexist, or else the world really goes to shit. I thought that was a powerful idea. Actual patriotism has to do with loving a place enough to try and improve it.
AVC: Is there part of you that thinks we might be past the point of no return?
WB: All the time. I've seen Barack Obama speak a couple of times, and I really like him. There's something going on behind his eyes, and I think he's really intelligent. But part of me just knows it's going to be Giuliani and Hillary Clinton, which really bums me out. But part of me wants to believe that it could be Barack Obama and John McCain, and there'd be an actual debate. The country needs a real debate so badly. A lot of times, politicians try to overwhelm the general public with how complex an issue is. In a way, I think that's why the anti-war movement in the States isn't as big as it should be. People are overwhelmed by the complexity of the situation, but I don't think a 16-year-old should have to know how to solve the problems in the Middle East to be like, "Fuck, we should not be in this war." But there's this idea that you have to know how to solve the world's problems in order to feel that something is morally wrong. I'm always back and forth between optimism and depression about the situation.
AVC: It's an interesting time to be in a band that brings joy to people, but in a time where it's almost impossible to ignore the dark side.
WB: It's crazy reading this Orwell stuff, because it could be today. When you read Martin Luther King's speeches about Vietnam, it could be today. Just change the word, and you're talking about the exact same situation. We're basically causing spiritual death in our country by doing what we're doing. At a certain point, you become morally unable to do good in the world, because the country gets so cynical and depressed, there isn't the force of will to try and change things. I definitely feel that in my generation, this kind of fatigue. And I feel that myself. You've got to fight it.
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