Random Rules: Kurt Wagner of Lambchop

AVC: Do you still listen to the Sourpuss stuff?

KW: It was weird. I
hadn't heard it in forever and then a friend of mine put 'em on a CD so I could
actually hear 'em. Threw 'em on here just to check it out. It's still, to me,
pretty cool sounding. It's definitely not what you'd think of when you think of
Lambchop. It's the really fun early days when we were doin' shit.

Sourpuss, "All
Around Man"

KW: See now,
Sourpuss again. Can we skip it? [Laughs.]

Mark Eitzel, "Homeland
Pastoral"

KW: I like Mark. I
like his thing. I think he's great.

AVC: Did you follow him back when he was in American
Music Club?

KW: I actually was
not a big American Music Club fan when they first came out. I'm always late to
shit; I'm just retarded or something. Like The Smiths, when they came out I
didn't get it. Two years later I got it. I was a little slow, so by the time I
got it they were already done, and Mark was kinda doin' his own thing. I saw
him once in Nashville, he came through all by himself. Played in some church and
got pissed off at the soundman and sat in the middle of everybody and played. I
was like, "Whoa, this is great. This is beautiful." I run into him from time to
time in Europe, and it's always good to see him.

Lambchop, "Please Rise"

KW: [Makes a buzzer noise.]
It's just a Lambchop song, new record. See, this is a problem. I'm not a
narcissist.

Buell Kazee, "A
Short Life Of Trouble"

KW: This guy gave me
an anthology of folk music. He's compiling a couple more volumes of it, this
crazy European dude named Max Dax. I've been really into checking out stuff
from that period in time, folk music and stuff. For some reason Europeans have
this weird perspective on what we do, and they're much more into archival stuff
than you would think. And everything on this collection, I'd never heard any of
it. It's great. I really don't even know what I'm listening to when I'm
listening to it, I don't look at the thing to see what it is.

AVC: What's it from, though?

KW: A lot of the
same sources, I guess, of the initial anthology of American folk songs. [The
Smithsonian Anthology Of American Folk Music]. He's just found other
stuff. He's really into research. This guy's really crazy, he did a collection
of Mafia folk songs. He went down to Sicily and talked to the mob, and talked
them into letting him record these traditional songs about the Mafia. It's a
really amazing, beautiful record. And really scary too, because all the lyrics
are about killing each other and blood and revenge.

The Jam, "Man In The Corner Shop"

KW: Sound Affects
is a great record. I wasn't a huge Jam fan, but I thought Sound Affects was a pretty cool record. [Skips ahead.] More
fucking Lambchop. [Skips again.]

M. Ward, "Requiem"

KW: I really like
that record [Post-War]. "Requiem" is a pretty cool song
too. He's a good writer, a good artist. That's a good sounding
record.

AVC: He seems really obsessive about tweaking
everything.

KW: In the
first few records, he definitely was into not letting it get too good sounding,
or at least had a quality to it that was unique and not gussied up.
Sometimes I find that annoying. Sometimes I find it really inspiring
because it creates its own space for whatever the particular song is, and I
appreciate that, but sometimes I go, "Make a record that sounds good," and I
think he did that with Post-War more than he did his other
records. So I'm not distracted by that, but that's just my perspective as
a listener. I get a little funny. I don't want to be
distracted. I just want to be able to listen to a song.

The Jesus And Mary Chain, "Just like Honey"

KW: Great record [Psychocandy].
When it came out, I just thought it was so scary and almost unlistenable, and I
really like that about it. There was a case where it seemed as much
about, maybe even more about the sound, but now it just seems really tame.

AVC: Do you follow the rest of the bands, all that
shoegazer stuff that came out after?

KW: A little
bit, but I never really knew it was called shoegazer stuff. It was just
certain bands that I thought were cool that ended up being there. I
didn't know My Bloody Valentine was shoegazer.I just thought it was My
Bloody Valentine.