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From a recent interview with Andrew Scheps.
QUESTION: Looking back on your career are there any, or several moments, that you thought: “This is heaven, can’t believe I’m working with this artist/project.�
ANSWER: Tons. If you look at my discography, if I hadn’t had them there would be something horribly wrong with me.
The obvious one is working with Red Hot Chili Peppers, I had been a fan of theirs since the very beginning. I saw them live in 1986 when they were playing in small clubs, so being able to work with them was absolutely amazing. Every single day in the studio with them is incredible.
Then there is a band called Motorpsycho (check them on Apple Music, or Spotify), from Norway, who I have been a fan of for years. Loved them but could never get in touch with them, tried a couple of times but it didn’t work out because I didn’t know any people who knew them. However, in the last year, I got to mix two live records for them which was absolutely incredible. When I finally met them all I wanted to do was to talk about their old records and ask how they did this and that, so just being able to have a conversation with them was amazing.
Full interview here:
@ TraktorBass – I will definitely be giving the albums more attention, but how much? I don't know
@ kjellepelle – Thanks for those two videos. I watched/listened to them this morning. I can't say they inspired me to wish for more TITS concerts. If they played in the UK I would go for the novelty value, but to be honest, there's nothing more than that to attract me. I certainly wouldn't be making any trips to mainland Europe to see them.
@Valderrama, Black-eyedJ and mybestfriend – Thanks for your sweet comments.
@Black-eyedJ – Thanks so much for translating the interview.
Disillusionment is tough to handle. It's why people say you should never meet your heroes. Sometimes just an interview can topple the cart. But we all read into music and interviews what we want.
Jon Anderson of Yes is considered one of the great spiritual hippie dudes of the 70s progressive rock scene, but I know people who know that behind the scenes he can be very egotistical, pushy, demanding, financially greedy … Yes it puts a damper on some of my feelings about his music, but the band is five guys (at any one time) and they all contribute. And the music they made in the 70s was phenomenal.
Sometimes musicians just project what they experience, but it comes in a different form. Maybe Snah never took psychedelics (only he really knows), but maybe he somehow has an open kundalini channel that gives him experiences of a psychedelic nature. Sorry to sound like a patronising lecturer, but we are all complicated people with myriad experiences. Who's to say where Snah gets his inspiration from, where and how he had his mind-blowing experiences. I never took psychedelics, but I smoked a lot of weed over the the past 40+ years and for a time did a great deal of meditation, including five years at an ashram in the Indian Himalayas and I can tell you that I had some pretty fucked up, weird, wonderful and reality-bending experiences. I also started a business years ago that at the beginning occasionally required I work three or four days with barely any sleep. Sitting on the loo one night taking a dump while watching the floor beneath me ripple and ululate like waves was pretty crazy. Maybe Snah just had some weird experiences because he had a few nights without solid sleep. I've also heard of people living in the far north having disorienting experiences because of the lack of daylight, or too much of it. I bet that can get a bit psychedelic at times.
Don't let a couple of interviews ruin your love of the man and his music. Be more curious to find out what makes him so special.
EDIT: Let me add this too… During the last several days I've been listening to the Mad Sun (acoustic) video on YouTube (the one shot in someone's living room), several times a day. I love the melodies, the interplay between the guitars, banjo and mandolin, and vibe and the lyrics. And I much prefer the lyrics on this version to those on the electric version I've heard. Indeed, Bent's lyrics are so evocative that I begin to feel like I know what he's talking about. And I wonder, was this a real experience for him? Based on his lyrics he seems to have a lot of interesting things to say about relationships, some of them seeming very specific and very personal – Vortex Surfer, for example. But are they his personal experiences? Or is he just able to tap into something more archetypal? Maybe he's just a keen observer of the way people go through relationships. The bottom line is, I don't know anything about his personal relationships, but he somehow seems to be able to articulate through evocative lyrics and music something that a lot of people can either relate to or at least, like me, find captivating because it's so beautifully human – warts 'n' all, as they say. Like Joni Mitchell, he exposes a vulnerability ("Too proud to bend, I would only crash and burn like a mad sun"), but for all I know he may not actually be that vulnerable. Great art and music seems somehow to be able to tap into our deepest feelings, it draws a reaction out of us, something inside that we may not be aware is there. Bent and Snah, with their music do that for me, and whether or not they had those direct experiences matters little, becuase whatever they've done in their lives, however they've lived their lives, whatever drugs they've taken or whatever relationships they've had, they are able to articulate something that subconsciously we can tune in to.
Don't worry about how they got there, just be thankful that they did and that somehow you found them.
I'd have to listen to those two albums a lot more before I could make a fair decision. But at the moment I'd have to say No!
This has nothing to do with quality; it's just a matter of taste. Though, to be honest, if that's what the guys want to do, and it makes them happy, and it keeps the juices flowing, why not?!
It seems to me that their creativity feeds on variety, so if making a new TITS album means we get more interesting MP albums after that, then I would have to say Yes!
@ paolinogrande – I'll be coing to Drammen, but not a few days early. Instead we're staying in Oslo for a few days afterwards – but only going to the Drammen gig.
@Krist – Brlliant! Thanks
Thanks everyone for your input to this thread. I agree with JERO, enough of the "Drug Thing" for now. As interesting as it is to me (you can blame it on the energy), I wonder if anyone has any other insights to or anecdotes regarding the band and the way they approach their 'work'.
Absorbing some Deathprod-era Motorpsycho goodness right now – listening to 1997-03-14 Rockefeller from the AADAP boxset
@mybestfriend83 – There's also the issue of being a family man and how he and his partner decide they want to control the release of information to their kid(s). This is always an issue for people in the spotlight.
@mybestfriend – It's a bit of a tradition among rock bands isn't it, to do loads of drugs but say you never did? I can remember way back when the Beatles still said they never did acid or smoke weed. I don't know about the laws in Norway, but in the UK back in the 60s/70s/80s, even though lots of people were taking acid/weed/ecstasy, it was common to keep that hidden. Nobody wanted the police knocking on their door. Even MacCartney got raided for growing weed! High profile cases like that make other artists careful about what they say and do in public.
