News : FILTER Magazine Celebrates 10 Years In Print
“Good Music Will Prevail,” that is the motto we have been championing here at FILTER Magazine headquarters for 10 years. That's right, FILTER, the independently-owned avant-garde music magazine, has now entered its 10th year in print, a pretty massive milestone indeed.
Over the past ten years (2002 - 2012) FILTER Magazine has stayed true to its roots. The publication was founded on the philosophy of printing quality content about quality music, helping fans to discover artists and their stories. From the first issue, On The Dark Side of The Moon with Weezer, which hit newsstands in July 2002, to the upcoming issue 47, on-sale Feb. 17, the magazine’s unwavering dedication to guide people towards good music discovery has kept its readership growing and FILTER readers coming back for more.
So what does this mean for you, the FILTER reader? As the year rolls out, we will be revisiting certain features from every single FILTER Issue ever published including covers stories from David Bowie, Lou Reed & The Strokes, Tom Waits, Bjork and more and we will also look at where all of our Getting To Know artists are now.
2012 will also feature FILTER's 50th Magazine issue, new content on the FILTER Magazine iPad App, 2012 SXSW Rainey St. takeover with four venue showcases, new Good Music Guides, Coachella Kick Off Party, Official Lollapalooza after parties, and the grandaddy of them all, the third annual Culture Collide Festival.
So be on the lookout everyone. 2012 will be an exciting year for FILTER Magazine.
Good Music Will Prevail.
Exclusives : FILTER 46: Print the Myth: Under The Hat With Tom Waits, Part 2
Are you always working or writing? Can you turn it off if you need to?
Sure I can. I have to. I do have a state that I live in. Which is why no one ever hears from me. [Laughs.] But this business we call show, it’s rather absurd sometimes when you really think about it, because you think you’re making stuff that’s gonna be around but you’re making popsicles that will sit on bus benches in Florida in the summer and melt. That’s what we’re making, this kind of music, this sound. And then they tell you that you’re the king of something—you’re the king of the schoolyard, king of the front seat, you’re the king of the weeds—just because you can draw really cool pictures on a dirty car with your finger, just ’cause you draw in the dirt with a stick and everyone likes what you do. None of this stuff is designed to stay. Except that you will retain some of it. The first time you heard “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.” Ah, man. They do stay with you, these musical things that you squirt into your ear. Some stay, some don’t. They either grow or they don’t.
How bout these band names now, huh? The Slacks? As soon as I hear a band that’s called The Slacks, I think they’ll probably be on the bill with The Bras, The Slippers, The Buttons, The Underwear and The Collars. Maybe it’ll be a festival. Band names.
You didn’t mess around with one of those.
I didn’t have to. I really wish I changed my name when I got started in show business though. It makes you cleaner. That’s the “me”—that’s the ventriloquist and this is the dummy. I wish I’d called myself something else. Bill Brassiere and the Sleepwalking Assassins. Beaumont Zipperhorn and the Canadian Ankle Fans. Jihad Gingerpoodle and the Shoehorn Orchestra. Just so you know the difference between you—the real you—the show, and the reality. Alvin Trickleshirt and the Belvedere Shinolas. One night only. I’m on a roll.
People talk about your benchmark albums, changes in sound: when you jump labels the sound changes, when you met Kathleen the sound changed… What got you from Real Gone to Bad As Me?
I’ll never say. I don’t know. There’s 100 things. Who knows what the ingredients for tunes are when that whole thing starts feeling like a record? Again, you want to know but you really don’t want to know, because if I told you and it wasn’t interesting, you’d go, “Ah, Jesus.” In other words, when you have the truth and you have the myth, print the myth. “Chicago” had just the right number of syllables for that song. Try Reno. Try Miami. Bern, Switzerland. Didn’t work. There’s too many or there’s not enough. This was just right, like the Three Bears. Chicago, Chicago. When you say it, it stops being a town and just sounds like a conjuring word, like abracadabra.
It was the magical solution.
It was for that moment. It’s just travelling music for immigrants. Here’s the truth: We definitely wanted to do three-minute songs, 12 of ’em. No fucking around. I tried to sustain that, to honor that. I thought it was a good idea. Now that you got CDs, you can put 19 of ’em on there, I love that. That’s not always the right idea. So, 13, that’s not bad. I lobbied for one more. Some of those songs are really long and had to be cut down. That “New Year’s Eve” song was really long. It’s about a night that went badly. So you think, “OK, how much do we tell?” Had a little to eat, Marge got food poisoning, Stan lit the sofa on fire, the dog ran away, the car got towed, our neighbors called the cops…there’s a song in there somewhere. You have to pull weeds and you have to do the dishes.
Do you know those people in the songs?
No, it’s code, remember? Protect the innocent. I’ll leave it up to you as to whether there’s a real Sergio or not because it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a song, it’s song logic. That always rules.
Less specifically, can you tell me what a “raised right man” is?
You’ll know when you get married. You’ll know that you aren’t one and you need to be, and you’re not ready. And you’ll know why there’s a sofa in the living room. You’ve not stood before God and had to explain yourself.
Do you see yourself as more of a conductor or as more of a facilitator when it comes to working with other musicians in your studio?
Maybe a little bit of a conjurer. Some of them already dance, but nobody really knows the answer to why a song’s not working. It’s like taking your pet snake to the vet. “I don’t know, Doc, he’s just been laying here for weeks. I can’t even get him to bite me. What do you think it is?” [Laughs.] And everyone is entitled to offer their opinion about what is wrong: “I don’t know, Tom, too much bass.” “Not enough bass.” Well, which is it? “Let’s start over.” “The song is shit.” “No it’s not.” You have great performances on really mediocre songs. Hey, the radio’s full of them. And vice versa. The poor performances of really great songs no one will ever hear. It has to all come together.
Song ideas have humble beginnings. Stood up on a date, my dog died, my dad was killed in the war… You put yourself in the room with people who are known healers, known entities. Sometimes if you go in there with somebody you’ve never worked with before, something surprising happens. If everybody has already worked together before, many times you’re just gonna chase a chicken around on the beach all day, you’re tired and go hungry. Sometimes you need someone to think outside the boxes. And you gotta trust the people you go in with, just like a cast on a play or a movie. “Let’s get him, man, Harry Dean Stanton, he should be the king! Let’s get Louise Brooks, have her be the queen. Let’s start there.” I work with great people, I know I do because I have an instinct about ’em. Les Claypool, great. Ribot, great. Flea, great. Dave, great. Keith, great. Casey Waits, great. Charlie Musselwhite, indispensable. Charlie brings about 600 harmonicas to a gig. “Jesus, Charlie, we can’t use all of those!” But he knows: If you don’t bring it, you’ll definitely need it. That’s true of every session.
I don’t know how much people want to know about what goes on inside the studio. I don’t even know how much these guys want to be known. Some of ’em, they’ll love to tell you, make shit up. Or tell you what really happened. Fact is I make ’em sign a…whaddya call it?
Non-disclosure agreement?
Yeah, right! They’ll start calling their high school history teacher, sendin’ pictures all over the place… It’s like, this was a private affair here; what happens in here stays in here. ’Course it’s never true, but we’ll all pretend.
That’s the fun part with music, if you really do let yourself go, you do find something. “The bass player had to leave by 9, so there’s no bass on this song.” Well, hey, it was better! Again, I still think we’re drawing in the dirt with a stick. Which is part of the excitement of it, too; there’s a certain energy in the room when you’re doing that. We’re not inventing the wheel here; there’s plenty of wheels, we’re getting the benefit of them. But you have to feel that what you’re doing is somewhat unique, even though there’s really nothing new under the sun. Read Ecclesiastes and you’ll learn all about that. Everything’s being borrowed, forgotten, made-up, left out, cannibalized; everybody does that, it’s that kind of work. In that “Bad As Me” song, when I stop and do that spoken-word thing… “Oh man, that’s Screamin’ Jay Hawkins all day, man!” So what? It’s a tribute to Screamin’ Jay. He’s gone, tip your hat to him. 50 children. So sometimes it’s just that.
Code or not, there seem to be a few hints toward recognizing some sort of mortality here. Or even immortality, like “Last Leaf.” Is that a theme you find creeping in more and more?
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes the last leaf is just the last leaf. It’s fall. And there’s one more leaf on that tree and he’s not going.
Can you envision reaching a point where you won’t want to do this anymore?
Oh, well, I don’t know, yeah, sure, probably. I need to move on to different things. Who knows where it’s taking you? If you knew exactly what you were doing, it wouldn’t be any fun, would it? You wind up drawing giraffes using Tabasco sauce on the back of coasters with a nail. I could sell those for big money.
I’m sure you could, Tom. Here’s my last question: What does it sound like in your house when you’re the only one awake?
It’s very rare that this place is empty, or quiet, and I’m up. But I do find it fascinating, the things that you notice when you’re trying to be so quiet—if you’re trying to make some eggs at three in the morning, and you get in that drawer with all the pots and pans, what it sounds like. I try to think of that when I’m in the studio, because it is like that, you’re isolating sounds, you’re taking them and putting them in the place where there’s just sound, and then they’re somewhat disembodied, and it’s an interesting thing, what the microphones do—things that happen only because it’s so quiet that you notice and then you want to keep. When the orchestra is tuning up, many times it’s the most interesting moment in the show. They had no idea it was gonna be that exciting, they didn’t even know they were making music. So if you bring in musicians and they’re goofing around getting ready to play, many times you have to pay attention to what they’re doing before they start playing with a capital “P.” They have no idea how interesting what they were doing before they knew they were doing anything was. Acting is the same, you’re kind of catching wildlife.
You gotta get one of those little military-engineered flies to really capture it.
They’re getting smaller and smaller, those things. I have relatives in the C.I.A., that’s how I know all that. Uncle Bill. He risks his life every time he calls me.
And you told it to a man with a tape recorder.
Oh my god. Now I’m gonna have to make you promise that you’ll never print any of this. Alright, this is the last question I’ve got for you: There’s one line that is said more than any other line in the entire history of cinema. Do you know what that line is?
I’m gonna go with… “What’ll it be?”
“What’ll it be?” No, no. That’s pretty good, though. You mean, guy’s walking into a bar and the bartender says, “What’ll it be?” That’s pretty good! It’s probably in the running, but it’s not the one. I can’t give you the prize.
So, what is the number one most-spoken line in cinema?
Here it comes, you ready? “Let’s get outta here.” That’s it. Let’s get out of here. F
Exclusives : FILTER 46: Print The Myth: Under The Hat With Tom Waits, Part 1
“This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
—from John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
What if it was all true? What if all the stories about the one-armed ship-captain dwarves, incarcerated Minnesotan hookers, dog-hating wild arsonists, bunker-buddies named Sergio with bad coughs, suicidal tramps and string-bean gypsies and out-of-work dancers and transgendered uncles and omniscient ringmasters and orphans and butchers and bricklayers and thieves, what if they were all real? What about the guy sitting on the barstool next to you, the chiseled one with the sandpaper voice and the bowler on backwards, sipping his secret elixir from a brown paper bag, spinning these yarns… Do you think he really knows karate, voodoo too? What if it was all true?
But, though, what if it wasn’t?
According to Tom Waits, it doesn’t matter one way or the other. Print the myth, respect the mystery, protect the innocent—these are the truths he lives by. As he’ll say more than once on this day, the ingredients of songs are code. Besides, according to him, songs are all just tributes anyway—they’re borrowed, stolen, cannibalized, forgotten, made-up, left out, mis-recollected, daydreamt and shape-shifted. So what? It doesn’t seem to get in the way of our enjoyment.
The Waits Legend is well known by now: the early years in Southern California, perfecting his imperfect barroom crooner act with the drunken pianos and unsavory characters of 1970s Los Angeles; meeting his future wife and writing-and-producing partner, Kathleen Brennan, while working on songs for Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart in 1980; their imminent union and how it changed the course of his artistry from lounge act to sonic conquistador; the births of their three children and his retreat into family life; his infrequent but illuminating forays into acting, stage musical composition and performances of his own songs around the world; his insistent compulsion to do things his own way. As an artist, but also as a businessman, performer and—to the best of his ability—as a citizen, Waits maintains complete control of his image and output, whether leaving a major label for an independent or deciding when, where and even if he plays live concerts. It’s not often these days that he chooses to step out of the shadows, down from the metaphorical mountain on his small patch of Northern California land in Sonoma County, to head back into the light. But when he does, he certainly makes his presence known, leaving a dizzying trail of creativity in his wake.
For Waits, even a place as seemingly soul-baring and spotlit as a stage can still be a stronghold. In Waits’ world, a translucent shield extends downward from every proscenium. A phone line contains a filter, his studio players sign non-disclosure agreements, magicians stay mute. To him, we live in a time—sadly—when spy cameras buzz around us always, when information leaks are trophies to be won. To announce his new album, Bad As Me, his first original material in seven years, Waits hosted an online “private” listening party, scripted to be thwarted by a call from the record company: “We have a situation here,” he tells the camera, turning down the music. “Apparently there’s no such thing as ‘private’ anymore. It’s an Internet thing.” It’s a plea to the rest of us to not spoil the surprise, to not betray the wonders of wondering; the irony that the video was itself a leak of information on the Internet was deliciously intended. Is he paranoid, or simply prudent?
In the clip, the solution Waits comes up with, naturally, is a shakedown, one-on-one playback session in a dilapidated old car, with “BAD AS ME OCT. 25 ’11” scribbled on the rear windshield, the singer himself behind the wheel as watchdog. The satisfied smirk and wink he gives the camera says it all: His way, or the highway—though, of course, they’re often one and the same. As he sings on Bad As Me’s “Pay Me”: “The next stage that I am on / It will have wheels.”
The songwriter’s quest to be remembered in this fleeting life never ends, but to Waits, it’s all just finger drawings on a dirty car. “Don’t you feel like that sometimes?” he asks. “You ever think you’re writing about stuff that is kind of like weather…drawing in the dirt with a stick?” On one hand, here’s a man at the age of 61 who’s been singing, writing, performing, making a go of it for over 40 years—and he’s still putting out the best music of his career, his way. On the other, here’s a man at the age of 61 trying to come to terms with the idea that everything he’s done thus far may hang under the branches of impermanence. On the subject of age, he drops this dime, with a new stress for each decade: “29 was rough. 39 was rough. 49 was rough. 59 was rough! Those border towns, those are tough.” It’s reflective, sure, but also sort of triumphant; he’s still here, bad as ever. There are songs about mortality on Bad As Me—“I’m the last leaf on the tree,” he declares on “Last Leaf”—he knows he’s going, someday, but has no plans to go quietly.
If Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs signaled a magnificent new direction for Waits in the ’80s, and 1999’s Mule Variations and 2004’s Real Gone proved that not only had he not hung up his apron but instead was just beginning to really cook, Bad As Me is the supreme work of an artist wise enough to pinpoint exactly what he does best, pair it with the brilliance of those talented friends and family members he’s collected over the years, and scale it all down into concise three-minute bursts of beauty and delirium. They elicit the appeal of a Corvette with the efficiency of a Corolla. The opening horn and banjo peel out of “Chicago” sets a frenetic pace that returns a few times throughout the album, including the blues stomps of “Satisfied” and “Raised Right Men” and the screamin’ voodoo crunch of the title track; other numbers, like “Pay Me,” “Back in the Crowd” and “New Year’s Eve,” ring with sweet, sad, slow sincerity and gorgeous guitar work. But the true star of the show, as always, remains Waits’ voice; among his incomparable talents, his mastery of that interior instrument remains his greatest. There’s simply nothing on Earth like it; the metaphors one could use to describe its variant incarnations on Bad As Me alone could outnumber those written by an entire semester’s worth of university poetry students.
When, at the album’s apex on the furious, cacophonic war-lament of “Hell Broke Luce,” Waits—amidst napalm blasts of guitar riffs, “Taps” trumpets and honest-to-god machine gun fire—barks, “Listen to the general, every goddamn word,” it’s a snide attack on those who give political orders, sure, but it also mirrors the way he makes his songs. “A record’s not a democracy,” he says. “Not in my book.” Still, he lightens up when on the subject of working with Brennan, and with those trustworthy few they invited into the holy studio to record: Keith Richards; Flea; Waits’ longtime bandleader Marc Ribot; David Hidalgo of Los Lobos; Les Claypool; the harmonica master Charlie Musselwhite; Waits and Brennan’s own son, Casey, on drums; and a select few others. “You put yourself in the room with known healers,” he says. “I work with great people, I know I do.”
Referring to himself as a conjurer, he rockets off on tangents about the origin of why we use the word “man” to refer to one another and his own “false” family history, gives pop-quizzes about movie trivia and invents outrageous band names at the drop of a hat. Tom Waits exists to entertain. Throughout our phone interview he shifts into characters effortlessly and without warning, holding communion with himself, laughing loudly and often, daring me to give chase. The lights may go down, but he’s always onstage.
When he assures me early in our conversation that “the truth is overrated,” he means it almost as a word of warning, as if to say, I’m going to tolerate your inquiries, but I’m not gonna play you straight. Trust me, it’s better for us both this way. When at one point Waits qualifies what’s about to follow with, “Here’s the truth,” are we fools to believe him? And does it really matter anyway? Sometimes, to understand an artist who says he feels most like himself when at a matinee, the only thing you can do is step right up and get your ticket.
Exclusives : FILTER 46: Getting to Know: Serenades
Sitting in his apartment in Stockholm, Adam Olenius is having trouble finding the right word in English to best describe the balancing act of taking on a musical side project. Even the results of an Internet search finds little in terms of a satisfactory suggestion. (“Damn Google translator,” he says with a sigh.)
“It’s [tough] because I like those bands that stay together forever and are almost like a religion,” says Olenius. “But bands can also get stuck. If you’re the lead songwriter, it’s really, really great to share your ideas with someone else or somewhere else.”
The opportunity to do something different, to bounce ideas off someone who wasn’t a longstanding fixture in his musical past is what largely brought the Shout Out Louds frontman to fellow Swedish musical artist Markus Krunegård (of Laakso). Meeting by chance while their respective bands were making a tour-traveling pit stop along the German autobahn, the two became close as they continued to run into one another at various Swedish festival and club performances. When their schedules would allow it, the two inevitably began working on demos together. “We were becoming friends,” says Krunegård. “I don’t know what people do when they become friends, whether they play badminton or drink beer. We both write music so it felt quite natural.”
Dubbing the project “Serenades,” the two eventually committed themselves to making a proper album last fall. The resulting full-length, entitled Criminal Heaven, swells with the kind of happy-go-lucky freedom typically reserved for kids prone to playing with make-believe friends. Taking cues from the likes of The Stone Roses and Panda Bear, the record layers itself in shimmering textures, dual vocal harmonies and lush, simplistic melodies. “We wanted to have a very playful sound,” says Olenius. “Very collage-inspired music.”
News : Quittin’ Time: FILTER’s Weekend News Round Up (Week of 1/23/12)
Your week is busy and we know that. So rather than put everything that we on the FILTER front have posted to our website into one long recap list, we wanted to just pluck a few gems from the bunch for you to revisit. These are the cream of the crop.
10 Years of FILTER: Issue #3 Cover Story: Coldplay
Rather than explain to you what this cover story was all about and why Issue #3 was special, we decided to reach out to the photographer who shot the cover, and in this case, it was a little band called Coldplay's first ever U.S. magazine cover.
FILTER Five: Our Top 5 Austin Venues
The FILTER offices have been keeping the SXSW spirit up for this year with our weekly SXSW Buzz-o-meter feature and since we like our lists so much, we decided to dedicate a list to SXSW.
CONTEST: Win a Permanent Records Vinyl Prize Pack
FILTER couldn't help but pass up an opportunity to team up with Permanent Records, so we've partnered up to present our followers with a Permanet Records 2011 Vinyl Picks Bundle! Enter below for your chance to win this incredibly large and impressive vinyl pack courtesy of Permanent Records Chicago and L.A.
SXSW Buzz-o-meter: Young Galaxy, Niki & The Dove, Electric Guest
It's 2012, and we're kicked in full gear. We're preparing our ears for some of the most highly anticipated musical experiences of the season. FILTER decided to help you out with getting to know who will bring the buzz SXSW 2012, and we're predicting you'll be praising these picks by the end of the extravaganza in Austin.
FIDLAR For ‘Hometown: L.A.’ Series By FILTER & Converse
The newest installment to the series features FIDLAR in their Highland Park studio performing "No Ass." Check out the band's thoughts on L.A., including house parties, the West side, and "Tacos, dude. Tacos!" at the Converse blog here, and enjoy the full performance below.
Contests : Enter To Win A CD Package from Mute Records
Enter for your chance to win a package of release from Mute Records including:
Earlier this month, we premiered Field Mouse's track, "Glass" and now that track has a video.
The dream-pop tune couples perfectly with the clip's images of bubbles, wind and slow close-ups of singer Rachel Browne. Enjoy the video below and then download the track.
Field Mouse's 7" will arrive on February 28 via Small Plates. and you can pre-order it here.
Media : MP3: Wild Nothing Gets Twangy With “Nowhere”
Dream-pop/indie enthusiast Wild Nothing has released a new tune from their forthcoming 7".
"Nowhere" is as light and dreamy as you can expect from Wild Nothing but leans more to the twang side than electro-synths. The single is full off lazy guitar licks, easy on the ears vocals and catchy melodies. You can stream and download it below.
The Nowhere 7" arrives February 21 via Captured Tracks.
News : LOOK: Stones Throw Reveals Monthly Subscription Service
Stones Throw, home of Madlib and Dam Funk, has started a monthly subscription service to bring you new music for a fairly low price.
In conjunction with Drip.fm, the service will deliver each of its new releases to subscribers without the anti-sharing restrictions. When you sign up, you will receive Homeboy Sandman's Subject: Matter EP, The Minimal Wave Tapes Vol. 2, and M.E.D.'s Classical Instrumentals.
The service is $10 per month and you can get yours, here.
Enjoy Philippe Laurent's, "Distorsion," from The Minimal Wave Tapes Vol. 2, below.
News : LOOK: 2012 Summer Season At The Hollywood Bowl
The Hollywood Bowl continues it's seasonal event series for it's 14th season in 2012, starting June 24. We are pleased to announce a partial lineup of artists for KCRW’s World Festival at the Hollywood Bowl for the2012 Summerseason. For 14 years, two powerhouse cultural institutions - Los Angeles-based public radio station KCRW (89.9 FM and KCRW.com) and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association -- have joined forces to present one of the most eclectic concert series in the country.
The legendary hillside amphitheater is a dream destination for musicians and this year Animal Collective, Passion Pit and others will make their debuts at the venue as part of KCRW’s World Festival. The 2012 season will showcase a wide range of artists on six Sundays, including Ben Harper, Hot Chip, and a celebration of music from the Philippines curated by Black Eyed Peas rapper apl.de.ap. Subscriptions for KCRW’s World Festival are on sale now and single tickets will be available on Saturday, May 5, 2012. See the initial line up below.
LIVE DATES:
KCRW’S WORLD FESTIVAL LINE UP - SUNDAYS, 7PM
Ben Harper - July 1
Reggae Night, Tuff Gong Worldwide Salutes Legends of Reggae, Ziggy Marley, Additional artists to be announced - July 15
apl.de.ap Takes You To The Philippines – A Celebration of Global Music - July 22
Hot Chip, Passion Pit, Additional artist to be announced - September 9
Animal Collective, Huun Huur Tu - September 23
Tickets are now on sale now at HollywoodBowl.com, at the Hollywood Bowl Box Office (Tuesday–Saturday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.), or by calling Ticketmaster at 800.745.3000, and at all Ticketmaster outlets; call 323.850.2050 for group sales. For general information or to request a brochure, call 323.850.2000.
People talk about your benchmark albums, changes in sound: when you jump labels the sound changes, when you met Kathleen the sound changed… What got you from Real Gone to Bad As Me?
FILTER Five: Our Top 5 Austin Venues
CONTEST: Win a Permanent Records Vinyl Prize Pack
SXSW Buzz-o-meter: Young Galaxy, Niki & The Dove, Electric Guest
FIDLAR For ‘Hometown: L.A.’ Series By FILTER & Converse
