06/05/09

Trent: A lot of it is marketing. MTV is telling you this is what is cool. Listen to what is cool. I think that the whole situation has made music less art-y and put more emphasis on music as a product. If you buy an album today and it has two good songs on it, it's okay. Before, if you bought an album and it had two bad songs on it, well...it's still an okay album. You got your money's worth. I can't tell you how many CDs we get from bands who want to open for us, you've never heard of them so you put it on and the first song is not bad. Then, well, that one sounds like the same song, sounds like that song...with CDs you can instantly hit that little button and skip to the next track. Albums, at least, you had to go to the trouble of moving the needle. With an album you had this big piece of art, something on the inside and the vinyl. You know, it was a cool thing. CDs are ugly little pieces of shit; art's gone. What really made me think about this was discovering a few records I hadn't really listened to, like: Bowie's Low album, or _Hunky Dory_, Iggy Pop stuff I had missed. You take a record like Low, or _Hunky Dory_ where every song, to me, is awesome, different and challenging. I wish I could write one song that is as good as any song on that album. Then you compare it to what is out today. I hate to think in a retro mindset. You know, "the Beatles were the best thing.." Fuck the Beatles, I hated people who were always going on about the fuckin' Beatles. They're dead. They're ugly now. Get them out of my sight. There isn't much coming out, it seems to me, that has much depth. It's based a lot on what the trend of the second is. And I realize that we are dangerously close to that same thing. Whatever.

Eric: Soon there will be soda commercials featuring some studio guy making bad imitations of your music.

Trent: Well, there was a Gatorade commercial. I had a hundred people say "Why did you do that Gatorade commercial?" I was like, "What are you talking about?" I hadn't seen it. I finally got a copy. It was "Down In It". The beat's a little bit different. The singing has got a little bit of dis- tortion, exactly the same kind of thing as my voice. So I looked into how we can sue these fuckheads. I don't want money. I just don't want them using my song. Well, they changed it a little bit. I remember hearing a commercial and I thought, "Joe Jackson, I thought he was cool, and now he's done a fuckin' commercial for something shitty." It was that song, "Stepping Out". Someting almost exactly like that, but it wasn't him singing. I remember in an interview he said, "They approached me to do this commercial, and I said 'absolutely no way'. And they said, 'Well, we're just going to get someone who sounds like you to do it.'" Well, fuck you. And they did it. And everyone in the world thought it was him.

Josh: What are your thoughts on sampling, within the definition of copyright laws and the restrictions therein?

Trent: I think that sound is sound. If somebody sampled a bit of something in an album of mine, that's cool. I don't give a shit about that. I think it's interesting how rap groups piece together things into new sounds. I'm into that. I do think that it's totally out of control now. Asshole major label lawyers are getting in on it, and realizing they can make money by ripping people off. If M.C. Hammer looped "Head Like a Hole" and did a rap over it, it'd piss me off, and I think I should be compensated because it's my song. I think at a certain point there should be some degree of compen- sation. When it's at *that* level. Like some of these assholes: Vanilla Ice, where it's another whole song with someone talking over it. Or Dr. Dre singing Funkadelic. I've used a lot of samples, but I don't tell anyone where I got them. It's not identifiable. I'm not just looping someone else's music. I'm more interested in textures than the novelty off who or what I've appropriated.

Josh: You bury your samples. If they were taken from a song, I would never be able to recognize it.

Trent: I just produced another band, Marilyn Manson, from my label, and they have a bunch of weird obscure samples, like Charles Nelson Reilly from Lidsville, some bizarre little excerpt from one sentence and the lawyers say "Did you get permission to use that?" This is just one of fifty things on the record.

Josh: Where do you draw the line?

Trent: Well, labels now are so afraid to put a record out. There are people at major labels whose job is just to clear samples, to listen for samples and start the whole thing up. So we made a list of all the different samples that were on this thing, from that song that goes (deep voice) "I bring you fire." You know which one I'm talking about, he's got makeup on. I don't remember the name of it. Just "I bring y..." Not even that much, and it's tuned down, but everyone was terrified. Some album came out, it might have been De La Soul, I forget which rap group. They didn't clear a couple samples and got sued like a motherfucker. They had to recall the album, it cost the label millions. So everyone's terrified now. We had to call Charles Nelson Reilly's peole to see if it was okay: "Yeah, but he'd like to have five hundred dollars for that sample." It's like, "Fuck you!" You know? You would never even know that existed.

Josh: It kind of takes away from the spontaneity.

Trent: Exactly!

Eric: So, it's not all right for you to sample Charles Nelson Reilly, but it's okay for some corporation to take your music. Even if you alter Charles Nelson Reilly, you have to pay, but they can alter your stuff and not pay you for it?

Trent: Everything is set up to protect everyone but the artist. You'd be surprised at things that are in record contracts. Who writes up a record contract? The record company. Who is it looking after? Not the artist. We're on the worst label in the world.
Trent: I don't like to talk about song lyrics when I do interviews because it lessens and cheapens someone else's impression of the song. That's happened to me. I read an interview and whoever wrote [this song] is bitching: "All these people think I'm talking about this. I'm talking about blah blah blah. These people are full of shit!" Well, I'm one of those people. I realize that once it is in the store it is other people's domain to interpret. That is what is interesting about this as a medium of communications. Unless it is something I feel really strong about that is being misinterpreted. For instance, I have been accused of misogyny and shit like that. I think, "You're not getting the point." Like "Big Man With a Gun", "Oh, you're advocating..." Should I even have to comment on that?

Josh: About two years ago I read a _Mondo 2000_ interview, where you called industrial music "the misuse of technology". Could you elaborate on that?

Trent: Well, I probably did say that. I don't think I meant it in that context. I think I was describing some elements in what today is called industrial music, whatever that really means, that use technology in different ways than it was designed to be used. From an engineering standpoint; electronic instruments, recording devices, things like that. Being a programmer I find it more interesting to find how these machines can do things they weren't meant to do. Usually that is a lot more rewarding than plugging something in, reading the manual and doing just what you're told and it sounds like a Janet Jackson record.

Josh: I'd like to know how you view your own artwork. Do you see your music as an attempt to confront the chaos of the world we live in, or is it the culmination of it?

Trent: I think...I don't really sit down and analyze my music. But afterwards, I am forced to because I have to answer questions. Then I have to say, "I haven't thought about that". I am not trying to just bitch, or say that the world sucks. I don't see any point in doing that. But I am trying to come to terms with my own head in a world that is chaotic and doesn't make sense. I'm trying to deal with my own thoughts and recycle them into something that I feel better about myself by expressing. And then, I guess that if others can read their own things into. That's a good feeling. If someone says, "I know what you're talking about, I feel the same way." That's the best...You can't get a better compliment than that. And that's when it was worth sitting in that studio, or fighting with our lighting director, or doing interviews every day. That is the best reward. I'm a public servant.