Giving an interview can be a little tricker on the artist than you might think. You do what you do, just trying to get it done and make it sound good, and then you're thrown up against a quantity of journalists who have their own ideas about what you do and how you do it. Sometimes they get it right the way you had in mind. Other times, they get it right in a way that may not be the thing you had in mind and it throws you. It can be a bit of a tightrope and it can sometimes feel a lot like a job interview for a job you already thought you had. As a result, some people don't come across as well while others -- who are often less gifted in the music department -- can come across with stuff that makes great copy. Personally, I've been REALLY lucky in that the people who write about me are generally doing so because they're empathic and they take up my cause. But there have been a few -- fortunately VERY few -- other times when I've read stuff about my work that makes me wonder if the journalist in question was listening to my record or someone else's, and those are usually the journalists who make authoritative pronouncements about what music I make (a "country tinged" organ trio record? Huh?) or how I describe it ("out of context" does not begin to describe a few things I've read about myself). So I can see where certain people fall into an almost defensive position when describing their work in interviews. As for my own descriptions of my work, they're not very "far out". I generally own up to what I stole and then try to change to subject before the interviewer catches up to my own appalling lack of creative integrity. I find that my superior Richard Pryor imitation diffuses things quite nicely for that. sh on 1/24/03 3:22 PM, ahorton at ahorton@vt.edu wrote:

...

myself, I'd rather hear an artist attempt to describe what they do in as far out and interesting a fashion as they see fit than just reduce it to the obvious mechanical aspects.

Well, that's one approach; but it seems to me that Mori (and many modern-improv artists that engage in this "exceedingly creative description" of their own work) are simply being dishonest. They're self-conscious; in a field (modern improv/jazz) that values an "intellectual", "academic", or otherwise "professor-esque" approach to one's music, they're afraid and ashamed to admit that they're simply doing what "feels right", what "comes naturally."

It seems to me that someone like DJ Shadow (just an example) is being more genuine and honest - whereas someone like Mori is trying to compensate for what they percieve to be a lack of "theory" or "depth" in their musical technique.

andrew

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