Stephen Malkmus, Guitar God, Gets Real - Soft Focus - Episode 3
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ค. 2012
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Ian asks Stephen Malkmus the eternal question: Did Pavement shred? Or did they rock? Stephen Malkmus submits to Ian's tender interrogation in this edition of Soft Focus. Getting started, Ian asks what it's like to be raised on the faux-Mississippi Delta. After Stephen reveals his distaste for the art world, Ian asks about the lasting effects of working at a gallery. After briefly discussing his oscillating music taste, Stephen says he's going on 17 years of liking CAN. Malkmus estimates the total number of Jicks records possessed by members of the NBA (it's about as many as you'd guess) and then the questoin comes that we've all been waiting for: Why does Stephen have those socks tied around legs?
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Their music is fun and care free. The line in Stereo about Geddy Lee puts a smile on my face every time so fkn random lol. These guys are relatable and just put me in a good mood. "Tell me off in the hotel lobby right in front of all the bellboys and the over friendly concierge " lol
Cleo Radonut yes but those random consciousness is very influenced by the fall
And ur my fact checking cuz
Aww
okay why is stephen's fit so hard
That's what I keep telling him.
I like how Stephen is real and describing how Pavement grew out of his life. It's another side of him that you wouldn't be able to get out of his music.
I love hearing malkmus talk.
"Do you still consider yourself a guardian of art?"
Who would have guessed the interviewer would be wittier than Malkmus?
This is one of the best interviews I've ever seen. Malkmus's personality comes out so well.
Stephen is still the coolest guy ever.
"people use the word 'indie', what do you think about that?" I laughed lmaoo
Why? Pretentious?
i think the interviewer is really good. asking interesting questions. being intellectual. getting malkmus to talk. and he does.
your wrists are strong.... malkmus seems so delightfully comforable with himself and honest with the world around him
So many comments from people watching an interview of a musician they don't like. TH-cam at it's finest right here. I didn't hear Pavement until recently but to me they define the 90s. Their music takes me back to that awesome decade. I always say they are an easy band to hate and that's part of their charm to me. It's like they aren't even trying but it's real and honest and that's what good art is all about.
two weird dudes bein' weird
Underrated comment
I knew there was a reason I'm watching this
Soft Focus pretty much has my favorite handful of interviews. Ian's great. I can't understand people who would prefer fake, waste of time interviews
13:50 "your just earning your check to go out and get st--... get a burrito afterwards"
Sarcasm is not for everybody, malkmus is great and one of the most underrated artists cause he never pledge to the big shitty music industry machine, a pure punk-rock father.
rilomuzik Doug Martsch from Built To Spill did though, and his music never suffered from it. Does major label really = bad?
rilomuzik built to spill? Lol alive and well, where are they now?
Josh Peters - politely fuck off, I still love Built to Spill. Their album in 2009 is my favorite
Jeremy Schep - Doug gets to keep all of his material though. Kinda different, in the sense that they can’t sell you
YES to the Suede album shirt hahahaha
Which album would that be? Coming Up?
His John Cale impression was short but damn funny lol
what point is it at?
Daniel B idk but he seems too cool 4 skool
Ian is the sassiest boy in america
"Do you see yourself as a guardian of Art?" Five stars right there.
Malkmus hasn't seen Garfunkle in years
Ian Svenonius, is an excellent interviewer...seen many of his interviews and this one with Malkmus is great as well
Yeah, seriously! I liked him a lot and scrolling through the comments and seeing all the hate he's getting confuses me so much. Maybe it's just that a lot of people that follow Vice/Noisey are assholes?
not really
your reading comprehension skills are amazing.
I get what he's saying about post John Cale Velvets, it's very good stuff too, but his addition to the band was not crap, it was also very good.
He VASTLY underestimated John Cale here. The Velvet Underground was Lou and John's vision, and you can really hear that. He worked with Reed a fair amount at Pickwick Records, which is where they came up with their whole music aesthetic...while writing and recording throwaway (but DEFINITELY not always) Doo Wop music. Cale was important and Malk should appreciate that.
Lady Godiva's Operation is the nadir of the VU though - Malk has a deep point
@@briansmith9455yeah i thought the same. love malkmus and pavement is probably my favourite band ever but i‘m a huge fan of john cale too and i think the first 2 VU albums (which are arguably the most groundbreaking) wouldn‘t have been possible at all without his contribution. i think moe tucker or someone else said that the lunacy-aspect in their music was gone after his departure and while they still made great music, they wouldn‘t be nearly as influential as they are without cale
@@jesselopes5196lol i love that song
@@louis143 there's something to that but post-Cale Murder Mystery is pretty lunatic doncha think?
Back 8 years later and I'm so glad I'm seeing Malkmus in a different light now. I suppose we've both grown up.
Love that he knows about Suede, my favorit band of all time =)
actually a great interviewer
This is the greatest interview oh my god
Virginia has changed quite a bit since the 1860s Ian. Its certainly not dixie.
Thank you
"But what you don't understand..."
that interplay is freakin hilarious to me--"you know southern-- like lightning bugs, lightning--stuff we don't have out here..."
I like the "Soft Focus theme song" mentioned in the credits. Link?
Lol. Wtf is going on in the comments?
Anyway, Malkmus is such a cool dude.
Not really.
@@mfpendle Elaborate please?
If by cool you mean pretentious then yeah
@@esstan7720Ridiculous comment. Get a dictionary. Look it up.
Hey! malkmus is my all-time favorite dude ever, too. then pollard. but definitely malkmus. i think you're probably right about scenonius. i'm really not too familiar with him and most of the great personalities have a bit of a learning curve to them.
Stephen has mentioned, over time, some of my favorites bands:
Deerhoof
My Bloddy Valentine
Can
Velvet Underground
Pavement
Makes sense that I dig his music.
i love the satirical intro!
UME was pretty under appreciated. First band since Pavement that got me going again! Then Built to Spill I guess!
Gotta love the title :D
Also, Malkmus is my all-time favorite musician, so I wouldn't waste time defending Svenonius unless I thought he was worth it. I respect that you're put off by him, but I think he's just an acquired taste. I personally think he's a really smart, funny guy. And he kind of exemplifies all the things that make Malkmus so charming, but only if those things were exposed to radiation and then magnified under a microscope.
malkmus is thinking "I've been sitting here too long!!" (pavement reference)
ha ha I hear that song
Malkmus's reading of the Velvet Underground has helped me understand why Pavement fell off a cliff once they parted ways with the experimental and embraced more formal song structures. His ambition all along perhaps? Were we were all trying to get to where he was leaving?
Bring back Soft Focus!
"get a burrito" lmfao
Dude it's Ian Svenonius from Nation of Ulysses and other great bands. He's just taking the piss with his character. Malkmus (and all the other guys he's interviewed) are friends with him
I didn't expect to like either of these guys but love their work.
It looked extremely rocky for the Mudville nine that day...
I lived in Northern Virginia, Stephen is right
When one guy I like (Malkmus) belittles another guy I like (Cale) ... well, these are the unfathomable ways of RocknRoll I guess. Anyway a great interview with good questions!
Oh dear God. I rewatched parts of this and, well, shit I must have been trolled by this show.
After all, there's no way that anyone could have been serious with that intro. Right?
Right?
Right
odd question, but does anyone know what jacket stephen is wearing? its really cool looking
shoelace just looks like a vintage ski jacket of sorts
Malkmus is so generous
Interviewer Ian is like is there a pure setting for music and Steve taps his nose
I fear people don't grasp the underlying comedic intent of this interview
Charlie Hanson no they don’t like.
I fear *you* don't grasp the underlying and very seriously subversive intent of this interview.
Btw, I did a poup poup inna big potty today but seriously; Have you ever gone stag so long that your pubes grew enough as to be able to comb out the hair on yours balls the way you would a beard?
It's not bad.
@@AnodyneHipsterInfluencer Drugs? Or bored
@@AnodyneHipsterInfluencer how dare you. Eat me!
16:51 Stephen's best Michael Winslow impression
Pigs they tend to wiggle when they walk....
Great interview...
Bagdad Theatre!!
What are you talking about? Malkmus is laughing when he says that, he clearly understands it's a joke and thinks it's funny.
Go research who this interviewer is. He has more credentials than most interviewers, and this entire series is intended to be ironic. Imagine like an indie rock Ron Burgundy. That's basically what's going on here. Once you get past the facade, though, it's actually quite though-provoking.
10:06 is hilarious
Stephen Malkmus is GREAT!
Ian is Not for Everyone.
not until they listen to nation of ulysses.
What are the bands SM recalls?
He's right about Northern Virginia.
TH-cam subtitles turned one of Malkmus' vocal guitar noises into "marijuana". 😂
Seems appropriate
Ian was awesome in nation of ulysses.
@4:55 "What you don't understand..." Glad Malkmus took it in stride
satire
Malkmus had to pee the entire time..
He just throws out the Suede reference like anyone is going to get it haha, but damn is it true, that was my first thought.
Love Gary Jarman.
i doubt malkmus or any of his fans see him as some sort of philosophical scholar. his subtlety IS what makes him cool, maybe even too cool for school. Take for instance, his reference to the pub owner with a kind word. Not saying much, but getting the point across.
How did this guy get his one show interviewing people??
these comments are really strange...
It's by design my friend. Check out the Nation of Ulysses, Ian's former band.
The introduction could be a Mr show skit about a pretensious and faux arty host who said so much, but somehow so little. When he slaps that goods train, I lost it
do you guys even know who the interviewer is? or where he's been and what he's done musically and artistically?
Thanks for dressing up for the interview Malkmus.
Hey when you look this good, you don't need to know anything.
+sydbarrett5 i'm wearing bandanas under my knee rn thanks to him
That is pretty cool actually.
Is that Nardwuar? I always wanted Nardwuar to interview Pavement or the jicks, they're the best.
what a beautiful man
how highhhhhhhhh.... am i not.... I'm not high enough.
This guy's pompous insistence that Charlottesville Virginia is "Dixie" despite Malkmus' (correct) experience to the contrary is maddening.
You thought that was douchie? Wait till you check out his intro for the Henry Rollins interview; it's the height of douchieness. And by "douchieness," I mean awesomeness.
"It was kinda like a college town is what I'm saying".
I think silver jews is his best band IMO
Jeff Koons? I will try to unhear that.
HELL.YES>
to be perfectly honest warhol pretty much was the velvets backbone the velvets continued with andy's influence and artistic ideas and integrity. To say they were a better band after cale and andy is an opinion. but americans will often say that because mostly they hate looking at music as an art anyway, they just like to think of it as fun + entertainment, I think that's wrong, they're just afraid of looking pretentious but having something to say and being creative doesn't mean your pretentious
right
Steven secretly wants to be John Cale
Just googled Steve Nash's favorite band, its Radiohead!!!
sox cap. nifty.
10:23 - VELVET UNDERGROUND CONVO
Everyone's bashing the interviewer in the comments here...I liked him and didn't think he was that bad at all but come on, holy shit, he was the singer for Nation of Ulysses and that alone makes him a really cool dude
Portlandia, for real. S-C-A-R-Y!!!
Oh my God, 15 minutes in, but I hope that sometime in the last 10 minutes Malkmus asks him, "What the fuck do you mean by that ridiculous question?"
Who is Stephen Makmus?
I don't know, Malkmus doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who would waste time being cordial. He seems to be more into passive-agressive sarcasm. I do know that Malkmus and Svenonius are friends, though, like all the people he interviews in the Soft Focus series. Malkmus even references going to see his band at Maxwell's.
Watch the episode with Ian Mackaye, It is the most blatantly "adversarial" but clearly in jest, seeing as the two go back to the early Dischord days.
does anybody get that this series is a joke? Have you watched any other Soft Focus interviews? Come on now, people, I know this guy's style of humor isn't quite as in-your-face as, say, Dane Cook, but if you stop and think about the shit this guy's saying/doing, it's pretty amusing, and it gets funnier each time you watch it.
It make be a joke, but it's just as annoying and pretentious as it would be if it weren't. It's like when Ween makes an album that sounds exactly like a bunch of crap from the 80s that sucks, and it's not funny, it just sucks, too.
I like Pavement and SM & The Jicks. But there are some really dumb SM comments about VU here. Ridiculous dissing of John Cale and the first 2 VU albums. I mean, don't even try to compare anything Pavement or The Jicks have done to White Light/ White Heat or the VU debut in terms of energy, innovation and sheer brilliance-- to say nothing of historical influence on bands that influenced Malkmus himself. Then he goes on to praise the avant-garde Stockhausen-schooled experimentalism of Can. Thing is, Can were very open about acknowledging the influence of early VU albums. Also, Cale produced more than that Stooges album Malkmus mentioned. He also produced the debut albums of Modern Lovers, Patti Smith and several Nico albums on which he played and co-wrote. I remember catching a John Cale gig in NY in the late 70s, and man was he rocking! His gigs at CBGBs and elsewhere were legendary for their edgy intensity. Malkmus makes Cale sound like some academic avant-garde egg-head with no feel for rock&roll. He couldn't be more wrong.
well put.
You are so right. Cale was an original punk rocker. AND an avant garde experimentalist. AND a top producer. AND a great songwriter with great taste for beach boys-like melodies. I can understand Stephen's point, i love 1969 VU (studio records and bootlegs), Sterling Morrison is definitelý an influence for Pavement, but he completely misses the point on John Cale. Out of the room? Please.
I didn't know Peter Dinklage did interviews??
These comments are hilarious. Ian's character is satire and the two are friends.
What did he mean Bowie was an enemy of his?
I have to know what that is all about..
He comes across like the David Spade of alternative rock.
Ghoopty Malkmus is handsome, though. Please present us all with another leading man.
And hes also actually funny, and doesnt have an annoying voice.
The interviewer asked some really weird (maybe even stupid) questions that seemed based on assumptions that weren't even true, but it definitely got Malkmus to say some interesting things.
I think that's actually the point because people like Malkmus, Sonic Youth get asked some stupid questions in interviews. This guy asks these apparently pseudo intellectual questions in interview after interview, and never really gets a straight answer.But he always keeps the artists talking. He does seem to make some of his subjects a little uncomfortable. But if you ask the question: "You were a guard in a museum. Do you see yourself as a guardian of art?" I think you clearly have a sense of humor. Everyone wants to slag this guy off, but I think they are actually missing the joke, missing the whole point. I think Noisey has some of the better music content on the Internet, and they go for non run of the mill interviewers. I was entertained.
when was this interview done? manute bol died in 2010....
+Pauli650 Malkmus said that Manute Bol *was* a Pavement fan so I assume Manute Bol told him that while Pavement were still together, so sometime before 1999. But the interview was 2012 I believe.
+Pauli650 maybe 2008ish? His girls were born 2004 and 2007 i believe.
Like Peter Fonda and Sam Shepard Malkmus is ''American royalty'', He has the look: tall, lanky, broad shoulders, square-jaw and the supercool attitude: louche, hip and entitled :American royalty