Chapo Trap House - Bonus: Interview with Parquet Courts' A. Savage

Episode Date: August 18, 2018

Amber, Will and Chris talk to A. Savage, vocalist and guitarist for the rock and roll band Parquet Courts. Pick up their new album, Wide Awake!, here: https://www.roughtrade.com/us/music/parquet-courts-wide-awake

Welcome to a very special, tyrannically amber-directed Choppo interview yet again. I have taken over the Choppo interview series so you can all look forward to forthcoming episodes about ballet and horsies and we're all gonna have to wear silk kimonos and drink rosé. The stream has been hacked. Taken over. And I am here with Will Menaker because he still has to keep us all in line. Otherwise he's madness. He's the chaperone, if you will. And our producer, Chris Wade, is also on the mic. Hi, I get a microphone this time. And we have special guest from Parquet Courts. Would you like to go by your rock

name or shall we go with the full first name? I was born with a rock name. Call me whatever you want. Savage is my name because Savage is how I do podcast interviews. Very cool. He said before he sipped a liqori. Yeah, we're drinking the cross brand seltzer here. For those listeners who may not be familiar with the Parquet Courts. I can assure you they have a wild sound. I don't know if you're into this guitar music, but I think it's really gonna catch on. Yeah, time's gonna tell. Yeah, I mean we'll see, but I have a feeling. But yeah, that's kind of where we wanted to go with this because what I

kind of shorthand as guitar music is still my favorite kind of music. It's really funny. I've never been one to to call any type of music like, you know, saxophone music, trumpet music. I think it was probably when Parquet Courts started doing interviews where people were like, so you guys play guitar music and I'm like, what do you mean? Yeah. What the hell is that? I think I actually stopped when I was actually I moved to New York in a band and I didn't want to get into conversations about genre. So I wanted to skim over that completely. Right. It's an odd clarifier to me, I think. Yeah, I mean it is, but it also avoids an awkward

conversation where you have to compare yourself to other bands. Sure. People are like, oh, you play guitar, say no more. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, please, say no more. Saxophone music is what I call jazz music. Oh, okay. Yeah, even when there's an absence of saxophone. It's all saxophone. It's all saxophone music. Who's your favorite sax player? Thelonious Monka. So I think we're going to start out sort of talking about like the popularity of sort of rock as a genre and I feel like right now we're in a time when we don't hear a lot of rock on the radio. There are kind of weird moments where there'll be something that catches on for a little while, but I

think the last time when it was really, really huge was like right after 9-11. So first question, did you start playing guitar because of 9-11? No, I was playing before that. Yeah, you know, I guess there's something kind of tokenizing about being, you know, someone who plays in a rock band these days where people kind of expect you to answer for this entire history of music and entire community of people. So I'll do that now. That's why I'm here, I think. Yeah. But during that time that you mentioned after 9-11, I was already like so far down like the kind of punk and hardcore wormhole that I kind of gotten into in

the late 90s and so, you know, by the time like, you know, the strokes and what else like the hives where we're kind of coming out. I was kind of weird stuff too, like yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was already like, that was already poser shit to me at that point, you know. So like, and that, you know, that's not necessarily the way I feel now. I like, you know, I like the strokes. For sure, definitely my brother, Max of Barquet Chorts, one of his favorite groups and like definitely a very, you know, a big informer of what he does. But it's hard for me to really make that connection of there being like a kind of rock and roll revival around

that time, because I guess in my mind, like being so, you know, headfirst and punk in the underground, it was already there, you know. And so when it started, and it was already happening and, you know, guitar music was already happening and I guess Lamer forms and like in the late 90s in the form of like new metal and stuff. So I guess I just, I didn't really notice when that kind of happened. But I will say that I think probably right now, rock and roll, rock music, whatever, guitar music, there's probably more of it being done than there ever has been, I think. And that's probably evidenced by, you know, going on

a site like Bandcamp or SoundCloud or something. I just, I think the thing that's changed is the cultural space that it occupies and the value that we put on it as a culture. I think that's kind of what changed. And yeah, I agree. The last time it really was at the forefront of culture and valued in this way is probably around then. Probably like the last big, you know, famous rock group was the Strokes, I would guess. I think so, yeah. I mean, it does seem very much like it was kind of an industry opportunism. They're like, oh, people are going to be, you know, they want like an American, you know, they want to look at a

Stratocaster again. You know, they want to feel like America did something good again. I kind of, and I'm not knocking that entirely. Like I still, I probably listened to that like, yay ass album, like, you know, once every few months and it's like a perfect album. And I'm, it seems like a lot of good bands got like a career and success out of it that otherwise would not have been on the radio. But I also remember very vividly trying to, do you remember this, trying to get the song New York City Cops? So I know about this song because it was supposed to be on Is This It, right? Right. Yeah, it was considered bad timing.

It was considered an important taste because of the first response. That wasn't, in 2001, that wasn't on my top concerns was finding New York City Cops. But I know about it. I know that it was included on the, what the English version of the LP, right? Yeah. And not the American one. They're not so sensitive about first responders over there. They had a different cover for that record too. It was a woman's ass and a black glove or something. Yeah, yeah. It was a better cover. It was a better cover. Yeah, but it was sort of this interesting thing where I think they were like, yeah, people are gonna, you know, latch back on to this idea of the guitar is like American rebellion and, you know, creativity, but not too much because it was still within

like kind of the, I guess, the the strictures of what they were already sort of trying to commodify rock music as, which is something maybe a little bit safer than then it was, you know, originally intended to be or whatever. Yeah, to me that kind of era also just seemed to be a reaction to what was going on in like indie rock in the late 90s, which kind of, you know, maybe looking at bands like, like Built to Spill or Pavement or something, like maybe bands with a little bit more maybe more whimsy, a little looser and maybe kind of got a bit more kind of restrained and consciously, you know, artsy perhaps. I

think it was it was also kind of reaction to kind of what was happening in, you know, college rock because essentially that's where most of those bands had kind of formed out of. I mean, like in this same time period though, like I'm trying to remember like when did when did the new metal craze sort of like peak and then recede? Was it basically around the same time? It seems like it was kind of to the 90s what hair metal was to the 80s, right? Yeah, I mean, although it did, I think it crept a bit into the arts, I think that kind of, I think that kind of negated it. But it was this like big wave of like very, you know, sort of macho,

dumb, aggressive in the same way that the hair metal was. Sure. But then just got displaced by like, you know, what grunge did to hair metal? See, it's weird to me though that you would consider like hair metal macho because I thought that was like the last gasp of like kind of androgyny or whatever. Well, I mean, in attitude I think it was definitely pretty macho kind of articulating this very you know narrow view of what masculinity is and a lot of the wearing makeup and tights. But yeah, like the content of it was pretty, it was a different time. I think until like a little bit maybe like the white stripes

or something, I skipped every band of my generation. I didn't like any of it. I didn't like any of the college stuff. I at 13, I decided I like, you know, Richard Hell and Patti Smith and I just didn't listen to anything again until the end of high school or anything new at all. Yeah. And I think probably it's just being a surly teenager stuff too, where you're just like, this new stuff sucks. Patti's the only one that understands me. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's still true. But it was interesting, I think, to watch kind of also renewed interest in the older stuff because of this wave of bands that were supposedly either

influenced by these kind of 70s punk acts or at least referenced them in some way. Or maybe that's the only reason why I stopped my kid. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I don't necessarily, I don't glean nostalgia from those bands really. And that maybe I'm being naive and it's like I said, it's not really my scene. But I don't really hear the strokes and think like they're doing 70s rock or 70s punk or something. I kind of, I can appreciate it in and of its own time, which I think is how music needs to be looked at. And I would say, we have this

temptation to constantly approach music and especially rock music that way. And it's, I don't know, in some ways it's a fool's errand because everything is always of its time, I think, even when it is referential, which inherently rock and roll music will be. It also seems a bit like that's the only way we kind of talk about music anymore is comparatively. That's, that's pretty true. Yeah. And you look, you read like old writing about music like Alan Wills or something and you compare it to like the pitch forkization of stuff where it's all about kind of ranking and getting like a definitive like blurb on every

single album and you know, cross referencing it with influences and stuff like that. Right. And I, doesn't pitchfork have like, like, like a decimal, like it's like that album was 8.5. That's true. What? 8.6? Well, they also retroactively rate albums, which I think is cheating. And let's be honest, it should have been an 8.6. Yeah, exactly. And I'm just like, yeah, well, what is their criteria for coming up? You know, you get that one Russian judge and yeah, but I remember, you know, I really, I really liked, you know, music journalism, like sort of long form stuff and discussing things

discursively. And, and by the time I started doing it, it kind of didn't exist anymore. It was all kind of about like categorization and genrefication and the family tree of these bands. There's also so much emphasis, especially for like pop stars on the narrative and like what the narrative is key. Yeah. What their like life story is as and who they represent and like what their fan base is doing around each album as it's released. That's everything now. You don't buy a mattress without its story. Exactly. Yeah. And it's got to have craft. Yeah. But I don't know. It makes me sad

because I really, I actually kind of only started writing because I started writing about music and it does seem like there's just not a lot of decent, I mean, you get some like great interviews still. There was that, I think that the New York Magazine interview with like Quincy Jones or something. Oh, that was, yeah, that was like, people are just so fantastic and weird and eccentric and brilliant that it's just great to hear them talk. Yeah. But music journalism doesn't seem to be just as popular as it once was. It's more efficient. You can look something up very quickly. Yeah. And I think with the

kind of the age of the internet that there's a kind of a quicker demand for turnaround time for a piece. So people, you know, people aren't working on an album review for months. I mean, for the most part, you know, but, you know, there's still great writers out there. There always, there always will be, you know, thoughtful people writing about, you know, culture, art and music. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that it's dead, but it definitely has, it definitely has changed. Well, I couldn't make money at it. So now I podcast.

Yeah. Maybe, maybe as a career, just kind of continue one thing that we were saying about like how, and this is also related to like music journalism is how things keep dying down or like rock music becomes just one genre of the musical landscape instead of the dominant thing. And then everybody's like, oh, rock's dead. And then like a few bands pop back up and hail to save you and suddenly it's, it's back. And I think that that's the same kind of as the music journalism thing is like, oh, it disappears for a little bit and it's dead. And then a big piece comes back and you're like, oh, it's back. That

seems like a lot of pressure to be in a band that, you know, you get a little popular. And then as you said at the very beginning, you're expected to like answer for the entire genre. I think people are too quick to declare things as dead. And, and people are too, you know, quick to try to be, you know, these king makers and try to, you know, declare someone as this savior of something, which is ultimately just going to be a disappointment for everyone when, when you try to do that. You know, every time I go over to like the UK, they have, you know, that's still

a pretty large music press over there. But they do have this habit of always kind of looking for the next, you know, Oasis or Stone Roses or the next, you know, the great rock band that's going to, you know, bring, bring them back to the good old days. But the thing is, there's, those good old days are never going to happen again. It's just because they can't, just because the world has changed too much to, and it's, it's funny. It's like, wait, there's still time for you to start a vicious feud with your brother and break up the band. So yeah, yeah, I mean, we'll see.

It's funny how like Oasis in the UK or like Nirvana here become these big iconic things and how you kind of have to live in the scar of them for a long time, because everybody's kind of like, Oh, is this going to be the next Nirvana, the next Oasis when every time, every moment of band that pops like that, it can only be that band at that time. Yeah. Well, I don't know if anybody ever thought that of my band. And if, you know, if they, if they did, shame on them, but, but people, I think, need to, need to appreciate things more within the context of their

times. And, and, you know, because, because, you know, music is always in a state of change, but even more rapidly now, and because rock music no longer has like the, uh, you know, same place in culture that it once does, it makes it, it makes a lot of the stuff that's happening right now more interesting. And, you know, it, it will, it will become more interesting. The further it's marginalized, I think, uh, kind of going off of that, everything's always changing, but more rapidly all the time. I kind of wanted to ask you about, um, like, Parkour courts came up in New

York and between, you know, whether it's 70s punk or the post nine 11 thing, you know, New York's always been a music city, but it's seemingly, you know, like the music itself, it's changing more and faster. And I just was wondering if you could talk about like, I don't know, keeping a scene together in New York when things are changing so rapidly from everything as general as like rent to like vice buying up and shutting down venues and stuff like that. And it just seems like there are, you know, every year more and more challenges

of doing the kind of community building and like mutual aiding that music scenes have always had to do. Right. Well, I guess speaking as someone who's been participating in, uh, you know, DIY for over a decade now, like DIY punk scene, like it's always a challenge. Like keeping a scene together is always a challenge no matter where you are. But I think one big challenge is when people have this idea of what being an artist in New York is, and it becomes cemented to them, like people

who, you know, become just kind of obsessed with, uh, with the 60s or the 70s or, you know, um, or like, you know, New York hardcore from the 80s. And in New York becomes this kind of frozen cemented thing and all of a sudden in their minds, it's over. Well, it's not over. It's just like it always has. It's changing and it's changing more rapidly. And that's, that, that informs, uh, the music community here and the artistic

community and, uh, it's best for everyone. If you appreciate something for, you know, for the, for the moment it's in it's in now and not compare it to, you know, this, this kind of, uh, uh, rose colored glasses, uh, you know, New York of old, you know, it does however seem just objectively more difficult now. I mean, just as a pure function of economy, like it's harder to find space to practice. It's just more expensive to live here. You have less time.

Every artist, whether they're a musician or a painter or whatever, like spend so much time managing their career so they can make enough money to be able to create that, um, the paces really quickly too. Yeah. Yeah. You got to have a job. You've got to have, I mean, to live here, you've got to have a way to make money. And that's kind of the, that's, that's the story of urban artists all over

the world, uh, the way urbanization is going and the way city living has become so preferred for so many people in the world. It's getting insanely expensive. And it's, it's, it has to be something. Well, it is something that park a course of talked about, uh, but it has to be something that more people talk about in their art and their music, I think, because it is a, um, you know, it becomes harder and harder. I think one of the most difficult things in art in general is being able

to articulate the time that you live in. And I think, uh, it is becoming harder to do that. And that's one of the ways to do it is talking about the way that, yeah, New York is, uh, you know, what the fate of artists are in this city and how, you know, Manhattan's kind of increasingly becoming like an island of the rich, essentially. Oh, you said it's, it's, it's harder now to articulate a sense of the sort of era or times that we're living in.

And I was like, why, what do you think that is? Because, um, it's harder to, uh, you know, articulate the moment because we live in the moment so much less, I think, uh, you know, we're, we have so many things to engage in and distract us from the moment, uh, so many opportunities to be entertained, uh, so many opportunities to just kind of, you know, to turn the moment off, to turn, to turn life off, that, that it becomes, you know, it's a muscle that you have to flex, uh, you know, being in the present, being in the present, uh, thinking, letting the present go through you and

thinking what, what makes this moment the present, uh, that, that's become something that we, I think, uh, don't use as much. And so that's why it becomes a harder thing to articulate in your art because it's something that you experience less, honestly, in modern life. I mean, if we're, you know, you know, map on to like the history of popular music and the latter half of the 20th century and now this kind of like an easy template of like, you know, rising in the, in the 60s and like sort of a, a hopeful counter cultural movement and then the, you know, harsh come down to

the 60s into, you know, a darker or then also like a more frivolous, like through, you know, the people just wanted to party and then into, you know, a more nihilistic turn and like going through these cycles, like we were talking of like sort of macho music to indie music. Like, do you have a sense of like where we are now in terms of popular culture and music? Yeah, that's, that's tough. It does seem like speed is a huge factor.

Like if I had to describe, if I had to pick like a single word to describe like our moment in the way we consume art or culture or literature of any kind, it's, it does seem like, like you were talking about like how rapid things have to turn out and like demand of the internet. The actual meeting of medium of the internet produces speed and I think it's the very, very reason like the genre of podcasts is popular is because people can do it while they're commuting and while they're working out. I had a ton of time.

I was, it was very difficult being like a, a writer because I had like no time and I'm not like really rapid and prolific and it does seem like with the amount of albums you just have like thrown at you on a daily basis. I mean, like Spotify literally gives me new albums to listen to like weekly. There's too much of everything. There's too much music. There's too much television. There's too many podcasts.

There's just, there's, there's too many options because the, the, the creation of content just is kind of like a snowball. It just keeps accelerating and, and as a, you know, as a, as a, as a person you're expected to kind of keep up with this, you know, and always, you know, be on the, the front of conversation. That's, I mean, that's, there's so much that I've kind of had to rule out like television and I know we're in this, this, you know, gilded age of television, of prestige, you know, programming.

And so every time I find myself in a conversation about television, which happens often, um, it's usually a sort of, uh, kind of conversational digest of, have you seen this? Have you seen this? Have you seen this? And it's like, no, no, no. It's cross-referencing cultural references. Yeah. And so you've got it.

There's, there's kind of, there's too much coming at you. And, and I think it's, uh, you mentioned speed. I mean, it's probably no coincidence that, uh, speed is being prescribed and taken by people so much right now. It's, uh, at kind of an alarming rate and it's kind of become, you know, socially pretty normative to, you know, to want to speed things up. Yeah. But, which is also really interesting when you listen to a lot of hip hop going on,

especially produced by like teenagers and what they call like sound cloud rap. It sounds like you're on Xanax. Like when you're listening to it. They're slowing everything down. Yeah. Yeah. But in a way that's different from like chopped and screwed like Houston hip hop, which I'm, you know, really into, uh, it's, it's, I, it feels more of a, uh, uh, where

that was kind of a maybe escapism or like, yeah, the result of a drug, the, the, uh, the sound cloud rap thing, uh, feels like more of a kind of reaction to this cultural acceleration that we're talking about. I was going to bring that up to try to alley wills question in about like musical times and moments and like maybe a decade ago, like immediately before, let's say the financial crash, you know, stuff that was kind of like an apocalyptic party vibe, you know, like, I don't know, Kesha or LMFAO was like the overtone, but now it seems like everything's very sad.

It's like a sad era of popular music. It's like the sound cloud thing or, you know, a lot of hip hop, you know, the sad Toronto boys. It's a lot of teenage feelings, you know, Felix loves like, yeah, like, uh, all these people, I mean, like, like there's violence around it, but like the overwhelming like ethos of it is, I'm sad. Yeah. Like I'm upset and, but I also don't have any feelings and I'm upset because I don't have

feelings. Yeah. Yeah. Sort of numbness kind of thing to it. Sure. Yeah. Well, that very young woman that, uh, like, who was a sound cloud rapper that Kanye put on the most recent album, like I went through and like listened to like her entire mixtape

or whatever. And like, I'm like, oh my gosh, teenage tanks will never die. But it was really, it was really good and impressive. It will never die. Yeah. Like it's the one thing that you can rely on, but it was very recognizable so far outside the genres that I generally associate it with. And also, I don't know, I think it's kind of cool that kids are able to make music without

having to have like a garage and a super expensive instrument. And that's, that's a huge thing that's changed is that if you're, if you're a teenager, uh, like I remember being, and you need to save up for, you know, a guitar, you need to, you need to buy a guitar to start a band. Now, like the other option is there's all this open source software that you can start creating music on and you can, you can, you can circumvent the whole, you know, purchasing an instrument step. It's, it's become the, you know, kind of, you know, the music of the people really.

So the, I think the SoundCloud, um, rap phenomenon, although I got to say, I don't, I don't love a lot of it musically. I think it's, I think it's bad, but it's, but it actually does have some highlights, I think. Right. And it's, that's, that's when you have to kind of, you have to kind of ask yourself is like, you know, is innovation tantamount to like a strong creative expression. I think a lot of it, if, uh, if you listen to it, a lot of it's like, wow, this is new.

You can also be like, wow, this is bad. But a lot of the times I'm like, this is kind of interesting. It's, I haven't really heard anything like this, you know. I think music gets away with skating by on novelty more than like, um, something like writing and visual arts skates by on novelty more than anything. You don't seem any SoundCloud novelists. I kind of circling back to where we very started here about guitar music, so much of popular music and also like things like SoundCloud rap is like out of the box produced

completely on a computer music is what you do in parquet courts is that categorically different than something that is created entirely, uh, uh, like a SoundCloud rap song that's, uh, created entirely on a computer with no instrumentation. I mean, I would like to think so, uh, just because, you know, as someone who is familiar with, uh, like the recording process, when I hear a lot of that stuff, I can just hear kind of copy and paste edits on there. I can hear like one chorus being pasted, you know, several times is that, you know, I can judge that as a musician.

Does that make what I do more real or more, you know, true, more of a craft or an art? I don't know. A lot of the, I'm really like holding myself back here from really shitting on, uh, teenage music, but, you know, we're allowed to hate the kids, you're allowed to hate the kids. Yeah, uh, you know, teenagers like I was aren't the most insightful people always. I don't, you know, love a lot of, uh, you know, lyricists that are, uh, that are teenagers, you know, not everybody's rainbowed. Uh, so I would like to think that I'm, you know, a better writer than most of them.

And I would like to think that's something that makes me, you know, distinct from them. But like, you know, ultimately, you know, society at large is going to decide, you know, the value of what I do and what they do. And that'll be, that'll be it. Well, but also when I think of like synthetic sounds, like I wouldn't compare, I'm, I, I am like partisan to, to whatever organic sounds and I like physical instruments. Um, I just like, it's just like an aesthetic preference I have, but when I do like synthetic sounds, like I wouldn't necessarily compare even the best sound cloud rapper to like suicide

or Kraftwerk or something, who I also love, even though I prefer. Yeah, I mean, I hate the really hackneyed idea of like the rocker dude being like fuck drum machines, like parking courts use drum machines and send them music. Yeah, they can be wonderful. And so can, you know, the application of, you know, music software and a lot of the really easy ways that they're able to make music, like you can make it, if you have a smartphone, you can, you know, you could make a music, you could make a record on that.

So I'm not, it's not the, it's not the application of producing the music that, you know, I've, I've ever like thought that is, is less than rock music because I'm using real instruments and there's a real drummer. I think that's bullshit. Yeah. I mean, to be clear, I think these things can be categorically different while one is like not, but without saying like one is better than the other. I mean, I don't know, I listen to a lot of EDM and that is just like all goofy synth sounds made in computers and it's good too.

Yeah. You mentioned your lyrics just a second ago and I kind of had a big question about this that about, what am I trying to say, corniness and I'm trying to ask it in a non-courney way, which is like some of your lyrics have like a kind of rye political edge to them. I like a lot of bands that have that kind of rye message to it, like, you know, Gang of Four, maybe, but also like one of the last, like overtly political bands, something like Rage against the Machine is something that I would thank you for complaining that I wouldn't have known here. So something I listened to even as a kid was like, God, I mean, I like this music, but it's all these, these lines are so corny and now I listen to it and I'm like, yeah,

I'm stealing from a tweet here, but I'm like, yeah, some of those who work forces are the same that burn crosses. But do you ever struggle with that at all of like trying to get across overtly political thought and trying to do it in a non or thinking at all that it's like corny to do so in music? Or being didactic. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. You say, fuck Tom Brady, that's not as didactic. Yes. Yeah, you don't want to come off as Pollyannish or, you know, you don't want to come off as kind of, you know, overly saccharine to the point where, you know, your, your earnestness just feels like a bit, your earnestness just feels like a pose. Yeah, I have thought about it. You know, I can only, you know, as an artist, someone who's trying

to express themselves like, and, you know, I'll express myself and, you know, try my best to make it, you know, not to come off as honest, because that's an important thing that I think should be important for all artists is being honest in their work. But ultimately, I think a lot of the a lot of the duty kind of is on the listener and how they interpret that. And, you know, you know, it's there's not a whole lot of explicitly political music being made right now, especially in, you know, the tier that parquet courts exist and certainly higher up. There's, you know, people, a lot of writers like to insert their own political ideas into writing about music that's decidedly not political, you know, kind of the populist style of writing where

these political concepts get highbrow political concepts get inserted into like a Taylor Swift record. So, you know, when a lot of when when explicitly political music does get made, sadly, I think a lot of people do take that reaction and say like, oh, you know, you know, they're you know, they're bleeding hearts or something like that. And that's their fault and not mine, really. So you talk a little about optimism. I, optimism was still going when I was still writing about music, and I really hated it, because I, one, I thought it was like disingenuous, and two, I thought it was kind of like a weird, moralist, defensive, just kind of enjoying pop music, like we didn't need just like a thing. It's literally fine to just enjoy something. And I think a lot of that has to

move to do more with the fact that we've sort of lost our aesthetic language and have replaced it with a moral language and whether it's good or righteous to read or whatever, instead of just like, maybe you aren't who you listen to or whatever, like if the expectation of like it with one likes a musician, then that musician should also be a good person or something or a paragon. Right, right. That and for better or for worse, the lines of what is art and what is commercial or advertising, what is content have become very blurred. And so it's, you know, I wonder what does like a, you know, what is like a 15 year old right now call art because, you know, I went to art school and, you know, I had professors who were, you know,

you know, very hard line, like, you know, this is illustration, this is art, you know, there's a difference between advertising and art. And, you know, at that age, I was like, fuck, you don't tell me what to do. But now I kind of see the distinction there. But, you know, you see with a lot of people that are moving into like, especially here in New York, a lot of people moving into what once was called like the advertising agency, but it's now like, what is it called now, like, you know, content, something, and, you know, they call themselves artists and stuff. That's, that's something that I that, and I'm not no real judgment there. Just I'm saying that that's something that affects the way we see the rest of culture. And I would say that's why

kind of the optimism ideology came out because it was like, you know, saying we value this kind of mass culture products as much as we value, you know, this more organic cultural product, and they should be spoken about on the same critical level. Yeah, I think the advertising thing, because I have a few friends who are in advertising. And I think none of them have any kind of fantasies about what they do, but they do know those people who like, I'm an artist, and I was talking to a friend once, I'm like, why would they say that? And he's like, well, because he went to art school. And he's like, and they're professional managerial class people and everything is about credentials for them. But it does seem like optimism obviously doesn't hold up now,

because the majority of top 40 radio is like produced by like an algorithm and like a 50 year old Norwegian guy. So like, you're not, you're not, you don't have any claim to kind of popular in the real sense of, of, you know, as belonging to the Vox populace or whatever anymore, it's like, no, this isn't, no one made this, it's, it's, it's algorithmically, it's more algorithmically produced, it's more fabricated than it's ever been. With the exception maybe to reprise the topic of the SoundCloud rappers, that, that, that in one way seems like a result of what you were just talking about. And in another way seems like a very kind of organic way for like a, you know, a person to, you know, access a means of making music and sharing it with the entire world. I

mean, that's, that's kind of the, the optimistic side of the, you know, democratization of the internet is that you can like one single person can have access to this, you know, this, this big platform. But at this point, yeah, even that, you know, may have likely been, you know, taken over by, you know, the algorithm. Yeah. But you, I mean, and I don't want to, I don't want to imply that the, I don't live my life by the algorithm because it controls me in ways that I don't even know. We love the algorithm. Let's not insult the algorithm. Yeah. Listening algorithm. I do remember though, being like 14 and like, like being really happy, like just like counting down to my 15th birthday, because that's when you can get a job in Indiana, because I'm like,

if I could only get a guitar, you know, and like, if I just have to make just enough money to get a guitar, and like I have to get a guitar, and there's no way that I, there's no way I think any like 15 year old has that same experience now. Well, there's got to be some that do. There's got to be some that lust for guitars, but they're constantly surrounded with non-guitar musical options for creativity. Yeah, but I meet kids like that, you know, they come to Parquet Court shows, and they write us letters and stuff. Oh, that's cute. Yeah, yeah, and it's still there. It's still happening. And I think that sort of isolation that they feel is the same type of isolation that I felt, you know, when I was in high school, even though, you know, at that time,

what we're calling guitar music was more prevalent on the forefront of culture. It's still kind of, it's that teenage angst, you know, it's, it's, it's always going to be there. And so I think, I don't think there's ever going to be a time, as long as guitars are around, they won't be dead, really. Yeah, it also does seem like, I mean, I've been very impressed like the last two years with the amount of like bands, the good stuff that came out, especially from women, which is pretty interesting. And I never, by the way, like combed through, I never picked my taste through affirmative action. I just liked what I liked. Yeah. But it just so happens, like the past year, like almost every rock band that I went to go see was like, like LaLuz or Japanese breakfast or something

like that are always or something. And it was like, wow, like, there's this weird, and you don't want to read too much into it, because obviously, there's too many factors to figure out why it's happening. But like the little Coca Cola liberal in me does like seeing that many girls with guitars, which hasn't ever actually been as prevalent as anyone likes to sort of like, herstory revise into like the history of music. That's true. It is. It's something that I noticed when I moved to New York. And it's something that I've even noticed since moving to New York is how much how many more female musicians there are. And that's, you know, a lot of times, like, people, you know, they want to ask me about, like, you know, the scene in New York City. And,

you know, is it still like, you know, is it still like it was? Is it still, you know, the same as, you know, I don't know, the yeah, yeah, yeah, as in the early odds. And, you know, of course not, you know, I just got on tour, I just got off tour for a month. And I'm sure there's, you know, been 20 bands that have, you know, started that I haven't seen yet in New York. It's, you know, it changes whether you whether you like it or not. And that's, that is one way that it honestly has changed. So we do the big boy questions. And there's, there's this Billy Idol quote that I always really love. You sent that along. Yeah. So I'll just read it. Punk had done what it set out to do to a certain extent, and it didn't make a dent in

the political system. Margaret Thatcher got in. That was scary. You went fuck all that shouting, nothing happened. It was demoralizing. I didn't see it as betraying anything at all. I saw it as moving on as an artist. I didn't think about anything about following your heart. And that's what punk was about. Granted, that's a lot of different thoughts from, you know, our beloved Billy Idol. But, and he's expressed this in a few different interviews, like, you know, we did all that shouting and Margaret Thatcher still got in. And I think people who are either artists or involved in politics or, you know, have some kind of like egalitarian political optimism, no matter how vague, when they invest a lot of energy in kind of an artistic movement or like

we'll be liberated through art, they ultimately get very disappointed. And I remember, I remember like occupied dying. And I had been very like lucky to have read a whole bunch of like political memoirs of old commies. So I'm like, Oh, yeah, this just happens all the time. But a lot of people are really heartbroken by it. And, you know, we make propaganda. And I think a lot of really good music is, is political and sort of generally, if not didactically, political, it's, it's influential and good for the discourse, if you will. But it's really weird to be like, like what is the role of the artist in politics? Billy might have had his expectations a bit too high, honestly. I think he was like 16 when he started to. It's, it's always, I think you're

always asking too much of art when you're holding it responsible for changing society, because by itself, it will never do that. And it's not, it's not really the purpose of it, either. Just, just like, you know, some people say like, Oh, you've, you know, you know, you did all that occupy stuff, you were protesting down Zucati. And, you know, what did that get you? Well, I don't think the, the intention of protesting always has to be direct change or direct results. For me, protesting and be that in, you know, the form of, you know, collective action or in the form of creating art is kind of a cathartic thing for me. You know, when Trump got elected, I, that night, I went down to Trump Tower, I just screamed at it. I just kind of screamed at it as this like symbol

of, of everything that I thought was wrong with this country. And I wasn't really quite expecting to change anything. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't anything more than, yeah. And that's, that's a lot of times what being an artist is and, you know, making art that, you know, has some sort of political conviction to it. I don't expect to, you know, change things on a grand level. But it's about, it's about my experience in articulating my experience to this moment and to who I am in this moment and, and, and just kind of getting it out of you. At the same time, though, I feel, at least I think now people more and more expect art and entertainment to answer for politics or change politics because people are so, just so fucking exhausted and have largely given up on

politics proper. And I think that like they are channeling that energy more and more into asking entertainment and art, entertainment and art or, you know, podcasts or whatever to change the culture to like respond to Trump or make it so that, you know, this will never happen again. And if like only we have the right art or ideas being expressed in them that like that, that will, that will fix it. I mean, do you find that to be true? Yeah, I think I see what you're saying. At the end of the day, what's really going to change things is, I guess, you know, the way people vote and spend their money and, and the way people kind of talk about, you know, actual the ways that, you know, terrible decisions right now are affecting so many people. And it's, it's,

you know, art culture is a, it's a wonderful thing and it definitely helps us, you know, get through our lives. And it even, you know, it can even add a nuance to these things that we see happening, but we can't solely rely on it. And we, I don't know, we can't hold it up to this kind of standard of, of, you know, it needs to, there was never a chance that punk was going to stop Thatcher. That was never going to happen. Right. It's just, it does seem like a weird thing. I also like our fans like seem to confuse listening to a podcast with collective political action or something. And it's, I think we've become very sort of like consumption based or like, well, we'll do like shopping and whole foods or something. Exactly. Exactly. Getting

Tom's shoes or whatever. And it's like, yeah, that's, that's nice and everything. But really, I think someone who, you know, whatever tries to organize their workplace and listens to the worst, most misogynist sound cloud rapper, uh, like in their car, I, I much prefer that person's kind of a net political influence than someone who listens to, I don't know, Billy Bragg all the time. I was just about to say Billy Bragg. I like, you know what, I have a soft spot in my heart for Billy Bragg because I think a lot of people specifically hate Billy Bragg because they're embarrassed that they liked them when they were still kind of nervous and earnest and not cynical yet. And it's like, you know what, whatever, he's a nice old man. There are some good Billy

Bragg songs. He's just, he's a nice old man. Just let, there is power in a union. There is also, I think more political discussion happening right now than at any point in my life on a daily and routine type of basis. And you hear political discussion happening in places that you used not to. So I think, I would like to think that that's a positive that people broadly are becoming more aware, which is something that I've seen happen in the last two years. People that previously weren't interested in, you know, activism have become interested in it. And, you know, maybe the silver lining here is that something changes. And I think that the credit won't go to art really for that. The credit, I think, will go to people being very close to the brink.

One of the reasons I really push for socialism is because I want us to get to a point where art isn't bearing the pressure of being the kind of moral or political vanguard. Yeah, that would be great. So we can just listen to like dumb dance music again or, you know, enjoy things and not have to worry about what kind of a person does this make me or whatever. That would be so great. That would be so great. Yeah, sure. I mean, and I would like to hope that, you know, nobody, nobody listens to parquet courts to kind of emphasize this, you know, thing that they think they should be emphasizing in their lives of being an active and engaged person. I would always hope because it is rock and roll after all that, you know, ultimately you're

listening to it because it makes you feel something, you know. Well, the way that Louis Louis makes you feel something. Exactly. Exactly. And sometimes that's, that's enough. That's what it's, that's what it's there for. I mean, it made people feel something Louis Louis Louis made people feel something so much that the FBI actually investigated. Yeah. Yeah, rock does matter. They tried to decode the lyrics because they thought there was some like, yeah, that's true message involved in it, you know, when the whole point of this song is that nobody knew what the lyrics were. Yeah, exactly. Well, then you read them and you're like, this is kind of problematic, actually. Louis Louis is sexist and a little bit racist. Examine yourself and say, what kind of a person

does it make me that I still enjoy this? Yeah. Well, I guess, I mean, you can plug the, the album. It's, you know, it's been out for months now. If you don't have it yet, you know, kill yourself. What are you, what are you, what are you really doing? Are you really a culturally tuned in person? Like you say you are and you haven't heard wide awake by park a courts on rough trade records? Also, just check out rough trade. There's a lot of really cool, you know, small labels that I actually keep abreast of it. They I do a much they do a much better job of introducing me to new bands than like Spotify, which I think uses an algorithm or something. Oh, big time. Yeah. So the new album is great. There's a light political touch, but it won't make you a better

person. It's just a really fun album, but it will make me a better person. If you go out and get the park a courts record right now, get it on vinyl. Sure. All right. Thank you, Andrew Savage. Thank you, Will, for keeping everyone in line. And thanks, Chris. Thanks, Chappos.