Speaker 1: Loud and Quiet presents Midnight Chats.
Speaker 2: Hey, good evening everybody, and thank you for downloading episode
Speaker 2: fifty two of the Loud and Quiet interview podcast Midnight Chats.
Speaker 2: It's midnight, it's Thursday, and here we are again with
Speaker 2: another episode. This is episode two of season six, or
Speaker 2: series six, as us Brits say. We've only just gone
Speaker 2: to the series model. We were just putting them all out,
Speaker 2: but we're on a series now. Episode one of this
Speaker 2: series was last week. If you missed that episode that
Speaker 2: was with Interpol, Greg did that one? This week is
Speaker 2: my week. My name's Stuart Stubbs and I am the
Speaker 2: editor of Loud and Quiet magazine. Now, a lot of
Speaker 2: people that listen to the podcast might not know that
Speaker 2: Loud and Quite is also a music magazine. So and
Speaker 2: we're terrible at plugging it. We don't mention it enough,
Speaker 2: or at least we feel that we don't. So we're
Speaker 2: going to try to plug it a little bit. So
Speaker 2: if if you are unfamiliar with that side of what
Speaker 2: we do, please do check it out. Loud and Quiet
Speaker 2: dot com is where you can order a copy of
Speaker 2: not just our latest issue, but old issues. There's one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty four that we've done over the last
Speaker 2: fourteen years or so, so please do check it out.
Speaker 2: If you like the podcast, you may all like the
Speaker 2: magazine as well. It's pretty much a print version of
Speaker 2: what this podcast is. It features a lot of the
Speaker 2: same artists or similar artists. But seeing as we're here
Speaker 2: for the podcast, now, let me introduce tonight's guest. Chile
Speaker 2: Gonzalez currently lives in Cologne in Germany, but he's original
Speaker 2: from Montreal in Canada. The story of Chile, or Gonzo
Speaker 2: as he likes to be called, and how he introduces
Speaker 2: himself to people, is he was a band guy essentially.
Speaker 2: He had a band called Son spelled Son, and they
Speaker 2: were doing pretty well. They signed a big record deal
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety five, and as far as he was concerned,
Speaker 2: that was kind of that his future was mapped out.
Speaker 2: But it didn't work out for him. It wasn't what
Speaker 2: he wanted it to be. So in nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 2: he became Chile Gonzales essentially, and he pretty much reverted
Speaker 2: back to his roots as a virtuoso piano player and
Speaker 2: also pursued his love of rap music. So since then
Speaker 2: he's pretty much straddled those two worlds. Sometimes he makes
Speaker 2: a record that is full of beautiful piano, and sometimes
Speaker 2: he makes a record that's like a rap record. And
Speaker 2: he's done loads of other things on top of this.
Speaker 2: He writes songs for a lot of other people, including Feist, Peaches.
Speaker 2: He's written songs for Drake. He won a Grammy for
Speaker 2: his work on Random Access Memories by Daft Punk. He's
Speaker 2: been in a film He's what else has he done?
Speaker 2: He's broken a world record for the longest ever solo performance.
Speaker 2: These are all things that I probably should have spoken
Speaker 2: to him about, and we do touch on a couple
Speaker 2: of them, but as is the way with midnight chats,
Speaker 2: we kind of just drifted from one topic to the next.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed talking to Chile, and I wanted to
Speaker 2: meet him since I spoke to him on the phone.
Speaker 2: Last year. We did a cover feature with him and
Speaker 2: Jarvis Cocker about an album that they put out last
Speaker 2: year called Room twenty nine, which was a concept record
Speaker 2: they wrote at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, the
Speaker 2: hotel there, and I didn't get to meet Chilly at
Speaker 2: that point because he was back home in Cologne. I
Speaker 2: had to speak to him on the phone. I'm glad
Speaker 2: that we managed to get him. I managed to get
Speaker 2: into a room with him and talk to him. He's
Speaker 2: he's an energizing guy, and I hope you get that
Speaker 2: from this. He's got a new record that came out
Speaker 2: two weeks ago called Solo Piano three. It's essentially what
Speaker 2: it says on the tin. It's the sound of a
Speaker 2: piano and it's the third record that he's done like that.
Speaker 2: It's the final one he says that he's going to
Speaker 2: do of just him and piano. It's a beautiful record.
Speaker 2: If if you're listening to Midnight Chats at midnight or
Speaker 2: late at night, then that is a great record to
Speaker 2: play around this time. I will leave you now with
Speaker 2: myself and Chili Gonzales. We will be back next week.
Speaker 2: We have another great guest next week. I won't say
Speaker 2: who it is, but I think we've got some really
Speaker 2: good people coming up on season or series six of
Speaker 2: Midnight Chats. For now, though, thank you for listening to
Speaker 2: episode fifty two with Chili Gonzales.
Speaker 3: And very different after dark, you know, and so you're
Speaker 3: gonna get a different side as opposed to a morning
Speaker 3: interview where it would be you know, a whole other ballgame,
Speaker 3: whole different You know, my guard is down. Yeah, the
Speaker 3: intimacy level has turned up. We're in front of a fireplace,
Speaker 3: We're on a bear skin rug.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've got pipes.
Speaker 3: We've got pipes, and we're both wearing dressing gowns.
Speaker 2: Of course, so this is gonna I'm not sure what
Speaker 2: number of the podcasters will be at this point in time.
Speaker 2: We've recorded fifty of these, but I think you are
Speaker 2: the first person we've had on who is a Guinness
Speaker 2: Book World record holder.
Speaker 3: Well former, I'm sad it's been broken since. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: played for twenty seven hours and change back in two
Speaker 3: thousand and nine. Yeah, the records were broken pretty frequently,
Speaker 3: so I believe just a few years later I became
Speaker 3: aware of a I believe it was like a sitar
Speaker 3: player because I had the record for the longest solo concert.
Speaker 3: It wasn't the piano specific. Guinness determined that you can't
Speaker 3: have a separate record for every instrument, you know, so
Speaker 3: it was the longest solo concert that I had the
Speaker 3: record for, and that was broken by a mile. I mean,
Speaker 3: this guitar player went like thirty eight hours plus or something.
Speaker 2: WHOA, Okay, so it's kind of out of reach maybe
Speaker 2: for a while.
Speaker 3: But don't you think a guitar player has an unfair
Speaker 3: advantage because it's like it's kind of trancel like music
Speaker 3: to begin with. You know, I play like miniatures, you know,
Speaker 3: I play like two and a half three minute long
Speaker 3: pop songs on the piano essentially. So I thought, well,
Speaker 3: he's probably used to just like you know, zoning out,
Speaker 3: zoning out and playing for hours and hours and hours.
Speaker 2: For all we know, the audience might have zoned out,
Speaker 2: so he might have stopped for an hour.
Speaker 3: They might have just thought, well, silence his music, as
Speaker 3: John Cage taught us. So yeah, you know, we start
Speaker 3: to get into very abstract territory.
Speaker 2: It's early to go there.
Speaker 3: There was a provision in the Guinness World Record kind
Speaker 3: of contract, and it was very hard to define, but
Speaker 3: it said something like you have to perform what can
Speaker 3: be considered universally as music. You know, there was because
Speaker 3: what they want to avoid is some like maybe conceptual
Speaker 3: artists just going ding ding ding ding ding ding ding
Speaker 3: for twenty eight hours and saying, oh no, that's music
Speaker 3: which counts and that's an argument. What is music is
Speaker 3: a whole other question. So Guinness sort of had to
Speaker 3: put some provision in there to say, look, it has
Speaker 3: to be like what most people would consider to be music,
Speaker 3: otherwise we're not going to certify it.
Speaker 2: So when you did, you did twenty seven hours. What
Speaker 2: was the record that you were beating? Can okay?
Speaker 3: I only added an hour to it? I mean, you
Speaker 3: know it was it was more like, you know, it
Speaker 3: just felt good. Okay, there was twenty six, I'll do
Speaker 3: twenty seven, you know, inched over, inched over the finish line?
Speaker 2: What made you want to do it? Can you remember?
Speaker 2: What was it that might you think?
Speaker 3: Ego? Ego? I mean basically, at that point I was
Speaker 3: coming off of a bit of a botched album cycle,
Speaker 3: an album called Soft Power where I decided to sort
Speaker 3: of sing and sort of pay tribute to the sort
Speaker 3: of yacht rock, soft rock sensibility of my very very
Speaker 3: early years. At that point, I was really obsessed with
Speaker 3: you know, what music did you hear before you have
Speaker 3: the self consciousness of taste? And for me that was
Speaker 3: you know, Beg's Billy Joel, the stuff that my sister liked,
Speaker 3: the stuff that when I was just you know, six
Speaker 3: or seven years old, just like seeing on the TV
Speaker 3: for the first time. Uh, And I was sort of like,
Speaker 3: let me get closer to that, let me get closer
Speaker 3: to the real DNA of my musical being pre taste,
Speaker 3: pre self image, pre you know, choosing the musical taste
Speaker 3: based on sort of defining yourself against your older brother
Speaker 3: or whatever that moment. You're just an innocent, naive sponge.
Speaker 3: And what I was absorbing was this seventies soft rock,
Speaker 3: what I would call now, you know, music of the
Speaker 3: elite in a way, you know, long studio sessions lasting
Speaker 3: months and months and months, perfection orchestras, beautiful performances by
Speaker 3: session musicians, all that stuff. And unfortunately I didn't feel
Speaker 3: like I could just stand behind that album, and so
Speaker 3: I kind of, in retrospect, might have been self sabotaging
Speaker 3: it a bit. And the way I presented the album
Speaker 3: in terms of promotion and being on stage was sort
Speaker 3: of working against maybe that naivete that I was looking
Speaker 3: for when I recorded the album. So it was a
Speaker 3: very weird mixed message, I think, and some people didn't
Speaker 3: know if it was literally a joke album or whether
Speaker 3: it just was sort of a misplaced sort of combination
Speaker 3: of presentation and content. But whatever the case, I was frustrated,
Speaker 3: and I felt like I had distanced myself from what
Speaker 3: really makes me unique. And I was kind of looking
Speaker 3: for some gesture for myself that would sort of jolt
Speaker 3: me awake in a strange sense. And I think I
Speaker 3: saw something about Guinness World Record, and I remembered how
Speaker 3: I loved those books when I was a kid, and
Speaker 3: seeing the guy with two hundred cigarettes in his mouth
Speaker 3: and all that stuff, the guy with long fingernails, all
Speaker 3: those famous Guinness World records, I thought, oh, this is
Speaker 3: kind of like brings back the sort of musical athlete
Speaker 3: part of what I do and a sort of surreal
Speaker 3: extreme performance that maybe only Chili Gonzalez really could do.
Speaker 3: And so I just sort of put that show together
Speaker 3: and decided to go for it. And all the operation
Speaker 3: that I should have been doing I didn't really end
Speaker 3: up doing because I ended up doing promotion. But what
Speaker 3: keeps you going through twenty seven hours, it's ego. I
Speaker 3: just couldn't do it now because I don't feel the
Speaker 3: same need to press reset on my career. I feel
Speaker 3: like my expectations and the reality are in harmony. So
Speaker 3: right now I think, oh my godness, playing twenty seven hour.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I played two and a half
Speaker 3: hour three hour concerts semi regularly, but to really go
Speaker 3: all the way and do something so so extreme it
Speaker 3: can only be a product of ego.
Speaker 2: What are the actual rules of that record? Is it
Speaker 2: that you allowed a certain amount of intervals or did
Speaker 2: you literally just have to play? Is there like a
Speaker 2: limit on the gaps between the songs when a song
Speaker 2: stops and when you have to stop playing again? Is
Speaker 2: that all?
Speaker 3: There is a limit on the gap, And I of
Speaker 3: course would play with that, you know, I would tell
Speaker 3: the people in the audience, or of course, you know,
Speaker 3: to make it a bit meta, I would say, you know,
Speaker 3: all right, guys, we have fifteen seconds. Nobody clap for
Speaker 3: fifteen seconds. That's to the limit, you know. Let me
Speaker 3: squeeze out as many seconds as I can. So it
Speaker 3: was fun to play with those with those limits. I
Speaker 3: also could take five minutes an hour or accumulate them.
Speaker 3: So the way I worked it out is because I,
Speaker 3: as I said, three hour concert is fairly regular occurrence
Speaker 3: for me. In that sort of Springsteen esque approach to
Speaker 3: an all enveloping concert that begins usually in pure music
Speaker 3: and my piano repertoire, and then slowly cycles through some
Speaker 3: master classes and then ends up with the rap material,
Speaker 3: and then give some lessons, get some people to come
Speaker 3: on stage and give music lessons, and then bring out
Speaker 3: some of my other musicians, and then we take it
Speaker 3: to a sort of rolling boil. And that three hour
Speaker 3: concert was basically the unit of the Guinness World Record
Speaker 3: Concert times nine, and I took a fifteen minute break
Speaker 3: between each of those three hour units. Okay, that was
Speaker 3: the way I conceived it. So after having done five
Speaker 3: of those, I was like, okay, five three hour concerts down,
Speaker 3: you know, and four to go.
Speaker 2: So what did you do off the twenty seven? So
Speaker 2: you finished, you decide, You get to the end and
Speaker 2: you go right, I feel I've done enough. I think
Speaker 2: you went just over that's right.
Speaker 3: I went eleven minutes past twenty seven, Yeah, exactly, and
Speaker 3: then my body gave out. I think it was like
Speaker 3: you make a deal with yourself in a way. Like
Speaker 3: I said, it's so much to do with ego and adrenaline.
Speaker 3: It's not really about what is the actual physical body
Speaker 3: capable of. It's more about what can the brain push
Speaker 3: the body to do that the brain needs. So when
Speaker 3: twenty seven hours came along, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna,
Speaker 3: I'm going, I'm going further. This is going to be
Speaker 3: even more extreme, you know, I can't stop. Yeah. And
Speaker 3: then honestly, seven or eight minutes after, I was like,
Speaker 3: oh no, no, no, no, my body is really sending me them.
Speaker 3: Everything started to hurt. I start to cramp up. And
Speaker 3: it was because I had made a deal with myself
Speaker 3: for these twenty seven hours, and I wrapped it up
Speaker 3: three four minutes afterwards. I think it was twenty seven
Speaker 3: eleven finally, and so my secret wish to go like
Speaker 3: twenty eight maybe twenty nine and just just make me people,
Speaker 3: Oh my god, you can't stop. It didn't quite manage
Speaker 3: it does the the contract was due.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you end in a kind of like really
Speaker 2: elaborate way or did you just kind of collapse on
Speaker 2: the keys?
Speaker 3: Well, my team came out and were spreading confetti at
Speaker 3: twenty seven hours, and then they kind of stayed on
Speaker 3: stage for those eleven minutes, and I believe I finished
Speaker 3: with my piece Chilli and f Minor, which was the
Speaker 3: first piece on my first album, which felt like a
Speaker 3: nice way to sort of wrap it up. And I
Speaker 3: remember having sort of one arm in the air and
Speaker 3: just sort of playing some crazy cadenza with my left hand.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it was it was, it was all a
Speaker 3: blur at that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, obviously that's something in
Speaker 2: a really extreme example, but it does play into your
Speaker 2: approach to concerts anyway. I mean last year when we
Speaker 2: spoke on the phone for the magazine, we were talking
Speaker 2: about how you like to play with the perception of
Speaker 2: what is a what is a gig and what is
Speaker 2: a show, and kind of yes, with the parameters of
Speaker 2: a gig, you don't want to just play normal. You
Speaker 2: don't play normal gigs anyway, do you. I guess the
Speaker 2: story that you told me that I found really funny
Speaker 2: is how you during your show you'll do a pop
Speaker 2: the pop master cast element of it where you kind
Speaker 2: of deconstruct a pop song, and you told me a
Speaker 2: story about how you would at a particular show you
Speaker 2: play You've got you had a string quartet and you
Speaker 2: got them to play a section of eleanor Rigby. But
Speaker 2: you at the end of that you kind of said
Speaker 2: to the audience, well, you'll all know that song that
Speaker 2: was Elizabeth Ridley by the Rolling Stones, and then you
Speaker 2: carry on and explain about and deconstruct that song and
Speaker 2: just carry on and just carry.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess it's that's just pure trolling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, it's yes.
Speaker 3: So in that moment, I guess I'm not content to
Speaker 3: quite let it go. The masterclass would already be quite
Speaker 3: entertaining for people, I think in that moment, because I'm
Speaker 3: sort of bringing the curtain back, you know, and I
Speaker 3: have the quartet there to make it to illustrate, like,
Speaker 3: listen to the rhythmic way that the strings are being
Speaker 3: used here. This is more using the string quartet as
Speaker 3: a rhythm section than as just some lovely chords and
Speaker 3: some you know, melancholy moods as strings are commonly used.
Speaker 3: And it's true that, you know, Paul McCartney was kind
Speaker 3: of a visionary for being able to think, Okay, this
Speaker 3: is a pop song, but it's going to have a
Speaker 3: string quartet instead of drums based guitard. That's already kind
Speaker 3: of you know, I'm already ahead, so to speak. And
Speaker 3: it's true that I have this tendency to want to
Speaker 3: sort of just just change the frame one more time.
Speaker 3: And that's yes, the source of sort of wanting to
Speaker 3: mislabel it and to almost in that moment when they think, Wow,
Speaker 3: this guy's a real expert of music, he's a real
Speaker 3: font of knowledge. He really must know his stuff, and
Speaker 3: in that moment they go, oh, come on, and some
Speaker 3: of course believe it. You know, I I probably told
Speaker 3: you on the phone. You know, I'll get messages on
Speaker 3: Facebook where people say, great show. But just so you know,
Speaker 3: here's a YouTube video you did. Mislabel it And yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess I always feel like there's always this extra
Speaker 3: little frame you can change at the end. And that's
Speaker 3: maybe thinking a little bit more like a comedian does,
Speaker 3: where they sort of have a setup of a joke
Speaker 3: and the punchline often involves you sort of having to
Speaker 3: revise your feeling about that story right at the very end,
Speaker 3: And maybe that's what that is. The punchline isn't to
Speaker 3: actually hear the quartet play eleanor Rigby. The punchline is
Speaker 3: the musical genius mislabeling it wrong.
Speaker 2: I like the fact that it's that is kind of
Speaker 2: it's almost it's a joke for you. It's a joke
Speaker 2: for one, in a way, isn't it because you did
Speaker 2: that to kind of miss lady on it and and
Speaker 2: kind of just change the atmosphere in the room a
Speaker 2: little bit and just tweak it so that people think, oh,
Speaker 2: this guy, maybe this guy doesn't know absolutely everything or
Speaker 2: gives them, gives the audience like a little one upmanship
Speaker 2: on you. I knew, I know that song, that he's
Speaker 2: got that right.
Speaker 3: I know he's wrong. And that's literally the definition of
Speaker 3: dramatic irony. So not in the Alanis Morris a sense
Speaker 3: of it's a day where you don't want it to
Speaker 3: rain and it rains. That's not truly ironic, as many
Speaker 3: people are often correcting their friends. Dramatic irony in the
Speaker 3: terms of you know, Aristotle and Greek drama is when
Speaker 3: essentially the audience knows more than the characters do, and
Speaker 3: in that moment, the character of Chili Gozalees knows less
Speaker 3: than they do because he's he thinks it's a rolling
Speaker 3: stone song. And I love creating that true dramatic irony
Speaker 3: because it gets the antennas of the audience up and
Speaker 3: they'll listen to the next song in a different way.
Speaker 3: I've definitely gone too far and done things that are
Speaker 3: only too provocative, and they'll remember the show, but they
Speaker 3: might not remember the music. So I'm always trying to
Speaker 3: sort of toe that line.
Speaker 2: What have you done that's gone too far in your
Speaker 2: What things have you done that you can remember?
Speaker 3: Well, just some some some conferent heat things, perhaps where
Speaker 3: I really sort of had an adversarial relationship with the
Speaker 3: audience or maybe one particular audience member who won't play
Speaker 3: along in some way, and I'll decide to sort of
Speaker 3: make an issue of it, and we say, drive into
Speaker 3: the skid when you're on the road and you're driving
Speaker 3: on ice, and I'd like to drive into the skids.
Speaker 3: So if there's a bit of a strange, awkward, ill
Speaker 3: dodgy energy in the room, I tend to run towards
Speaker 3: it rather than try to ignore it. And if you
Speaker 3: run towards it, then you have the chance to sort
Speaker 3: of take it on for the audience, so to speak,
Speaker 3: and then maybe you can turn your show into something
Speaker 3: very positive by the end. However, when you drive into
Speaker 3: the skid, sometimes you never really get out of it,
Speaker 3: and there have been shows where it just ends on
Speaker 3: a dodgy, strange, ill unresolved mood where perhaps the audience
Speaker 3: truly is confused and maybe truly dislikes me in some way.
Speaker 2: People ever got in touch.
Speaker 3: You know what, when I do those shows, musicians in
Speaker 3: the audience tell me it's the best show they've seen
Speaker 3: in me. Really, yeah, I'll just do one of those shows.
Speaker 3: And then it's the musicians who will say, oh my god,
Speaker 3: I've seen you six times when you've come to Hamburg,
Speaker 3: but what you did last night I was you know,
Speaker 3: but that's maybe the insider thing of musicians who love
Speaker 3: to see sort of something that wouldn't normally happen at
Speaker 3: a concert. A truly uncomfortable, unresolved moment of confrontation is
Speaker 3: pretty rare in a music concert. Sure, yeah, and so
Speaker 3: I guess that's why the musicians like it. And of course,
Speaker 3: you know, Hamburg, I had a very intense confrontation with
Speaker 3: a dude who just wouldn't get up on stage for
Speaker 3: his music lesson. And usually I have all these ways,
Speaker 3: you know, I can kind of get the audience to
Speaker 3: sort of clap for them, and then the pressure of
Speaker 3: the audience tends to get them up. Okay, that doesn't work.
Speaker 3: I can go towards some other arguments or and at
Speaker 3: some point I start to sort of really antagonize the person,
Speaker 3: you know, in hopes that they'll finally I think they
Speaker 3: have to come on stage. Is the only way that
Speaker 3: this tension gets resolved. And Hamburg, at this jazz festival,
Speaker 3: like back in twenty thirteen, he just wouldn't come on stage.
Speaker 3: He just wouldn't. And I didn't let it go, and
Speaker 3: I stopped. You know, I was probably three quarters of
Speaker 3: the way done through the concert. It must have gone
Speaker 3: off for twelve fifteen minutes, and there were people really
Speaker 3: standing up, and you know, there were Germans saying like,
Speaker 3: you know, we like your music, not your statements. Lady
Speaker 3: got up. And when I go to Hamburg now and
Speaker 3: do promo or do concerts, really at least a few
Speaker 3: people will mention. We'll mention and say, oh so no
Speaker 3: big confrontation tonight, huh. And I'm like, look, that's not
Speaker 3: my first choice. And my first choice is peace and
Speaker 3: love with a few little ill moments, harmless ill moments
Speaker 3: sprinkled in, you know. But like I said, if the
Speaker 3: mood really goes there, then I'm going to go there too.
Speaker 2: It's like a comedian, like there were certain comedians that
Speaker 2: kind of have that same approach of especially because I
Speaker 2: suppose especially because comedian culture in the UK at least
Speaker 2: has got there is like a Heckel culture, and there
Speaker 2: is part of that kind of back and forth with
Speaker 2: the audience, who is your what comedians or comedy generally
Speaker 2: like growing up who where does your kind of comedy? Loves?
Speaker 1: Lie?
Speaker 3: Well, I grew up watching you know, pretty mainstream television
Speaker 3: as a kid, and I guess the only comedians I
Speaker 3: really became aware of a little bit later as I
Speaker 3: really as I started to be on stage, I got
Speaker 3: more interested in. I became a big disciple of Andy Kaufman. Okay,
Speaker 3: and you know, he borders on, of course, performance art.
Speaker 3: He just happened to sort of choose the world of
Speaker 3: comedy to be a performance artist, in much as today
Speaker 3: you might say the same about people like Nathan Fielder
Speaker 3: or Eric Andre to whom I dedicated one of the
Speaker 3: pieces on solo Piano three. Actually the piece of Chico
Speaker 3: is dedicated to him because I feel like he's a
Speaker 3: little bit the Chico marks of today. And yeah, I
Speaker 3: love it when you could just imagine, you know, and
Speaker 3: Eric do you Eric Andre's work, so if you go
Speaker 3: online check out what he does. He has a show
Speaker 3: on a adults swim It's a very energetic, unhinged, intense show.
Speaker 3: For the first thirty seconds that I saw it, I thought, oh,
Speaker 3: hell no, I'm not going to make it through two
Speaker 3: minutes of this. It's way too aggressive. And then I
Speaker 3: got lulled into this hypnotic state and it sort of
Speaker 3: it weirdly. It relaxes me.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 3: But if you imagine those shows, which are I think
Speaker 3: are ten to eleven minutes each episode, if you imagine
Speaker 3: those hanging on a screen in the Guggenheim, you could
Speaker 3: easily think of it as a document of very cutting
Speaker 3: edge performance art. I like that blurry line between conceptual
Speaker 3: performance art and comedy, and I like to bring that
Speaker 3: into the concert hall where I am and play with
Speaker 3: the conventions of a concert hall. I don't like playing
Speaker 3: in art galleries because everyone will say, oh, I know
Speaker 3: what he's doing. But if you do it in a
Speaker 3: phil harmony in Germany, or if you do it at
Speaker 3: Cadogan Hall where people are used to understanding, oh, I
Speaker 3: come here for feel good Christmas, classical concerts and things
Speaker 3: like that, all of a sudden, you have a chance
Speaker 3: to really really mess with people's heads because you're in
Speaker 3: the real world. And I don't like art when it
Speaker 3: hangs in a gallery. I like art as it exists
Speaker 3: in the real world. Yesterday I was in I think
Speaker 3: it's Hyde Park and I saw that giant thing from Christo.
Speaker 3: There's this like looks like a candy pyramid or something
Speaker 3: in the middle of in the middle of the water there,
Speaker 3: and you can take a boat and get really really
Speaker 3: close to it, and I loved it. I like to
Speaker 3: see art. I like to just turn a corner and
Speaker 3: be like Aliens, Hello, you know. I love that feeling
Speaker 3: much more so than like going to the Tate and
Speaker 3: seeing that exact same pyramid in a giant room. I
Speaker 3: just wouldn't do it for me because the frame of
Speaker 3: a gallery, it's too obvious. We expect crazy things, we
Speaker 3: expect to sort of maybe be shocked or provoked, and
Speaker 3: we can always rationalize it while we're in an art gallery.
Speaker 3: But if that's happening in a concert hall, where you're
Speaker 3: used to seeing musicians be so respectful, and then there's
Speaker 3: a musician being so disrespectfu for sweating, spinning, sitting there,
Speaker 3: you know, swearing slippers, bathrobe, the whole thing. Yeah, that
Speaker 3: has a chance of being mildly transgressive in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: To do the same thing if I was playing in
Speaker 3: the Tate Modern, it's just not going to be a
Speaker 3: subversive or transgressive in the least.
Speaker 2: Do you know Stuart Lee at all? The British comedian.
Speaker 3: No, but just the other day I was asking someone
Speaker 3: for their British comedy recommendations and he was on that list.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm going to check him out very sea.
Speaker 2: He's like, I think you're you'd be into him. He's
Speaker 2: got a kind of I suppose he is like the
Speaker 2: he's kind of like the liberal elites comedian guy. Really,
Speaker 2: he's like anti T he doesn't do much TV. He's
Speaker 2: not like he's quite He's a snob. He's a total
Speaker 2: comedy snob. But he's got this, I suppose the way
Speaker 2: to describe him in a nutshell, although this isn't what
Speaker 2: he's all about. He kind of has a thing where
Speaker 2: he repeats a joke and now quite abstract, that quite
Speaker 2: weird and abstract, but he will repeat it for like
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes, so it goes there's a point where he's
Speaker 2: repeating the same thing and it's so it's funny. Then
Speaker 2: you have to basically sit out a period where you're
Speaker 2: sick of it and it's not funny anymore until it
Speaker 2: comes round to being funny.
Speaker 3: So it's like Philip Glass humor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of inentually.
Speaker 3: Because Philip Glass literally you know, when I talk about
Speaker 3: minimalist music, often the music is not as repetitive as
Speaker 3: it seems. Like Steve Raich, the music evolves quite a bit. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Terry Riley, it evolves. Philip Glass is a different bird.
Speaker 3: He actually repeats things and the change happens in the
Speaker 3: mind of the listener. So that's I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's a really good comparison. I think you'd
Speaker 2: be intim did you watch the talking about Andy Kaufman?
Speaker 2: Did you see the Jim Carey Not not the film
Speaker 2: of Man in the Moon, but there's a documentary about
Speaker 2: the making of it.
Speaker 3: I was not very convinced. I did not feel that
Speaker 3: Jim Carey really internalized what Andy Kauffman was really about,
Speaker 3: and he focused on some of the more superficial aspects
Speaker 3: of just the outward shocking nature of Andy Coffin was
Speaker 3: a very positive performance artist. To me, he created very
Speaker 3: positive energy through letting out his monster once in a while.
Speaker 3: But essentially, as I see myself as well, you're there
Speaker 3: to create positive energy. Otherwise it doesn't really work. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, not counting the occasional confrontation with his stoic
Speaker 3: german who refuses to get on stage. Fundamentally, I believe
Speaker 3: I'm there to create positive energy. It's what I strive
Speaker 3: to do. And I really think Andy Kaufman did that. Also.
Speaker 2: I felt like from that Jim kit from the documentary,
Speaker 2: it did feel like Jim Kye was just using it
Speaker 2: as a really good excuse to really piss every one.
Speaker 3: All exactly right. That's what I felt as well. He
Speaker 3: was sort of being a bit opportunistic what he thought
Speaker 3: the Andy Kaufman frame would let him do.
Speaker 2: In previous interviews of yours that I've read and seen
Speaker 2: online and things. Is the debate between an entertainer and
Speaker 2: an artist. And you consider yourself an entertainer.
Speaker 3: Yes, but I think entertainer includes artists. That's your thing.
Speaker 3: I think if you're an entertainer, you know they say that,
Speaker 3: like what do they say? A conservative is a liberal
Speaker 3: who got mugged or something. You know, so you're a
Speaker 3: liberal until you know someone robs you, and then all
Speaker 3: of a sudden you're like, get these criminals all in jail,
Speaker 3: you know, because it's finally touched you personally. In another way,
Speaker 3: I believe an entertainer is an artist who understood that
Speaker 3: they don't exist without the audience. And the minute you
Speaker 3: sort of switch that in your mind and think, oh,
Speaker 3: everything I do on my own is just preparation and
Speaker 3: the actual thing I do only happens when there's an
Speaker 3: audience there, then I think you just instantly become an entertainer.
Speaker 3: Not in the sense of Pandora to people, lowest common denominator,
Speaker 3: this will work. I'll just say the name of the
Speaker 3: town I'm in and they're all going to cheer. That's
Speaker 3: not what I mean by entertainment. Entertainment for me is
Speaker 3: essentially the strange seeming contradiction between being larger than life
Speaker 3: but very very intimate with the audience. And the way
Speaker 3: you do that, I think is by showing people your fantasies.
Speaker 3: That's what I observed David Bowie do. No one said
Speaker 3: David Bowie is inauthentic, Although if you really look at
Speaker 3: how he was dressed as Ziggy Stardust. You're kind of like, Okay,
Speaker 3: how come we feel so connected to him despite that, Well,
Speaker 3: it's because he has this fantasy that he's sort of
Speaker 3: not of this earth. He feels like he doesn't belong.
Speaker 3: It's actually extremely poetic to sort of take on the
Speaker 3: role of an alien who's observing these humans and feeling
Speaker 3: not at home. And that, to me was really touching,
Speaker 3: despite the fact that it seemed almost ridiculous, you know, superficially,
Speaker 3: and I feel that to incarnate the musical genius, it's
Speaker 3: a fantasy. I don't think I'm a musical genius. I
Speaker 3: would love to be one. In my fantasies, I have
Speaker 3: this impunity. And the impunity comes because will everyone will
Speaker 3: allow musical genius to do whatever he or she wants.
Speaker 3: So that's the fantasy I live out. And the strange
Speaker 3: thing is when you get on stage, people tend to
Speaker 3: play along in a way, and therefore it kind of
Speaker 3: reinforces it. So there are moments where you can start
Speaker 3: to believe your own fantasy. And that's of course where
Speaker 3: it can get I guess complicated for people like David Bowie.
Speaker 3: But for me. I guess the rappers were the ones who,
Speaker 3: in a more concrete way in the late nineties, served
Speaker 3: as my main inspiration. I think that's why I decided
Speaker 3: to apply the rapper's playbook to being a piano player, essentially,
Speaker 3: which to say, show your monster. Don't believe that you
Speaker 3: have to only show the sides of you that will
Speaker 3: make you well liked or you know, don't think that
Speaker 3: by simultaneously sharing, you know, fairly conscious and positive thoughts
Speaker 3: along with very negative exhibits of self loathing, that only
Speaker 3: creates more intimacy with the audience. And so to see
Speaker 3: a musician live out their fantasy is more intimate than
Speaker 3: just seeing them walk up on stage dressed as they
Speaker 3: would be in the daytime when they're not performing. There's
Speaker 3: just nothing intimate about that, even though they might think
Speaker 3: they're being authentic. I'm not interested in authenticity. Let's say
Speaker 3: I'm interested in intimacy. And what is more intimate than
Speaker 3: knowing someone's fantasies. I mean, sometimes you're in a relationship
Speaker 3: for five years with someone before you find out what
Speaker 3: their particular fantasies are. It's really that's personal stuff. So
Speaker 3: to go up there and show this bitter and deluded
Speaker 3: and you know, self aggrandizing, whatever, all those adjectives you
Speaker 3: can apply to the persona. It's because I dream of
Speaker 3: being able to be that way, and being on stage
Speaker 3: allows me to be that way. People clap for it,
Speaker 3: and it's a very reinforcing process.
Speaker 2: Like in terms of where where you're at now, as
Speaker 2: Chitty Gonzales, compared to when you're your first band's son,
Speaker 2: that the experience of being in that band and you
Speaker 2: released three albums and had a record deal and it
Speaker 2: was a thing. It wasn't like a high school band
Speaker 2: that didn't do anything. It was like the first stage
Speaker 2: of your career. I guess how much of that experience
Speaker 2: do you think has shaped you now?
Speaker 3: And all of the that's like the origin story. That's
Speaker 3: like when lightning hit the laboratory. And you know, I
Speaker 3: was so traumatized by how that project was perceived because
Speaker 3: I sort of naively thought back then, the music is enough,
Speaker 3: Surely everything else will fall together, like I've gotten signed
Speaker 3: end of Journey. And of course I then you know, realized, oh,
Speaker 3: maybe it wasn't a good idea to just let them
Speaker 3: choose the photographer. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to
Speaker 3: let them choose the stylist and I'll just wear whatever
Speaker 3: clothes because no matter what, the music is going to
Speaker 3: do the work for me. So I naively thought I
Speaker 3: was maybe above the work of storytelling around my music,
Speaker 3: and thought music is strong enough, it'll tell its own
Speaker 3: story and all that other stuff doesn't really matter. I
Speaker 3: quickly learned I should take control of the storytelling as well,
Speaker 3: because I won't like the story that sort of emerges,
Speaker 3: you know, and there has to be a story. To
Speaker 3: think that music is enough in its own in a
Speaker 3: vacuum in a business sense, in terms of like trying to,
Speaker 3: you know, find your audience is naive if you want
Speaker 3: to be a pure artist. And I know some people
Speaker 3: like this and they just make music literally for themselves,
Speaker 3: that's a whole different ballgame. But I am an entertainer.
Speaker 3: I don't exist without an audience. There are artists who
Speaker 3: can't exist with an audience. I'm not one of them.
Speaker 3: So therefore I'm responsible for the storytelling. And not only that,
Speaker 3: I've started to really enjoy the storytelling, so once I
Speaker 3: made it the goal of mine too. Okay, learn how
Speaker 3: to tell the story. See if this can become part
Speaker 3: of the artwork. See if this can be just as
Speaker 3: exciting as thinking of music walking down the street, think
Speaker 3: of what your next photo will be, Think of the
Speaker 3: next thing you're going to say in an interview, think
Speaker 3: of the next theme you'd like to explore. Has become
Speaker 3: just as much of a sort of reflexive way of
Speaker 3: being creative as thinking of chord progressions or melodies.
Speaker 2: Your genre is in one way because even though a
Speaker 2: lot of people might consider you a contemporary classical pianist,
Speaker 2: for example, there's kind of loads of different strings to
Speaker 2: your bow. Did you find that being in like an
Speaker 2: old rock band in your twenties was just too limiting?
Speaker 3: Well, when I first started recording as Chili Gonzalez, there
Speaker 3: wasn't that the piano was pretty well hidden inside the
Speaker 3: music and on stage there wasn't physically a piano there
Speaker 3: because I was sort of, you know, trying to tour
Speaker 3: a on a shoe string budget at the very beginning,
Speaker 3: And essentially I was just fascinated by rap performance, and
Speaker 3: so I thought, well, as a as a it's acceptable
Speaker 3: in the rap world to just basically have playback and
Speaker 3: to consider yourself the instrument. So that was good enough
Speaker 3: for me for those first few years, but that was
Speaker 3: a way of getting attention and testing out this combination
Speaker 3: of storytelling and persona and music. Once I sort of realized, okay,
Speaker 3: I'm onto something, there's a way that I can be myself,
Speaker 3: although quite exaggerated, and yet make a connection with people
Speaker 3: that was extremely encouraging. That was sort of the first
Speaker 3: test of the rappers ethos. Then there was a moment
Speaker 3: where I thought, Okay, I've gotten people's attention. This is
Speaker 3: around two thousand and three and I'd put on three
Speaker 3: albums and you know, back in the day that was
Speaker 3: still pre Internet, but you know, I'd been on the
Speaker 3: cover of Jockey Slut. Anyone remember Jockeys?
Speaker 2: I remember?
Speaker 3: And the face?
Speaker 2: Remember the face?
Speaker 3: How about Slee's Nation? I mean deep cuts? Wow?
Speaker 2: These are like these are?
Speaker 3: That was my stomping piano. That was my stomping grounds,
Speaker 3: really and I think ID Magazine might be the only
Speaker 3: survikay anyway. And that was a moment where I thought, Okay,
Speaker 3: I've gotten people's attention. I've proven that to myself, but
Speaker 3: I need to get back to another part of myself
Speaker 3: that I haven't really shown to people. That is important,
Speaker 3: and that's the side of me that is respectful of music,
Speaker 3: the side of me that was taught by my maternal grandfather, who,
Speaker 3: at three years old plunged me in front of the piano,
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, I had access to this
Speaker 3: machine and this mood where time would just pass for
Speaker 3: hours and hours and hours, where I felt safe, could
Speaker 3: express things that were unexpressible in polite society. And it
Speaker 3: just became an escape and really positive escape, and also
Speaker 3: earned me my place in society. I mean, it was
Speaker 3: so seductive and so addictive, and yet I hadn't really
Speaker 3: shown that side yet, because I'd been busy just trying
Speaker 3: to make a racket to get people to pay attention
Speaker 3: to me. So luckily, that first piano album, Solo Piano
Speaker 3: in two thousand and four was a way to sort
Speaker 3: of see, okay, let me go to this other extreme,
Speaker 3: see how many people can follow me. Let's see if
Speaker 3: this is of interest to the small curious audience that
Speaker 3: I've sort of built up now. And it ended up
Speaker 3: opening up all kinds of avenues for me. I wasn't
Speaker 3: even sure if it would just be a little side
Speaker 3: project and a sort of you know, a little curio
Speaker 3: for certain people. Oh, this crazy guy actually knows how
Speaker 3: to play the piano. But that became sort of a
Speaker 3: whole thing all of a sudden. I was, you know,
Speaker 3: blown away by the level of attachment that people had
Speaker 3: through the music. I hadn't seen that over those first
Speaker 3: few years where I was just barking to get people
Speaker 3: to pay attention. All of a sudden people were saying, yeah,
Speaker 3: I have this deep relationship with your album. This album
Speaker 3: helped me. Even things like that, and you think, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: this is a deeper reaction. I want more of this.
Speaker 3: Let me start chasing this a little bit more, and
Speaker 3: let me see how I can eventually try to integrate
Speaker 3: the carnival barker and the respectful child musician essentially. And
Speaker 3: I think that's started to click, probably around two thousand
Speaker 3: and nine, twenty ten, post Guinness World Record, starting my
Speaker 3: own label, doing the Ivory Tower album, slowly leading to
Speaker 3: solo Piano two and up until now the sort of
Speaker 3: modern era of what I do. I feel like I've
Speaker 3: managed to sort of reconcile those two be those two
Speaker 3: people simultaneously in my work, And of course, certain albums
Speaker 3: will always have a certain focus on one side or
Speaker 3: the other. I'd say the Solo Piano series tends to
Speaker 3: you know, it's a bit more idealistic in a way.
Speaker 3: In a way, maybe you can hear the musician who
Speaker 3: would wish that music would be enough when I do
Speaker 3: a solo piano record, and when I do a rap album,
Speaker 3: you hear much more the musician who wants to break
Speaker 3: free of that and just only wants impunity. But I
Speaker 3: feel like every time I do a concert, you see
Speaker 3: those two things not only easily co exist, but need
Speaker 3: to coexist.
Speaker 2: And now that you're at the end of the Solo
Speaker 2: Piano trilogy, how does that feel? Do you see this
Speaker 2: as the final of the who.
Speaker 3: Wants to buy album called Solo Piano four? That just
Speaker 3: sounds weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: The rule of threes really seems to apply. And I
Speaker 3: feel like the idea of making piano music that can
Speaker 3: be listened to passively and actively, which is sort of
Speaker 3: the point of the solo Piano records, is it works
Speaker 3: as background music. I love background music. I believe people
Speaker 3: deserve good background music absolutely, or people who want to
Speaker 3: listen to it in a closer, more intimate way. That's
Speaker 3: the sort of test for me for these pieces, you know,
Speaker 3: do they work in those both of those listening modes,
Speaker 3: And if it passes that test, then it can sort
Speaker 3: of make it onto the album. And I may have
Speaker 3: stretched that as far as it can go with the
Speaker 3: solo Piano three, where I started to find myself wanting
Speaker 3: to get close sort of how I play live. At
Speaker 3: the same time, I didn't want to make it so
Speaker 3: that it feels like a live album, which is the
Speaker 3: kind of album that frankly, if it's on the background
Speaker 3: and dinner and it starts to start to hit too
Speaker 3: hard and get too dense, someone's gonna get up and
Speaker 3: like turn down the volume. Yeah, that that means that
Speaker 3: it doesn't work as a solo piano record. To me,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure in the future if I'm always going
Speaker 3: to want to make music that has that duel sort
Speaker 3: of listening capacity passive and active, remains to be seen.
Speaker 3: But I do believe I'll make music alone at the piano.
Speaker 3: It's great because as I started to do interviews in
Speaker 3: France to say alone at the piano is solo piano,
Speaker 3: and so I had this perfect little like advertising jingle
Speaker 3: style thing. I'm like, I'm still gonna make music solo piano,
Speaker 3: but it won't be solo piano. I had, like you know,
Speaker 3: it's like a perfect little but you always find truth
Speaker 3: in those little those little turns of phrase anyhow, And
Speaker 3: it's true. I don't know that I really have something
Speaker 3: I can add to these three albums in terms of
Speaker 3: what the what the concept really was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of reached its natural end point.
Speaker 3: It's delument to use another French word. However, Jay Z
Speaker 3: retired multiple times and like just put another album last week,
Speaker 3: So never say never.
Speaker 2: No, that's true, you can always come out of retirement.
Speaker 3: Maybe prequels. I suppose that would be solo Harpsichord, the
Speaker 3: prequel to solo Piano.
Speaker 2: This year, you've also launched your first school program.
Speaker 3: That's right, The Conservatory.
Speaker 2: The Conservatory, great name.
Speaker 3: Obviously, I thought about it for years and it was
Speaker 3: only when the name came to me that it became
Speaker 3: a realcit Sometimes it's the name. Now I have to
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 2: No, I've got to do it because the name is
Speaker 2: just too good to pass this up. Has it happened already?
Speaker 2: This year? It was an eight day It's an eight
Speaker 2: day eight day.
Speaker 3: Yes, an eight day very intensive program really based on
Speaker 3: performance rather than studio or songwriting. It's about how to
Speaker 3: create this connection on stage by letting go well at
Speaker 3: the same time preparing in a very disciplined way for
Speaker 3: that moment. So that's sort of strange, counterintuitive, you know,
Speaker 3: dance between being essentially a respectful musician and a disrespectful
Speaker 3: one and trying to pass that on to certain musicians
Speaker 3: who've mastered maybe one side of it but not the other.
Speaker 3: So I had a really wide variety, again going for
Speaker 3: this musically humanist approach. So I had like a classical
Speaker 3: guitarist who was an African French woman. I had a
Speaker 3: rapper from Houston, singer songwriter from Argentina, a kind of
Speaker 3: freaky art performance artist, musician from Chile, a kind of
Speaker 3: slightly shy, introverted jazz saxophone player from the Ukraine. I mean,
Speaker 3: I really had all these different sort of types, and
Speaker 3: of course representing musicians that I'd known over the years
Speaker 3: as well. You know Peaches, who was one of the
Speaker 3: guest teachers along with like Jarvis Cocker and a bunch
Speaker 3: of other people. Peach just said, it's funny you chose
Speaker 3: the students almost as if you were looking for stand
Speaker 3: ins for all the musicians who who sort of taught
Speaker 3: something along the way, And yeah, in a way, I
Speaker 3: recreated this strange journey of me essentially a shy person
Speaker 3: who became good in performing. And so I sort of
Speaker 3: started to think, well, what if I can recreate those
Speaker 3: conditions that sort of happened to me by accident over
Speaker 3: fifteen years, if I can compress that into eight days,
Speaker 3: turn them into you know, a real sort of group
Speaker 3: of friends. Because when I had a group of friends
Speaker 3: to make music with, we never felt like we were working.
Speaker 3: So that was the first thing I was looking for,
Speaker 3: what's a group of seven who I think will become friends?
Speaker 3: Not just who were the best seven people? It was like,
Speaker 3: what's the best group of seven? That's sort of what
Speaker 3: was in my mind when I watched over eight hundred
Speaker 3: videos to choose these seven musicians. And once I had
Speaker 3: that group and it felt like, Okay, I have a
Speaker 3: strong suspicion they'll they'll get along as friends. Then in
Speaker 3: a way, it was just about, yeah, teaching the lessons
Speaker 3: along the way that I learned.
Speaker 2: Did they get on? Did they become friends?
Speaker 3: One hundred percent? Successful? Yeah? Yeah, I mean maybe it
Speaker 3: was a fluke. You know, I'm going to do it
Speaker 3: again every year, and we'll see next year if there's
Speaker 3: a sort of proof of concept that if my instincts
Speaker 3: were really so good that you know, they did get
Speaker 3: along and feel like a family after just three or
Speaker 3: four days a very intensive you know, living, working, playing,
Speaker 3: eating everything together, And we'll see if I can sort
Speaker 3: of recreate that, because if there had been some really
Speaker 3: bad sort of social feng shui in the group, I'm
Speaker 3: not sure I could have gotten as far as we
Speaker 3: did in those eight days. You know, they play a
Speaker 3: concert at the end of the eight days for a
Speaker 3: thousand people live streamed, and the material of the concert
Speaker 3: is all stuff they wrote while at the conservatory.
Speaker 2: They leave it all behind in eight days.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and only eight days, yeah, because I have these
Speaker 3: techniques to get people to write music very very very quickly,
Speaker 3: and in groups of two and three, at some point
Speaker 3: they just build trust in every possible constellation of the
Speaker 3: seven of them, and that's what bonds them together. They've
Speaker 3: each had a little sperience with each one one on one,
Speaker 3: and they're playing sometimes together as a group of seven.
Speaker 3: And everything they played at that final concert was something
Speaker 3: that they that they wrote under either time pressure or
Speaker 3: just a sort of improvising music game called songing, which
Speaker 3: is how I write music with my friends. Sometimes I
Speaker 3: mean Limit to Your Love, which I wrote with Feist
Speaker 3: and was covered by James Blake, was written using this
Speaker 3: technique of songing. Songing is essentially you have a list
Speaker 3: of titles. You just go, okay, let me write a
Speaker 3: list of titles that I could imagine could be songs.
Speaker 3: You just go very quickly. You know, the walls are
Speaker 3: closing in my favorite hat, screw you. Whatever comes to
Speaker 3: your mind becomes a song title, and then you have
Speaker 3: this piece of paper in front of you and you
Speaker 3: just create this space where you say, Okay, we're gonna go. Now,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna put my fingers on the keys, you're gonna
Speaker 3: start to sing. And one of those little titles that
Speaker 3: Fist had come up with was called limit to Your Love.
Speaker 3: She didn't know in what way it was supposed to
Speaker 3: be expounded upon. We just went for it. There's a
Speaker 3: limit to your Love. It was written in the amount
Speaker 3: of time it takes to.
Speaker 2: Perform to hear it. There's so many great songs that
Speaker 2: that's the case isn't it the best?
Speaker 3: We hear that exactly. How stupid do you have to
Speaker 3: be if you've had ten of those experiences? How stupid
Speaker 3: do you have to be to like labor over a
Speaker 3: song and think they should take you weeks when secretly
Speaker 3: you know that the best stuff you've done was when
Speaker 3: you didn't have time to filter it through your idea
Speaker 3: of like, is this good? Is this me? Is this
Speaker 3: what people expect to me? Will people like this? Why
Speaker 3: do I even do music? What is life? We're all
Speaker 3: gonna die? You know. There's it's so existential. Whereas you
Speaker 3: know if someone says pointing it, he was saying, hey, man,
Speaker 3: do a song called screw you. You're just gonna come
Speaker 3: up with it. And if you do. At one point
Speaker 3: we did I think forty of them, right, I think, no,
Speaker 3: thirty five. It was like I asked the seven of
Speaker 3: them to each come up with five titles, and in
Speaker 3: two hours, just by pointing at them and telling them
Speaker 3: the title, we came up with thirty five. And I
Speaker 3: was like, Kay, let's break for lunch. You know, and
Speaker 3: at some point they can't even remember all the songs
Speaker 3: they wrote when they're when they're working in this way,
Speaker 3: and then I had a computer where we recorded everything,
Speaker 3: and at the end of the day they can go
Speaker 3: listen and they can sort of go, oh, that's there's
Speaker 3: some truth in that in that song. It's only a
Speaker 3: minute long and it's not perfect, but the spark of
Speaker 3: it is something they can really trust as a product
Speaker 3: of their true instinct. And then, of course you can
Speaker 3: take months to finish things. I mean, solo Piano three,
Speaker 3: I spent two years really finishing the songs. But every
Speaker 3: song in and of itself was born of a of
Speaker 3: a sort of random sound check moment where I just
Speaker 3: suddenly was like and I was like, that's something amazing, okay,
Speaker 3: and then I take a year and a half to
Speaker 3: actually finish it. But the spark of it, it has
Speaker 3: to be in a moment where you have zero self consciousness.
Speaker 3: That's how you're gonna find something that really communicates something
Speaker 3: to people.
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