Matthew Good: Invasion Of America And The Future Of Music

[unrelated non-sequitur from Matt]

Continued from PART ONE of this interview. 

I walked into the studio today and somebody brought in a copy of High Times — and I just love it. They won't legalize advancements in wheat, in cloning wheat spores and stuff so they can feed the world, but you can publish a magazine with chicks in bikinis holding bongs and [telling you] how better to grow dope. Fucking classic. The world is awesome, isn't it?

Think you could back up what you say?
I grew up in a neighbourhood with Hell's Angels. I got a few tricks up my sleeve. I may be skinny and weak, but c'mon...

What's going on with the Matthew Good Band and the States?
The record comes out in the States in January. It's kinda like Beautiful Midnight Plus. Three songs have been taken off it and "Apparitions," "Deep Six" and "Everything's Automatic" have been put on it. It's like The Best Of.
It took us a long time to find a home down there. If there's one thing I hate about this business, it's the chicanery of people who work at conglomerates. In the States that's a little bit different. You've got people coming up to you going, "You're the greatest thing since sliced bread." And you're like, "O.K., you're full of shit."

I never really made any mystery of the fact that I think it's a poor psychological tactic to think that America's more important — because we're Canadians. I didn't start doing this going, "Let's go conquer America. Let's forget Canada now." And if we're big in Canada our existence will never be validated because we'll never be big in the States. Fuck, that's so typical a way of Canadian thinking. The Hip are so huge they might as well redo the fucking national anthem.

That aside, the United States is another country. And it has to be looked at by Canadian bands as another country. And I don't think that fucking anything in the music scene in Canada is going to change until people here start going, "I'm from Vancouver. And this is how I want to sound being from Vancouver." A lot of new bands unfortunately allow their geography to affect their minds when they're writing songs and that's the worst thing you can do when you're creating, dude. It doesn't matter if you're living in the Yukon, you can be in Hawaii in two fucking seconds with your imagination. That's the beautiful thing about the imagination in your head. You can go anywhere you want instantaneously. You can be anywhere you want instantaneously. And if you can translate that to what you do musically, it doesn't matter where you are.

What's the future of music?
Why don't people paint anymore? Why don't the middle classes and lower classes give a shit about art anymore? It takes too much time and they don't have the time. The same thing is going to happen to music. And then one day — when maybe all of the world's record labels are transferred to the Internet; when you get your music through the TV some kid in Milwaukee will come up with some kind of hit like "Loser" by Beck or something like that and it's going to spread all over the world and they're going to find out it's some 15-year-old kid who did it on his Yamaha YX-7 and he can fill stadiums in Los Angeles. And someone's gonna go, "Something's wrong with that don't you think?" Because he's never played live in his entire life.

It's kinda a hard choice and a hard road here. There's a reason why music operates the way it does — and this doesn't happen all the time — usually it separates the shit from the non-shit. If you can't get up on to a stage and fuckin' captivate people to some degree, then you have no business being on one. That doesn't happen over night.

The first time I stepped on a stage I sucked.
Unfortunately we don't live in the day and age where they allow artists to grow like that. We don't live in the day and age where you're allowed three records to develop your sound.

I mean, if I came out with Last Of The Ghetto Astronauts today, I'd be buried. That's how much has changed in five years. Then you live in an age where Radiohead can release Kid A and all these kids can say it's fuckin' genius, not realizing that Pink Floyd did it 10 times fuckin' better on five different fuckin' records and probably a helluva lot more inebriated.

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