Due to the fact that response to the previous Hoffman articles have been positive and because there was simply too much material to fit into just two articles, your crusty chronicler has decided to share the entire Hoffman interview with you folks—uncut! (My questions are in bold italic and his responses are in normal font.)
What in your opinion is your best album?
Why, my newest, FOP, of course!
Why?
Look, I know enough to realize that artists have very little perspective on their own material. Otherwise how COULD Lou Reed have ever released all those dreadful solo records? But with what little scrutiny I have at my narcissistic command, I believe I challenge myself to always try to exceed my accomplishments of the past. I believe I am always learning.
On FOP, I believe the lesson I learned was to trust that I already knew enough about hooks, craft, being concise, making catchy ear-pleasing arrangements, and wordplay that I could set my muse (if you will!) free to reach for a bigger compositional canvas.
So I allowed the songs to take ME on THEIR journey – if they were meant to be 8 minutes long, I let them. If they were meant to be searingly grandiose and self indulgent, I let them. If they were meant to be compact little vaudeville nuggets running about 2 minutes long, I let them.
I started out the album by telling myself: “Free your inner Jimmy Webb. He wants to come out!” But I believe by cross breeding that unapologetic opulence with my punk and Brit pop background, I came up with something new. I hope! The response has been pretty much uniformly positive, so I may be on to something.
I also am only just now learning how to sing in a way that doesn’t make me want to kill myself when I hear it! I know people like Dylan and Randy Newman make stylistic statements with the very specificity of their eccentric vocal sound. I’m not like that. If there were a “style” to my vocal, it’s that I write for a range like Roy Orbison’s – a range I haven’t got. If aspiration is a good thing, I’m doing well. Otherwise, I think I’m at least learning to sound somewhat less screechy.
I have to be honest and admit that it generally takes me some time to look beyond vocals like Dylan’s and see the other talents so I totally understand. So the next question would be what do you consider your best song (what album is it on) and WHY?
What a perfectly horrible question! Why, all my songs are masterpieces! I’m joking – but only just. I’m always surprised when I look at my catalog of songs and I don’t really find many cringe moments. I think I did a pretty good job. I unabashedly really like a LOT of my songs.
I would say “Something New Is Born” on FOP is one of my favorite songs. Mostly because it came from way out of my comfort zone. My inner craftsman kept telling me “It’s too long, it’s too slow, and it’s too big. You have to edit out half of the verses.” But when I hear the finished production, I think there isn’t a wasted moment. It’s just right to be that grandiose.
I also think that if I can write a line like “The semen in the eye of God” and actually believe that I earned it poetically, I’m doing okay. Or I’m perfectly delusional. Or both! But it’s a line no one else has got. That to me is a very “Kristian” line.
That “semen” made it into my piece, actually. But if you really had to choose . . .
But if I really had to choose, I would say “Scarecrow” from (my) 2008 album &. Not only because I got to work with my idol (and friend!) Rufus Wainwright, but I think it’s the right tone for addressing the Matthew Shephard tragedy: it’s somber, but not somnolent. It’s kind of lovely, but it’s not pretty. It’s occasionally jarring (“a rifle butt against the head”), but with good cause. It feels successful to me on that level. And Rufus’ singing in the outro is so gorgeous and poignant. I don’t like a rant, but occasionally we need one. Luckily, “Scarecrow” feels to me like more of a hymn than a rant.
No, go ahead and rant. I do all the time in my non-Examiner material. It’s good for you!
Many songwriters say some songs come easy and others come hard. (Don’t go there!) That song came to me very quickly, and I’m grateful for it.
Understood. So, tell me, having started in the Mumps, does it surprise you that the punk genre still exists? Why or why not?
DOES it still exist? You mean it’s not some corporate approximation of “Ye Olde Punque” genre dressed up in mall brat clothes about as threatening as the CBGB logo on a shower curtain that you can buy on Amazon?
Listen, I’m old! I’m a curmudgeon! I was there! To me actual “punk” was over the minute the Orange County bands took it over. It stopped being about ideas and invention and outsider-ness, and started being about regimentation and collectivity and easily traced cultural signifiers that didn’t require any creativity at all. It felt unthreatening to me, except that as a f@g one of those stupid skinheads might want to beat me up. Who cares if you can put on a leather jacket and a Mohawk and scream in an unpleasant gravelly voice “I hate this and I hate that”. It was like a church for the converted. I don’t like organized religion!
John Lennon said some of the same things, in fact. But please continue.
Is there a contemporary punk scene I don’t know about? I’m sure there is! If so, more power to them. I hope they tear the whole industry down, and while they’re at it, get us some world peace! I may seem precious about my music, but I’m only precious about trying to add something beautiful or moving or humorous to an ugly culture. So get pissed! Destroy!
I’m pretty clueless about contemporary music, since I have a weekly radio show dedicated to late 60’s psychedelia on Luxuriamusic.com. I have to troll for vintage 45s all week, so I’m sure I wouldn’t hear the greatest music even if it were playing on my own radio. The last new band I got excited about was The Hives. I’m just sort of lost in that past, and I like it!
OK. Here’s a standard question. If you had to label your music what would you call it?
Kurt B Reighly, the Seattle based DJ and writer, called FOP “Van Dyke Sparks”. I thought that was a terrific description of what I’m attempting to do.
Basically, I would say it’s orchestrated baroque glam psych. It’s like if you looked at the most foolhardy twee peregrinations of late 60’s pop psych through a prism of rocking glam. With a little Costello thrown in, lyrically at least.
Here are a couple of fun questions now. What was the first album you ever bought?
If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears, by the Mamas and the Papas – that set the bar for gorgeously inventive melody and counter melody with backing vocals, as well as a perverse melancholia that seeped through their most seemingly upbeat concoctions, pretty high!
What was the first single?
“Reflections” by the Supremes. I truly believed that all of the soul acts I loved were going to go through a crazy mind expanding flirtation with the great psychedelic tropes of the flower power moment. Didn’t happen. But this 45 damaged me enough to have believed it should have!
Who inspires you?
What really gets me excited is anyone who has a really personal flamboyant vision they are trying to realize, no matter how friendly or unfriendly the current cultural atmosphere may be.
That is what first attracted me to Rufus Wainwright when he was doing his one man solo shows at Largo before his first album came out. It’s what attracted me to people I’ve been lucky enough to work with like Ann Magnuson, Klaus Nomi, El Vez, Lydia Lunch – all very specific visionaries.
And that is why I've been lucky enough to meet and work with some younger people in that class - like Prince Poppycock and Timur Bekbosunov. I'm pretty lucky that I'm still meeting kooks of that caliber!
But I also love craft, and my first love is songwriting. So of course the unimpeachable poetry of Leonard Cohen is like that ultimate barometer of what a song can say, and mean, and how it can be multi-leveled, and be ruefully hilarious, cruelly sardonic, spiritually moving, and loving all at once.
I love all the great bands of the sixties. Sometimes when I flatter myself I’ve done something pretty spectacular, I just put on “Odyssey and Oracle” by the Zombies, which puts me right back in my rightful place – perhaps a somewhat gifted aspirant, but not quite in the Valhalla of Song yet!
I’m also very visual (that’s really code for the fact I don’t read much!), so I’m just obsessed with the symbolist movement, and the great illustrators from the dawn of the 20th century, like Kay Nielsen, Harry Clarke, John Austen, etc. Hence, I think I earn my title as fop – I’m obsessed with olde tyme frippery!
I was chatting with Tracy Blackburn of It's Alive! Media & Management some time ago as to some of your possible musical influences. We both could hear the Queen and even Costello when it comes to your lyrics. How do you respond to comparisons to Queen and Elvis Costello?
Flatter me more, you cocquette! Of course Queen set the standard for sonically glittering mini-operas with unapologetic bombast that somehow inexplicably sidled their way into even the “straightest” of record libraries. Freddie Mercury’s voice! That piano playing! That said, I’m more of a Bowie man myself – you can’t argue with his song catalog.
Hey! If being a fan of Queen is supposed to be more of a gay thing then maybe I’m bi! I like Bowie, too! So what about Elvis Costello?
As for Elvis Costello, he almost single-handedly placed the discipline of highly crafted songwriting front and center in a music industry that had almost lost all taste for it. He challenged himself to align his catalog with that of the greats, from Rogers and Hart to the Brill Building to Al Green, and beyond. Disciplined, smart, hard working. If there’s anyone who made me feel comfortable touting myself as a “craftsperson” - a calling that was about as hip as being a librarian B.E. - (before Elvis) it’s him. Now, if he could only edit!
The mother of my youngest has a similar complaint about Costello actually. As an artist, you wear many hats--graphic artist, musical director, band member solo performer, etc--If you had to give up all but one of your artistic professions which one would you choose to keep?
I was”trained” to be an artist as a child, and it was sort of what I was expected to do. I had a very easy facility with a pen and a brush. My parents couldn't figure out why I kept pounding away on the piano. There was much slamming of doors and snide ridicule of my keyboard ineptitude.
But it was music that always really inspired me – that could conjure complete Technicolor environments with the touch of a record stylus, and send me into a waking dream where no journey was impossible, no statement was too outrageous, no style too outré, and no beauty too transcendent. That’s the altar I wish to serve at. And – it’s a lot of fun!
Even at it’s most basic, you get to gather a community of friends about you to make fabulous mud pies – the creating of which is so thrilling that it almost doesn’t matter that they’re inedible! I just love music, and musicians. So I would keep writing, and hope that had the power to keep me in the warmth of that chosen community.
The last question always has to be: What’s next for you?
Hoping to do some FOP performances in various cities if I can logistically manage it. Also hoping to get more FOP videos made, remixes (one with Prince Poppycock is in the works right now) etc. I’d love to start recording my new album! FOP took so long to come out I have almost all the songs for the new one finished!
I’m also pleased to continue with my job as musical director for the amazing Brookledge Follies, at the gorgeous private 30’s magic auditorium at Brookledge Manor, with my good friend (and host of the show) Rob Zabrecky. That is a total blast!
Yeah, it’s great when you can get paid to do something you love! Thank you, Mr. Hoffman. You certainly are an interesting subject and we hope to hear from you again as soon as the next album is finished.
My name is Phoenix and . . . that’s the bottom line.
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