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Re: (TV) Even fewer words from Verlaine
That aux.tv one was a questionnaire, not an interview. A barrage of
optional-to-answer questions. No wonder it failed as an "interview,"
& Tom chose to not respond to most of it. Aside from the fact it had some q
uestions bound to leave Tom uninterested in answering (e.g. lots of ones
about the past), the format seems wrong. There's no back &
forth conver
sation to provoke answers, & I imagine it would be hard
to open up via a
questionnaire, (or even back & forth texting) to a
journalist one had n
ever even spoken to before...Especially when he asks such an awful lead-off
question: QUOTE: "You've cited French
impressionism as influences for y
our lyrics and guitar playing. Why do
you find that movement inspiring?"
-Tom responds saying "sorry, mr.
greg i am not sure of these claims
of mr. tom being 'cited'..." !
Has Tom ever cited impressionism as
an influence on his lyrics & guitar playing? Not that I recall hearing of,
impressionism being a painters'
movement: Monet, etc. I wonder if the jo
urnalist intended to say "French Symbolist" (literature) movement instead?
But I think that would have
been wrong too (if too often repeated as a "
fact" by journalists). Paul Verlaine was a symbolist movement poet, but
Tom's said he doesn't even
like Verlaine's poetry that much, but took
the name just 'cause he
liked the sound of it. And I think Patti Smith,
not Tom, was the huge
Rimbaud fan. The only French poet I recall Tom so
unding excited about in an interview was Nerval, a romantic poet not associ
ated with the
symbolists, who was obsessed with some woman, & ended up c
ommitting suicide in the street in Paris.
I don't know if the other
recent bad interview, the LiveinLimbo one may have
been a phone intervi
ew (or texting?), as there was back & forth
conversation, which didn't g
o well. On a positive note, at least the terrible aux.tv
interview elici
ted several useful bits of info from Tom: a new album
could be out by Xm
as, WFMU's his fave radio station, & his comments
on Toronto (my old hom
e town) audiences. Well, that awful interview
could have been worse!
-
Bob
On Thursday, May 8, 2014 9:22:49 AM, Joe Hartley <jh@brainia
c.com> wrote:
On Thu, 8 May 2014 11:54:27 -0400
Emilie <emilie.t.hs
u@gmail.com> wrote:
> It's funny, these emails remind of this article
in the new New York Review
> of Books about how writers hate the question
s that readers ask them called
> "Stupid Questions":
>
> http://www.
nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/may/01/stupid-questions/?insrcwbll
That
was brilliant. This sums it up perfectly:
"The public are firing shot
s in the dark; they are groping for some kind
of connection between the
figure on the stage and the particular atmosphere
of the novels they hav
e read."
It's one thing for the public to grasp at these straws, but o
ne hopes for
better from someone conducting an interview. Sadly, for e
very Ty Burr
there are a thousand hacks who are no better than the genera
l public and
who do not seem to grasp the concept of researching the subj
ect beforehand.
Being a fan and having listened to MM a thousand times
does not qualify you
to interview Tom for publication. Doing some res
earch and reading past
interviews gets you a lot closer. I think my fa
vorite Tom interview is the
one from the New York Times from 2006 where T
om and the reviewer went to
the Metropolitan Museum of Art before they sa
t down(*). Talking about the
art provided a great springboard for the
rest of the conversation and
clearly got Tom to talk about things that
he usually brushes off.
With this latest batch of "interviews" I can u
nderstand why Tom is so
reluctant to do many of them.
(*) http://www
.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/arts/music/18verl.html?_r A--
- UNIX/network Consultant - jh@brainiac.com
Without deviation from the n
orm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa
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