Chris, Bill, and Paul should start a band called “The Book Club”. Maybe Svitek could play lead guitar.
They won’t, but they should.
thanks a lot for the scans!!! really appreciate it.
though the article itself is kinda short, i mean, there could be much much more in it. song-by-song, why not… or maybe some mentions of tracks that were made or half-made but didn’t make it on the album, etc.
al is his typical self of course. many interesting tidbits here and there though, which was cool.
Filthpig, you are easily THE SHIT! Thanks for the post! And holy shit! Gila, you’re still alive!?
Now, on a serious note:
Is “book club” the best he could come up with? Really? How long did it take him to figure that one out? How many years? And it’s kinda funny how he all of a sudden started the “he was just the bass player” and bitter hatred. Like hell he was just a bass player.
If he “just played bass”, them what happened to the sound in-between 2003-2004? Something certainly left. Less electronics for starters. And the swipe at Connelly, was fucking cheap. Al’s incoherent political trilogy has zero soul, or any kind of logic other than random conspiracy theories and articles, only to recycle them into shitty generic-slayer albums. Four of them (including cover up). None of that even remotely comes close to a single album Connelly’s done. And so fucking what if he works in a record store? Has a family to feed and made music his secondary. Good for chris.
And what millions of albums? Al can barely sell 100k. No one bought the new revco albums. Only reason he probably sells tickets is because of the older fans wanting to be nostalgic, or teenage kids wanting to “rebel and listen to heavy shit”.
And those Grammy nominations don’t mean shit. And last a checked, Bad Blood had one too. How many grammys does Al actually have? Exactly. He’s a bitter has-been who gives a “fuck you” and the middle finger to the wrong people, fans and supporters included. He’s living in El Paso, how? That “book club” didn’t help buy that house? Or the studio?
Yeah, that interview pissed me off. How you can be so fuckimg ungrateful to people, whom you totally took advantage of and still talk shit about them. They helped bring about that “golden age”. But again, I guess they’re just a book club who he never liked.
Even on the old Piss Army board nobody bought that whole “just the bass player” thing.
And I bet the book is the real reason Al talked such shit about Chris.
Even on the old Piss Army board nobody bought that whole “just the bass player” thing.
And I bet the book is the real reason Al talked such shit about Chris.
I’d forgotten about that. Good point. I never got the book, but, yeah, I’m sure that’s a good part of it.
Even on the old Piss Army board nobody bought that whole “just the bass player” thing.
And I bet the book is the real reason Al talked such shit about Chris.
bingo! to be fair, Chris did divulge lots of personal info in his book ie he slept with a tranny, liposuction, hair extentions etc
Hasn’t Al admitted to sexual experimentation in his early days?
Don’t remember the liposuction bit…
Honestly, I can’t really take anything Al says as serious. There’s probably bits of reality mixed here and there in with the bullcrap, but it would take a million years to sort through it all.
For me, his “jumping the shark” moment where I just decided to tune out completely was when he told the story of his roadie or guitar tech breaking into the zoo to rape an ostrich. Come on, now, Al. Keep your lies at least somewhat plausible, for crying out loud.
paul’s response to al’s answers to the “journalist” who concocted this piece of work is that al will bury himself. paul was surprised, but not too much, considering the source with whom he had worked intimately for 20 years. everyone here can easily go to the bmi website and figure who did what, as far as that goes. as far as staying coherent and working with studio engineers and the mastering guy…that’s a percentage that is incalculable. that IS the sound, people.
oh, and rip steve jobs, who made music artists’ lives easier.
All I can say is that truth can be found why but a hard heart will only bounce off to the left and to the right and a straight answer will never penetrate.
to be fair, and to defend the guy who did this article, the ‘oral history’ format is VERY common, and he did nothing shady by structuring the article this way. fucking studs turk did it all the time… and no one screams ‘bad journalist’ at that man…
but yeah, i have a very long theory on AL, and it makes me mostly feel bad for him. he feels betrayed that paul would leave. there is a lot going on with a guy like al, a guy who made his bones being crazy, and was always the fucked up guy in a room… to him paul WAS just a bass player at the time, though in all reality paul did a lot more than that. but in his eyes, al was the spark, he was the fire, while paul was the order and system to everything… i donno… i liken it to a nasty breakup that one party never saw coming, you know? al resents paul because paul didnt thik the music was worth putting up with al anymore, whereas al has always existed in a world where he could do whatever he wanted beacuse his music was good enought hat people would stay…
i feel for him. his bitterness, his anger, it all makes sense, and in a weird way, i can even identify with it.
oh and also, (because this is the internet and SOMEONE just HAD to bring up apple’s crown prince) FUCK steve jobbbbs. he didnt make life better for any single musician, he kept more money than the artists did on every itunes sale, he inflated prices on songs, and he maintained the 10+ buck per album bullshit that labels have been pushing for years. that and his refusal to join the 50% club, his use of money to cheat the organ transplant system and steal a liver from someone who had been waiting for it, and his aesthetics over quality push… im not glad he is dead (no one ever dying is a cause for celebration) im just glad he isnt making money off of artists’ work anymore.
Thanks for the scans!
The petty vindictiveness is lame. And the claims about the millions of albums sold post-Barker and the 80-90% claims seem pretty ridiculous.
On the issue of quality vs. quantity, I would not trade my one Flowering Blight disc for a million of Al’s post-Barker albums. Nor would I trade any one of Connelly’s discs for a million nu-ministry or “revco” albums.
A lot of silly fan-stuff always quickly gets involved in these discussions, but for me, it comes down to a simple question: “Do I like it?”
So far, I’ve liked all of Connelly’s solo stuf, liked the High Confessions, liked Flowering Blight, (liked the music from USSA but am not fond of the singer). And so far I have not liked the post-Barker ministry, not liked the various albums of covers, not liked the post-Barker revco, not liked the new revco with the new lineup, not liked the Christmas song, not liked what I’ve heard of Buck Satan…
For me it’s an issue of stuff that I find exciting (from Connelly and Barker) and stuff that bores me (from Al).
Back to the interview for a second, I also thought it was interesting that Al never explains why he hates Paul. And I agree that the swipe at Chris was because of the book.
Also interesting that multiple people note that the ugliness started after the drug of choice became heroin. Al doesn’t comment on that at all.
13 records?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Right. I’m pretty sure it was more like 4 albums and 9 collections of remixxxes and crappy cover songs.
to be fair, and to defend the guy who did this article, the ‘oral history’ format is VERY common, and he did nothing shady by structuring the article this way. fucking studs turk did it all the time… and no one screams ‘bad journalist’ at that man…
There’s only one person here who doesn’t understand this.
[reply]I think the problem here is the interviewer; he wasn’t up to the job. This is usually the case in music journalism; it’s all safe, fanboy crap. When will an interviewer fucking challenge someone they’re interviewing and call them on their bullshit or contradictions?
What would you have asked? The topic of the article is the making of TMIATTT, not Al’s bullshit and contradictions.
Maybe his mistake was letting on to Al that the other members were being interviewed, if that is the reason Al is acting so defensive for most of the interview.[/reply]
His questions for the most part are standard questions related to the process of the album’s making, the environment, etc. and all that is fine and expected. But he doesn’t respond to any answers given, and incorporate them into other questions. It ends up just looking like a delivery boy transmitting questions submitted by fans. A quality interview, even about the making of a specific album, would allow for challenging of points, e.g. in this case, when Al is obviously contradicting himself about how he did 80% - 90% of the work yet still admits ‘The Book Club’ were important. When Al delivers all these hyperbolic insults and the tiresome “funny” anecdotes there’s no one to say to him: “Hey wait a second, bud, what’s going on here?” Regardless of it being about the making of The Mind I believe the interviewer could respond to the answers given and pick up on things, which was ripe to do in this case. Just giving musicians free rein to say anything under the sun is boring and tame; it also lets them off thinking they’re fucking great and people love them. I haven’t read one interview yet with Jourgensen where he’s called out on some point in a significant way.
And also if this interview is about the The Mind where is there detailed discussion of ‘Never Believe,’ ‘Cannibal Song,’ and ‘So What’? That’s three big songs from an album that has nine songs that are not covered. A reader of this article should be able to know at least one point that Connelly dislikes ‘Never Believe,’ yet we have to get that from his book and not in an interview explicitly about the album and with the guys who made it. Imo, far too much time is given to talking about ‘Test’, which I gather from others is generally considered a throwaway track.
He didn’t ask followup questions because it would have messed up the format of the article (which is apparently so difficult for some to fathom) in which all the participants get asked the same things in order to get different perspectives.
I do agree that I would have liked to hear about all of the cuts, and not just a select few. Cannibal Song in particular.
Regardless of what some may think, I don’t feel that the interviewer is at all on Al’s side. Using his complete quotes the way he did, in my opinion, shows that this dude was glad to give Al enough rope to hang himself with.
Even those who are new to the in-camp politics of Al versus the world would take away that he’s an insecure little baby.
If someone wanted to paint Al in a better light they would have trimmed some of those answers to keep it at least MORE to the subject. Or if he really wanted to suck up to Uncle Al they’d show the dude . . . “Uhhh, this is what you said the other day. You feel good about this?”
I don’t know if Al didn’t get his Oat Bran that day or had to write a royalty check or what, but, DANG!!! I honestly have never read such a pissy, immature, and vindictive ranting before.
Certainly no one (even the biggest of AJ fanboys) could read that and think, “Yeah, you tell 'em, Al!”
But, yeah, I totally get what you’re saying about the interviewer not taking the opportunity to ask for clarification, justification, details, etc. I think he might have been a bit shocked and awed, to be honest.
Yeah, seriously, no talk on SO WHAT? Really? That song is a MONSTER. I would have read a whole article that length on just that song. Feh.
Regardless of what some may think, I don’t feel that the interviewer is at all on Al’s side. Using his complete quotes the way he did, in my opinion, shows that this dude was glad to give Al enough rope to hang himself with.
Even those who are new to the in-camp politics of Al versus the world would take away that he’s an insecure little baby.
If someone wanted to paint Al in a better light they would have trimmed some of those answers to keep it at least MORE to the subject. Or if he really wanted to suck up to Uncle Al they’d show the dude . . . “Uhhh, this is what you said the other day. You feel good about this?”
I don’t know if Al didn’t get his Oat Bran that day or had to write a royalty check or what, but, DANG!!! I honestly have never read such a pissy, immature, and vindictive ranting before.
Certainly no one (even the biggest of AJ fanboys) could read that and think, “Yeah, you tell 'em, Al!”
But, yeah, I totally get what you’re saying about the interviewer not taking the opportunity to ask for clarification, justification, details, etc. I think he might have been a bit shocked and awed, to be honest.
yeah…i don’t think the ministry camp has been promoting this interview at all (ie facebook). it would have been interesting to see the reaction.
i can’t wait for someone else in the scene to put out a new book. as if you haven’t read chris’s yet, gunnar.
Dammit, I really gotta get Chris’ book soon.
This whole thing is amazing. It really is.
Gonna be spinnin’ Mind for a minute.