a cura di Ciobin
FARCES
WANNA MO
By
Ciobin
CIOBIN:
Please provide a little history of Farces Wanna Mo.
DAVE: Hi, I’m Dave and am handling this interview.
Texas is the second largest state, measured by area, in the United States.
Also, long distance telephone calls provide opportunity for limited types
of interaction. These facts conspired in the following way:
Farces Wanna Mo
(FWM) found itself in Dallas, Texas in early 1990 with a far-off Texas
girlfriend away at Texas A&M and an engineering job demanding of only
a limited time commitment. Work and telephone calls filled up only
part of the
day. Farces Wanna Mo arose to occupy this idle breach of time. At
first the band was simply Dave, a $76 Yamaha keyboard, pans, silverware,
40 by 45s (45 ounce bottles of Colt 45 malt liquor) and a couple jam boxes
(very
primitive multitracking!). After the first record was released at
the end of March 1990, other FWM members were induced by this pathetic
start to contribute material. FWM has never had members in the
traditional sense -- the rule is that one becomes a permanent member
simply by contributing material. Over the past 13 years the contributions
of most members have been music, as opposed to lyrics. In the first
decade of the band, a member’s contribution was most often made by
delivering a cassette of a song for finishing up.
There has historically been little face-to-face interaction, except
in the sense of, “Here’s your cassette, Dave -- it’ll be interesting
to see what you do to it.” No strict count has been kept of FWM
members, but there are probably about 20, with widely varying degrees of
participation over the years. Dave is a constant, with at least a
co-writing contribution on practically all the songs. Farces Wanna Mo has
never, ever played live, but we look forward to someday doing that.
Nor has the band ever made any money (or tried to).
C:
This is your first cd?
D: First, let me mention that the new LP is called “If Not Why Not?”
It is our best and our most hip-hop. FWM has released 15 records (LPs and
EPs) from 1990 to 2003. Although most were originally cassette only
releases, they are now all available in CD form for purchase over the
Internet. In fact, for the time being, most FWM songs are also
available for free downloading as MP3 files over the Internet!
C: Tell me something about hip-hop in your city.
D: Farces Wanna Mo is currently headquartered in a place called Wonder
Valley,
California. I hear that we have some old-time rockers, like Dick
Dale and a
Beach Boy, out here. I know of no hip-hop, probably because there
are only a
couple hundred people scattered thinly over many square miles, these
people
tending strongly to oldness and whiteness. Not a hip-hop demographic.
I do
live two and a half miles from a bar. I have never heard any hip-hop
at the
bar, unless you count country music as hip-hop.
C: Do you know something about hip-hop in Italy?
D: I hear that Europe generally is wildly enthusiastic about hip-hop.
I
sometimes wonder if hip-hop carries the same meaning in Europe as here in
the U.S.
C:
What do you think about mp3?
D: Short answer: amazing, thus-far-untapped, potential to
revolutionize music.
The first aspect of the untapped potential of the MP3 format is the
potential
for band’s to distribute music at little cost to themselves and little
or no
cost to the consumer. At some point, an Internet album will be
hailed as the
best album of the year by a critical consensus. That album may be
out there
right now. Maybe it is even a Farces Wanna Mo album.
However, as of right now there are two operative facts: (1) most of
the free
music is crap; and (2) music critics do not really see it as their duty to
wade through the crap. Fact (1) will not change, but Fact (2) will.
It will
only take a stellar album or two available only over the Internet.
The
migration of paid, commercially distributed music (e.g., i-Tunes) will
help
this to occur. As distribution costs go down, it will become clearer
that
record companies are bad gatekeepers of cred and credence.
Enterprising and
talented critic will be surrounded by a rising tide of crap and will begin
to
exercise the full scope of what should be their true responsibilities.
No
more piggybacking on the artistic judgments of the record companies!
This means critics will need to work a lot harder, listening to great gobs
of
yucky music, but, for the talented ones, the rewards will be great.
Nobody
realizes this now, but there will be a revelation. What The Beatles
did for
the LP, some wonderful band will yet do for the MP3 release. It may
or may
not be a hip-hop band, but it will happen.
The second aspect of untapped potential is the potential for increased
remote
collaboration between co-writers of song. This is highly familiar
turf for
FWM -- we never had any problem merely mailing cassettes of
partially-finished
songs from, say Palo Alto to Cincinnati. However, many bands
consider that
kind of thing to be a pain. Lazy, lazy! Digital distribution
will get people
working together on songwriting in more ephemeral and geographically
diffuse
ways. On the latest record “If Not Why Not?” many of the
instruments were
delivered over the Internet. Things like T-Racks (an Italian
mastering
program), AcidWav, Hammerhead Rhythm and Internet Audio Mix.
Frankly, the results of this new kind of digital songwriting collaboration
have been less than overwhelming to me so far. Public Enemy’s
album of fan
mixes simply doesn’t compare to “It Takes A Nation . . .”
Professor
Lessig is very good about citing digital songwriting collaborations on his
blog, but so far nothing earthshaking. Once, again, it will just
take one
great album to change everybody’s perceptions in this area. I
can’t wait!
C:
And about women in hip-hop?
D: As far as women in music, I have always thought that women were fairly
proportionately involved in performance, but not songwriting. I
think this
holds true in hip-hop. There are always lots of Madonna’s and
Whitney’s
and Beyonce’s -- you know, performance. However, the Jagger/Richard’s,
Strummer/Jones’s, Ren/Cube/E’s usually seem to be dudes. Not to
knock
performance, performance is a creative and artistic pursuit. However,
good
songwriting is what really interests me personally and this seems to be
the
area where women are really underrepresented, whether it be rock, jazz or
hip-hop.
To try to single out a couple of women who have made contributions to
hip-hop
songwriting, Anne Dudley springs foremost to mind. The Art Of Noise
is not
just an early, great hip-hop band, they are one of the best band’s ever
IMHO. Anne Dudley shows up in the co-writing credits and was clearly
an
essential part of the band. More recently, Le Tigre has impressed me
and I
have to guess that women write their songs. I wonder if they have a
woman
producer -- their production is great!
Looking at more mainstreamish hip-hop, I am impressed by the songwriting
that
goes into Missy Elliot’s songs. Maybe she writes or co-writes -- I
kind of
hope so -- I always like it when the songwriting face and the public face
of
an act are one and the same.
C: Have you performed live?
D: Not with Farces Wanna Mo. I have sang live for obscure bands
Slept On It! and
The DubOnicS.
C: Who is the artist you like most and why?
D: The Fall. They have more great songs than anybody else.
On a related note, I recently conducted a Farces Wanna Mo band poll to see
which album the band liked better: (a) Public Enemy “It Takes A Nation .
.
.” (hip-hop); or (b) The Replacements “Let It Be” (non-hip-hop).
The
contest ended in a tie. This probably reflects the fact that FWM has
a strong
hip-hop strand, but is not really a hip-hop band in toto.
C:
Do you think that hip-hop videos represent the real hip-hop?
D: Maybe in the case of the Beastie Boys.
Usually if a band has enough commercial pull to get videos made then their
songs are crap, or at least admirable performances without inventive
songwriting. It is fun to watch Beyonce dance, but give me that
pathetic-looking escalator video for “Magic’s Wand” any day.
C: In which way you live hip-hop?
D: Probably pretty clear now, as a writer. The rapper cramming
verses into a
worn notebook, the programmer painstakingly tweaking his loops and
dropping
samples down onto the graph. These are the images I relate to.
C: Tell me something about clubs and radios in your city.
D: They don’t exist.
C: Future projects
D: The next record will be called “Calm Blue Ocean, Calm Blue Ocean.”
Tentative song titles include: “Agatha Christie’s Last Apple,”
“Crying On The MLK Freeway,” and “Mrs. Charles Rice Goff.”
C: Thanks and hello to
D: Some of the other FWM who did not participate this time around:
MVM, Laux,
Alva, Eudean, Dick Whiskey, The Insecticides crew, Ron, Gareth Egerton,
Mr.
Abrams, Mr. Brillinger, Mr. Meidav and all the rest who have worn the
shared
the songwriter’s hat with me over the years.
www.farceswannamo.com