Extremely Lame

I don’t care how much of a genius he apparently is, he can go screw for all I care.

I don’t even mind the voice that was apparently created by gargling with coffee and eating cigarettes, I can get around that. It’s his post-modern nonsense that I can’t stand. Take this latest interview with him in the Independent. It’s even worse than his music; it’s completely unreadable. It’s so full of ridiculous lists, I thought I had slipped and started reading House of Leaves again. Actually, I take that back. This interview is what you would get if House of Leaves were written by Rain Man.

The one good thing, though, is that he shows us how much of a pretentious twat he is at the beginning of the interview:

“In the Seventies, a record company in LA issued a record called The Best of Marcel Marceau. It had 40 minutes of silence followed by applause and it sold really well. I like to put it on for company. It really bothers me, though, when people talk through it.“

For a moment, I thought he was just being sarcastic, but reading through the rest of this artist fluff piece, I don’t think he is. Actually, I think it may be masturbation. I don’t see anyone’s name listed as an author, maybe Waits made up these questions himself and someone just decided to print it. It would explain questions such as, “What are some unusual things that have been left behind in a cloakroom?” or “Can you tell me an odd thing that happened in an odd place?”

Maybe it’s the common part of me that notices, but I’m always suspicious of anyone who, when listing things they like or influences on them, can’t think of anything good or decent from the past thirty years. You can certainly prefer music and movies from an earlier time, I know I do, but declaring, “Oh, nothing is good anymore, all music today sucks, TV was better when we only had three channels, etc.” seems to be the pinnacle of pretension, and most of the time, it’s disingenuous. It’s often just espoused to show how cool you are because you don’t like things that everyone else does. Hey, I may like Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter, but you don’t see me looking down on people who don’t like it.