“A massive Trevor Horn fan. Propaganda’s A Secret Wish is one of my favorite albums of all time. It was the nature of the economy at the time, but you had people like Trevor Horn that had one guy with the Fairlight, one guy with the Synclavier. They had millions of pounds of gear, and they were pushing it as far it could go. Nowadays, you can do all of that with a laptop, but….there’s something nice about the grandiose. There’s room for that as much as there is room for the immediacy of punk, garage rock or acoustic stuff. It’s nice to have that big sweep sometimes. I also love something like The Blue Nile’s Hats, which is expansive in a different way. Dance floor music has to be functional. And that has to be a priority. But that doesn’t have to be the only thing.” [link]

“If we’re talking about this Rhein-Main-House thing, we’re basically talking about a super-stripped-down house track, yeah? Without the filter-pianos or whatever, it’s like just this basic rhythm. Like a deep bassline, but funky and groovy, and this is riding down for six or seven minutes without anything happening really. So it’s up to the DJ to bring in some a cappellas or whatever, tools to make it interesting. I always saw most of the tracks I made as being more songs than tracks. Songs that start at a certain point, try to build something up, tell a story, draw a picture and arrive at a totally different point. They’re not songs with a pop structure of course, but you know… Of course there were some tracks which were not like this. Especially if you look at Markus Fix or Robert Dietz. They also have some absolutely amazing songs. But the whole hype was more about the tool tracks, the basic house tools. That’s the main reason why music-wise, I don’t really see myself so much representing this Rhein-Main-House.” [link]

“One of the vibes I’ve been looking to experiment with is the Metalheadz sound palette of the mid-’90s. I really like the futurism that is embedded in the sounds, and I’m trying to update it. That’s very much where my head’s at at the moment.” [link]

a project I’m working on.

by Finn Johannsen, celebrating Front, 1990
by Derek Plaslaiko, celebrating House of God, 1990
by Sheldon Drake, celebrating Abstrakt Wave, 1996

“I can’t help but have a soft spot in my heart for Jewel. She helped get me a job. After an interview at eMusic, editor J. Edward Keyes mentioned that he needed to go review a show of hers in Long Island. I mentioned that I loved her work, and after the show I spent the long ride home back to Brooklyn trying to convince him of her relative worth. He wasn’t convinced, but I think he realized he could — at the very least — tolerate having me around eight hours a day in an office. As long as I kept my mouth shut about Jewel. I can’t blame him. Most people don’t want to hear about what makes Jewel great — especially people who take music ’seriously.’ She fancies herself a poet. Her music is resolutely lightweight so as to allow more room for said poetry. And her dyed-in-the-wool fans? Let’s just say that they don’t often go by ‘J. Edward’ or ‘Todd L.,’ and leave it at that.” [link]

in discussion with Finn Johannsen

“On a typical day Rick and Pam Barry get up between 10 and noon in their house on Mercer Island outside of Seattle and begin their exercise routine: First, there’s 15 minutes designed to develop the arms and upper body and then, to improve their flexibility, the hour-long Jane Fonda Advanced Workout.

After the workout Barry cooks up a pot of natural grain cereal, and they eat one of their two daily meals. Their diet permits virtually no salt, no sugar, no fat, no oil. They are committed to the pursuit of physical perfection, even at the cost of social isolation.

Barry adds bran, raisins and bananas to his cereal, flavors his one piece of Pritikin toast with a smidgen of butter and finishes his meal with fresh papaya and freshly squeezed orange juice, nonfat raw milk and so many vitamin tablets that if you turned him upside down and shook him he would rattle like a pinball machine. As a result of the exercises and the diet, Barry, who is 6′7″, now weighs 202 pounds, 20 less than he did at the end of his playing career, and though he looks gaunt, with so many sharp edges that he appears to have been put together from an Erector Set, he’s convinced he’s in the best shape of his life.

After their meal the Barrys set aside a few hours for “business.” Barry answers letters and phone calls, talks to his business manager, Harry Stern, about things like sportscasting possibilities, and checks on the progress of his television “projects,” which are in the developmental stage and include a golf show for American distribution and a golf and baseball show for Japan. Along with the sports projects, Barry is also interested in hosting a game show. “I love game shows,” he says. Although he hasn’t worked in more than a year, he says he’s financially secure. Still, it galls him that neither basketball nor broadcasting, the passions of his life, has found room for him. He has told Pam, “I think it’s not because of my ability. It’s because they don’t like me.”

After business the Barrys play tennis. And then there is dinner with Jon, 13, Barry’s second-oldest child and one of five he had with his first wife, also named Pam. They divorced in 1981 and Jon was sent by the court to live with his father. The three eat soup and salad and fish and talk of the things they did that day. Then Jon goes to bed, and Rick and Pam go to their bedroom to watch the soap operas they have taped during the afternoon, such as The Young and the Restless and All My Children. They frequently watch until two in the morning, commenting on the behavior of the characters. Then they go to sleep. The next day they do it all over again.

Rick Barry is in exile, the Napoleon of Mercer Island.”

[link]