Fischerspooner
(Casey Spooner)
January 2003
Word of advice: You have not heard Fischerspooner until you've seen Fischerspooner.
I was so surprised to hear that the “performance art” outfit had been signed to Capitol Records that, upon receiving the news, I looked into the sky for signs of the apocalypse. Not witnessing any flying pigs or flaming balls of fire I picked up the phone request an interview. The multimedia genius duo had been on my radar for many moons as I downloaded their import singles off the ‘net and waited patiently yet fervently for their entourage of dancers, strobe lights and innumerable costume changes to make its way to the west coast.
A veritable sign of the end of days what was how I interpreted Capitol’s reply: Not only would they be happy to put me in touch with Fischerspooner, but since they didn’t really know what to do with them now that they had them, would I be so kind as to spend time with the more “difficult” half, Casey Spooner, and perhaps come back to the label with a little guidance? “How odd,” I thought. “Since when did journalism become synonymous with psychoanalysis?” Looking back on past interviews, however, was enough to assure me I was more than qualified, so I accepted.
Lesson Number 1: The world of Fischerspooner is full of surprises, and so they kept rolling in as the interview appointment took shape. In another apocalyptic coincidence, my long-planned European vacation was due to take place the same time Casey was going to be abroad, and so our discussion was scheduled for some time aboard a yacht in the Mediterranean, where I would be guaranteed intimacy with my subject while he’d get the chance to – in Capitol’s hopeful words – “calm the hell down”.
Casey in person – carrying on off-stage in what we’d consider everyday, normal life – is not much different from Casey in videos, in performance or in slick photographic magazine images. He’s a chameleon, true, but the tensile thread running through each of those highly-produced façades is one of exactly that – image, change, dress-up. The slap in your face is that what you’re looking at is completely mutable and has nothing to do with what’s on the inside. Even in his briefs the guy is sporting a look, playing a role that while requiring the least amount of accessories demonstrates a one-two punch of sexual and intellectual idolatry. “See how much you want me even though I’m not sporting the six-pack of a Calvin Klein underwear model?” he taunts wordlessly. It’s the confidence spewing from inside that means no matter what Casey Spooner’s got going on outside, you’re gonna fall for it completely.
And it’s a good thing the guy’s not suffering from humility, let me tell you, considering the amount of pasta he shovels down in any given sitting. “Liberating the male form” is what he’ll tell you he’s doing when he tears into a box of Girl Scout cookies, but as long as he shares I can’t begin to feel like I should warn him that as he approaches the big 4-0 his metabolism will go into a nose dive which no amount of PVC vinyl nor Lancôme cellulite cream can rectify.
And Casey's sweet, Southern drawl is oh so very soothing that when talking to him it’s easy to just lie back and let the world roll by…
I live in L.A.; do you spend a lot of time there now that you’re jet setting all over the place?
I was really down on L.A. I got my ass in over my head on this big show and I sort of had a nervous breakdown.
Oh dear.
Yep. Downtown L.A., 2001.
That was a huge show. I was sorry to miss it.
Everybody missed it because that was one of the problems – the fire marshal limited the capacity.
And in a place like L.A. when something like Fischerspooner is so up-and-coming the only people who get access – not those who necessarily know about and admire you – are the privileged, the celebrities. Now that the album’s coming out and more people will have access to your work, I think that’s gonna definitely change your audience. The perception of what you do, at first, is one of exclusivity; people think it’s out of their reach. But once they get a hold of the album, do you think that that’s going to change that perception?
I hope so! I mean, we never set out to be exclusive entirely. It’s always been about trying to make something that’s exciting and interesting and popular. I could toil away forever in Brooklyn doing avant-garde stuff, but I really wanted to try my hand at making something that was for the people, a statement. Everybody loves a fool in a jock strap!
[Laughs] Except maybe my grandmother but that’s okay, she’s got Perry Como or whatever.
She’s your grandmother for a reason.
That’s right, she’s gotta keep me grounded.
She got jiggy with it at one point.
I'm sure she did. Now that you guys have the accessibility that’s being afforded to you through a major label do you think it’s going to be more and more difficult – once the demand grows for Fischerspooner – to bring that whole live component, the totality of Fischerspooner, around?
That’s what everybody asks me – the two big questions I get are like what do you think about the term “electroclash” – do you hate it, do you love it? The other is how are your gonna travel the show?
It seems like it could be a logistical nightmare.
I think there are lots of ways to share the spectacle with people. We’ve done small shows, we’ve done big shows… Some of the shows that got us signed were with a very limited cast in small nightclubs. The idea will work – it can work in smaller settings with a limited group of people or kind of “the sky’s the limit” on the scale. A lot of people like the shows that are in more confined spaces because they like the intimacy. So sometimes bigger is not necessarily better in terms of people’s experience of the event. But I think that we’ll definitely find a way to share with people some taste of what it is that we do, and I think that we’ll also explore new avenues in order to do that, which I’m most excited about.
A lot of things about what Fischerspooner has been to date might have to change, not in a bad way, but to just work within the system. When I heard that you’d been signed to Capitol I was simultaneously excited but then panicked because regardless of their roster and the other amazing artists that are on that label, Fischerspooner are not merely a band. And when somebody gets signed to a big label there’s that expectation of, “Okay, here’s a band, there’s their CD, they’re gonna go on tour, they’re gonna do The Tonight Show…” You know, there’s a system that has to be worked within.
Yeah, but that’s the reason why they’re excited to work with us – it presents new challenges. And one of the things we’re very excited about is the way we work with all different kinds of media and how we feel that photography and film and all these other things are very important as a whole idea – we’re deeply involved in all those things! So they’re very excited about those opportunities and, you know, they’re not really just looking for a bar band, you know, who’s gonna just run around and get drunk and perform on network television. Not that we won’t do that! But that’ll be just merely a facet to what we’re doing. I’m also excited because I think that they can support a lot of ideas that we wouldn’t be able to execute otherwise. So I’ve been throwing out all kinds of crazy ideas and they’re responsive to most everything!
That’s really cool.
I’m a bit astonished. I had the same sort of misgivings that you did – I was like, “Uh oh…” I never set out to be on a major label, you know? And that’s why it’s taken us this much time to end up finally releasing the material. We didn’t really set out for a recording music career, per se. We were just happy doing what we did and how we did it. So we didn’t really jump at every opportunity that came our way. We’re very picky and we didn’t want to in any way jeopardize what we were already happy doing. So I think in the end, the thing that is against what most people perceive – myself included – is that you’re somehow signed to a label and all of a sudden they’re gonna start telling you what to do. And it’s been the opposite – it has really been that they are looking for us to lead them!
For most record labels, they say the worst thing is that when they sign an artist, all of a sudden they expect the label to tell them what do to. It’s a lot of work to come up with all the ideas of what an artist is supposed to look like, who’s gonna take the pictures, what’s the music video like, what’s the concept, what’s the show like, what’s the this, what’s the that? And they’re just so thankful that we actually know exactly what we wanna do.
Right – it’s all built in with your package.
Yeah. So it was like we signed a contract and then all of a sudden we got a litany of deadlines unfurled on us. “Okay, you gotta do this, this, this, this and this…”
I would’ve assumed that having worked so hard for so many years before signing with Capitol, you wouldn’t just leap into a deal without actually thinking about it. But I think that in this time when there’s so much uncertainty in the recording industry about what’s gonna happen – the business people are panicking over file sharing and CD ripping, and the fans are hating the labels and the artists are caught in the middle – it just seems like it’s really smart move for Capitol to work with somebody like you guys who can help them rethink what they’re doing and look towards the future rather than stick with what has already been done and what’s failing, obviously.
Exactly! And the other thing is I feel like technology has been such a big part of what we do and how we approach what we do. You know, all the music is pretty much initially generated on Warren’s laptop. We’ve been building a fan base through the Internet and file sharing, not through record sales. We have been producing events and developing relationships with people internationally just from our home computers. So I really feel like we are really fortunate to be taking advantage of all these technological advances.
Exactly, instead of being afraid of them and trying to beat them down, you’re doing the smart thing.
Embrace it! I think there are lots of ways to explore technology and entertainment. You can’t fight it –you have to embrace it, and that was where our whole thing about performing live without musicians came from. You know, it’s so frustrating, but people pretend to execute electronic music onstage. They’re not doing anything! I mean, I love the artificiality of it for sure, but you know what? The world is not as dumb as people think it is and I know you’re not doing anything up there behind that laptop! So why not go ahead and take advantage of the opportunities that the technology affords to actually do something interesting and exciting for people to watch? Technology has been a big influence on all of our choices, embracing it and not feeling threatened by it. We’ve never approached it in a very traditional manner, so I think that we’ll always find new ways to share the different experiences with people, be it through film or photography or any number of things.
…My big new fantasy is I wanna create a customized semi.
A semi?
Uh-huh. The way I wanna tour is not in a bus, I wanna create like a moving installation. Kinda like a Transformer – you push a button and this hydraulic black-and-chrome semi unfurls. A pop fantasy! You don’t have to set up in every city, it’s not a strange environment because it’s set, you don’t have to reblock or relearn it or anything.
Have you brought this up to Capitol yet?
Yeah, yeah!
And what did they say?
They were into it – they’re cool. I mean, they were like, “Well, we need to start with a couple of club dates…but I guess we’ll start to work on the customized semi.” I was like, “Okay, and then after that we need to start working on the 3D IMAX movie.”
That was one of your old ideas, wasn’t it?
We have a lot of old ideas we’ve been dragging around. I’ve been talking about a 3D IMAX movie forever.
Is that something that might come to fruition? I was gonna ask you about your cinematic aspirations. I know the DVD is coming out but I meant something along the lines of a more fictionalized or thematic piece.
I know – we keep saying that we’re gonna start working on this feature treatment and I swear as soon as we get this record released we’ll really start to draft it. We have a bunch of ideas but we really have to lock ‘em down. It’s just a continuous job just getting the releases done. But I think that we’ll start to develop that idea. I think that that’s more for the second record.
Do you find that having to deal with all these deadlines and logistics and whatever means new obstacles to your creative process? Are you having to create differently now?
You can never stop learning, right? So I definitely feel I’m constantly like, “Oh, right!” It’s tough to be creative on demand, but you just have to go with the flow and when you actually get that idea you have to try to do what you can to execute it as best you can. The thing that I’ve also been learning is trying to trust my intuition as quickly as possible.
That’s hard.
That’s tough. When something comes up you have to not think, “Oh, I’m gonna think about this”, just really be, “Okay, I’m not feeling good about that, this seems weird…I like this, let’s go with that.” Be really direct and clear and on with your intuition as quickly as possible – don’t drag around, because that’s what you don’t have time for. Of course I don’t! I sit up in bed and go, “Oh my God that picture’s all wrong! I need to do a cover shoot now!” I have had a couple of those and I’ve pulled them off, but I’m trying to not do that and sort of anticipate. But I’d known it wasn’t right, and if I had just voiced that it wasn’t right then, I would’ve moved quicker to the next idea.
Well, following your gut is what art is all about and people forget that, I think – they try and make it a logical process, when it’s really like what you said, just about that flash and following it.
Yeah. It’s kinds of like a muscle, you know, the more you work it the better it does. So I feel like it’s definitely getting better because I’ve been exercising it a lot.
What were your inspirations for who you became as Casey Spooner and as part of Fischerspooner, the artists both visually and aurally?
God…um…I’m trying to think – I don’t know…
There wasn’t anything that happened when you were a little kid that made you say, “THIS is why I’m gonna be an artist!”, some event like that? Or was it more just a combination of things?
Well, my mom was my art teacher and so I was raised around that. She taught at a private school so that I could go to that school; she was my art teacher up until seventh grade. The thing that feels good about this whole project is I always felt very fractured, like I couldn’t quite find the right combination of things that were my interests. I like to perform and I’ve always been outlandish – it comes a little bit from my father and his being a charismatic southern lawyer – but I was always raised in a very artistic household with my mom and going to magnet schools for the arts and painting and enjoying that as well. So it was hard for me to find a way to perform and be artistic.
I knew I wasn’t an actor in a traditional sense in that I don’t do some kind of like Meisner sense memory emotional reality. And I wasn’t really coming from a background in literature or stuff that’s based on writing; it was more coming from a visual world. So it accidentally just finally felt right. I tried to be a model briefly; it wasn’t so much that I felt like I was the most attractive person in the world but I knew I could make pictures. I thought being a model could be really creative; I thought I was gonna meet some photographer and be a muse and lead them into creating images. But it’s so not like that at all.
But you've achieved that now, in a sense.
Yeah, I’m basically finally a model!
All this work just to be a model – who knew?
I know...
How do you and Warren work together in terms of joining his compositions with your words and then the subsequent visual expression?
Well, for a while we were writing primarily for the show, so it would be like, “Ooh, we need an intro,” or “We need a down-tempo something,” or “I have this visual trick that I wanna do and maybe it’ll be good in this song.” So it can come from any number of directions. But the standard is he typically starts a rough sketch of a composition and then I’ll have a couple of ideas and we’ll discuss it and agree on what we want to make the song about. And then I’ll start developing lyrical stuff, then sit in the studio forever…
You mean in terms of tracking or writing?
Well, it's like, we’ve been writing a lot of stuff on the mic, so I’ll take a section of a song and just loop it and listen to it over and over and over and over again and try a bazillion different vocal directions. Warren will cut the mic off – he’ll sit in the booth and talk on his cell phone – then finally turn the mic up, listen to what I’m doing after a while and say something like, “Um…why don’t you do something more like this?” and then he’ll go [hums] “Mm-mm-mmmm”. Then I’ll try to copy it. You know, it happens kind of randomly. We go back and forth or they’ll just let me go crazy, Les and Warren, and then we’ll pull pieces out and they’ll go, “Okay, I like it here where you ‘re singing in triplets and it’s better when you stay lower in your range,” blah blah blah. Then we’ll go from there.
Sometimes it’ll be that I don’t have the words and I’ll start writing the melody, then I’ll just start making sounds. And then sometimes it’s happened where I’m just making sounds and then actually when I go back and listen to the sounds there are words I didn’t know were there. Then I’ll transcribe the words and that’ll actually become the lyrics. It sounds kinda nonsensical but ultimately in a weird way it makes sense.
So much of this comes back down to instinctual feeling, like you said before.
Yeah.
And there’s no process to songwriting – that’s what people forget. Doing this interview from that point of view then trying to get it out to publications which are more about narrative and saleability is gonna be a challenge. And I can imagine people will be asking, “how can these people really be musicians when there are others who sit with their acoustic guitar and toil away for years and year and years trying to find the right songwriting formula –
Yeah.
Whereas your description just completely defies all of that.
I was gonna say, Warren cracks out a guitar every so often when we’re lookin’ for the right note. Our songs rock hard!
That’s great. That'll be the pull quote in all the magazines.
I mean, if you ask Warren, he says that he makes rock music.
I see.
Because he feels it is, structurally. That’s his experience – it’s a combination of rock and classical.
I’m curious about what you just brought up regarding Warren and his musical taste versus what he’s doing now. What happens if maybe you decide you want things to have a very different look, or if he decides he wants the music not to sound like this anymore?
It’s weird...early in our friendship we had a huge falling out and we completely stopped communicating with each other entirely. And then we reunited over this project and since we’ve never had an argument. We rarely disagree. We just basically respect and trust each other; somehow it just miraculously works. I’m not worried. I think he’s a brilliant musician and he’s made great musical choices, so I totally trust his instinct. He can’t believe that he chose this sound when it was so obscure and so not popular, and he nailed it. I really think this sound is gonna come back – this sound is gonna be big. And so he called it.
It’s a good reason to trust him, I guess.
Yeah. And you know, it’s cool, whatever – as long as I look good.
[Laughs] There you go.
We go back and forth. We also comment or contribute to any aspect of whatever it is we’re working on, so I can say something about the music and he can say something about performance, and then it’s fine. So that’s not a concern.
That’s good. Going back to the musical part of things, I think it was in your EPK where you stated something about how you really love everything about pop music –
Right, except the music itself.
Yeah.
That quote is a bit misleading in that it almost sounds like I’m talking about our own music. I said that and they thought that I’m actually talking about the music and saying I don’t care about music, I just like everything else around it.
I kind of took it to be in the vein of what you’ve said to me right now, that it’s about “I don’t know where I fit, therefore I’m gonna create a place or a way to do what I want to do because I don’t see a way to do it right now.” So when I heard the pop music comment, what I thought was that you would go about making the pop music you wanted to hear.
Oh, yeah, that’s true – there is that urge, too. It’s a little bit based on like when Nelly has his record come out, I’m not gonna buy Nellyville. At this point I’m the type of consumer who only likes the single. The rest of the record sucks and you may get like one good remix of the song. But for the most part I don’t care about the whole record – I only want the maxi-single. And the things that fascinate me are…I get so into things like the cover and the in-store display and the whole world that is created around these people that actually is more compelling and more interesting than a lot of the music. It just feels like sometimes they have all these songs that are just filler, just for the radio single and an excuse for them to get on a talk show. Those are the places you can tell they put the most energy and the effort is in all these peculiar imaging things. That’s not at all music.
Right – that’s what some critics might say is the line between entertainment and music. They’re entertainers and those who don’t really focus on all of that other imagery are the real musicians or artists.
Yep.
But it’s wrong to say that you can’t be an artist if you’re an entertainer, because obviously Fischerspooner is entertaining but you guys are rooted in art.
Yeah – you can try to be as profound and important as you want to be, but ultimately that’s not your decision to make. It’s sort of the test of time. I mean I’m sure that everyone who’s making stuff has to, for the most part, think that they’re doing something good. It’s just a matter of what will stand the test of time that determines how profound or interesting something really is. I think that that is a great cause for insecurity for a lot of people is they’re like, “Oh my god, am I an artist, am I not an artist? Am I making something valuable or am I just a complete schlocky loser?” It’s sort of a moot point. You make something that you find compelling and interesting and you hope that somebody else does, too. Don’t fret over it. That’s another thing that’s given us this freedom – I feel like we’ve really paid our dues in the underground so I don’t have any weird like hang-up that I have to prove myself as an artist. I just kind of feel like, whatever!
Well, you got where you are by doing what you wanted to do, so you don’t owe any justification to anybody.
Uh-uh.
I’m going to end this interview with a comment about all of the interviews that I’ve read about you guys.
Yes, please tell me – gimme some pointers!
The funny thing is that it seems like you started off fitting in with the spontaneity and the entertainment value of Fischerspooner by filling the interviews with a lot of misleading little tidbits –
Right.
Which confused people. I’m wondering how much of that you do now.
[Long, loud sigh] God, you know, I’m doing it less and less. And you’re right, I should. But the other thing is, you know, a lot of that stuff we didn’t generate.
I see.
And I haven’t given you the speech, which is that we consider press and publicity to be a part of this project. We’ve always encouraged writers to embellish or to have fun or to make something that they think would be interesting for their readers. And ultimately I expect nothing of truth in publicity. So you have complete artistic free reign to make it as exciting or interesting as you’d like.
Thanks.
I did that with a lot of people. Some people pulled it off very well, and some people did it very poorly. That’s when I got burnt doing it. Like Steve Lafreniere and Gavin McInnis are my two favorite writers. They created perfect illusions in writing. But Piers Martin and another guy, I can’t remember his name, they tried to do the same – they tried to follow that, creating an illusion, and it just fell flat and seemed really fake. So it’s difficult to do and I think why I started to dial it back is that some writers can pull it off and some can’t.
Right, right. I think it’s amazing that you would give that kind of license.
I always incorporate some degree of baroque artificiality in to the interview.
So then it’s okay if I sell this to every rag on the planet?
Sure! I’m a press whore.
Now I’ve gotta go through the tape and figure out what’s true and what’s not.
Exactly!
DISCLAIMER: While the yacht scenario was nothing more than a bizarre dream resulting from a grotesquely large Italian dinner, the interview did, in fact, take place via telephone. In April, Fischerspooner performed at the Coachella Festival to a tent packed with thousands of people whipped into an ecstatic frenzy. The level of euphoria among that crowd was such that you’d never guess it was 11:30 pm on a Sunday night at the end of a very long, hot weekend.
Two days later the duo performed at West Hollywood’s Roxy for a very select industry crowd. While kids clamored hopelessly outside begging for the opportunity to see their heroes, jaded execs in suits and ladies with insensible shoes – all of whom were on the hallowed guest list – yawned and walked inside. Two hours later, those cynics wouldn’t know what hit ‘em. And amidst the weeping fans who camped on the sidewalk well past midnight for a glimpse of Warren or Casey, a janitor swept up the cigarette butts and chewed gum of the glitterati. He was wearing a stained white t-shirt, torn work pants, and a white apron upon which two pins shone like medals in the night. The buttons read: “LOOKS GOOD” and “FEELS GOOD, TOO”. Beat that irony, Mr. Spooner.
