Arto Lindsay
Forget classical training: Arto Lindsay has been involved in a wide and wonderful world of music for the last 30 years. Speaking at the 2004 Red Bull Music Academy, he takes us through formative years growing up in Brazil, his involvement in the New York no wave scene of the late ’70s and how girls went crazy for a bunch of guys in suits called the Lounge Lizards.
Hosted by David Nerattini Hi everybody, meet our guest for this afternoon’s lecture. He’s a musician, a guitarist, a producer, a singer from New York and Brazil. Please meet Arto Lindsay. [applause] So as I said, New York but with some Brazilian things. You were born in the States? Arto Lindsay I was born in America but I grew up in Brazil. My parents were missionaries to Brazil and I grew up in the North East of Brazil, Belém Bocou. David Nerattini So how was it for an American kid growing up in Brazil? I mean, you were born in the States, and how long had you been in the States before going to Brazil? Arto Lindsay Well, I was three when I moved to Brazil. David Nerattini Ah, so you didn’t know anything about the States? Arto Lindsay No, but I was a foreigner in Brazil. I was accepted, but I was a foreigner. There were advantages and disadvantages. I was able to move around in Brazilian society easier than if I had been Brazilian. I could go to the slums to buy marijuana and hang out, or I could go surf with the blond kids, not that I was ever much of a surfer. I had a freedom as an outsider. David Nerattini So for how long you’ve been in Brazil as a kid? Arto Lindsay Fifteen years, so I was a teenager there. David Nerattini: So you got your first contacts with music in Brazil? Arto Lindsay Yeah, I seem to remember some music before I was three, but yeah. I heard the Beatles in Portuguese before I heard the real Beatles, that kind of thing. David Nerattini Cover versions, the Brazilian cover versions? Arto Lindsay Yeah. David Nerattini So when you got back to New York, you made some other music with no Brazilian references at first. You went back to New York in... Arto Lindsay: Yeah, I went to college in America. I stayed in college because of the draft. There was a lottery in America during the second part of the Vietnam War, and people’s birthdays were chosen and you were sent into the Army according to the order of this lottery, and my birthday was number eight. Actually, 18, come to think of it. So, I went running back to college so that I
didn’t have to join the Army. Then I moved to New York. David Nerattini You moved to New York and you were already playing music at that stage? Arto Lindsay No, I was a singer in a rock band in high school. I moved to New York and I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to, you know, do something. I was interested in writing, I was interested in dancing, actually. I took a few dance classes, I had a girlfriend that was a dancer. But music was what was happening and I drifted into music. It was the beginning of punk rock and I heard Television and the Ramones and these bands play a lot. Actually, I was talking to some of the guys from the Academy downstairs about how different it was then, and one of the things that was really different was that we started making music and we didn’t have a lot of media. There wasn’t this huge media machine waiting to jump on anything a young person did and try to sell it to other young people. We played just for each other for a long time. People in other bands and our friends and things kind of developed more slowly. It was New York and we did go do this in New York because we got a lot of attention from other places because of that, but it was pretty different. So, yeah, and inspired by this early punk rock, I started to make music too. We tried to go beyond what had come before and we thought that by doing so we would become really successful, immediately. And we kind of did the most radical thing we could and we thought that was the best way to become like rock stars. We were so naïve and we were just batted down by the industry and by the press and people just assumed we were completely negative. David Nerattini You’re talking about your band DNA? Arto Lindsay Yeah, and the other bands in that group, in that moment there. David Nerattini James Chance... Arto Lindsay Mars, Lydia Lunch. David Nerattini So you formed your band and you bought a guitar but you really didn’t know how to play, and that became your trademark style of playing guitar? Arto Lindsay That’s right, and I never learned how to play. And I’ve been working with sampling since, like, ’84 and all I can do on a computer is email. And I’ve been mixing records for a long time, too, but I’m just really good at giving orders. No, I’m kidding. [laughter] I had to overcompensate in other areas, learn how to work with people and get people to do things that I didn’t really understand how to do myself. David Nerattini So DNA was a band that people know mostly from a compilation that came out around ’78 or ’79 that was put together by Brian Eno. How did that happen? Arto Lindsay There was kind of a scene of these bands and we were starting to get local attention and Eno came to New York and I think he wanted to be associated with us because he wanted to be the avant-gardist. You know, the guy who represented the avant-garde to the rest of the world. So he suggested that we do this compilation record and he got the record deal with Island and he recorded it and mixed it. And we’ve been friends ever since because he’s a fantastic guy as well as a really great artist. David Nerattini So DNA was a trio: guitar, drums and keyboards. Arto Lindsay Right. David Nerattini Playing mostly nasty basslines. Arto Lindsay None of us were musicians, but we had ideas about what we wanted to do, and we tried to figure out ways to make those things happen on the instruments. David Nerattini I’ll play one track from the compilation, probably the first track, “Egomaniac’s Kiss.” So you’ll have an idea of what DNA were really about. (music: DNA – “Egomaniac’s Kiss” / applause) David Nerattini You guys would be making a fortune now with this type of sound. Arto Lindsay A fortune?! David Nerattini A lot of money. Arto Lindsay I know there’s a lot of bands that are really interested in this period, a lot of New York bands anyway. Some of them are incredible, I love Liars, their show is amazing. And there’s a band called Animal Collective and the Strokes and blah blah blah. David Nerattini There’s a half-Italian band called Blonde Redhead that took their name from one of your songs. Arto Lindsay Right, it’s one of those moments that was really inspiring later. It’s interesting, we were trying so hard to do something utterly original, so it’s kind of interesting to be imitated. Because if someone wanted to imitate it, it seemed like they would do something really original, too. It’s an odd thing and there’s also a lot of ways to think about that. Sampling and, you know, guys my age, we hear a hip-hop record and we’re like, “Oh, the Commodores!” You know the song, you danced to the song, you made out to the song, you fucked to that song years ago. And now, you hear a little bit over and over and over, so you can’t have this same relationship to it. It’s just different. David Nerattini So DNA went along for how many years, like two or three years probably? Arto Lindsay DNA only lasted two or three years. David Nerattini Then what happened? You joined another band. Strangely enough, a jazz band. Arto Lindsay I was actually in both bands at the same time. David Nerattini Oh yeah, in 1979 you started playing with the Lounge Lizards and DNA were still playing. Arto Lindsay Right. David Nerattini Right, so we just said you didn’t know how to play guitar, and playing in a jazz band or an avant-garde jazz band... Arto Lindsay The idea of this band was kind of like jazz plus me. [laughter] And on the record I’m kind of mixed low, but in concert it was kind of a battle between the jazz part and me. David Nerattini The noisy part. Arto Lindsay Yeah. David Nerattini [holds up record sleeve] So this record was the first Lounge Lizards record and it was produced by Teo Macero, I don’t know where to put the accent. Arto Lindsay [corrects pronunciation] Teo Macero. David Nerattini It’s the Italian, I mess it up all the time. So how was it, he was Miles Davis’ producer... Arto Lindsay He was incredible to work with, Teo. But I must say that from my point of view, not only was he Miles Davis’ producer and Thelonious Monk’s producer and producer of so many great jazz records, but he was a student of [Iannis] Xenakis, who is a twentieth-century composer. So he was a totally schooled musician in an avant-garde classical tradition, as well as being a jazz musician, so he was kind of a unique guy and we were super excited to work with him. Plus we recorded at this studio called Black Rock, which was the old CBS studios in New York, 57th Street, which was where all these great jazz records were made. This incredible room, it was pretty exciting for us. But I unfortunately had the flu during the three days we recorded it so I don’t remember it that well. But I do remember that Teo was like, “Yeah, Arto, play! Turn him up!” And when he mixed the record he mixed me kind of in the background, so he didn’t really have the courage of his convictions in my case anyway. I mean, I love him, he’s a sweetheart, but hey. But everybody knows the story now about how Teo is the co-author of all those records with Miles, because those guys would just jam and he edited those records together and sometimes he would make edits, make loops of grooves, and then Miles would play over them. So he was a very interventionist producer, a real hands-on producer of the Miles records. The earlier jazz records, I guess he just recorded really, he was that kind of a producer. David Nerattini That was what the producers at the time were doing, standing in the control room. Arto Lindsay Well, that’s true, but you got to set it up so people can really play. And that’s not easy, because if you’re making records like that, jazz records where you basically have one day to record a whole record, it’s got to be a comfortable situation for the musicians. You’ve got to know when to turn the machine on and when to turn it off. It’s another set of skills. David Nerattini So shall we listen to one track from the Lounge Lizards? Arto Lindsay These are like the longest tracks of my life, sitting here listening to them. (music: The Lounge Lizards – “Incident on South Street” / applause) David Nerattini So this was a very special band. All the guys in the band went on to do great stuff by themselves, but this was really John Lurie’s baby, we can say? Arto Lindsay Yeah, I mean it was really a band, and then when it became John Lurie’s baby, I left. [laughter] David Nerattini Not only you left, you and Anton Fier left and Steve Piccolo left as well. Now he’s living in Italy, actually. Arto Lindsay Yeah, I know, I see him, he lives in Milan. This band was great because this band was almost like a joke. We used to jam a lot, different people, people that weren’t musicians, actors, movie directors, artists. And we would just play for hours and hours and hours, I don’t know how we did it. It wasn’t Red Bull, I’ll tell you that. [laughter] It was a different time and we did a show and people went crazy, the girls went crazy. We all wore these suits and people just went absolutely nuts and it became a band. Audience Member What sort of audience are you speaking about? Arto Lindsay We’re speaking about Hurrahs, in like late ‘70s. So we’re speaking about a New York audience, totally young but totally mixed. Mostly white but not all white. Latins, African Americans, drag queens, you know what I’m saying? It was that kind of rock/disco thing. There was a club called Hurrahs and it was before Madonna hit, Sugarhill era, you know very early. David Nerattini So after Lounge Lizards, you and Anton Fier quit, you went away and made your own band called the Golden Palominos. Arto Lindsay That’s true. David Nerattini But once again, you made only one record. This is really a duo record, but all the other Palomino’s records are Anton’s records. So, what happened? This is a real New York record to me, a real cornerstone of that era. Bill Laswell is in it, John Zorn is in it, so how did this band come about? Arto Lindsay Well, Anton and I wanted to do a band. We actually wanted to call the Lounge Lizards the Golden Palominos. Because the band was originally called the Power Tools, which is very embarrassing. David Nerattini The Power Tools? Arto Lindsay Yeah, come on. David Nerattini Bill Frisell made a band with that name years later with Melvin Gibson and I can’t remember who else. Arto Lindsay He was old enough, he should have known better. [laughter] It’s a dumb name. Then we settled on the Lounge Lizards, but we wanted to make a band, so we left. David Nerattini This was a change from… Arto Lindsay But, you know, Anton and I were friends and we were best friends in the Lounge Lizards, as soon as we tried to make a record together, we started to hate each other and so we split up. But it happens, it wasn’t a big deal. David Nerattini Well, let’s listen to it. Arto Lindsay This record is interesting because it mixes a lot of the New York improvisers. Some of us came more from the club music side, the rock side, or the dance music side or whatever and then there were a lot of people on this record that were straight up improvisers, like David Moss and Fred Frith and Zorn. David Nerattini On this track there’s even Jamaaladeen Tacuma that was Ornette Coleman’s bassist. Arto Lindsay That’s right.. (music: The Golden Palominos – “Clean Plate” / applause) David Nerattini So for us, looking from Europe, this era in New York, the late 1970s and early 1980s, especially the early 1980s, looked like one big family, many musicians playing on each other’s records. Was it really like this or did we just see it that way? Arto Lindsay Yeah, it was like that to some extent. The way that we advertised these shows was with Xeroxed posters. So you’d go put up your poster and then the other guy would wait five minutes and then he’d come up and put his poster on top of your poster. So you know, that’s kind of family, too, eh? [laughs] This record sounds interesting, I wish you could hear more of the detail. All the crazy guys were a little buried but the groove is really good, too, and Anton is a really great musician. He became a producer long before I did, and then for various reasons he stopped working and left New York for a while. He only came back a few years ago and started to play again. He’s a great drummer and he’s a super programmer but he had some reasons to stop. David Nerattini So until now your Brazilian heritage… Arto Lindsay You know what’s really funny is the fucking slapping. [demonstrates bass slapping with his thumb] “‘Dang, dang, dong.’” It sounds so dated, the most dated thing on the record right? Nobody does that, maybe it’s the coming thing? [laughter] David Nerattini There were two bass players on that track, probably Bill Laswell was responsible for the slapping? Arto Lindsay Not necessarily, everyone used to do that at that time. You know how some things go out of fashion and then they just completely go out of fashion? Because both the records sound kind of tinny, now we’re hearing it with all this fake bottom [end], that bottom is not really there. [laughs] That’s in the system. Those records were so [makes a narrow line with his fingers]. That’s just the way records sounded in those days, bright and clean. It’s weird. David Nerattini So it took a while to get back to your Brazilian heritage. Arto Lindsay Right. Actually, the DNA stuff has Portuguese lyrics and part of this idea about being so radical definitely came from Brazil because the pop music in Brazil in the ’60s was really wide open and tropicalismo was this movement there in the mid-’60s and it was much more radical than most of the stuff in the States, and it was really pop. It was huge. But it mixed all this stuff pretty indiscriminately; Beatles, Brazilian folk music, soul music, modern classical, humor, you know, it was really wild music. And they were hits, the songs were hits. I really had no idea how conservative the music business was when I started. So, I don’t feel like there was this big return to the Brazilian roots, but… David Nerattini But in this record [holds up record sleeve], this is your first solo record. I always thought it was a solo record but then the other Ambitious Lovers album came out. Arto Lindsay It was kind of a solo record and then it evolved into a band is what happened. David Nerattini So you found a new partner? Arto Lindsay I did, his name was Peter Scherer, who’s kind of the opposite kind of musician. He was as trained as possible. He studied piano all his life, he studied at the conservatory in Zürich and then in Hamburg and then he studied with [György]
Ligeti and then he went to Mills College to study electronic music and then he ended up in New York and because he was skilled in electronics, he ended up working for Nile Rodgers, who bought one of the first three or four Synclaviers, which along with the Fairlights were the first sampling instruments. So at first he was hired as a technician and then as a musician and he worked with Nile and he worked with Kashif and a whole generation of rhythm and blues in New York at that time, which was all about slickness and studios, and it was great. David Nerattini So you started this Ambitious Lovers thing and you brought some Brazilian musicians as well. Arto Lindsay That’s true. David Nerattini And you started experimenting more with Brazilian and… Arto Lindsay Yeah, I had this idea that I wanted to make a kind of a samba soul record or a kind of samba thing with an Al Green vibe, and that was kind of my concept and I tried to do something like that. David Nerattini Let’s play a track from here. (music: Ambitious Lovers – “Pagode Americano” / applause) David Nerattini You were known especially for avant-garde… Arto Lindsay The only thing I had to do with that song was I told them what to sing about. Because these were the guys that were in the band and they played on a bunch of the other songs. David Nerattini So you were known for avant-garde stuff and rock left field, I would say. How did people react to [this]? Arto Lindsay People liked it, but this was kind of left-field in Brazil because in Brazil all anybody wanted to do was make rock music at that point. And the rock music was strictly English-style, it was all about imitating England and the States. So, to be interested in samba in Brazil at that point was heretical and everybody thought it was too corny and kind of embarrassing. David Nerattini At the time were you going back to Brazil or were you staying in the States? Arto Lindsay I was staying in the States, but actually what happened is after Golden Palominos, I thought about learning to play guitar, and I decided not to. But I decided to try and learn how to sing better. So I started listening to a lot of old samba records and sing along with the records, and that’s kind of how I taught myself how to sing. Then I made this record and I went to Brazil to try and have this record released. And I gave this record to a lot of musicians there and made friends and started this process of… David Nerattini At the time, did you know some other musicians of your generation? Arto Lindsay I knew Caetano Veloso. I had met Caetano in New York, who was an idol to me when I was a teenager. [But] no, that’s when I met them. I started to meet people from my generation or people younger at that point. David Nerattini And in those years you started translating the Portuguese songs into English for a lot of artists. Were they choosing you because you were bilingual or was it some record company thing? Arto Lindsay Mostly, it was about artist-to-artist kind of stuff. David Nerattini Because you translated Caetano Veloso’s songs? Arto Lindsay What happened was that Peter Scherer, my partner from Ambitious Lovers, and I produced a record by Caetano Veloso. David Nerattini In ’88, ’89? Arto Lindsay I guess. David Nerattini It’s Estrangeiro are we talking about? Arto Lindsay Yeah, and I realized how important Caetano was in the history of Brazilian music, but I didn’t realize that he was such a star and such a style-setter, and after having made that record, I got a lot of offers to work in Brazil. I began to work as a producer and before that I didn’t even have an ambition to be a producer. It just kind of happened. David Nerattini So I want to play one of Caetano’s tracks, because I think that his records from the ’80s, this one that you produced and Circulado, are some of the best records that mix together Brazilian music and some other stuff without making Brazilian music suffer, but exalting it. (music: Caetano Veloso – “O Estrangeiro” / applause) And this album came after a totally acoustic album from Caetano Veloso, strangely enough. How did he present the songs to you, like on acoustic guitar and voice? Arto Lindsay Yeah. David Nerattini How did you build this monster? [laughs] Arto Lindsay Well, the three of us sat in a room with a Synclavier. For that one, I guess we programmed the beat and the bass and then there’s live piano, live percussion. There’s a lot of samples, which I think were recorded to tape and not sequenced. There’s my guitar on there and also I believe Bill Frisell’s guitar is on there in the chorus. So just a lot of recording to tape basically, after we’d done the groundwork. There’s different songs, some of the songs are done all on the Synclavier and some are mixed and there’s some all live songs with a band. David Nerattini So, how was it messing with such a giant of Brazilian music and making him sound pretty odd? Arto Lindsay Obviously, he wanted to work with us, so he wanted us to do our thing and we were happy to do our thing. There are things that I notice now, like there’s a difference between Brazilian music and American music. One difference is that good American music is usually a little behind the beat. To be funky, you hang back a little bit. Brazilian music is really on it, you know what I’m
saying? It’s not like Cuban music, which is really on it. So something made me unhappy about the groove now when I could hear it, which on the record is OK because it all kind of blends together, but on the CD you hear maybe a little too much sometimes. And especially if the guy that’s mastering it isn’t so musical, he’s just more about total clarity or something, do you know what I mean? David Nerattini: So after this record, you started producing many Brazilian artists. Arto Lindsay That’s true. David Nerattini Like Marisa Monte, Gal Costa, who else? Arto Lindsay Carlinhos Brown, Ilé Aiye. I did a singer from Angola called Waldemar Bastos. David Nerattini But, I think Marisa Monte was probably one of the Brazilian musicians that you helped people all over Europe and the world to discover. Arto Lindsay She was already a huge star in Brazil when she came to me. Her first record was a huge hit and she came to me. Her first record was all cover songs and she wanted to do something more original and connect to her generation, so she came to me. David Nerattini So, your first record was Mais, if I remember well? Arto Lindsay Yeah. David Nerattini And it was not as electronic as the Caetano Veloso album, it was let’s say more funky in some ways. How did you work on that particular record? Arto Lindsay Well, I put to together several bands to cut the tracks with. A New York band and a Brazil band and because I can’t play or program, that’s the way I worked as a producer at that time especially. I would get a band in the studio, we would rehearse the shit out of it in a rehearsal studio, and then we would go cut it in a recording studio as fast as possible. Because as a producer you also have to think about the money, especially when you’re working on that kind of project, which involves going back and forth between several countries. Recording in Brazil, recording in the States, mastering in the States, having it pressed in Brazil, there’s all kinds of issues. You know, vinyl issues. I’m sure you guys are all into vinyl issues, right? But you know, there are a lot of financial considerations, even when you’re working with a big star. You’ve got the singer going, “Oh, let me do it a few more times.” And the record company are like, “It’s good enough, let’s put it out.” So you have to kind of deal with that situation. David Nerattini So in the meantime, while you were doing this Brazilian stuff, you were doing Ambitious Lovers records like this one [holds up record sleeve]. This is just a 12” from
the Lust album [holds up another record sleeve]. So then what happened with Ambitious Lovers? I always believed you had some troubles with your record company because the last album was supposed to be the record for Ambitious Lovers to break through in the market, it seemed like. Arto Lindsay Well, we didn’t have good management and we were kind of victims of record company politics. First, we were beneficiaries of record company politics; we were signed to Virgin and the person that signed us moved to Elektra and took us with her, which is really rare. But she managed to do that, to get us out of one contract and into another contract and everything was good. But then there were problems in Elektra and we were not selling well and they just dropped us. And we had no powerful lawyer or manager to move us around. And we were kind of at the end of our musical tolerance for each other too, so we split up at that point. David Nerattini And you started making solo records. The first one you made wasn’t like the others that came after. That was a guitar solo record for Knitting Factory, if I remember correctly? Arto Lindsay Well, actually somebody asked me to make a bossa nova record for Japan and I said, “Well, ah.” So I tried to make a really quiet record, if not a bossa nova record, and I thought I won’t play guitar on this record but I’ll make a record that’s really guitar heavy. So I made them at the same time. David Nerattini The two sides of your... Arto Lindsay Yeah. David Nerattini So, how did you approach your solo career? You always had a partner with you all through the years. Arto Lindsay Well, I tried to. I couldn’t afford to be a member of a band because I needed to make what little money there was to be made myself. But I wanted to be part of a band again. So I started to put together a group of people and I started to share credit and publishing. I tried to create a group of people and I took these people and put people together that didn’t know each other so that they would make something interesting. I took the Americans to Brazil over and over again so they could learn about Brazil. I brought the Brazilians to America as much as I could, and that’s kind of how I managed my solo career. David Nerattini Probably your best known record of the second part of the ‘90s, Mundo Civilizado, you took an approach to drum & bass or that type of electronic vibe. How did you get in contact with that type of music that is really a European thing and not so popular in America? Arto Lindsay As a producer, even more than a musician, you sort of have to know what everybody’s doing everywhere. It’s just a professional responsibility, and as a touring musician you’re in a position to be in all these places. So everywhere I travel I like to hear what’s going on, what’s new, what kids are doing. So we were aware of drum & bass almost as soon it happened, when it was jungle, when it was just a bunch of crazy Jamaicans in London. David Nerattini Speeding up breakbeats. Arto Lindsay Amphetamines and Cubase or whatever the hell. [laughter] Insane, insane stuff. It was incredible there, and another thing. It was some of the most avant-garde music I’ve ever heard, and that’s another thing that I think is totally silly. There is a lot of downtown New York improvising avant-garde people that think they’re so far ahead of everybody, when often Prince or somebody totally cheesy and popular is actually doing something more interesting and innovative. So you never know where it’s going to come from. So, as far as drum & bass, that’s kind of how we hooked up with that. And that record came out almost at the same time as Everything But the Girl, and they were so much more popular than I was that once they did it, I was like, “I can’t do it any more.” And they did a really good job of it, too, mixing the song form and the drum & bass thing, which is something that happens over and over again. Things kind of split up, instrumental music or electronic music will move in a certain direction and then it’ll get absorbed into the song form and then it will split up again and then it’ll come back again. I’m dying to hear this new Snoop Dogg thing with the mouth clicks. David Nerattini Yeah, “Drop It Like It’s Hot”? Arto Lindsay Yeah, yeah. David Nerattini: [clicks with his mouth] Doing these strange noises? Arto Lindsay Yeah, yeah. David Nerattini That’s a Neptunes track. Arto Lindsay Exactly, yeah. That’s it, but it’s very Virginia, act silly in the studio kind of… whatever it is. That’s one thing I’m looking forward to. They’re somebody that have been incredibly creative on and off for the last few years, right? Some of the shit is terrible and then some of it is just like the newest thing and it’s so exciting. So, you never know. David Nerattini So, on this record together with two other people that I think are pretty important to the economy of the record. They are Vinicius Cantuaria that wrote some songs with you and played on the record with you and DJ Spooky. Arto Lindsay Did you say “to the economy of the record”? David Nerattini Yeah. Arto Lindsay No, I like it, that’s just an interesting way of putting it. David Nerattini You know, sometimes I just translate the Italian way of saying things. Arto Lindsay Yeah, I know. You could’ve said, “the culture of the record,” that to me is equally of its time and place as an expression. David Nerattini So were they important to the development of your solo career? Arto Lindsay Definitely, they were part of the team. Vinicius was... Who was it? Vinicius and who? David Nerattini And DJ Spooky, who made some of the… Arto Lindsay Vinicius was definitely a big part of the group for a while. He no longer is, but… David Nerattini He’s a solo artist right now. Arto Lindsay Yeah, for whatever reason. But Spooky is a friend and a casual collaborator. He was not ever that involved. David Nerattini Not in the programming, the strange drum & bass stuff? Arto Lindsay No, no, no-no-no… We did all that because we wanted… No… David Nerattini So, let’s hear a song from this Mundo Civilizado, it’s called
“Complicity.” (music: Arto Lindsay – “Complicity” / applause) Arto Lindsay [laughs] I remembered something funny about that track. There’s live
percussion, right? It’s in a different time signature, slowly coming in, but
the main “boom“ is like Goldie or something, like right off the record. “Gimme that!” David Nerattini On this record there’s a cover version of “Erotic City” by Prince that has been a hit in this Red Bull Academy in Rome. Everybody was playing it. Ectomorph was playing the track, I played it one day not knowing that he was playing it. Arto Lindsay Really? David Nerattini This track keeps coming around, so why did you choose to make a cover of that particular track that is a b-side? Arto Lindsay Well, you know, you get to say “fuck” over and over again. No, it’s a good song. Audience Member Can we hear it or just a piece of it? Arto Lindsay Yeah, play a little bit of it. David Nerattini Of course. Arto Lindsay Yeah, actually playing pieces of songs would be really swell because it gets really embarrassing after a while. [laughter] Seriously! Just sitting here, what kind of look am I supposed to have while everybody’s listening? Audience Member I just want to know… David Nerattini Yeah, please questions! Audience Member They’re pretty much spoken word pieces that you’re making. Is that why you like hip-hop so much, because it is spoken word music? Arto Lindsay Some of them are. I mean, by chance a lot of them that we played were less melodic. But yeah, there’s one reason I like hip-hop. I mean, hip-hop is undeniable, rhythmically and sonically and lyrically. Audience Member But when you were going to the studio did you have in mind spoken word pieces or harmonies or melodies? Arto Lindsay That song has a melody, but it just doesn’t have too many notes to it. But they’re pretty crucial to the song. Audience Member You’re not actually singing in a traditional sense it’s more spoken word, in that you’re making the rhyme and rhythm with the lyrics that you’re saying. Was that part of the…? Arto Lindsay I think a lot of that has a lot to do with my background as somebody who used to write a lot of poetry in high school and maybe poetry was the first thing that really struck me as being art. That I really understood what it was doing and it really affected me emotionally and then I kind of understood how it was working on me. So, words are really crucial to what I do. Audience Member And when you were writing or composing your poetry, did you actually invent anything different there? Did you find new techniques in your writing that you could then translate into your songwriting? Arto Lindsay It’s harder than you think but I’m working on it. And it’s interesting that you think it’s so much spoken word because I hate spoken word. It’s like, [imitating] “The D train! I’m gonna take the D train!” It’s like, ”Yeah, OK, I feel bad! I feel so bad because nobody likes me because I’m gay. I’m black. I’m a woman. Everybody hates me but I’m really great!” [laughter] You know what I mean? I hate it! [applause] But I love poetry and I love poets reading poetry. Somebody that just reads and lets the words work and doesn’t try to dramatise what the words are saying. There’s nothing like hearing these old, badly recorded… That can be incredibly moving and I like that. And I love hip-hop. Go ahead. Audience Member In your personal opinion, what makes Brazilian music in particular special? Arto Lindsay You know Brazilian music is like American music, it’s African music and European music together. I mean, what are the most exciting musical traditions in the 20th century? Brazilian, American and Cuban. And they’re all like these collision, fusion, miscegenation, right? Brazilian music is one of these musics. Brazil is a very poor country. It’s a place where, until the middle of the 20th century, half the people or sixty percent of the people couldn’t read. So it’s a place where the oral culture is really important. So, music and the level of lyrics is really high in Brazil because you remember lyrics, you sing them again and again and people work on lyrics and they sort of mean more than in a place where everybody reads. These comparisons aren’t
really deep, but if you compare it to America where everybody can read, and then when they sing, they want to go, “Aaarrghhh!” You know, they don’t want to say anything because there’s too many words around. OK, that’s kind of a silly way of putting it, but… Audience Member I was really expecting you to talk about poetry in Brazilian music in particular because of the Portuguese language, which is very different from English and other Germanic and Anglo-Germanic languages. Because these languages are a little too guttural, and Portuguese, just like Italian, has a lot of vowels – open vowels and closed vowels. Arto Lindsay Are you Brazilian? [Arto and Audience Member have a short exchange in Portuguese] Audience Member So I was really expecting you to… Arto Lindsay I think that’s only one part of it because the sound of Portuguese is nicer because of all the open vowels. It’s very... Italian and Japanese have the same vowels, and I think that Yoruba and some of the other languages that came to Brazil with the slaves also have a lot of those open vowels sounds. Audience Member And also the native Brazilian languages. Arto Lindsay That’s right, the Indian languages. English is also very… It’s true to some extent but it’s not completely true. Like German; German has a reputation for being such a stiff, ugly language but if you hear somebody read poetry in German, it’s beautiful, too. There’s not so many, [imitating vowel sounds] “Aah, Oh, Oooh,” but there’s plenty of “err, eh err, eh.” [laughter] Audience Member Sure, but I think that Portuguese is good for singing. It’s a language that’s definitely good for singing. Arto Lindsay Yeah, it has that reputation. Actually, [picks up record sleeve] this is the sleeve to this Ambitious Lovers record, and the guy that did the sleeve was reading a book by Lenin, the Russian, and it says, “Portuguese is the most graceful language and the Portuguese are a most respectful nation.” So in other words, people have been thinking that Portuguese is beautiful for a long time. But Brazilian Portuguese is beautiful. Portuguese Portuguese sounds like Russian. Audience Member My name is Russian, so I understand very well. David Nerattini Sorry, have you guys heard this booty music coming from Brazil? Like Miami bass? Arto Lindsay What are you talking about? Of course, we have! [Arto’s carioca funk interpretation follows / laughter / applause] David Nerattini Even when they’re cursing, it doesn’t sound like bad words. Arto Lindsay Yeah, to you! David Nerattini Of course. Arto Lindsay It sounds like bad words if you understand it. David Nerattini But it’s sweeter than “Fuck!” Arto Lindsay Funky carioca is what you’re talking about, right? It’s interesting that this music first became popular here. OK, first a lot of music journalists heard about this hot, erotic music in Brazil and they went to write about it. I’ve been reading about this in I-D and Fader and shit for years now, but nobody outside of Brazil ever heard the music. The music is really raw, the music is really the experience, you almost have to experience it first and then hear the music. This music became popular in Europe because of a car commercial. You know about this? It was actually some producers from São Paulo who made a song that was on a soundtrack for a movie, right? And some European ad guy heard that, put that in a car commercial here, and it became a huge hit. David Nerattini Yeah, there’s many compilations now. Arto Lindsay Now there are many compilations, but it started with an ad. David Nerattini Very funny Brazilian hip-hop, like Run-D.M.C., very old school, but made now? Arto Lindsay It’s more like a Miami bass kind of beat but the lyrics are just totally basic. It’s just like, “She’s got a big ass! She’s got a big ass! She’s got a big ass! I want to touch it.” [laughter / applause] David Nerattini But in Portuguese, it sounds much better. It sounds sweeter. Arto Lindsay [shrugs] Hey... [repeats the phrase form above in Portuguese] It’s the same! And one of the stars is this woman who really can’t sing at all, she kind of squeaks. Her stage name is Tachi Keberabahaku. Tachi is her name. Keberabahaku means, “She’s gonna knock the house down.” So in other words, when she fucks, she’s so energetic that her little house will fall. And now she’s a big deal with the fashion people and she’s super trendy now. It’s kind of great. [laughter] Audience Member I have a question about those days in New York. You said you were jamming a lot, but then you were performing the stuff, was it a jam-based performance? Arto Lindsay No, no. Actually, it was not jam-based at all. Jamming was jamming and maybe a sound came out of the jam, but we were so careful in both groups, DNA and the Lounge Lizards, everything was really rehearsed. Sometimes it was so different than what people were used to that they thought it was improvised, but it was not improvised. Later on, I started to improvise and play with the improvisers, the kind of European school of improvisers that started in New York around that same time or a little after that. John Zorn, and Fred Frith was British but he lived in New York for all those years. David Moss, Christian Marclay who became more of a visual artist, but this whole group of people that did European-style improvising as opposed to free jazz-style improvising. Audience Member What is the difference? Arto Lindsay Well, free jazz is like you start out playing a song and then you keep going. And European style improvising is you start from zero, you pretend that there are no rules, you do whatever you want to and you don’t talk about it beforehand, it’s more about texture and… Audience Member Spontaneity? Arto Lindsay Well, yeah. Both include ideas of spontaneity, but free jazz is more about opening up a song, or you reach the limits of what you can do with a song and you kind of bust on through. Improvising is much more about… It’s more European, it comes from classical music. Audience Member You have to have a lot of knowledge, a lot of information and then you can play with that? Arto Lindsay It’s more like they have different references and the references are classical. But you know, Derek Bailey, he’s kind of the father of that whole thing, it’s sort of a British thing that then spread all over the place. Audience Member I’m kind of curious about the early ‘80s New York scene with the no-wave stuff that you guys were doing and the stuff you were doing with Bill Laswell. I’m just wondering how insular or how open that scene was? I’ve got a record called Massacre with Fred Frith and Laswell, you probably know about that. I wonder how Laswell went from doing that into working with Herbie Hancock and… Arto Lindsay There’s a guy called Kip Hanrahan who kind of invented what Laswell turned into a trademark. David Nerattini: [waves with Kip Hanrahan record sleeves] I’ve got the record, by the way. Arto Lindsay Oh yeah, yeah. He was this really strange guy, he wanted to be a movie director and then for some reason he decided that he was going to make records like a movie director. And he’s even more of a non-musician than I am. But he put together these really interesting groups with Anton Fier, Fred Frith… David Nerattini Jack Bruce. Arto Lindsay Jack Bruce is the singer on this record. A lot of Cuban percussionists. At that time in New York there was a whole new group of Cubans that came in because – they were called the marielitos. What happened was Fidel [Castro] decided to empty the jails and send those people to Miami. Literally. So, of course, a lot of musicians were in jail for one thing or another. I mean, life is pretty rough in Cuba. So suddenly, there was a whole group of incredible musicians that played a certain way that nobody in New York knew about. They showed up and John Stubblefield was this sax guy that played with Miles [Davis]. And Dom Um Romão, who was this Brazilian percussionist that emigrated outside of Brazil, and me, and Anton Fier, and he just put together these totally heterogeneous groups of people and he would just give you a few images and throw you together. Like Steve Swallow, a lot of incredible kinds of musicians… David Nerattini Arto Lindsay Yeah, but Allen Toussaint was somebody he worked with later, it wasn’t somebody that he threw into the stew. Because Allen Toussaint would have immediately told everybody what to do, being Allen Toussaint. And Laswell was on these sessions and definitely this is where [those] ideas came from. And then Laswell kept doing it in his own way, a lot of people kept doing it in their own ways. And I think [David] Rubinson, who was Hancock’s manager, heard about this stuff. Or maybe Herbie heard about it and put them together. And Bill had also done the Material records, which were not so ethnically diverse. They didn’t have people from all over the place, from all different kinds of music, they were about rock and R&B together with a little bit of
improvisation information. But basically they were much straighter records, what Material were doing. And that’s what attracted Herbie and his manager. Because his manager was pretty influential on Hancock’s career. He produced Headhunters, so he was really involved. He wasn’t just business, his involvement was musical, too. But I don’t know, everybody’s so curious about it. It’s pretty interesting because ten years ago all anybody wanted to talk about was the early 1980s and now it’s kind of amazing, considering that half the people are fucking dead. But it was harsh, everybody was very poor, there was drugs and it was New York, there was heroin and then crack, you know what I’m saying? Youth culture? Fuck youth culture! Get a job! It was a different time and it really has resonated in an interesting way. Not as much as the ’60s. Sometimes I think about the curse of the ’60s, you know? They never leave! OK, everybody should listen to Jimi Hendrix. Every kid has to read [Arthur] Rimbaud and [William S.] Burroughs and [listen to] Jimi Hendrix. OK, that’s great, but does everybody have to go through a Doors period or something? [laughter] Stylistically, we all look like all the stuff is hand-me-downs from the ’60s. It’s odd. I don’t know what that means. Audience Member Would you say that about the Strokes now? Arto Lindsay The Strokes, definitely. I heard the Strokes record now and I was like, “Dude, this is like low-rent Television,” or something. Bad Television, without the chops. But then I heard the Strokes live and then I loved them and I went back, so now I can enjoy the record. They’re a great live band. Obviously they just rehearse like idiots. Just rehearse, rehearse, rehearse because they sound incredible live. And they’re all pretty good, but as a band they’re really exciting. There are a lot more adventurous groups doing that sort of neo-’80s stuff. I mean, I like that band Chk Chk Chk [!!!] or whatever, you know what I’m talking about? And I love that guy, what’s his name? The producer that did “I’m Losing My Edge.” Audience Member Arto Lindsay Yeah, that’s pretty great. Pretty funny, right? It’s rare that a record is… Yeah Yeah Yeahs are great. I mean, there’s a lot of good bands in New York, this has been a good period for New York again. Audience Member When I heard the Golden Palominos, just what was played before, I heard a lot of stylistic similarity to Public Image Ltd or Talking Heads. Did you guys have any rapport or communication with them? Arto Lindsay Yeah, I would say yeah. Not that they were that close or anything but I knew David Byrne for a long time since then and we both worked with Eno. And I knew Johnny Lydon very slightly. We all knew him slightly. Laswell produced a Public Image record at some point, which was a great Public Image record. I loved that Public Image record, listened to it a lot. Or their records. Talking Heads were not a passion of mine at that time but definitely Public Image was an influence, you know what I mean? And there was a rivalry between London and New York. Who invented punk? And then Public Image got all this attention, “Hey, we were doing that first!” But just because the guy’s a fucking rock star. Then everybody writes about him, so there was a healthy rivalry. I actually think rivalry is really helpful when you’re starting out. Audience Member Why is that? Arto Lindsay It’s a deep subject because if you keep going, you end up with war. But on the other hand, when you’re young, you want to see how fast you can run and you want to run faster than your brother or something. I think it’s a good thing; competition can be a healthy thing. You want to jump higher. I mean, this is good. Audience Member Do you think it helps you consolidate your style? Arto Lindsay Yeah, it helps you consolidate your style, it’s good for concentration, it’s a reason to try harder and all these things. Audience Member Like a rebel for the cause? Arto Lindsay [laughs] Yeah! David Nerattini Anybody else? Audience Member Hi, listening to your story about all the music and whatever you’ve produced, I can understand that you have your strong personality printed on your music in a sense, but there is a change through musical styles. So throughout those years, we’re talking about decades by now, what’s the musical style that has affected you in the deepest way? Arto Lindsay Affected by or... ? Audience Member Yeah, affected by. Arto Lindsay The musical style that affected me the most? Audience Member If I could ask you another way: What sort of music would you be proud to say you make? Arto Lindsay As a musician, I feel that I wouldn’t want to define my music, I would want to feel free to make a lot of different kinds of music and I think that’s a function of being part of the record generation. In other words, I heard all kinds of music all my life and so I feel that they’re all natural to me. I didn’t grow up in a little town where we only made one kind of music that was for this festival on this day or whatever. I heard all this music since I was a kid, so it all seems natural. I think the music that affects you most is the music you hear as a teenager, because you use it to construct yourself with, even more than the music you hear when you’re a kid. When you’re a teenager everything is wrapped up. Your desire to be different, your desire to be liked, to find a group you’re part of, to be different than another group, to explain yourself to yourself. Music is also functional, it makes it easier to have sex. You go into a room with a bunch of people, you’re young, what do you want?! So you go in, it’s like, “Boom! Boom! Boom!” You’re like, “Uggh! Uggh! Uggh!” Hey! You’re halfway there, you know what I’m saying? [laughter] Or you go home and it’s like, “Da da dee da da da da,” it’s like “Oh!” [laughter] It’s very functional as a practical, it’s like, “Hey! Beer! Hey cellphone! Hey computer!” You know, music also helps you dream; it takes you away and it brings you back. Whatever, music, blah blah blah. So the music you hear when you’re a teenager is really important. So for me, I would say Hendrix, something like that. And Miles Davis, Caetano [Veloso], [Rolling] Stones, the Beatles, all of those things when I was like, “Wow! What is this?” You know what I mean? Something else that’s different now is there was a lot less music, a lot less recorded music in the ’60s. So every record you got, man, you listened to that thing over and over and over again and you sucked everything out of that record, and now there’s a gazillion records everywhere. Plus records on TV and then when you walk outside everywhere music, music. [imitating] “Tiki cheka tiki cheka waaahhh!” You know what I mean? One more wimpy, fake hip-hop beat and you want to vomit. It’s different. Audience Member And this ocean of abundant music, is this something that you find interesting? Arto Lindsay I find it all interesting and I think music is strong and it’ll win out, something will happen. There’s already interesting reactions going on to this situation. This, what I’m describing, didn’t start today. It’s been building up and a reaction builds up with it. Wow! [points to the ceiling] The crow wants to ask a question. Do you hear it? “Nyaaarghhh!” Audience Member Just a tangent question about Brian Eno, did you know or have anything to do with the group of African musicians that made the Edikanfo record that also came out on Editions EG that a lot of your records came out on? Arto Lindsay No, what’s the name of the record? Oh, the new one? Audience Member No, it’s really old and it’s on EG and it’s a Brian Eno-produced Afrobeat record from the early ’80s. Arto Lindsay No, I don’t know anything about it. But it just sounded like the name of a record that just came out on Crammed, which is this African electronic record, which is these dudes in the Congo [called Konono No. 1] and I believe Kinshasa that play thumb pianos and they built their own amplifiers and microphones and stuff. So you listen to the record and it sounds like electronic music and then you see how
they made it, it’s a very cool record. David Nerattini The kalimba? Arto Lindsay Kalimba, yeah. It’s kind of like soundsystem music. There’s this music in Brazil where they make these incredible soundsystems in Belém. It’s kind of amazing they make this wall, as big as this wall, all built of old electronic equipment and embedded in there is their soundsystem — which is a potent soundsystem — but just to make it look good they have tons of old cassette players and boom boxes and everything is turned on, all the lights are flashing. It’s home-made and it’s gorgeous. David Nerattini So, soundcheck is waiting for you. Arto Lindsay Yes, that’s right. David Nerattini So let’s thank Mr. Arto Lindsay!