RR: Over the last 15 years, there have been many side projects involving various Biscuits’ band members. Are you planning on some new things to do this year beyond any documented side projects?
AM: Always. Always. I have nothing strictly in the pipeline yet, but I’ve been writing a lot of different electro stuff, recently, and I’ve had some thoughts of putting together an Aron Magner DJ set, which is kind of cool. I’m starting to think of what material I would want to start DJing, and how I would go about doing it—setting up my computer, and all my different gadgets, and have a whole bunch of interfaces there. I’d have to learn how to use a DJ mixer, and start to DJ some of this material, as well. It is something that I’m personally thinking about on the horizon soon.
With these side projects that we do, part of it is that I love playing with the Biscuits, I love the music that we play, I love the melodies that Jon comes up with, Marc’s been fucking killing it on the bass, of recent, and Allen’s a monster of a drummer, and I love playing with the Biscuits, but it’s always refreshing to play with other people, and do other things, as well. You learn a little bit more of yourself as a musician. You learn other people’s tricks of the trade, as well. Playing even like these Join shows with Jamie Shields, who I revere and respect so much as a musician, yet alone as a good friend of mine, I learned so much from his masterful control of his keyboards, keyboards that are not meant to have that much variety of sound, yet it always amazes me that he continues to get new and interesting tones out of his keyboards. My keyboards are setup to have an infinite amount of tones—digital boards that have 4,000,000 different presets, and 70,000 different buttons you can press. His main keyboard is his Moog, and it isn’t setup to do that much, and yet, his masterful control allows him to really dial in some of the most interesting tones I’ve ever heard, and the most beautiful melodies that he consistently comes up with. It’s great to play with other musicians like Jamie Shields because you learn more about music, and you learn more about how you can develop as an artist by learning from other people, as well. It’s just fun. Like I’ve said, I’ve been playing tennis with the Biscuits for the last 15 years, and I know their strengths and their weaknesses, and I still love it, but it’s always fun to get out on the court with somebody else, and you don’t know what their backhand is going to be like, and you don’t know what their forearm is going to be like. You don’t know the tricks that they’re going to start pulling out of their pockets. To me, that’s fun, and that’s the point of side projects.
And then, you come back to your main project, and you can start to associate all that stuff. It’s the same way with Conspirator. When Marc and I started Conspirator in ’05, we learned so much about electronic music, and how to incorporate these electronic tones and even computers back into our setup. Or, for that matter, how to take some of these songs that were written in an “acoustic way,” and then, suddenly, transfer that over to the electronic world, which we did in Conspirator, and we were able to bring that thought process back over to the band, and the Biscuits benefited from it. So, to me, it’s only positive things that come from side projects. And, at the end of the day, they’re just fun.
RR: Right. An artist should always fight complacency, too. For example, when I listen to Planet Anthem, I can hear the band conquering that vibe quite well, while also creating enjoyable music. Now, there are fans that are put off by the new material because of its diversity and, in some cases, accessibility. In this instance, is this a case where the longtime listener has become complacent, and not the artist?
AM: I think that whenever you put new music out into the world that…you know, any kind of change is always kind of difficult to accept regardless of what it is—a life change that you have to deal with, or whether it’s an artistic change from a band whose sound you’re used to, and then, it sounds a little bit different, or the songs are even different. What’s interesting is that whenever we put out new songs into our catalogue, inherently the listener closes themselves off—most listeners; not all, but at least some closes themselves off because they just want to hear the older material, the material that you know. And I know that because I’ve been fans of other bands, and I’m at a concert and they’re playing new songs, and you just want to hear the old songs. It is the bane of existence for classic rock artists. Nobody wants to go out and hear a new Who album. They want to hear “Pinball Wizard.”
What’s interesting is that these new songs—people just want to hear “Cricket,” but at one point, “Cricket” was a new song, and people just wanted to hear “Basis [for a Day].” Now, “Cricket” is an old song and classic and huge in the same way that all these songs on Planet Anthem —“On Time” is no longer going to be the new song when the next batch of songs comes in, and “On Time” is going to become the classic that everybody can’t wait to hear, the song that you bury for a month or two, and then, rip back out again, and everybody’s so glorified that they were able to catch their “On Time.”
It’s a Catch-22.
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