Once Upon a Time in Chinatown:
Pavement vs. Andy Richter - (Part 2)
from Raygun, May 1997
Andy: Well. it was the producer, and that guy, Angus Young's older brother, and he produced AC/DC albums, too. But I remember nightmare parties were, you know, that high school-- "Why am I here getting drunk? I could go home"-- but you can't go home because why go home? And somebody played "Jamie's Cryin'" literally 20 times in a row and just thinking, "Oh my God. Get me out of here."
Stephen: I might have been one of those guys.
Bob: Did you have zero friends?
Andy: No, I was actually fairly popular, but in terms of my musical taste....
Bob: See, I had one guy.
Andy: That you could talk to about music? I have an older brother and I could talk to my brother, but I kind of was the one who went out and found things. I just don't have the energy anymore.
Stephen: It's hard.
RG: You're still like that, though.
Stephen: Oh, I am sort of a fanboy, but maybe not for, like, the new REM album or something. I'll be happy about it, but I'm more into finding things, just weird things. It's like a hobby, I guess.
Andy: A lot of bands don't give you any reason to listen to them. There's so many bands that I just feel like, "Why do you think I should listen to you? You don't really give any sort of personality and the singer doesn't really sing very well..."
Stephen: Sounds like us.
Andy: We went and saw Man or Astroman? and there were two opening acts, and the first one, I don't remember their name and I wouldn't say if I did, but they were sort of plaintive, heartfelt, strum, strum, strum, strum, strum, change, strum, strum, strum, strum, and there was a girl guitarist who would turn her band to the audience when she had to play a solo, and I was just like, "Now that's just not right! Come on! Don't hide that from me!"
Stephen: Wait a second.
Andy: Why?
Stephen: I tend to do that myself.
Andy: Oh really?
Stephen: But it's because I'm trying to hear, actually.
Bob: The Jesus and Mary Chain started that.
RG: It's a Miles Davis thing, too.
Stephen: Yeah, it's related to some classic great musicians. Sometimes, though, the front row just scares you.
Andy: But don't you feel guilty that you're not giving a show?
Stephen: Um, that's why we have five people in our band, I feel like...
Andy: You can share the focus.
Stephen: Yeah, I just figure if I'm turning my back for awhile, someone else in the band is doing something weird. When i watch bands I watch drummers anyway. I really think singers are kind of boring to watch. For me, I have so much to do. I mean, it it's Johnny Cash, he just strums G and C, you know, it's all plank, plank, and it's really in the voice and the singing, but I'm just trying to survive up there, you know?
RG: I'm always amazed by how much you're doing. How do you pay attention to all of it?
Bob: He's doing like two-thirds of it. I don't do anything, so that's why I'm supposed to be the visual. I have no responsibilities.
Andy: Your role in the band, I think, is sort of like my role at my job.
Bob: Sit back and gauge what needs to be done.
Andy: Yeah, I mean, and it's not even so much the stuff that actually happens in the hour we're taping. It's like, I feel it's part of my job description to, you know, throw trash cans into important meetings, and to...
Bob: Keep it wacky.
Andy: Yeah.
Bob: You've been with that show from the very start of it...
Andy: From the very beginning yeah.
Bob: Which was what year? '92?
Andy: '93. Actually, i was the first writer hired. I was hired originally as a writer, so I was there for two weeks, sitting in an empty office.
Bob: Was it your idea to go onto the show?
Andy: No. Well, I had been acting and there was this implicit promise, kind of, "Well, we'll find something for you to do."
Bob: Are you pretty good friends with Conan?
Andy: Yeah, pretty good.
Bob: Were you before the show?
Andy: I had never met him. We had a lot of mutual friends, and eventually I'm sure I would have met him, just because there isn't that many people producing comedy. (laughs) You know, it's like the same very select gene pool that just kind of floats around. When I was sort of wondering whether you can make a living at this, I thought, "Wow, there's so many people out there clambering," but, no, it's sort of the same list of 20 just filtering around in the backwash.
Stephen: Were you a comedian or an actor?
Andy: Actor, improv. I started out in improv. The main thing to me was that, "Oh, wow, there's all these funny people that are spontaneously funny. Funny in the way that I'm interested in being funny."
Stephen: Right.
Andy: "And they're serious about it , you know? Serious about being funny, and, hey, I get to hang out with them."
(Stephen peels a Levi's sticker from his jeans and sticks it on the table.)
Andy: New Pants!
Bob: This is our Levis sponsorship. (Laughs) I'm doing my part. I'm wearing my new Levis pants, 505s.
RG: You are kidding, right?
Stephen: No, we just pulled that off. Just in Europe. They're just going to put Levis on the side of our tour bus. And on the flyers.
RG: They should paint the whole bus.
Stephen: Yeah...like those jeeps that are painted like denim with stitching.
RG: I hate to bring this up, but isn't it kind of like a sell-out, man?
Bob & Stephen: Yeah.
Bob: So what?
Stephen: It's in Germany.
Bob: It's Levis.
Stephen: There's nothing to sell out in Germany, because we don't make any money there.
Bob: The government takes all your money there anyway, so you might as well get some free pants.
Stephen: Yeah, so we're just trying to like break even on our tour by using this.
Bob: And we got free clothes. We needed the clothes.
Stephen: We definitely do.
RG: You can't go wrong with Levis.
Bob: Yeah, they're solid.
Stephen: The cords are nice.
Andy: There is that amazing kind of rock thing about selling out or not selling out.
Stephen: British people don't care at all.
Andy: When you try to do some sort of creative endeavor, to me, it always seemed like the whole point is communicating it. And. you know, there's a balance between being...
Stephen: Crass about it.
Andy: Yeah, between being Jonathan Richman and being Michael Jackson. But still: so you get more people to hear what you're doing, what's so wrong with that?
Bob: It does cheapen it. Let's say you've got a song, say, I really like that song by Canned Heat, "On the Road Again" or something. But you just start associating it with a beer commercial and it does ruin the song.
Stephen: If you ever play that album again, it's like totally ruined, so, if you do something like a major-league commercial, the associations can be awful. And so it goes down to like, a fan, they see you getting bigger, and they see this person next to them that wasn't at the earlier shows, and it's like this dumb person in their eyes, like not from their social background, with Copenhagen and a backwards baseball cap, and they're going to be mad.
Bob: All we've ever gotten are a couple of free pairs of Converse shoes. Well, actually we got five or six items each from Levis, and most of them are all the wrong sizes and colors (laughs). So I certainly don't feel like a sell-out.
Andy: Well, if they're from Germany, you probably got lots of salmon Levis, you know. And mauve denim jackets.
Bob: Black actually. Everyone just wears black in Germany.
RG: Or brown shirts.
Stephen: And tight, high-crotched pants.
RG: One last note on the commercial thing. I don't know if any of you watch "Friends," but they sort of stole part of "Rattled by the Rush" for incidental music. It's really disconcerting.
Stephen: I heard it, too. I'm guilty of watching "Friends".
Bob: What is it, just like in the show somewhere?
Stephen: You know how like on "Seinfeld" -- boom bloom boom...?
Bob: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Stephen: It's like one of those things.
Andy: Transitional music. Well you should get your high-powered lawyers on it.
Stephen: Have you done any commercials or anything?
Andy: Well, I do voice-over stuff. I won't do any Arthur S. DeMoss foundation commercials. But, you know, I've advertised GMC Auto Parts, I've advertised Reach toothbrushes, and I just feel like, you know, I read this thing, and I make and absurd amount of money. Not like a million dollars, but an absurd amount of money for stopping off for half an hour on my way to work.
Stephen: It doesn't feel like work.
Andy: You know, there is a downside to it, and there is work involved.
Bob: Is there a lot of pressure? Like, if you don't mind me asking, how are you guys doing?
Stephen: They're doing well.
Andy: We're doing real well now. There was a tremendous amount of pressure, but I don't let that kind of thing...To me, I feel like I'm a hired hand.
RG: You were kind of the focal point of criticism at first, weren't you?
Andy: We all were. You know, the entertainment media, no offense, is a real smoke and mirrors show of making something out of nothing. And when the late night wars started, I think that there was this collective, "Oh my God, something to write about. Oh thank god." And so they focused on it. And then when we went on the air, one of the most telling things to me was that they were writing shitty things about us, but they were also submitting writing samples to our show, trying to get a job on the show.
Stephen: That's the music problem, too. A lot of interviewers, you know, they want to be in your band secretly, or they're just frustrated musicians...
RG: I gave you my tape, right?
(laughter)