Casey Spooner: Fischerspooner

It's different every record. It's actually not that hard when I have time, and it's also naturally the way I think because I come from a performance and visual arts background. A lot of times when I'm writing music, I'm thinking about what it looks like or I'm imagining how to perform it, so there's sort of an organic process that's happening.

The thing that was weird on this record was, all the other records I would write and I would almost have an image library. With Odyssey, I had an incredibly extensive, super organized catalog of images that would be [in] folders that related to specific songs, folders that related to specific production design, wardrobe or photography or graphic design. So when I had to go work on those elements, I would just send a reference library, a style guide, and people would have that to work from.

On this record, I didn't write that way. I wrote, for the first time almost language first, and not image. So, there was a bit of a crisis as the record was finishing because I did not have an image in my head 'cause I had done something very different on this record.

I wrote many of the songs title first only. For about a year I was trying to start the record and the only thing I could do was write titles. Then I was like, that's a good little system, because I sort of over-wrote on Odyssey. I was so panicked and I wanted to be so great, and wanted to do the best I possibly could, that I just basically made like a phone book-sized journal that was so impossible to manage or to edit or to find anything -- there are images of me on the floor of the studio with a thousand pages around me. It got too big. So I was like, OK, I'm going to write in a different way. I'm going to write just titles first, and when I hear music that I feel connects to the core theme of a title, then I'll get into structuring the language within the song.

Also, I've been doing this production of Shakespeare while I was writing the record. I would be writing while I was in rehearsal or writing while I was touring, so it kind of opened me up. Warren and I have had a lot of fights in the past about simple rhyme. I despise really simplistic rhyme, and I always would avoid it in songwriting because I felt that I was compromising the concept of what I was saying in order to satisfy an arbitrary structure. So I always resisted rhyme aggressively.

For instance with "Happy," I had written a crazy, weird, wordy chorus, which ultimately Linda Perry cleaned up, and put it into more simple rhyme structure -- just because I refused to do it. Warren and I would fight about it. He would be like, "Can't you just make it rhyme!" So, after working on Shakespeare, I started to value the power of something that could be meaningful and rhyme.

Yes. So I started writing differently on this record. When it came time to make the image I was in a bit of a panic, so for this cycle what we did is we did a couple of workshops with The Wooster Group. They gave us some stuff, we had some ideas, and we just kind of all threw it into these workshops, and that kind of set us on a trajectory that ultimately helped us start to develop the image.

Not quite. I mean Warren takes so long to finish the songs. Its like basically the idea was there, but structurally it could shift, but we had a general sense of what things were like.

The thing that was very different about this record also is that we continued to perform while we were working on it. Every summer we've gone out and done a couple of shows, and every summer we'd put in new songs no matter what state they' were in. We had written choreography for ten songs a year and a half ago. The whole show was written in a very traditional pop sense [by] summer 2008. We had projections done, we had choreography done, we had wardrobe done, we had all these elements already done. Then we kind of took that stuff into the [Wooster Group's Performing Garage] and then found a way to kind of interrupt it or infect it or kind of take it apart or push it in a completely different direction.

One of the things that we did that was very different is that we've been using video for the first time to kind of influence the choreography. Vanessa Walters, who's our choreographer, she would have written choreography from start to finish. Then, we went in to the Garage, [The Wooster Group] just gave us the space, and there happened to be a video camera and a monitor there, and we were playing with them just because they were there, and it ended up being a big influence on us.

We videotaped the choreography of one of the songs that was already written, and I accidentally didn't turn the mic on. We wanted to see what it looked like, and I was like, "Oh, we'll just play the music from this source and you just hit play on the camera, and then the music will play and we'll see the choreography then we'll know how it looks." We did that, and it was this weird accident where the choreography actually offset from the music because of course it was not in sync.

It was kind of a breakthrough because the choreography was in time and it was thematic to the music but there was this tension where the music would change and the dance wouldn't change. Or the dance would change and the music wouldn't. Then Vanessa started doing this crazy thing where she started trying to queue the dance up to the music, and she started rewinding and fast-forwarding the video and it started making these weird kind of glitches in the movement that were incredible.

So basically we went through all the choreography and we did the same treatment to all the choreography in the entire show where we remixed it using these video interruptions, then that was turned into choreography, and then that was learned. A lot of times we would actually write it, video tape it, stored it, put the distortion tape onto a monitor, have dancers copy the distortion tape, video tape that and then turn that distortion tape into the final choreography.

So there was a very peculiar way of trying to find a way to integrate pop music and dance in a completely new way that wasn't about the count, and it wasn't about style, and it wasn't about ration. It was more about finding dynamic tension in chaos. So that's one way the show is different from the album.

The first one I actually wrote for this record is the last song on this record, "To The Moon." I was a bit baffled because I had been immersed in Shakespeare and I didn't feel like I had a song written yet and I just started doing one of the scenes that I knew from the show. It's this line from Laertes to Ophelia, it's this parting when he's leaving Ophelia, and he's telling her to not have a relationship with Hamlet. His last line to her is, "The chariest maid is prodigal enough / If she unmask her beauty to the moon." Somehow I just locked onto that "to the moon" phrase and then I built an entire song. That was the thread when I left Hamlet and started the record.

It's kind of a sexy gastronomic song. I always loved the term "Amuse Bouche." It was always envisioned as like a lost Prince song. I can imagine Prince doing a song called "Amuse Bouche" that was all about eating and sex. Also, I liked the pun about taste, which then becomes about aesthetics. I love the first line because it sounds like a jingle to me. Like [sings] "It's a taste of the unexpected." That sounds like a commercial for MacDonald's or something.

The interesting thing about that song, is there are two tracks on the record that Warren programmed after the first record and before the second. "Amuse Bouche" was one of them, the other was "We Are Electric." They were two things that he'd programmed that I'd always, always loved. I had written a version of "Amuse Bouche" with the band, but he didn't like the music, so I took the melody and I ripped them off another song and then I just transposed them over an old track that I really, really wanted to try and save. I did the same thing again with "We Are Electric." I took a song idea and put it on top of a track that I liked that had been sitting around for a while.

Oh great.

Interesting. Actually I'm talking about money. I'm talking about how currency doesn't have the things that we have. "Ain't got no arms, ain't got no legs, ain't got no eyes, ain't got no head." It has no intelligence, it has no perception, it has no physical extremities. It's a little bit saying money sucks, money's lame. Money can't do what we can do.

Well the funny thing was I wrote that song two years ago. I mean it's kind of incredible because I wrote it about my own personal crisis -- I just feel like the world caught up to me. I wrote that in the spring of 2006.

Oh, yeah, for sure. We were just trying to survive.

Ugh! Tell me about it. I'm basically running a community service group over here.

Exactly. You just put the nail on the head. But you know, I'm addicted. It's like my drug. I can't do anything else. It's like artistically, I think, OK, I'm just going to kill this whole thing, and I'm going to go be an actor. Or I'm going to go be a painter, or I'm just going to go be a musician. And when I try to go do just one of those things it just is always unfulfilling. It's all about this collision of all these things coming together that's the only thing that excites me and feels relevant.

Exactly. I need it all. I need sensuality, I need intelligence, I need expression, I need physicality.

Yeah. There was a point a couple of years ago where honestly I didn't know if I was going to make another record with Warren. I didn't know how my personal life was going to pan out. I wasn't happy where I was professionally on every level, every person I was partnered with. There was just this moment where I felt like my entire life was an imploding disaster. I didn't know what I was going to do next, and so I kind of went to The Wooster Group as a refuge. I needed to go some place where I didn't have to be responsible, where I didn't have to create the opportunities, where I didn't have to know the budget, the schedule, and I didn't even have to be artistically responsible. I could just show up and be a performer.

I was incredibly frustrated because I had worked two years on this huge record and I was only able to perform for three months. And the two years I worked on the record was the longest period I ever spent not performing, and it made me a very unhappy person. So I went to The Wooster Group as a refuge, it was also what I felt my career was supposed to be. I thought I was going to be like Spaulding Grey or William Dafoe or Kate Valk. I thought I was going to have this kind of unique career as an artist and a performer that would be a hybrid between a visual artist and an actor. And I did have that but it just felt like the whole thing turned in on itself.

I was really driven by this project [Fischerspooner] because I like that we started as a performance art piece about entertainment that ultimately became legitimate entertainment. I like the fact that we were raising all these questions about what is performance art and what is pop music and when entertainment is entertainment not art and when is art not entertainment, and what does context mean. What does it mean to do the same thing in a museum as in a concert? Just raising all these questions about meaning and art and entertainment.

Sure. But some people would say that it is. Those are the questions. Why not? Yes. No. Can it? Does it? Will it? And how art ultimately becomes entertainment. The things that were once seen as artistic or transgressive or revolutionary ultimately become absorbed into culture and become status quo. There's this constant growth and renewal, and process of evolution with what is considered artistic and what is considered entertaining.

The thing that I made a big mistake on is that I thought I could build one artistic body of work and supply it to two business models, one was the art world and one was the music world, the entertainment business. What happened was I got myself in this weird situation where conceptually everything was working but in terms of a business model it was a complete disaster. It was so naïve of me to think I could actually conquer two industries simultaneously. Ultimately I came to realize that the art world and the business of art is driven by engineering value by limiting access to creative product. Entertainment is about engineering value by dispersing as much creative product. So the two things that I was kind of participating in, and trying to raise questions about, and trying to build a business off of were directly in competition with each other.

Exactly. I couldn't get the president of Capitol Records to talk to our art gallery, and I couldn't get our art gallery to talk to the record label. But meanwhile, they both had resources, and I was working in both worlds, and they could have both benefited from partnering together,

I thought that it could be almost like taking the idea of Duchamp that goes through the ideas of Warhol that manifest themselves in the ideas of Jeff Koons. I thought I could take that to the next level, and really blur and create a business by integrating all these ideas conceptually and fiscally. But, instead, basically it was like conceptual perfection equaled career suicide. The more successful I was creatively the more I destroyed the infrastructure that was helping me create work. So that was a disaster -- that was one of the disasters I was facing upon starting this record.

You know, honestly, I'm ignoring the same problems again. It's a little bit different now because we're not partnered with the same people in the same way. We've kind of had to reinvent ourselves, and the infrastructure that is basically manifesting all this work is not the same as it was before. So we're working in a way that's kind of back to where we started from where it's very independent. We basically self-finance everything so I don't have to answer to anyone, and I don't have to explain.

The thing that was good for me was to go back to experimental theater and back to where I thought my career should be. It really kind of invigorated my belief in the conceptual aspects of this project, and how it is such a rare opportunity for me to be able to participate in all these things that interest me at the same time that I couldn't do if I chose to go in a more traditional career path. So it kind of gave me the strength to come back to what I had considered a lost cause.

The thing that's been quite nice also is that I've had the experience now of working in very grassroots experimental theater. I've had the opportunity to work on a major label album release. I have worked were we've self-released, we've done mid-sized independent, we've done large. I basically participated in all these different methods of producing creative work and distributing it. They're all successful in ways, and they're all flawed in ways, so, in a strange way, it kind of makes me feel more relaxed because I know there's nowhere better than where you are. There's no perfect scenario. I'm kind of comfortable just solving the problems that are before me instead of struggling to go run out and find bigger / worse / different / better problems.

Well "The Best Revenge," it's just that cliché. They say the best revenge is living well. The question is, what does that mean? Success does not necessarily mean living well.

Exactly. I had the blessing of actually having dreams come true. This is the thing I hate about clichés -- basically there's truth in them. That's really what the song is about also, to me. It's such a cliché the song. That's the thing that's sort of fascinating about entertainment is you're trying to constantly reinvent the same thing. You're trying to reiterate the same clichés, you're trying to redo the same format of a song -- that's the thing that's quite incredible and awful.

It's this form that everyone can engage in, that everyone can decipher, that has a method of distribution, everyone has a dialog with them, everyone knows what they are, there's just something fascinating about songs. That's ultimately what the project is about, how you make a song, how do you make another song -- and does the world need another song? I mean, how do you make a song about a cliché? So "The Best Revenge" is a cliché about clichés.

I think just because I've been so immersed in experimental theater and been reinvigorated to engage in that form of theater again, the shows are much more about staging, they're more about image, they're more about performance. They're more like experimental theater than they are like a rock show.

Odyssey was really about being on Capitol, which was this icon of classic American music, trying to embrace that cliché and find a way to embody it and infiltrate it and take it apart at the same time. This is less about that. It's a bit of a return to the avant-garde for us.

There's a lot of dance, there's a lot of costumes, there's a lot of video, there's more of a sonic and visual collage that goes with everything. We're in the process of finishing it right now so there's a lot of things that are up in the air, but every time we do a body of work it's a different incarnation. But I want to make something that's more in the tradition of Grace Jones or Laurie Anderson.

This performance, it's kind of glamorous, it's kind of enigmatic. You really just want people to enjoy it. You want it to feel fresh and exciting, and in order to do that you constantly have to find new ways to engage in the same things. That's really what entertainment is -- when it's successful it's the same thing in a new way.

I have to enjoy it in a different way.

Odyssey opened up a spectrum for us, it opened another range of things that we could do, and now there's just a broader spectrum. So we can have live instruments or we can [choose not to] have live instruments. The way people look at musical performance is just not even part of the way we think about performance. It's just like making a play, making a performance where it's about the ideas of the body of work, and just being completely cavalier with whatever you need to do to execute that idea.

I guess the one thing that I think I want to make sure people don't expect is... it's not gong to be like...because the last time we toured North America, it was off the first record and I was really disappointed that we weren't able to tour Odyssey in North America. I feel like everybody is kind of expecting what we did six years ago. It's not the same kind of turn-of-the-millennium, exploding glitter, apocalyptic, punk celebration of excess. This show is a bit more restrained and kind of more mature. It's more about form...

I know. I hate that. I try to tailor my language for the audience I'm talking to so I don't come off as some pompous art school asshole.

Like I [follow] Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies [on Twitter], which I love. One of them the other day was, "Say what you mean in the clearest language possible," and that is what I'm trying to do. But it's really hard. It's hard to describe music with words. I hate reading reviews of music. They can't tell you what it really sounds like.

Yeah. Exactly. So ask me in six years and I'll give you a clear answer.

Entertainment comes out May 5. For tour dates go to Fischerspooner.com.