To me, the group is an ideal and you’re representing an ideal. At least, it was with my generation, because we were obsessed with the purity of ideal.

You imagine that they care as much as you do about what you do and your role. When you’re in a band, no matter what your band, you imagine that you’re very important and that people really care deeply about you and your role. I’d done a lot of interviews, and this made me appreciate the role of the interviewer, which I never had before I thought a good interview was because of the subject. When I started, I had no experience interviewing. Svenonius spoke about Chain’s 2nd album, Music’s Not For Everyone, (out this February on K Records), as well as causing us to wonder who we really are based upon our musical tastes.Ĭan you talk about your experience hosting the Soft Focus talk show? Has learning about the stories and motivations of other artists caused you to reflect upon yourself, yet, upon your own work?

punk (The Nation of Ulysses), the dynamic front man has leapfrogged to/from a half dozen projects through the years, most notably in the late 1990s with the funked-up soul punk collective The Make-Up, through the early 2000s as the more-rock-oriented Weird War, and, now, most recently, fronting the sardonic, gangly garage funk of Chain & the Gang, bolstered by a caravan of K Records players, including, at one time, Calvin Johnson. As he did with his 2006 rock ‘n’ roll manifesto, The Psychic Soviet, the quintessential gospel punk cut-up (who, as a veritable filing cabinet of facts is able to spout nostalgic tidbits about the Titanic’s disco-ball, to soberer facts from Napoleon’s battle with Spain), is able to chart illuminating implications about the experience, tradition, and power of music, and the blurry lines between culture and imperialism.Ĭut from the cloth of late-1980s D.C. Incorrigibly contemplative, Svenonius has distinguished himself as a provocative cognoscente, able, so casually, to pour out perspectives upon music that seem more attuned to those of sociologist. Ian Svenonius spent almost an hour talking with Tiny Mix Tapes about identity, and we’re still not sure who he really is.

Nation of ulysses