A Conversation with Janis Ian (continued)
PM: I've read both installments of your article "The Internet Debacle" twice now. That's amazing, all the thought, the research that you put into that.
JI: Well, that's why I'm not writing for the magazine anymore. It just takes up too much time.
PM: Yeah. And how long have you not been writing for the mag [Performing Songwriter], because my subscription ran out, I'm embarrassed to say.
JI: Oh, it must've been right after that follow-up article. I've done a couple of one-offs for them, but that was it.
PM: Does that fascinating two-part article continue to generate correspondence and controversy?
JI: Yes, kind of an absurd amount of it. It's terrible to say, but I'm totally over it. [laughs] I mean, nobody in my camp expected anything to come of it. It's just another article. So when our website hits suddenly shot up--we had 60,000 hits one day--I went, "Oh!" [sighs]
PM: 60,000 hits in one day?
JI: Yeah, yeah. We were slashed on it. But that was the worst of it. The main hassle for me was just that I really have always answered all my e-mail. So to answer 300, 400 e-mails a day, sitting in the car--I had to switch from AOL to Earthlink because AOL kept insisting I was spamming.
PM: I've been there.
JI: But it has led to some cool things. I got to go to the CES Convention, and got to meet Congressman Boucher and Congressman Doolittle, and do a press conference with them, so there's some cool stuff. It's an ongoing problem, as we all know.
PM: Yeah. And we don't even know what corners it's about to turn. I mean, certainly if you talk to the fifteen to twenty-five set, it's one thing, and if you talk to the under sixteen set, it's quite another.
JI: Absolutely, absolutely. And I think for the over forty, over fifty set, it is entirely another.
PM: Yes. It seemed to me when I was talking to kids who were sixteen to twenty-five that they're just sick of paying 19 bucks for CDs, and that's why they're downloading by and large.
JI: Yeah. That's not a real good argument to me. You know, it's really mysterious that it has nothing to do with what things cost, ultimately--except of course from a consumer point of view. "If you're going to give me crap, then I'm not going to buy it." The only power the consumer really has is in their pockets. But I think it goes beyond that. I mean, when somebody says to me, "Well, I ripped that CD, because why should I give the record company money," I say, "Well, what about the songwriters? You just ripped them off also." There are a lot of questions to this. I just think a problem arises from an industry that has never been a big fan of new technology unless it's cheap and easy to manufacture and easy to overcharge for, you know?
PM: Right.
JI: And there's not much to be done about that except for consumers to show how they feel by not
spending. And they're doing a pretty good job of that.
PM: Without belaboring the topic here, isn't it only a matter of time before music is almost exclusively purchased by downloading it from some source?
JI: I don't know. I keep thinking somebody is going to come up with another technology that will give you a great huge album cover, you know? Or printable album cover that will easily fit into a great biodegradable CD holder. And then some kind of format that's like the CD, but even better, scratch poof, and hassle proof. I'm sure they're working on it. Somebody has got to come up with something.
PM: Reading this interview will probably move a lot of people to buy a Janis Ian CD. Would you point them, first, to the latest one, God and the FBI?
JI: Yes, I'd point them towards God and the FBI, absolutely.
PM: That's a really good record.
JI: I think it's a good one, yeah. I was pretty happy with it.
PM: Let's talk about a new record that must be at least incubating, if not in the works.
JI: Well, there's no title and only about four songs. [laughs] I'm going to use most of the same team. I'm going to use Philip Clark and Marc Moreau, and I'm going to bring in Jeff Balding. He's a local who worked with me on Hunger and on Breaking Silence. And we're cutting it in Nashville in our little studio here, and it's conveniently a couple of doors down from my house, so that makes me very happy.
PM: That's nice.
JI: It really is.
PM: What did Balding do?
JI: He produced and mixed and engineered Breaking Silence, and then he mixed Hunger. So we're bringing him in as kind of a consultant and the mixer.
PM: Will you use other players?
JI: I don't know. I imagine so. There are so many great players in this town, people I've never gotten the chance to work with. And then the temptation is to take a group that already exists, like the Del Beatles, and then just work with them on a project.
PM: Oh, wow, what a cool idea.
JI: I think that would be big fun.
PM: Yeah. We've even interviewed them. [now called the Vinyl Kings, see the archives]
JI: They're good guys.
PM: You've been in Nashville a long time now. What do you like about living here?
JI: Oh, gosh, the community. First and foremost, the community. It's so much more musical than L.A. or New York. It's so much simpler to deal with. There's not the backbiting that you find in those areas, so I prefer it. I couldn't live in the north now.
PM: Yeah, it's rough.
JI: It's just a whole other thing. continue
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