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A Conversation with Swan Dive (continued)
PM: As you've demonstrated in that explanation, I know you both to be culture vultures of rare dimension. What are you guys reading, and to whom have you been listening?
MF: Well, I'm reading this new book that Bill got for me that's great, David Schickler. What's the book's name?
BD: Oh, yeah, Kissing in Manhattan.
MF: Kissing in Manhattan, it's a great book of short stories. That's what I'm reading right now, but I just finished West with the Night by Beryl Markham. I'd never heard of her before. But I had a book called Splendid Outcast, and those were short stories that she'd written after West with the Night. So I read those, and I thought, "I've got to find more of this." And I asked Bill about it, and of course he knew who she was, just like everything I ask him, he knows.
[laughter]
PM: He's crazy like that.
MF: So that was one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. It's just incredible.
I've been listening to the Burt Bacharach box set that Bill bought a few years ago. And for some reason I'm on a Dusty Springfield kick, I've been listening to a lot of her. Dionne Warwick and--I love it, he makes a lot of mix tapes for me. There's a new record by the Cardigans that I really love. My favorite vocal of the year, the Cardigans.
PM: Oh, yeah, the cut went by just before we started our interview.
MF: Yeah, I just love that. It's really perfect.
BD: Recent books, let's see... A book of short stories by Ron Carlson called At the Jim Bridger. I enjoyed that. I'm in the middle of a book of writings and essays by Peter Cook, the British comedian, that's hilariously funny. I was also looking at--shoot, I just bought this book, the title escapes me, but it's a collection of essays by Gary Giddins, the Village Voice music critic, pieces on everybody from Jack Benny and Irving Berlin to Kurt Vonnegut, just essays from the Voice. It's pretty good stuff.
And then I've just been on a '70s soul kick. The Chi-lites, the Stylistics, Blue Magic, Main Ingredient, Barbara Acklin, that stuff. I think, subconsciously, I just hope that that stuff somehow influences the next record we make.
PM: If that's your hope, it's already begun, I would think.
BD: I think about the stuff that I liked most as a kid, because I think the first 45 I bought was "Stoned Love" by the Supremes. That late-60s, early-70s period of R & B music--if I had for go away to a desert island, I'd just bring those. It makes me feel so good to listen to it. And it expresses such a range of emotions.
PM: And it sticks to the emotions. It's very simply stated, but it's always emotionally relevant, and it's never masked in a bunch of bullshit.
BD: But it's very musically sophisticated, too. Like you listen to the Stylistics, just the chord changes in the song "You Make Me Feel Brand New"--it's amazing.
PM: Right.
BD: And the arrangements are so meticulously thought out. Even the French horn just coming in for a couple of measures, it's making a statement that makes the song better.
MF: I got a record last week, too, that I didn't have. You probably have it. But it's Oscar Peterson and Ben Webster.
BD: That sounds good.
MF: It's one of those perfect recordings to put on in the morning. I've been playing that every single day. I just can't hear enough of that one.
PM: On what label?
MF: Verve.
PM: Musically or otherwise, what would you guys like to try that you've not yet attempted?
MF: Broadway!
[laughter]
MF: No, it would be fun to do some Broadway songs like "Promises, Promises."
[laughter]
MF: I'd love that.
BD: Yeah, that would be fun.
MF: Some songs to really, like, sing out. Maybe some--well, if we get to do some 70s kind of stuff--
BD: Yeah, Molly even said to me on the phone the other day, "I'd really like to sing out more on the next record." Because on this latest record, for the most part, she sang pretty quietly.
PM: Very.
MF: It's really, really soft.
BD: And the songs aren't that rangy.
MF: It just seemed like those songs called for a really subtle vocal.
PM: And now you want to belt some shit out.
MF: That's right.
[laughter]
PM: What about things you guys might want to try that are not in the musical realm? There's so much life remaining--anybody got to jump out of a plane or anything?
BD: My own rolfing business.
[laughter]
BD: No, I'm pretty squeamish when it comes to those daredevil things. I don't think I'd be able to jump out of a plane.
PM: Write a novel, maybe?
BD: Something that I'd like to be able to do before I pass away is get a humor essay published in Shouts & Murmurs in The New Yorker. That's kind of my ongoing fantasy. I write these pieces now and then, and I've submitted a few things, but I've just always gotten the rejection notice that The New Yorker sends you. [makes a very small hand-shape] It's this tiny.
PM: Oh, really?
BD: And it makes you feel smaller.
[laughter]
BD: It's like they just can't bring themselves to send a full eight and a half by eleven sheet of paper. Instead it's a little ticket.
MF: [laughs] It just says "No."
BD: Yeah, just like a ticket that says, "Okay, back to the end of the line again."
[laughter]
BD: But God, that would be the biggest thrill as a journalist, if I could do that.
MF: I'd like to be in a Woody Allen movie--
BD: Better hurry.
MF: --as a singer. Like in the back of the club or something, that Swan Dive thing back there--or in any movie. But it would really be cool if we were in a Woody Allen movie.
PM: Did you see the West Wing that had Jill Sobule playing one time? Wasn't that amazing?
MF: Oh, yeah.
PM: I didn't know it was coming up, and I was watching West Wing, and up pops Jill Sobule, and I jumped right out of my seat. [see our interview with Jill]
MF: [laughs] continue
