ERIC GRANDY: Hello?

CALVIN JOHNSON: Hello, this is Calvin Johnson.

IAN SVENONIOUS: Calvin!

JOHNSON: Yes, Calvin Johnson from Olympia, WA.

SVENONIOUS: Hey, Calvin, that’s so weird, I was just thinking about you.

JOHNSON: Wait. Eric?

GRANDY: I’m still here.

JOHNSON: Cool. Hey, Ian, are you there?

SVENONIOUS: Yeah, I was just thinking about you. It’s such a weird—

JOHNSON: Oh, whoah.

SVENONIOUS: This is such weird serendipity, because—oh, wait, that’s the wrong term, scratch that.

JOHNSON: Well, it’s some kind of modern, technological thing.

SVENONIOUS: [Laughing] No, but I was just listening to your new album—

JOHNSON: Oh, hot.

SVENONIOUS: Calvin Johnson & The Sons of the Soil.

JOHNSON: Oh, did you get that? I sent it to you in the mail.

SVENONIOUS: Yeah. This seems like a great opportunity to talk about it.

JOHNSON: Well, the problem was, I know that your neighbor likes to take your mail and hold it for ransom, so I didn’t know if I should send it to you there or not or if I should send to the Dischord house.

SVENONIOUS: No, no, it was sitting on my doorstep. I, uh, I got, it was ransomed, but (laughing) it was all cool in the end.

JOHNSON: Groooovy.

SVENONIOUS: So, when we’re having this discussion, we should remember to talk with complete sentences and articulate.

JOHNSON: Okay.

SVENONIOUS: Because, a lot of times in an interview, I’ve noticed that words are misquoted.

JOHNSON: Well, I think that the issue there is not misquoting. We need to not just articulate, but enunciate.

SVENONIOUS: That’s what I meant, yeah.

JOHNSON: Yeah.

SVENONIOUS: Yeah, I know what you mean.

JOHNSON: Articulate our concepts by enunciating the—

SVENONIOUS: Exactly, enunciate we have to, yeah…

JOHNSON: What happened to Eric?

GRANDY: I’m moderating.

JOHNSON: I see.

SVENONIOUS: He’s kind of a Bill Moyers character, and this is like a presidential debate.

JOHNSON: Well…

SVENONIOUS: So, I was thinking, we should use this as kind of a Socratic dialogue, and I’ll just ask you perfect questions and you can answer in the form of paragraphs.

JOHNSON: Me or Eric?

SVENONIOUS: Eric.

[Laughter]

SVENONIOUS: So, Eric, what brought you to Seattle?

JOHNSON: I’d like to know that myself.

GRANDY: Um, opportunity.

SVENONIOUS: Opportunity. You know, that’s a word that always sends me screaming in the other direction.

JOHNSON: Are you from Madison, WI originally?

GRANDY: No.

SVENONIOUS: So, is The Stranger named after the Camus book, and do you guys—

GRANDY: We don’t talk about it.

JOHNSON: All right, fine.

SVENONIOUS: Is it about alienation? Do people in Seattle feel alienated?

GRANDY: Some people.

SVENONIOUS: What percentage?

GRANDY: I'd say, 75.

SVENONIOUS: Well, that book is about killing an Arab, right? And I know George Bush likes that book; he talks about it. He reads existential French literature.

JOHNSON: He takes great inspiration from it. Say, this segues well into talking about books. Ian’s got a book out.

SVENONIOUS: I do have a book, it’s called the Psychic Soviet, and I was thinking of appearing at bookstores on the West Coast, which also seemed like a good opportunity to throw some parties.

JOHNSON: Yeah. Let’s have a party, man. Totally. ‘Cause all this heavy, existential talk has really got me down.

SVENONIOUS: [Laughing] You’re right, you have to have a balance, you know. They say everything in moderation. Existential depression balanced with boogie-woogie.

JOHNSON: Yeah.

GRANDY: Hence your tour?

SVENONIOUS: Exactly. Precisely. Are you suggesting we go on a tour together?

JOHNSON: [Laughing] You know, I don’t wanna, like... I feel bad about bringing this up now, only I feel good about it because it gives Eric a scoop, ‘cause I’m about to spill the beans. This’ll maybe give him one-up in the newsroom over there.

SVENONIOUS: It’ll send him to number one with a bullet. Yeah, I—

JOHNSON: Well, I was just gonna say that we actually did a tour in the summer, when the Psychic Soviet was first released.

SVENONIOUS: That’s true.

JOHNSON: The reason was because his publishing company asked him to tour, but Ian didn’t have a driver’s license and he couldn’t drive.

SVENONIOUS: [Laughter]

JOHNSON: So he was like, “Hey, Calvin, um. I need to go on tour, I’m gonna go on tour.” I’m like, “That sounds great.” He’s like, “Oh, cool. Do you wanna drive?” And I’m like, “Suuure.—“

SVENONIOUS: I can drive. I have a license, but it just expired.

JOHNSON: “—Why don’t we make it into like a DJ book tour?” So we did. And then, when he’s doing the West Coast tour, he was gonna just do a tour ‘cause now he can drive. And I was like, “Hey, wait a minute. What about the DJ thing?” He was like,” Oh, ah, well I don’t…uh, I guess so.”

SVENONIOUS: [Laughing] The thing about it is, once again, balance, and the book is so cerebral. You know, if you’re just going to bookstores every day your brain might explode, so you have to balance it.

JOHNSON: Now, when we were on tour last summer, we thought it was interesting, because my role in the book presentation is…I don’t have one.

SVENONIOUS: Well, no, it’s expanded. This time around, it’s expanded. You have a quite active role.

JOHNSON: Oh, I didn’t realize that.

SVENONIOUS: I’m gonna debrief you on it

JOHNSON: Oh, that’s exciting. Well, the thing is, in different cities, I noticed that we’d go to bookstores—well, this is interesting because in Seattle we’re not going to a bookstore, we’re going to a record store, which is very indicative of Seattle. But we’d be in a town like Bloomington, IN and we’d be at a bookstore, and they’d be like, “Oh, so what you’re saying is…” and their questions would be very earnest. Then we’d go to some other town, like Southfield, MI and be at the bookstore and people would be like—

SVENONIOUS: Ogres.

JOHNSON: [Laughs] It was weird. They would be like, “THAT PHOTO DOES NOT REPRESENT—” You know, they’d just really take him to task.

SVENONIOUS: It was heartening.

JOHNSON: It was great. I enjoyed it. My least favorite reaction was a place like Chicago, where these sophisticated urbanites, urban sophisticates, would just be tittering like, “Oh, tee hee, this is just so terribly post-modern.”

SVENONIOUS: Exactly.

JOHNSON: Which is a little annoying.

SVENONIOUS: It’s very arcane. It’s not post-modern; it’s before modernity.

SVENONIOUS: So, Eric, what do you think of what he’s saying, that the fact that I’m presenting in a record store is indicative of Seattle?

GRANDY: I don’t know, I think we’re a fairly literate bunch here.

JOHNSON: Oh, they did spend a lot of money on the new library. But, you know, the way I interpret that is that Seattle has a real inferiority complex. They’re always trying to prove that they’re a real city. “Look, we’ve got the biggest building west of the Mississippi! Look, we’ve got three—four professional sports teams! We’re like the big kids.” So when they had to build a library, it’s like “We have to build a library cooler than the one in New York.” Now, I don’t know if they achieved that or not, but that’s their goal.

GRANDY: Where do you think that comes from?

JOHNSON: I’d rather not say.

SVENONIOUS: I don’t know. This is all news to me. I don’t really know the lay of the land. I’m like a benighted outsider, and I look at everything there equivocally.

JOHNSON: I guess what I’m saying is, just because they have a really cool library doesn’t mean that anyone actually reads the books that are housed within it.

GRANDY: Every time I go there it’s either tourists or people—

JOHNSON: Checking e-mail, right. Well, sometimes when you’re in downtown Seattle and you need to use the restroom, where do you go?

SVENONIOUS: Maybe the bookshelves are actually just like, you press them and they reveal secret passages.

JOHNSON: Have you ever seen that TV show called Batman?

SVENONIOUS: [Laughing] Exactly. Bruce Wayne never read a book in his life.

JOHNSON: Who has the time? He’s a man of action.

SVENONIOUS: He’s a man of action and a bat. Bats are blind.

JOHNSON: Good point.

GRANDY: So what are your motivations in playing records for people?

JOHNSON: I like to watch people dance, and I like to dance myself. Fortunately, Ian is along, so I only have to play two or three records, and then Ian can take over and I can go out and dance. Ian’s very good at getting people moving. The problem I have is a lot of times you get these DJs that just want to show off what great record collections they have.

SVENONIOUS: Exactly, and that’s not us.

GRANDY: That’s not you?

JOHNSON: Well, Ian actually does have a great record collection, but the thing is it’s a tool. He does not have a display model. He has this tool that he uses to achieve his ends, which is to throw a party.

SVENONIOUS: A good dance party is the opposite of showing off your record collection. You could have a great dance party with one record. In fact we might only bring one record each.

JOHNSON: And three iPods.

[Laughter]

SVENONIOUS: No, no. No iPods, ‘cause we don’t like that shrill sound.

GRANDY: So you’re all analog, no digital?

JOHNSON: Yeah, I don’t know. But for me, the whole point of going on tour is really just to go thrift stores and try to find records.

SVENONIOUS: Part of the impetus behind the DJ tour is controlling history, revisionism one room at a time. You know, going into different rooms and questioning what is ‘dance music’ and how do we use certain music. You know what I’m saying, so it’s a kind of revisionism, just ‘cause, you know what I’m saying…Like, what happened in history? A big part of that is how do you determine what happened in history though the records you’re focusing on. What do you think of that?

JOHNSON: I’m not sure…

SVENONIOUS: [Laughs] I think that’s the main impetus behind a DJ tour: rectifying the wrongs of history. It’s kind of like a Howard Zinn reader but in a dance club.

JOHNSON: Well, I think it’s just fun to dance. I feel fortunate that we happen to be in Seattle on the night of Club Pop, ’cause I’ve never been to it, but I’m told that it’s where people dance. So we’re like, “Rock ’n’ roll. My kind of people.”

JOHNSON: The first night of our tour is a similar night in Los Angeles called Part Time Punks.

SVENONIOUS: The guy from Go Go Go Airheart does that.

JOHNSON: Yeah, that’s right.

SVENONIOUS: Sadly broken up.

JOHNSON: Yeah, they’re a good band. They were a band that knew how to get people to dance.

SVENONIOUS: Underrated band.

GRANDY: Ahead of their time?

JOHNSON: I don’t know about that, I just know that they were from San Diego and they were different than most bands from there.

SVENONIOUS: Maybe they were behind their time. Maybe they had their e-mail set with the wrong date, so when people got it in their inbox it was dated 1906 or something and then they just never got the memo, you know what I mean?

JOHNSON: It’s confusing.

SVENONIOUS: [Laughs] People were confused.

JOHNSON: Yeah, I am right now.

SVENONIOUS: Is that it?

JOHNSON: Eric, do you have any questions?

GRANDY: Yeah. Let’s do a question. Do you think there are fewer political manifestos in music these days?

JOHNSON: I’m gonna let Ian take that one.

SVENONIOUS: Gee, I don’t know.

JOHNSON: I haven’t noticed, to be honest.

SVENONIOUS: I think that there’s a problem right now where there seems like a lack of direction, a broadness we might say, right? And I don’t blame the groups; I blame the epoch as it’s been wrought. We have to harness the music and give it a sense of mission, because what’s rock ’n’ roll without a sense of mission?

JOHNSON: It’s a party!

SVENONIOUS: But it’s a better party if it has a sense of mission. But right now, we’re in a period, they’ve called it the “end of history,” like everything feels like it’s happening simultaneously. People are pretty overwhelmed.

JOHNSON: Hmm.

SVENONIOUS: And what’s happened is a general muteness. What do you think of that?

JOHNSON: Well… that’s possible. But, you know, I was at this art show the other day by a local Olympia artist named Jennifer Combs, and her show was called Pink. Her artist statement was very eloquent in saying that she feels it’s important to be making these paintings with bright colors like pink and red because there’s so much despair, especially when people consider our government and the way they’re behaving in the world. People feel so hopeless, and to give them some hope through some artwork is really important. Maybe I was wrong when I said it was just a party, it’s a chance to connect with people and know that you’re not alone in your feelings that life can be celebrated even in its darkest hours.

SVENONIOUS: Well said. So it’s a combination of historical revisionism on the dance floor and giving hope to the people, dispensing hope, like Johnny Appleseed.

JOHNSON: Yeah, we are Johnny Appleseeds in a way, that’s true. I think the Psychic Soviet is a useful tool in that way.

SVENONIOUS: Well thank you, Calvin.

JOHNSON: But I don’t think it’s revisionist, personally. I think it’s just telling you the way it is, and if you made the mistake of reading some other version of the story before hand, that’s your problem.

SVENONIOUS: Exactly.

JOHNSON: Fortunately, most people have no idea what he’s talking about, because they’re just watching TV all the time. So, to them it’s not revisionist, because they never knew any of these things ever occurred.

GRANDY: Speaking of TV: Ian you have a Vice TV show now, right?

SVENONIOUS: I’m not permitted to talk about that right now. [laughs] I’m contractually—

JOHNSON: I can tell you about it, though. There’s a magazine in New York, it used to be from Canada, it’s Canadian-born, and it’s called Vice. And they asked Ian to do a talk show for their new cable—

SVENONIOUS: Internet.

JOHNSON: —network, or whatever it is. Their vision is slightly limited in its scope, and so we haven’t really seen Ian unleashed on that show. It’s coming though. The handlers need to just take a few steps back. I think what’s neat is the theme song, which Ian’s bandmate Alex from Weird War did.

SVENONIOUS: That’s a good song.

JOHNSON: And the first episode of the show has an interview with Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye, though not at the same time, which is unfortunate.

SVENONIOUS: It would’ve been really cool to have them together.

JOHNSON: I know, because they were very clear, they said, “Look, we have a new book coming out, called Punk Love, but we’re not doing this as an interview to promote our new book. What we wanna do is talk to our friend Ian, so we’re gonna do it individually.” The problem is Ian [MacKaye] and Henry are such old friends that, subconsciously, they’re always trying to upstage each other.

[Laughter]

JOHNSON: Ian Svenonious wouldn’t have had a chance with those two hambones on the couch at the same time.

SVENONIOUS: That’s true. [Laughs] It would’ve been like Zeppo Marx, a footnote in history.

JOHNSON: So they, on their own volition, decided it was better for everyone concerned if they were interviewed separately.

SVENONIOUS: You know there was a fifth Marx Brother too?

JOHNSON: Yeah, Gummo. But he left for the war and never came back. I mean, he came back from the war but he never rejoined the group.

SVENONIOUS: I have a theory about the Marx Brothers, do you wanna hear it?

JOHNSON: Yeah.

SVENONIOUS: I mean, maybe everybody knows this, but I came up with it on my own, nevertheless: They’re the immigrants.

JOHNSON: Well, yeah, they’re from immigrant families.

SVENONIOUS: Oh, is that what it is? I mean, Harpo’s supposed to be the Russian, Chico’s the Italian, Groucho’s Jewish, and then Zeppo, obviously he’s not—

JOHNSON: He’s normal.

SVENONIOUS: And that’s why he kind of gets cut out.

JOHNSON: That’s an interesting theory, I hadn’t heard of that. I think you should write a Wikipedia entry.

SVENONIOUS: I’ll bet a lot of academics have already talked about that.

JOHNSON: It’s possible.

SVENONIOUS: That’s what I want to talk about: academics and their footnotes.

JOHNSON: Well, I don’t think you should. We’ve got to save something for your book presentation. So don’t give it all away in the article.

SVENONIOUS: Oh yeah. Well, you’re going to have an expanded role this time, Calvin, if you’re willing to shoulder the burden.

JOHNSON: Well, somebody’s got to sell the books at the table.

SVENONIOUS: So, Eric, do you have anything else you wanna know or is that good?

GRANDY: Well, how does the DJ tour compare to going out with your bands?

SVENONIOUS: It’s a lot more work.

JOHNSON: It was a lot of work. It was kind of a bummer.

SVENONIOUS: It was a nightmare, actually.

JOHNSON: This is our fourth DJ tour together, and the first two were a lot more relaxed.

SVENONIOUS: ‘Cause we were just DJing. We were like Paul Okenfield, just breezing into town, presiding over some dance bacchanal and sleeping in late. But with his book thing—

JOHNSON: It’s grueling.

SVENONIOUS: It’s—have you heard of the pharoah and the slaves? It’s a little bit like that.

JOHNSON: Well, the thing is, you have to stay up ‘til three or four in the morning, and then you have to get up and you drive, and you have to go to this afternoon thing at a bookstore, where all these smart people with glasses are asking you all these pointed, very intellectual questions, and you just woke up.

SVENONIOUS: It’s not all glamour. The good thing is we didn’t have as much stuff to carry.

JOHNSON: [Laughs] The best part about not having a drummer is that there’s no drums to carry, no bass amp to carry—

SVENONIOUS: But there’s less glory, too, less of a sense of omnipotence.

JOHNSON: The food is pretty good, though.