March 27th, 2003 2:46pm
Malkmus In Low SAT Score Shocker!
Here’s another amusing Malkmus interview. This time, it’s SM being interviewed by Playboy while preparing a batch of brownies.
The best part:
PB: Do you bristle at your reputation for being one of the smartest people in music?
SM: Yeah, that doesn’t make you feel that good. It’s just like, Oh, he thinks he’s so smart. Or, he’s probably at trivia night, watching Jeopardy! right now. Or, he’s sitting around playing Scrabble thinking of clever things to put in his lyrics. You want the music to be more from the heart, and the mind is there, in a sort of dumb way, and it’s guiding things, but I don’t think our music is totally intellectual. It’s got more bottom-end than brain.
PB: Out of curiosity, have you ever had your own IQ measured?
SM: No. Never. It’s not that high. I didn’t do that well on the SATs. Almost everybody I know did way better. I’m not even going to tell you how bad my score was. It wasn’t terrible, but I wasn’t one of those people who was like, “I got a 1400!” And my grades weren’t that good, so I’m really not that smart, I swear.
PB: All that testing is culturally biased, anyway.
SM: I feel like a politician. You can’t be that smart in order to win. Like George Bush. If you’re too clever, it’s bad. For Hollywood movie stars it’s true, too. The ones that are really clever, they’re never going to be like Julia Roberts, or J.Lo or Ben Affleck. People don’t want to support a complete hotshot know-it-all.
(thank you Tina)
Now You Know I’m Ready, Can’t You See I’m Ready?
Roooooooyaaaaaaalllllll Truuuuuuuux. I’ve been listening to Royal Trux constantly since Friday night. On one hand, I keep thinking “why haven’t I been listening to Royal Trux for all of this time?”, and on the other, I’m glad that I saved it til now. I’m ready for Royal Trux now. I needed a new body of work to obsess over, a new musical language to decipher. It’s exciting; I still feel like I’m figuring them out, which is always a fun feeling for me.
This morning “Yo Se!” clicked for me in a big way, which at least one person who may or may not be reading this blog might be very happy about, since she put it on so many tapes for me a few years ago. I never disliked the song, but I think in retrospect, I definitely needed more context for it than I had at the time.
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