Chords for John Maus interview | 2011 | The Drone

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Looking for [G] novel harmonies, _ _ sequences of _ chords that _ haven't _ _ _ [F]
been [Ab] _ represented in any
situation for thousands of years.
I mean, we can do [A] this in silly pop [C] music, this language that's just perhaps dismissed
by some people as merely reducible to the mechanisms of capital [G] or whatever.
Things can happen with this language that can't happen _ in these other, you know,
_ quote-unquote experimental languages, you know?
I really believe this, [C] you know? _ _
[D] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [G] _
_ [Dm] _ _ _ [Eb] _ _ _ _
_ [D] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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We don't want consensus, we want radical, radical dissensus.
Why don't we make so-called experimental music in the strict sense, in the sense [Ab] of
Cage and his [G] circle, or even in the sense of _ _ Schoenberg up to Xenakis and Stockhausen and stuff.
It's because [C] I take seriously this claim of Gilles Deleuze, right, that perhaps it's [E] our
task as artists to make an intensive use [Eb] of a major language.
[B] I always smell a bit of stink, of bad faith to these people that [A] are involved in the contemporary
art [Eb] world and this kind of thing [B] today, _ _ _ because [E] it seems to me that mobilizes some kind of
economy of [B]
distinction or sophistication and it's not so much about [Db] some kind of living [E] language.
_ _ _ [Db] _ _ [B] _
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_ [E] _ _ _ _ [Dbm] _ _ [Eb] _
_ [B] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[E] _ _ _ _ _ [Db] _ _ [Eb] _
_ [B] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [B] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Someone's alone.
_ _ [Db] _ _ [Eb] _
_ _ _ I definitely consider myself part of that whole philosophical tradition that [Ab] regards
the status quo as [Abm] unacceptable and unjust, you know?
I had a professor in _
[A] music school, he [E] said I was a musical thrills [D] junkie.
He dismissed me, he goes, oh, you're just one of those musical thrills junkies, you're
just looking for that surprise, you know, just that [Ab] one moment.
The whole [E] 90s, man.
I [G] mean, me and my friends, I've talked to them about this.
We just want to snort that out.
That was [Ab] an error.
It was a mistake.
_ [Gb] _ _ Those clowns who didn't seem to care about music at all, do you know what I mean?
It was about them with their guitars, you [Dm] know, _ _ _ _ making noise but not in [E] any way as radical
as [G] great rock and roll bands do or [Em] as radical as the noise composers did.
It _ [F] was just a goofy [Gbm] mistake [Gm] _ _
[E] that _ _ _ [E] we'd [Ab] like to obliterate from consciousness.
You know what I mean?
[G] I don't know. _
_ _ _ _ _ But somebody asked me recently what I thought of Aureo's recent big success and I [Am] said,
no, he hasn't been embraced yet.
[B] He can be put right alongside _ _ [E] those clowns, you know what I mean?
[Dbm] They haven't really understood what he's done.
_ [E] _ _
_ _ _ _ [Gbm] _ _ _ _
_ It's always the same, [E] as always.
Said [Dbm] the tongue-tied, it's [E] got a memory.
_ [Abm] _ I remember I went out to _ _ school in [Gbm] LA when I was 18, you know, I'm hanging out with Aureo
and he grew up listening to Faust [Db] II and _ Amon Dual and [G] Cabaret Voltaire and all this stuff.
I just knew Nirvana or something, you know what I mean?
[E] _ We'd be doing our home taping all week and then on the weekend we'd get together and
just play our stuff for each other.
There's nothing more _ inspirational than that, you know, pushing each other on,
challenging each other.
And speaking of utopia, that would be kind of my [G] utopia, right?
The whole world is just that, like us playing our tapes for each other, you know what I mean?
_ _ _ _ So to speak, [Ab] whatever our tapes are, our [Gb] movies, our poems, [Dbm]
our [Em] equations, [Ebm] our war machines,
as long as they're not just [Abm] for fun, like [Ebm] let's make a missile just to [Ab] shoot it at that wall or something.
You know [Abm] what I mean?
[Gb] Whatever.
_ _ [Dbm] _ _ _
[Ebm] Whatever.
_ _ [B] _ _ _ [Ab] _
_ _ [D] _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ _
_ _ _ [Bm] _ _ _ [Dbm] _ _
_ [D] _ [Bm] _ _ _ _ [Dbm] _ _
[D] _ _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ _ [B] _
_ _ _ _ _ [Gbm] _ _ [E] _
_ [Gbm] _ _ _ _ _ _ [B] _
_ [Gb] Whatever.
_ _ [A] _ _ _
_ [G] _ _ _ _ _ [E] I believe that the [Cm] most radical thing we can do with [F] pop, with [C] rock, with punk,
whatever you want to call it, is try to make it [E] as poppy as possible.
[B] Do you know what I mean? _ _ _
[Ab] _ _ _ _ [Em] _ It's longer, [Am] complicated, but I just hit the wall with that.
And now I'm not sure that's the way to go.
[G] All [Gm] these records that are just universally accepted as part of this tradition
go all sorts of places other than just that kind of place I've [Ab] been trying to go.
And I think _ it's stupid, it's been stupid of me not to kind of reach out more towards exploring