This Billboard interview is the first I’ve seen where she’s focused on the album coming this fall, instead of the EIG reissue.
Although it’s still without a title or track listing, Liz Phair’s new album is in its final recording stages. “This I can tell you: all my sloppiness is in there,” she tells Billboard of her ATO debut, due this fall. “I fought all the way through, and I’m not letting anyone take it to a perfected style.
“It’s not going to be ‘[Exile in] Guyville’ again, but I’m using all my tools,” she continues. “I keep pulling it out of producers’ hands, before they can do anything.”
Phair concedes that so far she’s confident in about “half of it,” but will be busy with the album all through August. The best way I can describe it is ‘natural,'” she says. “It has mistakes in it. It has layered background vocals of mine that just make an overall slop, but it’s perfect slop.”
Having split with Capitol earlier this year, Phair is finding that working with ATO is a breath of fresh air. “They literally look at me and say, ‘Here’s your budget, don’t go over, bring us something good,'” she says. “It’s a f*cking mind-bending experience after the last 14 years. Even when I was with Matador, combined with other labels, there were so many chefs in the kitchen. I’m working exactly the way I want to work.”
We’re talking about possibly using Twitter to add more real time aspects to the Hesperia Star site.
We talked about it at first, I think, for liveblogging the election, but we would likely use it to cover meetings and such — George Landon’s dramatic resignation during a school board meeting is a prime example of the kind of news that benefits from maximum immediacy — and just to let readers understand our work flow.
So, anyway, I’ve got a Twitter feed. We’ll see how it goes, and if it’s something I stick with. (My one friend who uses it that I could find, Wendy, gave up on it a year ago, for instance.)
So, one wrinkle of switching a new phone is the eternal question of what to use as my ringtone. On my Treo 650, using Ringo, I had the instrumental opening of LL Cool J’s immortal “Going Back to Cali” for my basic ringtone.
For work-related calls, my Treo’s ringtone was a portion of Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry.” (Remember, this is my same sophisticated sense of humor that gave the world a black cat named Lucky.)
I also had the Barb Stanton theme song play whenever Barb would call. That wasn’t that often, but it’s my belief that, if you have your own theme song, you should get maximum use out of it.
Well, iPhones only use ringtones sold by iTunes, which in turn only sell ringtones of songs the record companies have signed off on. For instance, you can get the Lisa Marie Presley version of “Dirty Laundry,” but not one by Don Henley or the Eagles. So much for that.
If anyone knows Don Henley or LL, give them a call and tell them to let their songs be made into ringtones, please.
And if you actually have your own theme song, feel free to buy it as a ringtone from iTunes and send it to me. (I use my Hotmail junk mail address as my iTunes account e-mail address.) I’ll set it to play whenever you call.
At least The Bryant Park Project has a final two-hour show, one last time. They’re going to try and keep the love going in a new social community but the show, at least in its original form, is no more.
