An Interview with Rascal Reporters!

Pleasant green runs afoul of the two Steves...

Pleasant Green Records: Where did you two first meet?

Steve Kretzmer: If memory serves, I met Steve Gore during a mid afternoon high school fire drill. Out in the parking lot I held a copy of 'Uncle Meat.' As if somebody would want to steal this record from my school desk! We conversed, and quickly became friends.

PGR: Is there anything you ever recorded that you wouldn't want to release?

SK: Yes. 'The history of Porridge,' recorded in the late sixties with Brian Blonder. We were kids before the onset of puberty, but these songs are wretchedly obscene. We knew not of what we sang.

PGR: When writing, are you ever thinking about a specific audience or are you not thinking about an audience at all?

Steve Gore: I know it's a tired cliche, but I write music and melody that I enjoy hearing, then hope that others will have similar tastes as mine and also enjoy the music. Perhaps Steve Kretzmer is the audience I write for, and I am the audience Steve Kretzmer writes for. I'm not sure. We always write (and usually record) our music alone, in isolation, then critique, make adjustments, minor changes, etc., after the music is recorded.

PGR: Describe your tape by mail recording process that you used for Happy Accidents and The Foul-Tempered Clavier.

SK: 'Happy Accidents' was recorded on a four track TEAC. The "musicians by mail" each had an open track to utilize. I was not specific to Dave Newhouse, and let him do his own bits, but Steve Gore was very much so...his intro tape preambles are extremely funny and should be released someday.

SG: This idea was first suggested to us by Fred Frith, and first used on our 1984 'Ridin' On A Bummer' LP. It's not a practical process, since the "mail order musician" has to have access to the same recording formats that we use. We don't know how to read or write music out on paper, and almost all the "mail order musicians" we've worked with are "manuscript fluent" so we send them the tracks we have finished on our end, and add an organ line that represents the melody or part(s) we would like the musician to play, then throw the whole shebang onto cassette and mail that out with the actual master tape (the master tape is usually reel-to-reel recorded on a TEAC 2340 4-track, with our parts on tracks #2 and #4, with #1 and #3 left blank for the guest artist to fill in). We then pray the master tape won't be lost by the postal service. We can't afford premium mailing services, so we just cross our fingers. We've never had a tape lost or damaged yet in the 17 years of using this procedure. Depending on the musician, they will either play what we've asked them to play, or come up with their own parts. If the musician is fairly well known, we just ask them to add what they think will work. I was told by Fred Frith that the 'tape-by-mail' process was fairly new at the time, in 1984. I understand it is fairly common now in the digital era.

PGR: Do you see any continuity to your whole body of work?

SK: Not really. Hopefully, it continues to improve.

PGR: What are the last two CDs you bought?

SK: 'Mingus ah um' and 'Kind of Blue'

PGR: What are your top five favorite albums of all time?

SK: 1. Uncle Meat 2. Revolver 3. We're only in it for the money 4. The Rotter's Club 5. Picchio Dal Pozzo 2

Take a look at Rascal Reporters' latest CD, "The Foul-Tempered Clavier"