{"id":21488,"date":"2021-09-09T05:30:06","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T09:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=21488"},"modified":"2026-06-10T09:00:45","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T13:00:45","slug":"wind-up-happening-musoscribe-meets-lmnop-part-4-of-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/09\/09\/wind-up-happening-musoscribe-meets-lmnop-part-4-of-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Wind Up Happening: Musoscribe Meets LMNOP (Part 4 of 5)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Continued from <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/09\/08\/wind-up-happening-musoscribe-meets-lmnop-part-3-of-5\/\">Part Three<\/a>&#8230;<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-21472\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/lmnop_pony.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"347\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/lmnop_pony.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/lmnop_pony-300x297.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/lmnop_pony-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>I&#8217;m not even suggesting that you should \u2013 it&#8217;s just an open question \u2013 but have you ever toyed with the idea of doing something completely in a different musical direction? <\/b><\/p>\n<p>No. I wish I had the time and energy to go into things like that, but the things that I have done have taken so much time and effort that I just don&#8217;t have enough energy and time to go into other areas.<\/p>\n<p>I have thought before about doing a 1960s psychedelic thing. The one that I would probably do if I could get myself into it is to try to do an exceedingly bubblegum album. My favorite song as a kid was \u201cYummy Yummy Yummy,\u201d and I still think that&#8217;s one of the most brilliant songs that&#8217;s ever been written, and I&#8217;m not saying that to sound weird. I really do think it&#8217;s an incredible song, and I&#8217;ve always wanted to come up with something that was on par with a song like that.<\/p>\n<p><b>Even in the early days, it seemed to me that <i>babysue<\/i> and LMNOP weren&#8217;t really separate entities. The two concepts seem to kind of blur into each other. Can you speak to the relationship between the <i>babysue<\/i> comics and the music, if any?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Wow, you&#8217;re asking some real psychologically heavy questions here.<\/p>\n<p>I really don&#8217;t know. I guess there&#8217;s some things that bleed in and out, but I think they&#8217;re mostly separate, but sometimes things bleed from one to the other. I&#8217;ll tell you, this is one thing \u2013 since you&#8217;ve been aware of this a long time, Bill, you might find this interesting \u2013 there are people that like the music, and there are people that like the writing and the comics, but there&#8217;s almost nobody that likes both. I could say there&#8217;s maybe four or five people that I&#8217;ve come across that like both sides of it.<\/p>\n<p><b>I didn&#8217;t discover Matt Groening&#8217;s <i>Life in Hell<\/i> until after I had become a fan of <i>babysue<\/i> comics. Were you aware of it at all, and did you consider him \u2013 and maybe even Bill Griffith&#8217;s <i>Zippy the Pinhead<\/i> for that matter \u2013 either an influence or a kindred spirit?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I did not know about his stuff when I was coming up with my thing. I did find it interesting that, apparently, the way he came up with <i>The Simpsons<\/i> was apparently the same way I came up with my comic strip character, which was to scribble something in about 30 seconds and then keep doing it over and over.<\/p>\n<p><b>Was there ever a time when LMNOP was a financially rewarding enterprise?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>No! Never! And it never will be! I\u2019ll put it this way: if you&#8217;re a successful person making lots of money in music in 2021, your music&#8217;s no good. That sounds terrible, but most commercial music lately is&#8230; I can&#8217;t think of hardly anybody that&#8217;s really good.<\/p>\n<p><b>Following on from that, the astounding thing to me is that it seems like the worse a song is, the more writers it has. I mean, you see some of these pop hits that have seven people. It&#8217;s like, \u201cIt took seven people to write <i>that<\/i>?\u201d I mean, I could write a bad song without any help. Why do I need six people to help me do it? I never understood that.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>We could really go on with this one for a long time! But what I would call credible, really good music: there&#8217;s more of it now than there ever has been, yet it&#8217;s all more underground and unknown than ever.<\/p>\n<p><b><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-21469\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/lmnop_single.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"367\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/lmnop_single.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/lmnop_single-286x300.jpg 286w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Yeah. With the rise of the Internet and digital, the good thing about it is the barriers to entry are down. And the <i>bad<\/i> thing about it is there are no barriers to entry. You don&#8217;t have to fight through the record company to get your stuff out there anymore, but you can also just make complete garbage. The signal-to-noise ratio is not very good. There&#8217;s lots of good stuff out there. You just have to really hunt through it.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Your point is really good. It&#8217;s not just with music. It&#8217;s with photography, it&#8217;s with video and movies. Now that everybody can do it, because it&#8217;s so cheap to be able to create things, everybody&#8217;s creating this. As a result, we have this huge glut of stuff, and there&#8217;s never enough people to take it in or to listen to it or watch it, because everybody&#8217;s making stuff and throwing it out there&#8230; because they <i>can<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><b>When I first was in touch with your publicist, my first response to them was, \u201cStephen wouldn&#8217;t do an interview, would he?\u201d I&#8217;ve always had the impression that anonymity was kind of your thing. So, do you do a lot of interviews? <\/b><\/p>\n<p>Well, I did a long time ago. Then, at a certain point, I had a few instances where people were putting stuff out about me that I really wanted private. So, I finally got to a point and put out the word that I wasn&#8217;t doing interviews with anybody, ever. Then, after I did that, I removed that from my website so that people wouldn&#8217;t think that. But by that time, nobody wanted to talk to me anyway!<\/p>\n<p>So, now, the way I feel about it is: I&#8217;m talking to people and doing things, but I&#8217;m not trying to promote myself as a celebrity and for people to recognize me and want my autograph. I&#8217;m trying to do a few things that will get the word out about the music, because I do want folks to hear what I&#8217;ve done. My intent is mainly to try to make people feel good or to enjoy something rather than to make a buck or to be a celebrity. That&#8217;s the truth.<\/p>\n<p><i><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/09\/10\/wind-up-happening-musoscribe-meets-lmnop-part-5-of-5\/\">Click here to continue<\/a>\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Continued from Part Three&#8230; I&#8217;m not even suggesting that you should \u2013 it&#8217;s just an open question \u2013 but have you ever toyed with the idea of doing something completely [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21467,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,41,49,51],"tags":[4626,4625,4627],"class_list":["post-21488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indie","category-interview","category-new-release","category-pop","tag-babysue","tag-lmnop","tag-stephen-fievet","cat-39-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21488"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21499,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21488\/revisions\/21499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}