{"id":6400,"date":"2014-09-19T05:30:44","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T09:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=6400"},"modified":"2014-09-19T05:30:44","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T09:30:44","slug":"boots-by-george-harrison-hair-by-robert-smith-the-posies-interview-part-five","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2014\/09\/19\/boots-by-george-harrison-hair-by-robert-smith-the-posies-interview-part-five\/","title":{"rendered":"Boots by George Harrison, Hair by Robert Smith: The Posies Interview, Part Five"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Continued from <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=6398&amp;preview=true\">Part Fou<\/a>r&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Bill Kopp: <\/strong>For a lot of people, myself included, <em>Dear 23<\/em> and\/or <em>Frosting on the Beater<\/em> are cited as the best <strong>Posies<\/strong> work. With <em>Amazing Disgrace<\/em>, you went in a much harder rocking direction. There wasn&#8217;t really anything on <em>Failure<\/em> that sort of hinted at that sort of future. Was the change a sort of natural progression for you both, or was a conscious decision: \u201chey, let&#8217;s rock out on this one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ken Stringfellow:<\/strong> It&#8217;s very easy to explain. When you listen to <em>Failure<\/em>, you&#8217;re listening to a duo who had never toured, never played in a club. We had played two acoustic shows. By the time of the release <em>Dear 23<\/em>, we had been playing as a local band quite a bit, but had done very minimal touring. But then we toured and toured and toured throughout the US. And then we played empty clubs for a year, and then we toured with <strong>The Replacements<\/strong>, which was obviously much better. And then after that we were a touring juggernaut. Venues were packed. And it upped the ante on our live show. The energy you have playing in clubs for four people night after night, I&#8217;m sad to say, is different than playing to 500 or 800 people who are really into it. We gained confidence, and we enjoyed playing intensely. And that resulted in a more rock kind of presentation.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/posies_vinyl.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"218\" hspace=\"20\" vspace=\"20\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jon Auer:<\/strong> It wasn&#8217;t a conscious move, not at all. I wish I could say The Posies were calculated, but we really weren&#8217;t. When I look back at things, I see that we just went where the music took us. Every one of our records from that era is incredibly different. <em>Amazing Disgrace<\/em> is an eclectic bunch of songs, if you really listen to it. By the time we made that record, we were a little angrier. We had gone from youthful enthusiasm to early adulthood, a time when you&#8217;re figuring out how the world works for you.<\/p>\n<p>Even from the time of <em>Dear 23<\/em>, if you had seen us onstage, we were a rock band from the get-go. By <em>Frosting on the Beater<\/em>, it became more about the visceral side of things; there was still craftsmanship, but it was more about the energy.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Bill:<\/strong> If you\u2019ve got a rhythm section behind you, kicking your ass, then it&#8217;s going to rock harder&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jon:<\/strong> And playing in front of people makes a difference. You can be precious about things in the studio, but I&#8217;ve found that doesn&#8217;t transfer live. I want energy when I see someone play live; otherwise, what&#8217;s the point? I can stay home and listen to the record.<\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/posies_bigstar.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"425\" height=\"262\" hspace=\"20\" vspace=\"20\" \/><\/center><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Bill:<\/strong> The last Posies album was <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=313\"><strong><em>Blood\/Candy<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, and that was four years ago&#8230; <\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"float: right; padding: 10px; width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ss&#038;ref=ss_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=musoscribe-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=B00LD0V9MO&#038;asins=B00LD0V9MO&#038;linkId=GUH2RBWZD6CJO36T&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jon:<\/strong> It&#8217;s really cyclical with The Posies, because we both have a lot of things going on otherwise. It&#8217;s a long term relationship, so it&#8217;s good for us to be able to do all these other things. We&#8217;ve got these reissues happening, but we don&#8217;t want to just be pushing the old; we want to push the <em>new<\/em>, too. So while I can&#8217;t say when, I feel like it&#8217;s going to be sooner than later. I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised if you see something new [from The Posies]\u00a0 in the next year&#8230;or two.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Jon and Ken also talked with me at some length about <strong>Big Star<\/strong>. We reflected on their experiences as young musicians discovering the band for the first time, and then upon later years as members of the re-formed lineup. I&#8217;ll share those in a feature that will be out later this year, around the time of the release of a Memphis Big Star concert. \u2013 bk<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/the_musoscribe\">Follow \u201cthe_musoscribe\u201d on <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/icon_twitter_small.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"18\" height=\"18\" border=\"0\" hspace=\"1\" vspace=\"0\" \/> Twitter<\/a> and get notified<br \/>\nwhen new features, reviews and essays are published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Continued from Part Four&#8230; Bill Kopp: For a lot of people, myself included, Dear 23 and\/or Frosting on the Beater are cited as the best Posies work. With Amazing Disgrace, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,51,55,62,64],"tags":[1205,1241,1622,1719],"class_list":["post-6400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview","category-pop","category-powerpop","category-rawk","category-reissue","tag-jon-auer","tag-ken-stringfellow","tag-omnivore-recordings","tag-posies","cat-41-id","cat-51-id","cat-55-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6400","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=6400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}