Download: Nino Moschella “What U Do 2 Me”

(off Boom Shadow out now on Ubiquity Records)

Nino Moschella started out four-tracking funk-soul that sounded like Sly and Shuggie and Stevie in a mountain shack at midnight and exploded into fidelity once he visited the wider world. His newest Boomshadow is out now on Ubiquity. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

If you were to make a soundtrack for a ’70s crime movie like Superfly or Jackie Brown, who do you want cast in it?
I would make a crime movie that has the Muppets in it. That would be cool. Maybe not Kermit and Miss Piggy but I want to make a gangster crime movie with all Jim Henson-type muppets. That would be silly.
You sort of have an accent from the East Coast.
My dad is from the Bronx. I’m born and raised in California. A lot of people say my accent sounds East Coast. It’s my dad for sure. And my mom’s from Minnesota. My dad’s overbearing. Not really, but he’s very influential, and I guess it comes out. I’m from Cali though. I love it here. I don’t think I’ll ever move. Are you from California?
Florida!
Oh, my grandfolks moved there when they got old. It’s hot and humid. I mean, it’s hot in Fresno—gets 110. But it’s dry heat. When we go to Florida in the middle of the summer, it’s humid and terrible. Man, and big old cockroaches. They’re humongous. Tropical bugs. I couldn’t stand the humidity. You’re always wet.
What kind of bugs are common in Oakland?
No cockroaches. We have mice and flies. I haven’t seen a cockroach. We had mice for a minute but they’re gone now—luckily. I put out some traps. We were expecting our two mice to multiply but they are gone.
It only takes mice two or three weeks to spring babies. In fact, rodents are the most successful mammal on the planet. I guess they didn’t like our house.
Who is the baby chanting on your song ‘I Love Myself?’
That’s my daughter, Stella. Me and my wife and her were in my home studio where I finished the album. Stella was playing the drums. She likes to have a microphone and hear her voice through the speakers. We were asking her questions: ‘What’s your dog’s name? Who are your friends? What do you love?’ That was how the vocals came about. She was like, ‘I love myself! I love the people!’ It was one of those happy accidents that came out. It’s a spoken-word Stella piece. She’s super musical. She’s going to be four in August.
You seem interested in doing things a little bit out of the box. ‘Ok, I am going to stick a song with my baby in between all these funky tracks…’
I am not trying to do anything that is status quo. There’s no point. If I don’t feel like it’s moving things forward, then it’s not worthwhile. Mainstream music might be satisfied with mediocrity and stuff, but for me, if it doesn’t challenge me, then naturally by extension it’s not a challenge. It’s got to perk my ears. But at the same time, I’m not doing it to be like, ‘This song is this type of song and it fits in this type of category and so on.’ When I put a collection of music together, one of my goals is to personally express something I think is fresh. That also lends itself to a flow. The stuff that comes naturally and easily most times is the stuff that is exciting and fresh and new and unexpected. It doesn’t come from a lot of struggle and laboring over it. The stuff you over-think and deliberate is the stuff that can fit into a box—because you have those constraints. Freedom allows you to do things that are fresh as opposed to doing things that have already been done.
Your stuff isn’t hard to take in. It’s digestible but I can pick out the little details happening at once.
I don’t want to create music that’s just heady. ‘Oh my gosh, this is so complicated and out there that it’s inaccessible.’ One of the goals is to make music that you can listen to easily and you don’t have to go to that place where you’re totally listening to every little thing. But if you want to delve into it, it’s there. That’s the challenge as a music maker. Off the bat you don’t have to get theoretical about it to dig, but you want to create something long-lasting so people can come back and hear something new. The music that I love the most is the stuff that originally just struck me and made me feel good. It gives me an emotion or something I can relate to. What I come back to are the intricacies and that brings up feelings too. That’s the beauty of art in general. It’s not a one-shot thing. It’s not just, ‘Alright, listen to this, put it down, you’re done with it.’ I think as a culture in time, that’s naturally what we’re doing. We get something, put it down, and it’s disposable. Good music isn’t supposed to be disposable.
What’s a record you’ve held onto since forever?
There’s so many! That’s a beautiful thing. There’s so much good music and it continues being created. The first record my mom bought me was Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis. She bought it for me when I was ten. I listen to that weekly to this day. That’s the best selling jazz record of all time. Thriller, you know—speaking of which, Michael Jackson was the first musician and entertainer that I consciously said, ‘Oh man, I want to do this. I want to dance.’ I was in grade school, and popping and breaking was huge. I heard Michael and I was like, ‘I wanna pop. I want to sing.’ He was an icon. David Bowie, later, Prince. My mom got me the red Thriller jacket. It wasn’t actual leather—that shit ended up falling apart.
Your mom seems pretty cool.
She was totally cool. When I was maybe eleven or twelve, my mom took me—a kid—to Purple Rain, which was very controversial when it came out. It was like, ‘Do you know what this movie is about?’ Prince and Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder—and Etta James was a huge influence. This was just the music that was in my house. Along with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and Jimi Hendrix and Coltrane and Miles and Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Mingus. My folks were into this stuff. My dad is a musician. They met in Greenwich Village. My dad was a performer at the same time when bop was in the Village. They were seeing Coltrane and Miles. Coltrane kissed my mother’s hand. Bop was huge and folk was huge in their world. That’s what they were digging. It was all going down in the same places. There was a club called the Bitter End that my dad was playing at, and Nina Simone was playing there, and at the same time Bob Dylan was playing there. Music wasn’t, ‘This is folk and this is jazz, and that’s where this goes and that goes there.’ It was all in the same club and area and thriving. Luckily that influence of my folks was accessible to me growing up. I feel blessed for that.
Did your parents give you any advice on what music is all about?
What I’ve learned is that music is about communication. Music is about expressing yourself. My dad didn’t want me to be in the music business. It wasn’t until I started making my own records and putting my stuff on the forefront and him being able to hear it, and that was just a handful of years ago. This was after I became a man—he was like, ‘Alright, you really want to do this? OK, I’m proud of you.’ He always supported me playing music for the sake of playing music but it was clear he didn’t want me to make a living at it because it’s such a hard thing. Very few people actually make it and many of them at the end of it lose everything. It’s not something you get into because you want to make money and be successful. You get into it because you have to. You will do this regardless of what’s happening around you. He knew it was a hard life because he went through it. I mean—now he is a school teacher. He still gigs but he was doing music as a living for twenty years and it was really hard to feed his family. He didn’t want me to live that life. But he realizes I understand that it’s up and down and it’s for the love of it.
Not everyone can articulate their life’s meaning that way.
It’s taken time. When I was a teenager, my idea was, ‘I wanna be famous.’ The important things with time become clear. I know for sure regardless of all the other stuff that exists in this business, I do my thing. I know it’s crucial to my existence to write songs, record them, perform them. That is the stability in it all. Nobody has control of that except for me. Nobody can tell me whether I can do that or not. Regardless of success—and maybe I am not a huge success. This is an underground thing after all. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is you stay focused on the point of it and the point of it is to express it and get it out, and if that’s to 100 people in your immediate community or to a million people globally—the point is that it has to be created for me to feel good about myself and to feel like I’m contributing to the world. I got to make music and that’s how it is. It’s still hard and all that other shit and you can’t ignore that, but when it’s all said and done, I know why I’m doing this. Sorry—this has gotten heavy.

L.A. RECORD PRESENTS NINO MOSCHELLA WITH CHIN CHIN AND ARMEN NALBANDIAN PLUS DJs ON FRI., JULY 31, AT THE DAKOTA LOUNGE, 1026 WILSHIRE BLVD., SANTA MONICA. 7 PM / $10 / 21+. DAKOTALOUNGE.COM. NINO MOSCHELLA’S BOOMSHADOW IS OUT NOW ON UBIQUITY. VISIT NINO MOSCHELLA AT NINOMOSCHELLA.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/NINOMOSCHELLA.

Download: The Shins “Australia”

(from Wincing The Night Away on Sub Pop)

The Shins right now are no longer the Shins they used to be—founder James Mercer debuted a new line-up (with members of Modest Mouse and Fruit Bats) last week and will be taking the band from Sub Pop to their own label Aural Apothecary for their next releases. He speaks now about this and Bob Dylan, Heath Ledger and Kermit the Frog, too. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

What was it like being interviewed by a Muppet at the Grammies?
James Mercer (vocals/guitar): It was crazy. You remember seeing children being interviewed by Kermit. It’s funny how quickly you look at the Muppet as a living being. It was fun being nominated for a Grammy and then getting interviewed by Kermit was such a silly and awesome little highlight of the night. I don’t think I ever dreamed I would have talked to a Muppet. But I definitely loved the Muppets growing up. I used to get so bummed whenever the show would end. I loved it.
Did you like the Muppet Babies?
That was the cartoon version? I was already a teenager at that point, so I couldn’t really get away with watching that. I was about six years old when the original Muppets came out. So I was at the perfect age to get into that. Now, for my kid, we got Yo Gabba Gabba. My baby girl loves that. The Shins performed on that show. She’s also into tricycles.
What’s the greatest thing your child said to you this week?
Oh, she’s going to be two, and she says some awesome stuff. [Consults wife] Oh, ‘Papa, change my poo poo diaper.’ Yep, and I’ve got the second baby on the way.
How has having a family affected how you do music?
I think there are some changes—related to how children affect your connection that you have with other people. I see other people around me as the children that they were, more so. It’s something that you can imagine and get there without having a kid. But having a child connects you with other people in a way that’s scary. It’s kind of scary to care about the human race. As a young man, I always thought the way to be happy was to not care, to be apathetic about the human race. Which is a weird, dark, place to be. That’s just over. That’s done. I’m not able to be ambivalent about the whole thing anymore. Now I have a huge part of me invested in the future of this planet and these people.
Having made an artistic contribution over the last decade that appears to have some major staying power, is there any parallel there that also makes you care for the world?
I actually don’t think so. There’s some separation there that I feel with the stuff that I produce. I have a personal connection to it and understand that when it leaves me it’s up to the strange factors of pop culture and how that’s going to ingest it. You lose control of it once it leaves you in a way—how it’s perceived. You do your work up front and then everything else is out of your control.
If you could show your top five Shins songs to one person, who would you want to hear them?
Oh boy, I would be really happy if the greats got what I was doing and appreciated it. Bob Dylan would be somebody that I would enjoy his appreciation. Brian Wilson would be a neat person to talk to. David Bowie, if he gave a shit about what I was doing, I would be impressed. Fats Domino is popping into my head.
If you had to pair each of your band members with a mentor from rock and roll history for a day, who would they be?
Joe should hang out with Tito Puente for a day. Ron Lewis our bass player should hang out with Jack Cassidy. Eric Johnson should hang out with Crosby from Crosby, Stills & Nash. Who would be perfect for Dave? I’ve got it: Robert Fripp from King Crimson. And I don’t know who they would match me with. Some old songwriter. Maybe one of the Beatles? Paul McCartney.
You have thirty songs ready to record with the new lineup—how much of it is open to their input?
The way I’ve always done it is I come up with a song that’s kind of the coffeeshop version with the acoustic guitar. And then the guys, we start fleshing it out, and we’ll talk about ‘how many times do we do that part?’ and structure it. The two songs we’re doing right now—‘Double Bubble’ and ‘The Rifle’s Spiral’—I showed up with two parts and they took them and we arranged it together.
What song are you most excited about right now?
I’m really excited about the one we’re calling ‘Double Bubble,’ I don’t know if that’s what it will be called in the end but that’s the working title. It’s really fun to play and the audience really likes it. It’s got a good energy to it. It’s fun to dance to, actually, which is really cool.
Is ‘Double Bubble’ a reference to gum?
Is there something called Double Bubble? Maybe it does. It actually just popped into my head as fitting the feel of the song. Maybe they’ll give us a year supply of Double Bubble.
Will the next album be the first release on your label since splitting with Sub Pop?
It looks like my old band, Flake—we’re going to reissue the record that we did and that might be the first release on Aural Apothecary. The first Shins thing that we ever did was on Aural Apothecary but we’re starting the label again to release Shins things on it but have more control—make more money. I know a fair amount about record labels, and my manager knows more. In a way, it’s kind of simple. You call up a vinyl pressing plant and get prices—they’ll tell you what they need. Then you send off a master, they press it into records and send it to your house, then you send it to record stores yourself. That’s the stripped-down version of what a company like Sub Pop does for you. Maybe they’ve got someone who does marketing and writes press releases but you can do a lot of stuff from your bedroom really. What we’ll be doing with my manager—and he did this for White Stripes, so he’s got that example to work with—we’ll get a distribution deal with a proper label and we’ll strike up a deal where we pay them a certain amount of money and they loan us their distribution infrastructure. Yes.
Now you can be a stay-at-home dad.
I’m already that for the last year, it seems like.
Do you see yourself dedicating the rest of your life to music?
Hmm. I never thought of it that way. Really, I don’t think I could say that. It’s something that’s been lucrative for me and it’s something I enjoy doing. But, other than that, I’d say,’Gee, I don’t know.’ I’m not sure if I’m the type of person who dedicates his life to anything. I’m dedicated to my wife, Marisa, right now, I think. She’s the one I hang out with when I need to forget I’m a musician for a while.
Who would you like to make a hip-hop song with?
If I really wanted to do a hip-hop song, I’d go for Jay-Z. He seems to pull it off pretty well. I’d rap about bitches and hoes. And I’d have an all-black Bentley in the music video.
Does it feel different to carry the same name but have a different band?
It’s something to get used to. But it’s been going pretty well. I’ve known the guys for a while, except for Ron, but he is a really good guy. I collaborate often with different people. Like the Modest Mouse guys. You end up working with the people you hang out with. It’s a local thing. We have easy access to each other.
How did you end up performing at Heath Ledger’s funeral?
The main person who set that up was his assistant, who felt that it would be something he would have wanted. He had done a video for Modest Mouse and was a music fan. I knew him through my old tour manager. I met him because they were friends. He was a real rock fan. I sang a Neil Young cover at the funeral. It was ‘Heart of Gold.’ That was a strange day.

THE SHINS WITH THE DELTA SPIRIT ON SUN., MAY 10, AT THE PALLADIUM, 6215 SUNSET BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 8 PM / $35 / ALL AGES. LIVENATION.COM. VISIT THE SHINS AT THESHINS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/THESHINS.