Furnari.net interview with Ozma - 2000: Difference between revisions
Furnari.net interview with Ozma - 2000 (view source)
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{{Interviewee/general|Ozma|For the most part I sense that visual artists embrace technology. You can often do artistic things digitally with much more ease and speed than if you were doing them by manual process, especially in the area of photography. I'm not very trained in darkroom techniques, but I can can screw around for hours in Photoshop for hours at a time. A lot of educational institutions are starting up centers to help facilitate the use of new technologies in all areas of art. UCLA has the CDA (Center for Digital Arts), Stanford has CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics), and Berkeley has CNMAT (Center for New Music and Audio Technology). It's a transitional time, but I feel like artists are finally integrating technology into the creative process in ways that are beginning to turn out art which is valuable to society. Technology-aided art has previously been stereotyped as being sterile and as lacking meaning to the majority of the world's people, but that mold was broken over time with movies like Star Wars and it continues to be shattered with electronic and multimedia pieces in all of the arts. Contributing to this movement are artists like Bill Viola and Charles Ray, musicians like Cornelius, Steve Reich, Don and Ezra Buchla, and even large filmmaking companies like Pixar. We, as artists, live in a very exciting time, with a plethora of new and extremely powerful tools at our disposal.}} | {{Interviewee/general|Ozma|For the most part I sense that visual artists embrace technology. You can often do artistic things digitally with much more ease and speed than if you were doing them by manual process, especially in the area of photography. I'm not very trained in darkroom techniques, but I can can screw around for hours in Photoshop for hours at a time. A lot of educational institutions are starting up centers to help facilitate the use of new technologies in all areas of art. UCLA has the CDA (Center for Digital Arts), Stanford has CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics), and Berkeley has CNMAT (Center for New Music and Audio Technology). It's a transitional time, but I feel like artists are finally integrating technology into the creative process in ways that are beginning to turn out art which is valuable to society. Technology-aided art has previously been stereotyped as being sterile and as lacking meaning to the majority of the world's people, but that mold was broken over time with movies like Star Wars and it continues to be shattered with electronic and multimedia pieces in all of the arts. Contributing to this movement are artists like Bill Viola and Charles Ray, musicians like Cornelius, Steve Reich, Don and Ezra Buchla, and even large filmmaking companies like Pixar. We, as artists, live in a very exciting time, with a plethora of new and extremely powerful tools at our disposal.}} | ||
{{Interviewer|Geeko|Daniel analises verse by verse the "Ozma Song", a tribute to them by the band Velcro. Let's see if they were accurate...}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Geeko|"I first heard your song on the tribute CD. Then we played with you at the Roxy"}} | |||
{{Interviewee/general|Daniel|That CD and that show exposed a lot of people to our music, so it's not surprising that that's how they first heard us}} | |||
{{Interviewee/general|Daniel|We did bring a big R2D2 beer-chiller up on the Roxy stage from the dressing room, although I don't know if Ryen has ever worn orthopedic shoes. Maybe they know him better than I do.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Geeko|"Daniel jumping in his jumpsuit. He's a Back to the Future fan. And he prefers that you call him Dan"}} | |||
{{Interviewee/general|Daniel|I do wear a blue striped jumpsuit to shows now and then, and I will admit to Back To The Future fanaticism, however, I never ask anyone to call me Dan. I like Daniel and Dan is fine, just as long as I don't get called Danny. I have bad memories of kids named Danny.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Geeko|"Star your first show was at the El Rey. And maybe you'll be singing someday"}} | |||
{{Interviewee/general|Daniel|We actually persuaded Star to sing two lines of backing vocals on our new album. So that Velco prophecy has come true... although she's still too shy to sing live.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Geeko|"Pat he's in charge of the merchandise. We talked to you and you're really nice"}} | |||
{{Interviewee/general|Daniel|Pat is a really nice guy, although I, too, often get stuck selling stuff after we play if our businessman Damien Bueno isn't there to take care of that stuff.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Geeko|"Jose you like the New Kids On the Block. And on stage you really like to rock"}} | |||
{{Interviewee/general|Daniel|Jose and I have an ongoing battle to see who can jump the highest, scream the loudest, and in general just rock out onstage. He wins a lot, although I remember at that Roxy show I jumped off the drum riser, landed on Ryen, and almost forced him to fall into the crowd. That rocked. I never knew he liked the New Kids, but maybe he has skeletons in his closet I'm not yet privy to. So yeah, in general their lyrical claims are pretty accurate!}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Geeko|What painter and/or writer do you think could be the Ozma counterpart in their fields?}} | |||
{{Interviewee/general|Ozma|We took our name from L. Frank Baum's book "Return to Oz," so he's the writer that comes to mind. In terms of artists, there's a sculptor named Charles Ray who personifies a lot of the traits I'd like to think are present in our music. He's got a sculpture called "Ink Box" that's a 4 or 5 foot cube made of black steel. It's filled with black ink so that the top face is actually a quivering ink meniscus, and if one was to touch the ink it would splatter everywhere and permanently stain everything. I think that's also characteristc ofmusic - that it can be as simple to perceive as a black cube but on closer inspection it can be found to be dangerous, potent, and unstable.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Geeko|What would you put in your 1988 time capsule?}} | |||
{{Interviewee/general|Ozma|A: My Back To The Future Nintendo cartridge, my best catcher's mitt, and some of my favorite small piano pieces. Those were the things I was most into in 1988.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Geeko|And in your 1999 version?}} | |||
{{Interviewee/general|Ozma|As for now, I'd definitely put in an Ozma CD, maybe some of my girlfriend Soy's artwork, maybe t-shirt of mine like my "In Search Of 1988," thrift-store-gem. Or if I had the time, I'd load as much information as I could onto a CD and hope they still have ways to read CDs in the distant future.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Geeko|How did your classical music formation influenced in the way you play rock tunes?}} | |||
{{Interviewee/general|Ozma|I'm not really a trained classical guitarist, although I compose a lot for classical style ensembles and both Ryen and I play or have played lots of jazz. We find ourselves writing jazz-influenced harmonies into Ozma songs. I have a belief that, along with rhythm, the blue notes in melodies - the ones not related to the chord progression - are the ones that make melodies "catchy." It's nice to have even a small knowledge of lots of musical styles, and I'd be lying if I said that knowledge doesn't carry over into our rock songs. The main keyboard theme of our song "Rain Of The Golden Gorilla" is lifted from an Indonesian gamelan piece called "Hudan Mas," which, in Balinese, means "Golden Rain." I played in a gamelan orchestra behind a girl I was nuts about, and that tune would never leave my head, so I wrote a song around it and put it to the words I had been writing about the girl in question. So even though it may not seem immediately clear, we incorporate things we've learned in other musical idioms whether we try to or not. At the end of the day, though, we just wanna forget about theory and musical influences and just pick up our axes and rock out.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Geeko|Jose once said that it took some time for the band to realise that simple and melodic songs are fine. Do you think that this need to show instrumental proficiency or composition complexity is in some way reflection of our generation, raised in a guitar hero/arena rock world?}} | |||
{{Interviewee/general|Ozma|Arena rock is all about ultra-rehearsed, ultra-refined, ultra-tight ensembles that sound so good you can only sit back and say "Daaaaa-aaamn." When I think about the music that's closest to my heart, however, it's groups that do something undescribable, something beyond technical proficiency... groups like the Beatles and Nirvana had just enough chops to play the music that was running through their heads, and that's all they needed. | |||
For a long time my Mom had a magnet on our fridge by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a Craftsman era designer. It said, "There is hope in honest error, none in the icy perfections of the mere stylist." That's something I really believe, that the sould of music is not in perfecting a guitar solo or a really dope pick slide or an amazing drum fill but in being human and attempting to use all of your technical tools to portray honest emotions, whether they're sorrowful, dramatic, cynical, nostalgic, loving, or even joking. I think that's common to all disciplines of art, and I think that, along with having a good time, it's our main ambition in Ozma. Whether we're successful or not is for audiences to decide... but just the opportunity to write and play is such a blessing that we're going to be doing this regardless of our surroundings or the way people perceive us. It's just too much fun.}} | |||
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