Loud Family - Brazilian interview

This interview, by Rubens Leme da Costa, was translated into Portuguese and first published at Mofo. It's kind of funny if you take the Portuguese text and run it through one of those Internet translation tools. You wind up with stuff like this:

Scott Miller is one of these myths that remain known for few. To the front of the Loud Family, Scott composes great musics, although its group not to still have reached the estrelato.

For me, the worse part was to learn to use the ProTools program and to handle a computer. I seemed a duck that enters for the first time in the water.

Question: - Anton is completely maluco, not? I adore the works of it, but it possesss strange ideas...
Scott Miller: - Yes, Anton was created with much more personality and freedom of what the remain of us.

This is Scott's original English version—not as fun 'n wacky, but easier to understand!

1 - Can you tell in few lines a brief story of your life?

Scott: I was an only child, grew up in Sacramento, California, and went to college in Davis, California. Since then, I've lived in the San Francisco area. I'm married and have a 3-year-old daughter and a baby daughter.

2 - Loud Family was a great power-pop band. How did you get together?

It was almost a side project after Game Theory. I was doing different mini-projets with members of this band called This Very Window, at the same time as I was trying to keep up a new version of my old band Game Theory, with Michael Quercio from the Three O'Clock playing bass. But he lived in L.A. so the commute-for-rehearsal factor made it just too expensive. I think I recall Joe Becker wanting to call it the Scott Miller Band for a while, but then we were just too pleased with ourselves when we thought of the name the Loud Family.

3 - Please, tell me something about the process of recordings of Loud's records.

Really different each time. The first one, Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things, was the most traditionally professional. Mitch Easter produced it and it sounds like a hit record. Then Tape of Only Linda was a partial fiasco. We were in this really posh studio called Brilliant in SF, and I remember it starting out fun but then deteriorating into a lot of tense moments. Interbabe Concern I produced myself, and did 90% by myself or with just Paul or just Kenny in the corner of my living room on an ADAT. But that's also the first time I tracked at Enharmoniq, which is now the Hangar, in Sacramento, which is now Anton's and my home base. Days For Days was with Gil and Alison, a relatively quick session, done mostly live, at Music Annex, and for the short tracks I worked a lot with Tim Walters. That was a terrific working experience. Attractive Nuisance was mostly a good experience, with Jeff Byrd at Mr. Toad's in SF.

4 - You and Anton are great mates, right?

Yes, very old friends, and I've been a big fan of a lot of his material.

Explain the new cd with him.

It was Anton's idea, and it was just supposed to be something like four songs, and we kept getting goaded into expanding it. [Note from Sue: Mwa ha ha!] I never finish a song anymore, I just work and raise kids, so it was actually a mental struggle for me to get my quota done. I thought the hard part would be learning ProTools and becoming a computer music person, but I ended up taking to it like a duck to water. It was suddenly like I had access to a whole lot of techniques I'd acquired the skill to use, mostly learned from Mitch, but that I was no longer in a world to command the equipment or personnel for at will.

When I got the system, I first did one little demo project which was an arrangement of a song Aimee Mann and I co-wrote, and it was the worst sounding production you could possibly imagine. But I guess I learned fast from my mistakes, because after that, pretty much everything starting sounding fantastic.

5 - Your early influences (5 names)

When I was a child, it was the Beatles, the Monkees, New York folk scene records, musical comedy like Gershwin, Rogers & Hammerstein, and if I had to pick one more, maybe the Rolling Stones.

6 - 5 favorite records and artists

Sergeant Pepper is still my favorite album, and I could present a case for it being hard to ever beat, the way T.S. Eliot presented a case for Dante being hard to ever beat. Besides other Beatles albums, let's say This Year's Model by Elvis Costello, Radio City by Big Star. I hate to not pick any recent albums. Illinois by Sufjan Stevens is great. Exile in Guyville by Liz Phair is way up there.

7 - How do you see the indie scene today? Better or worst when you began?

I'm pretty out of it. I'm the wrong person to ask. It seems about the same, except that a lot of the energy that used to be out on the street is now somehow contained in computer networks and iPods. When I was a teenager, it seemed to me that rock clubs and record stores were these glorious, energized social scenes in a way that doesn't exist now, but to some degree that's just nostalgia and prejudice talking. Someone else could say my little thrills going to see the Talking Heads and Iggy Pop were nothing compared to Haight Ashbury the day Surrealistic Pillow came out, or something.

8 - Do you have fans here, you know? What do you know about brazilian rock besides Mutantes?

Nothing, but what I've heard of os Mutantes is indeed great. I didn't even realize everyone would be expected to know who they are.

9 - Anton is a truly freak, right? but i love this guy...

Yes, Anton was created with a bit more personality than the rest of us. But he's strangely professional to work with. His meter and pitch and things like that are up there with the best people you work with. The thing is, if you have Anton record five things, five arrangement touches or something, you'll never get five average, adequate results. You'll get two or three that are exceptionally brilliant and deftly executed and make the song, and then two or three others that seriously sound like he didn't think the record button was on. I think he just doesn't check his work in anything like the fussy way someone like me does. The party just starts and then stops and maybe you got something in between.