With two albums on the shelves by his LA based group The Negro Problem, and his second solo project, The Naked Dutch Painter, brand new on the racks, Mark "Stew" Stewart has achieved phenomenal critical success, consistently showing up on writers' "Best of" lists year after year. That hasn't, however, catapulted him into the commercial spotlight. The Negro Problem albums are self releases, his first solo shot, Guest Host, was on the indie Telegraph, and the new one is on Smile Records, an imprint of Image Entertainment. Will that be the secret to multi-platinum sales, MTV saturation and top 40 domination?

No.

Which is not the problem Stew is out to solve at all. So what's the Stew solution? Well, that would be telling. Inquiring minds should read on.....

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Cosmik: I have to admit, I've been looking forward to this interview but it's been a little intimidating, because I don't think anyone, including myself, has been able to write three words about you without using the word "genius."

Stew: (Laughs) That's possible, believe me. The IRS does it all the time when they write about me.

Cosmik: The IRS writes about you?

Stew: No, no. I always joke about the IRS. I use them as the giant, all-encompassing monolith of people who don't think Stew is a genius. The IRS is one of them.

Cosmik: They seem to be in a small circle, at least if you read the music press. Is all that praise intimidating to you?

Stew: I don't know about intimidating. I think it's one of those words that, umm, Einstein was a genius, you know what I mean? I think the word ended for me back in the eighties when Time magazine called David Byrne a genius. We're just people playing guitars and singing in front of people. We're all basically just folk singers. I don't think we even need the word genius, you know? To me, genius is that term that intellectuals use if you want to make your mom and dad think that rock music is important, so you say "You don't understand Mom! Bob Dylan's a genius!" And then your mom is supposed to go "Oh, I now get it! He's like Jonas Salk." He's just a folk singer, and it's OK to be just a really great folk singer. We don't need to be called genius.

Cosmik: I do say that, too, all the time. I think part of it is that most of us who write about music would rather be making it as musicians if we could...

Stew: Right.

Cosmik: And many of us have tried at one time or another. So when we see someone who is making it, rather than admit that we're feeble, we say "Of course he's making it. He's a genius!"

Stew: (Laughs) Yeah, that's one theory. I think you're right.

Cosmik: Which brings rise in my mind whether in your mind there's anybody in music that's actually a genius in the field. It seems like everyone that writes about you invokes a list of influences drawn from the Rolling Stone review of Guest Host, and they're not necessarily the people I think of when I listen to your music at all.

Stew: Yeah, I think that whole list is a little bit off kilter. I think the question of influences, I mean, somebody, you or Greil Marcus or somebody should write a book about influences and what musicians really talk about, what influences really mean. I get the Jimmy Webb thing a lot, you know....

Cosmik: Well, you recorded a Jimmy Webb song, you must be influenced by Jimmy Webb....

[Ed. Note: The uniformed should immediately go in search of The Negro Problem's version of "MacArthur Park".]

Stew: Yeah, and that cover was like the result of a fragmented joke that our band had back then. We actually thought, wouldn't it be hilarious? It wasn't a matter of influences, we just thought it would be a fun cover. When things are so simple and thoughtless that a rock band and their little inside jokes suddenly have to go through that filter of intellectual rock criticism, it becomes an influence. And anyone who writes music will tell you that a TV commercial can be an influence. I've composed songs where I've imagined I was writing a commercial for some weird product, and it ended up being some tune and people hear it and say "Oh, that's the Beach Boys!" or "It's the Beatles," but influence is everything. It's even stuff you hate. It's absolutely stuff you hate. But genius? In pop music? I don't know. I think it's the wrong word. It's like asking who makes the furriest television set. It's meaningless. The whole idea about pop music to me is that it's just a simple thing that people share. It's not this gigantic, heavy thing that we need to get too philosophical about. I think that Jacques Brel's maybe, I don't know, I was thinking about Jacques Brel's lyrics recently and everything that people say about Dylan I think applies to Brel, but because he wrote in French people outside of France, people don't get it. But I think he's really close, songwriter wise, in terms of someone who really could put the range of human emotion and experience together in a three or four minute tune. I think he's maybe pretty close if I had to put somebody in that category, and let's not even talk about instrumental music, because that's a totally different thing.

Cosmik: When you get into the symphonic composers or....

Stew: Or you know, you can't listen to Thelonius Monk and not know that there's something there. To me that is Einstein, stuff like Monk or Coltrane. It is on that level where, you know, this guy's fucking with the universe. He's actually doing something with rhythm and with time and with melody that actually is something brand new and fresh, whereas I see myself in the tradition of guys who sit around with guitars and think that they're important enough that people who sit around the campfire should listen to what they're saying. I'm the guy who doesn't want to give up the guitar.

Cosmik: When you talk about people like Monk and Trane, you're really moving outside the world of pop into a world of, although I really don't like the phrase, art music. These are not performers, they're creators and the performance is what they have to do to pay the bills so they can create.

Stew: Exactly.

Cosmik: In a sense, too, though, your music moves into an art music space because you seem to almost deliberately subvert the commercial potential of your music.

Stew: That's true, yeah.

Cosmik: I'm thinking of the new album, where you've got a little rap about the word garnish which is heavily censored, bleeping the word fuck wherever it's used, and then on the next track, the title track and one of the best songs on the album, the word is right there.

Stew: Yeah, that's actually our joke.

Cosmik: Yeah, but it also guarantees that top 40 radio will never, ever play it.

Stew: Well, on that song, we actually thought long and hard, and the label is going to put together an un-fuck version of it, not an unmusical beep but they're going to do something with the song because there are some stations that want to play it, but there's something about that song, it's such a long narrative that no one is really going to go for that song and I felt really uncomfortable changing it, because if I change that first line it's basically a giant part of that song. So if it comes out commercial, that's fine. The thing about this record is that it has some of the most uncommercial stuff we've ever done and I think two or three of the absolutely most commercial things that I've ever done. People used to say "Oh, the Negro Problem should be on the radio! I love the record." The thing is, I understand why my stuff's not on the radio. I think it would be very cool if it was, but if you listen to the status quo on the radio, I shouldn't be surprised at all that I'm not there. I can point you to fifty thousand other artists who are good but won't get on the radio. So I'm not angry about it. But on this record, I think there are some three minute tunes, and the record company apparently thinks so, because they're making a little sampler to send out. But for me it's a broad record. There's arty stuff that my old art school friends will enjoy and say "Oh, he's still got his edge," you know what I mean, and then there's some stuff that you could easily play for, it sounds sexist to say this but there are songs for the girlfriend who hates music. The girlfriend who hates your taste in music, where she gets this pained expression because she's had to listen to you play the Bob Dylan record, or Eric Dolphy, and she's just tired of it. And there are actually three songs on this record, or four, that you could play and she'd actually like it. And for me, that's not dumbing down anything, I'm proud of it. This is something you could play for your aunt that she'd like, you know.

Cosmik: Well, maybe my taste is just too offbeat, because I couldn't pick those songs out myself. There's not one there that I wouldn't, aside from the obvious censorship issues, think belonged on the radio. There isn't one that I wouldn't play for someone who didn't necessarily share my more esoteric tastes and expect them to enjoy it. I guess, too, the things I think of when I listen to the music aren't necessarily the oft-cited "influences," the Jimmy Webb one, in fact, makes me laugh, and they mention the Fifth Dimension, too.

Stew: Right. The Fifth Dimension is more a Negro Problem reference than a Stew reference, but, yeah, that's out there.

Cosmik: Sure, but I've just never heard a Negro Problem cut that made me reach for a Fifth Dimension album.

Stew: Right, right. I understand.

Cosmik: But you move back to an earlier generation of songwriters a lot, and I think that because there's wit in your music. Some of it's laugh out loud funny sometimes, but most of the humor is really based in wit.

Stew: I think so, yeah.

Cosmik: Which brings up the Cole Porters and the Noel Cowards.

Stew: Right. I think what I try to do, which is different than what most people do who write songs, is I'm really just trying to write something that I'd like to hear if I'm sitting in a club and the third band comes on and they sound like the Smithereens or some 70s group or the Beatles and I'm so tired of it. It's not that what I'm trying to do is so brand new or original. I think I'm actually pretty much in the tradition. It's just, if you put together a good rhyme, a nice inner rhyme, that does something for the listener, it's entertaining on an almost micro level, because suddenly their brains have to work and they say "Oh, that was fun." I see people in the crowds when we're playing over a decent PA system and they can hear what I'm saying and it's great to be in a rock club and to see people really respond to a clever rhyme, because that usually doesn't happen in the province of a rock club, and that's maybe why it's, the kind of shows we've been doing the last few months, getting ready for this record and ready to support it, it's kind of moving toward what I like to call an adult experience, adult where it means setting down instead of the whole standing in front of the stage thing, which is the kind of shows we do locally, because we play rock clubs. But I'd love to play in a more cabaret environment and have people sit down and really take in the stories that are being told. I know that's not rock and roll, it's not people dancing and moving around, but that's where I'm at right now. That's the kind of entertainment I would like. That's another problematic thing, not just the music not being what's going around in most rock clubs, but the way I'd like to present it is different. I'm hoping there are other people out there that feel the same way I do, that don't have to be clutching a beer standing in front of the stage all sweaty next to some guy who's a freak. They can be sitting at a table really getting into the stories.

Cosmik: How much of that has to do with being maybe fifteen or twenty years older than the average member of the band on the bill with you in the rock club, and you've been there, done that?

Stew: It has a great deal to do with it. For us, we're really happy about the fact that we have a pretty old crowd. Our crowd, the people who come to see us, in Seattle or New York, Arizona or San Francisco, we don't really attract young people, and I'm not ashamed of that. We're not aiming for that 17 to 25. Our people are in their 30s for the most part, 30s and 40s. I'm perfectly proud of that. A lot of people who come up to me and say they have the records are these edgy dads. I like to call them dads with an edge. The forty two year old guy who doesn't like Celine Dion and he buys a Stew record and his son is totally shocked because suddenly his father is listening to something that isn't the Grateful Dead or isn't Cream. I don't know how many people have told me that either their kids have stolen the record and taken it to college or kids who tell me that their fathers have stolen the record from them. To me, that's the most gigantic compliment, because I don't think there's a lot of that going on. Your dad is not going to steal the Limp Bizkit record from you.

Cosmik: Well, I'm fifty, so I'm used to being the oldest guy at an awful lot of the shows I go to, and I really like that edgy dad idea. I'm the one guy who takes my kids to shows as my plus one, you know.

Stew: Right. (laughs)

Cosmik: And they're perfectly cool with it as long as they don't have to sit anywhere near me. They think it's great that I like the music, they just don't necessarily want their friends to know that.

Stew: (Laughs) Exactly!. I'm going to learn about that soon. I've got a nine year old and she's at the point where she's already a real astute listener. She's been raised with all this stuff. She's not at the point yet where she's embarrassed. She wants me to go with her to concerts at this point and it's because she's nine years old and she's never been to one, except my own. She's been to my own. But I'm preparing for that moment when we have to stand on opposite sides of the club.

Cosmik: Well, it comes to that, but it's OK, too.

Stew: Yeah, well, at least you're going there together.

Cosmik: I have to ask. A mutual acquaintance, a friend of yours, an acquaintance of mine, tells me I have to ask about your favorite Bewitched episode....

Stew: You know Barry? (Laughs) How do you know Barry?

[Ed. Note: Barry Smolin, the host of The Music Never Stops, heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, is a longtime friend of, liner note scribe for and occasional performer with Stew.]

Cosmik: We're both on an online system called the Well.

Stew: Oh, yeah. Barry's crazy. He's on a Bewitched kick right now. I'm going to be on his radio show sometime in the next week or two and he sent me a list of things he wanted to discuss. One of them was Bewitched. I think he's just going through a heavy Elizabeth Montgomery phase right now. He's crazy.

Cosmik: Actually, you have your own topic on the Well, a little coterie of Stew fans who rave about you.

Stew: I should get on there. Barry's been telling me about it for awhile.

Cosmik: Well, it's like your audience. It trends older. Most online forums are full of sixteen year old girls and twenty two year old guys.

Stew: Exactly. That would be a needed tonic for me. As far as chat room experiences are concerned, I had a rather traumatic experience back in 1996 or so. I got talked into this chat room interview, and we got online and tried to have this conversation and the people who came in were not the least bit interested in learning something. It was all like "Hey man, Rush rulez!" I mean the band, not Limbaugh, but it was like being in a bad neighborhood. It was like a scary cyber-neighborhood and I never wanted to do it again. We don't even have a guest book on our website because I'm just so scared of the whole interactive aspect. Needless to say, coming from a band called The Negro Problem I've received my share of crazy stuff, but much less than I would have if I had a guest book. We're all older in this band. We're not that Internet savvy and the whole enterprise kind of scares us, but the Well sounds like a fantastic thing. Barry's been raving about it forever.

Cosmik: Back to the music, and the new record, you've changed labels again. The Negro Problem records were on your own label, and then you put out Guest Host on Telegraph, and now you're on Smile. Is this a one off, or an ongoing relationship blooming?

Stew: I think this is going to be an ongoing relationship. Smile, and Image Entertainment, the larger company behind Smile, we sat down and had a meeting with the guys you'd call suits, except they weren't wearing suits...

Cosmik: The checkbooks....

Stew: Right. We sat down with these guys, and we didn't know any of them, and I started talking about what we were doing and music and, it's like, I got the most amazing impression. I've talked to people before that didn't know what we were doing that acted like they were familiar because it was the right moment for some kind of weird corporate situation so they did all their research the night before, but these guys really knew what we were about, and I was really impressed. They had really cool musical taste, we concur on a lot of things and there are people at Image Entertainment and at Smile, one of the guys there used to work for Elektra Records in their heyday, for like twenty years. Stuff like that means a lot to me. We still have a great rapport with Telegraph, they're still our friends. I'll still be performing songs from Guest Host for as long as I perform, because I love a lot of those songs, and Telegraph are still our buddies, but we have to move on. Smile is putting out the Negro Problem record as well, the next Negro Problem record.

Cosmik: So your next album is the Negro Problem again?

Stew: The next album will be full blown crazy rock electric, maybe my last stab to make a rock and roll album before I get too old and it becomes an embarrassing prospect. I'm going to bring in some of my jazz friends just to really freak people out. There's gonna be solos on this next Negro Problem record. It's going to be weird.

Cosmik: The Negro Problem went through some lineup changes, then it went away for a couple records, and now it's coming back, and the common denominator has been Heidi, so other than Stew and Heidi, who's the Negro Problem now?

[Ed. Note: multi-instrumentalist Heidi Rodewald is Stew's primary accomplice, co-producer, the brake on some of his wilder flights of fantasy, the voice behind his vocals, the cream in his coffee, well, you get the picture....]

Stew: The Negro Problem is a very large family. There's no core members, but we have a pool. We don't look at it as a bunch of hired guns. Everybody who's played in this band, we have about five keyboard players in Los Angeles who are familiar with the material, both the Negro Problem and the Stew material, we have about three or four drummers who know it, one who's in New York City, we have a really large family of people who according to their schedules, availability, etcetera, etcetera, we play with all these people according to everyone's schedule and there's no "you're in" or "you're out." In a way it's a kind of large band. I don't see it as us using hired guns who change monthly. One of the things people love about coming to our shows, in LA in particular, is that you never know when you come to a Stew show or a TNP show, you never know who's going to be up there. You know me and Heidi are going to be up there, but everyone's got their favorite keyboard players, their favorite drummers, we have guest musicians step up, it's always different. There's not a lot of bands in LA right now that have been able to continue, like, we've been playing live damn near once a month since 1995 and we still pack the places that we play in town because we don't play the same show twice. We just never have done that. I don't want people to think that it's just me and Heidi alone in the laboratory calling people out of the musician's connection book. Everyone who's been in this band before knows they'll come around and be in it again. I send out a mass e-mail every time we have a gig saying "Here's where we're going to be, here are the tunes we want to do, who's available?" and that's how we do it. So it's just a big family.

Cosmik: That might be easy to do in LA, but it's hard to do if you want to tour.

Stew: It's hard to do, but the good thing about this group is that we've toured as a trio, we've also toured the country as a seven piece band, so we're pretty flexible. Heidi and I are going to do some shows with Dan Bern, me and Heidi doing our acoustic duet kind of thing. But we're thinking very seriously about spending a lot of time on the road for the next two years, and when you're out you meet people. You go, hey, here's the record we're going to do, here's the songs, you burn a guy a CD and tell him you're going to be back in three months, learn the material, and boom, you've got a drummer in Austin or in New York. We've basically got an East Coast drummer who will do shows with us all over the East Coast. We'll get a middle drummer. Our approach leads to that. People will say "Oh no, I can only play with my favorite drummer!" Well, you know what, your favorite drummer? He wasn't Elvin Jones. Some guy in Austin could've cut it, you know what I mean? If you were John Coltrane and you didn't get to play with Elvin Jones anymore, that would be weird, but let's face it, we're just playing some pop songs here. I think the guy in Austin or the guy in Tampa Bay can handle this. It's not Giant Steps we're playing. Thank God it's not jazz, that would be a different story.

Cosmik: But a lot of people play jazz on the same level. They go on the road and can't afford to take a band, and there are local players who have mastered the standard book and can get in and out of most things.

Stew: That's true. I just mean from a personal point of view. If I was composing complex instrumental music I could see I would be a little more worried about touring this way.

Cosmik: Right, when you'd have to sit down and teach people parts....

Stew: Exactly. But if me and Heidi have got a drummer behind us and a fairly accomplished keyboard player, one rehearsal and we're fine. That's all we did at the Knitting Factory. We had a residency there. We just grabbed the guys, had one rehearsal, and we proceeded to play some great shows.

Cosmik: Well, on the new album there were what, 8 or 10 people that played, and any one of them might or might not be part of The Negro Problem on any given night?

Stew: Right. Every single person who was on the Stew record has been in The Negro Problem. And the credits list for the next album will probably be twice that long.

Cosmik: And people who were not on the record, because Probyn Gregory is not on this record.

Stew: (Laughs) I hadn't made a record that didn't have his name on it, and it just seemed very difficult for me to make a record and not have his name on it, so we just said, well, we've got to put the fact that he's not on it.

Cosmik: It made me laugh.

Stew: I never used to understand that thing that Zappa did, that Does Humor Belong In Music?, I really never thought about that too much, but recently, we really do, especially if you've seen us in the last few years, we really dig on being funny. We do want to take some of the air out of the whole rock posturing thing. It gets kind of pompous. There's some 24 year old guy making the big Pete Townshend pose and it's like, Led Zeppelin with the whole Viking Gothic whatever, this big sound with these big imposing guys, all of whom were actually not so imposing in real life. But we see ourselves like entertainers in an old fashioned sense, we don't want people to walk away from a show like "Oh, that Stew, man. He's really deep, man. These things he's talking about are so heavy." We really want people to walk away laughing, smiling, with good melodies in their head. It's much more old fashioned. I know the stuff we're doing can be kind of crazy sometimes, but we don't really want people walking away "Oh, it was so profound."

I've seen these bands that are doing the same old stuff that's been happening for the last 35 years and they get these serious looks on their faces. I see the Strokes and it's like, I see these young, serious boys who want to create this mystique and the thing is, when I was really young and I looked at pictures of the Velvet Underground I was like "Wow, those guys are mysterious!" You know what I mean? I needed that when I was 17, 16 years old. It was like, look at those guys, they were in New York and they were in lofts and they were shooting heroin and they knew Andy Warhol and look how serious and cool they looked. But you know what? I'm forty and I don't need that anymore. Kids still need that. They need that mystery and it's totally fine. I totally accept all that in its proper context. But for me, I don't need that. I love to go to a show. Me and Heidi go see a friend who does drag shows, and he makes up lyrics to popular songs, and we were at his show recently and we were just laughing and we walked away thinking we haven't been to a musical show recently that was this much fun. We're not comedians or anything, but anyone who sees us will tell you that we want to make people laugh as well.

Cosmik: Which is another set of challenges altogether, because any actor will tell you that comedy is harder than drama, and writing a great love song is one of the hardest things to do in the world....

Stew: Absolutely.

Cosmik: But writing a great funny song makes that seem simple, because you've got the challenge of comedic timing, and keeping that comedic timing musical.

Stew: Right. I think what I do is actually a pretty luxurious position to be in. Knowing that I don't have to be funny, that it's not my job, I can just go and write the songs and if something turns out to be funny, or I throw something in there to make it funny, if people laugh great, if they don't I still have the song. So it's actually pretty luxurious. Because I can do a song like "Rehab" from the Guest Host record, or when I do "The Naked Dutch Painter," some people do not crack a smile. Like the first time I did "The Naked Dutch Painter" for a crowd there was silence. They just thought it was totally this completely serious narrative about a guy and a girl and will they make it together or won't they. And I played it the next night across town and I could barely finish a verse because people were cracking up at every line. So people are either going to take it seriously, or they're going to take it seriously and laugh. Either way is fine for me. I always have at least one of those songs on every record.

I've been playing these workshops in Hollywood at the HBO Writer's Workshop. It's mostly reading, comedy writers reading their edgy material that doesn't make it to TV, and I've been invited to play there as the lone musical guest, and when I play for these hard core listening writer's crowds, they are so attuned to every word that I almost have to figure out a way to sing the song because they get every joke. They laugh at every fucking joke. I remember the first time I played there, I made a great impression, I had the audience rolling, but I was kind of annoyed at my performance because I don't know how to play for a crowd that's laughing at every word. So I kind of had to restructure. But I think the humor thing for me is kind of easy, because it's not my job. I can slip it in and if it works, great, if it doesn't, it doesn't. Believe me, I've done lots of things I thought were funny but the songs never got a fuckin' laugh.

Cosmik: Well, it's interesting that you're playing for a writer's workshop, because there's an element to your music that's not exactly literary, but it's very literate. It's not just "I love you, you love me, oobla oobla di."

Stew: Right. I'm starting to think that all music is basically tribal, because even if you don't realize it, when you write something and you play it, that music is going out and it's only hitting the people who are sort of in your tribe, know what I mean? When I'm writing, I know there's a certain section of the crowd that's not going to be there for me, but it's actually OK because the point isn't to make them happy. The point is to keep playing to find people you make happy. That's why touring is so important. So to me, one thing we're trying to do at Smile, at Image Entertainment, is to find those people. To find the 42 year old guy, the 50 year old guy, who does listen to cool stuff, who wants to keep expanding his or her collection of interesting stuff, to find the other members of that tribe. They're out there, it's just that other people don't want to spend the time trying to target those people.

Cosmik: Well, it's a lot of work, and it's not a good way to get rich in music.

Stew: Exactly. But we're trying to approach this from the point of view of if we get these people, not the fickle people, but we don't get too many U2s or REMs anymore, and I'm not a very big fan of either of those bands, but we don't get too many bands anymore where they actually get to have careers. The people who are going crazy about the Strokes now, it's not clear where they're going to be in a year or two, but my guess is they're probably going to be off to another band. So I think it makes sense, and the people at our label think it makes sense, to make the effort to find the people who are really into it, knowing that those people aren't fickle. They aren't looking for the flavor of the month. If we can find the people who are into it, we know we can make three or four or five more records and those people will pick them up.

Cosmik: The guy who buys the second Stew record will probably buy the tenth.

Stew: Precisely. We used to, a long time ago we used to have a little conflict with our ex-manager, who is still a dear friend, because he wanted to find a way to coax the younger crowd to get into us. That's what I mean by being tribal. People who look onstage, who look at the record, they want to see something that reflects them. Kids don't buy music made by older people unless somebody told them that the older blues guy is cool. If Mick Jagger tells the kids that Muddy Waters is cool, maybe Muddy Waters sells a few thousand more records. But if you put Muddy Waters in one club and some guy with a backwards baseball cap in another club, the kids are going to look at the marquee and they're going to look at the photos on the front and they're going to go to the concert with the guy with the backwards baseball cap. And there's nothing wrong with that, that's just natural. That's just human fucking nature and there's nothing you can do about it.

Cosmik: That's interesting. I've interviewed Joel Dorn a couple times. He was one of the legendary Atlantic Records producers, with a shelf full of Best Record Grammies for producing a pile of albums that end up on every critics "best albums ever" list, and he doesn't do much other than reissues and compilations these days, because there aren't may people out there he's interested in working with, and the acts that can sell the multi-platinum albums aren't people whose records he understands. He admits that he wouldn't know what to do with the Backstreet Boys, but that doesn't mean their music, though I may not want to hear it, isn't perfectly valid for a particular pop audience at a particular time. The kids deserve the music they want, no matter what we think of it.

Stew: Exactly. That's something I'm glad I've gotten over, the idea I had in my 20s when we were listening to stuff that we thought should be top 40, stuff that we liked from England or New York, and we thought this is good and the stuff on the radio is bad. Some musicians carry that with them too long, and I'm getting it now, in the last years it's become a lot clearer to me that that stuff is the way it is, and that it's going to continue to be that way. The only thing that changes a situation like the Backstreet Boys is not me, or anyone my age. What changes the Backstreet Boys is when somebody twenty-three ... we used to joke about this, that the Negro Problem should just fade away into the background and we should get some little kids, put these words in their mouth, and make a lot of money. It's hard to believe, I looked a a chart recently from 1960-whatever and the idea that "Positively Fourth Street" or "Like A Rolling Stone," that teenagers were actually buying those records? For that window. This is what has to happen.

Cosmik: Of course, the radio business was so much different then.

Stew: That's true. But it has to be some kid who changes things, and us old folks are just going to have to circle the wagons and do our own thing and accept the fact that what's going on in the 17-25 year old market is going to be stuff we don't understand, and who knows, maybe at one moment, maybe. But I'm glad that I'm on the other side of it now, so that I can concentrate on being good and making people happy that I know can hear this, instead of worrying about the people that can't hear it.

And there it was. The Stew Solution. Write good songs, make good records, put them out there and let the people who get it enjoy it. Of course, as a member of the particular tribe he's looking for, I can't imagine anyone not getting, or not enjoying it. It's just my opinion that Mark Stewart, whether as Stew or as the patriarch of the extended Negro Problem family, is as consistently fun, creative, witty and entertaining as anyone on the scene.

And I still think he's a genius.

(C) 2002 - Shaun Dale