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It's hard describe an album like The Blessed Faustina. The backspace key
gets a workout, mostly covering the words "yet" and "but," and by the way,
the thesaurus isn't much help, either. So many aspects with more than one
dimension. Much like the artist himself. Describing Victor DeLorenzo, or
even trying to summarize his unique career, leads the writer into the same
word abuse issues. The music is full, rich, lush... yet sparse, stark,
minimal; the man's undeniable musical talents prove him a musician, but
his long list of stage credits make a good argument for considering him
an actor. Victor doesn't really struggle with this. His status in both
worlds is assured by his long-running association with Theatre X and his
role as founder/percussionist of Violent Femmes.
After thirteen years on the drum throne for that influential folk-punk band, DeLorenzo said his goodbyes in 1993 and went the solo route, recording three albums to date (Peter Corey Sent Me, Pancake Day, and The Blessed Faustina) while resuming his affair with the theater, building a world class recording studio, and raising three children. Each thing is done with flair and a dash of the dramatic. His secrets? For starters, his main influence isn't a musician OR an actor. His main influence is an artist of the oil and canvas persuasion.
His other influence, or perhaps the word should be "gift," is his own ability to be a good barber. Those are his words. His father was a barber who, like most successful barbers, was a very good listener. Victor has learned to be an exceptional listener, and he's learned to take bits and pieces of what he hears and melt them into the ore with which he creates his music and develops his characters for the stage. In the case of The Blessed Faustina, Victor has combined both of those worlds, creating an album filled with characters, at once vivid and nebulous, and stories of longing and the search for fulfillment. The results are wonderful and very, very unique.
The following interview started as a
casual conversation that lasted about fifteen minutes before I smacked
my forehead and turned on the recording deck. A very humble and kind
man, Victor can make you forget you're not an old friend just catching
up, and that you're actually there to do an interview. Here is what did
make it to tape. There are a lot of ideas and pieces of information, so
be a good barber.
There are sound clips linked within this interview. If you have a RealAudio player, click on the highlighted song titles. If you don't have a RealAudio player, get one here.
Cosmik: What was your first love, in terms of music?
Victor: Jazz. That's where I started losing my mind. Jazz was the music that really spoke to me. Prior to that time of being immersed in jazz, I didn't have any use for popular music, or any genre of music, for that matter. I started out as an actor from the time I was five years old, doing little plays, not only in grade school, but commercial work on the side, and photos and stuff like that. It didn't hit me until I was in high school. Prior to that, the only time I'd listen to the radio would be to hear the great disk jockeys in the early to mid 70s coming out of Chicago. People like John Derimus and Franklin McCormick and all these great radio voices. They attracted me because I was coming from the world of theater. Franklin McCormick had a radio program called the Meister Brau Showcase, and he'd always start out with a nice little bit of poetry and then he'd play some light classical music. I got turned on to that because my uncle, Charles DeLorenzo, was the producer of that program and the vice president in charge of public relations at Meister Brau, which was a big beer here in the midwest for a long time. So that's how I got interested in radio, and then after a time I went from just listening to the voices to having a little bit of an attraction to the music that was being played. I didn't fall into popular music until one day my cousin said "hey Vic, you have to hear this new single by The Beatles," and I said "well I don't really have time for that," because it wasn't in my realm of interest. But he said "c'mon, you've got to hear it." So he played me "Hey Jude," and then it was all over for me. I don't know why, but I just fell into the magic of The Beatles and listened to nothing else for the next seven years.
Cosmik: Another soul reached by The Beatles.
Victor: Yeah, I got so enraptured with them, and I think it was just the times, too, because it was such a heavy time. I looked to The Beatles for direction in everything about my life at that point. I had played viola in grade school, but I was never really serious about music. Around 1970, my cousin called and said "hey, do you want to buy a drum set from my friend Mark Francetic, because he's going to Vietnam," and I was making some good money at the time washing dishes at the Holiday Inn, and I had some extra money, so I said "sure, what the hell, I'll buy it and help him out." I was kind of curious about the drums at that point. Once I got the drum set I started studying with a fellow by the name of Joe Pulice in Racine, Wisconsin, which is where I grew up. Joe had the notoriety of being a big band drummer who had played a lot in Chicago in the 1940s and was a friend and contemporary of people like Buddy Rich and Louie Belson and all these other drummers that came through the midwest. He got me interested in jazz drums, because as anyone who listens to jazz knows, the true expression of the drums in music happens in jazz. You're not just called upon to be a timekeeper or add accents to popular music. It really is working with improvisation. So he got me into the whole thing of reading music and appreciating the great improvisors of the jazz world, and also got me started on my brush technique that I later became known for with the Femmes.
Cosmik: Except your brush style is very unique, not at all traditional.
Victor: I took a lot of the traditional stylings of playing jazz brushes, but I bastardized them in this weird rock and roll kind of hillbilly fashion (laughs).
Cosmik: Who were the main jazz drummers that spoke to you?
Victor: At different stages of my development I was influenced by different people, but I'd have to say one of the first jazz drummers that influenced me, just because of listening to this music that was opening up a whole different underworld of music to me, was listening to (saxophonist) John Coltrane, and particular his Live In Seattle record with Elvin Jones on drums. Can you imagine listening to nothing but The Beatles and then getting sidetracked into listening to John Coltrane? And THAT record? That's not an easy record to get into, but for some reason it just fascinated the hell out of me, and I wanted to know more about that style of music.
Cosmik: Where did you go from there?
Victor: From Coltrane I went, of course, to Miles Davis, and then started going into things like Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler, and things that were happening closer to home like the AACM down in Chicago with the Art Ensemble, and Henry Threadgill and all those people down there. It's kind of strange, because I didn't start out listening to someone like a Derick Bailey, but eventually it got to that point where all of the different improvisors came into play as far as what I wanted to do with music. Overall, the person who influenced me most, my god of gods, was Tony Williams.
Cosmik: Incredible drummer. What specifically turned you on about his playing?
Victor: What he did with the way time was interpreted in the 60s and 70s. I don't think anyone else will ever come along that is quite as powerful and influential as he. Also, the mysticism that he brought to jazz drumming. There was a spiritual quality to what he played. I don't think too many people have really come close to interpreting music the way that he did.
Cosmik: Your current music comes from such an unconventional place. Do you think that came from the mingled influences of pop and jazz that you were absorbing early on?
Victor: I think everybody's a product of their influences, no matter what realm of artistic endeavor they're involved with. I think, for me, the overriding factor beyond all musics is (painter) Marcel Duchamp. He's obviously not known as a musician. He falls more into the category of iconoclast artist of the 20th century. I think he's just starting to get his due, and his influence is popping up in a lot of contemporary artists on the scene.
Cosmik: How would an artist influence a drummer, exactly?
Victor: He really showed me the way in as far as how to use time, and I
don't mean that in the sense as a drummer, but how to best use one's time
to do the things they're supposed to do while they're here on this Earth.
So he's kind of the granddaddy for me, and all things spring from him, I'd
say. I'd really sidetrack this interview if I started talking about him.
He has everything to do with music for me and he has nothing to do with
music for me. He has a weird, dichotomous role in my life in that I almost
follow him like someone would follow Buddah or some kind of guru. And
being a Catholic in remission, that's kind of all I've got. (Laughs)
Cosmik: I mostly want to discuss the new music, but of course everyone would be bummed out if we didn't cover a bit about The Violent Femmes. How long were you with them?
Victor: I was with the Femmes for thirteen years, and I actually consider myself to still be with them. (Laughs)
Cosmik: Still good friends?
Victor: Actually, I just talked to Brian (Ritchie). He was in town and he came to one of my shows that I did over the Christmas holiday. And I just wrote a letter to Gordon (Gano) the other day. I haven't really sat down and talked to Gordon as much because he doesn't come back to Milwaukee so much. He's living in New York. As does Brian, but Brian still comes back because he has a son that lives here and also his father lives here still, so I see him every once in a while. I guess for a while there we were on very tender terms with one another, but Brian and I started out together in this crazy world of music... God, this is the 20th anniversary now. When we started out in 1980, Brian and I were just hanging out together playing drums and bass. We'd had a couple bands previous to when we were just reduced to our rhythm section roles. We had a band called the Romboids, and we did mostly Brian's material. He played bass, I played drums, and we worked with two other Milwaukee musicians. But for a while we were just getting together every afternoon and playing, trying to emulate all the great jazzers that we adored, and beyond that we didn't really have any design on putting a band together. One day he showed up at my apartment and said "hey Victor, I have a name for our band. What do you think of this..." and I said "well, we don't really have a band, but okay, let's hear what you've got." He said "Violent Femmes," and I said "Aaaah, that's kind of funny," because one of our pet terms at that point was "fems," a bastardization of the French term for women. We just thought that was a funny word because we'd use it like "oh, that guy's a fem," like someone of an effeminate nature. Then putting "violent" in front of it was like, in our sick minds, putting this image out of some effeminate, un-assuming, non-threatening, non-powerful person being so incredibly violent. It was this weird, macabre, sort of dadaist dream. Then we started calling our rhythm section that.
Cosmik: How did it evolve into a band?
Victor: When we first started playing with Gordon, we'd do these shows that were just off the cuff. Brian and I would just join Gordon on stage and start playing these songs with him. No rehearsal. And a lot of those songs are the ones that ended up on the first Femmes album. We were playing in front of people who had never heard the songs. We called ourselves Gordon Gano and The Violent Femmes at first, but after a while we just decided "well, what's the most important thing here," and we changed it to just Violent Femmes.
Cosmik: That is so many degrees removed from the usual "how we started our band story."
Victor: Right. It's kind of like the whole story of Violent Femmes, because
it was never meant to be anything more than three guys getting together and
having fun. We weren't trying to take it to any commercial heights. It
COULDN'T work, you know, it was these weird, manic farmers from the midwest,
as far as how other people looked at it. How could they doing anything that
would fit into the modern sound on the radio, or something that could be
bought in a store? It just didn't make any sense. When you think of popular
music in America in 1980, 81 and 82, this just wasn't meant to be. This was
way off.
Cosmik: Was the entire success an accident, or did you push at some point?
Victor: I think that once we found out that people enjoyed the music we were making as much as we did, we took it to heart and adopted as our criterion that we would play anywhere/everywhere USA, and that's what we did. That's why it became so maddeningly successful. It's because we were willing to get out there and spend 275 days a year on the road playing everywhere, sometimes, especially in those early days, not being compensated for it. I mean, literally it was the classic band story at the end of the night. "We hope you enjoyed the show. Does anybody have a floor we can sleep on?" It was that kind of a thing. But we were a lot younger then, and a lot more headstrong. We really enjoyed our company together as musicians, and we were extremely compatible in our unity.
Cosmik: Do you listen to those old records now?
Victor: Every once in a while I'll hear "Blister In The Sun" on the radio, but I really haven't listened to them in a long time. And it's funny you should say that, because I've kind of contemplated doing that lately and... maybe I will.
Cosmik: Taking stock a little bit?
Victor: Kind of go back in time a little bit. When I hear a song I hear it different than everybody else, because I associate all those little stories that surrounded the music.
Cosmik: When you do hear the music now, how do you see your progression from that period to now?
Victor: Well... I guess I'm in a peculiar mind set when I listen to the Femmes records, because part of me feels like I was so inside it that I can feel everything having to do with that music, from a technical sense to a lyrical sense, what Gordon was writing about, and how I could relate to it given our lives together. Then there's the other side of me that feels like I've been given this chance to be this kind of a phantom voyeur who was there but wasn't there, almost like a dream state. It's hard to describe because it really does take on an otherworldly quality sometimes. It's haunting. It haunts me sometimes. I'm very proud of the work that I did with the Violent Femmes, but at the same time it almost seems like it's part of this overall oeuvre that I've built for myself over the years. I see it fitting into a grander scheme, where as for some people, it's the main thing.
Cosmik: You have more to draw from. Let me ask you about Theatre X, the Milwaukee theatre company you've been associated with for a lot of years. Do you still work with them?
Victor: Occasionally. I haven't done anything with them for about three
years now, but I was a member, and I guess I'm still kind of an associate
member of the company. I started back in 1976, when I was in college here
at the UW Milwaukee. I was a double major, theater and music, and then I
did an audition for Theatre X. I think they auditioned about 35 people,
and they were looking for a male and a female to come into the company. I
got accepted. Then I thought "I'm in school studying this, and I've only
been here two years on a four year program," but then I figured "well, if
this is really what I want to do, and they're going to pay me money and take
me around the world with them to perform all these original pieces, that's
probably what I should do." So I went into the company and took Wilem
DaFoe's place. He was leaving for New York, before he had anything to do
with the film world, and I actually came in and became friends with Wilem.
He tutored me on the role I was going to have to step into, which was the
role he'd been doing. We were doing a play called The Wreck (A Romance).
It was all based on an Adrian Rich poem. I jumped in and stayed with them
until right when the Femmes started. I joined Theatre X -- I'll never
forget this -- July 4th, 1976.
Cosmik: Right on the bicentennial.
Victor: Kind of an easy date to remember. Then the Femmes came about right in the middle of 1980. I tried to do both for a while, but then the Femmes just took up too much of my time so I had to drop out of Theatre X. Though I would come back when I would have time between projects with the Femmes, to do plays or be part of the writing aspect of the plays and things like that.
Cosmik: Your music has so much dramatic impact. Did your theater experience help you with your songwriting?
Victor: I think it's kind of a cross-pollination across all lines. I never really tried to put it in separate camps. I just thought of it as one thing influencing the other, and I guess if I had to think of myself as being anything, I'd go to what first attracted me to this whole magical realm, and that was working as an actor. I think the understanding to take the path of musical exploration came directly out of that, and then trying to develop myself more as a writer came out of that as well. I started with that, but I certainly don't limit myself to being just an actor.
Cosmik: And those things aren't even the limit of what you do well. You also have a very successful recording studio you run yourself. Is this two different places I was reading about, or is this really the full name: Joe's Real Recording and Sympathetic Muffler?
Victor: Joe's Real Recording is actually the upstairs, and the little studio space I have downstairs here, which is kind of like my office, is Sympathetic Muffler. Many years ago, when I did recordings with my first 4-track cassette porta-studio, then I would call the studio environs down here "Sympathetic Muffler."
Cosmik: (Laughs) It completely cracked me up when I read that name.
Victor: I'm glad you picked that up. I never thought in a million years that anybody would talk to me about Sympathetic Muffler. That's great.
Cosmik: You've recorded a lot of important artists there, too, like k.d. lang, John Wesley Harding, Marshall Crenshaw...
Victor: In fact, Marshall is singing background on my song "She's A Resin."
Cosmik: Wow, I totally missed that in the liners!
Victor: It's kind of nebulous, because I didn't want to do individual track listings saying who played what, just because I wanted to keep the design of the album very clean and very sparse. On my other two records I really listed who played what on everything, and for this one I thought it would be more fun for people listening to the record to try to figure out who was doing what. Then, also, I'd have the opportunity during interviews, like this one, to go a little more in depth on the subject.
Cosmik: Was it always in the plans to be recording other people in that studio? Or did the rep just grow?
Victor: Oh, I think my whole idea, from when I was very young, was that if I had a recording studio someday, I wanted to have it available as almost like a salon atmosphere like you'd have in Paris in the early 20s, where you could have people from all different walks of art show up and scratch their minds off of one another. I've been fortunate and blessed in that way, in that Billy J. Kramer (of Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas) was sitting here in my studio and I talked to him about Brian Epstein and John Lennon, and then I'd have someone like k.d. lang come and record, and Marshall, and a lot of musical illuminati from the midwest here... It's been wonderful in the respect that I could offer this service to these people. Not just having performers come here to want to do their CDs because they've heard the good rep about the place, but also just having a place to share with my friends, and also new people that I meet, where they could come and share their ideas about graphic design, or what's happening in the cyber world, or music, or painting, or writing... I mean, I've really had incredible groupings of people here.
Cosmik: Has the salon atmosphere worked out the way you envisioned it?
Victor: Yes, I'm very, very happy with it.
Cosmik: I wanna do my album there.
Victor: Come on over! (Laughs.) Do you play?
Cosmik: For about 28 years, but if you're the majors, I'm rookie ball, believe me. I just record to get it off my chest. Cuz it feels good.
Victor: But that is exactly the pure reason to do it! That is why I still do it. I think when I lose track of that feeling, then it would all become very shallow for me. I've been lucky to keep this feeling of wanting to try everything and anything. What happens if I group this person with that person? And what if I write a song with that person? I like that confrontational aspect of it, in a purely artistic sense.
Cosmik: What are you looking for when you do that?
Victor: Well... There was a director of a theater in Amsterdam called The Mickery Theater, and this fellows name was Ritsart TenCate. I remember after doing a rehearsal of one our original pieces, which we were collaborating with him on, to do at his theater and then take on tour through Holland, he came up to me after a rehearsal in which I had thought I'd done pretty well, and he said "so you expect to get BY with what you did today?" I said "what do you mean?!" He said "well, I can tell you're not really involved. In fact, I can detect that no sense that any part of your life is in jeopardy by doing this." I said "WHAT?!" He said "in order to be an artist, your interpretation has to be from the standpoint that there's something in jeopardy. That you are risking something by doing this. Sometimes you'll fail, but you won't make any artistic leaps until you're willing to take those chances."
Cosmik: So desperation is a necessary ingredient?
Victor: Kind of. And chance. And allowing yourself to feel the pure chance
of it all. That really effected me a lot, and I guess, in a way, it led me
to Dechamp. So I find that if I was going to become your typical musician,
of course you have to put food on the table and worry about commercial
concerns. But I've always managed to fall into the cracks and managed to
still make money, yet also be involved with people... like making a record
with Eugene Chadborne and then sitting down on television backing up Jill
Sobule. I could fall into all those different camps. It was like in school
when I could hang out with the freaks and I could hang out with the straight
A students. I've just always had that kind of knack.
Cosmik: Not an easy knack to develop, either.
Victor: I think it stems from my father being a barber, and of course, being a barber, you'd better be able to talk to people because they're sitting there for a while as you're trimming their hair or shaving them, or what have you. I think I picked that up from him. He then went on from being a barber to being in charge of operations for a big firm here in the midwest, and also his brother was in charge of public relations for General Motors for 35 years. So I think we have that aspect, that we share amongst us, that we know how to talk to people and we know how to listen. That way, if you have your wits about you, you CAN work in all those different camps.
Cosmik: Let's talk about [The Blessed] Faustina. It's a tour-de-force. How long did you spend on the album, from first take to last?
Victor: Roughly... it was a two year time span. I was putting that record
together while I was still under contract to Almo Sounds. In the first
couple months of working on it, I came to the very cold realization that
I probably wasn't going to be on the label much longer. They weren't
going to pick up my option for a second album. I didn't make the record
under any kind of protest or anything. Things come out of you. Music
comes out of you. It's like trying to control a bodily secretion, you
know? So I just kept recording, and even though the record contract fell
by the wayside, I was enjoying the music I was coming up with probably in
response to that whole feeling of being unwanted. Because that's what
happens when you lose a record contract. God knows I've been through enough
of them with the Femmes and with my solo stuff. You feel a little bitter,
and it crosses your mind that "what did I do wrong?" And then once you get
past that feeling, you can say "well I didn't do anything wrong. I just do
what I do." So I just kept my head down and kept making music. Also, what
really helped to fill out this record was... most of '98 and some of '99 I
was working on a soundtrack for a film here, one that's being shopped by
the producers now. It's a film called Expecting Mercy, by a filmmaker named
Dave Hanson. I wrote the soundtrack for that, and a lot of the pieces for
that turned out to be instrumental pieces, so that's why there are some of
those instrumental bits that show up on The Blessed Faustina. So I was kind
of drawing from everything I was doing at that point, not only writing what
would be considered more pop songs, but also the instrumental work, and then
getting into more of the esoteric realm of music.
Cosmik: It flows like a concept album.
Victor: It was designed that way because I didn't just want to put out a record of pop songs. I'd sent out, to close friends, a CD which I called Yeah, which was a collection of a lot of songs that are on the Faustina, plus other ones that I eventually took off. I was really paying close attention to the flow of the record, which I'm glad that you picked up on. These days it's really hard to say to someone "well I'd like you to sit down and listen to the whole thing in one sitting," because it's just such a fast-paced world, and unless it appears on a television screen in front of someone, it's kind of hard to get their attention. (Laughs.) I designed it with the hopes that it would be like one of the great records of the 60s, in that you could listen to it as one piece, and every time you listen to it you'd hear something different, or you'd figure out another piece of the puzzle.
Cosmik: In your own words, what IS the concept of the album?
Victor: It all came from the concept of longing, whether it's for a lost love, a great meal at a particular French restaurant that you like, hearing the voices of your deceased parents, it falls into all those different niches for me. I don't know if I really accomplished that, but longing also implies that it's not complete, and that it could go someplace else, so I don't really look at the record as being a finished piece. It's just what I finally had to put together in order to lock it into the CD. It had to be something.
Cosmik: I'm fascinated at the mixture of pop songs with all kinds of pop structure and other songs that are pure vibe, like "It's A Beautiful Machine." Was that planned, or did each song just hatch as it was?
Victor: Each song kind of hatched as it was. I didn't design anything in particular. For the machine song, that was actually a reference to a Roland sampler that I'd just got, and I sat down one evening to try to figure out how to make it work, and I just put in a drum pattern from a dat tape of samples I had going. Then I just went from there. I think I hummed the low note on there to take the place of a bass, and then there were all these other little percussion parts that I put on there, and literally the song just came out of this beautiful machine I'd just purchased and wanted to figure out how to use.
Cosmik: Again, many degrees from a typical answer, thank you.
Victor: It was almost like a tutorial for me. I was going through a tutorial trying to figure out how to use the thing, but I thought "oh, as long as I'm using this, maybe I can 'use' this!"
Cosmik: Do you find it fascinating to know that something with that beginning is being listened to somewhere by someone who is coming up with some grand meaning and scenario?
Victor: Well yeah, DJ, I got away with something again. (Laughs.)
Cosmik: (Laughs) And that's the magic of music, yes? A lot of people really resist talking about songs they've written. Do you feel that way?
Victor: Well see, I don't mind it because what I was saying before still applies in that not only do I feel like I'm getting away with something, but also something's being delivered to me from somewhere else. So although I may have little seeds of the impetus why these things were created, at some point something greater takes over. I invite other people's interpretations because they may inspire me to do something different.
Cosmik: Well, here's one, because I'm not even sure I have an interpretation. I'm asking about "She's A Resin." Should I take that at face value, or is it a lot of metaphor?
Victor: There's a LOT of metaphor tied into that. This is something you
obviously wouldn't know from listening to the song, but there was a whole
different set of lyrics written for that that were completely withing the
realm of the dadaists, in that I wasn't really looking to make any connection
to what would be our real world of thought. It was all going on sounds of
the words and also dealing with different kinds of cadences and how the words
were sequenced. And then a person I knew suggested to me that "this is nice
what you have here. It's real intriguing... but I don't know what you're
talking about at all, and would you ever entertain the idea of maybe making
it a song that might invite more people into the world of it? Vis-a-vis
why don't you fuckin' get some words together that someone else could
identify with if they're sitting over in Cleveland." (Laughs.) I said thank
you. "Thank you for being honest with me." And I came up with this other
set of words that still draws in a little bit of what I had in the original
lyrics, but also paints it into the idea that it's talking about a love
aspect of this woman and what she does to this man. And what the man does
to this woman. But that was an experience of working off someone elses
reaction, then adjusting it to what they felt might make a better song.
Cosmik: I'll tell ya, though, the line "She's real sticky down there" could sure interrupt someone's short attention span. First time I heard that I had to back it up to make sure.
Victor: (Laughs.) Of course there's a sexual connotation to that, but In my mind, I was thinking more "she's really sticky down there" meant that in her realm of experience, she comes with a lot of baggage. There's a lot of stuff happening down there. Do you want to get involved in that?
Cosmik: Just like you mixed the songs titles, there's a mix of lushly recorded and produced songs and songs with a minimalist approach. What indicates to you what a song needs in that way?
Victor: If you try to remain true to the world of a particular song that you're hoping to build, I think the song will eventually speak to you in ways that maybe aren't readily apparent when you're starting to work with it. Some of those songs would sit up on the recording deck for a good month or so, and I would change things here and there, whether it had to do with a lyric or a bass part, or if I wanted to develop the percussion parts more. Some of those songs have three or more drum sets on it at the same time. So I'd be thinking "well, maybe another polyrhythm would work here and it would emphasize what I'm trying to do with the lyric," or "maybe it needs less here because it's becoming too important." Sometimes things speak to me in ways that it's almost like you're working on a short story and thinking do you need the main protagonist to say this there, or should they kind of shut up and work the angle of mystery into the story a little more?
Cosmik: And let the listener fill in the blanks?
Victor: Yeah, sometimes you want to be crystal clear, and hopefully give the listener the experience that you feel as though you've transferred something that was in your mind to their mind, and other times you want to leave it more wide open. You may feel like "how could I be so presumptuous as to think that someone sitting in Oslo, Norway would have the same kind of feeling that I would toward this thing, given their upbringing. I think I'm cursed in that I come from that theater background. So many times I'm fighting myself of thinking too much. I have to almost do like Mr. Lennon said in interpreting the book of the dead, "turn off your mind, relax and float downstream."
Cosmik: Let it happen.
Victor: Yes. "It is not knowing." Sometimes not knowing IS knowing. You have to allow yourself to keep a little bit of your life in jeopardy, as I said before, but also realize when things are happening to you that they're happening for a reason.
Cosmik: Okay, when this is applying to a song in the studio, and you're realizing you have to pull back and let it be, is that easier to do than to let yourself go all the way?
Victor: Oh, man... That is a learned technique, let me tell ya. Whether
you're working as a songwriter, a singer, a producer, an engineer or
what have you, trying to step away from something is the hardest thing.
That's why, like I said before, I had to let that record go and put it out
unfinished. Like ALL my records are unfinished. But they're declarations
of time. If you think of it as being unfinished, you can say what you want
in the doing of it, but it doesn't necessarily mean you've said all you
wanted to say. So people will have an impression from it, or you'll be
able to talk to me, as you are now, about a lyric and what you were thinking
about it, and something you say to me will make me think "oh yeah... That
DOES apply." Well, maybe in the way that applies to the song you're talking
about, maybe this will lead me now to another song in response to what you've
said. So in that way, it's almost like you get on and off of this raft as
it's floating down this stream. Every once in a while you have to get off,
because you have to go to the bathroom or you have to eat or whatever, but
it is a constant thing that's there. You know you have that raft and you
know you have that river that you have to go on. It's how you deal with it
in time. I don't mean to get so esoteric or weird...
Cosmik: Hey, after all the three word answers I get to "what are your songs about," esoteric is interesting.
Victor: It's very fascinating to me, too, because music doesn't exist as pure music to me. It inspires thought. Just like Marcel Duchamp wanted to take art out of the realm of the retinal, just something that you would see, and put it back into the service of the mind. So there's a lot more going on under the surface of those songs than maybe I'd want to admit to certain people, because of my experience and how I interpret it. In that way, my little secret, my mystery having to do with it is completely self-serving, but I don't mean it to be in a selfish sense.
Cosmik: I'd resist calling "She Tried To Find Heaven" a rap, because it shouldn't be pigeonholed like that. How do you see it?
Victor: Let me tell ya about that song. It was actually written and recorded seven years ago. I've got a lot of stuff sitting here. (Laughs.)
Cosmik: Does it surprise you to have a song written seven years ago that makes such a perfect ending to this?
Victor: No, because when I was putting it together, the final sequencing of the record, it ended after "Forever." Then I figured "well, that's pretty cliche. Doesn't mean it's bad, but could this go anyplace else? Could I actually be putting on one song which could be from the NEXT record I'd be doing?" So when I started thinking that way, "She Tried To Find Heaven" fit in perfectly, because it's another state of longing. Trying to find yourself in grace. Also, the cadence of those words, and how it was almost ala Lou Reed or [Captain] Beefheart in a way that it's really dealing with the cadence of those words and the repetition and how things come back, that fascinated me as a person who works with words. The music could actually, I think, work just as a musical piece without a lyric over the top of it, because it's very moody and introspective. And I guess it compliments those words in a nice way, because it is talking about someone longing for something that they can't have because they haven't paid the dues of dying yet.
Cosmik: One of the things I love about my job is listening to an album again right after doing an interview, because I hear things I didn't before.
Victor: Sure. It's like when I read an interview. It's the same thing. I go back and listen to the records with all different thoughts in my head. It's wonderful that I can appreciate things on all these different levels, having worked with many different levels of musicians, from the idiot savants to the real structured, technical, classical people. Or thinking "well, I'm listening to this now as a recording engineer," or "I'm listening to this now as a publicist," or as a producer... It's never ending.
Cosmik: But you can hear it from any angle.
Victor: I try to.
Cosmik: One of my biggest frustrations is trying to get people to listen to something on more than a superficial level.
Victor: Like someone who listens to Bartok and then listen to The Slits. Oh my God, how can you make those jumps? Even though more and more people profess to do that nowadays, I really wonder. What do you think, DJ? Can people really make those jumps? Because I think it really comes to a very studied approach to how you appreciate music.
Cosmik: I don't know, what do you think?
Victor: I think a lot of people are putting us on. Everybody wants to be
of the world because the world is available now through a computer terminal.
They think just listen to these things without really trying to understand
the interrelations. That's where the true, pure knowledge comes from. There
is a lot more to understanding than just listening.
Cosmik: I think it's a miracle some people get that far, though, because most people just don't want to get that deep. I've talked to a lot of people who don't know the first thing about reggae, but they love dancehall because it has the rap thing going. They love it and they adopt the lingo, but they have no idea what it's about. And don't want to know because they have other things on their mind.
Victor: It upsets me sometimes. Mildly, though. I wouldn't say I'm angry, or I hate this, because I'd never use that word anyway. I think people who use the word hate are begging for drastic situations. But it does puzzle me and I find it very peculiar. I'm a musician, and I take what I do very seriously. I enjoy it with my whole heart and soul, because it's treated me very well in my life, and led me into other worlds of thought that I never would have considered. There are a lot of people to use it as something that's just on in the car when they're on their way to work, or maybe something to relax with when they come home from work, or something that's on in the background when they're trying to find someone to go home with at night in a club or something. I understand, it fulfills those needs for people, but I'm involved in a mystical marriage in that I want to use music for the betterment not only of myself but also, hopefully, of the world, that I can make something that will inspire wonderfully attuned thoughts in many people's minds. And it sounds presumptuous to say that, but if it's in my mind and that's what I'm really trying to do, well, then hopefully I'll be successful on some level. You're never going to be able to influence someone completely, but if you can at least give them a different avenue of thought, something that's available, I think that's a pretty righteous job.
Cosmik: If somebody is reading this right now that is kind of sitting on the fence, what would you say to them to convince them to really listen? To music and to messages.
Victor: Boy... I don't know, I think you'd better think about that, answer for me and make me sound really smart, because it's a hard question to answer. It involves so many different things. It's not just as easy as getting them to listen. I think what I'm talking about is getting people to feel. To listen. To allow themselves to be loved. To be willing to play the fool sometimes so maybe someone else will have an easier time in their life at that particular moment... It's a giving circumstance. It's a sharing aspect that goes beyond just "have a nice day." It's doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. I think, because we have kids... now I don't know how you feel about this, but I'm really kind of worried about what's going on in the world today, and I wish that things would be easier. When I was growing up things were a lot easier, and I wish it could be that way for my kids. There's so much more hate in the world now.
Cosmik: For one thing, we're living in a world where we can't let our kids go out and play in the woods like we did when we were kids, because we don't know what kind of creepazoid might be just out of sight in there. And we have to worry about sending them to school where bad things are happening to people.
Victor: I think it's a by-product of growing old, too, where you start to consider yourself in the world more. When you're younger and you're driving around in a van and playing with a folk-punk band, just trying to find a place to sleep at the end of the night, it's a lot more of a naive approach to the world. But once you see how things really work... That's why I wish people could have the understanding to really listen to what's being said to them, and to what they themselves say. I don't think it only applies to music. It applies to everything.
Visit Victor DeLorenzo's website at www.victordelorenzo.com. You can hear more sound clips and purchase his CDs there.
© 2000 - DJ Johnson