FROM THE ARCHIVES: Conversations in Indie Rock, Vol. 2: Justice

My Dear Gaspard! Tis not it much to our total convenience that we are inherently considered cool by the white boy Ivy League grad student American music press because we are two chain smoking French dudes who wear leather jackets, have an overblown stage show, and don’t really play any instruments?

Why yes Xavier! You know how timid I was for those many years about our utter lack of anything resembling talent! I almost thought we couldn’t pull it off!

Do not despair Gaspard! We are on our way to truckloads of hot American pussy. Truckloads!

But Xavier, do you think they might notice that we are clueless art school dropouts who don’t really know anything about music?!

You imbecile! It has nothing to do with music! No one writes SONGS anymore. It’s all about who you’re willing to fuck, and who you’re willing to let fuck you! Here, a snort a line!

Thanks. I guess it is pretty funny how people consider us exotic when I look pretty much like any Williamsburg douchebag in this photo. But I still think that people might start to notice that we pale in comparison to electronic musicians who actually know something about music, like Aphex Twin, Stars of the Lid, or even fucking Daft Punk! I mean does no one fucking notice that we are taking the same shitty marketing gimmick, running it through to its logical absurdist conclusion, and walking away with their money and their women? We are the Oasis of bourgeois electronica!

Look, we’ll just give our album some cool postmodern title, like a symbol or something. We’ll be immune to criticism! It’s like that fucking Icelandic band with the cooing noises and the album with the parenthesis. Do you ever hear anyone talk shit about that? No! Because the title is fucking parenthesis! How are you going to talk shit about a fucking parenthesis?! Art is subjective and there is no law! Besides, our fans are dipshits who can’t tell the difference between Bob Dylan and Sufjan Stevens anyway!

But Xavier, if everything is relative, does that mean our bank accounts, our lives of endless hedonism, our dedication to making music that has no cultural relevance and that no one can really connect to on a personal level, except while on ecstasy, vomiting on a stranger on the dance floor, are ultimately a vacuous hole into which we will fall, at the bottom of which lies Steven Tyler?

SHUT UP! ONWARDS, to sell out MSG!