An interview with Jeff Rosenstock, the Dystopian Don Draper
Here's a lil chat about NO DREAM.
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Every morning I wake up to my book deadline dumping a bucket of ice water on my face. After saying fuck! fuck! fuck! repeatedly and towel drying myself off, I think, “OK, no more messing around here. Time to write.” And at that moment an editor at some publication will send me an email that says something like, “Hey Dan, I’d love to run a story by someone who is a complete fucking dipshit who has dedicated their life to having the worst taste in music humanly possible and naturally I thought of you. I can pay you $40 in Taco Bell gift cards for 8,000 words. Interested?” And then I say sure because I have no respect for my time or the value of my work. I did this three times last week.
One assignment was from my friend Rachel at the Grammys (uhhhh ever heard of them?!) who asked if I’d interview my former and now current neighbor Jeff Rosenstock about his new album NO DREAM for their website. (To be clear, the Grammys paid me in real money and not Bell Bucks and Jeff’s album is not reflective of my bad taste in music!) So I got in my car for the first time in many days and drove over to Jeff’s house and interviewed him in his backyard from a safe and responsible distance while wearing a mask (don’t report me you friggin narcs!) and we didn’t touch each other or spit in each other’s mouths like usual.
The interview is up now if you’d like to read it. It marks the 400th time I’ve interviewed Jeff. One time was a feature on the end of Bomb the Music Industry! (whose headline I am still proud of). Another time he walked across the border to play a show in Tijuana and I tailed him like a sneaky lil rascal. (Chris Farren also played and once said it was the worst show he’s ever had.) And another time was a Q&A about the release of one of his albums. I don’t remember which one but knowing Jeff it was probably called something like one of the following:
oh crap! oh crap! oh crap!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Shit Sucks, Dawg.
Urkel voice: Did I doooo thaaaat?
NO.
“Whoops, my bad.” - Jeff
…SORRY?
Nope Thank You
Let’s Not, Please
My Name Is Jeff Rosenstock and My Social Security Number Is 059-137-7380
So I guess this was my fourth time interviewing him. Oh, actually, five. I just remembered one I did with him and Farren by email, which I never do but seemed appropriate for that one. Even though I’ve apparently carved out this weird niche as The Jeff Whisperer, it’s still a tricky thing to interview him. What do you ask a guy whose Whole Thing is centered around the idea of transparency? Plus, I was stuck within the confines of translating him to a Grammys website-reading audience, which means I didn’t ask him geek-out questions like if NO DREAM and its cover is a response to Culture Abuse’s BAY DREAM, which I doubt but who knows maybe.
We talked a bit about moving to Los Angeles just before a pandemic, the lopsided power Spotify has over artists, and the last show he played before everything went to shit. Oh and also if he would play a drive-in concert. Check ‘er out! It’s short n sweet. Here’s a bit of it:
You've been a very vocal critic of the exploitative model of the music industry. Have you noticed any changes, either positive or negative, during COVID?
I need to say right off the bat that I do not think of the music industry in any way. I think about bands and my musician friends. The industry as a whole is set up to take power away from musicians. I don’t really know how we’ll come out of it. There was a second there where artists were doing their own livestreams on their own platforms, and it was cool. The first couple of days of it, where Ben Gibbard was like, “F**k it, I’m gonna sit in my living room and play songs for you," that was a cool thing. Then it slowly got co-opted by brands and tastemakers. And then bands are asking, "Well, shit, this band is on this thing, why can't I get on that thing?" And then it just becomes the same problem, where the promoter only books the talent they're friends with. On the artist's side, there’s a validity to want to be a part of those things because you’re reaching new audiences. I don’t really know how it’s all going to shake out. I think musicians have power to play to their fanbase right now, whenever they want, in a cool way.
On that note, Laura Stevenson, who plays on your new record, tweeted something about the superficial assistance of Spotify's donation button, which you echoed on Twitter. Can you talk about that?
In December, I was trying to figure out how to put merch on my Spotify page that wasn’t merch. It was just to donate five or 10 or 20 dollars. I do think in my heart people who use these services are starting to question why artists aren’t getting paid, so I wondered if you could present people with an option to do that. You have to sign up through this one company that approves your merch items; it’s a whole thing. I remember thinking, "Oh, they just do not want people to donate." So, when they put [the donation button] up, I thought, "You should have had that up there the whole f**king time." When COVID ends, that button should be there. It seems like the music industry figured out a way to have Napster, which they sued everybody over, but now they’re making the money and artists are making no money. The thing that's frustrating is that there isn’t really an alternative. There isn’t really a universal way to get music on people’s phones the way that you could rip an mp3 and put it up somewhere. It’s not just bad royalty rates; it’s that there’s a barrier between the artist and the listener.
They censored out the bad words but they are “fuck” and “fucking,” respectively.
Will this interview help Jeff win a Grammy? I don’t know! But I think if anyone stands the best chance of winning the indie rock equivalent of an EGOT, it’s Jeff:
Also, please admire the TERRIFIC photo above that I took of him in his backyard (wow is there anything I can’t do? I mean besides focus on a book deadline.) which I have titled “Dystopian Don Draper.” Hang it in the Louvre.
Thanks for reading. Subscribe. Tell yer friends, etc. Oh, and listen to Jeff’s album.
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