JOE CARDUCCI'S TESTAMENT FOR THE ELECTRIC CHURCH

In '03 me and my good buddy Papa Chris Estey interviewed the author of the fan-effing-tastic book Rock and the Pop Narcotic. His name is Joe Carducci. (See my Bandoppler article on Carducci here and part I of the interview here.)

Back in the '80s Carducci used to work at SST records. In the early '90s he wrote the criminally underrated Narcotic which is a kind of stream of consciousness armchair philosophy rant on the state of rock and how we got here. He chides the rock-write intelligentsia, the inability of "rock radio" programmers to understand the rock aesthetic and the life sapping approach of pop music production. There's also some very interesting class oriented stuff which I mostly didn't understand but plan on re-reading. Since then I've been steeping in Carducci-isms for years. I haven't listened to or written about music the same way since.

Setting up the interview was no problem at all. Estey did a couple Google searches, found an email and within a day heard back from Carducci himself. This was a surprise as it was customary for us BANDOPPLER-ITES to get the publicist run-around from labels and publishers. I was pretty nervous conducting the interview--it was my first--but Estey acted like an old pro. About half way through Estey took over--which was fine, I was choking anyway--and Joe was totally easy going.

Perception is a funny thing. There I was thinking I'd really nailed what the philosophy of Carducci's book was all about. I approached the interview like I was a student interviewing a professor or something--like I was trying to talk through a hypothesis that the proff would then confirm or correct. But Joe was just another music obsessive like me and he just wanted to talk.At any rate, my involvement in the interview is awkward and largely inconsequential.

Thanks to Estey for transcribing the tapes and refereeing the conversation and thanks to Joe for the interview and the periodic email correspondence over the years. I will post Part II of the interview in coming weeks.BTW, you can check out Carducci's latest projects here.