T.V.O.D.: from Negative Guest List Interview (2010)

On The Sopranos, Australian TV, Cronenberg and Total Control, Gaspar Noe

I just came across this old interview Brendon Annesley did with me about TV and Total Control back in 2010 that made it into Negative Guest List #31. Brendon hassled me to write about TV and film constantly during the tenure of his magazine, so I’ll try dig some of that writing out for you.

For a brief period of time NGL was the best print mag on the planet, and not much has happened since to come close.

I provide it here without edit.

I've just started watching the Sopranos after ignoring it for a long time in favour of THE TRAILER PARK BOYS. I'm up to season 3 and am actually half-watching it now while I write. Who is your favourite character, what was your take on the final episode. What television shows have you been into lately; have you seen LOUIE yet? Check out, you will love it.

My favourite character in the Sopranos was Christopher. I feel like his constant attempts to impress and improve his standing with the other characters had a huge toll on him – he was a very weak and soft individual who came from a background that expected and demanded a hardness that he wasn’t capable of, he was made before he should have been and when he consistently indicated an incapability to be responsible it was interesting to watch Tony deal with the disappointment with failure, especially considering how pathetic that Tony is as an individual (self obsessed, self pitying crybaby).

The last episode? You haven’t seen it yet man? OK cool, I’m going to spoil it. I think the show is a very cynical document of the decline of the father, it portrays a man who cannot support or maintain a family because he is too self obsessed and too afraid. It starts from his psychological breakdown, at which point he begins to alienate his children and wife because he is incapable of being trusted, and concludes with his physical death at the point where he was most attempting to reconnect with them. The message is pretty bleak and yet also quite tedious – I wish there were people in Australian television intelligent enough to perceive the need for our country to explore these kinds of themes, as I am exhausted with American popular culture and I’m tired of referring to that because our popular culture is so insipid and insulting.

I think Mad Men is incredible – a lot of people complain about it being too slow, which I think is a huge part of why it has such an impact on me – I think the writers get Fitzgerald and even Dellilo in a way I have not seen in a TV show. The Wire was another show that really had an affect on the way that I watched TV. And Xavier: Renegade Angel.

"The message is pretty bleak and yet also quite tedious – I wish there were people in Australian television intelligent enough to perceive the need for our country to explore these kinds of themes, as I am exhausted with American popular culture and I’m tired of referring to that because our popular culture is so insipid and insulting." How then do you think that a television program like 'Underbelly' holds up against the Sopranos?

Underbelly is the Hey Dad to Married With Children. It's the Blue Heelers to the Wire. Australian TV is still confused trying to structure national identity and lacks the courage to demand an intelligent audience that the US has taken steps to cultivate. I was very disappointed with the insipid plot lines, the over-indulgent production and the flat tone of Underbelly, like an hour long Australia's Most Wanted dramatic re-enactment.

Have you seen THE DEAD ZONE with Christopher Walken? It is easily Croenenberg's most character sympathetic film, and it's probably because it was adapted from a Stephen King novel, who is a humanist. Cooper B. claims that Total Control have a 'Croenenberg vibe', which I don't quite understand, what's your take on that?

I have not seen Dead Zone.

That is pretty cool that Cooper said that. When I first heard about Videodrome I was really young and totally rewrote the plot for it inside my head. By the time I finally got to see it, it was so far removed from my invented memories that I was disappointed, and this was what “Paranoid Video” is about. All the lyrics are imagery that I invented for this film, and the song is about mental immersion, the feeling of sensory saturation that requires, for it to fulfil, fasting and deprivation as a reaction. I think that Cronenberg was able to pace his films in a really rewarding way, I constantly feel, when watching, that he views humanity as a very cruel and malicious creature.

Do you feel that the 'breakdown' in "Paranoid Video" bares any hardcore punk influence?

Definitely not. It bares the influence of man.

Would you say that Total Control would be more enjoyable to hear live or on record while high? Do you think you could have made music like this as an edge-head?

I’m not going to answer this question - maybe it’s the word “edge-head”.

How much a degree of separation do you see between Total Control and a band like Chrome Dome or the Lost Sounds? THE SCREAMERS, THE NERVOUS GENDER seem like important bands to those two. Not so much Total Contol.

When Eddy Current and SJN started playing shows together, Mikey and I would always find ourselves talking shit about records, originally garage and punk, and ultimately shit like Rod Stewart. I think I’d watched the film clip to ‘Young Turks’ and decided that I could do that if I really worked at it. I was not high at the time, I just had a lot more self confidence than self awareness. One time I went over and he’d been listening to Rikk Agnew and Adolescents and had written a really weird electronic punk song (that became ‘Stairway’) and we covered a Devo song (‘Swelling Itching Brain’) and realized we’d found a sound that we both were really happy with. Somewhere between synth punk and hardcore punk and the new wave cunts.

James and I had spoken in the past about doing a band like the Screamers, and I saw in this song the fruition of this concept. I emailed him in Perth to tell him that we’d started the band and he came to Melbourne to record the first 7” with other songs Mikey and I had recorded in his bedroom, and he also pieced together a track that will be on our next 7”. James turned me onto Lost Sounds when I was living in Wollongong and opened up some massive worlds of music to me that I’d been ignorant to: synth punk, black metal. In fact, I wouldn’t have checked out the Reatards had I not been obsessed with the Lost Sounds stuff.

But yeah, Lost Sounds covered Screamers and Digital Leather, both bands were on my mind when Mikey and I originally talked about Total Control.

I think if there’s a degree of separation there it’s because we’re not a synth punk band, like Chrome Dome, or a “black wave” band like Lost Sounds. We’re trying to cover a really broad territory with these singles and the shows we’ve played, there’s no point speculating where we’re going to settle.

Where did you take name from, again?

I was at the gym and the ‘Total Control’ video came on (Motels). I remember watching that as a kid and thinking that everybody was wrong – cigarettes were fuckin’ cool. What an affect that a girl could have on me. Everyone was dying of cancer and school everyday was full of horror stories. But she looked so angelic and tortured and the cigarette seemed to be the only thing holding her to the world.

This was one of the songs that Mikey and I had agreed upon real early – fucking COOL TUNE – and it seemed like a retarded band name that we were both surprised hadn’t been nailed into the ground because it is fucking cool.

How did the States tour affect your perception of the potential for Total Control as a live band and creative entity?

It had been over a year since we last played as a band when we decided to do the tour, originally because Mikey was going to play keyboard for the UV Race on the US tour as Emily left the band in February. We made tentative plans to tour with Total Control, and kept them when Alex joined UV on keys and Mikey toured as a 2^nd UV guitarist. The three shows before the tour were instructive but restricted heavily by our unfamiliarity with the songs.

It took a few shows, and especially a few bad shows, to get a good idea about the limitations and capabilities of the live band, but when we got it together it made me think that we’ve got a lot of space to move around in, and we’re in no hurry, so it’s really a pretty perfect position to be in as a band.

Will you be recording an LP shortly?

The plan right now is to work on songs over Summer and see what comes out of it. We have a 4^th 7” coming out imminently (it is late November as I type this) called 'Pyre Island'. I think this is a really cool record for us and I’m pretty interested in how people are going to respond to it – there have been stylistic jumps between the singles so far, and I think this one is pretty far.

Did you see ENTER THE VOID? I wasn't too impressed.

I did not. I do want to see this, as his last two films were very, very challenging. Perhaps as challenging as Celebrity Rehab.

I feel that the problem with the film is its blinding simplicity and inability to create any encouraging human discourse. IRREVERSIBLE is great because it is so convincingly inhuman, and PCP/adrenaline fueled. “Enter the Void” is a good title for a film that is by comparison in many ways like a 'bad' acid trip; frustratingly meaningless (not that one should particularly search for 'meaning' in the throws of psychedelic drug use), nothing to grip on to, ultimately boring. Have you seen ANTICHRIST? That is a “pointless” recent film that I really liked and recommend universally.

The Antichrist is the pinnacle of LVT directorial achievements - probably because of his rumoured distant involvement with the process due to crippling depression. One of the few truly horrifying films I have seen in recent years - it's a slasher film for people who grew up.

What is your take on M. Night Shyamalan? I think HE HAPPENING is an excellent surreal comedy.

Sorry, not familiar.

NGL: Where do you practice?

At home, in a chair.

How gradual was the expansion of TC from core duo of you and Mikey to the current full band?

The band came together at the end of 2008 when we were asked to play a show and asked our good friends to be a part of it. It's a perfect lineup, the kind that dreams are made of.

NGL: After I did the first issue of this mag, you sent me a CDr that had one tune on it, a Devo cover. Was that the first recorded Total Control track?

That is the second recorded track, the first was an electronic version of “Stareway”. We also did demo versions of 'Total Control', two different ones. Mikey and I put together a demo of early tracks that is totally electronic, and it never was released because neither of us were too confident with it at the time. I am happy we held out to release a punk 7" first, as it sounds much better.