1. What's the word?
Thunderbird! Of course!

Dr. Filth notes: Wow -- philologically speaking the word “Bird” is a corruption of the longer original term “Thunderbird”. This guy DOES have a big vocabulary!

Dr. Filth notes -- From Neil Young’s guitaryest album, Zuma. Fan cut - arrived upon quickly. Neil Young fixation somewhat confirmed, bolstered by Malkmus's one time case of the nervous compulsion :rEScribblewaves, a Young related disorder that makes you compulsively write words and make marks on every corner of your own album.

Scratch-Jacket

3. Fill in the blank -- I can’t stand _________ music.
I can’t stand . . . ironic country music.

Dr. Filth notes: VERY interesting use of the word ironic. How many times has Steve Malkmus had to read the word “ironic” in his own reviews? And now he curses irony on someone else! I guess country musicians are supposed to mean it.. While rock musicians maybe don’t. I really blew it by not asking a follow up question to this one.

Dr. Filth: Mick or Keith?
Malkmus: Keith

Dr. Filth:Williamson or Asheton?
SM: Neither.
DrF: You're not a Stooge person.
SM: Not really. I mean, they’re good, but I like the Velvets a lot more. Or the Groundhogs, or the MC5. I like the Stooges. I guess the one that played the wah-wah, you know.
DrF: Asheton. Which Groundhogs albums do I need to hear?
SM: Thank Christ for the Bomb or Split. You hear Split, and you might throw away your MC5 albums. You should get that. It's pretty affordable.
DrF: What's on the cover of that?
SM: Well, there's two different covers - there's an American one that makes it look like a ZZ Top record, with a like rope font, and it doesn't look like a Groundhogs cover at all, and then there's an English one with a black and white photo - it's glossy, and there's all these shards, and it just says "Groundhogs - Split". And Thank Christ for the Bomb is really good, too. It's always that Hendrixy, acid rock at times, but it's more progressive. One foot in both camps.

Dr. Filth notes: Interesting lack of party affiliation. A personality not very hung up on his punk cred, secure in his own aesthetic taste. The Entwistle choice, coupled with the lack of reflexive Stooge supplication shows a listener (and by extention, player) who would rather hear a solo rather than rhythm guitar, a man of many notes. Malkmus was at his most engaged and interested when he was talking about the Groundhogs.

5. WORD ASSOCIATION:

a. DrF: Paleontologist = SM: Skull fracture
b. Nascent = Birth Canal
c. Oblique - Moon Crescent
d. Smoke = Wind
e. Musician = Jerk

f. Reunion = Doors
g. Rendezvous - bad tv show
h. Popular - Nada Surf
i. Semi - Popular - Nada Surf
j. Unpopular - The Other Guys in the Lemonheads
k. Mothers -- Uh . . .Jimmy Carl Black.

6. How can you tell when the joint is jumpin’?
Um, when there’s sweat . . . falling from the ceiling. Getting in your eyes.

7. Would You Rather Shag, Monkey, or Pogo?
Pogo

drawn by Walt Kelly, Pogoman

8. First Bob Dylan Lyric off the top of your head?
"Hey Mr. Tambourine Man, Play a song for me."

Dr. Filth notes: No Dylan fixation.

Album cover #2: Bob Darin - Commitment
I see a guy’s back. He has a hat on.
What does this album cover mean to you?
Well, this guy, he’s had a bad day. And there’s no makeup person there, or maybe they were looking at all the shots, and that was his best one. Maybe he was nodding out.
What does this album cover sound like?
It sounds just like downer country.

see note 10B

Album cover #4 - the fabulous mystery album of Dr. Filth
What do you see in this album cover?
Oh my god. Uh, I see a chimp. Is that an orangutan? I see a turkey with a . . . that’s weird.
What does this album cover mean to you?
It looks sort of like they’re into Zappa or something like that.
What does this album cover sound like?
They don’t seem like they’re so much into psych as they’re . . . funny or something.
see note 10d

Dr. Filth note #10A: For those of you who have read the Jeff Tweedy interview, please note that Jeff Tweedy’s response to question three of the first album cover in the Rorscach test was IDENTICAL to Steve Malkmus’s, even though I used different records. This is surely some kind of synergetic indicator of the state of mind of the maturing modern rock and roller. Do they secretly resent the amount of indulgence possible in the 70s? Are they underindulged themselves? Or have we come a long way, in terms of having responsible rock stars? Although Malkmus was not familiar with Get It On, he did know who the band was, and was pretty sure he didn’t like them, based on their hippie connections and pretty dopey first LP. So there was predispotion here to his commentary, and any hope of a truly unbiased reading was scuppered, so I had to throw out most of the results. Except to say that his description of the abstract album cover is interestingly literal. And that he knows a lot about late 60s/early 70s records. Zappa reference #2.

Dr. Filth note #10B: More literal interpretation. Should have asked if it sounded like IRONIC downer country music.

Dr. Filth note #10c: More literal interpretation - interesting application of narrative to two straight album covers.

Dr. Filth note 10d: Third literal interpretation, plus third mention of Frank Zappa, which was pretty weird - he doesn’t come up a lot amongst the "indie rockers". Even weirder was the fact that the Orange Peel’s sound man was playing a Zappa cd when I walked into the club.

11. Where do you go when you play guitar?
Somewhere deep inside my brain . . . canals.

Dr. Filth notes: This question is designed to test a person’s preferences on a mind/body & reason/emotion axis. If someone says “Well, I go to a room in my house I have set up,” or “Up on the freakin’ stage, nimrod”, this tells us one thing. If a person says, “I try to soar with the angels (or “I try to go deep inside my self to get to the heart of what I’m feeling”,) this tells us another. Our subject’s source of inspiration lies “deep inside his brain . . . canals.” Which comes as a real surprise to no one.

Dr. Filth’s Diagnosis: The main purpose of much of my questioning was to stir up the guitar player within SM. I’ve always fancied his guiitar, so I did this for primarily selfish reasons. I was hoping to aid the evening’s by talking a lot about great guitar records and connecting him to his love of the instrument. This not only led to some distracted questioning, but it somehow proved to backfire - Malkmus’s performance and especially his guitar playing was listless all night. The Dr. Filth 11 Point Personality Profile let me and every member of the audience that night down, and I apologize right here and now. What we learn here is that the 11 Point Personality Profile should not be used for the personal gain of the administrator, and I caution future practitioners to keep this in mind. As far as a subject for research, Mr. Malkmus was alternately open to the process and shut down, present and distant, owing to external factors mentioned earlier as much as anything. He liked it best when we talked about records, and seemed really interested in hearing the story of the above mentioned Rorschach albums. His responses show someone of a great deal of intelligence, wit and learning, who does not readily confront or admit to emotional response.

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THROW AWAY YOUR MC5 RECORDS!

An illustration in the difference between underground classic and just another 70s ZZ Top boogie record.

UK SPLIT VS. US SPLIT

"If you don't shop at whizz, you don't know what music is!"

- The Revelators