Interview: Scott Miller (Game Theory/The Loud Family)

Angrylambie

The Loud Family – “Cortex the Killler”

Is there just a more crushable band in the world than The Loud Family? If there is, it’s probably Game Theory, which is Scott Miller’s other, older, band. His newer band, The Loud Family, is sort of an old band now too, though. Miller has said, “I’m utterly serious about music. I just respect the buying public’s judgment that it’s not what I should do for a living.” So instead he is a database programmer.

But he has also programmed his music into the database of HISTORY, and you can find it lots of places if you try. If you like crushable album names, there’s one called Interbabe Concern. And the band name itself, “The Loud Family,” is taken from the one of the first ever reality TV shows; the subject family was the Louds.

Scott Miller also used to answer fans’ questions on his website, so if it seems as though I’m asking things that have no relevance to Scott Miller, it’s often actually just referencing something he’s already said somewhere else. Like, I’m not just making a bizarre assumption about the aging process when I ask him if he likes writing songs more slowly than he used to. He’s said that happens. You should read through the whole website; it is great.

MBV Ronnie: Do you own An American Family?

Scott Miller: No, can you buy it? Besides not being able to afford the TV time my vegetative soul cries out for, I’ve always been a little afraid of it. It was my first mature experience of there being this disruptive truth-seeking power that rested in “How can kids today find a way to enjoy life without the concept of colored vinyl? No wonder they’re in gangs.”the hands of people like those filmmakers. But I wouldn’t want to own it because it’s too easy for me to picture people owning a DVD of personal goings-on around my house. It’s a hugely important cultural study tool, but I freak out a little if I feel too voyeuristic. I made that reference to the novel Lolita [by naming a Game Theory album Lolita Nation] because the idea of coming of age in the purview of usurious attitudes toward you was compelling to me, but I’ve never actually made it more than a few pages into the novel. It’s draining to me.

MBV Ronnie: So you don’t watch shows like Big Brother or Survivor? I enjoy them a lot, but they wear me out.

Scott Miller: I don’t think I even know what Big Brother is, but I’ve seen a few Survivor episodes. My main reaction was how disturbed I was that the world must adore that snuffing out the torch ritual.

MBV Ronnie: Have you ever actually played the Destroyer drinking game?

Scott Miller: No, but what a fine institution that is. He’s not even that repetitive in his themes. Imagine a game where you drink every time Pink Floyd sing about alienation.

MBV Ronnie: What would constitute a Loud Family drinking game?

Scott Miller: That sounds like it would be too identical to real alcoholism. Drink if someone in the song faces a hard reality!

MBV Ronnie: I was delighted and surprised to learn that Cole Gerst did the artwork for Days for Days. It’s one of my favourite pieces of ultra-90s-looking album art, and he is still very cool today and works in a different style.

Scott Miller: Cole Gerst did the artwork for all of the last three Loud Family albums. My original Days for Days concept was to have the CD come in a little square box with the CD fitting diagonally, and they’d look like a day, with suns on one face and moons on another or something I never worked all the way out, and the store display would be a stack of these boxes. But 1998 was well past my having enough clout to float a design like that. Cole and I worked together to come up with the pile of beans instead of a stack of day boxes, where each bean is a numbered day. We wanted to project a basic sunniness and optimism even in the presence of an undercurrent of somewhat cynical visual puns like “bean counting,” “hill of beans,” “numbered days.” Cole didn’t have the slightest trouble with layers of complication like that, nor with the fact that we knew only about five people in the world were ever going to care about that kind of consideration when they looked at it, let alone that bizarre parable in the gatefold.

MBV Ronnie: If you were releasing music today, how would you want to release it? Is the object an integral part of your memories of releasing music, and either way, is it an integral part of how you listen?

Scott Miller: I was the artist kid growing up, and I developed an intense physical fetish about printing and packaging by the time I was putting records out, so it was a horrible shock to my system that the world has drifted away from that. The little dinky artwork on CDs was sad. I never completely got my mind around the idea that there could be such thing as a collectible CD. I only cared about the vinyl version of any releases I was involved in until the nineties when there started being essentially no choice. How can kids today find a way to enjoy life without the concept of colored vinyl? No wonder they’re in gangs.

MBV Ronnie: Do you enjoy the increasingly slow process of songwriting? And, likewise, do you prefer to write songs when you don’t intend to release them?

Scott Miller: I don’t have passionate feelings one way or the other. I mostly just accept this is how life is now. I keep thinking I might do another album if I get “Dirty Projectors are pretty terrifying. They raise the bar for sounding good in some game-changing way that’s almost an impediment to liking them.”some brilliant idea about how to get the time and money, and if the musicians get paid yet it stands a reasonable chance of breaking even. That means I’m looking for a jump in my ability to sing and to put the preferences of my ear across to a wide audience, and also a jump in my ability get the truth content across directly.

MBV Ronnie: Do you think the way music works on the internet, and particularly how there is more democracy to music criticism and greater room for larger niches, would affect the reception of The Loud Family?

Scott Miller: It’s a good question but not that easy to answer, and the Loud Family is one thing and Game Theory is another. Game Theory thrive a little as a historical curiosity, and I don’t think there’s any chance new bands would know what Lolita Nation is or it would cost scary collector prices if it weren’t for the internet. But the Loud Family, much as I like some of that music, is just lost in the shuffle for the most part. Although watch out, Interbabe Concern is starting to move into the expensive used CD category, for no popularity reason that I can fathom. Seriously, maybe it’s considered an early example of Cole Gerst artwork.

MP3: Game Theory – “Bad Year at U.C.L.A.”

MBV Ronnie: As much as it’s inconvenient to someone who likes The Loud Family that there isn’t any more Loud Family music right now – and obviously, that’s not even accounting for any possible inconvenience to you – I love the idea that you feel Milkshake by Kelis was your closing credits theme. What was your theme for 2009?

Scott Miller: Dirty Projectors are pretty terrifying. They raise the bar for sounding good in some game-changing way that’s almost an impediment to liking them. The latest Andrew Bird is a big step up for him. I’m flipping over the latest Tris McCall. The Decemberists album is the first time I’ve been won over convincingly by them. Same for moments of the latest Death Cab For Cutie. I’m still way behind on listening to buzz things like I think they’re called Grizzly Bear and that band with I think the word Phoenix in the name.

MBV Ronnie: Last serious question. I was trying to think of the character of your music, and I’m sure it’s partly a failure of imagination/vocab/historical knowledge on my part, but my easiest thing to cite is a type of writing. “The little dinky artwork on CDs was sad. I never completely got my mind around the idea that there could be such thing as a collectible CD.”A writer like Lydia Davis is impossible to describe to somebody in a way that sounds juicy or cool, but in their craftsmanship – versus almost any type of writer – is where you find the real juice of any writing actually is. Am I making sense to you?

Scott Miller: I’m probably thinking of opinions I have that are like that more than verifiably following every word. Sometimes I think that the main reason important writers are important is the subject matter they gravitate to, and someone in that category can get away with an unflashy presentation, and even a fair amount of being wrong.

MBV Ronnie: Alright. Final question-question. Barbara Walters famously asked Julie Andrews: If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?

Scott Miller: I think Julie Andrews should be a lofty pine amid the fresh air of the
Austrian Alps.

I clearly don’t know what I’m talking about; Barbara Walters asked Katherine Hepburn that question. – Ed.

Buy the not-at-all-exorbitant/collector-priced Loud Family CDs at at Amazon.

- Ronnie Scott