Mark Mothersbaugh: Creative InspirationsIntroduction| 00:00 | (Music playing)
| | 00:05 | Mark Mothersbaugh: I used to like
to show them in groups like this.
| | 00:08 | To me this is like my diary.
| | 00:11 | The images come from things that are
happening during the day, whether it's a
| | 00:16 | really fun piece of music or
bad traffic on Sunset Boulevard.
| | 00:21 | I remember thinking that's why I've
spent my whole life learning how to play an
| | 00:27 | instrument. So that I could do that,
because that's what I wanted to do.
| | 00:30 | I was 12 years old.
| | 00:32 | There were girls screaming at the Beatles on TV.
| | 00:35 | I said that's what I want to do.
| | 00:36 | DEVO decided early on that we weren't
beautiful asparagus people, but we were
| | 00:42 | more dirty commonplace potatoes.
| | 00:46 | When we came out on stage in yellow
HAZMAT outfits that we ripped off and we
| | 00:51 | had like 1950's gym outfits underneath
it, and it just didn't look like rock 'n
| | 00:56 | roll at all to people and it
didn't sound like it. It was so strange.
| | 01:00 | It was like, everybody would say, well
you have got to go through this band.
| | 01:03 | He said, "Take that sound and mix it with
Ennio Morricone and then just give me a
| | 01:11 | Mark Mothersbaugh filter on the
whole thing" and I thought, okay.
| | 01:15 | You'd look at the scene.
| | 01:16 | You decide what you'd want to write.
| | 01:17 | You do it really fast.
| | 01:18 | You couldn't really do a lot
of different alternative takes.
| | 01:22 | You just had to just like get it out.
| | 01:25 | Something about that was really
exciting, how immediate it was.
| | 01:27 | It was kind of scary in a way too.
| | 01:29 | Part of his job was making sure that
things stayed broken, which is kind of what
| | 01:33 | circuit bending is in a way, is
breaking things in a creative fashion.
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| Workspace| 00:08 | Mark Mothersbaugh: We are at
beautiful Sunset Strip, West Hollywood.
| | 00:12 | This is Mutato Muzika, ground zero for most
of the things creative that I do these days.
| | 00:19 | Well, come on into the building.
| | 00:20 | I'll show you around a little bit.
| | 00:22 | Be careful, there is a -- be sure to
wipe your feet on a historic first rug.
| | 00:29 | I walked across this rug for about six
or seven years before I thought, oh, you
| | 00:34 | know I want to put my visual
art on rugs, not just the logo.
| | 00:39 | After I found this company in Kentucky
that would make me these rugs, I just
| | 00:44 | started doing them like every week.
| | 00:46 | I started doing another drawing that I done.
| | 00:49 | I turn it into-- Actually, let me see if I
have-- I might have something in my pocket.
| | 00:55 | Here's from the last couple of days.
| | 00:57 | This is from yesterday while I was sitting
at the Oscars, waiting for it to be over.
| | 01:02 | I just do drawings everyday.
| | 01:05 | And then if I find one I really
like, I was turning them into rugs.
| | 01:09 | It was so easy because I can do it in Photoshop.
| | 01:11 | I can just scan my artwork and
then play with it a little bit.
| | 01:16 | It's kind of nice when artwork is on a floor.
| | 01:19 | You think about it differently, and then you
know I still find time to be able to paint.
| | 01:24 | While James is over there getting the
score ready for the orchestra, I got time
| | 01:28 | to do some painting before we
have to go into the big sound stage.
| | 01:34 | DEVO still works here.
| | 01:35 | We are still semi-functioning as
a band, pretty fully functioning.
| | 01:40 | We have an album coming out.
| | 01:41 | We are kind of a little bit all over the
place here, and I kind of like it that way.
| | 01:46 | We are lucky enough to be in
just about every area of music.
| | 01:50 | Video games, commercials.
| | 01:54 | Another one is TV shows and films,
and they all have complexity.
| | 01:59 | Sometimes they are self-contained, and
at sometime in my life I've done all of
| | 02:06 | those categories just by myself.
| | 02:08 | But then there is no way one person can do it.
| | 02:12 | You end up putting together a team, and
there is a lot of specific jobs within that.
| | 02:17 | Hence all these little cells off to the
side where we have people toiling away
| | 02:23 | on their own on different specific projects.
| | 02:27 | Here is a guy that I work with that helps
make the big movie thing happen at Mutato.
| | 02:34 | This is James at Mutato.
| | 02:36 | He works on synthestration,
orchestration and conducting.
| | 02:41 | He conducts our orchestras.
| | 02:44 | Albert, he has worked on lots of commercials.
| | 02:47 | He has worked on lots of TV.
| | 02:49 | He has worked on film with me.
| | 02:50 | He loves old time, like this Moog here
is probably from the 70s, plus he has
| | 02:58 | enthralled to more hi-tech electronics too.
| | 03:00 | But over here is my admission of
defeat when it comes to digital mixing.
| | 03:09 | I ended up after going through a
couple of attempts at going digital for
| | 03:13 | a console, I went back to on old 80s
analog SSL console, what DEVO used to
| | 03:18 | record on back in the 80s.
| | 03:20 | This little guy here is an Ondioline.
| | 03:23 | I was rehearsing in a place called Modern Music.
| | 03:26 | Pink Floyd was rehearsing in the big
studio next to us, and when they were done
| | 03:30 | with their rehearsal, they were
getting ready to go out on tours.
| | 03:32 | So they had a couple of semis full of equipment.
| | 03:35 | So they were picking stuff
that they wanted to just jettison.
| | 03:39 | And this was going to go in the trash.
| | 03:41 | And I said "hey, what are
you guys doing with that?"
| | 03:44 | And they said "would you
like it?" And I said "heck yeah."
| | 03:49 | Once Midi came along, Midi kind of was
to help instruments talk together and
| | 03:56 | which was a really great thing, but
what it took away was this kind of
| | 04:00 | individualism that synthesizers in the 70s had.
| | 04:05 | Like this one here, the CAT for instance,
would have just like one switch that
| | 04:09 | would have some strange name on it.
| | 04:11 | It would be unique to that instrument and
you wouldn't be able to find it anywhere else.
| | 04:14 | Now all the synths, they all control the
same software, and they all control the same
| | 04:19 | sample banks and so things
are becoming more similar again.
| | 04:22 | But like this keyboard, the keyboard
itself, if you wanted tremolo, to get
| | 04:26 | tremolo or vibrato, you wiggled your finger.
| | 04:30 | The whole keyboard wiggles
and so if you go pingggggg...
| | 04:35 | I just love that idea.
| | 04:36 | It's like I wish that was on
pianos, for instance. It'd be great.
| | 04:42 | So this is kind of my studio.
| | 04:44 | The building is circular, which has a
lot of benefits that I found out through
| | 04:49 | the years, and you could be walking
around and forget where you are going, but
| | 04:54 | it's not a problem because you just
keep going because eventually, you'll
| | 04:57 | remember where it was you were going,
and then you just turn off in that room.
| | 05:01 | That brings us back to the lobby, which means
we've gone full circle around the main studio.
| | 05:10 | And that's it, Mutato Muzika.
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| Becoming an artist| 00:08 | Mark Mothersbaugh: If you got to my
house there is about 300 of these books.
| | 00:14 | What they are, is this is you know
like what I do everyday. I do drawings.
| | 00:19 | Every now and then you do a really
good one and then that's the one that
| | 00:22 | turns into a rug or I change it into a big
painting or it turns into a DEVO record cover.
| | 00:28 | you never know.
| | 00:29 | I used to like to show them in groups
like this because to me it's--
| | 00:37 | To me this is like my diary.
| | 00:39 | The images come from things that are
happening during the day, you know whether
| | 00:43 | it's a really fun piece of music
or bad traffic on Sunset Boulevard.
| | 00:50 | My start in becoming an artist kind of
was, the ground zero for that, was the day
| | 00:58 | that I got my first pair of glasses.
| | 01:00 | I was legally blind and
but didn't really know it.
| | 01:04 | Now it's not that incredible of a situation.
| | 01:09 | When you are kid you don't know that you are
seeing something different than other people.
| | 01:15 | So you just think everybody has the
same quality of vision as you and
| | 01:22 | you go with it.
| | 01:24 | I mean I remember being impressed that
other people of my class somehow knew the
| | 01:30 | right answers when the
teacher would say, okay what is it?
| | 01:34 | Tell me what it says on the
board in front of the classroom.
| | 01:39 | She'd ask me something and I make a
joke and everybody would laugh in the class
| | 01:43 | and I get put in the corner again.
Or disciplined or go to the principal's
| | 01:49 | office or get spanked.
| | 01:50 | I got spanked when I was in first grade.
| | 01:52 | They had corporal punishment back in the 50s.
| | 01:54 | Somewhere at the end of second grade
I went and had my eyes test. You know,
| | 01:59 | someone decided that I should get my
eyes tested and I did and they found out
| | 02:03 | that I couldn't see-- I could see the big E
when it was about a foot away from my face.
| | 02:10 | I could read the E then at that point.
| | 02:13 | So I got a pair of glasses and lucky
for me it was astigmatism and myopia.
| | 02:18 | So although it was extreme, it was correctable.
| | 02:22 | So a couple of weeks later I
got my first pair of glasses.
| | 02:26 | I remember walking out of the
doctor's office and I saw smoke coming out
| | 02:30 | chimneys and birds flying. I saw clouds.
| | 02:34 | I'd never seen what clouds looked like before.
| | 02:36 | I just remember being totally blown
away and my dad says "that's your school!"
| | 02:39 | And I was like, wow! That's amazing.
| | 02:43 | I've never seen anything that
clear before. That was crazy.
| | 02:47 | I became really obsessed with drawing.
| | 02:54 | The next day I remember my teacher like
looking over my shoulder and Mrs. Savery.
| | 02:59 | That day she said, "Mark you draw trees
better than me" and it probably wasn't true.
| | 03:07 | Although she could have been a
really bad artist. That's also possible.
| | 03:10 | But just that she said that, instead of
swatting me or you know like hitting,
| | 03:17 | you know cuffing me on the head for
like talking to somebody or creating a
| | 03:22 | disturbance or something.
| | 03:23 | Because of her saying that it sent me on a path.
| | 03:28 | So it was kind of a-- I think I became
an artist kind of because I got to save
| | 03:38 | up on getting to see things
until I was almost eight years old.
| | 03:43 | So it became like this instant treat you know.
| | 03:47 | It was kind of cool.
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| Discovering music| 00:08 | Mark Mothersbaugh: To me music was invented to
torture me. That's what I had come to the conclusion of.
| | 00:15 | I started taking my music lessons right
about the time I got my first pair of glasses.
| | 00:21 | There was this woman, Mrs. Fox,
| | 00:22 | who would come over to our house and we
had a little Skinner organ in the living room.
| | 00:25 | She was trying to figure out how to get
me excited about my music lessons and so
| | 00:31 | they found this book of TV theme songs.
| | 00:36 | I remember learning 77 Sunset Strip.
| | 00:39 | I remember deliberately playing it
really slow because she was going "77 sunset
| | 00:47 | strip," while I was playing on the organ.
| | 00:51 | But at that time it was just like, it
was painful. It was war between her and
| | 00:56 | me and I hated music.
| | 00:59 | Then one day I am 12 years old it's
dinner time and our families all there and
| | 01:03 | we were five kids in the family.
| | 01:04 | We were sitting around the dinner
table and we had a little portable
| | 01:08 | black-and-white TV setup in the kitchen.
| | 01:10 | We were watching TV while we were eating
and the Ed Sullivan Show and then he
| | 01:17 | said "okay from the Liverpool, The Beatles."
| | 01:22 | (Girls screaming)
| | 01:27 | I was just kind of like nailed the chair.
| | 01:30 | I remember thinking "that's why I spent
my whole life learning how to play an
| | 01:36 | instrument so that I could do that."
Because that's what I wanted to do.
| | 01:39 | I was 12 years old. There were
girls screaming at the Beatles on TV.
| | 01:44 | I said that's what I wanted to do.
| | 01:45 | So I called my friend Ronny
Wyszynski. He was with an accordion player.
| | 01:50 | So, we went to Woolworth's. They had
like 4 or 5 Beatle's albums and they were
| | 01:56 | all $3.99 and there was one
with $1.99 and I bought that one.
| | 02:04 | I got it home and I started listening
to it and like I don't recognize any of
| | 02:08 | these songs and I am like playing
the album for like for the third time going,
| | 02:13 | "this isn't their good album" and I am
looking at and I am looking at the album
| | 02:16 | and all of sudden I realized I'd bought an
album by The Bugs. I didn't buy the Beatles.
| | 02:23 | So, I go oh my god I got the wrong album!
| | 02:26 | So, I had The Bugs and I was really
pissed and there was a song and you know
| | 02:30 | when I am listening, I am trying to get
into it, and the best song on the record
| | 02:33 | was this one that goes:
| | 02:34 | You got me bug, bug, bug, bug, bug.
| | 02:36 | Hey! Little lady bug you belong..
And I am like "this is hideous."
| | 02:42 | This whole album is so uncool.
| | 02:45 | So I had The Bugs. That was the
first album I've ever bought.
| | 02:47 | But, I went back Ronny and got like a
book of Hard Day's Night sheet music so we
| | 02:55 | took it home and I am on the organ and
it's showing you playing the chords like
| | 02:59 | this like duh, duh, duh, duh,
duh, it's been a hard day night.
| | 03:04 | Ronny sitting there with on a accordion
going like this and we were taking turns
| | 03:07 | trying to play the melody line to figure
out who should be playing what part and
| | 03:12 | accordion and organ weren't
making and it was horrible.
| | 03:16 | Then so then when they go my dad's going oh!
| | 03:19 | You know the Beatles they are back on
Ed Sullivan again tonight
| | 03:22 | And I am like I know.
I am like watching it all and they go,
| | 03:26 | "And stay tuned because the Beatles will be
back with one more song after this statement!"
| | 03:30 | So, they come back and this time no.
Something's totally weird.
| | 03:35 | One of the Beatles is sitting down. He is not
standing up and he is sitting at a keyboard.
| | 03:40 | I am like oh, what's that?
| | 03:43 | It's an organ sound and it's the
craziest organ I ever saw because this organ it
| | 03:50 | was a Vox Continental and
they were popular in the 60s.
| | 03:53 | The white keys were black and the black
keys were white and I just, I remember
| | 03:57 | my eyes bugging out, looking at that
on the TV screen, going "that's impossible!"
| | 04:01 | I've never seen anything like that,
that's crazy and then like in the middle I
| | 04:04 | am down it comes to the solo and John
Lennon he's playing something really
| | 04:09 | kind of wild on the organ. I'd never seen
anything like that and I am watching him
| | 04:14 | and he start to playing with
his elbow and I am like,
| | 04:17 | Mrs. Fox never told me you could do that.
| | 04:19 | I just remember calling Ronny Wyszynski
up and like over the phone I was
| | 04:23 | so happy, I was really rubbing it in
that the Beatles used in the organ.
| | 04:27 | They didn't used an accordion.
| | 04:30 | So, I knew I was going to
say goodbye to Ronny Wyszynski.
| | 04:33 | I knew he was going to be left behind
in the gutter while I took off into the
| | 04:39 | world of rock-n-roll.
| | 04:42 | So, at age 12 I wanted to be an
artist. I was sure I was going to be--
| | 04:49 | at the time I thought I was going to be a
painter but now all of a sudden I was
| | 04:54 | going to be musician too.
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| Forming DEVO| 00:08 | Mark Mothersbaugh: DEVO, when we were starting as
a band it was right after a shooting and not just
| | 00:14 | at Kent but other campuses
around the country there.
| | 00:17 | Students were saying, hey!
| | 00:18 | We don't want to be part of this Vietnam War.
| | 00:20 | You know, we were watching it on TV
and we are like who are we defending and
| | 00:27 | why and why are we attacking people over there?
| | 00:29 | They didn't do anything to us.
| | 00:31 | What is the point to this war?
| | 00:32 | It's not a good war.
| | 00:33 | During that time period Jerry
Casale who I'd collaborated with on a few
| | 00:38 | visual things already that year,
he came over and he started playing music
| | 00:43 | with me and he was a bass player and he was
playing in a blues band to make some extra money.
| | 00:49 | I was a keyboard player but I was
playing like synth stuff and it was more like
| | 00:55 | Soft Machine or something.
| | 00:57 | It was kind of like more acidy and we
were trying to figure out what is this
| | 01:01 | sound we were thinking. Oh!
| | 01:02 | It's like Flintstones meets the Jetsons.
| | 01:04 | You know, like I was playing kind of
space age-y kind of sounds and he was
| | 01:08 | playing like kind of primitive bass
sounds, blues, blues-y kind of things.
| | 01:14 | We started talking about what was going
on around us and then what was happening
| | 01:18 | at school and what was happening in the world.
| | 01:22 | We came to the conclusion that what
we were observing was not evolution but
| | 01:28 | rather de-evolution.
| | 01:31 | So, that's where we've got the name
the De-evolution band and then the
| | 01:36 | De-evolutionary army before we cut
letters off the end and turn it into DEVO.
| | 01:41 | De-evolution was sort of our platform.
| | 01:45 | It became a way that we could talk
about things that we were curious about,
| | 01:49 | that concerned us and we could make fun of
things and we could draw attention to things.
| | 01:55 | So, we looked at people like
Andy Warhol for inspiration.
| | 01:59 | We saw-- and not so much in his
messages but in his techniques.
| | 02:03 | We saw that was the perfect.
| | 02:05 | He was about ideas and it didn't
matter what medium he worked in.
| | 02:08 | I'd liked the idea that he wasn't just
locked into like playing guitar or to
| | 02:14 | painting watercolors on a piece of
paper, the same exact thing every time.
| | 02:18 | He was into solving problems.
| | 02:21 | So, we kind of wanted DEVO to be like that.
| | 02:25 | We wanted DEVO to be like
an gait pop group in a way.
| | 02:31 | We wanted to have unit services in
Ohio and in Akron. We imagined our own
| | 02:38 | version of the factory in Downtown in
Akron where we'd have our music television
| | 02:44 | network and DEVO's re-education TV shows.
| | 02:49 | Then, you know the band had a
philosophy and we had our own slang.
| | 02:57 | So, it became like this phenomenon
but then it didn't really--
| | 03:01 | Record companies couldn't figure out how
that translated into record sales.
| | 03:05 | Record companies had enjoyed this long
run up through the 70s where they didn't
| | 03:11 | have to do anything.
| | 03:13 | They just pressed a record and put it
in a store and it would get gobbled up.
| | 03:18 | When we first signed with Warner Brothers,
a marketing plan with something like,
| | 03:22 | we'd go and to meet with
them and they'd tell us "okay!
| | 03:25 | Here is our marketing plan for DEVO."
And a guy would get up and he go,
| | 03:29 | "we are going to build life size standup cut
outs of the band and we are going to put it
| | 03:35 | in all the major record
stores around the country."
| | 03:37 | Then he'd kind of smiled then
everybody would be like, "yeah okay!" and that was it.
| | 03:42 | That was our marketing.
That was our marketing campaign.
| | 03:46 | I remember at that meeting
that we went to where that happened,
| | 03:50 | Gerald and I going well, how much is that
life size standup cut-out is going to cost?
| | 03:56 | They were like, "Well that's going
to be like $5,000 for those cutouts."
| | 04:02 | And we were like, "Can we have
the money to make a film with?"
| | 04:06 | They were like, "What?
What do you mean make a film?"
| | 04:11 | Well, we want to make a film of the
song Satisfaction on our album and they go,
| | 04:18 | "what do we are going to do with that?"
| | 04:20 | I remember being questioned
like. And we go "Well."
| | 04:23 | "It will be like those other films we
did, Jocko Homo and Secret Agent Man."
| | 04:30 | I just remember the
people at Warners going, "Okay?"
| | 04:34 | "You want to give up the life-size
cutouts and make a little film, go ahead."
| | 04:38 | So, they gave us the money and we
made the film Satisfaction and they just
| | 04:43 | thought we were crazy.
| | 04:47 | (Music playing.)
| | 04:53 | (Lead singer: I can't get no satisfaction.)
| | 04:56 | By the time MTV came around, DEVO had
already made enough films to do our first
| | 05:02 | major compilation DVD by that point.
| | 05:07 | So MTV, they gladly took our songs and
put them on their network and we were in--
| | 05:15 | You saw a different DEVO video like
every hour orevery half-hour in the first
| | 05:21 | couple of years in MTV.
| | 05:23 | We came out on stage in yellow hazmat
outfits that will be ripped off and we had
| | 05:28 | like 1950's gym outfits underneath it.
| | 05:31 | It just didn't look like rock-n-roll
at all the people and it didn't sound
| | 05:36 | like it. It was so strange.
| | 05:38 | It was like everybody would say "well
you got to see this band. It's really
| | 05:42 | something different."
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| Breaking into television| 00:08 |
Mark Mothersbaugh: The first TV show
I ever scored was Pee-wee's Playhouse.
| | 00:11 |
A friend of mine, Paul, had asked me to
score his stage show and I was busy with
| | 00:19 |
the DEVO and then he asked me to score
his film, his feature, and I was on tour.
| | 00:25 |
I was going on tour and I really
didn't really see how that was going to
| | 00:30 |
work and then he asked me to score his
TV show and then at that point DEVO had
| | 00:35 |
just signed some horrible deal with
Enigma Records and we were turning into an
| | 00:41 |
enigma and I said, "well, yeah, I could do the TV show."
| | 00:46 |
So I started. The first thing I
did for TV was write the theme song for
| | 00:51 |
Pee-wee's Playhouse, then
we had Cyndi Lauper sing it.
| | 00:55 | (Music playing)
| | 01:01 | (Pee-wee: Arghhhh!)
| | 01:02 | (Female singer: Come in and pull yourself up a chair.)
| | 01:05 | (Pee-wee: Like Chairy!)
| | 01:06 | (Female singer: Let the begin, it's time to let down your hair!)
| | 01:11 | (Female singer: Pee-wee's sure excited,
'cause all his friends have been invited!)
| | 01:15 | (Pee-wee: That's you!)
| | 01:16 | (Female singer: To go wacky at Pee-Wee's Playhouse!
| | 01:19 | (Pee-wee: Arghhhh!)
| | 01:20 |
It was interesting. I had never
scored for TV before and it was kind of fun
| | 01:26 |
because they had send me a tape on a
Monday. Tuesday, I'd write the music for
| | 01:34 |
the whole show, Wednesday I record it,
Thursday I had to mix it and send it
| | 01:38 |
back to them and then Saturday morning
we would sit and watch it and that was
| | 01:42 |
kind of cool because I had been in a
band up to then pretty exclusively where
| | 01:48 |
you wrote 12 songs, went out on
tour for six months, came back and started
| | 01:55 | it all over again.
| | 01:56 |
So about every year I get to write 12
songs, which was kind of that was the
| | 02:02 |
fun part been in the band and then
all the other stuff was just work to
| | 02:06 |
support and sell those songs.
| | 02:07 |
The idea that I was writing a half
hour's worth of music every week was really
| | 02:13 |
exciting for me and it was like you
didn't have a lot of time to sit there and
| | 02:19 |
like play with it and try different
version. Because it was kind of thing where
| | 02:22 |
you would look at the scene, you decide
what you want to write, you do it really fast.
| | 02:25 |
You couldn't really do a lot of
different alternative takes. You just had
| | 02:30 |
to just like get it out and
something about that was really exciting,
| | 02:34 |
how immediate it was. It was
kind of scary in a way too.
| | 02:36 |
So I don't know. That show was a
success so I got offered more TV shows and
| | 02:44 |
that's pretty much how I got started.
| | 02:47 |
But the ridiculous part about it is
I didn't go to school to be a composer.
| | 02:55 |
This was totally an afterthought.
This was something that I hadn't thought of
| | 02:59 |
when I was younger or even
had much thought that I would ever be
| | 03:05 |
in a position where I would be
able to get a job doing that.
| | 03:09 |
So I was just kind of all my own and I
remember at the end of the first season,
| | 03:15 |
talking with the editor of the Pee-
wee show and he said, "lock your tapes up
| | 03:20 |
with the video, because for you
it would be best." And I go, "how do you do that?"
| | 03:25 |
And he goes, well "SMPTE
time code." And I was like, "what's that?"
| | 03:30 |
I remember being in shock that there
was an easy way to do it, rather than just
| | 03:35 |
watching the film and like, as you get
closer, you go one, two, one, two, three
| | 03:39 |
let's go!! And then you would have like
five people playing and you'd try to start
| | 03:43 |
it at the right time and you go, oh no, I
started it a little late. Let's do it over
| | 03:46 |
again, then we go oh, we got to pick that up?
| | 03:48 |
But once I found out, it's like I have
found out how to write music for a picture
| | 03:54 |
on the job, is basically what I am saying.
| | 03:57 |
So I did it the hard way.
| | 03:59 |
It's like I wish I would
have gone the school for it.
| | 04:03 |
I would have made things a lot
easier for the first five or six years of
| | 04:07 |
my scoring career.
| | 04:11 |
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| Founding Mutato Muzika| 00:08 | Mark Mothersbaugh: Mutato, it
had a name, even when it was just me.
| | 00:12 | It was Mutato Muzika, because I
didn't want it to be Mark Mothersbaugh and
| | 00:15 | I didn't want it to be DEVO.
| | 00:17 | I wanted to be able to do a
wider, have a wider palette.
| | 00:20 | So I wanted something that meant
nothing to anybody in a way, other than it
| | 00:26 | was just an odd name.
| | 00:28 | So Mutato is a contraction of mutant and potato.
| | 00:33 | Muzika just sounded like it was like
foreign, and later on I found out that
| | 00:39 | is how you say
music in Hungarian apparently.
| | 00:42 | I realized that DEVO as the band could
not score movies, because we were used
| | 00:50 | to 12 songs in a year.
| | 00:53 | What happened when it came time for a film,
| | 00:56 | we had like a month or six weeks or
something to score one of these movies.
| | 01:00 | But we would sit there and like as a
band it was going over and everyday like
| | 01:07 | maybe we get one queue done, which is
like what would happen if you went into
| | 01:10 | the studio. You'd spend all the day and you'd
maybe get one song recorded and not even mixed.
| | 01:15 | So everybody felt like they're on schedule.
| | 01:17 | I'm looking at it and just realizing
there is no way the amount of queues we
| | 01:20 | had to do we were going to finish in time.
| | 01:22 | At a certain point, I just had to
start writing and scoring the film without
| | 01:27 | the band, and then it was...
| | 01:29 | So we did two of them and it was just
kind of after that I just decided well I
| | 01:33 | should do it on my own.
| | 01:35 | The first two things I did, once
DEVO kind of went into cocoon/siesta/
| | 01:41 | hibernation in the 80s,
| | 01:45 | was I did Pee-wee's Playhouse.
| | 01:47 | Then I did a Hawaiian Punch commercial.
| | 01:50 | Both of them won a lot of awards.
| | 01:53 | In the Hawaiian Punch
commercial, I kind of designed.
| | 01:57 | It was all real sound design music.
| | 01:59 | (Music playing)
| | 02:24 | So a kind of was
really fresh sound at the time.
| | 02:27 | And both of those things
brought me in a lot of work without having
| | 02:31 | an agent or a manager.
| | 02:34 | I hired someone to answer the phone
after a while when I had four shows and I
| | 02:37 | couldn't be on the phone talking to
people and writing music at the same time.
| | 02:41 | So I hired a secretary, but it was just
still me until a woman who had produced
| | 02:48 | most of the Pee-wee's shows said to me,
"Mark, I'm doing a show for Disney now."
| | 02:56 | "I need 100 episodes scored in two years."
| | 02:59 | I'm thinking okay that's an
episode of week. No big deal.
| | 03:02 | I said "I can do that." She goes, "okay."
| | 03:04 | "But I just want you to know, I also
want you to write four original songs that
| | 03:09 | are script-based for people with
lyrics, for people in the show, and guest
| | 03:16 | performers to come on and sing."
| | 03:18 | I went wait a minute.
| | 03:19 | So you want me to write 100 episodes
of TV in two years, but you want me to
| | 03:23 | write 400 songs in two
years also. She said, "Yeah!"
| | 03:27 | I said "I can't do all that
in that short a time period."
| | 03:31 | She goes "well, you must have some
friends that you work with, or other guys that
| | 03:36 | you collaborate with that would want to
work on this with you." I was like "yeah."
| | 03:41 | So I started asking people
to work on that show with me.
| | 03:45 | My brother Bob was one of the first to sign on.
| | 03:48 | I ended up with about 25
people that worked on that project.
| | 03:51 | So at the end of the two years, we had
a couple of dozen Emmy nominations and
| | 03:56 | everybody was all excited about it.
| | 03:58 | They wanted to do more.
| | 04:00 | It was the only show I had that was that big.
| | 04:01 | But I said well, if you want,
I will look for more big projects.
| | 04:07 | That's kind of how this company started.
| | 04:09 | It went from being just one guy in
a bedroom to be in a whole bunch of
| | 04:14 | people around the city.
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| The transition to film scoring| 00:07 | Mark Mothersbaugh: I got a call from G?bor and
he told me he had been doing The Simpsons and now he
| | 00:18 | was creating his own show.
| | 00:19 | It was called Rugrats and he said he
had heard a solo album I put out in Japan
| | 00:23 | called Music for Insomniacs.
| | 00:25 | He wanted to use one of the songs on Music
for Insomniacs for the theme song for Rugrats.
| | 00:29 | While we're talking I said "I've already
scored five or six TV series already."
| | 00:38 | Why don't you let me write you something for it?
| | 00:42 | I can do it in the style of that
music, if that's the music you like.
| | 00:46 | (Music Playing)
| | 01:00 | I started at the very beginning in I
don't know it wass like the third or fourth
| | 01:03 | season or something when they came and
told me and I was like "You're going to do a
| | 01:07 | feature?" and they go "yeah."
| | 01:09 | They go, "well, the show is incredibly popular."
| | 01:13 | I was thinking wow.
| | 01:14 | I just sit in a room all day and write
music and never know what's going on.
| | 01:18 | I never looked at the trades
or followed any of that stuff.
| | 01:21 | So I didn't really know the show
was like a pretty successful show.
| | 01:25 | But Paramount said "who you're going to--
who do you want to have the score the
| | 01:29 | movie? We have some ideas."
| | 01:30 | They said, "well, we want the
composer of the film to score it."
| | 01:33 | They're like "no, no, he has never
scored a big orchestral film before."
| | 01:40 | And I said, "well, I have scored like half
a dozen films." "Yeah, but you never had
| | 01:46 | more than 15 people playing."
| | 01:48 | This is going to be like
a 80s, 90 piece orchestra.
| | 01:51 | Gabor he went to bat for me and said
"no, I want my composer to write the music!"
| | 02:00 | The execs at Paramount relented,
and let me score the movie.
| | 02:09 | It was on-the-job training there too.
| | 02:12 | But it's like in some ways it's easier
to score a big score like that, because
| | 02:16 | you have all these people.
| | 02:20 | You have orchestrators and other people that
come in and they kind of watch your back for you.
| | 02:26 | The arrangers and the orchestrators,
there is a lot of checks and balances.
| | 02:30 | But anyhow so Rugrats ended being
the movie that allowed me to break out
| | 02:35 | of the Catch-22 of
he has never scored a big orchestra before.
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| Film scoring: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs| 00:08 | James Sale: Mark's focus for every
film that he does is melodic and thematic.
| | 00:14 | I think he feels that he can really
concentrate on that, concentrate on the
| | 00:18 | melodies and the themes, and not worry
about the scope and the size and whether
| | 00:23 | it's three trumpets or six trumpets, or
not get lost in those details because he
| | 00:28 | knows that I will then
take care of that afterwards.
| | 00:32 | Mark Mothersbaugh: This is James Sale.
| | 00:34 | He is composer in his own right, but
he is also an excellent synthestrator,
| | 00:42 | orchestrator and conductor.
Hi does all of those things here at Mutato.
| | 00:47 | What we have got here is the piece of
the film that we worked on last year.
| | 00:52 | It works for a Sony Pictures. It was a 3D
film called Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
| | 00:58 | James Sale: So we'll start with Mark's
sketch here and this is a key moment in the film
| | 01:04 | where basically our lead
character Flint has sort of given up hope.
| | 01:10 | (Music playing)
| | 01:20 | This is the full orchestral
version with samples to picture.
| | 01:26 | (Music playing)
| | 01:46 | So as you can see, the logic, it's got a
pretty good simulation of the real thing,
| | 01:56 | but now we will hear the
full orchestral recording.
| | 02:00 | (Music playing)
| | 02:28 | These strings are far more effective
obviously when they are real and detailed,
| | 02:33 | the harp and everything comes through.
| | 02:35 | (Music playing)
| | 02:40 | Solo lines like that are much more emotional.
| | 02:47 | So this is the score
that I conducted from, in London.
| | 02:55 | When I am out conducting on the
podium, Mark is in with the producers and
| | 03:00 | directors and he is constantly in
contact with them, talking to them, getting
| | 03:06 | notes from them, getting
recommendations, holding hands, assuaging fears and
| | 03:13 | all sorts of things.
| | 03:14 | Mark Mothersbaugh: Massaging them through the process.
| | 03:14 | James Sales: Yes,
massaging them through the process.
| | 03:17 | And then he relays that to me
when I am out on the podium.
| | 03:20 | Mark Mothersbaugh: There is nothing that sounds
like hundred live players all in the room breathing.
| | 03:28 | And midi and sampling is pretty
amazing, but it's just there is not a
| | 03:37 | comparison really in the long run if
you are-- I mean, which isn't to say that
| | 03:41 | all scores should be orchestral.
| | 03:43 | I mean a lot of scores need to be logic only.
| | 03:49 | They could be just happy living in the world
of synths and we do those kinds of scores too.
| | 03:55 | But it's just-- there is something
about having real players that nothing
| | 04:01 | else compares to it.
| | 04:03 | With this film in particular,
it was one of the smoother films
| | 04:06 | I think either of their separate work done.
| | 04:08 | Just, there was a lot of pre-production
for both of us and it was worth at the end.
| | 04:12 | It was like, it went very smooth on the
five days we were in the London.
| | 04:19 | And our directors they had
never been on a recording day before.
| | 04:28 | So when they were sitting there with
the hundred players playing, they were
| | 04:31 | appropriately blown away and that
worked out in our favor. It helped us out.
| | 04:34 | James Sale: We had to wait nine
months for that moment but it was worth it.
| | 04:38 | We kept telling them,
| | 04:39 | "You are going to really like this someday."
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| Mutato Muzika projects| 00:08 | Mark Mothersbaugh: I think what happened with me
is because my band was two sets of brothers,
| | 00:12 | we were always used to collaborating and
we were always used to everybody having
| | 00:17 | something to say about it and always--
We always were thinking about the end
| | 00:22 | product as opposed to "this is mine
and I wrote that and you're changing it."
| | 00:28 | There's no other way to do commercials
than be ready to be a team player and to
| | 00:34 | understand that somebody else
has lived with this project a lot longer
| | 00:37 | than you and they also have people
they have to answer to, that have a whole
| | 00:42 | another set of agendas from them.
| | 00:45 | So, as we started building this
company, it went from me doing most of the
| | 00:49 | commercials to where I was doing the
smallest percentage and everybody else was
| | 00:54 | getting really good at it.
| | 00:55 | John Enroth: My name is John Enroth.
| | 00:57 | I do whatever Mark needs me to do. Mostly
writing music, but that I do tech support.
| | 01:04 | I do commercials, video games, and I'm
helping him with the new movie he's working on now.
| | 01:09 | Each project is definitely different.
With more of the commercial stuff,
| | 01:13 | it's such a fast turnaround that
he'll just let us do what we want.
| | 01:18 | He'll give his examples and say what we
should do and/or write a melody and have
| | 01:22 | us do it but most of the commercials
are just write something, turn it in,
| | 01:26 | because we maybe having 24 hours
to a week to turn something in.
| | 01:30 | (Music playing)
| | 01:32 | Mark handed me the music that went
along with this.
| | 01:37 | (Male singing: Jump up, jump down,
jump to your left, jump all around.)
| | 01:40 | And you can hear the fake drums.
I put my own lyrics in and my own vocals.
| | 01:48 | They liked the music and were very nice to say,
| | 01:55 | "hey can we get different lyrics?
Maybe a different vocalist there?"
| | 01:59 | They didn't go out of their way to
say to say "we really don't like the vocals,"
| | 02:03 | but that's all right. It happens.
| | 02:04 | So, we ended up calling a bunch of
people that can actually sing and ended up
| | 02:11 | getting-- and then I had-- they also
wanted more energy and that sort of stuff
| | 02:14 | and obviously with all the fake MIDI
loops and stuff that was in the original,
| | 02:18 | they were hoping for more of a fleshed out idea.
| | 02:21 | So it went from that to this.
| | 02:26 | (Music playing)
| | 02:32 | (Male singing: Jump up, everybody. Get off of your feet.)
| | 02:36 | (Male singing: Jump all around. Sing a little louder.)
| | 02:38 | (Male singing: Jump up and down! One more time.)
| | 02:41 | (Male singing: Jump to the beat! Jump off your feet!)
| | 02:44 | You know, and it goes from there.
| | 02:46 | Albert Fox: My name's Albert Fox.
| | 02:48 | I've been a part Mutato since '97.
| | 02:50 | I am a music composer. I also do some
sound design and basically whatever else
| | 02:57 | needs to get them in terms of--
Basically my job is to help Mark.
| | 03:02 | If I could probably pull something up
from Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist here.
| | 03:07 | It's a movie that he basically
wrote a bunch of themes and then he had
| | 03:13 | us help him with pretty much taking the
themes and then fitting them to the picture.
| | 03:18 | So at that it's more really like
arranging and that kind of stuff, than it
| | 03:21 | really is writing or
scoring and an example of that.
| | 03:25 | (Music playing)
| | 03:26 | So this is pretty much like the thing
that he had it written, the theme for that.
| | 03:29 | (Music playing)
| | 03:36 | I don't even know if this is the
final but the finished version has that as--
| | 03:42 | At least until last part as
the main part of the arrangement.
| | 03:47 | So then I had to take his melody, which is going to--
there's a bit of an intro and build up.
| | 03:55 | (Music playing)
| | 04:01 | Yeah this one, they wanted like
older sounding drums. I think they have
| | 04:05 | given us like the Postal Service as an example.
| | 04:08 | (Music playing)
| | 04:11 | So there's Mark's stuff layered on top.
| | 04:14 | (Music playing)
| | 04:30 | So more of his main melody and
then my backing, backing stuff.
| | 04:35 | Working with Mark is great.
| | 04:37 | I mean it varies from day-to-day.
Sometimes he'll need a good synthesizer sound
| | 04:41 | so you get thrown into that.
| | 04:42 | Sometimes he'll say,"hey, I need you to
help me record vocals or I need
| | 04:46 | you to finger snaps or I need claps,
gather over in the building and we're going
| | 04:50 | do handclaps for this" or things like that.
| | 04:53 | Sometimes it's collaborating with him,
sometimes it's doing-- He'll do the
| | 04:57 | music and I'll do the sound effects,
whether it's a rock or 80s, orchestral and
| | 05:03 | salsa or you name it or
combination there of. There's that.
| | 05:08 | We get to do the wacky stuff and it's fun.
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| Film scoring: Private Pérez| 00:09 | (Music playing)
| | 00:14 | Mark Mothersbaugh: This movie her, I've really
just begun it. An up and coming Mexican director
| | 00:20 | who's already done a couple of films
and he's hired other American composers
| | 00:24 | before, named Beto Gomez. He wanted me
to look at his film and I was kind of,
| | 00:31 | about then I was kind of like feeling like I
was done for a while with doing low budget movies.
| | 00:38 | So, I was kind of-- I almost didn't
look at the movie and then I watched it
| | 00:43 | and it was great film.
| | 00:45 | (Music playing)
| | 01:06 | So, here I am now and I met with
the director and producers and music
| | 01:12 | supervisor, they were all from South
America and Beto it turns out as a big fan of
| | 01:21 | a couple of the scores I did for Wes Anderson.
| | 01:23 | He really likes Life Aquatic
and Royal Tenenbaums a lot.
| | 01:28 | He came in with some ideas of
what he wanted it to sound like.
| | 01:30 | He brought in a lot of Norte
Banda music, which has got a heavy Germanic thing.
| | 01:38 | I mean, even to the point with the base
is a tuba, and it's lot of boom, boom, boom-bo-boom.
| | 01:46 | And I don't know. He said, "take that
sound and mix it Ennio Moreconi and then
| | 01:54 | just give me a Mark
Mothersbaugh filter on the whole thing."
| | 01:58 | And I thought, okay, that said, I'm
still figuring out what that musical
| | 02:03 | universe is going to be.
| | 02:08 | (Music playing)
| | 02:15 | The concept of the music for this one
is like the second half will still have,
| | 02:19 | retain a western feel to it but it'll
have some middle-eastern elements in it,
| | 02:25 | like either a horn or some sort of a
string instrument that let's you know that
| | 02:35 | they're not in Mexico anymore,
they're not in the Western hemisphere
| | 02:40 | anymore, that now they are in the
middle east. And so, like these kind of
| | 02:46 | pads, I think I'll get a lot of mileage.
| | 02:49 | (Music playing)
| | 02:53 | But they have a little bit of a sitar
kind of sound and although sitar is not
| | 02:58 | really the right instrument, they
have just enough of a drone-y kind of thing
| | 03:04 | that you could make it sound mean.
You know, if you're walking around what
| | 03:07 | looks like Baghdad streets, like you
could find danger in these things,
| | 03:14 | in these sounds here.
| | 03:15 | Then I'm also kind of trying to give it
like a little bit of Mucho Macho, but
| | 03:26 | kind of kitschy version of Mucho Macho.
I don't know if it'll stay or not but I
| | 03:30 | put it in a little bit of Toccata and Fugue.
| | 03:32 | So, in the melody I have it going...
| | 03:33 | (Music playing)
| | 03:38 | At a couple of times where the music
stops, then that's the little tag and then
| | 03:41 | it goes back into the song again.
| | 03:44 | (Music playing)
| | 03:53 | And I don't know about the beat. I'm
going to take the beat out for a second.
| | 03:55 | (Music playing)
| | 04:05 | You also want to have a real authentic sound.
| | 04:07 | So, I really doubt I'm going to
get an orchestral band for this.
| | 04:13 | I really think it's going to be more
like I'm going to get a banda band from
| | 04:18 | Orange County or something.
| | 04:21 | Some of that I'm going to have to ask
the director to just give me some leeway,
| | 04:26 | cut me some slack on some of these sounds.
| | 04:29 | (Music playing)
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| Beautiful mutants| 00:06 | Mark Mothersbaugh: This is kind of the main
art room and Johnny kind of helps me in here.
| | 00:11 | He organizes the art projects that
we're working on. For instance all the
| | 00:17 | logistics with Scion. I'm doing some
a design thing, a piece with them right now.
| | 00:23 | It's a conceptual piece. They asked
me to do paint on a car and
| | 00:29 | like "we have always had lots of other
artists do that" and I don't want to paint
| | 00:33 | a car but I've always
wanted to take two cars and saw them in
| | 00:39 | half and put the front ends together or
back ends. And in this case, they had a car
| | 00:46 | that looked good, both the back
and the front end to do that with so.
| | 00:49 | Male Speaker: They didn't
want to do the back end.
| | 00:50 | Mark Mothersbaugh: Oh yeah, that's right, they
didn't want to do the back end and they were going
| | 00:53 | to sell it to me and I said, okay,
well let's just build the back end anyhow
| | 00:58 | because look at it what it looks like.
It's such a cute little trailer. It might
| | 01:00 | even be in a way the better looking to
the two vehicles, even though it has no
| | 01:05 | motor in it, and then when they
saw it, then they wanted it.
| | 01:11 | I'd always had kind of a fascination
with mutants in general and just take the
| | 01:16 | idea of mutants. And symmetry too.
| | 01:20 | I'd played around with taking images
and slicing them, my artwork,
| | 01:24 | slicing them into half and then flipping
the image and making a new image out of
| | 01:28 | two halves and then I started applying
it to photographs and I started off with
| | 01:33 | this pictures I'd taken. And at
first I was taking pictures with a mirror
| | 01:37 | and I was trying to use a mirror to
reflect and get like half of an image and
| | 01:44 | then I found out you could do it in
Photoshop so easy that it's like "what am I
| | 01:48 | doing all this other stuff for?"
It was really and it was really fun and I
| | 01:52 | could make another mutant everyday.
| | 01:55 | So, about 500 days later,
I had a collection of 500 mutants.
| | 02:04 | I don't know. I became fascinated with
this because I found out that in the
| | 02:08 | process of doing it, early on I found
out that when you slice a human's face
| | 02:12 | down the middle and flip it over,
almost rarely does somebody look
| | 02:19 | like the same person. You realize how
asymmetric everybody is, compared to like
| | 02:24 | snowflakes or so many other things in
nature that are much more symmetrical and
| | 02:30 | most animals are much more symmetrical than us.
| | 02:32 | DEVO decided early on that we weren't
beautiful asparagus people and we weren't
| | 02:38 | really glamorous eggplants but we were
more dirty, lowly, commonplace potatoes
| | 02:48 | and potatoes are asymmetric and they
come from underground and there's nothing
| | 02:55 | glamorous about them. But potatoes have
eyes all around and they see everything
| | 02:59 | and they know what's going on and
they're also-- In a way, there's some
| | 03:04 | dignity to their existence in the sense
that they're like a staple of everyone's diet.
| | 03:09 | One thing I found out is that humans
tend to have one side of them that is more
| | 03:15 | childlike and more innocent and
actually more beautiful and then one side that
| | 03:20 | is darker. Like even babies, they tend
to have like a side of them that is their
| | 03:25 | demon side it looks like when you
split a face in half and flip it both
| | 03:29 | directions and I became really
fascinated with that and I had no way to even
| | 03:35 | explain it and I just kept making them any how.
| | 03:37 | So, then I just started forcing them on
galleries and some galleries like them
| | 03:40 | and some people really like them.
Not everybody does, but I did it for a really
| | 03:48 | long time. I was really, totally
fascinated with that strange phenomena.
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| Working with Mark| 00:09 | Johnny Brewton: My skill sets, which are
print making, limited editions, publishing,
| | 00:14 | it seemed like a perfect fit here, and working
with Mark is great because he's so prolific.
| | 00:18 | He has such great ideas and it just
makes it a lot of fun to watch his process.
| | 00:25 | You know I feel like I'm
learning something by working with him.
| | 00:28 | John Enroth: Working With Mark is great,
because when he lets me just do what I want to do,
| | 00:35 | it's great, because he
trusts me and that's awesome.
| | 00:38 | When he wants something done
specifically, he just says, "hey I need you to do
| | 00:41 | this, this and this, and it needs
to sound like that, that and that."
| | 00:44 | With Private Perez specifically,
he handed me a bunch of files and
| | 00:49 | said, "hey can you put real guitar on
this and then try and find places in the
| | 00:52 | movie that it can work?"
| | 00:54 | So, with that one, I haven't written
anything for it and I don't know if
| | 00:57 | I ever will because he handles a lot of the
movie writing, but I'm definitely going
| | 01:01 | to be adjusting his stuff to the picture and
try and find places that fit. Show it to him.
| | 01:07 | If he likes it, then great. We can move on.
| | 01:08 | Albert Fox: It's a really wonderful
experience and not only seeing how he works and how,
| | 01:13 | you know, pretty much how he thinks.
I mean, it really helps me out to not only
| | 01:19 | watch him, but to be able to participate in
the projects that he is doing. It's wonderful.
| | 01:25 | From scoring aspects to just how he
generates ideas, you know how he works quickly
| | 01:30 | and comes up with stuff.
| | 01:32 | My musical horizons have expanded
exponentially since I've been here.
| | 01:36 | I mean, I started pretty much as the
synthesizer programming guy and now
| | 01:42 | it's anything that gets thrown on me,
I'm confidential that I could do it.
| | 01:47 | James Sale: Mark and I,
Ifirst worked for Mark in 2004.
| | 01:53 | I did some orchestrating on Rugrats Go Wild.
| | 01:58 | After we worked on Herbie, I bugged him
and said I wanted to work with him again
| | 02:01 | and I liked working with him and we
just hit it off, and I think he also
| | 02:09 | likes my temperament.
| | 02:11 | I think the thing he is probably best at
is in the course of the film, there are
| | 02:15 | a lot of revisions, there are a lot of
changes, there are a lot of requests for
| | 02:19 | things that Mark may not necessarily
agree with or like that he has to do.
| | 02:24 | He never-- I don't think he ever
makes the film maker feel bad for that.
| | 02:28 | He kind of says, "whatever you need to do we
will do." I think that makes a big difference.
| | 02:33 | And likewise when he's working with me,
I never feel like I'm pulling teeth or
| | 02:39 | doing anything difficult.
| | 02:42 | So I don't deal with temper
tantrums or anything like that.
| | 02:45 | He's is very levelheaded and easy to work with.
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| Circuit bent collection| 00:08 | Mark Mothersbaugh: My brother Jim, who used to
be first the drummer in DEVO, stopped playing and
| | 00:13 | became just kind of a mad scientist
and he became something that later became
| | 00:19 | known as circuit bending.
| | 00:20 | Now, circuit bending is
like a really big deal.
| | 00:23 | You know, there are all these little
instruments, that are made
| | 00:28 | out of toys, re-purposed into
like strange sounding devices.
| | 00:34 | (Music playing)
| | 00:45 | This instrument was made by somebody
who calls himself Strange Pursuit, which I
| | 00:53 | took as a compliment because there
was a song I wrote back in 1980,
| | 00:55 | 1979, 1980, somewhere in there.
| | 01:00 | The instruments are like by these kids that
you know are misunderstood. They are at home.
| | 01:07 | They are like total nerd geeks that
are like into electronics and sounds that
| | 01:12 | you don't hear in pop music.
| | 01:13 | (Music playing)
| | 01:25 | I mean, come on!
| | 01:26 | (Music playing)
| | 01:37 | If these devices would have been
happening back when I was a kid, I'd have been
| | 01:44 | a very happy guy and I'd have
been a part of this movement.
| | 01:47 | My brother Jim modified all of our
synths for us. As a matter of fact, we
| | 01:54 | had a couple of synths that we'd
accidentally broken and part of his job when
| | 01:58 | he went on tour with us-- when
my brother was working for --
| | 02:02 | when he was no longer drumming.
| | 02:03 | Now he's was our like mad
scientist electronics guy.
| | 02:07 | He'd be like, "Don't let the harp ever
get fixed because that's the only way I
| | 02:11 | can get that one sound for Pink Pussy Cat."
| | 02:13 | Which is when you'd touch the keyboard
and there would these two notes would play
| | 02:17 | at the same time and they'll
go Brr! in opposite directions.
| | 02:21 | So, part of his job was making
sure that things stayed broken.
| | 02:25 | Which is kind of what circuit
bending is in a way, is breaking things in
| | 02:29 | a creative fashion.
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