Adam Goldberg: The _Heeb_ Interview

By Kenny Herzog

When actor-turned-musician Adam Goldberg talks about the music he makes with band LANDy, it actually proves what a capable actor is. His composure and inflection lack the neurotic skittishness that became his semi-trademark after portraying “ineffectual nothing” Mike Newhouse in 1993’s Dazed and Confused. It makes you realize that, if anything, Goldberg himself is closer in assuredness to his iconic alter ego, The Hebrew Hammer—only with an endearing tendency toward self-reflection and cautious humility.

While Goldberg had experimented with lo-fi, tape-looped weirdness in the past—playing around small clubs in ‘90s New York and scoring 2003’s I Love Your Work (as well as the closing credits of Hebrew Hammer)—the nearly 20 sweet-and-sour psych-pop tracks on debut album Eros and Omissions were culled from numerous songwriting sessions and collaborations. Members of L.A. rock band The Black Pine, as well as The Flaming Lips’ Steven Drozd and Earlimart’s Aaron Espinoza, helped Goldberg flesh out and polish the disc.

Heeb talked with the self-proclaimed “hyper self-aware,” multitalented, 38-year-old Hollywood vet about creative motivation, bi-coastal stimuli and being in the same league as Justin Timberlake.

So there’s a widowed lowercase “y” at the end of your band’s name, but I assume LANDy is pronounced as it’s spelled.

I can’t really account for [the y]. It’s just a font aesthetic that somehow ended up sticking. As one guy said, ‘You sure you want to go with it?’ Yeah, I gotta go with it at this point. It’s like, ‘Are you really gonna wear that?’

It must have been a big challenge to cull together years of material for LANDy’s official debut.

The projects that I’ve come up with on my own that aren’t jobs for hire have always been very clearly defined, but this just wasn’t anything where there was ever a plan. I had just been recording music for however long because that’s what I wanted to do on that particular day or this particular few weeks. That’s not to say there weren’t several times where I thought, ‘OK , this is a demo,’ or, ‘That might be part of a record.’ But I felt so beholden to this notion that a record has to be made with a finite group of people in a finite setting over a finite period of time, so I thought this can’t really be a record. The fact that it turned into what it’s turned into, aside from a couple of very conscious decisions—it’s all been a little bit by happenstance.

This is a pretty weird record. I imagine it has to liberating to get ‘out there’ with your personal passion project, right?

Basically, there wasn’t any reason not to do whatever I was feeling on any particular day, because the thing was just for fun. I’m very aware of how easy it is to indulge one’s self and how easy it is for me to go completely off the rails. But at the same time that’s what I really like. These are the places where I really feel like I’m the most at home. Where you can create soundscapes. I like writing songs a lot. But I like taking the songs almost and placing them in a particular world.

And it seems as if that world may be influenced by a lot of classically quirky ‘60s and ‘70s pop.

It’s hard to say. There’s an osmosis factor that can’t be denied. Not a conscious effort necessarily, except on the occasions where I’d say: ‘This Plastic Ono drum sound is great. Let’s replicate [it].’ But I was never the sort of person who could hear a song and play it. I remember the day that I got my first 4-track and guitar, I must have concurrently got this delay reverb pedal, and that sort of automatically evokes a certain sound. A couple of times on the song ‘Jack’ [there’s a couple of] references to Pink Floyd. There have been periods where I’ve listened to their stuff for production inspiration, but I’ve never really connected to Pink Floyd, so I guess that’s just what happens.

In hindsight, the word ‘quirky’ maybe has the wrong connotation.

It’s a terrible word, I know. You have a problem with it too? I hate that word. It sounds a bit like you’re preciously congratulating someone for being weird. (Mimics sarcastic tone) ‘Oh, well you’re a little offbeat.’

So what ultimately did focus in your creative energy with your music?

I think when I first heard The Soft Bulletin, The Flaming Lips record, I think that created a big shift for at least my taste in music if not my music itself. I was really, really heavily into Built To Spill and Neil Young and Sebadoh and some of these things kind of show up unwittingly when I play live. But I remember hearing The Soft Bulletin and thinking, ‘Wow, this is incredible, because it’s like a score.’ I’ve always been a big Bernard Hermann fan and [a fan of] the Vertigo score and the Taxi Driver score, so I thought it was this great world where there are clearly songs you can pull out and probably play them on acoustic guitar. But they put you in this cinematic world, and that seemed to jibe with all of the things that I really like, both as a creative person and as a listener.

Part of what creates that world on your record are fairly distorted vocals. Was that a conscious attempt to give listeners distance from your persona as an actor?

That wasn’t a conscious attempt. From the day I got my 4-track I would double-track my vocals. I used to do recordings where I would sing through phasers, just to get lost in the way that that sounded. And for a while I liked doing really compressed vocals. That’s just how I always felt comfortable and what I felt was my aesthetic.

So what’s the difference between listening to a finished record of yours versus watching your performance as part of a completed film?

The closest thing I can liken it to in my own experience are the movies that I’ve [directed: Scotch And Milk, I Love Your Work and Running With The Bulls]. The experience is very similar on many levels. It’s something that was self-generated, not something that I was told to do or needed to do. In fact, both the films I’ve made and this record have contributed to the fact that I will probably have to hustle much more for work because of how much it’s drained me financially. [I’ve] subjected myself to scrutiny that at least I’m responsible for. I’d rather be judged for something I’m fully responsible for rather than something I was hired to do.

More accountability, yet more reward as well at least.

I’ve already reaped the rewards, because the reward is very much in the doing of it, very much in the action of the process. All of it is a development process, where oftentimes what I do to make a living—I think that if that were the only thing I wanted to do, I probably would find more and different creative ways to express myself as an actor, but at the end of the day you’re only really so much in control of that career. You might hone that muscle, but it really almost seems more like a muscle that’s being honed rather than a form of meaningful expression.

You’ve recorded and performed, as well as acted, on both coasts. What’s the difference between the creative energies in the two cities?

I feel like they’re both very stimulating. I’d venture to say it might not have anything to do with the cities in my case. I used to have a general thesis statement response to that kind of conversation. First of all, it’s like comparing apples and oranges. But when I first moved [to New York], which was the year before 9/11 and then through 9/11, I found myself incredibly energized. I have to believe in hindsight a lot of that was a function of taking me out of an element in which I had become very comfortable. I’m always surprised you don’t hear more about Los Angeles artists, because they have to rely on their own way of expressing and they’re not drawing from this kind of uniform well. I started to think, ‘Wow, I’m completely inspired by [New York’s] architecture, I’m completely inspired by these bridges. I’m completely inspired by the energy in the streets, but so is everybody.’ I started to miss the idea that I wasn’t forced to look inward a little bit more. I think a lot of people are inclined to use city and place as an excuse either for great productivity and inspiration or whatever ails them.

And on the actual sets of your films and TV shows, there must not be too many people who share your musical inclinations. I imagine you only have that much more songwriting energy pent up when in between projects.

There’s never so direct a correlation. The irony of prejudgments that occur for a person who’s known as an actor making music is that they’re posing as a musician. And I used to feel this way, but I haven’t felt for many years that I am an actor. When somebody says, ‘What do you do?’ I think I always say I act rather than I am an actor. I oftentimes feel like I’m posing as an actor, and that can provide somewhat of an alienating experience. I can easily forget that’s what I do and then I show up on a set and I’m reminded and it’s this very strange sensation. Which is not to say I feel most comfortable playing live musically. I haven’t yet been able to reconcile how I can make money and feel comfortable in concurrence. The things I want to do that actually make me feel comfortable are not the sorts of things that would earn me a living.

And just to revisit that dreaded ‘quirky’ word, time for the quirky last Q & A question. Have you given much thought to the Justin Timberlake questions you’ll get for having a song called ‘Cry Me a River’?

In a way it’s kind of interesting, because they represent total funhouse mirror sides of pop. This [review] came out, and I had forgotten that that would raise some eyebrows. He intimated that it was some alternative interpretation of what [Justin] was doing, as if that were a pop-culture statement. For the record, I’ve always been a huge Julie London fan, and her song ‘Cry Me A River’ is in Scotch And Milk, so I was real into that standard. I’m guessing I wrote it first. The Timberlake thing I didn’t know until years after I’d recorded this. I was at the gym and I was like: ‘What the fuck? What is that? What is he saying?’ And the guy was like, ‘It’s Justin Timberlake.’ And I’m like, ‘Aw, fuck me man.’ I mean, I just started singing those words as I was playing a riff by myself in a hotel and thought it was a reference to the Julie London song. But I suppose now, the association will be drawn. I’m just happy that my music is being mentioned in the same breath as Justin Timberlake’s.

Eros and Omissions drops on June 23rd. Click here for more info.

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