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All Tomorrow's Parties Today: Matt Groening talks outsider music and party planning with a fellow gearhead (John Payne, 11/07/03, LA Weekly)

You may or may not know that the famous Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, Futurama and our own Life in Hell comic strip, is also a former music critic, for the L.A. Reader circa early '80s. Groening is a lifelong, well-versed music fan who's been only somewhat involved in the choice of musical guests on The Simpsons (the show has featured Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Tom Petty, Lenny Kravitz, Elvis Costello, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Smashing Pumpkins and numerous others), but not to the extent that Middle America gets scared off by too much obscure weirdness. That's right, Groening's a supereclectic whose real cup of tea you might call music from the fringes.

For all his high-profile and considerable Hollywood heft, Groening is an amiable and shockingly down-to-earth guy who remains enthusiastically fanboyish about the sounds he likes. In addition to having guest-edited the just-out Best Music Writing 2003 (Da Capo Press), he recently took
on the job as curator of All Tomorrow's Parties, the progressive mixed-bag music festival. You may recall that after L.A.'s first installment of the festival at UCLA two years ago - a critical success but a logistical nightmare - a second edition was planned for last June under Groening's creative stewardship, but the whole thing collapsed in disarray, owing officially to poor ticket sales. Groening, however, has dusted himself off and is back with a reorganized ATP, to be held on the Queen Mary in Long Beach on November 8 and 9.

What follows is two guys who like music a lot, shooting the breeze about what gets them buzzing: [...]

Matt, you are indeed a music fan who obviously knows whereof he speaks. And you've just guest-edited Best Music Writing 2003. Do you read a lot of music writing?

There's such a huge array of amazing things going on in all different genres, but nobody's listening to all of it. To keep up with what I consider to be interesting music, I read The Wire and Folk Roots, and there's no crossover [into pop dross] in them. I read Mojo and Uncut. And Aquarius Records in San Francisco has an amazing Web site with some of the most entertaining record reviews. And there's WFMU in New Jersey [the last freeform station in the country] - I like the idea that people are programming truly eclectic music.

I feel sorry for music critics because of the dismal state of the current pop scene in general. I mean, this stuff [the ATP lineup] is great, but it's not being played on the radio. We're inundated with pseudo-hipness, and if I had to write about the big bands, I'd quit. But there's still great music out there, if you search for it.

When the Brothers were mere lads WFMU was the campus radio station of Upsala College--a few blocks from our home in East Orange, NJ--and even then the best radio station in America. I'd just assumed that when the school closed the station had gone with it--glad to hear it's still going strong.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 9, 2003 1:11 PM