TVHH Q&A pt.3

the very hush hush

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Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac and John Steinbeck all did the same thing--so I guess what I'm saying is that the inability of the sensitive soul to find an emotional connectedness anywhere in this country has not changed since the 1930s.

Rather than be depressed by that, we create our own world in our music. Washingsongs is all anticipation, for a change in the weather, in people, in seasons, and knowing that it will never really come. Mourir C'est Facile is the resulting scream, the release of a chakra in your throat.

After that you can break the world you've created apart and reconstruct it to match how you're feeling. You have to either do that or expatriate.

I want to know about your transition from classical music to TVHH. Is there something that classical piano LACKS, something ineffable, that you sought to express with your work in TVHH? Does it allow you to communicate more effectively?

GRANT:

We both began our classical training at a very early age. I was six or seven, and I believe Peter was maybe even younger than that. Of course it was tedious, maddening, sitting there for decades, playing sometimes one measure over and over for an entire day and when it was finished and flawless it might last for only one second. But it trains the way your mind works. The one common thing that exists between classical piano and the music we make is the ability to sit there for as long as necessary until the phrase is correct. And the focus on melody. Nietzsche described melody as wrathful. That may be the keenest explanation of it. It burrows into your head and changes you if it's really effective.

The creation of melody is what drew me away from classical performance. I still play sometimes, but the allure for strictly playing classical has worn thin. It's pleasurable to listen to a beautiful melody, and let it echo in your head. But it is an entirely different experience to create something that echoes in your head, and the heads of others. To see the expression on someone's face as their emotions shift when they hear it is eerie.

But the real crux of the issue boils down to wrestling with an idea and pounding it out on the ivory until it exists in the real world the way it exists in your head. I feel so much more worthwhile doing that than trying to work my way backward through the syncopation and counterpoint to the original melodic inspiration that drove Schubert crazy, or imagining what the inside of Beethoven's deaf head sounded like.

When you're performing classically, it's less about your own expression of self and experience than it is about your interpretation of the composer's self and experience. I feel that we have too much to say to be able to accomplish that by monkeying around with Liszt. The world is sound and also infinite and classical is such a very small slice.

PETER:

The issue of classical music is difficult for me because it was something I ostensibly failed at. That is, my mom, my piano teacher, my peers; they all expected that I was going to go all the way. You know, full ride to Julliard, world class Glenn Gould/Michael Tilson Thomas sort of shit. But it was too much pressure and so I snapped at the very last moment. Everything was building to this critical mass and I just snapped like a little twig underneath all of it. Who's got the balls to flawlessly play an hour long Concerto with a full orchestra in front of five judges? Well, not me--that's for sure.

I'm not too upset about my upbringing and my time with classical music. It was invaluable in helping me understand melody. For me, a lot of classical music is about filtering all the noise out until you only have melody, and silence. In this way, the music feels perfect.

How did you get to know each other? Give me a little background on this relationship.

GRANT:

I met Peter in Golden, Colorado, home of COORS Brewery. I had transferred from a small private academy. We had several of the same classes. After school, we began playing music together, though in a much different form than The Very Hush Hush. I think the only existing copy of anything our band at the time, The Jettisons, recorded is on a very scratched up tape in a bag somewhere. It was very punky stuff, very influenced by the Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, and Pond. It was loud and heartfelt and exceedingly ugly at times and reflected perfectly the angst and trash of that bile-pit where 'The West Lives'.

Much of our time was split between our friend's house where we practiced and the school painting studio. Lots of free time, open-endedness, and knowing that college loomed indiscriminately on the horizon. We both took a year off to work and begin serious composition before committing to school. Although we never named our project at this point, this was really the earliest incarnation of The Very Hush Hush. It was spacey guitar/synth rock that was Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk meets Sugar and the Buzzcocks. Peter went to California, and I to upstate New York. All I really did was smoke a lot of stuff and drive around the country wondering why the hell I felt so sad. I ran out of money after losing my scholarship and transferred to Boulder, where Peter had transferred a couple years earlier. We got a house, and well...you can't really call it picking up where we left off, because we each...

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