Good advice

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/03/2003 (8479 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AFTER a horrific year that saw his band break up and a war of words with Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger get splayed all over the press, Matthew Good is back on track.

Avalanche, the Vancouver singer-songwriter’s latest collection of moody pop-rock songs, is selling well, as are most dates on a cross-country jaunt with Montreal art-rock band The Dears.

All three of tour’s Winnipeg dates — Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at the 700-seat Colosseum — are sold out.

Nevertheless, the former leader of the Matthew Good Band still feels like he’s misunderstood.

“I’m a one-quote machine gun,” he said during a recent interview that touched on the war in Iraq, politics in music and his alleged Year From Hell.

“People go through an entire statement of mine, find the one thing that’s controversial and the qualification for my statement is completely disregarded. That’s the story of my professional life.”

Well, maybe it used to be. Here’s the world according to Matthew Good, uncensored and 83 per cent uncut:

FREE PRESS: You have three sold-out shows in Winnipeg, the new album’s doing great and you seem to be really happy. So what the heck happened last year?

MATTHEW GOOD: You mean the press invention?

FP: What, you’re saying last year was no problem at all?

MG: Not really. The band broke up. It was one of those things that was an inevitable conclusion to a bad situation.

I could have went all over the country saying, “I tried to keep the band together” and “it took four guys with their heads up their asses to accomplish its demise,” but what’s the point of that?

You get to a certain level as a band, and everyone involved become a little too self-important. Personally, I found I was letting myself get wound up emotionally — like, maybe we’ll get some good material out of this. I saw myself of as kind of a human cash register.

FP: Didn’t people see you as Matthew Good, as opposed to the Matthew Good Band, anyway?

MG: I guess. It’s a lot less exhaustive now, not trying to combat that, not trying to bring the other guys to the forefront.

It’s the old story — we got stuck with that name because we needed one when we were on tour.

FP: Any advice for Sam Roberts?

MG: Yeah, I hear he’s going by the Sam Roberts Band, now? I never should have done that, because now I’ve started this chain of events where everyone’s started the so-and-so band. Sam’s great, though.

FP: Do you ever turn on the news and wonder what kind of alternative-reality game show we’re living in?

MG: It’s very odd. The immediate concern for myself is the U.N, as an institution has basically been rendered useless by a private move by (the U.S. and Britain). Its power will be usurped and it will end up an empty shell in the future.

I could go on for hours about this. In 1988, Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds. Did the United States do anything then? Nope.

Then after the Kuwaiti thing, they could have deposed him then. But they left him in power for what — 11 or 12 years? Now they say he has weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, he’s had them for a decade! So how come he didn’t fire them at Tel Aviv? Of course, he had no right to — and he has no intercontinental missiles that can reach the United States. But all of a sudden this is a big deal?

FP: We can talk about this in Canada. Some of our American friends aren’t so lucky. You heard what happened to the Dixie Chicks.

MG: That’s America for you. It’s the land of the free, home of the brave (and) full of people with their eyes closed.

FP: You have a lot to say. Why you don’t make edgier-sounding music to go along with the message?

MG: Beauty speaks louder than abrasiveness. Mozart is far more unifying than the Sex Pistols. Punk rock isn’t socially conscious, anyway — the ’60s were far more political than the punk era. Hell, punk only lasted three years.

FP: You’re political, but you do it in the context of mainstream Canadian rock ‘n’ roll. Do you consider yourself subversive?

MG: Not really. To be subversive, you have to really rail against something, and I’m not railing against anything, I think everybody should be thinking for themselves.

If you’re a free-thinking individual, then think. But we live in an apathetic society where everybody takes our government processes and our freedoms for granted. They watch television and they put themselves to sleep. Don’t! It’s that simple.

FP: Still, I always wondered if you were ever interested in hardcore punk.

MG: The thing about punk rock is that it’s adolescent. It gets dated really quickly.

If I listen to (The Who’s) Won’t Get Fooled Again, I take it seriously. If I listen to Bob Dylan, I take it seriously, even 30 or 40 years later.

Look at a band like The Weakerthans — look at their roots (as punk musicians) and look what they’re doing lately. There’s a band that should be opening the Junos, if you want to celebrate Canadian talent.

FP: I’m a fan myself, But it’s not like anyone is pushing them to be superstars. You simply can’t market that kind of band.

MG: That happens to plenty of Canadian acts, whether it happens to be The Weakerthans or Ron Sexsmith or Rufus Wainwright or Kathleen Edwards

FP: Well, those latter three have received some great international press.

MG: Sure, but don’t you think Ron Sexsmith would exchange being hailed as a great songwriter by Paul McCartney for selling more than 4,000 records in Canada? I think he would.

FP: He seems happy to me.

MG: That’s the truly admirable thing about Ron, isn’t it?

FP: Getting back to you, you’re saying all of last year was a media fabrication? Even that exchange in the press with …

MG: The whole thing with Chad Kroeger was creative editing on the part of Chart magazine. I didn’t say I disliked anybody. I wasn’t sending hit squads to kill anyone’s family. I was just giving an opinion on something I didn’t like, just like anyone has the right to give an opinion on my music. Since the (new) record has come out, 20 guys have reviewed it and said they didn’t like it at all.

Chad Kroeger is a great guy. Since all this happened, we’ve had a great laugh about it. I think it’s fantastic Nickelback has been successful.

You can spend as much time as you like looking for me to say I think their success is terrible, but I never said that. All I said is that wasn’t my cup of tea.

You know what? I’m not a big fan of E.L.O. or Foghat, either. But no one’s going to get on my back about that … something usually gets lost in the translation. I’m just a guy with an opinion, who gave it about art.

If you can’t have an opinion about art and you’re an artist, then what can I talk about? But you’ll listen to what I say about politics? How the hell does that make sense?

FP: It makes sense because artists are the only ones talking about politics, while politicians talk about sports. Or crack jokes, like Donald Rumsfeld putting down France. The musicians are the only ones making sense.

MG: Yeah, that whole anti-French thing is absolutely pathetic.

FP: Anyway, you’ve sold out three shows in Winnipeg. It’s you and The Dears out in the ‘burbs.

MG: Hell, we could have just done one night at the (Burton Cummings Theatre).

FP: Nope. You’ve sold like 2,100 tickets and The Burt only holds 1,600.

MG: That’s cool. Winnipeg’s a good town for that. It’s a cool town for doing the bar gig — It’s a rock ‘n’ roll town.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca