It's Dan MacRae

I asked Mason (who you know from the previous post/your Tumblr dashboard feed/the film Ski School 2) to answer all nineteen of these questions on his blog, now he’s asking me to do the same on mine. Put on your reading mittens, let’s get to it.

1) What album do you consider to be “epic”?

It’s a pick that’s probably a bit on the nose but Electric Light Orchestra’s Out of the Blue is a big fat fucking gorgeous grandiose epic album.  The hooks, harmonies, productions and arrangements are just a Technicolor wrecking ball. Plus there’s like robot voices and junk on it. That helps tick boxes in the “epic” category.

2) Which band do you feel is more important: Crass or The Clash?

I’m not a huge Clash or Crass guy, but I suppose the “more important” band (what a weird open-ended question that is) is probably The Clash.  They were more exposed and had more (as in some) big crossover hits. I also like The Clash more than Crass, so they win the question. Pick up your Dan MacRae totebag in the lobby, Mick Jones.

3) You’ve been in a terrible accident.  You were horribly injured, so badly your heart actually stopped.  Shit, man—you were legally dead for three minutes.  Then you were in a coma for a week.  When you’re finally starting to recover, your best friend brings you your iPod as you lay in your hospital bed.  What song do you listen to first?

I would probably like to listen to a report explaining what had happened to me and why I was in a hospital bed. Do you think I could get an audio of that? I tried asking my friend to tell me, but he just shoved an iPod in my face.

Right, what would I choose? Probably Kanye West’s “Through the Wire”. That’d be something relatable. We’ve got a lot in common, Past Kanye and I.

4) Name a musical collaboration you WISH had happened.

I would have loved to have seen Dee Dee Ramone work with modern day rap producers on another Dee Dee King album.

5) You’ve got a time machine.  What show would you like to see?

Prince at First Avenue at any point in time.

6) Vinyl?  MP3’s?  Favorite format and why.

I prefer singles to albums, so MP3s appeal to me. Plus, I’m not a musician, so I don’t as many hang ups about the inferior sound quality of MP3s.

7) If David Bowie had looked and acted like Joe Pesci his entire career but still made the same records, would they mean as much to you?  How about Madonna, Lady Gaga, Ozzy Osbourne, or other artists?

(/begins typing answer, realizes how stupid the question is, erases answer) Yes, I might find Madonna’s music different if it were sung by a man. This is a really convoluted way of asking “do looks and presentation matter when it comes to music”, isn’t it?

8) What musician would you most want to have sex with?  Assume you’ve still got that time machine.

Josie from Josie & The Pussycats

9) What musician would you go gay for?

Elvis Presley (not a big Elvis fan, just a general principle thing) or the robot-men of Daft Punk. 

10) You’re directing a movie based on your life.  The screenplay was written by a psychic who knows you better than you know yourself, and even wrote scenes based on the parts of your life you haven’t even lived yet.  What song do you play on the soundtrack for your birth?  Your death?  And for when you lost your virginity?

It’s kind of cool that a psychic (who is profiting from my death) and I are teaming up to work on a screenplay. Me and ol’ Psychie should hang out more after the screenplay’s done. Maybe we could be on the same pub trivia team.

Birth - Cheeseburger - Winner

Virginity - The Strokes - the bridge from Hard To Explain (because that was the soundtrack, just the bridge) 

Death - John Cafferty - Voice of America’s Sons (Theme from Cobra) (remixed for the year 3200)

11) Your pick for the most overrated band of all time.

Toss up between Tupac Shakur, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.

12) Name a record you’re kinda embarrassed to admit you like

I’ve gone on a big ramble about this before, so I’ll try to do the abbreviated version: I don’t really have any music that I’m embarrassed by anymore. I used to be embarrassed by loads of bands I’ve liked, but my attitude about that has changed over time. I have a lot of super uncool stuff on my iPod (Fergie, Jennifer Lopez, Bush, just for starters) and now I really enjoy celebrating/defending acts that people hate. I’m in the “I like what I like” camp and that’s the most fun camp to be in.

That said, E-Town Concrete’s “Fuck This Town” continues to have a home on my MP3 player and I feel a wave of shame whenever I listen to it.

13) Name a song that makes you cry.  Now tell me why.

There hasn’t be a song that makes me cry, but I do get a lump in my throat when I hear The Baseball Project’s “Don’t Call Them Twinkies”. It’s a song about the Minnesota Twins with Craig Finn on guest vocals and it’s the song that hits me the hardest emotionally. 

14) Name a musician whose work you love, even if you suspect you’d absolutely hate him as a human being.

M.I.A. is the default setting on this question, right?

15)  You’re a musician.  If the only way you could support yourself as a musician would be to have Britney Spears’ career (not her personal life, but her career, singing the same shit Britney sings and raking in the same piles of money), would you do it?

So, I could have a job where the world’s best songwriters and producers work their fingers to the bone to create pop magic for me? Why wouldn’t I want that job? This isn’t so much a question as a lazy dig at pop stars. Go drown in a hurricane of dicks, quizmaster.

16) Your favorite record that you’d never let your children listen to.

Passing along my love of The Housemartins would probably get my kids beaten up on the playground. I should really give them a fighting chance.

17) Name a song that makes you horny.

I can’t explain why, but for a period of time Christina Aguilera’s “Candyman” was he soundtrack to me jerking off for roughly three dozen sessions. I don’t find Christina particularly attractive, I don’t have a fondness for the David LaChapelle video, I don’t have an Andrews Sisters revival fetish, it just has been something I’ve listened to while touching my wang.

18) Name a song so bad it makes you angry.

Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless The USA”. Not so much because of the jingoism (well parially because of the jingoism), but because it’s just so painful to listen to.

19) You’re a radio DJ trapped in the studio as the world ends.  How does it end, and what song do you choose to play in those final moments?

I’d probably jerk off one more time before the world ends, so probably “Candyman”. If I don’t, I’d go with Sam Cooke’s “Another Saturday Night”. Or Sloan’s “Everything You’ve Done Wrong” if there was enough time to sneak in one more.