well, the record is about American music as much as it is about American anything else. That rich period in the ’70s when all the styles were converging in a loving way. The styles are converging in the present day, also, but in a more clinical or unloving way. The current music is mostly like a doctor’s visit. Where you check off the questionnaire about the past and hope they don’t stick a finger up your butt. But back when the Osmonds were making a psychedelic record or soul blended into funk blended into psychedelia it was a pleasanter experience. Hip-hop brought the once radical practice of sampling into the norm. Now bands are trying to play as if they are samplers.

Everyone is quoting different parts of this interview, which is a testament to how thoughtful the questions by Katy Loretta Henriksen were. Fuck the New Yorker, that shit’s boring.

P.S. I cannot help but maintain that my interpretation of “America!” was pretty solid.