Friday, May 9, 2008
Mann finds the conglomeration of the music industry frustrating even as a consumer. "I don't really know how to find music anymore," she says. "I'm pretty picky. There are records people play for me and I like them, but I don't end up listening to them again. I think the Strokes were the last thing I played over and over again. Scott Miller gave me something by Ted Leo, and I really like that, but I don't know where the hell he came from."
Now she finds herself in the enviably complicated position of wearing two hats, creative on one side, businesswoman on the other. "I don't mind making business decisions, and I understand that people have to compromise and that compromise has to happen, but it's nice to make that decision myself." One example is her decision to commission graphic novelist Seth to create a 38-page booklet to accompany "Lost in Space." It is precisely the kind of decision that might be vetoed by bottom-line-obsessed money managers, but this time it is Mann's bottom line and the money is coming out of her pocket.
"I make an effort to have really nice packages because I hate jewel cases," she says. "But there are some places, like Wal-Mart, that will only stock CDs in jewel cases. So I need to make a decision about whether I have the record for sale in those places. How many copies would I sell in Wal-Mart anyway?"
Touring remains a bit of a sticking point for Mann, who is always happy to be onstage but doesn't enjoy the physical logistics of hopscotching across the country from one gig to the next. Several years ago she proved herself a trooper by making it to a performance even after her van was rolled off a highway and totaled along the way. "I'll do as much as I can," she says of current tour plans, "which compared to other people, I guess, isn't that much."
Last time around, touring was made more palatable by creating a special "acoustic vaudeville" show in which Mann split the headlining duties with her husband, Michael Penn, and assigned between-song patter to a revolving roster of comedians. Occasionally they even found volunteer jugglers in the audience and invited them onstage. "Michael and I toured together for a year and a half," she says. "It's a really great show for me to do because I get to take a lot of breaks. I get to watch Michael perform. I get to watch the comedian perform. I kind of look at touring as it's like going on military maneuvers. You have to gear yourself up, grit your teeth and plow through it." Penn will be unavailable this year, stuck in a Los Angeles studio completing his own new album.
With all the music industry shenanigans behind her, Mann still feels the sting of the notion of creativity by committee, even if it no longer has a grasp on her career. "I felt my music was fairly accessible," she says, "so I never really understood the extensive complaints about how I should be going in some other direction or the constant cry of 'It's not a single.' It always seemed to me that it was, well, not commercial music, but I wasn't out there on the edge. I think you sort of pick up on the kinds of things that make record labels nervous and you find yourself trying to avoid them, because you just don't want the argument. I never really thought about it while writing songs, but it certainly was a factor in choosing which songs to record.
"But in 1984, when I was starting out, what other options did you have?" she asks, offering her own counterpoint. "You took a record deal or you didn't have a career."
Around the same time that "I'm With Stupid" was mired in corporate limbo, Mann made a move that surprised many of her East Coast fans: She moved to Los Angeles, a city that seems an odd match for a girl who came of age while working in Boston's Newbury Comics. Mann became involved with Penn, a songwriter who matches her brilliance in chronicling the remains of disastrous relationships.
"I'm sort of surprised too," she says of the geographic transplant. "A lot of my friends moved to L.A. from Boston. I think that one of the reasons I wound up here is that Boston -- because there are so many colleges there, it's like a constant string of 20-year-olds. When you start reaching your late 20s you feel out of place, there isn't a peer group for you. Also, we were in a band and once that ran its course there was a question of what to do next. Los Angeles, creatively, offers a lot of possibilities for a musician, particularly for someone like me, whom people don't automatically think of using because I'm not a big star. The fact that people were leaving Boston and I just didn't know anyone there anymore made it easier."
Listening to Mann describe her new hometown makes you realize how much inspiration she may draw from its peculiarities. "L.A. definitely has its problems," she says. "But problems that you would anticipate because it's an industry town and that industry is all about how things appear. And the core problem of narcissism is being more concerned with how things appear rather than the way things are.
"You can encounter a lot of people who are really misguided or really disturbed or really sort of awful. But you can also encounter people who are desperate to meet other people who are creative. There just aren't a lot of natural meeting places. You can go run errands, go to the dentist even, and literally not see a single person. It's a very weird feeling." One can easily imagine Mann sitting in that Twilight Zone waiting room, jotting lyrics on a stack of blank appointment cards. Lost in space, indeed.
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