It's a Sad and Beautiful World
by Bronwyn Trudgeon
reprinted apologetically from RipItUp

If Mark Linkous - the man in the saddle of this year's best new
pet, namely Sparklehorse - takes a wee while to reach the phone
when I call him, it's perfectly understandable and totally fine
by me. For one thing, he's still on the road to recovery as a
result of an unusual accident he befell in January, which cost
him the use of both his legs for what he figures will be at least
another year. For anyone who hasn't heard the story, it seems
Mark fainted in a hotel room, knocked himself unconscious on a
piece of furniture on his way down, and lay with his legs trapped
beneath him, with their circulation cut off, for 11 hours before
he was found. That aside, I decided I had fallen in love with him
on the strength of Sparklehorse's debut album,
Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, and being kept hanging on the
telephone seems trivial in comparison to the wondrous
conversation I am anticipating. The there is the matter of the
lovely lady who keeps getting on the phone to inform me Mark's on
his way.

"He's just gonna get in his chair and run round to the other
phone," she tells me. Time passes. "He'll be right here," she
assures. Some more time passes. "Ah prar-mise he's coming," she
'prar-mises', "Ah swear." Now I've fallen in love with her as
well.

Finally, Mark himself gets on the line. His softly spoken
Southern drawl sets my heart a meltin', and I want to go and live
on his farm in Bremo Bluff, Virginia, with him and his wife
Teresa, their three dogs, two horses, one cat, and however many
turtles he owns, and maybe even the occasional visit from his Mom
too. Sometimes this job can be so goddamn beautiful.

It seems my call has found Mark in another hotel room, this time
in Detroit, where Sparklehorse are on tour with Cracker (whose
Bob Rupe provides the voice on
Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot's '850 Double Pumper Holley',
incidentally).

I take it you're fighting fit?

"Well, with the exception of my accident, yeah, I'm doing pretty
good... Well, actually, I have a cold. I have a virus or
something."

How's the recovery from the accident been?

"Well, it's gonna take a long time, because I lost the muscles in
my legs that keep your feet straight, so I have to train my other
muscles to compensate."

What do you have to do today?

"Well, it's gettin' kinda late... today's actually about 9
O'clock," Mark chuckles (it's only about 1PM where I'm sitting).
"I think we're just gonna hang out here in the hotel room and
maybe rent a John Woo movie or something. There's really not much
street activity in Detroit. It's sort of a depressed city."

Like most overnight success stories, Mark's hardly happened
overnight. He used to play in a band called Johnson Family, who
later became Salt Chuck Mary.
Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot's most recent single, 'Someday
I Will Treat You Good', can trace its heritage back to this
period of Mark's musical career. He was then in a band called the
dancing Hoods.

I figured it must feel kind of strange for you to be constantly
referred to as a new man on the music scene, when you've actually
been part of it for sometime now.

"It doesn't bother me at all to be considered a new person on the
music scene. I would prefer not having a past actually, [as
opposed to] being known as the lead guitar player for a now
defunct pop band. I'd rather just be from nowhere."

Have you found the attendant business of rock and roll has
steeped up massively for you with Sparklehorse?

"Yeah, just having to meet people that are affiliated with the
record company, like regional reps. Now there's a lot of doing
interviews for cable access. Between doing all that stuff, it
doesn't leave a lot of time for writing when you're on the road.
We have a day off today so I might be able to get a little in."

You seem to have kept your finger pretty firmly on the style side
of things, as far as your album artwork and videos go. Is it
important for you to keep your own stamp on those things?

"Yeah, 'cause just like the music, I have a picture in my head
about what the artwork should look like before I ever took the
photographs. I wanted to convey a certain image, sort of a
documentary feel, sorta like the album, I wanted it to look like
a strip of film in a way. So, I have really tried to keep close
reins on the artistic side as best I could. And the video, we did
our... Have you seen the EPK?"

Yeah, I have, it's fantastic.
(Sparklehorse's electronic press kit is shot like a low budget
foreign film. It details a Catalonian Maiden's desire that 'the
Sparklehorse' may someday cross the ocean to play at her wedding,
or perhaps her father's funeral, and a French Woman's lack of
desire for Americans. Cinematic high points include a chain
smoking, kind of panda-headed human helping out with the
narration. I strongly recommend you lobby your local music
television station to screen it in its entirety for your
plentiful pleasure.)

"Yeah, me and drummer [Scott Minor] did that, and we just love
that. And the video for 'Hammering the Cramps', we had a really
good time doin' that one too. Since the EPK and the 'Hammering
the Cramps' video got such a positive response, [Capitol] gave us
a little money and let us do sort of the rock 'n' roll video for
'Someday', which we tried to do. [Neither Scott nor I were
satisfied with the finished results, and Capitol wasn't either.
In the end they asked us to send them everything we've ever
filmed, and they hired an editor to put it together. That's what
you see.
"It's hard for us to do a true music video. It seems like the
agenda, stylistic-wise, for a music video these days has to be
lightning speed edits. It would seem people don't have the
patience for long shots, and they just have a very short
attention span. Both Scott and I are big fans of Wim Wenders and
Werner Herzog, the long, beauty shots."

Is that one of your dogs we see in the 'Hammering the Cramps'
video?

"Yeah, that's Otis. She was our first pet, we've had her for
about eight years. We have a dog named Barko, who has mental
problems... dog mental problems," he chuckles. "Then we have an
old hound dog we picked up called Hank."

There are a lot of doggy and horsey references on the album. Are
these in homage to your own animals?

"Well, there's also references to turtles and birds, and things
like that. Livin' where we do, I'm surrounded by so much nature,
and that has so much to do with this music that it finds its way
into the lyrics often."

Was 'Sad & Beautiful World' inspired by a viewing of Down by Law?

"Yeah, definitely."

Have Roberto Benigni, or Tom Waits, or Jim Jarmusch called to
thank you for stealing the line so well?

Mark laughs: "Well, Roberto Benigni is quoting a Walt Whitman
poem, so I'm borrowing from Walt Whitman."

How about the Richard III reference that opens the album - 'A
horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse' - in 'Homecoming Queen'?

"It's a Shakespeare line I heard out of context. A lot of times
I'm far more inspired by literature than music. Like, I'll pick a
Henry Miller line and just make a whole song out of it. A long
time ago I heard a David Bowie song, 'Sorrow', the first line is
[sings]: 'With your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue...'
Then later I heard a fairly obscure Beatles song called 'It's All
Too Much', and in the middle of an instrumental sort of jam,
Lennon goes [sings again]: 'With your long blonde hair and your
eyes of blue.' I thought 'Man, that is so cool, that Bowie took
that line and just made a great song. I always thought that was
so cool. It's sort of in honour of my heroes in a way." 

Where is the recording of the woman relating a dream about her
son in 'Spirit Ditch' sourced from?

"[Cracker's] David Lowery [credited as David Charles for his
production and playing on the album] and I had left a section of
the song open for some type of instrumental solo section. He was
away on tour, and I was in there, messing things up basically. I
didn't want to do a guitar solo, and I was bored, so I called
home, and my mother had left that message on the answering
machine. So, I called back, got the mic' set up, and stuck the
mic' up to the telephone."

Is she talking about you?

"Yeah, the cool thing is, we both say, 'I woke up', at almost the
same time."

I noticed Village Voice managed to come up with a label for your
sound and style - 'dreamism'. Do you think that fits, or would
you rather they didn't bother?

"I don't mind them coming up with some kind of title for a style.
I mean, a lot of my songs are inspired by dreams, dreams are a
topic often in my songs. But I think they may be referring more
to the sound, sort of the feel of the whole style."

The album title gives the impression of covering a lot of bases.
What was your idea when you put that huge moniker on it?

"That was also inspired by a dream. I dreamt General Lee had a
crude submarine of war, and I was swimming towards it, and I
could hear an old timey band playing inside of the submarine, and
the music was sort of distorted. The music just sounded all
weird, and how the music sort of metamorphosises when you hear it
from a different place, it just sounded strange being submerged."

As much as I would have liked to Mark about his dreams all day,
the clock told me our 'time's up' interruption was imminent.
Reluctantly I prepared to sign off by asking if "the
Sparklehorse" planned to cross the ocean in this direction at any
stage. I was pleasantly surprised to discover Mark was one of the
few foreign musicians who knew we weren't located in Australia
without having to be told.

"I don't know of any specific plans as of now, but I would love
to go there. When I was in hospital I saw a documentary on New
Zealand, and I can't wait to go there. It just looked like a
beautiful place, the terrain was very severe, and it seemed so
picturesque and beautiful. I can't wait to come."