Hello, world. I’m MacDara Conroy, and this is my blog.

Tag: interviews

What Ever Happened To Brendan Fraser?

Turns out, he got old, then found a new direction. “It’s so cool to see leading men become great character actors later in their career,” says a producer quoted here; indeed it is, and Fraser comes across as such an intelligent, sensitive and likeable guy in this GQ profile, that I’m quite looking forward to watching him in Trust now. #link

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Grant Hart - All Of My Old Friends Are Assholes

A repost for my interview with Grant from late 2012; as linked from NPR’s obit on Thursday. He wasn’t one for nostalgia, as his comments attest, but like the best musicians he could take his old material and bring it to life on stage, as new. As sad as it is that he's gone, and can no longer make his music live, the heart sings to see so many share their love for what he did, or for the man himself; ILX's tribute thread is particularly heartfelt. See also: Bob Mould’s remembrance/tribute, and Ken Shipley of the Numero Group label, which is putting out the new Hüsker Dü box, shares his memories of the man. #link

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Justin Pearson (The Locust, Retox, Three One G, etc) talks about his musical journey, as well as the gear that comprises his signature sound. He’s refreshingly candid about his lack of traditional technique, which gives me hope for cracking the secret of the bass. #video

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Pitchfork talks to Relapse Records’ Matthew F Jacobson

“I recognize that we're recognized as a metal label. By percentage, we have probably put out more metal than anything else, but there's probably a lot of stuff that people don't realize we've done. Even though I was a teenager at the time, part of the reason I chose the name Relapse was that there are some names that could have sounded more metal. I wanted something that was vague and wouldn't necessarily pigeonhole us.” A noble philosophy, to be sure. But Relapse is undoubtedly a big-time label in the metal ‘underground’, with little patience these days for the more experimental stuff (they dropped Pyrrhon after one record, for shame). #link

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Decibel Q&A with East Bay Ray

Short but sweet interview with the Dead Kennedys guitarist. I’ve come to understand their position since the lawsuit controversy. #link

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The cartographers of cinema

From an otherwise unremarkable interview with the Coen brothers in the Guardian last week on release of their latest, True Grit, there’s this:

It is their 14th to date, and the latest instalment in what appears to be a concerted effort to cover the length and breadth of America with Coen brothers movies. Maybe because their preoccupations seem so resolutely antiheroic, or because their ambitions fit so snugly within their love of genre, the scale of this project was hard to spot at first. While everyone else was lost in hyperspace, the Coens have been quietly wallpapering their homeland. They’ve covered New York in the 1950s (The Hudsucker Proxy), Los Angeles in the 1940s (Barton Fink), Mississippi in the 1930s (Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?) and 1990s (The Ladykillers), Texas in the 1980s twice (Blood Simple and No Country for Old Men), Minnesota in the 1960s (A Serious Man) and 1990s (Fargo), not to mention Arizona, Washington, North Dakota, Santa Rosa and now, for good measure, Arkansas in the 1880s. A few more like this – covering Ohio in the 1970s, say, or Wyoming in the 1900s – and their work will be complete: nothing less than a patchwork quilt of America.

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