Speech (Arrested Development)

Since The Last Time releases in the US Oct 30. In stores now everywhere else.

October 11, 2007, 04:49 PM

This is so exicting! Your episode of In Living Color was on recently and my brother and I said to each other 'Whatever happened to those guys? They were so great.' Your music had such a huge influence on people back then, I think your sound is one that has been sorely missed.

Thank you very much! That's kind of you to say.

We let's get right to it. The press release I received talks about how your new album Since The Last Time, is your first piece of work in 12 years...but that's not totally true right? Tell me about Among the Trees and Heroes of the Harvest. These were just international releases?

Yeah, we did some releases in Japan, Australia, Europe. Really, we were just waiting for the right timing and the right label situation to do another big release in America. We ended up going with my label, Vagabond. We were waiting for America to need it and be ready for that level of consciousness. America is very behind when it comes to that kind of social consciousness. Many of the problems we see over here aren't problems in other countries, and regarding socially aware music with a positive message, America is still behind.

Since The Last Time dropped internationally last year, but won't be coming out in the US until October 30th. Does that take any of your personal buzz away, or are you even more excited since you've already had such positive feedback in other countries?

For us it's exciting, but yeah we already know that people like it and we know how other territories have received it. It would have been nice to do a worldwide release and have it hit everywhere at the same time, but we're still excited. I mean, this is our home!

When I think of Arrested Development, I think of things that you just don't see in hip hop anymore- messages of hope, positive images of women, empowering young black men to want something more than gold teeth and hoes. Not to mention the rampant and frivolous use of the N word. Do you think this culture is going to turn around?

Definitely. Right now we're seeing examples of youth activism, and that exciting. Online activism. The spirit of environmentlal activism is so huge right now. The kids want to make a change in this world. They go about it differently than I did as a kid, I mean, they work with technology and all these new avenues to network and connect to people, but its the same grassroots spirit. I feel like people through music want to be uplifted and want to communicate a positive energy. We are on our Miracles campaign right now...people talking about examples in their own life. These aren't just religious type miracles, people discuss and celebrate things like perseverance and other miracles in their own lives.

This leads in nicely to a question I was going to save for later. Right now the two frontrunners for the Democratic nomination are both historically unlikely candidates. What do you think the US needs more right now, a woman president, or a black president?

You know, I like Hillary Clinton. I've met her personally and discussed issues. I am comfortable with her as a human. But, I am pushing for Obama. I have heard all the issues, especially with healthcare. Healthcare is a really important issue for Americans and I like his views and his plans. I like where he is going more and I like his idealism. To be honest, its less because he's black. I am less concerned about his race than I am the issues and his intelligence. He has an idealistic world view and I think that's what we need in this country right now.

12 years is a long time to be out of the mainstream. There are many issues artists face today that weren't prevalent in the early 90s. It seems music has lost its value not only to executives and fans, but shamefully, even to artists. That's pretty dangerous stuff. Do you think music should be free?

It has become cheapened in many ways. When I was younger I was into vinyl records. I couldn't wait for it to show up in the mail, or buy a new record from the store. I would look at it, smell it, stare at the big art work, really romanticize the whole thing. It used to be an EVENT. Now with downloading, there is no information, no artwork, it has been cheapened in a sense. You can't jump in, head first, into an mp3, and be submerged in that world. As far as artists giving it away for free, I think a lot of that is a response to the major labels having a chokehold on the industry for so long. They have been so mechanical. Less musical oriented and more strict business oriented. The bad, bubble gum music. People have had to respond with the only thing they could do. The extreme opposite of the bad music at the big mark up prices. Artists had to come up with a way to expose their own music, and for a lot of them, that means making it free. Not to mention a lot of hip hop uses samples they cant afford. Releasing for free allows them to avoid those copyright issues. However, I think the live experience is going to rise up more because of that. Fans will still invest their money into the artist, regardless of how much was paid for that album.

That also speaks to the lack of outlets that now exist for artists. Radio is worthless, there are no music videos on television, there isn't much respectable press..it seems artists are having to resort to cheap tactics to be heard. Even artists that I have a lot of respect for are popping up on lame reality TV shows. It used to be called selling out, but now there really seem to be no other options. Tell me why you decided to appear on Hit Me Baby 1 More Time?

It's a new era. In the 90s it was absolutely wack to do a commercial unless it was about your music. Like when Hammer did a popcorn chicken commercial everyone dogged him. Now everyone does it, the chicken commercials and everything else. It's one of those hard situations where you have to think of new ways to let people know you exist. People have submitted to a fast food world. They have submitted to television and the internet to tell them things. So we as artists have to find a way to reach the audience we want to reach. With doing that show, we had to determine what was good for us and where we can make a compromise and maintain integrity. The show took one day to shoot, we could let people know we were together and at the same time give to a charity we believe in very much (UNICEF $20,000 to help Darfur). It wasn't degrading to us. We weren't sure how they would portray us but from our perspective, the feedback we got was all good. It really comes down to distribution. How do you reach the audiences? If we don't do it, it's hard to get it done.

Does it concern you that this new musical environment puts so much pressure on artists to be businessmen that they can't focus on the art of creating music?

There are two sides to this. On the one hand it is very discouraging to focus less on art and more on business. But, on the other hand, we have to focus more on business, which is a good thing to do. Historical artists didn't make money off their music. Wilson Pickett and others have a real bad financial story. Writing, recording, releasing and touring with multiple hits, but they never made a dime. So, you still had a problem when artists WERE focusing on music and they weren't getting paid. Without any business sense at all, you're totally at the mercy of the industry. Now, today, you have more artists that are directly involved in the future of their band. That's a positive thing.

I am/was a big fan of the show 'Arrested Development.' I read that you sued them for using the same name. It seems kind of silly to me since you are obviously two different things, but explain to me what went down.

We had trademarked the name in 1993. The whole idea of a trademark is to keep consumers from getting confused. When there are multiple things with the same name, it can mess things up. The show is obviously a very different thing from what we were doing, but they didn't just have a TV show, they were also releasing albums and soundtracks, which could create confusion. I have nothing against Fox or the show, but it was a situation where a huge corporation came in and bullied the name away from us. WE developed that name. We worked that name. It took us 6 or 7 years to build that name. Fox just needs to put up a little ad after the super bowl and suddenly it's everywhere. It wasn't so easy for us. We didn't have a problem with co-existing, but we sued them to get their attention. In business, everyone knows to look for trademarks before doing anything. They saw that we had it but decided to go forward anyway. I don't know why the show was canceled, but it would have been mutually beneficial if they stayedon the air.

I wish they were still on the air, too. You know, there is an episode about you.

There is?

Well, kind of. There is an episode where a creepy convention (Motherboy XXX) shares its name with a metal band (Motherboy), and it becomes a running joke through the show. Surely that is in reference to your lawsuit.

(laughs) I have never seen the show, but that's cool. I got to meet Richie Cunningham through this whole thing. That was unexpected. (laughs)

Well that was really it for the questions I had for you. Is there anything else you wanted to get in here?

Not really, I think we covered it. Check out our website Arrested Development - AD, or visit us on MySpace. Check out the Miracles campaign if you haven't yet. The new album Since The Last Time goes on sale October 30th!

Thanks so much for talking with me, Speech. Good luck with the new album!

Thanks for everything!