A few weeks ago I decided to work from home for the day. If
that first sentence made you imagine a day on the sofa in fat pants with a
laptop roughly within reaching distance, you’re right. And if I'm being really
honest, Facebook got rinsed that day. Some of my friends are in a different
time zone, so we spent the afternoon chatting about a new music video that
popped up online. To be fair, we were discussing it for all the wrong reasons.
October 10th marked the release of the debut
single from Lonely Soup Day; a Western Australian based pop-folk fusion duo.
The song was accompanied by a music video shot in the USA and based on a pretty
far out concept. Sadly, it was brought to
my attention for the online-trashing it received. Rarely have I seen such a
strong adverse reaction to a new release from a newly emerging independent artist.
With only one hundred and forty one likes on Facebook and no gigs under their belt,
it seemed that Lonely Soup Day had grabbed the spotlight and channelled the
wrath of the entire internet for the day.
I was horrified and a bit put out by the reaction. Being
brutally truthful, the video was not to my personal tastes and I didn't
understand it, but I thought the song had real potential. There were a few
things I wasn't keen on in the mixing side of the track, but the essence of the
song grabbed me and the melody was catchy! I ended up playing it on repeat a
few times while I “worked”.
Luckily for me, Lonely Soup Day agreed to an interview and
were open to discussing the online blow up completely candidly. They've got some
great words of advice so here’s what went down….
What’s Lonely Soup
Day all about in a nutshell?
Chris: I’d love
to get a song in the background of Grey’s Anatomy. Or any TV show. But
seriously, we’re doing this for the love of it. We get pleasure out of creating
the music, and then just send it out into the world and hope it’s found by
people who like our sound. Nothing more than that.
Molly: Oh, we want
to make it to the big time, definitely! Actually, just releasing a song that my
Mum says she likes as much as anything by Melanie Safka would do. Or getting it
on the background of Grey’s Anatomy, whichever comes first.
How did you both get
into music?
Chris: I’ve been
improvising tunes since I was a kid, on the piano, but it was never really
song-writing. I kept playing, but I needed a collaborator. Once I met Molly we
became songwriters.
Molly: I have no
musical talent myself so, happily, Chris was enthusiastic about me
collaborating with him. I have been nagging people since I was about 5 or 6
years old to be in a band with me. I can’t play instruments, I can’t read music
so I had no hope of doing it independently. I performed live with my dad’s
guitar at a hippy commune when I was about 5 (to rave reviews), wrote my first
full length song by the time I was 9 and wrote a duet with my best friend when
we were about 10.
What inspired you to write
your own original music and go through all the effort of making a music video?
Molly: Everybody
loves music. I think, if given the opportunity, anybody would write their own
music and put it out there. It’s a lot of work, even when everyone thinks
you’re shit, but it’s rewarding…
Chris: I used to
work in film, and music videos were my main job for a while, so it seemed
obvious we should shoot our own. We’re both Twin Peaks fans, and we thought we
could tell a story in the spirit of Twin Peaks that matched the song. I think
we failed.
I've been directing professionally for nearly fifteen years,
and this turned out to be my last project. I was so disappointed with the end
result that I quit directing. I've gone back to being a writer.
You recently unveiled
your new music video for your debut track “Line of Sight”. Can you tell us a little
bit about how you made it?
Chris: We shot
the outdoors scenes North Bend and Snoqualmie (USA) using the original
locations from the Twin Peaks pilot and the movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With
Me. We also shot indoor scenes in Vancouver, with an extra indoor shoot in
Australia in September.
In Vancouver we shot some of the creamed corn footage, and
in Australia we shot the indoor scene in the ‘room above a convenience store’.
That’s the dark room with the weird goings-on. Some of the actors are
professionals from Perth, who are extremely talented, and a few were family. We
only had three hours to shoot, which was seven hours faster than it took David
Lynch to shoot the same scene, so I'm told.
I found the use of
soup in your music video a little confronting. At first glance, I thought it
was vomit! Then I remembered the band name and realised it must be soup. Is it
soup and does soup have some kind of special significance for you guys?
Chris: That was
just for Twin Peaks fans. It’s creamed corn, which has magical properties in
the world of the TV show. It was vile stuff, but it looks good on camera.
Molly: Soup… it’s
significant in that we live like students and consume a lot of soup and two-minute
noodles. I guess we could easily have been called Lonely Noodle Day or Lonely
Cheese Toasty Day. The stuff in the video is Garmonbozia: it’s pain and
suffering. It’s represented by creamed corn, which caused me pain and
suffering. Well, mild discomfort in my mouth and hands. It is confronting,
you’re quite right. I squirm every time I watch that moment in the video. But
then I laugh, oh, how I laugh.
"It
was my face and voice that was representing the band and I could have taken it
really personally but music and art are such subjective things. Ultimately, we
still came out ahead."
- Molly
The video seemed to
cause a lot of controversy after you aired it, in particular it drew some nasty
comments on YouTube. Do you have any comment on why this may have happened?
Chris: There were
some vile comments on the Welcome To Twin Peaks Facebook page which have now
been deleted. I love Twin Peaks, but a cult following can be protective of
their cult. If they don’t think your creation fits in with their cult, they
reject it. I spoke to a psychiatrist about the level of hatred we’d received,
and he said that whenever there is a cult, it offers comfort to the followers,
and the last thing they want is an unsettling change. So we upset people and
they hated on us. It was a mistake to make that video. If you don’t know Twin
Peaks, it’s a confusing mess, and if you do, you hate it for betraying your
dream. I saw somebody on a forum the other day saying that the new series of
Twin Peaks must not have any new characters in it, or it would destroy the
spirit of the show. That’s the mentality we were up against.
In truth, I hope it’s forgotten about, and that we’ll not
always be associated with Twin Peaks. We might even get somebody to make a
really dull alternative video for Line of Sight, something with cats in it.
People love that.
Molly: It got
flack because it exists and we put it online and it’s easy to hate on something
online. It would have been truly saddening if we’d been trying to sell it as a
single twenty years ago and got no sales but we wouldn't have a dozen strangers
casually tearing us apart publicly. I don’t really mind, though. It was my face
and voice that was representing the band and I could have taken it really
personally but music and art are such subjective things. Ultimately, we still
came out ahead. Our voice was heard and seen by dozens of people and will exist
indefinitely and was used for the edification of our souls and art. Their voice
was small, spiteful and thoughtless and limited to our memories and a Facebook
page and it’s certainly not as catchy as any music I've ever heard. I don’t
want the video to be forgotten about, though. I hope it’s one of those things
that gets more appreciation as time goes by, maybe after we’re both dead.
According to the
director of Twin Peaks, David Lynch, a major theme of the work is incest and
the feelings of the victim. Can you explain how the video is of significance to
the song or how the two are related?
Chris: To me the
series was about breaking down the barrier between two worlds – it’s an occult
parable, if you will. Twin Peaks says that love makes you vulnerable, and that
evil has easy access to you when you’re in that state. There’s also a lot about
animal desires and wearing masks. We thought that fit in with our song, but we
were probably wrong.
In the wake of the
negativity, a number of comments showing the reaction to the bashing of your
hard work started to pop up online. In particular, it said somewhere that you
“thought you had overestimated your talent”. Now that things have settled down
a bit, do you still feel this way?
Chris: That
statement was made about my film-making. I've been a writer for 25 years and usually
receive high praise. My film work has received almost no praise, so I don’t
think I'm meant to be a director. I was ready to quit, and the response to this
video sealed the deal. I've no idea
whether I'm any good at music, but we’ll see when the album’s finished.
Molly: If people
can’t respond to a song they don’t like appropriately, I'm not surprised hate
crimes are so ubiquitous. On the other hand, I don’t claim they’re wrong about
our song or music video but if they knew I was standing behind them, listening
to their conversation they wouldn't talk like that. I know this because I was
on the set of a massively unpopular rock band’s music video as an extra and
people whispered stuff among themselves but as soon as the band was seen they
shut the hell up. Because it’s not polite to talk rubbish within hearing of the
subject, right? So why write stuff that you know the subject is going to read.
That’s nasty. That makes you a nasty pasty!
"I
was on the set of a massively unpopular rock band’s music video as an extra and
people whispered stuff among themselves but as soon as the band was seen they
shut the hell up."
- Molly
Can you explain how
you feel about your first release after the release date?
Chris: I regret
making a music video for the fans of Twin Peaks, because they hated it. I don’t
regret releasing the song when we did. Some people like the song. Music will
always find its audience, eventually, even if that audience is small. One of
the bands I love the most, Lowlife, were never famous, but they have a small
following. That would suit me, a following, however small. We may end up with
20 fans or a few more and it really doesn't matter.
Molly: I stand by
the music video and the song. I wish more people enjoyed it because that is
gratifying but I'm not dependent on other people’s approval for my self-worth.
I had fun making it and I still consider our release affectionately.
When creating and
releasing your music and videos in the future, will you do anything
differently?
Chris: I’ll never
direct again and I'm so bored of music videos (having made a bundle) that I
don’t really care what they look like any more. In the future, I’ll never read
a review of our music, either, or a single Facebook comment, because I don’t
think you can learn from reviews. Criticism hurts and praise is misleading. Haters
hate as a hobby, and fans often remain quiet. So I’ll never know whether
anybody likes what we’re doing unless it sells well.
Molly: Chris
warned me that it could get lambasted and I was like, I'm not reading any
comments or any reviews and I don’t want you to tell me any that you read. In
fact, you shouldn't read them because then you’ll tell me anyway. So he read
them and told me them, anyway. Next time I'm going to turn off our internet
service. I also wouldn't release it through a fan site for something else.
For more information on Lonely Soup Day, check them out using the links below.
(And yes, the controversial music video can be found via YouTube!
I’d like to hear your thoughts if anyone has any!)
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