I like music that makes other people uncomfortable. I like Pere Ubu a lot, for example, and my favorite Pere Ubu album is New Picnic Time, an album that has sent many listeners screaming from the room. Captain Beefheart is another favorite, in which case I like Lick My Decals Off, Baby, an album of great rhythmic complexity and impressionistic lyrics. Rhys Chatham’s out-of-tune guitar pieces. Tony Conrad’s violin pieces for just intonation, LaMonte Young’s minimalisms, free jazz from the mid-sixties, the Sun City Girls, the Slits, Daniel Johnston, the Shaggs, Wesley Willis, Syd Barrett’s most ominous solo work, the most experimental David Grubbs, etc. It’s not that I think this music is interesting simply because it’s unusual. This music brings me genuine pleasure. I like pop songs, too, of course, in reasonable doses. But often the work that makes an indelible impression on me comes from a place of singularity. This work doesn’t give up its secrets easily. It makes demands. In the process of reckoning with it, you feel as though you’ve helped make it what it is.

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