Bundy K. Brown (ex-Tortoise)
SPB: What is the weirdest description you’ve heard of your music? Do you think it had some accuracy or could you see where the reviewer came up with it?
Brown: Whew. A decent answer to that question would require my brain to be filled with a lot less information than it typically is these days...you know: what's for dinner tomorrow, son's soccer schedule, odd work-related deadlines, half a dozen random shopping lists, etc.
I am quite certain at some point someone leveled a description against my music that I felt was not just weird, but inappropriate or deeply misinformed (though in truth, I don't feel like I ever really got much press). And no matter how out there it was, it was not so egregious that I have carried it around with me. I think that has more or less left me without a real answer to your question. I tend to wear my influences on my sleeve, and have never shied away from co-opting/regurgitating someone else's good (and occasionally bad) ideas, not to mention the fact that, musically, I haven't really demonstrated much growth or evolution, so what would be weird to me is if someone did not notice that obviousness. And in my outlook, I can wax towards relativism too strongly at times, so no matter how off the mark someone's critique may have seemed at the time, at worst, I probably just dismissed it as "everyone's entitled to their own opinion."
Well, actually in hindsight, I may have gotten wound up about something like that once or twice, but it probably manifested itself as me muttering to myself about it when no one else is around, or perhaps a small outburst among folks who I felt could withstand a tirade. Wait...scratch all that. A long time ago Mitch Myers wrote what was ultimately a very favorable piece about Pullman for the New City, but he framed it in this kind of historical fiction that just didn't make any sense. So what he said wasn't weird, but how he said it was. Does that count?
