Nothing Wrong With Liking A Flashy Man: An Interview With Dick Valentine

Popshifter: Absolutely. Especially, I think, it’s most visible in “Making Progress,” the last track.

Dick Valentine: Oh, yeah, on this album we finally got hold of a vocoder. So, I think it’s always fun to throw in a vocoder.

Popshifter: That was awesome. I’m a sucker for vocoder, I’m a big Zapp & Roger fan.

Dick Valentine: Yeah, it’s an easy way to make you feel more important than you actually are.

Popshifter: And it’s interesting because you used the vocoder at the very end of “Transatlantic Flight.”

Dick Valentine: Exactly, that was intentional, the bridge to the vocoder.

Popshifter: That was really good, it made it seem more of a. . .

Dick Valentine: “Wait, was that just vocoder?” and then the next song kicks in, “Oh yeah, that was vocoder.” (laughs)

Popshifter: (laughs) That’s you answering through the record. “Transatlantic Flight,” by the way, is probably your most chilling song.

Dick Valentine: My wife, actually, this morning when I woke up, she was like, “You need to,” you know, with the water landing in New York—

Popshifter: Yup!

Dick Valentine: —she was just like, “You need to get out there and start selling it, because nobody died.” You know, if anyone had died we couldn’t do it.

Popshifter: That makes it more of an exciting adventure than, uh. . .

Dick Valentine: (laughs) Yeah.

Popshifter: That was my thought, too: “Gosh, I wonder if they could use that, behind a news report or something.”

Dick Valentine: I’m not always the best at knowing who to contact out there, but every now and then they find us, so we’ll see, but most times they don’t. I thought by now that Taco Bell would use that song [“Danger! High Voltage!”], and they still haven’t.

Popshifter: Right. . . I don’t know what their direction is.

Dick Valentine: Yeah, maybe if I wrote a song about Fourthmeal, you know, we’d find a way to get in there, but. . .

Popshifter: Please don’t write a song about Fourthmeal.

Dick Valentine: I thought, you know, with the Taco Bell and the McDonald’s and the Formula 409 that we’d have some big commercial campaign going, but. . .

Popshifter: It’s not like you’re not making the effort. You’re trying to meet them halfway.

Dick Valentine: Yeah. (laughs) One of these days, it’ll work out. I remember earlier in 2008, we heard from our publisher that this movie called Twilight had asked to use “Danger! High Voltage!” and we were like, “Sure, that’s fine,” and it turned out to be the number one movie in the country and they didn’t end up using it after asking. I feel like Harvey Keitel at the end of Bad Lieutenant, you know, that close, but. . .

Popshifter: That close and yet still so far.

Dick Valentine: Yeah, that’s the part that’s infuriating. There was a Hugh Grant movie a while ago that asked to use that song, too, but didn’t, so you know. . . You always just wonder what could have been.

Click to read more from Dick Valentine on. . .

Touring and bad reviews
Vocoder and marketing music
Current lineup and Alexyss K. Tylor
“Heavy Woman” and Larry Craig
Sheffield and Austin
Alternative music and honesty
Florida and Election Day
The new album and “the heart of a lion”

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