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

Popshifter: What are you listening to right now? What’s floatin’ your boat?

Dick Valentine: Oh, I’m playing a lot of online Scrabble. Yeah, I don’t listen to a lot of music.

Popshifter: Is that just in general, or when you’re recording?

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Dick Valentine: I don’t know, I guess I like the new TV On The Radio record, and that stuff, but I just don’t really seek out music. I kind of get it through, “Hey, man, what are you listening to?” and then they tell me and I go, “Oh, that’s cool,” and then I forget the name of it and I never hear it again. So, that’s how I listen to music.

Popshifter: Whatever they tell you will most likely not be played on the radio.

Dick Valentine: Yeah, when I go back to Detroit, I listen to WJLB, which is the hip-hop and R&B station, and it’s so good. I don’t know the artists or anything, but I can drive around and listen to that all day long. I got into that music in the 90s when I had office jobs and used to drive to work. And you’d turn on the alternative radio station and it’s filled with shit, you know? And this is the rock that I’m supposed to be listening to. So that’s how I got into hip-hop and R&B, because it was so much better.

Popshifter: And then that was the alternative.

Dick Valentine: Yeah, the alternative to the alternative.

Popshifter: Because alternative got co-opted—

Dick Valentine: Alternative became, you know, Three Doors Down and Default. . .

Popshifter: Ugh.

Dick Valentine: And “Plush” by Stone Temple Pilots is going on its twentieth year of radio play, you know? I still go back and check on that radio station and it’s just like, “Here’s ‘Plush’ by Stone Temple Pilots!”

Popshifter: They’re locked into a particular brand of alternative.

Dick Valentine: Yeah. (laughs)

Popshifter: That’s why I really enjoy Internet radio stations or things like that, that are truly playing, you know, whatever people put on their own—

Dick Valentine: Yeah, yeah. That’s good that all those tried and true methods are losing money in droves, and soon they won’t be here anymore.

Popshifter: That’s awesome. People are able to make their own music, and they’re able to broadcast their own music.

Dick Valentine: But I think corporate urban radio will always be strong.

Popshifter: How do the band members get the names that they have?

Dick Valentine: If you take everyone in the band right now, I think I christened Percussion World and Smorgasbord!, and then when The Colonel joined the band, he just said, “Dude, I think you need a Colonel.”

Popshifter: (laughs)

Dick Valentine: So that was that. Johnny Na$hinal’s real name is John Nash, so you do the math there. . .

Popshifter: Yep.

Dick Valentine: And Tait Nucleus? I have no idea what that means. . .

Popshifter: (laughs)

Dick Valentine: It’s another case of not over thinking it.

Popshifter: OK, great. So, you’re steered by your guts alone.

Dick Valentine: Pretty much.

Popshifter: That’s great, it makes you probably one of the most honest bands out there right now. Like, not a whole lot of ulterior motives?

Dick Valentine: Not really, we have a good time being in the band, you know? It’s a good living. We got our first record deal at a point in our lives, in our early 30s, where you had an entire decade of trying to make it and realizing how lucky you are to do this. And we don’t take it for granted. People that get signed earlier think that they’re entitled to it, and aren’t willing to do the leg work like we are.

Popshifter: Yeah, I just finished reading Slash’s autobiography and being disappointed at how everything got taken for granted, and you just feel like, you know. . .

Dick Valentine: Well, yeah, but he’s Slash, though. (laughs)

Popshifter: (laughs) So he actually is entitled to it.

Dick Valentine: Yep, he is entitled to it.

Popshifter: He didn’t take any lessons, he just taught himself to play like that, so you know what? That’s right. You’re anointed, move on.

Dick Valentine: Yep, that’s how that works.

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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