It’s White Flag’s World, We Just Live In It: An Interview With Pat Fear

Pat Fear: So I ended up keeping in touch with them. We would chat on the phone, but I didn’t want to be a crazy fan and stalk them or anything like that.

So later on, I got asked to coordinate this musical project—oh man, I’m really getting in over my head with story; this is gonna haunt me—for a Spanish cartoon show called Motel Spaghetti.

When I was on tour with White Flag one of the show’s creators was like, “Hey, can you write a song for us?” And I said, “Yeah, what’s it for?” He said, “Well, we’re doing this TV show and we want a song in every episode like The Monkees. And he said, “Do you know anyone else who can help do this?” and I said, “Yeah, I do, as a matter of fact.”

Pat Fear with The Shaggs

I wrote our song in Spanish and sent it to them and they really liked it. They said they wanted to do a soundtrack album, too. I saw the cartoon and it was really well done; it was really funny. I said, “How about this? I’ll get some of my other musician friends to do music and I’ll write the songs so that they’re thematically the same. Why don’t we do a song about each character?”

And the producers were like, “Great!” So I wrote all these lyrics, one song about each crazy character, and I got NOFX, Sean Lennon, Redd Kross, Eric Erlandson [Hole] did a song with Anna Waronker [that dog, Ze Malibu Kids]. . . they all did songs for this compilation.

And I was in touch with Sérgio [Dias from Os Mutantes] and they were not together at that point. And I asked him, “If I write this song, will you do it?” And he said, “Oh sure, I’ve got a studio.”

And I had this stroke of genius. I called up Dorothy Wiggin and I said, “I have this project. Do you wanna help me write the lyrics to this song for a TV show?” She said (in Shaggs voice), “Oh, I haven’t written a song since we broke up.”

I said, “Well, I’ll give you the topic and write part of it,” and she said, “Okay, well send it to me.” So she finished the lyrics, and I gave them to Sergio, and he recorded it.

Popshifter: Oh my god.

Pat Fear: So I combined The Shaggs, me, and Os Mutantes on a recording.

Popshifter: Amazing!

Pat Fear: And it’s never come out because the people that made the cartoon show had meetings with the Cartoon Network and MTV and both wanted it, but they wanted to take control of it and the creators said no, they wanted script control and creative control, and it never went anywhere. So I have an entire compilation record of songs about cartoon characters that nobody’s ever heard of.

NOFX released their song as part of their Singles Club and it came out about a month ago. It was on this three-disc release called Fat Wrecktrospective. It’s called “Spaghetti Motel,” oddly enough. Sean Lennon actually wrote his own lyrics to his song, but I’m the only person to ever co-write a song with NOFX that isn’t in the band. So that’s kind of funny.

So I got The Shaggs, Os Mutantes, and me, melded into music that no one will ever hear. (laughs)

Popshifter: That’s really a shame.

Click to read more from Pat Fear on. . .

Dr. Demento & The Ramones
Causing trouble
The Malcolm McLaren Handbook
Battle of the Bands
White Flag Goes to Greenland
Those missing 22 copies. . .
Os Mutantes
The Shaggs
Motel Spaghetti
Gasatanka

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