A Quote by Tony Kanal

We were making 'Tragic Kingdom,' and we were kind of battling with the record company. It was just being drawn-out, in the same kind of situation where we were all working, we all had jobs, we were going to school.
I call it "being interrupted by success." We had done The Soft Bulletin, which came out in 1999, and we knew we that were gonna make another record before too long. But in between this, we were still in this mode of kind of just - not re-creating what we could be, but kind of doing different things. For the longest time in the Flaming Lips we were like, "Make a record, go on tour. Come back, make another record," and you know, I think, frankly, we were kind of like, "There's more to life than just recording records and going on tour."
When I was in high school, I had already kind of been working in the industry and had done a couple of acting jobs. There were definitely some girls that were either jealous or thought I was a snob. I was just trying to be a teenage girl and go to high school and have fun like everybody else!
We were on tour for 'Tragic Kingdom' for 28 months. We were going through the breakup, and in every interview we were talking about it so we were opening this wound on an hourly basis.
What I saw over all that time were so many deals disappearing and producers disappearing, fewer movies getting made, and it just being a bit more difficult. Working with Joel, we were in a bit of a bubble because he was always making things that were working for the studio and that kind of thing. We were always in production on something.
In my case, I was born to parents who were very young, and I don't think they were entirely ready to have a child. My dad was going to college and working two or three jobs at the same time, and my mum was working and going to school.
The 'Beacon Street' record was kind of like a b-side to 'Tragic Kingdom,' but it came out before 'Tragic Kingdom,' so it's a weird situation.
When I got my PhD, it was a time when there were just no jobs for PhDs. Period. PhDs were getting the lowest paid technician jobs, if they were lucky, in any kind of science.
I believe that everybody was born with a kind of uniqueness. There is never going to be somebody else with the same DNA as you, with the same experiences. There is something that you were meant to do as an individual. You have some kind of creative skill. It can either be creating your own business in some level, being a writer, an artist, whatever, or it can even be working within a company, but from within that company you're creating something.
I kind of remember a friend of mine saying, like, you guys should make a rap record. You know, because we were already making punk records. We were a punk band. And I kind of thought, that's crazy.
There was a time when we were in a van and handing out the CDs at Warped Tour. We had a two-song EP that we were just handing out for free just to promote ourselves. That was on the 'Waking the Fallen' record, and we were just going around and handing out the CDs and stuff like that.
You talk about rowdy - in Oakland the players were on you. The refs were on you. The stands were on you. You had to talk back or you were a sissy; you'd get run out of the league. Afterward? Yeah, it was kind of a, uh, struggle to get out of the gym. Cops had to be everywhere. Which was lucky.
I was living in a loft with Dave Sitek - this loft full of people just working on their stuff. Some were painting, some were writing. Any plans you had were kind of like a plan for the next two months.
When you are doing music videos through the '90s, which I did, and the 2000s, you were put in the position, really, as an independent filmmaker. You were being financed by a major record company or a minor record company or whatever.
There was a Yale even before Larry [Kramer] and I got there, and there were three designations of students: "white shoe," "brown shoe," and "black shoe." "White shoe" people were kind of the ur-preppies from high-class backgrounds. "Brown shoe" people were kind of the high school student-council presidents who were snatched up and brushed up a little bit to be sent out into the world. "Black shoe" people were beyond the pale. They were chemistry majors and things like that.
We couldn't predict what would happen with 'Roots.' You knew there were powerful moments that were going to affect people. We were making the film while the book was being completed. We were fortunate because the hardcover book was out and on the best-seller list. The heat was still on.
When we were writing the 'Stage' album, we realized we'd never really done proper covers, where we were taking songs and making them our own and kind of playing around with them. I came up with the idea of doing a cover of 'Wish You Were Here,' but we didn't really want it on the record.
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