Interview: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez
by Jeremiah Griffey
There are no concrete statistics on how many drugs Omar Rodriguez-Lopez consumed during his past two years spent in the land of milk and honey known as Amsterdam. However, given the bluesy coherence of his new solo album, “Se Dice Bisonte, No Buffalo” it would appear Omar kept his indulgences at a moderate level.
His first solo album, “A Manual Dexterity: Soundtrack Volume One” (GSL) was a disjointed hodgepodge (dis)colored by Jeremy Michael Ward’s noise-mongering (both literally and, I suspect, in spirit). “Se Dice Bisonte, No Bufalo” on the other hand, tells the sonic story of Omar’s inspiration and alienation in a strange land and desire to meld his wide-ranging influences into one multicultural truth-speaking language.
The album’s best track, “Rapid Fire Tollbooth” features Omar’s At the Drive-In and The Mars Volta co-conspirator Cedric Bixler-Zavala in the role of Robert Plant. (Nerd alert: Rumor has it Omar and Cedric have plans to re-record the song for the upcoming TMV album. Oh, and Cedric makes an appearance on the title track and “La Tirania de la Tradicion” as well.) Omar, who’s notoriously crabby in interviews when the words “prog rock” and “pretension” are bandied about, has returned to the United States, and spoke with me about his most important things: his family, his culture, and his music.
So you’re back in the States now?
Yeah, New York.
No more L.A.?
No more L.A.
Any reason? Needed a change?
With anything in life, we get bored. Some of us quicker than others. I spent four years in L.A. and I that was more than enough. I’m still trying to wash off the effects.
Care to elaborate?
It’s a really self-centered area. I guess any place is, and it’s stupid to try to harp on the clichés of this town. It’s just how singular it all is. People get in their little cars. They’re in their little bubble world. They go to their little bubble place. Their little bubble office or wherever the fuck they’re going. They really don’t give a fuck about each other. I guess New York isn’t that much different, but it’s a completely different approach to the overcrowded problem. It’s much more in your face and people have to interact. In L.A., it’s like when you walk in a room and there are two or three motherfuckers in the room, people do one of two things. They either do the human being thing and say, “Oh, hi. I’m so and so. We’re in this room. There’s only three of us. This is awkward.” Or they act like you’re just not there. L.A.’s full of people who act like you’re just not there.
I interviewed Sonny Kay once and he told me music was more of a pastime for him, but for you your guitar was more of an extra appendage. Can you talk about how music became that important to you?
It’s because music has always been present. It’s always been a staple in my life. Growing up Puerto Rican, everything centered around music. The festivities, celebrations, everything. Everybody in my family played something. It’s just always been the one consistent in my life. It’s more about music and expression than guitar or anything like that.
Why do you think you didn’t become, say, a social worker, an architect or a filmmaker? How did you know music was the career for you?
I really didn’t. Because it was such a staple of my life growing up, I never thought of music as something I would do as a career. Music and career are two words that don’t go together. I always wanted to be a filmmaker when I was a kid. When I got into high school – and it’s funny you mentioned architect – because that’s pretty much the only thing I was good at. I got bad grades. Everything else except architecture class or engineering class. I’d design things and cheat and have my friends help me with the math aspect. I was good at designing structure. During this whole time I played music. It was something that just happened. Music had to happen. It was a staple. It was like being conscious of breathing. It doesn’t happen until after. After baseball practice I’d go and practice with my band. After getting out of school I’d practice with my band. At a certain point I started ditching school and just playing music. At a certain point I just dropped out of high school and had a band with five of my friends and just played music around the country. That band broke up and I got into another band. That kept happening and I had odd jobs. Music was always the escape. It was what I wanted to be doing all the time. I never once in my mind thought that I could seriously live how I live now.
You talk about structure in architecture, and both of the bands you’re most well known for, At the Drive-in and The Mars Volta, both have very chaotic, but rigid, structures. It sounds chaotic, but it also sounds like you know exactly what’s going to happen next.
Definitely. It’s something that helps me to see the music visually. That’s such a big part of it when describing to Cedric what I’m doing or showing an engineer what I’m doing. I quite literally draw structures on a piece of paper, boxes, circles, triangles. It’s really good to be able to see parts as structures, transitions with certain shapes. It really helps you come to an understanding of what you want to do with a song. For me, that’s always been an exciting part of music, whether it be for At the Drive-in or this group. I like the approach of having it seem chaotic. The most common thing I get when I do interviews is, “It must be cool being in that band. You just like jam and make songs.” Nothing could be farther from the truth.
In your early career you started out playing punk music and now play what’s commonly referred to as prog music. When punk music started it was the direct opposite – they were reacting to the bloat of progressive rock. Do you find any sort of comparison in your career? Why would you start making more epic music?
It’s just a matter of circumstance. I grew up playing punk rock music and that was what I liked besides traditional salsa. When I came to this country, I never took music in English seriously. My dad was listening to The Beatles, and to me it was nice, but it sounded like a joke: “Oh how cute. They’re singing in English.” I’m sure it’s the same way people feel when they hear a Spanish song. English music never spoke to me or inspired me like salsa music did. Then I heard Black Flag. I started hearing all these punk bands and I felt a direct connection instantly. Even though that was my first introduction to digging English, and I played it for years. It was only a matter of time before I fucking got bored of the same five or six chords. I was like, “What’s this? Reggae music?” Through punk music I found all these other things. Slowly but surely, reading about all my heroes I found out The Clash and Public Image Ltd. were really into dub music. I was like, “What the fuck is dub music?” I did my homework and got into that realm and found it had the same fire as Caribbean music and I started exploring from there. Electronic music. Classical music. Whatever it is. Your tastes just start growing. I guess some people don’t get bored. Some people can just listen to the same music they were listening to since they were 15 and it works for them. I can’t imagine I’ll be playing The Mars Volta music forever. At some point I’ll get tired and bored of writing this kind of music and I’ll have to move on to something else. Living in the 21st century, we have so many music movements to be inspired by. I don’t see the point in fixating on just one form of music. When people label our music as “prog” or “progressive” or whatever the fuck it is, I just see it as some sort of cultured music. It’s varied. Our interests are varied. What I want to do is all over the place and I’m trying to hold it together with a common thread so something else comes out. Years from now I might just want to play an accordion.
2007 Se Dice Bisonte, No Bufalo (GSL)
2004 A Manual Dexterity: Soundtrack Volume One (GSL)
