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From The Desk Of Crash Test Dummies’ Brad Roberts: “The Writer”

CrashTestlogoCrash Test Dummies are best known for their 1993 worldwide hit “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm,” yet the Canadian band put out six more albums after that before going on hiatus in 2005. CTD is back this week with Oooh La La (Deep Fried) but in a brand new incarnation. Mainman Brad Roberts (now based in New York City) wrote and recorded the album with producer and engineer Stewart Lerman (Antony And The Johnsons, Marshall Crenshaw, Roches) using ’70s musical toys such as the Optigan for the majority of the LP. (The two were joined on Oooh La La by longtime CTD backing vocalist Ellen Reid.) The result is the happiest-sounding record of Roberts’ two-decade career. Roberts will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Q&A with him.

SalangerHemmingway

Roberts:
And now you’re expected to tell a story.
It has to make some kind of sense,
you have to keep them interested,
make them want to keep reading,
convince them that they must know the outcome.

And it has to be credible,
and balanced, and engaging;
it can be elegant or lavish or precise
or even outrageous—
so long as it is not gratuitously outrageous …

Pretense is useless.
The story must turn on its own axis,
contain its own center of gravity.
It must be born of its own volition,
And it must have a sense
of its own inevitability.

Eventually, of course
you just can’t come up with anything anymore.
The well is dry,
there are no more depths to plumb.

So you just sit there, staring away,
wondering how you wrote anything at all
to begin with.

Video after the jump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogQpie4JA9o

2 replies on “From The Desk Of Crash Test Dummies’ Brad Roberts: “The Writer””

i listen to the song MMM MMM MMM MMM several times, and i really would love to know the meaning of the song.. there’s several different ideas, but to know the truth would be satisfying.

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