MTV (Latin) 1996-08 By Ruth "Tibetan Freedom Concert" Subject: Bjork interview on Latin MTV Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 17:41:06 -0400 From: Ivan Rivera To: Multiple recipients of list BEP-L Hi Bepplers : This is my first post, and this is my first warning : "I don't speak english very well". I speak spanish. All I know about english is what I learned listening to the songs of Bjork ... (and I'm learning Icelandic too :-). Last Sunday I watched and recorded a Bjork interview on Latin MTV. But the interviewer (Ruth) has a very strange accent, and with the funny accent of Bjork it was too hard for me to understand it, but here it goes : (...) means a pause, and (***) is a word I couldn't understand. ------------------------------- [Bjork and Ruth are sitting in the grass of the backstage of the Tibetan Freedom Concert. Bjork is wearing a pink shirt and a white and long skirt. She looks like if she were sleeping for 15 hours ... she is without make-up] Ruth : So how did you decide to participate here in this concert today? Bjork : Well, Adam asked me if I would take part of this. And I been following all what's being on at Tibet since I was a teenager, partly because I come from a small country, Iceland, and [she smiles] we seems to always watch out for all minority's groups in the world, like the big oppressor threatening badly, we always ... we seems to be pretty quick in supporting the minorities, and like I said before we were for example the first country to acknowledge Lithuania's independence from the Soviet Union. So I say yes, of course, in anything I could do. [Flashback of Bjork singing Violently Happy in the Concert] Ruth : You started singing when you were a kid, and then, when you were a teenager had different bands, so is any available recording of that time when you had your Kukl band for example ? Bjork : There were two records that a label called Crass put out in ... about fifteen years ago. Ruth : And how at that time the "Goth" and "Punk" influenced you? Bjork : Well, it was more individuality. We were trying to be Icelandic, even our Crass, which was a very political and conscious label, very aware of human rights, animal rights and so on ... we ... we rather stood for the Icelandic ... fight, battles ... which was more a question of fighting mortal mentality, and narrow-mindedness and such, and opening people's minds. [Flashback of Bjork singing Hyper-Ballad in the Concert] Ruth : And what do you think about "punk" now in 90's, in 96 for example, the big explosion, the commercial explosion of the punk now in 90's? Bjork : Are you talking about punk as an emotion or as a fashion? Ruth : As a ... both together, an emotion first, and then it becomes a fashion, you know, all the people that follow the emotion of a few. Bjork : I think punk as a fashion and punk as an emotion are too completely different things. It's black and white. Ruth : Yes, there's is some people that have the emotion, and then there's a lot of people that follow those people that have the emotion and they become the fashion ... don't you think? Bjork : I think punk correctly(?) for me is about being a rebel, and you will always have that thing, and it's being in history since the man started for many thousands years oppressing ...... oppression and the awfulities(?) they want to control you, and supporting anarchy and supporting individuality and I will always support punk in that way. Even in the 70's, it was labelled, you know, got the title "punk". Even it has been around as long as the humans decided to be not monkeys anymore. But then you got the other thing, which is ... the hair like this [she moves her opened hand over her head] Ruth : Yes, the fashion Bjork : You know, the fashion thing ... which is a too completely different thing. [Flashback of Bjork singing Army Of Me in the Concert] Ruth : When you released the video of "It's Oh So Quiet", and the video is fantastic too ... how did you work with the idea of the video? Bjork : Well, I asked Spike Jones if he would do it with me, and ... because I've wanted to work with him for a very long time, (***) my artist (***) for many years. But, I was only just looking for the right song to work with him. And when this song came off, I thought "Brilliant ... this will be a brilliant song to do with Spike Jones". The only thing mainly I told Spike was ... was : I want it to be modern, I want it to be about people believe in magic today. Exactly(?) ... just normal people in the supermarket can suddenly start to dance. And the magic, we have magic here in our hands, you know, it's everywhere, and it's just an attitude, you know. And people always think in the 50's, so it's easy, you know, retro, like dance films and everything that only happenned in the past. But I wanted to prove in the video that it can still happen today. Ruth : Yes, of course, and beatiful. Bjork : And the rest of the work is completely Spike's ... Spike Jones ... it's his work Ruth : Do you have plannes to keep working with him? Bjork : I would love to, but it would have to be right. ----------------------------- Well ... that's all. It was just a part of the interview (Latin MTV showed it so). I have it taped and I needed to listen to it about a hundred of times to transcript it here, so this is a very big work, it took me a long time. (Play - rewind - play - rewind - play - rewind - play ....) Ivan Rivera Jofre http://www.dcc.uchile.cl/~irivera IvanR or Androgen on IRC