.

Video: Liz Phair Remembers 'Exile in Guyville

'This was when you really felt there was a mainstream music culture that we wanted to fuck with,' the singer tells 'Rolling Stone' at Matador 21. 'We felt we were making better music than the stuff you heard on the radio.'

By 
October 4, 2010 1:27 PM ET

“Everyone who was making indie music knew each other. It was a small group of people,” Liz Phair told Rolling Stone, sitting high up in the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas during the weekend anniversary celebration for Matador Records, which released her acclaimed 1993 debut, Exile in Guyville. “This was when you really felt there was a mainstream music culture that we wanted to fuck with. We felt we were making better music than the stuff you heard on the radio.” She has a new album, Funstyle, set for release October 19th (on Rocket Science), but was in Vegas to reconnect with old friends, including the Matador art director who wandered into the nearby wilderness during the cover shoot for Whip Smart and, apparently, barely survived. “It's intense — everyone is coming together. We've all been dispersed, the culture has moved on. [But] it's alive, it's still happening. Thank God Matador did this. They made a weekend that I'll remember forever.”

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

prev
More: Phil Collins Writing Book, Sonic Youth Trashed
Music Main Next
Lady Gaga, Sonic Youth, RZA Join Yoko Ono for Concerts Honoring John Lennon

Picks From Around the Web


blog comments powered by Disqus

Featured News From vulture vulture

Daily Newsletter

Get the latest RS news in your inbox.

Sign up to receive the Rolling Stone newsletter and special offers from RS and its
marketing partners.

X

We may use your e-mail address to send you the newsletter and offers that may interest you, on behalf of Rolling Stone and its partners. For more information please read our Privacy Policy.

Most Popular

Photos & Videos

Go To Content

Random Notes: Hottest Rock Pictures

Go To Content Play Video

Video: Metallica, 'Hit the Lights' Live at Orion

Go To Content

Gallery: Readers' Poll: The 10 Greatest Rock & Roll Rebels

Best Ever Lists
100 Best Albums of the 2000s

Other Lists

Song Stories

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The Joy Formidable | 2011

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”

More Song Stories entries »