mattinterview

VOX: So, I hear Matt Good is a real asshole.

Matt Good: [Laughs] I love proliferating my own legend. The reason I had those shirts made was, well, the press here [in Canada] love to vilify me, and I love fucking with them. I mean, the idea of controversy here is someone falling asleep at a fucking awards dinner, so anything beyond that is just not seen as good by the press. They've done a good job of creating the opinions of me, too. People meet me, and after spending a little time with me, they're like, "Hey, you're not such a bad guy." I think it's funny, so I had the shirts made, and they sell like hotcakes at the shows. I'll keep making them and changing the colors.

VOX: You can change the font�

MG: Yeah, I may do some different fonts, but I want to do a 70's style shirt - yellow with bad green lettering.

VOX: Let's talk about Black Market Surgery. What does it say about me that I really liked reading it?

MG: The bit about journalists?

VOX: All of it.

MG: You know, that all really came about by accident. It's funny, because the first thing management tells a new band is "Get a website." At the time I didn't know a fucking thing about the web. Most of the sites I had seen were pretty boring, but management is like, "Write something for the web." So I did, starting in the second month of 1997, and pretty soon I was getting like 650 e-mails a month. I was writing anything, whatever, at first, and it progressed to short fiction and so on. Right around the beginning if each month there would be this huge surge in hits from people coming in for the latest edition. I've stopped, now that I've finalized a book deal - you can buy it in the fall.
It was really interesting how different people reacted to it. I had these right-wing assholes writing in and making death threats and shit like that. There were bomb threats when we would play the Commodore here in town [Vancouver], and Stockwell Day was pissed off. I mean, here's a guy who thinks Catcher In The Rye shouldn't be in libraries. Then I wrote a bit on the Budwiser girls, and I got a bunch of e-mails telling me I was a sexist pig�it went on from there.
What was really tough, though, was while there was this great silent majority who seemed to really appreciate the stuff I was writing and took it for what it was, these other people would get pissed off and I'm like, "Fuck you." Here it is the 25th of the month and I'm up for like 3 fucking nights straight reediting so that I can get the shit together on time. That's why some of it just seems to end for no reason, because I was reediting up the last minute and finally it's like, fuck it, its deadline.
But, anyway, now that's done and the book form will be out in the fall.

VOX: Coming soon to a "Chapters" near you�

MG: I don't know where it'll be, and I have no idea if you'll be able to get it in the States, but it'll be somewhere.

VOX: Is it the same need to share your ideas that gets you to publish your diatribes as well as write lyrics?

MG: It comes from the need inside of me to make fun of people. And my need to make fun of myself.
I like writing things that are both intelligent and subversive. There's so much for me to write about - society has become so absolutely ridiculous. Any country or society that can be compared to Rome in terms of the economic and media control of things is fucking scary. I mean, look at how many Hispanic and Black kids got murdered in the Bronx last year, and see if any of that stuff got mentioned in the news, but if a kid goes in and shoots at people in his school it becomes fucking front-page news for weeks. I'm not saying that it's not important, but the other kids are just as important. But, you know the media has its way of putting it out there and controlling things. It fucking frightens me.
God help all of you. You get a new president, and his first fucking law he signs into existence is one stripping aid to countries that have legalized abortions. But, I bet if you look at that list of nations, America is still selling arms to many, if not most, of them. So what's worse?

VOX: Will you start doing like Moby and fill your liner notes with personal ideas?

MG: No. He's a tweaker. He uses big words together to make himself sound intelligent. I can't do that

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