For those of us who have been listening to records on repeat lately, those tracks that are punctuated by samples from television and movies seem superficial at first, and maybe their significance never really hits home for most of us. However ridiculous those small clips of dialogue might seem, they surely hold some importance to the songwriter, and as a result, do samples from other media hold as much weight as the lyrics themselves? Perhaps trying to delve into this defeats the purpose of using ambiguous samples in music – I set out to find the answer to these questions, asking Scott Freeman (vocals) from Shook Ones why and how they used samples to start and end many of their songs.
A lot of your samples seem to revolve around Washington, and particularly Bellingham, where you’re from – songs like ‘Penn Cove Muscles’, ‘Carms Race’ and ‘Who Told Omar’ – where did you get those samples from and why did you use them?
There’s a song on ’24 Hour Revenge Therapy’ where I just liked the sound of the music over people talking. The sampling started with the demo, and then the trend just continued with ‘Sixteen’ and on with the next records. Especially on the demo, the subject matter of the samples was pretty apt to what was going on with the song. Sometimes they’re just fun, but a lot of the times they fit pretty well. The sample in ‘Carms Race’ was from a 7” that our guitar player, Funds, found at a Goodwill.
The sample in ‘Who Told Omar’ is from a local sketch comedy show in the 90’s called ‘Almost Live’ – some of us were born and raised in Bellingham and felt like giving a nod to Bellingham. ‘Penn Cove Muscles’ is another Anthony Michael Hall quote that was buried because of rights issues, but that one was more about layers and aesthetic than what the quote was really about. Just that vibe of having a weird layer hiding in there, that sometimes you can’t understand or maybe sometimes you can, and I just like how that works with the song sound-wise.
What’s ‘Who Told Omar’ about – it’s one of the songs that’s harder to find some meaning to on ‘The Unquotable AMH’ – any hints?
It’s about me remembering not to be a shithead, and remembering that it’s easy to convince yourself of some flawed logic when you are in a bad head state. It’s about myself and also some friends who I watched to do some things that I would have been inclined to do when I’m in a bad head state, and how I think they made mistakes or that they thought they were fixing their problems by addressing what I thought was the wrong issue. The title of the song is a reference to ‘The Wire’.
Not only were we watching that show a lot around then, but also the notion of keeping something from myself when really you know, deep down, that you’re pretty transparent about things even when you think you’re being sneaky or you think you know what’s going on. In Baltimore, Omar knew everything and it was best to not keep things from him. The idea is that this song is laying it out and trying to be honest about it, kind of blowing up my own spot to Omar in a sense. It’s a mixed bag of nodding to ‘The Wire’ and fitting to the subject matter.
Do you think me dissecting your use of samples sort of defeats the point of it all. Aren’t they supposed be ambiguous – to only have meaning to you, the songwriter?
I think the practice of trying to dissect anything is kind of the point of even writing lyrics that I think are worth writing. Whether or not someone finds the same meaning that I do is not really the point. I don’t really believe in being hyper-literal because I think there’s a lot of ways to interpret not just the subject matter of the song but life in general. I don’t really think there’s one way to interpret events in your life or feelings you have.
“Hyper-vague” wouldn’t describe how I write lyrics, though. You’ve got to give people enough nuggets for someone to be able to drop themselves into a situation they think they are hearing in a particular set of lyrics. I think dissection is good and if people hear what I say and it sounds totally different than what they thought it meant, that’s fine. I think that’s interesting.
Finally, what are you guys up to now and what are your plans for the future?
For the first time in a long time, we all live in the same state. We just finished practice and we’ve got our first show in a couple years coming up in a few weeks. I think we’re just gonna play some shows, and it’d be fun to write another LP (we’re a little ways in on that). More of the same, really; we’re not gonna go on 4 week tours or anything, but maybe we’ll play three shows a year instead of one.
Hopefully that provides a deeper look into Shook Ones’s songwriting, and a chance to relate more to their lyrics, which reference more than a couple of TV shows. Perhaps this isn’t such a pointless exercise after all. Last time we talked to The Dopamines.