As Smart As They Are: The Author Project
This site was created to present a platform for music reviews in a creative writing format. Music and literature. One is the muse for the other. Hence the short story reviews of albums. It was this relationship between writings and music that piqued my interest in the documentary As Smart As They Are: The Author Project.
Natty Man Blues (mp3) by One Ring Zero, lyrics by Paul Auster

The band One Ring Zero created an exceptional and novel (pardon the pun) album entitled As Smart As They Are. They became the house band for the nonpareil publishing house McSweeney's. Hosting weekly literary readings, McSweeney's invited One Ring Zero to perform and create a unique experience in the unmarked storefront full of unusual knick-knacks.
Composing mostly instrumental music with accordion, claviola, thermin, and a diverse array of instruments, Joshua Camp and Michael Hearst decided to solicit lyrics from a scattering of authors. After receiving lyrics from Paul Auster, Dave Eggers, Neil Gaiman, Myla Goldberg, Denis Johnson, Jonathon Lethem, Darin Strauss, and many others, the band set out to create The Author Project. The end result is an album of unequaled and varying musical landscapes set to non-typical lyrics. The subjects include a song from the point of view of a cockroach (Lethem's "Water") to an ode to vegetation (Amy Fusselman's "All About House Plants") to the narrative of a hermaphodite (Clay McLeod Chapman's "Half And Half").
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One strength of this movie was the composite of interviews shown. The producers equally voiced the opinions of musicians, industry insiders, critics, and average music fans. The musicians were from differing genres and varying levels of popularity. ?uestlove bluntly explained the disparity between commodity and art. As commodity gains control, art disappears. Erykah Badu explained that there are 3 types of artists: the one who is in pain to express themselves, the one who knows how to imitate that, and the one who does what they are told. She continued to say that the first one will be more popular than rich, the second will be richer than admiration entitles, and the third is ever replaceable.
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