O: Well, they thought [making that type of record] was a terrible idea from the beginning. Let’s give them their due. They were very consistent about what they wanted all along. Gary, the guy who ran the label, wanted something that he perceived as Jennifer’s personality as a kind of a frosting on top of a pretty commercial cake. She didn’t want to be frosting, we didn’t want to be frosting, we were trying to make things very real. He wasn’t totally wrong about what works and what doesn’t work but he wasn’t into exploring with us.

J: He didn’t like the record, essentially. He thought it was too direct, too raw, too uncommercial.

O: They used the word ‘dark’ a lot, over there and we never understood what they meant until after we were done working with them. We learned a lot about what they were trying to say by blowing up the relationship. Like, if you take a clock to pieces and it’s exploded all over your floor, you finally know what goes into it. Now we know a lot more about what they wanted all along.

J: I need to think about that for a minute.

O: I think one thing that’s still on my mind from the last question, and maybe that would help you set up to talk about this one, is the record company and what their expectations were. Looking back on it, I feel like Gary and his expectations were totally cool. When we went in to make the first record they were like "You guys are great, whatever you’re doing is great." Then we made it and they spent a lot of money on it and it was the whole music industry shtick. Then after we made the record, they were so far from having recouped -- because you know the whole major label thing is such an expensive way of doing stuff, I mean, we made a video, a couple videos, oh my god -- the accountant must have been going nuts. Every single band that I know that was signed in the mid-nineties -- and there were a lot of them, during the label spending sprees that went on then, they were all having pressure put on them to come up with radio-friendly stuff so they could move product and recoup. Everyone was under tons of pressure and getting dropped right and left, as the nineties drew to an end, and we weren’t any different. I don’t think that there was anything that was really that unreasonable about it.

One of the ways that we grew as artists was by surviving the loss of our parachute. Because we had money to make our lives easier, for awhile there, and now we’ve gotten used to not having it. So that changed things for us, but we learned how to function with less support again. For a moment there, we had a little gravy train and then no gravy train again, and that’s cool. Now we do business with a really great label that just people like us.

J: Yeah. Personally, for me, I don’t feel the songs are depressing, if you really listen to them.

O: I’ll tell you what’s depressing. It’s that Britney Spears can have a hot record with a title like Baby One More Time. To me, there’s no more times for Baby, we’re out of times. That’s the thing, you’re sitting in a hospital, waiting for somebody to get over a cancer operation or a quadruple bi-pass, you turn on the TV, and some android is bopping around the screen going "Baby One More Time." It’s suicide music. To me, that is depressing. To me, McDonalds is depressing. Mall culture is depressing. You know, having every part of American culture -- world culture -- under the umbrellas of two mega-corporations. That’s depressing. I don’t think our music is depressing.

J: But we have been accused of that before that it’s depressing and I think that people might try and lump it there because it’s...real.

O: That was the biggest problem with Gary. He’d call me into the office and give me a dressing down for her not selling out fast enough for him and he would say "Look, America’s got a love affair with beautiful women." And that’s what he saw he as. Every time he had a new artist all he wanted to do was get her in a bathtub with her limbs hanging out...

J: And I wouldn’t do it.

O: He was like the Howard Hughes of the music business. I’m sorry, Gary.

J: It’s frustrating. I have to constantly kind of find my equilibrium. I mean, not everyone’s going to be able to find their way into this music. It’s almost like the music page in a newspaper, it’s really more about fashion. I really do want the music to be heard.

J: Sure

O: I would say that, somewhere in between in generally and always, what the song is about and the mass of the lyrical material is coming from Jennifer. And, a lot of the music, especially the instruments, is coming from me and the melody is a place where we work together very closely. But we go over things a lot until they’re seamless.

J: Yeah, it’s a very integrated process. A lot of what people hear me do, the melody that I sing, comes from me, but we cross into each others’ territory a lot of the times, where I’ll have a melody first, I’ll be singing and then words will come with that, sounds will form into words.

O: You know what, a lot of times if you’re listening to the lyric, and you notice that she’s saying something again, that was my idea, because very often, when she comes up with something, she’ll go through all the material and she’ll just stop, and I’ll be the one who says ‘You could say that word, or that line, again ‘ or ‘let’s go back there...’

O: (laughs) Oh, boy. But I’m into getting her to repeat things so lot of time if something comes back, hopefully in a pleasing way, you can thank me for that.

O: I never do. We don’t do it.

J: Yeah, we just don’t do it. I wouldn’t say this to a stranger, but I’d say that the best way kind of see what it’s about it to come over for dinner and get to know us (laughs) get to know me a little bit, and see what we’re like. Or come to a show, or get the record.

O: We had so much trouble from the get-go with the ‘Lounge’ thing, because in the mid-nineties, when we made our first relationship in the industry, the lounge thing was starting to take off at that time and that really hurt us. We ended up getting booked into shows on the lounge circuit and we played this place in San Diego that was like a Tiki bar.

J: To us, lounge means kitsch.

O: We have a very very slight element of camp, in some of the things that we do, you know, but I would say that 90% is not that way. A lot of those bands are evoking a culture or an era which isn’t theirs, in a campy or kitschy way. We’re not doing that. We’re not a lounge act. If we’re going to offer up any elements --whether it’s Indian music elements or Edgar Alan Poe -- whatever it is, we’re only going to present it to people if we feel that we’ve digested it and it’s a breathing part of us. Otherwise we won’t put it out there, because it doesn’t feel good.

J: I think that when something is integrated, it becomes crystallized. It’s something that becomes pure essence. I think that people, there’s really not a need to define something. Either it moves you or it doesn’t. You’re let into that world, and you either go there or you don’t.

O: A really good example for us about how our influences are synthesized is that our number one favorite singer, for both of us, is Billy Holiday. We adore Billy Holiday, the both of us, and no one has ever said anything about Billy Holiday in connection with our music. Between the two of us we’ve spent so many hundreds of hours studying and caring about Billy Holiday -- we’ve covered a lot of her songs. Jennifer’s Billy Holiday impression is just as good as anybody who’s out there selling a Billy Holiday impression. And nobody ever talks about Billy Holiday when they talk about our music because it’s integrated. If people start talking about it, then I’d feel that we didn’t do it that well. I would much rather listen to someone for whom it comes out with in a subtle way, like Jeff Buckley or someone like that, then one of her clones -- and they’re all over.

J: Also, a lot of it comes down to power and to fame. Because we’re this kind of underground band people feel that at this stage it’s only relevant if you can reference it to other things that are famous. Then we start getting compared to bands that I really don’t think we are like.