I think the Ambitious Lovers never got their due- we had terrible management and at that point, we were on major labels and we didn't have any music business savvy which we could have used. We made a series of hilarious mistakes not in terms of music but in terms of making it happen.

Arto Lindsay

Categorized in : Thinking Mistake Ambitious

The Lounge Lizards were relating with a tradition and it was like I was playing within a musical context. The guitar playing stood out as being different in some way. That was a real education for me.

Arto Lindsay

being-different guitar real

Years ago when DNA was going on, I produced a record in Italy but I didn't think I'd do another one.

Arto Lindsay

dna years thinking

It was a scene in the sense that we were all close and we all knew each other before the different bands had really formed. We used to rehearse in the same place.

Arto Lindsay

band different house

The period right before punk rock where people like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop were really strong.

Arto Lindsay

rocks strong people

We recorded that trio and it's out on the Knitting Factory label. I've got another record in the can with that group and Marc, which I'll hopefully finish some time before next summer.

Arto Lindsay

knitting summer europe

We deliberately used elements from Brazilian music and from African and Asian music. Now people can hear that but then it sounded so abstract, they couldn't hear it.

Arto Lindsay

asian elements people

My parents were missionaries - I was born in the States but I grew up in Brazil.

Arto Lindsay

brazil grew-up parent

We were really interested in music from all over the world. We realized that what we were doing was very close to contemporary classical music because of the lack of tonality in the guitar- the fact that I play guitar the way I play.

Arto Lindsay

guitar music way world

We were interested in this notion of compression- a lot of the songs were really short so that you'd absorb them in memory rather than when you're actually hearing them.

Arto Lindsay

short songs memory you

To some extent at that time, we injected rock and roll into that scene- we played loud and that was a huge turning point for that scene. We were involved in playing with all those people.

Arto Lindsay

rock rock-and-roll time people

There was some conflict there over Saturday nights because we were all really broke in those days- all the money you had in the world was in your pockets. Nowadays when you're say you're broke, it's not the same thing.

Arto Lindsay

you conflict money world

There was a generation of people who moved here to make something of themselves. They had to really struggle and created really something on their own apart from a lot of attention. It was a really exciting time here.

Arto Lindsay

generation struggle time people

Then the early punk rock period with Television and the Ramones. That's what I loved- that's what I was listening to immediately prior to when I started to play.

Arto Lindsay

loved listening play television

Playing with Kip I definitely learned a lot playing with these incredible guys and hearing them.

Arto Lindsay

incredible them playing hearing

It was very interesting for me because DNA made music without much technical knowledge at all.

Arto Lindsay

me music knowledge interesting

It was a turning point in the sense that as a scene, we can up with a lot of new ideas.

Arto Lindsay

sense point new ideas

I just had this notion that I wanted to do the most extreme thing I could and I also very consciously wanted to do something that was very different from Mars because we were all very close.

Arto Lindsay

something just mars different

I had this idea for a while to do mix this Al Green vibe with a samba thing. I tried to do that in many different ways. Peter added his own modern notion of funk and his own deep background in classical music.

Arto Lindsay

deep own green music

I had friends in this band called Mars and they used to play a lot.

Arto Lindsay

mars friends band play

Certainly since then many people have taken a lot of those ideas and ridden them for years and years and made careers out of them. Part of that is willingness to do the kind of work that I wasn't willing to do. Get into a van and cover the country.

Arto Lindsay

work country people ideas