"Modern culture is very insidious, very viral," Scott Miller wrily comments. Miller, pater familias of San Francisco's The Loud Family, recently conversed with PCP prior to the release of the Louds' Days for Days (Alias), and a month long, national tour. What is on Miller's mind? Not just modern culture, but also Postmodern and classical, work and play, men and women. Just little things….

Striking a balance between pop and prog, Days is more accessible than any of the Loud Family's previous output. But in spite of its listener friendliness, the Louds' latest is deeply grounded. He explains his motivation for the strong and sturdy legged Days.

"I know that answer probably turns people way off, but sorry everybody, that's where the rewards are." Miller remarks after noting that classic literature, postmodern critical theory and religious study served as his inspiration behind Days. "It sounds like, well, he's sick of what he does, he wants to escape to egghead world. But it's absolutely the opposite. It's wanting to look at that phrase "what he does," and get to the bottom of it." Still Miller is well aware of that such source material can be intimidating. "But if you're an average listener, it may be easier for you to relate to me than to a wordy French theoretician, or the prophet Micah."

Going further, Miller says Days is "not a reaction to a text, or other music, but you could probably call it a critique of progress. Not in a technophobic sense, but in the sense of music or art experienced more as 'progress' for its own sake than what the work is actually about, what it touches in your life."

Part of that life is Miller's day job as a computer programmer. How does that influence his music? "It gives me an opportunity to constantly observe human nature, including my own, in 'the real world'. Where you can absolutely observe humanity in the raw is a commute to work, because what anyone thinks they know about anyone else is all presumption. For instance, in a car or on foot, people really obviously race each other. You can observe this pageant of weak acquisitive gestures--like walking briskly, or passing, taking a double seat--become these signifiers of prestige, on the fly; things people would deny to the death if you asked them. "I am NOT walking fast just because he's walking fast."

Turning his focus to a gendered one, Miller explains the enigmatic album title. "I guess to get it at all, you have to know the expression 'legs for days,' meaning 'long, attractive legs.' I tend to focus on expressions of desire like that: conspiratorial guy-to-guy or girl-to-girl stuff. As if that were the bedrock of what we two could understand precisely--'we may not agree on much, but we agree those are great legs!' Now, I'm not a feminist trying to hammer at you that attractiveness is all cultural, it's not, but "legs for days" is less a spontaneous celebration of legs than a kind of negotiation. Yes, we have instinctive sexual appetites, but we have instinctive food appetites, too, and we can't agree on whether a sardine is good or not."

"So not to play my own interpreter too much, but "Days for Days" starts with an echo of that expression of desire, and adds the paradox of days that last for days, days for the sake of days, whatever mental exercise you go through trying to make that phrase land on one particular meaning. A lot of people won't go anywhere with it, but I'm happy enough to have a title that doesn't bludgeon you with its heavy irony, because there's so much of that, and I'm guilty of it, too."

Quirky song titles have been Miller's calling card since his first band, Alternate Learning. One of the more curious titles on Days is "Businessmen are Okay." Just what does that mean? Miller explains :"That's probably a critique of the idea that a man in a business suit is a sort of walking affrontery to us enlightened non-sexist modern primitives, or whatever--the problem is those other people, those older people who care about money. Not that they aren't sometimes really the problem!"

"There's a line in that song about the prophet Elijah. In KINGS, Elijah is usually engaged in what strikes me as the usual holy war nonsense, but there's a verse where he feels defeated, lies down under a tree and prays to die. He says 'I am no better than my ancestors.' And this moment of surrender is where things turn around for him. God, I find that so beautiful. It's funny, a lot of bands recreate the Old Testament, but they recreate the accusatory violence only, not what I'd call the more poetical aspects. That's just more *rock* I guess, but you hear these singers go on and on about their thunderous interactions with God and hell and angels, and you know these people would ridicule anyone they heard doing this in any context other than their own."

With this new album, there's a new band. Bassist Kenny Kessel, who joined the Family for the third effort, Interbabe Concern, returns, and joining Miller and Kessel are keyboardist Alison Faith Levy, and former Game Theory cohort, drummer Gil Ray.

"Kenny's a melodic bass player. By default, he never pounds 8th notes, he writes an interesting run. If you want to see a contrast, I played bass on "Look Through Any Window" on the Hollies tribute, and my goal when I play bass is just to give someone a headache as quickly as possible." Miller smiles. "Kenny's gotten serious about vocals, too. His singing is all over the new record, almost as much as Alison's."

Miller continues. "Gil and Alison (Faith Levy) contribute a lot to the feel of this album. As even Joe (Becker, the original Loud Family drummer) or Gil will tell you, Joe is a power drummer and Gil is a finesse drummer. They can both do each when needed, but there's no denying that each takes a record down a different road. The main difference with Alison is that there are a lot more ambitious vocal arrangements. She loves putting a tasty part together so there was no problem just sitting for hours and working them up."

Some of the "tasty" bits are unnamed interstitial shards, that bear some relation to the songs. This structure is one of the fascinating aspects of Days, and perhaps the most intriguing. Why the format? "It's too early for me to comment on that. Maybe a couple of years from now I'll have a bead on what you can call the "meaning" of that structure, but it still feels like Shamanism to me. Just 'this would be a cool thing to do.'"

Miller's 80's band, Game Theory, was a critical and college favorite. Part of Game Theory's popularity stemmed from the talented female members in the band. This was in the day when the only notable American performer with female instrumentalists was Prince. As Dan Vallor, a former colleague of Miller put it, "If anyone can site me another artist who has had as many women as band members as Scott has with Alternate Learning (Miller's first band), Game Theory and The Loud Family I'd be really surprised. Scott has consistantly made no distinction as to the gender of a musician in judging their qualifications (plus he's never applauded himself for this). Since ALRN he has had 4 women keyboardists, 2 women bassists, one woman guitarist and one woman drummer."

The typical 90s band is mixed gendered. But Miller does not think himself a pioneer. "No, I didn't have the feeling of it being a gesture. For one thing, in the late seventies, which were more or less my formative years, there were more bands with women in non-eye-candy roles than later on. The Talking Heads, Patti Smith--there was really no sexism among artists I would have been modeling myself after. Even huge bands like Fleetwood Mac." Miller quickly qualifies his statement with a reference to the question posed. "Well, Stevie Nicks was some variant of eye candy by her own design, but if you'll let Wendy and Lisa pass I'll let Stevie."

"If I'm ever choosing between a man and woman for a spot in the band, and they can both sing, the woman has the edge because the singing range is going to be more useful to me."

So what suits the self-effacing, erudite, soft-spoken Miller more? Respected cult musician or million dollar cog in the music machine? Miller seems content with the current state of the man. "Well, forget million dollar because I absolutely don't want to be a national celebrity. I truly value not having to be 100% accountable for every moment of my life, to not be constantly catching the eye of exploiters. I don't mean evil record companies who want to take advantage of my wonderful talent, God knows, I just mean that as soon as people start printing the shocking photos and going through your private life it's all over." And despite the notoriety of being named checked by Mary Lou Lord in live versions of "His Indie World", Miller remains humble, almost to the point of disbelief. "How do we know it's not some other Scott Miller? It's a very common name, trust me."

-30-

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