2005-06 Spin magazine

Full Spektor

Yoko Ono made a nonchalant exit out of New York's Bowery Ballroom after son Sean Lennon's March 30 gig supporting quirky singer/song- writer Regina Spektor. "I am very proud," Ono said with a smile, giving us a quick bow. Lennon, meanwhile, was on the balcony with fabulous friends like Elizabeth Jagger (daugh- ter of Mick), Harper Simon (son of Paul), and Adam Green (a Moldy Peach), singing along.

We asked Lennon if he considers himself a peer of Spektor's in the local rock scene. "No," he replied with an actual snort. "Everyone is into her music; no one is into mine."

But Spektor's two-hour set turned out to be more than even her most devoted fans could absorb, so we fled to the after-party, where we saw Strokes Albert Hammond Jr. and Fabrizio Moretti. Spektor, who arrived with her mother, explained that the epically long set was an accident. "Nobody told me!" she sighed. "They came, they bought tickets; I didn't want to gyp them!"

By Elizabeth D. Goodman

Related: 2005-03-30 New York, NY | Bowery Ballroom

New MP3s: A Lesson in How Fleeting Preservation Is, and more

Considering how little I do and have done with my life, it's kind of remarkable that the time to do proper updates on the site still somehow eludes me. Anyway...added the following MP3s to the recordings section ("the wires"):

"all the rowboats"
Unreleased song (title unknown), performed at Hotel Cafe (Hollywood, CA) on January 26, 2005 (thanks again to Jenn and Keith) As far as I know, this show was the song's debut performance.

Ode to Divorce
Song from Soviet Kitsch, performed at the Knitting Factory (NY) on September 9, 2004 (with Chris Kuffner on bass and Ben Kalb on cello) By request of Ben the Cellist's Mom (that is, the mother of Ben the Cellist, not the cellist's mom named Ben), although not from the same show.

Chemo Limo
Song from Soviet Kitsch, performed at Sidewalk Cafe on November 30, 2002 I'm pretty sure this is the first public performance of this oft-requested but rarely-played song (first time I heard it, anyway)

A Lesson in How Fleeting Preservation Is
Unreleased song, performed at the Living Room on May 15, 2002 Regina almost always places a disclaimer in front of this song to the effect of "this next one's kind of weird"...what's weirder is that I recall she had jet black hair done up in a bun at this show. The significance of this, I don't know. Or perhaps I dreamt it all.

2005-04-26 ChartAttack.com

LINK

Regina Spektor Plays Up The Kitsch Factor

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Tuesday April 26, 2005 @ 04:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

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Regina Spektor's first appearance in Canada should have come about two years ago. The singer-songwriter was supposed to have opened at The Strokes October 2003 Toronto show but had to back out when her grandmother died. When she finally did show up in early April, it was obvious that the appearance was long overdue. Her show at the Rivoli was sold out and people outside were literally begging for tickets.

For the young Spektor, it's a little hard to believe.

"I love playing shows and love being shocked and amazed that I'll get to a city and there'll be people there who pay to listen to me play," she says. "But I'm not that much of a road warrior, I'm definitely one of those people who wants to kill someone after a certain number of hours in a car. You get to a point where you just want to get out and run for the mountains. Just say, 'I"ll be back in five minutes,' leave and never come back."

The Russian native and New York resident has become a fixture in NYC's anti-folk scene and counts Kimya Dawson and the aforementioned Strokes among her fans. The Strokes even recorded a b-side with Spektor and insisted the track, "Modern Girls And Old-Fashioned Men" be credited to "Regina Spektor featuring The Strokes."

That marriage was born out of Spektor's relationship with producer Gordon Raphael, who recorded part of her Sire debut, Soviet Kitsch. The album is a not-so-subtle tribute to her heritage.

"When I got to America there was kind of a cliche image, people would find out that I was Russian when I was 10 or 11 and parents of kids I knew would be like, 'Oh Russia! Commies! Vodka,' whatever," she says, her accent still discernable. "I mean, you expect that kind of stuff from kids, but you wouldn't expect adults. Only later when I saw some of the films they saw growing up, all the propaganda against the USSR did it kind of make sense.

"So it was sort of a wink at those stereotypes, yes I come from Russia, from Moscow, from the U.S.S.R., I'm Soviet kitsch and this is what Soviet kitsch sounds like, it sounds like human, personal emotional music.

Spektor's live show is hilariously endearing. She tells stories, sings solo with either a guitar or piano and goes a cappella on a couple songs. At the Rivoli show, the crowd ate it up, amazed at the voice on the miniature singer.

This has, of course, garnered her comparisons to countless other artists who sing and play the piano. Or guitar. Or anything else. There are ups and downs to subjecting yourself to the music media, Spektor says.

"I used to be really upset about all of it, but then I guess you sort of grow up and realize that it's not personal and a lot of it is meaningless. I'll play a show and have people come up after and say, 'That song sounds like Billie Holiday, and that song sounds like Erykah Badu and that song sounds like Janis Joplin and this one sounds like Rufus Wainwright,' and you sort of go, these people don't sound like each other. This is all bullshit.

"But the nicest thing that came out of it was that I would find out about some of the people they were talking about."

For now, she's working on a new record and trying to figure out how to supply the demand for her appearances around the world.

"It's hard to tell when the record will come out with touring," she says. "It's like, 'When are you going to come to Germany? When are you coming back to Montreal again?'"

While you wait for Spektor to visit your city, you can check out Soviet Kitsch, out now on Sire.

—Noah Love

2005-04-22 mp3.com

LINK

Regina Spektor: A Steady Diet of Propaganda

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Every so often a new talent emerges on the popular music radar that is so unique one is forced to take notice. Regina Spektor is poised to be that talent.

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By Chris Rolls
Contributing Writer
April 22, 2005

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Every musician dreams of a serendipitous event catapulting them from obscurity to stardom, and Regina Spektor was handed just that. In the audience at one of her performances was Julian Casablancas of the Strokes. So impressed was Casablancas that he invited the cosmopolitan pianist and provocative vocalist to open for the Strokes on a domestic tour. Without a label, a manager, or a lawyer, and just a backpack, Regina leaped at the opportunity. This twist of fate would soon land her on the doorstep of Sire Records, and they offered to put out her self-released _Soviet Kitsch_album. She of course said yes and is now touring alone to support her own music.

We caught up with Regina while she was in Seattle eating a donut in her hotel room. She had much to say regarding Soviet stereotypes, her current love affair with David Bowie, and how she could really care less about what other contemporary artist she may sound like.

Interview:

Chris: I understand you've been on the road quite a bit.

Regina: Yeah, I'm in Seattle actually, eating my donut.

Chris: You've been to San Francisco before?

Regina: No. I've been to Seattle and to San Francisco once before when I opened for the Strokes.

Chris: That must have been pretty exciting touring with The Strokes?

Regina: Yeah, it was my first time going to the West Coast too.

Chris: Was that your first tour?

Regina: Yeah, ever in the world.

Chris: Really?

Regina: I know, it's one of those things where you sit in your room, and you're like, "Oh," feeling sorry for yourself, and you're like, "I'll never get to go on tour. Only other people get to go on tour. No one will ever take me on tour." And then, poof, you get a thing that's 7,000 times bigger than you'd ever even hope for.

Chris: And how did that tour come about?

Regina: Oh, they heard my music, and they really liked it, so they came to a show of mine and...

Chris: In New York?

Regina: At this club called Tonic.

Chris: So they came and saw your show there.

Regina: Yep. And then the next thing is, I heard, was like, "Oh, you know, they asked for you to be their opener." Whoa!

Chris: You must have been more than excited at that point.

Regina: I was so excited, yeah. And I had just made my record, _Soviet Kitsch_ and then, even, and so what I did, is I self-released and pressed it, and there was a bunch of copies, and then I just went on the road with them.

Chris: I'm really intrigued by the fact that you self-released the majority of your material.

Regina: Yes.

Chris: And then [Sire] Records swooped in and picked up _Soviet Kitsch_, right? Did they do that before or after you went on tour with the Strokes?

Regina: It was after…I went on tour with the Strokes I wasn't signed by anybody. I just kind of went with my backpack. I didn't have a manager or a lawyer, or a label, or anything. Or an apartment!

Chris: So that means that you had to pick up all the costs for your touring?

Regina: Yeah, I kind of maxed out my dad's credit card, and just went with it. I used to like, temp work a lot, in offices and stuff like that. And then it just got to be too exhausting because I didn't have enough time to work--I work a lot. When I'm at home I just, you know, I just work on music all the time. And it was just too distracting working all day and then taking the subway for an hour and a half to get there, and for an hour and a half to get back, and try and play shows, and stuff like that. So then I just decided that since I never ever made enough to pay rent anyway, and I wasn't going to, I just decided to quit all my temp jobs and just work on music. And like, I was still living in my parents--like, this was after college--so I just moved back into my bedroom at my parent's apartment in the Bronx.

Chris: At that was at SUNY Purchase right?

Regina: Yup…and then I figured if you know, after the Strokes tour I could just get another job and just work it off, you know.

Chris: How much time elapsed between that decision and then getting picked up to go on the tour?

Regina: Oh, quite a bit. I ended up making the same amount of money pretty much by...I used to like, tour New York City. I'd have my own, like, tours, you know, I would arrange them, like, you know, the Lower East Side, to the Lower West Side, Brooklyn, back to the Lower East Side. You know, sometimes midtown, really risqué. Can't really go above 14th Street and get away with it really. I mean, I played everywhere, like I mean everywhere. I didn't say no to a show. I played colleges, I played comedy clubs, I played [rid] bars, I played, you know. I don't know, I probably played people's apartments, probably have played people--I did play people's apartments. So it was like, it was just sort of one of those things.

Chris: And how do you think you were received at all these different variety of places that you played at?

Regina: Well, it was really funny. If you play a comedy club, people are preprogrammed to laugh. So things that were just, you know, in a regular show someone would just kind of maybe smile to themselves or something--or would be like, that's kind of funny--people would laugh hysterically at, at the comedy club. So like, you would just say something remotely funny in the lyrics, and there would be just like this huge roar of like, a laugh track, you know, like in a sitcom or something. It was awesome.

Chris: So it erupts while you playing.

Regina: Yeah, it was really amazing. It was really exciting, songs like "Poor Little Rich Boy," I mean, people laugh at my shows, at the lyrics you know. Like, people will laugh during "Ode to Divorce," or like "Poor Little Rich Boy" or something, but at a comedy club it was like, I was hilarious! But I've been really lucky, people have always been really open and receptive with my music, I didn't have to have a battle. And that's just luck, because I'd be writing this stuff anyway, and I'm just really glad that I didn't have to battle.

Chris: This has been great so far. I feel bad, I have to ask you a couple of questions about the, about _Soviet Kitsch_, if you don't mind.

Regina: No, I don't. Yes, go ahead. I mean, it's my record.

Chris: It is your record. The title is intriguing. Obviously the word kitsch to a lot of people sort of implies bad taste, or it's sort of generally reserved for tawdry artifacts or what have you. And I'm just kind of interested how you felt, how you arrived at the name and how you feel it applies to your music, or if it was just something that sounded good to you.

Regina: Well, it's kind of a combination of all the things that you said. And the thing is, when I came to America, it was a really fascinating experience for me to, as a kid, I went through immigration, I was 9 and a half, and when you go through something like that, and you get to a place where there's kids again, and they didn't go through that, you sort of feel really adult-y. I mean, I was already always like the little adult, like I think about myself...I was tiny. I was one of these little, little skinny tiny little short 10-year-olds, and I felt so grown up, you know. And when I got to America, and I would go to kid's houses and stuff, I'd be 10, 11, 12, and I'd have adults, like middle-aged people be like, "Russian, Commie, vodka," and they'd laugh. You know, Russki. And I was just like, so indignant, and I was this little, short elitist! I was like, what are these crude people talking about?

Chris: You had adults actually throwing stereotypes at you as a child?

Regina: Yeah, you know, it was a really interesting experience because it took me years to understand where it was coming from. I remember being at [SUNY] actually and watching this movie, this documentary, I don't know. Have you seen this thing called Atomic Café?

Chris: Yes.

Regina: OK. I was watching it, right? And there's all this propaganda…American propaganda--stuff that I was never exposed to. I was exposed to my own brand of propaganda, you know, in Russia. And I think it was the first time, I must have been 18, it hit me and I realized where those people are coming from with their stereotypes, because I saw what a steady diet of propaganda they had grown up with. And these were the iron curtain people so it kind of made things easier. But, I had a lyric, and it was actually a song called "Dusseldorf." There was a memorable beginning that goes, "In Dusseldorf I met a dwarf." And it didn't make it onto the record, even though I tried recording it, like 700 times, it just was never the right take, never the right thing. And, but it has that lyric in it. And I think that when I finished and I wanted a title, I just liked the sound of it, and--so much--and then I also felt like it would be a really good thing to sort of--like for the past--my whole time in America, I've been the Russian, you know. I've been the girl who came from the Soviet Union who has been on scholarships, and you know, who's this Russki, vodka-drinking, Commie immigrant. And I just thought this is what Soviet Kitsch stereotype is, and this is sort of like the wink at the image. But then I was hoping that people would pick it up and see that image, and see that title, and then put on the record, and then be like, wait a minute, this is just human. This is just like a human trying to make music.

New Video: Regina on The Tonight Show

Muchisimas gracias to Op for recording, encoding, and uploading the video . It's in AVI format (~11MB), and you need to have the DivX codec installed.

2005-04-20 Los Angeles, CA | The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

Recorded, encoded, and uploaded by Op

Somedays (AVI, DivX codec required)

[FIXED] New MP3s: Hero of the Story, Bartender, and more

Added the following MP3s (all from the Bowery Ballroom show on March 30, 2005) to the recordings section ("the wires"):

Hero of the Story & Bartender
Two unreleased songs (with Chris Kuffner on bass and Ben Kalb on cello for Hero of the Story)

"begin to hope"
Unreleased song (title unknown)

Time Is All Around
Unreleased song

"open"
Unreleased song (title unknown)

Hotel Song
Unreleased song (with Chris Kuffner and Ben Kalb on backing vocals)

Your Honor
Song from Soviet Kitsch (with Chris Kuffner on bass, Ben Kalb on cello, Elliot Jacobson on drums, and Andy Graziano on guitar)

A higher quality source for this show may surface in the coming weeks.

2005-04-03 New York Post

LINK

MIND GAMES

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By STEVEN P. MARSH

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* * * _April 3, 2005_ -- Forgive Regina Spektor if she doesn't play your favorite song -- she may not remember how it goes.

The prolific singer-songwriter has written so many musical vignettes since she finished her latest CD, "Soviet Kitsch," that her head can't hold them all.

"I've written hundreds of songs, so there's a lot that I have forgotten," she says.

The charming Moscow-born, Bronx-raised Spektor isn't happy about this.

"It's terrible. I get absolutely devastated." Even so, the 25-year-old Spektor just can't seem to write a song down.

"I feel like I know it, and I'll work so hard and so much, playing it over and over and over again while I'm writing it, that I feel like it's there. How could I ever forget it?" she asks.

Even a lost tune leaves a memory.

"It feels as if you just woke up and you know you were having a really vivid dream and it's right there and now it's completely gone. It's a very sad feeling. With a dream, it's OK, but with this, it's not OK, because it's your work!"

She's trying hard to change, though, for the sake of her fans. She does work with a friend a couple of times a year to lay down rough recordings of each new batch of songs.

"I know what it feels like when you just want to hear _that_ song. Because of that, I have been working on myself to remember how to play songs.

"I know that I've written another ton of songs and it's really fun for me to play them, but I can also understand what it's like for that person" who wants to hear a particular song.

After graduating from the music program at SUNY Purchase, Spektor began playing at the Sidewalk Cafe and other "anti-folk" clubs on the Lower East Side.

She developed a style that tops classically inflected piano lines with vocals that range from sweet folk song to yelping punky riffs.

She got her first shot on the national stage by chance, when the Strokes tapped her as the opener for their "Room on Fire" tour last year. The band was turned on to her by their producer, Gordon Raphael, who was also working with Spektor. That led to a long tour, complete with talk of a romance with Strokes singer Julian Casablancas, something Spektor politely avoids discussing.

Spektor's first headlining national tour, which kicked off last Tuesday, brings her to the Bowery Ballroom Wednesday for a short stop back in the place she calls home.

"New York is home and The Bronx is like,_ extra_ home," she said wistfully. "Yeah, this is my city, in every sense."

2005-04-02 WERS.org

Regina Spektor

INTERVIEW: Regina Spektor
PROGRAM: Coffeehouse

April 2, 2005

By Jinnie Lee

Singer-songwriter Regina Spektor entered our WERS studios in a casual yellow knit sweater and blue jeans with her curly brown hair falling naturally around her face. The petite and unaffected Spektor arrived in all smiles, despite the typical pre-spring Boston rain and dreariness looming through the station windows leading into the live mix studio where Spektor was patiently setting up. After much deliberation on which songs to perform, Spektor proceeded to rehearse and banter with Coffeehouse DJ John Paul on such topics like her Russian upbringing, her flourishing website, and the importance of non-commercial radio as Spektor is one of many live guests to have performed in our annual Live Music Week spring fundraiser.

Born and raised in Russia, and now residing in New York City, Spektor is currently on tour for Soviet Kitsch which allowed her to drop by WERS for a small Coffeehouse shindig. With much to say on her recent encounters with increased publicity, her thoughts on the Internet, and the process of being signed on to a major record label, Spektor offers a glimpse into her fast-paced world as a reserved and unwearied performer aimed for inevitable stardom.

I have noticed on your website that you have a link called Reginapolis, your personalized version of the game Tetris, which is pretty unique in terms of artist websites. How did that come about?

I was always thinking of the website and the Internet. I love the fact that we have it; we are so lucky and we take it for granted. If we had the Internet 20 or 25 years ago, there would have been no Cold War because you could text someone and be like “Hey, is this really what your country is like?” and they could be like “No, actually, it’s not.” Okay great, crisis averted! When I was not on any label, I would make home-made CDs and put them on the Internet and people would buy them in Croatia, the Netherlands, Japan, anywhere. When I would look at the addresses of these people, it would be so heartwarming. When I got the chance to make a website, I really wanted it to be a place where people can go to as a community. I have forum so they can talk amongst themselves and get together and it is such a pleasure to see it thrive because people are communicating across the Atlantic talking about different shows, politics and the different music they like. Spektris [the name of Regina Spektor Tetris game] was an extension of that. I wish I could put all my records on the Internet so people can listen for free if they do not have a chance to buy it or if they are saving up, whatever. I said there should be a game for those people who sit at their office, who want to go somewhere and play for 10 minutes and relax. So I gave them Spektris and they can play that on my website. The funny thing is when I first came to America and first found out about Tetris, it had Russian music and it was weird to me and thought it was so bizarre because I am from Russia.

It was a sign! So from working on the Coffeehouse last year, I know that we have had an advanced copy of Soviet Kitsch for about a year now. So why is the album being released just now and what was going on in the time between?

Soviet Kitsch was a strange putting-out process because I finished it right before I was invited to go on The Strokes tour and open for them. I made a whole bunch of copies and sold them on tour and self-released them. Then I ran out of those and labels started talking to me. And once labels get involved, you cannot self-release your album anymore and they won’t release it until the cows come home, as they say. Is that right? I’m so bad with American phrases! Anyhow, it has been a slow process. At first, Soviet Kitsch was going to be put out but the people at Sire Records, my record label, a division of Warner Brothers, were very cool and they did not want to just put it out so no one would notice it. They really petitioned for attention for Warner Brothers to put in the time and love into it, so that is why it has taken so long. But since March 1 st the album has been out so I am really excited. I have walked into a couple of stores and it has been there and it is so cool. I am on the shelf next to Britney Spears and Bruce Springsteen and there is Regina Spektor! It is really funny.

Speaking of opening up for The Strokes last year, I know you collaborated on a song with lead singer Julian Casablancas. Have you any plans to do more collaboration?

I have been talking to several musicians but I am so superstitious. I am like, “It won’t happen,” so I guess if it happens, you will know about it. But I do not want say it because if I say it, I feel like it will not ever happen.

That is understandable. So I assume you will be on tour for a while, but what will you be up to afterwards?

I am going to be touring for a long time. I am doing the national tour right now and then I am going to France and England. Then I am coming back to do more national so I will be doing that until the end of June, and what is it now, April? So it is a lot of touring. But after that, I am going to start recording my next record because I have so much material already.

And with your recent tour heavily underway, you have experienced your first couple of live television performances, notably on the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” What were those experiences like?

I have just been learning quickly. There is no energy from the audience—an impenetrable wall—around the TV people so everything that you bring is your own. You have to bring all the energy in, literally, seconds to do it you do not have time to organically fall into a show or fall into a song. You come in right at the peak and it is really hard and different from real life. You have got makeup and lights all up in your face with big equipment. But I think it is also very wonderful. It will be wonderful once I know how to let go. I am such a sucker for direct human contact. I want to be in a club where people are close to me and I want to be feeling the two-way energy; it is what performers live off of and TV just does not give you that. But because of TV, you do not know where you are going to end up, you know? Someone in, I don’t know, in a trailer in the middle of nowhere can tune in and there you are as they are sitting on their couch and that is so cool. Conan [O’Brien] was very nice to me when I was on his show. You get there and someone asks you if you need anything. They try to make it homey and they make sandwiches for you. And they put your name on the door! I totally kept the label; I ripped it off because it was so cute that I stuck it on my bathroom door at home.

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For more information on Regina Spektor, visit www.reginaspektor.com. Soviet Kitsch is now available to own from Sire Records.

2005-04-01 The Boston Globe

WITH HER MUSIC, REGINA SPEKTOR CREATES A WHIMSICAL WORLD FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

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BY JOAN ANDERMAN, GLOBE STAFF

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Glamorous as it looks, workers in the rock music trenches are perilously jaded, and frankly exhausted. There are so many bands. So many of them sound like the other ones. It takes some doing to get excited, and more often than not the rare happy jolt arrives unexpectedly, even against one's will. When Gordon Raphael found Regina Spektor, he was neither in the market nor in the mood.

It was Christmas 2002, and Raphael, a record producer whose most famous client is the Strokes, had just moved to London, where he was coming off a busy year working with upward of 30 bands. He was physically spent and musically fried, and he was on his way to Seattle for vacation from verses and choruses. When a good friend invited him to meet a young Russian woman who plays piano and sings, Raphael declined. The friend pressed. Raphael grudgingly agreed to stop in New York for a day. Pleasantries were not a part of his game plan. "I walked into TMF studios, sat down, and said, 'What do you do?' " Raphael recalls.

"Regina started playing piano with her left hand. She was banging a stick on a chair with her right hand, and it sounded like horses galloping over a plain. She was singing this complicated melody in this classic voice but her lyrics were modern, like the Moldy Peaches. And she was smiling at me the whole time. I said, 'My God. Go get the microphone.' "

Raphael and Spektor recorded three songs that afternoon. When he returned from Seattle (where Raphael spent his so-called vacation sending e-mail messages to Spektor) they finished an EP, and then coproduced with Alan Bezozi, the mutual friend who had introduced them a full album in New York and London.

"Soviet Kitsch" was released last month on Sire Records, and it's easy to understand why Raphael responded so viscerally.

Spektor's intricate keyboard work, stream-of-consciousness songs, and intense, quirky singing will earn her plenty of comparisons to Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Bjork.

But Spektor, who performs tonight at the Paradise Lounge, carves her own niche: a whimsical, literate musical world inspired by Tchaikovsky and Queen, Hemingway and Picasso, free jazz and the Beat poets.

"I'm a messy girl," says Spektor, 25, who is sitting in a Soho cafe, and speaking on her cousin Marsha's cellphone.

Spektor is talking about her apartment, her approach to songwriting, and her life. "I don't understand a lot, which is probably why I have quite a few songs written from the point of view of a male. . . . Sometimes I have a concept. I seem to wonder a lot about death, and I also mention food a lot. I love to eat. Sometimes words just come together phonetically." ("Crispy crispy Benjamin Franklin" springs to mind. There's only a trace of an accent in Spektor's voice. Born in Moscow, she immigrated to the Bronx at age 9, mainly for religious reasons.

"It's very anti-Semitic," Spektor says. "Every Jewish person's passport is marked, and as soon as Gorbachev said we could apply for visas to go to Israel or America my parents said 'No way our kid is going to grow up in this.' "

Her mother taught music history; her father was a violinist as well as a photographer, but when the Spektors crossed the ocean they had to leave their piano behind; it was considered Soviet property. Regina, who'd studied since she was 6, practiced for a year on windowsills and tabletops. She discovered an out-of-tune upright in the local synagogue.

Thanks to a fortuitous meeting on a subway train, Spektor began taking lessons from Sonia Vargas, a professor at the Manhattan School of Music, while attending yeshiva. Spektor was so focused on perfecting her Chopin that the idea of writing a song didn't occur to her until her senior year, but then the floodgates opened.

While at college at SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music, Spektor started playing local gigs. She sold a homemade CD at coffeehouses and, after moving back to New York City, began frequenting open-mike events while working day jobs as a medical secretary and as an assistant to a private investigator. As her songs became "weirder and darker" and as Spektor became more serious about a life in music, she moved back in with her parents to save money, and became a fixture on the anti-folk scene, supporting such artists as David Poe, Ed Harcourt, and the Dismemberment Plan. She made another CD, called "Songs."

Then she met Raphael, who financed her album because "we had a good feeling something would happen."

He hired a string section and the punk band Kill Kenada to play on "Soviet Kitsch" a clue to the idiosyncratic nature of this collection, which includes such titles as "Ode to Divorce," "Carbon Monoxide," and "Chemo Limo." Track seven, "* * *," is a whispered exchange between the artist and her brother. Her characters are so vividly drawn that when he heard "Chemo Limo," Raphael didn't doubt that Spektor had four children and cancer.

His influence extended past the making of the album. On a lark, late one night during sessions for the Strokes sophomore CD "Room on Fire," Raphael played one of Spektor's songs for the band's singer and songwriter, Julian Casablancas. Casablancas asked for a CD to take home that night. The next morning he came into the studio, put his arms around Raphael, and sang one of her songs into his ear. Casablancas invited Spektor to join the band in the studio for "Modern Girls & Old Fashioned Men," a B-side to the "Reptilia" single, and despite the rather glaring aesthetic differences the Strokes took Spektor out as opening act on their North American tour. That's when the labels came calling.

"It may not be logical," Spektor says of her musical love match with the swaggering modern rock band. "But their music was immediate and beautiful to me. Julian was drawn to mine. A classical violinist can walk into a jazz show and adore it. Still, I don't know what's to come for me. It's a hits world and sometimes smaller things can get lost in the bigger picture. But for every million people that follow the hit song, there are fifty people who want music that will stay with them through their life."

---

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.

2005-03-30 New York, NY | Bowery Ballroom

(with Sean Lennon opening)

Recorded by pattivill:

intro
Ain't No Cover
interlude
Edit with Chris Kuffner on bass and Ben Kalb on cello
interlude
Ode to Divorce with Chris Kuffner on bass and Ben Kalb on cello
interlude
Loveology with Chris Kuffner on bass and Ben Kalb on cello
interlude
Blue Lips with Chris Kuffner on bass and Ben Kalb on cello
interlude
Ghost of Corporate Future with Chris Kuffner on bass and Ben Kalb on cello
interlude
Hero + Bartender with Chris Kuffner on bass and Ben Kalb on cello for "Hero"
interlude
Rejazz
interlude
Pound of Flesh
interlude
Folding Chair
interlude
Baby Jesus
interlude
Ave Maria
interlude
Sailor Song
interlude
"begin to hope"
interlude
Après Moi
interlude
Prisoners
interlude
Summer in the City
interlude
Time Is All Around
interlude
Somedays
interlude
Carbon Monoxide
interlude
Poor Little Rich Boy
interlude
The Flowers
interlude
"open"
interlude
Silly Eye-Color Generalizations
interlude
Samson
interlude
Hotel Song with Chris Kuffner and Ben Kalb on backing vocals
interlude
Your Honor with Chris Kuffner on bass, Ben Kalb on cello, Elliot Jacobson on drums, and Andy Graziano on guitar
interlude
That Time
interlude
Bobbing for Apples
interlude
Reginasaurus
closing

Related: 2005-06 Spin magazine

2005-03-26 Pollstar

LINK

From Russia, With Love

---

Updated 03:40 PST Sat, Mar 26 2005

---

Most singer-songwriters pine over lost loves. Regina Spektor's was made of polished wood and steel strings. Spektor was forced to leave her beloved Petrof piano at age 9, when the curly haired, classically trained musician and her family moved to the United States from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1989.

"It was considered Soviet property," Spektor said during a recent interview in a café near her new home in New York City's West Village. If you listen closely to the song "The Flowers" on her major-label debut, Soviet Kitsch, you can almost hear Spektor whimsically ruminating on her long lost muse: "Things I have loved / I'm allowed to keep. I'll never know if I go / to sleep."

The nonconformist chanteuse is on tour in North America through April and has spring dates in Europe and the U.K. as well.

Like her music - a Molotov cocktail of lyrical classical piano compositions, indie rock crescendos, fuzzy guitars and playful piano snippets that sound like traditional Russian folk songs - Spektor isn't easily categorized.

"I don't really mean to, but sometimes I will write in code," said Spektor, 25, revealing a mischievous Cheshire cat grin. Her vocal style is equally anomalous. She tends to leap from the lovely, lyrical part of her voice to rap-talk and, on occasion, a raucous yelp. And despite the occasional self-effacing giggle, Spektor isn't shy on stage, either. During one recent show at New York City's Bowery Ballroom, the curvaceous singer swung an electric guitar over her shoulder and, before an awestruck audience that included her mother, father, aunt, uncle and cousins, unabashedly repeated the salacious lyric, "Someone is (insert naughty verb here) to one of my songs."

Luckily for Spektor, her Russian-born parents "speak absolutely wonderful English, but they don't pick up lyrics a lot, unless they see it written down."

While Spektor's parents might not realize what their daughter is singing about, they rarely miss a show. And while Spektor recalls very little of her childhood in Russia, she does remember countless family trips to the opera and ballet.

Spektor spent her formative years in the Bronx, living with her parents by day and playing East Village clubs by night. Several major labels attempted to court the burgeoning singer, to no avail. "For a long time, I was like, (there's that verb again) the establishment! I'll do everything myself," Spektor said. Until she realized she was spending more time standing in line at the post office to ship CDs than writing songs.

Indie tendencies aside, she does have one diva request. "When I go on tour, I make sure I get a keyboard in my hotel room. Otherwise I go insane," she said. Still, a keyboard does not a piano make. During a recent tour in Europe with the Kings of Leon, Spektor's piano withdrawal was so severe, she turned to the guitar.

"The only time I got to play piano was 10 minutes before sound check. At that point, it had been months since I had time to sit down and really be with a piano. I couldn't have one on the road because it's too heavy and too bulky, it was just a mess. So I had like, complete withdrawal by the time I was in the middle of the tour."

If Spektor had her way, she would spend her days playing and writing, not answering the phone or even leaving the house for days at a time. She'd also buy the cherry red Baldwin piano that was lent to her for the Bowery Ballroom show.

"I had nothing to play at home so I would go there and play. I fell in love that red piano," Spektor said of the Baldwin store in Manhattan, where she would practice regularly and became a regular fixture. "It's women-run and they're totally cool. They gave me jellybeans and Oreo cookies and hot chocolate."

2005-03-25 TheMusicEdge.com

LINK

Regina Spektor: The Red Princess

Moscow-born Regina Spektor immigrated to the United States in the late ’80s as former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the Perestroika program, a socio-economic and political restructuring of the Soviet Union that subsequently dismantled the totalitarian state. Now, it would seem that such a drastic change during the formative years would have a profound effect on a person, especially a young woman whose family chose the New York City borough of the Bronx for their new home. The simplest and most intimate way to take a peek into Regina’s life would be to put her new record, Soviet Kitsch, on full blast; her delivery is epic and fresh.

It would be practically impossible to try to sum up Regina’s music by drawing comparisons to peers or contemporary artists. Regina is something different, really different, and not in that hyperbole, rock-journalist or press-sheet kind of way. It’s the minor things, like her interesting vocal inflection and variable approach to songwriting (with both a piano and sometimes a drumstick on a chair) that start out simple and turn out to be monumental and defining. The first time her first single “Us,” gets into your head, you can’t get the internal stereo of the mind to quit hitting repeat.

Her music is void of ego. There is also a sense of danger that the percussive personality of her piano playing brings across when she is banging on the keys and singing; her songs are immaculate short stories about white collar slaves, lonely women, sailors, sinners and everyday folks. A singing raconteur, she’s like the David Sedaris of piano pop, with an ear for irony and a sense of humanity that could break a heart in one note and make you laugh in the next.

Regina hails from a musical family. Her father was a violinist, her mother taught music and Regina started learning classical piano at the age of six. When she moved to New York, the family worried that she wouldn’t be able to continue playing because the family had to sell the piano. Luckily, Regina’s father met violinist Samuel Marder, husband of Manhattan School of Music professor Sonia Vargas. Samuel had the Spektor’s over for dinner one evening and Regina asked Sonia if she could teach her. She took lessons from Sonia until she was 17.

Though Regina has played piano for almost her entire life, she didn’t start singing in front of people until she was much older. “I never sang,” she says. “I didn’t even know I could sing until I was older. My family would make fun of me singing. Sometimes I’d be doing the dishes and I’d get really into it, making stuff up, singing at the top of my lungs and they’d be like, ‘Hey what’s with all the wailing?’ So, I would mostly just sing in the shower and to myself, and when I was 15 or 16 more people would hear it and tell me that it was nice.”

There are some obvious differences between the musical world of Moscow and that of the United States, but Regina sheds some new light on her own personal experience. She says, “For me it was all classical music. We had records, went to concerts, ballets and operas. There were also these bards that were writing simple songs musically but deep and beautiful and poetic lyrics.

“My dad was a photographer who was pretty hip and he would get these great records from the Beatles and Queen and Moody Blues—records he would get from the Czech Republic (when it was still Czechoslovakia) and so he and his friend would make these tapes with this weird Italian pop music and the Beatles and We’d have these tapes floating around the house that I was always exposed to.

"I listened to a lot of Beatles growing up and I didn’t understand any of it, but as I slowly learned English, I started to understand the lyrics [and] it was really cool. People would make fun of me ’cause it would get to a part were it would be like, ‘La, la, la,’ and I’d ask what they were talking about and my dad would say ‘La, la, la,’ get it?”

When it comes to songwriting, Regina has a certain child-like wonderment that comes across in both her delivery and lyrical content. “I just make stuff up,” she says. “I consciously pay attention to life, read and go to museums. I think it’s a necessity and to make art. I think you have to always immerse yourself in learning. You can’t just go on the road and party every night and then get home and party every night and expect to call yourself a musician. But, as I’m working, I’m not trying to art-reference all these things that I see. I just want to make sure that I get those things in there.”

When Regina first started the process of tearing away from her classical background to start writing music for herself she says, “It was absolutely horrendous. I used to cry. It was never my idea to start writing songs. I used to scribble little lyrics down and do songs a cappella then all these friends would say, ‘oh you have a nice voice. You should write songs on the piano.’ But I was like, ‘no the piano is for Chopin and Bach.’ The first time I tried, it was so crude and so bad it sounded like this 'oompa - oompa' music. I couldn’t do the rhythm and it was a painful experience. Then slowly I started being able to change little things.

“Still, I think its part of the game, learning to push that one extra thing. It’s still really fun to see if I can get as dexterous as possible. Some people have some tapes (of early songs) and I haven’t heard them but I’m afraid to hear them,” she says with a laugh. In music, as any profession and art form, there is a continuous learning curve, one that is relentless and always challenging. Regina is always learning, even though her classical chops are top notch. “I’m learning all the time,” she says. "I’ll find one chord I’ve never thought of before and I’ll write a bunch of songs from the inspiration of that one chord. Because I’m so behind on musical exposure, like with Gospel music or pop music, I’ll hear something and the new stuff I hear’ll inspire me. I wrote this song recently that sounds like Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson because I was listening to that at the time and I don’t even know R&B.”

“Ray Charles said, ‘you know, you can never figure her out, you always find something new in her,’ (talking about the piano). It’s true. It’s kind of a lucky instrument because it’s so unnatural and tempered and so human and versatile. It could solo over an entire orchestra or it could be the most intimate little sound. It could be really percussive or really string like.”

Regina, like her exalted explanation of the piano, is tempered, versatile and human in every way.

Thanks Regina!!!

---

For more information please visit www.reginaspektor.com

---

By Shane Roeschlein

2005-03-24 Time Out New York

Musical theater

Russian-born singer Regina Spektor is drawing a crowd with her dramatic performances

By Alison Rosen

When people see Regina Spektor perform her idiosyncratic piano-pop, they either love her or hate her. Or they think she's a lesbian. "I've had so many people assume I'm gay because I'll sing a song from the point of view of a man,"she says. Gender is just one of many touchy topics Spektor gives the one-finger salute to on her sparkling major- label debut, Soviet Kitsch. On the first cut, "Ode to Divorce," she pushes bound- aries further, singing in elegant operatic tones, "Won't you help a brother out?"

"A writer can sit down and write a monologue from the point of view of an old black man up in Harlem," reasons the 25-year-old musician who was born in Moscow and raised in the Bronx. "Yet in music, for some reason it just doesn't happen. Nothing should be off-limits."

Onstage, Spektor is no less inhibited. She writhes on her glossy red piano bench, beats a wooden chair with a drumstick, and gulps, groans and hic- cups in an orgiastic way that's part human beat box and part rapture.

"As soon as I heard the music, I wanted to be involved," says pro- ducer Gordon Raphael, who met Spektor in 2002 through friend and fellow producer Alan Bezozi (with whom he shares production credits on Spektor's album). "She put one hand on the piano and played Poor Little Rich Boy' while hitting a stick on a chair and singing with this big smile on her face," Raphael recalls. "Everything about it riveted me." He was so taken that he cut his vacation short to start recording Soviet Kitsch, then released the album in the U.K. on his own Shoplifter Records. (Sire issued it in the States earlier this month.) Raphael, who also produced the Strokes' albums, played early tracks for that group's singer, Julian Casablancas, who was similarly smitten and invited Spektor to open for the band on their sold-out North American tour in 2003. But getting a rowdy rock audience to shut up long enough to listen to her sumptuous ballads was sometimes challenging. "People would yell, 'Freebird, and I, as the Russian, was like, What is this Freebird?'" she says, laughing. "The Strokes taught me a valuable lesson, though. If someone heckles you, you tell them to fuck off!"

Warming up someone else's crowds may be a thing of the past. Spektor has performed on Conan O'Brien, is scheduled to appear on Leno on April 20 and is headlining her own national tour. She's particularly excited about her upcoming Bowery Ballroom date. Well, excited and ner- vous. "I've opened there so many times, and I just can't believe I'm going to walk onstage and there's going to be my people there," she says, grinning. "I know it's going to be bigger than anything I can feel."

---

Regina Spektor plays Bowery Ballroom Wednesday 30. Soviet Kitsch (Sire) is out now.

New MP3s: Aquarius, Uncle Bobby

Added the following MP3s to the recordings section ("the wires"):

Aquarius
Unreleased song, performed at Sin-é on June 29, 2004

Uncle Bobby
Unreleased song, performed at the Knitting Factory (NY) on September 9, 2004

2005-03-13 The New York Times

LINK

WHAT I'M WEARNING NOW: The Pianist-Singer

[...]

She owns four tutus, which she wears over jeans, and collects T-shirts with chil- dren's TV characters on them. "I have a strange appreciation for clothes be- cause I came from Soviet Russia," she said. "We had uniforms, and you got whatever your parents could get second- hand. As a teen, I was confused by the idea of shopping off the rack, where you'd see 12 of the same thing. So I'd go to thrift stores. I'd buy a sweater and Scotch tape stuff to it."

Here, Ms. Spektor wears a sweater from H&M with a silk tie she found on the Lincoln Center subway platform and and-washed, she said, "to make it crin- kly." But she is learning to appreciate finer pieces, too. Her tweed skirt is by Cacharel (a gift), and her boots are vin- tage Vivienne Westwood. "You can see the artfulness and thoughtfulness in de- signer clothes," she said. "They're very comfortable. When I first saw this skirt, I thought, 'I knew I'd meet you all my life.' " JENNIFER TUNG

---

[PHOTO] Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

2005-03-13 SFGate

LINK

POP QUIZ: REGINA SPEKTOR

---

By Aidin Vaziri, Staff Writer

---

[...]

Q: Do you think Jesus is giving you the words?

A: Who? I'm Jewish.

Q: So it's definitely not Jesus.

A: I don't know. It's an interesting thing. I try not to think about it. I think some songs are like a dream, they just pass right through you. After you play them 700 times in a row, you still don't know where they come from.

[...]

New Video: Regina on Late Night

Credit to miao0726 who posted the original mpeg on the I♥Regina community. The version available here is a compressed version of that file--Windows Media Video, 320x240, ~15MB file size.

2005-03-10 The College Hill Independent

LINK

Respekt Her

---

Regina Spektor will blow your English professor's mind

---

BY ALEXANDRA DE JESUS

---

IF YOU'VE NEVER heard Regina Spektor's music, your life is probably a little sadder than it would otherwise be. Spektor, a classically-trained piano player, writes lyrics as wild as Joanna Newsom's and has a voice as strange and seductive as Björk's.

On her album Soviet Kitsch, just given a major rerelease by Sire Records, Spektor pounds piano keys, knocks drumsticks against furniture, name-drops Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and breaks various glass objects-all in 38 minutes.

Born in Moscow and raised in the Bronx, Spektor attended the Conservatory of Music at SUNY Purchase; after graduation, she began playing shows in and around New York City. She gained a group of devoted fans and released two independent albums: 11:11 and Songs. A meeting with producer Gordon Raphael led to the recording session that yielded Soviet Kitsch-and a US tour with the Strokes.

Regina Spektor has been feverishly promoting Soviet Kitsch. During a recent email correspondence with the Indy, she discussed the literary, the surreal, and more.

Independent: Your songs often include allusions to literary figures: Samson, Oedipus, Ezra Pound. What are your reading habits like? Do you have any favorite books and/or authors?

Regina Spektor: Yeah, I love books and papers and words. My reading habits, like all my other habits, though, are completely inconsistent. So sometimes I read and read and read, and other times I just listen and look. Sometimes I read one book at a time, but often I have a few things going at the same time. I love Chekov, Tennessee Williams, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Tolstoy. Bulgakov's Master and Margarita is one of my favorite books-but this feels silly, like I'm naming only a few things in a huge well of loved books/authors. Hesse, Dumas, lots and lots of poetry, Kurt Vonnegut, etc.

I: How old were you when your family immigrated to the United States? Do you have any particularly vivid childhood memories of Russia?

RS: I was nine and a half. The half was super-important at the time. I have countless vivid memories of Moscow, and of Parnu (Estonia, where I spent all my summers as a kid), and of immigration through Austria and Italy. It's all this colorful adventure.

I: I find your songs very unique and compelling-both musically and lyrically. Could you describe your songwriting process? Which element of a song usually comes to you first?

RS: I guess, usually, I write it all together. The words and the piano part just come to find where they sit together, and the sounds and everything just kind of roll around over and over, until it all settles as a song. Sometimes I'll hum while walking and write a song, but usually I can never figure out a piano part to it later. It just stays an a cappella song. ["Aching to Pupate," from the album Songs, is a great example. -Ed]

I: Your press release quotes you as saying that touring with the Strokes was "surreal and educational at the same time." Could you describe one moment of that tour which was particularly surreal? And one that was particularly educational?

RS: I think the Strokes were such brave fans to take me on the road. I had never gone on a tour before; I had never even played a club bigger than 300 people. But they really believed in sharing my songs with their fans. Many, many educational things: I had never been on the West Coast, or to the South, before that tour. And to play night after night opening for a band that you love, and to play venues like Theater at Madison Square Garden, where your name is lit up on the marquee, is pretty surreal. I remember walking toward Madison Square Garden and seeing it just as it light up. Strange stuff.

I: Soviet Kitsch has been available at your shows and on cdbaby.com since last year; now it's being released on Sire Records. What brought you and the album to this label?

RS: Sire is an amazing NYC label, and they were starting up again after a long sleeping hibernation period. It was just the right situation and the right people at the right time. I am so happy there right now, and my record is in stores for the first time in this country. They really wanted to re-release it, and I wanted it to get heard.

I: Because you were still unsigned when you toured with the Strokes, you had to cover all of your own expenses. This, clearly, was one disadvantage of being an unsigned artist. But were there any advantages to being unsigned? In other words, is there anything that you miss about it?

RS: Mostly, the things I've gained-a lot of support and a company that works alongside me to promote my music-are much more than what I've given up. I was very careful to retain my creative rights; I wasn't going to sign to any label if it would compromise my music and what I was trying to do. But there is definitely a bureaucratic element that comes with working in every company. Things have to go through a chain of people to be approved. So far I've been very lucky, I don't take it for granted. I'm very aware that the tide can turn. Before I was signed, all I had to do was decide on something and then save up money and work with friends to try and get it done. Now it's a slower process, but there are more people helping and working-so when it does get done, it's in a bigger way.

I: What have you been doing in the past month or so to promote Soviet Kitsch? Do you have any tour plans?

RS: I've been doing so, so much: playing shows, doing press interviews and TV and radio stuff. Makes me nervous, but it's for a good cause. I'll be playing a US tour from the 24th of March to the 21st of April. Then I fly to Paris three days later. After that I play a UK tour. So I'll be on tour for about two months, ending around the middle of May. Pretty intense stuff.

I: Last month I saw you perform here in Providence with the Dresden Dolls. The venue was being very strict about how much time you were allowed. There was a big digital clock on the stage, I remember. It was incredibly sad to see you have to rush through your set. I would love it if you came to Providence again.

RS: Yeah, they were so strict, bordering on mean, actually. I do hope you'll get to see a less rushed show someday. Though I won't be in Providence this time around, maybe I'll see you in Boston, or next time. Take care, yo.

---

If you ask her nicely, ALEXANDRA DE JESUS B'08 will make you a mixtape.

2005-03-10 New York, NY | Late Night with Conan O'Brien

Thanks to miao0726, who posted the original mpeg on the I♥Regina community

Us (WMV)

New MP3: Long Brown Hair

Added the following MP3 to the recordings section ("the wires"):

Long Brown Hair
An unreleased song performed at the Housing Works Used Bookstore Cafe on October 15, 2004.

Added Site Search

The contents of reginaspektor.net are now full-text searchable. What's that song that goes...?

New MP3: Happy Hooker

Added the following MP3 to the recordings section ("the wires"):

Happy Hooker
Unreleased song, performed at Barbès on May 11, 2003

Lyrics Added for Almost Every Regina Song

Added lyrics & info pages for the following:

***
2.99 ¢ Blues
8th Floor
AB
Aching to Pupate
All is Love
Après Moi
Aquarius
Ave Maria
Baby Jesus
Back of a truck
Baobabs
Bartender
Bear Spektor (no lyrics)
Belt
Blue Lips
Bobbing for Apples
Bon Idée
Braille
The Bronx
Buildings
BYOS
A Cannon
Carbon Monoxide
Chemo Limo
Consequence of Sounds
Dance Anthem of the 80s
Daniel Cowman
December
Dog & Pony
Düsseldorf
Edit
The Flowers
Flyin'
Folding Chair
The Genius Next Door
Ghost of Corporate Future
Happy Hooker
Hero of the Story
I want to sing
Just like the Movies
Kids
Lacrimosa
A Lesson in How Fleeting Preservation Is
Long Brown Hair
Lounge
Love Affair
Loveology
Lucky Penny
Lulliby
Making Records
Mary Ann
Mermaid
Mockingbird
Modern Girls & Old Fashion Men
Music Box
The Mustard Musketeers
My Man
Ne Me Quitte Pas
Ode To Divorce
Oedipus
Oh, Marcello!
One-String Blues
Paris
Patron Saint
Pavlov's daughter
Poor Little Rich Boy
Prisoners
Raindrops
Reading Time With Pickle
Reginasaurus
Rejazz
Sailor Song
Samson
Scarecrow & Fungus
Silly Eye-Color Generalizations
Soho
Somedays
The Soup
Summer in the City
Sunshine
That Time
Time Is All Around
Twenty Years of Snow
Uh-merica
Uncle Bobby
Us
The Virgin Queen (no lyrics)
The Wallet
Wasteside
You
Your Honor
Title Unknown ("all the rowboats")
Title Unknown ("be like a cloud")
Title Unknown("the clocks were asleep")
Title Unknown("come into my world")
Title Unknown("a cooler version")
Title Unknown("the devil come to bethlehem")
Title Unknown("dust to dust")
Title Unknown("eight miles high")
Title Unknown("the floor heard everything")
Title Unknown("I cut off my hair")
Title Unknown("if you're never sorry")
Title Unknown("I never loved nobody fully")
Title Unknown("no one can take that away")
Title Unknown("open")
Title Unknown("the big towns") (no lyrics)
Title Unknown("will you feel better?")
Title Unknown ("woolen gloves")

2005-03-05 ProductShop NYC

LINK

drinks with regina spektor

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Regina Spektor is the latest talent to emerge from New York’s anti-folk scene. Armed with only a piano, a russian accent, and some light strings, her major label debut, Soviet Kitsch, was released this week by Sire/Warner. She's about to embark on another major US tour. She’ll be performing at the Bowery Ballroom on March 30th with Sean Lennon. I caught up with Regina – which happens to be my mother’s middle name (she used to be embarrassed about it but isn’t anymore) – and chatted about Judaism, thumbs, The Strokes, friends, and lots more. She was funny and quite adorable the entire interview. You just want her to be a lil’ talking teddy bear that you could hug. Of course, the teddy bear would need to keep her defining accent that peppers her singing and speaking voice. Without further ado……

---

It’s Product Shop NYC’s round. What are you drinking?
Well, I’m drinking peppermint tea right now. Actually, I have three glasses in front of me. One is a Guinness glass with pear juice. And then I also have a cup of coffee. And then the peppermint tea.

Let’s start with some Jew talk. How has being a Russian-Jew effected your music?
Awesome. Yeah, I’m sure it does affect my music and me because it such a particular brand to be. I think in some ways that I have a more optimistic view of the entire country. More so than most of my friends. For me, I still see America as the land of immigrants dream. I find myself defending America a lot. It’s so much worse in other places. Especially and even now. To me, it’s important to uphold those ideals.

Were you Bat Mitzavah’d?
YES! I had a double Bat Mitzvah with my cousin, Marsha, in the Bronx. Marsha Marsha Marsha. It was really cool. It was basement of the synagogue where I was taught hebrew and everything. I wore this great big poofy dress that had like this white collar and I thought it was the best dress ever and, well yeah, it wasn’t. I thought it was so gorgeous. The whole community came to it. They had known me and Marsha for ever. We started going to there when we were nine. The party was great. We, me and Marsha, played piano at it. We dueted. It was so fun. We’re like twin sisters, except she’s a lot smarter than me. She’s in grad school for psychology and I write songs on a piano.

What is your song writing process? Are you able to sit and write everyday or do you have infrequent spurts of creativity?
More in spurts. I can’t figure out if its necessity or how I am. You try to write every day if I’m not running around all over the city. If I wake up and sit at my piano and I do write. I always start to work. Don’t quote me on this, I don’t know if it was Tchaikovsky who said it, but there is this quote like, “Not a day without a line” and he wasn’t talking about cocaine. He was saying that ever when you’re not inspired, you have to work and write. Sometimes you stumble on something and you work a lot of hours in a row and you have something. I don’t if that made sense. And now I’m going to start drinking my coffee

What are your feelings of “Modern Girls and Old-Fashion Men” a curse or a blessing?
Of course I’m proud of it. To me, it’s such a good song. It’s also the first time I sang a song I haven’t written. Julian wrote the whole thing. He wrote all over the places in airports, on tour. He finished it in a taxi. We had one day in a farm outside of Seattle and everyone was sick and tired. Except Fab I think. He was healthy. It was the first time we were in nature the whole tour. We got to record the vocals outside. There was a dog named Elevator there and everyone called her Ellie. We called her Vator. So the dog would bark whever we would sing loud. And Julian and I were doing our vocals at the same time and were singing loudly and the dog kept barking. We had to stick together a bunch of takes in the end. The only curse is that everyone asks me about The Strokes. I thought it was brave of them to take me on tour. I went from little bars to all over America. It was very kind. We're still very good friends. Them, me, Kings of Leon.

So the new record is out now and…
It’s out! Its out! I bought it! Actually, I bought it in two places. The first place was in Union Square Virgin Megastore. I was looking in new releases section and I couldn’t find it and then it hit me. It was right there. It started the second I got out of the subway. I got out of the subway and I was on a this rollercoaster. The guy who sold it to me went, “Would you like a bag for that.” And I was freaked out. I watched people pick it up and look at it and put it back on the shelf and it was so weird. I then also bought it at Other Music because it’s a great store and they’re really nice. They have big picture of me. It was weird. I felt like everyone could see me naked. It was crazy.

You said that the uptown Tower Records also has a window display.
I was looking at The Gates with David Kahne, who is working on The Strokes record, and he told me that they have the cover at Tower Records and I just didn’t believe him and we walked and talked and then GASP! There it is. It’s like something no real. Like look how big my head is.

Do you ever listen to your own records?
No. I mean. Unless someone puts me in the room and makes me. I listened to it so much while making it and mastering it. Usually what happens is, when enough times passes, I end up walking into a friends house and they’ll be playing something of mine and then I’ll be like “That sounds familiar” and not even realizing its mine for a minute. I’m to busy listening to other peoples records.

What’s your personal favorite song on your new record?
I don’t have a favorite necessarily. ‘Chemo Limo’ is one that is so particular. I just wrote it while I recorded but I don’t play it, but I never say never. I might but I just don’t. It’s like asking, which one of your fingers do you like the most. You have the pinky, the thumb….

What do you write your lyrics based on.
All fiction. Made up stuff. I’m not really sure what a lot of it is. Imagine all this made up stuff that’s rooted in real stuff. Fantasies. Sometimes I get a kick in the butt and then a year passes and I’ll walk into a studio and I’ll hear a demo and the song will remind me of something new and feel honest to me in a way that it didn’t before. I’m very secretive that’s why talking about myself is so weird. I don’t write about my own life. Event the encoded stuff is like hmmm. Hahah. Most of it is not. I’m thoughtful in life when I’m looking at art. When I write I don’t think about it. I just don’t want to be crude and thoughtful. Although, I really have the mouth of trucker.

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DOWNLOAD: Regina Spektor - Poor Little Rich Boy

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Posted by Jason at 12:51 PM

Added MP3s

The following MP3's were added to the recordings section ("the wires"):

Belt
Unreleased song, performed at Tonic on May 1, 2002 (with Anders Griffen on drums)
8th Floor
Unreleased song, performed at the Sidewalk Cafe on May 4, 2002 (with Anders Griffen on drums)
"will you feel better?"
Unreleased song (title unknown), performed at C-Note on February 15, 2003
Dance Anthem of the 80s (Watch)
Unreleased song, performed at C-Note on February 15, 2003
"dust to dust"
Unreleased song (title unknown), performed at Sin-é on May 31, 2003
Düsseldorf
Unreleased song, performed at Sin-e on May 31, 2003
"a cooler version of yourself"
Unreleased song (title unknown), performed at the Living Room on December 29, 2003
Edit
Unreleased song, performed at Tonic on October 16, 2004 (with Chris Kuffner on bass and Ben Kalb on cello)
Loveology
Unreleased song, performed at Tonic on October 16, 2004 (with Chris Kuffner on bass and Ben Kalb on cello)
"if you're never sorry"
Unreleased song (title unknown), performed at Bowery Ballroom on January 21, 2005 (thanks for this one to Keith--for taping--and Jenn--for sharing)