August 21, 2004
BJORK
Birds of a feather: Bjork & Yma Sumac
NAME: Bjork Gudmundsdóttir
LOVE CHILD OF: Yma Sumac, Voice of the Xtabay
WHAT IS SHE: Howler Monkey
WHO IS SHE: Name means birch in Icelandic. Born 1965 in Reykjavik, parents had been together since they were 14. Mother divorced, moved into hippie commune with daughter. Released album when she was 11 which sold 7000 copies, more than entire population of Iceland. Masturbates every day. Beat the shit out of Thai bitch who shoved microphone in son's face. Five days later, received acid bomb from obsessed fan who videotaped himself blowing his brains out to Bjork song I Miss You. Favorite actor: Beat Takeshi. Favorite soup: Tom Ka Kai. New CD: Medulla.
I actually like Bjork and her Audrey-Hepburn-does-Bladerunner chic, as long as I don't have to listen to her. She manages to be outrageously funny while taking herself way too seriously, or maybe it was just all those hippies & shooting stars. All Bjork wisdom culled from extensive and frankly excessive interview collection at this Bjork Fan Page
ON FIONA APPLE: "Oh, I hate Fiona, Fiona is the most ridiculous thing in the world."
ON PUBERTY: "I remember being underneath my duvet at the age of 12, fantasising about Kate Bush."
ON WHINING: "I'm not doing the Kurt Cobain, or anything. I'm not saying, Oh, poor old me. No f*cking way. Look at me, I'm a lucky c*nt, you know?"
ON MADONNA (for whom she wrote Bedtime Stories): "There have been several occasions when it has been self-evident for us to meet, but my instinct always told me the situation would get bothersome and faked. She seems to be all brains and no instinct, even if it obviously can't be so, since she has gotten herself to where she is now. But in the daily life it seems as if she isn't aware of her subconscious, as silly as it may sound. I have tried to avoid her, as much as I could."
ON SPONTANEITY: "I don't think you can rehearse singing. It's like rehearsing sex, like going to your boyfriend and saying, OK, let's first rehearse for half an hour and then have some sex."
ON GEEK LOVE: "I love Carl Sagan. He would go and discover strange galaxies, which encouraged me to search for that certain song no one's ever heard before."
ON ICELAND: "We have no art, no music, no dance in Iceland. Literature is the thing. Stories, poems, hymns. Icelanders were the first rappers in Europe, we told stories about the Vikings and the kings of the northern Europe and kept them alive that way. But it took until the 14th century before anyone wrote it down."
ON WOODWINDS: "There's nothing I hate more than saxophones."
ON BEAT TAKESHI: "I think his films are very funny, like he's taking the piss out of violence. I fancy him."
ON INTEGRITY: "99 percent of the people out there haven't got the guts to be who they are."
ON ART, OPTIMISM, & ELLA FITZGERALD: "I've always liked Ella because she's really happy. I've never been into all these suffering artists, I think it's a bit pathetic. You have your problems, but you have to go one step further, and see the funny side of it. Everybody has problems, not only Morrissey. That's why I've always preferred Ella to Billie, even though Billie is the singer of the century and all that shit, but I think it's much braver to be happy than to be suffering, taking heroin and all that. Ella was strong enough not to bore the audience with her own difficult life."
ON HER SPECIAL SCENT: "I've decided not to talk about that now because I don't want anyone nicking my smell off me."
ON SPRING ONIONS: "I love the spring. I feel like 10 spring onions are going to burst out of my chest like in Alien. Do you know that feeling?"
ON GEORGES BATAILLE'S Story of the Eye: "It changed my life. Books like that proved to me that I wasn't mad."
ON MODERATION: "When I get drunk, I get drunk. Vodka by the bottle. That's the kind of culture I come from. We don't sip drink, we f*cking drink it. You go all the way, otherwise you're a wimp. It has a lot to do with the weather. You're always either very sober or very drunk."
ON ABBA: "The Sugarcubes wanted Benny and Bjorn to produce our second album, but they didn't want to. We were naturally upset."
ON GETTING NO RESPECT: "I've done gigs in Iceland that have been ridiculous because people know you and when you're singing, they're shouting, Hey, you didn't make your English degree! Your uncle is f*cking my niece!"
ON BEING PRECOCIOUS: "One day I didn't want to get out of bed so I cut a hole in my bedsheet, put it over my head and went to school like that."
ON LILITH FAIR: "I've never been into all-women things. We musn't ignore the fact that our mothers and our grandmothers and our great-grandmothers fought (for women's rights). It's like the cage has beend and it's our time to walk out of it. Not scream, 'I'm in a cage! I'm in a cage! I think Lilith Fair's making more isolation. It's a step backwards."
ON TOM KA KAI SOUP: "What's in it? Lime juice, coconut and chicken. Why does it change people's lives? Well, food is pretty important. You'd be dead without it."
ON CANADA: "A friend of mine went to Canada once and on the form you fill in as you enter the country it asked if he had committed a crime in Canada, and he put, Not yet. And they threw him in jail."
See also: Gorgeous Bjork gallery at her site, Bjork video gallery, I HATE BJORK GROUP, Japanese Bjork, Icelandic Birds on Stamps, History of Iceland
Posted by Jeff at August 21, 2004 04:49 PM