Interview with Brad Sucks
by Adam Finley

Brad Turcotte is a 21st Century Digital Boy, and while Bad Religion meant the moniker as an insult, it's not a bad way to describe a man who has used the boundless distribution of the Internet (via bradsucks.net) to sell and share his homemade brand of music. It's a poppy, uptempo mix of styles reminiscent of Stephin Merritt's brand of sardonic lyrics and jelled electro-soundscapes.

Brad records under the name Brad Sucks and distributes his music from his home in Ottawa, Canada, bucking the traditional and ever-deteriorating modes of how people hear, share and even steal their music. His most recent venture is a compilation titled Outside the Inbox. Based on the subject lines of e-mail spam featuring songs by like-minded Web songsters, it may help pave the way for a new brand of musician who can rock your world without ever leaving the basement.

Brad recently took some time out to chat with Flak over the phone.

Flak: You've been offered live gigs. Isn't that odd since you've never played live before?

Brad: If the whole old record industry is dying, possibly that whole having to starve and kill yourself for a year to get any sort of respect will die, too. Thanks to the Internet and distribution you won't have to go around to each individual town and hand out 10 CDs each time and try to gather a few fans that way.

People have been finding me lately through the Outside the Inbox compilation. I came up with that idea as a way to promote the whole independent scene on the Net. There's a ton of these home recorder types over on songfight.org, and a lot of them are pretty talented. And you've got guys like MC Frontalot who are actually getting pretty popular these days, but not doing the traditional thing at all. A lot of it has rubbed off on me 'cause I've been doing a lot of the interviews for it and there's been a lot of media. I was on BBC Radio about a month ago and got a ton of e-mails afterwards and then nothing for a whole bunch of days.

I get a lot of people lately from the record label I signed up with, Magnatune.

Flak: So you're on a record label?

Brad: I'm on a nonexclusive Internet label. If you're my parents I just tell you I'm signed to a record label and you go, "Woo! My son, he's so famous!" I start off telling people, "Yeah, I'm on this fake Internet label that isn't good but new and different and they're not giving me an advance and they're not paying for my tour and they're not doing anything really for me." And people are like, "You're on a label? Wow, that's so cool!" I've been doing a lot of promotion just for my own stuff and now the CDs are kind of selling themselves. I've actually made a profit, which is more than most starving bands. That's kind of the joke: Brad at 400 dollars, the most successful indie band ever.

Flak: On your site you mention the "post-Napster universe." What do you mean by that?

Brad: What's the music industry going to be like a year from now? It's so drastically different from what it was a year ago, and five years, forget about it. There's no way anybody could have seen the way things are going now. Is all this digital download stuff going to work, or is it going to flop? Is there going to be a bigger, badder Kazaa to take the place of all the other file-sharing networks? You can't really know that stuff.

Napster showed that people are pretty hungry for music, and that people's tastes weren't really as confined as a lot of people believed. After Napster, and people don't talk about this too much, people's taste got a lot broader. You'd look in people's Napster directories and it would just be shocking a lot of the time. You like Whitney Houston and Limp Bizkit and Flaming Lips, and... what? It made people realize that people had more complex tastes than [mainstream] radio would have indicated.

The important background is that I'm a nerd. When these technologies and Napster came out, I immediately knew in my heart of hearts that this was unstoppable. Don't know what shape it's going to take or how it's going to change, but this is something that cannot be stopped. And they're talking about putting the genie back in the bottle, and I was "No, sorry, technology will roll the hell over you." I basically knew, hey, you guys who are worried about this stuff are screwed.

Flak: So as an independent musician you're embracing the whole file-sharing mindset, even if it means giving away a lot of music for free?

Brad: It's made it easier than ever to reach people and get some success out of being a little entertainer. The whole job of an entertainer doesn't come down to record sales. That's sort of an arbitrary thing that's been placed on this.

Maybe music is doomed. Who knows? Maybe being a musician is going to be like being a visual artist. Lots of painters I know don't make too much money. Maybe commercial music is dead. I have no idea. Maybe it's just totally dying and there will be no way to live off of it. Possibly in five years it will be a joke to say you're a musician. The arts are just fucked. They always have been and they always will be. You should probably get a real job, no matter what you're doing.

I'm fairly hopeful about it, but I guess ultimately I like making music so it doesn't bother me either way.

People get very possessive about their music but I tend to believe that what really matters most about being an artist is the fanbase. That's primary. If you sacrifice [album sales] to have a thousand people sit around and think you're a good musician and you should be out there making albums, that's probably for the best. Ben Folds doesn't operate on commercial radio, but his last album sold like 100,000 copies. He has more of a fan following and not necessarily the huge commercial appeal.

Flak: You also seem to appreciate the instantaneous feedback that the Web offers.

Brad: Being the Britney Spears type is really hard when you've got a weblog. I mean, how cool can you really be? You're talking about your dumb day or something. There's a level of rock star bullshit that's removed there. That's potentially not what people want. People may really want the type of musician that's standoffish and can't be reached. Maybe I'm doing myself a disservice by being out there.

It seems the Internet is inherently out there to reach people, and to try and get people all communicating. I like the weblog aspect just for that.

There's also the aspect of the whole human angle. With Britney, or anyone more rock starish, you like their album, but if you steal it, does it really bother Britney? Do you have any insight into what Britney's really like or going through? Do you know how much work it takes? With my weblog, you have a bit more of that, and maybe that's a good thing. The RIAA is currently making attempts to personalize musicians a little bit more so you know that when you download something off Kazaa, you're taking money right out of Keith Richards' pocket. With my weblog I'm basically saying, "Here I am, I'm working on stuff."

Flak: How does a typical "Brad Sucks" song come together?

Brad: I pretty much always come up with the music first. I have little books of written stuff, which is just little phrases. Song titles are pretty much my jump-off point for all the lyrics. Try and get a song title, try and match it with some music, hopefully the song title appears somewhere in the song. Then I sit around and free associate on the title and try to come up with something that means something to me. Something that isn't too clear and too pat.

I tend to like music that kind of lets the listeners imagination go a bit, [not] "Brad's girlfriend problems are with THIS girl! And they are of THIS nature!" That country music kind of thing where you're sort of moaning about a specific problem. Whereas I prefer to do more general moaning. A rather nonspecific feeling.

My other trend is to try to whine with an uptempo. I think that's some of the Nine Inch Nails influence. I like the moody music, but I don't like the sad, self-obsessed music.

Flak: "Overreacting" seems to be the quintessential Brad Sucks song: catchy tune and lyrics that are much smarter than they seem at first.

Brad: That song was the first one where I got the idea of the sort of songs I wanted to write, which is a kind of combination. I started off and tried some funny songs and then I tried some serious songs. And I didn't feel right doing just the funny songs because I tend to find those disposable and they're not that good for repeat listenings. I don't tend to go for the novelty music that much. Then I did some serious stuff, but if I'm up there screaming with a guitar about something or other, then I just feel like an ass. With "Overreacting" I felt like I had the whole. It's a sad song, but it's also got some funny in it so you don't feel like I'm taking myself too seriously. It could have just been me whining about my life real easily: "the darkness comes over me, I feel so sad. Writing my suicide letter."

What songs really delve into Brad's soul?

Brad: I felt really good about the song "Dropping Out of School." I liked that one a lot. Because I did drop out of school, I dropped out in grade 10. I didn't get along with the other kids. I was sort of shy and nerdy. I was smaller than everybody and shy.

I wasn't recording music back then, I pretty much just kept to myself in school as long as I was there. Around the same time I was on BBSes all the time. I was spending a lot of time on the computer and meeting all these other people that I got along with way better than everybody at school. It was easy for me to just sort of bail out.

Flak: Is it safe to say your role as a home/Internet-based musician was rooted in being somewhat of a recluse?

Brad: Pretty much, I'd say. I don't think I'd be doing any of this stuff if I hadn't dropped out of school. When I dropped out of school there wasn't much to do but play around on my computer. Shortly after that I got into making music with trackers, which is this old music software. You could load up a tracker and make music. I'd play around with those all day. It was a great way to waste time while all your friends were at school. I spent a lot of time doing that, also writing. I basically got to totally indulge myself in creativity. I like to think it'll make a good backstory if I'm ever a success. Or it'll be the nail in my coffin when people are explaining how I died in the gutter: "And it all started when he dropped out of school."

E-mail Adam Finley at pumpkinpants@excite.com.