The Mars Volta: "Without a doubt it’s a whole different era" | Interview – The Line of Best Fit

The video for 'Blacklight Shine' features Puerto Rican bomba dancers, which turn the preconceptions of dance on their head by allowing rhythm to be dictated by the dancer and not the drummer. That kind of reminds me of what you're saying here, the quote-unquote fans dictating how you should dance, as it were. It takes two to tango in the meaning-making of your music, right?

RODRGUEZ-LPEZ: It is a dance, but we have to come together in that. Again, the fans dictating anything aren't fans, that's just an absurd notion. That's the distinction we're trying to make. Fans are a supportive force; the root of the word is fanatical, which is related to extremism, which usually has to do with some sort of exploitation and oppression. We're trying to get as far away from that as we can in every aspect of our lives, let alone in the music, or this superficial understanding that people have from us because they know our music or have seen our picture somewhere. So it's protecting that personal freedom. Ha, what is that Wild at Heart Nicholas Cage snakeskin jacket quote?

BIXLER-ZAVALA: "It's a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom."

RODRGUEZ-LPEZ: Haha, exactly. And we're gonna protect that at all costs, and sure if you're on the other end of that as an oppressor, you better believe you're an enemy. [Cedric laughs] If that's what you were referring to, something I might have said in another interview, that's what I meant. If you're trying to oppress and exploit then yes, we back ourselves at all costs.

BIXLER-ZAVALA: We've experienced this since leaving At the Drive-In. Not only did fans f-cking get mad at us, but people we thought were friends in our home town, all sort of people, management, all just f-cking turned on us. People like KROQ threatened us and blackmailed us saying they would never play anything that would come from our new bands unless we got back together with At the Drive-In. The irony of that is that by the time The Mars Volta had done all the heavy lifting and got to play at a venue like The Wiltern and sell it out for two nights, then KROQ show up with their little van. As heard on KROQ, when you know god damn straight they weren't f-cking playing our shit at all, it was mostly f-cking snowboard and skateboard f-cking music. And, they don't even f-cking acknowledge the main person that made KROQ cool, which is Rodney [Bingenheimer].

We had this conversation record after record, band after band. Even when we did Antemasque, we had Mars Volta records being like What the f-ck is this? Because most Mars Volta fans at the time had no concept or terminology of what power pop was or why that was a cool thing to embrace, you know? But every record, every time there's a new person in the band, everybody comes out of the woodwork to say You're not at you're full potential, I'm just trying to help out. Well if you wanna help out, there's a muzzle, shut the f-ck up and listen. Just listen.

RODRGUEZ-LPEZ: Plus what would they know? It's the extreme irony that they became a quote-unquote fan, or fanatic, because they just stumbled upon something we were doing, you see what I'm saying? We were doing something without any kind of input from them, and then they came along and saw what we were doing and were like, That's great, I own you now and keep doing that.

BIXLER-ZAVALA: Mhmm.

RODRGUEZ-LPEZ: It's like, we were just over here doing shit and you happened to stumble on us. I compare it to the narrative of Christopher Columbus discovering The Caribbean, and in The Caribbean on that day that's celebrated, we say that's the day that the Tanos, the indigenous people, found a lost group of Spaniards going circles around the island of what's now Santa Domingo, you know what I mean? It depends on your perspective. It's the history of the world and that is our enemy. That is our natural enemy. Anyone that would try and get in the way of us living a healthy, happy life, which they have no idea what that is for us? We protect ourselves against that at all costs.

BIXLER-ZAVALA: The funny thing is that there are people that sort of fetishise the different players we've had in the band, which I always call the Football Fantasy kind of fan. While they were fetishising one player, they missed the beauty of the next guy we introduced to the world.

RODRGUEZ-LPEZ: Then later on they come and say I never got to see that guy live.

BIXLER-ZAVALA: I never got to see that, will you play those songs? And I say, well you were too busy talking shit and trying to boycott us because we didn't help you chase the dragon again, so now you missed that. I feel like a lot of people missed out on the Deantoni Parks era of our band, and you know what? Your f-cking loss man, because that was some f-cking cool shit we were on. I'm not trying to say yeah we're awesome, I'm just saying we had some very f-cking beautiful conversations with god when Deantoni was in the f-cking band. You were stuck on [Jon] Theodore or [Thomas] Pridgen, you f-cking missed out on Deantoni. And now people come out of the woodwork and I see it all the time, I hear it all the time, Will you play the stuff from Nocturniquet? I'm sure we will, but you missed it when it was in its original form because you were stuck in nostalgia. If you understand that nostalgia is not your f-cking best friend, it's a consumer tactic.

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The Mars Volta: "Without a doubt it's a whole different era" | Interview - The Line of Best Fit