Interview with Jon Glover of Ars Phoenix

The following interview is with Jon Glover of Ars Phoenix fame. His new album Engines of Progress is currently all the rave.


What inspired you to start playing music?
I'm not sure I can define a particular catalyst. I'd always been interested in music, I suppose for its emotive/aesthetic qualities. Of all the arts, music seems to, at least for me, have the most potential for eliciting a visceral emotional response. Expression, catharsis. If Spinoza was right about there being a third kind of knowledge--affect/affection/intuition/expression--music is the best way to engage it.

Do you think there is something to be said for going out on your own against what society as a whole wants for you, and striking out on your own?
Chasing down your own dreams or, as you put it, going out on your own IS the lesson. Success, in the corporative sense that we are so familiar with as Americans, reeks of hopelessness to me. I think the major lesson that playing music on our own terms teaches us is that there are always different ways to do things, different than the typical models always offered to us as the only options--major labels, living on the road, finding a "marketable" sound, finding a career instead "wasting time" on art.

Craziest thing you've ever done on stage. Most injuries sustained.

I was always the cautious one. In Failsafe (1995-1999) there was always an unsaid competition, I believe, between Leo, TJ, and myself for who could create the most chaos on stage. I did a fair amount of thrashing around on the stage floor, but nothing like Leo or TJ. Leo actually threw himself down a half pipe ramp that we were playing on at some skate park show once. That freaked me out. As far as injuries go, I was usually inflicting rather than sustaining them. The headstock of my bass drew blood from Leo's head on two occasions.

Do you feel a connection to something when you play?

"Feel" is the key word here. There is an abstract sort of sensation I get from playing music. Just sort of a harmony or resonance between myself and the sounds. I've been reading too much Spinoza, because I also am thinking of this from a Spinozistic perspective--when two "bodies" (in this case me and the music) are agreeable to one another--harmonize--their power, their ability to be affected, to FEEL is increased. This just might be an explanation for how music works period, but I definitely think it explains how it works for me.

Being from the "scene" do you feel that there ever was one in Fort Myers, and what construct made it up? What do you think tied the different personalities within the groups together?
Well, I was from the Naples scene, which strangely enough, was very distinct from the FM/Cape Coral scene, despite the many overlaps between all of them. I had been playing with bands in Naples since I was 15. It really wasn't until I was about 18, when Failsafe started playing more in FM, that I think I was really even aware of FM as a part of the same scene. Did Naples have an actual scene? Yes, I think so. But when FM and beyond get tacked on, that construct gets harder to articulate. Naples was basically a circle of friends who played in bands together.

The more things change, the more they stay the same? True or False?

Completely false! Really, this cliché is based on two assumptions--the stable/fixed/unchanging psychic core of the individual, and the stable/fixed/unchanging character of history. So many external factors affect how we as humans perceive ourselves and our societies that the act of comparison (between a current self and a past self, especially) is extremely tenuous. When we look back at ourselves 10, 15, years ago, do we truly recognize ourselves? Anyone who answers this question with too much confident affirmation should not be trusted.