Mike Jones has been giving his readers a lot to listen to. Each day I point my browser to his blog, The Camera As Pen, and find an amazing new band along with some MP3’s. The design of his page is nicely laid out and easy to navigate. Mike was kind enough to answer my questions, so after you check out his blog, read the interview below. Thanks Mike!

In San Diego

Let’s get some general background on you. Where do you live, how long, etc.

I’ve been all over the place but I’ve been in Michigan for the last four years now. This is where my wife grew up and her immediate family is here so it was the natural thing to do for me to move here before we got married. We live very close to Detroit, just north of it. Detroit’s a great music city, obviously. Not only does it birth a lot of great musicians, but we get a lot of them coming through town, as well. So it’s been great being so close to the action. Before I lived here, I was accustomed to having to drive at least 2-3 hours for a show. Now it’s like 15-20 minutes. My concertgoing definitely spiked after the relocation.

I want get an idea of your musical taste evolution if you will. What were some of the first albums/tapes/CD’s you bought?

This has the potential to be tremendously embarrassing. But I’m not going to lie and come up
with something that will make me look a lot cooler. Almost all of my early experiences with music were of the Contemporary Christian variety: Carman, Michael W.Smith, Amy Grant, Petra, White Heart, DeGarmo & Key, Mylon LeFevre & Broken Heart, and finally towards the end there, DC Talk and the Newsboys. These were the first tapes & eventually CDs I owned. I highly recommend that people reading this head over to Pitchfork for Menomena’s Artist List: My Favorite Cassettes (I was allowed to listen to), Age 7-15.

That will give you some great insight into what I was going through. It’s the funniest thing I’ve read in recent memory and possibly my favorite thing Pitchfork has published to date. All I can say is that my standards have come a long, long way.

How about some of the more recent CD’s you’ve purchased?

Recent purchases…well, this past weekend I picked up a few I’d been putting off for a little while: Super Furry Animals’ “Love Kraft”, The Bees’ “Free the Bees”, and Boards of Canada’s “The Campfire Headphase.” I also scored the last copy of Seu Jorge’s “The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions”, to which I must add that I am so glad these songs ended up getting released this way. I also just received Pedro the Lion’s new, limited edition Christmas 7″ which he’s been doing for Suicide Squeeze now for the past three years, I believe. This year’s is God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen w/ Silent Night on the flipside. I haven’t listened to it yet. I like to wait until Christmas Eve to put it on.

Where do you buy the majority of your records? Do you support a particular record store in your area, buy online, and if so, where?

I know it’s not the true “indie” thing to say, but I have to admit that I go the big chain store route for many of my purchases. Borders is a frequent pitstop. It’s on my way home from work and I’m a Borders Rewards card-carrying member. I’m sorry, but with the amount of money I end up spending on music, saving a buck or two here and there adds up quickly. What can I say? I’m a child of the Depression. OK, not really. Anyway, when I can’t find what I’m looking for there, which is probably more than half of the time, I’ll head to downtown Royal Oak’s Neptune Records. They specialize in really obscure electronic stuff, but they carry a lot of the standard indie rock fair, too. And they’re extremely knowledgeable. I also love Insound. Those weekly emails they send out are hilarious, they have great deals all the time, and when you order something, they throw all kinds of other good shit in there, too.

When I started listening to music, there were certain musicians that led me in the path of a lot of other bands. Did you have any similar experiences with bands growing up?

Yeah, I definitely did. I was listening to a lot of grunge and basically anything that was being profiled in Rolling Stone back in the day (R.E.M., The Cranberries, STP, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Blind Melon, etc.). Weezer’s first two albums definitely hit me on some sort of level that no other artists at the time were doing. Same with Nirvana when they did the Unplugged thing for MTV. Also, I still remember the first time I heard Oasis’ “Live Forever” on the radio. It wasn’t long before I was listening to nothing but Britpop: Oasis, Blur, The Charlatans, The Verve, Pulp, Primal Scream, Embrace, etc. All my friends would give me a hard time b/c I was the only one in my circle that was listening to this stuff. I also fell into music of the electronic persuasion while in college, thanks to Daft Punk and Air. My sophomore year of college a guy in my dorm introduced me to Sunny Day Real Estate, right before they got back together. They were definitely another one of those transitional bands that opened me up to a whole world of new music.

Mike and friend Jeremiah.

What are some of your favorite records of all time?

I have so many all-time favorites that it’s hard for me to remember them all whenever I’m asked this question. I guess you could argue that that sort of diminishes the point of choosing all-time favorites, but screw you. I love all these records:

Weezer – The Blue Album & Pinkerton
Oasis – Definitely Maybe
Blind Melon – Soup
ALL Radiohead
Hum – You’d Prefer An Astronaut
Elliott Smith – Either/Or
Air – Moon Safari
The Verve – Urban Hymns
Ride – Nowhere, Tarantula
The Prayer Chain – Mercury
The Lassie Foundation – California
My Bloody Valentine – Loveless
Slowdive – Souvlaki
Blur – 13
Badly Drawn Boy – The Hour of the Bewilderbeast
Grandaddy – The Sophtware Slump
Failure – Fantastic Planet
Pedro the Lion – It’s Hard to Find a Friend
Mineral – End Serenading
Sunny Day Real Estate – Diary, LP2 (Pink), How It
Feels to Be Something On
Jeff Buckley – Grace, Sketches for My Sweetheart the
Drunk
Bright Eyes (everything from “Letting Off the
Happiness” and beyond)
The Smiths – The Queen is Dead & Louder Than Bombs
The Cure – Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me & Wish
Death Cab for Cutie – We Have the Facts… & The Photo
Album
Sigur Ros – Agaetis Byrjun
Beck – Sea Change
Spoon – Girls Can Tell
Sufjan Stevens – Greetings from Michigan

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Any idea how many albums are in your collection?

I seriously couldn’t tell you. I’m not even going to try to guess. I’m constantly having to box them up and stash them away in the basement, though. Otherwise, they start covering up everything in the house.

If you could spend time with 3 musicians, who would you choose?

Damon Gough (Badly Drawn Boy), because I think he’s a riot. I love people that are really stonefaced but are really, really funny at the same time. I could just envision a day with him being really fun. Rivers Cuomo, because he seems like a really down-to-earth, guy. You know what I mean? I’ve seen interviews with him and stuff and he seems like he’s really nice. I love that he’s always so nervous and soft-spoken. This is how several of my friends are, so I know I’d like him. And lastly, David Bazan of Pedro the Lion.

I’m sure you’ve seen some great concerts. Can you tell me what the first concert you saw was and when? To follow that up, are there any particular shows that stand out in terms of being favorites?

I’m not gonna get into my first concert experiences b/c that would lead us down that Christian music path again (see the second question) and I’d have to sink away into a hole and never come out to blog an MP3 again. A few concerts that really stand out in my memory are…

- The Verve in Boston, circa 1998 or 1999. I don’t remember exactly. The summer after Urban Hymns came out. It was an outdoor show with Boston Harbor in the background and the sun was going down in the middle of “History”. Ashcroft was unbelievable onstage and I was in my own personal heaven.

- 3 shows at the 9:30 Club in Washington DC: Sunny Day Real Estate, during their reunion tour, in support of How It Feels to Be Something On; Air, after 10,000 Hz Legend came out; Sigur Ros & the Album Leaf circa 2001. I stood right below their feet. Totally surreal. They played ‘Pop Song’ last and the crowd stood and clapped for 20 minutes, no exaggeration. Everyone was completely blown away b/c nobody at that time had seen or heard anything like it.

- My first Broken Social Scene show at a shitty bar in Hamtramk, MI that had the best sound system I’ve ever experienced in a club setting. This was almost immediately following Ryan Schreiber sung the band’s praises in his review of “You Forgot It In People”. The show was a revelation. On a related note, I saw Do Make Say Think for the first time at the Magic Stick not long after this and that was damn-near unbelievable.

What are some bands that you haven’t gotten the chance to see live, but would really like to?

I’m at the point now where I’m sort of burned out on going to shows. I’m 29, so when I’m at a show and I look around, I’m definitely in the upper age group. It’s sort of unnerving. I’ve been to so many shows. A lot of them are starting to blur together. Plus, I’ve got a kid on the way, so I have a feeling that part of my life is swiftly being ushered out the door. I won’t be able to just leave the wife at home with the baby while I go to the show either b/c my wife would be jealous. She listens to a lot of the same music that I do, so she’d kill me if I did that. I learned my lesson after that going to that Sigur Ros concert I mentioned earlier. However, the next time Devendra Banhart or Beck are passing through, a babysitter will be scheduled.

How did you choose the name of your blog?

It’s weird. I was watching a Francois Truffaut movie – The 400 Blows, if I’m remembering correctly – and I had the commentary track turned on, because I’m a self-proclaimed student of film. The person who was doing the commentary mentioned something that another great director of French cinema, Jean-Luc Godard, had once been quoted as saying about directing films. I can’t remember it exactly now, but it was something to the effect of…making or directing a film is sort of like an author penning a novel, except that the camera is his pen. It really stuck with me and I thought it would make a cool name for my new MP3 blog, ironically, seeing as how it has nothing to do with music.

Can you tell me what got you into blogging, and are you surprised by the popularity your blog has attained?

I started blogging about a year or two after moving to Michigan. All my friends and family were in other states, so it started out as just a way to sort of connect with them. I could talk about what kind of stuff I was up to and whatnot. Then I started posting about music a lot, trying to turn my friends on to a lot of what I was listening to at the time. It just kind of springboarded from there. For a long time, I wanted some way to post songs to my site but I was only using Blogger’s server and stuff like yousendit and rapidshare were either not around or still hadn’t become widely discovered. So eventually I got my own domain and started posting MP3s and writing about them. MP3 posts sort of took over my blog and phased out all the personal stories and stuff. After awhile, I felt like I needed to move that aspect of my blogging to a new location and change the way I was doing it to something that wouldn’t be so time-consuming for me but would still be a good way for me to share music with others, blah blah blah…The Camera as Pen.

What are some of your favorite blogs? Music or otherwise.

I love Justin’s, the Aquarium Drunkard, whom you featured recently in this thing of yours. His is great. peter, over at *tmwsiy, always has some good stuff up. i’ve always like this place since i came upon it. of course, chris and dodge are the shit, too. I love that chris posts about the Detroit Pistons all the time. I think that’s what actually caught my eye while perusing the MP3 blogs last spring. Also, I stop in and visit Kevin’s So Much Silence, Moroccan Role (freaking great title, btw), Dreams of Horses, and as of late, When Apes Rule the Earth and Eric at Can You See the Sunset…

Unfortunately, it’s getting to the point where i can’t keep up with any of you guys anymore. My daily life has just become too hectic and everyone of you are making me look bad. I don’t even do writeups with my posts and I still can’t keep up in terms of sheer volume. Oh, the Catbird Seat is one of my all-time favorite music blogs. And, sadly, one of my past favorites, Uncommon Folk – that dude posted his last post in September. I think all the songs are still up, though. Highly recommend that one.

Let’s get away from music for a bit. What are some of your favorite movies and television shows?

Movies: Recently…Lost in Translation, Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, The Life Aquatic, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Magnolia, All The Real Girls, Dogville, Waking Life and those gosh-darned Lord of the Rings movies, too. I like a lot of foreign films, Japanese and French New Wave, especially. Breathless and Contempt by Godard are classics and so is Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. Also I love love love Robert Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar. Kurosawa was a genius and my favorites of his are Rashomon, The Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, and Ikiru.

TV: I watch TV all the time. Mostly football but I also look forward to The Office on Tuesday nights. That show was in my doghouse even before it began just b/c I loved the UK version so much. But I gave it a chance and it’s actually really funny. I’m a big Family Guy fan and am also devastated about Arrested Development’s cancellation. What a travesty. My guilty pleasure is (cue the firing squad)…Project Runway on Bravo. The first season of that show was a stinking crackfest. There was so much to laugh at. The guy who won it, Jay, was hilarious! I guess the second season just started and I already missed the first episode. Anybody see it last night?

A lot of people have a favorite concert t-shirt, do you have one?

I do have a blue hoodie that’s always been a size too small for me but I love wearing it. That’s how I like my sweatshirts to fit and it’s perfect. It has some kind of logo on the left chest area that says Culver Lake. I think it’s in Jersey, but I’m not sure. I slide into it on Friday afternoon and wear it all weekend. But I’ve put on some pounds lately and I’m afraid I’m gonna do start doing some damage to it so maybe I ought to hold off for awhile. For some reason, I’ve never really bought concert t-shirts. I never have $15 of cash on me at shows and when I do, I’d rather use it on a couple beers. It sucks. I did have a DC Talk shirt way back in, like, ‘92 that I seriously wore like every day. Everyone at school always asked me who they were because nobody knew any Christian groups. I would just play stupid and say, “I don’t know, I’ve never heard of them either”. What a dope. It was awesome, though. It had tour dates on the back, and then at the bottom it said, “YO! BE THERE, BOYEE!!!”

Outside of music do you have any other interests or projects?

By profession, I’m a graphic artist but I also like to toy with designs in my free time. I like sticking my nose in a book. I’m a fantasy football nerd and I’m a film geek, as well. I’m giving some thought to someday writing and directing something myself, just to do it, not trying to break into the business or anything. Dana and I also enjoy watching Pistons games. We’re
big Pistons fans (like Chris @ GvsB).

Mike and his wife Dana.

In your opinion, what’s the best place to eat on your city?

The Original House of Pancakes on Woodward Avenue, in my hometown of Royal Oak. Breakfast is my favorite meal to eat out and this is the best place around to do it.

Animals dressed as humans. Funny or not?

Absolutely not, and the opposite is not funny either. It’s just awesome.