I'm a music fan, and I can listen to the radio, or music, without thinking, "How am I going to screw this up?" [Laughs] If I'm really actively trying to think of a parody, then I'll have my antenna out, and be a little more proactive about it.
So that's why one of my rules of parody writing is that it's gotta be funny regardless of whether you know the source material. It has to work on its own merit.
What kind of morons do you have working at newspapers in Austin that would base an entire review of an artist's performance on whether or not they had a good seat?
It becomes more important to me as time goes on to make every album the best thing I've ever done, so it's a lot of self-imposed pressure that also kind of slows me down a bit.
Like, I have had moments, which I think most people have, where you'll be watching TV, and it'll be interrupted by some tragic event, and you'll actually find yourself thinking, 'I don't want to hear about this train being derailed! What happened to 'The Flintstones'?'
I'm always a little leery about doing shows where I'm not the headliner because when I first started playing in 1982 I opened for Missing Persons and got pelted for 45 minutes. After that, I made the decision to headline no matter what, even if I was playing to seven people. I wanted people to be there to see me.
I think I'm equally as abusive as the editors normally are for the "Letters and Tomatoes" column, which is the fan mail part of MAD Magazine and an ongoing feature.