RS: Funny you should mention your road manager. I was about to ask about a live performance. The night at Town Hall that's captured in your DVD, was there something magical in the air that night? What about that performance made you want to put that out on DVD?
Cyndi: What do you mean? All the cameras were there, there was nothing else going to happen, it was definitely going out. We were planning to do it and everything was booked so I said let's do it at Town Hall. Little did I know that "A Mighty Wind" was filmed there.
Everyone was very kind and generous to us. I sold tickets and then had to kill seats because they had to put the cameras in there. We got everything sorted with the stage and props, it was kind of like let's make a deal with what we cold do. When we finally got that sorted, no matter what happened, that show was going to be filmed. If I broke my leg, I would have gone out there anyway.
I kind of felt like it didn't really matter, I'm doing it and the ironic thing, and every time I watch it I realize the same thing, that I was so hell-bent on 'we've got to do this show because...' I wanted to make sure the film is right to get the story. My manager Lisa and Bill Witman worked with me on the story in the beginning and my husband. That line with "a girl from Queens could lose the s and become a queen," that was my husband. Lisa and Bill helped me articulate ordinary people who lived extraordinary lives, and then all of a sudden it became clear. I just needed to sit with somebody and tell these stories, say it and write it so that I wasn't overwhelmed. So all of their energy and effort went into it and Bill Witman, the way he mixed it and putting in the extra time, and everybody putting in the extra time. Of course, I did sit on everyone's head until I got them to do what I wanted, but still, they could have said no. When they did say no, I went out and did it myself because I wanted it to look a certain way, I'd waited a long time. I mean the thing is only called At Last because About Fucking Time would have been very wrong.
RS: Well speaking about taking it in your own hand and things being mixed, how involved are you with remixes of your music?
Cyndi: I used to be more involved than I am. I got discouraged because I used to think that dance music was very innovative, and then I found out it wasn't and I got real discouraged. I found that mostly remixers wanted to take ballads and rewrite them, but if you wrote a dance song they never want to do that because it's too obvious that it's a dance song. Like one time, a guy had a problem with Cleo & Joe because he said it was too gay, and I was like what? Duh, it's about a drag queen, I traveled with him on a bus, twelve of them, all through Italy and Spain, come on. That was a trip! Actually it was through Italy, but if it was Italy and Spain, what kind of movie would have that been? In fact I wouldn't mind writing that movie or if I would have taken my Super8 and filmed that movie, it could have been a great documentary.
RS: We'll come back to movies just a second, but about you realizing that remixing and dance music isn't as creative as you thought.
Cyndi: Well no. For example, "Stay" would make a great remix. Instead everybody gravitated to Walk On By because it was a ballad, and I just felt like well if they could do it I could do it, so there's now a groove version I did, a rock version I did and there's the one of the album. I know Eddie X did one and so did Tony Moran. Eddie's version has the Cuban-Afro beat that I like. Tony's version is more pop, he put in everything that I purposely took out but he's so great and has such a great pop sensibility.
RS: Absolutely.
Cyndi: You know, for me, I think it would be really fun to work with a remixer like when I worked with Junior Vasquez, that was an extraordinary time for me. I don't think that it could ever be pop because we went in and I re-sang parts and played recorder on it, kind of like jazz recorder. It's not big but the good thing about Junior is he was open-minded. Though he hated the dulcimer, he told me over and over again nobody wants to hear that hillbilly shit. After a while I was leaving messages on his home machine of just the dulcimer. But, I think he deserved it because he wasn't returning my calls right away, so I had to torture him. We did some awfully creative stuff together in dance when we did "Come On Home" and I redid the vocals. I remember working with Junior and we had our very, very, very extraordinary moment and I will never forget that, and I have not had that kind of moment since. I mean I did work with Bobby Guy.
