Eels, Live on The Current 4-7-2008

Mark Everett of Eels played Dylan for Minnesota Public Radio's The Current on Monday.

Eels (Mark Everett) - Live on MPR's The Current (4-7-2008)(mp3s):

Girl From The North Country
Ugly Love

He also spoke at length with Mary Lucia about working with the BBC on a documentary about his father, who developed the theory of parallel universes. Here are some bits from the interview:

MC: Was there a lot of things that were absolutely new to you that you found out through doing this process?
E: Just about everything. I really knew very little about him.

E: Well, people probably have no idea what we're talking about here. We're talking about the guy who invented the concept of parallel universes. And I did not inherit the math gene from him at all. I can't even add up the tip after dinner without a calculator.

E: I blame Einstein for ruining my childhood.
MC: Right on. How so?
E: Well, he didn't take my father seriously. My father withdrew, and he was like a piece of furniture in the house to me. That's all I knew.

MC: [about her relationship with her own father] I think people feel like, again, well he's your father, you should know him, and you should know where you come from, but when you don't necessarily have that much in common with someone...
E: Yeah. It's hard to have anything in common with a guy who's a genius quantum mechanic...and I think that was his biggest problem in life, that it was extremely hard to relate to the regular chimps around him.

MC: How did you meet Tom Waits? How did that ever initially come up?
E: There's this thing called the Shortlist Music Prize, and he was a judge on it a few years ago, and he nominated our album, Shootenanny, and that was the first time I had any idea that he was paying attention...the thing that's great about meeting Tom Waits is that he really is Tom Waits. There's no mistaking the entire time you're in his presence who he is. He's exactly who you would expect.
MC: Which, again, exactly what you would expect I'm not entirely sure...
E: Just awesomely Tom Waitsian.

MC: You met Neil Young?
E: Yes.
MC: Did you want to?
E: Of course, yeah. I met him and I got really nervous and the first thing I said to him was "I like your beard."

Pick up Eels' Meet the Eels: Essential Eels 1996-2006, Vol. 1 and Useless Trinkets: B Sides, Soundtracks, Rarities and Unreleased 1996-2007 (2CD+DVD), both released earlier this year.