Singles (compilation)

2004 compilation album

Sources

• SL: Is there anything you wanted to say about the new singles collection?
  • MT: Ah. It’s got twenty-one tracks on it. It started in ’68. There’s a lot of stuff in it and it’s kind of strange to hear it. I characterized it to somebody. I said Dead letters to lost worlds. And so I feel slightly sad when I listen to these tunes because I begin to see them in time in that way. And there’s a certain sense of loss or something like that, but then on the other hand. I think to myself, hmmmm, turn on that record, there’s still a radio. Who knows? It’s never too late. Something could come back and catch the public ear and it could work, so I hold out hope that out of that stuff, some of those singles will catch some ears somewhere and get into the conversation.
• SL: I just heard some of them for the first time. I’ve been playing Yik-Yak constantly.
  • MT: That’s the problem. I mean, I condone the compilation on the grounds that a lot of that stuff is just completely lost. There’s no way that I could make those available as a single or something like that, because there are commercial constraints and it’s pointless to make singles if you can’t distribute them.
• SL: But a lot of these had small distribution?
  • MT: All of them had small distribution. I mean some of them didn’t even get pressed. Some of the things that are on that record were never intended to be singles and therefore I feel vindicated in putting them out. But some of those things never even saw the light of day. So this is the end of the rubric of singles compilations. I can put some songs out there that nobody’s ever had any access to. I hope in the long run that, I mean, I had fantasies, of course, that somebody’s gonna hear this song or that song and then maybe market it all around the world and then there’d be one of those songs off that record that would hit. That they would connect in some way.
• SL: What kind of connection do you want to make?
  • MT: Listen. I’m playing for all the marbles. Should we get a hit? Gimme. Gimme. Gimme.
• SL: So you’re not averse to the idea of a hit.
  • MT: Hell-no. I live for the day. I mean that’s not why I play but I live on the hope that they will do their job.