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Rambo
The most anticipated movie since “Rocky Balboa” opened and is subsequently kicking every other movie’s proverbial ass. Electricity in other theaters are going out in cinemas across the nation because every watt available is used to power just one showing of Rambo. Gene Siskel woke up, saw an advanced screening, dubbed the movie “The Best Movie Ever And The End Of Cinema,” reserved two copies for when it comes out on Blu-Ray, and then died again. (If that offends, don’t see this movie).
It’s about fucking time Hollywood got it right. The American public does not want story, dialogue, acting, angles or anything else historically associated with cinema. We want shit being destroyed! If we can’t (legally) shoot someone with armor-piercing bullets, making appendages fly every which way, tearing flesh with every pull of a trigger, we better damn well be able to see it! For my money, it was the best $10 (damn, movies are expensive now) I’ve ever spent. Ever.
John Rambo, that beloved, distant, shell-shocked Vietnam vet has become a snake catcher in Thailand. There are atrocities being committed like clockwork at some Burmese village which a bunch of missionaries believe they can completely “fix” with the power of Christ. When they ultimately fuck themselves over, a bunch of mercenaries are hired to get these beloved white people back. Rest assured that the decapitation from the trailers/teasers is not even close to the pinnacle of the blood-gushing horror that occurs. Every possible bad thing you Kudos to Sly for being up with the political correctness of the current times, as the mutilation takes an equal opportunity stance, killing and wounding men, women, and children equally (most of the amputated limbs are from kids under 15, actually. Rape is still just on women.)
But is this movie JUST about killing? HELL YES! Mr. Stallone wrote, directed, and starred in this gem, meaning the dialogue is as trite as an episode of Full House, as short and void as the dialogue from Rocky I (every other word by Rambo is predictably “Fuck;” frat boys could make a drinking game out of it), all while being as poorly delivered as a high school production of Death of Salesman. At least that meant Rambo didn’t talk that much. All the supplementary actors, which were only there to illicit response from Stallone, er, Rambo (easy to confuse actors’ egos with their characters’), do the best they can with what they get. Though you can’t polish a turd, they spit shine with the best of their abilities. But the bloodshed that ensues, good god! It’s like walking through the Holocaust museum . . . you know, without all the Zyclon-B and piles of shoes. Guilt and nausea still apply. With horror split evenly between exaggerated firearms and melee/sword style carnage, this could be the most violent movie in recent memory (granted, I fell asleep in Mel Gibson’s latest racist escapade.)
Parents, take your kids to see this film. These are the values we hold dearest here in America, right on a screen so you don’t have to waste time talking to your offspring. “American/Christian values will always prevail, fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here, and least but certainly not last, shoot first and ask later.” God bless Sly.
P.S. I forgot the spoiler alert about all the violence. My bad.
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Tags: Movies, Rambo, Reviews, Sylvester Stallone
Damn, it was hard to pick just one place to be Friday night. There was Justin Jones and the Driving Rain with Junior League at the Rock and Roll Hotel, Benevento Russo Duo opening for Cornelius at the Nightclub 930, and Buffalo Tom with Revival at The Black Cat. I know, I know. Now’s the time to be pissed about not living in 4 dimensions. With all this on the plate, how could you possibly manage to stay at any one place? Alas, you gotta start somewhere, and after falling asleep in my car for an hour on the way to show central, I found myself in the Black Cat face-to-shoe with Revival.
Shame on me for never having been to the Cat before, at least mainstage. I’ll insult no one’s “cool” by describing the D.C. staple, something with which every District local but myself is quite familiar. Revival was playing after Drew O’Doherty (who I missed due to my inability to drive whilst both eyes are closed), and before headliners Buffalo Tom (who I didn’t stay for because 1) I don’t stay for headliners if I’ve never heard of them, on principle; 2) I never watched “My So Called Life,” since I’ve always had a penis, despite rumors). Alright, enough about me.
Revival came on with a full Gypsy Eyes Records posse, including solo artist John Bustine on the rhythm guitar to lead singer Josh Read’s rhythm-er guitar, and Brandon Butler next to Josh Wenk, both on drums. They generally played their songs from “Horses of War,” starting with a drunken stupor called “Anniversary,” which brashly harmonized the vocals of Read, Bustine and keyboardist Betsy Wright to a make a quaint, aching chorus. Duel drums made a swift segway to “Daysbreak,” a happier song that just feels right when heard in a bar, conversations distorting the sound just a bit. More than a concert, it had the feel of just a bunch of guys (and a gal) hanging out making music. No sense of urgency, just good music for a good sized crowd. It felt like home. Possibly the crowd was not ready for this laid-back approach, but overall, those unfamiliar with the band were converted to fans by the end of the set.
Read gave a snarl that would make Billy Idol blush through songs like “King of King’s,” which was the rock-out highlight of the evening. The band was allergic to smiling the entire night, except during the Kris Kristofferson cover “Don’t Cuss That Fiddle,” which set everyone, crowd included, into unabashed glee. Just to show a light attitude to all those patrons who were eyeing their time until Buffalo Tom, they finished off the song superimposing the lyrics with, “I know it sounds silly but I think we fucked up somebody else’s song.” The last song was an epic ballad, with sweat dripping from everyone’s face and Butler smashing the hell out of his cymbals, taking them off and giving them all hell. It was a hell of a way out.
With that, I up and left, hightailed it to Nightclub 930 to try to catch what was left of the Cornelius’ show. I got there with about 40 minutes left in the set, and just from that bit I could deduce it being the best show that has come to 930 club in recent history. People left asking if they could give more money to the band, that $15 was just not enough for what they saw. For those who’ve never heard of Cornelius and his Sensuous Synchronized Show, it is the result of perfect timing between a video projection and a live band. It hardly seems possible how perfectly everything timed up, given the disjunct songs. The Japanese take on rock was on-point, fun to listen to, but ultimately the show was what people came for. When things are impossible to describe, that’s probably when they’re best. DO NOT miss Cornelius the next time he comes around. Put this show above family, religion, everything. Oh, and apparently the Duo was good, too.
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Tags: Cornelius, Revival
Though I’ve heard “love ‘em or hate ‘em” reviews of Ween by critics and real people alike, the only response by a voyeur after a live show has been “FUCKING AWESOME!WOO!!!!” The Wednesday evening show at Constitution Hall will have no shortage of people screaming its praises, but you might have to ask the person saying so how many whip-its they scored from the guy selling them outside. Could have been the build up that left me as unsatisfied as my girlfriend’s libido (and for the same reason), it could have been that weekday concerts never live up to their potential, or it could have just been that I was surrounded with people who’re already so fucked up from whip-its they couldn’t give me directions to get any orange balloons myself. Whatever the culprit, I can’t help but feeling that I got a different Ween than I was promised.
Now, that’s not to say it was all bad, or even half bad. All the songs I wanted to hear, they played. All the songs I didn’t know I wanted to hear but ultimately NEEDED to hear, they played. But it certainly took a while for the performer/audience relationship to become cohesive. A good portion of the crowd showed up late (which I’ll blame on Constitution Hall for their notorious track record of ambiguous show/door times) until they reached full capacity about 20 minutes in, and the band kinda followed suit. Just like a “real” person at their shitty day job who shows up to work on time but spends a half hour dicking around the coffee machine and water cooler, Ween came out of the gates swinging live staples like “Pork Rolls and Cheese” and “Spinal Meningitis,” but did so somehow unenthusiastically. It took until the chorus of “Bananas and Blow” that Ween realized the audience was there in full force, and the band made the proper face-melting adjustments by way of a trademark Dean guitar solo, of which many throughout the night would follow. With an introduction like, “I’m gonna try to sing this song and not vomit” by Gene, “With My Own Bare Hands” was the early climax of the show, rocking each and every sock off in the room. This song was the REAL beginning of the evening.
What followed was a barrage of upbeat and downbeat songs for a solid 2 1/2 hour set totaling some 20-odd tunes. The upbeat one’s were great only because the songs are great themselves, but the lackluster performances of the slower ones showed that it truly was Hump Day. Now I understand the importance of crests and troughs in a concert performance and songs like “Your Party” and “Spirit Walker” add to the contour of the night, but there’s quite a difference between playing a slow song and playing a song bored. “Voodoo Lady’s” mini-lightshow looked great in the huge ceilings of D.A.R. (though, I remain, the venue was never meant for rock shows), and was another of great performances. Gene crooned, lounge-swinger style, to “Take Me Away,” and they busted out their big hit “Ocean Man” and turned the entire place into a great, big, campy 1950’s teen beach party. But once that was over, and it was encore-time, they just kinda came back out. They should have stopped high energy with the ending of the real set as the encore was hardly worth hearing. It was some three songs I don’t know and couldn’t recall if I heard them again. The lighting by this time was getting way overzealous, with obnoxious strobe lights for no reason, and then the band bid farewell. Just like that. No kiss on the cheek, no phone call, nothing. Had they finished the set and not performed this lame encore, the last thing the crowd would hear would be “WEEN!” being shouted for ions, instead of confused patrons dumbfounded asking,”Really…?” Let’s just chalk this one up to venue.
I’m happy to blame basically everything bad that happened on the Constitution Hall, believing that Ween truly is everything we all want them to be, and that this was just a fluke, some performance that got off to a lousy start and never got the kind of momentum Ween is famous for. I’ll definitely go back and see them the next time they come anywhere around the area, but will pray that they pick somewhere that people can dance freely and not have to nitpick about who’s got a better seat. Deep down, we can sleep at night just knowing that Ween rocks, and that everything’s gonna be alright.
Filed under: DC Rockers | 1 Comment
Tags: concert review, WEEN
DJ Craze at Eyecandy – Feb. 14th
The Fort Knox Five have been rocking their new residency at the Eyecandy Sound Lounge at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas. They’ve also brought many special guests to the club including Afrika Bambaata, Killa Kela and now for the second time DJ Craze. The last time Craze was in town, he completely destroyed the place with a barrage of old school funk, party rockers and even Drum & Bass.
So if you are in Vegas on Valentine’s Day – take your special sweetheart out for a spectacular night of music.
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Meet Shortstack!
Making a cover of a song is a very delicate art, and as such, must be approached very carefully. One has to keep authentic what the artist’s main aim was with the song, including style, tone and voicing, but can’t just play the song themselves the exact same way. It has to be different to fit the sound of the band, otherwise what’s the point of playing it? It’s so easy to screw up a cover so bad that you ruin the original. (I can’t listen to The Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes” without thinking, “Why did Fred Durst butcher that!”) Now, an entire album of covers is even trickier. On “The Covers EP,” Shortstack manages not only to make each song their own without shitting on its predecessor, but keeps the entire work relevant.
Such a simple title describes the album so perfectly. “A History of Cut Nails in America” developed their style, persuaded listeners into their ragged, bumpkin world, and “The Covers EP” aims to pay homage to the styles of music they are themselves throwing into a whirlwind. They take traditional pieces, classic rock, and plain weird-rock pieces all the same and turn them into works you’d think they conjured themselves. Take for example “Commotion,” originally performed by Credence Clearwater Revival. CCR’s swampy sprint gets beaten against a step like a dusty rug to fit Shorstack’s country, dirt-rock mileau , morphing in the process John Fogerty’s dipthong to Adrian Carroll’s twangy yelp.
To their credit, these are not typically covered songs. They could have just as easily wallowed though a version of “Oh, Danny Boy” to round out the traditional song slot, and it would have had that much larger of an immediate target than “Pretty Saro,” but what a shallow avenue that would be. The band scoured and landed on the songs which they could do justice, songs that deserve a new vitality, songs that deserve more credit than are readily given. And to take on as ballsy a task as covering Captain Beefheart is a feat, by chutzpah alone, that requires some big props, even if “Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles” is arguably Beefheart’s most famous ditty (thank you The Big Lebowski Soundtrack).
I sat down with Adrian Carroll, the voice of Shortstack, and Burleigh Seaver, the guitarsmith of the group, to see what they had to say about writing music, covers, and generally just how they go to where they are today.
Matt: I wanted to see how Shortstack got its beginning, first of all. The bio you have on your Myspace is kinda…
Adrian Carroll: It’s more of a fictional story, yeah. Well, Scott, the drummer, and I grew up together in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and we played music together when we were in high school. Then we went to college in different places and when college was winding down, we were in touch. I was moving here and Scott wasn’t sure what he was doing, so he decided that he’d come here, too. We played with each other for about a year and a half, and in that year and a half we got into a band with Burleigh. Scott and I started playing music and formed Shortstack, and we played at a house party and our bass player was there. He joined a few months later playing the upright bass. We played as a trio for a while. . . Burleigh and Scott were actually in a rock band. Actually, its kinda convoluted. The bass player from that band joined Shortstack playing steel guitar, and Mike played with us for a few years. And then about two and a half years ago in January of 05, Burleigh replaced Mike on steel guitar. So that’s pretty much the way it started. I was working for this publishing company and I had to read music periodicals all day and I read about a guy named Merle Travis. I found him really interesting and I was getting kinda bored with what I knew about how to play the guitar at the time, so I did some research on Merle Travis and got some records. I was really taken in by that sort of style of playing. Very few people play with a thumbpick, you know, with a classic thumbpick. It’s kinda like that Chet Atkins style. Chet Atkins heard Myrle Travis play when he was a kid and kinda expanded on it.
M: Like Travis-picking.
AC: Yeah, exactly, that’s where it comes from. So, I just got really into that and studying that style. But I didn’t want to play music just like that. I was also into other kinda stuff. I was getting into The Cramps and things like that. Also, into John Lee Hooker and kinda combining the two, combining some elements of all those things. And that’s kinda how it started. Then, it just expanded. Adding the steel guitar was . . . it sounded one way as a trio, but adding the steel guitar was the really interesting texture, especially cause Mike wasn’t really academic with the way he approached playing steel guitar. He played it more like a regular guitar. He played a lot more multiple string chords instead of in like old country radio where they play kinda like two-note lines. But he played it more like . . .
Burleigh Seaver: He played more like a punk rock guitarist.
AC: Yeah, and Burleigh has a different style with it. Actually, we had songs written when Mike played with us that Burleigh learned and recorded, and after Mike left, a lot of the stuff we started writing has just two electric guitars on it, no steel guitar. I honestly at first, I was like, “Wait a minute, Shortstack has a guitar, a steel guitar, an upright bass and a drumkit.” But its been really neat. It opens up a whole new set of soundscape. Burleigh actually learned a whole album’s worth of songs in about three weeks. When we went out and bought a steel guitar. . . actually, he bought a steel guitar; I watched him buy it. And in three and a half weeks he learned our songs and we went to Tucson to record an album.
M: That’s the “History of Cut Nails in America?”
AC: Yeah.
M: How would you describe your music to someone who’s never heard it before.
BS: I usually tell people it’s like early rock and roll but more echo-y, and a little weirder. It’s got some elements of rockabilly and stuff like that, but I think our newer stuff is getting away from that a little bit. Older stuff is definitely a little more country. I think the newer stuff is more, hopefully more unique in a way. It’s less firmly rooted in where, Adrian was saying, it came from, “Hey, I really like Merle Travis. Let’s play some songs like that.” It’s still got all of that in it, but now I think it’s less doing something like The Cramps or Merle Travis and more hopefully varied. It’s only taken, what, like seven years to kinda come around to that point *laughs*. But it’s sorta where we’re at.
M: So, you’re getting into Merle Travis and The Cramps wasn’t really rooted in where you first started getting into music?
AC: Like, back in high school? No, I never would have thought I’d like anything country at all. But like a lot of people who play guitar, I was interested in the blues when I was younger, but I always kinda knew that it all kinda sounded a little cheesy to me. Like B.B. King. . . Like Stevie Ray Vaughan is a great guitar player, but a lot of that stuff is just . . . it’s just so boring, and when you go back and listen to it, it’s like a five minute guitar solo . . .
BS: It’s like Eric Clapton couldn’t be more boring. *Laughs*
AC: *Laughs* I mean, a lot of country music, what’s so cool in my mind is that, even top 40 country from the 50’s and 60’s, they’re really set structures, they’re tightly organized and arranged songs, but the sort of instrumentation, I’d say it’s more harmonically interesting to me than blues. A lot of blues is just like, you got three chords, and it always has those three chords, and the guy’s always playing like the same scale.
BS: Same lyrics. You know? It’s like, “That song again.”
M: Why do an album of covers? Was this more of an ode to the range of influences, because it is all over the board in terms of genre, or is it more of just songs that you liked specifically and that you thought you could do justice?
BS: It’s kinda both. We definitely are influenced by many different things besides early country music and rock and roll.
AC: I barely listen to country music these days.
BS: Yeah. I think for many years, people thought of us as “that country band.” You know, “that band that would play at Black Cat, but was like country or rockabilly,” and we kinda wanted to do something that would show the broader range of our influences and show more of the direction that the sounds we’re making now came from. Incorporate a broader range of things. So, it’s not really a break from what we did before. We wanted to do something that showed where we’re at now, while at the same time sounding like our older stuff a little bit. I dunno, have you heard the EP at all?
M: Definitely, I’ve been listening to it all week, actually. But I wondered why you made it an EP instead of an album?
AC: Really, just time. *Laughs*
BS: We kinda cooked up the idea while we were on tour, and we all got really into it. It’s an enormous amount of work to get even one song together. At least the way we work, you know, get it structured and thought out and recorded and produced and all that, particularly because our drummer lives in New York, so we have a small window of time every now and again that actually works as a whole band. The three of us that are down here play a couple times a week usually. We’ll write stuff and think, “Does that sound lame? I can’t tell,” you know? And then Scott will show up and play something rockin and we’ll be like, “Ah, that sounds great!” So that’s definitely a factor. We kinda wanted to do this thing but also continue working on the music that we were writing. We didn’t want it to be like a blip, but we wanted to do it kinda in passing, and kinda move on to the stuff we’re writing.
AC: We’d had this idea of doing this since our records label was like, “Hey, is there anything that we could kinda put out kinda soon.” We planned on doing The History of Cut Nails and another album, which we will do. . .
M: So there is another full length album in the works?
AC: Yeah, it’s about 60% composed.
BS: I’m hoping it comes out in the fall. I don’t know if we’ve talked about this, but I think I was in the shower the other day and I thought, “I’d like to have a new record released in the fall.” *Laughs* That would be great.
M: Were there any songs that didn’t make the EP that you wanted to do covers of?
AC: We had a long list of songs. I don’t know how we decided on songs and there was no blood spilled. We had some cool ones: “Just One More Day” by Otis Redding. We were trying to put a broad scope and narrow it down.
BS: We like the idea of taking songs that were very different from what we normally do and then somehow learning them through the filter of our band and having it come out sort of the same but a little different. We’ve always played a lot of covers just cause it’s an interesting way that we found to take a song that you know already is good. Like there’s two elements of getting a song together: there’s actually writing a song and then arranging a song, figuring out who’s gonna play what and how many times they’re gonna play a part. And it’s always been an interesting exercise for us to take a song that we know is great, so you don’t have to worry about that part of it, and then you can spend your time practicing how to arrange it. So it’s been a good exercise for us over the years, and they’re fun to do. Yeah, there was a Stevie Wonder song, “I Wish,” that I thought we might do which is completely unlike anything we do. I always wanted to do “These Arms of Mine” by Otis Redding. Some of them we just had a really hard time imagining how that would happen, so we nixed some for that reason. Scott wanted to do a Depeche Mode song. And while I wasn’t opposed to doing a Depeche Mode song like out of hand, we sort of started thinking about why we were doing this. I was like, “You know what? I can confidently say that I’ve never been influenced at all by Depeche Mode, so I don’t think it really fits with what I’m going for here.” *Laughs*
AC: What turned out was a pretty fair balance of what people wanted. Burleigh always liked the song “Commotion.” He’d always play it when we were goofing around.
BS: Mike was really into the Captain Beefheart song “Her Eyes are a Blue Million Miles”.
M: The only reason I know Captain Beefheart was from The Big Lebowski Soundtrack, which they had that song.
BS: *Laughs* Yeah, I watched that movie a bunch of times and didn’t even know it was on there.
AC: That’s my favorite Beefheart album, with that song on there. It’s an album called Clear Spot. If you’ve never heard it, you should check it out. That and Safe as Milk are like more listenable Beefheart albums.
BS: He’s got some really out there shit. It’s interesting, but it’s not as fun to listen to.
M: It’s interesting that you did “Commotion” by CCR which is kinda unknown, and then some songs that might not be as well known, like The Kinks song, and The Pupils song.
AC: The Kinks song is in Rushmore, actually. When Bill Murray is climbing up the ladder of the high dive.
BS: *Laughs* Yeah, we realized some of these songs are in movies after the fact, and thought, “Yeah, I wonder if anyone’s gonna ask me about that.” *Laughs* But “Pretty Saro,” the traditional song that Adrian picked up sorta played for us, and we thought was cool. It’s not a song that I knew but it’s definitely something that I’d be into. So I thought we’d take a pretty diverse list. And we didn’t kill each other over it.
M: What are your thoughts on how the internet has transformed music as a art and a business?
AC: I think overwhelmingly negatively. That’s my personal opinion. It might be kinda crotchety. Have you read the Bob Dylan Chronicals? He talks about when he was starting out, he was really interested in folk music, and finding folk music at the time was incredibly difficult. Like finding a LeadBelly 45 or an Odetta 45 or like a Woody Guthrie 45 was like finding gold, so whenever somebody had one, everyone would go over and listen to it. And I imagine that people just turned this 45 over and over and sat around listening to the same few songs for hours, so you really absorbed it and you actually knew the names of the songs. Everything is just so hypersaturated now, everyone’s got an Ipod with 50,000 songs and another 50 million songs at the touch of a button on the computer. And there’s 50 million bands on Myspace who would write you and ask you to play shows or tell you how good their latest song is. I think it’s taken away a kind of social element. Music, like the Bob Dylan example, would bring people together. You could argue that the internet brings people together, but I don’t think it’s genuine in a way, like personal contact. You know, that contact, too, is part of how music is transmitted and passed. Again, the same thing could be said about the internet, I guess. You know, “I heard 10,000 bands today on the internet and they all inspired me.” There’s something with the hypersaturation.
BS: There’s sort of no filter anymore. Not saying that a filter is necessarily good before, because it’s not necessarily good that you couldn’t find a LeadBelly record; I think it’s bad in many ways. It’s not to say it hasn’t opened up new things. When I consume things, when I buy records I still like to go to the record store and buy records, or CD’s as it were. There’s just something about that that I enjoy. Does that mean I’m old? *Laughs* I mean, I bought the new Radiohead record online.
AC: It’s definitely democratized the music world. And also advancements in recording technology. People can do a lot of stuff at home and you don’t have to pay some studio thousands of dollars. So there’s a democratizing element to it, and also the day of record labels is kinda becoming irrelevant. The roles they played before are becoming obsolete.
BS: We’ve certainly benefitted from it. The tour we did on the West coast, like a lot of the shows, though finding bands on Myspace, through connecting with bands in other cities that seemed similar to us that we could check out ahead of time and write to them. You can just find them in the first place. I remember we were playing with bands like 10 years ago, trying to book a tour. I can’t believe anybody did that, thinking back on it. You’d send tapes to clubs that you wanted to play at and cold call and just hope that they would give you a show, and hope that they would book you with a band that made sense, instead of like a Kiss tribute band. It’s kinda amazing, the crazy ass shows over the years just because bookers were like, “Okay, I have these three bands from different parts of the country that all happen to be here on the same day and they don’t make sense at all, but I need a show so we’ll put them all together.” And then hope somebody shows up. Now you can sorta pre-plan your own tour and then have a network to tap into in these cities that you may have never been to before and make something work.
AC: A lot of the networking stuff, there is a positive side of that, but in terms of the actual listening part . . . We live in a culture that’s just so fast-paced. People are not able to focus the same way they could in the past.
M: Do you think music on whole is suffering on whole because of it?
AC: I guess, it’s hard to say. No, not necessarily. I still hear music that I like. Seems like there’s more of it in a way. More people are playing music and playing in bands.
BS: People always make fun of the music that’s in the top 40 now, how ridiculous it is, Brittney Spears or whatever. Honestly, I don’t think it’s any worse than top 40 music 20 years ago. I mean, it’s the same types of hit-maker song-writers writing the same kind of songs which is what people want. I think what the difference is that songs from 20 years ago, you’ve been hearing for 20 years and so they seem classic in some sense where as new songs don’t. But I agree with Adrian, it does seem like there’s a lot more going on, or at least you’re aware of more that’s going on.
M: So what are you guys listening to these days?
AC: I don’t listen to much new music at all. I like Spoon a lot, they’re a great band. We played some shows with Ted Leo, and he’s one of the most amazing performers you’ll ever see. Who else? Oh, I like the Feist album that came out. I like Cat Power a lot. Speaking of an artist who covers other people. I thought her “Greatest” album was really good. I’m trying to think of who else contemporary . . . We played with a band in L.A., they’re called Jail Wedding.
BS: I like the new Radiohead record.
AC: What else? The Dan Higgs album. He’s done a lot of interesting stuff. He’s the singer of Lungfish.
BS: Yeah, his stuff is really crazy but awesome. Like awesomely-focused craziness. It’s like he’s got this singular vision for what he’s doing and somehow makes this insane music that has a point, it’s not just drifting everywhere. That I really dig.
M: What does the band hope to accomplish? What is the end game?
AC: I don’t know if we’re gonna turn this into a job. Like, it’s easy to live and have this attitude, and I think it’s a negative attitude of, “Well, just around the corner this thing was gonna happen and that will be really cool.” You can live your life that way, and it’s not the way you wanna live your life. We’re trying to stay focused on making music that we like. Over the years, I’ve come to learn more to appreciate how special performing for other people is. I love listening to records and zoning out at home, but at the end of the day, the really special thing is playing for other people. It’s a unique moment. It’s a unique group of people that will be together, and it’s a real interaction between human beings that can’t all be described in words. When you go to a show that really affects you and moves you, to me, those are the things that really make life worth living, that brings real meaning. That could be putting a big grandois spin on it, but there are times that you get to play that it does feel that way. It’s more than a financial or commercial aspect. I mean, the commercial aspect will enable you to continue doing that type of thing. Otherwise, you’re playing to an empty room.
M: Has the music that you loved growing up effected the way you write songs now?
AC: I think there’s a certain aesthetic. There’s a certain underground ethos that things aren’t as overproduced or commercial sounding. A certain appreciation for things sounding a little, an element of avant garde in it; I don’t know if that’s the right word. Recently, I was listening to some old mix tapes I had in high school, older indie music from the 1990’s. I don’t even know who was on there . . . Sebadoh or whatever. You listen back to that, or like old Dinosaur, Jr., and a lot of the stuff by today’s recording standards is terrible but that was kinda the aesthetic that they had, sorta rough around the edges. I think it’s a nice thing to keep in mind. That’s what distinguishes us a lot of times, or people who are making music, like Sheryl Crow, is that it doesn’t always sound totally perfect, and that’s kinda what makes it unique.
M: I was curious about the artwork. What is the with the aggressiveness of the Covers EP pictures?
BS: Scott is a freelance graphic designer, lives in New York and works at home and listens to NPR all day *laughs*. He does all kinds of crazy stuff, like Lego did this whole series of transforming robots and he helped design the tag for that. He does a bunch of web stuff, a lot of crazy different things. He does a lot of backgrounds for like animation. So he won’t draw the main characters but he’ll draw the background going by. The Covers EP specifically was inspired by an artist named Walton Ford. Who is a current painter, who draws these giant paintings in a sort of naturalist way, like autobon style. It’s sort of Scotts take on that guy’s work, cause he draws in these giant, naturalist themes of animals but there’s always something kinda wrong in it. There’s always something wrong in his work and my take on looking at Walton Ford stuff is that it has something to do with the intrusion of man on nature. Scott saw a show of his work in a museum in Brooklyn and really liked it. I think the artwork came out a little more aggressive than I thought it would. Particularly having the dogs on the cover.
AC: My mother was scared. *Laughs*
BS: *Laughs* Yeah, it’s definitely weird. But what I like about it is that, if you sort of ignore the aggressiveness of it for a second, I think it sort of reflects the idea oftaking something and changing it a little bit, transmuting something from what it was to something new. It sort of fits the idea of the music and The Covers EP in a very abstract way.
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DC Rockers Live!
Whatsup, whatsup? Welcome to the blog here, thanks for stopping by. The birth of a blog is a beautiful thing, placenta dripping all over the place, babies giggling, off in the distance a musician gets his guitar strings. Alright, that’s all just lame, but thanks for stopping by, for real. We’ll be putting some good stuff up here regularly about what’s going on in the area, music wise, as well as virtually anything we feel like talking about at any specific moment in time. That’s what a blog is, ya? If you like what you read, come back. If you don’t, well, still come back. Happy groovin!
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