Magnificent storytelling and soul-staining southern rock will reel you through The Dirty South (New West), Drive-By Truckers’ intelligent, rebel roused ode to the mythological South. On tracks like “The Day John Henry Died,” “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac” and “The Buford Stick (The Legend of Sheriff Buford Pusser),” Drive-By Truckers scrape grit off prized local legends, exposing a southernly code of conduct that is possibly outdated…possibly not?
“I love modern day mythology,” says Drive-By Trucker's, Patterson Hood. “The old days brought tales of John Henry and Staggalee, folks no doubt loosely inspired by real life folks, but told through the years with all of the baggage and exaggeration that people add to tales as they pass them down the line from generation to generation. Now-a-days it is all sped up by movies, TV, tabloids and now the Internet. John Wayne, Patty Hurst, John Wayne Gacy, and the like, all compete for our collective consciousness. In the South there has been Bear Bryant, Wallace, Buford Pusser, and Jimmy Carter, who have all become larger than life figures in southern culture, or perhaps represent the South in American culture. As an artist, I have long been drawn to the various sociological aspects of icons and in recent years have made a couple of albums talking about the ones associated with the South and how they have shaped peoples views of this region. I'm also interested in how they have shaped southerners views of themselves.”
Drive-By Truckers looked to folklore surrounding their own Muscle Shoals, Alabama hometown for inspiration. So The Dirty South transports you, Greyhound bus-style, to a county the band describes in it's liner notes like this: “It’s a tough place to make a living. But we ain’t complainin,’ just doing what we got to do. Trying to raise our kids and love our women. Do right by the ones we love. But don’t fuck with us or we’ll cut off your head and throw your body over a spillway at the Wilson Dam.”
But Muscle Shoals’ criminal survival instinct isn't unique. A fact Hood nods to with “Puttin’ People On The Moon.”
“‘Puttin’ People On The Moon’ was written about the economic woes of my home region,” says Hood, “But it could easily have been set in any number of downsized and out-sourced industrial towns in our country. Likewise, this story is largely set in the past, but it hasn't gotten any better in many towns.”
Addressing universal doldrums with beneath-the-Mason-Dixon-line-reasoning is a Drive-By Truckers specialty. The band blares seedy rock about homeland characters, like the guy running numbers because he’s out of work. Mary Alice dying of cancer with no medical insurance. And Daddy gambling on a stump in the woods hoping to change fates’ fortune. Great anthems include “Never Gonna Change,” where the Truckers hail, “We ain’t never gonna change/So shut your mouth and play along,” and “Boys From Alabama.” Other standout tunes include, “Danko/Manuel,” with its heartbreaking refrain, “I ain’t living like I should,” and “Goddamn Lonely Love,” where Hood sings, “So I’ll take two of what you’re having and I’ll take all of what you got/To kill this goddamn lonely, goddamn lonely love.”
Hood is particularly proud of “The Sands Of Iwo Jima,” written about his 84-year-old Great-Uncle who saw terrible things fighting at Iwo Jima, yet somehow came home this amazing person.
“I have spent thousands of hours writing about all of these folks who have screwed up and done some terrible things and I wanted to write about somebody wonderful,” says Hood.
Celebrate the New Year with The Drive-By Truckers at Bowery Ballroom on Dec 31 and Jan 1.
Left in the wrong hands, lingering lyrical phrases risk sounding like an 18-wheeler without any brakes, but Conor Oberst, the creative force that is Bright Eyes, proves to be a storyteller who can handle them.
The growing phenomena surrounding the 25-year-old indie kid who shields his heart only with the guitar pressed against his chest, is testament to the effects of his profound word-craft. Oberst released two albums simultaneously this year on his own Saddle Creek label, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash In A Digital Urn, which resulted in tracks from each, “Lua” and “Take it Easy (Love Nothing) to debut at #1 and #2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles Sales Chart.
No doubt the “Vote for Change Tour” last year which thrust the Omaha troubadour’s wiry presence before the masses alongside Bruce Springsteen and REM helped to build career momentum. But what’s earned Oberst comparisons to Bob Dylan and secured his credibility is a body of prolific work, now six albums strong, bursting with evocative poetry.
On I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, Oberst holds close to his acoustic roots, but on the electrified Digital Ash In A Digital Urn he alters his dreamy quality to uncover a different shade of sensitivity. Lyrical prowess remains stronger than ever on both efforts.
In “Ship In a Bottle” from Digital Ash Oberst sings of jamming impossibility into probability: “Don’t you love what is intangible/I have built this ship in a wine bottle.” On I’m Wide Awake, “Lua” is a highlight with its simple moonlight strumming and vulnerable seconds: “I can tell you have a heavy heart/I can feel it when we kiss/So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out/ Trying to lift it,” or “If you promise to stay conscious/I will try to do the same/We might die from medication/But we sure killed all the pain/What was normal in the evening/By the morning seems insane.” “Road To Joy” offers a driving twist on Beethoven’s hymn celebrating the brotherhood of man “Ode to Joy,” climaxing in the cry: “No one ever plans to sleep out in the gutter/Sometime’s that’s just the most comfortable place.” And “First Day Of My Life” is quintessential Bright Eyes because while Oberst’s brooding browns may at first glance stamp him with a cheerless aura, he remains a hopeful and earnest interpreter of moments, which lifts his music away from sullen to someplace, well “bright.”
The Aquarian Weekly talks to Conor Oberst.
AW: You’ve turned out so much material in a relatively short time, two albums just this year. Do songs come easily to you, in that you need to write because it's more like your lifeline. Or do you work at it?
Conor Oberst: I’ve never found a good routine way to write. A lot of people will say, “I like to play with my guitar for a certain amount of hours a day” and “I spend this amount of time at a keyboard or with a notebook,” but to me it easily starts just with the vocal melody and maybe a couple lines or lyrics and then it’s more a matter of singing it to myself in my head and living with it. It’s easier to write on the go in different places. Eventually I’ll sit down and play guitar and figure out what key I’m singing it in or come up with the chord progressions to go underneath it, but for the most part it’s just a melody. Once I have the melody and can remember it, then I can work on the lyrics over the course of weeks or months or however long I’m daydreaming about the song.
AW: Why release two albums simultaneously?
Oberst: We made the two records more or less back to back. We did the folk record first and it was a really short process by our standards, just a couple of weeks recording a lot of it live. Those were the songs that I had sitting around for a while that had been written over the course of a couple years. Then there were a bunch of these other ideas and these half-finished things that I was working on and Mike Mogis, who’s sort of the other guy in the band, had musical ideas so I guess we were really excited and wanted to work on the Digital Ash record…By the time Digital Ash was almost done it was really apparent they were two different records and in my mind it made a lot of sense just to put them out at the same time.
AW: How do you view the differences between the two?
Oberst: Obviously there are parts of them that overlap as far as what I’m singing about because some of them were conceived roughly around the same time of my life. I think to me, Wide Awake is not necessarily a hopeful record, but more of a rallying, take responsibility for the world around you kind of thing. Be aware and be as present when things happen as you can. It’s just the idea of really stepping forward and embracing everything around you. Digital Ash is a little more dark, more just fearing death and how that pollutes everything.
AW: When did you first discover you had a way with words?
Oberst: I guess I was always drawn to it. I didn’t know how good I was at it. Even before writing songs, I can remember being real young, like eight or nine-years-old and writing little poems or stories or whatever. It’s just something I gravitated to. So once I started playing guitar it was almost an immediate thing. A lot of people concentrate on the music aspect of it, which I will say now I wish I would have been more the type of kid that was sitting in the basement practicing guitar scales. That would be kind of helpful at this point (laughs). At the time it wasn’t what I was in to. It was more like, “Okay I have two chords, so I’m going to make a song with these two chords with all these things I wanted to say.” The early songs that I was writing are similar to now in the sense of just writing about what was on my mind and my life. Granted when I first started doing it I was like twelve years old…
AW: What was one of your earliest songs?
Oberst: There was a song called “Space Invaders” kind of about the video game. It was some comparison between trying to keep the spaceships from blowing up your little satellites and it was about keeping whatever adversity I felt in my life away from me. Your frame of reference is definitely a little different at that point (laughs).
AW: How have you developed artistically from your last album?
Oberst: I guess more from a writing standpoint I value subtlety a lot more these days. I think there’s something nice when you can capture the in-between feelings. It’s easy to articulate those moments of crisis or those moments of pure overwhelming joy or love. Those are sometimes easier to write about and sing about. I think there are so many gray areas and so many endless combinations of human emotion and thought, being a person that’s alive and willing to reflect on life. I think that’s what’s intriguing to me still, to find those in-between moments and try to articulate those.
AW: As your career grows, what is one of the personal benefits?
Oberst: Definitely I’d say the main one is freedom to create. Before, there were always boundaries. Say there might be some piece of equipment we want to get. Before it was like, “Oh, that’s way too much money.” Now if we want to try something we’ll do it and that can come down to money or time or somewhere we want to travel. That’s just great to be able to let the music or the inspiration dictate what you do and where you go and not all the logistical things. Same with live performance. We’re traveling on this tour with a seven-piece band and a concert harp and a pretty elaborate set up as far as instruments. It’s just great to be able to do that and not have to think about cutting corners or how are we going to pull this or that off. Definitely also the chance to meet people. Just to be able to meet people who have helped shape my musical experience throughout my life and get brief insight from someone like Neil Young or Bruce Springsteen or these types of people. It’s like wow, such a privilege and you feel so fortunate.
AW: How much of yourself do you think you’re overtly revealing in your music and how much is gathered from your views of the world at large?
Oberst: I think that’s definitely changed over the years. At first I wasn’t really crafty enough to disguise my life, so I think some of the earlier recordings are really definitely overtly me. But I always felt the idea of writing a song was to convey some feeling or meaning that’s the point of the song or its essence. In order to get to that I think it’s fair enough to use any means necessary, whether it’s a friend’s story or something you read in a book or saw in a movie or a conversation you had or an observation you felt relating to something outside. I think the whole process of creating it is absorbing everything that you take in throughout the day or throughout your life. It all kind of mixes up inside you and comes out in this way that you don’t even, I mean I don’t have control over. At points I don’t even know what aspects of it are about me or about something else. Sometimes there will be a specific line that if you did know me or were privy to a certain situation you’d know what I’m talking about, but another thing I tend to value these days is to be able to write things that are universal that everyone can make their own. I think it’s a higher form of art when you can do that. I’ve been working on that. I still don’t think I’ve got where I would like to be as far as that goes.
AW: Is there a song that’s a favorite to play live right now?
Oberst: Yeah. On this tour we’re playing some old songs and it’s been fun to go back and remember some things from when I was writing them, but I always seem to enjoy playing the new songs the most on any given tour. We have new song called “Napoleon’s Hat” that I really like to play on this tour. It just has a tone to it where it seems a little dark and minor for a while, but then it kind of blossoms. The sun comes out from around the cloud and it twists into a nicer sound by the end. I always like that evolution from the start of a song, where people are like, “Wow this is a true downer” and then by the end it’s not.
Bright Eyes performs at Loews Theatre, Jersey City, NJ on 11/25 & 26.
If a pack of gypsies known as Gogol Bordello pass through your town beware. It means Cultural Revolution is in the air; at least that’s what the band hopes its music, inspired by Ukrainian Gypsy culture, will provoke. And if you find upon listening to the band’s new album, GYPSY PUNKS: Underdog World Strike, (SideOneDummy), you have to forcibly restrain yourself from building a huge fire and leaping over it with a bottle of whatever gypsies drink on a night out, then they’ve succeeded.
Singer/lyricist visionary Eugene Hutz explains that gypsy’s have a savage way of making music, coming from a culture where song is the only means of survival and that like reggae, it was created by poor people who have nothing but music. Experiencing sounds on those terms, Hutz and his collective of Gogol musicians that includes Sergey Rjabtzev (violin, vocals), Oren Kaplan (guitar, vocals), Eliot Ferguson (drums), Yuri Lemeshev (accordion), and Rea Mochiach (bass) continue their crusade to build a bridge between Gypsy music, rock’n’roll and other brands of rebel music from Flamenco to the perestroika punk that blossomed in Eastern Europe during the mid-‘80s.
“I’m naturally attracted to these forms of music because of their authenticity,” says Hutz. “In the West, music became more like a luxury thing. The reasons for making music became more hobby-like. That’s why it’s so un-effective and generally shallow. Gypsy music and reggae and punk come from very particular social settings and that is why their sound and their ideological backbone is so strong and in our own way, our music is authentic not because it is so gypsy or so punk or because I’m from Ukraine or anything like that or Oren is from Israel. It’s authentic because we present our own vision of global culture. We are qualified for that. We lived in many different parts of the world and we do have the comparative characteristic of all of that and we deliver what we feel. We’re not presenting words that have no life experience behind it. It’s really a product of the lifestyle.”
That existence included Kiev-born Hutz’s seven-year trek through Eastern Europe refugee camps to escape the Chernobyl meltdown of 1986, an experience that directly impacted the detailed life imagery and music on the new record, which Gogol Bordello delivers in it’s traditional bedlam atmosphere live.
Stand-out songs on the new album include the humorous “Start Wearing Purple,” an emphatic plea to a woman to lose her charms, wit and beauty, presumably playing on the Russian gypsy adage of ‘if you wear purple you lose your charm,’ “Think locally, Fuck Globally,” with a drum solo played by Hutz on an overturned fire bucket, “Undestructable,” with its hope-hearted rally cry from the masses, “Sally,” the band’s calling card, and “Dogs Were Barking,” with references to the corner of Broadway and Canal streets in New York where Hutz DJs at Bulgarian Bar.
“That’s where basically the center for the whole gypsy punk scene,” says Hutz of Bulgarian Bar. “I’ve been deejaying the party for five years. Now there’s new DJs as well that have developed this tradition in their own way.”
And the scene is picking up momentum.
“The gypsy punk is our own biographical vision of the music, but its amazing there are so many kids that are coming out of the woodwork and getting with this movement,” says Hutz. “There are several others of these bands. Hungry March Band is great and Kultur Shock. Even though they may be simply infatuated with the gypsy culture, the fact that they identify with the spirit is already more of an affirmation of a new rebel voice. It’s already a sign that they’re not buying into manufactured pre-made, so-called rebel bands playing Warped Tour and shit like that. We’re definitely not part of the army of boy bands. [Being on Warped Tour] was more like overthrowing their status quo and seizing thousands of new fans. I think it’s great that so many kids in this country who come for shows are getting into music that we’re propagandizing. It’s essentially a foreign spirit, a foreign cloud that travels on the territory and it obviously reflects their starvation for authenticity.”
Part of Gogol Bordello’s new audience includes Hollywood, with tracks featured prominently in the recent Liev Schreiber movie "Everything Is Illuminated," where Hutz also appeared alongside Elijah Wood.
“I have been offered roles for films before,” says Hutz. “It’s just that I was pursuing always music because that’s my most instinctual passion and I guess I knew it was going to come to acting at one point or another I just was waiting for a good role where I felt like I could put my heart and soul into it… There was much room for creativity and much room for trying out different thing and also learning things I can bring back to Gogol Bordello…I came out of this movie with great friends. When you’ve been working on something so hard, with so much dedication and going through certain struggles and come out with a bond after it—that’s the magic. I think it also speaks in the movie. I think you can see a lot of love and innovative creativity went into that movie. Liev let me do my own thing in a lot of ways and sometimes he would of course try to manipulate me (laughs), but that’s only what directors are supposed to do. Out of all of that the whole process was done in such a good will, it was only about, ‘Let me try it this way because I think this is going to be much better kind of style.’”
Currently Hutz is most excited about Gogol Bordellos’ upcoming appearance at New York Gypsyfest on November 6 at The Roxy where the band will be joined by two of Hutz’s heroes, world-famous clarinetist Ivo Papasov and saxophonist Yuri Yunakov.
“Seeing Yuri play is like solar energy. I could literally go for six months alone on that. Absolutely those guys are heroes for me and I was lucky enough to become friends and collaborators with them, which is something that happened with several other of my favorite gypsy musicians who are worldwide known legends. It is something that is so refreshing from dealing with rock n’ roll musicians where the germ of narcissism and rock stardom no matter what you do still gets in the way…Those guys are essentially heroes to me because they remain so humane. Gypsy culture is distinguished for its love of freedom and void of status quo.”
“Back in the 70’s in Bulgaria, there was this government policy of eliminating foreign elements from the culture,” continues Hutz. “What Yuri and Ivo used to do was mix up Arabic and Turkish and gypsy with Slovac and that was considered to be basically anti-government activity. So Yuri went to jail and was working during the day digging fucking pavements with a sledgehammer in downtown--enforced manual labor work. People would walk around, ‘What the fuck. Is this Yuri?’”…They did incredibly unorthodox things in their day and they also see that what we do with gypsy music is unorthodox as well. It’s a reincarnation of the rebel spirit. Every generation has to basically invent a voice for itself…Gogol Bordello is not just a band, it’s more of a culture. You can see the way it grows. It goes beyond definition of the band. It goes much farther. There are so many creative collaborators of people that are not necessarily professional artists or anything like that, that satellite with us. It’s getting hard to count who’s in the band and who’s not (laughs).”
Maybe the Brian Jonestown Massacre's lunacy onstage Sunday at the Bowery Ballroom can be blamed on the night's full moon? Or perhaps band founder Antone Newcombe's hostility toward band, crew and audience alike was the result of having his beloved guitar stolen the eve before? More likely, there was no reason for the chaotic sold-out spectacle other than it was just an ordinary day in the life of the band's madcap musical visionary.
During lengthy lulls blamed on tuning problems, Newcombe took the opportunity to challenge the sincerity of those in attendance. Without provocation, Newcombe called out, "I will fight all of you." He yelled, "Your love sucks" at one well-wisher and called another fan "a dark little demon," saying, "My God will fucking kill you." He also threatened to wait another 20 minutes if anyone threw anything at the stage.
Then the band's lashing came, which explains why the group has had about 60 players course through its lineup over the years. This incarnation of the band, which included returning original member Ricky Maymi (guitar), Frankie Teardrop (guitar), Collin Hegna (bass) and Dan Allaire (drums), appeared unusually tolerant -- particularly Teardrop, who was asked to leave the stage and then ordered to return.
"I don't understand why you give me the worst amp," Newcombe said to Teardrop. "Is your guitar in tune? Give me your guitar. Why don't you ask your girlfriend's dad to fly you home?"
Dysfunction finally subsided long enough for the full band to strike a song, an extended jam of "Hide and Seek," where Newcombe's disturbingly peaceful guitar style and hazy vocals reminded everyone why they were still there. Next was "Nevertheless," where the band hit its stride, with all three guitarists playing essentially the same parts cooperatively through the same amps, with reverb on 10.
The rest of the set teetered between wonderfully impulsive, twangy guitars with a futuristic spin and temperamental sanity from bare-chested circus-master Newcombe. By the third song, "Swallow Tail," Newcombe had cautioned the audience, "I had a bad day, and I don't want your bullshit." By the fourth, "Nailing Honey to the Bee," Newcombe reminded the audience that he had a hard day but declared he was ready to play again.
And by the fifth tune, "Wherever You Are," finally the first sensible words were uttered by Maymi, who leaned to tune his guitar and said to the front row, "It's like a rock concert in the Twilight Zone."
When a band that traditionally carries headlining festival slots back home in Ireland is bottled inside a more intimate setting, such as New York's Irving Plaza, the overflowing energy is bound to spill everywhere. And it did Sunday when The Frames, soaked with gentle sorrow and gut-growling dynamics, performed for a sold-out audience.
As adept at creating ale-house chumminess as they were navigating the stage, journeymen Glen Hansard (lead vocals/guitar), Colm MacConlomaire (fiddle), Joseph Doyle (bass/backing vocals), Robert Bochnik (guitar) and Johnny Boyle (drums) opened with "Keepsake" from the new album, "Burn the Maps." During the song, MacConlomaire's electric violin sensitively colored the quiet between Hansard's stirrings, and an odd-metered musical intensity built before the band dropped back into a mellow lull, an ebb and flow of feeling that was standard for the night. The Frames kicked up the show with a one-two punch of "Dream Awake" leading into "Finally," Hansard's Irish brogue coddling his pleas of "I want this so much.
Hansard's belief that people come to gigs to experience a moment pushed him to share transcendent ones. Inviting a sing-along in "Lay Me Down," he silenced all instruments to make room for fans to take over vocals as he grinned with satisfaction. Storytelling also personalized the performance. Hansard prefaced "What Happens When the Heart Just Stops" with a monologue about heartbreak that was so long it became humorous.
During "Fake," he pulled up his collar and swiveled his hips in a classic Elvis move as he pouted the line "You were always on my mind" with a snicker midsong.
Most effective, however, was the band's instinct for what the collective room needed at any moment, and they weren't too precious about their songs to miss the cues. When the line "I want my life to make more sense" came along in "Pavement Tune," Hansard and band followed the crowd's inclination to echo chants between chilly violin wallows.
"We can't tell you what it means to us to sell out a New York gig," Hansard said. "It's really important. The idea of playing Irving Plaza a couple of years ago was just a stupid idea, but now it makes sense."
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Kings of Leon already have been hailed inthe U.K. There, mane-tossing brothers Caleb, Jared and Nathan Followill -- lead vocalist/guitarist, bassist and drummer, respectively -- and lead guitarist cousin Matthew Followill enjoy platinum status for their current album, "Aha Shake Heartbreak," and their first release, "Youth & Young Manhood." If their show Monday at Roseland was an indicator, the U.S. will soon throw the Tennessee family a similar coronation.
Home-schooled for the lion’s share of their formative years and traveling from church to church and town to town with their preacher father, the brothers formed a tight unit that’s reflected in their musical bond. Converting idiomatic phrases of 1960s garage sounds and ’70s spirit into their own concoction of 200-proof rock, Kings of Leon barreled through some of their best songs.
In "The Bucket," Kings of Leon demonstrated how easily they navigate changes in feel and arrangement. "Soft" evoked a summertime ’70s vibe, like driving in a Nova, windows down, listening to AM radio with all your troubles miles behind you. "Milk" gave away their Southern roots and showed how well they trim parts down to work together through rhythms.
Caleb’s burned, slurry drawl and gravelly toned scowl were featured most prominently on "Pistol of Fire" and "Taper Jean Girl." The band also performed "Rememo," a waltz with a hangover; "Four Kicks," a shuffle where Caleb played chords for Matthew to answer with a boogie; and "Trani," where the band’s chord progressions hinted at their church music influences. The line, "Lord’s gonna get us back," from "Holy Roller Novocaine," one of their encores, sealed their religious sentiments with an amen to their hard-living lifestyles. Kings of Leon said goodbye with the twangy guitar intro and very Who-like instrumentation of "Slow Night, So Long."
While the band sounds a little bit like everybody, it also sounds like nobody. Kings of Leon learned their classics well, and their arrangements move out of the ordinary. Someone in the audience captured the show’s mood perfectly when he shouted out a very pleased, "Whee!"
“Every musician has something to try to get out and you want people to hear it,” says Anderson. “You want to connect with the outside world and I was just ready.”
From creating memorable riffs for others, like the guitar hook that drove Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” straight to the top of the international charts, Anderson moved to assembling his own hired guns on the just-released CD. Sir Paul makes a cameo on the track “Hurt Myself,” while Police drummer Stewart Copeland performs on “Catbox Beach.” Anderson’s neighbor/producer Mudrock (Godsmack, Alice Cooper, Avenged Sevenfold) joined in on production and longtime friend, Parthenon Huxley, agreed to co-produce. The result is the ultimate guitar album for non-guitarists.
“In a way I almost put the guitar on the back burner and focused more on lyrics and melodies and making sure songs were songy as opposed to guitar jams or something,” says Anderson. “I’ve been in so many head spaces as a musician…I just like music and I don’t like to be constricted to some sort of stereotype as far as being a guitar player and doing a guitar record, although I love the guitar as an instrument and I think it’s the greatest instrument ever. It’s very expressive and it has a lot of personality and a lot of anger and tenderness.”
Anderson began writing the record in between legs of the Paul McCartney tours and plans to continue performing with the former Beatle and others, but the process of creating something has become a new lift-off point in his career.
“I’m really stoked to be playing music for a living and I feel very blessed to be playing with Paul McCartney and to have played with the great artists that I have,” says Anderson. “It’s very therapeutic to make music and I think at the core of any artist, that’s kind of what keeps driving you. It returns you to yourself and gives you a feeling of wholeness. I think making a record almost gives you an excuse to commit to your own therapy—your own self-realization or something. That’s what I’ve experienced. I think its Picasso who said, ‘Art is never finished, only abandoned.’”
Anderson performs with Paul McCartney on October 4-5 at Madison Square Garden.
“If you want clean fun go fly a kite,” sings Louis XIV front man Jason Hill on “Paper Dolls” from The Best Little Secrets Are Kept (Atlantic). But if you prefer the band’s kind of fun, just follow their musical exploits with “Little Stacy Q” and “Dominique” at Irving Plaza on September 1.
Brian Karscig (guitar, vocals), Mark Maigaard (drums), James Armbrust (bass), and Hill (lead vocals, lead guitar) will dole out songs like “Illegal Tender,” “Finding Out True Love is Blind,” “Letter to Dominique” and “Pledge of Allegiance,” where prowling riffs and frisky beats meet decadent pleasures.
Louis XIV’s Jason Hill talks to TheAquarian about the band’s “just press record” studio technique and of course, women.
AW: Where do those lyrics come from!
Jason Hill: (Laughs). Well sometimes they’re just straight me ad-libbing…For instance on “Paper Doll” I went and set up the microphone one evening and only like two microphones on the drums and went and played that beat myself…Mark’s a much better drummer than me, but quite often I’ll be the only one in there late at night, so as a sort of hack drummer, I’ll come up with a beat nobody would normally come up with. I sat down and played the beat and later had Mark re-dub a snare drum on top of it, which you hear in the final mix. But I played the initial beat and then went to the guitar and played the little riff and literally pressed record. So the riff that you hear the whole song on the guitar is basically just me making it up as I went along. I did the same thing on vocals…I think that’s one of the songs I’m most proud about because it’s completely, with the exception of a few lines I had to re-sing, all ad lib. You hear me sing something like “bang a gong get it own” because I didn’t know what else to say. I literally was just imitating my girlfriend the night before. I heard her for the first time when she got really wasted and she started speaking this gibberish and started getting a little mousy with me, like playful back and forth and it was funny. So this next night I was in the studio and I literally pressed record and sort of re-lived that conversation, although I took liberty quite a bit (laughs).
AW: The album’s definitely very present.
Hill: It was quite fun. I remember after I was done I sort of listened to it a million times over and over again thinking, “Should I re-do it? No, it’s great.” There were some things that I sing a little differently now live, but there was such a moment there…I did the same sort of thing on “Finding Out True Love Is Blind,” and especially “Pledge of Allegiance”…The most unreserved things come out when you just do that ...There’s one of the best moments on the second verse. It ends with like “oka sica saca” or something like that. It’s complete gibberish because I didn’t have a rhyme.
AW: I’ll say you’re “unreserved” on the album (laughs). It seems there’s more of a “shared perversion” with gal pals throughout the songs than critics tend to point out. Like in “Pledge of Allegiance” you sing, “Little Stacy Q/When she doesn’t have a thing to do/She comes to my house/Well let’s keep that between me and you.”
Hill: I think you nailed it on the head and I’ve never heard anybody say that. There’s like a “shared perversion” (laughs). Often I’ll read in certain reviews people go as far as to call it “masochistic” and I don’t see that at all. It’s all very shared throughout the album. The girls within that are so spunky (laughs).
AW: I would think you have more female fans than females you offend.
Hill: We certainly do. It’s more packed with girls every time. But you can get somebody that totally takes it the wrong way. I mean we were picketed in Indianapolis recently, which I thought was sort of weird. It’s kind of a funny story where there was a girl in the front row, our first time playing in Indianapolis, and she was like a super fan. She knew all the words and sang along and after the show I went out and had a drink and said hello to the different people who wanted to talk and she came up and we started chatting and what not and she goes, “I’m sorry about my friends out there picketing. They just really don’t like your band.” And I said, “What?” So I walked outside and they were still picketing after the show and handing out pamphlets and it was just crazy to me. So I said, “Well invite your friends on the bus for a drink with us at least and have a little pow wow.” I was curious what it is that’s so offensive. It sounded like the most fun conversation I could have that evening was with these people…So they came on the bus and I gave them a drink and tried to talk with them but they literally didn’t say anything. They just kept looking at their friend like, “I fucking hate you. Get me out of here.”
There have also been some great reviews, one in San Francisco in some weekly that was totally like a thesis of why we’re offensive. (laughs). She said “chocolate girl” and “little Asian friend” were racist.
AW: But you actually sing in “Pledge of Allegiance” “I know it ain’t correct/But politics is so much better when there’s sex.”
Hill: Exactly! You get it. I’m just having fun…“Little Asian friend,” how is that offensive? I don’t know? Somewhere [in the report] she said our cover depicted a dead, naked girl that we’d defiled and raped and “A Letter To Dominique” was about a rape and I’m like, “Are you nuts?” The best part of it is like paragraph six or something where she says she would actually “like like,” (the double “like”) this music, but she goes on to say, but she just thinks “rock n’ roll should be more responsible.” And I was thinking, “I love that you said that, because that right there sums it up for a lot of people.” They’re going to go on the other side and go, “I don’t.”(laughs).
AW: Why do you think the best little secrets kept?
Hill: The problem with secrets is most often they’re not kept…Somebody always knows…I have many, many secrets that I keep very close to my chest…I’m not one to go around and talk about all my adventures in life, though I do in my songs.
AW: What is it about “secrets” that you cherish?
Hill: There’s obviously this dangerousness to secrets. I have so many facets of myself, which I think everyone has. There’s sort of a dark, perverted side. There’s a very vulnerable sort of kind of guy that literally loves to cuddle teddy bears and soft things. Everybody has those sides to them. There’s just something about secrets and that shared bond between people. If it’s truly kept, it continues to be very special. The problem with secrets is they get out there eventually and things unravel and if it’s not a big deal then they don’t, but it’s no longer special.
AW: What attracted you to the figure of Louis XIV?
Hill: Here’s the truth about it. The name means as much to us as led balloons meant to Led Zeppelin after the album. …The first tune we did was Louis XIV, so we named it Louis XIV…At the time I got really fascinated by Van Gogh [Vincent]…The story of his life was so fascinating that we sort of did the first album in many ways based around his life, but it becomes a boy that starts to lose his mind and then begins to believe that he is Louis XIV. Within that, I made a point of not knowing hardly anything about Louis XIV because to me if I’m truly going to tell the story, I wouldn’t’ really know all the facts about his life. You’re losing your mind, right? So you’re just sort of making them up. A lot of what we made up tended to actually mirror his life with our vision of the first album, oddly more by coincidence or that we were in Paris and tapped into something. I don’t know what it was. So we recorded that first record that had something to do with Louis XIV, but not really “the king Louis XIV,” but “our own person Louis XIV” and we kept the songs “Louis XIV” and “God Killed The Queen” because those were the first two songs we did. We brought them over to the new record…We wanted to make sure all the songs worked together and in some ways the sound connected it through and in some ways the production and in some ways the sexual nature and the honesty with the lyrics. But there wasn’t really a concept, like we’re trying to put the sex back in rock n’ roll or whatever.
AW: Your production on the album is interesting.
Jason: I fell in love with recording the moment I first bought a little tape recorder and played a song into it and realized it sounded different when I played it back. The first time I went into a real studio I said to the engineer, “I want to get the vocals of the singer to sound like this” or “the guitar to sound like that” and “the drums to sound like this,” and it was always, “No you can’t do that, but this is how I normally do it.” Then you’d come out and be very unhappy with the recording so it sort of forced me to be like, “Well, I’ll just have to do it myself.” I do things somewhat odd though because I was very broke all the time. I would max out all my credit cards to get recording gear, but to keep it working, especially old stuff, it cost a lot of money so often half of what I had was always broken and I had to make do. In that odd process of trying to do things and not caring how other people did it, but caring how it sounds, I would do things quite a bit different and the choruses sort of developed a sound…There’s no reverb on our record which is very odd for a lot of people to hear. Everything is very dry and fuzzy and natural. It’s sort of this crisp fuzziness. I love the fact that I don’t know a lot of what I play on the record. I love that I can never do the same solo twice (laughs). And I love the fact that half the record is me or Brian just pressing record and it’s just all off the cuff.
One morning Australian singer/songwriter Sarah Blasko woke to hear a song she had written blaring from her clock radio and thought she was dreaming. When the record labels started calling, she knew she wasn’t. Tastemaker radio station Triple J records had picked up on the Sydney native’s atmospheric pop and now she finds herself with a debut full-length, The Overture & The Underscore, released in the U.S. on Low Altitude/Universal.
Blasko’s vision to blend unrefined elements with electronics to create a patchwork of different sounds on the album was aided by Hollywood producer Wally Gagel (Muse, The Eels).
“Some of the stuff on the EP [Prelusive] was a little ‘electronicy’ and I wanted to find a way of fusing those things with a really organic and natural band kind of vibe, a bit of warmth I thought it lacked before,” said Blasko. “I think more than anything I wanted it to have a real humanity to it, for the voice to sound real and nothing could be overproduced. I wanted it to have a classic image to it and for the songs to have enough space to breathe and not be too clouded.”
In addition to Gagel and bandmate Robert F. Cranny, Joey Waronker (Beck, REM) joined them on drums.
“I’ve always had an appreciation for the drums, but I really value a really good drummer now,” says Blasko about working with Waronker. “He’s very intuitive and he’s got a lot of taste in what he chooses to play.”
In songs such as “Don’t U Eva,” “All Coming Back,” and “Always Worth It,” Blasko shows her intuition for getting to the heart of a song. She admitted that imperfections were welcome in the recording process. They signal intimacy and sensitivity. Perhaps some of that awareness for honest expression comes from the source of her introduction to music.
Seated in a church pew beside her tone-deaf mother and an eighty-year-old soprano hymning the Lord’s praises, was where Blasko first realized the difference between singing with conviction and technical vocalises. Motivated by the discovery, Blasko joined her Sydney Australian church band at age sixteen and by eighteen recognized songwriting as career-worthy. When her initial try at a band failed and actually flunked out of counseling too—long, expensive story—she retreated to her bedroom to record solo demos, including a song titled, “Your Way,” that started spinning on Triple J and paved her to being heard across continents.
Blasko’s climb to airplay was not as easy as the turn of a dial though. She toiled for six years and was quite disheartened by the process before meeting a reporter from a weekly music publication who became a fan and her manager. Using his connections he arranged to have a copy of Blasko’s demo tucked into a pile of CD’s a friend was handing to radio at a meeting. Check out Sarah Blasko at www.sarahblasko.com .
Vans Warped Tour combed Randall’s Island August 13 with My Chemical Romance stealing the scorching day’s spotlight. The performance of Gerard Way (vocals), Mikey Way (bass), Ray Toro (guitar), and Bob Bryar (drums) on Saturday showed why the band’s comic book-colored emo/rock has been catapulting them to well-earned superhero status. Preparing for their first headlining tour in September the band played “I’m Not Okay (I Promise),” “Helena,” and “Give ‘Em Hell, Kid” among others from Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge. The band’s New Jersey brethren, Senses Fail, also offered a powered performance with singer Buddy Nielsen delivering his usual consuming rock-wrenched melodies. Other highlights from the sold-out lineup included Hawthorne Heights, Funeral For A Friend, Transplants, The Offspring, Dropkick Murphys, Atreyu, Fall Out Boy and My American Heart.
Lollapalooza returned this year, transforming itself from a touring music festival to a one-site, two-day affair July 23-24 set in Chicago’s Grant Park. Showing the same tenacity he became known for when he pioneered the alternative music festival in 1991, Lollapalooza founder/organizer and former Jane’s Addiction front man Perry Farrell revised the event to adapt to the concert industry’s changing climate and to regain control over the integrity of the Lolla experience.
Over 60 acts lined up for the revived showcase, with stellar live performances by The Arcade Fire, The Bravery, …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Louis XIV, Drive-By Truckers, The Killers, Weezer, Primus, and Farrell’s new project, Satellite Party, a nebulous, satisfying musical experience with former Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt and No Doubt’s Tony Kanal on bass.
In introducing The Arcade Fire, Farrell explained they were an example that it’s still possible to be original. In restoring Lollapalooza Farrell proved there are always alternate paths towards that goal.
The breezy, sensual songs of Tori Amos’ ninth, and latest album, The Beekeeper (Epic) ride the drift of an impending storm with honey sweet vocals and a storyline that looks at mending the historical rift that divides a woman’s sexual and spiritual self. In writing the music Amos draws from both her own emotional impulses and the rhythm of the world as she sees it at this moment. Days before her Summer of Sin solo tour began Amos offered a synopsis of The Beekeeper and shared her creative process, which she also chronicles in a new book Tori Amos: Piece by Piece, co-written with music journalist Ann Powers.
WOMANROCK: On The Beekeeper you continue to satiate your worldly curiosity and desire for self-discovery through song. How has your music evolved since Little Earthquakes (13 years ago) and do you feel you approach your instruments differently on The Beekeeper?
TORI AMOS: When I can listen to something a few years later, I’m able to be more objective. When I’m in the thick of it, I’m making choices based on what is right at the time and you have to trust your instincts and you have to be clear on your vision. For instance, I was listening to Choir Girl over the last couple of days because I’ve been learning a few songs for the tour and I hear that album really differently now than when it was occurring (laughs). I’m able to step back and you have a sense of detachment, which I think is really healthy—not when you’re trying to finish it though. If you’re too detached, you’re not passionate enough.
WOMANROCK: True. As we grow we often don’t notice differences in ourselves until we look back in retrospect.
AMOS: I like to use the word “changing” because at each time that an album is created, that reflex is where you are and just because some people are more drawn to a “fiery you” and some people are more drawn to an “intellectual you,” it doesn’t’ mean that they’re both not valid. They’re both valid—all of the albums are—but they come from a different place each time and I think that’s what’s essential. I don’t think any different than a visual artist; I don’t think you can say one installation is more important than another installation. I think that it might have had more impact on the masses at a time, but they’re all responding to the changes that are occurring and you couldn’t really super-impose one ten years later if you follow me. It sometimes works because of the time at which it comes out.
WOMANROCK: Lyrically you’ve commented that you write so that people can find themselves in your music, not you? You focus on that a lot in your new book too.
AMOS: In the book I call it giving people a “backstage pass’ into the creative process. When the songs come, sometimes they come in two-bar phrases and sometimes they come more complete. What I am always trying to do is to translate them in a way that people can develop their own relationships with the songs. If you ‘re too literal sometimes you anchor a song into space and time in a way that it doesn’t allow it to take flight. I try to work more with parables and prose as a songwriter than a style of lyric writing where there’s no room for interpretation. I’ve always been drawn to songs where word association and wordplay are part of what that artist does. Sylvia Plath was always very much like that and Anne Sexton. I was inspired by their work as poets. I’m trying to translate what I call “essences.” They don’t have arms or legs, but it’s more like light filaments. They don’t look like us when they’re complete. They look more like light structures. That’s really what it’s all about.
WOMANROCK: Giving people such license for imagination in your work, are you surprised sometimes when you hear how your songs are interpreted?
AMOS: I find it pretty intriguing because it’s not as if what it means to them is wrong. It’s not. That’s their perspective and the songs have always wanted people to have their own relationships with them and I have my own relationship with them, so I’m able to have my opinion.
WOMANROCK: I would think that’s an interesting turn when you’ve created something so personal and you put it out there to witness people cling to it with a different attachment.
AMOS: This is where you really have to let the songs go. You have to let them go and make their friendships and make their enemies with people. The songs are very capable of having their own lives (laughs). They’ve made it very clear to me. It is a paradox where on one hand you’re a co-creator with them and it feels as if there are pieces of my own mosaic of life within them that I really don’t have authority over. I have to allow them to go and be. The authority that I do have is how they’re presented and I try and work with them. A lot of times that has to do with what is going on globally, what is going on in our world at this time and that means the sound of it, the melody choices, and rhythmic choices. Sometimes it’s very much about chronicling time and the music is I would say a lot more involved than people give it credit. A lot of times people talk about the lyrics because it’s more tangible but the curds are very much in the music.
WOMANROCK: Applying your process specifically to The Beekeeper, combined with the sense of “urgency” you felt for this album, could you discuss bringing it all together.
AMOS: Because the right wing movement is not covert any more, but overt, I felt that it was essential to go after certain ideologies and teachings. One major one has been that a woman was responsible for getting us all chucked out of paradise. Therefore the garden allegory that The Beekeeper contained was core, no pun intended, but I felt that we needed to create gardens that represented different emotions that weren’t presided over by the patriarchy. Therefore on the album “Tori” goes to God’s mother, Sophia and asks her how to combat the violence and destructiveness of this time and Sophia basically says, “Tori, you must eat of the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, unlike my son suggested.” So Tori eats of the fruit and each song is what she begins to have to look at in her own life. Some of her relationships are very loving and some of them are laced at the root with betrayal.
She begins to create this pantheon of songs once she begins to become conscious and that’s really at the root of The Beekeeper. The marriage of sexuality and spirituality is also very much part of what’s occurring here—a marriage within the being, not a marriage between male and female outside the being. The honeybee represented sacred sexuality in the ancient feminine mysteries and because Christianity has taken such a hold, as a minister’s daughter, I felt like we needed to go after this concept.
I did a lot of research reading the Gnostic Gospels written by Elaine Pagels discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945. I also read the gospel of Mary Magdalene, which was discovered in the late 19th century and I began to realize that there was another element to Christianity that was not included by some of the early fathers of the “proper” church. Women and their roles had been diminished and we had become subservient and subjugated in the new church. I was concerned because of some of the choices that were being made for leaders around the world—religious as well as political—that I felt were proponents for the ideology of the patriarchy opposed to the ideology of Jesus, which included women as equals.
If you read the Gnostic Gospels you discover that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute, but a “prophet.” Maybe that was not “profitable” to the fathers who were creating the church, because how do you get power? Well the patriarchy’s view is you divide and conquer. The greatest way to divide and conquer is within the self, so when you divide sexuality and spirituality within a woman, she is completely and absolutely divided, therefore, The Beekeeper was very much about bringing these paradoxes together into the garden, into one being. The garden’s reflective of a woman’s body. That is the back-story.
Originally posted on WomanRock.com August '05.
Tori Amos performing "The Power of Orange Knickers."
Billed as the "Island Getaway" at Randall's Island, Sunday's Dave Matthews Band show fulfilled its promise of escapism with musical virtuosity and a selection of radio hits, live favorites and offerings from the band's latest album, "Stand Up."
The group played with the tightness of an ensemble that has jammed together for 14 years. The grass-roots-minded superstars shared and traded improvisational spaces, navigated mood-changing tempos and explored grooves with spontaneity and excitement.
The band opened with "Every Day," on which singer-guitarist Dave Matthews broke away from his acoustic guitar and gravelly voice to raise his fist and squeak his falsetto for emphasis, singing, "All you need is love."
With the tone set, the socially conscious performers reeled off a series of highlights, including "What Would You Say," which hails back to the band's 1994 debut album, "Under the Table and Dreaming."
Classically trained Boyd Tinsley ripped his bow back and forth across his violin strings, dreads flying as he swirled, absorbed in rhythm. Tinsley grabbed the spotlight again during "Ants Marching" with the distinctive riff that helped catapult the tune to commercial success. Matching Tinsley's hillbilly funkiness was the gusty saxophone playing of LeRoi Moore.
Drummer Carter Beauford, Moore's onetime neighborhood jazz cat in Durham, N.C., tiptoed busily on his kit. Beauford is not a power drummer, but he is a "powerful" drummer. His fusion background and open style offered him a range of melodic sounding beats and rhythms. Dave Matthews Band's signature jumpy, slick bop comes courtesy of Beauford's choices from the band's co-pilot seat. Beauford smiled as he divided sixteenth notes, calmly blowing bubbles with his chewing gum amid the pulses.
On "When the World Ends," Matthews clutched his frets, eyes squeezed tight as he succumbed to that musical tic he gets in his legs; pivoting on the right foot, he alternately shakes the left -- a truly enviable approach to time-keeping. During "Dream Girl," Matthews' animated style continued as he arched an eyebrow, marking select lyrics with heightened emotional importance.
The new album's title track was accompanied by steel guitarist Robert Randolph, whose Family Band performed earlier in the day. Looking for an audience ready to testify, Randolph entered into an extended version of the song and then launched into a fiery version of "All Along the Watchtower." Overpowered by sound, Randolph kneeled to play, while Matthews and bass protege Stefan Lessard surrounded their guest with complex, uplifting, percussive riffs.
It's The Doors’ Ray Manzarek on organ and Robby Kreiger on guitar and you can hear the hypnotizing riff of “Touch Me” build until suddenly the song ignites. “Come on, come on, come on, come on, now touch me baby,” sings Perry Farrell. Huh? Perry Farrell? No, the former Jane’s Addiction front man is not replacing The Doors of the 21st Century’s Ian Astbury. Farrell is just joining his heroes for three tunes during Decades Rock Live, a new live concert series that’s taping to premiere on VH1 Classic in September.
Presenting legendary performers alongside today’s newest artists, the first concert will feature The Doors of the 21st Century with Robby Kreiger, Ian Astbury and Ray Manzarek. Special guests include Macy Gray, legendary rock guitarist Pat Travers, the original Vanilla Fudge, Antigone Rising, and Farrell.
Perry Farrell talks about the upcoming show, the return of Lollapalooza and his new project Satellite Party.
AW: Decades Rock Live is a new live concert series that pairs celebrated artists who have influenced popular music over the last 50 years with acts who have been inspired by them. What do you think of the concept and how do you fit into this first episode?
FARRELL: I love the idea of different generations of musicians getting together to play music, especially important musicians. It would be like if you have a great quarterback or a great center on a team and a draftee comes in. It’s going to take him a few years to get up to that level, but he’s got at least this legendary player who can tell him the inside things and what to look for. In the world of music, there are so many pitfalls and at the same time there are so many wonderful places to go as a musician. Just to be able to get the rub from The Doors; you don’t get any more integrity than the Doors. To be able to play with them and ride on their sound is going to be an experience. You probably couldn’t put into words the benefits that I will get and the other people will get from just being around them.
AW: What will you sing?
FARRELL: “People Are Strange,” “Crystal Ship” and “Touch Me.”
AW: With Lollapalooza becoming a destination festival this year, will you comment on how your revised format strengthened it and why you picked Chicago?
FARRELL: I guess you have to go back probably seven years when certain corporations were buying promoters around the country. What they did at the same time was bought property and form-fitted tours into the property using the promoters that they pretty much owned. What this did for the concert business, for myself as an independent promoter, was rather than being able to go around the country and meet different promoters and say to them, find us a great location, we really had no options but to play in amphitheatres. These amphitheatres came with deals for vendors that were pre-cut. There wasn’t much room for us to bring in the type of food and the type of extra things that we like to present to the audience.
It also price-fixed the package. Let’s say a promoter said, "Hey you can come play in my venue and I’ll pay you so much." Because there was a monopoly around the country on the venues and the promoters, the price fix was getting lower and lower and therefore the quality of the festival was beginning to suffer. Rather than being able to say, “Hey, let’s do something crazy and build a technology gaming system,” if the overseeing corporate promoter didn’t want to pay for that, you had no money for it. It was basically just turning into like a radio show. They would pay you what they felt they wanted to pay you for the acts. You didn’t even have room to negotiate that, so a lot of times, you’d basically be doing it for free. I hate to admit it, but I have made so little money putting Lollapalooza together. It got less and less and less to where the last year we were going out, there really wasn’t a chance to make any money at all because the promoter had us by the balls.
So what I decided to do is look for our own location. I was very lucky and found a private backer, yet another independent promoter, one of the very few left in the country. There’s probably less then five…What we did was we teamed up and we looked for our own location and decided to refine Lollapalooza. Lollapalooza was in its day, the first traveling festival. In 1991 it started all the other traveling festivals. It was a wonderful concept and the country really loved it, but it was a different time. There was not the monopoly that there is today, so we changed the model and we went to a location and built it ourselves and you know what? It has proven to be a very good idea.
AW: After last year’s cancelled show, how excited are you to have it back?
FARRELL: It was beyond my expectations. I honestly didn’t think I would ever do another Lollapalooza. As you know, the way things are with the monopolies and the corporations, once a tragedy happens to you in the business world, it’s very hard to regain your footing. I almost believed it myself.
AW: You were able to maintain the festival’s integrity and bring atmosphere back.
FARRELL: I think we have more integrity than we’ve had since probably 1994 now because we look over everything and locations are wonderful again. We’re paying for the groups that we want and I think that you feel it. It’s kind of like home cooking. You’ll taste the different.
AW: Tell us about your new project Satellite Party.
FARRELL: Satellite Party is being developed into a play that will eventually become a feature film. As I was writing this, I had the good sense to realize I needed a musical partner in this and I sat down with this amazing musician, Nuno Bettencourt, who’s just one of the great guitar players of our day. I don’t know if you’ve heard him?
AW: He’s formerly from Extreme?
FARRELL: That was his band back in the eighties and this guy is just as far as guitar, you ask guitar players about Nuno and there’s agreement that he’s just a great player…The music of Satellite Party is sounding even better than I would have expected because we have a somewhat difficult arrangement in that we work with electronics. We play with sequencers and things like that and that’s not an easy thing to pull off and really play. There are people who play with sequencers who really don’t play. Then there’s people who can’t play with sequencers. We are doing a wonderful job and it sounds powerful and I’m starting to move like I did in the day. A great sign for me…The people who have helped me to write the Satellite Party are Fergie from Black Eyed Pea who came in an sang on probably three tracks. We have Flea, who has written probably four songs with me. John Frusciante wrote one with Flea and I. The core is just Nuno and I…I’d love to see the music tour for a time, but I’d absolutely like to see within three years it become a feature…I really want to create something that will be in the future for all times sake a classic and so that’s what I’m looking for from the Satellite Party. It’s a beautiful story and the music’s beautiful too. I want it to come to fruition and be something that changes the perception of people. Maybe it even opens up a paradigm in thinking of mankind. Jim Morrison has something to do with it?
AW: How does he inspire you?
FARRELL: Jim Morrison opened paradigms and was a classic. Not just Jim Morrison, but the Doors. They’re still here and as far as I’m concerned I could count on one hand the greatest modern groups and composers and on one of those fingers has got to be The Doors.
AW: I saw you speak at Pollstar’s Concert Industry Consortium last year and you talked about how “everyone is an artist at one time.” You talked about how the artist is one who “continues to believe he can self-decorate the world.” What does being an artist mean to you today and how do you balance that with being a business man?
FARRELL: The artist in a way has an edge on life in that he really sees the depth and the realities even further than most people, but the problem with that is you get to see how pathetic human beings can be at times and how cruel and how brazen and just the lack of regard human beings have for each other, so they’re blessed, but they get cursed because their lenses are so clear. Then at the same time, they are very much overlooked because people just consider that what they created should have just been there or was there. They don’t realize what it takes to get it there. It takes your imagination, your time to pull it out of your mind and either put it to paper or record it to tape or digital. So they’re not appreciated. This is what I think really kills them. It’s the guy who in school might be wearing the letter jacket (who in probably five years is going to be working for an insurance company nonetheless but has got bigger muscles).
Unfortunately, I see this in music too. That person gets all the girls if you know what I mean. Artists understand their own value and at the same time they realize that others don’t. So the artist has to kind of suffer through life.
AW: On being a business man and an artist then?
FARRELL: You have to really balance that out. What I like is I like to become clever. There’s a lot of ways you can get exposure. People may say all press is good press. I disagree with that quote. You don’t want to be known as the person who’s got something really cheesy. You don’t want to be known as the person who sold out. You want to be known as an author. You “authenticate” something. I feel that you go to your strengths and you create something that will turn peoples’ heads and that’s how you do it. You become ingenious, rather than following what’s going on and cashing in on things or stooping away from what your God-given talent is. You create something that will be a classic.
Check out Decades Rock Live @ Trump’s Taj Mahal in Atlantic City on August 5
You may recognize the chart-topping Japanese pop duo Puffy AmiYumi best as cartoons but their career success beyond the two-dimensional world is anything but imaginary.
Their TV show Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m on Cartoon Network and opens with a song you can’t miss, “Hi Hi” with that ridiculously catchy chorus: “Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi show/Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi show” repeated a gazillion times. Based on the J-pop stars’ fantasized rock star lives the show follows them as they jam with aliens on an international space station, get chased by their No. 1 fan, and learn new dance moves for a Japanese dance competition.
In one episode make-believe manager Kaz even creates a pair of life-sized Puffy dolls so that the girls can be in two money-making places at once! It’s then up to the girls to stop the creepy dolls before they take over the Puffy girls’ world. Hmm. Not a bad idea Kaz, considering Puffy AmiYumi’s real lives are not so far removed from “all” of that fantasy.
Puffy AmiYumi have sold millions of records, including the first single they ever released in 1996 “Asia No Junshin” which launched Puffy-mania. Since then, they have hosted a television variety show (Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Puffy), headlined arena-sized concerts, and inspired action-figure dolls and even a line of shoes. All of their singles has been licensed for high-profile commercials for products such as motor scooters, cosmetics, computers, and soft drinks. You also heard their song “Friends Forever” in the Scooby-Doo 2 soundtrack.
The Japanese idorus (idols) celebrate their tenth anniversary next year, impressive longevity when you realize that the girls were actually strangers to one another until brought together by a record label and a management company. In 1995 Tokyo-bred Ami Onuki and Osaka native Yumi Yoshimura had each learned about talent searches underway in Tokyo. Ami sent her demo to Sony; Yumi auditioned for a management company; the next thing they knew, the unlikely friends were blending voices, creating hit after hit and launching a cultural phenomena.
The group’s latest CD, the Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi Soundtrack, was produced by Tamio Okuda (formerly of the platinum Japanese rock band Unicorn) and Andy Sturmer (formerly of American rock band Jellyfish).
What is the plot of Puffy AmiYumi’s next real-life adventure? The duo kicks off an East Coast tour this month to perform songs like “Joining a Fan Club,” “Planet Tokyo,” “Love so Pure” and “Koregawatashino Ikirumi chi” before a crowd of screaming fans.
*Speaking through a translator the girls gave WomanRock a heads up on what they’re up to.
WOMANROCK: What differences do you find between how Japanese and American audiences receive your live performances?
AMI: In the states it’s normal to have dance parties and to express yourself in body language. The cultural differences are not so different, but we can feel more movement in the American audience.
WOMANROCK: Everyone may not be familiar with the term J-pop. How do you describe it and is that where you feel your music fits?
YUMI: J-pop is actually Japanese pop. In that category there are a lot of other categories. It’s just a big way to say Japanese music. If the audience who listens to Puffy thinks it belongs in J-pop, that’s what we feel. We want to leave it up to the audience to categorize it.
WOMANROCK: What is it like having a cartoon based on your pretend rock n’ roll adventures?
YUMI: When we watch it, we watch it as cartoon Ami and Yumi. We don’t really portray ourselves in it. It’s so exaggerated and if we were really portraying our normal lives, it wouldn’t be that interesting as a cartoon (laughs).
WOMANROCK: You’re no strangers to television. You also hosted a television variety show in Japan a while back called Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Puffy?
AMI: That was like five years ago. It was fun and it was good for us because our music could be portrayed to a new variety of people who haven’t heard our music, so it was a good opportunity for us.
WOMANROCK: If you had to guess what makes you so relatable to your fans, what do you think it is?
AMI: Can you tell us? (laughs). We really want to know.
WOMANROCK: You were strangers to each other until you were brought together by a record label and a management company. Musically you hit it off, but personally how did you get to know each other?
AMI: In the beginning we were so different so we didn’t think we’d hit it off. Once we started to become friends we hit it off right away though.
WOMANROCK: Your debut single in 1996 “Asia No Junshin” launched Puffy-mania. Were you surprised by the sudden attention at what you had created?
YUMI: We didn’t expect it. A famous producer and musician in Japan, Tamio Okuda, was the producer for our first song and just everything that was put together for that song all came together and made it happen, but we didn’t expect it. It was luck.
WOMANROCK: You’ve had three CDs now. How did you approach this last album as artists.
AMI: We don’t write the songs ourselves. We write a lot of the lyrics. When we choose the songs, we always imagine how they will be performed at the concerts. That’s our main thing. We love to have fun doing our songs.
WOMANROCK: What do you like to write about?
YUMI: It really depends on the song and how we feel at that moment. There’s not really one thing that we’re influenced by. It’s just when we’re on the spot writing it together, we put our minds together. There’s nothing in particular we want to show or portray or anything like that.
WOMANROCK: Who are some of your favorite American bands?
AMI: Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Nirvana, and of course Jellyfish because Andy Sturmer is one of our producers.
WOMANROCK: What are your plans for the future?
YUMI: In the near future is obviously the East Coast tour and actually next year is our ten year anniversary together, so we want to do something together. We’re in the process of thinking of that.
Tina is a contributing editor and columnist for The Aquarian Weekly. She has also written for The Hollywood Reporter, Modern Drummer, Music Connection, Starpolish.com, and WomanRock.com.
Magnificent storytelling and soul-staining southern rock will reel you through The Dirty South (New West), Drive-By Truckers’ intelligent, rebel roused ode to the mythological South. On tracks like “The Day John Henry Died,” “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac” and “The Buford Stick (The Legend of Sheriff Buford Pusser),” Drive-By Truckers scrape grit off prized local legends, exposing a southernly code of conduct that is possibly outdated…possibly not?
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