interviewtheproletariat
The Eggs

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eggs

The Eggs – Disintegrate

The Eggs are a Brooklyn-based quintet comprised of Mike Britt (bass), Alex Cohen (drums, percussion), Roshan Reddy (guitar), Emma Sky (violin, viola) and Cynthia Wennstrom (vocals). I will make two claims related to this lovely batch of musicians: (i) their songs are aural patchwork quilts knit fresh from warm, loving hands, and (ii) they have no problem poking fun at themselves or giving confusing answers to questions. If you’re the kind of person that requires evidence for even lighthearted claims – fuck you, pedant! – well, read on!

Have you ever been in a fight?
RR: With Rihanna . . . (disclaimer: I’m a horrible person).
AC: Just with myself.

What is your favorite swear?
The Eggs: In no particular order: motherdamnit, shit-tits, cuntfish, Mitt Romney, poopie, Godfuckit, fuckethead, assmunch, slunt, clut.

If possible, which musician or band would you open for?
MB: Well I’m not sure, but I definitely think Metallica should open for us.
RR: Have you ever heard of this duo called Buke and Gase? They’re my favorite new band and the first project I’ve been excited by in a long time. I guess you could call them a noise-pop duo, but that would hardly do them justice.
CW: I think the Dirty Projectors would be a lot of fun to open for!
AC: Napalm Death. Easy.

Other honorable mentions include: Deerhoof, Battles.

What would you say to your first girlfriend/boyfriend?
RR: Thanks for introducing me to your wife.
MB: Do you still have that thirty bucks you owe me?
AC: I’m only half sorry for every dead baby joke I told.
ES: I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message.

What’s your most neurotic habit?
AC: Theft and arson.
ES: It’s probably the fact that if I don’t do yoga everyday I’ll explode.
RR: I . . . I see . . . dead people.
CW: Sometimes I stare off into the distance and imagine I’m riding Falcor from The NeverEnding Story and we solve mysteries together . . . then I snap back to reality and realize I left the oven on and smoke is now filling my apartment.

The Eggs – Patterns

What’s your worst experience from high school?
MB: I got suspended for self-defense once. Totally lame.
CW: I accidentally peed on myself during school. It was as horrible as everyone imagines it is, but in hindsight it’s pretty funny.
RR: This one only feels bad now that I’m a little bit older and have some perspective, but it was the few times where I watched or participated in making fun of someone who didn’t deserve it at all. I definitely feel like a chode for that.

Since starting in music, what has been your most frustrating moment?
MB: I find sympathy clapping and stiff audiences pretty frustrating.
AC: Heavy gear and being billed with other acts that don’t fit with the band I’m playing in that night definitely tend to be my main pet peeves.
RR: Watching artists succeed by producing trite and unoriginal garbage.

In the same vein, what has been the high point?
CW: Recording in a real studio for the first time when I was nineteen.
RR: Performing for over, or at least close to, a thousand people one time.
ES: I organized a benefit concert that raised a bunch of money for cancer research, which was an amazing experience for me.

Favorite emotion?
RR: What’s that?
CW: That weird feeling you get when you bump into someone on the street and you guys keep choosing the same direction to go and never get around each other . . . yeah, that’s the stuff.
ES: Does sweating count?
AC: Well, since I don’t have a soul I can’t really say . . .

What’s your earliest memory with or biggest impression of music from a young age?
MB: Knowing that music was a presence or a force, but that I couldn’t reach out and touch it [has] always baffled me. I guess that’s what hooked me as a kid and I’ve endeavored to figure out some way to perceive music visually ever since.
RR: Film music has always been a big source of inspiration for me and one of my earliest musical memories was me trying to squeak out the notes to the Jurassic Park theme song on my recorder. If it weren’t for the Star Wars or Jurassic Park soundtracks I don’t think I would be making music today. In other words: thank you, John Williams.

[Patterns EP.]

There’s more explaining I could do.

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I hear one thing: “I know.”

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Majical Cloudz – Turns Turns Turns

I hear one thing: “I know.”
I hear one thing: “I know.”
I hear one thing: “I know.”

The thing is: “I don’t know. I have never known. I have pretended to know, grasped at the fingertips of women and men who I thought knew, cried and begged for knowing, adopted the crushed posturing of somebody who knows. I have told people what to know, how to know, what it is to know. Angrily, I pointed fingers and shouted aphorisms in the name of Knowing. I believed Knowing was Power. Then, I believed Knowing was Peace. Neither held clean after the dishwashing. In the villages, I lusted for people to watch me stroll about my business. They would be hushed, wary. Whispering amongst themselves, ‘The Man Who Knows was known to walk these chalky paths.’ I have wished, dearly wished, to know, but all I know is the more I have known, or thought to have known, the less I have known in truth and the more confused I have become. Forever turning, never still.”

[Turns Turns Turns.]

“. . . because he’s Batman.”

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Riviera Rock

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shadow dancing

Christopher Owens – Riviera Rock

She danced late into the night in a Morocco club, smiling through the light glisten of perspiration on her face, her purple dress billowing around her. Several miles away, an addax loped over a purple bracelet in the desert dunes. Unmarked underneath, her husband’s body decayed.

[Lysandre.]

So mechanical, and you’re beautiful too.

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Foxygen – Why Did I Get Married?

“I’m late, I know. Unfashionably. I was, like, five minutes away and I got lost so I kind of cruised, started checking out the houses in your neighbourhood. Bit posh. Wait – is that . . . did, did you put out cheese and crackers? What the fuck? Whatever. Just point me to the beer. How’s the party? Who showed up? Oh, seriously? She came? I wouldn’t have picked that. I guess that’s cool. You should put the moves on her, man. Like Mick Jagger, ha ha. Current Jagger, though. Like 69-year-old Jagger. Not Rolling-Stones-Can’t-Get-Enough-Satisfaction Jagger. What I’m trying to say is you move like a senile pensioner. Kinda look like one too, with that polo top. Since when do you wear polo tops? Polo tops are for golfers and/or Larry David. Yes. Yes, they are. Alright, whatever. Anyway, good luck, man. No, seriously. I was just joking! Relax. I’m pulling for you. She has a great set of tits.”

[Take The Kids Off Broadway.]

Lean on old familiar ways

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unicorn lovers club copy

Paul Simon – Still Crazy After All These Years

“I have a headache.”
“Did you take a shower?,” Love asked.
“I tried everything — I took two showers, I took ibuprofen, I drank three glasses of water. I still have it. I’m going to bed,” Mrs. Love said.

It struck me that that was one of the Loves eccentricities. They will raise children who believe taking a shower will cure a headache. That’s just a Thing that will happen.

Every couple has its inexplicable eccentricities. Some put batteries in the fridge. Some put red wine in there. Old wives’ tales persist; I mean, we are still supposed to switch off electronics in a plane, despite Science. [Link 1, 2, 3, 4, infinity.]

Now I’m paranoid that I have a bunch of habits just this side of innocuous that no one has bothered to talk to me about.

[Still Crazy After All These Years.]

Out of this blue Sunday dream

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Back down, back down

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leotard

TOPS – Turn Your Love Around

1. I’m 16. I’m on a Vespa, my mom on back. We’re driving to buy bread, zipping down the hilly paved road at about 40 km/h. As we crest one hill, a scooter shoots out from behind a fence. My mother screams into my ear and it startles me more than the motorbike. We hit — hard — and I flip over the top of the handlebars and sail through the air. Time stops. I’m sure, fully positive, that I will die. I know this the same way I know my name. I feel a peace. I’m content. I’m going to die and everything will be ok.

2. I’m 20. I’m in the old gray Nissan truck, a junker with a rusted frame but surprisingly decent engine. All four of us boys learned how to drive stick on it, so the clutch is pretty finicky, but otherwise it has held up well mechanically. My mom is in the passenger seat. We’re driving into town to mail a package at the post office. Over the bridge there’s a three-way light, with a semi waiting at a red. I pull up and he starts drifting backward. I look behind and there’s nobody behind me. I go to put the pickup in reverse, except it keeps jamming. I push the gear stick down and to the right and all I get is that abrasive gear crunching noise. I’m not sure what to do — the semi is rolling slowly toward us — so I just keep trying to jam it into reverse. The semi is feet away. My mom reaches over and pushes the horn frantically, and the truck stops rolling. I probably would have sat there mutely and let him crush me.

3. I’m in fourth grade. Just graduated, in fact. I’m sitting next to my brother in a 20-passanger white van, ready to drive to the airport. All our luggage is piled in the back of a truck. Everyone at my boarding school whose parents live in Indonesia are in the van. Most of them are seniors. The girls are openly weeping, pressing their hands against the windows at their friends and pushing stringy hair out of their wet faces. They don’t know when, if ever, they will see their friends again. Either way, it won’t be the same; they will go to different colleges and grow apart and never raise each other like they did in dorms. We’ve been sitting in the van for half an hour. My brother and I are giddy. We’re on vacation and about to see our parents. And, plus, airplanes! We are laughing and poking each other in the ribs. We are tone deaf. One girl, through heaving sobs, cries, “Can we just go already?” It’s too much to stare at her crying friends, having already said goodbye, just sitting in a cramped sweaty van waiting for life to change, probably for the worse.

[Tender Opposites.]

Ladies and Gentlemen … Mr. Leonard Cohen

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