Puny humans!

Written by

Dragonball Z – Main Title (Rock The Dragon)

Reasons why you wouldn’t want to be a Saiyan in the real world:

  1. Your personal health insurance rates would be ridiculously high.
  2. Goku, on average, eats the equivalent of a week’s worth of food every meal. Given the cost of groceries, his weekly bills would be ridiculously inflated. You could make the argument for him buying some items in bulk but it would still be a helluva financial burden to take.
  3. You would be on call for every natural disaster, political conflict and societal meltdown – all across the world. When would you sleep? Saiyans need sleep.
  4. The real world doesn’t have senzu beans or healing chambers. Saiyans, as part of their physiology, become stronger each time they heal following a conflict but man, that’s a lot of time in hospital beds. How do you even operate on a ki-blast injury?
  5. You would end up with a lot of bugs in your mouth flying at high speeds.
  6. You think you’re already self-conscious during sex? Imagine if you were a Saiyan, with nearly limitless potential strength and speed. Get carried away once and you could kill your spouse. Sometimes it’s hard not to get carried away.
  7. Across the planet, people would be afraid of you. Even if you were constantly performing good deeds. Humans would be worried that one day you would realise how unrivaled you are in terms of strength and speed and use that to your malevolent advantage.

Reasons why you would want to be a Saiyan in the real world:

  1. You could turn into a fucking Super Saiyan, dude.

[Main Title (Rock The Dragon).]

Posted on January 28, 2013 - Tunes - 1 Comment »

interviewtheproletariat
all boy/all girl

Written by

all boy/all girl – Water

I spoke with Brooklyn-based band all boy/all girl via Skype earlier this week. Here’s the transcript:

Joan Sar: Hey there! How’s it going, Nicholas (and whoever else may be peering upon the screen at this present time)?

Nicholas Rahn: Good! We just finished up at our rehearsal space. Hannah Levinson (viola) and Luke Krafka (cello) have left so it’s Jessie Rogowski (vocals), Nicholas Rahn (bass), Tyler Erickson (drums), Joshua Curry (guitar) and Danielle Lovier (vocals and ukulele) here.

JS: Excellent. Hello to you all. How did rehearsals go?

NR: It went really well. It was our first time rehearsing back in New York City since before the holidays. It’s always a challenge to get seven people in a room together.

JS: Beautiful. Well, let’s get the easy question out of the way: seven people are in a band in Brooklyn. The press I’ve read is positive, and I’ve listened to your music a helluvalot since you sent it our way. How does that even happen? How did you guys come to agree on forming all boy/all girl?

NR: Well, I was in a band with Danielle (with whom I am in a romantic relationship) called Olive Juice. We played covers and performed at weddings (we have a YouTube channel worth checking out). A handful of parentheses later we moved to Brooklyn and were tired of being a duo. We wrote a handful of songs and I recorded the demos you’ve heard in my bedroom. Then we had to find people to play all the parts on the recordings. We turned to Craigslist. We had amazing luck. We found some of the coolest people in New York who were all excited about what we were doing.

JR: I had just moved to NYC from Chicago a few months earlier, and when I first moved here, I actively searched for a band or musical outlet I was happy with. I didn’t have success. I decided I needed to find a job first and make some $$$. Then, several months later, there was a day I decided to check Craigslist. I just thought, okay, it’s time. It was then that I saw the posting for all boy/all girl! I met Nick and Danielle the day after and I thought it was a perfect fit!

TE: I was drawn in by the eerie and captivating quality to the demos. I was really drawn to what I had heard and thought it was something really unique and exciting. We’ve been trying to figure out how to translate Nick and Danielle’s strange vision ever since.

JC: I joined the band after the departure of the band’s first guitar player, who happened to also be named Josh and was found through Craigslist. Nick and I are actually from the same hometown and have known each other since we were young, but didn’t start playing music together until college. I joined the band after moving to NYC this fall past.

DL: Nick and I aren’t romantically involved. There was a bet involved about me being so popular and Nick being a big loser . . . you get the picture.

JS: Ha ha, I’m not sure who wins the bet then. So, serendipitous events all around. I imagine, though, that there are stumbling blocks to the translation? I saw a few live videos and they sound great, but what are some of the challenges you guys come across in fine-tuning?

TE: It’s always a fun challenge. We’re a conceptual band based around composition. We’re constantly in a state of trying to tweak our songs. Maybe we’ll solidify everything when we go into recording in March. P.S. What are you wearing?

JS: Ha ha. Classic. A question that reminds me of my awkward teenage years. Ty, I am wearing these horrific off-white pants I bought in a thrift-shop with pressed images of landmarks and newspaper headlines on them. They were flares. My girlfriend hated them, so I cut them at the knee and now wear them as shorts. That, and a blue tee. In fairness, I think it’s a sexy look.

TE: Oh right! It’s summer there! We are all imagining you in those shorts.

JS: I’m glad. Keep that with you forever – especially if you ever make your way to Sydney. You can yell out in concert that you did an interview with a local guy who wears insatiably sexy shorts. I’ll probably be in the crowd and will almost definitely appreciate the attention.

TE: You have our word.

JS: Brilliant. So, tell me: what would each of you say to your first boyfriend/girlfriend now if given the chance?

TE: I am so, so sorry. No, wait – fuck you.
JR: You lied about your age and you thought you were cool. Now, you’re living at home and you’re a fucking loser.
JC: I still love you.
NR: Let’s call it off.
DL: Why didn’t you tell me you were a girl?
NR: Danielle’s one is a true story.

JS: I absolutely want to hear that story.

DL: Gabe went to a different high school than me. We met in the city. We talked a lot online and started dating. He met my whole family and friends. Even all my friends were very jealous of my “hot older boyfriend.” It was mostly an online relationship, but we did hang out. We ended up breaking up a few months later. A year onwards, I met someone who went to the same high school and I asked if they knew Gabe. They said yes, they’re best friends. I say, “Oh, we dated!” They said, “Oh, you’re a lesbian?” Since then, I’ve met a ton of people who told me she was just a girl who dressed and acted like a guy, but it was actually Gabrielle. I’ve been ruined ever since.

JS: Oh, wow. The perils of online dating. I had a couple of those online-centric relationships. A strange dynamic, to say the least. At least Nick is a guy, so far as I know.

DL: Only time will tell.

JS: How about fights? Have any of you ever been in a proper, full-blown tussle? Fists and all? I’ve never been in a genuine fight in my life. They all tapered off after the shit-talk had died down.

NR: Intra-band fight?

JS: Out or in. Either way!

NR: Well, Ty threw one of his friend’s glasses down the slide in the 4th grade. Other than that, we are peaceful people.

JS: Oh, if we’re counting youthful fights, full disclosure: I once injured my friend’s toes because we were playing hide-and-seek and I knew he was hiding behind the bathroom door, so I kicked it open. He was good-natured about it afterwards. Somehow, we’re still friends.

NR: Ha ha, I’m glad it worked out in the end.

JS: I read that you were traveling around Europe for a while, playing on the sophisticated and grubby sidewalks. Tell me about that.

NR: Well, Danielle and I started playing together on the streets of Philadelphia. We have a love for street performing actually. When we went to Europe it was just myself, Danielle, and Josh (one of our other friends came and played drums with us towards the end). It was a blast, but we went in autumn when Europe is really rainy . . . since then, we’ve performed on the streets of NY as a full band. We plan on doing it more when the weather is nice.

JS: How do you find performing in NY? I’ve never been, but my impression from films is a city full of snarky, cynical people. Somehow that sticks. (I’m sure deep down, they all want to be nice.)

NR: Performing in NY is cool, though booking shows is nearly impossible. Everybody in Brooklyn is in a band! Clubs here are kind of shitty because of it – they don’t treat bands well. The audiences here are as good as any other city though.

[Here: Jessie had to leave. We thank her for tale of how she came to join all boy/ all girl and her acerbic spiel towards her first boyfriend.]

all boy/all girl – Summertime

JS: You would hope so. So, another hypothetical question: given the choice – past or present, dead or alive – which musician or band would each of you most like to open for?

DL: tUnE-yArDs.
TE: Prince.
JC: Pavement.
NR: The Spice Girls.

JS: tUnE-yArDs. Nice. Nick, man – The Spice Girls? I guess mid-90s it would have been sweet.

NR: Ha ha, I was thinking 2013.

JS: Ha ha, well that would be interesting. Fingers crossed. I imagine you’ve each indulged in music throughout your lives. Since starting in it as a craft, what have been your high points in music and, in the same vein, your low points?

NR: Well, one time somebody threw rocks at Danielle and myself when we were busking in Philadelphia.

JS: Rocks? Why would they throw rocks?

NR: I’m not sure. It might have had something to do with Danielle wearing a onesie . . . on the other hand, Josh and myself opened for James Taylor once.

JS: James Taylor! Nice. How was that? Did you talk to him, maybe get some golden nuggets of advice?

NR: No, we were singing as part of a chorus so us – and one-hundred other people – opened for James Taylor, ha ha.

JS: Ha ha, still counts. So, who does the song-writing for the most part? Your lyrical arrangements are interesting. Sharp words and saccharine vocals are a good combination.

NR: I do the song-writing. Josh helps me with some things here and there. I’m an awful singer, so sometimes my vocal ideas get misinterpreted – for the better – by Danielle. A lot of the songs go into rehearsal as a rough concept, and the band helps flesh them out. We’re all on the same page with ideas and song-writing which is really cool.

JS: I have arguments with my friends about the importance of lyrics versus instrumentals and vice versa. I’m a sucker for good writing and can ignore the music sometimes if the lyrics are captivating. Do you have similar quandaries? Has moving into a larger band dynamic changed any of your previous ideas about music-making?

NR: We definitely value both of them, however we do put music first – slightly. They’re lyrics, not poetry, so I think we use the crutch of music and chord changes to carry the song.

JS: I’d say it works. Your songs have a free-flowing progression to them. They evolve nicely.

NR: Thank you!

JS: You’re welcome. Also, Danielle plays the ukulele! I adore ukuleles. I bought one on a whim a few years ago. I was in a Beirut phase and wanted to learn “Elephant Gun” on it. Impulse purchases can be fun. I never was particularly successful with the song, though.

DL: I think ukuleles are the instrument that people to buy to learn, but almost always ends up on the wall.

JS: Unless you’re involved with all boy/all girl.

DL: Ha ha, yes! I mean, I think at this point more bands are using them than in a long while. But in most cases, it’s a gimmick. (“A beautiful gimmick, at least”) True that.

JS: Alright, let’s wrap this up: if you were to write for tunetheproletariat, which songs would you write about, and what would you write about to go with them?

NR: Which of our songs?

JS: Any songs! Yours, others, whatever you like.

NR: Well, for our songs what first comes to mind is our song “Water”. We would probably write about a typical 1970s American prom. No one shows up to the prom, though. I don’t know whether that evokes any imagery for you, but we always talk about the idea of a “ghost prom” when we talk about that song.

JS: A ghost prom reads like a gloomy scene . . .

NR: Precisely.

JS: . . . music on the sound-system, balloons on the floor, nobody there to dance.

NR: Exactly!

JS: How about other songs? Which songs do you hold dear, that you could imagine writing about?

NR: The Congos’ “Fisherman“. A little lamb gets lost in the woods and can’t find his way out. He meets a crazy Jamaican dude, named Lee Scratch Perry, and the lamb gets sacrificed and made into an echo box.

JS: I like it! You’re free to write that for us, if you ever feel the impulse.

NR: Ha ha, yes, I’ll be working on it then! Josh said he has some intense, emotional ideas in mind already.

JS: I’m down.

[all boy/all girl.]

Posted on January 27, 2013 - Interviews - No Comments »

Australia Day

Written by

066108be676d11e2b0f022000a9f1369_7

Nick Cave & Dirty Three – Zero Is Also A Number

I was on the train today with Mum this afternoon. We were coming back from the airport, and our combined fare – one way – was more than $30. I suggested she get a pensioner ticket, save half a fare, but she’s terrified of transit officers so didn’t. Halfway home a policeman got on the train – an actual police officer, not a transit officer. He was checking tickets. He walked past two little old ladies sitting together without even glancing at them; he’d locked on to two Asian teenagers. One had his feet up on the adjacent seat and both had small patterns shaved into the sides of their hair. Mum and I watched the policeman stand over the two boys – I was listening to music so I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He swatted the boy’s legs off the seat, and then called his partner over from the other section of the carriage. He literally called for backup. The other policeman was wearing sunglasses indoors and a bulletproof vest. He walked over and stood next to his partner. Together they blocked off the aisle from the boys in a passive aggressive, claustrophobic, totally unnecessary way. My song ended and I heard the first policeman say to one of the boys, “Are you a pensioner? I don’t think so.” Both policeman starting writing out tickets, ducking dramatically in sync to check the name of the station through the window. They both had guns strapped to their legs, and knives in leather pouches on their belt. They probably had tasers. The second policeman never took off his sunglasses, not even to write out the ticket. They took their time. Must have been a slow day for real crime. When they were done they swaggered past the rest of the carriage – all white, all over 20 or under 7. The first cop glanced at the tickets Mum was holding out on her lap – she’d bought her correct, absurdly expensive fare, and she wanted it known. The cop kept walking. Everyone on the carriage exchanged looks of pity and guilt while the boys muttered “bullshit” and other profanities we all silently agreed the cops deserved. The two little old ladies in front of us moved seats so they were two rows behind the boys; close enough so that they could hear them while they murmured about pity and injustice. The weirdest thing was how everybody else in the carriage reacted; I looked around and eye contact was dodged and shame radiated quietly from every face. I think everybody on that train felt something for those boys – anger on behalf of them and shame for the policemen – and for the small, daily injustice that had occurred before them, and for the fact that they were spared. And they felt something for the day on which it occurred. No different to any day other, really. It was just so typical it was disheartening for those who wanted to believe in it.

At least that’s what I want to believe, about those people.

[Songs in the Key of X: Music from and Inspired by the X-Files.]

Posted on January 26, 2013 - Tunes - 6 Comments »

Transmissions will resume

Written by

Musings on seeing Muse for free in the Staples Center on Jan. 24:

  •   My buddy, Love, called me at about 6 p.m. and said he’d procured free tickets to Muse. Doors were at 7 p.m. He groveled, begging me to put off two articles I had planned on finishing that night. I benevolently assented.
  •   Immediately, Mrs. Love and I headed up to Los Angeles. I don’t like L.A. I think it’s soulless. They smothered the ground with cement and then erected industrial buildings across the dryness. It holds very little charm. But Mrs. Love lived a couple blocks from the venue downtown, so to her the place is nostalgic. Things mean different things to different people, I guess.
  •   Since he was driving from work, Mr. Love met us there. Still jittery from a busy day, he called Mrs. Love roughly every two minutes, changing where we should meet up and making sure we brought him food and coordinating other frivolous details. Why didn’t we just stay still nearby and he could come to us, I ventured. “What I’ve learned from marriage is that you have to pick your battles,” Mrs. Love said. This wasn’t one she bothered to fight.
  •   Inside, as we circled the stadium looking for our section (Staples Center is a basketball/hockey stadium owned by the Anschutz Entertainment Group), Love, $10 beer in hand, said he’d heard Muse puts on perhaps the best live show going at the moment. I suggested no concert in a stadium was in the running.
  •   Our seats were as far away from the stage as possible. On the field level, near the middle of what would be the court, was a massive sound/lights/lasers control booth. Beyond that was general admission, people milling about inside a fenced-off area that came within a couple feet of the stage. We were as high up as seats went, against the far wall: section 308, row 7, seat number 17. Or, at least, that’s where I was. The seats weren’t together, which is how Love snagged three. As people kept filing in, our attempts to sit together unraveled.
  •   Before we split up, the Loves briefly argued about where to leave the cars for an upcoming vacation. In the end, the husband was right to leave his car at work, and Mrs. Love admitted so. “This is marriage,” Love said, pointing at his wife. “She always thinks she’s right.”
  •   I sat between two teenage girls, my arms crossed to preserve limited elbow room. The one on my right had a shrieking problem. How I Met Your Mother would dub her a Woo Girl, except her woo threatened to split my eardrums. The one on my left watched the entire concert through the screen of her digital camera. “Enjoy the show,” her boyfriend implored her. “I am enjoying it,” she said. I think this makes me old, but I don’t understand the desire to document every experience with shitty pictures and shittier video. Your cell phone’s camera isn’t good enough to make a picture of lights a stadium away look interesting. It comes out as a bright blur. And your audio-recording equipment (not to mention lack of mixing software) does the live sound a disservice. /old person rant.
  •   The trio in front of me showed up midway through the first song, toked up, and proceeded to dance through most of the concert, obscuring my already limited view. “I think they were on something,” Mrs. Love said later. The light show was probably more enjoyable high, I thought.
  •   Can we talk about white people dancing? No one can dance quite as poorly as white folk. During the rocking songs, the stadium — or the parts of it I could see — broke out in awkward, gangly, off-beat gyration. Hips jutted out of rhythm. Fists and arms flailed seemingly to different songs. I tapped my toes.
  •   Muse are rock stars. During an early solo, the guitarist rode one of his thrusts smoothly to his knees and continued soloing away. Ever since seeing Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln I’ve been thinking about what our posture conveys about us (the way he hunches; the slow, old-man march of a gait — half mournful, half wistful as he disappears down the hallway toward his *SPOILER* death). The members of Muse have the posture of rock stars. They are comfortable on stage, which is evident no matter how far away you sit.
  •   Love met Muse once. He works in entertainment. He came home with a picture of them on his iPhone. The lead singer looks like a youth pastor. The concert felt, to me, like it could fit in the genre of mega-church worship, except good. I’ve seen many of the stage habits, the lights and the overwrought choruses in mega-churches. Except, of course, that Muse can fucking jam and that they nail those larger-than-life swells. Still, it felt at times like the hardest-rocking church band of all time.
  •   In front of me, a man with his septum pierced passed, holding a beer, on the way to his seat. In the other hand, he led his 10-year-old child.
  •   There are three members in Muse. I know this because I could see three people strutting around. But stage-left of the drum kit was a fourth. From what I can tell from the brief glimpses of when lights accidentally fell on him, he played keyboards, second guitar and some percussion. I felt deep affinity with this man. The spotlight never fell on him. The video cameras never picked him up. He probably makes several hundred times less than the three others on stage with him. But he is essential.
  •   Essential, too, were the 50 or so others involved in the production. The guitar techs, the sound guys, and whatever genius designed that light show. Along the back, in a half circle, were a series of screens maybe 5 feet long each. From the roof directly above the stage, a pyramid of screens lowered and raised throughout the show. The levels of the pyramid overlapped and interchanged, so that it did not always hold its pyramid shape. All these screens showed graphics, live footage from the show, or other video (as when the pyramid landed on the stage and played an extended clip while the band took a discreet breather). For one song they showed a cute hippopotamus dancing. It’s hard to explain without showing you, but even as screens overlapped and shifted, images moved between them seamlessly. Someone put many dozen or perhaps hundreds of hours into programming that, and it is an exceptional accomplishment. “I felt like he should have been on stage too,” Love said.
  •   I’m not deeply familiar with Muse’s discography. I own a few albums and am acquainted with the hit songs. I remember once playing euchre with Rat. I was winning. We were talking about music. “Why listen to Coldplay when you could just listen to Radiohead?” I said. “Why listen to Radiohead when you could just listen to Muse?” he countered. I hated him then. Ever since, I’ve kept Muse at arm’s length, secretly holding it against them that they will never ever be nearly as good as Radiohead.
  •   I heard on the radio that the singer wrote that Madness song you’ve heard way too many times recently about his girlfriend (wife?). She went to stay with her mother during a fight, and while she was away he wrote that song. It boggled my brain to imagine writing a Muse song. Most musicians you can kind of piece together how they do it. They strum some strings and hum a tune and if you jumble a bunch of other stuff on top it equals a song. Or they plink some keys to start. But how do you write a Muse song? Surely not on an acoustic guitar. They seem to come preformed, breech-birthed in dense recording, a matrix of rhythms, and explosive digital crescendos.
  •   I’ve been listening to a lot of Shearwater recently, one, because Animal Joy is the best album that was or ever will be released in 2012, and, two, because I found the CD in my car a few days ago. These bands are very distinct and the vocalists are obviously different, but I think the singers belong in the same category. That category might be: “the sound released when you crack open the earth’s core.”
  •   Matt Bellamy’s voice only faltered once during the show, when he stuttered over the lyric “They will not control us” on Uprising.
  •   Maybe it was the seats. Maybe it was the girl who took a 20 minute break in the middle of the show to buy overpriced nachos from AEG. But I witnessed this concert; I did not experience it. It felt like watching a concert on television, except without the closeups and with a bunch of jerks I didn’t invite in my living room. I felt no obligation to clap or cheer or woot or buy merch. When I felt the stickiness of beer underneath the sole of my boots, it was up in the cold clammy corner of a stadium, not in a sweaty bar.
  •   I read a bucket-list-suggestions thing that included attending a sold-out huge stadium concert. In my head I thought of Pink Floyd. I imagined an open-aired stadium, grass. I thought it would feel like being part of something. History, maybe. Or at least a rebellion of some sort — those kids and their rock musics and drugs and silly clothes. This show was not historic. It was not rebellious. It was a show you bring your kid to. It was a place to sit and eat nachos. Every second was meticulously choreographed and rehearsed. There was nothing raw about it. The condom didn’t even peel up around the base.
  •   Outside, after the show, we walked to the $5 parking lot where Love’s coworker’s car (and Love’s backpack inside it) waited. The parking lot attendant shotgunned a beer, stomped on the empty can, and kicked it underneath a car. “He’s so over it,” Love said. I think I would have rather watched a concert in that dirty lot, with that drunk parking lot attendant, than a few blocks away in the sterile Staples Center.

[The Second Law.]

Posted on January 25, 2013 - Gigs - No Comments »

I only play by the rules.

Written by

Posted on January 24, 2013 - Videos - No Comments »

I may not have what you desire

Written by

cig money

TW Walsh – Natural Causes (Yuuki Matthews Remix)

I get annoyed with how much continued existence costs. I should not have to spend this much money to stay alive. I have to feed myself two, sometimes three times, every day. It adds up. Every month, it’s the same barrage of bills: rent, electricity, internet, satellite, water. Every six months: car insurance, human insurance. Every year: license plate fees, taxes (not an insignificant amount for independent contractors), life insurance.

I don’t feel as though my life is cost effective. Not as in I don’t live frugally; I do. As in: the cost of continued existence is high enough for me to consider its worth. I could abandon the whole apartment thing, live on the streets as a bum, but daily worrying about my continued existence doesn’t appeal to me.

It has never been this way and it never will be this way, but in my head the following should come free: a place to sleep, enough food to sate me. In my head, whatever I earn through work should be profit, not just what’s left over after all the automatic payments vacate my bank account.

I wonder — given the choice before birth, knowing how much it would cost just to stay alive throughout my lifetime — if I would have chosen to splurge on existence.

[Songs of Pain and Leisure.]

Posted on January 23, 2013 - Tunes - 1 Comment »

A new kind of Justice League

Written by

[Sunshine.]

Posted on January 22, 2013 - Videos - No Comments »

Things you should love:

Written by

You should check these things out. Some of them we are friends with personally and support wholeheartedly, others we are not friends with but wish we could be.

Comedy
Mug and Kettle Comedy
Arthur B’s Fringe Affair

Theatre
Sidetrack Theatre
Rough Hewn

Posted on January 21, 2013 - Misdirection - No Comments »

(no subject)

Written by

Serafina Steer – Machine Room

I’m a bit tipsy (at best) and working on a piece about “personal branding” for some of my students.

“Interesting,” you say. Think that’s interesting? OK, well you’re a twat. Or a cunt. What’s the fashionable term these days? Anyway, you don’t need to say that’s it’s interesting, or give me any positive affirmation, because it really isn’t interesting. You and I both know it’s just a job. Don’t get me wrong, I like you regardless! But this shit that I do is a job, a thing I do that brings in money, and that’s it. This is the weird lovely world we live in.

All the stuff we get to do for free is brilliant. You know, going to the park, seeing friends, having them over to your/my place (mine has hookah and a bunch of weird plants on the porch, but you have some cachaça and a real-life karaoke machine!) talking, fucking, checking our phones intermittently for a respite, listening to album streams – album streams, for Christ’s sake. Think about it, think about how beautifully, brilliantly fucked up it is that a pretty famous musician will let you listen to their whole album for free, because they’re not making enough money from the music business in this bog-foresaken capitalist age. So, let’s not say that we have it too hard. We’re pretty well off, by any standard, even if it doesn’t feel that way.

But anyway, yeah, my dog bit a frog. He was pretty much keeled over, trying to puke and failing miserably (like, puking-upwards-style failing). Seriously, he is the John Bonham of tiny dogs. Luckily we had some milk and water and salt available, which is apparently all you need to help a dog when it gets poisoned – either that, or Pedro really wanted to avoid taking him to the vet (Pedro has done this ten times). He’s OK now, staggering around a bit, looking a little lost, kind of like the way I do when I wake up in an unfamiliar bed, I guess. He’ll be fine in the morning.

When you have a job, it brings money in. When you come home from your job, the frog-biter doesn’t really care whether you just hedged Shapeways against Facebook or if you cleaned a bit of scum off Mr. Shepherd’s toilet. You have a body? You have a face? It will be licked. Capitalism is weird like that.

[The Moths Are Real.]

Posted on January 21, 2013 - Tunes - 2 Comments »

interviewtheproletariat
Teen Mom

Written by

Teen Mom – I Wanna Go Out

Not that kind of Teen Mom. Who has a sick fetish like that? Freak. Anyway, Teen Mom! I threw questions at Chris Kelly, member of the band, and he took to them with aplomb. Or a plum. Either way, here’s what I asked and here’s how he answered and that’s that.

Whenever I search your band’s name, I get a lot of shit about Teen Mom, the godawful television show about entitled brats with kids. When you picked Teen Mom as a name, did you think about that at all? Since starting, have you been mistaken for pregnant 16-year-olds?

We mainly decided on calling ourselves Teen Mom because we thought it was kind of funny. We never watched the show, though. One time – which is kind of funny – The Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank had a piece on Sept. 11 about how the day isn’t this sacred event anymore. We happened to be playing a show that night and he called us out to make his argument (my god, even a band called “Teen Mom” is playing a ROCK SHOW on Sept. 11! Oh, what a world!) so we’ve got beef with him, but it’s all cool because, as you mentioned, The Post also called us DC’s greatest living [fuzz] trio.

Right. The Post did call you the “district’s greatest living fuzz trio.” How excited were you about that? Were many high-fives and retweets exchanged?

Well, when something like The Post gives you a shout out it’s really exciting – although I’m not sure how many fuzz trios there are in this town. Not many, for sure. But it was nice, definitely. I clipped the article. Something to show one’s grandparents.

I bet they’ll be proud. Now, tell me about the video for “I Wanna Go Out”. I mean, it’s great. It’s really adorable and nostalgia-tinged. How did the idea for that come about? Is it based off old experiences popping headphones on pretty girls and dancing slowly in frenzied lights?

Yeah, the video turned out pretty well. We didn’t have anything to do with it, though. Matt Carr, who runs the Analog Edition label that put out the Mean Tom EP, made it himself*. We had all been talking about making a video someday, but I love to talk and not do anything, so he took the initiative and did it. Thank goodness for that – people seem to like videos.

Especially when they’re lovely. DefaultMag says I shouldn’t ask you about Ireland. Now I really really want to. Can I? I think I will. What’s the deal with Ireland? We have an Irish writer on board (somewhere) so you’re safe if you want to blast it.

Ha ha, there isn’t any deal with Ireland. I think it’s just a joke among my friends because they all (Tom and Sean, the people they live with, our group of friends) went to William and Mary together and so have this shared history and friendship narrative from like 2005 . . . so college was when they all became close and stuff. I met them post-that, and while I don’t refuse to talk about my time at school, it just never seemed relevant or interesting. I find talking about my life very boring, but if something seems appropriate or interesting, I’ll say it.

Speaking of interesting, In Your Speakers said something goes “terribly wrong” with ‘Say My Name’. How do you fare with criticism? When you set out with songs, what’s your process as a trio? Do some of you take the lead on certain things, or is it a collaborative effort from start to finish? Are there many arguments?

It was a nice change, because [I think] that was the first time we had real criticism. You get to thinking that there’s some conspiracy (how can all these different people have such similar opinions? Perhaps they’re all the same person!) so I enjoyed reading the bad news from In Your Speakers (a website I had never heard of before). I mean “terribly wrong” is kind of hyperbolic, right? It’s a song, y’all, not the Titanic or something. But maybe they’re right – maybe I could’ve done something differently, maybe it is a bit lazy.

Then again, pop music is very formulaic and follows and builds upon rules from circa-1950 so what’s a man to do? I just wrote it. Our songwriting process is pretty simple. I write the song by myself and then introduce it to the guys (either by making a home demo on Garage Band or just playing during a practice) and they write their own parts and sometimes the song changes a bit (tempo, parts get moved around) and my home demos sound very different from the final product, but it’s a pretty easy process.

There aren’t many arguments. Sometimes we’ll disagree about what sounds good but usually things work out in the end. Time fixes everything.

* The footage from the music video for “I Wanna Go Out” is taken from 1980 French comedy La Boum – when guys still did cute things like pop headphones on a cute girl’s head.

[Mean Tom EP.]

Posted on January 20, 2013 - Interviews - No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »