So, in a sense, do you view your more revealing or controversial lyrics as you being a sort of spokesperson for marginalized aspects of humanity?

I think it's more of a personal choice to say things that I'm scared to say or that I feel weird about saying because once you start wondering why does this feel embarrassing or why is this humiliating, the answer is never rational. At some point you can get down below the agreed upon mores. But one thing I've been working on over the years is not to hide every last thing. You hear all those things I might talk about on the record, but I still have a hundred little things I'll never tell anyone. And everyone does.

To shift gears a bit, have you been working on new material?

Yeah, I have been writing lightly, you know, but I haven’t had too much time to delve deep into anything at all. But, I have, you know, I have like a folder full of scraps of stuff that aren’t quite put together yet or anything like that. So, yeah, I have a little bit, but other than that I’ve been doing odd jobs, you know, for other people.

Mowing lawns, that type of thing?

(laughs) Yeah, mowing lawns, exactly. Yeah…no, that’s cool.

Alright, so obviously there’s been a whole shit-load made of the down-sloping presence of hip hop in your music and all that sort of stuff.

Yeah.

But then you know you made a comment in a recent interview about how you’re working on some rhyme schemes where you’re rhyming every word with a word from the following line and that may encourage more rapping. And I was sort of wondering in those notebooks, all those scraps you’ve got, if these are more or less hip hop than Eskimo Snow.

Yeah, I guess I think they lend themselves more to a rapping kind of thing just because they’re probably too complexly drawn to sit within slower melodies. Although it’s not impossible. If you look at a song like “Fatalist Palmistry” where I did that, like “pet bird caught in a jetstream, that’s me /oughta be less cream in your best dreams,” you know, that kind of stuff. You can do that in a melodic song, but my guess is that the next stuff will be more rap. Yeah, that’s a good guess but I’m not sure yet.

One last thing: there’s a hardcore birth and death thing going on in Eskimo Snow and there are a handful of, you know, apparently Biblical references. But the one I haven’t been sure about is at the end of “Berkeley by Hearseback” where you say “like someone’s father’s father left listed in the book of numbers.” Obviously, there’s the phone book, but I was wondering if that had a Biblical reference to it.

Yeah, yeah. The Book of Numbers in the Bible.

Anything specific about that book?

Yeah, it just has a bunch of names, you know, like so and so begat so and so who begat so and so who begat so and so….which is like lineage and shit like that.

Fun times. One of those classic books of the Old Testament.

(laughs) Yeah, a real breeze to read.

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Why? [MySpace] [Label]

Why? will be performing at Fun Fun Fun Fest on Sunday, November 8th at 3:50 on the Orange Stage.

I am defining myself in positives rather using negatives. I am for things now, not against things so much.

You guys seem truly happy on stage, smiling and dancing. What’s the secret ingredient?

LETTING GO of any fear of anything. Knowing.

What does the term collective mean to you, and do you think it applies to you guys?

Collective means a group bound by an ethos. But, the word is used too much for high-brow art for my taste to apply it to us. We are a family. We are not loosely knit and bound by an ethos or any manifesto. We are bound by... for lack of a better term... fate.

There’s a noticeable Ennio Morricone vibe in some of your songs. Was that a conscious choice or something that naturally bubbled to the top?
His music has always inspired me. It was beyond a conscious 'decision', it was an atmospheric aspiration, declaration. There is something there that transcends, that moves me to jubilation and adventure.

What’s a typical night like in the bus on tour?

Eating, Laughing, playing,... living.

I know it’s super hard to define, but if you had to sum up what this musical project means to you in a sentence or phrase, what would that be?

LOVE and COURAGE.

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros [Official]
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros [MySpace]

Greg:There's been a common misconception that Red Sparowes was a collaboration or side project. We've always been a full-time band. I can see why people would think otherwise; we have to contend with other tour schedules, etc., but we've never considered ourselves anything but a full-time band.

T.S. Eliot’s Preludes is cited as the inspiration for the name Red Sparowes; in the poem, sparrows signify mankind’s willful destruction of nature. Your 2006 album Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun, is thematically centered around Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” campaign of mass slaughter of the sparrows who fed off Chinese crops. [This led to widespread famine after the locust population exploded without its primary predator.] How important do you think the listener’s understanding of cultural and historical references is to their appreciation of your music?

Greg: I don't think it's important at all actually. It's always been our goal for our music to stand alone so that people can relate to it in whatever way is natural to them. The album concepts have been there to give people an additional layer of depth that obviously isn't provided by lyrics, if the listener is interested in a context for the music. I hear all the time from people at the shows that they can relate our music to their own experiences, and I love that.

The titles of Red Sparowes tracks are notoriously long ("And by Our Own Hand Did Every Last Bird Lie Silent in Their Puddles, the Air Barren of Song as the Clouds Drifted Away. For Killing Their Greatest Enemy, the Locusts Noisily Thanked Us and Turned Their Jaws Toward Our Crops, Swallowing Our Greed Whole," for example), and form comprehensive paragraphs when read sequentially. Is this a way to add a narrative dimension to your lyrics-free albums, or something else altogether?

Greg: Yeah, it's definitely there to create a narrative element to the album. It's our way of saying to people who are interested; this is how we relate to our own music, and the mood that we feel it conveys. The absence of lyrics allows us not to force that on our audience, but it's there if they want the further understanding.

How did the band change after [guitarist] Josh Graham left last year?

Greg: Josh had already been living in New York for over a year and was concentrating on his new band. Part of why we've done so little in the past couple of years is because we were slowed down by geographical challenges and the baggage that comes with that. So, to start with, we've been a lot more prolific, the results of which will be evident starting early 2010.

We were also frustrated by a sense of limitation in terms of the music we were creating, both technically and aesthetically. With our current line-up there's not that sense at all; it feels like the sky is the limit. No one's afraid to take chances and the music is, as a result, much' more dynamic. It's still heavy, but there's a greater range and there's much more going on in terms of being very intentional about song structures, melodic movements and interesting dynamics.

Your latest release, the 3-song EP Aphorisms, explores the concept of these generalized observations as widely accepted truths. Now, we’ve heard that “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” but the opening track of your EP is titled “We Left the Apes to Rot, But Find the Fang Grows Within.” Is this a more regional aphorism? Chinese maybe? Seriously, though, tell us a little more about aphorisms as inspiration and how you express them musically.

Dave: The idea of Aphorisms is an extension of a larger concept we're planning for the next full album. When seen in full context, I think it will make better sense. But I don't want to elaborate too much on that just yet. Specifically, the theme and titles of the EP are intended both as an example of the more direct statement of the songs on this recording.

Aphoristic statements have historically attempted to embody general truths in simple statements, but as in human history and the developments of science and culture, we continue to follow a trajectory of ever-evolving modes of thought, and what is believed true at one time can be completely irrelevant later.

Do you have a favorite aphorism to share with us?

Dave: I have many favorites, but I think a particularly applicable one is included in the EP artwork: "Man is the measure of all things." -- Protagoras.

Why do you think there is so much backlash nowadays against the use of the term post-rock? Do you think that tag applies to Red Sparowes?

Greg: I don't know...it seems like there's a tendency towards genre titles like that going out of style, even though the music style exists, most likely under a different name. I'd imagine it has to do with bands wanting to be part of something new, and the association could easy pigeonhole a band that wants to be listened to and not categorized.

Sure, I think the tag applies, especially when thinking about the bands that were on the forefront of post-rock, like Slint and Tortoise. They were huge influences on my personal playing, although I can't speak for the entire band. But I'd hate to be put in a box. We've always called ourselves instrumental rock and generally I think we all feel a closer association with bands like Sonic Youth and early prog bands like Pink Floyd and Hawkwind.

What can we expect from your third full length album, due out early next year?

Greg: Not so much a continuation, but an expansion, of our previous sound. We take more chances and experiment with a greater range musically than we ever have before. It's definitely a much more mature album and we all feel really proud of it.

Dave: There are many different elements to the next album that I think seem a very interesting culmination of melodic tendencies of the first album and the more experimental bent of the latter two. It features our newly-solidified lineup and I think there's a big reflection of the ways this band has continued to evolve over time.

---
Hear Red Sparowes at Fun Fun Fun Fest Saturday at 4:20 on the Orange Stage
Red Sparowes [Myspace][Official]

Yes. And that’s what farmers will tell you too. Farmers will actually do better if people eat less meat, because they are going to be willing to spend more per serving and pay the actual cost. When people talk about meat being so cheap, it’s just the cash register price that is low and the real costs are externalized: human health, environmental clean-up, and the decimation of land values, and probably a certain, perhaps harder to measure, price of letting this happen as a civilization. So if we ate meat a lot a less, we’d be able to do it right. Farmers would be able to do things the way they did fifty years ago and would finally make a decent living. Overabundance is the problem.

Some people might not be able to afford meat at all. To be equitable, should we subsidize meat purchases?

We already do that. Rich people already pay a lot more taxes than poorer people and it's those taxes that are underwriting the meat industry. Also you have to really believe that this is very cheap food that is supplying necessary calories, and healthy calories, to people who can’t afford otherwise. A very few corporations are making enormous amounts of money by providing this cheap food at the expense of human health, the expense of animals and the environment.

Here’s another way of thinking about it. How much more expensive would it get: three times, four times or five times? Americans now eat 150 times as much chicken as they did 80 years ago. People are still going to be able to have it at every meal, but they are just not going to have a huge piece of it in the center of their plate.

Part two of this interview will appear next week.

Angry Olive Hat

The good news is, you, too, can slobber over her work—up close and in person. She’s part of the EAST tour. What’s that you ask? It’s the East Austin Studio Tour, when over a hundred East side artists open their homes and studios so we can check out their habitats and their work and, of course, buy up their stuff. There are no excuses—NONE—not to attend this event. This year it’s running over nine days, from November 14th - 22nd. Next week we’ll be featuring more info and profiles. For now, a little sneak peak via a Q&A I did with Kourtney.

Portrait of the Artist as a Tree Frog

SG: Who are you?
AO: Oh, geeze. I’m still figuring that one out. I think I need a beer before I can even begin to ponder. Let’s just say, for now, I’m reaching the close of my twenties, I’m a mother, an aspiring pilot and obsessed with doing too many things at once and getting overwhelmed. I like to use my hands…a lot.

SG: How'd you get involved in E.A.S.T.?
AO: Since I recently left the domestic life behind, I’ve opened my eyes to a brand new world, a world outside mopping my floors and cleaning the kitchen, and I’m actually getting involved in the arts- something I’ve always wanted to do. My friend Terra Biddleman has never given up on me since we met, and constantly introduces me to amazingly talented people here in Austin. That's how I met the lovely Eya Floyd, who held my hand through the application process.

Angry Olive Hat

SG: I knit, you knit, but not everyone knits-- so tell those us in layperson's terms how your on-the-fly knitting works. (i.e. what's your process from concept to completion?)
AO: Ok, so It depends on what I want to knit. Most of the designs of the creatures or hats I come up with just pop into my head, or they derive from a project gone bad or maybe it’s an extension or mutation of an old design. When it comes to clothing, I have a particular style in mind, but the real fun is when you get to play with stitch patterns and colorwork. On top of that, I like to mix techniques together. For example, if I combine crochet and knitting, sewing, and embroidery, it changes EVERYTHING. Most people I’ve come across who are involved in the fiber arts don’t like to step outside their comfort zone. They either knit or crochet, or sew, or felt, etc. When it comes to combining everything, I eat it up. My least favorite thing to do is the measuring and the calculating of stitches and making it all work for fitting a human. With making toys or pieces to be hung, you don’t have to worry so much about the math and counting stitches and practicality. Also, with many projects, I might have a particular way I want it to turn out, but then halfway through I completely change it, and luckily, it’s always worked out for the best. It’s all about intuition and throwing caution to the wind!

Fox Hoodie

SG: Favorite thing you ever knit?
AO: That’s like asking what my favorite song is! No fair. As for an actual item, I had a really fun time knitting the nevernude. I love, love, love knitting cables, fair isle, and lace is fun when I don’t have to rip it out ten times. But I cannot stress enough that it has almost everything to do with WHAT I knit with. Favorite needles? Turbos and bamboos-- Lantern Moon [brand] if I can splurge. Natural fibers are the best! Acrylic is essentially knitting plastic and I hate it. Anything that’s considered “novelty” yarn I stay away from, because I just don’t like it. Perhaps I’m a purist or a snob. I can accept that fault.

Fake Shit!

SG: Besides E.A.S.T. where/how do you market your stuff?
AO: I’ve been on hiatus for a while. I have an etsy shop that I need to desperately restock. I also had a website, but I can’t really put the time into it to makework. I’m terrible at updating my knitting blog and marketing myself has been the biggest challenge. I suppose it's because I have yet to convince even myself that my creations are that special or good. I just try to keep things simple and fun. Etsy, my (old) website, Ravelry and local fairs are usually what I focus on when I'm in the Angryolive Mode.

SG: Advice to other crafty folks who want to get into the business side of it?
AO: I wish I could tell you, because I could definitely use that advice. I would say if you want to sell patterns, you would probably be in better shape than selling handmade items. I am a one-woman sweatshop and because of that, I developed tendonitis. Keep things simple and less time consuming if you want to make a profit. The best thing I have ever done is put myself out there and MEET PEOPLE. I have noticed that crafty people who constantly update their shops, blogs and participate in fairs, and publish free patterns online seem to get some wonderful breaks.

SG: Current favorite knitted item you've made/are making?
AO: The current favorite would have to be S. Cargo and the Dame Critter Trio or the Owl Vest. There is also a vintage pattern of a nautical blanket that’s burning a hole on my shelf.

SG: Tell me about your "plush life"— What's up with the plushies?
AO: Plushies are typically instant gratification, and when you spend over a month knitting a top, you need to have a quick fix. My quick fixes have turned out to be some of my favorite things to make. In the amount of time it will take me to knit a plush, I can sew 20 from fleece. Instead of running 5 miles a day, I just get liposuction every now and then…

SG: What else do you want to tell me?
AO: I am participating in a play called Love and Chaos that will be a supernatural four act, four location show on November 15, 2009 starting 4:30 at Rio Rita and ending at Shangri La. Not to whore that out or anything, but If you happen to see plush guts fly out of a stomach and an extremely oversized cinnamon roll in the show- I made them! thetinyblackhearts.blogspot.com
Spike Gillespie wishes she could sit in a big pile of plush poo and just knit all day, everyday. She blogs at KnitBuzz and spikeg.com.

Our experience with the music up to that point had been the Beatles and a little bit of Jimi Hendrix (by '72-'73, every guitarist in the black community wanted to be like him). Of course, if you didn't know who the Beatles were at that time, you had to be living under a rock. When Dannis saw the show and told us about it, it took a little convincing. But when my mom's boyfriend took David to see the Who, that sort of changed things for him - it was 1973 during the Quadrophenia tour. Pete Townshend had all these speakers surrounding the Cobo Arena, and David was very impressed by the way he played chords and so forth. As we were a trio, we were impressed by anyone who could pull it off onstage with just three pieces - groups like Grand Funk Railroad, Alvin Lee and Ten Years After, Hendrix' trio, and the Who.

Thinking of the Who, there was also an operatic or theatrical sensibility that also entered Death, right?

Yeah, that was through David and hearing Quadrophenia. It was so orchestrated, and David thought that was one of the most brilliant albums he ever heard. He was telling us that this was the direction of the music - that rock and roll would be orchestrated, and that it was how Hendrix had seen his music before he died. With Tommy and so forth, that really influenced David to a more operatic approach, and he began to write a rock opera around the theme of Death. We were looking for a name for our band at the time, and he suggested that we name it Death - of course, that took a little convincing until he explained to us that he was trying to spin the idea of "death" from a negative thing to something positive. We were in once that became clearer.

As your recorded legacy becomes a bit more detailed, it's clear that some of the songs are stripped down to their barest essence while others are more fleshed out with a grander sense of form.

Well, I think that the real standout song that David wrote and that I put the lyrics to was "Let the World Turn," because that goes through so many variations, from very soft to a very operatic crescendo and then very driving rock rhythms. There are a lot of components there, and David said that it was his "mini-opera." That was the beginning, or the doorway to his concepts and where he wanted to take the music.

So the idea of the music as being stripped-down, wasn't necessarily the whole picture, and especially compared with other bands at the time like MC5 and the Stooges, who would eventually be called "punk"...

People say that we were predating punk, but I don't know about that. To me, we were just playing hard-driving rock and roll music. You have to remember that at the time, the word "punk" was considered a fighting word.

I have to attribute the recording quality to the genius of Brian Spears and Don Davis of the legendary Groovesville Productions in Detroit. Brian signed us after hearing our demo tape, though Don was skeptical of the name. We had known that he had produced music by Johnnie Taylor, the Dramatics and a lot of Motown and Stax stuff, so we were worried that he might come in and cross over our stuff. When he first heard us, though, he said "I'm not going to mess with you guys - just go in, I'll give you the best engineers I have, and we'll see what you come up with." He let us self-produce the music, though they did tutor and mentor us a bit in the studio to make sure everything was all right. He didn't say anything like "this part should have horns, this should have strings," you know.

That's partly why it sounds so raw; we had two engineers at United Sound - Jim Viti and a guy named Mike, who recorded Rare Earth, the Rationals, Bob Seger and MC5. By the time we signed up with Groovesille, United Sound had oriented itself toward rhythm & blues and hadn't recorded rock in a couple years. We were a breath of fresh air to those guys, because we let the equipment breathe - if you know what I mean. Don would come in every once in a while because he was concerned about his monitor speakers.

How old were you at this time?

I was seventeen, going on eighteen, when we started the sessions at United Sound.

So you were not playing gigs as much at this point?

We started out playing garage shows; at that time, you needed a union card or you had to be eighteen to play clubs. We played a little bit in Ann Arbor where the rockers hung out, but at that point it was really about the record, especially in Detroit. If you were in Detroit, and you were well-known with a record out, you were a big thing.

Was there an impetus then that if you were known, it would take you away from Detroit, or was it a local-centric thing?

We never wanted to leave Detroit; when we left it was by chance. If you were playing rock and roll between 1973 and 1975 you were on a wild ride, until it got stopped by disco. That was in 1976 and that had to be the most dismal year of rock and roll ever. It was especially rough for us because we'd separated (mutually) from Groovesville. We weren't riding around in a Cadillac, playing on expensive equipment or going in and out of the studios anymore. On top of that, disco was the main thing, and that's when we put out the single for "Politicians in My Eyes" in an edition of 500. It was hard to get any airplay; the radio stations wouldn't play our record unless it was late at night or early in the morning, and we only heard it once. Up to that point, you could take a record to a DJ and have it played, so we were confused.

One DJ, Steve Dowd, explained it to us. He worked at a station called WAVX in Detroit and later moved to Chicago, and he was part of the legendary burning of disco records at Comiskey Park. Anyway, he told us that things were changing in the industry and that the DJs couldn't pick their own music. The power had been taken from them and put into the hands of the corporate stations. In 1976, we saw that it was a low time and even good artists were jumping onto the disco bandwagon.

There had been some sniffing around by larger labels, right?

What had happened with Groovesville and United Sound, Don Davis was also recording songs with Gladys Knight, Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. (as a matter of fact, we met them in Studio A when they were laying down the vocal tracks to "You Don't Have To Be In My Show."), so he had business with major labels across the country. He shopped masters around to labels in LA, New York, Memphis and overseas.

Yes, that's what he did, and he had a team of engineers - it was an awesome operation and we learned so much from being signed up to his organization. He shopped our music around to bigger labels, and yet nobody bit. He was friends with Clive Davis, who was between Columbia and Arista at the time and legend has it that we were turned down by him for one of those labels.

At least Arista did have some interesting stuff like Anthony Braxton and the Grateful Dead in their mid-70s catalog.

Clive happened to hear one of the Death tapes and was interested, but he didn't like the name. We were summoned into Brian Spears' office and he informed us of the conversation that Don and Clive had. He said that if we were willing to change our name, we might have a deal. David told Brian to tell Don Davis to tell Clive Davis to go to hell [laughs] - and that was that. It all happened around 1975.

After this, how much continuation was there of Death as we know it?

We were young and cocky and didn't know how to articulate the scope of the music that we had written. Being teenagers, we'd do what any other rock and rollers would do in Detroit in the 70s: tell someone to go to hell. Don had business on the table regarding other artists, some of which were Grammy-winning, and he didn't want to rattle any chains over a black rock band called Death that was hard to sell. So guess who got thrown off the ship!

So in 1976, we agreed mutually that it wasn't working - record companies then wouldn't fire you, they'd just shelf you and not give you calls for sessions or advances. Finally, we all sat down in his office and agreed that it wasn't going to happen. We had five more songs that we wanted to do, and so forth - we had all of the masters. When we left, we were able to get those and that's how we put out our single.

In retrospect, that was really good because a lot of labels wouldn’t have done that.

It's unprecedented - I've never heard of a label doing that. We planned on releasing the whole album, but things didn't work out. There was the Carter-era recession, disco, rock and roll was wearing out in Detroit, and it was a bad year. Even the rock shows were few and far between. We could see that the landscape was changing; we'd lost the label prestige but we did have our talent and our shirts on our backs. A relative who lived in New England came to see us and said "why don't you come to New England and cool your heads for a couple weeks." We were like, “"what did they do with the old one?" [laughs] We thought he wanted us to fly across the ocean! We were only supposed to come out for a two-week vacation, but it's been thirty-some years, I've raised a family and I'm still on vacation! [laughs]

What made you choose Vermont in particular?

When we came here, we just fell in love with Burlington, Vermont. It kind of reminded us of Ann Arbor, but a little more intense. There was music all over the place, two great parks where people hung out and we must have spent two whole days alone hanging out in the park and playing music. It's a college town, so you're surrounded by students and bars to play in.

Musically, you went through a number of iterations - could you discuss those?

After we moved here, we still tried to retain the name Death. What happened was we tried to do a show that would introduce us to the town. David had a couple of friends who plastered the town with Death posters; the police and local people didn't know what was going on, that some kids had moved from Detroit and were putting flyers up everywhere about Death. We opened up the door and a cop was standing there with a wad of posters, and said "we don't start gangs around here." He thought we were recruiting and we tried to explain that it was the name of our band. At that point we said, okay, it might be time to change the name. So we changed it to The Fourth Movement. We continued to play rock and roll, put out a single and two albums, and took it to a more spiritual level.

Those are long out-of-print as well.

Yes, we'll be putting them out again too, because we have the master tapes and there's certainly a lot of interest.

I'd been enticed - I collect records - but I've never met anyone who has the albums.

We put out a single locally called "North Street," after what was the bad street at the time in Burlington. It was really well-received locally here, and that will be reissued as well. After we did the Fourth Movement and even with the spiritual slant, there were newspapers that wrote articles that said "nice music but hold the religion." There again, it was a new level of rejection. What happened with David, being the temperamental artist that he was, he kind of pined for Detroit. He tried to convince Dannis and I to return, but we loved Burlington and had raised families by that point. We were both working and going to school, and I had become a disc jockey at WRUV. That year there was a whole fraternity of disc jockeys who did some pretty amazing things, and especially Jay Strausser who brought Bob Marley to town. So once again we were exposed to a concert that changed our lives.

We saw Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, and we saw Sly and Robbie (of Black Uhuru) do an all-dub show because Michael Rose had been busted at the Montreal airport and sent back to Jamaica. They had a sold-out show at Memorial Auditorium, and it turned into this amazing dub concert. Here Dannis and I were left as a drummer and a bass player/vocalist, and we were searching for music to play. We were appreciative of reggae because bass and drums are very important in that music, so we formed Lambsbread and didn't look back for a while. Lambsbread was one of the most popular reggae bands in New England. Then, like a temple from heaven, Death falls back into the picture.

Could you explain how that happened?

My brother David had spread around a lot of copies of the single before we left. My son Julian had taken a year off from college and went traveling out west. He called me up one day and said, "Dad, do you realize they're playing your music at underground parties out here?" I thought he was talking about Lambsbread and he said "no, you were in a band in the 70s called Death in Detroit, right?" The phone got so quiet because I couldn't believe what he was saying to me. I said "yeah, that's us." My other son Bobby did an internet search and said "dad, please tell me you have the master tapes" and I said "yeah, they're up in the attic." He jumped for joy, you know.

Yeah, that single was going for almost a grand - I can imagine the talk around the internet.

Right and here we are. My sons are musicians and were inspired by the whole thing to name their band after David's nickname, "Rough Francis." They've been tearing up the town as a Death tribute band, and now they're also doing their own music.

Now that the Death material is available, or a good chunk of it anyway, what's next? You're playing concerts and that could yield significant possibilities.

We're taking it step by step. We did a concert in Detroit in September that was a huge success, and then a second show in Chicago sold out. Right now, we're loading up a series of appearances; there's talk of us going abroad to Brazil, England, and Japan, but Austin and the Fun Fun Fun Fest is, of course, first. We have a catalog of unreleased stuff that we want to share with the world, so over the next couple of years there will be a lot of interesting material to take in.

Would it be prudent to bring Death back as a recording unit, or are there other ideas to deal with as well?

We've talked about all of that, really. We have an awesome guitarist named Bobbie Duncan [also in Lambsbread], and we feel like David is channeling through him. We've done our "test marketing" and that's been very successful; we have a few songs in mind that we'd like to record as Death, so there will be both old and new material to hear.

It's a curious time, because it will either present a tribute to something that was, which people haven't experienced, or it may grow into something completely different that doesn't touch on the past.

We're as excited as everybody else to see the outcome. We're so glad that all this has come about and we can't thank people enough. Like what the old musicians in Detroit said, once you get with rock and roll, you may leave it from time to time but it won't leave you. If you record something and put it down for history, people will find out and it will come back to you. I put faith in all those "follow your dream" speeches that artists hear all the time.

It's a great story and it doesn't happen enough that people are the recipients of such good tidings.

Thank you. We hope that we can give everybody what they're expecting.

November 4, 2009

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 6th

• MOHAWK + CLUB DE VILLE: Local Music is Sexy
  Austinist presents LMIS w/Black Before Red, International Waters, TV Torso, Beautiful Machines, Distant Seconds, Air Traffic Controllers, The Authors, and more!
  (No cover! all ages, 9pm)
  

  
  

• BEAUTY BAR: Antics/Toyota Matrix and Learning Secrets presents Yeasayer DJ set, Learning Secrets DJs, plus live sets by Totally Michael, Best Fwends and Missions (ex-Clap Clap) (no cover, 21+, 10pm)
  

  
  

• RED 7 INSIDE: Fucked Up DJ Set (no cover, all ages) RED 7 OUTSIDE: Fu Manchu, Lions, Scorpion Child ($10, all ages)
  

  
  

• BEERLAND: Kevin Seconds (7 Seconds) solo performance, December Boys, Failure's Union, Cheap Girls (no cover, 21+, 10pm)
  

• MOHAWK: Voxtrot, The Octopus Project, The Coathangers, Twin Tigers, Jazzus Lizard (Jesus Lizard Jazz Tribute Band), and Walter Schriefeld's band ($10, all ages, 9:30pm)
  

  
  

• RED 7: Negative Approach, Christ on Parade, Trash Talk, Naw Dude, You People
  ($13, all ages, 10pm)
  

  
  

• BEAUTY BAR: The Cool Kids DJ Set, DJ Mel
  ($5 before midnight, $10 after, 21+, 10pm)
  

  
  

• BEERLAND: Jack Oblivion, John Paul Keith and the 145s, Lovvers (UK), Fleshlights
  ($10, 21+, 10pm)
  

  
  

• ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE RITZ:
  Youth Brigade hosts "Let Them Know: The Story Behind Youth Brigade and BYO Records" (10:15pm), MC Chris hosts "Gremlins"
  (12am)
  

• MOHAWK: And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, Dark Meat, An Albatross, Au, Free Moral Agents (w/Ikey Owens of The Mars Volta), Zech Marquise (w/Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez of The Mars Volta)
  ($13, all ages, 9:30pm)
  

  
  

• RED 7: Toys That Kill, The Forgetters (Black Schwarzenbach of Jawbreaker/Jets to Brazil, Kevin of Against Me, Caroline of Bitchin'), Ghost Knife, Smalltown (Sweden)
  ($10, all ages, 10pm)
  

  
  

• BEERLAND: Easy Action, Black Cobra, Black Tusk, Eagle Claw
  ($8, 21+, 10pm)
  

  
  

• ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE RITZ: Mission of Burma hosts "Not a Photograph"
  (10:15pm)
  

Also, check out the list on Fun Fest’s website.

Images from MySpace / Facebook / provided by entity.

Green Room

8:30 - Learning Secrets [website] [myspace]

Outside

9:45 - The Lennings [website] [myspace]
10:30 - Built By Snow [myspace]
11:15 - Corto Maltese [website] [myspace]

Inside

9:45 - Politics [website] [myspace]
10:45 - Sad Accordions [myspace]
11:45 - The Great Nostalgic [website] [myspace]

This disjointed tone is at its most egregious as Menelaus arrives to survey the damage his army has done to Troy. Richardson portrays him as a cocky villain, clicking his heels and self-impressed by how effectively he leveled the city. It's a jarring interpretation, but a valid one—at least initially. As Verity Branco's Helen—the woman for whom the 10 year war has been fought—arrives on the scene, clad in a feathery satin robe and red satin gloves, smoking a cigarette in a long holder, the cartoonishness of the play gets out of hand, and the human emotions we were invited to feel on behalf of the women are dismissed. In fact, upon Menelaus' arrival, the play stops being about the women at all—it's his show, and they're just characters in it, playing a role in his decision regarding Helen and providing something for him to think about on his long boat ride home.

What we're left with after the change in tone is a strangely exaggerated cartoon, with Scheming, Sneering Whore Helen and Led-By-His-Dick Menelaus dominating the stage. There's a mock trial of Helen that we have no ability to care about—what does it matter what happens to either of them when they're both clearly not based on anything resembling a real person? Not coincidentally, this is also when Kays goes into full-blown experimentation mode. A stadium-style scoreboard lying in the rubble comes to life during the trial; a TV we'd assumed was a prop turns on at Helen's command, offering exculpatory evidence; Hecuba grabs a microphone and busts out a rock song about how much she hates Helen. In the end, the face that launched a thousand ships is exonerated, but we're left mostly to believe that her innocence was determined by how much weird shit happened in the trial.

And all of this is so frustrating because there's a sensitivity throughout the first half of the performance that could have easily been extended to Helen and Menelaus. An earlier scene in which an outstanding Lesley Gurule as Andromache mourns the loss of her child demonstrates that Kays is fully capable of giving us moments that connect on an emotional level. And Menelaus and Helen—both facing down the enormity of what's become of their relationship—have the potential to earn our empathy as well. It's disappointing to see that potential dismissed casually, in favor of such facile interpretations that it becomes hard to even care about Hecuba and her fellow Trojans anymore.

Ultimately, The Trojan Women is all over the place, and that's unsatisfying for a play that possesses such a simple power. If it's at its most effective when it displays the unadorned grief of the women of Troy, then there's just no need to dazzle us with scoreboards and TVs and rock songs and Helen flashing her underwear at Menelaus. It's hard to fault Kays for experimenting in student work, but it's also fair to hope that some of the chances she'll take will involve exercising restraint.

Photo by Manfred Rahs from MySpace

What’s the Deal: Fun Fun Fun Fest has built a reputation of bringing in “What the… I never thought I’d ever have a chance to see that band” bands over the past few years with groups like Dead Milkmen, Bad Brains, Danzig and The Jesus Lizard. In most cities, The Jesus Lizard reunion shows probably wouldn’t be a main event to the masses. But, here in Austin, where an almost unnatural lust for the music we loved from a bygone era (even though the 90s aren’t that long gone) mixes with the fact that the group formed here about 20 years ago before relocating to Chicago, their performance is at the top of many Fun Fest goers’ must-see lists. Also, it doesn’t hurt that the group has a reputation for putting on exciting and ferocious live shows.

The Jesus Lizard sound is somewhere between alternative, noise rock and punk, which more or less put them at the right place at the right time with 90s underground music. But, if you weren’t a Jesus Lizard fan and don’t own a copy of Down or their Capital Records debut, Shot, you might have heard of them from their split single with Nirvana in 1993 called “Puss”/”Oh, Guilt”. Existing fans, though, have probably been stewing over their eventual Austin performance since even before the release of their singles box set this past Record Store Day (April 18).

Something Interesting: As one of the headliners this Saturday night at Fun Fun Fun Fest, they’ll go up against Destroyer and Pharcyde at 8:35pm, which for any punk fans, will be a no-brainer. To be fair, though, Pharcyde and Destroyer are nothing to shake a stick at either.

Other Tracks Worth Checking Out: “Thumper” and “Glamorous”

The Jesus Lizard [MySpace]

Artist Myspace

One such act is D.R.I (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles), one of the very first bands to fuse punk with thrash metal way back in the mid-80s. Their 1987 album Crossover, virtually gave birth to this eponymous movement. Among D.R.I.’s earliest tour experience is “Rock Against Reagan” with the Dead Kennedys.

Named after a recurring theme in the phrasing that vocalist Kurt Brecht’s father would use to throw them out of the house during/because of rehearsals, D.R.I. has exerted inestimable influence on other bands—most traceably Slayer—during a career arc spanning more than 27 years and still bending toward hardcore. Several D.R.I. albums are hailed as classics, so do yourself a favor and experience more than just what’s on that one Tony Hawk Playstation 2 game. D.R.I. takes to the Black Stage at 6:55 pm on the Sabbath.

D.R.I. [Myspace][Official]

Image by Wes Rowe

Sugar & Gold: [website] [myspace]

Image from Myspace

L.A.X.
Saturday, November 7
Waterloo Park (403 E. 15th)
1:05pm, Blue stage
[info] | [tickets]

This electronic dance band has been spreading synth beats and love all our its native roots lately. We had the pleasure of seeing them at the FlipScene Halloween Bash last week, where they put on a stunning performance dressed as characters from Alice in Wonderland. They played unofficial parties at SXSW, had a set at ACL and will perform at Fun Fun Fun Fest this weekend. For something that started as a electro duo performing at house parties, L.A.X. has come a long way and deserves this current burst of limelight.

The costumes could be partly to thank, but the cohesion between the six-piece group at the Flip Scene party made for a captivating and bright sound that kept passing zombies interested enough to stick around. Any band with six members tends to get messy and raucous on stage, but L.A.X. works together professionally and beautifully, which each member contributing something worthwhile. Vocalists Erin Jantzen and Yadira Brown bounce seductive harmonies off one another, giving depth to electronic mix. Frontman Andrew Collins retired his metal roots to spend time finding those sweet hooks and driving pop beats that make L.A.X. so wildly enjoyable. The band's sound is rounded and full with the addition of drummer Jon Oswald, guitarist Rory Phillips and bassist Chris D’Annunzio. Be prepared to party at 1:05 on the Blue stage Saturday, because L.A.X. will be anxiously waiting.

Neon Indian: [myspace]
L.A.X.: [myspace]

Well, it wasn't done at Coomers' mom's house, and the drugs weren't free this time.

You guys have played everything from house parties to boat parties to bigger venues. Which do you prefer? Is there a certain performance that sticks out in your minds as something you won’t soon forget?

We really like house shows with friends there. We want to keep doing those. On the other hand, we also like really nice, expensive sound systems where we can hear ourselves and everything sounds perfect, which is probably why we always end up splitting the difference and playing club shows with blown out speakers and a deaf sound guy. The boat was fun. It'd be cool to do one of those rooftop shows they have in Brooklyn. But, one of us has height issues and would be on so much Valium.

Girls and drugs seem to be a theme in your music. Do you guys pull content and inspiration from your daily lives and personal experiences? Are you guys concerned at all about writing songs with a deeper message?

No, not really. We really don't do as many drugs or girls as the songs might imply. We just piece together like fortune cookies and text messages from our friends to get lyrics. We stay totally sober, actually. Promise.

Dancing is something that is hard to resist at your shows. Have you made any observations or generalizations about the quality of dancers in Austin and beyond?

I like when people dance. When we play other towns we always say, "In Texas we do a fun thing called dancing, wyncha try it?" and then people either walk away or go bananas. Girls are usually better dancers than dudes, but an obscure National Geographic photographer once said, "You can't take a bad photo of a pig, there's no such thing as an ugly smile, and nobody looks bad if they're dancing." Wait, what?

Do you guys consider yourselves to be in the right place at the right time with the repopularization of stripped-down, danceable garage rock? When you first started playing music, was there another genre you were a part of? Was there an evolution to the sound your at now?

When Curtis and Coomers first started out, they recorded a really loud, abrasive screamy demo. I heard it in Coomers' mom's car once, and it was pretty rad. That Black Eyed Peas song “Sweet Escape” just came on the radio, and Coomers was saying that when they first decided to have a band, Curtis got kicked out of his girlfriend's bedroom and they were half passed out on the couch listening to that song, thinking "Yeah, maybe we could do a song this good." Coomers loves that song. We like pop.

What would be the pinnacle of your music making existence? What would be the absolute top for you?

One day maybe we'll get to open for Nirvana. That will be so cool.

Harlem [MySpace]