Made Out of Babies: An Interview with the Band

UPDATE: I’ve got an entire update/lowdown from Julie Xmas on her new solo record as well as what has been going on in the MOOB camp including info on their new record, new producer!, new loads of noisy AWESOME. I saw Brendan last Friday night at the Casbah, looks like he is doing some tour dates with Red Sparrowes. Hopefully we’ll see a spring release for the new record. The following interview took place on their first West Coast tour with Blackfire Revelation and Unsane in person at the Casbah. They had just released their Neurot debut, Trophy and I think I was the first person to interview the band. I’ll be adding the update/interview with Julie later this week so check back. Live they are magnificent, like a wolf pack in a cage covered in caribou parts, Julie as Asena stalking the stage, tearing through the crowd with her howl.

Brendan—guitar
Julie—vocals
Cooper—bass
Matt—drums

It’d be easy to do a bunch of metaphors using their name, but I’ll do my best to refrain from that lowest common denominator of writing gimmickry and provide a tale of my sordid encounter with Brooklyn’s fiercest “heavy” music act.

When Charles (musicedge.com photographer) and I made it to San Diego’s Casbah, much to our chagrin Made Out of Babies was three songs into its set. We got our wrists stamped and entered the venue with a spring in our step. Noticing the lack of people standing near the stage, we took it upon ourselves to show support by getting close—close enough to see the veins pop out of vocalist Julie X-Mas’ forehead as she spit the chorus of “Gut Shoveler” into her white-knuckled fist that was strangling the microphone.

Fans started to trickle in as MOoB went deeper into its set; most of the gathered masses were there to see noise core progenitors Unsane, who are touring in support of their latest Relapse Records release, Bloodrun. Yet those lucky enough early birds in attendance got a taste of what can only be described as awe-inspiring. MOoB combines the best of The Jesus Lizard chain-saw guitar effect (Brendan) with gut churning bass lines (Cooper) and bombastic, Keith Moon-like percussion (Matt). The apex of MOoB (aside from the talented instrument players) comes in the form of an auburn-haired Siren named Julie X-Mas, whose tortured, rage-filled screams are punctuated by moments of melodic beauty, enchanting listeners and raising obligatory devil horns from even the most cynical scenesters.

Their debut record, Trophy (Neurot Records), has a dozen gems that range in feel from manic chaos to schizophrenic surrealism. Their live set had the same feel of controlled chaos as their album with Julie caterwauling, spinning like a winged airliner in a final dive to the beckoning earth below.  Brendan and Cooper wield their instruments like weapons and their bodies act as if in the midst of some transcendental aboriginal dance, swaying back and forth to Matt’s maple splitting drum beat. This is a band that demands your attention while simultaneously command a sound with a passion and fury more than worthy of the barbaric applause and exalted screams from the crowd.
My only complaint was that the band didn’t play my favorite song, “Sugar,” which guitarist Brendan explained “is in a different tuning.”

With their set finished, we gathered in the Atari Lounge in the rear of the Casbah. The Lounge is a room filled with games like Gallaga, Ms. Pacman and Centipede. With the cacophony of video game music and the second act, Blackfire Revelation for ambiance, we sit at a table with an inlaid map of the U.S. and make jokes about Red and Blue states.  I’m impressed with the bands generosity as I attempt to conduct a very intimate interview.

SR: How did you all meet?
Julie: I dated him and him (pointing to Matt and Brendan). Brendan and I started playing together first about two or three years ago. Cooper’s been with us for over a year.

They proceed to argue benevolently on the precise time when Cooper joined the band.

Brendan: We drafted him about a year and a half ago.
Cooper: Here’s how it went. I played in my other band that’s called Players Club, and they opened for us on their first show and they weren’t good
Brendan: We were terrible.
Cooper: But I loved them. Anyway, a year later they recorded some stuff with the guitar player from Players Club, Joel Hamilton, and they recorded a bunch of songs with him, three of which are still on the record [Trophy]. I was at a party with these guys and said, “If you guys need a rhythm guitarist I’ll totally play rhythm guitar.” So a week later Brendan called me up and said “Why don’t you play bass guitar with us instead?” So I said, “Doesn’t Matt’s sister play bass guitar?” and they said, “Not anymore.” Then we immediately wrote the rest of the record.
Brendan: We were already in the process of recording but we weren’t happy with it, and we knew we could do better so we decided to scrap most of it and start all over.
Cooper: They had about five songs and we kept three.
Brendan: We had written bits of other songs then Cooper came along and …
Cooper (mockingly): Then we gelled, man.
Matt: Like a three-cheese quesadilla.
Brendan: Four.

SR: How did the writing change with the addition of Cooper, and how does the process work in the band? Is there one person writing songs or is it collaborative?
Brendan: It’s pretty much everyone. Different songs have started from different places. Some start with a guitar riff. “Sugar” started with a drumbeat and I wanted to do something “jerky” sounding, and Matt said, “Well I have this drum beat.” And it kind of went from there.
Cooper: I try and bring in like two parts that go together and let it go from there.
Matt: Lyrics come together once the skeleton of the song is in place.
Brendan: The great thing about Julie is that the lyrics come fairly easy to her. We’ll be figuring something out and she’ll say, “I want to try something right here.”
Julie: I always think of things as a singer. In writing, these guys have their own specific job. But thinking of things as a singer … that changes the writing too.
Cooper: That’s the great thing ’cause she can say; “I only have words for half of that.” So we’ll shorten that. Or “I have more than that” and we’ll double it.
Brendan: And most of the time it works ’cause it will break the cadence of the song up in a way that we wouldn’t have written it. The vocals and the melody will lend itself better to the song.

At this point we are interrupted by Dave from Unsane, bringing friendly shots to his friends and band mate, Cooper, who moonlights as a guitarist and vocalist for Players Club.

SR: As a writer, do you have things that you’ve already set down on paper prior to hitting the rehearsal or is it more spontaneous, creating words on the spot?
Julie: Well, sometimes I’ll use stuff that I already have, but most of the time I don’t even think about the words. Even some songs now I don’t have lyric sheets for because I use more sounds than actual lyrics. But I definitely take influences from things that I’m reading or something that strikes me when I hear their music.
Brendan: Like “Gut Shoveler”; what was that book you were reading?
Julie: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.
Brendan: She said to me, “We should do something that sounds like a machine” and that’s when I did that thing with the slide that makes it sound like something is churning over and over again.
Cooper: The other great thing about the recording process is all the stuff we had written together as a band had changed quite a bit.  The vocals were still pretty loose but when we went into the studio there was such a format and so many different ways to do it that Julie was really receptive.  We were in the control room and she was laying down tracks and we could say, ‘try the other one.’  She’s awesome because she can do the songs a million different ways.
Brendan: In some ways, Joel Hamilton who produced the record is in a lot of ways another member of the band because he came up with a lot of ideas that we ended up really liking.  Getting back to the song ‘Sugar’ Julie had a basic melody and when we recorded it she had a couple of different things she would do.  She would improvise a lot of things when we were in the studio and she would change something or do something different and we’d be like, ‘that, do that again!’  Joe sat down with that song over the course of an hour and came up with the melody in the chorus.
Matt: At that point it was nice to have an objective pair of ears cause we had been in the studio for a while and doing the same thing over and over and he’d suggest something and the light bulb would go off, ‘Bing!’
Julie: The song and lyrics are based on my sister and me. When I wrote that song I was thinking of a character so I took certain traits of my sister and I (who’s at every show that we play) and put it into one person.
Brendan: All right, enough about that song. [He says laughing]

SR: how did you get started playing guitar?
Brendan: Some friends of mine were starting a band right as I was finishing high school, and I was always going to the shows and I just wanted to be in the band with them. The guitar player was a really good friend of mine and he showed me how to play a few of the songs, and in about six months I was playing in that band. I played with them for about four or five years but it never went anywhere. I didn’t play for years and years and then Julie and I went out for a while, then split up.
Julie: Like a hundred and seven years.
Brendan: It lasted for years. It lasted forever! But then we didn’t talk for a year, and she called me and it was her sister’s birthday, and she was already playing music with Matt and they needed a guitar player. So I went and practiced with them for about four days and played the show for her birthday with Cooper’s other band, Players Club.
Cooper: I love ’em but they played awful.
Brendan: Matt hadn’t played drums for a number of years and I hadn’t played guitar for six or seven years so it was terrible.

SR: Did you just start playing bass for this band?
Brendan: He’s our celebrity.
Matt: Lets stick with bass; who’ve you played bass for?
Cooper: Sweet Diesel and this band. On guitar, I played for Thursday. Their first tour they were all 21 and I was 28. They are my best buddies in the whole world. They’re a bunch of dirt bags and I love them. Their first tour was a series of house shows from here to Florida for two weeks and back. I have great photos of that tour.
Cooper: They’re my boys. I love those guys. I went on tour with them and only had one practice with them. Jeff, aside from singing, is a really good guitar player and he’d tack up these teachings for me that were in guitarist speak that said things like, First chug-chug part, eighteen times—into second light emo part into second light emo part— two times.

SR: Matt, when did you start playing?
Matt: I started playing drums in the sixth grade, because there was a girl in band that I had a crush on. ’Course she dropped out of band the day that I started. I stayed in there and ended up loving it. So I was a band geek from sixth grade through junior high and high school. I played in marching band: bass, cymbals, triangle, snare, I played the roto toms. It was cool. I had a blast during that time.
Cooper: You played bass in the marching band?
Matt: Yeah. The bass drum.
Cooper: I pictured you walking down the street playing a bass guitar.
(Laughs all around)
Matt: I stayed all the way through school, learned how to read music.

SR: Julie, how did you get your start?
Brendan: Julie has the most formal training out of all of us.
Julie: I come from a big Irish family and everyone plays music. My dad still plays music. He started a local prison band in a minimum-security prison upstate—in his spare time. I started very young … and I can sing so I went to Julliard for six months and dropped out. [It was] all vocal training.
(Dave from Unsane interrupts again)
Dave: You’re still here?
Julie: We played with Neurosis last night. We didn’t play as well as we did tonight. It was scary. We’ve never played for that many people before.

SR: And how did the relationship with Neurot Records come about?
Julie: We sent our demo in to them on a gamble and they called us like a few months later. It was a joke that we sent it to them and we are constantly reminded that we are the only band that they’ve picked up from a demo submission. We were sitting there and talking about where and who we should send it to, and Brendan is a huge Neurosis fan so we sent it. It was out of nowhere.
Cooper: I’m on tour in California with Players Club and Brendan thinks I’m calling to [mess] with him.
Brendan: But then I called Steve [Von Till, owner of Neurot Records, lead man in sludge-core giant Neurosis] back and was like yelling, “Who is this?” And he’s like “Steve Von Till” and I was like, “Yeah, whatever.” And after I talked to him (and realized it wasn’t a joke), he said that he really liked the record and asked if we would want Neurot to put it out. And I had to think about for 2 seconds. I hung up the phone because I would start telling him how much I love him. Then I called every person in the band and blubbered it out.
Cooper: The funny thing is that we really like them, but they really like Red Sparowes, who we hate (he says smiling while wearing a Red Sparowes T-shirt).
Brendan: They’re knob-twiddling hacks.
Matt: Shoe-gazing long hairs.
Brendan: Please add into the interview Greg’s proclivity for hair products.

MOoB!

Click here to listen to the track “Swarm” from their album, Trophy

Pretty Girls Make Graves

I first found out about Pretty Girls from my friend and audio engineer, Dan Maier (Audio Design Recording). He played the self-titled 12″ for me and it blew me away. Immediately I went out and picked it up. Plus I was a fan of Murder City Devils and Sharks Keep Moving. I had set this interview up through Hopper PR and went to the Casbah to see them play. Of course it would have been rad to interview any member of the band but I’ve always been fond of the peculiarities of drummers. They’re usually more talkative than singers or guitarists or ‘leaders’ of bands, mostly because they sort of get passed over in the whole interview process. Plus they never have boilerplate bullshit answers like their more press friendly band mates. Drummers rule! Now the band is broken up, which is unfortunate. Their last record just didn’t cut it for me personally though there were a few stand out tracks. They had a good run and it’ll be exciting to see what this talented group will do next.

It’s always a venture saying that a band is ahead of its time during its present incarnation. It could present some awful paradoxes, rips in the time space continuum and worst of all it has an air of pretension usually reserved for store bought publications. All that aside, Seattle, WA based Pretty Girls Make Graves is ahead of themselves in song composition, structure and lyrics. Three aspects that would normally sound contrived in any context, especially to the scrutinizing ears of music aficionados, but in this case they make a good concoction for what many would consider by most standards a ‘punk band.’

That sonic concoction is made up of five people who were all part of decent Seattle indi-rock and punk bands at one time. Members from bands as diverse as The Death Wish Kids and Area 51(Andrea Zollo, Derek Fudesco), Murder City Devils (Derek Fudesco), Kill Sadie and Sharks Keep Moving (Jay Clark), and the Bee Hive Vaults (Nathan Thelen and Nick DeWitt) came together in what began as a side project and has since escalated into PGMG getting signed to indie powerhouse, Matador Records, and going on a couple giant tours. Zollo (Vocals) who once lent her vocal chords and youthful optimism to The Death Wish Kids has not only grown as a vocalist but as a songwriter as well. Even on their eponymous debut, when Zollo sings (on “3 Away”), “Too often we sit back and take what life gives us/like holding a bad hand of cards/always folding instead of raising the stakes/never wanna bluff and go for it/afraid that you’ll lose all you’ve got,” you can hear an intelligence and positivism in the lyrics that has rightfully established PGMG as a band to watch.

PGMG released 5 various single 7″ and a box set of 7″ after the first EP, most of them on Dimmak Records and respectively on Lookout! Records in colorful vinyl. It’s that aesthetic of individualism they hold dear through hard work and lots of touring, that PGMG eventually released the full length Health. Health featured a more mature PGMG with the same rock and roll attitude that made their previous records good. The track, “Speakers Push the Air,” is a rock and roll anthem that should be played whenever one gets discouraged about music. Essentially, music that makes you think, wow what a concept!

Soon after the release of Health, PGMG went on a giant tour, supporting great bands like Les Savy Fav and began work on their current release, The New Romance. The record, produced by indie veteran Phil Ek (Modest Mouse, Built To Spill, Les Savy Fav), plunges into familiar territory without rehashing old material. The latest single, “This is Our Emergency,” from the record has been getting some play on MTV2 and on college and alternative radio.

Drummer Nick DeWitt has the charisma and chops yet drums aren’t the only instrument in his repertoire; DeWitt also played keys for Seattle rock outfit, The Murder City Devils on their final tour. He began on the guitar, learning songs from tablature books such as Metallica’s Master of Puppets and …And Justice for All. His friends who played guitar turned him on to Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, where he says cryptically, “I learned some weird things from them.”
When he was younger he wanted a Tama Rock Star Drum Kit, but his brother talked him into buying the Gretsch kit he plays now. “I’m thankful he steered me in that direction, especially now, it’s much nicer. I still have it and I still play it. I started playing when I was 15 and it was perfect for me. I had some attention problems over the years – I’m a selective listener I guess. But it helped when I started to play.”

DeWitt’s influences vary as much as the tempo changes in a Pretty Girls album track. The idea that all the members of PGMG have come together from different musical backgrounds holds true, especially for him. “What initially got me interested in playing music on my own was Metal. Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, that kind of stuff. Megadeth and Anthrax. Really operatic types of stuff. When I was younger, it was more of the technical drummers that inspired me like Neil Pert (Rush) and Bill Bruford (Yes)-anything that was especially technically derivative. It wasn’t until later that I started to appreciate creativity in spaciousness and simplicity. The things that I appreciate now are so much different. Metal drummers were part of the building blocks of what I appreciated later.”

Eccentricity in taste is what makes Pretty Girls Make Graves so unique. Each member brings something new and exciting to the table, combining influences and technique to create interesting new arrangements. Variant music genre’s was part of DeWitt’s childhood. “My dad played a lot of jazz when I was growing up. Dexter Gordon, Donald Byrd. I really love Chico Hamilton. A lot of the Stan Getz samba stuff.”

It is somewhat difficult to properly pigeonhole PGMG into any given rock style, as it should be with any good band. One can’t pinpoint the exact style without skewing the actual feeling of the music. It was similar on the first PGMG record and has evolved on Health and now on The New Romance. It’s in those early songs that the foundation was laid, of which drummer DeWitt says, “I don’t think we had any real idea of what we wanted to do when we first started. That early stuff sounds so foreign to me, it was almost like we hadn’t considered taking it seriously. I think that is apparent with the direction we’ve taken and the thought we put into the songs. We spend a lot more time picking apart each other’s songs, and we’ve also learned to work with one another especially well. Progression can be attributed to several different factors. When we came together we weren’t all close friends so we didn’t know where we each [of us] came from musically, now that we’ve spent so much time together and worked together-its part of the process.”

For more on Pretty Girls Make Graves, please visit www.prettygirlsmakegraves.com

For more on Matador bands, please visit www.matadorrecords.com

Minus the Bear

Another vault feature from 2004. This was before MTB became the underdog darlings they are today. I had been a huge fan of Botch and Sharks Keep Moving and when I first heard Highly Refined Pirates I was impressed. I remember Paul at Double Entendre in Denver not being too stoked with their blatant lyrical male chauvinism but being a fan of Bukowski I thought it was clever and mostly character driven. You should do yourself a favor and go and pick up Planet of Ice. It rules.

Minus the Bear hails from Seattle, WA, a place well known for its slew of innovative bands.  Not the kind of bands every grandmother and flannel shirt purchaser of the early nineties knows about though.  Bands of the North West coast like Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, Murder City Devils, Undertow (RIP), Pretty Girls Make Graves, Integrity (RIP) and many more notable bands that have scarred the underground, ripping open new wounds to let in the knife of creativity that so often stagnates in the emergency room hipness of New York City and Los Angeles.

Minus the Bear, a veritable host of past indie rock members from bands that had great influence like Sharks Keep Moving (Jake-Vocals, Guitar) and Botch (Dave-Guitar) and Kill Sadie (Erin-drums, Cory-bass).  Dave was a trombone player in the 6th grade and Jake was an avid fan of music from an early age, his influences were from his older brothers friends.

“I took lessons for about three months or so, but that was about it.  I never really learned how to sight read or anything.”  Dave says on his early years as a guitarist, prior to playing guitar in Botch when I caught up with the band at local San Diego live music hot spot, The Casbah.

Jake had a similar upbringing in the guitar world, “I started playing when I was about 12.  The lessons I took, I would just bring in some Metallica songs and the Teacher would just show me how to play the songs.”

Minus the Bear was started as a side project of all the members and initially was just an outlet and break from the other bands they were in though eventually it culminated in a fulltime band as the other bands dissolved.

Minus the Bear’s music is what the logical progression of musicians from former bands should be, progressive.  In that it’s not just a new name with the same sound, or some alliance of musicians that just want to redo what they had done in their former bands.  Relive their glory days so-to-speak. According to Dave, “it’s a different kind of energy (from Botch). You can still get the same kind of intensity out of it whether its playing and going ape sh*t like in Botch or if its playing in Minus the Bear where its more feeling.”

Don’t count Minus the Bear out from the 9-5 world.  While the young insta-punk bands get signed with major label contracts, cash advances and paid tours and merch, Minus the Bear continues to “keep it real” although, admittedly, they would like to see that aspect change.

“We’re trying to (transition) make this (band) a full time gig, but the level we are at isn’t such that, we can make it as a full time band,” says Dave.

As far as major label signing goes, Jake speculates, “Any deal with any label regardless if it’s an Indie or a Major, it just depends on the deal.  If the deal is good and the contract is good than we would consider that.  If we like the bands and music the label puts out then we would definitely consider it.”

Minus the Bear rock the Casbah in San Diego and continue on their West Coast Tour then finish and move on to play five dates in Japan.  Dave is one of the most amazing guitarists to see live and without the light show from the Botch days hindering the performance viewing, it’s worth a look.

Check them out at http://www.minusthebear.com

Armchair Martian, Fluf, and Local

Buckfast Superbee, Armchair Martian, Fluf @ Casbah Sat. Sept. 2nd

It was a weekend of reunions of bands from the 90’s that I used to listen to or watch every chance I got. While my good friends from the North Atlantic were playing their swan song(s), closing the 3rd annual Denverfest (why the fuck wasn’t there one of these when I lived in Denver?) drinking and cavorting with mutual friends and my brother in law, I was not landlocked but instead walking distance from the Harbor at San Diego’s premier 21+ club, The Casbah. I met Borracho Bob there, another old Denverite and we said our hellos to Jon Snodgrass, Bob proceeded to tell Jon the story behind Chris Sharry’s album art for “Good Guys…Bad Band.” Which translated well to the image of the album cover to the right. Another example of barehanded drunks wielding instruments instead of weapons, playing for 10 people, two of which were Bobrob and Chris. So. Yeah.

We were patient with the mid-90’s bro-rock of Buckfast Superbee and became intrigued when their drummer had a hissy fit and threw his high hat over his head in a fit of frustration. I wish more bands would do that. It was the highlight of their set. Though TJ has a pretty awesome voice their songs sort of blended into one another, however a lot of people seemed to be into them and it was nice to see our rehearsal space mates draw some attention from the sometimes skeptical Casbah crowd.

Armchair was up next. Watching Jon run through songs I heard over 10 years ago was pretty remarkable. Especially since the last time I saw them was when they played with Samiam at the Aztlan Theater on Kalamath when that one dude Dan Steinberg used to price gouge all the Denver scene kids. That show was consistent with my memory of the band – inconsistent. Some shows they ruled the stage without fucking up any songs and other times they were fall down drunk. The art on the inside of “Good Guys…” is telling with Dracula, The Wolfman and the Mummy as the band members trying to decide if they should go set up for the show. This time around they played incredibly well. Jon has honed his country sneer from moonlighting in Drag The River for the past decade or so and sounded amazing. While it was nice to see some familiar Denver (via Ft Collins) band it wasn’t quite like seeing Crestfallen and Christie Front Drive play with Planes Mistaken for Stars. Essentially my three favorite Denver bands minus Acrobat Down (what you guys couldn’t get your shit together for a one off show?). They went through the hits and even tossed in a Gary Nuwman cover expertly sung/mimicked by bassplayer Paul.

I like the idea of seeing Armchair Martian as drunk as Drag the River but with more Jawbreaker and less Lucero ya know? It was a good show. Fluf played all their hits and all the bros sung along happily while chicks pretended to sing along but just sort of mouthed ‘watermelon/c a n d y b a r/ ooh’ while expertly sipping their gin and tonics or whatever the fuck they were drinking. I left early. Better to have the memory of a decent show than a show that I stayed too long at and might’ve been mildly impressed with.

End Of An Era: The North Atantic

Now that it’s official, Cullen Hendrix, drummer for San Diego noise-psych-punk act The North Atlantic is hanging up his sticks as the beat master (though he’ll continue making music and beating any number of things, like that pesky indictment…just kidding). As for singer/guitarist/brother Jason Hendrix and surrogate brother/bass player Jason Richards a much talked about and ballyhooed move to the windy city is in store where they will continue to create amazing songs and perform to a whole new subset of seenster folks who’ll hopefully fill out the crowd in any club and bar they play while in that city. It’s fucking cold there and it’s swallowed a few good friends already. While I wish them luck I’m a bitter and vengeful old man and I hope they grow to hate that city as much as the characters in Upton Sinclair and Ralph Ellison novels.

I remember when I first met Cullen and JH and JR. a mutual friend from Denver who had migrated to the Whales Vagina took me and my then girlfriend to a ‘Vegan’ dinner party, which was luckily for us being only several blocks away. I immediately found kindred spirits in Jason H and Cullen H. Jason and I talked about music like two savants. An instant bond was created. Of course they told me about their band, The North Atlantic, I thought, “Cool, I was in a band in Denver and I’m gonna try and start one out here, maybe we can jump on your coat tails and play some dive bars with you guys.” And it totally worked out for the better. But aside from self-serving band bullshit I truly grew to love those three assholes as friends and I respect them as musicians and activists as well.

My point, I’m sure you’re wondering if there is one. And there is (though it’s nebulous and its relevance and quality debatable). I’m a huge fan of their band but it’s always taken a back seat in my eyes when it comes to what they mean to me as people. Yes I’ve missed a few of their shows but I’ve been at all the ones that count. The release for Wires in the Walls when it sold out the Casbah was notable. Or when they played the Purevolume showcase in Austin to 12 people, those12 people that there at noon in the rain that hadn’t heard them before were instantly in awe of their energy. Cullen made quick to introduce himself and thank them for coming out to watch even if they were there to see Stephen Pedersen’s Criteria or 06 SXSW darlings, Minus the Bear.

Seeing them at Black Box Studio one halloween, dressed like Ron Burgundy in a pale blue suit and red velvet turtleneck and mustache, I swayed in time and shifted my feet to ‘Street Sweepers.’ One can always count on Jason Hendrix for some heady, literati word salad, spit with vitriol. Though I would have to say that Jason Richards is the best dancer in the band by far, which is interesting knowing he has several cubic feet more mass then the brothers Hendrix. Then there was the time Planes Mistaken for Stars (RIP)came and destroyed our livers and ears along with Bear Vs. Shark (one of the only good bands Equal Visions put out in the past 10 years – also RIP). We ran out of ice for the whiskey and Gared and Mikey got the last of the clear cubes, I noticed the tray of brownish cubes in Cullens freezer and popped those in my tumbler of whiskey: suffice to say vegans freeze vegetable stock and I drank a horrible whiskey soup concoction that day.

And of course all the shows at Scolari’s before it went from seedy dive punk bar to interior setting shot for Veronica Mars and a ‘slumming it’ style watering hole for all those fucking yuppies that live in those ugly ass condos across the street on 30^th. When Gabe, drunk and sweaty sang to every lyric from Buried Under Tundra and Charlie played some keyboards to what would become new songs for Wires. Can you believe I proposed to my wife in Scolaris while the band played ‘Submariner?’ How cool is that? It smelled like puke and she said yes to the eventual bombast and crash of the “Lotus Eaters.” I’ve loved loving them and I’ll hate to miss them as I’ve known them. You know we can’t all be lost boys chasing Wendy Darling forever. Being that they have always been more than just a band to me their music will always be more than something I passively listen to as well.

They’ll be at Black Box Studio this Friday, make sure you drive right past Turf Club and its requisite buffoonery and head right behind the 7/11 for the party of the summer!

Thanks for the memories.

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