Excite: When you were asked to compose the NHK Vancouver Olympics broadcasting theme song, what kind of piece did you want to create as L’Arc~en~Ciel?
hyde: I hoped it will become a well-known song. Not exactly ‘well-known’, but rather if people would listen to it and think “This is a good song~.” To tell you the truth, the temporary title for this song was “Osanpo [=A walk]” (laughs). It was a relaxed song. And then, it turned into a more Olympic-like song, with a slightly faster tempo.
Excite: Did yukihiro-kun take leadership, as drummer, to set the tempo?
yukihiro: Yes!
hyde: (laughs)
ken: That’s right, that’s right (laughs).
tetsuya: That’s right (laughs).
hyde: He started saying “I won’t do it unless the BPM is at least 200.”
yukihiro: (laughs).
Excite: This song’s tempo fits well.
yukihiro: Yeah, although I think it’s a hard tempo.
hyde: He wanted to try it for that reason. He said, “overcoming this obstacle will give us something in common with Olympic athletes” (laughs). And that “we have to create these links.” And he got mad at us, asking if we’re really trying (laughs). Once we got the tempo, the song became much better. After that, we did some arranging and re-examined the composition to fit the tempo better.
Excite: It’s nice how you begin with the bridge.
hyde: That was from ken-san’s desire to create a touching opening; he said “I won’t do it unless it’s touching” (laughs).
Excite: Did he really say that? (laughs)
hyde: No, he didn’t say it that strongly. But I think he was saying so in his heart. At first, the song just began with the intro, but ken-san said he wanted to start with the bridge. I thought it meant “the drama of the Olympics has already begun” so I said, “then, let’s do it that way.”
Excite: ken-san, was he correct about that point?
ken: Yes. Originally, the song began with the guitar’s arpegio, but I suggested that it’d be better if the vocals came first.
Excite: But in terms of guitar, the solo and obbligato [i.e. riff] won’t be for a while.
ken: For a while (laughs). Yes, it’s not until about 5 minutes into the song.
Excite: The electric guitar’s first note is just as important as the touching opening. Especially with this development.
ken: Yes. With the electric guitar entering the world of drums, bass, acoustic guitar, vocals, and strings, the song’s atmosphere changes. When I thought about when it would be best [for the electric guitar to enter], it turned out to be 5 minutes later (laughs).
hyde: Having that 5 minute wait, the guitar cries (laughs).
ken: After the song’s tempo was decided, I got an idea of the timbre, so it all worked out nicely.
hyde: The song’s value rose the moment ken-san’s guitar entered.
Excite: On a different note, the bridge’s bass part is very interesting. It’s a ballad, but if you listen to the bass, it’s going crazy.
tetsuya: The melody is ballad-like, but the bass is driving around. With L’Arc~en~Ciel, there are quite a lot of ballad songs where the bass is constantly in motion. If we took the normal slow approach, it’d become monotonous. It wouldn’t be L’Arc~en~Ciel.
hyde: I can’t come up with bass phrases like that. I think it’s amazing.
Excite: (laughs). As for drums, the drumming is softer than usual. What did you do in terms of drumming?
yukihiro: I hoped it would turn out gentle. I imagined a figure skater the whole time I was drumming. Like when a skater glides on the ice. I imagined that kind of atmosphere while I was drumming. I wanted it to be elegant.
Excite: And what kind of image did you have while writing the lyrics?
hyde: I didn’t want to limit it to the Olympics and wanted to broaden the meaning to anyone who is striving toward a goal and growing up in the process. With competitions and stage performances, I think the scene where someone is working really hard just before he or she steps on stage creates the emotional movement. I wanted the lyrics to reflect that. I listened to the previous Olympic theme songs and noticed a lot of them are about after the competition. For example, something like “the goal is the next beginning.” This time, what I wanted to sing was the part before it. I wanted to focus on the point that there isn’t just one person, but also many people who support that person, so I wrote it in third person to make people realize that more naturally. I think, once you step on stage, you should enjoy it for all of the effort you’ve put into preparing for it. Well, not that I’m a coach or anything (laughs). I’d like to say “Congrats” for making it this far. That was the foundation for this song.
Excite: What did the other members think after hearing the lyrics?
tetsuya: It made me want to see the Olympics. The Olympics can move you pretty easily, you know? So, I hoped the song will multiply that emotional movement. I could already imagine it and knew the song would match. I thought it would match the scene where an athlete receives a gold medal, a playback of an event, or anything.
yukihiro: I thought the English just before the bridge was good. I thought it was wonderful how it transitioned into the bridge with
ken: I thought it was a gentle song and it made me feel warm. After the oboe solo, it’s still gentle, but I also thought it pushes your back a little and thought “Ahh, this is good.” I think the lyrics are what they are because of the parts before it, so that might be why I thought so. It’s not just a “ganbare!” Hearing just now that hyde-kun was writing it like so, I thought, ‘ah, I see’.
Excite: Do you have any memories about the winter Olympics?
yukihiro: I can’t really watch it.
Excite: You prefer doing it?
yukihiro: No, no (laughs). I get really nervous when I watch it. You know how they fall, like during figure skating. But they should have been able to do it during practice. So I think “Ahh.”
hyde: I know what you mean.
yukihiro: So I just check the results (laughs). I’ll wonder how it’ll go, but I get really nervous, so I barely watch it (laughs). But, with “BLESS” I imagined figure skating, so I would like to see and hear someone skating to it. I’d like someone like Arakawa Shizuka-san to skate to “BLESS.” It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just skate beautifully. I’d like to see her do the Ina Bauer to “BLESS” (laughs).
Excite: And what about the strings version of “BLESS”?
hyde: It’s a bit relaxed. I wanted there to be another song without vocals that you could calmly listen to after “BLESS.”
ken: If you compare it to the one with the vocals and band, I think the strings version allows you to use your imagination more. If you listen to both of them, even with the tempo difference, I think it retains the song’s atmosphere.
Excite: Then, with the third song “ROUTE 666 -2010-” the world changes completely.
ken: Well, yeah, it does change (laughs).
hyde: It makes you think, “Ehhhh.”
tetsuya: Like it spoils [the whole mood] (laughs).
hyde: Like [everything before it] didn’t exist.
ken: I’ve never been this surprised before (laughs).
Excite: The difference is huge.
hyde: It’s completely opposite. We’re saying “BLESS” but then change to <666~>.
tetsuya: You know how you want to enjoy the reverberations of “BLESS” more (laughs).
hyde: So we did aim to make the break in between the songs longer.
tetsuya: We really thought about the length.
ken: We made the break longer than usual, but for people who want to enjoy the reverberation longer, it’s probably better to press the pause button.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
[L'Arc] Interview with Excite Music
P Money Speaks Out! (Real Talk)
South London grime MC, P Money, had a massive year in 2009 with bookings all over the country and with his mixtape, ‘Money Over Everyone’, selling untold amounts. He was one of the reasons why grime came back strong last year. But at the moment all eyes and ears are on P Money for one reason and one reason only, the Ghetts clash. “War dubs” have been made against each other which you can hear all over the Internet, the forums, YouTube etc and it’s becoming very intense. “Ghetts remixed a lyric of mine that I thought was directed towards me,” says P Money. “So I did the same back, I remixed his well known lyric, “There’s no introduction needed” and turned it on him (the tune was called Top 3 Selected). He then replied with the Plaistow video two years later and I thought, yes, finally, let’s do this.”
With Ghetts being the legendary grime MC that he is, it’s a bit of a shock to see how many people are backing P Money over Ghetts, seeing that he is relatively new and all. “I’m not surprised they rate me because I’m “new”, I’m just surprised at how may people rate me in a clash,” says P Money. “Just because an MC has been around for longer it doesn’t mean anything in my eyes. You get your respect, but new people will always come along, it’s just a matter of what you say. Ghetts has been missing, he’s been around for long, but in the last year all he’s done is three videos whilst I was doing everything, everyday.”
Surely there needs to be a face to face clash taking place soon? Lord Of The Mics 3, maybe? “Yeah I’ve been waiting. It doesn’t matter where (I’d prefer a rave though). If I could just get everyone in one place, me, him and a MIC, we could just do this. I don’t know why he’s being long, he’s known about this for two years and I don’t get it. Why is he taking so long? Does he really need two years to prepare? He’s talking about wanting to go mainstream and, but if he’s so sick he could deal with the clash and then do his thing after.”
P Money continues…
“Ghetts called Dot Rotten for information on me and Dot actually tried to get it. I see that as a big disrespect because Dot was calling me the other day saying he wants to do tunes and that. This clash has just brought out the snake in people. I never once said Ghetts wasn’t good, but the clash doesn’t have anything to do with anything else you’ve done, it’s all to do with what you say in the clash so calling Dot for dirt and not getting anything is “LOL OK”. Everyone who wants to know where or when the clash is, ask Ghetts, because I’m thinking the same thing you lot are. I’m ready. Now!”
To hear the ”war dubs” click: HERE
For more on P Money, check him out on MySpace – www.myspace.com/mcpmoney
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Interview with Jordan Protano-Byrne
Jordan Protano-Byrne is an abolitionist vegan and activist. He has adopted twelve chickens and several sheep, and when he isn’t tending to rescued non-humans he spends his time on political and human rights affairs in his home in Lancashire, North West England.
Q: When, how and why did you go vegan?
A: I’ve always been fascinated by animals and nature and as a young child I was obsessed with entomology, though I never really gave a thought to the animals I dined upon for most of my life.
Thankfully, that changed. I went vegan when I was 12 years old, after being vegetarian for a couple of months. At the time I was questioning why some people were vegetarian/vegan and once I learned where my ‘food’ came from and what really goes on inside the farm and abattoir, I realised there was no way I could carry on supporting this so I immediately went vegetarian. But as I looked more into the philosophy of animal rights, I came to the conclusion that being ovo-lacto vegetarian simply wasn’t enough. Cutting out dairy, eggs and other animal produce is a small thing we can do for animals, but it’s essential if we want to be morally consistent and effective at combating speciesism in all its insidious forms.
Q: Was it hard going vegan at such a young age considering you still lived with your family? What was their reaction, and how did you approach them about it?
A: Being vegan when you’re not the one who buys the food certainly presents some challenges. Fortunately for me, my mother is a long-standing vegetarian and so had no issue with buying me vegan foods. The rest of my family is quietly tolerant now, but at first there were some heated moments.
In retrospect, I didn’t handle things too well. My advice now, after dealing with a whole host of responses, would be to respond to any comments, no matter how puerile, obtuse or reactionary, calmly and politely. It is always much better received, and even if they don’t argue with you, they are more likely to be tolerant and respectful of your views. Sometimes, even the presence of a vegan may be enough to challenge the status quo and unnerve people, often they get defensive and this must be broken down before any meaningful exchange can begin. The best way to begin this process is to be understanding, polite but firm and, of course, logical!
Q: Some teenagers can easily go vegan, but have no idea where to start when it comes to activism. Can you tell about the kinds of activism you are involved with or give some advice about how younger people can use their skills to help out?
A: There are myriad forms of activism so there is no excuse for slacktivism!
Many people join groups and help out with stalls or protests, which are both great forms of activism but I’d advise people to be wary of the groups they join. Most ‘animal rights groups’, though often composed of dedicated and well-meaning people, are typically little more than new-welfarist organisations with fiery, “abolitionist” rhetoric. If your local group is like this or there is no local group, then set up your own!
But if protests and outreach stalls are not for you, then try volunteering at your local shelter. They are always understaffed and consequently lots of animals don’t receive the affection, companionship and play that they deserve. If it’s possible, see if you could adopt some animals. Sadly, there are many times more domestic animals than potential homes and whilst adopting a dog or a rabbit won’t solve this, it will literally mean the world to those you can provide a home for.
Personally, these are the avenues I’ve taken. When I first went vegan I got involved with my local ‘animal rights’ group but I ended up leaving not long after due to ideological differences. I look after various rescue animals and I’m currently gathering people together to start an abolitionist group.
I do recognise that neither leafleting nor rescuing is possible for some people, and my advice to those and to everyone else as well, is simple: be creative. Each and every individual in the struggle has their own interests and unique set of skills. Use yours!
Q: What is your experience in high school like as a vegan? How do you deal with your peers who might not understand about animal rights or give you a hard time?
A: Over the years, I’ve experienced a lot of different reactions from people. Many become defensive and almost take it personally, to which I smile inwardly and take note to gently probe in more favourable circumstances, although others are much more reactionary and have tried to give me a hard time over it. They’ve failed, because if I was ever proud of anything, I am proud of being vegan. In fact, I wear a big green vegan badge on my blazer and when I first started high school I had a bright yellow bag with ‘MEAT IS MURDER’ on it in block capitals, leaving nobody confused about my ethics. Pretty much everyone knows I’m vegan and, even now, it still comes into conversation. It’s sometimes difficult but I think in these situations we must try and keep the conversation productive and educate people who are interested about speciesism, the treatment and exploitation of animals and the philosophy of animal rights. Of course, this is how I deal with it when I think it’s possible for the conversation to be productive but when it’s clearly not a productive use of my time, I usually walk off or, if I’m feeling that way inclined, proceed to pick apart the facile arguments been thrown at me for my own pleasure. But I love debate and I’m pretty thick-skinned, so I wouldn’t recommend this for everyone. People react in all kinds of ways when they find out someone is vegan and the appropriate response depends on the situation, but remember that almost all of the time people’s reactions are borne of ignorance. So educate them!
Q: How do your political beliefs reflect your views on animal rights?
A: I’m a communist and I think the philosophy of animal rights fits perfectly with Marxism. Much of the Left is hostile to animal rights– many ignore the concept, and those who don’t tend to critique it as bourgeois lifestylism– but I don’t think this is a logical position to take. Folk have been saying “human freedom, animal rights, one struggle, one fight” for decades now, but only recently have people started to seriously consider how the struggle to emancipate humans is connected to that of other animals.
There are, of course, key differences; under capitalism, people work in factories and are reduced to their mere labour power, whereas animals themselves are reduced to factories for their flesh, their young, their bodily secretions, etc. But the paradigm of domination, that which values sentient beings extrinsically and uses them instrumentally, has its roots in the development of class society and the enslavement of nonhuman animals.
When human beings settled down and began to develop agriculture, they, for the first time in history, could accumulate surplus goods. They could not only farm their own foods, but also store them in large quantities. Previously, people have lived in a system of what Engels called “primitive communism”, without social class governing them, but now the first meaningful stratification of society into classes began. During this time, humans also began to manipulate crops and animals to their own ends. They started to control the animals’ breeding and restrict their movement, they developed ways to castrate male animals and use female animals for milk. Prior to humans, cows produced milk only whilst their calves required it, chickens laid an egg every month or so and sheep had wool coats similar to the short fur on other animals. Domestication created slaves of animals and made them dependent on humans; humans controlled everything about the animals’ lives, from when they were born through to when they would die. As societies waged war on each other for land and resources, the victors of these struggles began to apply their methods of controlling animals on other humans.
I think that the struggle for animal rights should be supported out of principle, in the interests of justice, but it’s also important to recognise these links in our fight against oppression. Many feminist theorists have demonstrated how patriarchal social relations and cultural speciesism oppress both women and nonhumans in many, often interconnected ways. If we oppose prejudice and exploitation, we must oppose it consistently. Species is just another arbitrary category, like race or gender, which isn’t morally relevant for discussions of ethics.
Q: Do you often feel alienated because of your beliefs? If so, how do you deal with it?
A: Sometimes I do. Being a vegan is often an alienating experience, especially when one rejects dominant ideology. Most apolitical/apathetic people don’t bother raising political issues, and neither do I in their company. I mainly try to socialise with fellow communists/vegans. When the week’s getting me down, I just think about the weekend, meetings, demos, etc. And I read a lot. It’s always pleasant to know you’re not the only sane person in the world.
Q: Looking around at the world today it is understandable why one could become easily discouraged. What keeps you motivated?
What keeps my motivated? Looking around the world. Seriously. There’s so much we need to do, there’s really no time to waste. But there are also so many touching examples of resistance, of people fighting back against the system and changing the world, even if it’s just for one person. I’m conscious of avoiding burnout, but equally I’m always active. Being involved in the struggle and rubbing shoulders with those fighting alongside you is probably the most motivating thing for me.
Q: What advice can you give to someone who is not quite vegan but just needs that extra push to get them there?
I think it’s important to realise that any speciesism and all speciesism is responsible for the horrors that animals are forced to endure. Often many people stick to being ovo-lacto vegetarian, or some other non-vegan variant, because they feel veganism is unnecessary. But by consuming cheese, free-range eggs or any other animal product we send out the message that exploitation is acceptable, we condemn billions of animals to suffer needlessly for we legitimise their slavery and their status as property. This ideology, speciesism, justifies all that animals endure and that they could possibly endure on the basis that one group of sentient animals– humans– are superior to all others.
All those that see the danger in this myth and the injustice, the suffering and misery it has propagated must be clear that the only way to combat it and all its insidious manifestations is to act consistently and strike at the roots. Veganism is a prerequisite for this.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
New things and Interviewing for SIN
I’m doing a couple of new and exciting things for the networking side of MM stuff —
As well as being allowed into the hallowed halls of
I’ve also been asked to interview some MM writers. As my interview with Charlie Cochrane (http://speakitsname.com/2010/02/14/author-interview-charlie-cochrane/) went reasonably well (we both got through it with our sanity intact and only a minimal mention of rugby), I’ve been told I can tell you the following people are on the list of interviewees for 2010:
MARCH – Dorien Grey http://www.angelfire.com/home/doriengrey/
MAY – Myrlin A Hermes http://www.myrlinahermes.com/
JUNE – Ruth Sims http://www.ruthsims.com/
JULY – Josh Lanyon http://www.joshlanyon.com/
AUGUST – Parhelion http://www.e-fic.com/sundog/original.html
SEPTEMBER – James Lear http://www.myspace.com/jameslearfiction
OCTOBER – Jamie Crag http://www.jamie-craig.com/
Not a bad list when you come to think about it! Actually, am slightly quaking in my boots at the thought of it. Well, onwards and upwards as they say!
Bayh Wants Filibuster Rules Changed
The Senate “should reform the filibuster as a way to end partisan gridlock,” Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) said Wednesday, The Hill reports.
Bayh, who cited partisanship and incivility as reasons for his retirement, said the filibuster has been used by the Republican minority too frequently.
“Now it’s being routinely used to frustrate even low level presidential appointees,” Bayh told MSNBC. “So perhaps the threshold should be lowered again.”
Bayh noted that the Senate had previously lowered the threshold for ending debate to 60 votes from 67. The Indiana Democrat said it may be time to lower that to 55.
(credit image – associated press)
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Interview: Boots With Spurs
Boots With Spurs really are quite fantastic, but it wasn’t until we had a chance to chat to them that we realised how fantastical they are as well. Their debut album is a brilliant piece of work, seemingly concocted out of a recipe of 30 years worth of science fiction films and The Mars Volta. You can read a review of that here. As the band sat in smoking jackets drinking a bottle of wine they found at one in the afternoon, we spoke to them about pretty much everything. Warning: the following transcript is not for the faint of heart.
The Only Thing I Know For Sure: Hey guys, thanks for taking the time out to chat, and thanks for the album as well, it was really good.
Clay Bail (Guitars): Thanks for the awesome review.
TOTIKFS: Yeah, I do apologise for making it sound as if you lot were a bunch of mental cases, starting it off with mentioning the asylum!
CB: We couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I think we all decided that it was a pretty alright thing. We can be mental cases.
David Finch (Bass): That’s why we’re wearing smoking jackets!
TOTIKFS: At one in the afternoon! I really enjoyed it; I thought it was really refreshing. Normally when you get sent unsolicited stuff like that and you listen to it, it’s like some 14 year old kid sitting in his bedroom crying with an acoustic guitar and having a wank at the same time.
CB: We all do that to. We don’t record it though!
TOTIKFS: I’ll start by asking a massive question – how did the band form, and why?
CB: Well that was the two of us (Matt Gonzalez, drums). We’d been around eachother for a while and we were just hanging out one night. We’d never really made music together at all.
Matt Gonzalez (Drums): We weren’t even friends!
CB: [Laughs] Yeah. His roommate plays in a band with my roommate. And so, we just started messing around on an acoustic guitar and we decided it sounded cool, which is kinda funny because you wouldn’t guess it listening to our music. So the two of us started hanging around in my basement and we started composing music that was just for us to have fun playing it. It was just going to be guitar and drums and then after we got into the studio we decided we should fill it out a bit. We took three months off and Matt wrote some lyrics, I wrote some basslines and we got our good buddy Vince from High School to sing for us.
TOTIKFS: So why did you choose the name Boots With Spurs?
CB: It really amounted to us sitting in a room writing down all of the cool words we could think of. Then we decided that Boots With Spurs best fit what we were going for. We’d already written ‘These Boots Were Made For Moonwalking’ and we’d just started ‘The Sun Never Sets On Andy Griffith’ so I think we were in that zone and it seemed appropriate.
TOTIKFS: Are you all big Western fans?
CB: Absolutely.
MG: I think the main dichotomy is that I am the band’s resident Native American. Clay is the band’s cowboy, and when the two of us were in the lab writing everything out that’s how everything panned out. We’re huge fans of cowboys vs Indians.
DF: And astronauts!
CB: I’m a big fan of all the scores for all of the Leone, Eastwood movies. Those definitely had some inspiration. On ‘The Sun Never Sets On Andy Griffith’ you can hear a little bit of that in the melodies, particularly the intro to the whole record I think is a pretty good homage to that.
TOTIKFS: What were your initial inspirations when you were setting out? Who did you want to be like?
MG: We wrote ‘These Boots Are Made For Moonwalking’ first, and at that time I was really under the influence of Jon Theodore from The Mars Volta. His drumming took me to new heights I think; I started studying a lot of his drum parts, a lot of the grooves and a lot of the wacky time signatures they did but by the time we were wrapping up ‘These Boots’ we were reaching out to all different types of places. I started getting a lot more into Frank Zappa and The Mahavishnu Orchestra and a lot more jazz-fusion groups that we tried to incorporate into this post-punk bubble. When people ask us what we sound like, most often we’ll say psychedelic post-punk.
TOTIKFS: That really came through; the whole Mars Volta thing was an obvious influence.
MG: The stuff that we’re working on now for future recordings…I mean we’ve moved on a lot since then already. So you can expect some very different sounding stuff to come out from us on our next recording.
CB: If you take our record and reverse the order of it so that ‘These Boots Are Made For Moonwalking’ is first, you’ll see a lot more pop structure in that; there’s a lot more of us using recurring themes and composing one big half-hour piece. Whereas ‘The Sun Never Sets On Andy Griffith’ we ended up doing it like it was a movie, where every part is a different scene. It jumps around a whole lot and the parts don’t necessarily match up one next to the other if you were to put the tracks out of order. We started to go into different styles and write some parts that just sounded like nothing that we’d written before, and we’re still doing that now.
TOTIKFS: Has music been something that you’ve been doing for a while?
MG: Yeah. I remember I got my first drum kit when I was 14 years old.
Vince DeSantiago (Vocals): Me, Clay and Matt all went to High School together and we all went to the Chicago Academy for the Arts. Clay and Matt were both in the music department and I was in the musical theatre department, so I sang everyday for four years straight and Matt played drums and Clay played guitar.
CB: That amounted to about six hours a day of practice while we were there.
MG: I don’t like to admit that though. Because, if anyone asks me how many hours I’ve practiced in high school and they hear six hours a day, they would be like ‘why the hell aren’t you better?’ Now if I practiced for six hours a day I’d probably be a very disgusting drummer!
CB: It’s a matter of what we were playing to I think. I’d been playing guitar since I was six years old. I did years of classical training before I ever picked up an electric guitar. I started playing electric when I was twelve and then got into Kiss and AC/DC and stuff like that. That would turn into Led Zeppelin and it just kinda grew from there. We’ve been practicing for years but we’ve been dabbling in different styles. Matt played punk rock drums for…forever!
DF: I think this is the first time we’ve ever encountered this type of musical experience and performance. I’ve never played in a band like this, and we’ve all played in many bands prior.
TOTIKFS: You’re still a young band at the moment. How long have you been at it?
MG: We’ve played two shows so far. [Laughs]. We’re brand new but we’ve already got a lot of attention from the people who have come to our shows. You can tell that it’s going to be a very cult-like atmosphere coming to a Boots With Spurs show. We want everyone to dress up like Indians, and instead of clapping do Indian calls.
TOTIKFS: You could have half the people come as cowboys and half come as Indians, and instead of a wall of death you could have a wall of cowboys and Indians attacking eachother.
MG: At our first show, I put on the invite that I sent out to everybody, that if they showed up dressed as an astronaut I’d make sure they got in for free. But nobody came dressed as an astronaut!
TOTIKFS: Let’s talk about the album for a bit. Put it in your own words – what is the whole thing all about?
CB: It’s a fusion of Apocalypse Now and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The concept is that there’s this one human being out in space by himself, driven a little bit mad by solitude and he sees all sorts of things on the way that no human being has ever seen before. So, whilst he’s cooped up, he’s also being let out of the basic human lifestyle and by the time he reaches the final destination ‘Goldilocks’ which is…y’know, the porridge isn’t too cold, it isn’t too hot, he finds the planet that’s right for humans, a place that could support human life. Then he thinks ‘what do I do from here? I’ve found this pristine planet, and I could save the human race, bring them here and we could expand and move to new frontiers or I could preserve the sanctity of this planet that I’ve just found’. And that’s the dual ending thing we’ve got at the end of the record. Ending A, it’s supposed to be the arrival of all the world’s ships to colonise the planet which is now essentially fucked. Then on ending B he decides that he doesn’t want to let the rest of the human race know about it, and it’s him just releasing himself out of the ship to float aimlessly.
MG: We all wrote lyrics, but I think especially on ‘The Sun Never Sets’ I wrote the majority of them and then because of that I was the one who had to set the story out scene by scene with the lyrics I wrote. Basically, the major themes of Andy Griffith are…what I think of it as is the story of the boomerang. What goes around comes around; it’s this story of redemption, it’s this story of second chances and it’s this story of finding things within this world that you didn’t think existed and using them to play the part of your life.
CB: We kinda wrote the stories as we went. It was something that right off the bat we got about through ‘Space Heater’ and then we said ‘what’s that song about?’. We started talking about ideas for what it would be setting up for the rest of the record. Once we’d sorted out the basic story there, we just built on it as we wrote the music. Every track was a new section, a new scene, and by the time we got to Andy Griffith it was just ‘ok, what happens next’ or ‘hey, I have this part’ and we’d practise it and then say ‘what scene in the story was that?’ So we just wrote it as we wrote the music and the stories changed over time from what they started out as. We’d write a new part and then that music would inspire us to take a completely new turn with the plot. ‘These Boots Were Made For Walking’ was always going to be a sort of sci-fi-esque thing.
MG: The way I could probably quickest sum up the plot of ‘These Boots’ is that it is the story of imperialism in outer space. It’s written much in the same vein as Heart of Darkness and the film Apocalypse Now. It’s set up with the same structure: this man is on his imperialist voyage, stopping at these hubs on his way, until he gets to the place where he finally realises what he’s supposed to do there, and by the time he does his prerogative has changed along the way.
TOTIKFS: I think a lot of people will read this and not know whether you guys are absolutely barmy or complete geniuses!
MG: We wanted to avoid the whole pop structure thing from the beginning. It’s just so dull to me. You have your intro, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus, out. I’m done with that; I think musicians can start being more creative than the same thing every time. There are a lot of bands who are now and have been doing things similar to what we’re doing, and that’s just the way I prefer to listen to a record. I want to put a record in and listen to it from start to end.
DF: I think it’s almost a difference of sitting down and reading a good novel or reading a book of short stories. Either approach can be done, and be very meaningful, but I think I enjoy an entire album as opposed to flicking track from track.
CB: I like when albums avoid silence whenever possible, unless it’s to achieve an effect. There’s an interview with Omar Rodriguez-Lopez that I read: he said ‘I’ve just never liked hearing pauses between songs – you put on a record and it gives you two minutes of energy and then cuts you off, starts you over and then cuts you off, rather than just taking you for this long ride’. Rather than a whole bunch of different paintings, it’s a series of paintings that will tell a story together.
TOTIKFS: Will there be any extensions to the stories?
MB: ‘The Sun Never Sets’ is only the first part of this story. Andy Griffith has a lot more to do before his story is over.
TOTIKFS: It’s pretty all over the place what you do. What’s the music scene like in Chicago?
CB: There are some good venues for sure. It’s hard to get people to come out in Chicago it seems. People are more into going out to bars with jukeboxes than bars with bands I think.
MG: I left Chicago, and went to Florida for three months around this time last year. I started noticing that the thing with Chicago is, when you have your childhood friends here and you leave then you come back, and you see that everybody is still up to the same shit that they were doing 20 years ago, it’s a bit disconcerting. People in this town aren’t ready to move on. I’ll try to phrase this without sounding conceited but we’re doing something musically that people in Chicago aren’t willing to try. People in Chicago want to hear punk rock, and metal and pop music, and there are great blues bars but people aren’t ready to elevate music here. Everybody just wants to do the same thing they’ve been doing, forever. It’s a little bit annoying.
CB: There are some fantastic blues and jazz musicians in Chicago for sure, but as far as the rock scene goes I think stylistically it’s a little bit limited.
DF: I think moreso, there are a lot of great acts that come through Chicago. Everybody wants to play Chicago because once you have the following I think everybody follows very closely. Trying something different doesn’t often happen with bands that come out of Chicago.
CB: Yeah, it’s a huge place for big bands that are touring. We have some enormous venues here, and the Rolling Stones come through and they’ll play three nights sold out. People are going out to concerts but there’s not that much local attention.
TOTIKFS: As a band you obviously want to grow your audience and succeed. But does the nature of the music industry contradict your music style in some respects?
DF: Absolutely. If we’re going to compete with any other original pieces that are being compiled, we have to be a whole three steps ahead of them. I think we’re a very diverse group of individuals with different influences.
CB: If the four of us were to write down individually which bands influenced us the most we’d have a page of a thousand bands.
DF: It would be comparable to the Rolling Stone’s top 500 articles. We try and know and understand everything that has come before us so that we know where to take things to the next level.
CB: The fact that we’ve been taking Latin lessons is us just trying to take that a little bit farther and learn some better communications skills, because I think they’ve got some of the best communication skills out there musically.
DF: I think communication verbally is something as well that we’re all getting together with. We like to have a good time and joke around, but we’re also working really hard to be able to communicate with one another and get our ideas down without having any arguments or taking anything personally.
CB: We bicker like a 40 year old married couple but we love eachother! But that’s what happens when you’re writing music with eachother for a whole year.
MG: Think of it as if me and Clay were locked into a room for four months with only eachother.
CB: Practising every day with one other person, you learn to have productive bickering!
TOTIKFS: Just to close off, try to explain your sound to an alien visitor who would have never heard of you guys.
DF: I think we feel that the aliens already know what we’re talking about! I think we could play giant arenas in outer space whilst no-one here would be following us.
MG: We’re trying to make Boots With Spurs the most fun you’ll ever have at a rock show. You can come out, you can dress up, and it’ll be like Halloween. Everyone’s hootin’ and hollerin’, jumping around, participating with us. It’s a dual thing going on: we’re up there playing for you, but we need you to come out and have the most fun you’ve ever had.
VD: As the audience relies on us to entertain them, we rely on the audience to entertain us as well.
DF: We want the theatre to not just be us on stage performing; we want the entire theatre to be a part of the show. Everybody that stepped in there is a supporting role in the cast.
INTERVIEW: SUNNY DAY REAL ESTATE
We’ve been working real hard the last couple of months just writing a record and thats just been really fun
Sunny Day Real Estate were one of the bands that both profited and were hindered by the explosion of activity and attention that centred around Seattle in the early 90s. Coming from that town they were immediately subject to forensic attention from the media and lumped in with what was being termed ‘grunge’. The reality was quite different as the band were coming from another place altogether. Their sound wasn’t derived from garage and punk rock, nor was it influenced by metal. It was a more dynamic sound that stemmed from teenage years listening to the likes of Slint and Fugazi and a chemistry between the band members that resulted in a democracy of their instruments and a kinetic energy in the combinations of their playing.
On the eve of their first ever visit to Australia, the newly reformed quartet are amazed that they have the opportunity to play in this part of the world. “I’m are so looking forward to getting over there, I can’t wait,” says guitarist Dan Hoerner. “We have this really great team of people [Foo Fighters management] that put this thing together for us. We would probably never have been able to do an Australian tour like this because we never would been able to meet anyone who would set up the tour for us. Right now we are getting to do things we would have never been able to do before. The USA tour we did, like 17 of the 21 shows were sold out and some were places we’d never played before,” he enthuses.
The touring over the last 6 months has given them a chance to revisit many old songs and one in particular has taken on a new lease of life. “There was a song on our first record called Grendel and it is one of my favourite songs and we could never get an arrangement that worked because we wrote that song in the studio and it was a conglomeration of a bunch of different things and we never really had been able to figure out satisfactorily how to play that song. This last time we got together we all sat down and it was the first time we got to play with Nate [Mendel] again since the ‘Pink’ era and we realised that with Nate we were able to play Grendel again and I think we played that almost every night on tour and I loved it. I think that’s one that does really well live,” Hoerner says.
Reunions often begin as a warm and fuzzy experience but has the reformation lasted with the excitement it first generated? “It just feels like things are going really well for us now. Things are moving forward of their own accord and its something we’ve never really experienced as a band before with things going well. I’m waiting for something to break,” laughs Hoerner.
Too often the first step of playing live gigs together is the only step so fans will be over the moon to hear that Sunny Day Real Estate are moving forward together. “We’ve been working real hard the last couple of months just writing a record and thats just been really fun. We’re in the writing and demoing process right now and we’ll probably go into the studio after we’ve done the European/Coachella thing,” Hoerner estimates.
“We want it to be good, we don’t have expectations about doing anything in particular or sound like anything, we just want to make a record that appeals to us. That being said, we’ve always tried to do the best we can do when it comes to making a record and this time’s not any different,” he explains.
The chemistry between the band members is something that caught the ears of fans when they first heard Diary and LP2 (The Pink Album). They were able to weave drama and intensity with guitar, drums and vocals and they weren’t afraid to do it with both a delicate and brutal touch. “We have this particular alchemy with each other and there’s no way of telling why or what it is. Whenever we look too closely at it or try and pick it apart and figure out how we did some of the best things we’ve done, invariably we miss the mark. Luckily this time around we threw off all caution and just started playing songs and not caring if they were even good or not and so that has been really freeing and fun,” admits Hoerner.
“That’s the thing about writing now that I love, that we just started going for it and I think that’s why those things worked in the past – we did not care if anybody would be listening to our music and we didn’t care that our stuff was really weird and had no chance of being on the radio or anything and we just sort of did it. I think that’s the way we need to keep doing it because we could never sit down and intentionally write a song that was going to be a hit. We’re just not that kind of band,” Hoerner proudly states.
Since their mid 90s heyday SDRE’s influence has often been apparent with indie guitar bands who have sought to create new and interesting diversions from the mainstream. This continued appreciation, the apparent camaraderie in the band and the prospect of a new album are all exciting signs that the short term forecast at least is looking great for this unique group.