Smile Politely.com / Music

Yossarian Plays WEFT Sessions Tonight, There's No Catch

2008-10-06T22:00:00Z

In Catch-22, fighter pilot Yossarian "had decided to live forever or die in the attempt." For the local band of the same name, the stakes weren't quite as high on Saturday night as they made their debut performance at Mike 'N Molly's, but Yossarian certainly survived, even thrived. They'll live to fight another day: namely, tonight on WEFT Sessions at 10 p.m. on WEFT-90.1 FM.

The quintet, with (alphabetically) Collin A. Bullock on guitar and vocals, Aaron Gates on drums, Matt O'Neal on bass, Alex Resnick on guitar and Merry Thomas on lead vocals, chatted with Smile Politely out on the sidewalk after their gig about, among other things: their original plan to start a Dolly Parton cover band and how their current sound can be described as a bear fighting a lion. The results are after the jump.

]]> Smile Politely: It's chilly out here, so I'll try to keep this brief.

Collin: I'm insulated like a polar bear.

SP: Some of your bandmates are not, though. OK, first show, how do you think it went?

Merry: It went surprisingly well.

Matt: More, more!

Collin: People seemed to like it, and what more can you hope for?

Passerby: Is your voice going out?

Collin: Absolutely. I screamed a lot. Keep that in the story, we have two random strangers hugging our lead singer right now.

SP: How long have you guys been together, rehearsing and all that?

Collin: A long time in general, with me, Alex and Matt, but we got a new lead singer and a new drummer - how long ago was that?

Aaron: Middle of June?...July?...July.

Collin: We've been around since, July, August or so. We had a show two weeks ago at the Red Herring, but that fell apart.

SP: So, you guys (pointing at Collin, Alex, Matt) were in a band together before?

Collin: No, Matt and I are old friends since high school, and he just bought a bass, so he's been playing bass for about as long as the band's been around. He's getting good.

Matt: I'm learning.

Collin: So we were in a band, and Alex, how did you find us?

Alex: The Internet.

Collin: Alex does not waste words.

Matt: He picked up on the residuals, and just followed it.

Collin: I posted a Craigslist ad, and Alex came and joined us through that, and Aaron, how did you get in the band?

Aaron: He (Collin) wrote a really terribly hand-written note and stuck in on the drum shop's door, and I looked at it and kind of was like, "What the hell did that say?" And I called up the number, and Collin was like, "Yeah, come on over, I'll rape you."

Collin: There was NO RAPE! And we had another singer at the time...

Matt: Dear God.

Collin: And that didn't work out. Merry, how did you join us?

Merry: Aaron's my roommate, I've known him for forever, ever since we were wee little high school children. And then one day he was like "Well, we need a new vocalist, so you should come over, like right now," and so I did, and that was how it all started.

Collin: In the practice space, [we had some issues and I was like], "Your roommate sings, right?" And she came over like, literally, 30 or 45 minutes later, and it wasn't bad.

Matt: We were originally formed, we were drunk when we originally got the idea...we were at Guido's, I think [points in the opposite direction of Guido's].

Collin: We were out at Guido's, and it was me, Matt and the other singer, and we were like, "Let's start a band! You want to join the Taliban? I'm in!"

Matt: The original idea was to play all Dolly Parton songs.

Collin: But I only know one Dolly Parton song, and it was the one that the White Stripes covered ["Jolene"] so that didn't work out. [To Merry's friend] Is that a Smashing Pumpkins Zero shirt? Awesome.

SP: So, did you guys grow up around here?

Aaron: Sadly, yes.

Merry: Yep, born and raised.

Matt: East St. Louis!

Merry: I was raised in a very nice neighborhood.

Alex: Arizona.

Collin: Interesting coincidence - Matt's going to leave for the rest of this interview because he has a drink, but I'll speak for him [this turned out to not be the case] - Alex lived in Arizona, that's where he grew up, and I was born in Arizona. How far away - you grew up in Flagstaff, correct?

Alex: Uh, I was in a couple different places.

Collin: What town would you say most encapsulates your experience there?

Alex: Phoenix?

Collin: And how far away is that from Tucson?

Alex: Uh, several hours.

Collin: So the story means nothing. It's interesting, I was born in Arizona, he was from there...sorry to waste your time.

SP: So, what is the greatest album of all time?

Collin: I'm going to say, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, by Neutral Milk Hotel.

Aaron: Personally, I'm a Killers fan, so I like pretty much them all.

Collin: You gotta choose one.

Aaron: I don't know, Sawdust is pretty tight.

Merry: I'm a big fan of Sufjan Stevens, I think my favorite album of his is Seven Swans.

Aaron: You can definitely tell our diversity here.

Matt: Daisies of the Galaxy by the Eels, been my favorite for a long, long time.

Aaron: Dragonforce is pretty fun, too.

Collin: The show tonight was not...we're really a Dragonforce tribute band. We figured we'd just go mellow tonight.

SP: [to Alex] Are you abstaining, or do you have an answer?

Alex: I was listening to Pecker Dunn, who's an Irish street singer, that was a pretty good album.

Matt: Nice!

Alex: That's the last one I liked.

Collin: When I was in Ireland I saw a street singer, and I was like, "Play 'Zombie' by the Cranberries," and he was like, "That's what fucking [unintelligible]."

SP: That's a pretty mean thing to say.

Collin: That's how the Irish are, dude. I was in a bar in Dublin, and I was like, "My Grandma's Irish, I'm Irish," and he's like [shouting], "No you're fuckin' not, you're from fuckin' America! You're in Ireland for one day, you have a fucking pint, you think you're fuckin' Irish, a hundred years ago you people didn't want us to come in, now you all want to be fuckin' Irish? Fuck off!" And like 25 minutes later he was like, "I'm just fucking with ya, have a beer, have a pint." But yeah, they're really cool, God bless Ireland.

SP: Maybe a little manic-depressive, but...

Collin: Which I've carried on in myself.

SP: Well, haven't we all. So you're going to be playing WEFT on Monday, how do you go from playing to people right there to playing over the air?

Collin: Let the record state that there were at least 15 people right there, so...

SP: To people, t-o.

Collin: Oh, my bad. How do we go from that, Merry?

Merry: Well, it's a completely different atmosphere, for one. I've never performed in a studio, I'm assuming that's where we're going to do it?

Collin: [pointing] Right there, as a matter of fact.

Merry: Oh, well, ha.

SP: Taking it on the road, and that road is Market Street.

Merry: Before the show, this is my first show ever, I was having all these thoughts, like, 'I'm going to screw up,' and it's different when there's not a lot of people watching you.
Aaron - Yeah, next time we need to play Memorial Stadium, completely full.
.
SP: It was a good show. I wouldn't have guessed that it was your first go-round.

Collin: We have technically played on the streets before for money. I don't know if that counts or not. We made like $14 or something.

SP: What would you say some of your influences are? You played a Joy Division cover. I wouldn't have recognized any of the other songs as covers. Are the others originals?

Collin: We know two covers, one of which we didn't play. We know "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division and "Just Like Heaven" by the Cure, which we didn't play tonight because there was a bar chord that Merry was having difficulty with.

Merry: Yeah, no, it's true, I can't play guitar worth shit.

Collin: You're better than you think you are, that's for sure.

Merry: It's one of those things where I can play it if I'm listening along to the Cure, but...

Collin: You were saying influences...

Matt: A pretty wide base between all of us.

Collin: This definitely has an alternative-rock, mid-'90s kind of sound, a bit, but you don't want to be too linked to that, beholden to that. So I think that we have roots to that, but there's very rarely a conscious sense that, this next song is going to be our Smashing Pumpkins song or something, so it kind of sneaks in as it does for anyone who listens to pop music for the first 20 fucking years of your life. It's probably obvious to people who aren't us more than it is to us. Everyone agree?

Merry: Basically, yeah. It's going to take some time it to develop a real fundamental sound. We don't really need to.

Collin: How about "fucking awesome"? That's our sound.

Merry: Fucking awesome. Yeah, that's the new genre.

Collin: An eagle giving birth to another eagle.

Aaron: Or a bear fighting a lion.

Collin: I want that to be the headline. "A bear fighting a lion" for Yossarian.

SP: So I'm assuming the name is a Joseph Heller reference?

Collin: Well, it's actually a weird thing both ways. It's a Joseph Heller reference to a certain degree. When I was born, my mom wanted to name me Collin Bullock, and my dad wanted to name me Yossarian, like hard-core, "I want to name my kid that." And my mom said, "He's going to get a bunch of shit for that," so my dad's like, "Fine, we'll name him Collin." But my whole life, he's called me Yossarian. It's like this weird, passive-aggressive thing, where he uses Yossarian, so I thought it would be a good band name. But he got the name from Catch-22, so it's a roundabout reference to Catch-22.

SP: Anyway, any closing thoughts? Sorry to keep you out in the cold.

Collin: I'm not cold. My personal advice, jog every day.

Thanks for hanging in there until the end. It was a lot more interesting to see the featured band before interviewing them, and hope you enjoyed it, too. Tune in tonight at 10 p.m. to see what you think of them in concert.

How We Helped Write Rock History: Way to Normal by Ben Folds

2008-10-06T18:00:00Z

Cristy: In spring 2007, we saw Ben Folds at ISU's Braden Auditorium. Midway through, he announced a new song that he'd written on the way to Normal from St. Louis—a tribute to a little town he'd passed on the interstate called “Effington.” He jokingly sang about Effington's residents “effing” in their yards and in their cars. Although he got the name wrong (it’s actually “Effingham") the crowd responded with raucous glee. Since it seemed crudely composed and sung as if Folds were making it up as he went along, I figured "Effington" was a one-off throwaway—a gift to his downstate Illinois fans.

Fast-forward to fall 2008. Browsing through Luna Records in Indianapolis, William and I discovered that Ben Folds’s new album is called Way to Normal. As I scanned the track list, my eyes stopped at "Effington" and practically bugged out of their sockets. “Hey! I think Ben Folds’s CD refers to Normal, Illinois!” I exclaimed to William.

]]> William: I squinted at the title, and sure enough it was “to” and not “too.”

C: We were there when it began! As spectators at the genesis of that song, present at the concert referred to in the title of the album, we were witnesses to a moment in rock history!

W: Well, it wasn’t Woodstock, but I still felt part of something kind of important.

C: So we bought it. I’m a huge Ben Folds (and Ben Folds Five) fan, but he's one of those artists I can only listen to when I'm in a certain mood. Folds's songs can be sadly poignant ("Landed," “Eddie Walker, This is Your Life,” “Evaporated”), and sometimes I feel too raw to go through Folds’s meatgrinder of lonely stories about ordinary people who realize that life doesn't go as planned.

Way to Normal is different. A more upbeat effort than his last album (the introspective Songs for Silverman), Way to Normal sounds looser, rocks harder, and moves faster. I didn't like it the first time I heard it. The first song ("Hiroshima (B B B Benny Hit His Head)") was recorded live, which immediately made me think the album was an uneven throwaway of B-sides and live tracks. While some songs sounded polished, others were distorted. When the CD ended, I was less than fulfilled. Then we played it again. This time Folds's hooks sank right into my skin. By the fifth time through, I was singing along.

Many tracks on Way to Normal are rowdy and capture the lower-fi Ben Folds Five sound (“Errant Dog”); others demonstrate his more sensitive songwriter side (“Cologne”). As a whole, Way to Normal boasts the usual Ben Folds anger and sarcasm, but he seems to be having a really, really good time. His dark humor permeates the disc, such as the solemn spoken preface to “Bitch Went Nuts.” (Speaking of "bitch," Ben Folds is always singing about bitches. Could the fact that he’s been married and divorced three times have anything to do with it?)

W: Ben Folds must be a master of the art of the break-up song, for better and for worse, and he shows his range here from the puerile “Bitch Went Nuts” to the more gracious, wrenching “Cologne.” Unlike Cristy, I identify with the immature Ben Folds, the bratty punk pianist of his debut Ben Folds Five. This CD is a return to the casual, childish Folds. With a charming disregard for commercial potential and classical posterity, he deploys cussing in most of the songs, even in the choruses. There are at least two moments where you can hear him or someone in the band laughing mid-song.

C: Folds also ventures beyond the piano, which is a cool departure. Funky, fuzzy sounds like mellotron and Moog abound, especially in “Free Coffee,” which also concludes with a quirky organ solo reminiscent of Steely Dan’s “Your Gold Teeth.” He even includes a duet: "You Don't Know Me" with Regina Spektor. (Her lispy soprano normally annoys me, but sounds great here.)

W: True that, while the emotional range of these songs is somewhat compressed, there is a diversity of arrangements. “Free Coffee” stands out with timbres like I’ve not heard before. With its eerie distorted drumming and trebly sequencer-like keyboard sounds, it makes becoming a rich rock star sound like getting abducted by aliens—and maybe it is. The a capella intro to “Effington” is an odd touch, perhaps a jab at the Midwestern collegiate mindset. The synthesizer on “The Frown Song” is old school, sounding more like The Day the Earth Stood Still than the Eurythmics. There is a string quartet used to subtle, excellent effect in a few places. But the familiar piano bouncing through the album is never silent for long.

Although I have not been an avid student of Ben Folds’s solo career, I endorse this disc, especially for parties, dog owners, recent divorcees, or people living in downstate Illinois.

The Overture: Oct. 06 - Oct. 12, 2008

2008-10-06T15:00:00Z

With work, family and pretending to watch Cubs playoff games, who has the time to find out about the best shows happening in Champaign-Urbana? No need to fear, because the editors here at Smile Politely have taken care of it. Here are the must-see shows of the week:

Wednesday October 8: Open Mic at Radio Maria – Radio Maria, 10 p.m., free

If you like acoustic guitar as well as fried plantains, you should come to downtown Champaign and check out Radio Maria’s new Wednesday night open mic. This relatively new development is great not only because it means there is an open mic that isn’t on Tuesday around here, but also because Jake Fleischli of The Tractor Kings is taking hosting duties. Check out some laid back tunes and maybe enjoy some delicious tapas while doing it.

]]> Thursday October 9: Robert Pollard’s Boston Spaceships – Highdive. 9 p.m., $15

Robert Pollard, the man behind Guided by Voices, is gracing Champaign-Urbana with his presence this Thursday while performing with his new band Boston Spaceships. Along with John Moen of The Decemberists and Chris Slusarenko of Guided by Voices, Pollard’s new group is self-described as a pop punk trio. Of course there’s something a little more going on, what with having one of the greatest living songwriters at the helm and a fantastic group of musicians supporting him. Two additional players will join the trio on tour to round out Spaceships’ full sound.

Friday October 10: Throw me the Statue with David Dondero – Red Herring, 10 p.m., $7

Who doesn’t love books about pedophiles? Seattle’s Throw me the Statue certainly does. Their hit song “Lolita” is an obvious homage to the great novel by Vladimir Nabokov and is pretty darn catchy too. Filled with synthesizers, glockenspiels, and danceable lo-fi beats, the music of TMTS is sure to be delightful. David Dondero, the man said to have inspired Conor Oberst’s trademark vocal style, will also perform.

Saturday October 11: Beat Kitchen – Cowboy Monkey, 10 p.m., $5.

Beat Kitchen, fronted by Brandon T. Washington, just got a little brassier. With the addition of a new horn section comprised of a trombone, trumpet and sax, you can bet Beat Kitchen’s Saturday night set will be extra funky. With a whole lot of people on stage, playing a whole lot of great music, it's going to be a whole lot of fun. The night starts with a set by The New Mhondoro featuring Bolokata.

Hopewell Returns To C-U Tonight at Cowboy Monkey

2008-10-03T19:00:00Z

Mercury Rev, the once-proclaimed "weirdest band on planet Rock," performed alongside local heroes HUM at the old Blind Pig in 1995, just after the major label signing spree that included almost half a dozen of bands calling Champaign their home. Since that time, the Rev have gone on to release one of the most important records in recent history, Deserter's Songs, as well as a handful of albums that haven't done much for them in the States, but have steadily increased their worth in Europe and Asia.

]]> The band never returned to C-U, as part of their "Secret Migration," that has included almost all of North America, save for a few one-offs in major markets.

Fortunately for us, members of the band have gone on to other projects, one of which has become a regular in C-U, stopping by numerous times over the years. Hopewell, the pet project of the brothers Russo — Jason and Justin — will perform tonight at Cowboy Monkey with local support acts New Ruins and The Number One Sons.

Having just opened for the reunited My Bloody Valentine in Chicago, and looking towards a decade of being a band, Hopewell has helped to define the road most traveled of American indie rock. Different labels, different drummers, different managers, different agents and a different musical landscape have helped shape this band, who began prior to the digital revolution and who are now trying to survive within it.

When they hit the stage at Cowboy Monkey, expect the years of experience to pour off the stage. Having seen them perform many times over, in front of packed houses and empty rooms alike, I can attest to their perseverance. At just five dollars, this could easily qualify as the best deal of the year — if not the decade — in terms of getting the most for your dollar.

Hopewell will hit the stage right around midnight at Cowboy Monkey, located at 6 E. Taylor St. in downtown Champaign.

Robert Pollard and Boston Spaceships at Highdive Next Thursday

2008-10-03T17:00:00Z
"I'm sort of a perpetual motion machine," says Robert Pollard, and if such a device can indeed be created, it would probably look a lot like the former Guided By Voices lead singer and guitarist. Pollard detailed his current slate of projects, which include:

a book of collages on Fantagraphics

a periodical series

an upcoming Steven Soderbergh musical

two albums with his new band, Boston Spaceships, with Tommy Keene on guitar, including their debut, Brown Submarine, released on Pollard's label, GBV, Inc. in September

It's enough to make your head spin.

Pollard's not a prolific tourer, though, which is why it's important that you get your tickets early for his show next Thursday, October 9, at the Highdive. Doors open at 8 p.m., The High Strung open at 9, and tickets are only $15. With the exception of Champaign, it's strictly a big-city tour, so it's a tremendous opportunity to see a legend of indie rock without wasting time and gas traveling.
]]> It's his first club tour in more than two years, and as he says, "It's an extensive tour for me, one month. I hear about Pearl Jam touring for two years or Foo Fighters touring for two years, and I don't see how they do it. A month is all I can take." As long as they're out, though, the Boston Spaceships are going to give people their money's worth, which means a two-and-a-half hour show sure to include new cuts and GBV staples, as well.

Formed in 1983, Guided By Voices burst out of Dayton, Ohio, onto the national scene in the early '90s, with irresistible lo-fi melodies, delightfully out-there lyrics and even better song titles, like "Tractor Rape Chain" and "Some Drilling Implied". GBV built a following based on critical adoration and relentlessly releasing new material. "It's good to keep yourself busy. I've been accused of putting out too much and diluting the product or 'genius', but that's my modus operandi," Pollard insisted. "People have complained that they can't keep tabs on everything that I put out, but my fan base, they like that."

Pollard had been a fourth-grade teacher in the Dayton school system during the band's formative years. "When Guided By Voices signed, I was 36 years old, and I quit teaching after 14 years, which would have been in 1993 or 1994," he said. "People were concerned about me at the time, I had a job, family, benefits, and they were pretty apprehensive that I would give that up. My thought was that I could always go back to teaching if I needed to. Once it became a possibility, I knew I'd be kicking myself in the ass if I didn't give it a shot. Teaching was nice, but not as nice as being able to work out of my house and make albums."

Guided By Voices disbanded in 2004, but Pollard, who had been releasing solo material while the band was still intact, continued his frenzied pace. He doesn't have much interest in settling down and conforming to other people's expectations. "What people used to call my stupid shit, I get paid for it now," he explains. "Guided By Voices didn't sell ourselves, even there were so many people telling us to. We couldn't kill it, it was too much fun, and it's hard to find something like that. It's my job, I get to have fun, and so many people are miserable with mundane work that they pretty much have to do. It's difficult to make yourself do that."

Pollard has never lived outside his native Dayton, although he's aware of its shortcomings. "I think about it [moving away] all the time, every day, but I just can't do it," he explains. "I don't know where I would go. I think about moving to New York, but I don't think I could handle New York. Austin is a cool town but I don't know, it'd still be a hassle. I've moved six times in five years, and the thought of moving makes me sick. My son and grandson live in Portland, but that's sort of the hipster thing to do, everybody's moving to Portland. I bought a new house and we've lived here three years, and I'm getting pretty settled."

Dayton has served others well, though, and Pollard has a theory about that. "It's a cradle of invention," he says. "The cash register, the flip top can, the automatic starter, the airplane were all invented here. It fosters creativity because there's nothing to do and it forces you to come up with new things."

Pollard is no stranger to Champaign-Urbana. "A group of my friends and I live in Louisville, Chicago, and we call ourselves the Traveling Dandies," he notes, "and we meet some weekend somewhere and we sit around in bars in drink, and we did that one weekend in Champaign."

Despite his frenetic level of activity with his recording and visual projects, he still couldn't hide his enthusiasm about the possibility of the Soderbergh project. "Steven Soderbergh is working on a project called Cleo that is the story of Cleopatra," he said. "I've known Steven for a while, he approached me when he was working on Full Frontal, and he used a song in that to a degree. He told me he had a movie shooting in a small town in Ohio using non-professional actors [which became Bubble], and I said, 'here's some songs that I've written.' There are two full band songs, but you can barely hear it, like when they're in the bar scene. It took very little time.

"The new project is a musical, Jim Greer is working on it to fit the script. He wants to use 16 to 17 songs from my past catalog and rearrange some of the lyrics. The songs are ready to go, they're getting the musicians and choreography set up. Shooting is supposed to be starting in May. It's an idea that he brought up earlier, and then there was a gestation period of two or three years, and now he's doing it. It's kind of a crazy project. Catherine Zeta-Jones is playing Cleopatra. I'm not holding my breath that it's going to happen, but it's exciting. I'm supposed to sing one of the parts in voiceover, I don't know what to expect. I've been doing songs for commercials and TV shows, and then to do all the songs for a Hollywood blockbuster is crazy. I really don't want to think about it, I'm just going to let it happen. In the meantime, I'm making collages."

Robert Pollard is a dynamo, and his enthusiasm is infectious. Don't miss the chance to see him while he's this close to home.

Here's a video for the classic GBV track, "I Am A Scientist":

Album Review: Of Montreal- Skeletal Lamping

2008-10-03T16:00:00Z

The crowd throbs and vibrates with Kevin Barnes’ tightly packaged package. One shining beam of glitter on my right is dry humping my leg, and the person to my left’s nylon wing is obscuring my view from the hypersexual spectacle on stage. I’m wearing the person behind me like a furry, sweaty coat as the crowd methodically sways and grinds to the prog-pop fury of Of Montreal.

Of Montreal has become synonymous with a musical parade of sparkle, ecstasy and a traveling clan of alien-esque androids. Their newest album Skeletal Lamping , coming out on October 7, doesn’t drop the ball far from their shiny pedestal.
]]> The 15 choreographed tracks are surprisingly cohesive for an Of Montreal record. Their latest foray into psychedelic pop, Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, was slightly more melancholy than their newest endeavor. Skeletal Lamping upped the Ritalin and loosened the strings to create a cheerful compilation of dance tunes and brazenly sexual come-ons.

“Women’s Studies Victims” is straight out of a sketchy, lucid dream. The slightly hip-hop ending smoothes into a mellow jam about sodomizing the city called “St. Exquisite’s Confessions”. “For Our Elegant Caste” is a personal favorite about softcore, along with “And I’ve Seen a Bloody Shadow” about a summer of pseudo-prostitution. Barnes lets loose a few of his paradoxical desires in “Gallery Piece” such as “I wanna slap your face, I wanna paint your nails.”

In the grand scheme of Of Montreal’s albums, Skeletal Lamping is like mixing sex with food. Barnes’s dirty words are layered on top of pink pop melodies and fluffy harmonies. This album brings a touch more wisdom than the previous, but the band still kept some tricks up their sleeves…and pants. Let the beat penetrate, and Skeletal Lamping will be sure to follow through with a championship finish.

Now Hear This! Revolting Cocks — "No Devotion" (1985)

2008-10-02T22:00:00Z

What 13-year old boy — a middle child in an Jewish-American family of loud-mouthed dramatists — didn't at one point do something, anything, to try to alienate himself from the world?

For me, it was smoking copious amounts of tobacco and weed, and falling in love with the industrial rock scene. Once centered around the city of Chicago and the Denver-turned-Windy City record store/label — WaxTrax!! — that, for so long, dominated the genre, I got my fix by listening in to music that my parents just scratched their head at.

In 1994, I was given the Black Box - Wax Trax Records: The First 13 Years for Christmas, which looking back, was an odd juxtaposition.

Here I was — 15 years old — and angry for the most part, about nothing really.

My hair was long on top, shaved underneath, with NIИ scrawled into the back of my head with a hair clipper. All the while, Amy Grant's cheesy-but-somehow-awesomely-nostalgic Christmas album is playing in the background. Later that day, I pulled a milky tube in my closet, lit some incense and pushed play. What came out was nothing short of pure sonic bliss making fairly dirty love with machines, screaming men and years of pent up aggression.

The best of those tracks? A single from Revolting Cocks' 1985 album Big Sexy Land. To this day, it still remains, one of the finest songs to drive to that I have ever heard. The lyrics, filled with an urgency about a dystopian present where the idea of god and lawfulness have slipped through the cracks, still give me chills.

Southern Culture on the Skids Camel Walks into Highdive Saturday

2008-10-02T18:00:00Z
There are bands that take themselves too seriously, and then there is Southern Culture on the Skids. Never described as overwrought, the North Carolina trio has been making a good-timey blend of Dixie genres for more than 20 years now, and they're coming to town on Saturday to brighten everybody's day, er, evening. SCOTS will be at the Highdive for a 7:30 show, the Hillbilly Jones opens and tickets are $15, which may include fried chicken.
Guitarist/singer Rick Miller (he's the one with the skinny goatee) chatted with Smile Politely the other day about their music's pelvic component, Porter Wagoner, and why he doesn't like emo. For more goofy goodness, check out the interview after the jump.
]]> Smile Politely: So, you guys are about to head back out on the road?

Rick Miller: Doing our Midwest thing, get some bratwurst, spring onions, maybe a little summer sausage. We have a lot of fans in the Midwest that feed us. You gotta eat local.

SP: You probably have a hard time getting good bratwurst in North Carolina.

RM: It don't happen. You've gotta import it.

SP: When was the last time you guys were through Champaign?

RM: It was a long time ago. It was quite a while ago, man. We had a great time, though. I think we're playing the same place. Is it called the Highdive?

SP: Yep, it's a great room. How would you describe your live show?

RM: It's solid rock and roll. It gets movin' and keeps going, and the crowds gets into it and it gets pretty lively. It's good music to have a drink to. I tell you what, there's so many people that have met and gotten married at our shows. We always get a couple requests to do wedding receptions a year for people that have met at our shows, so it's good for relations. Everything helps, right? So, you might get lucky at one of our shows, because the music has kind of a pelvic thing going on, gets you moving in the right direction. But that's the way we like it. Sometimes there's some fried chicken for the people that are hungry at the end of the show, you never know. You just never know what's going to happen. It's like a chemistry experiment. Rock 'n roll plus beer plus a bunch of people, you know what I mean? Equals who knows what.

SP: You've got to keep it undefined.

RM: That's right. We're scientists.

SP: How did SCOTS get started?

RM: We began when we were all in college at the University of North Carolina. We were just looking for something to do where we could score some beer, meet some girls and have fun. I mean, literally, that's how it started. And it kind of took off, and I found that I liked writing songs, and it was fun playing a guitar, and it kind of all went from there. We've always kind of done our own thing, I wouldn't say that we're really aligned with anything from Chapel Hill like, you know, Superchunk or anything. But we've just kind of alway done our own thing, and taken it on the road. Now we've got our own studio, so we've got a means of our own production, so that's the story. The way we got the name was kind of interesting. I was listening to a cassette of some rock 'n roll, Johnny Burnett and the Rock 'n Roll Trio, and it shut off and it was on that tape monitor thing, and somebody flipped it to the radio, and it was the end of an REM song, and I remember the DJ going, "That's the sound of the South, the new sound of the South." And I was like, "Dude, if that's the new sound, I preferred it when it was on the skids." And my roommate was like, "That's a good name for a band, man, that would really piss some people off." And we just started with it, and good grief, it's lasted twenty-some years.

SP: It gives you a good sense of place.

RM: Yeah, and if I need to write a new song, a lot of times I can just take a drive, you know, 30 minutes from my house, come back and I've got enough for a couple songs. You know, we've got to flesh them out and stuff, but it's inspiring to me to drive around. I do a lot of my meditation behind the wheel.

SP: That's cool. Do you ever get a hard time from people around there that think you're making fun of them?

RM: Nah, not really. I think Southerners have a pretty good sense of humor about themselves and about how other people relate to them. It's a pretty nice place to live, pretty casual. People have got a good sense of humor. Besides, it's not mean-spirited. We're not calling anybody dumb, we're just doing our thing, you know, we're celebrating Southern culture, because a lot of it is just getting eroded away. Everywhere's like that.

SP: What do you think the reason for that is?

RM: Just more people from other places, and it's just getting more modernized and stuff, cable television. I don't know, but it is. It's getting more like anywhere else, really. Every place is. Every place is.

SP: Yeah, it seems like any suburban place looks like any other suburban place.

RM: Yeah, exactly. The malls and the strip malls, you know. You can go to the mall in Sacramento, you can go to the mall in Fort Lauderdale, you go to a mall in Champaign, you can go to a mall in Raleigh, North Carolina, you'll see the kids with the same haircuts and people listening to the same stuff. You know what I mean? It's just very pervasive, I guess.

SP: I would describe your band as quite unique. Do you have any other musicians that you run across that you feel a kinship with?

RM: Oh yeah, all the time. I think the band we're playing with there is some friends of ours. You know, it's funny man, I like roots music, but I like it a little bit weird. I don't like it to be more revisionist rather than revivalist. And any bands like that, I kind of dig, you know? And we have a lot of bands we love playing with, and I'm always interested in new bands, because I have a studio, and I end up recording a lot of young bands. It's pretty cool what some of the young bands are into. I'm not big on the real mopey stuff, you know?

SP: Mopey?

RM: You know what I mean, like that emo rock stuff. It's just like, dude, you're 22, have a good time. Wait till you're my age, man, it ain't that much fun. You think you got to work on having a good time.

SP: It seems like if you can have a good time doing what you're doing, that's 90 percent of it.

RM: That's more than 90 percent of it, man, a satisfied mind.

SP: I was just listening to that song a couple of days ago.

RM: Yeah, that's a great one. I love Porter Wagoner's version. I love the Byrds' version, too.

SP: Does Porter Wagoner still tour through North Carolina?

RM: No, he just passed away not too long ago (Ed.: nice one, Joel). I remember watching his TV show as a kid. My dad would watch Porter Wagoner and the Wilburn Brothers. He was on every Saturday evening, a lot of Hee Haw growing up, things like that. My dad loved all that stuff.

SP: Yeah, I'm from Iowa, we got the Hee Haw end of things, but I don't think Porter Wagoner's show was on when I was a kid.

RM: Yeah, that was when there was real independent stations, you know. A lot of it was so regional. And that was great though. Like I say, it had the flavor, the regional flavor.

SP: You don't see that much anymore. Anybody that anybody thinks is any good is all of a sudden everywhere (in retrospect, I have no idea what this means).

RM: No, and I think that's where we come from, too in Southern Culture on the Skids, and a little bit tongue-in-cheek there, too. We're kind of exploring and celebrating the unexplored aspects of where we're from, and the people, and all that stuff. It's great fun. I enjoy it.

SP: How do you feel about alt-country? Do you guys put yourself under that umbrella?

RM: Nah. I listen to some of it, but I always figure, alt-country, I can't really figure out the alt-country thing, you know? It's like most of the people that I know that are alt-country, aren't really country, you know what I mean? It's kind of a weird thing, I don't know. Anyway, I don't consider us alt-country. That alt-country stuff's kind of boring to me, anyway, at least live, you know? Some of it's good, some of it just kind of lays there, like an old girlfriend. Not of lot left, time for something new. You know it's time for something new when it just lays there.

SP: Did you have anything you wanted to tell the people of Champaign? I'm kind of out of material here.

RM: No, man, I just want 'em to come out, have a good time. I'd just like to see 'em all.

Here's the video for "Camel Walk," probably SCOTS' best-known song.

Music Makes the Man

2008-10-02T16:00:00Z

How excited are you all for tonight’s debate? So much will be discussed and I, for one, am sitting on the edge of my seat. Debates are excellent because they allow us to see the candidates and hear what they are told by advisors they believe in so that we can decide on our own who we personally believe is best fitted to lead us. Personally though, I prefer someone else to tell me who to vote for. Political figures and newspaper editorial boards are alright sources for finding out who to vote for, but I prefer to be persuaded by people that have no true knowledge or expertise in the political arena – rock stars!

This year, there seems to be one clear presidential candidate choice if you’re into popular music. Barack Obama has support from every genre and every direction on the musical spectrum. Jay-Z is playing a couple shows in support of the Illinois Senator. Bruce Springsteen is doing the same. The Decemberists got tied up in Right-Wing punditry because of their support and this guy’s (pointing at self while typing) favorite New York band, The National, designed a t-shirt for the candidate of “change.” Don’t get the wrong idea, I’m not saying that Obama has it in the bag. I’m not saying that at all.
]]> Despite all those famous faces in Obama’s corner, John McCain has taken a clear advantage in the musician-endorsement bump. Yes, just a few weeks ago McCain took control of the election when he was joined on stage and publicly endorsed by none other than Daddy Yankee:

Game over. Some say that Kennedy won the 1960 election with the first televised debate. You just witnessed the same watershed moment in the 2008 election. Yankee’s endorsement helps McCain’s campaign in a huge way. How? Good Question. Obama has tricked America’s youth into supporting him, calling for change and becoming politically active and informed – things we all know citizens under 25 have no business doing. The Yankee bump, though the polls have not yet shown it, will undoubtedly swing the youth vote to McCain.

Yankee’s infectious brand of reggaeton is exactly what the kids are into. McCain, being utterly in touch with the under-thirty crowd, knew this. I’m a college student, so I can speak from experience. In college classrooms when a muffled “Gasolina” starts to sound, every single person checks their cell phone. The guy is that big. We all laugh and briefly discuss why “Gasolina” is our favorite song. One person tears up a bit.

The best part of this whole McCain-Palin-Yankee ticket is that the Senator can now have a great campaign song. Freedom haters like Jackson Browne, John Mellencamp and Heart have all asked McCain and Palin to stop playing their songs at rallies. No matter, because “Gasolina” truly sums up the hopes and desires of the nation: Da me mas gasolina. Give me more gasoline.

New Ruins, Old Favorite

2008-10-02T15:00:00Z

Olney, Ill., (pronounced ull-knee) is the undisputed home of albino squirrels. The chummy police officers sport chalky white rodent patches on their sleeves and wear clear jelly shoes. Without this hairy claim to fame, Olney could just be mistaken for a spot on a map. It was that seemingly insignificant spot that molded and formed New Ruins into the band, and the men, they are today.

New Ruins formed in 2004 with Caleb Means and Elzie Sexton both on acoustics. They created their first album, and The Sound They Make came out on Hidden Agenda Records (a subsidiary of Parasol Records) in April of 2007. In 2006, Means and Sexton played a show at Aroma Café in Champaign. There they met Roy Ewing, previously a drummer in Braid, and Paul Chastain of Velvet Crush who completed the package. This summer New Ruins worked on their second full-length album titled We Make Our Own Bad Luck.
]]> Both Means and Sexton brought their home base from Olney to Champaign-Urbana. “We appreciate coming from nothing. We’re not city boys; we like openness and space,” Means explains with a slight Olney accent. Their songs hearken back to the days of growing up in a simpler town, a simpler time and a simpler way of life.

Chastain and Ewing brought a plethora of experience to the group. The former has been making sweet music since the mid ‘80s, and the latter was Braid’s original drummer in the mid-‘90s. The majority of New Ruins has now settled down to start families, but they still reunite as a full band once a week. Sexton is also an artist creates all the art for their records.

Recording is a way for New Ruins to experiment and layer sounds. Means admits there’s a bit more “cheating” involved with recording, but their live shows are quickly coming up to par with the studio tunes. During live shows, most musicians’ minds might be straying to what to eat after the show, the girl in the front row or concentrating on nailing the right key, but Means says he plays music to think of, well, nothing.

“I think playing music is a lot like playing sports,” he says. “You have to practice to get it right, but when you’re playing you’re only really concentrating on that one thing that makes you happy. There’s a lot of depressing stuff, and for that moment I don’t have to think about anything that makes me unhappy in the world.”

If they had it their way, the guys would probably settle into a Bob Ross painting. Add in a few venues, maybe a grocery store, and call it home.

Fall plans: Peddling the new record, writing new material, and playing shows (hopefully the grungy basement type with cheep beer and good company).

Show highlight: The band once played a show in ’06 and had to share the stage with a gutter punk on crutches. He basically screamed, rolled around on the ground, performed to a tape and sometimes actually played an instrument. Needless to say, they won’t be returning to The Beecher Kids Festival anytime soon.

Fun facts: Chastain recently got married in Japan. Sexton creates mixed media artwork and has been featured in art exhibits at the Virginia Theatre and Radio Maria. Ewing has been working at Parasol Records for over a decade. Means gobbles up books like a worm, and his current prospect is “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy.

Check out New Ruins on Oct. 3 at Cowboy Monkey with Hopewell and The Number One Sons or Oct. 23 at Mike’n Molly’s with The Tractor Kings and The Championship.

Album Review: Post Historic- Memory Banks of Blue

2008-10-01T22:00:00Z

With the possibility that someone who believes dinosaurs and people lived together on Pangaea could vice-lead our nation as well as the questionable use of time travel on the new season of "Heroes," the perception and manipulation of time has become an important issue in our society. Where we currently stand is another interesting one. In one sense, we are on the brink of the next step; be it economic disaster or ruthless robot dictatorship, it seems something is on the way.

But on the other hand, it’s as if we are living in a place where everything has already been done. Our post-modern world merely references or repeats the past. We’ve long moved past supposed apocalyptic dates and the prophesied Ape Rebellion of 1991. So where do we go from here? You can categorize humanity into two major eras – history and prehistory. What will lead to the next inevitability?
]]> Post Historic, a relatively new Champaign-Urbana band, and their debut CD, Memory Banks of Blue, pose this question though never directly. It comes to mind organically; not only from their name but from the sonic landscapes the group creates. If it was based entirely on how enjoyable the eight-track disc is, it wouldn’t be too bad a place at all, albeit a bit over-dramatic at times.

The record opens with “Open Sail,” and it serves as an introduction to the post-history landscape. Lead guitar bends like Built to Spill over the sounds of a futuristic city. Vocals move in and out of the mix along a bed of reverb. The effect is a fantastic one and Post Historic’s opening track served its purpose. The listener is hooked.

The second track, however, does the complete opposite. “Serotonin” is the only true miss on Memory Banks. A rocking song for sure, it seems to rely on convention to get a crowd moving more than anything else. I feel like college students often write songs based on class notes, and this psych 100-rooted line, “Serotonin/ my essence and my being” serves as the reason that it shouldn’t happen.

“Burned by the Sea” returns the band to a good place. There’s something “new” new-wave about it, sounding like a sincere Killers, but it works well. That is until another vocalist comes in with the line “write another chapter in the book of love.” Though it comes in the last 30 seconds of the song, lines like that can be deal breakers.

The album turns around for the better on “New Garden.” Beautiful strings and mandolin follow the inventive chord changes and song structure. The instrumental bridge that follows the first chorus shows the great potential the band has. Having already proven they can handle delay pedals and a mixing board, Post Historic displays that they can be emotionally effective with simple composition and instrumentation.

“A Pattern Among Aimlessness” is just an awesome song. This could get any demographic of concert-goers – from frat dudes to Hot Topic teens to post rock hipsters — to start moving. These guys are awesome musicians and it shines through on this track. Most importantly, unlike “Serotonin” and “Burned by the Sea,” the vocals work with the instrumentation instead of making it secondary.

Overall, Memory Banks of Blue is a remarkable album. Brilliantly arranged and executed, it holds many surprises. My favorite moment may be the “Day in the Life”-inspired crescendo in the middle of “Delugeons.” I really had no idea what was going on and I loved it. On the closing title track, we come back to a subdued, maybe post-apocalyptic world that explodes into strings as the narrator sings on a sail boat in the sea. It’s a perfect conclusion to the tumultuous and histrionic ride Memory Banks takes the listener on. One of the most ambitious releases I’ve heard from a local artist in recent memory, it should definitely be heard.

An Evening on the Sofa with Santa

2008-09-30T22:00:00Z
Local indie rock outfit Santa has evolved into a staple band of the C-U music scene, playing two shows during this year’s Pygmalion Music Festival and busy with multiple dates well into November. A five piece group with psychedelic tendencies, Santa has stabilized their lineup and is now focused on their unique and recognizable melodies and textures.
Where I am from (Rockford, Illinois) a band such as Santa would find themselves performing in nothing more spectacular than a humid church basement, plugged into an outdated soundboard, amidst a dwindling number of local musicians and supporters. The presence in C-U of a band like Santa reaffirms my faith in what a local music community could be and also what types of acts it takes to maintain the appeal.

By sitting down with some of Santa’s members (the only absentee being bassist Otto Stuparitz), I aimed to gather their insights regarding Champaign-Urbana’s musical community; the positives, the negatives and what could change. Not only that but also touch on what type of transitions they are soon to face when it comes time to expand their fan base beyond this populous collegiate territory.
]]> Smile Politely: Who are the original Santa members?

Stan McConnell: (lead vocals & guitar): I am.

Mack McConnell: (guitar): As am I.

Smile: How long has Santa existed?

SM: Our first show was April 4th, 2006.

Smile: So you and Mack basically founded the group?

SM: Yeah. Mack and I were playing open mic nights for a long time. What happened is I’d write a song and rather than just tell Mack the chords and let him solo over it, we actually cared about musical composition. So we started to get our friends to go and people liked it. It was always our dream to start a band because, you know, that’s how we started to love music originally.

Smile: How many lineups has Santa seen?

SM: Well our first bassist quit then Otto came. Chad and Marty left the band so then Steve and Tommy came. We also had an auxiliary percussionist and he left the band after Otto came. If you want to count that, I don’t know. He was incredibly auxiliary. [Laughter]

Smile: Are you guys comfortable then with where you’re at as a band?

SM: Yeah. I mean as far as we can tell.

Tommy Trafton (keyboard): It’s really working out better than it ever has.

Smile: Could you guys discuss some immediate goals for the group and how you plan on turning those into broader ambitions?

Steve Plock(drums): Right now we’re playing as many shows as we can and right now we’re booked till November-ish but we’re talking about taking time off maybe over winter break and just write a bunch of songs.

TT: We’d like to get something done by the end of the summer on record.

MM: Geographically we’re expanding out of the Midwest. We have a show this weekend in Carbondale. We’re becoming familiar with St. Louis and Indianapolis and Madison, Wisconsin…

SP: Iowa City

MM: Yeah. Iowa City and we’re trying to get up to Minnesota. Take our humble little city of Champaign-Urbana and make a bunch of concentric circles. We’re trying to get out there.

Smile: What were your musical experiences like in high school and how well did they carry over into Champaign–Urbana’s scene? Did you find it to be daunting? Or was it inviting?

SM: It was both for me. I started writing songs when I got to high school about – you know – this girl or that girl or this time I had with my friends at a theme park or whatever. I was actually in a band with Steve in high school and we played all original music, which was kind of unique for our high school. Meanwhile, I was always showing our shit to Mack who was real supportive over the phone. Then we all got to school and it was very inviting because it was like “Holy shit. Mack and I are in the same zip code, we’re getting better at guitar just because we can play together everyday and holy shit, we’re at the place we dreamt of going to when we visited the campus in 8th grade and now look – they have open mic nights for guys like us.” So it was inviting but when I took the stage for the first time, I was nervous. I grew up in a small town and I was just that kid who wrote songs and I was special because of it but then I became, you know, very intimidated because there’s like 7500 kids in our class.

SP: Yeah, like the first time I started playing here was like bar-band/cover-band and I did that for like a year and a half. It kicked ass. It was a ton of fun but playing [in Santa] is a whole new dynamic.

Smile:How would you guys say the local music scene suits you? Would you say you’re satisfied? Is there anything that’s disappointing? Do you appreciate going to school here and do you feel if you were somewhere else things may be better or are things great here?

SP: Judging from other people we’ve talked to at other schools, most of which have been small, all they can do is complain about nowhere to play or no cool bands so I’d say Champaign-Urbana has a pretty sweet thing going on.

MM: And I think we have a pretty sweet niche in CU. We have a pretty cool thing going on because there’s a pretty large breadth of music that’s happening. Amongst our contemporaries that are local bands – like among the ones I really respect like Snowsera and The World’s First Flying Machine, Tall Tale, Carl Hauck, Elsinore, Headlights, The Living Blue. All these bands are really fantastic but I feel like we could play a bill with and we wouldn’t be competing in genre. It wouldn’t be like “Oh, there’s the same thing twice.”

SM: Just in reference to the school, I mean, we’re a big 41,000 Big Ten school so there’s no specific scene that’s emerging. Like “Oh Hey. This is a pop-punk pocket of northwest Chicago.” Or “This is the grunge of the Pacific Northwest” [laughter] There’s nothing like that happening and I think that’s cool.

SP: There’s a lot going on. There’s a lot of Hip Hop. There’s a lot of Punk stuff too. I don’t even know where it happens. I just see a lot of flyers for it everywhere.

MM: I was there for a lot of the northwest Chicago punk thing and I watched all of those bands get huge and they’re doing super well today. But because they were kind of doing the same thing at the same time, there was this real clear definition of a path to follow so I suppose success was pretty guaranteed if you were good at it. But in a place like Champaign-Urbana where everyone is doing something different, you definitely have to blaze your own path, which is cool but I guess it is kind of frustrating because there isn’t a channel that you can go down.

SP: The thing about a college town and student bands is that they usually break up when they graduate or they move to a different city. I don’t think there’s any local band made up of students that don’t go to school here anymore. Like Elsinore didn’t graduate from U. of I. and just stick around so I’d say that may be why there’s not like this path.

SM: There is a huge amount of student bands and I’d say one of the paths or scenes that’s typical to the whole big university is the whole bar band/cover band and there’s definitely that scene. But what’s cool is that there’s this whole separate scene that has artistic integrity as well. You know there are bands that practice once a week and play to that scene and they’re cool with that. But we’ve had a lot of lineup changes and that’s because we want to be the best band we can be. Yeah, we’re a local band but beyond that we want to be good band wherever we’re at.

TT: There’s a frustrating difference that has been established between student bands and just bands. You talk to Hot Cops or Tractor Kings and there’s this disconnect or stigma between groups with members out of school and groups with students in them. You know, they’re all above school. They’re older than us.

SM: Too cool for school.

SP: Just like marketing for shows like “Oh, this show’s downtown Champaign. We have to try so much harder” because students don’t go downtown but then it’s like locals don’t want to go see a student band downtown so it just makes it really weird. There are two very distinct audiences.

SM: There’s a wall but if you put yourself in their shoes, the wall makes sense.

TT: At the same time, there are bands like Headlights and Elsinore that try to help student bands grow.

MM: They’re also awesome role models. Like if you want to see an awesome band, go see Headlights or Elsinore. They’re fucking great acts. It’s cool to have that in your neck-of-the-woods too, you know. Like if there was a brand for Champaign-Urbana it’d just be “Totally Unique”. It’d be “Absolutely Unique” – that’s the brand.

Smile: We talked about local venues a little. Is there some type of venue that’d you like to see maybe bridge that gap between “the student band vs. local band” stigmas?

SM: Yeah, I mean, I think there could probably be one more.

TT: I do think Champaign-Urbana’s really fortunate with all the venues it has and even places that aren’t venues. You can go to the Quad and there’s a band playing or like Allen Hall is really good about having small bands play.

MM: I want The Red Herring to start having a lot more music and I think they’re going to after Pygmalion.

TT: Yeah, they’re trying every weekend now.

MM: Oh Yeah, if that worked out, it’d be a kick ass place to see a show. It has that basement feel, the cool funky interior and stuff.

SM: I think the venue we need is something on campus where anyone can book a show no questions asked. At least for the first show, you shouldn’t have to wait to play. It’d be reflective of an even bigger scene.

SP: Look at Canopy. They used to have open mic nights but they don’t do that anymore. Other places might but Canopy had a drumset, mics, amps. I do think that if The White Horse took itself seriously as a venue, it’d be a pretty cool place.

You can check out more of Santa at http://www.myspace.com/santamusic or go to their next show in town at Mike ‘N’ Molly’s on October 16th.

Push Play Gets Freaky

2008-09-30T16:00:00Z

Perhaps in name alone, New Weird America and Freak Folk may be my new favorite genres. When I came across the terms, I searched my iTunes and Rhapsody libraries to see if I had any songs that were categorized as such. I didn't. "Didn't," however, is past tense.

Devendra Banhart and Greg Rogove's (of Power Mineral) side-project, Megapuss, was the assailant of my iTunes' regular "alternative" and "rock" genre listings. The Stroke's drummer Fabrizio Moretti is a tentative member of Megapuss, but since he's always playing with them I personally would call Megapuss a three-member band. My first introduction to the band was the song, "Duck People, Duck Man:"

Megapuss- Duck People, Duck Man

]]> I’d say this song falls under the large banner of New Weird America and I was apprehensive as to whether or not I was going to accept this as a song into my library. It won me over, however, through the humor provided by Human Giant’s Aziz Ansari. Example: "We buy hummus from Trader Joe's…Have you ever had hummus with white bean and basil? It's delicious. We don't even need pita bread. We just eat the hummus by itself."

I laughed to myself a bit, and regardless of my similar hummus-eating tendencies, I like the tune. It's a mellow but peppy song and it prepared me for appreciating their other songs:

Megapuss- Crop Circle Jerk '94

Megapuss- A Gun on His Hip and a Rose on His Chest

Though none of these songs indicate what Banhart is wearing on set (likely a plastic penis skirt) I think that the general tone of the music gives the listener an idea of his quirky attire and their engaging sets.
At first Megapuss' shows were just for kicks, and some of the now "real" songs on the album were created out of ad-lib. Nevertheless, the album, Surfing, in which these songs are featured on, will be released on CD and vinyl through Neil Young's record label, Vapor Records, in mid-October – for real.

At the end of October, Brooklyn band, School of Seven Bells, will be releasing their first full-length album, Alpinisms (meaning the attempt to reach the highest point of an unclimbed mountain). It features the great song “Connjur:”

School of Seven Bells Connjur

School of Seven Bells (SVIIB) is made up of three members – twin sisters Claudia (vocals, keyboard) and Alejandra (vocals) Deheza with guitarist Ben Curtis (ex-Secret Machines).

The three have a smoother-than-most shoegazing sound with the Deheza sisters on vocals and Curtis' airy guitar filling in the background. As with many recent electronica, and, in this case, shoegaze music, SVIIB taps into the laptop's ability to create psychedelic beats and textures.

On November 21 School of Seven Bells, on tour with M83, will be in Chicago at the Bottom Lounge.

Ashley Riley Makes C-U Debut Tonight on WEFT Sessions

2008-09-29T18:00:00Z

Ashley Riley is a young, blonde lady whose instrument of choice is an acoustic guitar, so the comparisons to Jewel are ready-made and lazy, but she doesn't reject them. Just getting her feet wet in the regional music scene, Riley will be appearing on WEFT Sessions tonight at 10 p.m. on WEFT, 90.1 FM. Her debut CD, Last One Standing, was released last month and is available on her website and on iTunes.

Ashley was kind enough to answer some questions, and we'd like to call the results an "interview." This ground-breaking format is shared with you, the reader, after the jump.
]]> Smile Politely: Have you played in Champaign-Urbana before? Have you always lived in Decatur or did you move there at some point?

Ashley Riley: You could call this my Champaign-Urbana debut. I did come over and play at the Cowboy Monkey open mic a few weeks ago and that's how I ended up getting the radio show. I've basically always lived in the Decatur area. I went to school in Mt. Zion which is a small town east of Decatur, but to me it's all pretty much the same thing.

SP: How has the response to your debut CD been? Do you have any other appearances scheduled in the area?

AR: I've had a really good response to my CD, Last One Standing. I kind of feel like there's something on there for everyone. Right now I don't have any appearances scheduled in the Champaign-Urbana area, but I'm working on it!

SP: Have you played live for a radio show before? How do you anticipate it being different from a regular live gig? Will it be just you, or do you have other people that will play with you?

AR: This is my first time to play a live radio show. I'm not sure what to expect, but I'm excited. It will be just me for the most part. I do have a friend of mine, Jessica Jolly, coming to add harmonica on a song and tambourine on another.

SP: How would you describe your sound for someone who's never heard your music before?

AR: I like to call my music alternative folk. It's mainly acoustic, finger-style guitar, very lyric driven. I sometimes say I'm a strange mix of Sheryl Crow and Jewel.

SP: Was there a moment when you realized that you wanted to be a musician? How did that come about?

AR: I've always been into music. I did the show choir thing and played the piano growing up, but I think the point where it really became clear that this was what I wanted to do was when I got my first guitar and started writing my own songs. That was about five years ago.

SP: What's a singer or band that you've been compared to that you don't think is representative at all, and why not?

AR: Iron Maiden. Just kidding... Actually lately I've gotten Stevie Nicks a lot. I don't really hear the similarities but I'll definitely take it!

SP: What is the greatest album of all time? Why?

AR: I love live albums, so I'm gonna go with Neil Young's Live at Massey Hall 1971. I love his songwriting and playing style. I always connect more with a live recording. There are some moments you capture live that you just can't reproduce, it's the energy, I think.

SP: What was your favorite band when you were in junior high?

AR: Wow...I was kinda all over the place in junior high. I think I was obsessed with the Counting Crows and The Doors and also Aaliyah.

SP: What do you do for a living to fund your music habit?

AR: I'm a hairstylist. It's a pretty fun day job. I get to make people feel good about themselves all day long, and then write about them at night! Just kidding on the last part. I only write about my friends, they love it too. They think every song is about them!

SP: What do you like to do in your spare time?

AR: Hmmm...lots of things. I like to hang out with my husband and friends and family. I love to sleep. I also like shopping.

Pink Spiders Rise From the Ashes, Play IMC Tonight

2008-09-29T17:00:00Z
Matt Friction and his band, the Pink Spiders, were on the fast track to success just a couple short years ago. They had a major-label deal, with Geffen, and an appearance on MTV's Total Request Live for their debut single, "Little Razorblade." Then things went off the tracks a bit. Like an episode of "Behind the Music" that cut short the meteoric rise part to skip ahead to the part where everybody wonders what went wrong, their debut album struggled, Geffen went cold on them and then dropped them altogether, their tour bus burned to the ground, and two of the three founding members quit the band. Read this article in Nashville Scene to get yourself up to speed.
Now, Friction has reassembled a new edition of the Pink Spiders, and they're touring to support their sophomore effort, Sweat It Out, released last week on Adrenaline. They've got their mojo back, and they're ready to turn audiences on to their brand of swaggering garage rock. The Pink Spiders are playing at the Independent Media Center in Urbana tonight at 6 p.m. JigGsaw, Trash City Rockers and The Signal open, and tickets are $10 for the all-ages show.

Click the jump to read an interview with Friction.
]]> Smile Politely: I can't say I'm super-familiar with the Pink Spiders. I read that long article in Nashville Scene. Is that, in your opinion, a pretty accurate depiction of how things have been going?

Matt Friction: Yeah, a lot of specifics were editorially fuzzed, but the history of the band is accurate for the most part, minus a few small details here and there.

SP: Yeah, there was definitely some local flavor in there. I don't know how Nashville operates, but there's a lot of political crap that goes on even in a small city like Champaign, so I can understand how that could happen.

MF: Yeah, Nashville's pretty political, for sure.

SP: Is there a release date scheduled for your new album, then?

MF: Yeah, it's this Tuesday (which would have been last Tuesday, September 23).

SP: Long time coming, huh?

MF: Yeah, we finished our mixes and masters last November, and we've spent the whole summer on it. It's just been a long time coming, a lot of red tape with the label to get it back and we finally did, so we pretty much fast-tracked everything once we did to get it out as soon as possible. We got that worked out a couple of months ago.

SP: Cool. Did you significantly rework some of the songs, or were you happy with the mix that they had on the masters?

MF: Yeah, well, the label wasn't really involved with making the record; Brendan O'Brien produced and mixed it, so the version that we had with him, that we originally delivered was great, so we just used the same one.

SP: So, has the guy that made I Am Trying to Break Your Heart contacted you to make a similar movie out of your experiences with this record?

MF: That's funny, we had talked about doing a documentary, to be released with this album, and we had everything worked out in that regard and we were going to have Brendan O'Brien and all those people talk on it, but then with all the major-label shit that we went through, and with the guys leaving the band, other priorities kind of shifted and I had a lot of other things to work on.

SP: Yeah, I can see where that would take precedence. How's the new lineup working out?

MF: It's great, so far. It's guys I've known my whole life, in Nashville, they're fans of the band, so it's a pretty seamless transition. They came over to my house a couple of times for rehearsal and then we hit the road, so the new lineup's probably played 60 or so shows already all summer and on the Warped Tour, so we've pretty much made the transition at this point and it's pretty solid.

SP: As far as influences go, who are some of the bands that you try to emulate or bands that you liked growing up?

MF: Definitely a lot of Elvis Costello and Cheap Trick, Queen, Beatles and Stones, of course, the Who, the Clash, a pretty big melting pot, I guess.

SP: Is there anyone that the Pink Spiders get compared to that really rubs you the wrong way?

MF: We get Weezer sometimes, which, Weezer's a band that I've loved a lot since their first two releases, but I don't really hear the comparison. I know they dug out some '50s and '60s stuff like Buddy Holly that we're into as well, but there are bands that, when I'm writing a song, I can kind of tell where it's coming from, and they're not one of those bands. And I think, attitude-wise, we're the antithesis of Weezer.

SP: What is being on Adrenaline like compared to Geffen?

MF: Well, with Geffen I would have to be pulling in on the reins, checking in with people and making sure they were doing their jobs where Adrenaline is keeping me busy. I'm on tour and doing most of the legwork. It's pretty easy now, most of what I do is answer the phone and talk about myself for a half an hour, and I don't mind doing that at all. It was more frustrating before, where we were trying to do shows and making sure stuff was posted on your website and stuff. Adrenaline is just a common-sense approach. They've scooped up some bands that were lost in the shuffle at major labels, so there's a really strong work ethic, or a really smart work ethic, I think even more importantly. Working smart instead of working hard, they're spending money where they should rather than throwing it down the tubes. That's the main difference of where we are now rather than where we were before.

SP: Well that sounds like a lot better deal for you guys.

MF: Yeah, much better.

SP: So, tell me about this whole school-bus-catching-on-fire situation?

MF: We were in the middle of a two-month tour earlier this year with a band called the Horror Posters, and the tour stopped in Nashville about halfway through. So, while we were home, we had our van that we'd toured in for years and years and years and pretty much ran into the ground. We decided while we were home for a day that we'd go buy a short school bus and convert it into a tour bus. So, we bought it, and we took it about an hour outside of Nashville, and the fuel line caught on fire and it exploded and burned to the ground. In hindsight, it was not a wise investment.

SP: Well, at least you got to say you got to ride the short bus for an hour anyway. Did you lose a lot of equipment?

MF: The equipment was in the trailer, which was steel-reinforced, so it got a little singed and some of the gear smelled like barbecue for a few days, but it was just personal, like cell phones, glasses, laptops, hard drives, that kind of stuff.

SP: So was that just kind of the icing on the cake after all the crap that you guys had been through up to that point?

MF: It would normally have been pretty easy to just brush off, but the timing of it made it a little bit worse. Because we're already in this us-against-the-world mentality, and I think it may have worn on Bob and Jon more than me, because I was busy trying to work out all this stuff with the release and for them, they were a little bit in the dark about what was going on and it just seemed like a bunch of bad news all at once.

SP: Well, let's just focus on the future, then. Did you guys come through C-U on any of your previous tours (ed. note: way to focus on the future, jackass)?

MF: I don't think so. If I'm wrong, I'm going to sound like an asshole, but I don't think so.

SP: That's fine, not setting you up for anything there. My journalistic credibility is on the line here, literally weeks worth of work could go right down the drain. The venue you guys are playing in is an old post office, and it's a really cool place to see shows, and I was just curious how much information you're given about where you're going to play before you get here?

MF: When we have a tour as long as this, ten weeks, we just get a schedule with days and cities and addresses, so a lot of places we've been before we know what to expect, and a lot of places we haven't been before, we just get there and figure it out. An old post office sounds cool. I like unusual venues. We've played a lot of unusual places.

SP: What would you say is the most unusual?

MF: Center field at Dodger Stadium was pretty wild, or old bowling alleys where people would be bowling around us as we played. We played somewhere in Illinois, I think, where we were overlooking this military, aircraft-carrier kind of thing.

SP: Yeah, that would be cool. So, it sounded like you guys were making do on $3 a day when you were starting out in that article? Are you able to eat decent when you're out on the road now?

MF: Yeah, we're pretty well taken care of. I think that the money issues with the band were definitely pretty blown out of proportion. Nobody's starving in this band, nobody was starving in the band, and we were definitely well compensated for our time on the major label. At this point, we have guarantees, we have a hotel room, we have catering. We don't have a crew, we're loading our own gear, which is what bands do, I don't really think twice about it, that's what's done when you're an independent touring band.

SP: Do you get many teeny-bopper fans out at your shows now that you're not being marketed that way?

MF: Yeah, there's a really weird cross-sectionalization of fans, like the younger kids, some college kids, and some punk-rockers, it's a big melting pot at shows.

SP: Did you have anything you wanted to add for posterity or anything you wanted to warn the people of C-U about the Pink Spiders?

MF: Just come on out, and get ready to have a good time, it's going to be a fun show and energetic.