Go Metric

Interview with Mark Ryan (Marked Men, Mind Spiders)

On Brian Eno and Behavior Modification

By Mike Faloon

It took a while but I finally saw the Marked Men in the spring of 2011. That winter felt really long. When I heard about the Marked Men playing in Chicago, along with the Arrivals and Toys That Kill, I treated myself to a plane ticket (and a ticket to the show — not much point in flying to the Windy City just to stand outside the club).

To my way of thinking this wasn’t just a show, it was a cultural event—the Marked Men, the Arrivals, and Toys That Kill on the same stage in the same night! It merited significant documentation. I couldn’t muster much in the “significant documentation” department. I did, however, think that interviewing the three bands would be a lot of fun.

It was. At the time I was convinced that having interviews with bands of this caliber would spur me into publishing the next print issue of Go Metric. A year and a half later said issue is still draped in cob webs.

The interviews went really well, though, and I hated the thought of them remaining on my mp3 player, especially the following interview with Mark Ryan, singer/guitarist for the Marked Men and the Mind Spiders.

The interview went well despite two factors: one, it was incredibly late by the time we talked--it was after the show yet Mark was incredibly patience and gracious, never hinting that he wanted to split.  Two, I kept thinking, Holy crow, it's the guy from the Marked Men and Mind Spiders!

----------------

Go Metric: Thanks for bearing with me. I’m a novice with this technology (recording on with my mp3 player). I’m like a cave man—I don’t understand fire but I appreciate it. And thanks for taking a couple of minutes to talk.

Mark Ryan: Yeah, man, no problem.

GM: I’ve have waited so long to see the Marked Men. I’ve been listening to those records for years. We actually met once in Tucson. (Sounds like a Johnny Cash line.)  You were playing with the Riverboat Gamblers. You guys played with the Knockout Pills at that old hotel.

MR: The Knockout Pills were a great band.

GM: I was touring with Todd Taylor at the time.

MR: Oh yeah, I remember it now.

GM: Todd had said, Not only are we going to do a reading in Tucson, but we’re going to a show: Knockout Pills and the Riverboat Gamblers, you’ll like these guys. You came up to him and you were like, Hey, Todd, here’s the new Marked Men record (On the Outside, Dirtnap Records, 2004 — being there for this handoff is, to me, akin to Joey Ramone giving a copy of Leave Home to Lester Bangs. Wish I’d framed it that way at the time).

MR: Yeah. (Politely, patiently nods along, waiting for me to arrive at something — anything — approaching a point. Despite the late hour I’m fully wound up and giddily talkative. It’s Mark Ryan for Bloch’s sake!)

GM: A few months later I was listening to that record all the time. Then Fix My Brain (Swami, 2006) came out. So after all these years I finally get to see the Marked Men. Obviously I was enamored with the show tonight. How would you rank tonight as a Marked Men show?

MR: Pretty good. It’s always amazing to have a shit ton of people screaming, yelling your lyrics.

GM: And punching out all those accents on the drums.

MR: There’s nothing else quite like that. Chicago’s always been a fun town for us to play. We’ve always enjoyed it. Even with our old band, the Reds, we came up here a lot. It’s been a long time building that.

GM: There hasn’t been a lot of Marked Men activity the past couple years. What led to this show? Is this part of a tour?

MR: We’re playing Chaos in Tejas. We played last year and that was really fun. Then right after that we played a couple shows in Sweden, which was really great. We decided to do it again this year (Chaos in Tejas) but we wanted to come back here and Minneapolis because those are some of our favorite places to go. It’s real hard because Jeff (Burke, guitar) lives in Japan and him being able to get off work is really difficult, trying to avoid earthquakes.

GM: Oh man, I’d forgotten he was living there. Wow. In the meantime you’ve started doing the Mind Spiders. I just got the full-length (Mind Spiders, Dirtnap, 2011), so I haven’t totally absorbed that but I’ve listened to the first EP (World’s Destroyed, Dirtnap, 2010) so many times. With my favorite bands and records I enjoy trying to figure out why I like them so much. Yet I haven’t been able to pinpoint it with either the Marked Men or the Mind Spiders.

MR: (Laughs)

GM: I’d like to run this by you: when I watch you play it seems really taxing physically and very intricate, very involved. When I listen to the records it’s like an outfielder snagging a fly ball, equally impressive but seemingly easy and nonchalant. Is this really simple stuff or really complex stuff or assembling simple pieces in a complex way?

MR: I don’t know how to answer that.

GM: I know, I gave you a five-part answer to the question. As a teacher I should know better.

MR: No, no. I guess we’ve always been into the rhythm of the way that we play guitar. I’ve been playing with Mike (Throneberry), the drummer, since I was 19 and I’m 36 now. He’s an exceptionally talented drummer and it’s worked on my rhythm, and over time we’ve developed the way that we work together and it’s kept gelling. It’s hard to explain. It’s the way you do the downstrokes on the guitar and pound it out. I guess coming from Denton (Texas) for years we didn’t have much of a following.

GM: The Reds or the Marked Men? Both?

MR: Initially, the Marked Men. We had good shows but it wasn’t anything great. It was just a matter of continuing to pound it out and make it better and better to get people to respond.

GM: Do you play drums?

MR: No, but whenever Jeff or I write songs we know what we want from the drums. We plan it out meticulously.

GM: You don’t make it easy on him (Mike) as a drummer. He could keep those same tempos with quarter notes, it would be a lot easier.  But it’s always eighth notes, always twice the work, twice the intensity.

MR: You’re right. We always used to joke around that if Mike wasn’t in pain or exhausted after the show then we weren’t successful.

GM: Drummer abuse, basically.

MR: But the thing is there’s something about Mike and his style. If you listen to bands from Denton they’re influenced by Mike. The drummers that are there now when they were younger they loved watching him. That’s part of the sound.

GM: He doesn’t do a lot of fills.

MR: He used to. We had to calm him down. It was too ADHD. Had to tell him to quit that shit. We used to let him go at it however he wanted to but we decided not to do that. (Speaking to other dude who has just come downstairs) You want in on this?

Unidentified dude: Just an old friend passing through. Just an old friend passing through.

MR: I’m still recovering from that feedback. Just about knocked me out.

GM: That’s ironic. Bands are usually saying that they can’t hear enough of themselves on stage. Going back to the Mind Spiders EP. I love how wide the sound is, how expansive, like a really wide, desert landscape.

MR: On the record I double a lot of the drums, it’s two drum kits. I like that Phil Spector big sound.

GM: Playing the same beat?

MR: Yeah, but I think it sounds cool. I write really stupidly simple songs and I try to make them sound good. I got really into that first Brian Eno record, Here Come the Warm Jets. The drums are doubled. That’s one of my favorite recordings. I’m kind of obsessed with that record. That’s what kind of spurred some of that one (Worlds Destroyed).

GM: I love that record — it’s the only Eno record I know — but I never would have connected those records. Eno's vocals are very prominent, very sweet.

MR: I tried to sing and carry melodies and things like that.

GM: Like I said, I’ve just started digging into the full-length (Mind Spiders), but it sounds really different. Is that just because I don’t know it well yet or…

MR: The Mind Spiders is just a recording project I started. It’s not really a band. It’s something I started when Jeff was leaving. I had all these other songs and I was doing things on my own. It’s just my way of seeing if I can try to pull something off—let me see if I can do this kind of song.

GM: It’s pretty great. Your role sounds almost like a conductor.

MR: Yeah, well, it’s more of a band now. I’ve started a band and I’ve started recording another record. It should be coming out at the end of this year (2011). I know it’s funny for someone from Chicago, but in Fort Worth, where I live, it snowed a lot in February and everything shut down for a week. I didn’t go anywhere. I just hung out at the house and worked on another record—a lot of it was done then.

GM: Actually, I'm just visiting Chicago. I’m from New York, but I know what you mean.  This winter has been miserable. That’s one of the reasons I made this trip.

MR: For us it was crazy. If we get just a little bit of snow nobody goes to work, schools shut down, so it gave me some vacation time.

GM: What do you do for work?

MR: I work with people with mental retardation and write behavior modification plans.

GM: I teach fifth grade, general education teacher. I don’t write plans like those, but I try to implement them for some of my kids.

MR: I work for a psychologist. I got my master’s degree and I work under his supervision and go to a lot of different places around the Dallas/Fort Worth/Denton area.

GM: I know different schools are on different places on the continuum…

MR: Oh, I don’t work with people in schools—group home or big facilities. That’s been my main work for years.

GM: That’s not easy work.

MR: I know you can relate.

GM: I was talking to someone about that earlier—it’s a tough time to be in education.

MR: It’s gotten worse in Texas, a lot of the budget cuts. It’s been intense. A lot of similar services have been cut, so I have to do just as much as I did before but with less time.

GM: Do you ever watch The Wire, the season where they focus on the local newspaper? “We’re going to do more with less.”

MR: I always think about that line whenever I think about this.

(Why didn’t I linger on this point longer? I drove right past a potentially fascinating moment in the conversation — one of my favorite musicians and my favorite dramatic TV show? Geez!)

GM: In our district it seems like the first place they cut is where people are the most vulnerable.

MR: I completely agree. It sucks, but it’s cool whenever you can make a good decision here and there. You can do some good things. I like it. It is wearing me out.

GM: How long have you been doing it?

MR: I started out as a direct care person in the facilities. Actually, Jeff and Mike did the same sort of work for years — you could do PRN work on call, as needed.

GM: PRN?

MR: It just means “as needed.” It’s a nursing term. We could work for a while, a bunch of shifts, and then take off and go on tour. I started doing that and then I met the psychologist I work for and I went on from there.

GM: Does your work ever find it’s way into your music?

MR: The song “Doctor Dan” (from On the Outside) that’s my boss. Good name. He’s a really good guy.

GM: That’s not how I think of the typical song about a boss.

MR: I just used his name, everyone calls him Dr. Dan. It’s not about him. It’s about someone being crazy and not wanting to go into the psych hospital.

GM: Any chance the Marked Men will tour again?

MR: No, I don’t think so. We all have projects that are going on. Jeff, since he’s been in Japan he’s recorded 20-30 songs but they’re all demo versions. He’s had a hard time getting them recorded properly. It’s hard to do over there. Also, the recent earthquake destroyed some of his recording equipment. He’s got a new band. They’ve been playing over there. And Joe’s been doing a new band and I’ve been doing the Mind Spiders.

GM: It’s weird when a favorite band breaks up. In the next band I want to hear echoes of that prior band but I’m also hoping for something new and different.

MR: I want it to be different.

GM: Are the Mind Spiders a band you’d tour with?

MR: I don’t think so. Everybody in the band is in other bands, so it’s more about the recording. We’ve got to do some cool stuff. We went up to the Atlanta Mess Around back in April. We got to play with the Testors. That was pretty amazing. It was original line up. They’re getting up to close to 60 now. This was crazy because it was the original band and they were spot on, everybody. The guitarist had white hair and looked like an old school teacher and they were talking shit to the crowd. It was great.

Are You Receiving Me? #50 — Young Fresh Fellows

By Mike Faloon

Young Fresh Fellows
Tiempo de Lugo LP + CD
Yep Rec Records

Another Ten Reasons to Dig the latest Young Fresh Fellows record, Tiempo de Lugo:

 1) Tiempo de Lugo opens with this lyric: “All crumpled up like a highway wreck on the cold black floor of a desert discotheque” (from “Another Ten Reasons"). Pretty grim, eh? The narrator knows that his better half has ten reasons to split for every reason to stay, and yet he presses onward, ever onward. Despite a seemingly self-effacing metaphor, the Young Fresh Fellows (YFF) are in far finer shape than that desert car crash. 

2) The YFF write with equal parts humor and heartache. A lot of people have a distorted perception of the band’s humor angle; they peg the Fellows as a novelty band. In part, it’s a reaction to the band’s name. Fair enough, to some extent, on a limited surface level. In part such a reaction reflects the either/or thinking of the digital age. Republican or Democrat? PC or Mac? Serious band or funny band? We can’t peg you, Fellows. Thus, we deem you novelty!

Regardless, so many of my favorite performers — from Buck Owens to Boris the Sprinkler — balance both. I came of age in the ‘80s. Though I didn’t feel so at the time, I was pretty lucky. There were tons of “both” bands — Camper Van Beethoven, the Replacements, Scruffy the Cat. There were so many I could afford to pass on the lesser members of the pack (Dead Milkmen).

3) Kurt Bloch on guitar!

4) I love puzzling over the narrative to “Cleflo and Zizmor.” I had a theory even before I heard this song. The title characters sound like a pair of WWI-era immigrant anarchists.  Slavs or Pols, probably not of Italian descent.  Regardless, they're falsely accused, rounded up in the Palmer Raids, their story lost to the sands of time.  Except for those letters Zizmor sent from prison to some Kansas City broadsheet whose archives were wiped out in a suspect fire during the Hoover years. Turns out the song is about a doctor who advertises on the subway.

5) There is a treasure trove of wonderful phrases in the album’s lyrics. Here’s one from “So Many Electric Guitars”: “Some are not very proto punk.” The Fellows, and Scott McCaughey in particular, have a wonderful knack for redistricting language. They incorporate such a rich variety of words and phrases, many of which are associated with genres beyond the boundaries of typical rock lyrics—music criticism, short stories—and draw them into tunes both straight forward and ambiguous. 

6) Tiempo de Lugo is on LP! This is the first time since 1992’s Low Beat Time that I’ve enjoyed a new YFF disc on vinyl. All the ridicule I endured during the ‘90s and ‘00s for buying records and now the dang things are back, kind of.

7) There are six Tad contributions. Tad Hutchinson, that is, drummer, lyricist, artist. Those six cuts represent 50% of the songs on Tiempo de Lugo. That’s an historical high. (Or “a” historical high. It seems that changes are afoot re: which article to use in such cases. In the past month both my dad and my wife’s uncle have pointed out this transition. In both cases they did so with a hearty contempt for contemporary writers. I argued that spelling and grammar and language evolve. I think this is a good thing, but in the interest of establishing common ground I cited such lame newcomers to the lexicon as “blog” and “ear buds.”)

8) Nothing beats the sound of longtime pals sweating through a stack of new ‘60s styled pop and garage rock. Every time I get a new YFF record I think, Enjoy it, man, it’s their last. Hopefully they’ve found a lasting home at Yep Roc. (Then again what to make of the “guitars sticking out of an open casket” image on the back sleeve?)

9) The cover art is excellent. Looks great on a green t-shirt, too. Not shilling, just saying.

10) And at the end, after cycling the dozen tunes and getting ready for another lap, I’m left with a head scratcher: Who’s Jerry Marsdale? His name adorns the head of the kick drum on the back of the record.  He’s listed in the thank you’s.  Who is he is.

I found this on a blog called Seattle Pi: “They (YFF) continued with their intermittent jokes, a lot of which I don’t think I fully understood because they had some history to them. Jerry Marsdale took a jab at the band’s age by busting out an oversized calculator he pretended was a cellphone that he was calling David Duchovny of the 90s hit show ‘The X-Files.’” 

Then I emailed Scott McCaughey and asked about Jerry Marsdale: “Jerry Marsdale is just Tad I guess, or a fictional Tad, or a Tad drumming alter ego.  Who knows the way that guy thinks!”

11) After I let the above list site for awhile I went back to the album. Still a corker. Only change I’d make would be to move “A Fake Hello” back in the sequence. Seems too slow for the third cut on the album, especially after opening with the killer combo of “Another Ten Reasons” and “Tad’s Pad.” 

But that’s a quibble, a pick of the nit, one of those moves critics lapse into to justify praise of a worthy work—I want people to accept my celebration of this record, better mix in a criticism or two.  There's street cred to consider! 

Then I got over that nonsense and realized that “So Many Electric Guitars” is one of the finest songs Scott McCaughey’s ever penned. It’s got lyrics about rock and roll, baseball, and mortality.  Granted only 2/3 of those topics are actually stated in the lyrics. Undaunted I returned to the song repeatedly. I thought I had it figured out. I realized I didn’t. Scott McCaughey was kind enough to field a couple of my questions. I’ll note up front that he didn’t make fun of my theories. Nobleman of Edenbrook Forest, indeed.

Now the interview…

Go Metric: Is there anything to this theory about “So Many Electric Guitars”: the verses are about what becomes of old guitars. The chorus is about what becomes of old baseball stadiums, like the Seattle Kingdome. Finally, implicitly, the song is about what becomes of old(er) musicians?

Scott McCaughey: You’re probably giving me too much credit — not sure I thought about it that hard. It started simply with the thought of how many guitars are out there in the world, because in general, electric guitars don’t go anywhere to die. They just become cooler over the years — even crummy guitars, or one’s that are only cool for ironic reasons. This can also indeed happen to ballparks and musicians, although obviously not always the case!

GM: There’s a line in the chorus about “The Beach Boys, Clash, and Wings.” I’ve looked for connections among them. I’ve found none, come up blank. What am I missing?

SM: These are all bands that played there, in the generally woeful sounding Kingdome acoustics. I saw the Beach Boys, after a Mariners game, and the Clash, opening for the Who. Didn’t see the Wings show, it was before my time in Seattle. But it was captured for eternity as the filmed show from that tour. Why they picked the Dome I don’t know. The chorus (to “So Many Electric Guitars”) about the Kingdome only relates to the rest of the song in my own mind — thinking about the loud guitars that were played there, often somewhat ineffectually. The connection between the verses and the chorus is tenuous at best, but in my impressionistic thought patterns it felt right for the song.

GM: The lyrics to “So Many Electric Guitars.” I’ve puzzled out most of them, but can you fill in the gaps? (Note: I had most of the words right. I’m not such as cad as to ask a dude to type out his song lyrics!)

So many electric guitars
More than all the derelict cars
And even the homeless few
String 'em up, it's waiting for you

Somewhere there's a teenage band
Somewhere in Grow A Moustache land
Getting a trash can Trashmen tone
From a new Korean Epiphone

Where did the Kingdome go?
Where did the Kingdome go?
When they blew it all to smithereens
For the Beach Boys, Clash, and Wings

Some guitars look like space junk
Some guitars are not very proto punk
Green dazzlers, Old Black in a hearse
White Falcons and Tobacco Sunburst

So many electric guitars
Where's the electric guitar junkyard
They don't die when they get old
No, they turn into solid gold

Chorus

Chorus

When the dust settled in the ground
did the echoes finally drown
The big boss gold top sound

So many electric guitars

 

 

Todd Congelliere Interview

Back in the spring of 2011 I flew to Chicago for a most remarkable show: Toys That Kill, the Marked Men, and the Arrivals. I was able to interview all three of those bands. The second of those interviews was with Todd Congelliere, one of Toys That Kill's two singer/guitarists. He also played in FYP and plays a pivotal role in Underground Railroad to Candyland. And he runs Recess Records. And — much to my surprise — he's a Pink Floyd apologist. In fact, our conversation started off with Pink Floyd's "Echoes" and still turned out well. That's a talented man. — Mike Faloon

Full details at Razorcake.org

Interview with the Arrivals' Isaac Thotz

Last spring I finally saw the Arrivals. The show — which also included the Marked Men and Toys That Kill — was fantastic. I interviewed Isaac Thotz, one of the Arrivals' two guitarist/singers. Great interview. Anyone who aspires to "write songs like Vonnegut wrote books" is worth our time.  --Mike Faloon

Full details at Razorcake.org

There's a Rev. Norb Book! - Day 3

Are You Receiving Me? — The Annotated Boris (Day 3)

By Mike Faloon

On Parenthesis – A Special Christmas Edition Go Metric Mini-Interview (aka Rev. Norb on Certain Aspects of Grammatical Choices in )

Go Metric: One of my favorite aspects of your writing is the high volume of parenthetical clauses.  When they build up to four or five in a sentence I’ll re-read said sentence verify that it checks out.  To what do you attribute this habit?  A particular writer?  Genre?

Rev. Norb: I cannot actually attribute this to anything other than eighth-grade algebra, and learning about the order of operations and parentheses and brackets and curly braces and the what-not, as well as my own practically pathological compulsion to say every single thing i know about a subject, when i am talking about said subject. It just sort of became the best way to corral my various tangents while sort of keeping the main narrative moving in one direction ((or so i try to imagine)).

GM: Recently I’ve noticed that you use double parenthesis for the initial parenthetical clause.  Where/why did this change occur?

RN: This parenthetical double-bagging started when i was working in the video game industry, and was sending out lots of typed communications to team members that involved discussing sections of script or code which included parenthetical expressions. The double parentheses was meant to signify that it was me talking in parentheses, as opposed to the single parentheses, which were part of the code. For example: "Please add 'Play3DSound (snd_Explosion1);' to the end of the particle effect function call ((unless it breaks something))." My boss said he liked the double parentheses so i started doing it all the time.

GM: I also noticed that the parenthetical clause on the book’s cover reverts to the single parenthesis?  As they say in Spanish, por que?

RN: I was being wishy-washy and thought it was too hard to read for a front cover blurb that way. If you look at how the type is organized for that subtitle, the first graf ((as i believe such a thing is called)) only consists of two words, "AND OTHER." Eight letters and a space. If you add one parenthese, so the first graf is "(AND OTHER", ten percent of the characters in the first line are parentheses, which seems okay. If you add a second parenthese, the graf becomes "((AND OTHER", and now 18.2% of the characters in the first graf are parentheses, which seems like too much. Basically, double parentheses just didn't look good with the type stacked up like that in that particular section, and my graphic designer instincts trumped my literary instincts. For which i apologize.

http://www.bulge.biz/

 

Are You Receiving Me? – David Kilgour: Here Comes the Cars Review and Interview

by Mike Faloon

David Kilgour
Here Come the Cars LP
De Stijl Records

Act One: A review of David Kilgour’s Here Comes the Cars (which originally ran on Razorcake.com)

David Kilgour is best known for his work with the Clean, one of New Zealand’s finest exports. Over the past 20 years he’s also released a slew of solo records. Here Come the Cars is a reissue of his first, originally released in 1991. The record opens modestly; the title track barely dips its toes in the water. It’s acoustic and sloooow and has only a trace of drums — but be patient, the payoff is coming. We’re up to our collective waist with “Fine,” which picks up the pace and has a more immediate hook. But it’s a bit like ocean water on the belly, it’s refreshing but you’re aware of it, thinking about it, awaiting more. That comes with the next tracks, three perfect pop songs that wash over you. The rhythm section pushes the tempos. Kilgour mixes in more electric guitars and the songs flow seamlessly. The closing track loops back to the feel of the opener and it’s only then that you’ll realize that you haven’t been able to touch the bottom for awhile. Side two is nearly as good. Here Come the Cars is like a great day at the beach.

Are You Receiving Me? – Reports

By Mike Faloon

Reports
Dinamo Cambridge LP
Ride the Snake Records

Think Buzzcocks, Clean, and/or early Figgs and you’re getting a sense of the Reports. Dinamo Cambridge, the band’s second LP, is full of short, up tempo pop songs distinguished by fuzzy guitars and vocals that are just beyond the grasp, easy to hum along with, not so easy to pick up the lyrics, which hardly gets in the way.

The title track is the centerpiece. It’s just over 12 minutes long and could easily go on twice as long. It’s a beautiful mix of hypnotic keyboard, guitar, and bass lines. The song is largely instrumental — vocals surface every two minutes or so but they’re on the periphery, almost like another instrument that they periodically bring up in the mix and then fade out. Taken as a whole the track seems dense but when you follow the threads you realize that aren’t that many parts and each of those parts is relatively simple. It’s all in the placement and the subtle shifts — a punk rock take on Steven Reich.  The drums push things along but resist the urge to fill the space with heaps of fills (are there any?), often keeping time on the rim of the kick drum in place of hi-hat or ride.

“Dinamo Cambridge” seems to pick up where title track of their debut album (Mosquito Nets, 2007) left off. (See interview below) But whereas that song put the vocals and guitar front and center, “Dinamo Cambridge” is more decentralized, more of a swirl. It’s a fantastic song.

The Reports’ guitarist and singer, Martin Pavlinic, was kind enough to field a few questions. (Interview by Mike Faloon)

Go Metric: With the song “Dinamo Cambridge,” what was the balance of written out/sketched out vs. improvised? Related to that, was this a studio only song or one that you play out live?

Martin Pavlinic: It began as a massive improvised cloud that, over the course of many months, coalesced into a composed piece. Usually we start practice with some manner of inchoate warm up jam, but for whatever reason, this one lasted for about half of practice, and we noted what we liked about it and started to refine it into an actual thing rather than just discarding it as a pile of nonsense like we usually do with our practice warm up.

We played it live for about a year and a half before recording it, and it was daunting to try to think of how to treat it in the studio. The first time we played it, the song was our whole set, and lasted about 28 minutes. It settled into a regular 8-12 minute feature in about half our sets, the more we laid down guidelines and cues. The version on the record was the only take we recorded.

GM: A band I was in once wrote a 7-8 minute tune. It was a leap for us so we listened to a lot of longer songs by pop bands (Figgs “Tint,” Weezer “Only in Dreams,” Berserk “Lucifer Chin”) in order to hear how they’d stretched things out. Were there any particular bands and/or songs you used as templates?

MP: I'm a huge fan of extremely long songs and repetitive compositions by pop bands and non-pop bands. That said, I can't think of "templates" as much as I think we in the band all share an affection for that kind of patient repetition, and so have internalized a lot of the lessons taught by the best bands. If you find a riff or a pattern you can live in, then there's no reason not to live in it for a very long time, and one day we found that riff.

You should be able to visualize a pop song as a perfect closed package. Beginning to end should be a coherent thought, and that coherence is the strength of the song. But on the other hand, long songs like "Sister Ray," "Mother Sky," the entire Spacemen 3 catalog, Harmonia's Live 1974 album, "Spec Bebop" by Yo La Tengo, "Point That Thing Somewhere Else" by The Clean, "Sheets of Easter" and many others by Oneida, etc. aren't about beginnings or ends. I'll bet that none of those started as a short song where they thought "how do we extend this?" They've all got an endlessness to them, and at some point you open it and at some point you close it, and sure, there's undulations and lulls and climaxes, but those aren't the point. If the main spine of those songs were to repeat for literally 2-3 hours or longer, they'd still work (and probably be surprisingly compelling and awesome). It's not about stretching anything, if anything it's deciding how short to make this potentially endless thing.

GM: Longer songs tend to lead to polarized reactions — punk/pop/indie fans tend to embrace such songs or reject them. I know they have can similar effects within bands too — everyone galvanized by the process of pushing the boundaries together (best case scenario) or one or more band members resisting, coming along hesitantly (worst case scenario). Where were you guys along that continuum?

MP: We were all really excited when we got it to work. After the first time we kind of spontaneously wrote it, we decided to make it our set at the next show (it was with 4 other punk and hardcore bands, figured we'd be cheeky). Then over the next 18 months or so it came together as a coherent single piece, probably the biggest single collaboration by all the members of the band. We really like writing our fast noisy pop songs, but this song gave us something to play with the same energy but smaller moves could have bigger effects, and let us play around in a totally different way, and I definitely hope to revisit the move in the future too, and explore new long-form ideas.

GM: Your debut album, Mosquito Nets, also featured a lengthy title song toward the end of the record.  To what extent is "Dinamo Cambridge" a reaction to "Mosquito Nets"?

MP: I've never thought of it as a reaction, its more that both songs worked in the second half better, in my opinion. “Dinamo” is much more of a "title track" in my mind than “Mosquito Nets,” which I just thought had the best title of all the songs, rather than somehow holding the key to the record, haha.

GM: What's "Dinamo Cambridge" refer to?

MP: In Eastern Europe and Russia, Dinamo is a pretty popular name for sports clubs. For example, the biggest soccer teams in Russia, Ukraine and Croatia are Dinamo Moscow, Dynamo Kiev and Dinamo Zagreb, respectively, and there's plenty of others, and I think it sounds so awesome while also being evocative of this sort of grey concrete Eastern Europe vibe. Joe, the drummer, and I are both Croatian as well, and I wanted the album and the centerpiece song a club name that would make a sideways reference to our ancestral homes.

 

Interview with Kristin Hersh (of 50FootWave)

By Kevin Dunn

I have several tests of character and here is one: I casually refer to the band 50FootWave in a conversation. If the person I am talking to immediately goes into epileptic convulsions of joy, then I know they are about as rock-solid a person as I could ask for. But often there is no recognition, so I’ll follow up by explaining that it is an amazing power trio characterized by the best of DIY punk, combining a well-developed anti-corporate ethos with a massive sonic onslaught fronted by a female guitarist/singer with a brutal and haunting vocal delivery. Oh yeah, and they are also 2/3 of Throwing Muses. This last bits always throws people – understandably, as it threw me when I first realized one of my favorite punk bands was a side-project for a “college rock” band that I kept at arms length throughout the 1980s and ’90s. But for the disbelieving, I play them the song “Clara Bow”. That usually leaves them to that desired stage of epileptic convulsions of joy (if not, I hit them up with the video for “Pnuema” with Kristin’s sandpaper scream “Shut the fuck up!”).

It’s Tom’s turn to talk: An interview with Tom Scharpling

by Joe Evans III

I was introduced to the work of Tom Scharpling when I started listening to the podcast of The Best Show on WFMU as a way to kill time at work. The show features a mix of Scharpling sounding off, and contending with an endless supply of insane callers, including Jon Wurster (of Superchunk, The Mountain Goats, and many more), who has worked with Tom to create hundreds of character based sketches, and eventually the fake town of Newbridge, New Jersey. Add the fact that the show is an invariable tastemaker (with frequent guests such a Paul F. Tompkins, Julie Klausner and other great comedians, musicians and artists), and you’ve got a unique, modern take on the classic, golden age radio show. I loved the show so much I checked out his other work, most notably the USA show Monk (which he wrote/produced), which was equal parts captivating, touching, and funny at times. Scharpling also contributed to multiple shows on Adult Swim.

Tom granted me the chance to do an interview before a Best Show one night, and was nice as could be. He’s also one of most naturally funny people I’ve ever seen, who can start joking around in the middle of the most serious of discussions, without coming off as just “doing material.” Afterward, he let me sit in the studio on air, which was like a comedy fan’s dream come to life, watching him go off on everything from bullies to Beatles Fest. This was our conversation.

Razorcake Podcast Part 2: New Zealand

by Mike Faloon

Here is the second of my podcasts for Razorcake. This is focuses on New Zealand — kiwi pop with a focus on the Flying Nun bands of ‘80s and ‘90s. Listen to the start of the first cut, “Tally Ho!” If you dig it, stick around. You’ll love the rest. Think Velvet Underground’s third album or the Kinks circa Village Green or Arthur.

Listen to the podcast.