TEAM LAST CALL

Davey Havok is a dark and enigmatic rock star, waif-thin with androgynous good looks, a straightedge vegan who has become one of the voices of a brokenhearted and disenfranchised emo generation.
He’s also naked as a jaybird, as the hapless maid in his hotel is about to discover.
“I’m on the phone!” he hollers to the startled maid. “Thanks!”
When fully clothed, the 33-year-old singer spends his time shocking people in an entirely different way as the frontman of goth-glam punk band AFI. On the band’s newest album, Crash Love – the eighth record of the band’s 18-year career – Havok and company continue in their chameleonic ways, this time steering away from the electronica-tinged sound of 2006’s number one smash Decemberunderground and embracing a driving, melodic, bare-bones rock sound.
In anticipation of AFI’s November 12 show at the Electric Factory, Team Last Call tracked down the au naturale crooner to talk about why you won’t find him crying in a corner anytime soon.

Team Last Call: You’ve said that you’ve never been more proud of a record than you are of Crash Love. What prompted you to say that?
Davey Havok: It’s hard to step back from something you created and explain why it means so much to you. It moves me in a way that our music’s never moved me before. For the first time, when I listened to it through, I felt a sense that it could transcend any sort of era. That’s not to say it will, but I was struck with that feeling. I thought about it more – and I don’t think I’ve ever articulated this – but this is the first album really ever that I feel I can play for my friends and say, “OK, check out our new album,” without having to skip any songs.

TLC: Especially starting off in punk and hardcore like you did, you’re taking a huge risk by constantly expanding your sound, and it’s something you’ve gotten a lot of flack for. Have you reconciled yourselves to that?
DH: Absolutely. It’s something that we accepted very early on. It really comes from the ethos of being a punk and hardcore band. It was really because we just didn’t give a fuck. In the same way that we were playing punk and hardcore and didn’t give a fuck that anybody liked it, we continued to write and play what we liked and didn’t give a fuck if anybody liked it. Our hope is that people do like it, but if they have an issue with it, it doesn’t matter because we’re doing what makes us happy.

TLC: I can’t believe you keep getting away with it.
DH: Neither can I. Well, I can believe it in some respect, because the longer we’ve done it, the more our fans have come to expect that progression from us. Not to fear it, but actually in a way demand it. To release a record that sounds like our last record would be more of a detriment to us.

TLC: AFI attracts a lot of fans who feel like outcasts. Why do you think people react that way to your music?
DH: I think it really comes naturally from me. I really feel that likely it’s pervasive in the sentiment of the records because my feelings tend to be contrary to those of your general, average person. So if people connect to that and recognize that, it’s just something that’s part of the way I write.

TLC: Did you have music as you were growing up that served the same purpose for you?
DH: Pretty much everything I love was music from people who disassociated themselves from the masses in some way. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they weren’t a massive band, if you look at The Cure, for instance. But their perspective was not the average.

TLC: You seem relatively upbeat and sociable. It’s funny, because I’ve always had this idea of you, like, always crying in the dark.
DH: Most people do.

TLC: Do you care about that?
DH: Oh, no. It doesn’t bother me. Whatever people think of me is fine, however they want to envision me. I find it curious. I’m always intrigued by who people think I am and the persona they have created for me, what they think I’m into, what they think I’m not into. But I certainly understand that consideration, that I would be a bleak and miserable person, because a lot of my lyrics are very despondent. Luckily, I have the music to use as catharsis. If I didn’t, I might spend more time sitting and crying in a corner than I need to. Also, I think manners are very important. To be a sullen rain cloud when conversing with someone, be they your friends or a journalist, I think is inappropriate.

TLC: You are famous for your lifestyle choices, being vegan and straightedge. Why is that stuff the most important to project?
DH: I really think for the good of this world that, if I could have it my way, the whole world would be vegan and straightedge. So that’s why I feel it’s important to create an awareness of this lifestyle, create an awareness of the choices people make. To bring awareness about those lifestyles can bring a positive change, if only on the level of an individual.

TLC: It’s wildly entertaining, the amount of wrong guesses and suppositions you can find online about what AFI stands for. Do you have any personal favorites?
DH: I’ve heard we’re Christian, and that always tickles me. I’ve heard that I’m a junkie. I’ve heard that I’m a vampire. I’m a junkie vampire. That can be your pull-quote.

TLC: That quote just got boxed out in 24-point type.
DH: Thanks. I don’t spend a lot of time reading about myself or researching myself, so it’s hard to come by this stuff. It’s always pretty funny, and it’s rarely true.

TLC: Even the acronym itself. “A Flame Internal!”
DH: We’ve had people say it stands for something that doesn’t even have the right letters beginning the words. “Oh, that stands for Ah, Fuck You.” It’s like, what are you talking about?

TLC: You started this band 18 years ago at the age of 15, practicing in garages. Do you ever think about what you might say to that kid?
DH: Just do what you love, I’d say. Don’t try to write something that you think someone else will like. Write something that you like, and if they don’t like it, fuck ’em. That’s what it’s about.

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

As you already know, Dethklok is the biggest band on Earth. Ever. The Norwegian death metal band boasts a fan base of millions who willingly risk life and limb (and often end up losing both) just to see Dethklok play. The band is so big that it ranks as the world’s seventh largest economy. So  powerful that it’s been called “the world’s greatest cultural force.” So unreal that it’s a … cartoon.
Dethklok’s wildly popular animated series, Metalocalypse, returns this month for its third season on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. The series’ creator, writer, songwriter and resident guitar god, Brendon Small, is currently touring America with a live-band version of Dethklok, performing such timeless classics as “Bloodrocuted” and “Briefcase Full of Guts” under an animated screen.  The band’s second album, Dethalbum II, debuted in September at #15 on Billboard, making it the highest-charting death metal album in history. 

Team Last Call: I’m trying to imagine the initial pitch you made to the network for a cartoon about a death metal band that murders its own fans.
Brendon Small: I work for a network that is contrarian, so they got it immediately. It wasn’t too hard of a sell. I know they’ve gotten tons of pitches for, like, “It’s a band, but they’re zombies.” This isn’t a new thing. It started with The Archies. They made millions of dollars off of this band that didn’t exist.

TLC: So, you basically get to make cartoons, tell jokes and play guitar for a living.
BS: I definitely have the ultimate job. I can’t think of any other job I’d rather be doing. The only bad part is that I talked people into financing it, and now I have to deliver it. Even though it’s fun work and it’s satisfying work, it’s still work. I don’t take vacations and I don’t sleep that often. Right now I’m at that point where I’m like, “Oh, wow. I’m missing deadlines on the writing side because I’m on the road. I wonder how that’s going to work out?”
 
TLC: You’re out-selling and out-charting the “real” bands, some of which, like Mastodon, you’re even touring with. Does that get uncomfortable?
BS: I don’t believe that people would buy my record in place of buying a Mastodon record. I think there’s room for everything. I think the only person I would be in direct competition with is if there were another cartoon metal band out there. And hey, any other dildo that wants to go create a TV show and do what I did – why didn’t you do it first?

TLC: Dethklok is kind of like the gateway drug of metal bands.
BS: That has been the coolest part about this. The thing that I get is, “Hey, this is my first metal show ever,” or “I never purchased a metal record before,” or “I don’t even like metal, but I like Dethklok. What else is out there?”

TLC: Goodbye Hannah Montana, hello Cannibal Corpse.
BS: If I can do just a little of that, then I’m happy.

TLC: For the uninitiated, can you explain the purpose of a pain waiver?
BS: A pain waiver legally disallows any liability for anything that could possibly happen to you within the realm of Dethklok. So you trip, you fall, you die … You basically fill it out and you enter your credit card number, your pin number, your social security number, your date of birth and all that stuff, and then we have rights to film your dead body, we have rights to all kinds of fucked up stuff.

TLC: It even says that if the sight of you getting murdered disturbs the band members …
BS: They have the right to sue you. It’s pretty harsh, but you gotta think about the band. You gotta make them happy. If you bum them out by dying in front of them, then they can sue you.


TLC: What do you think is the grossest thing that’s happened to audience members at a Dethklok show?
BS: I’d probably say falling in love with each other. I think that’s pretty disgusting.

TLC: What was your personal favorite crowd massacre scene to write?
BS: It’s hard to go beyond what we did in the first show, which was, they do a coffee jingle and they pour scalding hot coffee on people in these gigantic vats, and then they put cream and sugar on top of them too, just to humiliate them even more. We could launch convicted felons into the sky and destroy them with a laser beam if we wanted to, but that fucking coffee thing, it’s hard to beat that. I think tarring and feathering would be kind of fun. Like, smearing their collective faces into dog shit would be a funny thing to me.

TLC: What powers does Dethklok’s music have?
BS: There are things that happen once they get together and start playing. There are even possible supernatural things that happen. Sometimes they get together and play and the weather starts changing.

TLC: What’s next for Dethklok?
BS: They’re in a very precarious place since we left them in the last episode. They’re basically without a manager, and they’re driving their own business right into the shitter. This third season deals with a little bit more of that “OK, we’re up here. Who the fuck are we now? Now what do we do?”

TLC: And what’s next for you?
BS: In the near future, I see a vacation happening. I won’t fucking do anything. I’ll sleep and put on 40 or 50 pounds. Eat some really good food. Kill a couple of trannies. You know, the American dream.

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

The Boston boys (and girl) of All That Remains became the toast of metal-town following the release of their most recent album, Overcome, which catapulted the band from Ozzfest second-stage anonymity to hard-rock radio celebrity. With the Top 10 Mainstream Rock success of “Two Weeks,” ATR showed that even metalcore bands can play Fall Out Boy for a day.
Incidentally, “metalcore” isn’t a label the band takes kindly. They’re an opinionated bunch, as Team Last Call found out first-hand during a recent interview with guitarist Mike Martin.

Team Last Call: Prior to “Two Weeks,” was radio success even on your radar?
Mike Martin: Not even close. We were actually thinking about not putting the song on the record, because when we heard it was all singing, we were like, “That’s weird.” I initially was just like, “Wow, kids are going to hate this so much.”

TLC: You’ve taken some flack for making your sound more melodic. Do you care?
MM: Nope. When a record comes out and sells five times faster than your previous record – which sold fairly well – you really don’t have time to care, because everything’s too busy going awesome.
 
TLC: It probably takes the edge off of little Billy’s mean blog post when you can finally have a good per diem.
MM: Or you get on stage and there’s a thousand people at your headlining show. It’s like, “Well, OK, the little jerkoff who’s masturbating to Internet porn all night in his mom’s basement doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.”

TLC: At this point, how do you measure success for the band?
MM: I guess you could already consider it a complete success, making a living off of it, making enough money. None of us have jobs when we go home anymore because we don’t really have time. We’re literally living off music. We’re playing every night of the week. That’s considered “making it” to a lot of people.

TLC: To be a touring musician and not going home to live in your parents’ basement is a success to a lot of people.
MM: Which all of us still do, basically, but whatever.

TLC: I’ve always heard All That Remains referred to as a metalcore band, but I just don’t hear it in the music.
MM: That just makes you smarter than everybody else, because we’re not.

TLC: Well, go on ...
MM: That’s the stupidest word for music ever invented, basically. It’s just dumb. If a metal band has dynamics in their music and it isn’t just this straight double-bass crap the whole time, it’s called metalcore. It’s just annoying and awful. We’re just a metal band, and that’s really all there is to it. It’s simple.

TLC: Which is worse, when people call you metalcore or when people call you a Christian band?
MM: I saw this one post like, “These guys are a bunch of Christian assholes.” Which is hilarious, because we’re the furthest thing from it. Just another example of people being completely ignorant and having no idea what they talk about.

TLC: When you get to those nasty sites like Lambgoat, sometimes it’s just best to turn off the monitor ...
MM: Lambgoat’s just straight-up vicious. I went on that website one time, and I was like, “OK, I’m never coming back.” I saw one comment that was like, “I hope this band flips off a cliff on their bus and dies.” Like that’s really necessary. Jesus Christ.

TLC: Is it true that [frontman] Phil [Labonte] is a conservative Republican?
MM: I don’t know what he is. I just know that he talks about politics a lot, and every time he does I leave the room. He sits in the front lounge on Twitter and watches MSNBC for 15 hours a day. He Tweets about everything that happens every 15 seconds. If you start talking politics with him, be prepared to be busy for hours and hours, and be prepared for me to not be in the room.

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

It’s two in the afternoon, and Kimberly Schlapman is in a hotel room somewhere near Portland, OR, trying in vain to pacify her 2-year-old with ice chips.

As one of four members in Nashville band Little Big Town, Schlapman is wrestling to reconcile her two new identities: mom and country music star. Her life as it stands now is a blitzkrieg of diaper changes and meet-and-greets, with nightly stadium concerts peppered in for good measure. Despite the hectic schedule, however, she and her bandmates are enjoying one of the first truly peaceful moments of their career, which up to this point had been pockmarked with record label strife, divorces, and family deaths (Schlapman’s first husband died of a heart attack in 2005).

After more than a decade of trials and tribulations, the dust seems to have finally settled in Little Big Town. The release of the group’s latest album, A Place To Land, signaled the beginning of a healthy relationship with new label Capitol Records. All four members are happily married (two of them to each other), and the babies are coming in rapid fire. Team Last Call caught up with Schlapman (and daughter) to talk about tragedy, triumph and other aspects of life during Little Big Town’s pregnant pause.

Team Last Call: Until recently, your life as a band was just one tragedy after another. Do you feel like survivors to a certain extent?

Kimberly Schlapman: Oh, definitely. We have persevered through all kinds of stuff. We are definitely survivors, and we are survivors because we love the music and we love each other. When one of us is down, the other three pick up the load and carry that one along. We have a really special bond.

TLC: To be a band for this amount of time and to still have your original four members is amazing in and of itself, but then to go through that kind of adversity ...

KS: I’m proud of it. Karen and I had this idea about 13 years ago, I think, to do this band. We knew that we would have to put together the best vocal collaboration we could, but also, it had to be the right personalities that could live together, because we knew we’d be stuck together more than we would our families. Thankfully, I guess we made the right choices. Karen and Jimi ended up getting married, so that was the perfect choice for her.

TLC: I read that before you were successful, you were at a point where you would have qualified for food stamps.

KS: We made such very little money. My late husband was my provider. He had a good job, so it was OK that I wasn’t making anything on the road. But some of the members of the band didn’t have someone to provide for them. The four of us would drive ourselves in the van anywhere in the country that would have us play, just for gas money and to cover the van rental. There were many, many very lean years for our band.

TLC: Now you’re on the other side of the spectrum with these huge tours. You can hardly sneeze without being nominated for some kind of award.

KS: We’re just thankful for our journey. As we look back, we know that every part of our journey was meaningful and for a certain purpose. We wouldn’t want the easy road, looking back. Our journey is the reason we write the songs we write today and the reason we make the music that we make. I’m sure of it.

TLC: You guys are like a commune on wheels with your spouses and children in tow. What’s that like?

KS: We love it. We thankfully have gone from a minivan to two buses and trailers, so we’ve got a little room to spread out. We have the crew on one bus, and then we have the four of us and spouses and two babies on our bus. It’s fun. It’s a challenge. As a mother, it’s a challenge with a two-year-old to keep her quiet at times. But when we get down and get kind of drudged in the business part of it, it’s nice to have the perspective of a little infant child. We just love it.

TLC: It must be tiring, because you have downtime as a musician, but you don’t really get to punch a clock on being a mom.

KS: I’ve waited a very long time to be a mom. It’s the best job in the whole world. I wouldn’t trade anything for it. And it is challenging at times, and it’s tiring, definitely, but I’m used to it now. I think I’m just tired all the time and I don’t even notice it. I’m just used to sleep deprivation and just being run ragged. But my husband also comes out. He’s just my rock. He is my helpmate and is Mr. Mom out here on the road.

TLC: There really isn’t even a hint of controversy in your background. I think there’s something about being in the country market where having a clean image also seems to be expected.

KS: It is expected. I think it has a lot to do with how we were raised. Not that any other artists were raised poorly or anything. But we were raised to appreciate what we have and to give back. It probably is expected in our format, and I’m glad. We’re just normal, average people. We’re not perfect. We certainly know how to have fun.

TLC: What would you put on Little Big Town’s tombstone one day?

KS: I think this is a band that never quit and always persevered through the struggle, and it paid off. Why have we made it? Because we never gave up. The times when nobody wanted to hear our music, we believed that we were making music worth hearing. We pumped our arms. My late husband used to say, “Pump your arms!” And I think of that so often, because that’s what we’ve done as a band. We just pumped our arms through it and made it.

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

At this point in his career, Gabe Witcher has a fairly sophisticated palate. He’s sampled the finest vintages of the finest strains of music, sniffed, swirled and spit.

Since the age of 5, the prodigious fiddler has performed with the most titanic of bluegrass legends, recorded on more than 300 records by artists from Willie Nelson to Beck, and contributed to film scores ranging from Brokeback Mountain to Toy Story. In short, the dude’s been around the block a time or two. But that didn’t stop Witcher from freezing up the first time he heard the composition his Punch Brothers bandmate Chris Thile had developed for the band’s debut – a 42-minute, four-part suite titled “The Blind Leaving The Blind.”

“I pressed play for the first time and it sounded like Super Mario Brothers on crack,” Witcher laughs during an interview from his southern California home. “It took me three or four days. I had to slow it down, get inside of it and read the score. Once I started to be able to hear it past the video game-iness of it, it started to make sense.”

That particular opus – the centerpiece of Punch Brothers’ debut album, Punch – was the launching point for the band’s sonic voyage into what the New York Times dubbed “American country-classical chamber music.” As unlyrical as that title may be, it’s as good a tag as any, although still barely vague enough to contain Punch Brothers’ expansive sound. Armed with banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar and upright bass, the five virtuosos deftly transcend the limitations of acoustic music and yield something literally and figuratively unheard of, something that breaches the worlds of both Bill Monroe and Bjork and inhabits every inch of the land between, from the complex grandiosity of classical music to the precise immediacy of pop.

Witcher puts it in simpler terms: “Music that we like, put through the filter of a bluegrass ensemble.”

“We’ll play a Radiohead song, and we’ll do Bach, then we’ll play Flatt & Scruggs, then The Strokes,” he explains. “Music is just music. It’s all made up of the same stuff. A good piece of music will translate through any medium, any instrument.”

Witcher and Thile, the latter most famous as one third of million-selling newgrass trio Nickel Creek, hit upon the concept for Punch Brothers (named after the Mark Twain short story Punch, Brothers, Punch) in 2006 while commiserating over recently failed relationships with the help of plenty of whiskey and several jam sessions. The idea to start a band came immediately, but didn’t come to fruition until Thile introduced the first tastes of “The Blind Leaving The Blind,” a meandering, yet intricately plotted piece pregnant with leitmotifs and counterpoints. The two dropped their other projects, rounded out the band with friends and likeminded musicians, young prodigies all, and set off like Magellan into the black waters of sound.

“It’s been the best, most positive musical experience that I’ve had,” Witcher enthuses. “One of the things that I think interests all of us as musicians is to come up with something that people haven’t heard before, that we haven’t heard before. We’re always searching for a new texture, a combination of instruments, a new form of song, a new way for a collection of notes to be ordered. Especially coming from the bluegrass world, there’s a lot still to be explored.”

Meet JBOT, a musician who, tired of dealing with egomaniacal bandmates, decided to start a rock band with robots as backing musicians. He built the robots himself with tender, loving care, giving one a guitar, another drums, until the band was completed. On the seventh day, he rested.

Then tragedy struck. JBOT’s beloved robots turned evil, captured their creator and yanked out his intestines and eyes. Now JBOT lives a tortured existence under the cold, watchful eyes of the robots, who delight in nothing more than humiliating their creator during their nightly concerts.

Team Last Call interviewed poor JBOT in anticipation of Captured! By Robots’ October 26 concert at the Chameleon to see how long we have before the robots take over the entire world.

Team Last Call: Why did you build the robots in the first place?

JBOT: Just all the stuff you have to deal with when you’re in a band, everything from drunk band members to girlfriends to “Oh, I can’t tour because I have a baby now.” So I decided to build some robots to take the place of human band members and see if they would do what I wanted – and they didn’t.

TLC: When did you first know that things went terribly wrong?

JBOT: It was pretty early. I had a horrible coffee-spilling accident with the CPUs when I was making the first two, Drum Bot and Guitar Bot. I don’t know if that’s what made them go against me and be evil, but it was something. As soon as I plugged them in, they captured me. They put a chip in my head and activated this chip as sort of a method of control. It’s called a Biocerebral Chip. It’s almost like being hit with a cattle prod. Not that I’ve been hit with a cattle prod, but that’s what I would imagine it’s like.

TLC: You’ve been captured for almost 13 years now. Are things better or worse overall?

JBOT: In the beginning, it was all torture and bullshit, just constant abuse. The first couple of tours we did, it was just me and the Drum Bot and Guitar Bot. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the situation where you’re lonely and tired and working really hard, and all you get is people yelling at you all the time, but it gets old fucking fast. But their hatred of me has gotten less over time. I think we sort of have a functionally dysfunctional relationship these days. We’re like an old married couple because we’ve been together for so long.

TLC: Why do you think Guitar Bot in particular is so damn mean?

JBOT: I think part of it just goes down to the instrument. I don’t know if you’ve met many guitar players, but generally – no offense – guitar players are pretty much dicks.

TLC: Do the bots tell you what kind of music to play?

JBOT: They don’t really care what we play. Basically, they rock hard and they’ll rock with whatever we play. And if the music I choose is bad, they just use it as another excuse to rip on me.

TLC: As far as you can tell, is there any way to avoid the imminent robot apocalypse?

JBOT: I think it’s only a matter of time. I think the human race is on borrowed time as it is. It’s not going to be global warming that kills us. I think it’s a tossup between two: either asteroids or robots taking over. The most likely is going to be robots taking over.

TLC: I would think so.

JBOT: Yeah, I’m pretty good with trying to analyze situations with percentages and statistics. I’ve run the numbers.

TLC: If people come out to the show, aren’t we in a way financially supporting this plan for them to take over?

JBOT: I don’t think so. I’m a bad robot builder. That new Japanese humanoid robot – my god, that’s what we need to worry about. That’s the scary part. I think we’re safe for the next five, 10 years. But if you know you’re going go die tomorrow, are you going to cry today or are you going to go out and party?

TLC: I’m going to party with robots.

JBOT: Totally!

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

As the frontman, mastermind and (presently) the only member of Brooklyn rock band The Honorary Title, Jarrod Gorbel has learned a few valuable lessons about surviving as a working musician. First, don’t sell out. Second, follow your heart. And third, never underestimate the binding properties of the burrito.

A recent evacuee of the major label system, Gorbel has mastered the art of fan relations. One of his best and most engaging ideas has been the auctioning off of “chipotle dates,” where fans can win the chance to grab a burrito with the singer-songwriter when he tours through their town.

“It’s always a surprise,” he says with a chuckle. “You would assume that who would sign up for these contests would be the teenagers, the younger demographic. But now it’s this 25-year-old teacher woman who wants to share burritos with us. It’s funny, but cool.”

Unorthodox, maybe, but Gorbel’s fan-friendly methods are part of what’s kept the indie crooner’s career afloat, despite his former label’s costly missteps. Gorbel founded The Honorary Title in 2003 as an outlet for his folky indie-pop songs. But when the band upstreamed from indie label Doghouse to parent company Warner Brothers in 2007, the major label powers-that-be had a decidedly different kind of sound in mind for the band. Namely, the biggest, most radio-friendly rock songs Gorbel could write.

“I had to put all my energy into these songs that were not my favorite, not the ones that I personally loved. I was trying to be something I wasn’t because I thought it would be a vehicle to do what I want all the time,” Gorbel recalls from a tour stop in Orangevale, CA. “[But] we’d go on tour, and the fans just wanted to hear my favorite songs, the ballads and the more folk Americana-influenced ones. So I said, ‘Fuck it. I’ll just do what I want to do.’”

Fast forward two years, and Gorbel is doing just that. He’s currently touring in support of a new solo EP that marks a return to the ’70s folk and alt-country influences that helped to frame his earliest work. Come early 2010, he’ll put an endcap on those major label years by dropping the band name altogether and releasing an eponymous album he recorded earlier this year with Rilo Kiley’s Blake Sennett.

“It’s scary in a sense, but it’s also a huge relief,” he says of the transition. “Finally I get to do everything I want to do. But then, I am backtracking. From the business outlook, it’s like starting over. But I do things hands-on, just by literally talking to fans in every city that we play. Fans of The Honorary Title, they understand.”

Until the album’s release, Gorbel says, his primary focus is on touring and building his fan base in the most honest and genuine way he can. “And,” he adds, “eating the finest burritos.”

Ten years ago, an impish wee-man known as Moby became the world’s most unlikely pop star thanks to the multi-platinum success of Play, a transfixing crosspollination of old gospel field recordings and modern-day house beats bolstered by the monster hit “South Side.”
While Gwen Stefani is no longer licking the back of his head in music videos, little else seems to have changed in Moby’s life. The self-proclaimed “weird, bald, middle-aged man” is still completely unequipped to deal with fame. He’s still hated by millions of people for no apparent reason. And he’s still churning out artful electro-pop that manages to be simultaneously poignant and escapist. His latest album, Wait For Me, is being hailed as his finest effort since his 1999 breakthrough. Ambient and subdued, it’s described aptly enough by Moby himself as a “hangover record.”
Team Last Call chatted with the baldheaded beatmaster prior to his North American tour to discuss his name, what he wants to think about on his deathbed and a certain phenomenon known as “nerd sweat.”

Team Last Call: Is it true that you got the name Moby because you’re actually an ancestor of Herman Melville?
Moby: That’s what my parents told me. Before I was born, they had decided that if I was a boy, my name was going to be Richard Melville Hall. And then once I was born, they looked at me and realized that was a very grown-up name for such a little baby. So as a joke when I was literally 10 minutes old, my dad started calling me Moby. I don’t think either my mother or my father anticipated that 43 years later I’d still be saddled with my infant joke nickname.

TLC: Wait For Me is getting an amazing response. It got on my radar because I flipped on NPR and heard the music critic call it your best album in a decade.
M: I try very hard not to read any of my own press. At this point, there are still a lot of journalists that just hate me for whatever. I could make the best record in the world and they’re still going to hate it. If I read good press, it makes me uncomfortable. If I read bad press, it makes me want to kill myself.

TLC: Why do people hate you?
M: I was actually talking about this the other day. Do you watch The Simpsons? Do you remember the Simpsons where Lisa had a bully? They realized that what the bully was responding to was the pheromones in Lisa’s nerd-sweat. That’s all I can think of. Maybe I’m missing something. It seems like there are probably more loathsome people on the planet than me.

TLC: Over the past couple of records, you’ve returned to making music for yourself, as opposed to satisfying expectations of a record label. Did you have some sort of epiphany?
M: The epiphanies that I have tend to be things that are fairly self-evident for most people. My epiphanies happen slowly over a long period of time. I rarely have one of those “Saul on the road to Damascus” moments, where the scales fall from my eyes and I can suddenly see things clearly. It usually comes from making the same mistake a few hundred times.
I guess what happened was, I never expected to have a record contract and I never expected to have any success as a musician. So then when Play became very successful, it certainly wasn’t a bad thing, but I was quite unprepared for any of the ramifications of success, the creative ramifications. After Play, suddenly I was getting more phone calls from the record company. I found myself trying to make records that the record company liked and that the press would like and that people would like – trying to please everybody. And especially with the album Hotel, I ended up with a record that I just wasn’t all that happy with. So I guess with Wait For Me, I just wanted to focus more on first and foremost trying to make a record that I loved, and then trying to make a record that another individual would love. Instead of generalizing about tens of millions of people, just trying to think of one other person at home in their living room on a Sunday morning when it’s raining outside.

TLC: Making an album like this is obviously not about trying to make millions of dollars and get free drugs. What is it about?
M: I have an answer, but I hope it doesn’t sound overly earnest, even though it’s true. At some point, I realized, I mean, life is short. Maybe we live to be 70, 80, 90 years old, but in the grand scheme, that’s not such a long time. I guess I just asked myself the question, “On my deathbed, what do I want to remember?” And I don’t want to remember meetings with record companies where they’re talking about collaborations with Top 40 stars. I don’t want to remember spending my time at celebrity parties. For me, one of the only things that I feel gives my life any degree of meaning is working hard trying to make music that I love.

TLC: That sounds honest, not earnest.
M: It’s hard. In interviews, you want to retain a degree of detachment. I think a lot of people, when they do interviews, they sound tough or they sound ironic or they sound like they don’t care. I’m neither tough, ironic nor apathetic.

TLC: You’re at a weird point now where you’re starting to sell more records out of the country than you are in the U.S. Does that matter?
M: It’s a bit strange. We just finished a European tour, and the shows there were a lot of big festivals where we’re playing to about 60,000 people a night. And then I’m looking at the North American tour, where on average we’re playing to around 900 people a night. Which is fine – I actually selfishly really enjoy playing smaller shows. But I think it was on the last record where I sold more records in Belgium and the Netherlands than I did in the United States.

TLC: Was it ever much of a priority for you to be famous in the first place?
M: I truly believed that I would spend my entire life making music in my bedroom that no one would ever listen to. If we had been talking 20 years ago, I would have guessed that my life would involve teaching in college and working in a book store. There’s never been any plan. When I found myself having success or being more in the limelight, it was very accidental. As a result, I wasn’t really prepared to deal with it. Now the way I deal with it is by almost avoidance – avoiding a lot of the institutions of fame that for me I just don’t see as particularly appealing. Most of the people who really pursue the world of fame, they have lives that I wouldn’t even want to have. Not that their lives are even available to me. I’m 43 years old. Being 43 and not able to dance does kind of limit your ability to be famous in 2009.

TLC: You keep talking about being 43. Do you feel cooked? What else is there?
M: All I want to do for the rest of my life is try and make music that I love. I’m not really too concerned about how the music is made or where the music is made or whether it’s successful. Honestly, that’s pretty much it. I mean, it’d be nice at some point to fall in love and get married. It’d be nice to learn how to put up drywall. It’d be nice to speak Spanish better. But pretty much the only serious goal I have in life is trying to keep working on music.

Armed with a quiver full of syrupy metal ballads and clad in zigzaggy, yellow-and-black spandex armor, the soldiers under command in California metal band Stryper single-handedly put Christian rock on the mainstream map in the ’80s.
While their peers on the Sunset Strip notoriously drank, snorted and shot themselves full of every available substance after shows, Stryper handed out free bibles. Needless to say, “odd man out” is an understatement. But despite almost constant ridicule, Stryper took their gospel to the Top 40 airwaves and set up shop at MTV with megahits like “Honestly.”
After a 12-year hiatus, Stryper reunited in 2003 and released a pair of albums, including 2009’s Murder By Pride. This month, the band welcomes original bassist Tim Gaines back into the fold and embarks on a 25th anniversary tour that includes a stop at the Chameleon on September 23. Team Last Call tracked down singer Michael Sweet to get the lowdown.

Team Last Call: What was the catalyst for this tour for you personally?
Michael Sweet: My wife passed on March 5, and right after she passed, a light went on in my mind and in my heart to heal. It’s not that Stryper needs immense or intense healing. It’s just that there’s still some things going on with the band, things from the past that I don’t think have completely been let go of. And I just thought, how cool would it be for all of us to get together, go out and do a tour together and not just tell people that we forgive and forget, but show them? Live it.

TLC: I read that you’ve got new yellow and black suits for this tour. Are you going to be rocking the spandex?
MS: Definitely not.

TLC: What’s the significance of the colors to you?
MS: Back in the day, there really was no significance. It was just a bright color, bold color. Then as we progressed and became Stryper, that’s when we found the scripture to go along with the stripes, Isaiah 53:5, “By his stripes we are healed.” That’s when we came up with the acronym and that’s when we defined the colors to be more like a warning that God’s message through this band is going to be presented.

TLC: It’s funny that even now, 25 years later, people still aren’t over the fact that you guys are a Christian band.
MS: We are that band that falls into the category of getting it from all sides. We really do. I’m not complaining. We’re used to it. We’ve been dealing with it for years.
We’ve always been a band that’s gotten it from the secular mainstream side for being a wimpy Christian band who, because we’re a Christian band, we must not be good. We can’t play, we can’t sing, we can’t write, we can’t perform. We must suck because we’re Christian. And the flipside of that coin is, from the church, we can’t be a Christian band because we’re metal, because we’re hard rock, because we look like we look, because we sound like we sound. It’s impossible, because of those things, to be Christians, so we’re hypocrites, we’re wolves in sheep’s clothing, we’re fake. So we’ve gotten it from both sides for years.

TLC: What’s the meaning behind the new album title, Murder By Pride?
MS: We all have pride. I feel like I have a lot. We’ve got to stand and put our pride aside and to just follow what it is that God wants for our lives and not let our pride cripple us.

TLC: You know, I’ve got to say, after being slapped around like the band has over the years, it seems remarkably ballsy to talk openly about stuff like that.
MS: We are four guys who blow it on a day-to-day basis. We sin, like everyone else. We’re weak guys, and we need God. We’re not ashamed to admit that. We all need God, man. It’s something that we’ll talk about and hopefully be humble enough to admit for the rest of our lives.

TLC: If you got to design it, what would you put on Stryper’s headstone?
MS: I would want people to read and know that no matter what, we always took a sincere, bold stand for Christ. I hope that that came through. Did we do some things kind of cheesy and corny? Yeah. But we tried.

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

There are pros and cons to having a computer as a bandmate. He rarely comes up with song ideas, and almost never pitches in for pizza. On the other hand, he doesn’t drink the band beer, and if he ever gives you any attitude, you can unplug him.
No one has learned these lessons as well as Jason Reynolds and Rob Lindgren of Revolution, I Love You, an indie rock-dance-pop band from Middletown, Delaware, whose third member always seems to view the world in ones and zeros.
“It sucks, because the laptop doesn’t go to the diner with you after the show. It’s not much fun,” says Reynolds.
“On the other hand, breakfast is a lot cheaper,” Lindgren offers.
The laptop is in some ways Revolution, I Love You’s defining element, providing the fat-bottomed beats and buzzing bass that turns Reynolds and Lindgren’s eerie Brit-pop into something fiercely fun. Stripped of the ornamentation, the songs might come across as gloomy, if not downright creepy, with Lindgren moaning and crooning in half-time over droning keys and dark guitar lines soggy with reverb. But those chirpy, choppy beats wring out the melodrama and replace it with a winking dare to dance. In the words of Black Eyed Peas, Revolution, I Love You are not afraid to get retarded when necessary.
The band captured this dichotomy on its debut EP, noise. pop. deathray., released last year to rave reviews that drew comparisons to modern-day buzz bands like Menomena, Ratatat and other groups that, frankly, RILY had never heard of prior to recording the album. “I listen to a lot of Bright Eyes and Rob listens to a lot of The Smiths,” Reynolds shrugs, adding Squarepusher and Aphex Twin as electronica influences.
“When we first started writing the album, we wanted to make something expansive and strange, but we kept coming up with these quirky little pop songs,” Lindgren says. “So the goal became to make these pop songs work with our propensity for abrasive noise and weird arrangements.”
Lindgren and Reynolds have been playing in bands together since high school, but it wasn’t until they were in college that one of their projects finally started to take off. So they both quit school to pursue it on a full-time basis – just in time to watch all of their bandmates quit. It was around that time that Reynolds wrote a song called “Can I Get the Door for You?” that would lay the foundation for Revolution, I Love You’s ass-shaking future.
Reynolds recalls, “At some point, I said the now infamous words: ‘Why don’t you try putting a beat under that?’”
“I entirely misunderstood him,” Lindgren says. “Apparently, he wasn’t thinking of ’90s house when he said ‘beat,’ but that’s what he got.”
The success of that song was the impetus for RILY’s sound to-date; the dance odyssey had begun.
So they can talk the talk on the dancefloor, but can they walk the walk?
“I do the Lawnmower,” Reynolds deadpans.
“And I’m working on the Carlton,” Lindgren says. “But seriously, I wouldn’t brag, but I don’t think either of us would get kicked out of the club, either.”

“I don’t necessarily want to have the first line of my obituary be, ‘He played a good organ patch.’”

Ah, the plight of the sideman, the second fiddle, the often-faceless, underpaid, rarely laid unsung hero of rock and roll. As far as the breed goes, Franz Nicolay is among the more recognizable, as much for his kooky handlebar mustache as his high-profile gigs in The Hold Steady and the World/Inferno Friendship Society. He’s a magnificent musician, an accomplished guitarist and accordion player whose fired-up piano is often the match to the Hold Steady powder keg. But does Nicolay get the glory? Of course not. He’s a sideman.

So what’s a Number Two to do? For better or worse, the answer in most cases is “solo album,” which is music speak for “vapid, masturbatory disaster.” Ever hear a Gene Simmons record? OK then.

In Nicolay’s case, however, the solo album is a revelation in its own right – if not for breaking new ground musically, then for illuminating exactly where his bands get a good portion of their spunk from [he also performs in Balkan klezmer band Guignol and chamber-pop collective Anti-Social Music]. Major General, released in January, is a curious, vibrant record that skips audaciously from all-American barnburners to gypsy romps. Flanked by a roster of musicians that includes members of World/Inferno and Dresden Dolls, Nicolay bellows cathartically and operatically about everything from subway graffiti to Jeff Penalty, a replacement singer for the Dead Kennedys. The music can be melodramatic and over-earnest, but at least it’s honest. Above all, it’s obvious that the album is less of a vanity project than a means for Nicolay to find a home for some the nomadic songs wandering around his brain.

“I didn’t feel like I had much to prove,” says Nicolay. “I had just built up a collection of songs that didn’t have an obvious home in World/Inferno or The Hold Steady or any of the other bands. A couple of the songs I’ve had around forever, and I just felt like, ‘Even if I don’t ever play this song live, I just want to get it on a record and move on.’”

Major General is the beneficiary of Nicolay’s lifelong musical wanderlust. The songs cascade off each other, punk bleeding into gypsy bleeding into – was that a clarinet solo? When isolated, only a few songs (”Jeff Penalty,” “Dead Sailor”) raise the pulse the way a Hold Steady song might, but as a whole, the album captivates with its sheer scope and ambition.

“I get excited about novelty,” Nicolay says. “I’ll get really excited about Balkan music for six months, and then I’ll get really excited about the Beach Boys for six months. There’s always some tidbit that I’ll get out of each of them about ways to sing background vocals or where you put the glockenspiel overdub or how the string arrangement for a George Jones record differs from a string arrangement on a Divine Comedy record.And all that stuff goes in the cauldron and can bubble up in unpredictable ways.”

Nicolay brings his mustache, his guitar and his botanist friend (he’ll have to explain that one himself) to ABC for a special solo show this month.

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

Lancaster Countians get a crash-course in Tuvan culture when Alash Ensemble, a quartet of master throat singers, visits the area for a special performance.

Tuva, a Siberian neighbor of Mongolia and a republic of the Russian Federation, has inspired curiosity around the globe with its singular form of singing, in which the vocalist produces a low, guttural tone and, through careful manipulation of the vocal tract, splinters the tone into two, three or even four notes simultaneously. Depending on the singer’s specific mode of throat singing, the “extra” tones resemble anything from a whistle to a songbird to, in the “kargyraa” style, the cries of a yak. It’s a surreal, improbable-sounding exercise that requires excruciatingly nuanced control of muscles that most humans rarely, if ever, use.

The only thing as unlikely as the sounds these men are producing is the story of Sean Quirk, an Ohio-born, Wisconsin-raised man who now travels the world as manager and interpreter for the group.

Quirk first encountered throat singing while in school in St. Paul, Minnesota. His fascination with an album he heard by master singer Huun-Huur-Tu eventually led him to try the artform for himself – for better or worse.

“I started imitating a couple months after I first heard and was blown away by the music,” he says in a Fly Magazine interview during Alash’s latest North American tour. “I made a lot of bad noises.”

After learning what he could on his own, Quirk earned a Fulbright fellowship and soon packed his bags for the south of Siberia to study at the feet of the masters. Soon after arriving in Tuva in 2003, he met Alash, a group of young men as beloved for their steadfast commitment to tradition as their vision for marrying the music with modern influences.

“They had been an ensemble going on five years at the time and were all members of the newly formed Tuvan National Orchestra,” Quirk recalls. “Being of a similar age, and musicians, they and the orchestra took me on as a student in Tuvan music. Naturally, we became friends, as the orchestra kind of adopted me in a sense, to the point of letting me sit in on the bass doshpuluur [a Tuvan lute], a post which eventually became my official job in Tuva to the present.”

Over the next six years, Quirk would marry a Tuvan woman, have two daughters and set up a permanent home within the culture that still holds his fascination today.

“Nothing can describe hearing and feeling it live. I have been living there a long time and seen a lot of Alash shows, and it still gets me deep each time to hear it up close,” he attests. “People also shouldn’t just expect ‘fancy vocal tricks,’ but rather a deep and richly developed music involving instruments and vocals which simultaneously feels exotic and intimately familiar.”

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

Sonic Youth have been perpetuating (and defining) noisy indie rock since 1981. And no one is less impressed by that fact than Sonic Youth, who last month released The Eternal, an album so full of romantic wanderlust and sloppy ferocity that it sounds more like the work of a group a third their age. Apparently, 56 is the new 19.

Where The Eternal doesn’t stray is in its uncompromised approach to rock as a genre to be manipulated, exploited and plundered as a limitless art form. It’s gloriously loud, sparse in places, unnervingly complex in others. While it’s the band’s first indie release in nearly two decades, The Eternal is about as far from a swan song as you can get.

Team Last Call: This album is getting your usual spread of responses, from “This is the best album ever made” to “Here’s more crap from Sonic Youth.”
Steve Shelley: Right! It can go either way. I just try not to get too involved. [laughs] We put a lot of heart and soul into making records together. When you’re finished, you really hope that people will love it and you’ll sell a million albums. But we’ve been making albums for a while, so we kind of know what to expect to some degree: The record will sell OK and some people will really love it and some people will not like it.

TLC: Popular opinion is that The Eternal is a little more raw and ferocious than recent albums. Where do you think that extra fire came from?
SS: I honestly don’t know. Maybe one of the things that influenced this record was, just recently, we had gone out and played Daydream Nation in its entirety, which is a really, really well-liked record of ours. And it’s a bit more of a high-energy record than some of our recent records. We hadn’t played a lot of those songs in almost 20 years, so we had to go back and relearn that album. There’s certain things that you did 20 years ago that you don’t do the same anymore. I think it just made us hear things in our music that we haven’t heard for a while.

TLC: Sometimes it seems so unlikely that a band can make music as challenging as yours and still be able to headline a place like the Electric Factory. What resonates so deeply with your fans?
SS: I imagine it’s the same things that I love about my favorite artists. People are attracted to storytelling or a sound or “I like the way that guy’s guitar tone is.” I don’t know what makes a Sonic Youth fan, but I’m glad they exist. It enables me to play music and enjoy a lot of things that I didn’t really ever think I’d be able to do in this life.

TLC: You just ended a long relationship with the major label system. Does that seem like a big deal to you?
SS: It doesn’t bother me who we make the records for. We’re happy to be on Matador, and there are a lot of things that improved as far as our relationship with our label goes. The good side of working with Geffen is that they never, ever did bother us. When we were making our records, no one ever came by. No one ever asked us to do something differently. We did have all that artistic control that they promise you when you sign the dotted line. I think the things that we had a more difficult time with them were CD pricing a few years ago when CDs were still listing for $18.98, and just business stuff like how they marketed the band. And often we would start a new relationship with someone at the record label – and this happened more than one time – where they would be let go, like, the week before our new album would come out. These people are supposed to help you in the time of a new record.

TLC: You occupy an interesting space between living legends in one respect and, in the pop world, relative anonymity. What’s your perspective on that?
SS: I think we’re kept pretty humble as we travel along. [laughs] A lot of people have not heard Sonic Youth. A lot of people have heard of Sonic Youth, but they’ve never actually heard us. We’re not as popular as whatever music is on American Idol or something like that. But then, you mentioned legends and stuff like that – I think most of the band would deny even being rock stars to you, let alone legends. Thinking about rock star status or legend status is way down on the list of priorities when you’re just trying to live your life.

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

“I hate when people are like, ‘So, if you had to choose …’ Why do I have to choose?”
Julianne Hough was born to dance. She was also born to sing, act, model, write novels, split atoms, cure cancer and apparently anything else on Earth she feels like doing. She’s not really into limitations.
Until last year, the 20-year-old Utah native was best known as the winner of two championships on Dancing With The Stars. She then decided to try her hand at music and, one Juicy Fruit commercial later, was the proud owner of the nation’s number one country album. Now Hough has her eyes set on the movie industry. At press time, the starlet was awaiting final word on her casting in the remake of Footloose, due out in June 2010.

Team Last Call: You were born in Utah, lived in London and then moved to L.A., and yet your first love is country music. How did that happen?
Julianne Hough: Even though I grew up in Utah, it’s very country music-orientated out there. I grew up listening to it with my family. I always felt like this is the kind of music I wanted to sing one day. When I was thinking about my career and where I wanted to take it, people were like, “Well, you should do pop music because you dance.” That’s not really true to who I am. It might work for a little bit, but I want a long career, and this is where my heart is. So we went for it.

TLC: You grew up studying dance, but you’ve called music your first love. At what point did music eclipse the other stuff?
JH: I grew up dancing, singing and acting. When I was in London, I was doing all three. I just more heavily emphasized the dance because I was competing rigorously with it. But the music has always been there. I’ve always wanted to do it. I want to entertain, whether it’s dancing, singing or acting. They all fit together. It’s not like I’m trying to be a singer and an astronaut.

TLC: I read about the audition you did for Footloose, so I figured acting couldn’t be far behind.
JH: As long as it makes sense. I really want to focus on one thing at a time and make sure I do the very best that I can at whatever I’m doing. But the music is the priority for me.

TLC: Since you’re only 20, some people are questioning whether you have the depth of experience to be an authentic country singer.
JH: It’s funny, even though I’m only 20 years old, I’ve lived a pretty crazy life already. I lived away from my family from when I was 10 to 15 in London. I’ve competed all over the world. I immediately graduated from high school and moved out and lived on my own with two thousand dollars – I haven’t asked my parents for a cent yet. Even though I’m 20, I’ve definitely had a worldly life. It hasn’t been sheltered at all. I feel like I grew up really, really fast and had to take on a lot of responsibility. So to me, my age and maybe how I look is 20 years old, but I feel like I’m, like, 30.

TLC: On 20/20, they called you “one of the best dancers on the planet.” Are they right?
JH: Oh my gosh! That’s amazing. That’s a huge accomplishment and an honor to be called that. I don’t know. I’m sure that there’s plenty of better dancers out there. I just happen to be shown on TV.

TLC: You were also number 25 on this year’s Maxim’s Hot List. Is that good news, bad news or no news?
JH: To me, of course it’s flattering, but it’s not like, “Oh my gosh, I’m 25 on Maxim!” I’m gonna take it and be like, “Oh, that’s cool,” and then I’m gonna leave it there.

TLC: What do you make of the fame that comes with being a successful singer and dancer? Is that part of what you’re after?
JH: I’m definitely not after that. There’s people out there who just want to be famous, and then there’s people out there that want to be recognized for their talents and their abilities. I want to do everything. I want to sing, I want to dance, I want to act. I want to do all that, and not because I need the recognition. I want to do it because I love to do it and I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else. It’s so fun and exciting.

TLC: Are you comfortable being in the spotlight?
JH: I think you kind of have to be. But I mean, I’ve noticed a lot of paparazzi lately. If I see paparazzi, I’ll go the other way. I’m not going to ham it up.

TLC: You’re portrayed as a goody two-shoes. Is that image true to life?
JH: I try to be as good as I can. I’m not going to try too hard – otherwise, I’m not going to relax and be myself. But I have nieces and younger siblings. If I were to look up to somebody, I’d want to look up to somebody who’s really cool and down to earth and is still a good girl. I want to be that person too.

TLC: It’s funny that you’re making news just for being well behaved.
JH: I try to be! I think I’m too busy to get in trouble. I don’t know how [other celebrities] get in trouble. They should be too busy to! That’s what my parents’ philosophy was when we were growing up: “Just put ’em in a bunch of lessons so they don’t get in trouble!”

TLC: You won Dancing With The Stars twice, your album hit number one on the country charts, you won Top New Artist at the CMAs. You’ve got all of these accomplishments and accolades. At what point do you think you’ll be satisfied?
JH: Oh my goodness. I’m the type of person that’s always grateful for everything that’s happened. But I want to learn more. I want to accomplish more. I want to just better myself as an artist and as a person. Nothing is ever perfect – it can be great and outstanding, but you can always strive for perfection. And that’s what I go for.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

For some bands, the worst thing that could happen is for things to go right.
Richmond, VA melodic hardcore band Strike Anywhere experienced that first-hand after November’s presidential election. After a decade spent railing against the administration as one of America’s most outspoken political punk bands, singer Thomas Barnett and company were left standing with a funny little feeling burning in their tummies: satisfaction.
It didn’t last long. Less than six months into post-George Bush America, Strike Anywhere is returning to the studio to record its next set of booksmart bombast, tackling everything from child soldiering in Africa to, as Barnett puts it, “the cost of the colonial legacy all over the world.” Fun! We talked to the dreadlocked vegan and activist in anticipation of the band’s June 13 set at the Champion Ship.

Team Last Call: When we talked last time, we had all kinds of juicy stuff to discuss in the middle of the Bush administration. Now in this different climate, with a bit of hope circulating, what subjects are in your crosshairs?
Thomas Barnett: There’s, of course, songs about the current economic meltdown and the bank bailout and all of that stuff. There’s even a song about the role of punk even when the environment changes into something less negative. I wouldn’t say positive.
We were in our town on election night in the heart of black Richmond, and it was the most stunning, breathtaking, wonderful thing. Spontaneous marches and people hugging each other in the streets by the hundreds – some crazy shit. It’s only going to happen once in our lives, and it happened when we were home at the capitol of the confederacy.

TLC: You almost sound optimistic about where society’s headed.
TB: I think there are slight windows opening up in the consciousness of everyday folks, people that don’t have a bunch of anarchist textbooks laying next to their bed, people who haven’t been 20 years deep in a punk scene or a radical scene or having had the privilege or luck to be in a university progressive community of ideas and debate. Those other millions of Americans who haven’t had any of those opportunities, there is a sense of, “Wow, we are supposed to be the government. We’re supposed to be helping ourselves and defending each other. There are things at stake beyond our particular survival.”
I think even the little bit of deliveries that have happened – Guantanamo being closed, discussions of torture – it’s going to be neat. I think it’s going to start something rising that no one’s going to be able to control, and that’s a very good thing.

TLC: When you’re up on the stage watching kids pummel each other in the pit, do you worry about the message getting across?
TB: Me and my bandmates are punk and hardcore kids, so we know that feeling. We can read people’s faces and understand that people are having their own moment. They’ve taken our songs and they’ve applied it to their lives in a way that surpasses anything that we were ambitiously or not writing about. The show is a fulfillment of that promise that starts with listening to the record in your car or at home or riding your bike somewhere when you really feel comfortable and open to the ideas. You figure out what you need from the song and then you bring that to the show.

TLC: On the other hand, since you guys are so message-oriented, do you think it’s possible for the music to get lost in the shuffle?
TB: It is so idea-based. We’re part of a counterculture that’s about ideas that are not your regular rock and roll song topics. But I think what my bandmates write is visionary and I’m honored to be with them. The whole thing is for us to keep growing and keep pushing it and staying true to what we love – not just playing music that is esoterically, artistically experimental that we’re not even sure we like, but to do things that move us. There’s a thing where hardcore is a dance form of music,too. There’s got to be something that’s not just cerebral and built on a self-reflection of a political righteousness. It’s got to be more about the humility of being a part of that moment. It’s definitely important for it not to become some weird academic, theoretical thing.

TLC: It can be a little intimidating.
TB: That’s the problem with a lot of super-political punk bands. There’s just that sense that they get kind of lost in a very exclusive world. Punk was also invented to stand against typical rock star bullshit and to be very critical and to look at the spectacular nature of commercial entertainment, and to make sure that it wasn’t just fooling us. This is about friendship and an extended global family of artists, radicals, dreamers, maniacs, teachers. There’s a dentist in Edmonton who works on our teeth and then gets in the mosh pit afterwards. It’s like that.

TLC: If you found another way of establishing that connectivity, another platform that lets you communicate better to the people you want to communicate with the most, would you quit the music?
TB: I can’t imagine that. I’m a real shy person. Having the music in this band is the reason why this whole part of my personality exists, I think. I think that it would be difficult for me to just speak like Henry Rollins or something. It’s also just wanting to be a part of something that everyone shares in.
It’s the collective catharsis about this that is bigger than just the ideas, and the song is the platform for debate and opinions and building a world within a world and giving people hope. All of that is intensely important to us. But I think it’s also just the emotional clarity, the communication, the dropping of pretense, the sense of intelligence and ferocity and the optimism that’s a part of a punk show – even with all of the contradictions in punk, all of the stupid violence and sociopathic personalities that are also drawn to it. That’s a huge part of why I’ve ever had the courage to write about the things that the songs are about and to express the ideas.
For me, it’s all about the music. It’s all one experience, and the effects it has on personality and on mentality are fairly transcendent. There’s no way to get to that state just planting a garden in your backyard. That’s not to say that we don’t carry the revolution with us in every mundane moment of our lives, waiting in line at the bank, all that shit. There’s a certain amount of fearlessness and hope that has to do with it being beyond the individual. The annihilation of the ego is what happens. That allows you to get past your fears or insecurities or arrogance. All of that stuff falls away, and that’s why the songs feel the way they do.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

This month, Helsingborg, Sweden’s The Sounds return with Crossing the Rubicon, their third album of synth-accented glam-pop.
Awash in piss and vinegar, the record picks up right where 2006’s Dying To Say This To You left off, with the band plowing its way through athletic, menacing rock anthems with sweaty dexterity under the guidance of sassy siren Maja Ivarsson’s raspy yelps.
Team Last Call chatted up drummer Fredrik Nilsson about the new album and the Swedish cockiness curve.

Team Last Call: What were your goals musically with this album?
Fredrik Nilsson: We just wanted to make an album that was totally the band’s [idea] of what our music is, and not someone else’s. We did all the demos ourselves in our own studio in Sweden, and then we decided to not have any labels whatsoever involved in the process of making the album. The five members of the band, we financed everything, all the album costs. We got rid of pretty much all of our old labels in various territories. Right now we’re licensing the album here in the States to a record label, but The Sounds own the album.

TLC: Going into your third album, do you feel satisfied with where you are as a band?
FN: The only thing I really want now is for the album to be out. It’s much more fun to play the new songs when people actually know them. I’m sure by the end of the tour cycle I’ll be really sick of the songs and just want to write a new album, but that’s the way it goes.

TLC: You’ve always been plagued with comparisons to Blondie. I always thought it was unfair, until I heard “Beatbox” from the new album, which sounds exactly like “Rapture” …
FN: Blondie is a great band, but I don’t think any of us is a Blondie fan or has any Blondie records or anything like that. To me, that’s just a lazy thing that journalists do, is to compare a band to something else that already exists. I think that’s a really easy and cheap way. To me, that’s really boring. It has more to do with the look of the band than the sound of our band.

TLC: You also get grouped in with the whole ’80s revival scene.
FN: We all grew up in the ’80s, so it factors in somewhere, but we never set out to have an ’80s sound. It surprises me sometimes. As soon as there are keyboards on the tracks, they all refer to the ’80s, like that was the only decade that had keyboards.

TLC: You’ve got a reputation for being a really cocky band.
FN: I don’t think we ever considered ourselves to be a cocky band. We’re a self-confident band.

TLC: I meant cocky for Swedish people.
FN: They don’t like it in Sweden when you’re too self-confident. They have this saying – Jantelagen, it’s called in Swedish – that basically says you’re not better than anyone else. Everybody’s the same. Don’t think you’re better than anyone else, because you’re not. We don’t think we’re better than anyone else. We just think we’re really good.

TLC: People have accused you of not being Swedish enough. Is there such a thing as being too Swedish?
FN: Yeah, there is. I think you can only explain it to other Swedish people. But yeah, you can definitely be too Swedish. There’s a lot of people like that in Sweden. They’re very, I don’t want to say self-centered, but everything that happens in Sweden is really important and everything that happens outside of Sweden is not so important.

TLC: A lot of Americans know your music best from the GEICO caveman commercial. Is that good or bad?
FN: All ways of coming across our band to us is a good way. But if you see one song in a TV commercial and then you go and see the band, you might be in for a real surprise.

TLC: Maja is always making the Hottest Women in Rock lists. What’s it like for the rest of you to see stuff like that?
FN: All publicity like that is going to rub off on the band. It kind of makes me wonder where all the Hottest Drummers lists are, and why I’m not on them.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine