TEAM LAST CALL

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.”

Have you ever thought to yourself, “I wonder if any of my friends is eating a sandwich right now? And if so, is there lettuce? What about cheese?”
Well, I’ve got good news. The answer to those and equally important questions (“Is there mayo?”) can be found on the social networking website known as Twitter, where people of all ages, races, religions and sexual orientations gather to, through the miracle of wireless technology, slowly bore each other to death.
For the uninitiated: Twitter is a service that allows subscribers to create posts of up to 140 characters at a time and send them directly to other Twitter users. These posts – or “tweets,” as they’re called by people for whom dignity isn’t a priority – can be about virtually anything that pops into the author’s head, including, but not limited to, such popular topics as “It’s raining outside,” “I’m in the mood for tacos” and “Kittens are so cute.”
In other words, if an epiphany is what you’re searching for, Twitter might not be the tool for you. Conversely, if you firmly believe that the world needs to know each and every time you have oatmeal for breakfast, you might be the right kind of tool for Twitter.
Here’s a tweet from Todd, who is wearing a new shirt today. Here’s a tweet from Bill, who thinks that moms are hot. And here’s a tweet from Jill, who – OMG! – is eating a sandwich! And to think that you almost missed it! I mean, where would you be without this type of insta-communication in your life? Having sex, probably.
Ultimately, Twitter boils down to millions of people devoting their time to methodically narrating the minute-by-minute activities of lives that might actually be interesting if they weren’t spent almost entirely on Twitter. Oh, paradox! Fortunately for those people, being interesting is hardly a prerequisite for tweeting. Exhibit A: the single most popular Twitter user is Ashton Kutcher, who is dumber than ham loaf.
Some users take it very personally when you make fun of Twitter. “Stop the h8!” they say. “No 1 is 4cing U to look!”
Then they send out a tweet like: “Why do people PARK in a DRIVEway, and DRIVE on a PARKway?!?!!?? LOL! What’s up with that?! ROTFL LMAO OMG BRB L8R” and prove my whole point. Sure, Twitter has some attractive surface qualities, but underneath, it’s nothing but a mind-numbing wasteland of moronic half-thoughts and Hallmark Card platitudes. So basically, Twitter is Sarah Palin.
My young coworkers have tried for two years to convince me of the virtues of Twitter. “You should start your own account,” they say. “We can follow each other.”
“But we sit within 10 feet of each other for eight hours a day,” I answer. “Can’t I just, like, tell you what I’m thinking?” At which point they grab their phones and start sending out tweets about how Old Man Royer just doesn’t get it. Which I totally don’t.
But despite their ridicule, I have stood my ground and refused to start an account, based largely on my longstanding belief that stupid things are dumb. Twitter is just not for me. It’s not for you, either. Know who it’s for? Miley Cyrus, whose last tweet was (and I quote): “I am craving 1. Subway sandwich 2. Whopper from BK 3. A white chocolate mocha frap :( I’m veryy veryy hungee”
I don’t know what depresses me more: The fact that she actually used the word “hungee”; the fact that she thinks anyone would ever care what she wants to eat; the fact that her 1,660,046 followers really do care; or the fact that my coworker is one of those followers.
In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I did sign up for Twitter for a brief period of time, mostly because it’s hard to write about something you know nothing about. That’d be like a goldfish writing an article about space travel, or the Steelers writing a book about not looking stupid in gold tights. So, against every fiber of my being, including the fiber that says thirty-somethings shouldn’t be reading tweets written by Miley Cyrus, I created an account. I have to say, I was sort of excited. I was about to join the Twitter revolution, to discover what had millions of people so freaking cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs that they spent all day with their noses glued to their phones. I logged in, took a deep breath, put my feet up on my desk and waited for the winds of social networking to sweep me away.
Then it came, the moment I had been waiting for. My first tweet. And it said … wait for it … wait for it …
“I like dogs.”
OMG. L8R.

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.”

Last month, Team Last Call began an inspirational series of columns for English majors addressing issues like masculinity, grammar mastery and the remarkable way in which those two things cancel each other out.

As a general rule, all English majors are fueled by the same basic elements: Pringles, Little Debbie snack cakes and a crushing set of insecurities. And TMZ. We are not an outdoor breed, and as such shouldn’t ever be expected to participate in activities that involve dirt, shirtlessness or roughhousing of any sort. We also have poor motor skills and tend to struggle with things like 1) upper body strength, 2) lower body strength and 4) math.

But we have positive qualities too, such as our ability to write self-help articles. Which brings us to today’s column, in which we will examine the practice of writing for a living and how it relates to fatherhood. There’s nothing quite like theresponsibility for another human life to really drive home the point that, by nature of the fact that you’re an English major, you don’t know how to do anything. Yet, as a father, you’re expected to have all the answers – especially if you’re having a little boy. There are things that you as a father need to teach your son. Tough things. Manly things. Things you know nothing about, like carburetors and leaf blowers and … what do you call those things again? The ones that are always denting your car when you’re not looking? Wives.

No, you don’t know about any of that stuff because you, the English major, were too busy crying over Artax dying in the Swamps of Sadness to learn anything useful growing up. While the other little boys played soccer and earned their Boy Scout badges, you spent your summers pretend-making out with Winnie Cooper in your elbow and trying in vain to get past Soda Popinski on Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out.

But it’s important not to let the past get you down. Just because you never learned how to “change a tire” or “fix a leaky faucet” or “develop pectoral muscles” doesn’t mean you’re not fit to be a proper male role model. Your son will simply have a different kind of father figure to look up to and emulate. The kind that has Lady Gaga on his iPod. On the plus side, by the time everyone’s kids are all grown, yours will be able to punctuate circles around the rest of them. Sure, he might be plump and dateless, but he’ll be able to write a sonnet like it’s going out of style. Which it undoubtedly has.

While some little boys grow up with images of their fathers fighting crime and rescuing kittens from burning buildings and felling trees with their bare hands, your kid will have visions of you curled up on the couch with a laptop balanced on your stomach, watching reruns of What Not To Wear when you thought no one was looking. But in your sedentary state, you’ll be able to teach him such invaluable manly lessons as 1) A scoop top and an A-line skirt can have a slimming effect on the hips, 2) It is too possible to make a meal out of Easy Cheese, and 3) As long as you’re wearing sweatpants, things like tissues and napkins will always be redundant.

Some little boys learn how to fish, or build furniture, or design little wooden racecars that speed down the track and win first prize like the one in that Subaru Forester commercial. You know the one I’m talking about. The one that makes you feel like a horrible father, even if you’re a teenage girl, for not knowing how to help your son build a car like that. Well, winning first place in the Pinewood Derby might seem nice for some kids, but it’s not in the cards for yours. Your son is going to enjoy advantages of a different variety. Other fathers could teach him how to drive a stick shift or properly grill a steak. I guess that’s exciting, if you’re into “knowing” how to “do stuff.” But only you, the English major, can teach him the crucial, panty-dropping art of correct semi-colon usage; you can also teach him the best way to hand a credit card to the plumber, how to eat his weight at Hot Diggity Dog and, most importantly, how to hide it from his wife when he gets home for dinner.

In summation, English majors have nothing to fear when it comes to fatherhood, apart from the certainty of failure. But other than that, you’ll do just fine. And who knows? If you keep your child focused on the right kind of activities, maybe in a few years he can show you how to knock out Soda Popinski.

“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