On The Road Again

Rip It Up, Issue 191, 1 June 1993, Page 12

On The Road Again

Heavenly, American manic pop trio Beat Happening and "the obvious stuff" like Sugar and Dinosaur Jnr. "It's quite strange really when you haven't got a lot of money to spend on new stuff, it's hard to experiment and hear a lot of new stuff, so you tend to stick with what you know and you buy something you know you're going to like. People say that's narrow minded and I should be listening to everything but I haven't got the time or the money." Betterthedevilyouknowthan the discs you don't. He's also been playing social soccer (a fierce passion of Robert's) for the Critic (local student newspaper) and completing some paintings for a San Francisco Bats fan who was so enthralled by his cover artfor The LawofThingsthat he commissioned some originals. Yep, apart from coming up with cracking pop songs Robert, like labelmates Martin Phillipps, David Mitchell, Chris Knox and John Collie, isn't too bad at the visual side of things either. We've been chatting in the backyard of Robert's Dunedin house. A few days laterthe rest of the Bats, guitarist Kaye Woodward, bassist Paul Kean and drummer Malcolm Grant arrive down from Christchurch for a gig. They provided a further consensus on Silverbeet during that nebulous area between the sound-check and playing; like Robert they're all smiles about it as well.

"We're happier with this one than we have been with any of the others," Kaye reckons. "Yeah, I feel really positive about it — it sounds a lot more like how we feel we sound. It's a fairly 'livey' sounding album." which is Paul's way of massively understating the album's highlights. "But the bass isn't very good," Kaye says with a mischievious grin.

"Hey, it's alright, I'm much happier with the bass than I was on the last one." is the witty reply. In terms of the overall sound, "This one is much tougher than the ones prior to it," according to Paul. "We were disappointed with Fear of God. \Ne were hoping it would be a bit tougher than it turned out." Apart from being a succession of strong songs, the album also features a few warped special effects, most strikingly used on 'Love Floats Too' with its surreal backwards piano intro (guaranteed Satanic message-free). So how did it come about?

"We said 'let's start with a backwards piano, shall we'" is the droll response from Malcolm. They were also fortunate enough to make it through a tour and recording session without anything being plundered. While recording Fear of God at Writhe in Wellington a van chocker with gear disappeared and prior to that a few guitars has been stoken at gigs. Instead only less expensive items like dothesand a camera wentthistime round. On a more positive flightpath, playing excellent shows, the quality of American coffee and bagels and watching hilariously crappy TV shopping shows is what took their fancy over there.

On the Flying Nun covers tape Roger Sings the Hits the Bats rush out a shambolic version of Look Blue Go Purple's 'I Don't Want You Anyway'. If Malcolm had had his way they'd have done 'Cruise Control'. The mind boggles at what it would've sounded like if they hadn't chickened out. The Bats latest gig has been playing with US Mammoth labelmate Juliana Hatfield and the wonderous Belly. With Silverbeefs release, they'll be swooping through the country—try to see them, you won't be disappointed by their compelling pop — before heading off overseas again. There's a line in 'Alight from The Rear' that goes 'Heaven knows I've taken my time, I need some reassurance'. Hey Robert, Malcolm, Kaye and Paul, the time taken has been worth it and rest assured, Silverbeet is ? gem. GRANT MCDOUGALL

BARRY SAUNDERS is on the phone from Greymouth, one of the multitude of out-of-the-way spots on THE WARRATAHS-go-everywhere national tour.

The West Coast is famous for majestic scenery and ghost towns — Saunders hasn't had the chance to check out the scenery but he reckons he's had run-ins with a few ghosts. "This is the first tour we've been on where we've played theatres, usually we've done pubs," he says, "There's so much history in some of the theatres that you can feel it when you're playing. It's as if the ghosts of all the people who have performed there are watching you." Creepy. Saunders is no nutter with a penchant for spotting paranormal activity. He is a straight up and down guy. He sings country music, drives a Landrover and loves performing so much that he's at a bit of a loss when

the Warratahs aren't playing. Ask him to name his favourite part of New Zealand — the Warratahs have been everywhere, man, in their seven years — and he opts for the rustic charm of untrendy South Canterbury. There are no rock star pretensions here. For the first time, Saunders has brought a tape player on tour with him — he sounds a bit embarrassed about it; his preferred source of recreational music is his guitar. The switch to theatres as the preferred Warratah venue also has him reserving judgement on these changing times. "We really like playing pubs, we're a bit of a pub band, really. With theatres people come along to be entertained — you've got to work a lot

harder to win them over." <

crop up, that's the way country

But theatres suit the Warratahs in other ways. They're getting too popular for pubs, but don't draw enough to play at the bigger venues. Saunders puts the typical Warratahs crowd at one to two thousand.

It wasn't always that way, Saunders recalls a gig when only four people turned up. He can laugh about it now, but says the

music is, but if you listen to the lyrics on Big Sky you'll find they are about things we have never written about before." Big Sky covers 1990 s issues — unemployment, economic depression, media misinformation, and the pressures on the

band takes steps to make sure it never happens again. "When we were in Nelson the five of us grabbed our guitars and went down town to busk in Trafalgar Street at lunchtime." They didn't put hats out, it was a slice of PR designed to

band to move to Australia. There are fewer of the relationship songs which are the bread and butter of country music.

So what are the Warratahs then, musical art or simply a good time? "I think we're in the middle really," Saunders says, "I don't mean to cop out, but we can make people think and give them a good time as well."

give their concert that night a kick along.

The tour has not been built around Big Sky. Of the 12 tracks

If any band can adapt to

on the album, the Warratahs

"we can make people think and give them a good time as well."

change, the Warratahs should be able to. Vocalist Saunders, co-lyricist Wayne Mason, fiddler Nik Brown, bass player Clint Brown and Mike Knapp have logged hundreds of play-ing-hours together in a chame-leon-like series of Wellington bands. Check back through the lineups of groups like the Fourmyula, Rockinghorse and the Tigers — you'll find a Warratah or two.

only play half of them regularly in concert. 'High & Dry', 'Tightrope' and 'Big Sky' put in appearances, and Saunders does the standout vocal number on 'lt's All Over Now'. The week the Warratahs hit the roads of the Mainland, Big Sky was No 7 on the South Island charts (and Nolsinthe nation). That popularity was not matched by numbers at the Nelson concert, but the shows on the West Coast were sellouts.

After so long, playing together is second nature, bad gigs are a rarity, and the Warratahs sound has become instantly recognisable. Butthat same familiarity has bred some critical contempt. The Mayrelease Big Sky copped a few "same old stuff, are they really trying?" reviews.

And there was plenty of competition for the entertainment dollar on the Coast that week. The Warratahs played Greymouth on the same night as Straitjacket Fits, and both had to compete with a stage production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (with real dwarves). The dwarves may have been elsewhere, but the ghosts were watching over the Warratahs.

"I don't mindbad reviews if they're fair, but I get annoyed when they say, 'oh just more of the same,'" Saunders says. "It's true that the same chords do

KEVIN NORQUAY

There's a line that can be traced through rock, people who created music that always made you feel as if you had to stay alive just to hear it. People like Dylan, the Band, the Go-Betweens, Love, Slint, The Chills, and others. People who always amounted to much more than the sum of their parts would suggest. Pop music as it could and should be.

California band Grant Lee Buffalo are managing to echo that tradition.

Unlike most newly signed American bands, Grant Lee Buffalo are not another insipid, derivative kiddy-grunge band. Their new album Fuzzy is the sort of fashionless album that reeks of the past as much as the present of rock, and even tries to have something to say. Although Phillips, bass player Paul Kimble and drummer Joey Peters have been playing together for about five years, the band got their break when they sent a tape to Bob Mould's Singles Only Label, which is exactly that.Mould replied a couple of days later, saying he'd love to put it out.

At this point the band hadn't even met Mould, but they obviously impressed him. As well as making them his pick for 1993 in a magazine survey, Mould invited them to support Sugar on their last tour. As a fan, who even taught himself the guitar lines to some of their songs, Phillips describes touring with Sugar as "the most fun I've ever had out touring".

Right now, life in Grant Lee Buffalo is mostly on the road. The longest that Phillips has been home recently is about two and a half weeks. Unlike many suddenly successful bands, Phillips' first thought about life on the road is about how good it is: "It's real fun, it's real nice to bring the "real thing", it means a lot to get to play for, urn, folks".

The band sound very different live. "Because we're a three piece, we resort to extreme dynamics when we play live. We sort of have space on our side. If we want the vocal to stand out more, we take away one thing — we use a method of subtraction." Doing things within the band is important to them. For example, bassist Paul Kimble produced the album, and acts as roadie as well. With the new album they've lost a little of that independence.

"As things get larger, like when you're dealing with an album, there are a lot more people involved. We really tried to keep it close to home, but there are other things like typesetting, so we work with that person, and there are other people that get involved... "We tend to work very fast in the studio for the same reason — the quicker we work, the more pure it comes out.

As well as people like the Band and the Chills, Fuzzy is reminiscent of John Lennon, the Violent Femmes, Galaxie 500, and many others. Phillips admits that it's difficult not to sound like somebody. "None of us live in caves, we're all exposed to the music that's on the radio, even someone else's radio in the car next to us, so it would be dishonest to say that any of us, our band or anyone's band, is completely uninfluenced... but we never sat down and said, we should try to sound like this. "The three of us have been playing together for a number of years, so I think we've just gravitated towards a certain sound and style." One song that does evoke comparisons is 'Dixie Drug Store', a song about muggy July around suppertime in New Orleans. It's quite reminiscent of the Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival, especially when you find out that Phillips has never been there, and has about as much to do with New Orleans as Canadian Robbie Robertson and Californian John Fogerty. What Robertson, Fogerty and Phillips are all doing is mythologising—taking the most idealistic and gorgeous icons and perceptions of America and immortalising them and making them real in the process. "It's like casting those traditional figures, like Hollywood stars or the Lone Ranger and putting them into some sort mythological place. Even real people like Evil Knievel, once they hit the mass audience they become something else, superhuman." Alongside the mythologising, Fuzzy has it's share of songs with a much starker view of America. The angry 'America Snoring' and the softer 'Stars n' Stripes', with its telling "Got you on the Handycam, fits in my hand..." refrain, express a much starker view of the Land Of The Free.

"It seems like it's a really wild time at the moment and I would assume it's going to get wilder", nervous little laugh, "I sense a great deal of suppression. "There are certain folks who got their invitation to the party a little bit early I think — Certain people are already celebrating the revolution, but there are big changes to come." Phillips believes that America is in the position where it's a choice of evolve or die, where even evolving involves a 'phoenix rising from the ashes' situation. "We're all going to have to become much more tolerant of each other, but what happens to get to that point, that could be tough, to give birth to that new ideal..."

Thefuture of America is only one of several things on Phillips' mind on Fuzzy. He writes songs like some people keep diaries, just about what's on his mind.

"I wouldn't have written it if it didn't hit me personally, if it didn't come from some place that made me write it.

"None of my songs are written to change someone's way of thinking. I'm saying "this is how I feel, how do you feel?"

"I try to go for the total experience, something you can think about if you want to, but I have to feel it in my gut myself. "I always hope that it works on both those levels, emotionally and intellectually."

CAMPBELL WALKER

Ever sit alone on a hot sticky noon with flies on your dick? Ween have, and they've written a song about it called — you guessed it — 'Flies On My Dick'. What is Ween? Two American boys obsessed with their weenies? Not quite. Dene and Gene are a couple of four-track home recording nuts who've been making Ween music ever since they met in Junior High nine years ago. Pure Guava is their major label debut. 18 songs with peculiar titles ('I Play If Off Legit', 'Poop Ship Destroyer', 'The Stallion Pt. 3') and music to match. As for the vocals — is it a girl? Is it a redneck? Is it Bill and Ted on an excellent drug? No it's Dean or Gene sped up or slowed down while the musical accompaniment blurps and screeps unsteadily, dipping to heavy distorted guitar one minute, spiralling away in a high-pitched helium haze the next. You would never guess that these guys dig Metallica. Now I'm talking to Dean Ween at home in Pennsylvania. His voice, unadulterated by technology, sounds like a confident Jonathan Richman. He puncutates every second sentence with a big fat meaty cough, hinting at unhealthy personal habits.

So Dean, you and Gene have been making music together since the day you met. Did you care if other people ever heard it? Dean coughs. "It was more justto entertain ourselves, really, but it was pretty good. Somebody gave us a gig in Trenton, New Jersey and we went over really well and so we kept playing gigs and it just went on from there. All the record labels we've been on have come to us. We never have tried to do anything yet for ourselves." Are you fascinated by making noises and experimenting with sounds? "No, more just hearing our own voices on tape."

Do you like 60s pop? Some of your songs are like distorted, hellium-zapped versions of sweet 60s pop. "Ah well, we like all kinds of music really. We could never really pinpoint — we don't like alternative music, I can tell you that. We don't like underground college rock or whatever. I don't know what the scene is like in New Zealand. We have like this bad college radio and everybody — they listen to all this crap. We like rock music, we like rock and roll and we like everything, jazz, rock and heavy metal, but we don't listen to underground alternative music. That just happens to be the circuit we're on."

You mean the "grunge" scene. "Yeah, none of that shit. I mean, I don't like any of that new music at all. I like Michael Jackson records and Prince and things like that. I don't listen to alternative music at all. Neither does Gene."

Do you like Led Zep and Black Sab? "Yeah, definitely, actually. They're the bands that made me want to make music. It certainly wasn't any of those underground bands." This is interesting, because 90% of the er, "songs" on Pure Guava are un-rock, veering from the John-Lennon-in-heaven-isms of 'Sarah' to the retarded leer of 'Flies On My Dick' (though live there's a lot more heavy guitar, says Dean). These songs are like evil nursery rhymes, the aural equivalent of those teeth-snapping dolls that menace Jane Fonda at the beginning of Barbarella. So do Ween have a nasty side? "Sure!" says Dean enthusiastically. "Definitely. It all depends on how you feel when you go to record. If you're really pissed off then, that's (laughs) you know..." Someone told me that on your first album some of your lyrics are a bit misogynist. Do you think that's true? "Yeah, we take a lot of flak. With each record someone's got a problem with something. Our first record, a lot of the songs were written when we were like 15 or 16 years old. A lot of times the women that are getting railed on on the first album are like Gene's stepmother!" I laugh, Dean laughs. "Nah, we're not misogynist or sexist or anything like that. You gotta be careful. It's like everybody's so politically correct. I don't know. I think it's just paranoia these

days. Everyone's very quick to call us racist or misogynist or something. We're nothing like that." My informant, who saw Ween in New York recently, also said they appeared to have a bit of a redneck following. Dean says they might have been attracted by the single 'Push The Little Daisies' ("the ugly side of us"). But Ween also attract the sort of people who bring them food and place it on the stage. Dean and Gene gather up the good stuff and leave the lousy stuff. This is now a Ween tradition.

You sound like you're singing under the influence of various, er, things. Is helium one of them? "It's not really helium. Oh I don't know [chuckles]. A lot of people don't realise that when you're done with a song you have the option to listen to it at like a million different speeds, so a lot of times we'll record a song — it'll sound normal —oh look —" suddenly Dean sounds alert. He goes off the line. He comes back. "We're on TV right now. Hold on a second." He holds the phone away. Laughs. "MTV. We're on this cartoon show. There's cartoon characters reviewing our video."

Indeed, I can hear cartoon voices jabbering above the wheedling chorus of 'Push The Little Daisies.' "Hah, we suck." says Dean.

("These guys have no future!" cackles the cartoon voice in the background). Then a Janet Jackson video comes on and Dean's back on the line.

Wow it must be weird seeing yourselves on TV. Are you famous now? "Wgll no, not really, no. I'm not usually impressed by, uh, by, uh, to me being famous is like [coughs] being like, I dunno, Barbara Streisand is famous, I think."

What's your favourite piece of equipment? "My favourite piece of equipment of all time? The distortion pedal." I read an article that said you and Gene are like smarter versions of Wayne and Garth. Do you think that's fair?

"No, I think that's a real piece of shit and anybody who says that should be just killed immediately." It said you were like knowing versions of those two.

"People are very quick to say that kind of shit. I mean, of course they couldn't say we're like Simon and Garfunkel or something really nice like that. Instead we have to be like two idiots, you know." Why do you use fake names then?

"Cos we started out as Dean and Gene Ween. If anyone asks my name I just tell them. We've never been very secretive about our real identity but now I would feel like Elvis Costello calling himself Declan MacMannus. Like I'm taking myself so seriously. It's like when Kiss took off their masks, you know, that was the worst thing that ever happened." Are you two hippies? "It all depends what classifies a hippy.. We're pot

smokers but we’re not very politically correct. I mean, we're not really politically incorrect. We drink every day, we both smoke like tons of cigarettes. We're not really left wing liberals or anything like that, we're more like scumbags, I think." Scumbags who are building their own studio and releasing their fourth album, courtesy of Elektra. Oh to be living in America! Are you opting for more sophisticated production this time? "Well yeah, yeah. It's so funny cos a lot of people make all these assumptions. We've done our last two albums on four track at home and because of that people make all these assumptions about us but if we'd had a 16 track at home we would have done it on that. It's just the best we could get our hands on for no money and it paid off because we can really work a four track, it's really easy, we're masters of the four track." And the next Ween album—what's it gonna be like Dean?

"It'll be great, that's all I can say, it'll just be great." DONNA YUZWALK