Guided by Voices, The Glands
40-Watt Club - Athens, GA

It’s cold in Athens. At least it was the night we decided to walk downtown strip to the 40-watt club to watch Guided by Voices perform. Of course I was looking forward to this, but by the fourth block my body was starting to get used to the cold, a certain sign of impending death. I never wear my coat to shows, because it’s hot inside and who wants to carry around a bulky coat in a sea of drunken pollardites? I certainly do not, so my trembling frame was covered merely by my trusty hoodie. During the final leg of my trek, I was pleased to discover that we would not have to wait outside. Good.

Once inside I rediscovered life, life that I would lose again later this night. I was warm, I could glide across the floor, I could jump on the chair, I could play that game which I forgot the name of. I could do anything! So I decided to go back outside. Why you ask? Well because I saw something. I saw a shirt. I saw a Guided by Voices shirt that I destine to have. A simple black shirt, with Guided by Voices lettered on the front in bold white sans serif letters and on the back a simple query. What shitty band are you in? So off to the ATM I went for the cash. Upon returning, I purchased the shirt, reanimated my limbs, and took my position on left side, just in front of the stage, to watch the opening band perform.

This band was called Glands. An odd name indeed, but who am I to question these four kids playing on stage. If they want to be called Glands, I have no problem with it. The songs were catchy, noisy, sing-along-ish, indie rock that has been duplicated many times in the entire Athens/Chapel Hill scene. Nothing spectacular stood out, but that was okay, they are just the opening band. The lead singer thanked the crowd for allowing them to play, because he knew. He knew why these people were here. They came for Bob.

Speaking of Bob. He was not on stage yet. I imagined him backstage, doing the drunken collapse, with the other band members poking him with microphone stands trying to get him to get up to do the show. Meanwhile, the roadies are hanging the sign. The neon sign that will soon exclaim, “The club is open” and will surely send this sea of people into orgasmic fits. Guess what? I was right. They lit up the sign and the crowd cheered, everything was good.

When Bob, Nate, Tim, Doug, and Jim finally staggered on stage, I fully expected them to start blasting A Salty Salute, but no, Bob wanted to play Hello There, a Cheap Trick song. That’s just what he did the entire night, Bob played exactly what he wanted to play. For over 3 hours and nearly 50 songs, Bob and his group of rotating band members played. They played everything from tunes off their yet to be released album Isolation Drills, to obscure songs from the Suitcase box set. When they finally made it to Salty Salute, it was on the second of three encores. Once they played it while Bob was away relieving himself, and then again when Bob burst onto stage, proclaiming the club is once again open.

I can’t recall every song they played, but it went something like this:

Glad Girls Chasing Heather Crazy Pivotal Film Isolation Drills Run Wild How’s My Drinking? Ha Ha Man Back to Saturn X I’m Dirty Chasing Tara Shocker in Gloomtown Far-Out Crops Submarine Teams Frequent Weaver Who Burns And I Don’t So Now I Do Tight Globes Pop Zeus Soul Train College Policeman Teenage FBI Mushroom Art Zoo Pie Things I Will Keep Fair Touching Alone Stinking and Unafraid In Stitches Peephole I Am a Scientist Tractor Rape Chain Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory Hot Freaks Closer You Are Game of Pricks Watch Me Jumpstart A Salty Salute Motor Away Cut-Out Witch Waved Out Whiskey Ships Psychic Pilot Clocks Out Girl Named Captain Get Under It Flat Beauty Baba O’Reilly Hello There.

Pirouettes, high kicks, drooling, fumbled cigarettes, many beers, a request to the crowd, a hole in the pants, broken glass, smothered in hugs. It was over. It was still cold outside, but we took a cab.

Life So Far, a four song demo CD from Madison, Wisconsin based power punk trio Rattbelly, is probably the best produced CDR I’ve ever gotten. It just sounds good, and while that might not be a prerequisite for lo-fi indie rock records, I think melodic punk rock needs to be heard loud and clear, as opposed to like it was recorded under a pile of laundry in the bottom of an oil barrel.

The first two songs, “Rebel” and “Life so Far,” are damn catchy but a little lacking. While “Life So Far” is almost too reminiscent of Green Day, and the lyrics to “Rebel” leave me a little flat, both songs employ excellent use of Van Halen style melodic choruses, the kind of thing you sing out your car window on a spring day. The solid drumming gives purpose to the frantic pace of the music, giving these tracks a sense of wild energy being just barely held back for your safety. Sometimes I wish vocalist Dan Clark would just let it all hang out (vocally, that is). He’s got the pipes, but he just needs to work some character, an individual sound, into his vocals.

The second half of this short collection hits a little closer to home for me. Perhaps it’s the twisted nature of “Stalker” and “Beautiful Mommies” that allows the vocals to bust loose a little more, and here the music is heavier and more layered than your average pop punk song. The final outcome are two entertaining, kick ass songs that really showcase what Ratbelly is made of.

It’s rare to hear a band that makes catchy, radio-friendly, original rock and roll with a unique-enough sound to stand out from morass of moribund, corporate rock formula crap out there today. Rattbelly strikes a balance between garden-variety pop punk and angry, growling hard rock without relying on a safe, proven formula. Punk as fuck. I hope they go far.

Godspeed You Black Emperor, Bonnie Prince Billy
The Wherehouse - Winston-Salem, NC

It made sense to me that God Speed You Black Emperor and Bonnie Prince Billy (AKA Will Oldham, AKA one of the Palace Brothers) were playing shows together. Perhaps a singer/songwriter with a twisted mind and twisted lyrics and an eight piece anarchist Canadian orchestra don’t seem like two bands that would go well together but it worked. It really worked well.

Neither band is made for the faint of heart. Fans of slick, comfortable (physically and mentally), carefully arranged concerts would be unhappy at this show. Their similarities made them perfect tour-fellows and their differences made the show a balanced study in musical contrasts.

The differences in style from one man’s cracked whisper to eight people’s lush instrumentals made the show like the favorite mix tape your friend made you. Start softly and simply, focus on lyrics and meaning and feeling. Start with a rough edge, unproduced and raw and move into a swirling ocean of orchestrated multi-layered sound.

It made sense to me that these two groups, with grass roots sound, feel, and focus would play a venue like The Wherehouse in Winston-Salem, NC. The Wherehouse is exactly that. It’s a warehouse, and ex-slaughterhouse actually. It is not a cheekily named club, but is an honest to god from what I can gather more or less abandoned warehouse with dicey plumbing, and holes in the floor (and what fun we had staring through the holes, and better yet, watching others, transfixed by the possibility of finding something no one else can see, bending over to peek!). The stage was roughly the size of my bed.

I like to be surrounded by sound. I like to feel like I’m seeing a band and not watching small people far away on a giant TV screen with 10,000 of my closest friends and for me, The Wherehouse is the perfect size to see a show. From the door I could have pegged Will Oldham himself in the head with a beer bottle, had I been so inclined. And I throw like a girl, too.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy is a strange man. He has one of those faces, his whole head really, that would make a portrait rendered by a straight sketch artist look like a boardwalk cartoonist’s caricature. He leaned back in his chair like an old man on a porch somewhere in the Appalachians, one ankle crossed over his knee, guitar which he sometimes played and sometimes just rested his arms on sitting on his lap, and softly began to sing.

He and the band made a lovely cacophony of random sounds and soothing noise that Bonnie Billy’s warbling and broken voice floated and soared over like a busted kite. He pretty much just sat and sang, sometimes closing his eyes, sometimes opening them and tilting his head back, looking preoccupied, lost, maybe even mentally deficient. Once he went so far as to lift his cowboy boot clad foot in the air but mostly he just sang.

Each song in their set ended with two or three of the musicians stopping and looking over at Bonnie Billy, who would shrug and stop playing. Are we done with that one? he would ask. Oh, okay. What should we play next? They’d discuss it briefly and start again.

The set ended with a couple of rockers, which honestly made me wish they had played faster songs the rest of the time. But it was okay because he was only the opening band.

About fifteen minutes passed between sets and the mystery of how nine musicians, including a set drummer, a percussionist (with tympanis!) two guitarists, a keyboard and other random things player, a bassist, a violinist and a cellist, could fit on a stage the size of a double bed was solved. The string section sat more or less on the floor. A far cry from cold distant area and stadium shows, indeed, and I was excited to be awash in the sounds.

While Bonnie Prince Billy and GSYBE! may have toured together on the strength of their similarities, their differences are what make the pairing work so well. While Bonnie Billy and the boys played simple strong songs without benefit of a set list or, it seems, much discussion over how long the songs should be, GSYBE! took the stage, dedicated the show to the spirits of the animals killed when the Wherehouse was an abattoir, and played two hours worth of seamless, nonstop, brilliantly arranged complex soaring music. With no discussion, no conductor, and only the barest hint of difficulty (and only during one little part) these nine beer and Captain Morgan drinking knit hat wearing heavy smoking Canadians crammed on a tiny stage and blew my brain out of my head.

As I mentioned, the Wherehouse is a big warehouse, a truly low-rent concert going experience. It was less an actual venue and more of a practice space. The show was billed as BYOB, which I took to be more of a liquor license thing, but which actually could have been better communicated as Bring Your Own Beverage as it was more of a “We are provided a sheltered space for a band to play that you might like to see and that’s it” kind of thing.

I love being that close to a band that I see. I love seeing live music in a space small enough for the sound to completely wash over me. And this space was perfect for that kind of sonic transcendences. And GSYBE! is a perfect band to see in a little warehouse that used to be a slaughterhouse that doesn’t have any concessions. And I was happy.

For awhile at least. My enjoyment of the music never faltered but after awhile my discomfort at standing for hours on a hard wood floor began to undermine my ability to loose myself to the music. I shifted and squirmed, and sat until my butt fell asleep and got up and shifted some more and honestly, by the time their phenomenal two hour set was over, I was glad. Tired, chilly, thirsty, and wheezy from the smoke, I enjoyed the music but was ready for the relative comfort of a warm car.

I wonder how the experience would have been different if God Speed had played in a symphony orchestra type venue. On one hand, I would have loved to sit semi-reclined in a comfortable chair with a clear view of the band and the creepy projector images they showed behind them while they played. I would have liked and pleasant lighting and access to liquids. But I wonder if how much that would have taken away from the show? How much of that feeling of swimming through the music would have been lost in a larger, more tastefully lit venue? How much of the crowd vibe would God Speed have missed if they weren’t quite literally sitting among them? And can a band of Canadian anarchists play in a better venue without compromising their values?

When I sat, I had a direct line of sight to the violinist and cellist. I watched as the cellist, lit cigarette in her mouth, walloped the hell out of her cello like some sort of string section Ira Kaplan. It was strange to see the violinist set her instrument on her lap during a section of the music where she didn’t play so she could drink her beer and light a cigarette. That’s certainly not something I would see if they played in an actual concert hall with concessions and comfy chairs. But how much did that affect the overall atmosphere, and the music?

I don’t know, really. Maybe I’m getting old and just like my fun a little cushier these days. Maybe, despite my protestations to the contrary, I’m selling out a little bit myself. Yes, I would like to see GSYBE and Bonnie Prince Billy in more comfortable surroundings. But I’d see them again at The Wherehouse, even knowing then what I know now.

Jennifer

I have never been a big fan of hip hop, especially commercial hip hop. In college, my friend Paul would try and turn me onto the likes of Method Man and Wu-tang. I would have none of it, there just wasn’t much for me to latch on to. I could appreciate the rhythm and the rhymes, but beyond that it was just more rapping with some back beats. Later in life, I discovered that I quite like hip hop, if it fits into a few categories. 1) It has an agenda that I can related to, example Aesop Rock, Fermented Reptile. 2) It’s incredibly catchy and fun to sing along with, example Tribe Called Quest, Jurassic Five. Or 3) The music itself is compelling and is an integral part of the lyrics. Enter Prefuse 73’s Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives.

Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives is one of those fusion of genre albums that makes you wonder why hasn’t anyone done something like this before? Sure there have been electronic elements in hip hop songs before, but nothing that I’ve heard uses them as a integral part of the album, the lyrics are the beats. Glitchy/IDM beats and stuttered vocals pepper this entire disc with brief ambient interludes and cut and paste speaking parts. This is taken to its pinnacle with “Point to B”, the skipping vocals become so staccato you wonder if they will come to a complete stop or just continue to break down into fuzz and white noise.

This is more than just another IDM release from Warp though. Scott Herren uses the electronic parts so much and so efficiently that the tracks were the rapper’s voice isn’t distorted, are the ones really stand out. “Life/Death” featuring Mikah 9 and “Blacklist” featuring MF Doom and Aesop Rock, and make a merely good glitch-hop album into a great hip hop album. I’m certainly not going to place Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives entirely into that genre though, especially since “Last Night” features a slightly digital stuttering Sam Prekop, post-rocker of Sea and Cake fame. Another monkey wrench tossed into the hip hop stereotype machine, but it’s a insanely mellow track that stands out from the raw bravado that the other rappers on the album put forth.

If anything comes of this release, I hope mainstream hip hop give Scott Herren a call to produce a few of their albums.

I read in some music magazine that Satellite Rides marked Old 97’s return to their roots. I took “roots” to mean “similar to Too Far Too Care” but apparently it means “boring, over produced Matchbox 20-like songs” because that’s what it sounded like. I feel sad being that harsh, because Too Far Too Care was so damn good (and I keep buying Old 97’s releases hoping to hear something even in the same ballpark) but I’m looking at my capsule criticisms as tough love.

If I didn’t like Too Far Too Care so much, I might have even liked Satellite Rides better. It’s not a horrible album, just comparatively shallow.

Sing-Sing, the duo of Lisa O’Neill and former Lush member Emma Anderson, have released their second album, Sing-Sing And I. The album is only available through the band’s store so while I was there I picked up their first album, The Joy of Sing-Sing. It’s interesting to hear the progression from 2001 to today. Lisa still has that playful quality to her singing but the songwriting and playing are more confident and focused this time out. The ladies are headed in a more pop direction and less of the dreamy stuff. I’m up for either so both albums work for me but it’s no secret that I’m up for great pop tunes. Speaking of which, check out Lover. There are a couple of carryovers from their Madame Sing-Sing EP, including the catchy A Modern Girl. If you read the bio on their site, it turns out that the EP was to raise funds for this album and people actually donated extra to help Sing-Sing along. Having been on the receiving end of such internet generosity, I know the band is thrilled. Heck, if I would have known about the donations I might have kicked in some extra but I’ll just have to be happy knowing that my EP purchase helped, even in a small way, to bring this fine album to fruition. Support those indie bands, people.

Deicide, Marduk, Skinless & Gorguts
Albany, NY

Peculiar things happen when you turn your back on the local hardcore/punk scene you supported throughout your youth.

The bands you start and the business you conduct spread out like icy fingers connecting to all other jaded ex-hardcore kids that have grown up and grown out of it. At the same time, you become a scenester in a scene that you no longer feel a part of. Suddenly people actually talk about your band and come to see your shows despite all the years that you played to empty rooms before you got older and wandered away from it all.

To top it all off, you no longer have to pay for shows.

Rather than take advantage of this godlike power, you begin to pick only a select number of bigger and better shows to go to. You start to remember them for the music instead of the funny comments your friends made or the silly dances and pro-wrestling moves the “scene clowns” were doing. Musicians become stars again and you regain the sense of wonder that you lost when the band was just a bunch of dirty kids who were no better than you, playing on the same floor you were standing on.

Granted, there is something sad about that… a large part of your social life has atrophied and the human aspects of show going have withered to the point that now you are a passive object being entertained instead of a vital part of an exchange.

It goes without saying that I am currently undergoing this process and in order to conquer these mixed emotions, I require the help of the biggest, baddest, and most satanic bands that are likely to soil Upstate New York with their footprints this year.

Gorguts is not my style. I don’t know much about them and upon hearing them, I don’t have much desire to learn. They are basically just like any other 90’s Florida death metal outfit which means downtuned, uninteresting riffs and monotonous mid-range growl-screaming that sounds neither frantic nor evil. As if to indelibly stamp in my mind the complete lack of interest their set brewed within me, they took a full 10 minute break halfway through to fix a guitar. I weathered this trial standing by the pool table waiting for my girlfriend to show up and trying extra hard to avoid the gaze of the washed up metal relics who might recognize me from high school and try to strike up a chat.

Ahh the relics. There are only a handful of real honest metal (not hardcore… not metalcore… but METAL) shows around these parts every year and you can bet that some long forgotten throwbacks come out of their basements and trailers when the clarion call sounds.

The bittersweet nature of being a plain-clothes metal fan is that while you think it’s honorable to live the metal lifestyle to the fullest, it’s also terribly sad to see the locals you used to look up to still stuck in their glory days and consequently still stuck (and I do mean STUCK) in their tight pants and biker boots. The bald patches compete with the double chins and beer guts to see which feature of normal aging will really transform the (remaining) long hair and band logo-covered denim jacket from a badge of local metal authority to a full on burning bush of graceless aging.

The bullet belts, however, were top-notch.

Gorguts was finally out of the way and Skinless was next.

In order to fully comprehend Skinless, it is necessary to know that there are several levels of metalhead:

• The casual fan that grew up with an older brother who listened to Slayer and Maiden (and often has Malevolent Creation right next to Dave Matthews in their CD rack).
• The metalhead that listens to metal as a default setting of their lifestyle (whether that entails x-treme sports and jolt cola or a bondo-covered firebird and uncle Budweiser) but doesn’t really do any deep thinking on the matter.
• The academic, who may not have a lot of metal friends or connections, but knows everything about every band and has a massive CD collection and every t-shirt known. You can spot them standing alone in the corner of the venue, with the tape recorder, barely enjoying the shows that they are furiously collecting for posterity.
• The serious metal connoisseur who doesn’t find Venom to be at all funny and resents you for thinking so.
• Undetectable metal spies like myself who usually give little outward appearance of their true nature, but secretly wish they had never thrown out their Kreator backpatch.
• Glue sniffing lunatics who live only for intoxication, fornication, and metal in any form.

Skinless are the last on that list. They eat, breathe, sleep, smoke, and snort metal. Their sound is basically an improved mixture of Cannibal Corpse and Deicide with a few extra twists, but the important thing is that their influences are bone deep and whether or not you approve of the fact that their lyrics tend to be manifestos for the painful destruction of all mankind, you have to respect that they do what they do from the gut.

The singer did the evening’s only stage dive (from the top of a 15 foot stack of PA speakers). He topped that by taking time out of their set (of songs about killing and maiming and perversion) to remark that his girlfriend was beautiful.

Marduk took the stage while nobody was paying attention. The key thing to remember about Marduk is that they are part of a dying class of black metal that harkens back to the earliest Norwegian bands who had more in common with GG Allen than Mercyful Fate. Early black metal shows were about hastily smeared on corpsepaint, old leather and spikes that looked like they might have actually been worn into battle, and often a bit of onstage self-mutilation.

Marduk did not opt to slash any chests this evening, but the punk ferocity and unrelenting blast beat mayhem was there, complete with the facepaint and loads of satanic tattoos. Their songs are exclusively about war, Satan, destruction, Dracula, Satan, and war. While other bands of their genre are moving on to orchestral stylings or bleak electronica, Marduk are plowing on like a tank through a convent with nary a stylistic variation in sight.

Judging from the crowds initial reaction, perhaps Albany was not ready to embrace a style that had already come and gone in other parts of the world… but a band can’t put out an EP named Fuck Me Jesus and not expect to encounter some friction now and then. Regardless, they put on a full-blooded set and filled the space between explosions with such banter as “This song is for all of you… because when you stepped into this venue, you fell out of grace with god.” He also had a wide palette of stage moves which included forming an inverted cross with his arms. Pure magic!

During a large chunk of Marduk’s set, a cowboy was being harassed by some fight-rock thugs because of his hat. The cowboy seemed to be digging Marduk. I decided to help him out.

Deicide is a band I have been listening to since I was probably 17 years old. They are on a short list of the first few death metal bands I really got into and if I actually scrutinized that list, they might be the very first TRUE death metal band I ever really liked. Their first album is unassailable in my eyes. From the heaviness of the production to the demonic chorus of vocals, it stands up to anything that came out before or since.

Luckily they played more than half of that album… forsaking the fact that 3 others have come out since then (including one within the last year which they were supposedly touring for, but only played one song from). Philosophically, I have a problem with bands retreading past glory at the expense of new exploration, but in this case, I was too busy shouting out the words to bother with philosophy.

While Marduk took the evening’s cake for overall evil, their song titles simply couldn’t hold a candle to such Deicide gems as “Blame It On God,” “Crucifixation” and “Bible Basher”.

Apart from anyone who has any concept whatsoever of an afterlife and eternal punishment, who couldn’t love a band led by a man with an inverted cross branded into his forehead and who furthermore penned a ditty called “Satan Spawns the Caco-Daemon” in tribute to his newborn baby (named, of course, Daemon)?

The awkward nature of being this sort of scenester is that you aren’t sure if you are supposed to stick around and thank the guy who got you in for free or just enjoy the show and go about your business like the world owes you a living. Generally, I choose the latter, but the social machinery of metal is such that the next time I see my benefactor (Skinless’ singer), I pretty much just have to inform him that “Deicide fucking rules” and it will suffice.

I ended the evening of nihilistic brutality with a Boca Burger (eaten savagely with a sharp knife) and some lemonade (imbibed with total abandon).

Scot

Neurosis is one of those bands.

You know… you are having a conversation with your record-geek friend and you say “wow man… this new album is totally heavy” and your friend says “Whatever, man… Neurosis has been doing that same thing for like 15 years”.

The Melvins… The Swans… Neurosis… they’ve been doing “it” for years before you ever knew “it” existed.

Being pulverizing and bleak and brutal… playing slow glaciers of riffs layered with screaming… writing off the wall lyrics that depress and confuse… it’s nothing new.

They were doing it 15 years ago man.

In that subset of bands, there are the Slayers, who bludgeon their style to death year after year until it becomes rote and nearly irrelevant. They live on their reputation and most likely continue to crank out album after album simply because they like being musicians and not because they love the music.

Then there are the Neuroses, for whom every album expands on the vision of the last one. Every song is a step in a new direction without ever abandoning the things they have done in the past. Every move they make ups the ante for their peers who were already unable to keep up.

So the lesson for this album, as every other review is fond of mentioning, is melody.

Neurosis’ past forays into melody have been of the early Ian Mackaye variety where they are sort of hitting notes and sort of shaping out some primitive melodies, but it’s obviously not high priority. Shouting in (implied) E Minor.

Now here they are on A Sun That Never Sets singing. Really singing. Not yelling.

The subdued parts of the songs are as weighty and well-executed as any of the heavy parts, and when the tsunamis of heaviness finally do interrupt the campfire singing, they are layered with violins and bagpipes - not with the baroque ornamentation of a black metal band, but dense and unsettling like melodies played by a swarm of insects. Neurosis has not decreased the brutality one notch… they are merely including some things to compare it to for a change.

From the a cappella ending of “Falling Unknown” to the bizarre chanting of “From Where Its Roots Run”, it’s revitalizing to hear that a band can stay at the top of its game and keep their music unquestionably heavy while still taking some chances. It’s metal music for metalheads with a bigger attention span and a hunger for something richer… metal for grownups.

“But then, I’m just the drummer!”

Vito, Photo by Sarah. (2004)

The Rapture are currently storming round the UK with the NME Awards Tour, along with Franz Ferdinand, the Von Bondies and Funeral For A Friend - strange companions, perhaps, for this New York futuristic-tribal-dance-punk-rock-hard-to-pin-down outfit. But then, as drummer Vito tells us, The Rapture are used to strange. They’ve played with Gil Mantera’s Party Dream, after all…!

YSOS: So, how’s the NME Awards Tour going so far?

Vito: It’s going really well actually, yeah. Every show the reactions have been really surprisingly good. We thought it’d be good but we weren’t really sure what to expect. But it’s been really amazingly good. People have been dancing really enthusiastically. For us it’s a good tour to do, because we’d built up a pretty good underground audience but we’ve been associated with more of a cult scene. We’re getting a lot of kids coming to the tour, who probably have no idea who we are, but they ask for autographs afterwards. It reminds me of when I was a kid and I’d go to see lots of different bands…

YSOS: Is it strange playing with lots of very different bands?

Vito: It’s actually been a lot less weird than I thought it would be, it’s turned out pretty well. I mean, Franz Ferdinand opened, but they’re like the biggest band around at the moment! So, it’s good that a lot of people show up early. And then the Von Bondies are a really good rock band, they seem to go down okay. And we’ve been doing well, and then Funeral For A Friend have a huge fan-base.

YSOS: Have you been watching the other bands?

Vito: Yeah, I try to. I have a hard time watching the show before I play because… it’s not necessarily nervous, but I need to focus. Everybody’s got on so well, though, it’s been a great tour.

YSOS: There’s no egos around then??

Vito: No, it’s amazing. There haven’t been any egos at all. Everyone’s been super-cool. We share a dressing room with Funeral For A Friend and they’re really great guys.

YSOS: A lot of people seem to be of the opinion that the late 90s was a bad time for music, and that was when you formed. Do you think you were reacting against this music scene?

Vito: Yeah, it was a complete reaction to it. I mean, it’s probably the same in England or anywhere else, but in America there was a great underground scene – there’s always a great underground scene there, but we were a complete reaction to what was going on above ground. Like, four years ago if you told us a major label would even be interested in us, much less we’d be on one, or we’d be going to all these countries to play… we’d never have believed you! The charts and everything was dominated with Limp Bizkit and all these kind of bands, and there just wasn’t much variety there.

YSOS: Do you think the whole idea of the “New York Scene” – whether that can really be said to exist or not! – is something that helped you to get where you are?

Vito: Yeah, definitely! A large part of it is on a math level, like with major labels or whatever. I mean, there’s always been interest in music in the underground but the idea that there’s all these bands over there gets the labels interested. Whether it exists or not is a whole other story, but it’s surely helped us. I mean, it helped everyone when The Strokes broke through. Now it’s got to the point where it’s almost absurd – you’ve got to the fourth generation of New York bands and major labels are just signing anything and bands that have been around for a few months are being given a record deal.

YSOS: Are there any other bands around at the moment that you can recommend though?

Vito: I really like Franz Ferdinand, they’re pretty good. And I like the Von Bondies. Suckers I like, they’re from Sheffield. Gil Mantera’s Party Dream, who nobody’s ever heard of. They’re from Columbus, and one of them is Gil Mantera and the whole band is his Party Dream. The other guy is called Donny and – it’s very bizarre, they have these total made-up personas. They say they’re from Youngstown and they say they’re brothers but nobody really knows. People who know them in real life too! Like, a guy who’s room-mates with one of the guys and he still doesn’t know! But Youngstown’s this really messed up, white trash industrial town, and they say they’re from there and they’ll bring the party wherever. Donny – Ultimate Donny, that’s his name! – he sings and Gil Mantera plays the keyboards, and then they have programmed drum tracks and stuff, but they’re really weird. At one point he was starting to light himself on fire! I think he really hurt himself. They’re amazing – it’s one of the most incredible shows I’ve ever seen in my life. They opened for us a couple of times and it was like, “Holy shit, how are we gonna follow this?!” It was insane. All our equipment was behind and it got covered in beer – our tour manager was really pissed off.

YSOS: Do you always pick the bands who support you then?

Vito: Yeah, for sure. I mean, if you don’t like the band you’re playing with every night it’s really hard. When we do shows in New York we really try to set up an event. We’ll have a DJ afterwards too, and in between the bands somebody’s playing good music, so hopefully we can build the night up and get people dancing even before we come on.

YSOS: You’re DJing yourselves at the Camden Barfly after the gig in London. Is that something you’re really into doing?

Vito: I love DJing, and it’s something we’ve done for a few years. I’ve got turntables and stuff and I’m not totally crap at it! It’s really fun because you can really get people going and so on. I just play jams, of like Prince and Michael Jackson and stuff that I really like. Being in a band you get a lot more opportunities – people don’t expect anything, it’s kind of like the celebrity DJ thing. I’m sure I wouldn’t be doing these kind of DJ gigs if I wasn’t in The Rapture, but… I am, so we do – as much as we can! It’s really fun, after a show especially, because you can’t sleep or anything. We’ve done about four shows where we’ve just gone to DJ gigs right after the show, and DJ-ed till about 2 or whenever the club closes. It’s really fun to just play music and dance. Everyone DJs in a band now though, so there’s not enough times to go round!

YSOS: Do you argue about what to play??

Vito: Yeah, everybody gets a little drunk and then all want to play at the same time. It doesn’t work! We’re trying to figure that out.

YSOS: You constantly seem to have been amused by the efforts of the press to categorise your sound as a band. Why do you think they find it so hard?

Vito: Probably because we don’t really try to categorise ourselves…

YSOS: I’ve spoken to bands who’ve said that while it’s hard to be original, when you get all kinds of different influences coming together from different members of the band you can actually end up with something original almost by accident.

Vito: Yeah, I think that’s part of it. I mean, there’s no one main singer-songwriter in the band, so that probably helped out a lot. We’ll never turn down an idea for being too unusual or anything like that, so everything gets added together.

YSOS: Do you ever worry that that means you’ll be categorised as this band with a “strange” sound – like, the NME always go on about the cowbells…

Vito: Yeah, exactly, I know! I think they’re still having a problem trying to pin us down. I mean, we’re not like this big party band…

At this point various Von Bondies walking past proclaim loudly that this is untrue

Vito: Yeah, that’s a lie! But I mean, we’re not always going “Yeah, we’re rock ‘n’ roll! Bring the chicks and the beer on!” It’s just not us. So they can’t really group us with all that. And they like to have a scene to fit things with, and they just don’t know where to put us.

YSOS: So you’re just the band with the cowbells then?!

Vito: Yeah! [laughs]

YSOS: What plans do you have for the future, after the NME Tour finishes?

Vito: We’re touring some more – playing in Europe and so on – and then we want to get back to recording. We’ve been writing quite a lot for the new record, and we’re really looking forward to getting back to that.

YSOS: I would ask what the new stuff sounds like, but it’s probably hard to describe!

Vito: Yeah! Well, I really want to make a party album, that’s my idea. I want to make an album like Prince. Echoes, for me, was perhaps a little down in places. But I mean we have ballads and everything – all these different songs. I feel like our live show’s good in that way, because there’s breaks where people can stop dancing! But yeah, I’d really like to make a party album. But then, I’m just the drummer!

Athens, GA

I’m constantly amazed by the CDs I find in the used bins at the record store. Rarely does a CD purchased from the used bin ever change my life. Fourteen years ago, fresh out of high school and stumbling intrepidly into the world, I purchased a CD from a used bin purely out of curiosity. The CD was God Bless Us All by NRBQ, a live set from 1987. I’d heard of these guys before but never actually heard them. I really didn’t know what to expect. When the unabashed exuberance and happy bounce of the music jumped out of the speakers, I knew this was something special. I listened to the CD again and again, each time becoming more familiar with it, more excited. I wanted to be at that party.

Little did I know that by buying the CD, I was already there.

Nearly a month after that fateful purchase, I began volunteering at a public radio station so eclectic that their record collection was in complete disarray. The African juju music was filed right next to Elton John, and the George Russell records were as far away from the jazz section as they could be. My job was to organize this musical mess. About two days into the project, I found the holy grail: the NRBQ stack. There was, among others, NRBQ with Skeeter Davis, the manic Scraps, the aforementioned God Bless Us All, and the classic At Yankee Stadium.

From the moment the needle hit the vinyl of At Yankee Stadium, all thought of ever leaving the party had vanished. All that was left was the raucous beat of Tom Ardolino’s drums, Big Al Anderson’s steady guitar, Terry Adams’ zany bounce, and Joey Spampinato’s sympathetic voice. The Q was the soundtrack to the rest of the record organization project. They made fun of me, kept me laughing, and held my spirits up throughout the project. They had become my friends.

Fast forward through fourteen years.

I’ve been to several NRBQ live shows - parties, if you will - and I’ve figured out at least one thing about these guys. A live NRBQ show is an adventure. Each time, I am greeted with the happiest bunch of musicians to ever take a stage. When a band is having as much fun as the enthusiastic crowd there to see them, you know you’re in for a treat.

Such was the case when NRBQ played at the Caledonia Lounge in Athens, Georgia, on June 2, 2001. As the band made their way onto the stage, Terry was singing before he even made it to his microphone and keyboards. Finding his seat behind the drums, Tom waved at the crowd like a bearded beauty queen from a float in a parade of freaks. Donning his bass guitar, Joey smiled like a Cheshire cat that knows you’re in for a wild ride. Johnny, Joey’s brother and still the “new guy,” drew his perpetual smirk, a result of the twist of fate that made him a Spampinato, a killer guitar player and a natural choice to replace Big Al in NRBQ. Finally in front of his microphone, Terry let out a big “weeeeeellllll…” and the band launched into “Tired Of Your Permanent.”

There wasn’t going to be a serious moment in the house tonight. Even when Joey stepped up to sing a heartfelt love song the mood was positive and light. Each song that bounced from the stage was like an old pal that makes your face light up every time you see him.

And speaking of faces, no one has a better collection of zany faces that ol’ Terry Adams. Each time he brushed his moppy hair from out of his face, he treated us to another kooky look from his vast archive of funny faces. Regaling us with his chant of “c’mon, c’mon,” Terry was the ringleader in this greatest show of mirth. I know of no other band that can sing about girl scout cookies, encyclopedias, and wacky tobacky like the Q can.

NRBQ has been around for over 30 years. They do what they do best, which is tour constantly and sumptuously entertain no matter where they go. I’m grateful that I can still see them play in a club that fits only about 100 people. Terry even remarked, repeatedly, in a high squeaky voice, that we could all tell our grandchildren that we once saw NRBQ “in a tiny little place way down Georgee way.” I’ll also remember to tell them to always search through the used CD bins, too.

Armando