It’s proof that a concert has motivated you to live up to your potential when you can go home and write the review immediately just because you know that the longer you wait, the less of the show you’ll remember and the more it will suck.
Firmly on the list of things that don’t suck, however, is Ani Difranco.
I arrived at the show shortly after she started and didn’t spend much time looking for the friends I knew were in the theater somewhere. It was a weeknight concert and I just wanted to chill out and listen before I went home to crash. And if you can’t listen to an Ani concert alone, with all her individual-empowering vibes, what is there left in this world to enjoy solo?
As I settled into listening mode, I was immediately glad I hadn’t skipped this one. Her guitar playing, captivating on record, was nothing short of impressive live. The band, especially the xylophone player with Einstein hair, also sounded good and were fun to watch. The combined effect had me grooving subtly with the packed McDonald audience, despite my tiredness. As I swayed in the back and brooded about schoolwork and various responsibilities, Ani slowly worked into my subconscious with her effervescent personality and poignant lyrics.
Eventually, her strategy worked and I decided such worry was useless if I was a Woman In Charge, not pretty and definitely not a fucking Napoleon. Instead, I zoned out while people watching for a while. Lots of girls high on estrogen and quite a few men, too, trying hard to look unthreatened. A couple of drunk, clingy chicks annoyed me for a while, but they eventually faded out into the audience. The overall mood was good and definitely more about the music than any sort of cause.
Ani brought my attention back to the stage with an, er, interesting song about the divinity of atoms (actually, it’s a good point – they are mighty powerful and inflict the burdensome punishment of nuclear waste when you try to destroy them). Then she said a few words to the effect of “patriarchy… damn it… nobody even says it enough, patriarchy!” I’m not really sure, I was starting at her boobs.
Just kidding! A highly recommended concert for people of any musical and political persuasion. It will get you back on your feet and leave you with catchy riffs in your head all week long.
words Jason Thayer
photos Daniel Arnold
If you ever get your hands on a flux capacitor-equipped Dolorean, forget the 50s. Set your sights on Atlanta, 2003 and find a Black Lips show. The sound will be kind of shitty – duct tape will do that to a PA – and the Lips’ songs will still be miles away from the dark country and doo-wop infused “flower punk” that landed their latest release, Good Bad Not Evil on just about every top 10 list for 2007. No worries though, you’re not there for the sound. You’re there for the spew—the cocktail of spit and piss that might make its way out of guitarist Cole Alexander’s pursed lips. You’re there for a shower, a little mist of history because it was, after all, these stage antics that earned the Black Lips nationwide notoriety and a spot on the blacklist of damn near every club in the South.
Recently, the Lips have traded in flying fluids and faulty equipment for trans-Atlantic tours and a whole slew of praise from the hippos at Pitchfork. Even without the piss, Rolling Stone anointed them one of the best live acts in the country.
While The Voice won’t compete with The Stone in terms of tits-per-issue, we still scored an interview with Lips’ drummer and co-vocalist, Joe Bradley. Ask him about anything we missed when the Black Lips bring their brand of refined sleaze to the WOW hall on February 6th. OV: Every thing I read about the Black Lips at least brushes on some of your crazier shows of yesteryear. You guys have tamed down the more lewd aspects of your live show. Why?
JB: In the past one of the reasons our shows were so crazy was because we weren’t the greatest musicians around. Sometimes our equipment was a little questionable being held together with duct tape. Back in 2004 and 2005 we didn’t even have cases for our guitars and they would just ride on tope of all the equipment in the back in a big ol’ pile. Most the time we wouldn’t even have money for replacement strings or anything. So to sum it all up, the music wasn’t that great at our live shows so in order to entertain people for the performance aspect of it, like, if the music doesn’t sound that great, it should at least be entertaining to watch, to be a part of. So things would get kind of crazy and we’d get a lot of crowd interaction and a lot of spewing of bodily fluids. But times have changed. We’ve gotten better at playing our instruments. We’re performers as well as musicians but we’re musicians first.
OV: I was really hoping to see you guys spit some piss at the Conan crowd.
JB: They we’re pretty strict and they were already taking a chance having a band like us on there because we weren’t that well known. I mean, we’re still not that well known. They normally have more established acts. Someone put their neck out on the line for us and luckily with as much chance as there is for things to go wrong in a situation like that, everything went great. Even the sound was really cool. It sounded really raw when they broadcast it, which is awesome.
OV: What was Conan like?
JB: Ah, he’s a bad ass. He’s really huge and he even took time to hold this thing called a post-mortem meeting which is just a meeting that happens after each one of his shows. But he took time off of that to come down and take pictures with us and hang out for like tem minutes before he had to go off and take care of business. But he was really nice, and I guess, he’s never out of character. When he came to meet us, it still seemed like he was being a talk show host. He’s just really cool. I heard he was a collector of old rockabilly seven inches.
OV: So you guys were right up his alley, then.
JB: Yeah.
OV: On the new album especially, I get a real country feel. Especially on “How do you tell a child someone has died.”
JB: Oh yeah, that’s like straight up country. That’s more influenced by this whole darker area of country that most people don’t know about. Hank Williams Sr. had an alter ego for all his darker country called Luke the Drifter. There’s a whole compilation of these really dark songs on Crypt records called God Less America instead of God bless America. That’s the type of song that influenced “How do you tell a child someone has died.”
OV: I feel like you guys have a knack for writing about dark, really tragic events without making them come off as melodramatic at all.
JB: It’s good to have that kind of juxtaposition. You listen to Emo music and it’s so sad and heart breaking but the chances are these people haven’t had anything bad happen to them their entire life. Most of the time you’ll find that the most happy go-lucky people are those that have experienced the most misfortune. They’re normally a lot more optimistic about life than everyday people because they’ve been to the depths of despair and they only way to go is up. They’re a little bit more positive about it but there are still very dark undertones to their lives.
OV: Well you guys have certainly been through some shit. What effect did Ben’s death have on you as a band?
JB: It helped us keep on going. We had a tour planned but then he got killed. We only canceled the first date in Chattanooga so we could have his funeral. And since a bunch of our friends from different parts of the country had flown in for the funeral we crowded them all in our van and in our friends, the Carbonas’ van and we all went out on tour together. We are all really close knit and it helped us get through it all. We just did the tour as a three piece and we asked one of our friends, Jack Hines, to move back to Atlanta and play guitar with us. He was on our second album and he was with us through the shittiest times. The times when we were eating out of trash cans and going to homeless shelters for meals, making more money on the street than we would for playing the show the night before. Things have gotten a lot better, a lot more organized, a lot easier.
OV: Did I read somewhere that you guys used to sleep at homeless shelters on tour?
JB: No, we’d normally just kick it in the van and wake up covered in sweat or freezing cold. We’d just go park in a hotel parking lot and sleep there because we couldn’t afford the hotel room. It used to be we’d play some shit town in the middle of nowhere and try our hardest to make friends. We had this thing called vulture mode where you seek out any thing that your body needs like food or shelter. You got no cigarettes? Get an empty pack and bum one from everyone in the room, then you have a full pack of cigarettes. If some dude’s walking out of the restaurant with his girlfriend, you ask him, “Sir, I’m hungry can I please have those leftovers” and he doesn’t want to seem like a chump in front of his date so he’ll give you the leftovers. Basically, you learn how to make friends real quick so you can stay at their place, maybe take a shower. One particular instance in Bowling Green, OH, I met this guy and he was like, “You can stay at my house but I don’t anything good to eat.” We’re like, “That’s fine.” And the next morning he brought us donuts and a two-liter of Coca-Cola for breakfast.
OV: Well you guys have come along way from scrounging leftovers. You’ve got features in Rolling Stone, Spin, Pitchfork, and I think even the New York Time called you the hardest working band at South By Southwest.
JB: That’s right. They did a video segment about us, it’s up on the internet somewhere. We’ve got a good work ethic and he know no one else is going to do the hard work for us. Plus it’s fun. It’s our job, as well as our life. Nothing’s better than working for yourself.
OV: Can you pinpoint a moment when you were like, “Wow, we’re kind of a big deal?”
JB: The turning point was October of like 2005. There was a point where we had been in Europe for four months—we did a two week tour then traveled for 6 weeks and then we did a full two month tour. After we got back to the states we noticed a real difference. Things have been rolling ever since.
OV: No joke. You guys are even going to be in a couple movies. Tell me about “Let it Be.”
JB: We’re supposed to be the stars in that movie. It’s your run of the mill movie about a do-it-yourself band roughly based off this band called the Altar Boys that existed in the early 1980s based out of New York. The guys who wrote the script we’re actually in that band so they wrote it based on their own experience. It’s basically the ups and downs of being in a band. The band sees a little bit of success and it all plays out from there. They want us to write some songs for the movie too. It should be an interesting experience. We’re supposed to start shooting on June 1st. Most of it’s going to be shot in Buford, SC and Savannah ’cause it’s a lot cheaper to shoot there. And all of the outside shots that are supposed to be New York are going to be shot in New York. It’ll be a nice break from touring. Before that we’ve still got to do a full U.S. tour and a full European tour and a full U.K. tour so we got our work cut out for us.
OV: Any nervousness about having to act?
JB: Nah. I mean people know we’re not actors so the expectations are low. We don’t have to do that great of a job. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to try. It just means we don’t have to feel terribly depressed if our acting is really bad. Look at the Ramones who did “Rock and Roll High School.” They were terrible, especially Dee Dee and he only had one line. Supposedly they made him do it 70 times.
OV: You guys are also going to be featured in a documentary on the Atlanta music scene.
JB: Yeah, it’s called “We Fun.”
OV: Atlanta’s just chock full of good bands right now.
JB: There’s a good punk scene there right now. The Carbonas are excellent, the 4th Ward Daggers, the Frantic, the Coat hangers—bands that are determined to get out there and tour no matter how detrimental it might be to their finances. That’s what we need to see. That’s what we’d do in the beginning. We’d save up for six weeks to go on tour for 12 days, lose all our money then come back and work again. Record labels, especially nowadays, are reluctant to put money into any band that hasn’t done something for themselves.
OV: It’s pretty collaborative down there, right? You and Jared and Cole are in a band with some of the guys from Deerhunter called the Spooks.
JB: Yeah, there’s also a couple of other dudes from different bands—it’s a whole collective and it’s a changing cast of characters. It’s a fun project we do when we’re all in town together. We’re almost done recording an album that should have been out four years ago.
OV: I hate the question “What does it sound like?” but, what does it sound like?
JB: It’s kind of spooky. We’ve got two Theremin players a keyboard player and it’s just real spooky rock. I think there’s some dark metal influence and some psychedelic and some noise. It’s a real hodgepodge, mish-mash group of people coming together and making music.
OV: When can I hear it?
JB: Hopefully it will be out sometime in the next few months. It just depends on how much money Die Slaughterhaus (Records) has.
OV: You guys recorded your live album in Tijuana. Is there a particular reason you chose that venue?
JB: You see live albums all the time: “Live from Atlanta” or “Live from Minneappolis” and that just seems really boring. We wanted it to be kind of an event so we worked with Vice and got some corporate sponsorship to help pay for the expenses. They got a shitload of Tecate and Tequila and it was all free. We just tried to make it the most debaucherous experience possible it being in Tijuana and everything.
OV: What was the club and the crowd like?
JB: The club was this old dance hall, just a big open room and the stage was like six inches off the ground in the center of the room so while we were playing we were surrounded by people who were constantly intruding onto the stage and at some point we had to fight them off to get them off stage so we could actually play.
OV: You guys are going to be tour through March. Do you hang out when you’re not touring?
JB: With each other?
OV: Yeah.
JB: No, we usually don’t see each other. I mean, we’re with each other 24 hours a day, nine months out of the year. We all like each other but it’s good to have time apart. It’s good to get a little breathing room.
OV: You guys have toured everywhere. Is there any place that really sticks out?
JB: It all kind of blurs together. Going to Israel and the West Bank was awesome. Playing on the street for all those Palestinians that was pretty fun. We really didn’t know what to expect, like if we were going to endanger ourselves by doing that. We rented some acoustic guitars and went over to the West Bank and found a decent looking square to set up in and just started playing. One of the shopkeepers saw we were setting up and he took me up to his shop and he was going to give me this little finger drum but then he told me he hadn’t had a sale in two days so I just ended up buying it from him. But it all went really well and after we played this other shopkeeper invited us in and served us this really good mint tea. The Palestinians were really welcoming. We weren’t there on a political journey or anything. We were just there to play music.
Yesterday afternoon I got back from class, and it was about twenty-five or six to four. I had invited some people over for spaghetti, so I had to get going on putting together a pasta sauce.
I spun the spice rack around to grab what I needed — parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme — then raided the fridge for the sauce base and necessary veggies. A little preparation, and the sauce was on. I just had to let it be.
At that point my friend Simon from Queens walked in. He prides himself on his knowledge of nature and the outdoors, and so he inspected my spice repertoire. “Oh, thyme,” Simon said, dangling a conversation. “You know, there are about 350 species of thyme. Which is this?”
“Does anybody really know what thyme it is?” I asked. “Does anybody really care about thyme?”
“It’s just that I’ve been searching so long to find an answer,” he responded.
“Well, you’re the only living boy in New York who would even care,” I said. “But if you’re that curious, here, just take a baggie of it. As it is, I’ve got too much thyme on my hands anyway.”
That seemed to appease Simon, and then he finally shut up. But as the sauce simmered, it began to smell very appetizing, and he kept glancing over at me as the mixture bubbled. I knew he wanted to try it, so I took care of the issue once and for all so I could have my peace of mind.
“Just cool the engines, Simon. I think it’s going to be a long, long time.”
“Hey, take it easy,” he said, and he dipped a spoon into the pot to sample a bit of the tomato sauce.
I sighed, and reached into the fridge for the spiked egg nog. Whatever gets you through the night.
How’s it going, Voice enthusiasts?
After some website issues, some printing issues, and some personal issues (because we’re all sooooo emo….wait, should I be admitting this?), the Oregon Voice brings you our second-to-last issue of this school year. Copy editor and all-around rad chick Katy Wolf brings us an interview with Greg Saunier of Deerhoof, myself and photo editor Naima Muntal battle it out over what makes a good dance party, and pacifists take the brunt of my unholy wrath as our asshole of the month (no hard feelings, right guys? I mean, our last asshole was children…) Check it out online, or please do visit one of our colorful (or not so colorful) boxes in and around the UO campus.
On April 20th (yes, that’s 4/20), the Oregon Voice will host a dance party fundraiser at the Campbell Club to raise funds for the printing of what we hope will be a 40-page mega issue with which we’ll usher in the end of this school year. The Mood and the Rockbottom Scoundrels, as well as DJ Jimbo of KWVA fame, will entertain us, and your entry ticket will earn you a chance to win one of many nifty prizes including some of our favorite CDs, books and OV tee shirts. For a mere three dollars, you can help us print our last issue and join us for some down and dirty booty shakin’.
Also, the Oregon Voice is in a state of transition (translation: we’re all graduating) which means we’re hiring for all of these administrative positions for the 2007-2008 academic year; two are paid, while the rest will give you awesome experience and proverbial resume cap feathers:
Editor-In-Chief (paid)
Publisher (paid)
Director of Photography
Layout Director
Director of Advertising
Applications are on our website, and are due no later than 5 PM on May 25th, 2007. Please keep in mind that while we love art photographers, you must have a handle on digital photography in order to be the director of photography. It’s a digital age, magazines are made on computers, and that’s just the way it is.
And if you’re interested in getting involved in our final issue—whether you be into graphic design, illustration, layout, writing or photographing– e-mail Sara the editor (myself) at ovoice@uoregon.edu as soon as humanly possible.
We hope to see you at the Campbell Club on April 20.
Sara, Reigning Queen Supreme
