When I Grow Up I Want to Be Reactionary Records

Is it crazy to open a record store in 2009?

Paul Tilghmon doesn’t think so. He opened Reactionary Records in February 2009 across from The Earl in Atlanta, Georgia (465-A Flat Shoals Ave). They’re open Tuesday-Sunday 12PM-7PM (and sometimes later). They have everything from punk to soul to hip-hop, mostly in vinyl form. You won’t find everything, but you will find something.

Reactionary Records operates on the principle that people who are dedicated to their music will seek it out. Vinyl lovers are the scavengers of the music world; the hunt is half of the fun. So while other Atlanta music stores go under (R.I.P. Earwax Records), maybe stores should start catering to their discerning vinylphiles. Paul’s store offers just that…with a heap of musical knowledge.

Stores like Reactionary offer hope that, even with the Great Internet Circus, music lovers can always find that dusty piece of vinyl art that they’ve hunted.

Reactionary Records has lots of in-store performances, and every Tuesday and Thursday 3PM-5PM (eastern) they have an in-store radio show called  Killed By Radio.

The Awkward Off Vs. Magnolia Electric Co.

While touring for their latest album Josephine, MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO. stopped by the 40 WATT in ATHENS, GA for a show. I was lucky enough to talk to frontman Jason Molina a bit before the show.

Beyond nervous, I got meet one of my musical heroes, Jason Molina. We talked about how vinyl media has influenced his album crafting, and he explained how their no-nonsense production emerged. When faced with the decision between studio and stage, Molina would choose the kitchen table. He’s not surprised to his lost things in weird places, so he’s taken to shredding his song notebooks and burning his unfinished song tapes. th

Full Transcript (Audio):

Nichole Bennett: I’m Nichole and I’m at the 40 Watt in Athens, GA. I am lucky enough to be with the one and only Jason Molina.

JM: How do you do?

NB: …who is rumored to be one of the hardest-working people in the showbiz.

JM: No. Well, I do write a lot. I do put a lot of sweat into it. I work a lot harder putting together songs, groups of songs and song cycles and the bigger picture of songs, than the entertainment side of it.

NB: So if you had to tell the story of Magnolia Electric Co. going back to Songs: Ohia and back to some of your solo stuff, would it be a pop-up book or a graphic novel?

JM: Definitely a graphic novel with no words.

NB: A silent graphic novel. I think I’d like to read that. Well I guess you wouldn’t read it.

JM: Yeah me too.

NB: Speaking of how hard you work, is anywhere home for you? I know you live in London now, away from your band.

JM: Correct, the band is still in southern Indiana. I still have a house in Indianapolis and hope to one day get back to Chicago. For the time being I’m trying to make London work. Just circumstance led to me living there, and it’s a difficult place to find musicians. Well, it’s difficult to find people without a preconceived notion of what I want out of playing music. Just getting four musicians together to play and see what happens has been really difficult. It’s been a really rocky road. It’s been two years. I’ve ended up flying people from the U.S. over and people from other places in Europe to come and play. Since Josephine was finished, I’ve finished about six projects. I’m working. I write a lot of songs. It just hasn’t been as easy. I know most places in the U.S. if you just throw a rock, you’re going to hit a good musician.

NB: So your latest record is Josephine. The other week, I was playing it for someone and then playing some of your older stuff for them so they could get an idea of some of the changes in a backwards anthology. And I’ve been searching for the word to describe the difference with the new album. It’s not necessarily more minimalistic. It’s almost less bombastic. Is that something that was intentional or something that just arose organically?

JM: While I was writing these songs that became the Josephine LP, I was thinking about things to leave out. I would come up with a lot of ideas, and before committing them to a tape or an arrangement with all of these ideas, I would see if there was any reason to have these other things. Usually there wasn’t a reason because it was kind of forced. I would extract parts. In Josephine there are a lot of references musically to a lot of records I’ve done in the past. So no only lyrically is it a cyclical…cycle. Hah, a cyclical cycle. There’s a lot of lyrical references to older records. There are musical passages that are in there bookending some brand new songs. So I really put everything in there.

NB: Coming from a consumer point of view, I only see the finished product. I know you had to cut some songs out. But to me it’s a very complete, almost vinyl, package with a side A and a side B.

JM: Exactly.

NB: Is that something that you had intended?

JM: Always. For every record I’ve done it like that. For most of the time I’ve been making records, I’ve had the CD as an option. I grew up listening to records. When I write songs, and I start to see a record coming together I don’t see this 78 minute long piece of work. I love doing a side A and a side B. It’s almost like every song is a chapter and then there’s a break in the book and you get the rest of the chapters. Hopefully, when you get to that last song you get a fully-realized story.

NB: You were saying that this one borrows lyrically and somewhat musically from some of your earlier work, and you do have some pretty pervasive themes and metaphors throughout your work. It’s almost not so much about events and stories as it is about feelings. I guess you could take it from there.

JM: Yeah, the listener has to come up with their own story. If tied to the actual sonic imprint of the record, like the recording style and the musical arrangement and the lyrics. If those things all come together then I don’t feel like something was added at the end to add atmosphere. For instance, if you have a finished song. It’s in its best state for you as an artist, and then you decide “let’s add some freaky reverb or delay” to this part. If the piece doesn’t call out for that, then I would feel like I was committing a sin against the song. The song didn’t ask for it.  A lot of the mood to the records comes through just the way of recording. Some of the most renegade records that we did were on a four-track or in someone’s basement with a couple of rickety mics and some duct tape and, you know, a wing and a prayer. These are albums that are still in print and people are still seeking out, and I think that’s grade. If the skeleton, the bones of the thing, are good—the lyrics and the attitude going in to the project—if that’s solid, then the other things that people latch onto like if this is a higher production value record or if this sounds home recorded. That stuff is incidental to me if the song is good. Some of my favorite music was recorded in the 20s and 30s in a hotel room with a microphone and a guy on a guitar just banging his heart out.

NB: And with recent music, so many people are going back in and tweeking their music. There are so many layers now, and it’s almost brave to have things be so bare.

JM: There can be no end to adjusting songs. Even when you’re recording in an analog world, you could spend weeks or months on a song and still do a hell of a lot to it. I want our songs to be a document of what we have with as many arms and voices and shit to pound on that we can do live. Then, if we wanted to go back and add something that we couldn’t do live, if the song required a little bit more, then that’s fine. The song will call out for that.

NB: So that being said, do you prefer studio or stage? I guess that would make them very similar.

JM: A kitchen table. Studio, for sure. I could live in a studio, and in a lot of ways I really wish I did. I’m not really interested in all of the technical elements of recording because I’ve put all of my energy and self-learning into writing songs. I know the value of having a good technician there to document this is just amazing because I don’t have to worry about that. Some people love it, and it actually spark a hell of a lot of creativity. While I’m trying to put together a basic chord progression and make sure that the lyrics have a solid landing ground, I know there a lot of musicians who are thinking of exactly what to do to get this one sound while they are still in the process of writing. It’s just a different way of working, but I would prefer the studio. I really enjoy the studio.

NB: You have some hobbies other than music, don’t you? You do a bit of art.

JM: I do. I do a lot of painting and drawing. On the road I don’t get much done. It’s hard to do in the van, but I work small now and not have paint out because paint in a van rolling down the highway gets hard. It’s hard to write lyrics in the van too. You might have 9 hours in the van, but it’s just awkward to write. I do everything in longhand, and it’s just crazy. It’s mayhem, but I do find myself getting a notebook full of ideas and sometimes a full song. If that doesn’t work out, I just get the pencils out and start drawing.

NB: What type of painting do you like to do?

JM: It’s lots of scribbles and just a little bit of color. It’s all really abstract stuff. I mean I do stupid drawings all the time just for fun, like cartoonish things. I do a little bit of figural stuff. The stuff that was inside the Sojourner box set were mine, but that was just a one off project that I was doing.

NB: Speaking of writing lyrics, is songwriting something that happens in which every song kind of comes similarly or are you just walking around and something comes to you? To me, songwriting is this magical thing.

JM: It’s rare that I’m hit with a lightening bolt of lyrical inspiration, but I may have an idea for a song. I’ll keep that with me. It may just go into my notebook. I may just keep it with me all day and keep revisiting it. I’m not the guy that sits down and has a song title in mind. I like the blank page and the challenge. The pencil and the page: I look at it, and I know I’m going to be sweating over it for a long time. There’s a lot that goes into the paper shredder. I’ll tell you. I actually started shredding lyrics recently because in London people go through everyone’s trash. It’s not that I’m worried about somebody finding my stuff, but there’s times I’ll be walking like a quarter of a mile from my house, and I’ll find part of a notebook of mine just laying in the park. Someone has found that in the trash and dug it out. I mean, it’s still trash, but that is really disturbing to see. You aren’t anywhere near your house and you’re walking. I’m like “That looks like my handwriting. What the fuck!” That’s just really weird.

NB: Wow!

JM: I’ll never forget one time I moved out of a place, and I left two days worth of clothes in my room. I was totally out of my room, and this was already worked out with the landlord that they weren’t going to have anybody in there. I wasn’t sure when I was going to be getting into the new place so I just left some basic things: a change of clothes and some shoes in a little pile. I go back, and my stuff’s all gone. I’m like “Shit! What happened to this stuff?” A year goes by…a couple of tours and stuff, and I’m in a thrift store in the same town that I used to live in and there’s my fucking stuff!

NB: Whoa!

JM: I bought my shoes back and the two rock t-shirts that I had were on the rack. I don’t know if they had been sitting there all that time or if they had finally made it to there. It was disturbing to buy that stuff back. I moved from Chicago and gave everything that I didn’t need to the Salvation Army. Three years when we move back, lo and behold, I’m like “There’s that fucking casserole dish of ours. It’s 25 cents, but I know its ours.” My whole life is kind of like that. It was most disturbing, though, to find my lyrics laying in the street.

NB: I can see why you’ve taken to shredding, but there’s something to permanence. Do you ever want any of them back out of the shredder?

JM: No. At new years I always ditch all of the songs that are totally unfinished. I burn them.

NB: Very interesting.

JM: I’ve been doing it for years and years, and it’s very liberating. It’s probably not the best thing in the world as far as pollution goes to burn a bunch of tapes. I’m not burning studio tapes here. I’m talking about cassette recordings. Four-track recordings and all of these half-filled notebooks of songs that just didn’t get finished. If I let that stuff accumulate, I’ll have a heart attack because I’ll look at that and think that it’s three years of work in order to get one finished product out of that.

NB: Do you ever read press about yourself?

JM: The label sends me a packet. After a record has been out for a year or something they’ll send me a paper copy of just a spectrum: some of the good stuff, some of the bad stuff, all of the really terrible stuff, and a little of the foreign stuff—just to get a handle on it. They know that I don’t read it all, so they don’t send me everything. I’m intrigued by it. I like to glance at it. A shitty review of a record doesn’t really hurt my feelings except when they’ve gotten it completely wrong on the factual side. This isn’t so much the case now, but in the cycle of Josephine, I’m getting the question all the time and the criticism that it’s been three years since Jason put out a record. What’s he been doing? And I’m like “Fuck you! Why don’t you fucking call me!” Because I did three records that just aren’t out yet and six more since November. So when they take the record at hand to task by saying “Well I guess he just hasn’t had any ideas, or he’s being lazy.” I’m like “Well, no. You’re wrong.” But that passes, in two seconds I couldn’t care less. The reason this is coming up is because no one asked me what I was doing. I would have said. I mean, it’s not a secret. I’m workin’.

NB: If you could be any animal what would you be?

JM: I’m like ten.

NB: That’s fine. You can say all ten.

JM: A wolf. A bat. A ram. Black spider. Snake. Sea serpent. An owl. That’s my starting.

NB: Thank you very much.

JM: That’s a ninja question!

The Awkward Off Vs. Handsome Furs

Before their show, HANDSOME FURS met me for an interview at THE EARL in ATLANTA, GA.

I was immediately stoked because Dan was wearing a shirt from my favorite East Atlanta record store, Reactionary Records. Later in the interview, we were joined by Paul Tilghmon, the store’s owner, who was confused to find himself in the middle of an interview.

We touched on all of the bases: dog farts, smoking with inhalers, and punk squats used for music videos. Alexei and Dan are just as nice as you would imagine, and they aren’t nearly as tired as you would think of interviewers asking them about being a couple and in a band.

After ragging on the FCC and censorship for a spell, we compromised by making up our own swear words and went straight into the interview. “Consarnit! Dagnabit!”

Special thanks to Matt Crisler for taking photographs and for being my concert buddy.

Full Transcript (Audio):

Nichole Bennett: On that note. I am Nichole. I am at the Earl in Atlanta, and I am lucky enough to be surrounded by members of Handsome Furs.

Alexei Perry: We’re only two. I’m Alexei.

NB: Yeah! I was going to ask you to introduce yourselves.

AP: And that’s Dan.

Dan Boeckner: Dan right here.

NB: So, if you had to tell the story of Handsome Furs, would it be a pop up book or a graphic novel?

DB and AP: Graphic novel.

NB: That was very quick.

AP: We read a lot of graphic novels, so it’s easy.

NB: I was going to ask you about your videos. Before the recorder got turned on, we were talking a lot about farting dogs and other such things. Your video for “Face Control” was just released.

AP: That was a really fun one to shoot.

NB: Yeah, I was going to ask if they were as much fun to shoot as they are to watch.

AP: Yeah, we are really fortunate to always work with friends, doing the directing and all the filming and everything. That was done by a guy name Scott Coffey out of Portland. We went there for two days and had to bang it out as quickly as possible.

NB: Wow.

DB: Yeah, we shot that video in under 48 hours for a budget of under $5,000. For indie rock videos, even…a lot of them clock in at twenty grand. We shot it at a punk squat next door to Scott’s house.

AP: And he just befriended them…you know. He was like “You guys do this anyway. Can we throw a party at your house?”

DB: We bought them beer and that made everybody happy. The first night was the interior shooting, and the next day was the outdoor stuff. The first night we were shooting it to look like a party, but it actually turned into a party.

AP: A really great party. It went so late. We were like, this isn’t going to match the shots anymore—the sun’s coming up.

DB: And it became difficult to act as we got really drunk.

NB: Do you guys prefer studio or stage?

DB and AP: Stage.

NB: You guys look like you have a lot of fun. I’ve seen you at both of the South By Southwests that I’ve been.

DB: Generally I like playing the new stuff.

AP: Yeah I think the new stuff is most exciting. You are on your toes trying to figure everything out, and when it all works out it’s really triumphant.

NB: I think for my first Handsome Furs experience….wow I wish this was on video.

DB: We’ll describe it for our radio listeners.

AP: Neil from The Cinnamon band just came in and handed us his inhaler because he needs to have a smoke.

DB: Smoke your face off.

NB: Oh, my first Handsome Furs experience. I was sneaking my way to the front of the tent, and the whole stage is rocking. Alexei’s Corona keeps earthquaking its way to the edge, and she keeps grabbing it just in time.

AP: Yeah we have a lot of fun on stage. Whoa a bug!

NB: I really do need to get into videoing these.

DB: It’s a creature…a cockroach.

NB: Narration—a cockroach creature just flew up into an old wasp’s nest.

AP: This is really good radio.

DB: Solid radio.

NB: Maybe I should get into TV. This is just like Prairie Home Companion with Handsome Furs. And I heard that when you guys do recordings, you do sort of a first-take thing. It sounds very fresh.

AP: That’s kind of our policy. We try to make it sound as live as possible, and we don’t want to do a lot of tinkering. Because we work with a drum machine, there is already that element of programming. While we are trying to do a recording, we try to do it as raw as possible.

NB: On a scale of one to definitely, how tired are you guys of interviewers asking you what’s it’s like to be married and in a band?

AP: I’m only really tired of that when they are lazy enough to use that as their angle. What happens a lot is when that question gets asked, it’s usually followed by “What couple band do you compare yourself to?” I’m like, “fuck off.” Ike and Tina Turner. Not really. I understand. It’s interesting. Honestly any journalist that is interested in us, we want to be as open and friendly as possible. And that fact is inescapable. That’s what we are. We have a very good time on stage. It’s hard not to notice that we are very much in love. It doesn’t tire me. It just tires me if the followups are lame.

NB: Yeah I read some that were totally focused on that.

AP: Yeah, we don’t write love songs. You’ve got the wrong band if you are trying to peg us as a cute couple. We love each other, but that’s about as far as it gets as far a songwriting.

DB: Yeah, absolutely.

NB: That being said, do you read press about yourself? I think that would be kind of nerveracking.

DB: I do sometimes. Yeah, for sure. Anybody who says they don’t read their press is lying.

AP: Yeah, it’s like “Do you not read?” I’m interested in new music so I go to blogs and magazines and such. So of course I’m going to end up reading some of it.

DB: It’s also that you can make the metaphor that it’s like you’re at a house, and there’s a door. There’s an entire room of people who are talking about you. Some of them are saying good things, and some of them are saying mean things. You know that’s happening. You know that’s going on. You have the ability to hear what they are saying without them know you are listening to them. Of course people do that! People make art, and they put it out in the world. They’re fucking vain.

AP: The truth is that there is also a really humbling part to that fame or notoriety or whatever because everything that you do is so immediately given back to you. I’m curious to know that. I wouldn’t fucking play live if I didn’t care what people thought.

DB: The trick is not to read it too much and not to take it too seriously.

AP: And also some bands that read it too much try to construct themselves in a way to be audience-friendly or critic-friendly, and that is something I’m totally against. I cannot choose my audience. I’m thrilled with whoever comes.

DB: You can’t change your art to match what you think people are thinking. And you can’t turn the tarot-internet babble into “We should write our songs in more of a major key” or “We should make our tempos faster.” “We should sing about this instead of singing about that.” You can’t do that. It’s just impossible. Everybody is as loud as everybody else on the internet, so there’s no way of judging.

NB: It’s a weird era that we live in. It’s sort of an A.D.D. internet mentality. And you can be anonymous…totally anonymous. You can be as mean as you want or as super nice as you want. It’s a strange set of extremes. You aren’t going to bother to post on the internet if it’s like “ah, meh.”

DB: I remember years ago when Wolf Parade was just starting out, I read something really awful on the Montreal music scene blog. At the start of that whole Montreal music scene…

AP: You’re basically like, “I know this person!”

DB: Well, the thing is I didn’t know that person, but I found out who he was. We weren’t friends or anything. His name was Dave. I went to a show…

NB: Dave, now your name is released on the internet.

AP: You are outed!

DB: Dave, as far as I know doesn’t make music or play music. He’s just a large internet presence. So, I saw him at a show. He was considerably younger than me. I think we were watching Comets on Fire. I was like “You’re the guy who wrote X on the Internet. Why did you write that? Like, really?” Then, he basically ran away from me. That experience really changed my relationship with reading reviews and such.

NB: How would you describe your sound to a five year old?

DB: Loud.

AP: It’s going to make you dance, baby!

NB: You guys do something that is brave, especially with having an electronic element. Your sound is pretty sparse. Usually with two people bands will try to cover that up. I was wondering if that was conscious or just came about organically.

AP: Yeah, it’s conscious in that it’s just us, and we just use the instrumentation that we have. And I think sonically what you do reflects on how you feel about the world, and how I feel about the world is totally dissatisfied with how empty things are. So I use that as a backdrop.

NB: We are getting a music and a show. Background music provided by Tree. On that note—so many bands are so very symphonic. It’s nice, but it’s refreshing to have something that is sparse and fresh.

DB: You know, in these tough economic times.

AP: You’ve got to keep things cheap.

NB: Noise costs money!

AP: We can’t afford xylophones!

DB: In these tough economic times, only the upper-upper class can afford a harmonium or a cello player or a bunch of violin players. It’s a band of the people, you know. The people’s music.

NB: If you could break one world record, what would it be?

DB: Most sweat on stage.

AP: Really? Mine is so lame, and it has to do with spicy food. That is all because of my father.

DB: I thought your world record would be to read more books than anyone.

AP: Yeah I want to read more books. That’s good too. I said that earlier today. So, yeah.

DB: Alexei secretly wants to own every single book ever published.

NB: What advice would you offer an up-and-coming band?

AP: Just tour. Play as much as you can, and do it with every earnest bone you have in your body.

NB: Which is something that you guys are really known for, and something that you guys really put yourselves into. Is this tour going well?

DB and AP: Yeah.

NB: You just came from Chapel Hill.

DB: Yeah, this leg of the tour is going good.

AP: Yeah that’s really my only thing to tell new bands is to play as many live shows as you possibly can.

DB: Yeah focus on playing live. Don’t focus on getting a great song to put on your Myspace page or getting a manager or signing with a record label. Just go on tour. Play shows in front of people. Record labels are going to be completely obsolete in the next five years, and the only thing people are going to be able to judge a band on is…Hey!

[Paul Tilghmon enters]

AP: We just bought records from him.

DB: Yeah we just went to…

NB: Reactionary Records! Did you guys pick up anything cool?

AP: We got Recommendations from Radio City

DB: And The Jags.  Which Paul wouldn’t sell me because they were his only copies.

Paul Tilghmon: I’ll sell them to you.

DB: Which means another trip to the store. We go Joe Gibbs and Phyllis Dillon. The Gibbs is a compilation and Phyllis Dillon’s One Life to Live. And I got a t-shirt too. You should support your local record store.

NB: Yeah I need a t-shirt before I move.

DB: Schoolkids Records shut down in Chapel Hill.

AP: Yeah we were pretty bummed because we wanted to go there.

DB: Support your local record stores and buy vinyl.

NB: I’m biased, but it’s my favorite. What are some of your favorite places to play?

AP: I’ll just go with some of the more recent ones because there’s a lot. Bucharest was amazing. Belgrade. Zagreb fantastic. Every show in Helsinki is life-changing and amazing. Philly was really great. New York is always beautiful.

DB: Detroit was pretty cool. We played a free show outside for the Comerica City Fest. Anybody could come.

AP: A lot of families…a lot of dancing kids.

DB: Not really our usual crowd but definitely a fun time.

NB: If you can get little kids to dance, then you’ve accomplished something.

DB: Little kids will dance to anything.

AP: They are very selective. No, no, no they are a very discerning crowd!

DB: Little kids will dance to Napalm Death.

NB: And I will end on if you could be any animal, what would you be?

AP: Dan would be an otter!

DB: I would be an otter. You would be a jaguar, I guess.

AP: We’ve discussed this a lot.

NB: It sounds like a recent discussion. I should just get these two to interview each other. Thank you very much!

The Awkward Off Vs. Eulogies

While at THE RANCH in AUSTIN, TX for the DANGERBIRD RECORDS showcase at SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST, I met Peter Walker, frontman for EULOGIES.

Between melting faces at shows and chomping on pizza, Peter talked to me about Eulogies’ latest LP. His description of his music and his love of college radio revealed him to be just as genuine as I imagined. Hard-working rockers, Eulogies are touring up a storm in their van, lovingly nicknamed “Gus.” Before finally letting the poor guy eat his pizza, we jabbered a bit about the importance of live music and how songs are more important than singles

Full Transcript: (Audio)

Nichole Bennett: My name is Nichole. I’m the music director for WSBF in Clemson, South Carolina, and I’m lucky enough to be here with Eulogies’ frontman.
Peter Walker: I’m good. I’m great.
NB: Great. If you could describe Eulogies’ sound to a three year old, how would you do it?
PW: It’s loud. Definitely for a three year old
NB: Like, cover your ears, little baby.
PW: Yeah, you are covering your ears. Our stuff is pretty driving, but it’s not death metal or anything. It’s like driving coming from a folk…maybe runway.
NB: Driving folk.
PW: Yeah, driving folk.
NB: A lot of my DJs and myself loved your EP. It’s kind of a teaser. We are really excited about the CD coming out. Can you tell us anything about it?
PW: Yeah, three of the songs on the EP are on the LP. Thank you. We love it too. We are so excited about it. Um, what else can I say. It really works as an LP. That might sound pretentious, but for the EP we just grabbed a few songs. The first song on the EP is actually the last song on the record, so it was a little weird. I feel like with the record, it’s all there ready to listen to.
NB: So if the story of your band was a coloring, book, what themed Crayola box would you use?
PW: What themed Crayola box?
NB: You know, like neon…they’ve got glitter. They’ve got the twenty four set…they’ve got the mega set.
PW: You know what I’d do? Primary colors. That’s it. Just red, blue, yellow.
NB: Would it be a pop-up book or a comic book?
PW: Probably a comic. You know, straightforward.
NB: Do you like crunchy or smooth peanut butter?
PW: I like both. I’ll eat them both.
NB: What question do you wish interviewers would ask more, and which one do you wish they would ask less?
PW: I know our less right off the bat. It’s “Why is your band called what it is?”
NB: Every says that. They hate that.
PW: I’m okay, actually. It’s just that the repetition is hard. More, I don’t know. That’s tough. Just more meaningful stuff.
NB: Do you ever read your own reviews?
PW: I try not to seek them out, but if someone give me a good one, I’ll read it. That’s pretty much it.
NB: I can imagine. I’m sort of self-critical, so it would be…
PW: Yeah, it’s hard. You have to be doing it for the right reasons, I think. We’re not really trying to please certain people.
NB: If your band had a mascot, what would it be?
PW: It would probably be…it’s actually right there. It’s our van. That old van right there is called “Gus”. He’s our mascot for sure.
NB: Oh man, I wish this was a video interview because Gus is quite impressive.
PW: Yeah, that’s Gus. Gusty Winds is his full name.
NB: If you could replace your arms with anything, what would it be?
PW: Wings, for sure.
NB: Is there anything else that you would like to say?
PW: Well, we have a record coming out on April 7, and we’re going on tour. The next seven, eight weeks we’ll be on the road. So hopefully we’ll get to play some shows for some of your listeners.
NB: Yes, you should stop by Clemson. South Carolina, we are a great stop in between North Carolina and Georgia. There aren’t any venues there but there is the college radio station.
PW: I love doing college radio stations, that would be fun.
NB: What do you eat on your French fries?
PW: Ketchup. Pepper, and black pepper.
NB: Everyone is saying pepper today! It’s such a new thing for me. If your band had a catch phrase what would it be?
PW: We melt faces.
NB: Melt faces, I believe so. Here’s a more serious question. This is kind of an age of the internet and an A.D.D. musicality. Everyone’s just looking for “the next big thing.” The good things they’ll write these longer reviews. But the new things, they’ll write short things and they may or may not persist. How do you guys play into that? Or how do you feel about that?
PW: We made an album. We didn’t make a bunch of singles and a bunch of b-sides. We have a whole record, and we feel like it’s a piece of art, you know? That’s where are, and that’s not necessarily where a lot of bands are.
NB: It’s a very single culture lately. With Hypemachine and blogs posting mp3s.
PW: I mean, I think that’s all cool because it’s great to get excited about a song, but I like having the whole record to choose from if I’m a listener. I can grab what I want to grab.
NB: Are you guys big vinyl people?
PW: Yeah, definitely.
NB: I really got into vinyl lately as soon as I stole my parents’ record player. I just think that this is in some ways very good for smaller bands, but at the same time it’s a very A.D.D. culture. We are like “oh, give me a single…okay, that’s good.” But at the same time, I was talking about vinyl earlier…it’s a piece of art. It’s something you can own. Whereas a CD, you can put it in the microwave, and it’s still fine.
PW: I think live music is a good antidote to all of that. When you go to see a band, they hopefully aren’t just playing one song, and it doesn’t always sound on the record. So it’s cool to go see live music.
NB: I think that’s one reason it will still persist. On that note, I will go let you eat your pizza. Thank you so much for joining me.

The Awkward Off Vs. Los Campesinos!

In the green room of the EARL in ATLANTA, GA, I was surrounded by members of LOS CAMPESINOS!

For the whole interview, I concentrated on trying not to pick up their British accents…with limited success. In between laughter and tangents, we discussed the importance of an album as physical art, the internet’s huge role in music, and starting up a Russian hamster fighting ring. They tried to convince me they were more music lovers than they were musicians, but their concert definitely proved otherwise.

Full Transcript: (Audio)

Nichole Bennett: This is Nichole with WSBF, and I am here with Los Campesinos!

Los Campesinos!: Hi!

NB: Would you guys like to go around the circle and introduce yourselves?

Neil Turner: Hello, I’m Neil from Los Campesinos! and I play guitar.

Gareth Paisey: I’m Gareth from Los Campesinos! and I sing.

Oliver Briggs: I’m Ollie from Los Campesinos! and I play drums.

Alex Berditchevskaia: I’m Alex from Los Campesinos! and I sing and play keyboards.

Ellen Waddell: I’m Ellen, and I play bass.

Tom Bromley: I’m Tom, and I play guitar.

GP: There’s normally Harriet as well, but she’s not here because she’s ill. She normally plays violin.

NB: So tell me a little bit about your history. How did you guys get together?

GP: We’ve been a band for getting on to three years now, which seems to have flown by.

EW: That long?

GP: It’s weird because we still get called a new band. I guess there’s not that much to tell. We started the band whilst we were at University. We then finished University. We released some records. We’ve toured…a lot. We’ve been to some really interesting places…some not so interesting places. It’s been, generally speaking, a lot of fun. I guess the rest is just what happens to bands.

TB: A series of clichés.

NT: Lots of interviews.

OB: Sex.

GP: Tell them about that time!

NB: So where did the name come from?

GP: The name is Neil’s fault.

NT: Yeah, I used to speak some Spanish in school. It was just a word I knew. When it came time to think up a band name—it sounded fun.

GP: It looks nice. It sounds nice. It’s quite exotic to our English tongues.

NB: So the exclamation point is the only thing keeping you from being a Peruvian band. I think there is a folk band there. Are you guys rivals?

GP: We’ve not had the pleasure of meeting them.

NB: So how is it? Is it just a mishmash of all sorts of things? The songwriting process, in general. Or if you don’t want to answer the question, you can make up an story….at any point in the interview.

GP: We’ve already given you the good story…Ollie’s story. Back to the question. They’ll write a song and then we’ll take it as a band and it will develop through that. I will write some lyrics over top of that, and I guess that is the boiled down version of how to write a song. Lyrically, recently, I tend to write quite autobiographically and honestly.

NB: We were speaking a little bit about the internet earlier. It’s radically changed how a band gets out. It’s definitely helped you guys along. How do you feel? Is it a negative and a positive thing at the same time?

GP: I think, first of all, to say that it was anything else other than an absolute positive would be really ungrateful. We admit that if it wasn’t for the internet, we would not be a band. In this case it was us recording a demo and putting it up on Myspace. Within five days of putting songs on Myspace, we were being offered record deals in Australia. We’ve not even been to Australia, so I think that shows just how powerful the internet was for us.

TB: There are lots of negatives.

GP: Yeah, there are things that the internet has changed the way people write about music  and the way that people interact with music.

TB: And the positive things massively outweigh the negatives.

NB: Yeah, I think it levels the playing field.

TB: Yeah, completely.

GP: It has put a lot more power in the hand of bands as opposed to labels. It’s getting where you can do a lot of things without a label. Obviously a label helps with putting a record out, but you don’t need it to get heard.

NB: As much as I hate Myspace at times, it is good at that. So I guess we could talk a little bit about the latest CD that has come out…the second one of the year. It comes with a lot of goodies.

GP: It does. Sadly not as many in the U.S. as it does in the U.K. The U.K. version of the record is so much nicer than the U.S. version. It was a matter of record labels.

NB: Yeah, you are on Arts & Crafts here.

GP: And Wichita in the rest of the world. The Wichita version is infinitely nicer. The U.S. version is nice. It has the extra DVD and a sort of ‘zine.

NB: Yeah, I remember getting the package and thinking they had sent me a novel as well.

GP: Yeah, I don’t really like that package. Pretty cheap. It’s just a lot of plastic and a lot of cardboard.

NB: It is nice in that way, in our digital age, to have something physical. That’s why I’ve gotten into vinyl lately. It’s a piece of art. It’s something you can own.

GP: Yeah, you have to give people an incentive to buy something physical rather than downloading the album for free in the space of two minutes. So when it comes to packaging, we want it to be something that people are going to want to actually go to a record store and buy and enjoy it in more ways than just listening to it off a computer. So, I hope that more and more bands will consider things like that.

TB: For me, I see doing things as a band the way that my favorite bands did. Like when you get a vinyl and it opens up three ways, it’s like the best thing in the world. If we are in a position to do things like that, we will. Maybe we sort of romanticize about things like that.

GP: We’re music fans. We don’t consider ourselves musicians at all. What we do is that we are several people who started a band who like a lot of music and are getting to do what people in bands that we like do. We want to be a band that we would like and be excited about ourselves.

NB: I’ve heard rumors that this one is going to be pretty limited. Like one run? Is that true?

GP: That is the idea.

TB: In the U.K. they had to print some more, but I think that had to do with somebody fucked up the preorders.

GP: They clearly over-ordered the record because we’re more popular than we ever thought we were.

TB: It’s not really a proper second album, so were able to do something special with the packaging. It was more for people that really loved us.

NB: Since we talked about you guys being more music-lovers than musicians, what is in your CD player right now or your iPod? What is really hitting you lately?

GP: I’ve been listening to a lot of orchestral music. I’ve realized that as we’ve been on this tour, I’ve listened exclusively to OMD, The Smiths, Paul Simon, and Simon & Garfunkel. It’s weird. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

TB: Yeah, that’s unusual for you, especially.

GP: Yeah I don’t know, but I’m loving it, especially those 80’s drum sounds.

OB: The drums are really good on Graceland.

TB: I’ve been listening to Guided By Voices.

NT: I’ve been listening to a band called Chlorox Girls from Portland. It was Tom’s birthday yesterday.

NB: Happy late! Is that what this cake is? Are they animals? And, what is your most embarrassing CD?

NT: I have the whole Alice in Chains back catalogue.

GP: I have Pearl Jam’s CD.

NB: One more. This is the only question that actually counts. If you were an animal, what would you be?

TB: I’d probably be a cat. They are really cute, and they don’t really do anything. They get lots of attention and don’t do anything.

GP: The thing is with questions like these, I’m totally incapable of giving and off-the-cuff answer. I have to really think about it. Neil just brought up a good point. I’m allergic to horses, and if I was a horse, would I still be allergic to them? I’ll tell you. I wouldn’t be a horse because I don’t want to take that chance.

OB: I’d probably be a monkey.

GP: I can see that.

TB: You’re already halfway there.

OB: I’ll take that as a compliment.

GP: I don’t really want to be an animal, if we’re being honest. I’d end up being eaten. What good animals are there? What do they actually do?

OB: Should we pick something for you?

TB: A vegan questioning the point of animals.

GP: I don’t like animals. That’s why I don’t want to eat them. What should I be Ollie?

OB: What about some sort of bird?

GP: If you were a monkey, what sort of animal would you want to hang out with?

NT: I like Russian hamsters.

OB: What is the difference between Russian hamsters and normal hamsters?

NT: Russian hamsters are really cool.

GP: A friend of mine had two Russian hamsters, and he named them after the Hardy Boys, Matt and Jeff. And they always used to fight each other. The thing about this is that the Hardy Boys were a tag team. So, it made no sense at all.