Blast from the PAST 2000: SUPERGRASS

Supergrass came into the British scene about five years ago with their first album I Should Coco. They were from Oxford and added some light to Radiohead's dark. Gaz Coombes, David Goffey, and Mick Quinn became a success in the high year of Britpop, 1995. After five years, many of those bands are no longer with us due to drugs and record company mergers. But Supergrass, with their new third album seem ready for some American notice. We always take a few years to get into something, and it takes a few albums for us to consider it a serious relationship. Supergrass has recently broken into some serious Britney Spears time on MTV, with their video "Pumping On Your Stereo." Their tour this spring has been nearly sold out, including three sold out nights in Los Angeles, where I saw them, at The Roxy, in Hollywood. Their show was strong and they stuck to the hits and most people were up for it. They played with a keyboardist, Rob Coombes. Next fall we will be hearing more from Supergrass when they tour with Pearl Jam. I talked to bassist Mick Quinn right before the tour started in New York City, at The Bowery Ballroom.

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Interview with Bassist Mick Quinn

AL: I was over in London a few months ago and saw the "Pumping On Your Stereo" video. I thought it was brilliant. How did that come about?

Mick: It's pretty straightforward really. We couldn't use our regular directors because they were too busy doing another video. We looked around for some other directors, and we came up with Gus Jennings, who had worked with other people like Bentley Rhythm Aces. The puppets was his idea. It looked like the most interesting thing to do. Our other video for "Mary" was just us playing in the basement of a house with the family upstairs.

AL: You came out with this record pretty fast.

Mick: We spent a year touring the album before. We had a month holiday. Then we spent three months writing songs for the new album. So it was a fast turnaround really. We spend a lot of time on tour at soundchecks writing new stuff or coming up with new ideas. This is just one album in a long line of them.

AL: You are all from Oxford?

Mick: Pretty much. I'm seven years older than Gaz Coombes. Ten years ago I was probably kicking his head in at the playground. He was a little kid. We used to see each other around. I knew Gaz's brother, Rob, who plays keyboards in the band. We all have the same sense of humor, so it does make life easier. What Rob does in the band is quite comfortable. I don't think he's interested in having his face in magazines or doing interviews. He's never been forced into it.

AL: Danny Goffey is also the silent member in another band, Lodger. What do you think of Lodger and doing things outside of the band?

Mick: They do some quite interesting music. I get enough from Supergrass that I don't need to do any side projects. It's fair enough if Danny wants to do that because he's an energetic person. He needs things like that to inspire him.

AL: What are your expectations for this American tour? You've done tours here before, but it seems that people are ready to see Supergrass this time around.

Mick: My expectations are to sell more records and to have a higher profile in America. I don't really have any more expectations for our gigs in America. We've played live before and we've gone down really well. I'm not too worried about playing the gigs. It's the other end of it that I'm worried about, like what the record company are going to do to promote us, and can we catch the imagination of the media, as well with the live audience. It's apparent that we're bigger in Europe and Britain, than we are in America. You shouldn't think that you'll be able to crack the States anymore than anywhere else. I can't think of any British band that has cracked wholeheartedly in the States in the last ten years. If it takes ten or fifteen years to make it big in America, I don't really care. I'm not in a big hurry.

AL: How do you go about creating the songs? Does Gaz come up with some ideas and the band responds?

Mick: Not really. We all write pretty equally. We all come up with original ideas. Danny came up with the original idea for "I Should Coco." Gaz wrote most of "Moving." Or I came up with "Mary" on the new album. It's all very equal. No one is the main songwriter or lyricist or anything. It's a three-way split in every sense of the word.

AL: The new record seems upbeat and positive. Does that reflect a feeling of the last few years?

Mick: I don't know if it's upbeat or the last one was downbeat. We wanted to create a lot more space and air in the songs. It's more of a relaxed album I think. I don't know if it has anything to do with our psyche. I don't know if we're generally more happy now than in the past. I think that we're generally more relaxed about things if anything.

AL: Was Glam music and David Bowie always an influence?

Mick: Yeah, well on "Pumping." There's two elements of we are into Glam music and I'm a Bowie fan. It also comes from the production on the record, and the fact that we're basically producing it ourselves. We don't know how to do a professional job, so we just throw it together and it ends up sounding like a Glam track. There were certain instances where Danny didn't hit the snare loud enough so we all had to clap over the snare. In the end it sounds like Bowie. We like to produce things ourselves because it's cheaper.

AL: Are you doing some Festivals this summer?

Mick: Yeah. We're doing V2000 and T in The Park. One in Greece. We played most of the major festivals in 1995. It's going to be a busy year.

The Go! Team Interview

The debut album by The Go! Team, Thunder, Lightning, Strike, has made an impact on British music in a very short time. It was all started by leader Ian Parton five years ago. He had an old sampler and a four-track recording machine. Their sound, a combination of samples and live musicians, has been described as "Sonic Youth meets the Jackson 5." Better than that: various songs sound like Cop Shows, Blaxploitation movies, Charlie Brown cartoons, and Wild Kingdom reruns.

The Go! Team started in Brighton. Ian Parton was working as documentary filmmaker. When he started making the album there was a filmic soundtrack influence. Soon that side project became The Go! Team's original sound. Tracks like "Ladyflash" and "The Power Is On" became theme songs for the summer. There is a lot of cheerleading, rap music, and northern soul influences too. The more the merrier.

What was the beginning of an album that was finished some time in early 2004. At that time there was no real band. When they were offered to support Franz Ferdinand in Sweden they started getting a proper band together. The band consists of Ian Parton (guitar/drums/harmonica), and Sam Dook (guitar), and Jamie Bell (bass guitar). But most of the members play several other instruments, and change things around. Soon there were three girls in the band too, with Fukami Taylor (guitar) and Silke (drums), and Ninja (vocals).

The album was released in the UK in September 2004 and was really popular. It even almost won the Mercury Prize. They have played a lot of festivals and have become popular in America beforehand. Their album was sample heavy so it took a while for all the samples to be cleared. There is an illegal version of the album with all the original samples. They have blown away audiences worldwide with their electrifying stage show. I got to speak to Ninja right before they came back to California to play some shows with Smoosh, another recent favorite.

AL: When did the band come together?
Ninja: The band came together actually last May 2004. Ian Parton was bringing in people one by one. He wanted to bring the music to life. He wanted to make a live show. I was the last person to join in May. We did our first gig literally two weeks later in Sweden in front of three thousand people. We were thrown in together. We have been together about a year and half now. So we are really still a new band.

AL: Was that the tour with Franz Ferdinand?
Ninja: Um. We did play with Franz Ferdinand. I didn't know who they were at that time. We never got to meet them. We played some of the same festivals. The festival in Sweden was really good.

AL: By the time you joined the band was most of the album written?
Ninja: Ian actually made the whole album himself. He wrote all the music himself. He started writing in 2000 or 2001. It was an ongoing process and he kept on doing it. The album came together over many years. At that point he managed to get other people into it. He wrote everything and got us together to play onstage. We all bring our different elements to the band. We all bring something different to the live shows.

AL: Are you doing all the rapping on the record?
Ninja: There are two versions of the album that were released. The first version came out in the UK in September 2004. It is actually an illegal version of the album because none of the samples had been cleared. Ian didn't have any aspirations to make any money from the album. He didn't think anyone would be interested. It was like "We are not going to make any money, so there is no need to clear these samples." But when it came out there was quite a demand. People kept on asking us for it. This summer we got signed to Sony BMG. We were on a smaller label before, Memphis Industries. If people want to buy it, and so we can make a living out of it, all the samples had to be cleared. That took a few months to sort out.

AL: People don't do sample heavy albums anymore because it's too hard to clear all that stuff. What were some of the harder samples to get cleared? What was the most expensive samples on the record?
Ninja: I don't know anything off the top of my head. I know "Ladyflash" has been given away. We don't have any of that song. It has been given away 100% to the singer. Half of "Bottle Rocket" has been given away as well. I think that Ian cares more about the music than making money. He has always been fighting to keep the songs as close to the original version of the album. There have been a couple of changes. You wouldn't have noticed really unless you were a diehard fan of the first original version.

AL: What was your background? Were you in bands before The Go! Team?
Ninja: I wasn't in bands before. I was still in university. I just graduated a few weeks ago. I was studying finals exams at university and traveling around the world with The Go! Team at the same time. That was difficult for me. I have always been writing lyrics. I was doing that way back when I was 12 or 13 years old. I come from a hiphop background. Coming into the Go! Team like I did was quite a challenge for me. It's a different atmosphere and music. When we play at festivals we are playing with a lot of bands that I would not normally listen to. The rock and indie music scene is not really the scene that I come from. It's quite exciting to be involved in it.

AL: What kind of music did you listen to?
Ninja: I listened to everything. I was into classic music and jazz. I am mainly into hiphop. I like the real hiphop with loads of swearing. I like those CDs with stickers that say "Parental Advisory" and "Explicit Lyrics." The proper hiphop is all about people getting shot in the neighborhood. It is all violence. I like that kind of hiphop. Because It was real and they were rapping about what they know. It's gone all bling with girls in bikinis and flash cars. It's not real anymore. It's putting me off. I have been listening to older hiphop. I like Ghostface Killa and DMX. I like artists who laugh at themselves and have a good energy onstage.

AL: Do you like NWA?
Ninja: I used to love NWA and Dr. Dre's early stuff. I also like Gravediggaz and Cypress Hill. I like the raw hiphop. I don't like that stuff that is like R&B.

AL: Have your been to some of the neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Los Angeles were a lot of hiphop comes from?
Ninja: I would really love to check out the neighborhoods and check out the scene but I haven't had any time on these tours. I am not inspired by any rappers in the charts at the moment. There is nothing really original at the moment. I think the British hiphop scene is coming out at the moment. There is a little bit more punch to it. It's not about cars and the money.

AL: What do you think of people like Dizzee Rascal and Lady Sovereign?
Ninja: I am proud of them. They are young. They are doing their own thing. They have attitude. They are doing really well at the moment. But personally, it's not my kind of music. I am glad that Dizzee did things his way. He paid for records to get done. He did it on his own. They call that Grime and Garage. I am more into hiphop, which is different. Some people get those two mixed up.

AL: How did you meet Ian?
Ninja: I was just surfing the net. I was looking for singing and acting auditions. I saw an advert for "Old school hiphop rapper wanted." I sent him an email. He sent me a CD. I listened it for two weeks. It took me a while to get my head around it. It was so unique that I didn't say, "Hey, I want to play." It was dizzy, different, chaotic, rocking, happy. It was so much. I was figuring what I was going to do. Ian wanted me to write lyrics for the live show. I was wondering how I was going to fit in. People think of rapping as being a certain way. The Go! Team really pushes the boundaries. There can be rapping, singing, and shouting. There is so many possibilities. It is not as restrictive as modern rap is at the moment.

AL: How has the live show evolved over the past year and how is it different from the record?
Ninja: It's two different entities. To know what The Go! Team is about you need to see the live show and hear the album. The live show is so hectic. So much is happening onstage. People are running around and changing instruments. Sometimes it is two people and sometimes it's all six of us. People can expect the unexpected. It might be a rocking fast tune followed by a slow tune. We have a lot of visuals going on as well now. The visuals encompass the spirit of the Go! Team. We make very visual music. It's like a party on stage. We have a lot of fun. When someone smiles you want to smile back. If we are having a good time onstage we hope that the audience is having a good time as well.

AL: What is the song "Ladyflash" about?
Ninja: That song has so many influences. It has a 1960s girl group feel, a soul feel, some flutes and strings. It's all wrapped up together in one song. It's a laid-back sunshine type of song. It has so many genres. It is one of our favorites to play.

AL: "The Power Is On" is very popular.
Ninja: It's quite different from the album to the live show. On the album it is quite cheerleader-y, and thrash, and in your face. In the live show it is different. It is more aggressive and political. It's more angry and powerful. It sounds quite different. It has a military theme about it as well. I love that song.

AL: "We Won't Be Defeated" is another cheerleader type song.
Ninja: Yeah. We do a few songs with dancers. They are like 18 year old. They sing and do freestyle dancing. They have a girl gang vibe. They will be at most of the shows. It's a powerful hiphop songs. We have three or four dancers with us for the bigger shows and the TV shows. We were nominated for the Mercury Prize. We had all the girl dancers there. That was a big deal for us.

AL: Getting back to the Mercury Prize, did you get depressed that they gave it to some American guy this year?
Ninja: You can say that because you are American. But if I say something like that I sound bitter. I wasn't sad at all. We were glad that we didn't win because there is a Mercury Prize curse. People win it and then you don't hear about them anymore. If we won there would have been so much pressure on us. We would have had to tour for six months straight. We are used to maybe four weeks of touring and then going back to our regular lives. I think we should have won because we are so different. All those people in England watched this guy win the award and then go back to America. They are not going to know what the new bands are in England.

By alexander laurence

The Handsome Family interview 2006

The Handsome Family
Interview by Alexander Laurence

Husband and wife duo the Handsome Family has been making music for almost a decade that is somewhere between alt-country and traditionalist music. Brett Sparks is from Texas where he studied music. He moved to Chicago with his wife Rennie Sparks, a fiction writer originally from Long Island. Their music deals with dark themes and dark humor.

The Handsome Family's debut album, Odessa, was released in January 1995. This folk record was a home recording with a punk influence. Their second record, Milk and Scissors (1996), led to tours with Wilco, and more shows in Europe. Years later Brett was hospitalized with depression. Through the Trees (1998), The Handsome Family's third album was written and recorded in the aftermath of his depression. It was their most successful record to date.

Soon after Through the Trees, they quit their day jobs and worked on their music full time. The result was In the Air (2000), which was another great record. In the last part of this past year they released Singing Bones (2003). This record returned to early sounds and expanded their audience. It was voted as one of the best records of 2003 by Free Williamsburg. I got to talk to them right before a long American tour in January 2004. As you can tell from this interview, they were funny, contrary, and engaging.

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AL: When did you record Singing Bones?

Brett: Before it came out. I am not sure.

AL: How long did it take you to do it?

Brett: I spend a lot more time on records than most people do because I record at home. I am retarded and slow. It was four months. I mixed it myself so that takes longer. It is time consuming.

AL: Do you have to have time off from tours so you can think about writing new material?

Brett: Yeah. We don't really write on the road. It's hard to do. We divide everything up into the school year and summer.

AL: You had a bunch of other people play on this record. How does that work out?

Brett: That stretches out the time too. We have to accommodate their schedules. There are a lot of Albuquerque people on the record. I have a lot of friends who are musicians. I wanted to have a bunch of different people doing different things so it just didn't sound like Rennie and me. I thought that certain songs would sound good with a pedal steel or mandolin. Most of these people play specific instruments. The person dictated what they would do. Rather that thinking that this song needs a good kick ass Van Halen style guitar solo. I could go down to the local metal music store and find someone who could do that. What the hell am I talking about?

AL: When you bring other people in you will have already recorded most of the song?

Brett: Yeah. Things will be close to being finished. It's not mixed. I have people come in and do overdubs.

AL: How do the songs get written?

Brett: It's almost always lyrics first and then music. Rennie will give me the lyrics and then I will read them.

AL: The song "If The World Should End In Fire" should like you used a choir in a bigger studio.

Brett: That was one of the easier ones because it was a simple vocal multi-track. Getting a good snare sound was more difficult than doing that song was. If you record your voice six or seven times and put a lot of reverb on it, it will sound like that.

AL: It sounds like thirty people.

Rennie: It's only one person.

Brett: It's nine distinct parts. Three basses, three melodies, and three tenors. That's it.

AL: It reminds me of that Langley School record.

Rennie: We don't know any kids. Or people who would leave their kids with us.

AL: Are you going to have some kids on the next record?

Rennie: Only if we find them on the doorstep. We have some traps laid.

Brett: We have this ice cream van.

AL: No children then.

Rennie: Only old people like us. Maybe a chorus of old ladies. I like the way Chet Baker used to sound after he got his face beat in.

Brett: Who whistle through their teeth. That is a good sound.

AL: Are there any records that you liked recently?

Brett: I like Alistair Roberts. It's really good. He's on Drag City. It's like Scottish folk music. It's just a guy and a guitar. It's really stripped down. It's very archaic sounding. The old talk. The old language.

Rennie: I listen to a lot of talk radio.

AL: That's good.

Brett: Rennie is not interested in music all that much. It just seems to get in the way.

AL: You tour with a lot of bands. You like any of those?

Rennie: Sure. We like lots of bands. I am not sure if they inspire me. I mostly inspired by books and talk radio. I like to eavesdrop on people in the aisle at Walgreen's. I met this blind girl in the parking lot of Walgreen's. That was pretty much the inspiration for the whole record. We helped this lost dog in the parking lot. We talked about dogs and beauty.

AL: How are you getting ready for this tour?

Rennie: I am doing calisthenics. I am bending spoons with my mind. That helps me focus. I smash light bulbs with the power of my thought rays.

Brett: I drink a lot of beer so I can get myself up to speed.

AL: How many shows?

Rennie: I hate to count. It goes on most of my fingers and then starts over again. I start counting with a foot. I try to count visually like a crow. They can look at seven objects without having words.

Brett: It's like looking at a pair of dice. You don't have to count.

AL: Crows? I thought you said Eskimos.

Rennie: There is a tribe in the rain forest that counts up to five. After that they go to "many." (There is a big noise) Hey! Get out of there! Motherfucker! Out!

Brett: All hell has broken loose here.

AL: What is going on?

Brett: It's the cat. He pushed an iron from a really high shelf last night. It was a huge bang and shattering glass. We go in the bathroom and it's all destroyed. The cat seemed proud of what he did.

AL: Are there only two of you who live there?

Brett: We try to throw our voices.

Rennie: I spent a whole summer trying to throw my voice and I got nowhere.

AL: Do either of you come from a musical family?

Brett: Neither one of us do. My family is mostly horse thieves.

Rennie: I come from a thousand years of tailors and accountants.

AL: No one in your family played an instrument?

Brett: My mother played piano. She was a schoolteacher all her life.

AL: How did you get involved in American roots music and Americana?

Brett: It was an accident really. After the indie rock explosion everything started to suck. It got boring. Punk rock got watered down and old. When I heard Hank Williams and Bob Dylan and a lot of early folk music it freaked me out how good it was. It was better than the garbage that I was listening to. As a songwriter it was good to model yourself on those old folk songs. It's not autobiographical and confessional. It doesn't have this "look at me" quality that most pop music has. It's beautiful. It's heavy stuff. It's not about some twenty year old complaining about unrequited love.

AL: It is more about storytelling.

Rennie: There were songs about ancient ritual murders of babies in the Middle East. People were throwing their babies into the fire and worshipping their god. There are also songs that we sing to children that are gruesome. Putting a baby in a tree and seeing if it will fall. "Ring Around The Rosy" is about the plague.

AL: What do you think about when Bob Dylan went electric?

Rennie: Many Americans don't like change. It's hard to shock people now like that, by picking up an electric guitar.

Brett: He got bored. Dylan has always been a contrarian. He pissed off a lot of people.

AL: Are these people conformists?

Brett: We met a lot of these purists. These people think that if you bring a harmonica onstage that it is not purist. When I brought an electric guitar onstage at the Harry Smith tribute at the Getty Center there were audible gasps. People freaked out.

AL: What about when you bring computers and drum machines onstage?

Brett: That scares me actually.

Rennie: The abomination. For a lot of our songs there was never a real drummer. It wasn't as if we left the drummer at home. Sometimes we bring a drummer with us on tour.

AL: Many people think that you killed the drummer.

Brett: Yeah, we ate him.

Rennie: But we didn't kill him.

AL: Are there any good books that you read recently that you care to mention?

Brett: I don't read. Rennie does. I don't read and Rennie doesn't listen to music.

Rennie: I like to read Barry Lopez. I was reading this book about a serial killer. It's about Herman Mudget. He was in Chicago during the World's Fair. All these people were going to the World's Fair and disappearing. This guy was luring young girls to his nearby hideout. It had trap doors. He had a crematorium in his basement. He had a good plan.

AL: Have you seen any movies?

Brett: We watched The Pianist last night. I thought it was really funny.

Rennie: I thought the movie implied that since he was an artist it was good he survived. Shouldn't the lives of bricklayers be just as important? Just because you are an artist it doesn't mean you are better than other people. I like the old version of Solaris. I like Touched By An Angel.

AL: That is still on TV?

Brett: I don't like other worldly shit.

Rennie: I like that the guy who plays Death is named Die. That fascinates me.

AL: Do you believe in higher intelligence?

Both: I hope so.

AL: Why is that?

Rennie: I know for a fact that two-thirds of the universe is made up of dark energy and dark matter. We can't perceive it at all. We only perceive one-third of reality. There is a lot more out there.

AL: Is there an afterlife or we do not just perceive everything?

Rennie: I don't know. I can only speak of the part that I perceive and so far it's pretty creepy. I am hoping the other two-thirds will make sense of everything. It's interesting that I don't understand everything about the universe.

Brett: It's safe to say that we don't have traditional Christian beliefs.

AL: Do you have any political leanings or personal philosophy?

Rennie: Kill Bush! Destroy him!

Brett: Don't say that.

AL: That was a joke.

Brett: We are very anti-war and anti-Bush. We feel that we were cheated out of the last election.

Rennie: I want my country back.

AL: You have to tour in Europe and people probably give you a hard time because you are American?

Brett: We travel around the world and play music for people. It's a real pain in the ass to explain yourself and your foreign policy to people every night. It sucks that you have to be embarrassed about your leaders and about what you are doing in the world.

Rennie: It would suck worse living in Iraq.

The Soundtrack of Our Lives

The Soundtrack of Our Lives
An interview with Ebbot Lundberg
by Alexander Laurence

AL: What is Gothenberg like compared to Stockholm?
Ebbot: Gothenberg is a paradise. I actually live in Stockholm now which is like living in a poodle city. It has a poodle mentality. It's very posh and hung up. The whole vibe is cold and stiff upper lip. It's very boring.

AL: In Sweden you would never talk to someone on the street.
Ebbot: Absolutely. Here in New York City, everyone talks to you. That's not the case in Stockholm. Not even in Gothenberg. I guess it has to do with temperature. It's very cynical. When it's summer, it's a paradise.

AL: How is Soundtrack of Our Lives different from Union Carbide Productions?
Ebbot: It's just an extension I guess really. It's something bigger and wider. Soundtrack can be whatever. Union Carbide was more an underground thing. It was part of the late-1980s movement in music, which was itself, an echo of the original hardcore punk explosion. Our band died when Grunge died.

AL: How did you put together that band? Did you choose who was in the new band in 1996?
Ebbot: Yeah, basically it was me and the guitar players from Union Carbide. I knew some guys who were in a band called Different Builders that I had produced. I thought that we should put a band together. It made sense. We started actually because we were doing music for ski movies. That was the case. We didn't initially have plans to form another group. It turned out to be a good thing, so we gave it a shot. It worked well.

AL: Have you spent time producing other bands?
Ebbot: Yeah, when I have time. Now I just end up producing this band. I like to work with other people.

AL: Most of us in the United States are more familiar with the "Behind The Music" CD. All three were released here about the same time. Is "Behind The Music" representative of the three CDs?
Ebbot: They are all great, I think. I can't really say which one is the best. The first one came out in 1996. That's a while ago. It's called "Welcome To The Infant Freebase." People should get into it. It's a fantastic album. It's on Parasol and people should be able to find it.

AL: When I got "Behind The Music" I listened to it, and then I found out that it was one of many albums.
Ebbot: The idea was when we started was to release a box set. We wanted to start out by releasing four albums. That is happening now in America almost. It's like digging up something in the past. "Behind The Music" was done after the Millennium shift. It came out about a year ago.

AL: Do you have a home studio?
Ebbot: Yeah. Some songs are home demos. We add some things. We have our own studio and production and we do everything.

AL: Do you all write songs in the band?
Ebbot: Everyone in the band has song ideas. I have to pick them up and write lyrics and melodies. Everyone in the band adds something in the songwriting process.

AL: You are known to be a great live band. Are some of the recordings just live takes?
Ebbot: I guess. Sometimes we just screw up on a song. Okay come back next week try it again. Let's try something else. The studio is this small bunker. We can barely fit in there. We like it like that. We can smell each other. We end up getting the right feel and the right emotion to it. We feel like we are in a rehearsal room. We try and make it as easy as possible.

AL: You have been touring this record for a while?
Ebbot: We have toured Europe so much. We enjoy being somewhere else like America. We enjoy just being here. We are going to China next.

AL: Has there been a larger fanbase in the past year since there is so much focus on Swedish music?
Ebbot: It is a slow growing process. I think that we want to maintain a following. We want to keep on doing good albums. We want to create a good vibe. That is what is missing in the world today. We don't have much choice.

AL: Do you have a group of new songs? When will you start recording them?
Ebbot: Yeah. I think that once we finish this tour in America, we will start on the next record. We will have time in December and early 2003.

AL: What will the new record sound like?
Ebbot: I hope to put out some good music before the shit breaks down. But the world is already breaking down. We want to create our own little parallel universe.

AL: What music did you grow up listening to?
Ebbot: Everything. I used to listen to stuff like Hoagy Carmichael and stuff like that. When I started to play in a band I used to listen to UK Subs, Black Flag, and a lot of American punk bands. Minor Threat and all that stuff. At the same time I was into The Beatles.

AL: You got all of that punk aggression out of your system?
Ebbot: Live, it's still there. When you are on stage, you are in the audience as well. Somebody is watching you that is you. So you don't want to disappoint yourself. I get that feeling. I don't want to be bored. I want to be thrilled. So we want to thrill the audience as well as ourselves when we play live, which can be hard. It used to be that you were in a bubble and here's the band and here are the people. People say "You suck" from a distance. If you are in a band you can't go on doing that for a long time.

AL: What excites you about music?
Ebbot: Everything. I hate to wait in the dressing room before you go on. You have to wait all the time. I am very excited by music. I wouldn't do it if I wasn't.

AL: Are you playing songs from all three albums on this tour?
Ebbot: Hopefully. Mostly from the latest one. We will come back for another American tour as soon as we can. We were going to tour with Oasis but I am not sure if that is going to happen. They want us to.

The Cribs interview

Intimate Interview with THE CRIBS
By alexander laurence

Ryan Jarman: guitar/vocals
Gary Jarman: bass/vocals
Ross Jarman: drums

The Cribs are three brothers from Wakefield. It’s a suburb outside Leeds.
They have been playing since they were teenagers. They have done a few albums.
The New Fellas (2005) is their most recent. They were ready to go ahead and do
another. The Cribs are busy guys. They have been on the road constantly the
past few years. They had a single in the charts. I got to talk to Ryan Jarman for
a few minutes during their show in Los Angeles in November 2005. Look for
more from this band.

AL: I don’t have to ask you how you met because you are all brothers. How do
you all write songs in the band?

Ryan: I don’t know. It’s weird. We have only started writing songs for the
new album. It will be our third album. It’s been so long. I have forgotten what
it is like being in the studio and not on the road. We don’t think about
writing too much. We go to our rehearsal space in Wakefield. It’s in this really
old building. They are going to knock it down to make yuppie flats. Nobody
wants a yuppie flat in Wakefield anyway.

AL: Are you going to get a real estate deal there for having been there
already?

Ryan: Yeah. And then sell it for an over-inflated price a year later. We just
finished making it nice. We fixed it up. We just put in a ping-pong table. We
have a Double Dragon, the arcade game, in there. Some guy was selling it down
the road. When I was a kid I always wanted one. We were able to buy it for a
hundred pounds with our advance. Being in a band, and buying that machine, we
have been able to satisfy one childhood dream.

AL: What is the studio like? Do you have a lot of gear?

Ryan: We have a lot of stuff. It’s like a youth club down at our place. We
don’t do anything strenuous or anything where we run around.

AL: Do you want to move to London?

Ryan: Everyone asks us: “When are you going to move to London?” I don’t like
big cities. I like going back to small towns. People in small towns tend to
be weird and more interesting. It’s good to go back to. You know that you
don’t want to live there, but it is okay to end up back there.

AL: There are more fashionable things to do in London. If you live in the
suburbs you end up working more and not being distracted.

Ryan: Yeah. If you are in a band, the record company always expects you to be
at certain parties and gigs. If you lived in London you would have to hang
out with a bunch of these people. I can’t be bothered with these people. That’s
not what I want to do. I would just rather go home and sleep. It’s just us
three and we hang out all the time.

AL: You go to the NME awards?

Ryan: Yeah. We will go to that party. It was fun. We went to the Q Magazine
after party and stuff. It was just like hanging out with lawyers. It was all
about getting pissed and slapping each other on the back. I don’t know why we
bothered going there for a round. It was the opposite of what we usually enjoy
doing.

AL: You played in California in June 2005. Then you came back for one more
show at the end of the year. Did you plan a bigger tour?

Ryan: Yeah. The second time around we just did New York and Los Angeles. We
were supposed to do a larger tour. But for financial reasons we wanted to share
a bus with another band. Nobody was happy with sharing a bus with another
band and a crew. It just turned out that we couldn’t do the whole tour and it was
canceled. I would like to do a proper tour of America, and not just a few
dates. We played CMJ and SXSW. WE have played east coast and west coast with
Kaiser Chiefs. And we would play some extra shows on our own when we could. It was
a long tour but not long by American standards. It was only like three weeks.

AL: What do you think about some of those articles in the NME about The Cribs
being part of “the new grunge?”

Ryan: It is just one of those things. It is just a label. We don’t get
involved in it too much because “grunge” was a stupid word anyway. Every band that
was called grunge was probably embarrassed by the name. I am not sure what the
fuck it means. It was just some fashion term. People used to wear ripped
clothes. There was also a focus on being a band from Leeds. We were the first band
signed. Then there was the Kaiser Chiefs. Then there was this New York-shire
term. That was Leeds and Sheffield and everything in Yorkshire. Whenever there
is this new tagline, you have a bunch of shitty bands that get signed. I
never really liked Leeds. In Leeds at the time there were all these bands dreaming
about getting a deal. They are really bitchy. They were going “Who are these
guys from Wakefield, and how did they get a deal?” We paved the way for all
these bands in that area to get signed. We got them exposure. It’s sort of
irritating. We were known way before we had a deal because we had played so many
live shows.

AL: You had a website back then?

Ryan: No. I didn’t know anything about computers back then. We just did it by
pressing a lot of vinyl. We played a lot of live shows and handed out
records. Didn’t know that the Internet would make such a big difference.

AL: I know you are all brothers. But does the one brother feel left out
because he is not a twin?

Ryan: Probably not because Ross has a girlfriend. He doesn’t need us. I have
been hanging out with Gary all the time. The funny thing is I don’t think that
he likes hanging out with me anymore. I don’t know how the whole twin thing
works anymore. We all get on really well. But when we go to hotels Gary and me
get put together as one entity. We never intended it.

AL: We all this song “Hey Scenesters!” over here. How do you choose the
subject matter for the lyrics?

Ryan: Either my twin brother or I write the lyrics. We don’t sit down and
think about these things. The main hook line was written when we were practicing.
We are from a small town. Last year we started to go to other places like
London. A lot of these shows were like being in the playground. There were all
these fashionable people. They would look down their noses at people and they
thought they were cool. We were just shouting at people like that for a laugh.
It’s all about having a main idea and a hook for the song.

AL: You sing all the songs you write the lyrics for?

Ryan: Yeah. Whoever gets to the microphone first. Much of the time we sing
together.

AL: What do you think of the shows in America this year?

Ryan: I really liked it. I was really excited about the Kaiser Chiefs shows
because it was like a party in the crowd. Our own shows went pretty well too.
We were told that American crowds are quieter but we had fun. It’s fun to go to
different places. It’s great to go to New York to California. In New York it
is fucking freezing and in California right nice weather. It’s cool.
Unfortunately we have to leave tomorrow. We have to fuck off. We have played like 300
shows in the past year. I usually have one day off a month.

AL: Do you ever get to see other bands?

Ryan: It’s rare. You only get to see bands that you are on tour with. There
is nothing going on in Wakefield. There is nothing going on in Wakefield. You
have to go to Leeds if you want to see bands. We play Leeds all the time. I see
bands there quite often. But we started putting on gigs in Wakefield. They
started out just like rehearsal. But every time we put on shows the cops come
because people are drinking. We stopped doing it. It is a lost cause.

AL: Do you have any other hobbies?

Ryan: I do a lot of writing. I write lyrics but I am always writing. I like
to read books too.

AL: Are there any writers you like?

Ryan: It’s all clichéd but I read the Beat Generation writers, like Kerouac.
I like this guy named Italo Calvino who is this surrealist type of writer. I
really like If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler. That is my favorite.

AL: How do you record the albums?

Ryan: We do it all live. You can’t think about it too long. You have to enjoy
it. It’s like if you think of a word too long it loses its meaning. Producers
have to be open to our ideas. You always have to have control of your record.
We trust Edwyn Collins who did the New Fellas record. Bernard Butler did the
latest single. It was a brand new song. I like both those people. It’s hard to
let anyone mess around.

AL: I heard Bernard Butler was really into production and Pro Tools.

Ryan: That is what I heard too. He lots to do a lot of layers. He likes to
have loads of guitar tracks. It’s cool. It’s the first record that was played
on daytime radio, which is proper mainstream shit. I just heard that today.
It’s a song called “Your Gonna Lose Us.” It’s not on the album. The radio played
the wrong version. They played the one with all the swearing. They got us in
trouble.

AL: Are you going to take some time off and do an album?

Ryan: We are going to England and play a few shows before Christmas. We were
going to take off loads of time. But it turns out that we are going to Japan
in January 2006. Then we are going to Australia and Germany for a little while.
After that there will be another tour of England. I don’t know when the fuck
we are going to have some time off.

AL: When did The New Fellas come out in England?

Ryan: It was around June 2005. We want to get on with the new album. Before
we basically did two albums in a year. We don’t want to take too long doing the
new album. We have loads of ideas at the minute. I want to get on with it.

AL: What are your shows going to be like in Early 2006? Are you going to play
new songs?

Ryan: It will mostly from the second album. When we released the first two
albums we played 200-300 shows a year for two years. We have played some of
those early songs so many times. Maybe now it will be cool to play an old one
because we haven’t play them in such a long time.

AL: What bands that you have played with have you liked?

Ryan: There is this guy from New York called Jeffrey Lewis. He used to be in
The Moldy Peaches. We took him on tour in England. It was just him and his
brother playing acoustic. We played some big halls. He was doing some songs
without a microphone. He would just stand onstage and shout. He is a genius
songwriter. He is one of those guys who don’t give a shit. His songs are really good.
He played with us at Mercury Lounge. We saw him play the other night.

AL: What is the best part of being in a band?

Ryan: I like it all. It’s all a good laugh. I don’t see it as being a job.
Especially in England right now, many people see it as being a job. With Indie
Music being so big in England at the minute it can be seen as a career move.
You can sign an Indie band for a million pounds. I can’t understand how that
can be done. I think that a lot of the bands are losing the attitude. We get to
go out to a different city every night and meet people and get pissed for
nothing. I am not worried about TV appearances. People have lost the plot.

AL: You were always doing music?

Ryan: Yeah. In Wakefield there is naught to do. I was maybe into video games.
When I was ten years old, some guy burgled our house. He took all our
computer games and all we had left were guitars. We had nothing to do.

AL: What does your parents think of the band?

Ryan: They come to shows when we are close to home. They are really into it.
Before that it was either go to college or work in a factory. They are
pleased. My mum plays piano and guitar. She could play songs by the Beatles. She
played them like they were nursery rhymes. I didn’t realized that these were songs
by the Beatles. I think she was in a band in the 1960s.

AL: Are you into collecting guitars and gear?

Ryan: I love my guitar. It has been broke so many times. It was nice when I
got it. It’s like a diseased guitar. People say that I should get some
expensive guitar. I have been offered some ghastly things. It makes me want to keep
my guitar because it is so disgusting.

Website: www.thecribs.com

The Morning After Girls: US Tour

So for the last few months, our relatively new musical happening called the morning after girls have spent time at home in Australia as they ponder how to follow up their well received SXSW and CMJ trips last year....and to our delight, things are looking promising for a fantastic 2006.

Last week they shared the stage once again with THE DANDY WARHOLS in Sydney and Brisbane. At which time, BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB invited The Girls to support them on their entire US tour. Without even figuring out how they would get across the globe, the band said yes and the wheels for the morning after girls’ return to America were set in motion.

And in comes the UK....BEST BEFORE RECORDS have now come on board to release ‘Prelude: EPs 1 & 2’ in the UK, and now things appear to be heating up over there for The Girls as well. NME, MTV (UK), The Fly, XFM and Zane Lowe at BBC1 have discovered the EPs and are starting to let people know.

MTV2 (UK) have been airing the video for ‘Hi-Skies’ exclusively since December (4 months prior to the UK release). And just when plane tickets are being sorted out for The Girls to support BRMC in America, STELLASTARR* steps in and offers them the support slot on their UK tour...so they’re jumping off the BRMC tour to do Europe with stellastarr*....including and NME Brats Show with stellastarr* and THE BRAVERY.

After the UK, the morning after girls are headed back to America to rejoin BRMC in Houston and do the west coast dates up until SXSW. Then the band is flying up to Seattle to join BRMC on their last show. Why fly up there for just one show? ?It’s because KEXP has been flogging them to death up there and sales are strong, so The Morning After Girls are going to play Seattle to say thanks for all the support....they will also be performing a live session on KEXP the night after the gig.

Anyway, the morning after girls are currently #7 on Mediaguide’s specialty radio chart, and and have been steadily climbing up the CMJ charts for the last couple of months. Below are the tour dates. They’re a coming back. We hope you can come out to understand why you need to believe in this band....

US TOUR WITH BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUBUS TOUR DATES:

Feb 5 - Gothic Theater - Englewood, CO
Feb 7 - Fine Line Music Café - Minneapolis, MN
Feb 8 - Metro - Chicago, IL
Feb 9 - Bogart’s - Cincinnati, OH
Feb 10 - Newport Music Hall - Columbus, OH
Feb 11 - Slippery Rock University - Slippery Rock, PA
Feb 13 - The Odeon - Cleveland, OH
Feb 14 - Mr. Smalls Theatre - Pittsburgh, PA
Feb 15 - Pearl Street - Northampton, MA
Feb 17 - Avalon - Boston, MA
Feb 18 - Webster Hall - New York, NY

jt leroy is a girl

Shock waves roiled the literary world Monday when new evidence surfaced that finally could prove San Francisco author JT LeRoy is not who he says he is. Instead of a former male hooker from a hardscrabble background, he apparently is a 40-year-old woman with middle-class roots.

LeRoy, who has cultivated celebrity and publishing industry friendships with the likes of Courtney Love, Winona Ryder, Madonna, Dave Eggers and Michael Chabon, appears to have pulled off the greatest literary hoax in a generation.

Since 2000, LeRoy has been gaining fame for his fictional depictions of a 12-year-old boy lured into a life of truck-stop prostitution by his own mother. His first book, "Sarah," was shelved in bookstores under "fiction" but was marketed as semi-autobiographical. The author's life story was key to the success of the book.

As the story went, LeRoy was saved from the streets of San Francisco by a woman named Laura Albert and her husband, Geoffrey Knoop. The trio became a family, and, with the help of a therapist, LeRoy was able to channel his traumatic life experiences, including his infection with HIV, into writing that was raw and powerful.

Over the past five years, as LeRoy's readership grew, his shyness became part of the legend. On the rare occasions when he would appear in public, LeRoy wore a woman's blond wig and sunglasses. LeRoy's gender issues were well-known: He identified himself as gay and spoke in interviews of his desire for a sex-change operation.

But according to a story Monday in the New York Times by Warren St. John, "JT LeRoy" is actually a family project. The person who portrays LeRoy in public is Savannah Knoop, Geoffrey Knoop's half sister, who is in her mid-20s. The person who writes the work, St. John argued, is Laura Albert, originally from Brooklyn.

The theory that LeRoy is Albert's creation was first advanced by San Francisco author Stephen Beachy in an article written originally for -- but never published by -- the San Francisco Bay Guardian. That story ran in New York Magazine in October.

"I am thrilled that the New York Times has answered the biggest remaining mystery in the JT LeRoy saga, the identity of the actor who plays the part," Beachy told The Chronicle by e-mail Monday.

"There is no longer any doubt that 'JT LeRoy' is a fake identity created by Laura Albert and her husband, Geoffrey Knoop, maintained with the help of Geoffrey's sister, Savannah," Beachy said.

On Monday afternoon, a Chronicle reporter rang the bell of a dingy, cream-colored Victorian apartment house on Larkin Street that is the residence of Laura Albert and Geoffrey Knoop, according to an online directory. A woman answered but refused to open the door. Conducting a conversation from the landing of the top of the interior stairs, where she could not be seen, the woman, who did not identify herself, told the reporter that Albert and Knoop had moved to Mendocino.

"You should get them, because they must be brought down," the woman said.

The revelations about LeRoy may not seem earth-shattering to those outside the literary world. Well-known cultural figures, such as Andy Warhol, have often toyed with issues of gender and identity. And, like Warhol, LeRoy pulled into his orbit celebrities and influential people who gave him support and publicity.

"While I am not a fan of JT's work, Laura Albert's is fascinating," Beachy said. "The hoax was brilliant and complex, and her understanding of human nature is obviously intense."

Beachy added: "The hoax needed to be revealed in order for us to ask the really important questions -- about what we want to believe and why, what we project onto 'outsiders,' and the magical aura we grant celebrities."

Over the years, influential San Franciscans reportedly have helped LeRoy with his work, including novelist and publisher Dave Eggers, Chronicle Datebook editor David Wiegand, Michael Ray of Zoetrope magazine and authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman.

"If the Times article is correct, then I was fooled by the JT LeRoy persona as much as anyone," Eggers told The Chronicle via e-mail Monday.

"I actually edited a story, 'Harold's End,' by LeRoy, and spent hours on the phone -- with someone -- going through a typical line-edit," Eggers said.

"I'm disappointed that I was misled. I'm still pretty confused by all this, but I do think, whatever the outcome, that the first two books are very well written," he added.

LeRoy's San Francisco publisher -- Ron Turner of Last Gasp -- remains unfazed by the New York Times piece.
"There's no change in our plans," said Turner, who will bring out LeRoy's next novel, "Labour," this spring.

"If it was a hoax, hey, it was a great hoax. They're still great books. I don't care who wrote them as long as they're really good reads," Turner said.

Author Armistead Maupin, whose novel "The Night Listener" was based on his experience with a literary pretender, has strong feelings on the subject.

"A lot of people argue that such frauds cause no harm and are a great joke played on the literary establishment," he said by telephone Monday.

"But in fact there's something very callous about using AIDS and an abusive childhood as a way of getting sympathy and support," Maupin said, adding, "I'm surprised that people were bamboozled as long as they were."

Lemony Snicket -- the San Francisco author also known as Daniel Handler -- was bemused by the fuss.
"From the moment I first heard of him, there was speculation about his identity," he said. "So it doesn't surprise me that there continues to be speculation about his identity."

Handler believes there is an artist -- never mind who -- behind the work. "LeRoy's work is very much of a piece -- it's consistent," he said.

"The only question is, did the person who wrote these things have as colorful a history as some people seem to believe?" Handler asked. "That's a question you could ask about Jack London."