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Archive: April, 2009
Monday: Saddle Creek new wavers The Faint teams up with Liverpool's Ladytron. Be prepared to bust a move like its Friday night. With Crocodiles. At the Troc. Doors at 7 p.m., tickets are $21.50-23.
Tuesday: Midwestern jangly punk with surf rock undertones. Sometimes melodic, sometimes intense, Private Dancer's pulling out all the stops. Catch their act at Danger Danger. With Boo and Boo Too, Hermit Thrushes and Matt Kurz One. Doors at 8:30 p.m., tickets are $5-10
Wednesday: Great Lake Swimmers cross the border in support of last month's dreamy release 'Lost Channels.' At Johnny Brenda's. With Kate Maki & Dead Folk. Doors at 9 p.m., tickets are $10
Thursday: Former Deep Elm foursome the Appleseed Cast bring melancholy post-rock to the M Room, with An Horse & Southeast Engine. Doors at 9 p.m., tickets are $10
Friday: Support Philly natives like indie rockers Blood Feathers and the folky Birdie Busch. At the North Star Bar. With Gerhardt Koerner. Doors at 9 p.m., tickets are $
Saturday: Flight of the Conchords, need we say more? Bret and Jemaine take their show on the road. The tickets are pricey but the laughs will be worth it. At Tower Theater. Doors at 7 & 10 p.m., tickets are $38.50-145 (ouch!)
Sunday: Who's more hardcore? As I Lay Dying or Lamb of God? We're at a loss, you decide. At the Electric Factory. With Children of Bodom, Municiple Waste & God Forbid. Doors at 7 p.m., tickets are $38-40
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[audio:http://stream.citypaper.net/music/Amanda%20Blank%20-%20Might%20Like%20You%20Better.mp3]
It's the first track from her debut album, due out in July. Here's the Blank Blog.
From the mind of David Bowie's kid (aka, Duncan Jones), Moon looks like Solaris, 2001, Saving Private Ryan and their pal existentialism all got together, had a couple glasses of wine and did things they only giggled about their girlfriends with in college. Plot-wise, Sam Rockwell is finishing up his three-year shift working on the moon ' dreaming about hanging with his fam and reflecting on his past dalliances. All is going great until he starts to lose it, especially after he literally confronts himself. Needless to say, this looks totally trippy and awesome, although I'm afraid it'll get too obtuse and into it's own what-the-fuck moments. Still, Sam Rockwell always pleases ' whether he's trying to be a movie star (Charlie's Angels, Matchstick Men) or essentially just playing himself (everything else). Moon hit Philly's fair shores during the recent PFF/Cinefest but I could never catch a screening. Anyone else see it? Whatchu think?
12 a.m. ' 1 a.m.
Don't you know that by suddenly becoming this cool, you're only guaranteeing that you're going to die?
Featuring: A subtle metaphor about the global dangers presented by an unchecked military-industrial complex. Also, Jack's face maybe melts.
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Dr. Gregory House stares wistfully at a photo of beloved character actor Kal Penn. Did they just kill off Kumar on House? Spoiler! Guess I don't need to watch that one. Anyway, previously on 24, the FBI raided Starkwood and Jack was sprayed in the face with a bioweapon that will kill him shortly after this season ends.
This week opens where last week closed, as Tony, Larry Moss and an FBI team are at the Starkwood base ' home of 1,500 ultra-badass mercenaries, three platoons of whom have them surrounded. Tony and Larry exchange 'aw crud' looks while, back at the ranch, Jack, Agent Walker and Janeane Garofalo provide laptop tech support, which consists of 'aerial intel shots indicate that you guys are royally screwed.'
Jon Voight arrives on the scene and has a face-off with Larry. Voight starts shouting at him, once again randomly emphasizing words, which continues to be an effective debate tool. Voight is doing some kind of weird Larry David-as-George Steinbrenner thing here, and I'm loving it. He gives Larry and his team five minutes to clear out.
Jack is stuck back at FBI headquarters because he's been medically ruled too dead to fight. Divorced from his ability to just go kill everybody, he brainstorms a plan to find a sympathetic ear at Starkwood. Said sympathetic ear is Starkwood Chairman Doug Knowles, who has a gigantic watch and who also realizes that Hodges (Voight) is completely out of his damn mind. Knowles is played by Chris Mulkey, and I immediately remember him as Hank Jennings from Twin Peaks. I actually say 'Hey, Hank Jennings from Twin Peaks!' aloud, but as I'm watching 24 solo this week ' purely to maintain journalistic integrity, mind you ' that just kind of echoes around my apartment. So this is what it's like to die alone? Huh. My emotionally vulnerable state aside, reader, if you can't recognize tertiary Twin Peaks characters, you and I can never be friends. Ah well. J'ai une 'me solitaire!
The FBI team quickly develops their own plan and Tony uses his Junior Jack Ninja Skills to turn invisible and blend into the background while Larry and his team stand down. Greg, John Voight's toady sidekick, gets pissy with Larry and demands that he be uncuffed or 'it's gonna get ugly.' Larry knocks him out with a single punch. A Starkwood merc clobbers Larry with a rifle to the face, but he just kind of shrugs it off. Oh, Larry, don't you know that by suddenly becoming this cool, you're only guaranteeing that you're going to die by the end of the day?
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The FBI packs up and heads out, allowing Inviso-Tony to sneak inside the hanger and hook up with Knowles. Walker informs Jack that their plan is working, but Jack is too busy grimacing and dying to be very happy about it.
Jack is able to temporarily stop dying long enough to teleconference with President Pillowface Taylor and Evil First Daughter Olivia Taylor. Pillowface is incensed by the idea that Voight would have his mercs ready to fire on federal agents. She drafts her new pal Jack Bauer into running the operation and tries to small talk Jack on the phone with a 'Heard you were dying, buddy, how's that going?' But Jack has no time for this, he blows her off with a 'Yes, Ms. Lady President Ma'am.'
First Daughter makes her own telephone call to that shady reporter guy from a few episodes ago. His sources tell him that there are a doin's a goin' down at Starkwood. He wants the inside dirt, but when Olivia won't play ball, he drops the 'I'll tell your mom that you had the Chief of Staff of the President of the United States fired so you could then become the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States yourself' card. That old trick. First Daughter has Aaron Pierce get her a car so she can go kill this dope.
Tony and Knowles are sneaking around Starkwood HQ with Garofalo acting as an ersatz Chloe for Tony. She tries to tell him how some computer card reader works, and Tony basically tells her to shut up. Some mercs in an armored Humvee drive by, so Knowles tries to create a distraction, Bart Simpson style, which means he pretty much just runs out and yells 'Look at me, everybody, I'm Chairman of the Board!' They throw his dumb ass in the back of the Humvee.
Meanwhile, Walker and Jack are babbling about something and OH MAN, JACK JUST DIED! OK, he just kind of had a convulsion and fell to the ground, knocking over a bunch of CDs. I wonder who has to pick all those up. But wait! His face is bubbling! I think. Maybe he was turning into a werewolf? I don't really know what was going on there. It was like when Schwarzenegger's head was getting ready to explode on the surface of Mars at the end of Total Recall. Spoiler!
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Jon Voight is informed that his men have found Knowles just taking a stroll around the Starkwood compound. They ask if they should make with the killing, but Voight tells them that you can't kill a guy just for taking a walk. This is the only line Voight has delivered on show thus far that I could tell he didn't believe. He gets an update from some bald scientist guy that the weaponized megavirus will be ready at the end of the episode.
First Daughter and Aaron Pierce arrive at the reporter's place, and she talks Pierce into waiting in the hall. Reporter Guy demands the lowdown on the showdown. Olivia tells him that she can't tell him because of National Security. He says 'c'mon, please?' and she almost immediately tells him everything. She tries to buy his silence by playing to his feelings, but reporters have no feelings. Instead, he demands that she buy him off via sexing him up. Eww, not with Aaron Pierce waiting just outside the door, you creep.
Back at the FBI, Jack talks to the CDC doctor, who is actually CDC Director Sunny Macer from way back in Season 3, an amazing continuity recall on the part of the producers. Despite her weirdly My Little Pony-esque name, Macer is a pro. She tells Jack that there is some kind of experimental procedure that could possibly save him, but Jack has no interest and instead chooses medicine that will just mask the effects of his impending death so he can be more useful for the next few hours. Kim Bauer is mentioned, and Jack tells Walker that he and his daughter are no longer on speaking terms, and he's content to die without letting Kim know. All Sean Avery jokes will be saved until Elisha Cuthbert actually shows up on screen, NHL fans.
Jack informs Tony that eight hostiles are en route to his location, and Tony gets ready to get his awesome on. Two mercs are sent his way, and Tony takes them out with a pretty sweet move, catching one guy in flying half-nelson while whipping around and kicking the second guy in the same motion, before pausing to break the first guy's neck. As the second guy starts to get up, Tony runs over and punts him right in the face. Advantage, Almeida! For the record, we're counting this as 1.5 Starkwood deaths for now.
Back from commercial, Tony is loading himself up with merc gear. Still no official confirmation that he killed that second guy. I mean, he probably did, but at least Jack makes it clear, so I'm only scoring Tony a half point. He gets into an elevator with the bald scientist, who has photos of Important Science Stuff. Presumably, that will be a plot point in an episode or two. They chit chat. It's not exactly the elevator scene in Big Trouble in Little China, as far as classic incidental elevator scenes go.
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Tony makes his way down to the Evil Bioweapons Lab and snaps some pics of the canisters with his Sprint Mobile Phone. Jack confirms those are the canisters that killed him, and now an air strike can be called in on Starkwood.
Knowles is being held in an office, and Jon Voight comes rolling in. Knowles raises his voice to Voight. Huge mistake. JV calmly pours himself a drink and gives us a little backstory about how Starkwood 'pulled America's ass out of the fire, again and again and again!' He does a slight variation on Nicholson's 'You want me on that wall, you need me on that wall!' speech from A Few Good Men. Knowles tries to talk some sense into him. As you may have guessed, talking sense is the exact wrong tactic when dealing with Jon Voight, who responds by beating Knowles to death with either a vase or wine decanter, then tosses him over the side of a railing. Knowles lands sprawled out over a giant world map. Then an eagle with a single tear in its eye flies in carrying a faded flag in its talons. This may be a metaphor for something.
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| Fall over the map. |
We finally go back to the creepy reporter's swingers pad, and oh no, they totally did it while Aaron Pierce was waiting outside. In the interest of keeping CritMass the most accurate (and therefore sexiest) 24 recap blog, I went back and did the math on this: allowing for 24's sliding real time scale, this off-screen sex scene clocks in at 16+ minutes, shattering the previous record of a 60 second commercial break sex scene set by President Logan in Season 5. Olivia buttons up, having ignored Supreme Court Justice Pat Benatar's mandate against weaponized sex. Evil reporter, who is lounging in bed in the creepiest way allowable on network TV, does the journalistic equivalent of turning into a post-sex vampire by telling First Daughter he's going to run the story anyway. You cad! First Daughter shrugs and plays her trump card, revealing that she recorded them doin' it on her Sprint Mobile Phone and will leak the footage scummy reporter's wife and colleagues if he runs the story.
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Chief of Staffs! Olivia records |
What would happen in real life in this situation: this weasel would immediately grab his own Sprint Mobile Phone to call up and divorce his wife, then giddily tell all his buddies what just happened before selling his copy of the Hot Evil First Daughter Sex Tape for at least five or ten million dollars. After that, he'd settle in to his new career of earning $25,000 a night for one hour of attending parties to high-five douchey, backwards baseball cap-wearing ex-frat guys with names like Trey and Troy, and supplementing his income by making paid appearances in the crowd at Ultimate Fighting pay-per-views and maybe boxing Danny Bonnaduce at a Wrestlemania. Now, reader, I realize this is not the kind of life that either you or I would ever want to lead. But this scuzzbag, who blackmails people into sex romps? This would be the greatest thing that could ever possibly happen.
What happens on the show: the slimy reporter says 'Oh noes! My sham of a marriage and career!' and silently agrees not to tell anyone about the Starkwood story. This is the least realistic thing to ever happen on a show where two nuclear bombs were detonated on US soil in the span of four seasons. The least realistic thing to happen on a show where both lead characters have died and come back to life. The least realistic thing to happen on a show where twelve guys took over the White House less than five hours ago.
JV heads down to the lab to meet up with Greg and the head scientist guy to celebrate their bioweapon almost being ready. He puts his hands on both their shoulders, and they both shudder. Then Voight brags about killing Knowles a few minutes ago. Greg looks away slightly disgusted, but JV keeps staring at him, all 'Isn't it great, Greg, how I just killed that guy? Come on, Greg, you know you think it's great. Look at me, Greg, acknowledge that I killed that guy.'
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| Can you fear me now? |
In the War Room, President Pillowface gets a video call from Voight, who demands that she turn back the jets heading for Starkwood. He tells her that three stolen missiles, loaded with the bioweapons, are pointed at the Eastern US seaboard, and then proves it by shooting her a jpeg of the missiles taken on his Sprint Mobile Phone. We get multiple split screen shots of the President and JV, the latter from the perspective of Voight's Sprint Mobile Phone. That's right, Jon Voight is now directing part of the episodes himself.
After some standard hour-ending split screen montage action ' featuring Jack doping himself with death-concealing drugs and Aaron shooting Olivia a 'you totally had sex while I was like, thirty feet away, didn't you?' look ' the President is forced to stand down and call off the strike team. That's right, terrorists can nuke the West Coast twice, but no President will ever let the East take another a hit like that. This is the biggest ego boost for the East Coast since we won the Ventriloquist Feud of 1997. You got my back, Professor Murder?
Death Watch:
- 1.5 Starkwood mercs
- Doug Knowles
An interview with Maria Taylor. She plays the Barbary tonight.
City Paper: Lady Luck was just released this week. A few of the songs on the album also appeared on your Savannah Drive EP. For you, what are the major differences between the EP and album versions of the songs?
Maria Taylor: Well there's only two that appear on both and basically I just was antsy and just wanted to put something out because I had to wait four months for the label to get prepared to put out Lady Luck so I don't know I just wanted to go on tour and I wanted to just show also the difference in how a song can just completely change according to how its recorded and so the EP was completely stripped down we only used our guitars and voices and that's it and so it kind of more shows how the song was actually written what it sounded like as I was sitting on my bed writing the song versus being in the studio with strings and a full band and its interesting to me to hear the difference and I thought other people might think so too.
CP: With Lady Luck, how'd the writing process/studio production differ from your early recordings?
MT: As far as writing I've pretty much written the same since I've started writing songs. I just kind of sit down if I have something on my mind I'll sit down in a place where I'm really comfortable which is usually in my bedroom on my bed with my guitar and I just sit there and write. But as far as production on Lynn Teeter Flower I had been touring with a rock band and I wanted it to sound a little more like we sounded live. We didn't really add that many over dubs and pretty much we just played everything live in the studio. For this one I just wanted to make it more lush and elaborate more production wise more so I had my friend Nate arrange string parts and woodwinds. I used the same people pretty much like Mike Mogis and Andrew LeMaster I always work with so lots of it felt the same but I feel like I've changed as a human being and whatever changes in my life I think that's the change that you'll hear in the music.
CP: How do you choose the order of songs on your album? Is it random or does it follow some sort of narrative progression that it follows?
MT: It's not random but there's not a narrative either. I like to get lots of my friends opinions when it comes to that for sure because I kind of feel like I'm too involved in the middle and I can't listen to it effectively. But I feel like a lot of it has to do with the flow. I really do get a lot of outside input when it comes to that because I'm just like 'I don't know,' I mean I can usually always tell what should be first and last but I'll just sit there and listen to it and there will be a little lull or there's something and I feel like when you figure it out it can make a huge difference in the overall effect of the record.
CP: Being your third solo album, how has your strength as a singer-songwriter has increased since your first solo release?
MT: It's hard for me to say. I hope my songs have gotten better. I mean I feel like I've been doing it now forever. ' For a living I've been doing this for 15 years. I have no idea. I feel like as a singer I can feel my voice getting stronger. I feel like I can do more things with my voice that I couldn't do and I'm more confident to try more things with voice. And I think I'm a better musician because I've been playing everyday for so many years.
CP: You were with azure ray for awhile do you feel like you have more freedom creatively being a solo artist versus as when you were in a duo? How are the dynamics different when it comes to working solo or with another person?
MT: With Azure Ray we always wrote separately we never wrote together so the only difference is that now I write ten songs versus five songs. I've never been in a band where I had to compromise anything. Orenda and I just saw eye to eye pretty much always. If I liked something she would like it and if she liked something I would like it. We just had really similar tastes and had such respect for each other we just trusted each other even if we were a little uncertain. And working with a band now, I work with different people all the time so I pretty much feel like it's a band when we're on tour with each other for a month so I usually switch it up every single tour. And on the record I switch it up on every single song. I have the creative freedom to do whatever I want on any song.
CP: A lot of artists don't have that. Its cool that you switch it up. I'm sure it keeps it fresh for the listener and also for you playing stuff over and over again.
MT: Definitely. Like last night we were practicing, we're about to leave tomorrow for tour and we were playing a 'Song Beneath A Song' and I was like, 'We gotta do this different.' And it still makes it easier because there's different people and everyone is going to add their own little personality. But with that song you can't really do much with it. It's three chords and you just play the same thing. So I was just like, 'Please, you guys just play whatever you want, just make it sound different.' And they were like, 'How about like this?' And it was like '70s disco and I was just like, 'Perfect, perfect, do it different.'
CP: It seems like every time you go on tour something unlucky happens along the way. Do you think you'll be any luckier this time around?
MT: Oh God, don't bring that up. I don't know. I'm going to knock on wood. I don't know, I think there's a balance in life and I feel like I'll just take the good and I'll take the bad. So when bad shit happens like I just look at it as something really good is around the corner so bring it on, I can take it
CP: That's a good way to look at it.
MT: There's usually something every single tour like whether we break down or our shit gets stolen. Our shit got stolen several times. I feel like now I'm getting tougher and tougher.
CP: It definitely attests to your resilience. To be on tour and have that stuff happen and still play a show and go on, it's pretty inspirational.
MT: Oh thanks. Well, I don't know, there's not much else you can do cause there's no home to stay in. I mean I do that at home plenty when I'm having a bad day. I'm just like, 'I'm locking myself in, I'm not talking to anyone, I don't want to see anyone.' Cause the worse thing is I don't like to make other people suffer when I'm in a bad mood, I don't want to bring anyone else down so I try to avoid contact with people when I'm having a shitty day but on tour you can't do that. I'm just trying to learn to bite my tongue, swallow it all down and be happy we're all alive.
CP: A lot of your songs are known for being emotionally intimate and honest. Opening up that way to your audience takes some major courage. How do you feel about the way listeners receive and interpret your songs?
MT: Well I guess I don't really know how they interpret it and I feel like that's the beauty of art, just sitting it out there and letting each individual interpret it how ever they want to. I feel like I'm free. I spell it out a good bit, but you know I'm that way as a person, as a friend. I'm just kind of wide open and I feel like I'm the same way with my music. Sometimes it makes people vulnerable but really it just makes me feel closer to every single person that I come across. It brings people closer.
CP: Are there any instances where you've talked to fans and what they've said really moved you? Have your fans inspired you at all?
MT: Oh yeah. This one girl came up to me and told me that this one song, she said that she was going to commit suicide and she was listening to this one song over and over and it made her think about things and she said she didn't do it. So I started crying and she and I were sitting there crying in the club and I'll never forget that moment. Sometimes I'll be like, I don't know, 'What am I doing with my life?' Like I want to be doing things that help people. Sometimes it can feel a little selfish and that's the aspect of this business that I hate. But then I realize, this is great and it makes me want to keep going and it reminds me why I'm doing this in the first place.
CP: So at this point has Azure Ray kind of taken the back seat for right now or is it kind of done with?
MT: Well we kind of just put it in a long hiatus but I think we both didn't really think that we'd ever work together again but I'm in Los Angeles now and Orenda moved to Los Angeles, she and her husband did and they live right down the street. We've just been seeing each other everyday and we might try to work on another Azure Ray record, that's kind of like the plan. I don't know when we're both going to have time because right now I'm just touring so much and she has a couple projects out as well. In the next year we're going to try to write and record one and it's really exciting. I can't wait.
CP: So what inspired you to start making music?
MT: My dad is a musician and he writes jingles for a living so we always had growing up a studio where he'd do the demos in the house. His passion is music so pretty much every memory I have of growing up involves my dad holding a guitar and singing some song and we'd always have soing-a-longs. It was always my hobby and always what we did around my house. I wasn't until I was 18 when I realized, 'wait a minute people do this for a living? I do this for fun.' I was a ballet dancer up until I was 16 and I think it just didn't occur to me that I could do that as a living. I would do it for fun. I was always playing, [playing with my friends. Playing drums and just loved it. I remember meeting this band, Remi Zero, they're from Birmingham and I became friends with them and they were on Capitol Records and they're just like to me so successful and I was like,'Holy shit, why am I not pursuing this?' And so that's when I pretty much quit ballet and Orenda and I got a record deal and went on our first tour across the country and there's no looking back after that.
CP: Like most of Saddle Creek's roster and artists in general, you've collaborated with a lot of people over the years. Are there any favorites that stand out that you're particularly proud of or moved you in a certain way?
MT: That's a toughie. I can't really say. I mean working on this record with Michael Stipe that was pretty special. Like staying up until six in the morning and jamming and him writing lyrics. That's something that will stand out in my mind forever. When I think about it, also the first Azure Ray record working with Eric Bachmann. ' there's something really special about that whole recording process. We were in our friends house on this 8-track and we had really no money to do it so we mixed the whole record in the middle of the night when no one was at this nice studio. And pretty much always when there are pretty string parts, like when people arrange string parts for my songs. When I come in and the string players are in there and actually hearing it for the first time with real live strings over my song I've always cried every time that's happened. I can't not. It's just like 'Oh my god it's so beautiful. And it's on my song and I can't believe it!' I don't know, there's some.
Maria Taylor plays the Barbary tonight, an early, all-ages show.
Like you, I've been suspicious of all this Hulu business. TV already encroaches too much on my life. And then late one night I found myself taking this Mental Floss quiz on The White Shadow, which was one of those shows I remember digging as a kid; white NBA player (Ken Howard) suffers a career-ending knee injury and, as a favor to an old Boston College teammate who's now a princpal at an inner city LA High School, becomes the school's basketball coach. And then I realized that nearly all three seasons of the critically acclaimed, ahead-of-its-time show, are available, instantaneously and for free, on hulu. Let's just say I've been watching a lot of White Shadow in the last few weeks. All I really remembered about the show was that there was a guy named Salami, a guy named Goldstein, a guy named Coolidge, a guy named Hayward and that they all sang in the showers after games.
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Back row (l to r) Jackson, Coolidge, Goldstein, Reese, Coach Reeves Front row (l to r) Gonzalez, Thorpe, Hayward, Salami |
What's kind of amazing, watching this show some 30 years later, is how frank it is about issues that start with race and class but which extend to religion, rape and even homosexuality (there's an episode early in season one that features an introverted preppy kid whose parents transfer him to Carver in hopes that the rough, inner-city school will toughen him up, essentially beat the gay out of him).
It's all a little clunky, in that way where 70s and 80s dramas hadn''t yet figured out that you can block a TV show like a movie, and yet the writing's pretty ace, even if the young actors ' the most famous of whom were Timothy Van Patten (Salami) and Byron Stewart who improbably reprised his role as Warren Coolidge on St. Elsewhere ' are occasionally figuring things out on camera. The show's pilot is above; "Just One of the Boys," the episode dealing with homosexuality, is after the jump.
Oh, and the show has what's got to be one of the top-five television theme songs ever.
Todd Phillips' Old School is one of those movies you watch with an impending sense of doom. It's not that it's bad ' in fact, it's anything but. It's fucking phenomenal. But you know that studios will begin greenlighting a million other subpar, sophomoric comedies just like it in hopes of recapturing the magic (see: pretty much everything else Will Ferrell has done since, sans Anchorman and the parts involving John C. Reilly in Talladega Nights). Even Phillips himself has fallen prey (why, hellow School for Scoundrels). But Phillips returns with Zach Galifinakis, Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms in tow. Welcome back.
The Hangover is scheduled to open June 5.
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An interview with Zach Condon of Beirut.
City Paper: You just released two EPs, March of the Zapotec and Holland, simultaneously ' are these forerunners to a new album?
Zach Codon: No, I see this release as a way of clearing the palette for what I do next ' so that I'm not held to any particular habit or style when I start writing again for the next album proper.
CP: And March of the Zapotec was inspired by your travels to Mexico?
ZC: Actually going to Oaxaca to record with the village band was my first time in Mexico (outside of a childhood trip into Tijuana). We went back earlier this year to Mexico City and drove to the coasts from there. Mexico feels like a more rough and tumble New Mexico.
CP: What was your time in Teotitlan del Valle like? What about it stuck with you?
ZC: Hard to think of something specific. Donkey's eyes are some of the saddest I've ever seen on any animal. Don't drink mescal from a plastic bottle. There's a song that got stuck in my head that won't leave me alone some times at night ' it woke us up everyday around noon to call the children back to school from lunch break, a goofy plunky march song written in the area; It was called 'March of the Zapotec.'
CP: How did the creative processes differ for the two EPs?
ZC: The one in Mexico was a giant project involving approximately 22 people in all, with a lot of preplanning and preparations and setbacks. A real mission I set out on. Holland however, was me all alone just letting the ideas fly.
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CP: Which songs are you attached to the most?
ZC: Well It's better to say I'm particularly fond of 'The Shrew' as it feels like the climax of a lot of my songwriting in the last few years. It gives me a snapshot of just the way I thought musically at that point in time with the violent middle and slithery melodies at the beginning and end.
CP: Tell us a bit about the legend behind 'La Llorona.'
ZC: Well frankly it creeped me out as a kid. It was fun to hear the slight deviations from the plot I grew up with and the version they have in Oaxaca. Short version: A women, smited by her husband, drags her children down to the river and in an unbelievable cruel fit of rage drowns them. Realizing what she's done she wanders the river crying out ' La Llorona means the crier, basically ' looking for her kids or any kids that she can get her hands on at night, forever haunting the riverbanks and arroyos.
CP: What's taken so long to follow up Flying Club Cup?
ZC: Touring. I plan on doing less of it next year so I can concentrate more on writing. Maybe I'll go disappear for a bit.
CP: What are your post-tour plans?
ZC: I might scope out a secret musical lab in New Mexico or something and eat burritos until I'm fat and happy. I'll see you in a year or so with a new record.
CP: Looking back on the recording process, which song(s) did you struggle with most?
ZC: In some ways 'La Llorona,' as it was the first one we started on. And that's when we realized the challenges we'd be up against. We spent a few sleepless nights up really late rearranging things to better fit with Banda Jimenez's style of playing.
CP: Which came with the most ease?
ZC: Probably some of the stuff on Holland.
CP: At this point in your life, would you say that the glass is half-empty or that its half-full?
ZC: IT better not be half empty. I've been working for it.
Beirut plays the Electric Factory tonight.
Beirut on Myspace.
Beirut on a nice looking web site.
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