“A drunk woman was giving [drummer Andy Harris] a bath when I first met him,” says Joshua Glass, guitarist and vocalist for three piece post-rock outfit the Interlopers. “I asked him if he wanted to be in a band with me. He told me he wanted to be in a band that sounded like Morphine, so I refused to play with him. Three months later, we ended up playing together in Black Angus, a band that was, if possible, even more doomed than the Interlopers.”
In fact, the Interlopers are just another permutation of Glass and Harris’ working relationship, which, to date, has included four bands (with the Eskimos and Secret Teeth occurring somewhere between Black Angus and the Interlopers). Part of the problem with keeping their act together was finding a permanent bass player—for example, one that wouldn’t get committed to a mental hospital, escape back to the garage where he was living and disappear altogether—who also understood the Interloper’s atypical song structures.
“Lefty [Parker] is the first solid third member we’ve had. I don’t ever have to explain what we’re doing with Lefty. We used to do a weird country-western thing at the same time that we did the weird punk thing we do now, and that had the tendency to confuse some people. A bass player will play the standard version of whatever genre they’re playing in, regurgitating the idiom. If you use two or three of these idioms in a song sarcastically, sometimes they don’t know what to do.” The fact that the Interlopers play smart punk rock ‘n’ roll that belies traditional song structures—verse, chorus, verse—undoubtedly made that process more difficult, but helps to maintain a sense of tension in the music.
“I don’t know what we sound like, maybe Black Sabbath with a Velvet Underground influence, or vice versa?” says Parker, who, with Glass, concedes that the nearest reference points for the uninitiated are the Fall, the Pixies and Richard Hell. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s too much music in the city of New Orleans. We’re trying to get farther away from music. We’re trying to make noise.”
“Andy as a drummer and me as a singer, we’re real song oriented,” elaborates Glass. “We look at melodies, but at the same time [Interlopers] songs are more like calisthenics than songs at this point. We’re getting away from being song oriented. Our song structures more powerfully assert themselves in an a-melodic kind of way. To have that song structure assert itself next to a strong melody is interesting to me. Maybe I’m becoming more consumable in my old age, but we’re basically a punk band.” The Interlopers EP—a collection of six songs called You Make It Sound So Bad—is due out on vinyl sometime this month, when the band is satisfied with the mastering.
“I went to go get an AIDS test recently,” says Parker. “They asked me if I had ever had sex for drugs or money, and I said, ‘You make it sound so bad.’ I told [guitarist/vocalist Joshua Glass and drummer Andy Harris] that, and we decided to name our album that. By the way, I don’t have AIDS.”
The fact that there’s a recording coming out at all is impressive, given that the band in its current incarnation had its first three gigs canceled owing to (in order) an irate bartender, Hurricane Ivan and the cops.
“I just ended up telling people that that was the show,” jokes Parker. “We practice really hard, load up the equipment, set up, break it down and then take it back to the practice space. You know those Kung Fu movies where people fight the entire battle in their minds? That’s the way I look at the Interlopers.”
The ‘Z’ is for Muzic
With apologies to OffBeat columnist Michael Patrick Welch, who usually covers the electronic music scene ’round these parts, the first annual Noizefest—yet another chapter in the history of innovative reactionary booking come Jazz Fest time that includes the erstwhile Zeitgeist Creative Music Festival and the Ponderosa Stomp—is billed as New Orleans’ first and only techno festival of ambient music. Produced by Keith Moore (a.k.a. Deacon Johnson, self-styled king of ambient noise and son of, you guessed it, Deacon John), the festival is a diorama of New Orleans’ electronic music scene.
“Noizefest is a direct response to the fact that one and two piece technoise acts will never get a gig at the ‘New Orleans Jizz and Heroin Festival,’” says Moore. “I’ve seen that such music has a following. I wanted to create an arena that would showcase unique forms of entertainment and turn up the volume on the ongoing debate about whether or not these people are players.”
The artists in question include Deacon Johnson, Jambox Pyramid, Manchild with Sir Steven, DJ Ladyfingas, Ray Bong and the Bongoloids, Denise Bonis, Kid Calculator, One Man Machine, Dead Boy and the Elephant Men, Micronaut, Rob Cambre, Miss Mass Destruction, DJ Proppa Bear, Siamese Cocks, the Hussy, Brice Nice, DJ Steve O, the King Louie One Man Band, MC Shellshocker, Michael Aaron, Beatgrrl and Quintron. The focus, it seems, will be on pushing the boundaries of art and music as well as pushing buttons.
“Noizefest is not about getting mere attention, it’s about getting respect,” says Moore. “This city is full of blues and jazz whores and crappy jam bands who have this haughty attitude about music. They think that if it’s digitized, synthetic or prerecorded that the artist is not a musician. Frankly, I’m through with that. Many others agree that technoise is the folk music of the future.”
The concert, held on Saturday, April 30, and Sunday, May 1, at Planet of the Dreamers (600 Desire Street) benefits Charity Hospital.
Grandpa Funk
While perhaps not quite on par with oh, say another Meters reunion, Papa Grows Funk’s five year anniversary show is worth mentioning if for no other reason than Hammond B-3 maestro John Gros’s now venerable brain child harkens back to a more innocent time, pre-9/11, when jam-minded college students didn’t have to party away their Monday nights at the Maple Leaf in a climate of fear. Catch the slightly older, wiser funk band April 11 at the Leaf before the draft is reinstated.
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