It's me, swear to god.
Believe it or not, Katharine was never suppressed or minimized. I wrote "Lid" for her, even taking the piss a little with that line about "grab your drinks and clear a space"--the idea that she would tear shit up was funny--and it was worked as the first single. Didn't really go anywhere. I think there's a clip on YouTube of the first "Lid" video which I directed, in which we break into a house and steal shit we like. At the end, Katharine pours gas through the house and stands outside, lights a match, and blows it out. MTV said "no go," probably because some idiot burned his house down after watching Beavis and Butthead. No joke. In my mind, it was all about us raiding the Sacred Jazz Museum. The next video, which I had nothing to do with, was all swing iconography and shot on 35mm instead of 16, costing us 80 large.
I remember some label guy asking Katharine when she was going to do a solo record during our first west coast tour, summer of '95. It pissed me off royally, as I was schlepping gear into the club when he said it, and I always considered us a band and didn't like being picked off or divvied up. Later, of course, she did one, after telling the label that she would quit the band otherwise. I found out about it when Bird let it slip on the phone. Heartbreaking. That record was what shut down the "Perennial" tour and hastened my departure. Jimbo gave me a cassette of "Christmas Caravan" demos, and on the back was her solo record. I couldn't decide if it was thoughtless oversight or "fuck you," as at first she denied even doing the record!
Anyway, after "Lid," "Hell" hit, unexpectedly. KROQ played it as a joke, and it blew up. Suddenly, I'm asked to be up front during the photo sessions. I was thrilled, but uncomfortable. I had entered the band as a drummer, and it was Jim and Katharine who asked me to sing. I couldn't sing for shit, as any listening of "The Inevitable" will attest. But that was back in the egalitarian days, and I got better. I don't believe I actually sang a song well until "My Evergreen," otherwise known as "I'm outta here."
When "Hell" hit, we were recording "Perennial," but the rot had started to set in. I only gave Katharine one song to sing, "Kraken," which was out of her range. She did a great job. Don Raleigh had another, but it got shitcanned. It's on a reel somewhere, unfinished. After a year and a half, the label hired this hack to advise them on the next single, paid him way too much money, and he lobbied for "Trou Macacq." I refused, because I thought another calypso would intimate that we were plowing the same ground, and there was enough tension because of my success already. I purposefully mixed the song in that fucked-up way, with distorted vocals coming out of one channel. I told the label that I'd pull the song from the record, because it was Jim or Katharine's turn, and they went with "Suits are Picking Up the Bill." Flop-a-doodle. Late, late in the day I assented to a"Trou" single, but by that time it was all over; late December '98.
Katharine was shy, or diffident, in turns. She wouldn't do interviews, which made her that much more of a commodity, and seldom talked to fans. She's certainly not ambitious, and felt she had little to say.
As far as guitars go, not sure I understand. There were three guitarists in the band--me, a solid rhythm player, Jimbo, a increasingly good soloist, and Kenny, Mr Clutch Man who could sound, in turns, like Les Paul, Django Reinhardt or Brian May. We put shit down as we saw fit, I usually played an acoustic rhythm, Jimbo an electric lead through a little amp, or Ken. Never talked about it much. Somebody would introduce a new song, and people would gravitate towards what instrument they wanted to play, as well as their favorite refreshment. Very little was dropped in, as "Hot" was recorded almost completely live, as was much of "Perennial." You might be intimating that there's a little stylistic sore-thumbiness, but we believed authenticity was an emotional, not historical, consideration. We always wanted our stuff to age well, and tried to make it so, but that judgment was never ours to make.
Call me anything you want. I was a bit of an asshole back then, as much as I tried not to let it fuck with my head. It's your blog, or posting, and I'm not gonna interfere. I will say that I'm the only guy that will actually talk about the fucking band and not pull any punches. Sometimes frankness can be considered inappropriate.
Been called worse, boss.
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Guitars And Vocals
Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 08:31:16 PM EST
5.00 (interesting)
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OK, so I misheard something in the music. Sometimes a mix in sound comes from compromise, and sometimes from agreement; given the tension apparent in Perennial, I couldn't be sure, not having access to any previous takes or outtakes for comparison. If what you called "Zipperizing" was the result of compromise, then, it would have been one explanation- an artistic one at that- for why the train stopped so quickly. Other bands have succumbed to the solo album urge, and it seemed a good guess. But it was wrong.
As for the rot setting in, I have a personal anecdote that may depress you, but is telling nevertheless: the day I bought Perennial, I looked at the back of the CD and tried to guess which songs were duets, instrumentals, the guys or Katherine solo. I was right on every one. Getting in the groove, or getting in a rut? Sounds as if it was more the latter, after your comments here and elsewhere.
If it makes you feel better, "Trou Macacq" is the best song I've ever heard about the difficulties of touring, walking that fine line between, "hey, this isn't as fun as it looks!" and "feel sorry for me!" Take Bob Seger's horrible, horrible "Turn The Page" (I really can't relate how much I hate that song)-- the parts of road life he pisses and moans about aren't exactly going to draw a lot of pity from factory workers or ditch diggers. (Gene Simmons says that he quit being a teacher and joined a band when he realized that nobody was going to stand up and cheer at the end of the day.) "Trou", OTOH, captures a more universal complaint, a realization that you've done your best, done your best, and in the end it wasn't good enough. Teacher, musician, athlete, scientist, anyone who puts forth an effort at something they've worked at can sympathize with such a sentiment. And "pine box derby" was a great turn of phrase!
So was Je Widenhouse also pretty private, or was he just cut out of that documentary by the producers? The absence wasn't so notable the first time, but after the third time I watched it (doing research for this story), I really began to wonder what was up. Any input?
If this doesn't get a reply, then thank you for your time, your kind words, and the information. Sorry to hear that you won't be working with Ken Mosher, and there's really no words that wouldn't sound empty coming from a stranger to say about your son's illness. Keep going as best you can.
Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras
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Re: Guitars And Vocals
Sun Jun 03, 2007 at 11:01:38 AM EST
5.00 (interesting)
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"Zipperizing" was almost a sacred term for me, as it involved very little discussion but an almost telepathic communication. I usually came in with changes, melody, lyric and a head/out riff, but was always thrilled with what came out the other end of the "zipperizer;" parts and approaches that would never have occurred to me. It was antithetical to compromise; it was pure collaboration. One of the true pleasures of being in a band.
"Turn the Page." Truly bad. Not as opaque and shitty as "Blinded By the Light," but one of those excessive songs that made me want to play music that was more...direct.
I got to where I hated "Trou Macacq." I was working on the song when we did "Hot." It was a double-tone calypso, where "Hell" is a single-tone. Don Raleigh had inadvertently invented "pine box derby" instead of "pine car derby" and we loved it. For a long time it was the working title of what became the "Hot" record. I still have early sequencing cassettes that are titled "Pine Box Derby." I had a video idea for "Trou" in which we're in a Little Rascals-style race down a big hill. Our cars are coffins, there's a lot of obvious back-projection, and one of the contestants is Death! Anyway, I thought that calypso was like blues or whatever, that I could couch my more serious complaints in that form and write one for every record. "Hell" put an end to that, and people said that "Trou" was a lame follow-up. Also, the head riff wasn't as perfect as "Hell's."
It taught me something, though. When Ken and I went to put some horns down on Ben Folds Five's "Reinhold Messner" record, they played us an early mix of "Redneck Past." I knew it was a single, and told Robert and Darren. They said that Ben was against it, and thought it was too much of a novelty. I said "don't put any song on a record that you don't want to become a single." They didn't go with it, though. Shame. It's brilliant. I knew that, after "Hell," "Trou" was the worst possible single idea, for every reason. It played perfectly into that stultifying industry idea of repeating the formula. I guess that's okay if the follow-up is titled "Oops, I did it again!"
Je was, and is, a company man. (And a beautiful guy.) Though he, like Stu, signed the partnership agreement, they never acted like peers as much as Jimbo's sidemen. That was the break for me: I always felt like it was "our" band, and Jim and Katharine felt it was theirs. So goes the world. Je was not into collective self-determination. He wanted a gig.
My son is well, and I appreciate your sympathy. He kicked that stuff in November, and is about to enter a lengthy, albeit low-intensity, maintenance phase. He'll go back to school. It's been very hard, sometimes almost brutal. With this stuff, the prognosis is great and the treatment's a bitch. But I wish I could tell you how incredible he is; how loving, how resilient. This process brought me to my own motto: relentlessly loving, and lovingly relentless.
I appreciate the opportunity to communicate. Once, and Ken and I played a show in which we performed the songs we wrote in Zippers, a local blogger called us "dicks" for doing it! It's not so much that I want to control how I'm perceived, but rather I'd like that perception to be well-informed.
Lastly, I only want to say that, in my opinion, the Zippers' "reunion" is artistically bankrupt. They're playing songs that Ken and I wrote (we were responsible for half the "Hot" record), and even using our likenesses in promotion. It's a bait and switch. I knew what it meant when I quit the band, but it's wrong for the line-up that only toured for a month the following year to represent themselves as the group we were in for five years. Not to mention Don Raleigh. I'm well aware of the goodwill associated with the brand and know that people will take me as a whiner. I just have a long-held belief that corpses should remain buried.
Three years ago I wrote a song called "It's the Money," and the bridge lyrics are:
What buys you time to daydream
Then makes you blow it all on magic beans?
What kills the patient when you find the cure
Then brings him back for the reunion tour?
...It's the money
It's all about the money
