MTC Fantasy Bands

Okay, here's the deal. I was doing yardwork over the weekend; I only do the grunto-destructo type of yardwork. Kathy and I actually have the same division of labor on most projects. I do the mindless, dirty, ugly work that requires little in the way of accuracy, finesse, or aesthetics (all three of which are fairly significant shortcomings for me). She does planning, project management, and the finishing flourishes (i.e. anything that might contribute to how something actually looks or works). We both like our end of this bargain. No sarcasm. I'm serious.

So I am weeding a fairly large perennial island that has been ignored since we bought the house in 2000. This oblong patch of reedy entanglement is an unweeded garden worthy of Hamlet's derision (you know the kind--"things rank and gross posses it merely," etc.). While most would cry "Fie! Ont," I was having a great time writing the following stuff in my head as I mucked with my shovel and rake. So here's what I daydreamed in the dirt that day:

TOPIC: Fantasy bands started with MTC members.
RULES: At my discretion, I can attribute any musical ability to anyone, including myself. I must be in every band. Each band exists in its own alternate reality (i.e. Bill Reich can be the accordion player in one band and the hip jazz guitarist in another).
NOTE: Being in a band is often accompanied by various maladies and personal misfortunes. If you don't fare so well in these scenarios, remember that the life of a musician is a tough one. And besides, it's fiction, right?
NOTE: Musicians are known for using salty language, so the word "fuck" appears here several times. If you are offended by the word "fuck," it simply cannot be helped. Sorry.

So, here are the fantasy bands I joined with you. I take our community members in the order they appear on my "Name Game" mixtape.

MTC Fantasy Bands

1. Bill and I form a small duo called Conscientização. It's hard to call us a band, though, because when we get together to practice we mostly just play records and talk. We will try to write new songs or practice old ones, and the conversation usually goes: "Aren't you glad you aren't the grievance officer anymore?" / "Yeah--oh hey, you like Eric Dolphy? Let's play that record." It's too bad that we don't play much music because our sound is distinctive and original. Our usual method goes like this: I lay down a supple and hauntingly elegant base track on a nylon stringed guitar in true Brazilian bossa fashion. We then each play a single instrument and sing in gorgeous harmony. Bill's instrument is the largest German accordion known to man; this thig is so large that it must partially rest on the table--he improvises brilliant basslines and comps chords simultanously. For my part, I play the viola a la John Cale. We sing every song in Portugese and have the best time with creative covers. The most satisfying song we play is a cover version of "My Sherona." People cry when they hear us play this tune--"Oh my God," they say... "I had no idea that was such a beautiful song."

2. You could say that Jackie and I started a band, but the truth is that I am employee for Jackie in her band, which she runs like a drill instructor a la James Brown. She's a no smokin', no drinkin' "drop-and-give-me-fifty" bandleader (I mean, Jesus, who does push ups and crunches before a gig? Do we really have to do this?). The band is called Sk8 Yer Gutz, and we play the roller derby circuit within a 350 mile radius of Flint (but we're starting to get national press and there's talk of a documentary and possibly a film score). It is certainly the most athletic and theatrical band I've ever been a part of--you've gotta see it to believe it. For each gig, we assemble a large half pipe in the middle of a roller rink. We perform while skating (our amps and gear are under the half pipe, and we all have wireless connections to our amps and the PA). Jackie is the lead singer--probably the best skate-thrash vocalist I've ever heard. Wearing a headset mic, she performs aerial tricks and pumps her fist to the surf/skate/thrash/fuzz of our guitars. I play a small Guild Ashbury bass. Our drummer has this Roy Wooten-type Synthaxe thing to control drum sounds (and he sounds amazing!). One guitarist uses a Razr scooter while the other rides in-line skates. At any given part of the show, we are joined on the half pipe by derby skaters and teenagers riding BMX bikes. Near collisions and actual crashes are part of nearly every song. Recently a prominent skate-punk blogger called us "The greatest thrash band on wheels."

3. Maybe the most fun I've had playing music is doing gigs with Larry in the arena metal band he formed called Oktane. I play a Gibson Thunderbird bass that is slung down below my knees. Glenn has grown his hair down to his ass and plays the drums. Larry has this amazing costume that is really hard to explain. He wears giant Gene Simmonsesque boots: each foot looks like a giant 70s muscle car (real fire actually shoots from the tailpipes). Our stage pyrotechnics are amazing: smoke, fire, and fake blood are everywhere. All of our songs are about the conspicuous use of fossil fuels and the virtues of industry. "Drilling In ANWAR (For Breakfast)" is one of our showstoppers. The song "Mountaintop Removal" has a great razor sharp chorus that I am always singing to myself: "Rip off your head / Take what I want / You got a better idea, you Prius-driving pussy?" Joshua plays guitar in this band--he is an amazing virtuoso, but always interjects his left-wing political views between songs. Part of our act is Larry giving hm a hard time: "Nice solo, Josh. Now would you shut the fuck up, please? Go free Mumia or something." The funny part of all this is that Larry and all of our fans are actually huge environmentalists; most of Oktane's profits go to fund research in alternative energy. We never play live shows anymore because Larry will only play under two circumstances a) sold-out shows at Cobo Hall, b) Pine Knob if they change the name back.

4. By the time I joined Michele's band, it had already cycled through three names: "Crinkle," "Room and Board," and "Tickets, Please." All three of these names sucked, though I will say that Crinkle rather fits our sound. We currently perform as "Recipe Box," which I think is worse than the previous three names combined, but I got outvoted. I play Johnny Marr-inspired jangle guitar on sparkle green hollow body Gretch. Glenn plays double bass (I'm letting him use my 1911 Czech, and it pisses me off that he's much better at it than I am). Larry is our drummer, and we are constantly nagging him to tone it down a bit. We have this great post-punk vibe that is part Smiths, part Echo, part Wire, and Michele's vocals are simply amazing. Edie Brickell came to one of our gigs in New Haven, CT and fell in love with Michele's voice. The bad news is that she hates the rest of the band and our sound; every once in a while she will call Michele and say "Paul will book a studio and produce your next record right now if you just fire that fucking band." All of us live in fear that she may take her up on the offer some day.

5. Joshua and I have a musical collaboration (we are way too sophisticated to have a "band") called "O.R." In this collaboration, Joshua is a turntablist. Not just any turntablist, mind you... he has been called the "Mozart of Decks." I can take partial credit for this; I bought him a pair of turntables (saw a deal on eBay I could not pass over) and he just started playing around. The truth is that he was born to play music this way--it is effortless for him. DJs from around the world send him e-mail asking him how he does it. The turntables don't just sound like real instruments when he spins; they can sound like an entire symphony. The vinyl platters are extensions of his very being. My role is playing a variety of analog synths--my go-to box is the Roland TB 303, but I have all kinds of Moogs, as well as vintage tape decks, signal processors, and even a theremin with me when we perform. The story of our name is far more pointless and complicated than you can possibly imagine. O.R. stands for "Omgekeerde Raadpleging," which is the Dutch name for the telephone feature we call reverse lookup. Anyway, early in our collaboration, we released a track called "Reverse Lookup" and it became a sensation in clubs and discos across Europe. After that, a pair of teenagers in Rotterdam became obsessed with our music and actually became involved with us in an odd way. We really hit our musical stride when these Dutch kids, whom we know as Aalbert and Radborg, started hooking us up with obscure R&B, funk, and rap artists that lived close to us in the US. From across the ocean they would send messages like this one: "You are living close to "Snooky" Riggs, yes? We bet you don't know this. Google says he lives 400 km from you. He will come to see you." In the case of Snooky, he actually showed up the next day as bewildered as we were. But the collaboration worked: we've done three separate projects with Snooky and they are all brilliant. Aalbert and Radborg had been collecting money to fly us and all of our gear to Amsterdam for a series of shows, but we cut off all ties with them when a Dutch police officer alerted us to the suggestion that they might be turning tricks on local cruise ships to raise the money. We'd love the gig, but we can't have that hanging over our heads.

6. Kim and I play in a band called Blood Farm, a goth/vampire/shoegazer quintet that has all the emotion of Sigur Ros, all the flashy exuberance of The Cramps, and all of the piercing beauty of The Cocteau Twins, but with vampires. We've actually received a fair amount of negative press lately. I developed what I thought was a fantastic PR stunt. We attempted to portray ourselves as genuine vampires (or at least very sick individuals who sincerely believed in our own lycanthrope origins). The stunt went like this: we persuaded the members of Vampire Weekend to agree to be kidnapped and held for ransom by us. We holed up in the basement of a 19th century cottage on Martha's Vineyard. We would threaten to kill or torture the members of the band during regular web-cam video streams that were leaked to the news. We were crazy vampire musicians, mortally offended by the sacriledge of Vampire Weekend's name and preppy Cape Cod antics. We would threaten to harvest their organs, drain all their blood, and sacrifice them in odd pagan rituals (the web-cam sessions are among the most visited videos on YouTube--they have a "Blair Witch Project" feel to them). VW went along with the stunt, but according to their lawyers the entire three weeks got "out of hand" and they are suing us for "mental trauma" and "cruelty." We also understand some criminal charges may be pending. Some people can't take a joke. Kim is pretty irritated with me now, because the stunt was all my idea, and now it is costing us time, energy, and money. She just wants to focus on the music, she says. Attendance at our gigs, though, has never been better.

7. I make music with Christy, but it's far too dignified to call it a "band." Our shows are simply billed "Christy Rishoi." She combines a kind of subtle songstress style that is part Billie Holiday, and part Diane Keaton. Because our act was so difficult to peg, we played college bars for serveral years, but this year we've gotten regular gigs at the nicest jazz rooms in major US cities, including The Blue Note and The Village Vanguard. They love us in Sweden: we make enough money on our yearly trip to Scandinavia (Christy got three marriage proposals in Finland alone--and all of our fans know she's married to the drummer). Yes, Larry plays traps in this band, and he is the key to our lyrical dynamics. He's the only one who can really read where Christy is going on each tune. The rest of us have gotten accustomed to taking his lead. I play Hammond B3 organ in this group, and Bill Reich plays a very mellow, Barney Kesselesque electric jazz guitar. The most interesting thing to me is what happened to Joshua. After leaving MCC to become the founding director of The Center for the Study of Digital Rhetoric at Rutgers, he became obsessed with Christy and our music. He is very dismissive of us, but reveres Christy's song stylings above all music. He is constantly contacting us via text messages suggesting songs to add to our book. He will often spend thousands of dollars to travel to our far-flung gigs. Imagine our surprise to discover him casually sitting in the back of this jazz bar in Reykjavik. "What the fuck?" I screamed at him. He acted like it was no big deal. "This place is supposed to be amazing," he replied. "I've been meaning to check it out."

8. Glenn and I wound up in a band with the name Ricky's Boys, the significance of which is fairly amusing. As sad as it sounds, Glenn and I found that our lives turned to absolute shit at the same time. We both lost our jobs at the college in spite of the heroic efforts of the MCCEA (my infraction involved calling one of my colleagues a "Mongoloid" during an e-mail flame war; this was ill-advised, I admit). To this day Glenn will not discuss why he was let go, though I have long suspected foul play and blackmail on the part of a senior administrator. In addition, our personal lives fall to pieces as well, and we find ourselves randomly driving toward California over a period of days. Long story short, we stop in Tuscon, AZ and a very drunk Ricki Lee Jones is doing a solo gig. On the break she very sloppily and embarrassingly throws herself at Glenn in an attempt to pick him up. Not interested, Glenn persuades her that he and I should be her backup band. Glenn plays tasteful Fender Rhodes piano (one of the many 20-something males who live in Ricki Lee's house gave it to us). I play tasteful, impressionistic drums on a very small kit with brushes. Despite her distractions (booze and young guys), Ricki Lee is brilliant when performing with us. She's also loaded and overpays us often, so we decided to take up residence in Tuscon. Mostly we do her old songs, but we have been making some progress trying to get her to write more. She often says very mean things about us to the audience; frequently she tries to pick up guys by taunting us: "Hey man, if I don't get laid, these guys don't get paid" she says. In spite of this, we love her and care for her like an elderly Aunt.

9. I rent a room from Philip and Bob in their gorgeous Park Slope apartment in NYC. We actually work together in a very lucrative business as accompanists for theatrical auditions (Bob accepted a job at The New School). Philip and I have clients all over the city and we help them prepare for auditions and rehearse shows. Most of our clients suck and are never going anywhere in the theatre, but they pay our rates and treat us nice. This work bores us to tears, so Bob managed to get us a standing gig at a really dumpy bar that transforms itself when we play because we've developed quite a following. We are called Threepenny Nightmare, and Philip writes all the material. The songs are dark and haunting but have an oddly-innocent Beat sensibility that make them touching and hopeful. He sings and plays various keyboard instruments--piano and Farfisa Organ mostly. I play drums and sing harmonies. We nearly lose the gig every week because of my excessive drinking and bad behavior. Philip is such a charmer that he usually gets me out of trouble. An organized group is trying to get the bar to fire us by circulating a petition that accuses me of being a Nazi--I have no idea why.

10. Aaron and I started to share a flat in Camden Town shortly after we both left the college and moved to London. We play in a wonderful Celtic folk/pop band called Cwtch, which we heard was Welsh slang for "hug." Most of our UK fans hate the name: "but the music is fucking brilliant," they say. Aaron primarily plays bizouki and wooden flute. I play a variety of Renaissance instruments, especially the viol de gamba and the theorbo. Our first record, "Out for a Curry," was an immediate underground hit. Over the past few years, the band has hardly been able to keep up with Aaron's songwriting. We have enough material for at least three records. Early this year, however, Aaron has been almost impossible to find. He has enrolled in a social work program at the Open University and declared his life-long goal of getting Richard and Linda Thompson back together. Both Richard and Linda have taken out the UK equivalent of restraining orders against him.