F-It Friday #26

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“Because you know you checked out on Wednesday...”

Friday, July 8th, 2011 ISSUE 26

The Music Issue

www.theblacksheeponline.com

Check out our Pitchfork Music Festival Interviews inside!

F.U., DMB!

KYLE HASSETT WROTE THIS In honor of the Dave Matthews Band Caravan coming to Chicago this weekend, I thought that it would be a nice gesture to personally dedicate this article to Dave Matthews’ devout fan base; “Devout” being the key word in that phrase. I’m talking about those that argue whether Dave plays a sicker show at The Gorge or at Red Rocks (who gives a shit), those who can stand listening to a 40-minute version of Jimi Thing without jumping in front of a train (fuck you guys), and especially those of you who get hard when he covers some obscure song at the end of his show, thus confirming it to be the sweetest DMB concert you’ve ever been to, until you see him again the next month and he busts out an “awesome” skat solo to close out the set (seriously, fuck you guys).

At this point, I should probably mention that I do not hate DMB’s music. The man’s a talented musician, sure. I just hate the fact that so many people think that he is God’s gift to Earth. Which reminds me: how the hell are there so many of these douchebag fans? They seem to reproduce like rabbits and it scares the shit out of me.

I have a working theory that Dave Matthews asexually produced sometime around 1990 and created the first DMB groupie, let’s call him Dave Jr. Dave Matthews told little Dave Jr. to travel across the countryside, spreading DMB’s music to the people. Most of them, like me, thought that

it sounded pretty solid, but not enough to devote their lives to all that is Dave. But unfortunately for humanity, a shitload of people answered the call.

Since then, they’ve been blazing trails across the country in their broken down Jeep Wranglers that reek of bud and swamp ass (two key components of a DMB concert). It is beyond my thinking capacity as to why these fans go to such great lengths just to catch a glimpse of the one they call “Dave.” And when did going to DMB concerts become the most American thing ever? He’s from South Africa, dumbasses.

I’ve meditated for days at a time, trying to figure out why everyone has a broner for Dave, but I’ve come up with almost nothing. I have come to the sad realization that these DMB fans that piss me off so much will never go away. Since Dave Matthews doesn’t age (another working theory of mine), I will just have to put up with these assholes until I’m about 60 or so. Why 60? Because by then, I’ll be a mean old man who hates everyone anyways, and the Dave fans will just blend into my path of blind hatred.

But until that day comes, it seems that there’s not much I can do. So enjoy your precious Caravan, and have fun passing out during a sax solo in the middle of Two Step, only to wake up half an hour later to find that the solo is still going on.

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PITCHFORK PREVIEW INTERVIEW: Chrissy Murderbot BRENDAN BONHAM WROTE THIS Chrissy Murderbot is not a female, and is not a robot. He’s a Kansas City-born, Chicago-based electronic musician playing at the Pitchfork Music Festival with his boy, MC ZULU.We chatted with him about everyone’s favorite subject—robots—and his latest ablum, Women’s Studies.

The Black Sheep: How did you develop your taste in electronic music?

Chrissy Murderbot: I was less than 10, it was the late 80s, early 90s, when all that pop rave music was blowing up. My sister—who is about 10 years older than me—was bringing that kind of music into the house. I got really interested in it. In 1994s jungle was coming out and I started buying them on vinyl because that’s the only way to go. When I was 14 I started spinning in Kansas City, where I grew up, and it’s been going on from there.

TBS: How would you go about classifying yourself as a musician?

CM: I try not to. I make dance music, but I try to keep from restricting myself from specific genres.

TBS: What’s the music making process like?

CM: Usually I’ll get an idea for a hook or melody—or something more abstract like, “What if I did this thing with the snare drum— when I’m away from home and unable to do anything about it.

Over the course of playing with the idea in my head I’ll develop it and see what I can do with it. The song will be written in my mind before I sit down and actually work it out.

TBS: Do you feel like the genre limits your ability to do things with music, or do you think electronic music is more open?

CM: It’s both. Electronic music is much more about composition than live performance. At its best it’s all about songwriting. Like, you may never have a chance to play your song live the way, like, a blues musician would. That ties your hands and frees you, because you can’t use the concept of stage performance to make your set more interesting. If a rock band sucks they can still be really exciting on stage and that will count for something.You don’t have that to work with as an electronic musician.

TBS: How does your collaboration work? Like, if you’re bringing a musician in to do vocals, do you just tell them what you want?

CM: It can be a co-songwriting process, or it can just be, “here’s a hook I want you to sing.” Like, when I work with MC ZULU I’ll give him my music and he’ll write his music. Like, he won’t even be in the same room, we’ll just mail stuff back and forth with advice and comments.

TBS:You did the Year of Mixtapes, where you did a mixtape every week for a year. Why? CM: A few reasons. One, to see if I could do it. Two; dance music is so segregated—it’s a DJ who only plays house on a reggae tip with diva vocals between 120-125 beats per minute—that’s always been infuriating to me. It bothers me to be playing an event where the attitude is, “we’re all getting together to listen to this sub-subgenre for 5 hours,” and the mixtapes were an attempt to get my eclectic tastes out there.

TBS: And did that help you on Women’s Studies?

CM: I mean, there’s things that I revisited in the mixtapes that became part of the album.Yeah.

TBS: And is Women’s Studies in line with your mainstream stuff?

CM: Well, it’s fun, uptempo bass-heavy party music.

TBS: For the 2011 Pitchfork Music Festival, how did your involvement in that come to be?

CM: They emailed me and I jumped at the opportunity.

TBS: How’s the live show going to be?

CM: It’ll be me and MC ZULU playing together. They’ll see a lot of interaction between the 2 of us in a classic dance hall, bassment soundclash mold. It’ll be the 2 of us working together on stage and playing off the audience.

TBS: Where did Chrissy Murderbot come from?

CM: My name’s Chris, but people have been calling me “Chrissy” my whole life. Then DJs really try to show what tough guys they are with their name. I’ve always thought that’s stupid—It’s supposed to be fun, dance music-- so I wanted to make fun of it, and the juxtaposition shows that I’m joking.

TBS: What would a murderbot look like?

CM: Invisible! You’d never see it coming!

TBS: If you had to fight a robot, which robot could you beat in a fight?

CM: Like, the biggest robot that I think I could beat, or which one would I prefer? I mean, I’d fight a Roomba, fuck it. If it’s biggest, Rosie the Robot, from The Jetsons.

TBS: Good answer.

CM: Then again, I would probably end up like Chris Brown, in the paper for hitting a female robot.

TBS:You could fight C-3PO, he’s a pussy.

CM: He IS a pussy, but would that be a hate crime? I always assumed he and R2-D2 are lovers. I need a male, hetero-normative robot that I’d be comfortable fighting.

TBS: What robot could you beat in a dance-off if the only move you could do is the robot?

CM: I couldn’t! It would have to have few moving parts. A Roomba, or that robot from Short Circuit. Have the college kids Google what that is.

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PITCHFORK PREVIEW INTERVIEW: The Dismemberment Plan BRENDAN BONHAM ALSO WROTE THIS The Dismemberment Plan no longer exists. Well, not really, but they haven’t put out new music in a decade, and they’ve just stared playing reunion shows. Still, we got them on the phone to talk about their upcoming, sure-to-be-awesome set at Pitchfork, and life as a semi-retired musician.

The Black Sheep: How did you guys get involved in the 2011 Pitchfork Music Festival?

Eric Axelson: They approached our booking agent in the fall and they asked if we were available to play. We were unsure if we were going to do festivals—we were playing club shows at the time—but we went back to our booking agent after those club shows went well and just said, “Let’s do it.”

TBS: What’s it like being in band limbo, where you haven’t recorded new music in 10 years, but you’re playing live shows?

EA: I don’t know if it’s weird, but it’s unfortunate that we’re doing our day jobs and there’s bands out there rolling into shows and that’s their whole existence. Pretty much every show we do we’re walking out of a meeting at work on Friday, hopping on a plane and flying back to work on Monday morning again. It’s fun to play shows in front of people again.

TBS: So do you have time to practice?

EA: It’s funny, because [frontman] Travis is in Brooklyn now, while Joe, Jason and I are in [Washington D.C.]. The other day us three got together in Joe’s basement for an hour and a half just goofing around, practicing and keeping our hands nimble. Travis is coming into town to do some work next weekend. A lot of bands have an ongoing practice schedule, but we have to look at our work schedule and our life schedule to see what we can work out.

TBS: And when you get those opportunities are you guys just jumping right back into the swing of things, or is there a lot of work that goes into it?

EA: Last fall we started practicing for the shows again, and it was pretty rough. A lot of forgetfulness, tired hands and sloppiness, but after a week or so we got our stuff straight. When we played again a month later it was night and day, it was like we were in our heyday again. Eventually you know the parts and you play them intuitively.

When you play all the time as a group you know what the other people are going to do instinctively, so you try to get back to that point.

TBS: Is it hard answering question from fans because you don’t know what the band’s future is?

EA: It’s nice and I get it, I’d love it for Fugazi to do another record, so it’s really flattering when people send us letters to see if we’d do new things. It’s fantastic to hear the stories, people coming from all over the world to see us, and they have stories too, like “Oh, I was in high school when you broke up and I never got to see you.”

TBS: When you guys first decided to stop playing music was there always the idea you’d play live again down the road?

EA: There weren’t any plans, we knew we were in a place where we wanted to stop. It’s not like we stopped playing music because we were constantly fighting, just the band wasn’t working for anyone anymore, and we’d rather stop when things were good than stop after we’ve beat everything into the ground. We don’t even know what’s going on after the Pitchfork show. Not to be coy, but who knows if this will be the last show we play?

TBS: Do you ever consider your musical legacy?

EA: People sometimes ask us what we think of our place in rock history, but being in the band we can’t really grasp that. I hear people talk about it and it’s nice. I’ll walk into a bar and people are playing our music, and I forget that it’s important to people.Yeah, people buy our albums and go to our shows, but to think that someone puts on our song to be happy or unwind, that’s cool.

TBS: The Dismemberment Plan has—or had—a lot of critical acclaim. Specifically, Emergency & I got a 9.6/10 from Pitchfork when it was released, and a 10/10 on reissue. Do you check that stuff out?

EA: It’s flattering, but we came from a long line of being panned.

Our first two records are both abrasive, oddball pop music.You can tell we were on a shitload of coffee, trying to get out a lot of ideas at once, and it’s a hot mess. People hated it. When you see the both sides of the coin you realize when someone understands what you’re trying to do. I’ve seen bands I don’t think are particularly good get great scores and great albums get shit on.