When I drive through Oxnard, CA I think of many things, but one thing that would have never crossed my mind is a thriving indie and twee pop scene. There are quite a few bands just north of us, quietly making a name for themselves and existing in their own musical bio-dome where the rules, trends and fashion, that can weigh down many Los Angeles bands don’t apply.

Tonight a fine Oxnard based label called Yay! Records took over The Smell, and brought some surprisingly engrossing bands down an hour or so south of their home. Although, not extremely far away, at least without factoring travel time in traffic, it’s still a rare treat to get to see many of these great bands down in L.A.

First up was Maria, sadly they showed up Gun’s ‘N’ Roses-late to the show. They dutifully still set up all of their equipment, apologized and played us one song. The song was good, classic twee pop in the traditional sense, but there was a simplicity to their music that you usually don’t find in Los Angeles bands who actually attempt to write songs. I’ve seen many bands take a stab at naïve pop, or just bang on instruments they don’t know how to play, but it always feels so put on. I feel like Maria were playing exactly what came out when they pick up instruments, and sound very similar to the bands they listen to. They said their thanks and apologized again for only playing one song, and made way for the next band.

Sea Lions seemed to share at least 90% of Maria’s members, and presented a set that mixed equal parts indie, twee and garage pop. They were able to reproduce the 80’s twee sound in a meaningful way, enough to possibly fool an aficionado with a well placed track on a mix tape. Although an easy connection to make, their sound is reminiscent of Beat Happening, vocally and musically, specifically the more upbeat songs. Their jangle pop is catchy enough to win over the most stubborn music snob.

Catwalk made a big impression on the Saturday night Smell crowd, sounding something like a shoegaze influenced New Order. At other times their driving Jesus & Mary Chain garage pop charm got the crowd going as they ripped through a high energy set. Although a remarkably young band, Catwalk lead vocalist Nick Hessler brings a maturity and excitement that betrays his young face, with songwriting ability well beyond his years. Catwalk really stole the show, and is a great example of a new band that keeps pushing their boundaries to write excellent songs regardless of the style or genre. Keep an eye on Catwalk as they have the potential to become the band that one day puts Oxnard on the indie map.

—Michael Cameron

Download: Mary Anne Hobbs vs. Gaslamp Killer – Low End Theory Podcast No. 7

(from the Low End Theory Podcast Series from Low End Theory)

Mary Anne Hobbs does for electronica on her BBC Radio 1 show what John Peel did for everything, and for years now she has been delivering L.A.’s best beatmakers to the world. When she first came to L.A. as a girl, she wore a glitter bikini and drove a motorcycle to Hollywood bars to drink with Megadeth, but tonight she’ll be doing a special DJ set at Low End Theory. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

You’ve been such a good friend to Los Angeles music on the BBC.
Mary Anne Hobbs: Well, your city—you’ve got it going on in such a big and serious fashion right now. Los Angeles is without question the most exciting city on the planet. I could feel this incredible sense of momentum building—even an ocean away. I kept hearing about this club, Low End Theory—it was echoing in every corner of my brain. I thought, ‘This club is calling my name right now, so I’m going to have to check it out.’ And that’s where I hatched the plan—in a filthy dirty northern rain in Manchester in an underground car park with Gaslamp Killer, just before Christmas last year. It was without question the most inspiriational trip that I’ve made in years. Those types of clubs are absolutely crucial in terms of providing a home and providing a space that people can gravitate towards and share their ideas and share their dreams. It’s been very important in terms of the whole dub step scene expanding. I think from the second I met Daddy Kev, you can tell he’s a godfather beyond a shadow of a doubt.
You said you can’t categorize an artist like Flying Lotus musically—do you think you can categorize any of the L.A. beatmakers philosophically?
Mary Anne Hobbs: I think for me Lotus is absolutely key. He’s right at the forefront and he is literally building a new sonic causeway brick by brick every day out into the ether. I think in a way you need those types of figureheads—people like Lotus, people who are so brave creatively and fearless in the way they forge these new pathways. Because they lead by example. I always look at Lotus and I think he is like the Hendrix of his generation. What Hendrix did with a guitar, Lotus is doing with electronic instruments. I’ll tell you a good story. The first time I ever saw him he played at a little club on the east end of London called Cargo. I was hanging out with people at Warp and they said, ‘You’re gonna love Steve—you’ve got to meet him after the show.’ He blew my mind so completely when I saw him perform that I literally could not form a sentence at the end of the night and I had to leave the building.
Do you remember what you said to him was when you finally recovered?
Mary Anne Hobbs: I didn’t meet him face to face until Sonar Festival 2008. The first exchange was this incredible bear hug between us because we had so much dialogue online. We developed this incredible friendship. In the aftermath of the Cargo show he asked for an email address and we began to chat backwards and forwards—we did a whole heap more work on the BBC show and then I asked if he would come and play Sonar in 2008. It’s a strange scenario with these virtual relationships that you have because you build incredible bonds that blossom creatively and yet often you might not meet people for years. It’s freaky because you think, ‘I know this person intimately and yet I’ve never shook his hand.’ That’s another reason why clubs like Low End Theory are so crucially important. In my case—and I’m sure it applies to many people—you spend almost your entire life in a virtual world. You live online. Almost every interaction is an electronic exchange. In spite of the fact that I have thousands of friends all over the world, in human terms you are extremely isolated because you do so much in a virtual environment. Even a show is virtual—it pops up in the ether and then it’s gone. So these places that you gravitate towards as kindred spirits—as human souls—to exchange energy and ideas and feel the frequencies of the music in a real tangible physical environment—it’s so important that these places exist! Even more so in 2009! So for me places like Low End Theory and Forward and Sonar in London where everybody gravitates toward each other to exchange those human emotions and to dance and sweat and sing and shout and explore their dreams—they are such important places.
Your new Wild Angels comp is named after an Alice Coltrane reference—do you think there’s a connection between her music or the music of someone like Pharoah Sanders and what’s happening in L.A. now?
Mary Anne Hobbs: That came from an expression that I used in the West Coast Rocks radio documentary that I did as a consequence of that trip I took in January to L.A. and San Francisco. I went to play Alice Coltrane and then I played a Lotus track afterwards which was called ‘Auntie’s Harp.’ It’s a tribute to his aunt. He’s got the beautiful arpeggios in it. I guess Lotus is a product of many different influences but Alice Coltrane—his great aunt—is a significant influence, I feel. A lot of the younger artists he nurtured are now featured on Wild Angels—people like Teebs and Take and Mono/Poly are all his boys and he nurtures them like his great aunt nurtured him, and you hear them traveling the generations. She is a seminal musician. It’s interesting how everyone talks about John Coltrane but actually Alice is absolutely mindblowing. I wanted to work backwards and show that particular reference point. Obviously so much of the new West Coast sound is represented on the record, but you can hear it echoing down the generations. I wish I would have had an opportunity to meet her—it would have been such an honor.
You’ve said that you want to make sure your own radio show exists without prejudice and boundaries.
Mary Anne Hobbs: The way that I see the show in my mind’s eye is like a bridge—it’s like a crazy old rope bridge that hangs across a crevasse in the jungle, and on one side are the world’s most fearless producers and on the other side are the hungriest audience that you could possibly imagine. And what the show does is bring those two groups of people together. There are no prejudices and everybody is welcome. I think at this point in the history of the whole of humanity it seems crazy to be setting up boundaries. That’s how I want it to be—as simple as that. There is now so much online that your choice is infinite. You can listen for the rest of time. I think there is more of a demand for somebody who will do what I do, which is sit there for ten hours a day everyday listening to every conceivable music that comes in and also seeking all the time—at some time you have to draw a line in that sand and say, ‘OK, this is a show—this is what we are going to do this week.’ But I think hopefully people trust me now. They know that I’ll do the work and I’ll do it consistently and they come back to me.
Do you think the artists you play feel the same way about music?
Mary Anne Hobbs: I guess my greatest hero in radio terms was always John Peel. His show would endlessly surprise and delight. Every week was like a Pandora’s box of chaos. You never knew what was around the next corner with Peel. And I think to a degree what was interesting when you listened to Peel was that you would probably only really love about one in three or four records, but you knew that everybody else who was listening would have the same ratio but the records would be different. So I might like record number one and number four and somebody else will love three and seven and everybody would have a different one they thought was incredible. But also with Peel as well you would think, ‘This isn’t necessarily something I would seek out and buy for my record collection but just to hear it—what the hell is this?’ From extreme European death metal to the craziest scratchy old 78 from one of the original blues men to something that he picked up from a tribe in Africa—it could be anything with Peel. Whether or not it was to your own personal taste was almost irrelevant. It was one of those shows that you wanted to hear because you wanted to experience the sounds. It wasn’t a question of him informing a perfect record collection but it was more like an adventure in sound. He was a broad person who knew no boundaries whatsoever and he responded in the same way. He was one of my teachers. I think everybody responds to music emotionally, ultimately. It doesn’t really matter what genre or tempo a piece of music is—it’s twisted into the DNA somehow and it either touches you at the very core or it may be an interesting artifact but it doesn’t move you in the same way. It was Peel’s spirit of adventure in sound that always informed me as a child. I loved it because you would just ride the rapids with him every single week and you had no idea what he was going to do next. He would go to Fabric which is one of the biggest dance clubs and play death metal records just for a laugh. I don’t think there’ll be another John Peel in this life or the next, but that sense of adventure and ambition and that quest that he was on just inspired me so much. And that’s how I feel about music.
You once said one of the most dangerous mistakes you could make would be to underestimate the intelligence of your audience. Do you think that’s why big labels and old media are dying?
Mary Anne Hobbs: That’s a really interesting question. It’s up to every generation to decide their own fate and this is why I do what I do. There’s no point sitting around moaning with your thumb up your ass. If you don’t enjoy what’s out there, go there yourself and try to make a difference. That’s what I’m trying to do with the show. What’s interesting in terms of what’s happening in the UK is that TV used to be the most powerful of all mediums, and now an entire generation of people almost completely disregard it. They are reverting back to listening to pirate radio and they are reverting back to watching YouTube and filming their own films and getting involved—the dubstep scene is a fantastic example of that. An entire scene has become a global thing without any patronage from the broader music industry because nobody wants to go with that shit anymore and everybody wants to be the master of their own destiny. It’s been proven now that it can happen. It’s a really exciting time. This is another thing with Peel—he was part of a different generation but he was an amazing example of how to tread a different pathway. He showed you that there is another way—you don’t have to follow the rest of the sheep, you can build your own pathway. I think what you’re saying is absolutely true. The dumbing down of the media giants’ output will be the death of them because they massively underestimate the audience. You can see now how the drift is happening with this generation. They are just completely disinterested with old school media establishments and they want to do it for themselves.
Is part of this because old big labels stopped caring about the long term and only wanted to get quick next-big-things?
Mary Anne Hobbs: I think that’s really true. In terms of most artists’ lifespans—when they signed a record deal with an old school traditional company—it was only ever meant to be a few years, wasn’t it? Like three albums tops, and beyond that people were always searching for something new. I think now longevity is the key. People want an entire career—they want to be in this game for a lifetime. Record companies in the U.K. are just like loan sharks, really—they hand you a few thousand bucks in advance but 24 hours later they are banging your door down saying, ‘Where is my hit single? I need this money back tenfold!’ They interfere with the tracklisting of the album—they say, ‘There aren’t enough singles on there and we’re gonna call in a whole heap of remixes that you don’t like to make sure we can spin records in the direction of the big DJs!’ You don’t have any control over the artwork or marketing. But if you define yourself online—say who you are and what you stand for—that’s really valuable. The days of Mercedes Benzes and Rolex watches and all that—I think they realize those days are long gone, or certainly you are not going to get them over night. But something like dubstep is like a new blueprint to how a scene can operate globally without any patronage at all from the music industry and continue to grow at an incredible pace. This is what I’m experiencing more and more. People aren’t thinking, ‘This is a teenage crush that I have on music—I’m going to do it for a few years and then I’m gonna become a doctor.’ People want to do this for life—it’s their calling and they want to make it work. But it’s like Darwinism—you have to adapt to survive.
Do you know the painter Joan Miro at all? He said the more true you are to yourself as an individual, the more universal your appeal will be.
Mary Anne Hobbs: I completely agree. For me, the artists that will really make it in the long term are people who come with a completely unique sound. We’re all a product of our influences—that’s what it is to be human. We absorb and process the things that we love. But the idea is to put a unique spin on that. John Peel taught me a number of very valuable lessons but my show does not sound anything like his. The principles that underlay are from him but the show is unique and individual. It’s a really valid point in terms of what I look for on my show—totally elemental pieces of music with their own identity that you would gravitate towards over and above everything else. What’s interesting is that people build up a body of work you can identify without knowing the artist. You can say ‘that’s Lotus’ and the music actually has a direct correlation with that person’s character.
What do you think is most special about what is happening in L.A. right now?
Mary Anne Hobbs: If I had to sum it up in word, it would be freedom. When I attend a club like Low End Theory or I watch an artist like Lotus play, I just see people tearing up the rules and it’s so liberating for me to watch this. I see Lotus play live and I watch that boy screw every conceivable sound into a live set—it doesn’t matter what genre it is! If he thinks that sound belongs in his set on a particular night and the stars are in the right formation, he’s going to find a way to screw it in there. In the U.K., it’s very interesting because we come from a culture where beat matching is very important, other than old school Jamaican dancehall DJs who are pretty much the only people who get away with stopping and starting records. In the U.K. you need a seamless flow of music and you’re not considered a DJ until you can do that. It’s so liberating for me to watch the way that Lotus and Gaslamp and all these people actually construct what they do on the stage. To watch artists play and deliver a set with that degree of freedom in their soul is absolutely incredible—it’s just a complete revelation for me and culturally its totally separate from what you can do in the U.K. It is so liberating because it means that your boundaries are limitless. I’m trying to absorb something of that freedom and distill it and reapply it to what I do because I love that energy and spirit—I haven’t quite figured out how to do it yet.
What were your own years in L.A like?
Mary Anne Hobbs: Oh, it was absolutely incredible. I was 21 years old and I lived in West Hollywood about a block and a half away from Barney’s Beanery and I had a lovely Yamaha motorcycle and I used to ride around in my bikini—I used to hang out at the Rainbow all the time.
Did you have an American flag bikini?
Mary Anne Hobbs: No—it was kind of a navy blue glittery one. These were the days when I would go see Guns ‘n’ Roses play at the Troubadour before they were signed. I was a fully paid up rock chick. Jane’s Addiction used to—before they were signed—play shows in downtown in these really sweaty warehouse raves and I rememer Perry Farrell coming out on stage in all his crazy dreadlocks. He used to wear this red rubber corset back in the day—it was fantastic. I used to hang out on Venice Beach when it was ghetto. I was writing for a music paper in the U.K. called Sounds and so I was interviewing everyone from Guns ‘n’ Roses to David Lee Roth.
Was he as David Lee Roth as you hoped he would be?
Mary Anne Hobbs: Absolutely. Motley Crue—I went on the ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ tour with Motley Crue and Tommy Lee had a very serious conversation with me about the possibility of building a roller coaster around the edge of every venue so he could do his drum solo on a roller coaster. He would tool around in a little roller coaster doing his drum solo. At that point Motley Crue—I’ve never seen so many groupies in my entire life. Their manager used to grade them in what he called ‘dog kennels.’ There was probably something like 300 groupies backstage every night and they would grade them into the amazingly pretty girls and there would be a room of sexual freaks and mother-daughter combos who would do whatever. I’d never seen so many women all sitting on six different passes, five of which were the wrong pass—I don’t know how they went about acquiring those passes. I would dread to think! The tour manager said to me, ‘Do you have any idea the number of road crew that we’ve got working on this tour? These girls are just for the crew—they’ve got absolutely no idea that they will never ever meet the band.’ The shed that I lived in was what they called in L.A. a pool house, so it was a room with a shower in it. I remember every time it rained I had to get all the pans out because the water would just pour through the roof. I used to hang out at a bar called the Firefly which doesn’t exist anymore—it was on Hollywood and Vine. They used to light the bar every night with lighter fuel. Lots of the metal bands like Megadeth and stuff used to hang out in there. You would hop up on the bar and you would talk to some incredible character—it was like being in Pulp Fiction, so yeah—I loved it. Have you seen that movie The Decline of Western Civilization?
Part 2? Is that what it was like?
Mary Anne Hobbs: Slightly earlier than that was made, but I liked a lot of the thrash—it was thrash metal and hair metal in L.A. back then, so David Lee Roth, Jane’s Addiction, Motley Crue, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Megadeth. Metallica could play to a thousand people and them and Megadeth were considered completely avant garde at that point. And Jane’s Addiction too. I just had heard so much about L.A. and on a whim I sold everything that I owned and I bought a one way ticket and I had 600 dollars in my back pocket and I thought, ‘Let me just see how far I can get.’
What’s the most profound thing David Lee Roth ever said to you?
Mary Anne Hobbs: Let me see if I can think of some advice. I remember the best story about David Lee Roth. When he first released Eat ‘Em and Smile, another member of his entourage that I knew very well said to me that every morning the first thing that Dave would ever do before he left his bedroom was see his accountant. This guy would show up at Dave’s house—full suit on, everything—and he would visit Dave in his bedroom. For years and years everybody thought this suited briefcased-up guy was the accountant. Many years later it came out that David Lee Roth was all but bald and this guy was actually his hairdresser—he’d come in every morning and sew in some fresh extensions so that Dave could come out with his hand grenade blond bomb of hair and nobody would ever know any different. So that is probably the best life advice there—whatever you’re lacking, first thing in the morning have a guy with a suitcase come and bring him in as your accountant.

MARY ANNE HOBBS WITH FLYING LOTUS AND NOSAJ THING PLUS ALL LOW END THEORY RESIDENTS ON WED., SEPT. 23, AT LOW END THEORY AT THE AIRLINER, 2419 N. BROADWAY, LOS ANGELES. 10PM / $10 / 18+. LOWENDTHEORYCLUB.COM. MARY ANNE HOBBS’ WILD ANGELS IS OUT NOW ON PLANET MU. VISIT MARY ANNE HOBBS AT BBC.CO.UK/RADIO1/MARYANNEHOBBS OR AT MYSPACE.COM/MARYANNEHOBBS.

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Download: The Strange Boys “To Turn a Tune or Two”

(from The Strange Boys and Girls Club on In The Red Records)

Texas made them strange and Beerland made them men and now Austin’s Strange Boys are one of the realest rock ‘n’ roll bands currently prowling the American interstate system. They play tonight at the Smell and tomorrow at the Echo and will eradicate years of listless go-nowhere-ism with only 25 minutes and access to electricity. This interview by Dan Collins.

I just read this MSN poll that said your hometown of Austin was one of the most ‘livable’ cities in the U.S.
Ryan Sambol (guitar/vocals): They haven’t been there in August, then!
And Portland got voted the worst! Do you think Austin is the polar opposite of Portland?
Ryan: That just means more people from Portland are going to move to Austin.
You’ve said in interviews that Austin was a great place musically because it was geographically in the middle of so many things. Like it was a great melting pot for blues, jazz, country and rock, and not so heavy-handed with any one thing. Can you tell me your favorite year for each of those genres?
Matt Hammer (drums): 1945 for jazz.
Ryan: It’s really hard to say! We can’t answer that question!
What’s a question you were hoping I would ask?
Ryan: ‘Do you want me to give you a million dollars?’
I was going to ask if you have crazy dreams on tour.
Ryan: Oh man, you’re asking great guys! Philip [Sambol, bass] has something called ‘night terrors.’ It’s where the person all of a sudden wakes up, out of nowhere, totally out of the blue, screaming as loud as he possibly can. Sometimes he’s just screaming, like ‘Aaaaaaaaaghgg! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaghgg!’ And sometimes he’s like, ‘Aaaaaagh, look over there, look over there, aaaaah!’ Sometimes it’s like a really quick ‘aaah.’ But once Philip has the night terror, he freaks everybody else out in the room so much where they can’t go to sleep, and their hearts are pounding! But Philip immediately goes back to sleep. Philip sleeps soundly while everyone else is at the end of their wits.
Are you excited to play in Los Angeles again?
Ryan: We’re really excited, especially to play with Mika Miko in their hometown.
What are your favorite bands in L.A. right now?
Ryan: Darker My Love, we’ve always liked a lot. Mika Miko, of course. Anasazis. There’s probably a lot… Motley Crue! Guns ‘n’ Roses!
What’s the weirdest band you’ve ever played with?
Ryan: One time we played with this guy—he’s called Captured by Robots! We started out as enemies, but now we’re friends. We saw him in Arkansas, and we didn’t get along very well at first. And then we traded off some emails discussing our viewpoints about each other’s music. And now he checks in with us every year, and he’s like, ‘How you doing?’ But he got hit by a car a few months back! He’s better now.
I’ve seen him many times back in the day. He’s like a one-man Man… or Astroman? And you guys started off as a duo yourselves, you and Matt.
Ryan: We were called ‘The Waves.’
On days like today, do you ever look around and go, ‘Fuck, this van could be so much more spacious if we kicked these other guys out?’
Ryan: Oh yeah, Matt and I think about that every day. If we were still a duo, we’d be making way more money. We’d be touring in a Civic or something, where we wouldn’t have to worry about it. We constantly talk about kicking out Philip and Greg [Enlow, guitar]!
You guys are all pretty young, but you and Greg are total total baby faces! Has that been a problem for you? Are bouncers like, ‘You’re not 21!’
Ryan: It’s not a problem now that our IDs actually say we are 21. They always say, ‘Oh, you look 14!’ I dunno. I would say most fourteen-year-olds are still cooler than the adults we meet.
Is it a problem when you meet lady folk because they think you’re jailbait?
Ryan: I think it helps!
One of things I like about your band is that despite being young, your sound has a really solid foundation in a lot of older music. Sometimes you sound a bit like something obscure from the sixties, though with a very genuine love of blues and Americana. What are your influences?
Ryan: Oh, so many. How about you ask each of us one band that has influenced us?
Okay, but don’t quote the bands you listed on your MySpace page.
Greg: I’d say Gino Washington.
Matt: I’ve been listening to a lot of Fela Kuti lately.
Philip: I’d say that the first Oh Sees record is what I was listening to the most before we went on tour. It has awesome bass on it, and just a really unique sound.
Ryan: Joe South! That guy doesn’t get a lot of props.
I think you’re just proving my point—you have a blues influence, but so much else is mixed in. And you’ve said in interviews that Texas is a great melting pot of sounds. Would you say Texas is a better state to make music in than other places?
Ryan: Being in Austin, everyone comes through, and there’s a lot of history in that sense. But it really doesn’t matter where you’re writing or recording.
Ryan, the lyrics you write are pretty intense sometimes, though I have to say I can’t always make them out on the recordings. But I pick out some stuff. Your song, ‘When,’ has parts that remind me of Woody Guthrie’s songwriting. Like, you talk about the World Trade Center bombing. Can you recite me that lyric?
Ryan: Um, let me think. It’s, uh, um…
You have to sing this somewhere tonight! You’d better know this one!
Ryan: Ha ha… it’s, um, ‘Always been proud of doing what’s right/ Always thought your government was on the same side/ And then they blew up some buildings in New York City/ And with it your trust, and what you thought was right.’ It’s about September 11th. I believe the U.S. government blew up those buildings, like a terrorist attack. But the whole song in general is not just about that, it’s about change. The first verse is about how I was looking at pictures of the band and stuff, and I never smiled. So I decided I was going to smile, and show my teeth more! And the next two verses are about being disinformed by the media, and September 11th, and the conspiracies about it, and you’re thinking about all this worldly New World Order humongous idea of conspiracies. And then suddenly you meet this girl, and she doesn’t know anything about that, and then some sort of love affair happens. And it doesn’t have anything to do with real life at all, and then the end is just, um… uh… I don’t remember what the last verse is!
It will give our readers some mystery, so they’ll go buy the album and find out!
Ryan: ‘If you’ve got three, give two to someone else/ if you’ve got two, give the other two a mouth/ if you’ve got one, give that other one away…’
Sounds kind of Biblical! Has religion played a role in your sound?
Ryan: It’s just whatever’s going on. Religion isn’t part of the music really at all. It’s broader thoughts, higher thoughts, thinking more. It’s spirituality that’s incorruptible.
In ‘No Way for a Slave to Behave,’ you have these cool ‘whoo hoos’ in the background. It’s a little more poppy than some of your other songs.
Ryan: My friend, Shane Retro, had that beginning riff. I met him two and a half years ago, and he played me this riff, and he didn’t have any lyrics to it. And I said to him at the very beginning, ‘I’m going to steal that riff, and I’m going to write a song to it.’ And I wanted more songs for the record, so I took the riff and added the lyrics to it and the other parts to it. And the poppiness just went with it, I suppose. Shane Retro isn’t really in a band or anything. He just is.
Have you given any song ideas to other bands?
Ryan: No. I think I could write an awesome song for Jarvis Cocker! Actually I have one that I don’t think I could sing right, and I think I could.
Charlyne Yi, this comedian in L.A., writes songs for other bands for that exact same reason! Would you cover a song by Charlyne Yi if you could sing it better than she can?
Ryan: Yeah, sure, if it’s good!
What about bands from the sixties? Like Back from the Grave garage bands—when you listen to those bands, are you like, ‘Oh yeah, I see where they’re coming from?’
Ryan: We dig a lot of those bands, but I don’t know. People make such a big deal about sixties music, and it was just a lot of people, and that’s what made it cool. There were so many scenes all around the world. But it’s just rock and roll, right? It’s either the real deal, or it’s some white kids trying to do it, and either way, it’s cool, you know?
But maybe people like me, unfortunately, want to be able to describe your sound, and they don’t know what else to say, so they just write ‘It’s garage-y!’
Ryan: People compare us to Nuggets. And it’s a four-disc box set! They compare one band to a four disc box set, which is 85, 90 percent filled with horrible, horrible things. Stupid, stupid lyrics that mean nothing and were written by these people just to make a quick buck, riding some sort of craze, you know? I mean, there’s some great stuff on there as well, but they’re just ridiculous. That song, ‘Sugar and Spice’—what the hell is that? That is stupid. We don’t like that.
As a bubblegum motherfucker, I beg to disagree. But you’re right—that sounds nothing like you at all.
Ryan: Just to clear up with you, we don’t care at all what other people compare us to. I don’t want it to be where someone says ,’Hey, you sound like Nuggets,’ and I say, ‘Well, I don’t want to be compared to Nuggets,’ and you write ‘Yeah, man, they’re trying to fight against labels by other people.’ If anything, just say, ‘Man, who gives a shit?’
Well, your ‘Sugar and Spice’ quote was pretty awesome, so I’m going to have to keep that in! In fact, you said something in an interview once about garage rock that I thought was really apt: someone asked if you were part of the garage rock revival, and you said, ‘There is no revival. People have been doing this kind of stuff since 1989.’ Are there some bands that are roughly in this same genre that you’ve looked up to as heroes, who formed more recently than the sixties?
Ryan: Oh, for sure! People like the Oblivians, the Reigning Sound, anything Greg Cartwright was involved with. The Cramps, the Gun Club: these were all bands that were doing awesome, awesome stuff, before it was ‘garage rock.’
Were you mortified when you heard Lux Interior had died?
Ryan: When he died, he went somewhere else. I don’t think it’s that bad of a deal. I never knew him. People gonna die.
I hear snippets of the early Rolling Stones and the early Velvet Underground in your sound, too.
Ryan: Compared to a lot of other bands, the Stones did justice to a lot of the covers they did. And then Beggars Banquet, the slide on that record, and the country aspect of that, they took it and did something else with it. The Velvet Underground for sure—you can’t even say much about it. There’s nothing cooler than being 16 and driving around listening to the Velvet Underground. I started to get guitar lessons when I was fourteen or fifteen. And one of the first times I went in to get the lessons, I brought in White Light/White Heat, and said I wanted to learn the whole record. And the teacher was like, ‘There must be alternate tunings, because I can’t figure out what they’re really playing.’ I think I quit the next lesson after that. It seemed kind of useless if he couldn’t teach me to do that.

THE STRANGE BOYS WITH MIKA MIKO, CEREBRAL BALZY AND PROTECT ME ON MON., JUNE 29, AT THE SMELL, 247 S. MAIN ST., LOS ANGELES. 9 PM / $5 / ALL AGES. THESMELL.ORG. AND WITH THE SHIRLEY ROLLS AND THE GROWLERS ON TUE., JUNE 30, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $7 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. THE STRANGE BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB IS OUT NOW ON IN THE RED. VISIT THE STRANGE BOYS AT INTHEREDRECORDS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/THESTRANGEBOYS.

Download: Xu Xu Fang Mix Tape Podcast by Bobby Tamkin

1. Jane’s Addiction “Trip Away”
2. A Place To Bury Strangers “I Know I’ll See You”
3. Jackie Mittoo “Get Up and Get It”
4. Bob Marley “Natural Mystic”
5. Lee Hazlewood “For A Day Like Today”
6. David Axelrod “The Mental Traveler”
7. Kraftwerk “Spacelab”
8. Gas “Eins”
9. Igor Stravinsky “The Rite of Spring Part I: Danses des adolescentes”

Xu Xu Fang like pictures of horses better than pictures of people and will release their new EP Seven Days Now this week. Founder Bobby Tamkin speaks to Scott Schultz about radio drama, fog machines and stoned Oklahomans who like Gossip Girl.

The new EP Seven Days Now is more electronic than These Days’ stoner rock psychedelia. Was the shift a matter of incorporating new musicians to the sound or were you consciously looking to change?
Bobby Tamkin: That’s the weird thing about the band. Most styles of music have elements that I like, and I want to explore those. Sometimes I don’t know if the guitar song is going to fit with the electronic beat-based stuff, but it’s not a conscious effort. If there could be different styles of music back to back, I would love to do that, but I don’t know if that would make a cohesive record or show.
You use a lot of sound effects in your music. Do you factor the effects into your songwriting, or do you add them after the tracks are recorded?
It depends on how the song was created. It may have started with a keyboard sound or an effect, or it may start with a drumbeat. There’s really no rhyme or reason. Suddenly it ambles into something, and at some point I will stop and figure it’s ready to go. Some of the sounds I personally record, probably 85 percent of the effects you hear. I like to run around with a microphone and capture sounds. I love the sound of horses.
Where were the horse sounds recorded?
The horses were a combination of both homemade and post-production. I had a recording that I made of horses, but it wasn’t strong, so I enhanced it with a little sound effect synth sound. Part of the fun is creating it all on my own.
How many musicians have been members of the Fang?
It’s unfortunate that it’s been a process. It comes down to whether people are up to do it. Show up and play—no drama. Enjoy the music and play it. If that’s the case, you’re all set, but there have always been different circumstances. Everyone is always a little unique. It would be cool if it was the same setup all the way through, but it’s getting there, it’s getting there. Our current lineup played together for the first time when we opened for Swervedriver at the Fonda. That was a little over 11 months ago.
Your music seems influenced by movie soundtracks and radio theatre. Do you have any favorite soundtracks or soundtrack artists who inspire you?
Oh man, that’s almost an impossible question. The score I’ve been listening to a lot lately is Bernard Herrmann’s North By Northwest. Bernard Herrmann is pretty much my favorite. It’s like hearing Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ over and over and over again, but there are subtle changes. He died in ‘76. The last score that he did was Taxi Driver. He died in the middle, but he was awesome. He’s partially responsible for the modern sweeping scores that you hear today.
Did you begin the radio drama piece with script, music, or concept?
I had a few bits of music that I recorded and didn’t do anything with. I really liked those old radio theater mystery dramas with the sound effects and I thought, hmmm, it would be interesting to make something like that, but make it a little more contemporary musically. I came up with a loose idea of what I wanted the story to be, and then I scripted out simple scenes and had friends do the voices. Then I wrote a bunch of new music for it to fill it out.
How many characters did you voice?
Just one.
The rat who turns in his friend to get whacked?
Yeah—terrible voice! It was so poorly acted. If you don’t know me, it may seem like the character was supposed to be that way, but if you know me, you know that I could have been so much better. Once I had the band together, we decided to play live. We didn’t have a singer yet, but we figured it would be cool to have images up behind us of L.A. in wintertime, and L.A. WEEKLY wrote a story about it and said that we played a live soundtrack to film, and I was like, ‘Hell no—this isn’t a film!’ I went back and shot hours and hours of more stuff, and I ended up editing all over again and finally it became some sort of a narrative and what it had been described as. It was never intended to be a score to a film.
From there, how did you segue into actual songs?
I didn’t want to make another film. I could have improved upon it, definitely, but I didn’t want to make something that would compete with it. Songs seemed like a good challenge: to write a song. It’s hard.
What was your first song?
‘These Days.’
Do you have more new songs beyond those on Seven Days Now?
We have eight new songs that haven’t been recorded yet. So we’re going to write two more and then make a full length with all new stuff.
How would you describe the new music?
That it’s more like The Mourning Son. Less dancey, more guitar. The real shape of it will happen when I get into the studio. At that point who knows what it could turn into.
You had two songs played on Gossip Girl, and they’ll be using a third song this month. Are you attracting Gossip Girl fans?
I guess it’s a testament to the producers and music supervisors that they would put songs like ours into a show like that. It was a total surprise. There are probably some 16-year-old stoner chicks in Oklahoma who check us out on Myspace after seeing Gossip Girl, and that’s totally cool.
Adam Franklin of Swervedriver found you on Myspace and gave you an opening slot when they came to L.A. last year, and Gossip Girl also found you with minimal hype. Are you just lucky?
We seem to have some sort of homing beacon like Batman for cool people. Adam Franklin liked the concept of the horse heads, and that drew him to us, and then he checked out the songs and like the music.
How did you come up with using the horse head pictures for the band photos?
I didn’t have a band when I put my first song up, and I wanted to put portraits of people to represent each musician, but then I figured if I put up a horse head, I wouldn’t have to change pictures. So I came up with a bunch of unique looking horse heads until I could get my band together, and then I just kept it. For a while it was funny—certain horses were more popular than others and would get more comments. I don’t know why.
You guys have some heavy jam breaks during your live songs, where Barbara (Cohen—vocals) dissolves into the murky mix with all three guitars going full rumble. Are you looking to make your jams even larger onstage?
We’ve always talked about doing one jam for the whole show. Just play ‘Good Times’ for an hour. It would be really fun to play that way, but the audience will get bored after a while unless they’re on something.
How long has Xu Xu Fang been using fog onstage?
Since day one. We also use the Stargate and really we’d really go nuts with the lights if we could. We’d need a full time person just for lights and fog. Barbara and Jenna (keyboards) don’t like the fog, because they say it messes with their voices. We had a residency at the Silverlake Lounge and we fogged that place up like crazy. I think he may have told us to stop at some point.
Your first CD had a very L.A. quality. Is the city a character within the story?
I love the atmospheric sounds, the rain—which we don’t get a lot of, but I think it has a real evocative sound in this city. The blasé—neither here nor thereness—fits the tone of ‘These Days.’ This city is so unique and there are so many great bands from so many scenes that are each unique but distinctly L.A., like Jane’s Addiction, NWA, The Doors, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Love, Van Halen…I think the bombast of the city is definitely in our stage show. The music is intelligent, but it’s not afraid to go huge.

MANIMAL VINYL AND RADIO FREE SILVERLAKE PRESENT XU XU FANG WITH VOICEsVOICES, DOWNTOWN UNION AND THE VOYEURS ON THU., APR. 30, FOR THE RELEASE PARTY OF XU XU FANG’S SEVEN DAYS NOW AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD.,ECHO PARK. 10 PM / FREE / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. VISIT XU XU FANG AT XUXUFANG.COM.