Friends Forever: Rawkers Kleveland and synth-punk jokers The Punk Group have a chat.
More than a bit strange that Devo divos the Punk Group and Kleveland’s longtime rawk heroine Stephanie Smith would choose to hold a joint release party for their new albums—the bands sound nothing alike and are notoriously prickly about other musicians—so WW asked the bands to interview one another. As told to Jay Horton’s Pabst-drenched microcassette recorder the back table of Club 21
Stephanie Smith, Kleveland frontwoman: Is this thing on? How does this work? [clicking noises]
Allen Hunter, Kleveland bassist: I’ll hang on to the talking stick. [Recorder shuts off.]
Smith: Hi, the Punk Group! Round One!
Brian Applegate, the Punk Group’s “sex object”: You have an album coming out…
Smith: It’s called Harder.
Tony Cameron, the Punk Group’s “model”: Harderthan what?
Applegate: Like, a Viagra statement?
Smith: Not necessarily about size, just…everyone has a certain idea of how you are: telling you to be this, telling you to be that, telling you to be harder!
Cameron: It’s funny because our album’s called Softer. [Recorder shuts off.]
Smith: Stephanie from Kleveland, here. The name of your album is actually Sex, Drum Machines and Rock ’n’ roll. How does it compare to your others?
Cameron: It’s a progression, as production and everything else has gotten better, we found more resources to make fun of, and it’s a continuation of what we’re doing. The world needs jokers, and we’re supplying that. We’re filling the void.
Smith: Are there videos? The “Fat Girls” video is genius. I love it! Who came up with the concept? Do animators come to you?
Applegate: Some of my friends are graphic animators…unfortunately, I think that’s the song we’re going to be known for.
Cameron: Against our will.
Applegate: That’s our one-hit wonder? That’s the song that we’re going to be known for? “Fat Girls on Bicycles”? Really?
Smith: This goes back to the whole reason we’re doing the CD-release show together…. You guys have a particular style that you stay true to, I have a particular style I stay true to, neither of which has been the mainstream of Portland.
Applegate: In Portland, the majority of bands—especially in the Northwest, but it’s spread everywhere else—are either indie or manufactured pop-rock, a bunch of bullshit that…you ask somebody who comes out of a show what made them excited, nobody could give a solid answer because they don’t know themselves. We know a lot of people that are in these shitty bands so, even though they’re nice guys, I don’t want to out them and say their bands fucking suck.
Hunter: Stephanie, as Kleveland, has spent years doing this fucking balls-to-the-wall I-don’t-care kicking-ass-and-taking-names dirtbag rock ’n’ roll. You guys are doing what you guys are doing…you’ve got this electronic, clever, funny-but-danceable poppy synth-rock but the sensibility is totally punk. It’s not like you’re wearing safety pins and blah blah blah, but you are who you are, you’re fun, you’re good to dance to, you make people think, you challenge people’s ideas….
There’s been this homogenization of the music industry to the lowest common denominator for beardo sensitive fag rock—everybody tries to do the same fucking thing. For seven or eight years as Kleveland, for you guys, with seven or eight years as the Punk Group, you’ve been sticking to your guns and doing what what you wanna do and fuck everybody else. So, for us to be on the same bill, releasing our CDs together, it’s a sort of perfect pairing.
Cringing
says:its probably a perfect pairing because no other local band in their right mind wants to play a show with these assholes. “beardo sensitive fag rock”? uh, yeah, crapping on everything in town doesn’t make your shit band any cooler idiot.
Posted @ August 20th, 2008 at 9:28 pm (August 20th, 2008) | Flag this Comment | permalinkking fader
says:yes it does.
Posted @ August 21st, 2008 at 9:08 pm (August 20th, 2008) | Flag this Comment | permalinkTony
says:Indie rock scenesters are seriously the greatest sheep on earth next to christians, honestly people. Does the truth really hurt that bad! It’s actually just laughable how trendy and mindless they are. Most journalists these days don’t even understand what the original designation “indie rock” means for crying-out-loud! It means not being on a major label: they are “independent” or DIY. (if you don’t know what DIY means, look it up). The reason they are on a major label half the time is because the other people that follow trends are the execs that are marketing them, and making a bunch of money off of the sheep that fall for “what is hip now.” Hey, here’s an interesting idea; let’s all put the word “Wolf” in our band name! It’ll be really neat and we will be famous for a second, then break up. Or, let’s grow a gnarly hippy beard, and look completely disgusting. Chicks dig it! Ad nausium, you get the point. Do something unique for once in your life:)
Posted @ August 22nd, 2008 at 6:10 pm (August 20th, 2008) | Flag this Comment | permalinkJay Horton
(post author) says:Actually, Indy Rock (or ‘open wheel’ or ‘bROCKyard’) originally referred to the northern Indiana garage scene of the early 1990s. The term was sarcastically employed to describe Pavement by an influential zine writer of the day, and the New York Times clumsily referenced ‘indy’ in the sub-head of their ‘93 Pavement feature. Subsequent corruptions of spelling and meaning continue to amuse.
Posted @ August 26th, 2008 at 1:16 am (August 20th, 2008) | Flag this Comment | permalinkTony
says:Jay, I think that Pavement incident was long after the English and Australian journalists had already been using the term “Indie” to refer to earlier punk, Mod, and new-wave bands that had their own ‘labels’ and that journalist who wrote about Pavement was using the term as a humorous double entendre to make fun of “Indiana” and their music scene. That’s what my English friends say anyway, and you know how they lie!
“The term ‘indie’ became nonsensical a decade or two back in Europe when big bubblegum acts like Kylie Minogue created their own labels and thus were officially classified as indie, ending up being No 1 in the indie charts beating Nick Cave and his ilk.
Anyway, even indie labels (like Astrelwerks and many others) are now owned by large labels such as EMI, Warners, etc.. so the term ‘indie’ is a marketing phrase with no meaning. DIY is pretty good until some twits in marketing get hold of it and bend it for their own use.”
- Courtesy of Milk Robotics
Posted @ September 10th, 2008 at 3:30 pm (August 20th, 2008) | Flag this Comment | permalinkMorgan Grace
says:wow Allen, here I thought you were only a charmless ass in private, way to go public buddy!
Posted @ September 22nd, 2008 at 3:22 am (August 20th, 2008) | Flag this Comment | permalink