ALEATORY #23: Japancakes

Though he's said it here before, Davecat feels it's worth repeating: a band's name can make all the difference. If you've got a stupid name, people are going to be less likely to seek out and listen to your music, however great it is. However, if your name is as awesome as Athens, Georgia group Japancakes, your music practically sells itself. Knowing nothing about their 2001 album The Sleepy Strange, Davecat picked it up at the record store based on name alone and has been hooked ever since. Their most recent album, 2007's Loveless, is an full-length, song-for-song cover of My Bloody Valentine's classic shoegaze album, interpreted in their beautiful instrumental style with shimmery guitar, pedal steel, and cello. Brant Rackley, Japancakes' drummer, took the time to speak with us last month, and we are honored to have one of our favorite bands as our 23rd Aleatory.

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7. Favorite composer?

I'm assuming for classical? If so, I'd say Bach. I remember the first time I heard Cantata No. 140 (Sleepers Wake). It's still stuck in my head. Something about the way the strings float around is amazing. It would be a good song to cover and make our own. Heather and Neff could work some magic on that one. As far as modern composers, I'd have to say Brian Eno. He just makes interesting music. I think I listened to Music for Airports for a year straight. Sometimes it's best to hear the music that's not there.

8. Favorite author?/Favorite book?

I can't sit still long enough to read much, classic ADHD stuff. I do like reading David Sedaris books. His stories are hilarious. Being able to be that honest about family and yourself is quite a feat. I need the number of his therapist. Favorite book(s), All the President's Men, any Dr. Suess, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. I have two kids, so most of my reading these days consists of children's books. I'm a big fan of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

9. Favorite song to start (or end) a mixtape with?

Starting song is a toss up between R.E.M. "Harborcoat" and Stevie Wonder "Living for the City". Ending song is toss up between Aretha Franklin "Ain't No Way" and Superchunk "Hyper Enough", the first one makes you long for more, and the second gets you all jacked up and ready to go do something.

15. Favorite exhibit or subject at the museum?

Andy Goldsworthy exhibit. He makes some of the coolest art I've ever seen. The patience that guy has is insane. If you've never seen his work I would highly recommend checking it out. Also, watch "Rivers and Tides", it's a documentary about him and his work. I can't really explain it without sounding like a babbling idiot, but to me it's simple and familiar in an awesome and completely foreign way?

18. Favorite pick-up line?

Do you know of anything that will get blood out of a clownsuit?
I'm married...it worked once.

21. Favorite album(s) from the past year?

I liked:

• Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago. Very stripped down simple record, totally full though.
• TV on the Radio - Dear Science. These dudes simply do some cool stuff with music.
• David Byrne and Brian Eno - Everything that Happens will Happen Today. This record feels good. Picking out all the little loops, blips, and blurbs in this is amusing to me.
• Girl Talk - Feed The Animals. Listening to this is like playing Musical Jeopardy. Very creative. Although I can't listen to it too much.

26. Favorite badass?

Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Every since I was a kid I wanted to be this guy. I got a thing for the bumbling detective.

27. Favorite chord/chord progression?

I got nothing for you on this one. I deal in simplicity, you know, pick up drumstick-hit drum.

28. What instrument would you most like to learn to play?

Piano, or anything other than drums really, but mostly piano.

29. Who do you wish more people were listening to?

Globally? Each other. Musically? Japancakes, every little bit helps.

32. Best thing you learned this week/month?

That the kind of UFO's that exist in my daughter's world, are fart-powered and they are only interested in collecting human underpants. She's a genius.

35. What's the best place you've randomly discovered while on tour?

We played some shows in France for the Sleepy Strange album. We were in Paris for a few days of the tour and there was a chocolate shop down the street from our hotel that was fucking great. I think it was a mother and daughter who owned/ran it. Every time we would go in there they would let us try all the new chocolates for the day. If you could marry a chocolate shop, I would. It just so happens that we also randomly discovered that Paris is the best place to; have your bass player step in dog shit (aprrox. 3-4 times in one day), chocolate bars filled with liquor, and one of the most hilarious clown paintings of all time.

41. If you could go anywhere in the universe, where would it be?

Where ever those UFO's my daughter draws are from. That place has got to be hilarious.

47. Biggest fear?

Although it's not very likely, being trapped under ice. That would be fucking terrifying, especially if you could see someone trying to help you. Realistically, something happening to my kids. I tend to freak out a little bit whenever I have to back out of my driveway. I have this horrible feeling that I'm going to back over one of my kids.

51. What are you currently obsessed with?

Gummy Coke Bottles. Fucking delicious.

52. At what point did you realize that music was going to be your full-time occupation?

This question doesn't apply to me. I only pretend it's my full-time job. Over-thinking and under-doing is my full-time occupation.

66. Worst song you've heard recently?

Anything by Kid Rock or Katy Perry. I appreciate "what" they do and they're obviously hard workers. I just don't get it. However, Jimmy Buffet is my least favorite ever, of all time, ever.

68. Favorite interview you've ever been a part of (aside from this one, obviously)?

We were interviewed in a van, in a parking lot on the Seine in Paris. It was cold, crowded, and hilarious.

69. There's got to be one: who has been your craziest fan?

Two come to mind. There was a guy in France who heckled the shit out of us. It was insanely funny though because he just spouted out the only bad words he knew in English. He'd yell stuff like "monkey shit" "I shit on your piss" "I suck your piss" Really funny, then he stumbled outside while we were loading up and knocked over a mirror I bought over there and broke it. Douchebag.

The other dude was in Athens. He hopped up on stage in a green monkey costume and just started playing the harmonica into the mic. Everyone in the band thought he knew one of us and it was just a friend having some fun. Turned out to be some random fan who thought his terrible harmonica playing would be a nice addition to our music. Again, total douchebag.

88. What's your deepest source for musical inspiration?

People trying. Hard to explain. I like to see people trying. Just anything. Something new, kids learning to walk, problem solving and determination type stuff.

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Visit Japancakes' website.

INTERVIEW: Of Great and Mortal Men

Many people have heard of NaNoWriMo -- National Novel Writing Month, which takes place every November and just celebrated its 10th year in 2008 -- but did you know it has a musical cousin? February Album Writing Month (FAWM) just got wrapped up, challenging musicians to write 14 songs over 28 days, and while one can imagine how much chaff such an endeavor must produce almost by nature, you shouldn't throw the wheat out with the bathwater.

J. Matthew Gerken, Christian Kiefer, and Jefferson Pitcher teamed up for last year's FAWM, taking the challenge one step further: over the course of a month, between them they would write a song for each and every President of the United States of America. Realizing they were onto something great, the three sent their songs out and got some of their favorite indie musicians -- Alan Sparhawk of Low, Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon, (Smog)'s Bill Callahan, Califone, Xiu Xiu's Jaime Stewart, etc. -- to play on the tracks. The result -- Of Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs for 43 U.S. Presidencies -- is as exciting to listen to as it is informative and an eye-opening look into the lives of these great, mortal men.

Davecat was extremely fortunate to be able to talk with each of the three songwriters about the project, out as a three-disc set from Standard Recording Company -- and now including a 44th song for President Obama.

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>>>> Christian is a history teacher, but what (if any) background do Jefferson and Matthew have in US history?

CHRISTIAN: I should probably note that I’m not actually a history teacher, although I do a fair amount of history-related reading in my classes. My graduate work is in American literature and I’m currently teaching English (rhetoric, writing, and literature) for Stanford University’s cutting edge Education Program for Gifted Youth, Online High School. My students are brilliant and it keeps me on my intellectual toes working with them.

JEFFERSON: I do not necessarily have a “formal” background in American History, though my undergraduate degree is in American Studies, and I have a longstanding interest in history. I think more important in the case of this project, rather than any strong ties to an academic path in history, was simply our inquisitiveness about the subject matter. History of the presidents is arguably about myth and popular culture as much as it is about the formal discourse of history (at least in the greater cultural sense) so a curious mind, a willingness to do a bit of research, and a longing to examine the way in which history is told was all relevant. My graduate work was an MFA in studio art, and while critical theory was present in that, I is, I think, wholly unrelated to this sort of history.

MATTHEW: I studied an obtuse brand of economic and social theory known as historical materialism as a part of my undergraduate degree in Urban Geography and Political Science. It is not really history as people normally think of it, but a certain lens for viewing the world, based in part on history (especially since the industrial revolution). Partly as a result of this project, I started to read more US history books, especially those with presidential themes. Actually, I think the degree to which one is interested in history might be a pretty good barometer for me to use in identifying new friends. I think I would naturally gravitate toward people that have at least some interest in history and away from people showing no such interest. Wow, I got way off topic there!

>>>> How were you able to line up so many popular indie musicians for the album? Were there a lot of personal connections, or did the idea to include others come later in the project's conception?

CHRISTIAN: The project is somewhat amazing to me for this reason. Much of it was connections via friends of friends, and a few labels were very, very kind in helping us making new connections with bands and musicians we love. We knew pretty early on that we wanted to include some guest artists. In particular, I was aware that I was doing an Alan Sparhawk-imitation when I was singing Eisenhower for the first time. So when it came time to do the real recordings (I mean post-demo stage) it seemed natural to ask Alan if he would do it. We’re quite fortunate to have learned that musicians really want to make music. Nearly everyone we asked to share their time with us was quite willing to do so. I’m still amazed by that, although I probably should not be. Musicians are good people. I’ll leave Jefferson to the next part…

>>>> Were any of the songs written specifically to be sung by the artists that perform them on the album? I ask because in some cases (such as the John Tyler song "Hindsight Falls On Deaf Ears" with Bill Callahan) the performance seems so completely suited to the song that it sounds they could have written it themselves for one of their own albums. Was there any collaboration with the performers as far as arrangement of the songs was concerned?

JEFFERSON: None of the songs were written with any specific performers in mind, and only a handful changed at all from the time of the original demos. We wrote the demos as a part of a songwriting challenge called FAWM (fawm.org) in which one writes fourteen songs in twenty-eight days (February). Because of the nature of the songwriting, we felt that we wanted to stay as “true” as possible to the idea from a compositional standpoint. That said, as guests joined the project, we were certainly open to some degree of change in the arrangements. The songs that standout the most to me, as having diverted from the original and having been collaborative are Coolidge which changed a fair amount when Jim Putnam (Radar Bros.) began working with it, Lyndon Johnson which Steve Dawson (Dolly Varden) re-arranged a bit and added lyrics to, and Wilson which Kiefer basically re-wrote when Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu) got involved.

CHRISTIAN: I’m a huge, huge fan of the Staple Singers so my original demo of Tyler was basically me trying to be Roebuck (“Pops” to his friends and family). I tried to get some of the folks from Ollabelle to sing some of their harmonies on it but that didn’t work out. Bill Callahan was a long shot but it turned out he was interested in doing it. Interestingly, out of the entire project, Callahan is the only guy I had no direct contact with whatsoever; everything with him was through kind folks at Drag City. It’s just a transformational performance from him—really mindblowing in every way and we’re very fortunate that he had the time and inclination to do it.

>>>> Speaking of individual songs, I'd like to know more about the (creepy) Woodrow Wilson song "A Life Among Men" featuring Jaime Stewart of Xiu Xiu. Looking through the impressive guest list of artists for this project -- Callahan, Califone, Sparhawk and Kozelek, etc. -- Stewart seems to be the odd man out (in the best way possible, of course). How did he wind up attached to the project, and to "A Life Among Men" specifically?

CHRISTIAN: Jamie Stewart has one of the most distinctive and heart-wrenching voices in music today. Having that voice on this project was very important to me. Turns out his sister is a history teacher and he felt therefore obligated to be a part of our weird history lesson. We pitched a few songs his way and he decided that Wilson was the only one he could really pull off. The original version we sent him was kind of a heavy Pink Floyd trip, but once we got his vocal back (in the mail) I sat and re-configured and re-produced the track so that his voice was really placed at the forefront. I didn’t intend to make a pseudo-Xiu Xiu track out of it, but I fear that’s what I did. Sometimes it’s difficult to avoid one’s influences.

>>>> "Someone to Wake," the 44th song in the 43-song series, was written after Barack Obama's election this November. Had you given any thought before the election what John McCain's song would sound like, had things gone the other way?

JEFFERSON: I was the one slated to write a song for McCain had he won, and the task was indeed difficult. I didn’t want to take the easy route of writing something disarmingly negative because I didn’t like him politically. A few years ago, I watched a film by director Werner Herzog called Little Dieter Needs to Fly, which is about a Vietnam Veteran who was in a prison camp for quite some time. I was fascinated by the extremity of his situation, and the way in which I believe humans can resort to a much more biologically survivalist mode of survival in extreme situations. As much as I didn’t like the fact that McCain’s war heroism came into the election rhetoric, I was fascinated by what it must have been like to go through that experience. So the demo I had decided on was a song about how he was proud of himself for having endured. Of course that doesn’t qualify him to be president in any way, and I didn’t want to write about it politically. I wrote about it in the first person, from a very emotional standpoint. Had it seen the light of day, I think it was sounding something like a slow, but loud Sonic Youth song.

>>>> On a related note, the three of you just did a pre-Inauguration show in DC. What was it like, being in the captial during all the Inauguration festivities? Any good Inauguration stories?

MATTHEW: Yes, we had a big show at the 6th and I Historic Synagogue downtown, a
venue that has lectures as well as great musical performances. It was a beautiful and ornate building and we had this giant light show and videos tied to the presidential music for an eye-candy overload. We invited many east coast and midwest based musicians to "cover" songs from "Of Great and Mortal Men," and I, for one, was blown away by the quality of the guest performances. The three of us also got to sing a couple of our tunes to a large crowd of enthusiastic and attentive people. By the Saturday before inauguration, the City was really beginning to fill up and there were tons of parties and events all around the area, which served as "competition" for our event. We spent pretty much all day at the venue rehearsing, meeting the guest musicians as they would arrive, and otherwise preparing for the event. By the time we were finished with the show, we walked down the block to grab a drink, and it was very clear that we had some "catching up" to do -- there were stumbling, overjoyed people all over the streets of Washington. To me, there was a palpable buzz in the air, too. By most accounts, this was the largest and happiest inauguration gathering in history. It was wonderful to be tangentially associated with it.

>>>> Were you surprised by the takes on some of the presidents that your colleagues came up with? Did anyone write an alternate song for any of the presidents?

MATTHEW: These United States, a great Washington DC based band, did a very cool, very low-fi version of John Adams. For some of the artists, we would send them the song and they would sing over it or play over it and send it back. For others, there was a wholescale re-recording of the song and sometimes arrangement changes. These United States' version was very surprising to me, and was very different from the original. I ended up wanting to keep both textures, and therefore the cut that is on the record features their version at the beginning and end of the cut and my version in the middle. Speaking of These United States, they played an unbelievable opening set at the show in Washington and also covered the song about Taylor ("Rough and Ready") at this show. They absolutely killed! What a talented bunch of people!

>>>> Who are your individual favorite presidents (and why)?

MATTHEW: This is a difficult question. Part of the beauty of them is that they all had flaws... some more than others. Probably Abraham Lincoln did the most overall amount of good, of all our presidents thusfar. Teddy Roosevelt was a great US President, making important strides in land conservation and trust-busting.

JEFFERSON: This is a difficult question, because so much of our knowledge about the presidents is based in a very incomplete reading (and understanding) of history. Though a flawed man in many ways, I would have to say Thomas Jefferson, primarily because of his thoughts on both the principles of democracy (I think he would be rather shocked and disgusted by the degree to which those principles have been eroded in modern politics) and education. His ideals in both of those areas are still entirely relevant if not needed today.

>>>> What are some of the best presidential facts you learned that didn't make their way into the songs?

MATTHEW: Gerald Ford was an All-American center for the University of Michigan (football) and used to request that aides wake him up in the middle of the night if necessary (while traveling abroad) to tell him the Michigan-Ohio State score.

>>>> Any plans for this coming February's Album Writing Month? Vice presidents? Kings and queens of England?

JEFFERSON: I’m afraid that with an eleven-month old son, it is about all I can do to get some food in me and a shower each day. I don’t plan to do the February Album Writing Month this year, though I am working on songs for a new record, just at a much slower pace. While I have deeply enjoyed the process of writing about this subject matter, I don’t want to become the guy who writes about presidents, kings, etc. While most, if not all, of my records have some very concrete themes, mostly borrowed and stolen from literature, I am far too interested in experimentation to stay on the same path. My new project is about the lack of water resources in a fictional town. So perhaps a mayor here and there.

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View the Of Great and Mortal Men official blog.

Gerken / Kiefer / Pitcher on MySpace.

OFF THE RECORDS: Evcat on NPR!

Hey there, readers!

We just wanted to let you know that Evcat is moving up in the world -- tomorrow (3.3.09), Evan is going to be on WNYC's Soundcheck program, participating in the weekly "smackdown" wherein two guests are brought in to discuss a current pop music topic. Evan, in case you didn't know, is the Associate Interviews Editor at PopMatters.com, and his review of the latest U2 album ran today, which lead to his invite onto the show. He will be going toe-to-toe with Joe Levy, the current editor-in-chief of Blender magazine and the former managing editor of Rolling Stone. It will be a great listen either way, so be sure to tune in!

UPDATE: Embedded below is the complete broadcast. Way to go, Evan!