Tag Archives for Growing

C & D bicker about new records (Arthur No. 17/July 2005)

Originally published in Arthur No. 17/July 2005

C: We meet again.
D: Indeed. [goes to fridge, returns with chilled brownie]
C: Okay? We are ready to begin. D, I wish you clarity.
D: Yes. Focus pocus.

Kool Keith
Global Enlightenment Part 1 DVD
(MVD)
C: I thought this was gonna be Keith being oh-so-weird but actually it’s him being clever… He’s talking philosophy.
D: He’s talking seltzer water.
C: He’s talking about theft, it’s a favorite subject of his. And this is about how he dealt with that: by doing something that is unstealable. Listen to what he’s saying…
Kool Keith on screen, talking about what he keeps in his refrigerator: “I learnt that people like to steal your sodas. Seltzer water, people don’t like it. You could send a big jug of seltzer water around, and nobody would touch it… But people taking my Hawaiian Punches, people drinking all my Tropicana. That happened for weeks, and months. I really learned that seltzer water keeps people away. It’s like a twist: I really don’t like it myself, but I like it because people don’t like it. You have to do it that way. But you have to learn how to like it, like it’s so good to you: it’s SO GOOD to have a glass of seltzer water.”
C: That’s the way I’ve felt about Keith’s last, uh, five records. They’re hard to like! But now I gotta listen to them again, because they were hard to like on purpose!
D [musing]: Hmm. I have to admit I did not even hear those records.
C: Keith is brilliant even when he’s talking about being weird as a conceptual survival strategy. This is funny: watching Keith on Tour. It’s a sustained critique of status-obsessed modern hip-hop. So, he’s supposed to be showing how large he’s living, that’s what hip-hop stars do on their DVDs. But here he’s living in a hotel, he’s eating at Popeye’s. He’s got no hot women on his wing so he follows one around buys her some shorts. He hangs out with music stars friends, that is, the streetbusking guitarist. He has trouble finding liquor. The whole thing is done straight….
D: Even straighter than the Turbonegro film.
C: Which is saying a lot, when you think about it.
Kool Keith on screen, walking through Manhattan’s streets: “I’m always touring, even when I’m walking…. Am I above the streets? I am above the streets at my mentality level. Everybody now raps behind the microphone and a couple of bodyguards and they say they’re the streets. You see a lot of rappers, they walk around with a lot of people with ‘em, with headsets? Their reality is not even reality. It’s a fantasy. I don’t sit in an SUV, doing my documentary, ride around and talk about ‘I was in the streets, I live the street, I am the streets.’ You mean you ride through the streets. Ha. You know what I’m saying?”
C: He’s goofing like Sun Ra. Everything has at least two and a half meanings.
D: Thirty-five minutes of new stoner comedy-philosophy.

Little Freddie King
You Don’t Know What I Know
(Fat Possum)
D: [looking at cover, reading the album title] “You don’t know what I know?” I have a feeling he knows the same thing Kool Keith knows. Which it is I do not but I am trying to know.
C: It’s obviously a Fat Possum production.
D: Which means it’s thick enough to eat with a fork.
C: Raw John Lee Hooker feel, without sheen or Clapton cameos.
D: John Lee Hooker would never have a song called “Crack Head Joe.”
C: It’s about time someone paid tribute to a crackhead.

Blowfly
Fahrenheit 69
(Alternative Tentacles)
C: Blowfly is an old R & B songwriter dude who’s been running the crude parody game for 75 years. Wears a cape and mask to protect his secret identity. Totally classic if you’re in a certain mood.
D: We have to give him some major credit to the cover picture, which is a takeoff on the Bad Brains’ first album cover, only Blowfly is doing a urine lighting strike on the Capitol building.
C: Blowfly has to be experienced live, he’s a comedian provocateur goofball. (You can see why he’s on Jello Biafra’s label now.) I saw him opening for the Pixies and Soul Asylum once at a half-empty Universal Amphitheatre, and I know this is damning by faint praise Blowfly blewflied them off the stage. And get this: his ENTIRE band was wearing GIANT…RAINBOW….AFROS!!!!
D: [looks at sleeve picture of Blowfly with his middle fingers extended] I like his fingernails more than his new record.
C: To update George Clinton: Smell my fingernail.

A Band of Bees
Free the Bees
(Astralwerks)
C: There are songs on here that are as good as the originals they’re styled after– whether it’s the Zombies, or the ballads, the Afrobeat stuff. The writing is great, the spirit is there, the production is definitely there, but… Could it be that they are the men who know too much? With the internet and Mojo every phase of Western pop music is now available to kids, and it’s all presented with this sexy, dramatic gosh-wow. What does that mean for young smart musicians? Are they perhaps over-educated in music history?
D: Maybe you are an over-educated listener!
C: Could be true. I’m sure if I was 12, I’d listen to this one record all summer. But back then, you did listen to only one record all summer because that’s the most that you could get your hands on. You had just enough money saved up to buy a new record. Do kids even do that anymore, listen to one record for a whole summer? This one record, with all its styles and the sheer rich quality of the writing and playing, would keep me going. But now…
D: Now you are becoming an old man. Which is sad for you, because for me this is wonderful stuff. It’s not just vintage décor, the innards are top-notch too. And as my good friend Gertrude Stein said, A good song is a good song is a good song.

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Comets On Fire/Growing jam session, Summer 2005, 60 mins

artwork by Arik Roper

From Ethan Miller’s Silver Currant blog…

“What I can remember about this session is that it was recorded during the daytime at our practice space on 3rd st. in San Francisco most likely between September 1st and the 3rd of 2005. Comets and Growing had toured the Midwest and Eastern U.S. together in June and July of that same year. This is just a few months later and Growing was out on the West Coast to play the first Arthurfest in Los Angeles which Comets also played…”

More Miller spiel plus a download of the sesh: http://silvercurrant.blogspot.com/2010/08/comets-growing.html

ALL-AGES DIALOGUES, Part V: Will Oldham—”I think the best thing we can probably do would be to make fake IDs more available” (Arthur, 2006)

photo by Valgeir Sigurðsson

The ALL-AGES Dialogues: A conversation with Will Oldham
by Jay Babcock

This interview was conducted by phone in late summer 2006, as part of a series of conversations I was doing with various folks regarding the history of all-ages, philosophy/ethic of all-ages, the state of play of all-ages, yadda yadda. Shoulda been published long ago but stuff kept going awry and we didn’t get it in the mag. Still, almost four years later, it’s a good, pertinent read. Thanks to Will for his time and patience, and special thanks to a certain friend of Arthur who transcribed this conversation a long time ago.

Will Oldham, as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, is traveling and playing shows right now with the Cairo Gang. More info: dragcity.com

Previously in this series:
Interview with John Sinclair (MC5 manager, activist, poet-historian)
Interview with Chuck Dukowski (Black Flag, Chuck Dukowski Sextet)
Interview with Calvin Johnson (K Records, Beat Happening, Dub Narcotic Sound System)
Interview with Greg Saunier (Deerhoof)

Arthur: Do you prefer to play all-ages shows? Is it a priority for you, or does it even matter?

Will Oldham: It matters and it makes a difference, but it isn’t a ‘priority.’ Does that make sense? Every show is contextualized for what it is—in that way, it’s important. But I guess my skewed stance is that I’ve always approached this work of making music in terms of… I think my main drive is to write and record music, so playing live is always just a weird experiment. So to me, every aspect of playing live is part of that weird experiment, whereas a lot of bands and musicians seem to make records of the music that they make. [For me] it’s the reverse. I think that every time that you play live, it’s like, ‘Whoa! What was that all about?’ It’s great whoever the audience is. You try to find the most fun audience, I guess.

Arthur: I noticed that when you are touring shortly, you’re playing a bunch of record stores…

Yeah, an all record-store tour.

Arthur: One of the weird things, from what I can tell about the performance environment in America, is that one of the few places where people of all ages can see quality music in a live setting now is the record store.

Yeah. “Quality music.” One thing that I had started to think about before we started on this topic was… like, how old are you?

Arthur: 35.

I’m 36, and my sense is that, if you won’t take offense, is that we are out of touch. There are quality shows going on six out of seven nights a week that are all-ages shows, in people’s houses, in public places, and we just don’t know those bands. Because I’ve seen some this year—I’ve seen some every year. And it’s like, Whoa, where’d these kids come from? And these kids came from the same places we came from, and they’re making great music that we don’t have access to, because… It’s the same way that bands that I went to see play 20 years ago, people who were 22, to 36, to 50, they would be saying ‘There’s just no music going on these days. There’s no shows like I remember.’ And meanwhile, I was having the fucking time of my life!

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ARTHUR RADIO VOYAGE #7: Alien Receptor

Another freeform blast set off from a location hidden deep inside the Newtown Radio labyrinth…sit back and allow the soundwaves to reverberate over you as the Arthur Radio team busies itself with scooping musical gems out of the debris.


Stream: [audio:http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Arthur-Radio-2-28-2010.mp3%5D

Download: Arthur Radio 2-28-2010

This week’s playlist…
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C and D from Arthur No. 13 (cover date Nov 2004)

This C & D session was originally published in Arthur No. 13 (Nov. 2004)…

C & D
Two confirmed schmucks grapple with the big issues—and an unexpected female visitor.

PICK A WINNER dvd
(Load)
C: You’re not going to believe this.
D: Try me.
C: [delicately loading DVD] Like an hour’s worth of charmingly bonkers/whimsical low-tech animation to go with homemade psych-crunge by the usual Fort Thunder-plus suspects… [Reading the sleeve text] “Dual formatted, double dipped and extra-whipped. Technicolor-laced acid flakes are on the table. Dig in! 18 trips of sound & sights are poured into K-Holes of dubious dimension from tonz of Load bands and video tribes with this new DVD/CD powered pellet.” Amen to all of that.
D: [looking at screen] Whoa.
C: Lightning Bolt, Black Elf Speaks, Wolf Eyes, Neon Hunk, Pink & Brown…
D: [eyes pinwheeling] I don’t believe it. I mean, I do believe it. I am believing it very hard.
C: Party video of the year. People are gonna be getting mandala’d all winter long to this thing, man. Plus there’s a CD in here too.
D: Do you have any mushrooms?
C: No.
D: I’ll take a spray paint can and a plastic bag at this point…

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New music: FUCK BUTTONS "Surf Solar" (edit)

Stream: [audio:http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/FuckButtons-SurfSolar.mp3%5D

Download: “Surf Solar” (edit) – Fuck Buttons (mp3)

This is an excerpt from “Surf Solar,” the final song on the Buttons’ newie…

tarotsport

…produced by Andrew Weatherall, who old beardheads will remember as the newvisionary who made Primal Scream sound like future/now geniuses during their Screamadelica period. Dudes are touring with Growing dudes across North America in a minute. Doobie duo dudes unite! ¡Muy bueno!

Fuck Buttons website: http://www.fuckbuttons.co.uk

Subscribe to Arthur’s iTunes Podcast and receive music automatically: click here

North American droners GROWING, profiled by Peter Relic (Arthur, 2006)

Happy Mediums
How nature droners Growing found their flow

Text by Peter Relic
Photography by Eden Batki
Layout by W.T. Nelson

originally published in Arthur No. 22 (May 2006)

If Plato had had the necessary resources back in the day, he would have definitely buffed out his philosopher’s cave with black lights and fog machines. The old Greek dude never got the chance, but in the new millennium, Growing have done it for him, figuratively speaking.

Growing is Joe DeNardo, 26, and Kevin Doria, 27, two gentlemen who met at Evergreen University in Olympia, Washington. DeNardo is originally from the suburbs of Chicago, while Doria grew up in Richard Nixon’s hometown of Yorba Linda, tucked deep inside Southern California’s Orange County. Together they play a slug-paced, ocean-deep drone music without drums or traditionally recognizable melodies that nonetheless projects a palpable pulse and a sense of pro-biotic harmony. Over three albums, and assorted tapes and EPs, Growing have united the foreboding heaviness of doom metal with the reassuring beauty of placid ambience in songs stretching up to 20 minutes in length. The unlikely arranged marriage actually works. Call it life metal, or nature drone.

“We chose the name Growing because it seemed all-encompassing,” Joe DeNardo says, on the cel phone from the duo’s live-in bunker in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. “A lot of people didn’t like it at first because they thought it was a reference to marijuana or boners. Not so. It does seem to describe the process of living and dying without being heavy and ominous. Which is nice.”

For their newest album, The Color Wheel, Doria and DeNardo have expanded the Growing sound to encompass even more: now, discord and rhythm join the Edenic shimmerblasts and underlying thrum of their past work. If Growing is an entity, The Color Wheel is the sound of it in adolescence: the bucolic innocence of childhood mostly lost, replaced by awkwardness, dark intimations of mortality and, of course, new joys. Adolescence is beyond volition—it just happens, whether or not you want it to—and Growing’s growth seems to have happened in the same way: the band’s sound has unfolded in ways its makers didn’t contrive or foresee, yet nonetheless accept.

Speaking with DeNardo and Doria is not unlike listening to Growing: it ain’t gonna work if you’re in a hurry, and the less you pry for insight, the more revelations are likely to come. Then again, these guys are don’t confine the big slowdown to their guitarwork. They do everything slowly, including going though college (Doria: “Took me seven years and I’m not even a doctor!”).

“We’re not very conscious guys,” says DeNardo. “Like, we’re not very aware of ourselves. We just kind of…float. We don’t articulate ourselves all that well. We don’t talk to each other much about this stuff; we don’t line everything up like ‘Okay this is the idea: I’m thinking about the French Alps right now, I spent time in the caves, we can make some music like…’

“We don’t do that. It’s just all kind of melts and flows together.”

* * * * *

Growing was birthed in Olympia, Washington. For two years—or maybe three years, no one’s really sure—DeNardo and Doria lived in a house with Joe Preston, a legendary musician with arguably the heaviest resume in guitar history, one that includes work with early Earth, mid-‘90s Melvins, White1/2-era Sunn0))) and now, High On Fire (which features an ex-member of Sleep), as well as his own one-man noise-drone-riff unit, Thrones.

“For the most part it was really just mellow times,” says Kevin Doria. “We played video games, went to Taco Bell…just hung out for the most part. He never practiced, not once. Okay, I think he did once when no one was around, for like 15 minutes. I guess he just didn’t like the way it sounded in the basement.”
DeNardo and Doria didn’t mind the basement sound.

“Before Growing, we had a little tape thing called 1,000 A.D.,” says Doria. “It started out as Joe [DeNardo] and me fucking around in the basement: a lot more riffage, no drums or anything, just guitars and bass, really long tedious parts that went on for hours. We were simultaneously doing this other band called Black Man White Man Dead Man which, when it started was more hardcore stuff: fast, loud. As time went on, it evolved into slower heavier jams. Finally we realized that having two bands comprised of the same members was really stupid, so whatever, let’s just have one band. The writing didn’t dramatically change as far as the songs were concerned, but everything did get slower. I’m not particularly good at playing fast, or playing parts even—that had something to do with us getting slower—but also, we just kind of got bored playing hardcore. We got older. It was natural.”

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