|
INTERVIEW:
THE BLOOD BROTHERS
We interviewed
Jordan Blilie, half of the Blood Brothers' dual vocal attack, in a room
with the couch, walls and table, all covered in cow spots.
I
think the Blood Brothers were assigned to the wrong dressing room. It is
difficult associating cows with the Blood Brothers. As
hard as I try, I cannot find a single bovine quality in these five guys
from Seattle.
Cows are sluggish, lackadaisical
creatures.
The
Blood Brothers play with an unsurpassed intensity on stage. Their live
show is a loud, fast, chaotic frenzy of flailing bodies.
Cows make a deep,
slow bellowing sound out.
The Blood Brothers' two frantic screams atop a sliding
guitar, pounding bass and unpredictable drumming make a sound that is harsh,
fast-paced and dissonant.
Cows are large animals.
If someone tied the Blood Brothers’ belts together, it wouldn't reach
half way around a cow's leg.
|
|
|
SPB: Exactly where and what is Piano Island, because it shows
up in all the lyrics on all your albums?
Jordan: Its just something that Johnny had thought up, yeah, it
crops up a few times. It’s sort of like when he wrote the lyrics to
that song [“Marooned on Piano Island”] it was sort of fantasy, just
outlandish and fictional. Just something that was a little bit visceral
just a kind of picture, I don’t think there was much. That was back in
high school. So, with “Burn Piano Island, Burn” it was something
like, the more and more shows you play and the longer that you’ve been
a band, you sort of realize that you have an opportunity to reach a lot
of people every night and if you don’t know where you stand and you
miss that opportunity – so that’s what we try to do with the new
record just we’ve got a lot of ideas that we haven’t expressed
before. But we also wanted something that people who’ve listened to us
for a long time would know.
SPB: Okay, kind of changing subjects here, what do you think
of the current state of music with the underground and mainstream?
Jordan: You know, it’s a little bit disconcerting and a little
bit inspiring to see so many new bands from our background and so many
of our peers getting all this recognition and coming out with record
deals and be able to financially support themselves and such. I don’t
have any problem whatsoever with a band that wants to play music for a
living and make live on touring and making records. It’s a little bit
strange, we were talking in the van the other day about in five years,
what underground music is gonna be, because we think that there’s
gonna be a few bands that really changed every single band that’s
going to get signed to a major. But I think there's some very inspiring
things coming out in underground music: Erase Errata, Chromatics,
they’re in a new band called Shoplifting, yeah there’s tons of new
bands.
SPB: More specifically how do you feel about Fifty Cent?
Jordan: He’s fucking awesome dude! He got shot nine times!
...Fuck man.
SPB: Yeah, he’s pretty hard.
Jordan: Yeah, he is, I mean he’s, hard shit. like anyone who calls out Ja Rule and his bullshit. I think
Ja Rule’s a fucking turd.
SPB: Excellent! The internet, how has that affected you
guys and your fan base?
Jordan: You know, its nice that kids can check out our records
and you know have a friend burn them something. I would hope that
they’d take the next step and buy the record. Because when I hear
music, I always like to see artwork with my music and hold a nice slab
of vinyl.
SPB: Segueing on that, your cover art on the newest album and
all the other ones, who did that and how does that tie in to the music.
Jordan: On our past two records, Adultery and March On, Morgan
did both of those. With March On, he wanted to take sort of all the
ideas and make them into concrete images. With the new one we wanted to
try something completely different than the style of artwork we had been
trying before. So, Cody, Johnny, and our friend Yaeger designed all
that. We wanted something really colorful, something that looked almost
silk-screened.
SPB: During your songs, there are parts that are pretty
chaotic, how do you work out all the parts, what’s the songwriting
process?
Jordan: Our song writing process is kind of boiled down to a
science almost; Cody and Morgan will have a riff or maybe a skeletal
structure of a whole song. The three musicians in the band will get
together and kind of work it out and exchange ideas while me and Johnny
either go and work on lyrics or watch. Its pretty basic, we’ll come in
and make suggestions, maybe a part needs to be richer and we’ll take
like a rough cut of it and put whatever lyrics we find fitting to it.
Johnny’s really good at writing kind of hooky melodies to pretty
chaotic parts, so it all works out.
SPB:
Did you guys all teach yourselves to play or did you get lessons?
Jordan: No, we all taught ourselves. Mark was in marching band or
something like that and I think that was pretty much it. Cody learned
guitar a little from his brother. I think Morgan was the same way, he
took a couple bass lessons but hated them.
SPB: Did Mark being in a marching band have anything to do
with “March on Electric Children”?
Jordan: Nah. It would be cool if it did.
SPB: If you could choose
any one of your songs to be in any movie, which movie would you choose?
Jordan: “Beyond the Valley of The Dolls”… any part because
it’s all just spectacular, all ridiculous. And… probably, either
that or “Sleepaway Camp” right after Angela says, “Meet me at the
waterfront after the social.” It would play that song
.
SPB: Its seems kind of obvious that you guys have some social
themes going on in your lyrics...
Jordan: I’m glad that that seems obvious to you, because to a
lot of people it doesn’t.
SPB: What are some of the underlying themes in the lyrics?
Jordan: Basically just comodification as a whole and exploitation
of sexuality. Turning something that has some kind of meaning to it and
distorting it into some sort of dollar sign, a product. Just the idea of
selling yourself, the idea of doing anything that gets you ahead in this
sort of capitalism we live in right now. The idea of severing
relationships and things that are worthwhile for personal gain. .
SPB: I heard you guys recently played on a truck bed, was that
the most metal show you’ve ever done?
Jordan: Yeah dude! It was the most Kid Rock show we’ve ever
done. It was in El Paso and it was in at a drag race. And we showed up
and the stage was like on a flatbed on a fuckin’ truck. With lighting
rigs and PA equipment on, and as we played there were drag races going
on and fuckin’ stunt bikes and shit! It was absolutely ridiculous; we
thought we would come out injured.
SPB: What are you guys up to next after this tour?
Jordan: More touring. I think we’re tour pretty much all year
round. We have two weeks at home in April that we’re looking forward
to. It was funny because it is almost like a vacation or something like
that.
SPB:
Okay, the last question is, we’re doing this interview for a
magazine called ScenePointBlank.com, he word “scene”, is that an
adjective to you?
Jordan: No, I’ve heard “scenester”?
SPB: No, just scene. It’s like the new “hip”
Jordan: Really? That kid’s really scene? That’s really
stupid.
SPB: Thank you.
Jordan: Wait, what does that mean!? Does he have black hair? Does
that mean he has a profile on makeoutclub?
SPB: Yeah, It’s ridiculous.
-
|
|
