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| Interview done by Burt Wolf with Jethro, guitarist & singer for THINGS FALL APART. Interview done on December 10th, 2005. |
| THINGS FALL APART IS A FAIRLY NEW BAND IN THE UNDERGROUND SCENE. I DON'T REALLY KNOW MUCH ABOUT YOU GUYS. CAN YOU PLEASE GIVE SOME OF THE BANDS HISTORY? HOW YOU GOT TOGETHER? ANY PREVIOUS BANDS YOU GUYS HAVE BEEN IN BEFORE? We all had been in bands prior... Dec & Jake had a Metal band That Chris & I at different times had filled in on rhythm guitar. I had played in a band with Chris since I was in high school. Then later on, I ended up joinging a band Chris was in to play bass when Jake quit. Incest is confusing...soooo, at around the same period of time, all these bands broke up. Me & Dec both lived in this dilapitated Punk house on Willy Street & started working on songs in the basement. Chris & I had a bunch of parts that were never used & never really fit well in our other bands, so we began building songs off those. Over about a year we would get together whenever we were all in town & had free time. We eventually had enough to play shows. But at that point, we still didn't have a bass player, our ambivalent friend Jake was then harassed incessantly until he would come over & play with us. |
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| WHY WAS THE NAME THINGS FALL APART CHOSEN AS THE BANDS NAME? I think that if it has any meaning, it would be a reflection of the entropic period of time we were getting together to write these songs...a lot of bands here called it a day & broke up, all the old houses that had shows & parties in their basements & living rooms moved on...relationships & friends. And I'm standing at my job listening to a fucking count down to a "shock-and-awe" bombing campaign on the Iraq people over the radio & all the pre-emptive demonstrations & rallies against the war that February were completely shrugged off by the Bush administration...sorry...uh...personally, at the time, the bands name seemed fitting. (And yes, I know who Chinua Achebe is & can recite fragments of William Butler Yeats, yo). |
| WHO OR WHAT ARE SOME OF THE THINGS THAT HAVE INFLUENCED YOUR LIFE & MUSIC? ...Uh, do you mean who do we rip-off? If I don't produce a list would imply that we write music in a vacuum? The other guys are at liberty to make a list of comparable bands, but that stuff seems all too much like a sly type of conflatory marketing algebra (i.e. hey kids, if you like (x) + (y) & (a) is greater or equal to (x) & (y), then you will totally like (a), yuck...) or perhaps this is just a case of mommy not wanting to compare her ugly, misshapen baby to the other "normies" in the ward. YOU GUYS BLEND TOGETHER METAL & HARDCORE MUSIC TO COME UP WITH YOUR STYLE? HOW WOULD YOU BEST DESCRIBE YOUR STYLE & SOUND? Oh, that's a good one...how about "Global-warning-style-snow-core:? YOUR SELF TITLED CD HAS BEEN OUT FOR A LITTLE WHILE NOW. HOW WELL HAS IT DONE FOR YOU GUYS? Like, monetarily? Or critically? We recorded those songs at Chris' parents basement over the weekend & there was a stuffed bear standing in the corner, for real...it was December, I was ill, we were drunk. We put it out there. WHAT WAS THE RESPONSE LIKE FOR IT? Sometimes when I'm riding my bike, dudes yell "Hey your band sucks!" out of their windows & I console myself by muttering "That's, like, your opinion, man" under my breath. CAN YOU EXPLAIN SOME OF THE MEANING BEHIND THE COVER ART & WHO DID IT? Me & Dec did that. The front is a sinking ship that I silk screened onto a piece of cardboard & then peeled away the front to expose the corrugation for texture. So the sinking ship is a thinly vieled symbol of how sometimes ships sink. Oh, I also did the masking tape. |
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| WHAT IS SOME OF THE LYRICAL CONTENT IN YOUR SONGS? The lyrics are made up of words, hardy har,har,har!... Okay, that's enough sarcasm...a lot of the songs are based on conversations & moments..."where were you when" is based on discussions & arguments during the manufacturing of the war in Iraq, & about our connection to imperialism. "Maquiladoras" is about the effects of exploitative trade policies like nafta (and now cafta) & predatory lending institutions such as the IMF & world bank. "Bound By Myth" is about the despair of having to work at a job you hate to pay rent, the ecological effects of production. And how all these negative effects of capitalism & how we live our lives are completely separated from necessity & adverse to survival...um, there's more, but I'll leave it at that, word. HAVE THERE BEEN ANY LABELS INTERESTED IN THINGS FALL APART? IF SO, WHICH LABELS? What do I say if not? |
| IS THERE ANY NEW MATERIAL IN THE WORKS OR A NEW RELEASE AVAILABLE? We're going into the studio December 9th to record four songs & then we'll get it mastered & then we have no idea what will become of it. Our friend Ian was gonna put out a seven inch on his label, MINISTRY OF FIRE, but we've been informed that he's no longer doing the label, now he wants to be a chef, since we don't know anyone else to try to curry nepotism, we'll probably do it ourselves. DOES THINGS FALL APART PLAY OUT A LOT? WHERE ARE SOME OF THE PLACES YOU'VE PLAYED? WHO ARE SOME OF THE BANDS YOU'VE PLAYED SHOWS WITH? We're playing tonight at the Orpheum Stage Door for the Roller Derby after party!! ARE THERE ANY GOOD INTERESTING OR FUNNY BAND STORIES YOU COULD SHARE WITH US? Here's one, about a year ago we booked a couple shows over a weekend that we were all in town. I had just got back from Northern California & had a really gnarly reaction to poison oak on my forearms. I had been doing some landscaping & was clearing brush & any other time of the year poison oak is easily identified by it's bright red oak shaped leaves, but it was December so the leaves had fallen & I'm pulling up all these ferns & vines & shit, totally rolling in poison oak. Then I took a hot shower which doesn't do anything except spread the oil around. Then the next couple days was hitching south to the Bay Area to catch a flight here, all the while wearing the same sweatshirt I was working in for another five days, until I started breaking out in blisters while I'm visiting my family for Christmas. It was so bad & getting worse, every hour swelling more. I hadn't been freaked out enough to go to the doctor until a few days later when I woke up without knuckles. So I got back from the doctor with a bottle of some steroid pills & had to go load out for a show. I played two nights in a row with extremely itchy, bright red blistered popeye arms, a fat cartoon hands without knuckles that I could hardly bend. Mind over matter, eh? Oh & that night I fell off the stage, the medication hurt my stomache & made me dizzy...a couple weeks ago Jake played a show after he caught the bird flu... Oh, here's a good one. Our van broke down on tour right outside of Fort Worth, Texas in a dry county. So, the guy who worked at a hotel offered to let us use his truck to go buy beer. The van took five days to fix & we missed the rest of the tour. We watched teh same movie every day & played board games, read books, got bummed, got drunk. Believe me, the irony of the situation didn't escape us, so don't even say it. |
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| ARE YOU INTO ANY OTHER STYLES OF MUSIC BESIDES WHAT YOU PLAY? WHO ARE SOME OF THE BANDS YOU HAVE CURRENTLY BEEN LISTENING TO? I like a lot of different stuff. The last couple years I was obsessed with a French composer named Yann Thierson & have been playing the accordion. I just got the new Tom Waits & have dug it, Jolie Holland is awesome. , Gillian Welsh, Woodie Guthrie...oh, & there's a lot of rad Hip-Hop: SAGE FRANCIS, AESOP ROCK, DEAD PREZ, BUS DRIVER, IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE...Hardcore bands that = good: BOTCH, BREATHER RESIST, HIS HERO IS GONE & the new PROPAGANDHI is riggin' amazing. WHAT DO YOU FEEL IS THE BEST & WORST PART ABOUT BEING IN A BAND? |
| The worst part is probably loading out at the end of the night, you're tired, you're possibly drunk, things seem heavier, though not something to complain about. Playing music is a profound priviledge. I feel immensely fortunate to be able to play music with my friends & record songs that express & communicate what i think & feel. It's a vert cathartic experience. WHAT WAS THE FIRST ALBUM YOU REMEMBER BUYING? I bought two 7"s when I was thirteen by OPERATION IVY & BIKINI KILL at RAINY DAY RECORDS in Olympia, Wa. Before that I had a bunch of mix tapes I got from friends. WHAT WAS THE FIRST CONCERT YOU REMEMBER SEEING? I saw RANCID & THE RICKETS when I was thirteen at The Capital Theatre in Olympia, Wa. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. All these kids going crazy & causing the stage to wave back & forth. WHO DO YOU FEEL ARE SOME OF THE BETTER BANDS. LABELS & ZINES FROM YOUR AREA OF WISCONSIN? I haven't come across any zines from Madison that I know of... THE PROGRESSIVE & THE NATION, two cool lefty mags, are published here, a month ago there was a zine fest here but alas, I didn't attend...Madison bands of note: MURDER OF CROWS, WEAVING THE DEATHBAG, DICIDER, 715, THE SUIT, THE YOUNG BODIES...Milwakee: HIGH ON CRIME, SINCE BY MAN, GET RAD, SEVEN DAYS OF SAMSARA... WHAT IS ONE THING PEOPLE WOULD BE SURPRISED TO FIND OUT ABOUT YOU? I can't type without looking at the keyboard. |
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| WHAT CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE NEXT FROM THINGS FALL APART? The new songs are way better, they're more organic than our old stuff, there's been more time to write lyrics, I'm excited to record them. Though it's a shame that they're resigned to obscurity. Wewon't be able to tour this summer as Chris will be spending it in holy matrimony. We're going to discusss playing some concentric midwest shows in february. That's about it! WHAT WERE YOU DOING BEFORE ANSWERING THIS INTERVIEW? WHAT WILL YOU DO NOW THAT IT'S DONE? |
| Today I volunteered for a fair trade holiday festival that had handcrafts, rugs, textiles, toys & food & coffee from India & South America & local producers & farmers. Then I drank Coffee. Now I gotta load equipment for tonights show. THANX A LOT FOR ANSWERING THIS INTERVIEW. FEEL FREE TO ADD ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO CLOSE OUT. Thanks for asking, take care go to our website & have a good day!!! |
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| PHOTOS & GRAPHICS COURTESY OF THINGS FALL APART. INTERVIEWS MAIN PAGE |