Sooner or Later You'll Be In This Band
by Rick Stone - From Snackcake Magazine
I was a little worried about this whole assignment; this was my first "out of towner" for SnackCake! (have we arrived or what?). I had once before met Kurt Bloch (Engineer/Producer/Guitar God/Young Fresh Fellow/70's Rock Historian) under semi-stressful circumstances, and wasn't sure if this whole thing would go to Hell in a handbasket the minute he saw me. (He didn't even remember me… sniff!) And the thought of interviewing a band as legendary as the Fastbacks was more than a little daunting.
My fears were dashed about 10 minutes after we arrived at the Sit 'N Spin in downtown Seattle. On the way from the airport, photographer extraordinaire Peter Ellenby and I were discussing the old-school rock records of our youth, and the subject of Motley Crue's first record came up. We decided it would be best to ask Kurt the whereabouts of a record store where we might procure such a lost gem. So, I sit down at the table, dispense with introductions and pop the question. Bassist Kim Warnick replies, "Why? You lookin' for Too Fast For Love? [Motley Crue's first record!!] Make sure you get the original release on Leather Records; the re-release sounds like shit." Whoa, a woman after my heart. I know she thought I was full of crap when I explained the coincidence, but what can you do? And so went the rest of the evening.
If you're not familiar with the Fastbacks' patented brand of guitar heavy musical confections, their latest offering New Mansions In Sound is a good starting point. Guitar solos straight outta Rock And Roll Over-era Kiss, lyrics heavy on melancholy (something you wouldn't expect from perennial jokester Bloch) and songs that run the gamut from the 60's pop bent of "Just Say" to the Cheap-Trick-On-Speed of "The Bitter Drink." And all the while there are the punch-drunk vocal harmonies of Kim and guitarist Lulu Gargiulo. It all adds up to the lethal concoction that has kept them consistently on more Top 10 lists in the last few years than just about any other American band.
A lot has been written about the Fastbacks, much of which hasn't relayed any real information, telling nothing more than the fact they are as much fun to hang out with as they are to watch. I don't really know if I succeeded in finding any more out than anyone else, but it was worth a try.
Joining us this evening is Mike Musburger (who's resume includes stints with the Posies, Love Battery and Tubetop, but not - even though Kurt insists - The Picketts), who at this point has been holding down the Spinal Tap-like drum seat as least as long, if not longer, than any of the many before him.
SNACK: How did this all start?
LULU: I met Kurt in my photography class, and Kim is a friend of my cousin's. Kurt was in a band with a guy who lived across the street from him.
KIM: We would go watch them [The Cheaters], 'cuz girls couldn't play instruments then.
[The conversation breaks down already, spiraling into a discussions about just when Kim and Lulu dated Scott, the singer of the Cheaters. At different times, of course…]
LULU: Kim, Kurt and Scott were in the same grade, and Kurt's brother, Al…
KIM: Who is in Wool…
LULU: And I were in the same grade. We would drive around and cause trouble when we were like 17 or 18. That would be the birthing of the Fastbacks. When I got out of high school, we put this band together. Originally we were a three-piece, and Kurt played drums.
KIM: We were only that way for six months.
LULU: And then after that, we finally got a drummer, which was Duff McKagan [Guns-slinger, Neurotic Outsider], and we put out that first single ["It's Your Birthday"/"You Can't Be Happy"]. As far as why we didn't put out records very often, until recently, was . . .
KURT: Because your diamant ring wasn't ready.
LULU: Yeah [obviously quite used to Kurt's Rain Man-On-Acid outburts]… I think it was a combination of no money and nothing was going on in Seattle. The scene really just sucked.
KIM: It was shitty around here for a long time… until Grunge happened.
MIKE: And now it's shitty again.
KURT: The Seattle music explosion is dead.
MIKE: Thank God. You have to tell everyone that because they don't realize.
[Kurt then goes into some spiel about giving a certain dezed A&R person in leather pants a diarrhea milkshake. Luckily, I can't make out the poor sap's name, so no one will be filing a suit anytime soon. And then the band informs me of (Seattle Free Weekly) The Stranger's expose on Jeff Smith (aka the Frugal Gourmet), about allegations that he molested a young boy and whether or not you actually have to be a priest to do that sort of this, etc., etc.]
SNACK: So Mike, what is your musical heritage. How do you fit into all this?
MIKE: I don't know; I ask myself that all the time. I was just some little punk and from Bellevue. I saw the Fastbacks when I was really young, and 10 years later I find myself playing in their band, making records with them, it's very odd. It's also a matter of circumstance: Seattle's not a very big city.
KIM: Sooner or later you have to be in our band.
LULU: Yeah, think about it.
SNACK: It's been 6 months since the record came out. Are there plans to record another record anytime soon?
LULU: There's never any plan.
KIM: Not anytime soon. If he [pointing to Kurt] doesn't lay down his J-O-B, then we can have songs to record.
LULU: We don't have any sort of master plan.
SNACK: What was it like to play with Pearl Jam?
MIKE: They're all drug addicts, especially Eddie.
KIM: Eddie is a fag. And you know what else? He totally steals stuff all the time. He went through our luggage.
MIKE: We lost stuff in our dressing room and we're sure he stole it.
KIM: And he wears a wig.
[There's no appropriate way to print "LAUGHTER," but I did nearly spit a mouthfull of beer all over Kim and Lulu.]
LULU: He's the nicest man, Pearl Jam are the nicest people, and it was really fun.
SNACK: Was it a positive experience? Do you think you gained any fans, that it helped you at all?
LULU: Absolutely. I would totally do it again.
KIM: I don't think it really helped us.
SNACK: How could it not help you to play in front of 25,000 people?
KIM: Believe me, they didn't care, all they wanted to see was Pearl Jam.
SNACK: You can't be that jaded!
KIM: I'm not being that jaded. Generally, most of the people there couldn't have cared less, we were in the way of them seeing their band.
LULU: I'm sure we gained some fans!
MIKE: They were nice to us. We gained some fans, but I don't know if they went out and bought the record, but you know what? Nobody bought the Pearl Jam record either. I think that has something more to do with the health of the record industry than health of the bands, or who likes them.
LULU: The only negative thing I can say is that when you play these big stadiums it's really hard to meet the fans. It's almost impossible. You get off stage and you're resting, in a half hour Pearl Jam's on, and then they're off and everybody's gone.
KIM: And also if you go out there… people talk to you, but only because then they can meet Eddie. But it was the funnest thing in the world, and I'm really sad that we won't get to do it again.
[Now the conversation turns to the laundry list all the famous people that were either in attendance or that they actually met (Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Susan Sarandon and "That Guy She's With"). Mike was totally taken with what a nice guy Bono was, and how he made fun of his own band (not that hard, now is it?). Apparently one night in Amsterdam, Mike, Kurt and Eddie opened for the Fastbacks doing Who covers.]
LULU: They made it really easy for us to go do this.
KURT: It was really great, they carried our gear, they bought us blow.
SNACK :WHOA! Now that's hospitality!
MIKE: I don't know if they do that for any other band. When the Ramones open for them they don't do that for them. They don't.
LULU: On the other side of it, everybody always assumes that we got first class accommodations. We toured on our own, basically. They took care of our equipment, but we still traveled separately in a van.
SNACK: You have the distinction of being the longest running drummer in the history of the Fastbacks.
MIKE: Am I? I don't know about the longest running. I think Richard might have that honor.
SNACK: I could pull out the pie chart. [Which I did, and actually, ex-Flop-boy Nate Johnson holds the title - 4 more songs, and approximately 29 minutes ahead of Mike. "What pie chart?" you ask… I'll get to that in a minute.]
MIKE: Have you seen this?
[He holds up a homemade CD of Fastbacks tracks. Apparently there's a "Superfan" who has made it his life's work to chronicle the work of the Fastbacks; pie charts, graphs, a breakdown of songs by writer, drummer, song title, song length. Now he's started making his own Fastbacks CD collections at home. An honor or a horror, you decide. I haven't just yet.]
I guess I'm supposed to relay a story that Kurt told (practically whispering into my tape recorder, so that I wouldn't hear it until I sat down to write this piece) about Flop's Rusty Willoughby crapping his pants at a Fastbacks/Muffs show at a club in San Francisco; a story which has neither been confirmed or denied. I consulted the infamous book of Fastbacks statistics for clarification, but alas, that little historical tidbit was conspicuously absent, possibly due to the fact that the legitimacy of the tale is still in question.
This, in a candy-coated shell, is what the Fastbacks are: something so good you find yourself constantly questioning its very existance. All I know is that I'm going to witness the glory front and center at this year's NoisePop. Do you think that with a little begging I can convince Kim to sing a couple of verses of "Livewire"?
