South By Spinner

As I posted up before here and here, I have been doing a number of interviews for South By Southwest sponsor Spinner.com (they are the people bringing you the Smokey Robinson Soul Revue) which have been taking up a lot of planning time over the last weeks. The bands have run the gamut, they are are trying to get every official showcasing band interviewed, so this has been a drop in the bucket, but I have Skyped Ireland for the Minutes, caught up with a 60-year-old alien named Ygarr Ygarrist to talk about his band Zolar X and called across town to chat with Ben Weaver, along with a whole bunch of others. Here is the latest batch, as I scramble on deadline to get that last ones in before heading down to Austin next week. Browse through, for all the variety, some truths remain; we do this because we love it, no one hands it to us and the more fun you can have, the better it sounds.

Christopher & the Souls
“We gave it all we had in terms of pure volume and primitive teenage energy, and I think it has held up pretty well.”

Year Long Disaster
“All the time you spend trying to get drugs you can spend in a much more positive way. Those are lost hours. It’s amazing how much you can get done in a day.”

Amplified Heat
“I have always loved vinyl. On the last tour, some of the cities we went to people didn’t want CDs, they were going to wait til we had it on vinyl.”

Zolar X
“Then I read a book, a rock and roll book from years ago and somewhere in it, it said, “Don’t ever look like your audience.” That and we loved Star Trek.”

Ben Weaver
“I just like to write songs about animals and grocery carts and things. I don’t really know, because I don’t try to describe my music. That’s why I make music.”

The Minutes
“If you’re playing lots of shows, don’t get fucked on the first night. That’s the end. It’s downhill from there. That’s probably the only plan if you’re in a band. If you’re not in a band, go everywhere, drink everything, meet everybody.”

Little Brazil
“Extra cell phone batteries. That was the biggest problem for me in the past couple years. Cell phone batteries and secret stashes of cash that you can keep on your body that maybe the drunk version of you won’t find”

Zlam Dunk
“The U2 comparison came because I use a lot of delay in my guitar riffs. Lostprophets, I don’t know, I don’t know if that person was trying to piss us off or what, but I don’t know where that came from.”