Email Interview: The Finer Points of Sadism

For this post, I'm gonna hold back and let a worthy local band, experimental electronica duo The Finer Points of Sadism, do most of the talking.  I caught one of their performances a little while back and was very impressed (you can read my write-up on it here).  So, without further ado, here are Jacobb and Ashley Sackett:

You mention on your Facebook page that you two met in high school.  How did that come about?

Jacobb Sackett: We met on a sort of blind date after speaking on the phone for a while.  She was 14, almost 15, and I was 15, almost 16.  It was a "Freshman Farewell" school dance.  I was not allowed into the dance because I was not a student at the school.  We ended up sitting outside for the 2 hours of the dance and got to know one another and talked the whole time.  The rest has been history.

How did you two start making music together?

Ashley Sackett: When I was 15, I had one day joked with Jacobb that I should be the bass player in his then 2-person indie rock band.  He actually thought that was a great idea and handed me the bass tab for Nirvana's "In Bloom."  I then got my own bass guitar.  We became a trio and played in that band for a couple of years.

Who are some of your musical influences?  How did you discover them?

Jacobb: Wall of Voodoo played a huge role in my musical development.  I discovered them at the age of 7 whilst watching an old episode of "120 Minutes" on MTV, with "Mexican Radio" being the video played.  I got obsessed with them in my teenage "early band" years with their strange instrumentation and use of sequencers and vintage rhythm machines.  Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV and Wire all inspire me greatly.  I have known about Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV for years but didn't really get into their music until after discovering the joys of altering noise frequencies and playing distorted, almost disembodied voices through cassette tapes.  They also inspired a lot of the FX that we use for our vocals.  Wire has always been a favorite, as they are utterly unique and hypnotic.

Ashley: Definitely Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV for me as well.  I can't really remember how I was introduced to them all but my influences also include Adam and the Ants, The Cramps, Pixies and Gang of Four.

You mention on your FB page that you started off playing punk rock.  What prompted you to start making experimental music?

Ashley: We had played in previous bands, from indie to punk, with the music evolving each time we started something new.  With all the band politics and the strain it put on friendships, as well as the differing opinions on where the music should be going, Jacobb and I were left dissatisfied and frustrated.  When our last band came to an end we had thought about starting another band from the ground up, but after thinking about it long and hard, we decided we didn't want to go down the same road and end up where we were once again.  We began experimenting with sound, endlessly listening to music and talking about our ideas until we settled on starting The Finer Points of Sadism as a duo.  We agreed to focus on what we truly wanted to express without concern, with no limitations or censorship.

Jacobb: It's true we did play "punk" rock, but to elaborate, it was more new wave-tinged, not some manufactured emo crap or anything like that.  Our music over the years has always had a more lo-fi, unconventional flavor.  The transition into full-blown experimentatal music was easy, as my near-death experience was the catalyst, as well as the freedom to create without limitations, to improvise on the fly and from that create sometimes breathtaking things.

Artwork by John Facey

You mentioned that FPS arose from a near-death experience.  Can you describe what happened?

Jacobb: To put it bluntly, one day at the end of my rope I tried to OD on over forty-plus anti-anxiety pills.  I drove out to a remote area and waited to die, and soon I began hearing strange audio anomalies.  Strange low humming-type frequencies acting as a sort of arpeggiator, raising to a hair-raising distortion and lowering back down again to a numbing buzz.  While OD'd, the only visual hallucination was my whole vision going to a sort of "negative" type look.  Like the negatives you get when you develop photos.  That x-ray brightness, the darkened background, in quick half-second to 1-second pulses.  It was quite unsettling and I felt as though I was dying each moment I saw the world in that negative look, and I was afraid the negative would finally just stay that way and I would be dead in this frightening afterworld.  Finally, after 4 hours of being where I was (which I thought at the time was only 20 minutes), I was able to be taken to the hospital where I recovered and got the help I needed.  Shortly following my discharge Ashley and I officially started The Finer Points of Sadism, the name based on a song I wrote while in our new wave band, but we never performed or recorded it.

Which of your recordings are you most proud of (or, if you prefer, which of them do you hate the least)?  Why?

Ashley: It's really hard for me to pick just one.  The interesting thing with the music we are doing now is that I can honestly say I really am proud of it all.  There is something about the way everything comes together, the way we create together, feed off of each other, that leaves me feeling completely satisfied.  It's nothing that I listen to and become critical of.  It is something close to us not only in content but in the way we record that leaves nothing to be desired for me.

Tell me a bit about your creative process.  How do you first start to construct a song?

Jacobb: We basically just sit at the mixer, with all the equipment spread out all over the damn place, and improvise right then and there.  We decide which instruments or items we're going to play and just go for it.  As far as instruments specific to us individually, there are only a couple, with me on electric guitar and most of the beats/rhythms and Ashley on steel guitar.  Otherwise, we interchange instrument duties on a constant basis.  We sometimes record huge chunks of audio, anywhere up to 40 minutes at a time, and pick out the juicy bits and elaborate on them.  Other times, the whole song is constructed from the improvisation right then and there.  Out of nearly 50 gigabytes of audio, around 5 songs were written beforehand or in some way planned ahead.  If something we record isn't up to par for us, we scrap it.  If we like it, we keep it.  Use of FX on various instruments is sometimes added after we finish recording, other times it is already set up for the song.  We try to accomplish the best of what fate and our minds can do together when interacting in our improvisations.  The results are the many songs that we have released in the past 2 years.  We just feel something and go with the feeling.  If the feeling is to experiment or play a certain item or instrument, we just do it.  It is like we read each other's minds.  We are extremely good together at improvising, anytime, anywhere.

Ashley: We also experiment with ways of coming up with concepts and writing some songs.  In previous bands, we had both done the typical "verse-chorus-verse" songwriting, and since we are doing something different this time around, we are very open to anything and to each other's suggestions.  We can write together or start a track on our own, then converge and complete it, the great thing being if one person starts on a song, the other can come right in and finish the thought.  Sometimes, we just go in and start playing and it's those sessions that give us the most rewarding results.  We improvise very well together, almost anticipating what the other is going to do next.  Things just come together for whatever reason, and it's perfect.

Is there anything you'd like to say to readers/listeners out there?

The Finer Points of Sadism: We would like the general public to know that in live situations, we are a performance art act.  That the majority of our songs are improvised on the spot and involve use of instruments and items that produce noises and effects not many people have ever heard or felt before.  We would like people to know that during live shows, spirits may become present as they have in numerous practices, sometimes communicating through a particular circuit bent instrument we use.  This may or may not happen during shows, it is not a guarantee.  It sometimes also fucks up the cord going to the said "cursed" instrument, so that's fun.  We are currently planning shows for the Portland/Seattle area in July and are open to doing shows in the Boise area if on the right bill (meaning with the right bands or for some kind of art show).  We do not feel above any band or person or business entity, but we do feel that our music/noise belongs in the right mix.  Thank you sincerely for your time.

You can find info about The Finer Points of Sadism on Facebook and elsewhere online.

The Acrotomoans and The Bloody Mess Rock Circus @ the Shredder (6/9/12)

I love writing this blog.  How much do I love it, you ask?  Recently, I got Season 1 of The Wire from Netflix.  I plowed through the whole thing in fairly short order, and now I'm hooked.  This last Saturday, I went out to Hastings and picked up Seasons 1 and 2 on DVD.  Despite these recent acquisitions, I managed to pull myself away from the TV to check out this show at the Shredder.  That's how much I love writing this blog.

There wasn't much of a crowd for this show, possibly due to the fact that quite a few other shows were scheduled this night.  Oh well.  For those other folks' sakes, I hope that those shows were as good as this one was.

First up this night was local four-man horror punk group The Acrotomoans.  I've never had a band dedicate nearly every song of their set to me before.  That's what I got for having worked with their bass player, Kyle Mann, for over two years at a call center (he still works there, poor bastard).  At least the dedications came from a kick-ass band.  Their punk-metal sound emphasized punk over metal and was all the better for it: they deployed their bonesawing guitar riffs and freight-train basslines and drumming in the service of smart, well-crafted three/four-minute songs.  I could hear some traces of Axl Rose and Glenn Danzig in frontman Luke Gushwa's powerful groan-and-growl, but he was savvy enough not to let influence become imitation.  It was damn good stuff, although I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about having a song entitled "Left to Rot" dedicated to me.

After The Acrotomoans came The Bloody Mess Rock Circus.  You know a punk/hard rock band's good when they can stick a Doors medley into their set (and include some of their best tracks too--"Roadhouse Blues," "Back Door Man," "Break On Through") and not have their originals sound the worse for it.  Christopher T. Baggins and Justin Case's lean, muscular bass and drums provided the perfect platform for Andy Friend's galvanizing guitar work and Bloody F. Mess' shrewd, rough vocals.  When they switched to acoustic for one song, it only made even clearer how sharp their songwriting is.  They made me think a little of Alice Cooper's early stuff (Love It to Death, Killer), only faster and even tougher.  It's really a shame that more people weren't there to see them: this was real Saturday night music if there ever was any.

You can find info about both of these groups of Facebook and elsewhere online.

Deaf Kid, The Gunfighters, Annex Madly and Rubedo @ the Shredder (6/8/12)

A couple of brief coming attractions.

Just last week, I received a request to review the latest album by a band I wrote about not long ago.  It's a little outside the standard scope of this blog--the band's from Utah, not Idaho--but they did play here in Boise recently, and in any case, I like their music so much that I couldn't refuse.  I'll get my post on the album written and published soon.

In addition to this, I just conducted my first email interview with a local band!  You'll likewise get to read that very soon (just need to get it typed up).  It'll be the first of what I hope will be several interviews with local up-and-coming bands/musicians whose work has caught my attention.  Hope y'all enjoy them!

Keesha Renna's Vagabond Promotions set this show up, so I wanted to go down and show my support.  Also, I'd heard good things about Deaf Kid from quite a few people and wanted to see/hear for myself.  The night was not without its hitches: not many people showed up, one scheduled band never appeared, and Rubedo's van broke down a few miles out of town and kept them from reaching the Shredder until 11:30.  So that goes, I guess.  Music-wise, however, the night went over just fine.

Four-man Caldwell group Deaf Kid started off the night.  I took it as a good sign when they played parts of Joy Division's "Disorder" and Black Flag's "Nervous Breakdown" during their soundcheck.  Their set proved me right: energetic post-punk/surf-rock beat, trebly guitar lines, solid tunes and, best of all, intelligible lyrics.  My favorite of the three bands that I've seen Jacob Milburn in so far and the two bands that I've seen Dominic Munoz in.  As for drummer Matt Stone, I'd rank this group as on par with his other group, Fountains.

Six-person Boise band The Gunfighters followed Deaf Kid.  Seeing them a second time confirmed my first impression that the traces of blues and country in their music add seasoning to what is basically a good pop band: catchy tunes, swinging rhythm section, bad-ass guitars, pleasant harmonies, decent lyrics (although I'm not entirely sure what "We are the founding fathers of the watchmakers" means).  They played to the two handfuls of people at the Shredder with no discernible flagging in their good spirits.  They'd get my respect just for that.

After The Gunfighters came local electronica trio Annex Madly.  Their performance this night demolished my reservations about this group's vocals.  While I found them obtrusive the first time around, they struck me the second time around as humanizing in the manner of, say, Bernard Sumner or Gary Numan.  This left me free to ride on their waves of beats, tunes, riffs and textures.  Purely enjoyable.

Denver art-rock trio Rubedo closed out the night.  Their set didn't start until 1:30 a.m., but their tough, playfully psychedelic music definitely kept the nine people in their audience awake.  They shifted effortlessly between straight-ahead rock, stomping metal, reggae and jazz.  Alex Raymond's guitar sang and shrieked where appropriate.  Synth player Kyle Gray belted out the smart, funny lyrics in his high voice and stomped and gyrated like a wild man.  Greg Ziemba's drums kept everyone on their toes.  Everything went swimmingly until some blown fuses forced Rubedo to cut their set short.  Geez--these poor guys just couldn't get a break this night.

You can find info about all of these groups on Facebook and elsewhere online.

Whale, Cat Massacre, Le Fin Absolute du Monde and Red Hands Black Feet @ the Red Room (6/5/12)

I faced a dilemma this last Tuesday.  Would I go see one of my favorite local bands play the Red Room's Atypical Tuesday or would I check out the first of Radio Boise's series of Tuesday shows at Neurolux?  The fact that Radio Boise's show was comprised entirely of local hip-hop acts made this decision even more difficult (I've wanted to check out some of those groups for a while now).  In the end, I opted for the Red Room show partly because I try to see every Red Hands Black Feet show that I can and partly because the bill included a San Francisco group that Wes Malvini was extremely excited about.

I do plan to check out some of the upcoming Radio Boise shows, however, and I strongly encourage others in the Boise area to do the same.  They have some absolutely fantastic shows lined up in the next two months (including two of my top four Treefort acts), and 20% of all drink sales will go into their worthy coffers.

First up at the Red Room was Whale, a local four-man hard rock band.  This was their second show ever (they played their first only a couple of weeks ago), and I highly doubt that it'll be their last.  A Whale song would sound right at home on classic rock radio between "Gimme Three Steps" and "Tumblin' Dice."  Jesse Wiedmeir's bass and Wade Ronsse's drums laid down a rock-solid, hard-driving groove, lead singer Tyler Brodt drawled and shouted the lyrics very nicely and both he and lead guitarist Alex Wargo delivered some impressively terse and elegant solos.  Their songwriting tended to rely on standard classic rock tropes (woman troubles, headin' on down the road, etc), but their arrangements give me hope that they'll soon teach those old dogs some new tricks.  Another very promising young group.

After Whale came Cat Massacre, a cute little hardcore group based in Boise.  With frontman Colby Meade spouting lines like "For those of you who like anal sex, this song is for you," I probably would've figured out that their noise was an end in itself even if Art Fad's Jacob Milburn weren't playing bass.  The random moments where guitarist Dominic Munoz showed off his prodigious chops only further emphasized that this was all a joke.  Not as witty as Microbabies or Art Fad but still fun.

Following Cat Massacre was Le Fin Absolute du Monde, a San Francisco-based art-rock duo.  I checked out their Facebook page before the show, and I'll confess that it made me both curious and wary.  A group that can cite both Megadeth and Sade (the singer, not the Marquis) as influences?  I dunno.  But hey, what the heck, I'll try almost anything once...

While the Sade influence came through in Chicky Myles detached, chanteuse-y vocals, the Megadeth influence manifested itself in Jason Myles' ripping guitar and strutting, headbanging stage act.  Meanwhile, their stomping beats and ominous soundscapes called to mind a few other artists that their FB page cited: NIN, Portishead, Massive Attack.  Taken as a whole, their ambient/metal hybrid wasn't bad at all, although I wished that they'd turned up the guitar just a little bit more.

Red Hands Black Feet closed out the night with a much looser and more sluggish set than is their norm.  I think that I heard more sour notes in this night's set than I did in their last three performances put together.  I should hasten to add, however, that it wasn't an out-and-out disaster.  Jessica Johnson was definitely on her game, and everybody managed to pull together for the big climaxes.  In the end, I just shrugged and said, "Hey, even great bands have their off nights."

You can find info about these groups on Facebook and elsewhere online.  Red Hands Black Feet will open for Pickwick, who was number 9 on my Treefort Top 10, at Neurolux on June 22nd.  I am fully confident that that night's set will meet their usual ass-whomping standard.

Like A Rocket and Kasey Anderson and the Honkies @ Neurolux (6/4/12)

I almost passed on going to this show.  I felt a little drained from the previous week, and there was some stuff that I needed to take care of at home.  In the end, though, my desire to see one of my favorite Boise bands again and my curiosity to see a group with the chutzpah to bill themselves as Kasey Anderson and the Honkies proved too strong.

A pretty intense storm made the drive down to Neurolux uncommonly interesting.  I drove by one house and saw a tree snapped in half like a toothpick, its branches scattered across the front lawn.  I navigated around more fallen branches and shards of wood as I made my way down 15th St.  Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night...

Possibly due to the crappy weather, not many people showed up at Neurolux this night.  That's a shame: now all they can do is read about it.  And buy the CD's.

One of my top five Idaho bands, Like A Rocket, opened the night's show.  As I watched them, it occurred to me that, while I've recently seen these musicians' other projects (Speedy Gray's partnership with Johnny Shoes, Z.V. House's A Seasonal Disguise), I actually hadn't seen this group in a little while.  It definitely felt good to see them this night.  While they may have hit a couple of rough patches, the interplay between Z.V. House's intricate basslines, Max Klymenko's colossal drumming and Speedy Gray's fiery guitar reconfirmed my belief that this is one of the greatest bands in this state.  In fact, the last two songs of their set, which featured the fiercest soloing that I've ever heard from Speedy Gray, made me wonder if perhaps I've been too restrained in my praise.

After Like A Rocket came Portland, OR-based Kasey Anderson and the Honkies.  Anderson and his partner, Seattle-based singer/songwriter Star Anna, joked that maybe they should have billed themselves as Kasey Anderson and the Honky.  But since there was more than one honky onstage, he reasoned after that, the plural still kinda worked.

Stuff like this is why my blog has taken the direction that it has over the past couple of months.  This music screamed out for a much larger audience than the handful of people who heard it.  While I heard a touch of Steve Earle in his sly, raspy drawl and his detailed, sharply observed lyrics, Kasey Anderson had an unsentimental warmth and an uncynical stoicism that were all his own.  Star Anna matched Anderson lyrically with her own tough-minded words and complemented him vocally with her strong, aching, beautiful moan.  They traded songs for about an hour, each one as stunning as the others.  Even when their subject matter turned to heartbreak and deprivation, their steady tempos and the forthright way that they were sung seemed to say, "I'm gonna deal with this, and I'm gonna get through it."  I hope that one or both of these fine performers play Boise again sometime soon.

A final word about this night.  After Kasey Anderson and Star Anna wrapped up, I went out to the smoking patio to talk with Speedy Gray.  I chatted with him and with a very pretty, very intelligent, very charming lady.  This lady turned out to be Amy LaVere, an excellent singer-songwriter based in Memphis.  Click here to see a clip of her performing the lead song from her latest album, Stranger Me.

You can find info about all of these musicians on Facebook and elsewhere online.  I strongly recommend doing so.  Buy their CD's too.

The Bare Bones, CAMP and Wildcat Strike @ the Red Room (6/3/12)

I made an announcement on this blog's Facebook page earlier today.  In case you didn't read it, I said that HCTD has received over 2,000 pageviews in only three months!  It's not much compared to some other blogs, I know, but it's much more than I'd ever expected.  What's more, I celebrated HCTD crossing the 1,000-pageview mark just under three weeks ago.  This means that views for this little guy doubled in that time.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: thank you so much to all my readers out there!

This show at the Red Room caught my attention because it featured two young Idaho bands who had impressed me greatly.  I hadn't heard of the touring band, but venturing into the unknown is a big part of the fun that I get out of going to live shows around Boise.

First up this night was local trio The Bare Bones.  They hadn't been able to practice since their last Red Room gig, guitarist Chris Brock admitted at one point, so they were playing the same set that they had then.  I certainly didn't mind, and no one else seemed to either.  This group's fleet-footed, psychedelic-tinged rock sounded just as good the second time around if not better.  Chris Brock fired off some nice, spare solos, Nathan Norton's liquid basslines laid down the groove and Aaron Bossart's virtuosic drumming made the music achieve escape velocity.  This is definitely a band to watch out for.

After The Bare Bones came the Twin Falls psychedelic/shoegaze band CAMP, who played this night without their keyboard player or projection show.  However, between their strong tunes, mind-warping guitar sounds, steadfast bass, muscular drumming and tasteful trumpet/trombone improvisations, they managed just fine.  Horn player Shane Cox's contributions made me wonder what Miles Davis could've come up with if he'd joined forces with Built to Spill.  He left the stage after the first two songs of the set, but the three remaining musicians soldiered on and generated a massive, ear-soothing, sternum-vibrating sound.

Wildcat Strike, a pumped-up, roots-tempered rock band from Salt Lake City, closed out the night's music in fine fashion.  Straight-ahead basslines and galvanizing drums powered droning country/blues riffs, sharp fills, terse soloing and smart, detailed lyrics.  I thought that their lead singer screamed a bit more than was necessary at first, but in the end, I reasoned that that just added to their rowdy, punkish intensity.  I did find my first impression somewhat justified, though, when the band turned down playing an encore because he needed to rest his voice.  Rein it in just a little bit, man.  Won't hurt the music none, believe me.

You can find info about all of these groups on Facebook and elsewhere online.

Jonathan Richman @ Neurolux (5/30/12)

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man...

--Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

I mentioned in my last post that I passed on seeing Austin Lucas.  The $8 cover seemed a bit too large an expenditure.  Jonathan Richman, on the other hand, I wasn't going to miss.  I mean, c'mon--a guy whose first album was produced by John Cale and who's gotten props from everyone from Bob Dylan to the Sex Pistols?  That's a guy who's worth paying $15 to see.  I didn't need to eat that badly this week anyway.

"Torn Curtain" by Television was playing on the jukebox when I got down to Neurolux.  That seemed rather appropriate (Richman spent some time in New York in the late 60's).  I bought a beer, staked out a booth and put on "Waterloo Sunset" by the Kinks.  I love sitting near the windows and listening to that song as the evening sun goes down.

I drank my beer and watched people trickle in.  A pretty substantial crowd had built up by the time that the show began.  It seemed evenly split between the Bengay brigade (40/50/60-somethings) and youngish hipster types.  I saw quite a few familiar faces: the owner of Neurolux and Pengilly's, Sam and Catherine Merrick, Josh Gross, Jeremy Jensen from the Very Most (I think), Ben Turner from Range Life, and a good number of folks whom I always see around but whose names I don't know.

Jonathan Richman took the stage at a little after nine o'clock with only a drummer and an amplified Spanish guitar, which he played much better than I'd somehow expected.  Within seconds of his first song, nearly everyone in the bar moved up as close as they could to the stage.  Someone I spoke with later believed that they did that because of the lack of amplification.  Personally, I think that it had much more to do with Richman's stage presence.  He was just so open, so friendly, so goofy, so seemingly guileless.  I wanted to cheer the guy on or give him a hug or something.

"If you're not gonna dance, gimme a beat," Richman told the audience at one point.  "Otherwise I'm gonna think it's a concert, and I hate concerts."  The audience was more than happy to oblige him.  At one point, he put down his guitar, picked up some sleigh bells and did some charmingly awkward dancing.  Well, it looked awkward, anyway: I noted that the jingle of the sleigh bells kept the drummer's beat perfectly.  I also noted the James Brown quotation that Richman slyly snuck into another song a little later.

While Richman didn't play any of the Modern Lovers chestnuts that any past or present punk-rockers in the crowd might have hoped for ("Roadrunner," "Pablo Picasso," etc.), his selection of older and newer material was so sharply written and performed that no one seemed to mind.  My personal favorites were "My Affected Accent," a hilarious apology for youthful pretensions ("I drawled like William F. Buckley does./ Uuuuhhhhh./ I should've been bullied more than I was.") and "Bohemia," a fond, clear-eyed portrait of the man as a young artist.

Throughout the show, his strong material and endearing stage presence enabled him to slip past any defenses that the audience might have had and achieve the intimacy and engagement that both punks and folkies strive for.  "No one was like Vermeer," he sang in one song.  Though he may have set the template for folks like Beat Happening and Daniel Johnston, no one's quite like Jonathan Richman either.