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Twisting Things Up: Interview with The Heavenly States
[by Scott Thill]
It's rare when a band can blend punk, politics and riifs without making you nauseous. It's even stranger when that band decides to resurrect woefully underappreciated Hardware Wars smartass Ernie Fosselius to direct its video for "Car Wash." After all, you throw some Dick Cheney puppets together with the States' narcotic songcraft, and you have one hell of a visual. But NorCal's Heavenly States are much more than a beneath-the-radar find helping out a fellow agitator in Fosselius. They have passion to spare, and the smarts to make it all stick. Which they do on their latest effort Black Comet. And though they may be beneath the War on Terror's radar, they've been around the world talking rock and soaking in the mass opinion. In other words, their secret will be out soon enough.
Morphizm: Talk about the raging energy behind Black Comet. All the songs have a frenetic vibe, especially "Pretty Life," with some amazing guitar work. How has being self-taught affected, if at all, the way you approach songwriting?
Ted Nesseth: I usually approach songwriting while it's drinking from the stream. Because if I'm stealthy enough, I'm able to grab it's haunches and hold it just long enough to make something happpen. I play upside down and backwards because I was born in a mirror. Put it to you this way, if I was to look at myself reflecting back upon myself, it would be like looking outward into my inner self outside and beside me, myself and I.
Morphizm:Got it. Who are some of your chief influences?
Ted: I learned by listening and playing along to Minutemen and Dinosaur Jr. records, plus, I knew all the old hits on 45s, because we had a Wurlitzer jukebox growing up. So I know every lyric to every SST album, and everything that Elvis, Streisand, Conway Twitty, Johnny Cash and Anne Murray released too.
Morphizm: How has your life growing up in a military family shaped your politics and your art? What do you think of the state of war and the troops that have to commit their lives to it?
Genevieve Gagon: As the war and occupation rage on, the Bush Administration is closing military bases and hospitals all over the country. In the context of these closings, the new, conservatively revamped NPR recently issued a story that Post-Traumatic stress syndrome among veterans is at an all-time low. The flagship of military hospitals, Walter Reade Army Medical Center, is the latest to go. Meanwhile, we personally know of military psychiatrists and other military physicians who are struggling at this very hour to keep up with the silenced, unreported, unending stream of injured soldiers whose needs are barely being attended by an ever-shrinking staff of military employees. This unreported story forms the other miserable chapter in the privatization of the federal government and the military.
I fear the situation of the soldier who no longer serves the abstract ideals of the federal governement that serves and protects him. Today, he serves the private individual and corporation whose sole task is to turn a profit and answer not to a set of ideals, but to fallible men. And most people have no idea what this means for them and will mean for them, or else there would be war in the streets of this country.
Morphizm: "Borderline." So many subtexts, so little time. Unearth some for me?
Gen: It's a song about all kinds of boundaries, all boundaries and lines in the sand. It's also about space in music.
Ted: "You must be the empty space in the rhythm."
Morphizm: Talk about Oakland, and the Bay Area. How does it help you work?
Gen: There are many, many bands in the Bay Area and it's a very expensive place to live. If you're coming to the Bay Area to play music and find an audience, we always say, set your clock for ten years. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a hard thing. Thankfully, there are a handful of clear-thinking and adventurous club owners that really make the effort to give artists their due. The Bottom of the Hill and the Independent have been really good to us.
Morphizm: How was the trip to Libya? Why did it happen?
Gen: When the travel ban on Libya was lifted last year in a deal which involved
Ghaddafi admitting guilt over Lockerbie, it seemed random and it was awkwardly reported in the press. We were trying to track the story during our tour in Australia at the time. The whole thing seemed suspect, but the press was distracted by the war and wasn't looking hard behind the scenes. Also, Ted got an email from someone in Libya who had actually downloaded one of our songs and that was it for us. We wanted to get over there. It's a long story so we put the journal up on our website. In short, it took eight months to plan and lots of rejection, but we eventually got in and played one great "underground" show.
Morphizm: Not to get all Sophie's Choice on your ass, but what are some of your favorite tracks off of Comet?
Gen: Well, good question since it is an "album" rather than a random collection of mp3's. Each album for us is a project unto itself. We like to keep songs together in the time/circumstances that they were formed. The slow songs are places to test our ability to avoid both sentimentality and irony, most reviled. The rockers are a great place to explore restraint, because with music and anything else, it's rare to convey what you mean to convey. You have to twist things up and walk crab-like towards the thing to get the thing. One friend we previewed the record for really loved "A Revolution Away" which is more of a quiet little interlude than a song, but it's an intermission that sits near the end of the album. What does it mean to put your break at the end, right? "Black Comet" and "A Revolution Away" go well together for me.
Morphizm: Finally, let's talk about Ernie and "Hardware Wars." How did a spoof maestro come to provide you with the name of your earlier band and a video for your newest one?
Ted: Ernie is a genius. A total pioneer and has been from the beginning. He was in one of the first punk bands in SF during and before the summer of love. The Final Solution would open for big names at the Fillmore and play in 7/8 time signature to trip up the hippies. Their rehearsal studio burned down on day. Rather than get pissed or cry they simply saw it as an opportunity to take the coolest band photo ever and posed in the smoldering amps and heat-warped drums. He also did sound design on a number of movies, all good ones. You should interview Ernie. Making our video with 20th Century Foss was one of the coolest things we've ever experienced.
26 October 05
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