Interviewed: Billy Boloby Originally posted 09.28.03 By: Gurl 76 |
Pics from the Billy Boloby interview NEW INTERVIEW: Interviewed Archive |
I left the choice of locale up to him and I'm not sure why he chose he chose the Borders in Boynton Beach. It turns out to be a good decision as he is sleep deprived and in desperate need of caffeine. The little coffee shop café has a curious assortment of people: a couple quoting religious verses out of a book, an old man in an Unseelie Court t-shirt, several teenaged boys going through stacks of Maxim, a cop hitting on a woman. And all of them seemed to enjoy listening in on our interview. Billy Boloby (vocalist and guitarist) has been in and out of bands for more than ten years now. "When I was about twelve I got this really, really cheap electric guitar with an amplifier built into it and I've been playing ever since," he says. After a stint with his last band, the Mute-Ants, Boloby became somewhat disenchanted with bands and music in general. "For the last year of that band, I was just really not happy with any of it. The music was really uninspiring. So, we broke up around January '99. I started trying to get new stuff together about six months later. I was just in and out of being like 'I don't want to do this' and 'I do want to do this.'" Boloby put together a band (which included Billy Boloby's current bassist Herman Von Uberstein and drummer Gary Harris). Unsure if he wanted to continue with that band, he began doing home recording. "I just spend months, every day, I would just lock myself in my room and record. I had no idea what the hell I was doing butI got to do my own thing. I recorded this four-song demo. It was just me, my guitar and a drum machine and I made it sound like there was a bass and all this other stuff. That's pretty much how [Billy Boloby's] music started, like how we got our style." The current band was officially born last year, when guitarist Marvin Holiday joined. "The biggest thing was when I stopped playing guitar and just focused on singing and whatever you want to call what I do on stage." It's been said that the full Billy Boloby experience comes from seeing them live, from seeing the combination of the music and what they refer to as "rock and roll absurdist theatre." "It's done for entertainment purposes but another reason we do it is because I really couldn't see going up there and just being 'okay, here's our song one, song two, song three.' That's so boring," he says. "You go on stage and you can do anything. There's no limits. That's what makes it art, if you want to use that term. Our only limits are what we can think of and our resources. We want to create an atmosphere. It's not just the music. We want the audience to have a shared feeling, we want to make things enjoyable. It's not just about us. Everyone goes out to clubs and a lot of times people don't enjoy themselves. A lot of places [have] a really dreary atmosphere and lot of egos. That's our main focus, to get people to drop their little identity walls they put up." Each show is a difference experience, with the band doing everything from serving the audience ice cream (a show at Soundsplash) to a third party doctor resuscitating Boloby with jumper cables (a show at Dada). "Last thing we did...it was a parody of that Supreme Court Justice from Alabama Roy Moore. I came out with 10 Commandments and I ended up smashing them over Marvin's head. A lot of times we do try to think of current event type things. That's always easy when there's something really obvious. [Sometimes we do] off the wall things. We did this thing were we were like a high school gym class. Because of budget cuts, gym class and music class had to share a class. I was the music teacher and Gary was the gym teacher. He had the shorts and a whistle and everything. That was pretty funny. We made Marvin and Herman dress out and do push ups." And, over all, the on stage "shenanigans" have been well received by the audience. "When we started playing at Dada, I thought it was going to be awkward. There are people that go there to dine. They're typically twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings, forty-somethings and they're not really into rock and roll music. People sometimes get into it. That's always a good thing. Even if it's just one person who normally wouldn't see you and you can tell that they really enjoyed it and got it. Instead of just playing for the same ten people with dyed hair, standing there, smoking cigarettes and trying to look jaded. That's what I don't like." It's a common site, "jaded" looking people watching, with most local bands failing to do much about the audience's attitude. Billy Boloby is, in essence, a reaction to all the bands that are out there. "My motivation is partially the music that I'm into and influenced by and having fun with the stupid ideas we come up with. A lot of it is motivated by being unhappy with everything out there." Boloby is positive about the South Florida scene. "I think right now, this is the best [the scene] has even been, as far as bands. There are a lot of good bands out there. They just don't get any recognition," he says. "The local scene is good at this time. It's got areas that need improvement. There's always a problem with...people [in bands] who feel that everyone is trying to slight them. That's why I don't like booking shows. I don't like to be responsible for band order. People are so prissy about that." Talking with Boloby is nothing short of interesting. He will be discussing run of the mill band topics and suddenly slip into the band's odd mythology. He tells these stories with such sincerity that it's hard to believe they aren't true. He refers to an article written about the band in the Weekly World News about a year ago. As he tells me more about the article, about how a surgeon offered to fix the physical deformities that each band member just happened to have (ranging from a hunchback to lobster claws, with Boloby having freakish baby arms), his tone is so serious that I feel bad that I'm laughing out loud. The people around us that up until this point have been eavesdropping on a "typical" band interview bristle and curiously look at his "improved" arms. "The first CD I sold over the internet was to [someone who read the article]." The CD is The Revival (available online through their site and Interpunk), a six song EP which was released last June. It was recorded at the Power Station in Pompano Beach, of which Boloby says, "It's really, really good and I recommend it." The songs on the CD are half pop, half garage rock. It's instantly catchy and falls easily into the 70s mod revival genre of R&B tinged rock and roll. The overall sound is a balance of melodious pop and frenetic, jerky rock. "It's pretty hard [to describe the sound]. I can tell you what our influences are but that's not always how the stuff comes out," he admits. "Musically, our influences, number one is the Jam. And a lot of '60s stuff, a lot of mod stuff. We're really into mod and mod revival and even a lot of Motown. We do a Supremes song. Not that I'm trying to be different or that I set out to differ myself. That's one of the things that is different about us [compared to] a lot of the other new garage rock whatever crap. They're into third generation bands that were into the real stuff but we're more into the Motown side of it. We into a lot of '70s punk bands too. It's not limited to that. The Real Kids, they're actually a big influence. Jonathan Richman, especially his attitude, the way he writes music, not so much the songs themselves but the kind of silliness to it. We're not the most serious band. We don't go on stage and look like we're crying." But, please don't confuse the use of the word "revival" with the current trend of reviving '70s garage rock. "Anybody that says we're like the Strokes or the Hives, they should just hang themselves because we have nothing to do with that." The band is currently on a break from playing out live, working on new songs and working with a new band member. "We have a new keyboard player now. We've tried out like four or five people. The one we were playing with for awhile just bailed. That gives us a new dimension, allows us to do stuff." The band will return to playing live with an October 18th show at the Surf Café in Boca Raton and an October 25th show at Respectable's in downtown West Palm Beach. And seeing as that Respectable's show will be a Halloween show, they have a lot in store for that performance. According to Boloby, the band found their new keyboardist online. "There's this guy and apparently, he's dead. We went and found his grave and dug him up. We're going to try and bring him back, on stage. It's going to be like Frankenstein but instead of a mad scientist, I'm going to be the mod scientist. Maybe I'll make some other creations as well." The band hopes to be bringing their live performances to audiences outside of South Florida by next summer. They also plan to record more material in the future. "It's pretty limitless. Our music's still continuing to change a little bit...we're getting better at writing structured songs. It'd be pretty hard for us to get really bored with coming up with new stuff to do, musically or thematically." In their short time together, the band has garnered a lot of attention initially for it's live antics but their music is strong enough to prove they are not all gimmick and hype. Maybe they could shake some life into the currently stale state of rock music. "I'm sick of all this garbage being fed to everybody and all these shitty bands being everywhere. I think we're good because we're interesting and I think that a lot of people can look at us and kind of relate in a way that you can't just relate to other bands...We're a band that has vitality to us. We're kind of a silly band...I think there should be more bands that are just like, 'screw all the rock and roll rules.' We just write our music and do our stage stuff. It sounds like a naïve thing to say but we're trying to change things in a way, just make people more engaged. Less of the 'look at me, I'm a rock star.' More like 'I'm a retard and look at what I'm going to do.'" |
Pics from the Billy Boloby interview NEW INTERVIEW: Interviewed Archive |
Interviewed: Billy Boloby Originally posted 09.28.03 By: Gurl 76 |
