Friday, September 16, 2005
it's their color scheme: the red and black interview
Michelle Floyd at the Red and Black done did an interview with the France this week; the results are up here. Very little of the actual interview made it in, so here's the whole damn thing. DJ and I answered these questions on Monday; he took the first few, I picked up the second half. See if you can find the dividing line.
1) You're music is pretty psychedelic and eclectic. Where do you draw your inspiration from? Is there an audience for it, especially in Athens and Atlanta?
A: I don't think we ever try to write a specific style of music, we just try to write what comes naturally to us. At times there is a pretty heavy psych sound but that probably only comes because there are 9 guys playing at once and its pretty dense sounding. We all have hearing problems, so we crank the levels as loud as they go and the waves you hear in the audience is actually the sound of your eardrum turning to liquid. There really isnt one specific type of sound that we shoot for in our music, which I think really makes The France. We could go from a 15 minute long uber-jam to a 2 minute rocker and still have fun with both. We like making music we can high five to, a lot. We just do what is fun to us and what sounds good to us, in that way I think we are pretty self-centered but we are also really really happy when other people are interested in our music. We also are a bunch of jackasses at times and really test the patience of our audience and friends. They have stuck with us so far, which is awesome and hopefully those who stick with us understand that our number one priority is to go to space and also have fun and we hope they do too. As far as influences go, it's pretty much a crap-shoot. We all love all types of music and bring them all to the rickety card table. Hip Hop to Drone and back again, whatever is cool with us. In that sense, most of our music is pretty eclectic, I guess, we have a lot of non-psychedelic, non electric stuff that we do all acoustically and with tribal influences - so yeah we are all over the place. Whether that is good or bad, we'll let the fans decide.
2) How did you get involved playing that kind of music, rather than something else? Was that the idea for the band when it started?
A: When we started it was simply because we had friends in bands (The Wee Turtles, The Masters of the Hemisphere, Nipples For Days, etc.) and we thought - "man, we can do this and make it fucked up". We started out playing 3 minute Archers Of Loaf rip offs and then as we played longer and ended our stint as the worst band in Athens, things just came naturally. The first article we read about the masons really inspired us as well, but we cant talk about that at all because if we do - we will have to cancel our show, because we will be dead.
3) On your news page, you mentioned using gong, bird whistle, etc. -- what
other kinds of instruments/etc. do you use to get the background sound? Where do you get the idea to use that? Do you write the music with those in mind?
A: We will literally put any instrument that we can find laying around onto a recording. Recently I just bought an Australian Didgeridoo and a set of pan flutes so God knows where we are going next. Probably the sound of Argentina. A lot of our recorded music is pretty thick stuff, hairy. We are big fans of the "Wall Of Sound" technique and incorporate that in a lot of our music. On our new record, we have songs that probably have somewhere in the range of 20-30 guitars on a single track, couple that with gongs, creeks, alien noises, Crog eating Taco Bell, keyboards, duck calls, elephant blasts, beer bottles, piano strings, refrigerator boxes, bums, penny whistles, organs, synths, cracker attacks, papa john's commercials, jesus' back, and a crap load of delay - then you have our recipe for a pretty righteous song.
4) On your bio, it says you refuse to take yourself too seriously. So no deep
messages in the songs? If no, why not? Are you trying to accomplish anything with your music?
A: Its not that there aren't messages in the songs, its just most people don't take a band seriously when they have an entire 14 song EP devoted to President Arnold Schwarzenegger and his favorite slice. And we don't blame them. We don't take our selves too seriously b/c this is a hobby to us, and we just wanna laugh, man. I think the great thing about The France is that our number one goal is to totally jam the shit out of ourselves, and anyone who wants to join the band for a sesh, hey that's cool. If we started worrying about what we looked like on stage, or "what people would think about this new song" - that would ruin our band and our buzz. Our next album is about the island we bought in the Caribbean and the jerk chicken salads we will serve from there.
5) Is your next release the one on AMT? Named yet? When will it be released?
Since in your bio it said that your 2nd album was more of a stretch, will
your next album be more different? If yes, how? How the same?
A: Our next project that we are releasing is going to be a split 12" record with the Japanese band Acid Mothers Temple and The Cosmic Inferno. Darkness and I run a small record label, Nokahoma Records, (www.nokahoma.com) which has released 20 or so CDR releases and a few 7" releases. However this project with Acid Mothers Temple is actually our first really big project. We contacted Acid Mothers to see if they wanted to release the record and they were very excited about doing it. They are extremely nice people and they are one of our favorite bands - so to be able to do a split 12" with them is a big deal to us. Each band is doing one song for their side of the record. Our song ended up being a 17 minute mind melter. Our next full length record is called Afrikan Majik and is really close to being done. We are putting the final touches on mixing and mastering the thing, and it will hopefully be out before the end of the year.
6) How many people are currently in your band (9, like says on news page?)?
If that many, do you play onstage all at once? What is that like? Is it
difficult to play with that many people or is there any confusion?
A: Right now there are currently nine people that play with us, and that does not include our spiritual guidance. Crog, Darkness, Ice, Griggs, SA, Jeremy "The Lord", OJ, Croxton, and Ken are the physical beings. Bob Marley and the Ghost of Norman Schwarzkopf are the spiritual masters. Actually Ken just climbed aboard recently and has been helping us out in the studio mainly. We actually havent played a full show with all 9 people yet, that would be a barn-burner. We have done so with 8 at the 40 Watt though and that was total fun with multiple high fives. The coolest part about it is probably the fact that when we are in the middle of a killer jam - you can step out go grab a brew and the band is still rockin'. Then you come back up on stage, have a chat, have a slice of pizza, then pick your instrument back up and join back in. It also is great b/c having that many people onstage playing at once - hides a lot of the mistakes! They get drowned out by the 3 other solos going on at the same time. I think it brings a higher level of excitement to our live show. Having three drummers is just mind blowing. Having three amazing drummers and Bob Marley whispering in their ear is even more mind blowing. When they set a rhythm down that is tight as hell, its easy for us to jam over top of that. Man, I sound like such an awesome hippy. Sweet.
7) Are you based out of Athens? (since you said you were living in Atlanta)
A: The France started in Athens and we play probably 90% of our shows here, but we all live in different cities. I think 3 of us still live in ATH right now. Ice and I live in Atlanta, Darkness lives in Boston, Crog lives in Los Angeles, and Sean lives in San Francisco - yet we have been more productive in the last year than we ever have. We cant even figure that one out. Athens is essentially where at least 50% of the audience might understand 20% of the show. So those are better odds than most other cities. I heard we are actually pretty big in Missoula, MT.
8) You said on the news section of your web site that one song was 17 minutes long -- do you like to play longer music? How do you keep people's attention? What is the longest song you've written?
A: We never sit down and say to ourselves, "well, this one'll be twenty minutes", or anything like that. Once we grab that comet's tail, no telling where we're headed, you know? Some songs will be 17 minutes, some will be three seconds. If people want to pay attention, they will; if not, we already have their money, anyway. We wrote a song about snakes and the Jemdat Nasr period of ancient Sumer and pro wrestling that lasted for about three hours. And in 1999 we played our song "Memorial Day" for 24 straight hours on the holiday in question, over at the River Mill pool.
9) Since you said "for some reason" you are headlining on your news part of the web site, do you headline much? If so, where? Do you play many shows (seen your name a few times, I think I remember, but I dunno how much)? Where do you normally play in Athens?
A: In Athens, we are fans of the 40 Watt, Caledonia, Tasty World, Buckhead Beach, the Blind Pig, Ember's Lounge, Mama Sid's, Bear Hollow, and the second floor of Creswell. We headline sometimes, and other times we support. We used to play three or four shows a week back in our heyday, but since Ice's hip replacement we limit ourselves to three or four a year. Our last show was at the Mind Zap fest in San Francisco. Our last show was also the sixth annual Twilight Delirium, held this year at the 40 Watt.
10) What will your show be like/What can people expect? What is the energy
like? Audience involvement? Will you play new songs from your upcoming release?
A: The energy is not unlike that at Thermopylae when those 300 valiant Spartans
gave their lives to help save Greece from the Persians. We're the brave soldiers protecting our music, instruments, and women from the audience, who are nothing more than a savage band of invading marauders. If the audience tries to get involved, we will stop them. And we promise all new material, plus a passel of unironic covers of theme songs from early '80's children movies. And sensitivity.
11) Since many acts playing that night, do you know yet how long your set will be?
A: Well, time is a lie, and anything lasts only as long as you want it to. To us, the France is eternal, an endless column of horror marching ceaselessly through our brains. The "set" will be infinite, for the "set" is life, and the universe, and all of creation, stretching far past infinity.
12) Any other news?
A: Crog bought a boat. And DJ sure would love a pizza party.
13) Anything else you want to talk about?
We want to talk about politics, baseball, rap, history, ancient cultures, astronomy, conspiracy theories, gender studies, pro wrestling, Bob Marley, and how totally awesome all those drugs are. Instead, we must return to our eternal hunt for the infinite hamm-jam. Thank you, Melissa; thank you.
Michelle Floyd at the Red and Black done did an interview with the France this week; the results are up here. Very little of the actual interview made it in, so here's the whole damn thing. DJ and I answered these questions on Monday; he took the first few, I picked up the second half. See if you can find the dividing line.
1) You're music is pretty psychedelic and eclectic. Where do you draw your inspiration from? Is there an audience for it, especially in Athens and Atlanta?
A: I don't think we ever try to write a specific style of music, we just try to write what comes naturally to us. At times there is a pretty heavy psych sound but that probably only comes because there are 9 guys playing at once and its pretty dense sounding. We all have hearing problems, so we crank the levels as loud as they go and the waves you hear in the audience is actually the sound of your eardrum turning to liquid. There really isnt one specific type of sound that we shoot for in our music, which I think really makes The France. We could go from a 15 minute long uber-jam to a 2 minute rocker and still have fun with both. We like making music we can high five to, a lot. We just do what is fun to us and what sounds good to us, in that way I think we are pretty self-centered but we are also really really happy when other people are interested in our music. We also are a bunch of jackasses at times and really test the patience of our audience and friends. They have stuck with us so far, which is awesome and hopefully those who stick with us understand that our number one priority is to go to space and also have fun and we hope they do too. As far as influences go, it's pretty much a crap-shoot. We all love all types of music and bring them all to the rickety card table. Hip Hop to Drone and back again, whatever is cool with us. In that sense, most of our music is pretty eclectic, I guess, we have a lot of non-psychedelic, non electric stuff that we do all acoustically and with tribal influences - so yeah we are all over the place. Whether that is good or bad, we'll let the fans decide.
2) How did you get involved playing that kind of music, rather than something else? Was that the idea for the band when it started?
A: When we started it was simply because we had friends in bands (The Wee Turtles, The Masters of the Hemisphere, Nipples For Days, etc.) and we thought - "man, we can do this and make it fucked up". We started out playing 3 minute Archers Of Loaf rip offs and then as we played longer and ended our stint as the worst band in Athens, things just came naturally. The first article we read about the masons really inspired us as well, but we cant talk about that at all because if we do - we will have to cancel our show, because we will be dead.
3) On your news page, you mentioned using gong, bird whistle, etc. -- what
other kinds of instruments/etc. do you use to get the background sound? Where do you get the idea to use that? Do you write the music with those in mind?
A: We will literally put any instrument that we can find laying around onto a recording. Recently I just bought an Australian Didgeridoo and a set of pan flutes so God knows where we are going next. Probably the sound of Argentina. A lot of our recorded music is pretty thick stuff, hairy. We are big fans of the "Wall Of Sound" technique and incorporate that in a lot of our music. On our new record, we have songs that probably have somewhere in the range of 20-30 guitars on a single track, couple that with gongs, creeks, alien noises, Crog eating Taco Bell, keyboards, duck calls, elephant blasts, beer bottles, piano strings, refrigerator boxes, bums, penny whistles, organs, synths, cracker attacks, papa john's commercials, jesus' back, and a crap load of delay - then you have our recipe for a pretty righteous song.
4) On your bio, it says you refuse to take yourself too seriously. So no deep
messages in the songs? If no, why not? Are you trying to accomplish anything with your music?
A: Its not that there aren't messages in the songs, its just most people don't take a band seriously when they have an entire 14 song EP devoted to President Arnold Schwarzenegger and his favorite slice. And we don't blame them. We don't take our selves too seriously b/c this is a hobby to us, and we just wanna laugh, man. I think the great thing about The France is that our number one goal is to totally jam the shit out of ourselves, and anyone who wants to join the band for a sesh, hey that's cool. If we started worrying about what we looked like on stage, or "what people would think about this new song" - that would ruin our band and our buzz. Our next album is about the island we bought in the Caribbean and the jerk chicken salads we will serve from there.
5) Is your next release the one on AMT? Named yet? When will it be released?
Since in your bio it said that your 2nd album was more of a stretch, will
your next album be more different? If yes, how? How the same?
A: Our next project that we are releasing is going to be a split 12" record with the Japanese band Acid Mothers Temple and The Cosmic Inferno. Darkness and I run a small record label, Nokahoma Records, (www.nokahoma.com) which has released 20 or so CDR releases and a few 7" releases. However this project with Acid Mothers Temple is actually our first really big project. We contacted Acid Mothers to see if they wanted to release the record and they were very excited about doing it. They are extremely nice people and they are one of our favorite bands - so to be able to do a split 12" with them is a big deal to us. Each band is doing one song for their side of the record. Our song ended up being a 17 minute mind melter. Our next full length record is called Afrikan Majik and is really close to being done. We are putting the final touches on mixing and mastering the thing, and it will hopefully be out before the end of the year.
6) How many people are currently in your band (9, like says on news page?)?
If that many, do you play onstage all at once? What is that like? Is it
difficult to play with that many people or is there any confusion?
A: Right now there are currently nine people that play with us, and that does not include our spiritual guidance. Crog, Darkness, Ice, Griggs, SA, Jeremy "The Lord", OJ, Croxton, and Ken are the physical beings. Bob Marley and the Ghost of Norman Schwarzkopf are the spiritual masters. Actually Ken just climbed aboard recently and has been helping us out in the studio mainly. We actually havent played a full show with all 9 people yet, that would be a barn-burner. We have done so with 8 at the 40 Watt though and that was total fun with multiple high fives. The coolest part about it is probably the fact that when we are in the middle of a killer jam - you can step out go grab a brew and the band is still rockin'. Then you come back up on stage, have a chat, have a slice of pizza, then pick your instrument back up and join back in. It also is great b/c having that many people onstage playing at once - hides a lot of the mistakes! They get drowned out by the 3 other solos going on at the same time. I think it brings a higher level of excitement to our live show. Having three drummers is just mind blowing. Having three amazing drummers and Bob Marley whispering in their ear is even more mind blowing. When they set a rhythm down that is tight as hell, its easy for us to jam over top of that. Man, I sound like such an awesome hippy. Sweet.
7) Are you based out of Athens? (since you said you were living in Atlanta)
A: The France started in Athens and we play probably 90% of our shows here, but we all live in different cities. I think 3 of us still live in ATH right now. Ice and I live in Atlanta, Darkness lives in Boston, Crog lives in Los Angeles, and Sean lives in San Francisco - yet we have been more productive in the last year than we ever have. We cant even figure that one out. Athens is essentially where at least 50% of the audience might understand 20% of the show. So those are better odds than most other cities. I heard we are actually pretty big in Missoula, MT.
8) You said on the news section of your web site that one song was 17 minutes long -- do you like to play longer music? How do you keep people's attention? What is the longest song you've written?
A: We never sit down and say to ourselves, "well, this one'll be twenty minutes", or anything like that. Once we grab that comet's tail, no telling where we're headed, you know? Some songs will be 17 minutes, some will be three seconds. If people want to pay attention, they will; if not, we already have their money, anyway. We wrote a song about snakes and the Jemdat Nasr period of ancient Sumer and pro wrestling that lasted for about three hours. And in 1999 we played our song "Memorial Day" for 24 straight hours on the holiday in question, over at the River Mill pool.
9) Since you said "for some reason" you are headlining on your news part of the web site, do you headline much? If so, where? Do you play many shows (seen your name a few times, I think I remember, but I dunno how much)? Where do you normally play in Athens?
A: In Athens, we are fans of the 40 Watt, Caledonia, Tasty World, Buckhead Beach, the Blind Pig, Ember's Lounge, Mama Sid's, Bear Hollow, and the second floor of Creswell. We headline sometimes, and other times we support. We used to play three or four shows a week back in our heyday, but since Ice's hip replacement we limit ourselves to three or four a year. Our last show was at the Mind Zap fest in San Francisco. Our last show was also the sixth annual Twilight Delirium, held this year at the 40 Watt.
10) What will your show be like/What can people expect? What is the energy
like? Audience involvement? Will you play new songs from your upcoming release?
A: The energy is not unlike that at Thermopylae when those 300 valiant Spartans
gave their lives to help save Greece from the Persians. We're the brave soldiers protecting our music, instruments, and women from the audience, who are nothing more than a savage band of invading marauders. If the audience tries to get involved, we will stop them. And we promise all new material, plus a passel of unironic covers of theme songs from early '80's children movies. And sensitivity.
11) Since many acts playing that night, do you know yet how long your set will be?
A: Well, time is a lie, and anything lasts only as long as you want it to. To us, the France is eternal, an endless column of horror marching ceaselessly through our brains. The "set" will be infinite, for the "set" is life, and the universe, and all of creation, stretching far past infinity.
12) Any other news?
A: Crog bought a boat. And DJ sure would love a pizza party.
13) Anything else you want to talk about?
We want to talk about politics, baseball, rap, history, ancient cultures, astronomy, conspiracy theories, gender studies, pro wrestling, Bob Marley, and how totally awesome all those drugs are. Instead, we must return to our eternal hunt for the infinite hamm-jam. Thank you, Melissa; thank you.
