WIRED: Your band manager, Alvin Izoff, notoriously overhauled your image-going from a Chicago blues band to your signature California style. It's almost like you took a pair of blue jeans, cut two circles out of them, and glued them over the front of a pair of glasses. Some people say the expression, "to see through rose-colored glasses." We see everything through blue jean-colored glasses.
There was a studio engineer who jokingly called us that, and it just kind of stuck. How did you get that name?ĪLLEN: That's the way we dressed at the time. WIRED: The name "Blue Jean Committee" has had such legendary influence. There are many meat bands from Chicago who have brought that history into the light: Sausage Men, Meat Guys, Meaty and the Meats, The Meatball Twins. Alter Ego is a metal cover band playing covers by Megadeth, Metallica, Bullet for my Valentine, Slayer, Sepultura, Soil, Godsmack, Iron Maiden, and more. WIRED: How do you envision Blue Jean Committee's role in highlighting that art? Are you alone in bringing it into the popular consciousness?ĪLLEN: Well, it isn’t just us. In ancient times, there was gold-making, painting, and the making of sausages. Do you see sausage making as an art?ĪLLEN: I absolutely do. Please put that in bold headlines for the article. It's almost like I would consider myself a visual tape recorder. It's hard to put into words how much that has inspired me as an artist. I'd like to eventually be someone who sings to people who are dressed up as animals.ĪLLEN: That's a very internal journey. All the animals were coming out of the forest, and I thought, wow, I'd like to fall into that. WIRED: What was the moment when you first realized that you wanted to be a musician?ĪLLEN: I saw a tapestry-a sort of quilt-of a person playing guitar and singing to animals. Another thing I like to talk about is people who think they're classy and high class, and they're really not. I put the emphasis on lyrics, more than really anything else. My early lyrics would be about the freeway, and trees, hair, driving, sunsets, sunrises, the midday sun, the sun behind a tree, the sun behind the waves, pictures of the sun, polaroids of the sun, depictions of the sun, the sun at a great distance, the sun close up, the sun on a t-shirt, the sun painted on the side of a car or a van, that kind of thing. A lot of imagery, a lot of words put together to evoke, a lot of verbal painting. A real wordsmith, a real sentence structure king. Do you think those early influences informed your songwriting?ĪLLEN: I consider myself a brilliant lyricist.
WIRED: You're known for such poetic lyrics.
Names like that were really important to me. You know, names like Thomas, or Mary-Anne, or Mary. We’ll see you in a couple weeks with a new theme, new guests, and some new songs to break down.Then when I started getting into folk, anything having to do with proper names was really good. Here’s this week’s collaborative Spotify playlist! Yes, it’s collaborative! As in: you can add tracks to the playlist that fit the theme!Įvery other week, and with every new episode of Themes and Variation, we launch a new collaborative Spotify playlist that includes the songs mentioned in the episode and more, which you can add to and enjoy. Back in 2004, she released the song Mona Lisa to debut her.
#ALTER EGO BAND SONGS MOVIE#
The movie never got made, this project did fail, but here’s the thing: There were so many, so many gems that came out of the world of Chris Gaines.” Join Our Collaborative Playlist Everyone knows Britney Spears, but not too many know about her alter ego Mona Lisas brief use. So the record came out a year before the movie was supposed to, which doesn’t feel like nearly enough run time, but like it never got made. And I think that that absolutely has to be at least a little bit applauded. He really, really went for something in a huge way.
0 kommentar(er)
