TVHH Q&A pt.4

the very hush hush

q¬&¬a

¬

¬

¬

¬

¬

had had these completely separate experiences that changed us quite dramatically in our own ways, and thus the music that we were compelled to create. Here, everything became much darker, more intense and somber, maybe even more mature, yet longing for the bitterness and frustration of youth that always breeds a feeling of invincibility.

The house was on a main street in Boulder, stuck between a fly-fishing store and a motor shop. It probably hadn't had a heyday since the Great Depression. It was under a pile of car parts and several feet of snow that we wrote our songs. It was also a mutual coming-to-terms and understanding that there are far too few artists in America, and that America is no place for an artist.

Another question. It's a bit tangential, but I wanted to hear what you have to say about it anyways. It was brought on by an evening out in Istanbul called Kumkapi, a street filled to the brim with fish restaurants that double as entertainment centers for the Turkish elite. Each restaurant has their own contracted band (sort-of Klezmer style) as well as a belly dancer that can entertain you if you wish. Somewhat cool, but mostly very kitsch, which put me back into a memory that I had when I was a little kid.

Thus:

Do you have any memories of Casa Bonita, fond or otherwise? If you can, give me your most accurate description of the place, replete with cliff-diving bandits.

GRANT:

The first word that surfaces (besides 'pink') is 'grime': a clattering mess of silverware and dirty dishes on a conveyer belt when you walk in, cafeteria funk everywhere; cheese fries, cardboard burgers, soggy sopapillas, too-sweet honey...a peptic disaster! Yellow flags you raise when you need something more, shiny-faced waitresses shaking their butts with a swagger, screaming children, someone blowing a whistle? Flashing lights, a fog machine, a megaphone, ridiculous papier-mâché rocks, a waterfall, tanned men in Speedos cliff-diving indoors, dirty carpet (was it green?), and strange, strange linoleum in the bathroom. I was there for a birthday party. Was it mine? I can't remember. I do remember Colfax--better than anything. What a street! And the arcade in that rundown strip mall...Oh, but Colfax...it's like a giant hypodermal squirting purple mountain majesty eastward to the plains, dripping a trail of filth and human depravity--Casa Bonita right at the base of the needle, celebrating the garishness and absurdity with all the eloquence of a loud fart.

PETER:

Yeah, I've been to Casa Bonita probably more than I would have liked. You enter and then you get corralled like sheep through this cafeteria-like maze. The food is similar to Banquet TV dinners, and the whole place stinks like industrial strength cleaners (chlorine especially).

Anyway, I had a friend who was a cliff diver at Casa Bonita. His name was Jared. I knew quite a few people who worked at Casa Bonita. In fact, the whole community of Golden seems deeply interwoven within the shoddy quilt of that strip-mall restaurant/extravaganza.

Here are ten songs that remind me of Casa Bonita:

1. Def Leppard - Rocket
2. Warrant - Cherry Pie
3. Kenny Loggins - Danger Zone
4. Slaughter - Up All Night
5. Kris Kross - Jump
6. Vanilla Ice - Ice Ice Baby
7. Whitesnake - Still of the Night
8. MC Hammer - Can't Touch This
9. Mötley Crüe - Dr. Feelgood
10. Winger - Seventeen

Grant, one of the aspects you liked about Debussy was his inclination to describe, in text, the instructions that a pianist must take to perform his songs. In a sense, he was able to verbalize the way a song should be played through poetic, rather than musical, terminology. When I came across Peter's response to question 3, during which he wrote, "We are not (yet) a band that is interested in only focusing on a literal translation of our work..." I was interested by the tension created in any attempt to put musical sentiment, be it instructional or expository, into words. Did you two ever try to speak about the emotional content of your songs, or was the songwriting process one that evaded words entirely and relied solely on musical communication?

GRANT:

Our musical communication tends to be eerily telepathic. Much of this can be chalked up to similar childhood experiences, and not an altogether differing worldview. We have vastly different emotional landscapes to express, but the process of release, for both of us I think, is very similar. We do not specifically discuss an emotional arc for a song ahead of time, but in talking through the state of the world, or the state of our minds, that dynamic automatically embeds itself in our music. Sometimes, a hive-like consciousness develops between us while composing wordlessly. We communicate, to borrow a brilliant and cheesy Asia lyric, "in the heat of the moment," mostly...

>>