Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The Aquabats’ super family fun

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Christian Jacobs has lived many lives in his 40 years on this planet. Today he is star, co-creator and executive producer of the campy Saturday morning show “The Aquabats! Super Show!,” which stars his long-running New Wave pop-punk band, The Aquabats. It took 15 years for the band to achieve their dream of having their own TV series, and it took the success of Jacobs’ previous creation, “Yo! Gabba Gabba,” to ease the way.

Jacobs began his show business career early — as a child actor, appearing on “Married … with Children,” “Major Dad” and more. A role in the skate movie “Gleaming the Cube” led the L.A. resident to the local skate and punk scenes. In 1995, the Aquabats released their first album, standing out with a costumed stage show and storylines about superheroes battling villains. (Jacobs’ character is known today as “MC Bat Commander.”)

After the band’s initial success wore off, Jacobs and writing partner Scott Schultz developed “Yo! Gabba Gabba,” the hugely popular and weirdly psychedelic series hosted by a hip DJ for pre-schoolers (and their still-with-it parents, and/or stoned college students). Their vision finally confirmed by a mainstream audience, Schultz, Jacobs and the rest of the band premiered “The Aquabats! Super Show!” on the new kids’ channel The Hub in March. The first season has featured guest appearances by “Weird Al” Yankovic, Jon Heder of “Napoleon Dynamite,” comedian Paul Scheer, and ’70s game show star Rip Taylor, and follows in the tradition of Saturday morning cross-generational classics like “H.R. Pufnstuf” and “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.”

“We really wanted to be put on Saturday mornings, in the tradition of that,” says Jacobs, “and we’ve been getting a lot of feedback from fans online and friends, saying, ‘It’s so awesome, we can’t wait to wake up and watch the show on Saturday mornings.’”

LEO: The last great network Saturday morning show was “The Weird Al Show,” which ended in 1997. You probably could have had this show on back then, but it took almost 15 years. Did Al give you any tips?
Christian Jacobs: Yeah, we talked about his show, actually. I was a big fan of his show as well … Al was like, “I’d been trying to do a show for a long time, and it came together, but there were so many rules and regulations, the network has this-and-that-and-the-other-thing; it was really an unpleasant battle to make that show,” which surprised me. He’s saying that standing there in a superhero outfit (laughs), because we were in between takes.

Jacobs praises cable and the Internet for giving writers and performers more chances to make shows like his, and with less restrictions. And though the initial broadcast audience might be smaller, such offbeat productions now have many more ways to be discovered.

LEO: The Hub’s target audience is between 6 and 11 years old. How difficult is it to balance making it fun for them and for adults?
CJ: I want to say “it’s impossible, you can’t do it, I don’t know how we discovered this magic formula,” but … “Spongebob” did it great, “The Simpsons,” so many shows do it great. For the kinds of things we’re referencing and homaging, I didn’t know it if would work for kids. I knew I liked it, I knew our peer group would enjoy it; it was just making sure it was appropriate for kids, that it wasn’t too violent, that kids could still benefit from watching it somehow. But being so close to the Aquabats, I always wondered, “Is this really going to be accepted by kids?” Or are kids just gonna go, “Oh, this is old, I’m gonna go watch ‘The Avengers’ or ‘Iron Man.’” There’s all these way more slick things out there, but we’re seeing that kids really do like it.

After so many years with the band, I’m just so glad that people are responding. It’s really surprising and satisfying for us, and I think the show can only get better and better as we keep reaching out there, do stuff that’s different and unique. It does come from a real punk-rock sensibility that we all grew up with. We grew up in a good time with punk and hip-hop and underground culture becoming mainstream; we’ve basically been applying that DIY ethic to making a television show.

‘The Aquabats! Super Show!’
Saturdays at 11 a.m., The Hub, hubworld.com.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Lee Ranaldo’s new sonic life

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For 30 years, Lee Ranaldo was one of the two guitar heroes of the ultimate guitar/noise/cool band Sonic Youth. While he sang some songs, Ranaldo was perceived as being more of a worker and less of a centerpiece than guitarist Thurston Moore and bassist Kim Gordon, who sang more and stood out for their long, seemingly ideal marriage.

The couple announced their separation last fall, and the future of the band was put on hiatus. Ranaldo, now 56 and a tireless collaborator who has already released eight solo albums of experimental music, had been working with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley and others on his first solo “song record,” as he calls it. The result, Between the Times and the Tides, was released in March, and Ranaldo and band come to Louisville in between dates opening for M. Ward.

Lee Ranaldo: I have a lot of friends who live in Louisville, and I’ve loved a lot of different music that’s come out of Louisville over the years. To me, it’s a really cool town, it’s a music town, and I really like hanging out there. There’s definitely local musicians I really like a lot, that I play with a fair amount, so I’m definitely psyched to come.

Some of his local friends include percussionist Tim Barnes, who often played with Ranaldo when he lived in New York, and singer-songwriter Will Oldham. Also, “There’s this poet/writer guy named Ron Whitehead down there that I’ve been longtime friends with.

“Louisville’s one of those places where it’s a small town but had a big impact on a lot of people,” says Ranaldo. “There’s been a lot of great music coming out of there.”

LEO: As a fan for two decades, this is the solo record I’ve been wanting you to put out.
LR: Oh, cool! Well, it’s definitely the record I’ve been wanting me to put out, as well. I’m super happy that it finally happened. It happened at the point when I least expected it. I’ve tried to make a solo record in the past, force it into being; either I’d get distracted by Sonic Youth going on tour, or going in the studio or whatever, it never happened. I’d always written songs like this — most of them are on cassettes in drawers. But this time, it snuck up on me at a time when I was preoccupied by a bunch of other stuff. It happened in a really natural way, which I think adds to how nice it sounds.

LEO: Did you feel that your time to do this was running out, after 30 years with a band?
LR: No, it didn’t feel that way at the time of making this record. But if you’d asked me four or five years ago, I probably would have said, “Yeah, if I don’t make a solo record soon, it’s never gonna happen.”

LEO: Did it feel like fate taking over?
LR: It was weird. Especially with the timing — it was mostly complete when it was revealed, all this stuff internally with Sonic Youth … I don’t think I could have made this record knowing that the band was gonna stop, for a while at the very least, or whatever. I made it in our downtime, oblivious to all that stuff that was going on … My band played our first gig the day after Thurston and Kim announced their split.

LEO: Did part of you feel like, “Hey, this is my moment!”?
LR: No, not really. If anything, I just felt sorry to see them going through this kind of pain.

LEO: I’ve thought before that if Sonic Youth had broken up around 1997, there would be millions of dollars waiting for you to reunite.
LR: Maybe. That wasn’t the important issue for us. We used to joke, “Yeah, we should break up and then come back six or seven years later, do a reunion tour, and make a lot of money,” but it wasn’t really ever the object of it for us. It’s been a lot of fun to do a small tour like this. It’s a lot of work to put it together; we’ve been spoiled in Sonic Youth by how faithful and devoted our crew’s been. It’s really, on a lot of levels, like starting from scratch … if I didn’t feel like the music was worth it, I wouldn’t be doing it.

Lee Ranaldo with Wooden Wand and Sea Hero
Saturday, May 19
Zanzabar
2100 S. Preston St. • 935-9227
zanzabarlouisville.com
$16 adv., $18 DOS; 9 p.m.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Artis more

The first full-length album by the band Artis Gilmore, The Narwhal and the Dinosaur, is 42.9 minutes of pure indie-pop, an unexpected fusion of singer-songwriter Rebecca Williams and Nerves Junior members Cory Wayne and Chris Snow. They play Zanzabar on Friday, and their album will be commercially available this week. How did Artis Gilmore happen? Are we safe?

LEO: Artis Gilmore doesn’t obviously sound like either of your own projects. How did you find this sound?

Rebecca Williams: I met Cory and Chris while I was in the studio recording this album, and several months later, we decided to collaborate as a live band and eventually started writing songs together. I wrote this album two years after my first, which allowed me time to listen to different music than I had been listening to before, and (I) found a thicker sound for the new material I was writing. The sound of this album is solely due to (engineer) Kevin Ratterman’s and (ex-Nerves Junior) Stuart Phelps’ distinct styles; I came to the studio with skeletons, and they gave them blood and guts.

LEO: Who else has inspired you in developing this band?

RW: The live act is heavily inspired by Björk and Matmos, the stuff that they did at the Royal Opera House.

LEO:
Where do you go from here? Videos, touring, festivals? Or is this just for fun?

RW:
Graduation parties and Bat Mitzvahs, occasional Hall of Fame inductions and/or ribbon cuttings. We’re still in the planning stage.

Learn more at facebook.com/ArtisGilmore.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly