Obits interview
Former Hot Snakes frontman, illustrator and veteran of DIY rock music, Rick Froberg, talks to HUCK with his new band Obits about innovation, attitude and keeping things garage.
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HUCK: What music are you into at the moment?
Rick: The Disappears. They’re a band from Chicago. Tijuana Panthers. The Soft Pack are good. Browns.
Do you think there’s any good new music at the moment? I read that you said "Innovation is overestimated."
Rick: What I was saying is that it’s pointless making a conscious effort to innovate something because, hopefully, what’s new or what’s original about music is going to be something you have no control over anyway. It’s not chords, all the chords have been invented before you, the only thing that’s going to make music original or new, are the things you can’t control. I mean, I don’t think we sound like anyone else. There’ll be riffs or touchstones that people recognise but it’s definitely not the same as anything else.
Scott: We’re going back to an old well and trying to draw new water from it.
Rick: We just like the sounds, you know? There’s nothing wrong with tradition, we’re just trying to entertain people.
Is it important for you guys to keep things garage?
Rick: We don’t treat the sounds because I think the sounds that we have… there’s more humanity. A lot of bands will play with amps that compress sounds or use distortion or something like that, so it doesn’t matter how you hit [the instrument], it all sounds the same no matter what you do. It robs music of its humanity when you can’t hear the things that are real.
Scott: We like mistakes in our music. We like flubs and little sounds. We make raw sounds because that’s the kind of music that we all gravitate towards. I like Eddie Cochran’s music because it just sounds so raw and crazy and, if that’s the music that moves me, I wanna naturally try and make that music that way.
Rick: I think it sounds wilder that way than how Sepultura does or something. The hardness comes from the playing, you know, not the volume.
Does that mean music can be democratic then, like anyone can have a go, it doesn’t matter how good you are?
Rick: Yes. As long as you wanna make stuff. Put your little stamp on popular culture.
Scott: Some of the best bands we’ve played with in the past are the most loose but you know there’s something raw and exciting about seeing these people. We’re into people making something at that moment. You only need to know three chords, you know, that’s what they always say.
Rick: Rock and roll is like 80 or 90 percent attitude or something. It’s nothing to do with how good you can play. You see the guys who play guitar well, who are really accomplished at their instruments and they get on stage and start shredding and, it’s like, nobody wants to hear that. No-one wants to hear you wanking off. No-one cares about how deft you are at your instrument, it’s got to be something that sits deep with you. It’s all about the vibe. When people are doing things and making things happen.
But DIY, by its very nature, can be a bit exclusive can't it?
Rick: I think elitism is definitely a part of music and you’re always going to have it in bands. People are concerned about… the aesthetics and they wanna have control. There are gang rivalries and scene rivalries, it’s always going to be part of it. It’s fine, it keeps it interesting. It’s funny. If you want to keep it independent, not everyone can be involved.
Scott: You have to draw that line and be like ‘you’re this and I’m that’.
What kind of things make you want to sit down and write or play?
Rick: Things that you have to express. It can be anything but I think it’s mostly the thing you feel needs a venue for expression; the thing that you can’t express comfortably in conversation.
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Obits interview (text) by Shelley Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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