FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Post-tentious music Made easy
Toronto act discover that now is a weird time to be inMade with J. Church and Viceroy
Friday, June 6"Hippies singing and rejoicing / a life not worth living," sings Jason Taylor of Made. An appropriate sentiment, not only because hippies are filthy vermin, but also in that Made, like a lot of twentysomething, post-Nirvana, pre-millennial upstarts, sound as though the (musical) world didn't exist prior to 1970 (or to the Velvet Underground at the very earliest).
"That song ('Hippies') was inspired by my downstairs neighbors, before I knew them," qualifies Taylor, Made's singer and lyricist. "I was just in one of those moods, I just remember looking out back and seeing these two hippies stomping away, playing Grateful Dead songs.... I don't know, it just pissed me off for some reason."
There's no better way, then, to wash away the melancholy produced by drippy Jerry Garcia afternoons than with the post-modern super-fuzz pop generated by Taylor and his three bandmates in the Toronto-based group. Initially introduced to music by his head-banging older stepbrother, Taylor eventually discovered the British new wave / pop of the '80s before becoming firmly engrossed by some distinctly American guitar rock.
"The Pixies came along in the mid-'80s and that changed everything for me," says Taylor. "That swung me around full-circle to the US. Then I started getting into Dinosaur Jr. and stuff."
Indeed, Bedazzler, Made's major label debut, certainly reveals its influences: there's a hint of Frank Black's Doolittle-era whisper / whine here, and traces of the epic fret-work of J. Mascis there. However, the band's sound isn't confined to a mere aping of Eastern seaboard college rock; Taylor is one of those guys who could probably go on forever about the stuff he likes (a brief sample includes U2, Yo La Tengo, and Galaxie 500, while drummer Alison Maclean is "more into punk rock: the Dead Boys, D.O.A. and stuff like that").
However, in a time when new possibilities for the traditional two guitar / bass / drum lineup seem virtually exhausted the question arises of how new bands like Made can thread their patchwork palette of inspiration into their own distinctive voice. It's a problem Taylor acknowledges, but isn't really all that concerned about.
"Now it's the post-modern nightmare I guess, sort of anything goes," says Taylor. "Maybe it's post-rock, I've heard that before. Maybe it's post-tentious, that's my word. It seems that when I was kid you were into this or you were into that; nowadays you meet someone who has Daft Punk, Nirvana and Yo La Tengo in their record collection. It's a weird time to be in."
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