Preview
HOT HOT HEAT
Friday, November 21
MacEwan Hall
This year’s release of solo records by Elvis Costello and the Clash’s Joe Strummer proved that they're now mere shadows of their former musical selves.
Given the ease with which Victoria’s dance-rock sensations Hot Hot Heat are compared to the seminal work of both these artists, one wonders what the future has in store for Canada’s latest rock darlings.
"I find that when an artist has had a long, successful career in a band and they get older and put out records, it’s really self- indulgent," says Steve Bays, the band’s guitarist-vocalist. "When you are in a band there are a lot of compromises you have to make creatively. I think you need to pay your dues to be experimental."
It may be a little early to worry about Hot Hot Heat’s latter-day sins, but given the monumental change the band has gone through in the last while, it’s clear their career is moving fast. Since the release of Make Up The Breakdown, their ass-shaking full-length for Sub Pop records, the band switched labels (again), sold out venues in New York and L.A., took Europe by storm and supplanted the White Stripes from the No. 1 position on MTV.
"The fact that we are all going completely crazy is fine," says Bays, "because the shows are amazing and I’d be an idiot if I didn’t love every second of it."
With the band’s immense success it’s doubtful Hot Hot Heat has given serious thought to whether it would be better to burn out or fade away. Given Bays’s glib sense of humour, it appears that obscurity would be a greater sin than indulgence.
"We have a joke about the line ’Oh, I like their early stuff better.’ We always joke that if someone asks you your opinion on a band and you know nothing about them, just say ‘I like their early stuff.’"
It’s possible Hot Hot Heat won’t have to worry about the stigma of late career disappointment – they may have already worked through their indulgent phase. The band is still earning the right to experiment, but Bays says that experimentation, in this and other bands, is what has informed their sound.
"Even in this band, our early stuff was experimental, bizarre, progressive and weird. For us to write a pop record – that was the biggest challenge and the biggest experiment." These successful experiments of Hot Hot Heat’s dance dance revolution have turned "Bandages" and "No Not Now" into Top 40 singles in the U.K., despite BBC Radio One’s decision to ban the former – for reasons that were never satisfactorily explained to the band.
Bays says Radio One told them that it was trying to be sensitive to its broad audience "The downside was that we had recorded a session for Top of the Pops, which didn’t air. The upside is that it was blown way out of proportion and it got us a lot of press."
The fact that they were even considered for the BBC ‘s legendary music program at all still floors Bays, who remembers seeing Nirvana on Top of the Pops. "It just seemed so ridiculous that a punk band was on this Top 20 pop show. In the U.K. a band like us can be a Top 40 band. It seems completely bizarre to me."
Whatever exposure the band has overseas, Bays hopes that it will help repair the damaged reputation of the Canadian music industry. With pop divas such as Avril and Celine acting as Canada’s musical ambassadors to the world, this will be no small task. Hot Hot Heat is up for it and hope to take their Breakdown to the next level.
"The next big challenge is to make another Make Up The Breakdown that sounds the way we want it to," says Bays. The evolution that comes from playing 500 shows in a year and a half means that there is a good chance that the band will do just that.
"It is not going to have the same naïve quality, but I think it will be traded for a better, possibly slightly more intellectual element, but still really poppy and fun."
CELEB TOP FIVE
The five favourite winter activities of Hot Hot Heat’s Steve Bays:
1. Go for a walk by yourself.
2. Buy an entire season of a television series on video and watch it from start to finish.
3. Something random and spontaneous – i.e. get a close friend, drive to a different city, find a random bar, play pool all night, sleep in the car, get a big breakfast in the morning and drive home.
4. Stay in bed the whole day with your girlfriend.
5. Hang out with your mom. The older you get, the more it means to her. |
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