Veselka Café, NYC
Tuesday, June 10, 2003
Interview by Catherine Despont
Photo courtesy of Feast
Above all, Feast is a band you need to see live, and not just because
their show is the only place you can get a CD. They’ve got presence.
They head-bang, roll around, fall to the ground, stare you down and
demand response. Or actually Clare does. Singer, Clare Amory epitomizes
the heavy-metal rocker chick: tall, bleach-blonde, and doesn’t
shave her armpits. Trust me it’s hot.
Although they’ve only been together for a year, drummer Fiore
Tedesco and bass player Dane Risch are cousins and the four have known
each other since college. Longtime friend Ezra Feinberg takes over guitar
duties. They are relationships that really come out on stage. There’s
an awareness and seriousness to their performance that could only have
come from a performing arts background. The ease with which they interact
bespeaks family, and the way they talk about music— half serious,
gently intellectual and appreciative of variety— is telling of
time spent at Bard and Vassar.
Fiore couldn’t make the interview but the rest of us had breakfast
at Veselka before setting out on our work days and it’s easy to
see that Feast is having fun as a band. They talk about Metal with something
close to joy and I was also glad to find out that they have a firm grasp
on the less musical things that make bands great, ie. Rivalry. They
weren’t mean, and hardly personal but there’s nothing like
dishing a little dirt to carry a band’s persona past the realm
of their venues.
Who do you guys listen to? What Recent Bands? What are your
influences?
Clare: Definitely a lot of ‘70s heavy rock. I am totally falling
in love with this band The Gossip. I love Boredom.
Ezra: I just got an album by this band that we played with in the fall
called Dead Meadow, that just came out on Matador, they do this really
kind of space rock that’s also got really ‘70s style enormous
riffs. More recently I’ve been listening to a lot of stoner rock,
really heavy, kind of slow sensitive riffs, ‘90s. But I’ve
never listened to just one style.
Where did you guys meet each other?
Dane: I went to high school with Ezra. Ezra went to college with Clare.
And then, Fio’s my cousin.
Ezra: Clare and I kind of bonded in college over music. We used to play
for fun, because we both had this cool love of sort of left of center
indie-rock, but also stuff like AC/DC. And then after college we just
decided to start a band.
How long have you been together as a band?
Dane: In the current form, less than a year. Me and Fio have been in
it for less than a year.
Clare: Naaaa you’ve been a year! We’ll give you a year.
The thing of having a band sort of emerged slowly. Ezra and I just played
music, and then we started playing music some more after school. I was
going to move away at some point and we were like “Maybe we should
just play for this party.” I was out of the city for about four
months and then when I came back we said, “Oh well maybe we should
keep doing this,” and it has just gradually gotten more serious.
I’ve only seen you guys play once. Does Fio always play
in a Speedo?
Clare: I’d say about 70 percent of the time.
You have such an awesome persona when you’re on stage
and I wondered whether that’s something that started right off
or whether it was preconceived?
Clare: I think it just kind of happened that way.
Ezra: It’s gotten much better over time.
What’s the song where you all fall on the floor?
Ezra: That’s called “It Takes One to Know One”.
Clare: There are a few things like that, that are a plan, but I’d
say there are only two things like that and then the rest just happens.
I’m actually really psyched for us to do this tour. We’ll
be playing so much and I think so much of it is having enough time with
each other to develop spatial awareness of what’s going on. The
other thing is that our practice spaces are really cramped and I don’t
want to head bang every day because that kills. I’m just so psyched
to see what happens. I’m a dancer, so that’s always been
my thing. Even in dance, the first dance that I ever made in high school
was with two guitarists playing really, really loud and there was a
warning in the program about the loud sound. I feel like I’ve
always been drawn to somewhere in between.
Ezra: I actually performed in one of Clare’s dance pieces in college.
And that also involved rock ‘n’ roll.
Where do you guys teach and what do you teach?
Ezra: We don’t teach at the same school. I teach music at an Arts
and Literacy program in Bushwick.
Do you guys go out for a lot of noise band, performance art
scene stuff?
Ezra: You mean like Black Dice and all that stuff? I saw Black Dice
and I was completely blown away. I saw them open for The Rapture at
Warsaw about a year ago, but they’re not so much about performance
as they are about the sound.
I’m just thinking like in terms of taking advantage of
the stage and moving around, that a lot of bands restrict themselves
from going into that, except for the noise bands and performance art.
Clare: Yeah a lot of that is the involvement of dance and theater, and
a lot of times rock comes from a tradition that is not that physically
creative, and is really just physically stifled.
Dane: I think playing rock is so physically demanding that it’s
hard to do both the playing and the dancing. I mean, that’s definitely
how I’m feeling up there. I’m not coming from the stance
of how to move myself around so much as how to get the job done. It’s
just how to communicate with everybody and the best way to get that
done.
Ezra: That’s why you’re the bass player.
Dane (laughing): Yeah, I’m the bass player.
Ezra: I read this obituary for the bass player from The Who who died
a couple of months ago and they were like, “He was a genius, he
never moved.” But there are certain bands who make is seem like
it’s really lame not to move around a lot. Or not to at least
have someone moving around a lot.
Clare: I also I think there’s some sort of blatant anti-fear about
silliness.Who gives a shit about clowning around, or doing silly stuff
on purpose. That kind of stuff always seems sort of gross. But then
there’s somebody who doesn’t have a pocket full of moves,
that’s just trying different stuff and isn’t afraid of it
being silly sometimes, and that’s so exciting.
I think there’s a real sort of entertainment aspect,
that in the end feels more mature as a performance than a band that
gets up there and doesn’t move around, unless that’s really
their personality and that’s what they do. I think a lot of the
scene is just sort of getting over an adolescent fear of looking stupid,
and I wonder whether the silliness electroclash has made other bands
more willing to incorporate more on stage.
Ezra: Well I would say that if there were any positive aspect of electroclash
that would be it.
Clare: I think it’s just a revival of pageantry. I think that’s
cool, and I’m all for it. I love all the sparkle-dazzle. But I
think it’s tough to do it well and I see a lot of real bullshit.
Ezra: Yeah, I definitely back that up.
Clare: The fact that the electroclash scene has got a huge queer scene
and how it’s just so effeminate and gender-bendery is so rare.
I love the real angry shit that we play, but it’s also a really
intense masculine charge.
In terms of revival, people really do seem to be enjoying the
glam rock era, David Bowie-ish type stuff. But I can’t think of
very many people who pulled off, not androgyny, but who walked the line
so successfully.
Ezra: And also The Man Who Sold the World is one of the best
albums ever.
And Hunky Dory.
Ezra: Yeah that’s really good too.
Clare: I really like that Marilyn Manson picture of him where he’s
like a weird Barbie-doll-woman body.
Ezra: It’s really interesting to think about you know underground
rock 10 years ago compared to now. There really was this phase with
bands like Pavement that were so literary. It was so consciously college
educated for so long. There’s something really great about that
but there’s something much more celebratory about just seething
energy. I mean I still think that most of the bands that I see are mediocre
at best.
Clare: Because we’re the best band in the world.
Ezra: Obviously we’re the best, but what they’re going for
is such a different thing. All that stuff with really high-falootin
references like Stereolab is really into Phillip Glass, but no one gives
a shit about any of those people now, which is kind of too bad in a
way. But there’s something really freeing about beginning with
just a search for rock energy and then bringing in these other elements
into the mix.
At the same time, I think that also runs the risk of the sort
of criticism that a lot of people make about electronica. There are
obviously some people who do it well but then there are other people
who are just sort of spitting beats out of computers. It is interesting
though that there seem to be fewer bands like Pavement, Modest Mouse
all that kind of stuff.
Clare: But I feel like there’s a lot more folk stuff. The first
time I noticed it happening was when Palace came around and I was just
like, “Whoa!” Before that I heard Leonard Cohen with my
boyfriend at the time and his mom came in and said, “I used to
make fun of people who listened to this music.” That was the beginning
of this real folk thing. I feel like what happened was that a lot of
these bands were somewhere in between and they could be really poppy
at times and had a folk song-writing thing but still had a rock thing.
Now there’s this real split where there’s a lot of folk
stuff going on that’s really acoustic, but at the same time people
have got their metal back. Which for me, I’m like “YES!”
We got the rock back. TOOL can kind of still make stuff, and there’s
a lot of those radio ballads that really suck but that I actually love
to slow dance to. But the actual metal has just been discarded and thrown
on the floor. All of these indie bands are picking it up and seeing
what they can do with it, so there’s a whole new freedom.
I think a lot of current metal gets pushed into this really
angry listening experience, whereas I think somehow the first bands
who did it were just into the sound and into the energy of it as opposed
to really, really dark imagery.
Clare: Well it’s crazy how it went from fairies and real sci-fi.
I mean it started out totally sci-fi and then death metal went totally
violent.
Ezra: But now, nu metal like on MTV and K-Rock are like ninth generation
Nirvana things where all the lyrics are about how no one hangs out down
at the track anymore, like in the suburbs.
Clare: And those are the slow dance-y ones that I love.
Ezra: And I basically can’t stand any of them. Everyone that we
know can’t stand any of that shit except for Clare. I mean I think
System of A Down are incredible and they’re really onto something,
but in general I think that the metal on the radio are all these really
dark emotional, dramatic slow jams.
Clare: There’s no fast metal going on.
I think if anything, my favorite thing about music right now
is that although there’s a lot of revival, at this point it’s
really moving past the revival and becoming new again.
Clare: If you appropriate it and make it your own. I feel like if you’ve
got everything on the floor you can take anything and make whatever
the fuck you want with it.
Ezra: I feel like that’s always been the case, but people are
so into writing off bands as are derivative. But there’s really
nothing wrong with being derivative. If you’re good and you have
your own personality it really doesn’t matter if you sound like
other people. Everyone sounds like someone and if it doesn’t most
of the time it’s because you’re lame. I don’t think
there’s anything wrong with it. Derivative and original are not
mutually exclusive.
I don’t know why but I was jotting down questions and
I thought I’d ask whether you guys had any rival bands.
Dane: Like who the Capital Ya-Hoos? (laughter).
Ezra: We call The Capital Years the Capital Ya-Hoos.
What’s the beef?
Ezra: They are everything wrong with what a band is. It’s like
you see them and they’re really cutesy and they’re all jumping
around and everything they do is just on the shallowest level. They
just make fun of rock. I just think that they’re silly.
Clare: I just want to say that I’ve never seen them but I don’t
like them because they put their posters over our posters.
Ezra: No that wasn’t them, we’re talking about the Capital
Years.
Clare: Oh them, oh yeah they’re even worse.
Dane: They’re real assholes when they’re drunk.
Clare: Maybe we shouldn’t say this.
No, no, it’s good to have rivalries! We need to bring
back rock rivalries. Who do you see as your good competition?
Ezra: Bad Wizard! Yes Bad Wizard! We do battle with them, but they don’t
even know it. Them and Rye Coalition. Bad Wizard, first of all has this
female guitar player who is so fucking hot it’s insane, and they’re
really good. They’re super tight and it’s just one badass
‘70s riff after another.