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August 14-20, 2008
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Return to sender
From Elvis to Kafka: the evolution of a modern literary voice
by Dale Bridges
And now, a little spice
Alt-rockers Pepper had to earn their success the hard way
by Alan Sculley
Return to sender
From Elvis to Kafka: the evolution of a modern literary voice
by Dale Bridges
About a month or so ago, during a conversation over beer and queso at a Mexican restaurant on The Hill, Daniel Grandbois told me that he once broke down in tears during an Elvis Presley concert. He was just a kid at the time, and Elvis was his hero. In fact, Grandbois’ loyalty to the Memphis superstar was so great that he refused to even listen to other musicians. His friends tried to introduce him to The Beatles and The Beach Boys, but Grandbois scoffed at them. There was only one King of Rock ’n’ Roll. When Elvis finally arrived in Colorado on a comeback tour, Grandbois’ parents took him to the show, and he got so excited during the performance that he started to weep right there in public. His mother asked him what was wrong, but he couldn’t explain it. He still can’t.
It takes a certain type of boy to become a devoted Elvis fan. You have to be whimsical enough to appreciate a dude dressed in a sequined jumpsuit, but it’s essential that you also understand the playful melancholy inherent in the music. Elvis’s songs are often deceptively happy on the surface (especially the early ones), but the lyrics usually describe a tragic scenario. Like all great entertainers, Elvis was a storyteller at heart, and his unique blend of upbeat rhythms and lonely narratives set a precedent in pop music that persists to this day.
It will probably come as no surprise to learn that Grandbois eventually became a professional musician and a writer of bizarre, poignant tales. He currently plays bass in popular local bands such as Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, Tarantella and Munly, all of which have been integral in shaping “The Denver Sound.”
I met with Grandbois to discuss his book, Unlucky Lucky Days, a dainty little tome that contains no fewer than 72 stories in no more than 119 pages.
I call them “stories,” but I’m not sure that’s an accurate description. While every piece features characters of some kind who engage in conflict, the events do not follow a traditional literary format. The writing is too surreal to be classified as flash fiction, but it’s not structured or conceived as poetry. In fact, it might be more accurate to call them “narrative poems,” although I’m not sure such a designation exists, since I just made it up. Here’s an example from a piece called “The Tunnel”:
A man and a woman stepped into a tunnel. It was lighter inside than they had expected. In fact, the deeper they went, the lighter it became until the light was so bright that it blinded them both.
That’s the entire piece. Three sentences. But what’s sort of amazing is how much Grandbois achieves in three sentences. There are two characters who take action to accomplish a specific goal. There is an obstacle in their way. The characters overcome the obstacle, but they suffer in the process.
Do I know what it means? No. But I do get a definite feeling from the piece and a vivid mental picture — a sense of adventure and obsession that ultimately fades to loss.
Grandbois is not exactly sure how to categorize his writing, either, and like any good artist, he’s reluctant to push his own interpretations on the reader. They’re experimental ideas, he says. They’re pieces of a puzzle.
But it’s a critic’s job to define the indefinable; therefore, in a desperate attempt to look like they know what they’re talking about, book reviewers have compared Grandbois’ style to Borges and Kipling and even Dr. Seuss. Of course, this is mostly bullshit. Grandbois’ writing isn’t subversive enough to be true satire, and it’s too sophisticated to be classified as children’s literature. If Unlucky Lucky Days ever makes it into The New Yorker, I’m certain the term “magical realism” will be bandied about with the appropriate level of intellectual snootiness, but I don’t buy that moniker, either. While there’s definitely some Kafka action going on here, it’s mostly conceptual and only partially stylistic. Kafka’s sense of humor was much, much darker than Grandbois’, possibly because the Czechs are just a morose group of bastards in general and possibly because Kafka was dying of tuberculosis while he was doing most of his writing.
In any case, it’s my opinion that Grandbois has tapped into something more obvious and elemental than the intellectual garage sale he’s been associated with. Like Les Claypool (another bass player turned writer), Grandbois is finding ways to bring pop culture into the literary sphere.
Ultimately, when I read this book, I think of a man standing alone on a stage dressed in a long, white cape. This man is old, but he wants to be young. He has long sideburns and a beautiful pompadour of jet-black hair. In the audience, there is a young boy, sensitive and full of imagination. The man sings about blue suede shoes and women who ain’t nothin’ but hound dogs and letters that are marked “return to sender,” and the boy cries. But he doesn’t know why.
On the Bill
Daniel Grandbois will read from his book, Unlucky Lucky Days, at 9 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 18, at the Laughing Goat, 1709 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-440-4628.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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And now, a little spice
Alt-rockers Pepper had to earn their success the hard way
by Alan Sculley
As with most bands that get a major label deal, Pepper hoped signing to the Atlantic Records imprint, Lava Records, for its 2006 CD, No Shame, would mean big things for the band.
“Like any band we wanted to sell tons of records and spread our wings as far as possible,” Pepper drummer Yesod Williams succinctly explained in a recent phone interview.
Pepper, though, never really got to find out what a major-label deal could do for its career. Shortly after finalizing the deal, Lava was shut down, and the band’s deal was transferred to Atlantic itself, a move that Williams said pretty much meant Pepper and the No Shame album would be lost in the shuffle.
“I would honestly have to say we were dumped into a bunch of peoples’ hands that really, I don’t think, had an interest in the band,” he said. “So it was just something they weren’t planning on, and they really didn’t put a lot behind it (the CD).
“I mean, we had (a single) ‘No Control,’ pretty much with no help reach number 19 on the alternative charts,” Williams said. “It’s one of those things where I’m looking at Atlantic like ‘OK, it’s already there. It’s already in the top 20. Let’s just push it a bit.’ They were just like ‘We want to wipe our hands clean and be done with it.’”
That sort of indifference would be a huge setback for many bands, not to mention a source of considerable bitterness. Not for Pepper.
And today, Williams looks back at the No Shame saga as a blessing in disguise in that it pushed Pepper to take further control of its own destiny by deciding to self-release its future records
“I know getting dropped by a record label is not (supposed to be) a good thing, but it really was the best-case scenario, and it’s really what put us on the platform to release our own albums,” Williams said.
Pepper certainly didn’t lose any momentum with the failed Atlantic deal. No Shame sold 75,000 copies. More significantly, the group’s popularity as a live act has continued to grow unabated.
And as Pepper returns to action with a new CD, Pink Crustaceans and Good Vibrations, it is launching its biggest tour yet. The band’s late summer trek (with Slightly Stoopid and opening act Sly & Robbie) takes Williams and his bandmates Bret Bollinger (vocals/bass) and Kaleo Wassman (vocals/guitar) into medium-sized amphitheaters and large theater venues — plus one notable large venue, Red Rocks Amphitheatre near Denver.
There’s been no magic secret to Pepper’s success, Williams said.
“It’s just hard work, and just staying on the road and sacrificing being home a lot and this and that,” he said. “It was a struggle for a few years, and finally we started to see, like, payback from all of our hard work and what not. So we just kept at it.”
Pepper began its gradual climb 11 years ago when Bollinger, Wassman and Williams moved to San Diego from the big island of Hawaii.
The group got a first break in 2002 when it landed a deal with Volcom Records, which re-released the group’s debut CD, Give’n It, and helped Pepper start moving up on the touring circuit.
The band went on to release two more CDs on Volcom — Kona Town in 2002 and In With The Old in 2004 — while seeing its audience expand beyond an initial core base that came largely from the surf-punk scene.
But with the release of Pink Crustaceans and Good Vibrations, Williams feels Pepper has created its most cohesive and focused collection of music, which draws primarily on rock, reggae and soul/hip-hop.
The band finds common ground in many songs with the easy-going groove that populates the soul-tinged rock pop of songs like “Love 101,” “Things That You Love” and “Lucy.” The band’s affection for reggae and ska, meanwhile, is apparent on tunes such as “Musical 69” (which adds some pleasing pop crunch to this reggae track) and “Davey Jones Locker” (which suggests the lilting rhythms of the genre, while not specifically employing reggae beats). A harder edge in the group’s sound emerges on tuneful rockers like “Do Something” and “Stand & Fall.”
“I think the new album is the most complete thought we’ve had as far as an album goes,” he said. “And I have heard people say it’s probably our most soulful album we’ve ever made, and that really makes me happy, too.”
In a live setting, Pepper has never seemed to lack for confidence, but Williams said he might be a little awestruck on this next tour by being in the presence of Sly & Robbie, the innovative rhythm section that has been featured on albums by the likes of Black Uhuru, Beenie Man, Bunny Wailer and Jimmy Cliff, to name a few.
“When our management called us up and told us they (Sly & Robbie) were on the tour, I had to pinch myself,” Williams said. “You talk about legends in the music industry; I keep telling everyone we’re going to be in the presence of legends every day.”
In the Box:
Pepper will perform with Umconscious at 9 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 16, at the Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder, 303-443-3399.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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