GroupThink

Menomena Interview Transcription

(I totally nabbed this pic from Band Doppler. Yoink!)

*This interview transcription is completely unedited.

Menomena Transcription
February 8, 2004
7 p.m. @ the Olympic Pub, Centralia, Washington

Interviewed and transcribed by Janna Chan for the Seattle Weekly

To read the resulting article from this interview please click on this link: Six Feet High and Rising

I met the three incredibly tall gentleman of Menomena on a balmy Sunday night in a Centralia pub. The band hails from Portland, Oregon and I call Seattle home so we agreed to meet half way. The guys were a half an hour late but their sincere apologies and affable nature more than made up for their tardiness. It didn’t hurt that they bought my dinner too. (Imagine that: A band buying the journalist dinner. Now, I’ve seen it all!)

Me: Tell me a little bit about yourselves. Where did everyone grow up? Where did you guys meet? What’s your favorite color?

Brent: I introduced myself to Danny at a show that both Danny and Justin’s band were playing in. This was senior year in high school either 1996 or 1997.

Justin: That band went on to break up and Brent and Danny lived together for awhile and decided to start a band.

Brent: Wow, this all sounds kind of weird. I approached Danny anonymously at a show and we later ended up living together. We’re both straight, though. Does it sound bad if I have to point that out?

Danny: Yeah, that does sound kind of weird. But, getting back to the point, Menomena started in the fall of 2000.

Me: So, Danny and Justin went to the same school. What school?

Danny: West Lake Christian High School. It’s a tiny private school in Lake Auspiga. It’s in a wealthy suburb and super cookie cutter.

Brent: I went to a large public school on the other side of Portland in Gresham. San Barlo High School.

Me: [Directed at Danny] Okay, so when you approached Danny at that rock show, did you go to the show specifically to see their band?

Brent: I was supposed to see this other band but they canceled and the club owner “insisted” that I see Danny and Justin’s band. I really had no plan to stay, but I guess it’s a good thing that I did. These guys played the best Pearl Jam-esque music ever.

Danny: We were scheduled to play at this all ages club called The Push. In fact, the owner of that club went on to start the Tom Fest [an annual Christian Rock music festival].

Anyways, Brent introduced himself to me after our set and I thought he was hitting on me. He asked me to come out to his car because he a had a cassette tape he wanted me to listen to. Against my better judgment I went out there with him and he handed me this tape with piano music on it. Brent was a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan at the time and he made this tape of what he thought “Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness’s” music would sound like after just reading the lyrics.

Me: [Directed at Brent] Why did you decide to do that?

Brent: I wanted to test myself by comparing my music with the Pumpkins.

Me: [Directed at Justin and Danny] When did you two start playing music together?

J: We started playing in June 1995 but we’ve known each other for 10 years.

Danny: We won the talent show during our senior year and the school had to debate whether or not we were singing Christian lyrics.

Me: Sound like a nice holy time. Well, I listened to “Am The Fun Blame Monster” many times and there doesn’t seem to be any obvious traces of Christian rock. What happened between then and now?

Danny: After high school Brent went off to the East Coast for college and the band went on a long hiatus. We would email and he would come back for holidays and he finally met Justin during a break in 1997. Menomena officially came together in 2000 after Brent graduated.

Brent: In fact, a lot of what’s on the album was written during that first year. Most of what’s on the album was created the first six months of the bands birth. It all happened quickly because we were excited to work together.

Me: Did you guys have anything out before this full-length?

Brent: We had the Rose EP which had five songs on it. Those songs all ended up on the full-length.

Me: What is the song writing process like? Is there one person who writes most of the songs or is a group effort?

Brent: All of us will write our own part for the song and we tend to bring in our own solo pieces and work it out with the group.

Justin: Brent is good at presenting a main idea by using DLR to show us a rough cut of a song.

Me: Okay, before we get ahead of ourselves. What is DLR [pronounced: deeler]? And please try to explain it to me as if I was a simpleton.

Brent: DLR stands for Digital Looping Recorder and is a computer program that I created to help us record impromptu material. DLR gives us a bunch of raw material that we can mix together at a later date. We don’t have to decide which parts will make the cut when we’re writing it. It’s hard to be creative and editing at the same time.

It came about because in the beginning whenever I had a vision of what I wanted a song to sound like the other members resisted or didn’t agree. It was always hard to reach a consensus on instrumentation. Now, each of us can use DLR to contribute ideas to songs. We can decide on the tempo of songs, add drumbeats or loops. It’s kind of like a peace pipe where one person will record their idea and then passes it along to the next person so they can record their part.

Danny: Nearly 75 percent of our finished music is recorded on the fly with DLR. Without it we wouldn’t have been able to preserve a lot of these work sessions.

Justin: It’s a great way to start something out of nothing.

Me: Are there a lot of potential songs left on the DLR sessions?

Brent: We have a ton of unmixed DLR sessions.

J: We pick the parts that strike us first.

D: There’s a separation between the DLR sessions and the actual recording of our album. Most of our songs start out as DLR sessions. We record the demo versions with DLR but play the songs live and get a different feel and end up rerecording them without DLR. There’s only one song in the album that uses the original DLR track.

Brent: Oahu is 95 percent written and rerecorded in a half an hour and was never re-performed.

Me: Wait, so what’s on the album is done without a computer or electronic music devices?

Danny: Most everything on the album is purely organic. No looping or samples.

Me: So, you don’t use DLR when you play live? How do you guys manage to play all of the different instruments that are heard on the originals?

Brent: We consider DLR more of a tool than an actual instrument. That’s the difference between us and hip-hop music.

Me: I’m glad you brought that up. I was wondering of there was any hip hop influence on the band because of your use of sampling.

Danny: Since a lot of our music is loop based people make that association. At least 80 percent of the drums were influenced by that kind of style. I never really understood playing the drums before. Growing up and listening to Public Enemy I never understood the whole drum machine and drum loops thing. I didn't know that there wasn't an actual person playing those beats. I really wanted to play that way and try hard to imitate that bass-heavy and rhythmic drive that's in the music

Justin: I think that people’s hip hop association would most likely come from the drumbeats more than anything else.

Danny: Chuck D said that all of the Public Enemy drumbeats are based after Led Zeppelin drumbeats so it’s interesting that he’s comparing their music to a rock band so I started listening to more Zeppelin.

Me: What are you guys listing to?

Danny: Led Zeppelin, Talking Heads, Blonde Redhead, Flaming Lips.

Me: How about the lyrics? Who’s responsible for that department?

Danny’s written the most lyrics because he’s mixed down the most DLR sessions.

Danny: On the album, we share responsibility for lyrics. It depends on who mixes. It’s at that point that lyrics are generated.

Me: Who wrote “Strongest Man in the World?” How would you describe that song?

Danny: I wrote that one. I always like to shy away from analyzing my own lyrics. I don’t want to sound like the deep pretentious artist, but I hate reading interviews when artists start describing lyrics because sometimes it’s completely a different explanation of what I’m thinking. I like to leave them open ended. We kind of made a conscience decision not to put lyrics or even performance credits in the CD. I feel kind of awkward taking credit for writing lyrics to a song. I love hearing other people’s interpretations.

Me: Was there a certain tone you guys strived for when putting the album together? It seems fairly dark and moody.

Justin: I don’t think anything we’ve done has been purposeful. We agree that anything we write or mix down is just what sounds good to us. We’re not trying to write any particular kind of song.

Danny: We practice at my dad’s place in Cornelius. It’s a little wood shed that we converted into a practice space. That may have something to do with the mood of the album but I doubt it. We have our little software there and our instruments.

Me: Would this music have happened without DLR?

Danny: The band would exist but would sound different. We’re still the same people. I would imagine it would sound similar, but not as loop based.

Justin: DLR would be nothing without the people operating it. Say we had DLR but we were the worst musicians ever—the music would suck. I hate to put emphasis on DLR that this is what makes our music good or what are band is about because it’s just another tool.

Danny: We’re called nerds all the time.

Brent: People reading about DLR might think that we’re some sort of electronica or midi band. It doesn’t write music for us. It just stores it. It doesn’t auto tune or synthesize anything for us.

Me: Are you considering getting a patent for it?

Brent: It’s something we want to use for us. But if someone wants to use it too then that’s great. After I made DLR I found out that there was this software called ableton live and it was very similar. I invented this program and someone else beat me to it.

Me: How long did it take you to create this program?

Brent: Not that long. The midi version took me a month to create in spring 2000. The digital audio version I wrote in two months in the fall of 2000. Since then I’ve been working on an even better version. Hopefully it will let us bridge to using it live. But we will never be electronica or Kid A [Radiohead album]. It’s just another tool. We’re just three people playing all of these instruments and it presents a challenge live trying to do the song justice. Some songs require playing five instruments, but live we have to pick and choose what parts to emphasize, what instruments to play, and with DLR it might help us get around that. But I don’t know if the other guys are as on board with the DLR live thing.

Me: I have a personal affinity with the song “Oahu” because that’s where I was born and raised. You guys managed to capture the essence of what island life is like in a nutshell.

Danny: Wow, thank you so much. That’s a huge complement. I lived in Oahu for seven years. Hawaii is very dear to my heart. We started writing this whole album with a concept. For all the lyrics and songs I wrote, they were based on a singular concept, a story with characters and series of events. The concept fell apart because we decided not to pursue it. Someone saw us live and had comments on the lyrics because he thought we were singing from a first person point of view and he thought that we were talking about ourselves. It’s not necessarily about us exactly. It’s from other people’s point of view.

Brent: Not for me. I know that you guys are writing it as someone else but the songs are still really personal for you right?

Justin: Well, yeah. The song’s not necessarily about me. Not literal. It’s just story telling.

Me: Does it make it easier to pretend to be other people because the songs are so personal?

Brent: Some of the lyrics do stem from personal experiences. Foe example, “Rose,” and “Monkey’s Back.”

Justin: The song is different from the majority of the other songs. It was the only outside song that we adapted. And it was very different before we adapted it. Less angry.

Brent: I had already written the song before Menomena. It’s an example of what sounded right at the time. I try to be true to what I’m feeling at the moment. We’re not trying to appeal to the tween market.

Me: Let’s talk about your seemingly instant success. You guys have been all over the Internet and in various music mags with stellar reviews. What happened?

Brent: We didn’t come out of nowhere. We’re living in Cornelius and Aloha. We made the album completely on our own. We did everything but mastering.

Danny: It’s weird that people think that we’re famous now or something. In our own lives nothing has changed. We still make every CD to order by hand and I still make copies for a living

[The album came out in Late May 2003. Within 6 months the album was a hit. It made Pitchfork’s Top 50, Number 32.]

Me: How did you guys promote yourself? Did you just send out CDs?

Danny: The Pitchfork thing was great. We owe a lot to them. We hadn’t even heard of the Website before. They were recommended to us. They overlooked the fact that we didn’t have distribution, a manager, a lawyer or a publicist, record label and they still picked up our album and listened to it. They’re not a tool of the industry. Their readers picked up on the album and we started selling CDs from our Website. We even sold a CD to someone in Israel. We’ve done reasonably well in Portland, before Pitchfork.

Justin: We’ve been playing as a band for two and a half years so it’s funny to hear that we came out of nowhere. We’ve paid our dues and are still paying them.

Brent: We seem to have a very grassroots success. There’s a handful of people out there that seek out new music and go to the trouble of ordering from our Website. We still make every CD to order by hand.

Me: Are you guys being courted by labels?

Justin: We have a lot of options right now and we have been contacted by some people, but we certainly haven’t been courted.

Me: Do you guys hope to have your next album distributed by a label?

Justin: We’re still trying to figure all that out. We don’t even know if we want to go that route. We’re not opposed to anything. We’re not counting our chickens before they hatch. It seems that we’ve done pretty well on our own. Danny has spent countless hours making the CDs. If we were to expand any further we would choose to have our album licensed by a label because we’ve already recorded and produced it and have sold enough copies to make us happy for the time being. It would be nicer to reach a broader audience.

Danny: We want to tour and reach a larger audience, but there seems to be a traditional path that bands take in order to do this. We don’t really want to follow that path.

Justin: One thing that is responsible for where we are right now, musically, is discernment. We think really hard on what’s the next step we’ll take. We’ve had a couple offers made to us by smaller nice labels but we’re waiting for something that feels right. We can afford to wait. We’re having a lot of fun right now doing what we’re doing.

Danny: I love the fact that right now all the CDs we sell are put together by us. We have complete control over that. We essentially touch every CD that goes into a person’s hand. There’s dog hair in just about every CD we sell from my pug Getty Lee.

Me: How many CD’s have you guys sold?

Danny: More than 2,000, I think. I’m very embarrassed to reveal the number.

Justin: Yeah we moved over 2000 units in the past quarter.

Me: So what are you working on now?

Justin: At this point we’re just trying to get along. This is a serious relationship. Relationships end all the time for weird reasons and this band is no exception.

Brent: We are working with the Monster Squad Dance Troupe and Mary Schnapp. We’re helping out with the music for this dance performance. It’s all original music with one installment called, “Under An Hour.”

Justin: We’re putting rarities on the Website for people to download free. Live tracks and songs that didn’t make the album. Once a month. No plans to put out another release yet.

Me: So why did you guys decide to make your CD case a booklet?

Justin: Brent’s into animation. The cool aesthetic in general goes to Danny the graphic design grad.

Me: [Directed at Danny] Where did you go to school?

Danny: I went to the Art Institute of Portland. I’m not in graphic design industry yet. I work at a copy place where I have to wear a navy blue apron.

Me: I suppose that answers the flip book question. It’s all paid for. How about you Brent, what school did you go to?

B: I went to Dartmouth. There’s a stigma. I studied Theatre modified with Music. I wrote a musical for my final project.

Me: How did you get into computer programming?

Brent: It was always a hobby. I always thought that I should have been an engineer. I thinks like an engineer. I always wanted to be an adventurer or an inventor. I used to program in high school for fun.

Me: What do you guys do for fun?

Danny: Dance Dance Revolution.

Me: You’re not serious?

Danny: I got a Play Station for Christmas and there’s this game called DDR. I have two of the floor pads. We’ve been known to go head to head to “Day’s Go By” by Dirty Vegas. I usually win for some reason. Well, I own it.

Justin: We’re thinking of getting Brent to program one of our songs into the game and that way we could go into the arcade and know all the moves instinctively.

###

For more information about Menomena check out www.menomena.com

Blue Scholars Interview Transcription

*This interview transcription is completely unedited.

Blue Scholars Transcription
December 9, 2004
1 p.m. @ Fort St. George Restaurant, Seattle, Washington

Interviewed and transcribed by Janna Chan for AsianAvenue.com

To read the resulting article from this interview please click on this link: Getting Schooled

After the introductory small talk…

Me: So tell me how this all got started. How did you two meet?

Geo: We met at the UW, the student hip hop organization of Washington (SHOW), in 1999. But I don’t think that it was until late 2001, early 2002, when I first started hearing Sabzi’s beats. There was a CD circulating to get feedback.

Me: How was it?

Geo: I was feeling it. We started recording but we had no intentions of being a group or putting out an album. None of that. We just wanted to record a few songs and see what happens.

Sabzi: We weren’t that serious about the whole thing.

Me: Was there a certain point when you decided that you wanted to make a career out of music?

Sabzi: I have a feeling that technically what I was doing was a hobby, but deep down we wanted to be better musicians. But we were taking baby steps—we didn’t want to get ahead of ourselves.

Geo: Yeah, we wanted to first get comfortable with the recording process even though we were using really ghetto equipment. Once we got that down we would listen to our songs and we thought they were really tight. Then we played it for some friends and they were not as down with it. They recommended we work on our shit. The people who supported us gave us some confidence and the people who critiqued us gave us a blueprint—guidance on what we needed to work on.

Me: That’s cool. Well when did everything start coming together? When did you guys have your first show?

Geo: Shit really started happening around winter 2003 but we did our first show in summer 2002. Our first show ever was in Portland at the Ash Street Saloon with the Typical Cats and Prime Meridian. It was the “The Urban Architecture Tour.” IN fact, I think it was sponsored by AsianAvenue. I remember the date and everything: July 27, 2002.

Sabzi: We hopped on two of their tour dates. Geo had a relationship with these groups through the SHOW. They were our Chicago family. It was a good bill and crowd during those first shows.

Me: How did you feel during that first show?

Sabzi: I felt really really nervous even though there were only 20 people there.

Geo: That made me more nervous. We were essentially performing for our family and friends who had never seen us before but knew we were a hip hop group. It was kind of like a private rehearsal for them to see if we could impress our own homeys.

Sabzi: …and I wasn't 21 yet so I had to sneak in.

Geo: Driving three hours to do your first show is horrifying.

Sabzi: We listened to these beat CDs and were rehearsing the whole time.

Me: Well, what happened after that show? Did it pump you guys up?

Geo: We had a good unit of friends and family that gave us good feedback that gave us motivation to stick with it. Maybe six months later in January or February 2003 is when we started to get shows on our own merit without the homey hookup. People started to hear about us. There’s a correlation between our longing to want to make our live show tighter and when we started working on the album because the first 10 to12 songs we put together we performed maybe 4 or 5 of them in a set and we weren’t satisfied with them. We got sick of them real fast. Early that year is when we started hitting the beats really hard.

Me: What changed?

Sabzi: I think it was the fact that we now had an outlet to share our creative material with the community. It boosted our incentive to improve. I started to manually play beats on the turntable and Geo would MC over it and that was well received by audiences as well as with hip hop nerds who understood the craft. We started to purposefully analyze music and that was a major factor in our metamorphosis into musicians.

So we wanted to really have a dynamic show that incorporated the DJ and MC instead of someone just pushing a mini disc player in the background and an MC who would just stand there. We didn’t want an album advertisement. We wanted to do a show. I started to purposefully analyze the music/hip hop a lot more. Through a lot of study I started to notice more and more the differences between where we were at and where our influences were at. The quality of the sound itself. I started sampling more raw breaks instead of just programming electronic drums. No one samples as much anymore in the mainstream. Now I work with strictly vinyl samples. I take pieces of old records and rearrange them. Like RJD2 or DJ Shadow. There are no programmed drum breaks. We take multiple samples from various sources.

When we started we were just taking one sample and looping it and played a drum beat over it. That’s what most mainstream hip hop is doing. I just got more involved with the production. We started developing.

Me: Well this leads me to the question about complexity in hip hop. You guys have been complemented and criticized for your straight forward style. Does hip hop need to me complex to be truly underground or high quality?

Geo: The term mass media, mainstream, implies that it reaches the widest audience possible and in order to do this you have to touch on universal themes that can reach out to various communities and crowds. You would be surprised at how interwoven all of our experiences are.

The easy route is to use a popular formula and duplicate that over and over again. We kept this in mind when we were putting the album together—that there was this mainstream music—but we also recognize that a lot of the stuff that’s mainstream now was once innovative and groundbreaking before it became formulaic. Through recognizing that we weren’t going to try too hard to copy a formula. We definitely would study it and take the good elements and add a little of our own. For example, with Sabzi, there was a break between the beats that I first heard him make and the stuff he was producing before the album came out. He just got mad experimental and made some tight and not so tight beats, but all in all it was a learning experience for him.

For me as an MC, when I met Sabzi I was still a closet MC and was more into spoken word so I was at the time just blending the two and not caring about if it sounded tight or not. Once I came to the realization that there was an audience out there that was programmed to listen to hip hop in a certain way we both became aware that we shouldn’t pander to these people but keep it simple and real. I touch upon a lot of complex issues in my lyrics and as long as they are accessible it’s all good. Accessibility is key because if people don’t understand where you’re coming from it defeats the purpose. Some people want to be really eccentric and still expect to gain a mass audience and that’s not very realistic. You can’t do one and do another. Well, maybe you can after your dead.

Me: Do you guys have a target audience?

Geo: I’ve never done this before in an interview but I’m gonna try it now [While saying this Geo is drawing a circle on a napkin that resembles a bull’s-eye]. We have a concentric circle. It’s us in the middle and our music is radiating out. We do have a core audience [as he points to second circle from the center] but that’s not all. We want to reach these people out here [he points to the area outside of the circle]. We would like a wider audience. Mass appeal. But if we don’t get it it’s all good. It feels good to preach to the choir because it’s more self-fulfilling than actually going out and trying to reach and influence other circles.

Sabzi: Our Friend Marc said that “Blue Scholars’ music is good music that takes the form of hip hop.” I agree with that. Of course it’s more than just that. It’s certainly hip hop because it was born and bred within a hip hop context. We set out making a hip hop album. We didn’t say, "We’re going to make a good music album with hip hop influences."

If you ask any real successful producer, or anyone working behind the scenes with a long career in the industry, they will tell you that all music is really the same. For the most part within this culture nothing has really changed since the Beatles. Musical concepts and what’s pleasing to someone’s ear are universal and they’ll tackle different forms from different genres. I think a lot of our music has certain things that are simply pleasing to the ear and the style is determined by our own personal style.

Our goal, first and foremost is to create a quality product. We want to live up to our potential as musicians. We didn’t set out to specifically sell 10,000 units to these people because in doing so would influence the creation of our music and the only thing that we want to do that is our lives and the music we listen to.

Me: You guys mention Seattle landmarks and history throughout the album. Is it realistic to expect people outside the city to relate or even be interested in your music?

Geo: I spoke with Nasty Nes who co-produced Sir- Mix-A-Lot’s breakthrough album, "My Posse’s on Broadway," and their aim was to reach just the Seattle audience. They wanted to make an anthem for Seattle folks because everybody [here] knows where Broadway is. What they didn’t anticipate was that the album would be a huge hit and that people all over the country could relate to the Broadway in their hood or an equivalent. There’s this universal element. A lot of the things we talk about may seem very Seattle-centric on the surface but it has a universal theme. I talk about Chinatown, specifically in the International District, but there’s a Chinatown equivalent in almost every other major city.

Sabzi: There are also universal principles that apply to every Broadway, Chinatown and University District in America. Everyone’s got a University Ave.

Geo: A lot of these East Coast rappers talk specifically about their boroughs and their projects and I ain’t ever been there before. I’ve never visited. When I was listening to these albums as a teenager I had never been to any of these places they rap about but I could relate to it. You know, like a core of crazy people all cracked out on the corner or roaches scurrying across your living room. I related to that. The more you touch upon your life experiences you’ll find people who can relate to it indirectly.

Me: I’m gonna back track now because I’m unorganized and that’s what I do. Tell me about how you guys came up with the name of the group? Where do you guys come from?

Sabzi: Here’s my short family history. My father comes from Iran and my ancestors in Iran were farmers in villages…They came from nothing and became successful and then had it all stolen and now that side of the family is in the United States and trying to achieve the American dream. Then my mom is from the projects of Beacon Hill in White Center. I grew up mostly in Lake City and the Kenmore area. My mom is White. All I know is that my parents have worked their entire lives with wage, and not salary jobs.

Me: [Directed to Sabzi] How did you get into music?

Sabzi: I’ve been writing music and composing since I was 6-years-old and my mother sings. They’ve been supportive of it in terms of, “If he takes piano lessons he’ll do better in school.” I had to stay inside and play piano.

Me: Being a DJ is very different from playing the Piano.

Sabzi: It sure is. My mother continuously says with disgust, “I can’t believe that you studied piano for so long and you’re not doing anything with it.” I try to tell her that I am. The piano is such a universally applicable instrument that taught me everything about music.

My dad was supportive of it as a hobby but never as a career until just recently when all of these articles about us started coming out. That goes for the rest of my extended family.

Me: Well, I know you and Geo met while in school. What degree did you end up getting?

Sabzi: I got an economics degree. Can’t say that I’m really using it now. I think that, al least, all those years where I was “working for free” for SHOW and spending late nights driving other artists around or picking up food for the catering at the shows is finally paying off. I don’t think my family understands what we do at all.

Me: Have they come out to see you guys?

Sabzi: No. They saw us once or twice when we were doing something for a community center. I mean events that are just so far form the scale of things we’ve been doing recently. It’s kind of like when you have a friend who really likes a band and takes you to go see them and you’re like, “Yeah, this sucks.” I think for a long time they thought that that was the level that we were at. To be fair, my parents work all the time so it’s hard for them to come and see us. I also wait for those times when we do those nice family style shows where I can bring them out.

Geo: I say about 80-90 percent of the shows we do, my parents would not dig it at all. If I even curse once on stage my parents would be so disappointed. I think the one show they came out to was one of those family oriented shows. My family works all the time too so they can’t really come out and see us.

Me: [Directed at Geo] How many shows have your parent’s been to?

Geo: Just that one. It was a family-ass show on a Sunday afternoon at the Langston Hughes Community Center. They still think it’s a hobby for me. I’ll tell them about a show in Florida and my mom will be like, “Is your work okay with that?”

…But getting back to our roots, I was an army brat. We moved around a lot.

My whole family is working class as hell. I got uncles and cousins who are working construction in the Middle East. My mom was a maid in Italy, that’s how she met my dad. Just growing up I’ve been exposed to nothing but people who work hard for very little. All that got accentuated in Hawaii. We lived on the Navy base and we were poor put we didn’t know it because everyone around us was in the same situation. It wasn’t until we moved to the mainland and you go to school and you have a whole bunch of people from various backgrounds. I was always conscience of that especially being an 80s kid. I was always bugging my moms and pops to get me a Nintendo or a Transformers and they could never afford it. I would have to wait for a special occasion and even then I’d get the bootleg versions of them.

Me: [Directed at Geo] Are both your parents Filipino?

Geo: Yeah. Both are first generation too. They are very Asian and they do not like this hip hop music. I remember coming home from school one day and all my tapes were gone. I actually got suspended from school once because I had an NWA tape and they had to come in and get me. They just hated hip hop after that. One time they found one of my Del The Funky Homosapien tapes and on the back of the liner notes he’s lighting a joint up and they were furious.

Me: When did you start listening to hip hop?

Geo: It’s funny, especially after telling you about my parents, but my dad got me into it. He likes a lot of mainstream music. He’s one of those guys who doesn’t know too much under the surface of music but he listens to the radio a lot and watches MTV. It’s funny because sometimes he’ll just bust out singing some hip hop song and have no idea what he’s saying. He got me my first tape. I didn’t know about this hip hop thing. I was just listening to 80s pop music. My dad got me one of those generic tapes like “Rap’s Greatest Hits Volume 11,” or something. It had the Fat Boys, Run DMC and the Beastie Boys. That blew me away. I just rocked that tape over and over again. After that there was no turning back. I was buying tapes once in a while but around 1989-90 I started stealing tapes from the Tower Records because that’s when that whole Tipper Gore and Parental Advisory sticker thing came out. I remember going up to the counter with two singles and the dude said I wasn’t old enough to buy them. I was like, OK, and started stealing them. Funny how that had a negative effect.

It wasn’t until I met up with a group of friends that was really hip hop centric, like into breaking and tagging, that I got seriously into hip hop. This was a identity formation period of my life, like junior high, and we became more conscience of who we were. Before seventh grade I had all kinds of friends—black, white, Asian—but once seventh grade hit I only hung out with Filipino kids for some reason. Even though it wasn’t political at the time I think that it was definitely a politically motivated thing that happened. You know, sticking to people who you were familiar with, that looked like you to avoid racial conflicts that were happening at the time. It was around 1992-93 that hip hop stopped being just a hobby. I wasn’t just a spectator anymore. I was studying the culture and staying up late listening to hip hop shows like Rap Attack and reading rap magazines. We all started putting our money together and I remember pitching in $5 with like four other people to get the 1994 DMC world championship tape. We all made recordings and passed it out to each other. The early 90s also happens to be the era of hip hop that influences the Blue Scholars the most.

Me: Does it hurt to not be black when making hip hop music?

Sabzi: At this point, in regards to access to different audiences, not so much. I think in the mainstream, yes. Like Jin is one example. As much as he tries to ride that line between representing his ethnicity while making ethnicity a non-issue—he can’t. When people look at him, they only see an Asian rapper.

Geo: It’s hard as hell to blend in. But in the underground I would argue that that scene is majority white. The rappers, and artists and promoters that run the game—it’s white dominated. I mean, Eminem didn’t just blow up. He made a name for himself in the underground. He was accepted more because of this. He had a core audience.

There are also different genres of hip hop. The mass media likes to project black/urban hip hop as Nelly, Ja Rule, Ludacris, and it’s hard for anyone who isn’t black to come out.

Me: Off topic again. So I heard that you guys recorded and produced this album yourself. How much did it all cost?

Sabzi: Under a $1000.

Geo: What about the pressing costs?

Sabzi: That doesn’t count. That’s a distribution cost. Not a recording cost.

Me: Has there been any buzz from the music industry? Do you guys even want to be on a major label?

Sabzi: Maybe, but we don’t really care.

Geo: From what I hear, there’s interest from industry peeps. Like so and so from Capitol Records likes this and that and stuff.

Sabzi: Personally, when I hear stuff like that it’s not nearly as exciting as when, like, when I went to Milwaukee. Three people bought the CD from me. That’s way more exciting. The fact that we have a chance to personally connect with a fan is mind blowing.

Me: Aren’t you guys afraid that the costs of being a musician might catch up with you?

Sabzi: There has been a track record of other artists who were able to sell 2 million records without major label support. Like Ani DiFranco. Not to say that we can sell 2 mil by ourselves, but I am much more impressed with that. IN fact, if I had to make a statement right no I would say: “Fuck major labels—We’ll do this ourselves!”

Me: Well, what’s next? I know you guys are re-releasing your first album with additional tracks. When can we expect a second album?

Geo: We’re working on it. We’re really excited to showcase who we are and how we’ve grown.

Me: Do you guys have a picture of your ideal future?

Geo: Definitely. I want to be a direct influence on the younger generation. I mean, not like that we think we’re all that, but it’s like, we have respect for our predecessors and it would be nice to know that we impacted our younger equivalents.

Sabzi: I want self-determination. I’m sick of being forced to buy back my time. I would like to be of some importance. I certainly don’t think that we’re pioneers in the scene but we’re also not new jacks.

It would be great to continue connecting with the community. I think that cultural arts can change the world.

Me: Now that you mention that, I read somewhere that you guys maintain a healthy relationship with a lot of community groups. Can you tell me a little about that?

Geo: As a group, we have facilitated workshops through the Wing Luke [Asian Museum] and the Langston Hughes [Performing Arts Center]. We talk to kids about the history of hip hop and we have demonstrations on to use turntables and other aspects of the culture. We want to encourage social consciousness while exposing these kids to new ideas.

Me: What age group do you guys mostly work with?

Sabzi: Primarily teen and adolescents.

Me: What part of your presentation gets the most response?

Sabzi: I think they're more excited to meet the turntables than they are to meet us. It’s cool though. It helps me remember my childhood.

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The re-release of the Blue Scholars’ self-titled debut will be out in Spring 2005. For a comprehensive list of concert dates, album info or general information about the group check out, www.bluescholars.com

Getting Schooled

Photo by Rachel Cendana courtesy of the Blue Scholars

By Janna Chan for AsianAvenue.com

It’s a rainy, overcast, and bone chilling December afternoon in Seattle. Cars whiz by J-walking pedestrians on a sparse Chinatown street and teenagers duck into the neighborhood diner to keep their designer bags dry. Two guys sitting at a center table in the diner briefly look up from their chicken curry rice concoctions to wave me over. I look long and hard at these two everyday looking guys. Both are dressed in baggy, fairly average looking, clothes and neither have what the kids call “bling” around their necks or on their fingers. These guys are supposed to be Seattle’s latest hip hop sensation?—Absolutely. In every sense of the word. Meet the Blue Scholars.

It’s not unusual for people to pass George Quibuyen, 24, aka MC Geologic, and Alexei Saba Mohajerjasbi, 23, aka DJ Sabzi, everyday without knowing who they are. Yes, music from their debut, self-titled album is played on the popular independent radio station, KEXP, everyday. And yes, they did just win the Seattle Weekly’s best album of 2004 award—but these two still have a knack at blending in with the crowd. Maybe that has something to do with their namesake: The Blue Scholars. The duo came up with the name as an homage to the blue collar roots of their families and the fact that both were privileged enough to get college educations. The result has been an album that chronicles the life and experiences of the working class and paints a vivid picture of passion, adolescence, love and friendship on a universal level. The trick, according to Geo, is using material that everyone can wrap their minds around. “The term mass media, mainstream, implies that it reaches the widest audience possible,” said Geo while finishing up a mouthful of food. “In order to do this you have to touch on universal themes that can reach out to various communities and crowds. You would be surprised at how interwoven all of our experiences are.”

On their 43 minute long, 12 track album Geo, the lone MC in the group, does not wax poetic about huge global affairs or big booties. Instead, he talks about living off the fat of the land, giving back to the community and about what it’s like to grow up in the city. On the track, “Bruise Brothers,” Geo raps: “Blue is for the color of the collar of my mother and father plus the scholars that we be/ The blue is for the nighttime mood swinging tune of every bluesman singing what it’s like to not be free.” In this song, Geo is talking about his pursuit of hip hop and having to prove himself to producers and other musicians. This is his version of honest hard work in relation to that of his parents. “I touch upon a lot of complex issues in my lyrics and as long as they are accessible it’s all good,” said Geo. “Accessibility is key because if people don’t understand where you’re coming from it defeats the purpose. I think that the more you tap into your life experiences you’ll find people who can relate to it indirectly.”

Geo and Sabzi first met while attending the University of Washington in 1999. Both of them were heavily involved in the Student Hip Hop Organization of Washington (SHOW) and had individual dreams of becoming an MC and a DJ. At the time, Geo was studying for a double major in history and American ethnic studies and was a spoken word artist for the Isangmahal Filipino arts collective. Sabzi was going for an economics degree and was just experimenting with scratching records and mixing beats together. It wasn’t until late 2001 that the Blue Scholars started taking shape, but even then the idea of a career in hip hop was far-fetched for both of them.

“I have a feeling that technically what I was doing was a hobby, but deep down we wanted to be better musicians,” said Sabzi. “We were taking baby steps because we didn’t want to get ahead of ourselves.”

By the summer of 2002, the Blue Scholars got booked for their very first live show in a dingy Portland bar and rocked out for approximately 20 people. (Coincidentally their performance was part of the Urban Architecture Tour sponsored by AsianAvenue). But, like the saying goes, it’s not the size that matters. “That first show was a career changing moment,” said Geo. “We felt good performing in front of people and I think it was the fact that we now had an outlet to share our creative material with the community that boosted our incentive to improve.” After taking a long drag from his cigarette Sabzi added, “I started to manually play beats on the turntable and Geo would MC over it and that was well received by audiences as well as with hip hop nerds who understood the craft. We started to purposefully analyze music and that was a major factor in our metamorphosis into musicians.”

It’s been nearly three years since this duo played their first gig and they have managed an impressive level of local success in a city that hasn’t celebrated any hip hop musician since Sir-Mix-A-Lot. The guys ended 2004 with a gig opening for De La Soul and filmed a video for their single, “Freewheelin.” The guys have sold more than 3,000 albums since February 2004 (all of which are made to order by the duo themselves) and, did I mention, that they are, and have always been, sans-record label? The two admit that not having a label behind them is a conscious decision on their part to avoid losing touch with their fans and music. Sure, that’s what they all say—except it seems like these two actually mean it.

“Our goal, first and foremost, is to create a quality product,” said Sabzi. “We want to live up to our potential as musicians. We didn’t set out to specifically sell 10,000 units to these people because doing so would influence the creation of our music; and the only thing that we want to do that is our lives and the music we listen to.” Geo added, “I mean, of course we want our music to reach a mass audience, but we are genuinely weary of anyone who might want to market us as something we’re not. I think we’re both happy to keep producing and pressing our own albums so long as we can continue to make good music.” Their blue collar brethren would have it no other way.

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The Blue Scholars will be playing at the Fais Do-Do in Los Angeles on Feb. 4, at the Chop Suey in Seattle on Feb. 11 and at the University of Pennsylvania on Feb. 18. For more concert dates and information about the Blue Scholars check out their Website, www.bluescholars.com