On a typically cold
March evening back in 2001, I was blindly wandering around the kitchen
of the long-lost local house show mecca the Pirate House when someone
came up to me and asked if I planned on checking out Fred’s
new band downstairs. Only knowing Mr. Fred Thomas musically from
his band Lovesick, I said that I probably would, knowing full well
that it all depended on how many cute girls I saw walking downstairs.
Moments later, I shook my head as I heard what sounded like the
pop jam of the decade blasting up through the floor. In disbelief,
I asked around, “Is this Fred’s new band playing right
now?” As the masses of nodding heads moved past me, all quickly
dashed into the basement, I followed. Down there I saw Saturday
Looks Good To Me play their first-ever live show like they were
the old champions of the rock world comin’ back for a reunion
tour. They were tight, poppin’, concrete solid and gearing
to explode. There was an electric buzz in the basement that night.
Everyone knew this band wouldn’t stay in the basement for
long. Through all the various line-up changes over the last few
years, Saturday Looks Good To Me has been not just as good as that
first night, but close to a billion times better. Every time I’ve
seen them play, myself and everyone in the audience has always been
blown apart. After a bunch of American and world tours, SLTGM is
coming back to Ann Arbor this month for a Blind Pig show with Detroit
popmasters Outrageous Cherry. To get up to speed, I had to recent
pleasure to talk with Thomas about his band, himself, music, time
travel and everything else that matters in the universe.
Ann Arbor Paper: What is Saturday
Looks Good to Me up to these days?
Fred Thomas: We’ve been touring for a long
time to support our last album, and we’re getting ready to
go to Europe. When we get back we’re starting work on our
next record, hopefully to be the best of them all.
A2P: Over SLGTM’s many-year run, what have
been some of the band’s, in your opinion, highest and lowest
moments?
FT: Every show and every tour and every recording
session all kind of contain the highest and the lowest of our moments.
The majority of our first European tour was pretty amazing, totally
inspiring. At a gig in Glasgow, half the 25-person audience was
made up of members of Belle & Sebastian, Teenage Fanclub and
Camera Obscura, and it felt really amazing to play music for people
whose music had inspired me. Then of course, three nights later
we were in Norwich, England, locked in a little room and sleeping
on a pool table that had clearly been thrown up and pissed on more
than once that week. The highs and lows come in quick succession.
A2P: What were some of your chief inspirations
and ambitions when starting SLGTM?
FT: When the band started it was my attempt to
make punk dance music, not to be confused with dance punk and certainly
not danse punk. Motown and Stax and all the old soul and dance singles
that were recorded so shitty and crumbly sounded so awesome, and
were made under intense logistic and monetary limitations. The ideal
and sentiments of those low-budget ‘60’s soul operations
were really similar to those of d.i.y. culture, but the sounds seemed
to me so much more lasting and timelessly beautiful. I wanted to
make music like that.
A2P: Beatles or Elvis?
FT: Don’t you mean “I’m Looking
Through You” or “Suspicious Minds”? It’s
still too tough a call.
A2P: Lennon or McCartney?
FT: Lennon all the way. Listening to anything McCartney
has done after Wings (which was still on the verge of not being
that good) just adds more weight to the fact that Lennon was running
things.
A2P: What was the last album you listened to, after
not having heard for a while, and had forgotten how much it “rocked”?
FT: On an overnight drive to NYC last fall tour
we stayed up listening to Gish by the Smashing Pumpkins. For a debut
album made in 1991, it held up amazingly well and “rocked”
more than I even remember from the hazy summer of my tenth grade
year.
A2P: How do you feel about the current state of
mainstream music?
FT: I honestly haven’t been paying too close
of attention to it. I heard that new, ridiculous and cool song by
the Gorillaz, that ruled. The rest of it just kind of passes by
like air.
A2P: How do you feel about the local music scene?
FT: The local music scene is pretty amazing, and
still sufficiently unaware of itself to stay great, hopefully. Ann
Arbor has always been and hopefully always will be full of talented
artists, musicians, writers, etc. Maybe due to the transient nature
of college towns, and the consistent youth culture presence therein,
or maybe just because it’s a really special place, unlike
any other. Without dropping any names, I’ll say that a lot
of the different sects of music happening in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti,
and all around Michigan are really exciting, and could even border
on being miniature movements.
A2P: What do you feel is left for you or SLGTM to accomplish
musically?
FT: There’s always somewhere new to go musically,
and the sound of our next record is changing more and more as we
keep messing around with it and making up new songs. Some bands
can kind of just make their first record every couple of years and
still rule, but I don’t know if that’s the thing for
us.
A2P: Do you believe time travel is possible? If
it was would you do it?
FT: Well, we’ve all seen the abbreviation
“E = mc2”, maybe in fake graffiti in a teen movie or
written on a box of cereal or something like that, and most of us
recognize this equation as Einstein’s famous theory of relativity,
but let’s expand on it just a little bit.
This foreshortened tag means “Energy (E) = Mass (m) multiplied
by the speed of light (c) squared (2)”. In very rudimentary
terms Einstein is proposing that energy happens when mass, or more
directly, molecules move at a rate of the speed of light squared.
Molecules, like the planets, rotate and vibrate at the same time,
and when moving fast enough this, theoretically, creates motion,
energy, the spark by which we live. The relativity in the theory
of relativity could be speed, but it could also be direction. Think
about it. . . if molecules moving at a certain speed creates life
and energy and moves us forward through time, reversing the direction
of those molecules’ rotation could (again, theoretically)
move us backwards through time, or allow us to live backwards, perhaps
reversing the vibrations of our bodies and the matter around us,
or maybe even taking us into some Back To The Future shit.If
there were a way to live backwards, I would totally try it out.
A2P: With school starting up again in Ann Arbor, do you
have any advice for the kids?
FT: Be nice. You may have a lot to figure out,
and I’ve heard it’s really stressful to go to college,
but don’t be such a dick about it. You’ll feel better
and be happier if you’re friendly and cool to everyone.
A2P: How would you describe Morrissey to a person
from another planet?
FT: I would start by explaining the concept of
the kid driving in a car listening to a Smiths tape. I would try
to somehow make it clear that the sound and the band isn’t
so much the main factor as the drive and the kid, and hopefully
it’s raining and the kid is of course bummed out, generally
and for no real direct or specific reason. After conveying this
I would try to get the person from another world to imagine a being
singing about his adventures in celibacy and vaguely forbidden love,
all the while aware that his words were like the pollen of the flower,
sifting invisibly through the atmosphere, coasting on a shadow of
itself for the reflection of every kid in every car driving nowhere
and singing along to words and feelings that vanish instantly with
the next reluctant girlfriend or thirty-cent raise at the supermarket.
A2P: How did you ever first get turned on to music?
Do you remember the first album you got?
FT: Like a lot of children growing in the 1980’s,
my parents had a ton of records around the house, and I would listen
to those in the family room. I wasn’t sure why they were good,
but I knew they were important. My mom and dad only had Rolling
Stones, Bob Dylan and Neil Young records, maybe like a random Joni
Mitchell or Savoy Brown one in there. I think the first record I
bought for myself, though was Skid Row’s first one. On cassette,
of course.
A2P: What would it take to get you to join a KISS
tribute band?
FT: Black and white make up and a confirmed gig.
KISS was an amazing band in their prime, and so many KISS tribute
bands have been almost more amazing. There was that midget KISS
band, the all French-translated cover band, and most amazingly was
ACES HIGH, Detroit’s own KISS tribute group where everyone
in the band was Ace Freeley. Amazing.
A2P: Which musical format holds the most beauty
for you: the mix tape, vinyl, mix CD or other?
FT: The mix tape is a sad and beautiful creature.
Like the endangered tiger, lurking with majesty and grandeur but
also aware of its numbered days. Records are always awesome, and
the mix cd doesn’t even chart. If someone makes you a mix
CD with no case and no sweet cover or anything, you might as well
stop talking to them.
A2P: What has been the strangest crowd response
SLGTM has ever gotten?
FT: We were shocked at the reception at a gig in
Sweden where kids were really freaking out, even to the mellowest
jams. This one kid kept screaming something repeatedly and I couldn’t
figure out what he was saying. I listened closely as I could and
heard him bellowing and braying the words “Phil Spector.”
A2P: Have you ever had a hairstyle, that looking
back, you’re not very proud of?
FT: It’s funny you should ask that! Every
so often I think it’s really healthy to re-access pride and
what proud pride times mean to each of us, as individuals. When
hair grows from your pores, it also dies, leaving a strange dichotomy
sprouting and brambolting forth from both scalp and corner alike.
In the end, the nerve may get pulled and pre-ambled, but pull all
you want! The meaning is already dead.
A2P: Do you agree with Elton John that sad songs
say so much?
FT: Yes and no.
A2P: In your long history with Michigan music,
what have been some of the artists that in your opinion have been
grossly overlooked?
FT: Gravitar, Couch, 36 Sails, Galen, Jaks, Tiger
100, The Rationals, High School, The Butler, Ohio, The Triggers,
Spindle, Godzuki, And Spiders, The Snitches, Igloo, Pterodactyls,
LABLobotomy, The Weather Channel, The Fags (punk band, not shitty
new band), Henry and June (half the members were from Ohio, but
they still ruled), Mini Systems, Maximum Cloud, AAB and Butterfly.
A2P: If SLGTM were to end next week, how would
you like the band to be remembered?
FT: Maybe you woke up some morning and the first
thing you thought about was how your life was all fucked up and
you looked around and your room or your house or whatever was all
shitty and filthy, or maybe worse, clean and sterile but totally
empty, right? Void of feeling and lacking tangible beauty. You look
around and you see nobody, so you kind of lay in bed and wonder
if there’s a god or if anybody wrote you any e-mails or if
anyone in the world is waiting to meet you or some shit such as
that. You go through your day and some things go right, but then
some other things go wrong, and maybe it’s just another boring
day where it seems like the universe is aligned against you, and
you just sigh cause it feels more and more typical of your existence,
not even sad, just whatever and a drag. The whole fucking day is
like that! You miss the bus, some kid at Subway pukes on you, whatever.
Then the night falls, slowly and invisibly from the sky. You find
yourself out later than you thought, and even though you didn’t
think you were gonna go out that night, something has drawn you
into the nighttime. The stars and the darkness seem to have a new
degree of clarity, busting through the murk that has been your day.
Things are changing and different by the moment, a little scary
but also very exciting. There’s nothing amazing or unbelievable
happening, but somehow you feel so good and so different, like everything
that was working against you is apologizing and reversing itself.
A very normal setting is somehow terrific and electrified. A get-together
becomes a dance party with no enemies or exes. The regular night
at the bar is magical. You’re drunk enough for some strange
first kiss, but not enough to regret anything that’s happening
tomorrow. You remember the potentiality of joy again, but you don’t
remember it with those big stupid words. You remember a smell from
when you were five or maybe a feeling you felt very physically when
you were sixteen. Wonder and nervous happiness that ran through
your arms and chest, a little bit painful but complete and natural.
If Saturday Looks Good To Me ended next week, I would want you to
remember us as the song playing on the stereo when you felt the
way I just described.
Saturday Looks Good To Me plays the Blind Pig
on Saturday, September 10. Doors 9:30. 18+, $10. 208 S. First, Ann
Arbor. (734) 996-8555 |
photos by Doug Coombe
|
