Local Brooklyn band Fiasco

I have never come across a more perfect embodiment of the chaos traditionally associated with all bands and musicians until I was confronted with that which accompanies Brooklyn math-punk-ish band Fiasco. I interviewed them late in 2008, when they were opening in NYC for Vampire Weekend, and it was a mess: they were meandering in and out of the room; their friends stopped by; there were chips and dip, which was awesome; and it was just so clear that these guys were completely in their element. Nor have I ever conducted a more bizarre, random interview... we talked about, like, what, David Bowie and octopi? The conversation is erratic, fragmented, and wildly fun, which makes sense, because it's clear these guys are having the time of their lives.

So you guys have been interviewed before but this is going to be a little bit different. Tell me your opinion of Ron Paul in five sentences or less.
LUCIAN BUSCEMI: Five sentences or…

I’m kidding!
LB: What?
JULIAN BENNETT HOLMES: Aw!

But if you want to, go ahead.
LB: [counting words on his fingers] Ron Paul is....
JONATHAN EDELSTEIN: That’s words.
LB: Oh. Five sentences? [laughter] I like Ron Paul. His views on certain issues are very good, but on some things I disagree with him.
JBH: I think he’s a little crazy. But he’s pretty cool; I’m glad he’s not our president, but he was a good candidate. That was one sentence.

No, it’s three, actually.
JBH: Three? Well, that second statement wasn’t a sentence. There was a semicolon.

So you said that this is the first time you’ve played a venue this size. That’s really exciting. So how did you get on the ticket for this?
JBH: Vampire weekend just asked us to play. Their agent called our agent. Like, “Can Fiasco play?” “Yeah.”
LB: And also you know the singer.
JBH: Yeah, I know the singer and he was like, “Yeah, I like your guys’ music video,” and so I guess they like us.

Well, presumably, because you’re here now. So how long has Fiasco been in music?
LB: Well, actually, we’ve all been playing together since 2003, ‘cause we had a different band before this one.
JBH: [checking his phone] Someone bought the polo shirt!
JE: Sweet!
LB: So Fiasco has been around since 2005, but we all went to school together at one point, we’re all friends, and all decided to make music together.

Yeah, do you all live in Park Slope?
JBH: Yes.

I actually found out about you guys through Sophia Warren.
JBH: Right. How do you guys know each other?

Through school. Yeah, we both go to [the same school].
JBH: Awesome.
JE: What grade are you in?

I’m a junior, so I’m one ahead of her. [other people walk into the room]
A FRIEND OF THE BAND: Are we being recorded?

Yes. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a public medium.
JBH: [in a funny voice] Nice shoes!
LB: [in a funnier voice] Thanks, they’re white!
JBH: Like pure souls.

So since 2003 you guys have been making music, and you started in a different band?
LB: Yes. It was called Stun Gun.

When did Stun Gun turn into Fiasco?
JBH: 2005.
LB: Stun Gun officially broke up in January of 2006. And Fiasco formed while Stungun was still happening.

With different people?
JBH: One extra member.
LB: Who played guitar.

What’s your philosophy on life?
LB: Life is a beach. Wear a towel when you go to it. [laughter]
JBH: Life is a chandelier; hang it on your ceiling. [laughs] Um… that’s a good question. I was talking to my friend the other day whom I’m also in a band with, his name is Mark Dinardo, and we were saying that we had a philosophy for playing music and for business and you should always say yes to people. And never turn things down.

So your philosophy is yes?
JBH: Yes.
JE: When you’re young it’s important.
LB: [in a funny voice] Wanna share a needle? Yes! [laughter]
JBH: That’s my philosophy in life: always say yes!
LB: You should see that movie with Jim Carrey, Yes Man, where he decides to say yes to everything.

Well he always says yes and it lands him Zooey Deschanel.
LB: I feel like at the end he learns you can say no sometimes.
JE: Who’s she?
LB: The girl from Elf.
JBH: Can someone hand me that white paper? [they begin drawing up a tracklist for the show]

I thought you would say something more musical.
JBH: “Always say yes” applies to music!

Well, “always say yes” applies to music. [laughs] “Life is a beach” doesn’t really apply to music. What are your idols in terms of sounds?
LB: Well, I know that we all started out kinda hardcore, we naturally grew out of it and started listening to different things, and I could say now that we… we’re very eclectic. But for the new album that’s coming out at the time we were realty into the Hella, Don Caballero… like stoner metal.
JBH: What’s stoner metal?
LB: And Pelican… Yeah, that’s about it.
JBH: Jazz… [to Jonathan] what were you into?
JE: Uh… the Beach Boys? I don’t know when.
JBH: No, but August 2007.
LB: That was like the center point of this album, of us writing the songs.

Yeah, you guys got signed recently to a new label, right?
LB: New Clothes Records.

So how did that happen?
JBH: I’ll tell you the story. I’m in this band called Orphans, and we played a show in Long Island at this place the Ghost Squad and Impose Magazine sent out some writers to do a feature on it. And so they heard a song and were like, “Oh, you’re Fiasco!” and we’re like, “Yeah!” And they were like, “Call us, we have a record label,” and I called his editor-in-chief on the spot and we were like “Yeah, let’s have a meeting.” So very fast. And then it took us like three months to sign the contract. But basically it was like a done deal in two weeks.
JE: We had a plan to send our demo to all these different labels.
JBH: But before we could this happened.
LB: It was great.

Before this didn’t you release some albums on a self-run record label?
LB: Yeah, one CD. And that’s the only other release material. But yeah, we had a record label but it's now dormant.

Dormant like a volcano waiting to erupt or...
JBH: Dormant like Latin the language. [raucous laughter] It might come back some day, but probably not.
LB: No, I would go with volcano.

Oh, nice to hear that even Fiasco is not a fan of my choice in languages. I take Latin, but it has no practical use whatsoever except for talking to the Pope, which I don’t plan on doing.
JBH: [working on the song list] That’s not gonna help.
LB: I don’t care.
JBH: You’re going to be asking me what song to play next.
LB: I’ll see a picture of a monster and be like, “Oh, that’s Oh You Horny Monster up next.”
JBH: You’re gonna be like, “Oh, a cat?”
LB: That’s not a cat.

[looking at pictures representing songs on the tracklist] Okay so what is this? You’ve got a monster. Is it a fish?
JBH: The song’s called Fishing.
LB: Well, it’s like fishing with a hook and expecting to catch fish.
JBH: Wait, you wanna not sing three in a row?

So the track list is mostly songs from your album?
JE: Four songs from the track list are off the album and then a couple are just songs we wrote and there’s no album for it yet. And then one song is off the old record.

So a couple of it is testing out the new material?
LB: Kind of. There’s no new songs.

Remind me, have you played Sophia’s?
LB: Yeah we were the first band to play Sophia’s house.
JE: We played there like four times this weekend.
JBH: In Perspective, when you’re playing “Do-do-do-do” we’re going to do a little noisy thing and then you should join in.
LB: Perspective?
JBH: At the end of Perspective you know how you go “Do do do do”?
LB: Oh.
JBH: So we’re going to start and then you can come in.

So you’ve been playing shows around New York?
LB: Well, the first place we ever played that wasn’t New York City was Westchester County.
JBH: It’s true. White Plains.
LB: And then we played- the next place that wasn’t New York City was Bosnia. So that was really awesome.
JBH: We didn’t even go to New Jersey first!
LB: So now we’ve played mostly around the East Coast.
JE: We went around the Northeast.
LB: Northeastern Tour. And then the farthest West we’ve ever been was Texas for SXSW.
JE: We’re hoping to go to Europe at some point, later in the winter.
LB: This Christmas break we’re doing a four-day tour to four different states and then in LB: March we’re going to go down by South by Southwest and then make our way back.

Oh yeah, I heard you guys were playing at South by Southwest. And Sophia told me about Bosnia too isn’t that where you guys decided to make your email “thefiascoband”? I heard that you guys were always introduced as “The Fiasco Band”.
LB: Oh yes. There was this really funny flyer for one show and they have the different dates of things that would be on a TV loop on different stills and one of them was “The Fiasco Band USA, this date this time” and in retrospect we actually should have changed our email to “The Fiasco Band USA”, but we didn’t. But, yeah, so that’s how we got the email. We just thought it was really funny.

So now it’s your new name in Bosnia. You’re Fiasco except when you go to Bosnia, and then you’re The Fiasco Band.
JBH: The Fiasco Band, USA.

The Fiasco Band, USA. Okay.
JBH: We should have changed our email to that.

So in Europe what are some places that you are trying to arrange to play at?
JBH: This agent would book it for us. So wherever he wants to put us. I expect Germany, France, and London.
LB: I know a lot of bands do a UK tour and then a European tour.
JBH: Unless they’re a European band.
LB: And I’ve never heard of like a “France tour”.
JBH: But some bands do Europe and they include the UK.
LB: We do want to go back to Bosnia cuz we had the greatest time there. We were talking the other day but we decided that we want to play every place that we can. Like if someone’s like “Let’s do tour of India!” like, “Fuck yeah we’ll do a tour of India!” “Wanna do a tour of Mongolia?” “Sure!”

There’s Julian’s philosophy, always say yes.
JBH: And then I think like a pretty realistic thing that I think we’ll be able to achieve is go to Japan. Which I really want to do. Really badly.

What if a classical musician were to ask “Hey, can I play on a track?” What would you say?
LB: Maybe. We’d say maybe.

So always say yes except sometimes maybe?
LB: Sometimes no too. We have different philosophies.

So tell me a story.
LB: So this guy has an octopus and he’s an Englishman. And the Englishman goes into a pub with his octopus and he says “I bet my octopus can play any instrument given.” So a Welshman says “Okay, here’s a guitar,” and the octopus plays a beautiful sonata, everyone in the pub is weeping. And an Irishman gives him a violin. And the octopus plays it beautifully and everyone’s sobbing, weeping, and going crazy. And then a Scotsman goes “Play this,” and he hands him some bagpipes and the octopus kind of touches it, looks it over, looks at it, stares at it. And the Englishman goes “What are you doing? Play it!” And the octopus goes “Play it? Once I get its pajamas off I’m going to fuck it!”

[laughter] All right, I haven’t heard that one before. I think I’ll keep that one away from my twelve year old brother. Um, so tell me about some of the stuff that you’re playing tonight.
LB: Thirsty is a song where we switch instruments. Oh You Horny Monster is a song named after this monster stuffed animal that lives in my basement.

So it’s that kind of horny.
LB: It’s the opposite of an innuendo. It sounds like it would be sexual but it’s actually not. Threshold is new, brand new. We played it once before.
JE: Wild Goose is really old.

All right. So how do you guys collaborate for songwriting purposes?
JE: Well, we usually don’t collaborate at all. Usually one person will have like an idea and they’ll have written the whole thing or one person will make up something and the other two will make up something to that.

You said that the album that’s coming out is predominately metal or math rock. Do you get influenced by or listen to music that’s completely far away from that?
JE: Yeah, definitely. We all really like rap music. My philosophy is that there’s good stuff in every genre, you just have to dig deep to find it. A lot of people will say that a given genre, like country, sucks, but they haven’t heard it every single thing in the genre. Everywhere you look there’s bound to be something good.
LB: I know that there are some artists that I really like, their lyrics tell a story instead of writing something poetic or whatever. And there’s a song that I wrote where there’s nothing you can analyze. You shouldn’t analyze it, I feel. You should just listen to the story. So stuff like that. And, like, the music that I’ve heard that idea from sounds pretty much nothing like our music. And also, like, we have a song called “David Bowie’s Balls”. It actually has nothing to do with David Bowie either. [laughter] But, say, with rap, we’re definitely influenced by the culture of it. Like our new album, the album that we’re planning on to be the next one—
JBH: This is exclusive, by the way.

Is this off the record?
LB: Oh, nah. No. Our idea is our cover is going to be us all wearing suits with chains.
JBH: We might re-enact a specific shot from Goodfellas. Which is actually in our neighborhood, fortunately.
LB: And there’s going to be gold cursive and a nice gold frame.
JBH: I want to press the record on gold vinyl.

That might be hard to engineer.
JBH: Oh, it’s been done.
LB: There’s an all white record.
JBH: My dad actually has a single of White Rabbit on white vinyl.

That’s amazing.
LB: But also back to the whole thing, there’s definitely some classical music that I really like and it’s more of, like, not the way it sounds but like “I like those notes he’s using.” Like we don’t have a string section. But there’s this dude named Argo Perry, and he’s amazing. And I love the way his music sounds and the notes he uses and sometimes I’ll be like “Hmm, that’s a cool note.” Stuff like that.
JE: I feel like only to us it would be cool. Those outer influences…
LB: No one’s going to be like “Oh my god it sounds like Argo Perry!” [laughter]
JE: I know some stuff I’ve written that people would recognize, but no one knows who he is.
JBH: And if you use a jazz line no one knows it.

Well, in response to what you were saying earlier, I’ve noticed that musicians tend to either focus on personal experiences or emotions or something like that or they tell stories about characters. Most music can be divided up into those categories.
JBH: I would say that lyrics could go into those two categories.

That’s what I was referring to.
JBH: Which one are we?
LB: Both, I guess.
JBH: Yeah, because we have a song about Star Wars.

I didn’t say that certain artists are one or the other, just that certain songs are.
JBH: Yeah, cuz I was thinking, my drumming isn’t telling a story about myself.

Yeah, I’m not reading that much into it. It kind of reminds me of all the people who would write five page essays on the meaning of “I am the Walrus”. And it’s like...no. I feel like they probably wrote it when they were so beyond high. “Oh… these words sounds nice”.
LB: It would be cool to be in the Beatles.
JE: That would be cool, yeah.
JBH: Yeah, at the time. It must suck to be Paul McCartney and be like “I’ve done so much stuff and I never topped what I did like forty years ago.” Unless maybe he thinks he did, but probably not.

Well half the band is dead now.
LB: I think we still have a bet on—I remembered in 6th grade we bet on who would die first.
JBH: I bet that Ringo would die first and you bet that Paul would die first.
LB: Yeah.

And now they’re both still alive, so neither of you have won yet.
LB: It was when George was still alive.
JBH: And now every member of the Jimi Hendrix Experience is dead.
LB: Oh, that’s sad.

Well, the world scorns me when I say this because everyone’s like, “Oh, they’re an ersatz Beatles! They’re not worth anything!” But I’m personally still happy that all of the Monkees are still alive. [laughter]
JE: Nice.
LB: They had some good songs.

I grew up on their TV show.
JBH: My dad always tells this story about like when he was young and the Beatles were around and there would be magazine covers around that would be like “Who’s better, The Beatles or Herman’s Hermits?” Stuff like that. And then Sergeant Pepper’s came out and everybody was like “Okay, the Beatles are the best.” And we don’t think about it that way because the Beatles are remembered differently, but it was like, “Who’s better?”

Well you don’t really know who’s going to have lasting impact until like ten or twenty years later. In music, in politics, in literature, in anything. You don’t know what’s going to stick around. Even if it seems like it’s going to stick around forever.
JE: I wonder if Sarah Palin’s gonna stick around.
JBH: I don’t think so.
LB: I think it’s going to be like twenty years.

I hope to god she doesn’t stick around.
LB: My theory is that like twenty years from now some TV show is going to make a reference to her and everyone’s going to be like “Oh, yeah, her! What a crazy bitch that was!”

I should hope that’s the reaction. I don’t want people to be like “We missed out on such a good thing!” I’m praying that that’s not the reaction. Either way, though, people are going to remember this election.
LB: That’s definitely true.

Did any of you vote?
LB: No. I just turned 18 so I could have in theory.
JBH: I’m still 17.
JE: Only one of the people who goes to our school got to vote.
LB: One girl could have, but she just didn’t.

So we’ve already talked about music that you’ve listened to. Do you guys get influenced by literature and film?
LB: For me, film more than literature. Obviously, because we wrote two songs about Star Wars.

Yeah, but Star Wars is an exception. You can not be into film and still write two songs about Star Wars.
LB: Yeah, but I feel the way film would influence me would be like, “I like that story, I’m going to write about it.” Not like, “This shot makes me emotionally happy.” Like that’s really cool and fine but that’s not the way I think about things. Also like the imagery in film I could see being an album cover. Like the Goodfellas reference. Like stuff like that. So I would say we’re influenced by film, but like in a certain way. Actually our friend’s band, they broke up, but the Machetes—I would say about 80 percent of their songs were about films. Like the plot of films. Like they would just write about being a character in that film.

Any particular films? I mean, Star Wars, obviously.
LB: Goodfellas. Labyrinth! That movie made me come up with the title of David Bowie’s Balls. Cuz you could see his balls, basically.

That follows a logical thought process.
LB: Yeah. We’re very logical.

Yes. Very straightforward. Good to hear. [laughter] I won’t have to write a five page essay on one of your songs.
LB: Excellent.
JBH: Don’t! We don’t encourage that. Leave the thinking to the indie rock bands. [laughter]
LB: Most of our songs are mostly instrumental, anyway.
JE: I have no problem with really complicated lyrics, but it’s that talking about it. Like, you should form an opinion on it, but not take it to this whole new level.
LBH: Pitchfork does that.
JE: I love Pitchfork, I think they’re really good writers.
LB: But they just press Pitchfork to talk about their feelings and, like, “You say there’s no hope for the future, you say your band plays up the future of this thing, like, with the election of Barack Obama, how does that make you guys feel?” He was like, “We’re hopeful for the next four years, but that’s about it.” [laughter] “History of man is kinda of pretty much a big downer. It’s because our lives aren’t a downer right now that we could elect a black president.”

Despite the fact that we’re talking about not over-thinking shit, I’ve just finished a unit on the great philosophers of the Enlightenment in my history class, and now I’m aligning that statement with, like, a philosopher. [laughs] But it’s like what we were talking about, how people write five-page essays on I Am the Walrus—especially with huge bands, they overanalyze every song, as though it has to have meaning. Maybe it just sounds good.
LB: Well, for me, English class is—I like it, it’s not a bad subject, something that I can whiz by and it’s like nothing. Like I’m interested in it but I have to take it slowly cuz I’m new at it and I don’t really focus on it because it’s not my favorite class. Like one year I got rushed into it and basically the teacher overanalyzed everything and everything and everything. It was really horrible actually.

There are some books that can stand that, and some books—I mean, for me, The Great Gatsby, like, Catcher in the Rye, I loved those books anyway, but then you’ve got something like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Lord of the Flies, and overanalyzing just ruins it for me.
LB: Well, like, I read Catch-22 over the summer for school and I was so happy I got to read it by myself over the summer ‘cause I really enjoyed it and I don’t even know if I would have if I had been reading it in school. I probably wouldn’t even have read it.
JE: I remember when I first admitted that I knew that overanalyzing stuff was ridiculous was in 10th grade when Jonathan Lethem came to my school and people were all over him and this English teacher was like, “There’s an obvious reference to blah, blah, blah.” And he’s just like, “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. I was kind of just… writing.” And you could see my teacher’s face was just like “Oh, fuck. I wasted so many classes.” And then no one had any questions for him. All the questions were supposed to be like, “What was the motive behind this?” And he’s like “…I wrote a novel.”
LB: And, oh, my god, The Book of Ruth was the shittiest thing. But it was funny because we would overanalyze it so much that the class came to the decision that one of the central themes into the book was sandwiches. And it was like, are you kidding me? No one thinks of that. The teacher even brought it up! Like, “there’s a sandwich here and a sandwich here. What does that mean?” And she was going over the word trapped, like, “The P’s are trapped in the word ‘trapped’.” Like, who the fuck thinks of that?

To get a hold of Fiasco's music, check out their MySpace.