HAPPY HUNTNG GROUND
Disgruntled in Hollywood after a particularly bad week on the road during their three-month tour of the U.S., Agitpop exploded in my living room—spreading band members, beer bottles, ashtrays, roadies and record sleeves over every inch of the place.
The CREEM Archive presents the magazine as originally created. Digital text has been scanned from its original print format and may contain formatting quirks and inconsistencies.
HAPPY HUNTNG GROUND
Disgruntled in Hollywood after a particularly bad week on the road during their three-month tour of the U.S., Agitpop exploded in my living room—spreading band members, beer bottles, ashtrays, roadies and record sleeves over every inch of the place. Well, I did tell them to make themselves at home.
Home for Agitpop is actually Wappinger’s Falls, NY, a burg set amidst Vassar, Bard, and a slew of other colleges that recently gained infamy for the Tawana Brawley controversy. “We get typecast with that ‘college band’ stigma,” complains John DeVries, singer/guitarist/occasional percussionist for the trio. “But none of us finished college. We played the schools all the time, but we also played biker bars and redneck discos. I think people term us ‘college band’ just because it’s convenient.”
Agitpop is getting a lot of play on college stations around the country with Open Seasons, their latest record on TwinTone, which displays the fullest, most cohesive sound of their three thus far. ‘‘We’re really
happy with this record. TwinTone has been pretty supportive,” comments DeVries. ‘‘This tour’s been quite a strain—we hope it’s worth it.” Touring the country in a VW bus for the third time, it’s a wonder these three childhood friends haven’t split up or killed each other in the seven years they’ve been playing together.
“We’ve come pretty close,” says drummer Mark LaFalce. ‘‘Like the time (bassist) Rick and I decided to kick John out of the band after the show in Texas. We left for New Orleans without John and with all the band money, and he managed to hitchhike there in time for sound check. It would have been a pretty funny show with just bass and drums.” Uh-huh.
Everyone laughs at this and numerous other tales of dissent, so interband relations seem pretty healthy. There’s been considerable evolution in their sound from the days when they used to play manic thrash sets all over the Mid-Hudson Valley .(and the occasional CBGB’s and Maxwell’s set).
John is reflective: “We used to be called a hardcore band, another convenient tag, but basically I just wasn’t very confident of my singing or lyrics, so I would kinda spew everything out in stacatto bursts, and the music just followed that. Plus, we were really into the Minutemen and went for the sparse, minimal sound. But we didn’t have the musicianship to back it up.
We’ve worked a lot on that for the past two records, so we don’t have to rely so much on the weird percussiveness. We’ve integrated all the bells and chimes and toy noises instead of pushing them up front.”
The new album does accentuate the odd rhythms that Agitpop favors, but there is enough conventional bass-guitar-and-drumsto please meat and potato rock fans. An MTVrun video for “Girl But Not a Friend” and their exhaustive touring should give everyone a chance to see and hear Agitpop. And, incidentally, they cleaned up all the beer bottles and ashtrays before they left.
Brett Bush
