Stop Standing Still

CLASH AND BURN: Carolyn Chernoff of The Motherfucking Clash speaks her mind all show long (left). Jeff Ziga does freelance fire-breathing for Aim of Conrad (right).

Local artists share their moves.

by M.J. Fine

Yeah, you're an artist, and good for you. But you're also an entertainer. You can have the chops from here till Tuesday, but that doesn't mean much if you want to hold the crowd's attention. If music lovers wanted a purely auditory experience, they'd stay home with the stereo.

Put on a damn show.

This is how some of your neighbors do it.

What: Dress for success

Who: KeN bassist Marina D'Angelo

"We basically talk about what we are going to wear for each show...Usually we choose some seasonal theme or something that has to do with the bands we are playing with or the venue or some personal conversation we had at practice. ...When we played a Thanksgiving-week show, we did a 'bountiful harvest' theme and dressed like pilgrims with a scarlet letter A on our chests. When we played with Alice Donut, we all sported our late-'80s punkster look and wore band tees from that era. Or, when [guitarist] Kristin [Thomson] was pregnant, we all wore shirts with a sperm and arrow pointing toward her on stage. Her shirt had a bull's-eye on the belly with a baby head in it and [drummer] Matt [Weatherbee]'s shirt said 'not guilty.' Or, when we played a benefit at Yards Brewery, we all dressed like Laverne and Shirley in their brewer's uniforms and wore large Ks on our shirts."

What: Spectacular props

Who: P.T. Lovekraft singer Xero

"Our grand-finale number 'has been "Fuck You, Fuck Dracula.' One night, my friend Helen Back invited us to play at the Fringe Festival cabaret and we decided to add a 12-foot blow-up Dracula into the mayhem. All I kept thinking was, 'Why won't that damn thing blow up all the way!' Then during the breakdown of the song I realized the zipper was undone, so I had a chance to zip it up and by the aggressive ending of the song it was up to its full 12 feet!"

What: Fire-breathing

Who: Aim of Conrad guitarist Jack Drummond and singer/guitarist Matt Smyth

Drummond: "The fire-breathing thing came about simply because our friend, Jeff Ziga, did it for his old band, R5, when we were on our first tour. Even though it's been done to death by lots of other bands, we still thought it looked cool and asked him to do it for us at a couple of shows in Philly. The best one he did was at the Killtime in West Philly. The ceiling was really high there and I swear that the fireball went like 15 to 20 feet. We don't really do it anymore because of what happened to Great White."

Smyth: "At the beginning of the show, I had forgotten that Jeff was going to spit fire. As the intro to the first song came in, I jumped off the stage. As I was in the air, flames engulfed my entire head. It was amazing."

What: Multimedia self-karaoke rock

Who: LotSix

"Anyone can sit at home and listen to a CD, watch TV or surf the Net. I wanted to make people come to watch and listen to me and my show. Otherwise, I may as well stay at home myself, singing into a brush in my bathroom mirror. ...I design the visuals to complement, accent, clarify, expand or even juxtapose the content of my songs. The visuals allow the songs to resonate on many levels. ...I can add visual humor to soften intense subjects such as an abusive relationship. ...Some songwriters like to leave mystery to their words so listeners can interpret it for themselves. I don't want to touch anyone that deeply. I want to control the interpretation, so I include my lyrics in the visuals. ...This also realizes the parallel to videodisc-driven karaoke where you read the lyrics over a cheesy video. I currently use slide-show software with still images or animated GIFs."

What: Higher power energy

Who: Rowdee Black Giants MC Jermaine Young

"In order to prepare for shows, we make sure we pray prior to each show and tell each other, 'You're the best to ever do it.' Once we take care of those particulars, it's showtime. We know people want to feel the music and we do everything, within reason, to give them what they want. Aside from that, all we need to do is hear the band and our energy is soaring. ...The best stage presence comes from believing in the music. We believe in our music and it shows in our performance."

What: Everybody talks, full-band style

Who: Capitol Years bassist Dave Wayne Daniels and singer/guitarist Shai Halperin

Daniels: "The talking-at-once idea is the kind of thing you can only come up with when you are trapped in a van for a very long time with the same three people."

Halperin: "I thought about it randomly one day..."

Daniels: "Anyone with any kind of sense, or responsibility, or normalcy built into their lives would just never even consider something so stupid. It's basically a goof on the idea of 'between-song banter.'"

Halperin: "...and the first night we tried it, it worked perfectly."

Daniels: "As most of us know, musicians shouldn't talk. At all. Seriously, when you play to 11 people in fucking Opelika, Ala., not a single one of them wants to hear about how the next song was written about your ex-girlfriend and your struggle to make sense of love and companionship in these troubled modern times. It's just insane to assume anyone could give a shit."

Halperin: "It lightens the mood a bit, disarms people who might be listening and watching a bit too seriously."

Daniels: "Plus, the sound at most clubs is near shit, and anything you say comes out almost entirely incomprehensible."

Halperin: "It's information overload. You can choose which one of us you want to listen to."

Daniels: "We figured, why not draw attention to the utter silliness of it all? And so we all talk at the same time."

Halperin: "We each say what we want. Sometimes we single out people in the audience, each other or we complain about the club, or what we had for dinner, what we did that day."

Daniels: "As far as I know, no one ever has anything planned to say. We just sort of ad-lib it. I've found myself rambling on about anything from U.S. foreign policy to the preparation of caprese salad, but very often it simply degenerates into drunken obscenity."

What: Everybody talks, one-woman-band style

Who: The Motherfucking Clash, a.k.a. Carolyn Chernoff

"Kim Gordon wrote a piece for Artforum years ago that basically said that we go to rock shows and pay money to watch someone else believe in themselves. ...Paying for the privilege of watching some band believe in themselves sticks in the craw of the MFC. Don't get us wrong — paying to participate in our culture, in our rock culture, can be as satisfying as anything, but not to do so in a way that reifies those old false gods of rock 'n' roll. Like Patti Smith said, 'We created it; let's take it over.' The MFC tries to make good on that. In reality, it should be participation that rules the scene, not distance or expertise or false dichotomies. Performing is a way of breaking down the walls between performer and consumer. The MFC is not just a punk band, but also a complex and nuanced meditation on the meaning of punk rock, of performing a rebel identity for the pleasure of others. Call and response, the pastiche elements of our intros and outros where we weave together a sonic tapestry from many existing songs and the invitation to touch our pompadour for a dollar are all calculated to poke holes in that glossy, unified and ultimately false notion that the performer owns the performance."

What: Physical abandon

Who: Snow Fairies bassist Neal Ramirez

"Did I plan to jump into the drums? No. They weren't my drums, and I was raised better than to mess with other people's stuff. I was very sorry to Justin [Staller], our drummer. Luckily, nothing was broken. At a basement show near D.C., playing the same song that caused the cymbal collision ('Water and Beer'), I threw Jayme [Guokas'] guitar and that wasn't a cool thing to do at all. I hope I never smash a guitar. I don't see the point in it as a performer. As a spectator, I must admit I'm fascinated with destruction. If a performer breaks something because the frustration factor has reached a certain level, that is fun to watch. If a band premeditates it and breaks something to put on a grand finale, I might chuckle but it's like adding a vocoder to your song because Ladytron's doing it and Ladytron is cool. "I'm not looking for the next Stooges when I go see a band, but to all the bands who are contemplating writing songs and jumping on a bill, at least try to put on a show. Don't talk! Play music! I don't go to shows for a lesson in cool. I go to rock out."