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youremypride · 6 years

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The Truth About Love | Ch.2

☽ Have you ever love someone so much, you would do anything for them? Even disturbing the peace between the living and the afterlife? Love knows no boundaries but there is always a price to be paid. How much do you say? As much as your heart desires for your true love.

Pairing: AHS! Michael Langdon x Reader

Genre: romance, angst, violence

Warnings: mentions of death

Note: Before the new episode starts, or is starting, another chapter to get the story rolling.

Word Count: 3046 words

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After the earthquake, I had completely lost track of time. I couldn’t tell how long we were locked in those iron cages. It almost drove me insane if it weren’t for Timothy and Emily. Until one day, they released us from our captive holdings and put us in an armoured vehicle that was silver and made of metal. As I looked out of the window, all I could see was thick fog swarming everywhere. All the leaves from the trees were gone, leaving a bare and eerie look from the outcome. The bark of the trees was burnt. Was there a forest fire or something?

Everything was grey and not a single drop of colour left could be seen. How could an earthquake do so much damage like this? This is why I should’ve watched the news. All my questions were answered by the same man who had took me away.

“There was a missile attack. A lot of countries were affected by it, including us.” Missile attack? Wow, I didn’t think that would happen so soon.

The two workers from before who were supposedly addressed as Cooperative agents said they were bringing us to an outpost. A survival shelter like the ones from Fallout.

“What’s going to happen to us now?” The man threw yellowed radioactive suits at us. “Put these on. The air is contaminated. They’ll explain to you when you arrive.”

They? Who is they? As we stepped out of the vehicle with our suits on, tall black gates welcomed us and it made an unsettling feeling in my stomach. The entire area was closed off with black fences as well. Was this a gated community? No, that can’t be it. To keep people out? Those two agents said that the environment was harmful now. That must be it. I couldn’t imagine being one of the affected. Just thinking about it sent shivers running down my spine.

A figure stood in front of us, dressed in a long robe that covered the person’s entire body, hands covered with gloves and a head mask with large eye googles and an opening tube to help with breathing. It reminded me of the Brotherhood from one of the Silent Hill movies.

The figure brought us further into the clearing and as the fog begins to clear, up ahead there was a man and a woman, kneeling on the grown with three other figures similar to the one in front of us. The woman was begging for forgiveness, saying it over and over again. What was she sorry for?

It was then accompanied by loud fired shots, as both the man and the woman were shot in the head. I felt my chest tightening, my breathing rigid and heavy. Holy shit. They shot them. They fucking shot them.

The entrance to the Outpost was a short curve till we reached the centre of the structure. The figure from before held out a card to the card scanner on the wall, a beep was heard, giving access to the main entry. It was then I knew that it would be the last time I ever saw the outside.

We had been assigned to our own rooms, mine just beside Emily’s. Each room had the same necessities, and a en suite along with it. The wardrobe was filled with long purple dresses, all of them with the same design and cutting. I was never really fond of wearing dresses, but if that’s the only thing I get, then so shall it be. Once I felt the hot water of the shower hitting against my skin, I felt rejuvenated and fresh. It’s been so long since I had one, and the feeling felt so good. My hair that was once greasy was now back to its original condition. I didn’t smell like a hobo anymore and the dirt from my skin had been cleared away.

I stepped out from the shower once I was finished, only to be surprised by a message on the mirror. It had been written out from the steam of the shower. It read, ‘Duo in carne una’. I couldn’t tell what it meant. Maybe someone might tell me but I wasn’t sure if I could trust them, knowing they would be suspicious of me. With a last look in the mirror, I join Emily and Timothy to meet with the others. We followed the music that was playing which brought us to a living room, a fireplace on the other side of the walls, with bookcases and sofas mirroring each other and a coffee table in between. This must be the common room for the survivors here.

There were seven people in the room, three men and four women. One of the women was in grey clothing unlike the rest.

“Well, well, well, well, well. New blood.” The older woman closest to ask spoke. Another woman approached us, “Come in, don’t be shy.” She greeted us warmly.

“You’re Dinah Stevens,” Timothy started, “My mother used to watch your show. She said you beat the pants off Oprah any day.”

“Bless her heart, a million of her and I wouldn’t have to be replaced by that telenovela.”

From my side, a blonde man came up to us, “Um, what’s happening out there?”

“It’s all gone.” Timothy replied. “Everything.” Emily chips in.

“Nothing but death.” I spoke. Thuds started coming from behind us. Ms. Venable was approaching us. She rings a bell, pausing a while before speaking, “Dinner is served.”

A plate holding a small white jelly cube sat in the centre of it.

“It’s all we get. Don’t be too disappointed.” The blonde man now known as Mr. Gallant tells us.

“Darling, you don’t know what disappointment is until you slept with Yul Brynner.” Evie replies back to him. Dinah laughs as Mr. Gallant looks down on his food, “I want to die.”

“The cube on your plate contains every vitamin our body needs.” Dinah informs us, “Or so they tell us.” Beside Timothy, Coco had stuffed her entire cube into her mouth, wolfing it down.

“I’m still hungry. I am so tired of the hunger.” She slams her hand on the table, standing up, “Fuck this bullshit! With all the thought that went into this place, they don’t have a single bag of Pirate’s Booty in the pantry?” While Coco was ranting away with her issues, Ms. Venable and Ms. Mead approaches the dining room from behind her. “For a hundred million dollars a ticket, I expect goddamn Gordon Ramsay in the kitchen cooking us real food!”

Ms. Venable’s cane taps the floor and the room went silent. With a flick of the wrist, Coco was greeted by a slap to her face, Timothy catching her and helping her regain stability. Everyone was shocked but I knew Coco had it coming for her. From the very moment, I could tell she wasn’t appreciative of what she had. Serves you right, bitch. I bit back a smile so that no one could see it.

“I’m going to be very clear so there will be no misunderstanding. We have enough nutrition for the next 18 months. And if our situation doesn’t improve, you can count on less and less.”

“Situation? What is our situation?”

Ms. Venable had informed us about a perimeter alert they had in the morning, saying a carrier pigeon from The Cooperative had sent a message stating that governments were wiped, rotting corpses had increased and survivors out there killing each other for food. Other outposts had been overrun, leaving our outpost the only one that was currently alive. Its been told that all of this happened in a mere of two weeks.

A few others came up, saying they detected a spike coming from the room. Mr. Gallant was quick to blame us just because we recently just got here. We defended ourselves, stating that we went through the procedures before entering The Outpost.

Ms. Mead checked each and everyone of us, and the only people that were caught were Mr. Gallant and Stu. They were dragged away to the decontamination room.

Another day passed and we all gathered back to the dining room. To our surprise Mr. Gallant had joined us, without Stu. He said that he was clean and Stu wasn’t which is why he was able to get free. Andre was blabbing away saying Stu never went outside and that he was with him most of the time, Coco was talking about how she started masturbating to cure her boredom, spewing out insults, causing Andre to curse at her.

Something was off about tonight’s dinner since Ms. Venable considered it a treat after last night calling it the bonne bouche. While the others were drooling over the hot meal, Andre was still not over Stu. Coco as always, getting a spoonful of the meat, slurping it up. Timothy too had suspicions about the meat. Andre began freaking out after finding a finger bone in the stew, claiming that Stu was the stew. Everyone started gagging and coughing out, while Ms. Venable stated it was ridiculous of them to think that. It was only her, Evie and I that was left sitting on the table. Everyone didn’t want to go near the stew anymore.

Evie continued her meal, “I don’t care what it is. It’s absolutely divine, and its full of fibre. I’m going to finish every drop.

“Don’t tell me your thinking of eating the stew, Y/N.” Timothy asked me. Was it wrong? It is after all, food. I was starting to get sick of the jelly cubes. “You shouldn’t waste food, Timothy. As much as it repulses me, I’m going to savour it.” A look of pure disgust came across his face while it earned me a smile from Evie and Ms. Venable.

“Such a good child, Y/N. You all should learn to be like Y/N.” Evie chimes. “Indeed, she is.” Ms. Venable adds on.

The others begin leaving to get back to their rooms, probably cleansing their mouth a hundred times to get the lingering taste off their taste buds.

Andre was glaring at Evie and I. He had an angered expression and the looked in his eyes says he was disgusted by the both of us.

“You’re a monster,” He spite at Evie, “How could you keep eating? You knew what it was. And you, Y/N. You barely just arrived and you think eating my boyfriend was your welcoming gift?!”

“It was chicken, Andre. Delicious white meat chicken.” Evie tried to assure him it was all in his head.

Annoyed, I decided to spite back at him. He needed to stop being such a pussy just because I ate his boyfriend, no pun intended there. “In my defence, I couldn’t care less if it was Stu or not. He tasted great. It’s been such a long time since I had someone in my mouth.” A sinister grin appeared on my face, causing Andre to get worked up.

“You’re disgusting. You’re a cannibal. You’re all cannibals!” He screams. Dinah, who I knew now is his mother, had both her hands on the side of him, stopping him from his rash behaviour. “Think about it. She ate it, too. Stu was contaminated. Why would Venable eat irradiated meat?”

“That’s right,” Timothy agrees, “Why would she feed us poison? The whole reason she is here is to keep us alive.”

“What makes you so certain she wants us alive? You can never trust anyone here, not even yourself.”

Andre starts asking his mother about his body, his ugly sobs starting to make me feel irritated.

“Shut up, shut up!” Emily snaps. “Just listen.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly. The song stopped.”

The old music player had changed to another song. Mr. Gallant proclaims that it was The Cooperative sending a message, saying that they were coming for them and that they were going to be rescued.

He was wrong. They were all wrong. All of them were dejected. Drinking away their sorrows, bringing up their hopes and spirit only for it to come crashing down. I wasn’t. From the day we were attacked, the was no hope left to seek. Only death awaits to give you kiss and embraces you in their darkness.

The days were long and it felt like I was on repeat every day. Wake up in the morning, get dress for the day, eat the same gelatine cubes, hang around with the others in the common room or read the books that filled up the shelves. The place is a bore and my life is a chore. There was nothing fun to do anymore. After a few weeks, Emily and Timothy started to distance themselves away from me. I didn’t take a genius to know what they were doing behind close doors. They had been on secret rendezvous with each other and the rules about copulation was starting to make them feel agitated and lusting for more of each other.

It was better that way. I was able to sneak around the Outpost without Ms Venable or Ms Mead knowing. The Outpost had a theme going the entire place. It was decorated with antique furniture; all the rooms were lighted using fireplaces or candles causing a saturated filter in my eyes. The whole place felt old and Victorian like. They did say this used to be a school. School for what exactly? Witches? I highly doubt it. The old news about that coven school for girls years ago was just the cherry on top. As if they exist in this century.

It dawned on me that it had been eighteen months since our arrival and the attack that left the whole world in chaos. The jelly cubes were starting to get smaller, and not forgetting that one time they served us Stu as stew. I enjoyed it with Evie as the others left to their own rooms, repulsed by the fact they were served human meat. I mean, eventually we all will be eating each other when resources decline and there’s little to none left to eat.

Before heading back into my room, I was startled by Ms Mead after finishing my nightly rounds around the place to digest my dinner.

“Ms Y/N, I’m surprised to see you here. How are you feeling?” Her voice brought me back to my senses, and I glance to her face. She had the same look on her, expressionless with no hint of life. However, I picked up a slight glint in her eyes and the small smirk playing on her lips. To be honest, I was beginning to wonder why she is always trying to start up small conversations with me unlike the rest. Does she have a secret agenda with me? What is her motive for having small talks with me?

“I, um… I’m fine, thank you for asking. Dinner was great. It’s been a while since we had something other than cubes. I’m heading towards my room? Are you heading towards yours as well?” I raised an eyebrow waiting for her reply.

“I’m getting the workers to get a room ready for a guest that’s coming.” Her eyes went big for a while, probably cursing herself for saying something she wasn’t suppose to. “Well, I better hurry along now. Go get some sleep, good night.” She hurried right passed me and disappeared around the corner.

“Weird.” I glance back before walking towards my room.

“My love, why do you call me your flower? Flowers are so beautiful, their petals are painted with different colours to make them stand out from each other, and their lingering scent could put you on a spell. I’m definitely not a flower, I am not beautiful enough to be captivated by.” This caused the man expression to sour after hearing what his lover had said about herself.

“Don’t you dare say something like that about yourself.” He cupped her face with both of his hands and made her look up to him. “I call you flower because you’re the most beautiful amongst all the flowers. I could never get enough of basking my eyes with your beauty. The colours you say? I’ve never seen so much colour in my life before meeting you, and now my vision is filled with bright shades of the colours in contrast to my previous ones of black and grey. I’m always under a spell, your natural scent only keeps me hungry of you more and more. You say you’re not a flower? To me, you’ll always be the most beautiful flower the world has never seen, as your beauty is for my eyes, and my eyes only. My beautiful flower.

“You really do have a way with words, don’t you?” Delicate fingers stroke against the pale white cheeks of the man. He places a small kiss on her palms and caressed her long curly locks of hair before pulling her in for a breath-taking kiss.

“Of course, if it weren’t for my words, I wouldn’t be able to court you at all.” Small laughter escaped from the woman’s mouth and it was music to the man’s ears. Her laughter finally comes to a stop as she held eye contact with the blue hues of the man’s. Green meeting blue, both holding a gaze so powerful with so much endearment and comfort.”

“I love you.” Her velvet voice was so sweet and gentle just like her lover’s embrace, holding her in his arms.

“I love you too,” The man had said a name, but it was unclear before everything starts to become hazy, the scene of the man and the woman fading out into pitch black.

Y/N woke up with a startle. Beads of sweat had dropped down her face, causing small hairs to stick on her forehead. Y/N could feel her heart clenching in pain as if it was broken by something, or someone. Y/N was still in her purple gown from the previous day and it didn’t help that it was hot and stuffy wearing it to sleep.

Why am I having these dreams again. Who are these people? What is going on? I need answers. I want answers.

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drewkatchen · 7 years

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Chris on his back patio | June 2017 | Jersey City, NJ | Pentax 67

Because my interview with Chris Leo involved a nice bottle of wine on a pretty damn nice summer day, our discussion meandered and maybe went longer than we initially expected, a fact that led to a hasty conclusion and us speeding off on bikes -- him on his and me on his wife’s -- to his work at the last minute.

Also, Chris is as generous in conversation as he is in his lyrics, and he’s willing to let things drift to wherever they may go for as long as they go.

What follows is the second portion of our talk, which is concerned mostly with his band The Van Pelt, a musical group that began performing initially in 1993 and disbanded in 1997 after releasing two full-length albums on an independent record label. Chris played guitar and sang, and Brian Maryansky, Neil O'Brien and Sean Greene performed with him. Also, this interview is very much in the spirit of the way interviews run long in fanzines, with very little editing and condensing so as to offer the reader an accurate, non-embellished portrait of either their favorite band or a band they wanted to know more about or a band they know absolutely nothing about. Those are the interviews I grew up reading, whether they were in Maximum Rocknroll, HeartattaCk or a million other zines. That transparency is also in the interest of letting the artist’s thoughts run in their full and proper context. So a majority of this discussion below is as we had it, with very light doctoring for cohesion. I hope you enjoy it.

The Van Pelt have had several reunions, which first began in 2009, and they will continue this month with a small string of live performances. Go see them.

You can read the first portion of our chat HERE.

Thanks for inviting me over again. How has your day been so far?

I’m a little overworked. There’s the coordinating with wineries, how to get my wine from Italy to here. Then there’s the distribution part. I only import from Italy. Then there’s all these companies that I distribute wine from, but I don’t import their wine. That’s during the day. And then I have to find new people to sell it to and then I have to get it to those people. So I’m also the delivery man.

When do you sleep?

I don’t sleep much because at night I go and I’m doing this wine bar in Downtown Jersey City. The problem with New Jersey is it’s not for outside thinkers. It’s a place to breed outside thinkers that then get the fuck out of here. It’s a great place to create expats.

Well, let’s flip the record a bit as it were, because this is also partially based on what you’re doing with music.

At this moment, Charlie the dog interrupts the proceedings for a few moments. But it’s cool because he’s stopped barking and now he’s being friendly.

Is he young, how old is he?

He’s actually almost seven. We’ve had him for three years. He was in the pound for three years and he was on the streets of Los Angeles for a year. That’s why he’s all tough guy.

Did you get him in Los Angeles?

Yeah, we got evicted because of him barking like crazy.

I believe it. So what year did The Van Pelt begin?

I think we began in the fall of 1993 or in the spring of 1994. It’s hard to say because there were many iterations of the band. I started out on bass.

Did you?

Yeah. And we made these two albums, and the second album -- which was our more popular album – we had issues with the mastering. So, not only did we want to get it back in print and we wanted it remastered for our own sake. And so we did.

Is it more fun for you talking about wine or the band?

There’s definitely more joy in wine. Music isn’t pure joy. Music is pain. But also amazing. I also like talking about music because it’s so hard for me to articulate.

You’ve remastered these records again because you want them to sound better. But you’re also doing what you don’t like to do, which is play shows. Why are you doing that?

Except that I feel like I’m in a cover band.

Oh, that makes sense. But does that fact make it any easier?

Yeah, because now I’m singing the songs of this pretty cool kid from twenty years ago. And I’m playing a part; I’m trying to get into his mindset. One common theme of the band is disillusionment with the left, this civil war amongst Democrats and progressives in America.

What left are you talking about?

I’m talking about an eighteen-year-old’s idea of the left. I’m talking about an eighteen-year-old who is coming from an all-boys Catholic high school who created his idea of the left and was dying to leave this and find my people in the Lower East Side. The huge mistake I made was that to me the left meant open dialogue and the right meant closed dialogue. Where I really wanted to go was where you could sit at a bar or table with anybody and you could throw out any topic. What I found was the left was not about open dialogue. It was ‘The right believes ABC; we believe XYZ.’ And I didn’t think that was the way it was going to be. I thought it was going to be ‘The right believes ABC, and we believe everything else.’

So, lyrically that is what the band represents to you now? When you look back on it that’s how you see what you were doing?

Partially. In the sense that it’s one of the themes I’m excited to revisit because I think it’s so relevant now with the Democratic Party not see what was really coming with the progressives and Bernie Sanders.

The other thing I like revisiting is Chris Leo apriori optimist versus Chris Leo the empirical optimist. These things have changed quite a bit, but I love playing the role of the apriori guy. For example, if I was kind of hip to Monsanto when I was nineteen or twenty, I would have thought it was way cooler than I think it is now. I would have thought this idea of fucking with nature down to the bare bones is the coolest idea ever. ‘That’s what we’re supposed to do. We’re part of nature. If we don’t admit we’re part of nature then we don’t really understand nature. We’re part of nature and us fucking with it is the coolest thing ever.’ That’s Chris Leo the apriori optimist in the nineties. Let’s take this to the extreme; let’s take on nature. Yes, so many times we’ve done this we’ve failed miserably but let’s keep doing it. Chris Leo the empirical optimist now, twenty years later…if Monsanto had this little lab in Nebraska where they did all the same things and they live streamed it to us and said ‘Hey, we’re going to make this crazy square tomato and we’re going to feed it to dogs for twenty years and see what happens and we’re going to do all these other experiments but inside this hyper-controlled environment. But that’s not what Monsanto does, so therefore now I will get on board with the left of the early nineties and the left now and march against Monsanto.

You did write a lot about food in your songs. Hang on, let’s see what did I write down in my notebook? Here are some examples: An unseasoned meal, before the meat turns toxic in our tubes, feed me bread, lychee pits, gathering bread for your plate, more apple pie than I’ve ever been.

I guess I’ve been heading down the food and beverage path forever. And with The Lapse I had ‘Buffet.’ [’Buffet’ is a song from the 2000 album ‘Heaven Ain’t Happen’ where Leo proclaims ‘We make meals out of condiments.’]

I’m assuming you like to eat even though you’re very thin. Damn you.

I do like to eat.

What else was on your mind then?

Sex. Love. Politics, yes. Mortality always.

Even at that age?

ALWAYS. I always think about it.

Do you see yourself as a musician, songwriter, arranger? What do you see yourself as?

I’m not a performer. I’m terrible. I’d like to believe I’m a musician, but again, I feel like there’s this reciprocity that comes with being a musician, and I can’t say that I’m a musician. I don’t feel confident saying I’m a musician, but I like playing music.

What is your relationship with music like now?

It’s starting to find a real nice sweet spot, 43 years deep into my life. When I was making music with The Van Pelt and even The Lapse, sometimes I was just a little too close to it to appreciate it in its fullness, particularly with The Lapse. I almost became less of a fan boy than I was before I started playing music. I was just too deep in it. Too heady with it. Then, after the Vague Angels [Leo’s band from the aughts], I stopped playing music entirely. So, I haven’t written anything new for eight years or so. And the first year was amazing. I became more of a listener in every sense of the word, and not just with music, but with wine too. It was so helpful. I had this burst of interest in music, just as a listener. I was a super fanboy.

Of what?

I was just sucking everything up. At the time, I was living in Italy, and I was trying really hard to find good Italian music. I was really digging deep into Italian music. But then my music muscle atrophied. Not playing music, I realized that all these other things I was investing my interest in co-opted my brain. It was this really weak music muscle. Then I would go years picking up one or two bands a year.

What were the genres that you began liking as you got older?

I’ve always loved pop and dance. In the eighties, they used to call me a poseur because when I would write band names on my shoes, I would have like R.E.M., Erasure and Cover Girls. Kids would be like ‘You can’t put Cover Girls next to R.E.M.’

Who were the Cover Girls?

You don’t remember them?

I know the Weather Girls and Mary Jane Girls.

[Chris sings to me] Show me, show me you really love me. Actions speak louder than words.

Is it freestyle?

Yes, I love freestyle. We should do a freestyle night. [Chris frequently has friends and patrons play music on the bar’s sound system]

Oh, you know more than I do about freestyle.

We can get people to help us out. So, this is also during the glory years of 120 Minutes, so I was just discovering late-era Wire, but listening to Silent Morning. It’s always been a thread in my life, dance music and freestyle and pop.

I would get that listening to The Van Pelt.

Ha. Ok, remove yourself from the situation a bit. You gotta know what you do, and that’s not always what you listen to. I just don’t do certain things. There’s plenty of music I just don’t do. With The Van Pelt, I was hyper-restrained and I loved it. When we broke up I didn’t want to do anything restrained. I wasn’t feeling restrained. Now I’m stoked to do a lot of that. I wanted to explode because I was just so sick of the punk environment being so sterile. Music is supposed to make you abandon all inhibitions; music is supposed to take you from, if you walked in sad and watched a happy band then you leave happy or if you walk in happy and watch a sad band, then you leave sad. You’re supposed to lose it, and punk was so not about losing it.

Can you contextualize for me what The Van Pelt were? What world did you fit into?

So, we had two albums. The first album was a real fanboy album.

What does that mean?

Like young kids who are sucking up as much music as possible.

What were you sucking up?

Everything from Seam to Gastr Del Sol to Kraftwerk to whatever cassette was really cheap on tour at a gas station in Kansas, which might have been Procol Harum, and who knew they had other songs? So, absolutely everything. But we were all in agreement that we wanted to make anthems, we really wanted to kick out the jams. And this is a contextual thing because nineties New York were not about bands. That was for the rest of America. You had Jon Spencer and Sonic Youth and you had bands like that but they were in a whole mega league; they were not DIY. We would have aspired to their sales and notoriety but we were DIY [do-it-yourself or independent] through and through, to a fault.

That’s one of the reasons sometimes people would call us emo. Your choices were to go indie and work the 21-and-up circuit playing all these bars and you have a booking agent and everything is pretty legit. Or continue with DIY and do the 18-and-up circuit or play anyone’s basement anywhere and also play bars but book it yourself and hop in the van, make everything happen the way you want it to happen and just because you’re doing it that way, they want to call you emo because that was the predominant DIY genre at the time.

So you don’t feel like you fit into that or you were that?

I don’t feel like we fit into that at all. What, you do?

I don’t know, maybe a little bit.

Maybe a little bit, sure. But not exclusively. We just wanted to make music. The second album was after a bunch of lineup changes; we’d just finished college. There was a huge blizzard in New York. We’d all just broken up with our girlfriends, so that was really pure. That one was like ‘This is what’s happening. No one is going to like it, but this is what’s happening. And it’s a bummer and this music sucks.’ Of course, that’s the record people like. So, who were we? We were just kids figuring out who we were.

Were you punk? Did you think of yourselves as punk then or no?

No. We thought of ourselves as DIY.

What’s the difference?

Punk has constraints.

So does DIY by its definition, no?

There’s no aesthetic or sonic restraints.

Oh, I see, I see. Where were you playing and who were you playing with? Who were your peers at the time?

We were playing at Brownies on Avenue A and 11th Street all the time.

RIP. [Brownies, an East Village rock/punk/indie club, closed in 2002].

I know, RIP. We never played Brooklyn. There was nothing there. Where else were we playing?

Did you ever play in New Jersey?

We played a Knights of Columbus in Wallington on the Passaic River, which was great. We would play colleges. We played The Cooler, all the time.

Who were you playing with? You were playing with emo bands, I’m guessing, even though you were not.

If we weren’t the booking agent. If it was a bill we booked, we would play with one of my brothers’ bands, Chisel or Radio Saturn. We’d play with Garden Variety. We played with Dahlia Seed. Their new band is playing with us in D.C.

Promise Ring? Texas is the Reason?

We didn’t play with Texas too much. We were all friends, but we didn’t cross with them much musically.

This isn’t the first time The Van Pelt has reunited. How do you feel about it now?

Great. This is basically the third time.

What made you reunite the first time in 2009?

Because an old friend of ours from Austin was like ‘Hey, I’m putting together a nineties bill for SXSW this year, please play.’

The Van Pelt perform in June 2009 at Coco 66 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Had you entertained the idea before that?

It never really crossed my mind, honestly. No one even asked us, really. So, we all agreed to do it, and it was really cool. But it was a year after I stopped playing music.

Didn’t you write a novel in there somewhere, too?

I wrote five.

Didn’t you write five novels in there somewhere, too?

So, we did it. My relationship with music in general was weird. It was more about meeting these guys that I shared so much with back in the day. But when bands break up, it’s like breaking up with a girlfriend; it’s never perfect.

So you had no real misgivings about reforming?

I did. But for me on that tour, I had misgivings about playing music and playing Van Pelt music, but I wanted to play with those guys. I wanted to get back on track and bury every and any hatchet that could possibly be still hanging out there for no good reason. And we succeeded in that. Sonically the theme wasn’t clear to me in my head.

Does it fit sonically with who you are now or what you’re interested in?

That’s one of the things I love in revisiting these songs; some of it really does.

Would you listen to that now as a man your age?

The second album yes. The first album not so much, but I have fun playing those songs. And some of them we’ve kind of done adult contemporary style and we’ll be doing some of them that way for these shows. The point is, that was really cool in 2009, but it didn’t bring everything together in my mind that I was hoping it would. So then, we release what was supposed to be our third album, and in doing so we get offered to play this huge festival in England. It was one of the ATP festivals [Jabberwocky, 2014]. By that point everything is cool between The Van Pelt guys, thematically everything is settled in my head. We go and play these shows, and it was fucking amazing. We were really good.

The beauty of your vocal style is that your speaking voice doesn’t change that much.

It’s a little deeper now.

With the exception of maybe ‘We Are the Heathens’, you can kinda do most of it, right?

I can do most of it better.

I assume your upper register is gone though.

Yeah, it’s gone. I think sometimes it sounds better now though. So musically those shows were great and it was super fun. So then, the record label that releases that was like ‘Ok cool, that was a success. Let’s re-master and release your first two records. But you gotta play more shows.’ And we said, ‘Ok, cool.’ So, in the sense of like, do I need to keep revisiting old Van Pelt songs? No, I don’t. But, when we were rehearsing in 2012 and playing old songs, it was really hard to not write new songs.

So you’ve written new songs.

Yes, and we’re going to play some of those.

What do they sound like?

I dunno. We’ve only written three so far. We all have these little pieces we’re tinkering with.

So you have songs that are now five years old?

No, basically in 2012, in between playing old songs we would tinker with stuff and a song would come together and then we’d say ‘Oh fuck, we can’t do this right now. We gotta get back on track with relearning these old songs but my god it would be so much fun to flesh this out.’ So then, that’s the way we rationalize these new shows. So, now let’s spend some time fleshing these things out.

What percentage of the set will be new material?

Maybe we’ll throw in one or two for the shows. And hopefully we’ll have a new album in 2018.

You’re kind of like Linklater’s ‘Before’ trilogy. Every decade you do something.

Maybe. I love playing with those guys.

Do you find it bizarre the music you were doing then can live beyond its initial time?

No, because back in that time I was digging deep into the racks looking for stuff from twenty years earlier, and it fit the context of that time.

What were the primary sources? Sonic Youth, Velvets, Galaxie 500?

I didn’t listen to Sonic Youth much, only because that was such the sound of the time you almost didn’t need to listen to it. I didn’t listen to it a lot, but yes, I love Sonic Youth.

With the first record, we really wanted to make anthems because we were living in this time where the guitar players were no longer making anthems. And there weren’t many guitar players. They were all going the route of the deejay. So, it was like all the guitar players are getting weird as fuck, and we liked it. But we wanted to give a go at making an album of anthems.

I was listening to a lot of the Dustdevils. An interesting thing, we discovered a lot of bands by who people said they imagined we were listening to. People would say we must have listened to a lot of Bedhead, and we said no. And then we’d go listen to Bedhead. And even The Fall. I didn’t listen to The Fall until everyone said we sounded like The Fall. Which could bring us to Parquet Courts.

How do they relate to you?

You don’t think they sound like us?

Ooh, yes. I do.

So many people are like ‘Are you going to sue them or what?’

They seem very knowledgeable in what they’re doing. I think they’re very steeped in music history. [Full disclosure: I once saw Andrew Savage at a DS-13 show in Brooklyn wearing a Turning Point shirt. The Hi-Impact Turning Point shirt. That is fairly legit to me. I also like them a lot, probably because they remind me of The Van Pelt.]

Maybe that’s the case, and if it is, then they should give us a shout out. If it’s not the case, the world is so weird that I can believe it not being the case. Anyhow, I love it. I do love them.

You kind of got me inebriated. Who else were your influences?

Eric B. & Rakim were a huge influence, to the idea of speaking and saying intelligent things and putting it to a repeating riff.

Can you estimate how many shows you played when you were around?

It had to be over a hundred. We were just talking about this.

Did you enjoy being in a band?

Everything about it except the actual show. That part I wasn’t so into. Traveling, late-night drives, post-sound check hanging out at the bar during happy hour when no one’s there. A sticky, stinky bar. I loved that stuff. Meeting people from all around the world. I loved being in a band and touring.

When it comes to the music and the recording, was the intention to have the music serve your voice? To me, the music is behind you on the recordings.

I rarely write the lyrics with the music; I can’t do that. I’ll have a bank of lyrics. Even right now I have tons. That’s constant. When we start to tinker with a song, I’ll think about what lyrics will fit with the mood of the song.

Do you care what people take from your lyrics? Do people ask you what your lyrics mean?

I do get asked from time to time. I hope people take something from them. When people usually ask me, I like to say in the least snarky way possible, if I could articulate them in another way, then I wouldn’t have made lyrics out of them. This is the art form. It’s not a redundant art form. The reason poetry and lyrics exist is because it fills an articulation gap.

Did you put a lot of emphasis on them at the time or are they quick musings?

No, I sweat them out. To write lyrics for The Van Pelt, I would get on my bike, and I would have pen and paper, and I would loop Manhattan. I would go from Wall Street all the way up to Hell Gate Bridge [near Astoria, Queens]. And anytime something would come together, I would stop and write it down.

Do you recall ever having people really wanting to know exactly what you meant? Punk commonly demands black and white lyrical subject matter. How did you deal with it?

Yes. I probably dealt with it poorly, but I don’t remember. It can’t fit into a perfect dialogue; if it could, it wouldn’t be music or lyrics. It’s not regular dialogue, it’s an art. For example, when I go to a museum, I want to take the lengthy explanations off the wall and throw it in the trash. I hate the idea of a little placard telling me what a painting is supposed to resemble. I want to look at the painting and enjoy it, period.

Sultans of Sentiment…this is a Dire Straits thing?

No, it came from Twin Peaks. By the way, one of the things you asked before, I don’t think I answered it fully. What do I want from these shows? I really hope we can reach a few kids. That would make me so happy. Like if the version of us that was flipping through records at Kim’s in the early nineties, just finding obscure shit from 20 years earlier, if that kid finds us and we’re part of some thread.

Is The Van Pelt considered obscure now?

I think we’re super obscure, no? We don’t make any lists of bands of the early nineties.

Hmm. Did I not ask you anything? Oh, I know, are your lyrics about any real-lived events?

Yes. ‘Do the Lovers Still Meet at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial?’ I was dating a girl who was half-Irish and half-Chinese and her Irish dad died, and her Chinese mother remarried a Chinese guy and they lived in Taiwan. And so I went to Taiwan a couple times during college, and I was not ready for the culture shock at all. It was really a lot for a kid in his twenties to take. Sometimes I would just need a break from the family and all the cultural things I just couldn’t accept, so we would meet at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial. It’s a huge giant white-and-blue pagoda, and old people would do ballroom dancing outside of it. And we would meet there, and we’d go out to clubs there and escape the madness of the culture clash that eventually proved to be too much for us. Eventually I left Taiwan with her prematurely on one visit, and I had a big argument with her family. I said ‘I’m done with this; I’m taking her out of the country. I’m done with this.’ It was just a huge battle. Pretty intense times.

Well, I’m glad I asked that. Ok, we’ve talked forever. Let’s end it. Thanks Chris.

#chris leo #the van pelt #the lapse #PENTAX67 #pentax #Tri-X 400 #new jersey #Jersey City

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