T!S!T!T!: The Official TSTD Interview

Where did you all meet, and how long have you been together?

G: Nicola is my brother. Diego was one of our best friends. We met him in High School. We always had common interests in music but we didn’t start to play seriously together until 2006.

Who/what are your musical influences?
We grew up listening to 90s American indie rock bands, such as Built to Spill, Sonic Youth, Fugazi, Pavement and almost all the records we could find from the kill rock stars catalog, and Nicola and I also listened tons of british pop music and obscure post punk bands.

Do you guys still live in Foligno? What’s the scene like there, and in Italy in general?

We are still living in Foligno, a very small city in the center of Italy, but despite what you might imagine, we are lucky to have one of the best rock clubs in the country. Over the years we’ve seen bands from all over the world and this certainly added to our musical growth. Unfortunately, haven’t had the same experience with Italian music in general. Here there’s a long cultural tradition of classic and melodic pop music, that is so far from our personal background! Hick!

In your experience, how do Italian audiences differ from NYC audiences?

It’s totally the opposite. Maybe you have a different way to approach to live music in U.S. Here in Italy the mainstream bands have a great audience, of course, but it’s not the same for underground bands. In NY people listened to our music in a very interested way, even if we were totally unknown. Here in Italy people don’t care about your gigs–they’re only waiting for the show to end to dance to electro music.

Of all your shows, which one has been your favorite so far?
For sure our first show in Milan. It was a messy and weird show, because we were totally out of minds because we were so excited to perform. Also, our last gig in Brooklyn at Tandem Bar, during the CMJ 09.

How often do you guys get to tour outside of Italy? Do you have any plans for an American tour?

Our first trip outside Italy was the U.S. It was totally exciting for us. We played twice in NYC, both times at CMJ–in 2008 and 2009. Austin is our third time in the U.S. and we love it! We haven’t yet planned an American tour but we hope that it could be possible very soon. At the moment we have some projects for a European mini tours (Germany, France, U.K) during springtime.

I’m thrilled that you guys came back to play CMJ this past fall. Aside from your own shows, which shows/bands were you guys most excited to see?

Pissed Jeans! They totally blew our minds.

Are you working on a new album currently?
Yes, we just finished to record our new EP, which we’ll present for the first time during SXSW. We’re very proud of it.

*Slight exaggeration. So tired today.

So fuck it. The kitchen faucet can be reassembled tonight.

Also, from my Facebook feed:

What does this mean? Is this like when the flight attendant asks “Is there a doctor on the plane?” Is it a sign of a new hobby? We can all agree on one thing: Nothing good can come from this. Any etymologist will tell you that the word “harm” hidden within “harmonica” is not a happy accident. Thankfully I no longer work with this person.*

*Ask Maud sometime about the Situationist-meets-Guerrilla Girls prank we’ve been planning for years. It involves harmonicas.

So he sent someone to fix it, and they did, with mixed results.

On the plus side, we got new, non-leaking fixtures that actually allowed us to control the temperature of the water.

On the negative side, it took two weeks of us showering in a tub sealed off with contractor garbage bags and gaffer’s tape before they sent anyone to put tile over the gaping hole the plumber had created.

On the plus side, we met the super from the building next door*, a gracious former death metal drummer. (I don’t know what it’s like to go from touring Europe and getting blowjobs every night to living in a basement with your mother, in Queens. I imagine it’s not much fun.) We told him how much we hated hated HATED our neighbors and our apartment and the building, and he told us that if anything opened up in his building, he’d let us know. Because we are nice people.

Flash forward a few weeks and N & I had begun perusing Craigslist apartment ads daily in order to temper the escalating bloodlust we felt toward our neighbors. I was literally hitting Apple+R every 15 minutes.

An apartment from the building next door appeared in the list. A 2BR in one of the two most coveted lines in the building (this building is identical to ours, and is a prewar job, so each apartment line is–for some bizarre reason–a different shape. There are two lines with absolutely enormous living rooms, and this place was in one of them) and it was available for March 1. We went over to see it that night. We overlooked the quirks–the cabinet- and drawer-less kitchen painted bright green, the decrepit bathroom (I know, I know…)–because all we could think of was HOW BIG THIS PLACE WAS and how we could fit ALL OF OUR SHIT and THEN SOME. We grilled them: Are the neighbors noisy? Does anyone downstairs smoke? How is the water pressure? They claimed everyone was really quiet and kept to themselves.

So we decamped our 1BR with the awesome view of the city and not a single good quality beyond that, found someone to take over our lease**, and moved in last weekend.

It’s the biggest place I’ve ever lived in NYC. You could fit most studio apartments inside our living room. So that’s cool. The wood floors are nice and level. The bedrooms get good light. And they were right–the neighbors are pretty quiet.

So our first night, we got into bed, all proud of ourselves that we’d finally escaped all the screaming, banging, slamming, hammering, drilling, sawing, and smoking. It was so very quiet.

At first.

At 1 am, a startlingly loud whirring noise woke us up. I lived next to a long-haul trucker growing up. Sometimes in the winter he’d leave his truck running all night (or else it wouldn’t start). It sounded like that. We wandered around the apartment trying to figure out its origin–the floors were actually vibrating.

And then it clicked off. And 45 minutes later, it clicked back on. And then off. And then on. And then off.

It turns out that we live above the building’s boiler.

Which means that everyone whose name I cursed for the past 6 years has had the last fucking laugh. Oh, but let’s just see who’s first up against the wall when the revolution happens. At least our living room’s bigger now.

Lullaby for the Strange, by Gabriel Hart. [Via A Little Necrophilia.]

*Who, unlike the super from our building–the Serbian war criminal who once told me, when he was hooking up my gas stove in a rather cavalier way, “In my country, is man talk and woman listen, you know?” –actually does work.

**More on that later.

Him: Good luck. I did my taxes last week, and my refund was less than half of what it was last year.

Me: Socialism.

Him: [simultaneously] Obama.

Me: Well, I just hope I get enough back so I can rent a small plane.

Him: If I don’t see you tomorrow, I’ll look for you on CNN.

And I like my inlaws. In fact, I’m currently penning a how-to book called How to Renovate Your House on the Cheap by Enslaving Your Elderly Parents.

On the other hand, though, that would severely curtail My Alone Time, which mostly consists of drinking bourbon, eating peanut butter out of the jar with my hands, reading Metafilter, and listening to the music that N can’t stand. And sometimes it’s music that no self-respecting musophile would admit to enjoying, under pain of death even. Like post-Gabriel Genesis. Or Josh Turner (whom NPR seems to like, so maybe he’s not totally uncool)(that was said in half-seriousness). Or the Dead.

Or post-Toys in the Attic Aerosmith. Very post-.

Twenty years ago, when I was in high school (and oh my god I can’t believe I just typed that), I got mono. I started coming down with it the week of spring break, but I didn’t want to tell my parents that I was running a fever and feeling a bit delirious and tired, because I had plans to play tennis*** with this cute boy from school and I was not about to be stopped.

So, the Monday school resumed, my mother found me standing in the shower, dry, staring numbly at the hot/cold water knobs and unable to figure out what the next step was. The doctor confirmed it and thus began my month of quarantine.

As much as I like to be alone, I can’t say that I enjoyed this month, because I also had an almost unbearable–and tenacious–case of strep throat. Seriously, it was bad. It was so bad that for the first time in my young life, food held no appeal, and I couldn’t taste anything. My parents made me milkshakes every day, which I refused. Milkshakes.

MILKSHAKES!

I lost about 15 pounds, which actually put me at a healthy weight. (When I returned to school, people would stop me and ask what happened, and I told them I’d been away at an unwed mothers home.)

The school sent a tutor every week to bring me homework assignments and give me tests and whatnot. I finished everything within an hour. Public school is a joke.

This meant that I spent most of my time watching MTV. You might not remember this, but 1990 was not a great year for popular music. As such, in my febrile state, I watched an unchanging and fairly small rotation of videos. Of them all, Nothing Compares 2 U was the most tolerable, but then there was also Adam Ant’s pathetic comeback attempt, Room at the Top. Also, we had Onion Skin, by Boom Crash Opera, a band so mind-blowingly awful and improbably popular that I have to assume they made a pact with the devil. And then, of course, there was “Hold On,” by Wilson Phillips (which, by the way, was the number one song of 1990), who had not sold their souls to the devil in exchange for fame–they were actually his henchmen and I will not be linking to their video.

Finally, though, there was a song that somehow resonated with me, as bad as it is. To this day, I really, really love it. I even bought the mp3 from Amazon last year.

Aerosmith, “What It Takes”

So when I am alone, I listen to this song. Really, it’s not so bad. A sad accordion song will do it for me every time.

*Other times, I want to pick up and move due to the fact that we do, in fact, own a house there now, and also to the fact that the weather in NYC is ready to kill me right now.
**I can’t imagine why, though I suspect I should blame Obama. I miss the Struffoli but not a lot else.
***All these odd revelations about me today! I think that was probably the last time I picked up a tennis racket, by the way. I should be glad my spleen didn’t explode.

*I was thisclose to typing “sweetie,” just because the term irks me so much. I see it cropping up everywhere on the web, and it conjures up images of furries and Ren Faires. You can’t call an adult a “sweetie.” (Unless that adult is a bunny.)

Which is a pity, because he had a GG Allin patch on his pants. Talk about a guy who cared about children!

Canvasser: Hi, do you have a minute for children?

Imaginary GG: Of course I do! If it wasn’t for kids, I’d never get laid!

Naturally this exchange wouldn’t have been nearly as OUTRAGEOUSLY funny if it had been between the Canvasser and me. I wish Imaginary GG Allin could always be with me when I talk to canvassers.*

*Please note: I’m nothing but polite to those people. I know they’re forced to be aggressive, because otherwise they wouldn’t make money. I know some of them are brainwashed and don’t know any better. Even though I only belong to cool nonprofits.

Man Dressed as Pirate Robs Clerk at Knife Point:

Tom’s Fruits and Gifts at 1812 A1A South was the scene of an armed robbery late Wednesday afternoon according to a report received by the St. Augustine local news desk at Historic City News.

88 year-old Thomas Grohowski and 56 year-old William Grohowski were at work just after 3:30 p.m. Wednesday when they reported that a white male, about 5′8″, in his early 60’s, with a ponytail and facial hair, wearing a pirate hat, a long sleeve shirt and tan pants entered their store.

The unknown man browsed while waiting for other customers to leave.

When they were alone, the man approached William Grohowski at the cash register and brandished a large stainless steel folding knife. The robber demanded that Grohowski give him all of the money in the till.

Grohowski told police that the suspect fled south toward the Pizza Garden; riding a bicycle that was towing a trailer, displaying a Florida Gator flag.

We have driven by Tom’s a million times. It’s the archetypal Florida Souvenir Purveyor–the one-stop-shopping emporium for all your shellac’d gator head, polished conch shell, soft-shell pecan, and Dixie flag needs.

The kicker is that I swear to God N and I have seen the bicycle pirate. Minus the pirate hat, there’s a guy who rides around our “new” neighborhood, towing a wagon with a dog wearing a Gators t-shirt. Kinda hard to miss. (Which is why it’s even more…confounding…that the police weren’t able to find him.)

Related PS: A reader helpfully pointed out that a possible reason behind tourists’ Bad Subway Behavior is due to the fact that the majority of America is without reliable, convenient public transportation. This is a very good point. Though it must be said that this doesn’t address the fact that many parts of America do have reliable and convenient crazy people.

Unrelated PS: Hello, breakfast!

*I’m having a hard time understanding why this guy didn’t have a gun. Everyone in Florida has a gun. Except the bike-riding pirates.

Photo from Historic City.

I’m glad I went. It was an entertaining reading. A big group of readers, too–several members of the Broad Set Writing Collective, who are very talented and also young. (Fuckers.)

In addition, their professor Mickey Hess, who is totally hilarious and also young(er than I am), read. (Fucker.) He signed a book for me: “Keep on rockin’ it!” Why have I never thought of that inscription?

He read from his book, Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory,* as well as a chapbook called Shittin’ on a Jet:

If you ask me, the greatest hip hop success story has to be that of Brian “Birdman” Williams, founder of Cash Money Records. In his song “Poppin Bottles,” Birdman takes the typical American Dream story to a new level. Generally, American success stories take us from rags to riches or from the poorhouse to the penthouse, but Birdman tells us that he “went from shittin’ in a cell, to shittin’ on a jet.” In that one line, Birdman re-envisions success as going from shitting in one place to shitting in another.

….Then I realized Brian had pictured Birdman squeezing through the aisle, sliding closed the OCCUPIED lever in a cramped Southwest Airlines bathroom, looking at himself in the tiny mirror above the sink and thinking I made it.

Shitting in an airplane bathroom is maybe three steps above shitting in a cell. In between you have gas station, hospital waiting room, and Burger King.

But Birdman doesn’t say airplane. He says jet. Jet implies private jet. I bet Birdman’s is made of diamonds.

And then the evening got better when, rather than going out and spending money we don’t have, LC and I went back to her abode, had pizza** and wine delivered, and looked at old photos. A perfect wintry Friday night.

*I really like Garrett County Press. Many years ago, during the #1HS era, they sent me a copy of Mykel Board’s Even a Daughter Is Better Than Nothing and set me up with an interview.
**The pizza we had delivered was DiGiorno, which makes the whole scenario like a Zen koan: It’s not delivery…it’s DiGiorno…except when it’s delivery.