The BellRays - London, UK, Summer 2002
By: Toby L
Uncompromising, powerful, focussed, The BellRays have been getting people talking lately within the UK. Although formed already for beyond a decade, the charismatic and individualistic four-piece from Riverside, USA only recently stumbled upon such hyperbole and praise amidst British shores following the signing of the group to Alan McGee's gradually-rising label, Poptones. Yet, to those journalists privileged enough to get in front of them, they won't stand for any time-wasting.
'I think we do come off a lot of the time as angry, and we are, but we generally like to have fun doing what we're doing,' muses bassist Bob Vennum on the subject of the group's singled-out strong attitude and confidence. 'If you can't enjoy it, then why are you doing it?'
Singer and front-woman, Lisa, shuffles in her chair. 'I get the impression that a lot of journalists aren't used to bands asking questions themselves,' she raises somewhat powerfully. 'We're not going out there trying to be mean, but if somebody asks us a stupid question - and there are a lot of stupid questions that get asked over and over - then we are compelled to tell people, 'Hey, you can do better than that! Are you really a writer - or just someone that's got a deadline to meet..?'
'Yeah,' revs up Tony Fate, guitarist of the act. 'We're not some up and coming group; we didn't just get out of high-school, start a band and get so excited about being interviewed - we've been around... We have already established ourselves for a long time - so we're not here to just be your new favourite band.'
Despite such strong sentiments, you'd be false to believe that The BellRays are merely moaners, constantly striving to prove themselves. In fact, they're self-assured - and it's everyone else that needs to prove themselves to them.
Today, they are even more relaxed than one might anticipate, despite having overcome the arduous task of multiple interviews in support of their current single 'They Glued Your Head On Upside Down', not to mention the release of their sterling LP, 'Meet The BellRays': a scintillating, soulful rock-merging of the quartet's two previously US-only albums into one for UK inhabitants. They're sitting down to eat in a Camden restaurant and are in a fruitfully entertaining and effortlessly eloquent mood.
'Someone said that Bob is bald,' laughs Kekaula, pondering over further inadequacies within the press-coverage they've received thus far in their rise to notoriety.
'Yeah,' grins Vennum, 'I was the 'balding bass-player', apparently.'
'And, aside from that,' cuts in Tony frantically, 'we never, ever, ever in any way shape or form in any interview said that we were the next MC5... Everyone else is saying that.'
Bob nods in agreement. 'One of the things we're really against is comparisons like that, because it really simplifies anybody with a job. If you're in the media and are trying to tell people what somebody is like, there's a whole language out there to use: adjectives, adverbs, you know, to do that - and that's what separates the good journalists from the bad journalists, from the hacks to the people who are really trying to do something with their work... It's these kinds of comparisons that make entire societies become banal and stupid.'
Not just passionate on record, but - as proven - also within general dialogue, too...
But - seeing The BellRays live is a completely different, Earth-shatteringly impacting experience. Whereas before you're frenzied into an excitement when hearing the raucous recordings of such mini-anthems as 'Too Many Houses In Here' and the recent 45, 'Fire On The Moon', it's in dark rooms with a stage, a simple PA and a couple of lights that the 'Rays, arguably, really shine.
Fate doesn't deny it, though holds an objection. 'The live aspect is not where you live on, however - you leave your legacy on a record. I think our records are real good; they are played live, but they may not sound it, because there are a lot of sonic borders to overcome when you're recording; but, if we died tomorrow, I'd be proud from leaving behind the records we did leave behind.'
But you do get seminal live-performances too, though, where these become as famous as the artists and their records involved - and where the number of people isn't important... Take, for instance, the Beatles at the Cavern Club all those years back...
'Well,' affirmatively states Kekaula, 'that's what it's all about to us; the number of people you're playing to is not an issue. We've played to crowds of one person and none before - and we've had the best shows we've ever played because it was just one of those nights where everything aligned the way it should align, and the music came out the way it should come out...
'Yeah,' she continues, 'the recording is what you leave behind, but a lot of times, the folk lore is what makes people go out and buy those records, too: the fact that we may have played a live-performance that actually touched someone, because that is when you have the opportunity as an entity to bring all your forces together and touch people in the audience with the songs - in a way that you may not be able to do in a recording.
'I think we do surpass ourselves live, but - like Tony - I agree that what we leave behind is what gets best remembered... I think that some people expect for us to be apologetic for the sound-quality of our two records ('Let It Blast' and 'Grand Fury' - which combined to form LP, 'Meet The BellRays'): you know what I have to say to them? That's a load of bullshit. Because, who said that all records have to be made to sound as clinical as they have for the last twenty years? We don't have a very clinical sound - it's just not something that we're looking for.'
'Even though the records are live,' adds founder-member Bob, 'we want the live-show to be a separate part of it. I've seen a lot of bands where I've checked them out live and I've went to buy the record and it's virtually the same thing; we always play different sets, there's a lot of songs that we just don't play the same way twice - we do different things to them - and we try to make a live experience; you've paid money to see us - we want to create something unique, make it something that you remember.'
'Yeah,' Tony snarls, 'we don't want to be up there, staring at the floor, like all these shoe-gazer bands; there's a lot of them... Especially from England... We're here to make them obsolete.'
And, performances from The BellRays are just what you could ever hope for: involving, big, loud - and competent.
'It's supposed to be high energy all the time,' Tony starts up again, shedding further light on the topic. 'Even though we sometimes slow it down, maybe play a bit quieter, it even maintains a certain pulse; we pace our sets in a very intentional manner: to have a breathing quality... When you're talking to somebody, you don't scream every word at them - you take pauses, and some things you say loud, some things you say quiet: that's what makes a conversation - and it's how we lay out a set.
'Plus, we also throw in the chance-factor - and we start improvising, and that can maybe lead into another song in the set that wasn't planned, but we're pretty savvy because we've been playing for a long time together - so we know how to take that in, all as part of the conversation.'
Bob laughs to himself. 'I can't tell you how many shows I've been to where a band plays, and I'm into them, then the song stops, and the singer talks for five minutes... Then, they play another song and he talks again for another five minutes - I don't wanna hear it: just play! If I was the guitar-player, the drummer or the bass-player in that band, I'd be throwing shit at that guy - 'Shut the f**k up, and let's play the next song!'
His female accomplice giggles grandly, before her own contribution being added. 'There's a conscious effort on my part as a vocalist to not explain a song; the song should be an explanation in itself - and that's the medium that you're using...'
Tony rounds the matter off almost perfectly. 'We are highly influenced by old bands of the past, and when I read about The Who and The Kinks, and Jackie Wilson - and you can name James Brown - they always kept the energy high, it was always very entertaining... Then, I look at a lot of bands nowadays and think, 'Man, what the hell happened?!' There's an aspect of looking at a stage and wanting to see something exciting; a lot of bands nowadays are following the same route that contemporary art follows, which is into this conceptual phase, where the idea is more important than the actual art...
'Well, we are modernists - we are not post-modernists; in the modernist era, you'd see a great, exciting painting, a Jackson Pollock painting, hanging on the wall and that would get you excited - you wouldn't see a load of words on the wall explaining what the painting's supposed to be in place of the painting: but that's what's out there now. I don't care about the cerebral part of music - I want the animal part of it.'
By now, you've probably recognised that The BellRays aren't just mere creators of storming music, yet also poets with the English language, the overriding enthusiasm on their product making for compelling listening. And, quite often, some of their conversational-themes seem to be quite spiritual...
'Yeah,' confesses Fate. 'There's a very spiritual connection that's made in our music, because it has brought us up to a certain point that validates everything we do... I mean, if we didn't play rock 'n' roll, I still think we'd be valuable human-beings - we'd probably do something real worthwhile - but the arena of rock 'n' roll has provided a certain vocabulary for the way we feel. And that's allowed us to get our point across, an emotional point, and without that vocabulary, you're stuck - you have nowhere to go...
'Perhaps these shoe-gazer bands,' he notes, 'they've chosen the wrong vocabulary.'
Lisa likes what she's just heard. 'Sometimes, these people just don't have anything to say. I've seen a lot of people get up to the microphone, not just as a performer, but I see people say things on television or wherever they get their fifteen minutes of fame, and they say the dumbest things; it never occurred to them that they are representing themselves. I see it with professional athletes, for example - I've seen them say things and look a certain way, and I'm thinking, 'You're not really thinking through this time that you have.' So, some of these people maybe aren't just using the adequate vocabulary - whilst others just don't care.'
'In a lot of these bands,' strikes up Vennum, 'I sometimes see people that probably shouldn't even be in bands; they maybe shouldn't necessarily be disconnected from rock 'n' roll or music, or whatever, but they'd probably be better served as songwriters... They just don't have the tools to deliver what they're trying to do.
'Going back to the idea of The BellRays as a concept: this punk-thing with a soul-singer or whatever; initially, it came about because I recognised that Lisa sang the songs the way I wanted to hear them sung - and I couldn't do it: it's that easy of a decision, I'm not an ego-maniac! I had a good time fronting a band before that, but I realised that I couldn't take the music where it needed to go.'
'The ego-mania has got a lot to do with it, though,' points out Tony, 'because when you start a band, you don't plan out what you're gonna sound like, but you have to be able to stand away from it as far as possible in a third-person sense to see what's going on, and then assess that sound - or else everybody's gonna be making a whole bunch of noise; you'll have the heavy-metal guy on guitar, the reggae-guy on drums - and it'll sound like crap! So, you have to be able to stand away from it all. Then you have to even say, 'How are we going to present it?'
So, bearing in mind the idea that many bands choose to out-live, arguably, their better creative periods, do you think that artists should present themselves with a cut-off point where they stop themselves from producing music?
Tony sighs, contemplating the issue. 'You know, Pete Townsend probably went through this a lot; I'm sure he went through this question all the time towards the last days of The Who... And maybe Eric Clapton does nowadays, too... Man, if Eric Clapton jammed with us now, he would sound great. I would take that damned Stratocaster out of his hand and give him an SG.'
Lisa smiles briefly and then becomes sternly serious. 'It's up to the individual involved to say, 'Maybe I need to change the arena that I'm playing in: maybe I need to go further underground, or above ground.' No one puts a gun to these people's heads to force them to put records out.'
'David Bowie,' exclaims Tony suddenly. 'He reinvents himself all the time; he's been the big, commercial success, and then he turns around and does something like 'Tin Machine', which was great! Now, he's doing this other stuff that is not really commercial either, but it's good - and it's provocative: you've gotta stay provocative.'
'You know that David isn't operating on anyone else's opinion,' backs up Kekaula. 'He is operating on David Bowie-time; and, that's what we will operate on - BellRays-time - because we've been doing this shit before anybody else and thought that was it valid enough to write about.
'It's not like we've ever tried to shove it down people's throats, but people can't just expect us to change our direction or our focus because, now, somebody says, 'Hey, we notice who you are...' That's cool that you notice us - just notice us, and keep watching.'
Blimey - how could we fail not to? With views as coherent and stringently thought out as these, it's no wonder that the people behind the music of The BellRays are as sonically interesting as their own instrumental produce. But where's it all heading?
Tony opens with his wishes. 'I would say that we're trying to leave behind a history of challenging music - that just kicks ass, because there's a lot of challenging music out there that's boring as hell.'
'The BellRays want to elevate the status of the perception of rock 'n' roll,' believes Lisa. 'Over the years, it has become something that people kinda see as only major-chords, la-la music.'
'Yeah,' finalises Bob. 'It's either seen as if it's U2's politically, poignant testament to man's greatness type of thing, or some stupid, boring, 'Watch me smash a beer over my head'-crap. That's obviously just two ends of the spectrum with so much in between - but, hopefully, The BellRays are at least opening some minds.'
Don't worry, guys - you're certainly achieving your ambition.
Artists in this article: The BellRays