ALMOST
FAMOUS
January
2003 - This month:
Year
End Picks for 2002
The very first
interview EVER with: The Know-It-All-Boyfriend (featuring Butch Vig and Duke
Erikson from Garbage, Freedy Johnson, and their Madison,
WI musician pals)
Happy New Year, SF Herald readers!! It's hard to believe 2002 has come and gone. Here are a few of my "hits 'n misses", in random order ...
Best Bay Area band : Simon
Stinger
Honorable mention: The People
Nicest band I interviewed :
Simon Stinger
Coolest weird SF Herald connection:
helping guitar goddess Mary
Cary join Simon Stinger
Best opening band: The
Negro Problem (for Blondie at The Warfield)
Best new major label release:
Divine Discontent ; Sixpence
None The Richer. Honorable mentions:
Everybody's Got Their Something
; Nikka Costa; Group Therapy ; Concrete Blonde
Nicest celebrity I interviewed
: Wayne Brady Honorable mention:
Leigh Nash from Sixpence
None The Richer
Weirdest band interview: Black
Rebel Motorcycle Club
Most entertaining on-stage
interview: Ben Fong-Torres interviewing
Dianne Weist at the Mill Valley
Film Festival
Best all-around comrade and
mentor: Ben Fong-Torres
Best karaoke: Tuesday nights at Yet Wah in Diamond Heights
Biggest mensch (Yiddish
for "cool guy): Simon Kirke, drummer for Bad Company
Celebrity interview most
beneficial to recovering addicts and my freelance writing career : Richard
Lewis
Most run-on sentences : Richard
Lewis
Best 80's comeback album
: Voyuer - Berlin
Most disappointing comeback
show that I wanted to love: The Motels at The Icon
Coolest publicist: Ken
Phillips
Artist most in need of a
makeover: Debbie Harry
Best movie: Frida
Most disappointing movie:
Punch Drunk Love
Best SF film editor: Kirk
Goldberg
Best stage mother: Doris
Goldberg
Best TV show: The Sopranos
Most disappointing season
of a TV show I adore: Sex & The City
Most disgusting TV phenomenon:
American Idol. Dishonorable
mention: The Bachelor
SF's hottest new artist and spiky bra chick: Laurie Jacobs
Best comics: Good Clean
Fun
Best hair styling team:
Elle and Akemi at DiPietro Todd
Salon
Best Bay Area musician: violin
player Calvin and drummer Wade Olson (tie)
Best Bay Area commedian:
Michael Capazzola
Biggest thrill: Flying in Ian Copeland's four-seater plane in LA. Honorable mentions: selling my first freelance piece; becoming
a TIC spy for SF Chronicle's
Leah Garchik
Favorite film critic I most
often disagree with: SF Chronicle's Mick LaSalle
Best large concert performance:
David Bowie on Moby's AreaTwo
tour, Shoreline Amphitheater
Best pastor and high school
friend: the Rev. Rachelle Pierson
Favorite restaurant we reviewed:
Mas Sake in Palo Alto
Best "heroes 'n zeros " release: Circus Town ; Tommy Womack. Honorable mentions: Hurricane Of Change - Elisabeth Cutler;
Love Tone ; Billie Joyce
Best way to remind me why
I'm here: playing music once a month for the residents at Pacifica Nursing
and Rehab
Best SF producer and new
friend: Dr. John Barsotti
Best example of the power
of teleprompters and speech writers: George W. Bush
Best Bay Area murder rate
: Oakland.
Best networker: Steve
Sodokoff
Best travel partner: Rachel
Schwartz
Best SF Herald columnist:
Mr. Fabulous and Steven Capazzola
(tie)
Hardest working man in publishing:
the illustrious editor of this little newsrag, Gene Mahoney
Let's rock in 2003!
They know (most) of the
songs that make the whole world sing:
The Know-It-All-Boyfriends
at Slim's, San Francisco,CA, December 14, 2002
Most musicians get their start by playing in cover bands,
dreaming of the day when they can play their own songs, or join a famous band.
Not so, for the members of the Know-It-All-Boyfriends, aka KIAB, a cover band from Madison, WI. The partial-star line-up, consisting of
Garbage's rhythm section
and co-founders: bass player Duke Erikson and drummer Butch Vig (who also produced Nirvana's Nevermind), acclaimed recording artist Freedy Johnson, and their hometown buddies, Madison area singer/songwriter/producer
Jay Moran, percussionist James "Pie " Cowan, and their tour
manager Stick, began as a
happy accident that has turned into a habit they have no intention of breaking.
Sample songs from their wildly eclectic set range from Wings' Band On The Run, to AC/DC's You Shook Me All Night Long, mixed with
medleys of The Go-Go's We Got The Beat and The Ramones I Wanna Be Sedated. Bread's Baby I'm A Want You and Steve Miller's The Joker are thrown in
for good measure, along with Journey's Lights , T-Rex's Bang-A-Gong, and The Carpenters' Close to You. No genre is
out of bounds for these hit copiers. Celebrity guest stars are bound to show
up, like Jerry Harrison from Talking Heads, who played a
couple songs from his old band Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers at the top of
this night's second set. They sometimes read off of makeshift charts, all take
turns on instruments and/or vocals, and occasional botched attempts are quickly
discarded mid-song, like Fleetwood
Mac's
Go Your Own Way. It's all part
of the wild joyride.
Sitting down to their very first interview as the KIAB, on a
stormy night before their first set at Slims, these are boys who clearly just
wanna have fun.
Kimberlye
"Almost Famous: Gold: You're doing your first interview, ever as the Know-It-All-Boyfriends, for the San
Francisco Herald. This is an important moment!
Butch
Vig:
It is very important!
Jay
Moran:
We wanna talk about the video, Larry King Live, the world tour, let's stick to the
talking points I discussed.
KG: So this is an
on-going thing?
BV: We do a gig
about every six months.
JM: It's all about
great rock tunes and Packer football!
The
Packers were set to play the 49ers at Pac Bell the next day.
KG: I'll pitch
this piece to the papers in the cities you're playing.
BV: World
domination in 2003!
Duke
Erikson: May I offer you a Vodka/Apple/Grapefruit, Kimberlye?
KG: I'll drink
pretty much anything you offer me, thanks! But now we have to focus...
BV: It's the only
time we'll have to focus for the rest of the evening.
DE: We're
know-it-alls!
KG: So how did
this all start? You guys were at a party or something and the band didn't show?
BV: It was at my
brother's cocktail party. All of us friends were going.
JM: We couldn't
get anyone else to play so we did.
BV: They had a
piano in the living room , and a trashy drum kit and guitar amp in the
basement. Somebody decided to get up and jam, Freedy or Duke, I don't remember,
we were all pretty loose. We played really sloppy covers and jammed for about
an hour.
KG: Had you ever
played together before?
BV: In "serious "
bands, but this was a party! We had just come off a really grueling, 20-month
world tour with Garbage, and it was so liberating to get on stage and play
these trashy rock covers. Freedy dubbed the band The Know-It-All-Boyfriends. We
decided, "This feels so good, we have to keep this thing going. " We're such great friends. I remember Duke
looking at me...
DE: I looked at
him and said, "What song is this? "
KG: Where'd the
name come from?
Freedy
Johnson: Personal experience. It was a label before a name. I had another band
back in 1990 called The Know-It-All-Boyfriends. It came from working at this
studio, when I said to the producer, "Some know-it-all-boyfriend said to his
girlfriend, ... " and it stuck. Then somebody stole the name from us and we had rival bands! The name
had to live on!
KG: How do you guys
all know each other?
BV: I produced
Freedy's record, This
Perfect World ". Then a couple of years ago, Freedy was working
on his last record and he came to Madison and set up shop at our studio, wrote
and recorded the record there. I played drums on a few songs, helped Freedy mix
it.
FJ: Starting the
KIAB really helped me finish my own record. Learning all those cover songs I thought I knew, all the
words and chords, definitely helped me.
KG: Because it
enabled you to write your tunes in a different way?
FJ: Exactly. Various people's ways of
writing songs, you realize the simplest words or chords you would never think
of. But I'm the new kid on the block. "Pie ", he's a Madison guy.
BV: Pie's played
in bands with us for years.
Pie: I've known
these guys over 25 years!
JM: We were all
working on records at Butch and Duke's studio. It was so funny to see those
guys be more excited to play with the KIAB than work on their own record. It
was such a fun diversion for them!
BV: It was a
psychological release from the tedium of making a Garbage record.
KG: You all met in
Madison?
JM: Yeah. I met
Freedy through a golf tournament he has here every year.
BV: He calls it
the Hack 'N Slash.
FJ: It's in its
fourteenth year!
DE: He's the
announcer, he guides us through it all.
FJ: (Gesturing toward the babe sitting
beside him) Tiffany here won "shortest drive and shortest skirt "!
JM: It's for
artists, musicians and psycho-killers.
FJ: We're trying
to segue into other things, underwear...
BV: Swag, man!
FJ: Butch's brother
runs a clothing company in Madison. We're gonna run with the KIAB label and see
if it works.
KG: How do you
choose the songs you play? Is it just whatever anyone feels like doing?
BV: We never rehearse. If it
sounds terrible, and they want to do it again, I icksnay it and say, "No, we
can't play it! " If it gets too perfected, it gets to be a bummer!
DE: Any time we
start a tune and get through the chorus, and we get to the bridge and no one
knows it, we just stop and move onto the next.
KG: Clams are
good!
DE: I call it the
Clam Band! No pressure, just cocktails, party, and going off wherever.
KG: Do you ever pull
out covers from your own bands, like the Ringo All-Star tours?
DE: We try to
avoid that at all costs.
BV: Definitely.
KG: So can I get a
copy of the set list? Oh, wait, there is no set list, right?
BV: Jay drew one
up tonight, but I think we're gonna move right off of it as soon as we get
going.
KG: Well, you're
all invited to my acoustic gig tomorrow night. You can get up and sit in and
play some cover tunes!
DE: That might be
a good post-Packer thing to do. If they win...
BV: (earnestly) It feels good
to do an acoustic thing, right?
DE: This is all
like therapy, in a way.
KG: Group therapy!
Hey, this is all why we started doing this right? Because we all heard those great songs and fell in
love with them!
I feel honored to have been the first so-called journalist
to interview you.
BV: Our pleasure,
Kimberlye. Thanks for being interested in the band! Our first, proper, sit-down
interview!
DE: Maybe we'll
see you tomorrow.
I gave Butch Vig a copy
of my CD because he seemed the most sincere and went out to enjoy the show. I
talked to these people from Minneapolis who met the KIAB in the airport and
flew all the way to SF just to see their show. Those guys must have made some
impression! There were a smattering of fans (groupies?) wearing KIAB beanies
and T-shirts . The swag was swingin'!
Spotted backstage and in the audience: SF comedian and sometime SF
Herald contributor Michael Capazzola, brother of
our own Mr. Fabulous, Steven
Capazzola, who delivered the
funniest line of the night, describing a petite, curly haired, blonde woman
with tinted blue shades dancing to the KIAB: "Excuse me, Meg Ryan is on the phone. She'd like her look back."
He also saved me from what could have possibly been my most embarrassing
moment: approaching Jerry Harrison from Talking Heads, mistaking him
for Robbie Robertson. I
would have died. Thanks, Mike! I gave Jerry a copy of the last Herald with Blondie on the cover, my reputation intact.
The next day I secretly rooted for The
Packers, against my own hometown 49ers, in the hope the Know-It-All-Boyfriends
would show up at my gig. I was a traitor. The Packers won. The weather blew
- everyone away before I could. It sucked! "Almost Famous " strikes
again! I should have known-it-all!
To
read other articles by Kim Gold, click here!