INTERVIEW: Material Issue
- Joe Silva
It's a fool's assumption to think you might have a take on someone's personality based on spinning their records, but recently, I got suckered good. Jim Ellison and his near perfect pop star sneer were rounding a corner near the Atlanta theatre where he and the rest of Material Issue would be playing that night, and I should have took his look as fair warning that he was in some sort of a foul mood. Up close, Ellsion is a set of rail thin bones with two pierced ears and a taste for aggressive urban footwear. I march not too far behind him into a small dressing room where he removes a small wedge from an apple pie and then goes over to a guitar rack to absently bang on a swell black and white Gibson until everyone's ready to sit down and talk.
My expectation of a docile encounter with a popster who's penned dozens of sugary paens to the girls he's had or longed for, was unseated quickly by a handful of curt answers to my questions. He won't tell me anything about his appearance in buddy Liz Phair's new video for "Whip Smart" other than "You have to wait and see" and he won't grab the chance I give him to rant about the narrow slant most journalists take on his lyrical content. Whether he's pissed or not, it seems as if Ellison has more of an pronounced attitude connection with gob-era Johnny Lydon than with someone like...oh.. say, Matthew Sweet, even though they have probably have the same type of pop-smart blood in their veins. But Ellison probably isn't a true snot. Phair cast him as the "good" angel in her video to play opposite Nash Kato's "bad" angel character and there are the gushy lyrics and the graceful harmonies that stand to belay any attitude that Jim may cop.
Freak City Soundtrack is Material Issue having distilled to near perfection the kind of classic stuff that fueled the 45 single for so many years - quick, punchy songs with immaculately chiseled melodies wound tight around a verve not seen in a trio since the likes of The Jam. From the jumped up beat of "Going Through Your Purse" straight through to the revved up tempo of "She's Goin' Through My Head," they make a point that are the latest link in a lineage that descends from the Knack and traces backward to the likes of Badfinger and the Hollies and any number of other power pop bands killed off by the rise of Led Zeppelin and the realization of heavy metal. And, with various shades of Black Sabbath now freely roaming and reigning over the alternative music spectrum, Material Issue have made themselves into a daringly peripheral rock outfit that sing about cars, the radio, and solicit girls with cute navels for their album covers.
"We've never even seen that girl." says 26 year old drum beater, Mike Zelenko. "She's supposed to be really young. She's only like thirteen or something. She probably has braces and everything, but the navel was all we needed."
But not even a sound navel could get the band's first single, a cover of the Green Pyjama's "Kim The Waitress," more than modest radio play. The follow up ("...Purse") was released apparently into oblivion and despite their semi-constant tour schedule this year, (opening for INXS and now the Pretenders) the Atlanta audience doesn't seem to offer a lot in the way of recognition to Material Issue. Jim is unbridled onstage - loud and energetic. He pulls faces, tosses his picks, and doffs off ripping solos from his cranked six string. Every new tune is staged like a winner, and their past hits ("Valerie Loves Me") do nothing at this point but serve as padding for the practically brilliant new material. So while it's littered with potential hits, why hasn't Freak City Soundtrack been their crowning moment? Ellison can pin it on one word: Mercury.
"They're just a terrible record company." Ellison says straight faced and none too happy. "They don't push anything. If you want to see a Mercury video, you're looking more towards Bon Jovi or Kiss."
Mercury is silent on the subject but there's a lot to be said of Ellison's perspective. If you're not a priority at a label, the rule of thumb is generally you might as well not be there. Evidence Warner Bros making a small three piece form California a number one concern in their overall strategy over the past year, and now witness Green Day playing to 60,000 fans in a near riotous gig in Boston.
"I don't think you'll find an act on that label that's being pushed." Jim continues. "I think we sell records by default. It's because people know our music and want to buy it. Not due to anything else."
The subject of their deal snuffs our chat and the remainder of the conversation trails off to nowhere. Rick Neilsen plays on the new album and Mark Chapman (formerly of Sweet) produced it, but the they offer no anecdotes about either, though both figure large in the current state of Material Issue. They are associations that stem from an era that are a touchstone for the band and a mindset that Ellsion more or less crystalizes in the Freak City line that goes "And when I feel I can't go on/I turn the radio on."
