It was late last summer when San Francisco's Eskimo slipped around the country "under radar," playing small clubs on the east coast. Touring to help Mammoth (who'd picked up distribution from the band's label Prawn Song) promote their 1993 recording Der Shrimpkin, I was fortunate enough to see them perform at NYC's Knitting Factory. I also had an opportunity to talk to one of the members, John Shiurba. Time constraints kept me from transcribing the conversation until recently, but I think it was worth the wait. So, without further ado, here's a bit of our conversation.
Consumable: Your press kit claimed you started out busking [street performing]. How much of your style was evident then?
John: When we played on the streets, we were really horrible. It was just a way to be able to play, because we didn't have anywhere else to. It was out of frustration, almost. We took our instruments, sat out on the street, and made complete fools of ourselves. And passerbys would see us.
Then eventually, just because we were so wacked out, people started asking us to play in clubs. We tried translating that to clubs and it was kind of difficult at first. We were a three piece group, we didn't have a bass player or the trombone. It was just marimba, guitar, and drums. It wasn't very good, really. We didn't write many of our own songs, it's hard to describe how bad it was. But eventually we started writing songs and becoming a real band. I think the wackiness was always there, the more serious side of the dichotomy wasn't there until the late '80s. And we started in '86."
C: So it took you about three years.
J: Yeah, it took us that long to get a sense of direction that actually made any sense to anyone, even though it wasn't quite where we're at now. We had a group sound that was reasonably coherent.
C: Then another three years until you recorded Der Shrimpkin.
J: This actually our second album. Our first album we made ourselves and if you're one of about 500 people that are lucky enough - or unlucky enough - to have it, or to have seen us during that time and bought it from us. It's not easily attainable. But we made a record in about 1990, or '89 I think was our first record. Then we played for a couple years and made the other record in about '93, I think. Then there was a period of inactivity where the record was sort of finished, then Prawn Song came along and offered to put it out.
C: How has the band changed during the two years since the release?
J: Well, the personnel has changed a bit. But I think we've sort of been waiting for this tour. We haven't done a whole lot as a band. We've all pursued other musical projects and tried different avenues a little bit. As a band, we've been on hold, a little bit. So, it's kind of fun, because you can come back to something you really love and be able to do it again.
C: Did the solo projects change your approach to the material?
J: I think so. Personally, I try to bring something a little more direct and not so totally left field to it now. My perspective is always walking a fine line between being, on the one hand, really intelligent or intellectual and on the one hand, being totally retarded. And on the one hand, being really accessible and on the one hand, being for the music connoisseur. I think it's important to keep both sides of that... tightrope [laugh] happening, so any person who happens to be in the club can really enjoy it. Even though it might have some elements of advanced music that's not something people are used to, it does have elements of stuff that they can grasp on to and have fun with.
C: How much of the band's sound is due to the "environment" of San Francisco?
J: This is an interesting question. We sort of existed outside and inside the mainstream club circuit. Because we were a rock band, we did play rock clubs, but we were always the sort of jazzy, weird, rock band. So we didn't get the shows opening up for the more straight forward rock bands. Then the whole jazz scene comes along... in the past couple of years in San Francisco, it's really hit big time. And it's like, "ESKIMO!? Those guys aren't jazz..." [laugh] and now we're outcasts of that scene, too.
So, there's a lot of really nice musicians we hang out with, but I don't know if we're really affected by the sound of the groups around us. I was lucky enough to see Snakefinger three or four times in the '80s in clubs, just because he was in San Francisco and he played clubs. He wasn't a big deal when he played. He played the same clubs we played [chuckle].
C: The bands you're compared to - Beefheart, Zappa, the Residents, Fishbone, Snakefinger - all have cult followings that seem to result from having a vision and staying true to it. Is that desire to challenge yourself and your audiences as opposed to being popular, true for you also?
J: I think those are important questions. I think, sometimes for me, the question becomes not, should I challenge the audience, but how much [laugh]. And how much is too much. I think we do have a vision. Whether or not we would all agree on what it was is probably another question.
I think the band does have a sort of group consciousness that they're not really aware of, that kind of defines our sound. And I think we would take it to most anything we did. Even when we play cover songs, we try to play them, what we see as, "the right way." What we hear [laugh] as the elements of the song, that make it important. You can listen to a song, hear your own version of it in your head, and hear certain elements that define the song for you. So, when we cover a song, we try to play it right.
C: Not necessarily the way it was originally performed...
J: Right. So people think we're deconstructing it [laugh] or something, but in reality we're just trying to play it right. It's just that different people hear different elements. I think the fact that when we do covers, it still sort of sounds like Eskimo, is evident of the fact that we do have a group consciousness. Whoever knows what it is, I'm not sure.
C: What are you covering this tour?
J: On this tour, we're doing the theme from "You Only Live Twice" - a John Barry composition that Nancy Sinatra sang - and we're doing the covers that are on the record, which are the Snakefinger -"Kill the Great Raven" - and the Duke Ellington [Blue Pepper (Far East of the Blues)] we're throwing out there every now and then. Once in a while we do "Happiness is a Warm Gun" - the Beatles song.
That's an example of a song we tried to play as right as we could and people thought we were deconstructing it [laugh]... but I don't know. I guess that's what happens when you put a vibraphone and a trombone in an arrangement of a typical rock song. If you're really doing a cover, you should be doing something different I think. But, then you get into the dangerous territory of ruining the song. I think somebody said, "In order to do a cover, you have to totally ruin it." [chuckle] I don't know if that's true or not.
