INTERVIEW: Fig Dish
- Al Muzer
"Things do get a little strange here and there, don't they," chuckles guitarist/vocalist Blake Smith when a few of the more creative lyrical moments on Figdish's second Polydor Records release, When Shove Goes Back To Push , are mentioned.
"We had most of the lyrics written down before we showed up at the studio," he continues. "As soon as we got there, however, we started drinking - basically, all day long. We wound up in the vocal booth at some point but nobody could remember any of the words! So, we just kind'a made shit up as we went along," he laughs. "You know, 'Hey! Now that sounds pretty cool!' That's why things on the record may seem a little, uhm, obtuse at times."
One of the brightest-sounding records of 1997, the latest offering from the Chicago-based four-piece picks up the crunchy, Raspberries-flavored, guitar-pop torch their critically-acclaimed 1995 debut, That's What Love Songs Often Do , carried while it adds even more hooks, harmonies, glockenspiel, pseudo-metal riffs, techno-churn chaos, smart-ass lyrics, jangling power chords and revved-up guitar madness to the group's arsenal.
"We're all huge fans of good pop music," Smith says of his bandmates. "The great thing about being in Figdish is that the four of us all share a common pop vocabulary. We've all known each other since high school and we all come from the same place musically, so we don't have to consciously try to effect any particular pose. We just play what comes naturally to us."
"One of my favorite comments that I hear about the band when people see us live is that our gigs are more like watching a gang than a band," he adds. "We get out there and we're all, like, totally tuned in to each other and completely into putting on a great show."
"It's all, you know, about delivering 'the rock' to the people," Smith laughs. "And, while that might sound kind'a corny and may even border on Spinal Tap, the thing is, we all love music so much that our pure love for playing and making music sometimes makes us come off as a little bit weird on stage."
"We almost seem like a put-on or like we're goofing on the audience when we're really goin' at it up there," he chuckles. "We jump around all over the place and like to strike these really dramatic, Ted Nugent-as-guitar-God poses. The thing is, though, as much as we love having fun, we're more than half-serious about what we're doing."
"You know, we've tossed a few television sets out of a few windows and gotten ourselves into a bit of trouble every now and then," Smith laughs when asked just how far he and his band were willing to take their quest for rock 'n' roll fun."
"Which makes a lot of the people we know ask us stuff like, 'What the hell are you guys doin'? Don't you want this?' [a career as a musician] And I'm, like, 'Well, yeah! This is what this is to me.' Partying. Getting loose. Having fun, man, when I was a kid growing up in the '80s, that was what rock was all about, you know? People really enjoying what they were doing."
"Rock has just gotten so damn tight-assed over the last few years," he says with a mixture of frustration and genuine disgust. "You turn on the radio anymore and everyone you hear is so damn serious and so damn straight-faced - it's fuckin' rock, man! Lighten up, have some fun! Throw a party!"
