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| Mike White |
Check out part 1, on The Body, here!
Also, check out Jason's Ferocious Fucking Teeth release review here!
In this day and age of five minute careers and bands that are forgotten quicker than a person can click delete on their mouse button, the career trajectory of Athens based loud rockers Harvey Milk is kind of an anomaly. They originally formed in the early 1990’s released a bunch of really good, yet sometimes hard to find albums, and then called it a day in 1998.
But they didn’t stay dead, they reformed in 2005, and were given a heroes welcome by a bunch of underground rockers who had kept their legend through word of mouth and the internet. Yes, this is one case where the internet, actually helped extend a bands career instead of speed its demise.
“It’s something that has grown over the past 4 or 5 years. We have fun doing it, so that’s why we do it. We feel very lucky that people still care enough about us to come out and see us,” said drummer Kyle Spence. “We know really good bands that can’t even tour for two weeks.”
The band, which also, includes singer/guitarist Creston Spiers and bassist Stephen Tanner, has seen an up tick in the amount of people that have shown interest in the band. The internet has kept the band’s name alive so that people could still hear the albums they made in the 90’s before they broke up.
He also sees other things good things that came about because of the internet. Booking has become easier, even though downloading has had its effect, it hasn’t had enough of an effect to change the way they operate. It will be noted that each member of the band has day jobs and lives outside of the band.
“Let me put it this way, honestly for a band like us, it hasn’t taken that much money out of our pockets,” said Spence.
Even though Spence is a big fan of CDs, he knows those are on the way out. In fact, the band has gone the vinyl route, putting a lot of their money into making vinyl to sell at their shows. This whole thing of vinyl being on the upswing is no joke, because Spence said that people do buy it at the shows.
But before we talk too much about the economics of a touring band, let’s just say that none of this would be possible if it wasn’t for the incredible music the band puts out. Sometimes called a sludge band because of their use of slow speeds and down turned riffs, the band actually has a wide variety of influences that include noise, experimental and classic rock.
But if you talk to Spence, he’ll even have a more streamlined description of the band’s sound.
“We’re basically a blues rock band, a blues rock trio, in a way like Cream, but with a music major writing the songs,” said Spence.
That blues tag is actually quite apt, because when Spiers starts moaning, you can definitely tell he has something deep down inside of him that he needs to get out, and the bands riffs draw on the classic sounds of that genre, though dipped in tar and slowed down a bit. But that is just only one part of their, as evidence by 1997’s “The Pleaser” the band can turn it up and boogies like the best of them.
Spence said that record was a response to what was happening at the time it was released.
No where has the band’s love of the slow and low is more evident on the band’s newest release “A Small Turn Of Human Kindness”, where the band takes it love of slowing things down to the extreme, trimming all the fat off this sound. In fact, according to Spence, the band has kind of fucked itself, because they’ve taken it as far as it can go on this one, it’s like the closing of a chapter.
And who knows maybe they might even close a chapter on another aspect of their musical lives. You might want to come down to the show because you never know when they will stop doing this. Spence has this to say
“We haven’t thought it out past the next few weeks. Who knows this could be everyone’s last chance to see us. We’ll do what we feel,” said Spence.
Manic Productions Presents:
Harvey Milk
The Body
Ferocious Fucking Teeth
Tuesday, July 12
Daniel Street
21 Daniel Street, Milford, CT
8:00 pm – 21+ - $12 ($10 advance)
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