People often disparage the cassette for being a terrible medium in terms of sound quality. But they're forgetting how incredibly MORE terrible the flexi disc is. But when there's a song as good as Zuckerbaby's Andromeda on it, we're willing to give it another chance. This was originally included in the May 1997 edition of Chart magazine. Less than a year after that single, Zuckerbaby was on the cover of the magazine with a photoshoot and article that is a great encapsulation of the excesses of the alt rock bubble of the 90's. [img width=585]//7ca49eb9f67ba1319ef136f9d52cd8b8.cdn.bubble.io/f1739143025946x343766465169204100/richtext_content.jpeg[/img] [img width=585]//7ca49eb9f67ba1319ef136f9d52cd8b8.cdn.bubble.io/f1739143039472x695541187712225000/richtext_content.jpeg[/img] [img width=590]//7ca49eb9f67ba1319ef136f9d52cd8b8.cdn.bubble.io/f1739143052095x384868053555967400/richtext_content.jpeg[/img] [img width=593]//7ca49eb9f67ba1319ef136f9d52cd8b8.cdn.bubble.io/f1739143065860x231902740289497960/richtext_content.jpeg[/img] [img width=596]//7ca49eb9f67ba1319ef136f9d52cd8b8.cdn.bubble.io/f1739143077951x638155501501043000/richtext_content.jpeg[/img] [b]ZUCKERBABY[/b] It's rather synchronistic to delve into the existence of Calgary's Zuckerbaby just as Pete Frame's book Rock Family Trees has hit shelves. Like most rock groups, Zuckerbaby winded a path through several splintered, less successful band configurations before hitting on a formula and line-up that seemed to fly. Guitarist Reed Shimozawa is infamous on the Prairies for his Van Halen-like noodling in the band Smash L.A., after which he went on to play with Andy Eichhorn (vocals) and Wayne Stadler (drums) in the Calgary band Calliope for a spell. To trace the path of bassist Brian Doss' personal rock band tree would lead him to a branch of the Zuckerbaby family, most recently from a Calgary Celtic-folk outfit. But at what point does a band become a separate entity rather than a new incarnation with a different line-up? In Zuckerbaby's case, that point came about two summers ago. Calliope had spent several seasons and a lot of energy as a punk-flavoured band which offi- cially broke up when its members "went their separate ways" late in the spring of 1995. "We were just kind of going, 'Well, what do you want to do?' for a couple of months," says ex-Calliope lead singer Andy. "[It was] for a summer. The lost summer," he says wistfully. "Reed and I both worked on a couple of [song] ideas in the break-up period." "We weren't sure if Wayne was going to do it or not," adds Reed, alluding to the fact that former Calliope bassist Ted Koti would not be making music with the other three ex-mem- bers any time soon. "We went through a bunch of stuff [during] that period. As friends, we were going through some personal things. It was the dark period," Andy admits. "We do, we call it The Dark Period," asserts Reed with a hint of a grin. "We went through some things personally and eventually we started writing these songs. Andy had a couple and I had a couple and we got together and worked on them and thought, 'Yeah! This is good!’" With the new material, Reed and Andy approached Wayne to see if he'd still be interested in playing with them, but Wayne was debating whether or not to move back to his native Vancouver. Word leaked out within the Calgary scene that Reed, Andy, and possibly Wayne, were looking for a bass player to write with, and Brian Doss entered the picture, or family tree, as it were. "I was a little frustrated with my old band, so I called [Andy and Reed] and said, 'Let's jam.' And that's where it took off," Brian explains. The first night the foursome jammed together, they created two of the songs which would end up on Zuckerbaby's debut self-titled album for PolyGram — "Heavy" and "Bellybutton Queen." The songs were basically finished by the time the guys left the rehearsal, prompting Andy to call a meeting over coffee to see if the others were interested in committing to a new band. "I said, 'I don't know what you guys want to do, but I feel a real honest-to-God chemistry here. Let's not ignore it. Can we have everybody on board?' Everybody kind of felt something, I think," remembers Andy. "So we decided to say, 'New band. Fresh. New lease on life. New name'," Andy states matter-of-factly, alluding to the birth of Zuckerbaby, whose name is derived from an old black and white Marlene Dietrich movie. From Calliope to Zuckerbaby, what made the foursome decide to change the name as opposed to feeling like they'd just replaced a bass player, was a sense of a new direction in songwriting. "It was experimental," Andy continues. "We wanted to do something completely different than before. We asked ourselves, point-blank, 'What did you really get into this for? What kind of band did you really want to be in when you first got into music?' So we went back to basics and everybody was into it." "Back to basics" meant pure pop songs for the new unit. "The thing I started playing music for was pop music," stipulates Reed, whose foray into big-hair rock less than a decade ago might make one raise an eyebrow or two. "I love pop songs," he declares. "It doesn't matter if you're talking about real cheese or the '70s rock that we were into. Harder, lighter, faster, slower there are hooks that span multiple genres and that's why we feel we can go there," Andy posits. "[Calliope] was into groove-oriented jamming and stuff whereas this, the songs, the band, is based on ideas brought in [by Reed and Andy] and then Wayne and Brian put their two cents in." Coming from a more pop angle took the lads away from any threat of Aerosmith comparisons and placed them far more suitably next to the work of The Beatles. It becomes apparent upon frequent listening to the debut Zuckerbaby album that a nod to the Fab Four is certainly present, although not necessarily prevalent. And indulgent is the right word here: once you are reeled in by the hooks on this record, the Zuckerbaby album will probably not stray far from your CD player. With sugar already implied in the band's name (uh, "zucker" is German for it), the melodies, harmonies and catchy lyrics will be the last thing floating through your head at the end of the day, guaranteed. With a reference to "rubber soul," a few McCartney/Lennon la-la-las sprinkled through one track and a trumpet line that's too obvi- ously Beatle-induced to ignore on "Make It 'Til Monday," it's easy to assume Zuckerbaby as a whole worships at the altar of the most famous band in rock. They're not all Beatles freaks, though. "I don't think Wayne is," says Reed. "Nope, just a freak," Brian quips. "I've always been into bands like Bowie, the early British Invasion stuff, The Hollies, those kinds of sing-along groups," admits Andy, Zuckerbaby's lyricist. "There was a time where [The Beatles] was all I consumed, mostly the literature, the aura around the fanatic side of it, and then more recently got into the music and start- ed learning songs, and more appreciation for it," he says. "Directly or indirectly, it all stems from them because they were the first ones really to do it." "Like it or not, if you're playing pop-rock music today," Reed picks up the thread, "you're influenced by The Beatles. They opened up the genre completely. They took it from one-four-five blues-rock songs, all the way to songs that have really interesting stuff, not just arrangements but the chord structures themselves. We are influenced by The Beatles and we'd be lying if we said we weren't, but we're also influenced by ten million other things." "A lot of times," confesses Brian, "when I was making up bass lines, I was thinking, 'What the hell would Paul McCartney do?"" "But at the same time," counters Reed, "part of the reason you can get away with doing that is because you don't really know that many Paul McCartney bass lines." "Yeah, he can't just go, 'I think I'm gonna throw this 'Let It Be' lick in'," Andy chimes in. "And that's the beauty of trying to maintain an arm's length from your influences." Fanning the flame and trying to get the message out to more people means constant touring, and Zuckerbaby finds the rewards and the drawbacks of it are pretty much equal. "There's nothing I would rather do than play music every night," Reed effuses. "I'd put up with a lot of suffering to do that. I consider it a privilege to be able to just get out there and...RAWK! Seriously, I love it." And RAWK is what Mr. Shimozawa certainly does. Infamous, at least within the group, for being one of the top five most "stylin"" musicians in Canada [see Chart's October 1997 issue], Reed takes care of his onstage image, but he does so without pomp and circumstance. "It's like when you go out," he says, "you're going to wear certain things. I don't want to go up there and have people say, 'That guy's a fuckin' slob!' That's not what I'm about." Known for his also-stylin' vintage thrift-shop duds, Andy adds, "The clothes that I have in my bag are clothes that I wear all the time, whether I'm onstage or not. I've been in bands where it was really an image thing, where these were your stage clothes and these were your street clothes. I don't have one wardrobe for home and one wardrobe for rock 'n' roll." "You want to present yourself with dignity," adds Brian, which elicits a response of uproarious laughter. During the photo shoot for this very article, Brian chose to don a wig, lipstick and an apron for a hilarious session that will surely be brought up at band parties for years to come. "Don't you talk about dignity to me!" snickers Reed in fond remembrance of the dolled-up Brian. "Miss Dignity 1997!" Funnily enough, make-up, high fashion and a major penchant for glam is seeping back into musical culture lately. Canadian bands like the now-defunct Ballroom Zombies, Vertigo, Bloody Chicletts, The Age of Electric and The Conscience Pilate all throw a little eyeliner on before heading out onstage, and each has a varying degree of glam to its essence. Discussing the glam resurgence and, by extension, a newfound acceptance of '70s progressive rock sounds, the guys throw out theories on who has glam or prog elements to their music in the '90s. "This is a good time right now because there are a lot of bands that write three-minute pop songs, in and out, click, bang, that are doing well," postulates Andy, "and there are a lot of bands that are experimenting, Spiritualized being one of them. I think that's a great thing. Otherwise it's kind of boring when everything just goes in one direction. Because disco was big, then all the metal bands, everybody, was doing disco. Kiss was doing disco." "KISS DIDN'T DO DISCO!" Reed bellows from across the table. "Fuck you, they did disco, liar!" Andy counters. "There's nothing wrong with that because there was a lot of cool stuff that was influenced by one big, global thing. It was everybody. The guys who were delivering the five o'clock news had their lapels out, you know. John Travolta changed a lot of people's lives." "The Spice Girls are Kiss for the '90s," Brian decides. Talk shifts to the fact that there's already a British Spice Girls cover band called The Spicey Girls which has toured North America before the original Spice Girls have. It has always been frustrating to see cover bands in the suburbs of any city make more money playing than original rock bands. "We've seen the No Doubt tribute band," says Andy. "There's an Our Lady Peace tribute band in Montréal," nods Reed. "They might have been called Naveed." "I wonder if we could convince anybody that we're a Zuckerbaby tribute band," muses Wayne. "We know all the songs!" laughs Brian. Yeah, and the lead singer dresses just like Andy... "Oh, I don't know! The guitar player can't really play, though," says Reed. "Wouldn't that be a schtick, like a year later, to expose it all!" wonders Wayne. They'd have to be called Andromeda, then. "Or Zuckerchild," Brian offers. "You never know," says Andy in a dreamy, far-away voice. "People's perceptions are really strange. Some say, 'You guys sound just like you do on the record,' and then you run into some other people who say, 'You guys sound good live but you don't sound the same as you do on the record.' Or, 'You guys sound really good live, the vocals are really tight,' and maybe they aren't. And then, just the seed gets planted that maybe you're a tribute band: 'Yeah, they're not very good. Their vocals are fucking shit.' It's just a matter of perception, planting that seed. I find that kind of interesting." Like an ancient Chinese philosopher, Chang-Tzu, said in a poem, "Once upon a time, I dreamed I was a butterfly. Suddenly I was awakened...now I do not know whether I was a man dreaming I was a butterfly or whether I am a butterfly now dreaming I am a man." Zuckerbaby or Zuckerchild? Will we ever know for certain? [b]YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT?[/b] It's a funny thing, perception. At a live show, you'll have some people saying, "I've seen you guys play five times and that's the best show ever," and you think it's the worst show. But as a spectator, it's all the elements in his/her life coming together that made them think they saw a great show or a bad show. "The kid could just be pissed off because Burger King changed their fries," Wayne thinks aloud. "Which, by the way, is a fucking farce," spouts Reed. "I would like to use your magazine as a forum to say their fries suck! They're like those crispy battered fries. And now KFC has those same fries as Burger King and they are two fucking thumbs down. They're BAD!" What do you really think, Reed? Stop beating around the bush... "Yeah, but I mean something as simple as that can set off one of our days," says Wayne. "You're having a bad day, or having a bad show, maybe our perception is off." So Burger King had better realize the effects its having on rock 'n' roll... "You know who probably came up with the idea for those new fries? Probably the same guy who came up with new Coke. Or Clear Pepsi," Brian opines. "He pulled it from the market, he lost his shirt, and now he's moving on to fries," chuckles Andy. - Karen Pace [b] [/b] [b]WAVE BABIES: Zuckerbaby on summertime memories[/b] Considering the fact that most of the Great White North is covered in the snow that begat the country's nickname at this time of year, Chart magazine decided to bring a sunny disposition to its mid-winter issue, so we asked some summery questions of the boys collectively known as Zuckerbaby to help them, and you, forget those winter blahs. [b]What's your most embarrassing water- related summer story?[/b] Brian: When I was a kid and we were in Arkansas, me and my brother were swimming in a pool and he came up and his shorts were around his ankles [Makes a motion like he pulled down his brother's shorts under water]. He was, like, "Aaah!" and he came back down and smacked his chin on the side of the pool. It was the biggest dork act...mind you I was eight. I was young; I needed the money. Wayne: Riding my bike off the dock at Harrison Lake, into the lake, and sacking big old school, a 1912 building with a big myself on the handlebars. Andy: Haven't been the same since, have ya? Reed: When I was really young, we were all at the swimming pool and we decided to go off the high diving board, which is a big thing when you're 12. So we climbed all the way up there, and there was this whole line of kids behind me, and I got up on the high diving board and I sort of inched forward. I got down on my hands and knees, crawled a little bit more and then I was just, like, "Nah, I didn't want to do that anyway." So I went back down the ladder. On the way down, I was just telling everybody, "It's out of order." [b]What are the ideal ingredients for a summer barbecue?[/b] Andy: Some kind of a boom box and a barbecue. Brian: You need beer, like a light beer. Andy: Yeah, like a non-alcoholic beer. Wayne: Food for the barbecue. Reed: Some animal by-product. Andy: Spam. [b]Our diverse climate means you rarely get to see women in bikinis. Discuss.[/b] Wayne: It's quite a shame. Andy: So you have to keep a lot of wallet- sized pictures in your wallet. Brian: I'm actually terrified of seeing us in bikinis. Reed: They don't really suit us anyway, so the question is irrelevant. [b]Should Speedos be banned on everyone except Olympic swimmers?[/b] Reed: And flashers. Andy: And fat Mexicans. Yeah, I think they should be banned. [b]Was your first kiss at summer camp? [/b] Andy: My brother and I went to this summer camp once and it was this church camp. We both conspired to leave, and it was an hour and a half outside Saskatoon so we started hitchhiking and we got caught and we were crying and shit. Reed: The first summer camp I went to, I didn't kiss any girls there because it was a Cub camp, it was all boys. There was this little kid named Bruce... [Bruce LaBruce is shooting Zuckerbaby's video for "Shampoo" in a salon upstairs as he speaks, with a pink chiffon scarf tied around his neck]. Actually there's kind of a sad story because I went to Cub camp thinking everyone in my own Cub group was going and nobody went, so I didn't know anybody. I cried a lot that summer. Andy: You know, the first kiss, though, wasn't at camp. It was grade three, behind this white thing with a little partition where they kept the high jump mattresses behind a wall and they closed it up and there was a little space between there and you could just squeeze in there with a girl. Shawna Kistle, I believe, was her name. At noon-hour. She just gave me a peck on the cheek and I was, like, "Oh my God!" Wayne: My first kiss was in elementary school chasing some girl around the play- ground. Kissing tag. Reed: I don't [remember my first kiss]. They just started appearing. [b]Do you suffer at the thought of no hockey during the summer months? [/b] Wayne: I don't play hockey but I watch it and I can live without it during the summer. Reed: Sports ain't rock 'n' roll. And neither are shorts! I have news for all you shorts-wearing rockers: you're out of the rock club!
