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Asteroid #4 - Apple Street
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Asteroid #4's latest release, 'An Amazing
Dream'
is available for download from apolloaudio.com
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 Hailing from Philadelphia, American band Asteroid #4 are among a few East coast giants.
Not “millions of records sold” giants, but more importantly in today’s culture giants in the quality of their song writing, giants in knowing how to stick to their guns, showing integrity, believing in what they are doing and never selling their souls to the devil and that’s no mean feat.
Purveyors of some of the best psychedelic/ experimental music for the last ten years, it can all be enjoyed thanks to four albums, 1998’ ‘Introducing The Asteroid #4’, 2000’ ‘King Richard’s Collectibles’, ‘Honeyspot’ released in 2003 and last year’s ‘An Amazing Dream’
plus a couple of Eps.
Original members singer/ front man Scott Vittorelli and guitarist Eric Harms have witnessed many permutations among their bandmates, however 2007 sees a new and hopefully more permanent line up of the A#4 with the recent joining of Aislinn and Ryan Van Kriedt to add to longer standing members Adam Weaver and Jamie Mahon.
I catch the band in Northampton where they are due to play tonight, but for them this is the end of a few days in the UK, still promoting their last Lp which was released in the UK in January of this year.
Luckily for us they are back in August.
The seven of us are bundle into their van due to the British weather but no amount of rain can’t dampen this bands’ mood as they are obviously ecstatic to be over here and are clearly feeling the love of their public from city to city.
Having friends in common, [You know who you are!], I am immediately welcomed into their fold and apart from three or four planned questions I decide to let this interview “go with the flow” as I quickly realise that this bunch of smart, strong opinionated people could never let me down...
Florence: Hello guys, lady....
You are in the UK on the tail end of promoting your latest release ‘Amazing Dreams’ which is also your fourth album.
You have been noted for changing your sound with every record and yet still stay true to the root of your inspiration which is psychedelia.
 Scott: Yes we have tried different things.
We went for a Mod kind of British invasion sound for our second Lp, on the third we experimented with a country rock sound.
But we always try to keep a root in psychedelia.
Florence: I don’t know if you’ve been thinking yet about the next album but if you want to keep on with this working ethos where could you go next?
Scott: A bit of pop or reggae perhaps?
We’ve been writing songs and I think that from what we’ve already started working on it’s probably gonna be on the same lineage as an ‘Amazing Dream’ but maybe a little more developed.
The country record took us to an area where we were a little bit uncomfortable so ‘Amazing Dreams’ was a kind of reaction to that.
Trying to write better songs and doing what we were doing back when we first started, meaning psychedelia, Pink Floyd, Hawkwind kind of drawn out shoegaze....the whole thing. I think that now maybe we are comfortable enough in our own skin to try and continue with a country element and still keep that kind of psychedelia song base.
With past records we had a goal, we really wanted to try this or that but now we’re at a point where we just want to do what comes naturally.
If there is a country song on the record then so be it. We’re not trying to go with this aesthetic anymore, now it’s just us after ten years.
Adam: What really matters is to reveal something in a song, whether it’s a good time or heartbreak. It’s all about hearing a song and whether you are aware of it or not, believe it and connect. It doesn’t have to be super deep or important, it should just be genuine.
The best you can do is to at least be genuine and sometimes it can take a long time of trying to be like something.
Miles Davis said: “ you’ve got to play a long time to sound like yourself. “
Also we’ve changed things up a bit too by bringing in other people.
I’ve been playing with these guys for five years now and Aislinn and Ryan moved from Oakland five months ago and have been playing with us and that brings a whole other sound into it.
By the way you should check out their band, Sunsplit.
Scott: Jamie, our bass player is also part of a Philly band called The Three4Tens. We’re all long standing friends.
Eric and I are the only two original members after ten years and bringing in new members also brings in new influences which are welcome, otherwise it all feels a little stagnant.
Florence: Do you feel that you need to keep on moving?
Scott: Musically we like to move around a lot but I’d like to keep a band together for a long time now. I think that we’re all at a point where rebuilding is scary because we’ve been doing it for so long.
This whole changing members every three years or so is not very healthy because it’s like completely having to start over again and again.
Jamie: We’re trying to adopt that family vibe within the band and we are really close knit in that way.
Scott: We really strive on being like family.
Everybody has got their own bag and we’ve had some interesting personnel coming in and out of this band but I think that right now with A#4, Sunsplit and The Three4Tens sharing members and a studio we have a great community and that’s what made some of the best scenes in Rock’n’Roll.
Aislinn: The Philadelphia psychedelic music scene is kinda going crazy right now.
Scott: Just like back in the late 90s when we first started and there was a big psych scene we were all part of with The Lilys, Mazarin, The Cobbs...
Florence: Punk music for instance has come and gone and then has been kind of resuscitated but the genre you are into has somewhat always been around.
As you’re all too young to have lived through it the first time around, what it is about it that’s so dear to you?
It is the sound itself you’re in love with or the period in time it represents that you think should not be forgotten?
Eric: It’s a timeless genre of music and in a way it can’t be duplicated.
Jamie: It’s also the music that we grew up with, that our parents were playing.
Scott: We are the first generation that can say that.
Our parents’ parents’ music was Swing and Bebop but we were all spoon fed The Doors and Led Zep, The Beatles, The Stones....
Adam: There are a lot of parallels with what is going on in the world right now and back in the late 60s, especially with this particular administration.
Florence: That’s a very interesting point.
So do you think that we’ve done a full circle and somehow are back to square one with the Iraq war being to us what the Vietnam war was to our parents?
Adam: I think that our parents did well having someone like Nixon compare to having someone like Bush!
Scott: Bush makes Nixon look like Kennedy.
Adam: All the same things are there. It’s the same recipe with the same issues and people are reacting now the same way they did then.
Scott: But it’s not the same though because back then there was a draft. Today the American youth is very lazy and consumed with consumerism and MTV. There are things to get up in arms about but ignorance is bliss. It’s all about the television, the shopping mall, our big cars.
Adam: There are a lot of people between the two coasts of America and that’s a lot of votes. These people are afraid of things that have absolutely no effect on them and all this kids are going to war but their lives aren’t changing, they’re still shovelling buckets of fried chicken in their face. They don’t really realise the sacrifices made by previous generations.
Florence: With the UK being such a small country whenever a soldier comes back in a body bag it often happens to be your neighbour’ s nephew or your friend’s cousin’s best friend....
In the States you have approximately the same number of casualties but with 300 million people it all feel very diluted.
Aislinn: The sad thing is the people going to war are from the middle of America and yet the people on the coasts are the one who are up in arms about it!
The point is we definitely disagree with our government and we wish that the music we make would be part of things coming full circle.
Florence: Well it had to be said.
Anyway, all that to say that we love psychedelic music!
Scott: The thing is we might think that this is a scene much bigger than it actually is. I hate to say that but especially in The States people aren’t really listening to the kind of music that we do.
The difference between now and the Sixties is that the bands we are talking about being influenced by, were #1 to 10 in the charts, even the black artists. Today’s black artists in America aren’t singing about anything that they should, politically or socially. All they are singing about is money, it’s all about money, for the ones who have made it anyway. It’s all coming from “the man” for lack of a better word.
They don’t want bands like ours because we can’t move the same volume of units.
Florence: When it comes to music or any form of art people today don’t even have the same attention span as they use to.
They’re happy just buying singles!
Scott: We like to make records not singles.
Bands from the 60s made records, for a full hour.
People don’t have patience anymore and they don’t care enough about anything that isn’t put right in front of them.
Adam: If you go on Broadway now everything has to be sung in order for people to pay any attention, nobody goes to see a Tchekov play anymore. They want to see ‘Cats’, they want to see ‘Titanic, the musical’, there is probably a musical about Jack The Ripper for all I know, it’s such a light subject!
Florence: Personally I have a problem with iTunes and the likes, where people are happy and allowed to only buy a single. You’ve worked your socks off to put together twelve tracks and people only want one!
What kind of bullshit is that?
I find it very disrespectful towards the artists.
We need some sort of backlash!
Scott: A cultural backlash could be on the horizon.
We’ve already seen a psychedelia revival that keeps coming back.
Even in the early 80s there was The Paisley Underground on the West coast with bands like The Rain Parade, The Long Ryders and early Bangles...it just keeps coming back. The kids have been so into that post Punk thing and for so long that if we are following the trend of what happened between the 80s and the 90s, we’re probably heading into another one of those shoegazers’ revival where everyone wanted to be Ride, Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine and eventually we might be at the right place at the right time for the first time.
When we first started Oasis was already done making their most popular records. Basically we’ve never been on cue.
If you’re a band and you keep on doing what you’re doing eventually it will catch up with you.
Ryan: Or wear everybody down eventually!
Scott: There is a lot to be said for longevity.
Again, back in the 60s a label would financially help an artist to develop. Nowadays people like Pink Floyd would have only made one record.
Whenever I think about who we should model ourselves on, maybe not musically but how we should work together as a band, I think about Guided By Voices. They started when they were in their twenties, just like we did, and kept going and going, never gave up and they kept their day jobs, and when they hit their forties they finally sold enough records that a major label like Matador thought: “ shit these guys are actually making money! “ , signed them and finally the band could quit their jobs and now they live comfortably, I don’t know how comfortably but they can make a living doing music.
Once again longevity!
Eric: Really You don’t need the big record companies anymore.
Adam: They used to facilitate an audience but now it’s a lot easier to facilitate your own.
Florence: Because of the internet?
Scott: Ten years ago if we had Myspace and YouTube, we might be much further along than we are now.
There are so many more ways to get your name out there and your music around.
Adam: You can virtually bump into someone on the other side of the world and say: “ hey listen to this “ , before you’d have to take a plane and set up your gear if you didn’t have a label do it for you and also you had to pay a lot of money to go into a studio, ten, twenty years ago but now you’ve got a computer, you’ve got a mike...and maybe now people are discovering that they are listening to songs with a little more honesty because they’re not covered up by a producer that knows every little trick and can touch up your vocals a hundred times.
It’s not just the internet that has changed things but also computers.
Aislinn: You’ve also got people like Eric who has his own site called Apolloaudio.com where artists can put their entire album up for people to buy and he gives 50% of every sale to the band.
You would never make that kind of money with a label.
Florence: Looking back at the 60s, 70s, whose career do you most admire?
Maybe wish you could emulate?
Scott: Pink Floyd was nice. The way they started out as being the king of a little mod/psych scene.
Also Neil Young who kept his integrity for a long time.
Aislinn: The Velvet Underground because nobody liked them.
They didn’t sell any records in the 60s and now, in our generation they’ve been named the #1 influence for so many bands.
Scott: I think that they’re more influential than The Stones in a lot of ways. They created Punk rock which created alternative music.
Ryan: They also created the whole spaceman scene and Spiritualized...
Scott: They were the first space rock band for us.
Florence: Any of your contemporaries, maybe not from your own genre, you particularly respect?
Scott: The White Stripes which to me are a phenomenon.
I really respect them even though I’m not always a 100% into what they do as I really think they could use a bass player but they’re playing the Blues. They’re doing in the 90s and 00s what The Stones did in the 60s, bringing the Blues to white suburbia. It’s pretty impressive.
Jack White is not a clown and he ended up doing The Raconteurs, he’s a really smart guy who didn’t waste it on dope and cars.
He had a plan and he went for it.
Aislinn: When they come on you know it’s them. Their sound is so unique, they’re amazing.
 Florence: Please could you recommend a few good bands?
And be as obvious as you want!
Scott: Well then Sunsplit, The Three4Tens, The Cobbs, The Quarter After, The December Sound from Boston who are collectively our favourite, The Sky Drops, The Sunray from England, Brother JT from Philly who needs a little more respect.
Eric: You could say that Brother JT started the whole psychedelic Philly scene back in the mid 80s with The Original Sins.
Florence: Briefly going back to your next album, how far are you with that?
Ryan: We’ve recorded a song today in the van actually!
Scott: We’re not very far really.
We have a lot of stuff written and we do play live a couple of tracks we are working on but that’s about it for now.
Florence: And to conclude, a message to the world perhaps?
Adam: Go back and find out what the people you like listen to, don’t just listen to what you’re hearing now. Really do go back in time and listen.
Scott: Politically we could have a fucking slogan fest but we just don’t have the time.
Words: Florence ACHERY Pictures: Martyn Fenwick
www.asteroid4.com
www.myspace.com/asteroid4 |
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