NEWSLETTER

Photo by Tod Seelie

I’m in love with Baltimore. A little weird as I’ve never actually been there. To me, it’s an exotic wasteland of derelict warehouses strewn with the victims of Edgar Allan Poe tales, fringed by those highrise projects you see in The Wire, while Gram Parsons records leak from late-night dockside bars.

Even if it’s nothing like that it would still be great to go there because all the music emanating from Baltimore manages to be original, entertaining and fun. Maybe it’s the low rent, communal living and abundance of arts-based colleges, or perhaps it’s the talented folk who live there right now. Either way, you can’t argue with a city that’s produced acts as varied and interesting as Dan Deacon, Spank Rock, Double Dagger and Cass McCombs. The Death Set arrived in the city as outsiders from Australia and soaked up the town’s club, punk and Wham City scenes, forging them into a weird hyperactive amalgam. Try imagining Video Hippos doing Fascist Fascist covers with a live show that’s caused structural damage to several squats. For a band who make the Libertines look like Dire Straits in terms of holding it together, the improbably named duo of Johnny Siera and Beau Velasco have managed to put out a hefty slew of 7-inches on labels such as Super Busy Bodies and Every Conversation.

Vice: Is there a hierarchy in Baltimore with Dan Deacon as, like, Old King Cole, Spank Rock as the court jester and Ponytail as the court choir?

Johnny Siera (guitars, bass, samples): When I first got to Baltimore I happened to move in next door to the original Wham City. We used to play shows there and I met Dan and all those guys. I met Spank Rock through our friend Emily Rabbit who put out our first EP. There are a bunch of connections between us all. We’ve done tours with Ponytail and I live with their drummer and I mastered their last record. Nolen from Double Dagger is doing our artwork and everyone helps each other out. It’s nice.

You play your live shows on the floor and people always go nuts. Did you see a Lightning Bolt show one day and think, those guys are onto something there?

I first saw The Power Of Salad when I was living in Australia and it was inspirational, but we did this one tour that had no stages and found it more fun to get in people’s faces. The reaction is usually pretty good. We played a basement in Brooklyn a few months back with Dan, and people were running outside to throw up from heat exhaustion. The roof was also covered with some asbestos-like crap. People were grabbing onto these water pipes covered in it and afterwards all these kids broke out in a grotesque rash. It felt like a thin layer of glass all over us for days.

In which soap does Alan Dale give the better performance: The OC or Neighbours?

I will have to Google image search that, dude. Fucked if I know. Not all Australians watch Neighbours, you know.

JIMMY JAMJAR
The Death Set’s next album Worldwide is out soon on Counter. myspace.com/thedeathset

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