From the years 2000 to 2002 I ran an online zine, Actionattackhelicopter, along with my friends, Brian and Josh. I was fortunate to interview many musicians whose work I enjoyed. I’m posting some of those interviews here for anyone who may have missed them the first time. They have been edited for length, relevance, and to correct for my poor editing skills at the time of original publication. Keep in mind that these were done over a dozen years ago, thus individuals’ opinions, thoughts, and ideas may no longer be relevant, but they are still interesting as a snapshot of a particular time and place.
This interview was done sometime in November or December of 2000.
—
I’ve known John Davis for a while as the guy behind HeldLikeSound Fanzine as well as one of the fine men who works at Holiday Matinee Publicity. However, I never realized what a fine little band he has with Q And Not U. Based out of Washington, DC, QANU’s debut album, No Kill, No Beep Beep recently came out on the prodigious Dischord label. While definitely influenced by their peers, Q And Not U has taken inventive rock and roll to a creative spot, scurrying the entire way with their frantic guitar playing, three vocalists and off-kilter time changes, No Kill, No Beep Beep is a very stimulating listen which breathes new life into a rather stagnant DC scene. I recently chatted with John (who plays drums for the band) over the phone and here’s what he had to say.
Both the band name and album title are very odd. How did you come up with those?
They’re both pretty indicative of the fact that we have a hard time making decisions when it comes to names. We’re not the best at inconsequential stuff like that. The name of the band was something we had been tossing back and forth for a while. We had a hard time settling on something. Harris (Klahr, guitar/vocals) had been talking with someone and this person had mentioned how there are no words in the English language that aren’t Q without U. Everything is “QU” like quiz or quotient. Unless it’s a proper noun, there’s nothing that we knew of that would have been Q and not U. He said, “Oh, Q and not U. That’s a pretty cool name for a band.” That got thrown into the pot so we decided to go with it. I seem to remember having a very passive role in deciding that Q And Not U would be the name. I think somebody else was the one who wanted to do it and I didn’t care. With the album title, it was the same thing. We had lists a bunch of pages long of possible album titles and we were sitting there for hours and couldn’t come up with anything. As a joke I combined a couple of them and said, “How about No Kill, No Beep Beep?” We laughed about it but I said I thought it was kind of cool and Harris was laughing and said he liked it too. It took a while for Chris (Richards, guitar/vocals) and Matt (Borlik, bass/vocals) to come over on it. Chris was borderline with it and Matt didn’t like it, but eventually we all decided to do it. It has an interesting ring to it. What the hell does it mean? Is it a road rage thing? Ian MacKaye said, “No Kill, No Beef Beef?” That’s what he thought it was the first time we told him. He was like, “Well, the vegetarians are going to like it, but I dunno, it’s kind of a weird name.” We didn’t care, though. We were in a serious time crunch with this record. We recorded it in the beginning of June and we didn’t know if it was going to be on Dischord or not. We were hoping so and it seemed to be the case, but they took a while to deliberate. The label was in this weird limbo. They didn’t know if they were going to be putting out any new bands. They thought they would just let it go. But they all met up and were listening to our record and the Faraquet record and they asked themselves if they wanted to do it, because it’s a lot more work than what they had been doing for the last year. They hadn’t been putting out any brand new bands. They were all psyched about it and agreed to do it and that was about the beginning of July. We were leaving at the end of July for three weeks of shows. Ian said that we had to have the artwork turned in before we left but we had nothing. We did it all in a span of two weeks. We came up with the design and shot all the photos—and that was an entire day and night we were stuck in that room sticking up all those letters and getting all the people to show up. We had to hope that they wore the right colors. They were instructed to wear primary colors. Everyone showed up and it went really well, but it was all about a week before we went on tour. The next day we took the film to the one-hour photo and had to get high quality blow-ups done and that took a few days. I had finished the art the minute we were leaving for tour. I got it done and said, “Let’s go.” I gave it to my girlfriend and she brought it over to Dischord. It was down to the very last minute. He had said that if we didn’t get it done before we left on tour that he would have to push it off until January or February and we didn’t want that so we worked really hard to get it in on time. It wound up coming out in November, then.
What is the deal with Dischord, then? Like you said, they don’t sign a lot of bands and they usually choose to deal exclusively with bands based in Washington, DC. What is their status right now? You had mentioned that they were thinking about not putting out any new bands. Why would they do something like that?
I think it was a situation where Ian wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with the label anymore. They didn’t know what to do. They didn’t sense a direction so they were just coasting for a while. They were like, “We can still put out records by Fugazi, Lungfish, and Bluetip, and we’ll keep our back stock going and do the distribution, but let’s hold off on new bands.” I’m not sure if it was a matter of him [Ian] not being interested in any bands, but he liked our band and we very strongly wanted to be on Dischord. He said, “Let me tell you about all this stuff, because I don’t want you to be disappointed.” Because they’re not big on the press stuff, as you know. Very old school.
I know that I ranted about it in that email I sent you, but their lack of press doesn’t bother me that much. It’s not that big of a deal. Honestly, I have tremendous respect for Dischord. If I had to start a label, they would be who I would model myself after. I think you guys are really lucky to be on Dischord because the press they do develop is very focused on the few bands they do have. Whereas, a lot of labels that have a bunch of bands just push their label and not a specific band. But you can open up some magazine and see a Bluetip ad where it just says “Bluetip” and has a weird picture. You can see those in magazines for months because they push their releases for moths. So I think you guys are really lucky to be in a situation like that.
We definitely feel really lucky. When I first saw the Q And Not U Dischord ad, that was a really cool moment. I grew up listening to Dischord stuff and reading zines and seeing the Dischord ads. It was pretty awesome to see the band that I was in was the band being featured in the ad. That was cool.
Little John’s grown up.
I’ve arrived!
How was Ian as a producer? How did he affect the album?
He definitely had an effect on it. He and Don Zientara, who was the other guy who was involved with the recording—those guys are just totally amazing to work with. Far and away it was the best recording experience I’ve ever had. First of all, Inner Ear studios is an incredible place. It’s really nice, but not opulent. It’s tastefully done, the lighting is very nice and it’s warm and homey. But you’re there to work. There are not snacks all over the place or movies being projected on the wall. There’s another room so you can read or lay down if you need to get away. It’s just really nice. Ian and Don were good at keeping us focused but not being too tense. They’re very much jokesters. They were kidding the whole time because you’re in there for a week or a week and a half and it gets boring sometimes. Particularly where you get to the parts where you’re not involved and you have to sit there and wait through what everyone else is doing. Ian was hands off when we were doing the tracking. When we were doing the recording, that was Don’s territory. Ian would offer some suggestions and adjust the mic here and there, but mostly he would just say, “Why don’t you try this?” or “What do you think of this?” and mostly we would say no to whatever he would suggest. Two out of three things we would say, “No, I don’t think so.”
[laughs]
He’s into throwing out these outrageous ideas. Like, “You’ve got to have the three vocals here and then do this!” We were like, “No, come on. We’re not going to do that.” But once in a while, there were things on the record that he proposed and were his ideas and we thought it sounded cool. We may not do it live, but little things like in-jokes between Ian and us that are on the record.
Like what?
At the very end of the album, the last thirty seconds of the last song sounds like a hiss over the end, but it was actually rain. The last day we went in there to do vocals was this cataclysmic thunderstorm and it was really scary. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was raining so hard on the roof you could hear it when we were doing the vocals. We thought it was kind of funny. We were recording and letting it run minutes so that we could have a thunderclap like Garth Brooks’ rain and thunder crashing. We’d get a little thunder and Ian would be like, “Oh! We almost got it!” We never got a good thunderclap, but we got the rain so we threw the rain on at the end. I don’t think anybody is going to hear that and know that it’s rain. It just sounds like background noise. Little stuff like that is funny. That’s an example of Ian’s sense of humor. Ian and Don are both very funny and relaxed and good at diffusing any tension that might come up. Plus they have so much experience and know so much about recording and music. Ian is very thoughtful about taking care of us. He’ll bring in nice bread and olive oil and trail mix and he treated us to dinner once or twice. He was really nice and it was cool to have somebody who cared about the final product. These guys were invested in it. I’ve recorded plenty of times where you’re in and you’re out. It wasn’t that they didn’t care; it’s just that they do so many bands. Ian and Don really cared about it and you can tell. They were proud to be a part of it as much as we were. I think it helped make it as good of a record as we can make.
In comparison with some of those DC bands that you mentioned earlier, how do you see yourself as different from them while still being part of that music scene in Washington DC?
Well, we’re young. We’re one of the most active young bands. I’m the oldest at twenty-four and the other guys are twenty-one, twenty-two and twenty-three. Most bands in DC and certainly on Dischord are if not pushing thirty, then they are in their thirties. It’s pretty unusual for a band as young as we are to be on the label. We definitely play a lot. Fugazi and Faraquet haven’t been touring as much lately. Bluetip tours a lot. I’d like to play with them more. We don’t play with the Dischord bands as much as I’d like to. It’s kind of weird. We’ve toured with Engine Down, XBXRX, The Mercury Program, and we’re going to be touring with Ted Leo, and Radio 4. All of them are non-label mates. Most of them don’t even live in our city except Ted. It’s just kind of weird that we don’t tour as much with DC bands. We’ve done weekends with Faraquet before and I’m sure we’ll play with them again. Hopefully someday we’ll play with Fugazi and I’d like to play with Lungfish. They’re up in Baltimore, but that’s close enough. We try to do that kind of stuff. We’ve done weekends with The Dismemberment Plan and we’ve played with Burning Airlines before, too. It’s a mix.
Currently is the music scene getting older or are there more young people coming in?
There are plenty of younger bands. All the people on the cover of our record, for the most part, were under twenty-five years old. That was kind of the point. They were all people who are involved in the music scene on the younger end of things. There are a lot of bands and many of them don’t tour and that’s why people outside of DC don’t know about them. There’s a band called Edie Sedgwick and they’ve been doing some touring and they have a CD that just came out. El Guapo is another band that is doing things. There’s a band called the No-Gos that was around for a while. There are a lot of really young bands that do stuff, they just don’t tour or put out records as much. There’s a band called The Apes that aren’t much older than us and they’re putting out an album on Les Savy Fav’s label, French Kiss. That’s coming out and they’re touring a bit. The younger bands do tour, it just seems that the older bands tour more. Like Burning Airlines, Fugazi, Bluetip, and Dismemberment Plan. I mean, Dismemberment Plan aren’t that much older than us. They’re like twenty-seven.
But they’re considered the old men of the scene.
They’re not considered on the young end. They’re in the middle. They tour constantly. It’s really cool that they work hard still. There are a whole variety of bands. It’s a really big music scene.
As far as lyrically, while I know you told me that you don’t write the lyrics, I was wondering if there is a point to any of them. It seems that a lot of the DC bands that I know of have really hard to understand lyrics and they’re really coded. I was wondering if you guys were the same way.
Like I said, whatever anyone sings, that’s who writes it. Chris sings the most and he’s been taken aback with it all because a common response has been, “What’s with the lyrics?” To us they definitely mean something, but you definitely have to dig a little deeper to find out what it’s about. And sometimes you might not be able to figure it out. I sure as hell have been like, “What the hell is that song about?” I have no idea. Some of the ones are easier to figure out than others. Other ones I just know about because he’ll say, “That song was about the one time I was at my parents’ house and they were painting the walls.” Or something like that. It’s just different and that’s the idea. We’ve always tried to do things that are not quite so obvious. You see bands and they just lay out everything for you and it’s too easy. “Here on our one-sheet is our manifesto of how we’re bringing radical politics and fashion together.” Or “We reject the whatever of punk and we hate emo.” It’s just stupid to me. Give the listener a little credit. The fun of music is finding your own meanings. Sometimes I don’t want to even read about what Coltrane or John Lennon were thinking. I have my own interpretation of this music and that’s it. Music, for us, is not a static thing. It’s something you do and then the interpretation by the listener is just as much a part of the music as is the creating by the artist. That’s how we view it. You may read those lyrics and say, “What the fuck? This isn’t about boy getting upset by girl. I don’t get it.” But each of those songs has meaning. And if you look at it you can find the meaning. Whether or not it’ll be the same one as Chris or Matt or Harris intended, there’s still meaning there. There’s meaning in all that stuff. I know when I was in high school I wrote lyrics that sounded cool like [sings] “The car’s going down the street!” It just fit. I definitely remember doing that in junior high. I understand that’s easy to do and you just want to get those lyrics done. I know one of Harris’s songs is about filmmaking and one of Chris’s songs is about being an outcast of sorts. Matt sings about working. It’s just a big mess of stuff. We just want people to think and to try and do something different.
Do you think making the lyrics so vague takes away power from you as songwriters? And if so, is that something you want? I know a lot of bands want to hit someone over the head with a message and I suppose it depends if you have a message to get across but even a band like Fugazi can be political and abstract about it. I guess I didn’t know if you had an agenda or a point you’re trying to make whether it’s “love sucks” or “vote Democrat” or whatever. Is that something you’re comfortable with: giving that power to the listener?
Yeah, I think so. I see what you’re saying.
It’s funny because I just babbled for a minute, but I don’t think I really said anything. [laughs]
No, I know what you’re saying, but to us we’re really interested in maintaining the idea that we’re going to put forth something and it means something to us but you’re going to have to figure it out. And I hope you can and even if you can’t, it’s still yours and you figured it out in your own way. We’re a little turned off by the overt politics or emotions. There’s so much of that. It’s not completely reactionary, it’s just that we’re trying to do something different. We’ve all been on the other side of that where we’ve been in bands that write very straight forward lyrics. But we want our identity to be that we’re making music and not that we’re vegetarian or we’re anti-this or anti-that. That’s how I feel about my life. I don’t want my identity to be about my politics. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to be apathetic at all. I think, I read, I’m involved. But that’s not my language. For so many people, that’s how they deal with other people. “Yeah, let’s go protest this!” Obviously I’m not belittling that, but for many people that’s how they speak to each other, but for me that’s not how I want to speak with other people. I don’t want that to be my identity. And that’s kind of reflected in the entire lyrical thing by leaving things open and living your life and seeing what other people have to think about what you’re doing. I guess that bothers some people and confuses them. It’s kind of cool to fuck around with that stuff. Like I was saying, Chris is a little bothered because people say, “These fucking lyrics don’t make any sense.” And he was like, “Shit, for the next album should I just write straight up?” But I think he realizes now that he doesn’t have to do that. People are going to make out of it what they do.
In such a big music city like DC and along with your other personal endeavors, how do you keep the music relevant? How do you make your art important to yourself and give it the ability to speak something? How do you keep from burning out?
This is something that I and we as a band have already dealt with. As far as keeping it fresh and important to us, you just can’t get on a treadmill and you can’t get distracted by other things that get in your way when you’re in a band writing music. While things such as touring and supporting the record are important, we can’t let that determine the direction of a band. If we don’t want to practice right now, then we shouldn’t do it. Above all, this is supposed to be enjoyable. We’re trying to create things. If we pressure ourselves to try and write a song because we have a show, then it’s going to suffer. So, I think we’ve learned to be more laid back about those sorts of things and I realized that it was burning me out. Last spring we were playing all the time and it’d been a year and a half of doing that and we had the album coming out and we had talked about touring all summer and it was like, “No. I need to step back from this and take some time off.” In the long run we didn’t ever end up doing that, but just by saying we were going to do that it made it a little better. I guess I keep it fresh by making sure that the reason I do this isn’t to sell records or pay off our van. You’ve got to remember why you’re doing this in the first place. It’s to make things. That’s kind of the point to life for me. Why the fuck am I buying all these records and watching movies and reading books? I guess it’s like you ingest it and then you digest it and what comes out is your music. Or whatever you’re creating. You incorporate the whole world around you.
So, art for art’s sake instead of for some utilitarian reason?
Right. For me it’s to make something of what is inside of me. I’ve got to get this out and this is what happens. When I listen to the record, I hear and see so many different things from my life. It’s not just listening to the BeeGees or the Gang of Four. I mean, you hear that stuff too, but it’s a whole thing and it’s cool how you can see this crystal of what’s going on in your life when you look at this record. It’s all right there. It’s like this waste product of one year of your life.
It’s like taking a shit or something.
Well, I wasn’t going to say that.
[laughs]
But that’s pretty much what it is. That’s what happened: we crapped out this record. That’s how it sounds and that’s what it looks like.
At least it doesn’t smell bad and it sounds good.
That’s kind of what it is, but hopefully it’s not waste. You get the metaphor.
