Free Blood: Part I
John Pugh talks about starting Free Blood, why they chose so many remixes and how to handle creativity.
John Pugh has been around the block a couple of times - in the best way possible of course. Before starting Free Blood with friend and fashion designer Madeline Davy, Pugh started and fronted the band !!!. For those who think Free Blood is the bastard baby of the artistic !!!, think again. Free Blood is its own entity entirely. Free Blood takes the madness and beauty of music and throws it against the proverbial wall full-force to make a sound that embodies Pugh’s creativity and Davy’s fashionable ideas. In our first part of the Free Blood interview, Pugh talks about starting the band
HEAVE: What was the reason behind the band name Free Blood?
John: It was one of those things where the meaning wasn’t really premeditated. It was almost like the words came together first and then we had to put attributed meaning to it after the fact. But I don’t know, I think that it kind of makes sense because in one sense you can look at “free blood” as a very blunt way of talking about human beings. Meaning, we’re just these bags of blood inside these bodies and if you cut one of us open the blood runs free and out of us. It sounds kind of brutal. It’s more about the human condition and relationships and stuff. We are, when it comes down to it, these animals. We’re pretty complexed animals but then there’s like a simplicity there too. And then on the other hand there are other meanings within that. You take the words “free blood” and a lot of people kind of take as having a personal sense of freedom. A “young blood” is someone who’s more naïve and a “free blood” is someone who is unafraid and has given themselves position to be free and act on that impulse, I guess. So it’s kind of got multiple meanings, and I’m always thinking of it more as an abstract. But it’s pretty much open to interpretation at the end of the day. Those are just my closed interpretations I guess.
HEAVE: Do you think that kind of energy, that freedom you were describing dictates your style of music or is it more you and Madeline’s personal influences?
John: I don’t know, I think we have an energetic band that we’re working on. We don’t really sit down and write songs based on our influences or with something specific in mind, like “Ok, now we’re going to write an old school disco song” or “Now we’re going to write a kind of 60s doo-wop style.” These songs kind of emerged, and a lot of times you can see our influences and the music that we’ve listened to throughout our lives and the music we’re excited about now bumping up against that and forming it a certain way. But yeah, we tap into an energy when we play songs.
I think we’re interested in creating something that’s free and a little bit out of control but keeping it contained by creating certain values for ourselves. Like one value would be our limited physical power. We use a computer for a lot of backing tracks and drum programming. We’re careful not to distil creativity by having everything that has to do with us happening. I think we throw out this impure element with this punk energy that preexists. But also it’s kind of scaled back and we really trim the fat so there’s only the most essential elements. Sometimes it comes off like animal, sometimes it comes off like a clusterfuck of sound. But I think this is like us trying to be true to the energy that we want to convey and true to the song itself, you know, letting the song exists in its own world.
HEAVE: So within the madness there’s structure.
John: Yeah, I think it’s a danger when you have access to, especially these days, the technologies of music-making. There’s a tendency to just go kind of crazy and let yourself run off into the cliff with all the possibilities. And for me personally it’s almost stifling when you’re working at song and you’re like “We can do this, and we can do this, and this, and this, add a horn section, add this and that.” Now when I set out to write a song I give myself very specific ground rules like “I just want to have large brassy elements” and use those elements and that’s it. But it helps you within those confines really stretch and be more creative and work with what you have. I think now we’re more leaning towards really exploring what we can do with just microphones and our voices and breathing and feedback. You know, like using a microphone as an instrument itself. Not just a conduit for voices but something that actually has a sound itself and can be manipulated. That all comes out of not giving yourself a million and five options.
HEAVE: Why did you guys decide to make your album The Singles half original songs and half remixes?
John: Well that just came out of the fact that all those songs originated as actual singles that we put out on 12 in. The idea was that we wanted the DJs and the music heads to get it first. Because “normal people” don’t buy 12 in. singles any more.
HEAVE: Most people don’t even buy vinyl.
John: Right. Everything comes in CD form or digital from iTunes, which is what I think most people get their music from. We really wanted to sneak in through the back door with just some straight disco singles and with each single there was a remix that other people did from one of our songs. Which I think is good too because I think a lot of our songs have that element obviously and live we definitely tap into that energy, but recorded aren’t treated as dance club style songs. They’re almost too weird for certain dance clubs. So the idea was to bridge the gap between the experimental pop element of the song and the pure dance element and make it a little more DJ friendly and dance floor friendly. So when we were putting together the CD there were so many great remixes we wanted people to hear those as well. The CD became like the two sides of the coin with us.
I think on the next release we probably won’t have as many remixes but we’ll definitely continue having people do remixes for whatever singles come out. This was more of an experiment on our part. It was our first proper release and to be honest we didn’t know exactly what we were doing but we were playing it by ear and making it up as we went along. But we are pretty pleased about how it came together because it is kind of a sneak attack. I think people are starting to realize that we’ve been around and now we’re coming out into the light.
HEAVE: Did you decide to release singles because of time constraints or was it just a better format for you?
John: I think it was more about the origins of the song itself. Because most of these songs are older songs that we’ve been playing for years just at house parties and clubs around New York. And the way that these songs were written were they kind of were like three to four minute blasts of dance pop essentially. In whatever warped, fucked up way that we interpret dance pop. So partly yeah, it was a time issue because we didn’t have a lot of time to spend in the studio and we were kind of doing it two songs at a time. You know, go into the studio for two weeks, a weekend here, and a weekend there. It wasn’t like we were going to go in and record an album’s worth of songs over this two month period. It was really spotty. We would find a week where we could coordinate schedules to get into the studio and work a little bit on each song. And we were all for getting it out there once they were done.
So the idea was this way would be quicker and when the music is all done we’ll put it out. And while that single was floating around we’d keep working on other songs to put out. So it made sense on multiple different levels. And really I don’t think all the songs put together sound like a whole well-rounded album, they sound more like a collection of singles. Which is what we’re working on now, putting together songs for a proper album. I think maybe our next release will be similar to this one, in that we’re doing some housecleaning on our old songs that we’ve playing for years and years and we’re just like “Let’s just record these and get them down.” And then we kind of want our album to be a completely new work that we have been playing for years but it’s more like songs that are specifically written for an album so that they all work together and tell the story together. Maybe we’re kind of weird, but we want to create a work in and of itself.
But it’s like I said before, everyone’s getting their music off of iTunes so in a way we’ve gone back to the 50's standard of how pop music was marketed. Like back then they released everything by single and then the album is kind of an afterthought. People are like “Oh yeah, they have an album out,” but who really wants to buy an album of old songs when you only want those three or four songs. So I think artists need to refocus on how they can create an album that’s a complete work that needs to be taken as a complete work rather than picked apart just for the song that you happen to like. Hopefully us creating an album album will encourage people to really take it as a complete work rather than pick and choose.
Stay tuned next week to hear Madeline Davy’s side of Free Blood.
Posted by Amy Dittmeier on Jan 20, 2009 @ 7:00 am
