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The PLAYBACK:stl Archive Vault
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Home  Archive Bobbing for Apples With Ted Leo
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Bobbing for Apples With Ted Leo |
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Written by Sean Moeller
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Friday, 16 December 2005 |
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Leo’s messages are not just slogans or
extended catchphrases; they take aim at every meaningful target a song
should strike.
A recent intrigue to disprove the frequency of apple-bobbing among
peers and fans led Ted Leo to conduct an involved and tireless
investigation into the supposed all-American rite of passage. He
surveyed friends and foes, neighbors and strangers. He polled
Web-surfers far and wide to affirm his hypothesis that he wasn’t odd
for never having plunged headlong into a wet tub, chomping for a core.
The results he returned with were staggering.
“I found that a lot of people had done it, and those who had have done it more than once,” Leo said. “Which is kind of gross.
“Earlier in the fall, something made me think about bobbing for apples,
and I realized that I’d never done it before, and I didn’t really live
a childhood that was that far out of the norm. So I started asking
friends of mine if they’d ever bobbed for apples, and none of them had
either, so I was like, ‘Wait a minute. Is this a big conspiracy?’”
The next topics up for discussion could be the lost art of pillow
fighting or if anyone can positively verify that cats always land on
their feet, and if not, from what height do we see crashes. Okay, I’m
kidding about that. What really needs to be discussed is the general
cover that Leo works beneath. Sure, he purposely shirks the mere
concept of big labels, choosing to peck out an existence on Lookout!
Records and make name recognition a struggle when competing against the
bottomless promotional pockets that tout unimportant pretty boys such
as John Mayer and Howie Day. What’s money better spent? Is it the green
bills to support light, marshmallowy messages like those trash nuggets
in Mayer’s “Your Body Is a Wonderland” or the cash put behind the
smart,
why-do-we-believe-the-illusion-that-the-rest-of-the-world-loves-us
scoldings of Leo’s “The Ballad of the Sin Eater”?
Leo is this
decade’s Bob Dylan, but with a voice that hits falsetto highs the likes
of which only The Darkness’ Justin Hawkins could comfortably reach
while wearing his testicles. Leo’s messages are not just slogans or
extended catchphrases; they take aim at every meaningful target a song
should strike. They’re lasting, roasting the hair off your brows,
coating over your short-term memory like a slow wave of maple syrup,
and dealing with principles and purposes that make a monkey of
conventional love songs.
In Dirty Old Town, Justin Mitchell
(director of Songs for Cassavettes, a documentary of the early ’90s
West Coast punk underground) beautifully pans New York’s Coney Island
during a broiling hot July 2003 day as the Siren Music Festival is
taking place with Leo, !!!, Radio 4, Sahara Hotnights, Modest Mouse,
etc., all sharing a stage bordered by the Astroland amusement rides and
historical boardwalk. Leo’s performance is impassioned and aggressive,
punching out words and giving them as much meaning as one throat can.
He plays and sings as if it’s the last time he’ll ever get to and, in
doing so, goes against the better wishes of his health advisors. They’d
like him to take caution and cool the intensity since he blew his
larynx to pieces last May in Champaign, Illinois.
“Pretty
much every trip out [it acts up]. I wasn’t able to give it the time off
that the doctors and my vocal coach assured me I’d need,” Leo said.
“I’ve modified my road habits. It’s very important to me that I don’t
spend a lot of time in the clubs talking to people and watching bands,
which is unfortunate, because that kind of used to be my M.O. That,
more than anything, helps me through.
“My whole life in a
club that night requires that I be quiet and hide out in whatever
modicum of a dressing room they give me. I stretch and I try to warm
up, but it’s kind of impractical that you can have something soundproof
where you can go, ‘Mi-mi-mi.’”
When the voice failure first
happened, Leo’s doctors forced him to remain silent for three weeks.
“It was easier being silent around other people,” he said. “What was
really insane was that I realized how vocal I am when I’m alone. When
I’m just milling around the apartment, I’m always making noise. For a
half hour, I’d just be singing or talking to myself, and I’d be like,
‘Holy shit, I can’t be doing this.’”
The Siren Festival and a
solo performance at the famous Pianos bar were two of the first
appearances Leo made after his forced shutdown to rest his tattered
throat. Initially, Leo worried that, with a project like Dirty Old Town
which was going to have some permanence, a rusty, still-recovering
voice wasn’t the one he wanted to showcase. “I sort of reluctantly gave
it a thumbs-up,” he said. But he’s glad he did, noting that everything
about the film is top-notch. “If anything is lacking in it, it’s me.”
Mitchell’s work gives fans a glimpse of the calm and humble man who
can’t keep himself from writing songs or wearing a worn green T-shirt
repetitively stating along the left side of his trunk that he loves New
Jersey (he wears the same one on the cover of the Tell Balgeary,
Balgury Is Dead EP). He gives a lot of glimpses himself with constant
Web site updates and actual personal responses to e-mails, just to stay
in tune with his fans.
“I think it’s one of the most
gratifying and energizing things about the way I do the thing I do.
People feel really comfortable with friendly heckling, and they want to
chat after the shows,” he said. “People are really freaked and
appreciative that I respond to their e-mails. It would be the same way
I would be, too. There might be a point where I can’t practically do it
anymore.
“Sometimes there are people who’ll come up to me and
be like, ‘What’s the deal, dude? I talked to you the last time you were
here, and you said you’d write me.’ And I’ll have to say, ‘Sorry, that
was six months ago. I’ve played 200 shows since then. Cut me some
slack.’”
Ted Leo + the Pharmacists play the Rocket Bar on March 22 with Electrelane and Paris TX.
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