DAVID BROWN: LYING UNDERNEATH A PEACH TREE?
BY LAURA FLORES
“We love playing music and we dream of having a ship that runs on waste oil, so that we may travel the seven seas making new friends and eating salted cod and mangosteen,” reads the manifesto on Brazzaville official web site. Likewise, ‘East L.A. Breeze’ (South China, UK 2006 / Vendluss, US 2007), the fifth studio album of band Brazzaville, takes you to a musical journey through exotic countries and sounds (‘Bosphorus,’ ‘Peach Tree’), peppered with disturbing stories of tragic characters (‘Jesse James,’ ‘Mr. Suicide’), haunting memories (‘1983,’ ‘Madalena’) and a few moments of trembling hope (‘Star Called Sun,’ ‘Morning Light’).
When the L.A. band emerged in the late nineties, author and journalist Neil Strauss (The New York Times / Rolling Stone) suggested us to "think of Brazzaville as vagabond pop for fans of Morphine, Tom Waits, Spain, Leonard Cohen and Tindersticks." At a dinner some months ago, someone who had not heard of Brazzaville asked Brazzaville frontman David Brown how their music was like. David gave a shy smile and humbly said: ‘I guess it is basically pop music.’ Undoubtedly, it is pop music, but not in a common sense. Music styles aside, for me, Brazzaville music is solidly centred on melody, David’s warm, soothing voice, and very poignant lyrics. Brazzaville is, above all, the fascinating adventure of singer and song-writer David Brown, a man who you sometimes seem to half-discover in the lyrics of songs like ‘Old Folks,’ ‘Asteroid Fields’ or ‘Taksim,’ that once fifteen-year old boy, who used to live as a runaway in the streets of L.A., taking the bus down to the sea in ‘1983.’
I catch up with David in Barcelona, just after his recent tour in the US and just before departing for a number of shows that will take Brazzaville again to Russia and Turkey.
LF: How did your musical career start? How were your beginnings?
DB: I guess it began when I bought an old alto saxophone when I was 18 years old. That was the musical side of it. As far as writing lyrics go, that began earlier. My grandmother was a poet and gave me a real appreciation for writing. I began keeping a journal when I was about 15.
LF: You play saxophone in one of the best, or at least most famous, albums of rock history: Beck “Odelay,” and used to tour with the güero from 1997 to 2001. How was to work and be on the road with Beck at that time?
DB: For the most part it was wonderful. He and I met when we were teenagers as part of the coffee house scene in L.A. in the late 80s/early 90s. We were good friends. When he began taking me on the road, it was a really eye opening experience. I had been listening primarily to jazz for several years before that and it got me listening to more contemporary music again.
LF: Do you remember any particularly funny story while touring with Beck?
DB: We were playing a show in Glasgow and the crowd was going wild for us. But the people in the front row refused to get out of their seats. That used to happen a lot especially in L.A. and NY because the front row would be full of bored looking industry people. Beck got angry and we decided to do something about it in the encore. We took the stage and Beck told them all to get up like the rest of the crowd. They wouldn’t, so he and most of the rest of the group jumped into the audience and began a kind of a mini riot. It was all quite funny until the next day when Victor, our drummer, told us that he had spoken to some kids after the show who said that everyone really loved the show, even the people in the front row, but they didn’t get out of their seats because they were handicapped!
LF: When did you make up your mind about writing your own music?
DB: I began composing instrumental music for a band that I had in the early 90s. It was after going out with Beck in ’97 that I decided to try writing lyrics again and to begin singing.
LF: Many of your songs deal with characters with tragic lives –from the last album (‘East L.A. Breeze’) ‘1983,’ ‘Jesse James’ or ‘Mr. Suicide’ come to my mind. There seems to be some kind of aesthetics of pain in these songs: the feeling that beauty comes from pain, and that pain comes from beauty. “1983,” for example, is a nostalgic flight to the life of a fifteen-year-old, L.A. boy: “And if I should die, in the meantime, take me home / To those days when the world still really shone.” Is it only an aesthetics conception or it has to do with your own experience of life?
DB: 1983 is about my youth in L.A. I agree with what you said. I don’t there is much I could add to it.
LF: There is a song in your last album called ‘’Star Called Sun,” a cover of a song by a Russian band from the eighties called KINO, led by singer/songwriter Victor Tsoi. I read you used Tsoi’s music but rewrote the lyrics of song, How did the lyrics come out?
DB: I felt that Tsoi’s lyrics were very specific to his experience as a Russian youth, living at the tail end of the Soviet era. I felt that it would be a bit silly for me to sing those lyrics. Also, it seemed next to impossible to fit them gracefully into the melody after translating them into English. I therefore thought it would be better to write a song about something that meant something to me, like the night of my mother’s death when I was 11. I tried to retain the theme of stars, sun etc. And I added a chorus that dealt with the enormity of our physical universe and the comforting effect that has on me: “There’s one million stars for every little grain of sand down there.”
LF: The US, Russia, Turkey, Holland, Germany… You have played in places that seem very different, culturally speaking. Are audiences really so different from one country to another?
DB: Yes, they vary quite a bit. For example, Russians are great to play for but they have a hard time clapping on 2 and 4. They are definitely a culture of 1 and 3. One never has this problem in the US, Turkey or Spain. It could be a danger in Germany though!
LF: You are currently based in Barcelona, Spain. How did you end up here? What was that attracted you to a city so different from your hometown, L.A.?
DB: I think that the fact that it is so different from L.A. is what attracted me. It is a reasonable size. And although I like to complain about Catalan culture sometimes, I really find the Catalans to be a very kind, moral and decent lot.
LF: What is the thing that you like best about Barcelona?
DB: The “Bosc Inundat” (flooded wood) at the Cosmo Caixa.
LF: What is the thing that you miss most about L.A.?
DB: The food and my friends and driving around late at night listening to KPFK (Pacifica Radio 90.7FM Los Angeles).
LF: I heard that your sax was accidentally destroyed while moving to Barcelona, and that, instead of buying another one, you began to play guitar.
DB: No, I had begun to play guitar years before. But it’s true that my tenor sax was completely destroyed when we moved here. I’m not sure where it happened but I think it was the men we hired to pick up our belongings from the port.
LF: Do you play any other instruments?
DB: Not really. I play guitar, sax, a bit of shaker and tambourine and some very simple keyboards. On the whole I am a pretty mediocre instrumentalist.
LF: Your band Brazzaville has different line-ups, depending on the countries where you perform. I imagine this must be difficult to handle sometimes. How do you decide on the different line-ups?
DB: The decision is usually financial. Obviously, I want anyone I play with to be good but the number of people I bring me from Barcelona is entirely determined by money. If there is a large budget, I bring them all!
LF: What are you working on right now?
DB: Right now I am getting near the end of a new Brazzaville album. I just finished recording a song that wrote with a young, Russian guy named Misha who has a band called Minerva in Moscow. We made a video for it here in Barcelona with the great Catalan director, Ferran Calvo. I co-wrote a couple of songs with the Rusian band B2 that will be released in Russia in February of 2008. Next year I am going to Istanbul to record an album of songs from the Brazzaville songbook with some great Turkish musicians.
There is not much time to talk about anything else. David is definitely not lying underneath a peach tree. By the way, I cannot believe that I have been living in Barcelona for all my life and I still have not seen the Bosc Inundat. This should be my next destination.
Discography:
Brazzaville (South China Sea, 1999)
Sonambulista (South China Sea, 2001)
Rouge On Pockmarked Cheeks (South China Sea, 2002)
Welcome to… Brazzaville (Mimicry, 2004)
Hasting Street (Soyuz, 2004)
East L.A. Breeze (South China Sea, 2006 / Vendluss, 2007)
Tour:
Oct 17 2007 Soho, St. Petersburg
When the L.A. band emerged in the late nineties, author and journalist Neil Strauss (The New York Times / Rolling Stone) suggested us to "think of Brazzaville as vagabond pop for fans of Morphine, Tom Waits, Spain, Leonard Cohen and Tindersticks." At a dinner some months ago, someone who had not heard of Brazzaville asked Brazzaville frontman David Brown how their music was like. David gave a shy smile and humbly said: ‘I guess it is basically pop music.’ Undoubtedly, it is pop music, but not in a common sense. Music styles aside, for me, Brazzaville music is solidly centred on melody, David’s warm, soothing voice, and very poignant lyrics. Brazzaville is, above all, the fascinating adventure of singer and song-writer David Brown, a man who you sometimes seem to half-discover in the lyrics of songs like ‘Old Folks,’ ‘Asteroid Fields’ or ‘Taksim,’ that once fifteen-year old boy, who used to live as a runaway in the streets of L.A., taking the bus down to the sea in ‘1983.’
I catch up with David in Barcelona, just after his recent tour in the US and just before departing for a number of shows that will take Brazzaville again to Russia and Turkey.
LF: How did your musical career start? How were your beginnings?
DB: I guess it began when I bought an old alto saxophone when I was 18 years old. That was the musical side of it. As far as writing lyrics go, that began earlier. My grandmother was a poet and gave me a real appreciation for writing. I began keeping a journal when I was about 15.
LF: You play saxophone in one of the best, or at least most famous, albums of rock history: Beck “Odelay,” and used to tour with the güero from 1997 to 2001. How was to work and be on the road with Beck at that time?
DB: For the most part it was wonderful. He and I met when we were teenagers as part of the coffee house scene in L.A. in the late 80s/early 90s. We were good friends. When he began taking me on the road, it was a really eye opening experience. I had been listening primarily to jazz for several years before that and it got me listening to more contemporary music again.
LF: Do you remember any particularly funny story while touring with Beck?
DB: We were playing a show in Glasgow and the crowd was going wild for us. But the people in the front row refused to get out of their seats. That used to happen a lot especially in L.A. and NY because the front row would be full of bored looking industry people. Beck got angry and we decided to do something about it in the encore. We took the stage and Beck told them all to get up like the rest of the crowd. They wouldn’t, so he and most of the rest of the group jumped into the audience and began a kind of a mini riot. It was all quite funny until the next day when Victor, our drummer, told us that he had spoken to some kids after the show who said that everyone really loved the show, even the people in the front row, but they didn’t get out of their seats because they were handicapped!
LF: When did you make up your mind about writing your own music?
DB: I began composing instrumental music for a band that I had in the early 90s. It was after going out with Beck in ’97 that I decided to try writing lyrics again and to begin singing.
LF: Many of your songs deal with characters with tragic lives –from the last album (‘East L.A. Breeze’) ‘1983,’ ‘Jesse James’ or ‘Mr. Suicide’ come to my mind. There seems to be some kind of aesthetics of pain in these songs: the feeling that beauty comes from pain, and that pain comes from beauty. “1983,” for example, is a nostalgic flight to the life of a fifteen-year-old, L.A. boy: “And if I should die, in the meantime, take me home / To those days when the world still really shone.” Is it only an aesthetics conception or it has to do with your own experience of life?
DB: 1983 is about my youth in L.A. I agree with what you said. I don’t there is much I could add to it.
LF: There is a song in your last album called ‘’Star Called Sun,” a cover of a song by a Russian band from the eighties called KINO, led by singer/songwriter Victor Tsoi. I read you used Tsoi’s music but rewrote the lyrics of song, How did the lyrics come out?
DB: I felt that Tsoi’s lyrics were very specific to his experience as a Russian youth, living at the tail end of the Soviet era. I felt that it would be a bit silly for me to sing those lyrics. Also, it seemed next to impossible to fit them gracefully into the melody after translating them into English. I therefore thought it would be better to write a song about something that meant something to me, like the night of my mother’s death when I was 11. I tried to retain the theme of stars, sun etc. And I added a chorus that dealt with the enormity of our physical universe and the comforting effect that has on me: “There’s one million stars for every little grain of sand down there.”
LF: The US, Russia, Turkey, Holland, Germany… You have played in places that seem very different, culturally speaking. Are audiences really so different from one country to another?
DB: Yes, they vary quite a bit. For example, Russians are great to play for but they have a hard time clapping on 2 and 4. They are definitely a culture of 1 and 3. One never has this problem in the US, Turkey or Spain. It could be a danger in Germany though!
LF: You are currently based in Barcelona, Spain. How did you end up here? What was that attracted you to a city so different from your hometown, L.A.?
DB: I think that the fact that it is so different from L.A. is what attracted me. It is a reasonable size. And although I like to complain about Catalan culture sometimes, I really find the Catalans to be a very kind, moral and decent lot.
LF: What is the thing that you like best about Barcelona?
DB: The “Bosc Inundat” (flooded wood) at the Cosmo Caixa.
LF: What is the thing that you miss most about L.A.?
DB: The food and my friends and driving around late at night listening to KPFK (Pacifica Radio 90.7FM Los Angeles).
LF: I heard that your sax was accidentally destroyed while moving to Barcelona, and that, instead of buying another one, you began to play guitar.
DB: No, I had begun to play guitar years before. But it’s true that my tenor sax was completely destroyed when we moved here. I’m not sure where it happened but I think it was the men we hired to pick up our belongings from the port.
LF: Do you play any other instruments?
DB: Not really. I play guitar, sax, a bit of shaker and tambourine and some very simple keyboards. On the whole I am a pretty mediocre instrumentalist.
LF: Your band Brazzaville has different line-ups, depending on the countries where you perform. I imagine this must be difficult to handle sometimes. How do you decide on the different line-ups?
DB: The decision is usually financial. Obviously, I want anyone I play with to be good but the number of people I bring me from Barcelona is entirely determined by money. If there is a large budget, I bring them all!
LF: What are you working on right now?
DB: Right now I am getting near the end of a new Brazzaville album. I just finished recording a song that wrote with a young, Russian guy named Misha who has a band called Minerva in Moscow. We made a video for it here in Barcelona with the great Catalan director, Ferran Calvo. I co-wrote a couple of songs with the Rusian band B2 that will be released in Russia in February of 2008. Next year I am going to Istanbul to record an album of songs from the Brazzaville songbook with some great Turkish musicians.
There is not much time to talk about anything else. David is definitely not lying underneath a peach tree. By the way, I cannot believe that I have been living in Barcelona for all my life and I still have not seen the Bosc Inundat. This should be my next destination.
Discography:
Brazzaville (South China Sea, 1999)
Sonambulista (South China Sea, 2001)
Rouge On Pockmarked Cheeks (South China Sea, 2002)
Welcome to… Brazzaville (Mimicry, 2004)
Hasting Street (Soyuz, 2004)
East L.A. Breeze (South China Sea, 2006 / Vendluss, 2007)
Tour:
Oct 17 2007 Soho, St. Petersburg
Oct 18 2007 Ogni Ufy, Ufa
Oct 19 2007 Vagonka, Kaliningrad
Oct 21 2007 Jumangee, Saratov
Oct 24 2007 Aviator, Izhevsk
Oct 26 2007 Tele-Club, Ekaterinburg
Oct 27 2007 (acoustic show) Ekaterinburg
Feb 22 2008 Is Sanat Concert Hall, Istanbul
Web:
Brazzaville official web site: http://www.brazzaville2002.com/
Brazzaville official MySpace site: http://www.myspace.com/brazzaville
Web:
Brazzaville official web site: http://www.brazzaville2002.com/
Brazzaville official MySpace site: http://www.myspace.com/brazzaville
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