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Tuning In  I met Jeff Curtis in the dorms at Kent State University in the early Eighties. It was a hot Autumn afternoon, and I was playing the Sex Pistols a bit too loudly-if that’s even possible—and a mop-haired young Warholian knocked on my door and asked me to turn down the music a bit. I’ve often flattered myself and assumed that Jeff was just curious as to who else was listening to “new music” during the days of Springsteen and Led Zeppelin, but then again, Jeff probably just wanted me to be quiet while he was illustrating one of his comic books while listening to the Velvet Underground and eating popcorn.Jeff went on to release his Sub Comics series while playing in many local bands—post-punk bands and art school bands and all sorts of interesting bands like Ghosts Before Breakfast, The Crummy Fags, and the Gang of Four-inspired minimalists known as J’Accuse. Kent was a hot-bed back then for new music, although Akron and Cleveland seemed to get more ‘national’ attention for their groups, and eventually, like rivers converging into an ocean, he and many other like-minded punks and artists relocated to Cleveland. Fast-forward some 15 years and I had returned from Chicago and was curating a propaganda art exhibit at Lyz and Kristin Bly-Roger’s Newsense Gallery in Lakewood. Jeff was part of the show, and he brought along his freshly-minted punk rock grrrlll-friend, Kat Stewart, to the opening. Definitely a time-warp trip—history repeating and all of that—and he told me of his latest band—the all-bass, all-the-time Black Cabbage. They were playing shows at Pat’s In The Flats, etc. and we stayed in touch. Capsule in Lakewood had opened—a cool space on Madison where lots of experimental music was starting to happen on certain nights. I finally made it to one of their shows there. After hearing an interesting set from faux-rap karaokesters Human Host from Baltimore, the newly-transplanted Minnesotian Jay Krasnow and his amazing triple-necked lap steel guitar, and some egregious death-metal shite from a band no one knew, Iron Oxide—Jeff and Kat’s latest project—took the stage, replete with a blind theremin player from Los Angeles and guest drummer Wyatt Howland. Regarding mud huts, Ayn Ryn, Anti-Capitalsim, the efficacy of Kent, obscure German bands and cohegencies..the rest is detailed below. Cool Cleveland: Who are the members of the band, and what instruments do you play? Jeff: I pretty much always control the electric bass guitar, played through various and sundry effects pedals. Sometimes I also play it with an electronic Shruti [Indian drone generator] box, a slide, or a drum stick. Kat controls whatever she's in the mood to control at any given time. Lately that has been the electric bass guitar, but in the past has also included: Farfisa combo organ, home-made electric drums, electric violin, home-made elektrokakaphone, three-stringed electric guitar, etc.. Jeff, I know you have been playing bass for decades, but Kat, is the bass a new instrument for you? Have you played other instruments before? Kat: I always wanted to learn an instrument when I was a kid, but I never had the money to buy an instrument or get lessons. When I was 15, I finally talked my parents into getting me piano lessons, which I only took for a year. When I moved in with Jeff about two and a half years ago, he started teaching me how to play bass, and eventually I got my first instrument, for $77 on eBay. Jeff--you have been in countless bands, from the Colloquial Boys back in Toledo to J'Accuse in Kent and now Iron Oxide in Cleveland. What other bands have you played in, and feel free to make note of who else played in those bands that have gone on to do other projects? Jeff, the Kent music scene that spawned so much music of quality back then and actually brought/attracted so much attention (I remember the original Devo suit always on display in JBs, I remember the american agent for Ireland's Stiff Little Fingers trying to get punks to sign a petition to let them tour in America; I remember the Bettys and the F-Models) is a dead, dog-gone deal these days. Why do you think "scenes" don't tend to last very long and what remains is such a pale shadow of its former glory? Kat, I seem to recall that you hail from Tacoma, Washington. What brought you here? And how did you and Jeff meet-up? You are, after all, the post-Indie darlings of the dating set around town, I hear? Iron Oxide's performance at Capsule was heavy, concussive, creepily-familiar with factories and industrial debris and collapsing Infrastructures of economic engines. Are you guys anti-Capitalist or anti-Industry or are you in some maverick, Ayn Ryn-way actually celebrating factories and industrial squalor? Jeff: I guess my take on it is that we sort of are using our music as a kind of mirror of our environment--as a reflection on the state of the Cleveland/Northeast Ohio 'Rust Belt' heritage, which isn't just a cute nickname, but a living, breathing - or maybe dying - reality. I don't know that we're so much celebrating industrial squalor as reveling in it,…rubbing people's noses in it. It's inescapable here, as much as people try to or want to ignore it; it's all over the place, and we’re making people aware of it. Kat, how does your band tie into your Zine you produce, “Rust & Brique?” Is there a connection? Jeff: Rust, what it is and what it does, and what it symbolizes, is just aesthetically pleasing and provocative, I think. "Rust never sleeps," as DEVO said.. IF Devo said that, they were quoting Neil Young I think. Might new subscribers to Rust & Brique one day get an Iron Oxide mini-single included with an issue, much like kids could cut out the Bobby Sherman single on the back of Super Sugar Crisps in the Seventies? Your guest theremin player, Pat Trip from Los Angeles, was a real extra bonus surprise. He was such a nice guy, and he DID look like a skinny Will Farrell. And there he was, seated in front of the rest of you, basically coaching and conducting' the theremin....this machine based on electronic wave lengths and ...magnetism I guess? And he's blind to boot. The whole atmosphere, and the music Iron Oxide made with him gigging with you,....to me it was like "Plan 9 from Outer Space" meets Jah Wobble-era Public Image Limited or a more ponderous, less hopeful Nick Cave, somehow. Were you surprised at the synergy that happened that night with Trip along for the ride? Was it what you had hoped for? Meeting a blind man from Los Angeles who plays the theremin isn't an every-day-occasion. How did you guys ever hook up with him to begin with, anyways? Okay, I've done some describing of your band, but now it's your turn. Kat, if Iron Oxide was a weather pattern, what would it be? Jeff, if Iron Oxide was an antique, what would that antique be? Capsule seems to have been a great venue for the more experimental fringe musicians in-town to cut loose and hone their skills. Plus, the ambience in there is just minimal enough and just original enough to be entertaining and provocative without being threatening or too forceful. There seems to be some disagreement at present as to whether it will remain open or become another Irish pub, which of course is what everyone needs in Lakewood! What happens next, then--for Iron Oxide, and also for the musicians who 'needed' Capsule? Who are you both listening to presently music-wise? Who do you recommend as someone worthwhile to check out? Jeff: I usually end up listening to a lot of what Kat listens to, but in my own time I usually listen to a lot of various kinds of old music. After all these years I'm still very much into psychedelic garage rock from the 60s like the 13th Floor Elevators and the great and underappreciated Music Machine, but I also love old-timey folk & country music from the 20s & 30s, old-old jazz like Django Reinhardt, and old Delta blues recordings like Charlie Patton. We also both like a lot of weird 'world' music too, like the 60s/70s soul music from Ethiopia on the 'Ethiopiques' series of cds; Cambodian pop music; Bollywood soundtracks,etc. Two bands that are no longer around that I'd like to mention, too, are the Mens Recovery Project, who are sort of a hardcore punk band who listened to too many DEVO records and ate a shelf full of dadaism books; and the 39 Clocks--an impossibly obscure German band from the late 70s/early 80s with a weird kind of Velvet Underground meets Cabaret Voltaire-with-Peter Lorre-singing kind of sound.. Great stuff. Kat, I take it you hung out in the Tacoma scene before moving here. How do the two cities compare, in whatever categories you care to cite? Jeff, I'm wondering what your take is on the modern music scene in Cleveland, if you even have one? (You've always been a bit hard to pin down on things!) You two both play bass. You live together. You're in a band together. Does it help, or hinder, your personal relationship...all this co-mingled project-togetherness? Jeff: I don't think I'd recommend it for most other people either, but I can't imagine it any other way myself. To me, there's little more rewarding than being so intensely-involved in the creative process of making and performing music with the one person that you are also intensely involved with. Music is such a huge part of both of our lives, and one of our biggest common interests--to me it only seems natural that we would have a band together. You used to be Black Cabbage. Now you're Iron Oxide. What prompted the name change -- hopefully not some lawsuit from another Black Cabbage band? Last question. Could you both please tell me what a "cohegency" is all about? Your emails announcing your performances used to feature this word all the time. Intrigued Clevelanders can learn more about the band and various other projects, like the online version of Rust & Brique, at http://www.iron-oxide.com. Keep on rocking in the free world! Devo might have said that as well, eventually. Interview and photo by Cool Cleveland contributor Daiv Whaley |