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the following interview and live recordings
are from
brian
carpenter's free association (mondays 7-10PM)
on
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need a real audio player to listen. click here
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interview
clips
clip
1
clip
2
clip
3
performances
glass
slipper
missed
me
oh
mrs o
the
time has come
if
you're lazy here's the text:
This
program is a two-hour interview with Amanda
Palmer and Brian Viglione,
together known as The
Dresden Dolls,
the sensational punk cabaret duo hailing from
Boston.
In the
summer of 2002 I met Amanda when she was performing
with Brian at one of her famous Box parties.
This was the first time I saw The Dresden
Dolls play, outside in their garden, to a very
absorbed and unique crowd of friends.
I remember what caught my ears first,
beyond the great songwriting, were the spaces
between the notes, and the vast difference between
the silences and the intensity.
A few disgruntled neighbors and two policeman later, we were forced to move upstairs
for the final Box VIII and Beat
Science was up
at The
Cloud Club sliding through our very
first public gig.
Since
the times of the Box parties things have changed
a bit. No disgruntled neighbors shouting
through their windows. No cops shutting down the
shows.
Fewer intimate shows and loft parties.
In the summer of 2003 they won the WBCN
Rock & Roll Rumble, and since then have
been adorned as the reigning king and queen
of the Boston music
scene by practically every music journalist
in town. It’s wonderful to see musicians
doing something different actually finishing
in first for a change.
And this is a great testament to Boston as well.
They built up a large following in loft
spaces before ever playing their first gig.
One thing that can also be said is they
put on a hell of a show. And their debut studio release
The Dresden Dolls is a wonderful document
of their creativity and chemistry on stage.
This
transcript was taken from two interviews. The first aired in February
2003 before the release of their live record
A Is For Accident, the second aired in
September 2003 with Amanda Palmer before the
release party for their studio record The
Dre Dolls.sden
“Missed
Me”, A
Is For Accident
BC: You’re listening to Free Association
right here on WZBC 90.3FM. The Dresden Dolls are here
with us this evening in the studio. Thank you for coming.
AP
:
You’re welcome.
BV
[in Ringo Starr voice] :
Thank you for having us Brian, it’s great to
be here.
BC
:
Hmm, that sounded very familiar but I can’t
place it.
BV
:
Ringo!
AP :
The other drummer...
BC
:
Oh yes, of course.
Brian has all of these voices and we’ll
hear a lot of them tonight.
So The Dresden Dolls are here with us
and what we heard was a track off of a new live
record.
AP
:
Yes, that’s off of our new live record which
we are going to release at this show on Friday.
BC
:
And what else is on this record?
AP
:
Well this is sort of a weird hodgepodge of mostly
live club stuff and live radio stuff.
And there’s one track on it we recorded
in the studio when we recorded our full album...it
just didn’t make it onto the album, it’s like
an outtake...so we’ll play that tonight as well.
BC
:
And there are recordings of live music at different
clubs...
AP
: Yes, they’re taken from I think seven different
venues, the Lizard Lounge, TT The Bears, The
Milky Way, Sanders Theater, LUXX down in New
York, WERS, WMBR...
BC
: For those who just tuned in we’re promoting
the show this Friday with The Dresden Dolls,
Sex Mob and Beat Science at the Middle East
Downstairs...and master of ceremonies Evan O’Television. And your new live record will
be released then?
AP
:
Well, we haven’t even seen it yet! We’re supposed to have it
by Friday.
This is just the master we have with
us.
BC
:
Oh...this is just the master?
Well maybe it’s dangerous for me to be
talking about this...
AP
:
It is kind of dangerous.
It’s at the processing plant and someone’s
going to drive up to Maine
and pick it up...(laughing).
BC
:
When did this first come together, the genesis
of the group. Amanda, did it come into your
mind before you met Brian, vice versa, or did
the concept really click when the two of you
met? Or did you incorporate some
of what you were doing solo into The Dresden
Dolls?
AP : That’s mostly what it was. I mean the stuff that we started
out playing were mostly songs that I already
had written.
And Brian just added...his Brian.
BV
:
THE ROCK.
AP
:
His Brian brand of Rock.
BV
:
THE POWER.
AP
:
Well we should probably tell how we met. Brian actually tells this
story better than I do.
BV
:
This was Halloween of 2000 I think. And she was playing a solo
set upstairs in a room called The Cloud Club,
which is the top floor of the building where
Amanda lives that the landlord has built into
a beautiful hobbit-like domicile...
AP
:
...Alice
in Wonderland...
BV
:
I was looking for some people to play with at
the time and was really interested in the music. And we got together a few
weeks later and it definitely clicked.
AP
:
It was like a few days later.
BV
:
Yeah, it was very soon after.
It was very natural and we both sort
of looked at each other wide-eyed and said,
“Let’s be in a band!”
AP
:
It was more about how Brian looked on Halloween
night that attracted me to him.
BV
:
Yes, future suitors out there for Amanda Palmer
: White face and blood running down the face
is a shoe-in.
AP
: I go for effeminate men wearing white makeup...(laughing)
BV
[deep voice] : Well. I’m not that effeminate.
BC : That was your costume?
BV
:
That was a costume...
AP
:
Well, but he wears makeup all the time...
BV
: I wouldn’t say AALLL the time...(both laughing)
BV
:
And so there you go.
And then we played at PAN9, a
wonderful little art space in Allston that January...
AP
:
Uh, home of Evan O’Television. And that was a couple of months
after we met.
BV
:
...and then things took off from there.
AP
:
We sounded like crap.
BV
:
Oh...using distortion pedal on the piano.
BC
:
PAN9 was your first gig?
AP
:
That was it.
Actually our first club gig was at...
BV
:
Either the Kendall
or the Lizard Lounge...
AP
:
No no no. It was at the Zeitgeist...and
then we played at the Lizard Lounge.
Lizard Lounge was our first real club
gig. I say real...or we might have
got paid twelve dollars but at least we got
paid something and got free beer.
And back then we weren’t called...
BV
:
Oh!
AP
:
Oh!
BV,
AP, BC (together) :
OOOHHHHHH!
BV
:
Trivia Question #1!
BC
:
Yes, I should point out that we’re going to
give away a free pair of tickets to Friday’s
show a little later. So we’ll ask a question...sounds
like you’ve already figured out what the question
should be.
I love it when personalities come together
like that. It’s really obvious in a band
when that happens.
AP
:
Oh, we jumped up and down.
BC : I’m sure. The two of you have such a
symbiotic thing going.
Can we listen to something else off of
this?
AP
:
We’re going to play Mrs. O. One of the things I should
point out is how we decided to put what onto
this album. The main thing is that, with
I think three exceptions, aren’t on the forthcoming
album and aren’t on the 5-song EP we’ve been
selling at shows.
BC
:
So it was a way of releasing material you wouldn’t
otherwise be able to...
AP
:
Yeah.
I mean some of it was stuff that didn’t
quite make it onto the album, or has been written
since then...
BV
:
This is already our album of B-sides and we
have no studio record released...
AP : Yeah, an album of B-sides before the album
of A-sides basically...
BV
:
This is all the weirdo oddities and strangeness
that won’t make it onto the studio record.
AP
:
It’s good stuff.
I mean...one of the songs we’ll play
a little later, “Glass Slipper”, I really wanted
on the record.
BC
:
Why didn’t it make it on?
BV : The producer didn’t
want it on the record. He thought it was too long...
BV
:
The child that got mistreated and forgotten...
AP
:
But it’s a great live song.
The beauty of the song is the live feel
of it. I don’t even know if we could
have captured it in the studio. And this particular recording
of it just came out so well...
BC
:
I was going to ask you how do you translate
that energy into a studio record?
BV
:
That’s a question for Martin Bisi
that should be asked and he could probably tell
you.
AP
:
Yeah, and we didn’t totally do it on all the
song. We went into the studio to
do the record that’s coming out later, wanting
to make it sound really live.
And we ended up sort of compromising
that but we got something different and almost
better.
But it’s not a live-sounding record.
BC
:
And that’s the mark of a great producer who
can say, “That may be a great tune live but
it’s not right for this record.”
AP
:
Well, and it has to stand up to repeated listening...which
is the thing that I kept coming back to.
BV
:
The ecstasy helps to.
AP
:
Anyway...
BC : Transitioning here...this is “Mrs O” we’re playing...
AP
:
And this was recorded live at Club Luxx
in Brooklyn...about
a month ago.
“Mrs O”, A
Is For Accident
“The
Time Has Come”, A
Is For Accident
BC
:
You’re listening to the music of The Dresden
Dolls, who are with us this evening.
What did we just hear?
BV
: That was called “The Time Has Come”,
taken from the Milky Way back in October. We played with Torrez, a great
local band.
That is actually an older song that had
been sort of rehashed and reworked.
AP : I wrote that two years or so before I met
Brian and we pulled it out to see if it could
work as a Dresden Dolls song.
BC : The name “Dresden Dolls”...I’m thinking of
Weimer-era Germany which alludes to perhaps a Brecht / Weill influence?
Were those influences for you and how
did the name come about?
AP
:
That’s part of it.
The name works in a lot of different
ways. One of the things I like about
it is that…it doesn’t mean anything in itself. There are these toys, these
actual dolls made in Dresden. Before the city was destroyed
in the war it was famous for its china and these
dolls.
So Dresden Dolls actually exist, you
can buy them online. But the thing I like most
about it is that the word Dresden
for most people conjures up an image of the
firebombing in World War II.
And the idea of this firebombing, this
explosive and painful thing for everyone juxtaposed
with the idea of this delicate little vulnerable
doll…I thought fits perfectly with the music. Because the music is sort
of the same way, it’s 0 to 100.
BC
:
When you compose new pieces for the group now,
do you start with the piano first and then come
up with lyrics, and then in the back of your
head try to decide how this will work with Brian
and present it...
AP
:
Yeah...it usually works one of two ways. I’ll either have the song pretty much completed and
then bring it to Brian.
I’ll usually have a good idea of what
he’s going to do or I’ll already have an idea
of what I want the drums to sound like and Brian
will then flesh out the idea. But occasionally I’ll have
sort of a fragment of a song in my head and
I’ll throw it out to Brian and see what he bounces
back.
BV
:
Your writing style I think definitely changed
in the sense that they “have the drums in mind”.
AP
:
I definitely have the drums in mind.
BV
:
As opposed to before...
BC
: Were there were songs that you started with
that you couldn’t use later when Brian joined,
where you said, “Well this isn’t going to work,
it was great as a solo piece...”
AP
:
Yeah, I keep those as my solo songs. I do, not very often, but
I do separate solo performances.
Occasionally, and we don’t do it so much
anymore, but in the beginning I would play some
songs where Brian would just sort of play very
light expressive stuff on the cymbals. But those are usually the
slow moody songs that don’t need a beat.
BC
:
The idea of Brian playing just cymbals and laying
back is sort of ironic...
AP
:
It works, he does it very well. There are a few times when
I play a song when he’s just literally brushing
a cymbal. When we play “Slide” live,
he used to just play one little snare fill in
the middle and that was it.
But it still added something.
BC
:
Brian, can you describe what your background
is, did you start on the drums, was that your
first instrument?
BV : Yes, drums was definitely the first instrument
introduced to me at 3, then again at 5, and
then I think I picked it up at age 9.
My background is 100% tried and true
southern New
Hampshire
and all that that entails.
Hair Metal.
Absolutely a big influence. Poison...were there for me. Back in ’89.
AP : Warrant.
BV : Yes.
BC
:
Great White?
AP
: (groans)
BV : Well, I gotta say,
yeah, they were there for me too. (singing) Once bitten, twice
shy! It’s
embarrassing but I won’t hide it.
From there I played with a couple original
bands and then moved down and played with a
punk band in Arlington. And then I played in a band
called Asciento
for about a year and a half and then I met Amanda. That’s pretty much how it
went but the metal has always been there.
BC
:
I guess you must love playing with Amanda because
of the dynamics of the music.
You can walk into a live show of the
Dresden Dolls and depending on when you walked
in, it can be very delicate and then before
you know it you’re just involved in this wall
of sound. Is this something that was
refreshing to you?
You’re a master of dynamics and it’s
interesting that your background is all of this
hair metal...
AP
:
He’s leaving out a huge side of the influences...
BV
:
Yeah, those were just the formative years. But jazz was introduced to
me too at an early age and Elvin Jones’
playing and Philly Jo Jones and Buddy Rich,
Max Roach, a lot of those players were thrown
at me by my father.
And a lot of other music too, that I
discovered in later years, like Diamanda
Galas and Swans and some of the darker
music. And then Black Flag
and Circle Jerks and some of the early
80s hardcore was another huge part that I took in. And of course when I was 12
and 13 that was the heyday of grunge and so
Nirvana and a lot of that heavy playing I took
a lot from too.
But
yes, in this context, to be able to have that much room to play with,
and especially the songwriting works in such
a way that it doesn’t have to be just a beat
backing up a song. The lyrics are at the forefront
and there is so much room to embellish here
and there. I have jazz in my mind a lot, and
just coloring here and there depending on the
way the lyrics hit me or the way she’s playing
the keys, it just leaves a lot of room for expression...which
is definitely what I’m all about.
I love to play music like that and play
music with other people.
And for those people who play you know
it’s the best feeling. So to be able to connect with
someone on stage at that level is definitely
a treat.
BC
:
What else can we play off this live record?
AP
:
Yeah, let’s play one more.
BC
:
One of your “hits”.
AP
:
This is not a hit.
Let’s play “Glass Slipper”. And this was recorded live
at TT The Bears, our last big Boston
show in late December.
“Glass
Slipper”, A
Is For Accident
“Isolation”,
John
Lennon
BC
:
You’re listening to Free Association on WZBC
90.3 FM. We’re listening to the music
of the Dresden Dolls.
Brian just handed me that last one...moving
on to the influences phase of the program here...
BV
:
That was “Isolation” by John Lennon. That was off the first Plastic
Ono record.
BC
:
I guess we were talking about this Friday’s
concert. You have an augmented lineup.
Who’s playing with you?
AP
:
Well we’ve done this before and actually on
the upcoming album I guess 3 songs have a full
band. But we don’t usually play
with a full band live just because...I guess
just because we don’t.
BV
:
We have two guys playing with us on Friday from
a great local band that you all out there should
check out, they’re called Ilation, a three-piece and they do a lot
of improvised rocking stuff.
They’re great players.
We have Greg the guitarist and Jim the
bass player joining us this Friday for a couple
of numbers.
BC
:
Speaking of that...playing in a duo for so long,
I guess it’s sort of odd, you don’t see a lot
of bands with just two people. But one of the nice things
about listening to this band is the SPACE. There is use of space in this
band, and that’s one of things I love about
it, because it often seem there are no rock
bands that use space! And I love the fact that you’re
doing that.
Are you embracing that element of it
and even the limitations of it and sort of being
so limited you’re forced to draw out the emotional
qualities of the music.
AP
:
Definitely.
We’re also lucky that I play piano.
I mean piano is such a versatile instrument
and it can sound like an entire band.
And Brian also gets to have a lot of
room to play. Once you get enough people
on stage then he’s basically just got to be
a drummer.
BV
(crying) : I’m just
a drummer...
AP
:
No, I mean, he plays so musically but the subtlety
gets lost the more instruments you add.
Are there are specific songs that just
sound better fleshed out.
“Good Day” is one of them.
I mean, it sounds fine, with the piano
and drums, but as soon as you add the bass and
guitar, it’s like “Ahh...that
was supposed to be there.”
That’s what it needed.
BV
:
Well I think it’s also, it’s not only the playing,
it’s kind of inherent in the songwriting.
When there is a quiet line it’s sung
quietly, it’s not pedal-to-the-metal the whole
time. (pause) Not to keep using the word
metal.
Sorry. It’s just all I can think
about.
AP,
BC (laughing)
BV
:
But definitely, there is a lot of room to lay
back.
BC
:
And you can play melodically, which is another
great thing about your playing.
You’re a melodic player and for a drummer
that’s unique. It’s horizontal playing instead
of vertical rhythms.
BV
:
That definitely helped when I was playing bass
in Asciento and learning to play a different
instrument, you get a different perspective. So that definitely widens
your palette I think.
AP
:
He’s a better musician than I am.
BV
:
No, she’s the better musician.
BC
:
Oh, here we go...
AP
:
He’s one of those creeps who has perfect pitch.
BV
:
No I wouldn’t say it’s perfect.
BC:
So if I sing a note you can name it?
AP
:
I bet you anything he would know. (singing a tone)
BV
:
You’re...flat.
I don’t know,
I can’t work like this...
AP
:
If you weren’t on the spot, he would be able
to do it.
BC
:
It’s interesting having a drummer with perfect
pitch...sort of sad and ironic.
AP
:
He’s a decent guitarist too...he plays guitar
on the record.
BC
:
Oh, that’s right, I had forgotten about that. You played guitar on a few
gigs, that ArtRages
show...
AP
:
And he’s going to play guitar on Friday night. We actually have a guitar-and-voice
song we’re going to do.
BC
:
Good.
You mentioned before the capability of
the piano and it being a sort of orchestra unto
itself.
Do you find yourself now practicing more
on voice or piano?
AP
:
What do you mean practicing on?
BC : I mean what are you working on more?
AP
:
I’m working on my computer more. (laughing)
BC
:
Now that the record is done!
AP
:
Since I’ve had problems with my arms, I’m playing
very little...only when I need to and not expending
a whole lot. I sort of work on what needs
the most work at the time.
If that makes any sense. And depending on what we’re
playing I kind of do what’s called for. So if we’re playing a show
and I know we’re doing a number where my voice
has to go into the upper regions of the range
I’m not used to, I’ll do a lot of warming up.
If I know we’re doing easy songs right
in my range, I want focus on that as much.
BC
:
I remember the last time you were here, one
of the things you wanted to focus on was vocal
training. Especially going into the
studio and doing it every day, day in, day out.
AP
:
Oh my god.
That was a complete nightmare.
BC
:
I’ll bet.
I’ll bet.
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