Chase those Monday morning blues away with a new track from San Francisco punks Great Apes. Their new EP ‘Playland at the Beach’ is out on Asian Man Records (you can grab a pre-order of it here) . We love Great Apes because of their concepts and the new EP doesn’t let us down, telling us about San Francisco from the point of view of specific local landmarks or buildings. The idea of landmarks personified telling their own stories about the city sucks you right in.
We have “New Rough, Old Diamond (A Conversation Between Vesuvio And Specs)” for you today which is sung from the perspectives of Vesuvio and Specs’, two longstanding North Beach bars, who have fallen towards each other to share a drink in the middle of the street well after last call. Give it a listen below:
We had a chat with Brian Moss about the new EP and the city that inspired it..
The album is inspired by San Francisco, what’s the best story you have to tell about SanFran?
There are so many in terms of my own personal narratives, and frankly, most of my them would likely come across as odd and boring. They are intimate moments involving close friends, ex-lovers, or a passing snapshot of something fleeting and beautiful. In those stories, the city, its buildings, lighting, or weather are the setting or backdrop to some permanently imbedded impression that someone or something left on me.
Beyond that, I’ve of course got a holster of hilarity in terms of big nights and audacious behavior. The old Castro Halloween street parties come to mind… Stumbling around North Beach as a kid, egging neighborhood frat boys as well… an adult. I’ve also got an array of crazy-shit-that-I’ve-seen-in-the-streets-and-on-public-transit stories up my sleeve. Gnarly brawls, a dude trying to put a meat cleaver down into a gutter discreetly in broad daylight, guys shooting junk on the curb, street preachers on meth, trustafarian street musicians that haven’t the slightest clue, and so forth. However, all of that could potentially occur in a variety of metropolises across the world. The good stuff’s in the details. Again, it’s all about the fleeting moments that speak to you personally. The way the fog was lit up under a streetlight at the top of a certain hill on a late night walk with a certain friend… That stands out.
I learned a lot while researching for the record and in terms of history, the city is full of fascinating stories. There are a couple windmills in Golden Gate Park that I always assumed were decorative, but when I was studying up for lyrics, I came to learn that their original purpose was to irrigate the park’s plant life. The wind power generated was used to pump water through pipes. I also found out that the It’s It, my favorite ice cream treat ever, was invented blocks from my current flat at the now defunct amusement park that our record takes its name from. It’s Its were exclusively sold there until the park closed in 1972. Now you can get them all over the Bay Area and elsewhere. Like there are with any city, country, house, or person, there are a thousand good stories hiding in San Francisco’s past, and I’d encourage interested parties to do some investigating of their own.
The last album Thread was lyrically inspired by conversations you’d had with friends, each song representing a different person, which I thought was a really interesting idea and made for an awesome album. The new EP is just as interesting with SanFran as told by places and objects. How did you approach this when writing and recording? What were the challenges with writing songs from the POV of places and landmarks? Was it much different to how you did the last album?
With Thread it was a bit easier because my friends gave me their perspectives, whether it was in the form of an interview or a simple conversation. They told me what they wanted their songs to be about and expressed themselves. I crafted lyrics around them. With Playland at the Beach, it was a bit trickier, because I had to both personify landmarks with characteristics and ideals and decide what their focal points should be. Clearly, there are overarching themes on the record and to some extent, I created characters and centerpieces for songs to fit that agenda. While I represented some ideologies and thoughts that aren’t necessarily my own, my personal experiences and beliefs are rife throughout the record. They’re just not expressed in a conventional lyrical way. Loose topics were selected in advance and then the locations were chosen to match them. I refined the personality of each location as I wrote, and in some instances, our other guitar player, Rob, helped out. Characters evolved with the songs and ultimately, everything came together to create a brief collective portrait of the city’s, past, present, and future.
We know you pushed back your European Tour to 2015. When can we expect you over? (We’re pretty damn excited for some shows!)
Hopefully sooner than later. There is nothing we’d like more than to get to Europe for some shows. Matt, who plays drums, and I have been over there on tour multiple times, but it’s been a while since we’ve gone. We’re itching to get back. I’d always rather play a shitty show in Europe than a great show in the U.S. Being able to experience new countries and cultures through music is a blessing, and I’d jump at the opportunity whenever possible. Alas, airfares have skyrocketed over the past five to ten years and last summer we had to postpone on account of not realistically being able to make even one third of our costs back. Tickets were looking like $1500 bare minimum. We all work regular jobs and none of us can afford multi thousand dollar vacations at the moment, so we’re just remaining hopeful that in the future we’ll be able to find some cheaper plane tickets and/or get on some shows that help balance the expenses. Any help is always appreciated!
Is the reliance on concepts (like Jahbreaker and the last album) necessary?. Is there a worrying degree of derivation within pop-punk?
I don’t rely on concepts. Jahbreaker was a fun one-time Halloween joke that got blown out of proportion, and in terms of writing conceptually from differing perspectives with Great Apes, I simply got bored of talking about myself and my feelings from a first person perspective after over a decade of releasing records. I wasn’t challenged as a writer and I wanted to represent other people and other points of view, so I pushed myself to do something new to make it more interesting. As a listener, I get bored as fuck with that too. I wanted to keep things fresh and at least attempt to bring in some atypical literary aspects to lyricism. That’s it. That’s all. I have no real concerns about adhering to the supposed roots of pop-punk, punk, hardcore, or any musical genre.
We promise to never mention Jahbreaker again!
What are some things would you say we had to do if we ever find ourselves in SanFran that we couldn’t find in a guidebook?
Walk the semi-secret Sunset Stairs. Go to the top of Buena Vista Park after midnight. Hit the Riptide to play some bingo and hear real country bands in a city generally not associated with that particular sound. Eat an entire container of habanero hot sauce from Taqueria Guadalajara. Explore the bayside warehouses, abandoned buildings, and old shipping yards along the southern sections of the city. Visit the Mission or Haight to shit talk and/or observe neo-hippies/burners, bumper sticker liberals, and snot-nosed, self-entitled techies. Avoid Dolores Park. Dine or drink at the Silver Crest. Bar hop in Chinatown. Hike Land’s End, although that’s definitely in some books.
You seem to pick things that connect you to important figures/places in their life (friends, San Fran). Do you see writing as a way of staying connected to that? Particularly given the fact that being in a band is often a life lived in transit
Everyone’s life is a life in transit. We are always in motion, even when we are lost in our memories or focused on our futures. There are no pause, rewind, or fast forward buttons. We do our best to work with the push of time, which can never be altered. Unlike a moment, music, writing, photography, film, paintings, architecture and so forth can last and be revisited. Within them, one can depict or hold onto something passing. I choose to document things that connect to me because I view them as pieces from my life that I want to hold on to and reflect on later and/or because I believe they are potentially of use to other people as well. I write for myself, but equally so to share for the purpose of fostering communities, reactions, or emotions elsewhere.