Photo by Kelsey Winterkorn
The past year has been a period of growth for the Disco Biscuits. The 14-year-old group headlined Red Rocks for the first time, made its biggest impression on the radio and even scored some airtime on mtvU thanks to the song “You and I.” The next few months should be even more exciting for the Philadelphia-based group as it puts the finishing touches on its long-awaited fifth studio album Planet Anthem, an infectious blend of rock, jam, electronica and hip hop that could score the band its biggest crossover success in both the rock and rap worlds. On the eve of the band’s five-night run at New York’s Nokia Theater, bassist Marc Brownstein reflects on the past twelve months, looks ahead to Planet Anthem’s release and discusses his new friendship with hip hop icon Damon Dash.
I was very pleasantly surprised to watch the Disco Biscuits’ new video for “You and I” on mtvU. The song entered mtvU rotation through an online contest, correct?
Yeah. We just pumped it really hard. We’ve proven in the past that when we pump it really hard our fans respond—we won a Jammy, you know? When we let our fans know something really matters to us, they just get behind us. It was unbelievable—the bands just kept jumping in front of each other and, ultimately, at 2 PM we were in the lead. None of those bands have 14 years of fans that can rally behind them. The video is getting added into rotation on mtvU and that’s huge. That station can get watched at thousands of colleges across the country.
Somebody said something to me the other day like, “Why are you guys trying to get on mtvU?” Honestly, I don’t even know how to answer that question. I guess for exposure, right? Any exposure is good exposure, but this was great exposure because over the course of the week…I don’t know how many people voted, but we put it out to the whole Relix list, out to our whole list and Facebook, and we were pumping really hard to tens of thousands of people. I just have voting in my blood from my dad being a politician. For me, it’s like any good election or contest—it gets exciting for me and competitive.
You’ve been working on Planet Anthem for a few years now and only recently started playing “You and I” this past summer. When was that song actually written?
I think “You and I” was probably about eighteen months ago—maybe a little bit before that…it came together really quickly. It was pretty new when we started playing it over the summer. I think we started writing it about a year and a half ago.
I know you were originally planning to hold off from playing any of Planet Anthem‘s songs until the album was officially released, but you’ve started ti roll them out in your live set along with the album’s advance EPs. Are you still trying to hold off from playing the Planet Anthem songs until they are officially released in some recorded capacity?
Definitely. The only reason any of them got played in the first place was because they were out [either as singles or part of a series of advance EPs]. The only exceptions were “Uber Glue”—which we hadn’t intended to put on the album, but we had been playing live and everyone really like it so we added it to the album—and “The City.” It’s just a song where the recording of it got so good that it just had to go on the album even though we’ve been playing it. And when people hear the recording, it sounds nothing like “The City” we play live. The idea was to hold back all these songs, and ultimately we did that. We accomplished what we wanted to do, which was let people hear the [recorded] song first and then play them live. We just wanted to let the songs be songs for a week or two, let people digest them and then we added the jams. So we played “You and I” on the radio to promote Red Rocks in Denver, and people obviously recorded that, and it just got out instantly. So we said, “Well, it’s out, so we might as well start playing it.” The version we did at the Electric Factory was a monster—it has come a long way since we started playing it in July.
Do you plan to make videos for other songs off Planet Anthem?
We are hoping to make ten videos, and “You and I” is our third or fourth, depending on how you’re counting. We have a few more in the barrel that are going to come out with this album. Content is a big part of what we’re doing right now. We have a lot of remixes, and we weren’t sure exactly how to get them out. Our management had this really interesting idea—instead of waiting and putting the album out and then putting these remixes out—they suggested we put out these EPs before the album comes out. They are almost like mix tapes. So it’s backwards of the way people have traditionally been doing this in the jamband world. In the hip hop world people do this shit all the time.
I feel like the process we’ve been going through—where we’ve been introducing the songs one bit at a time over the course of a six-month period—is almost like a mystery being solved or a puzzle being solved. It’s getting pieced together. It is almost like the way we released the “Hot Air Balloon” opera in 1999. We introduced the songs one at a time and some people could tell there were certain themes, but it wasn’t until we played the opera on New Year’s Eve that people got the full scope of what was going on.
That’s interesting because with this album you are not just introducing new songs to fans, but venturing into entirely new genres like hip hop. The way you are releasing these songs is almost setting the stage all the genres Planet Anthem presents.
You know, I really like what Damon Dash did with the Black Keys on Blakroc [having different guest rappers record live vocals over blues-rock studio jams]. We’ve been talking to Damon recently about doing some recordings and definitely some remixes. I was in the studio with him recently, and he introduced me to Ski—he’s a legendary producer, and he was asking me for the stems of three of our songs because he wants to whip out some remixes. We’re planning on dropping a mix tape this year too. And I can’t even imagine what “On Time” and “Loose Change” are going to sound like.
Ski and Mos Def put out a track yesterday, and it was on the front of every hip hop site that was out there. Twisted Dee just got nominated for a bunch of Grammys last week and, at the same time, he’s putting the final touches on his “On Time” club remix. We just got out of practice—we were practicing the New Year’s countdown and Jon [Gutwillig] said, “2009 was a year for a bunch of firsts for us: the first time we headlined Red Rocks, the first time one of our songs got in rotation on radio, the first time a song’s video got put into rotation on mtvU…”
2009 is only a couple days more, but I don’t even know what’s going to happen between now and the end of it. Shit’s been happening so fast for us. So much has happened, and developments have happened—opportunities for collaboration—in the last couple of months, so I’m interested to see what’s happened next because “On Time” is going to start getting worked in the clubs. At the same time some of these songs are going to get remixed into hip hop songs. So we’re working this album in the electronic music scene, in the hip hop scene, in the rock scene and to straight AAA radio. We have such a good team since we signed onto Red Light and they know how to operate in the 21st century.
Speaking of hip hop collaborations, I know you played with Curren$y both at the Electric Factory over Thanksgiving Weekend and down in Jamaica. How did you first meet him?
That was through Damon. He came down with Damon to the Electric Factory show the day they released the Blakroc album. I met him, and we had a smoke off, and I definitely won—I’m not afraid to say that I won that smoke off. That guy is a great guy, man. I predict big things for him. I could see him becoming a movie star. I’ve been hanging out with him for a couple of weeks, and we hung out for a bunch of days in Jamaica, and I just get along with him real well. He reminds me of Chris Tucker. If Damon decides he wants to make a movie, Curren$y’s the fucking star, man. A good hip hop star is charismatic, and he’s just really charismatic. I heard a remix he did of “Konkrete,” and it is really cool.
What’s nice is that we introduced Planet Anthem collaborators] Alex Chigger and Harry Zelnick to Curren$y, and Pnuma’s Alex Botwin was already into Curren$y. I have a lot of friends that are big Curren$y fans from everything he’s done with Lil’ Wayne and all the stuff he did when he was on Young Money. I hooked him up with Alex B because he makes crazy beats—they hung in Jamaica for a bit. It’s cool because we could make an album with them and, at the same time, we could just be making a new Biscuits record. We could have two simultaneous records. Right now me and Aron are in the other room working on tracks for the next Biscuits record.
Already thinking ahead—this one’s not even out yet?
For us even “Mirrors” is old at this point. We have about 25 new songs that were written after Planet Anthem. We’re just writing so many songs right now that we can’t even hold them for the next record. There’s this massive batch of songs that won’t get on a record because of this record, and they’ll probably be old by the time we want to make a new record.
Well that’s how the music industry has changed. You can put them online or remixes and they will still get out to people.
There are just so many singles. We need a little time to do that we want to make “Minions” into a single and “Mirrors” into a single and bring “Rockafella” into the studio. We have all these songs we’re playing that we want to make definitive studio versions of by putting them out as singles or maybe as bonus material. We were planning on doing another four-song EP and giving it away, and have those songs be “‘Rockafella,” “Park Avenue,” “Minions” and then maybe “Flash Mob.” It was going to be a free EP but we are finding it hard to find time to make that record because we are thinking so far ahead.
Speaking of hip hop collaborations, I was just looking at the credits on the On Time EP, and saw that TuPhace not only co-wrote the lyrics with the Biscuits. That is a new songwriting approach, right?
Aron wrote the music, and TuPhace wrote the lyrics, and then we changed some of the lyrics around, so it’s a collaboration. The guy’s really talented. At first we were like, “How are we going to perform this?” But the truth is it just works so fucking well. Magner sings with the vocoder, and it just sounds cool. “On Time” at the Electric Factory was really big, the same as “You and I.” The two songs kind of grew out into their own at the Electric Factory show. It’s been so fun—my favorite thing about playing these songs is the process of watching them grow.
It’s just really fun and for a couple of years it wasn’t fun. New songs are always new so people don’t know them. It’s a hard process when you’re a small band and you can do whatever the fuck you want. Then when you get a little bit of success you have to live in your own world and not worry about anybody else. But it takes a little bit of maturity to learn that. For me, it took a little bit of maturity not to worry about what’s going on out there, and just enjoy what I enjoy most about being in a band, which is writing music. The best part of being a musician is sitting down with nothing and creating something. This is happening right now in the other room. I watched Ski use this synthesizer last night, and I though to myself, “I have that synth,” so I went home, opened that synth, and I put it on a song I’m working on that is tentatively called “Rahm Emanuel.” It is not actually about him so I have to figure out the title [laugher].
I brought it in today, and we practiced our countdown for a couple of hours. After we finished, I played it for Magner, and he’s in the other room right now working on that song. The best thing I can do is just not be in there right now and let him take what I started and work on it a little. But I was just awe-inspired by a hip hop legend working with a fucking synth in his studio—it is the best part of being an artist.
It is definitely a big part of any band’s growth—figuring out how to morph and change, while still keeping your roots intact.
The last year-and-a half or two years have been the best two years of being in the band ever because I am so oblivious. I’m the fucking most ignorant bastard you have ever met. I just write shit for myself, and if I like it I go forward with it, and that’s all I care about. I trust myself.
“Caves of the East” is a perfect example. When we started out with “Caves,” I was playing it on a regular bass, Magner was playing the guitar line and, little by little, we shifted it around. I started playing it on a keyboard the way I did in the studio and that changed the whole vibe of the song. [Drummer Allen Aucoin] started using a click and syncing-up with Aron’s computer. Barber took the main melody line, which freed Allen up to do all the little things to make “Caves” sound like Caves and then Magner—because he was on a click— started to get a little bit funky with it and started dropping all these samples. We were in LA and he played Snoop, we were in Atlanta and he played Ludacris, we were in New York and he played Beastie Boys. It’s fun—on Halloween he just made scary shit happen.
This was over an eighteen month period, though. When we first started playing it in Europe it was really terrible—not what I wanted it to sound like, but as we worked on it we figured out the instrumentation. Sometimes that’s a process when you write shit the way I write shit on a computer…you have to figure out how to play it later and interpret all these sounds. “Rockafella” is another example…it goes from really raw and loose and not really that driving to being a song that people are like requesting, and looking forward to.
I’ve definitely felt that this new batch of songs represents a new era for the band, rooted more in true electronica than the earlier “trance fusion” sound the band was known for.
That process to me is what being in the Disco Biscuits is all about. We are maturing to the level to where we can write a song a day like Frank Zappa did—everyday he’d write a new song, and pick the best one, and start warping those ideas into real pieces of music to present to fans. You never stop working on them—it’s just like a piece of clay, and the sculpture is never quite perfect. But you are just always making a little bit better, and you have to be open to making it the best it could be. “Caves,” for me, is a quintessential example of why being in the Disco Biscuits is so much fun. It goes back to the improvisational spirit of the band where it can change all the time— whether it’s in the studio making it unique and doing remixes and different collaborations. It’s a pretty cool time.
It is a cool time and there’s so much shit that’s about to come out that I can’t even perceive how it’s going to play out. We have committed ourselves to just like putting out more content all the time—writing music all the time, and just continually evolving and continually pushing the envelope with what it means to be in a band. That’s our job. It’s fucking great.
It goes back to the beginning of the decade when you were writing operas and writing music all the time. I remember at one point in the early ‘00s Barber told Jambands.com that the Disco Biscuits had six or seven albums of material ready to record…it sounds like the band has gotten back to that point.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that all year why ‘99 and ‘09 mirror each other so much— the cycle of time and how you reach the end of a decade and there’s a sense of urgency. All I can think is that maybe it just pushes you creatively. You can’t help but get pushed creatively. It’s not just us, there’s so many other bands pushing the envelope creatively right now—putting out new material and new records. I think it’s just a creative push to the end of a calendar cycle.
