Corcovado - Man at Arms - Spit for Athena - The Sea The Sea

It's winter in West Michigan, which means that over and over again you'll hear about how much snow we get because we live next to some big lakes – lake-effect snow, they call it. In honor of that snow and the music of the independent bands who play in it, Grand Rapids' Friction Records released The Lake Effect: A Four-Way Split just in time for the first meteorologist to drop its namesake on the six o'clock news. The CD, with artwork and screen-printed covers by label owner Jeff VandenBerg, features four new recordings by local regulars Corcovado, Man at Arms, Spit For Athena and The Sea The Sea. Recoil moderated a roundtable discussion between the bands to get their take on local music.

Recoil: How did you come to be a part of this project?
Levi Bailey, Spit For Athena: I was at a party with Jeff [Vandenberg], Tina from Corcovado, Eric and Ted from Man at Arms, and Tom from The Sea The Sea. We were playing Boggle, and Tina started going on and on about how the lake effect in Michigan really bums her out. She drank a lot of Kool-Aid that evening, and if you get enough sugar into Tina, well – talk, talk, talk. She was going on about how she always had to bring three extra sweaters when she went to hang out with her buddies on the lake, and that got Ted started! He starts gibbering about how he hates having to pack extra coats to prepare himself for that icy Wisconsin air that invades our state. Anyway, we all decided it was time to do a benefit CD to try and stop The Lake Effect. Tom suggested we raise enough money to have the Great Lakes filled with concrete. Jeff agreed to put the CD out on Friction if we'd give him fifty percent of the profits. Jeff doesn't believe in benefit CDs – he says they're for pussies and suckers. Hence, The Lake Effect: A Four-Way Split. Magical fucking stuff, huh?
Eric Gallippo, Man at Arms: Jeff asked us to be on it after a show we played at the DAAC back in February. We'd been playing Friction-sponsored shows for a while and knew Jeff pretty well, so I was excited he had asked us. Plus, we were already fans and friends of Spit For Athena and I'd seen Corcovado and The Sea The Sea a couple of times, so it sounded like a good group of bands to be a part of.
LB: Yeah. Like I said, magical. Friction-sponsored shows? What the hell?
EG: I just mean shows Jeff put on. 'Friction-sponsored' was shorter than 'Friction Records presents independent music night at...' See.
LB: Listen, Eric, Friction Records doesn't sponsor anything. That guy steals from charities to fund his little 'shows' and you know it.

R: What made you choose the animal that represents you on the split's cover, or was it chosen for you?
Tina Louise Newhouse, Corcovado: Well, we have a song about a spider, so it was a natural fit.
Mike Christe, Corcovado: There's a spider in the light.
LB: Jeffers Vandenberg did a sweet painting of a rhino that all of us in the band thought was pretty darned sweet-o. Plus, rhinos have horns, and I'm very horny. They wanted to stick us with some pussy animal, some bullshit bear or something. Fuck that. Spit For Athena equals rhino, you dig?
EG: We chose a buzzard because they're big, ugly birds who pick your bones if you happen to die in the desert or in the woods. Plus, the band already had a fascination with vultures.

R: What do you think the bands on this disc have in common?
LB: Gee, I don't know. Guitars? Michigan? A desire to cut open Jeff Vandenberg, crawl into his body and live the life of a god?
EG: Yeah, I think you're right, Levi. There's not that much stylistic continuity, but all the bands seem to approach making and playing music in a similar way, either by choice or because there aren't any other options. They've all played shows together, except we've never played with The Sea The Sea.
LB: Well, Spit For Athena has played with The Sea The Sea; I can't count how many times Tom has given me atomic wedgies. That guy is a bastard.
Rebecca Rodriguez, Corcovado: Even though we play differently we have qualities of unity in our sounds.

R: How do you feel about music in Michigan, and more specifically, Grand Rapids, right now?
LB: There's a lot of crap bands and crap venues, and people don't seem as interested in shows as they should be, but I guess I can't talk. I don't know. Good labels like Elkion, Friction, Acutest – good people trying to do good things. Skelletones takes good care of Spit For Athena, and Vertigo is a super-sweet music store.
EG: Excitement seems to come and go. When we started playing we had no clue as to who used to be in what bands and all that. We made some friends with similar tastes and like minds and had a lot of fun playing Thursdays at Skelletones and Stooges. Bands broke up and people moved on. We've played shows at new venues that we liked and then they would stop having them. We only play the DAAC anymore or, occasionally, Skelletones, not as a rule, we just do.
Mike Christe, Corcovado: I wish there were more places to see more independent, diverse music.
RR: A lot better! For a few years it was a dead sea. Now it's forming a scene again, like back in the day.
TLN: There is a great network of musicians and music happening in Michigan and in Grand Rapids. There seems to be a lack of interest or support from the community though. I hope the scene continues to grow. I would have given anything to have a place like the DAAC when I was sixteen. To see such a great variety of local and touring independent music and not be required to buy coffee to see the show.

R: When did you first see each other's bands and what was your impression of them?
TLN: Man At Arms at the DAAC – a really nice surprise. We didn't know what to expect and ended up walking away talking about how much we liked them for hours. We still really like them. Spit for Athena at The Avenue; the CD we heard before we saw them didn't do them justice. Seeing them live they had so much electricity and they were all so damn cute! They are all still really cute. The Sea The Sea at a benefit show in Bay City; Tom's vocals are like the Hoover Dam exploding. We really like them and are sad that they are no longer together.
EG: I instantly loved Spit For Athena the first time I saw them. It was at Stooges and we played after them and they made me nervous. I remember liking Corcovado because they were different from other stuff going on at the time and kind of sweet sounding. The more I saw them, the more I got to hear all the different sounds going on and really appreciate it. The Sea The Sea I only caught twice. The singer reminded me of some frantic albatross and they had saxophones and metally guitars all together. I wish we could have played with them.

Clockwise from upper left: Corcovado, Man at Arms, The Sea The Sea, Spit For Athena

January 2005