Abe Vigoda influenced by goth music?
Written by: Andrew Iliadis
Date: August 6, 2009

Before their summer North American tour, Andrew Iliadis talked to Abe Vigoda’s Juan Velazquez about their Reviver EP, popular California venue The Smell and being influenced by goth music. A: What are you guys up to these days?

J: We leave for our tour on Sunday, so we’ve just been in the practice space a lot, working on getting our set put together. Rehearsing and stuff. We’re adding new elements to our songs so we’re kind of messing around with that, new samples, keyboards, etc. So we’re kind of working with all of that crap. We’ve been rehearsing using samples and stuff like we’re going to do on tour, because usually we just play two guitars base and drums, but now we’ve got new elements to work with. We’ve kind of been fucking with that.

A: So you are incorporating a lot of new elements. The EP Reviver sounds different. Have you added new instruments since Skeleton?br />
J: Not really, actually. It’s more like, in the newer songs that we recorded but that aren’t released, there are accents and stuff but we’re going to try to incorporate that live so we don’t have to get a fifth member [laughs]. We’re basically just trying to get our set concise and streamlined because we have a lot of between song elements and samples, so we’re kind of just practicing.

A: Can you talk a little bit about the Smell, how that community germinated and the bands that started playing regular shows there?

J: It’d been around for ten years now. It opened in the late 90s but I wasn’t around for that. I was still in junior high. But when we started going it was bands like Mika Miko and Wives, which is No Age’s previous band. Kind of like a hardcore band. Then we started playing. But when I was 18 or 17 we started playing there and it was pretty low key. People would come out and it was a lot of fun. Now it’s a little different, I guess, since Mika Miko and No Age got a little more popular. More people are going to shows. There are more kids coming out, shows are selling out. And we never really had that before, especially not for us. Only our friends would come. But it’s a really cool place and it’s still pretty low key. It’s not like one of these venues with super expensive cover, bouncers and jerks and stuff. In certain ways, it’s like any community oriented or DIY space, so it’s a cool place to play and still a really fun place to go see shows.

A: Were there any specific bands or genres that influenced your sound as you guys started to play? What bands were you guys listening to before you formed the band and what are you listening to today?

J: Like when we recorded Skeleton?

A: Well, a lot of reviewers and writers in the blogosphere toss around the term “tropical punk” as a label when describing you guys. Was there a conscious decision to create something “like” that?

J: I think that just fell in. Mike and I were really into Konono No. 1 and then we got into, like, other really cool African “rock” bands, guitar based bands. And I mean there’s the stuff that we’ve always been into, kind of the more obvious stuff like Sonic Youth, that’s always influenced what we sound like. And our drummer [for Skeleton] was really into like, top 40 hip-hop and reggae and dancehall and stuff like that. So I think it’s kind of a mix of all these things. But it’s not really a conscious thing where we say “OK, we’re going to do this and this and this.” It kind of just comes together when the band gets together. As we write songs now and when we wrote the songs that ended up on Reviver, it’s partly an influence thing and partly just getting together and trying new things and new sounds. But it wasn’t this super conscious thing where we’re like “we’re going to write a song that sounds like this” or “this is what we’re listening to right now so let’s make music that sounds like that.” I don’t think it’s like that for any band. Maybe. But for the past year or two I’ve been into a big Goth and New Wave thing.

A: About the songs that you’re working on now, are there any plans to put out a new album?

J: None of the stuff we’re working on right now is going to be available on tour. So we’re just going to play all of it. We have four new songs and we’re going to play all of them. Every night. It’s the part of the tour that we’re most excited about. But our next record probably won’t be out until next year. We’ve written four songs and recorded three, so it’ll be next year, maybe January.

http://www.myspace.com/abevigoda