JOHN EYE

by DJ Mätthew Griffin

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, their flag to April’s breeze unfurl’d; Here once the embattl’d farmers stood, and fired the shot heard round the world. -Emerson

Noise: Let’s start with the early years. You began with gigs at the Rat and upstairs at the Middle East. Before long, the band [One of Us] was filling up the downstairs at the Middle East, T.T. the Bear’s and headlining the Paradise. You’ve played shows in a lot of different venues—do you have a favorite?

John: That’s a hard question to answer. I used to get really excited about playing new stages and wondering what kind of craziness I could get myself into at each venue. I always liked Club Babyhead in Rhode Island because they had lots of pipes on the ceiling to climb around on and hang from. The Bank in New York City was really cool because the dressing room was in the old bank vault, and of course the Somerville Theater was one of the best on stage sounds. The height of the ceilings, and the fact that it was actually designed with acoustics in mind made drums sound gigantic. I could really feel them blasting by me and that’s a huge turn on.

Noise: In those early years before you went solo, you would put on a pretty wild performance. From self-mutilation onstage, to hanging upside down from ceiling pipes. Where were you mentally before a performance?

John: I was a bicycle courier back in college, and managed to get struck head-on by a car in the South End of Boston while delivering a package. When I was resuscitated, I spent the next two years having metal plates put in my face, and being surgically reconstructed. This shattered a lot of illusions I had about life and left me with a lot of unanswerable questions. Frustration and anger were the primary byproduct of this, and I sought any way I could to reconnect with some feeling of reality. Since I don’t drink or do any drugs, the only way to challenge my perceptions of the world was to push myself to endure extreme physical stress. I ran the Boston marathon, experienced a sun dance, began competitive breath-hold diving, took up extreme distance swimming, and tried to push myself beyond the limits of endurance on stage to see if I could feel whole and alive again. So, generally before performances I was quiet, introspective, and meditative. I wanted to store up as much energy to unleash on the audience during the show as possible. Give them their money’s worth.

Noise: What was the original concept behind your first band One Of Us?

John: I started One Of Us when I was in art school with the plan to put together one show as a performance art piece. I wanted to compile and illustrate all the emotions and ideas that seems difficult to confine to a canvas. After that show I figured I might as well keep going since I had some pretty talented people willing to work with me. Joel Simches [Count Zero/ Axemunkee]and Christian Gilbert [Opium Den/ Reflecting Skin] were a couple of very influential people I was lucky enough to find in those early years. Joel for his pop sensibilities and production skills, and Christian for pushing me to explore world music influences and raw emotional composition. So, I guess the concept since the beginning and now in my solo work has always been about exploring new ideas and acquiring new influences.

Noise: Tell me about your songwriting process.

John: For the most part even before going solo, my process has been to sit down with the instrument that I am feeling most inspired to play at the time, and just come up with something I like. I primarily work alone in the studio, so I will just start to track one instrument and then build around that. I spend a good amount of time focusing on the drum rhythms and the production of them because in my mind, no matter what genre of music it is, barring very few, the drums are one of the most important components. Lyrics I usually write separately, and attach them to the song once I have a feel for the emotional direction of the music. Once the lyrics are put into the song, the arrangement mostly works itself out, and I find myself trimming unnecessary measures and riffs that don’t need to be there. A lot ends up on the cutting room floor.

Noise: The track “Beethoven Was My Lover” [off the cassette Humane, and later, an alternate version on the CD Sky Clad] was a crowd favorite, as you would come down off the stage and pick a lucky girl to waltz with. What is the story behind that song?

John: We were being very tongue-in-cheek when we wrote this. I was surprised by how much people liked it. At the time I was just messing around lyrically in all the songs I was writing. Just being silly and twisting the meaning of everyday pop culture things. I had been drawing a cartoon about a little boy Peter and his friend Kate, and how they were maliciously counter-culture and extremely cheeky with their innocence, so when Joel first played that melody on the harpsichord I reached out for the first thing that came to mind… and there it was. The only reason I recorded the second version of the song was, I felt that the original vocals were atrocious, and I needed to offer a better version to people who liked the song. Oh, and it wasn’t “always” a girl.

Noise: What do John Eye and One Of Us fanatics [“fanatics” would be the appropriate word to describe a majority of your fans, myself included] have in store in the near future?

John: There will be two video releases coming up shortly, the first around April/May for the song “Cannonicus Sun Dance” and the second soon after for the song “Faith And Fanatics.”
The “Cannonicus Sun Dance” video, directed by Herschel Smith Jr. has been a really fun project with a pretty large cast and a ton of location shots. Herschel and I decided that instead of doing your typical band playing instruments and lip-syncing to the music, we would shoot it in the style of a trailer for a Brit-influenced gangster action film. Picture Guy Richie and Quentin Tarantino working together. There’s lots of drugs, money, hot women, murder, and disposal of bodies, all set to music. Just an average day… really.

That video will be released with a six to eight song maxi single CD called Cannonicus 3.14, which will include remixes of “Cannonicus Sun Dance” by DJ Osheen, Herschel Smith Jr., Basil Simon, Bill T Miller, and myself. The disc will be fairly “beat happy” [to quote BTM] but will span the club genres, the rock world, and will also include my performance of the traditional “Lakota Sioux” sun dance song. The “Faith And Fanatics” video is a lot simpler concept. Politically charged war footage [some from friends who experienced it first hand] cut to music that poses the question, why, after all this time have we not grown out of killing each other in the name of some god or another to serve individual greed and desire for power? This is a question we should be posing again and again to our leaders, until they understand the absurdity of this, or resign and go away out of shame for being so obtuse and without basic humanity. This message in the lyrics helped a demo version of the song be picked for Neil Young’s compilation of anti-war songs Living With War Today, and is a subject I hope more and more people will take note of.

After that, several maxi singles with new songs and remixes by some pretty stellar producers and DJs will be released, followed by the full-length album. At this point the songs are divided between rock based songs and much more club friendly material.
I’ve been really pushing into the club and soundtrack genres lately and am more into creating an atmosphere with music whether it be party, or something tense for a film. This is definitely a left turn from some of the more mainstream rock I had been writing over the past few years.

Noise: Can we expect any live performances, with this new release?

John: After the next series of singles and videos are released I will be looking into some strategic tour dates. I want the next shows to be events, more like tweaked out sexy dance parties than a bunch of guys plugging in and turning up to eleven. All the tour dates, video, album releases, and dirty black mail pictures will be made available on my newly designed site www.johneye.us.

Noise: Any parting thoughts?

John: Pry open your mind.

www.johneye.us