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Vice Blog

NEW YORK - AWESOME COLOR

Awesome Color is a three-person, one-girl psychedelic minddozer of a band from Michigan that makes easily the best new music we've heard this year. No dispute. Their album Electric Aborigines sounds like it was started in some smokey suburban basement in '68 then time-traveled forward every five years to pick up new elements until arriving in the future one fuzzy, all-encompassing monolith of good tuneage. At the risk of further embarrassing myself with sentences like that last one, let's just say they're playing tonight with Tall Firs at their NYC base camp of Glasslands and tomorrow at the Market Hotel with the USAISAMONSTER, and that we interviewed them below. Here's them.

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Listen: Awesome Color - "Do It Right"


Photo by Lisa Corson

Vice: I heard there was some sort of weirdness with your signing to Ecstatic Peace. What happened with that?
Derek Stanton (vocals, guitar): We got a myspace from Thurston Moore—we thought it was a joke—that was basically like, "Hey give me a call," and a few months later we were doing the record. We were kind of reluctant to sign the deal and we didn’t actually sign until the day before it came out when we were basically forced to. Everything was done but we hadn’t signed the contract and it had to be done, so we signed it on top of a skateboard because we were outside skating and there was no desk or anything. Then we pushed the board into the middle of the street and watched everyone run after it. Mark Ibold videotaped it. We weren’t trying to be mean or rude or anything—it was symbolic basically.

Skating seems to be an important catalyst for the band. 
Allison Busch (drums): It’s how we met. Michael had a skate band called Violent Ramp and Derek and I went to their first show. It’s the best when people tell us they thrash to our music.
Derek: We met one skater who’s now the fourth member of Awesome Color—Davey Urf, aka Lord Zurp. He’s also the coolest guy in the world.
Allison: He’s our roadie and merch-man‚Ķ he even learned how to drive stick so he could be our driver in Europe. He plays tambourine on the new record and he can order for all of us at Cracker Barrel.

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Cracker Barrel is the best. Who gets what?
Allison: Momma’s Pancake Breakfast. I get the pancakes plain with real maple syrup, my eggs over-medium, and I substitute the meat with fried apples usually. Derek gets Momma’s Pancake Breakfast too, usually with fruit like peaches or cherries, well-done hash browns, and scrambled eggs. Davey gets the same with pecans, but sometimes he puts chocolate chips in there too and he gets sausage. Michael’s vegan, so he usually drops us off and goes to the grocery store.
Michael Troutman (bass): Most of the time I get hummus and bread, but we’re saving up for one of those rocking chairs eventually.

What’s your favorite monster?
Derek: Werewolves. I’ve loved them since I was a little kid. I wouldn’t want to be one permanently, but if I could be one for a week that’d be great. You don’t remember what happens, so you could maul people and do whatever.

The band collaborates with a lot of people. Who’s your favorite?
Allison: Everyone’s great but this one guy named Scotty Karate stands out. He was in McDonald’s commercials when he was a baby, he was on Elimidate, he’s got a beer named after him. He played a beer festival in Michigan where they had this sign that had all these beers you could order and at the bottom they had "& Scotty Karate." So all these people kept trying to order a Scotty Karate. The brewers were just like, "Well, now we have to make this beer." It’s a Scotch ale with 9.6% alcohol that makes you feel like you’re on downers.
Derek: He’s probably the greatest singer-songwriter in the world. He’s part of the family.
Michael: He brought us to Foamhenge. It’s a place in Natural Bridge, Virginia.

What’s Foamhenge?
Derek: It’s an abandoned life-size replica of Stonehenge made out of foam. We had to hop the fence to get there and it’s basically beer cans and foam pillars that have been knocked over by hillbillies.

You guys help out at Glasslands. What’s that like?
Derek: We have a practice space there and do a lot of shows there and book shows there so it’s kind of like HQ. But we’re trying to make it more than a music venue.
Allison: We do a rad after-school program there for kids who get busted for graffiti at school. It’s through the NYPD, so the police will drop all these kids off in a van and instead of doing detention they can come hangout at Glasslands and draw. Sometimes they’ll play drums—I try to get them to use the bass drums instead of just the cymbals and the snare. One of the kids I was working with checked out our video on myspace and told me it was weird.
Derek: We did the Good Times Fest during the No Fun Fest last year. I’d do it every year if we weren’t always on tour.

What do you make of the whole No Fun scene?
Michael: When I go to it I always have a fucking blast.
Allison: It’s the only festival I’ve ever been to in New York. We always have a good time. You walk in and you can’t even talk to everybody because you’re too busy high-fiving this whole noise flea market that’s going on.
Derek: Even though we’re not a noise band it seems like everyone there is family. There’s a heavy Michigan influence. What's up with the title of the new record?
Derek: When we were on tour with Dinosuar Jr, Lou Barlow gave us a mix tape with this song "Just Like an Aborigine" by the Up and said he wanted to play it with us. So we started playing it on the road and the word got stuck in our heads. It’s kind of a contradiction of terms, but then I realized it’s a real thing. I could be wrong, but I think it’s a mechanical roof that you can retract during the summer. It’s super experimental architectural shit, like Frank Lloyd Wright on acid.

DARBY BUICK