Waking someone up for a phone interview about their band is the bane of every music journalist’s existence. It can happen to us as often as once a week. You ring, they answer groggily, you remind them that this call was arranged days in advance, they say “Is that now?,” you avoid offering to call back later because a deadline looms, and then you lob very easy questions while waiting for them to wake up as you’re talking.

So much easierto do interviews in bars. The interviewees often balk because they don’t think they’ll be clearheaded. But they don’t know what they sound like at 10:30 in the morning after that night in the bar is over.

This week we phoned someone so out of it that they got everything wrong: the date of his next gig, the title of one of his songs, even at one point the name of one of his previous bands.

We won’t embarrass the guy by naming him, but the upshot is that the interview had to be voided and the story didn’t happen. (We plugged the show regardless, but in a lesser, interview-free format.)

Next time, we advise, just go for that last drink and pour your heart out at the bar. Better than fighting your dreamstate first thing in the morning. We speak fluent bar-lingo. We have yet to master semi-comatose.

Tonight: Doomladen lyric night at the Bullfinch with Romantic Egotist, Write Hard and Orderly Man in a State of Disorder… Big Envelope Marked Scott and Don the Red, headbanging love rock, at Hamilton’s… Rap hasbeens Steve Old School Beaver (OSB) and $6 Car Wash at D’Ollaire’s, barely holding onto their jewelry …

The Back of the Heads, clearly, had a concept already firmly in place when they named their band. Facing away from the crowd while playing is a phenomenon we’ve documented here numerous times. Thinking ahead, and basically caring for the needs of the audience, sets BotH apart.
“We’re ugly,” suggest singer Franque. “Plus we’re video geeks and computer programmers. So we do projections and videos.”
BotH shows are big events at the campus on the hill. So much so that it brings up a whole other “back of the heads” issue.
“They’re getting too crowded,” Franque sighs. “People can’t see. We’ve had to start playing auditoriums, or classrooms with a lot of chairs.”
Sad, he says, since Back of the Heads’ music is danceable and frantic, a mechanical-beated fuzz-noise melange that benefits from a light show—as long as the light show doesn’t take over.
Franque is stymied by the paradox. “We meant to liven things up, and we’re deadening them.” This should not be a problem, however, at the Bullfinch Thursday. There, the projections will be high up on the walls over the bar, and the videos plugged into the TVs on the walls.
“One day,” Franque, “we’ll get the balance right. It’d be a shame to ditch the band and just make movies.”

Tonight: Folk slumberthon at the Bullfinch with The New World’s First Fashion Victim, Shy Turtle With a Soft Spot and Sounds from the Mountains—all of which are solo acts. The longer the name of your act, it seems, the fewer people are likely to be in it… The Original Transformer and Awesome Forces, hard rock with heroic overtones, at Hamilton’s… An Evening With Green Sea Urchins at D’Ollaire’s… Crowned Madonnas, yes, Crowned Madonnas, at a basement show we can’t tell you anything about…