Interview with Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt

We at IHYEB recently had the chance to do a little web interview with Neil Fridd, the frontman of Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt.  This is what he had to say:

IHYEB: What artists have been your biggest influences over the years?

Fridd: Jason Anderson, The Knife, Xiu Xiu, and more recently, Mississippi Records Tape Series Volume 15: “I Learned it All the Hard Way”

IHYEB: If you had to sum up your reason or purpose for making music, what would it be?

Fridd: How many people do you know who don’t like some kind of music? I can think of one dude I know who doesn’t like music and he’s tone deaf. It’s the grand unifier! The universal language whatever majig! How rad is it that making that can be your job?! That there’s some dude I’ve never met in japan who’s fucking bobbing his head to “Snowday!” That fucking rules!!! That’s the best job ever! It’s validation, that all these things I think and feel and think are important enough to put into song are felt by other people, and that they agree with them to the degree that they would come ot our shows and sing them with me, it’s reassuring, maybe I’m doing okay here…

IHYEB: What do you think of involving politics in music?

Fridd: For it.  Have you heard the song “Thoughts Thinking About Themselves Under a Projector Witha Cracked Mirror and an Unfocused Lense” by Phlegm?

IHYEB: When writing a song, how much do you base what you write on how it will present in a performance?

Fridd: At first it was not at all. I’m writing our second album now, and I guess there’s a bit more of a conscious “oh yeah, this will be fun to chant with a bunch of sweaty kids!”

IHYEB: Do you dig Stevie Wonder?

Fridd: Dude, Sir Duke is my jam!!!  It’s interesting that you bring him up…I was blasting that in the car last night and woke up this afternoon thinking that I’d really like to have him play my wedding…Steview Wonder and Jens Lekman seem like the best wedding bands…

IHYEB: Which comes first in terms of song writing: drums, lyrics or chord progression?

Fridd: Totally depends. Usually it’s some lyrics and scraps of melody that I keep singing over and over until it’s more fleshed out and then I find the chords under them. But that’s only about 50% of the time I’d say.  Sometimes I come up with a rocking drum beat or killer bass line first. Depends…

IHYEB: I get the feeling that a lot of musicians have forgotten that music is supposed to be fun. Do you feel that is a revolution you are trying to start or just something that is innate?

Fridd: I would accept “a revolution that we’re a part of” but claiming to be the founding fathers of it seems ridiculously arrogant and ignorant. It was definitely a reactionary creation, a response to going to way to many fucking boring concerts at the Bowery Ballroom.  I remember thinking it was such a treat when i went to a show there where people actually went nuts (the only one I can remember is an Akron/Family concert like 4 years ago. It was epic…) I wanted to make a band where that got to happen every time. It was a conscious decision but also something innate: It was what felt right, deep down somewhere in my chest.

IHYEB: The name. It’s terrible. Why?

Fridd: I was in high school. Get over it. U2, The Black Eyed Peas, Radiohead, are these good band names? No. Once a bunch of people like your music it doesn’t matter.  The only good band name I know is Nero’s Day in Disneyland, and it’s taken.