Marta from The Meaning of Life talks videos, cats, and CMJ

  As promo for 10/17 Hearts Bleed Radio CMJ Showcase #1, my band Big Quiet was going to record a collaboration with The Meaning of Life. Unfortunately, we couldn't make the time to get it recorded in time, so you're going to have to wait till, well, who knows when. But it's gonna be an original song, and it's gonna be sweet! Anyway, instead of a song right now, you get an interview, and a song in the future. You can see both bands (as well as FAN-TAN, EULA, and Heavy Birds) on Thursday, and another great bill (I set it up, so I'm biased...) on Saturday 10/19. So check out this interview with The Meaning of Life's singer/bassist Marta DeLeon and get pumped for the festival!


Hearts Bleed Radio: So, I've known you guys for awhile, but I'm not sure exactly how TMOL got started. How did you and Christian meet?

Marta: Somewhere between J-Date and the Bensonhurst Times? I answered Chris's ad for a female singer who sounded like Talk Talk's Mark Hollis being tickled by Jeff Buckley.

HBR: You seem like such a good fit for each other, it's hard to believe you met that way. What was it like when you first sat down to play together, and how is it different now?

Marta: I'm always a little scared meeting strange men in remote areas of Brooklyn BUT Chris's silliness translated through email. I was glad he also seemed to be a intuitive and creative player at the end of the B6 bus ride. We played for a couple of hours mostly originals. We were going to do a Velvet Underground cover I think to break the ice. Our approach today is similar. We start playing in the practice space with our adept current drummer San Lajeen and form a verse and maybe a chorus piece of the song. Then we make fun of each other while one talks of an obscure sitcom and or metal band. San grew up in Kalmyk and Chris in Chile so that makes the pop culture POV really fun.

Just another day at TMOL practice...

HBR: We did a piece on the Laura V video. Now that it's been out for awhile, are you thinking of making more videos? I kinda think you guys should do a movie.

Marta: Sure and something much different than Monty Python right?! The video really let us express the absurdity, color and cinematic qualities that we feel in our heads when play and write music. We are inspired by so many different images, vintage and futuristic I'd love to make something like "The Man Who Fell to Earth" type video/mini movie next time. These things take time and a little bit of bling.

HBR: Yeah, that's true. I'd like to see a four song EP, where like, you make videos for each song. Then, if you watch them in a row, it all actually goes together somehow. Anyway...
Are you working on anything in the studio right now?

Cleveland's Filmstrip plays Brooklyn's Death by Audio

Hey people! Filmstrip is an awesome band from Cleveland, OH, and they've been on the road for what seems like 10 years. Monday, 7/15, they are playing in Brooklyn at Death By Audio, with one of my bands, Big Quiet, another Brooklyn band, The Meaning of Life, and Severe Severe, from Albany. Marta DeLeon (lead singer/bassist of The Meaning of Life) took over interviewer duty and spoke with Filmstrip guitarist/vocalist Dave Taha. Here's the transcript:


Hearts Bleed Radio (Marta): Obligatory, why did you guys choose "Filmstrip" as a bandname? Are movies an influence for songwriting, etc?

Dave: Our friend Ray was on a photography kick and suggested "The Filmstrips". We thought that was too pop-punk sounding, so we went with Filmstrip. We sat on it for about a week, and it kept coming back up. We liked the sound of it, the arrangement of letters. It stood out and was the obvious choice.

HBR: I like the lyrics and pop leanings of your single "Stuck on Explode". How was that written and recorded? I hear Sebadoah, Superchunk with the post rock guitaring of bands like Polvo. Any notable influences that you like or like at this moment?

Dave: Wow, thanks! I wrote that song in 2002 on an acoustic guitar. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about the lyrical content, but I guess I was reacting to the onset of instant-gratification/ soundbite culture, the swiftness of it. As far as recording, I've actually recorded this song a bunch of times. The process at Echo Mountain was really smooth, we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to get out of it, and luckily we were able to translate that to the finished version. Influences? Those three you mentioned are pretty spot-on. We came of age in the 90's, so grunge and post-punk are huge for us. Right now it's a lot of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, The Band, that kind of stuff, but we'll always be close to our punk roots.

 

Filmstrip, outside and unwound.

HBR: You guys grew up together and have been playing in this incarnation for awhile. Good serial monogamist musicians! How does that influence the songwriting? Are you collaborative?

Dave: We have a pretty established system, where, if we all agree we like it, we go with it. Sometimes that might mean I approach the guys with a finished song (at least my parts), with a concrete idea of how the drums and bass should sound, and other times it might be the three if us jamming, and we go "Whoa, what was that? Let's do that again!" We're lucky to have a streamlined, intuitive writing process. That's the easy part. I think we'd all agree the songs come from somewhere else, we're just the vehicle.