Punk-rock has always
been a difficult ideology to pin down, partially since it’s pocked with
contradictions. Perhaps its most prominent is that so many who enjoy the genre—which
was built by rule-bending and -breaking musicians who promoted musical
experimentation and accessibility—subscribe to a strict set of standards by
which bands are judged to be “punk” enough (or not).
These limitations and
contradictions steered Chris Urban and Jeff Rubin away from punk-rock—or at
least the pretentiousness that limited their creativity. Though they
appreciated punk’s ethos and aesthetic, they were more influenced by those artists
that challenged the rules of their respective genres rather than subscribed to
them blindly. “Around the time that we stopped playing in our punk-band,” Rubin
says, “we started getting into Bob Dylan and Tom Waits a whole lot. And Tom
Waits obviously has the weirdest instruments ever, and I was really inspired by
that.”
At the time, Rubin was
studying percussion at music school and had access to mallet instruments, such
as the xylophone and glockenspiel. “So we started writing really folky music
with acoustic guitar and mallet instruments,” Rubin said. Calling their duo
Crazy and the Brains, Urban and Rubin wrote songs with predominately punk-rock objectives:
to do something different, something weird, and something fun.
Though the idea to incorporate
mallet instruments into their sound seems novel, if not innovative and even
visionary, the idea initially emerged more out of convenience. “We always would
practice at his school,” Urban remembers, “and [the xylophone] was just there.
So we were like, ‘Fuck it, let’s try this out,’ and it just ended up sounding
cool.”
“Yeah, I had to practice
a lot for music school anyway,” Rubin admits, “and this was my way of
practicing in a band and practicing my instrument at the same time.”
Crazy and the Brains eccentricities
were quickly celebrated and embraced, particularly by New York City’s anti-folk
scene. “We didn’t know where to go, so that’s where we went,” Urban says. “And,
I don’t know, we kind of fit in there. If you’re a fan of anti-folk music, you
probably would be like, ‘Oh, you guys don’t fit in,” because we lean more
towards punk.” But the band’s mix of scratchy acoustic chords and chunks of
xylophone, along with Urban’s sly slur, won them fans at the SideWalk Cafe,
anti-folk’s venerable epicenter, and caught the attention of Crafty Records,
which released two six-song EPs.
“I had never really
heard any of that [anti-folk] stuff before,” says drummer Lawrence Miller about
watching the band’s performances as a duo. “When I started going to Crazy and
the Brains shows and seeing people get up on stage and doing all kinds of weird
shit, it was the opposite of folk; they weren’t playing these really drowsy
country rhythms with these lyrics about war and society and all this bullshit.
But what I was really watching was people going up on stage and doing something
original, playing odd instruments and doing weird, off-the-wall style
songwriting and arrangements.”
When
Urban and Rubin were ready to try a “louder” version of their sound, they asked
Lawrence and his brother Brett to play drums and bass respectively.
Immediately, older songs like “Saturday Night Live”, which thrummed before with
mellow energy, became bouncier, brighter, and somewhat wilder. Rubin’s
glockenspiel still sparkled softly, accenting the stuttering xylophone as they
had in earlier recordings; and Urban’s vocals still swaggered in a rhythmic
monotone that let his acoustic steer the melody. But the playful pops of
Lawrence’s snare and kick, combined with Brett’s mumbling bass, transformed
Crazy and the Brains’ songs from rogue folk into proper pop.
As
a louder four-piece, Crazy and the Brains released six-song cassette tape in
2011 called Don’t Need No Snacks on
Baldy Longhair Records. Though some consider the cassette tape an archaic
format, the band was excited to support an idea that so closely matched their
own objective—to do something interesting, innovative, weird, and wonderful.
But
cassette tapes also possess a certain attention-stealing appeal, the band says,
and a certain weight. “If you go to a show and somebody hands you a Memorex
CR-R with Sharpie on it wrapped up in a piece of printer paper,” Lawrence
argues, “people are going to spit on it or throw it away or throw it at someone
immediately because they don’t care about it. But if someone hands you a
cassette tape that slips right in your pocket and actually has logos and good
artwork and a download code, it imparts a more serious attitude. It feels more
substantial.”
The
songs on Don’t Need No Snacks are as
deceptively substantial as their preferred format. A song like “Lindsey Lohan”
might be about an obsession with the famously dysfunctional star, but Urban’s lyrics
express a playful and poetic simplicity. “I’m not that rich but I got a lot a friends,” he murmurs,
Rubin’s glockenspiel winking wildly behind him. “They all like my jokes and
they think I’m really funny
/ We can eat at McDonald’s you don’t need to bring
no money /
If you do, it’d be cool; if you don’t, it’s alright
/ We can drink
Olde English all night.”
Likewise, opener “Let Me Go” hops and twists with
the spirit of classic rock ‘n’ roll. Having tapped his foot through the song’s
whole first half, however, the listener might make a startling realization:
that this catchy, crazy song consists simply of buzzing acoustic strings; the
ping and plunk of mallets on metal and wood; the call and response of kick and
muffled snare; a deep, groaning bass guitar; Urban’s reptilian tenor and the
wild shrieks of his band mates behind him; and that’s it. There’s no distortion, no overdriven amps—sources from
which punk-rock often gets its power. Instead, “Let Me Go” runs just on genuine
energy.
Of course, the irony is that Crazy in the Brains,
in their effort to steer clear of its contradictions, have created a band that
epitomizes the essence of punk-rock. But, then again, Urban and Rubin never
intended to defy punk in the first place; their intent from the start was to do something different, something weird, and
something fun—the ingredients of punk-rock. “We’re obviously punk kids and come
from the punk scene,” Urban concludes, claiming that punk is and will always be
part of who he is. “We just didn’t want to do the typical punk thing—the ‘Oi Oi’
thing that you’ve heard a million times. We wanted to be creative and think of
new things.”
And it’s within these innocent intentions that
Crazy and the Brains have found the secret of punk-rock—that sound and
aesthetic has never mattered; that it, like all art, is about intention,
experimentation, expression, or some combination thereof—which is yet another
reason why punk-rock has always been
a difficult ideology to pin down.
Urbin, Rubin, and the Miller brothers originally recorded their Switchboard Session from New Jersey on a humid, mid-summer evening, but technical difficulties destroyed the files. A month later, after traveling across the country and back during a month-long tour, they re-recorded the session in the Miller living room. Urban played guitar and sang, Rubin played glockenspiel and xylophone, Brett Miller played guitar, and Lawrence Miller played drums.
"Let Me Go" and "Saturday Night Live" appear on Crazy and the Brains' 2011 cassette tape titled Don't Need No Snacks. "Birthday Song" on the band's 2010 Yellow EP. "Give Him a Great Big Kiss" is a cover; the song originally appeared on the Shangri-Las' 1964 single.
Visit the band's website for more music.
Sorry, but these songs were taken down due to space constraints. Please download The Switchboard Sessions, Volume Three for a track from this and other sessions recorded in 2012. If you're desperate for a copy of these tracks, please see the "About the Switchboard Sessions" page for info on how to contact the author.
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