Live Blog: The Brentford Sound and Pop Pop at Yabbos.

For my live blog I chose to attend a show featuring The Brentford Sound and Pop Pop, who were playing at a restaurant called Yabbos.

9:30 P.M.-I arrive at Yabbos expecting a few people to be in attendance. To my surprise the entire parking lot is filled with people young and old. Unable to find a laptop to use for tonights event I instead walk around awkwardly clutching a notebook and a pen while saying hello to everyone.

9:45 P.M.- I snap a picture of The Brentford Sound before showtime. Maria,whom prior to this show only played trumpet for the band is now the new singer.

9:50 P.M.- Some girls ask me what is in the notebook I am holding. I sheepishly hand it over to them as their hands magically flit to some "poetry" I wrote. They both cackle as they read. I walk away, not really needing it as the show is running late anyways.


10:30 P.M.- Pop Pop, which is a three man band consisting of Marc Davis, Mike Cosden (also in numerous other bands and The Brentford Sound) and Doug Davison take the stage. Pop Pop can best be described as jangly indie pop.

10:42 P.M.- Twelve minutes into the set Doug says: "Y'know, Summer is just around the corner and so is that sweet sweet sauce. This song is called Bar-B-Que Days."

10:51 P.M.-Marc Davis drummer of Pop Pop messes up. It appears now that the drums are playing him.

10:56P.M.-Pop Pop play "Fisherboy" a heartfelt love song that include the lines:

This still water so very calm
like darvocets, like Vietnam.

Let's ride around all day
in your Mazda Protege.

I'll pay the bills
if you stop taking bills

and tell me why you frown
when we hang around.

If I can't be your fisherman
can I be your fisherboy?


11:00 P.M.- Pop Pop finish their set. The noise of chatter fills the air as The Brentford Sound set up.

11:30 P.M.- The Brentford Sound start their set. Maria looks around nervously and opens her mouth to sing.Her voice is better than expected.It is amazing honeycomb, soulful and sweet. The crowd cheers. We are on the road to somewhere.

11:47 P.M.-Let it be said now that holding a notebook in a room full of gyrating bodies makes one look stupid and foolishly self involved.Especially when one is in a room full of gyrating bodies appearing to be having the time of their lives.

11:56 P.M.-Michael Cosden messes up on guitar. I note the time and scribble this down happily,knowing he is far better than I on guitar. My hand bounds across the page rejoicing in this unexpected chance to be a chronicler of his mistakes.

12:15 A.M.- The Brentford Sound finish their set. The bartender in a fit of happiness declares all yager shots to be $2,"Drink em up!" he says.

12:16 A.M.- Goodnight.

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Interview with John from The Brentford Sound

The following interview is with John Schiller, cupcake stealer and founding member of The Brentford Sound, one of the only local bands currently playing traditional Ska/Reggae/Soul.

What inspired you to start playing music?

From as early as I can remember, I always loved music. When I was a kid my parents used to quiz me on the songs on the radio; "Who's this Joe?" "The Rolling Stones!"

But when I was 15 I started going to local shows, and I was just blown away. I couldn't believe that kids, my own age or close to it, were forming bands, writing songs, playing shows, booking the shows and collecting the door. As a teenager, all of that was just so liberating to me, and I wanted to be a part of it.
And the people I met through my interest in SEEING music inspired me to want to MAKE music.

Do you think there is something to be said for going out on your own against what society as a whole wants for you, and striking out on your own?

Absolutely. The days when you could stow away on a ship and take off to new lands are long gone, man. Magellan's gone and he ain't coming back, there are no new lands to discover. So what's left?
There's no "new world" left, all that's left is you and your experience in this world. I don't want to tell the same stories everyone else tells. I don't want the good "old days" to be "Well, back before I was an investment banker, my friends and I would have quite rousing games of beer-pong!"

As far as hard work and dedication are concerned, I look at it this way: Life is hard man. The world isn't designed for you and me to succeed. So you're going to have to work hard at something if you’re going to get any satisfaction. And I choose to work at getting my dreams done.



A band moment that comes to mind of misery or jubilation…

Misery: Having to kick out our first singer, because we realized he just wasn't able to give us what we all needed him to give.

Do you feel a connection to something when you play? Do your thoughts quiet down?


Usually my thoughts run wild. What ever it takes to just NOT think about what my hands are doing, because that just makes me stiff.

I sometimes get wrapped up in the idea that a whole mess of complete strangers would take time out of their day and their lives to pay their hard earned money just to hear what I've been working on. I don't think there's anything more sincere and genuine that you can give to a person than your time. It's the single most valuable commodity in life, it's the only truly-limited resource. And I sometimes get a little emotional on stage thinking about how my time is being repaid by people who owe me absolutely nothing.

And sometimes my thoughts turn to the people that I love. Every time I play I think about the people who I have in my corner, and I'm either ecstatic that they are there with me to see me doing what I love, or I'm aching a little bit because they couldn't be there to share it with me. But that's just me. Like I said, what ever it takes to stop thinking about my hands.

Being from the "scene" do you feel that there ever was one in Fort Myers, and what construct made it up? What do you think tied the different personalities within the groups together?

A "scene" is a funny thing, because it has so many different connotations. I was definitely part of a scene, and the scene that I was a part of definitely seems to have died away.

On the surface, scenes are made up of bands and the people that like them. Bands and people are living things. Bands break up, and people lose interest, therefore "scenes" are like living things, constantly being born and growing and evolving and sometimes dying.

But deeper "scenes" are made up of singular individuals on their own. And those individuals might have a lot in common or they might not. But they are tied to each other by a passion for an idea,

To be specific, the scene I grew up in was a bunch of kids who didn't all particularly like each other, but who were all passionate about the idea of freedom through music. Some of them got into the scene because it was different from the norm in their high school, some people got in to it because they loved to play guitar and the "scene" was the place to get people to listen to it. Some people got in to it because they just wanted something to do. For some people, it seemed romantic, for some people it seemed organic. For some people it made them feel grown up.

But for all of us, the point was, music freed us from the rest of our lives.

And there's still a scene in Fort Myers, it just isn't the one that meant to much to me growing up. I'm sure there are still teenagers and even people my age gathering to share in a passion for music. I'm just not a part of it.

What are you trying to do with the lyrics in The Brentford Sound? What are some of the themes, and how have they changed or progressed?


The style of music we play doesn't allow for a lot of poetic license, at least not as much as a more modern sound would allow. To fit the music, the lyrics generally have to fit the traditional pop-song frame-work.

And Scotty, our drummer, takes pride in writing pop-style song lyrics with reality in them, with depth to them, and about non-traditional topics. Like Dear Susan, that's a pop song about a woman left behind by a lover going to war.



How did your youth inspire you? And when does the switch happen from all night drives to play for no one being ok, to all night drives not being ok because what's the use?

My youth inspired me only in the sense that I didn't know any better. I wasn't old yet. I didn't know how hard it was going to be. So my youth was my biggest asset.

Now, my youth inspires me like a tiger on my tail. I'm running towards my dreams because youth is fleeting.



What were your influences-literary-personal experience-records-people that shaped you or taught you a thing or two?

Literary: John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway

Experience: I just suck at working a 9-5.

Records: Countless. Let's start with the Beatles, Billy Joel, The Slackers, Hepcat, The Bouncing Souls.

Reflect on an insane band experience...

Maria will KILL me for telling this story, but!

We played a KILLER show in Gainesville with the Duppies, knocked everyone dead, and we actually got PAID enough to get to the next show with no money out of pocket. It was the first show that told me that this band really had something.

We drank free PBR all night, and came out of the venue to see that the van had been towed, with all our equiptment in it. I think we walked every inch of Gainesville that night trying to find the impound lot.

To make matters worse, we did the entire tour in a van that I'd JUST bought, and I spent every single dime I had on it, and didn't have the money to register it. So I was pretty anxious thinking that if the van had been towed, perhaps the police had scanned the tag and were going to impound it, leaving us stranded and unable to recover our gear.

ANYWAY. Maria had managed to get herself about as drunk as I'd ever seen anyone. We left a party behind to take care of her, and when an hour and $78 later, we showed up with the van, she was on her knees rubbing her face in the grass, because “the dewy bushes” just felt so good.

The more things change, the more they stay the same? True or False?

It's really both. In my experience, the more change you see, the more you refine what's important to you. It's like life erodes the insignificant stuff off you and leaves only what you're passionate about.

The Internet Changes Everything...

For any of you audiophiles who relish the smell of musty vinyl click here for an interesting article which talks about Silver Platter and record stores in general.

Against Me!

Against Me! originally hailed from Naples and often played shows here in Fort Myers under a different line up. As you can see, this flier is from a now extinct record store called Higher Learning Records.


For those of you in the know, Piebald also played there once upon a time as well, along with Blink-182.

Some really bad local band names.

While perusing the internet I'd thought I'd found some pretty awful band names.

But the longer I stare at them the cooler they sound.

I don't know, decide for yourself...

Down The Hatch

BopGun

Skunk Monkey

Screaming And Crying

Pound of Life

Cracker Blues

SmackDaddy

SoapyTuna

Hate Puppet

Piet N Willy

Galactic Burrito -which is actually kind of cool.

Wonderful Johnson

Violet Mack

Zombie Eats Kid

Susana Guthrie-relation to Woody?

Dots off of Atlantis

I Strangle Boston

Charles Schultz

Marcos Burns

Ulqfwkov-Say it quick and skip the q and it kind of sounds like...

Kandy Fry