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ALL GOOD BET
Allgood Music Co. must be pretty damn good considering they
won the 90.5/Lakewood Amphitheatre local band contest. The
funkadellc band will open for UB40 this Friday night at Lake-
wood. Tickets are $21.50 reserved and $18 lawn. Congratsl!
The Red and Black » Tuesday. May 29. 1990 • 6
SOUND
Vigilantes have poetic acoustics
By GLORIA ROWBOTHAM
Entertainment Writer
The Vigilantes of Love are a far
cry from the rock ’n’ roll “bad boy”
image.
“We’re domesticated,” Bill Mal-
lonee, songwriter and guitar player
for the band, said. “People think
that they have to be arrogant to be
in a band, I think it’s a bunch of
horsesh**.”
Mallonee and Mark Hall, the
accordian player, met at a church
that they both attend.
“Mark was a classical player at
the time. He was in school working
on a masters for the organ,” Mal
lonee said.
He said Hall had originally
played the organ for the Cone Pon-
nies, which is another group Mal
lonee heads.
Mallonee describes the Vigi
lante’s sound as “acoustic-folk-pop
with emphasis on street poetics.”
'The idea with the Vigilantes
was to strip it (the sound) down to
whatever the bare minimum was,”
he said.
Mallonee said what makes their
sound unique is his use of a lot of
open tunings and altered tunings
to get at the chords that aren’t
available on a traditionally tuned
instrument.
He said to alleviate time on
stage, he keeps four or five guitars
on stage that are each tuned differ
ently for a particular song.
Most of tne ideas for songs come
from his love for language and
trying to put things through in a
hard and Last manner, he said.
‘There are certain ideas I try to
get across,” he said. ‘The human
fallenness, I mean that directly
from a Biblical angle. I think we
f ;ot a disease. It’s a sickness. It's
ike a grid through which a lot of
stuff comes. That’s probably a
common theme on the ‘Jugular’
tape.”
“Jugular* is the Vigilantes’ first
recording effort.
Mallonee said “Lady Luck," a
song from ‘Jugular,’ is a response
to numerous individuals he knows
who seem like they’re going to go
through life believing luck is al
ways on their side.
“It’s a real nebulous thing. It’s
an idea that they’ve made kind of
their god in a way. Come hell or
hieh water, luck will be on their
side. I was trying to take the ex
treme of that and show how ridicu
lous that is,” he said.
“I’m not a purist. We tend to bas
tardize evertning we do,” he said.
Mallonee said the name Vigi
lantes of Love originated from
what he thought was an inter
esting juxtaposition of something
violent with love, two things com
pletely incongruous.
He said he has known Hall and
Jonathan Evans, the harmonica
Bill Mallonee: Guitarist and songwriter of the Vigilantes of
Love says his band strips the sound to minimum
INTERVIEW
player, for quite awhile.
“I’ve known Jon for seven years.
I didn’t even know he played har
monica for about two. Jon had ac
tually done some studio work with
the Ponies. I wanted to get an in
strument in there where you could
bend the reeds, he said.
“We were looking for Jon, be
cause we do have elements that are
Delta or Bluesy. It worked out
really well, because his style is
kind of like a Chicago style, where
it’s very quick, short clip notes
where Delta style is more long.
He’s very good and extremely
humble about his talent. I had no
idea he played so well.”
Evans said he learned to play
the harmonica in his sophomore
year in high school. He said the
first songs he ever learned was
“Suwanee River" and “We Wish
You A Merry Christmas." He said
he doesn’t read music, and is self-
taught.
Evans is a professor of English
at the University.
Hall said he picked up the
accordian just last summer. It was
when he was playing with the Cone
Ponies. The bass player had an
accordian laying around.
“I figured it was a keyboard in
strument, and it couldn’t be that
difficult, but it is difficult,” he said.
“I took it home that night and
within a couple of days, I was
playing with the band.”
He said he is going to start work
on his doctorate this fall for the
organ and harpsichord.
Mallonee said he is self-taught
on the guitar. He said he began as
a drummer.
“I had only just hacked away at
guitar. My parents had bought me
a few guitars in my youth. I played
them until the strings fell off, he
said.
“But I’ve been writing lyrics and
prose for years."
He said he’s a house-dad, and he
enjoys staying at home with his
two bovs.
Mallonee said this is the first
year the Vigilantes are breaking
even, well enough to make the
ledger sheet balance.
“I’ve been fortunate to work with
guys who are willing to try some
thing different. They’re willing to
take a chance.”
Five-8 plays for own benefit
By NOEL MURRAY
Entertainment Writer
Five-8 will play at the Rockfish
Palace tonight for nobody but
themselves. The band just re
turned from New York and is
feeling the crunch. Roosevelt
opens. The music starts at around
9:30 p.m.
Although many musicians
come to Athens intentionally
looking for success, this isn’t true
of all the bands here. It’s cer
tainly not true of the local band
Five-8. Their’s is a less common
story.
A long time ago, in a town
called Binghampton, New York,
there existed a band called The
Reasonable Men, consisting of
Dan Famz, Dan Horowitz, Mike
Mantione and any drummer they
could find.
“We were a sort of poppy,
jangly band,” Mantione remem
bers, “Famz and I did the writing
for the group and we had definite
conflict of style. He liked the pop-
pier stuff, and I, well...I was an
angry young man.”
Mike became an even angrier
young man in 1987 when Farnz
packed up all of The Reasonable
Men’s equipment and decided to
move to Athens, Ga.
“We followed him down, Horo
witz and I. And then we were sort
of forced to stay bv circumstance.
I hated it here at first , this is not
where I wanted to be. Now I love
it.“
Now, he should love it. A few
months after they moved down,
Mantione and Horowitz started a
new band, Five-8, named after
the average height of all males
and dedicated to mining the
harder-edged vein that The Rea
sonable Men denied.
With the recent addition of
former fan Patrick ‘Tigger” Fer
guson, the band has been
building momentum since last
fall, gaining a following and stun
ning crowds at every venue.
Five-8’s music is nearly impos
sible to describe. Mantione’s in
fluences range from Husker Du
to The Kinks and his songs re
flect that diverse inspiration.
Five-8: Patrick “Tigger" Ferguson, Dan Horowitz and
Mike Mantione play to earn some much-nteued cash
INTERVIEW
“I write a hook first, usually.
And I almost always have some
idea what the songs are going to
be about. The lyrics I expand on
over time, and Tigger and Dan
help shape the final sound.”
Live, Five-8 is energetic and
LOUD. They hold nothing back.
Ferguson and Horowitz provide a
relentless rhythm to support
Mantione’s guitar strangling and
desperate shouts. His lyrics are a
literate and refreshing change.
Experiencing Five-8 live isn’t un
like undergoing primal scream
therapy without having people
look at you funny.
“I just like to be honest,” Man
tione explains, “I write about the
way people are.”
There is a Five-8 song called “A
Man is a Pent-up Thing” and
nothing better describes the
drive behind Five-8. Their songs
are about average men shaking
off their social constraints and, as
Mike says “getting honest” with
each other, with women and with
the world.
At a recent show at the 40
Watt, Mantione had one of his
Radio Shack co-workers onstage
to sing a dreadful version of I^ed
Zeppelin’s “Communication
Breakdown" that ended with all
the bandmembers writhing on
the floor, shouting out the
chorus. It was a pure rock and
roll moment. Just what the genre
is supposed to be about. Where
else can a guy in a suit vent his
frustrations on a guitar and a mi
crophone? Five-8 answers that
question.
Fans of the band are rabid, as
Ferguson certainly proves. They
have energy and passion that is
rarely seen. Many people besides
the band members believe Five-8
will break through.
“I think well be successful,”
Mantione says, “Definitely
We’ve been playing a lot of well-
received gigs out of town and
we’re at work on an independent
record, probably a seven song EP.
We’re all three very serious about
this, this is what we want to do
with our lives."
Onstage, Mantione tears into
the vicious repeated note that
opens one of their strongest
songs, “Suit of Sin.” The electri
city that fuels the guitar seems to
flow out of him.
Lunch and Learn Series
COPING WITH MENTAL ILLNESS
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