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Flagpole • March 30, 1988 Page 3 * • Let s Active: The Interview Flagpole: John Jackson Let's Active: Mitch Easter FP: What compelled you to start a band? ME: Well, I started playing In bands when I was twelve. It was just because everybody was doing it. I mean, heavy art reasons didn't have too much to do with it back then. It was a good excuse to have groovy clothes. FP: You were in several bands before Let's Active... ME: Oh, lord yeah. This group was... (phone rings) I think I'll get that. FP: Who actually started Let's Active? ME: It formed around me, I guess. It wasn't like I joined an already existing group, but it was all three of us starting at once. The original group was me and Faye Hunter and Sara Romweber. I had moved back down here, here being North Carolina, from New York. I didn't really have any prospects for a band and those two are not the usual kind of people I'd been in bands with. Faye was sort of a beginner and Sara was nine years younger than me and lived in another town but somehow it just became this conept in our heads that we should try playing together. We did it and it worked out pretty good. I think the thing that really made us go out and really play, though, was when I was first recording REM and Jefferson offered us a spot for them two weeks from whenever they were in town. So we said OK and learned a bunch of songs and came down to 688 and opened for them and that was the first show for this band. FP: What kind of stuff were you into that might have evolved your sound? ME: I think what I really liked when I first started was stuff I was incapable of doing. I remember liking stuff like 'I Can See for Miles' by The Who and the Beatles' psychedelic records and thinking that was incredibly cool and I wish I could do it. But the band that I was in was doing alot easier stuff. Maybe not easier. It was just not as hip. I think the very first vaguely hip song that I learned was ‘Hello. I Love YoW by the Doors. Then I got In a group with this guy named Sam Moss who is this real good guitar player and this was so long ago that these songs weren't that old then. We learned all this Hendrix stuff when I was in a bnad with him. That was. to me, my first touch of playing ■art" music. FP: So you were concentrating on playing the more complicated stuff? ME: Well, just better. At first when I wasplaying, just holding that guitar and being in front or people was a big thrill. I didn't hardly care what songs we played, but pretty soon I really wanted the group to start writing its own songs. I was always bugging everyone about doing original stuff because I thought I wanted to make records and you can't make a record with somebody's song that's already out. JONATHAN RICHMAN and THE MODERN LOVERS with DENNY DENT and his two-fisted art attack Thursday - April 7, 1988 Legion Field University of Georgia 7:00 p.m. $1.00 - UGA Students / $3.00 - Public Tickets Available at the TATE STUDENT CENTER CASHIER Rain Location: Georgia Hail ) Call 54-UNION ruyversitin Union Mot lino —L/ltOA ) contemporary concerts