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L isten: you've seen Rush in Rio, right?
It's not hard to find; it's the DVD with
the purple dragon on the cover—
the purple dragon with the Chiquita .
banana headdress. What treasures awaityou
on this glorious digital video disc? Classics
such as "YYZ," "The Spirit of Radio," and
"By-Tor and the Snow Dog;" a few solos (a lot
of solos); punctuations of the band's patently
Canadian—uh, "quirky"—sense of humor.
(Alex Lifeson: "This is jazz. Jazz... is weird."
Yeah, dude, so is pushing a female cop down a
flight of stairs). Also: 40,000 Brazilians abso
lutely losing their goddamn minds.
So, it makes good horse sense that these
people, these Portuguese-speaking aesthetes,
would love them some Medications. Because
you see, Medications—currently comprised of
Devin Ocampo and Chad Molter—have dedi
cated their musical careers to something a
little like Rush, a little like The Who, a little
like King Crimson, but always, always, with an
ingredient these honestly great bands have
always lacked: humility. By working exclusively
with Washington, DC's standard-bearer of
music industry ethics, Dischord Records (with
both Medications and their former project
Faraquet), Ocampo and Molter have, career-
wise, driven home the point of punk rock:
the music can be glorious and powerful, but
people are people. Devin Ocampo sings like an
ordinary guy because he is one.
"Faraquet had Tplit up by 2001, and it
wasn't the type of situation where we were
going on hiatus; we were done," says Chad
Molter, emailing Flagpole from his home in
Denver. "So, we all moved on to doing sepa
rate things. Devin and I continued to play
music in different projects until our paths
crossed again with Medications." The dif
ferences between Faraquet and Medications
are akin to those of two close but distinct
brothers. Guitar lines and vocals hit points
and counterpoints, always with muscular con
fidence (not macho posturing). The main ele
ment, it seems, is always rhythm: Ocampo and
Molter are both, by turns, excellent drummers.
Faraquet's martial, all-elbows approach to the
so-called "Dischord sound" took a turn for the
ethereal with Medications, but both are bound
by Ocampo's personalized, acrobatic guitar
playing and steely vocals. Mover's contribu
tions have been more fluid: while he's in his
more comfortable role as a punchy, aggressive
bassist in Medications, he learned his way •
around the drums, implausibly, in the stagger
ingly complex setting of Faraquet. "That was
basically where I learned how to play [drums],
with a lot of patience and assistance from
Devin," he says.
Now the two multi-instrumentalists have
set out to compose a new record, taking full
advantage of their combined skills, if not
their proximity. "I live in Colorado now, so we
have a lot less time to collaborate in person,"
explains Molter. "Lately we've been writing
separately and then coming together and
working things-out for shows. The situation
is a lot looser in some respects because we've
gotten away from having a certain role or just
one instrument to play in the band, which, for
us, had been a bit inhibiting in the past."
The progression from Faraquet's never-
sit-still restlessness to the more spread out,
patient state of Medications' union has con
tinued in their new long-distance setting. It
makes sense: simplify as you go. "I think that
we've both moved toward writing songs that
are a bit more stripped down in their arrange
ments. There isn't as much writing going on
when we get together, just some refining.
All in all, the music is moving in the same
trajectory, which began when we first started
playing together many years ago. We're still
writing what, to us, are just weird pop songs."
Not so weird, however, that they would
alienate our South American neighbors. It
seems like most of the band's touring as of
late has been in Brazil: "We were contacted,
pretty much out of the blue, by a Brazilian
production company, and, after working
out some details, we decided to go. The
Faraquet tour happened in a similar way.
When Medications played Brazil we discovered
that there were some Faraquet fans hiding
amongst the general population, so, with
the help of a lot of really great people we
had met over there, we decided to do some
shows as Faraquet. We never really intended
to get Faraquet back together, but when we
decided to finally re-release some material
that had long been out of print, we started
talking about doing a few shows or possibly
a short tour or two. With the exception of a
few shows in Brazil and one in DC, that never
panned out. Devin and I had never seriously
thought about jumping back into Faraquet
again. It's hard enough to keep one band
going."
Jeff Tobias
‘ • >
WHO: Cinemechanica, Medications,
Edie Sedgwick
WHERE: Caledonia Lounge
• WHEN: Tuesday, Mar. 24
HOW MUCH: $6 (21+),$8(18+)
V ... )
18 FLAGPOLE.COM • MARCH 18, 2009