Newspaper Page Text
1
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists Fight the Good Fight
isten: if the hackneyed bumper sticker is true and money
is the devil, then we're all pretty much going straight
to hell. This is the real deal, physical original sin. So, if
we're going to continue with this religious metaphor (and
hopefully we won't much longer), then piousness is a true vir
tue. When everything is neatly priced, we can't allow ourselves
to be owned. One might be reminded of seeing William Ayers
speak at the Athens Human Rights Festival a few weeks back.
Paraphrasing here must be forgiven, but the Chicagoan radi
cal/ Fox News talking point was speaking about the efficacy of
various individuals in the political process, and he framed art
and artists in what might be considered an unusual slant: he
defined art as altruistic. He didn't see artists in the popularly
held pose of chronic self-involvement and masturbatory aes
thetic blinders. He saw artists as giving, as willing to work as
- catalysts for something larger than themselves.
This is the raison d'etre of Ted Leo and his Pharmacists.
Theirs is a world where purity actually—stop me if you've
heard this one before—matters. It's a diamond-hard belief
that the conversation that occurs between artist and listener
pivots on that axis and that axis alone. Sponsorship, private
interests, and such are alien by the very nature of their moti
vations. "I personally hate the fact that I associate whatever,
Isuzu, with a Buzzcocks song," says Leo. "Because it changes
the context of music that was previously so important to
me, and that was at least originally presented as something
that was incorruptible—[something] that was about show
ing a young person who has aged, obviously, but still retains
these... ideals that there are realms to life, aspects to life,
that don't revolve around commerce and capitalism and prod
uct placement."
This interview took place a week prior to the day that Pearl
Jam continued on its march towards becoming the grunge U2
and announced plans to tie its forthcoming album with Target.
With the music industry's means of support still a big fat Comic
Sans question mark, artists like Leo who have been saying "no
thanks" to free money from nice men in suits for over a decade
now (much longer if you count his previous band Chisel) are
facing grim circumstances. "We'd just hit that point where,
'Holy shit, we're paying our bills! I don't need to go do a temp
job anymore!' We hit that moment exactly when it ceased
being an option for bands at our level of the game. And I don't
say that in a boo-hoo way; it's just kind of one of those cos
mic ironies. We don't actually completely make our living from
music anymore; we did for a brief shining moment."
Let's pause for a moment to discuss a tiny bit of detritus
from the prior sentence: music. Leo's music is often punk only
in attitude. After he broke into indie consciousness with The
Tyranny of Distance in 2001, he established his weapons of
choice as decidedly more populist than the double-time/ no
swing approach favored by the Warped Tour set. With his some
times-rotating but always solid Pharmacists, he has whipped
out a combination of celtic-centric Thin Lizzy-esque, melodic,
fist-pumping, '60s soul for vocal inspiration, and vigorous nods
of the hat to Elvis Costello. But he's not 100-percent station
ary, as the very, very awesome experiment with reggae "Crying
Over You" from 2007's Living with the Living proved. The music
is generally pop rock, and that's what makes it a*Trojan horse.
As the indie-punk community has bleached itself further into
what is now today's world of barstool liberals, it seems like
political content has become somehow unfashionable. And so
Leo's approach of using rabble-rousing pop gets his always-
politicized (out frequently subtle) lyrics to the masses.
But in the time since, Touch & Go, Leo's label of choice,
succumbed to the economy and stopped pressing new releases.
And while it seems like an obvious route now, even when Spin
and Rolling Stone were running features on the Pharmacists,
major labels were never in the equation. "I've made no bones
that I'm really not comfortable with working with a major
label. I've talked to labels here and there, and I've always
walked away thinking that I've made the right choice in not
going in that direction," he says. "Let me also say that I
think that the kind of dialogue that goes on around this, kids
getting into arguments about who sold out and who hasn't,
people think it's a bunch of bullshit—but I don't think it is. I
think it's totally valuable and valid to discuss those ideas, to
figure out where you stand on these things and hash out these
issues, because they are real issues."
Jeff Tobias
< \
WHO: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists,
Titus Andronicus, All the Saints
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Thursday, June 11
HOW MUCH: $10 (advance)
v : )
16 FLAGPOLE.COM JUNE 10,2009