17 Pygmies – science fiction og musikken
Originally written in Danish by Jacob Pertou (
Undertoner), below you will find a rough English translation of the interview with Jackson Del Rey.
17 Pygmies' drowsy interpretation of the progressive rock in their Celestina trilogy is a bit of a rite of passage to implement.
Celestina is a love story rooted in medieval inspired by a contemporary love triangle - located in a futuristic sci-fi environment - added music and conceptual thinking from the 70s. The accompanying libretto is difficult readable. Front man Jackson Del Rey is fortunately a better communicator of his fascinating enterprise 17 Pygmies than he is to write science fiction. Morning Fresh put him in the event of a telephone connection to California. Here he shuts up the floodgates for an interview rounds concept's history, the music industry in internettes glow literature for and about children, and finally, futuristic and classic films.
La Celestina
I'm not a big reader of science fiction and other fiction. It is as if (on) the world's many distractions have ruined the immersion, it requires to be drawn into a book universe. I gave up trying to put myself in what the three albums so to speak itonesætter. Is it the reason why I do not feel so attracted to Celestina?
"Yes and no," says one morning fresh Jackson, and elaborates: "If I had not written any of the stories, I'd say you could still be able to listen to the album and still get a good experience out of it and a sense of what I trying to tell. But it helps to have read the story, because I try to take the music out there, where it is actually soundtrack to a film that was never made. A sort of backwards process, where the music is made before the movie. "
The film, Jackson is referring to is the imaginary film that arises in the mind of the listener. He has his idea to the inner film, but leaves it up to the listener to visualize his own cinematography. A significant location is outer space.
"I think the room is a truly beautiful place. I'm looking at the pictures away, and they defy the wildest imagination. But at the same time, space is so infinitely dangerous. We should not be there. It is a vacuum, and get too close to the sun, you will be burned up. It is a hostile environment for mankind. It is the human urge to explore the black holes, discover new galaxies and so on, I'm trying to make a story. "
But it is also a love story?
"Yes, it is! One of the really interesting events in my life was when one of my relatives on my mother's side of the family did some genealogy for four or five years ago. My mother's parents came from then part of Austria, which now belongs to Poland. The town they came from is gone now, when it was destroyed during the war. Nothing is left. We thought our roots went back to Austria, and depending on family history ended with the obliterated city. But the said relative on our mother's side managed to investigate further and it turned out that we actually comes from Spain. "
"Therefore, I developed a great interest that I had not previously had, for Spanish culture. Here I learned about the book La Celestina. It really is a great book. It was written in the late 15th century, yet incredibly modern. It is not to understand that someone has been able to write it at the time. It is an alternative to the ideas that Shakespeare later wrote about, in the form of a tragicomedy. In Shakespeare so you rarely encounter between tragedy and comedy. It was probably confused and impressed people at that time. "
Triangle Drama
Jackson Del Rey does not hide his enthusiasm for the original publisher and recounts another inspiration for the story was to science fiction:
"There was an interesting story in the newspaper about an astronaut named Lisa Nowak. She was part of a love triangle with two other astronauts, creating a huge mess over here. She ended up driving 24 hours in a row from California - or something - all the way to Florida, where the astronaut, she had felt angry about was. She tried to storm their way through the space center, but was of course retained. It rablede for her. We are talking about astronauts to handle spacecraft! So here we are, half a millennium later, and people are still struggling with the same problems. So in the light of it I got the idea of putting La Celestina into space. Not only is it a surreal scenario - it is more than realistic. It happened almost. Imagine the three in a spaceship, all alone! What could be done? "
Recruitment
It is important to stand out in 2012, when be published albums. The physical format is not quite dead. As an observant person once said, you can not sign an mp3 file. The three handmade Celestina albums are designed as sealed envelopes with invented, human symbolizing star formations on the front. Inside is Jackson Del Rey science fiction story. This has worked, since he also has contacted the thousands of bloggers worldwide, many of them in particular have been excited about the attractive physical appearance. Jackson puts it all into a larger perspective:
"It's kind of funny, because it is now the thirtieth year for us as a band whose example, without considering a break of seventeen years, where I went!," Laughs Jackson, with steady profits and continues:
"I've still proud memories back to the early eighties, where to find fans for your music and find an affinity with his audience was ... if it was ... magical. There was no outlet for our music. The only thing one could do was to make a record and send it to as many radio stations as you could. Much more could not be done. "
College Radio
Jedda By the Sea (1984)
At the time, played 17 Pygmies not with the progressive ideologies, but rather a genrekonfust, surf inspired indie band judging from his debut, Jedda By The Sea (1984). Jackson has the following statements about this time:
"When I started out, there was not really any college radio. Yes, it was there, but no one had really put predicate of indie rock. No one knew it was a genre that no one knew that there was a group of people who were interested in the type of music. It was very clique-ish. No one could foresee the catapult into the mainstream. "
The road to a record company in the indie environment was thorny and not with genrefællernes unconditional support when there were written contract.
"Of all the world how could Sonic Youth to sign a contract with Geffen Records!?!," Said Jackson with contemporary contemptuous tone. "How could such a prestigious band, however, sign a contract with the record company!"
Internet
"Today I send one thousand emails out, which for most people is really boring, and no one understands it enough, but I contacts each, which I should send them a letter. Because I'm fascinated by it! I send a letter out in cyberspace, and Jacob will call you back! '
"Today, most preferably be able to press a button to reach out to a thousand email recipients. It sounds weird, but I would never do, because I would miss a large part of the value of the spread of my music. "
The Internet is not just an outlet for 17 Pygmies' own music, says Jackson Del Ray:
"I have learned so much new music to know that. It is definitely not a one way street. I take time to look at people's pages. I take the time to learn your name and see what you like the music. I am sincerely interested. "
Jackson Del Rey has a lot to thank the technological progress.
"It's magical, and where did it come from? It's fun to look at people's websites - I have a dagjob, so I do it only in the evening - but it's fascinating what they put on blogs, how they can interact with each other. Facebook, email and all the things that did not exist then. It is amazing how quickly it has gone. They sent the plates in the mail, and you prayed that there was someone who would put the album in rotation. So you sat by the phone, wondering if they would call back. It could take weeks, but maybe months before anything happened. Now is it all so quickly, almost immediately. "
Hype and buzz
But the reviews are proportional to an increasing interest in the band's music?
"Oh yeah, we see it all the time! I can tell you that there is one thing that has not changed in the music business. These are the two types of quotes, promotion. There is hype, and there's buzz. Hype is everything you say about yourself. Why do you say 'Do not believe the hype'. We talk only about themselves, so the hype is nothing. You can hype yourself all day long. I can send one thousand emails, I can send one million emails, but if nobody likes what I send, you do not get much response, and if you do, it becomes a very negative response. Buzz happens when you send something to someone and they tell it on. You try to get people to talk about you - behind your back, roughly speaking. It is what makes the music industry so interesting. You hear something and you buy it. You do not go to the movies, watching a movie, and afterwards say 'Wow, that was a good movie, I would like to pay for the ticket'. It is the only industry I know of where it is an advantage that will talk behind your back. When a sufficient number of people tell it on to their friends, and so on, so it is buzz. When a review is published, it has two effects. One is media effect, where you have communicated to the readership, and the secondary are people who refer to notification. This is where buzzen occurs. We do not know what you did to all start talking about one. "
"There are certain magazines that over the last few years have written about us, and we suddenly have more emails from people orders several hits on our website, more album downloads, multiple streams on Spotify. So it has an effect. It is fascinating to see it take shape as a kind of virus, we are trying to do to you that you infect others. We call it Pygmania! "
Anniversary
In Celestina (2008)
17 Pygmies are no vårharer and is celebrating its 30th anniversary as a band, even though the group had an intermediate leave at 17 summers. Concept Trilogy Celestina, who has taken over four years to make, is in itself quite an achievement, but an anniversary is well on its place?
"The next step is a new album," recounts Jackson and explains that in June gathered to make initial preparations, but the style of Celestina is maintained. But not in a damning point:
"It is my band, and yet tell my bandmates that I banned from writing anything for three quarters of the next album! Four quarters or seven-eighths, I do not know what it is, but they've got queasy roller, so I do not get longer allowed! "
More anniversary attractive - and surprising - it's the band going out to perform on the stage again:
"We have contacts with people in Italy, Holland and England. We are planning a few shows. Believe it or not. It is not something that happens very often. I freely admit it has something to do with me. It's hard to get me up on stage, all the others seem to enjoy it, just not me. But we do it! "
Celestina III (2012)
Jackson has so much to be happy about his current situation with the band that stage fright just be seen as a hurdle that can be overcome. He thinks the band has reached a peak with Celestina III and finally accomplished something special. In the thirty year career, he has not experienced anything like this. The anniversary has been interrupted by a 17-year break, where 17 Pygmies completely kept away from music.
Collectibles
The band did not go into oblivion in this interim period. On eBay you can buy 17 Pygmies' LPs and CDs to near small fortunes. And on Rate Your Music gets the band quite favorable for visas in credentials book. So time will almost surely be ripe to republish the early material?
Hatikva (1983)
"Well, maybe ...," says Jackson, and remember the original Hatikva EP, as they did for "many, many years ago."
A little like their more modern email philosophy tells Del Ray, how they received the 1000 black and white album covers from the printers and even color laid them. Thus was Hatikva in 1983 his suit. An interesting, but also expensive, collectible - if you can find it.
Another reason for the high prices can be found in the curiosity that the band does not really bother to reprint the plates when they were sold out.
"Back then we were less together than we are today. We had no structure, and it is to laugh today. We pressed 1200 copies of an album, ran out and looked questioningly at each other, we should press some more? It was almost as we decided that we would not. We're done, let's move on to something else. And so we made a new record. "
Although 17 Pygmies went and was a bit of a strange cult band annoys the Jackson bit that they did not do more to promote their music.
Captured in Ice (1985)
'Captured In Ice (1985), which - frankly - is one of my least favorite albums, sold 2500 copies in three days. We reprinted it never! Rhino Records, the famous record store in LA, had posters with us in the window. Rhino they sold 150 copies alone in a week. The proprietor told me that it had no band made before and came with a lot of advice: Make your, do that, write a contract with a major label. "
Lots of success
17 Pygmies did not listen to good advice, but in retrospect it is what has shaped the band's identity, says Jackson, and wanders off in the success of the concept. You have to ask yourself what you want with success and create its own definitions of success criteria.
"You can really get caught up in all that nonsense. You must put its own framework. Whether it is to make an album, complete a trilogy. What drives you to do these things? It is a good question to ask themselves. Over and over again. "
"It's fine when bands become successful as long as it is their goal. Do you want to go up the stage and be Bret Michaels, Motley Crue, Celine Dion ... I mean, as long as Celine Dion will be Celine Dion, and she will play every night at Cesar's Palace, in front of a pile full, white men, the fat ... As long as she wants it. "
The child in the bubble
If 17 Pygmies are cult band that has achieved the desired level of success, then the aspiring writer behind Celestina less fortunate asked in its infancy as a children's author. He has several children's books in the repertoire, but publishers have not wanted to publish some of them. Strangely, when they have quirky titles like Horton eats The Who or covers a four-year girl blowing a chewing gum bubble and fly away in it.
"The whole book is about how all follow her and try to get her to come down. She will not, and there is a worse circus on earth to get her back down. "
As with Lisa Nowak, who stormed the space center in Florida and was the inspiration for Celestina, surpassing reality over imagination. Some years after Jackson wrote the book about the girl in the bubble, played there in the U.S. media a similar story.
"There was this weird story about a guy who reported her child missing. He had made a hot air balloon that looked like a UFO, and he claimed that his son had climbed into the balloon and flown away. The media thought that the child was inside the balloon, so in 24 hours you could literally turn on the TV and watch the balloon hover over the USA! You could not just shoot it down, because there was a child inside it. They waited for, it would land somewhere and followed it by helicopter. Wow ... That sounds familiar. The funny thing - when it finally came down - was that the child was missing. The child had, in inverted commas, hiding in a barn. These people were from Idaho or something like that. Later it turned out that his father was a complete whack, who had staged the whole thing just so he could get his own reality TV show. "
Music Therapy
Jackson laughs amazed at how his story became reality with an even more surreal twist. The interest to be a cultural - even to children - is back to the time of the debut album Jedda By The Sea.
"We got a request from a school for disadvantaged children back in 1984-85. One of the employees had bought Jedda By The Sea, and he played it for the kids. Each week they played a new record, or something like that, and he said that Jedda By The Sea had the most incredible effect on them. They sat and just listened. It did not happen with other plates, so they kept playing it until the groove on the plate was worn. So we continued to send copies of the plate so they could play it for the kids. At one time we forgot to send a plate, not maliciously, but then wrote the employee pleading back that the kids really needed the plate. We sent them five copies and never heard from school again! "
Availability
17 Pygmies have even appointed the plate referred to as a classic in their press materials. As explained earlier, there was no interest to reprint the plate. It is, however, on various download platforms, but via the band's facebook page link to the blog where it can be downloaded for free. A little surprising initiative, or what?
"Oh, well ... I still have little contact with the old band members, and I said to them: 'From my view, it is archive material. If you are interested in it, fine. Are you not interested in it, also fine. 'I do not see it as something I have no desire to make money. It's more a kind of documentation. I called them up and said, 'We can do two things. We can make a big fuss out of it or we can make music accessible to those who want it. I asked if they were okay with it. It was they, and we sell from time to time still music. We earn enough for a few hundred dollars a year on our music. "
It's not much in 2012-money. Jackson also has another explanation of why the band is not a profitable business.
"We publish most of our music for free, and we are very happy."
Three-stage rocket
In elementary school, back in the mid nineties, we had a theme of science fiction. This was rounded off with a matinee in the form of the classic Blade Runner. All classmates yawned through the slow film, and only then the teacher afterwards underwent synopsis, I could see glimpses of the film's obvious qualities. In 2012 I heard for the first time Vangelis' soundtrack for the film, which immediately becomes a high-ranking album among my absolute favorites. With Jackson Del Rey's interest in science fiction, I hear whether I should revisit the film also despite a general aversion to the genre.
"It's funny you bring Blade Runner on the track. The answer is yes, by the way. "
It will be a little long investigation before Blade Runner is mentioned again. But the issue is something that occupies Jackson much, and you go right past Celestina again.
"Every part of Celestina represents a different period in science fiction movies. There are three periods, science fiction fans divides the films in. Celestina In fall under what is called 'The Silver Age'. When you see Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers, so everything was silver. The future was silver, spaceships were silver. "
One possible reason for the silver color as a symbol of the future was that the contemporary monochrome television sets to stand out among the gray tones. Since then came the colors in television sets, you would think that the next period in science fiction was called something more colorful. Jackson can tell something a little paradoxical.
Celestina II (2011)
"We get to a milestone, I think, is reflected in Celestina II - namely, since 2001: A Space Odyssey was released. And suddenly all said, wait a minute, the future is not silver. The future is white. Everything is white. Back then talked Mon on 'white technology'. And the reason for that was that we were incredibly worried about bacteria in space. If everything was silver, it was impossible to see them. So everything had to be white, so you could see that they had this clean, antiseptic environment. "
Jackson asserts that Celestina II is a whiter, harsher, colder, more calculated album than Celestina I. It goes away from the fifties silver romance of the 2001s Space Odyssey visualization of the endless, tedious, but extremely dangerous cosmos.
"Take heed of HAL-robots," laughs Jackson merrily and go on to Celestina III. This album falls under the concept of 'retrofitting'. A direction in the sci-fi that goes against the two former color dominated beliefs.
'Retrofitting' means in everyday language that you take something existing, amplifies it and thus makes it ready for future resistance. For example, to ensure an old building against earthquakes. In science fiction, the concept of what we know from the present set in futuristic perspective. This brings us back to Blade Runner - the movie that started it all started.
'Blade Runner is a visualization of Los Angeles and a lot of things that we know today. One of the most famous scenes is the one with the taxi that looks like a taxi, but a flying taxi. "
Blade Runner deplete not known, but builds on the other hand, says Jackson, and thereby gives his opinion on the film's raison d'être.
"Then you see Blade Runner? Hell yes! And the soundtrack, it's killer! I love it! "
Cash battleships
Easier symbolically held 17 Pygmies a break of 17 years, where Jackson's interest in playing music almost disappeared completely. He does not want to get any closer. The band returned in 2007, but it was a solo project that lit the flame again.
Del Rey: Battleship Potemkim (2006)
"Another of my great passions is silent. I had seen Battleship Potemkin, which I believe to this day, still one of the best films ever made. Created in 1925 by a my great idols, Sergei Eisenstein. I read about the film on the occasion of its 80 th anniversary, the Eistenstein hoping someone every ten years would write a new soundtrack. He believed that the images he had made, was universal, but the music would not withstand the times again. Therefore, he hoped that some would make a new track every ten years. Now the movie 80 year anniversary - I write new music, I thought. I had silly little around with some of my friends, but I had not really made any music. It was the first project that had really interested me all these years. "
In 2006, Jackson appeared Del Rey version of Battleship Potemkin with very favorable publicity. The result was shown on a handful of film festivals in the United States.
However, it was pointed out that another international name had also made an interpretation. Something that Jackson is not discovered in the process.
"In 2004, Pet Shop Boys ordered to do 80 years jubilæumslydsporet. They built the plant in Europe a few times over the years. It got a lot of attention. One of my friends said, hey, they stole your idea. Now it was not my idea to begin with, haha. "
Jackson does not believe that the Pet Shop Boys were up to the task.
"I will not be sarcastic, but I'm really disappointed in their tracks. Had they just read it, Eisenstein was trying to do and say with his film. If you read about Eistensteins review of the film, Notes from filming, etc., can be guaranteed to hear that neither of the Pet Shop Boys have ever read any of it. If they did, they ignored it anyway. Some parts are okay, but I would really like to see some more respect for Eistenstein would have had a higher priority to this task. It's just my opinion. "
Isabel
A good hour or so in the company of Jackson Del Rey has passed and it is time to hang up. Any last words at the last moment.
"Now, we're trapped in this science fiction universe of time, so we usually end our interviews with the ever famous, and still usable Quote: Live long and prosper!"
After the interview, which ended with Mr. Spock's famous quote, the band has made a sequel to Celestina trilogy. The story and the sound is reflected on the album Isabel, who will be the first in a series of three. The album can be downloaded via Pledgemusic where the money will go to get printed album on CD.
Tags: 17 Pygmies, Alt. Rock
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