JD Samson is getting ready to go on tour. Hot off of several European shows, her new project, MEN, is spending the summer playing across the U.S. before joining The Gossip and Peaches on the road in October.
But first, there are some issues on the home-front to be taken care of…
| “Yesterday my downstairs neighbor called me and was like, ‘do you have ants?’ ” Samson says. “I was like, ‘eh, I dunno. I’m never there!’ So I came home and there were all these tiny ants! The exterminator came over and he apologized to every ant he had to kill. I think the job is getting to him — he said it’s morbid.” |
LISTEN WHILE YOU READ! Please do not hot link this MP3. |
To call JD Samson prolific — not to mention busy — is an understatement. You may know her as a member of beloved feminist electro-punk band Le Tigre. Or as a player in Peaches live band, The Herms. Maybe you’ve seen her DJ’ing around town, or heard a track from one of her side-groups like The New England Roses and Hirstute.
Now, she’s busy with MEN, a band born out of her collaboration with Le Tigre bandmate Johanna Fateman. As the two DJ’ed together, they began writing original music to fill the void created when Le Tigre went on hiatus (more on that to come).
And as they toured together, they found themselves being pushed around, figuratively speaking — circumstances that eventually helped them coin their double-entendre generating band moniker. (Writer’s note: We’re fully aware of how it reads sometimes. Apparently, so is Samson.)
“[The name MEN] now has become another thing, just gone onto something funny,” she says. “We got a letter from South By Southwest this year that said, ‘SXSW is proud to have MEN at our conference,’ and I couldn’t stop laughing.”
“We always found ourselves at the airport and always feeling annoyed with everyone there,” Samson says. “I’d be like, ‘okay, whatever. Fine.’ Or we’d play at a venue and they’d be like, ‘well we didn’t make enough money, so we can’t pay your guarantee.’
Basically what it is, is when you’re apologizing to someone for something you didn’t do…you just think, ‘well, what would a man do?’ They’d probably just take care of themselves and move along. It’s about confidence.”
She pauses for a moment. “I guess it’s pretty sexist to make a generalization like ‘all men do this.’ That’s probably the irony of the whole thing.”
At the same time, Samson was also writing music with friends from Brooklyn under the name Hirstute. Fateman got pregnant and decided she didn’t want to tour — but would be willing to collaborate and contribute here and there. So Samson decided to round up her Hirstute colleagues — Michael O’Neill and Ginger Brooks Takahashi (artist Emily Roysdon, an original member, left when her art career became too demanding, but also contributes and advises, like Fateman) — and merge the two projects under the MEN umbrella.
She describes the dance music of MEN as “80’s disco,” naming Talking Heads as a ‘huge influence — politically, visually and musically’ but also drawing inspiration from music by pals like The Presets when writing for MEN.
Like Le Tigre, there are plenty of references — to punk, to art, to political and social issues — in the music and the group’s visual presentation. Last month, at a show in New York at The New Museum, the group played their song ‘Credit Card Babies’ as artist friends unfurled a painted backdrop and waved two signs in the shape of hands that read ‘FUCK YOUR BEST’ AND ‘FUCK YOUR FRIENDS.’ (watch above). Samson wore a huge hat on her head as an allusion to ’80’s artist David Wojnarowicz.
“Ginger and I are both visual artists and we kind of live our life around artists,” Samson says. “We know each other from the art scene in New York. For the New Museum show, we asked our friends to help out. We all sat around and painted everything and did the backdrop together. We belong to this community of artists who really like to collaborate and work with each other. I feel really lucky with that.”
MEN’s just recorded a four-song EP that they’re putting out online in two weeks. Eventually, they’re planning on releasing a full-length record. I ask her when Le Tigre is getting back to play live shows — and whether it’s true, as Pitchfork reported, that the trio is currently helping Christina Aguilera on her new album.
“We’re writing for other people right now, that is true,” Samson says. “I can’t see us playing a live show anytime in the near future. We’re just so unorganized about what happened to all of our information – the samples for some of our songs are on drives that are all over the place. We’re working together, we’ve written a bunch in the past months and that’s really good for us.”
yes please