October Artist of the Month: BJ Price
By Sarah Laubacher - 10/2/2003
I'm not sure, but I think the first time I met B.J. I was loitering in the doorway of the Union seeking a cure for hiccups. I spent some time in the limbo-land between the upstairs door and down, until someone finally cured me with a shot of Rose's Lime and sent me on my way.
B.J. wasn't at his usual station upstairs at the sound board, and for some reason stayed to listen to me ramble about how uncanny it was that I owned a Rose's Lime Juice beach towel. Surprisingly he didn't write me off as a lime-juice loving lush and since then has never hesitated to say hello, quite a friendly characteristic of someone whose demeanor sometimes dipped into disgruntled, (or so I'd heard.)
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Sound Engineer
"I'm fully aware that I'm a hot head and need to calm down about stuff," he said during an interview at Donkey Coffee -- a hangout oft-inhabited by the multi-talented music production major.
Now participating in the Athens music scene onstage and off, B.J. offers an interesting perspective on the dynamic between egotistical "rock stars" and the "sound guys" who bite their tongues for the sake of things running smoothly. He said he realizes he's dealing with rock & roll -- where coddling egos frequently falls within the job criteria of a sound engineer.
"I'm the one who has to kneel in the broken glass, clean up cables covered in beer, broken glass and puke, and get all this stuff to work the next night after someone's trashed everything," he said. "It's easy to get a temper."
B.J. explained that he is sometimes financially responsible for broken equipment, because it is difficult to pinpoint exactly who breaks the cables and mics -- usually the singer in the spotlight during a microphone's demise isn't the one who damaged it the most.
"It's all well and good to break stuff in the name of rock and roll, but bring your own stuff if you're going to break it," he said.
The frustration of being sober amongst an assemblage of drunken fans also factors into his disposition.
"I never have more than a drink or two -- I'm sober," he said, "People don't realize that I'm the guy who remembers everything the next day -- believe me, I'm two feet above everyone watching."
The sloshy crowd also obstructs his path from sound board to stage. Many criticize him for not saying "excuse me," but B.J. said he stopped being courteous when people never heard him anyway.
"I have to work through a crowd that won't move," he said. "I have to get the hell up there, and can't slip through the crowd like a ghost -- I've got a decent size belly on me."
Despite the difficulties, B.J. said he wouldn't want to work anywhere else.
"The Union is the best place I could possibly end up working," he said. "It's a great venue with a good P.A. We have to baby the monitors, but that's only because they're wet all the time; people are always pouring beer in them."
The Campus Stranglers
Before his three years as sound engineer at the Union, B.J. studied computer science at Owens Community College and Bowling Green, and electronic music at the University of Toledo. He was involved heavily in the BG scene, working as a consultant for a guitar store, helping purchase vintage instruments and starting a few short-lived 'zines.
Band mate Jesse Dillon said he recalls B.J.'s first day in Athens.
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"(The Campus Stranglers) got together almost by accident … I remember the first day he came to town, actually. I met him in Outer Limits. We found out we had lot in common. Much later, while we had a folk music class together … we found out his uncle and my dad played together in the sixties."
The Stranglers, self-described as "a combination of garage psych-surf and British beat music," have been in the works for a couple years. Both B.J. and Dillon said that before that, the two found it difficult to find fellow fans of "swampy psych-surf."
"I couldn't find anybody to play stuff I wanted to play, and he couldn't find anyone to play either, so we sort of teamed up on the street corner," said Dillon, whose (sometimes-spacey) surf guitar alternates rhythm and lead with B.J.'s fuzz guitar "sludge."
B.J. also handles vocals, while Matt Box and "5-D" Chris McKee fill out the bottom on bass and drums. Dillon said that late-night horror movies also influence their sound, and things can get a little "far out."
Fan (and local musician) Leo DeLuca says, "The Campus Stranglers rock my fragile universe."
The Stranglers will open for Holly Golightly at the Union, Oct. 23, and are also up for playing house parties. (www.frognet.net/~absent/CampusStranglers1.html)
Influences
Also a rock history enthusiast, B.J. points to garage and acid rock, among others, as his inspirations and areas of expertise.
"When I say garage I don't mean the White Stripes or the Hives," he said. "Those are good bands, but we're a lot more tied to the roots of that … like Question Mark & the Mysterians, the Seeds … all these weird bands from the 60s."
B.J. said the Stranglers channel a pre-70s punk-rock aesthetic, favoring smaller bands from '63-'66 over the "spit-in-your-face" punkers of the '77 explosion.
Other influences include everything from rockabilly to the aforementioned acid rock.
"Rockabilly … can't escape acid rock, like the Butthole Surfers … I'm starting to get into 50s and 60s R&B, soul. As far as blues stuff, I like it from the mid-50s and back; after that I'm not interested."
Doucheifer
The Campus Stranglers aren't B.J.'s only recent onstage venture -- his project Doucheifer provides him a petrie-dish platform for experimental noise chaos -- a passion he's had since 1985.
"Doucheifer is a project about free-formed, improvisational chaos music -- if it's music at all," he said. "You get a feel for it after awhile. It sounds like it's all chaos, but it's really creating a chaotic situation, seeing what structures you can get to arise out of the chaos, sustaining them for awhile until it's time for them to relax naturally, and then letting the next one arise."
Bassist Andrew Lampela said, "We all know how to play … we've all been in so many different bands. It's fun to get together with no set plan, just pick a note and try to play themes. Most of us come from prog-rock backgrounds, so experimental stuff is fun."
Band members rarely play the same instruments twice, and if a line-up shift is drastic enough the group goes by the name, "Steaming Heap." B.J. plays Moog synthesizer/guitar synthesizer; Andrew Lampela, bass; Matt Box, bass/fuzz-wah bass; Jim Mullins, AM radio, digital sampler, conch, electronic anti-drums; Tom American, AM radio, fender twin reverb; Dan Dreiforttucky, vocal effects, toy electric guitar, drums; and various masked players provide vocals, such as a drag devil go-go dancer (David Camaro) and a mysterious character in a Nixon mask.
"The product is not the sound itself, but the reaction the audience has to it -- it might be more interesting to watch the audience reacting to us, rather than actually watching us," he said. "There is a visual aspect, though, like when I play keyboard with my ass or smear myself with money."
B.J. said that their first show was as non-musical as they could make it.
"Hence my efforts to destroy rock and roll as much as I try to produce it," he said. "I like the balance -- maybe because I'm a Libra."
Of his current projects, B.J. thinks Doucheifer is the most likely to get some airplay, considering that another freeform improv. group he worked with at BG, Lords of True Slack, is garnering some attention. Nonetheless, he's not harboring any fantasies of fortune and fame.
"We all have lives here. I mean, I don't think anyone in this band has a weird delusion about getting a contract and becoming rock stars," he said. "If we can get some good recordings, great … and if someone picks it up and distributes it, wonderful, but we're in Athens for God sakes … and I like having my soul."
Other Projects
B.J. has yet another band in the works, The Pop-Rocks, ("60's bubble-gum pop/new wave,") and has not abandoned past projects such as the studio noise band "SHRiNeLaBS," which he considers to be his "life's work." The main instruments are mixers and reel-to-reel machines, and as with Doucheifer, much of the sound results from running AM radio signals through a mixer.
"It's the studio version of my chaos experimentation … playing with tape machines, effects, and computers as musical instruments," he said. "Some stuff is about to be released on Dielectric Lull's upcoming, "I Sold My Song for a Taco" compilation."
More information about SHRiNeLaBS can be found by going to the artist list at www.frognet.net/~absent.
The Athens Scene
From his seat at the soundboard, overlooking countless rock shows, subcultures and crowds, B.J. has developed an interesting perspective on the cycles of certain scenes.
"I've seen entire subcultures of independent music come and go, several scenes, several lulls between scenes, especially at Bowling Green. I've seen enough that it doesn't faze me anymore. There are dead spots. People say this is a dead spot in Athens, but I don't think so."
B.J. said that he recognizes two or three independent scenes in this city alone, and that Scott Winland's Blackout Booking really keeps things hopping.
"Wherever stuff is happening, we're getting it -- it's coming to us. It's amazing; we're spoiled…we're getting stuff that is so completely esoteric, really experimental. There's a lot going on here," he said. "I think the cycles are good cycles -- if this is bad for Athens, I can't wait to see good."
