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TROUT|
HISTORY i
By Geoff McMurtry
Senior Editor_
The night of their first show, they
opened for Little America. The two
bands got along so infamously that
Trout received a perverse tribute in
the form of graffiti on the
Drumstick’s legendary backstage
wall — “Little America would like to
thank the Trouts for nothing.”
Apparently the Americans, (or
Littles, whatever) didn’tappreciatc it
when cx-Lampshadc Dave Sullivan
said, “I’d like to thank Little America
for closing for us.”
For better and worse, richer and
poorer, (probably mostly poorer),
that kind of rapport with and against
their audience and peers has been
Trout Mystery’s trademark. From
their sarcastic onstage asides, and
guitar solos played with their
tongues, to satirical versions of
covers that dredge up the bottom of
the trash-heap of 70’s Rock ‘n’ Roll,
Trout Mystery — guitarist/vocalist
Sullivan, guitarist/vocalist Chris
Albright, bassist Terry Pieper, and
drummer John Flcischli — is a Rock
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A Rock V Roll band that hates
most Rock ‘n’ Roll bands. Obviously
bored and disgusted with the
mindless repetition and mediocrity
surrounding them — especially most
of the lethargic pop currently
masquerading as Alternative rock—
Trout is known as much for its self
subverting stage persona as for their
music, although that may change
with the recent release of their first
tape.
“We’re serious about our stage
show — the choreography,” said
Sullivan. “But the music we don’t
give a hell about.”
But seriously, folks ...
“I think we’re a little more diverse
than most guitar bands, locally and
nationally,” said Albright. “There
are a couple great Lincoln bands, but
I think the rest are very drony and
Smiths-ish.”
“I think right now everywhere in
the world, or the nation at least,
there’s just been this, REM-clones,”
said Sullivan. “Everybody says it,
but Lincoln’s sound, its general basic
sound, is so close to that it’s scary —
it’s depressing. When I hear most of
the stuff around here I think, ‘That’s
the Lincoln sound, and it sounds a lot
like the REM clones.’”
“I think the last original band that'
I heard was Mr. Mister,” said
Albright sneering, or laughing, I
Trout Mystery — Fleischli, Pieper, Sullivan, Albright
J.P. Caruso/Daily Nebraskan
couian t leu wnicn.
“Music kind of just feeds upon
itself, and it always has, because
Rock ‘n’ Roll is nothing real new, it
just fed upon something else,
everybody knows that, but that’s
what we do. We just bring things
from our past, things we’ve heard,
and we create a different way of
hearing it,’’ said Sullivan.
“But at the same time, our band
sounds like some other band, there’s
going to be another band out there
somewhere that sounds like us,
there’s no way to get around it. But at
the current time, in popularity, or
whatever, we don’t (sound like
anybody). We’re not consciously
trying to sound like anybody. We
move away from certain things—we
move away from sounding too
pretty,” said Sullivan.
“I think writing songs like REM is
easy, and writing the songs that we
write is hard. Because we really are
bringing something up that people
around here aren’t gonna be totally
used to, and sick of.
“It’s not that I can’t write songs
like that, I can—it’s easy, that’s why
Idon’tdoit. Because it’s too damned
easy,” he added. “I just don’t like that
kind of music that much, I don’t
really like REM anymore. I used to,
but I 'm not really excited about them
anymore.
“I don’t know who we sound like,
I don’t know who we look like, I
don’t know who we act like, I don’t
know anything about this band. All I
know is what other people tell me.
ana i uon t trust tnem, saia Sullivan.
“I don’t want to put anybody
down around here, because they’re
trying, and they’re going for it, and
we are too. We’re just infantile, we
don’t know what we’re doing,” said
Sullivan. ‘‘I don’t worship those
bands, but I can’t really say too much
against them either, cause obviously
they’re doing something that
somebody likes.”
“I’d like to get to this originality,”
added Fleischli. “I think that’s a big
myth in Rock ‘n’ Roll. I’m not sure
if I agree with it. The way I play, I
just play what I listen to, or it comes
when I practice, or when I used to
practice, and it just rubs off. It’s not
like you invented something new,
you’re borrowing from a tradition.”
A tradition that, for Trout
Mystery, includes anything from the
Clash, to the Doors, to early British
Invasion, and of course, to Kiss.
The resemblance isn’t as strong as
it would seem, however. Trout
Mystery actively undercuts any pop
accessibility that might sneak its way
into their music.
“It should be more of a challenge
to the performer and the listener,”
said Albright
“When you come in and see us, or
13 Nightmares, you’re not gonna like
us rigntoff the bat. I like that,” added
Sullivan.
“Either you open your mind up
to it, and let it come in, or you’ll just
never know ... if you’re gonna like
something, cause you won’t give it a
chance,” he continued. “I mean,
ueorge Micnaci nas songs on i v
that I actually like, right off the bat
but I listen to them about five times
and then they suck. If we write song:
like that — and we know how to dc
it—people are gonna like them righi
off the bat, but gel sick of them fast
That song 'Highway Town,’ if we
play that every damn show, pretty
soon people are gonna go (through
nose) ‘Highway Town, highway
town, yeah that’s real nice.’
“I think that’s a mistake a lot of
bands fall into. They want to be liked
right off the bat, and it doesn’t hold
up,” said Sullivan.
“That’s where all that REM
prettiness comes from,” said
Albright. “The clean, jangly,
Rickenbacker, drony, Smiths kind of
sound.”
This unconventional outlook can
backfire when the audience doesn’t
share the same attitude, and wants to
sing along with something familiar,
but Trout Mystery doesn’t seem
fazed.
“I would rather play to 20 people
that enjoy what we’re doing, than to
200 people who just went to Duffy’s
to drink and socialize,” said Albright.
“You want to be that much belter for
those people that are really there to
see you.
“I’d rather see a bunch of people
sitting down and watching us, than to
look out and see a bunch of frosted
uniforms dancing with Coronas in
their hands.”
“As long as you ’re truthful to your
music, it doesn’t matter if the crowd
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is 20 or 20,000, added Sullivan.
“Thai first show at the Drumstick,
there were about 400 people, none
were there to see us. Halfway through
the show, I looked out, and
everybody in the place was staring at
us, and I knew right then it was a good
thing, because these were 12 songs
that these people had never heard,
and we had their attention,” said
Sullivan.
Despite having enough original
songs for a two-hour show, they
often y ar shouted requests for some
of th; nore unlikely covers they’ve
becc ie known for — from Led
Zep;>elin’s “The Rover” to a sort of
Heavy Metal version of the Sonny
and Cher classic “I Got You Babe.”
“We do some to make fun of, and
some that we like,” said Albrigh*
“Usually the ones that we like are
fairly obscure. It usually just comes
up in practice, or we’ll just look up
(show) in the other part of the bar,
and maybe see . . . Heart or
something, and we’ll get real
inspired by these real incredible
songs. So we’ll just do “These
Dreams” or something.”
“Sometimes we just gel really
angry," said Sullivan. “To the point
of, there’s no sense in throwing your
TV out the window, because ‘Monty
Python’ might be on in an hour, but
you’ve got that microphone, and
you’ve got people watching you, and
if you can drill somebody onstage —
trash their song in public, it’s as
good as punching them in the back of
the head.”