TRULY:
BELIEVE IT OR NOT By Janiss Garza
It doesn't matter how gifted, unusual or inventive a band is - musicians are,
without exception, a destructive bunch. Within moments of being in my car, Truly
drummer Mark Pickerel breaks the knob off the liftback attachment behind the
backseat. He hands it over with the good-natured attitude of someone who's used
to wreaking small bits of havoc. Not that I really care - I throw it in the
glove compartment, figuring that maybe it'll be worth something someday. At
least, that's my hope - not because I plan to make a killing off of worthless
bits of plastic touched by aspiring stars, but because I happen to think Truly
is an incredible band and they deserve to be very huge.
The Seattle-based trio also includes singer/guitarist Robert Roth (who is
sitting in my car too, and about to wreak havoc of a different sort) and bassist
Hiro Yamamoto (he's not here - he's up in San Francisco at a friend's wedding).
This small unit has created an atmospheric 72-minute epic that washes over you
like an ocean wave on a black, new moon's night. Fast Stories... From Kid
Coma [Capitol] is one of the most exceptional major label debut albums
in recent rock history, and an amazing follow-up to their '91 Heart and
Lungs EP on Sub Pop. "Virtually" threatens to pull you into a
dark vortex, bewitching you with a sweet melody and haunting words. Tunes like
the dusky and deep "Blue Flame Ford" and the soulful "So Strange," sounds like
nothing else released in the '90s. Truly is a band that walks confidently on
the razor's edge of creativity and doesn't look back.
For a couple weeks now I've been trying to come up with an interesting gimmick
that'll form the premise for this story. Truly doesn't lend itself to such artifice,
however, so finding an angle was tough. When the day comes and I meet with Roth
and Pickerel at their motel, we decide to just do something completely absurd
and head for Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum.
While threading through Hollywood's grungier streets, Roth and I embroil ourselves
in a heated debate. As it turns out, he utterly hates the fact that I called
his offstage demeanor ordinary and un-rock 'n' roll-like in the Fresh Blood
piece I wrote on the band. He's convinced that I've been spoiled by dealing
with L.A. musicians.
"I mean, Axl's f**king headbands and dying their hair and stuff..."
he grumbles. "In Seattle the whole thing was to play all that down. These people
don't really affect themselves cosmetically, and I don't really either."
"But from meeting you briefly and interviewing you on the phone, you seemed
rather low-key," I remark.
"What am I supposed to do?" he bristles. "Say, oh, 'Our band is the f**king
coolest and every other band sucks and we're gonna go to the top'? I think a
lot of the stuff in L.A. is really contrived and really fake, and maybe it comes
off as being charismatic and artistic, but it's all clichés. I don't
like the bands, and I especially don't like the mentality. Most people who I
know that I respect, who are talented, are shy people. To write and create and
do those things, you have to sort of look inward and have a center inside of
yourself. And..." finally he runs out of steam. "I don't know - I'm sorry, I'm
not trying to rank on anything..."
It's rare for me to piss off someone in a band I admire as much as I do Truly.
But in a way it's cool, because it confirms what I divined about him as an artist.
No matter what you think of his outward appearance, Roth really is anything
but ordinary. He has a fiery nature that seethes just below the surface, threatening
to erupt at any given moment. The tension that lies underneath his intelligent
exterior is what makes Truly such a fascinating band. Thankfully, the agitation
we've stirred up abates as we reach the museum.
Ripley's, unfortunately, is not all that unbelievable. There is a skeleton
of a two-headed baby and a few taxidermied animal freaks of nature, along with
replicas of people being tortured. Oh, yes - and Elvis Presley's underpants
are on display. But overall, it's just another example of silly Hollywood chicanery...
almost as if to underscore Roth's earlier rant.
"They could name it 'Ripley's Unbelievably Boring,'" Pickerel suggests later
over lunch.
Some things about the band are almost as unbelievable as the museum. First,
Yamamoto is finishing his M.S. in Physical Chemistry at Western Washington University
in Bellingham. And in Roth's spare time, he has been writing songs with his
mentor Jim Carroll - their use is as yet unknown. Finally, and most astonishing,
are Pickerel's unbelievable outlets. For example, the fact that as a kid he
played drums at church ("My church rocked," he emphasizes). Or that
this plainly-dressed guy collects wacky outfits ("We're gonna invent our own
style, man," Roth kiddingly drawls). Or that he owns a record store, Rodeo Records,
in Ellensburg, Washington, that he keeps running even while he's on the road.
"We signed with Capitol right along the time I hired a full-time manager,"
he tells me. And yes, he carries albums of bands that he's been in (which includes
the Screaming Trees, incidentally). "I've probably sold a couple dozen releases
that I've played on where the person purchasing the record had no idea that
I had anything to do with it."
And I found out the real reason Roth went off earlier in the afternoon.
"What comes to me naturally is to be contrary to everything else," he admits.
"Like, I hated metal in the late '80s just because it was so prevalent. But
now that everyone cut off their hair and is trying to be Green Day, I'm digging
out my KISS records. If records start sounding like Fast Stories... From
Kid Coma in two years, I'll go and play country music or something. I can't
stand falling into clichés in any way. What's the point if you're not
carving out your ground or adding something? That's what I mean by contrary,
and that's another reason for the sound of the record."
"The idea is to carve out our own ground musically," Roth explains.
"This being our first record, we have a lot of different things to express,
so that's why it's long. It's hard to stand out after almost 50 years of rock
'n' roll, and it's hard to do something different with guitars.
Now that I think we've kind of carved out that space, we can make more concise
records."
And while much of the album is autobiographical, it's not Roth's life story
either. "Even though it's all based upon real things," he points out, "there
is a fiction aspect to some of the songs. Like 'Leslie's Coughing Up Blood'
is almost a sci-fi tale inside the album, and the characters like Kid Coma and
Leslie and Cindy ['Angelhead'], these are all composites."
Considering the intricate orchestration of Fast Stories..., it's
no surprise that Roth would like to do film soundtracks someday. "However, I
would never want to do it in place of being in a rock band," he insists. "I
think of it more as a hobby - a hobby that could actually make some money -
but not my true passion. Coming up with the music is f**king easy. Writing a
song and having lyrics go with the song, that's hard. And keeping a
band going, that's work!" Work is something Truly are used to, and truly
don't mind - believe it or not!
(RIP Magazine, March 1995)