erasing clouds
 

100 Musicians Answer the Same 10 Questions

Part Six: Michael Kentoff of The Caribbean

instigated by dave heaton

There's always invisible people walking among us, right? Spies and ghosts - for years now the Washington, DC band The Caribbean have served as those for the indie-label pop/rock world, making mysterious, stunning, and absolutely unique music that walks stealthily around the rest, serving as pop music's shadow. Their latest album, probably their best, was Plastic Explosives, released by Hometapes. Songs can be heard on the Hometapes site and the band's own website. For the group Michael Kentoff sings, and plays guitars, keyboards, and more.

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What aspect of making music excites you the most right now?

Probably thinking about it when I'm at work; it's like a far-off dream and I tend to romanticize it -- at least until I have guitar on knee. Other than that, I love just performing really well -- cleanly, with soul. Live, our set is a highwire act with lots of moving parts and space and intimacy. When it comes off, we deliver something utterly human and unique and I can't wait to hear how the next song is going to sound. When it doesn't come off, I give a fake name.

What aspect of making music gets you the most discouraged?

I don't think anyone likes the feeling of pouring out their soul into an abyss. Without nearly constant affirmation, the artistic ego gets needy and really annoying. Well, mine does anyway. And any affirmation you get only makes you want more of it. Combine that with our sort of forced residence in a musical neighborhood that isn't necessarily the one in which we'd choose to grow our families, it's easy to feel displaced and alienated even doing something you adore.

What are you up to right now, music-wise? (Current or upcoming recordings, tours, extravaganzas, experiments, top-secret projects, etc).

We've been touring on and off over the past year plus. Actually, Dave, we'll be at Tritone in Philly on August 3, so word. We just started working on our next full-length and have been collaborating with our Hometapes labelmate Nick Butcher. I don't know if the record will wind up being a Caribbean/Butcher joint or just him working as part of the group, but it's starting to sound like the soundtrack to a revolution on the Island of Misfit Toys. If you've ever heard Nick's music, that might make sense.

What's the most unusual place you've ever played a show or made a recording? How did the qualities of that place affect the show/recording?

In the front seat of a car next to a sanitarium. I'm sorry, I didn't read the entire question. You weren't asking about Doing It. My old band, Townies, recorded in a farmhouse in Northern Illinois with John Hughes III. We were miles from anywhere and it had just snowed. Our only interaction with humanity outside of us was with John's parents, when we had dinner with them one night. John's dad, a world famous writer/director, cooked out and we talked about music and Stanley Kubrick and Charles Schultz. The whole weekend was fun and surreal and the recording is certainly that. All 8 people who heard it thought it was the shizz.

In what ways does the place where you live (or places where you have lived), affect the music you create, or your taste in music?

I'm sure we wouldn't be nearly as intimate with Silver Sonya/Inner Ear if we didn't live in the DC area, so the effect our living in DC has on our records is incalculable. Other than that, I doubt it has any direct effect on our taste in music or the kind of songs we write and play. I like some Dischord bands, dislike others, just like I like some DC bands and dislike others. Some local music has great promise, but, like any other city, most of it doesn't. Most music isn't that entertaining and just fills up bandwidth, because I think lots of people just make records because they can -- because they have the capacity. I'm drifting off topic. DC, though: I've been lucky enough to strike up good friendships with people I like musically and I do think there's something subtle and glacial happening in DC. I'll stop short of calling it a scene or a movement, but some like-minded people who tend to like each other are making some rather progressive, innovative records that kind of cut against DC's reputation. I don't mean progressive as in Yes or King Crimson, although I do like both Yes and King Crimson.

When was the last time you wrote a song? What can you tell us about it?

Last Saturday. Tony Dennison was over recording drum tracks and we typically record a lot of his drums before we even have songs. The thing is you don't just want 4 minutes of a drum pattern all the time, so I was playing electric guitar just to provide some kind of structure he could use and then we could write something over it later. I had my guitar tuned a little funny, slapped a capo on the 6th fret and just started strumming to a pretty poppy beat. Every chord I hit just kind of worked and was evocative. I wrote words and a melody for it over the past couple of days. We never work like that. I do not work modally and I don't generally like pop music that is modal -- it all sounds like Pearl Jam or Counting Crows, which I probably hate more than death. Usually, for us, the chords serve the melody and then you have a full-blooded SONG with both melody and chords working hard separately and together. I had to work really hard not to write a melody that just snapped into place with the strummy, kind of Feelies/Luna chord progression. If the song makes the cut -- it's currently called "Wayne, the Anachronism" -- you can judge for yourself if it works.

As you create more music, do you find yourself getting more or less interested in seeking out and listening to new music made by other people...and why do you think that is?

It's all a cycle. I'm sure I'll always go back and forth between really enjoying seeing new music and really hating the experience.

Lately what musical periods or styles do you find yourself most drawn to as a listener? (Old or new music? Music like yours or different from yours?)

As fashionable and vapid as it is to say, I'm not really listening to a lot of new music right now. I've been repeatedly disappointed with newer records I thought would really move me. And some stuff that is really popular right now with the indie-rock cognesenti just drains all of the fucking blood out of my body. I'm not utterly out of the loop, and I've heard some newish records that sounded pretty good (like the Islands record, I'm completely shocked to say), but I've been listening to a lot of 50s and 60s country, especially RCA stuff like Porter Wagoner and Jim Reeves. And Chet Atkins as a producer? Don't get me going on him -- he was a genius. I've also re-discovered the Stones -- who will always lose to the Beatles in the big stand-off, but probably went a little underappreciated by me until recently. They did, at their peak, have Glyn Johns as an engineer and that didn't exactly hurt.

Nothing I listen to sounds very much like The Caribbean, which is really one of the main pillars of our existence; if there were records out there that resembled what we do, we'd do something else, like landscaping or watching TV. Having said that, everything all of us listen to is a form of R&D and I'll steal from the country greats or any other genre's leading lights whenever I can. Happily.

Name a band or musician, past or present, who you flat-out LOVE and think more people should be listening to. What's one of your all-time favorite recordings by this band/musician?

Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom

What's the saddest song you've ever heard?

"Has He Got a Friend for Me?" by Richard and Linda Thompson. Regardless of the situation or surroundings, I get teary-eyed when I hear this. And I'm not easily misted. The occurrences are rare. One is a scene from Mike Leigh's Life is Sweet where Nicola and her mother Wendy have a confrontation. That gets me -- Oh -- every single time. Another is the very end of The Apartment (although that's tears of triumph, not sadness) and one is "Has He Got a Friend for Me?" which is really one of the most hopeless confessionals I've ever heard. "He wouldn't notice me passing by. I could be in the gutter or dangling down from a tree." Why did we have to end with this? I'm going to be down all day

To check out the rest of the Q&As, click here.


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