Live Death U.S. Tour 2007: forget Ozzfest, Rock / Usadown brings the real rock borne of mental illness, drug addiction and revolution to cities nationwide.
“Rock frontman Dave Unger and USAdown’s Joe Johnson admit that there’s a method to their madness, which is to say there isn’t really one besides gathering onstage and gigging. And unlike their jazz-inspired dissonant counterparts, they riff strictly in a hard-hitting rock style -- no rubber-armed drummers or saxes played to sound like sodomized geese. Their sound is best represented on This Is The New American National Anthem, which features guitarist/vocalist Johnson and keyboardist/guitarist Unger performing a noise clinic in a single 47-plus-minute composition. Whenever a structure becomes apparent, the duo shifts directions at breakneck speed to deconstruct the inherent qualities of structure. It’s very cool stuff, man.” -- Phoenix New Times
The remarkably candid and outspoken members of noise duo Rock / USAdown have faced many challenges in their respective lives -- from mental illness and drug addiction to trading prestigious musical educations for life on the road in the ballyhooed 90's AmRep band Love 666. So, it's fitting that its freeform musical style is equally challenging to the listener. Take a listen
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This May, Rock / USAdown plans to throw down the gauntlet nationwide for all to see on a tour destined to be an event of legend and bearing far more heft and urgent catharsis then the entirety of this summer's Ozzfest.
Those familiar with the heyday of the fantastic T Rex-meets-Blue Cheer power trio Love 666 will recall that band's penchant for grandiose statements of drug-fueled revolution (including the landmark album titled Please Kill Yourself So I Can Rock.) Over a decade later, Dave Unger and Joe Johnson are still advocating pure freedom, drug use and revolution in the new skree collective fittingly named Rock / USAdown, two independent endeavors that perform separately on tour and on future releases.
The duo's forthcoming new album This Is The New American National Anthem is the product of mental illness, years of drug abuse and personal epiphanies found in free-association noise music. Rock / USAdown's performances are completely unhinged and unhindered -- neither musician listening to the other. Guitars squall, crash and crescendo alongside looping noises and many other dashes of extreme ugliness. But this isn't some plebian attempt at noise; both members of Rock / USAdown have trained in music at prestigious schools before shirking that world in favor of the pursuit of chaos and revolution.
This Is The New American National Anthem is essentially a split record: split in the sense that both bands perform on the record. Rock currently consists of Unger performing solo on guitar and vocals. USAdown currently consists of Johnson on guitar and vocals and Unger on keyboard/guitar and vocals.
The Rock / USAdown saga is as heavy and challenging and intriguing as its recordings. To fully appreciate it, you've got to get it in the band's own words. So, without further ado, here's Rock / USAdown:
USAdown: When I was a kid I was a drug addict and mentally ill . . . I took a scholarship to the Berklee School of Music and quit after about 90 days. Fairfax, VA: playing local gigs and I met Dave Unger on the street in between sets before a show. we cut some demos, an album called high school, and did a lot of drinking and played shows around DC.
Then we started Love 666, which I quit immediately after cutting the first album, then rejoined later for a tour that featured a suicide attempt and resulted in a trip to the mental hospital, detox and divorce. There was a certain thing about Love 666 that involved events like that. Like Angel, the drummer had to stop touring because of a heavy MS-like disease -- before he was in the band he had to commit himself to a mental hospital 'cause he was out of control on drugs and took a contract from his dealer to kill somebody. Dave virtually went insane after 6 months off drugs and alcohol... and had to go back on. Everybody that played in that band was a total drug addict / alcoholic / mentally ill.
Once you play free music you can't go back. Love 666 was playing a new kind of music, free improvisation with the players not listening to each other. But not jazz. Total hard rock, feedback noise, and fragments of songs coming in and out. A total revolution in music that's gonna be a revolution in society. We don't tell people what to do or play... but once they see what real freedom is they tend to start changing. So after I played that I had to change my thing and I started USAdown. I made an album in NYC called Death In The USA, which is still in the can, then another album called Drugs which is coming out January 2008.
Rock: After a couple of U.S. tours with my friend Bill Kitsoulis, I ended up broke and stranded in Dallas, in a girl's room where you could see an American flag out the window. That's the first time I ever heard Harvest by Neil Young. I came back to DC and started playing with an actual blues guitar player named Bobby Parker. I then played in the house band at a club called 15 minutes. After that, I spent a year at the Peabody Conservatory studying for a masters degree but I dropped out.
The reason I quit Peabody was to be a rock star, so I went back to Virginia to start a band. After a while I hooked up again with my friend Angel who is a really great drummer. Joe Johnson was already in the band, playing bass but then he switched to guitar. Everybody else in the band got fired as soon as Angel joined. We just changed the name to Love 666. We kept on drinking a lot, saving up money to buy a van, and we cut a record in my basement and went on a tour that was like, 8 gigs in 30 days, or something like that. Got signed by Amphetamine Reptile. We started touring a lot. I couldn’t really party on the road too much, but by that time I was blown out of my mind, I fell in love with someone for the last time. At that time, I was living in the van between tours, sometimes crashing with my friends in different cities.
Love 666, 'the most important underground band in America', according to some major indie press, was the coolest band I had ever been in. It was like, 'fuck the audience', and 'fuck you'. Playing free as an individual without listening to the rest of the band was the hardest kind of playing I ever did. It’s a level of freedom that once attained, you’ll never give up. I feel like the music is a revolution in music, it’s the most advanced form of music happening. If you take it to the max, it’s about a revolution in society. And, it totally changed my life ‘cause I realized I had to be as free in my life as I was in my music.
Nothing ever really changed. Angel got sick, I freaked out, the band broke up and I moved to NYC and spent a long time recording and reforming Love 666 on and off, which didn’t work. I always feel like my room is a van, I never feel like I actually live anywhere. I never had a gun and I don’t want to kill anybody but I’ve always been trying to figure out a way I could advocate violent revolution. I finally figured out that I could write a song called “Violent Revolution” that refers to suicide, because I would rather die than shoot somebody.
I started a new band, called rock, which basically takes what Love 666 was doing live and expands on it. Now the records are all cut live, the really free style is what it’s about, everything comes from that and I think I can get hits out of it. I just feel like there’s so much work to be done, so many songs and records and feelings and ideas that I haven’t been able to record. So, I just want to keep on going as long as possible so I can get it more done.
Everything inside me and outside me is killing me, man... I'm trying to love but I just can't make it anymore. If I don’t see you anymore in this world, I’m not gonna see you in the next one, because it doesn’t exist… don’t be late.
To sum up, Rock / USAdown offers the following marketing & “selling points”:
Founding members of legendary underground band Love 666.
Drug addiction.
Alcoholism.
Mental illness.
Revolutionary free style of improvisation in which the players don't listen to each other.
Application of that freedom to all aspects of the music, i.e., writing, mixing and recording.
Application of that freedom to all aspects of life.
The only free band in the world.
Not jazz or prog - total hard rock.
The only band that can create a revolution in society.
The destruction of rock & roll.
The destruction of America.
The creation of rock & roll
The creation of America.
Death.
Live death.
Rock / USAdown Live:
05/01 Mesa, AZ Hollywood Alley
05/06 Seattle, WA Funhouse
05/07 Provo, UT Starry Night
05/08 Denver, CO Monkey Mania
05/09 Lincoln, NE Chatterbox
05/10 St. Paul, MN Big V's
05/11 Des Moines, IA Vaudeville Mews
05/12 Chicago, IL Ronny's
05/13 Cleveland, OH Pat's in the Flats
05/14 New York, NY Club Midway
05/15 Brooklyn, NY The Hook
05/16 Providence, RI AS220
05/17 Somerville, MA P.A.'s Lounge
05/18 Baltimore, MD TBD
05/19 Charlottesville, VA Dust Space Warehouse
05/20 Chapel Hill, NC TBD
05/21 Atlanta, GA TBD
05/22 Athens, GA TBD
05/23 St. Louis, MO Lemp Arts Center
05/24 Nashville, TN Muse
05/25 Lawrence, KS TBD
05/26 Kansas City, MO TBD
05/27 Tulsa, OK TBD
05/28 Houston, TX SuperHappyFunLand
05/29 Dallas, TX TBD
05/30 Austin, TX Trophy's
05/31 Albuquerque, NM TBD
Linear Mode
