Dec
Thanks so much to Jonathan Caws-Elwitt for the interview! The Silly Pillows released many records, mostly in the 90s, on great labels like Perfect Pop or Little Teddy! A few weeks ago Jonathan got in touch with me, by coincidence, about the band Les Fleus who I had written about on the blog and who he namechecked on one of his songs! Seeing it was a good opportunity I asked him if he’d be up to talk about his band and thankfully he was up for it! So here you go, a lovely and detailed story of the Silly Pillows! And do check their official site for more information.
++ Hi Jonathan! Thanks so much for being up for this interview! How are you? Still making music?
I am well, thanks! Life has been treating us (me and Hilary Caws-Elwitt) very sweetly. But essentially I have not made music since 2008. After the full-band lineup of the Silly Pillows came to an end in 2000, I made several attempts to keep things going via solo or duo recording, but I wasn’t able to generate much interest in, or even awareness of, those recordings. (That had actually been the case already with the final release from the full lineup, a self-released digital EP. I mean, you can’t win: In 2000 it was like, “Wait, your new release is just some files you put online? Hunh, not sure what we can do with that”; and then five years later it was like, “Welcome to MySpace, where you are just one of seventeen thousand self-recorded indie-pop bands with free new mp3s in search of listeners!”) And the home-recording process, which is what I ultimately defaulted to again in the 2000s, was so often joyless and frustrating to me, a constant negative battle against umpteen kinds of undesired distortion and so forth. Even if I could prevail after countless miserable hours of wrestling with the fancy digital machine, and get something that sounded OK, that’s not how I wanted to be spending my time (especially if hardly anyone was going to listen to it anyway—or, if they did, if it was likely to strike them as “flat” and underwhelming compared to our studio-produced stuff with real drums). Recording was supposed to be about the joy of bringing the songs to fruition, but at home it largely ended up being about the misery of fighting the technology. Sure, I’d done lots of home recording in the old days; but there was much that I found heartbreaking about the process and results at that time, and in that era what redeemed it was the fact that I was young and hopeful and it was all new and exciting. And then my recordings started to garner a listenership—a listenership, luckily, that found the lo-fi constraints not only acceptable but even appealing. So anyway, there I was in the non-lo-fi 2000s, not so young and with no band and no label and no really satisfactory way to record—and no audience to speak of, or plausible path to one. So I faced up to the futility of it all and called it a day. (But despite everything I’ve said here, I should note that I’m fond of the tracks I recorded in the mid-2000s. I wouldn’t do it again, but I certainly don’t regret having these on my hard drive to listen to!)
++ Let’s go back in time. What are your first music memories? Do you remember what was your first instrument? How did you learn to play it? What sort of music did you listen at home while growing up?
My parents listened to classical, folkie protest music, Herb Alpert, and a little bit of Simon and Garfunkel, and I enjoyed some of those things. I took piano lessons from age 5 to 8; I had a knack for it, but I quit when the Partridge Family converted me to long hair, groovy vests, and acoustic guitar (which, alas, I didn’t really have a knack for). And when I used keyboards in later childhood and adult life, the independent-two-hand dexterity of my 7-year-old self was long gone. But before giving up piano, I wrote some crazy little juvenile compositions, which MIDI artist Ken Clinger has recorded as the works of “Young Jonathan.” They sound like they were composed by a Martian. Then, when I was 10, I wrote my first pop song, which I recorded a cappella on a cassette recorder and mailed to a local radio station (with no results).
++ I read that originally you had been in a band called The Killer Asparagus in the early 80s in the Boston area. Was this your first band? And how did the band sound? Did it last long? Any recordings?
The Killer Asparagus was my first real band. But it was almost contemporary with the Degrads, because the KA started at Harvard in early 1982, and then during the summer in Rochester the Degrads happened. The Killer Asparagus was a mess. At first we barely knew what we were doing, then more people got involved and we had a hodgepodge of ideas about what we were doing. Imagine one of those late-1960s bands that vacillated between pop, garage rock, and “psychedelic” experimentation, only less good. The KA was “artier” and less whimsical than the Degrads, and flabbier sounding. There was some good songwriting (the highlights of which were cannibalized for the Degrads) and some interesting arrangements (for instance, blaring guitar-bass-drum punk accompanied by an Alpertesque trumpet)…but on the whole I don’t think you’d really want to listen to those tapes.
++ Where were you from Boston originally?
Boston was where I went to college (and where, in college, I met Hilary). Prior to that I lived in Rochester. The family had lived a couple of other places, but when I was 8 and my brother Sam Elwitt was 4 we settled down in a Rochester suburb called Brighton.
++ Afterwards you were in The Degrads, now in Rochester, NY. Why did you move there? And do tell me a bit about this band, any recordings? Who were the members?
When the Degrads began in 1982, we were mostly college students living back home for the summer, though Sam was still in the middle of high school (and already able to play circles around the rest of us, as a musician). In addition to the Elwitt brothers, the other band members were Mitchell Mutz, David Cohen, and Alfred Woo. Some songs were punk-pop (the style we ultimately focused on), and some of the early ones were silly parodies of other styles. Unlike with the Killer Asparagus, we seemed to have a unity of purpose, and things tended to gel rather than devolve into chaos. We also rehearsed more than in the KA, and had a lot more fun. The following year, when the Degrads got more serious about our musical identity and ambitions, we stuck to one instrument apiece and had a permanent drummer (Philip Michael Brown). Before splitting up, we recorded and self-released a 45 that Trouser Press and John Peel liked, and in 2015 the French labels Cameleon and Hands and Arms co-released a full-length LP of old Degrads material. (Tons more info about the Degrads here: http://www.45vinylvidivici.net/ajout/RAJOUT/CAMELEONRECORDS/CAMELEONdegradsUSA.htm)
++ Afterwards, in 1986, you asked your wife to start making music together and that is how the Silly Pillows start. Was it easy to convince her? Has she been in bands before? How were those early days for the band?
The Degrads broke up in 1984, and I got myself a “Dr. Rhythm” machine and started recording myself with just voice, guitar, and rhythm box—one take, no overdubs, often ad-libbing the songs in real time. (You wouldn’t want to listen to those tapes either.) That was my musical life for about two years, apart from when Sam and I very briefly formed a band in Boston with Xerox Feinberg of the Prefab Messiahs. Xerox had a four-track cassette machine, and in 1986 I followed his lead and began making multi-track recordings by myself. Around the same time, Hilary and I home-recorded four or five songs as the Silly Pillows, but for most of that year I was doing solo recordings, usually when she was at work in the afternoon (since I was working part-time in the morning). Hilary was a huge music fan and a former college DJ, but she’d never really been in a band before (though she’d written lyrics for one of the last Degrads songs!) and didn’t particularly aspire to it. But I adored the personality of her voice and wanted to write songs for us to sing together, à la Marty Balin and Grace Slick in 1967—and we liked doing projects together as a couple, sharing our activities—so she was glad to give it a try. Her involvement was usually limited to stepping in and singing the parts I wrote for her, after I’d laid down all the other tracks. She enjoyed the challenge for a while, but a challenge it was, because we did a lot of takes and she was often not that happy with her own performances (though I, and many other people, loved how she sounded). Because of this, though she liked the songs and liked being part of them, it was stressful for her. She stuck with it for six years! But at that point she decided, quite understandably, that with all her other interests and priorities, struggling with singing shouldn’t be part of her life anymore. But before she bowed out of the act, we’d had the magical experience of getting our music out to a small but appreciative audience—reviews in zines, a trickle of sales for our homemade cassettes, airplay on a few offbeat community-radio stations. There were people out there who actually dug what we were doing, instead of being turned off by the cardboard-box production values. Plus we met (through the mail) some like-minded artists (e.g., Linda Smith, Squires of the Subterrain), did some quirky collaborations with Dan Fioretti and Ken Clinger, and had lots of rewarding snail-mail correspondence with other home-tapers and fans of DIY music.
++ How was Boston at the time? Were there any bands that you liked? What were the good record stores? Or what about the pubs or venues to go check out up and coming bands?
Some of the local bands I remember seeing in the early or mid-1980s were Primitive Romance, the Sex Execs, the Dogmatics, the Annoyed, O Positive, and a pre-TT Aimee Mann group. Robin Lane and the Chartbusters were an important local band, but ironically I saw them play in Rochester. The first time Hilary laid eyes on me was at Mission of Burma’s final performance in 1982! The venues I remember are mostly the bigger clubs where the cool touring acts performed—the Channel, the Rat, Storyville, the Paradise. But my favorite local band was the Pets, featuring Evan Shore (who’s now in Muck and the Mires). They did catchy original material in the British Invasion / garage-psych vein and, like me at that time, they wore mid-1960s clothing. They kindly covered a song of mine, and it was Evan who introduced Xerox to the Elwitts. As for record stores, we frequented Newbury Comics, Festoons, In Your Ear, Cheapo Records, and Nuggets.
++ When and how did the band start? How did you all meet? How was the recruiting process?
Through 1992, the Silly Pillows was just me and Hilary (with occasional collaborations with various others, near and far). Around the time Hilary left the act, I was getting a bit burned out myself—but just then these German record labels began contacting me about putting stuff out, and that gave me a new lease on musical life. They’d started putting out tracks from our home-recorded catalog, but with labels getting our work out there I really wanted to give some songs a proper studio treatment. I enlisted Sam on guitar and bass—he was so much more polished on the instruments than I was—and approached fabulous DIY psych-popper Christopher Earl, aka the Squire(s) of the Subterrain, about playing drums and contributing one of his old songs that was a favorite of mine. (We were recording in Rochester, where Chris was based, though Sam and I never knew him in our own Rochester days.) I did vocals and keyboards. Also on vocals was Cheryl De Luke, a good friend of ours from the bookstore I worked at in Binghamton, NY—she had no band experience, but she sang sweetly and had an interest in being part of the music-making process. Michael E. Fiato, who started playing bass for us the next year, was another co-worker at the bookstore. A little later on, I also met drummer Dave Joachim through the bookstore (his wife worked there), and Dave had a friend who in turn introduced us to keyboard wizard Charlie Zayleskie. Linda Smith, like Chris, was a crony from the home-recording era (I was a fan of her beautiful solo tapes, and Hilary and I had covered one of her songs); and Belinda Miller was part of the WFMU scene—she was a friend of Sam’s, and over the years had played some Silly Pillows on her groundbreaking kids’ music show, Greasy Kid Stuff. She wasn’t usually in bands, but her exuberant voice and presence were an excellent match for us.
++ Were there any lineup changes at all?
Indeed there were! The first studio session in 1993 was a one-off in Rochester, an EP (Equilibrium). I didn’t know if there would be any records after that, or even who was going to put that one out. After that, we started recording in NYC, and Chris wasn’t available for that. But we’d picked up Michael on bass, and Sam was able to cover the drums on top of guitar. This lineup took us through spring of 1995 (the sessions comprising side one of the Strangest of the Strange LP and side one of the Lukewarm Weather EP), when Cheryl and I parted ways as musical collaborators. I approached Linda, who joined us in the co-vocalist role for what became the Out of Our Depth album. I also wanted to redistribute things so that Sam wasn’t playing drums in addition to guitar (and sometimes bass too, when Michael wasn’t available), and that was when I brought Dave into the picture.
Once we’d started performing live in the fall of 1996, it became clear that Linda was just too far away to be available for rehearsals. (She lived in Baltimore, whereas the rest of us were either in Binghamton, eastern Pennsylvania, or NYC.) We worked briefly with another singer, but that didn’t work out, and that’s when we added Belinda, who made New Affections with us. This lineup—JC-E, Sam, Michael, Dave, Charlie, Belinda—was stable until the band dissolved in 2000.
++ What’s the story behind the name Silly Pillows?
Back in the Degrads days, a penpal told me his band was in search of a name, and asked me if I had any suggestions. Hilary and I brainstormed, and one of her ideas was the “Silly Pills.” I think “silly pills” are something parents sometimes say with reference to giggly kids (“You must have taken some silly pills!”), but Hilary didn’t know that—it was just something that popped into her head, and she said it with the emphasis on pills, not silly. I saved a copy of the list (my penpal didn’t use any of our suggestions, of course), and when it was time for us to name our duo I looked it over. I didn’t want to be the Silly Pills, but it occurred to me to modify it to Silly Pillows (also with the emphasis on the second word). Hilary agreed, though later she took a dislike to the name. But by that time our tapes were getting some attention, so it was too late to change it. (Story of a million bands!)
++ How was the creative process for you? Where did you usually practice?
The creative process varied depending on exactly who was involved, where everyone was located, and which “era” of the SPs it was. Writing songs by myself, of course, was straightforward, and I always did some of that even as the band expanded. Sam and I only wrote a couple of songs together for the SPs, but when we did it happened on weekend visits and sometimes via mailing cassette demos—or even playing stuff over the phone. Cheryl, Michael, and Charlie lived near us in the Binghamton / northern Pennsylvania area, so when I was pairing up with one of them to write we could actually meet up at each other’s houses. But the usual m.o. for co-writing was different with different people. Sam and I would sit there and figure out both music and lyrics as a team (as we’d done in the Degrads days), with Sam brilliantly coming up with a lot of the chord structure, and vocal parts and lyrics showing more joint creativity. When I was working with Cheryl, she would usually write or co-write the lyrics—the words always mattered to her a lot—and I would do the rest. Michael would give me tapes full of all the infectious bass riffs he’d come up with, and I’d pick some out and assemble them into songs. Then sometimes he’d get involved again to join me in writing the lyrics. He has a hilarious verbal imagination! Charlie would give me finished piano music, pop gems with complicated chords—either with or without a line for the vocal melody included—and I’d write all the lyrics and (if not already present) the melody, plus harmonies.
Once we were having regular full-band rehearsals, we were able to all work together on arranging. I would usually come up with the vocal arrangements—all the harmonies and backing vocals—and the instrument players would develop their parts (whatever wasn’t set in stone by the songwriters) in the rehearsal room and/or on their own time, but there was lots of fine-tuning as a group. By contrast, during the first couple years of our “studio era,” we’d mostly had to rely on working things out on our own or in pairs—we were almost never all in the same place until recording day—and then just quickly putting it together in the studio.
Proper rehearsals, once we started having them, usually happened near Allentown, Pennsylvania. Dave lived there—with his drums set up, of course—and it was the kind of house where one could take over a room and make noise. So Charlie, Michael, and I would commute down from the NY-PA line, and Sam and Belinda would come in from NYC. All of us (except Dave) were driving 2-3 hours each way to rehearse—and people had jobs, partners, etc.—so we usually only rehearsed one Saturday or Sunday a month.
++ And who would you say were influences in the sound of the band?
My biggest influences were the mid-sixties pop-rock/mod/psych sounds (Hollies, Byrds, Beach Boys, Kinks, Zombies, Turtles, Left Banke, the little garage-psych bands, etc.), combined with punk-pop like the Buzzcocks, my favorite neo-psych-pop band the Three O’Clock, and a bit of Jobim and Tin Pan Alley. Other band members had some similar influences, but also some slightly (or sometimes very) different ones. Michael was a huge Rush fan. Charlie and Linda both loved Bacharach. Dave came from a blues-rock and jam-band background, but he’s an incredibly sensitive and creative musician who understood instantly how to adapt his playing to indie-pop. The first thing he did at his first SP rehearsal, after getting oriented to our style, was call a break so he could dismantle half his drum kit!
++ Your first recordings were available on tape. I’ve tried to find out more about these tapes, like what were their names, how many where they, how many copies you made, and if any of these songs would later pop up in future releases. Like “Lazy Silences” was one of them? I would love if you could give me some background information about these early releases of yours?
There may have been as many as 20 of those self-released cassettes, depending what you count. (Some of them were under my name rather than “Silly Pillows,” some were collaborations, some were not full-length—though some were double-length, both sides of a 90-min. tape!—and some were assortments of miscellaneous tracks I had lying around, rather than “albums” embarked on as such.) These were released from late 1988 through early 1993. (Prior to that, I’d circulated our recordings only to a few personal friends, and thus the first couple of “official” tapes served to catch up on the huge backlog from two very prolific home-recording years.) Some of what I’d call the more significant cassette releases were Friendly, Here Come the Silly Pillows!, Lazy Silences, New Ears, We Remembered What We Were Going to Say, and The Silly Pillows à la Fois. A handful of each of the tapes would go out to zines and radio, a bunch would get traded to other home-tapers, and then we might sell 10 or 20 copies via mail-order. All told, there were a couple hundred tracks from our 4-track-cassette period (not all of them great, in retrospect!), and a lot of them were later reissued on vinyl and/or CD: the When She Gets Home EP, the Pillow Image Ltd. LP, the Silly Image Pillowhead CD, side 2 of Strangest of the Strange, side 2 of Lukewarm Weather, the “I Liked It—What Was It?” (split) single, some of Pillow Paw Prints, as well as some multi-artist compilations. You can see most of the original cassette covers at the very bottom of the http://www.sillypillows.com/ home page.
++ And I suppose these songs on the tapes were home-recorded? Just like your first vinyl release “When She Gets Home”, right? How was home recording back in the early 90s compared to these days?
Well, in the 1980s and early 1990s, I loved being able to make multitrack recordings of my songs at home. I loved performing all the parts. But there was a lot about the realities of home recording that I dreaded and hated. (See above.) You would painstakingly layer the guitars and harmonies and cheesy little Casio-synth “organ” sounds, and then people would hear the keyboard solo you were so proud of on the tape and say, “Is that a ringing telephone, or someone singing?” These songs sounded like the legitimate pop thing in my head, but to the average listener in the late 1980s those tapes sounded like inaccessible shoeboxfuls of striated mud or, at best, “demos” that “a real band” should maybe record. It was a few years before I started to encounter the people who were willing to take lo-fi on its own terms. But home recording was the only option I had—a whole world better than live-no-overdubs, especially for the kind of musical elements I cared about—and the thrill of arranging and multitracking my songs into little DIY “albums” kept me going. And sometimes the tracks sounded pretty good to me, despite the flaws and limitations. Some of them still do!
When I returned to home recording in the 2000s, with digital equipment, it was in some ways better: no troublesome cassettes, no loss of fidelity with track bounces, a better sense of my own strengths and weaknesses and a better developed critical ear…but in another way it was worse, because the expectations and implied comparisons in the music world were so different. Back in the day, once our homemade tapes reached the right audience, the lo-fi feel of them was taken as charming, as a proud aesthetic in itself (though, personally, I never would have chosen it if I’d had access to something better). Even now, those early Silly Pillows tracks, the ones from the home-recorded-cassette era, are often what people who like us at all seem to like best. But it seemed that if you were self-recording indie-pop in the 2000s, it was supposed to sound “pro.” You were supposed to have a drummer, or at least be able to program convincing drums. You were supposed to be a capable engineer who could coordinate multiple pieces of software to get great instrument sounds, perfect reverbs, a shiny, bespoke veneer over the final mix (and no unwanted distortion). I just wasn’t cut out for that. I tried! And, you know, a 23-year-old with subpar production values might be endearing, but a 43-year-old can start to look kind of pathetic.
++ This was released on the labels Hoppel Di Hoy and Little Teddy Recordings. I know quite a bit about Little Teddy, but absolutely nothing about Hoppel Di Hoy. Who were they?
Hoppel di Hoy released, I think, four things starting in 1993. I believe When She Gets Home was the first, and the only one done under the auspices of bigger-little-label Little Teddy. One HDH release was a solo Linda Smith disc (before she was in the SPs), and one was a solo project of Sam’s called the Hazeltones (on which I have a co-writing credit). It was thanks to Hoppel di Hoy that the SPs entered the Little Teddy universe.
++ Your next release was the “Equilibrium EP” that was released by the Norwegian label Perfect Pop. I am very curious about how did this relationship start? How did they found out about your music and how good was this friendship you made with them?
Perfect Pop was run by the so-called Bartleby of the Tables, and he was friendly with the Little Teddy folks (who, as you know, were in the Bartlebees—and they’d arrived at that name independently of Bartleby!). The two labels communicated and shared their discoveries, so Bartleby found out about the SPs and contacted me. At the time I didn’t know whether Little Teddy had more plans for us, and it ended up being Perfect Pop that I approached with our “Equilibrium” recordings. They said yes but had to push it back to a late 1994 release (in the interim they did a fan-club cassette of SP home recordings), and in the meantime we made Strangest of the Strange for Little Teddy. So the two records ended up getting released right around the same time. The next year Perfect Pop did a CD comprising the studio tracks from both those records plus the Little Teddy–released Lukewarm Weather EP, and then Perfect Pop and Little Teddy co-released Out of Our Depth in 1996.
++ For this record you recorded the songs in studio. How was that? Did you like it better compared to recording at home?
YES! It was what I’d always wanted. I’ll never forget Cheryl sitting in the booth and saying, “Wow, now I can really hear what you were going for with the home-recorded stuff.”
++ Most of your releases happened on Little Teddy and Perfect Pop though there were also a few in the Japanese Rover Records. Then when it came to compilations you did appear on compilations from all over the world. You really were a band that belonged to the international pop underground. How did you achieve this do you think?
Getting absorbed into the international indie-pop scene came as a surprise—a delightful surprise. In the late 1980s, I was mostly doing what I was doing in isolation (though both Sam and Xerox were doing similar things). I didn’t know about C86 or K Records. I’d listened to the first three Television Personalities albums and the first two Times LPs devotedly and repeatedly, but I thought of those two (related) bands as their own special thing, and I wasn’t aware of how “twee pop” was becoming a whole genre. Nor did I think of what I was doing as particularly related to TVPs/Times (though I knew we were attracted by a lot of the same 1960s sounds and fashions). And then, when our first exposure came in Option and Sound Choice (and Electronic Cottage and Factsheet Five thereafter), along with the No Pigeonholes radio show, the context was a very open, “anything goes” clearinghouse for DIY music of all genres. These places were wonderfully welcoming—I owe so much to them—but they weren’t pop specific, let alone twee-pop specific. I did start to find the other artists who were doing my type of pop, but I still thought of us as little islands, not a “scene.” I think it may have been the Writer’s Block zine that first linked the SPs to the larger twee-pop world. And then the European labels got wind of us, and there were comp copies of their other records and zines and mixtapes and compilations, and so finally, about seven years after I’d begun Silly Pillowing (and just when I was transitioning away from the DIY approach), my ears were opened to this whole international indie/twee/punk-pop scene that I’d been unaware of but had unwittingly been a part of! A bounty of ear candy from the UK and Norway and Sweden and Germany and France and Japan and even North America, other people doing boy-girl vocals like we were, and whoopee!
++ Your split single with Citrus, on Rover Records, actually reached the no.3 domestic singles chart. That must have meant a lot! And that actually led Teichiku Records to release a best of called “Pillow Paw Prints” for the Japanese market. Was that the biggest highlight for the band perhaps? And who picked up the songs for the best of? You or them? Was it easy to work with a major label?
The chart thing was crazy! I have a video tape of the TV show where they briefly ran down the chart, playing a few seconds of each song. As I recall it, the other “hits” are slick, mainstream-sounding Japanese bands with pro video clips. Then there’s “I Liked It—What Was It?” which somehow sounds pretty good, despite the gulf in production values…and since they didn’t have a video they just did a mini-slideshow of the hand-drawn B&W sleeve, alternating between my SP drawing and the Citrus drawing. It’s a hilarious punk moment! I’m really proud of that track—one of the very last home recordings I made in the 1990s—among other reasons because I’m not an accomplished guitarist, but about once a decade I somehow forget to play badly, and this seems to have been one of those times.
The Teichiku release was indeed a big deal for us—though as it turned out it was more of a blip than anything leading anywhere. This interest on the part of bigger Japanese labels (we’d been approached twice before, with things that fell through, before Teichiku) was all directly or indirectly thanks to everything those awesome labels Little Teddy, Perfect Pop, and Rover had done for us. Kenji from Rover was very involved in our Teichiku release, as a consultant and Silly Pillows expert I guess, and it was he who chose the songs and discussed ideas with me for the album title. Working with a major label went fine, until they pulled the rug out from under us (see below). Aside from the businessy details, there wasn’t much I actually had to do because these were all previously released tracks, and Kenji was handling the track list and Mike Alway was doing the art design. (All of this happened by magic, it seemed. I didn’t have to ask anyone to do anything!) It was all very exciting, but also sort of remote and dreamlike because it was happening so far away. This was 1996-97, right before the internet really took off, and I didn’t have much of a window onto things. But they did send me some slick magazines with the release reviewed or mentioned inside, and that was something tangible and fun!
++ You have released lots of singles and also lots of albums. I was wondering then what would be your favourite format for your music?
I like albums best. Preferably on CD, because I’m a misfit who can never manage to get the noisy dust off LPs, and because I always knew a lot of people who wanted to hear my music but didn’t have turntables.
++ One of your songs was covered by Nada Surf. What was that about?
Matthew Caws of Nada Surf is Hilary’s brother, and there’s been a bit of collaboration over the years. I co-wrote a song with him for one of his pre–Nada Surf bands, Because Because Because, and he does backing vocals on the SP tune “Katy Tongue in Cheek” (the one that namechecks Les Fleurs): since I was singing in French and Matthew has a virtually perfect accent, not to mention a beautiful voice, I asked him if he would lend his talent. He’s championed the Silly Pillows in many ways. There were a couple of our tunes in particular that he took a shine to, and when NS did their covers album he finally had the opportunity to bring one of those to his audience, which he generously did. (Bonus trivia: For a couple of years in the late 1980s, Sam played bass in Matthew’s first band, The Cost of Living.)
++ I suppose you must have many unreleased songs, is that so? Maybe in demo form or perhaps studio recordings?
Considering how much we did release (especially in the cassette era), there’s not all that much that’s unreleased. But there are a handful of “unreleases” from 1996–2000: tracks for compilations that never came out, rehearsal takes of songs that we never officially recorded, and a track from the full band’s final project that the group decided to cut from the release. Then there’s a very late home recording, from 2011—the last one we ever made—that was rejected by the label who’d requested it for a compilation, because of the production values. (I’d mostly stopped recording by then, but that episode convinced me to do so firmly and permanently.)
++ If you were to choose your favourite Silly Pillows song, which one would that be and why?
Hmm…I might choose “Idyllica,” from the Tomorrow Is Yesterday online release. I like the energy, the Left Banke-i-ness, the rhythmic snappiness and piano/guitar tradeoffs, the vocal arrangement and the playful sexy euphoria in the lyrics.
++ You have also collaborated with other artists, like writing a song for The Tables or producing The Dupont Singles. How do you like those other jobs a musician can have?
I’m a natural mimic (I once recorded a song where I tried to imitate the singing, and musical styles, of about a dozen different old favorite music artists), so writing a song “in the style of” my friends the Tables was a fun challenge. I had a great time, and I was delighted that they were actually able to use it, because even though they’d invited it, you never know. I’m a big fan, so it was quite an honor.
The most common thing I’ve done for my colleagues as a musical person is writing lyrics for songs that don’t have words yet (sometimes also writing the vocal melodies, if they haven’t already done that). On some occasions my work never got used—either the whole project was abandoned, or they decided not to use most, or any, of my lyrics—but that’s showbiz. But one instance with a satisfying outcome was when Charlie asked me to write lyrics for a Todd Rundgren spoof. I wasn’t very conversant in Rundgreniana, but Charlie gave me a crash course in TR’s lyrical themes and styles, and I took it from there. Like vocal mimicry, literary pastiche is a specialty of mine, so this was another fun task for me. They liked what I came up with; it went on an all-Rundgren-pastiche compilation, and I’m told that Todd himself thought well of the track!
++ What about gigs? Did you play many? All over the US?
We never played that many gigs, and the ones we did play were almost entirely concentrated in NYC between 1996 and 1999. Initially, the SPs were an overdubbed home-recording project that couldn’t have replicated itself effectively onstage. Likewise in the Equilibrium/Strangest of the Strange era: we still didn’t have a complete stage lineup, band members were spread out geographically, and we didn’t rehearse like a normal group. This changed in early 1996, when one of the nonstarter Japanese deals was in the offing, and Kenji suggested we might be invited to tour over there. We approached Charlie to join us as keyboardist, and Michael was now available to rejoin the band after having missed the first half of our Out of Our Depth sessions. So finally we had all the main instruments covered by different people, and JC-E (and Linda) mostly just singing. And though logistics meant we weren’t a band who could make a habit of touring, we all agreed that if a 10-day thing or whatever in Japan came our way, we’d make it happen. We didn’t know when this might be, so we started rehearsing like a real band (though less frequently than most), pointing ourselves toward a live formula as well as developing the songs we had yet to record for the album-in-progress. Well, we never got invited to Japan (see below), but we did start saying yes to our contacts in NYC when they invited us on to their bills. So there were a few super gigs like that, and then when Belinda joined she set up some great shows for us. I loved being onstage singing our songs, in front of audiences who appreciated us (and with other people playing all the instruments), so those were terrific experiences for me. In theory we could have played out a bit more in those days, but the opportunities just weren’t there. I tried to set shows up in Boston and DC, but I couldn’t get anywhere.
++ What about abroad? I read that you were supposed to tour Japan and in the end you didn’t, why was that?
Pillow Paw Prints didn’t do well—and we’ll never know how it would have done under more normal circumstances. What happened was the Japanese stock market crashed, and Teichiku had a reshuffle. What this reshuffle meant to the Silly Pillows was that the week our CD was released, the A&R person whose baby it was, who I guess had been the one and only person running the “FloatinFriends” indie-pop imprint, was reassigned to reggae. And that was that.
++ And what were the best gigs you remember? Any anecdotes you can share?
In some ways, my peak experience for gigs was the band’s live debut at Mercury Lounge in September 1996. This was a Chickfactor show with Magnetic Fields headlining. It was Silly Pillows, a Linda Smith set (in addition to her performing with the SPs), and my captivatingly tuneful friends Musical Chairs. I think people didn’t know what to expect from us—somehow we’d gained a reputation for being “mysterious” and “reclusive,” maybe because we had a rural ZIP code. We were bouncy and effervescent onstage, and I think that was an entertaining development for some people who might have assumed we’d be quiet and timid. We seemed to get a genuinely enthusiastic response—attendance was great because of Magnetic Fields—and even Stephin Merritt seemed to like us. (He was running a high fever that night. After the delirium passed, he came to his senses and gave our album a snarky review.)
++ And were there any bad ones?
In 1998, we were invited to play a pop festival in Baltimore. We were part of the bill at the “secondary venue,” a sweet little neighborhood bar with no stage and no sound system. The six of us crowded onto a little platform while some kind-hearted attendee tried to mix us with somebody’s loaner PA; and while we were in midset—nay, midsong—the festival organizer (who’d been nowhere to be found while the bands and bartender had been trying to figure out how the hell to do this) pulled Belinda offstage to complain that he couldn’t hear our vocals. I mean, we’re literally in the middle of a song, and Belinda—I guess because she wasn’t singing at that particular moment—gets yanked down for a conference. Granted, “down” wasn’t very far, because, again, this was like a six-inch platform that she was already falling off the edge of. But meanwhile I’m standing (or balancing) there singing the song, wondering if Bel’s great-uncle had died or something. I seem to remember people who normally liked our music leaving the premises ten minutes into our performance, and I couldn’t blame them. But the one good thing that came out of that gig was we were introduced to the fabulous power-pop trio Cherry Twister. (With only three members and no keyboards, they could sort of fit on the “stage.”)
++ When and why did Silly Pillows stop making music and you went to name yourselves The Original Silly Pillows? Why this change?
At some point after our New Affections album had come out (and hadn’t sold well), our label seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. We already had a bunch of new songs, but with no label and no deadline the band members voted to slow the pace down, to keep taking the gigs that came up from time to time but not push ourselves to ready material for another album. Personally, I wasn’t enthused about this plan—some of our “new” songs were already starting to feel a little old to me, and I didn’t want to lose the moment of freshness; and, while I loved the fun and excitement of performing live, getting recordings of our material was the more important, and more lasting, source of satisfaction to me, not least because a voice like mine really benefits from the controllable conditions of a studio! But obviously I understood that there were other demands on people’s time—and anyway, we apparently had no record label. Eventually, in early 2000, Sam and Charlie came up with a well-developed plan for recording ourselves quasi-professionally at the Caws-Elwitt house, using borrowed and rented equipment. We decided to do a six-song mini-album. The recording went pretty well, but nonetheless I was feeling that I didn’t want to keep the band going after this project if it was going to take us three years to get some songs down, just so that nobody could release them. I didn’t feel I could sustain enough enthusiasm on that basis to make it seem worth all the effort of keeping everything going. (It might have been different if we’d been getting more gigs, but we’d played only twice in 1999, and not at all in 2000.) Then came some unhappy mixing sessions; and also I generally had an increasing impression of discontentment among the band members, about various facets of things. None of it seemed fixable to me, I was discontented myself, and at this point I didn’t feel comfortable presiding over the group anymore.
It took me a couple of years to even want to think about making music again (and definitely not with a band), but from 2002 to 2005 I did a couple of online EPs under my own name (with a terrific local singer named Kitrina Phillips on backing vocals). Then Hilary got interested in singing again, and so the next online release was billed as “Original Silly Pillows” (to differentiate it from the defunct 1993-2000 versions of the band, and hearkening back to our original duo from 1986-1992). Like I said earlier, none of these releases found an audience. But in 2007, before I called it quits (again), Charlie and I did two little pop-fest appearances (with Hilary joining us on one song), one an International Pop Overthrow in NYC and one a Popfest New England in Northampton, Massachusetts (where Hilary and I then decided to move!). We called this act “Silly Piano Pillows” (we’d previously done it in Binghamton as “Silly Pillows Unstuffed”), and it was what I’d call cabaret-style versions of our songs.
++ What are the other members of the Silly Pillows doing these days?
The most musically active ex-Pillow is probably Sam, who can currently be heard and seen leading Miriam Linna’s group. Some of the ex-Pillows are writers, and some are visual artists.
++ What about Deco Pillow? What is that about?
In 2006, I wanted to try my hand at EDM / trip hop. Like the other stuff we did in that era, it didn’t go anywhere, but Hilary and I had fun remaking an old Degrads song called “Dancing in My Underwear”!
++ Has there ever been a reunion? Or talks of playing again together?
No. For that matter, no one has invited us to do so. (Heck, gig offers were few and far between even when we had a band.) Personally, I love the idea of going onstage again and singing my songs for an appreciative audience (with people other than me playing all the instruments), but I’m not sure under what circumstances such a scenario is ever likely to occur.
++ You made one promo video right? For the song “Time Zones” which is fantastic. Was wondering where was it recorded? Did it take long? Any anecdotes that you remember? And if it is the only promo video you made?
The reason we got to make a video was because one of my best friends from the Rochester days, Brian Steblen, is a professional film director. When New Affections was in the pipeline, he approached me and offered to make a whimsical video for one of songs, which would showcase the band while also showcasing his filmmaking creativity. All we had to do was get ourselves to Rochester on filming weekend and pay for, like, the sandwiches. I felt so lucky, and I loved the ideas he came up with for the project (with some input from us as well). I had a tremendously good time with the shoot, though there was a certain amount of time-pressure stress because we were losing the sun and people had to get back to NYC and all of that. For us, it was just a hectic weekend’s work, but of course the real burden was for Brian in the editing room, and that took a bit more than a weekend (and contributions from his animator colleagues)! I’m so glad you like the video—I’m really happy with how it came out, and it always makes me smile.
++ Did you get much attention from the radio?
A little. By the time of New Affections we managed to get adds at about 100 CMJ stations and hit about 10 of the individual stations’ charts. I think the fact that we were “import only” was an obstacle to our presence on radio, and in stores and in magazines—all of which reinforce each other, of course. It was a little weird, being a U.S. band whose label relationships were all overseas. Even Little Teddy themselves thought some U.S. label ought to take us over on this side of the pond, and we sure tried to interest people like SpinArt and Minty Fresh and K. But I think maybe we never quite appealed to North American indie-pop sensibilities (to generalize broadly) in the way we appealed to European and Japanese listeners. Also, the timing may have been a little off. By the time we were trying to get gigs and pushing New Affections, that particular era of mid-1990s indie-pop was perhaps already phasing itself out. As you know, a year or two can make a big difference where music is concerned!
++ What about the press? Did they give you any attention?
Once in a while. There was Option, of course. We had one review in The Big Takeover, and a mention by Elisabeth Vincentelli in one of the Village Voice’s “Pazz & Jop” supplements. Gail O’Hara, in addition to doing so much for us with Chickfactor reviews and slots in Chickfactor shows, gave us wonderful plugs in Time Out when we were appearing in NYC; and Andy Stevens wrote several heartwarming reviews of our records for Binghamton’s daily newspaper. And ten seconds of an SP song was heard on MTV’s Indie Outing (though they never aired the “Time Zones” video)!
And to put all this in perspective—the label releases, the radio, the press, the gigs—I felt, and feel, very fortunate that as much of it happened as did. By the end of the 1980s I’d given up on any fantasy that a record company, large or small, would put my music out, and the things that happened for us in the 1990s were way beyond my expectations. I know I don’t have to tell you that there were so, so many great indie-pop bands deserving attention; so I was and am very grateful for the fact that we got attention at all.
++ What about from fanzines?
Fanzines! Yes yes! Writer’s Block / Caught In Flux, Chickfactor, Funny Face / Tongue in Cheek / Baka-Poi, Soft White Underbelly, Quien?, La Grande Illusion, Versíon Original, Incredible Heaven… Can I use a row of heart icons in an interview?
++ Aside from music, what other hobbies do you have?
I did a lot of prose writing for a while, much of it for publication—humor, stage comedies, sexy fiction. And I sometimes do some comedy acting in local theater. On the whole, there’s not much happening these days in my creative life. On all fronts, I think it’s become harder and harder for creative people to actually reach an audience.
++ You’ve moved quite a bit and I believe these days you are in upstate New York, close to Binghamton. Never been to that area so I would ask for some recommendations! What are the sights one shouldn’t miss? Or the traditional food or drinks that you love that I should try?
Hilary and I lived in the Binghamton area from 1987 through 2011 (mostly across the border in Pennsylvania), but now we live in Northampton, Massachusetts. But as for Binghamton cuisine, I can tell you that Italian restaurants are a real strength, and spiedies are a specialty (though, as vegetarians, we never ate them). As for scenery: If you like vintage carousels, the area boasts many!
++ Anything else you’d like to add?
Only a big THANK YOU to you!
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Listen
Silly Pillows – Time Zones
