Music, Style & Culture
| Print : Web : Radio : Mobile

Men: Costumes Are Important

What initially started as a remix project by Le Tigre members has now grown into so much more.

Posted 23rd March 2010, 9:45pm in Interviews, by Jasmine Phull
Men Men is a Brooklynite band of two women and just one man. They create lofi, dance music complimented by sassy lyrics with political inflexions. What initially started as a remix project by Le Tigre members Johanna Fateman and JD Samson has now grown into so much more. On stage the feminist electro-punk band consists of Michael O’Neill, JD Samson and Ginger Brooks Takahashi; they perceive their live show as a performance in which music, costume and multimedia work together to create an unbridled zeal fuelled spectacle. However, off stage Men consists of a whole collective of artists; many of whom you may recognise, and as a group these individuals create music about the world they live in. Whether it is about political issues, test tube babies, their own sexual preferences or simply a menial task like paying the rent, they certainly have a lot to say. Men is not about women posing as men, instead it’s a personal comment on society cleverly matched with music that makes you want to listen. Fortunately for us coercion need not be part of the process.

It seems like costume is a pretty integral part of your shows?
JD: I’ve never played a show in my life without wearing a costume. It’s important to have a stage persona and give something to the audience that’s more than playing an instrument. We’ve tried to make performance art and I think the costume is an important part of that.
Ginger: Also what you’re wearing is an acknowledgment of the body.

Do you guys have a theme when you dress up? Like how Beyonce’s mum used to dress Destiny’s Child in similar outfits.
Michael: It kind of varies.
Ginger: I think we kind of work intuitively. Like someone will be attracted to some material or style and then different things will come to us while we’re on tour. Like when we were in Sweden we were at the junk shop and I found this little kid’s leather harness and i wanted to wear it but it was so small that I ended up wearing it on my head.
JD: I think it’s really cool that the costume is one of the parts of the band where you can do your own thing.

So is your on-stage persona your doppelganger?
Ginger: (Laughs) No it’s just our real selves; perhaps just an amplified and exaggerated version. It gets to be this channel that all this energy comes from.
Michael: But it gets to change too, because we don’t always wear the same thing. One night we can be a completely different person to the night before.

Change your name, put a wig on..
Michael: Exactly.

Men is described as an ‘art collective’ does that mean you do other things other than produce music?
JD: Right now we are working on three different performances in different art spaces. They may or may not include a set of our music and I think it’s really important to us, to keep our space in the art world and do things that aren’t necessarily in a regular rock show environment. Having a multimedia art style performance is really something that we wanna keep doing; being in the art world in that way.

Is the multimedia also integrated into your art shows?
Ginger: Yes and when we say multimedia it can mean like cardboard props or sculpture. We’re trying to move away from the video projection that has become so common with lots of bands. We’re trying to use the resources around us. We’ll ask friends or strangers to come up on stage and hold props.
Michael: We started this band more as an artistic experiment but when it merged into Men, Joanna Fateman from Le Tigre was also working on it as well. So it’s also about a collaboration of people.
JD: We’re definitely interested in making Men about more than just the three of us.

Is Men as political as Le Tigre?
JD: I feel our politics are naturally emitted through our music and there aren’t any expectations. We write about what’s happening in our lives, whether it’s about the economy or how much it costs us to pay our rent. We’re radically political people and think that’s always going to be in our music.

Is Men feminist?
Ginger: Even just using the name Men it challenges ideas about gender and who gets to call themselves Men and what it means for us three to call ourselves ‘Men’ on stage.
JD: Everyone has a different definition of what feminism is but I think that we are for equality of all people and to us that’s what feminism really means. And that’s definitely something that we as a band want to continue to support.

How far are you into the recording of the debut?
Michael: I think we are about 70% done. That’s the number we’re using now. As soon as we get back to the US we’re gonna hit the studio and try and finish.

Have you got a title yet?
JD: We have a couple of things bouncing around but it’s going to have to be a surprise.

It could be Boys to Men?
(Everyone laughs).
JD: Some things like that have been mentioned.

Will there be collaborations on that?
JD: Well Emily has written some of the lyrics and Johanna did some production on a couple of tracks. The live band is us three but the recording process includes many other people.

Let’s talk about your videos. They’re quite DIY.
Michael: They’re all made by our friends so we pretty much let them run with the ideas that they have. They’re all artists in their own way so they directed and created the videos.
JD: One thing we thought about when we put out the EP was, let’s kind of give these to video makers that we know in the same way that you would give tracks to a remixers. So there might be three different videos to one song.
Michael: Kate Hardy had us dress up in these weird costumes and at the start I was like ‘do you really want me to wear that’ but after it turned out really well.

She held you down and dressed you herself?
Michael: (Laughs) Yes.
Click like to get the latest music news, hottest tracks and more via Facebook.

Comments