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ShareIt’s late April 2006 in the nearly stultifying, pavement-cracking heat of the California desert, and my friend SteveChris and I are fearing for Ted Leo’s life.
We had pushed our way near the front of the Outdoor Stage at day two of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, each of us having already guzzled more water than the average sub-Saharan African country sees in a year to try to stave off the triple-digit heat.
To understand our concern, you have to understand Ted Leo’s musical history as a power punkster who got his start playing on the same Washington, D.C., stages as Fugazi and has undoubtedly thrashed the amplifiers of D.C. punk into the next generation.
After fronting the critically acclaimed band Chisel in the `90s, Leo reappeared in 1999 with the Pharmacists, and began releasing albums of fierce but melodic tunes. His early albums Tyranny of Distance and Hearts of Oak earned him comparisons to Joe Strummer and The Jam, while his songwriting was frequently compared to that of agit-folkie Billy Bragg.
And the music has remained in the true vein of what independent music was supposed to be—spectacularly unpretentious, progressive and often bare-bones with strong, occasionally valiant, lyricism.
The performances we saw in tiny clubs in the Washington-Baltimore area usually involved Ted ripping the chords out his guitar with such intensity that his thrift-store shirt was a mess of sweat by the end of the set.
Thinking of how much he’d sweat in the Coachella sun almost made us tell Daft Punk to be on standby with the ambulance and a water hose.
“Not to self-aggrandize here, but I do work pretty hard. It’s a pretty athletic event,” Leo said in an interview last week. “I just think I get so ramped up so quickly in the course of or in the beginning of a set that it just starts happening.”
He survived the Coachella show of course, though he was instantly drenched in sweat from the first song—which means that he rocked the oversized, ironic sunglasses right off everyone’s faces.
If you wanted to hear the sweat—besides that being gross—you could find it on Living with the Living, the band’s fifth full-length, released Tuesday.
Some critics have said the album is Leo’s most political yet, particularly because the song “Bomb. Repeat.Bomb” sounds like a vicious anti-war missive as it verbally the assaults mindless, faceless, video-game-ish nature of combat.
But punk politics are often much more intrinsic and personal than the left-versus-right cable news circus most of America sees. For Leo (who identifies himself as Teddy on his voice mail), political songs come more naturally than writing pop songs about love or relationships.
“Shake the Sheets (the previous record) was practically just like a musical blog at a certain point,” he said. “On the contrary, when I write a song like “Colleen” (on Living with the Living) for example, that’s something I have to think harder about: `Wow, this is kinda just really a personal song that’s obviously about somebody specific. How do I feel about doing that?’ The default mode is to deal with political questions.”
Though the band has gained popularity in recent years, selling out D.C.‘s famous 9:30 Club instead of sticking with the smaller Black Cat on this tour, for instance, and touring with Death Cab for Cutie, they’ve never strayed much from their dirty, loud punk roots.
The band switched record labels last year but stayed with small, independent Chicago label Touch and Go. Several songs in their catalog could easily be commercial hits that would blast the background colors right off any Fall Out Boy fan’s MySpace page, but Ted and Co. still huff their own equipment on stage.
“It’s like, this might be kind of corny-sounding ... the idea of paying someone to move my stuff for me, it just feels strange,” he said. “I could see at a certain point if we could afford it having someone to help but I can’t see having someone to do it all. I feel like I would have to remain involved in that aspect of the evening.”
Artists that lug their own equipment are fine by us. Just save some of that sweat for the show.
___
A TED LEO AND THE PHARMACISTS DISCOGRAPHY
(As compared to various items from The Legend of Zelda)
Tej Leo (?), Rx/Pharmacists (1999): The wooden sword. Everything’s kinda strange and bizarre in this new world of punk. Whoa, is that a goblin headed this way?
The Tyranny of Distance (2001): The bomb. Now we can start doing some damage. “Timorous Me” is so good it probably opens up secret dungeon passageways.
Hearts of Oak (2003): The Triforce. A sonic representation of everything you spent hours in front of the Nintendo trying to achieve, minus the lousy ending. Playing “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?” could easily defeat Gannon by itself.
Shake the Sheets (2004): The Magical Sword. Elegant and eerie, but it will still knock you out of your tunic. “Me and Mia” is probably the best song written in the past five years. Seriously.
Living with the Living (2007): A fairy. A good find when you’re down on your luck, and it will at least keep you going until you find another heart container.
