vee device
Words From A Red State
www.tweedmag.comvee device breaks it down, talking to Tweed a bit about War, Condoleeza Rice and those secret identities.
How about you start off by telling us a bit about the band. How did you guys meet, get together? What’s the story behind vee device?
vee: While category may be what you need to gain recognition these days, in our case, it boils down to something much simpler — vee device is a group of friends whose goal it is to bring good, honest music to the masses. A goal we no doubt share with many bands out there. Popular opinion and critics are fickle so who knows how successful we’ll be. Whatever the case, we’d like to think that when future chronologers pick up their pens, history will absolve us.
The story of the band’s chance formation is a long one and perhaps too drawn out for the purposes of this interview but here is the distilled version. vee device came together in the autumn of 2003. Disparate elements somehow blended seamlessly; you know... the sum of the parts is more than the whole, and all that jazz. We’ve been constantly evolving ever since.
Lets move on to the name. What does it mean? Where does it come from? And what is this revolution you speak of? Musical? Social? Political?
vee: A “V” or Valor Device is technically an “accoutrement worn to denote participation in acts of heroism involving conflict with an armed enemy.” It is unique in the fact that it is one of the only such awards a civilian can earn. And so, here we are, advancing the vee Revolution.
Not that we’re really in a pitched battle against anyone in particular. More like the idea of Naqoyqatsi — everyday life as war. Whether it’s us against them, blues versus reds, carbs against protein, love versus hate, people have grown accustomed to a black and white presentation of the world. There is no longer any room for gray.
Sometimes, with all of this craziness swirling about, it seems the best a person can hope for is to go down with valor. But still, in the end, too many people place their emphasis on the discretized instead of the summation. It’s as simple as calculus. Live a valorous life, not one simply marked by alternating fits of valor and ignorance — that’s what the vee Revolution is all about.
And while its primary impetus is musical, it encompasses the social and political, spiritual and emotional. Part of art’s beauty stems from its endless capacity for interpretation. What you or I walk away with is a result of what we brought to the experience in the first place.
&roid: In my eyes, the revolution is mostly an artistic one, much like the art movements of fin de siecle Paris. The sort of art movement that helps to bring about social change and challenge long standing tradition.
From what I gather, there are three core members to the group: vee, &roid and G-Man.
vee: Yes, there are currently three members in the band. At times, we’ve had as many as five. We also have a habit of picking up guest players wherever we go. There have been many who’ve made contributions to our music. In essence, vee device is a cooperative effort based around a core. In this way, there’s always some stability in theme, but the instrumentation and arrangements retain their eclectic, unpredictable nature.
What is the significance of the cloaked identities? What role does this play in the band?
vee: As for the cloaked identities it is much easier to relate our checkered pasts under pseudonymous conditions. After all, the stories of rebellious youth can take a toll on our reading mothers—alter-egos give them a means by which to detach their dear children from the revolutionaries we’ve become.
&roid: Cloaked identities? What are you talking about? I guess my other name would be The Cellonator 4000. Seriously though, the cloaked identities are something fun we like to do. It allows us to feel a little more comfortable performing. The names conjure up characters that we put on, like an actor does when he is on stage. We don’t have the budget of Gwar so we have to create atmosphere on the cheap.
vee: It also confuses the heck out of the public at large. People become very self-conscious when addressing someone with an obvious nom-de-plum. The absurdity of it all keeps us laughing and laughter ensures we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
Let’s move on to the album: Out of the Darkness. Now, this is your first endeavor as far as LP’s go. What was the process for getting this CD recorded? Who does most of the song writing, lyrics, arrangements, etc, for the band?
vee: G-Man summed up the recording process very eloquently during the Out Of The Darkness sessions when he said: “What we need to do is just sit down and think really, really hard.” Truer words have never been spoken. Countless hours were spent sitting in the Basement Studios, thinking, recording, and then thinking some more.
Basically, every track begins as a simple idea. I do most of the songwriting and so they usually find their genesis in one of two ways: I write down some words and put them to music, or I fit the words in retroactively after coming up with a song’s chord structure - your basic singer-songwriter-type methods. With a melodic framework and set of lyrics established, I bring the song to the band.
And this is where the fun begins. It soon takes shape in ways I had never imagined. Added instrumentation can breathe life into a piece but we’ve found careful arranging is even more crucial to our music. On Out Of The Darkness, G-Man’s hand is evident in a majority of the arrangements. Taking his bluegrass and jazz backgrounds, he was able to fuse those ideals with the work’s inherently folksy-rock nature.
As for the instrumentals, many were written based on themes that appear elsewhere on the album. “Tuesday Morning Drive,” however, was an impromptu affair completely conjured by G-Man.
Finally, we took all the songs we’d recorded, laid them out in the order we wanted them to appear, and wrote some bits to connect them all together.
We’re extremely proud of how the album coalesced.
The theme of this album is omnipresent and cannot be ignored: the New York Blackout. Being a band from Colorado, a place so far removed from New York in more than just a geographic sense, what compelled you to use this event and for what purpose(s)? What exactly is the darkness meant to symbolize?
vee: It is good to hear you say that first sentence because the blackout theme has apparently confounded some critics. To be sure, from an outside perspective, a power outage that occurred 1500 miles away may indeed appear an odd choice of topic...
As a matter of fact, until recording began, we hadn’t even really hashed out the album’s overall arc. We had a handful of songs I’d written over the past year but little direction. Once in the studio, some interesting parallels between songs became apparent. That was when I set to work, fleshing those ideas out and writing the rest of the album around that framework. Some have criticized it for being too loose to hold together as a “concept album” but it was never intended to tell a direct story. I think they missed the point. We weren’t chronicling the history of the blackout; this is an album about cycle—how everything comes back around time and again. Everyone can relate in some way to what we were singing about. It just happened that there was a common thread tying everything together. The blackout was a perfect metaphor.
As for the darkness, it symbolizes fear and doubt. Each of these has a consuming power, a universal way of striking unease into people. When robbed of sight, most people have little to go on, so skewed is our sensory palate. We feel most vulnerable when deprived of sight because we trust our eyes above all else. They are our navigators.
Couple these ideas with the current cultural climate and there is an incredible thematic resonance. Throughout the world, fear is on the rise. As Glassner demonstrated, it permeates our culture. Yet, within it, we are firmly entrenched—a blackout still drapes itself across the land.
Did you find that a distant, outside perspective offered some sort of new, unique insight into the blackout? If so, in what way?
vee: I found it a fascinating spectacle. Contrary to what the evening news would have you believe, my NYC friends who were caught up in the blackout were more affected by the inconvenience than fear. But for the television audience, the incident was transformed into a harrowing tale, chock full of intrigue and suspense.
Moving back to the music, overall, lyrically, you tend to focus on experience and the personal but there are some bits and pieces of what appear to be social and political criticism. For example, the cut “Winston Churchill” gives the listener a picture of people struggling financially and socially in life. Also, in “Misbegotten Fame”, you sing “Buy this dress, expense will set you free.” Do you feel as if these are politically and socially motivated lyrics? How so?
vee: Yes, they certainly are socially motivated. “Misbegotten Fame” is an ode to commodified life—how everything is bought and sold. Fame is usually achieved through purchasing power alone. Thus the line: “Happiness, more or less, they’ll gladly guarantee by excess; buy this dress, expense will set you free.” Consumption is the new cure-all remedy, shrink-wrapped snake-oil with a mass-market sheen.
How do you feel overall about politically and socially motivated lyrics? Do you think there is a place for politics and social criticism in music?
&roid: Most certainly. Some of my favorite artists such as Phil Ochs and Dimitri Shostakivich wear their political hats quite proudly. Our society would be in a far different state today without protest music, punk rock, and progressive hip-hop. Music has the power to change people’s thoughts because it conveys messages in a way that mere words cannot. The music of Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony paints the clearest picture of Communist Russia’s suppression of art better than any essay on the subject that could ever be written and Phil Ochs’ messages could be more readily accepted by those who disagreed with him because of his catchy melodies and clever poetry.
vee: I agree but think there is a fine line. The danger inherent with such lyrics is that they can come off sounding like a diatribe from a raving, out of touch dialectic. But then again, music completely devoid of any motivated message lacks a certain power and can easily devolve into schmaltzy cheese.
Look back at the 60s—it was an amazing period of growth in music. You had the protest singers but for the first time, you also had those incorporating protest lyrics into mainstream, popular music. They were emphatic enough that it worked. Neil Young singing a line like “Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming...four dead in Ohio.” There was an outraged voracity there. Ochs, along with his friend Dylan, was on the leading edge of the movement. The music engendered a widespread connection with the everyman.
This was a point where things turned, and critical lyrics were no longer relegated to spirituals of the oppressed, late-night carousers in the corner pubs, or folksy front-porch picking. They were out in the foreground for everyone to hear.
It is important to speak out, bring your voice to bear with whatever means you have available, whether it’s us with our music or you with your magazine. The key is communication. If we all took the attitude that problems are obvious and relied on others to speak up... well, we’ve seen the results of that here recently. We have a responsibility to call attention to pertinent issues. After that, people are normally smart enough to figure out appropriate solutions on their own.
Coming form Colorado, a Red state, you can offer us North Easterners a unique perspective on contemporary issues. What are your thoughts on the outcome of Election 2004?
&roid: I think vee device is more in tune with the liberal thoughts of north easterners than many of our fellow Coloradoans.
vee: That’s for sure. Certainly, this election proved one of the most divisive. There was (and still is) a clear split in the populace. I saw two electoral maps that were quite interesting. Both were broken down county by county. One said “Bush Country” and painted the US as a frighteningly large swath of red. The other was labeled “Purple America” and illustrated how split the population is by mixing shades of red and blue in accordance with the vote proportions. Spinsters will work their magic but their red strokes cannot disguise the fact that half the nation is disgruntled with the current leadership. Speaking of which, I was pleased to see Tweed’s article entitled ”Your Worthless Opinion” — a refreshing, commendable take on the whole election process.
In any event, what was disturbing after Bush won was how the administration and analysts began acting like they had the national mandate. 51% certainly isn’t a broad majority. As soon as Kerry conceded, there were outspoken people saying: “Bush won, so now you have to change your mind. Come in-line with our agenda or you are in league with the forces of evil.” Perhaps it was said in terms less melodramatic, but the implication was clear enough.
&roid: I think there’s hope of reconciliation, but in order for it to come to fruition, we need to keep spreading a message of personal freedom and liberty, try to make a difference in our communities. The world is always changing and it is the people of the world who are responsible for and capable of changing it. “We the people” have a responsibility to make sure that we don’t leave too many choices to our figureheads without them knowing how “We” feel.
What are your thoughts on the War in Iraq? The War on Terror?
vee: The war in Iraq is clearly wrong. Justified under false pretenses. Aimed at revenge. Turned into a holy-war. Another crusade.
The doctrine of preemption is one of the more troubling things to come out of this administration. Logicians claim it fallacious to base arguments on prediction, terming it the “slippery-slope.” If predictive reasoning is a fallacy then actions predicated by it are necessarily reckless and unfounded. Justice, by its very nature, is reasoned—a fact which is traceable all the way back to the Socratic dialogues. So it follows that there can be no justice in pre-transgression intervention.
There are two grave consequences of a government following a line of preemptive reasoning: 1) being that they have the largest means with which to act, they thereby have the largest means to do injustice, 2) in their positions of extreme power, there are few in the world who can reign their flagrant abuses—none save other governments and they are wont to turn a blind eye.
The paradigm must shift. Think a modified form of timocracy—honor as the guiding principle for a ruling body. Wouldn’t that be something for a change?
&roid: Yes, it would. We are very strongly against the War in Iraq for all of the reasons that have been beaten to death by liberals all across the country. I don’t understand how killing people thousands of miles away makes us any safer. The Middle East is a big mess right now and it’s mostly America’s fault. We need to get out of there as soon as possible so that the community there can find their own path to healing.
vee: The War on Terror is an outlandish idea. To think that you could successfully prosecute such a war using conventional military might is ludicrous. These are criminal organizations. The War on Terror, much like its misguided predecessor, the War on Drugs, is only another extension of Monroe’s Doctrine.
Our current military thought is rife with 19th century strategies. Strategies being advanced by old-school theoreticians who it seems have never read Sun-Tzu or Mao’s treatises on guerilla warfare. And so, in the name of brining a small number of wrongdoers to justice, we ravage entire countries. There’s some distorted proportion for you.
What’s more, the language both camps were using during the election was preposterous. “We will find these freedom haters and kill them.” It’s not that they hate freedom...they hate us. And whatever happened to “bring them to justice?” To kill is indiscriminate.
Since the re-election of Bush, the administration has undergone some serious changes. One in particular is the replacement of Colin Powell with Condoleeza Rice, a woman who is described as having a foreign policy much more in alignment with the Bushes. With foreign policy being such an important issue in a Post- 9/11 world, where do you see this country headed?
&roid: To be honest, I’m trying not to think about it. There’s not a lot I can do to change George Bush’s mind about who he wants to help him rule the country (or run it for him, whatever the case may be).
vee: I agree, but this development with the Secretary of State is troubling. Colin Powell, viewed by many as the only stabilizing factor in the cabinet, leaves a void. Enter Condoleeza Rice. Her expertise lies in Cold War history. Here are a couple items of interest from her White House biography:
- “From 1989 through March 1991... she served in the Bush Administration as Director, and then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.”[1]
- “She was a member of the board of directors for the Chevron Corporation...”[2]
- Her published works include: “Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (1995) with... The Gorbachev Era (1986)... and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army.”[3]
And yes, our new Secretary of State has an oil tanker named after her.
I first remember seeing her during discussions following each episode of the CNN’s Cold War series in the late 90s. What she demonstrated during these discussions was a healthy working knowledge of a bi-polar power-struggle. But now, the Soviets aren’t there. And so, the administration is flailing, trying to fill the evil-empire gap with anyone they can find. That is how they best understand the world. “Terrorists” have become the new “Commies”—a plug and play approach to politics. Replace one enemy with another, but do not adapt strategies.
Tweed Magazine -- Friday, December 17, 2004
By William Wallace