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On the Venn diagram of music genres, space rock and classic rock don't
seem to overlap (or at least not successfully). Ghosts of Pasha,
however, promise that these diverse influences inform their
forthcoming album, and that they coalesce into a solid full length.
While GoP's self-titled EP scored the Vermont-based quartet some
attention, it wasn't necessarily the kind they wanted; a New York City
"organized fun" troupe, Improv Everywhere, attended a GoP gig on the
band's debut tour, and they came ready to rock armed with their keen
knowledge of GoP's lyrics and riffs. Frontman Milo Finch opens up
about IE's surprise appearance at their Mercury Lounge show and why it
both helped and hurt his band's career, how MySpace.com has changed
GoP's fan base and how lesbian love flicks can lead to balls-out rock
songs.
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Splendid: I first stumbled on to you guys on MySpace.com. What
has this website done for your band? Has your fanbase changed
at all?
Milo Finch: We've been getting a lot of hits on our other site
from it. It's definitely helped us out. When we first started on
MySpace and were playing more shows, a bunch of people came out to
shows from MySpace.
Splendid: Is that how Improv Everywhere heard about you?
MF: I think they heard about us straight from our website
because we had a mailing list that went out. I think a friend of a
friend knew them, and it must have got sent over to them and they
checked out our website.
Splendid: What went through your mind when they came out to your show?
MF: We were working (laughs). We were just up there giving back
what they were giving us. It was weird -- I mean, nothing really went
through our minds until a couple hours after the show and on the ride
back we were asking "what the hell happened?"
Splendid: What has the press from that done for you?
MF: It's made us work a lot harder in the past year since it
happened. It also jaded us a bit. A lot of people didn't know to
expect when they came to see our shows since then, it put us in a
weird spot since it made us a little bit of a joke starting at our
third show. So we never really had a chance to breathe or grow without
being under the gun. At this point, I think we're kinda taking some
time off from playing shows since we've been doing it since then
straight; just concentrating on recording a new record and putting out
our old material we've been recording along the way that we never had
a chance to put out because we were too busy touring.
Splendid: Your music sometimes reminds me of All Night Radio
with the sort of spacy, subtle psych rock aspect to it. How would you
characterize your music?
MF: There's definitely a space rock throwback feel. I mean, we all grew up
in the '90s and had our space-rock era. We kinda tried to mix it with
a little rock and indie rock-flavored guitar, basically just
regurgitating everything we like back. Everything from the Cars to
Mogwai to Radiohead to Talk Talk, even.
Splendid: "Power Bitch" is the EP's most balls-out track.
Tell me what and who the song is about.
MF: The song was actually inspired by a movie called Lost
and Delirious, with Mischa Barton from The OC. It's just
like a lesbian empowerment film and there was a scene in the movie
where the girls break up, and one of them is crying about it and starts
screaming, "Why you being a girl? Crying like a girl?" I mean
basically it's verbatim, a lot of it, we just thought it was a funny,
weird scene. And a lot of the people that we were hanging out with at
the time were complaining about stupid things and we just got annoyed
that they wouldn't do anything about it.
Splendid: Can we expect more songs like that on your
forthcoming full length?
MF: Like that? No. We're about to release two to three old
records that we had recorded since we started while we're recording
the new one, which should be out in two or three months. The EP that we have up
was recorded in three days. It was originally intended just to get shows,
and we never intended it to be listened to like it was. The new record
we've definitely be putting a lot of time in to and getting it the way
we want. Basically it's a space rock record. It's kinda like Teenage
Fanclub meets My Bloody Valentine meets a little bit of Tom Petty.
Splendid: You guys are from Vermont. How's the music scene up there?
MF: It's pretty awful. I think we're all about to take off from
Vermont. It's very jam bandy and it's not cohesive.
Splendid: Chunky Monkey or Cherry Garcia?
MF: Cherry Garcia, classic.
-- Julia Simon
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