Résumé
Less Lee Moore
Website: http://www.theautomatik.com
Email: theautomatik@gmail.com
Why I should write for you:
Love of music has been the driving force of my life as long as I can remember. Without a doubt, it has shaped me as a person. I’m not a hipster and I’m not preoccupied with seeking out only the latest music, but instead, seeking out only the greatest music. The highest compliment someone can pay me is that my writing about music has touched them or inspired them to listen to bands they’ve never heard before. I co-created a zine with a friend called Smack Dab that lasted from 1994 to 1998. Someone once called it the perfect combination of Sixteen magazine and Creem magazine.
Earliest musical memory:
I recall obsessively listening to Barry Manilow Live! around age 5 and I still have the photo of me holding up the album when I got it for Christmas. At some point I took a safety pin and scratched “I Like Him” on the cover. There were similar obsessions with the soundtracks to The Wizard of Oz, America Sings! (Busch Gardens attraction with singing puppets) and Annie. Thankfully I have recovered from that last one.
Early musical influences:
Adam and the Ants, early 80s MTV, Friday Night Videos and Video Jukebox, Gary Numan, musicals, my stepfather’s Bowie albums, Split Enz, The Beatles, WTUL college radio (Tulane University; New Orleans, LA)
What I listen to now:
Aerosmith before rehab, All the stuff I listened to in the 80s, Breakfast on Pluto soundtrack, Brian Eno, Cheap Trick, Death From Above 1979, Disco that doesn’t suck – it’s not an urban myth, Elliott Smith, Flop, Glam Rock, Hanson, Imperial Drag, Jason Falkner, Jellyfish, Jim Thirlwell in his many forms, Joel Plaskett, Led Zeppelin, Morrissey, Mr. Quintron, Peter Holsapple, Pulp, Punk that doesn’t sound like Good Charlotte or Green Day, Queen, Redd Kross, Roger Joseph Manning Jr., Sparks, Suede, Super Furry Animals, The Beatles, The Cowsills, The Meligrove Band, The Move, The Smiths, The Stooges, Thin Lizzy, Thrush Hermit, Tricky Woo, TV Eyes, XTC
Early influences on my writing:
Bill Murray in Meatballs, Brideshead Revisited, Hammer of the Gods (I must have read this 20 times in high school), I’m With the Band, John Hughes teen comedies, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, photo captions from Creem magazine, Spin in the early 80s
Current influences on my writing:
David Cross, film essays, Hurricane Katrina, Lester Bangs, Mojo magazine, Nick Kent, Paul Feig, Please Kill Me, Raymond Chandler, Rock bios, Tanith Lee
First music piece written:
Probably the Duran Duran fan fiction I wrote at age 12 – though we didn’t call it “fan fiction” then.
Favourite music pieces written:
Thoughts on Barry Cowsill, 1954 – 2005
Excerpt:
Although the Cowsills’ music is often dismissed as nothing more than bubblegum fluff, I assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. This was not a band that was put together by men in suits; this was a family who loved music and who were (and are) very good at writing and performing it.
Most people probably know their hits like “The Rain, The Park and Other Things” (flowers in her hair, flowers everywhere!) or their cover of “Hair” (complete with lil’ sis Susan’s recognizable “And spaghetti!”). It was this version that Leonard Graves Phillips from L.A.’s punk goofballs The Dickies used as a template for that band’s own cover version in the 90s. No stranger to the tragedies and pitfalls of early fame himself, Leonard once admitted in an interview that he adored The Cowsills’ “We Can Fly” and used to hide the single under his bed so he wouldn’t lose punk cred amongst his peers.
We Are Being Reduced
Excerpt:
Music was my thing. It belonged to me and no one else could claim it. The music I listened to seemed like the answer to all the times I questioned why I didn’t fit in or why I had few friends. It was the solution to all the lonely days spent making up plays with my dolls as the actors, all the ersatz radio shows I’d created adopting fake British accents. These bands were obviously misfits who didn’t fit in, either; why else would these boys wear make-up and strange clothing? If being weird was going to be something I was stuck with, then I was going to make damn sure I milked it for all it was worth. If the popular kids listened to music on the radio, then I was going to listen to music I saw on MTV.
My strangest encounter with a band:
In the mid-90s, Kim Fowley tracked my friend and me down through our New Orleans-based fanzine, created from our devotion to the band Redd Kross. Kim insisted upon meeting us. Naively, we agreed. Little did we know what an insane creep he was.
During the meeting, Kim ranted about blowtorches and Redd Kross’s Jeff McDonald stealing his music. After I left he even performed a runway-style fashion show, which consisted of Kim modeling outfits he thought Jeff should be wearing.
For months we continued to see Mr. Fowley around town. He continued to talk about blowtorches, the hit songs he wrote for KISS, and how we should not give Jeff McDonald his phone number. Obviously he knew about Jeff’s history of prank calls. Immediately we forwarded Kim’s paranoia on to a highly amused Jeff, someone we knew casually as fans.
Kim eventually started making threats such as, “I’ll come after your mother if you give Jeff McDonald my phone number.” The pièce de résistance was when Jeff himself related the story on a Canadian radio interview. In translation, however, the story had transformed.
Jeff’s version: He told them, “If you give Jeff McDonald my phone number, I’ll blowtorch your mother’s face.”
The added High Fidelity factor – Top Five Favourite Bands of All Time:
- Redd Kross
- Pulp
- JG Thirlwell et al
- Sparks
- Cheap Trick
