Ben Blackwell wrote a review of our show at the MOCAD on his blog, Tremble Under Boom Lights. Ben's record label, Cass Records is releasing our next seven inch in a week or so.
There was also this Human Eye interview in the South End.
February 02, 2007
Tonight at MOCAD: Human Eye Awes Another Curious Crowd
Johnny Garcia
Contributing Writer
At MOCAD tonight, the opening reception for the “Shrinking Cities” project should start with a nice raucous jolt, as Detroit’s own Human Eye is slated to perform. This four-piece outfit of crazed punk rockers has been screeching, screaming and throwing octopuses in and outside of Detroit since October 2003 and there seems to be no end to the madness.
The band’s penchant for weird stage props and costumes coupled with their loud, raw sound gives their live show all the excitement and electricity reminiscent of the days of our forefathers of punk rock. And although their music could definitely be considered punk, they certainly have a sound all their own.
The band formed after the break-up of the infamous Clone Defects, a more straightforward punk group fronted by Tim Vulgar, the Human Eye’s singer and guitar player. Whatever the reason for the break-up, the band seems to expand from where the Clone Defects left off.
They keep the rawness but spread out more to let the drums sprawl and circulate, while the guitar squeals, the keyboards buzz and pulsate and the bass keeps everything in place. Human Eye manages all of this while being potent enough to make your brain scream.
The band recently released a seven-inch on Ypsilanti Records and already has one full length out on San Francisco’s In the Red label with more to come.
With the recent addition of Brad Hales on bass, the band plans to continue playing shows and freaking audiences out. On a particularly cold Wednesday night I sat down with Human Eye to ask them a couple of questions.
The South End: How did you guys meet?
Vulgar: Me and Johnny met at a party and then I saw him at some Clone Defects shows, and when the Clone Defects broke up and I heard he made weird noise pedals, we hooked up and started jamming. I met Brad at a record store, Desirable Disks, that we worked at 7 years ago. I met Billy at the Magic Stick and I said, “You look like a drummer,” and he said, “I am a drummer,” and after we tried him out I was like, ‘holy shit! That’s the dude!’
TSE: You guys have a pretty musically varied background, everything from straight-up punk, to rock, to Motown and afro-funk stuff. Did you guys set out to sound a certain way or did it just happen?
Vulgar: I wanted to do straight ahead two-chord punk with noises and shit and we just kind of evolved…got rid of the first drummer and it just happened that way.
TSE: What about influences?
Vulgar: Anything that sounds crazy and awesome.
Hafer: Anything exotic or bizarre or ethnic or unusual, anything attention getting
Hales: For me, Motown and Detroit’s history of music, I spend so much time studying that and it definitely seeps in melodically. But I always go back to Duke Ellington’s quote that there are only two kinds of music, good and bad. It could be a country song that moves you or a classical piece, either it moves you or it doesn’t. So I’m just looking for the stuff that does.
Johnny Lazar: I’m into a lot of space stuff, I go to school for astrophysics…
Hafer: And I’m a painter and I live in the desert in the middle of nowhere.
Vulgar: And I lick toads [laughs]. I like biology, I like toads.
TSE: What about touring, you guys got anything planed?
Vulgar: We’re going to play some shows somewhere in 2007 [laughs].
Hafer: We toured in the fall and right now we’re developing a lot of new songs.
TSE: Cool. What about your past live shows? One of the coolest things about seeing you guys live is the performance aspect of the show; what you’re going to wear or do on stage. You guys have been known to do some wild things. Is there any one time that stands out?
Hales: We had a cow’s head; in Portland there was a fish head
Vulgar: Yeah, we went to this fucking Asian market and bought this knife that’s like 4 dollars, this big huge cooking knife and some duct tape and we went to the fish part of the market and they had these eels and weird creatures that are still alive. And Johnny says, “Look at that thing,” and it was some big-ass fish head and we bought that thing and put it on a bayonet. So we played this show and I duct-taped the knife on to the end of the guitar and stuck the fish head on the knife. And when I was playing the guitar I could feel the fish head weighing it down and it kept going out of tune so I flung it out into the audience and that was pretty cool. [Laughs]
TSE: How did people respond to that?
Vulgar: They didn’t put us on the Goner Fest video.
TSE: How do they usually respond?
Hafer: Usually people don’t like it and they leave.
Lazar: Some people like it, though.
TSE: Do you think people respond better to that sort of thing in Detroit?
Hafer: In Detroit they understand us better because they’re used to us.
Vulgar: They know what do at home with fish heads.
Lazar: I think there are a lot of good new bands in Detroit, but not a lot of people going to the shows anymore. Like the Frustrations and bands like that.
Hales: The Human Eye was the band I was always excited about in Detroit. If you would have asked me this question six months ago, before I was in the band, I would have answered the same.
TSE: You guys have anything else you want to say?
Vulgar: Yes. I do believe in music; yes I like to drink a lot, yes the next day my kidney hurts; yes I can drink with my eyeball [pours beer on eyeball].
Hafer: We’re not just a Detroit band now, we’re a band of America [whole room laughs].
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