Caught in the Carousel

Birdsongs of the Mesozoic

By Peter Hamm

Birdsongs

Boston Massachusetts has served up some of the most wonderfully creative, moving and, at times, eclectic music imaginable. From composers Leonard Bernstein and John Williams to surf music icon Dick Dale and arena rockers Aerosmith, the city has offered the world some of the finest and most influential sounds ever recorded. All the while, Boston has continued to blaze trails in the alternative, indie, punk, ska (name your genre) scenes. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, bands like Mission of Burma, the Del Fuegos and the Pixies were making the rounds by constantly packing any of the city’s great venues: The Rat, The Channel, T.T. The Bear’s, Middle East or the Paradise. These bands would influence and inspire others to try their own hand at picking up an instrument and banging out a sound. All too often, the Boston bands of the aforementioned eras are relegated to “seminal influence” status on the liner notes of some other band. During those years, WBCN (then, “Rock Of Boston”) radio, along with one of the first alternative rock radio stations, WFNX, showcased the abundant local talent, while journalists from the Boston Phoenix would gush about what they had just heard.

In 1980, Mission of Burma’s guitarist, Roger Miller, approached Erik Lindgren about recording his recently composed piano pieces. The two had played together briefly in the band Moving Parts, which had split up in 1978. Lindgren agreed and offered keyboard over-dubs, while Mission of Burma’s tape magician, Martin Swope, served up the same with guitar. The results of the sessions were picked up by Boston label, Modern Method. In 1981 the label asked if a live performance could be put together to support the release. Rick Scott, also a former band-mate of Miller, assembled with Miller, Swope and Lindgren and Birdsongs of the Mesozoic were born. While intending to perform only one show, the audience reaction was so strong that additional shows were booked and shortly thereafter the musical project was signed to Rick Harte’s, Ace of Hearts Records. 30 years and 14 releases later, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic continue to melt minds.

I was able to break bread with Miller, Lindgren, Scott and Michael Bierylo, the remarkably talented, eminently charming and engaging “Triassic” lineup of Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. Over lunch we talked about the music scene in 1960’s Detroit, revolution in music, their many influences and their thoughts on popular culture.

CITC: How high were you when you came up with the name Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, and do you have any of that with you?

Roger Miller: Martin Swope, the tape-loop guy for Mission of Burma ... he had a record called Birdsongs of America, and when Erik and I first started this project, which Rick and Martin joined shortly thereafter, we needed a name for the band and I just kind of superimposed Mesozoic on America. At that time, the theory that a wing of the dinosaurs was turned into birds rather than reptiles - that was kind of a radical new idea so Birdsongs of the Mesozoic made current social, philosophical sense. My dad actually was a paleontologist.

CITC: For each of you, what was going on in your lives when you first picked up an instrument and decided that this was something you might want to do?

(They all jump in to answer and then try to “out-polite” each other with the “No. No. After you ...”)

Rick Scott: I was captivated by listening to music as a kid. As a kid I grew up in Detroit. It was pretty much a golden era, I think, of music in Detroit ...Motown. I remember listening to an old AM radio in my parent’s basement - and I used to spend all my time down there at night cranking the dials and listening to this old console radio and being really excited about music. And then the pop stuff started coming around and my ear was kind of attracted to that as well. And of course, you know, in high school everybody had to be in a band. So the first thing I did ... well actually I played clarinet through grade school (laughs). I think when I got more into popular music; the guitar was the better vehicle. Clarinet wasn’t really all that hip in popular music.

CITC: So MC5, the Stooges?

Scott: Oh hell yeah. That stuff sort of came around and caught my ear after I’d gotten into the rock thing a little later. MC5 - that stuff was everywhere. It was a great time to be in Detroit for music. Around the time I left, the scene had deteriorated quite a bit. They kind of had to be arena rock and it wasn’t that interesting. That’s one of the reasons I moved to Boston where there was such a vibrant music scene. At that time there, there was great art and music.

CITC: So how did you move into that particular brand of music and why the move into the more compositional Birdsongs sounds?

Scott: I think it starts with whatever gets your juices flowing. And then - my interests when I went to college, - I got into more contemporary classical music. That’s when I met Roger, actually; we were in a 20th Century music class and started becoming exposed. There were field trips to New York and the Charles Ives anniversary concert.

Miller: Yeah, the 100th Anniversary concert. First time I had been to New York. Pretty cool.

Scott: Yeah. It was a pretty cool class actually. So that was a great exposure to musical expression that I wasn’t all that familiar with up to that point. It just sort of broadened my horizons. At the right time.

Erik Lindgren: I was just going to say that I’m more drawn to composition. I mean, I’m a composer, pianist. One of my first memories of playing piano – before I knew how to play piano – was ...I remember writing a piece called “Night and Day.” You know, as I was a kid, “Night” was banging on the “ergghhh,” so I was always drawn towards composition. Immediately I ran into people that introduced me to stuff that wasn’t mainstream. I discovered that I was a big fan of the composer Erik Satie. I remembered that whenever I ever had a little money for school - you know, I was at a secondary school - I was always sending money off to the Boston Music Company and I was getting all the Satie scores. Like a baseball card checklist, I wanted to get everything he ever wrote. And I was learning about his ‘experi-music’--his nocturnes, not the well known stuff, and I really absorbed that.

CITC: What was it about the music that captured you?

Lindgren: Well, it was really more about siding with the French aesthetic rather than the Germanic aesthetic. They were more succulent harmonies, you know, things that were aesthetically pleasing to my ear. I kind of followed that path. Then I discovered Stravinsky and composers like that now come to mind.

CITC: And you’ve done the Rocky and Bullwinkle theme too?

Lindgren: (chuckles) Well, that was our fabric. It’s still the high-water mark for cartoon music.

CITC: You’re completely discounting the Flintstones. Michael, how about you?

Michael Bierylo: As did Rick, I grew up in Detroit and growing up in Detroit I listened to radio a lot, and the first thing I ever remember hearing, I was in my parent’s basement, hearing Chuck Berry playing “Maybelline.” You know, I don’t think that’s when the thing came out, but I just remember the sound of the guitar coming through the Bakelite radio - from the tubes and everything. There was this warm, comfortable, rhythmic thing about this. The imagery just sucked me in. My father worked for the auto companies. He was an engineer, a bit of a scientist, so growing up – following in my father’s foot-steps – I wanted to be a scientist. So, I had chemistry sets and chemistry labs and everything and I liked to build radios; crystal radios and portable types. I was on track to be “Mr. Wizard.” And then I heard Jimi Hendrix (nods and laughter)...so “Mr. Wizard” got, sort of, pushed aside and I started playing guitar. That was a big turning point. At the same time, the “Mr. Wizard” thing never really left. It’s shared a space with the Hendrix side. So growing up, I played guitar in high school bands and stuff. Detroit was a really rich place. The high school I went to, we had sock-hops. We had local musicians playing the soc-hops. We had bands called the SRC – Scott Richard Case - Bob Seger and others. Anyway, I was in a band that had the opportunity to open up for the MC5 when they played at my high school. So we got to meet the MC5 and hang out with them and find out the “thing” about music that I really didn’t want to do (laughs). It was kind of at the tail-end of their heyday and they already had a ‘crumbling at the seams’ ... personality. The music was just totally amazing! So that’s kind of how I got started. When I left Detroit, I went to Ann Arbor and for two years attended University of Michigan and discovered contemporary composer William Bolcom. That was also a turning point for me. He had a class at U of M in composition and that’s where I got started with a lot of new music things; serial composition - that kind of stuff - from his tutelage. After U of M I figured I wasn’t going to be a music major there, being a guitar player, so I came out to Boston and went to Berklee College of Music. What I find is if there’s something I get passionate about, I trace it down in the roots and find out where ‘they’ came from, what pulled ‘them,’ and that broadens me. When I was in high school I saw Mahavishnu Orchestra. That was another revelation. From there I’ve followed the railroads into jazz and what their influences were. It was a very fertile time in my life – high school, college, early years after college ... breathing stuff in.

CITC: So are you still breathing and drinking it in? Still exploring?

Bierylo: Oh Yeah! Absolutely. That’s one of the things I like about what I do. It’s not as fast and furious as what it was, but there are eras in my life that are marked by different people that I was aware of.

CITC: Where do you find “it” now?

Bierylo: Sometimes from my students. I teach electronic music at the Berklee School of Music. So a lot of times now I hear stuff from my students. A number of years ago I was teaching at the Museum School of Boston and one of my students said, “You gotta check this guy out!” This guy, named Aphex Twin, before he had even surfaced, and so that whole area of electronic music just kind of exploded. Also my son, who is now 13- years-old, he listens to stuff. That’s another avenue.

CITC: You have college and satellite radio contributing, but it’s always interesting to hear where artists are getting their influences from. Whether it’s older stuff and drilling deeper, or finding new and evolving ...

Bierylo: The metaphor I always look to is “drilling for oil to see if you get a little leak or a gusher” ... musically. We were talking about this the other day. Growing up in Detroit there was this underground radio, WABX. There was no real distinction, no genre that would define it. You could hear Count Basie, Cream and Muddy Waters. All of this “continual stuff” and that’s how – I think – we all learned about music and how we framed our perceptions of the relationship between music and the media ...and that got shattered pretty quickly (laughter). Now the web is out there. There’s so much stuff out there that you have to find a point of entry otherwise you just get lost.

Scott: See, that’s the thing that radio did for us back then is that it, was sort of a filter, a point of focus. With the Internet everybody can be everywhere and you have all the music. The problem is there’s no place to screen out what you want to hear, what you don’t want to hear. That’s the thing that frustrates me about radio. When we grew up, it was “anything goes.” It wasn’t, “this is what you should be listening to.” It was this is music – some of these are classics, some of these are new. The shows were put together by people who were passionate about music. Radio now is put together much the same way the labels are with bean-counters, saying - “How can we make money on this? How can we make money on that?” - as opposed to “How can we expose an audience to an artist that they might want?” The DJ’s we grew up listening to were passionate about music and it was infectious. We’d get excited about it. I don’t really feel the same thing anymore. It feels a lot more formulaic. We had a real advantage growing up.
Miller: In the early ‘60s AM radio was where you got everything. Then in the psychedelic era, suddenly FM became more of an interesting place for music, like Michael and Rick were talking about. You could get anything on there. And then once they realized there was money there, they became classic rock. And then you had college radio. So the hippies had FM and the punks had college radio. And then after that it got co-opted away. I mean, college radio is still really great. I’m not dishing it, but there’s this “thing” with the majors and college radio that they didn’t do before. Now you have the Internet where everything is available, and to cause a revolution, you have to be held down, and there’s nothing held down anymore. So I’m personally not sure – unless something changes – there’s really a way to get a new revolution in music; like punk rock was a revolution in music. Because everything is everywhere there’s no way for that to gain power and then explode something because there’s nothing to explode. You can expand anywhere you want. I think that’s a problem with revolution in music.

CITC: Do you want to cause a revolution in music?

Miller: It’s not my job to do that anymore, but Burma helped to do that back then. Well ...I’d be happy to, but you can’t ...

Bierylo: It’s kind of peripheral

Miller: Things are more exciting when there’s a revolution. The British Invasion was a revolution. The hippie thing was a revolution. Punk rock was a revolution. People that were into it were maniacal and it became a cultural revolution.

Scott: I don’t see it anywhere anymore. Today it’s kind of amorphous. There’s interesting new stuff, but there’s nothing that’s cutting the new tarp

CITC: Has Punk been co-opted?

Bierylo: Definitely co-opted (laughs)

Miller: I mean Green Day. They’re a fine political band in their own way. As far as their music, there’s nothing there, whatsoever, that hasn’t been done by the Buzzcocks. Nothing whatsoever.

CITC: Punk Pop.

Roger Miller: Punk Pop. Right. That’s the safe form of punk rock

CITC: There are a lot of bands trying to flow under that banner. The fashion statement period or what was happening in New York in the early ‘70s. Do you think that Birdsongs might be the next iteration of punk?

(Laughter)

Miller: It seems highly unlikely. I think it’s really interesting music, but I don’t think it’s going to cause a cultural revolution.

Bierylo: I think for a lot of us, from our perspective as musicians, it’s the next chasm we go down and we don’t necessarily think of what the ramifications are. At this point we just think about the music. There’s a lot of filtering that goes on. We think Okay, what do we normally do? Okay, we haven’t done this. It’s not on our radar as being the next climbing device. We hope to, as anyone does, add to the larger conversation that’s been going on about music. I think all of us are very grateful to be part of that larger conversation. I think when we all moved out of the garage we realized that you know you’re a contributory to music. If it gets to be a big river, that’s great. If it’s a small stream, that’s cool too.

CITC: When I was tiny, it seemed to be all about the fashion sense of it, green Mohawks and all the rest of it ...

Miller: All the revolutions ... fashion had something to do with it. The British Invasion came in and everyone wanted to look like the Beatles. The psychedelic era, everyone grew their hair long and wore bell-bottoms. That’s where it seeps into mass culture. If you don’t have a fashion you just have interesting music. Movements require – I think - a part of fashion. Like in the hardcore thing, they all shaved their heads.

Lindgren: By the way, when I met Roger in 1978, auditioning for this group we had called Moving Parts, Roger had long hair down to here (pointing to his shoulders)

Miller: (laughing and interrupting) It wasn’t down to my shoulders ...

Lindgren: But he also had facial hair.

Miller: It wasn’t that long ...

Lindgren: (to Miller) Well, you gave up rock music. In 1978 you gave up rock music to come to Boston and learn piano tuning as a new profession.

CITC: So then why in the hell did you answer the ad in the paper for someone who could play guitar and read music?

Roger Miller: (chuckles) Because I’d rather play rock music. There was no scene in Ann Arbor, where I left. Boston had a scene. I came in, there was a punk scene. I’d finally landed in a place where my ideas could become manifest. I saw that ad at the music school and said ‘reading music and playing punk rock’ what the hell! Why would I not possibly do that? So I threw all my jazz thing to the wind, shaved my beard and couple of years later my hair was a short as yours (laughs). You know, it’s kinda long now ...

CITC: For each of you, describe what it was like the first time you were playing live and knew that the audience was resonating with what you were doing. What was that moment like?

Miller: Our first show was a benefit for Modern Method (Boston label). We only had 3 songs. We brought in “Triassic, Jurassic, Createous” so that we could extend the set to 10 minutes. When we did that we brought in a drummer, Peter Prescott, from Burma. We did it at the Rat. It became this driving pulse and you could feel that pulse everywhere.

CITC: And the audience was into it?

Lindgren: Unbelievable. They were into it. It was almost scary.

Bierylo: (laughs) It’s been downhill ever since ...

CITC: Was there something else behind it?

Lindgren: A lot of it was the approach. We all have our unique perspectives on music, our appreciations. It was kind of this ‘yell.’ You know, I’ve always been interested in rock, but I wasn’t really a rock guy. I like it as an archival form. It was just this energy, and again the unorthodox instrumentation; these 3 sounds, the keyboard sound, the organ sound and this moog sound and then you had this very edgy guitar. All the while we’re using this android Holiday Inn-type drum box. It had a lot of potential, and there was nothing even close to it. I mean there was Steve Reich doing 4 organ pieces that had sort of an uppity flair to it. You know, I didn’t grow up in Michigan, but I actually had the first Stooges album and I was tucked away in a prep school in western Mass. They had this thing in the school store, and I was like, “WHAT?,” and it flipped my roommate out, so I was kind of aware of what these guys were going through.

Miller: I was actually at the Stooges first CD – er, I’m sorry, first LP release at the East Town Ballroom.

Lindgren: And I actually have a framed poster from the Stooges first record release party in 1969. So it’s kind of a common ground.

CITC: That’s alright. I actually have some framed posters of you guys as well.

(Laughter)

Bierylo: It’s all coming together then ...

CITC: Some songs come to songwriters in a flash; others take a long, windy road. How does it happen for you?

Miller: When I write, I’ll come up with a kernel. You know that riff from Chen the Arousing – that (sings) ‘Ba, neh, NAH’ As soon as I have that, I have a song. It’s just a matter of finishing it at that point. So it’s just that kernel in there and then I make up melodies after that.

CITC: So how do the rest of the guys jump in on that?

Miller: Well, we usually have scores. We’ll say, you play the melody there, this comes here etc ... I’ve always liked improvisation; let’s make noise and see what comes of it.

Lindgren: As the group has evolved over time it’s become a lot more composition driven. I think in Roger’s composition there are these ‘kernels.’ And they’re road maps. We’re following the score for the most part. The group, over time, has evolved. Before we were a chamber group that basically had stuff scored out, rehearsed, and once we had it ready we’d play. We would suck if we stuck to the same formula. Our other current member, Ken Field, he’s brought a whole new aesthetic to it. A whole new area or tangent to it. But it’s evolved and if it hadn’t evolved, we might as well throw it out.

Bierylo: You know, various members of this group have been around for about 30 years and in that 30 years there’s really been different eras and different types and ways of thinking about music. Before now, it’s become an opportunity to go back and reflect about what started this whole thing. I mean, where the group is now is a whole different place than where it started. There’s a lineage, a logic ... or as Erik might say a Swedish logic to it. But again you’re talking about different points in time. There are aesthetic judgments, the influence of technology, and other influences. The vantages have changed. But it’s a lot of fun going back ... especially for me because I wasn’t with the original group. I’m the new kid. So for me to go back and re-visit this material that someone else carved out is a lot of fun.

CITC: But also bringing your own spin to this material?

Bierylo: Not consciously. I’m really trying to do what Martin did, but I’m not Martin.

Miller: We were playing in New York and he was covering Martin pretty well, but he was doing it in his own way.

Lindgren: One thing about Michael, once he learned what the themes are about, he added his own sound, his own ideas.

Bierylo: I think what was interesting about the early sound of the band, was that Martin was not a schooled musician, and so what he added was a very personal voice. It’s so personal that it’s very difficult to duplicate. You can’t duplicate it by reading the parts. Again, he’s a very singular musician, I think. And one of the things that’s very interesting about the group is that it’s made up of singular musicians and I think that was the heart of the time of that early music. I think that still exists, but it has taken on a more compositional form than the actual sound or manipulations that happened in the earlier days.

CITC: Was there anything unique he (Swope) was doing with the guitar, looping it back?

Bierylo: From what I gather just about everything was unique ...

Miller: He’d never really studied guitar and he taught himself how to read when he joined the band. So everything he did came from a very left-field approach. I mean here’s a guy who played the bird call records. He had a very John Cage…well I have a Cage influence as well – but he would do a lot of that stuff.

CITC: I had read of Cage’s influence. You have also commented on Brian Eno. How big an influence is Eno?

Miller: I really liked his early records, his first four records, but I don’t know if it was really that big of an influence. Where did I say that?

Lindgren: Martin was much more involved with the Brian Eno aesthetic. He was very process-oriented and each one of us has a different method of working. Where I’m of old school coming out of composition, traditional composition where you have your parts ...

Miller: There is something that Eno did; he made an intellectual instrumental kind of music that helped pave the way for bands like Birdsongs to exist.

CITC: Switching gears, what are your thoughts on current “scene” cities; like New York or Boston; what existed or what’s happening there now?

Miller: Whatever is happening can be interesting to me, but I don’t see it coming out of a particular location. I mean, New York has cache’ because you can do more stuff there. I don’t think about it city by city. It used to be during punk rock or post punk that a city like Chicago came to the fore, then Boston came to the fore. Atlanta/Athens had that scene with bands like Pylon. I just don’t look at it city by city, and not just in rock music.

Scott: I don’t know. I don’t keep up with the scene. I mean the most recent show I went to was to see the Bunnies at the Middle East. It’s a band that Roger produced and they were great.

Bierylo: I’m kind of interested in stuff that’s happening with electronics and technology and am hoping, next year, to go to Berlin. There’s a lot of stuff happening in Berlin. It’s becoming kind of a focus area for creative manipulations of sound. Very innovative in the stuff that they do there. You know, Boston right now ...it’s a good scene for a lot of different things. I was thinking of what Roger said earlier about the connection to fashion; I would expand that to the connection to culture. Remember, Boston in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s there was really a cultural feeling. A feeling that you were part of something. When I go there now, I see that culture, but I’m just not connected to it. It still exists, but I just don’t have the same feeling that I did. We’re all not quite as involved as we once were.

Miller: It is true what you’re saying that there’s a look or a culture, but again, when I’m talking about revolutions…I mean, punk rock was viewed as ‘dangerous.’ If you looked like a punk, people would give you shit. The way everyone looks in Boston now is kind of laissez faire, ‘don’t really care and I’m kinda cool.’ There’s no threat to that. Like hippies--you’d walk around with long hair and get beat up if you had left Ann Arbor. If you’re not a threat then nothing is really going on. That’s what I see and Michael is right, there’s a way that people dress and a culture but it’s totally non-threatening. No revolution.

Bierylo: I think the threat of revolution now is not with society in general but with technology and compositions. That to me is a kind of revolution. But what Roger is saying is that it’s not with mass society. You know, 20 years ago if I walked down the street as who I am now, I’d be the enemy. I don’t feel like the enemy anymore. I don’t get that anymore. But there are certain places, you know, with rap music ...certain rap music, that’s really creative stuff. Stuff that we’re not exposed to on a daily basis. Stuff that’s really dangerous, but I don’t know if will translate into a mass movement.

Miller: Rap has already done that, but at this point seems to be so co-opted and the signifiers seem to be so mainstream at this point ...everybody is driving down main street with a boom-box and a jeep and half of them are white. So rap has been absorbed.

CITC: We’ve danced around the concept of the internet and getting songs out there. What is Birdsong’s approach to the Internet and it’s usefulness in music?

Roger Miller: Well, Mission of Burma has a record coming out, and we’re doing some special radio stuff and something affiliated with Pitchfork Magazine that you can link on and see on YouTube. But, you know, I don’t even know if that’s worth anything. I mean, Burma is a little bit more high profile, but I don’t know that there’s anything purposeful ...

Bierylo: Well, we have the MySpace page. I shot some video on stage in New York and put it on our Facebook site. So we have the Facebook group. So we have the trappings of that.

Scott: If you buy the CD there’s things you can click on and it will open up stuff.

Bierylo: Yeah. And we have the web-site which is a bit of an archive. So if you want to know anything about Birdsongs it’s all there. If anyone has interest in the group, you can type in Birdsongs into Google and up we come. In terms of, let’s say, what my students are doing with the Internet, they’re building their careers from it. For us, we’re aware of it and maybe are building our next stage with it. But I don’t know. The one thing I’ll say is that, I learn from my students and they will say; “Well what do I need a record contract for?” And I will say that Steve (Cuneiform Records) has taken so much off of our plate in terms of organizing the tour, getting word out ...so much stuff that my students have no freakin’ clue about. You get to a certain point and it’s a job. If your job is as a musician you have to parse your time out and create the time to do that. You’re not going to be a promotions person, you’re not going to be a record label, and you’re not going to be negotiating stuff. There’s a value to business empathy and Steve has been a really great model of that.

CITC: So when you’re not doing music, what are you doing?

Miller: Mostly music. I ride my bicycle to get from one musical thing to the next.

CITC: Are you still tuning pianos?

Miller: Not anymore

CITC: Guitar or piano?

Miller: Either one. They’re both different, and both good. We were doing an interview yesterday and Michael suggested I was the rhythm piano player.

CITC: Ok, but you’re not off the hook altogether. So what do you guys do when not doing music?

Scott: I probably do more music than anything, but I have to work to support my music habits. I do have a day job ... I’m a sales weasel.

Lindgren: He’s sort of notorious in the New England area. Everyone knows him. Everyone loves him. I run a re-issue record label. This is why I’m kind of fascinated with looking back to look forward. It’s called Arf Arf (www.arfarfrecords.com) and I’ve got about 6 dozen releases. It’s not the type of music I make. It’s got basically, the ‘60s, the garage stuff, psychedelic. It’s got a fairly big presence to it. Then I also have a recording studio. You know you can’t quite make a living on Birdsongs royalties, right Rick?

Scott: Not quite, but we’re almost there!

Lindgren: Yeah we’re close. How we doing on iTunes?

CITC: So when you came into the recording studio, was that an 8 track?

Lindgren: No. It was a 4 track! It’s evolved over the years. I mean, some of my favorite records were made on 2 and 3 and 4 tracks.

CITC: What are some things that you guys wish folks in my position would actually ask you?

Scott: I think you and other interviewers we’ve been speaking with have a knack for coming up with good things on your own.

Bierylo: Journalists over the years will ask things that people are interested in, and might want to know about, but they might not be the things that we would gravitate towards. So for me the journalist might be making a statement to us as much as we might be making a statement to you. If you’ve thought about the questions and the things that you want to know, that’s a statement to us. That means that we’ve managed to put something on the table that becomes fertile ground for your questions.

Miller: I can hear you moving the question ‘here,’ and we move it ‘there.’ It ends up covering all the bases.

CITC: I don’t want to ask the stupid things like, “If you were a tree what kind would you be?”

Scott: Thank you, but we could talk about politics.

Bierylo: Nah, we don’t wanna do that ...

CITC: Do you like the current administration?

Bierylo: Yeah.

Scott: Hell of a lot better than the last one.

CITC: I really appreciate you taking the time to sit down here and do this.

Bierylo: Not a problem. We love talking about ourselves. You know, one thing that Roger does is scoring soundtracks--has done so for about 15 years now. We’ve been working together on this and I do engineering for him. That’s how Roger and I are connected. I didn’t really know him before I joined the group.

CITC: To read about it, there are two spots on the planet; Ann Arbor and Boston ...

Bierylo: Rick and I grew up pretty close to each other in Ann Arbor

Miller: That is a really interesting thing about the band, there’s always a real strong Michigan element. Originally there were three people from Michigan. When Martin left, Keith Adams took over and he was from Michigan and then Michael took his place. But with Ken Fields in the group now the balance is slightly off because Ken is from New Jersey. But Michigan is pretty prevalent.

Lindgren: You know, I always had this real Michigan fixation. Screw Nashville, screw New York, and screw Los Angeles. I was aware of all this Michigan stuff and couldn’t believe it. It was my favorite place for the ‘60s music.

Miller: Right. I mean we were driving down the road at night on the New Jersey turnpike and Erik has this A Squared records compilation which is like the mid-‘60s bands. Some were obscure, but we knew them!

CITC: Are you still piling yourselves into vans and doing your own set-ups? No one working for you as roadies?

Rick Scott: We’re doing it ourselves...

Lindgren: I don’t think anyone can wire up my equipment. One of the thrills for me about this endeavor is that I was able to drag a lot of my antiquated equipment out of the basement. No one in their right mind would have any of this stuff that even works. I have old drum machines, what’s called pre-midi. This is obscure stuff. I think from maybe the first note I had two drum machines that were a bit out of synch, but the sound alone brought you right down to maybe 1982, 83.

Miller: Yeah, instead of a CD player, we have sound effects. Erik has a hand held cassette deck. During “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” he’s scratching it back and forth. No one in their right mind would be doing this.

Lindgren: And it works. I mean it’s a colossal hassle when I set these things up. (Turning to the band) You guys have no idea. But it works!

Bierylo: I’m very happy to let Erik do this. It’s like a vacation for me. I mean, all I do is set up a guitar and play

And – later that night – play they did!

Sunday, July 26 Talking Head Club, Baltimore, MD

For the fourth stop of a five show mini-tour, the Triassic lineup of Birdsongs of the Mesozoic came to the intimate setting of Baltimore’s Talking Head Club.

Amanda Schmidt and Rod Hamilton of Baltimore’s minimalist band, Avocado Happy Hour got things rolling through four ethereal and lovely atmospheric songs. With Rod on the vibraphone, and Amanda on a Rhodes piano singing her way through a warm and private delivery, the stage was more than appropriately set.

Next up were Baltimore’s amazingly talented Lo Moda. This 6-piece band consists of Raili Haimila on viola, Gillian Stewart Quinn on keyboards, Christian Sturgis doing some brilliant guitar work, Anthony West creating a wonderful foundation with her bass, Scott Braid completing their great rhythm with the drums, and Peter Quinn sounding and moving in an eerily similar fashion to Joy Division’s Ian Curtis. Lo Moda took us through some tracks from 2006’s Gospel Store Front release (Creative Capitalism label), as well as blazing through songs from 2009’s excellent Replica Watches. The sounds were ripe with influences of The Fall, Joy Division and John Cale. A six-piece band on this smaller sized stage in this smaller sized venue might overpower and thus fall into a wall of noise trap. Yet somehow the 6 gifted artists that make up Lo Moda were able to clearly push their songs out so that all in attendance could enjoy the individual parts as the sounds – all at once - played against and yet supported one another.

Very soon after the opening acts had left the stage, the corporeal punch of Birdsongs of the Mesozoic could be felt in one’s torso and in one’s mind. To support the release of Dawn of Cycads (Cuneiform Records), the 1980-87 “Triassic period” of their music; Erik Lindgren, Rick Scott, Michael Bierylo and Roger Miller, masterfully took the audience through the following 12 songs and an encore:

Shiny Golden Snakes
Sound Valentine
Lost in the B-Zone
Chen / The Arousing
Scenes From A ...
Beat of the Mesozoic-Part 1
Theme from Rocky And Bullwinkle
Transformation of Oz
Ptoccata
L'qabbil Insaanya
The Orange Ocean
Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous
Pulse Piece (encore)

The opener, “Shiny Golden Snakes,” began with the metrical rattle that gives way to a cadenced synth/organ rhythm which made you feel as if you were being shaken by the core of the earth. This sound and feel powerfully created the foundation for the sweeping guitar and piano interplay as the song progressed. From there we were taken to the beautiful piano that is the centerpiece of “Sound Valentine.” Sometimes haunting, sometimes urgent, the song combined amazing percussion cadences. Brilliant electric and acoustic drumming was prevalent throughout all of the songs. Halfway through the set, Birdsongs launched into my personal favorite “Beat of the Mesozoic – Part 1.” The song opens with a furious and urgent piano and gives way to a cacophony of staggering African drum beats; “Drum-line” in quality, sound and feel. From there, the band went into their cover of the “Rocky and Bullwinkle Theme.” In my conversation with the band, Erik Lindgren commented that this piece remains the high-water mark of cartoon music. For this evening, it was simply one of 13 high-water marks. Throughout the performance it was fantastic to watch four men enjoying themselves as they offered up their creations. We witnessed them throwing hand-sign cues to each other as the songs turned and wound to their conclusions. For the encore, Lindgren donned the vintage bird-head that Roger Miller had made out of paper mache back in the early '80s which is their mascot headdress. An audience can feel and appreciate sincerity, and it was brilliant to watch artists having fun plying their trade.

Let’s face it, labels are for canned food. However, if you were to combine elements of jazz improvisation, classical composition in some sort of a sound blender and then topped it off with a smattering of post punk rock, your concoction would be called Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. This is astonishingly contemplative, rhythmic and physical music. In all things artistic, it is a good sign when that piece stays with you long after you first absorbed or witnessed it. The Baltimore, MD performance of Birdsongs of the Mesozoic will remain with me for many, many years to come.