Made
for TV Movie (CD release), Machine That Flashes
Meow
Meow, 527 SE Pine St.,
230-2111
9 pm Friday,
Nov. 17
$5
All ages
In his memoir
My World, Jeff Ott of punk-pop faves Fifteen states
that one of the best ways to destroy a car is to let Dan
DeVriend drive it.
The Story
of My Heroics CD is available from Portland's Jealous
Butcher Records.
CAST (in alphabetical order):
P.J. Aylward as The Drummer; Dan DeVriend as The Guitarist
and Singer; Tanya Smith as The Bassist; and Robert Stack
as The Narrator.
Narrator: Dateline: Portland, Oregon. A band plays,
its music a shifting audio storm that spins from chiming
reflection to twisting heat, pained howls and chain-sawing
guitar chaos laced with razors of feedback. The Guitarist
and Singer, a skeletal scarecrow of a fellow, paws at his
instrument, punches buttons, stomps on pedals. To his right,
a brunette plucks her bass with stony resolve, reeling out
thick cables of sound to lasso the noise, keep it from stampeding
into a formless void. In the background, a half-hidden drummer
alternates between slow-march rattles, quick-tempered fills
and triumphant hammering.
This is Made for TV Movie. Like their namesake film genre,
they're something familiar, yet subtly warped. The kind
of slightly unsettling display that, each time you think
of looking away, demands your attention with a quick plot
twist or brazenly manipulated hook.
CUT: Close-up of The Guitarist and Singer.
The Guitarist: "A made-for-TV movie is always very
wholesome. But there's a weird, dark undercurrent of strangeness,
like Partridge Family strangeness, where it's all
very nice--but I bet the dad's molesting his daughter."
Narrator: This same elliptical reasoning behind
Made For TV Movie's name seems to power its slanted, emotional
post-punk exorcism. Song meanings are elusive, hidden amid
obtuse lyrical phrasings. A latent sense of loss haunts
the atmosphere.
The Guitarist: "If I try to write something topical,
it's just a complete failure--my mind doesn't work that
way."
Narrator: Fortunately, Made for TV Movie's other
(rejected) choices for moniker indicate its lighter side.
The Carter Years, for example, was skipped for being "too
political." They also wisely opted to drop Kum Kleen and
Lucky Pierre from the roster of potential names (too many
website hits from icky swinger types). And the acronymic
version, MFTVM, led to inevitable KMFDM comparisons.
The Drummer: "That was never acceptable."
Narrator: While he may not be a fan of KMFDM's brand
of repetitive disco thrash, the Guitarist does play
a sampler--albeit an archaic, taped-up Casio SK-1 toy keyboard
balanced atop his Marshall, which he uses to record riffs
and loop the lo-fi buzz back into the system for maximum
damage.
The Guitarist: "I like electronics. I like not being
a regular guitar player who solos. That's not my goal. Ever.
At all. I'd rather explore different things that the guitar
can do.... The next band I'm in, I don't want to sing. It's
distracting. I'd rather hit buttons and play guitar."
Narrator: He's been around long enough to know.
The Guitarist logged five years and countless miles as singer
for screaming emopunks Bisybackson, fueling his desire to
escape the spotlight--though not until he's clicked off
a few more road trips with Made for TV Movie. The band,
though a mere few months in existence, has already tested
itself on a blitzkrieg tour, complete with a surreal "toxic
waste accident" horror story involving some real
Gary glitter.
CUT: View of speeding Ford Econoline shot through
soft-focus "flashback" lens.
Narrator: Made For TV Movie careens across the heartland--near
Gary, Indiana, to be precise. A seemingly innocent can of
aluminum oxide, an abrasive metallic powder used for screen
printing, rolls around in the loft compartment of the band's
van.
The Guitarist (voiceover): "All of a sudden there's
this magical silver cloud floating through the van. The
fucking canister had broken open and spilled everywhere.
And the van leaks tons of air, so it was circulating."
The Bassist: "It coated every inch of the van. So
then we read the can and it said: Avoid contact with
skin. You know: Wash immediately. Dan looked
like the tin man."
The Guitarist: "I was silver, completely silver.
So we walk into this KFC in Gary, Indiana, and ask to use
their bathroom, covered in silver."
Narrator: And you thought your war stories were
weird. Theirs are straight out of L. Frank Baum. But with
a name like Made for TV Movie, one can be sure everything
turned out OK in the end--no tumors or brain defects. Yet.
The Bassist: "We did actually use the dye we had
left to make T-shirts.... Though I'm sure in 10 years it'll
creep up on us...."
FREEZE-FRAME of The Bassist in mid-laugh. Fade to Negative
with Sinister Caption: To Be Continued...?
ROLL CREDITS.
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