Music:
Member Since: 1/22/2005
Band Members: WARNING: SITE NOT YET COMPATABLE WITH INTERNET EXPLORER.
(SO USE FIREFOX. IT'S BETTER ANYWAY.)
garrett--guitar, vocals
mike--baritone guitar, vocals
melanie--keyboard, percussion, vocals, pregnancy
erin--bass, vocals
tom-drums, percussion, auto parts
Influences: "[A] Pixies-esque, hook-a-minute quintet"
-flavorpill
"Chicago quintet HIDDEN MITTEN...plays mid-tempo independent rock that is, by turns, dissonant and melodic."
-The Empty Bottle
I've been giving this a lot of thought lately,
and here's what I've come up with:
Wherever you find honest growth in music,
you will find an influence in the Hidden Mitten. It's not so much other peoples' music that makes me want to play, but moments in the short history of rock and roll that I think of when you ask what my influences are.
My influences are The Beatles stomping away in sweaty cellars on the Rieperbahn. The Kinks cutting their speakers with knives so that they could achieve their trademark fuzz sound. Frank Black's first "eargasm." These are the things that make rock music so attractive.
Kraftwerk, Thomas Dolby and Gary Numan pushing the technological limits in the early 80's
Bands like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine who refused to go away all through the 80's until music came to them instead.
The moment where it seemed digital production was about to eat itself, being geared toward the polishing of turds. When the grunge movement came, digtal recording had to backpeddle hard to take the emphasis off of slick production and turd polishing, and refocus the technology on accurately reproducing the raw sounds that prevailed in those days. Music with that kind of power, which had the industry scrambling despite the obvious handicap of the medium itself having gone digital around the same time--CD's were everywhere and tapes were just gone...it just makes me so fond of the whole idea.
Music *forced* technology to become backwards compatible in its purview, to accurately collect sound rather
than to enhance something horrible.
These are the things I love about rock and roll.
As a band, we are five people who do
what we do, simply because we don't know any better.
Sounds Like: I have to give credit to Erin's husband for this: "Thurston Moore takes over Weezer." I'm not certain I agree, but I like the idea. Or Doolittle era Pixies apparently. Strange, since that's my least favorite record of theirs by some distance...
Record Label:
Type of Label: None