 
What do you do when your record is taking its sweet time coming out? Geez, you recorded it last year already and the label tells you, “If anyone asks, tell them September”. You’ve hit the big time, but… not yet. All you’ve got to show for it right now are some promo CDs of the new record and a snazzy new white tour van financed by the label. If you’re Scott Blonde and Lisa Light of the Lovemakers, you go back to work. Well, sort of. In one sense, work hasn’t stopped for the trio-turned-into-quartet from the East Bay. They hit the Blank Club in San Jose, they went to LA and back and they’re opening the main stage at BFD, sharing the bill with Sleater-Kinney and the Foo Fighters. But what Scott and Lisa are talking about is dayjobbing. “I just took a couple of regular shifts at my old job,” says Scott. “I never really stopped working there, whenever we were in town, I would sub for people, but now that I have the regular shifts, my whole life has exploded!” He smiles widely. “It’s all about being around all those people all the time. When I worked with just two people all day, I though I was going to kill myself. The social thing is so great!” Lisa scoffs. “And yet at shows you never want to talk to anyone.” “Yeah I do!” counters Scott. “I’m always talking to people at shows. It’s super cool and nice, obviously. Unless, sometimes we’ll get crazy fans. We’ve gotten to a point now where people at shows will talk to you like you’re not a person. You’re whatever they have imagined you to be. It’s happening more and more.” “Will you sign my napkin?” asks Lisa, and then answers
“No! Weird!” Scott: “Why don’t you just stop by my work, where I can serve you!” Lisa: “Some art school brats were at one of Scott’s table and they wrote him a note that said, “too bad your waiting skills aren’t as good as your band”. I still have that somewhere. They didn’t leave you any tip.” The setting is Connie’s Cantina, an excellent little Mexican place on Grand avenue, near the Grand Lake Theatre. We wanted to do a story about the Lovemakers, simply because we like them. They did an instore performance at Rasputin’s that was absolutely incredible, and we’ve sold the hell out of their first independently produced CD (we still have some! Get it now before it’s gone forever!). We knew that they were on the bill for BFD, and we knew they had been signed to Interscope. We also knew that the article wouldn’t be timed so well for anything in particular. Anyway, we wanted write about the Lovemakers and we didn’t really know what to write about them. Ooooh, they used to get naked and make out on stage! They kind of have an eighties retro sound.! Lisa and Scott used to be a couple! What’s the deal with Jason Proctor and his pseudo Miami Vice look? Nope. None of those, so we invited them to tell us what to write about. We’ll take you out to dinner, we said, at a place that you really like, and you tell us what to write about. They chose Connie’s Cantina. “Scott and I have our own side projects brewing for the future,” said Lisa. “We’re going to have stoner, sludge metal bands, his would be called Magic Missile. Mine is called Too Stoned to Fuck.” “You could have a war like the Killers/Bravery thing,” Jason sips his Corona. “Serious trash talking!” Lisa shouts above the din. “ Our drummers could light themselves on fire!” Scott has obviously put some thought into his future metal band. “My concept is to have twelve guitar players, in a semi-circle and a drummer in the middle and a singer.”
“In a semi-circle!” he emphasizes. “With a big twenty-sided die above us, with all the numbers cut out, and a light in the middle!” This sets off the alarm for Dungeons and Dragons nerd. Luckily, Scott doesn’t try to deny it. “Sometimes we attempt to have a game, but then, after a day, we kind of remember that it’s not really as cool as it used to be!” There’s much laughter and another round of beers, except for Scott who sticks to mineral water. “What were we talking about?” Since we were at Connie’s, I might as well tell you that my chile relleno was excellent. None of the eggy crap that you get sometimes, but a very tasty chile and a delicious red sauce. Jason had some sort of burrito which he enjoyed immensely, and which Lisa coveted. “Once again, I ordered the wrong thing (two very nice looking tacos – ed.). Mine doesn’t look as cool as Jason’s.” But in the end she enjoyed her tacos del pastor. The waiter (Connie’s son, no less, and Connie was there as well) regaled us with tales of seeing Starship back in the day and hanging out with Carlos Santana. I feel obligated to discuss something that actually pertains to the Lovemakers music. This would be a good place for Scott and Lisa to sigh and say good night, but instead, Scott is enthused. “I would say that we’re different. It’s a really unique thing, with the guy-girl vocals, there’s nothing else like it. We’d like to think that we’re somewhere in between the whole Killers-Interpol thing and the whole Britney Spears-Justin Timberlake thing. That’s what we’re trying to pull off. Like what Prince did in the eighties.” OK. What do you say to that? “You could do an Appollonia kind of spin-off band.” Scott: “I’m behind that one hundred percent.” When the topic turns to the album, Scott has this to say: “I think it’s perfect.” So we say, will Interscope get mad if you give us a copy? Of course, we also discuss Live 105 and BFD, which for any band is a very cool thing. How did they get that enviable spot? Scott: “They just called us up out of the blue!” Lisa: “Aaron called me and goes, “Do you want to play the show, on June 10th?” I said, OK, because they had asked us to play Popscene things. So he says “Yeah, it’s gonna be a really great show, there’s gonna be a bunch of bands…” I thought maybe it would be at Slims or something. I had already said yes before I even knew what it was and then he said “It’s gonna be the Foo Fighters and …” and I’m trying to write everyhthing down and then he says “and it’s going ot be at Shoreline” and I already had hung up the phone and I was like “WHAT?!!!” I didn’t even know what BFD was!” Tom: “Do you listen to Live 105?” Lisa: “I do now!” Scott: “It’s pretty exciting! I can’t believe it. Live 105 has been behind us from the very beginning. Aaron just kind of took a liking to us and that was it.” Much joking ensues, with various suggestions about which Foo Fighters songs to cover and whether or not they’ll get a star on their dressing room. And then we adjourn to the Alley, the famous Oakland nightspot across the street, where legendary pianist Rod Dibble is supplying support for anyone that wants to sing. I want to tell you more about our conversation, but the real salient
point is that they named their indie record label after their cat Captain
Weird Eye. Jason has a Persian cat named Chester, that Lisa likes to
call Chest-hair. Lisa occasionally has racoons and possums invade her
house. There’s a guy in LA (“You fuck!” yells Lisa
into the tape recorder) who wants to kill Scott, even though Scott has
never met him. And their new drummer frequently offers to beat people
up. I try to get Scott to have some vodka but he sticks to his so-called
“clean living” bent. Lisa volunteers that doing yoga while
stoned is pretty cool. |
The
Fabulous Lives of the Lovemakers
“Twelve
guitar players?” we ask.