Utah Jazz is the name of a professional basketball organisaton, who in 1979 relocated from New Orleans (one of the world’s jazziest cities) to Salt Lake City (the world’s most Mormon city).
It’s also the name of a hard boppin’ punk band from Buffalo, New York who have just released their debut album Ivory Wave.
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Featuring members of Brown Sugar and Mayday, the three-piece have taken their sweet time in releasing the album but their dual guitar rock action has been kicking a dent in the Western NY punk scene for a while now.
Taking some classic guitar rock and mixing it with weirded out punk they tackle subjects such as dogs who wear dog shoes “Dog Shoes” and dolphin porn on the instrumental but graphic “Dolphin Porn”.
We caught up with Britt, Brandon and Melody to find out more.
Noisey: Of all the small market professional sports franchises to name a band after, why did you choose Utah Jazz? Brandon: We just thought it was cool that the whitest state in the union could re-appropriate the word jazz and have it become part of an average vernacular. So we re-appropriated the whole term. We LOL’d to it and it stuck. TTYL.
What music genre would you associate Buffalo with?
Melody: Brewtality? It’s pretty eclectic nowadays. We play with metal heads and hippies and garage turkeys and hardcore bands and the common bond is alcohol.
Do you play Toronto more often than you would New York City?
Brandon: We’re a few hours closer to Toronto and when they ask us to play we say yes. We’ve got some buds there. NYC has their cool thing going on and we’re a bit unorganised so it just never became a regular occurrence.
Britt: We play Toronto more; we have frans (like friends who are also fans) there.
Did the Canadians change the law to make it easier for US bands to play in Canada?
Britt: We’d like to think that. It’s too bad we don’t return the favor.
Some of the requirements for your new bassist was that they could enter Canada legally and were fashionable but didn’t wear glasses. How did you go?
Brandon: It turns out nobody in Buffalo has those characteristics!
Melody: Well it still hasn’t worked out. There are already two of us with glasses, and that would leave one person out. We don’t want that! We don’t like that! Lots of people in Buffalo have DWI’s (they can’t go to Canada then) and the rest have glasses. Too bad… so sad.
Britt: I was looking at the list as a “Mary Poppins” list, the traits you would want your nanny to have. We might find this person someday, but we can’t rush it. I’d rather have a keyboardist, but that’s a whole other list.
What’s your most favourite of your new songs?
Brandon: “Sharon is Karen” (which is unreleased) is neat because it’s fast and people spill beer all over our guitars when we play it.
Melody: “Ivory Wave” is a neato number because it represents a different side of our songwriting skills.
Britt: I like all of the new unreleased songs we have been writing, but I guess on the new LP I like “Dog Shoes” because it makes me LOL.
Pre order ‘Ivory Wave’ now through Black Dots.Catch Utah Jazz at one these shows:
Sept 2 – New York City at Silent Barn
Sept 4 – Richmond at 25 Watt RVA
Sept 5 – Columbus at 2071 N. 4th.
Sept 6 – Bloomington at 420 W. 4th St.
Sept 7 – St Louis at B-ville Palace
Sept 8 – Madison at the Vault
Sept 9 – Minneapolis at the Riverboat
Sept 10 – Milwaukee at Borg Ward
Sept 12 – Chicago at Rancho Huevos
Sept 13 – Cleveland at Now That’s Class
