Life As Art, Loudly
oh my god
by Dean “I’m Not Worthy” Bonzani
10.8.04
Chicago’s oh my god are the best kept secret in this town.
The first time I ever saw this fire-breathing trio from my own home city by the lake, it was by accident. I blundered into a local cocktail lounge with my vivacious date and there they were. The two of us stood there in the middle of the dance floor, bundled up in heavy winter coats with all the trimmings, staring at the weirdness of oh my god. What was this music? So strange and compelling. So HUGE, but coming out of three guys. Was the keyboard player possessed by demons? Was the drummer trying to kill his drums? I turned to my companion, who was just as dumbfounded as I was and asked, “Doesn’t the singer look like Charles Manson?” She nodded. We stood there for song after song, transfixed. I finally turned to her and asked, “Do you want to stay?” Which was kind of stupid, because obviously we couldn’t leave.
It was so...different. Aggressive and raw-throated rave-ups that segued into achingly sad piano passages that seemed to suspend time. Songs that seemed to come out of nowhere, and lead the listener down odd passageways. Savage drumming of inside out beats, played by a ridiculously lanky and handsome young man whose cymbals were set up at an impossible height to facilitate the reach of his long arms. When he played, it was like watching a wheat threshing machine, and he was as deadly accurate as he was brutal.
And it was all so...beautiful.
The man behind the organ was like an amped up Beethoven, eyes closed and mouth agape in rapt concentration as he summoned gargantuan tones from his organ. Occasionally, he would break out of his reverie and grin broadly, evidently deeply in love with his music—deep in the joy of performing it.
And the skinny man with the Manson beard.
For some songs, he’d strap on a bass guitar, stomp on a distortion pedal, and play liquidy lines high on the fretboard, but mostly he’d sing, with a voice like warm chocolate cake dripping with butter cream frosting. (Made with real butter, mind you.) His energy projecting outward in all directions for a solid thousand feet, he was a magnificent lionine presence, leaping and crouching, every movement so attuned to the rhythms rolling from the stage that it often didn’t seem real— didn’t seem possible. It was electrifying.
Oh my god pierces the blubbery psychic membrane that coats our senses, allowing them to roar to life. Oh my god reformats one’s notions of what rock and roll is, restoring faith in the creative impulse and leaving its audiences panting with lusty appreciation for the natural self. Their sound is deceptively large, their compositions startling in their originality, and their performances absolute in their determination and power.
What is the sound of oh my god? It is the sound of Edison’s fascination with universal force! It is the sound of humankind pushing with all its might against the filmy curtain that separates dreams from waking! And it’s kinda like Hüsker Du.
If OMG was a car, they’d be a bitchin’ Camaro with an F-14 jet engine under the hood. Lime green. With purple stripes. And big ass mag wheels.
OMG is Milwaukee native Billy O’Neill, vocals and bass; Philadelphia-born Iguana, organ, piano, and backup vocals; and Fort Wayne, Indianan drummer, Bish. Before he turned organ into a punk instrument, Iguana toured with Junior Wells, and recorded with Junior on his 1997 Grammy-nominated “Live at Buddy Guy’s Legends. He’s recorded with Carey Bell and Koko Taylor and played live with Van Morrison, Jeff Healy, Otis Rush and Buddy Guy.
Oh my god’s last album, “Interrogations and Confessions” is brilliant, and spawned a DVD single of the song “Get Steady” that all true fans of the band will want to own and treasure. The band has two other albums, “The Action Album!” and “Well,” as well as an EP that was recorded early on, which includes the cult favorite track “My Liberal Lifestyle.” A brand new album is just a lap hair shy of being ready to distribute, and will, unfortunately, not be available on the first leg of the band’s latest tour.
I recently had the supreme pleasure of talking with Iguana, and the ever-gracious Billy O’Neil. Bish, who enjoys hiking and the outdoors when he’s not onstage, was not in attendance, but then, he’s the quiet type anyway.
Billy O’Neill
“My start in music began when I was being babysat by the family down the block in third grade. They had a son who would play me Black Sabbath and Rush records. I’d tell him to turn the speaker out the window and play “Iron Man.” Just gleeful about all that. That was followed by lots of singing into bathroom mirrors and singing along to the radio. I got a bass guitar when I was in high school and I was too lazy to learn how to read music, so I would ask people, ‘How do you play this song? How do play that song?’ I played the bass because everybody wanted to be a guitar player, so I’m like, ‘Sure, I’ll play bass— no problem.’ I got in a band later, and was living in Milwaukee, playing. Then I moved to Chicago at the insistence of a friend who said, ‘You gotta come to Chicago, man!’ That’s where I was playing when Iguana saw me in a band. I got a phone call from him. He brought over a tape— very unusual and different. The beginnings of his organ sound...(strange background noise like the swooshing of large amounts of smokey air through a cylindrical object) ...see? There it is right there. I could tell that it was a really original sort of conception. My response was like, ‘Hmmm. Very interesting.’ It was a curious sort of a thing— it was certainly unlike anything I had heard before. To me, there’s a million different ways to be cool, and really, all that matters is that you’re just tuning in to what is occurring organically, and I just went with it. Next thing you know, I’m combining my classic rock and pop rock sensibilities with his punk rock organ. And, lo and behold, we had oh my god.”
“I’ve always felt that, for me personally, I’m just as inspired by a friend who’s doing something with a visual art thing, or somebody who’s made a short film as seeing another band. I just feel that hopefully we keep our senses open to all the things going on around us, whether we’re doing it consciously or not. Integrate anything that’s inspiring into our process. You never know where motivation comes from sometimes. Life as art, etc., etc.”
“I like the quiet time and being able to read and things like that, and being on the road affords those opportunities. But I also love going out and seeing theater. I love seeing live human beings doing things. Increasingly, we get separated and isolated, and people are in their houses, not even aware that there’s live music happening in their city. We can trace some of that to the unfortunate media centralization, when one company owns 1,200 radio stations and they all have the exact same playlist. Pretty much anyone who’s out there playing music in bands can lament that situation.”
“Flint, Michigan has been fantastic. That city has had so many economic problems, and there’s this really vibrant music scene alive there that is supported by all these kids in town. We go to Flint, we show up and play to sold out... 250 people every time. Tucson, Arizona is a burgeoning place for us. Our last show there was fantastic. New York City has done well for us. Obviously, when you’re talking about New York City, there are millions of people who have no idea who the hell oh my god are, but we’ll expect to see 150 people there— the word’s getting out on us. Each time the crowd’s a little bigger, the show’s a little stronger.”
“For the last couple of years, we’ve done 150 shows a year, and we’re getting things— like somebody just sent us something from this big biker rally that occurred in Minneapolis, a photo of somebody in the front row of this rally wearing an ‘oh my god’ T-shirt. We didn’t know who they were or anything like that, so occasionally things like that happen. I think in Forbes magazine, of all things, they’re doing a story on the Rolling Stones tour and one of the guys on that crew was wearing an ‘oh my god’ shirt. There’s a photo. So, I just think when you’re out there as much as we’ve been the last couple of years, people are responding, and we’re just doing our bit to spread the good vibes. Just spread creativity and be a voice that is our own and that hopefully encourages other people to be creative, and let their freak flag fly. To hopefully lessen the weight of the oppressiveness sometimes of the world around us, that so often seems to be about sameness. If we can do that, it’s certainly time well spent.”
Iguana
“We learned early on, as we were figuring out who we were as a band that we were never going to really rock as loud and big as a band with two guitars and bass and drums. It’s all about juxtaposition— if what you’re playing here is spacious and tender or whatever it might be, and then you go into a part where you pull out all the stops, literally— you know, on the Hammond organ I pull out all the stops— and he turns on the bass like that and we GO. You can sound as rockin’ as anybody. We have the advantage that our tones don’t sound like most other bands, and our songs are so eclectic that it’s hard for us to compare ourselves to other bands, and visa versa.”
“I was always a piano player, and I used to play fifths when it was the thing to do. And I got to playing organ, and I found that, when you don’t have a real Hammond organ with you— I have a real Hammond organ in my basement, but I don’t travel around with one. But I do travel around with a Leslie speaker that I find it important to use. I found that there’s this pedal that’s the preamp for that Leslie, that’s called a Trek pedal. It has basic e.q., and it’s got a ‘high’ and a ‘low’ gain input, and when you put it on the high gain input like you’re supposed to, when you plug an organ into there, it’s just like when you play a real Hammond organ out of a Leslie— when you play at your full volume, it starts to get a little bit gritty. I found, though, that when I plugged it into the low gain setting, like you might do with an electric guitar or something that doesn’t really put out a lot of loud signal that needs amplification, I found that if I was at volume ‘2’, I’d be loud; if I was at volume ‘4,’ I’d be distorted; if I was at volume ‘6,’ I’d be very distorted; and if I was at volume ‘10,’ I’d be outrageously distorted. This guy that I know in Chicago who sells and works on organs said, ‘You can play at all the volume you want to— you’re not going to hurt the speakers, you’re just going to overdrive them and get that kind of sound.’ And the tubes look like an electrical storm when you’re playing that loud.”
“I’ve always been so inspired by American punk music like Hüsker Du. I learned all the Add nines that went in that kind of music, that Bob Mould was always playing. A fifth with another fifth on top of it. That stuff sounds so good on the organ— I pretty much stopped playing thirds. I pretty much stopped playing major and minor chords, except for we have a lot of songs that have piano. The organ at the distorted volume like that, when you play a third, it sounds kind of out of tune. It sounds very shaky and weird. It’s pretty rare that I play one. I’ve gotten to be really proficient with voicings that are the kind of voicings that guitar players use. Really, people that are very familiar with rock bands and rock guitar bands can walk into the room, and they’re absolutely sure they’re hearing a guitar player. That’s because of the tone, and because my sensibility has been aligned with guitar players. By what turns me on to play, and to listen to. People are amazed that I’m not deaf. They should revisit me in twenty years, because I do really like the sound so much as it comes out — I like to have the speaker right near me, and get that incredible sound, like I guess I could have gotten out of a Marshall stack or something. But when I’ve plugged into guitar amps, it just doesn’t sound as good. I think there’s something about a Leslie that is meant to go with an organ, designed to go with an organ.”
“Some of the high (in pitch) stuff I do is my imitation of feedback. You ever listen to Superchunk? They have so many moments in their songs and at the start of their songs that’s just this kind of anticipation that always excited me, where you hear this one high pitch of feedback, and then the entire band, you know— two guitars, bass and drums just hit! And it’s always so exciting, that moment of...levitation...where you’re just hearing this high pitch. And so a lot of the stuff I do is, I’ll be playing big chords and big loud parts, and then as we’re about to go to another part, I’ll just leave one high note that I’m playing up. I’ve gotten to do it so subconsciously that even as we’re writing songs or playing chords, I’ll automatically lift all but one finger, just leaving one note back. Then, what you hit after that sounds so big.”
“I remember I had a really good professor in school, who was one of the world’s experts on Emily Dickinson, and she had a poem about being in a box. It was about how much power and strength she could get out of wanting to push out of this box that she was involuntarily in. You wouldn’t get as much power and strength if you were out in free space. If you say, ‘We’re working within these confines,’ and you’re pushing those confines, that’s exciting to me.”
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oh my god, with Buddha Witha Gun, Thurs., Nov. 18th at Mogollon Brewing Company.
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Ethical Disclaimer: For the record, Buddha Witha Gun is my own band, and I jumped on the chance to warm up for one of my favorite bands in the whole world. In addition, as a writer and a loyal fan, I swore an oath after last seeing oh my god perform live to a very small, but wildly enthusiastic crowd, that I’d one day write a decent-sized article on them, in the sincere hope that I could impart even a tiny measure of their greatness to my readership.
©2004 by Dean Bonzani, All Rights Reserved