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Cover Story Interview w/ Basile
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Magazine article - Oklahoma Today - May/June 2009
Rock & Roll Fantasy (pages 24-26) (interview wit...Magazine article - Oklahoma Today - May/June 2009
Rock & Roll Fantasy (pages 24-26) (interview with Basile and Mooneyham)
A rock-and-roll lifestyle is not for the faint of heart, as this pair of long-timers can attest. At fifty-five, Athens, Greece-born Basile Kolliopoulos has spent nearly forty years as a singer and guitarist in a myriad of bands, including the Fensics, the Fortune Tellers, and, for more than fifteen years, the Reverb Bros. Jon Mooneyham, forty-eight, whose resume includes bands like the Memluks, a brief stint with the Flaming Lips, and the Melodious Thunk Infinitet, not to mention years of deejaying, has been a fixture on the Oklahoma music scene since the late seventies. Here, the two Oklahoma rockers talk about everything from tattoos to life lessons.
What have you learned from a life in music?
Jon: Not much money to be made in music.
Basile: I was just gonna say that!
Jon: But that's not why you do it. You do it because you're motivated to do it; sometimes you can't even explain why. And because you love it.
What's Oklahoma's best rock venue, past or present?
Basile: The Boomer in Norman back in the early days. This is the pre-Wayne Coyne days we're talking about, '79, '80. All the new punk bands would come through.
Jon: And definitely the Bowery.
Basile: Oh, anybody and everybody played there.
Jon: Remember that X show, and the power went out?
Basile: It's stuff we never believed we'd get to see, especially in Oklahoma City.
Jon: We've still skipped over a lot. VZD's has done good things. You know, places come and go. I have to say in my own days, formatively, the Boomer Theater was huge.
Who are your idols?
Basile: Derek Bailey, and English guitar player and the father of improvisation. He died a few years ago, and he is my all-time favorite because he changed my life when I heard him a couple of years ago. Jon turned me on to him. Besides that, all the free jazz stuff.
Jon: Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy. We're talking about the jazz territory here.
Basile: And then, with the blues, the more obscure, like Jessie Mae Hemphill. She was a delta blues guitar player and singer, and R.L. Burnside. Our heroes, our musical idols, were not guys who were millionaires. They were more of the unknowns. These were the guys we looked up to and got inspiration from. If you've never really been anything, you're not a has-been.
Where did you get your music as a kid?
Basile: I came here in 1971 from Athens and enrolled at OCU. There was a record store, Wilcox Records, on Twenty-third street. It was the coolest. An old lady and her husband owned it, and I don't know where they got that taste, but they had the coolest stuff that came out. We're talking Captain Beefheart, Lou Reed, and the New York Dolls. I would walk down there after class or before class - or during class - and buy as many records as I could afford and go back to the dorm and listen to them.
Guys in the music business seem to appeal to a lot of girls.
Jon: You know, I could have met a whole lot more girls if I'd been really aware of the potential. Of course, I find out all about it after the fact.
Basile: It is easier to meet people if you're in the band, but to be honest, that's not why I got into bands and music. I got in because I really wanted to do it and get together with people and play. That was the most important thing.
Do you think Oklahoma is a good place to be a musician? Jon: Sure.
Basile: Yeah, because you can have a job and still do what you want. And pretty much, more or less, people are supportive.
Jon: The playing field is level now. With technology and the way bands promote themselves and communicate, it doesn't matter where you're from. It used to be like, oh, you need to be in some sort of hot cultural center or wherever the scene is right now, be it Austin, or Cleveland, or Seattle.
Basile: It's easier to get around. You're in the middle. When I was in New York in 1980 and 1981, no one could get out of town. No one was really making any money. I knew a guy who played in a band called Suicide; they could not get out of town. And they were my heroes! They couldn't afford to tour.
What have been your greatest moments as musicians?
Basile: Emotionally, the most fun was playing with Bo Diddley the first time. We were his band when we played with him in 1984 at the Bowery. Musically, the third time we played with Bo Diddley in 2001 is my highlight.
Jon: What about the second time?
Basile: The second time was great too. Anyway, playing with Bo Diddley on the same stage was fantastic, and so was getting to hang out with him.
Jon: My musical moment? A saxophone lesson from Ornette Coleman. He showed me some pretty cool tricks, including how to get almost an entire chromatic octave out of just the left hand.
What inspired you to get into music?
Basile: When I was a kid in Athens, I started listening to a rock-and-roll show on an American station. It was a half-hour, once a week. And the first time I wanted to be a rock dude was when I saw a picture of Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. He was getting out of a Rolls-Royce and had this furry looking coat on, and the hair. I thought, this looks a lot more exciting than my days at school. Listening to all that, and hanging out with people who used to have a record store in Athens who turned me on to people like Miles Davis and John Lee Hooker, I knew something was going on. It was almost like the world had gone Technicolor when it was black and white before.
Jon: Epiphanic moment? It was probably the first time I got a decent electric guitar in my hand and just wailed on it. It was probably like a C chord or G, but it just sounded big. There's a simple, basic power to that that can really be invigorating. In high school, I was interested in music from the other side of the fence, the oddball sort of stuff, which is probably just inherently part of my personality. At the same time, I was listening to rock. I was always inspired by the ones who had all sorts of instruments. I'm talking about people who had lots of horns, percussion instruments, or marimbas and xylophones and exciting sorts of stuff. That stuff still appeals to me. And of course, jazz.
Tell us about your tattoos.
Jon: This (the tattoo on his right forearm) was done in 1983 or 1984 by a tattooist who used to be in Oklahoma City back in the illegal days. This was unfortunately near the waning end of his career; his eyes were going. My second one is on the back of my neck, by the same guy. Its the central image from the Mandelbrot set of chaos theory, which was something I was pretty excited about.
Basile: I have nine. Most of them were done by Rollo Banks, the godfather of neotraditional tattoo design. I got them done in Austin in the mid-eighties. We played there all the time, and every time we went, I'd make a point of getting a tattoo. The last one is an Om. I got it from a different guy than Rollo.
Do you guys have any kind of motto?
Jon: No.
Basile: Uh, improvise.
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Live Review opening for The Cramps
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Skratch Magazine (CA)
The Cramps
The Gore Gore Girls
The Reverb Brothers
LIVE REVIEW
April 26, ...Skratch Magazine (CA)
The Cramps
The Gore Gore Girls
The Reverb Brothers
LIVE REVIEW
April 26, 2003 @ the Diamond Ballroom (Oklahoma City)
By H. Barry Zimmerman
The Reverb Brothers are a three-piece rock institution around these parts. Led by guitarist/vocalist Basile Koliopoulos, The Reverb Brothers have got muscle to spare and professional, sneering charm. The group's revved-up rock 'n' roll is very swingin'. The band came through with a warm-up set that got the kids in full-blown hoedown mode. The band ended their set with a wild, wailing guitar song about poet Miguel Pinnero. The Reverb Brothers did us proud.
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Live Review
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The Reverb Brothers by Doug Hill, Norman Transcript 8.26.05:
"Brothers Basile Kolliopoulos (guitar/...The Reverb Brothers by Doug Hill, Norman Transcript 8.26.05:
"Brothers Basile Kolliopoulos (guitar/vocals), Marty Dillon (drums) and new bassist Casey Friedman were as hardcore as a wild night in Mabel Basset Correctional Center. Their song about rain was a percussion downpour. The Brothers' funk fog was made heavier by bone rattling volume. Basile's a mysterious man who stirs Delta blues, Blue Cheer and blue bedroom lights into a bittersweet brew. Middle Eastern cadences collided with fundamental soul chords. An attractive woman in the audience did a compelling bump and grind to the music while her male escort stood motionless, arms akimbo. The Brothers' intensity fed off the amplification. Their dark, threatening show was over in a flash."
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Live Preview
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OU Oklahoma Daily
Reverb Brothers to play in Norman
Wednesday, May 19, 1999
Music lovers wanting ...OU Oklahoma Daily
Reverb Brothers to play in Norman
Wednesday, May 19, 1999
Music lovers wanting to explore a sampling of the diverse roots of music can do so this weekend when locals the Reverb Brothers take the stage. Reverb Brothers will play Friday at Othello's in Norman.
The Reverb Brothers are regular favorites in Oklahoma and elsewhere for their supercharged reworkings of the rhythmic sounds of delta blues, popularized recently with the resurgence of interests in the likes of R.L. Burnside and T Model Ford.
"We take the rhythmic elements of blues and slate it with a lot more volume and come out with the reverb style," said guitarist and leader Basile Kolliopoulos.
Kolliopoulos is a master performer best known as the force behind the much lauded and sadly departed Fortune Tellers. The Reverb Brothers began a decade ago as an offshoot to further showcase his interest in straight-up blues. The band also features Austinite Hector Watt and drummer Aaron Preston, formerly of the Chainsaw Kittens and For Love Not Lisa with bassist Victor Goetz playing occasionally.
"The music we play is always in style regardless of the trends and it's not the usual old blues," Kolliopoulos said.
The members of the band recently had a late night jam session with psychobilly legend Hasil Adkins, who impressed him so much he encouraged the band to put together a demo to be shopped at his label, Fat Possum/Epitaph.
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Live Preview
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Custom cars, electric guitars will growl at third annual Okie Twist-Off
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
...Custom cars, electric guitars will growl at third annual Okie Twist-Off
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
By Charles Martin
Okie Twist-Off celebrates an entire culture of custom cars and brash music that its organizers openly describe as “trash culture.”
What that culture sounds like and looks like isn’t as simple as one might think. Organizers Kevin Burden and John Manson both pointed to the legendary 1980’s Oklahoma City venue The Bowery Club as their inspiration. As full-fledged members of the Bowery generation of Oklahoma music fans, the two took the eclectic and lowbrow spirit of the club as a template for what the car show and concert should be.
REUNION
EMPHASIS SHIFT
“The Okie Twist-Off definitely has that Bowery feel, where we were throwing in all kinds of music,” Burden said.
Part of the challenge, Manson said, to having such a diverse music lineup is establishing trust with the audience, so that visitors unfamiliar with some of the booked bands are still confident they’ll be entertained. Unlike other custom car shows across the country, Okie Twist-Off doesn’t just focus on rockabilly, but instead combines a variety of styles, with the unpolished and strident spirit of garage rock as the unifying factor.
“Rockabilly is certainly a part of it, but no one promotes this as a rockabilly show,” Manson said. “We call it a ‘Kustom Culture’ event, which incorporates roots, garage rock, punk, Americana, primitive blues, neo-honky-tonk and surf.”
REUNION
Local pioneers The Fortune Tellers are reuniting for a slot at the Twist-Off, prior to headlining an Aug. 22 Bowery reunion Show at VZD’s. The band featured Greek brothers Miho and Basile Kolliopoulos, and split up in 2000 when Miho returned to Greece. As an architect, Miho Kolliopoulos travels to Oklahoma from time to time for work, and Manson, who once served as The Fortune Tellers’ manager, was eager to bring the band onboard.
“I do credit the Fortune Tellers with destroying my morals and many, many synapses,” Manson said, with a laugh. “They were a sort of house band for the Bowery and were playing when the punk crowd and the rockabilly crowd were first fusing, back when the Stray Cats and people with flattops and steel toes were first getting together. The Okie Twist-Off is a latter-day fusing of that.”
Basile Kolliopoulos has played both previous Okie Twist-Offs as part of The Reverb Brothers, and sees the festival as celebrating styles of garage rock often overlooked.
“I’m a big fan of roots, rockabilly, roots rock and blues, and the festival represents that side of the scene in Oklahoma City, which is not something that is in the front lines,” he said. “The music scene is permeated by The Flaming Lips and that type of alternative music.”
EMPHASIS SHIFT
But rock ’n’ roll is only one half of the Okie Twist-Off. Burden said that while the car show remains a consistently popular draw, the Twist-Off has progressively shifted the emphasis more toward music.
“The first year we pitched the car show as the top bill, and last year we flipped the bill,” Burden said. “The old car show guys don’t really care about the music — they are just there for the cars. We hadn’t really thought that part out, so now we are putting even less emphasis on the car show, because we’ll get these old-timers who just saw the car show on the poster, and when they get there, it was a little more than they bargained for.”
The Bowery generation, according to Burden, grew up with the combative spirit of punk fused to the stylized soul of roots rock and rockabilly, and are more agreeable to having garage rock blaring through the speakers at a custom car show.
The true value of the Okie Twist-Off, Basile Kolliopoulos said, is to introduce that convergence of sights and sounds of trash culture to a new generation of fans.
“We need younger people to be aware of this music, and for that, the Okie Twist-Off is great,” he said. “It’s not music that is trendy and popular — it’s music that we like and really believe in. It represents an entire culture.”
Okie Twist-Off Pre-party begins at 6 p.m. Friday at the Prohibition Room, 1112 N.W. 23rd. The concert and car show takes place at noon Saturday at 66 Bowl, 3810 N.W. 39th. —Charles Martin
