Little Fyodor

CITYGIGS.COM: The Rock n Roll equivalent of a chicken with its head cut off. Schizophrenia for your enjoyment. Frank Zappa if he had never gotten laid. Brilliant.

BEEF MAGAZINE: Lively and fun, and reminiscent of Iggy Pop. Growling vocals make tongue-in-cheek demands on the audience in the best punk tradition.

MAXIMUM ROCK 'N' ROLL: Eccentric garage punk with very clever lyrics like early DEVO with Allen Ginsburg on vocals.

AURAL-INNOVATIONS.COM: Impressively tight, fun, creatively-structured songs.... Much zanier than DEVO or Weird Al and much more interesting musically.

NEO-ZINE.COM: Call Dr. Demento, I think I've got the kind of genius he respects right here.

COLORADO MUSIC MAGAZINE: Little Fyodor's songs reflect his social conscience, his metaphysical disgust, and, in a unique way, manage to poke fun at all of life's little foibles.

BOYD RICE: I've seen Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop, David Bowie and various members of the Rat Pack, but by far the most charismatic performer I've ever laid eyes on has got to be the man who goes by the stage-name of Little Fyodor.

THE REV. IVAN STANG: ALL HAIL LITTLE FYODOR!!! GREATEST SPAZZ ROCK STAR OF THE CENTURY!! The Subgeniuses in attendance went into WILD GYRATIONAL CONNIPTIONS after EVERY song! - various

The subtly disturbing "Death Sides Now," a Joni Mitchell cover, opens the latest full-length from Little Fyodor. Recalling the more demented side of Sun City Girls, Peace Is Boring is possibly this act's most actualized release to date. Before punk became codified, weirdos like the Residents, Ranaldo and the Loaf and Devo were lumped in with that movement. The unbound creative spirit of those acts informs this album of manic, deranged genius. The Stuart Hamblen cover, "Open Up Your Heart (and Let the Sunshine In)," made famous by the Flintstones and sung here by longtime collaborator Babushka, sounds absolutely un-ironic. With Fyodor in general, live or otherwise, the musicianship is solid, and these twisted pop songs will infuriate many but delight those who appreciate the unapologetically weird. - Westword Magazine

And now it's time for more FUN FUN FUN with Little Fyodor himself. Idiots Are Closer To God is a reissue of a vinyl LP originally released in 1990 and includes 17 of Fyodor's well crafted songs of silliness and dementia. A lot of territory is covered on this album in a mere 36 minutes. We go from the retared, head bopping, and slightly stoned psych groove of "I Don't Know What To Do", to the ultra whimisal "I Believe In God", and on to the soulful Blues of "Everybody's Fucking", all in a 3 song succession. Fyodor's cover of "This Diamond Ring" is hysterical, though I can just see the sour look on ‘ol Gary Lewis' face. "Sister Schizo" is one of my favorites, being a riotously fucked up Devo alien fuzzed out dance party trip yer brains out number done up in Little Fyodor's unique style. "Coffee Dump" and "Happy People" are rockin standout tracks that feature some kick ass ripping shred guitar. And as the album progresses, despite the zaniness you can't help but notice how solid much of the musicianship is. Overall a fun set of creatively zany songs. - Aural Innovations

Closing out the night was Little Fyodor and Babushka, a duo that has been making “angry punk rock” for years in Denver. They put on a wild 45-minute explosion of rigid, biting and angst-ridden post-hardcore. The four-piece regaled the dive with songs like “That Was A Mistake,” “Useless Shit” and “I Don’t Know What To Do.” Babushka frowned constantly in the visage of angriest grandma and Fyodor gesticulated with contorted faces beneath his mop of receding red curls. In a dream world where Alice Cooper and Frank Zappa still rule the Top 40, Little Fyodor would make the reactionary punk rock. It’s extreme, and extremely funny. - Hey Reverb

Every once in a while you go to a show because you think it might be "interesting". This gut feeling turned into truly unforgettable experience Friday night in a cavernous little bar in the heart of East Berlin. Sponsored by the Church of the Subgenious (http://www.subgenius.com), the place was covered in the ever happy grin of their god JR 'Bob' Dobs or simply, Bob and the line-up was as far east of normal as you can get.,,,

The next freak (and I use the word freak in it's curliest haired sense) was Boulder Colorado resident Little Fyodor. "Any humans here?" he asks and you believe he might have a hard time telling us apart. The rock and roll equivalent of seeing a chicken with it's head cut off. Schizophrenia for your enjoyment. "I want an ugly girl, who'd want nobody but me", "All my clothes are uncomfortable", "Nobody wants to play with me", "You make me horny" ("to all those fine young German lasses"). Frank Zappa if he had never gotten laid. Brilliant. You thought Thom Yorke and Gord Downie made funny facial expressions... - Citygigs

Every once in a while you go to a show because you think it might be "interesting". This gut feeling turned into truly unforgettable experience Friday night in a cavernous little bar in the heart of East Berlin. Sponsored by the Church of the Subgenious (http://www.subgenius.com), the place was covered in the ever happy grin of their god JR 'Bob' Dobs or simply, Bob and the line-up was as far east of normal as you can get.,,,

The next freak (and I use the word freak in it's curliest haired sense) was Boulder Colorado resident Little Fyodor. "Any humans here?" he asks and you believe he might have a hard time telling us apart. The rock and roll equivalent of seeing a chicken with it's head cut off. Schizophrenia for your enjoyment. "I want an ugly girl, who'd want nobody but me", "All my clothes are uncomfortable", "Nobody wants to play with me", "You make me horny" ("to all those fine young German lasses"). Frank Zappa if he had never gotten laid. Brilliant. You thought Thom Yorke and Gord Downie made funny facial expressions... - Citygigs

In my time I've seen Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop, David Bowie and various members of the Rat Pack, but by far the most charismatic performer I've ever laid eyes on, has got to be a man who goes by the stage-name of Little Fyodor (pronounced Fee-A-Door, like Dostoevsky). On the surface, he would appear to be the antithesis of what you'd expect of a Pop Star; and he is - deliberately so. He has consciously inverted the rock n' roll paradigm, and in so doing created a kind of bizarro-world version of the rock idiom.

That said, Fyodor's music is perhaps truer to the spirit of rock n' roll than anything produced by the sort of ersatz bad boys who feign defiance in Mtv music videos. Little Fyodor is a genuine outsider, a pop anti-hero who both laments and celebrates his alienation. His songs are well-crafted pop psychodramas that usher the listener into a funzone in which giddy glee and paranoia blur effortlessly into one another.

By way of introduction, we here reprint an interview I conducted with Fyodor roughly a decade ago. Welcome to the world of Little Fyodor...
- Discriminate Audio

Little Fyodor is a strange little man with some strange little songs, and as if it isn't enough to inflict his warped sense of humor on the world via his own material, he misappropriates the work of others to his own bizarre ends more than once here. In fact, he opens with a perverse rewrite of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" (retitled "Death Sides Now" and sporting new lyrics that would probably not meet with Joni's approval). He has a fair number of side musicians helping him realize his grotesque vision here, but no outside vision can impede the seriously twisted fever of his own personality, and the fourteen tracks here are all very much his own sound and vision, even when they're covers. Titles like "That Was A Mistake" and "All My Clothes Are Uncomfortable" give you some idea of where he's coming from, but nothing can prepare you for the terrifying reality of actually hearing him, especially when he's channeling Tiny Tim on "Open Up Your Heart (And Let The Sunshine In)." Musically, he's all over the map -- instruments used on the album include keyboards, guitar, slide whistle, drum machines, drums, bass, banjo, and organ, often in peculiar and unconventional ways -- with a sound that could best be described as "outsider pop" (well, sort of), and if you can deal with his crazed vocal mannerisms, his songs are often quite catchy, even when they're distinctly weird and often indifferently recorded. His aesthetic is certainly a unique one, to say the least. Bonus points for the sublime title of the final track, "Fuck-a-duck-a-luck-a-luck-a-ding-dong," which pretty accurately summarizes his aesthetic. - The One True Dead Angel

Rating: 9
Claiming Denver as home this juggernaut of insanity has ranted and raved about his decidedly disenfranchised reality since at least 1981. Now, with fellow soothe sayer Babushka they explore 14 newly twisted avenues of totally snapped psycho punk rock including a couple revisioned classics. A mental calliope of grandeur and disillusionment for the children of the Subgenius. - Maximum Ink

It was probably inevitable, but Little Fyodor & Babushka band have become popular with a younger crowd. At points during the set there was even something of a pit where people got out their aggressions to the frenetic punk rock that is at the core of what this group does. The kids seemed to be very much into Fyodor and company's unique stage show and songs.

Opening with "Deathwish," the band did not let up until closing with the always smile-inducing "Dance of the Salted Slug." But there was such a spirit of enthusiasm that Little Fyodor and the rest of the band were convinced to do an encore consisting of "I Wanna Be the Buddha."

After "Salted Slug," it looked like Little Fyodor hurt himself because he was bleeding when he came back to the stage after some time out in the crowd. Regardless, he didn't complain or comment, and it didn't curb him from going for the encore. In this day and age, especially for a guy Fyodor's age, that is about as punk rock as it gets.

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
Personal Bias: Little Fyodor & Babushka band is the most punk rock thing in Denver. - Westword Magazine

Little Fyodor is blessed with a face, a voice, and body language that makes his presentation as a weirdo outsider music kook beyond convincing. What he doesn't possess is the ability to mask that his strange, urgent music is by no means the work of an outsider kook. This is deliberate, nuanced, masterful music by a smart, knowledgable musician, it's music that cohesively explores anxiety, lustfully contemplates sexuality, viciously considers God, war, death (a brutally morbid cover of "Both Sides Now)", nature, mental illness, and duck fucking. Not to say that Fyodor is divorced from the realm of Dr. Demento. By no means is that the case, he is messing with weirdness and novelty and audience expectation in ways that are all about the history of novelty recording. But if you laugh at this stuff the same way you laugh at Weird Al Yankovic then you have a hole in your soul. Though this stuff is funny -- laugh away -- it's just a different laugh.
As far as Fyodor's tribute album, we really don't need an army of home-taper all-stars reinterpreting LF's catalogue to prove to us that his compositions are solid, or that his vision is skewed and weird. But need and love are different, and I love hearing local non-legend Dan Susnara produce one of his best tracks ever, Amy Denio making Fyodor's angry fist shaking at God turn into a lovely fist shaking at God, Voodoo Organist intensifying the already intense, and all of Fyodor's friends at Discriminate Audio getting in on the fun (Boyd Rice, Nervesandgel, Brian M. Clark, and the great, great Ralph Gean contribute nobly). But at the end of the day, it's the Little one himself that we long to hear, so I'm anxious to heer him again pay tribute to his own talents soon. - Roctober

Little Fyodor is blessed with a face, a voice, and body language that makes his presentation as a weirdo outsider music kook beyond convincing. What he doesn't possess is the ability to mask that his strange, urgent music is by no means the work of an outsider kook. This is deliberate, nuanced, masterful music by a smart, knowledgable musician, it's music that cohesively explores anxiety, lustfully contemplates sexuality, viciously considers God, war, death (a brutally morbid cover of "Both Sides Now)", nature, mental illness, and duck fucking. Not to say that Fyodor is divorced from the realm of Dr. Demento. By no means is that the case, he is messing with weirdness and novelty and audience expectation in ways that are all about the history of novelty recording. But if you laugh at this stuff the same way you laugh at Weird Al Yankovic then you have a hole in your soul. Though this stuff is funny -- laugh away -- it's just a different laugh.
As far as Fyodor's tribute album, we really don't need an army of home-taper all-stars reinterpreting LF's catalogue to prove to us that his compositions are solid, or that his vision is skewed and weird. But need and love are different, and I love hearing local non-legend Dan Susnara produce one of his best tracks ever, Amy Denio making Fyodor's angry fist shaking at God turn into a lovely fist shaking at God, Voodoo Organist intensifying the already intense, and all of Fyodor's friends at Discriminate Audio getting in on the fun (Boyd Rice, Nervesandgel, Brian M. Clark, and the great, great Ralph Gean contribute nobly). But at the end of the day, it's the Little one himself that we long to hear, so I'm anxious to heer him again pay tribute to his own talents soon. - Roctober

Little Fyodor speaks with the kind of manic intensity you might recognize in any of a thousand men you might see at a show in Austin. His aura is one familiar to me, entirely too self-aware, disaffected, generally morose, but not at all unhappy about it. Little Fyodor is fully conscious of the horror of his existence; no, not just his but the very concept of existence to begin with. I recognize this not just in myself, but in the huddled masses of aging hipsters that walk these very streets.

As he speaks on his background in music—how he started in college, without knowing how to play an instrument, teaching himself as a way to express his disillusionment—I can’t help but think how much this Denver musician would fit in perfectly in our little scene.

“I’ve been Little Fyodor since 1981 when I first started writing songs to express my sense of being lost in the world,” Little Fyodor says. “My roommate’s brother, the drug dealer, had a guitar so I started writing songs on that. There was a piano in the house so I started writing songs on that. It was an act of desperation and I started doing that.”

The music he plays exudes the same sort of mania present in his demeanor; like some sort of love child of Dead Kennedys and Frank Zappa, Little Fyodor aims to challenge not just your conception of what music is and can be, but also your very conception of ideas. It’s weird. It’s raw. It’s edgy. It’s…punk rock, I guess? If it’s hard for me to classify the music of Little Fyodor it’s only because Little Fyodor tries hard to avoid classification to begin with.

“At the risk of sounding like the worst cliché known to musicians, we don’t fall easily into any genre. I think you can categorize what we do easily. But hey, people want their categories. It’s part of the human brain that you want to put things into boxes so that you can more easily think about it.”

One thing he emphasizes, above genre, above style, above everything, is that he wants to play music that’s weird. This is something that seeps into all aspects of his life and especially in his own radio show Under the Floorboards on Denver’s KGNU.

“I like to say my radio show is for the insects of society,” Little Fyodor says. “I play the weirdest crap I can get my hands on. Weird, strange, or experimental…anything that’s out there that’s the antithesis of commercial appeal. I don’t even care if it’s good, I just care that it’s pure, that it’s somebody expressing the fact that this is what they want to do and that they don’t fit into normal society.”

I say his commitment to weirdness makes Little Fyodor deserving of the title Honorary Citizen of Austin. Without knowing it, Little Fyodor exudes all that is Austin in ways most residents couldn’t even dream of. He is, in many ways, the aspirations of the city’s ideal, personified. For example, take his current band, Little Fyodor and Babushka. Describing his bandmate, he says:

“Babushka’s this feral, crazy, sensual bag lady that I found pushing a shopping cart in the alleys of Denver. She pulled out of a garbage can this Casio keyboard and the next thing you know we were a duo. We were a drumless rock and roll duo. It’s okay with me that we’re playing as a duo. So what if it’s not normal? So what if it’s not how you’re supposed to play rock and roll, with just guitar and keyboards. Eventually, I did let a full rhythm section on stage with me and now we have a full, kick ass band.”

Despite a relative anonymity towards the scene at large, Little Fyodor is widely influential among the Denver scene and much of the underground and indie scene in general. Even indie darlings Apples in Stereo have listed him as an influence, especially in their early development. Indeed, just speaking to him I found myself inspired by his general “get out there and do it” attitude towards creativity and life in general. That he so fervently refuses to be stopped is awe inspiring, if nothing else.

“[I’m satirizing] all of existence. Why stop at anything short of that? I’m not satirical like someone, say, Frank Zappa. [He] would pick out targets and make fun of them. It’s satirical just in the sense that I’m using (at the risk of sounding pretentious) satirical literary devices. Irony, humor, and kind of twisting things on their head to make a point,” he says.

“I’m satirizing my life; I’m satirizing my view of things; I’m satirizing the way existence leaks into my brain and makes me what I am. I’m kind of a neurotic nerd that has a tough time connecting with the rest of the human race. Just like the character in Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (that’s Big Fyodor) and if you read Notes from Underground, you might get an idea of what my plight in life is. The character might be a little worse off than me, but not much.”

For whatever it’s worth, I don’t think Little Fyodor needs to quote literature to express the way he feels. That internal burning for purity of life and art, of a peaceful existence and mindful consciousness is something most of us feel at one time or another. Little Fyodor is the epitome of expression unbound by the constraints of form or function which allows him the absolute freedom to express the existential weirdness of his reality. Austin would do well to take note of Little Fyodor. For him, “keep it weird” is not a slogan you see on an over-priced T-shirt you can buy on 6th Street. He makes no compromises and he makes no apologies. Far from being a mere platitude, for Little Fyodor weirdness is a way of life.

Little Fyodor plays tonight, Wednesday March 12 at BD Riley’s from 9:00-9:40pm. - The Horn

Not all artists headed to Texas this year are new acts pushing to be recognized and thrust into fame. Some of them have been performing under their respective monikers for longer than the festival has been around and are just now catching the eye of organizers. Little Fyodor boasts 30 years making music and the official recognition, he says, is just a small notch in his long belt of experiences.

“Validation is for parking lot tickets,” says Fyodor. “I don't need any validation for what I do; but it's always nice to be noticed. I do this to communicate with people in a way I don't feel able to otherwise. It's both nothing and a great honor, like any accolade in life. We're all headed for the grave anyway, and so what, but we'll have big fun with it while we have the chance.”

Fyodor says he entered in to the festival with little expectations for any positive outcome. “I filled out an online application and sent them some money, and then practically forgot about it other than to wish I had that money back,” says Fyodor. “I was fairly flabbergasted to find out they'd accepted us, as I'd pretty much written it off as a ‘no friggin' way’ just because I didn't think I'd shown the proper amount of seriousness and music-industry acumen.”

His brew of punk-rock oddities is a drastic shift away from everyday genre floating but also contrasts as a solid pillar in the essence of the true anti-establishment ideal. Fyodor’s bizarre persona is admitted in his biography as, “obsessed with alienation and spiritual displacement and the fragility of human psychology.” It’s heavy subject matter blended with the silliness of his persona that’s carried him through one EP, seven full-length albums and another EP on the way. The latter won’t be finished before SXSW, but Fyodor says he may have something else just for the event.

“I'm kicking around the idea of re-packaging something older just for the occasion, haven't decided for sure on that yet,” says Fyodor. “Anyway, I’m happy to give those folks a taste of what we can do!”

- See more at: http://www.therooster.com/blog/sxsw-official-guide-colorado-bands-taking-over-years-festival#sthash.YP65itMO.dpuf - The Rooster

“I’ve had people tell me my music is too silly, and other people have said I’m a terminal bummer,” says the musician known as Little Fyodor. “To me it’s a mixture of both. Oscar Wilde once said, ‘Give a man a mask, and he’ll tell you the truth.’ I think it’s easier to go further into the dark side of things if you’re doing it with humor. Otherwise it gets too dreary and painful.”

Fyodor has been an important figure in the American experimental-music world since the early ’80s, when he moved from the East Coast to Colorado and became part of the band Walls of Genius. By the middle of the decade, he had developed a solo project, and by the late ’80s, Fyodor had connected with an artist named Babushka. Performing as Little Fyodor & Babushka, the two began to develop a cult following, including two future members of the Apples in Stereo, Jim McIntire and Hilary Sidney.

That band went on to become one of Denver’s best-known musical exports. And its members co-founded the influential Elephant 6 collective, which put out its first album as a record label in 1994: Dance of the Salted Slug, by Little Fyodor & Babushka.

Since then, Fyodor has firmly established himself as not just one of the strangest and most interesting performers anywhere, but also as a pop songwriter par excellence. The Little Fyodor & Babushka band has since added bassist Amadeus Tonguefingers, and drummer Tricky Dick Wikkit joined in the early 2000s. The group has come to perfectly embody the spirit of punk, with an irreverent sense of humor, dark songs about personal turmoil and frenetic energy to burn.

The foursome’s latest record — its first since 2009’s mind-twisting Peace Is Boring — is the first release featuring songwriting from Tonguefingers. The seven-inch, called Truly Rejected, is eighteen minutes long and should be played loudly for the full effect. Roughly half the songs are covers, but the band renders them nearly unrecognizable. For a take on the Beatles’ “I’m Down,” Fyodor modified the lyrics to reflect an awkward conversation he once had about Tim Tebow.

“McCartney had some stupid line about a woman that wouldn’t make out with him, and I figured he was just making that shit up,” says Fyodor. “I couldn’t relate to that, so I came up with my own verse, inspired by my social ineptitude.”

The original line was, “We’re all alone and there’s nobody else/You still moan, ‘Keep your hands to yourself!’”

“McCartney was probably eleven since he last heard something like that,” says Fyodor. Instead, he sings, “We can’t relate because you think I’m a nerd/I vomit on every word.”

Fyodor has made a career out of mining psychic angst for his art. “Most of my songs are inspired by working out difficulties in my life,” he says. “Some people might think I’m a loser or that I’m not as bad as my songs are. Who knows? That’s for other people to judge. When things are fucked up and I have doubts, and I’m trying to figure out what my life is about, that tension inspires me to philosophize about it. That sometimes turns into songs.

"Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who is my namesake, once said that suffering is the root of all consciousness. When things are going okay, you don’t have to think about it so much." - Westword