The Other Band On Earth

I knew about the big annual Outside Lands music festival (with Kendrick Lamar, D'Angelo, Sam Smith etc.) happening in the Bay Area this weekend, but, for some reason, until very recently I had not even heard about the Goat Roaster III festival also scheduled for today and tomorrow (August 8th and 9th). Looking for the first time this past week at the poster above for this wonderful alternative Bay Area festival and reading the lineup that includes Metallica, A$AP Rocky, Deerhoof, Primus, Thurston Moore, The Melvins, and Tina Fey DJ'ing I was most intrigued. Now that's something I'd pay to see, I thought as I curiously eyed the poster that stopped me dead in my tracks as I passed it on the sidewalk on Telegraph Ave in Oakland over by the Legionnaire Saloon one recent afternoon. But as I looked for ticket prices and location, neither of which I could find, but noted that the headliner was the relatively unknown The Other Band On Earth I knew something seemed fishy about this "Goat Roaster III" festival.

But it sure it made me look and, since it was a legitimate looking, full color 18" by 24" poster on the Oakland street along with all the other legit show posters, it got me thinking that it might possibly be real. Well, for a moment that's what I thought. But either way, it was one interesting looking and diverse lineup, one that included a "Fogerty Plays Zappa" set which, while unlikely, was remotely possible and something worth seeing. Even the billed "DJ set" by Tina Fey! In this day and age when everyone and their mother is a DJ, it seemed plausible but unlikely. But then when I read that among the performers was Pete Seeger who, if memory served me right, had died a few years ago, not to mention the questionable "target farts" and "a couple of reggae bands," I knew I had been momentarily had and that this was a beautifully well-thought-out and executed prank. I laughed aloud, and set about finding out who was responsible for this wonderful poster prank. Not surprisingly, it was the fictitious festival's headliners, Oakland's noise rock group The Other Band On Earth (OBOE) featuring Andy Maag, Adley Penner, Dan Schwartz, and Tyler Shenk-Boright who were behind it all. OBOE's recently released s/t album (soon to be available at Amoeba Berkeley) features a track titled "Goat Roaster" while the music video for another album track ("Culture" - see below) was what the goatroaster.com address on the poster linked to. Over the past couple of days I tracked down Dan Schwartz, the band member mainly responsible for the ruse, to ask him more about the "Goat Roaster" festival poster campaign as well as his band's new release.


Amoeblog: How did you get the idea for the poster and faux festival concept?

OBOE's Dan: We’ve always been big fans of advertising. Our first music video was a State Farm commercial. Didn’t even touch the audio. That, and we’ve always wanted to play a big festival, be the big stars, but it’s just never worked out. That’s when it clicked. If we actually played a music festival we’d have to hang out with Metallica and eat the GMO catering and all kinds of other bullshit. At the end of the day only a few thousand people would see our performance. Now a poster--that has the potential to catch the attention of millions, and even if you’re unknown, as long as you surround your name in exciting new acts and a few big comebacks, nobody is going to leave the telephone pole disappointed. It might disappoint other fans, but not ours. Our fans understand that advertising’s nature is to associate unrelated images with fictitious emotions in order to condition an audience’s attitude towards a name or product. Our fans are intelligent, humble, well-rounded, inspirational people with great senses of humor. Once you understand you don’t have to advertise something real it really opens up the playing field. You can rule the earth.

Amoeblog: Besides you, whose creative input went into coming up with the artist names on list - like Pete Seeger, Tina Fey, "Justin Fingergate" etc.

OBOE's Dan: Well we wanted Tina Fey to emcee between bands, kinda like at the Academy Awards, but she begged us to let her do a DJ set. She said she’d been working on a bunch of new shit, making a bunch of beats on her MacBook, fuckin with a few guest artists, and she was really itching to test it out in front of a crowd. She can get pretty demanding. I don’t know why everyone assumes she’s such a nice person off the screen, because she’s not. She can really dredge up the pain at the bottom of a man’s soul. Finally she offered to pull some strings and get us a performance slot, but Ellen refused, so she hooked us up with TEDx Reno if we’d let her do her thing. She also said she could get Robin Thicke to perform at the festival, but we turned that down. So that was Tina. Otherwise, Pete Seeger’s the shit, so that’s a no brainer. I just found out he’s dead, but if anything, that takes a lot of weight off our shoulders. And Justin Fingergate was inspired by politics and Justin Timberlake’s fingers. Fogerty play Zappa would be a great show. It’d be kinda like one of those ‘Creed shreds’ videos.

Amoeblog: How many did you print up and what kind of response has there been?

OBOE's Dan: At first we just laughed about throwing a festival, but then we were hanging with Billie Joe Armstrong and he said he didn’t want to play, but it was a good enough idea, so he donated $40. So we went to Kinkos and printed up $40 worth of posters and put up about 89% of them. Which wasn’t as many as we’d hoped. Response has been varied, but very promising in the long long long run. I’ve noticed a sharp increase in the number of visitors listening to less than 10% of any given song on our Bandcamp page. It measures those things.


Amoeblog: "Goatroaster.com" links to the "Culture" video - was that the main objective of the poster?

OBOE's Dan: The main objective was to get sued by Metallica. The rest was filler. It could still happen, fingers crossed.


Amoeblog: : Why the "3rd Annual"?

OBOE's Dan: We called up Bob Weir to try to get him on the bill but he was being such a douche about only playing ‘established festivals’ because evidently he’d been offered drugs in lieu of money once of twice before. After that we realized it’s hard to get big names when you’re doing something as adventurous as Goat Roaster for the first time, so we changed the name. It helps sell it to pedestrians too. We wouldn't want them to think it's all a joke. I mean, otherwise we would have put a lot of time and money into nothing.


Amoeblog: You mentioned two dates of the "festival" for this weekend as well as the "VIP show" on July 25th - any meaning behind those dates?

OBOE's Dan: OBOE played a private party on July 26th. That’s what the 25th was all about. I mixed up the dates in my head. As for August 8-9... We might have to push it back a few weeks.





The Other Band On Earth "Culture" (2015)


Amoeblog: Can you tell me a bit about the making of your new album - where it was produced and how the experience of recording it differed from playing live?

OBOE's Dan: Well, we’re really a live band. We go into every performance with a real nail-your-nuts-to- the-stage attitude. Lots of noise collages. Lots of dissonance and a pretty elastic approach to our fixed compositions. So we wanted our album to sound raw. None of that overproduced nu-metal super-soaker sounding bullshit. Reto Peter produced most of it and he is the best. He’s a local guy and he worked on Smash Mouth’s Christmas album, along with a bunch of other local and national acts, so we thought he’d be perfect. We recorded almost everything as a band--very few overdubs or punch-ins--so that we could best capture the live energy of our songs.

Playing music is an immediate experience, a completely interdependent relationship, a lot like fishing or horror porn. We wanted to preserve that energy. It’s so much more exciting to record knowing that one mistake might ruin everyone else’s perfect take. Why record on a mattress when you can do it on a razor’s edge, peering into the abyss? Tyler Hafer, one of Reto’s disciples, produced three of the cuts and couldn’t have made us sound better. Especially since he’s only, like, 18. Look him up. Get him while he’s cheap. Yosh! at Faultline Studios did "Culture." That’s our single. It’s about Emeryville. - Amoeba Music

The Other Band On Earth by The Other Band On Earth was made for musicians and alternatively-minded music apprecianados. It has been known to spark fear-induced enlightenment in those with their nictitating membranes sealed. 'Enrapturing' and 'Cultural strike-slip' are the most common descriptions of their sound and live-performances. This album marks the origination of the Transcendental Beach Sludge music genre. - Goat Roaster Publishing