There are many reasons to dig Piebald, that popping guitar-crunch quartet from outside Boston. Its songs take a wonderfully powerful yet decidedly literary tact. Its fourth album (Accidental Gentlemen) was recorded on analog tape and features real songs (hey, remember those?). It covers sweetly the Kinks' telling "Strangers." The band's so unselfishly world-aware as to offer a subtle fuck-you to conventional industry mannerisms — it tours in a huge Ford van that's fueled on vegetable grease, not gas. Piebald's Travis Shettel gives up his five monomanias of the week:
5. Alt. rock: There isn't just one way to conserve resources and the globe we are living on. Veg oil is just a tip of a huge iceberg of alternative fuels and energies. Use your brain, start thinking, do some research and be creative.
4. Green Day: Being green is not being a hippie. My band is a rock band. We like it loud, fast and obnoxious.
3. Lawyers, guns and money: Killing people in another country is not going to make gas cheaper.
2. Stop your sobbing: "But converting to vegetable oil will cost a lot of money." That's usually said to me, or us, in a whiny voice and has no basis in reality. Truth is that it'll save you money, eventually buy your van or car for you and piss off Mr. Bush!
1. Tap that Keg!: The little individual bottles of water that are given to bands every show. Do clubs not think I'm willing to drink out of a gallon jug and pass to my fellow bandmate, tourmate or showmate? Could you create more trash?
Friday, June 22, at St. Andrew's Hall, 431 Congress, Detroit; 313-961-6357.
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