Casual Business 04: MiniBoone

When Mini­Boone arrived I imme­di­ately felt at ease. They’re five white dudes in plaid shirts and denim pants just like me. They all wear glasses and I would too if I hadn’t got­ten the LASIK surgery years ago. When I made jokes related to flat­u­lence or feces they laughed oblig­ingly, espe­cially Craig, who is known to lose it at the faintest whiff of deuce. We all enjoy cheap Amer­i­can lager because it gets you loose and also because some­how we like the way it tastes. Most of all, these dudes LOVE TO ROCK and that’s an immer­sive pur­suit I get down with daily.

They launched into their music, and for all its kinetic twists and sur­pris­ing turns it’s essen­tially verse cho­rus verse Amer­i­can power pop–but I don’t mean that in a pejo­ra­tive sense. They’re draw­ing on time­less tra­di­tions and I think what they do is good for rock and roll in the sweep­ing sense. They rock with­out brood­ing or pre­ten­sion. They embody the idea of a band as a gang. They look to deliver vis­ceral rock thrills AND they cut to the heart at the same time. They’re smart but not snarky. The songs feel uni­ver­sal but not vague. The band plays tight but not mechan­i­cal, loose but not sloppy.

The first part of this ses­sion was devoted to tap­ing my Break­Thru­Ra­dio show. Hear it here and watch the video below. My BTR ses­sions tend to veer towards beery mostly because it’s nervewrack­ing to pre­tend to be a talk show host. I pre­fer a social atmos­phere. This ses­sion was taped back before Four Loko was banned. I had some of that for­bid­den elixir and shouldn’t have, because my sharp rec­ol­lec­tions have faded into foggy notions. I took notes, how­ever. Here is a snap­shot of my scrib­bles from the session:

Mini­boone ripped through 4 songs in the space it takes nor­mal bands to do 2. It’s not because they play short songs. It’s because they love play­ing together so much they didn’t want to leave my live room.

Travis Har­ri­son

I’ve been singing MiniBoone’s praises for so long, and so loudly, I wouldn’t be sur­prised if the echo’s still ring­ing around some ware­houses in Bush­wick. I fuck­ing love this band. We first met via the Ampeater sub­mis­sions box almost exactly a year ago, and it’s been a blur of show­cases, inter­views, and live ses­sions ever since (you can check out my open­ing love let­ter to Mini­Boone here). As Travis men­tioned in his note above, this is a real band, a real rock and roll band. Mini­Boone car­ries the torch of an entire genre, and does it with such con­sis­tently infal­li­ble taste and enthu­si­asm that it’s hard not to stand up and take notice. When­ever some­one tries to give me the “rock and roll is dead, man” speech, I strike them sternly across the face and point them in the direc­tion of Mini­Boone. We couldn’t drag these guys away from the mics, and before we knew it they had cut 4 mag­nif­i­cent tracks for this Casual Busi­ness (dou­ble) dig­i­tal 7-inch.

To know engi­neer extra­or­di­naire Travis Har­ri­son is to have the music of Bruce Spring­steen forced upon you with the obses­sive loy­alty of a reli­gious zealot. After about a year of frus­trated reluc­tance, I came around to The Boss dur­ing a stoney late night YouTube ses­sion fea­tur­ing the 1978 E Street Band. Need­less to say, Travis went apeshit when Mini­Boone launched into their a cap­pella intro to “Danc­ing in the Dark”. I mean, he was right to go nuts–there are cov­ers, and then there are COVERS. Mini­Boone owned this song, and made it their own with­out reser­va­tion or restraint. It’s a sense one gets on most Mini­Boone tunes, that they’re some­how able to go just past the point of con­trol with­out los­ing it alto­gether, and to snap back into san­ity at the last pos­si­ble moment. It’s this par­tic­u­lar knack that makes their music so fun­da­men­tally excit­ing, and deliv­ers hooks by means of struc­tural and tex­tural vari­a­tion in addi­tion to the usual melodic tricks. Pay atten­tion at the end of the track and you’ll hear Travis enthu­si­as­ti­cally hump­ing the slid­ing glass door to the stu­dio and then high-fiving every mem­ber of the band.

In a recent inter­view, I asked Mini­Boone what their alter ego bands Mega­Boone and MetaBoone might sound like. Tay­lor oblig­ingly replied:

Mega­Boone: Music com­posed and per­formed by 1994 leg­end, Mega Man. He would have to take a hia­tus from fight­ing the evil robot Wily, and since he was orig­i­nally “Rock Man”, this would be our biggest foe in a “Rock Off” com­pe­ti­tion. Sounds of lasers, mega-jumpz, and frus­trated nerds would dom­i­nate each song. Mega would def­i­nitely require the help of his team mem­bers Proto Man, and Bass to defeat Mini­Boone. This would all take place in a hybrid of “Rock Band” and “Mega Man X”, to even­tu­ally become CAPCOM’s most prof­itable story to date.

MetaBoone: This band would look Mini­Boone, stink MB, sound MB, and wear the same cus­tom fab­rics that MB orders from Nepal each year. One excep­tion though, when they per­form live each Mega­Booner would spon­ta­neously pop like a bal­loon and con­fetti would shower the stage dur­ing their set closer “Hilar­i­ous Cur­rency”. Thus mak­ing only one live appear­ance for MetaBoone even possible.

I’m not sure whether this inter­view snip­pet con­tributes any­thing to read­ers’ enjoy­ment of this ses­sion, or to the greater under­stand­ing of Mini­Boone at large, but do I hope it con­veys a vague sense that this isn’t your aver­age Brook­lyn indie band, and con­vinces maybe a cou­ple aspir­ing youths that even dudes who play Mega­Man can grow up to be rock stars.

Ben Heller

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