But because they named themselves The Airborne Toxic Event, the central plot element in Don DeLillo’s White Noise, I’ve sort of kept up with them anyway.
When I phone-interviewed Mikel Jollett of the L.A.-based indie-pop-rock band the Airborne Toxic Event, it surprised me when he said:
“We wanted a name that was a big fuck-you to names,” he said of the Don DeLillo-novel-inspired band name. “People say, ‘It really turned me off when I first heard that name.’ And I say, ‘Good, I’m glad.'”
… Jollett’s a smart dude. He’s an aspiring fiction writer and has written stuff for Filter magazine and the L.A. Times. He was mid-novel when he felt called to become a rockstar.
“I came to this crossroads. I had to decide whether to finish my novel or play music,” he said. “I had a literary agent and I was getting published and I had a column at NPR and my writing was going really well. It [had taken] years to get to that point. But then I was like, ‘I’m gonna start a band.'”
That was in 2006 and the ATE has since released a multi-hit record and are touring extensively around the world (“there’s definitely a lot of globetrotting going on,” Jollett said). He continues to make progress with his novel, though — an excerpt was recently published in McSweeney’s.
“You know that Bukowski poem, ‘How To Be A Great Writer‘?** ‘If you want to be a great writer, first of all you have to fuck a great deal of women,'” Jollett quoted. “I don’t think that’s true, actually. I doubt Steinbeck fucked that many women.”
Not knowing exactly how many women Steinbeck laid pipe to, Jollett continued, citing his interesting upbringing as being something of, but not completely, an inspiration for his music and writing.
“My parents had a healthy disrespect for all things conventional. They met in a commune, and I was born on that commune. They were kinda hippies, like starcrossed lovers. You know how the ’60s produced all these odd couplings? That was one of them,” he said….
I know, I know. A very weirdly written article. SOS can’t even figure out how to fix it…. Is the writer high?
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** Pot-banging piece of crap. But don’t take my word for it. Read it yourself.
July 30th, 2009 at 7:51PM
followed link, read it. your verdict is sustained.
July 31st, 2009 at 8:24AM
Well he’s no Robert Service, that’s for sure.
July 31st, 2009 at 10:01AM
An interesting piece about an interestingly named band.
UD might like to know that The Airborne Toxic Event is playing at the 930 Club in DC on October 12. A live blogging event, maybe?
July 31st, 2009 at 10:22AM
Ok, so I’m listening to Sometime Around Midnight even as we speak – La Kid’s in here too, listening — and we both like it a lot.
So maybe.