Happy 10th anniversary to Jonny X and the Groadies, local purveyors of beautiful, fucked experimental heaviness. Send them candy-grams, cakes, and roses.
A lot of bands lose their energy and give lackluster, limp, boring shows after 10 years. How do you keep it passionate and fun?
DJ INVISIBLETOUCH: Practical answer—being conscious of bands that mellow/burn out after a couple years I consciously have avoided mellowing/burning out.
Funny answer—since we do everything at such a slow rate we are not 10 years old in band years, we're more like a two-year-old band. A couple of tours under our belt, a couple releases. Give us a couple decades to get boring and mellowed out.
How has the band changed in the last 10 years?
JONNY X: We used to pretty much only play at Thee O now we pretty much only play at Food Hole. Just a hundred or so feet from each other.
DJ INVISIBLETOUCH: We used to be a fairly annoying hardcore-punk band, now we're a fairly annoying electronic-metal-hardcore-punk band.
If you could use your music to annihilate anything in Portland, what would it be?
JONNY X: The Pearl District and the North Macadam Urban Renewal District.
TRAVIS WEST: The Alberta Street Fair.
PROFESSOR (JEREMY) ROMAGNA: The Willamette River. If you annihilated all the water in the section of the Willamette within the city of Portland, such that all of the water north and south of the city rushed back in to fill the void... that would be awesome.
DJ INVISIBLETOUCH: The pay-to-play "promoters" that are the vampires of the unconnected and/or young bands that are around Portland today. Instead of giving money to these "promoters," make a demo CD-R/tape/MP3, share it with people that are in bands, book shows, work at venues, etc., or put on your own shows in free spaces/houses/schools.
If you could use your music to help/save/protect/benefit anything in Portland what would it be?
WEST: I wish that the force of our music would install the rest of the sheet rock and finish up the construction of our "sound-proofed" garage we started working on over two years ago.
DJ INVISIBLETOUCH: Hmm, answers were hard to come by for this question, maybe that means our alignment would be more chaotic evil rather than neutral good....
Jonny X and the Groadies' 10-Year Anniversary, Food Hole, 20 NW 3rd, Tues July 4, w/K.I.T., Abiku, Sour Grapes