Interview with The 88

The 88 is a band from Los Angeles. Their upbeat brand of music has been featured on The O.C., Grey’s Anatomy, How I Met Your Mother. Recently, they have made headlines by being the first band to record a single, the song “Love is the Thing,” directly onto an iPhone. I recently spoke with keyboardist Adam Merrin.

First of all, to jump right into it: you recorded a song using an iPhone. What made you decide to do that?

It all started when we were on tour and we were driving in the van and Keith [Slettedahl, vocals/guitar] was browsing through the app store and he came across the Four Track application. He brought it up and said “oh this would be cool just to record ideas when we’re away from home. Something to have fun with” so we downloaded it. And I decided it would be interesting to try to experiment and record the full band onto the iPhone to see what it would sound like. So we just made a plan when we got back to set a day aside and record and we knocked it out in a day.

We recorded everything in a couple of hours and then I took it home and mixed it on the computer, and that took a couple hours. We actually filmed ourselves during the whole recording process and I edited the making of film in iMovie and we put that on the website and got it on iTunes. It actually spread a lot more than we had imagined, which was really cool.

How hard was it to using an iPhone as opposed to a more traditional way of recording?

It was super easy. Everything on a Mac and on an iPhone is very user-friendly. It was just like you’d imagine. Everything is very self-explanatory; you don’t need any manuals or to be a recording engineer genius to figure it out. Anybody can do it. And we kept that theme of “anybody can do this” and did it very simply with cheap instruments – the drummer used a toy drum set, the bass player ran his bass through a practice guitar amp. I played keyboards on a cheap $150 keyboard. We didn’t use any microphones at first and just used the built-in microphone to record everything. I did a mix of that and it sounded cool but the lead vocals sounded a little bit distant. It still had a very unique sound and I thought it was pretty cool, but we also thought it might make it even more intimate to try to use a microphone going directly into the phone to do the lead vocal. So we did a little more research and I found a thing Alesis called Pro Track. And with that you hook your phone into it and you can hook a microphone into that. So we re-recorded the lead vocal into that to get a more close up feel. And I think it came out really great. But all the other tracks were recorded using the built-in mic, which actually is a decent mic. It picks up everything really nicely. It’s a lot better than I expected.

Was it hard to get the levels right on the different instruments?

Four Track doesn’t let you control the input level, so in order to get something to not overload the phone you basically just move the phone further away from what you’re recording. So for the drums, which would be the loudest thing we were recording, we put the phone on the other side of the room, put some pillows around it. We also covered the drum with a sheet to help quiet it. So that’s pretty much how you have to do it until they come out with an update that has an input level, which I’m sure they will at some point. But again this was pretty cool to do it in that style. I thought it had a pretty unique sound.

Do you think the iPod or iPhone has changed the way that you listen to music?

Well, the thing that’s great is I have my whole music collection in the palm of my hand so when we’re on tour so instead of having a huge notebook full of CDs it’s very easy and convenient. It definitely makes touring a lot more fun. I have different ways of listening to music. I have a record player at home so when I’m at home I’ll listen to vinyl. But definitely when I’m away from home it’s great to have an iPod. That other great thing is that when you put it on random, stuff will come up that you wouldn’t normally put on that is nice to listen to, so I really like that feature cause you’ll get some stuff that you wouldn’t necessarily think to play.

Do you feel that, as a member of a band, that iTunes and online availability of music has influenced you in the way you think of songs or put together albums?

No, it hasn’t. We still come from an old-school way of thinking when putting together an album. I know that topic has been brought up when we’re finalizing everything– the songs, the album cover– and it’s definitely a question of whether it looks good on the iTunes store. Even coming up with a sequence of songs on the album. You hear some people say it doesn’t matter now since people download [individual] songs but to us we still come from the thinking of making a proper album with the sequence of songs.

I’ve noticed from comments about the band is that your live shows are described as being “high energy.” So what do you aim for in a live show? Do you try to recreate the song the way it was recorded or do you try to experiment? What’s your goal when you’re performing?

We like to try out new things when we’re performing live. To me it’s just such a special moment. There’s so much energy and time and work that goes into planning the live shows and we take it seriously and also have a lot of fun at the same time. But when I’m on the stage, I cannot take that for granted. I know that it’s a once in a lifetime moment and I think that this could be the last we play, for whatever reason, so I just give it my all. And I think the songs are fun to play, so we have fun and I think the audience likes to see a band that’s having a good time, cause they’re there to have a fun time too. We usually get a good reaction. I think we get a lot of new fans at our live shows too. We just got off the road with the B52s and I think we got a lot of new fans from those shows, people that had never heard us before and so we really enjoy recording but we really enjoy touring too.

You mentioned that you were on tour with the B52s. What was that like?

It was an honor touring with them. Before we went on tour with them I was listening to some of their albums and I was thinking “I cannot believe we are touring with them.” They are so original and definitely have their own thing and their own sound so it was really an honor to be playing with them. It seemed to be the right fit with their audience. People who go to see them go to have a good time and I guess they noticed the older influences in our band. It was just perfect. So every single night we’d be selling a lot of CDs and meeting a lot of new people. It was the best touring experience that we’ve had.

What type of influences do you have as a band?

We kind of listen to a little bit of everything, but we lean towards a little bit of the older stuff from the 60s and 70s: the Beatles, David Bowie, the Band, the Kings, that kind of thing. I definitely listen to more of that stuff than modern music. But then there are some bands that I do like, such as Sigur Ros, Matt Costa, Radiohead. So it’s not like I listen to only the older stuff, but I enjoy the way that was recorded and the older sound is more appealing to me. Even the song structures too. I like the way they were written back then.

One last question: what do you see in the future for The 88? What’s next?

We’re continuing to record new music. That’s what we’re working on this summer. We’ve tried new ways of recording and different producers and a variety of studios around LA. After all that we’ve found that we love recording on our own so we just want to continue doing that. Any good touring opportunities that come up we’ll take. We also want to try doing things differently than the standard way that bands have recorded music and released it. We just want to record music and get it out as quickly as possible instead of having this long waiting period and then a build up to a release. That’s the old way of doing things and I don’t see how that’s worked for us. And I can’t see releasing a new album every year or two because we’re always writing and recording. We just want to capture that and get it out there as soon as possible and not have that album cycle that people are used to. I think it’ll work best for us.

There’s something to be said about not keeping people waiting two or three years for an album. That can get frustrating for fans.

Yeah. And for us too. In the past we’d record a song and it wouldn’t come out for six months and by the time it comes out we’re sick of it and not excited to play it live. It’s not fun for us and people can tell we’re not into it. We want to write something, record it, and play it live as soon as possible to keep it fresh and exciting and fun for us. Otherwise it’s not worth it. The whole point is to have fun. We’re really excited about things now, especially now that we’re not with a big label anymore. We’re free to do what we want. LIke this iPhone thing. We wouldn’t have been able to do that on a major label. What’s really funny is that it’s sold more downloads than when we were with a label. It’s been a great learning experience learning that we don’t need that– that bands can do it better, in fact, than having a big label behind them. Especially the way the state of the business is right now I think it’s better for bands to do it themselves. There’s so many outlets for getting music out. And there are so many inexpensive ways to record your music and still make it sound really good.

The 88 is currently on tour with the B52s. Their albums Not Only but Also, Over and Over and Kind of Light, as well as their recent single “Love is the Thing” are available on iTunes.

Learn more at The88.net

interview by Matt Saye