Baseball Furies

The first time I heard the Baseball Furies a few years ago, I had the wind completely knocked out of me. I received their "Greater Than Ever" CD from Big Neck Records, and it sounded like a savage beating in an alley by someone whose displaced anger found me through drunken opportunity. The music was searing rock'n'roll weaponized with garage punk engineering and delivered with a fatalistic disregard for safety of any sort. The lyrics come off with an urgent sort of poetry that makes them all the more striking, unsettling, and enduring. The band seems to be faithfully transcribing the dark and pulsing id that lies underneath everyone’s publicly restrained exterior, while musically and lyrically retaining the smallest possible measure of control in order to retain its surging vitality. It is ruthless, primal, and immediate. It is fantastic. The Baseball Furies are: Billiams: drums Hollywood: bass Odie: vocals Styles (A-ron): guitar I was able to do the following interview with A-ron "Styles" Orlowski in May 2005 through e-mail.

RRP: You took your name from the 1979 gang movie “The Warriors,” right? Who were the Baseball Furies in that film, and why did you choose that name? A-ron: Yeah, the Furies were the gang that dressed in Yankee-like uniforms with grease paint on their faces similar to Kiss. The name was chosen before the band was formed when Odie and Aaron (Blowtops guitarist) were sitting around drinking one night and Aaron convinced Odie to start a new band. RRP: Didn’t you used to wear those baseball uniforms with painted faces and bats? Why did you stop doing that? A-ron: The band did do that for a little while (their first few shows) that they played with the original drummer (on the first 7"), Chris Volois. He left to move to Florida and become a lawyer before I joined the band. Once I joined, we recruited Dapper on drums and the uniforms were ditched. Hollywood said that the uniforms never matched and his especially was too small (showing embarrassing bulges). The grease paint was even worse because if you touched your face at all, it wound up all over your guitar or anything else you touched. We do talk about doing it as a surprise some time at random. RRP: Why did you move from Buffalo to Chicago? Is that where the whole band is based now? How does the music scene differ between those regions? A-ron: We moved to Chicago because one band member's girlfriend moved here for work and he announced that he was going to move with her. Odie and I were kind of sick of Buffalo and said we'd move too. Dapper stayed behind and continued working as a nurse and got married. We got Matt Williams from the Guilty Pleasures and have been here three years now. The music scene in Chicago is a lot different from Buffalo. First off, it's a much bigger city and there are different scenes here that are not only divided by genre but also geographically. It's strange to us since in Buffalo , if you were in a band in the city you pretty much knew of most everyone else in any type of band. Here there are bands that we have no idea exist that live in the same city as us. It's kind of cool to discover bands completely out of the blue, but it's also hard because there is so much going on just with the people we know that there is little time or money to check out things that you just catch wind of. We did recently play a show with a southside hardcore band called I Attack in our neighborhood and are looking forward to playing with them on the southside. It is easier to set up a show here because there are way more people into doing that. In the Ruff Buff it was always someone from the Furies or the Blowtops setting up shows. Especially for out of town bands. It was also a lot harder to get bands to come to Buffalo, although we proved it could be done with things like the Rust Belt Revolts. I mean you had to have a pretty good time to drive to Buffalo for nothing but free beer and a place to sleep for two nights and it sure was. RRP: The song “Sweat-out” seems to be about a retribution fantasy against the police. What kind of run-ins have you had with the cops that may have inspired that song? Didn’t you guys get arrested in California in 1999? A-ron: Odie writes the lyrics to the songs so I can't really speak for him. Everyone that has been in the band has been arrested, except for Hollywood, for things ranging from criminal possession of stolen property to stealing cable. We've never been arrested as a band, but the reason we missed some shows on our tour in 1999 was that we started breaking down constantly once we hit California. I've been asked this before and don't know where that rumor started. RRP: What secret clubs do you hate? A-ron: All of them! RRP: Almost every review of you guys mentions the words “hate,” “venom,” “spite,” aggression,” “anger,” or another similar descriptor. What sorts of things are driving your fury? What is pissing you off? A-ron: Everyday things piss us off. Shitty jobs, bills, girls, name it. I guess this comes across in our music because it's a way to get away from these things by playing as hard as we can. RRP: What drives your lyrical sensibility? Do you guys vent though other mediums as well? A-ron: Again, a question for Odie, but he's too lazy to write a response. He does spend time writing the lyrics. We both went through a Bukowski phase and have always enjoyed books like Last Exit To Brooklyn and things along those lines. He definitely writes with a feeling similar to those writers. As far as other things we're into, both Hollywood and Odie are into art. I skate when I'm not injured and we all are a bunch of drunks. RRP: In an interview with Odyssey Zine, Jared of the Ponys was asked what was the worst live situation that he could imagine, and he said, “the worst thing would be pooping my pants like Aaron from the Baseball Furies did at SXSW last year.” What’s the story behind that? A-ron: Well, we were down there for a few days hanging out with friends and playing shows and drinking all day and night. So we have an afternoon show at Beerland and we get there about 11 in the morning and start drinking. I think we were to play at three or something. So anyway, the bar has these crock pots with a sign that says "Free Frito Pie". So I'm hungry and the price is right but I had no idea what this dish was. The bartender opens a bag of fritos and proceeds to dump this vegetarian chili into the bag from the crock pots on the bar. Add a little cheese and a bunch of jalapenos and it's a meal. So I ate a couple of these "pies" and drank a lot more and felt fine. So we take the stage and the first song starts with ring notes that you do windmills to right at the beginning. So I hit the first chord with a mighty windmill and sprayed a bunch of wet shit out of my asshole into my pants. So we play the rest of our set and I'm trying to move around, but this is a very uncomfortable situation for any kind of movement. The worst part was the crowd wouldn't let us leave so we played three more songs after we had finished our set. After each of these songs, I'm pleading with the guys to end the show, but Hollywood just keeps yelling songs out and we go right into them. So after the third song, I unplug the guitar and run to the bathroom, ending the show. After cleaning myself up, they are giving me a bunch of shit about being a pussy for being tired and not wanting to play extra songs. That' when I finally told them that I had shit myself during the first song we played. They laid off me after they heard my explanation. RRP: What can you tell me about The Sanctuary in Buffalo? Was that a place where you used to play a lot? What was it like there and why did it get shut down? A-ron: The Sanctuary was run by Bart who went on to start Big Neck Records. We played there a bunch. He would promise out of town bands $75, free drinks, and a place to stay, which was Odie and my house or Aaron's (Blowtops) house. It was tiny: maybe 40 people could fit upstairs where the bands would play. We all would drink every night there. Sometimes I'd run around naked and check ID's at the door. It was a place where we could do pretty much whatever we wanted. The city ended up shutting him down, ran him out of town and he moved to Virginia. Now it's a shitty yuppie cigar/martini bar. RRP: What do you guys do for work when not with the band? Is it difficult to get time off to tour? A-ron: Hollywood works at a bar called Delilah's, strangely enough owned by a guy from Buffalo. Odie bartends at a restaurant, Billiams works at the Empty Bottle, and I work at a museum. It's kind of tough for me to get time off, but they're pretty understanding. We're going to Europe for 5 weeks starting in April so they gave me extra time off on top of using my vacation days, so that was cool. Also with Hollywood in the Tyrades, we have to schedule tours around both bands. RRP: How is the new CD “Let It Be” different from “Greater Than Ever?” In what direction have you gone musically and lyrically, and what can people expect from it? A-ron: I don't know. It's a little moodier, darker. I think it's just as intense, just better songwriting maybe. A while back, I listened to all of our records chronologically and it seems like a natural progression. This band has never been dedicated to a "sound", we just write whatever we feel like and see if it can work with the whole band playing together. As we're exposed to more and more music, that just subconsciously gets thrown into the mix when writing and arranging a song. We like to incorporate sounds we all like into our band. This record was written four years ago, at that time we were listening to a lot of Wipers, Testors, Gun Club, Birthday Party, Stiff Little Fingers, sixties garage, blues, noise... I guess just a ton of stuff. So I can pick out parts of our stuff that's influenced me to write, but its funny to hear others say that a song really sounds like one band and that is totally off from what I was going for but still makes sense. It's just that we as a unit have a unique sound that seems to come out naturally. If people like it, that's cool, if not , Fuck 'em cause we like it. RRP: How would you describe the typical Baseball Furies fan? What kinds of people do you draw? A-ron: That would be for them to describe. I don't know if we have any fans. Most people who like our music that we meet become friends. Just people who like good music and having a good time and don't really care for gimmicks or bullshit. RRP: What are some of your most memorable shows or touring experiences? A-ron: Well, obviously, shitting my pants. Memorable shows would be with the Dirtys and Splash 4 at the Gold Dollar in Detroit. Playing to three people at Rudyards in Houston in '99, but selling more merch than the night before. Any south by southwest cause so many friends are down there at once. Both tours with the Mistreaters. The West Coast tour with the TV Killers and the Stitches. Basically meeting new friends and seeing old ones are the best memories. RRP: If you were in control of shit in this country, what things would you change? A-ron: Well, I don't like the way shit smells so I'd have scientists come up with a way to make shit smell better. But I'd rather control other things than shit. I conferred with Hollywood about this and he said that shit should be blue, not brown. So maybe it should smell like blueberry muffins. RRP: What is your most prized possession, and what would you do to somebody who stole or damaged it? A-ron: Property is theft. RRP: If you could pass along one bit of information or advice to the next generation, what would it be? A-ron: Don't listen to anything we say.

Baseball Furies Web Site