HEALTH

A conversation with John Famiglietti

(February 2008)

Interview by Alexis Roberts

It is nearly impossible to find this band on search engines with a name like HEALTH. The four Los Angeles boys seemed to just stroll out of The Smell and into the ears and eyes of the country overnight. Their live show is just as visual as it is musical. To see HEALTH is to believe them. It’s no wonder that they have been touring non-stop and have no plans to slow down anytime soon. About to embark out upon their spring tour with saucy Canadian duo Crystal Castles, HEALTH were kind enough to answer a few questions for us. HEALTH are more than a band, they are a fashion statement and a symbol of everything amazing that downtown Los Angeles hole-in-the-wall venues have to offer.

You have been touring quite a bit lately and according to your MySpace it looks like you will be on tour until April and then are heading back out in May to Europe.  What do you look forward to when touring, what are you not looking forward to in the least, what are your favorite cities to hit and when in Rome will you do as the Romans ?

We really love playing cities we've never played before and meeting new people and seeing new bands, et cetera.  I'm definitely not looking forward to loading gear in/out everyday for the next four months or so.  We love playing anywhere in Texas, the South, Denver, New Mexico, NYC. 

Tours are similar to family vacations, and band members are like a family- so how long do you think it will be until you all start bickering about silly things or do you have a perfect and harmonious relationship? What are you going to listen to on the road? How do you choose what makes it into the CD player?

As far as bands go, we get along really well.  Fights are pretty rare.  My iPod is the van iPod as we usually listen to that unless someone (not me) really wants Guns N' Roses or Paul Simon - then we switch to Jupiter's iPod.

In Los Angeles do you get a much different response from other cities or are you finding yourselves welcome with open arms? Do you think that this has to do with all of the great press that you guys have been getting lately from various other publications?

In LA everyone knows us and there is a HEALTH show culture which is much more of a party/get crazy vibe (thanks to so many Sean Carnage shows)....  That's not always the same in other places.  Now we are going to cities that have always been rough shows before and they're awesome shows now...so it must be the press or something...

How did your relationship with Crystal Castles begin?

20jazzfunkgreats, an incredible music blog based out of Brighton.  Upon our first visit there was a CCastles post with "Chess Mess" and "Love and Caring" for download.  We were immediately hooked.

Will the remix album be released or will it stay as an online thing which you let people download for free? That’s very cool by the way… What made you decide to put your songs on MySpace and available for free download?

The remix album will be released.  There was an original plan for a CD album, then the idea switched to vinyl singles and digital, so I stopped limiting the number of remixes and went shit ballz crazy, now we have a ton....and Lovepump wants to do the CD now, so we're thinking of creative ways to get them all on there.  We made the //DISCO MySpace and DJ hotline so the remixes won't be forgotten and so they could get to DJs.  We think the remixes are really special and we want them listened to and danced to.  Its not like a label commissioned all these for market saturation or crossover or whatever, these are all artists we were fans of and wanted to work with.

Your collaboration with Cold Sweat seemed to be a major success and the first 500 copies of the record sold out already. Were you expecting that to happen as quickly as it did? Does that make you all feel warm and fuzzy inside?

Nope, especially since we didn't have vinyl our entire US tour, which resulted in a lot of sad faces at the merch table.  We sold all our copies through HEALTH//FASHION which was a treat.

What role did The Smell play in the coming together of this band? How much did that have to do with the choice to record there?

I had been going to the Smell for a while ever since I moved to LA, I got really excited that if I was in a band we could play this really cool place.  After putting out our live cassette (also recorded at the Smell) and hearing what the room did for drums and vocals, it was an obvious choice for the LP.

Why does everyone like to wear neon outfits to your shows? Do you think that your music sounds like neon colors?  It also appears that some people don’t know what to do while HEALTH is playing they don’t know if they want to dance, push and shove, or stand still… What do you guys like to see the audience doing in neon colors? Will the way a crowd is responding spawn a reaction in your performance?
 

I don't know.  The color thing began as a reaction to aggressive or intense music always being on black, and not very girl-friendly.  We wanted the opposite of that.  Whatever an audience member wants to do is fine, but we love it when they dance.....I think its easier to spazz if you have the album and can anticipate the parts, but the show on our end will be the same.  If the show is for two people or 200, it's remarkably similar and we try to do it the same, but if there's a ton of stoked people involuntarily I get a little "sassier" - same if you're getting heckled by hardcore doods in a Milwaukee basement ("bitchier?"). 

Are there any HEALTH side projects that we should be on the look out for, or any other bands that you are into that you feel deserve some recognition?

The only real side project is that Jupiter and I will be DJ'ing amateurly under the HEALTH//DISCO moniker, nothing to get crazy about...just spinning the remixes + blog house for an afterparty or whatevs, once we figure this software out.  Look out for: Captain Ahab, Videohippos, Telepathe, The Invisible Conga People, Anavan, Kyle H. Mabson, and Ponytail.