RED RED MEAT -
MORE IN COMMON WITH
SOAP OPERAS THAN LIFE

BY ANASTASIA PANTSIOS

Chicago's Red Red Meat confronts a song head on, like an aggressive and determined dog, pokes and prods it for a while and then starts to attack it, gnawing on it until it screams for mercy. Nice, solid, bluesy riffs turn strange and twisted as they're mangled; songs that seemed to start out well-grounded end up out on a limb somewhere, stranded in space and babbling. It's kind of like... a conversation with guitarist/vocalist and band founder Tim Rutili. You give him a question, he takes it and bats it
around a little, and then when you try to move on, you'll discover that he has kidnapped your question and dragged it off into the alley to work it over, refusing to let it go.

Take, for instance, the rather innocuous question of how the band hooked up with their current record label, the
esteemed Seattle-based indie, Sub Pop, who have just released the band's second full-length album JIMMY WINE MAJESTIC, the follow-up to last year's setf-titled, self-released (on "Perishable Records") debut, as well as the inevitable batch of 7" singles.

"I have some triends in Seattle," Rutili begins, innocently enough. "A girl I used to date is dating Jonathon." That would be Jonathan Poneman one of Sub Pop's founders and head honchos. "The two of you must have
parted on good terms, then" I offer, figuring she must have slipped Jonathon the band's tape.
.

red red meat   no shirt, huge shoes, no service

jonathan poneman   machiavellian plotter

"No. I flew out there because she's mine and I want her back. It was an edgy scene with me and him and her."

So, it must be fine now, right?

No! "We're still dealing with it." Rutil is on a roll, reveling with a vengeance in the part of the passionate, wronged lover. "They love our music and he's a businessman. But she's mine and I want her back. I keep writing her
love songs; she really wants to come back to me."

"Why doesn't she then?" I inquire. I should never have asked because Rutili clearly intends to tell me. "She just doesn't know that she wants to yet. I'll keep writing her songs until she knows. I think he just wants to keep an eye on me." "He", we presume, is Jonathon.

We also presume that he actually learned of the band through the favorable response they got from their early records; we know from the Chicago press that he flew out there to hear them at alternative rock club Lounge Ax on the city's north side. And we presume that he was just as impressed as we were when we saw them at the Grog Shop by the band's open-ended, broad-stroked approach to their music, while
the diminutive Rutili plants himself between the twin towers of bassist Tim Hurley and guitarist Glenn Girard, wailing his convoluted and unfathomable narrative, while drummer Brian Heck stoically keeps moving him ahead. On stage, as in life, he's starring in his own internal drama.

Jonathon signed you to keep an eye on you??!!??

Yes... "It makes me feel like a victim," says Rutili with a sigh. 'but that's okay. Human nature is hunger and greed and jealousy and stealing and going to the bathroom. You can't get away from human behavior."

The music is kind of like that too. Songs start out benignly enough, like familiar classic rock-style songs that a biker blues/rock band might jam on at their regular Sunday night gig at the neighborhood bar- a little loose, a little wound down, a little shaky after the long weekend. But then the band clamps down its musical teeth and digs in; the song distorts in its grip becoming barely recognizable.

They torture a song the way Rutili tortures himself with melodramatic scenarios of his ex-girltriend dating the head of his label, enjoying the spectacle of poor, heartbroken Timmy suffering at the center.

"Some would say you're a whining little puke," I suggest, and I can almost see his eyes light up over 350 miles of phone wire. "They'd be right!!"

So you haven't been thinking that there's sweetness and light and harmony at the heart ot this band; which came together in 1990 from meeting in the neighborhood
laundromat where Rutili worked on the north side of Chicago. In fact, his meeting with guitarist Glenn Girard was one of those fellow-spirit recognition moments when both discovered they loved the Television album "Marquis (sic) Moon", another paean to stretched, twisted, tortured beauty, another band who mangles a song until it warbles
in pain.

But- they fight. "Sometimes it makes the music better," he insists. "Last weekend we had some shows. No one was speaking to each other all the way up. It was this whole bad vibe. On stage it went away. We were able to challenge each other on stage. Of course, after the show,
we were fighting again. We have mood swings. Everybody in this band is a dick; everybody has a chip on their shoulder."

So how do you stay together, I ask, starting to think there's very little that Mr. Rutili doesn't turn into a soap opera. "We're all pretty unselfish," he offers unexpectedly. "We are all trying to promote the end product." He expands, "We do a lot of improvising. It helps to keep things alive. That's when the tension helps to keep things interesting."

Considering that, it's really not such a surprise when he goes on to reveal another of his musical enthusiasms."I love the Grateful Dead. As long as they keep playing live the way they do, keeping things loose and not set, they'll be valid until they drop dead. I've seen them 40-50 times."

Not that he's permanently locked into the classic rock era. "I like Spaceman Three; I like Spiritualized," he says, ticking off some of his current favorites. "I love Flaming Lips' latest album. Going on tour with them was amazing."  (That tour brought them to the Grog Shop here in Cleveland late last year.) "They're one of my favorite bands in the whole world."

Red Red Meat ended 1993 with a New Year's Eve show at the Cabaret Metro in their hometown, then did some spot shows while waiting for the February 15 release of their album. Then there'll be more touring, undoubtedly fraught with more drama. "We like to play 'Oregon Trail'. It's a game for sixth graders but I'm completely obsessed with it. It's really close to what it's like being a band on the road. You give people names like "Stinky". They get measles and dysentery. Usually a couple of people end up dying."

I guess we should pray that doesn't happen to Red Red Meat