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Crashing Cairo
Is it too late or too much to ask for a revision of the terms and conditions regarding the expression "pop music?" Blame elitists, blame whomever you wish, the simple fact is that "pop music" has become one of those terms that people just aren't willing to use for fear of the possible negative connotations. Be that as it may, so much emphasis is put on praising the ironic that we're all likely to miss out on a band like Crashing Cairo if we aren't careful. Their first album "Monday Changed Everything" is about as quintessential pop rock as it gets, which is not a jab at the band - for reasons alluded to earlier. Behind the band's mostly upbeat, contagious sound (seriously, their song "Hair" will never leave your brain) are four guys who dealt with some major hardship before finishing up almost a year of recording. Dan Denton, whose keyboard and guitar chops are featured throughout the album, tragically and suddenly lost his life in October of 2007. The band bravely chose to press on and released their record with a show at the Magic Bag in February. Detroit Fashion Pages caught up with Crashing Cairo front man Robert Wax to get to know the band a little bit more. DFP: How did the band get started? Wax: Well, I started doing my own stuff under I am Wax. I went out to New York to CBGB's and played an acoustic show there. One of the people in the crowd was Duane Lavold (Custom) with his entourage. He came up to me and we had this long conversation. He invited me out to his place in New York and he sat me down and said, 'Look, this is the deal. I don't care who you are, if you're doing the kind of music that you're doing you gotta have a full band.' That made a lot of sense and considering the guy has been successful I figured I should listen to him. So I came back and immediately started putting together a band. We got together and started playing shows as I am Wax, but I had always wanted more of a band approach. I really had a connection with these guys. So, when we added on the new bass player (Nick Potter), we changed the name, we changed the attitude, we dumped a bunch of songs and created what you hear. The band's been around for about a year now, so we're still babies. DFP: Talk a little about the past year. Wax: It's been a rough year. To get this album together we finished tracking everything except the lead vocals in August (2007) and I tracked all of the lead vocals in September. Then, after that, our keyboard player (Dan Denton) died. It was sudden. [He was] a healthy guy. He was the kind of guy that wouldn't eat the bun with burger, just get two pieces of lettuce. It was kind of a fluke thing; I think it was a result of an asthma medication that has a class-action lawsuit against it. It took the wind out of us for a while and we just kind of spun - didn't know what to do. Then we decided to press on. He was too valuable to replace so now I play his keyboard and guitar parts. We took a little time off - it took us a little time to get over it. We'll never be over it. DFP: What do you listen to? Wax: I listen to Mellowdrone. They've got a cool, quirky sound that I'm into. I listen to a lot of dead people: Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, but they're not dead (laughs). The new Radiohead ("In Rainbows") is just blowing me away. The other guys in the band really like Radiohead a lot too so that's like an over-arching influence. I know they're very main stream but I like U2. I've always liked U2. I think "Joshua Tree," to me, is an album that everybody should own. It's a very mainstream album and I know it's sometimes not always the most popular thing to say, 'Hey, I like a main stream artist,' but that's how I feel. DFP: I'd like to hear your approach to writing a song. How does that usually go? Wax: Well, it's changed. Over a year ago, when it was just I am Wax, I created everything. I used to record everything. Then we became a band and so you have all these people working together to create something. So, now the way we did it is I'll come up with maybe a skeleton of the song - I'll come up with some lyrics and maybe a very basic chord progression that really has nothing to do with the way the song is going to sound. So then I'll leave Nick (Potter) up to writing the bass lines, I'll leave Bob (Gilbert) up to the entire rhythmic approach, Joel (Cooper) up to the guitar approach and, on this last album, Dan up to the keyboard approach. That's the way we built those songs. I come in with the skeleton and they add the organs and the flesh and the hair and the skin. To find out more about Crashing Cairo, check out their next show at the Berkley Front, in Berkley, on May 10. For more information go to www.crashingcairo.com. -Nick Degel
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Photo courtesy of Steve Vilnius
