INTERVIEW + UPCOMING SHOWS: EXALTED RULER 1998

CM: How did the three of you end up playing music together?
JB: Brian and I were filming a video for the AV class we were in and Brian mentioned he needed a bass player for a little bedroom project he had going on with some dude from our art class. It sounded horrible and didn’t last for more than like 3 practices. A couple of months later we were watching a video for this band, Wavves, and I’m like, “Brian, let’s start a band” so we did. After a few line up changes we ended up with our old high school friend, Markus Rosetta, on the drums

CM: Where did you get the name Exalted Ruler 1998?
BZ: I took an AV class back in high school and a friend of my was playing this sort of school function downtown at a place called the Elks Lodge. Its essentially the Water Buffalo Society from the Flinstones; bunch of middle age dads pound some drinks and do karaoke. I shot this intro for the video and one scene involved this wall of plaques, and I zoomed in on this one guy whose given title was “Exalted Ruler 1998″. We thought it was the most ridiculous name for a position especially for a social club, and Jordan suggested that if we ever started a band that would be the name. We actually ended up contacting the guy and apparently he became a fan funny enough

CM: I can’t say I know much about music in Alabama, whats the music scene like in Huntsville, AL? Is a there anything interesting there that you have an abundance of?
BZ: As far as our part of Alabama, Huntsville, there’s not really much of a music scene. There’s an abundance of Christian hardcore acts which we all abhor. All of them are just cookie cutter copies of each other and have this warped ideology they throw in their music which they probably get from their strict conservative parents. Its unfortunate because most of the nearby venues kind of cater to them there’s not really many other places for different types of bands to play, a few bars and a couple other random spaces. There’s some good bands though and we’re pretty much all friends or acquaintances with each other. A few that I can recommend are Oto Benga, The Jellyfish, Or the Children’s Crusade, and the Brothers Mayhall. But honestly its really hard to play around in Huntsville, people are flaky and not much will come of it. Birmingham is really where any sort of music scene in Alabama is happening. We’ve played there a few times and we are again on this tour. I really like it there especially the places we’ve got to play. There was an all ages venue called the Spring Street Firehouse ran by a cool dude named Nathan and he did a really good job with that venue. He lived upstairs as I understand it and now he’s moving to a new spot. There’s also the Bottletree which is really popular because all the big indie acts that come down south will play it. We played there once for an open mic night and it was awesome because I’ve seen countless shows there. Jordan actually ran a short lived venue in south Huntsville that was actually pretty successful.

JB: Like B-dog said, I ran a short lived venue called “The Earl Mom”. The Earl Mom catered to bands and sounds that normally wouldn’t get to play anywhere else in North Alabama. We gave teenagers a chance to play, which is a huge problem with venues in our area, but problems happened with underage kids involving illegal substances and it had to close… Which is extremely sad because now those kids have nowhere to play and I feel this discourages the youngsters from getting out there and experiencing new music. Caution Morning, The Jellyfish, The Breathing Light, I Can End My Sentences in Prepositions if I Want To, and Freelance Morticians are my top list of unsigned bands coming out of our area.

CM: I’ve been listening to some of your music that you have uploaded online. Are your recordings self-made?
BZ: Yeah, we recorded them all ourselves over the course of about three or four days I’d say. We’ve worked with some of our friends in the past who recorded us, but the only one who we thought did a good job is sort of a recluse and hard to reach, he did our first EP. We felt that everybody else who had recorded us or tried never could get the sound that we wanted. I like the guitar jangly and thin but people were rounding it off and making it sound bland like they were trying to make it sound very professionally done and I just don’t feel that encapsulates how we actually sound live. We go for that raw live stuff in our recordings. We put out an album before this current compilation and we weren’t satisfied with the final product so we decided we would just take all our favorite oldies and the new stuff we had written and record it all ourselves. Our off and on drummer got some recording equipment and so we used that. We used two mics and just did live takes and felt like for the limited equipment we had the product yielded was what we aim for. I’ve been messing around with Garageband enough that I’ve figured out how to do a decent job at mixing. Listening now I can pick out things that I could’ve done better, but I guess that might be with any body of work.

CM: I see that you guys are playing the Radio Room here in Greenville on June 23rd. Have you played the upstate area before?
BZ: This will actually be our first time in the area, our first show in South Carolina period. I’m really interested in checking out the area because I’ve never been and I was unaware of the scene you’ve got going on there. I had never heard of Greenville before booking this tour and when I did my research I was pleasantly surprised and I’ve heard good things about the place.

CM: Where do you guys get inspired to write music? Lyrics?
BZ: The inspiration is always kind of random for me. Sometimes a melody will just pop up in my head and I’ll start humming it and if I’m not near an instrument then I’ll hum it into my phone. There’s a scene in that 90′s cult film “Bandwagon” where the lead is getting ready for work and then all of a sudden he starts humming and figures it out on the guitar, he ends up being late to work. That’s pretty much the same trend for me. I swear inspiration strikes at the most inconvenient times. But personally the music comes first usually which is probably better because I take forever with lyrics I try to be very exact with my words. If I don’t have a ready melody then I’ll just fool around on guitar and stumble upon something that sounds cool and work from there. I’m interested in songs made of parts rather than the verse chorus form, kind of like suites. We’ve done it before and I think that’s what I want to do more of in the future, essentially filling songs with hook after hook. I’m also getting more interested in jazzy chords and darker stuff. I discovered The Birthday Party and Rowland S. Howard’s guitar playing is some of the stuff I want to try and pull off. I’ve always wanted to know how to make those kinds of sounds but didn’t know how until I watched videos of him playing. I’d like to make a good combo of dark dissonant stuff but also strong melodies that make it listenable, that’s at least my aims for my guitar playing in the future.

Lyrics take me forever because I don’t often sit down and concentrate on finishing the lyrical side of things. Normally I’ll just write random phrases down and when it finally comes to putting words to the music I just try to gauge the mood of the song and some ready lines and see if they go together. If they do then I’ll work from there and it usually takes me a while because I don’t like to spell things out. I try to be a little cryptic or witty. The person who got me to pick up guitar and start writing is Isaac Brock and his lines make me want to shoot for the gold when it comes to writing lyrics because that guy is fucking Shakespeare as far as I’m concerned. There is the rare occasion where I’ll just make up some lines while playing and if they fit well and are catchy then they’ll suggest the subject matter and I’ll go from there also.

JB: When we started Exalted I had been playing bass for a few months and couldn’t play anything harder than some “Unknown Pleasures”-Era Peter Hook shit or Nicholi from the Strokes so those became my biggest influences when writing shit. As I got better at the bass, my influences starting leaning more towards Andy Rourke of The Smiths and Carlos D of Interpol. Morrissey is an inspiration to me lyrically.

CM: Is there anything you guys have coming up that you’d like people to know about? Anything else interesting about the band?
BZ: There’s not really too much coming up that I can think of. There might be a new single on the way, but that’ll probably happen after the tour. I’m working on and demoing some new material that I’ve been writing for a few months now since the compilation was finished. I moved to Tennessee and didn’t know anyone for a while so I had a lot of time to work on music in my spare time. Really the band is in a kind of state of flux at the moment and there’s just a few factors that we’re waiting to see on how they end up to determine where we go from here. The band will continue in some form or another but depending how things end up we might be on hiatus for a little while after the tour. The drummer we’re touring with is probably only going to stick with us for the dates and then we’ll be without a drummer again. Our old one might join up again though as a permanent member so we’ll have to wait and see. Me and Jordan want to keep going with this and see where it leads so we’ll keep writing and playing. We’re planning on relocating to a bigger city and trying to find a new drummer if we can’t get back our old one on as a permanent member. There’s not too many available drummers in Huntsville especially ones that fit our style so we’re going to test our luck somewhere else. That and more options as far as venues go is also another appealing thing about moving to a bigger city. We could use a change of scenery.