A Conversation with The Axis of Awesome. All of Them. Yay. – HuffPost 9.9.11
A Conversation with The Axis of Awesome. All of Them. Yay.
Mike Ragogna: Hi guys. I’m scared. Okay, who’ve I got?
Jordan Raskopoulos: This is Jordan here, from the Axis Of Awesome.
Lee Naimo: This is Lee, also here, also from the Axis Of Awesome.
Benny Davis: And I’m Benny. I’m also in the Axis Of Awesome.
MR: Now, your song “4 Chords” is a phenomenon, having been viewed by almost thirty million people in various YouTube incarnations. This is your greatest hit, but come on, isn’t it really something like forty or fifty other artist’s greatest hits strung together?
LN: It is, and if we took every four-chord song we know of, it would
probably be about half an hour to forty-five minutes long.
BD: We’ve got about two hundred songs and growing. There are lots of bands that have maybe three or four. There are a lot of artists who fly under the radar when they have big hits, but they still have four chord songs.
JR: Also, when we’re performing in different countries, we’ll tailor the set list. So, there are a lot of Australian hits we wouldn’t do when we’re performing it in the States or in Europe, for example, and vice-versa. There are lots of songs.
LN: Speaking of tailoring the songs, “Taylor,” the song, is in “4 Chords.”
BD: By Jack Johnson.
MR: By the way, in the time we’ve been talking, you’re probably up to thirty-one million YouTube views.
BD: Yeah, I should make it clear that the way YouTube works is that it could be just a hundred people who have just watched it millions of times.
MR: (laughs) Yes. I imagine you guys have seen the “amateur” versions of “Four Chords” that have proliferated?
BD: Oh, they keep getting sent to us all the time, and we love them.
They’re great.
LN: “Hey, me and my friends did your song for an audition at our college, and we got a part in the musical.”
BD: “We did this for a competition and we won, and we didn’t credit you.”
JR: We are, at the moment, performing at the Edinburgh Festival, and there is this brother/sister duo busking on the corner of the street, and they’re singing the “4 Chords” song. Their dad is standing nearby with a whip, making sure they perform it properly.
MR: So, will there ever be cover versions of those cover versions of your cover versions?
JR: I think so. I mean, if Hollywood keeps remaking movies, I’m sure
people will keep covering the same things.
BD: It’s kind of like when you hold a mirror up to another mirror–that’s kind of what you get with the “4 Chords” song–it just keeps replicating itself ad infinitum.
MR: Okay. It’s that time. Exactly how did “4 Chords” come about, he asked sheepishly?
JR: Lee and I actually came up with the idea.
LN: That’s Lee and Jordan. It had nothing to do with the other guy.
JR: Benny had nothing to do with it. We were actually sharing a small
bath, and as the water level rose we noticed that suddenly an apple was
falling on our heads…
BD: …you’re thinking of your theory of relativity. I wrote it. I wrote the whole song. This is Benny talking now–I wrote it. I just picked up on it from listening to pop music and eventually playing cover gigs at bars. People kept asking me to play songs that I’d get bored with because they sounded all the same. So, I decided that if I strung them all together to prove they’re all the same, then people would believe me and I wouldn’t have to play them anymore. Now, I play it every night, and I sing these songs over and over again, so it really backfired.
MR: Yeah, I was going to ask if it was as simple as you listening to the radio and feeling that every song was the same.
ALL: Pretty much.
BD: I listen to the radio these days to do research on who’s written a
new one.
MR: Do you customize your medleys based on new hits?
JR: We kind of listen to whatever the newest hits are on the radio. Then, when we visit different countries, we’ll alter the songs.
LN: The other day, we did a show with David Hasselhoff, and Benny inserted one of his songs into the “4 Chords” mix.
BD: Which, I should be clear about, it wasn’t actually a four chord
song–it only had one chord in it.
LN: We cheated, but it was good cheating.
BD: No one recognized it, though, so it was kind of worthless.
LN: Probably not a great story to tell.
BD: Yeah, we should have ended this story a lot sooner than we have.
MR: So, because there are hits in Australia that we don’t know here, and
vice-versa, you constantly have to be adjusting the song lineup.
JR: Even “Don’t Stop Believing,” which is what we start the song with,
didn’t really hit Australia at all. It wasn’t until Glee became popular.
BD: Actually, I think Family Guy.
JR: Family Guy as well.
LN: It’s interesting that it’s only really well known through other pop culture mediums.
JR: Yeah, Journey themselves were never that big in Australia. But yeah,
we do tailor the songs to the different countries we visit.
MR: Of course, that begs the question, did “Don’t Stop Believing” really need to be re-recorded?
LN: Yes, by as many people as possible.
BD: We’re going to do a cover of it soon, just for fun.
MR: Now, you’ve got another song on your Animal Vehicle album that deconstructs the musical stereotype, “How To Write A Love Song.” It’s totally original, not a cover. Then again, isn’t it sort of a cover? What’s going on here?
JR: Well, it’s kind of a genre parody. So, rather than parodying a specific song, we wanted to parody a style of songs, which is ’90s boy band music. When we made the music video with “Funny Or Die,” we tried to parody as many Boyz II Men hits as possible.
BD: The one we missed out on was “A Walk On The Beach,” but otherwise, I think we did pretty well.
MR: Explain the writing hackneyed ballads thing?
JR: I remember driving home and listening to love song dedications. All those songs have the key change at the same point, the same style of voice, and the same style of everything else. Much like the “4 Chords” song, we just wanted to make sure that everybody knew that things are similar to other things.
LN: So many songs use the line, “Make up or break up” or “Put your hands in the air like you just don’t care.”
MR: You’re popular in your native Australia and in the U.K. where you’re
spending the month at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, but you’re also hugely popular in Sweden, where English is not the primary language. Do they get it over there?
JR: They speak better English than we do because they actually study it
in school. We’ve done two tours there so far, and it’s just a really beautiful country with wonderful people.
BD: That’s really the best thing about the internet–we were able to build an international following without having to leave home.
LN: Well, that’s the second best thing about the internet. I think we all know what the best part of the internet is.
MR: (laughs) Uh-oh…
JR: The main language of pop music is English, and when we do music
deconstruction stuff, that’s going to hit home in most countries.
LN: Before you go on stage for your first gig ever in Sweden you do think, “Are they going to get this? Do they know what we’re talking about?”
JR: The hardest thing was, we have a song about KFC and they don’t have KFC in Sweden.
BD: Which is Sweden’s loss, if you ask me.
LN: I concur.
MR: Have you ever eaten at a KFC?
BD: Once, here in America, and we love America and Americans.
MR: So, you’ve toured the US–actually, you were in my town, Fairfield, Iowa, and you’re headed back next month. How are the audiences here compared to Australia and Britain.
JR: We don’t really have a culture of glee clubs, pep rallies or anything like that. We’re quite surly audiences who sit there like, “We’re not going to laugh for no reason,’ whereas you guys laugh for no reason.
BD: It’s not discerning at all, and it is such a pleasure to be in front of crowds that will give you adulation for the tiny things you do.
LN: Even playing places that are quite religious areas, and doing some of our less God-friendly songs, they still just get right into it.
JR: It seriously is wonderful. America has got a very diverse culture, and everywhere from New Jersey to Texas and Oklahoma we’ve just been met with wonderful crowds.
LN: Colorado too…and we played in Oregon.
BD: George Washington…the place, not the guy.
LN: We were in George Washington?
BD: Isn’t that great? We played in George Washington.
MR: Where were your drunkest audiences?
BD: It depends on the time of day, really.
JR: We did a couple of music festivals, and I don’t know if they were drunk, per se, but they were definitely out of their faculties.
LN: The other day, we went on at three in the morning in Edinburgh, and you get some pretty drunk people when you’re performing at that time.
JR: And drunk Scottish people are really fun.
MR: Oh my. So, do people come up to you with song ideas?
BD: We do get emails from time to time, from people with parody ideas, or we get new suggestions for “4 Chords” songs that we might not have heard.
JR: Some of those people send us things saying, “I’ve written a song, and I’ve written a “4 Chords” song so that you can put it in your song and make me popular.” We have to explain to them that that’s not the way it works.
MR: Is it tempting, though, to do a “discover a new artist” song with a bunch of those strung together?
JR: One day, if we’re feeling charitable.
MR: Since “4 Chords” became so huge, are you concerned that some of your other material may be overshadowed by it?
JR: When we’re performing live, “4 Chords” has kind of been the thing that has been bringing people to the shows. We do an hour or an hour and a half of performance, and five minutes of that is the “4 Chords” song at the end. Everyone enjoys the rest of the show as well, so if it’s opening doors for people to hear our music, then it can’t be that bad.
LN: A couple of years ago, we kind of thought, “Is this going to be the thing that we’re known for and nothing else?” But like Jordan said, if it brings people along, then it’s a great thing.
BD: The same thing works online. People will discover us via the “4 Chords” song, but then it leads people to look at related links on YouTube, and they see all our other clips, and that’s usually how we build our fan base.
LN: And then they buy all of our songs…
BD: …available on iTunes. We’ve got T-shirts and other paraphernalia there.
LN: You can buy a date with Benny. He’ll come to your house and clean your fridge for you.
MR: If you could pick one other song on the project to be as popular as “4 Chords,” what would it be?
LN: We probably can’t say the name of it on radio. We have a song called,
“Can You Hear The F**ing Music That’s Coming Out Of My Car?”
JR: It’s kind of deconstructing a certain type of music that people play loudly on their car stereos as they drive around town. That’s probably the one that we want to catch on, and also the one that we want people to play loudly in their cars because we’ve recognized a problem and we want to make it worse.
MR: Were your onstage personalities fully formed when you started, or did your personas grow over time?
JR: They definitely grew over time. They were definitely very raw characters when we started off. We got some directors on board for our earlier shows, and they really defined the way the characters all worked. I think now we’re at a point where we’re comfortable with who each of us are, but early on, we were all just kind of making jokes and acting like silly idiots.
LN: If one of us thinks of a line, we kind of know who that should by said by. So, a lot of the lines that we say on stage might not have been written by us–normally mine, because I’m the dumb one, and I say, “Here’s a dumb line, say that.”
MR: Can you describe the individual characters?
JR: Yeah, Jordan’s character is the best–he’s like the best at all things in the world–and everybody loves him and gives him free pizza whenever he wants pizza.
BD: Benny, I guess, you’d describe as the straight man, and I’m also the favorite. They like me the most because I’m really talented and that’s what I do.
LN: And I’m Lee.
MR: (laughs) Is making it in America your ultimate goal?
JR: We want to make it on the moon. America is just a stepping-stone to
interplanetary conquest.
BD: It’s going to be a lot more difficult now that NASA has stopped the shuttle program. But if anyone is going to get it started again, it’s going to be the Axis Of Awesome.
LN: Yeah, we want to cover David Bowie’s “Life On Mars.”
MR: Literally. If you had a TV series, how would it be formatted?
LN: Well, we’d prefer not to talk about that, but have you seen Two And A Half Men? If you like that, it will be exactly like that. If you hate that, it will be nothing like that. If you’re indifferent to it, next question.
MR: Do you draw inspiration from things like Spinal Tap?
LN: Our ideas just come from the things we see around us all the time–every day kind of stuff.
JR: I think we were inspired to go into musical comedy because a lot of other acts. I think, stylistically, we try to create our own music and create our own style.
BD: Whereas a group like Spinal Tap is sort of a legitimate heavy metal band, and that’s kind of what makes them ridiculous because they’re not very heavy or metal. I think we’re quite knowingly a comedy band, and I think that’s what differentiates us.
LN: On the TV show they’re trying to be a serious band, even though you know they’re a comedy band. We’re a little bit more self-aware than that.
LN: But yeah, I’m a big fan of Christopher Guest’s work, and Spinal Tap is
one of my favorite movies.
MR: What advice do you have for new artists?
JR: In the music industry or the comedy industry, you just have to back
yourself up. Early on in your career, people are going to tell you that
you’re rubbage, and you have to believe that you’re not, even if you are.
LN: So, you might say, “Don’t Stop Believing.”
JR: Yeah, that’s the advice.
BD: Also, maybe cut your ear off. I know that’s worked in the past–I’m not sure if that would work these day, but give it a try, it hasn’t been done in quite a while.
LN: Stage time in comedy is really important. You have to get stage time, and sometimes when you first start out, that can be really difficult because everyone wants to get on stage. But get yourself a lot of stage time, and just get comfortable standing in front of an audience. Then, that will really help.
JR: Also, sacrifices to dark gods work really well.
BD: Yeah, practicing in the dark arts in general is going to help out.
JR: I mean, if your neighbors have pets and you have an altar, then just go for it.
MR: And as you mentioned earlier, it all does come back to “Don’t Stop
Believing,” right?
JR: Absolutely.
MR: Alrighty, you guys, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today.
ALL: Our pleasure.
Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney