Music Is To Blame had the opportunity to sit down with Martha Davis and Marty Jourard of Californian New Wave legends The Motels. Fresh off the back of their incredible performance, we chatted about all things New Wave, their new sci-fi concept album and Davis’s five alpacas.
As the excitement of playing their first UK show since 1980 melts into relief as we sink into the plush backstage sofas they reiterate the common chaos of festival shows. “It was fun and a little chaotic as those things often are. We had to cut a couple songs, but it worked out.” vocalist Martha Davis says triumphantly. “We call it throwrow and go. No sound check, you just set up to play and pray.” adds Marty Jourard - the band’s keyboard player and saxophonist.
Reflecting on the excitement of returning to the UK, Davis mentions the diversity of the crowd; “I think that there's probably some people that may have known us from those days, but there's a lot of young people. This is not our crowd, this is the festival crowd, so we're getting a lot of people, we had a pretty good size crowd, which was nice. People were singing along to the songs, so that was pretty exciting.” Jourard dwells on the vast gap of time between their last performance and now, reflecting that “if somebody was born the last time we played here, they'd be 45 today. So there's a whole generation, at least, that went by.”
As well as Forever Now, the band played an intimate show at punk staple The 100 Club. “I'm very excited because I've never been there and I hear it's legendary.” Davis beams. Jourard mentions playing The Marquee Club back in 1979, mapping out central London’s punk hotspots. They are disappointed to learn that The Marquee is now a Wetherspoons. “Progress” Davis says, irony dripping from every syllable. “It's like, and it's these big, big organisations that buy out the little clubs. It's just sad. If we got to enjoy that era, we’re lucky!” The conversation changes dramatically in the best way possible once we asked the band about the scene where they are based. Once based in L.A., the band now reside all across the U.S.. Jourard is based in Seattle and Davis owns a farm in Portland. “I have a beautiful farm. I have at least one of everything. I have one pig, four horses, five alpacas, nine goats, and three cows. That pretty much covers me. And four dogs, yeah… and some cats too!”
The two share a knowing glance as they share their term of endearment for the decade we are gathered to celebrate - “The Won’t-Go-Awayties!” David theorises that there is something people love about the decade that they just can’t let go of. She is glad people are still enthusiastic, but all the while a bit wary of things like 80s nostalgia cruises that seem to be popping up out of nowhere. “We played one of those once, that was weird.” The band dare not dwell on the past for too long however, as they share some exciting news; Davis declares that The Motels “have a new album coming out this year that's very wacky! It's sort of a science fiction. There's a story that goes along with it that I’ve written. It's sort of like album-meets-graphic-novel. I'm very excited.”
Jourard jumps in on theorising about the popularity of the decade’s artistic output. “ They embraced a lot of the nonmusical aspects back then. The reason people like the 80’s so much is because it's probably the last time they could do whatever they wanted” he says as he begins to sing Cindy Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’. “ It was such a monumental time in music” says Davis, “so much changed. Two things happened as far as I'm concerned. One was the video. Everybody was doing videos. Also, synthesisers became available for home use. Instead of having to buy $125,000 Synclavier, you could go buy a $5,000 Moog.” Jourard excitedly chimes in, “You could get so many different sounds out of it. There's only so much you can get out of your guitar or a piano or an organ. I don't think it was exploited long enough. I don't think they milked it, you know; “okay, we got everything out of a since we can, let's move on to the next thing.” It died an unnatural death. I found them fascinating, like a box of chocolates that went on forever, all these sounds.”
Davis continued; “The other thing that the '80s had that was really important was everybody wanted to be an individual. No two bands ever wanted to be alike. Unless you were in the hair metal department. If you're a hair band, that was a different category. But in the New Wave/Punk scene, everybody had their own style, and everybody was so different. Blondie didn't sound like Talking Heads didn't sound like Oingo Boingo didn't sound like The Pretenders, it goes on. And that happened, I think, because of this confluence of beautiful art mingling. Art loves it when you give it new tools.” She begins to recount details of art’s affair with music; “The time I think music was at its greatest was in the 60s. Up until - I don't know the exact year - but everything was AM format, so all songs were two minutes and 30 seconds long. They had a strict format and every song had to adhere. And then FM radio came along and you could have a six minute song, and people were going “oh, hell yeah!” It’s those kinds of things that actually revolutionised art itself, it just goes, “wheeeee!”” The fast paced movement of her hands as she personified art’s unpredictable nature only emphasised the impact .
“You’re right about the bands! The B-52s, who looked a certain way and they had that sound. Yeah. Devo, a whole other thing, you know.” Jourard notes. I mentioned that the two bands would be touring together soon, Davis adding with ecstatic emphasis that Lene Lovich would be joining them, holding my hands and squealing like we were school girls. “Kill me now” she said, gasping and swooning. The Motels and Lene Lovich played together frequently “back in the day”, and the admiration for their contemporary has not faded since. “I saw her play the Whiskey A Go Go!” Jourard says, “‘77 or whatever? God, she was good! What a voice!” “And she looked incredible too,” Davis gushes. “She would have those black bands around her fingers and she had the lights shining from beneath her. I mean, yeah, she didn't go for glamour. She for went, “whoa, what the hell?” Fashion was such a huge part of it. Most of the good thrift stores used to be so awesome, and I would find so much there.” Provoking reactions through fashion was exactly what the decade was about, and exactly what was on show at the festival. “ Fashion is another layer of the expression, you know, especially in the 80s. Everybody had their look, I had this noir kind of thing going on.” she concludes.
Expanding on the intersection between music and the visual, Davis shared that the band are working on expanding the universe of their new sci-fi epic ‘Escape From Planet Earth’ to the best of their ability. “I'd love it if somebody picked it up and said “It's basically already storyboarded. Let's make a movie!” It has all of the right elements. But also performing it live, I've been racking my brains, trying to figure out how we would do that, because we are not a band that likes to use tracks. So I think we might have to hire an orchestra.” “I'm with you on that, baby!” Jourard says. Inspired by various things such as Davis’s love for animated series Arcane, the album will follow a girl and her cat as they navigate the dystopian world around them. “Why make an album these days?” she exclaims. “People are just releasing singles. If you're gonna make an album, you don't want to just put a bunch of random songs on it. You have to do more. It just, it doesn't make any sense to do less. The last album had sort of an underlying theme. This one is just a flat out story.”
As our conversation came to an end I felt it was only right to apologise on behalf of the British weather; their first show in the UK in decades and the rain decided it also wanted a front row seat. Typical. Without hesitation the two declare “We’re sorry we’re Americans!” Jourard apologetically saying “We didn’t vote for him I’ll tell you that!”. Davis says the whole thing is ghastly. “We have one problem and it's called money. I believe it is an entity. I’m actually writing a screenplay on that. But it is like the supervillain is money. And it's like, it's actually developed into an actual creature. And it's a Godzilla tearing through our whole lives. But that's another story.” Her contempt for the regime seeps into her work. The reflection is interesting, our political climate reflects that which birthed punk, then post-punk and the rest of the alternative eighties. The tension and unrest of past and present births the art that fights it. “Musicians and comedians will be the first ones to tell you that the shit's hitting the fan.” she says in a bitterly comedic tone.
In an effort to not be consumed by the existential weight of the world outside, we spoke of all the acts they were excited to catch. The two were more excited to catch up with old friends; The Psychedelic Furs, Billy Idol, the “old crazy days” as Davis put it.
The Motels’ reinvasion of the UK was a success, with their performance at and a raucous show at the punk staple The 100 Club in London with one of Siouxie’s ex-Banshees John McKay. Here’s to hoping they will be back very soon!
Eylem Boz
Image: Forever Now Festival / Sylvia G
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