LOCAL SPOTLIGHT NYC photo by Daniel Araujo

It’s hard to go for long in Brooklyn without hearing news from Vivian Girls; from the constant touring to Pitchfork Music Festival to Pool Parties to their new LP, these girls are keeping busy. JM.com’s Tricia Patterson talked to guitarist Cassie Ramone about Vivian Girls’ number-one fan, what “lo-fi” means in 2009, and the “can’t get better than this” moments they’ve had in their rapidly skyrocketing career.

JM.com: Ok, burning question, pick a tattoo any tattoo and explain.

Cassie: We all have a tattoo of a feather that we got in London at this guy’s flat for 10 pounds each. He had the hardest hand of any tattoo artist we’ve ever gotten tattoos from and it hurt like hell. I like this tattoo because it’s the first matching tattoo all of us had gotten together.

JM.com: What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned since you first released your demo back in 2007?

Cassie: We’ve learned a lot about how the music industry works and how touring works. Before Vivian Girls those were both vague concepts to us but now we have a handle on both those things.

JM.com: What kinds of things did you learn about the industry and touring? Seedy underbelly?

Cassie: Not as many seedy stories as you would expect – we work with people we trust, so most of the time we are able to avoid the bullshit. When we started the band, we had no idea how the industry or touring worked at all, and now we’ve done everything from punk tours to playing huge festivals. It’s cool to know firsthand how everything works, how to book a tour, how to release a record. It’s really interesting.
More on Vivian Girl (That’s Right, Just One)

FRESH BAKED
in NYC
Vivian Girls
Everything Goes Wrong
2009 | In the Red
C

You know that Christopher Walken sketch? from SNL? The one that spawned a thousand t-shirts and drunken frat-boy recitations, where he proclaims loudly, with his trademark accentuation, that he has a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell? Hilarious.

The reason I mention this is that I have a feeling Christopher-Walken-as-Bruce-Dickinson produced Everything Goes Wrong. Only he wasn’t asking for more cowbell. He was asking for more fuzz. “I gotta have more distortion!”

I mean, he’s a man who puts his pants on one leg at a time. Only he also makes gold records, so we should trust him, right?

The Vivian Girls: Cassie Ramone, Kickball Katy, and Ali Koehler, have been receiving a lot of hype lately. The Brooklyn trio are getting exponential amounts of press, and have been touring all over to promote Everything Goes Wrong, their sophomore effort, following their 2008 self-titled debut. They’re indie darlings who will probably be the Next Big Thing. But is it entirely warranted?

To return to an earlier theme, although Walken/Dickinson loved it, the cowbell was distracting. If you take SNL sketches as gospel truth like I do, it almost broke up Blue Oyster Cult. But this distortion? It’s just boring.

If you’ve heard one Vivian Girls song, you’ve pretty much heard them all.
More on Vivian Girls | Everything Goes Wrong

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by Max Sebela