Riding Shotgun with Hot Chip

ure, I like a lot of bands. But there really aren't a lot of bands out there that make me giddy these days. Hot Chip, however, are one of those bands that elicit a silly grin every single time I listen to them. They are dancy. They are smart. They are the kind of band that makes it fun to fall in love with them. If you own any Hot Chip at all (and quite frankly, you should) you'll know what I mean. They're the kind of band that makes the DC kids dance, and we all know that requires some effort. Now that I've outed myself as a huge Hot Chip geek, it's time to get better acquainted with them. I had the pleasure of sitting down with songwriter/Casio lover/all-around nice guy Alexis Taylor before their triumphant first-time gig this Spring, and he was kind enough to shed some light on the Hot Chip-ian lifestyle. So put on your favorite Hot Chip song, and read on to see how Alexis feels about Cleveland, R. Kelly, and Tottenham.

Touring is: (long pause) Inappropriate for maintaining a home life, but appropriate for introducing music to different people around the world.

Our first gig was: At high school, not that we use the phrase high school, but just so you know which era of school we're talking about, in the school drama theatre at lunchtime. It was myself and Joe, I think we played a Pavement song, and that's all I can remember about it.

Our favorite venue to play is: The Windmill in Brixton. It's a small, pub venue that maybe no one else in the band shares quite the same enthusiasm I have for it. It's so tiny, and just got a really nice atmosphere in there. And they introduce a lot of new music to people, and it's always got different bands playing most nights of the week. It's to me the best size venue you could play, it's so tiny and so intimate, but still kind of sounds good for a rock show.

Our favorite thing about touring is: Flea markets and car boot sales. I went to the one just five seconds away from the venue, and I bought another Casio keyboard to add to my collection for $8. It's the same one, I already have it, but I thought it'd be good to have one to play on tour. Couldn't really turn it down. It's good for writing and thinking up stuff whilst traveling. Our sound engineer even suggested that we could Velcro it to the wall in the bunk, so you could be asleep and (mimics playing).

And the least favorite: Not knowing when you can have a shower, and just the sort of disruptive nature of it, you know, living life on the road. I mean, it's kind of fine but it's not very easy to adjust to, if you're trying to be based in one place, like I got married last year, and it'd be quite nice to be actually spending time with my wife...but this is part of the job I do.

City with the best audiences: Toronto has been really good for us, and also Leeds. One of my favorite shows last year was at the Grog Shop, in Cleveland. The year before we played there and the crowd seemed pretty timid and not that excited, but the last time we had a really good show there. It's very unpredictable, I mean, New York is always good as well and some people tell me that New York is usually quite hard to please, in the same way that London and Paris crowds are quite kind of standoffish. I think people are generally quite surprised that it's kind of quite fun, dance music, kind of a like a party atmosphere when we play live. And even though that's what we plan to do, I get so many people saying "Oh, I've never seen a crowd jumping up and down like that before," and you just think what do they normally do? This is what we wanted. Probably no one will move at all tonight, having said that.

Band member most likely to disappear after a gig: Well, I don't necessarily hang around and kind of mingle, so maybe me? But having said that, for a long time I used to like just finishing a show and coming straight off the stage into the crowd rather than going to any kind of backstage place. I dunno. Maybe no one really, but that's not really an interesting answer. So far no one's vanished.

Laundry is: a) washed regularly, b) washed irregularly, c) we go shopping a lot: Well, I'd say my washing is done regularly but not frequently. Usually at regular intervals of one and a half weeks to two weeks, but on tour it's easier for me to bring too many clothes than a small number. Owen tends to bring maybe two pairs of pants and six tee shirts and just wash them all the time. I always bring so much that I can barely move from carrying it, and add new things to the pile.

What's the most unusual item on your rider? We seem to have a rotisserie chicken on the rider that not that many people in the band are interested in, so we need to take that off the rider to stop wasting the poor thing. Only two of us eat meat in the band, so the rest of the group just eats cheese and vegetables. I don't think we make too many strange demands of people on the rider, I think maybe just quite a lot of food, more than we really need.

Who controls the music in the touring vehicle? And what do you like to listen to while tooling around on tour? The tour has only just begun, and we haven't listened to a single cd since getting on the bus last night. Usually we watch DVDs like "Curb Your Enthusiasm" or "Peep Show," and we all kinda just plug our computers in and make playlists. We've just been record shopping. I'm planning to move house soon, so I didn't buy too much, but Joe bought about 50 in one day. We've been listening to, in the venue yesterday or the day before we had a really good Pete Seger record as the kind of intro music. Some of it's in that film Raising Arizona. And then we listened to Roy Orbison, and Curtis Mayfield. Quite a mix.

Most amusing memory from your current or most recent tour? Well, Owen came up with some new words. "Disgustee," one of them. That seemed to amuse him quite a lot, I don't know how amusing it really is. He seemed to accidentally come up with this word. Also, it was my birthday yesterday and he gave me 12 copies of the 7" single "Party Man" by Prince, 12 identical copies. It was quite confusing and amusing. I think that maybe he asked for the 12 of "Party Man" and they gave him 12 copies? If that was the high point of comedy, it's going to be a pretty serious tour.

Favorite tour activity (other than the gigs themselves): I do like record shopping, but I think maybe my favorite thing is finally breaking out of the tradition of just going around record shops and occasionally actually seeing some art gallery or exhibition or something. There's so little time between arriving in a city and when you actually start sound-checking, you usually just kind of find the nearest record shop, something that's gonna keep you sane. It's nice to walk around really and see places. It's nice if you go back to places you've played before, then you're at least getting to see a bit more. I've never been here before, so I've seen like ten blocks.

Please name the city you wouldn't ever play in again? Or if not a particular city, which venue (if any) would you not mind seeing razed to the ground? (long pause) London. I know, that would be foolish wouldn't it. Maybe you're right, maybe I'm too polite to answer honestly. I can't think of anywhere actually, anywhere I dislike enough to rule it off the map.

Favorite Hot Chip song to play live? There's a new one that we've just written, called "Bendable Poseable", and that's probably my favorite one. You'll hear that tonight. Even if we like the songs that we write, we don't necessarily know if they're gonna sound great live, because they're often written and recorded not as a live or five piece band, it's me and Joe who kind of come up with the song first and we kind of translate it into a band thing. With that one, we didn't really know that it was going to feel so good to actually sing it live and play it live, it's got a good groove to it in the way that "Over & Over" seems to as well. Not every one of our songs works so well live, even if we believe in them as songs, so this was a nice surprise. People seem to be getting into it so far.

What song, if any, do you wish you had written first? "Ignition Remix" by R. Kelly. I think that's one of my favorite songs. It sort of feels very effortless in its superb qualities. I don't know how to write a song as great as that, that makes people feel as good as that one does.

In how many languages can you swear? Three: Greek, French, and English.

Have you been to the top of the Washington Monument? No. Should I?

What would you like people to be saying about Hot Chip in 50 years? "It was so good that they didn't stick around too long and outstay their welcome. They made some great records, they didn't put a foot wrong." That would be good if we manage to do that, and not make any sort of awful, boring records.

If we weren't in Hot Chip, we'd be: Maybe I would be teaching music, not that I'm classically trained, but maybe practical lessons, how to play the guitar or keyboard or think about writing songs, to school children maybe. That would be fun, I think, and difficult.

Have you ever considered assuming a nom de plume and recording a completely un-Hot Chip record...something like death metal, perhaps? I've done some music that was very much like Hot Chip under a different name, with Joe, who is the other half of the Hot Chip songwriting team, so that was pretty strange to just basically make some Hot Chip music but give it a completely different name and not tell anyone that it was by us. So we've done that, and obviously most people guessed it was Hot Chip. I do some fairly quiet, under-produced sounding music on my own, it's not a million miles away but it's not very rhythmic or based around grooves or funk or anything like that. I would like to make kind of that ambient synthesizer record, it's something that I've been planning to do that is just a kind of long extended piece. I've been listening to some Terry Riley recently, there's a record you should definitely get called Rainbow in Curved Air, I think that anyone who hears to it will fall in love with it. So maybe something close to that.

Who will win the Champion's League this year? Are Manchester United still in it? I'd like Liverpool to win it, but I think Manchester United will win it. Tottenham, who I like, just went out recently.

Please recite a line of poetry: "What are we waiting for, gathered here today in the Senate? We are waiting for the barbarians." I think that is almost right, but probably not quite right. It's by Kavafi, a Greek poet, who was writing in the first half of the 20th century. But I can get away with saying those lines because it's in Greek originally, so it's always going to be an approximate translation.

And finally, it's BigYawn's round. What's your poison? I think tonight the answer is Anchor Steam beer. I noticed they have that on tap here. It's from San Francisco, it's really nice. I like White Russians, most of the band would accept a White Russian if it were offered.

For more Hot Chip, including amusing band-posted blogs, head on over to www.hotchip.co.uk, or www.myspace.com/hotchip

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