[A
conversation with Jesse Michaels]
Story and design by Scott Torguson
Mr. Michaels talks about his former band, Operation Ivy, his
new band, Common Rider, and a few things in between
Jesse photo by Amanda Marsalis, Operation Ivy
photo from the Lookout CD, Common Rider photo courtesy of Panic
Button Records
It
was one of those strange coincidences that seem to be happening
to me a lot lately. Like being stuck on the San Francisco Bay
Bridge in traffic and seeing the person who had threatened to
kill me in the car next to me. Only this one was more pleasant.
I had talked to John, Heckler’s Music Editor, about an
idea for a story. Ten years ago, a band from the Berkeley area
called Operation Ivy put out an LP entitled Energy. I was 17
at the time and knew most of the songs already from seeing them
live. I played the album constantly for a couple years, and
it always seemed as fresh as the day I bought it. I wasn’t
the only one; Operation Ivy is almost single handedly responsible
for every ska-punk hybrid band that existed over the last ten
years. I thought it would be cool to do an interview with either
Dave Mello or Jesse Michaels, the two people from the band who
are not now in Rancid. Kind of a “ten years later”
type thing. I’m sure by now everyone who is interested
has read interviews with the guys from Rancid, and many of those
interviews have covered Operation Ivy extensively.
A couple days later I get a call from John letting me know that
Jesse has a new band, recently relocated back to the Bay Area,
and is doing interviews. I figured the odds of tracking him
down, and him wanting to do an interview were next to nil, but
a couple phone calls later and it was set. So me and my friend
James Taylor hooked up with him on a Saturday afternoon in August
at a restaurant called, coincidentally, Michael’s, and
hung out for a bit. Check out the restaurant if you get a chance.
It’s a ‘50’s style diner that’s totally
vegetarian on Telegraph in Berkeley just south of all the hippie
vendors.
I didn’t want to spend too much time on Operation Ivy,
because they have been so extensively covered, but there were
a few things I was curious about. Everyone always described
the band as a cross between ska and punk rock. While those elements
were unquestionably there, most people, including most of the
bands who tried to borrow their style, seemed to have missed
the hip hop influence, which was most noticeable in Jesse’s
vocals. “I was totally into rap back then. On the song
Unity, it’s basically a total Chuck D vocal pattern.”
Most bands that throw so many different styles in the mix invariably
end up sucking, but it all sounded so seamless and unforced.
I think that’s where the magic of the band was. I also
asked him what he thought about all the bootlegs out there.
“I don’t have anything against bootlegs, but I would
strongly advise anyone who is thinking about purchasing one
to see if they could listen to it first, because a lot of them
really suck. Sometimes when you release something, there’s
a reason for it.”
I punched Operation Ivy into my search engine the week before
the interview, and it pulled up over 6,000 matches. Besides
all the straight praise of the band, there were all kinds of
stories ranging from the curious, to the flat out untrue. “I
remember the first time I saw that stuff, I was freaking out.
I was, like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ I just couldn’t
understand.
It just blew me away.” One
of the main topics was the reason why Operation Ivy broke up.
One story was that the band had agreed to break up as soon as
they got an offer from a major label. Most of it centered on
the band (in general) and Jesse (specifically) being uncomfortable
with how popular the band had become. “Well, to be completely
honest, although it’s tempting to say that’s true,
it’s really not. We were still playing clubs. We were packing
clubs, but it wasn’t like we were selling out the Warfield
or anything. Like a lot of relationships, it eventually comes
to a point where it’s time to move on.”
He didn’t want to get into the personal differences between
band members but left it with, “There were pressures from
having different visions.”
Another big internet rumor topic was what Jesse’s been
up to in the last ten years. Some of my favorites were: He was
teaching English in London (false). He became a Buddhist monk
(somewhat true). And he went to Nicaragua to build schools (true).
“After Operation Ivy I just partied and went to shows and
just raged for, like, years. I tried to study Zen Buddhism,
but I couldn’t get up at 5:30 in the morning, I couldn’t
handle it.”
I think everybody expects someone from a band as popular as
Operation Ivy to be constantly doing something exciting, but
Jesse basically just lived quietly for ten years. Op Ivy’s
success allowed him a bit of freedom financially since it still
sells about 10-12,000 copies a quarter. I asked if this freed
him from having to work. “It would have, except I’m
not really responsible with money. Any normal person would be
buying houses by now, but I’m basically struggling to buy
groceries.”
At some point he became a basketball fan as well. Although I
promised not to run some of the things he said about one portion
of Sacramento’s population, I made no such promises regarding
his take on the Sacramento Kings. “You got that crazy white
boy point guard. I hate that dude.”
But does Jesse himself have any game?
“I can jump high, but once I’m in the air, it’s
kind of hit or miss.”
Anyway, he spent the last couple years in Florida, then moved
back to the East Bay. Back in the East Bay, he decided he wanted
to try to do a band again. The only thing that he did since
Operation Ivy was a little known 7” with a band called
Big Rig in 1993. At that point, though, he was consciously moving
away from the music scene, and the band was just a short-term
project. This time, he wanted to do a real band again. “I
was trying to start a band out here, it didn’t work out,
and I called Ben Weasel and complained about everything, and
he said, ‘Why don’t you bring your songs out here
[to Chicago] and I’ll hook you up with my rhythm section.’”
And that’s basically what he did. Jesse, who now also plays
guitar, had written a bunch of songs, so he went out there,
taught them to Mass Giorgini and Dan Lumley, and recorded an
album under the name Common Rider.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got the CD a couple
days before the interview. I just hoped it didn’t suck,
so I wouldn’t have go to the interview and ask “Operation
Ivy was so good, why does your new band suck?” But this
album is exactly where it should be. It sounds like the album
Jesse would make ten years later. It’s a lot more laid
back, which makes sense considering the songs were written when
Jesse was 30 rather than 20. And although he didn’t become
a Buddhist monk, he has obviously mellowed a bit in the last
ten years. “It’s a continuation of the same spirit,
but it’s different in the sense that Op Ivy was a live
band. We would get on stage and just fucking turn it out and
go ballistic, so all the songs were basically crowd tested.
This one’s a little bit different because there’s
a little more subtlety, a little more nuance.”
Gone is the ska influence of Operation Ivy, and it’s been
replaced with a very Caribbean reggae sound, complete with keyboards
and sax. There’s also a bunch of punk rock and some surprisingly
pretty pop ballads. Now that the album is out, it begs the question
of what the band is up to next. “I’m taking it one
little step at a time. The next thing we’re going to do
is put together a tour, then I’ll make a decision about
where to start a permanent band.”
Although the rumors were a lot more fun, it was cool to find
out what Jesse had been up to for the last ten years, and what
he is doing now. So go check out Common Rider when they show
up in your town and say hello.
It
was one of those strange coincidences that seem to be happening
to me a lot lately. Like being stuck on the San Francisco Bay
Bridge in traffic and seeing the person who had threatened to
kill me in the car next to me. Only this one was more pleasant.
I had talked to John, Heckler’s Music Editor, about an
idea for a story. Ten years ago, a band from the Berkeley area
called Operation Ivy put out an LP entitled Energy. I was 17
at the time and knew most of the songs already from seeing them
live. I played the album constantly for a couple years, and
it always seemed as fresh as the day I bought it. I wasn’t
the only one; Operation Ivy is almost single handedly responsible
for every ska-punk hybrid band that existed over the last ten
years. I thought it would be cool to do an interview with either
Dave Mello or Jesse Michaels, the two people from the band who
are not now in Rancid. Kind of a “ten years later”
type thing. I’m sure by now everyone who is interested
has read interviews with the guys from Rancid, and many of those
interviews have covered Operation Ivy extensively.
One
of the main topics was the reason why Operation Ivy broke up.
One story was that the band had agreed to break up as soon as
they got an offer from a major label. Most of it centered on
the band (in general) and Jesse (specifically) being uncomfortable
with how popular the band had become. “Well, to be completely
honest, although it’s tempting to say that’s true,
it’s really not. We were still playing clubs. We were packing
clubs, but it wasn’t like we were selling out the Warfield
or anything. Like a lot of relationships, it eventually comes
to a point where it’s time to move on.”