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Mo' Better Blues
01/29/1999 5:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Bill Holdship
Better Than Ezra's Kevin Griffin is calling from the band's studio/ office in the Lower Garden District of their native New Orleans, where he's biding time until the trio begins touring again with an appearance at the Super Bowl in Miami on Jan. 29. It's only a week after the trio was in L.A. for an appearance on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno; Griffin still has many friends in L.A.--dating back to the 12 months the group spent in Hollywood, playing the local club scene--so he's well aware that today is "D-Day" in the music industry, with Geffen and A&M shutting their doors and other major downsizing that will have serious repercussions on pop music of the future.
"It's been very eye-opening to observe how fast trends have come and gone, and how fast the faces of the industry have changed so quickly just since '95 when our band got signed," he says. "We were part of the 'commercial alternative' radio thing--I wrote 'Good' in 1990 and it got passed over by labels, publishers, you name it, until 1995--but now that that scene has saturated itself, we constantly have to ask ourselves, 'What do we want to do? Do we want to be successful? Do we want to make any concessions? Take certain trends in music and make them our own?' But it's frightening. It could happen any day--'Well, [Elektra Records president] Sylvia Rhone has gone to Universal.' Or something like that. On the other hand, in corporate America, you could be out on your face any day. That's the reality of it, so you have to keep it in perspective."
Although the band seems more than ever to have used its Crescent City musical roots, especially from a rhythmic standpoint, on How Does Your Garden Grow, BTE's latest LP, Griffin reveals that tunes like "Je Ne Me'en Sovien Pas" and "One More Murder" (soon to be featured on NBC's Homicide) have other roots as well. "This is the first album that totally exposes that we're Anglophiles--totally into British music," he says. "Look at my CD collection, or the other guys', and it's almost all British artists. It's not a conscious thing with us--but I do think there's more of a history of British bands exploring textural ideas and being a bit more experimental--whether its King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, the Smiths, World Party, even the Beatles. The funny thing is our first two albums were considered to be bordering on roots-rock--we're a very American-sounding band. But when we started this album, we were listening to a lot of Brian Eno, especially the stuff he did with Bowie and Before And After Science."
One thing Griffin still isn't revealing is the origin of his band's name. "We don't give anyone that information," he laughs. "For a short time, in 1988, we told people what it meant--but what they'd come up with on their own was always better. So, it's now our own little gimmick. Some bands have Marilyn Manson or Courtney Love. This is really our only thing, and regardless of whether it's in America, Germany, or Japan, people want to know what it means. The funny thing is there's this book out about how bands got their names. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, they both get several paragraphs. Better Than Ezra gets two paragraphs! So, it works for us."
He laughs again. "Whatever it takes, baby!"
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