by Ida Griesemer
This interview with Alex Bleeker (of the Ridgewood, New Jersey bands Real Estate and Alex Bleeker and the Freaks) took place on January 13, 2010. It will appear in six parts.
In which Alex starts his first band with 12 friends on the last day of 8th grade.
LL: So you graduated from Bennington in 2008, and that summer you started playing with Real Estate?
AB: Well, yes and no. In a way I’ve been playing with Real Estate for 10 years. It’s been sort of a flow of evolution, but I guess under the moniker Real Estate, and with the set of songs that we were playing that then became our album, that started happening, the seeds of that. We all came home for the summer. Martin and Matt came home. We always played music together, especially the three of us.
When Matt, Martin and I were going through college, over breaks we would always jam together, play music, because it was like, all we did. It was the basis of our friendship in high school. And we always maintained that friendship throughout college. So whenever we got to see each other again we would play casually, in someone’s basement, or go to a show. So we just started doing that in the summer, just drinking at Martin’s house and jamming in the basement.
LL: How did you start playing with Etienne?
AB: Etienne has been on board for a few years. That started the very first tour that we went on with Julian Lynch. The tour was more Julian’s music, he was the leader of that band and it was his creative project. It was called the Lese Majesty. That was in the summer of 06, I wanna say. After my sophomore year. We had like no…it was completely different than what it would be like to set out on a Real Estate tour. We also had no semblance of any kind of an established band thing. We just sort of did the best we could. We booked this ambitious 5-week tour through myspace and emails and stuff. And that’s when we met Etienne. He and Matt had the Amherst connection and we needed a drummer for the tour. All five of us – the four members of Real Estate and Julian – made that Lese Majesty record, but Martin couldn’t come on the tour. It was originally gonna be me, Matt, Martin, and Julian, but Martin couldn’t come so we got Etienne. Etienne has been within our musical community since then.
LL: So with the other Real Estate members, was it in high school when you first began to play together?
AB: Martin and I started our first band together on the last day of 8th grade. I went to a show, a high school show, the day before the last day of 8th grade. And it blew my mind, it changed my world. I had no idea that that stuff was going on in my town.
LL: Who played?
AB: It was this band then that we thought were going to be the biggest band ever because they were a relatively tight band and they covered Weezer songs. It was called Easily Amused, and they’re all like, married and not playing in bands anymore. But it was this school’s out, backyard bash -10 bands or something like that. And I saw this and I was like, I can’t believe what’s going on. And I went back to school the last day and was like, We have to start a band. It’s possible. We can do it. So that day, we all got really psyched and the idea traveled around to 12 people, so there ended up being 12 of us going to this house after school and having our first band practice. It was a friend thing, so we didn’t want to exclude anybody. It sort of became a ska band because we were into Reel Big Fish at the time, and we had friends who played trumpet and sax. But then there was also a synth player, a turntable player… I couldn’t play any instruments at the time, so I was just the singer. But we were 8th graders and obviously couldn’t manage this huge 12-person project, so that band basically split into two separate bands that became our dominant high school bands for the first 2 years of high school. Then everything sort of shifted.
LL: What were the names you were using at that point?
AB: The first band that I was just talking to you about was called Emerson X-Ray Solution. It was super ska. And we had like, one song. And we played one show. We practiced all summer for our first show ever. Emerson X-Ray Solution was the most important thing for the summer after 8th grade. And then we broke up shortly into 9th grade. But that was the foundation summer.
We played a show in September, on Martin’s birthday, and that was that ska band’s one and only show. We played a bunch of covers and 2 original songs. We invited all our friends and had a big sleepover afterwards. It was a big deal. The band who opened the show was these kids who we were just starting to meet but didn’t know that well, from around the neighborhood. It was Paperface, and that band was fronted by Matt Mondanile and Julian Lynch. That was their first show too, and there was a little bit of a rivalry between our two bands because we didn’t know each other very well yet. We were young and it was before we got old enough to know everyone in the town, and grades were a large separation marker. They were a year ahead. So they were these older kids who also had a band, and that was sort of our introduction to both those people. Which was definitely more a rivalry than it was friendly in the beginning.
LL: Do you remember what that tension was like that night?
AB: Well, they made fun of us and stuff. We were younger, and we were playing ska, so I guess it’s fair. They were definitely a cooler band. They played a Dinosaur Jr. cover. They were a little bit more hip than we were. I remember they were looking for a bass player for while, before they had one. And they saw Martin walking around, because Martin and Matt literally live down the street from one another, and so they were trying to steel Martin from us or something. So there was tension over that. I remember AIM conversations with Julian and Matt at Matt’s house and me and Martin at Martin’s house, and they were trying to convince Martin to leave our band, and they were like, that kid Bleeker’s lame! But then we all like…you know. I guess those other people who were in the bands, they’re definitely still in our lives and we’re still friends with them, but it’s funny that the four of us wound up coming together. We started at the exact same show at the exact same place, and we realized that our sentiments, both friendship-wise and musically, were more alike than some of these other people that we were playing with.
View: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
1 comments:
who knew 8th grade would be so important....also, i like the part where he can't believe all that cool stuff is going on in his own town.
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