interview: Jesse Hlebo
photos: band
What are you guys trying to evoke through your name? It conjures images of a sort of failed celebrity, an oxymoron of sorts, in my mind.
Moe! Staiano: Nothing really. The name came up one night at a bar back in June of 2006 in Oakland with a conversation I had with Ava about my problems of being quiet is social settings (I'm not super great around people, nor being social at all) and stated that I felt like a 'mute socialite'. It just came out and it stuck with us. Of course, we eventually decide to use that as our name after a half year of being together as a trio. It's like Led Zeppelin, it doesn't mean a thing. Except 'Mute Socialite' actually has more meaning and was even used in a couple of other contexts before my own comment.
Are you making music 'for' something? Like, is it an illustration of feeling or an accompaniment to the civilizations demise or a pure energy expulsion?
Alee Karim: I am making the music I want to hear.
Ava Mendoza: I make music 'cause I start to go nuts if I don't.
Moe! Staiano: Just for the simple fact that I only make music for myself and it's very nice to have people into you and appriciate what you do. I make music what i want to hear and never for the fact of what others want to hear. I feel that is a bit compromsing for others and I frown on that.
How much jazz do you guys listen too? Is there any one in particular, jazz wise, who's especially inspiring?
Alee Karim: Hardly any but John Coltrane and Art Ensemble of Chicago are up there...
Ava Mendoza: Some early stuff like Ben Webster and Lester Young, Billie Holiday, more out stuff like Mingus and Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler. Ayler is a huge inspiration... Miles Davis' 2nd quintet (started in '65) is really inspiring to me for its fluidity between structure and improvising, and also just the superbness of the players. it is not very "out" sounding today but to me the way that music is composed is so elegant and allows for so much individual freedom that it inspires me even in a totally different context like Mute Socialite.
Moe! Staiano: I'll periodically listen to some good jazz every now and then. My nephew is starting to play clarinet, so, for Christmas, to hopefully start him on the right track, I'll give him the Peter Brotzmann album (the one with five or six other clarinet players, including John Zorn). Hopefully, with him being only 8, he won't be too overwhelmed.
How important are your other senses to the music you make? Does one sense inform your music more than an other?
Alee Karim: Visual in conjunction with aural.
Ava Mendoza: I like to pet fur.
Where did you all spend your childhoods?
Alee Karim: L.A.
Ava Mendoza: Miami, Florida and Chicago, Illinois.
Moe! Staiano: Brooklyn and Staten Island, New York, at the start of my miserable life. Then Livermore, California for almost 12 years before moving to miserable Manteca.
How important do you feel community is to the 'well being' of society? How do you think the Internet has changed/affected community?
Alee Karim: Very: the internet has both enabled and deteriorated community depending on the perspective.
Ava Mendoza: Very important. For better or worse, the internet is causing our ability to communicate in person to atrophy and our ability to communicate quickly via writing/images to become stronger.
Moe! Staiano: Having a community is very important as long as here's a comminication base to keep everyone informed. Which is how the internet has provided in some circles. Of course, the internet has its shares or pros and cons, just like television.
Do you guys have any thoughts on the relationship of peoples knowledge and information to the current time period as opposed to ten years ago?
Ava Mendoza: Our lives are more oversaturated with information now, and our memory facilities are atrophying because information is so readily available that we can rely on externals sources to retain info for us.
How do most of your mornings go? Specifically the first 25 minutes?
Alee Karim: Wake up and pee. Make breakfast for my girl and her kid.
Ava Mendoza: Spoon my cat...hit snooze...think about eggs. Get up and make eggs.
Moe! Staiano: Er, usually drag my ass out of bed and struggle to turn the alarm off (as to not irk the missus for waking her up), eat breakfast and go online. Very beauteous indeed like the rest of the billions of people in the world do everyday.
Do you guys want to make music till you die?
Alee Karim: I wanna make music 'til YOU die!
Moe! Staiano: Depends. I've thought many times of not doing music because I get so damned frustrated so much as well as lonely oddly enough. Yet, I trudge on still. I've always thought those who died on stage while playing music was THE way to go. The thought that you lived as a musician and you died as a musician, with an instrument in your possesion, seems almost symbolic. Frightening for the audience, but still! What an honour! But don't worry. That won't mean I'll pull a R. Budd Dwyer at a show any time soon. Legally, I can't be in possesion of a firearm until the summer of 2009...
