When Jason Trachtenburg stumbled on a box of a stranger’s slides at an estate sale and bought them, he probably wasn’t expecting to be viewing them almost every night for the next ten years. Most likely he just wanted to look at them. One of the unique paradoxes of slides is that you would rather sit through an hour of a stranger’s than a minute of your parents’—so even his daughter Rachel must have been initially  excited about popping them in and seeing the spare and exalted stolen moments of someone else’s history up on the wall in  bright analog colors.

Even when Jason decided to write some songs about the undated and unclaimed images and get his family to perform them with him on stage he must have thought of it as a side-project–a one act play to delight some local audiences before moving on to something else—and despite those performances’ popularity he could have stopped doing the Slideshow Play. It’s a special kind of wisdom in an artist to recognize your true medium when it shows up at your door smelling like placenta, and while the Trachetnburg’s have been involved in plenty of other configurations over the years, they’ve never abandoned the structure that brought them to the underground mainstream’s attention in the late 90s—indie-pop songs about slides. I say this not in a cynical way, but in admiration: all the flaws that critics might find in their music or personae (dewy-eyed romanticism, rudimentary song structure, off-kilter vocal tics, overly wordy lyrics, and a drummer who sounds like she’s 8 years old) are morphed into vital elements of their work, and that is all any performer could ask for.

Even the rigorous tour schedule that is a grinding fact of life for most mid-level bands in their hands becomes a utopian existence. David Cross says on their DVD that he would love to be Jason, or Rachel, traveling like Roma with a box of wonders, spreading both joy and unsettledness from town to town. Rachel is a teenager now, and in a band with Kate Nash apparently, but on stage she’s still a kids book character—the hobo child, given a role in a multi-level Freudian drama where a family makes art about another family’s accidental art, in a traveling band singing about tourists; the parents enacting their ideal childhood on their child using the memories of some random person’s past which might have been used to torture the actual child of the photo family, slouching bored in a living room as the parents loll in the glow of their recent idylls. It’s a pretty specific emotion, a mix of nostalgia, joy, and horror, that nevertheless grows as you listen to the songs and watch the slides into a feeling that anything could be this weird, any picture, any drawing, any piece of industrial equipment or tool. The Trachtenburgs found a way to point at your own memories too and say: “See, these aren’t garbage, they’re still good, check it out.

I spoke to them over email so I’m not sure who exactly answered my questions about Mad Men, their kid’s TV show, and being specifically New York weirdos.

 

BYT: What songs are you all playing on the tour? Mostly stuff from each slide collection album or Jason’s solo stuff or some new additions?

Trachtenburgs: As always, we will be performing some new songs, some old songs, some obscure songs, and of course…the hits!!!

BYT: You’ve been around the indie rock scene on two coasts for two major musical cities and probably played with countless bands. Do you ever just want to grab one and shake them like: COME ON DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT, ENGAGE PEOPLE?

Trachtenburgs:  I used to be so frustrated with the deterioration of art, performance, and the art of performance. So I have taken the responsibility, upon myself, of the weight and circumference of the entire history of entertainment – past, present and future, and, with the understanding that anything is possible, have successfully moved all obstructions away, as nothing will allow me, or any other performer, to not reach their highest potential and all of entertainment will follow suit.

BYT: What draws you to the time period you’re concerned with? Specifically the 50s through the 70s? Is it something missing from our current culture or just nostalgia for your own childhoods?

Trachtenburgs: These are good questions. Yes, I am drawn to that time period. The 1950’s through the 1970’s were a shinning age of enlightened entertainment. The art of songcraft never recovered after the advent of MTV. Style over substance took precedence, where as if an artist did not have a certain look, then their career stalled and stumbled.

BYT:  Have you seen the Mad Men http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2bLNkCqpuY  episode about slideshows? Where Don Draper pitches the Carousel? When I saw it I thought of you guys:

Trachtenburgs: I am not familiar with that show, but thank you for thinking of us.

BYT: Well a quote from it is:

“Nostalgia – it’s delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.”

Part of the joy of your performances is simply watching slides, which hardly anyone does anymore. Along the lines of that mad men scene–what balance of emotions do you hope to leave an audience with after a show…simply charmed or also somewhat disturbed?

Trachtenburgs:  I need the audience to be more informed then they were before the start of the show. Informed on matters of health and wellness. Informed on the theatricalities of the removal of the proverbial fourth wall. Informed on the power of word and the weight of the visualization. I need the audience to be intrigued and temporarily speechless, but then, forever inspired to create a better atmosphere for their psyche and aura, all as a result from this pop experience.

BYT: It seemed to me that the Off and On Broadway DVD  was a great encapsulation of that drama in your live performances– are the albums missing something by not including  slides? Or when writing is there a point where you go: OK this can stand by itself now?

Trachtenburgs: A couple of notes. 1. Our first album – Vol 1 – does come with a pull out booklet with images of all of the slides. 2. These songs will or will not stand on their own not because of lack or gain of visuals, but by their own chords and lyrics.

BYT: I’ve got kind of a long weird question– I saw that video of Rachel singing with her uke at a city council meeting and everyone was totally dumbstruck—it was, stop me if I’m  wrong, to protest the loss of affordable housing in Manhattan. I know your friend Jeffrey Lewis has written songs about this as well– it seems like New York losing its ability to be a Mecca of weird artists and poets. Is that a symptom of American homogeneity and “coolness” in general? How do we stop it?

Trachtenburgs: Long questions are our specialty. Long answers require some editing.
Rachel was actually at N.Y. City Hall protesting the horse drawn carriage industry. Nellie McKay was there as well. Jeff Lewis is one of our faves.

Trachtenburgs: It is a great human tragedy that money defines so much of our perceived existence. A wealthy man may have homes that he does not live in at all, and the poor man is looked down upon for his squalor. Meanwhile it is often the rich who exploit the poor to become rich to begin with, yet we place the richest on the highest pedestals as if it is their riches that propel them to supremacy. As if their thoughts are more valuable as well. What to do ? Well, I am excited by the prospects of a growing movement in the world to encourage a real back to the land simplicity. The excesses of rock and roll, and the entertainment industry as a whole, are reflective of society’s own wastefulness. Entertainers and celebrities are here to set a positive example of the infinite possibilities of accomplishment in this lifetime. Just look at what the Beatles did. They changed the world. A rock band changed this world. It can be done. It has been done.

Trachtenburgs:  We cannot just be thinking about New York. The rest of the world has too much creative potential to be concerned with the rise and fall of any one city – even New York.     

BYT:  Three parter: How did the Rachel kid’s show pilot come about? Did the whole family write the songs and script? Is it really going to be a show like on TV?

Trachtenburgs: Our newest adventure is Rachel Trachtenburg’s Homemade World. This is a children’s production that started out as a show at the Edinburgh Fringe. All three of us contribute to the script and songs, and a whole cast of Lower East Side comedians and performers help us out with their own individuality and creativity. We are positioning this show to be aired on network or cable TV and we will help to make the medium of television more beneficial to humanity as a whole, and children as a group.

BYT: Thanks for your time!

Trachtenburgs: Thank you for taking the time to read through this and I ask all of you to reconsider your relationships with cellular phones and their toxic technology. Microwave radiation seeps into your brain and 50 million years of earthly evolution cannot successfully adapt to the modern day electro-magnetic frequencies that have become an all too customary reality of our existence. Please choose your health and well-being over the so-called conveniences of the digital devolution. Also please consider a vegetarian lifestyle. This will benefit both yourself and the precious resources of the Earth.
Jason Trachtenburg March 11, 2009.

>Don’t miss your chance to feel displaced in your own hometown: The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players are at the Velvet Lounge on Friday evening.(TONIGHT!)