If your band went through 20 members in five years, you'd want to change your name too. The Lansing band that was once Porno Jazz didn't want to rush into fresh nomenclature, so it'll be playing under the name The Artists Formerly Known As Porno Jazz at 8 p.m. tonight at The Temple Club, 500 E. Grand River Ave., in Lansing.
The State News talked to the band's vocalist, music education junior Erin Socia, about her experiences since joining the band.
State News: How long has the band been around?
Erin Socia: I think Porno Jazz has been around four or five years, but we just started working together in November (2005). I auditioned right after Thanksgiving break, and we worked together all through Christmas break, and my final audition was this show for a lot of the band's friends. It was at our old bassist's house, and it was just kind of a test to see how good our chemistry was on stage. It happened to be really good, so we decided to keep it, and it's working out.
Was it difficult coming into a band that had formed before you joined?
No, they were really welcoming. They didn't make it seem very formal by any means. It was strange for me because I had never been in a band before, but it was something I always wanted to do, so I kind of just had to let go and explore whatever came to me. Like at my audition, we did these three songs — two of them that they had done before and the last one they had given me lyrics to — and they were like, "Here's the music, just make up a melody and we'll see how it works." So I did that, and then right after that they were like, "OK, now we're just going to jam, and you can just make up a melody and lyrics and we'll see how it works." And actually, that first audition is when we came up with one of these songs; it actually is a song that we do now called "Glass Box."
How would you describe the band's sound?
I think it's like a '90s alternative mix. I don't know what band to compare it to. It's a little bit Garbage; it's very guitar-heavy, but not in a hardrock sense.
It seems to me that there's a good deal of foreboding in your songs. Where does that come from?
There's one of the songs, called "Tag Team," (that) was one of the first songs we started working on. They played it for me and were like, "We have this new idea and we want to see if you can make lyrics to it," because they had played it for other singers before and they couldn't do anything with it. So they played it for me, and I kind of got this sad, sad feeling. It reminded me a lot of how my brother is moving away, and I've been around him for about three years. We've become really, really close friends and the music kind of reminded me of my brother and kind of how I've been feeling for the past couple of months, knowing how he'll be moving away. So I ended up writing this song about how we used to not really get along and didn't get each other when we were little, and it's developed into a really good relationship. So that's kind of where that song comes from.
What is it like being a female singer in an otherwise all-male band?
It's amazing. It's fun because I can bring different elements that they don't understand necessarily because we are different sexes. They're always asking about my relationships. It's fun because with our different perspectives on music, we can collaborate and kind of make a different sound that may not have come around when they were an all-male band, so it's interesting in that respect.
How many live shows have you played with the band so far?
Pretty much just the one at our old bassist's party. It was really hard last semester to play shows, so what we did was we focused on writing songs. This summer we're focusing more on trying to play some live shows.
In addition to those summer shows, what does the future hold for The Artists Formerly Known As Porno Jazz?
Well, we are going to start recording a CD, and hopefully we're going to play some all-ages shows around Michigan this summer and try and get our name out there. Once the CD's recorded, then hopefully we can get that out and play a lot more shows next year, and hopefully a lot longer than that.
