Kam Mohager of Chain Gang of 1974
Chain Gang of 1974 is multi-instrumentalist Kam Mohager, a nice guy with sleek hair, some stubble and a musical style that seemingly has 80s new wave and
LCD Soundsystem as its grandfather and father respectively, but obviously there’s always more. Electro-beat and synth driven, guitar decorated and lightly coated with seductive, baritone vocals, Chain Gang of 1974 provides listeners with a couple of options: dance, or stare at your footwear in contemplation. On Friday at Lollapalooza, Kam decided to hang with Bear Girls at a nearby tree to discuss his most recent record and aliens.
Bear Girls: Have you seen any sets so far?
Kam Mohager: I’ve been back here the whole day, but I snuck away to go watch Delta Spirit. I love that band. I’ve been following them. A couple of the members used to be in this old emo band from San Diego called Noise Ratchet, and I’m an old emo kid, so I loved them. They broke up and they all started Delta Spirit. There were a few bands in-between, but now Delta Spirit. So, I’m a huge, huge fan of that band, and I caught a few of their songs, which is fucking great. But that’s it so far. Hopefully I can check out some more bands tomorrow, but we’ll see.
Bear Girls: Wayward Fire was just released. How do you feel it’s being received?
KM: I think it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing right now. I haven’t really read too many negative things about it, which is good. With reading reviews, I’ve kind-of started to realize that I can’t really listen to what any of them say. It’s just their opinion, you know? They’re like, “Oh, the songs are too long.” I’m like, “Well I wanted the song to be that long. You didn’t write the record. I wrote it.” But it’s their opinion, and it’s a trusted opinion for a lot of people. It’s a little weird, and it took some time to get used to, but it’s still pretty awesome. Seeing the reviews in Spin or Pitchfork, it was cool. And hopefully the record continues to get into peoples’ ears and they enjoy it.
Bear Girls: Have you read any reviews that have gotten everything completely wrong as far as concept?
Wayward Fire
KM: There was one that was like, “The album starts off extremely strong with guitar,” and I’m like, “Okay, it’s acoustic guitar in the first song.” And they’re like, “After that, there’s no guitar on the rest of the record.” I’m like, “there’s guitar in every single song, and louder.” Honestly, I think a lot of times they don’t even listen to the record. So that was one of them, and I was like, “You’re an idiot. You’re a complete moron.” It was some shit site; I don’t even remember what it was. But it’s funny, though. It’s silly. I write music for myself and no one else. I guess it’s all part of the game. People gotta talk about it.
Bear Girls: Yeah. That’s what everyone’s here for.
KM: Regardless of how silly it may be, it’s still very cool, and I’m blessed that people actually wanna pay attention to the record. I don’t want to sound like a complete dick.
Bear Girls: What is the “Wayward Fire”?
KM: It’s very personal. If you listen to all 11 songs, it’s all kind-of about the downsides of love and all that stuff. And I think the “Wayward Fire” is an unforeseen disaster, I guess. It’s just there. It can have everyone’s own meaning if they want it. I have my own meaning to it, and I keep it to myself. Not to myself, but it’s just weird because the record is extremely personal, and it is kind of hard to give it all to someone – and by someone I mean the public – all at once.
Bear Girls: Is it more personal than your other releases?
KM: Oh yeah. I’ve been doing this band for four years, and it took a little while for me to find the sounds that this band needed to be, and a lot of the earlier stuff that I did was very bare stuff, and lyrical content meant nothing. It was just there. It was strange, because in the midst of everything I was going through, I was writing and recording the record. So, I would literally go to the studio from having the biggest argument of my life, to sitting down and writing a song right there.
Bear Girls: What made you make the switch from lyrics that didn’t mean so much to you, to now lyrics that are so personal?**
KM: When I started the band, it was very grungy, electronic kind of stuff. And then for some reason I got really influenced by some of the electro stuff that was going on, Justice and all that headbanger stuff. I don’t know why. I never really listened to that music, but I was just kind of trying to emulate that for some strange reason. And then after that, it was just a random thought. I was working on a record for two years, and I scrapped it, and then I went in and just kind of completely transformed the band. I discovered my voice, and just took it from there. I guess you can say the music is more serious if you want to say that. But it was a nice way of expressing everything I was going through, and as I kept writing, and writing, and writing, and the more shit I was going through, it just kind of became an album.
Bear Girls: What’s the main difference between releasing via a label and self-releasing your own stuff?
KM: I’m much happier releasing with a label. It’s gotten me here, which is really, really cool. And I think it’s a very hard game if you want to be the unsigned band, because you gotta have a lot of buzz. A lot of it. You need to have websites talking about you even before you have a publicist, or any of that stuff. Certain bands can get away with it. Chain Gang was never one of those bands. I’ve been touring, and touring and touring for four years and putting out music, putting it out on my own. Thank god I was offered a deal, and they were cool with everything and put the record out. So for me, personally, I’m better off with a label. I couldn’t do any more. I was tapped out on my own. There was nothing more I could do… Once I got signed, it’s been going up, and hopefully it continues to go up, or it goes really high and stops, at least at a high point…
Bear Girls: I was watching an interview you did, where you were talking about wanting to recreate the feelings of your influences’ music. What specific emotions did you have in mind?
KM: There are songs, especially tracks from the 80s, going to early shoegaze songs from the early 90s, there’s that kind of emotion evoked through the way they wrote the songs. If you listen to “The Cutter’ by Echo and the Bunnymen, it’s this dark track up until – I don’t know if it’s the chorus, or the bridge, I don’t know what it is – but when that part comes in, these melodic chords come in, and it tugs on the heartstrings, and you get that feeling you get when you’re just hearing that epic song. And a lot of my influences work and arrange tracks with specific chords and structures, and I’m very influenced by a lot of music, and a lot of different types of music and bands, and I think it’s just a natural thing. Let’s say I’m listening to “Broken” from Tears for Fears, and I love the song so much, and I wanted to sit there with my guitar and start jamming with it. Next thing I know I have a song. I don’t know, to be honest with you. I’m bullshitting everything I’m saying. It just comes out naturally…
Bear Girls: In a press release for the album, it was talking about your early ambitions of being drafted to the NHL. Why didn’t you end up going for it?
KM: One, I think I’m too short. I was a goalie, so I don’t think I’m big enough. I lived in Hawaii for ten years, and I was a big inline hockey guy with all my brothers and our friends, and I played inline hockey for years, and it was my dream when I was a kid. I just wanted to be an NHL player; I was obsessed; it was my life. And then music kind-of gradually started to take over, and I just stopped playing hockey. I miss it, but I have really, really bad knees because of it, so I’m afraid to get back in the equipment and play again because, you know, I’m getting older. I don’t want to fuck my knees up.
Bear Girls: That’s actually really funny, because we were talking with a couple of guys from OK Go, and they were saying they had bad knees too.
KM: Yeah, I saw them dancing on stage, too. It fucks with you.
Bear Girls: Do you have any fun stories from your hockey days?
KM: I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but I was a badass when it came to hockey. So, one year, I played forward in my age group, but I played in the 16 and up league for goalie when I was 12 or 13. So it was one of the games, and this guy has a breakaway, shoots, and I make a glove save. But he fell, and when he fell, he slid and purposely punched my glove, and the puck came out and went in the net, and they counted it. And I freaked out, and I’m looking at this dude, and I have my blocker. I just punched him in the face, and this guy was 18 years old, and I was 13, and he just looks at me with, just, anger, but knows that I’m just this little kid, so he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. So, he raises his arm, just kind of looks at me, and just let it go…
Bear Girls: Your Facebook page also mentions that you’ve drawn from experiences at family gatherings and traditions.
KM: Yeah, if you go to a Persian gathering or a Persian wedding, it’s the raddest party you’ve ever been to. And it’s just this amazing music with such amazing percussion and beats, and just thumping, driving songs. Just being around that I think influenced me now to have that energetic, beat-oriented music, maybe. But it was a good time. I have a lot of memories of seeing my dad just holding a towel, waving it around his head at a party. It was awesome.
Party Time!
Bear Girls: Do you ever take those experiences from those parties and bring them on stage with you?
KM: Oh yeah, I think so. When I was younger, what really got me into music was punk music and early emo bands. I would go to three to four shows a week, and I would be in the crowd singing, crowd surfing, moshing. And seeing those kinds of bands on stage, all the energy they gave out, it really stuck with me, and I think a lot of times, we’ve had a few shows that are like punk rock shows. There’s like, moshing and crowd surfing. If the crowd is energetic, you’ve gotta capture that, and you have to get that. No one really wants a stiff up there. And it’s not just for them; I like it. I don’t want to be on stage just standing there. I like moving. It keeps me somewhat in shape…
Bear Girls: Recently there were reports that an experiment was done in Japan that seemingly “disproved” time travel. Do you believe that?
KM: I’m a big sci-fi nut. I definitely think time travel is possible. I don’t know how. I know there are ways of getting through the wormholes, all that stuff. I hope to god it’s true. I think it’s amazing. UFO stuff, I’m all about it. I was watching Ancient Aliens. They were saying how aliens are a control, and they’ve created humans, and that all the natural disasters in the world, it was them, because humanity was just so shitty. So they were saying that 2012 is gonna be the other one where they’re gonna come wipe out the human race and start making hybrids, 80% alien, 20% human. And they said there are already a few hybrids walking around in the world. I believe it, it’s a weird thing, but I believe it.
Bear Girls: Going on the aliens subject, in an article by the New York Times it says that scientists may have found evidence of actively flowing water on Mars. So, I was just wondering if Mars becomes inhabitable, would you live there?
KM: Oh yeah.
Bear Girls: What would be the first thing you would do?
KM: The only way I would do it is if the entire female cast of 90210 came with me, especially Gillian Zinser. She’s my celebrity crush. I think I creep her out on Twitter too much. She did e-mail me once on Twitter, because one of my songs got used on a CW show, which has 90210, so I tweeted, “Hey, my song got used. I want to take you on a date at In-N-Out Burger.” And she e-mailed me, “Hey, you’re very sweet,” and I was like, “Fuck!” But then I’ve continued to tweet at her, and she never wrote me back. She probably thinks I’m a creep. So if the entire female cast comes, especially her, that’s all I need. Add some cigarettes and some phone service, and I’ll be okay.
Bear Girls 