ADAM GREEN at Sonic Boom (512 Bloor West), Saturday (April 17), 3 pm. Free. And at the Mod Club (722 College), the same day, 7 pm. $15. rotate.com.
While in San Francisco during his current tour, Adam Green didn’t visit the house from the opening sequence of Full House.
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“But I’ve seen a lot of famous houses,” the New York singer/songwriter points out, sensing my deep disappointment.
“I saw the Home Alone house, I saw the Risky Business house, the Family Matters house,” he says. “You can still see Urkel’s footprint on the front porch. Oh, and the Ferris Bueller house. That shit was awesome.”
Chatting genially about the John Hughes tour he took in Chicago, Green does not come off as the “arrogant and emotionally unavailable bully/singer” described in his label bio.
That description, he explains, was written at a low point in his life.
“My manager wrote that. I was yelling at her so much for a couple of months. I went through a bullying phase. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Green might still be a bully today had people not “caught on to the fact that I was a piece of shit jerk-off asshole.
“I’ve kinda reined in the bullying.”
That’s the subtext of his sixth album. A response to his own aggression, Minor Love (Fat Possum) is a gentle cycle of sensitive brooders revealing the baritone indie rocker’s tender side in the context of a Lou Reed/folk aesthetic.
It’s also his least complicated-sounding record in a while.
The former member of the Moldy Peaches says Minor Love’s bare-bones sound is strictly the product of creative, not budgetary, factors.
“If I wanted there to be a 60-person little kids’ choir or an orchestra of harps, I would’ve made that happen,” he says.
Speaking of unusual arrangements, it was a bit disturbing to hear that the Atlantis resort company has adapted the Moldy Peaches song Anyone Else But You for a commercial.
The movie Juno first made the track omnipresent, but the Atlantis ad takes things to the next level by adding lyrics that rhyme “dolphins” with “golfin’,” for example.
Green was stoked when he heard it.
“I was pretty psyched that they’d rewrite my song and make it 100 times better than the one they paid for,” Green says. “I think they should keep the offers coming in.”
Interview Clips
Adam Green is excited about Teen Tech, his art show at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in Bowery, New York. The private opening party is April 22 and the exhibition will be open to the public April 23 and 24.
For his Red Grooms-inspired exhibition, Adam worked with paper-mâché, plaster and acrylic. Here, he describes his sculptures.
Discussing the Atlantis resort commercial featuring Anyone Else But You, the Moldy Peaches song used in Juno, the conversation turns to Carnival Cruise Lines’ ad campaign with Kathy Lee Gifford. Adam then admits that while he doesn’t know what she’s up to now, he was into her during “the classic era with Regis.”
Adam Green online.
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