From Odd to All-Star: Edie Sedgwick

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EDIE SEDGWICK IS DEAD.

A new Edie has risen from the ashes of the cross-dresser armed with an iPod, a projector and a microphone who thrilled and terrorized audiences with bizarre performance art routines about celebrities. Edie — really Justin Moyer — is bringing his new, all-star band to the Black Cat on Sunday.

Of course, the first Edie Sedgwick, the drug addled heiress deemed a "superstar" by Andy Warhol, died in 1971. Moyer decided this empty vessel would make an apt name for a project that used smart humor and songs to camouflage serious insights into our age of celebrity.

"I like to think Edie would be into it," Moyer said.

The same can't always be said of nightclub audiences.

"They're used to seeing people play instruments," Moyer said. "Once you step outside that, I'm just a crazy guy with crazy movies. I want to be less of a novelty."

Enter his new backing band — keyboardist Jason Hutto, bassist Melissa Quinley and drummer Chad Molter (members of The Aquarium, Soccer Team and Medications, respectively) — and a new sound.

"It's like James Brown meets a teenager with a Casio. Or Lungfish meets a lounge singer. We're trying to dumb it down so much that it becomes smart."

Moyer, who's currently the guitarist-singer in Dischord act Antelope and formerly with Supersystem and El Guapo, told Express quite a bit more about Edie's new bent; full interview after the jump.

» EXPRESS: Your write-up in the All Music Guide says you "used the name of a dysfunctional person to comment on pop culture's dysfunction." Is that true?
» MOYER: I remember reading that and thinking this guy or girl had done their homework. Edie Sedgwick is supposed to engender a broader discussion of the role of these people on the cover of Us Weekly: these people we will never know, but play a major role in our lives. We're always thinking about them, talking about them, in some cases more than we're talking about our family members.

So the fact that Edie Sedgwick was a dysfunctional figure — it's an appropriate framework in which to bring up these issues that my art seems to be about.

» EXPRESS: What would Edie Sedgwick think of Edie Sedgwick?
» MOYER: Edie Sedgwick is such a slippery person. She's been cast as this put-upon, poor-little-rich, powerless figure. I wonder if she was as dumb as people think. In many ways, she's as great an artist as the artists she was surrounded by. Her art may be just being herself, being an iconic somebody/nobody. I like to think she'd be into it.

» EXPRESS: You were ahead of the curve. You started this project in 2001. A few years later, there was an upsurge of interest in her.
» MOYER: There's something about this person that resonates in our culture. Edie Sedgwick doesn't have any real — it's not like she was a filmmaker or a painter. People can take her symbol and run with it. They can run with the glamour element; they can run with the drug addict element; they can run with "hung out with Warhol," the artsy side. She's vague, and for that reason, I like her as a symbol. A lot of people have responded to her in that way. She's easy to dress up as you'd like.

» EXPRESS: Everyone focuses on the refrain of your song "Robert Downey, Jr." ["Relapse! Recovery!"] But what do the lyrics "Here's a guy doing what he should" mean?
» MOYER: People are critical of Robert Downey Jr., but he's doing what he should by going through this process of relapse and recovery, for hopefully a drug-free lifestyle in the future.

When I say, "What about those people not doing what they could?" that's saying, "There are all these people in the world that are not engaging that process." It's a song about looking at people who aren't visibly engaging the process of relapse and recovery and saying, "We should pay more attention to those people, and less attention to the trials and tribulations of people that already recognize that they're addicts and are coming to terms with their addiction."

» EXPRESS: That's a good point. Who have you written songs about since the last album?
» MOYER: Sissy Spacek ... I didn't expect to write a song about Anthony Perkins, but reading about his life, there's a lot of fascinating aspects. I have a song about that movie "Red Dawn," which is about Cold War fear circa-1985 that a lot of people my age went through.

I was trying to work on something about Glenn Close — I think there's a lot to be said about that movie "Fatal Attraction" and its anti-feminist qualities. I think it's an interesting cultural touchstone, but I can't quite figure out an angle on it.

» EXPRESS: Have you made videos to accompany all the songs?
» MOYER: I run the videos on the side. I'm doing static portraits. I want the video to be there, and it's a good aide to bring the performance together, but I don't want it to draw attention away from the music. I put it in the background. It's a pretty static loop and it doesn't captivate the audience as much as the stuff I used to do — a lot of edits, a lot of visual activity. I'm a musician, so I want people to hear the music. I don't want them to stare at the screen the whole time. But I do make a portrait for every song that is performed live.

» EXPRESS: Did you play all the instruments on the record?
» MOYER: Yes.

» EXPRESS: The drums are electronic, right?
» MOYER: For the most part, but the new stuff I'm working on is pretty much all live instruments. I'm playing with a band. The electroclash thing I was doing, it's great, but ultimately it doesn't really resonate with people who go to a rock show expecting to see rock music.

It's a problem with hip-hop and it's a problem with electronica: People who go to the Black Cat, they're used to seeing people play instruments. Once you step outside of that, people are like, "Oh, isn't this cute and clever!" I got sick of that.

So, we're working in a form that people are familiar with, but [messing] with the form: "This is familiar — wait, no, it's not!" Before, I [was] just a crazy guy with crazy movies. I want to be less of a novelty. I want to work within the existing form, but make it unrecognizable.

» EXPRESS: How are you changing the form?
» MOYER: I've probably played over 1,000 shows in my life. It's always the same: bearded guys play male indie rock. Sometimes that's enough. Frequently, it's tedious.

We have instruments, we're playing rock, but, "This guy's in a dress, there's this weird visual element and there's a weird stand-up comedy element." I talk to the audience a lot.

Even if you don't like my show, I don't want anyone to come to my show and not remember it. At least it was different. At least it was trying to take this format to a different place. All I'm trying to do is make it not boring, make it different.

» EXPRESS: The stand-up comedy aspect, like a lot of what you're doing, reminds me of Ian Svenonius. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much of an influence is he?
» MOYER:10. I don't know Ian well, but I think he's a revolutionary figure. A lot of what he does is perceived as humorous, and some of it is, but it's always well thought out and serious. There's truth in everything he does. You could say that what I do is my version of what The Make-Up was doing in 1998. I'd like to think that it's from the same tree, from the same roots.

» EXPRESS: I think there are some sonic similarities between your old band, Supersystem, your band Antelope and this project. Do you agree?
» MOYER: [In] Supersystem, we'd be like, "How can we make this more danceable, more hooky, more like a number one song?" We were in the business of trying to make number one tracks. While I'm not really in the business of making number one tracks, there's an element of my composition when I'm like, "Is this hooky enough? Is this engaging for an audience?" That's the Supersystem element of what I do.

» EXPRESS: Who are the other people in Edie Sedgwick now?
» MOYER: Chad Molter, the drummer, he's a member of Medications. Jason Hutto plays keyboard in the Aquarium. Melissa Quinley plays bass. She's the bass player of Soccer Team. I'm working with musicians from the Dischord community, which has been my community for some years.

» EXPRESS: Do you still sound like Devo?
» MOYER: No, now it's like James Brown meets a teenager with a Casio ... or Lungfish meets a lounge singer. ... It's kind of an ignorant vibe, like music played by people that don't know how to play music. We're trying to dumb it down so much that it becomes smart.

Sometimes someone will play something overly showy or hokey. That's what I want. I want to make it so hokey that it's a diamond bullet of seriousness.

I want to make it more like filthy outsider art, like Wesley Willis or paintings by prisoners or mental patients. I want it to seem like I didn't know how to read, so that I seem like the smartest person on Earth.

» Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW; with The Points, Sun., 9 p.m. $8; 800-551-7328. (U St.-Cardozo)

Written by Express contributor Tim Follos

Photos courtesy Edie Sedgwick