A Guerilla Q&A by Tony Martins / Photos by Jonathan Hobin
You can thank technology in large part for pleasantly strange musical phenomena such as The Peptides. You must also thank humanity, of course, just be careful not to go overboard there.
Back in 2004, armed with a home studio, a perfectionist’s zeal, and a knack for singing beautifully about the fatal flaws in human nature, Claude Marquis and his cohorts gave rise to The Peptides, a refreshingly bizarre blend of music-with-a-message and whimsical, retro-styled theatre.
While an astute Facebook commentator aptly described the band’s quirky, throwback sound as “Lori Anderson meets Austin Powers with back up from the Beach Boys and the Bangles,” there is a serious underbelly beneath the styling and whimsy.
Though The Peptides rarely perform live, the band’s third and fourth albums dropped simulateously this summer: the lavishly produced concept collection called For Those Who Hate Human Interaction, and the introspective acoustic album titled North Hero.
A serial collaborator, Marquis seemed to discover a muse for these latest recordings in versatile vocalist Deedee Butters. But Marquis is a music machine, no doubt already at work on his next project and probably the one after that. Why are he and his crew hell-bent on doing whatever the heck they please? As Marquis explains it: “No label, no record company, and no fan base to corner us!”
Guerilla: Who exactly are The Peptides? Does the band change with every album?
Claude Marquis: Exactly, I don't know. I'm the instigator and many talented singers and a few musicians have participated. With the theatrical aspect of this album, Deedee became very involved and rose to every absurd challenge, from singing as a broadway cockney gal, a 1920s muse, a 1950s era songstress, to pirouetting vocal gymnastics on the funkier tunes. The Peptides to me is above all an art project, but as other artists will attest, it's mostly many infinite hours of work before it ever gets spewed upon the public.
Peptide is a term from molecular biology. Why did you name the band this way?
I discovered we're all addicted to certain chemicals in our brains that release our emotions. In a fascination—as I switched from painting to music and sought to slowly withdraw from accumulated grey matter waste—I had a vertebrate central nervous system and cerebral cortex detox. I named this music project after these addictive chemical neurotransmitters.
Why do The Peptides rarely perform live?
With every album completed, I immediately pounce onto the next, bypassing the whole glorious luminescent drenched stage. The creative sphincter for For Those Who Hate is particularly wide with possibilities. If granted, I would prefer a theatrical stage version with pliable bare-chested dancers, juicy vocalists, dazzling ejaculatory lights, a frothy video show, and a seminally spattered orchestra rather than just a band.
How do you distribute your music?
Why do artists distribute at all? If this were a Star Trek world, then creativity would be the only goal, rather than the sale of it. I'd gratuitously sing to Captain Janeway her beloved song “For Those Who Hate The Earth,” and with an honorary bow, scamper back to my duties at the Shuttle Launch Bay. Here in the capitalistic conniving corporate world, I've sold previous recordings on CDBaby, though I'll now be planning more suitably for these next two albums with digital uploads and some foreign distribution deal. I'll also be freely offering on our website the first full 9 songs from Act I of For Those Who Hate Human Interaction.
New technology is making it possible for almost anyone to record an album and "distribute" it any way he or she sees fit. It seems like you are intent on exploring this new avenue for the sake of artistry/exploration, not to be become a pop star, correct? For instance, if the album becomes an Internet sensation and you are invited to appear on the David Letterman show, would you appear?
That's why I insist on calling this musical venture an art project. It was never about becoming a pop star. How is 25 song titles beginning with the words “For Those Who Hate” popular? Part of the exploration though is seeing where and how far one can go, including the dismal chance of appearing on the Letterman show. But if I end up penniless, begging Mother for money, food, and lodging, I can walk her dog Cookie with a nostalgic grin, for I partook in the ethereal, magical, and hazardous world of art.
In your For Those Who Hate album, are all the references to Hate a response to popular music’s copious references to Love?
That ain't love! It's lust, begging, whoring, and haughtiness over being cheated that they are regurgitating. Burt Bacharach and Hal David, for instance, endearingly composed songs about the many layers of love in a more classy fashion, and so will I on the next album titled Love Question Mark that I'm already 20 songs into processing, eventually coming to a theater near you.
Where’d the For Those Who Hate title come from?
On a September day whilst recording in a rented cabin in North Hero, Vermont, I picked up the local “welcome freshmen students” rag while balladeering. There was an article inside on where to eat for cheap. One burrito hangout was recommended for its promise of anonymity and invisibility, with the writer concluding: "So, for those who hate human interaction, this is the place for you!" I had an immediate visceral attachment to this phrase which made me expulse a deep-seated sneer and snicker toward humanity into more than 30 songs. It became a sort of stage-less satirical musical in my head. When I wiped my hands clean of that album, I returned to the little gloomy gypsy album I had intended to record, North Hero.
What was your aim with the photos for the Hate album? Were you trying to tell a story?
It's the brainchild of Jonthan Hobin. He heard many of the song demos and along with the inspiration of an Art Nouveau book Deedee had gifted to him, his vision came to perfectly correspond with the theatrical element of the album. Jonathan's work is amazing and I'm convinced he will be asked one day to replace Annie Leibovitz at Vanity Fair. He's also a conceptualist, which makes his images not merely photographs, but art. I love the album cover because it unintentionally, and in happenstance, evokes my personal favorite, Fleetwood Mac's iconic Rumours, crystal balls and all. I even insisted that we exclude any text promoting the album title and band name. Why ruin a great shot?
In what new directions are you going with the new albums?
As long as one remains cohesive within a theme or tone, everywhere. No label, no record company, and no fan base to corner us! Possibly, also, world domination and a Peptides Burger Shack franchise or For Those Who Hate Chicken Nuggets concession booth. My limited, slowly expanding skills as a home-based producer and my insular nature are the major musical impediments to recording, say for example, a choral versus electronica album, imaginarily titled Elechoralica! That, and incessant pending doom reverberating within my very core.
A surface reading of the lyrics from the Hate album would be: depressing. Is that an accurate reading?
With a twisted smirk, Kurt Vonnegut would have disagreed. If you add some humour in expressing just how absurd and warped humans are, then you've instantly acquired a hardy survival elucidation to managiing sanity. How is that depressing, rather than running towards heavenly daddies and mommies for intangible head pat consolations and Vicks vaporizer soul rubs? As part of the privileged few on the unbalanced global socio-economic scale, I have the opportunity to explore art. Meanwhile, horrid atrocities are being perpetuated around the world by humans towards other humans, beasts, and their habitat, or simply in your local government workplace. There is a way of expressing this ugliness through art that transforms it into something we can tap our feet to, or contemplate through visual art, even chuckle at.
True, the album’s opening number is a call out for the annihilation of the human race! We've been indoctrinated, particularly through religion, to believe that humans are sacred, when really we are just another organism, an evolved bacteria, that has invaded planet Earth. I'm merely a realist, and for those who think reality is depressing, I may be wrongfully branded a pessimist. Though one would think otherwise if they met me at a party with a cocktail in hand.
So the “incessant pending doom” that's reverberating at your very core—what's that all about?
I'm glad you asked. True, the North Hero album opens with a slow furtive cover of “Don't Fear The Reaper”! Without intending to belittle blitheful woolly creatures, it's the sheep factor in humans that disturbs me to the point of silent inner terror. It's not the ego-maniacal dictator, the evangelical lunatic at his pulpit, the murderous army leader, whether NATO sanctioned or Congolese unsanctioned, that instills a sense of doom, it's those that follow, work under, and attend as an audience. Without the power of the people, they would just be obnoxious buffoons screeching hot spittle on a street corner.
… So, in anonymity, or within a mob, or in North Korea, what is it about the psychology of humans that leads us to stray into the dark? But on a positive note! I love the enduring human spirit in the individuals that surround me, but am obviously wary of humanity in general. As an anthropological sponge, I flush out these goopy speculatory secretions through art so I may stroll the Earth as a light-hearted trollop. Um, does that answer this question?
For more on The Peptides visit www.thepeptides.com.
