It was only a matter of time, but we've been working up to this since we launched the site. With such a rich legacy of music and bands associated with the various members and associated musicians of the Ordinary 5, we knew at some point we would bring the family together under one unified umbrella. No longer an archival effort, the new site will now feature current and past projects from all of the musicians and bands that initially sprung from the Ordinary 5.
As a kick-off to this momentous occasion, we've included an Ordinary 5 band interview we did with Tom Hilton of Aldora Britain Records that will appear in a future edition of his label Aldora Britain eZine. Tom is what you'd call an "uberfan" of independent music. His label is multi-dimensional, but most of his activity centers on Bandcamp. He scours all the new music pouring into that site daily and creates compilations as a means to "curate" some of the best music (even if it doesn't always have a huge following). He found us and was kind enough to add our music to three of his weekly compilations, for which we are incredibly grateful!
The interview does a great job of answering some of the questions you all may be having right about now.
Tom Hilton: Hi Matt, how are you? I am really excited to be talking to such a brilliant musician and songwriter today. Thank you for your time. I was wondering if we could start off by travelling back in time. What are some of your earliest musical memories and what first pushed you towards pursuing this passion of yours?
Dave: I think it was listening to AM radio as a kid and realizing how good music can make you feel. Then when you share the love of music with others there’s a deep connection. It’s how I connected with Matt. But making music was always something “others” did…they were professionals and “musicians”. It wasn’t really until college where we even considered making it. It was the early 80’s and this was the time where REM and also U2 were these unknown bands who did it differently and sounded completely fresh and new after the regurgitated corporate bloat rock of the 70’s. And mind you we were in the Twin Cities and we could go SEE bands and THEY were doing it on their own…the Replacements, Husker Du, Magnolias, Trip Shakespeare, Soul Asylum, Urban Guerrillas…Icould go on and on.
Matt: Similar to Dave, I listened to a lot of AM radio, most of the time in my parent’s car. I guess I was about 5 or 6 when I realized how music took me to another place. This was around 1969 and 1970, a peak period in popular music. Back then, AM radio played a lot of different styles of music, e.g. rock, pop, soul, and R&B, all of which influenced me in some way, but another reference point was when my cousin and I stumbled upon his aunt’s record collection. It was then that I first heard Rubber Soul by the Beatles, who quickly became my favorite band and the seeds of my desire to be in a band. Upon arrival in college in 82, I discovered a record that changed everything for me. It was the Rain Parade, Emergency 3rd Rail Power Trip and it was unlike anything I had ever heard. I was blown away, especially after seeing them live. It wasn’t too many years after that, fresh from a handful of folk guitar lessons that I bought a Rickenbacher 360 guitar and was on my way.
Tom: Always loved music and how it made me feel. Emotive. Grew up on Elvis, Beach Boys, Beatles, etc. I never thought as a kid I would ever be in a band!
Don: First memories were stealing my brother's records and playing them over and over. Beatles compilation double album (blue), Elton John'sGoodbye Yellow Brick Road. All very mainstream but they could write.
Rob: My earliest musical memory is dancing to “Zorba The Greek” by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass in my grandparents’ basement. I was probably 3 so it was 1967. Herb Alpert was spinning on just about every hi-fi in the land.
Tom Hilton: And now, I wanted to fast forward to 1992 when Ordinary 5 came to be. How did this come about? How did you meet the other guys and what was the initial spark behind embarking on this musical adventure?
Dave: In college we spent an inordinate amount of time listening to music, going to record stores, and trying to find the next band to fall in love with. At our school we all needed a fine arts credit and someone realized we could take guitar lessons to get it! So off we went learning from the same teacher. We were all pretty bad, but we started to jam together. It was really pretty terrible...but every once in a while…wham…something would happen. Post college we stayed in touch but started getting jobs and wives and the like. I went off to do some grad studies but moved back after a couple of years. We had all advanced a little in our playing and Mattand I decided to get together every Friday night to work on music. We’d toss guitar ideas back and forth and record them in a closet with a Fostex 4 track. We had a few people come and go as we tried out some keyboards, a drummer without a drum kit, and a couple of different bass players. Nothing really clicked, but Don Egeberg got wind of our Friday night boondoggle and purchased a drum kit and we started playing and had a few beers now and again. He knew a guy from high school who he thought could sing (Brent Mastel). We lost our bass player, so I moved to bass, and we added Tom Welsh on guitar to round out the band.
Matt: Dave summed it up pretty well. It was very much a happy accident. We enjoyed each other’s company and shared a love of music. It was this love of music that drew us to the clubs to see live bands. I think it was the DYI ethic that was still very much at the center of that era that inspired us to see what we could do ourselves musically.
Don: As Dave mentioned, the Friday night practice (some might say party) was the hook for me. All my friends were there. They could string a couple of chords together. I knew I was behind on the learning curve, so I bought a drum kit and mentioned I got one. I started showing up on Friday’s and spent the next 30 years trying to figure out how to play.
Tom: At one point Matt’s frequent business travel led Dave to ask me if I’d be interested in sitting in with the band.
Rob: I showed up a few years later, when I moved across the alley from Matt in November 1996. Surprise, we end up about talking music for hours. He kept saying “you should come see my band” so I relented and asked where their next gig was. His response: “Oh we don’t play any gigs. I meant you should come see us in our practice space.” With expectations lowered accordingly, I showed up at the band room on a Wednesday night (band night was always on Wednesday’s in those days). I actually liked what I heard, and was nominated manager (no one else ran). A thankless job, but I got these socially inept, apathetic guys out of their windowless, nicotine-addled cave of a practice space, and into the studio, then gigs, radio and even TV coverage (long live the Pirate Stage)!
Tom Hilton: You have a love for 70s and 80s post-punk and new wave. This definitely comes through in your sound and it is such a timeless style, for sure. What appeals to you about this era and music, and who are your biggest influences?
Dave: Too many to mention really. Everything you hear influences you (good or bad…I DON’T want to sound like THAT!). We all had some really different tastes, but definitely rallied around punk stuff like Buzzcocks, Magazine, Clash, and the Jam, but then we all dug the Cure, the Feelies, Rain Parade and the Replacements. Some of us loved the Church and the Chills and the Clean, and others were way into X and some of the country-tinged stuff. And we were, and are, still huge fans of The Beatles, the Stones, and the Velvet Underground.
Matt: Exactly. Back in the days before Facebook there was MySpace and there was a field to enter your influences. I think our list of influences had over 50 bands on it! While we all had our favorites, it was really a matter of starting with what we were capable of playing. A lot of our very early stuff was influenced by my fascination with arpeggios and psychedelia, but once Tom joined, we started integrating a lot more post-punk elements into our music. We used to get the question all the time “who do you guys sound like”, and we never could come up with a singular influence, which I guess means we were the sum of our influences!
Don: The others mentioned the bands. The blessing for this group is all the music we love in common. We all listened to the same stuff over and over again. We had the same appreciation for music. So that really bound us together.
Tom: The angst for sure. I loved the brash, saucy attitude. Sometimes the music was good too!
Tom Hilton: You recorded two albums in your initial tenure, but neither were released until 2021. How come they have taken so long to see the light of day? There is some seriously good material on there.
Dave: Thanks, you are very kind. It really was just a hobby of ours. WE couldn’t make a RECORD. That just, again, seemed like something a “real” band would do. Matt met a neighbor (Rob Blackwell, aka DJ Roob of KKSM radio in San Diego) who was a music-head as well and heard Matt was in a band. He came to see us, with VERY low expectations, but really liked what we were doing and said he’d “manage” us, and he talked us into getting studio time. Recording was a complete and total blast and it sounded pretty decent. Our engineer was pretty green (as were we), and he’d probably never heard a band like ours. But he did get us some gigs and that first foray into recording was really memorable. That became “Backseat of Tomorrow”. They are all pretty much live tracks minus some of the backing vocals.
As for why so long to see the light of day…we just pressed fifty CDs or something…we sent to a few radio stations and the like…it just didn’t happen for us just like it doesn’t for the vast majority of bands. With the streaming services and Matt getting a ton of free time by retiring, we thought “what the hell”, let’s put it out there and see what happens. And here we are!
Matt: With the advent of Spotify, the ability to reach people is amplified far beyond anything we had available to us back when we were playing live gigs. To Dave’s point earlier, we all had careers and families so our music always took a back seat to that. Had Rob Blackwell not entered the picture, it’s doubtful we ever would have played live gigs or recorded. He was shocked by how apathetic we were about being a proper band.
One of the factors in our releasing this now was the fact that none of us had any way to listen to the music we made. We are all so streaming centric now, few of us even have a turntable or CD player anymore! After releasing the Swell Crusade record digitally, it just seemed a good time to release the material from all of our various projects.
Tom: Self-deprecation crushed any confidence we may have had. Frankly, I was just happy to be there.
Tom Hilton: I would like to single out Inappropriate Love Songs. This is the record that introduced me to your music. What are your memories from writing and recording this album, and how do you reflect on it now?
Dave: After we had our first “record”…we pressed a few CDs and gave to friends and sold a few (very few) at our infrequent gigs, but now we knew we actually could make a record and our playing ability and writing was improving. We would take a LONG time to make a song…mainly through jamming and repetition, but that did make us very tight as a band. My brother Kent is an actual real sound engineer, so once we had a new bunch of songs, we rented an RV and drove 11 hours to Indianapolis to record at his studio. We had a weekend to record the songs we had. It’s a fantastic way to record in our opinion. We again essentially recorded live 6 hours Friday night, 12 hours Saturday, 8 hours Sunday or something like that. You are in a different city, with a limited amount of time, and it makes everyone focus like mad. Eight tracks made the final cut…we had a few that didn’t. Kent did a masterful job and worked his tail off (engineers don’t get breaks!). He really captured our live sound. Hearing it 20 years later, Ithink it holds up pretty well. It’s a little bit of a melancholy memory recording that because Brent left shortly thereafter. We were a very loud rock and roll band who would play extended jams (likeShrewmin’ from that record)…I think it got a bit tedious for him. I think he still sounds great on that record. We’re still great friends.
Matt: What I remember most of all is the camaraderie. We were a gang of sorts. We looked forward to practice, cabin weekends, the gigs, and the recording process. Everything was new and you couldn’t really see an end to it because it wasn’t a job. I think that’s why we managed to keep doing this over the years. We used to joke that “apathy” was the primary force within the band, but we really did care about making music that we personally liked, so it was only logical at some point we’d “make a record.” Recording Inappropriate Love Songs, and the subsequent gigs that followed, were definitely high points for me. I am particularly blown away by Brent’s lyrics and voice on that record and how Tom and my guitars worked together. What’s been amazing has been not only listening to this again after all these years, but seeing people from all over the world listening to it and adding tracks to their playlists. Unfortunately, we still haven’t learned how to promote or market our music!
Tom: I didn’t write much for the Ordinary 5, just finding my footing in the band was good enough. Recording was always fun. I don’t have the finely tuned ear that the others had to refine the sound.
Don: Things changed about the time of Inappropriate Love Songs. Brent decided to leave. No acrimony, just actual creative differences.
Tom Hilton: You have also been involved in a number of other projects. Just before we go, I was wondering if you could give me the ‘nutshell’ story of The Fizzgates and The Swell Crusade.
Dave: With Brent’s leaving, we asked our manager, Rob Blackwell to join us for a couple of years (as Swivel) before he too left. The remaining four of us soldiered on because we loved what happens when we hit that groove. We just kept going and kept writing and decided to all try to help with the vocals. That ultimately became the Fizzgates. Which is essentially what we did between 2003 and 2017. We’re pretty proud of what we recorded. We had a 3rd record almost ready to go, but Tom decided he was ready to move on.
So, the last three of us just kept going. We decided it had to essentially be all new material. We took a few months to go off and wrote songs on our own and got back together. But we wanted a full-time singer…and the universe sent us Bob. He fit in super well, especially given that the three of us had essentially played together for 25 years. The Swell Crusade has elements of those prior bands of course, but we are really proud of Blue Skies All The Way. We have a new record in the works that should be out in 2022.
Matt: To Dave’s points, we were pretty adamant that we evolve as we began new projects. None of us felt right trying to carrying on playing our old material after losing members, so out of necessity, we always wrote new material. At the same time, music continued to change and evolve and our influences changed over time as well. While the Ordinary 5 was the sound of our 70’s and 80’s influences, the Fizzgates were the sound of our 90’s influences. We were all fans of guitar bands like the Stone Roses, Ride, Suede, Oasis, Pavement, Luna, Radiohead, Dandy Warhols, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Six by Seven, etc. and wanted to make guitar records. Fortunately, Kent was a sympathetic producer and being a guitarist himself, he was instrumental in encouraging us to turn up and add multiple guitars to several of the tracks. Tracks like “Nothing”, “Go”, and “Six By Seven” are really good examples of that.
With the Swell Crusade, we stripped things back and focused on the songs themselves. Blue Skies All the Way is truly a “band” effort. I got rid of the distortion pedals and went for a much cleaner guitar sound with a bit of reverb. Along with giving Bob space to sing his heart out, that record is one where Don’s drumming and Dave’s bass playing really have space to breathe.
Don: Funny thing about the progression of our stuff. While it's great we recorded it and we have it to listen to, I think none of us want to go back. We enjoy what we're onto now. Personally, I had to live it in order to understand why, take Radiohead for example, don't just keep making OK Computer. It might be a fan favorite and everyone can sing along to those songs but as a band they have moved on. We have moved on.
Tom: The Fizzgates were a blast. We were the “leftovers” from the Ordinary 5, but determined to move forward. I personally grew a lot musically in this transition and wrote some songs I am proud of.
Rob: Sometime after Brent left the band but before The Fizzgates, I joined the band as an interim singer and songwriter, and we called the project Swivel. I was an average singer but a better songwriter, and I would write songs on the piano, bring them to the band room and the rest of the guys would interpret them. Loved the collaborative part of being in a band and we kept the entity of the band going, playing gigs and writing music. My short time with Swivel ended when I moved to California in 2003. Unfortunately, we don’t have many recordings of good quality of that era, save for a rough mix of the best song we performed, “When.”
Tom Hilton: QUICKFIRE ROUND
Favourite artist? Rolling Stones (Dave), Velvet Underground (Matt), David Bowie (Don), Taylor Hollingworth (Tom)
Favourite album? Exile on Main Street by the Stones (Dave), Penthouse by Luna (Matt), Zen Arcade by Husker Du (Don), and I Should Coco by Supergrass (Tom)
First gig as audience member? Rush in 1981(Dave); Cars in 1979 (Matt), Police in 1982 (Don), Devo in 1981 (Tom), and Beach Boys & Steve Miller Band in 1978 (Rob)
Style icon? Paul Weller (Dave), Johnny Marr (Matt), Reuben Kinkaid (Rob)
Favourite film? The Graduate (Dave), Fandango (Matt), Taxi Driver (Rob)
Favourite up and coming artist? Modern Nature (Matt), Flatworms (Tom), Brothers Burn Mountain (Don), Jesus Gonzalez (Rob)