 |
Shades of grey (and blue)New Jersey’s Titus Andronicus
|
by ERIK LEIJON When New Jersey-raised, currently Brooklyn-based band Titus Andronicus performed with cannons blazing at the now-defunct Green Room this past April, frontman and primary songwriter Patrick Stickles was surprised to be greeted by two important figures from his past. Dr. Edward Shannon and Dr. Monika Giacoppe were not your typical groupies—the two professors played an important role in shaping the Ramapo College of New Jersey English major into his current status as impassioned yet erudite punk rocker. “They taught me to love Walt Whitman,” says Stickles. “Dr. Giacoppe taught me a lot about being a punk in her comparative feminist theory class.” The group’s second album, The Monitor, does come with a list of suggested further reading. But despite being an American Civil War epic with an expansive sound, mostly eight-minute-long free-for-alls and special guests portraying the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Whitman and confederate president Jefferson Davis, it’s not too oppressively American for our gentler Canuck sensibilities. “I’d like to think you don’t have to be an expert on American history to enjoy it. As much as we try to observe cultural relativism, we do strive to address more human issues that aren’t too specific to a place and time.” The true genesis of The Monitor is certainly more universal, as it came about from a despondent Stickles, residing away from the Garden State for the first time in Massachusetts, watching Ken Burns’ PBS documentary series The Civil War and finding parallels between his nation’s pivotal conflict and his own fear and loathing. The series also introduced him to the nautical battle between the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia, the first time two iron-hulled warships met in combat. Not so coincidentally, Stickles now lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the location where the Monitor was originally built. “There’s a street here called Monitor, but otherwise there’s nothing else [commemorating the ship],” he says. “I went down to the old site of the Continental Iron Works, but there’s only a shitty parking lot left. No plaque or anything. “That’s the way it is in America, though. We love to forget our history. That’s why we’re so often doomed to repeat it.” WITH FREE ENERGY AT IL MOTORE ON |
