Airport—Drummer Jeff Brown fuels up jets, or so he tells me. I read in a previous City Pages article that part of his lifestyle includes regular tuberculosis screenings because he works with monkeys at the V.A. Now I don't know what to believe.
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Balm—Singer Sheridan Fox obsessively applies lip balm about 59 million times during the interview, although his lips appear neither notably dry nor notably moist.
Cardinal Bar—Where I meet to talk with the fellows. They patty their burgers fresh daily, if you didn't know.
Dartmouth—Fox reluctantly divulges he went to college there. Dartmouth ranked 11th on U.S. News & World Report's most recent "Best Colleges" list, which means he's probably smarter than everyone else in the Cardinal Bar, if burdened with a crippling self-awareness when it comes to lip emolliation.
Eighth grade—When the Jeffs no longer attend the same school. See the entry for letter "J"
Foxfire—Back in the day, Brown and Fox frequented this defunct all-ages venue. It has a pretty special place in their memories. They talk about it like it pulled them out of the ocean after a shark attack, or like it's the girl they always saw themselves marrying.
Ground Floor—An all-ages club in Grand Rapids, South Dakota, that almost stopped the band from performing their set, because they thought...
"His Mischief" was a reference to the Devil!
It's not.
Jeffs—There are two in the band: monkey-tending jet-fueler Jeff Brown and bassist Jeff Quinn. Brown tells me they have been BFF since grade school, when they were known as "Jeff One" and "Jeff Two."
Karate!
Led Zepplin—Fox hates 'em, Brown loves 'em.
Modern Radio—The local label that released the His Mischief EP Summer's Eve.
No citations were written after the following incident:
Officers on bicycles once dismounted to tackle Fox and Quinn, because they were running suspiciously through a football field very late at night. They were released when it was determined that the cause of the sprinting was nothing more sinister than high spirits, as the lads were on tour at the time.
Principal Dick—Brown alleges that he and Jeff Two had a principal named Mr. Dick in seventh grade, and that Two was suspended after spraying him with a SuperSoaker.
Quinn, Jeff—The bass player who I don't get to meet, 'cause he's at work.
Rock music (more specifically, garage) is the genre of choice for His Mischief.
Summer's Eve—Freshness should be something you feel, not something you worry about.
Teacher's pet—Who Fox was actually trying to squirt when he accidentally shot his teacher with a squirt gun. He was also suspended.
Umbrella ella ella eh-eh-eh
"Victory Gasoline" is the fifth track on their Summer's Eve EP, although if I were to single out a particular song to mention without regard to the rather sophomoric conceit of this piece, it would be the scruffy, spiky hip-jerker "Captain's Ship."
"We make sure to incorporate 1,001 notes in every song," Fox brags, somewhat misguidedly. "Quinn tallies them."
X—The Jeffs are ex-members of the Monarques, the band that won Picked to Click in 2003.
Y—"Why do you make music?" I ask Fox. He responds to my boring question with a sincere but stock answer about how much he enjoys entertaining people at parties and participating in a local scene where everyone is so supportive of one another...and he's always playing for his friends, and his friends are always playing for him, and yadda yadda yadda, until...
Zzzzzz we are all tired of the interview and go home.
