Stream: Eli Chartkoff, excerpts from ‘Obliteration City’

Daiana Feuer on April 26th, 2017

0

Eli Chartkoff, the man behind such bands as Madame Headdress, Dawn of Sequins, and The Monolators, has funneled his creativity into producing “Obliteration City,” a solo record consisting of songs adapted from interviews with “various people, some famous, some not,” he says. Sourcing magazines, books, TV interviews, and documentaries, “They’re all real things that real people said.”

The inspiration came to him in the form of Gwyneth Paltrow. “I was on Facebook one day and someone posted a link to an article called ‘The 20 Most Obnoxious Gwyneth Paltrow Food Quotes,’ which I had to read. One of the quotes was from a Red Book interview where she was asked what she’d want for her last meal. She said: ‘Oysters, cocktail sauce, and then a baked and stuffed lobster.’” Another moment that jumped out to him was this quote: “I drank like crazy when the kids were babies. How else could I get through my day?” He says, “That sounded like a song to me, so I set it to music, word for word.” And so the “Gwyneth” song was born.

||| Stream: “Gwyneth”

This creation lit a fire in Chartkoff’s brain. He became consumed with finding the best interviews deserving of musical adaptation. Rumor has it he sequestered himself in a padded room with a strong internet connection. He says, “Finding more interviews that would work took a long time, but a favorite source was this TV interview with James Brown, where he answered questions by the (very game) host by singing lines from his own songs. That turned into ‘Jam/I’m Real.’”

||| Stream: “Jam/I’m Real”

||| Watch: The original James Brown interview

“Obliteration City” also features songs inspired by interviews with Patti Smith, supermodel Gia Carangi and Donatella Versace, and is being released on cassette by Chain Letter Collective. Chartkoff enlisted many musician friends to perform on the tracks, including members of Ghost Noise, Pizza!, Madame Headdress, Polartropica, Mouth 4 Rusty, Shirley Rolls, Slow Rose, QunQ, Kissing Cousins and Sons of the Bitch. Most of them are playing in the 12-piece band backing Chartkoff at tonight’s one-and-only performance of the album in full.

||| Watch: “Donatella”