RRIICCEE is the biggest pain in the ass for music writers to describe. There is no press kit, there are no recordings because all the compositions are live and change every night, and there are no videos or anything to reference. The only way to understand RRIICCEE is to see them live.

Mr. Gallo, could you describe it for me?

“I just know that for many years now I haven’t been excited by the mood of music in the Western world. It feels like it’s an extremely old vocabulary that still exists that doesn’t have context to people in a real way and isn’t part of thei
r authentic experience and is caught up a bit in cabaret and pantomime. So the concept of the band with Eric [Erlandson] was simply… about a year ago I saw him in a health food store, which is a good sign, to see people, to see your friends in a healthy thought, in a self-respecting thought, it was a good vibration or whatever. I casually mentioned to him, ‘Hey Eric, what are you doing musically these days, anything?’ Which is a silly question anyways; it just came from habit or something because he was in a famous band. [Erlandson played in Hole with Courtney Love.]

“And he said to me, ‘Oh man, I don’t want to be part of that problem anymore, so I’m just really not connected to that problem anymore.’ And I thought about it for several days, and I really understood what he meant in terms of how you connect with what kind of energy and how you become the person you really are and not who you learn to be and how you don’t get caught up in old stories and philosophical ways… that I understood that vocabulary. It’s vocabulary of today and I knew what he meant.

“But further still, I knew what he meant in a creative way. What he meant was, how can we possibly be excited and comfortable to perform, to play, to create music if we’re stuck in musical forms that don’t belong to us or are not really part of our mood and generation and we’re out there dealing with audience and business and other people and venues, etc. etc., that have this whole story clearly defined and really stuck in? So I called him up and asked him, ‘Could we meet, could we talk?’ And we got excited about playing music together in a way that would be, as much as possible, not stuck in the problem, and that’s really it.”

Gallo will continue to refer to cabaret and pantomime through the interview when discussing bands that perform the same songs every night.

I interviewed Richard Hell some years back and he said that the reason he got out of music was because touring was so boring, playing the same songs every night, doing sound check then having to wait for hours in a city you know nothing about. He said that’s why he ended up with a drug problem, because of the boredom of touring and playing.

I understand Gallo’s frustration with the current national music scene. Regarding our local San Francisco music scene, there is so much going on we can stay in our bubble and enjoy great bands that are redefining music across all genres. But on the national exposure level, the MTV and Clear Channel vanilla offerings, that’s when RRIICCEE makes sense, as well as Gallo’s frustration.

Gallo continues, “In 1930, could you have imagined music in 1970? No way. But if you go 30 years back or 20 years back of the Chili Peppers, is it so far outside our understanding that they would progress in such a banal way like that and basically be doing the same thing? What we’re saying is that we’re trying to stay open and, in the process of staying open, we’re not flowing into unconscious habits. And so, to be conscious means to wake up. If you start to play music and you immediately start to feel that design, that desire with things that are from the past or things that are from habit, then how can you transcend yourself? How can you make things that are better than yourself? How can you grow, as a person or creatively?

“…could the Beatles have imagined what they did in ‘69 with what they did in ‘64? No way. They made themselves open and they were flexible and they were authentic in many ways and that’s why they participated in that growth, and that’s what we’re saying, you know.

“And to go on the stage at Coachella and do a cabaret act at Coachella with a bunch of bands looking for a deal or promoting our record or whatever, how are we going to grow past that?”

So Vincent, it’s staying outside the music industry, but kind of being fully aware of yourself as your own?

“We’re not staying outside of anything in regards to reaction. It’s a very important point that you understand that I’m not a provocateur. Eric is not a provocateur. We’re a four-piece band. We’re not four provocateurs. We’re not reactionary. It’s just nothing about the music business has said to me, ‘Wow, that’s really exciting, I want to connect with that,’ you know. I just don’t feel connected with the music business in the way that I understand it today. Or in the way that the music business tries to frame or express creativity in music. And Rick Rubin, who’s a good friend of mine and a funny guy, was just appointed czar of a big music label, to be the creative czar of the label. Rick Rubin is more stuck in an old story than anyone I know. He’s so out of touch, he’s so stuck in the music business story of the past. He glorifies in it, relishes in it, and it’s his only vocabulary. If I look at that and kind of move from a corporate level, it doesn’t make me say, ‘God, wow, things are really exciting right now; this is a revolution.’ I don’t feel like the music business is collectively on the cusp of a revolution, but I think the collective conscious of the world is on the cusp of a revolution, and that will overshadow any corporate regressions or any corporate stories that are stuck in the past. I know that people seem to be more open to the show than they would’ve been 10 years ago, at least conceptually. So it feels like a good environment to be doing things that are more open-minded and more conscious.

“There must be something going on since four people found themselves excited to do the same thing anyway. Just the fact that four people are connected with that and we’re having this conversation is a good sign.”

What’s the live experience of a RRIICCEE show for you?

“One thing I can say to help think it over: If I didn’t tell you that the show was completely improvised, you may not know that, because it isn’t solos and it isn’t jamming and it isn’t meandering and it isn’t wallowing. It’s a very conscious, fragile mood of four people communicating musically to spontaneously create composition. Not abstractions and not disconnection, to create compositions which are a group of moods or movements strung along together to create a whole piece. And the way that it’s done is very challenging. When four people are very open, and that’s the goal, then it’s very possible, and that’s what we’ve been doing.

“Expect four musicians playing music, but musical forms that are maybe not so obvious to you, yet the music as a whole will make sense. It won’t be impossible to understand. It won’t be so difficult or challenging that it has no relationship to the vocabularies that you’re used to. It’s just those vocabularies that you’re used to will only be slightly referenced in some ways that you are familiar with from the past. But basically we’ll be making new music for us and hopefully new music for you.”