Live and on the air early one Friday afternoon, Malik Gaines, keyboardist for the band My Barbarian, instructs listeners on how to make a homemade percussive instrument.
“You take two paper plates and place some beans in the middle and take a stapler...”
Jerking with laughter, he nonetheless continues.
“And then you have your own ethnic shaking device on which you can draw your own favorite deity,” he says from behind the microphone, smiling and laughing impishly.
Gaines and his band mate, vocalist Jade Gordon, are guests on a radio show to promote their free upcoming performance at the UCLA Hammer Museum on Thursday. They tell those listening to KXLU, an indie radio station located at Loyola Marymount University, that they want people to bring their own percussive instruments to the museum on Thursday night to participate in the hippie drum circle at the end of the show. Gaines ends up providing an arts and crafts segment on the radio, understanding that not all of those attending the show own professionally made percussive instruments.
Most fans of the band My Barbarian (and indeed the band itself) will tell you that there’s no other band today quite like theirs – comedic, campy and theatrical, with a Broadway show-tune sound. But remember that little band from the ’70s called Queen?
The difference between My Barbarian and Queen (besides the fame of the latter) is that My Barbarian take the theatrics to another level. That’s because the principal song writers of the group have each been involved in theater and the band actually refers to itself as a “performance art collective” as opposed to simply a band.
Gordon is an actress who was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in 2000 for her starring role in “Sugar Town” and has also appeared on “That ’70s Show.” Gaines, who has a bachelor's degree in history from UCLA, is a playwright whose work has included a 2003 commission for the Mark Taper Forum. And in 2004, the band performed at REDCAT’s NOW Festival and as part of the Evidence Room Theater’s Spring Break Performance series.
With a penchant for elaborate story lines, the members of My Barbarian create a complex plot and multifaceted characters for each of their musical productions. In “Pagan Rights,” which they are performing at the Hammer Museum show, the story is centered on the character of Josh Suarez, a gay marine stationed in Camp Pendleton in San Diego, where he has adventures in drug dealing, cruise ships and kite stores. Suarez is eventually sent off to Iraq and the drama ensues.
The band’s childhood-fantasy-inspired lyrics are just as colorful. References to unicorns are abound and vocalist Alex Segade sings in Elfish in the song “Morgan Le Fay,” the fabled nemesis of King Arthur.
Gordon said some lyrics and characters were inspired in part by her mother, who was an actress in a French theater group and a hippie who lived all over Europe – at one point, she served as a tarot-card reader in a commune.
“She had all these stories, and I don’t know how much of it is made up and how much is true,” Gordon said. “Sometimes I draw on the stories to create characters and when she sees them, she’s often upset because a lot of what we do is comedic. She gets a little bit upset that we’re not as serious as she thinks it should be.”
Another major difference between My Barbarian and Queen is that the former consciously looks to create comedy in its theatrics. My Barbarian lyrics have been about various aspects of apartment life like shared laundry facilities and excessive masturbation. And several years ago, they performed a jazz version of “O Christmas Tree” with lyrics sung in German during their Christmas caroling tour around town. One pit stop, in fact, included the home of the musician Beck.
The group also performs choreographed dance routines in leotards, neon-spandex and custom-made medieval/hippie costumes and masks. For their performances of the project “Gods of Canada” in Toronto at the beginning of July, they wore Canadian superhero costumes that a friend created for them. The costumes were inspired by a ’70s comic book that was the Canadian equivalent of X-Men.
According to Gaines, the humor and camp come naturally to the group, though he says it does bring up the style issue: “Can you be entertaining and still be performance art?” Nevertheless, the group basks in its comedic glory, saying the comedy allows them to communicate better with their audience.
“People often can’t relate to performance art because it often takes itself really, really seriously,” Gordon said. “I think making something comedic is a way of making it more palatable for people. People would rather laugh about something than have people say (in an angry, accusatory voice) ‘Do you know that...’”
For My Barbarian, comedy is a way to communicate highly controversial themes with subtlety. For their last project, “Gods of Canada,” the group designed and created three flags to represent what they say are the three gods of Canada’s socialism: gay marriage, universal health care, and lax marijuana laws. The flag representing gay marriage depicted two California bears kissing each other.
The “Pagan Rights” show features a song Gaines wrote about the conflict in Iraq.
The pagan themes of the production, Gordon said, are a response to the rise of the Christian right.
Despite all this controversial material, My Barbarian has maintained a relatively low profile in its five-year existence in the L.A. music scene. Who knows if the band will ever blow up to be as big as Queen was, but Gordon says that’s of little concern to the band. The problem, she says, with most bands today is their obsession with fame.
“They’re complacent with fame,” Gordon said.
“They want to be famous for nothing like Paris Hilton. How do you build a pop culture of nothing?”