Leaning into Discomfort With Captain Ahab
by Samantha Cornwell
Captain Ahab – “Acting Hard”- Live- Sync Space- Los Angeles- 6/10/10 from Samantha Cornwell on Vimeo.
http://gayumbosezine.blogspot.com/2009/05/captain-ahab-if-i-see-my-sexual-partner.html
Yay! There’s a big article with an awesome picture about us in the new issue of Skyscraper – available everywhere! hooray!
The article’s by Alison Meeder (who also wrote the Boozeismymama article), and is (dare I say) EVEN BETTER than that one!!! HOORAY!! here’s the text:
CAPTAIN AHAB
Game Killer of The Pussycat Dolls
By Alison Meeder
Jonathan Snipes is standing on stage. Shirtless and stoic in acid washed jeans, the Captain Ahab frontman has got that ‘Don’t touch me little people, I’m Dave Navarro and you’re not’ look in his eye. Over a hammering techno beat, he’s singing about dirty sex with dirty people. In the crowd below is the Los Angeles duo’s other half, Jim Merson. Wearing tennis shoes and tighty whities, he’s running towards you with a frothy determination that makes you wonder if you can still get a rabies vaccination at this time of night. Merson doesn’t know you but he humps your leg nonetheless, covers you in sweat, and moves on to his next victim. Phrases like “restraining order” and “pregnancy test” flash through your mind, but you get yourself under control. Looking around, you see the audience – many of whom have also stripped down to their underwear – dancing as shamelessly as of a bunch of eight-year-old girls at a wedding reception. They seem to be having the time of their lives and by the end of the night, you will be too.
This is the way with most of Captain Ahab’s fans: terminal bewilderment giving way to complete adoration. Rightfully so, since Ahab’s hypersexual vibe can be a little overwhelming on the first pass. Not that sexuality in pop music is anything new; most rock songs, from the Stones to Spank Rock, usually contain some variation on the male libido. These days someone’s bending over to the front and touching their toes or it’s not a party. Ahab songs, however, are often written from a female perspective, and Snipes’ protagonist is usually vapid, underage, and out to get low – or else. It’s funny, but a little scary too. You wonder if you should really laugh at something so… wrong. When Snipes is asked if he might be unwittingly spreading misogyny, he’s quickly dismissive. “I don’t have an agenda,” he maintains, adding, “All responsibility in art is on the viewer.”
Possibly, but are songs about teenage girls huffing paint really art? Maybe. Snipes began writing his dirty anthems as Captain Ahab in 1997. As a high school student he produced D.I.Y. Casio beats and lyrics about robot sex. He met Merson, and after watching his caveman-on-Viagra antics at Ahab performances, incorporated his friend as an ultimate Hype Man. It all seems like a stupid good time. But songs such as “Girls Gone Wild,” found on the group’s 2006 debut full-length After the Rain My Heart Still Dreams, are too dark to be purely for laughs. Snipes as a coked-out sorority girl demands, “Everybody look at me! I deserve attention!” Fine, you think, show me your boobs but just don’t hurt me. Even if Ahab isn’t art, it’s an awesome bitch slap at female objectification in mainstream pop. Compared to Ahab’s girlie creations, Top 40 female hits like “Don’t Cha (Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me?)” come off as half-assed begging.
If Ahab’s barely legal lyrics don’t make you blush, then the techno soundtrack behind all that T&A just might. If a cheap thrill can be coaxed from a drum machine or synthesizer, then it can be found on an Ahab album. Happy hardcore, booty bass, Miami Vice chase-sequence hooks: everything is fair game, sometimes all in the same song. The duo has dubbed their style “ravesploitation,” and Snipes also refers to it as “mash-ups without samples.” Either way, it’s the kind of unsubtle, unironic dance music you haven’t copped to liking since the ecstasy wore off in 1999. “I say it’s post-ironic,” says Snipes. “For the longest time I wanted to be Aphex Twin, but I finally realized I was listening to my bad records more than my good ones,” he confesses. “I figured maybe they weren’t really bad.”
Likewise to Captain Ahab. Snipes and Merson may not be Aphex Twin but they’re pure pop brilliance, and the word is getting around. An original Ahab song titled “Snakes on the Brain” made its way into the Snakes on a Plane ending credits after the group won an online competition. After the Rain My Heart Still Dreams is getting heavy play on college radio, and an army of potty-brained fans is growing daily. You may even have an Ahab record hidden behind that Squarepusher one you pretend to listen to. Surely, you’ll be waiting to see what kind of debauchery will be coming up next. “I know people expect dirty songs from me,” says Snipes. “So I think I’ll switch it up by writing something clean. I haven’t done it yet, but I’ll let you know if I ever do.”
SELECT DISCOGRAPHY
Snakes on the Brain (CDEP, Deathbomb Arc, 2006)
After the Rain My Heart Still Dreams (CD, Deathbomb Arc, 2006)
www.captain-ahab.com
text copied from here
CAPTAIN AHAB
Are funner than you
———————————————————————-
by Alison Meeder
When I first saw Captain Ahab live they blew me off the planet. They are two guys named Jonathan Snipes and Jim “sexual dancer” Sweat. Jonathan sings through a vocoder and Jim runs around putting his balls on peoples faces and basically scaring the living shit out of everyone while getting them pregnant. They sound like some sort of synth-electro, way fucking-positive trance (sorry boys but yes), freestyle pop. If you listened to L’trimm and Roger and Zapp growing up then Captain Ahab’s shit will set off some sort of Pavlovian bell in your head. They will make you feel like it’s summer vacation and all you have to do is chase down the ice cream man, get yourself a rocket pop and figure out how you’re going to be an astronaut when you grow up. Except they make you feel better than that. Because now you’re all grown up and drunk as hell and freaking some girl with an almost see-through shirt and asymmetrical hair.
It was pretty simple. I was going to go to the show, ask my five questions about how they met and then dance like my life depended on it.
Right…. then I got off the escalator and Jim was standing there. I remembered him being sweaty and phenomenally gross when I saw him before but he was all showered and cute and had the best eyelashes ever and so I basically gave up. I mean, this dude humps people for a living… and he goes and pulls this “Whoops I’m totally hot” shit on me? What am I supposed to do with that?
Jonathan has been calling himself Captain Ahab for six years or so. Doing that white-boy-shy-is-the-new-in-your-face thing where he went down in his parent’s basement and recorded himself rapping on some Wal-Mart Casio about fucking bitches in the ear.
I planned on asking about how someone who looks so normal creates an alter ego who’s such a faceless sex freak. Then Jonathan showed up and said he wasn’t feeling well… and he had his girlfriend with him and I couldn’t do it. I just can’t ask someone how they write a song about fucking bitches in the ear in front of their really nice girlfriend (who watched my purse for me while I smoked a thousand cigarettes.)
Anyway Jim met Jonathan in high school but they fell in love or whatever in college. They were scene partners in some sort of Shakespeare class. Then Jim went to Jonathan’s shows and was a total super fan and danced his ass off and now he’s a permanent sexual fixture. (Jim’s also in a band called something like Rose for Bohdan. They’re opening for Ahab in Omaha.)
I asked them what bands they’re into and they started naming a bunch of shit I had never heard of and high fiving the crap out each other. I explained that our readers wouldn’t know what any of it was and so Jonathon said he liked the new Nine Inch Nails record and so I got out my wallet and headed directly for the bar. Nine Inch Nails? Have you even heard that CD? Has anyone? (Thanks for the drink tickets.)
I have all of the bands they like on my interview tape. I am saving the tape. I am listening to it. The next time I am surrounded by 80 pound indie boys I am dropping the names of every single one of those bands and I am going to get paid with affection.
Who the hell does Captain Ahab think they are anyway? Did they read our website? They did not. But apparently they can read like goddamn CHAMPS since they went to college and sit around developing complex social/economic theories about being performers and prostitutes and assholes.
Fucking fuck.
Their fans showed up. During the interview they would wander up and say “Sorry, sorry, sorry! Sorry, but I have to give these guys some props.” They all knew that Jonathan was Jonathan and that Jim (pussycat?) was Jim. Everyone who has seen them live is devoted to them like 12 year-old girls. They were all psyched as hell for the show.
I was also psyched as hell for the show. I never asked Jim how he would feel about having his face on a pair of underpants when the band sells out, but who cares? I was crunk. I was ready. Then they got onstage.
Their show is hard to describe. Trust me though, because it was really, REALLY good. These guys make you want to shake every muscle in your body until you black out. They have this kind of dark cloud shit about them, like maybe it’s your last night on earth. If bombs were falling and someone was going to throw an end-of-the world house party in their parent’s brown carpet living room in Kansas, then I want Captain Ahab to rock that bitch. In fact, I wish that would fucking happen.
Captain Ahab is playing The Smell on August 2 in L.A. and Ted & Wally’s Ice Cream Shop on August 5 in Omaha. Anyone who doesn’t go see them deserves to be left in the parking lot at the end of the night and with their Mom forever.
“Captain Ahab was amazing, all the kids were dancing, grinding, and going nuts.. stuffed animals were flying everywhere! i was on some dudes back at one point and he was slapping my ass.. it was a blast! but the lame festival people cut it off early do to ’sexist lyrics’.. which was completely unnecessary and pretty lame. what’s sexist about saying you want to stick your penis in a guys butt? lame.” – some guy on a messageboard
