The first band that I put together was called Radio Mango. I had just left my brother’s rock band, Aya Sofia, wanting to play music that incorporated sounds from the various places I had lived and visited. RM played original music with heavy Latin, African and Caribbean influences. We did some great things, played some great shows, but after 2 years performing together, we decided to split up.
I then formed a new band. Unlike RM, this time I wanted to have no preconceptions about the type of music we would play. Thus, About A Girl. We have continued to keep the free-flowing, no preconceptions thing going now for 5+ years.
When I was young I had a Sony Walkman then Discman, and it was always one album at a time. In the age of iPods, however, when you can listen to 15 genres or 15 bands or 15 songs from 15 countries – whatever – in an hour AND in this age of singles, not albums, I only think it right, for me anyway, to do lots of different types of songs. What is a genre?
On to this week’s song, “Brother.” At the time I started About A Girl, my brother and I had a big disagreement. RM was doing pretty well and he thought I was being stupid to start playing an entirely different type of music.
We debated it for a while, I tried to win him over and failed. That night I remember playing the conversation over in my head several times, feeling pissed and down. It wasn’t really that big of a deal, but I wanted him – my bro, who I had played music with – more than anyone else to get why I was making the change and to support it. To deal, I wrote this song. It will be on twoheartstwo which should be out this fall.
