For better or worse, Andrew Earles and his friend Jeffery Jensen have been breathing new life into the form of prank phone calls. With the May 2008 rerelease/widespread distribution of Just Farr a Laugh Volumes 1 and 2 by Matador records, E&J introduced, among others, the phrase “fiddle-fucking around” into the American (or at least our) lexicon. Featuring such characters as Jazz Jermaine (RuPaul’s personal assistant) and a furious, entitled Christopher Cross, JFAL sees Earles and Jensen spouting some of the most ridiculous bullshit you’ve ever heard to perfectly innocent people. It’s tough to wax poetic regarding the virtues of a double-disc collection of pranks, but when we had the opportunity to interview Andrew Earles via e-mail (we agreed, oddly enough, that phone interviews tend to make all involved parties sound dumb), he managed to pull it off while also working in Amy Sedaris. Not bad.
Addendum: This eBay listing censors “Fiddle-fucking” to ” F*************.” Classic.
Whose Fault Is That?: It seems, understandably, that Crank Yankers and the Jerky Boys seem to be the the only touchstones critics ever bring up regarding JFAL. Just as understandable, though, are the ways in which a track called “Morris Day Has Worked Up an Appetite” is different than a call where a guy screams the same word over and over into the phone until the other party gets annoyed and hangs up. Do you feel any creative camaraderie with the people behind those other collections of calls?
Andrew Earles: In the context of the form/end result (the calls), my answer is no. Regarding the behind-the-scenes creative process, well, my answer is, again, no, though it’s not as definitive a “no.”
Jeff and I have been creating and obsessing over our own ideas of Awkward Humor, and those of others, for years. At the risk of sounding like a jaded underdog, the current trend of what I like to call “Awkwardsploitation” is based on ideas - not our (Earles and Jensen) grossly obscure ones, mind you – that have been bouncing around under the radar for years and years. Speaking for myself, I don’t wish to be lumped in with “quirky” or “uncomfortable” art because these terms have been neutered to mean “aggressively mediocre and safe” if they mean anything at all.
Not that you were doing this, but it appears to be the cold side of the pillow for a lot of people. That means it causes a rustling in a lot of people’s tool belts, if you get my drift. If not, I mean it results in resounding, raging hard-ons across the pop-cultural board with fans and progenitors alike.
Conversely, in that we mess with people over the phone, we are always compared to some types of community-college comedy favored by those that shine in the recollection of lines from Office Space, Wedding Crashers or saying “Schweeet!!” (wherever the fuck that originated from) at birthday parties, dinner parties, backyard barbeques, etc.
Our closest brethren in the undefined micro-genre of Prank Phone Call Comedy remain Longmont Potion Castle as well as Gregg Turnkington’s Great Phone Calls title from the early-90’s. Bootleg Jim Henson creations calling to have a doorway widened or crane rented so that a several hundred-pound spouse can be moved from one room to another…this is a healed-over, once-festering wound on the comedy landscape.
Lots of disparate things are still festering, however. Another big difference between Earles and Jensen and Crank Yankers is that we pace around our respective apartments struggling to come up with decent phone call ideas, and don’t have the luxury of a call center full of comedy writers hemorrhaging outtakes until a famous comedian or comedienne jumps in to deliver the voiceover goods. In that sense, I’d like to capitalize on a seemingly fresh (but actually age-old) trend and proclaim right here, for the record, Earles and Jensen Present…Just Farr A Laugh Vol. 1 & 2 (The Greatest Prank Calls Ever!), to be the world’s only lo-fi/shitgaze prank call release.
As far as calling someone up and threatening to “kick their fucking ass” ad infinitum, we have a loosely-held “no cruelty” rule with our calls, and that approach appeals to semi-literate half-wits, sure, but this is coming from a guy that almost soiled his jeans while repeatedly watching a YouTube clip of high school kids yell obscenities from a car window.
WFIT: A huge portion of the humor in JFAL lies in the characters you manage to develop throughout short, ridiculous phone calls. I am pretty sure, for example, that I know more about your version of Morris Day (dances on the bar, is friends with Michael Bolton and Bob Geldof) than I do about the real Morris Day. How much of the characterization in JFAL was planned out beforehand and how much was made up on the spot?
AE: Well, I’d say 30/70. The Morris Day call was a late-night, spur-of-the-moment applesauce helped along by chemicals (maybe). I’d wager that absolutely no planning went into that character, if you want to grace it with such a generous title. Bleachy was born when Jeff came across a woman, or man, named “Bleachy Washington” in the Memphis phone book. After 25 or so calls, the character was in place. The celebrity impersonations are simply our fantasy versions of the source material. “The Party Doctor” was a character I assumed for Tom Scharpling’s The Best Show on WFMU.
I did about four of those as live call-in bits, then carried it over to the single-take call that appears on disc 2. Generally, some characters are afforded, at best, an afternoon of development. Relatively speaking, we hammered out a lot of calls and spent an unusually long time (revisiting it over the course of a day) on the idea behind “Room Silencing Religious Call.” Others get thirty minutes and some notes on a scratch pad. A large majority were not even conceived as characters, but just happened the way you hear it after following some very rough outlines.
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WFIT: What is the funniest prank phone call you’ve ever heard?
AE:I can’t answer that. I can merely rattle off some golden examples, rather than pinpoint the funniest call I’ve ever heard. Jeff purchased a random prank call CD off of eBay back in 2002; supposedly recorded by a gentleman that had committed suicide. Subsequently, his friends found the tapes and compiled the best moments. I want to it originated from the Carolinas or Virginia. The caller taps a classified section for people selling normal items, cars and bed frames and such, then calls very late at night/early in the morning. They were very simple:
“Yes, I’m calling about the Volvo you have listed for sale.”
“Ok…it’s…”
“NOT INTERESTED!!!”
His longer calls were unbelievably funny and often uncomfortable. The notorious “Mark Knopfler” calls floored me as a teenager and hold up surprisingly well. Most of Gregg Turkington’s Great Phone Calls album is top-shelf, and a huge influence on JFAL. When I was 18 or 19, it just showed up in the bin of my local indie store…I had no idea what it was about. Remember, there was no “Neil Hamburger” at this point, and I’m pretty sure Gregg was running a label and working as a roadie for Mr. Bungle when he released that album. It blew my mind.
WFIT: A host of washed-up celebrities are mentioned and/or impersonated throughout the record. I’ll forgive Jermaine Stewart for not keeping abreast of the indie comedy world, but have any of the them, to your knowledge, caught wind of it? Additionally: What’s with the fixation on assistants to and siblings of D-list celebrities?
AE: The reasoning behind calling as a personal assistant or sibling is multifold. For one, it presents a far more believable situation, thus keeping the recipient on the line longer. Otherwise, the idea of certain entities having a personal assistant at all is, well, sort of funny. And it allows third-person exposition that’s often much funnier than the alleged celebrity talking about themselves.
WFIT: If you could prank call one musician and one United States president, living or dead, who would you choose?
AE: President? F.D.R. Just want to see if I could pull one over on him.
Celebrity? Bill Drummond.
WFIT: One of my favorite moments on JFAL is during the “Everyone Loves a Good Bootleg Garfield the Cat” call when the restaurant employee, faced with an extremely straightforward impression of Garfield, attempts to come back and falls completely flat. Has anyone ever come through with a legitimately funny counterjoke?
AE: Oh yes. When Jeff called me at 3 A.M. on 3-way and then called Amy Sedaris, who was (and still may be) listed in the Manhattan phone book. Referencing her appearance on Leno or Conan (I forget), in which she claims there’s something funny about everything, no matter how tragic, negative, awful, etc, or something like that, Jeff asked her what was funny about two totally unknown, unsuccessful, inspired, good-looking, and charismatic guys calling her at 3 A.M. Or something like that. She answered by unleashing, and I cannot stress enough how exclamatory her demeanor was, a barrage of “FUCK YOU! YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES! IT’S FOUR IN THE FUCKING MORNING!”
When he called back to ask, “What about now?” she pretty much repeated her answer. True story. No, it was not taped.
WFIT: Have you ever fired a gun? If so, when?
AE: Yes. My father was an old man by the time I was born. My mom was his second wife, and the marriage boasted an age difference of eighteen years. He was a fighter pilot in both WWII and Korea, plus, he was one of the first twenty or so pilots to fly a jet fighter in combat. There’s a display honoring my father at the Naval museum just north of Pensacola, Florida.
Point being, the house contained some guns. His closet was an arsenal. He was close with my uncle, who always had access to or owned a fair amount of rural land, and at an early age, I hunted fowl before losing the stomach for it. So I was familiar with shotguns and .22 caliber rifles, but didn’t touch a firearm between the ages of 14 and, say, 28. In recent years, however, I’ve patronized a few firing ranges (using the pistols provided by the establishment) and I keep a well-concealed, 12-gauge Browning pump-action shotgun for home protection. Don’t tell my girlfriend! Memphis is a very dangerous city.
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WFIT: Who holds your vote for best record label of all time?
AE: That’s easy. Matador Records.
Honorable Mentions: Crucial Blast, Reflex Records, and Touch & Go.
Most Fascinating Record Labels of All Time Due to Certain Stretches of Particular Attributes: Homestead, SST, Ace of Hearts, Rough Trade, Casablanca, and Too Pure.
WFIT: In my completely anecdotal and probably inaccurate experience, when most people think of current rock writing they either think of essentially anonymous “music bloggers” or of Chuck Klosterman. Who would you say are some music writers presently doing good work?
AE: John Darnielle, Eugene Robinson, Andrew Earles, Gerard Cosloy (but it’s mostly sports writing on his blog, cantstopthebleeding.com), William Bowers, Bob Mehr, David Dunlap Jr., Cintra Wilson (not really a music writer, but probably my favorite entertainment-based scribe of the past 10 years…funny lady), and a handful I’m forgetting. Yes, I gave some friends props. Most of the rest are sycophantic whores carrying extra hankies in which to wipe the excess turds gathered around their respective pie-holes. I can be one of those, too, but only part of the time.
WFIT: Do you have any plans for future comedy-type audio releases or any other major projects in the pipeline?
AE: Jeff and I hope to complete JFAL Vol. 3 this year. And Jeff and I hope to have it released by Matador. We have some earth-shattering material in the can.
Joe Bernardi interviewed Andrew Earles in December 2008. Andrew has a blog, and Earles and Jensen have a Myspace. Both seem as good a way to stay in the loop as any.