Bradley's Buzz

Swivek Trivia

well, why not?

So here we go - a bunch of little things you never needed to know but I'm going to tell you anyway.

• The name Swivek came about when I was a little kid and had a band named the Cats with four friends, I wanted something cool but they didn't like it. When I decided to do music with Patrick, I didn't want my name as the moniker because I figured written by/ produced by/ art by/ cover shot by/ all instruments by/ singing by all me would be a bore. As for the actual word, if you look it up online it seems to be used as a tool but I think people just misspell the word swivel a lot. I thought I heard my father use the word while either working on the house or on a car; but as far as I can tell, it's completely made up.
• Real People in Swivek songs - sometimes someone pisses me off so much or makes me so giddy I just have to put them into song - so here is a list of songs that are inspired by or written about real life people - "Real" (Drab), "Psycho Trip", "Bitter Tears", "The Other Side", "Factory", "Bernice", "Winter" (Pissant), "Live Love Be Free", "Wish", "Outside", "Mexican God", "Speaking In Tongues", "Life" (Mexican Gods), "Thoughts Of You (Fly)" (Wish single), "Too Wonderful", "Voodoo Lounge" (Bruised), "Boyfriend", "Just Go" (Spastic Valentino single), "Debbie Doesn't", "Anything At All" (Happiness Is Hard), "Wasteland" (Army Fatigue), "Pissed", "Can't Say No To That", "Johnny Misunderstood", "Need" (Darkness + Light) and "Come Alive" from Army Fatigue is written for someone but Charles Mason wrote the lyrics and I'm not sure who it was written for. Incidentally, "Bernice" is a real convenience store clerk in Couer d'Alene and not my sister Denice who we have affectionately called Bernice.
• Not Really - Songs that sound like they could be about someone I know but are completely made up are "Eva", "Spastic Valentino", "Cherry Go Go", "Little Miss Priss", "Holly wood" and any other pissy love anthem that sounds like its aimed at someone.
• The song "I'm Gonna Getcha" from Mexican Gods is an ode to Blondie and references 8 Blondie songs - "11:59", "One Way Or Another", "Hanging On The Telephone", "Accidents Never Happen", "Detroit 442", "(I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence Dear", "Die Young Stay Pretty" and the Debbie sung single "Little GTO"; the song "Debbie Doesn't" written about Debbie and I meeting only references two Blondie items - the single "Presence Dear" and the album title Plastic Letters.
• Cover Me - Swivek has recorded and released 8 cover songs - "Fade Away & Radiate" by Blondie (Drab), "Guilt" by Marianne Faithfull (Mexican Gods), "There Are Worse Things I Could Do" by Stockard Channing from Grease (Bruised), "Where The Boys Are" by Lisa Hartman, "Girls Talk" by Elvis Costello (Happiness Is Hard), "Heartless Love" by Maree J. Wilson, "Surrender" by Cheap Trick, "Billy & The Gun" by Rachel Sweet (Army Fatigue). We've also recorded covers of Blondie's "In The Flesh" & "Island Of Lost Souls" and Pat Benatar's "We Live For Love" but they didn't quite make it to a release.
• The Leivas wrote most of the music for the song "Boyfriend" from the Spastic Valentino single. I wrote the lyrics as an ode to the man.
• Orange Television has remixed at least one song from every single Swivek album from the 'Waiting at the Cove Bowl Mix' of "5:50" in 1999 to the 'Fluid Pill Mix' of "Pissed" from last month.
• The very first song I ever wrote as Swivek was "5:50" - in the darkened basement of Patrick's house in Coeur d'Alene, while I waited for him to come home from work.
• The cover of Happiness Is Hard is really me as a little boy. In fact if you look you can see it's my 5th birthday party, the boy next to me is my cousin Danny.
• The title Violating Overween Skies for the remix album by Swivek and Orange Television was named by Patrick - it's actually an acronym of Swivek and Orange Television. He did the same thing with the Orange Television remix of "Debbie Doesn't" called the Head Bribery Mix (acronym for Debbie Harry); and I did it with the first album Drab - which is of course my name - but that one wasn't quite as complicated as the ones he did.
• My old boss is the one who suggested making the cover of "Where The Boys Are" a techno dancey song - he envisioned a video with a bunch of hot boys on Santa Monica Boulevard - I never did get the money for that video shoot.
• The Leivas didn't actually physically assault me for the cover of Bruised - instead it's all make up and I did all the photos myself with a timer as I climbed into closets and almost choked myself for one shot by putting a pair of boots around my neck. That shot didn't turn out.
• For the cover of the single Holly wood, I am not actually laying on the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard; instead I'm laying in front of the cul-de-sac filmed for Knots Landing. The real boulevard is always too crowded so I just super imposed the pic.
• The most downloaded song in the Swivek catalog is "Get Up On It" which gets hits every single month since I put it on www.soundclick.com in August of 2005.

and that's all I can think of for now; but I'm sure all of this will come in handy for you one day - I just feel it.

oh, here's a few more:

• The covers for the albums Drab & Pissant and the EP Rhinelander, are not the original covers made for them. Patrick and I designed the original Drab cover which featured a black cover with a lit cigarette peaking in, the back was a pic of me in a red and blue coat and the inside had a pic of me in the shower. However, when I moved to LA all that artwork was lost and Alfred redid the design you see today. I still have the original and like it a lot more actually. The original Pissant cover was by Patrick and was an image of a dirty ashtray with some brown imagery on the back - there is only one copy in existance and it belongs to my pal Tara, so if you really want to see it and are anywhere near Seatle I'm sure she has it on display - I'm sure. Again, Alfred created the artwork we now use; and Rhinelander was done by Patrick again with some cute boy on the cover but that artwork was lost as well, so I made the new version with a pic of me in a top hat at Disney land and the cover featuring that mythological beast the Hodag.
• There are two songs by Swivek that don't feature Brad at all - the song "Tower Of Knowledge" from Drab features Tara Fisher on vocals and Patrick playing all the music, though I did write the lyrics. The second song is the 18 minute opus "Rhinelander" from the EP of the same name - it's a short story I wrote but Patrick did all the music and is reading the story though it's completely manipulated to sound like someone else.
• The cover of the Mexican Gods album actually features pics of Mexican gods, though I can't recall what they are gods of and the middle one is actually female so I guess she's technically a goddess. I came up with the design though it was Alfred who found the great gold background and actually did the work in designing it.
• and one more about album covers, the cover of the Cherry Go Go single was designed by Patrick, though I re-designed the inside and back. On the cover is Candy Darling, one of Warhol's gals.

posted by swivek @ 4:30 PM