Sitting pretty: (l-r) Mike Keegan and Nick Carpenter of Lincoln Money Shot. Photo: Joe Putrock

No Satisfaction?
The traditional blandishments of the rock & roll lifestyle have been few and far between, but Lincoln Money Shot continue to play through the pain
By John Rodat

If this were a Cameron Crowe film, some serious backstage behind-the-music wisdom would be dropped here.

The band are at home, lounging on mismatched and slipcovered secondhand furniture. They’re surrounded and ensconced in pop-culture references and influences, from the shelf of Angel videos to the dozen or so Jandek CDs (an artist so prolific and obscure, he’s become a legend simply by not becoming a legend). The walls are covered with rock & roll and movie posters and counterculture cartoons: promo flats for Barton Fink, La Dolce Vita and Punch-Drunk Love, an ad for the Japanese folk-rock band Ghost and a saintly image of Dylan as a young man share space with the artwork of R. Crumb and homemade collages. Much of the floor space is taken up by milk crates of LPs. The drummer is noodling on a weathered acoustic guitar, while the stereo drones the druggy guitar buzz of Spacemen 3.

It’s a perfect setting in which to meditate on the meaning of life—or, the meaning of the rock & roll life, anyway.

So, it’s right at this point that the camera should pull in on the starstruck cub reporter, his eyes wide, as the rock god tells him tales of excess and life on the road while handing him his very first beer.

But it’s not a Cameron Crowe movie.

There will be no grandiose and boozy musing.

There will be no beer.

The rock god got carded at the convenience store.

“They were training a new girl: She rang me up, I gave her the nine bucks and then the guy goes, ‘You forgot to proof him,’ ” gripes Mike Keegan, the 20-year-old guitarist-vocalist of Lincoln Money Shot. “It’s the saddest story ever. It’s worse than the crucifixion. Mel Gibson’s already expressed interest.”

For many—say, those of you raised on the outsized personalities and appetites of arena rock—this would sound a sad story, indeed. Keegan’s sarcastic invocation of the Passion Play may be a little over the top, but, really, what’s rock & roll without the chemical excess, without the Dionysian element? Well, there’re always the chicks, you’d guess.

“Sadly enough,” Keegan says, “there are not a lot of young girls. We draw a predominantly male audience.”

Drummer Nick Carpenter (himself, just 19 years old) demurs. The other half of LMS contends that it’s not entirely true that no girls like the band. Keegan relents:

“There are two girls who like us.”

They identify these girls by name.

No booze, no groupies. Well, there’s always the artistic satisfaction of reaching people, of providing a soundtrack to the lives of listeners, of giving voice to their unspoken or inarticulate yearnings and urges, of connecting.

But Keegan confesses, “We’re not really playing a kind of music that’s listened to—by anyone, really. And it’s not easily embraced by young people especially.”

What exactly, then, is the point? The outsider would be forgiven the question. Is this the rock & roll fantasy? A college dropout and his best friend, sharing an apartment, both working at the same movie theater and playing in a struggling and underappreciated band?

Well, if Keegan is to be believed, the two-man noise-rock/art project that is Lincoln Money Shot in large part serves a purpose by giving them something creative to do and keeping them out of trouble.

“It was, like, the alternative to stealing parking cones,” he explains. “We had done that, and that had just been played out. So, it was time to try rock & roll.”

Keegan and Carpenter met at Bishop Maginn, a Catholic High School in Albany; the school, according to the two, planted the seeds of Lincoln Money Shot by providing no encouragement whatsoever.

“They dedicated no money to extracurricular stuff like music,” Keegan recalls. “So there was nothing to do, and the cool kids were sort of forced to find one another. People who wouldn’t normally hang out—parents from all over send their kids there—would hang out because they had something in common. Nick and I, and our old drummer, were like the three kids in school who liked music.

“That’s the best summation of us,” he laughs. “We were born of social limitations.”

There was similarly little support from classmates, the band members say. Close friends could be convinced to see LMS shows not more than once or twice; and even within the band, conviction wavered.

“Our third member was kind of spastic, and wouldn’t want to learn the songs,” Keegan recounts. “It wasn’t some lofty artistic thing—which is our shield now. He was just like, ‘I’m not gonna learn this fuckin’ shit.’ He wouldn’t even learn the titles. He’d make up his own titles.”

“And his titles were numbers that told him how many times he was supposed to play something on the drums,” Carpenter adds. “ ‘Oh, this is 8-4?’ No, no, we’re playing 6-12, now.”

“And he’d always play the same drumbeat anyway,” Keegan jokes.

So, at first, Lincoln Money Shot were more a small club of music fans than a real going musical venture. Even now, when discussing those days, Keegan and Carpenter have as much to say about the bands from whom they’ve drawn inspiration, bands they saw performing around Albany in the late ’90s, as they do about LMS specifically.

“That was right around the time Beef began playing around again,” Keegan says. “And the Brown Cuts Neighbors . . .”

“Back then, every Brown Cuts Neighbors show was like a revival, or something,” Carpenter enthuses.

In fact, one of Lincoln Money Shot’s earliest performances was an outdoor gig at which they performed under the Brown Cuts Neighbors name; it was more a comedic sketch than a concert, a prank entirely in the spirit of the local anarchic performance-art/rock troupe from whom LMS took cues.

“When we started out, it was a lot more of a project than a band,” Keegan admits. “There was a lot of costumes and running around.

“But,” he is quick to add, “[since becoming a duo] we’ve really gotten to be a band, and we have songs that we play. We’re not going to get up there and just throw our guitars around.”

If it’s suggested that there’s a hint of defensiveness in Keegan’s voice, he won’t deny it. He says the band have difficulty getting gigs in the area’s primary small venue and, frankly, that grates on his nerves.

“Well, what kind of sucks . . . ” he pauses, searching for diplomatic words, weighing the consequences of speaking on record, perhaps. “I don’t know if there’s a gentle way to say this, but Valentine’s won’t book us. It’s never been told to us to our faces, but it’s been told to our friends. . . . The word that’s gotten back to us is that Howard [Glassman, owner and booker of Valentine’s] has said that we’re noisy and we drive people away.”

“And there’s truth in that,” Carpenter observes.

Nodding, Keegan finishes, “But it’s frustrating.”

Howard Glassman laughs in avuncular fashion at the question of Lincoln Money Shot’s alleged banishment.

“They’re definitely not everyone’s cup of tea,” he says, “but, hell, I’m as experimental and avant-garde as the next guy. The thing is, they’ve never called me for a show.”

Surprisingly familiar with the band, Glassman continues, “There’s not a band in Albany that can’t get a gig here, eventually—well, there’s one, but it’s not Lincoln Money Shot. If Keegan or Nick called me, I could get ’em on a bill with Struction, probably, or the Amazing Plaid, or a Matto thing . . .”

Interestingly, those same local bands are cited by the members of Lincoln Money Shot—along with others like the Wasted and the Stars of Rock—as friends and fans, or fellow travelers on the road less taken. They’re evidently musician’s musicians, and have shared bills with many of them in a variety of mostly informal gigs, from nonprofit arts venues to private basements.

Singer-songwriter Brent Gorton (of the Stars of Rock) has produced LMS tracks, used them as session musicians on his own recordings and performances, and opened his basement to them. To an extent he agrees with the perception of LMS as a slightly unhinged outfit, but he characterizes that as a strength: “Sometimes they play erratically—they’re very kinetic, and not really formal—but that leaves them a lot of open-ended room. Every show is different, and they’re always bringing new ideas to their songs. If it was polished, it wouldn’t be the same. . . . Still, the songs do come through.”

As to the band’s marginalization, he says casually, “I don’t know, they’ve played in my basement, and lots of people always come, and it’s always been fun. If they have limited appeal, it’s almost by design.”

Another local musician familiar with LMS, Gay Tastee of the Wasted (otherwise known as Stephen Gaylord of the now-defunct Beef), says that it’s certainly true that LMS have their detractors, but in his mind that’s a plus.

“I feel they have been vilified locally in some circles,” he says, backing up the band’s claims. But, he continues, that negativity is something they bring upon themselves. Not that they should feel in the least ashamed of it:

“There’s a sardonic joy in watching them clear a room full of unsuspecting Albanians thinking they’re going to hear more postpunk college indie-rock- whatever bullshit.”

But Gaylord also backs up the band’s claim that—however challenging their music—they’re no longer just a prank: “I’ve heard, ‘Anyone could do the same thing. Take any two fools off the street, give one a guitar and sit one behind half a drum kit and, voila!’ That’s pure envy right there. These aren’t any two fools, but two very special fools.”

Carpenter is proudly displaying the handmade packaging for a Lincoln Money Shot box set: It’s an oragami- elaborate fold-out sleeve that reveals a new picture as each flap is lifted. He is explaining that each copy will be customized for the intended recipient. It’s a pretty labor-intensive process for a band to undertake themselves.

“I’d like to sell them,” he says, noncommittally, “but if someone wants to hear it, it’s so much more rewarding just to give it to them. You know they’re going to appreciate it, because you made it for them.”

“Basically,” Keegan explains, “we like to make ornate shit to give people as one-off projects.”

And the band have more than enough material to continue to give for some time. They claim to have stockpiled a “depressing amount” of recorded material, much of which was recorded at an old rehearsal space in Schenectady.

When discussing that space, each member of the band lights up. They describe the joy of having that first private space, a space that “only you have access to,” where friends inspired by bands who “just didn’t give a shit, except to be original,” could play without concerns about image, about merchandising, about forming street teams, about making it, where improv and instinct could be given reign by a society of two.

“I mean, I’m going to go back to college at some point, you know? I’m going to have to be responsible at some point,” Keegan says, as if detailing an upcoming stint in the armed services. “But, right now, why not? You know, why not work in a movie theater and play rock music? That’s fun for a few years. Why not?”

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