Tribune Photo/BARBARA ALLISON
"The Next Six-Million-Dollar Band?" by Andrew S. Hughes, Staff Writer, South Bend Tribune, South Bend, IN, April 15, 2001
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| Christine Murray, left, Nan Turner, Pam Weis and Alina Moscovitz make up the
New York City-based indie rock band Bionic Finger. Weis grew up in Plymouth, and the band played at Higher Grounds April 8 during a two-week Midwest tour that concluded Saturday in Chicago. Tribune Photo/BARBARA ALLISON |
Plymouth native keeps time with Bionic Finger
Pam Weis sits on the half-moon-shaped couch in the living room of her mother's home in Mishawaka and says, "I see Indiana through new eyes now." To her left sit the three people whose eyes have given the Plymouth native that new perspective on her home state.
Together with Alina Moscovitz, Christine Murray and Nan Turner, Weis plays in the New York City-based band Bionic Finger, which performed April 8 at South Bend's Higher Grounds on a double bill with the local rock band Space and Noise Productions.
After its show at Higher Grounds, Bionic Finger spent the next three days in Mishawaka before moving on to Chicago for an April 12 show at Girl Bar.
"They see all these things that I thought of as the norm and that I was used to from growing up," Weis says. "Just simple things like going to Target or driving around on the country roads kind of fascinates them."
Weis, Bionic Finger's primary drummer, grew up in Plymouth and graduated from the town's high school in 1992. She attended Indiana University for a year as a theater and voice student but moved to New York City to study at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy.
She met Turner in an acting workshop, and Turner "mentioned one day, very casually, that they needed a drummer for their band." Bionic Finger played its first gig in February 1997.
"We didn't know how to play, but we had a lot of enthusiasm," Turner says. They can play their instruments now -- in fact, they switch instruments on a regular basis, with each song's writer playing rhythm guitar and singing, as a general rule -- and their enthusiasm remains evident.
Bionic Finger and Space and Noise Productions played to about 70 to 80 people at Higher Grounds, and the mostly younger-than-25 crowd saw two bands that share a common excitement for playing their music, and the audience picked up on it at Higher Grounds. "It was really nice to get a warm response," Turner says. "They seemed interested in hearing new music."
Bionic Finger adds that most delicious of pop delights, three- and four-part harmony vocals, to its dance-ready power-pop music.
About two-thirds of the way through their set at Higher Grounds, Turner paused to retune her guitar. For most bands, the music stops, conversation starts and the performance's energy dissipates.
Not so for Bionic Finger.
While Turner tunes, the other three Fingers launch into Moscovitz's a cappella "The Tuning Song," and before the audience's attention can shift away from the stage, it's riveted on three voices locked in harmony singing about what a drag it is to tune.
Moscovitz, Murray and Turner attended New Jersey's Drew University together and played two shows as Shrew while they were students.
"I went to London and got very into the Riot Grrl scene and saw women playing," Turner says of the band's collegiate origins. "I wanted to play with friends who were at the same skill level I was, and I was influenced by a lot of Riot Grrl bands. Seeing bands that weren't really technically skillful meant something to me. It gave me the confidence to get up on stage and believe I had something to say."
When it came time to record its first album, "Inner Bimbo," the band presold it to its core fans and the members' families. The fund-raising plan involved a tiered sponsorship program that awarded sponsors different premiums for different levels of donations.
Orbit Music in Mishawaka now stocks "Inner Bimbo." It also can be ordered through the band's Web site at www.bionicfinger.com.
Weis describes Bionic Finger's music as "quirk core." "It's poppy and punky, but it's got a sense of humor to it," she says.
Her "What I Think" on the "Inner Bimbo" album has a folk-rock sound to it that Murray's bass playing counteracts nicely to give it a harder edge on the bottom.
Murray's "Come On" has a bright, pop sound to it in the melody and harmony vocals, while Moscovitz's bass dominates her "10 ft. Shadow."
"One thing that unites our songwriting is that it's not negative," Moscovitz says. "I guess there's a lot of negative music out there, and we don't really subscribe to that philosophy. I guess we try to write songs that are sex-positive and women-positive. We do write about serious subjects, but in a positive way."
Turner's "Sweaty" has a rhythm guitar riff reminiscent of Keith Richards' playing on the Rolling Stones' "Waiting on a Friend," while her disarming "A.s.s.h.o.l.e." opens with the band's four voices spelling out the title word in harmony and segues into the sort of pop melody that makes hit records.
The lyrics, however, describe a date rape, and the narrator forces her assailant to face his own guilt when she deconstructs his defense that he was drunk and calls his bluff of innocence as she sings, "Staring at your shoes, pretending you're confused/It's time you were blamed, and it's time you were ashamed."
"It's about something terrible that happened to a woman, but I think it's very positive for women who have been abused, because it points the finger at the abuser rather than having the woman go around saying, 'I'm a victim,' " Moscovitz says. "I think having the chorus be happy reinforces that."
Moscovitz describes her own songs as sex-positive, and "24-Hour Bug," "Melting Ice," "Shut Up" and "Get Like This" explore female sexuality in the same terms of pleasure and choice familiar to male songwriters' treatment of male sexual desires.
"Obviously, there are songs about sex in the mainstream radio, but I think usually they are about being sexualized, but the songs we write are very active, about getting what we want," Moscovitz says. "It seems like women usually sing about making others feel good. Also, with the Second Wave of feminism, there has been a whole backlash against being sexual because that's the way men want you to be, but it totally discounts the fact that women are extremely sexual, so it's an attempt to recapture that."