A Minute with Chris Gunn from the Hunches (Part Four)

A Minute with Chris Gunn from the Hunches (Part Four)

K: I grew up in Cleveland so there were old punkers around all the time, but whata you gotta say ‘bout the Electric Eels? How’d you find out about ‘em and why “Accident” instead of some other cover? (That’s a song with a vacuum on it, right?

CG: The Electric Eels are one of the best bands ever and they were a huge influence on us. Any singer or lyricist worth a shit should study Dave E’s lyrics religiously. Brian McMahon is the only person in the history of In the Red Records to demand royalties for our cover of Accident. Larry has to send him about twenty cents a year or something like that. One time Brian came to our show in Chicago so we thought that was pretty cool. I’m pretty sure he came just to make sure we weren’t ripping The Eels off too much. I was too drunk and nervous to meet him but Hart says he was there.

We got into the Electric Eels in High School in Eugene, Oregon through our friend Bryce who was an avid reader of that old zine “Black to Comm.” That Cleveland scene was a huge influence. The Mirrors were another one of our favorite bands.  “Carnival Debris” on Exit Dreams is kind of our stab at a Mirrors style song. “Where Am I” off of Hobo Sunrise is kind of a Pere Ubu type thing.

I’m sorry but I have talked about the vacuums too many times and they have been made to be some sort of focal point and they really are not anything special. I guess when we were 21 and made that first album we thought we were pretty cool and unique for putting those over the top of Accident but if I knew it would have become some sort of tag for the band I probably would not have listed them on the album. Lots of bands use things other than traditional instruments. It’s really not that special and it does not make us unique. We really were just copying Neubaten and Pussy Galore anyways. It kind of makes me feel stupid now.

K: Let me preface this with the fact that I do like your band – it’s just difficult to listen to any of your records all the way through. What are your listening habits? There’re some RnB hints in your music, lemme hear about some gem you just stumbled onto.

CG: That’s alright if you can’t make it through our albums I don’t like listening to them either. Any overt R n B influence wore off pretty quickly. You can definitely hear some on the first album by way of the Oblivians or Gun Club and that type of garage music. Playing that way started to feel very contrived and fake after awhile. We are small town weirdoes from Oregon and Idaho and we really had no business messing with the Blues or R’n’B or anything like that.  We needed to expand into songs that fit who we really were rather than what we thought we should be.

On a side note, there are a lot of bands still hanging out down by the Crossroads and they absolutely should put their mouth harps down and go to law school. There are a select few artists that could play the blues or garage and they are mostly dead. I think that we grew into our own sound and hopefully grew out of those watered down copycat formulas. 7th generation garage music is pretty hard to stomach. You have to be pretty drunk to play or listen to it I’d imagine.

The Hunches main influences were definitely Cleveland shit. The Electric Eels, The Mirrors, Pere Ubu, Peter Laughner, the Cramps. We also loved the Cheater Slicks and the Velvet Underground. Syd Barrett was a big one. Captain Beefheart as I said earlier.

Currently I listen to a lot of Kurt Vile. Eat Skull’s new album is awesome. I can always rely on the second Meat Puppet’s album and Neil Young. That Group Bombino album on Sublime Frequencies is the shit. New Zealand stuff rules. Early Guided by Voices and Credence are always on constant rotation. The Homosexuals for sure. The third Thirteenth Floor Elevators album “Bull of the Woods” is so good. I also just got that Robert Martin album on Yik Yak - I like that a lot. (CON’T)