Interview Context / Botanical Gardens Memory
by Jean Yaste
A friend of mine, Patrick Sandberg, once wrote a piece about this band, titled “Girls are Beautiful and Honest.” At least that’s how they looked when the four of them strode down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive earlier today in Golden Gate park. Christopher hum-drummed his loping shoes over pools of sunlight, looking down into the concrete. JR remained stoic as the streets, always at Chris’s side no matter what. Boyd and Hayes bring up the rear, smiling and sweating in the late afternoon sun.
From across the street Lazlo and I wag them over, explaining that our original meeting place, the Botanical Gardens, is now closed. Looks like plan B is the usual in out over the barbed wire turnstile. Once properly snuck in, the six of us weave through a myriad of exotic plants and butterflies, flowers creeping up over old slabs of marble shadow ferns nestled into the footpaths. Once we come to a clearing, we smooth out a spot next to some child’s potato patch.
Lazlo spreads out the woolen afghan blanket he liberated earlier from Thrift-town as I assemble the recording components, a fifth of Jameson, a bottle of ginger soda and a glass, honey-comb pipe and some grass.
We settle into the bright afternoon, queing up the machine, picking up the lighter, and unscrewing the cap. The following excerpts from the Girls’ Interview touch on soaking up the fleeting San Francisco sun, how to morph a bedroom backdrop operation into a touring machine, and the beautiful women that inspire the leap, one way or another.