They're Just Men From Detroit

When we’re backstage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins, it doesn’t affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury . . . I can’t fool you, any one of you. It simply isn’t fair to you or me. The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I’m having 100% fun.

—Kurt Cobain’s suicide note

The first time you see Hard Place singer-guitarist Freddy Cristy onstage you think, Rock Star. Almost too much Rock Star. Like, there’s gotta be a wink here, right? Look at that bleached hair. Those cheekbones. Those emotive eyebrows that slant up- and center-wise when he’s singing a ballad, forming the top of an arrow. Those tight jeans. That Ibanez Millennium Destroyer guitar. It’s like the dude was test-tube-designed at the Lab of Rock.

So you double-take. You look for the wink. And just when you think this is pure jive, you realize something: This song they’re doing fucking rocks. And so did the last one. And the one before that. And here comes another one. Your gag reflex, well-honed from years, possibly even decades, of experiencing music via MTV, Clear Channel, OmniCorp and Hollywood showcase bullshittage, suddenly . . . disappears. You stick around. You watch how all the girls in the audience are dancing, how Freddy has everyone laughing by the end of the show as he walks out into the audience — he’s charming, he’s sweet, he’s clever, he’s at ease. You get into it. You buy the home-burned CD-R from Freddy for 5 bucks after the show. You play it three times in a row the next morning. You’re delighted and a bit puzzled.

’Cause what’s going on is something you ain’t seen much of in American rock music in the last 10-plus years. You’re seeing actual Rock Starpower — you’re experiencing the joy of witnessing the perfect fit: someone who actually belongs onstage and knows it. Someone, in other words, who isn’t faking it — someone who is actually having that 100 percent fun that so eluded Kurt Cobain.

Hard Place is a trio. Freddy and keyboardist Nathan Shafer met on campus at Detroit’s East Michigan University. Soon they took acid and were writing music together, using the name Cabal. Freddy moved to San Francisco a few years ago; Nathan soon followed. There they started Hard Place as a duo and a drum machine, attracting instant followers. Their first fan found them their now-permanent drummer, Tom Marzella (also, coincidentally, from Detroit), and designed their Web site; they wrote a song about her, one of their best, called “Sharkey’s Got My Back” (“and she’s got my front as a matter of fact,” the lyrics go). Work dried up, and Freddy and Nathan moved to Los Angeles less than two years ago, working day jobs and picking up gigs at hole-in-the-wall bars like Glendale’s the Scene and Atwater’s Bigfoot Lodge and doing shows at the Silverlake Lounge and the Derby when Bay Area friends like the Cuts and Bart Davenport come through town.

Their music? It’s catchy rock. Sticky hard pop. Melodic hooks, good rhythms. Vocals you can actually hear, lyrics that are fun and smart and funny and sometimes a little sad. There’s Sparks, Devo, Queen, Cars, Sweet and Cheap Trick in there, definitely. It’s everywhere/anytime music, meant to be heard in a club, in an arena, in the mall, in your car, and fer shure, on the radio.

“Top 40 radio is hugely important to me,” explains Freddy. “I love songs where someone can sing the song to me, they don’t even know how to sing, but they’ll sing the song to me and I know it, and it’s already stuck in my head. Like Kelis’ milkshake song — you don’t even need to know how to sing! You know the milkshake song, right? ‘My milkshake brings all the boys in the yard/They’re like, it’s better than yours, damn right/I could teach you but I’d have to charge.’ Milkshake is shaking your titties, right? I can’t think of a better answer to a riddle. But anyways, you don’t need to hear the song, you don’t need to hear the production, that’s not the important part, the absolutely crucial part of the song can be repeated by anyone on the planet with two lips and a tongue. I love that. Of course, as a songwriter you can probably go too far in that direction pretty easily . . .”

Which is where the humor comes in.

“Yeah! There’s different qualities of humor. You’ve got your ‘Weird Al’ humor — ‘Weird Al’ is novelty songs, joke songs. Then you’ve got Queen and Devo and Sparks, where you can laugh, but there’s something deeper in there. The reason you’re laughing is probably because there’s something really disturbing at the root of it. When I’m writing songs, sometimes I just can’t resist the humorous angle on a certain situation. I couldn’t resist writing a song [titled ‘Yeah Right’] about not being able to get it up, ’cause it’s funny — ’cause it hurts! I know that for some people, humor and music should be totally separated, but music can’t be one-size-fits-all, right? Are you gonna write the one-size-fits-all song? I guess you can do it if you’re Andre 3000 . . .”