On album, Erase Errata sound like a boldly femme Captain Beefheart, mixing twitchy blues with almost Arabic warbling, or a more beat-fixated DNA, with careening time-signature changes, wild juxtapositions and a willingness to confidently explore musical tangents - and outright noise. So to me, it's exciting to play the kind of guitar that I play and to be a woman doing that, and hopefully making some kind of impact that way," Jaffe says, laughingly describing her guitar playing as "noisy and messed-up." "It's definitely increased in recent years - more experimental rock music with more women doing it. The current Bay Area musical scene and kindred bands such as the Numbers, the Lowdown, the Quails and the Vanishing make the challenges worthwhile. The one thing I would say is difficult is because we leave town a lot, we kind of have to quit and get new jobs a lot, and finding jobs has been difficult." "We have a practice space, and we have places to live. "I think that we've actually been pretty lucky in terms of being able to do what we want to do," Jaffe says. With the critically acclaimed Other Animals newly remastered and rereleased in Europe on tsk! tsk! records, the band is planning to tour Europe in September and looking forward to the fall release of that musical sign of the times - an album of remixes - here, done by Matmos, Kid 606, Blectum From Blechdom and Adult. The group, which includes bassist Ellie, is a third of the way through a solo summer tour and on the cusp of a string of East Coast and West Coast dates opening for Sonic Youth at the biggest venues they've played during their three-year existence. Still, Erase Errata hasn't had it that bad, San Francisco guitarist Sara Jaffe adds, as the bandmates pass the phone around the car while driving from Omaha, Neb., to St. "So I think there were a couple of songs that had to do with just the Bay Area economy, which was really oppressive to people like us who don't have a lot of money to live on." "There was a lot of things going on in San Francisco at the time, in the economy and in housing," says vocalist Jenny Hoyston, who moved with drummer Bianca Sparta to Oakland around then because of a lack of affordable rentals in S.F. Not surprisingly, the no-wave dissonance, jagged guitar lines and wired, punky energy of Erase Errata's music and lyrics - heard on their full-length debut, last year's Other Animals - reflect the anxious origins of a band born during a tumultuous time. It’s always a good time whenever we’re together, it’s always like it’s a laugh fest, and then making the records is beyond hilarious as well.The all-female Bay Area four-piece moved here from parts as far-flung as Nebraska and New Jersey at the height of the tech gold rush, but they didn't hit the artistic mother lode till they started playing together in 1999. My love for him and admiration for him has just gotten even stronger and bigger over the years. I’ll come up with something better.’ Whatever you’re hearing on the record is pretty much first thing he started singing that naturally came out of him, that he started hearing in his head. I mean, there’s very, very few times where he’s actually said, ‘No, let me come back to that. With OZZY, whenever we’re playing riffs, he would be like ‘keep playing that riff.’ Pretty much every time he just gets up there and starts singing what comes to him naturally, he knocks it out of the park all the time. You got to come up with some cool stuff.’ On NO MORE TEARS, I guess I was more relaxed. I had definitely crawled into the fire and kept thinking. Zakk Wylde adds, “On the first record, ‘It was like I can’t believe I’m here. And Zakk’s playing on it is spectacular.” But there was also lots of goofing around and we had a good time making it. Every song was worked on for a long time and we spent extra time trying to get things right. Sometimes you’re surprised for the better, but other times you’re disappointed, but John and Duane did an extraordinary job on the album. It’s so nice when you get a producer who’s more like a part of the band than them saying, ’nah, you do it this way.’ Because we write them and when you write the songs, you have a mental picture of how you think you want it to sound. Before we went into the studio, we discussed what we were going to do–everything was planned. “We worked hard on the record with John Purdell and Duane Baron, who became extra two members of the band. “I have a lot of great memories of making the album,” OZZY OSBOURNE says. Per a news release, some reflections on No More Tears from Ozzy Osbourne and guitarist Zakk Wylde:
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