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Adam Green, one half of the duo known as the Moldy Peaches, could never have been mistaken for anything but a Peach on stage in his Robin Hood costume, flanked by his other half, Kimya Dawson, equally unmistakable, dressed as a bunny. Things have changed, as Green and Dawson put the Peaches on hiatus and released solo albums. Green's effort Garfield landed him on a solo acoustic tour, opening for fellow New York City kids, Ben Kweller and the Strokes, and made him just one of the boys, literally. Really, no one seems to be sure which boy Green is.
"Most times when people stop me, they think I'm Ben [Kweller] or Julian [Casablancas of the Strokes]," Green says, laughing. "I got a free meal the other day because the restaurant people thought I was Julian." Green, however, fessed up. "Truth is, I'm just really not that devious. I told them, 'Listen, I'm not in the Strokes. I'm not who you think I am.' They were just so embarrassed. They don't want to give you bill that says zero dollars and then take it away, like all of a sudden you're not good enough . . . and it was a pretty nice restaurant."
Green may share the lovable mope look -- slight build, shaggy hair and a thrift-store wrinkle -- of the New York rock scene, but, musically, he stands apart, churning out anti-folk that is so anti-folk, it's more like nursery rhymes inspired by Leonard Cohen and the Rolling Stones. Like the Peaches', Green's inspiration lies in a wildly different sensibility than the care-less-and-still cooler-than-you, New York attitude.
Green grew up Bedford, New York, an hour north of New York City, where the few-and-far-between mom and pop record stores in the surrounding area would serve as his entry into music and the DIY punk philosophy. It was at record store in Mt. Kisco, New York, where Green, then thirteen, met Dawson, seven years his senior. The two became friends and would write songs together when Dawson, who was dividing time between Washington and New York, was around. But Green was also befriended by the store's owner, who introduced him to Leonard Cohen and the Velvet Underground as well as Mississippi John Hurt and the Scott Joplin band. While the rest of his peers were into Phish ("I could never really feel that stuff"), Green found one ally and mentor. "This kid Ben Schulman taught me about music," he says. "He came to school with this little SST catalog and was like, 'You have to order Minutemen and like Bad Brains and Black Flag.' I got this big package in the mail. It was like my punk rock gift pack [laughs]."
After high school, Green did a brief stint at Emerson College in Boston and then followed Dawson out to Washington, where the Moldy Peaches originated.
Back in New York a year later, the Peaches were part of an emerging Lower East Side anti-folk scene, and they garnered attention for the costumes, and their signature vocal trading: one girl, one boy, volleying lyrics from their fragile hearts and dirty minds.
Green and Dawson never shied away from childhood's "dark side." The subject matter, humor and delivery were all reminiscent of that one kid who wastes no time wondering and goes straight for the "You show me yours and I'll show you mine" method of getting answers. That quality was as often a point of criticism as it was praise, but according to Green, it was never intentional. "It's not really that we were trying to write all these songs about childhood -- we were just not trying to not write about our childhoods," Green says.
And while most singer-songwriters make careers out of being the sensitive, innocent kid, whose world was rocked by the dirty revelations of their counterparts, the Moldy Peaches proved that a little bit of both kids exist inside everyone. Now solo, Green has not let his inner dirty kid die. Maybe because he's only twenty-one, or because he began writing songs at age eleven or because childhood, for Green, was less than idyllic.
"I feel like I was a pretty pathetic character throughout my childhood," he says. "I was pretty low," he says. On Garfield, appropriately enough, it's the songs that sound like nursery rhymes that contain the most scatological and polymorphous perverse imagery.
"Mozzarella Swastikas" is set to a campfire, acoustic strum and features the line "I'll be getting head/Under the rainbow." And on "Computer Show" Green slows down the melody of "Row Row Row Your Boat," singing, "You caught my eye against/Your eye deep inside the crowd/You hung me from the/Hooks inside my asshole and my mouth."
"I want to write the next 'Mary Had a Little Lamb,'" Green says in perfect earnestness. "I love folk music. I always wanted to write songs that are melodic and easy to sing. I guess I'm trying to write that kind of escapist stuff. A lot of times I'll think about a weird memory, or earliest thoughts or childhood fantasies and it'll end up in my songs somehow."
That stream of consciousness, childlike inhibition is reflected musically as well. "I'll write at the weirdest times. Usually when I'm walking around I'll have a tape recorder. Sometimes I'll sing the words, and sometimes I'll sing the melody and figure out what the chords are later. Whatever feels good, sounds good that's what I'll do."
You can hear that philosophy on Garfield, where the styles on the album range from folk to Fifties pop to gritty, Stones-y rock. The eclecticism is an indication of his abilities. Green can and will tackle any style and refuses to limit himself to fit into an easily marketable genre. "Every time I start to write a song, I try to do something different than before," he says. "I'm not like, 'Oh no, don't write another folk one.'"
But his eclecticism is also part of the maturation of a songwriter coming into his own sound, even as childhood continues to be source of painful memories as well as inspiration. "It was such a tumultuous time for me; it was really bad," Green says laughing. "Things have gotten much better since."
CHRISTINA
SARACENO
(November 20, 2002)