Our 3/5 Show Podcast Is Up: Featuring Kate Garner and New Music From Debora Iyall, Martha Davis

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:56 — 47.5MB)

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The podcast edit for our 3/5/10 Revenge of the 80s Radio show is up and available at the bottom of this post. This week, we feature a conversation with Kate Garner. She, with Jeremy Healy and Paul Caplin, formed the trio Haysi Fantayzee. Garner is also an internationally-renowned fashion and art photographer, having had several critically-acclaimed shows and exhibits including her most recent, Jolly Darkness. Our interview leads off the second hour of the show. We also played new music from Garner, Debora Iyall and Martha Davis.

Kate Garner was already a respected fashion photographer when she met Healy and Carpin. Their diverse artistic backgrounds proved a unique tandem to create Hasyi Fantayzee, a band best known for their wild outfits and political messages hidden beneath catchy lyrics and danceable music. The band saw quick success with instant hits including “John Wayne is Big Leggy” and “Shiny, Shiny” and were on their way to superstar status. That, as Garner explains in the interview, wound up leading to the quick end of the band as well. Sadly, Haysi was only around to complete one album, thus breaking up the band.

After a brief solo stint, Kate continued photography full-time and found herself over time phasing out fashion photography in favor of more dark-artistic creative endeavors. Much of her avant-garde work can be seen on Garner’s website, kategarner.org.

In 2009, Kate Garner returned to the studio armed with a new talent: she taught herself the ukulele and, in doing so, she created her own sound on the traditional Hawaiian strings. Kate Garner 2.0 begins with her single, “Lucifer,” where she features her uke while questioning conventional wisdom about knowledge versus faith. One must also admire her inventive use of white noise in the chorus as well as her intentions with the pace changes toward the end (you will need to hear it to capture the mood). We play “Lucifer” at the end of our interview. “Sideways of Red” is the B-side, which also showcases bold keyboards and Garner’s admitted lack of respect for convention beginning with the cold vocal/keyboard combination that hammers in the track.

At one point in our conversation, Garner says she never thought of herself as having a good singing voice, this point was also driven home by her mother, who was an accomplished singer. While far from the conventional standards, she has a vocal range that move from pixie-like to forceful. She can also stretch her voice out to enhance her own singing, whether the music calls for an artistic use of arpeggios, needs the tone changes of a songbird or even a Dale Bozzio-esque squeak.

Throughout our conversation, Kate and I discuss several topics, including:

• Her early music influences.
• How she, Jeremy Healy and Paul Caplin formed Haysi Fantzyzee.
• Why, after instant success, the trio broke up after only one album.
• Kate’s career as both a fashion and art photographer
• Our shared philosophy on how boring “normal” really is — and how that is reflective in Kate’s art and music.
• Garner’s new music and her innovative plans for producing and distributing it.

Kate Garner continues to work on new photographic art and music with her label, iDIOt Records. As for her Haysi-mates, Healy is a well-respected and in-demand producer and DJ while Caplin has his own software company, Caplin Systems.

We also featured a world radio premiere of Debora Iyall‘s new “Stay Strong,” a single set to be released with her upcoming album tentatively titled Unsettled, scheduled to be out this summer. Fans of Romeo Void will hear a new side of Iyall with this single and the rest of the tracks, four of which are described in our review of them on this blog.

We also played the new track, “Mr. Grey,” by Martha Davis. She has been working on a number of creative projects, including a children’s album. Our 2009 interview with Davis is here.

We also played classic alternative cuts from artists of the era Boomerang, INXS, Red Rockers and The Undertones.