Junius Interview: SXSW 2010

Junius, a group that struggles to even put their own sound into words, is not your ordinary band. The roots of their name go deep in philosophical thought from an anonymous political rebel who questioned the status quo. Their new album, 'The Martyrdom of a Catastrophist' chronicles the life of Immanuel Velikovsky, a Russian psychoanalyst scientist who had theories about the Earth's past. They spent three years creating an album about a man who has a story to tell. Spinner.com caught up with frontman Joseph Martinez recently in anticipation of the group's SXSW gig.

Describe your sound in your own words.

People have described us as "cinematic art rock." The "art" is a little pretentious but cinematic is definitely a little more accurate. Post rock has also been a big label for us. I never even considered us post rock until our first EP came out. Then, everyone started putting that label on us. Epic is what we try to go for. We always have a crescendo of some sort, an ending that is huge or a climax of some sort.

How did the band form?

After I dropped out of college, I moved to Boston because I wanted to start a band. I met Dana, our drummer, and we started writing together. We went through many bass players. We started doing local gigs around town. We met Mike through a friend of a friend and he came to our show on accident. Eventually he wanted to join after we made an announcement for a guitar player. After Mike joined the band, we started writing and found another bass player. Eventually we were like, "Screw it. Let's change the name and go at it from another perspective and have more of an organic feel to it." We went through a bunch of bass players before our current one, Joel.

How did you come up with your band name?

Before touring, I valet parked. I had a lot of time to read and had an old dictionary, like a 1956 edition. The older dictionaries were more like encyclopedias. I went through names and wrote down a bunch of names and then I saw "Junius," an old political writer. We all agreed on Junius.

Who was Junius?

No one knows the actual person behind Junius. He was a Roman politician, I believe. His letters were written for the London Advocate in the 1700's and they were protesting the British ministries, colonization, and the world. He wrote all these really eloquent letters and everyone thought they were a famous author or a king. No one knew who wrote them because he always signed his name either "Lucius Brutus" or "Junius." But "Junius" was the most predominant. They never actually found out who it was. I think the letters are at the British Museum.

What are your musical influences?

As far as Junius is concerned, we were all really big fans of Hum. All of our influences are different. For me, my influences would be My Bloody Valentine, Failure, Bed Head, Sunny Day Real Estate. Dana's influences would be Hot Water Music. Mike's would be Faith No More, that kind of thing. Our influences are pretty varied.

What's in your festival survival kit for South by Southwest?

We just kind of let it happen. It's always crazy. We go blind into it. We don't have a place to stay. We don't know where we're going to sleep at night. We just play it by ear. We know so many people at this point in Austin that we always have a place to go.

How many years have you played at South by Southwest?

Five. We did the anti-South By shows for the first three or four years. They are the ones that are not official South By shows. We did a bunch of those. Our first time being officially on it was last year. This year we are officially on it.

What's your musical guilty pleasure?

I really dig Gwen Stefani and the fact that she has the greatest producer, Pharrell Williams. All the songs he touches are amazing. I think he is one of the greatest producers of our time, especially in this last decade. Maybe my guilty pleasure is really Pharrell Williams-produced tracks.

What's the craziest thing you have seen or experienced on tour?

Frankie Muniz [of 'Malcolm in the Middle' fame] was our merch guy one night in LA. We met his fiance in New Orleans and she was moving to LA and she liked us. She told us to hang out with her and we didn't know anything about her. It turns out she was marrying Frankie Muniz . We went over and she was in a house in the Hills. It was weird because Paris Hilton was coming over the next day because they were selling it because he wanted a bigger place.

The funny part is when we got there and we looked like four sketchy dudes with big beards. I could tell he was a little sketched out. They didn't have any ice or something so they had to leave to get something. He [Frankie] was like, "Oh, you should go check out outside." We walked outside and he locks us outside. Like, he didn't want us in his house. We were totally not even paying attention and it was really beautiful out there. And then we were like, "Wait a minute, I think he locked us out here." That was pretty funny.

Eventually he wanted to come to our shows but he was underage. So we had to tell people he was our merch guy. He was sitting by out T-shirts because he had to stay there while we played. He was only 19 at the time. He was a really nice guy, though.

Who was your first celebrity crush?

Growing up I liked Rosanna Arquette [of the 1980's movie 'Desperately Seeking Susan']. What was funny was Frankie Muniz told me he had to make out with her in a scene. I was like "Dude that's awesome. You're so lucky!"

What is your favorite snack?

Cheetos and Dr. Pepper. I'm a vegetarian but that's my guilty pleasure.

Explain the concept behind your new album 'The Martyrdom of a Catastrophist.'

It is about Immanuel Velikovsky. He was a Russian psychoanalyst scientist who had these theories about the Earth's past. Basically, he believed the Earth went through cataclysmic events that basically shaped our consciousness and the Earth. He believed because of these cataclysms he used comparative mythology, the Old Testament, and ancient texts and similarities and found they were in the same time.

His basic theory was that Venus was a comet and near the Earth and created these cataclysms. He had these theories and abandoned a great career in psychology to research to put these books out. He put the books out and people went at him, thinking he was crazy. It was an uphill battle the whole time. I really connected with the theories and though they were really cool and actually really beautiful. This dude went through a lot.

It was to the point they boycotted his books. His publisher, MacMillan, pulled the books because all the professors at Harvard and Oxford said they wouldn't buy their textbooks from MacMillan. Their bread and butter is textbooks so they pulled their deal publishing with Velikovsky.

The funny thing is that the only person who wanted him to continue his research was Einstein. You have one of the greatest minds of our time who was behind this pseudo-scientist. Granted, Einstein didn't necessarily believe him but he believed in him enough to get behind him and get some of his experiments done.

The whole album starts from his birth to death and just arching his personal life, not really his theories, as much. It took a long time, about three years to do. This was our first full-length album and we wanted to do something kind of out there. I was reading about this guy and was totally into it and said, "Let's just do this." I think his story needs to be told.


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