Limousines Reveal 'Sexy, Sleazy' Origin of Band Name -- Top 100 Acts at SXSW 2011
- Posted on Mar 3rd 2011 4:30PM by Brian Voerding
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The Limousines
From there, success was almost immediate. With songs on the radio, they played one-off shows in front of thousands of people and label reps crawled over each other to sign them. But the duo chose to self-release its debut then sign with respected indie label Dangerbird Records. Spinner talked with Victorino about dealing with that quick rise to fame, the value in not rushing into a record deal and the "sleazy glamour" of the band's name.
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How did the band form?
i was in a rock band at the time, touring in England. My guitar tech, who had gone to school with Gio, put a CD [Gio's remix of Jay-Z's 'The Black Album' called 'The Bloody Album'] into the van. I just had this immediate change of heart when I heard it. It made me feel like I wanted to be making that kind of music. I e-mailed him and then we were trading song ideas back and forth. It was fun. It wasn't a band; it was just an online project for the longest time. We started by accident, I guess.
He'd send me instrumental ideas, and on my laptop, I'd sing stuff and sometimes throw it up on MySpace before he even heard what I sang. Sometimes, he would get an e-mail from someone saying, "I really like that Limousines stuff" and he'd go over the page and listen to it for the first time.
When did you finally meet in person?
We hadn't actually met in person until we went to a recording studio in Oakland to do a better version of one of our demos. Luckily, we clicked really well in person. It felt like he was a hot girl I was talking to and when I finally met him, he looked as good as he did in his pictures.
Did you consider it a serious project?
The day we decided to take it seriously is when I came up with a name and put up a MySpace page. We just threw up music whenever we had the songs. We liked it. We didn't know whether other people would. Then people would comment on our MySpace page, and say, "When are you guys going to play a show?" We were just thrown into taking it more seriously when people started asking us to play shows. It forced us into becoming a real band. We had no intention of doing that at first. I was prodding Gio, "Hey, let's see what happens if we play these songs live." At the same time, I didn't know if i wanted to do it again.
You guys generated a lot of buzz in a hurry. How did that happen?
We took the demos on our MySpace page, realized we hadn't released anything physical and thought it would be fun to put out a vinyl for the people who were paying attention, who weren't many. We put out an EP and then people started asking about an album and record labels approached us.
Those are the people you want to pay attention to the band, but it wasn't the right time for us. We let it all die down and kept writing songs until we had what we thought was an album.
Was all the attention stressful?
It got really weird. We had companies waving money in our face and saying, "We can't wait to hear the rest of the album." Gio and I were looking at each other, thinking, "Are we doing this? Are we really going to do a band?" We were having all these philosophical conversations about whether or not albums even make sense any more. We hardly knew each other, and there were these record labels willing to gamble on us. We retreated. We figured if we could get their attention once, we can do it again.
You've been in bands that worked hard but got little recognition. Now you're on the other side. How does it feel?
It feels like a big joke, how easy things have been coming for us. I've been in bands before where you toil away for years and fight for every inch you get. Limousines are not like that. It's like all these great things just happen for us and we laugh at it. It's fun. Completely different.
Your path so far, particularly in the face of being offered so many opportunities so quickly, has seemed really deliberate and smart. Where does that patience come from?
Gio is a very naturally skeptical person. When someone approaches us and it seems like something will be handed to us, he's the first one to say, "I don't know, let's think about this, let's not jump to conclusions." Me, being at the losing end of a band before, when an opportunity comes up, I jump to it and am prematurely excited about something that isn't real in the first place. The fact that we're not in a hurry, and we went into this with no expectations, makes it easier for us to do things our way. There's plenty of ways other than finding the right record deal. There's so much you can do on your own. We weren't in a hurry to make people help us.
How has that paid off?
We do what we want to do. Everything from our album artwork to our music video, 'Internet Killed the Video Star.' We made it for $950. It's got a half-million YouTube views now. We spent most of it for this car we crashed in the video. Then we sold the car for more than we paid for it, to a fan who wanted to support us. The actual end cost of the video was $300. If you can accomplish something like that on your own, it feels pretty good. There are these record labels that will go and spend $100,000 making a video that no one ever sees. The video played on MTV last week, during the credits of 'Jersey Shore.' That's the big joke -- we made essentially a $300 music video that ended up being on MTV.
Where did the band name come from?
It didn't have a reason. It was almost kind of sarcastic. It has a sleazy glamour to it. When we first started out, it was funny to name the band Limousines when you're singing your demos into your MacBook. There's a connotation with that word that does sort of fit us. There's a sexy sleazy grossness to it that we're not ashamed of.
Catch Limousines' SXSW Sets on Thursday, March 17 at Billboard Bungalow @ Buffalo Billiards (201 E 6th St.) 9PM, Saturday, March 19 at Emo's Main Room (603 Red River St.) 11PM and Friday, March 18 at Mellow Johnny's (400 Nueces St.) 12:15AM.
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