If it's not girls from second-rate suburban high schools, someone, usually journalists from second-rate publications, is always comparing The Delta 72 to the wacky gospel-yeah-yeah members of The Make-Up. And it's not a completely out-of-the-air comparison: Together with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, they form the triad of punk-soul-R&B bands that came from the East Coast during the mid-'90s. Like The Make-Up, the band started out in Washington, D.C., with Kim Thompson on bass and lending Exene-ish backups. Thompson, who is now in Skull Kontrol and Deep Lust, was an alum of the late, great, suicide-obsessed Cupid Car Club, which, when you nudge her out and add ex-Frumpie bassist Michelle Mae, becomes -- voila! -- The Make-Up. But while comparing the two groups is convenient, that doesn't mean Foreman has to agree with it.
It's not that he dislikes The Make-Up's music, or even its gimmick. Foreman is tired of the references because, as he notes, "They do something completely different than what we're doing." The night before, The Make-Up played in Philadelphia and "the band was there to back up him walking on the audience," Foreman says, referring to Make-Up singer Ian Svenious, the former frontman of Nation of Ulysses who was once infamously dubbed "The Sassiest Boy in America" by the late revolutionary teen magazine, Sassy. Of course, there is more than a little audience manipulation in The Delta 72, Foreman admits, but it's for their own good. "I have to be kind of a circus director," he says. His shtick is, at least, for real -- and it makes people dance.
Playing live has always been more important than playing in the studio for the band, which has spent a large fraction of its existence on tour. Sure, the albums the group has recorded stand alone, but there's not much fun in that. Better to hear the songs played right there in front of you, when the sweat's flying and Foreman is doing his best white-soul-brother routine. It's the band's live show that has led head honchos in the indie-rock world to predict that The Delta 72 is meant for bigger, if not better, things. And it's the group's new record, OOO, that could do the trick.
The original instrumentation -- slide guitar and Farfisa organ stealing the show, with drums and bass keeping it from falling apart -- is still there, but it's stretched far beyond a re-creation of a really good gimmick. Instead of wailing female backup vocals, the group brought in real gospel singers for a pair of songs. "Just Another Let Down" is the best Stones song in two decades, with Foreman stealing Jagger's swagger, crooning, "If you want to stay lonely..." "3 Day Packet Plan," a song off OOO that keeps within The Delta 72's trademark of shimmying and shrieking, actually uses an acoustic guitar. Multilayered production, songs about love -- what has happened?
"We spent a couple of years learning to play funky grooves," Foreman says. "[This record] is more accessible than anything we've ever done. Our goal is always to get more people to hear the music. What else is out there? Elliott Smith, Modest Mouse? It's good, but it doesn't make you dance. You can dance to every song on the record."
Dancing is at the core of The Delta 72's music, and making the crowd move is instilled as their mission. Foreman doesn't think that The Delta 72 is part of a movement, but rather a wave of bands around the country beginning to take in dancing as part of their rhetoric, and fans are starting to answer. He speaks as a representative of the entire Delta 72 assembly when he points out exactly what is wrong with rock music today. "There is such a lack of rock music," he says. "It's such a big void. Most of the stuff I love is from the mid-'60s, '70s. There's nothing like that right now."
What does Foreman consider rock music? He starts with the Stones, the Faces, but moves on to Gram Parsons, Public Enemy, Aretha Franklin, and Ike and Tina. To him, it's big music, music that's enduring, so specific yet quite universal. He starts to gush about "soul sister" Mabel John and her recording of "Daddy Please Don't Hit Me Anymore." "Some of the most incredible music, the most incredible soul, is from the ladies...'Daddy please don't hit me anymore!'" he wails into the receiver. "God, it's so powerful. Maybe someone was hitting her, maybe he wasn't. But what's there today like that?"
In the wake of the recent string of misogynistic and just plain scary events in the rock world, coinciding with the second coming of crotch rock (Korn, Kid Rock, Marilyn Manson), and the mall-teen embrace of The Whitest Boys On Earth, Blink 182, The Delta 72 is more important than ever. More than once in our conversation, Foreman starts a statement by gasping, "I'm not trying to get political, but..." They're not trying to save us with concepts and lectures, but with, he says, "rock and sincerity." How much respect are kids learning for each other, for music and for musicians, when they bang around bloodying each other up, or the alternative, stand frighteningly still, staring at an ongoing concert like it's a TV drama? "I may be part of the problem," Foreman admits, "but I think we'd all be in better shape if people would stop seeing so many white boy bands, and actually move."
Like a boy-girl post-hardcore answer to Booker T. and the MG's, The Delta 72 started off equally and nonchalantly divided among gender lines. The R&B of Membership, the group's first album, featured Thompson on bass, Sarah Stolfa on organ, and Jason Kourkurnis on drums. Thompson left the group in 1996 to pursue her academic career, and Stolfa left two years ago because of personal and artistic differences. Bruce Reckahn stepped in on bass for the recording of the group's second album, The Soul of a New Machine, and former Boss Hog keyboardist Mark Boyce took over for last year's EP and lengthy tour. Delta 72 is now a band of four white boys. Isn't it kind of a step backward, making music that's supposed to bring everyone together but offers only one model on the stage? Foreman has no apologies. He believes the band is the strongest it has ever been. "I'd much rather get down with ladies than with some white dude with a guitar," he admits. "But things happen."
OOO, then, is only distantly related to the two previous records. Recorded by Um and Eve (better known as Royal Trux's Neil Haggerty and Jennifer Herema), it's smoothed-out and grown-up. Whereas R&B was scrappy and fierce; compelling because it was so hard to listen to, and Soul was the dance-party record of the year, OOO is the album you put on as the party's dying down and you're looking to get your private groove on. The newest record, released March 7, shows what a roster change, a move, an almost two-year break, and 10 tours can do. It's not that The Delta 72 is an overhauled rock band or one of those projects that changes around the whims of its charismatic frontman. "It's still funky," Foreman claims, "but it's rock and roll."
Just playing rock and roll isn't really the thing in Washington, D.C., where Delta 72 started off six years ago. The promo shots of the band for the first album reveal three East Coast-perfect, shoe-polish-black bobbed haircuts, and more black leather than a biker convention. The band is in Philly permanently now, and Foreman likes to think that he's taken what he could from the experience. "We finally feel like a full-on Philly band here," he says. "It's a lot more about the music. D.C. is a good place to start, but I'm glad we ended up here." Even his look has changed, although he's still spiffy. Once serving as a role model for Spock rockers everywhere, "[My hair], it's not that Romulan look anymore, it's more of a young Rod Stewart-mullet, with a little bit of a puffball."
"The white belts may be in the closet," Foreman says, giggling, mocking the snotty, idealistic reputation that one gets when they associate themselves with their old hometown. He's quick, however, to assert the value of strong ideals and strong actions. If they are part of a movement, if they are doing something revolutionary, he doesn't want it to be manhandled by the media, citing the "riot grrrl" media frenzy as an example. During the band's formative years, the punk-rock feminists that thrived once in Washington, D.C. were taking their final, media-dealt blows.
"Y'know that picture on the [Bikini Kill] record, where Tobi and Kathleen are both sitting on the stage? I was at that show, and that's one of the most amazing shows I've ever seen," Foreman remembers. "Once an idea like that is born, the press gives it a name and kills it, really, trying to make a three-page spread. People are out there trying to do shit, and it's not a joke."
