Boris Talks About Finding Josh Baish's Ear After A Gig
Pitchfork's kinda been all over Japanese noise rock act Boris' new release, Smile, which is released stateside today. And Josh Baish of Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios in Denton keeps finding himself mentioned in the copy.
Why?
Well, the story goes like this: Baish went to a Boris show in Marfa, got into a tussle, had a piece of his ear chewed off by an assailant, and, in turn, lost the ear. Later, when Boris was putting away its gear, band members found Baish's missing flesh. And then they kinda sorta wrote a song about it. Seriously. True story.
Only now, the band seems kinda sick of talking about it:
Pitchfork: So how did you and Takeshi decide to include that ear story into "Floorshaker"?[Atsuo Mizuno]: [laughs] That song is an extension of "No Ones Grieve". It's kind of complicated but, when we finished the song, I had this vivid image of being in a desert in Texas and someone we knew was dancing in the distance but it was still vague as to who it was. But it was vivid and something that stayed with us. Separately, the image of finding this guy's ear on the floor was at the same time so vivid, we couldn't ignore it so we put it into the song. But recently I get asked this question a lot, and I'm asked whether the song is written to make up for the loss of his ear or whether it's an apology song. But it's not like that at all. We didn't write the song entirely for the guy; it was already written, and it's actually two different things, that were coincidentally related. It's just a coincidence and I hate it to be written, like, the other way around, I don't want it to be written like that, so let me set the record straight-- the guy lost an ear and we wrote a song separately [laughs]. But it's funny, I don't really know what to do. I thought it was over and done with, but now that everyone's written about it, it's gone beyond a beautiful story, it's more like a surreal comedy people can't believe now [laughs].
Pitchfork: Yeah, that story is everywhere.
Ooh, ooh! Here, too! --Pete Freedman
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