The One AM Radio and Wind-Up Bird

On college rock, the Bravery, and the Harlemshakes

Freddy Deknatel Arts Editor

Two bands, The One AM Radio (Hrishikesh Hirway) and the Wind-Up Bird (Joe Grimm), performed off campus at Wowhaus49 (49 Park Ave.) this past Tuesday, Oct. 25. The One AM Radio’s softly emotive songs, with a laptop, guitar, bass, and violin, shared basement space with the Wind-Up Bird’s disparate, ambient noise from his laptop and microphone. The Miscellany News talked with Hrishikesh and Joe before the show.

The Miscellany News: How different is touring and playing music today compared to five or more years ago?
Hrishikesh Hirway: I played at Vassar with a different band in 1999 and felt that Vassar was a pretty hip school then, too. I think that, you know, there have been hipster colleges forever, (chuckling).
MN: Yale wasn't a hipster college?
HH: No. Extremely square college.
MN: Did you graduate Yale knowing that this was what you wanted to do? Do you do this full-time?
HH: I do it as much as I can, which is not full-time. But I think by the time I graduated, I was pretty sure that this was what I wanted to do full time, I just wasn't sure how possible it would be. And it's proven to be somewhat possible.
MN: By what factors?
HH: By discovering that I don't need that much money to live on.
MN: Have “indie” bands been affected by growing popularity? What do you think of the Arcade Fire?
HH: When I was first introduced to what is loosely called "indie rock" it was called college rock. I was in high school and there was this thing CMJ—you know, college music. What is that? And at the time it was Polvo and Arches of Loaf and Pavement and Superchunk. And I think that those bands were pretty popular. Pavement was on MTV. And the Arcade Fire is basically the contemporary equivalent of that. I think there are some things that have changed, like The OC has basically made indie culture - I mean, not just The OC, but it's a contributing phenomenon—and movies like Garden State have, you know, pushed indie culture into a more mainstream view.
MN: The Bravery are a former Vassar band benefitting from this change.
Joe Grimm: They're fucking horrible! I'll go on the record.
MN: This band that opened for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah in September, the Harlem Shakes, are from Yale. Have you heard of them?
JG: I know who they are. They want to be the Strokes.
MN: Yea they were like a Preppie Strokes band.
JG: Yea, they're a prep-school band.
HH: What were they called?
MN: The Harlem Shakes.
HH: Are they from Harlem?
MN: It didn’t seem like it.
JG: They're from like Westminster.