The Alchemist, May 25, 2010, Volume 3, Number 125
Vol. 3, No. 125
Take Me To Your Neighbors
Lately you may have seen two words on fliers around town that don’t seem to have any rational connection. All right, so really that happens a lot, especially in the world of music, especially in Corvallis. This article is specifically about Space Neighbors, a band that actually lives up to its name.
“Uh-oh. This space neighborhood looks kind of sketchy,” Philip J. Fry in Futurama, Bender’s Game Part 1.
All right, so living up to any part of Futurama may be a lofty goal. Luckily, it isn’t the sketchy part the band is going for.
“The name came because we were all within a mile of each other in south town, so neighbors,” explained Space Neighbors drummer, Rigel 7.
What started as a line from TV and a happy coincidence for the original trio became not just a name, but a great idea for music.
“Once we locked into Space Neighbors we found a lot of songs could easily be space-themed,” explained bassist and vocalist Yohan Solo.
“The name helped us develop. We had this hidden cache of space-themed songs,” Rigel 7 said, adding “There’s an overall galactic space theme with funk.”
In their first year, known as “The Space Age,” the band turned out songs like “One Space,” “Your Space or Mine,” and “Space Circus.” Sometimes they break into a space-related theme song mid-way through one of their own songs. Each member took on Space Neighbor names too, as you may have noticed with Rigel 7 and Yohan Solo. There is also the guitarist, The Mysterious Planet Joel, keyboardist and vocalist Milky J, and vocalist and percussionist Jennatronics – also the 2009 Alchy Award Winner for Best Acoustic Performer.
Prior to Space Neighbors, each member has been in myriad other bands playing a variety of music. Planet Joel came from the east coast two years ago, about the same time that Yohan Solo came up from the bay area where he’d played rockabilly jazz with Caravan West, and funk with Booty Sanctuary. The rest of the band is more locally based. While Milky J hails from the Phoenix area, he has been in Corvallis for some time now. This reporter first met him as part of Northstar Gypsies in 2004. He later played in the group This is Us. Since the year 2000, Rigel 7 has jammed in both The Southtown Hounds and The Hounds, played acoustic in Leaf Hoppers, done Cajun and Zydeco in Bon Ton Roulet, and also jazz in Rhythm and Green. Jennatronics is force in her own right, but has been covered often in The Alchemist under her common name, Jenna Summer Smith.
Space Neighbors officially formed just over a year ago to play at May Day, an event they were happy to return to this year. Rigel, Yohan and Joel had been playing together before then.
“We’d met off and on trying to write hip-hop,” Yohan Solo said.
“Then we floated around and decided we wanted to do more funk,” Rigel 7 said.
“I wanted to write reggae but everyone was doing it,” Yohan added, “Hip-hop to funk is a good mash-up.”
Once they officially became Space Neighbors, things really took off. The group honed their skills together and are now up to 13 original songs and about 10 covers, like the Donna Summers song “I feel loved,” and a funk version of The Grateful Dead’s “Shakedown Street.” Of course, when a funk band plays covers one can usually expect to hear some Parliament, but this is a smaller funk band.
“You really need a horn section to do the pure funk,” Rigel 7 explained, and later added “We’re really working on that core section right now. You get too many people trying to write songs and it gets difficult.”
“We’re keeping the neighborhood small,” Yohan said, “We just have to buckle down and get the album done.”
That’s not to say the band doesn’t dabble. Recently the horn section from Sar Shalom sat in with the band at a wedding. Besides the music, at the average Space Neighbors show you can expect things of visual interest – lights shows, fire spinning and such. Of course, music is the strong point, especially at a funk show.
“There’s more to it than just dancing, but we want people to dance,” Yohan said.
You may have danced to some Space Neighbors at the last May Day, or at Cloud 9 on the 15th. If you missed those, you can catch the band at Bomb’s Away Cafe on the 29th, and later this summer at the Da Vinci Days. Keep tabs on their upcoming shows at the bands Facebook and MySpace pages, or give them a listen on their YouTube channel.
~Robin Canfield
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