Over the course of the past two years of writing articles and interviewing artists for my One-Man Band Series I have come across singer/songwriters from all over the world. Mickey Pantelous, however, whose Dr. Albert Flipout's one CAN band project is the topic at hand, is the first one I have come across from Greece.
Even though Mickey Pantelous is from Greece, he sings in fairly clear and unbroken English. There is the effect attached to his vocals of being surrounded by a light distortion, but it suits his dirty blues sound pretty well. And speaking of his sound, it is a somewhat unique take on blues punk, only with more of an emphasis on blues than punk.
For his Dr. Albert Flipout’s one CAN band endeavor, Mickey employs such instrumentation as electric guitar, minimal drum kit setup, harmonica, and vocals. With practiced hands and feet and vocal cords, he picks and strums and pounds, he growls and howls, and he speaks and sings though thirteen original songs on his debut album, Can’t Find My Pills.
“Who is this Dr. Albert Flipout?” most of you are probably thinking to yourself by this point. A good question, no doubt about it, to which the answer is…well, Dr. Albert Flipout, while firstmost Mickey's trusty sidekick, is a presence which bears dual symbolic meaning of sorts (but we'll get to that later in the interview portion). To be more specific, simply picture a tin can that’s been given a persona of its own, remade into a countenance with disheveled white hair, googley eyes, a button nose, and a long white mustache, and you will have a good idea of what he looks like. When Mickey plays a show, Dr. Albert Flipout is right there on stage with him, as he also serves as an intstrument. And Flipout not only has his own extensive biography, he's also given partial credit for the songs on the Can’t Find My Pills album.
Can’t Find My Pills is a pretty impressive debut with a handful of standout songs. The album opens with the title track, “Can’t Find My Pills,” a composition with a fluctuating rhythm that rises and falls between sustained chords and involved noteplay, and the vocal delivery follows suit even when the lyrics move into a little dialogue between Pantelous and Flipout. “Your Friends (are giving me a hard time)” and “There Goes Jack” are both very catchy numbers to which one can stomp one's foot and sing along. “The Madhouse’s On Fire” is a piece with prominent percussion during its verses and dirty guitar during its choruses, as well as clever lyrics that go from mental patient to mental patient describing each one’s psychological issues. “Albert’s Blues” is a blues punk song through and through, with infectious music, and great lyrics that begin with having murdered the woman he loves. “I’m Goin’ Away Baby” has more of a country feel to it than anything else. And lastly, my personal favorites, “Nickels and Dimes” a gypsy-esque folk-punk type composition with clever lyrics like,…and God plays with men like cheap nickels and dimes; and “It Won’t Let Go,” which is short romp with tumbling notes and screaming tenor sax.
If you appreciate the music of one-man bands such as Lonesome Joseph, Birds Are Alive, Pete Yorko, Tongue Tied Twin, and Reverend Deadeye, you will probably feel similarly about Dr. Albert Flipout’s one CAN Band, since his music thunders and roars and clanks down the similar tracks.
Recently I had both the opportunity and pleasure of interviewing Mickey Pantelous of Dr. Albert Flipout’s one CAN band. What follows is the content of that interview in its entirety.
In the interest of giving the readers of this piece a better understanding of the artist, I would like to begin in an introductory fashion. So...who is Mickey Pantelous, not just as a singer/songwriter but also an individual, a human being in this mad world in which we live?
I am just a human being gone crazy in the world that we live in.
I think it would make sense to start by asking you why you chose the one-man band route over the full band approach to writing, recording and performing music?
Well, the truth is I do have a hard time getting along with people. I find they are inconsistent. I used to have a full band project called “Mickey Pantelous and the Chess Mates” and a side band called “The Drunk Trunk Blues Trio.” Both projects reached a pretty high level music-wise but somehow never made a breakthrough. After a while, band members started cancelling gigs for better paid ones, and I felt like I was being dragged and I really couldn’t understand whose fault it was that the whole project didn’t go any further. Wanting to prove to everyone, including myself, that it wasn’t my fault things weren’t going any further I dismissed everyone and gave a shot at it alone, one man, one band… petty much 'cause they were damn good musicians.
I am admittedly compelled to ask you where the whole Dr. Flipout concept came from. I mean, it’s not everyday that one sees a singer/songwriter whose project is largely based on an empty, mustachioed tin can, with a long and amazing back-story which consists of university, advanced degrees in psychology and medicine, an apprenticeship under Freud, prison sentences, and many other things. And since first learning about you and your music, I have wondered how it all came about?
Being “left” alone I got worried that things might get too lonely. So if you can’t find the partner of your dreams, why not create him. Albert (Dr. Flipout) is a TIN CAN Latin Shaker. He is the leader and the “snare drum” of the band. I thought it would be relieving going back to being a simple band member rather than a band leader again. Since it’s Albert’s band and Albert is a CAN, it’s a “one-CAN* band” we have going here.
*CAN: a) A "can" is a metal container in which something such as food, drink, or paint is put.
b) You use the word "can" to indicate that someone has the ability or opportunity to do something.
A good partnership includes good conversations. In order to have a good conversation you need to have a background. The more interesting the background is the more an interesting conversation you get. So I hardly ever get bored when I’m around Albert.
His story is based on true facts literally or metaphorically. Some personal experiences in there as well. For example, my father suffered from sclerosis and eventually died from cancer so there you have Dr. Sigmund Freud and Betty Mc Neal (Albert’s Wife) one suffering of cancer the other being quadriplegic both being mercy-killed, which wasn’t the case with my father, he suffered and there wasn’t much I could do about it. And there are more examples of the kind to find in Albert’s story, but I don’t think they are of much interest to the reader.
Let’s say Albert and I have been through some similar situations but he made the decisions I’d never dare make. Maybe he’s someone I’d like to be, he has a certain coolness I admire. This is stuff I only found out myself much later after I had created Dr. Flipout. Creating this character was like going to the shrink, found out lots of stuff about myself. Besides, Albert is not an empty tin can, he’s my pill case.
Your sound fits pretty well into the current international one-man band scene, especially with the whole primitive rock’n’roll and blues trash bunch, like Lonesome Joseph, Christian Beshore, Tongue Tied Twin, Mr. Ochio, Birds Are Alive, and so on. What influenced you in creating such a sound?
Ha Ha, man. I know none of the names you’ve just mentioned. Guess I have some research to do, but I’ll take that as a compliment. I’m a plug-in and play kind of person, I don’t know what things are supposed to sound like. When I was recording, Mike the engineer asked me what I wanted the whole thing to sound like and I said, “I don’t know? Dirty!”.
You know, there are two ways of doing things: you either know exactly what it is you want to do and you have the way and means to do it, or you have an idea about something that could be anything and all you do is help it happen and then you see for yourself what it is, 'cause even you don’t know what it is until it’s done. I usually go the second way. I have neither enough money nor acquaintances to go the first way.
The CD was recorded, mixed and mastered in fifteen hours. The sound suits some songs perfectly, while others not so much, but that’s all a matter of taste.
Bands that have influenced my sound are the “Red Devils” a lot, “R.L. Burnside” too, “The Black Keys.” But they’re not OMBs.
(I checked out the names above after answering all the questions. Great stuff man!)
What have been some of your most memorable tour/gig moments to date?
Memorable moments…hmmm, let’s see. Girls, fights, booze, drugs, car accidents, truths and lies.
I think that the most memorable moment would be a Sunday morning when I was buskin' downtown Athens, and this homeless guy passes buy, looks at me, cracks a toothless smile, does a boogie woogie “I’m constantly drunk” kind of dance, sits about five meters from where I’m standing and starts begging while rocking to my music. He kind of pissed me off, 'cause he was interfering in “my” buskin' space. But ten minutes later he gets up again comes up right in front of me, cracks his toothless smile, bows while doing his boogie woogie “I’m constantly drunk” kind of dance, throws the money he had gathered while sitting there in my guitar case, thanks me for the good music and moves on! He left me standing there staring at what seemed to be the definition of the ultimate freedom!
What are all the instruments you play?
I’m basically a self-taught musician. I started out as a drummer. When I was about seventeen I picked up the guitar, and then I discovered the blues and picked up the harmonica, after a while the blues turned into jazz so I had trumpet lessons for a couple of years. But that’s all in the past. And I hammer the piano a little whenever I’m close to one.
Over these past two years, while doing this series on one-man bands, I have written about and interviewed artists from all over the world, but never one from Greece. What is the scene like there? And do tend to share bills at venues with other one-man bands (if there are any other ombs in Greece?), or is it a mixed bunch of full bands and solo singer/songwriters?
Scene? What scene? You know Greece is a crossroads between east and west, and as far as the Greek tradition is concerned it definitely belongs to the east. So there is not a very strong rock'n'roll tradition here. There are great rock'n'roll bands but not a tradition, unlike Denmark where my mother is from. It was in Copenhagen in the late '70s I first saw a one-man band. I was about five years old, but I remember it clearly, and I was very impressed. So OMBs are a very uncommon here Greece. I’d say the music scene here is a mixed bunch of full bands and solo singer/songwriters singing mainly in Greek and doing everything in Greek, I guess that’s why in the end it all sounds Greek… But there are some great bands and artists here, believe me. Himerinoi Kolymvites, Psarantonis, Mode Plagal, Salonumuz Klimalidir, to name a few.
What bands and/or singer/songwriters, past and/or present, have inspired and influenced you over the years?
As a teenager I was a great fan of The Who. Later on, when I discovered the blues, I was really taken away by the old slide guitar players, like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie McTell, Robert Johnson, etc. After that, I was really attracted by artists who played what I call “twisted blues” -- Captain Beafheart, Tom Waits, Chuck E. Weiss. Now I mostly enjoy listening to jazz from the '30s, '40s and '50s.
Your favorite cover song to play at your shows, if you have one? If there’s more than one, which ones?
I think the most successful cover I’ve ever done is “Sweet Child O’Mine” by Guns’n Roses. I’ve given a traditional slide blues ballad feel to it, and people seem to enjoy. But there are many cover songs I enjoy playing: “State Trooper” by Bruce Springsteen, “7 Nation Army” by White Stripes, “Cut My Wing” by Seasick Steve, “Dying Gambler’s Blues” by Blind Willie McTell, “Down by the Riverside” (Traditional), “Loser” by Beck…etc. etc. etc. So many good songs.
Is there anything of note coming up for Dr. Albert Flipout’s one Can Band (featuring Mickey Pantelous)? New songs? Recordings? Shows? Etc?
You know, we have a crisis here in Greece. We’re going through “the years of the Great Depression” and it looks like it’s gonna last for a while. I’ve decided to move from Athens to the island of Syros (where my girlfriend is from), where life is cheaper, and where I can work the land...unless of course I’m suddenly discovered by a big time agent who’ll arrange a worldwide tour for me or something. Some dreams die hard.
Anyway, I’m gonna be doing gigs here and there, and songs always pop out every now and then. I’ll probably wait till there are about a dozen of them before I start recording again. That could take a year or three.
Lastly, if there’s anything I failed to cover, or if there’s anything you would like to discuss or express, you may do so now. The floor is all yours, Mickey.
People can get my CD from CD-baby.
And my online pages are...
www.MickeyPantelous
www.MySpace.com/MickeyPantelousMusic
www.MySpace.com/DrAlbertFlipout
www.Last.Fm/music/Mickey+Pantelous
www.YouTube.com/MickeyPantelous
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