ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON JULY 22, 2004
By Steve Newton
Those smart-assed pranksters, ya gotta love ’em. Take Alex Greenwald, vocalist for L.A. guitar-rockers Phantom Planet, who open for Hoobastank at the sold-out Commodore on Thursday (July 22). Earlier this month, when his group was playing its final show as opener on the No Doubt/Blink-182 stadium tour, he decided to go out with a bang–or at least a few chuckles.
Knowing that a burlesque dance troupe was scheduled to hit the stage in the middle of No Doubt’s set, he and some bandmates became momentary members of the Pussycat Dolls, fishnet stockings, pink boas, hair extensions, and all.
As Greenwald explains by phone from the House of Blues in Las Vegas, No Doubt frontwoman Gwen Stefani was the main target of the bump ‘n’ grind exercise.
“She does a lot of wandering back and forth on the stage,” he says, “and her back was totally turned when we went on. Then you heard this huge roar from the crowd, and she turned around, and we were in, like, full cancan formation. I think maybe it blew a few chips in her brain.”
Having been made aware of Greenwald’s penchant for messing with people’s minds, I call his attention to something he posted on his quintet’s voluminous Web log. According to a June 20 entry, he’d been listening to a nonstop barrage of heavy metal in order to combat the overpowering hippie vibe backstage on the No Doubt tour.
When he mentions that he’s been grooving to the likes of Slayer, Venom, and Cannibal Corpse–the repulsive death-metal band noted for song titles like “Blunt Force Castration” and “Entrails Ripped From a Virgin’s Cunt”–I decide he must be joking.
But he’s dead serious. Hammer-smashed-face serious.
“I used to listen to metal as a teenager,” he explains, “and I felt like revisiting it, in particular Slayer. That first Slayer record is really, really, really good. Even if you’re not into the darker side of things lyrically, like what they’re doing musically and structurally and arrangementwise, it’s quite a beautiful, amazing thing.”
Although Greenwald can’t rave enough about Slayer, it’s his own band that’s been receiving kudos recently–including one from the Boss himself. A Phantom Planet fan sent them a tape from a Bruce Springsteen gig in Massachusetts in which the heartland rocker gave them an impromptu thumbs up.
“He’s playing a show,” Greenwald explains, “and you hear someone scream out, ‘Hey Bruce, what have you been listening to recently?’ And he says, ‘Well, I really like the new Flaming Lips record, and there’s this band from Los Angeles, California, called Phantom Planet. I’ve been enjoying them recently.’ And you hear, like, one person go: ‘Yeah!’ ”
Greenwald made CD copies of Springsteen’s taped remark, and handed them out to his bandmates and management. It’s a definite ego boost, though not really necessary; one listen to Phantom Planet’s new self-titled disc–which is invigorating, smartly arranged rock noise fuelled by the double-barrelled guitars of Darren Robinson and Jacques Brautbar–would suffice in that regard.
Before signing off from Sin City, Greenwald offers some details of another prank he almost pulled off a few days earlier, after a gig in New York. He and a friend made a pact to get drunk, light their shoes on fire, and run through the rain-soaked streets of Manhattan. They even convinced a bystander named Bob to try the stunt before a security guard in front of Tower Records put a call in to the FDNY.
“Three fire trucks were deployed,” Greenwald recalls, “and they took our can of lighter fluid and shook their heads in disappointment. But we didn’t get in trouble, so it was awesome.”
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