On the evening of Nov. 12, Deerhoof lined the stage at Club Congress. Satomi Matsuzaki’s fey and twittering voice versus Greg Saunier’s forceful, convoluted drumming made people shed their mid-November chills. If seasonal depression was about to hit, Matsuzaki’s kind, open face and hopeful voice chirping the “”Bunny jump bunny jump”” whilst wearing an oversized tiger head would convince anybody to give it a few more weeks.
Recent addition Edward Rodriguez fit in perfectly with Greg Saunier’s and John Dieterich’s hyper-articulate instrumentation.
And now, answers to pressing questions provided by one of Deerhoof’s guitarists, Dieterich.
In high school, was there a book that blew your mind?
A book? Ahh, I started reading really kinda early, my dad was an English teacher … I started getting into fantasy books when I was really young. I remember there was this series by this guy Steven R. Donaldson called “”The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Non-Believer”” and it was this really heavy duty (series) – every book was three inches thick. This was between third and sixth grade, I would wait at the bookstore the day it would come out. Yeah, I remember that very vividly; I don’t remember anything from high school.
So is there a certain recipe that you like to make when you’re home, a dish you’re really good at?
Yeah, actually, I’ve been obsessed with this pasta sauce recipe for the past three or four years. I make it once a week, all of the time that I’m home. I mean, it is truly obsessive, up to the point where I’m getting over it; it’s becoming insane. It’s really simple, that’s one of the things I like about it: Just use organic hand tomatoes, onions, garlic, really good olive oil and that’s it, that’s all you need. Oh and hot peppers.
What did you guys do about voting?
I did an absentee ballot; my girlfriend had to forge my signature. She practiced though.
Does anybody in your band suffer from night terrors or recurring dreams?
I went to Senegal 13 years ago and I was told to take anti-malaria medication called Larium…They said if you have any paranoid tendencies, don’t take this one (medication), I didn’t want to take the other because it made your skin very sensitive to the light. … I didn’t want that problem in West Africa. … I dreamed that the world went totally insane, I would wake up every single night standing against the wall, tearing posters off the wall, this kind of thing. It stopped after I came back, but I wake up every now and again like that.
What has been your favorite stop so far?
My favorite stop so far was yesterday. We went to White Sands in New Mexico. Apparently, whatever-million years ago, it used to be a lakebed. It looks like, they’re white sand dunes. … It looks like snow. There are these huge dunes that you can go running around in, it was really surreal and beautiful. We don’t get very much time on tour to do anything, so when it’s two hours to run around and get a little exercise, it’s nice.
