Desperate Living

Horse the Band teeter on the brink of brilliance, total ruin and extinction. All day. Every day.

This mere fact of their existence is masterfully executed by and evidenced on their latest slab of artful noise, 'Desperate Living' - an album which is inspired by John Waters' film of the same name and the experiences the band has endured over the past several years in the eats-its-young music business. Rather than sack up and get in line as the next tasty meal to be devoured by the music business beast, Horse the Band decided to write their own rules regarding their career. It wasn't easy, but they learned a whole lot.

"We had been touring the same places for so long that what used to be a new adventure everyday was starting to blur into a continuous stream of boredom and self-destruction," said keyboardist Erik Engstrom. "Here is this great dream of your life and five years later, you've played to a lot of people and been everywhere in your country 28 times and are thinking, 'What have I done with my life?' We felt like the disillusioned, bad-attitude pariahs of the music industry. We ended up with a well-known reputation, partially deserved, for 'being crazy and wasted', 'not giving a shit,' and 'treating the wrong people with disrespect.' It seemed like all normal avenues were played out or closed to us. Any ideas we had that were outside of the box - to bring something new to the table - were disregarded as not part of the traditional business plan." Don't call the wah-mbulance just yet. Things got worse - a whole lot worse - for HTB.

Since the Southern California band's last album, 'A Natural Death', they tore through three drummers, three booking agents, two bassists, two domestic labels, a handful of international labels and were nearly sued by one of the major companies the band does business with. You do the math. Shit was sucking. "We were threatened to the very brink," Engstrom says soberly. "We didn't have any money. We went on the craziest world tour ever and came back with zero. We couldn't even be creative as a band because of all the member changes. We were always training new drummers and bass players instead of channeling our experiences into new music."