Wednesday was a busy day for The Fling. In the morning, the Long Beach quartet were the inaugural band on Nic Harcourt's new radio show on KCSN, set to air Saturday. After recording with the guru-DJ and former host of Morning Becomes Eclectic on KCRW, the crew headed over to Amoeba Music. There they recorded a Greenroom Session, a private audio and video recording in a back room of the mega-record retailer. About 20 minutes after finishing up the Greenroom Session, drummer Justin Ivey gave us a call to chat about their newest album, life after being signed and going back home.
] OC Weekly: How did your session with Nic Harcourt go? Justin Ivey: We were the first band to play on his new show which airs Saturday. It was great to meet him, I'd been listening to him for years. It was a cool, special honor to be a part of his first show, I mean the first band on his new show. That was really cool. I can't belive how many awesome guys this person has interviewed and there's a lot of history there. It's cool to be included in that.
Have you found anything cool while you're looking around at Amoeba? I'm actually looking at old school rap stuff, like Dr. Dre. Some folk like Fiona Apple. I saw the new Cults record, so I might pick that one up.
Are you a strictly vinyl guy or do you like CDs? I buy vinyl but the majority of my music collection is CDs. I don't do any illegal downloading because it hurts me to the core. Plus I like tangible things. I like to open up a record or CD and look through the liner notes and all that. It's something that's been important to me instead of downloaded media.
Has being signed to affected your band at all?
Being signed to Dangerbird is a huge accomplishment and something we've wanted to do for a while. We like the bands on their label. They're local; we're based out of Long Beach and they're in Silverlake, just a short drive up the I-710 to get to them. It's been a huge plus. It's really nice to go to Amoeba and see your stuff there. We couldn't do that ourselves unfortunately.
Has it affected your music?
I think we push ourselves hard anyways. But I feel like you've gotta work even harder than generations have in the past. We just put out our record, [When the Madhouses Appear] in May but we have about 30,35 songs ready to go. We're planning to release an EP during Halloween. We're going to be tracking here pretty soon. It's made us push ourselves even harder and not stall.
Where's your favorite place to play locally?
We love playing the Detroit Bar. We actually play Detroit Bar on the way back from tour. It'll be our last show. They've always been really good to us. It's got a cool vibe to it. It sounds good as a performer. I've seen plenty of shows there and the sound's always clean. I've never seen or played a bad show there. Ever. And I've been there hundreds of times.
Prospector, obviously too. That's where we got our start.
How does it feel to be playing at home again on your tour?
It's always a blast to play Prospector. It's literally walking distance from our houses. It's pretty sweet to play at home and not worry about having to drive home or how late it's going to be when you get outta there. We have our friends and people come out that we love having at our shows. We haven't played Long Beach in a while, so we're happy to get back.
The Fling begins their west coast tour today in San Diego and ends at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa on a to-be-announced date in early August. They plan to embark on another tour come November.
The Fling performs with Strange Vine and Chairs Missing at the Prospector, 2400 E. 17th St., Long Beach, (562) 438-3839. 10 p.m., $5. 21+
