Oak Island
WL 359 - Sunday, April 15 – 10pm
Purveyor of: a fist to your fucking face!!! RAWWWRR!!

Interviews editor Evan Dickson knew exactly zilch about Jeff Zito, aka Oak Island. But now that they’ve e-met Jeff seems like a pretty cool guy and had some fun(ny) stuff to say. You should read it now.

Please introduce the band members and tell us a scintillating secret about each.

Well, it's just me (Jeff), my equipment and occasionally a big-ass bass drum with a cool light inside. People might know me as Jeff, Jeff Zito, Boston Jeff, More Than A Feeling, Boston, Ottawa, Ottawa Jeff, Bottawa, ummmmmm, The Secret??? Well, between you and me I lip-sync every show.

Pretend to be Detective Comics #33 and recount the Oak Island origin story.

I played in bands in middle school, bands in high school, went to Berklee College of Music for percussion, dropped out, moved here for York U, dropped out, and somewhere in the middle realized I really liked boring audiences, makin' loops alone in my room and gettin' introspective all over the track. Oak Island's kind of a blanket name for my various musical interests... I was gonna use Wavelength to premiere my new ipod band project 'Pitchforkmediadotcom' but I figure I'll play my guitar one last time. I'M HANGIN' IT UP!

That last question was intended to refer to your band, but can you tell our readers the amazing story of the Money Pit and the real place, Oak Island, Nova Scotia?

200 years ago some kids dig a big-ass hole on this island, find layers of wood at like ten-foot intervals and then forget about it. They bring some other morons back with them and find a bunch of weird shit (COCONUT?!?!?!?!), hit a big wooden chest at the bottom of the hole (90 feet down) and then the big-ass hole floods. Almost all the original evidence of the hole and digging and chest and ten foot logs are anecdotal and most of the proof of these claims disappeared ages ago (if it ever existed at all). There are reports of coded stone tablets and pieces of spoooooOOoooky parchment in the pit... it's ridiculous. Rather than accept it's the nature of shitty little islands to have weird depressions, sinkholes and flood tunnels these people convinced themselves that things like pirate treasure, proof Francis Bacon was Shakespeare, the Holy Grail, ummm... a whole litany of different, increasingly absurd things are buried down there. Men have died, millions have been lost and no one is any richer. It's a good story though... I would refer interested parties to the pretty thorough, though partially incomplete, Wikipedia entry on the subject (incomplete?? see- NO OAK ISLAND JEFF ZITO DISAMBIGUATION. WTF?!?!)

What mind-blowing work of art does everyone need to know about?

Hold on, I have a MySpace friend request… Okay I had a whole list written out but no one really cares about why I think Ali is the most beautiful movie ever made. ummmmmmmm… I guess read The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty. It's a little heavy-handed (largely about race in America) but the way Beatty uses language is astonishing. So yeah. The White Boy Shuffle. While you read, listen to The Garden of Brokenness by William Basinski... an atrocious title to one of the most affecting pieces of music I have ever heard. Delicate little piano loop ----> the most depressing 49 minutes ever recorded.

How 'bout a tip for the dedicated and savvy readers of Wavelength? What stops will you pull out on April 15th?

I honestly don't know what that means. I guess if you like Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint, it's kind of like that but with a fucking fist to your face!!! RAWWWRR!! Also my guitar tone's better'n Pat Metheny's. That dude sucks. Any time I play a norm-y venue like a bro-dude bar or something about ten minutes in someone shows up near the stage to ask me to turn it down... so, uh, hot tip?? Bring earplugs. And I'd say 75% chance I'll end up lying down on the stage flailing, shaking and screaming/crying.

HI MOM!!!

By Evan Dickson