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| | Issue #21.11 :: 03/12/2008 - 03/18/2008 | Back on Track
Treadmill Trackstar at Headliners: Saturday, March 15
| BY KEVIN OLIVER
| You’d never have known it from the way the band played at last November’s Rockafellas Reunion show, but Treadmill Trackstar’s Angelo Gianni says its part of the show almost didn’t happen.
“I had believed in my soul that playing again as Treadmill was a really bad idea and tried to get out of it multiple times,” Gianni says. “If it wasn’t for the promoters telling me they’d already printed the posters about three weeks before the show, we would have bailed for sure.”
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| Treadmill Trackstar initially broke up ten years ago. |
The reality, it turned out, was just about the polar opposite for Gianni and the band.
“It felt completely horrible until we actually hit the stage,” Gianni says. “Then it felt awesome. Once we hit the stage, that feeling of dread completely disappeared and was replaced by pure enjoyment. It was just like another show, like we’d taken a short, decade-long break and everything was back to normal. Instead of feeling like people were yelling for something that used to be, it felt like they were yelling for something that was.”
In the past 10 years since Treadmill’s initial breakup, Gianni spent time trying to get back to normal.
“Really, after the band I had two goals,” Gianni says. “Make some real cash and get my relationship happening — those were two things the band really kept me from getting done. We enjoyed California for about eight years while I worked in commercials and film production, and then decided it was no place to raise kids so we chucked it all and moved to Asheville.”
It was the new proximity to his old musical stomping grounds that got the ball rolling on the band’s reunion, and last fall’s show was just the initial catalyst in what has now become a serious look at continuing as a band in some form.
“We have nothing to lose and nothing hinging on our success or failure, which makes it much more enjoyable than it was — it’s purely about our love of it,” Gianni says. “Our only goal is to enjoy playing. That’s a nice place to be and a very different place from where we were a decade ago.”
This week’s show is being promised as a preview of things to come, and Gianni says there are future plans in the works.
“We have a definite very elaborate evil master plan,” Gianni says. “I can’t say what exactly, other than it amuses me to no end, and it’s sure to amuse everyone else too. We have this insane idea that will involve all of our friends and fans.”
The band has been working on new material since last fall’s show, and Gianni says that several songs will make their debuts this week, with more to come.
“We’re all set to play two or three of the many new songs we have written since November,” Gianni says. “Something broke loose after that show, and they’ve been flowing like warm goat’s blood.”
Gianni’s uniquely colorful gift for words that are equally descriptive and disturbing shows up in one of the new tunes, “Hands Off (Climbing the Cross),” which culminates in Gianni singing, “I’m not Christ; I can’t forgive you.”
“That song was written a few weeks ago,” Gianni says. “I spent a night getting pissed off about all of the against-my-very-nature things I’ve let myself be made to do in my life.”
The focus on new songs is one of the reasons the band is willing to continue playing as Treadmill, he says.
“We have no desire to be a nostalgia act,” Gianni says. “We’re not Sha Na Na. Although I think Heidi is taller than Bowser.”
Headliners is located at 700 Gervais St. The Stellas open. Doors open at 7 p.m.; admission is $7 at the door or $5 in advance. Call 796-2333 or visit
headlinerscolumbia.com for more information. | |
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