Andy 978 (aka Andrew Hicks) -
absolutely everything
Influences
The Cure, The Stone Roses, Jimmy Eat World, The Pixies, Oasis, Peter Murphy, The Hold Steady, For Squirrels, Nick Cave, The Killers, whiskey, women, The Old '97s, Green Day, love, and monsters.
The Pluto Tapes is (at the moment) Andy Hicks, a singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/DJ/geek and his imaginary friends.
Andy's Dad (singer and guitarist for The Jolly Rogues) underwent a mid-life crisis recently, and instead of buying an H2 or going the Lester Burnham route, he decided to start a recording studio-slash-microbrewery in his basement. He enlisted the help of his son to figure out all this new fangled equipment he'd somehow acquired, and before long, the younger Mr. Hicks was sequencing drum tracks, learning some rudimentary riffs on the ol' synthesizer, and recording a bunch of songs he'd written.
He decided to call this project "The Pluto Tapes" for a couple of reasons, but mostly because "Pluto" was the God of the Underworld, and "Tapes" are, well, tapes, and it sounded cooler than "Stuff I Recorded In A Basement." Plus, it sounded at once futuristic (spacey stuff), anachronistic (no one uses tapes), and conspiratorial (i.e. The Roswell Tapes, The Watergate Tapes, The JFK Tapes.. whenever something has tapes, it sounds like someone's up to something sneaky.) Plus, there was that whole "Pluto's not a planet anymore" thing, but that was one of those weird coincidence things because Andy totally came up with the name like a month before that happened.
UPDATE (06/10/07) - "Dead Planets Tell No Tales", the debut home produced album from The Pluto Tapes is available for digital download on iTunes, eMusic, Napster, Rhapsody, Sony Connect, and MusicNet.
Andy continues his search for musicians with which to "play out". He hopes to have a band and at least a gig or two before the end of the year. If this does not happen, you will probably find him standing on stage with a "band" made up of blow-up dolls, life size cut outs of Star Trek characters, and a contraption made out of a broom, some rubber cleaning gloves, and the head of a Cabbage Patch Kid on bass.
Come to think of it, that'd be pretty neat. Andy thinks Andy will do that.
Listening to my copy of the album, purchased off iTunes just this morning, and loving it, loving it, LOVING IT. Good job! I'm loving hearing the final, polished versions of songs I first heard here or, in the case of "Eddie", way back in the day.
Awesome album. Anyone reading this who hasn't bought it yet, should go buy it now.
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