COVER STORY .

The Extraordinaires

Irresistibly Theatrical South Philly Rock Storytellers [Listen on the CP Playa]


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Published: Oct 17, 2007

Michael T. Regan

I'm following the Extraordinaires up a narrow staircase at Ninth and Jackson, and there's a lot to take in. A small, hyperactive salt-and-pepper dog named Sheeba runs around sniffing legs. At the first landing, everybody has to put their backs to the wall and shuffle sideways to get past about a half-dozen clear plastic bins stacked 5 feet high in the hallway. At our destination — the small living room that houses their label, Punk Rock Payroll — a grid of strings crisscrosses the ceiling with dangling, still-wet screen-prints. Metal shelves are neatly stocked with shirts. A to-do list for the band's upcoming tour is taped to the wall by the computer: "Gas for van. Pack merch."

The merch is those bins, which are filled with hundreds of colorful, clothbound books. No, this theatrical South Philly rock band hasn't taken to selling literature on the road; these are their CDs.

"I guess LPs are still pretty big, but we didn't really grow up with them," muses singer/guitarist/wind organist Jay Purdy, once we're all seated. "People who were into music 20 or 30 years ago, they miss getting the artwork, [seeing] all the time and effort that would go into it. And we're just tired of ripping open plastic CD cases and going, 'Yeah, there's the liner notes, there's the picture, there's the album.'"

So instead, the band's two releases — the maritime narrative Ribbons of War and the recent collection of stand-alones called Short Stories — are actually books bound in Masonite. Included are cute flourishes like ribbon bookmarks and library cards listing band credits, neatly slipped into a sleeve stamped "Property of The Free Library of S. Phila: Punk Rock Payroll Family Branch." The bright covers are screenprinted by label head Frede Zimmer. Inside are the album's lyrics printed out as a collection of poems, with colorful illustrations on each facing page.

The bookbinding comes from Frede's wife, Misty; she was using the workspace to create blank journals in a similar fashion when the label brought in this band that wanted to try something a bit different with their album art. The Zimmers excitedly describe the work days that resulted, when all four Extraordinaires — Purdy, bassist/accessorizing instrumentalist Matt Gibson and keyboardist Jacob Wolf (all natives of Charlottesville, Va.) and drummer Pete Hurd — showed up at PRPHQ and formed an assembly line. One handles the pages, the next handles the glue gun, the next the cloth covers.

A new batch of album-books is currently being readied for their national tour with Man Man, another Philly band with a taste for carnivalesque excesses. Wolf calls them "the darker version of what we do" — the Captain Beefheart to their Beat Happening, perhaps. Keeping pace with Honus Honus and friends shouldn't be difficult, though, since fanciful album art isn't the only trick in the Extraordinaires' bag.

Their first album told of the tragic romance between a sailor and an aviator, the couple torn apart by their separate loves for sea or air. The tour in support of it had all four bandmates dressed in naval costumes, delivering in-character monologues rather than between-song banter. In August, Ribbons got the big stage treatment; a full-scale touring musical production with set pieces and props, debuting at the band's North Philadelphia warehouse space.

While the first album is a lively set of piano-driven rock — "Anchors and Feathers" recalls Ben Folds Five's "Army" in the best possible way — Short Stories has a baroque, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink feel. Mandolin, strings, recorders and quirky percussive noisemakers accent each song, creating cacophonous, poppy fun. Do people actually respond to this, outside of indie scenes and like-minded circles?

They think so. Hurd goes on a hysterical tangent, telling the story of his first tour with the Extraordinaires, where the tatted, ripped, imposing bouncer at a sketchy South Bend metal bar purchased a copy of Short Stories, floral print cover and all.

"We're four dudes having a whole lot of fun onstage," he says with a sly smirk. "People can't resist us."

(j_vettese@citypaper.net)