CLAWJOB

By C.D Di Guardia
Photo by Ricky Hull

The way Mike Gintz and Nick Burgess of Clawjob tell their story, most of the band’s early ideas started as jokes. Every once in a while, a wacky idea stuck. Such was the case when the duo began transcribing, performing, and recording the music from the classic NES game Mega Man. While this seems like an inauspicious beginning, Burgess says that the duo quickly realized that they were about to tap into the mainline of a bizarre subculture of video gaming musicians, all out to put their own spin on their favorite themes. Gintz and Burgess, in a symbolic move towards their future artistic choices, they decided to push things a little further. Rather than simply covering a theme song or two, they went for the game’s entire score, covering Mega Man 2, all the while their magnum opus — 2006’s Space Crackers album — had been growing like their 8-bit hero’s charge-beam.

Space Crackers was a full-fledged rock opera with a cast that Gintz and Burgess rounded up from all over the city, including Kris Palumbo, Night Rally’s Devin King, Harry and the Potters’ DeGeorge brothers, Tristan da Cunha’s Ernie Kim and various members of Bakula, Piles and Reports. The album was well-received and gave the band ambition to work on their next full-length, based on the Civil War, on which work continues to this day.

Manifest Destiny is a concept EP that shows 19th century America from a variety of perspectives. Gintz says, “We are treating it as a prequel to modern life, as we’re mostly dealing with themes of greed, deception, failure, and dashed expectations. It’s not a rock opera in the sense that Space Crackers is, but it’s very conceptual. There aren’t as many characters and drama in this one,” says Gintz.

A band that almost never plays live or tours, Clawjob can be boiled down to a creative duo that loves the excitement of the behind-the-scenes creative process — the homebase bull sessions, the website designs, the DIY PR campaigns and labyrinthine plot collaborations. “We just go with what we find fun,” Gintz says. “We have a ton of non-concept songs in the works, but the big ideas are what really drive us. Space Crackers’ plot drained us and it was very hard to write some of the songs. And even though our next few releases will be concept projects, they will be a little looser to give us the freedom to play around more within the framework. I’m sure those will show up on our website or the next Now That’s What I Call Music! compilation.

Clawjob’s wacky ideas, however unlikely, continue to blossom into shockingly relevant and full-blown realizations of music, art and performance. And like Mega Man, the band continues to acquire resources and all forms of fun weaponry to aid them in the future, the past and the present.

www.clawjob.com