by Chris Gray
Humans
are cynical creatures,
at least until something or somebody comes along to change their minds. We are
cynical because we’re
all frustrated romantics; we each have a little voice that whispers “I want to
believe” whether we want it to or not. But faith is dead, so before we believe
in anything, we need a damn good reason. Lucky for Starfish, its three members
have several. They believe in their music, they believe in their band, and they
believe in each other. Breaks your heart, doesn’t it? Starfish has something special that’s almost as hard to define as it is to
ignore. It’s not just Jason Morales’ hollowbody guitar riffs slicing through
Starfish’s garage/rehearsal space like a barely contained buzz saw; it’s not
just Ronna Era’s buoyant bass lines that steady the band even as they drive it
ahead; and it’s not just Scott Marcus’ drumming, a human approximation of a
perpetual-motion machine. All of those qualities are bought and sold in Austin
like nickel bags of crack at Seventh and Red River. What gives Starfish its
juice is how the members merge into a single unit, feeding off and fueling one
another until the set ends in a wave of feedback and sweat-drenched exhaustion.
Morales, Era, and Marcus have that mental lock, a kind of musical way of
finishing each other’s sentences, that less fortunate bands spend lifetimes
looking for. A band so young (though not inexperienced), so new, and yet
already possessing such a clear mind about what it wants to do, and be:
Somebody up there likes Starfish a lot.
Even the way the band came together seems to have been astrologically
divined, at the very least. Long before they were an item, Era and Morales were
both members of Olympia, Washington’s vaunted indie-rock scene (immortalized by
a certain Miss C. Love in “Rock Star”). The pair decided they needed a change
in venue, attitude, and climate, so they packed up and headed out for Austin.
Upon their arrival, the band went through a succession of drummers similar to
Spinal Tap, except for the macabre element – all Starfish’s former skinsmen are
still among the living. The revolving stool days came to an end when, by
originally planning to audition his then-roommate, they happened upon Marcus,
who had played with K. McCarty’s band Glass Eye and was ready to split town.
“I was in deep, dark, semi-depression,” says Marcus of the period immediately
prior to his joining the band. “I was like, `Fuck this.’ I was ready to leave
Austin.” When a band in Richmond, Virginia, he’d auditioned for thanked him for
his time but decided to put a friend of theirs on skins, Marcus became
Starfish’s third arm. All three band members are quick to say that, from the
first note they played together, it was a coming together of peanut
butter-and-chocolate proportions. Their present incarnation meshed like none
other. “It’s like what we all always wanted in a band that we didn’t quite
get,” Era says.
The band began to gig steadily, mostly at Emo’s, the Electric Lounge, and Hole
in the Wall, and survived an abortive deal with doomed Austin Throwdown records
before Trance Syndicate label owner King Coffey heard of the band, and on the
advice of his friend Bob Mould, signed ’em up. Unfortunately, the band was
signed too late for it to be a part of Trance’s “Murderer’s Row” showcase at
South by Southwest 1995, but not too late for them to head into the studio,
Mould in tow, once all the music-biz carpetbaggers went back from whence they
came. And somehow, amid all this flurry of activity, Morales and Era found time
to fall in love and get married, which they did March 25, onstage, at the Ritz.
Morales recalls the wedding as a simple affair: “We came out, played half an
instrumental, got married, finished the song and finished the set.”
Although the marriage was as natural as an open D chord for Morales and Era,
who seem to be as happy a couple as you’re likely to find these days, that it
happened at all is another testament to the strange feeling of zen Starfish
generates. Both Era and Marcus had been through the ringer of personal
involvement with members of previous bands; she as participant, he as observer.
Neither particularly wanted to go through it again, until Starfish formed and
bylaws such as “Thou shalt not be involved in a romantic way with any other
member of thy band” went out the window. Marcus says he was in the band for two
weeks before he found out Morales and Era were a couple; by then, it simply
didn’t matter. Starfish clicked so well that, on Era’s and Morales’ request,
Marcus even put aside his fondest wish – abduction by extraterrestrials,
which he says would be “like the ultimate tour.”
For his part, Morales had absolutely no problem with any of this. He thinks
it’s great. “I feel lucky because this is my first time in a relationship in a
band, and I think it’s cool just to have that much more in common with who
you’re going to be with,” Morales says of his bride. “We both have this
motivation to just rock the world.”
Why stop there? With the release of their record, the aptly named Stellar
Sonic Solutions, Starfish is primed for anything. If Marcus has his way,
the trio won’t merely rock this world, but will do the same for Mars, Venus,
Jupiter, and so forth. Hell, these three might even find some way to make sound
travel in a vacuum. After everything Starfish has accomplished since they
formed, it only seems like the next logical step, that’s all.
This article appears in September 29 • 1995 and September 29 • 1995 (Cover).