TRANSPORTATION IN TIME :: An interview with Chandra Oppenheim (part 2)
The Chandra Dimension - 1982.
Chandra Oppenheim's musical legacy will always begin with Transportation, the madcap mutant disco vehicle she commandeered from the ages of 10-12. However, throughout the ensuing decades, the pre-teen post-punk has continued to concentrate her creative energies into shapeshifting sonic personalities. In the second half of our conversation, we transport through Chandra's adolescent backing band of the early 1980s, lesser known projects of the '90s and aughts, a children's album, her contribution to the film Teenage, and on to her upcoming opus, A Slightly Better Idea.
Julie Reich (JR): Let’s talk about the transition into the Chandra Dimension. In the second incarnation of the band, there were some teenagers that joined you. Who were the other members?
C: My childhood friend Evie Teploff was the keyboard player. She goes by Evelyn now and lives in Japan, but we’re still in touch a little bit. The drummer was Les Horowitz, and the bass player was Marina Sally. They were a little bit older than I was, so we didn’t really connect, besides Evie who was my good friend. We weren’t together for that long. I mean, it could have been a year, maybe?
JR: Why did this transition happen in the first place?
I suspect it was because The Dance didn’t want to do the kid thing anymore. That’s the story I’m coming up with, but I don’t know, I’d have to find out from Eugenie and Steve. They assembled the band, and I thought it sounded like a good idea. Maybe that was their idea all along… they just needed some time to put it together.
Jesse Locke (JL): How did it change the dynamic once you had this different band playing with you?
C: Well, looking back on it, The Dance was a much better band [laughs]. I think there was something nice about us all being young people, but I don’t know, it never quite felt as solid to me.
JR: Did the Chandra Dimension play live a lot? And what was the second recording session like?
I guess we played more shows with the first band, but I don’t remember how many. I remember doing more interviews and photoshoots with the second band, but not as much performing. In terms of the second recording, I actually don’t think any of the younger members played on it. I don’t recall if they were in the studio. I believe it was only Eugenie, Steve, and me.
JL: Interesting! So then you just decided to just shelve those four songs?
I’m not sure why they didn’t come out. Maybe it was because the band didn’t exist anymore, or because it didn’t make sense to put money into releasing it if we weren’t going to be out promoting it. These are all just guesses. I think the band dissolved partially because I was feeling drawn to school demands.
I mean, that’s how it was told to me, and it seemed that I didn’t have the time and focus to put into the band. It’s hard for me to believe that because I loved the music so much, but it is possible that I felt school was more important… which I TOTALLY do not agree with now [everyone laughs]. Of course, at the same time, I appreciate that I was able to go to top-notch schools. But at this point for my daughter, I’m very much into this movement in education called “unschooling,” because I like the idea of living life according to your passions, and that life itself is education.
JL: What did you go on to study after your time with the band?
Well, I was still in grade school, but I took it very seriously [laughs]. Ultimately, I went on to study Anthropology at Barnard, the women’s college of Columbia University.
JL: Before jumping ahead, we were curious what happened throughout the rest of the ’80s. Were you still working on music?
I tried to get back into it. Even after that shelved second recording, I kept working with Eugenie and Steve on songwriting. I had a keyboard and I was writing stuff but I don’t know… It had just fizzled and never came back in terms of our collaboration
JR: Did you record any of that stuff that you were working on at that time?
Probably on a cassette tape somewhere in my attic, maybe, but never beyond that.
JL: The actual long-lost Chandra recordings!
Hmmm, yeah, there were a lot of those throughout the years. One of my favorite songs never got recorded. It’s called “Explosions” One of the things I liked was that I wrote the song and then my dad made a piece called Explosions as well. I always liked that I had done something that inspired him.
JR: Moving on to the Transportation reissue from Cantor Records, Aaron Levin’s label - how did you two connect?
C: I think it was through my dad, because he was easier to find. That’s how I remember it happening. That’s how people usually find me [laughs]. Then we just started emailing, and it developed into doing the re-release with the second record that had never been released.
JL: How did it feel in 2008 when that music was coming out and being rediscovered by a whole new audience? Was it exciting for you?
Well, it was very gratifying because I always thought it was the best stuff I had done, and I was glad that people liked it! To do something so many years ago as a child and have people like it… I mean, whenever ANYBODY likes your music at all, it’s nice. We do it because we love to do it of course, so it’s an extra nice thing when someone likes it. The re-release was sort of like a time machine in a sense because there was this long period when it was dormant and then it came back. I don’t know the word to describe it other than very…
Yeah, also uplifting and gratifying.
JL: It’s almost like TRANSPORTATION IN TIME.
JR: Good one! [everyone laughs]
Chandra Oppenheim - Studio City (A Slightly Better Idea)
JL: Can you tell us a bit about your new musical project?
My new record is called A Slightly Better Idea. I started working on it almost 10 years ago with a musician and film composer friend of mine named Paul Brill. We came up with the idea to do these sessions where he would improvise music on the computer and then I would come in with my lyrics sheets and essentially improvise these spoken word things. I couldn’t sing because I didn’t know what was coming next, melodically. I ended up speaking everything. We created five roughly 30-minute recordings.
Shortly after that, my daughter was born, and I left the project for five years. When I came back to it, Paul’s career had taken off and he wasn’t available to continue working on it. Also, I was living in Maine and he was living in New York, so I needed to find somebody who was going to do this massive editing project with me. I wanted to edit it into the story that I had always envisioned. Paul’s versions are very abstract. The story itself is already abstract, so I wanted to create a sort of conceptual map.
Now I’m working with a producer and composer, Noah Cole, and we’ve been working closely together on this for almost three years now. We’ve completely re-vamped it using all of my original vocal recordings, plus some of Paul’s music, but then Noah and I have redone it. We’ve turned it into, essentially, what I’ve always thought it could be. I wanted to put out a dance record, danceable music. So it is that, just with spoken vocals. I’m basically telling a story with these dance vignettes separated by interludes, creating 40 minutes of continuous music.
JL: What is the story about?
Basically, it’s about someone going through devastating heartbreak, a breakup, and her journey through it. The thing is when I talk about this, there are so many things I could say about it, but it’s also important for it to be left pretty open for the listener’s interpretation. I can say that it is about heartbreak and traveling through that. There is a dreamlike element, so it’s allowed to travel to places where it wouldn’t make sense to go physically. In a dream-state, one can move around easily.
JR: Do you plan to perform it live?
Not only are we performing it live, it’s turned into a multi-media performance art piece. I’ve come full circle!
We are working with a New York-based production designer, Charlotte Royer. She and photographer Jessica Verry worked with me to create the photos that will be projected on three screens. She’s also going to co-direct the live show because we will have some staging. I’m going to have a couch on stage, and I’ll have a wireless mic, so I’ll be moving around doing things. It’s going to be a 10-piece band with horns and strings. It’s a big production - lights and fog and all that stuff.
JL: Very cool! It sounds super theatrical.
It’s going to be, yeah! I wasn’t expecting that. I thought we were just going to be a band performing the record, but it developed into this.
JL: So, your new album and the reissue of Transportation will be coming out around the same time. We’re really looking forward to you coming to Toronto for the tribute / release show with Julie’s band covering your songs.
If my daughter were just a few years older, she’d be perfect for a tribute show. She looks just like me… pretty freaky! But yeah, I’m excited to be a part of it.
JL: There are a few other projects we wanted to ask you about. First off, can you tell us about The What Goes On Show?
That was put together by a friend of mine named Lee Chabowski. He had a bunch of friends who were musicians and wanted to put us together in kind of an old school variety show. My song was about a serial killer. The idea was that it seemed like a love song, and it is, but it’s a love song from a serial killer written to his victim. It talks about the blonde hair thing, which goes all the way back to “Kate.” The serial killer basically scalps her and then wears her hair. There’s a bridge in the song that spells it all out very clearly, but I sometimes do it with the bridge and sometimes without the bridge.
JL: That’s pretty dark. Was it your first time performing live in quite some time?
Well, that was just a recorded thing. There was no audience or anything for that.
JL: Oh OK, it was just the first performance footage I had seen of you for a while.
Yeah, well that’s true. But in the early ’90s I had a band with my former husband, now a film composer, Charles Graef, called Huperdaughtersons. I appreciate those songs for their melodic complexity and the unexpected twists and turns they take.
After that, in the late ’90s, I had an alt. rock band. For a while, looking back on it, I was not so happy with it. But I’m developing a newfound appreciation for it. My collaborator Tom Shad and I were very committed to the project and put a lot into it. I’m glad I did it, but if I compare it to the stuff I did when I was a kid, I just don’t think it even comes close. That said, I recently listened to it again and there are some aspects that I now appreciate, like the use of dissonant harmonies that carry over from my early songs.
JL: What was the name of that band?
Casanova. I don’t think you’ll find anything about it. There were some interesting things I wrote songs about though. For example, I read an interview with the director Robert Rodriguez about how he raised money for his first film, El Mariachi. He signed up to be one of those people that they run experiments on, so he could have time to write the screenplay, while making money to produce it. I was really inspired by that, so I wrote a song based on his recollections of the experience. He told some sad stories of people gambling away all of the money they were making, so that after a month of being experimented on, they had nothing left. The doctors would call his assigned name over the loud speaker, wake him up in the middle of the night to draw blood, take samples of this and that… just all this gruesome stuff. The name he was given was Red 11, and that’s the name of my song.
There was another weird one I wrote about my in which I demand that he take me to the petting zoo, which was a little disturbing [laughs]. Where did that come from? I don’t like the connotation of that.
JR: Just take the word ‘petting’ out and call it the zoo [laughs].
It was about a little girl, you know, “Dad, take me to the zoo.” I should take a closer listen to these songs – there’s probably some cool stuff in there.
After that I was in an original bossa nova band in the early 2000s, which we sort of had a name for - White Ape Offers the Grape. Unfortunately it didn’t really take off. We worked hard, did some recordings, and rehearsed for a couple of years but we didn’t really perform much. I loved that band though, and I love what we came up with.
Then there was actually ANOTHER band I had called Chandraplexi. It was very short-lived, but we had some fun songs. One of them was called “Radioactive Bats.” That was inspired by a party that my dad had. His girlfriend wrote on the invitation. “Radioactive Bats on Hand.” I guess he had a piece called Radioactive Bats and they were going to give out some bats at the party… or something. I wrote a song about it.
JL: So Chandraplexi would have been in the 2000s as well?
Yeah, that would have been in the mid-2000s. It was wild! I was in my 30s, and the other people involved were 10 years younger than I was. They were living at my house, and we had this band. It was a fun time. I felt more like I was a teenager even though I was 35.
More recently, inspired by Iwan Rheon the Welsh actor and songwriter, I developed a Welsh character named Eira Lewpart. “She” wrote several songs, performed around Portland a little, and played at the great open mic they have at Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg. Eira is on hiatus while I’m finishing up A Slightly Better Idea, but she’ll be back. It’s fun to play around with having an alter ego, and to run the social anthropological experiment of seeing how people react differently towards me as someone from Wales.
JL: We also wanted to ask about the inspiration behind your children’s music album, All Around Town.
That’s the first thing I did after my daughter was born. It’s based on a sign language class where people teach their infants sign language so they can communicate before they are able to speak. It’s an amazing thing for parents and children. I took a class like that with my daughter, and when I moved to Maine I developed a class of my own with my good friend, Delilah Poupore. We released a record comprised of the songs we wrote for the class. I have a tendency to be dark in my songwriting, so I had to make sure to lighten it up for the 0-3 crowd!
JL: It’s a really cool continuation to make music as a child and then, so many years later, make music FOR children.
I never saw that coming [laughs]! But that’s how I was able to get back into it. Not that I feel like I ever really left, but if I did stop with music, it was during the years when I was so focused on my daughter. It wasn’t even five years because I did that kids’ album in there, but I was so immersed in that world of being a parent. It was such a creative project that I didn’t have any juice left. I was sleep deprived for two years [laughs].
JL: Does your daughter have any creative aspirations?
She’s amazing. I teach songwriting at her school, a small place called Forest School. That’s turning into this thing where I’m able to pass it on. Someone came to me when I was 10 years old and said “Do you want to write songs?” Now I’m basically offering that invitation to children from age 5 to 10. Working with them inspired me to start a record label to release these songs. It’s called Rain Boots Records. I’ll release my records on the label as well as the songs by the Forest School students. The label will also put out music by bands I know personally who I believe have something special and who I want to support.
But back to my daughter - she wrote a song, and I love it! It’s a collaboration between us, an Appalachian-inspired song called “Little Chickadee.” With the students, I don’t teach songwriting, I facilitate it. It’s just like what Eugenie and Steve did with me. And it’s a little more hands on because they’re younger. Five is the youngest, but basically they’re providing the material and I’m shaping it. That’s what I did with my daughter’s song, and it’s amazing. She sings, and has great pitch!
[L-R] Chandra, Phyllis Jalbert (mother) and Kate (from the song) - Hot Club, Philadelphia, 1980.
JR: I’m curious - is your mom an artist?
My mom is not an artist. She would be the first person to say that [laughs]. My mom is an amazing person, and she’s a million other things. She created a successful real estate business in New York with my stepfather. She used to fly airplanes. She’s a registered Maine guide, and guides canoe trips. She grew up in Northern Maine, so she has these cabins that her great grandfather built on the Allagash and now she runs those. She’s a philanthropist. She’s on a gazillion boards, including our public radio station board. She’s involved in a human rights and Holocaust centre, and had a building constructed for that. She’s on a U.S. biathlon team, and on and on. She’s very busy.
JL: Every article and interview seems to mention your dad, so we wanted to hear a little bit about your mom too!
My mom will appreciate that, because although she understands that the focus goes to him because of my father’s celebrity, she wishes that she would be acknowledged too. My mom raised me. I mean, my dad was around and I would go see him and hang around with him, but my mom was my parent. She’s still my parent!
JR: She sounds like a good influence. It’s cool you had the artistic side from your dad and this very grounded side from your mom.
Yeah, thank goodness! I lucked out.
JL: What about Eugenie and Steve? Are you still in contact with them today?
When the 2008 re-release happened, we got back in touch. Since then we’ve been in touch loosely whenever different things happen. For example, there’s this movie, Teenage. I don’t know if you heard about that.
JL: Yes, we saw “Kate” was included in the soundtrack.
Teenage is a documentary by Matt Wolf that came out last year. It was doing the festival circuit, and I went to see it at the Tribeca film festival. I was sitting there engrossed in this great movie and then this song comes on, and I was like “Hmmm, that’s familiar.” I was so engrossed in the movie, and forgot I was there to hear my song!
JL: That’s great to know it’s a good movie too.
Oh yeah, I was so happy with it. The other kind of cool thing is that “Kate” is the only non-original piece in the film, so it really stands out.
JR: Looking back on everything, I guess your experiences have all been pretty positive. If you could go back, would you do it the same way? Do you have any regrets?
You never know what road you’re going to take, and where it’s going to take you. I do wish that I had stuck with it consistently back then because I had something that I didn’t realize I had. I had something very valuable. I had people’s attention; people were listening, they were interested, there was press, and people wanted to come see us play.
JR: That’s just like being a child. It’s very precious, because when you grow up, you can’t be a child ever again.
I loved doing what I was doing, and didn’t know that I was kind of giving away something. There was an opportunity to continue with music if I had stuck on that road instead of being drawn to my Latin homework [everyone laughs]. It wasn’t until I was a bit older that I realized I already had something and had given it away.
What I do believe is that everyone finds their own path through life. Things happen, and you might go into a dark place for a while, but then hopefully you can find your way back. One of the things I would tell myself is that I could have gotten into some bad things if I had continued. You hear about child stars and all the things that could happen in terms of fame, drugs, and all of that. I had a very calm, nurturing childhood and I’m a stable happy person. If I had gone down that road, I might have run into some difficulties. But there’s just no way to know.
I feel like I said that to myself for years just to make myself feel better [laughs]. Really, being up on the stage is my favorite place to be, and it seems like ever since then, I’ve been trying to get back there.
Transportation is now available from Cantor Records and Rain Boots Records. On Friday, October 17 at Double Double Land (Toronto), Chandra will share the stage with Bile Sister for a performance of songs from Transportation, along with opening sets from Sexy Merlin, New Chance and the Invisible City DJs. Advance tickets can be purchased at Soundscapes and Rotate This. More information here.
