*Article by Maggie Labno — buzz Music Writer*
Photo by Wesley Hamilton
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin is returning to Pygmalion this fall and they’re as excited as their fans. The band recently released Tape Club, a twenty-six track album with a little bit of old, a little bit of new, and a lotta bit of good. A few minutes after a missed phone call, I got unexpectedly mentioned in a tweet from the SSLYBY account. It was Phil Dickey, the band’s drummer, asking me if I could call him back. Moments after he picked up the phone we were naturally laughing about him having to find me on Twitter. SSLYBY will perform at the Highdive outdoor stage on Saturday, September 24, at 3:20pm.
buzz: Who runs the SSLYBY Twitter account?
Philip Dickey: It’s me. I try to tell everyone about it, and I tell them the password, well we have the same password for everything. So, everyone can do it, but I’m just the only one who does.
buzz: Do you read every single tweet you’re mentioned in?
PD: Kind of, yeah. I don’t do a lot of funny tweets on Twitter. For some reason, I just can’t do that. I think I’m just a nervous and insecure person so I can’t really do the personal tweets, but then I start feeling horrible that all our tweets are just for promotion and just saying “Hey we have this new thing, check this out.” The balance between the personal and the promotion thing is just saying thanks to people.
buzz: “Back in the Saddle” is featured on the Shark Night 3D soundtrack. How do you feel about that?
PD: I feel pretty awesome. The reason it’s so awesome is because you know, obviously it’s not a critically acclaimed movie, The Onion gave it an F. it’s just something to be proud of on an artistic level. What was really fun was that we kind of got all our friends together and we saw the movie the night it came out. We were yelling, stuff like that. It was just fun to go to the movies with a bunch of friends.
buzz: You guys also had a song on The OC, “Oregon Girl.” Are you featured in any other soundtracks?
PD: Just a couple here and there. We’ve been on Sixteen and Pregnant a lot. There is a girl on it named Farrah, and I don’t think she even knows who our band is, or probably doesn’t like our band, but for some reason our songs are the soundtrack to her life on that show. There are really emotional moments with her and the baby; I feel bad for her. I wish, for her sake, that it was Death Cab for Cutie or a famous band but Farrah is stuck with us. I tried to send her a message and say “Hey we’re the band…you’ve probably heard us if you watch your own show.” And she never wrote back, but that’s okay…
buzz: Do you have a favorite film soundtrack?
PD: I guess Rushmore. It’s the soundtrack I listen to more than any other soundtrack, especially when I got it. I got it my freshman year of college. It’s an amazing soundtrack because there are so many different genres on it.
buzz: You guys played at Pygmalion in 2006. How will this year’s performance differ?
PD: Well in 2006, we just started touring. It was kind of a whirlwind where we’d only played shows in our hometown, and all of a sudden blogs and people found our album online, and we all went from being a band that never toured before, to playing bigger shows. I don’t think we knew what we were doing; hopefully we got a lot better since that last show.
The main difference is now we have three albums of songs and we have been touring for four years. We’re kind of used to it. This is the first show we’re gonna play with Deerhoof, which we’re really looking forward to. We usually play with smaller bands, so this is kind of a big deal to us. Some of our friends are driving up to go to the show. I think it’s definitely the most high-profiled show we played in a long time.
buzz: Are you nervous for that?
PD: Yeah…
buzz: You guys are playing a show on Halloween this year. Are you going to dress up?
PD: Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. We did “Where’s Waldo?” once. Our singer kind of looks like Waldo, so he was the Waldo and you had to find him in the band, which shouldn’t be hard because there’s only four of us.
buzz: How do you keep yourselves entertained when touring?
PD: We bring a friend with us. We bring a friend who is funnier and a better person than all of us, so they keep us entertained.
buzz: Regarding Tape Club, What gave you the idea to put all these songs on one album?
PD: The first idea came over two years ago. There’s a music management company in Champaign called Undertow. They’re really cool guys and they worked with our label, too. Undertow came up with the idea that we have all these extra songs, either b-sides, or demos that people like better than the album versions for some reason. It’s frustrating to be a music fan sometimes, for instance…Phoenix is one of my favorite bands right now, and I’m probably not gonna hear any new Phoenix songs for another year or two, you know? Being a music fan, it’s frustrating to wait for the next album, so we thought this was a good idea. to put it out and give something to people instead of having them wait. That was the original idea, but also it turned out that we accidentally made an anthology of the complete history of our band. The first recording was recorded at my mom’s house for an extra credit school project in college. We go through different classes, and dorm rooms, apartments until we finally realized we should do it at the studio. So you go from the bedrooms to the studio recordings. We made this history of our band.
buzz: How old is the oldest song of the album?
PD: I think we did it in 2001, right after September 11, but it was recorded January 2002 or something like that. So it’s almost exactly ten years ago.
buzz: Were there any news songs written specifically for Tape Club?
PD: Actually there are seven songs on there that no one has heard before. It’s almost like an official album just based on stuff that hasn’t been heard. Then there are a lot of songs that are on the Internet, like mp3s and stuff. We cleaned them up and remastered them. I think that most people haven’t heard those songs, too. It has so much stuff that people haven’t heard before that it’s almost like a new album.
It’s kind of scary. I wanna tell people it’s our new album but I guess it makes some people mad, it’s like you tricked them into buying it, and they already heard some of the songs.
buzz: What’s the best compliment you ever received?
PD: I was really obsessed with this band called the Mommyheads when I was in high school, and when we first did our demo, even before our first album – the Mommyheads broke up in the 90s, but I somehow found the band on the internet and I found their e-mail addresses, and one of them wrote back and told me that this song on there was his favorite song that he heard in three years and he wanted to record it. I think when he said it was his favorite song, that kind of freaked me out. It was also a turning point, like, “Oh maybe we should try to do this, keep playing music and try to be a real band.” The song he liked is actually on Tape Club; it’s actually like the second song.
buzz: So, would you say that you’re a real band now?
PD: For the most part, yeah.
buzz: What do you do when you’re not on tour?
PD: We all have other jobs in town. We all live in Springfield, Missouri, and I do some freelance stuff for a newspaper which is why I felt so bad missing your call because I know how frustrating that can be. Our singer works in a coffee shop, another guy has a recording studio.
buzz: If a fan asked you to name their pet, what name would you give it?
PD: I always thought the name Chris was really good for a dog. I guess I like human names for dogs and cats. Chris or Jeffrey.
buzz: Are there any future plans in the works right now?
PD: Yeah. We’re touring and making more music videos… But I think mostly the biggest plan is working on new songs and recording a new album.
Who: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, Braid + More – Polyvinyl 15th Anniversary Showcase
When: Saturday, Sept. 24 @ 2:30 (SSLYBY @ 3:20)
Where: The Highdive – Outdoor Stage
Ages: 19+
Cost: $25 in advance ($30 at the gate); free with festival wristband
Buy tickets here
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – Tape Club
buzz Magazine: Music 
Posted on September 14, 2011
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