We all know what mods are, but what’s Mod Lang, I couldn’t find anything on the internet
Beej: Didn’t do the homework! [everyone laughs]
I tried to!
Ava: If you have to ask, you’ll never know.
Antonio: Directly, it’s a Big Star song off the album Radio City, but Mod Lang is also short for modern language
Alex: It was a class that Chris Bell was taking at community college and thought would be a cool name for a song.
Antonio: I think it’s a great song, but the aspect of modern language is also cool, because Mod Lang was a new step for me in life and in music.
Ava: It was almost Kanga Roo.
Antonio: Yeah, Ava and I were looking through song names, because we were like “so many cool bands are secretly named after song names,” so we went through albums and albums like “oh that’s cool, is that used?”
Ava: We were at Kyle and Shelby’s house [of 208] and there was a book and Kyle was like “open the book and the first thing that you point to,” and we flipped it open and it was Kang a Roo and there’s a Big Star song called “Kangaroo” that rocks, but then Antonio was like “what about Mod Lang?”
There’s something in the ether right now with what I guess you’d call a ’60s revival. Do you think there’s a reason for that?
Antonio: I think all of us have always been obsessed with ’60s stuff, but speaking for me personally, it was always like simple, garage, kind of meathead hard rock shit. But as I’ve gotten older, I’d see more bands that were poppier, like Shadow Show [one of Ava’s other bands] or Secondary Colors [Alex’s other project that Antonio joined] and that inspired me a lot. I discovered a lot more ’60s pop from there. All the songs that did the garage rock stuff had the pop hooks, and I just never paid attention to any of that.
Alex: Pop music is awesome and its progression is really cool. I was just listening to Wire yesterday and I forgot how good they are. And it’s super poppy. There’s so much pop that I’ve neglected, until the last couple years, that extends past 1975.
Antonio: Yeah I hated the Flamin’ Groovies, I know that doesn’t make sense.
Ava: Off the record, off the record! [everyone laughs]
Antonio: When I was younger, I was like, “Why is this so clean? This is so lame.” Like I said before, I was so into the fuckin’ [meathead voice] meathead shit.
Ava: On top of being interested in the music, you’re learning how to play songs that other people have made and you just go from there learning to play the songs that you listen to. And now we can listen to songs from all decades: the deep cuts, the nuggets, where it’s cool to post a YouTube link on your Facebook ten years ago—the song no one knew about. Things that weren’t brought to the masses are now accessible in a different way, so I feel like that’s why people are able to feel inspired by stuff.
It’s like that Tages song you guys had on your Instagram once.
Ava: “I Read You Like an Open Book”? I love that song. Aren’t they from Sweden?
Yeah, we’d have never heard that!
Ava: [sings] “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” It’s like the Turtles.
The Turtles are the other band I was thinking of a lot while listening to you guys. That Battle of the Bands record.
Ava: That record is so good! “Buzzsaw,” now that’s a meat-head song.
That record is like listening to Ween.
Antonio: Dude, Ween are so good, I love them
Beej: I was literally thinking about giving Ween a chance the other day and I told TY [another band he drums for] and they were just like, “No.”
From: https://see-saw.fun/mod-lang-make-pop-rock-for-mothers-and-meatheads-alike/
