Semester final

Here is my final story for the semester, a news article about smoking within the LGBT community. It has been published on Pavement Pieces:
http://pavementpieces.com/lgbt-community-smoking-more-than-straights-study-shows/

Lizzard Kisses

Here is a story I wrote profiling Lizzard Kisses, a Bed-Stuy band, last month. I still haven't gotten the edits on it, but I figured I would put it up. I haven't written as many stories lately because I am busy working on my semester final, which is a reporting trip to Philadelphia. I will be covering public housing in Philly and am traveling there next week, hopefully to interview a family in a low-income unit. Here is the Lizzard Kisses story, with pictures:

Sleeping In and Staying Up: Lizard Kisses on The Band and Their New EP

By Rachel Ohm

There is a lot of space in Marc Merza’s room. A solitary bookshelf stands opposite a desk and a mattress on the ground. There is barely anything on the walls, cast in a baby blue light from a single bulb attached to the ceiling and reflecting the faded paint. 

However, the extra space seems to disappear when the guitar comes off the wall, the microphone moves to a stand in the center of the floor and Cory Siegler sings.

Marc and Cory record and write from the sparsely decorated apartment that they share with six other people, where the few items besides furniture include headphones that hang on the wall; the reel-to-reel machine in the corner and an envelope of Polaroid’s on the bed stand. The bookshelf contains folders filled with Cory’s drawings and album cover designs.

The Bed-Stuy duo, which goes by the name Lizard Kisses, just finished their first EP, a compilation of ethereal soul music mostly written and recorded on a three-week long stay in Vermont in October. At home in New York they talk about the origins of Lizard Kisses and the making of “Sleeping In.” 

“We started Lizard Kisses just because we thought it was a lot of fun,” said Marc. “We wanted to do something together and collaborate on this and we had a blast doing it.”

The couple met at the Guggenheim Museum last spring, where she worked in the gift shop and he sold audio guides. 

    Their first date was to a show he was playing with his band Inoculus. 

    Since then, they have been writing and recording their own music. 

    “We started dating and music naturally came out of it,” said Cory, a self-described visual artist who graduated from Pratt in 2008 with a degree in fine arts. “I never really did music before. It’s kind of a new thing.”

    Aside from elementary school chorus, Cory, who grew up in Yonkers, says she never sang but always had a musical family. She has aunts and uncles who sing and a grandmother who plays the flute, but it wasn’t until recently that she discovered her own voice.

    “I do more visual arts, but when me and Marc started dating this past spring I noticed that he’s always playing his guitar or ukulele,” she said, sipping green tea from a Zabar’s mug. 

    Marc, who grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, plays in two bands. He came to New York two years ago on the heels of a friend who worked at a record store with him in Berkley. 

    “I probably went to my first show when I was 11 or 12,” says Marc. “My sister brought me to a pop-punk show. We saw New Found Glory and I think Reel Big Fish. My sister was dating a guy at the time who was really into skateboarding and he gave me this CD by this band called Homegrown.”

    He says he started reading the inside covers of CD’s to learn about new bands. He watched music videos to teach himself the bass. He got involved in promotion for local bands and would hand out fliers and merchandise when he was still in high school. 

    “As I got older there was a transition where I started writing my own music and playing shows,” he says. “I always really loved bass and that was the first instrument I picked up. I learned mainly by listening to songs and playing by ear. I don’t know much about theory or chords or anything like that.”

Lizard Kisses does a fair amount of experimenting on their 9 song EP, introducing different instruments to mix up the sound. 

The short album includes a tambourine, toy instruments from Chinatown and “this bamboo Chinese flute recorder thing,” found on Canal Street. In Vermont they also recorded sounds like cars driving by and crickets. 

Usually Marc writes a melody for guitar and Cory will add the lyrics after. She 

sings and he plays guitar or bass. 

One exception is the first song they wrote- “Where the Living Room is Fine,” 

which didn’t make it on to the EP. The song was originally recorded in Cory’s living room in her old apartment, which had a piano.  

“Basically that song is just about the living room,” said Cory. “It was the first song I ever wrote and Marc told me to just write words. I didn’t know what to write about and he said write about anything.”

“I had this really pretty guitar line, but I’m not that great of a singer,” said Marc. “I brought it to Cory because I really love her voice. It was kinda by accident. It was an organic thing.”

What followed was a three-week road trip to West Woodsboro, Vt. in October, where Cory’s parents have a summer home. They brought Marc’s guitars, their own amplifiers, two microphones, a computer and the toy instruments. They recorded everything on the Mac program GarageBand. 

The EP includes 4 songs and 5 other pieces that the duo describes as more “experimental- they have these long interludes of instrumental.” The title, “Sleeping In,” derives from the mornings spent lying in bed followed by staying up all night to write and record. 

    Lizard Kisses are now working on artwork to go along with the EP. They have a collection of Polaroid photos from Vermont that they plan to use as artwork for the inside cover of the album. 

Cory, who has a background in drawing and print making, has designed a cover 

with geometric designs and the name “Lizard Kisses.”

  The songs are available to download for free on Lizard Kisses’ Bandcamp site, and they are making plans to take their music live, searching for a backup vocalist and a second guitarist. 

For now though, they are content writing music and playing in the upstairs room of their apartment.   

“Lizard Kisses is something we started because it was fun,” said Marc. “We want our music to be accessible to as many people as possible.”   

Photos: 

Lizzard Kisses 
Cory Siegler, 24, of the duo Lizzard Kisses, sings "Old Friend," a song she wrote about lost acquaintances. Cory and Marc Merza, 22, pictured here on the guitar, write and record their own music from their Brooklyn apartment.  

Waiting for the right note 

Marc Merza, 22, one-half of the musical duo Lizard Kisses, strums his acoustic guitar on Nov. 1, 2010. His eyes are on Cory Siegler, his girlfriend and band mate, as she sings the song "Old Friend," written and recorded by the two in their Brooklyn apartment.