Jeremy Wheeler – The Bang!, comics, movies and life in the Midwest.

STI: One thing I’ve noticed about The Bang!; no matter which one you go to whether it’s a Valentine’s Day or Back to School or New Years or Halloween or a month where no holiday exists — it’s just a month where you’re having a Bang! — no one’s too cool to dance. I mean, everyone gets in on it and that’s kind of a testament to what you’ve built, you know?

JW: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for whatever reason, Ann Arbor has become a really great place for people to not feel self-conscious about dancing and about having fun and whether that’s something we bring or something else that brings [it] out, it’s really nice to see. It’s nice to see that and its really nice to be a part of a group of people that just kinda go out and have fun and they’re creative about it and they’ve really enjoyed themselves and what we kinda deliver for them.

STI: You always release the mix tape list of songs from any given Bang!. Have you ever made the mix tape first and then fleshed out The Bang! around that mix?

JW: I see what you’re saying, but not really. Not really. We’re usually — the mix tapes are the very last things that happen. They’re the last week. Most of the time with me they’re the night before.

STI: So you’re going in fresh.

JW: Yeah.

STI: It’s not contrived like you’re not putting too much thought into it. It’s spur of the moment.

JW: But, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but if you — say if we did, like when we did the Beach Blanket Jaws thing, I made sure to try and put on — Lalo Shifrin did a great Jaws cover on one of his jazz albums and so, made sure to put that on and, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if we did a “Back to School” then you’d probably hear “Hot for Teacher” so it’s just like, the themes that we pick, there are certain songs that spring to mind that we’re definitely going to try and play. We just had “007 Year Bang!” for our anniversary so, Marvin Hamlisch of all people, made the most groovy, great Bond song for [thinks for a moment] Let’s see, for… It wasn’t “From Russia With Love”, but “Spy Who Loved Me.” In fact, I think it’s “The Spy Who Loved Me.” So yeah, definitely we were going to play that. But we’ve never quite made a mix and then went, “Ok, what theme are we gonna do this time?” You know, it’s always a month in advance or two months in advance. “Ok, we’re gonna do this then we’re gonna do this, then…”

STI: So you kinda schedule it out a little bit ahead because there’s a lot to plan for, and then the mix is the last thing to hit, so it’s in the moment.

JW: Yeah. I mean, we’ve known since August we were booked through the year and we knew exactly what we were going to do. Right now, it’s the beginning of December. We have the New Year’s party then we’ll have the Love Bang! in February and then March is up in the air. We usually do it around St. Patty’s Day and it might not hang around there, so…

STI: Last year was Glamrock –

JW: Glamrock Shamrock. Yeah, so we’ll see what we come up with. Maybe we’ll still keep it green.

STI: It was like Ziggy Stardust does Ireland.

JW: Yeah! Yeah! You know, put disco and crazy shamrocks together.

STI: You were talking earlier about your rabid fan base. When was it that you realized you had a hit on your hands?

JW: Well, definitely not to this effect, but we were immensely surprised at how well the first Bang! went off. We pretty much threw The Bang! for the friends we had in town. There was a great supportive, fun, young, creative, smart group of people who came out of the days of the Pirate House, which is an old house that used to have shows, and so we really wanted to kinda throw a party of our own that would bring those people in, that would give them something to do. There was nothing like that unless you went to Detroit, you know? No one from Detroit would come out because Detroit people are known for really not liking Ann Arbor, for having a preconceived notion and you know, that’s fine. I totally understand it.

STI: Too stuffy? Too liberal? Too hippy? Too college?

JW: Uhh, I’ve seen people say that we’re too hippy.

STI: Well, there is Hash Bash…

JW: I mean, there is Hash Bash and maybe they’ve been to Ann Arbor during a Hash Bash and they think that’s what it’s all like. I’m not really sure. I know that there are definitely some complaints about the venues that we have in town but… But, I don’t know, but getting back to your original questions, we were really happy with the reception we got. We had no idea it was going to go off that well and just the fact that the space was filled with people and they were dancing and they were having fun, we’re just like, “Wow! This is really cool. Who knew that this was gonna to happen, so let’s do another one!” And then we did another one and the turnout was just as solid as the first and then when we hit the Blind Pig, it’s just kind of… when it got to the point where we’re at now, where, if the students are in town, you can depend on there being a line outside or something like that. I’m not sure when we got to that point.

STI: There’s no definitive moment. It’s just, it happened when it happened and you went, “Hey, this is cool. Let’s do another one” and it just went on from there?

JW: Yeah, well… I can definitely say that when we started, there weren’t many opportunities for people to go out and dance to rock music. There was a big electronic scene in Detroit. Frankly, one of the reasons we started The Bang! was because the club in Windsor, Canada, the Loop, that we all used to go across the river till, um, September 11th happened and right after September 11th happened, there were back-ups of like, 9 hours or something for people to get across the bridge, so that was kind of… going to Windsor and partying anymore was just kind of out. So that kind of made us make the decision. “Ok, well, let’s try to make something; try and do these thing that we’ve thought about for a while and actually do it.” It was also our stab at trying to get Detroiters to our fair city instead of us always going to them.

STI: So The Bang! kind of came from 9/11, would you say?

JW: Yeah! It definitely had an effect.

STI: Something good came from that?

JW: Yeah! [laughs] I mean, it’s a terrible thing to say, but yeah, there were certainly times when we were at the Loop or before that ,there was an indie dance party in Detroit in, like, ’99 called SIPS and that, you know… going back then, that really was the earliest example we had experienced where people were dancing to, like, Pulp and Blur and the Smiths and things like that.

STI: Kind of like your smaller college basement party where you would put on your favorite college-type radio albums or just tune into the local college station and dance if you want to, don’t if you don’t, you know? That kind of thing except on a grand scale?

JW: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And there were things that like, when we were at the Loop or something, we would notice songs that would go off great and we would notice songs that wouldn’t go off too well. “Why are they playing this, why don’t they play this?” And we were just like, “Why don’t we do this?”

STI: So your Inner DJ came out, kind of?

JW: Definitely. Definitely. I mean, we were taught from SIPS and from The Loop on what music really worked. What people were into, what we were really into. We moved here… Jason Gibner and I moved here eight years ago. We moved here from Grand Rapids and this was after my time in Pittsburgh, and really, there was nothing going on in Grand Rapids that was remotely supporting any kind of scene where people would dance and party and things like that. There were house parties, but nothing really that special. So, we were really energized when we came to Ann Arbor. When we met all these great people who liked to dance as well and as soon as we started going to these other events, we were just like, “Wow! This… We could really do something here.” Or “we could just throw a party of our own and see how it goes.” And the next thing you know, it’s seven years later.

STI: Just like that. [snaps fingers]

JW: It feels like it! [laughs]

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