| Cityzen: The Band – New Mobility Magazine | |
Besides Toby Forrest and guitar player Jeff Line, Chris Woods does keyboards and his brother Nick is on drums. Nick Lopez plays bass and Joe Spangler adds violin and sax. The band is serious enough that they rented Jack Johnson’s studio to record a CD, engineered by Robert Carranza, a guy who has won four Grammys. You can buy “Invisible Mental Tentacles” on iTunes — “I want to reach into heads of listeners, grab them with invisible tentacles,” says Toby, “get into their mind and make them think.” Call them progressive urban-savvy funk-metal. Toby has always liked the band Tool, once described as “the thinking person’s metal band.” The band members all dig Mars Volta, certainly more cerebral than ’90s contemporaries Megadeath or Pantera.
Cityzen’s “Lizard People” is ostensibly about people (like the infamous Balloon Boy’s dad) who believe Hillary Clinton is part of a lizard conspiracy to take over the world (I’m not making this up). “The whole point is to show that it’s people who are poisonous,” says Toby. “Smooth Dirt” is about the once all-powerful force of religion, now a sick dog that has to be put down. Toby says people have compared Cityzen to a harder Pink Floyd. “Fatal Lullaby” is about old Mother Earth. “If we don’t pay attention, not take care, we’ll all be gone and the earth still [be] here,” says the lyricist. Cityzen performs live to a small but growing fan base. Working but not exactly opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, if you know what I mean. Gigging around L.A. these days means that a band brings its own paying fans. Clubs and bars here rarely pay a no-name band outright — off-quota musicians sometimes end up owing the club money, a bargain the almost-famous accept for a chance to be in the right place at the right time. Once or twice a week Cityzen lifts Toby up on some of the very same stages that launched the Eagles, the Doors, Guns ‘N Roses, the Wallflowers, System of a Down, and many more. They run through a 30-minute set, including most the tunes on the CD and one that’s not, the picked-to-pop house-rocker, “Drunk Hollywood White Girls.” “DHWG” is about unrestrained young women confronting the cute guy in the wheelchair. “Before, it was easy, or at least easier with women,” says Toby. “In the wheelchair, no matter how charming or good-looking you are, there’s always a barrier. But drunk girls, they love me. Part of it is that I’m a place to sit, an open invitation for them to sit on me. Then they want to push my chair around and run over people’s toes.” So he wrote the lyrics and worked up the song with Jeff. “It’s definitely a fan favorite. We see it as a novelty song, more of a live song, and didn’t include it on the CD. Funny thing is how many girls will come up after and say, ‘Oh, that song was about me.’ Well, girl, it’s not a compliment, you know?” |
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