How about you start off by telling us a bit about the band. How did you guys meet, get together? What’s the story behind vee device?
vee: While category may be what you need to gain recognition these days, in our case, it boils down to something much simpler—vee Device is a group of friends whose goal it is to bring good, honest music to the masses. A goal we no doubt share with many bands out there. Popular opinion and critics are fickle so who knows how successful we’ll be. Whatever the case, we’d like to think that when future chronologers pick up their pens, history will absolve us.
The story of the band’s chance formation is a long one and perhaps too drawn out for the purposes of this interview but here is the distilled version. vee device came together in the autumn of 2003. Disparate elements somehow blended seamlessly; you know... the sum of the parts is more than the whole, and all that jazz. We’ve been constantly evolving ever since.
Lets move on to the name. What does it mean? Where does it come from? And what is this revolution you speak of? Musical? Social? Political?
vee: A “V” or Valor Device is technically an “accoutrement worn to denote participation in acts of heroism involving conflict with an armed enemy.” It is unique in the fact that it is one of the only such awards a civilian can earn. And so, here we are, advancing the vee Revolution.
Not that we’re really in a pitched battle against anyone in particular. More like the idea of Naqoyqatsi— everyday life as war. Whether it’s us against them, blues versus reds, carbs against protein, love versus hate, people have grown accustomed to a black and white presentation of the world. There is no longer any room for gray.
Sometimes, with all of this craziness swirling about, it seems the best a person can hope for is to go down with valor. But still, in the end, too many people place their emphasis on the discretized instead of the summation. It’s as simple as calculus. Live a valorous life, not one simply marked by alternating fits of valor and ignorance—that’s what the vee Revolution is all about.
And while its primary impetus is musical, it encompasses the social and political, spiritual and emotional. Part of art’s beauty stems from its endless capacity for interpretation. What you or I walk away with is a result of what we brought to the experience in the first place.
&roid: In my eyes, the revolution is mostly an artistic one, much like the art movements of fin de si
