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From The Desk Of Battleme’s Matt Drenik: “Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia” (Sam Peckinpah)

The name might suggest some kind of internal struggle, but Battleme tries to keep things intuitive, says bandleader Matt Drenik. “Other people have these interpretations of the name: ‘Are you trying to battle yourself with your pop songs and your loud songs?’“ Drenik jokes from his home in Portland, Ore. “I’m like, ‘Not really. I don’t know what I’m doing.’” When listening to Battleme’s latest, Future Runs Magnetic (El Camino Media), the idea that Drenik doesn’t know what he’s doing sounds far-fetched, with his bedroom-pop sensibilities somehow finding common ground with the record’s brasher rock songs. But the first Battleme tracks were very different. While still a member of Austin stoner-rock band Lions, Drenik recorded some country/folk songs under the Battleme moniker for Sons Of Anarchy. Drenik will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand-new feature on him.

BringMeTheHead

Drenik: Back in 1998, I remember waking up and thinking, “I’m gonna be an artist.” My parents thought I was nuts. But that was par for the course, especially being from the Cincinnati suburbs, where art was for degenerates. Remember Mapplethorpe? “Yeah. An artist.” It was one of those young, uninhibited ideas that only an 18-year-old can think because when everything feels possible; you’re blinded to the shit storms that are hidden in the clouds. So I took my books and my teenage ego and moved to Boston, where I survived two years of film school before dropping out and fleeing to Austin.

A few years later, I found myself back in school, trying to give this whole “artist” thing another crack. This time I found post-punk and Sam Peckinpah. And I happened to find them both at the exact same time. And nothing had me more convinced of Peckinpah’s brilliance than the impeccable Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia. Not only did I have a hard-on for Kris Kristofferson, but Warren Oates as the bumbling, drunk hero had me dreaming of big desert landscapes full of complicated choices and Jedi mind fucks as far as the eye could see. But Kristofferson’s role shined as to why I’d come to love Sam Peckinpah as much as I had. He had the uncanny ability to make you question everything, including your morality, and make you see the world in the most disgusting and beautiful ways, all at the same time. Is this guy an asshole or a genius and is there really a difference?

Garcia is so loaded with questionable motives that it takes an insane amount of guts to look on, or look away. Art can make your blood boil.

That’s the point. And it’s pretty rare that anyone actually ever gets to that point. But he did. And what’s better than being young and having your blood boil?