Industrial strength

Vandelay Industries gives new meaning to sitcom pseudonym

By Newt Briggs

"Vandelay Industries. Kal Varnsen speaking. How may I help you?"

--Jerry Seinfeld, "Seinfeld" #34

Look up Vandelay Industries on Google, and you won't find the local indie rock trio's official website in the first 100 listings. Instead, you'll find an endless proliferation of TV junkies swapping "Seinfeld" minutia and gabbling about how funny it was when George stumbled out of Jerry's bathroom with his pants around his ankles screaming, "Vandelay Industries! Say Vandelay Industries!" The reference--familiar to any "Seinfeld" fan--was to a fictitious latex company, which George concocted in order to maintain his unemployment benefits. And to this day, it still makes Vandelay Industries guitarist Shawn Crowley laugh.

"We kicked around a few names for the band," says Crowley, noting that the band also considered the name A.G. Pennypacker in honor of Kramer's well-heeled alter ego on the show. "Originally, we were just going to call it Art Vandelay, but we didn't want any dumb-asses coming to the show and being like, `Oh, man, I love Art. He's the greatest.'"

Besides winning over "Seinfeld" fans, the name has earned the band a couple of gigs--or at least a bit of interest from venues typically more inclined toward national acts. "It's totally gotten us in the door of a few places," Crowley says. "We got a callback from the House of Blues, and the guy was like, `I never call anybody back, but I saw your name and I had to know what you guys were all about.'"

But Vandelay Industries' "Seinfeld" connection ends with its name--the band opting for the oblique lyrics and jangly melodies of emocore over the whimsical wisecracking of situation comedies. Together now for almost two years, Vandelay Industries is filled out by singer/bassist Matt Ivie and drummer Matt Norcross--erstwhile timekeeper for Las Vegas' next best thing, the Killers. Although exactly why Norcross parted ways the Killers remains somewhat sketchy ("The guitarist and I didn't really get along," he says), it's clear that his new band was brought together by that time-honored rock `n' roll staple, the classified ad.

"Every band that I've ever been in has been the product of a band ad," says Norcross. "It's a little bit of a freaky process, because you never know who's on the other end of the paper."

"It's really just a matter of weeding out the psychos," adds Crowley, who placed the ad. "Oh, man, this one guy had an ad--and these ads are always lies--that said, `Putting together hard rock band. Major label deal in the works.' So I meet up with him, and he's got this long `80s hair and he's playing these songs that sound like third-rate Poison. But I play with him for a little while, and then I ask about the label. And he goes, `Yeah, I kind of know this girl who knows somebody's dad at Columbia Records.' I was like, `I'm sure you do, dude.'"

After a period of trial and error, Crowley, Norcross and Ivie hooked up, and the fledgling band started looking for a singer to pull it all together. "We were actually going to be a four-piece or even a five-piece," says Norcross, "but we dropped that idea pretty quick because of all the losers that came in and tried out." Of the half-dozen vocalists who auditioned, only one merited serious consideration, and he was jettisoned after writing a song about Pop Tarts and spaceships. At that point, the like-minded threesome resolved that Ivie, a surprisingly capable singer, would handle the vocal duties. With the lineup set, the only thing the band had to worry about was its name--and a potential lawsuit for copyright infringement.

"We don't exactly have a lawyer or anything, but we talked to a guy who said that the name shouldn't be a problem because were not selling a competing product or anything," Crowley says. "But if it becomes a big issue, I'm sure we'll change it. I mean, there's a lot of other TV shows that we could take names from, right?"