By Daiv Whaley

It’s been argued that Cleveland as a self-esteem problem, thinking too little of itself and the creative talents producing noteworthy work in all sorts of genres throughout the city. Musicians, visual artists, actors and writers and film makers labor away and often don’t get much recognition, while Clevelanders stay at home to watch American Idol or Lost, or turn out in droves for the latest baseball, football or basketball game and then go home to their suburban domiciles to walk the dog and go to bed. Clearly, the folks following their muses in this city aren’t doing it for fame or profit, but because they have to do it…it’s in their blood and they just can’t keep quiet. But maybe in a purist sense of things, that’s a good thing. To paraphrase Elvis Costello, their aim is true.

On a cold winter night in 2006 at Pat’s in the Flats, I witnessed a remarkable band schooled in Rock and Roll and awash in that underground “cool” that made me feel like I was in Greenwich Village or at CBGBs when it was still a very fine place to be…a four piece who whipped up dissonance and feedback and a threatening atmosphere that was exuberant and disquieting at the same time. Comprised of veterans of the music scene, that band was the Flat Can Co. The front woman was Miss Melvis, a svelte and lithe guitarist who wore a marching band hat and sang into the microphone with a megaphone and blew a tiny toy horn and laid down guitar riffs over a thundering wall of bass and drum and guitar like a cross between Courtney Love and Ted Nugent, tattoos and all. And this was Cleveland!

Miss Melvis turns out to be Melanie Fioritto, a native of the Cleveland area and a long-time musician involved in the Rock scene here. Witty, smart, self-possessed and confident without that annoying cockiness some musicians seem to wear like a second skin, she makes a very striking counterpoint to her black t-shirted band mates kicking up enough decibels to literally shake the walls. On their My Space page, the band describes its sound as “Rock/Hardcore/Experimental,” and again as a “flat-out fuzzed 4 piece free rock behemoth lumbering and teetering across the wasteland.” I’d say they’re the logical next step to artcore bands like Fugazi and Sonic Youth; they’d say “grrr buzzzzz woo hoo.” And did I mention that the band only performs together on stage—a total improvisational experience, each show a new thrill set.

It took awhile to get her to agree to an interview. Assorted details regarding female versus male guitarists, Rock & Roll, Cleveland, and her interesting choices in headwear now follow….

Cool Cleveland: Okay, first off, who are the other members of the Flat Can Co.?

Miss Melvis: Sure, there are the brothers Pickering, also known as Scott (drummer) and Keith (guitar). And Jim Donadio (bass), who I refer to as Jimmy D!

CC: By the way, is it Flat Can Company or Flat Can Co.?

Melvis: I don’t even know. Flat Can Co. I suppose.

CC: Your music in the Flat Can Company is fantastic…….so much feed-back and cacophony going on….like you four are whipping up a thunderstorm on stage. When you played the All Go Signs event at Cleveland Public Theatre last summer, as you guys were all jamming in that amazing balcony scene, I kept waiting for one of you to start hurtling lightning bolts down from Mount Olympus or something. Have you ever thought of wearing Viking helmets and capes on stage?

Melvis: Ha! Thanks by the way. I did actually think about hurtling myself off of that balcony for minute. A former band mate of mine in the audience found it to be a great opportunity to throw water bottles at my head. And all along, I thought she was trying to give me a drink.

CC: I’m curious as to how you generally describe your band’s “sound” to people you are inviting to come and hear the band for the first time?

Melvis: I say that we are a noisy improv group, “Hendrix times ten” I say. Always with the caveat that we are not a hippie jam band.

CC: Do you feel audiences generally “get” your music, like, how it took folks awhile to “get” Mozart?

Melvis: Did it take folks awhile to “get” Mozart? Poor guy. I guess they either get it or they don’t. If they walk in knowing that we are going to make their ears bleed and we are making the shit up as we go along, then I suppose they get it. If they come in wanting a pretty little ditty, then, no.

CC: You told me once that Flat Can Co. only plays together when you perform live……no practices, etc. And that much of the time you’re all playing so loudly that none of you can hear the other musicians and their parts. What’s that feel like…..can you perhaps give me a metaphor or simile for that kind of experience, as a member of the band?

Melvis: Well, all of the above is true. In fact, we just had a show with a great sound system and it allowed us to hear one another, creating a whole different dynamic. Ordinarily, we can’t hear shit. I don’t think I can explain what the experience is like. It’s great for me because the stress of having to remember things isn’t a factor. I used to get so nervous and preoccupied in some other bands that I would blank out on songs that I knew. This is great, because we have no idea what is going to come out on any given night, and it really doesn’t matter. At our first show as Flat Can at Pats in the Flats, I had this absolutely cathartic experience. I was holding in some serious anger that just spilled out of me. Then, I listened back to a recording of the show and felt it from the opposite end. It was pretty ugly, to me anyway.

CC: Okay, so you’re one of the guitarists in the Flat Can Co. You’ve also played in the Porch Monkeys and the Donnas (Or was it The Heathers?) and Chump. What other bands have you been involved with over the years?

Melvis: The Porch Monkeys? It was the Backmonkeys actually. And yeah, the Donna’s would be nice, but I was in the Heathers. Same difference, we’re just a bit older and much cuter. My first band was called the Mink Strollers. We named it after my grandmother’s mink coat. We did an awesome rendition of “Roadrunner.” I was also in a group called Chevelle, and as we were about to play at Studio A Rama a few years back, the singer from the Chevelle that ultimately ended up on the radio called me and duped me into thinking he was a fan. He got all of this info from me and then we received a cease and desist from their lawyer to stop using the name. We ended up playing under the name Trans Lunar Injection, which was the beginning of a merger with some Speaker Cranker folks that ultimately led to the Flat Can Co. I also played in the band for Cleveland Public Theater’s production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and recently have had the opportunity to play with some of the folks from Home and Garden, past and present in a gallery setting doing improv. Somewhere during all of this, there was Chump, the band I had the most invested in personally. And you just reminded me of a short little stint in a crazy-ass group called Pizza Girl, which was a bit of a joke, but we had some really good songs.

CC: How long have you been playing guitar, and is there a fantastic story about how you became interested in the instrument in the first place?

Melvis: No fantastic story about me and guitar. I always remember having one, though I never really started playing it until my brother and I formed a little blues band with some friends. We all sort of learned off of each other as we went along. I guess when you ask how long I have been playing, I’d say about 15 years or so, if you call what I do “playing”. I really always wanted to be the singer or the drummer. I still do. Most of my rock n roll role models were not guitar players at all. They were people like Alice Cooper.

CC: Did you take formal lessons and all that, or just pick it up and work on it for many years?

Melvis: I tried lessons here and there. This one guy whose name escapes me would laugh at me and say I looked like a pigeon because of how I looked at the music and back at the neck of the guitar. We didn’t last very long together. Then at some point I took lessons from Michelle Temple from the Vivians and now of Pere Ubu. She taught me more about how to approach playing. One key thing she taught me was that it is the strumming hand that is important. I always thought the fret hand was, so the whole rhythm/strumming thing was eye opening. She also got me into using heavy strings and heavy picks. She was all about heavy. The fucked up thing is that I am left handed, and play righty, so I often wonder how I would fare if I had learned on a left handed guitar. When I air guitar, it is always left-handed!

CC: Who’s your favorite guitarist in the whole world, and what brand is your favorite make & model?

Melvis: There is this guitarist named Charles Baty, of Little Charlie and the Nightcats. I love his playing. And of course Jimi Hendrix. I also liked Stevie Ray Vaughn’s playing a lot. The record he did with Jimmy Vaughn called “Brothers” right before he died is incredible. I’m also a great fan of Buddy Guy. I actually got to play his polka dot guitar onstage with him looking on at the Agora. It was one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life. Long story, but it was sort of a dare from my brother. I actually got up there and was scared to death. The Scene Magazine review of the show was very kind and described my playing as “angular riffs”. That was a really nice way to put it! As far as guitars go, I know very little about them. I play Les Paul’s, but I’ve always wanted to try other makes and models. I like Gibsons because the neck is wide, and I’m kind of clumsy.

CC: Every time I’ve seen the band, you’ve worn that crazy marching band helmet. What’s that about?

Melvis: You’ve seen the band twice. I don’t wear it all of the time. I have these friends that gave me all of these old marching band uniforms from Kirk Middle School in East Cleveland that was recently demolished.

CC: Have you ever dreamt of new guitar riffs or had other guitar-inspired reveries?

Melvis: No. I am definitely not the person who can drum up a guitar line in my head and then figure out how to play it. When I wrote songs with Chump, it was all through fucking around and then needing another part and fucking around some more until it felt like a song. I can’t even figure out what other people are playing. I’m terrible at that. To take it a step further, I can’t even figure out what I’m playing when I listen to stuff back. It’s all about the moment and it’s hit or miss. The comfort being in knowing you’re only one note away from something that works. The trick is getting there like you meant it. That part I have down.

CC: Do you find yourself unduly focused upon or perhaps treated a bit specially because you’re a female guitarist in a fairly ‘man’s world’ environment of Rock & Roll?

Melvis: Well, I have heard that before, but I’m not sure it has to do with being a female guitarist. Maybe being the only female in the band factors in, in which case, I could be playing the kazoo for all anyone cares. But I could see that maybe people still see a female guitarist as a novelty. It’s a bit ludicrous, because there are a lot of us these days.

CC: Do you even agree that Rock & Roll is rather a man’s world kind of environment, like Liz Phair was implying on that great album of hers, "Exile in Guysville"? I mean, yeah, there are the Deal Sisters and Throwing Muses and Bikini Kill and L7 and Sleater-Kinney and there was always Ann and Nancy Wilson from Heart and Joan Jett, but there’s way more dudes playing axes than women, you know what I mean?

Melvis: Well, you just threw out a laundry list of women players, so no, I’m not sure I agree. You make me think of Charo, who was really known as a comedienne/performer, but she was an amazing guitarist. And sure, there are more men playing guitar, for whatever reasons, but that’s changing now the same way other things traditionally male now include females. Women’s roles are changing and we have a place in many arenas. I mean come on, just take us seriously. I’ve never really considered playing guitar as a gender related activity, so it’s hard for me to understand why it is considered so odd that women play the damn guitar. It’s not Major League football.

CC: Would you care to speculate on why there is such a preponderance of males playing guitars, and do you see that changing with the times at all?

Melvis: Why do I think that’s the case? Who knows? We’re finally exiting the age where females were expected to do certain things and not do other things. It also probably has a whole sociology attached to it. If you think of the girl groups of the 60’s, these were largely vocal groups put together by men. You also had people like Carol King writing amazing songs that a lot of male groups popularized. It’s just the way it was. If I were to venture a guess, I would say that early representations of men with guitars always make the guitar look like a sex object. It was this thing that was incorporated into the hip-swinging male sexuality that women would literally cry over.

CC: There does seem to be more lesbians playing guitars per capita….say, like The Indigo Girls or Melissa Etheridge...

Melvis: You’re going to have to do better than that to prove your point.

CC: Do you look at yourself as a female guitarist or as a guitarist who just happens to be a woman? I’ve heard you describe yourself as an "entertainer," not a musician or a guitarist at all. Is this pertaining to your more theatrical work in costume, or a statement about how you view what you do, even with your band projects?

Melvis: I don’t really look at myself as a guitarist. So that pretty much squashes that question, doesn’t it? Let’s just say I present myself as a performer. Mostly because I’ve been in a variety of different performance scenarios, and there is no one way to describe it. I wouldn’t dare declare myself a guitar player, because then people may have an expectation of me and find me out. So I had a Barry Manilow moment and decided I was a performer.

CC: “Miss Melvis” is such a great stage name. How’d you end up with it as your moniker anyways?

Melvis: It goes back to a Christmas card I made a long time ago. I somehow superimposed a picture of me and Elvis standing together and signed it 'Melvis.' It just caught on and even my parents started calling me Melvis. So the Christmas cards continued and got more elaborate, and that was really the impetus. I decided to use it as my name on recordings, and then whenever I did anything performance-based. I added the “miss” because there were a lot of people calling themselves Melvis. Some guy in Vegas, etc. It was also my way of letting people know I was female because I thought it would cut me the slack I needed to be accepted in the male dominated world of guitar that you spoke of earlier.

CC: Back to that guitar again, what guitar-based performance, recording, or collaboration are you the most proud of so far in your career?

Melvis: It’s funny that you call it a career. It would be a career if I were writing this from my own private jet. Let’s see. Tough question. I’m proud of the Chump stuff considering where we were musically at the time. I think we wrote some decent songs. I remember a show with some incarnation of Chump where we did a version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” at the Euclid Tavern. From what I remember, it rocked. I’m proud of a lot of things. I’m also really grateful to have played with some of the best drummers around.

CC: That marching band hat you wear is so iconic. Is there a story behind its assimilation into your stage look?

Melvis: You asked about this already. You are obsessed with that hat. I can elaborate by telling you that since I did this sort of performance art thing called “MelAdjusted” at the All Go Factory with my friend Mark, I have been playing around a lot more with looks that have a bit of a military bent. That’s what I was going for in that performance and it incorporated a bit of restraint as well, so there is definitely something going on that has to do with uniforms and being tied up.

CC: Speaking of a staged look, a lot of performers like Iggy Pop have talked about a transformation they make as they prepare to go onstage. You're pretty intense, almost threatening, when you're performing. Is that you onstage, Melanie, or an altered ego of sorts, and what is she about if she's not you?

Melvis: Holy crap. Now you’re messing with my head. I come off threatening onstage? No wonder nobody talks to me after the show. Everybody transforms before they perform. Of course it’s an alter ego, but not a stagnant one. It is a character that changes. I suppose there’s a dash of Melanie in there somewhere.

CC: What’s your take on the Cleveland music scene these days—how’re the kids doing?

Melvis: Well, I don’t get out much these days. But from what I have seen, there’s some exciting stuff going on with all types of music. There is a whole new contingency of these really young punk rock bands (junior high school age) that are fun to watch because they constantly morph and grow and it’s really interesting. I also have Sirius radio and Cleveland is highly represented on Little Steven’s Underground Garage channel…The Vacancies, Cobra Verde, Rainy Day Saints and many others, old and new. It’s really great. I know those groups have been around for a while. Music created in Cleveland has always had a distinct sound to me. The same way Detroit has a signature sound. I describe it as an underlying anxiety that is unmistakably Cleveland. The only example I can give is of a group like Bone Thugs and Harmony. I love them, but their music only works for me here. I tried to listen to them in LA once and it wasn’t working at all. It came from and belongs in an environment that is at times dark and dreary and ensconced in or surrounded by brick buildings and bridge underpasses.

CC: Cleveland has a rather illustrious cache about it in terms of Past Rock & Roll that acheived 'greatness', from Alan Freed to the Dead Boys and Pere Ubu, that latter band being comprised of some musicians with whom you have performed. It's one reason the Rock Hall is here, and why Ian Hunter retitled "England Rocks" to "Cleveland Rocks." I'm curious as to your opinion about what influences have helped bands like Ubu generate here, and also if that kind of thing could ever happen here again?

Melvis: It would be pretty presumptuous of me to even begin to suggest what influences were at work with a band like Pere Ubu. I have no idea what was going on at the time except for some very disjointed stories I hear about those days. I still think though that it relates a lot to the environment. It’s where people are producing music that is compelling. You certainly are not going to hear any Orange County sensibilities coming from here. Can that precedent-setting, history-making thing happen here again? Absolutely. It may be happening now for all we know.

CC: Flat Can Co. just released a factory-pressed CD of limited quantity. You guys are an improvisational band that only performs together live, so is this going to be a recording of a live session, albeit sans audience, or are you being more deliberate and even downright calculating in what you’ve captured and recorded for the disc?

Melvis: We took it straight from our last two shows at Pats in the Flats. Scott Pickering records every show. Jimmy D has a keen way of extracting the good stuff and finding a beginning point and an ending point. So you will be getting the real deal.

CC: Last question. I know you’ve been around and involved in both the Music and the Art scenes for quite some time here. Is there anything you’d like to tell the good citizens of Cleveland with words, instead of with your music?

Melvis: Sure, why not. I’m proud to live in a city teeming with amazing artists of all types. I hope everyone realizes the breadth of what we have here. It’s quality shit and it’s in every artistic arena.

The Flat Can Co. performs this Friday night, May 12th, at the Beachland Tavern with Pistola and Blush. You can also check out their sounds at the Grog Shop on June 14th, with Bardo Pond and Neil Blender. They will be featured at this year’s Ingenuity Festival—look or listen for them on East 4th Street. Information on their newly-released CD is available on their website, http://www.TheFlatCanCo.com

Rock on. dw

Photos by Jeanette Palsa and George Nemeth (:divend:)