The Obelisk Questionnaire: Alessandro Trerè of Herba Mate
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Alessandro Trerè of Herba Mate
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
My name is Alessandro Trerè, I am a 45-year-old father of two kids, I’ve been playing for 20 years with my two pals, Andrea and Ermes in the band Herba Mate, I am not a professional musician, I have a full-time job in a MedDev company, but music is my life: I am a record collector, bass collector, solid state amps fanatic, part time consultant in my wife’s record shop in my hometown Faenza…
Herba Mate is a trio who comes from the same musical background: me, Andrea and Ermes are almost the same age and we have lived the golden age of ’90s/’00s international rock music in our teens; even though we are in a geographically and linguistically distant country (Italy) we were fed with bread and US/UK rock music thanks to local small but very well stocked record shops and good TV broadcasts! We started playing grunge covers with zero experience, no cash in our pocket, borrowing crappy instruments…and when stoner rock came up, we got hit by the sound of Kyuss, Monster Magnet, Fatso Jetson, the Heads, Core etc.: in particular, the live performance of Homme & Co. on the Italian TV program “Segnali di Fumo”, back in 1995, was the turning point; watching it in real time, on a national TV program, just after lunch, back from school, was the moment when we understood that a new musical concept was born. So we started to tune down our axes, to crank up the gain on our self-distorted cheap amps, to put aside our pocket money for affording still cheap, but more powerful amps and Herba Mate was born.
No doubt, our music is then strongly inspired by stoner rock / desert rock, it spans from ’70s heavy rock to groovy stoner rock, with a touch of ’60s psych and a bit of Krautrock motoric iterations. It’s the sound coming out from our amps that gives us the fuel for our musical inspiration.
Frankly speaking, what we listen to, now, is distant from the stoner rock we were listening to when we started our journey back in 2000: the three of us have different musical tastes that, in most of the cases, don’t involve heavy distorted guitar sounds! But, when we plug in and switch our amps on, there’s nothing better than a heavy psych jam to take us to our own comfort zone, our own paradise.
Describe your first musical memory.
There was a sort of MTV in Italy, back in the ’80s, and I remember quite clearly the video of “it’s a shame” by Talk Talk… that sound told me something, and nowadays I can’t help but having goosebumps when I hear Mark Hollis’ voice.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Hard to say, I am not able to isolate just one single, best musical memory. As I love lists, please allow me to write down the following short one:
– When I first touched a bass string on a secondhand Fender Jazz bass
– The first time I saw Kyuss on a TV show (see my answer above)
– The day I listened to the first 15 seconds of track #1 of Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart
– Watching Morphine live in Imola (my first rock concert when I was 14-15 years old)
– Attending Slint performing Spiderland live in Bologna.
– First time I saw Fatso Jetson live at Sidro Club in Savignano, few years ago: that’s the day I met my idol and actual friend Mario Lalli for the first time! Few months later my band Herba Mate supported them live and then we received from Mario a bunch of their unreleased tracks, for our split album Early Shapes… What a man, what a band!
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
When I realized that I could handle health problems, both physical and mental, not relying solely on medical / pharmaceutical prescriptions based on conventional drugs and conventional medical approaches.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Artistic progression leads to peace and harmony, individually and globally. As a human being, the gift of embracing an artistic path is helping me releasing personal tensions and gloom, which results in an open minded, proactive approach towards the outside world; and the more I feed my art “hunger”, the better I face the world and who lives in it. Anyone should let art in.
How do you define success?
Success is when you find the right tuning and the right frequency in everyday life: for instance, when you tune your instrument on the stage or during rehearsals, when the song you play is in-tune, but also when you properly tune your talking to your children, your wife, your working colleagues, your friends…Tuning is a form of empathy you should tend to, and when you find the right balancing and frequency, you are on your way for a daily success.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
The most shocking one has been the accidental viewing of a scene from Deep Red movie (from Dario Argento) on TV, when I was six years old: the reflection of the murderer on a mirror, with a spooky picture on the back wall, is a frame that haunted my dreams for years and has probably had a negative effect on my growth… over time, I got over it and that movie became one of my all-time favorite, but I really think that, those days, this small event helped making me a shy and introvert kid.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I haven’t yet finished to shape myself for becoming the human being I’d like to be; but I am working on it, I still have to refine some roughness. (#128521#)
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Art is an essential element: it should be mentioned in Mendeleev’s table somewhere in between Carbon and Oxygen.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Being fully grateful.
https://www.facebook.com/HerbaMateBand
https://herbamate.bandcamp.com/
