By Mike McGuirk

MIKE MCGUIRK: "What I want to do is get this one big quote from you ... this real techie, Guitar Player magazine type of thing. A very involved, incomprehensible explanation of how you have your pedals set up." –Anthony Petrovic: "You get a bunch of broken stuff, you put it through a delay pedal ... and you play drums to it."

Down, tiger

I was supposed to write this article in October. At the time E-Zee Tiger, the brainchild of local musician Anthony Petrovic, was about to head out on its first tour ever, and I had promised Petrovic I would do something about his band to promote his tour kickoff show. Although I barely knew him, I liked Petrovic because he was always talking about this weird old band Hickey and how awesome they were, and even though I can't remember a single Hickey song, I remember they always had these hand-drawn, utterly cruddy album covers, and I had the feeling they were complete idiots, in a good way. For whatever reason, I never listened to them. Who knows why. Maybe I was just really into the new R.E.M. at the time. Anyway, I knew exactly who they were, so Petrovic's mentions of Hickey always stuck with me. Plus I liked the CD-R he gave me – E-Zee Tiger's Hey Kids I'm in a One Man Band! On top of that, I had really enjoyed seeing him live the one time I made it to one of his shows. But the real reason was I liked the guy. He's a good guy.

I interviewed Petrovic, listened to the record a couple times, and then, because I'm lazy, proceeded to not write the article. Something happened and I didn't have to turn it in on the day that had previously been agreed upon. I'll tell you: I love music, and I love writing about music, but if there's an opportunity to not write about music, I'm the first to volunteer.

So the article didn't happen, and a couple weeks later Petrovic was like, "Dude, uh, what happened?" and I was like, "Look, buddy, I don't know who you are or what in hell you are talking about. I've never seen you before in my life," and then I karate-chopped him in the face. The dude dropped like a sack of potatoes.

Real simple

My actions were unconscionable, I know, because Petrovic's such a good guy. And he plays happy, fucked-up music that's totally excellent. What he does is play a simple rock guitar riff, something he made up possibly under the influence of one substance or another, then he steps on a delay pedal and creates a loop of the guitar riff. He puts down the guitar and picks up a bass and plays a riff to go with the guitar and puts that on a loop. Then he puts the bass down and picks up the guitar and makes some kind of feedback noise, like "scree," maybe, and puts that through the delay pedal, on a loop. He stands up and goes over to a little turntable in the corner and starts playing a record.

You might think he has forgotten what he's doing and has decided to go listen to some Bright Eyes record, but he is, in fact, scratching – DJ stuff – and adding it to the sloppy roar coming out of the amps behind him. You're like, "What the hell can be next?"

This is where Petrovic sits down behind a drum set, and with this howling, throbbing mess unfolding around him, begins to play a beat. That beat is delayed and looped as well. Then he starts singing, with delay on it. Halfway through the song, he picks up the guitar again and somehow manages to fit a blaring, unpredictable guitar solo on top of it all. It really is nuts. The amount of setting up that goes into each song makes them long, and when the drums kick in, it feels good. Like victory after a glorious battle. Like you're trapped in a six-foot-tall bong with Bob Marley and Jim Morrison and they just gave you acid.

Pedal pusher

I asked Petrovic how he came up with this completely whacked way to play rock 'n' roll.

He said, "I've always been screwing around with delay pedals, singing through them, beatboxing through them, or whatever. And for every little repeat that would happen, I realized I could add something else or something else. And then they started making these delay pedals where you could layer things onto one another. Then I started to think about how I could add more and more stuff to it. You know, bored, at the practice space and stuff, screwin' around."

You know what that means, right? Dude is tuned in, turned on, and tuning it all out.