Jennifer Trezza: 

Stranger no more

Jennifer Trezza is a live synthpop performer whose sets typically preceed shows by the local post-punk band I Almost Saw God on the Metro.

Despite a longtime interest in performing, Jennifer suffers from such extreme stage fright that she prefers to hide her face behind a ski mask, or anything else that will disconnect her from the audience.

"If it were up to me, and if it wouldn't be so extremely boring, I would put up a big screen so that no one could look at me and then I would be fine."

Her itch to perform began in the four years she lived in London, where she realized that she couldn't play guitar but could program anything. During her current solo performances, she gets up to seven machines -- combinations of drum machines, keyboards and effects pedals -- going at once.

"I've always loved Kraftwerk and DAF and collected records like that since an early age. Then this electro thing happened and it was like 'Thank God' because other people were making records that were good and were sort of like what I was doing: using old, cheesy keyboards."

With 500-600 records in her collection, there are a few odd titles in there: "Most of my records are bad. They're like Tina Yothers [of Family Ties fame] and Paula Abdul."

The stage fright thing is a bit ironic, given her day job. "I'm a stripper. I will say that 85 percent of the stereotypes are true. We're just there to take all your money and leave. Only most [strippers] don't go home and shit their pants over the latest keyboard. They're buying shoes or whatever."

Jennifer's also been known to DJ. She once used the moniker Little Stranger, which she has since dropped. "After a while I thought it was stupid to call myself a band name when I'm not a band."

Even DJs make mistakes: "I put out a really bad remix of [Brooklyn buzz band] the Yeah Yeah Yeahs under [Little Stranger]. I thought I was going to have a chance to touch up first before they put it out. I called them up and said I had the finished version, but they told me it had already gone to press. So I pretty much stopped using that name after that."

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this thread:

Add a comment

Latest in Profile

Search Events

Recent Comments

www.flickr.com
items in Creative Loafing Atlanta More in Creative Loafing Atlanta pool

© 2012 Creative Loafing Atlanta