Growing up in quaint, historic Fairfield County, Connecticut, was awful, says Tim Aher. “I was alienated in this way that was so profound it couldn’t be reduced to some weird group-politics thing. So I spent a lot of time in my room woodshedding on the guitar and listening to metal.”
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In his senior year of high school he found salvation on IRC, a clunky on-line chat forum where he met other self-described “lonely teenage guys,” striking up a particularly close friendship with one named George Moore. They bonded over music and their mutual hatred of school and decided to start a band. When Aher went over to Moore’s house for the first time, he saw a ton of records by groups like Whitehouse and Acid Mothers Temple–bands he’d never heard of. Moore told him his uncle Thurston (yes, that Thurston Moore) turned him on to almost all of the experimental music in his collection.
Earlier this year he started putting on shows at the U. of C. “It’s good for the university,” he says, “because it makes them look hip, and they’ve got a big stake in that, especially right now, because they’re trying to expand the college and not have everybody be socially inept.” But his idea of the best way to socialize the school, it seems, is to get everyone involved in some sort of antisocial activity. A few months ago, when his “improv psych” band, False Sex, played at a party, one of his friends threw a garbage can through the wall and Aher body slammed a band member onto a couch full of girls. Later, when someone asked him what his “deal” was, he replied, “Don’t you get it? It’s an excuse to act retarded.”
