Holiday: It's not your average vacation...
Words: Aubrey Bramble
Photos: Aubrey Bramble

"It's like artwork. If you're hanging a painting... what's it mean to you? I know what it means to me; I do it for me. It's personal. There's no message."

Holiday's Ricky Seelbach is my kind of musician. He doesn't write epic humanitarian odes to saving the children and ending world hunger or sad, self-deprecating ditties in an attempt to woo teenage girls out of their Vickie's. Ricky writes songs primarily for himself. The fact that he sometimes plays these songs to the public is just the icing on a rather resonant cake.

"The intro to Europe's The Final Countdown pretty much inspires me to make music," replies Ricky when I ask him where he gets ideas for his songs, or lyrics. He explains that sometimes a song originates from an experience, but that most often it will be inspired by a single sound.

And it doesn't have to be complicated. Currently, he is working on a cover of the Real McCoy's 1995 dance hit, "Another Night." The little bit I heard at his in-home studio was infectiously fun, and guiltlessly good.

I ask him where the name "Holiday" came from. "Well, I was sitting around, imagining one of those families from the 50s having a picnic. And then a huge nuclear explosion in the distance wipes everything out. I like the juxtaposition - the name, and then the type of music that I play."

Ricky is somewhat of a juxtaposition himself: mild-mannered and polite, while at the same time simmering with passion and packing an aggressive punch. A real life Clark Kent/Superman dichotomy, right here in our own backyard.

Ricky calls his sound "punk music with keyboards," noting that he's "always wanted to be on stage and rock out" despite the fact that he's never learned to play the guitar. So he relies heavily on the vocoder and a few electric keyboards, and somehow still manages to bring the thrash. You get all the action of a punk show, but with a more developed, progressive sound. In a music scene as diverse and abundant as ours, this is evolution.

School yourself in his distinct sound over at his MySpace, www.myspace.com/holiday1982.