Simple Machines says:
The Secret Stars are a duo, sometimes trio, from Boston. We knew Geoff and Jodi from the times they lived in Washington DC. At that time, Geoff started up this great fanzine called No Duh that we loved. He eventually moved to Boston to finish school at Berklee, and Jodi moved there separately. Anyway, Geoff and Jodi are going to tell you the Secret Stars story. We put out a lovely 7" in the spring of 1995, and Shrimper just put out their full-length CD/LP. Although they're not really on Simple Machines, we like to keep in touch with them so you can always their tour dates and news from us...

The Secret Stars say:

The Secret Stars was an idea that we, Jodi and Geoff, came up with during the summer of 1993 while we were housesitting our friend's apartment in the South End of Boston. It was all aesthetic and had nothing to do with music. We just wanted to wear sunglasses all the time and take lots of pictures of ourselves, mostly doing these surf songs where Jodi played drums.

Anyway, I'm in this band called Karate that has a 7" out on Self-Starter Foundation in February of 95 and a full-length on Southern in 1996. I got back from Karate tour in July of 94 and hated loud music and big equipment, and I had all these songs I had worked out on tour. So I asked Jodi if she wanted to make a tape. So we did and it was great. That is our main focus...just recording lo-fi stuff in our bedrooms, and the rest is residual. We've only played three shows: Ian's Monstres Celebres, in Boston w/ the Lune, and of course the Simple Machines thing. We decided that we are only going to play special shows and shows that our friends ask us to play for now, and that we're going to do a little tour this summer. Until then, we are going to play a Shrimper release thing at Pipeline Records that our friend asked us to do, and a show with Lois in April. But the recording is the main thing. We did the first tape, this single, the Shrimper tape, and we have about five new songs that we're going to start recording this spring. The coolest thing is being able to have this control over the songs, to record them how we want and when we want, and to be able to drink hot chocolate or turn on NPR if we don't feel like recording for a while, without having to worry about engineers and drum sounds.

The most recent project was our three-week Italy tour in November 2000 that was truly excellent. Of course Jodi, being fluent in Italian, was in heaven the entire time. We played in lots of smaller towns that we've never visited before, and of course ate some of the most amazing food of our lives. We even put out a single on an Italian Label, Candy Apple Records, to support the tour.

Jodi says that The Secret Stars are for the secret stars, our friends (like Amy Farina, or Gavin McCarthy, or everyone's hired gun, Josh LaRue, or even you guys) who do these incredible cool projects but are behind the scenes for the most part. She says that we're a tribute. I'm down with that.

My big thing is just to record sappy love songs that my friends listen to while kissing, just like when you make your friend a mix tape and she tells you that she listened to it when she was depressed and it made her feel ok. That's the best feeling. This is probably bad stuff for promo, I would imagine, but we aren't a 'band' per se and we don't want to be. I think we're more of a media project and that's what makes it so great and vigorous for me.