IMMODEST MOUSE

CHECK OUT THE DISCUSSION THREAD DEDICATED to local band Modest Mouse at punkrock.net, and you’ll read over 30 pages of hot-tempered commentary that begins, “Isaac Brock from Modest Mouse raped a girl in Seattle last week… DON’T LET HIM RAPE AGAIN.” Then there was the cryptic reference on MTV a few weeks ago to the Murder City Devils cancelling their tour with the band.

What gives?

It turns out Modest Mouse–more specifically, Brock–is at the center of an underground controversy surrounding a 19-year-old woman who claims he date-raped her in February. Brock couldn’t be reached for comment, but his manager denies the allegations.

According to police reports and an interview with the alleged victim, Brock met the woman at the Cha Cha Lounge on February 16. At the end of the night, after a few too many, Brock offered to walk her home. The woman says that upon reaching her apartment, she realized she didn’t have her keys. Brock suggested that she stay at his house in Ballard.

After calling several friends, trying to line up an alternative, she took his suggestion. At his house, the two kissed, but when he started to undress her, she told him she didn’t want to have sex. “I said ‘this is not okay. I don’t want to do this,'” the woman recalls. She says Brock forcibly entered her at that point.

She says she pushed him off several times and told him “I don’t want to do this.” When she realized that he wasn’t going to stop, she says, “I sort of left my body and went somewhere else.”

Strangely enough, the woman says that after intercourse, Brock “freaked out” and asked her how well she knew members of the Murder City Devils. She said she knew them well, and he responded, “It’s a good thing I stopped before things went overboard, right? You don’t think I’m a dick, do you?”

With no place to go–the woman says she “felt trapped”–she spent the night at Brock’s house. He gave her money for a cab home in the morning.

At first the woman didn’t report the incident, but talked about it with friends, most of whom work in the music industry. It wasn’t long before word got around. “Within two days people knew in L.A. and New York,” she says. “It was on the Internet.” The Murder City Devils canceled their show with Modest Mouse at Boise State University and all subsequent tour dates.

Chad Quierolo, the Devil’s booking agent, said that “the Murder City Devils know the girl very well, and they’ve known Isaac for a long time. They think she’s credible. They believe her and they don’t ever want to play with Modest Mouse again.” Quierolo said other bands he represents also don’t want to play with Modest Mouse until “things get sorted out.”

Damage to the band’s reputation hasn’t stopped there. According to Jef Hoskins, who runs in the same circles as Modest Mouse and the woman, “When it first happened people were wanting to physically fight about it and they’re still arguing. There’s a lot of tension between even my closest friends and me. If they’ve heard his side, they think she wanted to be with him but changed her mind after the fact. I’ve heard third-hand stories that they got up the next day and spent all day together. I wish the people it affects would communicate with each other. The wrong people are discussing it the wrong way.”

The 19-year-old woman, who initially “just wanted the story to go away,” has been emboldened by similar tales from friends (though not involving the Modest Mouse singer). “My friend was saying that a guy in [another band] raped a woman a few years ago in Oregon and it was gossip for weeks, but she didn’t report it and now they’re playing Gap commercials. It’s like it didn’t happen for them, they never had to deal with it, but she had to go through all the shit and live with it.”

So she decided to speak out. “He’s a rock star and he’s got a big head and he probably thought ‘this girl is so stoked just to be at my house.’ And when I wasn’t into it he thought ‘fuck you, I’ll do whatever I want because I can.’ But he didn’t know who he was messing with.”