Interview Thread
 

I don't think we've ever had one. Post music-related interviews.

Shonen Knife
http://www.furious.com/perfect/shonenknife.html

Violent Onsen Geisha
http://unquote.tripod.com/VOG/raygun.html

If Japan seems, at times, on the verge of unrepentant nerdiness, then Masaya Nakahara, instigator of the noise act Violent Onsen Geisha, is a contender for King of the Nerds. Ubiquitous in Tokyo are the school boys in their heavy wool black uniforms with white clerical collars, the otaku-zoku (computer nerds) furtively stuffing mangas (comic books) into their oversized down parkas as they shuffle home to jack in and log on, and the bespectacled salary-men who have elevated nerdiness and high-test-score geekiness to new international heights. Westerners don't like to write it or say it, resisting the cultural stereotyping that smacks of political incorrectness, but loads of Japanese men and boys are crippled by congenital geekiness and unremitting momma's boy-ness. Few societies in the world lavish as much praise on stellar test takers and data memorizers while disregarding the corollary awkward physical manifestation, bestowing relentless promotions, perks and favors upon the exemplary uncool while the occasional iconoclast who embodies a James Deanish rugged individualism is relegated to unmarriable pariah.


As a Japanese woman, I can dare write it: many Japanese men don't know how to be cool. All this makes it even more admirable that Masaya Nakahara has emerged as a pop culture phenomenon by embodying that nerdiness but somehow making it seem cool.

Now, as he sits in Aoyama's Spiral Cafe, amidst wirey, cagey sculptures that are part of whatever avant-gardish show is up at this museum cafe, Nakahara comes across as a bad little boy, his hair shorn in a Japanese school boy haircut - black bristles and too-white scalp - wearing a black parka and T shirt with a portrait of Vanessa Paradis. But he makes a smirking, judging, appraising, sneering, condescending, snide little boy, the kind of bad litle boy, maybe, who I wouldn't mind slapping around, undressing and suiting up in a good Italian two-piece, because Nakahara, 25, is handsome in a cleft, sullen sort of way, the rugged loner, defiant in the face of mono-culturalism.


Nakahara is organically individualistic, often writing film crit praises for B-movies, authoring a collection of essays about such flicks, and directing promotional videos. He is a renaissance geek, art directing his album covers, penning obtuse lyrics, performing Nancy Sinatra covers. And he records alone, plinking away on toy pianos and rattle-trap drum sets over samples of his parents having an argument or his sister practicing karaoke.

"I record alone because I don't have any friends," explains Nakahara as he looks at a menu. He announces how delighted he is that this cafe serves creme brulee. I ask him if that's his favorite food. "It's very good, you should have some." Nakahara orders and watches the big-hipped waitress as she walks away.
I ask him who he makes his music for, if his constituency is perhaps primarily the otaku-zoku and related sub-cultures. "I make music for intellectuals with masters degrees and super models. I'm not an otaku kind of musician. I'm not a representative of that pathetic subculture. Those people aren't creative; they are compilers and disseminators of already existing information. I take some existing data, reconfigure it, remix it, through samples, whatever, and then put it out and it is something new, rejuvenated if not totally original."

Nakahara's first three albums, Que Sera, Sera, OTIS and Nation of Rhythm Slaves have established his niche in the Japanese music scene, a cultural cocktail blending sampled animated films, cartoons and computer games with the somnambulistic mania of a more mellow Beck that already makes him the arbiter and definition of Japanese noise music. Natahara is musically obtuse, plinking and winding his way through atonal, sometimes dreary cul-de-sacs before anything emerges that could be called a song, or even a form. Primarily, he seems interested in creating unease, and is as likely to lull the listener into despairing disinterest as any other emotion.

"I don't set out to confuse people. I feel that this generation processes music differently, is more willing to accept odd varieties as 'pop."' says Nakahara. Explaining how he developed his peculiar aesthetic, he says, "I used to listen to the radios lot when I was in elementary school. NHK had some contemporary music programs, so I had a chance to listen to a Greek composer like Xenskis. Also, I watched movies, paying attention to the music - I especially liked Kenneth Anger films. I learned the sense of electronic sounds far the sake of sounds, sort of a musique concrete. Then I started dabbling, using just a tape recorder and electric piano, since I didn't have a synthesizer. I am the last of the analog warriors."

The waitress drops off his creme brulee. He scoops some custard with a spoon and keeps talking. Eager to dispel the notion that he is an otaku-musician, and to distance himself from Japan's other preeminent noise act the Boredoms, Nakahara points out that his "music is pop music, I think. Experimental or free music is not generally considered to be pop music, but to me it is. Noise music is playing with music, which is a pop thing to do, therefore it's pop music. But most people don't think so, so they try to label me." Nakahara presents himself as an enigma - "I don't use samplers, yes I do, no I don't, well, write that I use a dozen open reel-to-reels" - but the mystery is somewhat undermined by the curious fact that he still lives at home with his parents in the Aoyama section of Tokyo. How cool is it for a cutting edge noise musician to live with his mom? Nakahara won't talk about that, saying only that when he is a rock star he will move out of the house. He changes the subject and reveals that he records in his pajamas, "for maximum musical comfort."

Violent Onsen Geisha's live performances have posed special problems for Nakahara, necessitating that he hire or cajole musicians to play Black Sabbath and Nancy Sinatra covers over which he projects his warbling voice, the resulting music being nothing like his albums. "Lately, I've started to think I should do it properly. I take recording seriously, though. And my future is as a pop musician. I am not one of those types who wants to die on the fringes. I want mainstream success, but a success that allows me to record the kind of music I like to record." And what's that? "l am always changing. I don't know if I would ever be a musician, because I just create things that happen to be music."

I ask Nakahara, it you could be anything else other than a super cool noise musician, what would you be? "I would run a bar or be a baseball player," he laughs. "And I would not live at home." Interview by Michiko Toyama

Kan Mikami

Interview by Takuzo Nakashima; translated by Alan Cummings.1

Like a lot of people, my first exposure to Kan Mikami's guttural, soaring heart-rending vocals was through his appearance on the early PSF classic "Live in the First Year of Heisei", a super-group that also featured Keiji Haino and venerable free-bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa. A bit of poking around in his back catalogue soon revealed that Kan had been a huge folk star at the height of the Japanese folk boom in the seventies, but that his dark, nightmarish lyrics and screaming intensity put him way ahead of the field of jangling acoustic losers with their pretty harmonies. Kan fell from grace with his major label backers in the eighties and entered into a period of oblivion, playing infrequent shows to miniscule audiences. During this period, his lyrics had become oblique and surreal compared to the early fear and loathing, he had a new uniquely jagged and rhythmic guitar-style, but the magnificent vocals still remained to soar and tumble, carress and lambast.

Mikami still plays very frequently around the live-house circuit in Japan, supported by a small band of intensely loyal hardline fans / drinking buddies known has the Mikami Komuten. His one-take solo recordings have become one of the mainstays of the PSF label, who rediscovered him. The PSF connection also gave him the chance to meet up with Japan's other long-time underground legend, Keiji Haino. The two often play together in shows of startling empathy and raw musical alchemy, most recently in the amazing Vajra trio.

Kan is also a published poet and novelist, a regular TV presenter (especially on late-night shows), and an occasional film-star. You may have seen him in Nagisa Oshima's POW drama "Merry Christmas, Mr.Lawrence" with David Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto. You won't have seen him in numerous Japanese films of very dubious reputation. As an introduction to Kan's music, I would recommend "Jazz, and other things", the second Vajra album "Ring", or the afore-mentioned "Live in the First Year of Heisei". But all of his appearances on PSF are worthy of your investigation. And if you're ever in Japan, make sure to see him play live and have a drink with the man afterwards. Tell him I sent you.

When did you first pick up a guitar?
Mikami Must have been in 1965, but I didn't know how to play then. I'd just look at it and polish it.

Did you learn to play from a book?
Mikami I had this book by Koga Masao and I practiced with that.
Back then a lot of people would practice with steel strings on a gut guitar. Did you do that too?
Mikami Everyone did back then. I used to change the strings about once a year.

Did you have to go all the way to Aomori2 to buy new strings?
Mikami No, there was even a music shop Goshogahara3. There wasn't one in Kodomari4 though.

Did you start writing lyrics at the same time?
Mikami No. First I spent a year or so learning some chords, and then I started writing.

What kind of themes did you write about at the start?
Mikami Anti-war stuff. The Vietnam war had just started, and everyone thought that folk equals anti-Vietnam War songs. So I wrote a few of those, though not that many.

Did you perform in public at all?
Mikami I played at my school festival5. Back then there weren't too many people who played guitar so it went down unexpectedly well.

Did you sing any anti-school songs?
Mikami No. I was the head of the students' representative body, and I was pretty aggressive in getting them to lend us somewhere to perform. But I wasn't really a model student. Our school was co-ed and they used to segregate the kids who couldn't study into a separate class. We kicked up a fuss about that. But there was a pretty free atmosphere.

Did you really get into the guitar about two or three years after you first started?
Mikami Yeah. I'd practice until six in the morning. There were a lot of times when I'd look outside and it'd be morning already.

Did you write a lot of your own original tunes back then?
Mikami I've forgotten them all. They were mostly imitations, or versions of stuff that was popular at the time.

Did you have any feeling that you would go so far with your guitar?
Mikami Not at that time. It was just a hobby—I'd pick up the guitar when I was tired of studying.
Between graduating from high school and coming up to Tokyo you went to a police training school. Did you really want to become a policeman?
Mikami I had a really immature attitude, and just wanted to fire guns and stuff. (laughs) I didn't associate the police with authority for some reason. Anyway, I did that for two years and then I quit.

So you left the police training school and came up to Tokyo. Had you always yearned to come to the capital?
Mikami Yeah, I really did. All the sixties pop-art stuff, and Shuji Terayama6 and Tadanori Yoko7. It seemed like there was a lot of crazy stuff going on in Shinjuku8 , and I didn't just want to watch it from the provinces, I wanted to come and get involved myself.

When did you come up to Tokyo?
Mikami The fourteenth of September 1968. The autumn.

Did you come up trembling on the night-train?
Mikami Yeah. There was hardly any information back then, and I wondered what was going to happen to me. I was a little worried—make that very worried.

What did you think when you first arrived in Tokyo?
Mikami I thought of the word "violence". It was as if the city was controlled by violence. The countryside is really pastoral, and I understood the relationship between man and nature. And then you come to a city, and suddenly violence is the real power. Like when the traffic light changes and everyone sets off at once in the same direction—when I saw that I felt like I was being chased by someone. Like there was someone following me and someone controlling it all. Like Tokyo itself was moving.

Where did you live when you first came up?
Mikami At the start I wasn't in Tokyo itself, but in Fujisawa9. I was there for about four months and then I moved up to Numabukuro in Tokyo itself.

Were you working and playing the guitar as well?
Mikami Yeah. Around that time Kansai-folk10 —Nobuyasu Okabayashi11 and that crowd had just started up. I felt that I wanted to sing and perform again myself.

So did you first start playing seriously in live houses around that time?
Mikami There were hardly any live houses or places where I could sing back then. There were small theatres, so I got to know some theatre people.

After that you played at Station70 in Shibuya, and gradually got involved in that world. Did someone talent-spot you for that gig?
Mikami No, it wasn't like that. I heard that a new place had opened, and I went along to sound them about me singing. I remember them giving me an audition up on the roof, and then I played there for real. Station70 was where Marui12 is now, underground. There isn't anything left now though. It's become a coffee shop now. It was really up-to-date back then—they had TVs on the wall—it wouldn't look out-of-place today. The PA was good too.


the rest is on here: http://noise.as/mikami

Fushitsusha

This interview originally appeared in Japanese in the second issue of G-Modern, PSF's in-house "Psychedelic, Avant-garde, Underground" magazine. It has since been reprinted in English in the third issue of the New Zealand magazine Opprobrium. The interview was translated by Alan Cummings. Thanks to Alan and Nick Cain, the editor of Opprobrium, for allowing the interview to be presented here.
Yasushi Ozawa1 - Bass
Jun Kosugi - Drums
Maki Miura2 - Guitar

Interview text by: Koichiro Sakamoto & Masakazu Nakajima

As this is the first interview you've done as a band, first I'd like to ask you a bit about yourselves. Starting from Miura, is Fushitsusha the first band you've been in?
Miura Before joining Fushitsusha I was in a band called MTK with Akui3 and another bassist and a pianist for five or six years. Then I also played guitar on that Okami no Jikan track on Tokyo Flashback 2.4
Then you were in Katsurei, and now you play guitar for Shizuka, right? I think there must be a lot of difference between Katsurei and Fushitsusha. Fushitsusha don't really seem to suit heavily structured tunes-it sounds like you just make up the arrangements as you go along.
Miura I wouldn't really say that we don't suit structured stuff .

In that respect, was it difficult for you?
Miura There are inevitably going to be difficulties-it would be boring if there weren't. With Katsurei, we would take hours in the studio to decide where every last drum roll was going to fit in. With Fushitsusha, we put a lot more into the arrangements than everyone probably thinks. But when we play live, we hardly ever duplicate what we do in the studio. I mean, when you play somewhere the acoustics are different and we have different ways to make the most of a particular venue. So the arrangements change minute by minute when we play. Sure, it's difficult but once you become able to enjoy it, then things enter a whole new level. (laughs)

When did you first start to play with Fushitsusha? Around '88?
Miura No, I'd been playing in the studio for a lot before that, but it was probably around then that I first played live with the band. I was originally an improvisation specialist, but with Fushitsusha, the difference was too great for me. If you take it that what Fushitsusha does is improvisation, then there isn't another rock band like it anywhere. That's how different it is. I more or less understood on a sensory level, but it felt like my body and mind were being taught how to think. I became able to sympathize with what Haino-san is trying to do, and there is a lot of common-ground in our pre-music sensibility. It felt like Haino-san had already discovered mystical, unknown things that I too was interested in. So I practiced for an unbelievably long time, but it was fun at the same time. I reckon I must have just practiced for about a year. (laughs) And the next thing I knew I was playing on-stage with the band. Now I come to think about it, the A and C sides of that Fushitsusha double LP are taken from the first show I played with them.
Ozawa There's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that no one ever sees. That all takes a long time. There've been times when the drummer has changed several times in those intervals. (laughs)

How did you come to join Fushitsusha in the first place?
Miura The first time I saw Fushitsusha play live, I had this feeling that one day I would come to know Haino-san better. Simply because we look alike. (laughs) Only joking. It's something I can't really put into words, but the songs seemed to soak into my body-it was too cool. Then I thought that I had to video a gig, so I asked and got permission. Haino-san saw the video and said that there our aesthetic sensibility had some points in common, or something along those lines, I don't remember exactly. So he asked me if I would come along on the next tour to video the shows, and there was no way I could turn him down. I was really interested in what he was doing, and wanted to get to know him. And that was that.

Next is Kosugi-san. You were in a band called Dendo Purin5, weren't you?
Kosugi The band is still on-going.

Is that a totally different type of music to what you do with Fushitsusha?
Kosugi When people see it they probably think it's totally different, but to me it's not that much different. Umm, in terms of theory it's different but the way the music is put together is the same. Our aim in Dendo Purin is to fuck things up, not really to give out energy though. There are hardly any bands around now who have real impact, are there? Before I joined Fushitsusha I had always wanted to make something interesting, and that's why I joined, or rather they let me join. I had just started playing the drums and hardly had any technique at all, I thought it was enough if I could just make noise.

How did you come to join Fushitsusha?
Kosugi The first time I saw Haino-san was at a show he did with Kan Mikami6 at Kataashi Kutsuya. That was the first time I had seen him, and I had been completely unaware of him up till then. But when I saw him play, I thought that he was doing something way above my fucking up. . . .
Ozawa Really fucking it up. (laughs)
Kosugi Mikami-san is amazing too though-like I can feel it on my skin. I thought I would invite him to my college festival but things didn't work out and we postponed it till the next year. I also got him to play at the Komabasai festival7. Round about then there was a time when Fushitsusha didn't play for six months or so, but I went to see Haino-san every time he played solo, two or three times a month. And gradually we started talking to each other. Then sometime around the Komabasai festival, I forget when exactly, and we were on a train and Haino-san said "It's really sudden and you're probably going to be surprised, but would you drum with Fushitsusha?"

Was it totally unexpected or had you had some premonition?
Kosugi None at all. I mean Haino-san had never seen me play, though I think he had heard of the band. That was in November two years ago (1990). Then at the start of the next year, Haino-san and Ozawa-san came to see me play. Just the two of them enshrined at the back, (laughs) I was really scared.
Ozawa Haino-san had said to me that there was someone who he wanted to play drums with us, and wouldn't I go and have a look. So that was the first time I heard you too.
Kosugi I was really tense so things got even more fucked up than usual. And afterwards we talked and then I went along to the rehearsal studio with them and jammed a bit.

the rest on here: http://noise.as/fushitsusha

THE MONKS PART 1: WE ALL WANNA DIE IN A HAIL OF BULLETS







shea M gauer

The Monks were one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll bands ever. They came from nowhere—five G.I.s stationed in Germany about to muster out of the U.S. Army when Vietnam and the Beatles were both heating up—and they sounded like nobody else on their single album Black Monk Time and they faded away after only a few years, so shell-shocked that they had to struggle to remember how to be Americans again. Light In The Attic has just reissued Black Monk Time (with vital outtakes like “Pretty Suzanne”) and the pre-Monk Time demos. Founders Eddie Shaw and Gary Burger (who reveals the location of the lost last Monks session!) speak now about the Monk times. These interviews by Chris Ziegler. Read Part Two of the interview (with Monks singer Gary Burger) here.

Eddie Shaw (bass): I was a musician when I was 15 years old and I played in a casino in Carson City, Nevada, and Wayne Newton was 12 years old—he was on the front stage, and I was 15 and I was on the back stage. So, you know, I come from a musical family. My aunt Sue almost married Will Wills, who’s Bob Wills’ brother. I was a musician all my life and actually I was assigned to the 6th Army band when I went in the Army. They were gonna station me in San Francisco. I had a plush job and I went and screwed it up and said, ‘Well, I’m gonna be so close to home—can I see some place else?’ and they said sure and sent me to Germany. When I got to Germany all of a sudden I was in an artillery outfit.

Do you feel like you’ve always chosen the path of most resistance?
Well, yeah—I did. My new book is about birds hitting windows and this trumpet player keeps hitting windows and I’ve spent my life hitting windows but that’s the thing. I don’t like playing or doing the conventional sort of stuff. Usually its about discovery for me, and that’s what the Monks was. It was about discovery.

What did you discover through the Monks?
The minimalist thing. The idea of tension.

Do you still feel what you wrote in your book Black Monk Time—that all Monks songs are love songs?
They are in a sense. If you listen to ‘I Hate You, But Call Me,’ how many of us hate the person that we love at any given minute because we’re so frustrated and so in love? The very heart of love in some ways, right?

Did you ever feel that you were turning into your own songs?
We got tired at the end. I don’t know if you saw that Monks documentary Transatlantic Feedback—the documentary was about a list and really there was no list. In the documentary it sounded like we broke up or we didn’t make it because we didn’t follow the list. It’s a myth—just like the Lunachicks in New York City were the first to play Monk music in the states. They had an interview in People magazine and they said, ‘Where’d you get those songs?’ and they said, ‘Well, we discovered this old obscure recording.’ They said it was a bunch of GIs in Germany who went AWOL and the police were looking for them and they showed up on German TV singing ‘I Hate You, But Call Me’ and the police closed in on them and they disappeared and nobody’s seen them since. I’ve always liked that story the best—I wish that one was true. But getting back to whether we were that thing—when you wear that image everyday, people treat you differently and you get used to it and you get the feeling of how it must feel to be a monk. Or a figure of religious authority, so to speak. Until you say, ‘fuck you’ and you have a shot of whiskey and ogle the girls standing over there and they figure it out—‘Wait a minute!’

In the book, you say everybody’s personality was defined by the instrument they play. So who were the Monks?
Gary was a country-western player. I think his roots were probably in folk music. [Banjo player] Dave [Day] played three chords. [Organist] Larry [Clark] took piano lessons and he played Chopin and he also got a $90 organ and could play ‘Green Onions.’ [Drummer] Roger [Johnston] was from Texas and he played Texas swing. He might have been influenced by the Bob Wills swing group. I never discussed my musical past with them. We were all from different environments—for the most part, that’s what made the Monks. The music is a hybrid of sort of a conversation between all of us to get rid of what all of us had that the other ones couldn’t work with. I come from Miles Davis and Chet Baker and all that. My music culture has nothing to do with the Monk music culture and I know that Gary’s music culture has nothing to do with the Monk music culture. Neither do any of them. Basically what the Monk music culture became was what we could do that would work together that nobody else had ever done.

You guys said in the book how you wanted to be truthful as a band and just communicate the simple truth. Is that why people thought Monk music was so ugly?
I don’t think people like to be hit in the head with the straight-on idea that everybody lies. I tell everybody that I lie three times a day and I try to do them as early in the morning as possible so I get them out of the way. So you know—‘Shut up, be a liar.’ We still have that today. Just look at politicians. I’m not a political person. I didn’t really like the political content that we were doing because I don’t really like that. To me it dates the songs. ‘Monk Time’ is dated because of the reference to Vietnam. If it wouldn’t have been the reference to Vietnam, it could have been like ‘Shut up, don’t cry!’—it could be good now. But there is a way to talk about politics in a song that doesn’t date it and we had a big argument about that one. I was against it. But I compromised. If it’s our kid then I’ll do it. But when you use a song to attack the headlines, you are basically dating yourself. It’s not that you shouldn’t have the honor or the courage to say, ‘I’ll speak my mind.’ Because I will. But if you’re going to make a piece of art you want the message to last. I don’t want it to die as soon as the problem died.

I read about someone who’d seen you play in Germany and said, ‘What the hell were you guys doing? I didn’t understand what it was but I got pissed off as soon as I heard it.’ Does that count as success?
Yes, it does. I was in a bar five years ago and I was sitting there drinking a beer and this guy about my age was sitting there we were talking and he said, ‘I was in Vietnam.’ I told him I was in Germany and he said, ‘Yeah, I went to Germany from Vietnam and I had a girlfriend and went to Hamburg and saw this group playing and I hated them—I wanted to kill ‘em.’ I drank my beer and I didn’t say anything but after a while I said, ‘I was in that group.’ He says, ‘I absolutely hate you.’ He said it, but we were drinking a beer real friendly and I say, ‘What did you hate about it?’ He said, ‘That whole bullshit about Vietnam and crap—I just got back from Vietnam.’ I said, ‘Yeah I didn’t like that myself. But as you turn around and look at it thirty years later when Robert McNamara came on TV and apologized about it—I felt then at least maybe we weren’t wrong. Not that that’s the important thing—the sad thing is that 58,000 American kids died along with all the Vietnamese kids.’ And he says, ‘I know that and I thought about it and you’re absolutely right.’ ‘After all these years,’ he says, ‘you’re right. But I still hate you.’ So I said, ‘OK.’

You seemed so shell-shocked coming out of the Monks experience. What did the Monks do to you?
You get conditioned to knowing that you’re going to piss people off. When I went home—my mother is a hell of a piano player, and when I played the Monks stuff for her, she didn’t say anything against it but she just ignored it and went on to something else. But normally before, when I played drums and trumpet, all the jazz stuff—she’d say, ‘Great! Do that again!’ My uncle who also played just turned it off—‘God, you used to be a better musician than that! Why are you doing that?’ So you just lock it away and say, ‘Well, that didn’t work.’ After I wrote the book, these two guys showed up at my house and asked if I was Eddie the Monk and I about fell over. I called Gary Burger in Minnesota just because he would like to know that and I said, ‘You wouldn’t believe this but two guys showed up at my door and wanted to do an article because they’d read the book and they loved our music—the Monks have people who like them.’ And Gary said, ‘fuck you,’ and he hung up.


the rest on here: http://larecord.com/interviews/2009/...il-of-bullets/

CAVE: SPACE, OF COURSE, IS TIMELESS






luke mcgarry

It’s nice, easy, and recommended for all folks to zone out with Cave’s 30-minute jams. If only the band’s MySpace page background could follow them around, spiraling neon colors out of sounds and frequencies, and so could we engage the ideal psychedelic lifestyle, in which a blink of an eye might transport us to an outer-space beach blanket with Sun Ra. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

You move furniture for a living?
Cooper Crain (guitar): Everyone in the band does, actually. It’s us and the band Mahjongg. We’re all originally from Missouri and have moved up here at different times. There’s a company that our friend owns. It’s not really ‘real’ but it is real. We own some box trucks and move all throughout the year. It’s called Starving Artists, and there’s a bunch of people in bands. And there’s some people who make visual art and some who write. It just makes it so everybody can leave and do what they want to do but always have a job.

You don’t necessarily think of musicians as handy movers.
Oh no—it’s great because it makes it easy to move amps or anything since for your job you move a bunch of people’s apartments and stuff up stairs all the time.

Do you ever compete to lift things?
Well, there’s certain people who are taller and their arms are longer so they’re able to carry box springs. And every now and then a move is made by somebody who figures out how to get a certain type of couch through a certain doorway. It’s a lot of fun. You work with friends and it pays cash at the end of every job so it’s nice work.

What’s the most current thing in Cave land?
We recorded a bunch of songs last winter and made a record and a single out of it and that’s coming out on May 26 called Psychic Psummer on Important Records. That’s the newest thing. But a 7-inch of ours just came out in England. This new record is the ‘new band.’

How is that reflected musically?
Big, big deal! Before it was just kind of a thing where certain people were involved and every show there would be various amounts of people. It would go from four to ten people in the band at one show. That was in Missouri and they were kind of freeform jams for the most part. Then me and a few other guys kept doing it on our own and moved to Chicago. Some people have left but for the last year there’s been an actual band. Only me and Rex who plays drums are the ones who have been in it the whole time. But this live band that’s on the album—we’ve been doing it for a year and it’s totally a great change. Before only a handful of people would be overdubbing or doing it live. And then editing jams and now it’s advanced a lot more. There’s Adam playing electric organ, I play guitar and keys, Dan on bass, Rotten Milk plays the mono synthesizer and sings and Rex on drums. It’s a five-piece now.

Are you playing full songs at shows now or just jamming?
The album that’s coming out—half of it is songs we actually worked out and half of it is jams we recorded or edited that we kind of learned in order to play live from the recording. Now all the songs that have been recorded—as far as the structure goes, we do a lot of editing in the studio but a lot of new stuff is actually just start and then end. That’s the vibe of how everything starts.

Do you have communication tricks when you play?
A few of us have been playing together in various things for a long time. All of us live for the most part near each other if not in the same household, and we work together then play together. I feel like over the last year being around eah other makes it easier. Since it’s a band now, it’s advanced the sound. It’s tighter and things can happen smoother. As far as location for when things happen—not always but every now and then, there’s a nod or two. It goes half and half.

What’s the longest continuous session you’ve played together?
The very first thing we ever did, we hooked up a tape machine and threw out a bunch of mics and that was like a 36-minute song. That’s probably the longest. Maybe we’ve played literally longer back in the basement in Missouri. Our goal was to try and not go over a half hour for a continuous jam, but it may have slipped here and there. That’s more than a side of a record. That’s why we’re releasing a single with the record. There’s one song that is actually three and a half minutes, and it was kind of written as a song rather than a jam. And we were like, ‘Wow, that’s our first actual song. There’s a lead vocal part on it! We should make it an album single—like an old 45.’ That just shocked us all. But that’s the direction it’s more going into. We’re starting to get into songs, while still maintaning the spirit of the old songs. We’re evolving, as always. It kind of started as a part someone had and we worked it out and we felt it shouldn’t go too long, not that it lacked interest, but it sounded like a song—short and sweet.

What’s the greatest guitar riff you’ve ever heard?
Aerosmith, ‘Sweet Emotion.’ I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that one.

If you could time travel to spend an afternoon at the beach with three historical figures, who would you choose? What moment in time would you like to visit them in?
It’d be cool to go back a little further when things weren’t kept so close-eyed. Mid-1900s. And hang out with some Ethiopian dudes. Maybe Terry Riley or jazz dudes? We’ve all been really into the Doors lately, but not so teenage-girl way—not so Jim Morrison, so I don’t think I would want to hang out with him on the beach. Perhaps one wild card, one TBA. No, wait, actually—though I don’t think I will ever be in this situation, I think if I could have a telephone booth like in Bill & Ted, I want to hang out with Terry Riley, David Tortuga and Sun Ra. Location: a beach in the outer-space zone. Maybe we’ll depart from the mid-1900s. But space, of course, is timeless.
http://larecord.com/interviews/2009/...ss/#more-31056

Nico

Good evening, Nico.
Hello.
Welcome to Melbourne. Er ...
I've not quite arrived yet.

Yeah, but you will tonight, I'm sure. And er, well, let's start off. Where do you come from in terms of your Australian tour, where do you call 'home' these days ? You've lived in America, England, Europe ?
On my passport I don't, I don't have a home. It says 'ohne festen Wohnsitz' which means-a 'without a fixed address'.

Right.
And I prefer that, because it's like being married when you have a home. God, it's terrible.

Have you ever found a place that you sort of were tempted to sort of start to call home and really put down some roots in ? Any particular country ? I think I read an interview recently where you were living in a part of England ...
I lived on a ship, but I don't live there anymore now. I live in Brixton now.

Brixton ?
Yes.That must be fairly intense.
Not as much as people make out, I mean like hell's kitchen on the Lower East Side in New York is much more dangerous.

Right. Now you've begun your career, er, in Europe, and er, moved across via England to America. What attracted you, what actually moved you into music when you first started playing, I think a lot of people feel that the first recorded Nico was with the Velvet Underground. As a matter of fact it was a single with Jimmy Page, prior to that. How did Nico, the model and actress find an attraction to music, what was the connection ?
Well, first of all I grew up on Opera with my mother taking me to Opera when I was a child and it sort of got branded in my brain. And er ...[Sighs]

What about Rock & Roll, I mean, which is what you did first with Jimmy Page ?
Yeah, but I always preferred Jazz already, as a young adolescent I preferred Jazz, Free-Jazz. And...



Folk ?
Well, yes. I met Bob Dylan and he sort of changed er, the idea that I had that I should only sing torrid, torrid songs, you know, love songs. I started singing Dylan songs, when I was on three 'Ready, Steady, Go!' shows, in England, with two Dylan songs and one Gordon Lightfoot song.


Well, you recorded the Gordon Lightfoot song with Jimmy Page.
Yes, the same.

And then what prompted you to move from England to America then after that particular record ? What was the attraction about America ?
Oh, it's er, Dylan's managmer, manager, Albert, who bought me a ticket, and said I should come over there, that-a, he can only do something for me over there.

It seems ...
That's how I met Andy again.

Right. In New York City ?
Whom I'd met just previously in, in Paris.

It seems that New York City at that stage was a place where if you moved amongst certain circles all the circles of people seemed to interlock, that there was a chance of meeting a large community of people, more so probably than today where it's a very crowded town. It seems there was a certain creative group of people who were working in areas with Warhol in media, and you had Dylan in music, and then you had the Velvet start out of that. That there was a lot of overlap.Mm.
Yeah ?
An overlap ?

Well, you said you could move between different groups of people.
Oh, you mean myself ?

Yes.
Oh, er ... no, I only wanted to be with, with the, the underground people, I wasn't interested in Fashion anymore, and I also had studied acting with Lee Strasberg, which helped me a lot to sort of discover myself like all young people always have to discover themselves, right ?


the rest on here: http://www.st.rim.or.jp/~seven/artis...ew19Feb86.html

Crucifucks

from Touch & Go 'zine

The Crucifucks were interviewed on May 5th in Lansing.

TV: So your last couple of gigs have ended on a violent note I hear... tell me how much you like Flint.

Scott: It's OK... It's the bouncers.

Doc: We didn't see much of the town - just the disco...

Scott: It has a really strict dress code... (talking about the Micotam)

TV: How many of you got beat up?

Scott: 4 or 5...

Doc: Scott got shoved around a lot and my back is really starting to bother me.

TV: You gonna sue 'em?

Doc: I'm gonna try... probably find out it's the mafia and you'll find me in a ditch somewhere.

TV: What about your gig in London, Ontario?

Doc: There were people who came to that bar just to cause trouble... Yeah, long-haired leather jacketed guys with gloves with knuckles exposed... The guy that booked us in there got suckerpunched twice before we even played... and it just got worse. It was chaos... people were throwing glasses...

Scott: It ended up we didn't get paid.

TV: Had any problems here in town because of your name?

Scott: We can't play...

Doc: Some people find our name offensive.

TV: I say bring back Club DOO BEE.

Doc: That place was perfect almost...

TV: So, what do the Crucifucks stand for ideologically, socially, politically, morally, sexually... blah blah...

Doc: I can't speak for the other guys, we're all really different... We like to think that compared to most bands we've got a better idea of the different ways the government is fucking people over... and how religion plays a part in that.

TV: Hence the name...

Doc: We have to play around here as the SCRIBBLES... It's always been an asset of mine to offend people. Basically... I hate police. We've got a couple of songs about them... Most of the songs are directed to people like that who have little or no intelligence whatsoever.

TV: That was great when we did (we being the MEATMEN) "Fuck the Cops" and you started screaming and the whole crowd went apeshit...

Doc: Yeah, the same thing happened in Flint - we started the song "Who Are Those Fools in Uniforms" and I just screamed KILL THE PIGS... There's a lot of good sentiment out there it's just that people are subdued cuz they are afraid of the consequences.

TV: What's "Positive in a Negative Town" about?

Doc: Ask Steve...

Scott: Bagels...

Steve: It speaks for itelf...

Scott: Well, he doesn't know.

TV: When you guys do "Go Bankrupt and Die" I always think lovingly about my boss.

Doc: That's good that you thought about that... it can be applied to anything or anyone establishment. Just look at all the man-hours logged throughout history and now it's all stockpiled in gold for the rich... and there's all these people with no jobs and no future... It's like in "Democracy Spawns Bad Taste" I say "Put a gun in my back and I'll do what you say, but if you let me get away you'll get yours"... and I'm not a revenge-seeking person, but if someone does something it comes back to haunt them...

TV: So how did the incident with the EL cops come about...

Doc: There's this bar in East Lansing called the America's Cup that's really preppy and all the assholes go down there and drink. It was right before our gig with L-Seven and we were passing out flyers and as we went in, there was a cop so I yelled "asshole"... The guy didn't hear me so Scott said a couple of things.. what did you say...

Scott: Shithead... Fuckface... (That ought to do it -ed)

Doc: A bouncer grabbed and put me out the door and then I elbowed him really hard and there were the cops... When they had me in the cell they were hassling me saying "We have some tinker toys for ya" and then I said I wanted a phone call, so they made the phone ring in the outer room and they said "Go get the phone,go get the phone" and they were laughing at me...

TV: So what else would you like the world to know about your band?

Doc: We've been accused by our parents - Joe has and I have - that it's just a totally negative message.

TV: Have your folks heard your music?

Scott: My mom has a tape of us and she gets up in the morning and listens to it... She played it for her fourth-grade class... You can't understand the bad words so she played it for 'em. She's seen us twice...

Doc: People around town accuse us of being troublemakers but we don't actively try to cause trouble, it finds us... People are intimidated by what we say and we're saying things that are true... Everything we do is borne out of concern as to why things are still this way.
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~cch223/usa...s_TGinter.html

An Interview With John Coltrane

If you know of any links to information about the people mentioned in this interview (Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Rashied Ali, Pharoah Sanders, Don Cherry, John Gilmore, Archie Shepp), please tell me about them! Send an email to
habib@mri.ernet.inClick here to go to Amber Habib's home page, or hereto go to his Jazz page.

The following is a transcription made by Brad Baker (bpb@mlb.cca.rockwell.com) of a cassette recording of an interview with John Coltrane. Everything is the result of his work, except for the few links that I've put in. "The copy of the tape used here was several generations old, complete with tape dropouts, etc. There are sounds of children at play and automobile sounds in the background."
The interview is by Frank Kofsky, and has been published in his book " Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music". Excerpts from his update of this book are also available online. Note Frank Kofsky was a professor in the Department of History, California State University, Sacramento. He passed away in November 1997.

FK: "The people I was staying with have a friend, a young lady, and she was at, downtown at one of Malcolm X's addresses, speeches, and lo and behold who should plop down in the seat next to her but John Coltrane..." < laughs>
JC: < chuckles> "Yeah".
FK: "...so right away that whetted my curiosity and I wanted to know how many times you had seen him and what you thought of him when you saw him and so forth."
JC: "That was the only time..."
FK: "Were you impressed with him?"
JC: "Definitely... definitely."
< both try to talk>
FK: "Oh, go on..."
JC: "Well, that was the only time. I had to..., I felt I had to see the man... you know... and, I was livin' downtown, I was in a hotel, an I..., I saw the posters, that he was gonna be over there..., so I..., I just said 'well I'm goin' over there' you know, and see this cat, because I'd never seen him, and..., I was quite impressed."
FK: "That was one of his last speeches wasn't it"
JC: "Towards the end of his... career."
FK: "...Some musicians have said that there's a relationship between, some of Malcolm's ideas and the music, especially the new music. Do you think there's any thing in that?"
JC: "... Well, I think that, music, ...ah being expression, ...of the human heart, of the... human, of being itself, does express just what is happening..."
FK: "So then if..." < John starts> "...oh."
JC: "...ah, I feel that it express... it expresses the whole thing. ...The whole of the human experience at the particular time that it is being expressed."
FK: "What do you thing of the phrase 'the new black music' as a description of some of the newer styles... in jazz?"
JC: "Well, ...... I don't know. Phrases ah, it, I don't know it ... They don't mean much to me. ..., in a sense because usually I don't make the phrases, so I mean..."
FK: "That's right."
JC: "...I don't, < laugh> I don't react so much to 'em I mean it makes no difference to me one way or another what its called."
FK: "If you did make the phrases, could you think of one..."
JC: "I don't know what the hell I, ...I don't think I have a phrase, I don't have the... I don't think there's a phrase for it. See what I'm sayin'?"
FK: "The people..."
JC: "...that I could make."
FK: "The people who use that phrase argue that jazz's particularly related to the black unity, and it's an expression of what's happening there, that's why I asked you about your reaction to Malcolm".
JC: "Well I think it, ...I think its up to the individual where you can... call it what you may, for any reason you may. My self I, ...I recognize the artist, ...and I, ...and I recognize an individual, I see his contribution and, when I know a man's sound, well to me, that's him. ...You know, that's just man, and that's what I recognize, and all that... labels I don't bother with."
FK: "But it does seem to be a fact that most of the, changes in the music, the innovations have come from black musicians."
JC: "Yeah well this is... how this is..."
FK: "Have you ever noticed, since you've played all over the United States and in all kind of circstances, have you ever noticed that the reaction of an audience varies, changes if its a black audience, a white audience or a mixed audience? Have you ever, seen that the racial composition of the audience seems to determine how the people respond?"
JC: "Well, sometimes 'yes' and sometimes 'no'."
FK: "Any examples?"
JC: "Well, no I mean sometimes it might... it might appear to be... one, you might say well... It's hard to say, man, you know sometimes people like it or don't like it no matter what color they are."
FK: "It... you don't have any preferences yourself about what kind of an audience you play for..."
JC: "Well to me, ...it doesn't matter..."
FK: "What kind of.."
JC: "...I just, I only hope that whoever's out there listening, I hope they're enjoying it. That's the, you know if they're not enjoying it... you have an idea..."
FK: "If people do enjoy the music, how would you like them to demonstrate this? Do you like an audience that's perfectly still and unresponsive or do you like an audience that, reacts more visibly to the music?"
JC: "Well, I guess I like an audience that, that does show its ah, you know, what they feel. ...that responds."
FK: "I remember sometimes when you played the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco you really got, that kind of an audience that you didn't get when you played in Shelley's Mann Hole in Los Angeles and it seemed to me that that had some effect on the music..."
JC: "...It seems to me that the, that the audience, the parti..the audience by... in listening there is an active participation goin' on there you know and... and when you know that somebody is, maybe moved or... the same way that you are to such degree or approaching degree, ...its just like having another member in the group."
FK: "Is that what happened at the Ascension date? The people who were there... did they get that involved, for example?"
JC: "I...I don't know ah... I was so doggone busy, till, I mean... I was worried to death. That was my, you know that was the way I felt... I couldn't really enjoy the date as if it hadn't of been a date. If it hadn't of been a date then I would have really enjoyed it. The date I'm.. trying to get.. you know, time and everything set and I was just too busy myself. But I don't know.. I hope they... felt something... to hear the record, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed all of the individual contributions..."
FK: "Well its a beautiful record. ...and its probably the one record that I've had to listen to the most number of times to get at everything that's happening."
JC: "We got another take out on it now. Did you know that?"
FK: "That's what Bob Thiele told me he said he'd mail me the other one."
JC: "Yeah."
FK: "What you think then about playing concerts. Does that seem to inhibit the interaction between yourself, your group and the audience?"
JC: "Well, on concerts, I... the only thing that bugs me on concerts is... might be a hall with poor acoustics or acoustics which we can't quite get the unit sound see... but as far as the audience, its about the same."
FK: "I wasn't too impressed with the acoustics in Friday night's concert..."
JC: "Mmm, no, I wasn't either."
FK: "...I was sitting right down front so I could hear most of what was going on but even then it didn't sound..."
JC: "Nah, I couldn't feel - I couldn't feel it."
FK: "You can tell when the musicians - they can't hear each other and therefore they can't get themselves.."
JC: "No its - its just like the wind, you're blowin' through the wind."
FK: "Yeah < laughs> . ...Another reason I asked you about Malcolm was because -, you know, I've interviewed about a dozen and a half musicians by this time and the consensus seems to be that, especially the younger musicians talk about those kind of political and social issues that Malcolm talked about, when they're with each other, and, some of them say that they try and express this in the music. Do you find that in your own groups or in the musicians you're friendly with that ... these issues are important and you do talk about them?"
JC: "Oh well they're definitely important. And as I said they are - the issues are part... of what IS... you know at this time."

the rest on here: http://www.geocities.com/a_habib/Jazz/coltrane.html

20 questions






with scissor shock's adam cooley

Scissor Shock’s Adam Cooley is unlikely to ever garner the sort of underground legend status allotted to Merzbow or The Haters, although his unusual assemblages of sound have led to a dedicated following amongst lovers of unconventional music. With releases out on several noteworthy microlabels, as well as a whole bevy of compilation appearances, Cooley has proven himself an enormously productive and continuously innovative sound sculptor. As his Scissor Shock outfit nears its end (at least for the time being), Cooley reflects on his past musical meanderings and answers our incisive, insightful, and occasionally grotesque 20 Questions. Read on...

--
1. Scissor Shock's sound has changed considerably over the years, and awhile back you cut ties with the egrind scene. What sorts of genres and sounds have you been experimenting with as of late, and what would you like to try in the future?
First of all, thanks for the interview. I get interviewed about once a year, and this interview has the most interesting questions I've been asked yet! Anyway, I never felt a part of the egrind scene; when I was first making this music, I was the only one making it that I knew of. I mean, I was doing what is now called egrind back in my band Stagedive Suicide when I was 12 (approximately a decade ago), before I knew Libido Airbag or SMES or whoever ended up becoming the egrind "originators". It just seemed like a natural fit. Somewhere along the way, a thousand dumb kids started screaming over Fruity Loops and people suddenly started appreciating the music I was making. By that point, I REALLY wasn't interested in making it. I never called my music grindcore, to the best of my knowledge, though I did scream, and there was a drum machine. I was more interested in no wave music and stuff and the idea of a drum machine being arrhythmic, a style I still explore a bit. Also, don't get me wrong, there are some egrind bands I love (Kindergarten Hazing Ritual, Gigantic Brain, It's Okay We're Chainsaws, Bubblegum Octopus though he's a bit too poppy to be labeled "egrind".... and a few others), but I feel like there is just too much crap out there nowadays, and I always felt a bit "outside" of that, even though I've obviously done splits with some of those bands and some people in that scene have helped me get to, uh, where I am today, I guess. The point is, when I started making this stuff, I was just trying to do something different... making music no one else was making because I wanted to hear it. And I've pretty much changed my sound dramatically with every album, because there's no point in repeating myself. In the process, it has alienated potential fans and record labels and such who want me to release something that sounds like something else I'd done. Which always makes me curious, because I have no idea what albums of mine people have actually heard and what sound I'm associated with... for all I know, people could be basing my entire project from the songs on myspace. Basically, the stuff I'm writing at the moment sounds like Jandek, with actual riffs, doing a prog rock western, in collaboration with Captain Beefheart. I guess.


2. What is there to do in Columbus, Indiana? What's the music scene like?
I live in a town of 50,000 people, and for whatever reason, there has been an active and interesting musical scene here; lots of creative and even like-minded musicians and LOTS of bands, usually started by some combination of the same handful of people. I mean, garage surf bands, psychedelic bands, lots of experimental punk and electronic bands, even a band that sounds like Goblin (frequent Dario Argento collaborators). Lots of intelligent, open-minded, talented people have come and gone here. The problem is, there are no places to play... we played a few shows here but got kicked out because even though there are some open-minded people, the MAJORITY of people are ignorant fuckheads. We pretty much have to drive 30 miles away to play a show nowadays. But that's okay. I don't really connect with most people around here, though the few I do connect with... I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world, and I often collaborate with them.


3. What's on your stereo as of late?
I mainly listen to drone, actually. Drone... and the old stand-bys: I always tell people they need to get the entire discographies of John Fahey, Thinking Fellers Union Local # 282, Sun City Girls, Slowdive, Jandek, Captain Beefheart, Cerberus Shoal, and a few releases by Boredoms, Jim O'Rourke, and Merzbow. That's all you really NEED in life, though obviously my musical tastes reach a little further beyond that.


4. How much attention do you pay to reviews of your releases?
I think they're interesting, because I'm basically sending albums to people who probably have no idea what to make of what I'm doing. I don't even know if my music is that GOOD, I don't ever listen to it, but I know what I'm doing is at least INTERESTING. And certainly most reviewers say things along those lines, "Unique! Innovative! I never want to listen to it again though!" I'm fine by that. I pretty much agree! Sometimes, it's more important to influence a lot of people than to actually be consistent all the time. When you're doing something that is clearly "experimental", you're going to REALLY divide people. But I know I have a few fans who aren't reviewers who love everything I've done. So... whatever. The music is out there, people can do what they want with it, you know?


5. Your lyrics and song titles are bizarre and often quite shocking. What inspires themes such as apocalypse and misogynism?
I dunno.


6. Digital music versus tangible, physical product. Discuss.
Doesn't matter. There won't be much physical product much longer. One year, I sold a whopping 155 physical CD's.. that was YEARS ago, maybe 4 or 5? Nowadays, I sell maybe 20 in a year (myself; I have no idea what the labels sell off of me, probably not much). Why is that? The interest in my music has definitely only gotten bigger, I've made way better music, and I've released stuff on some respected underground labels. I get new fans all the time. So... I just think people are starting to lose interest in physical product in general. Which is fine by me to an extent, I never made money off of the physical CD's I sold, anyway; I sold them for the price of shipping and handling. The only problem is, I LOVE physical products, and I love all these little labels, which feature plenty of smart, open-minded people working impossibly hard for releases that'll only be heard by maybe 50 people. So, I hope it doesn't die, and I think it won't die out COMPLETELY, but it's certainly getting to that point. I just want people to hear my music, in whatever form. I'd be doing this stuff anyway, even if I had no audience whatsoever. I just wish some labels would get more appreciation for their hard work and effort.


7. Would you rather drink a pint of diarrhea straight from the source, or a pint of garbage juice fresh-squeezed from the truck?
I guess it depends on what the garbage and the diarrhea are made of. Generally, I'd like to think diarrhea is a little healthier than garbage... garbage is a broad term, right? I mean, that could include oils and other weird chemicals... yeah, diarrhea, definitely.


8. Your "influences" list on myspace names about half the bands on the planet and spans quite an array of genres. Are there any genres you don't like at all?
No. I tend to find something good in everything in life. Even if it's something I hate, I'll try to pick one element that appeals to me. I like quite a bit of mainstream pop, country, rap. There's something cool in everything, even if it's just a silly 2 second slide guitar part or some weird synth tone. Whatever.


9. Lately you've had a string of releases on Jay Watson's Placenta imprint. How did that happen and how has it worked out?
Jay is a great guy, very friendly and easy to work with. He sent me some Placenta stuff, including DENTAL WORK who are excellent... and he got very interested in my band for whatever reason (I have no idea why people like the stuff I do), and he wanted to work with me for a while but I played hard-to-get, as I usually do with labels for a bit. Haha. But yeah, I decided to do a clearing-of-the-vaults album and throw together all these weird rarities from the past 5 years. He did a great job on putting that release together, and I think it's a good album for people just getting into Scissor Shock and also, strangely, since every song sounds SO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, it also may be one of the weirdest albums ever made. It sounds like 20 different bands, really. Anyway... I plan on putting out the next full length through him if he wants me to. It's up to him.
the rest on here: http://www.indieville.com/articles/20Q/scissorshock.htm

We're So Bored With London: Part 1Part 2
Interview discussion between Russ Bestley and graphic designer/writer Wayne Daly on the subject of UK punk singles and sleeve design, published in The National Grid Magazine No.4, New Zealand, Spring 2008.
http://www.hitsvilleuk.com/downloads/

article by mike baker

Galaxie 500's kinship with the Velvet Underground isn't limited to musical parallels. The group, founded in Boston in the late 1980s, was far more successful after its break-up than it was over the span of its three full-length releases -- Today (1988), On Fire (1989) and This Is Our Music (1990).
Overshadowed by the behemoth Pixies at the time of their greatest successes and subsequent swan song, Galaxie 500 are once again battling those alt-rock giants in the summer of 2004. The release of Plexifilm's video anthology Don't Let Our Yourth Go To Waste: Galaxie 500 1987-1991 arrives in the midst of a Pixies reunion, an irony that is far from lost on members Damon Krukowski, Dean Wareham and Naomi Yang. But the Plexifilm collection, which includes all four of the band's videos (all directed by friend and collaborator Sergio Huidor), five full-length concert performances, two bootleg concerts from the band's final year of touring and a rarely-seen UK television performance, once again puts the band in the center of a maelstrom, as fans and critics argue for Galaxie 500's legendary status within the history of alternative music.
Galaxie 500 frontman Dean Wareham (now of Luna) and drummer Damon Krukowski (now of Damon & Naomi) spoke to Splendid about the release of the Plexifilm anthology, and discussed the group's history and ever-expanding legacy. · · · · · · ·

Splendid: Dean, for readers who are unfamiliar with the band's history, could you offer a quick summary of how you, Damon, and Naomi all met?
Dean Wareham: I moved to the US from New Zealand in 1977 and went to high school in New York City with Damon and Naomi. We all wound up going to Harvard together -- I studied the social sciences -- and we started Galaxie 500 after graduation. We were about twenty-three when we started doing it.
Splendid: So who finished their degrees?
Dean Wareham: We all finished our degrees, which is the opposite of the standard story. Galaxie 500 didn't start until after we all already had our degrees, and when we started the band Naomi was in architecture school, which I guess she did not finish, and Damon was a grad student as well -- Comparative Literature, I think. He didn't finish that either, so the band did destroy their academic careers. (laughs)
Splendid: How did the Plexifilm disc come together, and what was the motivation?
Damon Krukowski: We had these videotapes that were not only unreleased but unwatched -- there was a pile of tapes in the closet. Dean had some too. The idea had sort of been bouncing around for a little while. Since the format had come in, Naomi and I were attracted to DVDs -- VHS tape just always seemed like such a crappy format. DVDs are very appealing. Naomi made a DVD for our last album on Sub Pop, Song to the Siren, a live CD packaged with a DVD that Naomi created -- it was a tour diary. In putting that together, she had authored the disc as well, so we learned how to make a DVD from scratch. We were just enjoying the format and we'd never owned a TV until we bought a DVD player, so it was partly that, actually. And then there were these tapes, and we had the feeling that if we didn't compile the material, someone else will, meaning it would just be bootlegged, which is okay with us but we had material that no one else had. And just as we did when we put out a live Galaxie 500 album, Copenhagen, we felt like we would like to make the choice and make the best possible presentation that we can. Dean was very into it also, so we all catalogued what we had and made dupes and showed everything to each other.
Dean Wareham: We started looking at the tapes and found all the stuff that we didn't even know existed, including a bunch of bootlegs that had been bought at various places -- but some of them were just too awful to include. Some of them, though poor quality, had something going on in them. The London show, for example, doesn't look so good, but it actually sounds good.
AUDIO: Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste
Splendid: Is it safe to assume that Rykodisc was supportive of the project as a way of boosting the catalogue?
Damon Krukowski: Absolutely, but we took it to Plexifilm instead of Ryko because Naomi and I have a history with the people at Plexi before they were "Plexi". The person who runs it, Gary Hustwit, used to run a book publishing company, and Naomi and I have a book publishing company called Exact Change -- Gary's former company and ours went through the same distributor. We used to see each other at trade fairs and business things so we actually knew each other from before he was even doing DVDs. So that was another thing that happened -- we had an eye on what he was doing with Plexi and we thought it was a great program that he had and we felt it was very comfortable place for the Galaxie 500 stuff.

Splendid: It's probably fair to say that the growing prestige of being associated with Plexi will probably come to mean something very different than if your DVD was just another catalogue release on a record label.
Damon Krukowski: I agree. And I really like what they're doing, the mix of music and interesting cultural artifacts from avant-garde film to the Christo release (Five Films About Christo and Jeanne-Claude) -- I like the whole spirit of the collection and it didn't feel like we were inserting it into the context of those straight-ahead music video compilations that are being spit out a lot right now. With good reason, I suppose, because DVDs are a great format for this stuff.
Splendid: I would argue that Sergio Huidor's work fits quite well with the Plexifilm aesthetic -- his videos are the sort of experimental fare that Plexi is exploring on other releases.
Damon Krukowski: I think that's a very nice point.



the rest on here: http://www.splendidmagazine.com/features/galaxie/

Interview by Michelle Cable

http://panacherock.com/magazine.php?...=9&issue_id=21

Bernard Stollman: ESP Disk's Sound Revolution
Published: January 6, 2009


By Franz A. Matzner

[1] 234 | Next Page

 

In 1964, record producer Bernard Stollman founded ESP Disk with the motto "The Artists Alone Decide." Over the next ten years, Stollman's label secured legendary status, releasing a stream of avant-garde jazz, rock, punk and folk that consistently challenged the definition of what it meant to be avant-garde. It did so by bravely embodying its motto and embracing its instincts.


interview: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=31456

Melt-Banana take aim again

Not in it for the money, but they don't mind a little pop


By SIMON BARTZ
'It was my first time to kill so it affected me a lot," says Melt-Banana's vocalist Yako, before breaking into a cackle befitting a Shakespearean witch. "But it wasn't a cute bambi. It was a big deer. You told us about (the Sex Pistols song) 'Who Killed Bambi.' It's you who made us keep thinking about the bambi incident."







Agata, Rika and Yako of Melt-Banana are touring Japan behind their sixth album, "Bambi's Dilemma," in April and May, before traveling to the United States to support Tool.


Damn, and looking at your new album "Bambi's Dilemma" I see I don't even get a credit. That pisses me off!

Melt-Banana don't drink. Don't smoke. Don't take drugs. Their only vice seems to be mowing down animals at 100 kph in their tour bus. Yako was driving the bus to Cleveland during their mammoth 2003 U.S. tour and a deer stepped into the road and the next thing they knew they had a barbecue on their engine.
"But anyway, last year I spent a lot of time listening to The Sex Pistols again and it's kept the bambi thing going in my head," says Yako.
And it seems like listening to the retro punk-pop of The Pistols might have influenced Melt-Banana's direction with their brilliant new album, which, just like the last one, 2004's "cell-scape," does have its mainstream "pop" moments -- "Cracked Plaster Cast" has a guitar motif that could have been ripped from a U2 track and album-closer "Last Target on the Last Day" sees Yako ditching her screechy rap and opting to sing. It seems that Melt-Banana are realizing that it's not only frenzied live shows that burn into your frontal lobe and leave you with a feeling of "I don't know what hit me, but it was f**king great," but that to make a career out of it you've got to make a record that people can play when they get home from a hard day at the office/prison. A record that won't wind them up so much that they'd headbutt the cat before disemboweling themselves on their balcony. So on "Bambi's Dilemma," Melt-Banana are compromising -- slightly.







Melt-Banana


"Usually we put all the new songs on an album, but this time I'd written about 50 or 60 songs and we couldn't use all of them so then I had the dilemma of what songs we would use. We couldn't put out a 3-CD set!" says guitarist Agata. "Yako said she didn't like some songs and if she says 'no,' it's 'no,' so we deleted them. Yako basically chose the rock songs -- the ones where there was a distinct guitar, bass, drum, vocal. So it's a basic rock 'n' roll sound. A punk-rock sound."

And the other songs?
"It's a secret. They're for the next album," says Agata.
So Melt-Banana are moving in a different direction. Perhaps country and western?
"Hahaha! No! But from the very beginning we were thinking of making a record without guitars and bass. We felt we could make more accessible songs using this idea."

Accessibility is not what Melt-Banana is all about. Intensity is. When I watch a Melt-Banana live show or listen to their records I often think of human spontaneous combustion. These guys are so loud, so manic, so explosive that you almost expect them to go up in flames at any moment and burn the livehouse down. And I have never ever felt like that watching any other "hard" band, including Slipknot, Atari Teenage Riot and Japan's Incapacitants.
But whereas on stage Melt-Banana roar like lions taking a knee to the groin, offstage they are pussycats stoned on catnip. When Yako and Agata (bassist Rika doesn't do interviews) turn up at my apartment in Ebisu -- I've known them for 10 years now so we're on more-than-nodding terms -- I don't even bother offering them beer, and instead put on the kettle and ask them if they want milk and/or sugar.


Acknowledged abroad Melt-Banana have knocked out six studio albums in 15 years. They play tons of shows abroad and that's why, along with the likes of Guitar Wolf, they are much more famous elsewhere than they are in Japan. In 2003 they played 83 shows in Europe and the States, in 1999 115 shows in the States and Europe in just 18 weeks, and in May this year they embark on another two-month U.S. tour, most of the way supporting the band Tool.
Are they angry that they're still a small underground band in Japan, but one of Japan's biggest musical exports in America and Europe? It must feel like being rejected by your family when you play in front of just 100 people in Shinjuku and then 1,000 people in Brighton, England.
"We've given up on that," says Agata. "I think the number of people in Japan who really listen to this kind of music is low."
With these constant sanity-sapping tours have they ever thought of jacking it in?
"I never thought like that," they both say immediately.


"We have a friend called Mike Watt of a band called Minutemen who plays bass for Iggy Pop and he also has his own bands," says Agata. "He's in his 60s (actually, on Wikipedia he's just 49). When he's touring with Iggy, I don't think he's driving or carrying T-shirts, but when he tours by himself he's doing the same things that we do in the U.S."

"For us that is really normal. We are not as old as him but when we are then we can do the same thing. If he does it and other people do it, then we can do it until the day we die," says Yako.

I have to admit that I agree and I feel a bit dumb for asking Melt-Banana the question in the first place. Struggling to ask them things I haven't asked them in the last 10 years (it's all on The Japan Times Web site) I end up asking them what's been their happiest moment ever in the band?
"Maybe when (the late British radio DJ) John Peel told us we can do anything we want for 30 minutes live on the BBC," says Agata.
"John Peel was doing his radio show in the next room and he was introducing us, saying 'Here's Melt-Banana' and we were supposed to play immediately but I wasn't sure if I should start as soon as he finished talking or wait a little. So I didn't say anything for a few seconds. In the next room through the glass was the staff and producer and all these people and they looked really pissed off. Hahahaha."

And so what's been the biggest mistake they've ever made?
"It's not a mistake but it's a kind of mistake," says Yako. "It's when we asked Natsume to play drums on the second album. He was too good for us. After that album I felt like we had to have drums as good as his. It was great for us to play with him, but a kind of curse. We still suffer from that."
"It's not only Natsume. We also played with David Witte (credited on half the tracks on 'Bambi's Dilemma' for 'drum ideas'), who plays really good, fast drums. It's really hard for a drummer to play those kind of fast drums, but we still end up asking drummers to play hard and skillful like that. It is a problem because not many drummers can do that," says Agata.

What advice would you give to Japanese bands wanting to make an impression in Europe or America?
"The first thing I would tell them is forget about the money," says Agata. "I was asked by this young band about how well we do financially when we tour America. But the thing is, when we first wanted to play outside of Japan, the reason was we just wanted to play to as many people as possible. We were wondering what American and European audiences would think about Melt-Banana and found that interesting. I had no idea about money at that point, it didn't matter."
"We don't think too much about the money," says Yako.
"It's all passion," says Agata, and he laughs out loud.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-b...0070427sb.html

• PODCAST: Listen to the Czechmate diary interview with the Plastic People of the Universe (CLICK HERE!)
• READ THE INTERVIEW BELLOW:

http://czechmatediary.com/2008/10/27...-the-universe/
1. What impression do you have of the US? Any significant difference between the first time you came and now?
Eva: for me the first time with the band was only 3 years ago, so it is rather a question for Vrata.
Vrata: The first time I came to the US was January 1989. The PPU were performing at a beneficial concert in a Manhattan club called “Kitchen” and we were to alert people about the fact that our artistic manager Ivan Martin Jirous was in the heaviest jail in Czechoslovakia. So we wanted to make an event to support him. And the communists obviously didn’t like such events. The second time I came to the US was in 1999 – it was our first tour as the PPU; we were touring the East Cost, the West Coast, we had 3 concerts in Canada – It was great!
What changed? Dollar is worth almost nothing right now, you can compare this situation to the Black Friday in 1929 when America was just a surviving nation. It’s a political situation because of your current president, but I hope it will be better after the elections. It will be better for the whole world if America has a better, more intelligent president than the one it has now.
Eva: The American tour in 1999 also celebrated the fact that after many years the band got together again. The band got together on the occasion of the 20 year anniversary of the Charta 77, so the PPU were invited by Vaclav Havel to play at the Prague Castle. You could see the country’s leading dissident intellectuals and long-haired rock’n’roll underground musicians together again. It was so successful that many concerts of PPU followed and the house was packed every time! And then 2 years later the main leader/composer died which was a big loss for the band.
Tanja: I read that you guys were…sad that he died…but you also felt freed in a certain way…
Vrata: Well, he (Milan) was a composer, bass guitarist and singer. But now we have Eva as a bass guitarist and great singer as well.
Eva: Yeah, they picked me because of my long legs (laughter). But it was a bit difficult because Milan was a very charismatic person and many people thought the band should just cease to exist because he was not only the main engine but also a very dogmatic kind of a person. So, after his death, the guys started to express themselves much more freely: they started to improvise more, the solos are now not played strictly at the same moment and there is a lot of space for musical synergies, as if one felt a human and divine spirits cooperating. There was also a certain disagreement among the members of the band because Milan wanted to sample out the new musical technologies out there. But Vrata, for example, wanted to keep the old character of the band, more psychedelic and more natural, that’s how it sounds now only it has a more progressive sound.
Vrata: We like making music as a project. Recently we have been working on three projects the two of them being reproductions of our concept albums from the earliest days but today with the contemporary-music ensemble Agon orchestra. The first original album was composed by Hlavsa and it is called “Nemesis Celebrated” inspired by the Czech philosopher Ladislav Klima, the second one is called the “Passion Play” music again by Mejla and words adapted from the New Testament by me (Vrata), the third project is something like a rock-n-roll opera called the “Railway Station Opera” and it was premiered in a real station setting where people, together with the musicians, got on a crowded train and headed towards the main stage…
Eva: ..And it was a blast – real happening! It looked like in the old days, except we didn’t dress up that much but there was a theatre set and people around wore costumes, we also had an opera singer who sings with us….The story reveals a dream of Vrata’s friend, Mr. Sadovsky who happened to fall asleep on a train one day and that’s what he dreamt.
We currently also play in the National Theatre before each performance of Tom Stoppard’s play Rock’n’roll. Stoppard is Czech by birth and his play gives a superb survey of the periods ranging from 60s to 90s.


2. At first the PPU were not interested in the politics at all. But whether you wanted or not you became a political symbol of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s and therefore you had to pay attention to politics. How about now? Are you still interested in politics?
Vrata: We know about what is happening around but it’s not our focus. We would like to be more poetical than political. We have never sang political songs, there was just that one song called “Hundred points” (1978) which had political lyrics in it.
Eva: But we don’t stay away, we do get involved in some things, like the event “We don’t talk to the communists”. This band has really become a legend based on the fact that they really destroyed our country so when there is a chance we just express our thoughts.
Vrata: It’s necessary to do that.


3. What attracted you as a musicians in 60’s and 70’s to a progressive music like Frank Zappa and Velvet Underground? These bands were pushing the boundaries at that time. How about now, do you know of any bands (Czech or foreign) that do that?
V: I joined the band in 1972 I always wanted our band to have its original sound and expression with the Czech lyrics. Instead of clumsily singing in a funny English I have always thought to sing in our own language music which we create.
E: It’s more and more difficult to influence people by music; In the 60’s there was a different atmosphere – a war atmosphere – so it was easier to do that. But nowadays people don’t react that much to this kind of playing anymore. I wonder why that is. Even in Prague I thought that it would be different after the Velvet revolution, that we would set on much more of a spiritual path. But our country now is more capitalistic than any other country around us. Everything is so much more about money then about relationships and spirituality and that’s very sad. It’s all twisted. That’s not what we presumed during the Velvet Revolution! We used to drive around the country talking to people, trying to convince them to go to the general strike and they did. And it changed the whole establishment. I doubt that this similar behavior of togetherness would happen now.
Tanja: I even wonder sometimes if the kids nowadays know what the Velvet Revolution is!
Eva: No, I don’t think so.


4. Did you ever meet Vaclav Havel and what was your first impression of him?
Vrata: Disappointment. (laughter). When I finished my time in jail I was invited to his farm and I expected this buffed guy, 6 feet tall, with shiny black hair, but he was a small guy with blond hair. But we immediately clicked and became good friends. He supported us so much! We even did couple of our recordings on his farm and he paid for the whole thing. We also performed our “Passion Play” there and Vaclav asked me if we would allow this young band to be our for-band. The band was called “Psi vojaci” and they were about 13 years old at that time. We are still friends with them, they are great. We have to remember that it wasn’t just our band that was responsible for the fall of communism, it was other bands too. We all influenced each other.
Eva: Havel comes to our concerts from time to time and sometimes asks us to introduce him as the non-playing member of the band…
Tanja: ohhh, that’s soo sweet!!
Eva: (laughter) People just adore him..


5. I know that a lot of people asked you already about your time in prison during communism. But I will ask you again because I think it is important for people to always remember those times. So, here I go: What would they do to you in prison? Would they beat you?
Vrata: It was a complete nonsense.
Eva: They would beat them up, drown them…it was quite the torture!
Vrata: I would say I survived about 80 or 90 interrogations which was sometimes very exhausting.
Eva: They also pretended that they kidnapped Vrata’s daughter and they made him defect the country.
Vrata: But the truth is that some prison guards would be very polite, they would ask if I had enough cigarettes and stuff.
Eva: They even made one of the episodes of the famous TV series called “Major Zeman” about the PPU. They made them look like hooligans and druggies. That’s how they brainwashed people and many of the viewers still believe it was true up until recently. I think it’s very difficult for Americans to understand this whole think. When I tell them that we used to buy music in a black market in the deep woods and that we would get arrested for getting caught exchanging Pink Floyd albums – which cost a fortune, by the way…something like 500 Czech crowns!
Tanja: Thank you so much for taking the time and doing an interview with such a “lowly worm” like me and I wish you guys the best of luck!

The Sacred Bones Label Finds Shades of DarkByAndy Beta

Caleb Braaten, holding court underground
http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-07-...hades-of-dark/

martin hannettan interview

First published in Muziekkrant Oor, September 1981 in The Netherlands.
Interview by Bert van de Kamp.
Translated by Hans Huisman whom we thank profusely.


After a written request for an interview we're finally sitting opposite him in the lobby of the Strawberry Studios in Stockport, near Manchester. 'Martin moves in his own mysterious way' Howard Devoto had told us that same morning. He rolls a joint (the first of many) and gives me a smile from underneath his coated glasses. Behind him a photograph of Abba's Agnetha, his biggest musical hero. 'I take that picture home with me every night' he jokes. He is soft spoken, often diverges from the subject and is sometimes unintelligible. 'A lot of musicians find it hard to work with him', according to Devoto, 'because he doesn't communicate very well. He sits like Buddha behind the mixing desk: untouchable'. England's new wave producer number one is an enigmatic character, who finds it hard to talk about his work. This is his third interview.
Jilted John, Buzzcocks, John Cooper Clarke, A Certain Ratio, OMD, Durutti Column, Joy Division, Pauline Murray, Basement 5, Magazine, The Only Ones, The Psychedelic Furs... this is just a selection of all the bands Martin 'Zero' Hannett has produced in the past five years. He has developed his own unique sound. Dub techniques, delayed reverb, elastic drums and other 'special effects' give away the producer's identity. There are people who buy every record produced by him. Reasons enough to visit the man and find out about the hows and whys. The interview including interruptions will take the whole evening and go into the night. Martin is just finishing the first New Order album. During the breaks he sits with me and answers some questions. At five o'clock in the morning, everybody else has long since left, he takes me home with him. The uncooperative man from earlier that evening has changed into a very kind and willing person.


I desperately need a holiday. I've been working constantly for the past three years now and there's danger that work becomes routine. I want progression, not status quo. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in the control room. There's no reason for that.
What's your favourite production?
Professionally speaking Soap (Magazine: The Correct Use of Soap) was the best, Closer (Joy Division: Closer) the most mysterious: that album was made as closed as possible, kabalistic, locked in its own mysterious world....


According to some the Basement 5 album was the best.
The only problem with that album is that you have to play it very loud to enjoy it to its fullest. It was the most difficult production, that I must say, the heaviest, it was 18 degrees in the shade, the end of August. As I recall it has been the most physical album that I've ever done. It was good. It made me feel like I had been carrying bricks around.....


Bricks?
That was the feeling at the end of every day. Putting the bass lines in the right place, heavy work.....


The dub techniques on that record are very up-front. On most other records you use them more subtly.
Yeah, most of the time I do use them, don't I?


Where did you learn those techniques?
I've always listened a lot to Joe Gibbs records.


Do you immediately know how it works?
Not always (laughs), but sometimes when you're in the studio you develop certain unique, magical qualities which you don't understand yourself. I think it's because this music is so openly dope-music, dub, you break free from your cocoon, play it loud and feel alright.


When you play Magazine right after Basement 5 you cannot believe it's been done by the same producer. I hear it because I know it. Your fans say they can hear it right away.
That means that in a certain way I've succeeded in what I set out to do. I put these special things in my productions to keep them interesting and not to lose the listeners' attention. When you know what to look for, you hear them everywhere. On Soap it's more sublime.


The break in I'm a Party is clearly Hannett.
(thinks) Yeah, although I always forget what version eventually was put on the record. There are five incarnations of I'm a Party and they're all totally different. Strange repetitions and such.... you know when you're in the studio for ten days in a row, strange things happen: little ghosts start creeping around (laughs).


You can distinguish two types of producers. The serving kind, more like a technician and the creative type, that is responsible for the more artistically decisions. You clearly belong to the latter.
Mmm, maybe so, yes.


Have you ever been in a situation where a band comes into the studio not knowing what they really want?
Not really, although: Steve (Hopkins) and I recently did a few sessions with Paul Jones, for which we've also written some arrangements. I always keep my ears open for things which are out of context and don't get noticed by the band. With the Psychedelic Furs I had more artistic control. Everything was wide open. I love records with that party-feeling to them. Bowie records have that. Like everybody was having a party in the studio. In an ideal situation every band I work with have enough studio time to be themselves.







the rest on here:
http://www.martinhannett.co.uk/frame.htm

Swans • PDF of 1 interview (total 3 pages, 1.9 megs) Fear and Loathing, Volume 30, 1995, Interview with Michael Gira and Jarboe. 2 pages.http://www.publiccollectors.org/MusicUnderground.htm

wow nice work porky.

some of my fave blastitude interviews:

Pink Reason
by Steve Kobak

 

Pink Reason breathed new life into underground music last summer with their debut single, Throw It Away. The homemade seven-inch appeared out of nowhere and dominated turntable time around the United States, filling speakers with basement-recorded gothic post-punk. The slab of vinyl contained within the photo-copied girl-picture sleeve seemed to be constructed by a local scene vet finally breaking into the national underground limelight. When the needle hit the grooves, a classic-model seven-inch blasted through speaker cones with the A-Side sporting a catchy-as-hell lo-fi post-punk burner and the two B-Sides showcasing weirder but just as compelling gothic-industrial tunes. Along with Cheveu, Car Commercials, Home Blitz and Tyvek, the band spearheaded the comeback of the seven-inch single, as christened by Blastitude.
One would think the masterminds behind Throw it Away had released many singles before hitting a stride this glorious but, in truth, it was the first release from one man, Green Bay native Kevin DeBroux. Though DeBroux stockpiled his four-track recordings throughout the years, self-doubt and general indifference from the local scene kept him from releasing the recordings to the public. He received minimal local support throughout his four-year career under the Pink Reason moniker. Promoters refused to book Pink Reason; partly because of DeBroux’s rumored antagonistic behavior but also because his music was, in their eyes, “too difficult.” This paired with an ever-rotating, unsteady cast of bandmates stirred self-doubt deep within DeBroux.
Friends say DeBroux’s notoriety in the local hardcore scene caused negative local attitudes towards Pink Reason. As he waded his way through the ranks of fucked-up teenage thrash bands, psychedelic noise outfits and straight-1980s hardcore groups, he developed an outsider’s mindset and a friend group comprised of “the real fuck-ups.” In bands like Zone 13 Rejects, a band DeBroux claims was “more conceptual in nature,” he provoked and attacked audience members, earning him lifetime bans from some clubs. Todd Kellner, operator of Trick Knee Records and DeBroux’s friend, relates the first time he met DeBroux was at a hardcore gig where DeBroux kicked one audience member in the face.
“He had an aura about him where people were kind of afraid of him,” said Kellner. “It’s kind of funny, especially looking back now.”
During a show with hardcore punks Hatefuck, DeBroux and company traveled to Winona, Minnesota. After a five-hour drive to the town, wasted locals, angry punks and gnarled three-legged dogs greeted them by leading them into a commandeered park. Inside the park, DeBroux found “the ultimate punk rock experience” with townies huffing rubber glue and mohawk-brandishing kids starting fights with crusties. The show ended and the locals gave the band three dollars for their troubles. A few kids asked DeBroux and company to chip in the three dollars on a keg. Soon, the crowd dispersed and left the band with no money or place to stay. The band wound up sleeping on an island between Minnesota and Wisconsin and breaking up soon thereafter. He wrote the first Pink Reason song, “Winona,” about this experience. DeBroux began to write and record songs on four-track soon thereafter and embarked on three unsuccessful years of creating CDRs and trying to rouse local attention.
After the town towed the car he lived in and crushed it, along with his personal possessions, he decided to move back in with his parents. He acquired a construction job, saved $500 and exacted his revenge on the local scene. He plotted to send his three favorite songs to United Pressing Plant and retire from music altogether. The resulting seven-inch would be a testament to and a panegyric for the power of Pink Reason.
He cannot remember the exact date he received the records but he said it took the record a short while to gain attention. He gained distribution through S-S Records, a label and distro center for a small niche of obscure art punk records. Within a couple weeks of sending copies of Throw it Away to S-S Records, the distribution’s operator, Scott Soriano, asked for more copies. Eager bloggers sang the praises of the 7” and his MySpace friends doubled. He said he felt vindicated, as people finally recognized his talent. He believed critics should like his record but, at the same time, one of these reviews humbled DeBroux. The Siltblog entry, written by Siltbreeze records associate Roland Woodbe, praised Throw it Away as “The best record of it's ilk to ooze outta Wisconsin since Hollywood Autopsy slithered into exile...”
“That was the first review that really blew my mind, to be honest,” he said.
Soon, Siltbreeze head Tom Lax sent DeBroux e-mails asking if Pink Reason would like to record for the label. DeBroux spent days sifting through recordings, listening to masters and picking the perfect song sequence. Still, he felt timid about sending the songs to Lax because of Siltbreeze’s storied history with bands like Dead C, Strapping Fieldhands and Harry Pussy.
“I was afraid to send him the masters,” DeBroux said, “but he kept on e-mailing me and saying, ‘Yeah, dude, whenever you’re ready, just send the masters.'”
Pink Reason embarked on a summer tour with Dear Astronaut in late July of 2006. Self-booked and financed, the bands often played in front of small crowds at art galleries, house parties and dive bars and generated enough gas money to slough to the next date. DeBroux pulled double duty, donning an acoustic axe and iBook accompaniment with Pink Reason and plucking a bass in Dear Astronaut. The tour stretched from Green Bay to Missouri and back to Maine. In between, DeBroux finalized the Siltbreeze deal during his Philadelphia date, even acquiring $20 in drinking money from Lax. (I think that's what they call an advance! -- ed.) He planned on handing Lax a CD of material for the Siltbreeze album but the label’s reputation daunted him.

 

After the tour, he sucked up his fear and send Lax the six songs which would become the 2007 LP Cleaning the Mirror. DeBroux constructed the songs on record during a “tough period” in his life; one that saw him living out of cars, on floors and in friend’s closets. He attributes the length of the tunes from these sessions to his speed habit. When he could access recording equipment, DeBroux often stayed up for days at a time, perfecting each song’s sound by recording and rerecording guitar solos and bridges while jacked on crystal meth. Seven-minute recordings felt like pop songs to the geeked DeBroux.
“[Cleaning the Mirror] represents a pretty rough time in my life,” said De Broux. “It’s kind of weird that sometimes, when I think about what I want to do next and shit like that, I’m just in a completely different place than I was in when I was recording that stuff, you know.”
Darkness infests the album and DeBroux lowers his easy-going Midwest vocal tone when relating tales from the period. One of his many stories involves grabbing a few friends and some possessions and heading to New Orleans in an attempt to forge a career for his hardcore band. On the way, the only people with money spent it on truck stop beef jerky and other “nonsense,” so the crew sold most of their belongings to survive in the Big Easy. DeBroux worked temp jobs in the day and eventually saved enough money to travel back north. The band broke up soon after.
Another finds him spending six months living with and apprenticing under a meth cook and practicing guitar in his vast amount of free time. While moving the meth cook’s heroin-addled girlfriend into a new apartment, DeBroux stumbled upon her diary. Unable to restrain himself, he flipped through the pages. Some of the words stuck with him and reworked versions of the diary passages slipped into a few lines on “Up the Sleeve.” The gothic-folk feel of the song reflects the bleakness of the lyrics, its tar-pace steadily creeping along until it reaches a lackadaisical boiling point.
“It doesn’t make me feel bad, listening to it,” he said. “I don’t regret my experiences or anything but, when I hear that, it takes me back to times I don’t necessarily want to relive at this point in my life.”
“Up the Sleeve” also demonstrates his instrumental approach, as it was orchestrated on the spot using whatever instruments were available at the time. He varies his attack on the song, thrashing about on banjo, saxophone and organ as opposed to the usual cheap Casio and guitar attack. After recording the song, he quickly forgot its chords. DeBroux, who taught himself to play guitar by playing along to Russian punk songs, wings it with many other instruments on his recordings. On “New Violence,” he bounced a big exercise ball for percussion. DeBroux constructed the rhythm guitar line on “Sleight Train” by strumming on a broken toy guitar he found while dumpster diving.
“A lot of the instruments I use on the recordings I don’t even technically know how to play,” he said. “Once you’ve been fucking around with shit as long as I have, even if you’re not playing it right, you’re still getting what you want out of it.”
Though recordings mainly feature DeBroux, Pink Reason concerts feature an ever-rotating cast of musicians. As of May 2007, he claims six members left the band, including Shaun Handlen, an original Pink Reason member who moved to China. He seems to snag whoever is around for each tour. Before the spring tour with Psychedelic Horseshit, DeBroux assembled a band from friends who had moved back in with their parents or were living in cars. At a Cleveland show in March, DeBroux drafted Alex Teder to fill in on drums after his drummer abruptly quit a few dates into the tour.
“A lot of people, I don’t think quit. I just think they play with him for a couple of weeks and then go back to their day jobs,” said Teder. “It’s not like a conflict of interest with anyone not getting along with anyone else.”
DeBroux recently shipped off to search of a backing band in Columbus, where record stores already stock Pink Reason records in the “local” section. His success with the LP generated a need for a permanent band. To support his self-professed “transient nature,” Kevin embarks on a national tour this summer with a full backing band in support of Hue Blanc’s Joyless Ones. He will have a rotating cast of characters in tow for the trek. DeBroux could not tell whether his new supporting band will rock with the loose garage feel or his recordings’ structured basement groove.
“I never consciously set out to do anything specific,” he said. “It kind of just happens.”

16 BITCH PILE UP
by B. Edwards

Sixteen Bitch Pile-Up is a group of ladies—and I use that term (ladies) loosely here—based in Ohio who get together and make sounds; sometimes the sounds are like porcupine car wrecks recorded underwater, sometimes they’re like slow glacial drift. At one point there were five of them, but two were sacrificed and cannibalized and aren’t spoken of in polite conversation anymore. The remaining ladies, sarah, sarah, and shannon, are soon to be undertaking a tour of the united states, wherein they will eventually park their shells in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. A tour itinerary follows the interview so you may track them down and witness their cathartic seizures live. Until then, behold: undistilled 16 Bitch Pile-up.
Since 16BP is a small army, or perhaps more accurately a highly disorganized battle of pheremonal explosives, maybe you best present your name and what sounds you make as part of the pileup.

sarah bernat: i make dirty sounds.
sarah cathers: you SMELL like dirty sounds.
sb: YOU smell like dirty sounds.
shannon walter: you are retarded.
sb: it’s a miracle we make sounds at all.
sc: i often make farting sounds with my hands.
sb: i like to draw cock and hairy balls.
sw: i am so happy to be alive.
sb: did we answer that?
sw: precisely.
sc: shannon plays the heavy shit (dark cave drippings) i play the OTHER heavy shit i.e.: car crashes, and sb is like when you are stranded in the desert and you hear that shrieking flying carrion beast.
sb: or like when you’re in seventh grade and fighting with your parents.
sc: i'm totally goth.
sw: no, I'M totally goth.
sb: no, you’re more like IDM.
(sc high-fives sb)
sw: (indignant) have you EVER listened to me? i'm insulted.
sc: have you ever really (sc, sb, sw in unison) looked at your haaaand?

Wonderful; I expected nothing less from you skirts. I have no idea to what the “hand” reference refers, and I’m glad for it. Let’s try something more concrete: Bernat, I know you’re a biking kinda gal. Are you all avid bicyclists? Any moments of bike and idiot driver vengeance worth sharing?

sb: bicycle!
sw: when i am not wearing heels.
sc: too true!!
sc: i abandoned my car in detroit cause i'd rather ride.
sb: i don't know about angry drivers (sc: yes she does) but i got in an accident and got maced and got put in jail for the night, does that count?
sw: a greasy spitball in a wifebeater called me a cunt blowjob and nearly killed me so i threw an open and full beer bottle directly at his face and the car exploded.
sc: oh, you mean there's rules? ohhh i'm sorry officer (bend over, put tits in cop face) they don't teach you that in riding school….
Getting maced definitely counts re: bad interactions; what had you done to warrant the macing? (I am, of course, assuming your guilt here.)
sb: well i had already been handcuffed and left to rot in the back of the cop car, when after about an hour they dragged me out of the back seat to formally arrest me. like anybody, i've seen too much TV, so when they don't read me my rights i get all WTF and say to the 2 cops who are on me: "well aren't you going to read me my rights?" they respond, "NO" and i'm all like, "what? why not? read me my rights!" to which they respond, "NO shut the fuck up" and i'm not happy, and they're not happy, and even though i'm still in handcuffs and there's 2 cops on me, apparently i'm some kind of a threat, so i get maced. that shit lasts forEVER, like 6 hours. when we get to the station one of the assholes tells me i can wash it out with water, which i do, but if you know anything about mace, which i didn't, putting water on it just makes it flare back up like it just happened. this was total bullshit and the worst experience of my life. how did this happen to begin with? well i ran a red light and hit a pedestrian, gave myself and probably her too a concussion. it had been bad day -- a real bad day. In fact it was probably already the worst day of my life before all that shit went down, so getting arrested was just the icing on the cake.
sc: i must say, she is no cupcake when it comes to dealing with the cops, or any authority for that matter...
And here I was thinking bicycling might steer

us into puppy dog and flower territory. So, back to the band. Do you ladies have a trajectory for 16BP? The split cassette with Sword Heaven was like a steamroller going over kids and bigwheels, and the split LP (also with Sword Heaven, you incestuous vipers) was more, shall we say, mellow. Is there a transition in your sound interest, or are you just bipolar and do whatever the hell you want?

sb: mental illness is no joke.
sw: what does a fish say when it swims into a wall?
sb+sc: what?
sw: dam!
sc: but seriously, you think we're mellow?Well, that LP is pretty, shall we say, “restrained” in comparison to the cassette.
sb: we prefer the term harsh ambient.
sc: we do what the voices tell us to do.
Point taken that you dredged up “do what the voices tell us to.” What's one of the most entertaining shows you've done?

sb: well, at first i was gonna say that show in Denver at Monkey Mania when shannon was dragging me around by the jump rope, but then i thought the show in Albuquerque, but probably for all the wrong reasons -- as soon as our set was over we got into a very nasty almost break up fight, screaming at each other all the way from the house into the middle of the street...
sc: as far as i was concerned we DID break up…
sb: then the cops came.
sc: called on domestic violence.
sw: we roll up to newark, ca expecting to be playing a house party and it turns out to be this kid’s grandmother’s house and she asks us if we can keep the volume low and sing diana ross songs. so we covered "where did our love go" in her back yard.
sc: entertaining to whom?
sb: yeah, the audience or us?
Either one, really. But what about the cops this time?
sc: oh yeah -- and then the cops came.
sb: i think they were called on domestic violence or something.
sb: they've all been entertaining in their own special (sc: “ed”) way.
sw: like when sb is standing outside of bourbon street yelling at us "what are we? just masturbating!?!??!"
sc: was that the night we were mooning traffic and yelling “pink pussy”?
sw: no, but close.
sc: our first entire year was very...interesting.
sw: and blurry.
sc: there used to be a lot of big sheets of plastic and…
sb: quote unquote ART involved.
sw: schtick?
sc: whiskey? shit used to get crazy!
sb: but we are feeling better now.
sc: we even practice now.
sw: we practiced then too!
sc: what, getting wasted?
You’ll never get the straight edge crowd at this rate. Are you all born and bred midwest girls, hence the fleeing to the west coast?

sss: what’s round on the ends and high in the middle?

Admirable harmony. Anyway, since Ohio’s apparently boring you wild young things, you're relocating to CA; are you all moving, as a cohesive unit, or will the band be shifting around due to said move?

sss: names that begin with the letter s are the names of snakes.
I’ll just transcribe that as an emphatic “yes.” Do any of you do solo audio?

sb (in computer voice): yes i have done solos as weird habit but don't have many releases to date. just one "happy birthday" 3" completed in england in 2004.
sw: sssolossss. drowned drone. shark attack!!!
sc: it depends on which persona you are asking about. actually we made a box set of five solo tapes (of the original 5 bitches) last fall. other than that its just boxes of tapes under my bed. (they all sound the same......)
Who’s the most diplomatic among you? who's the fascist?

sb: i can hear both of you saying "sarah bernat is the fascist!"
(sc+sw: toooo true!)
sb: sarah cathers is most notably acknowledged as the diplomatic one although i think shannon is the easiest to get along with in EVERY situation: shannon is the nice one.
sw: i'll be over here eating cheetos…
sc: we are a democratic unit and make all decisions as a group. we pick boyfriends for each other and no one is ever angry EVER! or else!!!
sb: …and sarah cathers never approves of our boyfriends.
sc: shannon had a good boyfriend once and i have like two of sb's.

Bonus round, part 1: you get to start a cover band. name the band you'd want to be a part of representing and how you'd accomplish it.

sb: ELO, go on a lifetime karaoke tour featuring hit single telephone line. "HOT SINGLE LIFETIME KARAOKE TOUR"
sw: first i would build a ship. and then i think i would be a SLEEP cover band and start smoking a lot of pot.
sc: even though she already employs (in unison with sb) "stoner logic."
sw: (flips the bird and blows the horn; hoooonk!)
sc: does this mean i am supposed to learn how to play an instrument? i am already busy with full time job of being sarah cathers.
sb: maybe someone needs to start a cover band of you.
sc: reality tv show. stunning soundtrack. real life true hollywood stories!
Bonus round, part 2: I've seen (and heard tell of) some excellent baking you ladies have done; the battered torso of the Black Dahlia being but one “festive” cake. What's your favorite item to cook?

sb: tacos!
sw: corndogs!
Do you actually prepare the corndogs or just throw pre-made ones in the microwave?
sw: microwaves? We didn’t have a TV til like last year. farm life is rough...have you ever really looked at my hands? they are calloused by years of corn dog-making.
sc: i am an excellent cook.
sb: i am the idea girl!
sw+sc: pffffft.

sweet thread idea. thx man.

SUN CITY GIRLS- Rick Bishop Interview
http://www.furious.com/perfect/sunci...interview.html


SUN CITY GIRLS- Alan Bishop Interview
http://www.believermag.com/issues/20...terview_bishop

warmer milks: http://www.blastitude.com/19/WARMERMILKS.htm

taiwan deth: http://www.blastitude.com/18/TAIWANDETH.htm

pissed jeans (tons of references to obscure punk and hardcore bands) http://www.blastitude.com/18/PISSEDJEANS.htm

ceramic hobs: http://www.blastitude.com/17/CERAMICHOBS.htm

pengo: http://www.blastitude.com/17/PENGO.htm

neil young (of fat worm of error)/yeay! casettes: http://www.blastitude.com/17/YEAY.htm

no doctors interviewed by weasel walter: http://www.blastitude.com/14/pg2.htm

carly ptak: http://www.blastitude.com/11/pg2.htm

big whiskey (i was infuriated when i was at zia records the other day and realized that there is a record by dave matthews band and big whiskey, of course this is some other band named big whiskey, not this amazing but waaaaay obscure psychedelic southern drone rock band): http://www.blastitude.com/9/pg2.htm

dylan nyoukis (prick decay/decaer pinga/blood stereo/ceylon mange) and alab bishop (sun city girls/akvarius b) interview eachother (SOOOO RAD): http://www.blastitude.com/15/pg3.htm

angry samoans: http://www.furious.com/perfect/angrysamoans.html

slicing grandpa: http://www.terminal-boredom.com/slicing.html

Does anyone else find it frustrating how piss-boring the overwhelming majority of musicians are? I mean, Nico is clearly amazing, but pretty much everyone else in this thread is duller than me whinging about them being dull.

Having said that...

Derek Bailey
Charlemagne Palestine
And, of course, Smith.

The now sort of infamous NME interview with Shane MacGowan, Mark E. Smith and Nick Cave.

Source: New Musical Express
Date: 25th February 1989
Author: Sean O'Hagen and James Brown
Copyright: (c) NME

Part 1/5

NME talks to...

For its second pop summit of the year, NME lent SEAN O'HAGAN and JAMES BROWN 10 pound each to buy SHANE MACGOWAN, MARK E SMITH and NICK CAVE a drink, and discover what motivates and aggravates rock's three wise men. "So the NME thinks we're the last three heroes of rock'n'roll, do they?" laughs Nick Cave.
"Smarmy fuckers," adds Shane McGowan, "what they actually mean is that we're the three biggest braindamaged cases in rock'n'roll."
"Apart from Nick", jabs Mark Smith, "Nick's cleaned up."
"yeah", drawls Cave, "my brains restored itself."
A bottle's throw from Millwall FC, The Montague Arms, a mock Gothic fun pub for morbid tourists, plays host to a bizarre summit meeting. Amidst stuffed horses' heads, skeletons on bicycles and mocked up corpses, three of contemporary music's most infamous individuals are gathered at the NME's request.
Shane MacGowan of the Pogues, Mark Smith of the Fall and Nick Cave all share an outsider's attitude that informs their respective musical output. Both championed and castigated for their obsessiveness and extremism, this unholy trio are dogged by reputations that precede them.
That they agreed to such a meeting is surprising. What ensues is inspired and insane by turns. The fractured and, often fractious, conversation sprawls between the amiable and the aggressive- Presley to Nietzsche, songwriting to psychology, football to fanatics.
In an afternoon of sheer psychotic hellishness, Cave plays the diplomat to Smith's bursts of contentious rhetoric whilst MacGowan transmits his thoughts from his own singular, rarified wavelength.

Part 2/5

WHAT REALLY WENT ON THERE ? WE ONLY HAVE THIS EXCERPT

NME Do you think it's accurate to describe the three of you as outsiders?

NC "I think we have all tended to create some kind of area where we can work without particularly having to worry about what's fashionable."
MES "Yes, fair enough. But I think there's a lot of differences in this trio here. Nick was very rock'n'roll to me but he's turned his back on it which was cool. Shane's more, I dunno. To me the Pogues are the good bits from the Irish showband scene, like the Indians. You had that feel, probably lst that now. Your work's good though."
SM "Fuck it man. Who wants to work in a place where there's all these people looking at you ?"
MES "Are you talking about your gigs ? You should stop doing them, then."
SM "Can't afford to."
MES "Fuck it, you could fight not to if you don't like it."
SM "...and leave the rest of them in the lurch ?"
MES "Nah, the rest of your band will always complain about not working. If you're paying them a wage tell them to stay at home and behave themselves."
SM "It's a democracy our band."
MES "Why aren't they here with you then ?"
SM "Cos the NME didn't want to interview them."
MES 'Cos nobody'd recognise them."
SM "That's it ! They want to interview us because we've got distinctive characteristics. They just want to interview three high-brow loonies."
MES "In that case you should have brought your mate Joe Strummer along."
SM "I said high-brow loonies."

HITS AND MYTHS

NME You must be aware that, consciously or otherwise, you've each created a particular myth that has arisen, in part, from your songs.
SM "Nobody created my mythology, I certainly didn't."
NC "No, you (the press) created it."

SM "The media has a lot to answer for, you're all a bunch of bastards however friendly you are."
NC "Let's not talk about the media. Why the hell are you talking about mythologies ? That tends to suggest it's somehow unreal."
SM "It seems to me that in your songs, Nick, you're doing a Jung-style trip of examining your shadow, all the dark things you don't want to be. A lot of your songs are like trips into the subconscious and are therefore nightmarish."
NC "Possibly."
SM "You're exploring the world through the subconscious. I've done that on occasions for various reasons, whether it be illness or self abuse, or whatever. Once things start to look grotesque I don't write them or sing them. I couldn't write them the way you do, I couldn't-making nightmares into living daylight..."
NC "I think you do a pretty good job of it in some of your songs."
SM "The minute it gets dark I shoot back, retreat. I haven;'t always but I do now 'cos..."
MES "Don't give too much away Shane, don't tell them. Hold a bit back."
SM "I haven't told them anything yet."
NME "How do each of you approach the actual mechanics of songwriting ?"

MES "When you ask that you induce fear in a songwriter. I just go blank."
NC "It's not a cut and dried process."
SM "For a start I've got to be out of my head to write. For a lot of the time it's automatic writing. 'Rainy day in Soho' was automatic."
MES "Its gotta be subconscious and off the wall. He says he's got to be out of his head, and a lot of the time I have too. Sometimes, I just wake up and do it. It's one of the hardest questions you ever get asked. For instance, you sometimes hear things that would make a great idea for a song but you never carry them out."
SM "I do. Like the "Turkish Song of the Damned" was a Kraut trying to tell me something and I misheard him. He said, "Have you heard 'The Turkish Song' by the Damned". Then I woke up.
MES "My German song's better than your yours, I bet. This is like one of those night-time discussions on Channel 4."
NC "I writesongs in batches then record them and then can't write again for ages. I try and build one song upon another, they may not look obviously inter-related but often one song acts as a springboard into another."
SM "You haven't been back to the swamps for a while, have you ?"
NC "The swamps ? Heh,heh. I've written a novel about that."
MES "Nick thinks a novel's two pages long. Very novel, heh, heh."
NC "What's it called ?"
MES "It's called 'It'll Be Ready in Another Five Years'. You should write more aggressive songs, Nick, you're getting too slow."
NC "I haven't sat down and thought about the mood befoe I wrote them."
MES "I find your work almost English Lit oriented, like Beckett, things crop up again and again."
NC "And your songs are very deceptive Mark, in the way they're sung. They might appear at times like streams of consciousness but that's deceptive."
MES "One thing that eally annoys me is that stream of consciousness thing. I wouldn't let on to it normally, but it annoys the shit out of me. I put a lot of hard sweat into them, I think about them. They have an inner logic to me so I don't really care who understands them or not. I see writing and singing as two very different things. My attitude is if you can't deliver it like a garage band, fuck it. That's one thing that's never been explored, delivering complex things in a very straightforward rock'n'roll way. My old excuse is if I'd wanted to be a poet, I'd have been a poet."
SM "And starved."
MES "I can write, boy, I can write. That's what I do. People like you sit around moaning about the state of pop music...The trouble is it's too bloody easy for people, that's why music is in the sorry state it is. Any idiot, actors mainly, can go in there, sing a chord, bang on a machine...I'm not objecting to that but when people get at me for trying to say something in a rock'n'roll mode it's as if I'm a freak."
SM "All this talk about the state of music, rock'n'roll, Irish music, soul, funk."
MES "Salsa."
SM "Its been proved by Acid House that anyone can make a record."
MES "We're not thick, we all know that."
SM "Look, I'm talking about the implications of Acid House"
MES "There's nothing new in Acid House for me, pal. I've been using that process for years. Bloody years. It might be new for you but don't assume it's new for anyone else, because you're fucking wrong, pal.
SM "What the fuck are you talking about ? Have you made an Acid House record ?
MES "It's the same process, right. Have you had some sort of bloody revelation about Acid House ?"
SM "Hah ! It's obvious if you listen they put Eastern melodies over it, bits of this nad that..."
MES "That's what music should always have been like."
SM "It always was."
MES "Why haven't you been doing it for years then pal ?"
NC "I think they have been doing it. I've heard zithers and so on. Eastern stuff and Turkish stuff."
MES "We had jazz arrangements in '82 when the rest of those tossers were playing cocktail lounge music and fucking pseudo new wave, so don't talk to me about it because I know what I'm talking about pal."
SM "Fucking hell, what's he on about ?"

Part 3/5

CONTAINER DRIVERS


MES "The trouble with the music biz is that its become so bourgeoise. A middle class executive business like the police force."
SM "A middle class executive police force ? You must be mad ! They're stormtroopers nowadays, thicker than they ever were."
MES "Can we drop twe cop talk ? It's the same with everything else, like lurries..." Sm "Lurries ? What are lurries ?"
MES "Lurries. Containers that deliver your fucking food to your fucking house, alright ?"
SM "Lorries ! Yeah right."
MES "The drivers are paid the lowest wages because everyone wants to sit in the office and be a ponce. You can't just go into a hotel and write your name, you've got to fuck around on a bloody computer. Nobody wants to work anymore."
SM "Oh God ! You make me wanna puke sometimes, you do. Of course nobody wants to work. Who in their right mind wants to work ?"
MES "Alright, alright, that's obvious, the sky's fucking blue. Soccer's the same. None of the fuckers want to hit the ball in the back of the net. They're all too fucking muscley. And thick. Running up and down the field like bloody morons. The England team are all bloody minor executives who can't kick the ball in the back of the net, can't do the bloody job they're hired to do. I do loads of gigs, that's my job to play loads of gigs, I'm not an executive, I don't mind playing in front of a load of sweaty people." NME "Do you two still enjoy playing live ?"

NC "I don't know if I do. The first Kilburn show was a nightmare."
MES "What's new with The Bad Seeds ?"
NC "I used to hate playing live totally, just the whole physical exhaustion wass too much for me."
MES "Bleeding workshy Australian. Australians never do any work."
NC "The last tour, going on stage was a release."
MES "Sexually ?"
NC "As my life gets more constipated and cramped going on stage I'm able to purge myself in some way."
MES "A bowel release."
NC "I feel more relaxed."
MES "With Mick Harvey behnd you with the vaseline."
NC "Put a muzzle on this guy."
SM "The gigs I enjoy are the ones where I am so angry and paranoid, and I hate the audience so much, that I put everything into it to feed off the aggressive side of it. I don't actually hate the fans but when I'm feeling angry, pissed off and full of hate, it's a good gig for me."
NC "An audience is the perfect thing to unleash that hate and venom on. It doesn't necessarily mean that you hate everyone in the audience but when you've got a so-called adoring mass in front of you, it's a perfect target for that kind of disgust. Sometimes you find yourself in a position where you're venting your disgust on an audience and a lot of them keep coming back because they actually like that aspect. In a way that diffuses the feeling and you don't get the same release."
MES "You gotta reassess your audience, make sure they aren't just coming to throw ashtrays at your head for fun. Shane says he goes on full of twist, you've got to. If you don't you're fucking fucked, that's whats wrong with a lot of acts these days, they do fucking yoga before and go on all fucking relaxed. I've been with Fad Gadget and he was doing incense and headstands. The English soccer players could do with a lot of twist, they should be put in a room and made to go round in circles, and told "if you don't do a good gig tonight then you're not getting paid."
NME "Shane, you obviously don't enjoy playing live anymore, is that through being on the road too much ?"

SM "I feel like I've spent the last five years of my life on the road. It hasn't affected my songs but it has probably affected everything else about me. Obviously, the more you travel, the wilder the things that keep happening to you, the more likely it is that complete strangers will knock on your hotel room door."
MES "Nick and I don't related to that 'cos the people who come up to us either hate our guts or wouldn't really want to be alone in a room with us. You're a very amiable guy, Shane."
NC "I'm not sure what you're talking about here but the way people related to me in the dressing rooms and so on was incredibly aggressive. They know every record and they seem to think they should nudge me or bump into me as they go past.It was this incredible performance that used to amuse me. I think we share something in common on that level 'cos, like, in the early days, people were drawn towards us like they'd be drawn towards a car smash..."
SM "I read about the fan mail that Freddie Krueger from the Nightmare on Elm Street movies gets-real sicko stuff, loads of letters from genuine corpse freaks and child killer types. It frightens him shitless. That sorta thing freaks me out."
NC "There is a definite relationship between that fanaticism and the fact that, as a performer, you expose more of yourself, of the undercurrents of your personality. Most rock personalities subdue that or chose not to explore it."
[caption] "It's rare when a group comes along that has any real soul to them." (Cave)

part 4/5





HEROES AND VILLAINS

NME "Mark, of the three of you, would you admit to being the professional cynic ?" MES "No, cynicism and defensiveness are two things constantly levelled at me. Look, I've got time for people, I'm good mannered. I usually find that when you are down, nobody has a bloody minute for you. If I was a nobody, you wouldn't even talk to me."
SM "You are nobody."
MES "Fuck off. It's bloody true. Neither would you, Nick."
NC "Bullshit! That's bullshit I take offence at that."
MES "I'm not levelling anything at you. People, in general, don't like being upfront and civil. They hate you for it. They label you a cynic 'cos you're reasonable."
SM "You're no reasonable though. You're a rude bastard. That's fair enough."
MES "Ok I'm cynical. But I'm not defensive. I'm slightly paranoid which is healthy."
SOH "Slightly?"
MES "Listen, Sean, do you walk around London embracing everybody? If I was in the bleeding gutter you wouldn't piss on me.
SOH "I would."
NC "Your reaction is becoming very defensive, Mark."
MES "You're a failed psychiatrist."
NC "I've analysed you, alright-defensive paranoid with delusions of grandeur."
MES "I've had discussions like this all the time in pubs. I end up beaten half to death on the floor. I try to be civil and people assume I'm attacking them."
SM "You attack people all the time. In the press."
MES "I used to. It became too routine so I gave it up. Nietzsche said 'Embrace your enemies'. You two aren't my enemies so I won't embrace you.
SM "Read a lot of Nietzsche, have you?"
MES "All his stuff. I can't quote him. I'm not into him anymore, gave up three years ago. He taught me a lot, though. We're not all born public school boys like you."
SM "I'm not a born public school boy."
MES "Do you like Brendan Behan, he's good."
SM "Yeah, he's not a fascist maniac posing as a philosopher."
MES "If we're gonna talk philosophy, that's a load of crap ! The Nazis adopted his creed and distorted it, they misquoted him all the time."
SM "'The Will to Power'? Try re-interpreting that statement. You can't. It says what it says."
MES "He wasn't a Nazi-you're only saying that because some polytechnic fucking lecturer told you he was."
SM "I'm saying it 'cos I read two of his books where he dismissed the weak, the ugly, the radically impure, Christianity, Socrates, Plato. He was anti anyone who hadn't a strong body, perfect features..."
MES "That's the coffee table analysis. He was the most anti-German pro-Semitic person..."
SM "His books were full of hate."
MES "You've just said you're full of hate when you go onstage."
SM "I don't go around saying Socrates was a cunt, Jesus Christ was an idiot, do I ?"
MES "Jesus Christ was the biggest blight on the human race, he was. And all of them Socialists and Communists- second rate Christianity. It's alright for you Catholics. I was brought up with Irish Catholics. Some of my best friends are Irish Catholics."
SM "listen to him."
MES "Hitler was a Catholic vegetarian, non-smoker, non-drinker. The way you're talking about Nietzsche is that anyone who's a non-smoker, non-drinker is a Nazi. That's the level of your debate, pal. You don't know fuck all about Nietzsche, pal."
SM "You're anti-socialist, too, aren't you ?"
MES "Yeah. I'm an extreme anti-socialist. You don't live on a housing estate where there's been socialism for thirty years and they keep saying it's gonna get better all the time and it never does. Thirty fucking years of it getting worse and worse. You obviously haven't experienced that, living in London."
SM "What's the alternative ?"
MES "I don't have to worry about that. I'm an adult. I'm working class, me. I come from a generation that fucking created this nation pal. You lot, you just sit around and talk about socialism, you're the bloody problem. Eighty percent of this country are white trash, working class. How come they don't vote Labour? 'Cos the Labour Party are a fucking disgrace, that's why. Engels- he was a factory owner in Manchester exploiting 13 year old girls. Learn your history, pal, learn your history. I suppose you blame all Ireland's problems on the British. All the problems of the world are down to Britain. That's what you think, why don't you say it? You can't tell me anything about oppression 'cos, I'll tell you something pal, if you'd been part of Germany, you'd have been liquidated. If you were part of Russia, you wouldn't even exist. Don't tell me about oppression, my parents and grand-parents were exploited to the hilt. Sent to wars, they had gangrene in their teeth. My grandfather was at Dunkirk and all you can see is Margaret Thatcher on my face when, actually, She's on Nick's face. Isn't she Nick ? Come on Nick, help me out. Basically, I like to discuss things right down the line and I don't agree with anybody..."

Part 5/5

KING INC

NME "This is getting a bit out of order, can we talk about something less acrimonious. Heroes ? SM "You're into Presley, Nick."
MES "A lot of Presley's good stuff was overlooked. LIke. the NME viewpoint that he died when he came out of the army. I think the opposite, his best stuff came after the army."
SM "That figures. He was a pile of shit when he came out of the army compared to before he went in. His mother died when he was in the army. That was one of the causes. Anyway, he did some good stuff in the late '60's after the army- 'Kentucky Rain', 'Suspicious Minds', 'In the Ghetto' as opposed to 'Heartbreak Hotel', 'Blue Moon of Kentucky', 'That's alright Mama'. I suppose that's all shit to you , is it ?"
MES "I'm not saying that but everybody writes the later stuff off..."
SM "Who ever writes off Elvis ?"
MES "Look, pal, Elvis was the king, right? To me, Elvis were king. He was only the king 'cos he sustained it. You probably think he's somekind of criminal 'cos he went in the army for a few years. You're insinuating that I'm pro-army and if you have anything to say on that score, say it now, pal and I'll fucking argue right through you !"
SM "What ! He's off again."
MES "I'm into Merseybeat at the minute- The Searchers. I respect Dylan. The only good thing I've heard of his is that LP he did with George Harrison and Roy Orbison."
NME "You seem to prefer older music, is there nothing contemporary that appeals ?"
NC "It's rare when a group comes along that has any real soul to them. Rock'n'Roll history isn't long enough. There's three or four blues people that I like after filtering through loads of blues. There's about three gospel bands, a handful of country ones. I have to draw on the....what are you laughing at, Mark ?"
MES "Oh nothing, heh heh, I'm really into John Lee Hooker myself. He's great solo without a band. His bands are crap. I was always into more experimental bands- Can, Faust. I won't say German 'cos Shane'll have an epileptic fit. I think Nick's more traditional and I espect that but, I'm into things like Stockhausen, The United States of America and Gene Vincent and rockabilly. That's my influences. And I always prefered Lou Reed to the Velvet Underground."
NME "What do you think of the blanket critical approval of Morrissey ?"
MES "Morrissey's another Paddy! A South Manchester Paddy. Shane's got more to say than Morrissey."
SM "I think you guys are encouraging Mark to be like this. You journalists love it."
MES "Of course they do. That's the NME policy, they love a good argument. Don't you lads ?"
Things fall apart. The unholy trinity climb on the pubstage. MacGowan on drums, Smith on guitar and Cave on the organ. A jam of sorts ensues- The Velvets meets Hammer Horror with a hint of Acid House. Totally wired. Summit mental.

Yeah, see, that's how you do a proper interview.

I love the way this bit pretty much grinds the interview to a halt. Amazing stuff.

MES "I don't have to worry about that. I'm an adult. I'm working class, me. I come from a generation that fucking created this nation pal. You lot, you just sit around and talk about socialism, you're the bloody problem. Eighty percent of this country are white trash, working class. How come they don't vote Labour? 'Cos the Labour Party are a fucking disgrace, that's why. Engels- he was a factory owner in Manchester exploiting 13 year old girls. Learn your history, pal, learn your history. I suppose you blame all Ireland's problems on the British. All the problems of the world are down to Britain. That's what you think, why don't you say it? You can't tell me anything about oppression 'cos, I'll tell you something pal, if you'd been part of Germany, you'd have been liquidated. If you were part of Russia, you wouldn't even exist. Don't tell me about oppression, my parents and grand-parents were exploited to the hilt. Sent to wars, they had gangrene in their teeth. My grandfather was at Dunkirk and all you can see is Margaret Thatcher on my face when, actually, She's on Nick's face. Isn't she Nick ? Come on Nick, help me out. Basically, I like to discuss things right down the line and I don't agree with anybody..."

PiL:
NME, May 27th, 1978

Transcribed (and additional notes) by Karsten Roekens,
with thanks to Tom Berglund
© 1978 NME / Neil Spencer
INTRODUCING JOHNNY ROTTEN'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND
Neil Spencer meets and hears John Lydon's new combo. Joe Stevens took the pics.
JOHNNY ROTTEN DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

"Here, lend us a fiver Neil." John Lydon's upturned palm pokes toward The Guest Journalist, an expectant eyebrow arching above the famed John Rotten stare. Britain's most famous rock star is tapping me for a hand-out.
Is he joking? Is this another arch put-on, in the grand Johnny Rotten tradition of arch put-ons?
"I'm broke," he says flatly. "Completely penniless. There's no money coming in at all. He has it all..."
The eyes roll in silent reference to well-known and heeled King's Road anarchist and rag trade magnate Malcolm McLaren, ex-New York Dolls manager and currently protagonist of a flurry of lawsuits against Pistols photographer Ray Stevenson and now film maker and ex-Roxy Club DJ, rasta Don Letts.
Presently too, it seems, McLaren and his Glitterbest organisation will be engaged in another legal tussle, this time with his former protégé and Sex Pistols frontman, a situation that under British law precludes all but the vaguest references to and conjectures about relations between the two parties concerned.
Suffice to say that on the Lydon side of the tracks, the wounds inflicted by the Pistols break-up and subsequent events are deep and bloody. The resentments held are bitter and savage. The resolutions for the future though are considered and determined. No matter what happens, you feel – and as much should be clear from past events – John Lydon is not a man to be kept down.
Which is just as well considering not only the current financial embarrassment of both Lydon and the slightly motley musical trio rehearsing with him, but also the immediate prospects for its relief.
"Frankly," says Wobble, the band's bassman, "with John's business affairs the way they are, I reckon it could be six to twelve months before this band is gigging."
In the meantime the quartet of Lydon (vocals), Jah Wobble (bass), Keith Levene (guitar) and Jim Walker (drums) face the usual precarious hand-to-mouth existence that's the lot of any unsigned rock band, and quite a few signed and successful ones, to come to that. Just because we put these guys on the NME cover it doesn't necessarily mean that they can afford the time of day.
They do at least have somewhere to live though. "This," says Lydon with a gesture that takes in the scraggy three-story terraced house that he bought with Pistols proceeds and which overlooks a thundering inner London juggernaut artery, "is all I got out of it... the Pistols. It's very nice, but now I can't afford to pay the bills, the rates, nothing..."
The three other members of the band sit dolefully on the sagging sofa, and Wobble and Levene compare sympathetic notes on the injustices of being struck off the social security as a result of their joining forces with Lydon in this line-up. Jim Walker sits quietly on one side, resisting all attempts by the others to haggle him into going to the off-licence, with the ackers dutifully coughed up by The Visiting Journalist.
On the wall 'Anarchy' posters are relieved only by the occasional photograph of the Kray brothers. On the turntable it's reggae.
It is not what certain members of the rock press touchingly refer to as an 'interview situation' – that comes later once Lydon is conveniently absent. He's never liked committing himself to tape, least of all now he's faced with a minefield of legal complications.
The conversation roams around, centering mostly – and inevitably disparagingly – on the activities of former Sex Pistols and McLaren. Tales and incidents are related, some sinister, some downright laughable. John – he responds to a passing reference to 'Johnny Rotten' with a wry "he's not here" – seems particularly concerned lest the tapes that Paul Cook and Steve Jones apparently made with Great Train Robber Ronald Biggs in Rio de Janeiro are released under the Pistols name.
The former Pistol describes Biggs as "someone to avoid at all costs rather than seek out. People seem to have forgotten that that train driver is still a vegetable." (Actually, he's dead – Ed.) [1]
Lydon also has a small fund of stories to relate about his recent visit to Jamaica and the attempts by Boogie, a former Pistols roadie, to film him there – attempts which went so far as to involve the hapless cameraman hiding in the bushes by the Sheraton Hotel swimming pool.
Mention of the way some people closely involved with the Pistols have changed their 'anarchistic' attitude over recent months spurs me to trot out the old George Orwell adage about 'all power corrupting'. [2]
"Well, that ain't true," says Wobble. "Just look at John, it ain't corrupted him. He used to be far worse than he is now."
"It's true," agrees Lydon with a cackle. "I was far more corrupt when I started than now. These days I'm not corrupt at all..."
Jah Wobble – he acquired the Jamaican prefix as a result of his obsession with reggae – is better placed than most to pass judgement. He's known John Lydon some five years now, first encountering him when they were enrolling at Kingsway College of Further Education together.
"I thought he was a Led Zeppelin fan," he recalls. "I was queueing up behind him and we had a bit of a quarrel about who was going to put their names down first... After that he just started crawling around after me and I let him be my mate. He used to have to buy me drinks though, 'cos no-one liked him then. He used to wind everyone up, everyone. People who say he's a bastard now should have seen him then."
Wobble himself was still something of a skinhead at the time, fresh up from his native Whitechapel and the terraces of West Ham [5], which easily outstripped the current rock scene as a source of inspiration. His heroes at the time, he says, were the West Ham team. "Trevor Brooking definitely. Not just 'cos he's a good footballer, but the way he plays the game... you can relate that to life - style, elegance. Musically I've always been into black music, always. First soul, then reggae, which I followed through from my skinhead days. Bit of a cliché, but it's true."
It's worth mentioning at this point that Wobble has acquired himself a reputation in some quarters as something of a bruiser, and there are comparisons drawn between him and Sid Vicious, whom Lydon also met at the Kingsway College and who of course also went on to play bass alongside Lydon. Furthermore, it was Wobble who played back-up to Vicious in the seedy fracas at a Pistols gig at the 100 Club in summer '76 [3] when NME's Nick Kent, in the words of Malcolm McLaren, "got what was coming to him" and was 'done' by Vicious and his chain.
The Vicious/Wobble comparisons, though, don't really wash. Wobble is not the type to share Vicious' taste either for exotic pharmaceuticals, crazed American ladies of high parentage, or the cranky exhibitions of bloody self-destruction which Vicious has paraded before the world.
Wobble's interest in the rock scene began only with the Pistols' emergence in late '75. Since then he's entertained the notion of playing bass without ever taking up the instrument seriously until a month or so ago.
At the other extreme, Keith Levene started playing guitar at the age of seven and received classical training in both guitar and piano well into his teens [6].
He describes his major point of interest in rock before Pistols as Bowie. "I was a skinhead for four weeks... I was a hippie first, then a skin, 'cos I wanted to be different, but all the skinhead I knew were stupid and would just fight all the time, so I became a hippie again, a hippie in skinhead clothes."
A follower of the fledgling punk scene from its earliest inception, Levene belonged to The Clash in their earliest incarnation, surviving only a matter of weeks before his departure/expulsion for reasons which he says should be "obvious... I wasn't into politics."
A flirtation with drugs was apparently another reason why Levene didn't stay the course with the City Rockers, certainly 'Deny' on The Clash's first album is widely reputed to refer to him at this time, a period when he also met Wobble and Lydon for the first time.




rest on here: http://www.fodderstompf.com/ARCHIVES...WS/nme578.html

Aesop Rock Interview



Do you think you're old? Do you feel old? Are you scared of growing old?



Jeez way to jump right in there. Ha. I guess I do feel old. I'm 30. I have a handful of friends my age and older, but most people doing the music I do, or attending the shows I do are younger. The concert-going fans will always be a younger bunch, as I was really all about seeing shows during my late teens and early 20's. The only part that scares me about growing old is that I am constantly haunted by wondering what I'm gonna do next, in all of this, in music, in art, all of it. Sometimes the worry of that outweighs the enjoyment of what I do. Will I find something to keep me interested musically or otherwise? Will whatever I find pay the bills and support whatever family I may have at that time? I'm finally at the point where I can actually look back a little and say "oh shit, this is what I did with my youth". That can make you feel locked in, which is a scary thing. I also am starting to have the desires to involve myself in things that help out younger generations, which to me is an "old" way to think. I am starting to feel like it is my duty to show kids that they don't have to be a banker or sit in a cubicle, or if they DO have to or want to do that, there are other things in life that can bring you satisfaction and a sense of personal accomplishment that don't necessarily come with a 9-5. I know living off music or art has been a blessing, and if it stops ever I am still happy I got a chance to do it. I'd love to introduce kids to that world.

On the MTV site they said something about you "building on the rapping style eccentrics of Kool Keith and Del". How do you feel about that, and did you see Kool Keith last week at mezzanine and what did you think of the show?


I take that as a huge compliment. Those are 2 dudes that I am honored to share a place in a sentence with, as I definitely felt like both of them were role models to me in many ways. They really continue to show people that it is ok to let your personality show thru in your music, which really is the most important thing. It seems really odd, and sad that something like 'letting your personality show thru' is something that people need to be reminded of, but I guess it's maybe a sign of the times. I dunno. I did not see the Kool Keith show in sf.

List some places here in SF where you can be found? (places you enjoy going- eating at- parks to sit- record stores- spending time at- bars to drink at- movie theaters- anything if anything.
It depends on who's looking for me. To be honest I don't go to that many bars or parties. I don't drink, so that kinda stuff isn't really all that appealing. I'm really just trying to get used to the city still. I lived in NY forever, aside from college, so it's a bit of a change of pace. I haven't been here all that long. Most days my wife goes to work and I work at the crib. I make my rounds to all the record spots every couple weeks. I like walking anywhere cuz most of it is still relatively unfamiliar to me. I am a major movie nerd but I hate theatres. I'm trying to re-train myself to enjoy theatres. That being said, I saw nacho libre the other day and was really really let down. I like jack black, but they forgot to write jokes into the movie. I can also be found prying Jeremy fish out of his house to go eat at any of SF's fine diners. Grub Steak is up there.

I know Fat Nick from skating in Ohio. Do you know him and have you been to his Scribble Jam? If so, you ever compete in it?


I've actually never been to scribble jam. I may know nick if I saw him but the name doesn't ring a bell.

Did you say that smoking cigarettes will make your voice sound dope? That stuff causes cancer. Worry about that stuff? You smoke four packs a day?! My dad used to smoke three. I thought that was tough.
Jesus talk about something being blown out of proportion. I said the voice/cigarettes thing as a joke in an interview many many years ago and it has haunted me ever since. I did at one time in my life for several months smoke 3-4 packs a day. It was a bad time. A 'low point' if you will. The rest of my smoking 'career' averaged around a pack a day. Smoking doesn't do anything to your voice but fuck it up. I have long said in my life that I would quit smoking when I either had a baby or turned 30, whichever came first. that being said, I do not have a baby, but I did turn 30. I have not had a cigarette for 23 days. I have officially quit. Cold turkey. No going back.

Tell me how this collaboration with Jeremy Fish came about. How did you two meet and what in the hell do you think about that big geezer?


Man that guy is my hero. We have a friend in common who hit me up a while back saying that this guy Jeremy fish had an opportunity to pitch a cartoon to Disney and wanted me to be involved in the music side. I flipped out cuz I was also a fan of his, and owned some of his work. I was also dying for any kind of side project that I could get involved in, as occasionally making solo records gets really boring and repetitive, no matter how you approach it. As soon as I moved out to SF we got up, and that was that. We were getting the runaround on the cartoon, but decided we would collaborate regardless, as we had a ton in common and really just hit it off well. I grew up skateboarding, though it had been maybe 7 years since I have done it regularly, but Jeremy is pretty involved, and I got to nerd out on old skateboarding stuff. We just got along well, and his work ethic is inspiring to say the least. When I first moved to sf and re-set up my studio I was working a lot but having a real hard time getting into a zone. New surroundings, foreign city, all that. Jeremy really took the time to show me around a bit and helped me to get back in the zone. That guy is a gentleman and a scholar.

Would you consider yourself a nerd?

music nerd, movie nerd, video game nerd, part-time skateboard nerd, part time art nerd, and I like to read science journals.

Describe yourself when you were twelve.

Skateboarding. Dead Kennedy's and Public Enemy t-shirts. Pretty much listening to any music my older brother gave me. Trying to make art. Learning to play bass. Rapping over my brother's Casio concoctions. Building a launch ramp. Making out with a fat chick who wore Skid Row t-shirts. That was all around that time give or take.

You perform live a lot. Tell us about your worst live show.

There have been a few doozies. We had one this past year. I went to Santos Brazil for 2 shows with my friends Rob Sonic and dj Big Wiz. We played in this concrete soccer stadium thing by the beach. It was kind of open on the sides and covered up on top. It was over 100 degrees outside, and hotter in the spot. When we got up, somebody had piled all these towels onto wiz's computer, causing the whole thing to over heat. it was so hot that his equipment simply would not turn on. we were all so hot and that was causing us to be aggravated and irritable with each other. We finally go things running and in our flustered state started doing the wrong set (form an older set list), as in playing songs that weren't rehearsed. About 4 songs in the whole system again shut down. if that happens in the u.s. you can cover it up with something accapella, or freestyle, or make the crowd clap or something. but when you are somewhere with a language barrier, a lot of the impromptu shit is out the window. we tried our best and fudged our way thru it with the equipment going in and out the whole set. I've never seen wiz so mad. in hind site it was funny, but Christ we were not happy. luckily we played the following day too, and the weather had cooled. we did a lot better. I've had everything from blackouts during the performance to stabbings at the show.

When you first started taking off was it hard to stay away from the hot groupies?
yes.

How has living in SF changed your music if at all... and how did you end up here?


My music tends to change over time regardless, so it's hard to tell what effect sf has had on it directly without taking into account the changes the sound has already gone thru. I'm being really critical on what I do these days, it seems more so than ever before. I'm also trying to just write about shit I have never written about. I have a few more stories than I ever had. I've been really into songs that tell a story lately, or songs that just describe a setting and set up an event but don't actually detail the event, if that makes sense. saying this was the time, the city looked like this, it was night, it was summer, the air smelled like this, etc. I love that stuff.

I came to SF cuz I recently got married, and it was easier for me to relocate than my wife. she had a job and a band (parchman farm) in sf, where as I always worked by myself from home.

So you used to skate in the '90s. What was the largest pair of pants you rocked? I got to 56, and that was conservative.

Hum I don't honestly remember the actual size. I definitely had some bad ones though. But for every large pair of jeans I had, there was always a raver somewhere that made me feel like mine were a small/acceptable size.


rest on here
http://uhh4d.blogspot.com/2006/08/ae...interview.html




from fecalface.com

RFC Interview: Plastic Crimewave


As posted here yesterday, this Saturday WHPK and the U of C Film Center will be presenting Pictures and Sounds 2005. One of the musicians providing auditory accompaniment to the event will be Steve Krakow, aka Plastic Crimewave. He'll be performing solo guitar drenched with interstellar effects to the first Sci Fi film ever made, Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune, 1902). RFC recently caught up with Mr. Crimewave to learn more about his work and this upcoming performance... RFC: When hearing “Pictures and Sounds,” the first thing that comes to mind for me is a psychedelic aural and visual spectacle ala The Pink Floyd in 1967. However, the big differences here (besides the lack of LSD) are that: 1.Rather than random lights and slides, the music will be accompanied by complete video compositions and 2.The music will be improvised around the film rather than vice versa… Most people site The Floyd as being one of the innovators in bringing lights to live music, but who started the trend of improvising music around movies and film shorts?
Plastic Crimewave: Well, shit-this feels like a quiz, but it would be impossible to gauge. Me thinks-since folks were twiddling along on piano without set scores to the very earliest films!
RFC: This concept seems to be gaining popularity recently…(in the last few years, a couple of lounge/downtempo bands have released entire albums based on their improvising to old movies and locally, Califone did residency at Rodan last fall where they improvised to old films) …Is this your first gig like this? Or is it something that you’ve been experimenting with for a while?
PC: My full band, Plastic Crimewave Sound did Pictures and Sounds a few years back to Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising. I've always been into the idea though, being a silent film buff, and seeing a great Knitting Factory show in maybe 1995, where avant garde types scored such films.
RFC: So how do you prepare for a performance like this? I would assume you’re not going into it completely blind, and would have to have some ideas or themes planned?
PC: Oh, i've practiced a little, keeping mental notes, like "spaceship taking off part" or "underwater sounds" or "crowd chaos part"...funny enough when PCWS scored Lucifer Rising, I was the only one who'd ever seen the film, and folks still asked how we managed to score it so tightly-ie-they thought we'd practiced it a lot and had distinct movements planned, when we never had!
RFC: How or why did you choose Méliès' A Trip to the Moon for this performance?
PC: It was actually chosen for me, but a fine choice indeed, that I OK'ed.....
RFC: Anything else we should know about this performance?
PC: I'll be utilizing treated guitar and electronics...and promise aural lift-off! also very excited that my ol pal Fur Saxa will be playing, she rules!
RFC: Besides your performance at Pictures and Sounds, what else is on tap for Plastic Crimewave (and your band Plastic Crimewave Sound)? Future gigs? Album releases? International super-stardom?
PC: This is going to be a sort of big year for me/us...Let's see-
For PCWSound: a new double LP/CD due on Eclipse for summer; a split 12" w/Oneida on JagJaguwar; a track (and I did the artwork) on a UK 10" that is a tribute to "free-festivalers" Pink Fairies, Hawkwind, and the Edgar Broughton Band; a collaborative Lp w/Michael Yonkers; a west coast tour in May with the Ponys (also playing their record release show april 29 at the Double Door); also hoping to get to Europe/UK in the fall.

On the personal front, I've been drawing a bunch of posters, ads and album covers, will have a new comic strip in the Reader, been writing for Stop Smiling and Arthur mags, and I will have a new double-sized Galactic Zoo Dossier magazine available in Summer on Drag City, also will have Million tongues festival #2 in fall at Empty bottle. whew.