FYF Quarterly Booklet by FYF Fest

4 MIXTAPE CONTEST

22 HOT SNAKES

HOW TO WIN CASH, FAME AND LIMITLESS ADORATION (AND FREE PASSES TO THE FYF FEST) JUST BY SENDING IN A MIXTAPE!

INTERVIEW BY TOM CHILD

28 TRUE TALES OF TURBONEGRO

A COMIC BY LUKE McGARRY AS TOLD TO D.M. COLLINS

INTERVIEW BY CHRIS ZIEGLER

6 DJ HARVEY’S GUIDE TO THE BEST OF WEST L.A. 32 FUTURE ISLANDS

AS TOLD TO KRISTINA BENSON

10 FATHER JOHN MISTY

INTERVIEW BY CHRIS ZIEGLER

14 MATT BRAUNGER’S GUIDE TO PLACES TO DRINK ALONE (AND YELL AT GHOSTS)

AS TOLD TO CHRIS ZIEGLER

18 AESOP ROCK

INTERVIEW BY REBECCA HAITHCOAT

38 DAM FUNK’S GUIDE TO HIS FORMATIVE FUNK EXPERIENCES

AS TOLD TO CHRIS ZIEGLER

42 REDD KROSS

A COMPREHENSIVELY ANNOTATED DISCOGRAPHY AS TOLD TO CHRIS ZIEGLER

48 CLOUD NOTHINGS

INTERVIEW BY CHRIS ZIEGLER

FYF FEST MIXTAPE CONTEST

There is something very special about making and receiving a mix tape. It takes enough effort to prove that it’s something you care about, and it carries the personality and the emotions of the person who made it in a way that a .ZIP file or Spotify playlist never will. You remember how this works— trying to fit all your favorite songs together in a way so they add up to a story all their own, and learning to use words and music by other people to say something you can’t quite say by yourself. Technology has made it easy to share music now, but sharing a mixtape is another thing entirely. So this contest is simple. We want you to make us a mix tape. Pretend that we at FYF are your high school crush and that you are trying to win us over. The only thing we ask is that you are honest with the songs that you pick. Don’t try to impress us or give us what you think we want to hear. (That doesn’t work on crushes either!) We want to know your guilty pleasures and the songs you sing out loud when you’re alone and the songs that you’ll be in love with for the rest of your life. This mixtape won’t just be a bunch of songs in a pile—it’ll be you. 4

MIXTAPE CONTEST

THE RULES ARE SIMPLE! • Must be on an actual cassette tape! • Must be at least 45 minutes. Try not to go over 90 minutes. • Be creative with the design! Draw on it, sticker on it, paint on it—whatever! • May contain anything you desire! No limits. Music of any kind, of course, but spoken word or instrumentals or soundtrack music and comedy is fine, too! • Must come with a track list • It does not need to be made on a brand new blank tape. Feel free to overdub on an old tape if you want! • Do not put two songs by the same band back to back! • Tapes must be postmarked by Thursday, Aug. 16.

MAIL MIXTAPES TO FYF FEST PO BOX 1558 TORRANCE, CA 90505 • The winners will be picked by the FYF crew based on originality, selection, awesomeness and overall charm. • Winners will be announced on Monday, August 20. • The GRAND PRIZE winner will receive five (5) VIP tickets to FYF Fest 2012 and $500 spending cash. But that’s not all! They will also go on KXLU 88.9 FM to play their mix tape on the air and talk about it. This will be a lot of fun! And we will play the grand prize mixtape through the mainstage PA between bands at the actual FYF Fest! • Three RUNNER UPs will each receive four (4) Weekend Passes to the FYF Fest! • Any questions? Please email info@fyffest.com.

DJ HARVEY’S GUIDE TO THE BEST OF WEST L.A. AS TOLD TO KRISTINA BENSON

DJ Harvey is an Englishman who still enjoys a nice pot of tea and English style bangers with his ceviche tostada. Since he’s AWOL—Always West Of Lincoln—he (with some coaxing) shared with us his favorite spots to surf, get weird videos, and shop for authentic English food on the sea side of the city. Best Surf Spot: Psycho’s at Venice Beach “My favorite surf spot is really right in front of my house at a place called Psycho’s which is named after a friend’s girlfriend. She’s not psycho about surfing—just generally psycho. As an Englishman who grew up skateboarding—living in London quite a long way away from surf breaks—to be able to walk from the bottom of my garden and be able to jump in the ocean and surf … that’s the best surf spot. I like to surf there on Christmas because I can. Also on Superbowl Sunday. I’m sponsored by a company called Kookbox, which is Joel Tudor’s—a famous longboarder and jujitsu champion—he and his buddy deemed me worthy of some surfboards. I’d actually forgotten about this interview today. If I’d gotten my shit together I’d be in San Onofre right now.” Best Place FOR English Food: The Continental Shop, 1619 Wilshire BLVD., Santa Monica. (thecontinentalshop.com) “Generally English food is bad by it’s nature. There’s no such thing as an English restaurant—the only place to get English food is at an English person’s home, cooked by their mum. But there is somewhere that calls itself the Continental Store, and I must admit that I do go there and buy Wheatabix, Marmite, Lemon Curd, Daddy’s Sauce and English bangers. In fact they’re called Irish bangers there, and they’re the only ones that taste like English sausages. It doesn’t matter where you go—Whole Foods or one of these designer butcher’s. It’s impossible to get sausages that taste like English bangers. In fact, the Irish do a great English style breakfast—or I suppose it’s Irish style, with fried eggs and fried bread. The bread is fried in bacon fat—it’s so good for you. I think alcohol cuts out the fat. Maybe that balances it out. Beer tends to be fattening but if you’re a real alcoholic you’re not fat. Alcoholics don’t tend to be fat. If you really drink, you don’t really need food.” GUIDE TO L.A.

855.GO.BABYCAKES

BABYCAKESNYC.COM

THE AWARD-WINNING VEGAN, KOSHER, GLUTEN & REFINED SUGAR FREE BAKERY HOLLYWOOD 236 North Larchmont Blvd.

CH & SNIFF! *

SCR

DOWNTOWN L.A. 130 East 6th Street

*FEATURE UNAVAILABLE, PLEASE VISIT OUR BOOTH AT FYF TO TRY OUR GLUTEN FREE, VEGAN COOKIE SANDWICHES & BROWNIES.

Best place to get a coffee—Joni’s Coffee, 552 Washington Blvd., Marina Del Rey (joniscoffee.com) “I avoid Venice coffee emporiums like the plague, but this place called Joni’s, they roast their coffee on the premises. It’s a German coffee roaster from the mid-century—I think someone captured it in the war and shipped it back to America. If your coffee is made by someone with a mustache that isn’t Mexican and has tattoos, it isn’t good. If your coffee is made by someone that has tattoos and a mustache that looks like they just got out of art school, it’s no good. It needs be made by a Mexican for starters, or an Italian, and Joni’s is the only place. They make real old fashioned, American-style strong coffee and if you have one of those, you don’t need to eat. Don’t go to artsy places—too much style and not enough content.” Yoga: ‘This machine kills yoga gurus.’ “I don’t do yoga. I ridicule yoga. Yoga’s for sex creeps. It’s preparing for death. People don’t realize that. People that invented yoga aren’t about hanging about on Earth— they’re about going to somewhere else when they die and yoga is basically helping you prepare for that. It’s a preparation for death thing. I also don’t go to the gym. I’m an Englishman. And no one from the West Side actually does yoga or goes to the gym.” Best Video Store—Vidiots, 302 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica (vidiotsvideo.com) “There’s an amazing video store called Vidiots, which is sort of a pre-Netflix video store. It’s a wonderful amazing video store that still has VHS and stuff like that, and things that may not appear on Netflix. You could spend the rest of your life going through the Netflix catalogue but there is stuff that doesn’t appear there.” Best Thrift Store—Wertz Brothers, 11879 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles (wertzbrothers.com) “I love thrifting but I very rarely find anything. My favorite place that isn’t really a thrift sore is kind of a vintage emporium, and it’s called Wertz Brothers. It’s a massive fantastic store—a big warehouse with loads of units and loads and loads of little dealers sort of doing antique bits and pieces and little bits of furniture and stuff like that. I think thrift is pretty much over. Anything that was really good was put on eBay or raided by the Japanese. I imagine you’d have to be really into sort of collecting really cheap mid-‘90s sportswear by not the original designer—by Nik, not Nike. Copies of sportswear—sort of peasantwear. You know when you see footage of war-torn Serbia? Check out the kind of copies of Adidas and Nike that they’re wearing—it’s really kind of amazing style. That is probably the only sort of frontier of thrift that’s left.” GUIDE TO L.A.

FATHER JOHN MISTY INTERVIEW BY CHRIS ZIEGLER

Josh Tillman is Father John Misty, the Zevon-esque shadow dweller who was once a part of Fleet Foxes but who has now relocated to L.A. with his new album and his new novel. (Which come together in the same package.) He can make real life into a good story and make a good story seem like real life. He speaks now about an interesting Sunday afternoon, and what was interesting about it. What was it like hanging out at strip club on Father’s Day? I got the feeling maybe the girls were working a little harder or something? The performances were all very cathartic. I like going to those places—like kind of meta- trips. Christmas Eve is an interesting one. It’s nice when there’s a unifying theme to the proceedings. But I think it was kinda business as usual on a Sunday afternoon. We were in there at 4 pm and were the only people for a couple hours. I don’t feel any pity for them. Because I identify with them so much, and I try not to pity myself either. When they’re up there doing their thing and the sun is still shining and nobody’s watching, I completely identify with that situation— and the absurdity of it. If you can’t appreciate the absurdity, you don’t have the stuff to be a stripper. And I definitely have the stuff to be a stripper. This is going in print, you know. Absolutely. Stripping is a big part of my novel. It’s something I’ve thought about quite a bit. It’s such an absurd act. It’s INTERVIEW

so ideological. People are getting out of it exactly what their minds bring to it. I’m fascinated you can sit in a room and there’s hundreds of disparate attitudes regarding it. Kind of cohabitating. To ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine.’ What are these specific attitudes? I can definitely detail some archetypes. There are the self-haters. Self-hating men. They exhibit really extroverted behavior like throwing crumpled up bills and laughing a lot with their friends. It’s some kind of deep-seated self-loathing. Ultimately, some strange contempt for women in general. Another archetype is the meta-observer dude, sitting there like, ‘I’m not really here! I’m just watching this all go down.’ They definitely have some narcissistic sense that everyone else in the club can sense they don’t belong there, or that they aren’t engaged with the lowbrow entertainment directly. That’s as odious as the other behavior. Then there’s the ‘Girl In The Group Of Girls At The Strip Club,’ and they’re just going apeshit. 11

Which is also a way of compensating with their profound discomfort with the whole thing. It’s really just seeing people’s vulnerabilities manifesting in a carefully engineered counter-intuitive way. The space I like to fill in a strip club—and I’ve definitely played with fire a couple times, like being invited to get coffee and accepting, and then all of a sudden you’re in the world of that. I’ve learned since. I like just chatting. Keeping it light. I try to curtail those stories. It has to stay fun. For me, too. I’m susceptible to the romantic. In the ‘Russian Romantic’ sense. The romantic narrative. I’m definitely a sucker for getting too embedded with these charming anti-heroes. Luis from the Wildfires says bartenders, strippers and musicians are all doing the same thing. Oh yeah. A characteristic found in all three is a very thinly veiled … like contempt, honestly. For the audience, for the clients. Really, when you’re performing, you’re not seeing peoples’ faces. You’re seeing them as a singular entity. This faceless singularity— I was hoping you’d say ‘blob.’ No, but those are the kind of strippers I like to go see. Really fat ones, who don’t have faces. A blobophile, eh? But that contempt is purely conceptual and easily broken down, with just interacting with certain types of person. There is some me against the world attitude that I think is necessary for self12

preservation. I’ve never related to people where the dancer, musician or bartender is doing this cheery, ‘Anything I can do!?’ It makes me suspicious. In music? What’s music with good customer service look like? Oh hell yeah! It’s a guy on stage talking like a camp counselor. ‘HOW YOU GUYS DOING!?’ Obviously all this canned ham they say every night. There’s a Bukowski poem where he says, ‘Those who preach love, their hate is perfect / like a knife, like a diamond, like the tiger’s eye.’ That sort of behavior makes me really suspicious. I love being in a strip club and seeing a dancer say, ‘Fuck you.’ There’s nothing more unattractive, even in personal interactions, than someone determined to get you to like them. It’s an adversarial dynamic, but the two need one another. That’ makes it interesting. Now your video with the dominatrix seems much more complicated. That was role-playing within role-playing. I absolutely did have a very good time doing that video. But the idea was to coerce the audience into identifying with forms of intimacy that on the surface are maybe uncomfortable or unconventional. Are you trying to get 25,000 Sub Pop fans into S&M? No! Hopefully that’s not what people come away from that video with. I wonder if I have turned anybody into an S&M freak? But I will extrapolate … I’d say I’d prefer if they show up to the shows in the gear. INTERVIEW

MATT BRAUNGER’S SEVEN PLACES TO DRINK ALONE AND YELL AT GHOSTS AS TOLD TO CHRIS ZIEGLER

Drinking alone is a great freedom, and like a mother’s love or a person taking a dump in the bathroom at the mall, it’s always there. Most people associate it with sadness, but that’s mostly because of crappy movie writing. It can be really fun getting buzzed and reflecting, introspecting, or just watching a football game on mute while AC/DC’s “Givin’ the Dog a Bone” plays. Sometimes I just go sit with the rummies, have a few, and zone out. On a side note: Men, listen. If you see a girl drinking by herself, and she’s not giving you the eye, leave her alone. Too often a gal’s evening gets ruined by a dude’s “Hey, no lady WANTS to be left alone, right?” bullshit. Cut it out. Everybody deserves a solo boozer. El Prado—1805 W. SUNSet blvd., echo park (ELPRADOBAR.COM) “Yeah, we’ve all been. Huge wooden bar, beer and wine only—what?!—and all music chosen by the bartender and played on vinyl. When it gets crowded it turns into a hallway of softly lit hell, but go early in the evening on a weeknight and you’ll have the place almost to yourself. This is the only place on the list where I’ve had sad beers. It was after my pilot got passed on by a television network I won’t mention. Three IPAs made me realize that it was a dumb, unrelatable problem to have in the first place. Finally, I love that no one who’s drinking controls the music. Watching someone get mad at what’s playing while having no power whatsoever to change it ... well, it just goes with beer better than peanuts.” The Huge Field Up the Street From My Apartment—SILver LAKE OR FROGTOWN? “I live where Silver Lake and Frogtown meet. There’s an elementary school a street down from me, and if you follow my street all the way up the hill, it becomes a small forest and then a field of high grass. It looks like that Smashing Pumpkins video where people are fucking outdoors while the lead singer looks around while wearing an ice cream man outfit. I’ll go out there with a 2X4—24 ounce beer—in a bag sometimes and sit in the grass. If you can figure out where it is, you can join me.” GUIDE TO L.A.

Bar 107—107 W. 4TH ST., DOWNTOWN (MYSPACE.COM/BAR107) “Again, I’m sure you’re familiar. My friends own this bar, so I’ve been going for years. I like to come here around 7 on a Saturday, have a couple pops, and decide what I’m going to do with my night. It’s actually over a hundred years old and was a Latino gay bar before its current incarnation. I sit at the very end of the bar. You know—by that stupid fucking white horse? Then I reminisce about when the white horse wasn’t there. I love Bar 107, but God, I hate that horse.” Musso and Frank’s—6667 Hollywood BLVD., HOLLYWOOD (MUSSOANDFRANKGRILL.COM) “This is where everybody in Hollywood, from the writers to the actors to the cops, used to and still do get the best martini in town. The drinks are as cold as the indifferent bartenders and vice versa. Shut up and drink it, you stupid young punk. Consider your failures, skim through your victories, and know what it is to be a drinking adult.” Chinatown “Dump out a can of 7-Up halfway, then fill up the rest with Old Overholt Rye and club soda. Put your thumb over the top and give it a quick shake—just once—so it mixes. You’ve got yourself a Rye Press, the most refreshing summer drink there is, made for walking the streets. Walk around Chinatown until you find the craziest souvenir you can find that’ll fit in your pocket. Once you have it, go to ...” Hop Louie—950 Mei Ling Way, CHINATOWN “I hate to be that guy who goes, “Oh, it used to be better when ...” but this place used to have a jukebox full of 45s. Damn it! When is the young person of today’s quest for old-timey authenticity going to come around full circle so that all bars have those again? Anyway, the main bartender’s an old man in a vest, shirtsleeves, and brylcreem-ed hair, and the other one’s a big guy who seemingly would rather be in prison than working there. It’s also along a random Epcot-fake Chinese side street that’s great to stumble out onto at the end of the night.” The Roost—3100 Los Feliz BLVD., ATWATER “Everything’s red, there’s always someone there twice your age, and there’s free popcorn. If I’m there on a non-drunk night, I only order beers. This place serves what I like to call bucket drinks. Large, wide glasses holding cocktails with four shots minimum. After two, you’re at least mildly drunk. After three, the world and everything in it ‘isn’t so bad, you know?’ After four, you start kissing people on their heads. At least I do. Anyway— great, no nonsense bar. Just know when to pull the trigger on the buckets and when not to. Cash only.” GUIDE TO L.A.

AESOP ROCK

INTERVIEW BY REBECCA HAITHCOAT Aesop Rock is a hip-hop renaissance man or maybe a renaissance monster—he raps and produces and conceptualizes and experiments and digs deeper and deeper into himself until you wonder if he worries he’s just gonna tear through to the other side? His newest album Skelethon is a solo effort in the most primal sense and he speaks now about setting off into unexplored musical territory all on his own. So the new album, Skelethon, just came out. It’s your first fully self-produced album and your first in five years. Feeling any sort of ‘fan-anticipation’ pressure or nerves? Oh yes, I am a nervous wreck. Not so much because of the five-year thing, or the self-produced thing—just a solo release in general. I get nervous tying my own shoes, so putting out records just puts me in another world of anxiety. I don’t think the self-produced aspect has me that worried as I’ve had a hand in producing all of my stuff, as well a handful of other projects, groups, etc. I guess five years is a minute, but I’ve been steadily busy over that time, so it’s not like I’ve been ‘away’ or anything. But just putting out solo stuff in general is very taxing on one’s sanity. Mine, anyway. How has being on Rhymesayers influenced your creativity? Well, when I knew I would need to find a new way of releasing stuff, I didn’t immediately seek one out. InINTERVIEW

stead I just thought, ‘I’ll figure that all out later. Right now I need to hole up and make some music.’ I actually found some comfort in being ‘unsigned’ during the whole process. I honestly didn’t know that anyone would be interested at all, from fans to labels to anyone, but I also tried not to care about that stuff. I figured worst case scenario is I make a record, nobody wants to put it out, I put it on the internet for free—bam. And I guess, while not ideal, enough of me was OK with that option to not seek anything better out right off the bat. I have longstanding friendships with some of the folks over at RSE, and their attitude in general to me has been, ‘If the time comes when you ever want help, we are here.’ Which is awesome of them. So when all was done, we started sending the songs out to a few people, but pretty quickly I think I just said fuck all this noise, and called up the Rhymesayers boys like, ‘So ... uh ... help?’ They’ve been great. 19

Will you paint us a picture of what you envisioned this album to be? I didn’t really go in with any vision of what it would be. I had a difficult five years for many reasons—a lot of loss, some deaths, blah blah blah. I don’t usually talk about music as therapy, because I don’t identify with that analogy much when I hear it put out there, but I think maybe more than ever the songs on this record were born of things I should probably be speaking to a therapist about. Anyway ... Certain events would trigger childhood memories that I had forgotten about, which then became relevant to everything I was then. I think that’s probably true about all of my stuff. The only thing that really changes is what is happening around me during the times I am writing. That kinda dictates what the songs are going to be about. So you had complete control over creating this album, and it was totally your vision and execution. That’s a lot to deal with. What was your process for tackling all of this? I’ve never been the kind of person that can sit and write a song front to back and be done. All the stuff is made in pieces, the music, the lyrics—all of it. Production-wise it’s a lot of trial and error. I tend to make beats until I find something that gets a reaction out of me, but it’s usually something minor—a loop, a drum pattern, something simple and unfinished. Then I’ll usually write some stuff and demo it up. I will go back into the beat and add and subtract, then back to 20

the lyrics same way. Add and subtract. I also tend to have lots of songs going on at once, so I’ll have five or ten songs I’m working on, all partially written and partially produced. I just chip away at all of it, really. I write a lot of notes and pull from them a lot. As things take shape I invite some musicians in to add some live pieces. It’s a wildly scattered process for a long time. Then one day you realize ... ‘Hey, I might have some songs here!’ Much of the production on Skelethon mirrors your delivery in that it’s intense, driving, dark and a little paranoid—basically the opposite vibe of the season during which you’re releasing it. Is that a concern at all, or are we just too L.A.? You’re suggesting I wait for the proper weather? The thing took five years— I’m not about to wait for some leaves to change hue. What do you do to refine and advance both your flow and your lyrics? Is it as easy as using it so you don’t lose it? How do you handle crises of confidence? I don’t know how to handle crises of confidence, but if you do—or anyone you know does—please call me as soon as possible. I am the least confident man there is. As for refining and advancing and things of that nature, I think I just really like to rap. Like ... a lot. I like writing. I like learning. I don’t want to stop learning or exploring. I don’t want to plateau in my chosen field of study because what is the fun in that? I don’t identify with the common concept of INTERVIEW

trying to be ‘the best rapper’ or any of that shit. I want to just keep going, keep working, keep trying to hit those little moments where I think I might’ve done something neat or different or new. I don’t want to find myself in any comfort zone with this stuff where I’m fine with the level I’m at, because that just seems like ... I dunno, what is that? It makes no sense to me to be done learning. If I’m gonna do that then I might as well crawl under a rock and shrivel up. You’re considered an ‘underground hip-hop star.’ Does that ‘indie’ tag ever get just totally annoying or have you completely embraced it? ‘Star’ I’m not comfortable with. ‘Indie’ kinda doesn’t mean anything, or maybe it’s kind of a synonym for ‘underground’ which kinda also doesn’t mean anything. Neither of those two terms particularly annoy me—they just seem like ways of saying that someone isn’t really shooting for the commonplace Top 40 sound of the moment. I’ve been called a lot of things. At the end of the day, the songs are out there. It is what it is. As much as people were into ‘conscious’ hip hop when you came up, it was also the era of money, cash, hoes, bling (ugh) ... outrageous displays of ostentatious wealth by the music industry. And then here you were, rapping very complexly about the opposite of all the industry stood for. How difficult was it to carve out a space—to find your audience? INTERVIEW

I don’t know that I can confidently speak on carving out my space or finding my audience. My recipe for all of this is: write some songs, cross your fingers. I’ve been extremely lucky that people have connected with the stuff and continue to be supportive. It fucking thrills me more than I can put into words. But I have no strategy here. I’m not really following any blueprint or making any sweet career moves on purpose. There’s no master plan. Politically and socially, what are your views right now? To be incredibly dramatic ... who can save the country? Ha. Fuck if I know. If there’s one thing in life I find overwhelmingly uninspiring, it is politics. It seems to be a bunch of people who enjoy arguing finding each other and arguing. The shit is so far removed from anything I know to be real in the world. I just try to be nice to people and hope people are nice back. Have to ask about one of my favorites on the new album, ‘Gopher Guts.’ In the last verse, you make all these confessions, and one that stands out is how you’ve been ‘completely unable to maintain any semblance of relationship on any level.’ That seems drastic, and intensely personal. Perhaps. I am a pretty isolated person. The line kind of explains itself. I find it increasingly difficult to connect with anybody at all, and unfortunately have a pretty pessimistic impression of humanity, myself included. That song is kinda like ... ‘Fuck you, but you know—fuck me, too.’ 21

HOT SNAKES

INTERVIEW BY TOM CHILD Hot Snakes are like six different spirits of rock ‘n’ roll fused together into one of those glowing roaring dripping-with-nethergoo Poltergeist things that eventually bursts out of the basement in every suburban neighborhood. They broke up in ‘05 but unbroke in ‘11 and John Reis and Rick Froberg speak now about San Diego burritos ... or do they? Rick, in ‘Kreative Kontrol,’ you mention that you would cut off yourdick for kreative kontrol—but do you think that’s really necessary? Rick Froberg (guitar, vocals): No, it’s not. You’re right. I’m a little prone to exaggeration. John Reis (guitar): I would cut your dick off out of boredom. Each member of the Hot Snakes perform in other prominent acts, sometimes together. How does it feel different to perform as Hot Snakes rather than Rocket From the Crypt, Drive Like Jehu, The Obits, The Night Marchers, Beehive and Barracudas and so on and on forever? JR: I feel more tangy. A bit more relaxed. Casual, even. I played in flip-flops at our last show. It’s definitely got more of an ‘under the pier’ vibe. Then again, this could also attributed to age. RF: Different group of people, different dynamic, always. Hot Snakes for me is a bit more white-knuckled and requires more wind. The guys in back and to the sides really make your pant-legs flap. INTERVIEW

The song ‘I Hate the Kids’ is pretty self explanatory—but would you care to elaborate on what you think the kids might be getting wrong these days? RF: This is jealousy, mainly. That’s really the only reason the old hate the young. Rick, what would be your dream illustration project? RF: I don’t know if I have any dreams about this. I like—and insist—on doing the record covers for whatever band I happen to be in at the time. This is a big deal to me. I guess I could dream about being paid shitloads of money for something relatively easy and fun, but this seems pointless as it is not my lot. ‘Prestige’ jobs are rare and pay poorly. John, what’s the best place to get a San Diego style burrito? RF: (to John) Don’t tell them. JR: It’s funny. Rick gets the art questions and I get the ‘where’s the burrito?’ I get it. Divide and conquer. You guys all get pretty sweaty onstage. Do you enjoy this? Or is it an unavoidable byproduct you’d just as soon eliminate if you had your druthers? 23

JR: I think I sweat more than everyone else. It just pours outta every pore. I actually kinda like it. It is a bit gross and ruining clothes every night is not ideal, but I do feel like the feeling of exertion. RF: I have no problem with this. John, you mentioned in an interview with Peter Holslin that you weren’t sure if there was really a ‘San Diego sound, per se’ anymore. How would you have described the sound that WAS there? How would you describe the legacy of San Diego rock in the greater musical pantheon? JR: When I first started noticing the sounds the bands were making down here, it seemed to me that there was a prevalence of really good players whose tastes leaned to the sounds of early rock ‘n’ roll. This is in the 80s. So it definitely was a musical reaction against the times. Whether or not it was a ‘sound,’ I dunno—but it seemed as there was a consistent thread of revivalism. How that class of bands and everything that happened locally before it and after fits into a greater musical pantheon, I dunno. A footnote and blog fodder at best. Of course, it is all pretty important and influential to me, but I don’t expect much of it to mean anything to anyone else, except to those who were there and to those who wish they were. Have you guys been at all surprised by the fevered excitement greeting the reunion shows? Did you know that the clamoring for more Hot Snakes was so widespread and passionate? 24

JR: I’m very stoked to be playing our music again. I think we are just as good if not better than before. I think Rick and I’s guitars sound more personal than before. There is an elevated sense of occasion for the shows which was not as prevalent the first time around. It’s like that old saying. ‘Abscess makes the fart go Honda.’ It’s been a lot of fun. How did playing that first reunion show together feel? JR: Not like sex. RF: It was great. In Austin, Texas— though we did play an unofficial warmerupper at Bar Pink in San Diego the night before—which is always fun, provided you can find a place to sit down in the shade, use the bathroom with some measure of dignity, et cetera. These things were all provided. First time I ever successfully shotgunned a beer. A Tecate— shoulda saved the can. Captain Sensible shook our hands afterwards. What’s your favorite spooky keyboard song of all time? JR: The Haunted House music at Disneyland is really good, although an obvious choice. RF: ‘Don’t Bring Me Down,’ by the Animals. You must get asked this a million times, but given the joy that’s greeted the Hot Snakes reunion, are there rumblings of any projects reuniting? RF: I dunno, are there? Sounds intestinal. JR: I do like pickles on my cheeseburger. I get asked that all the fuckin’ time. INTERVIEW

8*5) #-"$, #"/"/"4

"VHVTU v .BZBO

4FQUFNCFS v +PIO "OTPO 'PSE 6^[ST]e^XRT 5H5 P]S >aXVP\X EX]h[ _aTbT]c

0DBCA0

/*()5."3& '0353&44 r 7*$& %&7*$& 03*(".* 7*/:- %+4

4FQUFNCFS v 'POEB 5IFBUSF

4FQUFNCFS v &M 3FZ 5IFBUSF

.&/0.&/"

4FQUFNCFS v &M 3FZ 5IFBUSF

0SJHBNJ 7JOZM QSFTFOUT

XJUI #0%:(6"3% 0DUPCFS v 'POEB 5IFBUSF

XJUI %:-"/ -&#-"/$

0DUPCFS v &M 3FZ 5IFBUSF

0DUPCFS v 'POEB 5IFBUSF

:?8I><1 /''$.+,$*''' K@:B<KD8JK<I CF:8K@FEJ

FUTURE ISLANDS INTERVIEW BY CHRIS ZIEGLER

Future Islands singer Sam Herring is known not just for his singing but for his voice itself—a completely unique and gloriously messily passionate growl that knows neither limits nor restraint. He speaks here about the first time he really used it ... and how he wanted to rap before he wanted to sing. What was the first time you were ever going to sing on stage? What happened? I killed it in this play production when I was in first grade. I guess first and second graders weren’t allowed to be in the drama, but my first grade teacher was also the drama instructor, and asked me to sing a song for the big play. I was a tiny kid—that was my moment! I was the surprise at the end of the whole play, so I had to hang out in this weird room that was a two-level room—the gym teacher’s office, in the back of the gymnasium. With like a bunch of jock straps awaiting bleaching? Not that bad, but a lot of cleaning equipment and random bullshit. I’d been in there for an hour and a half and no one had checked on me, and I had to take INTERVIEW

a piss really bad. You know, elementary school plays just drag on forever. So I went upstairs and pissed on the rafters, and then it was time to sing. Ah, early deviance. Wait—so you pissed down upon the very stage on which you were about to sing? It was … like an old gymnasium from the 30s or 40s, like a little WPA gym, and on the second floor of the office there was exposed rafters … but yeah, I kinda pissed on … yeah, kinda. Yeah. It was my time to shine! You can’t keep me in a box, man! Like I said, I always enjoyed the stage since I was a kid, and I always had a nice voice. What’s your rap voice like? You were into hip-hop before you were into anything else, right? 33

I was just a kid freestyling with my friends every day and writing my first verses. I fell in love with West Coast underground— Freestyle Fellowship, Project Blowed … Omid and his comp Beneath the Surface. Mykah 9 is the man! I was just listening to Freestyle Fellowship’s first LP a while ago. For me, it was all about their style. They approached hip-hop in a different way. I liked weird stuff. I was really into Anticon when I came into college—Buck 65’s early stuff is amazing. I was into a lot of weird stuff, man! Why did you connect to this so deeply? What made it seem so important? Everything in my life changed on my 13th birthday when my brother bought me three albums—Digable Planets Blowout Comb, De La Soul Buhloone Mindstate and Artifacts Wrong Side Of Da Tracks. New York hip-hop. Those CDs changed my life. I listened to them a million times and dug through all the liner notes for shout-outs, and my dad would take me to pawn shops in the marine area where I grew up and I’d scout pawn shops for used CDs from people I recognized from the liner notes. I’d go strictly on shout-outs. ‘Well, De La and Digable both shouted out this guy or this girl or this crew—keep your eyes open!’ Internet was still kind of fresh then—like ’96 or ’95? You’d wait four hours to get one MP3. So I did crazy research. I’d go to my parents’ office and go online to Sandbox Automatic—which still exists—and just scour names and listen to like their RealPlayer files. I’d mow my grandma’s INTERVIEW

grass and get $25 and give it to my mom to mailorder tapes from California. Like randomly. Education—it’s what you did. There’s this tape … when I rediscovered this tape, this guy called King Koncepts and a tape called Project: Ambershine. That was my whole 10th grade year. Heartbreaker! I gave it to this girl I was in love with right before she moved, and I never saw it again. Then I rediscovered it on this website and it blew my mind. You’d get it however you could. Feeling so far away from it … it was this magical thing. The exact opposite of where I was on the other side of the country. I had no idea what it was like and how to get there. L.A. has a crazy place for me in my heart. Seattle has an amazing hiphop scene—I was really entrenched in that back then. I got to see Of Mexican Descent and Living Legends in Chapel Hill, and OD ended up being the DJ— that was one of my total fan moments. I think back to that sometimes. It’s a great feeling. Do people ever ask you about this in interviews? Or is it unexplored territory? That’s the beauty of artistic license and creativity—finding that individually. We try to just do what we do and not take ourselves for granted how we do things. The only way to make real true art is to be true to yourself, to the point of not allowing outside influences to take hold as far as what people want you to make or do. One of the things you don’t think about … it’s all these weird elements that make us the way we are. 35

DAM FUNK’S GUIDE TO HIS FORMATIVE FUNK EXPERIENCES AS TOLD TO CHRIS ZIEGLER

Dam-Funk is a proud Pasadenan, but he became the man he is today thanks to funky formative experiences all across Los Angeles. He speaks here of session work, dinosaur bones and the inspiration you can get when you keep your mind healthy and open. SEEING KISS at the UNIVERSAL AMPHITHEATRE—100 Universal City Plaza, UNIVERSAL CITY “When I was a kid I used to listen to radio stations like KMET and KLOS, and it was like … it was just fun, man! Groups like KISS, you couldn’t access them—not like it is today with Facebook and Twitter. Back in the day, you wouldn’t be able to request that like Gene Simmons blow fire tonight. They were, you know ... larger than life! And the excitement, just driving from Pasadena on the 210 getting off and transitioning to the 101, and getting off at Universal Amphitheater—it was just magic, man. Me and my dad went and Motley Crue opened up—they were just a new group. Motley Crue did great, but Kiss just whipped ass, and just showed ‘em who was king. They blowed fire, and they still had on the makeup. I caught them just like a year before they did Lick It Up, when they took off the makeup. It was really cool because I didn’t know that Kiss said bad words on stage because their records, they weren’t allowed to do that. Between songs they’d be like, “How many of you are ready to rock this motherfuckerrrrrrr???” and it was crazy! I was like … 12, 13, when I saw this. I’ll never forget!” WORKING AT POO-BAH RECORDS—NOW AT 2636 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena “I used to always ride my bike there, going to the promo section—they’d have whitelabel 12”s like Depeche Mode’s ‘Get the Balance Right’ before the songs would come out. Radio station guys would dump all that stuff. It was a great record store, like all the community went in there, All races, all styles of music. They had the rock section, the soul section, the experimental noise section and a great group of characters that worked there. So like when I graduated, lo and behold they asked if I was interested in working there. It was a great experience. When people would ask me things, I would just talk to them about funk—turn them onto some of the old stuff.” GUIDE TO L.A.

PLAYING KEYBOARDS FOR WESTSIDE CONNECTION ON ‘LET IT REIGN’ SESSION—HOLLYWOOD “At that time, I was doing a gig at a comedy bar called Regency West at Leimert Park playing drums, but I got the call to do session work as a keyboard player from a friend named Binky Mack, who was in a group called Allfrumtha I which was on Hoo Bangin’ which was Mack 10’s label. I don’t think that people realize that Mack 10 was the main guy keeping Westside Connection together. So Binky called me in like, ‘Look, I know you know keys—I have this beat ...’ I was scheduled to play drums that night, and my buddy Melvin was like, ‘You can’t go fuck around with Regency West! You gotta do this session!’ So here I am, pulling out my hair—‘Am I going to leave a band without a drummer or am I going to go to Hollywood to do this session?’ And I had to do the session! I got to see Ice Cube sitting in one part of the studio, W.C. in another part, Mack 10—the studio was so packed! It was a midnight-in-Hollywood vibe—anything could have happened! I was so under pressure. After I finished the session, my homie wanted to hang out with everybody but of course I had to go back to Regency West. It’s just my character—I didn’t want to leave them hanging. I tried to get in on the last song. But after that, I knew I was pretty much done playing behind a bunch of dudes at a comedy store, and I just went full-fledged into session work.” PLAYING HIS OWN SONGS LIVE FOR THE FIRST TIME AT THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM—900 Exposition BLVD., EXPOSITION PARK “My first live gig was with Master Blazter—my own material—at the Natural History Museum. Inside in the glass where somebody designed like prehistoric visuals. It was a great vibe—I couldn’t believe it because there was just so many people there. I signed my first tits at that show. It was a trip!” SEEING SOMETHING UNEXPLAINABLE AT BROOKSIDE PARK—OFF ARROYO BLVD., PASADENA “I was walking up one of the trails with a couple of my friends and I saw like a sphere, like a circle of light in a sphere, it was floating around the trees and like right in front of me—I looked directly at it and it was a moment of stand still. And then it disappeared. When I made the song ‘Brookside Park,; it reminded me of that experience! I didn’t feel fearful—maybe because I was always open-minded, going back to my pop. He always gave me that example—how could you think we are the only ones on Earth? I think he saw on some TV show, with a kid going to a closet and some other planet or universe is in there. They just wipe off their hat, and a piece of dust falling off the hat could be planet Earth! So from hearing that kind of stuff, I was open! If people are open minded, they can see stuff that other people can’t. And I’m still open to it.” GUIDE TO L.A.

REDD KROSS

AN ANNOTATED DISCOGRAPHY AS TOLD TO CHRIS ZIEGLER In the beginning was Redd Kross, grammar school punk rockers who paid for their first EP with paper-route money—they were the few, the proud, the pre-pubescent. Now it’s 2012 and Redd Kross isn’t so much back as just re-activated for their first LP in fifteen years. It was never a break-up, says guitarist and singer Jeff McDonald, It was just a hiatus. In between, Redd Kross crossed paths with everyone from Tommy Ramone to Tiffany and watched the world of rock ‘n’ roll crumble and renew itself around them. (Multiple times!) While brother Steven is on tour with Off!, Jeff tells the stories behind Redd Kross’ records. They’ll celebrate their newest record Researching The Blues on Tue., Aug. 7, at the Roxy with Tijuana Panthers, Pangea and DJ Keith Morris. ANNETTE’S GOT THE HITS EP (POSH BOY, 1980) “I learned guitar from a Cat Stevens guitar book and my uncle showed me barre chords. The first song I learned on barre chords was “Train Kept A Rollin”. An insane version. And that enabled me to learn the first Runaways and first Ramones albums. We had no way of putting out a record but we cobbled together some cash and found Media Arts on Hermosa, which turned out to be where Black Flag recorded, and we’d just met them. My brother had a Daily Breeze paper route, but even then, studios were super expensive—I think we had enough for three hours, so we went in and recorded essentially the first EP. Then we played our first show in L.A. with Black Flag, and Robbie Fields from Posh Boy saw us and signed us on the spot. But he wanted us to re-record the EP at Shelter Studios. Looking back, I think he just wanted to own the masters! So we repeated that experience. The first recordings weren’t released, but they sound almost exactly the same. All I remember from both experiences was getting behind the mic and it was like … the first time I ever heard myself! We didn’t have PAs at rehearsal. I was scared shitless! And I only got one take. In those days, people who worked in record stores or at house engineers would look at you like you’re insane. ‘You can’t even play. What is this punk shit?’ Just total hostility. They’re not even amused. They just wanna go home!” DISCOGRAPHY

BORN INNOCENT (SMOKE SEVEN, 1982 / FRONTIER, 1986) “The first EP, we were literally children. And then we broke up. That record was kind of a KROQ hit, and we just wanted to hang out. It was too much of an ordeal to be in a band. The guy who was the owner of Smoke 7 Records had a band called RF7. We recorded three songs for a comp he was putting out. Steven and I had been smoking a lot of pot at the time, and he kinda sold pot. ‘Yeah, I’ll give you some pot—why don’t you come down to my friend’s studio and lay down some more tracks?’ ‘OK.’ The studio was out in Simi Valley in someone’s ranch house, and the guy who owned the studio engineered the record. He was someone you’d meet at an early ‘80s Guitar Center. Nice! But not at all involved in punk. But what’s great about Born Innocent is it’s one of our best SOUNDING records. There’s no effects on it or anything. If you compare it to other groups our age, everyone had loud reverb on their snares and stuff. When people try and be ‘with it’ with their recording techniques, you gotta beware. That’s why most records from the ‘80s sound so horrible! After doing this three or four times, we all of a sudden had an album. ‘Well, you have an album. Maybe we should like … put this out.’ ‘OK.’ We literally did not know we were making an album.” TEEN BABES FROM MONSANTO (Gasatanka, 1984) “During Born Innocent we were kinda fish outta water cuz that’s when hardcore was big and all the shows were like twenty-band bills with all these clone bands. We were in the middle of that and it was a nightmare. Those people hated us, but there was nowhere else to play. We spent years cobbling a little fanbase of friends together. By Teen Babes, we were getting a little bit more druggy. That’s the one record that gives me a stomach ache to listen to cuz we were on speed when we recorded it. We had like $1,000 to record that album and Bill Bartell was gonna put it out on Gasatanka and Geza X was gonna produce it because I loved all those Dangerhouse records. So Steven and me and Geza X secretly took speed and didn’t tell the drummer. We started in the early afternoon and just kept going. We finished the last song— ‘Linda Blair 1984’—at nine the next morning. The drummer had no idea. ‘Can we please stop now?’ 44

DISCOGRAPHY

NEUROTICA (BIG TIME, 1987) “Born Innocent was pot, Teen Babes was speed and then I did a stint in rehab when I was 21 and the day I came out I wrote ‘Peach Kelli Pop,’ which is the most famous song on that record. Most people think of that as our psychedelic album but it was the full-on sober album. That’s the only way—you’re either hung up on one-day-at-a-time thera-pop or you go off the deep end and make a totally psychotic record. We turned into absurdists. Not like we were a joke, but we really got off on the totally absurd. The original person we wanted to produce was Sonny Bono, but we didn’t have a way to get hold of him. Flo and Eddie were a little intense, and we didn’t have a budget. Me and Steve were really obsessed with the second Ramones album—Leave Home. It sounds more like a Phil Spector record than End Of The Century. So we made the record with Tommy Ramone. One of the studios we made it in was run by this really weird old school hustler manager guy, and he was the genius behind Tiffany. We’d be in the lounge between takes, and the secretary would be playing ‘I Think We’re Alone Now.’ And when we were finally on the road, we heard that song—‘Oh my God, that’s the song that secretary kept playing!’ We were hot on the heels of Tiffany.” THIRD EYE (ATLANTIC, 1990) “This was a time in L.A. when there was Guns ‘N Roses, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane’s Addiction and us, and everyone got signed but us. We’d sell out every show and the audience would be dressed like us—we were trying to cultivate the classic pop situation. Like a bubblegum band, but a smart bubblegum band. But all the labels were like, ‘I don’t get it. I don’t get it.’ We had two sold-out nights at the Roxy and we used to jam so much in rehearsal we could pull anything out of the hat, and we were like, ‘Oh, let’s do side 2 of Sgt. Pepper’s!’ And we did it in its entirety, and we were rejected by every label after that. We had to go to New York City and play this theatre and we thought it was terrible—‘Oh, God, we blew it again!’—and it started a bidding war! One of our worst shows! But we really did want to make a bubblegum concept album, and we never thought … how would you market that? We learned our lesson. When you signed with a major back then, you had like a week. You’re a quarter-million-dollar poker chip they put on black or red, and if the record doesn’t take off, you’re history. We kinda knew it was DISCOGRAPHY

happening. This was a time when people sold like ten million records—pre-grunge by two years, and SST had come up with ‘Corporate Rock Still Sucks’ and we were on Atlantic and getting flak! We’d try and tell people, ‘Look, we KNOW SST! And every band who’s ever been on that label has sued them!’ At least you know the situation with Atlantic. They give you once chance, and if it’s not working, they drop you! It was totally frustrating. We were just a year ahead of our time. Later it wouldn’t have mattered. All those bands were on majors. But not in ’88 or ’89.”

PHASE SHIFTER (THIS WAY UP, 1993) SHOW WORLD (THIS WAY UP, 1997) “We did a lot of touring on Third Eye and then we got dropped, but it wasn’t like we didn’t see it coming. We started going to England and we ended up getting signed and getting really popular and having another kind of bidding war. Teenage Fanclub had brought us out—they were obsessed with Teen Babes! I hadn’t heard of them, but they were huge in England and I’d see them every night and I loved them. We signed with this cool label and did two records—there were two years between because we were so fried from touring non-stop. When we made Show World, like a couple weeks later Seagrams or some huge company bought all the record labels—a total disaster! Millions of bands were dropped and a lot of labels went under immediately. Both those records to me are very similar, even though they’re a couple years apart. They’re heavier cuz we’re more about playing live than anything else, and heavier music was more fun to play. And it was really cool to be an American band in England because all the groups were really influenced by American music. The Byrds and all that classic stuff. To be a band like us who were really fearless onstage … we’d blow away those English bands who made really great records but were so boring live. All the shoegazer bands. I’m not overly patriotic but I remember feeling like … ‘Oh, wow—we’re the source!’”

DISCOGRAPHY

RESEARCHING THE BLUES (MERGE, 2012) “We were burned out but never broke up. I was writing and we were putting out fun little records, and Charlotte [Caffey] and I had a daughter. I still had to make music but I didn’t like playing live. I had all these songs, but we kept getting sidetracked. We’d recorded all the basic tracks and half the vocals in like a week, and then all of a sudden everyone became busy—Steven had a kid—and it sat on the shelf for two years. It was driving me crazy having this unfinished project! So I took it on myself to finish all the songs—sang a bunch of crap, play guitar … I told Steven, ‘This record is really good!’ But he had a million things going on. He was going touring with Off! in Australia and I put together my rough mixes and gave him the CD—he’s a real space cadet, so I went to his house and put it in his bag. Twenty hours later he calls like, ‘Oh my God! The record’s great! When I get back I’m gonna finish mixing it!’ It was like a term paper I wanted to finish. I didn’t give a shit who put it out or if we had to put it on iTunes. There were periods I was just gonna dump it on the net cuz I was going insane. We tried Merge but were like, ‘I dunno—they’re a big indie. They probably want young bands.’ They called us back immediately! And boom—all the shit started happening!”

LOS ANGELES’ BIGGEST MUSIC PUBLICATION The award-winning L.A. RECORD magazine was started in 2005 on a bedroom floor as a one-page weekly broadsheet dedicated to Los Angeles music of all genres and generations. Now after five years and over 100 issues, L.A. RECORD is still an independent print-and-web operation, staffed by writers and photographers and artists from across the city. Get in touch! LARECORD.COM • FORTHERECORD@LARECORD.COM • TWITTER/LARECORD FACEBOOK/LARECORD • SUBSCRIBE AT SHOP.LARECORD.COM DISCOGRAPHY

CLOUD NOTHINGS INTERVIEW BY CHRIS ZIEGLER

Cloud Nothings is Dylan Baldi from Cleveland, Ohio, home of many of America’s best and most righteous rock ‘n’ roll weirdos—few of which are in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame but many of which are in Baldi’s mental musical database. (Like the sub-unknown Bernie and the Invisibles, unable to be justifiably referenced in L.A. RECORD until now.) Baldi speaks now about growing up in a city where even the polluted lake can be beautiful. Much like the Dead Boys, you had to go to New York City to get things rolling for your Cleveland-born music career. What else do you most have in common with the Dead Boys? From what I hear about Cheetah—from another old punk guy—was that he was like a calm, collected guy. So I think I probably got that going. I’m not a wild person, but I can play angry music just fine. No one’s ever asked me that before! As a Clevelander, where is your preferred spot for psychic recharge? Well, we’re right on Lake Erie so when I come home from tour it’s nice to go to the beach and sit and just … sit. Kind of chill out and cool down from being in a different city every day for a month. Wasn’t Lake Erie once so polluted it caught on fire? Yeah—it’s dirty, I don’t go in it but to sit there and look at it is nice. INTERVIEW

David Thomas of Pere Ubu and Rocket From The Tombs told me that he was in the first generation that had grown up post rock’n’roll—that he and everyone else who had grown up after like 1956 had always had it in their world, and that’s part of why they made the music they did. What have you grown up with that’s always been there? Something that’s part of my life and I never knew a world without it? I think a big thing with that is probably the internet. I feel like a nerd saying that but it’s something that’s always been there, and I think of like, ‘I wouldn’t have heard all this music if I didn’t have the internet.’ I’ve heard all these great rap and psychedelic albums—stuff that’s very normal to me. But you talk about people who are a little older, and they’re like, ‘Why do you know about 49

all this stuff?’ Well, I saw it online— you go to one website and find out about everything. It was just Googling around, cuz I knew I liked music but I started getting into weirder stuff. The music I make isn’t necessarily weird ... but I like listening to weird stuff. What do you mean by ‘weird’? What is that quality that you’re looking for? I’ve always liked music that’s like a very obvious interpretation of the individual that’s making the music. So that’s one thing I’m kind of looking for. Just trying to find different personalities—like if I hear this band and I’m like, ‘I like this person!’ I listen to more about how the actual people are coming across than the music itself. The Wipers are like that, definitely. More recently I found a band called Life Without Buildings, from Scotland or something. Their record came out in 2001 I think, but they’re amazing. The singer sings like nobody else. They’re probably the most recent thing I’ve heard where I’m like, ‘That’s special.’ When you’re doing your own music do you ever stop and think, ‘I need more Dylan’? No—because when I write something I’m writing as myself, and I hope that comes across. If it doesn’t I messed up, you know? If I does, I think people respond to that really well. I’ve ended with all sorts of stuff in garbage cans because of that. Digital garbage cans? Recycling bins. Trash is trash—I don’t keep that stuff around. INTERVIEW

Ian Svenonious said that this phenomena of solo people making music on their laptops or with their acoustic guitars or whatever originated because all of these people who would have been in a garage band ... the bottom fell out of the economy and they literally could not afford a garage to be in for the garage band. So anything they could do by themselves in a small room became the default form of American youth expression. Aa guy who possibly is living this thesis, what do you think? First of all, that guy is wild. But I hadn’t thought about it in those terms ever. Honestly, I was living with my parents when I started this band, so if I really wanted to, I could have found some other kids. The only reason why I think I didn’t do that was because it was easy, not because I thought that it was what I was forced to do. It was just the easiest route. If I want to make a song, I make a song. Maybe because it’s easier, more people who wouldn’t have bothered to make music at all are doing it because they can—using a computer with the program that came with it. Do you think that the barrier to entry in the world of music has been erased a little bit? But hasn’t that been happening since like punk? People realized, ‘I can start a band!’ and since then, people have been doing it. If you want to make music, you can make music and that’s that. 50