L.A. RECORD 115 DIGITAL EDITION

VOL. 8 NO. 4 ISSUE 115 SUMMER 2014

LOW LEAF • THE MUFFS JOYCE MANOR • NED DOHENY RUTHANN FRIEDMAN • BLU DJ HARVEY’S WILDEST DREAMS CRAIG LEON • MILK ’N’ COOKIES CURTIS HARDING • JOEL JEROME

PUNK IN AFRICA • ALEXANDER HEIR BRIAN REITZELL • BLACKBOARD CAFE ALBUM REVIEWS • COMICS • AND MORE

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CURTIS HARDING Chris Ziegler

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LOW LEAF sweeney kovar

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DJ HARVEY’S WILDEST DREAMS Kristina Benson

NED DOHENY Chris Ziegler

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THE MUFFS D.M. Collins

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RUTHANN FRIEDMAN Daiana Feuer

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JOYCE MANOR Chris Ziegler

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CRAIG LEON Ron Garmon

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BLU sweeney kovar

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JOEL JEROME Jacquelinne Cingolani

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MILK ‘N’ COOKIES Ian Marshall

RUTHANN FRIEDMAN by AARON GIESEL

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L.A. RECORD strongly encourages vinyl submissions for review and accepts all physical and digital formats! We also invite submissions by local authors and filmmakers.

We review any genre and kind of music and especially try to support local L.A.-area musicians. Send digital music direct at digital@larecord.com. For film—Rin Kelly at rin@ larecord.com. For zines—Sarah Bennett at sarah@larecord.com. For books— Nikki B. at nikkib@larecord.com. Any physical copies to:

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ACCOUNTS Desi Ambrozak, Kristina Benson, Chris Ziegler CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ron Garmon, Jason Gelt, Zachary Jensen, Eyad Karkoutly, sweeney kovar, Stephen Sigl

L.A. RECORD is a community newspaper and we strongly encourage submissions of all kinds! If you would like to interview, review, illustrate or photograph for us—or help in any other way—please get in touch! Email fortherecord@larecord. com with “submissions” in the subject line and we’ll get you going.

CONTRIBUTING DESIGNERS Kristina Benson, Jun Ohnuki

LOW LEAF COVER PHOTO — Alexandra A. Brown THE MUFFS POSTER — Ward Robinson and Jun Ohnuki

This issue dedicated to the memories of Mike Atta and Eyad Karkoutly, L.A. RECORD supporters, inspirations and friends.

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CURTIS HARDING Interview by Chris Ziegler Photography by Ward Robinson

Curtis Harding came out of Atlanta with some Cee Lo tours behind him, a ferocious Velvet Underground cover and a band called Night Sun that was born from the same swampland that birthed the Scientists. But then Burger put out his first solo 45—a realdeal soul stormer called ‘Keep On Shinin’—and quickly followed with full-length Soul Power, Harding’s true debut. Here he takes twelve songs to pass through three decades and the smoke left behind by a long line of blazing 45s, revealing himself as the sort of charismatic iconoclast—a la Arthur Lee, Kid Congo Powers or Andre Williams—who bends genre to his will and who doesn’t stop rolling tape til he gets exactly what he wants. Get the record and go where it tells you.

Tell me about your family—your mom was a gospel singer and you grew up touring?

My dad is a blue-collar dude. A master mechanic, been in the Army—he’s 84 years old.

He was in the Korean conflict, man. My mom, she’s a gospel singer and evangelist— still. In my house we were not really allowed to listen to what was called secular music, but I would find it and still listen. Just go to a friend’s house. As I got older, my mother got a little more relaxed with it. She realized I wasn’t gonna bend my ideas and my thoughts about life in general. I dunno how it is on the other side, but for me, that was just normal—how life was. Until I started meeting other people who grew up differently—that’s when I realized there’s another perspective on being a kid growing up. Like not traveling and not growing up that way.

But for me, that’s what it was.

Was there any kind of culture shock once you left the world of the church?

I didn’t have that cuz my mother would have us out on the streets of New York City at 3 AM—seeing homeless people, having homeless people staying with us, gang members staying with us. I was not sheltered! My mother was tough about what we inputted in our ears, our audio listening. That was one thing she was always adamant about. But sheltering?

No. I lived in South Central L.A., all over the place. But I could see how coming from that culture of churchgoing people how that happens. I have friends that happened to. Musically, we were a little sheltered. I had to sneak things out.

Who did you meet as a teenager that you still remember?

Homeless people, man. People we’d stay with or who’d come stay with us. Different people at different times, depending on what side of the world we were at. Sometimes it was heavy, sometimes it was easy, just like anybody else.

Homeless people are just like anybody else, down and out but just like anybody else. Gang members are just like anybody else. It’s just different circumstances.

Are you good at starting up conversations with total strangers now?

I learned not to talk to strangers! However— if you do, you learn what to talk about. And 6

learn to be comfortable in your own skin. You learn shit is not as hard as you think it is. You might have some problems, but some other guy has it way worse. Learning those lessons, being exposed to different things like that—it’s definitely gonna stick with you. That’s why I don’t throw a hissy fit if I sleep on the floor.

As long as I have somewhere to sleep! When I came to L.A. for two weeks, I had a book bag with a pair of jeans, a couple T-shirts, my computer—one carry-on bag and that’s it. You don’t need a lot. If I need it, I can go to Walgreens. You might have to get the fuck out of wherever you at! You don’t know! And someone will have some toothpaste, dude. Or baking soda and peroxide. You can use that. If there’s a will, there’s a way.

There’s such a clarity to your record—I hear a lot of people try this sound and they just step all over it.

Like trying too hard?

Like not even remembering what they were trying. How did you not do that?

How did I not make the songs sound shitty?

Exactly—if we can answer this now you’re going to change the world!

I wasn’t trying to do anything. I wasn’t trying to make it sound like it was old—I was using elements of shit that I like. That’s my version of pop music. I like that era of music, that’s what I call hip pop—good song writing, recording to an analog tape. I’m not trying to make shit sound old. I’m not a throwback. This is 2014.

I’ll definitely use elements—like whatever guitar or amp they used—but I’m not going to try to make it sound like shit. If they were recording today, they would try to make it sound as clean and as crisp as possible.

It’s not the tape hiss that people like—they like the actual music.

Exactly. Just leave it alone, keep it simple. You know who’s good at doing that—making elements of old songs plus new stuff? Daptone.

They got it down to a science! They love soul music and they’re making it and you can tell. It also helps to have a team of people who know their gear, and having the right engineers, the right studio, the right team of people. That’s a huge part of it.

You named your album Soul Power—what’s soul power? Is it different from soul music?

‘Soul Power’ is a song that was going to be on the record and I took it off, but the name stuck. The name is fitting. Soul to me is like no respect to genre or a person or anything— you either have it or you don’t, and it’s experience, it’s a love of music, a love of life, a love of all that shit. Ol’ Dirty Bastard had soul. Most people have soul. DeeDee Ramone had soul.

I don’t think there’s any one way of like … there’s no school for soul. I guess the school of hard knocks maybe? Just hanging out with people, hanging out with your uncle that listens to blues, and drinking moonshine, and going to the bar, and writing songs, and getting your ass kicked sometimes, and hanging out with homeless people, and going to shows.

It’s a lifestyle—it’s not nothing you can teach somebody. It’s something you have to live, you have to go through. And then it’s something that comes out in your personality and extends into your music if you’re a musician. And you don’t even have to be a musician to have soul— you can just be like a regular motherfucker, know what I’m saying? To me, that’s it. I know a lot of people who aren’t even musicians, like my uncle for one, who has a whole lot of soul!

Just hang out with his ass and you’ll see!

Who are the people in your life that you still look up to? And want to learn from?

I don’t have a mentor so to speak, but my uncle—I talk to him. My dad, he’s been through a lot in his life. He’s seen a lot of shit and been through a lot of shit. My mom, she definitely has soul. There’s no one person. I definitely have friends who are like-minded and who also have been through things and musicians who have lived lives of their own. It’s a community of people, and it’s almost like rock ‘n’ roll high school when we get together and we play music. That’s another thing Burger is good at— bringing like-minded people together.

I feel I’m catching you on the part of the roller coaster where you’re about to roll through the craziest part.

I’m 34 years old, I’ve been through it, I’ve seen it—it’s like I know what I want to do and when you get to that point, you’re okay. It’s almost like a basketball player leaving high school and going straight to the NBA—it’s better to go through college and hone your skills. Take your time, then you’ll know how to handle

certain things, That’s the only thing I can compare it to at this point. You just gotta grow into it, take your time. That’s part of having soul—you don’t have to rush anything. When you’re young, you want to conquer the world, you want to make a million dollars off of five songs and you think you got the hot shit. But that’s not reality. Usually if something happens really fast, there’s something wrong with it and you need to sit back and look at it.

That’s like the company just trying to hustle fresh product out. Which is great for the release schedule but maybe not for the artist.

And it’s not good for the music. That’s one thing I appreciate about Burger—they really like music. And that’s what makes a great producer too! I mean, I can play drums, play guitar. But when I was recording the record I was like ‘OK, I can play this riff, but I know someone who can play it better.’ And that’s what makes a good producer as well. As a musician I want to play everything. However, to make this song better, I’m going to ask my friend who can play his shit the way I hear it in my head. You do what’s best for the song, best for the record, best for music in general.

If more people had that mentality then we wouldn’t have this fucking influx of bullshit that’s been going on for so long. That’s people being tricked by their egos: ‘I’m awesome all the time!’

There’s a time and a place to you to feel like you’re fucking awesome but when you actually record the record, take a step back and be like, ‘What is actually going to make this song sound good to people?’ If people did that shit more often, shit would be a whole lot better.

How do you de-fuse the ego?

I don’t know how to explain that shit, I think it’s another thing like fucking soul: you either have it or you don’t.

When was the last time you were like, ‘I’m fucking awesome!’?

Last time I had sex, man.

Before, during or after?

All three.

CURTIS HARDING’S SOUL POWER IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM BURGER RECORDS. TWITTER.COM/KIRK_UNDERWATER.

LOW LEAF Interview by sweeney kovar Photography by Alexandra A. Brown

Low Leaf is an alchemist. By synthesizing analog instruments and digital programming, Angelica Lopez has been creating powerful and ambitious music since 2011. She dares to be heartfelt and direct in a landscape saturated by irony. Her music speaks of love not as a romantic notion between individuals but as a crucial connecting force in the universe. Born in Los Angeles to Filipino immigrants, Low Leaf spent her early years learning classical piano before teaching herself guitar and harp. Her curiosity eventually led her to samplers and software. Her first releases were wild beat meditations with splashes of classical instrumentation that caught the attention of luminaries like Flying Lotus. Her live performances began to incorporate these analog and digital elements until Low Leaf split her time between a compact digital controller and a massive harp at gigs. She’s already toured a healthy cross-section of the world and performed with artists like Mark de Clive-Lowe and Robert Glasper. It seems Low Leaf is just beginning to hit her stride. Her latest album, AKASHAALAY, released on digital and tape through Fresh Selects, is a spiritual offering to the Philippines. In our interview, Low Leaf speaks on the album and her increasingly vibrant connection to her motherland while also drawing connecting lines between colonialism, food access and spiritual enlightenment.

Tell me about the new album. Is it supposed to play out like a story?

‘Akasha’ in Sanskrit means ‘ether.’ ‘Pag-alay’ in Tagalog means ‘offering.’ The album is a spiritual offering to the Philippines. The first song, ‘Umaga,’ translates into ‘morning.’ The story, I suppose, is the awakening of the people. All of the songs are messages to the Filipino psyche of today as well as me trying to call upon my ancestors as a vessel. Not having access to the ancient traditional folk songs that have long been forgotten—I wanted to know what the unheard songs were. We’re all alive because of our ancestors and I wanted their frequencies to pass through my filter so people could wake up and realize that we’re creating the culture today. Even though the wounds of so many years of colonization are still very much apparent in today’s society, they can be healed through music and creation. It’s up to us to reawaken that which they could have never taken from us—our spirit. Once we alkalize the spirit, then we can let it show through our art and music.

I think it’s really interesting that you bring up resisting against the heritage of colonialism but you acknowledge that some part of it is 8

in us—especially living as people of color in America. Before you reconnected to your heritage, did you feel like you had a double consciousness growing up?

Oh yeah! Growing up I had such a confused identity. My parents migrated to America to pursue the American dream, I guess. My dad is a doctor and within our household we had all the Filipino traditions. But when I stepped out of the house I had no idea what Filipinos were in American society. There were no Filipinos in music or in the media at all. I didn’t have anyone to identify with. In many ways I was resentful and I didn’t understand why I was born Filipino. In searching for an identity I found myself gravitating to different genres of music because that made sense to me. As I was trying to find myself, the music drew out these heavy questions: ‘What is my sound?’ ‘Where do I come from?’ ‘What is my ultimate heritage?’ So I just started looking up the history and trying to find songs on YouTube. I found this instrument with gongs in different tones and the sound immediately resonated with me. I started researching Filipino myths that made so much sense to me—more sense than Catholicism,

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“If you can conceive of a sound, it exists.

It’s up to you to pull it out and manifest it.” which was brought to the Philippines from the Spanish. I was like, ‘OK, before Catholicism the Philippines had their own gods!’

They were almost like pagans in a way. I got all these books like The Way of the Ancient Healer, which talks about healing and sacred teachings of the Filipino ancestral traditions.

I found that Filipino shamans did healing rituals with music and nature for ages, which inspired me so much. When I make music, I have my own rituals with lighting sage and candles and always making sure that before I enter the music-making process, I acknowledge that these are not my songs. I try to make it as sacred and honest of a process as possible. I also realized that this whole time I had been tapping into my ancestors without even knowing it, for I am a living ancestor too and my intentions with music are to— ultimately—try to heal and uplift the consciousness of people. It’s very exciting to be alive in this point and time because we have access to all this information from the past as well as the technology to create anything that we want. If you can conceive of a sound, it exists. It’s up to you to pull it out and manifest it. I think in a lot of ways it works to my advantage having grown up without an identity.

My entire life has been a journey to discover what that identity is and it inevitably affects the music. The music is just a documentation of where I am in my spiritual evolution.

How have you strengthened that connection to your heritage?

For the album, I was sampling a lot of sounds from traditional Filipino instruments. I was really musing my return to the Philippines.

I hadn’t been there since 2012, when I had this really beautiful experience in this mystical mountain where I actually saw spirits. It really validated a lot of the feelings I’ve had my entire life. I was never the same after that.

Every single song I made after that was for the Philippines in a way and these are ten songs that made most sense together. The album’s done and now when I’m writing things I feel that ultimately, no matter what, me being Filipino will always give its own flavor to the music. But now, I’m really interested in the tribespeople of the entire world, because we all have a shared heritage, which is of the cosmos.

What you’re saying reminds me of something I’ve heard recurring in your music.

You make reference to ‘hearts becoming one’ several times.

INTERVIEW

I feel that the only way we are going to collectively shift our consciousness is if we truly become one with compassion. Once you see yourself in the other—that is when we will be able to really come together and create the world that is meant to be. We are moving in that direction already, and it’s been written that we are going to wake up as we are in this transition phase. Compassion is so important to me because once I felt that for myself I began to see my face in every single human that I met. Growing up in American society you are conditioned at an early age to see separation by clothing or by class. You want to be an individual and make your own identity.

I’ve always felt like such a fuckin’ outcast. I couldn’t fit in with anyone and I tried to for so long and really compromised who I was so I could have a group of friends. It wasn’t until I woke up and was like, ‘Fuck it, I don’t care anymore if I don’t fit in. I gotta be true to who I am even if I stand alone.’ It was then that I started to gravitate towards like-minds and I realized that what we had in common wasn’t on the surface—it was this particular vibration that I found in all sorts of people no matter the race or type of person. I could find it in someone at the bus stop in San Francisco. I could find it in someone at the grocery store.

It was a vibration. I realized that that vibration is in everyone, although sometimes it is harder to find because some people haven’t accessed it within themselves yet. I found that if you immediately address your highest self, then all the illusory bullshit you may be hiding behind dissolves and you can meet each other on a higher plane. That happens when you see the unity, but it has to light up within yourself first.

In the song ‘Slaveless Master’ you mention purifying your body as a way to help you connect or transcend. Can you talk about that?

Well, the body is ultimately your vessel and your spaceship through which you can access higher realms and have that higher conversation. The purification process takes such a long time because there is so much reprogramming of thoughts—it begins with your thoughts and your belief system of yourself and who you are in relation to the entire universe. I found myself having these recurring thoughts that would send me down these negative cycles and I started paying attention to these indicators. I’d find myself maybe feeling like shit one day and I’d have to reach into my mind and look into my thoughts

objectively and see what was the seed and pattern so that I could purify my thoughts and have a healthier state of mind in general. It took a lot of meditation. Meditation is so difficult at first because you have to sit there with yourself. That’s the hardest fucking thing! Thoughts can be so fucking heavy but you have to sit through that because you want to see behind the veil and learn what’s really there. That was a big part of the purification process and it’s still happening. I think when I actually wrote that song I was in one of my higher states. It fluctuates. Sometimes I even come back to that song to remind myself. Anyway, there is also purification of your physical body with the things that you eat. I started to take notice of—holy shit. I’m sorry I just got a text from my friend about purification. This is crazy! My friend is a fucking visionary. We’ll have these crazy-ass dreams where we will meet each other in the dream world, she’ll give me a scroll and then I’ll read it and I’ll wake up and be like, ‘Yo, Ivey, I dreamt that this and this and this happened.’

She’ll tell me, ‘Yeah, it happened. I gave you the scroll and it was written in blue ink.’

Wow— She’s on a soul fast so she is telling me about purification and its power. Anyway, so the food that you eat is either highly alkaline or acidic. Alkaline food is alive like vegetables, leafy greens, fruits and anything that grows from the earth. The further down you go towards acidity you go down to food that is not made of natural grains, meat, alcohol and all that shit. I went on this alkaline fast for a long time and I was vegan for a long time too. It shifted the way I saw nutrition and saw the process of eating food as actually eating energy. I would eat food and acknowledge that it came from the ground and all the processes that went into the food before I ingested it.

It became a sacred thing. I have to take from the earth so I can give back. I’m no longer vegan because I started getting kind of sick.

I’m a small girl, I realized that even though I would prefer to be vegan and have this certain lifestyle I need to pay attention to my body and what it wants. I’ve found my own balance with eating a little bit from the entire spectrum but just being aware of what I am eating so I am consciously making decisions. Every single choice you make is going to affect the earth, and reflect your internal person, the things you buy, the things you eat and the things you think.

Food and food access as a global issue is really receiving more and more attention lately. Is this an integral part of the collective consciousness you were talking about?

Oh my god, yes! Yeah, man—I mean you are what you eat and I think once we get the food on point—to even get to that point there needs to be a respect for the earth, we will evolve. The ways in which we get our food through agriculture and spraying it with pesticides and chemicals … it’s all about money.

It’s not about truly nourishing and feeding the people. I think once we are able to fix these issues slowly and gear them more towards sustainable farming and living, that’s going to drastically change the lifestyle of the people as a whole family. The U.S. has enough money to feed the entire world. It’s going to take a really long time. It’s already happening though, on a smaller level with people that have their own farms and grow their own food. Whenever you meet these people, they’re always fucking happy. It’s like they know something you don’t—it’s that connection. We are on this planet borrowing resources so we might as well build that relationship with the earth, that’s the way it was meant to be. More and more people are waking up and people need to continue talking about it so it can spread.

Maybe it will have to become a fad before people think it’s cool but shit—as long as the outcome’s positive, then that’s fine.

Can you tell me about the song ‘Bahay Kubo’? It’s a Filipino folk song.

That song is about vegetables. It’s a children’s folk song that you learn growing up as a Filipino child. It describes their simple way of life—living in a nipa hut and eating vegetables. I chose that song because I thought that maybe subconsciously I could plant that seed in there, you know? I’ve never done a cover song before and Filipinos are known for doing covers of American songs in English, so I thought I would cover a Filipino song in Tagalog. ‘Bahay Kubo’ was cute, so I made it really silly and electronic. Whenever I perform it in the Philippines, all the grandmas and grandpas all of a sudden start paying attention. Looking at it now it kind of ties into everything.

LOW LEAF’S ALBUM AKASHAALAY IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM FRESH SELECTS AT FRESHSELECTS.BANDCAMP.COM. VISIT LOW LEAF AT CREATORDIY.COM. 11

NED 12

INTERVIEW

L.A. guitarist/singer/songwriter Ned Doheny—surely you know his family’s beach or famous drive?—sailed through the steamiest part of the big-label AOR 70s alongside friends and coworkers like Jackson Browne and the Eagles, but his was a discography of almost hits, not greatest hits. (Although he did get banned in Boston and big in Japan—two things you don’t think really happen until they happen to you!) Now Numero Group has put together the ‘Best Of’ that Doheny deserves on Separate Oceans, a comprehensive reissue that starts with his signature ‘Get It Up For Love’ and zig-zags through the twilight world of mid-70s Los Angeles. Wise, wry and articulate at a Van Dyke Parks-ian level, Ned speaks now not so much about being lost but being found.

D DOHENY Interview by Chris Ziegler Photography by Ward Robinson

INTERVIEW

You were one of the musicians in residence at the notorious Paxton Lodge studio, where Elektra Records spent tons of money to make this rustic recording studio way out in the woods. There’s a story that after weeks of just hanging out and partying, the president of Elektra, Jac Holzman, comes out to see just what he’s been paying for, and all the Paxton Lodge people have this, ‘Oh, shit—dad’s home early!’ moment where they had to clean up and make like they’d been working the whole time. So how’d that day play out?

I had the bedroom at the very top of this old lodge. At one point it was a whorehouse and at another point a rehab center for alcoholics— —consecutively?

That’s what I was thinking! Talk about conferring some extraordinary energy on a building!

There was a bathroom upstairs, and there were two boards in my floor and if you took the boards out, you could look into the bathroom below.

That was an architectural feature left over from the whorehouse days?

I’d like to think so. We were there and we were whores, so why not? I had one of the only bathtubs in the place, and I’d lugged it up there.

And so Jac came out and we served a lavish repast. It was intense. I think he got pretty high at that point, and there were some women in attendance who were drawn to the novelty of the situation, shall we say, and they spirited Jac away. Sort of dragged him into the bathroom where they all had a nice bath together. And there were about three of us upstairs at the hole in the floor with our hands over our noses and mouths so we wouldn’t make snorting sounds and give ourselves away. It was absolutely hysterical. One girl was kind of looking up, like, ‘Hey!’ And the next morning when we got up, we were all pretty rumpled from the night before. Our producer, Barry Friedman, had been a clown in the circus—Ducky the Clown. So everyone is hungover and kinda weedy and Barry comes out and he’s gonna reprise his Ducky the Clown routine and eat some fire for us. So he dips his baton in white gasoline, which of all the flammable substances apparently burns the coolest—at the lowest temperature. He puts it in his mouth and we’re like primitive people, like the monkeys in 2001. We can’t believe what we’re seeing! He takes a mouthful, blows a fireball and we’re all just agog. And we realize simultaneously that Barry had taken a little too much, and what this means is it’s gonna walk down the stream before he can get rid of it all.

Basic physics never sounded so menacing.

It was dark and deep and all at the same time we’re like … [terrified inhalation]. One of those terrible accidents you can see but can’t stop. So it gets to his face, his face bursts into flame, and some people jump over the couch and put him out with great vigor. We had some axes to grind with him, so people really put him out.

A lot. I didn’t move, I was in my chair looking, and first I see one of his hands come over the back of the couch and then the other and then the face. And I’d been to a thousand horror movies and I was like, ‘OK, it’s gonna be dripping pizza with eyeballs,’ and instead his once majestic handlebar mustache had been trimmed to a little triangle and it just looked like he’d been in the sun for twenty minutes.

And Jac Holzman is sitting there like, ‘OK. I just gave this guy a check for $70,000.’ Which in those days was serious money. And Jac went outside and there was a rocking chair on the porch, and he sat down in it with that 100mile stare and was just rocking back and forth, squeaking and trying to process all this. Ah, god, it was so good.

So as a guy who lived through the very heart of the 70s—you were sauna pals with Jackson Browne, the Eagles and more—what of value has been lost to history? What does no one remember that was worth remembering?

The 70s, for people who know nothing about it, were just an exercise in hedonism. But a lot of serious inquiries were made into what made us tick, what made life tick, how we were a part of it. Even when we’d go out in the desert and take peyote, it was always to dig a little deeper, go a little further, understand a little bit more. It wasn’t all an exercise in escapism and futility. It had value. It probably sounds silly to someone who’s never been there or done that, but that’s the truth.

So if we wanted to philosophically rehabilitate the 70s— It can’t be done! But basically we’re talking about a generation escaping the structure of postwar formality. People who went through WWII were a club to which we’d never belong, and that was it. That was the alpha and omega. So when you begin to question that one thing, you begin to question everything, and of course the merry pranksters that opened up that door for a lot of people were the Beatles. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single artist that does not refer to their viewing of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show or in a movie theater or whatever that didn’t go, ‘Holy shit—I can do this.’ Of course they couldn’t do it quite as well, but they could definitely do it. And a lot of people just 13

marched into that hole and started asking questions and really doing dangerous things.

I don’t mean physically dangerous, but when you break covenant with your culture … when you alter your relationship to your timeline or try and start a different zeitgeist, you’re gonna get punished on some level for it. I don’t mean necessarily literally, but figuratively. An area you felt you used to belong to won’t have you anymore. The I Ching says it really well. Knowledge partly gives, partly takes away. Consider this—Carlos Castaneda was a friend of mine, and we were taking martial arts from an incredible Chinese gentleman called Howard Lee— Between your martial arts training and your classical guitar training, do you have the most crushing handshake ever?

Actually it’s fairly light, but a bolt of energy proceeds down my arm like water going through a hose. No, I’m kidding. But wear a first baseman’s mitt! So Carlos would say the point at which you assemble reality, which he referred to as a geographic location on your body, which is novel and miraculous … if you begin to move that point at which reality is assembled, different realities will be assembled.

We only see as much as our agreement to the reality we grew up in is still in effect. If you were to really change your perception, who knows what you’d be looking at? We all have this vision of ourselves in rare moments of inhabiting a sphere whistling through a space that’s continually expanding—that’s a pretty good definition of the miraculous! Not even Xenu and all his scribes could come up with something that far-fetched! So we live in the midst of a miracle but are completely unaware and prefer to beat each other senseless over revenue and race and perception of equality, and that tells me we are clinging desperately to a paradigm slipping from under our feet. It’s really difficult to predict where the next incursion will come from. Like: I’ve been healthy all my life. Never had an operation, nothing.

Until I got valley fever. So I’m convinced that whatever will destroy or save mankind, it’ll be both simultaneously, and it’ll come from a corner none of us can imagine. Who in their right mind could ever imagine the digital revolution annihilating the music business? And taking people’s jobs away? And completely confounding their creative process? The French didn’t finish the Maginot Line, and all the Germans did is go down to the end—they went where they’d stopped building. All the time, labor, thinking, planning, plotting, and nobody went, ‘Hey, guys … what if THIS happens?’

So whatever it is that’s gonna wipe us out or save us, it’ll be something that leaves us all speechless—something we’d never imagine in a million years. It’s the idea that as we accost each other in a burning house, are we really looking at what is really true out here? According to Carlos, sorcerers are simply people who altered their perception by shifting their assemblage point. And even they can’t see everything. They’re just no longer married to a specific reality.

I always thought music was good for this.

It’ll transmit the new reality right to you— like when you were talking about everyone hearing the Beatles and then wanting to do it themselves.

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Anything that engages your mind and body simultaneously, I’m down with. Even if you’re not enlightened, if there’s a piece of music that can put you there, you’ll be enlightened for three and a half minutes. To me, the thing that’s so great about the sophistication of music is the emotional … the intervals between notes. Depending on how you arrange them, they have an emotional value. Some chords are happier, some scary. Why not use that?

You may have to actually work at it before you know it well enough to call forth those feelings. I mean, you practice on yourself. We all did. I’m not a really quick writer, but to me I always wrote something cuz it was something I’d enjoy listening to if someone else did it. I’m also part audience, and I think, ‘Oh boy, wait til they get a load of this!’ A huge portion of my life is essentially in a minor 9th. It’s very beautiful, but it’s very melancholy. I lived in that incarnation for twenty years? Thirty?

How did you figure that out? I’ve never ask someone what chord defined their life because no one would ever have that answer.

On one level, I’m musically illiterate, but on another I understand it intuitively. And escaping the great minor 9th … I still work at that.

There’s something so poignant and temporary about life, and that chord really captures it. It’s a very difficult chord to walk away from. In a way, it’s kind of cheating. ‘OK, chord, take over cuz I can’t think what I want to say but at least I can make everyone all moody and melancholy.’ I’d like to go a little further. I’m at a point now where I’d like to study a little bit more. This famous bass player Carol Kaye, she played guitar before she played bass and one of the things she was saying was, ‘Well, in most rock ‘n’ roll, the tonic is king.’ That’s certainly arguable. You move the bass note around and you’re talking about a different chord. Get a bunch of musicians in a room and an argument breaks out whether it’s an 11th or a 13th.

Her point was that in those areas—exploring those chords without being as devoted to the tonic—you can really find the potency of those intervals. I find that intriguing. You can only beat people up for so long! Look, my wife likes to cook, I like to cook, everyone loves a great meal—but musically there’s very few great meals to have right now. I like In-N-Out same as everyone else … but what else is there?

I got to a point in my age where I’ve been writing, ‘I want it, I have it, I lost it’ my whole life.

So … now what?

I think Nick Tosches said that was the bedrock story of rock ‘n’ roll—he got what he wanted, but he lost what he had. So what starts where that ends?

To me one of the most interesting marriages of all is the musicality of R&B and the storytelling capacity of country music. That’s the intersection. If you can build something evocative and provocative and just kinda get at it in a way you can’t readily explain … you’re good to go! What’s interesting now is Numero is pumping a lot of energy into me—in the sense that there’s apparently a number of people that are interested in what I’ve done. When that energy enters your life, when what you put out eventually returns to you, it changes you. Probably any future work coming will reflect that. I never really had what Jackson Browne and the Eagles and my other friends had, which was a

certain level of public acclaim that gave them the fuel to be maybe a little less self-conscious.

A little more relaxed.

Relaxation is an underrated part of the creative process.

Truly. And if you haven’t straightened out your internal working, parts of it will never let you write anything. It’s absurd, in a way, that you can create something out of nothing and people will find it interesting.

I know you just said that you’ve always tried to get past that ‘I want it, I have it, I lost it’ story, but listening to your songs, I feel there’s this almost instructional feel—or they’re conversations with the listeners, telling them how do to things. ‘Get it up for love,’ ‘If you should fall / give it your all,’ lines like that—like your songs are little philosophical lessons for people.

When I was in my twenties, I was more in my bleak but hopeful period— What’s next? Pure bleakness or pure hope?

There’s a record I did in 2011 or so called The Darkness Beyond the Fire, and it has a song called ‘Too Late for Love.’ And there’s a line in it that goes, ‘Another joyride to God knows where / was it worth the trip?’ and the response is, ‘Oh, yeah!’ regardless of what I talk about, I always try and include some element of hope at the end. And I still do that. Owing to the unpredictability of life, which to me is probably one of the greatest mechanisms for avoiding suicide. You may not be feeling particularly good at the moment, but life could change in an hour—and wouldn’t it be terrible if you committed yourself to eternity before your ship came in?

There’s a lot to wallow in right now.

A lot of wallowing—it’s like, ‘Write what you know!’ ‘I know how to feel like shit—let’s work with that!’ But at some point if we’re all sort of moving to some level of resolution—and I do truly believe that consciousness change has the power to save the world and at the very least humanity—that’s a life’s work. And people should be encouraged to follow that particular path, even though it’s wildly uncomfortable.

It’s the only thing that makes any sense!

Have you ever willfully attached your most downer lyrics to your most dance-y song?

Like Sting? ‘Every Breath You Take’ is about a stalker, but they play it at weddings? No, I’ve never done that consciously. I’m not one of those guys that writes when they feel terrible.

I usually write when I’m feeling great! I try to find something that reflects all that. You spoke about the conversational aspect, and one thing that’s so interesting about the process of writing songs, at least in my case … in the past, I’ve tended to be very top-heavy. More noetic than somatic, if that makes any sense? It’s taken a lifetime to push my energy down into my chest and stomach to come from that place— getting that window to open and talk. Your brain can drown that shit out every time! An idea comes to you and your brain rushes over and stomps it out before it bursts into flames!

The harder you try to do it, the harder it becomes.

At one point I studied biofeedback with this guy David Velkoff, who founded the Drake Institute in Santa Monica. And David was a student of the martial arts teacher Jimmy Woo, and I studied Chinese boxing with this

guy Howard Lee, so we had a sort of point of convergence. His description of how to meditate was ‘Think where you want to go, and then take your foot off the accelerator.’ In a way, that’s what we’re talking about. The thing with writing, at least from my perspective, is you wanna do something you’d wanna hear somebody else do. Not like, ‘I wanna hear someone cover this song!’ but like, ‘Wow, isn’t that fucking great? I really love that!’

Put what you want to hear into the world?

Something YOU would listen to! There’s not so much difference between audience and performer. A slightly different choice in highways.

I’ve always thought it’s important to remember what it’s like to be a fan.

I was talking to a guy from Forbes magazine— About music? Or like hog futures?

No, about music—and I said one of the most fun things to ever possibly have happen is to go to a nightclub and feel threatened by the level of skill you’re seeing.

Like the merciless new young gunslinger?

Or old gunslinger! Anybody who may be better than you! That’s the best thing. Who wants to see somebody that isn’t playing at that level?

It’s thrilling to have someone throw down the gauntlet, cuz they don’t do it consciously.

They’re just doing their best. Which may be better than your best!

What martial art would be of best practical use to a songwriter?

To get out of your head and into your chest?

I tend to gravitate to the Chinese cuz I’m a closet Daoist—I like everything that sorta lays along those lines. You have to differentiate between a hard form and a soft form. Tai chi would be more of a soft form. And like some form of gung fu would be a harder form.

The interesting part of harder forms—they’re kind of self-regulatory. You get your horse stance and the harder you swing, the harder your stance gets—everything about it regulates itself. The horse stance and the parries are the essence, and they keep deepening. With tai chi, for instance, you have the benefit of movement, and that you can do at any age. It’s really about quieting your mind, and if that’s what we’re talking about, either form is fine. If you’re a youngster and you need superficially … well, that’s dangerous. If you need a physical challenge to it … the thing is, tai chi has that, but it takes a long time to realize. Any dancer can go to tai chi and look at the moves and do them, but it’s not about the moves. It’s the power behind the moves, and until you get your hands on that … and finding a really great teacher. That’s no small feat.

That’s true with music, too.

Absolutely right. My teacher taught a form of southern Chinese style martial arts, Choy Li Fut, and he was just about outrageous at that.

For the tai chi contingent, I gravitate to Chinese nationals—maybe it’s a conceit on my part, but I just think they’re closer to the origin and maybe a bit purer. And also there’s benefits in both martial arts in the healing aspects of acupuncture and herbs, which are both ubiquitous and taught back to back. Destruction and healing wrapped in the same force—kind of a great thing. And painful—they’re all painful! They ask a lot of your legs. But a lot of breakthroughs are possible. It’s quite valuable.

INTERVIEW

Nick Waterhouse was telling me about producing a band and trying to get them to understand that it needed to be simpler—that everyone was stepping all over themselves trying to be ‘good.’

The ‘dig me’ phenomenon. That’s why I’ve never been particularly interested in soloists. The rhythm guys always interested me.

Rhythm guitar players. I love that—to me, that’s the whole shooting match. Most of my favorite guitarists are really, really competent rhythm players. Steve Cropper was especially good at that. For example, I don’t think Chuck Berry is particularly well-educated—I could be wrong, maybe he’s been to college? But he probably just got in the game and stayed in from the jump. And here’s a guy to whom the rhythm of the sung word just comes naturally. If you look at his lyrics, they just fall so easily and they’re these wonderful narratives, great stories, and they’re not particularly overwrought or convoluted. I’m probably one of the only guys you know who’d use ‘collusion’ and ‘subterfuge’ in a rhythm and blues tune.

Or ‘flee in terror.’ I never heard that phrase in a song before.

Excellent! When Hamish [Stuart] and I were writing ‘What Cha Gonna Do for Me,’ there’s a line in the first verse that says, ‘The ground you lose exploiting the blues won’t get the job done.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s great.’

People exploit the blues all the time. They’re the gateway to self-pity, and as we all know, self-pity gives you permission to do anything.

And Hamish said, ‘I don’t know, man, I don’t know …’ He was going out with a model at the time, Tara Shannon, who was like most women a seeker of sorts, and she said, ‘Oh, no—that’s the greatest thing ever.’ And we left it in! But if you look at a pop song, it’s like … exploit? EXPLOIT!?

How close did you ever get to Warren Zevon? You were on the same label, but not at the same time—but I feel like two hyperliterate smartasses like yourselves must have crossed paths.

Warren was kind of a juggernaut. He had an appetite for self-destruction, paired with a really good brain, and that almost made him toxic. This is a guy who was discharging firearms into pillows at his house. It’s crazy shit.

And I never had much appetite for crazy shit.

At one point I met Gram Parsons at the Chateau Marmont— What an L.A. sentence.

I know—hysterical! People dragged me up there and thought maybe we’d write something, and he’s sitting there nodding out. And I just looked at him and thought, ‘You’re not in the game. You’re not taking this seriously.’

I’m not saying that about Warren in anyway.

Obviously he made quite a name for himself.

But he had a big craziness, and it made him kind of difficult to work with. I think I played guitar on his first record? The one Jackson produced? At least people tell me I did. I don’t really remember. A lot of that period went by like debris in the river.

Numero Group has reissued a sort of Greatest Neds album and your song ‘Get It Up for Love’ is getting a second life—it seems to be the song that’s the gateway to getting new people into Ned. Do you remember where that one came from?

INTERVIEW

There was an engineer working on the first album—John Haeny—and John Haeny was gay. And at one point he said to me, ‘God, I’m not sure if I can get it up for this!’ about a mix he had to do. In those days, you couldn’t recall all the settings digitally. You had to go in and turn every freakin’ knob for all your cross patches. All that stuff had to be redone. And I remember hearing that phrase and thinking, ‘Hmm, that’s interesting.’ And I came up with that particular groove which strangely enough was inspired by a guitar part from a Dr. John tune. [Sings] ‘I was in the right place…’ If you were actually to put them side by side, they’d be nothing alike. But the guitar player was playing this thing when I saw them at the Troubadour and he played this part, and I thought, ‘Fuck yeah.’ And I’d be lying if there wasn’t a little James Brown in there, too. Originally, when Glenn Frey heard that song, he was like, ‘Oh, gosh, let’s work on that!’ Chances are it would have been a completely different song—that probably would have made a lot more money!

I kind of wrote it from the standpoint not so much as a sexual song, but more of a question of summoning your resources. Like pulling yourself together. That’s what it meant more to me—Haeny’s meaning without the overtones.

You told Wax Poetics that music for you is a dialogue with your internal life—that’s interesting cuz it suggests that the more you go into yourself, the more other people can relate to what you come back with.

Absolutely. If you try to do something authentic—of course, what’s authentic? And if you’re on a personal level: ‘What is it about me that’s authentic?’ Cuz this is gonna have to be something you stand up and sing to people. So in the search for authenticity, you’re trying to find out what aspects of you are perhaps timeless. That’s really at the core of what happened in the 70s. There were a lot of Tin Pan Alley people who wrote great songs that I’m sure didn’t feel that way. I’m sort of best categorized … when I went to have drums put on these tunes, this guy Michael White who’s played with, among others, Steely Dan. He can play.

And I’m playing him these songs and the first thing he says is, ‘ Who ARE you?’ And the second thing he says is, ‘Where have you BEEN? I just love this stuff. You’re such a smartass.’

And I thought, ‘Yup—correcto.’ That’s always been my relationship to it.

Was there a breakthrough when you found your inner smartass? And does that have anything to do with ‘Get It Up for Love’ being banned in Boston? If that’s true?

That’s absolutely true! They tried to release it in Boston and Boston wasn’t having it. When I was a kid, ‘banned in Boston’ was legendary! A cliché! It was so great. I was honored.

But on the other hand, they didn’t play my tune.

What unlocks a song for you? I’m sure you have lyrics and melodies in your head all the time. But what’s it take to realize it’s finally time to put the song together?

I have pages of potential lyrics I write down.

But in my particular case, my playing skills have always provided me with an almost limitless supply of grooves and chord structures.

So I usually hook myself by hearing something really lyrical and compelling, and try-

ing to figure out what I’m supposed to say. I don’t usually work backward from lyrics—it’s forward from melody. When something gets under your skin, it’s a non-verbal thing. And to come up with another form that fits that is really kind of exotic! Most songwriters will tell you that you can’t count on it. If someone calls you and you’re in the middle of something … a phone call can end your songwriting for that particular tune.

Like the traveler who interrupts Coleridge, so ‘Kubla Khan’ is never finished?

Yeah—or someone called Paul Simon in the middle of a song and that was that! I think songwriting is a lot like lucid dreaming.

If you push it too hard, you wake up?

And you have access to a part of yourself that’s often off limits. It’s really hard to keep that gate open until you find what you’re looking for.

You’re giving out a lot of practical advice here—instructional, like I said!

I like people to just hike up their pants and learn to do stuff! Yeah, everyone’s upset about the world—I’m watching refugees flood over the border and I’m thinking, ‘Jesus, it’s cinematic!’ The world is threatening to become unhinged and we’re all confronting some major turning point in our lives, individually and collectively, and isn’t there some way to deal that acknowledges the problem but implies there might be a solution?

That’s hard for me—recognize a problem, but recognize a way to get through, too.

I know this sounds kinda … egocentric. Maybe the idea of somehow having the certainty you can create something that doesn’t exist and that people will want it implies a certain arrogance. But if you were to talk to all of us as kids—I know the Eagles and Jackson and all those people had a lot of success, but we were all in our early twenties together— And a sauna together!

Or the desert—that’s a more interesting episode! But if you were to ask them—well, this is the way I felt, and I suspect it was more than just me—we thought not only were we doing something for ourselves but doing it for everyone else. Maybe our observations would prove to be of use to somebody who was struggling with an equation they couldn’t quite balance. Then it becomes for the greater good, and once it’s for the greater good, it becomes holy.

What was the first inkling you had that you had actually become big in Japan?

It was one of the greatest things. I was seeing this girl—actually the first girl I ever lived with—and I’d just got captured by the whole thing, flat-out. Hook, line and sinker. Except part of me knew this was a crazy person and great harm would come to me if I persisted in my folly, which it did—greater harm than I could ever have imagined. Like your feet are stapled to the crosswalk and the truck coming at you has no brakes. This all sort of culminated at the end of 1976. She moved out and a really good friend of mine got in a terrible auto accident and lost his left leg four inches above the knee, and he came and stayed in the house. I was emptying bedpans, chain smoking Camels—and it rained for three months straight. The most rain I ever saw in Los Angeles.

That’s verging on biblical.

Very much so—that’s what it felt like. My parents were leaving town, and in those days we had a beach house down in Oceanside. And they said, ‘Would you mind terribly moving down there and keeping an eye on the house?’

I thought, ‘Fuck yes.’ I learned to surf there— to me it was like mother’s milk. And before I left, I got a call—‘Would you like to go play in Japan?’ I thought about it like … ‘Really?’

Kind of the last thing I imagined happening but I figured why not? So I threw some people together. I didn’t have any idea what kind of heat there was over there. My first album was being taped and sold and taped and sold and taped and sold. You could pay $300 for an album that had already been listened to by fifteen people.

An early beneficiary of music piracy?

A beneficiary of piracy? I’d have to think about that! So I pulled together my folks and went over, and lo and behold almost everything that had eluded me in the U.S. was sort of there in triplicate in Japan! We played in various places and it was all really wonderful.

There was a little mini-riot in Osaka. They all rushed the stage, and we went back to the hotel and there were a bunch of kids in front and I thought, ‘Oh, there must be someone famous here—I wonder who it is?’ I got out of the bus and I was mobbed by all these kids, and someone grabbed me and tossed me in the lobby of the motel! We went to a wonderful place, the Kiyomizu shrine, which is now basically a tourist attraction but in those days looked like a hardworking temple without the railings and walkways. The guitar player with me was standing on the upper balcony, kind of looking over the trees as the storm moved in—this tough kid from the streets of Buffalo—and he just started crying! It rolled over him! Too much to contain in his melon—it crushed him.

What happens to your further personal development when you know for a fact people will actually riot for you?

Well, then you get back to the U.S. and you realize of course that that was a wonderful little dream in another part of the universe, and now you’ve come back to the somewhat less sympathetic aspects of your own culture who—as it turns out—doesn’t give a rat’s ass about you!

How do you feel now that Numero is reissuing you? This isn’t the usual ‘lost genius rediscovered’ story cuz you were never lost.

But do you feel … rediscovered?

There’s been stuff happening spontaneously in different areas. I’m seeing symptoms in more than one place simultaneously, and that’s led me to believe something organic is happening. And I’m really quite amused by it. I’d just like an opportunity to play, cuz I could put together a unit that could cook eggs! It’s still amazing to me. Groove is like a train that’s constantly running, and if you got the perception to see it, you can get on board any fucking time.

Where’s that train go?

Doesn’t matter if it gets you to stop thinking.

You’re full of universal truth today!

Kind of! Usually I’m a little funnier.

NED DOHENY’S SEPARATE OCEANS IS OUT NOW ON NUMERO GROUP. VISIT NED DOHENY AT NEDDOHENY.COM. 15

RUTHANN FRIEDMAN Interview by Daiana Feuer Photography by Aaron Giesel

In 1967, Ruthann Friedman became the third-ever female songwriter to write a song that reached number one on the American charts, when her pals the Association recorded her song “Windy.”

While that little tune went on to become one of the most beloved songs of the 20th century, Friedman’s music career hit some personal roadblocks and abruptly came to a halt in the early 1970s. That’s not to say she didn’t live the rock ‘n’ roll life. This woman has had adventures: drugs, sex, love, wind, sun, sea, desert, heartache and the California dream. Then she settled down and raised a family. Almost forty years went by when suddenly the world called and Friedman shook the dust off her guitar and dove back into music. After the reissue of Constant Companion, she began writing songs again and immersed herself in the new folk music scene of Los Angeles, spreading joy and magic cookies amongst her new friends. This year sees the release of two collections of songs from her heyday: Windy: The Ruthann Friedman Songbook and The Complete Constant Companion Sessions, as well as an album of new material, Chinatown. We could fill a book with her stories, but here’s a glimpse into the personality and times of Ruthann Friedman.

Have you had a time in your life when you didn’t want to be part of what we would call normal life?

At least once a week, still. I would like to be out in the woods somewhere. I lived in Big Sur for a year and that was quite amazing. Some people said, ‘There’s a cabin that no one is living in and they never come up.’ So we moved in and squatted. There was nothing much there. There was a bed. It was across from a stream and under the redwoods. It was amazing. That was as close to living off the grid as I’ve ever been, eating macrobiotic and all that.

I ended up getting a job at Nepenthe, at the gift shop, because eventually you want to eat something other than brown rice. An egg once in a while is nice.

When was this?

Shit, I was about 21. Maybe 1964?

Are we right to glorify the 60s?

Well, yeah. I can appreciate that because I love the music from the 60s. Though I never liked the fashion. All of a sudden we had polyester and paisleys. That’s not what it was really about. The fashionista’s idea of what having a hallucination was like is NOT what having a hallucination was like. I can understand glorifying the time but everybody has to understand that we were just people and we were just as fucked up as people are now.

After being in Big Sur a while, I realized it was just like being in any subdivision. People are screwing around on each other, husbands and wives—it was like hippie suburbia. People behave the same way. they are just in a different milieu.

Those are the real consistent parts of being human.

Most of my songs are about my relationship to the world in general. Some of them are about my perceptions of the world, which certainly I would never say is absolutely true—but it’s my perception. And most of my songs are based in reality, I’d say, although we have poetic license don’t we?

You’ve got two new releases of old songs and a release of new songs, both out now—do you see an arc from what you thought about things then to what you reflect on now?

What I thought about the world when I was 20 and what I think now that I’m older is a lot different in terms of what is important to me. A lot of my lyrics were naïve—they’re still nice, because naïve is nice—but they weren’t real. Twinkling sparkly silver things, lots of silver things.

Maybe everything was shiny and new then.

Are you darker or lighter about the world now?

Darker, definitely. Things have gotten a lot darker. I’ve lived here in Venice 40 years. Where there were stop signs there are now mini malls on all four corners and lights with left and right turn arrows and where there were a few cars on the freeway at 2 in the morning, there are now lots of cars on the freeway at 2 in the morning.

And billboards everywhere. I really hate them.

Shit, we were all worried about nuclear war in the 1950s—we had the stop, drop, and cover your head under your desk, and a lot of good that would do as you got vaporized—but now it’s really more a threat. The nuclear weapons

are in the hands of people who are unpredictable and rash. If North Korea or Iran get mad enough, or if terrorists get angry enough … they believe in their myths so stringently, they would do anything to get rid of the infidels.

I think a lot about having an apocalypse plan. What to do on the last day on Earth?

This song I wrote is about that: ‘Imagine this is the last day on Earth / would you sit at home and cry / or wander around with a smile on your face and hug your friends goodbye …’ I think I would probably get together with the people I love and give them a hug goodbye— maybe attend a party.

I wonder if there’d be much looting?

Yeah, cuz what are you going to do with it?

But maybe someone waited all their life to steal a Corvette and wear a fur coat and go up in style.

What’s the song ‘Chinatown’ about?

Opium. And also it was sparked by my grandparents’ bakery sign. Red neon that would flash on and off. On rainy nights when I was a little kid I would see this … what my mother called Chinese writing, when the light would get all distorted in the puddles. The image came to me of that red neon being scattered in the water. Opium—‘Curls of smoke through a crimson door’—and maybe it’s also about taking to drugs to assuage the guilt, family guilt, which was laid upon me. Jewish guilt.

Why do they lay the guilt on?

As a way to control. It’s like Catholics—you tell them they’re going to go to hell and make them feel guilty about being sinners and then you can control them.

17

“Here is an answer for you that is true: assistance I remember that all I have is But you still sinned a bit, huh?

I was a bad girl. My dad died when I was 15 and my mother was useless and I just did whatever I wanted. Can we leave it at that? I was a loner in school, one of only two Jews, and I spent a lot of my time playing guitar.

When I was 18 I just took off—threw my dog in the car and left the Valley. First I went to Denver with my boyfriend, ‘El Niño Dorado,’ Bruce Patterson, who was a flamenco guitarist.

I still have a picture of him. We went to San Francisco next, then came back to Los Angeles and got an apartment, and then his mother came from Kansas and took him home. I was an older woman. I think he was 18 and I was 19. Ha! But I did what I wanted to do. I didn’t have any guidance particularly. I made a lot of mistakes.

But by mistakes, one lives. I don’t think people learn too much about life when they’re not making mistakes.

Maybe. That could be. But when people keep making the same mistakes over and over again then you have to wonder. Like when you keep going out with the same guy. You think he’s different but really you’ve picked up on something about him that is like your dad and he’s going to end up being the same guy—abusive, controlling, whatever it is you are drawn to.

Was there a point when you were like, ‘OK, I finally grew up’?

No. Somebody wrote on Facebook that the first 40 years of growing up are the hardest.

And I added that the next 40 ain’t no picnic either. Life is hard. You have to force yourself, like a blade of grass poking through the sidewalk crack that has to force itself by law of nature—force itself to grow, force yourself to move forward, to work, to do the right thing sometimes. My sister, that was her line. She also said, ‘With the Bible, with all the rules, all you really need to know is row, row, row your boat gently down the stream.’ We make it complicated.

Do you ever lose thoughts or are you good at catching them?

I’ve been lazy lately. I took a poetry class and this poet said she thinks of ideas as ticker tape coming out of her ear and she has to keeping pulling it or else she’ll lose it. You always think, ‘Oh, I will remember that tomorrow.’ But you don’t. You lose the context, you lose what could’ve been. Do you have dreams that you will always remember? I have had some really weird dreams that stuck with me. If you try to analyze your dreams, it can be very helpful. I had this one dream about walking down a dirt road, through Owens Valley or something— desert on all sides and mountains. Across the 18

road there is a big spider web with a spider sitting in the middle and I had this feeling that there was someone standing next to me but I couldn’t really see them, this shadow person.

I just stopped. I said, ‘I can’t do this, this is just too scary.’ But then the shadow person said, ‘Come on, let’s do it. You can do it.’ We snapped the spider web and walked through.

What it told me is that I have it within myself to conquer my fears, if I just do it. I can still picture it so clearly. It was scary.

What if dreams are when we are awake and this is us sleeping right now?

Well, you could think that way. I am my own dream, my real self is somewhere else dreaming me. Well, wake up! Or what if the whole universe is a grain of sand on someone else’s beach. Or, how about infinity? The sky has to end somewhere, doesn’t it? Where does it end?

Is it endless? I think it has to not end. It has to go on forever but we can’t conceive of it. It’s not within our brains to really conceive of it going on forever. Does it fade off at the edges?

It just goes on forever. You know how we were talking about molecule soup? Consider being a combination of specialized cells, because that is what we are. Right? The eye cells developed seeing, etc. One of the first colonies of specialized cells were jellyfish. That is not an organism—it is a colony of specialized cells. That got me thinking about us. These sensory things are cells, they got together cuz they functioned well together so they kept on getting together. Something happens and it works so it keeps on doing it, like finding a niche and living in it. Like a plant that grows in a certain place. Like the wolves, they got rid of the wolves in the forest so they have too many deer. You get rid of the lead predator and everything else goes crazy. You have to have a predator so things can stay in balance. Sharks keep the oceans clean. Sharks are the garbage disposal of the ocean.

If you had to choose between staying on a boat that might sink or swimming towards an island miles away, which would it be?

Am I with Leonardo DiCaprio? That’s freaky.

I would find something in the boat that would float and take my chances. If I were still in my twenties or thirties I would swim. Although I wouldn’t have a choice if the boat sank. I’d have to swim the four miles anyway. I don’t like swimming in the ocean anymore. I used to body surf a lot as a kid. I loved churning around in the waves. We didn’t have boards at the time. Boards came around in the 1950s, right? When I was little, no boards. We didn’t have plastic when I was a kid. We had Bakelite.

It looks like plastic but it isn’t, or it was an early form of plastic.

You’ve seen a lot of interesting history then.

My mother saw it all. She was born in 1911.

She saw the first radios, which were crystal sets.

You could get one and put it together. She saw the first airplanes. When she was born there were still horses drawing wagons down the streets of New York. And then computers! If you went back in time and showed a computer to someone from 1911 they would think it was sorcery and string you up as a witch.

Tell me more about what L.A. was like when you were a teenager?

I hung out at the Troubadour and Barney’s Beanery. I was a sad teenager. My music was where I retreated. When we moved here from New York I was 10, and I had no friends. I had lived in a Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx and suddenly I was in a classroom where the only other Jew was my cousin Joel.

The teacher was from Texas and I could barely understand what she was saying cuz her accent was so thick and I just felt very isolated.

They took me out of my place, my school, my friends. I ended up spending a lot of time in my room, playing guitar. It really inspired me to do a lot of music. When my father died it was a good thing and a bad thing. But all in all my family was not fun. Music was a great escape. And books. A lot of reading. At first I would mostly play other people’s songs. I wrote one song when I was 12 which I still have. It’s so funny. ‘I’ll never, never, fall in love again…’—I was 12 years old! I played a lot of Bob Dylan. But it was Buffy St. Marie— when I heard her, I was like, ‘I could do that.’

That’s when I started writing songs. I could write and I could play music, so I put them together. I went to open mic, what we called a hootenanny—I was playing hootenannies at the Troubadour and a coffee gallery called Coffee Confusion and another one called Fifth and State and playing my songs and singing. And I got to know a lot of people in the music business. I got a contract with a guy called Steve Clark from Atlanta, and recorded a lot of stuff with him. A lot of the stuff is on the new Ruthann Friedman Songbook—it’s full of names you might recognize. So I left and went to Big Sur, came back from Big Sur … and I don’t know how I ended up living at David Crosby’s house but that’s when I wrote ‘Windy.’ I was 24, 25. Jim Yester’s wife, JoEllen, asked me for a song for the Association, and I offered up ‘Windy.’ When ‘Windy’ came out, I also had a song on the radio at the same time, ‘Little Girl Lost and Found.’

When they were both playing on the radio, it was just amazing. I was ecstatic. I couldn’t believe it.

How did ‘Windy’ come to you?

It just came! It was a twenty-minute song. I wrote it in twenty minutes. I had remembered my high school English teacher saying that if you wanted to catch people’s attention in your writing, ask a question right away, and then people want to stick around to see the answer.

So: ‘Who’s peeking out from under the stairway? ... Everyone knows it’s Windy!’

Chinatown has been a while in the coming.

Are you happy?

For the most part I’m very happy. There are things I would change but that’s how it goes.

Everyone that worked on that album did it cuz they wanted to. It was a labor of love. I couldn’t pay anybody. I kept going back and forth to San Jose to record with John Mueller to record it at his place. The final additions and mixing took place at Jackson Browne’s studio.

It was so much fun. I’ll never get to do that again in my lifetime. People would listen to it and want to play on it and it was the greatest. Van Dyke Parks came and played on three songs. It was so nice.

Is this album something you needed to do?

Yes. There is one old song on there, ‘Southern Comfortable,’ cuz everyone demanded that be on there cuz they liked it. But all these songs are songs that I wanted out there. They are songs I am proud of. You know, I understand I made a contribution to folk music with Constant Companion, but for what it’s worth, these new songs are me, now, and I wanted them out there. Other people may or may not be into it, but screw them. It’s a picture of time.

It took about three years to get it done, which is a long time.

I remember when you started playing these songs. They’re part of a soundtrack to a period of my own time. I can’t see the word ‘Chinatown’ without hearing you in my head, ‘Chinatowwwn, in the RAAAIN.’ I’m just glad that it’s out. And now I’m writing more songs. I’ve got six new songs. I worry over them. The songs that I write take me a long time. Every word has to be right. I have to wait a month sometimes just to be satisfied with another word. I’ve become much more critical. The words are important. I wrote a love song for the first time in a long time.

What’s important to you now?

I want to make another record. I want to keep playing. I write alone so that’s the lonely part.

I very seldom write with others. I want to get them out there cuz I write them to share them.

If I don’t get to share them, it stops me. It’s like, why bother. I’m not driven. I don’t have graphitis where I have to constantly be writing. I need to have a reason. Playing and singing are a reason.

INTERVIEW

: when I need some sort of spiritual this moment in time.”

How do keep your creativity in shape?

I think my brain is constantly thinking creatively, bouncing from one thing to another, thinking about things in a different way. When something clicks, then I sit down and write it.

I also do a lot of automatic writing because that keeps it flowing. A lot of time you do automatic writing, then look at it in a month and you see these thoughts in their development.

Best time to do it is first thing in the morning.

And then a lot of it comes from playing the guitar. Lyrics come second for me. That song ‘Sideshow’ took me three years to write. I have a new one called ‘Monster Love’ that also took me three years. I’ve been playing the same riff for three years! And I tried a bunch of different lyrics until finally it came together. And it’s a weird song.

Right here on this couch?

Right here on this couch is where the magic happens. See that pile of legal pads? Those are all my notes that I’m working on. I love the music. When I get into it. When I get high and I’m playing, it’s just … oh my, great. I can’t play high in front of people because I get lost.

I did it at Taix when it was just my friends left in the audience, and the song just turns into something else and they don’t care. In middle of the song I will forget what I’m playing and just start playing something else.

Are the songs on the Ruthann Friedman Songbook the ones you recorded for A&M in 67-68?

Not just for A&M—there are things I recorded for Steve Clark in my early twenties.

It’s from all over. Things I recorded for A&M, things I recorded for Warner Reprise, things I recorded on my own. It’s a whole time capsule of different recordings.

What was happening in the late 60s for you? You were caught up in your romance with Peter Kaukonen? Why did that distract your from your music?

Funny thing is we were together for a year, that’s all—but I lost A&M because of Peter.

Instead of concentrating on my recording, I was sitting in the booth calling him and not getting an answer, thinking he was fooling around on me, which was true. But what are you going to do? Live and learn.

But you bounced back cuz right after that you jumped into Constant Companion?

Yes, I was living in the desert with my next man, Alan Wayne, who I lived with for five years. He was an artist. I still have many of his paintings in my house. That’s where I did Constant Companion and some other things for Warner. With Van Dyke Parks we did ‘Glittering Dancer,’ which is a bonus track on one of my albums … I INTERVIEW

really don’t know, maybe on Hurried Life?

I honestly can’t keep all the facts straight at this point in my life.

Did you go out to the desert on a spiritual quest to find answers or just cuz you wanted to get out of town?

I wasn’t out there meditating or anything. I just went down there one weekend and I was playing my guitar at Jilly’s, who was a friend of Sinatra’s [ahem, as in Frank…]. And this young man came up to me and started talking and I ended up staying with him, Alan, for five years. We stayed in the desert for a little more than a year. We had a great house near Palm Springs. There were no other houses around us. It was different 40 years ago. There were still hotels, but not as many.

It was the Rat Pack hangout. They’re all mostly dead now. The reason Alan was there was because his mentor, Victor Thall, was there. Victor was an amazing character and brilliant abstract expressionist who had been in Paris in the 20s at the height of the arts movement. I was typing his endless memoirs for him. He was a crusty New Yorker about whom I have many tales to tell … another story for another time.

Do you have regrets about how your music career went?

My music career never went. When I was on the road pushing Constant Companion, I called Warner to find out where my next show was, and they told me to call my mother’s house and my stepfather picked up the phone and told me my sister killed herself. So I packed up and went home and everything went downhill from there. And I was like … enough. That was the end of that and then I just didn’t want to do it anymore so I raised a family instead. I found my husband, Jeffrey, and we raised a family.

The years went by and then suddenly people wanted to hear my songs again. So I picked up the guitar and started doing it again, and I realized that I just loved doing it. I love writing songs. And I think my songs are better now than they were then. I went to college. I got an education. I stopped recording music entirely in 72, 73.

What got you through that period in your life?

Well, it wasn’t drugs. I had given that up.

I don’t know. Probably just the belief that it would turn out okay. That it would end. No matter how bad it gets, there’s always light at the end of the tunnel. There’s more good times, more productive times.

Since you felt let down by your parents, were you worried about being a good mother when you decided to make a family?

You’ll find that what we do is the actual opposite of what our parents did. I didn’t set boundaries for my kids like I should have. That song ‘What a Joy It Is to See You’: ‘We didn’t know how to make you strong, but you found out on your own / we’re so proud of how you’ve grown …’ That’s the story right there. I was worried about being a good parent. I loved my kids. I loved them, I love them! It all works out though.

What brought you back to music?

About seven years ago, I got a call from Pat Thomas of Water Records and they wanted to reissue Constant Companion. And I got a call from Devendra Banhart, who wanted me to play at a festival he was doing. So I dug out my guitar. And then I found a guy who could listen to my old recordings and start me off on how I used to play them. I didn’t remember!

Then I realized I could still do it.

One lesson to take from this is that things are never really over.

No, it continues. Unless you decide ‘I’m never gonna …’ If it’s in you, it’s never over.

Are you happy music is back in your life?

Absolutely. Oh yeah! And I’ve made so many great friends in the last few years, so many people when I walk into a room and see them, I really feel happy and they feel the same. I love singing. I love performing. I love sharing my songs. Otherwise I wouldn’t do it. Meeting people and having these great friendships keeps me going absolutely. I’m going to be 70, you know.

You’re looking good for 70!

Well, thanks, dear. I spent a lot of time waiting. I wasted a lot of time. Thinking. You know that Eagles song, ‘I would’ve done so many things if I could only stop my mind …’

I think too much. I procrastinate. I have to get the whole thing worked out in my head before I actually go and do it.

Why is it so hard to do the things we want to do the most?

Maybe we’re afraid to fail. Or afraid we can’t do it. Also the way I was raised; I was not raised by nice people. They were crazy. My father especially made me feel very bad about myself.

That seemed to be his goal in life from when I was 5 years old. It’s hard to keep positive and it’s hard to believe in yourself. In my songs, you can see, they’re not exactly all joyous.

That also makes me think of your spider dream. You just had to go for it.

That’s true. Not being afraid. Just plunging forward. It’s like that Alice in Wonderland song: ‘I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it. That explains the trouble that I’m always in.’ I love music. I’ve always loved music. Music makes the world go round.

It does. It brings people together, it sets them apart. People find themselves, either by making or listening.

I’m thinking about what you said about being spiritual. I think that I thought that people ‘knew’ when I was young and that I didn’t get it and they all knew something that I didn’t know. And now I know they didn’t know anything. They would make you believe they knew something to make themselves feel really cool. It’s all bullshit—I mean, basically. Anyone who tells you they know, especially about spiritual things, doesn’t know. I don’t go for the mythology that tears the world apart. Religion is tearing the world apart.

What should spirituality be?

You try to love yourself. Love your friends.

Make nice. Do what you know is the right thing to do. Try to always do that. It doesn’t necessarily mean you should be majorly successful and make a lot of money. Live off the grid if you think that’s what’s important. Be true to yourself.

Which is harder than it seems.

It is. That’s why life is a trial. For some maybe it isn’t. But I don’t know anyone who doesn’t suffer and struggle. People with money aren’t necessarily happy. They can afford expensive psychiatry. Here is an answer for you that is true: when I need some sort of spiritual assistance I remember that all I have is this moment in time. Past and future, all else is illusion and at the most quarky, subatomic level we are all connected to everything. I don’t consider myself necessarily a wise person but I like to inspect things and think about what makes things go and why they are the way they are. That’s usually what my songs are about. My songs are it. If you want to glean what’s going on in my head or what I’ve learned, that’s where it is. In my songs.

That’s where I’ve worked it out. But otherwise, the second 40 years of being a kid is just as hard as the first 40.

As long as I get to keep being a kid.

It’s good, I think. Being able to see the world and have fun and see things as new. And not wear polyester pants.

RUTHANN FRIEDMAN’S CHINATOWN IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM WOLFGANG RECORDS. WINDY: THE RUTHANN FRIEDMAN SONGBOOK AND THE COMPLETE CONSTANT COMPANION SESSIONS ARE AVAILABLE NOW FROM CHERRY RED/ NOW SOUNDS. VISIT RUTHANN FRIEDMAN AT RUTHANNFRIEDMAN.COM. 19

CRAIG LEON Interview by Ron Garmon Illustration by Emanuel Farias

Producer and arranger Craig Leon is best known in the United States for being present at the creation of new wave music, helming classic albums by Blondie, Ramones and Richard Hell. But to progressive rock aesthetes and followers of allegedly serious music, the effervescent and scholarly Mr. Leon is the man who in the early 80s created two LPs worth of gorgeously warped, drastically advanced, generically unclassifiable music based on the idea of interplanetary Top 40 radio. Stupendous twin feats of purely tonal reasoning, as multilayered in concept as some deep-dish SF classic yet as eerily cozy as your last late-night bout with Can or Ash Ra Tempel, Nommos and Visiting are now re-released as the whimsically titled Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol. 1. The Facebook chat interview came with an unusual amount of transatlantic static, our faces flickering in and out of a blizzard of stunted bandwidth.

I wanted to ask about early influences.

Oh, gosh. As a musician? I had a pretty schizoid upbringing. I was trained and loved from a very early age—we’re talking young childhood—playing what’s called classical music on the piano. I hate that the term classical, but that’s what it was, the old masters.

The very first record my dad ever gave me was Beethoven’s Sixth. We lived down South in the middle of nowhere and, late at night, I loved listening to early rock ‘n’ roll radio and the greatest stuff was the Grand Ole Opry out of Nashville and Howlin’ Wolf out of Arkansas. Another early record my father got me was Smokestack Lightnin’ and I loved that! They helped define what I did afterwards. Specifically for Nommos and Visiting, the influences came from the avant-garde and classical side—”Ballet Mécanique” was written by an American named George Antheil in the 20s. I have the poster for the premiere right here over my shoulder and I’m sorry Facebook can’t let you see it. He was a student of Stravinsky. Seven player pianos hooked up to a sync mechanism and piano rolls with holes cut in them that had them play pounding rhythms. Musically, that had a lot to do with the rhythms of Nommos.

Then, of course, I was big fan of the German synth bands. When I worked at Sire, I tried 20

to bring in Can, Kraftwerk, Neu! and others, and I got rejected on all of them. They never sold any records—with the exception of Kraftwerk and them they did want, but they ended up being signed by their American affiliate. I wasn’t trying to consciously create Krautrock or anything industrial and it turns out the main inspiration for the records was something entirely different— We’ll get to that! You’re famous for producing and playing on new wave rock LPs. But your first gig was on a Climax Blues Band record.

Yeah, not a so-called punk record. It was the first production job I ever had. They were working on an album in England and the band didn’t like it and their producer wanted to hang out in Florida so he picked my little studio. I did a bunch of arrangements that everybody liked so Richard Gottehrer asked me to come work for him at Sire. I sold the studio and went to work there.

Climax Blues Band couldn’t get it right so that was your start in the biz?

Exactly, but they did get it right!

You worked at Sire during the 70s. This was your Brill Building experience— Yeah, well, Seymour [Stein] and Richie, the owners, came right from the Brill Building.

Richie was out of 1650 Broadway, which

was kind of the alternative Brill Building.

He wrote a lot of those early 60s pop songs and Seymour was a promotion guy.

What was producing the first Ramones album like? Did they have clue one about recording anything?

Well, a little knowledge is sometimes dangerous! Tom Erdelyi [aka Tommy Ramone] was the manager of the band and had the concept of the band which to me was very, very important, which is why I credited him as associate producer on the album because he actually came up with the concept for the band. In terms of recording, he’d engineered a little bit but didn’t know a lot about it. The rest of them didn’t know much about it. But they had the songs and a distinct concept of what they wanted to do.

Contrary to popular belief, we didn’t play it live—there were overdubs and odd concepts I kind of put in there because I wanted their album to sound radically different from everyone else’s because everybody’s albums sounded the same. Nobody had quite figured out how to record the louder bands. The Stooges’ albums didn’t sound all that good and neither did the MC5’s, so we couldn’t really record them conventionally like those records. It’s been written about a lot—the exaggeration-as-a-joke early

Beatles-like stereo. Their name comes from the Beatles—‘Paul Ramone’ was the hotel check-in name for Paul McCartney. They really thought they were going to be one of the biggest bands on the planet and in a weird way, they did it. Thirty-eight years later and we just went gold on the first album a week ago!

What did most of the corporate people you dealt with think of the turn in mid70s rock?

It has to be either the first Ramones or the first Suicide album. I write and compose and my wife and I make our own records, but when you’re producing a record for somebody else, it’s another thing altogether.

You’re trying to create a sonic environment unique to that particular artist and to help them get their point across. Nowadays it’s how many people it takes to cobble together a viral hit on YouTube. Back then, it was to trying to establish the identity of a band.

It’s one of the reasons the music of that era is still present in the culture.

Before Warners got involved, we were a tiny label with five people working for it, like an indie label today. All that stuff was completely under the radar for the people at the big labels and if they noticed it at all it was to say it wasn’t very good.

INTERVIEW

When did you take up the synthesizer?

I played classical piano. At Sire we had a sister label called Passport and there was a very long project going over there with Larry Fast, who was a keyboard player who went on to play with Peter Gabriel. He was doing one of those things where they take written orchestral music and recreate it one note at a time. He didn’t read music very well so I got drafted to go help him out on a semi-classical piece he was working on. I read all the notes and I learned from there.

Did you ever hear Beaver & Krause? Parts of their early 70s records come close to what you did on Nommos.

Of course! Paul Beaver had a synth record out on Takoma before I did.

Tell me about the Brooklyn Museum exhibit that inspired Nommos and the other recordings.

There was a book that accompanied it and my wife and I were fascinated by this particular tribe the Dogon, whose art was being exhibited. They had a cultural tradition involving aliens visiting from space—they were very specific about what planet it was— who taught them the basics of civilization, kind of like our stories of angels in Western religion and mythology. They had pictures of these beings, which were kind of amphibious. They actually described where these creatures said they came from—a star system very far from ours, with attributes something like the Dog Star Sirius.

This is in terms of speculative fiction—I’m not saying it’s true, but when I thought of this, I began to wonder, ‘Surely they had some kind of music.’ So I created from the legends an alternative musical system that these beings would’ve used.

Wow. I don’t wanna bore you.

Don’t worry about that! What were the parameters you set for yourself in executing this concept?

I used a system of very repetitive short drum loops, which is pretty much what African drum loops are, only mine were a bit more in 4 and some of theirs are in 6. Depends upon what tribe it is and everything. And then I created very specific small-scales tonality—like five-tone pentatonic scales but not the same ones we normally use and put those two things together. Also some parts of ancient Egyptian, Greek and Phoenician music had these very simple melodic lines.

On top of that, I thought if they came from an aquatic planet, they obviously— —heard things underwater!

So in painting a science-fiction picture of what these guys were listening to, that’s kind of what interested me. Of course it’s not done as an intellectual exercise but as a kind of a supernatural fictional, kind of tongue-in-cheek thing … not as if presenting a paper on this music.

No, it seemed rather more instinctual than that. Don’t be surprised if one day a religious cult comes out of these records.

Well, they might—the original concept of the Dogon religion is quite complex. I just wanted to show what was on the transistor radio, so to speak. What they were listening to as they were flying through space, 22

perhaps in suspended animation for years.

There are books and books and books on the psychology and religion of these creatures, especially in France. It would take a lot to attempt the Dogon religion, I think.

How many other musicians were involved on the record?

Nommos? Pretty much me and Cassell Webb, who still plays with me live.

Why did you re-record the album?

I wanted to add some things to it and tie it together with the second record, Visiting, which is a more earthly version of the idea. Same principles, but fast-forwarded a thousand years in technology. We didn’t have enough room in those days on two vinyl records. I started tinkering with it around 1995 and finally wanted to see it through. Nommos and Visiting, if you play those records orchestrally, they sound like my other orchestral records, which is why I’m gonna start performing them live orchestrally. We will be doing that in London with an orchestra next year. Nommos and Visiting together had a smaller budget than the first Ramones record, which was one of the smallest budgets of all time. I couldn’t afford an orchestra at the time.

Visiting is very comparable to a whole fistful of prog rock classics in my opinion. How long did recording it take?

About a week. Nommos may have taken a slight bit longer. I’m old-fashioned about my stuff, I actually write it out, sketch it out and then play it, so the writing took much longer.

Little could be further removed from Blondie or Richard Hell. What was the reaction to these albums upon release?

Probably no reaction. [Laughs] Dead on arrival, eh?

Pretty much. A few avant-garde publications noticed it and it got airplay on classical stations late at night with the other twentieth-century stuff. As far as the audience for Richard Hell and Blondie goes, there was a whole thing with a lot of the New York bands of that era being into the avant-garde scene, particularly the Velvet Underground and Suicide, but that’s another conversation. They weren’t big sellers and still aren’t.

What made you decide these two records are worth retrieving?

When Nommos came out it was terrible sounding, and I didn’t want that to be what they remembered. I didn’t realize original copies now go for all kinds of crazy money.

Same with Visiting. I wanted to do these before a whole bunch of crappy bootlegs came out. I wanted to use it to get some of my ideas about sequential music and more ‘difficult’ music into the mindset of some of my classical music partners so they can help me make more records like these.

CRAIG LEON’S ALBUMS NOMMOS AND VISITING ARE AVAILABLE AS Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol. 1 FROM RVNG INTL. AND CRAIG LEON’S NOMMOS IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM SUPERIOR VIADUCT. VISIT CRAIG LEON AT CRAIGLEON.COM.

JOEL JEROME Interview by Jacquelinne Cingolani Illustration by Joel Jerome

California native Joel Morales began his journey into the Southern California music scene in the late 90s after a series of 4-track bedroom recordings made their way from his father’s home in Inglewood to his mother’s home in Hawthorne to the venues of the South Bay as the basis of the band that would become dios. Formed by Joel and his brother, Kevin, dios made beautiful, idiosyncratic records heavily influenced by the Beatles, Os Mutantes and the Beach Boys. The eventual dismemberment of dios served as an opportunity for Morales to reinvent himself as solo artist, not unlike Neil Young after Buffalo Springfield and CSNY. This existential period also revealed an inner guiding voice, urging him to explore the world of recording, and a producer was born. Papa Joel—as Morales is affectionately known—uses an Albini-esque sliding scale for producing and recording that allows artists who lack funds to make high-caliber recordings. He has helped local bands such as La Sera, Cherry Glazerr, Happy Hollows, PISCES, Froth, Mystic Braves, Dirt Dress, and Mr. Elevator and The Brain Hotel, just to name a few! After time with his band Babies on Acid, Morales began writing and recording his first solo record, Psychedelic Thriftstore Folk, under the name Joel Jerome—out soon on Manimal Music.

Are you watching TV while I interview you, Joel? What if you aren’t paying attention and you accidentally say, ‘Fuck that band!’ or ‘So and so sucks!’?

Oh, cool! Then I will DEFINITELY make sure to mention some band I don’t like!

Do you think the danger in rock music has been lost? I ask the same question to all the artists I interview because I love to hear everyone’s perspective on where the mystery has gone. When was the last time you’ve seen a band in the mainstream possess the same kind of frenetic energy like— You mean like Nirvana? Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, the thing about Nirvana is even when they weren’t big they were still signed to a pretty big label and they had those resources to really push them. I think nowadays people don’t really sign acts like Nirvana, at least not in the mainstream. I mean, think about a band like the Black Lips. They have this reputation for playing crazy live shows, partying, being kind of out there, blowing audiences away with these high-intensity shows, and touring in the Middle East. If they were being pushed as a mainstream band, they would be selling millions of records, but the point is they don’t sell a million records cuz they don’t have that kind of support and aren’t capable of making the same footprint a band like Nirvana did.

Why isn’t anyone pushing them? Where are the balls?

That’s a good question. I don’t know. Nirvana hit because they genuinely touched something universal. They had that one ‘je ne sais quoi’ quality about them. ... At the same time, the resources were different. Once they started hitting, the labels started pushing them out even more because a shit ton of money was flowing in. Labels just don’t really do that anymore.

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The industry takes fewer risks cuz it’s easier to invest in and make money off of pop stars or ‘safe’ rock bands cuz they’ll do what they’re told. They’ll play the game and they won’t try and sabotage themselves or the formula that’s been laid out for them.

What would you like to see happen in L.A.?

I would love to see a bunch of bands that were playing backyard parties and record store shows a few years ago get bigger and really get something going. I talk to a lot of bands—especially Lolipop bands—that all seem to have this thing … and I have it, too. It’s the idea things are going to explode. No one knows who it will be, but it’s gaining momentum cuz it’s this growing community of young people who are in bands and each band has something unique to offer. It just feels like at some point people are really going to catch on and it’s going to burst.

Do you think it’s ageist?

No, not necessarily, but fresh out of high school and not having the responsibilities that come with shit that starts to come up in later life is for sure an advantage. It’s really about the time and the energy you are willing to commit over anything to do with age.

Do you think younger bands have ‘staying power’? What did Oscar Wilde say? ‘Youth is wasted on the young.’

As far as the ‘staying power,’ it means you are a band that likes each other enough to be a band for more than ten years. That’s a part of the whole dios thing. It’s been ten years since our first record came out—that’s insane! I mean, the Beatles weren’t together for more than seven years. I’ve seen bands get big and then fizzle out because members were over touring and crashing on floors and wanted an actual career.

Did that happen with dios? dios started off with my own 4-track bedroom recordings and then took a while due to lineup changes to really get it going. The first record came out and it did really well. We started touring and that led to more records and more tours. … It was a cycle that fizzled. I guess I realized it was difficult to be in a band with a certain group of people, especially when some of them are longtime friends. I realized I was better off being a solo artist. Then the real pain in my ass was the whole name-change thing.

I really wish we had fought back. Kevin and I were really pushing to keep the name dios and with all of the legalities, it started to shift in another direction. ... We were playing Coachella that year and the name was on people’s radar, so it was a perfect opportunity for this dude Ronnie James Dio to try and sue us for stealing his name. I thought it was a joke! At the time, managers and agents were urging us to change the name and even though I was against it, I went along with changing the name. It was really a pivotal moment where things started to change and dissolve.

But how can you own the name ‘dios’— ‘God’ in Spanish? That’s INSANE! He was a metal singer and cuz we were in the same business, it was like we were stealing his branding and it was confusing to the general public. I still don’t know how he got away with it. The whole thing took a lot of wind out of my sails, that’s for sure.

That brings us to your new solo record, Psychedelic Thriftstore Folk. Will it feature a rotating cast of players?

I recorded the record with Kevin and Jason [from Hanakeawe and Babies on Acid] and it worked out really well. I keep it under Joel Jerome to have it all under one umbrella so I don’t constantly get, ‘What happened to dios?’

‘What happened to Babies on Acid?’ For the most part, dios was me and so is Babies on Acid, so I guess I realized I like to do everything alone because when I hear that voice, I have to answer to it immediately—that way I’m not waiting or relying on anyone. It’s like painting.

I don’t like to paint with people around. I like to create for the most part alone.

You have become a local hero when it comes to recording bands, using the Albini approach of offering a sliding payscale. Does it get weird to be approached by bands and you hear their songs and think, ‘Man, there is no way I can get into this!’?

Yeah, every single band I have ever recorded sucks. I wish I could sit around and record myself all day. I really do it for the paycheck.

JOKE! JOKE!! No—really, I have never had a horrible experience or anyone I didn’t like. I generally don’t like to advertise my studio cuz I want to focus on passion projects or projects I can connect to.

You’ve recorded a lot of women.

Whoever makes good music makes good music, but it’s pretty cool to see women coming out and making really good music. I like to empower women and people in general to fulfill the ideas they have and be able to execute their vision.

Attention females! Call Papa Joel for your next studio experience—he can help you execute your vision!

Don’t say it like that! It’s creepy! People will think I’m some big creep. Call me Brother Joel instead.

JOEL JEROME’S PSYCHEDELIC THRIFTSTORE FOLK WILL BE RELEASED LATER THIS SUMMER ON MANIMAL. VISIT JOEL JEROME AT JOELJEROMEMUSIC.BANDCAMP.COM. INTERVIEW

DJ HARVEY’S WILDEST DREAMS Interview by Kristina Benson Photography by Olivia Jaffe

DJ Harvey is perhaps best-known for being a famous dance/electronic DJ who contributed cheerfully to many a person losing their mind in public, but the Englishman-turned-California-surfer-dude also has a soft spot for what he refers to as ‘California folk music’-—which to him is psychedelic rock, some adroitly funky beats, and songs that start with ‘Move over honey / I think I want to drive.” His Wildest Dreams outfit is him and an as-of-press-time-nameless band, and Harvey himself joined us while recovering from the effects of a bad kale smoothie.

If you were trapped in a lifeboat from the whale ship Essex with three other musicians of your choice, who would you cannibalize first?

I’d say the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and I would eat Mitch Mitchell so I could do all the drumming.

Why so into the story of the Essex?

It’s just a wonderful story. I’ve attempted to read Moby Dick on numerous occasions, and it’s just a difficult book to read. I like the idea of these wild men of years gone by who went through unbelievably tough situations and rose above and survived—and they’re awfully eccentric and wacky people, too—when the world wasn’t completely mapped out. I mean, it was probably a much worse place than now.

You got a toothache and you died! But it’s just a fantastic story. It puts the whole thing in perspective. The Japanese didn’t eat all the whales, the Americans burnt them all. The Essex had to go to the Pacific cuz they killed all the whales in the Atlantic. The Japanese weren’t traveling to the Atlantic to eat whales.

The Americans had burned them all cuz before oil was discovered in Texas, the oil that fueled America was whale oil. And baleen was used for French corsets—hence whalebone corsets.

And the fat, the good stuff, was used to make lipstick. We rub whales all over our faces and then set fire to them—but we blame it on the poor Japanese fishermen! Poor old whaley! It’s pretty sad stuff … but whales still taste good!

I’ve eaten a lot in Japan. I don’t seek it out but it’s like a cross between tuna and beef. It has a long grain. Lots of different cuts. It’s a big fish! They should farm the whales and then it’s all good. I think whales are actually better off now than they have been in the last 400 years—I read a book about Greenpeace needing a figurehead for people to associate with them— They needed an adorable animal cuz no one would care about saving some bug?

Exactly—no one cares about codfish. Which are dying off cuz no one cares. They renamed another fish cod. When I was a kid, you did not eat tilapia. Tilapia was thrown away. I INTERVIEW

think Alaskan cod and black cod aren’t cod.

They’re something else. What can you do? Eat it while there’s some left.

Speaking of the Old World—you are in England right now to play a gig. Did you do anything fun or was it all work?

I did go to the British Museum to check out the sarcophagi—the British stole all the best stuff around the world and put it in their museums. Most people who had an empire stole cool shit. But we have the Rosetta Stone, all these mummies—they must have desecrated so many burial sites! But I really love the stone sarcophagi. The Egyptians really seem like … sorta stone Cadillacs in which to reach the afterlife. Some are sports versions, some are SUVs. It’s mindblowingly cosmic stuff.

How did you make this Wildest Dreams album? Did you mind-control some band into doing what you wanted?

I kind of put this band together—they were a funk band who were nameless at the moment, and I told them they should play rock ‘n’ roll instead of funk. I had a little bit of a concept and they were a ready-made band. We listened to some records and we’d come up with some simple chord structures, and then we’d jam around those, and I’d sorta write some poetry and make verses and the chorus and then dub some solos and … like that!

What were those records?

Probably something by Captain Beefheart, something by Can? You’re kind of a shredder—why were you hiding that? Shouldn’t the world know Harvey can knock out some amazing psychedelic guitar?

There’s two of us who play on Wildest Dreams—maybe the more accomplished stuff isn’t me! It’s funny—if you asked me to play that stuff I couldn’t do it. But sometimes it just comes out of my hands. It’s a thing that happens with drums all the time.

You kinda go beyond what is humanly possible. And when you lock into that force, it takes over and you can do things that aren’t possible! I played guitar for many years,

since I was a kid at school, but I was never any good at it. I always wanted to be, but I was never any good. But with the modern age and computers, you only have to get it right once. I dunno if I could sing and play on stage. I could sing and drum, do the ol’ Phil Collins thing, but when I play guitar, I’m hunched over like Robert Fripp, sitting in a chair with a little prop for my foot and it’s all up high and not very glamorous at all.

But it sounds okay.

Why did you end up making this specific kind of music? You must have some of every type of record ever made in your collection. How come Wildest Dreams ended up sounding like a 60s or 70s psych band?

It’s definitely what I grew up with. The firstever music I got into was my mother’s collection of what I call ‘real rock ‘n’ roll and jazz.’

By ‘real’ rock ‘n’ roll I mean Jerry Lewis, Bill Haley, Gene Vincent, Johnny Cash, that stuff on Sun Records. Basic real 50s rock ‘n’ roll.

My mum had nice jazz music, too, and I remember my babysitter playing me some Jimi Hendrix and saying, ‘This’ll be too heavy for you.’ But I didn’t know what heavy meant!

And when I heard it, I was like, ‘I dunno what this HEAVY is, but it’s amazing!’ Then I got into what I suppose now is traditional rock ‘n’ roll in many respects—the English blues-based rock ‘n’ roll, Cream and the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, Peter Green and Fleetwood Mac, all that stuff. And psychedelia at the same time. Then punk rock came and that was a real teenage revolution—a real hark back to original rock ‘n’ roll with attitude and everything, and I felt that was more ‘mine.’ I was 13 or 14 at the time and thought, ‘This is the first time this has ever happened!’ Then I started listening to the Stooges and the MC5 and California psych and all that … I dunno, it’s a massive story! And then hip-hop is the next thing after punk, and in the 70s disco was all around.

And to be a real punk, you listened to disco cuz you weren’t supposed to! Like being a real satanist—you do things you’re not supposed to! You contradict yourself.

What do you think is next in the great pop culture recycle cycle?

Who knows? There’s an early 90s revival happening at the moment far as I can see with dance music. Kids making this almost proto-house sound. The next way to go as far as dance music is … gospel house? Overproduced gospel house meets late-90s dance? As far as techno, gabber and overtempo—maybe a drum ‘n’ bass revival? You never know what kids dig up. As far as rock ‘n’ roll, it seems like it’s all been done two or three times. You just get a new injection of energy, and then talented people come add a little flavor and you have a leap forward in technology and then a step back—now everybody’s all about tape!

It’s difficult to really predict the future. Hopefully someone will find the 13th bar of the 12-bar blues and we’ll have a complete rock ‘n’ roll revolution. It’d be great!

Was 68 to 74 the peak of psychedelic dude music?

There’s incredible music being made right now. It’s probably at its peak somewhere with some kids who threw their computers away and are living in a hole in the desert and we know nothing about it, and it’ll be discovered in years to come. And it’ll be an amazing thing cuz they went off the grid and it was allowed to mature and develop. If I was a younger man, I’d jump up and down on my computer and go live in a hole in the desert with a bunch of crazy, young, disaffected middle-class chicks and make the best music since the Beach Boys.

When you made these songs, were you accessing your internal encyclopedia of music? Like, ‘Oh, this would be cool if it was like Twink but more of an Easter Everywhere sound, and then put out on Harvest’?

I describe the album as California folk music—very traditional and simple.

When you say California folk music, do you mean like the Mamas and the Papas?

It is like the Mamas and the Papas, just the singing’s not as good! Maybe I shoulda spent more than four days on this?

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“Three or four chords, played with feeling and heart, and that’s where the magic comes.”

That’s it? You’re so lucky to just go so fast. I get nervous if what I’m making is good.

It doesn’t matter what you think, it’s what other people think—you just have to put it out there and somebody will like it. Do something—maybe lots of people like it? I don’t worry about that now. Lots of people like things I don’t like. So if I don’t like it, it’s got nothing to do with whether lots of people like it or not.

So … do you like this record?

It’s not too painful! I’m more about the initial spark of creation, rather than wallowing in how fantastic it is afterward. There’s nothing too complicated to blues and psychedelic chord progressions. Usually three or four chords, played with feeling and heart, and that’s where the magic comes.

How scared were you that first time you DJed in front of a lot of people?

I’m happy on stage—I’m an entertainer.

That’s my realm. I’m always nervous before I go on, no matter what. But within a few minutes that turns into power when I’m on stage, and I quite enjoy it. I’m nervous cuz I want to do well, and I care what people think! I’m not one of those people who doesn’t give a fuck. I think anyone who says they don’t give a fuck, they actually really do an awful lot.

You said earlier that you don’t care if people like your record—you don’t feel the same when you go DJ a party?

No—interesting you should say that. It’s a different form of performance. I don’t approach DJing like that. When I’m DJing, I do consider the people and try to make them happy, cuz they’re right there in your face! When I produce music, I dunno … it’s not like there’s an audience right there instantly … that could walk away! Although with a record, they have a chance to listen to it before they pay for it.

With a DJ performance, they paid for it before they get it.

You said having a band is like having four girlfriends—is Wildest Dreams like that?

I haven’t spent enough time with them! That was from when I joined my first band at 15 or 16. You all go to school together and hang out or live in the same apartment and travel around in the van, and you have very close love-hate relationships. And then your girlfriends get girlfriends who start to determine they don’t like you being heavy metal and want you to be a hair metal band! The state I’m in, we’re a little more mature. We’ve got wives and children and mothers-in-law and mortgages—a slightly different take!

What’s it like partying when you’re sober?

I don’t go to bars—bars are somewhere you go to drink and I don’t drink so there’s no reason for me to go there. I’m lucky cuz my profession puts me in a social zone, which I 30

like. So I party for a living, not for recreation.

Whereas most people do some job for a living and party for recreation—I’m the other way around! Although I actually do absolutely nothing for recreation and party for a living!

Do you still surf?

Yeah, and ride my skateboard and eat nice food and listen to music. It’s changed, but for the better. I found that 35 years of doing this—when I was a drunk—that every sort of three or four months, I’d do something really mentally stupid and it was only a matter of time before I woke up next to a dead girl.

That didn’t happen, did it?

That didn’t happen … but it almost did, or I could have woke up and I was dead! So you get that out of the equation. And owning firearms isn’t quite as dangerous as it was.

You’ve really assimilated if you own firearms. Are you into guns?

Yeah! I suppose it’s a little bit wrong, but I see them as sexy and glamorous, which I think few people would admit to. Apart from that, they’re fucking useless. Apart from being a fantasy item for sex and fantasy violence. If you take them into the real world and use them for what they’re meant for, which is … what’s the word? Attack. I don’t think they’re very good for defense, which is an excuse for a lot of people. I don’t think they’re very good for that at all. If someone’s shooting at you, most people are bigger than guns, so they’re hard to hide behind. In the real world, guns are horrible things. But in the fantasy world, they’re sexy and glamorous.

Do you shoot or just collect? Have you been taught to use a weapon correctly?

I have—I was trained as a child soldier by the British government back in the mid-70s.

They called it the Air Cadets. I was an 11year-old kid … people get all upset about 10-year-old children in Africa taught to murder people, but I was that and so were many other people. They probably do that in America, too. That’s child soldiers, right?

So I know how to use firearms. And I also grew up in the English countryside, where firearms were just lying around—you’d walk into your friend’s house and there’s a shotgun and a few dead rabbits, and we had access to that stuff. My dad enjoyed target shooting and we had a gun cabinet in the house.

And I have a very, very healthy respect for them! I know what they’re capable of. If you watch what I call the Hitler Channel … it’s now called the American Heroes channel, changed from I think the Military Channel, and now they just show nothing but stories about Hitler, which I find quite interesting, too. But anyway—they very rarely show the result of these weapons. ‘Here’s a liquidized family!’

When you went shooting, did you dress up in those Downton Abbey tweeds?

Not really—as an Air Cadet, I’d wear a uniform, and if it was muddy, you’d wear Wellington boots. But I never got into English shooting fashion, which is quite hilarious, —deerstalker hats and tweed leather-elbowed jackets. It’s almost as bad as golfing fashion!

English people seem like they love changing clothes. They have different outfits for everything.

I had sort of an idea of wearing extreme sports clothing rather than actually engaging in the sport. Like mountaineering, you get all sorts of carbiners and ropes and belts and tight shorts and strange rubber shoes and all this chalk to play with and fun stuff like that.

It’d be fun to wander down to CVS in that gear—hanging out in the footcare department dressed in mountaineering gear. It’d be quite entertaining.

Which is more of a challenge to make entertaining—a band or a DJ set?

Unless you come from the shoe-stare school of indie, [a band is] probably more interesting than a DJ to look at. Maybe you got funny clothes, a blond wig, glittery pants? The more entertaining you make it, the better, right?

People come to be entertained. I went to see a KISS show some years ago and the guitar turned into a rocket and flew across the stage, and Gene Simmons flew into the air and there were all these flames going. I can’t say I ever liked any of their music, apart from ‘I Was Made for Lovin’ You,’ but for pure entertainment, they’re fantastic!

Does every band, no matter how big or bad, have one secret good song? The Osmonds have a psychedelic song I love.

Every band has made a good song at some point. The Osmonds made a really good record called ‘I, I, I’ which is a cosmic disco classic. Which is hugely unknown outside that circle. I’m an Osmonds fan, actually—they’re creepy and preppy and deranged. When you perform, your job is to entertain—not to educate or teach. You’re there to put on a show and make people happy or whatever. I just recently watched some GG Allin YouTubes and he’s a WONDERFUL entertainer! He’s inciting the audience to kick his ass. I don’t think I’m gonna shit in my hand and throw it in the crowd, but there’s a lot to be said for getting naked and running around and shouting and hitting yourself in the head with a bottle.

That’s kind of a credit to him—people still remember him.

He could walk the walk but couldn’t really talk the talk, bless him. He was never like Johnny Rotten. Johnny was an intellectual who’d speak the truth, and GG just sorta shouted a bit too much.

Are you friends with Johnny Rotten? Isn’t he your neighbor?

No, but I’m sure he is. The girl who took the photos was like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna move to London,’ and I said if you wait long enough, all the great Englishmen move to California.

The English are great Americaphiles. So many things English people look up to come from America. For me, whether it was William S. Burroughs or Charles Manson or the Beach Boys or hot rods or dragsters or skateboarding or porno history—all the things I like! Hollywood Babylon, all the really fun things that are so right and so wrong at the same time.

America is a very attractive proposition to the English, so when people have the opportunity, they move here. I’m sure East Coasters would beg to differ, but I think L.A. is much darker. Paradise lost, you know? The plastic people. It’s not supposed to be, but it is and it isn’t at the same time. New York is too cool for school. L.A. is shit and we love it!

What exactly do you look up to about Manson? I guess he was pretty good at motivating people.

He speaks the truth! Charlie is pretty good with lyrics. He talks pretty sensibly. I’ve never really had anything wrong with anything he’s had to say. As far as I’m concerned, Helter Skelter was just a prosecution case by Bugliosi. People take it as the truth, but it’s just how he managed to get his conviction.

There’s so so many things that are left unknown, untold and doubtful whether this or that went on. The Family is a little more close to the truth, and it doesn’t attempt to answer many of the unanswered questions. I don’t think Charlie is a particularly nice guy, you know? But that’s okay. James Brown made good music but he wasn’t a very nice guy either.

I struggle with that. I try and buy ethically, but what if I like an artist who turns out to be a shitbag? Does it matter?

That’s a big subject. I wouldn’t like to have to answer that in a moment. Generally, art and religion and politics are monster subjects.

I’d have to think, including whether or not Charles Manson’s actually cool—he’s a pop icon, and a lot of people have done an awful lot worse. If you kill one person, you’re a murderer. If you kill 25 people, you’re a star. And if you kill a couple hundred thousand, you’re a president. It’s all pretty odd stuff.

DJ HARVEY’S WILDEST DREAMS IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND, AND NEW LOCUSSOLUS REMIXES AND MUSIC ARE COMING LATER THIS YEAR. VISIT DJ HARVEY AT FACEBOOK. COM/HARVEYDJAY. INTERVIEW

THE

MUFFS Interview by D.M. Collins Photography by Ward Robinson

Music journalists and musicians have some big things in common: a dogged, financially ruinous love of music and a determination to bring it into the world. And sometimes they’re friends, too, and normally I’ve got the best poker face of the bunch—but not this time! Not with the Muffs, and particularly Kim Shattuck, whose little sister married one of my best friends from high school. More than some fans, I’ve followed her recent rise and fall with the Pixies with rapt attention, and I’m excited by the news that the Muffs have reemerged, complete with tour dates and an album ... and maybe a little anger! But as I’ll find out, what this 23-year-old trio has the most of is what I like to think I’ve got, too: a love of music, and a determination to bring it into the world.

How long has it been since the last Muffs album?

Kim Shattuck (vocals / guitar): Exactly ten years!

A super long time.

Why so long? And why start up again now?

Ronnie Barnett (bass): We’ve actually been working on it for like four years … at least?

After we put out the last record and toured the last record we ended up taking about three years off. But I think we’re 23 now— over the course of a long career you just have some breaks. We didn’t stop being friends or anything. It just ended up being a three-year break.

KS: We did the last album on Five Foot Two Records. It was a label that Charlotte Caffey from the Go-Go’s and Anna Waronker from That Dog. started.

Is that a reference to Iggy Pop’s song ‘Five Foot One’?

KS: No, it’s cuz they’re both really short! They have complexes, like, ‘Oh, I’m soooo short!’

Ha! We did a bunch of local shows and did a bunch of shows around the world—like, we went to Japan—and then, you know how things die off. … Right around that time it didn’t seem like rock music was easy music to promote. People were like, ‘Whatever.’ I think our record got good reviews and stuff like that—I don’t read reviews—but even if we’re good, fans were like, ‘Whatever.’ [But] it’s good for your ego to go to Japan. They treat us like the Beatles there. They run after you! I mean, you have to run, too. … But you get to know what it’s like to be one of the Fab Four.

People will come up, crying and shaking, and you hug them and you hug them tighter and they shake more and you try to comfort them and they cry more, like ‘Muuuuuuughh!!’ I don’t get it! It’s like, too weird. It only happens there.

I feel like they’re not that way about Japanese bands.

KS: People don’t appreciate their local bands.

I mean, everyone’s a local band somewhere.

We’re a local band here in L.A. but in Japan, we’re a band that came from across the world.

And you’ve now traveled all the way to Fullerton to join up with Burger Records.

KS: They’re really nice! How I found out about Burger was … well, I just live under a rock. I don’t pay attention to anything except for my own thoughts, I guess. I’m just a homebody or whatever. But Roy had toured with Redd Kross a bunch, and Steve McDonald is all plugged in to knowing everything about everything, and I guess Burger had something to do with the tour. So they were going around in

the van … like the Scooby Doo van basically.

And Roy got to know Lee [Rickard] really well.

So when we were looking for a label, Roy said, ‘You gotta try Burger out, cuz Burger is really cool right now.’ And I was like, ‘I like burgers!’ We have a record called Hamburger, so it’s kind of perfect.

Roy McDonald (drums): Before this album, we were all a little burned out. We were just spinning our wheels at this point. We had put out Really Really Happy, and the touring cycle was over and we were doing some local shows, and we did a show at Safari Sam’s. That show almost crystallized what we were feeling—we were burned out, we felt no energy, there was a weird vibe—that place had a weird vibe anyway! That place was doomed!

KS: I went back to school for photography, just to take some brush-up courses. And I started doing photography more: portraits and weddings and stuff like that.

You took some of me dressed as DEVO. KS: The ones of you wearing the strap-on keyboard? That’s one of my favorite photos! It’s for fun. It’s not like a paying gig. I’ve realized I don’t like to do professional photography—I like to do whatever the hell I want, and that’s what I’m going to do. Making money off of photography makes me not like photography after a while.

My favorite song you guys ever recorded is probably your cover of ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Girl’

by Paul Collins’ Beat.

KS: Oh, thank you! Did you know we tried to change the lyrics a little bit: ‘I want to beat up a rock ‘n’ roll girl’? ... I did the chorus like, ‘I want to beat up a rock ‘n’ roll girrr-rrrr-rrrlll.’

And I got a letter saying they wouldn’t use the song unless I re-sung it just like the original words: ‘I want to be with a rock ‘n’ roll girl.’

They said that it wasn’t good for women. And I was like, ‘Wow, THIS woman has a funny sense of humor!’ Not that it’s funny to beat up women, but another woman singing it, I guess it should be okay, right? When we do it live, we redo the choruses. It’s stupid.

Is the original Paul Collins lyric about an empowered woman? Or more like a rock groupie type?

KS: When you hear the original lyric, you think it’s like a groupie kind of thing, and to me that’s more insulting than beating them up—ha! But I guess they had a point. I was morally shunned for my violent nature.

Remember when I interviewed Paul Collins? You had me ask him if being two millimeters away from your mouth gave him any ideas.’ He said, ‘I wanted to kiss her!’

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KS: Oh my god—he had the absolute worst breath of anyone on the planet. He’s totally nice and stuff, he’s kind of curmudgeonly … and it was fun singing with him! Smokers have the worst breath of all time, and he’s a heavy smoker, and I guess he’d just chugged a bunch of cheap beer. So it was just this collection of disgustingness in my face!

It’s been kind of a disgusting year! A lot of what’s going on is just dark and evil, and a lot of people have fallen into depression. In times like these, does the band respond with darker material or lighter material?

KS: The things that inspire me to write are usually a little bit dark and a little bit angry.

If I can’t write music, it’s usually cuz I’m really happy and I’m just doing my thing. But when I’m a little bit weirded out about something, and I kind of get over the hump of the weirdness where I’m not mad anymore, I’m just like, ‘Wow, that was weird, I’m glad that was yesterday or the day before!’ I’m usually really good about writing lyrics at those times, cuz I’m processing it. But the way I write lyrics also is that I’m not thinking about what I’m writing at all. I just go to a weird automatic place.

When the lyrics come out, whatever they’re about is what I’ve been grousing about days before. It’s super weird. If I try to write lyrics, if I try really hard, they just come out sounding stupid. All my best lyrics are done kind of subconsciously.

On this newest album, what have you been grousing about?

KS: The first song on the record is called ‘Rude Boy Next Door.’ I wrote it in about two minutes—whatever the run time is for that song, I wrote it in that amount of time. I thought it would be really easy to write the lyrics if I could just go to that little automatic place.

And all of a sudden I heard banging next door, and yelling, and screaming, and I’m like, ‘Holy shit, what’s going on?’ I peeked over next door, and I see the kid over there who lives there literally taking a baseball bat and hitting the garage with it. And screaming! Acting out in this weird, angry way. And I was so pissed cuz I was trying to write songs, and I was scared cuz it was violent! I didn’t want to call the police cuz I live right next door to him … he would know it was me! So I felt really trapped.

I ended up writing the lyrics to this song about this guy—scribble scribble scribble scribble scribble. And when I read it, I was laughing cuz it was really intense about him. Kind of jokey lyrics, but perfect for that song.

What’s the theme of this album overall?

KS: More of the lyrics are really complaining about people that I know. There’s a couple songs about me—pretty much about how weird I am! And there’s a fictional song I probably thought about a little too hard, but it came out good anyways.

What is so weird about yourself that you have to chronicle it in song? Do other people perceive those things?

KS: I was going through some ups and downs, I guess—a lot of mood swings. I was like, ‘Shit, I should just write this.’ When I was writing my one song about me [“Up and Down Around”], I didn’t know what to write about, so it just started coming out. The first verse came out about how it feels to be depressed, and then a whole chorus is about going up and down and INTERVIEW

around. … I thought, ‘OK, what’s the opposite?’ The second verse is about what it’s like to be waaaay too up and animated and not being able to sleep. So it’s just one of those moodswingy kind of songs. And then another song I wrote is about angst about relationship stuff.

Angst and relationship stuff? Your husband seems so nice! Do you ever have to use other couples as references?

RB: Every couple has their differences. [Kim’s husband] Kevin’s so easygoing and mellow it’s hard to think of him as being difficult. Dealing with Kim, sometimes you’re going to have your difficulties—I don’t mean it like that!

Kim is set in her ways and she has her opinions …

KS: Last time I was super happy, so the whole album was a happy album. This one, I’m kinda mad again, and just bitching about stuff and complaining! If I get into a fight, and I’m all frustrated, my feelings come out that way sometimes. ... If I figured out why I am the way I am and why people react to me the way they do, songs come out of that. ‘Oh, now I realize why people are mad at me!’

Sounds like a healthy way to deal with other people’s reactions. Have you ever responded with physical violence instead?

KS: Well, yeah! I’ve gotten in fights before.

One time some girl was slam-dancing into everybody … she was really super drunk. And I got really sick of it! And instead of being the person who just walks away from it, I decided to just push her down and smack her and take her clothes off—or more like take her jacket off her. So I stole her jacket and I hid it in my garage cuz I was still living at my mom’s house.

My mom saw it and was like, ‘Where’d you get that jacket?’ ‘I stole it off a drunk girl.’

Stealing clothes reminds me of a story I heard about the Pandoras in the 80s, your band right before the Muffs—that one time Gwynne Kahn showed up at an event after beating up Paula Pierce, clutching her love beads in one hand and a big lock of her hair in the other and was like, ‘I kicked the bitch’s ASS!’ KS: I was there! I think it was the Café du Grande, like 1985. I had just gotten into the Pandoras, and we were hanging out outside, and Paula was still inside. And I think that was when Gwynne came up to her with a Perrier bottle—it later got reported as a ‘beer bottle’ but really it was a Perrier bottle, which is thicker and harder—and she hit her over the head with it. And then Paula died of an aneurysm later … hmm, I wonder? Ha! I don’t remember the hair-pulling part, but I remember kicking and fists and stuff. But that was so long ago …

Tell us the story of the Pixies!

KS: It was in September that I heard from Charles [aka Frank Black], just from random messages from Twitter and Facebook, and he was asking if I wanted to listen to some music. And I was like, ‘Yeah sure,’ if he wrote it, cuz I didn’t want to listen to random music that he likes. I hadn’t heard from him in years—it seemed like a whim.

Then all of a sudden he asked, ‘I was wondering how you’d feel about being a bass player for the Pixies?’ ‘Yeah. That’d be great.’

Kind of casually. He’s a flamboyant character, so I had a feeling he was maybe saying

this to everybody. After a really long time, he got hold of me again and said that they were recording and they had somebody for the album, but still needed me for the tour.

Then he told me they were holding auditions. They gave us a variety of songs, so I learned all of those, then learned a few more.

They’re not easy, so every second I was selfconscious. Charles liked me, but the other guys weren’t so sure. He convinced them, and then it was just practice, practice, practice. All the time. It was more work than a job, but I wasn’t getting paid. The manager even said to me, ‘There’s plenty of people who’d do this for free.’ I had to deal with a lot of shit from that guy. So that’s the story of how I got to be a part of the Pixies lineup, temporarily.

How did it end?

KS: We started to go on the road and do a bunch of shows. I got a little carried away at one show and I jumped into the pit and basically went up and down the pit being cute, jumping up and hugging people, high-fiving them, kissing people, just being really gregarious. After that I got yelled at by the manager, who was like, ‘Don’t do that. The Pixies just don’t do that.’

RB: A lot of people point it out as why she got kicked out. That wasn’t really the reason she got kicked out—there were a lot of things. It’s basically clear now that the bassist in the Pixies is a hired gun. You don’t see the new girl in the pictures. I think Charles kind of wanted it to be a band, and the other two didn’t see it that way. They’ve been in the band for 26 years, and Kim was getting some attention …

KS: And then after that, the drummer, Dave [Lovering], would not talk to me. He was a good guy in rehearsals, but after that he just would not talk to me unless he had a criticism of how I played. After that leg was over, Dave started talking to me again and he was super nice so I figured something happened. Turns out Charles had a talk with him and said it was unprofessional to not talk to me.

And just not practical!

KS: It turns out he didn’t like that I had a stage persona. He felt like I was getting too much attention. And then they did things like … any show where you hear a recording of the show, they bury my bass completely.

On the BBC and the Jimmy Fallon show, you can totally hear the bass. Anything from our shows, they kept my bass down just to placate Dave. He said he didn’t like the way I played, but he didn’t even keep me on in his in-ear monitor. He just decided he hated me after I jumped in the pit and didn’t want to be in a band with me anymore. I was in all the pictures, but none of the interviews.

Now Paz [Lenchantin] is in all of the interviews and they are like, ‘We love her so much.’ Which is cool with me. She’s a much better bass player than I am. I’m more of a plunker. I don’t have any problem with her cuz she just took an opportunity. But for a while I would look to see if they said anything fucked-up about me cuz they would.

I would show it to Kevin and we’d laugh cuz it was old dudes curmudgeonly saying things about how I wasn’t right for the band.

They take it super seriously.

What about the Pandoras? Did they not invite you to be in the second iteration?

KS: I don’t really like what those girls do. I’m not being petty, but the girl who started that whole second generation was only in the band for a month. It’s a different line-up and I am not a big fan of what they put out. I think Paula would flip over in her grave. She was very dictatorial about being the only person who wrote the songs. It’s weird that they’d keep writing and putting out songs and calling themselves the Pandoras.

Kim, you have this raw voice—it’s never going to be that ‘sweet’ sound. But you guys have a pop sensibility, and you had it even during the grunge era. What is it about your band that gives you one toe in song structure that other bands lack?

RB: It’s all about that with us! It all goes back to Kim. Kim is a fan of very little music. She still listens to Freddie and the Dreamers and stuff. It’s all about melodic pop songs. We kind of rev them up. But underneath the screaming and stuff, there’s always a melody going on. I think that’s why we’ve endured so long, too.

Even though there’s some grungy stuff on that first record that hasn’t held up so good, there’s stuff that’s kind of timeless. In those Warner Bros. records, we never once used a trendy producer, so aside from some of the stuff on that first record, it doesn’t really sound of the time.

Blonder and Blonder still sounds fresh. And the songwriting, too! We have precise pop songs.

There’s no drop-down E tuning in this band.

There’s another evil of the 90s you avoided—mid-late 90s melodic punk-pop like Green Day, who had a kind of Lookout!

Records sound. No offense to Green Day, but there was a shtickiness to the bands of that time. How do play what you play without sounding trite?

RB: That kind of music that you’re describing is probably my least favorite kind of music in the world—all that pop-punk stuff from the 90s. It’s weird. In our band, we appeal to all these different crowds. We appeal to fans of that music. We appeal to power-pop people.

We appeal to garage rock people. We can open for virtually anybody. We could open for Great White and be okay. But we’re not influenced

by NOFX. Do you tell yourselves certain things NOT to do to make sure your melodic pop rock doesn’t turn to the dark side?

RB: No! It’s just all very natural for us. None of this has ever been thought out. The only things that might have become dated is our early grungy stuff. And you know, we wore big shorts, we used to throw our instruments around … that makes me cringe now.

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JOYCE MANOR Interview by Chris Ziegler Photography by AMMO

Joyce Manor’s newest album Never Hungover Again (also their first for L.A.’s Epitaph) has a cover design winking at Big Star’s Radio City and a quick 20 minutes of songs about those nowhere nights where it seems like you’re the last person awake (or alive?) on the surface streets. By now, they’ve spent almost five years refining—as singer/guitarist Barry Johnson puts it—their not-aspop-as-it-used-to-be Jawbreaker-vs-Lifetime punk sound toward some kind of highly personal document of life as it was lived by another four South Bay kids who didn’t feel like they fit in. And so, here and on record, they tell it like it happened to them.

What was the first book you ever read twice?

Or the first movie you saw twice? The first thing that you had to go back to for more?

Barry Johnson (guitar/vocals): I got really obsessed with Terminator 2 and Terminator.

Insanely fixated. My parents let me watch or take in anything I wanted, so when I was 5 in 1992 and my dad took me to T2 in the theater … that was it. That was all I was into for years. Just that! At that age, where do you go from there? Your friends weren’t allowed to watch that. I didn’t have anyone I could talk to about it. So I’d have my friends come over and watch.

But they weren’t allowed.

No, I was that friend. ‘Come watch bad stuff at my house!’ Every neighborhood needs that kid. And then it was The Shining. At 7 or 8—that was just huge. There’s a lot of nuance, and a lot of that was lost on me. But I still enjoyed it. It was super, super scary. I had to go back a lot to it as an adult. I’ve been watching it at least once a year since I first saw it.

Are you able to mark your personal development by your changing opinions of The Shining?

Definitely. The Clash are a huge band like that for me. I’ve listened to them since I was really young. I like them more every year, for different reasons. It’s just great to marvel at something like that. Like I love how stressful The Shining is. Do you know the impossible loop?

You know how Danny is on his tricycle going in circles? A lot of the loops he does are not possible. The movie is laid out so you can plot the floor plan, and the loops end up in places you can’t go. Or when Jack goes to the interview and there’s a window behind the desk.

That window can’t exist either. Kubrick would never have let a thing like that slide. It’s very 36

intentional. He was so obsessed that he’d create things that maybe would never get noticed, but the fact he put them in there is why they’d get noticed. I think he was a guy who was just into things people would freak out over—not like, ‘I want people to obsess over this later!’

Like he had no choice. I like the idea of someone being guided by something they don’t understand. A compulsion—and watching what someone else with a compulsion created.

What happens to something when it’s powered by compulsion, instead of technique or just an idea? Is that what it’s like for you?

The frustrating part about being the guy who obsesses over things and is just compelled to do it and can’t get a decent night’s sleep till it’s right ... it’s like either A) other people’s work comes across as lazy and shitty. Like I think my own work is bad and then I listen to other people’s stuff, and I’m like, ‘This is horrible!’

Or B) it’s completely effortless and I’m jealous!

Like they just did it and it’s perfect! It doesn’t sound like they were obsessed. It’s like they woke up, stretched, yawned and the first thing they played was perfect. Both are maddening, frustrating. ‘Why didn’t they work on this?’ or ‘Why didn’t they HAVE to work on this?’ I have to put a ton of work in. I take pride in that, but I don’t have a choice to not do it. I can just never relax again.

That’s like Jonathan Richman sings: ‘I never can relax.’

I really like Jonathan Richman! He’s fucked, though. His whole shit is super-fake—his ‘act’!

The grandma shit he manages to make tight! I remember hearing him and thinking, ‘I can’t believe how much this is up my alley.’ Like it felt … perverse. Like weird porn I’d tapped into. I was almost afraid of it. Like, ‘I might join this guy’s cult.’

INTERVIEW

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What would that cult be like?

You know the people in high school you couldn’t relate to even though you thought they were cool and really attractive, maybe people you wanted to even be like? This is the thing they’d find so offensive—‘This is the gayest, lamest shit I ever heard in my life!’ But I like it, and that’s what makes me different from those people. That’s what’s weird about it. You can see the thing that makes you different.

What was your favorite album ten years ago? What do you think your favorite will be ten years from now?

I was 17. I had a personality problem where every few months I’d decide I was gonna be into something different. I was one of those guys! The year previously I was really into indie rock—Weakerthans, Death Cab, Radiohead. Then next year I was so burnt out, so I was really into Rancid, Cocksparrer, and I didn’t listen to any indie rock shit. I was embarrassed. ‘I listen to punk, man!’ I had my nose up in the air at the stuff from the year before. Did anything stay with me? Not really.

I’ll put something on every now and then. I remember once I turned 24, I started honing in on what I was actually into. Beach Boys, Guided by Voices … drunk dad shit? No, cuz that’s Wilco. But GBV, Beach Boys, Smiths, Toys That Kill. Stuff with punk leanings but a little more than that. I started fucking with things I thought were special. It’s gratifying cuz once you see it, you realize it’s possible. Once I saw how those bands did things, it was like, ‘Oh, I can do this!’ Not like ripping it off, but knowing you could be a punk band that did something a little more personal. I tried to understand it more so I could do it myself.

What’s it like when people come up to you and are like, ‘You did that for me, man!’?

I’ve tried to tell people how their band is to me, and then kids have the exact same conversation with me! I’m trying to reassure them like, ‘Yeah, I know how you feel, I’ve done exactly what you’re doing.’

Do they believe you?

No, not really. I can tell they’re all sweatypalmed.

What got you into music in the first place?

Punk-O-Rama 2! In fourth grade! Before there was kinda shit on the radio. Reel Big Fish and Goldfinger? But that comp had Poison Idea and stuff. My friend’s older brother made me tapes with AFI, Union 13, and I started going to shows in sixth grade. Like a treat—my stepdad would take me to two shows a year!

Like AFI, Sick of It All, Hot Water Music …

And then I started going to local shows like Rock Goggle Fantasy, Le Joshua … that was in my friend’s backyard. There’s a point where music and video games and movies are all just part of the same media entertainment thing, and then you find something you can be part of. It becomes more attainable and doable. I literally thought some people could play guitar and some people couldn’t. And I was just one who couldn’t. I didn’t look at it as something I could do.

What’s the positive part about being someone who takes a long time to decide what they’re into? How does going buffet-style help you out as a person?

I always wanted to play guitar and be in a band. And I always projected onto people in 38

bands I was obsessed with, and went back and forth between a wannabe pop-punk band and a wannabe hardcore band. Pop-punk being like Beach Boys, Weezer, all the pop side of the brain.

You’d think those two things are opposite— but tons of people are super into pop and hardcore.

Yeah, that’s really common! Tony Molina has that exact thing—hardcore and pop-punk. I always go back and forth. Pop-punk band for three months, hardcore for three months. I was just more gifted on the pop side. I didn’t shine in the hardcore world. Early Joyce Manor is a pop-punk band that deep down wants to be a hardcore band. That’s why you say people wanna sing along. Cuz they’re hardcore songs. And our shows are full of hardcore kids.

I was like, ‘Why do people I have nothing in common with respond so well to our songs?’

And it’s cuz deep down I was a hardcore kid.

I think we lost some of that, and maybe not for the better. Especially on the second record!

The first thing we did was pop-punk wanting to be hardcore, and we succeeded. That gave us the confidence to focus on more pop stuff, which we wouldn’t have had the confidence to do before—to really wanna write actual pop songs, for better or worse.

How did you learn to put more personal ideas in songs? When you aren’t in a hardcore band, you don’t get to hide behind fastloud-can’t-understand-the-lyrics.

Absolutely. That’s where the hardcore side was.

It felt more comfortable, more doable. We couldn’t be held accountable for what we made.

We were just going for it. ‘Hardcore band’ shit!

The point of a good song is to communicate something, and hardcore is not a typical … well, it can communicate something very simple. Maybe kinda adolescent? The same way a tantrum is a good way to communicate. But you just need something that communicates more complicated emotion, and melody can do that. If you combine melody with that tantrum, it’s satisfying in two ways at once.

Every song on this record is also about a ‘me’ and a ‘you’—it’s one person talking to another person. Why? I hadn’t noticed a dialogue happening. My girlfriend and I broke up before this record, and I didn’t wanna mention that—‘This is a break-up record!’ We ended up getting back together before this came out— Is that when you got super into Big Star?

Totally did. But yeah, it’s corny and playedout. Everyone’s been through a break-up. But maybe that’s what it is? Trying to understand how someone else feels—they tell me how they feel?

Is this two opposite things at once again?

Anything that has momentum needs two things at once. The conflicting ideas create the spark. If one thing sits idly, you need the other to create the heat. I took something from Kurt Vonnegut—writing a book is like building a car, and if the things aren’t in the right spot, it won’t go. And until it goes, it needs work! You can’t explain it to yourself: ‘Oh, no, it’s good cuz of this!’ You feel it—you feel it, like the track goes now. It’s horrible when it won’t go.

You move shit around and it never happens.

Do you have a junkyard of broken songs?

Yeah—friends tell me those are the best parts.

‘I can’t believe that didn’t make the record.’

I dunno what to tell you. It didn’t go. Some people make everything go and it’s effortlessly good. But fuck those people!

What have you learned about making songs by making your songs? What are the blueprints for Joyce Manor?

The songs have to be driving. It has to all be going toward the end of the song. That’s why a lot of them end up being so short. You can’t do that for too long before you lose that momentum. When we tried to do stuff that doesn’t have that momentum, it doesn’t work. Which is maybe why we end up using the same kind of drumbeats and similar chord shapes or something.

Are you working toward the ultimate perfect Joyce Manor song?

Completely. I hear that in other bands, too.

Tony Molina, same thing. People say it all sounds the same, but it doesn’t. Well, they do, but it’s not negative. It’s someone perfecting their craft. That’s why it took us two and a half years to write eighteen minutes.

You said you’re a little mean on some of the new songs—like ‘Christmas Card.’ Is it easier to write meaner?

The people you’re writing about are gonna hear it! I’ve had people I know ask if it’s them?

And I say no … but it totally is. It’s too uncomfortable to talk about—no one wants to fess up to that. I don’t wanna fess up to that!

But any good artist is gonna face that. When you do it in a way that’s not cryptic, it’s not as effective. Or cathartic.

What’s this record say about where you are in life?

Especially on the first record, I had this really weird complex where I felt I was owed more than I had, whether it was relationships with women or jealous of the success of my friends.

It felt like I had been shortchanged in some way. I was kind of entitled. Listening to it now, I feel like, ‘Man, I was such a jerk.’ An entitled crybaby jerk.

That’s the foundation of a lot of music.

I don’t think I’m like that all the time! I think I allowed myself to be that for writing songs, cuz it felt good. I think there’s less of that on the record now—I hope that says something positive! I hope airing it out helps me be less like that? Maybe I’ll listen to this in a few years and think, ‘Nope, still an entitled dick who feels he deserves everything!’

What changed? A lot of people love living like that.

People say I’m so angsty. It’s just trying to deal with that and become a better person! And not live my whole life selfish and entitled and being okay with that. That creates that frustration with yourself, that desire to not be so much like that. Which is hard! And it’s one thing to want that, and another thing to actually do something about it. Which I almost never do, but at least I feel bad about it! Hopefully it leads to proactive measures.

Self-improvement through self-loathing?

And what’ll I do once I improve myself? No more tunes! Maybe part of me doesn’t wanna improve. ‘People seem to love this, I’m paying my rent!’ Reap the benefits!

‘Heart Tattoo’ seems to be one of the most positive songs—‘I know it looks bad, it’s the only one I have.’

I love that song cuz it’s about one thing only.

It doesn’t ever stray lyrically from that exact thing. That’s the first time I’ve ever successfully done that. I had that first line: ‘I want a heart tattoo, I want it to hurt really bad …’ and it just kinda started. It wasn’t all one go, but I wrote that in about twenty minutes.

What’s the landscape of this record? You sing about these empty homes, climbing over backyard walls, parties you don’t wanna be at—it kind of reminds me of ‘Bikeage’ South Bay suburban desolation.

It’s taking a bus home from practice. From Del Amo Mall in Torrance, goes through Carson and then Wilmington, the crazy industrial part of Harbor City and into Long Beach. The 232 bus. There’s these weird blue lights on the 232 at night, and I’d come home from practice after a few beers. I’ve taken that bus a billion times. The song ‘Schley,’ that’s a stop on that bus—Anaheim and Schley.

What’s there?

Nothing, literally nothing. It’s completely desolate. I grew up in Harbor City and Lomita, went to school in Torrance. I read interviews with the Descendents or Black Flag and it’s exactly the same.

Is that comforting or disturbing?

Comforting! Cuz I love it too! It’s a weird source of pride that I shouldn’t be proud of.

There’s nothing to be proud of!

What was going on the night your album cover was taken?

The lady in the picture is Frances from the band Hop Along. We were hanging out in Philly after a show—it’s a green room. We’re all partying, having a great time and my friend snapped that photo. I love that it’s posed but it also feels candid—really natural. We’d done our first attempt at tracking the album then, but it was different songs. Only ‘Heart Tattoo’ and ‘Schley’ are the same. And we hadn’t written ‘The Jerk’ yet. That’s the one that set the bar. ‘This is what we need to strive for.’ I came to practice and Chase [Knobbe, guitarist] had been visiting his girlfriend in Santa Cruz and was like, ‘I wrote a riff!’ ‘Oh, cool, I got one too! Wanna try and play ’em together?’

So 1, 2, 3, go—we play at the same time, and it’s ‘The Jerk.’ Same key, different notes, and they sound totally different independently but together create this emotion we want captured. The rhythm guitar is mean, or sad and angry-sounding, and his guitar is really pretty.

Together the two things at once create a totally different feeling that I can’t pin down. It’s not ‘happy’ or ‘sad’ or ‘whimsical.’ It’s a weird feeling hanging over my life that I can’t really say.

It’s like the ending of The Graduate—where the shot just lingers a little too long.

Too long—a perfect example. I love that movie. You feel like you’re in their life at the very end. Like, ‘Oh shit—now life just keeps going.’

GOLDENVOICE AND FYF FEST PRESENT JOYCE MANOR ON FRI., JULY 25, AT THE EL REY THEATRE, 5515 WILSHIRE BLVD., LOS ANGELES. 8 PM / $15 / ALL AGES. GOLDENVOICE. COM. JOYCE MANOR’S NEVER HUNGOVER AGAIN IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM EPITAPH. VISIT JOYCE MANOR AT FACEBOOK.COM/JOYCEMANOR. INTERVIEW

Gilberto Gil: Gilbertos Samba

Rosanne Cash: The River and the Thread

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Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer Exposed: Songs for Unseen Warhol Films

Dr. John & The Nite Trippers

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single tickets on sale wed, aug 13

BLU

Interview by sweeney kovar Photography by Anthony Williams Several years back, John Barnes was set up by many to be the great West Coast hope for hip-hop. By now, his Below the Heavens is the stuff of fables, and if you’re under 25 and from the left coast, you probably have some personal story about how Blu’s first album made you love hip-hop again. Instead of ascending to the mainstream however, Blu took a series of head-scratching left turns. The C.R.A.C. Knuckles project was a new-age De La Soul Is Dead. Her Favorite Colo(u)r was a cinematic heartbroken love note. NoYork! encapsulated the beat-scene movement in a way no MC has been able to do. Jesus sounded like a lo-fi Sunday morning. Along the way, Blu ditched a Warner Bros. deal, produced for other rappers, and revisited his musical bond with Exile on the Give Me My Flowers While I Can Still Smell Them LP. Still, Blu seemed more interested in pushing himself into new territory than in looking back towards the past. Young Azul is one of the only MCs on the planet that can switch his style up consistently and not miss a beat technically.

And now, while TDE and YG are shifting the mainstream focus back on the sound of the cul de sac in the age of molly water, Blu has hooked up with Bombay to produce a “G-Soul” record, Good to Be Home. Hood in the way a Charles Burnett film is hood, Blzzo’s newest effort sidesteps ghetto sensationalism for a sound that strikes a balance between the cerebral and the intuitive. He speaks here about the creation of the album, why Bombay was the perfect producer to bring it to life, and if he’d ever revisit a major label situation again. And make sure to visit larecord.com for an exclusive interview with Bombay.

You’ve said Good to Be Home is your most definitive record. Can you explain?

It’s my most defining and definitive album in that it was a must for me to create this album.

Being from the West Coast, I owe so much to the coast for the love they’ve given me throughout the years that has allowed me to be me—a humble, backpack-conscious MC coming out of Cali. What was prevalent was always gangster rap, so to be accepted into the underground it was only right I take the time to turn around and give love back to the city.

If you go through all your older albums— from the Blu and Ex shit, C.R.A.C., Johnson&Jonson, NoYork!—each one has its own distinct sound. This one sounds like its own sound too; it sounds much more like the neighborhood.

It’s not too conscious, it’s not too street, it’s not too lyrical and it’s not too dumbeddown—meaning it isn’t too simplified, like a 4-year-old can go pick up a pistol after they hear it. Or dumbed down to the point where we have been lowered in society—we are still there cleaning up, pulling heads up, yo. It’s a nice, warm, chill record. It’s a double CD, so it’s enough music to satisfy a person. When I decided to do the record with Bombay, I knew he had the sound I was looking for. I was looking for a sound to lay down what I wanted to speak about. I wanted to do the Good to Be Home record before I had the producer to do it. I knew I wanted to do a West Coast record. I had a bunch of beats from producers in mind but it wasn’t until I got Bombay’s beats that I knew his were the beats for the project. I’ve always been a big soul fan—soul music, jazz, blues, all that— but I wanted to do some G shit, you know what I mean? I wanted to bring back some G shit but I was like, ‘How am I going to do some G shit when I’ve done like future-wave shit and very conscious music?’ Then I heard Bombay’s beats and it was like the illest G 44

shit but still very soulful. I don’t think anyone has beats that are drenched with as much soul as Bombay’s. It was a must. Those fat-ass basslines? So West Coast, bro.

How did you first meet Bombay?

I first met Bombay in high school. He was actually the third person I met to play me his beats. I got this beat CD in high school and my homeboy was in a crew that had worked with Daz, RBX, Ras Kass and different MCs out of Long Beach. He swore up and down they were DJ Quik beats: ‘There’s no one in Los Angeles who could make these! These are DJ Quik’s beats.’ We thought they was for a while because the CD had that song ‘Addictive’ with Truth Hurts and they were on that vibe. It was a crazy beat CD—the best beat CD I had ever gotten at that point. I talked to the homie that I had got it from and he hooked me up with a dude and the dude ended up telling us they wasn’t his beats, so he hooked us up with some other guy. I started paying him like $75 a beat and I’m in high school. I go to pay for like my fifth beat and the homie calls like, ‘That’s not even Bombay.

That’s not even the real dude—that’s his cousin.’ This is the third person we’ve met claiming this dude’s beats! So we finally set up a meeting with Bombay. We go out to the 909, the I.E., and meet Bombay. I didn’t believe him. He was playing these jazz loops and had fat keyboard skills and crazy sound-chops. He was doing these weird jazz loops, almost like some Madlib shit. He said those [beats on the CD] were his but then he was like, ‘Lemme play this other beat CD.’ He played another beat CD that was exactly what the fuck we were looking for. We knew it was him.

So when did you finally meet him?

I was probably 19, a year after high school. I put out my first album and Bombay did about three beats on there. Miguel was singing on one of his beats too. That was my first underground album. I only pressed 1,000 and sold

them all myself. That was called California Soul—that was my first album. It wasn’t until shortly after I did that album that I hooked up with Exile and we started working on what would become my official debut, Below the Heavens. It wasn’t till years down the line that Aloe Blacc asked me, ‘Did you ever start working with Bombay again?’ We hooked up with him [again] and dude had so many beats I couldn’t believe it. They was so dope—I was shocked. I got this fat beat CD from him and by the time I got halfway through it I knew I had to do an album with him. It was time. We did it. It’s coming out, two years in the making [Out now!—ed.]. We’ve known each other for like twelve years, you know what I mean?

Good to be home...

Why do you think it took so long for the musical relationship to come full-circle like that?

I think we were busy at the time. Even after I did my first album, Bombay was doing a lot of work with other people and I was doing a lot of work with other people. We were hooking up every now and then but we respected each other highly and we always had plans to do big things.

The sound on this album, it definitely has that bass, a little of that G-funk that— It’s not the G-funk era, Bombay is the G-soul era. This is my G-soul album.

You also still have that lo-fi grit that’s present on the Jesus LP and other projects.

Even my first album, Below the Heavens, we didn’t do a commercial album. We did an album that was pretty digestible but it wasn’t a commercial record. It had warm samples, soul sample chops—we weren’t doing any electronic bounce-house hits. We both come from an underground scene. We both listened to underground music coming up. We have a similar ear. We love Dilla, Hi-Tek, Premier, Pete Rock, you know what I’m saying? My man is just as deep as I am into the music. He

knows what’s hot as well as I know what’s hot.

We both like Roc Marciano, Lootpack, Slum Village. It wasn’t like I was trying to make a Jay-Z record and he was trying to make a Jurassic 5 record. We wanted to make a Bombay and Blu record. I knew he had the heat and I knew whatever I needed he’d be able to deliver. He knew I wasn’t going to give him any bullshit cuz of all the albums I’ve put out.

You’ve always been a skilled MC. On this album, it seems like the lyricism is so dense—every bar is maximized. The rapping is gritty and abstract but still very soulful.

Definitely man. The fans know what to look for when they get a Blu record. They’re not going to get anything commercial, they’re not going to get anything cookie cutter. They’re going to get some good soul records. They’re going to get a good vibe listening to our shit.

We’re just trying to make you feel good.

Did you feel as an MC you had anything to prove with this record?

Not really. I wanted to carve out my spot in L.A. and let it be known that I am an L.A. artist. I’ve never capitalized on that or overpronounced that. It was always a part of who I was. I was heading out to wreck everybody, I wasn’t just trying to wreck the West like that.

I wanted to eat up everybody on every coast, overseas, down South, wherever you’re popping up at I was trying to eat you up. I did a lot of records not really looking back. After touring and trying to break new sounds, going from independent to major and back, we finally found time to be back home. Right off the bat, we were just chilling at the crib. We turned down shows, just chilled in the studio and vibed out. It was good to be home and it was good to just relax and do an album without any label pressure, any fan pressure, trying to top this record or do that. ‘Let’s cut it, let’s do it.’ What happens when people pressure the artist is a Detox or a Soulquarians alINTERVIEW

bum, or the Nas and Premier album, or a new D’Angelo album. We hardheads, yo—if you tryna pressure me for something, nine times out of ten you ain’t gonna get it.

Did you purposefully keep it close to home?

Besides a few records you leaked there wasn’t too much information about this album till a few weeks before its release.

It was kind of on purpose. You know me— this wasn’t all that was in the can. I was working with Nottz at the time, I started working a lot more with Madlib and Alchemist. I’m walking into different climates and planting seeds everywhere. Bombay would come through and we’d knock out three or four songs in Long Beach then I would go spend two days at Al’s spot, fucking with Al and Ev. Fuck around and come back and holler at MED and fuck with some Oxnard heads, mess with some Madlib. With Bombay, it was more of making a solo album. With Nottz and Madlib, the things we were creating were more like group projects. With Bombay I felt like I was doing a solo record.

The album feels very cinematic. You even have a cinematic intro at the very beginning. You tell a story without a clear linear narrative—it’s more like snapshots.

We wanted to make a day in the life of L.A. in an album. Being as true to who we are. Keeping it real to shit we play and the vibes we give off, what we’re looking for and what we put into life. We wanted to put all that into the record and we wanted to hear all of that come out of the record. The theme of it was just a day in the life. It was so easy for everyone to fall into character. Just do what you do naturally. It wasn’t hard to get it crackin’ in the studio. We were working with everybody, folks like U-N-I, who I’ve known for years. I hit up Thurz and he’d come down and cut his shit.

I hit up my cousin Casey [Veggies]: ‘We need a verse!’ A week later he’s sending me a verse and he’s getting hollered at by Roc-A-Fella and everybody. One of the hardest verses on the album is Casey Veggies’ ‘Well Fare’ verse.

That plays into the cinematic aspect of the album for me. It sounds like it starts with you coming home and then you start venturing out into the neighborhood and you start interacting with the people there.

The story doesn’t really start and end. The more you play the record over and over the more you realize it’s just like a day, over and over. You just start another day. You play the record again and it’s like, ‘I’m waking up, doing the same shit over again.’ It doesn’t stop.

The last song is ‘Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop.’

How did you pick the features? You have cats like Prodigy, who are very known, and cats like Sweet Pea, who are much more underground.

I definitely needed to keep the homies involved because we got so much heat. I hate not being able to just cut mad shit with the homies. Soon as we got this rolling, I called everybody up like, ‘Everybody gotta get a piece of the record.’ Everybody contributed and it was fun picking out the heat. It was fun doing mad tracks with mad heads. Home is the realest place you can be, so let’s be real—as much as I wanted a feature from Ice Cube and DJ Quik, it is ‘good to be home’ and the homies got bars and work! Hardheads deserve shine, G—I got mad homies who ready to eat up yo’ 46

spot right now, na mink! Y’all not ready for the crew albums—Dirty Science, the Johnson Family, BRIDGETOWN! ‘Whip Crème’ Part Two coming soon! Sweet Pea is my OG, super OG. He wrote my first rap. Prodigy is the only MC that’s not from the West on the album. Prodigy is the prodigal son, so Prodigy being on the album is a gem, an ultra gem. It’s one of his most classic verses I think. He came through and blazed it. Being in the studio with him was crazy. I pulled up some verses like, ‘Bro, we got some heat.’ He walked into the session and I started playing him something. He wanted to get down and I played him two beats. He picked ‘Red & Gold’ and we went in right there. Getting people like Phil [Da Agony], MED and Oh No was like a no-brainer because we’re just around each other so much. It was being back home with so much talent around you, you can’t really hide it. It was a must for us to collaborate. I definitely was trying to paint my picture and pick my piece out of that L.A. also. Getting certain people like Imani from Pharcyde and [2Mex and LMNO from] the Visionaries on there—that’s some ultra-backpack shit for me.

We didn’t have $5 million to do the album, we had like $500. $500 and a lot of love, you know what I’m sayin’?

This album comes at a very interesting time for L.A. hip-hop. The focus has come back to L.A. hood stories, the block. That’s the face of L.A. rap on a mainstream level It’s definitely there. Nipsey Hussle’s always been there. TDE’s doing their thing crazy with Dre’s camp. The Game’s always been holding it down. Dom Kennedy as well, Krondon. For us it was more like Compton’s Most Wanted. We wanted to paint the hood with soul samples. Today, it’s more bigger produced shit. Back in the day, it was fat loops and we wanted to let that vibe paint the picture. All the beats feel like they’re holding hands. It sounds like one long-ass beat. I love that, bro. We have a couple of instrumentals in there. I’ve done a lot of short songs, with Johnson&Jonson, Jesus and some of the older joints—two-and-a-half-minute, three-minute songs. On this we were trying to do full songs again. With this record it felt like if we put all these songs together fools would drown, you know what I’m sayin? The instrumentals help the record breathe. It helps the listener breeze through the album.

Why did you make it a double album?

We just had so many songs. We were ready to do an album, we were etching it out and it was almost a last-minute decision. ‘Let’s just make it a double album.’ I think we did a good 50 songs. Below the Heavens we did like 75 songs, Johnson&Jonson we did like 50 songs. The Flowers joint, I think I cut like 25 Exile songs in two weeks. NoYork! we probably almost hit the 50 mark there. I think we hit the 50 mark again on this one. It was good to do that again, to not be pressured to do just ten songs. Back to getting E&J instead of bottles of Grand Marnier. Let it simmer slow. We can’t do two blunts. We have the euros rolled up, the euro spliffs, zig-zagging through Long Beach.

What does L.A. sound like to you today?

Today L.A. sounds like it’s coming together, almost forming a huge union. The West is one. It almost feels like we can all get on the same song one day. The South is huge. The

South is its own planet. New York is ghost town, you know. They’re getting hard outside of the hip-hop realm, expanding music into more experimental realms and smashing it. On the rap shit our underground scene is nice. We got somebody like Dom Kennedy who has put out mad product in L.A. and is just now getting MTV love. Or like a Nipsey Hussle who I don’t think has ever released an official debut album but he put out a mixtape for $100 a bop. I think he made $100,000 in a day with his mixtape. We’re at a fruitful stage where creativity is king. Kendrick Lamar being at the top of the list is showing how much our ears are open to lyricism or conscious trains of thought as opposed to only some G shit or a fat beat out of a sample my mom used to bump. The kid who can rap circles around everybody got the crown. I think that’s beautiful in the West. The Visionaries never stopped rapping. They are like my inspiration. LMNO put out like fourteen albums in 2011. I just found that out last year. I think the following year Madlib put out what, fourteen albums? Work ethic is crazy out here.

Record sales are at an all-time high—that says a lot for the return of vinyl. It’s huge right now. The ball is in our court. It’s beautiful. Independent music is rising. The creator shit is popping. We just kicked back and did a cool ass G-soul album on them, though. Just sat back, sparked the J and let the beats play.

You had that foray with the majors but it sounds like you’re much more comfortable where you are now.

I was in a beautiful situation with Warner Bros., but Warner got turned inside out while I was there. The company was bought out— all the presidents, vice presidents, A&Rs were fired. Artists left. I would fuck with a major again. I had a great situation there but you can’t stop a person. You can’t expect a person to stop. We got out of that situation with four projects already in the air. Most of them are out now. It wasn’t like we got off the label and we were going to sit around until we got another offer. We have music we want to put out. We made sure that came out. If the majors are ever ready to go another round, I’ll be ready. Until then, we’ll see you in the underground. We make music the way we make music—we are free to create freely. Our music sounds the way it does because our creativity isn’t put in a box. We’re not cutting cookies or being expected to do anything. We’re free to create, bro. We drop three verses back-to-back but there’s no major label trying to put out three hardcore rap verses back-to-back with no hook. Is the song called ‘No Hook?’ Nah, the song is called ‘The Evolution of the Mind’s Axis,’ you know what I’m saying? We’re trying to Wu Tang the majors. All the majors have moved down South—what the fuck, man? Go down South, make all your money and when you’re ready to come back and do some ill shit, we’ll be right here.

What keeps you hungry as an MC? I’m not even trying to eat heads right now.

I’m full eating beats. We find hot beats and eat ’em up bro. Heads don’t want to get ate up. We’re happy and full from eating beats, we’re content. Niggas is well-fed. We got the best producers in the underground. Bombay right there just stepped into the realm. He’s about to let out that arsenal and it’s about to

get crucial. For me, rapping is turning into songwriting. I’m not trying to progressively push my pen to be the best lyricst or have the most brand-new patterns—it’s more so penning down bars that compliment the beat than the beat complimenting what I’m saying. I’m trying to incorporate more rhythms in my patterns. I think my biggest attribute is the creativity. I think that’s what I strive to do with all my records and it definitely keeps my pen in a great place.

What inspires your creativity?

My imagination. My dreams inspire my creativity. It makes me want to create something that isn’t here. You hear the most amazing beat and the more you listen to beats, you start to hear amazing songs right on top of those beats: ‘I have to capture that song out of the ethers before it’s gone or before somebody takes this beat.’ It’s also being around other MCs like being in the studio with Alchemist.

You step into Al’s studio and there’s going to be five other MCs there and it’s not going to be the same five MCs that were there two days ago. You got Roc Marc in the studio, you got Oh No in the studio, you got Action Bronson in the studio, you got Odd Future in the studio—your pen has gotta be sharp! Also doing an album with MED. MED is one of the most slept-on lyricists. We’re doing an album and that is an incredible record. That’s coming up. That should be dropping around the end of the year. Right now though, Good to Be Home. Bombay. Shout out to Pac Div, shout out to Fashawn, shout out to Bridgetown.

New World Color. Prodigy. Alchemist. Evidence. Krondon. That nigga Phil Da Agony.

Mitchy Slick. PA, Planet Asia. Killa Ben. Big Twin. We goin’ platinum. Pick up the album, it’s crazy.

I remember reading two things in previous interviews of yours. One is that you weren’t sure if you saw yourself rapping long-term.

Is that still the case?

I got one way I can answer that question: the last song on the album is called ‘Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop.’ We did that song just cuz I said I was about to retire from rap and I turned around and we did this album. At the end we did ‘Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop’ just to let heads know. Forever, yo. Wu Tang is forever.

The second thing is when you told an interviewer you wanted your career to be like Thelonious Monk.

The way a jazz player will have different players play on different albums as opposed to a band in the 80s who have been the same band through the 2000s. A jazz cat will change up the players every two records. Me changing my producers, working with a new team is the same approach. Exile, Mainframe, Ta’Raach, Flying Lotus, Alchemist, Knxwledge, Nottz, now Bombay.

Is there any sound you haven’t done yet that you want to?

Yes, but that is a secret. Can’t expose the next step. I have to let Kanye drop his record. I always let people know about my record after Kanye drops.

BLU’S GOOD TO BE HOME IS OUT NOW ON NEW WORLD COLOR / NATURE SOUNDS. VISIT BLU AT NOYORK.TUMBLR.COM AND THENEWCOLORBLU.BANDCAMP.COM. INTERVIEW

MILK ’N’ COOKIES Interview by Ian Marshall Illustration by Seth Bogart

Legendary power-pop band Milk ’n’ Cookies thought they’d had it made when they got a deal with Island in 1974, but they turned out to be too late for glam and too soon (and far too cute) for the first wave of punk. But their first and only (and brilliant) album slowly built the cultiest of cult followings, surely inspiring all the sweetest stuff on Burger Records and starting hundreds of immortal friendships based on “Whoa, you know Milk ’n’ Cookies?” Though they flamed out in 1978 after songwriter Ian North left to pursue a new wave-ier solo career, some embers remained, and led by co-founder (and in another life, historic remixer) Justin Strauss, Milk ’n’ Cookies have reunited (sans North) for a few shows and a deluxe reissue of their self-titled debut. Strauss speaks now about the first days of the New York scene, their fifteen seconds of glam-rock fame and the remote possibility of coaxing North back into the fold.

You’re from just outside of what would be considered Brooklyn, right?

I grew up in Brooklyn till I was about 8 or 9, and then we moved to Long Island to a suburb. And that’s where Milk ’n’ Cookies was born. Long Island is a bit more yards, and more greens—it’s got a suburb kind of vibe.

It’s kind of fancy. The area I grew up in is a nice area. We moved there because they had good schools. It was nice. And I hated it! I was a kid that got into music from the Beatles and was totally an Anglophile and the glam stuff started coming—Bowie and T. Rex. I was into the Buddah Records stuff, the Zombies, all those things. And I was in high school and kind of a loner. They were all into sports and I was a freak that was into this kind of music, and I met this girl in high school and she knew Ian and our original bass player, Jay. We started going out and she told Ian about me, and he was starting this band and she said, ‘Oh, you should have Justin be the lead singer!’ Not that I’d ever sung in a band before, but I guess I ‘looked like a lead singer.’ I mean—I had been in a little band when I was in sixth, seventh, eighth grade with friends. But I was more collecting records. That was my life. I spent all my time in record stores. And my dad had taken me to see the Beatles and the Stones and the Dave Clark Five. I met Ian and Jay and Mike, and my dad was an audio fanatic so we had a lot of tape recorders and audio equipment, so I started recording them in my basement as a kind of an instrumental group. Then it turned into me wanting to sing. That’s how it happened—gradually.

You mentioned the British invasion influence—is that what inspired you?

It was a combination of my father, who always had records around, and seeing the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. After that, I was like, ‘This is the only thing I ever want to do for my entire life.’ I was a Beatles freak. So it was my dad’s love of music and my parents taking me everywhere to see shows—I was lucky.

So you’ve been recording demos in your basement and then ...

The band wasn’t even named Milk ’n’ Cookies yet. We all bonded over a love of glam and all the British stuff and bubblegum. It was hard to meet like-minded people, especially in Long Island. We found Sparks, and the New York Dolls—that was a huge huge thing for Milk INTERVIEW

’n’ Cookies. ‘Oh, we can do it too!’ These English bands—we’re far removed from that. But here is a band that we could go see, and this was before CBGB or the New York scene— we were going to Max’s to see Sparks and Iggy and it was all inspirational to Milk ’n’ Cookies.

We got to become friends with them and it made it seem real. The New York Dolls got a record deal—‘They’re no different than us, so this is obtainable.’ Before CBGB, there were all these little places to play, like the Coventry, where Kiss played. And we met this band the Fast, who were playing around and renting little theaters and playing. They were the first band who asked us to play with them, so we would open for them. They were much more mod. It’s pretty safe to say that Kiss were totally inspired, make-up wise, by the Fast. They were doing stars on their faces before Kiss. The singer from the Fast, Paul [Zone], has a book called Playground, which is a fascinating account of New York at the time. And Paul was taking pictures. There are pictures of me and Ian and everyone. It’s a great read and captures what happened in New York at the time.

As grubby as people make it sound in New York at that time, it was where everything started.

It was really what I would call the center of the universe at that point cuz you have punk stuff, disco stuff, rap, all being born together.

I don’t know that we’ll ever see something like that again. It was quite the time to be alive. It was insane, like a dream. New York was dirty, gritty; it wasn’t Disney World like it is now, and I think that spurs a lot of creativity. People could come here and get a cheap apartment— all these great people who came to be could come to New York and express themselves.

And unfortunately that’s not really possible anymore. It was a creative time of cultural explosion here that changed the world forever.

Tell me about some of your early gigs.

One of our first gigs was a sweet 16 party.

And we got a bunch of baseball uniforms and dyed them pink—pink baseball uniforms at the Coventry. We also had pink pajamas with feet. We were cultivating the idea of a uniform but that didn’t last very long, so we just started wearing different clothes.

When you guys were in that basement cutting demos and you’re about to open your mouth to sing to it ... at the time there

weren’t a lot of people that sounded like you. Where did that sound come from?

It wasn’t anything I did on purpose. I just had this sound to my voice. The music was pretty hard—it was garage-y sounding and contrasted with my voice. A lot of people didn’t get it, and even after we got signed, people were like, ‘You sound like a girl.’ When I heard the Only Ones, it’s like, ‘Wow, these guys must have heard us.’ The guy who produced their record was one of the engineers on the Milk ’n’ Cookies album, and the cover even had letters like we had our letters. It was a lot of coincidences. As the years go on, I meet more and more people who are like, ‘Yeah, we were big Milk ’n’ Cookies fans!’ Which is great and flattering and cool!

But where were they with their money in 1975?

Looking back on it, it just makes more sense now. The whole glam thing was going on in the U.K. and we were disciples. When I was a kid, I was dying for these records and it was hard to find them. You didn’t go in a record store and find the newest RAK single or the newest thing on Bell. I would write letters to all these record labels and told them I was a writer for some magazine and I got on their mailing list. I would be getting all these records in the mail every other day. I got on the T. Rex promo list, so it was like Christmas every day and everyone would hang out at my house because we rehearsed in my basement. But anyway a lot of people didn’t get the vocals at the time—they thought they were fey and girly. When I sang, that’s what came out, and it got us a record deal before basically any one else in New York. We were just making these demos with vocals in the basement, and sent the tape to David Bowie’s Main Man management and to Sparks’ management cuz we felt that those people might get what we do.

We got a letter from Main Man saying, ‘Keep up the good work and keep us posted’ and, you know, ‘we’re not going to manage you.’

And we got a reply from Sparks’ managers saying, ‘We love this, we want to work with you guys.’ Sparks had moved to England and were doing stuff on Island, and they said, ‘We played your tape for the head of A&R on Island and he wants to come to New York and meet you guys and see you play.’ I was still in high school! And they said, ‘We really like you

but we don’t like your bass player. We don’t like the way he looks and we would like you to consider another bass player. We know this guy Sal Maida, who just got off the road with Roxy Music, and we think he’d be a great fit for Milk ’n’ Cookies.’ We were willing to give it a shot, so we met Sal and unbeknownst to our bass player had an audition with him and we loved him. He was a total Anglophile record collector. We threw out Jay and got Sal. At that point it was like, ‘OK, we’re coming over and we want to see you guys play.’ We ended up playing for Muff Winwood and Sparks’ managers in my basement near Long Island and got signed that night! It was like a fairy tale. After it was over we went upstairs, and my parents were there—I quit school and I was like, ‘I’m going, that’s it.’ I’d never been to England and here I am, going to England to record an album with my band and Muff Winwood is producing it—the guy who produced one of my favorite records. Everything seemed to fall into place.

Did you go back to school and brag?

I was always kind of an outcast at school and word started getting out: ‘Oh, your band has been signed, and you’re gonna be famous.’

Then everybody wants to be your friend.

Back then, getting signed was like you’d made it!

We went over there and we were put up in this amazing little townhouse in South Kensington, and we would go to the studio every day and record and go record shopping in between. And go to clubs. We recorded at Island Studios and Muff Winwood produced it, the engineers ended up working with Roxy Music a lot and produced the B-52’s. It was a mindblowing experience.

For me, if I could get off a time machine plane and be in England in 1974 in the middle of that scene, I couldn’t think of a better place. Did you get a buzz going where you got to be surrounded by fabulous people?

Obviously we got to get friendly with Sparks because we had the same management. Roxy Music, Robert Palmer, and the Wailers were recording one of their first albums while we were in the studio. We walked in and I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face cuz of the smoke!

I didn’t even know what I was hearing—reggae was kind of a new thing.

Bob Marley wasn’t a god yet?

49

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Yeah! It was pretty insane! We’d go to this place called Speakeasy and all these fantastic stars were in there, and every Thursday we’d watch Top of the Pops. The music was so ingrained in the culture there—that music and magazines and fashion and clothes. I still have the list I made of the ‘wants’ that I found. Stuff like Troggs, Blossom Toes, all these records, and I found a lot of them for next to nothing. There was no eBay, no Discogs, just kind of going in record stores and digging. Sal took me to a place called Vintage Records. It was this dirty store lined wall-to-wall with 45s. I spent the whole day in there with him, and we’d come out with piles and piles of records and they were dirt cheap, like 55p, it was nuts—the Eyes EP for next to nothing. We were there almost two months. Then we came back to New York and this New York scene was starting to explore. CBGB came into the picture. We shot the cover and the whole promotion machine was going. They asked us to come back in February of 75. They were going to release the first single and they wanted us to do promotion.

They picked ‘Little, Lost, and Innocent’ as the first single, and we were like, ‘Really? When you have a song like “Not Enough Girls (in the World)”? What do we know? We’re not a record company. They must know better.’

And while we were in New York we shot two films—one for ‘Little, Lost and Innocent’ and one for ‘Rabbits Make Love.’ I have not been able to find them cuz they weren’t on video at that point. They got shown on British TV shows. And we began gigging heavily, at like CBGB, playing every other weekend with the Ramones or Blondie, Talking Heads, the Runaways ... we were playing a lot.

How did Ian North get control of the songwriting?

It was Ian’s vision, song-wise. He was the songwriter. He was not sharing that, nor was there really much pressure cuz we really loved his songs. He’d make a little demo of the songs, and we’d work it out and come up with the arrangement. And he was very prolific at that time. There are a lot of songs that were never even recorded.

After you came back from London to New York, a new scene erupts, but you’re called back to England to do PR—what happened when you returned?

The album hadn’t been released, and when we got back to New York, there was a bit of jealousy—‘Oh, why was it that Milk ’n’ Cookies got a record deal?’ Then we found out that Island had got cold feet about releasing the album.

We got a call from our manager saying, ‘We have good news and bad news. The bad news is Island is not putting out the album. Yeah, you know, the single didn’t do that well—they don’t know if they want this poppy band on the label. It’s not really their image. But the good news is we’ve got Bell Records interested! And [Island] gave us back the album and we can do whatever we want with it.’ We were obviously very disappointed and kind of in shock. The fairy tale wasn’t the fairy tale it turned out to be. We were counting on our English managers to do it. We believed in them, but nothing was happening. We started doing all these gigs in New York and Sire records become interested and gave us a contract. Not even to rerelease that album, but to record the Girls in INTERVIEW

Gangs album. At that point, the whole punk scene started exploding in England and Island Records goes, ‘Oh wait! We have this New York band, don’t we? Yeah, we do—Milk ’n’ Cookies.’ So they decided to release the album right when all this punk was happening, and we’re their New York punk band even though we’re really not a punk band. We get this call from [our manager John] saying Island wants to reissue the album, and we want Ian to come over and talk to them about it. Meanwhile we’re negotiating a deal with Sire. So when Ian gets over to England, it turns into not really— they’re going to release the Milk ’n’ Cookies album but they don’t want Milk ’n’ Cookies anymore. ‘We want to sign Ian North to a solo deal.’ We were like, ‘Whoa.’

Was that true or did Ian spin it that way?

Ian might have pushed that, let’s say. Ian was disillusioned with the band, at this point, to have gone through the fairy tale and the nightmare, and wanted to maybe pursue a solo thing. Which is what it turned into. Although it never happened. And Ian being Ian, at the time pissed it a bunch of people off there and they said, ‘We’re not dealing with this.’ Then he went on to get involved in the punk scene and got a record deal. And we were just left in New York. Sal had already left the band to join Sparks and record Big Beat. Ian had moved to England, and me and Mike were stuck in New York. I was devastated. I get a call from Sal, who says, ‘You gotta come out here [to L.A.] and start the band. Everyone asks me about Milk ’n’ Cookies! Milk ’n’ Cookies are legendary out here!’ I’d never been to L.A. but I talked to Mike and convinced him and we went out to L.A. and put a new band together and started playing shows and after a few months, Sal rejoined the band. We did stuff from the first album, and stuff that would be on the second album. It was a really incredible time to be in L.A., cuz it was the beginning of the whole thing there. We became friends with Rodney [Bingenheimer], and he was very supportive. Elton John’s label was interested in us, and a few other things were going on, but nothing happened. After a year and a half, two years—1978—I started to miss New York. So that was the end of Milk ’n’ Cookies. That’s the basic timeline of the whole mess. My old girlfriend who had got me into Milk ’n’ Cookies calls me and was like, ‘You have to come back to New York. There’s this great club called the Mudd Club, and I became friends with the DJ there and I think you could DJ there—you have so many great records.’ So I get this gig at the Mudd Club. But when I first got back, one of the managers from Milk ’n’ Cookies was like, ‘I want to manage you as a solo artist.’ I loved James Brown and I had this idea to cover this Bootsy Collins record. I had a little demo of it. I met the guys from Stiff who were opening a New York office, and they were like, ‘We love this, we want to put it out.’ And that’s how that happened. Before I did that I actually recorded a couple of tracks that Ron and Russell [Mael] wrote for me, right after they did the Giorgio Moroder, disco-y stuff. Kinda cool, but never came out.

Prior to arriving at the Mudd Club, were you paying much attention to this dance-y vibe that became a part of your life? When did you get the bug for clubby music?

I was always into soul music as well, and collected all that stuff. When Studio 54 was around, me and my girlfriend—we were young, like 17—would sneak in there, and I started buying disco records, too. A lot of people that are into Milk ’n’ Cookies and that kind of stuff are very close-minded when it comes to other types of music. For me, it all makes sense. I love that—I also love disco and house.

It’s hard to imagine other people out of the scene—like Johnny Ramone—being comfortable at Studio 54.

I have always been like, ‘If it’s good, it’s good.’

There’s a lot of crappy punk and glam records and there’s a lot of bad disco records, but some are incredible. Obviously, I really love that stuff, and I recorded it. I always managed to be in the right place at the right time. I was lucky to be around New York in the 70s—the Paradise Garage, the Mudd Club, all these fabled places. Being in L.A. for the whole punk thing—the Screamers, the Go-Go’s. All these things have influenced my musical sensibilities, from punk to disco to house. After DJing all these clubs, I started wanting to get involved in remixing and I’ve been lucky enough to remix hundreds of records. Back then, you weren’t breaking records on the internet—you were breaking records at the clubs. Labels were bringing acetates and reel-to-reel tapes to DJ at the clubs. I became friends with all these labels and I’d be like, ‘Hey, why don’t you let me try something in the studio?’ One thing led to another—one thing becomes a hit and all of a sudden everybody wants you.

Do you think not getting famous with Milk ’n’ Cookies ultimately helped you find yourself and your career?

It forced me to re-think it. It was a very natural process: ‘Why don’t you come back to New York and maybe you can DJ?’ I knew music was something I always wanted to do—as my job or my life and I could never see myself doing anything else. I was obsessed. Things just kind of fell into place. I’m in the unique position of having done all of [these successful remixes] and having done something like Milk ’n’ Cookies, which has now kind of come around. I never thought that I’d be playing with Milk ’n’ Cookies at this point in my life, or that anyone would care. When I started DJing and stuff, I thought that Milk ’n’ Cookies was forgotten about. But somehow or other, I still love this stuff, and I’m still inspired by it. I don’t take it for granted. A lot of people say, ‘Oh, this isn’t what it was ... ’ If you just sit around and bitch about that all the time, you’re not gonna do anything creative—you’re not gonna try and push the envelope a little further. For whatever reason, I still have that in me. I still love making records, and being on stage with Milk ’n’ Cookies. Y’know, Ian has a lot of trouble with Milk ’n’ Cookies …

Why isn’t he involved?

Ian’s a difficult guy sometimes. I guess he feels a bit bitter about what happened. He sort of broke up the band when he left for England that time, and probably pushed his solo thing more than the band. And now that he sees that Milk ’n’ Cookies have gotten all this love years later, he has a hard time with it. Ian’s whole thing is that he wanted to be taken seriously as a serious songwriter, and he feels somewhat embarrassed, I’d say, by the lyrics of Milk ’n’

Cookies and the adolescent innocence of it maybe. I said, ‘Ian, Milk ’n’ Cookies is the most important thing you’ve ever done and ever will do—you really need to embrace it and you really need to understand what it means to people.’ There’s a lot of people, especially because of the re-releases, that are finding out about this band, and somehow or other, it still resonates with kids. I am so proud of it. I wish Ian could enjoy it. He is becoming better about it. He came to New York—he lives in Florida now—and I made him go to a party.

Somebody played a Milk ’n’ Cookies song, and the place went nuts. Everybody was singing along and Ian was like, ‘Wow.’ He didn’t wanna know about it for years. I asked him to come play with us and everything, but he just can’t seem to ... He’s like, ‘I haven’t played a guitar in years.’ And I’m like, ‘You don’t have to. Just show up on stage with us for a couple of songs during the encore, and people will lose their minds.’

You have a different life now that’s not a hundred percent Milk ’n’ Cookies—it must be a little odd for you, to be going back.

The whole pain of the end of Milk ’n’ Cookies was something I didn’t want to think about cuz I always thought it was such a great band and could have been so huge. It was painful that it never seemed to reach its potential.

Years later some Japanese label re-released the CD without anyone’s knowledge and I was at a record store one day and saw it. ‘Whoa!

What is this?’ All of a sudden all these weird things started happening. I’d see people online talking about Milk ’n’ Cookies and trying to get in touch with me about it. We got asked to do this power pop festival in Brooklyn and so we did that.

Were people surprised you were right under their noses?

What blew me away about the whole thing was that it was all these kids who had discovered the band through the internet or whatever, and who were just totally into Milk ’n’ Cookies. When we stepped out on the stage I was blown away! The kids who knew every song and were singing along!

It’s got a more solid cult following than a lot of things that had some sales at the time.

It’s funny–when we were going to reissue [the record] people were scared to hear some of the unreleased songs. We’d done some demos for Warner Bros. and we were like, ‘We don’t want it to mess with our stuff!’ But it was good and everyone was happy! [The record] was an elusive record for a long time—people were looking for it. Now more people know about it because of the reissue, but before people were really coveting it. The people who are into Milk ’n’ Cookies are like a cult. If you meet someone who’s into Milk ’n’ Cookies, it’s like, ‘Whoa, you know Milk ’n’ Cookies?’

MILK ’N’ COOKIES WITH RONNIE SPECTOR, SHANNON AND THE CLAMS, THEE OH SEES AND MORE ON SAT. AND SUN., JULY 5 AND 6, AT MOSSWOOD PARK, OAKLAND. $35 / 12:30 PM BOTH DAYS / ALL AGES. BURGERBOOGALOO.COM. MILK ’N’ COOKIES’ ‘SELF-TITLED ALBUM WILL BE REISSUED THIS FALL ON CAPTURED TRACKS. 51

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ALBUMS

EDITED BY D.M. COLLINS

54 56

ALBUM REVIEWS THE INTERPRETER: BRIAN REITZELL Kristina Benson

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THE ONCE OVER, TWICE D.M. Collins

67

ONE REPORTER’S OPINION Chris Ziegler

BOOKS

EDITED BY NIKKI B.

68

ALEXANDER HEIR Stephen Sigl

71

WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE CANYON Heru Avenger John Basil

72 COMICS EDITED BY TOM CHILD

CRAFT/WORK

CURATED BY WARD ROBINSON

74

BLACKBOARD CAFÉ Frankie Alvaro

FILM

EDITED BY RIN KELLY

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PUNK IN AFRICA Justin Maurer BRIAN REITZELL by OLIVIA JAFFE

ALBUM REVIEWS Babes takes those sounds to places no band has yet covered. Really, it’s not a problem if there’s another band that likes the 60s. It’s like Homer Simpson once said about Calvin Klein and “Antoine Bugleboy”: these are the people who saw an overcrowded marketplace and said, “Me too.”

—D.M. Collins DAVE VAN PATTEN

BROCK POTUCEK

AMON DÜÜL II BABES Düülerium Cleopatra

self-titled Harvest

Now with Can, Faust and Tangerine Dream safely ensconced with the immortals of 70s rock, attention may be paid at last to the Amon Düül II situation. While it’s now relatively safe for fans to openly admire such second-rankers as Magma (a band once legendary among North American rock fans for volcanically noodling excess), there’s still a sizable faction of Amon Düül II haters out there. Early LP titles like Phallus Dei (1969) and Tanz der Lemminge (1971) seldom roll without injury or embarrassment from Anglophone tongues, but within the grooves of both records are the very brain-freezing essences of kosmische Musik and every postrock exercise to come. News this 45-year-old Munich collective’s first new music in twenty years is unsurprisingly grizzled and atypically longwinded. “On the Highway (Mambo La Liberta)” is close in composition and spirit to more commercial parts of their catalog—especially Wolf City— and “Du Kommst Ins Heim” is a boldly loony series of bilingual chants and nonsense howling.

“Standing in the Shadow” is a gloriously elongated groove any admirer of Captain Beefheart’s later albums can click cloven hooves to. The shortest of the four tracks clocks in at over eight minutes and “Back to the Rules/Walking to the Park,” a universe of vagrant feeling and heart-stopping retrohippie pyrotechnics, comes to a shimmying, shambolic halt at the monstrous span of 26:01. This hulk of a record is perhaps one of the very last times a rock band of this era will return to greatness.

Düül rüüles!

—Ron Garmon

There’s a lot of talent in this charming little EP of four songs. Clearly the band has both guys and gals in it who can sing, and the gal, Sarah Rayne, has a great kind of whispery longing to her voice, which she can use to do a Claudine Longet/ Margo Guryan thing. or something deeper, dreamier … I wouldn’t be surprised if Babes were inspired to start the group over a mutual love of Julee Cruise’s songs in Twin Peaks— ohhhh, just think about pop music that uses the early 60s “Teen Angel” ballad as a springboard to something between a sunrise and a visit from a ghost. By comparison, the male vocalists of the band are kind of less pleasant, but luckily they don’t really get songs of their own; both “You & Me” and “Hey My Man” are duets with a lot of interesting synthy production; in the case of the former, you can even hear the sawing of a viola or cello somewhere in there, before the crazy keyboard starts percolating! Despite the variety, some parts of their sound are a little familiar: vintage-y, echo-ey, in ways that bands like Dum Dum Girls already covered to great effect in 2008. But

54

CARA BYRD

GUY BLAKESLEE

sounds loud as fuck. I love how he plays with that spotlight; the narrator’s voice on “Ophelia Floats Away” is almost Berlin-era Iggy Pop, and there’s a wordy, folk-rap approach on “Kneel and Pray.” Sometimes things might still be too wordy, or too prosaic. Face the Sun’s lyrics were a little obvious in some places, especially on “Year of the Dragon,” which reappears here. But god, why split hairs on what he’s saying, when he says it with such an amazing voice? On “Told Myself,” Blakeslee almost becomes Sal Valentino from the Beau Brummels, but an octave higher!

His lilting falsetto is so smooth, surrounded in a perfect bed of banjo and glockenspiel, that when he talks of being “clean and a junkie, too,” he absolutely sells me on the beauty of a good paradox.

—D.M. Collins

ery of the bars. When rap’s top dogs are continuously emphasizing and expanding on the gap between the artist and the listener, young Blzzo makes an album reaching for the mood of the everyman. There’s concept behind the bevy of guest spots on the record as well. Side-stepping convention that would dictate the largest marquee names possible, Blu reaches to a diverse crew of homies for assistance. From underground superstars like Alchemist and Phil Da Agony to hyper-local talents like Sweet Pea and Co$$, the features further add color to the homegrown mood of the record. There are traces of the introspective sentimentalist Blu that many folks love and there are plenty moments of microphone swashbuckling, but the biggest victory the LP can claim is creating an experience for the listener that is greater than the sum of its parts.

—sweeney kovar

Ophelia Slowly Everloving

When I reviewed the Entrance Band album of only a few months ago, Face the Sun, I was surprised at band leader Guy Blakeslee’s calm, introspective approach to his newfound sobriety; reformed rockers usually prefer their first clear-headed disc to be loud and rockin’, lest anyone call them pussies for not wanting to kill themselves slowly with expensive poisons. Now I see that Blakeslee was holding back the aural floodgates for this, his first solo album in a decade and his first ever under his own name. Unlike Face the Sun’s vocals, which were moody and lonely and a little bit creepy, here he uses a simple drum machine and open chords so that his voice, by comparison,

ALBUM REVIEW SUBMISSIONS

L.A. RECORD invites all local musicians to send music for review­—anything from unreleased MP3s and demos to finished full albums. Send digital to digital@larecord. com and physical to:

P.O. Box 21729 Long Beach, CA 90801 If you are in a band and would like to advertise your release in L.A. RECORD, email advertise@larecord.com

JARED PITTACK

BLU & BOMBAY Good to Be Home Nature Sounds/New World Color

Blu is the West Coast’s prodigal son that went off the beaten path, but on his latest solo project, Good to Be Home, he’s found his way back. This project serves as Blu’s retort to the resurgence of West Coast gangster rap. While we’re falling back into an enamored haze with ultra-violence and sensationalized depictions of brown and black lives, Blu challenges the listener to find the meaning in the mundane. A self-described “GSoul” record, there is an intentional parallel running throughout Bombay’s beats. The fat basslines, warm samples and garnishes of distortion feel like hazy sun setting behind a row of palm trees. Blu’s performance is immaculate; there is no question that our author’s technical ability is top-tier. But the focus is not on the acrobatics of his language but the comprehensive marriage between the feel of the music and the imag-

JARED PITTACK

DANNY BROWN Hot Soup Street Corner Music

Hot Soup is a snapshot of a spark that lit a fire. In the summer of 2007, Danny Brown was fresh off a yearlong county bid and hungrier than ever. Making the most out of a budding relationship with local hitmaker Nick Speed, Danny funneled his remaining energy and resources into a recording extravaganza over 4th of July weekend. The product of that became the core of Danny’s Hot Soup, his first album and first bold leap into becoming the unparalleled artist he is today.

And man, does this still bang.

“What Up Doe” will make you Errol Flynn, “Gun in Yo Mouf” has a lurching, deformed monster of a beat, and Danny is as poignant as ever on tracks like “Work Song,” and “Two Steps Back.” There are random guest spots like Rapper Big Pooh and one misstep in the ghetALBUM REVIEWS

totech ‘club banger’ attempt “She Love It,” but even those points add color to the canvas. Initially the album lived as 1s and 0s on the internet and a very limited mixtape-quality CD pressing in real life. Now it’s available pressed onto vinyl in gatefold jackets and double CD. Detroit’s DJ House Shoes and his Street Corner Music label are to thank for this rare instance of retroactive appreciation. As an added bonus, Shoes tacked on some bonus cuts and a bonus bonus 45 for the vinyl version. The extra donut contains two of Danny’s most searing but slept-on cuts to date. First it’s his cold-blooded murder of Apollo Brown’s bare-bones beat for “Contra” and the B-side presents a classic display of Danny’s wild and perverted imagination on the Samiyam-helmed “Radiohead.”

—sweeney kovar

Smirk” is a kind of hip-hop “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” and “Keep on Rockin It” is the collection’s lost anthem. AIDS morality fables and verbs like “conversating” abound.

This is a danceable time capsule that hits like one of those gigantic Bear Family retrospectives of traditional Americana. Stupendous.

—Ron Garmon

courtesy band

DAHGA BLOOM No Curtains Captcha

SIERRA JOY

CHARIZMA AND PEANUT BUTTER WOLF Circa 1990-1993 Stones Throw

Stage name for Milpitas-born Charles Hicks, Charizma was a supple-voiced MC who fell in with DJ and producer Peanut Butter Wolf (aka Chris Ganak) and began to shop the pair’s homemade demo tapes around the powerhouse San Jose scene of the early 90s. Signed

by Disney subsidiary Hollywood Basic toward the end of the Golden Age of hip-hop, the pair recorded material for over a year, very little of which saw release before Charizma was found in his car shot to death in 1993. Here, twenty-one years later, is the bulk of that collaboration: a four-disc, 40-track set that takes in some half-finished experiments and tuneful fragments along with more realized tracks, though nuggets like “Apple Juice Break” and “Wikki Wikki” are a big part of the fun. As a rapper, Charizma was influenced

by Kool Moe Dee, and PB Wolf’s production finds oddball uses for notions from Paul’s Boutique-era Beasties, though both were instinctively funkier than their influences.

Of the set-pieces, “Scratch ‘n’ Sniff” is fussily funny, “On & On/Here’s a ALBUM REVIEWS

With pulsating synths and ridiculously heavy bass, coupled with the echo and reverb-drenched vocals of Lucas Drake, Dahga Bloom have carved out a niche for themselves in the current Southern California musical scene. Known for their great live performances, the band has also been hard at work in the studio creating amazing tunes that work just as well pressed to vinyl.

With some excellently executed production and engineering by Drake and Manny Lopez, songs like “Space is the Place” or “Put It on the Table” are enhanced by really strong vocal lines, which in the modern psych scene is strangely hard to find. Big, hard beats and fuzztastic bass litter the album.

That the band cares about how the music feels is evident from the strange and mind-numbing introductory track, “Supa,” all the way through the last notes of “Born to Be Brown.” This band deserves all the hype they receive and they back it up on this new record.

—Daniel Sweetland

DAVE VAN PATTEN

DJ HARVEY

Wildest Dreams Smalltown Supersound

Object of the bigger cults in the international DJ set, Harvey Bassett is renowned for eclectic tastes, famously perverse underground parties and cultivating a persona Rolling Stone is pleased to call a “libertine Englishman turned California surfer dude.” This fulllength is a useful corrective for the idiots in your life who think DJ music isn’t music because DJs aren’t musicians. Here, the famed dance-floor monster does a sharp left turn on us, uncorking a shimmering concept album based on Los Angeles. Onetime king of the city’s know-somebody late-night scene, Harvey unsurprisingly hears L.A. as a funky, proggy, hard-driving score for a purely imaginary movie. “Last Ride” and “405” are evocative enough to stick around in the general culture a while and the whole album has the compressed ambience of a downtown warehouse rager, right down to that vague feeling you knew the tunes before you paid the cover charge. Your midnight summertime Harbor Freeway of the ears.

—Ron Garmon

you go in for that white boy longhaired surfer rich-kid look. And you’ll see a LOT of his looks—the booklet lays out Doheny’s entire history of great music and frustrating obscurity everywhere but Japan, a historian’s delight. But the tunes… if you like Shuggie Otis and Todd Rundgren-esque blue-eyed 70s soul, this might just become your favorite kick-offyour-shoes collection! Or should I say “boot-knockin’”? If Doheny’s respectfully insistent voice inflection and jazzy electric piano riffs don’t make yer knickers hit the floor, just turn to the page of the booklet where David Geffen gives him the shaft in 1974 … believe me, you’ll be able to “Get It Up for Love.”

—D.M. Collins

BROCK POTUCEK

DRAAG

self-titled self-released

AMY HAGEMEIER

NED DOHENY Separate Oceans Numero Group

About this time last year, I was interviewing the legendary recluse Shuggie Otis, the broodingly handsome almost-ran who palled around with the Stones in the 70s but whose famous father (Johnny Otis of “Hand Jive” fame) overshadowed the son’s more nuanced, sexy, delicate, and sometimes synthy recordings, which would only eventually become appreciated in their own right years after their release. Pretty hip? Well… leave it to L.A. RECORD to find a recluse even MORE reclusive, with a name even MORE famous (like, streets and villages and beaches and the lead in fucking There Will Be Blood famous), who hung out with even MORE famous 70s musicians (Jackson Browne and Cass Elliot and fucking Chaka Khan!), who incorporated perhaps even MORE 70 synths, and who was, maybe, MORE handsome, if

With former members of the Shoegaze band Tremellow as well as members of other bands, this San Fernando Valley group has an established creative base to draw from. The opening track hits you like a freight train in the form of a thrashed-out 45 seconds of screaming and banging on every distorted instrument at hand that leaves just as quickly as it came. This harsh introduction is replaced by the minimalist dream pop track “Tragic,” which sets the stage for the rest of the music to come. The remainder of the album is a blend of dreamy sounds and similarly ethereal yet heavier shoegaze tracks that work well together.

There are a few ambient noise songs that serve as transitional pathways, in the form of mood stabilizers, which move you from the softer songs to the more intense ones. One such track is the song “Slymar,” running at a blissful two and a half minutes.

Think Kevin Shields for Lost in Translation and you will get a solid picture. Draag’s debut album is self-released, but from this strong showing, there is no doubt the band’s second album will find a home on a label.

—Zachary Jensen

BRIAN BROOKS

FAR WEST Any Day Now Medina River

It’s hard to find fault with a band that formed over a mutual appreciation of Waylon Jennings (according to legend, the Craigslist ad that drew the members of Far West together featured nothing but a video of “A Couple More Years”). That kind of understated explication is a driving force behind the band’s sophomore platter, Any Day Now, which dishes up thirteen well-crafted, no-frills country songs—not Nashville glitter country, but real country, the kind with dust on its boots. Far West also draws inspiration from alt-country heavyweights like Uncle Tupelo and Sun Volt, creating a vibe that is rich, textured and steeped in tradition, although not a slave to it. Any Day Now is concerned with atmosphere and ambience, and the varied selection of both mournful and jubilant songs shows it. The band’s desire for authentic mood is underscored by the fact that Any Day Now was recorded in a vintage hot rod repair shop. The record opens with “On the Road,” a lonesome and mournful ode to the tribulations of trying to make it in Hollywood. Underscored by shimmering keyboards, the cut kicks the album off to a vivid start.

The strollin’, struttin’ “The Bright Side,” with its joyful mid-song honky guitar solo, is another highlight, as is the stripped-down “Leonard,” which flexes its creativity in the form of a warbly, New Orleans–tinged trumpet solo. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the soothing, elegiac “Post and Beam,” a pretty farewell song to youth. Recommended.

—Jason Gelt

AMY HAGEMEIER

FATIMA

Yellow Memories Eglo 55

THE INTERPRETER

BRIAN REITZELL

Curated by Kristina Benson Photography by Olivia Jaffe

As a longtime collaborator with Sofia Coppola, Brian Reitzell is responsible for composing and supervising the soundtracks for The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette and The Bling Ring, and was also a drummer for Redd Kross and toured with the French band Air. Now he’s releasing his own record on Small Town Supersound, Auto Music, which was recorded in his home studio over a period of around a decade. He joined me over Skype to talk about his favorite records, when he plays them, and why he loves them.

STAN GETZ & CHARLIE BYRD JAZZ SAMBA (VERVE, 1962)

“ “It’s always in front of my turntable cuz it just transforms my entire house into a Brazilian Copacabana. It’s mellow with a West Coast jazzy feel, and it’s also the record before ‘Girl From Ipanema.’ It’s classic, beautifully recorded, sounds like the band is in my living room. If I’m having people over, it’s such great background music—or even if it’s just me and my puppy having a beer.”

DAVID CROSBY IF I COULD ONLY REMEMBER MY NAME (Atlantic, 1971) “For a time, when I was between 5 and 7, I lived on a commune. My parents got divorced and we moved from the suburbs to Redwood City, not far from Neil Young’s place. And we lived on this commune, where music was always playing. I remember the Stones’ Goats Head Soup the most—it must’ve been new at the time. I used to play with my Tonka trucks around a garden of pot plants and blackberries! There was a guy who lived in the garage who fixed motorcycles for the Hell’s Angels, and there were always records. This one takes me back. It’s one of Crosby’s finest moments. It’s so Pacific Ocean, Northern California, Santana, Joni Mitchell—all of it is in there.”

The Specials the specials (Chrysalis/twotone, 1979)

“Everyone should have this record! 1979, pissed-off British youth, one of my favorite party records. Elvis Costello produced and it sounds so raw. This is probably my third copy. It’s the ultimate make you feel good, get you up record. I played it backstage a lot when I toured with Air. I’d put this on and everyone would be jumping up and down!”

Sandy Bull Inventions (VANGUARD, 1964) “A friend of mine in Japan turned me on to this. Sandy Bull was a tragic guy who died far too young. I think he was the original Ry Cooder—more adventurous even. He had crazy jazz and classical chops. This has one of his own songs, a couple Bach pieces, ‘Memphis, Tennessee’ by Chuck Berry. It’s just Bull and Billy Higgins, a great L.A. jazz drummer. It’s got some of the best guitar-jazz. I dunno what you’d call this! He’d play anything with strings. Oud, bass, acoustic guitar, banjo. He was a genius!”

augustus pablo east of the river nile (Message, 1977)

“If I had to pick just one record of all of these, it’d be this one—it’s a dub record with no singing. Augustus Pablo plays melodica. It’s just ridiculously groovy. All instrumental. I can flip it over and over and over.”

The replacements Tim (Sire, 1985) “I got this when it came out cuz the woman who ran the record store I worked at worshipped the Replacements. And I became such a big Replacements fan. Then I kinda stopped for ten or fifteen years, but I pulled Tim out not long ago and it’s such a perfect rock ‘n’ roll record.

These records are like little memories—they transport me back to when I was young and carefree!”

THE INTERPRETER

krzysztof penderecki “capriccio for violin & orchestra” AND “de natura sonoris” (Nonesuch, 1969) “This is a mindblower. To me, these pieces are the most inspirational things. The work I’m doing on Hannibal is horror music, but I’m also doing Japanese music and percussive-based musique concrète, and really trying to go back to how it started in the 40s, when Pierre Schaeffer invented musique concrète. He got money from his friends’ TV studio to do experiments, and from there you get Pierre Henry, BBC Radiophonic … it all came from Schaeffer. And he got money from TV. And if I get my money from TV studios, I’m looking backward to go forward, so I listen to Penderecki. This sounds like the most modern music I’ve ever heard, and they’re not using anything new—nothing is plugged in!

The first time I listened to this, I had a really high fever and was rolled up in blankets trying to get the sweat out of me, and the music was taking my pain away cuz I was listening so intently. I forgot I was so ill!”

ART BLAKEY AND THE AFRO-DRUM ENSEMBLE THE AFRICAN BEAT (BLUE NOTE, 1962) “The last great percussion record Art Blakey made, and this is the most African of any of them. Art is really the only trap drummer, and then there’s an incredible Spanish Harlem African percussion ensemble. It’s a fantastic recording by Rudy Van Gelder. Everything starts with a motif that goes away and then the rhythm section just goes off. Late 50s, early 60s be-bop records are some of the best drum records ever made, and the way they captured this—really good stuff.”

Sumire yoshihara percussions in colors (rca, 1978) “This might be the rarest on here. It’s Japanese, direct mastered—straight to press with no mixing. Serious audiophile stuff. Side one is ‘Munari

by Munari,’ by one of my all-time heroes, Toru Takemitsu, a Japanese film composer. This record is so minimal, it’s like you open a window in the house and hear the birds a little better or a clomp! down the street or an airplane flies over —it’s the most ambient record I ever heard in my life! Yet it’s such a beautiful, flowing work, and the space between beats and sounds … it’s nature is what it is! As recreated in this case by one percussionist—Sumire Yoshihara. There’s a picture on the back showing them in their 70s Japanese garb, just listening—great!”

The chet baker quartet with russ freeman the complete pacific jazz live recordings (mosaic, 1989) “It’s kinda cheating cuz it’s a box set. Chet doesn’t sing on this, but his flugelhorn-playing is the epitome for me of West Coast 60s jazz. I grew up a bit of a jazz snob, way more into New York jazz and Coltrane and Art Blakey. But that only lasted a few years—maybe it was my relationship with the Pacific Ocean? I dunno? But this just sounds like you’re near the ocean in Southern California in the 60s. People aren’t aware Chet Baker replaced Coltrane in Miles Davis’ group. He had the same beautiful, elongated, pastoral breeziness Miles had. Everybody thinks of him as a singer, and he was amazing, and as a personality cuz he was kinda tragic. But anything by him on Mosaic is worth buying. I used to be a chef, and I’d be cooking and listening to records, and with the possible exception of the Replacements, this is all great cooking music!

Also great drinking music!”

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There’s a sense of nostalgia throughout this debut album from London-based Swedish-Senegalese soul vocalist Fatima Bramme Sey, and not just because many of its tracks find her in bittersweet reminiscence about love turned complicated. With a cadre of a half-dozen beatmakers in tow, Yellow Memories offers an eclectic yet classicist mix of soul jazz that recalls a time when Lauryn Hill was commanding prime airtime on “MTV Jams.”

And set against the current backdrop of marquee R&B and pop music that feels more semiotic than erotic, this is something of a small coup. On its own modest scale, Yellow Memories resembles the stuff of real life: the opener combines brazen confidence with the a refrain of “I can do better,” the relationships oscillate between joy and doubt, and the finale about an absent father says a lot about what pride and despair have to do with each other. But as much as ambivalence tints these yellow memories blue, Fatima arrives fully formed as a vocalist, elevating plainspoken lover’s laments like “Biggest Joke of All” with an effortlessly lyrical levity over producer Floating Points’ tightly wrapped hip-hop groove.

It’s the downbeat moments that reveal the subtleties of expression the most, where the fine details of these lovingly crafted beats emerge and where Fatima’s thoughtfulness as a performer is most evident. And with that introspective sense of impressionism locked down, you’ll start to wonder what it’ll sound like when she can do even better.

—Sean Manning

courtesy band

FRENCH STYLE FURS Is Exotic Bait Frenchkiss

Make no mistake, Is Exotic Bait is not a Cold War Kids album, even though French Style Furs features both CWK vocalist Nathan Willett and CWK bassist Matt Maust. No, this is an album of dirty-sounding exploration. It’s raw and daring.

With some strong beats, courtesy of We Barbarians’ Nathan Warkentin, and Maust’s signature basslines, 58

Is Exotic Bait takes the listener to strange and wonderful places, whether it’s the rhythmic lines of “Solitary Life” or the aggressive pounding and gothic keyboards of “All the Way Down.” Super-groups can be tricky to present as new and discrete from the artists’ other projects, but French Style Furs sound like themselves, a band formed from longtime friendship and a mutual desire to explore new and exciting terrain.

—Daniel Sweetland

WALT! GORECKI

THE FRESH & ONLYS House of Spirits Mexican Summer

The Fresh & Onlys have been a staple in the San Francisco garage rock scene ever since putting out their first album back in 2008. The band is fairly consistent with releases too, with their latest album, House of Spirits, being the fifth full-length in the band’s relatively young career.

Made partly while Tim Cohen was living on an isolated horse ranch in Arizona, House of Spirits was intentionally meant to have a distinct A-side, B-side feel. The first half of the album has simplistic and basic song structures; the instrumentation is minimal and sparse with Cohen’s vocals driving all of the songs. “Bells of Paonia“ is a great example, featuring a droned-out guitar riff that drifts through the entire track, while Cohen gives the song shape with his strong singing style. “Animal of One” has a strong western feel to it—deep, echoing vocals backed by Ennio Morricone–style guitar. Inversely, the B-side features “heavier” songs, replete with fast-paced drums and in-your-face guitar riffs—a bit more of the traditional Fresh & Onlys style. Regardless, all the songs on this album seem to be a pretty big departure from each other. Although each song is extremely good, they don’t necessarily work cohesively as a collective release.

—Zachary Jensen

BROCK POTUCEK

CURTIS HARDING Soul Power Burger

Curtis Harding plays a style of music that he has coined “sloppin’-soul.”

Combining elements of everything he has encountered musically, and mixing it with his true love—soul music—Harding makes a sound all his own. This by itself can give you a fairly good idea of what his music is like, but it would not do the man nearly enough justice. His debut release, Soul Power, is an experience.

From the album cover alone you can see that the man exudes cool. The feeling doesn’t stop there though. As the first track opens up with acoustic guitar riffs, steady drumbeats, and a smooth bassline, the listener is eagerly set up in anticipation. Then Harding sings and knocks you right back down. There is so much emotion and strength in his voice that he could drive a song with vocals alone.

The instrumentation on the songs only adds to the experience that he creates. The opening track gives you a small taste of what is to come. While always staying deeply rooted in soul, the entire album runs the gamut with its secondary influences. Some songs have a garage rock feel, while others have an R&B, funk, surf rock, or even a heavy blues tone. Each subtle change in style brings the energy, but in a whole new way. There are no fillers on this album. If Soul Power is any indication of what Curtis Harding has in store for us, then he has a long career ahead of him.

—Zachary Jensen

courtesy band

HUNTER & THE DIRTY JACKS Single Barrel self-released

It’s nice this glossy blues-rock fivepiece doesn’t sound like a wimpy, lilting indie band, but their hard rock posturing travels to the outer limits of the opposite end of the spectrum.

If Single Barrel had been recorded and released twenty-five years ago, Hunter and the boys would have been wearing liberal applications of lipstick and powder, sporting copious perms and shaking the floorboards at Gazzarri’s nightclub. “I can take you higher and higher,” Hunter belts out in the amusingly titled “Doctor Dingo.” “I’ll hold your hand while you walk through the fire/I wanna be your sole survivor.” Those are pretty representative lyrics: a little silly, a lot dramatic. Lyrical themes such as hard liquor (“Break Me Down”), mean-hearted women (“Lorraine”), and headin’ on down the highway (“Gotta Keep Movin’ On”) mix with shredtastic guitar solos, arena-friendly riffs and balls-forward balladry courtesy of Hunter’s rough-edged, often soaring vocals, which every so often develop a little hitch at the tail-end of a line. Hunter and the Dirty Jacks are trying hard to sound authentic; every note comes off like it’s based on something better and older. The album’s title, Single Barrel, seems apt—that’s how Hunter and the Dirty Jacks loaded their musical shotgun; one barrel just wasn’t working, and it shows.

—Jason Gelt

WALT! GORECKI

IKEBE SHAKEDOWN Stone by Stone Ubiquity

Soul and funk in their various incarnations have been coming back in a very big way for the past few years (not that it ever really left). The sound of a tight horn section blaring out raspy melodies in conjunction with a solid bassline seems to get just about anyone going. And when it comes to getting people going, Ikebe Shakedown has the formula down.

Like the title suggests, the group built this album Stone by Stone. Each track is carefully and meticulously constructed to build an experience that will take the listener to the greatest heights. Every song is a hit. Although the album is heavily rooted in 70s

soul and funk, Ikebe Shakedown is not unwilling to take risks. Songs like “The Offering” and “The Illusion” have a Fela Kuti or Mulatu tinge to them, while “Rio Grande” has a spaghetti western feel that sits on top of the soulful sounds of the horns.

All the songs have an air of attitude and confidence while still remaining unpretentious, a quality lost among most musicians these days. There is a cinematic quality that creates an entire world as the music envelops the listener. It wouldn’t be surprising if these guys ended up scoring a Tarantino film.

—Zachary Jensen

MOOMAW

JJAAXXNN Space Case self-released

I’m glad that crazed retro teen punkers in the 90s refused to let cassette tapes die their rightful death, because there is something about a cheap analog rhythm box sound that comes across as innocent and beautiful on tape, even if it’s tinny, and even if your tape player spools just a tad unevenly. It’s like the beats have been left out in the sun to melt a little bit—and for a band like JJAAXXNN, the subtle tape effect just adds another layer of psychedelia to an already packed fun house.

Of course, the “band” here is one Josh Bruner, the former Blank Tapes ne’er-do-well who also founded the in-your-face stoner guitar trio Magic Leaves a few years back in San Francisco. You couldn’t ask for a greater disparity in bands between Magic Leaves and JJAAXXNN—whereas Magic Leaves usually has vocals and a drummer and riffs for miles (clearly the “leaves” here must be the kind of kush Sativa that keeps your girlfriend awake at night), JJAAXXNN is like what would happen if ambient Kraut constructionist Cluster had a 6-year-old kid who banged on the drum machine in lieu of a toy drum kit. Space Case is completely vibrant yet totally dreamy—it’s like a crazy koan, trashily transcendent.

And with enough listens, it perhaps can make us step out of our everyday selves as much as JJAAXXNN allows Bruner to step outside of himself.

—D.M. Collins ALBUM REVIEWS

DAVE VAN PATTEN

MATT KIVEL Days of Being Wild Woodsist

Matt Kivel’s debut release, Double Exposure, was a sleeper hit for many who came upon it last year. The album had an intimacy that reeled you right in—a carefully curated collection of songs that were perfect examples of how subtlety, calm and fragility can make for a beautiful record. Kivel’s follow-up, Days of Being Wild, (title taken from a Wong Kar-wai film)—released less than a year from its predecessor—takes everything that was working on Double Exposure and expands upon it. The new songs have an even fuller feel to them. Kivel steers clear of the acoustic guitar on many of the tracks in favor of an electric one.

Artfully looped melodies, effects pedals and simple drum rhythms provide the backdrop for his dreamy, pop-drenched style. Carrying the powerfully atmospheric music is Kivel’s voice—at some moments a confident, sun-drenched tone, and at others a high-pitched falsetto that reminds you of the frailty that dwells beneath the surface. There is a longing quality to many of these songs that pull at your chest. You can feel the emotion, a romantic air that wants to be shared. If Double Exposure was about the intimacy of a moment, then Days of Being Wild is about putting all those feelings on the table for everyone to see.

—Zachary Jensen

courtesy artist

KOREATOWN ODDITY 200 Tree Rings New Los Angeles

The Koreatown Oddity is an acuteALBUM REVIEWS

ly intelligent and observant beast of a rapper living in the Los Angeles enclave he’s named after. 200 Tree Rings is the tale of his auspicious rise out of his cultural cross-breeding metropolis of a home as well as of his dubious death, seemingly from the excess and hyper-stimulation that comes with living off Mexican food, stand-up comedy, rap and shrooms. With a style as unhinged as his look, The Odd walks a fine line between self-aware and feral, bringing together influences from Project Blowed and Low End Theory.

KTO doesn’t shoot for mass appeal, he keeps it hyper-local. The credited crew is made up of all Angelenos or current residents and the lyrics are a peek into the chaotic mind of a rap nerd having the petri dish L.A. life. He details the best spot to get a falafel in K-Town (7th and Irolo); describes a childhood memory of playing Sega with Afrika Islam, the N.Y. DJ who helped create Ice-T’s sound; and mourns two of our era’s funniest comics (Mitch Hedberg and Patrice O’Neal), who he grew up seeing at The Laugh Factory.

Yet somehow the chaos aligns in this savage affair of an album. Los Angeles may be the only city in the world that could raise a wolf-man MC who is just another face on the Red Line.

—sweeney kovar

LA SERA

GNUCCA

Hour of the Dawn Hardly Art It feels like there are a lot of bands similar to La Sera. But what is their brand of rock exactly? It seems comical to call them a “formerly vintage girl-group rock band that once sounded surfy and 60s and now mostly doesn’t,” but isn’t that what they and Dum Dum Girls and Best Coast and Tennis and (just to throw some boys in) Girls and Tijuana Panthers and the Moonhearts, etc. all have roughly in common, that they used to have something in common? Now that we can tell everybody apart, some might want to reappraise whether La Sera deserves their moment in the spotlight more than the rest.

Though maybe it’s a moot point: clearly, bandleader Katy Good-

Morgen Morgen Sunbeam

Touted by some as last of the great 60s psychedelic obscurities, Morgen is the sole album by a quartet of Long Island longhairs remembered chiefly by collectors of NYC rock posters. “Welcome to the Void” is a start as wobbly as frontman Steve Morgen’s vocals, but the moment the whacked-out interplay between bass, drums and Morgen’s prickly virtuoso lead guitar ignites, you’re past caring about the vocal track. The serious buzz starts with the jangle kicking off “Of Dreams” and stays there throughout. This group was clearly influenced by the Who, but owned a kind of stuttering momentum that prefigured the Pixies and brought Heavy Messaging with the assurance of many a Hendrix or Burdon-struck Midwestern garage band. The set rings down with “Love,” a 10:50 minute tribal stomp that must’ve blown teeth out of the backs of heads at venues like the Electric Circus. Recorded a full year before its 1969 release on Probe, an ephemeral freak-rock subsidiary of mega-conglomerate ABC Records, Morgen got a fine send-off on local rock radio before promptly sinking without trace and taking the band with it. Including single versions and enough unheard bonus tracks (like the worthy protest tune “Too Many Americas”) for a whole other album, this is the definitive reissue of a fabled slab.

Mike Cooper Trout Steel Paradise of Bachelors

Though known mainly to post-Canterbury U.K. avant-folk specialists, Mike Cooper started his career as an acoustic bluesman who (as the story goes) turned down Brian Jones’ slot in the Rolling Stones to wind his own eccentric path through the Love Decade. Historically, Trout Steel is an entry into the postpsychedelic, pre-country rock sweepstakes dominated by Donovan at his most mystic and Van Morrison at his least sober. As verbally grandiloquent as neither fellow, Cooper here relies on exquisite taste, fussy countrified arrangements and a nasally Americanized carny barker twang for his effects. Ghostly touches of Pharaoh Sanders glide along the surface of these sessions but within this hallucinatory Dixie of the ears, all is possible, including skronky jazzbo meditations like “Pharaoh’s

March” and “I’ve Got Mine,” the latter fantasia clocking in at 11:25. Not so much fusion and nowhere near prog, the songs sound like what American rock music might’ve sounded like had there been no British Invasion, which is a handsome conjuring feat for a hotshot slide guitarist from Reading, Berkshire. Drop the needle on this and hear the years between the Byrds and Wilco dissolve.

The Clean Anthology Merge

Mighty in their native New Zealand, the Clean specialized in punchy, meandering ditties said to have influenced Yo La Tengo and Superchunk. Early tracks from “Tally Ho” to “Point That Thing Somewhere Else” mark a familiar evolution from simple Ramones-y cutesiness to five-minute ionospheric head trip that would take any normal band three albums to trace, but the Clean makes on one early cassetteonly release. Wry and razor-sharp by Vehicle, their 1990 full-length debut, the group refined their basic approach into an engagingly rattletrap garage rock with jokey proclivities and heavy noise pop influences. Their Flying Nun/ Rough Trade releases sound commercial without filing away too many edges of a singular personality. Available on two CDs or four LPs, the first half of this set collects their early singles and obscurities, with the second making a two-dozen track plunge into their 90s heyday.

Wyrd Visions Half-Eaten Guitar P.W. Elverum & Sun

This spare soundtrack to a Druid acidhead western of the mind quickly sold out its original issue, but Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie thought a series of acoustic campfire incantations worth retrieval from the 2006 memory hole. The standout track is “Sigill,” opening the record with a loping, gently disorienting waltz that fades by unnoticed degrees into a multisyllabic chant that cuts off mid-bar, like a cosmic revelation whose batteries abruptly quit eleven minutes into enlightenment. Colin Bergh picks lucidly and sings tremblingly while a few drumbeats and organ notes occasionally bob into the mix as the fivesong set runs the listener through everyday life as a disembodied specter in a blighted windswept plain. Insufficient time has passed for this album to be hailed as a lost classic, but this is about as post-rock as music gets.

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80s madman Minimal Man, and both, by devoting so much time to reviving music like this, secretly reveal themselves to be wide-eyed optimists.

The Cthulhus Lethargy: A Novel Russian Winter

Someday I’m going to write an article about

Jon Wahl and the Amadans

The Angst Blues of Jon Wahl and the Amadans Elastic Singer and guitarist Jon Wahl, formerly of Claw Hammer, has lost none of his voice in the past 25 or so years he’s been in the public eye. In fact, this might be one of his best singing performances yet; sometimes going crooner, sometimes warbling like a melodious yodeling country western star, and at other times evoking the best of Pere Ubu’s Dave Thomas—or better still, Captain Beefheart (whose song “Orange Claw Hammer” gave Wahl’s old band its name). That’s why I think he needs to have a stern talking-to with his band: with all the power and variety he’s mustering, he deserves a little back in return from his buddies here. While the rhythm section is definitely locked in, and bassist William Tutton even plays a little counterpoint melody during some of the guitar solos, he and drummer, Bob Lee, stay predictable throughout, maybe a little jazzy in a Firehose/Sublime kind of way, but dull as dishwater. Part of the blame goes to the engineering. The snare is way hot in the mix on some songs, and the drums altogether sound uncomfortably live, like when you’re walking past a bar and can hear the thock of the drum kit every time someone opens the door. But when the album works, it really works, like in their cover of Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon,” or the extended jams on the long songs, which probably sound just as good as they will at Alex’s Bar some lucky month in the near future.

Feral Future

Haematic Western Medical Hearkening very, very much back to the Riot Grrrl era of punk (they’ve even opened for screenings of the Kathleen Hanna documentary going round), Feral Future are loud, vicious, Texan, and very personal-is-political, right down to the trigger-warning thoughtfully included with their liner notes about which songs might be particularly disturbing for victims of PTSD. Really, almost any of these songs could trigger terror in the faint of heart, full as they are of pummeling beats and screaming vocals and crushing distortion—the first song had such a gnarly hiss that my dog, Valerie Solanas Collins, came running out from the bed to bark at me that SOMETHING WAS VERY WRONG HERE. Those who’ve read me know I am a 60

staunch feminist, but I’m wary of any punk that claims to be primarily political, since it often can be a smokescreen to hide a lack of musical ideas. And not every note is radical on Haematic. But the execution, especially the singer’s Kathleen Hanna/Mia Zapataesque ability to jump from clean melodicism to blood-curdling screams within the same sentence, is good enough that you’ll forgive them, even if they haven’t reinvented the three-minute punk song.

Derrick Knight Mayan Rain Dance Wiener Sure, I’m upset, even horrified, at this young man’s rather thoughtless appropriation of Native American culture for a pop song (dude, I’m pretty sure the Mayans would never even need a raindance, what with their living in the rainforests of the Yucatan and having access to fresh water in underground cenotes). But Knight is merely following a trend that stretches from the Village People to the VIP tent at Coachella. And anyway, I’m pretty sure Knight is only conjuring the “Mayan Indians” in an attempt to access their alien connection. Knight is also the founder of the MoonPad hostel in downtown L.A., whose very open goal is to eventually plant a hostel on the moon! As the founder of a new business, he doesn’t seem to have had much time to practice his vocals, or to create any complex rhymes for these pop songs that seem to be attempts at hip-hop. But luckily he has enough pitch correction to hit those notes like the aliens he admires, and damnit, the tunes are catchy, even if they do lack all of the things that normally make a catchy pop tune catchy. Derrick, I’m raising a toast to your enthusiasm, and hoping it doesn’t wane as you continue to practice, get better, and start writing good music.

Sashcloth & Axes/ Terminal A

“Oedipus Kiss”/“Girls in Black” split 7” Kiss Kiss What a lovely little piece of darkness to shove into your nighttime turntable rituals! Both bands here evoke early 80s postpunk, pre-industrial electronic madness.

Sashcloth and Axes (really just one guy) go for full Soft Cell immersion by way of the Normal’s “Warm Leatherette.” Terminal A takes a more goth rock approach, blending noir futurism beats with an angry distorted guitar and the screams of the damned. Both sound quite a bit inspired by San Franciscan

the slippery slope between character and costume, and how, like Venom and Spiderman, too much of the latter can eventually consume the former—just think of DEVO, and how, after they appeared in awesome red Energy Domes on the cover of Freedom of Choice, the truth about de-evolution soon took a backseat to what kinds of headgear they’d be wearing next. The reason I haven’t written the article yet is because, honestly, I’m still not sure why the same indignant fate never befell Sun Ra or Ziggy Stardust or even the Mummies—and that’s why I’ve worried, in the past, about my buddy Travis Cthulhu, because I wasn’t quite sure he’d figured it out yet either. For those who have seen the Cthulhus play live, “they” are a one-man band featuring Travis in green or silver monster make-up with tentacles, rhythm boxes, and a whole lot of sci-fi shenanigans going on. If I wasn’t certain that the Cthulhus are Elder Gods, I might assume Travis was about my own age and had lived through the same mid-late 90s epoch of Aquabats, Man… or Astro-man?, Captured by Robots, Ape Has Killed Ape, Gwar, even the re-reboot of Kiss—becostumed bands that all had great music and some real lyrical messages (well, except the Aquabats, though they did start Yo! Gabba Gabba!) but who had a hard time being taken seriously, or moving to darker, more nuanced music once everyone had already associated them with guys in rubber masks throwing stuffed animals at themselves. And if it seems like I’m going off on a tangent and have gotten distracted from the Cthulhus’ actual music, well, I think that’s exactly my point: a point that the Cthulhus seem to be learning on this disc. The Cthulhus have always been able to make raw, ethereal music with poignant lyrics sprinkled with dystopian sci-fi philosophy, like distant transmissions from a doomed species picked up too late by humans in a scorched solar system.

But this one has more mystery than monster movie about it. The name “Lethargy” is a misnomer, because clearly he’s put a lot of thought into getting this one right, from the tone of the lyrics to the tone of the mastering. The more I listen to this, the more it scares the shit out of me, especially at 3:59 a.m., when I can’t turn it off even when I want to. This isn’t a new formula for him— there’s still a lot of echo and simple guitar scratches and delay and noise and bent keyboard notes—but they seem to be there to hit home a feeling rather than because they evoke sci-fi elements. I think this is intentional on the Cthulhus’ part, and I think he/ they just might be getting closer to cracking the character versus costume code, and I think it’s helping me to figure out a little bit of the secret too. Is it concept versus conceit?

Or motivation versus concept? Or emotion

versus motive? I think the secret is in here, somewhere in the songs with names like “Thoerem 3.6 (Version 2)” and “Subduction Zone” and “A Pockmarked Tomorrow.” I’m going to find it. Even Ziggy Stardust eventually needed to find one damn song that would make him break down and cry.

Rainman

Digiphrenia Porch Party Records Be careful listening to this album at home alone, late at night, or even when driving after dark—there’s a tragic melancholy to Rachel Rufrano’s voice that can make you feel desperately empty, more alone than actually being alone. Not that this is a collection of pining ballads. The majority of the tempos here are at least at “saunter” speed, if not exactly a gallop. Yet despite the more or less standard rock combo of drums, bass, and a couple guitars (take or leave the upright bass and piano), not to mention an almost Beatles-esque sense of harmony when they want it, Rainman resist every opportunity to fully commit to a compressed pop gem the way, say, the Blank Tapes might. There’s always something so live about these recordings, whether it’s the decay of a snare drum, or a bright trembling guitar tone that sounds like an Everly Brother might be playing it, or simply the echo on Rufrano’s voice, which makes her sound like she’s in the room with you… but maybe she’s backing away. It all adds up to a sound that feels folky, despite the omnipresence of electric six-strings, and with a pit of loneliness at its core. It makes you suspect that seemingly triumphant characters are fooling themselves: is the trans-child announcing his gender change in “Same Old Me” really so secure in his new identity? In fact, I suspect that the cold, quiet storyteller in the album’s final cut, “Downtown Long Beach,” with its gripping depiction of homelessness and sad bars, is the real identity of Rainman once the saunter and effects pedals are stripped away.

Peg/Hand Habits

Living With Abbreviation/Small Shifts split 10” Eschatone A half a decade ago, a band of high-schoolers called Avi Buffalo showed up on the scene and charmed everybody with their mature songwriting and the seemingly limitless guitar genius of singer Avi Zahner-Isenberg— but drummer Sheridan Riley has proven herself to be just as much a prodigy, going on to lay down drums for difficult adult groups like the psychedelic wunderkind 5-Track and generally keeping herself busy. This EP shows her returning to some Buffalo-esque material, this time built around her own guitar work. While the layers of indie guitar are pretty impressive, “Abbreviation” is an apt description: I’d like to hear more! I like the punk distortion and Meddle-esque folk atmospherics and even what sounds like Richard Hell ballad-type stuff. But she’s not yet as good at hiding her vocal limitations as was Avi, and the first and last tracks take a while to get going. But it’s a great freshman effort. The B-side is by Hand Habits, who ALBUM REVIEWS

continue the Meddle theme but with a little less chutzpah. If I were them, I wouldn’t get in the habit of pitting myself against Riley: their pining, sad, folky songs come off a little dull by comparison. But taken alone, they’ve got enough chill in them to dunk your heart in ice on a hot day.

Christian Lee Hutson

The Hurt and the Natural Charm Daytrotter For nearly a decade, Horseshack Studio and its related website, Daytrotter, have been vying to be the Peel Sessions of Illinois. Making new, one-of-a-kind recordings of existing songs by every artist who comes by, they take their recording methods to the extreme, bested only by NPR’s Tiny Desk Series for minimalism and lack of pretense. Hutson, no stranger to playing without pretense (he was in the Driftwood Singers, by god!) nails it here with a couple songs from his album Yeah Okay I Know, which he’s been slowly revealing song by song on Bandcamp, etc. each month for the duration of 2014. Fans of Hutson will recognize that a few songs here are sneak previews of yet-to-be-released ditties from that album. My favorite is “Dirty Little Cheat,” a song so fragile and haunting it could be from the Bert Jansch or Roy Harper catalog. Hutson somehow makes the cheater not to be evil, but a doomed sinner, one to be pitied for her inability to love. Even the song’s structure gets lonely, the guitar picking eventually reduced to just idle, almost inaudible strumming, before Hutson comes back strong with the kind of woe that sounds almost indistinguishable from tired frustration, the kind a man who tours as much as Hutson does must truly understand.

Ssleaze

SS Daddy (cassette) self-released Inspired, in part, by Justin Pearson’s All Leather project, and in part by the fact that every electro disco dance band of note ever ever ever has been pretty gay, Ssleaze exist to make sure the world keeps dancing nervously to gay men shouting lyrics about sex fetishes over square, mean, minimal beats. There’s something angrier on this cassette than you might expect from the live shows, where singer Andrew Sean Flores usually revs up the crowd with sexy/slutty outfits and a whole lotta smiles. I guess the live show NEEDS that to keep it human; without the visual sexiness, songs with titles like “Gash” and “No Shame” sound less like enthusiastic consent and more like brutal assault. Kyle Souza, of Narwhal Party/Stab City/the Icarus Line, no doubt helps in that regard—he, too, usually tempers his, well, temper onstage with boas and fey facial expressions. But here, his vocals (and he sings a fair amount on this cassette) have the same crushing noise-punk energy we’ve come to love in his guitar bands.

SoftSpot

MASS self-released This band kind of lives up to its name, at least vocally—though she can chew the words ALBUM REVIEWS

when she wants to, singer Sarah Kinlaw’s favorite style is the ethereal soprano, a voice you’ll recognize from your nearest 80s goth chanteuse (in my case, I’m going towards Gitane Dimone). Musically, this is definitely a guitar band, with sheens of shoegaze accented but never dueling with the orchestral keyboard synths beneath. All the players are good, and the time signatures are a little more jazzy/complex than you’d expect from the typical chillwave/neo-darkwave/beach goth thing the kids of 2009 might be listening to. But that’s because beneath all the stuff you’ll find familiar here is something unique, something visceral and driving, even if it never stops trying to BUM YOU OUT.

Hillstomp

Portland, Ore Fluff & Gravy Records Something akin to our own Restavrant, Hillstomp have been doing the bombastic just-drums-and-guitar blues thing for well over a decade. So why have you never heard of them? Not as versatile as the White Stripes, nor as full-throttle riveting as original blues duos like Doo Rag (and too young to claim either as their descendants), these guys have generally moved crowds live, but maybe they needed a hook to stand out in the same way that, say, Bob Log III or their hero RL Burnside used to do. After a fouryear hiatus to think about it, Hillstomp have come up with this: an adult album that strays from the template by injecting banjo elements that strive for pathos rather than power. On previous releases, they’d almost used the banjo as a novelty, not even bothering to write a script for songs like “Banjo Song #1.” Guitarist Henry Kammerer still hasn’t turned into Earl Scruggs, but he’s replaced some of the stompers with songs like “Undertow” that chill rather than kill. There are a few tunes on here with ill-advised guitar distortion and other Hank Williams III type mistakes. But when the boys stick to murder ballad/bluegrass style/2 a.m. honkytonk numbers, playing open chords and slowing down so we can hear the tears—in other words, when they cease to be bluesy— they bring something to the table that even bands with full handfuls of members often can’t.

Chrome

Feel It Like a Scientist King of Spades A lot of old-timers will put out an album late in their careers completely devoid of the songwriting and tastefulness of their glory days, but which they think we’ll like MORE because they now have the freedom to indulge in their excesses. “Finally! [NEW ALBUM] is how I’ve always wanted [OLD BAND] to sound!” But spacey proto-punkers Chrome have always let indulgent melodies and mayhem seep out from the edges of their minimalist guitar riffs (and vice versa). Perhaps that’s why this new album actually succeeds at being, if not the best thing Chrome has ever done, certainly one of the best albums to come out this year, more manic and psychedelic and spacey and thoughtful than many of the bands I

saw at Austin Psych Fest this year who have followed in Chrome’s wake. Chrome now features only Helios Creed from the band’s heyday, but since the death of founder Damon Edge in 1995, Creed has been collecting a “stellar” line-up of space cadets, with names like “Aleph Omega” and “Anne Dromeda,” who play with instruments and ideas with equal precision. These guys have some potent musique concrète powers, using field recordings and random voice shit and bizarre electronic elements in ways that feel frenetic rather than goofy. And oh, the tunes! Some songs sound industrial, in a guitar-based way. Some sound like 80s Iggy Pop, too cool in their growl to allow any howl. Some are pure noise strung over drum beats. Some are played backwards from how recorded, some sound like spaceships turning on, and some sound like the Purple People Eater hosting a party for the cast of Earth Girls Are Easy. Quite a few sound like Ian Curtis replacing Johnny Rotten in a version of Public Image Limited that does only Hawkwind covers... actually if there’s one big take-away you’ll have from this album, it’s that Lux Vibratus is a killer bassist who could rumble with Jah Wobble at any time. Whether or not you’re already a fan of Chrome, if you play this once, you’ll repeat the experiment.

The Bongoloids Ft. The Xanadu Sound

Fig. 10 ShanGORIL la Records What a cryptic release! I listened to this for days, thinking, falsely, that it was the Bongoloidz project by Fredo Ortiz, who plays percussion with the Julie Ruin and is an all-around awesome weirdo in the vein of Bobb Bruno. Turns out there is a SECOND Bongoloids, this time from New Orleans, but they might really be another project called Earl Long, or something (even the album title varies depending on who you ask). Like Ortiz, these are some weirdo jazzbos, though here it manifests itself more with strange, monotonous Firehose-esque jazz guitar chords chiming in endlessly over ambient strangeness and musique concrète.

Somehow it all works, though Side A, with tracks like “Germs Again Again” and “Pickled Okra (Is Cool)” might be better for revving you up, whereas Side B is definitely the cool-down side, more found sound and softness. I think this would enhance any drug experience, and vice versa, though I’m looking forward to using this as a “controlled challenge” during my next attempted one-night-stand. I definitely recommend the vinyl, but I think you can only get it at their bandcamp page: http://shangorillarecords.bandcamp.com/album/fig-10 (P.S. Am I a fuddy-duddy for getting annoyed when bands have no Facebook presence?

Answer: Fuck you.) (P.P.S. Sorry, Fredo, if I missed my shot at a review of you! Blame it on voodoo.)

The Morning Birds

BLOOM self-released This folky duo has all the right stuff lined

up for international fame … and the sheer talent doesn’t hurt, neither. My favorite track on this remix EP might actually be the original: track one is jazzy in an almost 60s pop way, like something Sade would have kept under her pillow as a little girl. But the remixes are pretty cool, especially the Dimond Saints version, which adds futuristic spy mystery via some insistent electro beats, and Knife & Fork adds some almost Pizzicato 5 flavor, like if jungle was based on calypso beats and slowed down to the speed of bossa nova.

Extra Classic

Showcase Burger/Nopal Yes, I feel white guilt for loving this blueeyed soul dub reggae band more than most current Jamaican artists. But this album continues the sheer quality of their last. It’s a little less vinyl-groove skuffy and maybe not as psychedelic, but the concept—recreating the 7” dub B-side for each track on the album—is a great one, and works even when you play the album straight through.

Piss Test

self-titled Jonny Cat Records This is fun, fast, frenetic punk, so bombastic that the disc plays at 45 RPM despite being a 12”. Singer Zach Brooks has paid his dues in some of Portland’s best bands, like the Red Dons and the Soda Pop Kids—it’s hard to top a resumé like that, but this is definitely a wake-ya-up LP of pure punk pleasure, with songs about suicidal 12 year olds and Mussolini that will make your glad they recorded this clean enough to hear the vocals (but dirty enough to, you know, be righteous). I love the clear, thick vinyl, and the tough silkscreened cover, which survived being shoved back and forth in the fucking overhead baggage on my goddamn U.S. Airways flight back from fucking Portland.

Fuck U.S. Airways.

Sex Scheme

Thruster Stale Heat For someone who once carved the word “Cliché” into my chest as an homage to X-Ray Spex, I’m pretty jaded about modern punk rock bands. As a style, it often bores me, and as an ethos, well, didn’t that die out with Sid Vicious and Darby Crash? But fuck, there is something to Sex Scheme that is as compelling as all those old bands. It’s not just the rebellion of songs with titles like “Amputee” or “Cocaine,” and it’s not just the speed or volume; actually, this is kinda slow. There is a nihilism to this third-generation Robert Quine string-ringin’ that can not be denied, and the singer (Ben? Rusty? Jason? Tell us who sings, you FUCKS) has a snarling pain in his voice so sour and just emotionally awful, it sounds like he’s about to stick a knife through his arm. I’m scared of these guys as much as I am scared for them. Like a Bizarro-world version of the Fastbacks, I think the drummer writes all the songs but doesn’t sing on them. P.S. Someone(s) in this band was in Mountain Cult.

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man is moved more by the need for catharsis than by the desire to “show up” her competitors. And perhaps that’s a good thing. This new album does show her attempting to evolve musically from where La Sera were a few years ago. But it does so in small stylistic flourishes rather than in true leaps and bounds, something like a latter-day Ramones album—she and her bandmates have added some extra solos and faster drums, but they’re superimposed right over the same song structures. At the end of the day, most of this album still seems to be about bad relationships and navigating generalized life obstacles. Sure, Goodman can still make these stories very compelling! But a part of me wishes that La Sera was attempting to evolve as a band in the ways the people she’s not competing with have done in recent years.

—D.M. Collins

keyboards, electronic sound effects and downbeat guitars. Cry Is for the Flies has a punk-rock crust and an art-rock heart. “The Gold Chair Ate the Fire Man” grapples with the question of God’s existence, and the psychokeyboard-driven “Boulders Love Over Layers of Rock” makes reference to “self-proclaiming vultures.” There’s even a guest cameo from the elder statesman of punk, Henry Rollins, who delivers an unnerving monologue titled “Moment of Guilt.” The overall effect is uneven, but it’s certainly engaging and surprising.

—Jason Gelt

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LOW LEAF AKASHAALAY Fresh Selects

AMY HAGEMEIER

LE BUTCHERETTES Cry Is for the Flies Nadie Sound

In the 90s, Le Butcherettes would have been categorized as “alternative,” that odd, uncomfortable amalgamation of art rock, punk rock and prog rock that publicists dreamed up to supplant the previously dominant term for nonTop-40 music: college rock. Le Butcherettes don’t fit comfortably into today’s wilting indie rock climate—the new album is a little too rocking for that. But neither is their sophomore platter gritty enough to be called punk. Cry Is for the Flies inhabits its own creative space, which is a good thing; things that are tough to fit into boxes are often more exciting.

That’s not to say Le Butcherettes don’t have their influences. At times, lead singer, Teri Gender Bender, evokes the alternately high-pitched and husky wail of P.J. Harvey or Karen Oh of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and occasionally the brazen vocal stylings of an early Siouxsie Sioux. The ominous instrumentation lurks and slithers along behind her, a dark stew of

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Through the marriage of Sanskrit and Tagalog, Low Leaf uses her latest album’s title to message a spiritual offering to her native Philippines.

AKASHAALAY also represents a creative peak for Low Leaf after several years of intriguing listeners with amazingly intricate beats that have often utilized her expertise as a piano player, guitarist and harpist.

The Fresh Selects release is available on cassette and digital, two disparate formats that also reflect the analog and digital alchemy Low Leaf often employs to get her message into sound. “Bahay Kubo” is a reinterpreted Filipino folk song about eating your vegetables. “Ascension” sounds most like Low Leaf’s earlier instrumental beat work. But the moments that shine hardest and resonate strongest are original vocal songs like “Rise Up” and “Set Me Free.” Both those joints fill my head with colors. They’re the most modern incarnation of the American singer-songwriter archetype—a classically trained and self-taught daughter of immigrants singing songs about a quest for liberty that is spiritual, historical and personal.

AKASHAALAY is ambitious and intentional, drawing the audience into a world that honors the past and aspires to a future that’s sustainable through music steps into power.

—sweeney kovar

TOM CHILD

MARC MARON

Thinky Pain Comedy Central Records One might be forgiven for not being aware of comedian Marc Maron prior to his pioneering podcast “WTF” rising to iTunes chart dominance.

By Maron’s own admission, his success as a stand-up was frequently hampered by his seeming pathological tendencies to burn bridges, hold grudges and indulge in crippling resentment towards the success of those he deemed undeserving. Consequently, his album Thinky Pain, a recording of his stand-up set at New York’s Village Gate, is necessary listening for anyone more familiar with Maron the podcaster than Maron the comedian. While undeniably funny in his podcast, the stage is where Maron’s skills as a stand-up become most apparent. His set feels intimate in a way that few other comedians are able to achieve, coming across more like a conversation with a good friend over dinner than a theatrical performance, and it’s this accessibility that encourages an audience to empathize with him as he analyzes his more difficult emotional journeys. This honesty becomes particularly moving during the emotional core of the album, “Why I Don’t Like Sports,” in which he recounts being a non-athletic, overweight child forced into Little League by his mother. It’s simultaneously moving, relatable and hilarious—all of the qualities that have allowed Maron to cultivate a highly devoted audience after decades of career uncertainty.

—Tom Child

ANNA B

THE MUFFS Whoop Dee Doo Burger/Cherry Red

Along with some notable others, L.A. punk legends the Muffs spent the 90s making the rock establishment eat the archaically stupid idea of a “girl band.” This fifth full-length comes a decade after Really Really Happy and 23 years after the group’s formation in another America entirely. With canny self-awareness, the Muffs opted for “fun museum piece” instead of retooling their sound, as lesser bands sometimes attempt with disastrous results. “Weird Boy Next Door” is a nastily funny diatribe about that smelly specimen found surfing every third couch in what’s left of suburbia. “Take a Take a Me” is Slade-like romantic maneuvering and “Cheezy” a putdown of the kind of semi-loveable egomaniac that’s peopled the earth since well before invention of jangle pop. Much of the record drips with a kind of late-twentieth-century post-teen venom that might jar sensitive listeners in this age of proudly YouTubed death threats. Kim Shattuck’s vocals are as winsomely scabrous as ever and not a bit curdled from last year’s brief residency as Kim Deal’s replacement in the Pixies. Rude, crude and adept, the Muffs will probably pick up fans from this record.

—Ron Garmon

shy away from calling out people for their idiocy and greed. Take the track “Doug Stamper (Advice Raps)” in which he tells white rappers not to use their stupid “hood voice,” tells LeBron to quit steroids, and even tells paid porn site subscribers to try YouPorn for free… though, of course, they should “pay the fee” for his own tunes! Hypocrisy? Nay … Mike’s narrator may be unreliable, but purposefully so, just one more tool to help us glean insights about our media-driven culture and the devices we use to propagate our tomfoolery. Despite what at times might seem like almost whimsical production choices, like cute little acoustic guitars, it all ties in to an overarching theme. I’m still not quite sure what that is! But when a rapper chooses to have his beats get out of sync, you know he’s doing some serious artsy ninja stuff.

And you should pay attention.

—D.M. Collins

AMY HAGEMEIER

BUZZ OSBORNE

This Machine Kills Artists Ipecac

courtesy artist

OPEN MIKE EAGLE Dark Comedy Mello Music Group

Confession time (and I’m ashamed of this): despite reviewing albums in the past that Open Mike Eagle was on, I kind of had no idea who he was until last year, when he appeared on the Hellfyre Club Dorner vs. Tookie collaboration, and his complaints about rappers saying “bitch” too often impressed me. He was both moral and awkward, two qualities not normally boasted about in rap lyrics, but which are prominent themes in Dark Comedy, Mike’s seventh album. So too is nerdiness—Mike gleefully references comic books, Seinfeld jokes, and even They Might Be Giants! And he doesn’t

Those with only a passing knowledge of the Melvins and King Buzzo might associate him strictly with heavy music—but the deep-dish fans know that this guy has been pretty prolific in the last three decades both within and without the Melvins, filling in information in many of the niches along the x/y axis of rock and roll.

Here Buzzo goes for a folk thing— for those few of our readers who didn’t already figure it out, “This Machine Kills Artists” is in fact a reference to Woody Guthrie’s guitar, which said “This Machine Kills Fascists,” and which he carried with him until the day he died in a hospital, hooked up to machines. What’s odd about this album is that it’s actually NOT so much a folk album, but a rock/ country album without accompaniment, and not with open chords or other call-and-response finger-pickery that you’d typically expect to hear from a solo artist playing acoustic. Nope!

ALBUM REVIEWS

Buzzo is playing chords, some of which are kinda metal-ly, even Metallica’s Load-esque. And that sounds terrible on paper. So why am I enjoying it so much? Maybe it’s because he’s picked JUST the right chords, and that the sweet swish of his fingers over the frets somehow just feels right? Or maybe it’s the political (and personalis-political) nature of songs like “Rough Democracy.” But this has the feel of something naked but at the same time completely unashamed, even bold—something like PJ Harvey’s Dry demos of two decades ago. This album kills preconceived notions.

—D.M. Collins

ANNA B

THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART Days of Abandon Yebo Music

Indie pop, the eternal nowsound of L.A.’s near-eastside, may conjure a Silver Lake of the mind just about anywhere, but this New York–based collective shows more heart than anything heard along that end of Sunset Boulevard. Belong, the band’s 2011 sophomore full-length, grazed the middle reaches of Billboard’s Top 200 album chart, and this follow-up is an ultramelodic steeping in the Cat Stevens tune barrel. I kid, but Days of Abandon is as keen and ultimately cleansing a listen as Teaser and the Firecat and the kind you’ll want to press on friends without having to explain the whole Salman Rushdie business.

It’s simply impossible to sustain heaviness of mood after hearing “Kelly” (featuring Jen Goma of A Sunny Day in Glasgow singing ravishing lead) or fail to withdraw in to romantic reverie during “Beautiful You.” The album closes out with “The Asp at My Chest,” as frontman Kip Berman leads us all into the bright sunshine of a better today amid tastefully arranged bombast and near-manic cheer.

—Ron Garmon ALBUM REVIEWS

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PINK MOUNTAINTOPS Get Back Jagjaguwar

With his semi-solo project, Pink Mountaintops, Stephen McBean (from Black Mountain) guides us through the rock ‘n’ roll landscape.

On Get Back, it’s to the late 70s and back again: the Bruce Springsteen–esque feel of “New Teenage Mutilation,” the early punk-like pounding of “The Second Summer of Love,” the strange and filthy female rap verse on “North Hollywood Microwaves”... But mostly what Pink Mountaintops is doing is not settling for a stifled and easy modern sound. On a whole, the album is very strong—a ton of hooks and potent melodies. McBean has always seemed to be in the driver’s seat, but on this album it also feels like he is trying to find something for himself.

—Daniel Sweetland

courtesy artist

QUEENS D.LIGHT

California Wildflower self-released There’s something refreshing about putting “psychedelic” and “spiritual” next to “homegrown” and “hood” when talking about Oakland’s Queens D.Light and her debut LP, California Wildflower. This daughter of a Queen and an L.A. Crip brings Ma’at to the block with intelligent, vulnerable, unapologetic and aspirational music. Not too many other rap albums can pull off a journey that goes from hood stories to shroom trips, love lullabies, posse cuts and back. Supported by

her Them Hellas crew and close affiliates like Ras_G, sonically the album’s in the spirit of 90s heirlooms like Digable Planets and Souls of Mischief. Queen meets her blunted production like an East Bay–bred Roxanne Shanté who did a thesis on X-Clan. She’s raw and earnest in a way that belies the vivid Town imagery and charm that exudes strongest after repeated listens. This is pro-Black positive rap, not as kitsch but as conviction. Trite but true, it’s a breath of fresh air. Have you seen her videos? She’s fly as hell. What you gonna do when the Queen comes for you?

—sweeney kovar

GNUCCA

EMMA RUTH RUNDLE Some Heavy Ocean Sargent House

Thought you could just sneak off to the beach this summer, eh? Here comes Emma Ruth Rundle, the resident spell-caster from Nocturnes, Red Sparowes, and Marriages, with a solo album dedicated to creating more dread about the ocean than Jaws in 1975. She does it not by scaring you away, but by luring you in. Everything from the mysterious woman in the sand on the album’s cover to the songs’ echoey vocals that nearly lose coherency as words to the aphorisms that cling to the sentences in her stories, will make you want to wade deeper and deeper into this album—but you’ll soon realize that this undertow is not a fucking game, and Rundle has no qualms about scraping you along the jagged horrors at the bottom of her soul. You might expect an album with songs like “Haunted Houses” and “Savage Saint” to pull from the atmospheric paganism of post-metal Red Sparowes. But Rundle keeps things calm, using pretty much an acoustic guitar, with a lone synth note here or a distorted e-string bounce there— imagine her work with Nocturnes, but even more alone and more hopeless and long, long gone, like if one day the tide pulled away and never came back. Forget that old Growlers album title; Beach Goth starts right here.

—D.M. Collins

Echo Curio, dormant since a 2010 dispute with the city over ordinances, permits and general nonsense, is being reinvented. Four summers ago, this vibrant spot on Sunset was the center of our scene. Curated by Justin McInteer and Grant Capes, the Curio was a magnet for underground artists and musicians who valued participation and community over merely showing their work or playing their songs.

It was “the living room of Echo Park,” in the words of L.A. RECORD’s own Charles Mallison, and its closure was lamented as a harbinger of future disappointments. Indeed, the ensuing years have seen the demise of other important DIY institutions without replacement.

So when I heard that Rhea Tepp and Sarah Cisco were planning Echo Chamber, a three-month residency in the old Echo Curio location, I was filled with nostalgic joy! July, the first month of the residency, will tap into that nostalgia.

Events include retrospective storytelling from Capes, FMLY’s Cameron Rath, and documentarian Amy Darling. I happen to be hosting a July 27 show highlighting “Early Works,” featuring visual artists like Sean Solomon and Colin Ambulance alongside musicians including Emily Lacy, So Many Wizards’ Nima Kazerouni, and Post-Life’s Brianna Meli.

Nostalgia, however, is not Echo Chamber’s mission. While July’s theme is “the past,” August is focused on “the present” and September is “the future.” Most events are organized around making new things, not looking back. According to Cisco, Echo Chamber aims to be “a pop-up co-op ... a fully collaborative headquarters for L.A.’s independent art and music community.” Through events like a WOMEN group poetry reading, a series of installations by (L.A. RECORD contributor) Walt! Gorecki, and a month-long series of live Wednesday morning broadcasts on KXLU, the aim is to inspire creators to be creative together.

To that end, Big Joy will be hosting a twelve-hour zine challenge accompanied by a twelve-hour band challenge in which a group writes and records an entire album. DUM DUM zine will use the space to construct its next issue, L.A. Zine Fest will be making its next “Guide to L.A.” there, the Women’s Center for Creative Work is hosting craft workshops, and Tiny Splendor will be teaching people how to use a RISOgraph screen printing copy machine.

And though there will be an opening celebration with bands at neighboring Lot 1, Echo Chamber won’t be a place for traditional live music but rather a re-imagination of what a space for the arts community can offer. “I value the connections I make with people at a live music show,” Tepp told me, “but those moments are often lacking the environment to create and share ideas together. The desire for these connections exists and is incredibly powerful. I want people to put down their smartphones for a moment, to share stories of what the creative process is like and take time to connect.”

Fortunately for all of us, that creative spirit will be alive again from July to September at 1519 Sunset Blvd. in Echo Park.

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TOM CHILD

SPARE PARTS FOR BROKEN HEARTS

ing vocal harmonies and crunchy guitars of Sarah Green and Laurita Guaico, the wild yet rhythmically precise drumming of Tosha Jones, channelling Nevermind-era Dave Grohl, enhancing the emotional sincerity of Green’s songwriting. In an era of music characterized so frequently by pastiche delivered with a sly wink, it’s refreshing to hear a band utilize and own their influences this sincerely.

—Tom Child

I Love You self-released

Long Beach’s Spare Parts for Broken Hearts’ second EP, I Love You, is informed by 90s alt-rock—and listening to I Love You is a reminder that for each of that era’s musical missteps, there were bands making music that was vital and exciting. Sure, Candlebox, but there was also Nirvana, and it’s the more dynamic bands that Spare Parts for Broken Hearts recall. The band leans more toward the Breeders (particularly on the revved-up “Born Again”) than Bush, not to say I Love You doesn’t have its share of head-rocking anthems (see the plaintive “Say When”) but rather that the trio has the taste to deploy those missiles discriminately. Single, “In the Glow of Ashes,” encapsulates the band’s strengths: the interplay between the confident, haunt-

66

DAVE VAN PATTEN

TA’RAACH One Two EP LOVETURL

Like a glitch in the matrix, Ta’Raach re-emerges with the disruptive One Two EP. The Detroit producer and MC has had a long career that began in the same scene that birthed Jay Dee and Slum Village. Along the way, however, he has evolved from a boom-bap master to a force that looms over hip-hop and materializes when most needed. And

we need Raach now. The EP begins very much as an interruption with static and frequency modulation. The twelve-minute project has eight parts presented as one track and Raach’s rhymes are anything but linear. The bars are almost code—modern sonic hieroglyphs activated when they reach proper receptors. “Xhriller” sounds straight supernatural; Raach raps like poltergeist. When old classic “The Big Bang Theory” gets electronic refurbishing, it’s clear Raach has always been a step ahead. The crown jewel is his bizarro-world remake of “T.R.O.Y.,” presented here as “Reminisce.” Raach flips the concept of Pete and CL’s classic to pay tribute to two of Detroit’s fallen grassroots heroes.

The way he programs the strings on the beat sounds like the energy of MOP channeled through an orchestra. This is the music that Morpheus would ride to in the Nebuchadnezzar.

Don’t step in if you can’t handle life outside the machine.

—sweeney kovar

AMY HAGEMEIER

WHITE FENCE For the Recently Found Innocent Drag City

Tim Presley has come a long way since his days as a member of the indie-psychedelic act Darker My Love.

As a solo artist, his sound has sharpened into a diamond-edged take on 60s rock ‘n’ roll. He collaborated with Ty Segall on Hair in 2012, resulting in a righteous melding of psychedelic and garage rock interests. The two collude once more for White Fence’s latest LP, with Segall twiddling the knobs at his famous backyard studio, lending his talents to some of the drum tracks, and even assembling the final mixes. Presley also moved from John Dwyer’s Castle Face Records to big-time Drag City, which lets you know he’s poised to blow up just like Ty did. What really counts is that For the Recently Found Innocent is a catchy, ambitious and energetic album. Presley serves up echoing falsetto, jangly and fuzzy guitars, and lyrical concerns straight off a Chocolate Soup for Diabetics comp. Songs move from dreamy “The Recently Found” to the folk-rock anthem “Anger! Who Keeps You Under?” to the mellow stroll of “Sandra (When the Earth Dies).” It’s charmingly authentic in its vintage sensibilities, but unmistakably the product of its own time.

—Jason Gelt

BRIAN BROOKS

DEVON WILLIAMS Gilding the Lily Slumberland

Williams has always been a man with a singular pop vision; it’s to his credit that he’s been able to achieve it. The problem is people expect him to grow into a new vision when he hasn’t fully explored this one. I’m shocked no one has picked up that this is a concept album taking Alice in Wonderland as its source. EVERY song—“Rabbit Hole” to “Pendulum” to “Puzzle”—is a reference.

“Gilding the Lily” means forcing beauty when what’s beneath is wilting. Perhaps Williams is confessing that his album’s echoey pop is itself ornamentation? Or maybe the lily in question, and this album, is purity itself. There’s something childlike in Williams’ approach. But look closely at his wide eyes—he might just be three moves ahead of us.

—D.M. Collins

ALBUM REVIEWS

zig zags self-titled LP (In the Red) You know how it goes with a band like Zig Zags—too weird for the punks, too punk for the weirdos and far too unwilling to cut their hair or wear a shirt with sleeves to even interface with the rest of society. So welcome home to my column, dudes—my garbage is your garbage. This is Zig Zags’ monster debut LP, recorded (perfectly) with Ty Segall and sent to crash land on a strange and hostile alien world … that just happens to be called EARTH! This is punk, thrash and hard rock as banned by the PMRC with lyrics as (or even about) horror movies—like line-by-line retellings of (I think) John Carpenter’s The Fog and the cult mess Psychomania, which provokes lines like, “So you think I’m alive / cuz you heard it on the radio / I was buried / I was buried with my motorcycle! / … / don’t give a shit / I killed myself to be born again!” I’m not sociologically qualified to explain why, but they make serious magic out of half-mangled retelling-slash-reactions to trash media—it’s like your playground friend trying to explain some forbidden R-rated movie to you, and making it even better through misunderstanding.

Spiritually, Zig Zags are somewhere between bands like the Gizmos and the Weirdos, true freaks that saw society crack a bit around ’77 and clawed their way through—every song on here could easily start with, “Attention, all you humans!” Actually, that’s the whole vibe of Zig Zags—everything that crept in through the cracks and did all the damage it could, before the teachers and parents could grab it away. Musically—besides “Down The Drain,” which is very Wipers circa Youth Of America—Zig Zags are like early Metallica convinced they’re the early Misfits, when they’re really dudes in detention rehearsing in their heads for Bonehead Crunchers Vol. 6 sometime in the future. Ultimate rippers, if you wanna cheat: “Magic,” which should be a 45, “I Am The Weekend,” which is like Dictators via Testors, and “Voices Of The Paranoid,” which is a bugged-out Sabbath-ized finale. Up there with Jack Name for get-meoff-this-planet rocker of the year so far.

m. Geddes gengras Ishi (Leaving) Gengras’ previous album Test Leads split itself down the middle with two Terry Riley-esque cascades of iterative euphoria and then two more discordant, maybe even insectile pieces.

But newest Ishi is less two sides of his synthesizer’s story and more of a story in itself—a thesis, conflict, and epilogue, as he told one interviewer. And it’s named for California’s famous Ishi, the last of the quote/unquote ALBUM REVIEWS

“wild Indians,” who was captured starving in the woods in 1911. So there are deep things generating the power in these generated ambient pieces, which all share a certain Gas-eous atmosphere while dealing with momentum and tension in connected and unexpected ways. Second track “Passage” (the conflict, or “Poppy Nogoodcancomeofthis,” maybe?) is where the ocean rolls in at night and stated epilogue “Threshold” feels more to me like actual passage. There’s a tidal relentlessness as “Threshold” and Ishi end—by 11:55, presence and absence are slipping past each other at a tectonic, subsonic level. It’s bottomless from its very beginning and anxious and euphoric by turns at waveforms break and dissolve into each other.

MATTHEWDAVID In My World (Brainfeeder) In My World starts with couple turntable swipes at Zappa-style lowrider sweet soul, and then the future beams on in, materialing pixel by distorted pixel. The production here (as everywhere in In My World) is maximal, versatile and absolutely confident, and it’s all dedicated to making the kind of love song where there’s no such thing as too much. Matthewdavid is fully committed here, and when he goes over the top—which he loves to do, probably with a big ol’ grin—you’re going with him: “In my world we’re rockin’ / in my world non-stop / … / don’t try to fight the enlightenment!” Or maybe let’s examine the exactly appropriate reverb on: “OUTER SPACE IS WHERE I WANT TO KNOW YOU!” World is futurepast funk-soul that fits as well on Brainfeeder as it would on a shockingly ambitious Beck remix or a lost Animal Collective session, with direct ties to every electronically inclined iconoclast currently awaiting deluxe import reissue. (This Heat, thinking of you!) Part of the reason you (or I) will love this record is that this record loves itself, which doesn’t always work in music or real life but man—this is personality as art so just embrace it. “Singing Flats” and “West Coast Jungle Juke” would be killer singles; “Flats” is a space-bass Low Endfriendly song with tuned drums and a synthesizer riff that Egyptian Lover would love, and “Jungle Juke” is the unabashed smasher/keytar shredout. Sometimes he sings—at his best, in a Lifetones-like robo-deadpan that comes out like sunlight through clouds—and sometimes he raps but all of this comes from a pure and personal place. Get this—it’ll secretly teach your other records to be cooler.

Habibi is like Girls In The Garage plus Girls At Our Best, produced by Joe Meek in one of those little closets under the stairs. Closer “Tomboy” has got the charm here—I can’t tell if the tomboy is just good-bad or truly evil, but these are clever, precise lyrics and the song is as minimal (and therefore powerful) as it can get while keeping all the catchy parts alive. There’s a Vaselines-style wit—they sing sweetly but they’re sharp. Like: “Gone Like Yesterday:” “She’s wrong … to the right people.” Truly heavy. “Far From Right” is another winner, a kiss-off song delivered with hesitation and flattened affect that somehow makes it even stronger. I’m intrigued, which I never get to say. Denney and pals are for sure a circa-Let It Bleed Stones-alike—especially as regards “Live With Me” and nasty habits, discussed here as, “I’m gonna smoooooke dope, everyday!”—but the Stones and a few more drinks get us right into the Dolls et al, so here we go! “Broke” is the best of the rockers, close cousin to L.A.’s crucial gutter-trashers the Joneses, and next up are “Mama’s Got The Blues” and “Hooked,” which sounds like it fell off the back of Too Much To Soon and woke up handcuffed to a Decca Stones B-side. When they get country, it’s in the spirit of jailbird Jerry Jeff Walker, possibly the most criminally demonstrative of that wave of outlaws, but with more of a reedy John Prine voice—especially “Pain Pills,” a “Sam Stone”-y mea culpa about the hole in daddy’s head where all the oxys go. (Also keep in mind that you could take this album as a partied-out Reigning Sound circa Time Bomb High School, and still stagger home happy from the record store.)

Solid record and born for a dive bar jukebox, if any exist anymore.

MASSENGER Girl Glass EP (Porchcore) This is a punk band who’ve heard a lot more than just punk records, and who took the Avengers cover of “Paint It Black” and decided to find out how much farther into the dark they could get. Sometimes, especially when the guitar leads keep on going and the chanting starts, this gets into Destroy All Monsters territory—a good place to be, as long as you survive. Title track is the instant winner, threeish chords that don’t stop for a song that’s basically nothing but sing-along chorus, even on the outta-nowhere B-52’s-style skyrocket vocal on the bridge. M&Ms, Muffs, Teenage Head—play it over and over, as designed.

B-side starter has garage-y Elevators guitar and lyrics that make me think of the Monks: “Ah, you think like I think!” Maybe I’m a Massenger too? (Associate publisher Kristina chimes in here to shout out early Hole, too.)

Adept, ferocious and political in a way that makes instant sense. Production (by Joel Jerome? He did their LP—which you should get!) recalls Nick ‘Basher’ Lowe’s job on Pure Pop and the Damned LP, which means noisy in an immortal way. Closer “Volcano” hits a spot between VKTMS and Wipers a la “Potential Suicide”—propulsive, deep and a little surreal.

Beach Rats

habibi

“It’s Impossible” EP (Rehab)

DENNEY Y LOS JETS

Three high school kids from Long Beach and their best song is first song “It’s Impossible”— punky hardcore like Negative Trend or Rhino

self-titled (Burger) Mexican Coke (Burger)

39, with some of the delivery of the very early (pre-Pink Flag) Wire. Which means: anxious, unpredictable, simple and brief. And legit!

The other songs are twice as fast and mostly too blurry for it—TSOL bass, a little post-Adolescents OC-punk melody and similarly dissolute teenage vibe, but they never slide into the joyful (if that’s the word) chaos of bands like the Neos. (Cuz if you’re like me you like your hardcore as close to sticking your face in a jet engine as you can get.) Funny shout-out to Taco Bell and promising guitar lead in “Hit The Deck,” tho. If they chase more songs like “It’s Impossible” (and listen to the first two Urinals EPs, the Deadbeats on Dangerhouse and that Outsiders Vital Years reissue) then next EP will come prepped for combat.

THE MOLOCHS Forgetter Blues (Fourth and Orange) Long Beach’s Molochs do 60s garage as reinterpreted on those first Modern Lovers demos— with all the tinny guitar and righteous outsider alienation that demands—plus Peter Perrett/ Only Ones-style vocals and the bedroomdude version of the Loaded-era subway-sound guitar. Recorded just how it should be by Tony Matarazzo formerly of Jail Weddings and the happily disturbing Some Days, Forgetter Blues (now finally on vinyl) plays like an album’s worth of “I’m Straight” for 2014: “I go out with a girl / she buys me drinks / but I can’t buy her anything,” sings Lucas, who has plenty more to say about how tough it is when you just wanna do your own thing. The hit is “Cut The Red Dust,” a particularly desperate rocker with nice sharp Telecaster guitar and shoutalong choruses that’s pointing at the extra clattery UK post-punk bands and includes the fuck-you-if-you-can’t-hang lyric: “I love that table, I love that chair / I punch myself, I don’t care.” And it’s followed by charmer “Crawl Around,” a bummer reincarnation of “Little Black Egg” and a Lou Reed-ified cover of Syd Barrett’s “Wined And Dined” that came out faithful and even great.

THE NATIVES

Last of the Natives (Porch Party)

GREATER CALIFORNIA Long Shadows 7” (Porch Party) Porch Party is working on becoming a goldenage SST—a homegrown down-for-the-people label putting out music by neighbors they believe in. That means I got a huge package of releases of ambitously different types, and that I owe Joel Jasper and Pregnant their own reviews ASAP! First up—the Natives, whose debut LP is meticulous hip-hop a la Diamond D’s Stunts, Blunts and Hip-Hop. MC Nativethoughts has a perfect sense of balance and makes-it-seem-easy flow, and DJ (and I think producer?) Gerrath McDaniels displays really careful and ambitious production on here, flowing from classic to daring to KMD-style unexpectedness as one verse melts into another and perforated with samples political and personal—I’d classify the famous Kool Keith “people don’t steal seltzer water” speech as both. After A-side’s “Native I,” the production opens up and they’re ready to roll. Then Long Beach stalwarts Greater California do a Zombies-via-Smile piano heartbreaker and a gentle Millennium-meets-Spiritualized psych track with brass and full choir—a wall of sound with flowers growing across it.

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ALEXANDER HEIR Interview by Stephen Sigl Illustration by Alexander Heir

Filled with smirking skulls, severed heads and dislodged eyeballs, the demented work of illustrator and clothing designer Alexander Heir continues a longstanding punk art tradition of mining the dark side in pursuit of the truth. Comical, thought-provoking, and sometimes purposefully confounding, Heir’s art betrays influences from Gojin Ishihara to Raymond Pettibon, but has an unhinged vibe of its own. From xeroxed flyers to record jackets to graphic (in both senses of the word) illustrations, Death Is Not the End (Sacred Bones Books 001) collects a mass of Heir’s debrained, disemboweled and disenchanted characters into one disgustingly gooey and virulent volume for all to enjoy. We speak to Heir here about—what else?—commercialism, capitalism and culture.

You hone in on death a lot by combining skeletons and similar imagery with different sorts of cultural iconography—are you saying that death itself is ubiquitous throughout these cultures? That all cultures have a particular fascination with death?

The first thing you said seems to resonate more with me. Death is a great unknown and it represents all the unknowable things in this world. The skeleton that is inside you is like the spirit that’s also inside of you and it has occult—though I don’t really want to use that word—associations. It involves the unknowable, whatever that is, and how a piece of music or art can stir this thing in you that daily life doesn’t necessarily do. I’ve always been interested in medieval culture, Japanese and Tibetan culture, almost all the different cultural representations of good and bad. When I’m working on a piece I often wonder what I have to add to it that would make me want to look at it as an observer, and so many times it comes back to the macabre. I don’t know if that’s just me or if it’s something about society. My work can be commercial, especially in terms of fashion, and it’s interesting to provide a counterpoint to this feel-good advertising bullshit. And to explicitly say that the world is pretty fucked-up and full of terrible things.

There’s a very stark and severe morality in your work that transcends the typical ‘cool’ notions people have of transgressive art. The pieces that seem the most moral also seem to make special use of symmetry.

I feel like those very symmetrical or balanced works can be a good metaphor for what I believe: there’s always two halves to everything 68

and the truth exists somewhere between them.

I was having an interesting discussion about empathy this morning with an acquaintance.

It seems so obvious that it should be a guiding force for everything, but it’s thrown out the window, even by people who claim to be Christian or radical or whatever. They still lack empathy for the other or so-called enemy. I don’t really believe in enemies, which is funny cuz so much of my work is like ‘fuck cops,’ but a lot of that is just rage and frustration. Living in a police state where people are being priced out of their homes or being targeted for the color of their skin … sure, that’s not happening to me, but it’s an important thing to bring up. If I can make morality or empathy be cool, that’s my goal.

Morality and empathy aren’t ‘cool’ now?

I think they are considered ‘cool,’ at least in the underground. DIY mentality and the punk philosophy are rooted in a pretty high set of moral standards. Nobody wants to be told what to do, but if you can make your ideals look sexy, people gravitate towards that.

How does your awareness of realities like police power or systemic inequality affect your ideas and position as an artist?

I strongly believe it is an artist’s job to speak the truth—that doesn’t necessarily mean discussing these issues. There are lots of artists whose work I respect that talk about more personal issues.

In another interview, you said you’d have done just as well buying and reading a bunch of books as you did going to art school. Were you referring to technique or to the tradition and theory behind art?

I meant that in regards to the actual mechanics. Art is a combination of having a skill and then having a thought behind your skill— that’s what separates you from being just a craftsman. I felt there was a big push about the theory and very little about the skill, and that wasn’t the education I was going for at the time. I feel that I learned way more sitting in my studio the four years after school just cranking away making work than actually being in school. That’s not necessarily the fault of institutions, that’s maybe just how I work. The way art schools work is that they push an outdated hip, Chelsea-galleryabstract-painter mentality when the world has changed since then. I was a printmaker at Pratt and the printmaking department was cool at that time because the people involved actually wanted to learn how to cut wood, make a lithograph and be a craftsman, and the combination of those people was really interesting. I think it’s a shame that the school let go of some of the teachers that were involved with that and is going more towards an abstract or academic approach, which is the opposite of the way the world is going now. The only people I know that are successful are the ones that are slugging it out in the studio and working.

You have to conform to a DIY ethic, as opposed to an ivory tower one.

Exactly—I already came to Pratt with that DIY ethic from punk. Basically, it’s just a requirement now to be a practicing artist in New York, unless you’re already independently wealthy or your parents are. Between the price of rent and living expenses you have to find a

way to support yourself and be a little crafty.

It’s hard to listen to people talk about minimalism when all you can think about is, ‘How am I going to pay my bills when I get out of school?’ I don’t want to discount the whole school experience or the concept of concepts themselves, because that’s really important too.

If I was just drawing skulls and monsters without any thought behind it, it wouldn’t really matter what I was doing.

How do you think art will change as it becomes harder and harder for people to make a living—not even as artists but just as people?

It’s so expensive to live in NYC, let alone rent extra space for a studio. I had my silkscreen press set up in my apartment for seven years before I was able to find an affordable studio share. With the influx of young and wealthy people here, you wind up having a microcosm of what’s happening in the country and the world—the wealthy are able to flourish, both artists and non artists, and those with limited resources have a harder and harder time even competing. Those in the middle, like myself, are able to get by, but it becomes very hard to grow when the rent and cost of living and space is so high. I am lucky enough to have been able to attend college and have been able to support myself from my art, clothing label, and screen-printing business, but there are a lot of voices out there that don’t get heard because they have to focus more on surviving than creating.

How much of your interest in making clothes has been dictated by the fact that you just have to generate some income?

BOOKS

I had graduated from school and me and a friend invested in a shirt-printing press and we took on freelance printing for bands and artists and I was able to support myself just by doing that. Lately I’ve been able to focus on my own brand, but to make a painting requires so much time and focus and you have to take yourself out of the world; then, that piece might never sell, or only certain people will see it. Versus a shirt that takes much less time to do and people are going to wear it out for the whole world to see. I know if I make a T-shirt, an x amount of people are going to want to buy it, whereas if I make a print I guarantee a lot less people are interested in that. On the one hand I don’t think there’s anything wrong with selling a painting for a lot of money if someone’s willing to pay. That’s your life—or your tombstone, since it’s what’s going to be sitting there after you’re gone—so it should be valued. But at the same time, who actually has the resources to buy that stuff? Usually it’s some asshole stockbroker that’s just buying it so it can go up in value. My conundrum is the same problem that everyone has in this country: how do you make money and try to make a better life for yourself while reconciling how fucked everything is? Even for me—trying to grow my brand and leave my punk bubble and do interviews with more mainstream blogs and publications, which I was really hesitant to do, and worrying that I might alienate myself, my message and the people that have supported me.

Baudrillard was really interested in the ineffectiveness of terrorist opposition to the capitalist system—he thought it operated in complicity with the power of the state.

In a piece called Our Theatre of Cruelty he wrote: ‘The secret is to oppose to the order of the real an absolutely imaginary realm, completely ineffectual at the level of reality, but whose implosive energy absorbs everything real and all the violence of real power which founders there.’

I was talking with a friend of mine about this just the other day. However revolutionary or radical you might think you are, you can never actually achieve that ideal because you still exist within the context of capitalism. You’re still buying food and wearing clothes in a world that has been created for you. Even if you stand in opposition, you are standing in opposition within the framework of the thing you are against.

How do you reconcile this for yourself?

I don’t think making ‘oppositional’ art is necessarily a bad thing, I think it’s pretty crucial, in fact. If you can inspire or engage someone with your work it’s all worth it.

I was looking through your book and wondering if your work could be considered ‘figurative.’ If the language that you use is something that a large part of your audience can’t immediately comprehend—like Japanese letters, for instance—then isn’t it almost purposefully abstract?

That’s really why I started using the Japanese kanji in the first place. I was really interested in this idea of putting words directly on something that, to most Americans, wasn’t obvious—but to a whole other country/culture was. I could say something like, ‘Destroy the Government’ or ‘Fuck the Pigs’ in Japa-

nese, and it was almost like a coded message.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that without actual text, be it Japanese or in English, and incorporating more symbols that can be deciphered but which aren’t immediately obvious or recognizable. One of the reasons I started using Japanese in particular was because the strength of the characters—they’re gorgeous, but it also complicates things. I took about four years of Japanese in high school and started using it in my work, but I’m not Japanese, and I didn’t want to cross the line into inappropriate cultural appropriation. So I’ve not been using kanji in any of my new work, save a few commissioned pieces where it’s appropriate, like a Japanese tour shirt.

Why are you deliberately complicating parts of your work?

I suppose this purposeful obfuscation is to force the reader to delve a little more deeply into the meaning of the words or symbols to find out the meaning. The same way a poem or song can be more interesting when not everything is spelled out for you—part of the experience is in the discovery of the meaning.

You often juxtapose the kanji against Moroccan-style buildings.

It’s weird being in America, and especially New York, because you’re exposed to hundreds of different cultures every day, and it all kind of seeps into your psyche. I feel like I’m very much a product of that—I have all these visual ends inspired from different cultures.

Is there something that you want to capture in your work that is particular to the culture itself and transcends visual appropriation?

That’s a really hard thing to do, especially in the age of the internet where you have access to every image that’s ever been recorded. How do you move past your influences and inspirations to actually create your own thing? This is something that I talk about a lot with my fellow artists. At some point you have to internalize your influences without directly referencing. This book is the last few years of my work—and I just turned 30—so for most “real artists” this is like their baby-phase. I’m really proud of it, but I also recognize that these are the building blocks and it’s nice to look back on everything and know what I was trying to attempt and to gauge how it might’ve come off to other people.

One last question: the name of your book is Death Is Not the End. Were you consciously using the Dylan title or was it the Nick Cave appropriation?

I had no idea that was a Dylan song. I’m definitely a Nick Cave fan, but I thought it was a cool reference to the company ‘Death/Traitors’ and that it’s not the end but the beginning of my career. One of the first shirts I ever designed, when I was 17 or 18, was just this door that said ‘Death is not the end.’ So when I was trying to come up with a name for a book I thought it would be good to go back to the beginning. It’s actually been kind of contentious because some people are like, ‘What are you talking about? There is no God. Death is the end!’

ALEXANDER HEIR’S DEATH IS NOT THE END IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM SACRED BONES. VISIT ALEXANDER HEIR AT DEATHTRAITORS.COM. BOOKS

ART by NATHAN MORSE

Dave McGowan’s new book, Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon is showing an insane pattern of manufacture of ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ on the West Coast. It’s a pattern of military intelligence and old money, and that will bring in the ‘occult,’ which under my research IS the intelligence community. Who originally moved to Laurel Canyon? The first eight residents were military intelligence. There was a high clearance propaganda base at Lookout Mountain, which doesn’t get into play til the 50s.

The whole idea is making things be spiritual and divisional. Shaping the idyllic to control the tangible. In a control game, you must control the left and the right. And if you follow the money trail, why has the Man always financed the counterculture? It wasn’t the fellow flower children. People don’t get that.

People need to hold on to their idols.

So it took the young Hollywood. Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern.

Their backgrounds are real scary.

Let’s just say the Brandos and Fondas and Van Cortlandts, Crosby’s insane family—Crosby gave ‘em a lift to New Amsterdam on his ship, that’s how far back those families go. I can show you Zappa in 1968 talking and they’re asking him about revolution and he’s laughing, pissing his pants. ‘If there’s gonna be a revolution, it’s certainly gonna be a sloppy one!’ Frank was a military kid.

His dad was a chemical warfare specialist. Jim Morrison’s dad, Admiral Stephen Morrison, got the Gulf of Tonkin rolling—he started Vietnam. If I’m the Lizard King, am I gonna wanna let you BOOK REVIEW

WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE CANYON

Dave McGowan, Headpress know my dad is Admiral Stephen Morrison?

There’s always the argument like why all the military connections?

Yeah, it was baby boomer times, so most people were in. But this isn’t like ‘Oh, my dad’s in the infantry.’ Everyone was an officer or in intelligence and there was money on top. Bruce Dern’s grandfather George Dern was the secretary of war under Roosevelt.

His godparents were Adlai Stevenson and Eleanor Roosevelt. Bruce Dern, Mr. Counterculture Guy! ‘Rock ‘n’ roll’ is a military word—rock ‘n’ roll, light ‘em up!

This is all about the theory of ‘true rumor,’ which Morrison was obsessed with. Like here’s tangible facts, and then I start saying stuff and keep on saying it and it gains more spin. It doesn’t matter what the true stuff means anymore cuz this other stuff has taken over.

This is the machine. And they were the freaks—and dancing in the flames at the top was Vito, master of masters. It took freaks and young Hollywood. They started clubs with both of those, and then they put the bands in. The bands were the last things to come. People went to the clubs to watch the freaks

dance.

Let’s go right to the manufacture of the Byrds. Or the Wrecking Crew! There were no musicians in these bands!

Where did they all come from? Jim wrote everything on the beach, and just randomly met Ray Manzarek? Or Neil Young and Richie Furay drive a hearse from Canada to go look for Stephen Stills, and by chance in traffic on Sunset Blvd., they pull a u-turn—in a hearse!— to catch this guy they heard on a whim in Canada? It makes no sense. It’s all serendipity. That’s the word that makes me cringe. ‘It was magic! It just happened!’

Look how Hollywood created a god and goddess system. A star system, it’s a religion. A new 20th-century religion to homogenize. The one goal is control. They manufacture it cuz you want it to look derelict. If I’m gonna roll in and get things done, I want it to be freaky, to be weird. You want divisionals.

That’s a must. Divide and conquer. And confuse. And then you control. Dave is really cool about not trying to come up with a conclusion. He just presents all these things. I like how he says that.

I’m a little more brave than Dave. He’s really good.

He starts with all the major biographies, all the Crosby biographies— he cracks up, ‘Why do you need four biographies?’—and Buffalo Springfield … it’s all straight from things like that and then a little extra. Follow the money a little further. I could really do the LSD thing, but he doesn’t go into it.

Once they start a game it runs. And that’s an easy game to keep going.

The new wave thing recycled the 50s60s cycle. Useless commodities— back to Bernaysian methods. Shit Dave doesn’t begin to talk about. But he does get a little new wave. He highlights the Copeland family—the dad pretty much helped start the CIA, his son Miles starts IRS, and Ian is Frontier Booking controlling every band, and Stewart jumps into the Police—the new wave band shoved down the world’s throat.

And he doesn’t even mention Iggy.

Iggy was always handled. And what is punk? It’s nothing—a myth? A mag in New York City, by kids who like Iggy?

Malcolm McLaren saw Richard Hell and thought, ‘Here’s my look. Here ya go, Sid, be a fucked up Ziggy Stardust.’

It’s all connected to Bowie—Bowie was a handler, almost. You’re either a puppet, patsy or handler. That’s what I’ve figured out. If you make it past the puppet stage, you might live. And we know what patsy means. What’s interesting about Laurel Canyon is how many suicides there are. And how many houses burned down.

—Heru Avenger John Basil 71

COMICS Curated by Tom Child

CHAMPOYHATE

BRIAN BROOKS

JOHN TOTTENHAM 72

DAVE VAN PATTEN COMICS

CARA BYRD

LILA ASH COMICS

ELANA PRITCHARD 73

BLACKBOARDCAFE Interview by Frankie Alvaro Photography by Ward Robinson Al “Alboy” Korff and Brittney Tharaldson started Blackboard Cafe two years ago in their Echo Park home, cutting and sewing their trademark striped sweaters—which are all truly made in America—from the fabric to the buttons. Now they’ve opened a shop on the southern end of Sunset Blvd., named after one of the most famous places in California biker culture. Here, Alboy tells us the history of his own—and the original—Blackboard Cafe.

From my understanding, you and Brittney had a whirlwind romance. After a month you moved in together and started Blackboard Café?

Al “Alboy” Korff: Pretty much, actually—I was already doing Blackboard in a black market way. I was just selling bootleg shirts and hats at the swap meet. Blackboard just seemed fitting to me because of the history of the name.

When Brittney and I got together, she had experience in the fashion industry, and I had retail and vintage clothes experience. And I wanted to make something, and Brittney was just laughing at me—like, ‘That would be so easy to make!’ I didn’t believe her. I was like, ‘Make me a shirt and I’ll believe you. I don’t even know you!’ She made a shirt and I couldn’t even believe it! ‘I can’t believe you made this!’ It was so perfect. I made her make a second one cuz I didn’t think she could do it again! And it started from there. I found a knitter in Los Angeles cuz it was really important for us to have everything made here. We made these super heavy-duty sweaters that you could wear while you rode your motorcycle.

Just an ultra classic item that anyone from a gay sailor to a tough biker could wear. Anyone in the spectrum of fashion has worn a striped top at some point. So that was our simple formula, really—‘Let’s make these sweaters and shirts and short-sleeved shirts with graphics.’

And you know … we made some hats then we had a full clothing line.

I have one of your sweaters and it fits extremely well and it’s super warm. Do you have plans for making a thinner sweater— something a little more for the Southern California climate?

It’s funny—that’s what everyone says. ‘I love this stuff but it’s so warm I can’t wear it all the time.’ We have a lot of customers in Canada, back East, Japan, Sweden, and places where it’s a bit colder than here. But if you ride a motorcycle—which I know you do, Frankie—you know that a sweater is not enough. You still need a jacket. The wind is so cold.

That’s the main reason I wear a denim vest— protects your chest from wind.

Yeah—you know the sweater and the denim vest is really the SoCal set up now. You can have your sweater with you and just pop it on when you’re cruising PCH. What’s in your line right now? I know you have the heavy sweaters and the shirts.

Right now, we have shirts—we made striped shirts, but it seemed like you could get a similar shirt at Target or wherever. A shirt made in China. It just seemed too basic to us. We just had a new fabric made for us that’s kind CRAFT/WORK

of like what you were just saying. It’s a heavyweight T-shirt. Not as hot as the sweater, but a good shirt you can wear while you’re riding instead of wearing our super thick sweater.

And they’re kind of made in the same style as shirts from the 30s or 40s that were just really hard knit fabrics. Not a wimpy, stretched out, see-through shirt from American Apparel that everyone has. A good substantial shirt that you can live in for a while. There’s all different kinds of patterns. We have the stripes, and I’ve been buying vintage striped shirts and cool vintage shirts anytime we can find them. We have a ton of vintage clothes we pull inspiration from. It’s kind of the name of the game.

Everything we make has been made before— they just don’t make it anymore, or it’s being made terribly now. We’re just trying to make a newer version of something that’s been made before in the same way.

Where did you get the name?

It’s named Blackboard Cafe after this actual place—a pretty famous honky tonk bar in Bakersfield. It was a major stop for bands on the road. Everyone played there. Buck Owens played there—he was actually in the house band, played there for years. It was a cool place. There was pool and dancing seven days a week. You could go in there and see a live band every night of the week. By the time the 60s rolled around, L.A. was a pretty wild place.

You know, choppers and vintage motorcycles, which are a pretty big hobby of mine. That’s where the name comes from. Those guys that would go to Blackboard made it a popular spot to ride to. You could go there, get a beer, meet a chick, whatever. They made paintings of the place. It’s got a little history, just within the chopper thing and the vintage motorcycle scene at the time. Besides the whole music side. It’s famous for a lot of different things.

The photos from the late 60s of all these old biker dudes going there and partying—their bikes were incredible. Their clothes were incredible. And being vintage clothing nutcases, we would just drool over these pictures. And that’s our main inspiration for the line. These old photos. The denim jackets, the jeans, the boots, the shirts—we sell all of that. Old deck jackets. Mexican party vests—you know.

These crazy shirt graphics. So it was a bar, and we modeled our shop after that. We recreated the original Blackboard sign that we have out front.

Do you have any artifacts from the original Blackboard?

It burnt down from what I’ve read. It’s not there anymore, just an empty vacant lot.

But you can go to the spot in Bakersfield.

There’s so many photos of it that we were able to recreate a lot of the same stuff. The logos, and we have pictures of the original barmaid uniforms—we were able to make graphic tees with the same logos. We were able to recreate the sign that hangs in front of the shop. One of the things that was cool … the real Blackboard had live music every night, and Brittney and I grew up going to shows all of the time. And we don’t get to do that anymore cuz we are so busy. Now that we have a place we decided to start having shows here. Every month so far that we’ve been open we’ve had a band play. We have a big party and feed everyone. The first month we had Jesus Sons play—those guys are awesome. They played a great show. And last month we had Michael Rey and the Woebegones play. And coming up we are having a stoner metal show—a couple of bands are playing that night. Right in the shop. We clear out the sewing machines and make a space and have a party. The sidewalk is all lined up with choppers. It’s a great time.

Is that a goal for you? To have your shop be a destination for motorcyclists or for anyone who wants to see live music?

For us it’s somewhat paying a bit of a tribute to the real Blackboard Café, which is a great historical thing that just vanished one day and is gone forever. And we’ve taken that name, but at least we’re somewhat able to live up to it by having a good party once a month.

Have you been able to contact anyone from the original Blackboard Café?

No, not at all. In fact I meet so many old people—just at the swaps and who are bikers. And I ask everyone that could have possibly been there, and a lot of people say, ‘Oh, from the old Ed Roth paintings? Nah, I’ve never been there.’ I don’t know … if you were twenty in the 60s taking acid, I don’t know if you can remember too much today. [Laughs] When did your shop open?

We actually just opened in April! It’s 1286 Sunset Blvd.—down on the southern end of Echo Park. It’s kind of grimy down there. Not a super happening area, but there are some cool restaurants that have opened down there.

We can get away with a little more over there.

Like I ride my chopper to work and park on the sidewalk. My buddies will all show up on their bikes and just fill the sidewalk up, and everyone’s just hanging out in front of the shop like it’s a different era and no one seems to give a fuck. I mean—I wouldn’t want to be on Melrose anyway. No offense to anyone but it just seems kind of wimpy to be over there, like in the trendy area. We’re just trying to be

a shop. A destination spot, where we’re going to be there. We sell vintage clothes, we sell our line. You can come in and have a beer. You know it’s a cool place. Its not a flash-in-thepan kind of a place. Brittney and I have been working on this for a long time. We get up and get ready and the store opens at 12. We’re at the shop and working and it’s also a store.

You’re actually sewing in the shop now?

Yeah! There’s five sewing machines and a cutting table, and we’re sewing right in the shop.

Our shop is a storefront and a work room. It’s open air—we’re cutting and sewing and everyone can see what were doing. You can come in and see everything being made right in front of you.

I think people really appreciate the romance of that. I know I do. I love the grassroots thing you’re doing.

Yeah—I hear a lot of different people boasting that their things are made in the USA. Like, ‘Is your hat made in the USA? Your fabric comes from China and your buttons do and all of your accoutrements, you know? And your labels and all of that shit. It’s not actually made in the USA.’ We actually cut our labels from fabric. And we have custom rubber stamps made by this rubber stamp company that’s been in L.A. since the 20s, and we stamp every single label with our name and we sew it onto every goddamn shirt, you know? It’s the real thing. It’s not part made in the USA with a giant tag saying MADE IN THE USA. I think you could spend a hundred bucks on one of my sweaters and feel good about it, rather than spending 275 on one from some Melrose joint and you go home and it falls apart.

What’s in store for the future?

We make sweaters and shirts, and we make hats. And we do a lot of modified vintage. We buy vintage clothes and retailor them to fit better. Add an inch or two there, make them more unique. And we sell both men’s and women’s vintage. We have some great women’s leather jackets right now. Cool bags. Brittney is very creative—she’s always making new things. Especially on the women’s side. We have a lot of summer stuff in there right now. And in the future we definitely have some new products that we are trying to release right now. A few new items, like a jacket we’ve been kicking around for a while. Hopefully by fall it’ll be done. There’s a lot of stuff, but since we do pretty much everything one at a time by hand, it’s like a factory.

VISIT BLACKBOARD CAFÉ AT 1286 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. BLACKBOARDLOSANGELES.COM. 75

PUNK IN AFRICA Interview by Justin Maurer Illustration by Walt! Gorecki Punk In Africa is a new documentary covering the history of the punk scene in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. In 1979, with Apartheid in full swing in South Africa, this made being in a punk band more or less illegal. Many punk bands were not only commenting on the political situation, but some also had both black and white members, which was not only taboo but against Apartheid law. Being in a punk band could not only get one beaten, detained or arrested, but anyone who was considered big enough of a threat was under a very real risk of kidnapping or death. Bands like Suck, Wild Youth and National Wake defied authorities and cranked out some excellent, ballsout punk rock. Punk In Africa—by directors Keith Jones and Deon Maas and producer Jeffrey Brown—is the only film covering African punk rock. It was a difficult project to undertake, as both Jones and Brown were living in Prague and using Maas as their South African diplomat.

After multiple trips to Africa, hundreds of hours of interview footage and material from historic archives was compiled and edited, and Brown managed to secure enough financing to give this grassroots film a worldwide circuit. An expanded interview will post on larecord.com.

Why did Punk in Africa need to be made?

Keith Jones (director): Punk in Africa just naturally suggested itself to be made, as the story was virtually unknown. It had not even been researched, and the music was completely unattainable. Today, after the success of the film, there are numerous articles about the project but also the bands and the African punk history—it has been covered in Rolling Stone, the music has been reissued both in South Africa and internationally, and the context is completely different. This feels like the most valid reason for making the film—simply to give exposure to an untold story and challenge people’s perceptions and preconceived notions, which seems to be the point of any good documentary. Not just to educate but to be a little provocative and challenging.

Jeffrey Brown (producer): There was a great story that hadn’t been told. Having seen a lot of other punk films, we realized many bands went unremembered and unnoticed, even in Africa. As a filmmaker you want to tell an untold story, and this was a diamond in the rough.

How did punk initially arrive in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe? How did folks there catch wind of what was going on in the U.S. and the U.K. at the time?

JB: It depends on who you ask. People were aware of the Clash. People, especially whites, were able to travel and bring music back to South Africa. NME and other U.K. music magazines were available there. But it also had its own origin and organically grew up there.

Most filmmakers would have interviewed Mick Jones, Don Letts or Henry Rollins, and had them say something about it, but to us it seemed cheap—we could have had any of those but decided just to let African punk speak for itself.

KJ: The general feeling we had in making the film was that, outside of the First World, punk happens when and how it needs to depending on the local conditions. Not only in Africa in the past, but in the late period of the Soviet Union in Russia or today in Burma and Indonesia. Alternative music and subcultures can have a small but profound impact in societies like that, and that is something we tried to present in the film—that it really did matter as something more than simply a fash76

ion choice. It was legitimately political in the Southern African context, and to some extent still is. The first thing is that the ‘60s’ never really happened in those three countries—they were the last bastions of European colonialism so they missed the African independence movement of the 60s and all of the great expressions of identity through music which that era spawned. But due to censorship and social conservatism, they missed out on the Western counterculture and youth movements also. So when punk arrived via U.K. music newspapers and so on in the mid-70s, there was really a pent-up need for that. And in South Africa, the DIY aspect and being able to sing in one’s own accent about local concerns was incredibly liberating under the circumstances. In Mozambique in the 80s, rock music was an escape from the endless civil war that went on for decades, and allowed for a very local expression of identity that was completely alternative. In Zimbabwe, politics and music have always gone together, and it’s really a country in which art and opinions remain dangerous and even taboo, so the punk attitude can obviously find a space to occupy within that. Today, the internet makes access to information incredibly easy but even that is difficult and to some extent controlled there.

Punk arrived in South Africa simultaneous to the Soweto Uprising. What role did music—punk specifically—have in the various revolutions and upheavals?

KJ: Punk was the first form of alternative music to arrive in South Africa that really also challenged people to think and ask questions, so it had a small but genuine impact on how young people at the time felt about their reality. At the same time, the Soweto Uprising— which occurred totally outside of traditional liberation movements or any ideological background—had a similar impulse within society.

And there was also huge awareness of reggae in Southern Africa, which is also a form of music that merges a philosophy of liberation and struggle with a DIY aesthetic, and which had connections to the international punk scene anyway. All of those things had special and specific reverberations in South Africa in the 70s and later also in Mozambique. The main thing was to cause people to think differently, and those societies were so closed and

conformist at that time that even this simple thing had a truly radical impact. At the end of the day, a real revolution isn’t caused by music.

However, music and alternative lifestyles can play a huge role in helping create the conditions for people to start thinking as an outsider about how to approach things and how to conceive of society in a different manner, and that should not be underestimated even if it is not strictly ‘political’ in the larger sense.

What kind of challenges did early punks in Africa face?

KJ: Communal living was extremely difficult to do in South Africa at that time, especially if it involved mixing of the races against the laws of that regime, as was the case with bands like National Wake and KOOS. Many of the venues also fell foul of this and it really marginalized that whole scene, even in Johannesburg.

There was also a certain degree of political harassment from the authorities, especially in the 80s when some of the bands specifically mentioned in the film, like the Genuines and Kalahari Surfers, crossed over into the actual political arena. The first punk tour of South Africa in 1979 fell apart in Cape Town due to racial laws. The Durban hardcore scene was better known in Europe than at home due to press censorship and police repression of gigs. And on top of that, life was difficult and strange and highly politicized in that context to begin with—and involved making a lot of moral choices as soon as you stopped turning a blind eye to things around you. South Africa was also involved in illegal border wars at that time and so military conscription was a serious issue, and was the turning point for a lot of young South Africans to openly question their role in society. Punk did help this process.

In another interview, Keith and Deon [Maas, co-director] say that ‘nobody got tear gassed or detained in the Western world’s punk scene.’ Here in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, the LAPD was notorious for beating, tear gassing and detaining attendees of punk rock shows. How did participants in Africa’s punk scene face even more danger than an L.A. punk in 1980?

JB: You were going to get harassed in Africa.

The house that National Wake lived in, the cops showed up whenever they wanted. Even if you were a punk in L.A. at the time, you

wouldn’t have cops showing up at your house just for white guys living with black guys, or black guys living with white guys. I’m not saying L.A. punks in the 80s weren’t harassed, but it was nothing near the level that people went through with the regimes in Africa at the time.

Punks as a whole were under a risk of being harassed by cops, that’s just a given.

KJ: The harassment of the early 80s hardcore scene in Los Angeles is well-known and of course worthy of enormous respect, but I think the context is different. In Los Angeles the heavy-handed repression of the early 80s punk scene seems to have really stemmed from the lawlessness of the police force, and therefore can be placed in a local context of police brutality against youth movements and subcultures dating back to the zoot suit riots, if not even before—and certainly at that time the local folklore would still have remembered Watts and the role of the police in suppressing local manifestations of the counterculture, whether it was Beats and the Central Avenue jazz scene, the L.A. Black Panthers or the antiwar movement. And while there is definitely a political subtext to any and all of those things, most of the excessive attitudes seem to have stemmed from the behavior of the local police. In Southern Africa, the police repression was just one means of enforcing actual state policy—the beating and tear gassing was not unique to the punk scene but was a fact of daily life in those days. This was also just the most openly violent aspect of a general security apparatus that was run by the state rather than local authorities, and so also involved suppression of the mail, tapping people’s telephones, press censorship and even segregation on the state-controlled media on the radio and television. So the entire way in which the oppression operated was much broader and deeper.

But a riot is still a riot no matter where it happens and police brutality is exactly that—and should be resisted, full-stop.

Many of the musicians in your film could have been jailed or even killed for playing in a subversive or mixed-race band during various repressive regimes. How did this make the music even more powerful?

KJ: Many of the bands featured in the film involved subversive ideas or mixed-race members, and virtually all of them embody some FILM

form of multi-culturalism either in terms of mixing languages, styles of music or musicians from different cultural backgrounds, even apart from race. All of these things made those bands a very dangerous proposition in the old days. And so the music reflected that, but not always as pure protest or anger—a lot of the music is actually quite positive about those identity issues rather than simply taking up positions against specific issues. Even relatively non-political bands like Wild Youth reflected that in their lyrics and the locations they chose to perform in. A lot of the explicitly political bands may have gone so far as to embrace the imagery of actual terrorism and militant resistance, but even bands like National Wake or Power Age also stressed mostly positive ideas about identity, self-awareness, educating oneself, and the desire for a non-racial society. So that combined with the energy and intensity of punk and the spirit of the times made a lot of that music incredibly powerful—those guys really walked the walk even though it could be dangerous.

How did indigenous music in Africa impact and influence African punk musicians?

KJ: Growing up in Africa it is impossible not to absorb some influence and awareness of local indigenous music no matter what your background is. Rock music in Southern Africa has incorporated elements of local African music dating back to the late 1950s, and also expressed itself in local languages like Afrikaans and Zulu as well as English. In terms of the punk scene specifically, in the film you see actual demonstrations of how these things fit together by several diverse musicians—Ivan Kadey from National Wake, Warrick Sony from Kalahari Surfers and Mac McKenzie from the Genuines. All of those guys come from different and very divergent backgrounds but they all picked up on various ways of how local indigenous sounds can be incorporated into rock forms. And of course at that time all of that had a strongly political dimension, and was itself a strong statement. But incorporating the different local rhythms of music like goema (the Genuines, Hog Hoggidy Hog), marrabenta (340ml) or chimurenga (the Zimbabwean bands) is also a way of expressing local identity, which is hugely important within the African punk scenes. A lot of this also fits very easily with ska and reggae, which are probably even more prominent in the punk scenes in Southern Africa than elsewhere, so all of that plays a part. Punk bands have shared stages with local indigenous music in Africa dating back to the Free People’s Concerts in the 1970s, and there was always a mutual influence. At some periods—like the mid-80s in South Africa, or the mid-90s in South Africa and Mozambique, or today in Zimbabwe— that surfaced even more strongly due to what was happening around in society, whether as protest or celebration, or even just local patriotism. All of these ideas are also expressed onscreen by numerous musicians in the film.

Do the newer bands around today know and respect the struggle and history of their punk forefathers in Africa?

KJ: For the most part, there was virtually no awareness of the prior bands and scenes before the film came out, but there has been this incredible opening up from both sides to each 78

other as a result—we see this at virtually every screening, even abroad. And this works both ways—there is much more respect from the elders towards what is happening now as well.

That has been one of the most satisfying aspects of the great response to the film. In general though, there is a lack of awareness of the recent past among young people in all three of the countries.

The first hour of your documentary was dedicated to the history of the South African punk scene, and the remaining twenty minutes to Mozambique and Zimbabwe— with a brief overview of bands in a few other countries. Why not call the film ‘Punk In South Africa’ and focus on one country?

KJ: The political histories of those three countries between 1970 and today are incredibly interwoven with each other due to the fact that they really were the last colonized nations in Africa—along with neighboring Angola, which has a slightly different cultural background but is nonetheless also connected. Our original idea was to focus more on just South Africa, but it became apparent early on in the process that the story moved across borders as well as time, and that it would be unfair to not address that. South Africa is of course the regional power and a much bigger country, and exerts tremendous influence on the other two countries, but many people from Zimbabwe and Mozambique also live in South Africa, and as a result form part of the local punk scene, as well as most art scenes in general— they are a minority but are always present. The story just naturally follows that direction. Also, these three countries are the most multi-racial and multi-cultural societies in Africa, and as a result they share a lot of features in common.

Perhaps the most controversial line in the film is when a member of Hog Hoggidy Hog, a white South African of Dutch descent says, ‘I’m not gonna, like, say it’s my fault and have all of this guilt and say, “‘I’m not really African,” because you know what, like I actually am.’ As a native-born American I would call myself American, but as I am of European descent, I’d consider the only ‘real’ Americans the indigenous ones—the Native American Indians. Obviously, a filmmaker tries to be impartial, but do you think a Dutch South African has the right to claim himself just as African as indigenous Africans?

JB: The point is that there are white people in Africa. That’s just a fact. To take your comparison a step further, would white Americans not call themselves Americans? Give me a break.

White people live in Africa just like the blacks and I think that’s his whole point. I think people assume that they are open-minded to the world, but certain African film festivals rejected our film more or less for having ‘too many white guys.’ But there are white Africans! That is his whole point. He feels African.

KJ: First of all, that musician, trumpet player Lee Thomson, is actually of directly Scottish ancestry—his parents were born in Glasgow and he speaks Scottish dialect with his mother to this day. However, he was born in South Africa and also has family connections in Botswana. That statement is for me not controversial at all because he immediately follows it up with an explanation of how he was raised by

his stepmother, who is a famous black South African jazz musician, and he mentions how township jazz played a big role in his upbringing and his sense of where he fits in society. I think this is also a key to understanding the jazz element in the horn section of Hog Hoggidy Hog, as that directly complements all the pondering of African identity and multi-racial themes in South African society in their lyrics.

That band is really of the Mandela generation and fully embrace ‘Africanness’ as something different from just race, which is why that is so prominent in the film. I don’t think he would have any issue with your statement about ‘real’ Americans and would clearly feel the same way about his local culture. These things are never very far from the surface in South African music—that band also works pretty extensively with goema, which is a form of Cape Malay carnival music that also reflects the partial roots of Southern African multiculturalism in Asia. Personally, I am down with the Freedom Charter of 1955, which states from the very outset that South Africa is made up of and belongs to all those who live in it, regardless of race or language. Virtually everyone in Mozambique is of mixed ancestry, and more or less every white Zimbabwean I have met, including those in the film, is fluent in at least one indigenous language. From my European perspective, it is difficult to see these people as belonging to any other society than Southern Africa, and certainly European audiences don’t perceive any of the cultures presented in the film as being European, much as how they similarly perceive Americans or Australians—these are just places that have their own culture and identity regardless of where somebody’s ancestors may have come from. A side note to this: nobody in Africa—not even in West Africa where a lot of Afrikaners work these days—would refer to Afrikaans culture as being ‘Dutch’ apart from some very vague staring point, much as nobody feels the need to trace the Zulus back to their time lving next to the Swahili culture in East Africa before their migration. The whole point of Afrikaans identity—for an Afrikaner—is that they deliberately broke off from the Dutch [i.e. the Cape Colony] and moved into Africa to form their own tribal identity in the wild. As a result, their culture today shares more in common with the Zulu culture than it does with the ancestral Netherlands, especially in terms of family structure, ties to land, role of religion, social conservatism and so on—it really is a ‘tribal’ identity which only makes real sense in its local context. All of this is explored to some degree in the film but in a very minor way—it seemed important to include it, but it was also something we didn’t feel the need to dwell on as there are numerous excellent documentaries that already deal with that, and it is also something that is complicated to go into.

It seems that people in Africa are more prone to identifying with reggae and ska as opposed to punk—a white-centric musical form of expression and rebellion that came from the U.S. and U.K. There were very few black punk bands—Bad Brains and DEATH being two notable exceptions and a few punk bands—Scream, Dead Kennedys, the Chiefs—had black members. Most of the people in your film interviewed and

participating in African punk bands seemed to be from European descent, and the bands who had more of a reggae and ska influence had more black African members. Is this true?

KJ: This is perhaps partly skewed because of who we feature onscreen—we simply chose to interview the most compelling and well-spoken member of most of the bands, or in some cases the surviving ones. So several bands may be represented by a white spokesperson in the film for various reasons, but still been a pretty multi-racial band in terms of their music as well as the individuals in the band. We also mostly were interested in bands that explored a specifically African identity in their music but through punk, rather than bands closer to U.S. or U.K. models. That was the main criterion that we focused on—how punk subculture and African identity could meet in this alternative space. The racial dynamic in the punk scene is also a little different than in mainstream society in these countries, even now. But certainly someone like Ivan Kadey or Warrick Sony or George Bacon from Hog Hoggidy Hog are all just as close to reggae as a source of inspiration. The reggae and ska influence is just more pervasive and suitable to the local scene, something commented on by many musicians in the film, black and white. Even the straight hardcore bands, like Power Age or Screaming Foetus, often played with reggae DJs, which can be glimpsed even on the flyers we scanned for the film—it has always been there, and the ideas expressed are similar to begin with.

Reggae explicitly focuses on the notion of Africa as a kind of spiritual yearning but also defiance, so it of course has different reverberations there than in the U.S., or even immigrant communities in the U.K. What advice would you give to other filmmakers hoping to reveal buried treasure in another part of the world?

KJ: The same advice Don Letts gave me—a good idea attempted is better than a bad idea perfected. The success of Searching for Sugarman shows how far a dream and a good story can take you, even with limited resources. The main thing for me is always research—good and thorough research is not only about getting the facts straight but also getting to know people and how a society functions, how people enjoy themselves, what themes stand out in their local literature. This applies to archive footage and music as well as just simple historical chronology. From this point of view Africa is a gold mine—which it literally is anyway, but also another story—and the amount of undiscovered treasures are virtually limitless.

This is no doubt true in many if not all parts of the world—the story is never only in the telling, but in the discovery itself. I would tell anyone to go for it—and I would buy their film or go to see it just on principle. I support documentaries anyway but I will always have time for anyone with an approach like that.

Just go and do it, and enjoy every moment even through all the difficulties. It is worth it.

THE PUNK IN AFRICA DVD IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM PUNKINAFRICA. COM. FILM