L.A. RECORD ISSUE 104 SUMMER 2011

VOL. 6 NO. 1 • SUMMER 2011 • ISSUE 104

KING TUFF MIA DOI TODD HALL AND OATES GUY MADDIN + SPARKS TIM BURTON PAUL COLLINS ANIMALS & MEN THE MIDDLE CLASS SPINDRIFT FEEDING PEOPLE SHABAZZ PALACES BLEACHED COMPUTER JAY AND MORE

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CHELSEA WOLFE Kristina Benson

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MIA DOI TODD Daiana Feuer

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KING TUFF Chris Ziegler

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PAUL COLLINS Dan Collins and Kristina Benson

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SPINDRIFT Daiana Feuer

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HALL AND OATES Dan Collins

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MICHAEL CHAPMAN Kevin Ferguson

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PAPERCRANES Daiana Feuer

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ANIMALS & MEN Chris Ziegler

FEEDING PEOPLE Dan Collins and Lainna Fader

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DON JUAN Y LOS BLANCOS Lainna Fader

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JAMES PANTS Chris Ziegler

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SHABAZZ PALACES Lainna Fader

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THE MIDDLE CLASS Jonny Bell

DON JUAN Y LOS BLANCOS by FUNAKI

EDITOR AND PUBLISHER — Chris Ziegler — chris@larecord.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER — Lainna Fader — lainna@larecord.com EXECUTIVE EDITOR — Daiana Feuer — daiana@larecord.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR — Kristina Benson — kristina@larecord.com NEW MUSIC EDITOR — Dan Collins — danc@larecord.com ARTS EDITOR — Drew Denny — drew@larecord.com BOOKS / COPY EDITOR — Nikki Bazar — nikkib@larecord.com COMICS EDITOR — Tom Child — tom@larecord.com FILM EDITOR — Lainna Fader — lainna@larecord.com DESIGNER — Sarah Bennett — sarah@larecord.com EVENTS PRODUCTION — Shannon Cornett — shannon@larecord.com WEB DESIGNER — Se Reed — se@larecord.com CALENDAR EDITOR — Shane Carpenter — shane@larecord.com ACCOUNTS Nikki Bazar, Kristina Benson, Lainna Fader, Chris Ziegler

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CHELSEA WOLFE Interview by Kristina Benson Photography by Charlene Bagcal Chelsea Wolfe summons up her power from the interzone between life and death—and sensitive and severe and easy and difficult—and makes songs that sound like PJ Harvey stuck at home in a lonely room overlooking a graveyard, which is strangely close to where Chelsea grew up. (You actually had to look over the fence to see the graveyard.) Her new album, Apokalypsis, releases this summer and it sounds like the long-lost sister of Stevie Nicks and Carla Azar asked Steve Albini to help make a record about what is hidden and what is here.

She speaks now about self, spirit and the ghost that played her Casio.

You’ve said you sometimes prefer white noise to music. Do you know about Electronic Voice Phenomena—where people hear the voices of ghosts in radio static?

I’ve heard you can pick up certain signals when you record in a space that’s haunted.

Have you had an experience like that?

Yes. I think I was in seventh grade and I had this Casio keyboard that my dad had given me and it had three different places where you could record a song—three different tracks, three places where you could store a song.

When I got it, I erased everything that was on there so that I could record all my own songs and on the first one I recorded a simple piano pattern, and on the second one I recorded some beat and like some ocean sounds. And on the third one I hadn’t done anything. I kind of just left it for awhile. Then I came home from school and I had an idea for a song and I was going to record it in the third place, so I hit play just to make sure I wouldn’t record over something I forgot about. I hit play and it was the piano part from the first place, the first track—just the first four notes—and then it went into this dark and beautiful variation on it, with harmonizing parts and just little delicate things that I would never think of. No one in my family could play that well. In the end it went back to my original theme. I don’t know what it was but at the time I felt like a spirit of some sort had taken my idea and made a song out of it.

Did you keep it?

Yeah—I recorded it and I found the tape a couple years ago and put it on my computer and I still have it. Pretty crazy. It gives me chills. The kind of cheesy part of it is that at the time, the house we were living in—our backyard basically went into a graveyard. So I was always peeking over the fence and watching the funerals. It was kind of eerie. I’d go out and look out over the back fence.

That’s kind of morbid. Did your parents worry about you?

No. I don’t think they noticed. The ones that were right behind my fence—the graveyard was in sections, by religion or something— and there were Indian funerals, from India.

And they had cool chanting and singing and I definitely felt that was strange because I had never been to a funeral. And everything on TV was traditional Christian funerals. So it was really strange to watch that.

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Why do you perform with a black veil? Is that connected?

Occasionally, I’ll put together a performance in a theatrical way. A while back I had a solo show where I wanted to look like I had stepped off a funeral march. I wore a long black dress and a lace veil and I realized—onstage!—that it helped me get over any nervousness and let go a little more than usual. So I kept wearing it from there. It’s partly symbolic, and partly so that I can be a better performer. For now it’s a part of what my music is. When I started putting the songs on The Grime and the Glow together, I was trying to have a sense of mourning for like … like the way the world is but also accepting it. I wanted to look like I stepped off a funeral march. That kind of imagery is very beautiful and kind of striking.

What are you mourning about the world?

I think a lot of people would agree—I think that the way things are isn’t a beautiful thing but you can find beauty in it. It’s the acceptance of horrible things with beauty being juxtaposed.

You said once you’re drawn to things that are ‘severe.’ Why? I think severe in that I think things aren’t always supposed to be easy. I try to make my music slightly difficult to listen to—with length, repetition, with the notes of the voice.

In that way I mean severe, I mean something that’s not so gentle. I do think that spirituality can be really severe sometimes. I’m also really drawn to that. And I’m interested in traditional religion, and the ritual. Not being involved but as an observer of the expression. I do think of spirituality as a personal thing. Everyone has their own interpretation and it can be very concrete or something abstract. I think there are many different names for the same thing—some call it ‘magick.’ I think it’s trying to tap into different dimensions. For me, it’s interacting with the spiritual realm, seeking it out and being open to it. Trying to let go of my own restrictions and allowing something deeper to move through me. It’s that way for music, too. When we’re writing or when we’re onstage, we try to lose ourselves—to become vulnerable, but still strong. I want to be vulnerable and open up to everyone but I want to be strong and feel strong. It’s not a weakness.

It’s yeah—it’s an attitude. I think I can be vulnerable just by giving my all on stage. And not holding back vocally or musically. It’s a study

in contrasts, I guess. I’m always trying to create a contrast and I think there’s a contrast in my head and it comes out in the music. A lot of it’s really simplistic and I want it to be simple and beautiful and understandable—and sometimes I want it to be severe and sometimes really dark and evoke painful emotions. I just try to keep it all kind of real and yet reaching out into different dimensions. It’s just a constant contrast within myself and the music.

Hank Williams had a sort of alter ego named Luke the Drifter, and David Bowie had Ziggy Stardust and Beyoncé has Sasha Fierce—do you have an alter ego?

No. I’m more bold and outgoing in my music than I am in every day life and I don’t consider it an alter ego. I think you can be a sane and happy person and still explore dark and strange things in your art and music.

Why do you think so many people fail at separating the two? They explore dark things and then they become dark.

I just finished this book called Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch and it seems like inspiration for artists. There’s a part in there where he says the whole thing about being a suffering artist—I don’t know what word he used— not ridiculous, but it’s not always right. You don’t have to constantly suffer to make good art and I don’t know why people can’t separate the two. I think it’s possible and I understand when people can’t separate it because some people need to get into a dark place to make a certain type of music and maybe it’s hard to get out of that.

You said you took a break from music because you weren’t happy with what you’re making, but that now you’re satisfied. What can you do now that you couldn’t before?

I know myself better. Then I was really naïve, and let a lot of different people dictate what I would do with my music. Now, I’m the one who does it—I record alone a lot. It helps me with the initial writing process. I like to do it alone so I can get it out without anyone else’s ideas interfering. But I was allowing different people into my musical world—letting them tell me what to do, almost. I had a lot of producers and things and I needed to step back from that, and really just do it myself. For a while I was really unhappy with the music I was making. So I took a break from it for a good amount of months and just didn’t listen, didn’t play, didn’t try to write … just took a

break from everything. In 2009 I went on a three-month tour with this performance artist and that kind of opened me back up again.

Playing one-off, spur of the moment shows at art galleries, factories, wherever we were—that fueled something inside me to try. To follow that sound, the industrial reverb. That feel.

Raw in-the-moment emotion. I’m kind of a shy person—a hermit in a way. I spend a lot of time alone. I need more practice. Once I’m interacting with other people, I’m not the best at articulating what I want. It has gotten better with time. Once I admitted that I wanted to do music as my calling, and follow music as my calling, I instantly started to take it more seriously and spend more time on it. I don’t know if it was just calling myself a musician, or if it just happened as I became more confident and felt I was in the right spot—or if I gave up on trying to be a normal person.

You’re super shy and soft-spoken but then you make all these crazy feral noises!

I do use the word ‘shy,’ but maybe what I mean is that I have a hermitic tendency. ‘Antisocial’ seems like too negative of a word for what I’m talking about because I don’t dislike people.

I’m just really sensitive to others’ energies and haven’t really learned to control it yet. In that way, it’s not difficult for me to let loose and create feral sounds or screams—but it is hard for me to carry on a normal conversation at times. Most of my pictures end up as self- portraits, cuz I get really awkward. It’s hard for me to do photo shoots.

I read an interview where you said you thought you were an alien when you were little—is that the same feeling?

When I was young, the first poem I wrote was called ‘The Blackened Seed’ and I always felt like I was this blackened seed that got thrown out with the rest of the seeds and wasn’t meant to grow. Alien just refers to a sense of displacement. It’s just about not knowing where to fit in in the world.

CHELSEA WOLFE WITH LITURGY, HEPA TITUS AND BLACK MATH HORSEMAN ON SAT., JULY 23, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 5 PM / $8-$10 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. CHELSEA WOLFE’S APOKALYPSIS RELEASES AUG. 23 ON PENDU SOUND. VISIT CHELSEA WOLFE AT CHELSEAWOLFE.NET. INTERVIEW

´MIA

MIA DOI TODD Interview by Daiana Feuer Photography by Grace Oh

Some people seem transported from a parallel universe, sent here to make this world a little more magical or strange. Like Mia Doi Todd—she seems out of place standing on a street corner. She should be floating on a carpet, leaving a trail of flowers, or accompanied by a river that washes the city clean of all the creeps and malevolent vibes. Listening to her latest album, Cosmic Ocean Ship, a little bit of cosmic energy seems to seep in and that parallel universe becomes visible. Suddenly, you wish you lived in France or Brazil.

Would you be able to kill a cow?

Single-handedly I could definitely not kill a cow. No. And I’m OK with adopting a more vegetarian diet. I’m almost a vegetarian. I am allergic to shellfish but most anything else I eat.

What about a chicken?

If I could corner it and catch it, I could kill a chicken. Or a rabbit. If I needed to feed my family. I think I could kill a chicken or a rabbit. I’m a rabbit.

You are?

In the Chinese horoscope.

What does that mean about you?

It’s the lucky sign and you know how rabbits propagate so rapidly … it’s known as a fertile sign. I have not produced any offspring but I have made many albums which are like babies sent off in the world. We’re easygoing too. We’re pretty smiley in general. Andres Renteria, who plays percussion with me, is also a rabbit.

How many of your own albums have you released?

I started a label for my third record, Zeroone.

I returned to putting out my own records with Gea in 2008. My first record was very limited-edition press, so I reissued that. So Gea, an instrumental record with Andres [Renteria], Morning Music, and Cosmic Ocean Ship. This time I’m partnered up with Virtual Label in New York, so they’re helping me with distribution. This is different because I have a broader independent distributor. Up until now I was with Revolver, which is a great company in San Fran.

And you’re on the radio.

KCRW has been supporting the album so much. I’m so local, they’ve watched the whole process of my singer-songwriter becoming. The new album is the most accessible so far. They asked me to play at the Hollywood Bowl this summer. It’s a soul tribute. I feel honored to be a part of that.

INTERVIEW

My music is super soulful, but with the stereotypical definition of soul … it’s not what you’d think of my genre as.

What is your genre?

It’s hard to define. I’m really multi-genre. I feel very soulful—soul, jazz, singer-songwriterdom is my main category—Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan. I’ve mostly written my own songs but I have started doing more covers and Brazilian music.

I’ve gotten more jazzy and more world music. I have also collaborated with electronic musicians over the years. I have songs that are trip-hop—but that’s an outdated term.

I even recorded vocals on hip-hop albums.

And my meditational music that Andres and I made, that was new age music. You could play it in yoga class—not that I like to hear music in yoga class.

Does your music reflect the interests you’ve taken up in other areas of your life?

Being a multi-ethnic person, I was always looking for myself. I have to keep redefining myself and that has contributed to my interest in world cultures—trying to mix everything together within myself and my music. I’ve been traveling a lot in the last few years, Brazil, Cuba, India and Mexico— gathering those influences and trying to digest and make it more a part of myself. This record is more Latin-music-based than my previous one. There is a song dedicated to Paraty, a town that is between Rio and São Paolo. There’s a song dedicated to Havana, in Cuba. The influence of Cuban music is really strong inside of me. And I had a chance to digest it.

How has this translated into your music?

Working with Andres, we’ve been playing for six years now, and his experience with AfroCuban music and percussion has definitely influenced my songwriting. Going to Cuba and Brazil, it’s all about the drums. All the percussion. Being around that more makes

me think differently about music and sing differently, try to play guitar differently. I am stuck in my patterns still and I come from a North American tradition. I’m trying to blend all these things—to try to create a new world culture. See, I imagine … I dream to participate in that and be a source of inspiration to others. Things get overlooked, like nature, with all the development that’s happened in the last 100 to 200 to 1,000 years.

There’s a lot of nature here in L.A., but you have to drive through big cities to find it. In Brazil and Cuba nature is still more left on its own. I have been learning Brazilian songs about nature spirits. One thing that’s interesting about Central and South America is that all the cultures have collided there, they’ve all met there and mingled and that creates music that is so inspiring to me. In Brazil, indigenous music has very much mixed with African and European music.

Where are you from?

I’m from right here! Being of mixed culture, I definitely feel like I had to go search for myself and find myself in things. I am half Japanese and half Irish and I identify with both—but being mixed I identify a lot with Latin culture too, being a place of mestizos.

So there’s no Latin in you?

Well, Ireland was Roman at some point. In my family nobody speaks Spanish. But growing up here in L.A., you can’t help but absorb the Latin culture that’s all around. That’s another reason why I identify with it.

Why do you hang out in nature?

Every time I drive to the desert or the mountains at the Angeles Forest I spend just a few hours listening to the creek or the birds in the trees, where it’s free. The birds actually love it here by the L.A. river, but going out farther out of the city I always feel a great release. I can hear myself more and it’s invigorating, refreshing, and helps me come back to the city. It’s about that. I love L.A.

Why do you love Los Angeles?

My family is here, and it’s very hard to leave for long periods of time because we all rely on each other a lot, and so many friends, my musical community. I respect the city and I love my city. I can buy amazing kale and I can also grow it, but there’s so much variety here—culturally, artistically. I like man-made things too. I am such an appreciator of the arts: sculpture and music and film and art.

That’s more common in the city. That’s one great factor in favor of cities. That’s where people can see things. You can be out in the country to make those things. I want to find a balance between the city and nature. I have grown up so much in the city and I think it would be great to be among the wind and trees and hear more sounds other than the 5 freeway.

How can a city develop but keep in touch with nature?

That’s a rough one. That’s the crisis of the 21st century—how to reestablish a balance.

We’ve become so populous. How can we cooperate with Mother Earth so we can blossom rather than kill each other? And feel nature? Hopefully it’s part of the new culture we’re building—the village. Last summer I spent in France living in a village where I had to bike to get groceries and produce was coming from the fields right there. The meat, the eggs, everything was more local.

It’s cheaper.

Do you think civilization will collapse?

It’s possible. It’s very possible but it will take a while. If natural disasters like the tsunamis and earthquakes, fires … if they begin to swallow up coastal cities and destabilize the status quo—if New York was hit by a tsunami, life there would have to change drastically. But maybe those buildings are strong. A friend was in Japan on the 21st floor of a skyscraper during the tsunami, and it shook so hard back and forth for five minutes, and it was terrifying 9

“I am always trying to plan my escape route.”

and life-changing, I think. If more things start to rock our cities, they might have to fall down.

The U.S. was large-scale built on the car culture, whereas in Europe, agricultural land is still more interspersed within the cities. Once gas prices reach astronomical levels and we haven’t tapped into solar power as much as we need, people won’t be able to get water and food the way they could if they lived in villages. Villages of the world will have a leg up on the cities.

They have a smaller structure. All the people coming to the cities in the last 30-50 years, going to cities for work, it’s probably going to reverse. Water will be the big situation in L.A. We live on more of a desert plain. Maybe we’ll sort it out and the cities will be fine—if we can work out water desalinization and solar power.

I am always trying to plan my escape route.

Where will you go live then?

Perhaps somewhere in California. I have been dreaming of Ojai, which is still close enough that it’s almost like home. They have a long history as a spiritual center. I imagine Native Americans who lived here before found Ojai to be as beautiful as we did and hung out a lot. Ojai has some of the best new thinking. Krishnamurti has a center there. In Ojai, it would be easier to get food from close by.

Do you find you have become more new agey with time?

Yes, yes. I don’t feel sooo new agey. I am not a burner. What’s it called? I’ve never been to Burning Man. I don’t know exactly the definition of new age but it often pops up that I’m a new age artist so I guess I am.

When you and Andres were sitting in the artist area at the Silverlake Jubilee around all those other people, did you feel that you two came from a different planet?

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Yes! And it’s only in situations like that in which I realize that I’m pretty far out.

Someone who was organizing the Jubilee came up to me and Andres and she had to tell us some stuff about loading in and schedule and she said just talking to us and being around us for a minute really helped calm her down. Growing up in L.A., people hardly think I am from L.A. because they associate it with Hollywood. Or what else is L.A.? Maybe beachy? Not exactly Andres and I. We are so L.A. though. It’s a bit hidden, our L.A. I worry about people that come to visit for a few days in West Hollywood. Come hang out with me and you get a vision of the secret L.A. It’s all about the secret woodsy parts. We have great parks in L.A. Especially here on the east side. Griffith Park and Elysian Park and the Angeles Forest. Central Park in New York is amazing but it’s man-made.

The parks here in L.A. haven’t been as controlled by man. With the big fire in Griffith, they’re letting nature take its course.

At your house you host late-night jam parties with big groups of musicians. Did you ever attend the ones Jonathan Wilson did in Laurel Canyon?

No, I didn’t know anything about that. Laurel Canyon is far from my neighborhood. I never went over to those music jam parties.

He came over to my house for a party and I didn’t even meet him that night. He was friends with a girlfriend of a housemate of mine. Money Mark and I share a compound and he was playing drums with him. I have fun parties where musicians come and play together casually, all night usually. I definitely remember saying hi to him.

What led to recording Cosmic Ocean Ship with Jonathan Wilson?

Gabe Noel, my bassist, had been playing with him. He recommended I record at Jonathan’s. I had written all these songs and I needed a place to record. He asked me what size shoe do I wear, and I said, ‘five and a half, six.’

Wow, you’ve got small feet!

Sometimes old things fit me because things used to be quite small. So I go over there to show him my songs and he came out with these cowboy boots that were my size. It was a sign that we should work together. We recorded the whole album all very much live in his amazing room. He is so skilled as a musician and engineer. He plays different instruments on all the songs. He played drums, guitar and bass and percussion, piano, organ, and he just knows exactly what a song needs.

That’s his great producer mind and then he can play it. He lives near my house so it was convenient and felt homelike.

What did he bring to the album?

He brought more of an American roots tradition to the record. North Carolina, hippie North Carolina. He brought a more American Southern tradition to the record—to Andres and I, who are more California-Latin based. We synthesized somehow. One track is more doo-wop, doo-wop-a-doo—‘Summer Lover’ is more like that. Jonathan helped bring out a little more country aspect to my songs. He totally understood where we were coming from. Another thing—that first day, I had barely met him. I just said, ‘Can I come over and play my songs?’ It’s easier to play your songs for strangers in a small place.

He was a stranger to me then. I played the songs, he gave me the boots.

Why did he have little cowboy boots in your size?

He had gotten them at a thrift store, not knowing who they were going to fit. I think he goes to thrift stores and looks for precious items.

The album cover you’ve reenacted for our poster is very provocative.

[Gal Costa’s] record cover for India was very provocative when it was released, and still is today. Not too many people put a full cameltoe crotch shot on a cover. I am more modest, but I look a lot like her and identify so much with her album, her music, so we wanted to pay homage to her. My album Cosmic Ocean Ship also celebrates American culture. India was very orchestral in parts but it celebrated the Native American. That’s a piece of my record as well, what I was trying to put out in the world. I feel very native to L.A. Do you feel like a babe right now?

I will probably get fat. I hope I do. So it was a good time to take those pictures and celebrate my womanness, my womanhood, and the universal creative mother spirit and beauty. It’s a good thing to celebrate naturalness—the human body is a part of that.

MIA DOI TODD WITH STEVIE WONDER, SHARON JONES, JANELLE MONAE, CECI BASTIDA AND MORE ON SUN., JULY 24, AT GLOBAL SOUL AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL, 2301 N. HIGHLAND AVE., HOLLYWOOD. 7 PM / $24-$134 / ALL AGES. LAPHIL.COM OR HOLLYWOODBOWL.COM. AND WITH GUESTS TBA ON SAT., AUG. 6, AT THE NEW LOS ANGELES FOLK FEST AT ZORTHIAN RANCH, 3990 FAIR OAKS AVE., ALTADENA. 1 PM / COST TBA/ ALL AGES. LAFOLKFEST.COM. MIA DOI TODD’S COSMIC OCEAN SHIP IS OUT NOW ON CITY ZEN. VISIT MIA DOI TODD AT MIADOITODD.COM. INTERVIEW

PAUL COLLINS Interview by Dan Collins and Kristina Benson Illustration by Dave Van Patten As the drummer for the Nerves and Breakaways and lead singer of the Beat, Paul Collins helped create the genre of power pop. His songs have been covered by virtually every band with a guitar, from Audacity to Green Day to White Fence to the Muffs to the Exploding Hearts to … me. And yet despite never achieving the chart success of his rock ‘n’ roll heroes or even bands like the Knack, Collins still has the enthusiasm and optimism of the kid he must have been in the mid-70s: a New York/San Franciscan newly arrived in Los Angeles, workin’ too hard to be the man the record labels would want. He speaks to us now on the phone while watching the sunset from his apartment in New York City, on Mother’s Day. Kim Shattuck of the Muffs wants me to ask you if ‘being two millimeters away from my mouth with your mouth gave you any ideas.’

Yeah! I wanted to kiss her really bad! But I couldn’t do it. We did a show here a while ago, and it was great.

I feel like a lot of your fans are like her: more toward the punk side than the pop side.

Even when the Nerves started, you seemed more comfortable hanging out with bands like the Weirdos rather than the Knack or the bigger power pop bands.

With the Nerves, we were like these street urchins in the streets of Hollywood and we were definitely trying to find people to relate to.

And we met all those bands. The Nerves put on the first shows of the Weirdos, the Dils, the Zeros, the Zippers, the Germs … None of those bands could get gigs at the Whisky or the Starwood so we started running our own renegade shows. Unfortunately it was prevideo so we couldn’t document it, which was a shame, but we put on the first L.A. shows of the Germs and the Zeros and the Dils and all those bands, and it was incredible.

Did any of those bands ever look down on you for having a more traditional rock sound?

The Nerves were so steeped in our trip, I think people thought we were kind of crazy to tell you the truth. ‘Who the hell are these guys? What planet did they show up from?’

The thing is, all those bands were L.A. bands, and they came from Orange County and L.A. and they grew up there and they had all their friends from high school and stuff. We were complete outcasts. We didn’t have any friends, and we were major hustlers. Every day was, ‘We gotta do this! We gotta get it together!’ So I think in a way that made us a little over the top. We were just a little too intense for them because they were more laid-back. Plus we had this desperation factor. We really wanted to make it, like the Beatles and the Stones.

There was like no time to waste. That’s the fucking lede for your article: NO TIME TO WASTE! Why did you have to do everything yourself? What do we take for granted now that you never had?

Well, we’re talking about ‘70s, early ‘80s. This is just when the indie scene was starting. In 1976 you could not get a gig at a club unless INTERVIEW

you had a record deal. And that meant a major label record deal because there was no indie labels. Either you were signed to one of the handful of big major labels, or you didn’t get a gig. Yhey’d yell at us at the Whisky: ‘Why are you calling us? Don’t call us until you have a record deal!’ Which meant, ‘Don’t call us until you have a major label record deal.’ There really was no way to get gigs. So out of desperation ... we met all these bands at rehearsals cuz that’s where we’d see these bands. We ran what we called the Hollywood Punk House, which was just a roving location. Sometimes we did it at S.I.R. Studio Rentals——anyplace that we could rent out. The last place that we put on shows, we put them on at the Orpheum Theater that was across the street from the Tower. The Whisky scouts would come up and we ran the door—it was a shoestring operation. They’d say, ‘We’re from the Whisky!

We want to come in.’ ‘Sure, five bucks.’ ‘We’re from the Whisky!’ ‘We don’t care where you’re from, man—we can’t even play your club! If you’re comin’ in, you’re paying!’ They’d get all upset, but you know—screw you.

Why hadn’t anyone done this before?

It does seem crazy that people didn’t think to do it. But in those days you had a whole new scene, and we were all young kids, and the es­ tablished music business had such a grip on things—nobody thought there was any other way to do it. We were locked out from all sides, and so ambitious and aggressive... it forced us to do these things. And in reality, they were simple things. We put on shows. That’s a very simple thing. Anyone could do it. But it was also very difficult and nobody thought there was any point in doing it. We moved to L.A. from S.F. because we couldn’t get anywhere in San Francisco, and it’s like a light went on: ‘Oh yeah! We gotta go to L.A.! Why didn’t we think of this before? That’s where the music industry is! That’s where we’re gonna get fa­mous!’ Of course we went to L.A. and it was even harder than in San Fransisco. And it was also more brutal. S.F. is like a hippie town, and L.A. was totally cutthroat and really intense. So after we did all thse shows and we STILL couldn’t get anywhere and get any acceptance from anyone in the business, we decided to do the tour. And the tour was like the major thing that we did, outside of making that record. But then we decided once we had that record and couldn’t get anywhere in

L.A., that we’d take it national and go on tour.

Basically we did what every other band did locally—we just did it nationally.

Now I can just jump on the internet: ‘I want to find a bunch of venues where I can play to a hundred people.’ But back then, how did you do it?

It was a massive amount of work and I did it myself because I was good at it. I did my research by looking at fanzines, and Greg Shaw helped me a lot. He was very supportive because he knew that this would be something very important to open up the avenues for a lot of bands to do this because nobody had tried to do it with this kind of music. Bands had been doing this in other times and in other genres in American music, but nobody had done it in this new wave of music. What I did was—it was my coup d’etat. It was a stroke of genius. There was no internet and no cell phones, and calling these clubs all across the country would have been astronomical on a regular home phone, and I don’t think we even had home phones at that point, we were so broke. I have a long history of ripping off the phone company and this was my piece de resistance. I figured out that if you go on the pay phone and called up the operator and ask, ‘How much does it cost to call Chicago?’ that they’d tell you, you know? ‘Two dollars and twenty cents for the first three minutes.’ So then I’d hang up and call the operator back and I’d say, ‘Listen, I was just talking to Chicago and I got cut off.’ ‘How much did you put in?’ And if you gave them the correct amount they assumed you were telling the truth and they’d reconnect you. I’d have to get all my business done in three minutes. I booked an entire national tour on a dime.

Three minutes at a time?

Yeah! But then a year later, I’d go back to these clubs with the Beat, and this one guy told me, ‘We were getting phone calls’—cuz this is when there was only one phone company, AT&T—‘we were getting phone calls from the phone company asking about did we know this guy Paul Collins? And did we have any way of getting in touch with him?’ They tried to track me down. And at the end of that Nerves tour I was at the Chelsea Hotel in New York doing that same thing, and they changed their policy to if you got disconnected you’d have to give them your name and address and they’d send you a refund.

Because of you?

I’d like to think it was because of me because I was making a massive amount of phone calls! I think someone finally figured out that someone was trying to take advantage of the phone company. Not that they weren’t taking advantage of everybody else! Jack [Lee]’s job was to figure out how much money we needed to do this thing, and I think he came up with a number off the top of his head, it was $80. So that’s what we would ask for. Today, I think it would be even harder to do.

But we would get it! 90% of the time, we got that. I kept a diary and I kept the finances and I know that we came home with no money.

We were completely broke. The other thing we did that was pretty ingenious—we ran out of money going into the desert that you come out of before you get to like Palm Springs.

This was in August. It was brutally hot. We had no money. And what we’d do to eat ... we’d go into supermarkets and get a shopping cart and pretend to fill it up with all this crap, and a lot of these supermarkets had delis. So we would order a sandwich and eat it while we were shopping. Then we would just wind up like buying a loaf of bread and cheese wiz.

That’s how we ate. I think by the time we hit Las Vegas we had literally nothing. Like zero. We didn’t have enough money to buy gas. This was Jack’s idea and I hated this but we had to do it. Everytime you pulled off the freeway, there were four gas stations—one on each corner. So we would all fan out, one guy at each gas station, and go up to the cigarette machine. This is when cigarettes were like 65 cents a pack, and you would pretend that you put your money in the machine and then you’d start pulling on the lever—back then, you’d put your money in and pull a lever and the cigarettes would come out—and then say, ‘Oh man, it just ate my 65 cents!’ And the gas station attendant would invariably give you your 65 cents. That’s how we got home. We’d do that at each exit.

Did your parents know about this?

No, that’s a whole separate issue! And that’s another thing that played into it. I came from New York, Peter came from Buffalo and Jack came from Juneau, Alaska. When we got to San Francisco and then L.A., we knew nobody. We didn’t have any infrastructure. All these bands we were dealing with—they grew up there. That was their scene. We were completely isolated.

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We didn’t know anybody. It was really difficult for us to get things going and as a result we were like a very nuclear family. We really depended on each other. Really, that’s all we had—each other.

We were extremely ambitious and extremely aggressive and in a certain way that kind of worked against us, you know? Because California is laid back and we were anything but laid back. I think we rubbed some people the wrong way. We were like, ‘No. Now. We can’t wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow is too far away!’ And we wanted to go to the top, We wanted to be as big as the Beatles and the Stones, which are all normal things for young people to do. You’re hungry and you want to go out and eat up the world. And that drove us to go out and do what we did. In one way, it was really good. We were constantly working on the music, and constantly figuring out how to get the music out there. And I’m proud of the work we did. You look at that band, and we put out one EP with four songs. 35 years later, that record is still sought-after. People pay $180 on eBay for it. When you hear it, it sounds as incredible today as it did the day we made it.

The production is simple, but it’s extremely well-executed, the music is awesome and so all those things that we applied ... we were right.

The principles involved were worth aspiring to.

All this time later, you can pop that thing on and it still rocks and it’s still exciting and it doesn’t sound dated.

What was it like going from struggling with the Nerves to signing with the Beat and working with people like Eddie Money?

When things started to move really fast we went from the Nerves—which was like total street urchins—to, like, big time rock with Bill Graham and Bruce Botnick and Columbia Records. It was really intense. I mean, I was parking cars, and all of a sudden we were at Columbia and we were like rock stars.

You literally had a job parking cars?

I used to park cars at the Imperial Gardens, and L’Orangerie, which was like a really upscale French restaurant, and Osko’s Disco, which is no longer there. I parked everybody’s cars. I parked Jack Nietzsche, I parked Ringo Starr, Mick Jagger, Milton Berle—you name it, the whole nine yards. Osko’s Disco was totally fucking insane. It’s where they filmed Thank God It’s Friday.

When you were parking the cars of people like Jack Nietzsche, were you ever tempted to leave a demo tape?

I did! I left one with him, I left one with Ringo. I used to park John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. They’d show up in, like, an old Buick Riviera, and they had a Pepsi bag filled with blues cassette tapes. And the first time they showed up, I was wearing my little red parking jacket with the black lapels and a white shirt with a skinny black tie, and I had a Blues Brothers button. I parked them and they were like, ‘Yeah, man, that’s cool.’ They gave me my best tip: $20.

Was that how you caught Columbia’s ear?

You know, Eddie Money really did it. He went out of his way for a solid year. He told everybody and anybody that I was a great songwriter. He just went on a rampage. It was almost embarrassing. He was invited to these parties—and this was in the day when people would spend fifty 50 grand 16

making a demo tape—and he would play this fucking cassette made at home on, like, a Realistic cassette player that sounded like shit and he’d say, ‘Aw fuck that—you gotta listen to this!’ And he’d put on ‘Let Me Into Your Life’ and ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Girl’ and these guys were like, ‘Eddie, what the fuck are you talking about?’ And he’d be like, ‘No! This guy’s fucking great.’ And he just went to town for me.

Are you guys still friends?

I ran into him on the street in New York, and we took a great photo, and I put it on Facebook and got this incredible response.

We haven’t played together, but I love the guy and he is who he is. He co-wrote ‘Let Me Into Your Life.’

I read that the Paul Collins Beat and the English Beat had to fight over who could be ‘the Beat.’

Well, it wasn’t a fight. I just got this call in the middle of the night in L.A. saying, ‘This band from England has the rights in England.

You’ve got the rights everywhere else. What do you want to do?’ Blah blah blah blah. They actually made it ugly. They were kind of assholes about it, but I was like, ‘Aw, fuck it, I’ll be ‘Paul Collins Beat.’ I don’t give a shit.’ We were actually playing the Roundhouse in London, and we went to the recording of ‘Tears of a Clown’ but they weren’t very nice to us. It’s really funny because in the last two years I’ve been touring my ass off all over America and I’ve done about ten shows where they either played the night before or the night after. At the last show I was playing in Pittsburgh, they were literally playing across the street on the same night.

Who had the bigger crowd?

They probably did. They’ve got that whole dance thing, you know. I actually called the guy and said, ‘Why don’t we do a “‘Beat Off?”’’ No, they probably would win because they have all that action, but that’s what I’m saying, man. It’s an uphill battle with power pop, and I’m totally ready for the challenge. It’s what I do every day. I bust my ass for this kind of music. A lot of people still have to hear about it and learn about it.

When people talk about the history of power pop, they often mention the Raspberries and Big Star as sort of being these pivotal— I don’t know about that. I mean, I love the Raspberries, but power pop started in the mid- to late ‘70s. That’s the generation that started it. I know that Pete Townshend coined the word but for me it really started in the mid- to late 70s with guys like us and the Shoes and the Romantics and the Knack and the Plimsouls. You know, all those bands that did that shit.

Who would you say are the top three power pop bands of all time?

Me, me and me! [Laughs] No … it’s hard to say. That doesn’t really matter. What really matters is that people discover the treasure trove that there is here. There’s all kinds of bands. Just go look at a map: Syracuse, that’s the Flashcubes. The Pezband from Chicago.

Material Issue. Name a place in the country, and there are great power pop bands that came out of there.

I’m from Oklahoma and the only power pop guy we have of any note was Dwight Twilley—and he’s now on Burger Records!

Yeah, I’ve been talking to Dwight lately and we’re talking about maybe doing some touring together. I love him. I mean, if I’m the king of power pop, he’s the emperor.

In the early ‘80s, it seemed like there were a lot of people poised to make power pop the next big thing. Kim Fowley declared on the Tom Snyder show that it would replace punk rock. And yet it didn’t happen.

You know what the problem with power pop is? It’s not that fucking dangerous. Rock music is dangerous. Punk was dangerous. Hardcore is dangerous. You don’t have to kill your parents to like power pop. It’s a very particular genre of music and it really does embody all the great elements of rock ‘n’ roll which are great songwriting, great harmonies, great hooks, great guitar parts, tight pants … sexy looking guys on a good day. The thing is, it’s not dangerous. It’s uplifting. If you come to any one of these shows that I do and there’s a hundred-plus people and you see them smiling and dancing and singing, it’s such a great time. So maybe it’s like, you know, Pat Boone.

It’s wholesome, but it’s so cool.

It is cool, and a lot of it was produced really cool—tight and rockin’, not slick like mainstream seventies 70s rock. Do you think horrid production in the ‘80s helped poison the genre?

What happened in the ‘80s with the record industry is that the record industry took over, and it became a producer’s medium. I mean, to hell with the band! Look at guys like David Foster, who did Toto and all those bands.

There were a handful of guys that dominated the market, and it was like, ‘We’re not going to use the band. You’re just going to come in and sing,’ and of course a lot of the bands probably hated their own records.

Did you have those struggles with making the second Beat album, The Kids Are the Same? I can’t help but notice that it lacks some of the oomph of the first album.

Oh, we had tons of problems making The Kids Are the Same. It took us two years to make that record and it was because of the music business. It was like, ‘You gotta have a hit.’ They fired the drummer, they fired the producer.

We went on this merry-go-round with different producers. It cost a fortune. The problem was they were trying to fit that music into the mainstream pipeline and it just wasn’t going to work. It just wasn’t. After they fired Bruce Botnick we went back to him. We did a whole album with Andy Johns, who’s Glyn Johns’ younger brother who did Rod Stewart and shit like that. Before him, we did the album with this guy John Jansen who was from New York. It was just a clusterfuck. It was absurd.

But I will say that record has some great music on it. ‘That’s What Life Is All About’ is one of my biggest songs to date.

You can tell that the first album was lovingly crafted and the second album just feels … different.

We were so lucky to make that first album with Bruce Botnick because he really loved the band and he did what every great producer should do. He acted like a piece of glass or a mirror. He just got our sound on tape. Then

we let all these people tell us what to do and it took me a long, long time to get out from the influence of the music business.

And now you’re back, and there’s a larger audience than ever waiting to hear it! What rekindled that interest in your music?

First thing is, I never threw in the towel. Secondly, the internet has just been fantastic for my music and the kind of stuff I do. There are always new bands that cite me as a reference, and that’s pretty much who I work with now.

Like the tour I’m doing out here, I’m going to be with Audacity, Garbo’s Daughter. The Burger Records guys are good friends of mine, and I’ve done a lot of tours with their bands.

All these new up and coming bands: it’s incredible!

A lot of them are on the Nerves tribute that came out a couple months ago.

Yeah—Volar Records. The show in L.A. is going to be in conjunction with them.

Some of those songs, like the Shark Toys’ version of ‘I Don’t Fit In,’ really made me listen to your songwriting in a new light.

What’s the secret to writing songs that will stand the test of time?

Well, you know—when I started, I was so lucky to hook up with Jack Lee and Peter Case at the time that I did because that was like my university. That was my college of rock ‘n’ roll, and we spent so much time studying the masters, everyone from Elvis to the Beatles to the Stones, Chuck Berry—all the great music of the ‘60s that really inspired us. We wanted to take it a step further and make it very economical and compact and high energy, but there was a level of quality that we wanted to achieve.

‘Good’ was what you threw out! We worked so hard to achieve a high level. You know, that Nerves 45— …we made that little 45 in a tiny studio for no money and thirty 30 years later, you put that record on and it rocks, man. Recording was like our religion. That was our Holy Grail. You’ve got to put it down on tape and make it count. All those things that I learned then, I’ve tried to keep all that alive and implement it in the work I do today, which is why I’m so proud of the latest album, King of Power Pop, because it really draws a direct line to what I was doing in the Nerves and the work ethic that we had and the idea of how to put together these little pop songs. I’m really dedicating myself totally now to promoting power pop as a genre and really giving it the exposure it deserves and it’s really an underdog genre. People need to be turned on to it because it really does encompass all the best elements of rock ‘n’ roll: great songs, great songwriting, harmonies, big guitar hooks.

It’s fabulous!

L.A. RECORD PRESENTS PSYCHO BEACH PARTY WITH PAUL COLLINS, AUDACITY AND GARBO’S DAUGHTER ON FRI., JULY 1, AT THE BLUE STAR, 2200 E. 15TH ST., DOWNTOWN. 10 PM / $10 / 18+. LARECORD.COM/ SHOWS OR GROOVETICKETS.COM. PAUL COLLINS’ KING OF POWER POP IS OUT NOW ON ALIVE. VISIT PAUL COLLINS AT THEPAULCOLLINSBEAT.COM. INTERVIEW

HALL & OATES Interview by Dan Collins Illustration by Lisa Strouss

Hall & Oates never stopped being cool, even if periodically they’ve had to endure the public being too lame to think so. Now they’re back in L.A. for the July 4th weekend to teach a thing or two to the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Daryl Hall speaks now about antique architecture, &#%$! record labels, and his knife fight with John Oates.

According to Wikipedia, you met John Oates in a fight, like a rumble! And you were on opposite sides.

Daryl Hall: For once, Wikipedia got it right.

It was a Philadelphia experience. We were teenagers, and we were both promoting our own records, and it was at a West Philadelphia record hop/lip-synch kind of thing. And it was a typical Philadelphia gang-fight kind of thing. Nothing unusual about that.

No knives and chains, then?

It was knives and chains. Yeah.

Whoa! Who won?

I don’t think anybody won. It was an outbreak of spontaneous violence.

How do you go from knife-fighting someone to having a partnership that’s lasted 40 years?

I think that’s the way you go! If you started your life in a knife fight, then you don’t have any problems after that.

In later years, did you guys ever come to blows? Or at least have an argument?

No, no, no, no. We’ve never had any difficulties. We’ve known each other a long time. Every once in a while we’ve had a disagreement. But there’s no bad blood between us at all.

Did you guys ever get in trouble because the song ‘Rich Girl’ had the word ‘bitch’ in it?

INTERVIEW

Yes! There were a lot of stations that switched the word, turned it backwards, bleeped it— whatever one did in those days. There was one station that, even when it was number one, wouldn’t play it because it had the word in it. hahaIt sounds so quaint now. We were maybe the first bunch of people to ever have a number one record that had a bleeped word. We’re ahead of our time!

When did you realize that, ‘Oh my God, me and Oates are beyond being able to sell some nice records—we’re a phenomenon at the top of our genre!’?

I realized different things at different times.

But I think recently is the most rewarding part, because I see that I’m intergenerational, which is what I always wanted to be. That’s how I looked at music. I didn’t look at music from people my of own time, I always looked beyond all that. And I think that’s the most rewarding thing of everything I’ve done.

Growing up in the 80s, I remember you and Oates being on MTV all the time. You were unstoppable. But then you put out a solo album, and the perception was that Hall & Oates had ‘broken up.’ There was even a Kids in the Hall sketch where Bruce McCulloch played John Oates as this abandoned man with a moustache. He looks at the camera all forlorn and says, ‘I’m Oates,’ and that’s the joke. Did you guys actually split?

We never had any split. Again, it was some kind of perception that you can’t be two things.

And I never understood that. I did one album that took me a while to do, and I wasn’t working a whole lot with John for about a year. But that wasn’t because we split up. I was busy.

And that happened again in the early 90s.

I was just out of the country. I’m surprised people don’t say we’re broken up now because we don’t record together anymore! We love our body of work that we created more or less together on the same albums, but John has a solo career that he promotes and works, and I have my stuff that I do, and we come together to play the songs that are on all the Hall & Oates records, and that’s pretty much the relationship that we have now. I would call it ‘separate, but equal.’

You two were so huge in the 70s and 80s!

But in the 90s, not so much. Now suddenly you guys are uber-hip again! You’re playing with Chromeo and scoring Zooey Deschanel films, and my hipster friends who write video game columns are blasting your tunes on their iPods. What happened? How did you guys get back into the swing of things?

Well, I think if you look at anybody’s career who’s being doing it for a long time, it’s all very cyclic. People’s tastes in music ebb and flow. And what an artist does is just what an

artist does—when people respond to it, that’s a good thing, but the whole idea is to just do what you do, and just deal with the ebb and flow of people’s interests.

I was just watching the Chromeo episode of your web show, Live From Daryl’s House.

How did your friendship with them begin?

Pretty much like all the working relationships—with telephone calls, and finding out that they were fans of what I do and me being curious about what they do. And then we got together, and you sort of see what happens as it unfolds. There’s no preparation for any of this. It all happens in front of the camera.

And now, as I learned from watching Live From Daryl’s House, your hobby is taking homes from England that are hundreds of years old and moving them to the U.S. to rebuild them and put pools in them.

Ha ha—when you’re dealing with the expense of these things, I hate to call them ‘hobbies!’ I have a dual obsession: I’m obsessed with music, as you can imagine, and I’m also obsessed with antique architecture. It’s something I grew up with and am very much involved in: saving, restoring and living in old houses. I’ve done them in various places in the United States and also in England.

What’s your favorite city, architecturally?

Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It’s a pretty much intact Colonial city, and it’s just there.

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“If you started your life in a knife fight, then you don’t have any problems after that.”

It’s a small town, only about 27 thousand people, and it’s filled with Colonial houses.

My other favorite is Charleston.

My favorite is Bath, because it’s the Georgian city.

Oh yeah, well, if you’re going to get into Europe, that’s a whole ’nother something. Bath is fantastic! Georgian and Roman.

If you have enough money to buy houses that are hundreds of years old, have you ever had the urge to do something crazy, like pay a minister to do a naked sermon?

I am a minister! Number one, what I do is a ministry, in the most ancient of ways. And if you want to get real about it, about half of my family are ministers. I grew up in church, and I’m not a Christian, but I certainly have the traditions and the attitude of a minister.

It’s well-known that you have written songs based on your readings of Aleister Crowley—is that your faith?

Oh, that was a passing interest that lasted for quite a while. I take things from various experiences, but no, I would not say so.

There was a comic book that came out recently called Henry & Glenn Forever, about Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig, basically with the premise that they’re a gay couple.

Have you seen it? Hall & Oates are their neighbors and are basically a Satanic cult.

I wouldn’t be the neighbor, but I’d be the Satanic cult!

You’ve made a lot of money in songwriting and music. But has the music industry changed so much that modern musicians can never aspire to own their own Georgian home?

I think everybody who has an obsession wants to follow that obsession, but as far as the ability to do it … I dunno, man! I think the music business has obviously changed 22

drastically. Music as a phenomenon has gone the way of the media, and the way the Internet and information is disseminated, you can’t be all things to all people. Even pop music has changed. There is no such thing as all things to all people. You have a tribe, and you have a very avid tribe, and that tribe supports you. And I think that’s what all musicians should strive for today if they want to be realistic. That’s what sustains you and gives you a career.

Looking back on your career, you and John Oates got an early boost from Todd Rundgren’s production assistance. And he seems to still be a friend—he was also a guest on your show.

I’ve known Todd almost as long as I’ve known John! We grew up very close, physically, to each other in southeastern Pennsylvania. He’s an old friend. He and I share a lot of the same musical influences. We listened to the same people as teenagers. We exhibit that in slightly different ways but also in similar ways, so working with Todd is very effortless. He’s a real kindred spirit.

He was producing the New York Dolls around the same time he produced the Hall & Oates album War Babies. Did he ever drag you down to Max’s Kansas City to see those bands?

Did I see them? Of course! I lived in New York. It was a small scene. I went to one of their first performances, at the Mercer Arts Center—almost like a clubhouse for new music back in the day. I was very aware and interacted with all the 70s New York people, even though I wasn’t doing the same sort of music. I was following the sort of Philadelphia trail. I was around the Ramones and Talking Heads and Television and Debbie Harry and the New York Dolls and everybody else. That was the New York scene.

It seems like with your 1980 solo album, Sacred Songs, that you were attempting to do something in the new wave vein, very different from the ‘Philadelphia trail.’ It was made in collaboration with Robert Fripp and was supposed to be part of a monumental trilogy, but it was delayed and lost all its potential steam by the time it was released.

You know, if you look at my music, it’s always been playing around with my roots.

The only album that was even remotely close to what you might call the ‘Sound of Philadelphia’ in its pure form is a record I did with John not too long ago called Our Kind of Soul, where we literally took old Philly songs and I wrote some songs and released them with our songs. John Oates and me are part of the sound of Philadelphia—when I started, my first records were made with Gamble and Huff, Tony Bell and those people. But when I got together with John, we decided we were going to do our own version of the sound of Philadelphia, which encompasses a lot more than what the O’Jays and Spinners were known to do. So to answer your question in a long way, Sacred Songs is just another example of that. You listen to a song like ‘Why Was It So Easy’ that’s really taken to a realm that’s not that different from a lot of other records I did—where I took my natural soul thing and put it in an expanded context. To me, that’s all part of a pattern. It was surprising to some people at the time, but of course that was a real era of trying to put people in boxes, and that album certainly didn’t fit into what their box for me was in those days. But now people listen to it and they realize how groundbreaking it was. I just listened to it recently and I was doing things that people are just now starting to do.

Some songs, like ‘NYCNY,’ are really punky, new wave, Bowie-type songs. But your record label didn’t want it to come out?

Record labels … record labels don’t know anything! All they want is to make money! They probably thought I was going to do ‘Rich Girl, Jr.’ I don’t know what they thought. That’s always the problem with any artist. You have to please yourself, and then you also have to work within the constrictions of committee opinions and things like that. I’ve been an indie artist for a long time, and I’m now signed to Verve. I have a good working relationship with Verve so far, and I hope that continues. But I’m true to myself.

And it’s worked—you and John Oates by some metrics are the most successful musical duo of all time, and it’s your songwriting that has driven that success. What’s the secret of writing a hit song? Is it like you say on Sacred Songs, that you’ve got to have ‘Something in 4-4 Time’?

Well, sometimes I write in 7—ha ha! But I think the world kind of marches along to the 4/4 beat. Maybe occasionally the 6/8 beat or the 12, but man, that’s a hard thing for me to be objective about! What I do is just what I do. I write from the heart, I write from reality, I write from my true feelings, I put my true soul into it—and if people like it, that’s great, and that’s what I try and do.

HALL & OATES WITH THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL ORCHESTRA ON SAT., JULY 2 THROUGH MON., JULY 4, AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL, 2301 N. HIGLAND AVE., HOLLYWOOD. 7:30 PM / PRICES VARY / ALL AGES. HOLLYWOODBOWL.COM. VISIT HALL & OATES AND HALLANDOATES.COM. VISIT DARYL HALL AT LIVEFROMDARLYLSHOUSE.COM. INTERVIEW

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PAPERCRANES Interview by Daiana Feuer Photography by Ramon Felix About a year and a half ago, Rain Phoenix flew to Los Angeles for a visit and didn’t leave. She was hit by lightning—that is to say, she felt that jolt of inspiration that facilitates major life changes and immersed herself in the music and artistic community. She began playing her songs with musicians she met and the songs themselves blossomed. As if heated up by the sun and smog, she felt infused with this “energy” thing people talk about happening here. She was tired when Daiana Feuer met up with her at House of Pies for teatime.

Why are you tired?

We rehearsed till like 1 in the morning and I had to get up at 8.

Do you have a day job?

I got up to exercise. I had a class via computer.

I do a ballet conditioning thing via iChat. If you cancel, you lose the class.

Virtual aerobics.

You see your teacher, your teacher sees you, you see your classmates. It’s called Ballet Beautiful. It’s great.

Isn’t it interesting to have appointments in virtual reality?

Especially when you put it that way.

So when the teacher praises your progress, they really mean YOU. Yeah! And she corrects you. I can’t do the gym. I get bored. But I like to move. I’m very limber from doing all this now. I can kick my leg at a show and not limp for two days after.

I can high kick.

Maybe you should try martial arts.

I have tried that. I do like it, I’m not against it.

I love exercise. That’s my hobby.

Sports or working out?

Yeah.

Which one?

Oh you said, ‘Sports OR working out.’ I thought you said, ‘Sports are like working out,’ and I was like, ‘Yes, yes they are.’ It’s working out.

What prompted the residency this June?

We haven’t played pretty much since our CD release in February in L.A., or January, it was right before the record was released. I really like the venue, the Stone Bar, and they like the band, and we were itching to play, and now we’re here and it just felt right. This new show we have a new keyboard and bassist.

Do you like rotating musicians?

It’s great when you find great players and we’ve been lucky, but it’s also fun to play with the same people for a while and lock it. I appreciate the time we have with the people we do, but I’m always happy for them if they get a better opportunity or a record they have to make. It’s always for a good reason so I am supportive of it, but it’s difficult to sort of go to square one. I am so used to it though. I’ve grown used to it. I don’t see it as a negative.

INTERVIEW

There’s a silver lining to playing with new musicians and finding people that are excited about it all over again, that gets us all to see it anew.

What’s ‘anew’ with you now?

In January we started working on new material. This summer we’ll be releasing the first of three concept EPs, babies from Let’s Make Babies in the Woods. Three four-song EPs titled First Born, Middle Child and Baby.

What’s the through-line between Woods and the babies?

We just released Let’s Make Babies in the Woods, and the title just lent itself to continuing conceptually. As far as releasing them as separate entities, there were 20 songs we narrowed down to twelve and then groups of four songs that worked together. Each four had a separate personality from each other group of four; that’s how I thought of them as children.

The firstborn is different from the middle child and so on. We separate the children and let each personality shine, to be individuals.

Maybe then people can choose favorites and we can put them towards the family. It can keep going forever. I like to conceptualize things and it felt exciting when the idea came to me. These four sound like one personality.

The first record is downtempo and cinematic and the demos of those songs have something about them that I don’t think could be repeated. Sometimes you record something and no matter how poor the recording is, there’s a mood or personality to how it was played that you can’t just redo. There’s a feeling in it that you sense. I didn’t want to tamper with how intensely everyone matched up in this dark room. It spoke of a very serious child. Sometimes the firstborn has the most responsibility for their siblings. It makes sense, this child.

How are the ‘children’ different from the Woods?

Let’s make a baby in the woods—there was no question we were going to give ourselves a chance to second-guess what we were doing, we were just going to record it and be off-thecuff and be unforgiving to that commitment to experiment. The off-the-cuff thing is what I wanted. I wanted something naked and raw. But once you do one thing, you want to 25

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“If all else fails, I’d be a great housekeeper.” change up the process and do something new next. Lyrically, I work in the same things that a lot of people do: it’s love and relationships and birth and death and family and friendships and nature and all of that. Religion is in the middle child a lot. There’s questions of God and nature and love. Lots of existential thoughts. I wrote these around New Year’s with the concept of making a ‘family’ or siblings/children from Let’s Make Babies in the Woods—grouping songs like personalities in different children, and taking them through the process of birth, childhood, life, marriage, divorce, happiness, religion and death.

Are these the themes that are currently present in your world?

Absolutely. Within my personal world, yes, and they are the themes of all of our worlds.

And that leaves room for the listener to impart their own emotional attachment to what they’re hearing. It’s very personal for me. I write most of them first from stream-of-consciousness, based on melodies in the moment, the music that’s there at the same time. Usually the first spontaneous words I spit out, I keep.

Writing from a subconscious place, there’s true stories in the songs that I discover later.

I might find a personal story in it or I might realize I wrote something about a friend going through a divorce. It wasn’t me, but it was the theme that came through from a facet of my life. Songs can mean anything and nothing, pretty much. I hope to approach writing that way and still give a universal story. With a lot of the lyrics, even if I go back and work on them, the words just pop out from our collective unconscious. I can go back and edit and bring in my personal themes but it originates from this collective unconscious place and so it involves the themes of so many people and who we are as human beings. I hope that what I write connects to other people on a personal level that they can echo back to me.

Is the collective unconscious more like a river passing by that you pull something out of or is it stored inside somewhere like a container?

It’s wild that you mention that. I went to an estate sale and bought all these old records from the 20s and 30s and 40s. I put them on and I was listening to the lyrics and looking at the song titles—‘I Was Dancing With a Tear in My Eye’ or ‘I’m Crying Because I Love You.’ The song titles were awesome. I connected with ‘Dancing With a Tear in My Eye’ and it’s not current and it’s not what I would write and it’s cheesy but I felt so connected. I was blown away by the idea that the themes are the same no matter what time we live in or how it’s said. Those feelings and thoughts and words. It’s so amazing to think about the people from the 1930s in their amazing flapper INTERVIEW

moments having the same bad moments and the same good moments of connection to the themes of the human heart. I want to be a part of us talking about them in song. I won’t be here forever, but I love the idea of people connecting to me and connecting to the people that I connect to. That idea that it’s all there all the time for us to tap into. We will always be connected by these themes—primarily love— and relating to joy and sorrow and birth and death and all these big themes are there for the human race. We all love or hate and have jealousy and all the themes that make up the emIf all else fails, I’d be a great housekeeper. otional body. They’re always there. I feel like writing from that place is almost being aware that it’s out there and allowing it to come out and be here. The themes of the past are the themes of the present and future.

What’s Gift Horse Project about?

When I moved to L.A., I started this artist collective, Gift Horse Project, with A.J. Mason. It’s about my high ideal dreaming—feeling like it’s in the realm of possibility: how to see that value is not so much about money, all-for-me stuff, but more about the value of uplifting each other so we all win. It’s trying to put that idea in action by bringing together different artists to make one band or one gallery show or one event for one night only for charity. Even though we’re poor, all artists want to give back to other artists who might not have anything, but want to make art. That came through the sense of community that is already here in Los Angeles. I had been talking about it in New York, about how to create a collective that gives back and rotates artists so that people are exposed to more musicians and artists in a short amount of time that better fits the ADD of our time.

The attention span is so little that to get a bunch of artists in the time that you might get one artist keeps people gripped and interested in a showcase. Collaboration lets us change how we as artists help each other get to where we want to be. There’s plenty of room for everybody and we should all shine and flourish, but how can we do that together if need be?

How does Papercranes put these principles into practice?

Papercranes is me and whoever I work with at the time, so it evolves through constant and shifting collaboration. Let’s Make Babies in the Woods was written with my Gainesville Papercranes. After I moved, the Florida guys gave me their blessing to play with a new band here. My motto is that I have to keep going, writing songs with people.

What I like about moving around is that every incarnation of the band brings something to the sound. It’s ever-changing.

At last year’s Manimal Fest, I took it that you wrote mellow music because you played your songs slower and laidback. Then at the Stone Bar in February, your guitarist was using his teeth within ten minutes. Same songs but totally different!

It’s never really that deliberate. It has to do with the energy in the room that makes the performance free form and crazy. It’s hard to have an idea in my head and go execute it. I’m not sure what’s going to happen show to show. I like the element of surprise, when I lose myself or feel very self-aware and nervous. That was actually the same band. Actually the record we put out with Manimal was tracked by Gainesville Papercranes but has only been played live by this band. So it’s the first time that these songs have become a live real band feeling. We tracked the songs very experimentally, often in one take, offthe-cuff, and that’s what made the record. Now to play them as entities with new musicians has grown the songs too. Manimal was an early stage of the band.

The musicians you’ve brought together are interesting. Jenny O on keys, Kirk Hellie on guitar, the cellists. It is experimental. It’s easy to digest but at the same time it is different.

The cellos are special. As we become more comfortable and sonically gelled, energetically as a band it comes off more intensely. The shows are now showing each of our personalities and the whole group idea. By continuing playing, our sound keeps evolving.

From your stage performance, one might assume you’re a lively, flexible, excited person, surrounded by all this hair.

You mean because that’s how the last two shows spoke to you?

Your hair was all over the place and you were fist-pumping and stretching, moving around. There was a lot of power.

It’s the energy in the room, the audience, the way it just feels physically. The energetic exchange between watched and watchers is an amazing part of what makes performance and also that connection with the band frees me from thinking too much about whether we’re playing the song right. I’m just in a zone. That’s what you’re seeing. I’m able to just let myself go and that’s what happens when I let myself go. So, yes, if hairy and all over the place is the description, I’ll take it because that is authentically how I’m feeling at the moment.

Why is music what you do?

Well, I can sing. I finally admitted that at a certain point. I can sing! I can hold notes properly, and I really love that form of expression. Though I sang from a young age, I finally mentally accepted that as who I was.

That propelled me to pursue it as my art form and not be caught between a million things I

want to try to do and am good at. A process of elimination and delineation finally let me do that. It’s wonderful to write a song and to connect with a band, for me there’s nothing better. It’s the best drug I’ve ever tried. Music is the best high I’ve ever experienced, and so I’m addicted.

Do you live this life because you have to or can you see yourself in an alternate straight reality?

If by straight you mean doing something that is not in front of the camera or on the microphone and doing something behind the scenes in something creative—yes, I love doing that. I’m fond of collaborating and bringing people together and not being the focus of that thing. I enjoy organizing people to play music, creating shows, creating nights. I like doing that, and I enjoy producing. I’m very hands-on with my records. It’s all in an artistic field that I see myself. I don’t know if I could hold down a desk job. If there were an option for me that was not artistic or creative, it would be housekeeping. I’m really organized and really good at house-cleaning.

Do you like to do the dishes?

Yeah, I love that. I’ll go to people’s houses and if there’s sink fulls of dishes, I’ll do them because I enjoy it. I’ve gone to friends’ houses and cleaned them. If all else fails, I’d be a great housekeeper.

You could sing and clean at the same time?

That sounds almost fetishistic. I like it.

Swoop your hair around as you clean the curtains.

Full rock outfit, cleaning, vacuuming, fishnets. Definitely.

Do you know how to make a paper crane?

I don’t. The original guitarist thought of the name and was a real origami fan. He would fold them all the time. He and his girlfriend folded about 50 for me to shoot my music video for ‘Synapsis.’ They got blisters from folding all night. I’ve never had the patience to fold an origami crane.

But you’ll do all the dishes in someone’s house?

And in so fast amount of time. I enjoy it if someone leaves the room and they come back and it’s like, ‘Wow, what just happened?’ And I don’t leave them dirty. It’s not just for the sake of quickness. I get into a zone with dishes.

PAPERCRANES EVERY TUESDAY IN JUNE, AT HARVARD AND STONE, 5221 HOLLYWOOD BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 10 PM / FREE / 21+. HARVARDANDSTONE.COM. PAPERCRANES’ LET’S MAKE BABIES IN THE WOODS IS OUT NOW ON MANIMAL. VISIT PAPERCRANES AT PAPERCRANESMUSIC.COM. 27

ANIMALS & MEN Interview by Chris Ziegler Illustration by Alice Rutherford Courted by Adam Ant—a relationship from which they politely withdrew when he suggested hiring a studio band to re-record their songs—and noted by John Peel, Animals & Men were positioned to take whatever version of fame and fortune the first wave of U.K. post-punk had to offer. But when the big boys came calling, they turned around and walked back to their tiny mining town in the grasslands, where they stayed with their unreleased tapes until good ol’ Hyped 2 Death re-presented them to the world. Encouraged by the release of retrospective collections, A&M have not only reunited but restarted as a working band, releasing brand new, extremely ferocious songs like “John of the Sword.” They’ll play their first-ever U.S. shows this month. Founders Ralph Mitchard and Susan Wells speak now from their living room, where they play in war paint with the door open while the neighbors marvel.

As young punk kids, you had a zine called Stranded in the Jungle and you got to meet Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. What’s the first thing you say to Screamin’ Jay when you’re six inches away from him?

Ralph Mitchard (guitar/vocals): We basically bribed our way into the dressing room. There were these Welsh teddy boys in there and they kept saying things like, ‘Screamin’ Jay! Screamin’ Jay! Have you ever met Jerry Lee Lewis?’ I asked him if he was back playing R&B now and he went crazy and said he’d never stopped playing R&B! He sort of chewed me out.

So could you say that Screamin’ Jay Hawkins … screamed at you?

RM: Well, yeah—that’s true. He made me feel about three inches tall. I sort of went exit stage left—pursued by a bear, you know?

When you started the band, you said you deliberately wanted to be obscure. What’s so attractive about the rock ‘n’ roll netherworld?

RM: I don’t know. It’s funny because the very first song we ever recorded was the song ‘Render Us Harmless,’ which is complaining about the music industry. We started out with this idea that we were going to be abused.

We were quite cynical—but we were actually quite right because record companies that were interested in our first single saw us as being like Altered Images or the Undertones. It’s not like we hate those bands or anything, but it suddenly became evident that we were going to become caricatures of ourselves. Unless you’re really desperate, that’s not a very interesting possibility.

Why did you already think you’d be abused?

RM: It’s just part of our nature. We’re not comfortable having praise heaped on us.

We basically turned down a Peel session.

He called us and asked if we’d like to do a session, and we told him we’d prefer he listen to our new stuff before saying yes or no to that … but he didn’t really think it was any good! If we’d just shut up and taken the thing and run with it, we would have had a Peel session.

What was the most important thing about the band to you? The thing you’d never let get watered down?

Susan Wells (vocals): We always kept our integrity, I think. I always kept my clothes on.

INTERVIEW

Didn’t one magazine offer you coverage in exchange for sexy photos?

SW: Yeah—we could have gotten on the cover of Sounds if we’d made some comment or done some photograph. I think the fact that Ralph and I are in a relationship always gives us a backing. We just say, ‘No, we don’t want to do this. We don’t have to and we don’t want to.’

You convinced a bank to give you a loan to put out your ‘It’s Hip’ 7”. How do you get a banker to pay for a punk record?

SW: In those days, they were just keen to get you signed up for loans and things. If it looked fairly viable, they’d do it. I mean, they got their money back.

So when the record didn’t sell, you threw almost all of them in a dumpster?

SW: Well, yeah—quite a few of them. We needed the room.

Everybody who reads this will be spasming in pain because they’d love to have one!

RM: There are so many stories of people tipping their life’s work into a dumpster. At the time it didn’t really seem like anything because it was kind of a failed record, really. John Peel only played it, like, the once. We got to see Yo La Tengo do a cover version of it a couple of years ago. That was pretty weird. In a massive auditorium where people sat down. It was very surreal. At the time it just seemed like a bad idea that had been received badly. Having this suitcase full of unsold singles was like having something laughing at me.

In your liner notes, you say the band was based on exploring interesting combinations—like Chicago blues with punk or Link Wray and the Shangri-Las. RM: The last thing that Sue and I recorded in the early 80s was with a local rockabilly band.

We got this idea that we wanted to do rockabilly so we recorded ‘I Ain’t Never Worryin’’ and ‘The Man With the Spiked Toed Shoes’ with a rockabilly band. We were called Red Hot and the Sans Culottes. The idea was that we would all dress in French Revolutionary fashions and have a guillotine and things like that. We were going to make a video with the guillotine and people roaming about in Revolutionary gear. It was the mid-80s, I suppose.

We got as far as recording the record.

How many of your ideas have been proved correct by now?

RM: The idea of mixing punk and blues was one of our ideas, and it’s kind of slightly to our sadness that John Peel didn’t really like it— but he really liked the White Stripes. Kind of in a way we could have done that … but on the other hand, we didn’t.

What’s something that seemed like a mistake but you realize now you dodged a bullet?

RM: The whole Adam Ant thing was best that we didn’t do it. At the time he was sort of manipulating us—saying we should be called something else and that we should do this and that we should do that. We were desperate but we weren’t that desperate.

So what made you say, ‘No, we’re not going to do it!’

RM: It goes back generations, really. That’s a funny thing. My grandfather was a miner and in a general strike they had to go back and he said he’d rather eat grass than go back and my father was a Labour politician and he had all these crazy principles about never wanting to be in management. ... There are lots of incidences in our family history that show people turning away from licking the lollipop.

Did you see that mirrored in punk? Is that part of what brought you to it?

RM: Yeah, of course. Initially it seemed like a really great grassroots thing. We used to organize our little punk evenings and everybody would come from the surrounding towns and villages. We’d play records and pogo and talk to each other. Everybody would bring their records along and be, like, ‘Yeah, you should play this one.’ That was fun. And you’d sort of meet the types of people from the neighborhood that you’d normally be fighting—but because you’re sort of unified by punk, you’ll be friends.

When did that seem to disappear?

RM: There was sort of this element that a certain amount of our original punk friends got into—that sort of violence, wearing the Nazi armband … It was originally a unifying philosophy but it became, like, ‘These people over there … ’ Factions started to happen.

And then things like mod came along and two-tone and it became subdivided factions of factions.

I feel like you were always looking for something independent but still somehow unifying and diverse at the same time.

RM: Part of my musical background is that if somebody’s doing something really good, eventually someone will come and knock on your door and say, ‘Yeah, we think that’s cool.

Can you play this university?’ Taking the long view, we’re pretty happy with the way things have been.

Is there a lasting, positive effect of punk that’s still around?

RM: Personally, I think it’s the idea that it doesn’t have to be technically brilliant. It’s sort of bad to be doing something that’s twothirds brilliant. If you take poor old Poly Styrene—you know, we’ve been mourning Poly Styrene—‘Oh Bondage, Up Yours!’ … you can’t polish that. It’s like a moment of genius.

If people can avoid trying to polish things that don’t need polishing and just get them out there and have fun with it, I think that will be the thing. Sometimes it’s nice to see the stitching and the construction lines because it shows how you do it yourself.

In that video of ‘John of the Sword,’ is that your own living room you’re playing in?

SW: It is. It’s our front room where I am now. We were going to play on the patio but it rained so we all had to move indoors. We lived in a long row of houses with gardens in the front so people were in the gardens. They were watching but they were standing under the trees in the gardens so they couldn’t really quite see us. They could hear us.

Do you have war paint on?

SW: Face paints, yeah. It’s the opposite of putting on a lot of fancy makeup and thinking, ‘Look how gorgeous am I.’ Now, I realize I’m not a pretty young thing. I am who I am— so I just let myself look a bit more interesting sometimes.

Have your kids ever complained that your band is too loud?

SW: No, no—they wouldn’t dare.

L.A. RECORD PRESENTS ANIMALS & MEN WITH WOUNDED LION, DUNES AND KIT ON THUR., JUNE 30, AT THE SMELL, 247 S. MAIN ST., DOWNTOWN. 9 PM / $5 / ALL AGES. THESMELL.ORG. ANIMALS & MEN’S S.T EP IS OUT NOW ON CONVULSIVE. VISIT ANIMALS AND MEN AT MYSPACE.COM/ANIMALSANDMENTERRAPLANES. 29

THE MIDDLE CLASS Interview by Jonny Bell Photography by Ward Robinson

The Middle Class is Mike Atta, Jeff Atta, Matt Simon and Mike Patton. (And no, not that Mike Patton).

Depending on who you ask, you might be told they are the first ever hardcore band, or you might get kicked in the gut with a pre-scuffed Urban Outfitters combat boot. After a very long spell, the band reunited last year to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Frontier Records—the label re-released the Middle Class’ 1978 EP, Out of Vogue. Now they’re returning to the Echo to play a badass L.A. RECORD show with Kid Congo, the Urinals and Grant Hart. Jonny Bell of Crystal Antlers (who have a new record out in July!) speaks with the band now from Mike Atta’s “vintage modern” furniture shop, also called Out of Vogue, in beautiful downtown Fullerton.

Do you get ever confused with the other Mike Patton?

Mike Patton (bass): Yeah, when I was living in Santa Monica one time I got a phone call and it was a girl and she asked, ‘Is this Mike Patton?’ I go, ‘Yeah,’ and she just screamed.

‘Aahhhhhh!!’ And I was like, ‘Oh, you must be thinking of that other guy …’

Mike Atta (guitar): Nobody’s ever screamed for me. People have screamed at me …

Do you ever get Middle Class super fans coming in to your store?

MA: I wouldn’t say super fans—they don’t scream or anything—but I get kids in here who will be standing over here by the records or by the guitars and they’ll be nudging each other and whispering, ‘That’s him.’ And I’m just like the slob behind the counter, and finally I’ll ask ’em, ‘Can I help you?’ And they’ll say, ‘Are you the guy?’ and I’ll say, ‘Well, that depends. What guy?’ ‘The Middle Class?’

‘Yeah I’m the guy.’

So tell me about The Sound of Music club in San Francisco—I’m told you did some memorable shows there.

MA: The club I remember best of all was the Deaf Club.

Matt Simon (drums): I remember very distinctly playing there, like an afternoon show with the Toiling Midgets where we were going to leave right after and come home. And I started coming on to the acid and I remember seeing all these people—rolling drunks and stuff ... this is my Sound of Music story ... and I see this old black guy who comes walking up and I was like, ‘Hey, you should be careful.

You’re all drunk and I just saw these people rob this guy.’ So I sat and talked to him for like five or ten minutes. Then he said, ‘Don’t worry about it,’ and he opened his jacket and he had a badge and gun and everything, and I thought, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ.’ I was just coming on to the acid.

MP: The Deaf Club was really cool—it was a club for deaf people and we played a show and the deaf people that were around were behind the amplifiers. A bunch of them were touching the bass amp and putting their heads against the walls to get into the vibrations. We played with the Bags and Patricia [Morrison] lost her bass after the show and I remember going into a room looking for it INTERVIEW

and asking if anyone had seen a bass. When no one turned around I yelled, ‘Hey! What, are you all deaf?’

MA: I remember it being next door to a hotel where punk rockers lived—it was like one of those places where you walk in past the guy in the glass case and he hands you a towel. One of those kinds of places with heroin addicts and everything.

You guys were pretty interested in the San Francisco scene, right?

MA: I think we were more accepted up there by the scene and the kids and everything than we were in Los Angeles ... I think at that time, when were playing with the Wounds and the Toiling Midgets—what would that have been 1980 or 81?—I don’t think their scene was like the scene down here. The scene down here had become more hardcore with like the beach scene and everything, and they may have had hardcore elements up there but it wasn’t the same kind of thing. It seemed like they were open to more kinds of music.

Why do you think that the bands in San Francisco didn’t end up being quite so ‘legendary’ as a lot of the Southern California bands?

MA: Well, the Avengers and the Nuns and all those bands—they were all pretty big San Francisco bands and they could do pretty well in L.A., but I don’t think they did well with the crowd that was the crowd that liked TSOL and the Adolescents and all that kind of stuff.

MS: I think the L.A. punk scene was bigger too—there was more music industry stuff down here, more records put out.

MP: What was the Sound of Music’s or whatever’s fanzine? Oh, Search & Destroy. It was too intellectual —it was intellectual and L.A. was not.

MA: I would say San Francisco was more like the earlier parts of the L.A. scene, where you had a lot of people that were art school—you know like the Weirdos and X and all those bands that went to CalArts or whatever. Poetry readings and all that.

What were some of your favorite bands growing up—before Middle Class?

Jeff Atta (vocals): Leading up to the band, like before 74-75, me and Mike would go to Licorice Pizza in Santa Ana and they’d have all

these weird imports, and we got into Eno and Roxy Music and stuff like that.

MP: When I was growing up, I didn’t listen to music. And when I met Jeff in high school he introduced me to Mott the Hoople and the New York Dolls, and I kind of got introduced to rock ‘n’ roll when Jeff and I were hanging around. I remember Jeff had the English music magazines and Creem magazine that we used to read. Creem had this little article about this new thing in England called ‘punk rock,’ and they listed the Sex Pistols, the Damned and the Buzzcocks—those three bands. And in high school people would ask you what bands you liked and I would say the Damned, and I didn’t even know what they sounded like.

MA: I think for me, at that time—I was about 14 when you guys were discovering all that other stuff—I was listening to stuff like Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, anything that would go along with my pot-smoking at the time. And then I remember when I was 15 and a half, almost 16, I started playing guitar and everybody else that was playing guitar was trying to learn Aerosmith and stuff like that, and you guys had gotten like the Dictators and the Ramones in like 76, and you said, ‘You should try playing this.’

MS: You guys covered a lot of Ramones songs when you first started, right?

MA: Yeah, when we first started and it was me and Mike and a couple other people. We were doing Stones songs, Ramones songs …

MP: Cuz it was easy.

You started off playing a lot of covers?

MA: Yeah, just in our studio. We had a storage unit that was converted into a place for us to rehearse and that’s where we started playing that, and then writing some of our own stuff.

But we were into writing songs like Wire and the Ramones. We just didn’t know how fast it was going to end up.

I know it’s a simple question—but why did you start playing so fast?

MA: It wasn’t premeditated—that’s for sure.

JA: I think we thought, ‘OK, punk is loud and it’s fast,’ so we just played as loud and fast as we could. We weren’t intentionally trying to play any faster than anyone else …

MP: And it wasn’t something we really noticed until people started saying, ‘Wow, you guys are really fast!’

MA: We didn’t know anything about the ‘rules’ of music. You know, all those bands like X and everybody, they were all based in blues—they all still had that ‘thing.’ We didn’t know anything about that. We didn’t know about relative minors. I’ve had people say, ‘You know that song “Introductory Rights”?

Did you know that song is only one chord?’

[Laughs] Rob Ritter from 45 Grave, Gun Club and all that—he always recorded bands early on. He had a cassette recorder with him all the time, and he goes, ‘I was trying to figure out how to play your songs. What kind of alternative tuning do you use?’ And I go, ‘Alternative? I just tune to Mike.’ … On the speed thing, we recorded—on the record that Frontier put out—a version of a song ‘You Belong’ that’s a half a minute longer than the 45 version—and it was just a six-month period till we got to the speed of the ‘Out of Vogue’ single. And like I said, it wasn’t intentional. I don’t know how we got there; it was just a lot of Dr. Pepper and Suzy Q’s. … I remember consciously drinking Dr. Pepper and being kind of like straight-edge after reading in Trouser Press magazine where they were first talking about ‘the punks’ and that they’re against all rock ‘n’ roll conventions, all what’s supposed to be rock ‘n’ roll—the drugs and all that. So we took that to mean that we weren’t supposed to get high—we were just supposed to play this music. It didn’t take long to find out that wasn’t true.

MP: Well, that was one of the reasons I think the L.A. people liked us—we were cute. We were from Orange County, we were straight ... we were VERY straight.

MA: I smoked pot before Middle Class, and I quit once we started because I thought you weren’t supposed to do dope or anything like that. It wasn’t until later that I really started smoking a lot of pot. [Laughs] JA: At that time we were living in Santa Ana, and later in Fullerton. That’s why we got so big up in L.A., because as far as we knew we were the only people in Orange County playing punk rock. Later we found out there were people in Fullerton, Huntington Beach, recording around the same time, but were totally isolated.

MA: At that time there really wasn’t a lot of bands coming out of Orange County at all.

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at all. When we got interviewed about the Masque when Brendan Mullen was writing his book, he asked, ‘Was it hard? People always said that people in the L.A. scene wouldn’t allow bands from the South Bay and Orange County to come up and play?’

Well for us, it’s because that didn’t exist yet.

Everybody that was in those early bands— those first-waver bands—they were all from someplace else anyways. How many people were really from Hollywood? They were all glitter kids from the Valley or the Dils and the Zeros were from Carlsbad or San Diego.

Our first show, I just met the guys from the Zeros and asked if we could play—told ’em we had a band and they said, ‘Yeah, you can play next week.’ It was that simple. It was with the Bags, the Controllers and Skulls or something like that. Kind of a different time—that’s for sure.

Do you think there’ll ever be a scene as vibrant as the early punk scene was back then?

MA: I talk to a lot of the kids coming in here today. I talk to Audacity, and I ask them how they keep up. Everybody’s in a band now— it’s easy for everyone to get their content out there. Before it was you had no choice—if you wanted to be part of punk rock you had to be part of a little scene. I mean there are little scenes still. Burger Records has their little thing— MS: —but it’s not underground. You can’t keep anything underground anymore; it’s very difficult in the computer age.

listen to these bands individually, they kind of sound like they shouldn’t be playing together. You got the Middle Class playing with the Screamers and when you listen to the Screamers now you hear them doing like bloop beep—all that kind of stuff.

I think they all fit together because it was all outcast things. Later on, when you had your hardcore punk scene, you could put four hardcore bands together and it was kind of a blur of music.

MP: And the problem with the hardcore scene was that it became very regimented, and there was a certain way you were supposed to look and a certain way you were supposed to be and it was completely the opposite of what punk started as.

MS: It was not a friendly scene! If you weren’t connected or dressed right you were in danger of getting hurt bad.

MA: I just remember when you played shows up to 1980 or so, you could look out into the crowd and there would be a bunch of girls in the audience. By 1981 you looked down there and everyone had a shaved head and no shirt on! I saw this amazing picture on this Mabuhay thing: Black Flag playing at Mabuhay Gardens and it was Henry Rollins and he was just like all tense and flexed and tight and everything, and there’s like four guys in the front and they all looked exactly the same.

It became like a church …

MA: Yeah exactly. I read this thing about our band and our relationship with hardcore and they wrote that if we would have just done

what gets us known and stuff. And people say this led to that, or Black Flag was a heavy metal band till they heard the ‘Out of Vogue’ single. People will argue that thing with the Bad Brains: ‘Look at the two records—Middle Class was 78, Bad Brains was 79.’ You know, I think that the arguments are pretty funny. A blog I was just reading yesterday was saying Black Flag was the first hardcore band.

‘Their single came out in 76.’ I’m like, ‘What?

Where did you get that from?’

JA: All that stuff is just a record collector thing. You have to pick something, somebody always had to be the first one. It’s just like the argument about who was the first ‘punk’ band, and somebody will say, ‘Oh, Iggy was.’

MA: No—Sonics!

MS: It was Charlie Parker!

MA: Next thing you know people are saying it was the Carter Family or something. I think [‘Out of Vogue’] was influential to a lot of people, and I’ll take that.

What do you think about all the old punk bands re-uniting?

MA: I find the whole thing kind of interesting that bands like ours, or bands like TSOL or whatever the bands are can actually play these shows, and there’ll be a mixture of young people and old people. I just remember being 19 or 20 years old and having absolutely no desire to see bands that had existed 30 years prior, you know what I mean?

MS: Yeah like going to see the Coasters!

MA: I remember one time when we were about 23 or 24, and we went to go see Eric

MA: Yeah, of course. We were going to try and get a guy from ER to take Jeff’s place if he wasn’t going to do the show. An actor! But anyways … they tried to get us to do the Germs return show a couple years ago. They said, ‘We got the Minutemen, we got the Germs.’ And I was like, ‘D. Boon’s dead, Darby’s dead. How are you guys doing that?’ Didn’t make any sense to me. …

Maybe the actor is good, but to me it’s like going to see Wild Child as the Doors or Atomic Punks doing Van Halen. But, believe me, more people go to see that than the Middle Class!

MS: You know, like I watched the Adolescents and TSOL and they’ve obviously practiced all the way through and they’re tight and perfect, but to me that’s not really the most important thing. They’ve been playing the same set over and over again like for 20 years, but for us it’s a lot different, you know, cuz we’ve just started playing this stuff again this year.

MA: It’s kind of like Middle Class was before … The way we play and the way it is, all it takes is just one little thing to go wrong to throw it into a complete mess. You never know when the wheels are going to fly off and that’s what makes it kind of exciting. And you know with some of these other bands you can tell that it can be done in their sleep.

What’d you guys do in the thirty or so years since the band broke up?

MA: I was in a band with Alice from the Bags called Cambridge Apostles; I did that for a

“We’re going to get beat up again, aren’t we?”

MA: It gets co-opted or whatever, and I don’t know ... it’s just like fashion today. It’s just all taking parts of other things. We never dressed like punk rockers; we dressed pretty much like what you see now, but in high school everybody had long hair and it was still an outcast kind of thing. Now, you can go to any high school in the United States and you can’t tell what people are into because everybody looks hip or indie or whatever. Before, you could identify a person and be like, ‘That guy’s a loadie, that guys a surfer, that guy’s a punk rocker.’ Now it’s like the guys that are in bands like Mumford & Sons or whatever, look the same as the guys in the Audacity! They’re all wearing flannel cowboy shirts, and these guys are playing songs about squirrels?

MS: When I got into punk, I just cut my hair and started wearing ties, and older people would say, ‘You’re a very nice young man. ‘You’re thinking of joining the military?’ And people my age were like, ‘You’re just an idiot.’

MA: I just saw this posting from a friend of my wife’s son’s band and it’s called ‘posthardcore,’ but they all have haircuts like Disney channel kids. But I guess that it’s ‘post-hardcore metal’, not ‘post-hardcore punk’ or something. I don’t know! You know it’s interesting because in the original punk rock scene from L.A.—and I think S.F was the same—when you look at bands that were involved like Weirdos, Screamers, the Middle Class ... when you 32

our first single and kept with that music, that we would’ve been as popular as Black Flag.

But we changed the formula.

MP: I remember when we played the Fleetwood, some guy came in with long hair while we were playing and got pummeled by the crowd because he wasn’t supposed to be there, and there was a real visceral reaction. I remember Jeff refused to play the first singles.

We wouldn’t play them and we broke from that.

MA: I just remember you would start playing and everybody’s back was turned and they’d be all ready to start throwing down and stuff.

MS: I think the ratio of being hit to throwing punches must’ve been 50 to 1. We’ve been beaten up a lot more than we’ve beaten.

[Laughs] It’s not a TSOL kind of thing where there are these four big guys who were like asskickers.

MP: The original punks were not jocks, you know—they were all losers. But then the jocks got into it and saw about an inch deep of what punk rock was. Didn’t get the whole concept of it. Put on the uniform, and there were jocks and assholes coming in, and now that was hardcore.

MA: We’re going to get beat up again, aren’t we?

Do you think ‘Out of Vogue’ was the first hardcore single?

MA: Some people that were in the original scene—Alice Bag or something—they’ll say it was proto-punk or the beginning of thrash punk or whatever. And I’ll take it because it’s

Burdon. … We were fed up with punk rock so we were looking back at some of the old stuff like the Animals, doing something different. So we went to Eric Burdon at the Roxy and he looked all Vegas! Had his shirt open and all these gold chains on. And he did a medley of the Animals’ hits and we were all like, ‘Uhhhh …’

MS: I remember that and we were—I hate to say this—a little bit famous at the time and the guy was like, ‘Here, we’ve got seats for you right up front.’ After like the third song we were like, ‘Let’s get outta here!’ It was terrible.

It was unbearable!

MA: I think it’s interesting that kids and people find inspiration in going to see these old bands and everything. I mean, I’m completely thrilled by it. I’m flattered that a 15-year-old kid would come in here and actually value my opinion on music and stuff, cuz I could tell you that when I was their age I could give a fuck about what somebody that was 30 or 40 years old thought about music. People will bring CDs in for me and ask, ‘Can you listen to this?’ and I’ll say, ‘You know, there’s nothing I can really do for you.’

[Laughs] It’s kind of cool that they care. With the Audacity kids I was like, ‘You guys wanna play behind my store?’ Ha ha!

MP: The fact that anybody cares is fucking awesome.

Watching you guys play was great, as opposed to maybe the Germs or something. You heard about what they’re doing now?

little bit. For a very short time I had a band with Ward Dotson from Gun Club, and for a while I didn’t do anything except for play with Matt’s band—he was in a band called the Pontiac Brothers. They discovered the Doll Hut here in Anaheim and started that thing.

MP: I played in Trotsky Icepick with Jack Grisham [of TSOL], then I was going to college and was in a couple bands—Breathe and Young Caucasians.

MA: Wait, you were in Breathe? Oh, there was a band Breath— MS: —Bad Breath! They were the first hardcore— MA: —Gingivitis band! Then you took over the Eddie empire. Eddie and the Subtitles.

MP: Yeah, when Eddie bailed, I presided over the crumbling empire—produced China White, Adolescents, Christian Death …

MA: Oh, I thought that was the other Mike Patton!

L.A. RECORD PRESENTS MIDDLE CLASS WITH KID CONGO AND THE PINK MONKEY BIRDS, GRANT HART AND THE URINALS ON FRI., JUNE 24, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $16$18 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. THE MIDDLE CLASS’ OUT OF VOGUE: THE EARLY MATERIAL IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM FRONTIER. VISIT THE MIDDLE CLASS AT FACEBOOK.COM/ THEMIDDLECLASSOFFICIAL. INTERVIEW

KING TUFF Interview by Chris Ziegler Photography by Ward Robinson

King Tuff is Kyle Thomas from Brattleboro, Vermont. His dad works at a mental asylum and his mom special-orders socks with giant shark mouths on them. He was already part of psych-folk band Feathers and heavy-dude band Witch with J Mascis, but in 2008 he took the name King Tuff and released Was Dead on little New York label Colonel. He recorded every song all by himself in the dead of night and it’s one of the best power-pop-rock-‘n’-roll-freaked-out-freak-in-full-freak-mode albums of the decade. Find it, buy it, cook it, eat it, and feel its power course through you. After this year’s SXSW, he borrowed a spraypainted punk truck and moved into a sublet in Laurel Canyon, perhaps inspired by the winterized L.A. hat he has worn pretty much since King Tuff existed. In honor of this brief opportunity to qualify King Tuff as a local and enjoy him live backed by the power of Audacity, L.A. RECORD treated him to strange Brazilian chocolate pizza. He will be recording a new album for Sub Pop (his follow-up to the band known as Happy Birthday) later this year, and it will not have banjo on it.

What’s the worst idea you ever had and what nickname did it earn you?

Probably spray-painting my hair! I had a mohawk all through high school. I’d always use unflavored gelatin. You put it in the microwave with water. But I wanted to take it to the next level. And it was like an instant dye-job, too! So I did it and it stayed up for two weeks.

I literally had to take a two-hour shower.

So was the nickname … Krylon?

That would work—people have called me Krylon!

Where did you get your winterized Dodgers hat with fur flaps? Did the hat bring you to L.A.? Or did L.A. bring you to the hat?

I used to have a different hat. A Dodgers hat, but it just said Los Angeles. An oldschool hat. I got a Star of David embroidered on it at the Beverly Center. You can either get your hat there with the Star of David or without—no, you can get anything on it you want. But I’m Jewish—not practicing, but I still wanted to make a hat that would confuse people. I’d wear it all the time and people would be staring at me and I knew they could not figure out what was happening. ‘What is up with that hat?’

‘That’s my team—the L.A. Jews!’ Then that hat got really old, so I got a new confusing L.A. hat. The winter version.

Why confusing hats? Are you trying to confuse your natural predators from the top down?

I don’t know. It’s my natural tendency. To confuse people.

Do you ever look in the mirror and confuse yourself on accident?

I’m so confused by that question.

Why did you come to L.A.? Are you gonna make your L.A. album?

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Everybody keeps saying that. I don’t know what that means. I guess it’s a phenomenon.

Maybe it’s involuntary.

I do have an instrumental song called ‘L.A. Sleigh Ride.’ I’m working on demos. There’s an enchanted piano where I’m staying and I’ve just been recording on that. I’ve never really had a piano to record with before. It’s super old and only the keys in the middle work.

It’s all busted up. I started doing like Phantom of the Opera—lighting a candle every night and going mental. It totally adds another side to writing songs. I do things I’d never do.

Have you felt the presence of the ghost of Warren Zevon?

I have one that sounds like ‘Werewolves of London’! I feel like Laurel Canyon is really strange. Supposedly there’s a ghost carriage, like a horse and buggy. Apparently it comes at the stroke of midnight. I’m gonna camp out there inside a fake bush so the ghost doesn’t know. I just imagine the driver wearing like a ten-foot-tall top hat with a skeleton for a face.

What kind of songs do you do now that you’d never have done before?

I don’t know what kind of songs I’ve never done before because I don’t know what they are.

Disco reggae?

Oh, I’ve done disco reggae. I’d like to go more in that direction. A long time ago I made some banjo songs. I don’t know how to play the banjo. A few people who’ve heard that stuff told me they like it, but there’s no way I’d ever put a fucking banjo on anything. I hate the banjo! I also hate the fucking saw! I’m so sick of motherfuckers playing the saw.

What kind of music are you listening to where the saw is overexposed?

If you go to a street corner anywhere, you’ll see motherfuckers playing saw. Now I’m gonna get beat up by crust punks. I’ll get sawed!

How did you get to L.A.? In your mean green Chevrolet?

I wish it was the mean green Chevrolet! I had to give that up. It just stopped driving one day. It could have been the battery but I didn’t have any money to fix it. I parked it in my parents’ driveway and it started growing forests of mold on the inside. You couldn’t even go inside. The steering wheel was turning green. It had been painted lime green with like house paint.

Same color as your bedroom walls?

Freak! How’d you know that? We’re very similar.

How did you finally dislodge yourself from the East Coast after a lifetime there?

I had to bust through the mold!

How long did it take to make King Tuff? Are all these songs from like one crazy week?

Was Dead was originally a different album. I recorded it in 2003 or something. Then I revisited it. I just knew I could record the songs better and make it tighter. I always had a fucking pile of songs that just build up over time.

I recorded 30 demos. I did it all in a month. I did all the drum tracks first and then you go through with guitars, bass … just work on it all at the same time.

Is it true there was a line of girls stretching all the way around the block when you played your first show as King Tuff at the Knitting Factory in New York?

That wasn’t my first show.

But the line … ?

Duh! Did Sub Pop sign you as King Tuff? Or just simply to exist?

I signed a contract to stay alive. They just wanted me to be alive. It was as Happy Birthday or King Tuff—to make albums as either.

There’s no communication with them, really.

Every once in a while I show up and hang out and sleep on their couch in the office.

You said that King Tuff is sexual rock ‘n’ roll. What is sexual rock ‘n’ roll?

Isn’t all rock ‘n’ roll sexual if it’s actually rock ‘n’ roll? I feel like music is very vague now.

Indie rock is all very vague. You never know what the fuck anyone is talking about and you can’t even relate to anything in it. My music is just more straightforward in some ways. I try to make something people can relate to.

Like sex. Obviously that’s not all it’s about.

I’m always … shit’s getting weirder. I’ve just started to write more songs. All my new songs are just kind of about like … busting through the mold.

We all have to bust through the mold.

Yeah—but you also have to eat some mold first. It’s like … hair of the dog.

I’ve never eaten mold.

You’ve never made a crazy sandwich and took a bite and then looked at the loaf of bread and it’s covered in mold? Or had a bunch of coffee cups lying around your room and picked up what you thought was a new one and realized it was a relic?

For the first time ever, you’re going to have another person help you record King Tuff—Bobby from the Go and Conspiracy of Owls. What do you hate most about music that you’re gonna make him do?

Bobby Harlow. I’ll make him play the fucking drums! My first instrument was the drums, and I can fake it—I play the drums on Was Dead—but I fucking hate it! I like playing the drums, but not when I have to get it right. I INTERVIEW

also hate dealing with fucking cables and wires and that shit. I’ll record a song and by the end of the night I’m inside a pretzel of cables and I can’t get out. At the time, there were many tears. Mental tears. It’ll be cool to not have to deal with pushing buttons.

What is gonna be on the new album besides no saw, no banjo and you not playing drums?

Good question. Out of those 30 songs I wrote, I had an idea of what was gonna be on the next album. It’s all new songs but I’d say … it’s weird. I sent the songs to Bobby and he picked about half of the same ones I liked.

I agreed with him on half. The other half he chose, I was kind of like … ‘Whoa!’ I wasn’t thinking about those ones. I don’t know what it’s going to sound like. It’s definitely a continuation of Was Dead, but it will probably end up going in a little bit different direction.

I can’t ever make anything sound the same twice! I’m too all over the place with my song-

like a little piece of candy you can eat over and over again. You want to be able to listen to it over and over and you’re not gonna do that with a seven-minute song. Nobody has an attention span—especially some fucking teenagers driving around in a car. They want that shit and they want it now and they don’t wanna fuck around!

What’s the best way to make ten seconds of a pop song really count?

Scream! Some kind of Yeti scream.

What does songwriting mean to you? What are you allowed and not allowed to do?

I don’t know how to talk about it. I consider myself a songwriter because it’s all I think about. From the second I started trying to play guitar. Fifth or fourth grade. My dad bought a Stratocaster and it was sitting in the living room and I just started touching it and stroking its body. I never really tried to learn covers or anything and I never took lessons.

From the second I started playing, I’d just

So what you have to offer is hideousness.

But if she can embrace the hideousness, I know she’s the one for me.

What universal thing can there never be enough songs about?

Cavemen. And cavewomen!

You have a tattoo of your inner cavewoman.

What kind of advice does she give to you?

I just look to her for guidance. I lick her. I also have a spirit alien.

You’ve got the song ‘Freak When I’m Dead.’

When did you learn you were a freak?

The first time I looked in a mirror.

What’s the one thing all true freaks have in common?

Everyone’s a freak! Some people are uncomfortable with it, and some people choose to embrace it. But it’s all about embracing your inner cavewoman. Just fuck the world! That’s what it’s all about!

Have you ever helped someone discover their inner freak?

You should demand socks and underwear at every show so you never have to buy any.

I am gonna do that. Although I have a lot of socks because my mom works in a shoe store and she’s obsessed with socks, and she gets to order them so she gets the weird ones. She got me ones with guitars all over ’em. The best ones look like sharks eating your legs.

Where is the best graveyard to do your thinking?

What I’m talking about is probably the most powerful dream I ever had. I was walking around the graveyard near my house, and a doorway was in the ground—made of grass. I opened it up and walked down these dirt stairs.

When you woke up, you could completely rip on guitar?

Yes! No—at the bottom was another door, and inside was a room. Lush with plants, walls and ceilings and everything—another graveyard, but an underground graveyard. Just a room with no windows or anything but an

“I’m so sick of motherfuckers playing the saw.” writing. Do I show people that I can write all these different kind of songs? Or just give ’em what I think they want—like a straight-up rock album? Which is cool but kinda hiding the fact that I write other kinds of songs.

What’s the difference between the songs you wanted and the songs Bobby wanted?

He was looking for things he hasn’t heard before—lyrics and emotions and overall songwriting. Me and him are really focused on songwriting. We’re both songwriters. He also can write lots of different kinds of songs, which is why I’m really psyched to work with him.

What are your different kinds of songs?

The songs I record up here, they’re more like acoustic songs. They’re not like rock songs is the thing. I’m wary of putting them on a King Tuff record. People want King Tuff to be like a party fucking thing! And there will be that for sure. But I can’t hide the fact that I’m a fucking troll!

What’s a troll song like?

Trolls are like fucking big-ass feet, playing a fucking pennywhistle in the top of a fucking tree. Like Jethro … Troll.

Paul Collins said the keys to a good pop song are economy and efficiency—is that true?

Every little second serves a purpose. There’s no fucking around! You gotta make that shit as short as you can possibly make it. People don’t have an attention span! And I don’t either! I hate long songs. You want every song to be 36

make up my own songs. That’s just what happened naturally. Then I thought about it all the time. I really started writing songs toward the end of high school. I bought like a recording device and just started hanging out in the basement. I don’t know what made it kick in.

Being girl crazy? Writing a bunch of fucking songs about fucking feeling horrible?

Which of those worked better?

Writing about girls or like four specific girls definitely did not work. Maybe it worked. I tried one time when I was like 18 and it definitely did not work. You can laugh at me all you want!

How about feeling horrible?

Feeling horrible is just cool in general.

How come?

Then you’re on the same page as everybody else.

What’s the last thing you fell in love with that wasn’t a human being?

I know the answer to this. I think I gotta go back to the enchanted piano.

What’s your standard romantic operating procedure?

Um … candlelight … maybe some fruit salad … I got nothing. That’s probably why I don’t have a girlfriend. Candlelight and fruit salad!

That’s kind of beautiful. What would a King Tuff date night be like in L.A.?

Probably take her to Pink’s and let her watch me eat some chili dogs.

Is that especially spectacular?

It’s more like a hideous display.

I don’t wanna take credit for turning people into freaks. But usually if I’m around people that have a sort of kindred freakiness, that’s when the shit really starts to bubble up. I’ll be hanging with people and they start acting crazy. ‘I never act this way—what did you do to me?’ They start like farting and screaming.

At the same time? Are they out of breath?

‘Farting and Screaming’ is a good album title!

This is a good concept. You’re like a producer for people’s personalities.

Whoa! That’s kind of cult-leaderish! It’s like—a lifestyle manicurist.

Have you ever had a mani/pedi?

Yes, I have as a matter of fact! Me and my girlfriend at the time got manicures for her birthday. It was fucking awesome. I got a Halloween paint job. Alternating black and orange. It was so crazy. My fingernails felt made of rubber. I haven’t had a pedicure yet. I’m embarrassed. I have one monster toenail.

Have them put a face on it.

Like a gargoyle?

Tell Sub Pop to pamper it.

I’ll put that in my contract: ‘I have a gargoyle toenail and it needs to be taken care of on a daily basis!’ I think people are lazy about coming up with that shit for contracts. And you probably wouldn’t get it in anyway. They always ask what you want on a rider and I say shit and you barely ever get anything. People just don’t treat each other right.

insane white light emanating. It was the most peaceful I ever felt. I was just chillin’ in there.

Something about that dream really fucked me up, in a good way. There also used to be a grave in my town up in the woods behind the mental institution that just said FRANKENSTEIN. And someone stole it!

You have a piece of art titled ‘I Dreamed I Owned 1,000 Dogs.’ What dreams have you actually realized?

I’m just doing what I love to do—make art and music, which has always been what I’ve done.

When I was a kid, I actually wanted to be a dessert chef/masseuse. The ultimate business for middle-aged women. I was probably like 7.

Do you think someday you can make all those middle-aged women happy?

Yeah—I’ll probably just have to put out like a Tony Bennett-style album. Or Tom Jones.

And you can be shirtless with the Sun Medallion.

Fuck! Now we’re getting somewhere!

KING TUFF WITH AUDACITY AND PERSONAL AND THE PIZZAS ON SAT., JUNE 25, AT BURGER RECORDS, 645-A S. STATE COLLEGE BLVD., FULLERTON. 2 PM / FREE / ALL AGES, BURGERRECORDS.COM. VISIT KING TUFF AT MYSPACE.COM/KINGTUFF. KING TUFF’S WAS DEAD IS AVAILABLE NOW ON CASSETTE FROM BURGER. KING TUFF’S FUTURE ALBUM WILL BE OUT IN 2012 ON SUB POP. INTERVIEW

SPINDRIFT Interview and photography by Daiana Feuer

Over the last ten years, Spindrift pioneered a cosmic Wild West sound that influenced a new Western swinging scene in Los Angeles. We spent 24 hours in the desert with Spindrift at Hicksville, an unusual oasis—a themed trailer park resort/recording studio hidden among the outer limits of Joshua Tree. Here we shot BB guns and played ping-pong while the band laid down tracks for their new album, Classic Soundtracks Vol. 1, with an all new lineup of unique musicians, full of desert fantasies with a soft spot for psychedelic science fiction.

Kirpatrick Thomas is the ringleader, the man in black. He’s walking in the desert, barefoot. He speaks first.

What do you think pulls you to make psychedelic music?

I think I got turned on to psychedelics probably around 1991 and, you know, it sort of opened everything up and there were a lot of other bands I started listening to. I didn’t know about the whole underground garage rock scene. I lived in Delaware so I wasn’t from California or any kind of metropolitan area so all this stuff I had to discover for myself. This is the 90s. You didn’t really have Internet and you couldn’t check all that stuff out. You had to go to the record stores and try to find it. The one band we had was almost like a heavy metal band and then a prog metal band and all that kind of stopped and we were like, ‘Yeah, let’s do something kind of heavy and psychedelic and we can always change it up.’ I just think it’s a good type of music to expand on. You can do whatever you want with it.

What do you get out of it?

I don’t even really look at it as a kind of music. I think it’s more just what interests me the most is writing a song about something or having it kind of have a feel of something that I’ve never done before. I more enjoy moving from one type of music to the next. Like unconquered territory is the main thing. I like writing spaghetti western type stuff but I’ve always been into the Bollywood scene in India, and Eastern music. ‘So let’s do a song like that because that sounds fun. Let’s do something that’s kind of funky that you can dance to. And let’s do something that sounds like a surf Joe Meek song because he’s awesome. Let’s do something that sounds like a trucker song.

Let’s do something that sounds like Spacemen 3. Let’s do something that sounds like Jello Biafra.’ We vary a lot from song to song. You could listen to some of our stuff from 1994 and just be like, ‘That’s a completely different INTERVIEW

band,’ but my voice comes in and you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s Spindrift.’

There seems to be a sense of humor in your lyrics. There’s sort of a play with the cosmic cowboy that’s a little bit funny.

Yeah, it’s kind of satirical. Sometimes cynical. I think that’s just the nature of our personalities.

Maybe some previous versions of the band were a little darker. But I think that generally we’re a pretty humorous and jovial kind of band with sort of an interest in the dark side of life. I think with everything there’s a yin and yang. Like, write a happy song and on the other side you write a sad song, you know?

What are some of the movies you’ve been screening in the studio for inspiration?

This next record is called Classic Soundtracks and it’s all the movie themes we’ve done. As long as we’ve got some visuals going on there it basically helps to keep your mind away from the fact that you’re in a studio with a bunch of microphones around you and what you record is going to be indefinitely what people hear.

You kind of just do it more like, ‘OK, I’m just watching a movie and playing to it.’ It kind of brings it closer and even closer than that—it’s being in the desert. Recording in this setting makes it very natural and takes it home.

You picked this environment because you wanted the stars and the desert and all this stuff to feed into the creation of this album.

Now that you’re almost at the end of the week, have you reflected on how it’s infiltrated the album to record it here?

It’s amazing waking up and walking out of your trailer and thinking, Wow, I’m in the desert, and then looking over at the studio and thinking, Wow, I’m recording an album, and then you look at the pool and you’re like, ‘I’m going to jump into that pool.’

And then go shoot stuff.

And then you can go shoot stuff. You can just kind of say, ‘This is life. This is as good as it gets.’

Sasha Vallely’s voice leads the new Spindrift album and she plays a mean flute, among many other instruments. As we speak, she’s wielding a knife in the kitchen.

How did you end up in the band?

When I was in England I met up with the Warlocks and Brian Jonestown Massacre and we became good friends instantly. I just hung out with them for years every time they’d come out to the U.K. and they were always saying, ‘Oh, come out to L.A. It’s great, it’s great.’

Back then, in 2003, I think, Bobby Hecksher asked me to join the Warlocks as bass player but I was in my band so I didn’t want to leave it. My band split in 2007 and he asked me again to join because I think Jenny had just left so I came to L.A. to do that. I played in the Warlocks for a little while but wasn’t really vibing with the Warlocks. When I was out here, I met K.P. I was friends with Plucky and that’s how I found out about Spindrift and as soon as I heard them I wrote to them and was like, ‘Let me join! Let me join!’ This was about three years ago.

You’re contributing lyrics too, right?

I wrote one of the songs on the album, which is really exciting. It’s called ‘Shadytown,’ and me and K.P. have been co-writing some lyrics for the other songs. It’s really good that he allows me to do that because obviously it’s his baby.

Why does Spindrift exist?

I think it exists because it’s bringing the old and the new together. We obviously have a huge Morricone influence and 60s psychedelic music, but it’s actually creating a new genre that isn’t around so it’s bringing together some-

thing modern, something old, something new, something classic. …. It’s like creating another genre: psychedelic spaghetti western. Ever since I was a kid, my dad always wanted to be a cowboy. I always wanted to be an Indian, funnily enough, so it’s like I’m living my dream.

I’ve always been into Native American culture and stuff and really follow that. It is kind of like being a big kid and playing cowboys and Indians.

Henry Evans is the other longest standing member of Spindrift. He’s the guy with long hair playing the double-neck bass guitar. We sit on the porch of the trailer decorated like a log cabin.

How do you think the band’s sound has evolved with the new members?

Luke [Dawson] playing pedal steel definitely has more of a country feel although one thing that I really like about his playing is that he plays pedal steel in a really psychedelic way as opposed to just straight Hank Williams-style country pedal steel. The addition of Sasha playing flute adds a lot to the band and her vocals are also really amazing. She and K.P. do a lot of duets on the new material. It’s really compelling.

I feel the cowboy and Western thing is a form of experimental music. This kind of delving into the possibilities of old-time …

Yeah, I agree. That’s something that’s really attractive to me about the music because I’ve always had a soft spot for Bob Wills and Gene Autry … you know, cowboy music. The cowboy music is what inspires me. The marriage of the old-time country or the old-time Western with maybe a more modern 1960s psychedelic sound. And obviously our influences range from Helios Creed to other contemporaries of 39

ours like Black Mountain—who we’re friends with—and Brian Jonestown Massacre and Black Angels. We have the album The Legend of God’s Gun, which is a straight spaghetti western soundtrack for a spaghetti western movie and the album that we did after that, The West, was really eclectic in terms of the influences.

I think this album seems to me a bit more focused than The West, because it is thematic, even though the theme is that it’s a variety of different styles—at least the concept is that it’s all film music for different films.

What do you think draws people to music that might have more of a fantasy appeal about it?

For me, the music that we make … first of all, it’s not pop music but it does have a sort of pop aesthetic. A lot of it is catchy and sticks in your head. What I love about the music is that there’s a real sense of drama to it. I think that there are other bands that do something similar to us but somehow can’t quite capture that. But it’s another thing about this band that keeps me going. Obviously, not every song is a gem but the ones that we fully flesh out and release and play live—I think for the most part, there’s something about them that makes them compelling for people and I think a lot of that has to do with the drama and the power of it. If it were really easy to sum up and describe, I think a lot more people would be able to do it. It would be easy to write music.

Pedal steel player Luke Dawson sits on the astroturf by the saltwater pool.

Why do you like Gram Parsons?

The time that I first heard about him was a pretty big moment. I had just moved from the suburbs of Dallas, where I’d grown up, to Denton, which is 45 minutes away and that was a big move for me. … About that time I wanted 40

to get more into country because it was always kind of there but I never gave it a shot because of all the new stuff that floats around. I started digging deeper. Obviously I had known about George Jones and Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings and Ray Price and all those cats but I never gave it much. I was 20 years old and didn’t know shit about shit. That led me to Gram Parsons. A friend of mine told me about him. He was like, ‘If you’re into country, maybe you’ll like this sort of psychedelic country,’ and I was like, ‘There is no such thing as psychedelic country. Get the fuck out.’ ‘Check out the Flying Burrito Brothers. Gilded Palace of Sin.’ And I did and it changed everything.

Yeah, Sneaky Pete was the first time that I’d heard psychedelic pedal steel. That’s kind of what drove me into playing pedal steel. I was familiar with the traditional, awesome, beautiful stuff coming out of Nashville and Bakersfield and everywhere else but I always sloughed that off as something I would never be able to do. Then I had an epiphany when I heard about a Space Echo and what that thing could do. I was like, ‘Why doesn’t anyone put the pedal steel through the Space Echo and make it psychedelic?’ I stewed on that idea for maybe three years before I even started looking and once I did find one, I played it for about six or seven months before I told a soul that I had it.

It’s a very communal vibe in Denton so everybody plays on everybody’s records and I didn’t want anyone inviting me to play when I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. First thing I did was put it through a delay pedal and that’s just kind of how I got away with getting into it, kind of leaning on the psychedelic stuff that I already knew how to do because I was holed up in my apartment with a guitar on my lap and a slide and running that through and making it as crazy and tripped out as I could.

It was kind of a natural progression.

How do you approach what you add to a song when you’re adding accents?

Where and when to play and what to play? I don’t know. With pedal steel it’s really important to be on pitch so, naturally, I’m going to do things slowly. It’s like the longer you take to get to a note—sometimes, as long as you get there in time, it works and it can also work to your advantage if you’re not a very skilled player. I will just look for little pockets that I can fade something in to fill it up. In my head, that’s what I always want to hear. Something tripping out. Somebody heavy on the reverb and echoes and such. It’s just naturally what I gravitate towards.

How did you meet K.P.?

It was early November, I guess, at the Halloween show over at Pappy & Harriet’s with Gram Rabbit in 08. That was their last show with that formation and then he came out a couple weeks after that so it must have been mid-November. It was a slow night up there and I had just moved to town six weeks or two months prior. I’d gotten into the habit of going up to Pappy & Harriet’s whenever I could, especially on Mondays because they have dollar draft night. Dollar Budweisers.

I’d go up there and he was up there and I didn’t think much of it but the friend I rode in with was talking to him. … I was telling him why I was in town because I’d moved from Texas to get the hell out of there and he was like, ‘Well, you play music or anything?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got a pedal steel and I’ve been playing it for about a year steady but it’s nothing that you’d probably like to hear. It’s really psychedelic, not traditional by any means.’ And he was like, ‘Aw no, what, are you serious?’ and his eyes got pretty big and he got excited. We exchanged numbers and on the way out I was like, ‘Oh, man, I didn’t even ask what you do,’ and he

was like, ‘Oh, I’m in this band Spindrift,’ and then my jaw dropped. I was like, ‘I’d heard about you guys a long time ago out in Texas of all places where nothing ends up really, at least for a younger kid that doesn’t know where to look.’ So that was pretty cool. ... He called me three days later and I packed up my stuff and got a ride into L.A. Why do you like playing with Spindrift?

It’s the perfect combination of all the music that I like. I love the old country stuff and Henry knew more than I did about the traditional 50s and 60s country, and that blew my mind, so we had an immediate rapport.

K.P. loved anything that I was doing because I didn’t really know where I was going most of the time, just making psychedelic sounds and he was loving it. So it’s really nice to play with someone who really knows what he wants to hear and we kind of hear the same thing. I don’t know, everyone lacks ego completely in this group and we all get along really, really well and we can easily stay in a van together for five weeks straight and nobody wants to kill each other. I think that’s the greatest part about it.

The reason drummer James Acton isn’t heard in this article is because we all went to shoot shotguns instead.

SPINDRIFT WITH RT N’ THE 44S ON THUR., JUNE 30, AT THE DARK HORSE, 901 E. 1ST ST., DOWNTOWN. AND WITH EVERY SPINDRIFT MUSIC VIDEO DIRECTOR PRESENTING THEIR VIDEOS ON WED., JULY 27, AT EL CID, 4212 W. SUNSET BLVD., SILVERLAKE. SPINDRIFT’S CLASSIC SOUNDTRACKS VOL. 1 IS OUT NOW ON XEMU RECORDS. VISIT SPINDRIFT AT SPINDRIFTWEST.COM. INTERVIEW

MICHAEL CHAPMAN

By Kevin Ferguson Illustration by Michael C. Hsiung

Fairport followers, Jansch backers and even Zeppelin heads, breathe easy! Listen to Michael Chapman!

Postcards of steam trains, breakups and sincere portraits of America the Beautiful dominate his 40+ years of well-practiced strumming, slapping, cooing and crooning. A contemporary of the newly-fashionable UK Folk revival, Chapman plays more with his heart than his heady peers like Fahey and Renbourn: phased out 12string fingerpicking, CSNY harmonies and soul-of-Bonham drums swirl together in a classic Harvest Records haze. Earlier this year, Light in the Attic blessed all of us with a reissue of Chapman’s 1970 LP, Fully Qualified Survivor (John Peel’s favorite album of that year) and it comes not a moment too soon. Guitar by Mick Ronson, bass by Steeleye Span’s Rick Kemp and production by Gus Dudgeon (just days after he helmed “Space Oddity.”)

Chapman speaks now from a highway in Kentucky just prior to his tour with Bill Callahan.

In my favorite promo photo of you from back in the day, you’re looking pissed off at the camera with a beard and a cigarette.

It says, ‘Would you have a drink with this man?’ Would you have had a drink with that man?

Yeah, of course I would! That dates from my days in Hamburg. Germany. I don’t actually look like that anymore, which might be a good thing! I think a lot of people woudn’t have a drink with me back then, though. It was a good photograph at a time and we used it a lot. No such thing as bad publicity!

In America, it feels like people are just now finally getting into the music of the ‘60s UK folk revival.

Yeah, it’s not really going on in the UK either. Steve Gunn and I just toured again.

Fairport was always there! There’s been people like John Martyn, who passed away recently. Roy Harper. It’s like survival of the fittest. The last few years, all this stuff has been re-released, like kids started buying it. Maybe they’re wondering, ‘What’s my dad been buying? I might like that.’

What’s the biggest thing our generation is missing out on, musically?

Music is so corporate today. It doesn’t interest me at all. I like people coming from left of field. The people coming into music today want to be famous and will do anything. I don’t take to this philosophy of ‘instant fame and gone tomorrow, and there’ll be another one tomorrow.’

What’s changed about the crowds?

It’s very different. People have different philosophies. It’s great if they like you—if they turn hostile, it’s a different story. I do what I do, and if you don’t like it there’s a door at the back. I use that philosophy wherever I go. I’m not an entertainer. There’s nothing I can do about it if you don’t like it.

42

What’s the smallest word you’ve used to communicate a big idea?

Oh, ‘NO’ and ‘YES’ work fine, perhaps!

That’s what I try to do. Everything I do sort of stems from the simplicity of the old blues guys. The simplicity of very few words. I’m no English scholar. I want to communicate as quickly as possible.

More conversational, maybe?

I’ve never really written songs about conversation. I’ve heard the one-sided conversation songs. My songs are kind of like diaries.

They’re all things that happened to me. I’m very self-centered, to be honest.

An English teacher would just say you’re being true to yourself.

And I hope that’s what I do! I don’t write about other people; I don’t know other people well enough. The person I know best is me.

You’ve got that famous story about first getting on stage because you traded the doorman a half-hour set of guitar if he’d let you in free so you wouldn’t have to stand out in the rain. Do you think you would have been a musician if you could’ve afforded to get into clubs?

That night was the night my life changed! If it hadn’t been raining that night, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you. I’d just come out of teaching—no job, no one. The guitar saved my life. If I hadn’t walked into that club that night everything would’ve been different.

I wouldn’t swap my life for anybody.

Is that a prerequisite for being a legit musician? No door money?

Maybe so, you know? You might be right about that. I’m a huge Steve Earle fan. I heard his last album and maybe he’s too content with his life now. It was pretty dull! Maybe he’s too happy! He lost his anger quotient. When you suffer, you do get songs out of it. And I don’t write anywhere near like I used to—maybe I’m content as well. It’s been a long haul.

When was the last time you wrote a song about a train?

It was a piece of guitar-playing called ‘Two Trains.’ One was a freight and the other an express. It’s on a new album. But the last song I actually wrote was about a waitress. It was the first song that wasn’t about me! She was in a truck stop, one of the great American icons.

I just wrote a song imagining what her life was like. Maybe I should try again. The first song I ever learned to play was ‘Streamline Train,’ an old blues song. I’ve always been a steam train fanatic.

Which train is closest to your heart?

Well, I had two days on a train when I was playing Geneva and I went to Paris on the TGV which goes 200 mph! The next day we got on the Eurostar that takes you underneath the channel. That was a brilliant ride!

Other then elevator ducks and poverty, what does the South mean to you?

I love the South. I think the South in the States and the North in England are the same.

People got time for each other. I love the food down here. People are very open and kind down here. I love it! To me, it’s like that in England, but it’s the other way if you go south to London—they won’t give you a second!

It’s too much trouble! We’re driving through some spectacular countryside right now in Kentucky!

What’s your last memory of Mick Ronson?

He used to ring me up sometimes. He lived in America for ages but he never lost his accent! But once he hooked up with Bowie I didn’t see a lot of him. He played on an album of mine called The Man Who Hated Mornings. I wanted Mick to play on it and

“When you suffer, you do get songs out of it.”

You wrote ‘Memphis in Winter’ about a seeing a rich man’s ducks coming out of an elevator while people were starving on the sreet. Is that a uniquely American phenomenon?

That hit me hard, you know. A prime example of the extremes of America. Memphis was in the grip of a terrible winter, it really was bad. And the opulence of the people there, the homeless people dying in the streets. It’s never gonna get me keys to the city!

How did they know what floor to get to?

They live in a penthouse suite! Apparently there used to be like two dozen of them, but they’ve all died off. That could only happen in America.

produce it, but when he turned up he was in really bad condition and I could only use him for one track.

You did a noise album. The title’s a John Fahey reference, yeah?

Yeah, I’ve done that. It’s sold out completely!

It’s The Resurrection and Revenge of the Clayton Peacock—a reference for the Fahey freaks in the world—give them something to think about. Maybe they can work that out! That was fun to do.

MICHAEL CHAPMAN’S FULLY QUALIFIED SURVIVOR IS OUT NOW ON LIGHT IN THE ATTIC. VISIT MICHAEL CHAPMAN AT WWW.MICHAELCHAPMAN.CO.UK. INTERVIEW

FEEDING PEOPLE Interview by Dan Collins and Lainna Fader Photography by Ramon Felix Feeding People is a dark and delicious contradiction. Both the band and the band members are incredibly young (founders and power-couple Nic Rachman and Jessie Jones are just 19 years old) but their music—fueled by beer and the attentions of Burger Records—also veers towards the ancient and dark. These punk rock kids have roots in psychedelia, stoner metal, pre-war blues, and even Sunday School sing-a-longs, and they also know how to enjoy a backyard, a cool evening, a chimenea, and a cracklin’ Duraflame log. We coaxed them into talking about drugs and demons, just days before the End of Time— bad timing, since this is their first interview ever!

What was it like sharing the stage with Thom Yorke?

Mike Reinhart (drums): He shared the stage with us!

Nic Rachman (guitar, bass, vocals): It was at the Airliner, for Low End Theory.

Louis Filliger (bass, guitar): I told him, ‘Thanks, Thom Yorke, for opening for us,’ because he played before us. I’ll never get the chance to say that again!

MR: Gaslamp played, and Free the Robots.

It was Thom Yorke’s first DJ session ever! He was pretty nervous because it wasn’t his equipment. Flying Lotus was helping him. For not knowing, he DJ’d for like two hours. We didn’t know if we were gonna play! The place kept getting shut down by the fire marshal.

NR: They turned away 300 people, then kicked out like half the people, and it refilled again. That was pretty crazy. They wouldn’t even let us go outside.

MR: Thom Yorke just appeared out of the wall, and when he was done, he disappeared into the wall! There were no trap doors! He jumped into a large man’s jacket and somehow fit into his belly fat and was led away.

Did he turn into swarms of rats, or some other form of vampiric manifestation?

MR: Now that I think about it, I saw a shit ton of roaches on the roof.

MR: He probably disintegrated into bugs and left the building!

Jessie Jones (guitar, vocals): And belly fat.

How did you end up doing Low End Theory in the first place? Your sound doesn’t seem to be a fit for that scene.

NR: Well, because Gaslamp Killer plays our songs in his shows. They like our music— that’s why they asked us to.

MR: I think we’re the third band to ever play at Low End.

NR: We’re only the second—Entrance Band was the other band.

MR: Of everybody who was there to see the show, no one was there to see us! They were like, ‘Uhhh, what’s going on?’

JJ: Surprise!

MR: ‘All of a sudden we have to be subject to a band?’

Jane Reich (keyboards): We started off playing and there weren’t that many people in there— but slowly, but surely, more people were coming in.

JJ: They’re open to a lot of types of music, and I think psychedelic music is one of the genres that they like.

JR: As far as music goes, the more bands and DJs come together, the more we’re understanding each other’s style. Like, I’m into hiphop, and I’m into psychedelic shit!

Who’s your favorite hip-hop artist?

JR: Uhhhhhh … ha ha ha ha ha!

MR: The beat scene is working in a lot of old psychedelic, 70s and jazz. I hear Gaslamp throwing in Jimi Hendrix.

NR: I think that’s why they like us. It’s kind of weird—at that show, we were a completely different feel. A lot of people were really into it, though. Daddy Kev offered us a record deal!

Your current record label is through Burger Records and you have a new tape with them—but you guys seem so different than those bands as well.

MR: I’ve been friends with Sean and the guys who run Burger, and we’ve been accepted by all the other bands, too. It’s not like we’re outsiders.

JR: We can’t thank Burger enough—all of them individually: Sean, Brian, Bobby and Lee—but especially Bobby and Brian. Brian was like our uncle when we went on tour.

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Do you feel like your music is darker and heavier than anything else on the label?

NR: I think Burger is pretty dope, but I think our music is way darker than anything there.

LF: It’s more comparable to the MMOSS album they put out. They’re doing some psychedelic, dark stuff.

JR: I think we are definitely the weirdest individuals at Burger Records.

MR: My left nut has batwings!

We just interviewed Daryl Hall, and we talked about how he had dabbled in Aleister Crowley-ism. Are you guys involved in the occult?

MR: Who’s Aleister Crowley? That’s the guy with a triangle on his head?

JJ: Thelema: it’s his philosophy/religion that he created. No, we’re not involved officially.

MR: I am fully involved with demons in every way. Mike Reinhart is a demon!

NR: Cornerstone, on La Palma. In Anaheim.

Christian, evangelical and evil!

JJ: Evilgelical!

NR: I went to a rehab there for high school, and got kicked out. That church fucked people up! The first time I ever did drugs was in that church.

JJ: And look what happened! Sorry, Mom! Do you think music and spirituality can be legitimately entwined?

LF: Bach wrote religious music, some of the craziest music ever written. It started there, and with Mozart: triple octave shit he does, with two hands; it’s crazy! Mozart’s Final Requiem is a religious piece, and it’s some of the best music ever written.

What other genres or artists have influenced your style?

MR: All the music from 90s Disney movies.

Sonic II soundtrack.

Nic, you were homeless?

NR: I was homeless for about four months.

JJ: He had an attitude problem!

NR: I got a ticket for pot, and my grandparents flipped out and kicked me out. And this guy, Louis— LF: —I used to feed him!

NR: He would come to Starbucks because he was ditching school and didn’t want his mom to know. I was 16 at the time, and turned 17 while I was homeless.

MR: I didn’t even know he played music! I just knew he was a homeless kid and he seemed cool! So I brought him down to the river in my van and we chased these chickens around.

Did you eat them?

MR: No, they were pets. As violent as I may seem, I would rather cut a man’s head off than a chicken’s. I would happily

“I would happily eat a human.”

JJ: I was possessed as a demon in a dream a couple nights ago. I was crawling on the ceiling, and I cut my throat open.

NR: I am definitely thinking seriously about getting a universal hexagram tattoo for Aleister Crowley.

LF: I was crucified in my dream a few nights ago. I was Jesus, and the guy who was crucifying me was wearing a polyester bowling suit, curly hair, and was totally like a Greek, slob bowler.

Why are you racist against the Greeks? It was the Jews who killed Jesus Christ.

LF: He was just greasy!

Despite being heavy and sinister, your music has some acoustic flourishes.

NR: That was pretty much the original stuff.

It started out with a couple recordings like ‘Kaleidoscope,’ which is on the tape, and ‘Summertime Dear’—just that kind of acoustic stuff. Actually, a lot of the songs on the album that are now electric, like ‘Native’ and ‘Uranium Sea,’ were acoustic, just me and Jessie Jones. We used to play this coffee house in Orange called the Ugly Mug every Monday night, at the open mic. The guy who runs that place was the biggest asshole!

JJ: They kicked Mike and Louis out.

NR: The guy strangled Louis.

MR: And I stole an OATMEAL COOKIE from that cocksucker! He watched me do it, too. I stared him dead in the eye and was like, ‘I’m taking this oatmeal cookie,’ and I walked out the door.

You wrote three songs in two hours for your first open mic. What songs were those?

JJ: We wrote ‘Sweetness,’ which isn’t recorded, ‘Kaleidoscope,’ which is on the cassette, and one other one—I can’t remember. The session was pretty good! It was encouraging.

NR: We were just bored and decided to write a couple songs and go play! We’ve known each other for six years. We used to play together all the time when we were young: we played in a church band together. She sang, and I played guitar.

That’s adorable! What church?

46

NR: Super Mario music, definitely!

You guys feel more like a Castlevania band.

MR: Whatever you say, man! Bruce Springsteen. Chuck E. Cheese music. Silver glove era Michael Jackson …

So you’re a Sega game. Moonwalker.

MR: Dope movie! Joe Pesci with spiders all over him …

NR: Syd Barrett, Roky Erickson, Jimi Hendrix …

JR: Sonic Youth. Leadbelly. Delta blues.

NR: Gandalf’s self-titled is like the best album ever …

LF: White Noise, An Electric Storm.

NR: Sapphire Thinkers, definitely.

MR: You guys are just saying shit you learned about last week! White Noise and all that shit …

NR: I heard that album three years ago!

With all your acoustic interludes, would you get offended if I compared your music to Led Zeppelin?

LF: The first album rules, so that’s OK with me. I like Physical Graffiti.

JJ: I would say it’s more like Black Sabbath.

Do you like sludge metal, like Pentagram?

MR: I’m totally into it. When I first heard them playing acoustically, I told them, ‘Let’s turn this into a fucking rock band.’ I didn’t even think I was going to be playing drums. I just thought they needed that fucking sound.

We turned it into that sound.

JJ: In a week! In Reno!

MR: We did the most drunken, sloshed-out show in Reno.

What bands were you in before Feeding People?

JR: I was in a band called Aneurism.

LF: I was in a Chuck E. Cheese band.

We thought you guys met on a chicken hunt?

MR: That’s how Nic and I personally met. I’m a Boy Scout and a fisherman, all around natural birdwatcher, and I was fishing down by the river, and I saw some chickens. And then I go to the local Starbucks, and I saw this homeless kid, and Louis was hanging out there with a mutual friend …

eat a human.

Anton LaVey’s followers ate a human. A surgeon procured a piece of a human thigh and they served it at a party.

JJ: That’s resourceful, but gross.

Your sound is lo-fi, but it still sounds cleaner than bands like, say, Cosmonauts or Audacity. What do you attribute that to? Just your style?

MR: We’re clearer.

NR: I think that’s just the style. The tones are a lot different. Most of those bands are really punk-influenced, and that’s not what we really are. We’re more psychedelic.

LF: Uh, we all bring different influences.

MR: Me and Louis primarily like fuckin’ punk rock. Heavy sludge, like Ink & Dagger …

LF: Le Shok.

MR: We grew up as hardcore kids, and that’s what we contribute to this band.

JR: Whereas I come from a more psychedelic thing, like Can, Faust …

JJ: I’m personally hoping for us to get heavier.

I’ve always had more of a Sabbath ideal, and I hope we get heavier and darker, even more than we already are.

LF: I hope we get more commercial so we can make money. Two-minute songs. Chuck E. Cheese commercials. Honestly, there’s more pressure on us to be more commercialized. Now we have a manager, and we want to make money off this, you know? So now we’re at that point. How are we going to make money and keep our integrity?

Wait fifteen years, and then go country.

NR: I can see it going towards a heavier stoner-rock, fuzz, riffy, jam music.

With those kinds of musical goals, how did you get Chris Alfaro of Free the Robots to produce the songs on your album?

MR: Louis was giving out sexual favors— ‘massages’—in the local club scene, and Chris was one of his clients, and Louis did such a good job that Chris wanted to know about his personal life.

NR: Chris owns The Crosby in Santa Ana, and when we played our first show there, he came upstairs to hear what we were do-

ing because he thought it was cool. And when we were done he came up and said he wanted to work with us. That was like September, and basically we started recording some songs on the 16-track digital recorder that we have, and we just sent them to him by email and he worked on them while he was on tour.

MR: We pumped out thirteen songs in a month on a shitty ass little recorder, all recorded live. We have never track-recorded.

We recorded drum, guitar and bass live. And it’s all on a whim—a lot of it’s jamming.

LF: All the music’s live, except some of the leads. We would have done vocals live if we really knew how to do it. But it got confusing.

MR: They sound live. In the next recordings, we’re going to keep recording live. We’re not going to try and polish ourselves—we’re going to keep it raw and dirty.

NR: It’s first takes! That’s how we wrote the songs. They were all acoustic, and then we just played ’em electric.

MR: There’s only two songs on the album that are acoustic songs, the rest are pretty much written just jamming on the recorder.

NR: No, that’s not true, because a lot of the songs were original ideas on acoustic.

MR: Just ‘Night Owl!’ NR: No, ‘Native,’ ‘Uranium Sea’ …

MR: ‘Uranium Sea’ started after we were already playing. Everything was written together besides ‘Night Owl.’ NR: And ‘Standing Tall.’ And ‘Kaleidoscope.’

LF: I feel like we’re negotiating.

This is too long—in print, we’ll just put ‘[They fought]’ in brackets.

MR: Put in there that Mike punched Nic! What are the heaviest drugs you guys have done?

JR: DMT! I’ve done it all!

Did you see pulsating globules? Supposedly everybody who takes DMT sees the same thing.

JR: That’s not true at all. I’ve done it a couple times. There’s that thing like, ‘Everybody sees aliens!’ But that doesn’t happen every time.

You see aliens, but only sometimes?

JR: Well, they like talk to you, but it’s so extensive. They were like right in my face, and they telepathically talked to me. They basically told me that they’re here because we’re fucking up the planet, and that’s eventually going to fuck up the solar system.

NR: It sounds like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. ‘So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Tried to warn you—you’re gonna be dead!’

MR: This interview doesn’t matter, because when we get stomped on by the bigger being, time doesn’t matter!

So what does matter?

MR: My mom. Ha ha! Since nothing matters, we could just sit here and laugh.

FEEDING PEOPLE WITH COSMONAUTS, WONDERWHEEL AND DAMEDAS ON TUE., JULY 5, AT THE COPPER DOOR, 225 1/2 N. BROADWAY, SANTA ANA. 9:30 PM / FREE 21+.

FEEDING PEOPLE’S PEACE, VICTORY AND THE DEVIL CS IS OUT NOW ON BURGER. VISIT FEEDING PEOPLE AT FEEDINGPEOPLELICORICEPIZZA. WORDPRESS.COM. INTERVIEW

SUMMER 2011 Série de Luxo

DON JUAN Y LOS BLANCOS Interview by Lainna Fader Photography by Funaki Classic rock ‘n’ roll doesn’t have an established tradition of strong female singers with voices that could scrape the frost off your car windshield, but you’d never know that from hearing Don Juan y Los Blancos. Their bat-out-of-hell garage rock evokes both knife-fights and backseat make-out sessions where the blood gets licked from the wounds. It’s Wanda Jackson, but really, it’s Suzi Quatro. Their new 45 is out now on Wild. We speak to co-lead singers Becky Blanca and Don Juan Villicana about nerds, fights, geese, pinball and hate.

“If I hate stuff, there’s a reason!”

Why does Don Juan y los Blancos practice in an old West saloon?

Becky Blanca (vocals): Larry’s parents are badasses. They were a biker couple from Boston and yeah, I only say that to cite proof that his parents are badasses. His dad worked in construction for years so he knew how to build things. So they built a saloon. They started out with the barn—the space we practice in, a small, two-story barn—and then they added on the saloon, and then a jail, and then a barbershop. Now they’re just about done building Larry’s living quarters. Right now he lives in a trailer right next to the saloon.

With his gerbils?

BB: Oh yeah—guinea pigs! Those are his girlfriend’s guinea pigs. Those are rodents that I’m unfamiliar with, but they’re very cute. I had a guinea pig as a child and I used to hang out with it and watch TV and it would lay on my chest and bite my chest! I’d scream and cry and drop it on the ground. So yeah, fuck guinea pigs! I think the only thing I hate more than a guinea pig is a goose.

What do you have against geese?

BB: Dude, they’re dicks. I used to volunteer on this little ranch and this ranch housed and rehabilitated these wild animals. So I got to do all this bullshit. I fed a pony, had to take care of a wallaby. But there was these two geese on the farm and I fed them and for whatever reason, they would chase me around the barn, but I’d always be with somebody who could shoo them away. But I was out one day with a pony and I felt this pinching on the back of my ankles and this motherfucking goose is biting my ankles! I started freaking out and screaming and banging on the door, trying to get back into the building and I couldn’t get in. She was flapping her wings with her head bowed all low and I started running. I jumped like three of those wooden barn fences and it was on my heels the whole time! It was fucking scary! They’re so mean! I talked to other people about it and the general consensus is that they’re kind of aggressive and kind of jerks but the people who own them can control them. The guy who owned that goose picked it up, turned it upside down, and held it by its neck and was like, ‘No! Shut up, you goose!’ They can smell fear. There’s a reason. If I hate stuff, there’s a reason!

Juan said he’s the worst frontman ever cuz he just stands there on stage and lets you do all the moving and the shaking. Does he ever dance with you?

BB: Not really! I mean, sometimes he’ll humor me and sometimes he won’t, but he never really lets loose on stage. He’s really shy! He never wanted to be a frontman.

What can you—or we—do to make him less uncomfortable?

BB: I think when you put in as much work as he does off stage, you earn the right to do whatever you want. He’s not uncomfortINTERVIEW

able—in fact he’s very comfortable standing there drinking and singing. Best thing the audience can do is get drunk and hang out!

That’s pretty easy, right? Honestly, that’s what I’m there for. I’m a really weak songwriter.

I do lyrics fine, but I could never come up with songs like his. It’s a fair trade cuz I can definitely dance around and be ridiculous— kinda enough for the both of us, y’know?

Who do you consider a mentor, in or outside the world of Wild?

Juan Villicana (vocals): I don’t think I’ve had a mentor. We used to be the weird band in Wild cuz they’re strictly—well, predominately—a rockabilly label. But now everybody’s kinda doing other things together. More 60s things. I know Luis [Arriaga, from Luis & the Wildfires] changed a lot. I don’t feel that weird anymore. We’re trying other sounds now.

BB: The thing is, I met Juan and our ex-guitarist Aaron when I was 12 years old cuz they were in a punk rock band called C.O.F. who I was absolutely obsessed with. They were my weekends, they were my time after school, I fliered for them, I kissed their asses on a daily basis. I was their merch girl. … They were always my heroes. Me and Juan didn’t talk for a couple of years.

Why? BB: Growing apart. I stole money from him.

Whatever. But when we started hanging out again, I never would have anticipated that it would become what it did. I never could have predicted that as a kid. Juan and Aaron and their friends were my idols—my heroes—and it’s bizarre that I’m dating Juan now because it never would’ve happened when I was a kid. Well, and because he was five years older than me, and I met him when I was 12. I love Juan.

What relationship in punk rock history best captures how you relate to each other?

BB: Aw, man! I’m gonna go with my gut instinct. It’s totally gonna be John Doe and Exene, I feel like Exene is a little more melodramatic than I am and I’m way more abrasive than she is though.

Are you gonna get married like Exene and John Doe? BB: Aw, I wish! Juan’s actually totally not interested in marrying anyone. I’m a hopeless romantic. I would totally get married. He’s one of those ‘It’s just a piece of paper, what’s the point?’ types. But I think he’s an old softie and when it comes to dying alone, I think he’ll propose!

JV: I think it’s a stupid thing to do. I don’t know. I just don’t see any reason for it. People always say for financial reasons but I don’t know about that. I don’t really believe in love at all—I think people just like each other a lot.

I think people can get married if they want to but me personally, I just don’t see a reason to.

If you love someone, you don’t need any paperwork to prove it. Also, the whole ceremony

is retarded. I would never wanna do that. I’m Catholic so all the family stuff, two hours in church—it’s all really boring.

What’s the longest you’ve ever shouted at each other—either on stage, or off?

BB: Oh my god! Ha ha! I don’t know. I’ve never had a timer handy and I’ve always been belligerently drunk when we’ve gotten into shouting matches. I really—Juan is very eventempered. I really have to provoke the shit out of him to get him to yell back at me. I’m so obnoxious and have done it on several occasions. We’ve gotten into a fight with probably an hour of just fighting and then there’s like the two or three hours after the fight where you talk about what the fight is about, forgive each other. And I’m a crier—I can admit it, I’m a big crier. It comes with the territory!

We’ve been dating for what, four years now, and we’ve fought about everything and we’ll probably continue to fight about everything.

Everything I do is completely emotionally driven and everything that he does is completely logical.

Who’s the best pinball player in Don Juan?

BB: Larry! I think if Juan practiced enough, he could get as good as Larry, but Larry has the machines at his house and he’s totally better than everybody.

JV: I would say me for sure, no doubt about it whatsoever. Not Larry—she’s a liar. I can tell you that there’s one vintage pinball game they have there and I rolled it over. No one else has done that! I’m calling bullshit on Becky.

At the Whistlebait two-year anniversary show you led a ‘Nerds! Nerds! Nerds!’ chant and talked about Halo 2 coming out. Is your band as nerdy as you are?

BB: Oh, man! I do vaguely remember leading that chant and it’s all cuz I also work at Best Buy and I put out video games and I put out advertising materials all the time, so I always know what the newest video game is. But I’ve never played Halo. I’ve never played Starcraft or Call of Duty or anything. But whenever I talk to someone who does, they’re always really excited.

You’re a nerd impostor?

BB: I’m a real nerd! Just not about video games! I went to school for a while to study music theory and I’m a nerd about that. Definitely nerdy about music. Well, I would call it nerdy—Juan would call it annoying obsessiveness when we’re writing songs.

JV: Video game-wise, I collect the NES games, the original Nintendo games. Anything with more than four buttons on a remote is too hard for me, too much for me.

The best is original Contra. And Punch Out. I beat Mike Tyson! That’s something to brag about. I beat him, and that was the happiest day of my life.

BB: Every job I’ve ever had, I’m a fucking nerd about. I love Best Buy and I love Frysmith and I get really enthused. Also, I like Lady Gaga,

and I guess that’s pretty nerdy too. Are you gonna put this in the interview? I like, OK, I totally like that her songs are catchy. They’re easy and catchy, no doubt about it. I really like the lyrics. She writes really clever things. But I think what I like about her most is that she realizes that the singer-songwriter market—as a girl—was tapped, was done, quite done, so she created a persona and sold the shit out of it and people got obsessed with it and continue to be obsessed with it and now she can make a living doing whatever the fuck she wants. She can get away with murder cuz she’s such a badass.

Would you wanna come crawling out of an egg on stage?

BB: I don’t have access to incredible designers but the sad part is that even if I did, I never would’ve come up with a bubble suit! She just does stuff that makes you think, ‘Aw, that’s so ridiculous, that’s so cool.’ Totally insane. More power to her, dude. And anyone who hates her, hates her cuz people won’t shut up about her. That’s not enough of a reason to hate someone! A lot of the time, the most talked about people are talked about cuz they’re interesting. She’s weird as fuck and she’s totally milking it, but way to go, Gaga.

When you pull a girl out of the audience to dance with you, has anyone refused?

BB: Yep! There were two times. You know what? Fuck Orange County. One time in Orange County, I got totally stood up by every girl I tried to dance with. In Don Juan, I’d only been stood up once by this super cool rockabilly girl in Rosemead. She was there with a date, and she was sitting at a booth. I walked over shakin’ it at her, and she wouldn’t even look at me. She just stared forward, completely serious. The guy she was with was even looking at her laughing like, ‘Really? You’re gonna sit there and ignore her and be a bitch?’

And yeah, she was! That’s exactly what she did—sat there with a bitch face. She was no fun at all, so I went to dance with somebody else! It’s a bummer, but the girl was a twat, so who cares? I’m gonna have fun with everybody else.

I think most people would consider you asking them to dance an honor!

BB: Ha ha! Dude, people like that—if you don’t wanna have fun, don’t go to a bar, is all I’m sayin’. If you wanna be a wet mop, stay home.

DON JUAN Y LOS BLANCOS WITH PACHUCO JOSE ON WED., JULY 13, AT THE LIGHTHOUSE, 30 PIER AVE., HERMOSA BEACH. 7 PM / FREE / 21+. THELIGHTHOUSECAFE.NET. DON JUAN Y LOS BLANCOS’ “MEAN STREAK” 45 IS OUT NOW ON WILD. VISIT DON JUAN Y LOS BLANCOS AT MYSPACE.COM/DONJUANYLOSBLANCOS. 51

JAMES PANTS Interview by Chris Ziegler Illustration by Joe McGarry

James Pants is the missing link between Gary Wilson and Prince— well, maybe Giorgio Moroder and Kim Fowley? He’s a producer (in the most expansive sense) who overcame a horrific prom night to sign with Stones Throw and explore the various unexpected intersections between the psychedelic occult and the analog synth. His self-titled 2XLP is out now on Stones Throw and he speaks here of the last place in a wired world to discover real weirdos.

This might be a little personal but I think the world wants to know: Did you ever get the goat that you wanted to get when you were living in Washington?

Oh, you heard about that? I wish I could have gotten that. We never had the space, of course, and it was a zoning issue. I don’t know that I have what it takes to raise a goat but I’m a big fan and one of these days. It’s kind of my life goal to get one.

Is that just because they eat trash, or because you want to look into those goaty eyes and find a soulmate?

A bit of both, but I really like the cheese too.

If you’ve got a soulmate that can make cheese, you’re living the life. What is the largest animal you’ve ever had?

I had a pretty large tarantula when I was a kid.

I was kind of one of those bug nerds. I had a big centipede too.

Did you let them crawl over your naked arms?

I did, strangely, but then I had a bad incident about a year later where there was this spider—not a pet spider, but just a normal spider—that somehow … I was living in a basement in Washington and there are just tons of spiders in the fall. It was a huge one, obviously a very pregnant spider and it was kind of in the center of my room. When I woke up in the morning, I stomped on it and it looked totally dead and then it ran under my bed.

INTERVIEW

So I refused to sleep there for a couple days.

It might have been a week. Because it was in my bed and, you know, I was young. When I came back, I pulled my bedsheets open and there were tons of spiders in my bed. Like it had raised all these babies.

This is like a David Cronenberg movie.

From that point on I had it with spiders. Although ten minutes ago, I freed one. We had one in our bathroom and I just let it outside, but usually I hate them. I got bit by, like—I guess we call them ‘hobo spiders.’

Are they carried by hobos or they act like hobos or …?

I think it’s because they just hang out in your house. It’s like a basement spider. It’s brown, big and hairy. They’re slightly poisonous and I got bit by one in my sleep like five years ago.

Can you speak to how slightly poisonous they are?

It starts off like a tiny little mark on your arm that itches and it just grows every day. Five days later, my arm was covered in blisters and it was gross. Just super gross. So I went in and it was a relatively easy fix but it was pretty nasty.

How do you think your robust ability to metabolize poison has helped you as a music producer?

Good question. I guess alcohol consumption, coffee … I like both ends of the spectrum: the depressants and the stimulants. I used to

drink a bunch of wine and record but lately in the last year or so it’s just been quite a lot of coffee—almost to the point where you’re getting really panicky.

These images that have been put out into the world of you stepping into a concrete room with a single red bulb and being surrounded by vintage synthesizers—how close is that to what actually happens?

It’s slightly accurate. I’ve always had basement studios. And I used to have a red light. But I started off in the concrete basement and went to a wallpapered basement and I did that Seven Seals record in my house’s laundry room.

That was more of a linoleum basement.

You’ve mentioned in a bunch of interviews that you have a lot of affection for the solitary genius kind of guy, like Gary Wilson, Mikey Dread, Joe Meek, Madlib—what is so attractive about the guy who comes out of the cave and just presents his genius to planet Earth?

There’s not really a regional scene you can attach their music to. And that’s maybe because they are solitary. …I’ve always lived in decentsized cities but not ever, like, the one that’s cool. So there’s really not a music scene I was a part of. I was just recording by myself and so I think that’s what makes my stuff different than other ... you know, that’s what differentiates it from other people. I think also that’s why I’ve always liked those guys who just kind

of put out a record and it comes out of nowhere and sometimes people hate it but it just sounds totally different. Those are the kind of records I like to buy and hang onto. Just anything that sounds completely different—you can’t pinpoint exactly what it is.

How do you keep your own music from going off the rails into complete insanity?

I listen to a lot of pop songs. I guess I make pop music at heart really—that’s all it is. So I think it’s the artist that makes pop music but it’s kind of the outsider pop—like it could be a hit in some other world. It’s just for whatever reason—like their keyboard was out of tune and they can’t sing, but the song is there.

Is that the secret to all these guys? ‘I wasn’t trying to be weird. I was trying to be Michael Jackson.’

Exactly. That’s really the key. Sometimes people are weird for weird’s sake and to me, it comes off not as genuine for some reason.

It sounds like you’re trying too hard. Which is why some people say my stuff’s humorous— which I guess it is, but it’s serious. Maybe it’s humorous because it’s like pop, but stranger. … It’s probably just because of the music videos. I get so nervous with making those and we never have any budget so it ends up looking like some Looney Tunes stuff. One of these days I’ll do a professional video and we’ll see. In fact, there’s a video coming out for a new song and I’m not going to be in it.

53

“I always imagine myself like a bad cruise ship entertainer.”

Did you hire an actor to play James Pants?

No, actually it’s even better. The guy who’s directing it is Joey from Airplane, the late 70s comedy movie. The little boy who goes in the cockpit and the pilot’s hitting on him and stuff.

How did you find that guy?

He lives in L.A. and he is a friend. I met him through Peanut Butter Wolf. He did the ‘Cosmic Rapp’ video. And he’s the perfect guy when you have 500 bucks. When you’ve got to make a blockbuster, he’s like the dude to call.

Do you find that you work better with no budget and no time?

For sure. I think I make better songs when I have less time. I technically have not had a day job for four years until the last two weeks. So maybe that’s hard to say. I try to record every single day but as far as the no money thing ... for sure, I can’t afford to do anything else but sit around and try to make songs. And money’s such a weird thing with music because you’re like rich for a couple months and then you’re broke and then you’re rich again.

How much of the music you make is based on what was available easily and cheaply?

How much of your musical identity is based on, ‘Well, I’ll get ten things from this dollar bin instead of one thing for ten dollars’?

I think that actually plays a huge part. When I was making that album Welcome—I think it came out in 2008, I can’t remember—but I started that maybe in 2005 or 2006, not with an album in mind but just recording. And I was buying a lot of 80s R&B and it was so cheap because everybody wanted 60s funk or really rare Italo disco and I couldn’t afford it.

So I was just buying 80s R&B from the dollar bins and I fell in love with the sounds and keyboards and then I basically got priced out of that too.

Is this like in the movie where the evil developer comes in and builds a shopping mall over your playground?

I definitely wasn’t trying to do 80s revivalist stuff but it was in the air at the time and that sound just got wildly popular and it still is. I feel like there’s a new boogie artist every day.

So that was when I said, ‘OK, I’m just going to make a psych record.’ I was buying pretty good records, but really beat-up ones. So I just got way off the deep-end into psych and like 70s electronic music. I think for the last record I didn’t really have any specific records in mind when I was buying, but basically my 54

theory is that the next big thing is always the dollar bin. Whatever people aren’t buying will be a new thing when you revisit it. I was even buying a lot of new age records …

And then all of a sudden here comes this whole new age Vangelis revival thing.

Yeah and Oneohtrix Point Never and stuff like that. I remember when I was younger, maybe when I was in high school or university, everybody was after Roy Ayers records and they were very expensive. It turns out they were not that rare and suddenly nobody wants them and you can find them for a buck. So it just goes like that. David Axelrod or whatever.

Can I ask you to philosophically extrapolate this? How much of what’s going on in music and culture can you literally scout out by just checking the thrift stores?

I don’t know, it’s hard to say. If you think of the music right now, it went from whatever they call it—chill wave—to like …

Warbly VHS late-night music?

Yeah, but right now a lot of the thrift store stuff has dried up in the U.S., other than, like, Steely Dan. And I think you hear a lot of Steely Dan in a lot of the records coming out.

Have we hit peak thrift store in the same way that we’re coming up on peak oil?

To be honest, I think we have, unless we want to revisit easy listening. I’ve been buying those records too. But now it’s different because I’m in Germany so there are no dollar bins, but they have really crazy records over here so it’s a whole new world for me.

What is your reject pile like? You know, all the dollar records you bought that turned out not to be good records at all?

Oh, I’ve got a lot. But it’s always worth a dollar gamble and I’ve come across some really good stuff that way too. Although lately I’ve just been buying—it’s so terrible, I feel like I’m a sell-out—but I’ve just been buying stuff on iTunes, getting stuff on blogs, and if I like it then I try and find the record and pay way too much for it. There’s still one area left relatively untouched, and that’s CD Baby.

CD baby is the thrift store of the internet?

There is some crazy stuff on CD Baby. A lot of them are burned or hand-drawn or not even drawn. I bought one that was just a CD-R with Sharpie on it.

So this is where the private press records of the 2000s are?

Oh definitely. I went on a spree not that long ago and got a bunch of really bizarre—and

I stress ‘bizarre’—Dirty South, like, gospel music? It’d be like Mannie Fresh-style drum programming really badly recorded with a lot of rapping and singing by little kids and older ladies. You know, really nutty stuff. A lot of bedroom guys recording on their boom box.

And you can sample all the music, so it’s really cool.

Do these people ever write to you? Do you get little notes or stuff since they’re stoked that some guy in Germany is ordering their record?

I wish. Sometimes cool stuff happens, like I put this one late 70s soul song on a mix and the guy’s son found out about the mix and said, ‘I’ve got all his other 45s and I’ll send you some.’ That kind of stuff.

That’s everyone’s dream. The mixtape comes to life and it’s friendly.

Actually, one of my favorite bands of all time is the Seeds and I put them on some year-end list of my favorite records and Sky Saxon’s wife—he’s deceased now, but she sent me a note saying how happy she was and included these three crazy posters from the 60s of each member of the Seeds. I was like, ‘Man, how the heck does that happen?’ I would imagine Beck or someone would give a shout out to the Seeds as well. I don’t know why she sent the posters to me.

Maybe she sensed something Seeds-esque about you. Wasn’t he in that cult for a while?

Not the Rainbow Family but …

Yod? Father Yod. You did the whole Seven Seals thing and your Music for Cults mixtape.

Do you think the next natural step would be becoming Father Pants and setting up a commune in Germany like Faust did?

It’s possible. I’m still developing my theology.

The whole cult thing is so fascinating because during that time—I wasn’t alive; I wasn’t born until 82—but to me it’s, like, mystical. Like, there are all these weird cults and they’re making records and, like, what is going on? Kenneth Anger movies … wow! I like the whole aesthetic of it.

Who is your favorite ‘never made it’ guy?

I have to say my main homeboy, Gary Wilson. He continually impresses me in that he does relatively the same thing he’s been doing since the 70s and it still sounds crazier than anybody else. Luckily I’ve been able to tour with him and play drums for him and stuff.

What is Gary Wilson like when you have to drive 500 miles in the van with him?

He’s actually a really normal dude.

How would you quantify that normality?

Well, he’s definitely not ‘normal,’ I guess. I guess no one really is. But socially, he’s fine.

Very friendly and quiet. He really likes hamburgers.

What’s his fast food restaurant of choice?

I think any one will do, but I know he only eats hamburgers with nothing on them.

No cheese, no mayo. Just the patty and the bun. That was kind of an issue in some cities where they didn’t have regularly available hamburgers. But yeah, he’s definitely the obvious choice for me but there’s so many.

You were talking in interviews about how you like to retire your keyboards after doing records so you’re not always using the same sound over and over. What is the James Pants retirement home for vintage synthesizers like?

Oh, I sell them.

You’re kind of a ruthless guy!

I think I was keeping too many records and too many synthesizers and it was a pain to move. I had to have all this extra space in whatever spot we rented just to have my stuff and I just over time got fed up, sold most of my records, almost all my keyboards …

Was this in one cathartic day or was it gradually?

There were a couple cathartic days but yeah, I had a lot of records. Like, walls. And I have maybe 600 now.

So in some little record store in Spokane there’s still a giant pile of your records waiting for some guy to come in with a van and completely score?

Definitely. In fact, Spokane has a really good record store.

This is the kind of solid info I like to put out in the world. Do you want to give the name?

Sure, it’s called Unified Groove Merchants and actually, Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys stops by there quite often because I guess his college roommate lives there and he runs a magazine there.

I had no idea Spokane was this hotbed of music and insanity.

Well, it’s not really, but it’s a good spot. It’s one of those hostile cities where no matter what you do, people won’t like it so you have to earn your way. I didn’t know anybody liked me in Spokane until I moved away and now it’s super fun to play there.

INTERVIEW

What is your best personal strategy for dealing with that kind of hostility?

I kind of embrace it. I guess I get a little more antagonistic. I think every show I do is a little bit not professional. I always imagine myself like a bad cruise ship entertainer.

I heard you talking about playing in the South Seas.

Oh, yeah, I’m going to Australia and all that.

I’ve been in a South Seas mood. I did a remix for Daedelus the other week and I was kind of envisioning this ‘cruise ship stuck in the entertainment galley for all eternity’ thing.

That’s kind of my new thing. Like, fun music gone wrong. Anything for eternity sounds really horrible.

Is this like that Twilight Zone episode where the gambler finds out he’s going to win forever and ever and that’s his hell?

I haven’t seen that one but that sounds really, really good.

Based on Seven Seals, what would be your personal conception of hell?

Basically, I always think of 2001 with the guy in the box at the end. That’s probably the single most inspirational thing for me. I think anything carried to eternity. I just like the really creepy paired with the smooth or the happy. It makes it extra creepy.

I’m surprised you haven’t grown the kind of facial hair that would accentuate that because when I think of creepy-plus-happy I think of a certain kind of a mustache.

I’m actually working on it but I get to this point a week or two in where the hair starts turning blonde kind of towards the end and it just looks like early high school.

That in itself is kind of creepy.

I know that anytime you grow a beard you have to muscle through that first time and just deal with it, but I just can’t look at myself in the mirror so I chicken out every time. I tell my wife every couple of weeks that I’m going to do it. One of these days I’ll do it.

How often have you not been able to look at yourself in the mirror throughout the course of your life?

Well, usually after a tour I am very bloated with grey and yellowish skin.

You had an interview where you were talking about how you feel that a lot of people making music now are consciously trying to sound old, whatever that means. What did you mean by that?

I don’t like it, frankly. I think that’s maybe the problem with our generation. I was reading INTERVIEW

some article that talked about how this is one of the first cultural moments where the new generation hasn’t really added anything new as much as taken from other eras and blended them up, which I think is very fascinating and some incredible stuff comes out of that, but I think—especially when you’ve got people literally trying to sound like 1983, the same set of sounds, the same kind of vocals—I think it’s cool and it sells records in that moment when all the stars are aligned, but it’s just a bad business move. It’s not really helping anything. Of course stuff comes back in vogue and that’s a good thing, but when you’re really trying to carbon copy stuff, that’s not very interesting.

Something I found interesting about that is that a lot of times the whole craft becomes how well you can reproduce that sound. It’s not exactly what the song is like but, ‘Oh man, that’s exactly what the synth sound would have been!’

Exactly. And I have to admit I’ve been guilty of that for sure, especially with my first record and I think overall it’s a natural progression for people who make music. You really learn by copying at first, but I think in general that as a trend—whether it be a soul revival or a boogie revival or an 80s metal revival or whatever—in the end as soon as it comes out it’s already digging its own grave.

What feels new to you? And makes you think that planet Earth still has a few good years left in it?

Man, that’s a good question. I mean, I’m definitely an optimistic person but I can’t really pinpoint anything. Honestly, I read old books, I don’t watch TV, I really only wear clothes with single colors. Maybe I’m just ridiculous, but I guess I’ve come to a spot— and I’m not even that old—but it’s such a difficult time, people have such a difficult time keeping up with whatever ironic neon lizard print is cool on a T-shirt this week. It’s a lot of work to keep up with. Definitely when I was younger I was more into it. I’d be like, ‘Oh dude, I found a hypercolor shirt!’ I think if you can detach from that and make your own thing… I think I saw that in Broadcast’s music or Ariel Pink. I think even Flying Lotus’ Cosmogramma record is really impressive because he transcended that beat music. I THINK WHENEVER YOU CAN GET OUT OF THE MATRIX, THAT’S WHEN THE REAL FUTURE BEGINS. I don’t know, that sounds really corny.

I’ll put it in all caps so it sounds really intense. [See above—ed.]

Perfect!

What was the black nationalist rap group you DJ’d for as a very young James Pants?

The group was called Ballistix with an X on the end.

The name’s got a lot of impact.

It was circa 1998 so that was the move. I was all about that stuff. Basically, I think I forced my way in because they definitely were not … I guess they weren’t exactly black nationalist, but definitely every song was kind of about how the white man’s system has them down, so it was just funny that I was in the back DJing.

Did you get to shout stuff?

I didn’t shout. I didn’t have the courage.

Did you have the courage later in your life to shout about things?

I did, yeah. We opened for a lot of people in Austin. I remember I didn’t do anything because we would just play the music off a CD Walkman and I would have the prerequisite scratching on the chorus but I remember I would just stand there and look awkward during the verse. … My DJ name was ‘The Brainchild Solomon,’ so how about that?

Do you find looking back that it’s actually a little inspiring that human beings are willing to pay money to see a guy shouting over a CD Walkman?

I think that sometimes, but I think that everyone was just brainwashed at the time. The whole hip-hop thing … That was right when there was the retaliation against the commercial stuff. If you were an underground hip-hop fan you supported it and went to the shows but really you should have just saved your money because we encouraged a lot of rappers to continue a career that was just more and more depressing every year.

So what you’re saying is the revolution needs a better PA and a lot more self-editing?

Ah man, I mean, don’t get me wrong, I really like rap, but to me it’s the funniest genre right now because it’s totally, completely lost.

Who has achieved the Spinal Tap level in modern hip-hop right now?

I’d definitely go with Gucci Mane, but I like some of his stuff and not in an ironic way.

I like all of the Dirty South stuff because they’ve got energy and that’s exactly what rap is. I mean, if the beat’s halfway decent and the

guy’s energetic, it’s probably way better than any of these, like, Premier knock-off kind of beats with some guy rapping about ‘taking it back.’ It’s like, ‘Yeah, spare me.’

You have this famous story about you and Peanut Butter Wolf meeting on prom night. And you’ve also talked about later that night, driving around with your girl looking for the right moment ... and at one point you’re hanging out in the car and a van pulls up and a guy opens the door and all these cats come out. So ... what?

It was creepy. It was one of those situations where I probably could have … It was this girl from a different high school who went to my church and I thought she was really cute and way out of my league, but I asked her and she said she would go and I probably in retrospect should have taken some clues that she was having a good time, you know? I probably could have made out or something, but I was so nervous that I didn’t know what to do so we would go to these make-out spots and kind of sit awkwardly and then something would go wrong like some kids would start throwing rocks nearby so we’d be like, ‘OK, well, let’s just drive around a little more,’ and we’d stop somewhere else. And then this van pulled up with cats and I think it was at that point she was like, ‘Well, it’s getting pretty late. I think you should take me home.’

Why would a van be driving around with a ton of cats?

I have no idea. This was in the middle of the deep hill country suburbs of Austin by some bridge. Just a dirt parking lot in the middle of nowhere and this van pulls up and unloads a bunch of cats.

Did they just spill out all at once?

It was probably like ten or something.

That’s still more cats than I’ve ever seen in a car in my life.

I’m sure they were just dumping them, but it kind of freaked her out and it just ruined the mood, whatever magic we had going. It was a little disappointing in that respect but I’m glad a record deal eventually came out of that.

You’ve got the swarm of spiders, the swarm of cats … You’re like a swarm magnet. Just watch out when you go in the ocean.

Oh God, that’s my nightmare.

JAMES PANTS’ SELF-TITLED 2XLP IS OUT NOW ON STONES THROW. VISIT JAMES PANTS AT JAMESPANTS. BLOGSPOT.COM. 55

SHABAZZ PALACES Interview by Lainna Fader Illustration by champoyhate

Ishmael Butler is known by many names, most of which we aren’t meant to ever discover. In another lifetime, he was Butterfly of Digable Planets. Now, he stands at the center of the universe of the mysterious Shabazz Palaces, holding court as Palaceer Lazaro in the first hip-hop group ever signed to Sub Pop. He speaks here about divine inspiration, being in love, and keeping perspective.

Why do you make music?

Palaceer Lazaro: I don’t know. I hope to never know. I think that it’s something that—I’m compelled to do it by things that are deep inside of me. They’re just my instincts. They’re the unrecognizable—or undefinable—parts of myself that compel me to make it. I don’t have any reason—the reason is that it happens.

You said you felt compelled to write, that it was instinctual. When did you first recognize those instincts?

I was always predisposed to follow them without recognizing them, but there was something that I read about originality being linked to instinct, and that’s when I started to try to draw the line.

What do you mean by ‘originality’?

Going from your instinct to the final piece without any alteration.

You said that the title ‘Of Light’ was a divine inspiration, and that it came from light. You said you see it in your mind and it looks like everything and nothing. What happened the last time you were divinely inspired?

My kids were around, and I was downstairs doing something, and they were upstairs.

They live in different places, and they hadn’t seen each other in a long time. We were all together and they were upstairs and I could hear them—their voices—and I could hear in their voices a love, a familiarity that went way beyond the time they had spent together. It came from a place years-years-years and INTERVIEW

spaces ago, and when I heard it, I felt it. But I saw my grandmother yesterday too, and it was in her face, in her eyes, too. And in her sounds. But these things—they are for me to see them. They’re always around. Sometimes you get caught up in the responsibilities of life. Or wanting to watch the game.

Just wanting to talk to somebody or missing somebody. Not paying attention to the profound things that are right in front of us. Sometimes you do though—sometimes you are keen and sensitive to it.

How do you remind yourself to not get caught up in the responsibilities of life?

Practice. Drills. You know, repetition. Landmarks—mental ones.

What kind of landmarks?

That’s a personal thing. I don’t wanna talk about that. But that’s how I do it.

How does art connect us to something bigger than ourselves?

When you’re attracted to something it’s seductive, and when you’re being seduced, you’re most aware of yourself. You’re also out of control. It’s like—a lot of discovery and realization and excitement and I think it’s one of the funner things that happen to us.

What’s the relationship between creative input and reaching the divine?

I think that creativity is divine. I mean, cuz good ideas—you can’t really trace them back to any place or thing. For me, it comes from some place, some divinity of some sort.

How is creativity a way for us to help each other?

Yeah—that’s how it starts. People are looking inside of themselves for something to affect what’s going on inside of themselves or inside of the people around them. It could be a small thing. You could be walking by a newsstand and see a photo and there’s a color in the photo that can make you change how you view life and then yourself and then you can make different moves.

In Shabazz Palaces, you’re Palaceer Lazaro.

What purpose do these new personas serve?

What is the power in adopting a character?

I have more secret names than known names.

The known names—they always come about serendipitously and it’s cool. I know the story behind it, but I don’t think it’s important.

Plus I think it’s more fun to not know the story behind things.

What happens when you disconnect someone from their story? What potential is revealed in that space?

I don’t believe that when you tell the backstory that you find out much because it’s a poor representation of what actually goes into something. I don’t know. I think the story is in the product. And it’s infinitely explorable by the people that are looking and listening to it and it’s better to go in that direction. Some people are good at being able to chronicle that, but I’m not one of them. Not many people are good at that—that’s a whole ‘nother talent.

In the new album, at the end of ‘An echo from the hosts that profess infinitum,’ there’s the cautionary lyric ‘Certain

things need not be asked.’ Why do you think people are so interested in knowing your backstory? Why don’t we need to know it?

I don’t think they do—there’s just a lot of places that rely on content and in those places, the content they rely on is not very broad or imaginative and just want the content to fill up whatever they need to fill up. At the end— and at the beginning—of the day, they’re not really interested in it. Maybe for an anecdote over drinks or to wax over knowing some things. It’s just superficial—surface things.

Some do, some are interested, but I think once you analyze their interest, you’re like ‘Nah, that don’t even matter.’ [Laughs] You know what I’m saying? Your imagination is a much more fertile and vast and dazzling space than having shit narrowed down for you by a megalomaniac. I just think it’s a characteristic of our times that people engage in things as a ritual—a formality—but I don’t know if it’s really substantial or if it lasts. It’s just stuff we do in the moment. And then, it just doesn’t seem to have much depth.

As an artist, how does this affect the way you think about communicating with people through your own music?

Creating shit is still an adventure, kind of a gamble, and you still believe in a lot of good things and potential in order to even be able to feel like doing something today, putting it out, so it’s hope. And fun. And adventure.

And wonder. You know? It’s like going out on an adventure—you never know what you’re 57

“There’s so much power in belief. And when you do believe, then you can be what you believe and there isn’t any doubt about it.

Other people can look at it and think you’re a fuckin’ nut! But you feel it and it is so.”

going to find. It doesn’t predetermine anything in terms of creating music. I definitely don’t study it while I’m doing it. I don’t think about it that much but I’m sure it’s in me—in different kinds of ways. It’s hard to say.

You’ve said you’re not interested in looking into the past but what about the future?

Octavia Butler said ‘the very act of looking ahead to discern possibilities and offer warnings is an act of hope.’

It’s interesting because she lived up here, and died up here. I’ve read every word she’s ever written—but I’ve never read any quotes of hers or anything. But that’s what I’m saying— about trying to pinpoint backstories. Her influence on me is profound—I could never put it into words—but that correlation that you just drew just does it.

In ‘Swerve ... the reeping of all that is worthwhile (Noir not withstanding)’ the lyrics are ‘Black is me, black is us, black is free.’ How is black free? How can anyone be free?

Some of it is a call to act, as much as it is a declaration. Some of it is something to try to do—to try to figure out, to try to pursue. I do think that people can be free.

What does being free mean to you? What kind of freedom do you hope for the most?

I don’t know if I understand freedom. I just kind of know what the word is supposed to mean, and that’s kind of my point. I don’t know if I believe in the word as an absolute.

I haven’t figured out what it’s supposed to 58

mean, but I do know what it means to the world and I used that to shape the way I use it in the music. But freedom? It’s all relative. I think it means having the confidence to pursue your instincts at any quote unquote ‘cost.’

There’s so much power in belief. And when you do believe, then you can be what you believe and there isn’t any doubt about it. Other people can look at it and think you’re a fuckin’ nut! But you feel it and it is so. There are so many routes to freedom. Even if you just look at physical slaves—emancipation comes in all kinda ways. It’s like—it’s a mixture of things both in the realm that we live in and in realms that we don’t dwell in that get together to emancipate and free somebody. I don’t really know, and you never know how it’s gonna happen, or if it even will. The important thing is that you can kinda help yourself to it. But some people try to help themselves to it but they still get blocked—they still remain confined by things. You never know how things are gonna happen but you can have a courage and a strength and a bravery about life that puts you in the position when these things do fall into line—you can capitalize on the exits and escape routes and fight your way to a little bit more light.

What is the light? How is it different from the dark?

In the light, things are obvious—very clear. In the dark, it’s just a little less manageable. The same things are there—but you can’t see them or feel them or express them so clearly.

What do you see for your own future and the world at large?

That’s a big question! I don’t—I don’t see into the future. I do, you know, but I can’t talk about that cuz I won’t be doing any justice to the things that I see. Plus, it’s hard to put into words, the feelings. I don’t know, man! [Laughs] What do you see for the world? I’d like to hear you answer that!

Do you know any people who are dead, and they’re kinda too young to be dead? Well, if you think about what they would feel about living right now, then you’ll have another perspective on things. If you can’t understand what the gift of it is, then maybe you don’t deserve it. And I want it. And I want to be able to recognize the gift of life. So I just do! So when it feels like shit’s fucked up and not going the way I want it to go, then I recognize that as a ludicrous approach and just get out as quick as possible and move on to some work—making something, helping somebody, looking at somebody else’s’ work—things that affirm life. The easiest shit to find—and they’re everywhere.

And plus, you never know what tomorrow’s gonna bring. You just gotta work on things you can do, today. Cuz when you do … it’s result-oriented—always. Something’s gonna happen when you make a move. That’s the way things work. I think everything’s alright. The world is definitely nuts, you know what I mean? There’s a lot of bad in it cuz we set the tables for ourselves so that

shit that’s gonna happen as a result of what we been doing is not gonna be cool but at the same time I think a lot of cool things are gonna happen too. And when things are just happening and they’re inevitable and they’re real, you kinda have to look at them and accept them for what they are instead, of just dwelling on how bad they are or why. Because tomorrow is the only thing that you can really impact.

If you didn’t have love, would you be so willing to trust the universe?

Yeah. If you’ve ever had it, then you know.

You know the possibility that you could again.

Love is—it makes things feel a lot brighter, no matter what. It’s hard still, but advice from someone that’s older than you: the thing is, you just have to believe. And beliving in things takes practice and a lot of explaining to yourself. Spending time with yourself and figuring out that it’s not about dwelling on what you don’t have, or what isn’t there. Cuz a lot of times when you do that, you set up barriers to ever having it again anyway. You know what I’m saying? You just gotta have courage.

Bravery about believing in life. It sounds cliché, but when you really get to the bare bones of the real meanings of those things, it’s pretty bright.

SHABAZZ PALACES’ BLACK UP RELEASES JUNE 28 ON SUB POP. VISIT SHABAZZ PALACES AT SHABAZZPALACES.COM. INTERVIEW

ALBUMS

EDITED BY DAN COLLINS

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ALBUM REVIEWS

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THE INTERPRETER: COMPUTER JAY Kristina Benson

THE INTERPRETERS: BLEACHED Kristina Benson

78 COMICS

EDITED BY TOM CHILD

81 L.A. WISDOM

EDITED BY DAIANA FEUER

ART

EDITED BY DREW DENNY

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TIM BURTON Drew Denny

FILM

EDITED BY LAINNA FADER

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THE INTERPRETER: RIA AMA Lainna Fader

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GUY MADDIN AND SPARKS Lainna Fader

BOOKS

EDITED BY NIKKI BAZAR

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EXCERPT FROM KASMIR

BY JON LEON

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FROM DALI TO LAMA …

KARMA OR COINCIDENCE

BY PATRICK CAMPBELLLYONS

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BOOK AND ZINE REVIEWS RIA AMA byLAUREN EVERETT

COURTESY C. LIONS

CALIFORNIA LIONS self-titled self-released

The California Lions want you to know that it’s perfectly OK to feel good these days. As a matter of fact, they almost insist. Through seven short-but-sweet tracks they provide tunes reminiscent of a warm, breezy afternoon, soaked in sugar and positivity. Nowhere is this more evident than “Being Happy’s Not Half Bad,” which unapologetically states the virtues of a good attitude while telling the haters where to stick it.

Recalling the best of the late 70s singer-songwriters, and throwing in a dash of the Monkees, the California Lions have put together an album with laid-back hooks and great male/female harmonies, where even the songs about heartbreak still find a way to put a smile on your face. Admittedly, the songs can lack depth at times, with efforts like “Association Home,” which talks about the trials of living in a gated community, coming off as little more than a cute attempt. But when it feels this warm and fuzzy, who cares? This EP may not be the soundtrack to your summer, but it can provide some really sweet asides. The California Lions remind me of California Gold.

—Joe Sebo

LISA STROUSS

CLAP Have You Reached Yet? Sing Sing This is the reissue equivalent of finding an untouched cheeseburger atop a trash can at the pier. (Don’t act like you’d be too proud.) These 62

COURTESY H. HEROINES

HEROES & HEROINES untitled CD-R self-released

Teenage virtuosos with an uncanny knack for arrangement and excellent taste in equipment, Tony Infante and Gabriel Diaz will plant many a melody in your mind. This free CD-R—recorded in Infante’s parents’ garage in Lomita—delivers four precious gems perfect for summertime in the City of Angels. Unabashedly poppy, songs like “Two Weeks” (which will also be released on the band’s forthcoming 7”) jitter with chunky guitar, blissful organ, and rhythmic variations that prompt a joyful mixture of twisting the hips and banging the head. Slippery 60sstyle group vocal harmonies punctuate Infante’s dreamy lead singin’.

Equal parts charming and dextrous, Infante’s voice seems out of time somehow. His darling timbre delivers brutal sincerity through a combination of casualty and passion that only true love and youth allow. Nick super-efficient teenage minds from North Torrance reduced the Rolling Stones to their most valuable basics (cool guitar, deliberately mispronouncing words in interesting ways, hating the unendingly boring and stupid world that surrounds us) and then went nuts 1973-style, with vocals that make Sky Saxon sound like Frank Sinatra and unbelievable lyrics about being tortured (they don’t like it), creaming one’s jeans (it’s a waste of time), and jobs (they don’t need ’em) and then a sax or harmonica or a slightly bent bass solo that will make you freak the fuck out over the pure fearless teenageness. Other bands, like Scruffs and Thane Russal, had this style exactly (be a better Stones than the

of Vixen and Samantha Fox). A lot of these songs have been presented to the public before, but hearing them all together like this allows you to get past Heather’s vocal sheen and find the nuances, like the saxophone on “Escape Forever” or the little part of “Silky Eyes” where the bass gets to boogie. The influence of Berlinera Bowie/Pop is clear on songs like “No Mames,” with its water-droplet Gil’s surfy guitar riffs, Alex Faciane’s key effects and “Come and Go urgently melodious basslines, and With Me”-sounding geetar at the those perfect percussive surges and end. But “Everybody’s Sick” has the swells by Diaz each walk a fine line same siren-song deliciousness of that between innocence and expertise. tune Lara Flynn Boyle sang on Twin I’ve been enjoying these tunes for Peaks, and “California Shakedown” years (and even had the pleasure to has a sprinkle of the kind of sideways sing along with them during one live shoegaze distortion not seen since, I performance) so I’m anxiously await- dunno, Curve? That’s a rarity—Skying more music from Heroes & Her- lar’s guitar chords are generally clean oines. With such mastery of tempo, and open, and there’s more Cocteau melody and line, I can’t wait to hear Twins and Siouxsie Sioux in here what happens when they grow up than My Bloody Valentine—yet it’s and start taking drugs. happy, hopeful, youthful! The best —Drew Denny song on the album is still the Ariel Pink-co-opted “Stilyagi,” which takes the feel of Menudo’s “Cannonball” and makes it walk alone at midnight.

There’s definitely room for these guys to grow, but with Skylar’s brawn and Heather’s brains, I think they’ll make lots of money.

—Dan Collins

ELSA HENDERSON

PURO INSTINCT

Headbangers in Ecstasy Mexican Summer This album is well-packaged and well-organized, from the little radio promo “KDOD” interludes every couple songs to the silk-saturated album cover, which seems to be trying hard to push Heather and Skylar Kaplan as a sexy sister duo like Heart (though with the peachy lingerie they’re wearing, I can’t help but think

VALERIA HERRADOR

REGGIE WATTS

Live at Third Man Records Third Man Records

I first saw Reggie Watts a couple years ago at the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle. He was a pudgy, unkempt man with a giant ’fro and beard, and he totally fooled me then with the same trick he uses here: starting his set in a stereotypical “black” accent, a stream of “know what I’m sayin?” that occasionally dips into completely non-verbal Ebonic consonants, and then out of nowhere switching to a hipster lisp or English accent and completely mind-fucking the audience with the revelation that “this has all been just a character … and if I thought it was real, am I racist?” Watts is the king of mimicry—not just of accents but of wizard voices, robot sounds, and even recording effects, and he uses this to affect ridiculous audio puns, such as when he says he’s going to tell a “quick” story and then relays it to us as if we’re hearing a highly sped-up cassette. This album’s brilliant goofiness will remind you of Steve Martin’s Wild and Crazy Guy. And like Martin’s banjo prowess, Watts’s skills gleaned from his years as a failed musician serve his comedy well, and not just because he can carry a tune and play keys.

Watts’ real weapon of choice is the loop pedal, which he uses like Beardyman or Kevin Litrow to construct layered vocal tracks, turning his beatboxing and Isley-brothers falsetto into damned fine ditties about smurfs and gypsies that both Scissor Sisters and Ween fans could enjoy. This is his best album so far, perfect for playing over and over again on your next summer road trip.

—Dan Collins

record or elsewise starve to death.

This is where a bunch of us came from, I think.

—Chris Ziegler

Stones!), but Clap made an entire album all on their own with nothing but vision, guts and disgust to push ’em through. If I could figure out how to liquefy this and make the fruit-fly-control planes spray it over the Southland, I’d do it and probably save more lives, too. If

you dig King Tuff, Burger Records, Kim Fowley, fucked-up awesome garbage and freaks who kept it real despite crushing societal pressure that eventually transformed them (as the Phast Phreddie-penned sleeve notes shockingly reveal!) into realtors, you will have to get this

DAN KERN

CLOROX GIRLS Genocide 7” self-released ALBUM REVIEWS

Portland-based all-male trio Clorox Girls power through catchy punk tunes that echo their late 70s punkoriginator-influences on their new 7”. They open with “Genocide,” a rollicking, danceable track with a pop sensibility that belies the pessimistic verse “we can’t win, that’s the truth of it.” B-side track, “Bad Girls,” kicks off with a rumbling drum beat, alternating a simple catchy repeated chorus of the song’s title with howls that veer toward being sweet and engaging rather than animalistic or threatening. Playing in various incarnations for nearly a decade, Clorox Girls refuse to slow down or grow up, keeping simple memorable punk tunes coming through in a playful, unassuming fashion. After their 2 ½ year hiatus, it’s nice to see them back in action, with a return to the more stripped-down punk that appeared on their early releases. Perhaps this has something to do with the group’s return to their California roots, or perhaps it’s a return to the sort of frenetic performances that put them on the map to begin with. Either way, this 7” gives us a hopeful preview of the sort of high energy archetypal punk we can expect on an upcoming full-length.

—Walt! Gorecki

DAN KERN

COSMONAUTS self-titled Permanent

Someone once told me that seven chakras run through the Earth, as they do through the human body, emitting energies which inspire creative greatness. Supposedly Fullerton, CA, is one of those chakra centers, and that’s why so much cool shit comes out of seemingly nothing. This industrial suburb spawned Christian Death, A gent Orange, the Adolescents, a little band called Social Distortion, and was home to the original O.C. punk and hardcore scene.

Fullerton may have fallen off

“I got hope that the end of the world’s coming,” Mark Sultan told me during a phone interview a few months ago. “It’ll fucking be amazing. It’ll be a great thing. We should all be happy. Even if we sacrifice all our lives, then the thing we’ve abused for years is gonna be living and there’ll be beautiful creatures. I don’t see what the problem is. It’s the natural progression. If it ever does happen, we should be thankful for the apocalypse.”

These dour words of wisdom seem especially timely just a few days after Mr. Sultan’s most recent Southland appearance at the Blue Star diner deep in the heart of downtown’s industrial core.

2012 may be half a year away, but already 2011 – with its plentiful droughts, tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, surging gas and food prices, not to mention John Boehner’s House and John Roberts’ Supreme Court – is the kind of year that, as ALBUM REVIEWS

the map since those glory days, but it seems to be experiencing a full-scale renaissance as of late, what with the opening of Burger Records and the trifecta of bands generating much hype: Audacity, Dirt Dress and the Cosmonauts. All these bands make lo-fi stoner garage punk of the highest caliber, overtly borrowing from others while still being undeniably unique (same could be said for Burger’s aesthetics). If Picasso’s quote “Good artists borrow, great artists steal” is true, then the Fullerton scene is a gang of kleptomaniacal octopi. But don’t get me wrong, this is not a dis. Exposing yourself to the best things that humans have done and effectively bringing those things in to what you’re doing takes real talent. So when the Cosmonauts take Nirvana’s sludge and Deerhunter’s fragility, and translate it into a psychedelic sound that fans of In the Red records will celebrate, don’t think of copy-cats, think of crafty octopi on a chakra wave.

—Vanessa Gonzalez

COURTESY PETER CASE

PETER CASE The Case Files Alive

On this retrospective, the former Nerves/Plimsouls alum assembles a collection of demos and unreleased outtakes from his lengthy solo career. The folk protest-style songs generally take issue with the state of American political and economic immorality, sounding the alarm as it were (a siren can literally be heard blaring at the beginning of “Let’s Turn This Thing Around”) and repeating the exhortation to turn things around, a phrase which recurs later in the album on “Ballad of the Minimum Wage,” where Case

talk-sings as an organ intersperses stealthily quiet sections and loud electronic hissing bursts, and a guitar riffs in the background. In “Kokomo Prayer Vigil,” Case is alone with an acoustic guitar, using the distinctly American theme of the road trip to comment on the lack of conviction in political debate—at one point having a tense encounter with the guards at the El Paso border checkpoint, something any Angeleno who has driven to Austin can relate to.

Among the surprisingly diverse array of blues tracks are covers of the Stones’ “Good Times, Bad Times,” Dylan’s “Black Crow Blues,” done with a piano and harmonica, and a rousing and infectious version of the standard “Milk Cow Blues.”

Also included here is a demo of Case’s 1987 hit “Steel Strings” featuring T-Bone Burnett and a cover of Alejandro Escovedo’s “The End,” where Case howls “Is this really the end?” in the same tumbling run-together way Van Morrison sings “G-L-O-Rye-eh,” making one hopeful that, as far as Case’s career in music is concerned, it isn’t.

—Nick Collins

my landlord said of 2010, “makes you want to take a rape shower.”

How better to escape misery than through music? End times often have a way of sparking fierce creativity, and the prickly field of garage and punk is no exception. If we had to flee a massive Pacific tsunami tomorrow and I could only take five recent releases with me, the choices would be as easy. So here we go:

The People’s Temple “Sons of Stone” (HoZac Records). Not to get all HoZac on your asses, but after a slew of releases from “Lo-Fi” snoozers like Reading Rainbow and Idle Times, the great Chicago label has finally started issuing real rock ‘n’ roll again. This reverb-drenched, fuzz-laden monster psych record combines influences such as blues, R&B and Big Beat for an invigorating approach to ‘60s-inspired garage rock – all laced with a dark, cynical underbelly that makes it as much a part of our world as a part of the past.

Reatards “Teenage Hate” (Goner Records). The much missed garage punker’s final album, “Watch Me Fall,” sounds wimpy when slung alongside this writhing, bleeding, feverish melding of blues, punk and hatred. The fact that he was a snotnosed teenager when these recordings were made in the late ‘90s makes it all the more impressive.

G.G. King “Esotouric Lore” (Rob’s House Records). If you were sad when the Carbonas broke up, there’s no reason to fret, because the incendiary Atlanta punk band’s crazed front man has quietly been building up a solo career – over the course of a handful of blistering seven-inches -that fills the void. With influences such as Hubble Bubble, Zero Boys and even T.S.O.L., his first full-length features horrible hand-rendered cover art, but contains some of the punkest songs of this year or any year.

Happy Thoughts S/T (HoZac Records).

Hoosier garage rock that’s as soft and warm as an old flannel shirt, with a delicate pop soul and a world of hurt pulsing through its veins. Singer Eric LaGrange is one of the dudes behind Cave Weddings and the Romance Novels, two of the most underrated bands of the last decade, but this new platter finds him and the boys at top form. Best summer album so far.

Schiller Killers/ IV Eyes split 7” (Rubber Vomit Records). We’re big admirers of that wascally wabbit of rock ‘n’ roll mayhem, Nobunny, in the pages of this periodical. Well, his dirty paws are all over this delightful little romp, which features two mysterious, sloppy punk bands doing tasteless songs about serial killers and Terri Schiavo.

Killed by Death junkies take note.

63

THE INTERPRETERS

JENNIFER AND JESSICA CLAVIN Curated by Kristina Benson Photography by Gari Askew

Jennifer and Jessica Clavin are the sisters who went from Mika Miko to sidemanning (for Cold Cave and Puro Instinct, respectively) and now back to a band together with their new group, Bleached. They speak now about the albums that they think about when they make music of their own. Bleached has a new 7” out and will play with the Spits at L.A. RECORD’s Psycho Beach Party at the Blue Star.

METALLICA KILL ‘EM ALL (MEGAFORCE, 1983)

DELTA 5, “MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS” and “ANTICIPATION” 7”s (ROUGH TRADE, 1979 and 1980) Jennifer: “The first time I heard these, I couldn’t believe music this good existed. Both released on Rough Trade which is the reason why I love Rough Trade so much. They are ALL perfect songs to me. Simple and straight forward music is the best kind. The lyrics are weird and dark and you can hear them really well. I am also really inspired by their art.

Very 70s DIY. Delta 5 is what introduced me to a lot of the early punk female UK and European bands. If I could have been in any band from this time, it would have been Delta 5. When I play drums or guitar, this is what I try and sound like.”

Jessica: “One of my biggest influences for playing bass. The bassist isn’t afraid to hit the highest notes.”

RED CROSS SELF-TITLED EP (POSH BOY, 1980) Jennifer: “These six songs are so good. I like how they are so young and singing about an S&M party. Also it’s cool that they are brothers like Jess and I are sisters. I feel like Bleached sounds a lot like this album. I can’t believe how good they are at their instruments for being so young.

‘Clorox Girls’ is like a punk anthem!”

Jessica: “This album was totally our driving album for tour. His vocal effects are so good. The sound of the bass reminds me of Crass. It’s like a style that’s clean and poppy and not too simple.”

NEW ORDER MOVEMENT (FACTORY 1981) Jennifer: “I love love love driving up the West Coast and this is the main record I will play. It’s like if the West Coast had a soundtrack it would be this album. Also the perfect record to play as background music while falling in love! The sound of the guitar is my dream guitar sound. This record is one of those records that comes in and out of my life. Every time I listen to it again—not to be too cheesy—I feel like I am hearing it for the first time and I am shocked at how good it makes me feel.”

Jessica: “I love this album but I can only associate bad memories with it right now.”

DEPECHE MODE MUSIC FOR THE MASSES (MUTE, 1987)

Jennifer: “The lyrics on this album are so intense. I like how dark this album sounds—but with pretty melodies on top. The arpeggiated synths are so hard and danceable.”

Jessica: “Yeah, kind of like the synth in Stevie Nicks ‘Stand Back.’

When I feel like my life is empty and I have no direction I like to listen to this album. It makes me feel better even though it’s really depressing. Kind of like a horror film. It makes me realize I don’t have it that bad. Leatherface isn’t cutting me up with a chainsaw!”

SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES JUJU (POLYDOR, 1981)

Jennifer: “Siouxsie was my total inspiration in high school and when we first started Mika Miko—the way she sang and danced and her make-up. Her singing has so much power so it makes whatever she says really intense. I like how eerie sounding the guitar is in this whole album.”

Jessica: “I use to sneak into Jen’s room and steal this album to listen to. I would dance around my room and pretend to be the guitar player.”

INTERPRETER

Jennifer: “When I first heard ‘Jump in the Fire,’ I was like, ‘This is disco!’

So then Mika Miko decided to cover it. We actually have it recorded with Dean from No Age drumming but we never put it out.”

Jessica: “Because Metallica would sue our asses! Cliff Burton’s bass solo on the album is just awesome. It really makes me want to pick up my bass and play like that.”

Jennifer: “I think it’s so cool they have a whole song dedicated just for bass—and it’s a long song, too.”

Jessica: “Even though Lars isn’t the best drummer, his style added a lot to this album. But I love Kirk Hammett—I have a poster of him on my wall. I feel like I can hear the energy in this album. It reminds me of the energy and youth Mika Miko had.”

THE REPLACEMENTS LET IT BE (TWIN TONE, 1984)

Jennifer: “Every time a boy would make me a mix tape, there would always be a Replacements song on it! When I first heard this album I felt that the songs were more structured than I was used to hearing from punk bands. I also totally tried singing like Paul Westerberg in Mika Miko. The guitar reminds me of Jessie’s guitar playing for Bleached.

‘Seen Your Video’ is so cool—all instrumental until the end when his singing comes in for just a little. This album also just reminds me of growing up in L.A. and riding our bikes everywhere.”

Jessica: “When we are doing band photos and art, I always think about this album cover. The guitars have the perfect amount of distortion. The way he plays the guitar melody with the vocal melody is exactly how I go about writing solos with Jen’s vocal melodies.”

MISFITS WALK AMONG US

(RUBY/SLASH, 1982)

Jennifer: “We love the Misfits! ‘Walk Among Us’ is so Oi. ‘Astro Zombies’ is like an end of the world love song and when they say ‘exterminate’ really deep, it’s so cool. The whip in ‘Devil’s Whorehouse’ is so clean and loud. It makes me feel like I am punk in the 80s doing donuts in an empty dirt lot.”

Jessica: “Yeah—and pumping your fist to it, too. And they make a point to end every song on a good note. The harmonizing and singing in ‘Hate Breeders’ reminds me of what we try to do for Bleached. You can tell they tried really hard to hit the right notes and they sound really pretty doing it, too!”

THE GUN CLUB MIAMI (ANIMAL, 1982) Jessica: “‘Mother of Earth’ is my favorite song on this album. The guitar tones are so warm and comforting. I love the slide guitar throughout this album. This is my all-time favorite album cover. It’s so L.A. with the palm trees and the wind in the trees and in their hair. It’s like the sunny weather outside right now. Also Jeffrey Lee Pierce sings like a babe.”

Jennifer: “He went to my high school in the valley so I feel a connection.

With Bleached I for sure try and sing like him.”

THE PETTICOATS AS HEARD ON THE SCALING TRIANGLES COMP (EUSTONE MUSIC, 1981) Jennifer: “‘Dreams’ is one of my ultimate favorite songs. Her vocal melody goes from one style to another but it works so well together and it’s so catchy and weirdly dark sounding. I like the drum machine—it’s like the same simple beat through almost the whole song until the end and it sounds like a Linn Drum. I know she plays all the instruments herself, too, which I think was kinda rare back then.”

Jessica: “Chaotically organized.”

67

ELSA HENDERSON

CO. FEE

Easy Listening My Hollow Drum Exotic, edgy vibes pulse through the seven heavily synth-laden tracks of Easy Listening, Los Angeles-based producer Co. fee’s first release on beat collective/label My Hollow Drum. Easy Listening hits hard from the start with the epic and wonky “Destroy & Rebuild,” making the album’s solemnly eclectic agenda clear and setting the bar high for the tracks that follow. Co. fee pulls from an eclectic roster of samples, ranging from vintage Bollywood love song vocals on “Kali” to carnival-style Brazilian horns on “Katana” and the subtly woven-in, sexy afrobeat on the aptly named “Gypsy Skirt.”

Mixing back-of-the-crate samples with glitch edits and an overarching dub sensibility, the album stays true to its modern production and results in something truly easy to listen to.

Clocking in at a short and sweet seventeen minutes, with only one track exceeding the three-minute mark, there’s no reason not to give Easy Listening a spin.

—Elsa Henderson

in the bowels of hell and yelling “BITCH!” a lot: one song, “Guillotine,” is not much more than a slow electro beat mimicking a continuous decapitation. But by the time you reach the song “Klink,” which puts beats over the descending guitar riffs of Black Flag’s “Rise Above” and looped screeching of someone going “Uuuhh, Whuuuuu,” you realize these guys kinda have a Judgment Night flavor that works.

Maybe it’s the involvement of Zach Hill from Hella, maybe it’s because the lyrics are faster than lightning, or maybe it’s because, like Gaslamp, they’ve done their record collecting homework, with Hank Shockleeevoking noise culled from David Bowie, the Castaways’ “Liar Liar,” and even Link Wray. My favorite tune of the moment is “I Want It I Need It (Death Heated),” which is based around Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive”: the protagonists take every drug imaginable and then hit the clubs looking for “volcano pussy.” Music’s worst nightmare, indeed!

—Dan Collins

theme, it was great to hear tracks like “Keys to the City,” a catchy, bouncy collaboration that manages to rhyme “tithes” with “city” perfectly. Then there were tracks like “We God Love,” which in soft danceability still fills its space with powerful lyrics that you may never be able to sing along with, but you can certainly feel. JNatural doesn’t overdo it on the looping samples, twangy tracks like “Rain” stand out even more—tasteful and a real delight. All in all, Love Is on Hiatus would be a perfect album to create a really nice vibe at a party, or even something to play when you wake up in the morning to give you a good outlook on life.

—Nikol Hasler

STEVEN FICHE

SAMIYAM

Sam Baker’s Album Brainfeeder

CHRISTINE HALE ELSA HENDERSON

DEATH GRIPS Exmilitary Third Worlds Music

This album feels like a deliberate challenge to Gaslamp Killer, not only to claim his throne as the most intense, crazy sample-based hiphop sound in California, but also to reinstate the MC’s role firmly in the new era. Death Grips’ MC Ride shouts with an in-the-red intensity somehow stranded in the Bermuda Triangle of soccer hooligan chants, “Who Let the Dogs Out,” and Onyx. There’s a major debt to horrorcore in these lyrics about orgies 68

JNATURAL Love Is on Hiatus Project Blowed

It’s not just an album, this is an episode of hip-hop Sesame Street sponsored by the letter Love and the number All. From the moment the intro track gives us different voices telling us what they think about love, the listener starts to think about what they would have said.

What is love? And it’s not like when Haddaway asked us in the 90s, but we all knew he didn’t really want the answer so much as to see us naked. The examination of all things love inspired by this album spans and expands. Always a fan of a nice

Sam Baker’s Album is seventeen funk-fueled tracks with a classic hip-hop backbone densely packed into a quick 40 minutes. This is Sam’s second full-length—the first was Rap Beats Vol. 1, self-distributed via his MySpace page up until FlyLo made it his first release on Brainfeeder—and while Sam still brings donuts with sprinkles and the beats broken off from video games, it’s not Rap Beats Vol. 2 by a long shot. His second LP shows what a vivid imagination the Ann Arbor-turned-L.A. producer has, knitting together a series of vignettes that delve into hip-hop and pop and electro-funk, with pixilated explosions punctuated by retro synths, heavy basslines, and samples of what sounds like clay pots smashing on a deck and being dragged across concrete. “Kitties” is the track that sold me on the record—right out of the gate,

Samiyam samples Bubbles from the Trailer Park Boys: “Me and kitties, it’s kinda like that book Catcher and the Rye. Did ya ever read that one?

I’m kinda like the guy that looks out for all the kitties in the park. Otherwise, there’d be nobody to take care of them. This cocksucker here, I found him in a storm drain.” It’s very playful—meows cut in right on time to accentuate deep blunted beats. And baby Sam on the cover, of course, is adorable.

—Lainna Fader

as close as possible to laying out a Shabazz manifesto: “Clear some space out, so we can space out.”

Though Tyler the Creator’s Goblin is the most hyped, Black Up is the most masterful hip-hop record of 2011 by far.

—Lainna Fader

CHAMPOYHATE

THIRSTY FISH Watergate Mush CHAMPOYHATE

SHABAZZ PALACES Black Up Sub Pop

Ishmael Butler has travelled a long road. He started out in the early 90s as Butterfly of Grammywinning, jazzy, smooth-rapping trio Digable Planets (remember who taught you how to be “Cool Like Dat?”), and then, after a seven-year hiatus, he returned as the singer of velvety electro-funk band Cherrywine. Six years later, he dropped twin EPs with AfroArabian imagery, Shabazz Palaces and Of Light, as the mysterious and press-evasive Palaceer Lazaro of Shabazz Palaces. Black Up is Butler’s debut LP as “Shabazz”— the first hip-hop record ever for Seattle indie powerhouse Sub Pop—and here we find Ish at the top of his game. His vocals, lyrics, and cadence are as smooth as ever, but we’ve also got stellar production and spaced-out beats propelling existential musings on freedom, identity, motivation and desire. He dares the listener to unpack its density, starting with the challenge of deconstructing extremely long and fairly abstruse song titles that are stories in and of themselves, narratives that exist beyond the tracks. Slow-burning paranoia seeps in with “An echo from the hosts that profess infinitum,” while “A treatease dedicated to The Avian Airess from North East Nubis (1000 questions, 1 answer)” brings out his romantic side. Soulful female vocals—Shabazz protégées TheeSatisfaction guest—kick in with “Recollections of the wraith,” where Ish gets

On Watergate, Open Mike Eagle, Dumbfoundead, and Psychosiz come together to make a cartoony and witty album that highlights each MC’s considerable strengths and blends them all together into an extraordinarily entertaining whole. The three rappers became friends at Project Blowed, a longrunning Leimert Park hip-hop workshop whose influence on underground rap cannot be understated. In a sense, this album is a tribute to Blowed’s ability to unite talented artists and make them better through diversity of community. Mike’s a teacher by day and an “unapologetic art rapper” by night. Dumbfoundead is a celebrated globetrotting battler whose T-shirt ads can get 50,000 YouTube views in a single day.

And Psychosiz is an introverted video game designer whose flow is acrobatic and craftily abstract.

When they trade lines, they create something unique and outlandish. On tracks like “Ducks Fail” and “Girls... Or... Like,” they sound like they’re having a hell of a time playing off of each other’s verses and experimenting with ideas they wouldn’t explore as solo artists. On “Sounds Like Rap” and “Antique Blowed Show,” the three men elevate each other with challenging and thoughtful ruminations on the nature of hip-hop itself. Taken as a whole, Watergate is a stacked album. Helmed by executive producer Busrider and featuring tracks by Daedelus, Exile, and Para One, it’s full of so many smart lyrics and melodic ideas that it takes several listens to even realize how good it is.

—Geoff Geis ALBUM REVIEWS

STEVEN FICHE

HEAVY WATER EXPERIMENTS Dark/Heavy Demo self-released

Sweet and fitting it is that Heavy Water Experiments has a name that sounds like code for LSD tests conducted by the CIA. Or, if you prefer your analogies more literal and less drug-related, a name that sounds like slowly being swallowed by quicksand while men in labcoats jot on clipboards. At its very soul, this is an album of acid-scorched psychedelia barreling straight out of the 1960s. One imagines their music videos consisting of painted women dancing under green and red stage lights as the band stays silhouetted in the background. But HWE takes these psychedelic roots and gnarls them into something much darker and, for lack of a better word, heavier. The bass lines are mesmeric and gritty, repetitive and explorative.

The drums don’t attract much attention, but they do provide some much-needed funk to round out the psych schema. You have to listen closely, but the stickwork ultimately gives the band its adaptability as it swings from Tullian metal to electric freakout and beyond. The vocals are all about power: the female parts are haunting and melancholy, and the male parts drift and hang on the wind like hawks. The ability to coalesce so many obscure and wonderful influences into such a cohesive mixture requires a level of geek cred that borders on inhuman.

—Matt Dupree

WALT! GORECKI

POWERAXE The Kinship Modern sleeze

POWERAXE! Enough said, but allow me to explain how brothers ALBUM REVIEWS

Brian and Ryan bring brutality back to life and make it fun with The Kinship. These two heroes have embarked on an epic journey to save the stolen princess from fire-breathing dragons deep inside of a volcano, and they deliver nothing short of a fair lady vomiting the explosive sounds of thundering, smashed and blown-out speaker rumble. This drum and bass duo carries the massive torch of huge head-banging destruction with enough layers of leads and solos to bring a tear to the eye. Yes, you will be caught in a whirlwind of emotions! This violently moving noise is brought to you by men mature enough to cry, and backed by a drummer whose vocabulary will have you reaching for a tissue right after you just punched your buddy in the mouth.

Prepare yourself for the melody, composition, and enough brown notes to sink Los Angeles with a mountain of feces due to a diet rich in Poweraxe.

—Thom Crooze

than head-crushing doom. This is a thread Weinrich masterfully weaves throughout the record in harmony with his usual balls-to-the-wall motherfuckery. Wino’s patented Sabbathian riffs take center stage on tracks like “Modern Man” and “Clay Pigeons” (a personal favorite), the latter of which screams Black Sabbath Vol. 4 and is guaranteed to make your head bang. “Peyote Road” and “Senses” further open up the record and cement the band’s psychedelic exploration. Weinrich isn’t reinventing the wheel here, just driving it down the desert road and stopping at the naked Indian guy’s house for peyote. 13 reminds me of the time I smoked a J while racing to Vegas during a freak thunderstorm followed by twenty minutes of blossoming flowers. This is a must for any of the Wino faithful and will fit in nicely with the rest of his back catalog.

—Adam Beck

STEVEN FICHE

ELSA HENDERSON

PREMONITION 13

13 Volcom

Premonition 13 is a thunderous return for doom legend Scott “Wino” Weinrich of Saint Vitus, the Obsessed, and Spirit Caravan fame.

Plugging back into his amp following recent acoustic efforts, Weinrich leads the charge of this power trio, which includes Jim Karow and Matthew Clark. 13 is somewhere between Spirit Caravan’s tight, straightforward fuzz and the psychedelic melodies that defined his work on the Hidden Hand. The album opens with “B.E.A.U.T.Y.,” setting the stage with a slow build of delays that is more space rock

STABBINGS Kill Me CD Single self-released

Imagine that you’re walking through an old mansion’s haunted hallways, with the sounds of a chanting voice, accompanied by eerie music echoing through its halls on loud speakers. Stabbings’ two song CD, Kill Me, sounds very similar to that. The first song opens with a high-pitched voice almost at a scream and heavy, slow guitar riffs.

Creepy organ melodies reverberate with its guitars in unifying octaves.

The vocals sound like they could be casting a spell, but you can’t really tell, because they are accompanied by loud guitar and doubled organ progressions. You will be grinning at all of the sound’s ghoulishness.

—George Ellias

June gloom got you down? Stuck in the muck of nature’s eternal occurence? Perhaps some rad music news to change things up a bit! And of course, its coming from some of our city’s gnarliest bands. One of them is Costa Mesa’s TRMRS (pronounced tremors) who you might’ve seen at L.A. RECORD’s show with Marc Sultan, Lamps, and Death Hymn #9 ... or maybe the Silverlake Jubilee. Initially starting out with their connections to The Growlers, they’ve since forged their own path spanning the circuit between Trash Pretty in Laguna Beach and L’keg in Echo Park and then beyond—like playing at SXSW and SMMR BMMR in Portland, touring the midwest with Night Beats (Trouble in Mind/ Seattle), and recording their debut LP Sea Things (Resurrection Records). The epicenter of the action’s at the Five Star in Downtown L.A., presented by the Hear Gallery for 5 bucks every Friday in July.

Speaking of residencies, Long Beach’s own Crystal Antlers are at the Echo every Monday in July for the cost of free. Not much word yet on who they’ll be playing with but if the lineups are anything like June’s thee Parkside show in San Francisco with The Audacity (Fullerton/Burger Records), Tijuana Panthers (LBC), and Devon Williams, it’s sure to be a pleaser. Also fromthose bands, Audacity will be touring with Ty Segall at the end of July and TJ Panthers are playing FYFFest this year.

And at the Echo coming up is the inimitable King Khan, backed by Greg Ashley’s Gris Gris on July 15th. Another really great show there will be the boy/girl duo Cults on July 27th. Cults have already worked with Sleigh Bells , M.I.A., and Vampire Weekend. Playing with them that night is Guards, the solo project of Anaheim’s ex-Willowz front man Richie Follin.

If garage rock isn’t your thing, go back on July 12th for Omar Souleyman, who some call the Syrian M.I.A.. This guys been putting out underground cassettes throughout the Middle East since the 90s. U.S. label Sublime Frequencies has since culled and reissued some of his live shows spanning the last ten years. Playing with him are Moon Pearl: a nine piece tribalesque arkestra from Orange County headed by the same people who put on D.I.Y. shows across the UC Irvine campus regularly. Furthermore, San Francisco’s psych rockers The Fresh and Onlys tour with Woods this summer and play August 2 at the Echoplex. Oh yeah! The Allah Las have a Tuesday residency at the Echo in August. Lastly, the Sunset Junction: raging on this year with the Growlers, Dum Dum Girls, Melvins, Butthole Surfers, and Hanson (wha!?) and more at Sunset Junction August 27th and 28th. Then FYF Fest with The Descendents, Death From Above 1979, Guided By Voices + more September 3rd will close out the summer.

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COURTESY OF CWL

CASSETTES WON’T LISTEN Kevin Spacey Daylight Curfew

Kevin Spacey would like you to stop calling this album “Kevin Spacey.”

Which is sad, because I was really looking forward to describing this album in terms that are also applicable to Mr. Spacey. Oh well, his loss.

Cassettes Won’t Listen, if you didn’t know, is a guy named Jason Drake from Brooklyn who occupies that strange space between being a DJ and a songwriter. You want remixes?

He’s your dude. Original tracks full of sunny pop melodies as played by computers? Bingo. As is appropriate for this genre, Drake’s vocals are androgynous, simple, slightly sad, and autotuned: coming soon to an iPod commercial near you. But that’s just the starting point for Drake.

He pushes toward dubstep sounds (without any of Skrillex’s fart noises) and less-polished noise aesthetics. This is still squarely within the bounds of indie electronica (essentially the only valid use left for the word ‘electronica,’ by the way), but it’s clear that Jason Drake has a wandering ear for sounds and a talented hand at making them his own. It’s like going to an ice cream parlor: you can order any flavor you want, but you’re still getting ice cream. No matter what Jason Drake folds into his album, you’re still gonna hear it as IDM. —Matt Dupree

gramma, sometimes offered stripped away of their original context, sometimes represented and re-imagined

by Brainfeeder labelmates Teebs, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, and Matthewdavid. Originally, the tracks were made available in early January to any Flying Lotus fans with a physical copy of Cosmogramma, a webcam, and access to the internet.

Fans could visit a website, hold their copy of Cosmogramma up to a webcam, and a new interactive webcam image recognition software would unlock and download alternate takes and versions of Cosmogramma. Later, these tracks were pressed onto vinyl and made available as a special limited-edition release on record store day.

The value of such a record is twofold: first, it offers a kind of a behindthe-scenes view of the architecture behind Flying Lotus’ compositional style: “Clock Catcher (Harp Arrangement)” is Rebekah Raff’s harp part from “Clock Catcher,” peeled away from the beats and ambient textures of the song to stand alone; similarly, “Galaxi in Janaki (String Solo)” is just that--the string part from “Galaxi in Janaki.” Second, it is indicative of an emerging ethos wherein collaboration elevates— rather than degrades—the production of musicians: Teebs’ “Archway,” for example, takes the harp stems from “Clock Catcher” and creates an entirely new song, with new energy and a new narrative. For Brainfeeder labelmates, it seems, there is no stealing. There is only sharing, an attitude that they (and we) all benefit from.

—Dan Collins

broastcast: “You are looking down on the city scene, shrouded in heavy smog.” This is Los Angeles—“Los Angeles is Beautiful”—and these are the sounds hidden under the cloak of the city’s smog. The Leaving Records co-founder listens differently than most people, latching onto sounds most don’t even hear, much less get inspired by. Matthewdavid magnifies these beautiful, fleeting moments lost in the shuffle of city life, capturing the whipping of the wind and the rustling of reeds in his field recordings. With Outmind, he explores how these found sounds and more familiar beats can work together, producing music that exists in a realm in between, oscillating between ambience and rhythm, structure and space. Texture-heavy west coast hip-hop runs deep (“International feat. Dogbite”). Delicate and gauzy ambience (“Group Tea feat. Flying Lotus”) flows into heady dubstep-leaning beats (“Like You Mean It”). His shape-shifting soundscapes represent the heterogeneity of Los Angeles perhaps better than any other producer in the Low End/dublab/Brainfeeder circles.

—Lainna Fader

STEVEN FICHE

MO KOLOURS EP1: Drum Talking One Handed Music

VALERIA HERRADOR

FLYING LOTUS

ELSA HENDERSON

The Cosmogramma Outtakes Warp

MATTHEWDAVID

The Cosmogramma Outakes is as the title promises: a collection of stems and fragments culled from Cosmo-

Outmind opens with a crackly announcement, sampled from a dublab

ALBUM REVIEWS

Outmind Brainfeeder

Inspiration is always indebted to its surroundings, and Mo Kolours owes his sound in part to the warm tropicalia of Mauritius, an island off the southeast coast of Africa where the ocean shines that brilliant shade of cyan that only seems possible in Photoshop. There, the half-English, half-Mauritian percussionist and beatmaker absorbed sega, Mauritius’ drum-driven music born out of the slave trade. What results are not beats

that cling to 8-bit nostalgia but a style that’s uniquely organic: the sound of hands slapping skin, voices calling from distant, communal choirs.

“Bakiraq” blasts forth with swirling, psychedelic dub. A rush of reverb then morphs Mo Kolours’ voice into something atmospheric and elemental, like a howling wind buoyed by the echoes of an entire city. “Drum Talking” is a bit too sparse, a layer of clicks and clacks transformed into what sounds like the rhythmic dripping of a leaky faucet. But “Biddies” bounces back with a hypnotic loop of voices caught in a hushed melody.

He sings on top of it all in slowburning stretches not unlike Gonjasufi. “Dead of Night” seems to have a touch of Timbaland; “8 Hours” walks the streets with a wobbly hiphop swagger. EP1: Drum Talking is something all its own—both an intercontinental memoir and, it sometimes seems, a field recording from the future.

—Miles Clements

oeuvre can be and has the same creepy, funky vibe you might have gotten if you heard Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” when it first came out. Like that flash-inthe-pan, there are some gloved-one grooves on this album, just like there is in the work of Daft Punk, who seem to be this sound’s major mentors. This is electronica that never escaped its childhood, and really, who wants to grow up?

—Dan Collins

VAL HERRADOR

TOKIMONSTA Creature Dreams EP Brainfeeder

WALT! GORECKI

MAGIC MACHINES

La Machine Magique EP Electricolor Some reviewers have likened this EP to Soulwax, but I can’t imagine Magic Machines stooping to the level of remixing a crappy dancepunk band and pretending that’s part of the game. This is pure growling-synth Angeleno DIY dance electronica, with no words or guitars to get in the way (though the press release says they sample “Led Zeplin,” I heard no such thing by any name). It’s an exciting, fouron-the-floor sound that reminds me of why as a Ramones/Misfits/ Black Flag fanatic teen in the early 90s, I couldn’t help but turn my ear to the sounds of Alpha Team and Acen and wonder if I needed a glow stick—I almost expect to hear a “drop the bass” or “y’all ready for this!” right before each drop-out/ drop-in. Track 2, “Call Me” is going to be the hit that will keep people dancing. With a great Metroid beat, melodic minor open keys, and even occasional Farfisa-sounding interludes, this instrumental is as close to beautiful as something akin to Halloween Swim Team’s

Fans far and wide have come to trust the Brainfeeder label to curate and cultivate some of the best musicians and producers the beat (and now jazz) scene has to offer; on Creature Dreams, Toki lives up to the promise of the brand. The EP is replete with Toki’s trademark stuttered and hiccoughing beats and brims with impressive production but the songs still sound fluid, cohesive, uncrowded.

“Darkest,” featuring Gavin Turek, combines elements of 18th Street Lounge mid-oughts downtempo with neo-soul vocals ; “Moving Forward” is a mix of processed bongos, arpeggiated sequences, and bubbling flourishes, pinned down by a looping bass. “Stigmatizing Sex” shows off Toki’s impressive production skills—the bass punches along while ambient noises flutter and pan, turning eventually into a harp (or is it a nylon stringed guitar?). Toki has grown as an artist since Midnight Menu: the songs here are more focused and narratives more articulated. Even so, the production is where her maturation is most evident. Each song is packed with thrumming details that are clear without being cold, distinguishable without overwhelming the listener. The songs pulse with energy but they aren’t bangers as much as head-nodders, swimming with details reined in by clever production and tasteful arrangement. Creature Dreams is best listened to repeatedly, at sundown.

—Kristina Benson 71

THE INTERPRETER

COMPUTER JAY Curated by Kristina Benson Photography by Theo Jemison

Computer Jay is the computer genius whose mom made him take piano lessons when he just wanted to mess with a Moog and who hacked old Ataris and Commodore 64s into obeying his every mental command. He plays synth-and-technological-ephemera with Dam-Funk’s Mazter Blazter and has a new project with Gaslamp Killer called Computer Killer. He speaks now about the most magnificent synth and Moog records he’s ever found.

NEIL NORMAN GREATEST SCIENCE FICTION HITS, VOL. 1 (GNP CRESCENDO, 1979) “Neil’s a producer and songwriter and has worked with everyone from Les Baxter to the Ventures to the Monkees. And he’s had a lot of success as a producer and a guitar player but I think he’s more known for his synth work and for scoring certain sci-fi movies. On this record he covers some great songs—Battlestar Galactica, Phantom Planet, Godzilla, which Pharoahe Monch sampled—so his sci-fi work was in my opinion his best stuff. And he has that eerie sound that people associate vintage synths with!”

HERBIE HANCOCK MWANDISHI (WARNER BROS., 1971)

“This is one of Herbie Hancock’s first solo records. Still had a heavy jazz influence on this one but his Fender Rhodes and Moog work on this is just incredible. And it’s one of the first records I sampled! I know my cousin—KK from People Under the Stairs—also sampled this. This is one of my first go-tos both as a sampler and as a synth enthusiast.”

THE MOOG MACHINE SWITCHED-ON ROCK (COLUMBIA, 1969)

BRUCE HAACK THE WAY-OUT RECORD FOR CHILDREN (DIMENSION 5, 1968) “I got this from the Orange County public library. I checked it out and never gave it back—it’s just too good! It’s so quirky. It has amazing synth work on it. It’s like little children’s songs, and I thought it was incredible. I’ve sampled it a handful of times—it has all these interludes and a real De La Soul feel. Like it goes, ‘Turn the page!’ and makes a peew! sound. And the synth work in the background is just incredible—full of these bizarre modular synths doused in reverb. And it’s a record for children!”

DR. TIMOTHY LEARY TURN ON, TUNE IN, DROP OUT (THE ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK) (MERCURY, 1967) “Timothy Leary obviously was the psychologist from the 60s who was probably mostly known for his LSD advocacy. This record came out in 1967 and is basically Tim Leary and a couple of friends getting really deep over heavy, bizarre synth music that’s all washed out with reverb and has some amazing random percussion. I’ve sampled this one several times, and what he’s saying is super incredible. Sure, he’s out of his head and off his rocker—but it was amazing what he’s saying. It’s definitely one to listen to. You can listen to the classic effects of LSD!”

DICK HYMAN THE AGE OF ELECTONICUS

“A lot of these ‘Switched-On’ records are covers, which is crazy when you realize this record is monophonic. It’s still super deep and amazing—it sounds like full polyphony but you gotta remember that everything was played one note at a time! These records cover a lot of the same songs but I love hearing all of the different versions. I’m also pretty sure the Beastie Boys sampled it for Q-Tip.”

HUGO MONTENEGRO MOOG POWER (RCA/VICTOR, 1969)

“Heavy on the Moogs, and of course, a cover of ‘Aquarius’ once again.

I like this one a lot because although it has a lot of modular synths, it’s super drum-heavy—the drums really bang on this one so it always stuck out in my head as one of my favorites of the Moog records.”

Z MUSIC FOR SENSOUS LOVERS (SENSOUS, 1971) “This is a very experimental record—lots of modular synths with sounds of moaning and groaning and humping on it! The music in the background is phenomenal. It’s got this padded synth sound where it sounds like the synthesizers have a layer of dust on them. It’s smooth on the ear—really easy. I bought it and thought it was cool and that night, when I went to sleep, I heard it in my dreams, playing over and over. Then I went back and listened and realized how amazing it really is. This is a heavily sampled record too—Dilla and a few other people have sampled it.”

(COMMAND, 1969)

“I always tripped on that name—Dick Hyman! And this one has ‘Give It Up’ by James Brown but a modular synth version, even all the way down to the drums, which are made using modular synths.

There are other famous samples that came from this. That’s the amazing thing about sampling—it kind of is infinite. I’ve sampled this a thousand times and I was listening to it recently and came across this Dilla sample. He used it on The Shining. I didn’t even realize that before! And this has got a great version of ‘Aquarius,’ of course. Dick Hyman is an incredible guy. Oh, and the song ‘Kolumbo’—one of these dubsteb dudes sampled it and he really flipped it!”

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WALTER (AKA WENDY) CARLOS CLOCKWORK ORANGE SOUNDTRACK (COLUMBIA, 1972) “Anyone who has seen the movie knows how powerful the soundtrack was. The classical songs were done with these huge amazingsounding modular synths. It was just eerie and creepy, but sophisticated all at the same time. I put this record on, and I want to wear a wig like Ben Franklin did and have tea while I listen to it. And if you like this, check out Switched-On Bach!”

THE INTERPRETER

WALT! GORECKI

DEATH HYMN NUMBER 9 Smokestack Frightening Vitroil

Death Hymn Number 9 already sounds like a song of satanic praise ripped out of an unholy piece of literature. Without doubt, this band’s sound is worthy of its bold and irreverent name. Contrary to the title, however, this is music that reminds you that you are alive. It might even be raw and abrasive enough to raise the dead and make ’em dance, which I’m sure was the idea. I imagine songs like “Trainyard Boogie” and “I Reckon You Gonna Die” blasting eternally while I make my descent to whatever hell will have me. It’s that terribly good. Overall, the record is short and deserves everything you have to spend. Spread the good word. It’s not too bad to die, so long as Death Hymn Number 9 is playing your funeral.

—Darby Duenas

Smiths’ “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.” Dee-Dee Penny flirts with irony as she slathers honey vocals all over Morrissey’s evocatively dark lyrics, making the words “To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die” disquietingly agreeable. The other three tracks, original compositions, nod to other influences. “Wrong Feels Right” smiles at Sub Pop labelmates the Vaselines, whose 1989 full-length debut, Dum-Dum, reveals their place on the influence meter, right alongside Iggy Pop (remember “Dum Dum Boys”?).

Add a booming kick drum and “Take Care of My Baby” would be right at home on a record by the Ronettes, a band the Dum Dum Girls often cover live. Richard Gottehrer, who helped pen “I Want Candy” and produced Blondie and the Go-Go’s, returns as producer, but this time shares credits with the Raveonettes’ Sune Rose Wagner. Her penchant for pushing the limits of noise pop meshes with Gottehrer’s artful pop craft, making for a short but sweet EP, dreamy as it is ardent.

—Linda Rapka

little dance. The lead vocals seem a bit more playful than on the A-side, giving this tune a more live performance feel, and I like that. “Never Go Away” inhabits a more power-pop 80s jag in that Joe Jackson/Knack universe. But let me be clear: New Fidelity is its own planet, a planet where Beatle boots, Rickenbacker guitars and a brighter tomorrow rule the day.

—Adler Bloom moustache he’s sporting. I’ve even seen him desex a Cramps cover, which is no mean feat. Frankly, the lyrics are throwaway. It’s hard to pull off glam lyrics about “hills of pills” or “a white knee-high platform boot,” tongue-in-cheek or not, because it’s just not as easy nowadays to be impressed with decadence and debauchery, even when given a detached treatment.

But that doesn’t mean I prefer the instrumentals (there’s a number of them). From the deep, campy drawl of the “Time Warp”-ish “At the Ruin of Others” to the jokingly breathy roster of fruits in “Catsuit,” Kid’s vocals bring life to the songs. Though their live show is where it’s really at, I like this.

—Howe Strange

California Summer 7” self-released

ANNA BADUA

DUM DUM GIRLS He Gets Me High EP Sub Pop

Sweet and hard, like the candies that bear their name, Dum Dum Girls defy homological description. Cutesy goth? They own it. In their world, razor-fanged guitars prey upon bubbly pop in a battlefield of super-compressed beats, Robert Smith frolics hand in hand with Margo Guryan, and lollipops lick sugary people to death. And on the band’s new EP, He Gets Me High, unabashed affinities for doo-wop and 60s sunshine pop collide with a devotion to British post-punk. The resulting concoction gets no frothier than on the final track, a supreme take on the 74

Innings Woodsist

NEW FIDELITY

KID CONGO AND THE PINK MONKEY BIRDS KIDS ON A Gorilla Rose CRIME SPREE In the Red Blah blah Gun Club, blah blah Cramps, blah blah Nick Cave … it’s time Kid Congo isn’t limping under the weight of his own shadow. Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds’ new LP, Gorilla Rose, isn’t tapping an unused vein, but if you’re into what they usually do, you’ll still be into it.

Sometimes I flatter myself that I require depth in my tunes, but each time I see Kid Congo live, I realize I’m full of it. Give me a first-rate rhythm section and eyeball-bursting fuzzed-out guitar solos, and I’m like a jock on steroids. And though I appreciate ball-grabbing as much as the next person, I’m oddly satisfied by how un-macho this band’s rockabilly numbers are, even given the delightful sleaze of Kid Congo’s voice and that patchy, shady

We Love You So Bad EP Slumberland

Bands can easily recreate the sounds of a yestertime, haunting you with a warm and fuzzy audio nostalgia that keeps you thinking, “Where have I heard this before?” With Kids on a Crime Spree, at first listen you will get just that; however, by the first chorus of “I Don’t Wanna Call You Baby, Baby,” the first track on this EP, you will unmistakably be aware of the new, of the now, of the dreamy pop shimmer that, although nostalgic, has just shattered your belief that we’ve managed to do all we can with “indie” pop music. This EP has all the elements needed for an epic formula that leaves you begging for more. Throughout the songs there is a consistent fervor along

DAVE VAN PATTEN

NODZZZ

TOM CHILD

JEREMY SZUDER

WALT! GORECKI

with a hum, similar to that of a Jesus and Mary Chain recording.

Songs like “It’s in My Blood” and “To Mess With Dynamite” ensure that Kids on a Crime Spree can and will set their footprints deep in a stale indie pop scene. A must for anyone who can appreciate a well-crafted piece of music aimed right at your heart.

—Chavo Macias

New Fidelity have always channeled the early 60s Brit pop sound of bands like the Hollies, the Dave Clark Five and the Zombies, but they infuse it with a uniquely Southern Californian beach sound—which makes sense, since the boys hail from Long Beach. Their new single is unabashedly bright and in full Technicolor, taking you far, far away from politicians that commute the sentences of murderers and four-dollar-a-gallon gas.

“California Summer,” the A-side, vacillates between tight, bassdriven post-punk (reminiscent of the Jam) to a chorus hinging on Archies bubblegum pop. Lead vocalist Dan Perkins laments being away from his California summer, which makes him “feel like a Buddhist Monk in a church in Rome.” The B-side, “Never Go Away,” percolates with enticingly sweet guitar picking, a heavy counterpoint of syncopated power chords, and organ swells that follow deep bass and drum downbeats. Each musical entity, played at different time signatures, fits together perfectly with the others in a complex

From their first single, 2007’s “I Don’t Wanna (Smoke Marijuana),” to songs like “In the City (Contact High)” and “Controlled Karaoke” off their 2008 self-titled debut LP, Nodzzz have always had a knack for writing catchy and memorable songs. It was for this reason that I have been eagerly anticipating something new from these guys since their 2009 teaser 7”, “True to Life,” whose A-side is featured on this LP, albeit in a different skin. Anthony Atlas and Sean Paul Presley (brother of White Fence’s Tim Presley), the two guitars and mouths behind Nodzzz, create a unique style of garage-pop with sounds that are both twangy/jangly yet crunchy, featuring vocals similar to what Television Personalities may have sounded like if Dan Treacy was a nerdy American college kid instead of a fucked-up British punk. Innings, Nodzzz’s second full-length, shows the band a tad grown-up yet still able to create addictive quirky songs. Despite the album’s name, this is not a record about baseball. Instead, such as on “Always Make Your Bed” and “I’m Not a Wanderer,” the first two tracks off the album (and two of its most memorable), are about playing it safe and looking ahead. On “Heyday Past Heyday Due,” they sing, “I don’t care to reinvent the stairs,” and it’s true: this album is very similar to their previous work. However, being a band with such a unique style, that’s not a problem at all.

—Daniel Clodfelter ALBUM REVIEWS

STEVEN FICHE

DAVE VAN PATTEN

FRANK FAIRFIELD

Out on the Open West Tompkins Square Records Frank Fairfield might actually be from another universe that’s evolved different notions of time, past and future, old and new, and perhaps truth—he certainly plays old songs with old technology and dresses old-style, that seems true. On this album’s first song, “Frazier Blues,” the banjo strikes up, and Fairfield sings low and close, so close he’s breathing in your ear about a hundred years ago. Then “King’s County Breakdown” travels to a

COURTESY GEORGE ELLIAS

GEORGE ELLIAS EP EP End & Co. ALBUM REVIEWS

barn dance where Fairfield plays lead fiddle, and he’s a-hootin’ like it’s a party—but his is the only voice in the room. Next, “Someday You’ll Be Free” happens some “when” else completely, where Fairfield plays banjo fast and hard, and his voice grows higher and quivers as he sings.

The next two songs are actually four songs with names that sound like they belong in another old country place, but “Haste To The Wedding/ The Darling True Love” goes where bagpipes come from and “Turkey In The Straw/Arkansas Traveler” seems written at a medieval cocktail party by the guy who woke up a few centuries later and wrote “I’m playing with my baby bumblebee ...” From this point on, there is no telling where or when in time these songs come from, whether Fairfield is moving forward, back, or straddling more than one time at a time. Do things sound familiar when they’re not? Or are we merely splashing in the waters of the unconscious universe that holds everything together, where things that sound alike are stored near each other?

—Daiana Feuer

While less intricate than some of the musician’s-musician folkies that have made life and liquor so much better in recent years (Fort King, Olentangy John, Frank Fairfield), George Ellias’ coupla-chord acoustic guitar approach is intimate in the same way some of the best post-rock folkies have been, from Neil Young on up. Though this is definitely the people’s music, Ellias tends to evoke the rockers as much as the folkies, from coarse angels like Daniel Johnston and the Tinklers to Skip Spence and Ellias’ hero, Syd Barrett. (And I’m

SPINDRIFT

Classic Soundtracks Vol. 1 Xemo Records This is probably a Spindrift fan’s wet dream. They had me at the flute solo on opening track, “Japexico.” It’s followed by thirteen more soundtracks for different films, real or imagined, delivering forty-nine minutes of psychedelic wild west pleasure.

The album features an array of instrumental showdown music and themes, as well as stories sung

by KP and newcomer Sasha Vallely—who actually does most of the singing on Classic Soundtracks.

She puts the sultry in “Red Reflection,” then dukes it out with KP on “Theme From Amboy,” where “home on the range is a rattlesnake!” Most of the “films” feature bandits chasing each other across the desert in a galaxy far, far away. Even the Bollywood-y “Space Vixens Theme” feels transported to a place where gunslingers roam. By album’s end, they hit every major style, plot point and not guessing there—I’ve stumbled upon Ellias’ Last.fm comments!)

In fact, my only complaint about this EP is that he could have just skipped the cover song: his barefoot rendition of “Baby, Please Don’t Go” feels a bit squashed by the garage door that Van Morrison’s Them opened and the Strange Boys closed with their versions.

But that’s more than made up for

by Ellias’ originals, like the sweetly sick slack-tuned “Wonder Babe,” in which Ellias plays the Barrett/ Guthrie/Dylan game of strumming as long as it takes to fit an extra seven syllables or so into a line.

And Ellias gives Graham Forest a run for his collection plate money with the foreboding “A Farewell Song,” which takes a Goodnight Moon approach to the Apocalypse: “Goodbye sunshine/goodbye rainfall/goodbye Mother/I can’t hear your call.” But why compare? Ellias’ brave and deceptively smart song poems have earned him his own notch on the fencepost of L.A.’s thriving folk scene.

—Dan Collins

sound effect regularly encountered in a spaghetti western, though I’m sure the genre’s never seen a psychedelic pedal steel like the one played by Luke Dawson, another newcomer to Spindrift. Spindrift had almost ceased to exist when KP met Luke in the desert; multiinstrumentalist Sasha came on board with her Australian/British accent and her flute, among other things; and a wanderer named James replaced Plucky on drums.

While honoring its cinematic influences, the band also fulfills its responsibility to rock ‘n’ roll. The most awesome rocking happens on eight minute-long epic “Theme From Drifter’s Pass.” The last two and a half minutes … wow! Heavy metal climax.

—Daiana Feuer

DAN KERN

TEARS OF THE MOOSECHASER Songs for the Sinister Woman self-released

COURTESY JACK LITTMAN

JACK LITTMAN The Mixtape EP self-released

Do not be fooled by Jack Littman’s humble album title. The Mixtape sounds like anything but whatever demo-sound that suggests. Littman maintains very good production values throughout the album, and it’s obvious that he has a pretty good grip on his studio skills. Maybe his standards for mixtapes are high? The song “Little Pretty Thing” maintains its seriousness, despite the less-than-serious message that he expresses throughout the lyr-

When the debut CD for Tears of the Moosechaser was described to me as “psychedelic bluegrass that’s country-sounding, but different enough to be an L.A. RECORD-type band,” my first reaction was “This CD will be totally awesome or completely suck.” I am psyched to say that this is one of the best CDs that I’ve heard this year. Songs for the Sinister Woman comes from deep outer space in the woods, outside Area51, and they definitely hold their own among the fertile American Freak scene in Los Angeles. These songs are freaky, yet have a distinctively American sound, much like Amanda Jo Williams. They have a peyote enhanced campfire feel to them, the kind that can seamlessly turn into bad-trip a freakout, as if Edward Sharpe were leading a death cult. Tears Of The Moosechaser‘s weapon of choice is a picking, plucking style of guitar and banjo, but they’re not so cowboy that they’re afraid to bring their chamber instruments into the wild yonder.

The disc opens in full-tilt nightmare mode with “On the Hunt Again,” but it soon mellows out with the lovely “Man in a Shack.”

The middle of the CD’s “Lost Amongst the Whales” is soothing psych, and the flaming fiddles on “The Sea, at Last …” will keep the coyotes friendly. This disc has been out for a bit, but I’m assuming that it’s new to most, and it’s definitely a terrific CD worth seeking out immediately.

—Scott Schultz ics of the song’s bridge, sung in a cutesy voice: “Don’t you change a thing/you perfect little pretty thing!” That he kind of makes this work, more or less, can give you some good insight into his skillful approach towards music-making. No pure traditionalist, Littman fills the album with synthesized instruments such as bass and beat machines, keyboards, etc., which turn songs like “Sinking Ship” and “Got2HaveU” from folk to funk! But if you don’t like freakfolk, don’t worry: Other tracks, such as “Late Night,” “Waiting” and “Undercover Lover” maintain a relatively acoustic feel. Littman uses his guitar, his voice, and various eclectic instruments to create an entire album that is widely varying in range, from light melodies to highly arranged compositional pieces of instrumentation—like a mixtape!

—Skip Bojangles

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WALT! GORECKI

THE BLANK TAPES

Home Away From Home EP w/The One EP White Noise When Home Away From Home originally came out in 2010, the Blank Tapes frontman, Matt Adams, was quoted as saying, “The music keeps getting better and better.” With the subsequent release of The One EP, it’s a statement that continues to be true.

Currently being sold together as a package deal on their website, both are indicative of Adams’ rootsy, 60sinspired rock ‘n’ roll with a California twang. But if Home Away From Home was a slight transition away from the overly pretty sound found in previous releases, The One EP takes the idea several steps further, injecting a new level of maturity and moodiness into five very good songs.

Although these songs came out of the same recording sessions, these two albums have a noticeably different mood and feel. If Home is driving out through the desert on a road trip in the early morning, The One is that same desert just after sunset, full of reflection and introspection. The songs are still pretty, to be sure, but a little less upbeat and a little less radioready, while managing to be catchy as hell. Regardless, both are great examples of psych-folk rock with excellent pop sensibilities, though the only real musical experimentation you’ll hear is extra-long guitar solos.

Getting both for five bucks in an era where fans are demanding value for their dollar is a steal. Download them and hit the road; summer’s waiting.

—Joe Sebo

On its third LP, Twist Again, Bodies of Water demonstrates an impressive mastery of an array of timbres and moods, each of which is loosely “indie rock” but also something more. Opener, “One Hand Loves the Other,” hauntingly conjures the tonal spirit of Everything Is Wrong-era Moby, “Triplets” channels 60s British girl pop, “Open Rhythms” is both neo-psych and strutting-ly groovy, while “Mary, Don’t You Weep” is a post-Arcade Fire epic complete with spoken breakdowns in a Shangri-Las vein—and those are just the album’s first four songs.

On these numbers and the ones that follow them, Twist Again is unswervingly deliberate, thoughtful and forward-moving. It’s lush, with gorgeous strings provided by a cadre of Highland Park orchestral all-stars. Horns, too—like the blasting, urgent funk trumpets that propel “Like a Stranger” and the jazzy sprinklings that add sparkle to the R&B of “Ever With Us”—give levity to the whole affair. Bodies of Water is an orchestral pop group in the truest sense of the term, yet these inflections don’t overwhelm its songs or its singers. Throughout, vocalists Meredith and David Metcalf are present and compelling as they perform a symbiotic back-andforth that lends even more diversity to the considerably diverse instrumentals. The whole thing sounds mature and accomplished, and should solidify Bodies of Water’s reputation as a giant of this big, beautiful genre.

—Geoff Geis

WALT! GORECKI

BODIES OF WATER

Twist Again Thousand Tongues 76

ELSA HENDERSON

CAVE SINGERS No Witch Jagjaguwar

The Cave Singers sound like they sprang from some parallel universe, where the bands that clog the playlist on your local classic rock station never succumbed to the coke-fueled egomania, corporate greedthink and general hippiecrit douchebaggery that made punk rock so necessary. What if Fleetwood Mac had fled L.A. for the backwoods of the Pacific Northwest, hanging out with meth-cooking bikers and stray members of the Manson Family instead of making Rumours and basically ruining the 70s? It might have sounded something like this: pretty acoustic picking and hippie harmonies with some mean blues groove, with a vaguely sinister Eastern drone as an extra special element of surprise, and some trashy garage stomp thrown in, just to keep things evil.

—Anne Frankenstein

a “second” album seems like it might (minus the “sophomore slump” connotation, but we’ll get back to that). The album has more of everything: instruments, melodies, and (if you don’t include Tentacles’ noise-wank finale “Several Tongues”) running time.

The tempos are more relaxed, and the guitar has more room to maneuver with solos and riffs. The end result is a collection of really strong summer tracks (“Summer Solstice,” “Dog Days,” and “Jules’ Story”). But the band hasn’t forgotten its “psych-punk” (read: there are organs played quickly) origin story. In these moments, when tracks like “Always Afraid” aren’t trying to pacify, they’re out for blood. The whole affair is essentially like a bi-polar ex who wants to take you out for a nice dinner and then accuse you of things in public.

—Matt Dupree

DAN KERN

DAGONS

Upon the Dull Earth Dead Sea Captain

ELSA HENDERSON

CRYSTAL ANTLERS

Two-Way Mirror Recreation Ltd Two-Way Mirror is Crystal Antlers’ second proper album release, the first on their own Recreation Ltd. Label. After their last label, Touch & Go, bowed out of record-making, like a disgraced politician, in order to spend more time with its back catalog, the future didn’t look good for our Long Beach heroes. But this crew has pluck and vigor oozing out its amps. Compared to Tentacles, this album is rounder and less organ-soaked.

Once again it falls upon Jonny Bell to make the “punk” half of the genre comparisons work by wailing his heart out while his bass goes for a walk. In fact, this album seems to embody everything that

The Dagons Upon the Dull Earth harkens to an era when Veruca Salt and Liz Phair controlled commercial radio, MTV played L7 videos, and Hole was good.

But it is not strictly a throwback.

There’s a hypnotic Eastern atmosphere, by way of the sitar, which adds a unique quality to this album undefined by time. Yet Dagons’ vocalist, Karie Jacobson, reminds me so much of Suzanne Vega sometimes, that if I’d been told this album were her gothic side project from fifteen years ago, I would believe it. Were it not for the track “Zero Years” with its lyrics (“We are living in the zero years, plenty to prove, plenty to fear”), this album could be the product of an alternate 90s reality where Riot Grrrl followed the trajectory of 60s rock bands.

If Babes in Toyland had met the Maharishi in London, while visiting Portishead, practiced Transcendental Meditation in India and picked up the sitar, this album would have been made in ’96. So if you’re nostalgic for 90s grrrl bands, or you were born in

the 90s and are into the Vivian Girls and Best Coast, pick up Upon the Dull Earth. It is a psychedelic, shoegaze-y, magic carpet ride through an apocalyptic carnival that is sure to delight.

—Vanessa Gonzalez

WALT! GORECKI

DENGUE FEVER Cannibal Courtship Fantasy Records

Dengue Fever might blend Cambodian psych-rock with African, dub and West Coast surf-soul sensibilities, but please don’t call this world music. Instead, just listen to the band’s fourth album, Cannibal Courtship, as it departs from anything categorizable and drifts into an amalgam of new Los Angeles sounds like a Cambodian-saturated Ozomatli. While the band’s first few albums were mostly filled with 60s Cambodian rock covers and original Khmer-language songs, Courtship finds the sextet relying even less on their musical ancestry and experimenting more in the realm of American indie rock. Several songs on the album (“Cannibal Courtship,” “2012 (Bury Our Heads)” and “Cement Slippers”) throw these new directions up front: all English-language lyrics, three-part harmonies from The Living Sisters and rapid-fire tonal shifts courtesy of a custom-made instrument called the Mastadong. The double-necked Fender Jazz Master/long-necked Cambodian guitar fuses together two cultures both literally and musically, allowing guitarist Zac Holtzman to jump continents within songs like never before. Despite exploring new ways to bring a lost era of Cambodian music to new audiences, the most important aspects of Dengue Fever’s original sound remain unchanged. Cambodian-born singer Chhom Nimol still delicately drops lines with a ghost voice that would make Ros Sereysothea proud and the band’s arranging still brings Dick Dale guitar riffs, psych organ and Eastern scales together in a way that doesn’t make the occasional jazz flute solos seem out of place. If this is what globalization is donating to the airwaves, then thank you postcolonialism!

—Sarah Bennett ALBUM REVIEWS

COURTESY KISSING COUSINS

KISSING COUSINS

Unfortunate End EP Velvet Blue Music The press release for Kissing Cousins makes it seem like the band doesn’t have a consistent bassist, so it’s odd that bass seems to propel its new double 7”. The first 7” is aggressive, heavy, and practically devoid of treble. The blunt opener, “You Bring Me Down,” wouldn’t have sounded out of place in Sonic Youth’s set during their SST years, while the flipside rides distorted basement funk into grunge territory. Kissing Cousins isn’t always noisy, though. While “Throw Her Body in the River” suggests nurseryrhyme melodicism, the band really opens up on the third side, “Granny Get Your Gun.” Here, singer Heather Bray Heywood leads a soft, slowly unfolding progression that sounds like Warpaint in the foreground and Mazzy Star in the background.

This is the high point and most compelling part of the EP, made more poignant by the fact that that it’s surrounded by noisier jams, including closer “Pale White.” Overall, Unfortunate End is a good bet for fans of dirty, capital-R rock music who enjoy intriguing two-part harmonies to go with the snarl.

—Geoff Geis

Magnuson take the well-worn formula of bands like Tool and Muse and infuse it with guy-girl harmonies. While their influences are fairly obvious on the early parts of Crash of Cassini, the latter half displays an interesting pop sensibility that has the similar effect to pouring a cup of sugar into a cup of mud, stirring it up, and eating it with a spoon.

Sure, some of it is bitter and dry, but some of it tastes pretty darn sweet. The darker tracks dominate the beginning of the disc, with suitable titles like “Dark Reality” and “Dying to See.” The songs are loud, and Greg’s lead vocals have more than ample anguish to match the heavy riffage and power drumming. While the songs are fine, the angst can have a numbing effect after four or five songs. Then suddenly, with “Stars Collide,” the band really begins to take full advantage of Krysten’s harmonies, and the music lightens up like sunlight parting the clouds after a heavy weather disturbance. The poppier songs, while heavy, are catchy in ways that their influences could never match. And by the closing tracks, “Here & Now” and “Strange Lights,” they’re borderline radio-friendly! While not a classic, Crash of Cassini is a good start. More sugar mud, please!

—Scott Schultz

MAGNUSON

Crash of Cassini Homeless Rerun Music What does one prog-metal rocker say to the other? Who cares, as long as the music is LOUD! San Diego’s Greg and Krysten ALBUM REVIEWS

THE ONE AM RADIO

Heaven is Attached by a Slender Thread Dangerbird

OBI BEST Sentimental Education EP Social Science Recordings COURTESY MARK ENGLERT

MARK ENGLERT Mark Englert participated in many legends before trying to create his own. He’s been a member of Dramarama since ’82. He covered the New York Dolls before it was cool, jammed with Sky Saxon in the 80s, and has worked with members of Blondie and Tom Petty’s famous Heartbreakers. His solo work owes a lot to his KROQ history but bodes well for a more interesting future—though a history of hits is probably a hard one to shake.

Welcome to the Good Life is a strange pick for my taste, but I’ve

over. Sentimental Education is a self-described “mini-adventure.”

In its alien synth-heavy songs, Lilly’s vocals and kooky melodies are again her strongest lures. The track “To Have Class” has witty lyrics like “your wallet is empty, but you have currency” sung over an echoing pulse. “Knock on Any Door” is the highlight and it stands out as a maturation in Lilly’s lyrics and songwriting in a work whose vibe thrives on childish ruminations. In it, she reflects on the impermanence of stages in your life and being satisfied with the present. Just as Lilly croons in the final song—she doesn’t hesitate to say that she is lost.

—Lauren Arevalo

CHRISTINE HALE

COURTESY OBI BEST

Welcome to the Good Life Recreation Ltd

COIURTESY MAGNUSON

had a good time listening to it in a Berlin café wishing I was driving through the American West.

“Disasters” features beautifully jangly guitars that remind me of Tom Petty’s best work, and “I Fell In Love” starts as a Neil Young tear-jerker, then morphs into a space jam starring some facemelting solos that wail a bit too much for me. With its dirrrrrty guitars and grindy bass, “October Part Two” is a song I would love to make up lyrics for while moshing at a frat house foam party. Despite its perfect production and conventional material, there is something really special about Englert’s music – a subtle sadness here, a nuanced celebration there… My favorite song on the record, “A Van Nuys Christmas,” combines underwater sitar guitar lines and nostalgic holiday xylophone melodies into something so strange it could only be described by its title. Moments like that make me want to keep listening to this musician’s development. I think he’ll surprise us all someday, hopefully soon!

—Drew Denny

Alex Lilly is the backing vocalist for Los Angeles pop mainstays the Bird and the Bee. In 2009, she released Capades with the help of her friends, under the moniker Obi Best. It only made sense that her penchant for creating dreamy chamber pop would be the hallmark of her own debut project. With quirky and cutesy songs of scorn like “It’s Because of People Like You” about hasty parking jobs and people with the gall to leave mean notes on your windshield, Capades was an album with many things to like, showing that Lilly was a singular talent as well. Now Obi Best’s latest release, Sentimental Education, with its whimsy and infectious choruses, left me wanting more after its four tracks were

At a first listen, one might hastily assume that music which melds genres is conflicted about its direction. Well, that’s not the case with the One AM Radio’s most recent endeavor, Heaven Is Attached by a Slender Thread. The brainchild of Hrishikesh Hirway, this band has explored the fusion of electronica and indie music previously, but with this new effort Hirway has moved past mere experimentation to assert his own theme for the work: surviving on the fumes of hopes and dreams in the plastic city of Los Angeles while constantly being confirmed and betrayed. In “An Old Photo of Your New Lover,” the upbeat melody built on a simple drum loop and a guitar track are equally matched with a catchy vocal refrain that points to the hopes and dreams of a new love, while the brassy vocals play on the scorn of those very same hopes turning traitor. Other songs on the album root up the plasticity of the city, including “In a City Without Seasons.” The echoed vocals and hollowed-out instrumentation combine appropriately to bemoan the absence of seasonal change

that further tricks the senses. The One AM Radio’s Heaven is proof that a synthesis of styles can serve a common cause.

—Paul Rodarte

JACK HEARD

SADIE SIEGEL They Live in Different Valleys self-released

Sadie Siegel makes art music for people who like to sing along; this album is not a record or a tape, but a scoop of ice cream you feed to your laptop by sticking a fork into your USB drive. The sculpture/flash drive comes with a book and a doormat so you can wipe your feet on one of Sadie’s song titles. Mine reads “Water Museum,” which also happens to be one of my favorite tracks. The album opens with a simple symphony, then leads through quacking ducks (or is that the volume up/down sound on a Mac laptop heard through a hundred peculiar processings?) to Austrian art historian Claudia Slanar expounding upon the yodeling traditions of her homeland. Siegel explores the interplay between meaning and meaninglessness, masculinity and genderlessness, pop and noise by employing idiosyncratic recording methods and some conceptual limitations regarding duration (several songs are three minutes long exactly) and material—some use only their preceding songs as instruments.

Slanar’s interstitial speeches regarding girls and boys who can’t “go together” because they live in different valleys are also timed, at one minute. Besides an adorable Austrian (whose voice was secretly captured during a phone conversation), Siegel’s only collaborators are animals, YouTube videos, electronics and software.

Demonstrating a perfect balance of beauty, nostalgia, innovation, and esoteria, Siegel makes you think, but never pushes you so far inside your head that you can’t feel the music’s emotion, intuit its meaning, or at least laugh along with a yodeling European.

—Drew Denny 77

COMICS CURATED BY TOM CHILD

FANTASTIC HEAT BROS.

shea M gauer CHRISTINE HALE RYAN QUINCY

champoyhate

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COMICS

COM

DAVE VAN PATTEN

CHRISTINE HALE

MIKE JASORKA

RYAN QUINCY

ELANA PRITCHARD

FANTASTIC HEAT BROS.

shea M gauer

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COMICS

MICS

LISA MOUSE

KEEF PATRICK

RON REGE JR.

DAVE VAN PATTEN

M. MORRISON

COMICS

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How many people is it OK to sleep with in a week? What if I just fall in love easily?

—Allison, Silver Lake LG: Come on—you know there’s no, like, NUMBER that makes or breaks OKness.

I mean if you’re havin’ fun and respecting yourself and the people you’re sleeping with then I mean—whatever. Somewhere between 0 and 300?

EE: I’d say seven. Any more than that and you’re on a path to double penetration.

There is a woman at work with freaky plucked eyebrows AND she is a close talker. How do I get her to talk at me from further away?

—Brendan, Highland Park LG: Eat tons of raw garlic. You can kill two birds with one stone that way— it wards off most annoying people and vampires AND it’s super good for you.

If that doesn’t work, then maybe try that thing where you spray saliva all over the other person’s face while you’re talking, like you’re Sylvester from Looney Tunes.

You can even say ‘Sufferin’ succotash!’ for added effect.

EE: Stop brushing your teeth!

Cultivated by Daiana Feuer L.A. RECORD has decided take advantage of a tiny bit of the 50,000 years worth of accumulated creative wisdom floating openly through the city and so we are starting a column where you can send in questions and we will get you answers from the people who made the best records in your collection. Now instead of wondering what Kim Fowley would think of your love life, you can actually find out! Send future questions to Daiana Feuer at daiana@larecord.com. L.A. RECORD guarantees nothing but the absolute reality of all answers. This issue we talk to Laena Geronimo, bassist of many ripping rock ‘n’ roll bands, and Elvin Estela, Low End and Heavy resident and master of six kinds of disaster.

A friend gives you 20 dollars to buy them beer at the store. Is it wrong to keep the change if they don’t ask for it?

—Michael, Huntington Beach LG: No, and you know what? While you’re at it, you should wait till your friend falls asleep and steal all of their valuables, destroy all their sentimental treasures, slaughter their pets and then find out their blood type so you can ‘harvest’ their organs and sell them on the black market next time you need some extra cash YOU JERK. EE: If they don’t ask for it then that means they tipped you for getting beer! If they didn’t tip you, they’re not really your friend anyway!

What should I do on a daily basis to maintain a pure self?

—Gale, Mar Vista LG: Remind yourself that this idea of ‘pure self ’ is bullshit.

You gotta be cool with your, uh … ‘unpure self ’ too. Otherwise you’ll turn into a deranged psycho like Hitler or all these religious fanatics. Maybe try changin’ your focus to being realistic and working to maintain a balance or something.

EE: Smoke weed, make love, and drink water.

LG: What the hell are you talking about? Lucky for me there’s a Wikipedia page for ‘flesh light’ … Uh, I don’t think anyone’s intimidated by this. I just think it’s fucking creepy as fuck. I’m pretty sure that you’re very wrong about this whole thing, and that a dude finding a vibrator would be A LOT less freaked out by it than his girlfriend finding a fake vagina under the bed. I’m sorry but that is JUST sad and TOTALLY creepy. According to the Wiki page there is even ‘a limited edition blue color for an Avatar-like look.’ HA HA HA! EE: Because flesh lights don’t generate lubricant, so that is their basic flaw, while the vibrator is an eternal hard-on.

No fair.

Does flirting over Facebook count as cheating? Sometimes there’s photo exchange but it’s not in person so does it count?

—Alan, Frogtown LG: I dunno man. You know what? It doesn’t matter. I mean—what ‘counts’ as cheating? There’s no defining law, especially with the internet. I mean … just don’t be a fucking hypocrite, OK? If you would be totally cool with your partner doing the same stuff, then you’re golden. If not, then … uh, think about that? Duh. EE: Hell yes, that’s cheating—would you want your lady sending photos of her hoohoo to her Facebook pal?

Should I worry about the times that he disappears and doesn’t respond for a day?

—Kate, Koreatown LG: No. Worrying is stupid. But I mean—I have no idea what you’re talking about. You could be talking about your cat, or the boogeyman, or some dude you’re in love with who’s totally cheating on you for all I know.

EE: No, he’s probably getting more experience out in the world to become a better lover for you.

My roommate is a bitch so sometimes I steal her weed.

I think she deserves it karmically but is it my place to deliver the Universe’s punishment?

—Tash, Pasadena LG: Well, most people who justify actions that negatively affect other people with the belief that they are carrying out the will of a higher power are totally fucking crazy and dangerous, so maybe steer clear of getting too wrapped up in that mindset and find a new roommate.

EE: It is not your place, but if she’s a bitch, she doesn’t deserve Jah’s blessing.

Why do guys feel threatened by vibrators, but no woman is intimidated by a flesh light?

—Abby, Mt. Washington

I like to pick my nose but I don’t want anyone to know.

If that means it’s wrong, should I stop?

—Sara, Venice Beach

WISDOM

LG: OK, so I just held a video conference meeting with Dr. Phil, Oprah, Jerry Springer and Judge Judy to get some thoughts from them on your highly relevant and emotional dilemma. They have agreed to team up for a special one-time-only collaborative weekend special show addressing your pressing issue and would love to have you as their featured guest!

EE: No! Picking one’s nose is one of life’s great rewards. Just make sure you do it in a private place and dispose of your boogers properly. My favorite way to do that is out my car window after a pretty intense picking session usually lasting my entire stint in traffic.

I still have imaginary friends. I know they’re imaginary but does that mean I’m crazy? People can be so unreal sometimes.

—Sam, Silver Lake LG: Rad. My advice is to be cool with your imaginary friends. If you’ve got a handle on the difference between reality and letting your imagination go nuts, then enjoy yourself. I’m kinda jealous actually.

EE: You need to get a Facebook account and get some REAL imaginary friends.

If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do?

—Mark, Long Beach LG: Because life is pain, suffering and penance if you want to avoid the eternal hellfire? Because most of us can’t afford to pay others to do all the lame shit for us? Because unfortunately the world isn’t made of gum drops and cotton candy? HAHAHAHAHAHA! Dude, lighten up and go do some shit you like already.

EE: Because it feels good!

I moved back in with my parents at age 30. How long can I stay until there’s something wrong with me? Until it becomes sad?

—Jones, Pasadena LG: I dunno, man. To me there’s all this stuff that depends on stuff, and stuff ... But Michael—the Raw Geronimo drummer who’s sitting in the van next to me right now— says, ‘Three months!’ So let’s just go with that.

EE: If they don’t mind, I’d say stay as long as you want! It becomes sad if they drive you around and you are in the back seat of their car. I don’t know why exactly, but I’d say that’s the sad point.

What can you tell about someone you are dating from the mixtape they make for you?

—Pat, Echo Park LG: Well, for one … you can tell what kinds of music they like. Using that information you can then make vast generalizations about ‘people who like Sabbath’ or whatever. But I suggest just relax and have fun listening to the mix—maybe even discover some new music to get into? Also, if you hate it then that probably doesn’t bode all that well for your future together? Unless you’re into that kinda thing.

EE: You can tell the following things: A. How much of a music snob they are; B. How much they obsessed over you; and C. How much weed they smoke on a daily basis.

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TIM BURTON Interview by Drew Denny Illustration by Luke McGarry Director and American icon Tim Burton is taking over LACMA until Halloween with a colossal exhibition that arranges personal works alongside artifacts and artwork from Burton’s filmography, from puppets and storyboards all the way down the rabbit hole to Polaroids of Burton’s dog Poppy sourced from a Christmas card. (Danny Elfman has also contributed a new original score for the exhibition.) Burton communicates now via email from an undisclosed location.

What do you think about people getting tattoos of your characters? Do you prefer to be exhibited in a museum, a movie theater or on someone’s arm?

I’m flattered that people would want to put my characters permanently onto their body.

I’m equally happy to have something on an arm or on a screen.

How did it feel to re-examine and re-contextualize your body of work for this museum exhibition?

It was an interesting process. I remembered a lot of things I’d forgotten, and the curators found a lot of pieces I didn’t realize still existed. Sometimes it felt like sifting through dirty laundry, but ultimately I’m impressed with the job they did.

All the descriptions of the retrospective mention the inclusion of ‘highly personal’ projects without any further explanation.

What’s the most personal project represented in the retrospective?

So much of my artwork is personal and I never expected anyone to see it. Mostly I draw stuff to amuse myself or to express a thought or a moment.

Did the curators choose anything you didn’t want them to include?

The curators ran everything by me first to make sure I was OK with everything they were including in the show. I remember they had picked four of the large Polaroids of my dog Poppy that I had taken for a Christmas card, and I couldn’t understand why they wanted all four. But once I saw how they had them laid out, it made perfect sense to me.

They really had a vision in their head and were able to carry it out successfully.

I was born in 84 and was lucky enough to be given your films as a child. Identifying with your characters was a distinguishing feature among the small and motley assortment of people I considered my friends.

How do you feel about being the author of an aesthetic that has become a sanctuary for an entire generation of kids who identify as ‘freaks’ or ‘Goths’?

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It’s nice that people who don’t feel like they fit in can still identify with something and not feel totally at odds with the world. I never felt like I fit in, and that’s a hard thing as a child, or even as an adult. It’s tough to balance the line of maintaining individuality but not wanting to throw yourself off a building, so if giving people something to identify with makes their lives a little easier, then good.

Many of your fans believe that your stylization of characters and environments allows you to speak more truthfully about the ‘real’ world than those artists and storytellers who attempt to represent the world realistically—what do you think?

I think it’s all a matter of perspective. I can’t work on something if I don’t connect with the material in an emotional way, and that’s what I try to express. I certainly don’t understand some shows—certain sitcoms for example— that are supposed to portray real life, but to me come off as very fake and forced. For me it’s all about the feeling that’s conveyed.

The first movie of yours that I saw was Peewee’s Big Adventure, of course, and it’s still one of my favorites. What drew you to Paul Reubens and his work?

He and I had very similar artistic sensibilities. Indeed, we both used some of the things we owned as set decoration in that film. Paul Reubens and I were on the same wavelength, so it all came naturally and easily. We keep in occasional touch and I’m happy to hear Peewee has taken off again.

Think you’ll work together again?

It’s always a possibility.

Were you an Oingo Boingo fan before you started working with Danny Elfman?

Yes, I used to go to their shows and loved the cinematic nature of their music. It’s one of the reasons we thought of him when trying to pick a composer for Pee-wee.

What’s it like to work with the same composer for so many years?

It’s like any long-term relationship—we’ve had our ups and downs. Ultimately, though,

it’s a very positive experience, and [I find] something new and different each time we work together.

I’m working in Berlin right now and all the DJs are dressed like vampires and all the singers are wearing zombie makeup. What do you think about the Goth fetish in postfascist societies?

I don’t know that it’s limited to post-fascist societies. When I’m in Japan, I see that stuff everywhere. Personally, I love it.

Have you ever been to Hot Topic?

No, I’ve not had the pleasure.

What is so scary about the suburbs?

In the suburbs there is a uniformity and pressure to conform into a social concept of normalcy, when underneath nothing is normal.

Describe your last encounter with bureaucracy.

I constantly deal with it on any film I’ve ever tried to make.

When did you start working with/making maquettes and puppets?

My first film with puppets was Vincent, at Disney, though I had a bit of fun with claymation in high school.

How do you respond to criticism from longtime fans who feel that your current employment of digital effects and CG doesn’t represent your aesthetic as well as the practical effects for which you became known early on in your career?

On Charlie, I read a lot of people complaining about the use of CG on the sets, when in fact almost all of that was practical. The same with Corpse Bride. Many people thought that was a CG-animated film, when it’s really stop-motion. The only film I’ve used a significant amount of CG on is Alice. To me, it’s all a means to an end. If I can express something with CG that I can’t do any way else, then that’s what I’ll use. I don’t see the point in limiting the process to only practical effects.

In Dark Shadows, it’s going to be more practical, but we also don’t have talking rabbits and caterpillars.

What’s the best idea you had but have yet to realize?

I’m not dead yet so I could still realize it.

What’s the best birthday present you ever got?

Ann Margret singing for me on my birthday.

Has raising children changed your taste in films or affected which projects you pursue?

I don’t feel like it’s changed anything, though I may end up seeing some stuff I normally wouldn’t watch. I still pursue the projects I can connect with and that present a challenge.

How is a soap opera like a fairy tale? How’s Dark Shadows coming along?

Both are extremely dramatic with essential truths running beneath the surface. Dark Shadows is only a few days into filming, so the only thing I can say at that moment is that I’m really excited with the cast we’ve assembled.

How did the story of Edward Scissorhands relate to your own life? Are there autobiographical elements in your newer work?

The idea of not being able to touch was something I related to personally. In each film there’s some key element that I have to identify with, or I couldn’t make the film.

Do you believe in gods or ghosts?

I believe in ghosts. During Alice, we filmed in Plymouth, England, for two weeks and the house I stayed in was haunted. Everything happened from glasses spontaneously shattering to candles disappearing to noises in the night.

I went to CalArts so I can’t help but ask—is it true that you modified that door in the dorms?

Some doors should remain unopened.

Have you ever seen any one die?

Myself, every day.

TIM BURTON AT THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART, 5905 WILSHIRE BLVD., LOS ANGELES. THRU MON., OCT. 31. FREE-$15. ALL AGES. LACMA.ORG. ART

THE INTERPRETER

RIA AMA Curated by Lainna Fader Photography by Lauren Everett

Ria Ama is an artist and filmmaker who uses her background in traditional Japanese sumi painting to capture the quieter moments in life and the shadows of our minds through light paintings for Sprint, an animated textbook of Tao, and a short about a painted phoenix willing herself into existence.

BLADE RUNNER (RIDLEY SCOTT, 1982)

HIROMIX PHOTOGRAPHY (HIROMI TOSHIKAWA, 1996—)

“This is my ultimate favorite science fiction film. I like the cinematography, and how they used the lighting. It’s all shimmery all around. It’s very sophisticated—it’s very romantic and sexy. I first saw it around 2000. I loved it, but when I saw it, I wasn’t really paying attention to the lighting. It’s only been maybe five years since I’ve started paying attention to the lighting, so I appreciated it more later.”

“When I first saw her work, I was really young. Her work was very different from what I had seen before. She takes pictures of ordinary things that surround her, which is very girly and pop culture. It felt very familiar, and I felt very connected to her work. She just brought things she sees in her daily life to the public and I had never seen it like that before. I think she just made me feel like it’s OK to express what I see and what I feel as a girl without it having to be artsy or difficult.”

HI NO TORI COMIC (TEZUKA OSAMU, 1967-1988)

“‘Quiet’ and ‘uneventful’ aren’t used to describe all those crazy, loud, fast Hollywood movies out these days. I’m very influenced

by Ozu’s slow, slow tempo. It’s very quiet, and nothing really happens, but he depicts the subtle, sensitive moments in everyday life and I think it’s really beautiful. The time is very different—but I think the theme of this story is universal. Kids grow up and move to the city. Parents want to visit them but the kids stay busy. But I like that speed the most, and I thought of it constantly when I made Mu.”

TOKYO STORY (YASUJIRO OZU, 1953) “A great masterpiece about incarnation—each book staged in different eras and places. Each page has beautiful graphics with great details and abstractions. His figures are very intricate but his backgrounds can be sort of abstract. I’m just blown away by his way of telling stories. Hi no Tori is about finding a phoenix and you see the human drama in trying to find that bird to get eternal life. It’s about enlightenment. The stories evolve around one person and how everything is connected. I looked at his work a lot when I made my thesis film, Mu.”

BERUSAIYU NO BARA COMIC (RIYOKO IKEDA, 1972-1973)

“I really love Shojo Manga (girls comics) and I especially love the ones in the 60s and the 70s. They’re very romantic and dramatic and full of dreams and fantasy and beautiful curly hair. It’s about Marie Antoinette and Oscar, who works for her, protects her. It’s the first historical manga written by a woman. At the time, girls comics really started getting popular, but the publishing was all done by men. It was all just silly stories about daily life and she brought something deeper. She’s very influential.”

EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE! VARIOUS WORKS (2007—)

“It was such a huge shock when I saw their work. My friend introduced me to it at the Silent Movie Theatre and it blew my mind away. EIT doesn’t use classic films—they use our own pop culture and edit it into some other product and it’s very sarcastic and funny.

They’re questioning, ‘Wow, is this the world we live in? Is this real?’

And the films do exist. I think they’re really brilliant. I think they belong in MoMA. Museums should have their work in their permanent collections.”

ZATOICHI SERIES (ORIGINALLY CREATED BY KAN SHIMOZAWA, 1962-1989)

“Zatoichi is the coolest man on earth. He’s blind and the most sensitive swordmaster ever. He always saves people, and never sleeps around with ladies like James Bond. (Although beautiful girls always want to abandon their life to be with him.) He used to be in the mafia—but he wants to stay away. Each film has a different style and a different director. Sometimes bold as fire, sometimes quiet as snow, his character gradually changes from serious to more charming. The cinematography is beautiful. The art of Zatoichi’s sword is breathtaking—and there’s no blood!”

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AKIRA (KATSUHIRO OTOMO, 1988) “It’s an animated film—they drew it and I don’t know how they did it! I don’t like seeing animals singing and dancing and rapping and I like Akira because it gets involved with something deeper. It deals with life and cosmic energy and the graphic transformations are really amazing.”

GHOST IN THE SHELL (MAMORU OSHII, 1995) “I like this one for similar reasons. It gets into our soul and body— how they can be separated. The soul keeps living even if the body stops moving. I’m always attracted to pieces that get into the idea of the spirit—the relationship of the spirit and the body and how you distinguish the mind and the spirit and the soul. It evolves around the idea of eternal life and wanting to make another human.”

“THE BLACK HAIR” AND “HOICHI THE EARLESS,” FROM KWAIDAN (MASAKI KOBAYASHI, 1964) “It feels like a weird nightmare, but it’s really beautiful. It feels like someone’s creeping on you. They’re Japanese ghost folktales—really famous stories. Kwaidan is composed of four short stories, and these two are my favorites. There are ghosts but there’s no CG, of course— it’s the early 60s. It’s really effective—very creepy—and how he uses sound—you just hear all these cracks and it’s scary.”

PIÈCE TOUCHÉE (MARTIN ARNOLD, 1989)

“Using the clips of the ordinary moments from classic films, he breaks expectations and gives birth to a whole new graphic imagery. Instead of narratives, he focuses on visual rhythms, cutting up all those pieces.

It’s kind of like scratching records. His work is more repetitive than Everything is Terrible. He repeats and slowly changes speeds and slowly, gradually, you notice. You experience the flow of the change.”

FILM

GUY MADDIN + SPARKS SEE NEXT PAGE

Interviews by Lainna Fader Illustration by Steven Fiche

Director Guy Maddin’s latest project is a “film-to-be” adaptation of a musical originally written for Swedish National Radio by brothers Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks, in which a live cast—including Maddin and the Maels, appearing in supporting roles—will perform on stage the story of Ingmar Bergman, who is mysteriously transported from his native Sweden to Hollywood during the height of the studio system in the 1950s.

Maddin will direct the on-stage world premiere of The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman at this year’s L.A. Film Festival and hopes to make the story into a film in the future. He speaks now from his home in Winnipeg.

Why are you working with Sparks on a musical about Ingmar Bergman?

I’m a longtime fan of the boys—the Maels.

It never occurred to me that I’d ever do anything like this. I’d been researching them as film forces for a lost film project that I’m in the middle of right now—lost, aborted and unrealized films, I should say. I know at one point they were slated to make a picture with Jacques Tati back in the 70s and I was really intrigued by that. I think I discovered them in 1974 when they were just a few albums old.

I’d kept in touch with them because I liked the fact that they’re really hard-working and kept evolving but still kept what I’d loved about them in the first place. I’d heard from a mutual friend—Michael Silverblatt, the guy that runs KCRW’s Bookworm—that they were aware of my movies and liked them OK or whatever so he arranged for some kind of introduction so that we could just kind of sheepishly glance at each other through splayed fingers and blushes, things like that. I find that they and I have very similar temperaments and as I got to know them a little bit more I learned to love these guys. When they asked me if I’d be interested in working on this I just said, ‘Absolutely. Sounds like fun.’ I’ve always been interested in the occult way in which music and image work together. No one can ever figure it out, I don’t think. There’s no formula.

It’s not quantifiable. There’s no function that can be written down. It’s just very mysterious and so I thought, ‘Well, why not try to make it happen with this project?’ Which INTERVIEW

was already pretty cinematic. After all, it had its premiere in a theater with a blank screen and so people were listening to The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman and sitting in their seats looking at blankness—so they were obviously seeing things through the music.

How does the Maels’ relationship with Tati feed into their characterization of Bergman?

I don’t know. I’d kill to get my hands on the original Tati script for Confusion—the film they were going to do. I know Bergman is endlessly complicated and the more you watch him, the deeper he gets. What’s strange about the Maels’ music is that it seems remarkably simple—at times even as simple as a kind of a Dr. Seuss-y kind of a bounce—but the more you listen to that, the more you appreciate what’s going on in it. It rewards constant re-listening. I think maybe at first glance the opera—or whatever this is—is so simple.

Bergman goes into a Swedish theater showing an American film and ends up literally in Hollywood—not just imaginatively—and has himself a little panic attack, which ends by the Santa Monica pier. And he runs out of North America to flee from Hollywood and then just his sort of fevered brow … You know, us Scandinavians—I’m Icelandic—us Scandinavians aren’t used to having brows with temperatures above 50 degrees Fahrenheit, so when his brow is soothed by Greta Garbo, a successful Swedish émigré to Hollywood, he feels he can safely return to the dour, cold breast of Stockholm. I just liked

the simplicity of it. And yet Bergman himself brings so much complication. It’s almost like you’re just getting a character transplant. A lot can be done in a short amount of time with the movie.

How exactly will Greta Garbo rescue Ingmar Bergman in the film?

I don’t know. I had my own encounter with Greta Garbo once—slightly more mystical than Bergman’s. In 1992 I went to Stockholm and saw the dress she wore in her first film, Gösta Berlings Saga. It was locked in a glass case at the Stockholm Cinematheque and I asked the curator there if he could please, please, please unlock it just so I could climb inside the glass chamber just so I could be inside the same space as the dress and he actually did so. I couldn’t believe it. I had to flirt with him a lot to get him to do it. He even locked the door so it was locked in there with me and once the door closed I was surrounded on all four sides by clear glass, like a perfectly transparent phone booth with the Gösta Berling dress—which I was very familiar with, I’d watched it over and over again—just on some kind of body mannequin. My head started to swim and I couldn’t help it. I licked it. I licked it right on the breast and with my big soggy tongue, dug into the fabric, which was 72 years old or something. I don’t remember exactly, but it was old and I tore a hole in it. I tore a hole about the size of a quarter in it and whatever formaldehyde spritzes were being used to preserve the fabric scorched all the taste buds off my tongue and I couldn’t

taste anything for a year after that but I was so proud that I didn’t care. I couldn’t taste food.

It was a tasteless act, I suppose, on some sacred object but I felt like it was mine. It was mine to do with what I wanted and it was a bit of a gesture of mad love. I know I do have a cold temperament like so many other Scandinavians but … I don’t know, I was just overcome by madness. I’ve just always felt a lot closer to Greta since then. So when I encountered this episode that they’d written in, I just thought it was another great intersection between Sparks and me. That they would choose someone as all-powerful as Greta Garbo—because that was the face of a century, after all—to loom out of the sky, to loom out of the luminosity and just restore things to a monochromatic cool and everything would be fine …

Why do you think Russell is suited to play a studio executive and a police officer and Ron is suited to playing a limo driver and a Hollywood tour guide?

They only have so many singing parts and things in the movie, and I guess maybe Ron just didn’t want to play Ingmar Bergman. I guess he just doesn’t look enough like him. It’s a big fever dream so it makes sense that the creators of the opera themselves actually serve as sort of footmen—that they’re at every level of the hierarchy of this thing. They’re chauffeurs and executives and composers and performers as well. I like the fact that they’re interlarded with the project from top to bottom. They’re kind of smaller parts, but they’re very lovely and they just keep reminding everybody that 87

SPARKS

GUY MADDIN CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

Veteran pop duo Sparks are now 22 albums deep and their latest, a musical commissioned by Swedish National Radio called The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, will be performed live at the Los Angeles Film Festival, with stage direction from Winnipeg wunderkind Guy Maddin, who hopes to direct a feature film adaptation.

Why did Swedish National Radio commission Sparks to write a musical?

Ron Mael (keyboards): For some reason there’s a following for us there and this woman who was the main person at the Swedish National Radio commission had come backstage at one of the shows. There’s kind of a system in Sweden where they really support live radio drama. It’s kind of considered something cool—it’s not something intellectual. So she contacted us in 2009.

Most of the artists that have done work for Swedish National Radio are Swedish artists but she really liked what we were doing and she wanted to know if we’d do a radio musical. We were a little hesitant because we’re kind of visually oriented but we decided to go ahead with it. The only stipulation they put on it is that it had to have something to do with Sweden in some way. We were familiar with Ingmar Bergman and we love that sort of cinema so we decided to write something for them. They had the premiere of the radio musical and they have kind of a ritual there where everybody goes into basically a small opera theater but there’s nothing happening on stage. You just sit there and listen to it.

So they were staring at a blank screen?

Ron: There was a picture of Bergman on the screen and a couple of exit signs but other than that nothing. We were sitting in the audience and usually when you’re performing you kind of think that you’re pulling some strings sometimes but with this there was nothing, But the reaction was really good.

So in any case we’ve always wanted to do a movie musical. We’re big fans of Guy Maddin and our mutual friend Michael Silverblatt introduced us. Our manager sent the piece to the L.A. Film Festival and they really thought it was special—plus they really love the work of Guy Maddin so the combination of the two was something they were really interested in. They originally just wanted a table reading where everybody just sits there and sings or reads the thing and Guy Maddin was just going to do stage directions in between pieces but we thought that it’s not so exciting for an audience to watch people sitting there reading. We had total confidence that the music would work on a purely aural level, but once you added the visual element of people reading it seemed like it’d be more boring. So one thing led to another and now we’re doing it on a pretty grandiose scale. We want to keep it from being a completely successful theatrical event, because our aim for doing this—to be crass about it—is to get somebody to finance the film version. If they saw it as being finished theatrically then what’s the point?

88

What about Maddin’s work attracts you?

Russell Mael (vocals): We feel a kinship with Guy in a certain way. He’s got a selfcontained world and all of his films fit into that world. And it doesn’t necessarily relate to anything that’s not in that world or going on in film. Sparks has created kind of its own universe musically. It doesn’t really matter what anybody else is doing on the periphery. We think Guy has that same sort of vision with his films. He doesn’t operate within the same parameters that are used in Hollywood. Having said all of that, we feel that the combination of what Guy does with this project is not so left field that it couldn’t have a bigger audience.

Bergman’s films are deeply impacted by his experience of growing up religious, losing his faith and then struggling with that loss for the rest of his life. How do you relate to Bergman in terms of faith?

Ron: We kind of understood him through his films, really. Our upbringing wasn’t as traditionally religious as his. But there is a moment in this piece where he’s asking for God’s help in much the same way someone in one of his film’s would, and we wanted that to be sincere and not a joke. It’s the one moment in the piece where the Bergman character actually sings and that seemed like the way to make it seem really important for Bergman. Peter Franzen, the actor who’s doing that song, is able to perform it so it’s really touching, whatever your feelings are about religion.

Why is Greta Garbo Bergman’s savior?

Ron: Even though the starting point of the piece is the ’56 Cannes Film Festival, we wanted the time references to be all over the place so it wasn’t just a story about the past. So at the time that a savior is needed for him, to have Greta Garbo—another iconic Swedish figure—walking on the beach in Santa Monica and spiritually and physically saving Bergman seemed like the right thing to do from our perspective. She seems so iconic and out of place but we like things that are out of place. All these things are done with some absurdity but we never wanted it to be campy or just funny. We wanted it to be emotionally touching and we think we pulled it off as far as the writing went, but the people actually performing are taking it to another level.

Russell: She is also kind of the bookend device to how he got himself in trouble by adventuring in to see this Hollywood movie.

A Swedish device ends up showing him the way back to where he really should be— and that he made the right decision to clear out of Hollywood.

You did an interview in the 70s in which you said you liked doing music and liked acting, but you didn’t like combining the two in the same project. What changed?

Russell: Ego trip! I can’t even remember in what context that was said but I honestly don’t know. I think it’s more about combining the things on our own terms.

It just depends what the project is. Our strength is doing our very specific vision and it’s the same with Guy. You take the person out of their world and you dilute their strengths.

Ron: Also—in the 70s, we were working within the song format. Even though they weren’t traditional songs sometimes. By taking part of something that’s more theatrical and not as restricted, maybe our objections dampen because we’re trying to find a way to burst out of what we feel is such a limited view of what pop music is today. In some ways, what we always do is a reaction to what other people are doing. The more conservative other things seem to us, the more adventuresome we want to be.

You’ve said that you fight hard to not sound like a band who’ve put out 21 albums—how do you do that, and why?

Russell: I don’t think there are any other bands that would do the kind of project that The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman is.

With 21 Nights, we were really convinced that no other band would ever do 21 albums in 21 nights. There aren’t that many bands that have 21 albums and the ones that do are groups with a more established, comfortable situation that wouldn’t want to go through what we did, rehearsing for four months for this. We know the Rolling Stones will not do 21 of their albums, even though they have more than 21. They will never do it—I promise you that! Having that kind of spirit of wanting to do things that other bands wouldn’t want to or couldn’t do keeps you fresh, as does wanting to do challenging stuff that gets people as excited as we were when we heard things on the radio that inspired us.

Roxy Music was releasing albums when we were living in England in the 70s, and it was unspoken but we wanted to be able to compete. There was a competition when our stuff would come out while we were there and we’d go, ‘Oooh, what’s Brian doing now?’ You always heard about the Beatles and the Beach Boys working off each other, seeing who can outdo the other—just having that kind of provocative spirit. When you do something that makes you a little uncomfortable, those are the things that end up having the best possibility of sounding really fresh.

even though there are other performers and bigger parts—Bergman, Garbo—the Maels are involved top to bottom. It’s a nice way of knitting the composers right into the performance by actors and singers. I think I’d really love that to happen in the movie as well, if it ever gets made.

The Maels have said that they aren’t interested in revealing their own personalities in their music. How do you relate to them?

I think it’s another place where we agree or where we have similar approaches. A lot of people think my movies are really strange or bizarre or something but I’ve always been a folklorist—a fairytale buff. The Maels and I are always entering the world of music and literature and film through the fairy tale door, finding ourselves in there somewhere and then trying to figure out ways of representing ourselves in those terms—in heightened terms, in uninhibited terms, exaggerated terms if you have to. I like the idea of calling it ‘uninhibited’ terms because when you’re uninhibited, you’re telling the truth and the truth that’s on your mind is free to be blurted out. It might seem exaggerated or too loud or inappropriate or bizarre but it’s still true. When you’re exaggerating what’s on your mind, you tend to distort things. I think what they do is they take the truth and figure out a really stylish or boppy or fun way of uninhibiting it and revealing it to people in disguised forms— forms that are more fun or melancholy even, or boppy or catchy, whatever atmospheres or flavors they’ve chosen for songs.

What fairy tale meant a lot to you as a kid?

I really liked Journey to the Center of the Earth which was more of a movie I remember seeing when I was very young, maybe 3. Maybe just ‘The Three Little Pigs,’ which I never took to heart. I’m still building things out of straw. I became a housepainter and instead of replacing rotten boards, I’d just put three coats of paint on top of them. I kind of make films that way too. Their surfaces are always moldering and flaking off and things like that but I do try to have at least a strong framework underneath—but I’ve still got lots of rotten straw around there. Maybe somebody should have explained the fairy tale to me.

Memories from growing up are obviously a big part of your films—do you think memories enhance or impede our ability to enjoy the present?

Our memories are the present, you know?

I can only paraphrase something Faulkner wrote. I think that we all live in the past and the present simultaneously. When you think of it in the most simplistic terms … you see a glowing red-hot stove element and you go to put your hand on it because it’s attractive but then you remember. There’s a very complicated matrix of memories that inform every moment and whenever we smell something, it subconsciously or even consciously reminds us of something. We’re just constantly wading through a sensory world of memory that’s being stirred up constantly by the present.

FILM

What do you think the difference is between nostalgia, melancholy and grief?

It’s tempting to be glib and say they’re all the same thing. They’re all sort of component parts of … yeah, I don’t know. Luckily I don’t feel grief very often. Nostalgia and melancholy are often overlapping—like carpet and underlay, you know? They’re hard to distinguish and sometimes they do feel synonymous. I like the feelings. I like a melancholic stroll. For some reason, walking is just a thousand times better for producing memories and creative solutions to problems than, say, driving or jogging or bike riding or laying on the couch or even just writing and trying to solve things. For some reason, just going on a stroll and thinking … it’s like everything settles in while your most recent meal is settling in. All the years that you’ve lived before start settling in, kind of like collating pages and shuffling them and squaring them until they’re in a nice, neat stack and things start to make sense. You start to remember how far back some things are and place them and they make some sort of emotional sense—how emotionally far back some things are and literally how chronologically far back some things are. For some reason I like those feelings. I guess I’ll just refuse to answer your question. I won’t distinguish between those two things. I like them both.

It’s kind of like whether to get a chocolate shake or a chocolate malted. They’re both exquisitely melancholy.

What’s your favorite synonym for sadness or depression?

I have to say this would be up there on the big board in Family Feud or something. I like ‘lugubrious.’

In your published journals, you describe sex and amnesia as two different anesthetics for the pain of loss. What kind of loss is best treated with sex? With amnesia?

Amnesia is a far better anesthetic than sex, I’d imagine. We all need forgetfulness just to get through the day. There is a Borges story, ‘Funes, the Memorious,’ about a guy who remembers everything so well that he’s basically paralyzed. You’re remembering everything and ultimately nothing. Starting there, you need some amnesia just to create some continuity in your life. Then, you need to be able to move on and forgive yourself so you need to forget some of your most heinous acts of thoughtlessness or cruelty. You also need to forget those that have been committed against you.

You need to forget some of your fears. Sometimes it’s helpful to forget your responsibilities and duties. You need to forget that it hurts to fall off a bicycle or a horse or you wouldn’t ride a horse or a bicycle. You know, those sorts of things. Some people forget their marriage vows and things like that and that’s a good thing for them. All that stuff makes the world go ’round but it’s obviously not good for everybody to do that—or to forget their parents. But I think sometimes it’s great to forget grief. To forget a big injury is part of the healing process so if someone you really love terribly has left you, it’s best to be allowed to forget that now and then. So forgetting sounds like a negative thing when you first think of it, but it’s very liberating. Sex? Oh geez, I don’t know what that anesthetizes. That’s more like scratching an itch—sometimes an itch big enough to litFILM

erally revolve the moon around the Earth and the Earth around the sun but sometimes it’s just whatever. I don’t know what I was thinking of with sex as an anesthetic. I might have been thinking about how my genitals had no feeling in them anymore.

You’ve said most filmmakers don’t have the nerve to be really cruel to their characters, to give them what they deserve and what the audience secretly wants, even if they don’t know it. What are they afraid of?

I must have said that a few years ago. I was probably just bullshitting. No, I think I was probably complaining that a lot of directors are afraid of melodrama and that in melodrama, just like in the Old Testament, people get what they deserve—in melodramatic terms anyway. I’m not calling for a crackdown on crime or anything like that. I actually believe in rehabilitation instead of punishment. I’m one of those people. However, once I’m holding a camera or watching a story, I think we all become punishers—or people trying to understand the world—but you can’t help but give yourself over emotionally rather than just rationally, or judicially or fairly. Who needs to be fair when they’re watching a movie? So I think a lot of movies wimp out. They’re afraid and they get bogus in the third act and give people the ending they feel they should rather than give people the ending that seems psychologically right.

Do you think people tend to enjoy seeing other people suffer?

Absolutely. Not always. Sometimes witnessing such things creates permanent trauma. It’s almost as horrifying as the other’s suffering. But let’s face it—that term schadenfreude exists for a reason. Almost everybody has it at one time or another for sure. I’m not so cynical as to think that it’s all the time. I’ve actually worked hard at trying to be more empathetic. I think I was a sociopath when I was a teenager and a young man. I recognized that at least. I think I read a definition of a sociopath and secretly gasped and realized I was one. I’ve been working a lot harder on being less of a sociopath and I think you can actually make some progress that way.

How do you work to be less sociopathic?

How did I do it? I think it was just an exercise of trying to constantly put myself in other people’s shoes and maybe I just accumulated enough years on the planet and actually experienced some miserable things and realized how little the old me would have cared about how the new me would have felt and I was kind of appalled and felt lonely. I’d also had some huge regrets about how I hadn’t sent off some elderly relatives very well and I really don’t want to make that mistake now that some more elderly relatives are ready to go.

They’re on the launch pad. Some of it’s selfish. I want to be more empathetic so I’m less haunted by the send-offs. I’m not sure that’s complete empathy, but if all I can get is a facsimile of empathy, I’ll settle for it.

THE SEDUCTION OF INGMAR BERGMAN ON SAT, JUNE 25, AT THE FORD AMPITHEATRE, 2580 CAHUENGA BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 8:30 PM / $18 / ALL AGES. ALLSPARKS.COM OR LAFILMFEST.COM.

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KASMIR A NOVEL BY JON LEON Illustration by themegoman Jon Leon’s most recent books include Elizabeth Zoe Lindsay Drink Fanta (Content, 2011) and The Malady of the Century, forthcoming from Futurepoem Books in 2012. Check more out at www.agioteurs.com.

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I sort of tired of SSS after she became more real. After I wrote that the edge of the world feels like syphilis. For the first time somebody from the press was coming to look at the club.

I talked to Sunner under the sun on the beach imagining that I was running the length of the beach talking to Sunner. I felt like crying. For so many years I made Kasmir and remodeled Kasmir and thought about the plan for Kasmir and who would be at Kasmir. I felt so real at that moment standing on the beach like finally the world would appear to me like in a theme song and it would be like we were watching a digital billboard convert the images of our lives into ads high above the smog. I sat in the sand with my hands open to the drizzle. I lifted my face to the air and felt like if I didn’t deserve to see this I would burn from the inside out and end Kasmir like it wasn’t the resort we asked for in eternity and she wouldn’t be the last Version to enter the millennia with a clutch and a package of Vyvance.

Ketja came over and sat next to me in the sand. I dropped my phone. She picked it up.

There was a reporter walking around inside The Embassy. We walked back.

When we entered The Embassy it was satanic. Crowds were gathering around a ring of fire, several nude boys lounged on a navy blue couch, people in owl masks groped each other, gangs of dancers in dustmasks moved like someone possessed, artificial rain pum-

meled the interior. Somewhere a reporter was covering this for the first time. After tonight everyone would know and we could raise our prices and we could be fucking and loving the world like a God. I’m in the bathroom of Kasmir half puking wanting to buy a revolver. Ketja is outside the door pleading for me to come out. I don’t want to go anywhere near her. I splash some water on my face and look gravely into the mirror. I like what I see now. Now that Kasmir is higher and I’m sort of high and thinking I’ll be mapped through the vacuum of Kasmir and SSS will allow me to unwind into the thing of our lives.

I come out looking all forlorn and meet Ketja in the hall. She looks at me like I’m missed. I say sorry, I’m the part where everyone’s dream becomes real.

Sunner is around with the journalist talking about the sustainability of the club’s design. How fucking green it is. I’m thinking ROI while I’m warming a white leather couch with SSS. She’s here and she’s almost touchable, enough that I’m able to finally cognize her attrition. I’d like to forget myself in her, but ultimately I’ll be swallowed by the greed of the mob who stomp the floors of Kasmir like it’s the last night of their lives and I’ll be approached by men. And I’ll say to men no it’s the idea of the thing. You’re an impediment to its essence and prismatic disappearance. I run my hand through the hair BOOKS

of SSS and stare without blinking. I hated her, I became her. Maybe I should release the Versions.

Kasmir had reached impeccable heights.

It began to look as though the club could be immortal. The crenellated walls embracing the Center were reflecting the decay and self-reflexivity of the outside and of the anti-age and their fortressing act began to symbolize my own limitless desire to become fanatic about people with the limitless capacity to consume people.

I wanted to think that what Sunner and I and in a way Ketja and later SSS and always our stable had attempted was something society would use to withdraw its illusions about contemporary morality. Sadly Kasmir became the only place left to be perfect. The world beyond Kasmir grew ever more desperate to maintain its resistance to itself and in so doing Kasmir became a monument to the peace of a way beyond human. I found immorality inconceivable. I looked up at Kasmir from the dunes, alone for once in the sand, rain pelting the green ocean, the ocean disparate as my own feeling at that moment, a saccharine sun piercing my eyes, the crenellated walls seemingly melting into the clouds, a bird, the hills above the surf glowing, and I fell to my knees like a vet and I covered my face with my hands and my eyes began to moisten and I thought of a theme song and I started to heave and I couldn’t help myself. I did something I’d never seen anyBOOKS

one do in my lifetime. I cried and it was like a woman on her stomach bathed in blue light.

I knew my face was contorted like a painting.

Tears sweeter than wine fell through my lips.

I had a feeling of panic as if I was somehow destroying my body and I wept ferociously like it was the first time someone touched me. SSS appeared at my side and she took off her clothing and she lie in the sand and I lost myself in her and I found myself in her.

Before I began to cry I had begun a project that would encapsulate the wavelength of the times. It was this massive structure on an epic scale but when that structure began to reveal itself as more than just a castle in the air the massive weight of the massive structure began to push down on me. Sunner noticed this and he said to me only drowning men can see you.

So I began to unwind a bit with SSS and she was merely devastated. I’d built her after all.

After I’d created her I began to create others and I drafted an executive summary to pitch the culture of panic onto a mezzanine-like segmentation of interconnected targets. The creature of the Version whose open parts were like elevators with limitless reach were one by one devastated. The true cruelty of Kasmir was its reality. I was never hesitant in discovering the potential of that. Now I have never been more aware of its detriment.

Driving into a green light rectangle-like structure I don’t know anything about. It’s a fast

market I think to myself. Everything with the cold interior of Kasmir went hot. Girls have died there. I want out. Sunner is nowhere.

It’s like he abandoned his job. Ketja is almost half-dead. Nothing is fun. People want me to plan things. They want the ultimate connection. I stole half my intellectual property from another intellectual. Today the legal environment has shown itself. It is the first violation of nature imposing itself upon the crucifix of Kasmir – and The Embassy will be the sacred fast of clublife. A stupid dream people admired for its relationship to the dirge escapade of Michael Donnelly who is now part of my team and is sort of financial enough to comprehend the deadness of life. Michael Donnelly is alive and well inside the hue of Kasmir.

Now that Michael Donnelly is in charge of Kasmir we are going to make it like a harsh facsimile and he will use a Nokia phone and wear a pager. I gave him the keys to the white beamer. He is now doping in there as I talk to the barmaid about what. Michael Donnelly was hired straight from a MBA program and he is very edgy. We have had many pints of Hennessy where we talk about what it will be like and his fantasy is sort of close to mine except that he is Michael Donnelly. Michael Donnelly is here is the new name of the Michael Donnelly is here VIP room which is like a gentrified part of town that was once ghetto.

Come, Michael Donnelly, you are The Embassy and the way. Promote our regression to currency. Michael came up to me and wrote in accent marker that we are experiencing negative amortization. He owns the bank that owns The Embassy and now we own the variable rate subterfuge that is the institutional redemption. Come inside Kasmir bathers.

Michael Donnelly wants to try something new. I’ve gone back to publishing retro stuff on computers. He is a wild man. Now there’s a wall of screens inside his office. I go in there to talk about clothes with him. Michael Donnelly looks at me and can tell I’ve been crying.

I haven’t been crying but he can tell something is wrong. I’m like Michael what is wrong. He’s looking at the screens in a way that is local. I’m like this is the dart room, this is the shine room, this is the fascist room, this is the replica of the Cabratta Club. Then I have him do some modules and give him another walk-through of The Embassy’s basement. Afterwards Sunner comes around for orange drinks. I look at Sunner, I look at Michael Donnelly, I can smell the empire on the empress. Ketja arrives. I do everything to her. SSS walks in blindfolded.

She’s been like that all day. She is plain blind holding a mandarin tonic. SSS I shout, like the blindfold is limiting her hearing. She whines what. I say what and throw an iPhone at her.

It’s weird how she catches it. I say SSS, tell me something, where are your friends tonight. She says whom. I say the Versions. She says she’s no longer friends with them. I’m like why SSS. She’s like I’m functional. I’m like I know and throw her over the ottoman.

Michael Donnelly’s machismo is what I think says Sunner from the terreplein. He is derisive in functional ways. Sunner hands me a flash drive. This is The Embassy. I look at the flash drive and say nothing. Sunner is watching me and explaining to me that Ketja is ageing. I

say I know. He says she is unable to command.

I say she is ageing. He says she is unable. I say she is but an arrangement and pierce the Nicorette blister package and walk into the dunes. I know Sunner is back there counseling himself.

He catches up with me to continue. Do you remember 2003 he says. Do you remember Kasia. Yes I say. Do you remember what you did to her he says. Yes I say. Do you know Michael Donnelly is you. Yes I say.

I forget this conversation immediately and walk into my room. I’m in there chewing Nicorette listening to a podcast. I look at my watch and think about Christian. Christian I think. I want him to come home to The Embassy where he belongs. I pick up my pager and page Christian. “I miss you” it says. He calls me back from Mexico. Christian I say where are you. Mexico he says. I’m like Christian I was praying you’d call me back. I finger the stuff in my pocket. Christian I say why don’t you come home to The Embassy the club I own now. He says something about Cabratta. I’m like I don’t know.

I’m alone here. I need a partner. Sunner is acting weird. He’s like look I’m the inside of you. I’m like I know Christian as I’m lighting a candle. Candle I whisper into the receiver.

What he says. Nothing, listen Christian, Michael Donnelly is here. He’s in charge. I’m nothing. I need you. The Embassy needs you. I am going to lead. What is your answer. There’s silence for a minute or two and then Christian says I am the leader in a kind of chanting voice. I’m like okay you’re the leader come on up.

Christian doesn’t show. I peer into a can of Mello Yello and stare out across the ocean. Michael Donnelly is in there with Sunner. I glance over my shoulder and see them on the terrace of Kasmir sipping mandarin tonic probably.

I look at the hole leading to The Embassy. I have to go in there and understand it. Kasmir is fading. The escapade is escaping. I see no reason not to. I toss the Mello Yello into the sand, take off my Sperrys, and slide into my chinos.

I imagine the world is something besides a web of competing perceptions. I think I can find the thing that makes everyone the same. I think I can see The Embassy now. It’s a dare. It’s the same as everybody.

Christian arrives 3 days late. He’s here. I’m like Christian you lack a well-defined purpose in life.

He stares at me like he’s trying to have an impact. Okay. He and I get into the buggy and rip through the dunes listening to a song that rules.

I’m like listen Christian. He says good. I know.

We reach The Embassy’s main entrance. Christian is wearing some shit that looks pretty sporty and good. It’s lime like and new. I’m dressed like a yuppie as usual and wearing the new pager.

Stepping out of the buggy Christian is growing ever more intense. He can hear the wails of The Embassy. I look back over my shoulder at Kasmir and take his hand. We enter The Embassy.

We descend a marble staircase and a subsequent flight of marble. At the landing a splash of light absorbs Christian. He looks genuinely mild, I’m mellow. Everything before us is panic. I sort of step back like I’m floating as Christian brushes bangs from his forehead. He turns to me with the halo of The Embassy enveloping us. I say this is it Christian. This is the law of life.

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FROM DALI TO LAMA …

KARMA OR COINCIDENCE

By Patrick Campbell-Lyons Illustration by Dan Kern

Patrick Campbell-Lyons—one half of the British chamber-psychedelic band Nirvana—dicsusses the karmic set of events that led to his most recent solo album cover. Check out that CD, The 13 Dalis, and his book, Psychedelic Days, at www.psychedelicdays.com. A deluxe DVD of that album, including promo films for a couple of Nirvana songs, will be released on July 13.

LOS ANGELES. NOVEMBER 2008.

I went over to the Irish shop at the junction of Vine and Melrose to get myself a box of Barry’s tea bags and two packs of Jacobs “Kimberley” biscuits, a Dublin-Cork “double whammy” that would hit my sweet pleasure spot even better, as I was a long way from the real source.

Avoiding the “sodapop” trolley convention by the liquor store, I weaved between the fuel-guzzling Hollywood tractors. As I passed the free press stand, a genially surreal face flashed me a peace sign from the cover of a soon to be defunct publication. Buddha Lama and I made a connection—songs I had written, not yet recorded for a new project as yet untitled, flickered in my distant vision as I pulled out thirteen copies. I was born on the 13th of a month, I lived in two number 13s, I always played 13 if I went to a casino.

13 is my number. I knew there and then, the smiling Buddha image would play an important part in my next music project.

A voice in my head stopped me in my tracks … “Fuck you! What about me?” Salvador Dalí. He was back again playing his games, games that for me came into existence in Cadaqués, north of Barcelona, a coastal “drop-out” in the mid-60s when I met him for the first time, and resurrected two years later when I appeared with my band on French television with him for a “happening” in Paris. … The only band ever to play a “live” show with Dalí. The adoration and ejaculation of his work became an obsession until I met the fantasist painter Geoffrey Cervantes, another Dalí acolyte who put my mind at ease when I realised I was not alone in the Port Lligat circus. The paintings of Geoffrey Cervantes are dark yet beautiful with a totality that one cannot define. A few months before my trip to the West Coast, I visited him and his family at their home in Aguadulce (Almeria), Spain. He showed me a painting he had just completed called “The Artist Painting Dalí Painting García Lorca” BOOKS

… it fucking blew me away. What I especially liked was that he gave Dalí a vulnerable, moronic visage. The manic stare the Catalan surrealist had perfected for the camera was not there. I convinced Geoffrey to give me a copy. On returning to my cortijo in the mountains above Granada, I blue-tacked it to the white-washed stone wall of my bedroom next to a fading religious image of the Immaculate Conception which I had inherited from the previous owners, and accepted as a blessing to the house.

When I sold the cortijo and moved down to the coast, I left the Immaculate Conception for the next owners, as a sacred blessing.

Geoffrey’s photo-copy of “The Artist Painting Dalí Painting García Lorca” was in my luggage. I was not to know at that point that the 13 Buddhas I found in L.A. would, with Geoffrey’s print, unite in such celestial harmony back in London a few months later.

LONDON. MAY 2009.

The sampled montage for The 13 Dalis took six hours to construct; it was exhilarating, exacting work as I did not possess the proper tools for the job, but I clearly saw what the finished product would be. With a blunt scissors and a post office glue stick I cut, and after some complex underlay and overlay moves, pasted eleven senior Dalai Lamas and one junior Lama, who I had reduced that morning at a local photo-copy shop. Dalí, I manipulated in, with perverse pleasure, however I couldn’t persuade him to look at the camera. I cut some blue sky sections from the original as a backdrop. It was complete. What really delivered for me was the Dalí Catalan hat matched the robes, and his paintbrush was so horizontal to the vertical peace signs. Beautiful accidents are a turn-on. I lived with my “sample” for a month before I decided it would be the CD cover art.

Geoffrey Cervantes was “cool for a credit,” now I had to seek out the artist who painted

the Buddha Lama and get his permission.

I called the Los Angeles telephone number for the newspaper … no reply. The printer distributor same story. … I called the L.A. Weekly and someone whose name sounded like CHOCOLATE FISH said, “Can’t help you dude.” No one knew anything; yesterday was history. It had not occurred to me in any shape or form that it could be the work of a graffiti artist, I thought it was computergenerated or the work of a graphic designer painter. I had connected with the artist and the spiritual feeling of the painting, that was the deal. I spent the summer and autumn of 2009 writing and recording songs for the project at a studio in Andalucia, Spain, and returned to L.A. in spring 2010.

LOS ANGELES. APRIL 2010.

The record company in San Francisco were looking to get the artwork from me complete with titles and credits; it might just have to be “artist unknown.” I was none the wiser about who had painted the L.A. Buddha.

I have always made it my business to go out and find the world, not watch it pass by on TV. In foreign capitals I will plan a day around nothing more than a bus number I see coming towards me, and go where it takes me. I am addicted to trains and journeys that meander across the landscape.. I like to move around a place, see it for real, the rough smooth weird and cool. On the other hand, if I am in the rural scenario terrain I dig deep into my solitude, walking and talking to myself in silent dialogue perfecting the art of thinking nothing—yoga at the crossroads, karma at the oasis. … The night, wherever you are travelling, has a different agenda, a different game to play.

When I had to drop off a letter to an office on Spaulding Avenue off Melrose, I took the bus ride from Hollywood and decided to spend the day wandering in that part of the town. The polite driver “gave me the nod”

when I should exit. I proceeded to walk to a residential property down on the right side of the street stopping only to window-gaze at a trippy hairdresser shop. Just before the hairdresser’s was a narrow alleyway. I could not believe my eyes, there it was … the Buddha of my montage but it was huge, ginormous on the back wall of the hairdresser’s building.

I was ELATED with my discovery and the remarkable series of events that brought me to this place. I am blessed with good fortune and spiritual connection, I remember thinking. The owner of the hairdresser’s arrived and enlightened me with the name of the artist … MEAR ONE was his “moniker.”

She thought he was Mexican and assured me that he was “cult status” amongst L.A.’s graffiti elite. At last I knew who to credit with the work.

I went online to check him out and found that the work was titled “Free Tibet.” On his MySpace he spoke of spiritual warriors, messengers, of sharing and receiving as a concept. In an interview in answer to the question “What are your thoughts on the state of cover art design today?” he said, “I think cover design is a way music can be interpreted without hearing sound; a visual can express the sentiment of the music and connect us to the idea of what’s inside.” Brilliant … Perfecto … give me La Movida! Now I was sure he would allow me to use the Buddha in my montage. The next day I went back with the L.A. photographer Sarah Morrison, a really talented, original conceptualist. …

I had to have the event documented for my Facebook page. I emailed Mear One on two occasions without getting a reply and I spoke with the record company who told me the work was in the public arena, and also that it had been used on the cover of the publication eighteen months previously, that it was okay to use it and give the credit. That is what was done. The 13 Dalis was officially released on Global Recording Artists in November 2010.

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VICTORY CHIMP

NICENESS IN THE ‘90s

NEIL HAGERTY

JIM MILLER

(DRAG CITY) Neil Hagerty of Royal Trux, Pussy Galore and Howling Hex releases audio book of his 1997 sci-fi novel, Victory Chimp, on Drag City about Victory Chimp, the synthesis of primal cunning and the cerebral domination of artificial genetic breeding but with conscience, essence this happened after generations of genetic enhancements overseen by the immortal Chon himself had reduced/elevated chimpanzees to a race of brain slaves for the earth humans and now Victory Chimp travels the “multiverse” is the only chemist who could create the complex body-mass tanker lining; he could keep the meat fresh, yet chemically active groovy, improvvy flutes the frazzling of any semblance of effective communication and whoa Gimpy Chuck, SlowBoy Deco and Nikko Krappa are shipping meat in diffident airships to Howling Hex sounding like R. Stevie Moore covering the theme song to Beverly Hills 90210 which makes me feel like my BRAIN is soaked in PHLEGM and, oh, I’ve forgotten to follow again A nagging reflexive fanfare from my light-depth dream involving another mind, penetrating inside our active thought, not from a physical being among us this book is not understandable is completely un-understandable but along the way, some amazing—She let her hair grow long. She waded through the trench between the pines. She crawled past the blue cockleshell-like flowers—damn, that is beautiful you have absinthe for blood you are entering re-entering re-entering infinitely that narrow red hallway into Space Mountain with a lo-fi soundtrack INSIDE your spleen and alas! Victory Chimp defeats the immortal Chon wait! Chon did not die The wisp of power was the very impetus of his explosive escape how will he die will you listen will he die and even if you do will you find out?

—Howe Strange

MICK WALL

(PLEASANT PEASANT)

(ST. MARTIN’S)

Jim Miller was a guitarist and songwriter in two L.A. bands in the 90s—Trash Can School and Black Angel’s Death Song— who rode the same waves as some grunge luminaries, like L7 and Hole, but didn’t quite make it to the other side. I’m into this idea—a rock memoir written by one of the 99th percentile—but too often it reads like a sketchy journal, without any of the reflection you might want out of a memoir. Instead, we get a lot of matter-of-fact commentary about people we know, but who aren’t central figures to the book: “I only moderately

Mick Wall is no stranger to metal bios; he’s written about G N’ R, Sabbath and Iron Maiden. The challenge with Metallica is providing revelations about a band most recently famous for shilling their personal demons on film.

The story arc is just so familiar: a driven young band who joyrode in with the thrash scene, then surpassed less imaginative bands with the help of their spiritual and musical backbone, Cliff Burton, whose death on the Master of Puppets tour sparked the beginning of their undoing (depending on where you date that from).

Starring Lars Ulrich, the smarmy, businessy visionary; James Hetfield, the red-blooded alcoholic loner; Dave Mustaine, the eternally disgruntled hothead, etc. You might find yourself wondering how you already know so much about Metallica. But Mick has a flair for meat and potatoes—an undeniable command of the metal scene, a dispassionate take on bullshit, and a square approach to blunders. And if he overglorifies the Ciff era, he compensates later, eagerly disabusing any notions of blind fanhood by being too sharp a critic—laying torch with special gusto to Reload (“truly turgid fare,” “generic rock,” “musically uneventful,” a “mélange of triteisms and factory-fodder riffs”). Ouch, but true. And his overall portrayal of Lars is downright Dreiserly. It’s hard not to be novelistic about this band. Thirty years, nine studio albums—from putting Napster out of business to Guitar Hero: Metallica, from the idolatry of Cliff to the abuse of Jason “New Kid,” from spandex and strippers to husbands and Hall of Famers. OK, it’s no An American Tragedy, but it’s more fun to read to Ride the Lightning.

—Howe Strange

liked L7’s recorded material, but I became a fan for real when I saw them play live around Thanksgiving. I had never seen an all-female band play with such energy. They also had some funny stage banter. They were a very good live band.” There’s a lot about bands who made it big in this book, but no indication Miller has much of an inside story besides being sort of in the same scene, so the result is uncomfortably equivalent to namedropping. On the other hand, when Miller does succeed in communicating the total heartfuck of rising then flagging interest, crushed dreams, watching other people just as good as you make it—then, he’s on to something. He just needs to be convinced we want to hear about him more than we want sketchy anecdotes about Courtney Love and Dave Grohl. I’m ready for Harshness in the ’90s.

—Denise Tek

MAD MONSTER MAGAZINE: ISSUE 1 VARIOUS Mad Monster is a letter-sized glossy that released its first issue just in time for April’s Monsterpalooza convention in Burbank. While other horror-film fanzines focus on specific eras of movies (like Friday the 13th Hollywood-cheese or obscure 2000s Asian thrillers), Mad Monster is all about celebrating the past and present of monster, science-fiction and fantasy-based horror films. Starting in with a description of 1896’s The House of the Devil—possibly the first monster movie ever—the publication sets a tone that is part educational/part obsessive, perfect for those who know nothing and those who know too much. Submission-based authors provide everything from “what if” musings on Lon Chaney to how a 70s television horror flick called Satan’s Triangle changed their life. Visual contributions included scanned memorabilia from the author of the Psycho novel and a haunted mansion paper-model kit that is printed throughout the last half of the zine. To be fair, this zine is partially ad-supported, which may disqualify it from being a true zine, but it harks back to classic geeky fanzine in so many ways, we’ll let it slide. (madmonster.com) —Sarah Bennett

SHARDS OF GLASS IN YOUR EYE! ISSUES #3 and #4 KARI TERVO

Kari Tervo is an old-school L.A.-based zinester who originally did two issues of Shards of Glass in Your Eye! back in 1995, but folded the idea, probably with the death of the Riot Grrrl movement. Inspired by Atomic Books’ “Revenge of Print” challenge, however, she revived her zine for one more issue, then had such a good time doing it that she made another one a few months later. Issue 3—“Disco Ball Party Zine!”—makes no apologies for its hodgepodge values, bringing together essays about being “a chunky chick in a skinny city,” a list of words that label you as upper-middle-class, a humorous interview of the author by herself, and a photo of the Foucault Pendulum. The cover of issue 4—“Sex Sells”—proclaims “Sex sells, but this is free so you might as well take one.” Inside is even more of Tervo’s random thoughts dump, including “things not on the Beverly Hills walking tour map,” a list of celebrities she has seen in their natural environment, and a critical response to L.A. Weekly’s anti-rave article “Death, Money and Megaraves.” Tervo’s 94

ENTER NIGHT

fuck-it-all attitude is welcome in this world of polished computerdesigned rags. Thanks to Atomic Books for motivating Tervo to cut, paste and photocopy her reflections into a black-and-white half-pager rather than putting it all on a blog like anyone else from this millennia would have done. (wemakezines.ning.com/profile/ KariTervo) —Sarah Bennett

DON’T TAKE YOUR LIFE JUSTIN MAURER

Every globetrotter has got a few good stories from their halcyon backpacking days. Justin Maurer, underfed lead singer of the band Clorox Girls, has yelped his way through a fair share of countries for years and has yet to leave the backpack behind. (He once played a European tour consisting of 47 shows in 45 days.) In this nearly 50-page autobiographical zine he recounts his bouts with sentimental lovesickness around the world. He is dosed in a Turkish drug den, draws some unwanted attention in a Manhattan lesbian bar, and pursues an ephemeral romance into the wilds of Canada all the while remaining upbeat and ready for more. Although his stories are not the most elegantly told, at the heart of them lies a charming sense of wonder. Once Maurer’s stories get beyond his childhood, he branches out into more appealing topics that make for a worthwhile read. (futuretensebooks.com) —Sean O’Connell

TUMBLEWEED: THE TOUCH ISSUE VARIOUS

This debut issue of Tumbleweed is all about tactile feelings which consist mostly of images of hands by contributors with blogspot accounts. Michelle Edison’s photos of a girl in a coffin-sized freezer are hazy and a little repetitive, while Samantha Dietrich’s comparatively long story about making out with a strange French man relishes its awkwardness. The collages are the best part of this project, with the usual non-sensical pairings of magazine photos and typewriter font.

Considering that this zine was the work of ten people, it is pretty light on content. And despite the fact that this issue is all about touch, nothing was done to treat the paper. Couldn’t they have covered the thing in fur or maple syrup? (tumbleweedzine.blogspot.com) —Sean O’Connell BOOKS