LA RECORD SUMMER 2015

ISSUE 119 • FREE SUMMER 2015 KAMASI WASHINGTON DRUG CABIN THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION TODD RUNDGREN

by JONATHAN RADO of FOXYGEN

EAGLE NEBULA

THE HOLLOWAY FILES with

DAVID BOWIE + ARTHUR LEE THE AMAZING NINA SIMONE JACKIE MENDEZ DVA DAMAS GIRLPOOL AHNNU AND MORE

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F U N F U N F U N F E S T. C O M

Wu-Tang Clan Chromeo Schoolboy Q Grimes ODESZA Neon Indian Jane’s Addiction P L AY IN G RI T U A L D E L O H A B I T U A L

D’Angelo and the Vanguard CHVRCHES Future Islands Ride Venom O NLY U S S H O W

NOFX Gogol Bordello Coheed and Cambria Drive Like Jehu C O M E D Y & S K AT E / R I D E L INE UP C O MIN G S O ON

Rae Sremmurd MSTRKRFT Hudson Mohawke Gesaffelstein Peaches Joey Bada$$ Big Freedia Afrika Bambaataa Cheap Trick ANTEMASQUE Toro Y Moi American Football Growlers Fuzz Mikal Cronin The Charlatans UK L7 Dag Nasty DJ SE T

O NLY RE UNI O N S H O W

Desaparecidos American Nightmare Converge Chain of Strength Skinny Puppy Babes in Toyland #FFFfest

Slow Magic Lido Doomtree BADBADNOTGOOD Anamanaguchi Shamir Bomba Estereo Snakehips Tops Haelos Two-9 Roger Sellers The Outfit, TX SURVIVE Viet Cong Alvvays Speedy Ortiz Murder By Death Cass McCombs Steve Gunn Broncho Grifters Creepoid East Cameron Folklore A Giant Dog Think No Think Ringo Deathstarr Parquet Courts OFF! La Dispute Title Fight Fucked Up Head Wound City Dwarves The King Khan & BBQ Show Benjamin Booker Andrew Jackson Jihad Nothing together PANGEA Power Trip Joanna Gruesome American Sharks Future Death

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JACKIE MENDEZ Kristina Benson KAMASI WASHINGTON sweeney kovar

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EAGLE NEBULA sweeney kovar

28

GIRLPOOL Daiana Feuer

30

JOHN COOPER CLARKE David Cotner

42

TODD RUNDGREN Jonathan Rado

46

DRUG CABIN Chris Ziegler

KAUFFMAN & CABOOR Chris Ziegler

AHNNU sweeney kovar HOLLY HERNDON Kristina Benson DVA DAMAS Jacquelinne Cingolani

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JACKIE MENDEZ Interview by Kristina Benson Photography by dana washington

Ever since Jackie Mendez was a kid, she’s been in love with making music, singing recuerdos along with her father at family gatherings and playing the bass in a ska-punk band she started with her friends in junior high. Eventually, however, she made her way from ska-punk to ska and from ska to reggae and then fell in love with the kind of rocksteady style reggae that you might hear on a Trojan Records comp. Her first vinyl release with Angel City Records is the kind of music she says she was always meant to be doing, and she speaks now about the first time she performed on stage and what it’s like to finally have a project of her own.

When you were growing up in El Monte, what kind of music were you into?

Punk music. All types of punk. Then I started getting into the whole ska thing. When I went to record stores, reggae caught my attention, and then I was realizing that a lot of the songs were covers of old original ska music. Then I got to the root of what that was, and got really into traditional ska. I’ve never been in a punk band—I always wanted to! I was in a ska-punk band. Like No Doubt covers, Op Ivy, all that put together. I was a junior in high school, and I played bass and did back-ups. I didn’t want to sing, but as members quit I ended up singing and playing guitar and switched to guitar and vocals. I really just wanted to play bass at one point!

How did you find your way to Angel City?

Wally and Mark are the main guys. I’ve known of them for years. Mark would always DJ when I was super young and he’d play all the records. Wally was in other bands, and one day he asked me if I could do backups. Then right after my band broke up—the day after our last show—Mark messaged me and asked me if he could meet with me about a project.

I had no idea it would be a label! I was the second artist. I looked over the contract and I loved the idea—a label for ska, reggae, soul.

How did you learn how to sing?

A lot of my family sang at church but my dad was always bringing music and instruments home ever since I could remember. Drum sets, keyboards … he introduced me to singing and music. A lot of my aunts and my mom sang as well. Since I was little, I’d just sing, and my dad was like, ‘Hey! You can sing!

You kind of know what you’re doing!’ I went years with just singing and got into it and did it myself.

Why did reggae and ska resonate with you?

Just the sound of it—how much soul it has.

I’m super into oldies, like 60s music. That 6

always kind of appealed to me. And rock steady is not like rastafari, but it’s more like a tradition—like oldies with a reggae beat. I thought, ‘Oh, man, that’s perfect!’ I just fell in love with the sound. I felt inspired like I could write to those songs and it just fits me.

When you tell people you do reggae—like family friends maybe, or people you meet through work—how do you explain it to them?

‘It’s like old Bob Marley!’ But not like ‘One Love’ Bob Marley. Sometimes people ask, ‘Oh, what kind of music? Oh, reggae? Wait a minute—this is kind of different.’ I love all types of reggae but I feel like when you show people rock steady, it’s more like diverse.

Older people really like it cuz of the sound and younger people are like, ‘Oh, this is cool.’

I love Amy Winehouse and I feel like she—in a sense—opened a new door for a lot of people cuz her style got accepted in the mainstream and it’s great. It’s a shame that we don’t have her anymore. Now people get it when they hear that. Her style exposed ska music, but in a very positive way.

What kind of music did your parents listen to? Were they into anything like this?

No. My parents are from Mexico so a lot of Spanish music. They liked Spanish oldies— they’re called recuerdos, which is the Spanish word for ‘remember.’ So oldies, but in their way of saying it. I love hearing that music cuz it reminds me of my parents and my grandparents and my family. My dad was a singer and he plays guitar as well. He never really went far with it, but that’s where I got it from. We’ll be at family parties and he’ll bust out the guitar with my uncles. My dad got into English [language] music as well, like Stevie Wonder or the Beach Boys or the Beatles. Old school stuff, so I like all that.

Have you ever recorded a song in Spanish?

I have but I feel like my Spanish isn’t 100%

amazing so I’d really need help with that lyrically. The way you write lyrics in Spanish is so different. The way you’d say something in English would be super weird in Spanish so you have to be careful. I would definitely be open. I’ve done it before with a Spanish mariachi-sounding song. Back in the day with a bunch of friends we covered that song and made it traditional ska so it sounded really awesome. That was the first time I sang in Spanish live. Learning the song was hard, but once I got it, I really enjoyed singing it in Spanish. I thought, ‘I could do this. If I really tried, I could do it.’ I’ve never written an original in Spanish but it would reach a new fan base for sure!

When you decided to get serious about your solo project, what was something that you had to really work on?

I was so embarrassed to sing in front of people.

When I was young I never wanted to do it. But once I started playing instruments and getting influenced by seeing different people do it, I felt more comfortable. When I started playing the bass or the guitar, it wasn’t like all the focus was on me because I was playing too. That helped me be in front of people. Just putting yourself out there is what I needed to work on. You’re always working on that! Just going in front of a crowd and telling them, ‘Hey, I’m here!’ I learned just to get comfortable with it and to be myself. That finally happened when I decided, ‘I want to play in bands—that’s so awesome! I want to do it!’

In a band, there are a lot of compromises that have to be made so that people can work together. But now, you’re writing the lyrics and the melody and that’s that. Did it make things easier at all?

I felt like this was more me. When I listen to the tracks, I’m like, ‘This is what I’ve been wanting to do.’ No offense to anything I’ve done before—I love it. But that style is what

I wanted to do. Old school reggae feel with my twist. I felt like I could play with my voice more—bring it out more. I had to sing, you know? It was easier cuz I connected with the tracks. When I listened to them, I knew which ones I wanted to do—’These are mine.’

How do you balance the desire to be true to the genre but still make it your own?

That’s what I try to do. I try not to think about it so much. I have to keep it original.

I feel like you have that soul but in your own way. Whatever I feel is right, I just do it! Like when you think about things too much, it’s not natural.

In the picture on the cover of your record, are you wearing anything underneath that fur coat?

Yeah, I am. No top! But I do have bottoms on.

Which of your own songs do care the most about? Which is most important to you?

‘Thought You Should Know.’ It’s a little bit of a slower one. That was the first one I actually wrote out of the three. I love all of them, but that one was the one for me I think. Just the lyrics and the way I wrote it, I’m pretty proud of it.

The three songs you wrote seem like they’re all about the same relationship, or the same period of time in your life.

Pretty much! And then just experiences. So I guess I could say it’s from a specific time.

If there’s a person you wrote about specifically, do you think they know it’s about them?

I don’t know—I never really said anything. I’ll just keep it a secret!

JACKIE MENDEZ’ INTRODUCING JACKIE MENDEZ EP IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM ANGEL CITY RECORDS. VISIT JACKIE MENDEZ AT ANGELCITYENTERTAINMENT.INFO. INTERVIEW

KAMASI WASHINGTON Interview by sweeney kovar Photography by Theo Jemison

Raised in a pocket of Black L.A. that carved out a place for forefathers and history, Kamasi Washington was able to channel his universal teenage restlessness into laser-like focus on his instrument. He honed his craft with childhood friends like the Bruner brothers and Terrance Martin and while studying in UCLA was already touring, using his powerful horn to back up Snoop Dogg on his way to performing with Chaka Khan. He has various projects and innumerable live shows to his credit already, but for many his most recent release—the 3-LP The Epic—is an introduction. Large in frame and soft in voice, Washington looks the part of a burgeoning jazz master, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. His jazz acknowledges the rise of hip-hop without catering to it. Washington is religious but his music doesn’t clash with the secular like traditional gospel might. It’s spiritual music, in the purest sense. When I spoke with Washington about the vibrancy in black L.A. jazz, his own journey in music and the impetus behind his Brainfeeder debut, I’m reminded that masters transcend their instrument. We’re living a moment of transcendence in American music and that gift is irreplaceable.

You’ve always been keenly aware of your place and—now that you’ve come into your own—of your role in the history of L.A. jazz. Do you spend time thinking about being a part of something bigger?

Definitely I’m aware of it—there’s a movement that’s been blooming and cultivating for years.

I always knew that one day—I didn’t know when it would happen, or if it would even happen in our time—that the world would recognize. This was back before me, like my dad. I grew up around my dad and his friends.

They were all musicians. And it dates back even to what they were doing. It started cultivating before they were even born. I knew how good these musicians were and how amazing and dedicated they were, and how powerful that music was—how beneficial it could be to the world—and I always wondered why why nobody was playing them. As I got a little older and started meeting musicians from around the country, and I realized they didn’t know at all who these people were, I used to wonder, ‘How do you not know?’ Then I realized that in a way it’s a gift. Because the world has overlooked this, no one’s been pushing me one way or the other. The directions I’ve gone in my life and in my music have all been so good. I feel blessed because this has allowed all of us to develop what we’re doing. It was a long learning curve for Miles Mosely to get from that pedal steel to that upright bass, and

he needed time and support and kind of a little bit of—a little lack of attention to get it right. And now he has it. It’s like with my work—you have a plan, and then you have the reality of what happens in your life. Musicians mostly start early, and you have to plan for what you want your life to be, but in the end, what happens is what is supposed to happen.

You might think that Thundercat came out of nowhere, but he didn’t. He was living with that sound for decades. Whether you like it or not, you’re going to get that sound on your music when you play. So it’s cool to see that people are now—it’s the perfect time. The rest of the world is getting it at its height.

So you must be aware that there is a little bit of building momentum from outside the jazz world.

Oh absolutely. My first West Coast tour was with Snoop Dogg. The second one was with Raphael Saadiq, and I think my third was with Lauren Hill. So that relationship, and what we do—L.A. is just like that. It’s not a land of specialists. Everyone here, they’re really great and they do everything. You don’t really find too many people that just do one thing. The opportunity is not there to just do that. You’ve got to branch out. Growing up in high school, I was practicing ten hours a day to be this jazz saxophone player and I come out of high school and the first tour I get is with Snoop Dogg. I toured with Snoop for like three years.

I learned a lot, actually. That was important.

The way I look at music, I look at it with a detail that a lot of jazz musicians—they look at jazz from so wide, so deep, so high, and so far, it’s like sometimes you lose your sense of detail.

With hip-hop, it’s like—that detail is what it is. It’s not real hard to play. But you’ve got to play it in an absolutely perfect way and find that groove and feel and all these little nuances have to be there to make it sound exactly right.

Like my record—I finished my album last year. And for whatever reason it kept getting pushed back because there were other albums that I was meant to work on first before my album came out. And I was mad at the stars and yelling at the moon, like, ‘Hey man!

Why is my album being pushed back?’ But everything happens for a reason. Part of that whole thing of people noticing jazz is because of hip hop. You put these labels on music because it helps organize it, but the reality is that if Jellyroll Morton and John Coltrane are both jazz, then you can say that John Coltrane and James Brown are both jazz. And if John Coltrane and James Brown are both jazz, then James Brown and Snoop Dogg are both jazz, and all this African-American music is related.

And we put these dividers up as if they’re not, but they are. And so groups like A Tribe Called Quest and Kendrick and Outkast made super real hip-hop records, and like most of the other super real hip-hop records in history, if 9

All New Season Cassandra Wilson Coming Forth By Day A Tribute to Billie Holiday

An evening with

Buddy Guy

Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music DakhaBrakha plus Huun Huur Tu

Snarky Puppy plus Kneebody

Lucinda Williams with special guest Bill Frisell plus Sean Rowe An evening with

Randy Newman

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you listen to them, there’s a lot of jazz in them.

Jazz is an integral part of the African American experience. So of course, if jazz is having a resurgence, it might be related to hip-hop.

I’m glad you said it was part of the AfricanAmerican musical experience. Something that’s really interesting about this jazz resurgence in L.A. is that it’s young Black musicians. Do you think about your music as an African-American thing? As a Black experience? Or do you not really see labels on art like that?

I think music is a form of communication.

Jazz is Black music in the way that English is a white language. It has origins in the culture, but the spirit behind it—the feel, the groove— originates from the experiences that we’ve had. Anyone who wants to really play this music has to be aware of that, and be aware of those experiences because that’s the language of the music. That’s what it speaks from. It speaks from the blues and the pain the came from slavery. That’s where this music originates. The whole African American experience is so rooted in slavery.

Not only slavery, but the reason why there are African-Americans is because of slavery. So if you’re talking about African-American music, you’re talking about music that comes from this really dark history, and the music is the light that allowed us to make it through the darkness. That’s what the real point of it was.

We’re further out of that darkness—we’re not out of it, by any stretch of the imagination— but we’re further out of that darkness. But just like anything else, there are other people who are involved in the darkness and in the light.

There are white people who are involved in shining a light to help us get out of the dark, and there are white people involved in trying to keep us in the dark. So that energy, that communication that this music has, it has all over different types of cultures—not just white and Black. Historically, slavery wasn’t just a Black thing—it was a world thing.

There were other people involved in slavery, not just white people and Black people. I don’t look at jazz like a music that’s only for African Americans, but I do look at it as a music that represents the experiences that African Americans had. And I love it and I think it’s great for everyone. I don’t deny its origins or the history that it represents and that it speaks to. I also don’t think that I should somehow not be included and partaking of this art—or speaking this language or being involved in this music—because I’m not a part of that history. The origins don’t come from that culture, you know what I mean?

So in a sense ... I don’t think it excludes anyone, but I definitely think if you’re going to play this music you have to understand the origins. Just like if you’re going to play Cuban music, you have to understand the origins.

Or you could just play it and have fun with it. Music is also light—it could be just for fun. So if you really want to play it, you have to understand the origins—the culture—or you could say, ‘I’m really not playing that; I’m playing something else.’ Which is fine. The term ‘jazz’ to me speaks to that. But jazz has styled off into so many different places that sure, you could play improvised music with saxophone and bass and drums and call it jazz INTERVIEW

and it could be great. And you could say, ‘I have no connection to the African American experience but I’m playing this music,’ and you can. There’s nothing wrong with it. But to me, the history of the music comes from that place. That’s the origin.

Something that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is that in the last several years we’ve also seen a resurgence of Black and brown activism on a large scale. The other night I was thinking of the parallel between the two and how we’re seeing a resurgence of the kind of improvised music that was more popular in the mainstream in the 60s and 70s—and we’re also seeing the same kind of social consciousness and action, more importantly, that was also around in that time. That’s kind of a long way of asking ... when you compose and you write, do you feel like you’re responding to the present times? Or is it an internal conversation?

My take on that is that music—people may disagree—but music comes from a place outside of us. When I’m writing a song, I’m reaching for something. I don’t really know what I’m reaching on, but in my reaching, over the years, I learned where to go with my subconscious mind to get to it. And it comes to me, and then it’s pretty ambiguous and it’s pretty unformed, and then I form it into what I want it to be. So when I write music and the form is in the inception phase, I can’t really control the inception of the music that I write. It is what it is. Sometimes it just comes. I can try to direct it, I can say ‘I want to write something dark’, and maybe I will or I won’t, and maybe something bright and happy is going to come out, and that’s just what it is. So then other times, once I have it in me, then I direct it into the direction I want to go. And then yeah—there are things that I want to speak to and music is almost like an attempt to make it this one thing, but that doesn’t meant that’s what it’s going to be.

If you’re talking to someone ... you have ideas in your head that you’re trying to convey, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to hear or believe it. If I want to communicate to someone, I may or may not have a choice as to how they’re going to hear it. Once I get the music inside me, that’s when I make something that I put out to the world. A lot of the songs are actually from 2011. A different time period, actually. And a lot of my current music is definitely much more influenced by what’s happening in the world. Even the music I hear now—it’s not like these things that are happening now are new. They were happening back then as well. People weren’t as conscious of them or speaking about them as much, but we all knew it and we all felt it. So it’s in there as well. But music is pure in and of itself—it’s something that you just give to people and you don’t get to control what it is. You can just add what you want to add to it. So to answer that question ... what I add to it is always something going on in my life, either because of the society I’m living in or ... if I’m going through a tribulation with my family, my history, different parts of myself—sometimes the song itself will inspire what I put into the song, if that makes sense. Like take ‘Change

of the Guard.’ I heard these chord changes and it just felt—it felt moving. That song is really a tribute to my dad and his generation.

I always felt like they didn’t get the chance to be the guard. They were ready, but somehow the torch passed over them.

Why do you think that happened?

I wish I could tell you. I don’t know. From a social-historical perspective, Los Angeles has always been known as a film town. But it’s also a big city and you can make a living.

It’s not like living in a little small town, where if you want to play music at all, you have to leave. You don’t have to leave L.A.. And so for whatever reason, people just overlooked it.

And that overlooking process is what caused them to not necessarily take their right places as musicians who could have an impact on the world. There’s a lot of music that was lost between the ‘70s and now. Not lost ... but it just wasn’t experienced by people that could have been able to help them. Because music changed my life—my cousin giving me an Art Blakey tape in sixth grade was life changing. Art Blakey changed my life. He didn’t mean to do it, but because his music was so powerful, and he did what he did, it changed my life. Whereas my dad gave me John Coltrane, but before I heard Art Blakey, I couldn’t relate to the jazz my dad tried to play me. But when my cousin gave me that tape, I was able to understand and hear that other jazz. You never know what power or what change happens from one album or one song. So it’s a shame that so much brilliant brilliant music has been passed over because it could have had an effect on the world.

You have a very specific presence on stage, with the clothes that you choose to wear and how you present yourself. Is there an intention behind besides aesthetics? That long flowing tunic with the top piece at the release party—is that a little bit of a throwback, or is that just you?

It’s both! I’m a big fan of African culture. The clothes that I wear, I just like the way they look. I enjoy my culture, and I enjoy African culture as well—and I like those clothes, yeah!

I do feel a sense of responsibility because I understand that there’s pressure on AfricanAmericans to not like their culture and be ashamed of being Black—to be ashamed of being connected to Africa, and to feel like it’s at very best a sad story, that these kings and philosophers who invented all these amazing technologies, who did a lot for the world ... we don’t really get taught to be proud of that.

If I can be an example, hey—I’m proud of it.

I’m very honestly proud of it, and actually I do honestly really like the way the clothes look! I just think they look cool. It saddens me when I see my niece or like my little cousins and they’re ashamed of their hair.

They think that their culture is ugly or stupid or inferior or primitive and the clothes are weird. And it’s like, ‘Why do you think about it like that? They’re cool!’ And when I wear them, people look at me and are like, ‘Wow, that’s really cool!’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I know it’s cool!’ So it’s more that. It’s not like I’m trying to make a statement with it. I think it’s cool!

And why shouldn’t I wear it, and you’ll think it’s cool too. Nothing wrong with a suit or jeans. I wear all kind of clothes. Clothes are

just clothes. But there is a sensation of ... if I can be a bit of a force against that mentality that somehow there’s something wrong with what we do, then well ... I hate the way that if African American people do something, it’s immediately turned ‘ghetto.’ Like this or that thing is ‘ghetto.’ You’ll never hear me say that in my life. It’s like—what does that mean? If we do something in our neighborhood, it’s somehow bad, you know?

And it’s like no—the clothes we wear and the clothes people wore in Africa or what they wear now, or even what I’m wearing, it’s coming from a different place. And I think it’s cool and I like it and that’s why I wear it.

What’s your vision for the future of yourself as a musician? What ambitions do you hold?

It’s been so beautiful, the response that I’m having to the album. There’s such an excitement for it. I’ve always felt like people have been needing this music and it has the power to change people and blow people’s minds because they’re so much beautiful music out there. When I heard that Art Blakey record, that’s what opened my mind to John Coltrane and Eric Dalton. Art Blakey. And if my record can somehow open people’s minds to that, that would be dope.

I want my music to do something like that, and that’s always what I wanted. Even when I was young I was always going to my friends, like ‘Check this out!’ and giving them tapes of this person or that person. They’d look at me crazy when I gave them avant-garde records, but it opened their mind. Music is powerful like that—you can’t help it, but when you hear music, it’s going to communicate with you and whether or not you decide to act on that information is up to you. So I think that’s important, and I think people are looking for music to do that too, and I want to do it, and I want to express it. Music isn’t something that I want to horde or keep secret or buried somewhere—I want to get it out for everyone.

Based on the way that you were mentored and encouraged, do you feel a sense of responsibility to encourage that for the next generation?

Absolutely. I know what it means to have someone to look up to for encouragement and support and I know what it means to look up and not have encouragement and support. I never want to do that. And I think that—not that I’m old, but I’m not young, and there’s a whole younger generation of musicians who have a perspective that I don’t have. They were born with it and I didn’t get it til I was older. Everyone has an obligation to help those that come after them. And that will make the world a better place. The only way to do that is to help people.

65-92: THE RHYTHM CHANGES BUT THE STRUGGLE REMAINS FEATURING KAMASI WASHINGTON ON SAT., JULY 25, AT CALIFORNIA PLAZA, 350 S. GRAND, DOWNTOWN. 8 PM / FREE / ALL AGES. G R A N D P E R F O R M A N C E S . O RG .

KAMASI WASHINGTON’S THE EPIC IS OUT NOW ON BRAINFEEDER. VISIT KAMASI WASHINGTON AT KAMASIWASHINGTON.COM. 11

KAUFFMAN & CABOOR Interview by Christopher Ziegler Illustration by Dave Van Patten Songs from Suicide Bridge is a record that traded a place in time for a sense of place. If you’ve ever found yourself on (or under, where the secret rituals took place) Pasadena’s most haunting landmark, you’ll instantly recognize the loneliness and isolation and creeping feeling of detachment that make David Kauffman and Eric Caboor’s first album such a strange and original work. And in the 60s or 70s, it might have had a better chance at finding a home—yes, albums with ‘Suicide’ on the front cover were never easy sellers, but at least there was something of a public appetite for this kind of quietly fearless singer-songwriter introspection. But when Suicide Bridge came out on Kauffman and Caboor’s own Donkey Soul Music in 1984, Prince and Tina Turner were about to top the singles charts and the local underground was looking to punk, paisley, hardcore and the beginning of L.A. hip-hop—and Kauffman and Caboor were two guys fourtracking an album that sounded like it came from another planet, and a very distant one at that. But they knew they needed to do it, so they did. As Caboor sang, they were “lonely losers” seeking same. And now, after more than thirty years, they’ve found their audience, thanks to a reissue on Light In The Attic. (A very appropriate home—this album is nicely compatible with the Rodriguez LPs.) David Kauffman speaks now about playing basement shows in Echo Park back and the way the big picture is actually the little picture.

There’s a story in the liner notes on the reissue about a show you played at a fancy house with a hot tub. Did you discover that having a hot tub around really brings out the best in Songs From Suicide Bridge?

David Kauffman (vocals/guitar): That probably has to do with a house concert we gave. It was a husband and wife couple. They were folk music aficionados, and they’d have house concerts once every couple months. The story is … it’s actually kinda embarrassing! We had the album covers delivered to us, and we’d booked the concert under the impression the album was gonna be finished. Needless to say, the records weren’t finished! We’d guaranteed a free copy of the album to anyone who went to the show. So we promised to send each one of the people who attended an album—we got their names and addresses and we sent them the albums once we got them.

You followed through! So heartwarming!

It’s not as heartwarming as you think cuz I think there was a total of 10 or 12 people at the house concert and maybe 5 or 6 wanted a copy of the album!

What was life as musician like in L.A. then?

You’re working while things like punk and new wave are big—and you’re the outsiders to those outsiders.

Eric and I were totally out of the loop in regards to what was the latest stuff. I realize now that punk and new wave was the new thing at that time. That wasn’t our background. We were singer-songwriters. We weren’t gonna try and change what we were doing. We were just too much into being ourselves and trying to express what we were going through with music that we liked. In that sense we were kinda in a vacuum. L.A. is such a big place. There’s a lack of identity. The place is so big. You’re suffocating cuz you’re overwhelmed by it all.

We were trying to do what we did in places we could find to play, but virtually nobody was interested. You know how the music thing is.

People just go with the flow, and whatever the latest thing is, that’s what they’re into. I met Eric in October of 81— In the church in Echo Park, right?

Yeah—there was a basement coffeehouse down there every Saturday night. It was an open mic we were both at. I did three or four songs INTERVIEW

and as I was packing up, Eric approached me and we exchanged numbers and later we got together. Mark Philips who ran the basement coffee shop, he’d call us about once every six months and invite us to play.

What was your order at Burrito King?

I never ate at Burrito King! I used to hang out at the Orange Julius. Echo Park then was deader than a doornail. We were playing at the basement one time and Michael Jackson had reunited with his brothers and was doing a world tour. We’d go out in the parking lot and shoot the breeze while someone else was playing, and we could see and hear the concert—the lights of Dodger Stadium—and hear the music of the Jackson 5 going on, way off in the distance. Then we go into this basement coffeehouse in this church—quite the slice of reality for us! Eric was pretty self-deprecating, and we weren’t burning performers. We had a sober attitude in regards to our talents and what we could do. We had more confidence in our songwriting than our ability to impress anybody with our playing.

Eric would say, ‘And here’s another of our top ten hits! Here’s another tune to hum on your way home!’

Listening to this album, I’m struck by what a self-contained world it is—you and Eric and no one else present, even when you’re singing about other characters. There aren’t even really any relationship songs. Were you just not dating in the 80s?

Ha! If you go back in the history of popular music, back to the 40s and 50s and the World War II era, they were romantic songs. Guys were away from home—that type of thing.

Through the 50s and 60s, like a lot of the early Beatles or Rolling Stones, a lot of it is about girls and relationships. Probably in popular music, that’s the go-to theme. I was always listening and attracted to stuff with a little more substance. Songwriters like Dylan, Joni Mitchell, I like Randy Newman a lot—they might have one song vaguely about love on the album, but most of it was drawing more from different topics that were of interest to us. We picked up on that in our writing. That third song on the first side, that makes reference to a relationship I was in at the time: ‘Life Without Love.’ That was a break-up song.

‘My mind destroyed by a life without love’?

That’s some break-up.

I might’ve gone a little over the top!

Why did you want to sing about these things? Was it documentary—like recording your lives? Confessional? Therapeutic?

We weren’t thinking—obviously, which follows through with how many sales we had—we weren’t thinking of the audience in any regard. Eric and I had both had a pretty productive period in songwriting up until that album came out. I think that was our most prolific time—’80, ‘81, ‘82. All those songs had already been written except the last one, ‘One More Day.’ What we did was first we decided, ‘You know what? Let’s make a record.’

We’d been recording a little bit and thought we could put something together. We started kicking around ideas on which songs to do, and we both liked concept albums—albums with a theme. We started going through our songs and we saw there were certain songs that seemed to work well together. We’d originally had 13 songs and once we realized the limitations of vinyl, we cut three. Those three … two of them were even more down and bleak than anything else.

You’ve got songs where the narrator might drown himself. What’s past that?

The song we were gonna end with was just called ‘The End.’ Kind of an outtake, with a Dylan type of feel and imagery of a black crow.

Real bleak, a fingerpick thing that just sent chills up your spine. We did a rough recording before we started laying down final takes, and I’m pretty sure the rough recording had the 13 songs. So they do exist, but just in a rough take format. We never had final takes. If we had, we would’ve given them to Light In The Attic.

Why the cuts? Did you get halfway and think, ‘Is this is a little too suicide-y?’

We realized we weren’t gonna be able to do all thirteen. My girlfriend at the time … I told her about this concept and she thought it was a terrible idea! She knew some of my other material which was more … acceptable. She thought, ‘You guys are just shooting yourself in the foot with this thing!’ When she said that, it kinda brought Eric and I above ground again to rethink things. We decided to still go with the concept, but Eric went back to his apartment

and in one sitting wrote ‘One More Day.’ The songs were very introspective and pretty bleak, but ‘One More Day’ gave the listener an out. If you go through the progression of the album, it’s a series of emotions and peaks and valleys, but at the end there’s a door to get out. We thought that was a good concept to go with.

Where did the concept of Suicide Bridge come from?

When we began to come up with the idea of a more downer desperation type album, Eric mentioned Suicide Bridge to me. I was unaware. The first time I ever saw it close up was when we went out to take the photos.

Initially, I was thinking, ‘This doesn’t look like a bridge people would jump off of. It doesn’t look high enough.’ Then you get up on it and look over the edge like, ‘Wow—we’re way up here.’ Eric and I were so much into listening to albums. You buy an album, bring it home, put on the headphones and just soak it in. It was almost an unreachable dream to ever make an album of your own, you know?

Once we decided this is possible, we got the equipment, we got the songs … then we got the Suicide Bridge tie-in. At that point, there was no doubting. We made a live demo of the songs and gave it to the guy taking the photos on the bridge. He got back to Eric and said, ‘I just love this thing.’ When we heard that, we thought … it’s obviously gonna have an extremely limited audience, but it was worth it.

We had nothing else going on at the time. We weren’t into playing out. We hunkered down in the studio and got it done. Eric’s folks had a house in Burbank, and they built a standalone room in the backyard. I don’t know if it was originally a utility shed or if they actually built it for Eric cuz they didn’t wanna hear his guitar playing in the house anymore? The first album was recorded … not even a four-track reel-toreel, it was a four-track cassette deck. Eric had some money down on reel-to-reel equipment and the stuff got ripped off, so instead of going that route again, he decided to check out the portastudio. We’d heard Springsteen’s Nebraska was made on that. He was making at as a demo to give to the band, but he decided to release it as it was. I don’t think Nebraska influenced us much musically, but it gave us the go-ahead— ‘You can use this equipment and release an 13

album as well.’ We knew enough acoustic singer-songwriter albums that had been done pretty sparsely, and the songs we had in mind for the album would work with not a lot of arrangements. So we decided to give it a shot.

How was this album changed by your partnership with Eric? You’d think two people together would mean compromise, but I somehow feel you two pushed each other further. Like alone you’d secondguess yourself, but together you went where you’ve never go by yourself.

I never thought of it in those terms … but invariably you’d think with collaborations there’s some type of compromise that’s made— you think of Lennon and McCartney and you always feel McCartney pulling Lennon back to the middle. And when Lennon came out with that first solo album … you realize the effect McCartney and the Beatles had on him. I don’t think there’s any question that either one of us would’ve made that album if the other hadn’t been on board. Especially from my point of view. Eric was writing more honest songs than I was at the time. Eric reminds me a lot of Randy Newman, not musically but the way they write—they get in this sleazy character mode and write from that perspective. Eric is about as far from a sleazy guy as you can get, like the nicest guy in the world. But in order to experess himself, he gets in this sleazy-guy mode to really say how he feels.

His inner Warren Zevon?

Exactly—you listen to ‘Neighborhood Blues’ or ‘Backwoods’ and that’s not Eric singing.

That’s some dude channeling through him. I don’t wanna speak for him but from my point of view he had two ways of writing. One was the ‘Neighborhood Blues’-‘Backwoods’ sleazy character. Then you hear Eric as he really is on ‘One More Day.’ That’s him.

Why do you say his songs written in character are more honest than your own autobiographical songs?

A lot of times when you’re writing, if you’re writing from your perspective, you’re holding something back. I remember an interview years ago with Joni Mitchell. I think she was in the process of recording Blue. She’d given Kris Kristofferson some of the demo tapes, and he listened to them and got back to her and said, ‘Gee, Joni—this is too much. You gotta hold something back.’ That always stuck with me.

If you’re really writing with no holds barred, why are you holding anything back? But I think that’s true with people in general and life. Most of the times we’re not saying what we’re feeling—we’re holding things back, we’re protecting ourselves, we’re protecting other! By not saying how we really feel! So being around Eric and hearing his material, I was—as you say, I wrote from a more autobiographical point of view—I was able to say things in those songs, at least on that album, that I wouldn’t have ventured to say otherwise. When we were discussing Suicide Bridge as a concept and title, I never would’ve done that if it was something I was doing. But at the same time, it intrigued me. It’s like the scary story the kid wants to hear. He doesn’t know why he wants to hear it, cuz it scares him! Yet at the same time, he’s intrigued.

Kids like those things because it’s the thrill of the unknown—or really, the unexplored.

14

There’s still things to discover. And Suicide Bridge is kind of the same. You guys were going into barely explored territory. The photo on the cover matches the artistic terrain—you’re taking a few steps into the beyond.

You put it better than I could almost. It’s like someone asking how you’re doing. Most songs out there answer by saying, ‘Ah, I’m doing pretty good.’ Our answer was, ‘You know what? I’m not doing so well.’ And right then the person doesn’t wanna hear it, you know!

‘Uh … Hang in there, buddy!’

We were expressing ourselves and we didn’t care what anybody thought. This wasn’t contrived in any way, but we put out an album that wouldn’t have existed if we hadn’t done it ourselves. That’s what makes it kind of special. And it’s an accurate depiction of where we were at the time. This may sound strange, but I don’t think the album has much to do with suicide at all. Apart from a few lines—but even then, neither one of us was thinking of committing suicide. But the issue brought to the forefront in many of those songs is whether life is worth living?

Possibly the only issue ever.

Hey! That’s the issue for everyone! We don’t realize it—it’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room at all times! The alarm clock goes off in the morning and the first thought in your mind is ‘I gotta get out of bed,’ and what’s that saying? ‘Well, life must be worth it.’

I’d love to ask you if life is worth living, but I feel that takes a lifetime to figure out.

You can figure that out yourself—I’m talking to you right now, so you can figure out what the answer is!

What did you learn about these things by making the songs and the record? Obviously you can’t keep those ideas in the back of your mind if you want to write and sing about them.

Eric has made this point before, and one of the things that was factored in is we always felt better by playing the songs. After we played it, it was almost some type of corny musical therapy. Certainly there’s a gratification that comes in the writing of a song like that. You feel like you exorcise some of your demons.

But in performing, you can relive that on a different level and get that same deliverancecleansing thing going on. If you’re gonna get past something, then face it. And the time we waste running from it! Don’t discount the influence Eric had on me and the influence I had on him. We were the biggest fans of each other’s songs. Obviously we weren’t feeling too huge in the confidence department anyway.

But when someone is affirming what you’re doing … if it’d just been me, I don’t know if I’d ever have gotten the gonads to do something myself. And Eric probably wouldn’t have either.

But together, we felt we could do this thing.

It’s like a Horatio Alger story, like someone who starts with nothing and the dreams come true—but on a really really small scale!

A little less nothing!

We started with nothing and ended up with an album that got nowhere—but yay!

Maybe you actually got what you wanted— just not when you wanted it. Now it’s 2015 and the record is going right to a new audience.

It’s pretty bizarre. I own a couple copies of the vinyl. I got out the album and listened to it once. I probably hadn’t listen to it for 8 or 10 years—and now I haven’t listened to it since then. Once over twenty years.

How does it feel to listen to yourself as a young man on such a personal album?

The connection can’t be broken. That’s you.

When I listened to it again, and I’ve listened a number of times in the last year, it never seems that strange. I’m the same person.

I’ve just moved on. I can still relate to where I was at the time. That’s good—the songs still communicate what they were meant to communicate. They’re still relevant to the human condition.

I’ve always been into a concept of surfacestreet noir—if the freeway is all action and speed and specific destination, the surfacestreets are about slowness and detail and the way you get where you’re going. I always felt Suicide Bridge was a surface-street noir record. Then I find you were a runner who’d do night runs on the surface streets. Is this the most surface-street album ever?

It’s a very much a street-level album cuz it’s dealing with the minutiae of life. Yet at the same time, the big picture stuff is always under the surface. You’re addressing the bigger picture by the smaller picture. There’s a number of those songs where there’s not a lot going on, contentwise. I think of ‘Kiss Another Day.’ Virtually nothing significant happens in that song. I’m talking about waking up, getting a cup of coffee, watching TV and telling my girlfriend about this song. And that’s it! Yet the chorus comes in, and the guy’s asking himself, ‘I don’t know how much longer I can live this way.’

You’ve got the minutiae going on, but in the background you’re trying to answer the bigger questions, through the day-to-day stuff of life.

We didn’t have any type of huge panorama we were addressing. We were trying to deal with life as it came to us, and we were chronicling that in the songs. I read about an author years ago and they asked him how he wrote a book, and he said, ‘Well, it’s just like driving down the road at night with your headlights on. You can only see so far.’ You’re always only seeing so far. That’s the way Eric and I wrote. You’d start not knowing where you were going, but you could see just enough to write the next verse, and just enough to write the next chorus. You never had the total vision before you started.

It’s different now—you got the GPS going on!

Which totally crashes the party. It’s no longer fun anymore!

Is this an album that could have only been made before the internet? It seems so dependent on isolation. Eric even asks, ‘Am I the only loser left in this world?’ Today you could find people online instantly.

I don’t think the information highway would’ve affected it. It would have given us a platform to put it on. But you’re right in that when we made the album—we recorded most of the songs in 83 and the album came out in 84—both Eric and I cuz of who we were and the type of music we were doing and what we were trying to do, we both were loners anyway … there’s definitely that isolation you can hear in those songs. We both felt we were misfits in a way. Not liking what other people like, not fitting in, this type

of thing. When we made it, it was maybe a year or two before there were independent record companies beginning to show up.

Of course, we didn’t know about them. We figured, ‘We’ll just make our own album.’ If the internet had been up and around at that time, there wouldn’t have been any question that we would’ve got a website up and put our songs out for download. I don’t think the technology we have today would’ve affected the album cuz the album came from where we were at in our heads. But it would’ve given us a stage to put the stuff out on. The only stage we had at the time was some college radio stations and some coffeehouses to play in—an extremely limited forum! And add to that neither of us really liked performing that much. It was like pulling teeth to get us out there. The whole equation didn’t add up to a successful campaign in regards to marketing.

I’ve read your promo letters and they’re so honest. You say, ‘This album takes a while to get into, and it’s not for everyone, and we also don’t like to play shows. But we’re really proud of it.’ Did you do that as a reaction to like slick media hype? Or did you know no other way than to tell it as you felt it?

We weren’t fooling ourselves, thinking someone was gonna sign us to a big contract and we’d be playing stadiums. We were trying to be honest in regards to where we were coming from. We knew when you put the needle down on the first song, needless to say you’re not boppin’ around the room. And we knew it’d take some initiative on the listener’s part to sit through a side, let alone two sides. Yet at the same time, we knew what our listening likes were, and how we enjoyed listening to an album—Joni Mitchell Blue, like putting on that album and closing your eyes and just going where she’s going. We knew there were people out there with those type of listening likes. But how to find ‘em? We had 500 of the vinyl pressed and at least half or maybe two-thirds we sent out as promos to radio stations or had someone consign them at a few record stores in town.

But there was no way of getting the album out on a bigger scale. I dunno if it’s in the liner notes or not, but ironically, the two places the liked that album the most were Sitka, Alaska, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. We did have a suspicion that if we were gonna have a positive response, it’d be from pretty obscure places. We were correct in our assessment! And that was about as good as anything we could hear—‘Hey! Some dude in Sitka, Alaska, has got us number one on the rotation!’ That made us happier than if they’d been playing it on some station in L.A. Places like Alaska and Nova Scotia … you realize there are people who just cuz of where they live, they can relate to this album.

The isolation and the unexplored territory?

They’re already in that mode! They drop the needle like, ‘Hey, man—something we can finally listen to!’

So a record made by two guys in sunny Southern California finds its real home at the ends of the earth.

In a way, that defines the whole thing.

KAUFFMAN AND CABOOR’S SONGS FROM SUICIDE BRIDGE IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM LIGHT IN THE ATTIC. INTERVIEW

AHNNU Interview by sweeney kovar Photography by Theo Jemison

Your boy Leeland Jackson creates moving work, in both the figurative and the literal. As Ahnnu, he pushes electronic music toward its bare emotive essence, creating context in which listeners can immerse themselves. As Cakedog, however, he’s actually moving you. An avid admirer of the footwork movement from Chicago, Cakedog is Jackson’s contribution to the canon. On paper, his visual art pieces are portals to worlds where a three thousand year old edifice might be full of burners. Originally from Virginia via Japan, Jackson has found a home in Los Angeles with hubs like Leaving Records and peers like Knxwledge and Mndsgn. During our conversation, there are moments when he reminds me of Joe Morton’s character from The Brother From Another Planet. He’s earnestly curious about the bizarre social fabric we live in while many of us still wonder what is water? He speaks directly with unsentimental optimism. His off-center perspective is the link between his emotive electronic work as Ahnnu, the irresistible grooves of Cakedog’s footwork, and Jackson’s strikingly visceral visual art.

I didn’t know you grew up in Japan.

My father was in the Air Force and we were stationed in Japan. By the time I moved to America in the late 90s, you guys were getting the stuff I was getting in the early 90s in Japan. I moved here in ‘95 or ‘96. When I was younger I remember the first huge cultural reference between my friends was Dragon Ball Z. While American kids were first getting to know the series with Dragon Ball, in Japan we had already known the GT series which didn’t air in the US until the mid 2000s. We also had the N64 before it came out here. My neighborhood friends were like, ‘What is this?!’ Everyone was only familiar with Super Nintendo. There were a lot of cultural things I had to get used to, but during my teenage years I adapted to the lifestyle pretty easily. My taste originated from my father. He’s always been really into a lot of sci-fi and fantasy. He’s a pretty nerdy dude.

When I came here, I felt I had different taste than a lot of my peers because of my influence at home and having spent my earliest years on an overseas military base. A lot of the cultural tastes were separated by about a decade of time difference. By ‘95 in America, everyone was wearing baggy clothes. But in Japan, most people dressed like they were in the 80s. These subtle cultural differences had some kind of social effect on me and helped shaped the way I look at things today.

Were you exploring visual art before you stepped towards music?

I was into drawing as far back as I can remember. In kindergarten I was drawing all the time. I was trying to copy the cartoons I was watching. I wasn’t really into music until 8th grade. I joined a band through some kids I met in middle school. We actually toured a little bit. I like to think we were pretty 16

successful for how old we were. It was weird.

We were covering rock songs and listening to some heavy stuff but also various electronic artists and progressive rock bands. Around then is when I started to become interested with the creation of music—not just casual listening. One of the homies we started the band with—his pops had a full-fledged studio in his basement. He would let us play on his expensive basses and guitars, which really set the foundation for me as far as exploring my own instrumentation. The band started in 6th grade and when we all went to different high schools we broke apart—around 2001. My friend John who actually released a record on Leaving [Records] recently as Nerftoss was in that band. We had similar tastes that extended outside of rock and traditional songwriting.

John and I would trade a lot of music we’d find and listen to it very intently on long drives.

It was the beginning roots of my inclination towards electronic music and having a greater focus on my own musicianship.

How did you link up with the Chocolate Milk collective in Richmond, Virginia?

I moved to Richmond around 2007. It was a huge growing process, trying to live independently with artistic freedom at a young age. It didn’t go exactly as planned but I did meet a bunch of great artists. A friend of mine from Northern Virginia, Patrick, was one of my only friends at the time. We hung out a lot and eventually I was introduced to his friend Josh, who like me, was into the visual arts but had a huge appetite for making music. We became close friends as well, and through his associations we gathered a group of friends who would later become Chocolate Milk. He knew Brad [Ohbliv] already, too. I went to a rap show when Brad was in a Rootstype band. He was the MC and they had a

singer, guitarist and all that. At the time I only knew Brad as an MC. A couple of days later, Josh showed me his beats. He was the only other person I felt was trying to reach for what I was reaching for. I was really into early instrumental hip-hop at the time— listening to DJ Shadow, DJ Cam, revisiting Tribe and Digable Planets and appreciating their production. A lot of early 90s hip-hop music was new to me because I missed out on that era when I was in Japan. When I met Brad, it was like I stumbled across a producer who was making what I listening to at the time. Over three years or so we played a lot of shows together as Chocolate Milk and grew slightly, but eventually time took its natural course—we all continue to grow very well independently. Richmond was where I met visionary artists who helped give me the confidence and support to follow my own vision. It had college town traditions just like anywhere else, but it was a healthy art community and people were excited about each other. I happened to be there at a special time. It’s changed, I’ve heard. At the time there was less regulation on parties and there was no noise ordinance.

What made you leave Richmond?

Josh again. I found Devonwho’s Myspace page around that time and I was blown away. I was listening to a lot of electronic and hip-hop music at the time but he had a crazy fusion. It was like he had already matured a sound that was really subtle, in my mind. He had hardedge electronic elements with that feeling of hip-hop swing. Through him I found Ringo [Mndsgn] and Glen [Knxwledge] and at that time Klipmode in general was on some other shit. The whole Myspace charade was how I found Teebs and all the electronic musicians that I feel were making future music. They’re

doing well right now—I guess it was meant to be. Moving out of Richmond was the next logical move. I felt I had lived in the area long enough. Even though Richmond had a great environment for creative thinking, I think it lacked the real infrastructure to have artistic careers based there at the time.

What’s your creative process like when making music?

It’s different with Ahnnu and Cakedog. The technical process is the same. I still use Fruity Loops but it’s a total shift in attitude between the two as far as creative aim. With Cakedog, there’s a lot more variables. Dance music in general to me is more of a social object. With Ahnnu I feel like I can do whatever I want. I can always retreat into my own ideology. With dance tracks, however, it grooves or it doesn’t.

With Cakedog I try to be more mindful of whether a DJ has to use it—that extra gap between the break or being able to play it and have dancers respond to it. I have different intentions with Cakedog and Ahnnu.

What made you want to move into dance?

It wasn’t until I came to California. I’ve been listening to footwork before I came here. I think when I came here, footwork was still too close to trap music for a lot of audiences.

To me, footwork was something different and coming over here and trying to play the tracks it almost felt like there needed to be … not a re-education because I didn’t start it, but more of a demonstration of how diverse footwork music can actually be.

Do you get more satisfaction out of Ahnnu or Cakedog?

They’re two sides of my brain. With Ahnnu, I don’t care as much. It’s more omnidirectional.

I work with the intention of giving the listener more freedom and possibility. I want the listener to finish it. I don’t want to guide them too much. I want to create a situation where the listener finds something on their own and attaches it to the sound so they can have their own intimacy with the music, without the pressure of a standard or measurement. With Cakedog, I want people to do a certain thing. I want people to feel the tension and energy. It’s more rigid for me in that way, though I have to pay attention more. Right now I’m into that more because it brings new challenges as far as understanding my own production style. It’s been involving, but making dance music has shown me more possibilities.

How do you see the evolution of your music as Ahnnu?

I try not to think about that too much. The Ahnnu stuff is a representation of how I’m feeling at the time. It’s connected to my own process of self-education and experience, where music-making is only a part of a greater idea or attitude at the time. A lot of things I read or study can influence me deeply and musically in some way. Ahnnu is going to be a very very long learning process.

What questions drive the Ahnnu music?

I’m starting to realize that a lot of what makes me even want to create at all is the social environment. It’s very interesting. I draw a lot of my questions just through the social phenomena and the social behavior I perform and encounter day to day. As I grow older and I begin to mature myself as a human being— not even as an artist—I become more deeply INTERVIEW

aware. The questions always change. I look at Ahnnu as a social tool, as a way of helping other people think for themselves. That’s probably the one thing that is running a lot of the conflict—people not being comfortable with themselves. My aim for Ahnnu is to have people be like, ‘This is strange, but it grew on me somehow.’ As long as I can inspire the questions, that’s all that matters to me. Like in math, if you just tell someone ‘27’ they’re not going to know what you’re talking about. The question have to come before the knowledge.

I try to inspire the questions. After that, it’s out of my hands.

Ahnnu sounds like a lifelong documentation project. Does Cakedog have a finite lifespan?

Cakedog is my own personal attempt at trying to become more social. Not that I’m anti-social but to me we live in many different layers of social systems and I feel like … man, this is kinda deep, dude. A lot of the time, even within the subcultures, there is a cut off.

There is prejudice everywhere. It’s natural, and to me it’s not about eliminating the pre -judgement but more about not rushing to a definitive judgement. It’s completely natural for people to say, ‘This is not my thing.’

But at the same time, you can’t remove the connection. Design, for me, has principles found in a lot of social systems. For example, negative space within a design. For someone who don’t understand the components, [they might say] ‘Of course you want to fill this space because it’s negative.’

It can be meant to add value to whatever else is there.

Totally. A lot of the time, we try to eliminate the opposition—someone who contradicts what you do. Maybe it’s a Western thing but Americans know that the best things comes from just putting shit together. It’s true in so many ways. If you let go of the character, and not put a hat on it, it can be whatever it is.

Do you see yourself ever putting Cakedog to rest?

I don’t think I do. It’s helping me in a personal way. Because it’s more of a social music, it helps me understand my environment around me, and challenge my own social traditions.

Only I set up my own barriers. The thing with Cakedog is that it lets me see how the barriers can be cool sometimes. Ignorance is cool in art but being conscious is cool too. The fact that I have to think about the DJ that is going to play this or think about the dancers that are going to dance to it—that helps me think about making a functional social object. I feel like that’s the hardest thing to do—make something that is flexible enough to withstand someone else’s participation. Cakedog is being cool with certain limitations. It’s a contrast to Ahnnu, where can do whatever I want. I actually try to psyche myself out.

What do you mean by that?

It’s weird working with a computer program.

That freaked me out for a while. If you listen to a singer or a ballad, you’re experiencing something. To me, that’s music. I’m trying to create that feeling without context. It’s a contradictory thing I’m trying to create. I want to create an organic experience but at the same time I’m working with a machine so I try to figure out ways to break Fruity Loops. I try to

find exploits within programs to make weird stuff. It’s half me, half whatever the machine allows me to do through its own biases.

Something you said earlier about the social experience and all the ways it’s stratified made me think to ask you about background. Some people might not know you’re Black. As someone who is Black but can sometimes not be identified as Black because of how you look, I’m curious as to how that experience has shaped your art.

Totally. That’s really the pinnacle of everything for me. I know where I come from, you know what I mean? No one can tell me who I am. At the same time, I’m treated differently. That’s one of the things I noticed when I came to the states. Cats were like, ‘Yo, your last name is Jackson?’ I remember times when I had to show pictures. If I didn’t show pictures then I was not Black. It was a weird thing because in Japan the race thing wasn’t present like that.

Coming into junior high in the states, cats were all about race. A lot of times that determines your social life. That was new to me. Some people feel like there is certain criteria to what an authentic Black experience is—something I think is even in the Black community. I had a very diverse background and I never really looked at my skin as different until I came to the States. Even though my brother and my dad look different than me, it wasn’t even a thing. To get to your question—I feel like that’s something I’m still coming to terms with now. A lot of the times I feel that principle to be true: people fall for the surface of things. Looking further has always been much more fruitful. You realize that whatever idea or image you had in your head is flipped because you decided to go a little deeper. I feel like my biracial life—and not looking like the rest of my family—has given me certain inspirations because I’m treated a certain way.

I also recognize prejudices are even beyond the skin color thing. It can attach itself to any ideal and weaponize it as long as it focuses on the differences.

Do you ever see yourself going back to live instrumentation or analog equipment?

I want to change my performance set up. I feel like I’ll keep my studio stuff the same but as far as the performance, I’ve done too many shows where the studio and the stage are the same thing. I think in the coming years I’ll be revising how I’ll be presenting my music in a live setting and also how I perform in the studio. I’ll be trying to push myself. There’s a lot of confusion in the world. As artists we have a social responsibility to help the condition. At the end of the day, when people are done with their 9 to 5 and they come home and they turn on their TV and they’re ready to relax, the entertainer is the last bastion between that person becoming a psychopath and becoming ignorant. We’re kind of the dessert makers. We should take care of our role. It’s not our job to change political stuff—we have limited power in that respect. The power we do have is very precise. If we can demonstrate self-innovation maybe it can help inspire people to do the same thing—to question and evaluate.

The artist interacts with the audience at its most impressionable.

Totally. It’s really important. Artists now feel entitled to self-expression. Whatever they put

out, it is what it is. I feel if you have the power of influence, you must possess compromise.

That whole conversation actually evaporates when you pay attention to those things. It’s like making dinner. You have a bunch of people who are allergic to certain things. How can I make it so everyone can have a meal together instead of leaving certain people out? ... or making people sick?

Yeah! That’s a huge problem with popular music today. We’re in such a special time with hip-hop being popular music now. That puts a different umbrella under the condition of not just entertainment and culture but the condition of how people associate culture with the Black experience. You ever heard Epic Rap Battles of History on YouTube? When I look at that. I realize how far the music and culture has gone. And that a large number of people experience hip-hop and rap in that way.

Like it makes you question what they’re really fans of?

Yeah—what are you really focusing on? It’s hard because if you’re a hip-hop fan, you’re looking at that and feeling like they’re making fun of hip-hop. That’s the thing about appropriation. The line between honoring something and mocking a tradition is very thin if you haven’t done your research. The subtleties are important. Even within the culture there are people that are okay rappers that are labeled as completely wack. It’s not like he’s mocking rap or hip-hop, but that’s just the attitude of hip-hop. It’s historically fortified itself through strict critique. But even that dynamic can put a stranglehold on letting hip-hop expand into other cultures. …or even expand within itself. That whole debacle about Nas having had some shit written for him made me think about how great artists in music write for each other all the time. Why does hip-hop have to be an exception? Why does it have to be limited like that?

Imagine being homies with someone for a long time. It’s just you and your best friend.

Then a new friend of a friend comes in. You might be like, ‘Who is this guy though?’

But then that friend gets comfortable. He comes through your crib, warming up the oven nonchalantly. I feel like that’s the state of hip-hop right now. The purists are in that state of ‘Who do these people think they are coming into the house like that? They’re not even taking off their shoes.’ At the same time, you have to be able to deal with a world full of people who don’t take off their shoes. It’s funny with purists in art—sometimes those people end up by themselves. They’ve built so many walls in their own kingdom. They’re in their own perfect world. I feel like that’s definitely threatening the future. What are we really fighting against? Wack artists and wack art— destructive art—are always going to be around. It’s not about the elimination. You have to dig through that in order to find the gems.

AHNNU’S PERCEPTION IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM LEAVING RECORDS. VISIT AHNNU AT DOGTROPIC.NET OR AT SOUNDCLOUD.COM/AHNNU. VISIT CAKEDOG AT CAKEDOG. BANDCAMP.COM. 19

HOLLY HERNDON Interview by Kristina Benson Illustration by Angie Samblotte

With 2012’s Movement, Bay Area-based composer Holly Herndon offered an example of sound design that engaged in a bold rebuttal to the notion that the computer is not a viable, expressive musical instrument. With Platform, Herndon has made an even denser, more overwhelming soundscape, and now her focus has turned toward documenting the ways we live in (and struggle with owning) our digital selves. Working with a diverse array of collaborators and deploying the butchered linguistics of pop-up ads (and even an Audio Sensory Meridian Response skit featuring Berlin Community Radio’s in-house specialist Claire Tolan) Herndon’s Platform aims to place where our digital avatars intersect and overlap with our physical and intellectual selves. Herndon spoke by phone about Kanye West, paradise politics, and corporate sponsorship of music.

I was intrigued that the video you commissionedfromMetahavenforthetrack ‘Interference’ used the word ‘manifesto’ in the end credits. This is interesting since the track doesn’t use language in a way that would conventionally suggest the idea of a manifesto. Can you talk a little bit about your choice to use that word?

The term ‘manifesto’ is pretty weighted, right?

It’s usually used as like a political manifesto or in terms of artistic manifesto. That’s kind of how we meant it. Like we’re coming together and everyone involved in this project is going to stand by this thing. That we’re collaboratively writing and putting it out into the world. It’s really about the solidarity at that point.

But what the fact that most of the lyrics are obfuscated? Can it still be a manifesto given the way lyrics are treated in this track?

The manifesto is actually separate from the lyrics for ‘Interference.’ The lyrics are the extra large font, and the small text below that I’m not singing. Those are not lyrics. That’s a separate document. A separate manifesto that we wrote together and overlaid on to the video. In terms of audibility, all of the lyrics are printed inside the album art. That helps with clarity. But I really use the voice as an instrument, even though I’m dealing with pop to some degree—it’s a marriage of pop and experimental music. So I’m using voice as an instrument and it’s important to me that it’s not a completely clean and clear layer on top of everything. Voice is part of the environment. It’s one of the instruments. It’s not this hierarchal thing above the others.

How does someone like Kanye West influence this discussion? What does it mean inside and outside of the experimental music community that the most famous musician in the world often sounds like a singing computer?

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Pop has been … I don’t know if I can say more, but at least as boundary pushing as experimental communities in terms of vocal processing. We have these strange positions like ‘This is popular music! This is experimental music!’ but they don’t always scan. Hip-hop is insane when it comes to not only vocal processing in terms of technology but also in terms of vocal aspects. Even if you look at somebody older from the 90s like Busta Rhymes, the way that he uses his voice in this accented and percussive way is extremely experimental and extremely boundary-pushing and forward-pushing. I totally agree that it’s extremely experimental and I think it should be praised for that.

One of the people whose work you’ve consistently referenced is Guy Standing, whose concept of ‘paradise politics’ is central to this record. You posted the full text of his piece ‘The Precariat – The Social Democratic Challenge’ on your Twitter.

When I started following Guy Standing’s work, the thing that stood out the most immediately was this idea of paradise politics.

I was trying to figure out—like I’ve spent a lot of time in experimental music communities and it’s been wonderful, but I got to the point where I was wondering what the greater point of it is? Or what is it doing? Since experimental music is being embraced by a wider audience, what are the actual implications of that? So Guy Standing’s idea about paradise politics struck me as something that music could be really effective in—it could play a really significant role in creating what I like to call ‘new fantasies.’ Fantasies for 2015—not relying on old fantasies. If we can create the fantasies of the future we would like to have together, then maybe we can actually reach that future growth together. That’s how I was first attracted to Guy Standing. In terms of public spaces—like concerts—the approach to the album as a whole has been incredibly

collaborative. It was really important to me that I opened up the practice beyond myself.

Everyone involved in the album is coming from a DIY vantage, but also a DIY vantage that’s embracing technology. That’s because most of the people—although I can’t speak for anyone but myself—are interested in being effective. It’s about not trying to escape anything, but instead to design an exit or come up with different exit strategies together.

And that requires working together. That requires not tearing each other down. Music people can be really competitive or can tear each other down. So a lot of this was about ‘This is not going to take away anything from me or what I’m doing if I shout out other people and tell people where my references are coming from.’ People like to see musicians as this kind of lone genius that’s coming up with all these amazing ideas by themself in the studio. I don’t think culture works that way. I don’t think life works that way. It makes us all stronger if we support each other a little bit.

As an artist with a public platform, you’ve chosen to speak openly about issues like patronage and funding in the arts. Why do you think so few musicians want to talk about how to get money to fund a career but are fine with talking about royalties?

That goes along with what we were just talking about—transparency and opening up. It’s an overall interest in infrastructure. I did my doctorate for a couple reasons. One is because I have a lot of respect for the research that’s come out of the institution where I’m based.

It’s an endless stream—there’s a huge brain trust there. The best minds when it comes to certain topics in computer music. And just having access to the resources there. I can do a lot of multi-channel things that would be close to impossible to do myself unless I had some sort of large donor. I’m able to work in these crazy studios with 24-channel surround and have someone there willing to show me

how to improve the system I’ve built. That’s huge. When I applied for Stanford, that was before I released [the 2012 album] Movement.

I didn’t realized I’d even have any interest from anyone outside a very niche community. It was a way for me to pay my bills while being able to write music. At the time I was working full time at a children’s museum taking care of interactive exhibits for children and trying to make music on the side. I knew something had to give. I had to have a normal life at some point. I had to be able to take vacations. They pay me a salary to live off to do my research and that was so amazing. So if we want to be able to have in a say in how things run and how things work, we need to understand them and be honest about them and be open about them in some way. So much about music and art specifically is shrouded. There’s a lot of secret money. It’s not about shaming anyone or being like, ‘You’re a rich kid! Fuck you!’

It’s about understanding that when there’s a 15 year old in some random town, they understand that these are the implications of deciding to start your own independent label.

Most of the independent labels in the United States are coming from wealthy families.

That’s not dissing those families. But let’s let that kid who’s 15 and dreaming of opening a label know that that’s what they’re dealing with. That’s the only way we’re going to be able to make progress. It’s important it doesn’t come across as a witch hunt or a shaming thing because some people get really guarded. We’ve entered a phase where music and corporate sponsorship is more than it ever has been before and people are really guarded about that. In order to really assess the situation, we have to know who’s getting paid and how.

HOLLY HERNDON’S PLATFORM IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM RVNG INTL/4AD. VISIT HOLLY HERNDON AT HOLLYHERNDON.COM 21

DVA DAMAS Interview by Jacquelinne Cingolani Photography by Aaron Giesel

DVA DAMAS, a two piece from Los Angeles, talk with me about Aztec Secret Indian Healing Clay masks, their philosophies on intuition and fear, and why no one dances in L.A. Their most recent release, the “Wet Vision” 12”, was produced by Burch and Cocherell and curated by Juan Mendez for the label Downwards America, and integrates a plethora of sounds for a borderline Western-slash-gothslash-80s electronic soundscape. Incorporating vocals, guitars, synths—including a Yamaha CS5—as well as samplers and a Zoom drum machine, the duo’s collaboration is the result of childhood friendship and a developed connection with each other’s psyche, cultivated through the five years they have been actively making music and touring together.

I have you guys on speaker phone so I can record.

Taylor Burch (vocals): We have you on speaker because we are actually doing clay masks right now and we have to wash them off.

Is it the bentonite clay one?

Joseph Cocherell (drums): Aztec Clay.

I love that shit! Can I put this in the interview?

TB: Ha—yeah of course!

I’m always blown away with bands with only two people on stage. I feel like it’s a ton of pressure!

TB: As anyone else would, we do get nervous about what could potentially go wrong. Once you walk on stage you’re kind of okay and just submit yourself to the situation. Whatever happens, happens. We’ve played a few shows where a bunch went wrong and it’s not that bad. I mean—a little embarrassing but you’re still breathing.

It seems like it’s an attitude you adjust to—trying to let your intuition guide you so you don’t completely freeze.

TB: We’ve been playing live for five years so when you first start out, you freeze when things go wrong—and you make it more obvious to the audience that something has gone wrong. Nut eventually you learn to just go with it. For example, the show you were at where we played with HTRK—I was looping something and it wouldn’t work so I had to manually loop it, stay in time and focus on the vocals! Instead of panicking, we responded by smiling really big and kept going. Later, our friends asked us why we were smiling, having no idea something had gone wrong.

Is there something you both enjoy about the danger of it?

JC: Yeah—we went through a phase of recalculating how we were doing everything live. At first, we were trying to plan everything out and then we found ourselves seeking out that kind of danger you mentioned because it makes playing live so fun. It also means things will go wrong and things will happen that wouldn’t have happened if you were a little more structured.

Keep nothing in stone, exist in the moment, and let it all ride. Is this philosophy present in all areas of creating?

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TB: We really enjoy pop music and it’s hard to create a pop structure on the fly. We have been trying to do our tracks in a way where half of what we do is planned and the second half of the song, we do what we want to do moment to moment and go off of our environment.

Do people respond to you because of that blend? Because there is authenticity in it?

TB: It’s kind of hard to tell because we haven’t been playing that often in this new particular way. But we have been getting good feedback and we’ve noticed from our perspective people tend to be enjoying it more and dancing instead standing there with their arms crossed staring at us.

I know that one—that’s an L.A. thing!

Stand there with dead eyes, arms crossed.

TB: It’s weird because I do it too. I never dance when I go watch someone perform or see a band.

JC: When I was in Europe I noticed how many people would go out specifically just to dance. With L.A., I’m not sure if because it’s a car city and there are so many restrictions that people feel they can’t loosen up due to all of these responsibilities—I can’t really say. But for sure L.A. is an observer.

Does the city directly influence the writing process? How does the writing process work?

TB: The writing process works with me writing up a rough demo because I’m not really skilled with the technical side. Then Joe and I go back and forth with perfecting it and making it more proper. I’ve never lived anywhere else but L.A. so I’m not sure how much surrounding affects what I do. I feel like I don’t really go searching for inspiration, it just comes.

JC: I know this sounds cheesy but it’s almost like an energy loop. It’s really hard to explain because we have been so insular, due to it being just the two of us. It just happens and we both agree on it or we don’t.

Is there anyone in L.A. who influences you aesthetically or musically?

TB: Our friend Albert Cameron. He is an artist living in L.A. and his opinion means a lot to me. He does installations and he also does music but he never really shows it to anybody.

JC: It’s cool because everyone we know constantly works and is highly motivated and wants to do something and it’s motivating to see people working all around you.

I think there is something really magical about people making art with no real end result. I can see why Albert would be such an influence.

JC: You know you’ve hit something when you’ve affected him. It’s not about approval but more how it moves him.

Is it because since it’s out of the box, it stands alone? Sometimes you see a lot of bands or artists start to blend in over standing out.

JC: We’ve never wanted to be a part of the scene so it never mattered to us.

TB: We never wanted to be lumped into a group because it makes you so disposable.

You’ve known each other since childhood and I swear knowing someone creatively since childhood creates strong psychic intuitions about one another’s process.

JC: We’ve known each other since we were fourteen. We met at a school in Santa Ana for artistic kids. We got really close when we turned 17.

TB: Joe had been in bands all throughout high school. I was obviously a big fan of music and we talked about making music for a while before it actually happened. We learned over the years how to communicate and work together productively.

JC: That goes back to what you were asking about how we work together. We’ve known each other for so long, it’s almost intuitive. I know what feels wrong and what feels right and I know she feels the same way.

TB: A big part of it is learning how to talk to each other. When you are making something where so much emotion goes into it, you have to be able to separate from it. Our relationship is like a brother and sister—if we have any conflict, we always drop it and don’t hold grudges.

JC: At the end of the day it’s cooperation with some sort of end goal.

How do you guys do that?

JC: You have to surrender to the ego! Part of it is that we would never classify ourselves as musicians.

As frustrating and ego bending as it can be, there is something beautiful about not knowing what you are doing.

TB: I don’t actually know how to play the guitar or how to sing. You couldn’t play a note for me and I’d be able to tell you, ‘Oh, that’s E or that’s G.’ I know nothing about musicianship.

Exactly—it’s not about what you are playing. It’s how you play it.

TB: Yeah, and to be honest, the more I make music, the more difficult it gets for me to make the next thing—I feel like I have learned so much more. It’s like I almost want to unlearn because the more you know technically, it makes you start thinking about notes in certain parameters.

JC: I always say I could give a fuck how well someone plays guitar or drums. I’ve heard simple beats move me more than anything technically advanced. It’s about how something makes you feel. I always look at music as constructing, not playing. I look at music like a building. It needs certain things to function and anything else is extra. That’s how we do it. She makes the blueprint, and we fill it out together and she designs how it’s going to be decorated.

TB: I guess you can call it musical design?

It’s cool for whoever is reading this to understand they can do it too, even if they haven’t been playing for years and years.

JC: Be yourself and take risks. I think that being yourself is the most important thing you can do. Proper things are boring, do the thing that is wrong.

TB: Yeah—Jonnine and Nigel from HTRK are some of the coolest people we know because they never try to be anything but themselves. When I first started playing I felt I was copying someone else, but I learned I was being a lesser version of something else and not my unique self. Why would you want to be a copy of something less over being your unique self?

DVA DAMAS’ WET VISION EP IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM DOWNWARDS AMERICA. VISIT DVA DAMAS AT DOWNWARDSLTD. TUMBLR.COM. INTERVIEW

EAGLE NEBULA Interview by sweeney kovar Photography by Protius

Materializing over the piece of L.A. County known as Inglewood, Eagle Nebula brings a cosmic interpretation to the earthly experience. The rapper, singer and poet’s work is often hyperlocal, burrowing deep in the community she’s found and making links and connections with like minds. Since relocating back to her native Inglewood, the astral artist has become an extended member of Ras_G’s Afrikan Space Program ensemble. She recently finished a project with the City of Inglewood, experimenting with a series of community writing workshops that culminated with a record produced exclusively for county libraries. I talked with Nebs about her new cassette Space Goddess. Like L.A. itself, the conversation sprawled: our sound scientist remembers the ‘92 riots and the vibrant black community of Los Angeles she grew up in, and explains why a loud-and-proud west side woman would spend a decade in NYC. What came first—writing or music-making?

They’ve always been side by side. From elementary, I had always found myself in a rap group with my homegirls kind of thing.

I always was a lover of hip-hop music and an avid consumer of hip-hop music. But at the same time as a young person preinternet—with a lot of free time on your hands—writing was very natural to me because I’d have days where I’d have nothing to do. I have this memory that I go back to all the time where I was probably 4 or 5, and I wanted a new doll. And my father thinks that dolls are very stupid, so he said, ‘If you want a doll, then you have to write me an essay on the history of dolls.’ I want the doll, so of course I’m going to write the essay. I remember sitting there one Saturday with two encyclopedias, really getting my thorough research on about dolls, looking at the history of these Victorian dolls. I presented my paper to my father at the end of the day, and on Sunday we went and got the doll. It’s something I will always do.

When I started to make music with writing, I was around a bunch of people that made beats, but I wasn’t ever trying to record any rhymes. They were always like, ‘Yo, put one of your rhymes on this beat!’ or ‘Write something for this!’ Because people knew that I was a writer—and a closeted MC—I ended up recording. But it was never my intention. I had always written songs, but I never shared them. I would share a poem, I’d share an essay, I’d share whatever I wrote—a rant—but a song I never shared.

Was this when you were a teenager in L.A.?

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No—when I was a teen in L.A., I was going to parties, freestyling a lot, and writing poetry. Once I left L.A., every time I came back, people would just be like, ‘What’s up with you?’ Can you read this poem over this track?’ [laughing] It was always something I did with friends. I guess that started when I was a teenager out here.

You’re born and raised in Inglewood, right?

Born and raised in Inglewood, California, until I was 17. Then I left to go to school in D.C. When I think about my time growing up out here, there’s two sides to it. In the 80s and 90s, at first you don’t really have a lot of gang violence. My mother was a teacher at the local high school, and later I remember her having to go to a lot of funerals for her students—watching her figure out what to do with their desks and their work being turned in. That really affected me. But at the same time, my mother is a dancer, and so we’d always be in Leimert Park at dance class. I never wanted to dance. I was super shy and a bookworm. Across the street was the World Stage. I’d go in there and listen to people read their writing and hide in the corner. I was really comfortable there. Being from Inglewood and being that close to Leimert, you’re around these great artists and this great art all the time to the point where it’s not a big deal. It’s just life. When I look back, I’m like, ‘Wow.’ These great jazz musicians and poets and dancers who had made contributions to musical and creative culture ... and they were just like my neighbors. As I got older and moved away, I realized how much growing up in Leimert had influenced me.

What relationship do those two sides—as you put it—have with each other? How did being exposed to so many different creative disciplines help process other things happening around the neighborhood?

The area of Leimert Park really started to blossom after the riots in ‘92. That’s kind of when Fifth Street Dick’s emerged. I think World Stage had been around a little bit before that. It was a way to build something positive in the community because at that time things were looking like they couldn’t get any worse.

Leimert Park became this oasis where we could free ourselves to creativity, whether it be dance, music, writing, photography … It felt like a very safe bubble where Blackfolks could be Black, and they didn’t have to worry about the negative things that could have come to them on other streets, or just around the corner from that same block. For me as a young girl, I was able to roam Degnan Boulevard freely and go into shops and sit outside of Fifth Street [Dick’s] and talk to people, and it was great. If I was in Leimert, I was never worried about anything because it was like a village—it was that little oasis. During that time in L.A., things in the community were going so wrong, and Leimert was a place that folks could come and just be on something else.

What was experiencing the riots like as a kid?

That was so confusing. I was in the 5th grade.

When they broke out, I was at my babysitter’s house at my after-school program, and they showed people rioting—actually, no. They gave the Rodney King verdict, and my babysitter, this woman named Mrs. Ball—Mrs. Ball was this southern lady that took care of all of us INTERVIEW

that went to Bennett-Kew Elementary. God bless her soul, Mrs. Ball was sitting in her chair and when they gave the erdict, she called it: ‘They’re going to start rioting in the streets.’

‘No, that’s crazy. Mrs. Ball, that happened in the 60s—what are you talking about?’ And then—boom. In the next couple of days it went off. I remember waking up to the smell of that smoke and looking out of my window.

I could usually see a little bit of the mountains and the Hollywood sign from my window, and the air was just so red and smoky. The year before, my family and I had gone to see Nelson Mandela. Nelson Mandela was on tour—he stopped by the College Theater. We’d gotten these hoagie sandwiches. And they burned down the shopping center where we’d gotten the hoagies. I was so confused as to why things were burning down in our community. A lot of those places are still vacant lots. The riots still cast this hole on the soul of South L.A., and it’s been over twenty years. Not much has changed in terms of infrastructure. There’s a lot of vacant lots that are owned by the city.

As a kid, I just didn’t understand it, but I understood that people are upset about what happened. That’s one thing I did understand.

I didn’t understand was why our communities were being burned down, and we’re paying for it still today—they still haven’t been rebuilt.

Why did you decide to move cross-country to D.C. once you graduated high school?

My mom used to tell me stories of college in New York, and I was like, ‘Wow, that’s got to be the coolest thing ever.’ I wanted to see the world. I had never left L.A. During my teenage years, I was partying in L.A. a lot, and Leimert Park had started to change, like Fifth Street [Dick’s] had closed, and [World Stage co-founder and renowned drummer] Billy Higgins had passed away. I was like, ‘I don’t know if there’s much more for me here as a young person.’ Howard was my first choice, and I got in. I’m really happy I made that choice to go there because it helped me develop as an individual.

Once you graduated Howard, what made you decide not to come back home? You moved to New York instead.

I was trying to figure out where I wanted to be.

I had lived in West Africa for like a year when I was in school, and I was thinking about going back to Ghana. I studied film and television, so L.A. seemed like a good place to be. I came back for about two or three months, and I was working as an assistant for this woman in Hollywood. It was just the worst. I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m definitely not an assistant.’ In those years, I was running from being an artist.

‘I’m not an MC—no! This is not—no!’ I was really hoping to be normal. Which is funny because no one in my family is normal. They were hoping I’d be normal too, but I was the weirdest one.

What about being an artist made you uneasy?

I come from a very private invisible space. That was the scariest thing in the world to me, to create things and share them with people or to do anything that would put a light on yourself.

I was like, ‘I can never be an artist because artists—what kind of life do they live? People tell them how awful they are when they give their heart out—who would sign up for this?’

What I learned is that you don’t actively move

toward it—it’s just who you are. If you try to suppress it, it will make you go crazy. I had to learn to succumb to that. Every time I tried to do something ‘normal,’ the doors would not open. But the moment I’d go out on a limb and share things I’d been doing behind closed doors … I just got tired of fighting. ‘This might not necessarily be what I want, but this is clearly what my life is supposed to be.’ I was like, ‘If I’m an artist—and then on top of that, being in New York and a woman and a hip hop artist … who wants to sign up for that?’

I’m glad you mention that. Can you elaborate?

The man that’s my husband now … when we met, we were just musical collaborators. But again, I wasn’t trying to put it out there like that. I just felt it was more acceptable for a woman to be a poet than an MC. Especially around the time that I was starting to explore music, which was like 2006 or 2007—there was no female presence in hip-hop.I think we had like one pop-up like Lil’ Mama real quick. So it was like ... what are you doing?

But I would record with Protius, and he would be like, ‘I think you’re dope, and you need to do a show.’ After that I kept getting shows in New York. I ended up being part of this community of hip-hop artists who are really about their craft—master freestylers, master B-boys, masters at everything—and there were people that really believed in what I did. I also was part of the female MC community out there which was really strong. I’d been doing open mics and getting a good rep on having a good live show. New York is a very traditional hip-hop state. Like they’re about their boombap—they’re about their particular sounds, and here I was with crazy left-field West Coast beats. People would be looking at me like I was crazy on stage, and after I got off, they’d pull me aside, real quiet, like, ‘Yo, that was dope.’ They were ashamed they liked it. They were afraid to like something like that. But the beats I work on are the beats that I really like. I wasn’t trying to bow to the beats that they liked. New York is a very group-think kind of place. I guess you could say the world is like that, but New York is really like that.

I’d have a lot of people come up to me like, ‘You’re my secret favorite this, and you’re my secret favorite that.’ Why does it have to be a secret? I can definitely say that in New York, I have a lot of support, and the guys treated me like a guy. They weren’t nice to me because I was a girl. They didn’t let me down easy. If I needed to work on something, they was like, ‘Yo. Do that again.’ They were never soft with me, and they helped me develop and maintain my sense of self. People would never tell me to sound like anybody else. ‘This Eagle Nebula, she’s going to be sounding like herself—just let her go.’ I think the reason I can do that is because of those formative years in New York, where they were like ‘Just be you.’ I’m actually very happy I cut my teeth out there because I was able to make strides and grow as an artist and gain that stronger sense of self. Now I’m out in L.A. and I’m able to put out my projects and do all my things without any doubt. ‘No, this is me. I do what I do, and it works.’

What was hardest about living in New York?

The cold. When I left New York, I escaped from New York, you know? The challenge with New York is the cost of living and the lack

of nature and lack of sunlight. Once you live there for a while, you realize how evil and how rude people are. I can say that in New York, what I love is that you rock a mic every night.

All you have to do is want to. There’s a million places. In L.A., it’s not really like that. But in New York, there’s not much infrastructure to help support artists. In New York, there’s no one who cares about artists in New York—like especially the underground New York artists.

There’s no journalists that take an interest in that. You can do great things, and people just won’t know about them. There aren’t really any record labels in New York to help promote the artists on the underground there. It’s extremely grassroots and extremely artist-based. One thing I know is that everyone can’t be an artist.

If we want to go somewhere, somebody’s got to be thinking about other things. New York didn’t have that. There was excitement, there was talent … there was no infrastructure to help people get records out and help people get anything out. That’s where I got really frustrated. We’re all rappers in here. After a while, you’re just playing for people who are there because— —because they’re about to rock next.

Exactly—or you guys are friends on Facebook or whatever. But because of that, everything is very individualized. So though there appears to be a great community, you still have to very much go for yourselves. The minute you want anything more than rocking a local show, then good luck with that.

Was your creative capability different in New York than it is in L.A.?

Really different. In New York, in terms of creating new music and writing new songs, I was really blocked a lot because I was too busy hustling and running through the city.

It was hard to even find a quiet hour to think. That energy that people love about New York City, after a while … well, for me, when I started living there as a creative, I started to hate it. Because I can’t think. I can say I was part of a studio collective in New York, and whenever we met up, it was always quite magical. What you do get in New York is some of the most talented people in the world all coming to live in one city. When I had creative moments with people, they were great. It’s just that everybody’s busy in New York, so you’ll find that those things are few and far between. Here in L.A., the energy is a lot slower. The fact that it never snows and I never have to put like eight coats on and seven pairs of pants—that helps a lot.

I can wake up and be in tune with nature, as opposed to bricks and concrete and people’s attitudes. I also feel really spiritually connected to Inglewood specifically because I grew up here and because my whole family is buried in a cemetery in Inglewood—it’s right up the street. Even the Pacific Ocean feels very spiritual to me. L.A. has a much more spiritual feeling. If you tap into that spiritual feeling here, you can really get the creative outlook you want. In New York, I was always snatching time for myself. New York is that tough love, and L.A. is that nice motherly love. I needed both. I’m all about mother’s love right now. New York was rough. I was there for eight years, and I didn’t plan on being there that long, but I 25

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was, and it was great. I did everything I set out to do and then I came home.

What did you set out to do?

My list was long and exhausting—a really ambitious list that a 22-year-old would make when they come out of college. Making music was not on there, but making music was the bulk of my life in New York, which was funny.

I acted in some hip-hop theater, which was great, and I was a VJ for Centric, which is like BET’s little sister. It was like a playground. I think anyone in their twenties should be all over the place because you need to explore and figure out what are you really about? I was able to find that out in New York because I had done all those things.

Did you leave because you felt complete?

So complete, and also homesick. But I remember a friend of mine telling me, ‘New York doesn’t love you until you leave.’ Nobody appreciates anybody because everybody’s been around for so long. I started to feel that. I looked at my list of things—this little journal that I had had when I moved out there—and literally everything I wanted to do, I checked off and then some—I had also, hilariously enough, become a performing artist and recording artist. That was a thing that I wanted to do deep down but I would never have told anybody. When I was putting out my first recordings, which I did in New York in like ‘04 or ‘05, I was with a friend and we were playing around in the studio, and she was like, ‘You got to be a rapper. You got to MC.’ I was like, ‘I don’t sound like anybody.’ How stupid is that? ‘No, that’s how you have to do it!’ I was like, ‘That is the dumbest thing I ever heard.’

As I grew into consciousness through my artistry, I understood what that meant—the importance of having diverse voices. I was just so shy. At this point now, I’m cool. I’m at peace with it. It’s been almost ten years for me. I love it. It brings me joy, and so it works. I had to let that dream of being normal go. My mother was like, ‘You’ve never been normal.’ ‘Thank you, mother.’

Did realizing that change how you work?

Since I’ve been back, I’ve been a lot more focused and serious about putting out music that I record—looking at it as though it needs to exist. I’m looking for opportunities for myself as an artist, whereas before, I was like whatever comes is cool. When I came back to L.A., I was scared because L.A.’s a lot slower. I could easily not do anything.

Just work and be at my mom’s house and be an auntie to my nephews and never create again. But I would go to art galleries and open studios just to see what the creative pulse was out here. My first opportunity I came across was an arts commission gig with the city of Inglewood. I applied for that and ended up creating a record and a book for the City of Inglewood. Coming out to L.A., I was very curious to see what would happen if I applied myself to something big like an artist grant. I felt I had enough credentials to get something like that, and I did. I created a project for the City of Inglewood that I’m really proud of—a three-piece project called the Inglewood Poetry Project. It was born out of the fact that wherever I lived—D.C., New York, Ghana, West Africa—when I told people I was from Inglewood, they would INTERVIEW

be like, ‘Up to no good!’ I’m somebody who really believes in the power of words, so it would really bother me. At first it was like ha ha, but after years of ‘Hi, my name is Eagle and I’m from Inglewood.’ ‘Inglewood, up to no good!’ I felt kind of attacked by that phrase. So in my little mind, I thought, ‘Well, Inglewood is really a nice community of people. It’s where I learned about the importance of being politically involved and the importance of strong community.’

Also the fact that when my parents were growing up in L.A., Inglewood was a place where Black people could not walk. You couldn’t be here after sundown, or that was the end of your life. So Inglewood also represented this Black American dream— this sort of civil rights triumph. But then the 80s and 90s and gang violence came and ravaged the city. I’m thinking how a record has spread the city’s name all over the globe, and it’s just pure bad. There should be a record that exists to balance that out. It’s not going to be on the radio, but it should exist so that perhaps one day somebody will find an opposite view of Inglewood. I sat down with people in the community—elders, young people, everybody in between—and I did poetry-writing workshops where people talked about what they loved about the city. We took those things and put them in an anthology that is going to be available in libraries in Inglewood and throughout L.A. County. Then I created a record where I did poetry field recordings. I included some electronic music I made with friends and two songs as well. It culminated into a performance where I had people from the community read their poems, and I did a small musical set with a live electronic band.

We did our performance in the library. It felt so full-circle. Back in high school, I used to go to that library to meet my math tutor. I’d get there early and walk through the poetry stacks to find new poetry books—looking at interesting covers—and I’d go through the records. So for me to be at that library performing, reading a poem, putting this book into their archive—having the mayor shake my hand—it was just really cool. It was the ultimate testimony to what happens when you stay true to yourself. Had I tried to stick myself in a corporate job, this is what I would be daydreaming about—what I’d be hoping I had the guts to do. I came from a place of not wanting to show anybody anything, and now here I was presenting myself very proudly, like for the first time, to people in my hometown.

The way you talk about success and achievement is different than what some other musicians and MCs have said to me.

They might have a very static idea of what success would be.

For me, success is a fluid thing. Success is about how I feel at night, right before I go to bed.

Success is that feeling when you stay true, even if you stay true and the success is going to be delayed. We don’t necessarily live in a society that rewards people who stay true with success.

So for me, it’s got to be personal. When you’re an artist, you can attribute success to an award or a contract, but rewards and contracts are a flash moment in an artist’s life. We have to live

with ourselves every day. We can’t equate our whole existence that we sacrifice to make this thing to something like an award or a contract.

Those things help us build, but I don’t know if that, for me, is necessarily success. I’m about knowing about greatness while I’m living and being satisfied with the choices that I make while I’m alive, regardless of how they’re viewed by people who say ‘this is success’ and ‘that’s success.’ How many wack rappers are millionaires? It’s a hard thing to quantify, but if you go with the feeling inside of yourself, you’re just never wrong.

You’ve been working on Space Goddess for a while, and it’s finally done. How did it start?

The Space Goddess project came about when I was living in New York. I was a part of a group of guys who shared studio space, and we’d come together and make beats and build these shows. One of the members had moved to Spain, and there was an opening, and P.U.D.G.E. had just moved back to New York from L.A., so he became the new studio mate. When I met P.U.D.G.E., we had a million friends in common. I’d heard about P.U.D.G.E., but I’d never seen P.U.D.G.E. So now here I am, sharing a studio, and we instantly clicked. We recorded ‘Eternal Sunshine’ first. ‘Oh, we kind of have a cool chemistry together—let’s make some more.’ Then it was like boom-boomboom. But I decided I wanted to leave New York. ‘P.U.D.G.E., that was great, but I can’t take it anymore—I’m leaving.’ It put a halt on the project because at that stage we had recorded about six songs. The last two songs were actually recorded out here in L.A. Until a year ago, I didn’t think the project was done. I went out to New York and was making more beats and trying out more stuff—and when I came home after that trip, I was like, ‘OK, no—this project is done.’ Then it became a matter of how do I want to put it out? I decided I was going to put it out myself. I was curious to see what would happen.

Space Goddess touches on some interesting abstract ideas—like this idea of Eagle Nebula as this cosmic being—but there’s also a lot of concrete Earth themes. Especially on the song ‘Gangsta Like Harriet Tubman.’

I’m constantly navigating spiritual space and earthly space, which why I gave myself the name Eagle Nebula. Especially when I was younger, I was like Miss Spiritual Talk.

I’m more quiet about it now, but when I was younger I was all about the universe. I also think about my earthly self, which is a chill person, but also somebody who has aggression and opinions about the state of the world and the things I see. And it was really about what the beats P.U.D.G.E. gave me brought out. A lot of beats were taking me to a very abstract place, where I felt free to explore abstract parts of myself that have no other place to live. A song like ‘Nebulizer’ is not necessarily like a poem that you want to read. If I write something like that, what do I do with it? The backdrop is a super-celestial beat for me. A lot of the music he gave me was pulling out etheric spiritual cosmic places that I explore all the time within myself.

Then some beats would bring out that person who’s looking at society with a side-eye: ‘Do

y’all see this, or what’s this about? Like is this what life on planet earth is? Is this what you want it to be?’ I oscillate between the two in my life and my personality. I am very earth, but also very ether. After listening to it, I was like, ‘This is very personal and very much an insight into who I am—not just as an artist but as a human being. It gives you insight into the way I think, and the fact that I really do try not to get caught up in earthly matters because they will distract me beyond repair.’ I’m always trying to look for something greater than what humanity is giving me. At the time I was writing that record, I was watching two-three hours of news a day. When I finished, I did not watch or write about the news. I did not want to write about anything political. I wanted to get away from the planet. I was like—‘Oh my God. There just has to be something more.’

There’s this seeker inside of me that is always looking for something other than the BS we’re experiencing all the time. Even the beat that I made with P.U.D.G.E., that opening track—for me, it was funny because I love the vocoder. I love that MicroKORG, and in the studio, I was always playing around with it, but never would have thought to record myself doing it. P.U.D.G.E. was like, ‘No that’s you, though—you got to put that on the record!’ I love the fact that the producers that I work with—they don’t put any cages on me.

You’re a very multi-faceted artist. What is your writing process like? What turns an idea into a song instead of a poem?

The poems come with no music—literally lines in my mind that appear out of nowhere.

Writing songs is very different. That starts with the rhythm, or a rhyme I’ll hear and write down. The most fun part—and my favorite—is when I get a beat to write to.

‘What is this beat saying to me? What is the story?’ It’s like how Michaelangelo said he would approach the marble like he saw the figure, and it was his job to just chip it out.

When I hear a beat, I hear what the beat wants to be. I’ve had the song be so stubborn.

It wouldn’t go on no other beat. ‘No, I was born for that beat.’ If I had to choose one thing, it would be songs. But it’s also my longest process. The songs are coming from the ether, and they are persistent. They are adamant about being born and created in a particular way, and I’m just this vessel that has the hands and the paper to put that down and the voice to record it. But the songs are completely … almost possession.

EAGLE NEBULA’S SPACE GODDESS EP IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM EAGLE NEBULA. EAGLE NEBULA’S ISOTOPE TELEPORTATION RELEASES LATER THIS YEAR ON AFRIKAN SPACE PROGRAM. EAGLE NEBULA HOSTS THE ANANSI WRITERS WORKSHOP EVERY 4TH WEDNESDAY AT THE WORLD STAGE, 4344 DEGNAN BLVD., LEIMERT PARK. 7:30 PM / $5 DONATION. THEWORLDSTAGE. ORG. HER BOOK OF POETRY FUNKY TUBE TO NUBIA WILL BE RELEASED THIS SUMMER ON WORLD STAGE PRESS. VISIT EAGLE NEBULA AT IAMEAGLENEBULA.COM. 27

GIRLPOOL Interview by Daiana Feuer Illustration by Joe McGarry

Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad are two young things making music as Girlpool. People are touched by the perceptive words of these 18 & 19 year olds. They remind us that wisdom is ageless and comes in all shapes of experience, and honesty isn’t about maturity or being legally able to drink whiskey woefully at the bar. You can get it all on their new album, Before The World Was Big, a heart-on-yoursleeve exposition about coming of age and wondering at the world. They’re out there having laughs as they drive around the country playing music, meeting weird people at gas stations who wear hats shaped like cheese or scream about candy.

Harmony Tividad (bass/vocals): We were in Canada getting gasoline and this guy was trying to get candy and kept screaming different candies at the counter person.

‘SMARTIES!’ He kept screaming it loudly with so much aggression. We keep re-enacting that as we go.

Where are you right now?

HT: We’re in Wisconsin on the freeway.

Cleo Tucker (guitar/vocals): There’s a ton of cheese. There were ridiculous hats that were cheese shaped in the gas station. They had all different sizes and textures of cheese.

Is sightseeing restricted to gas stations?

CT: Pretty much. We try to explore as much as we can because we’re both super fascinated by new places. There’s not much time sometimes in one place. All these drives have been humblingly beautiful. Harmony and I have been in the car with our jaws dropped.

HT: We were driving through northwest Montana and that was really beautiful and cool. It was totally gorgeous until Montana plateaued out and was totally flat the rest of the way. And it’s a huge state, literally, so long.

But the first half was really pretty.

CT: We have Harmony’s acoustic classical guitar that we picked up when we were in L.A. and we’ve been playing music, which has been fun. We recorded a song using our phones in the car when we were driving through Idaho.

Also using this cool Casio that Harmony has.

You guys are very deep and philosophical when you speak. Do you ever just want to talk about farts and penises?

CT: The way that we sort of communicate is really the way we are feeling. It doesn’t wear us down because it’s the necessity of the way we communicate with each other and through our songs. We like to reflect and observe and that comes out a lot in interviews. The first few interviews we did were definitely a learning experience. It was like, oh, we’re not just on the phone with our friends talking about weird experiences that we’ve had? This actually gets written down and gets read by people we don’t know. We learned that we should probably watch what we say!

It’s one thing to be a genuine, and honest and vulnerable person, but another thing to get on a stage and expose that realness to others.

INTERVIEW

HT: I don’t know if I necessarily feel exposed.

I feel like being that way is what feels best when we are creating things that are honest to the core. I don’t need to hide myself. This is who we are and how we choose to create.

CT: I feel like Harmony and I have entered this period of our lives where we’re given this platform to create and expose our creations together and that by no means changes the intention between the two of us and the intensity with which we write and share with each other. We aren’t going to compromise anything. We’re focused on doing what feels good.

How was the transition from the DIY scene to being ‘professional musicians’?

CT: I don’t know if the change has fully hit me. Even though the shows we’re playing are significantly different from DIY spaces, the environment we create is based on the DIY experience and the intention is the same. The difference is however many eyes are upon us.

What we try to do is create an intimate space for us to share and relate and be heard and to keep the feeling present and the most real.

HT: The weight is the same because it’s the same between us. It’s what it is, and one kind of show experience isn’t necessarily greater or better than the other. Either one can be special.

One thing that’s cool about Girlpool is that you are a duo that in a way fuses into one voice. You are obviously two personalities but somehow blend into a singular force.

CT: It’s interesting the way that you phrase it because when we write together, Harmony and I, we sort of wrestle with each other’s thoughts or feelings and dissecting them and exploring them together and feel fulfillment within ourselves via this combination and partnership in exploration.

HT: We often talk about how our creations become their own entities that are separate from us and embody us in a way that’s very specific and particular and yet have distinct parts of our personalities projected into it.

CT: We sort of have the intention, when we’re writing, to stretch each other.

I feel like there’s got to be a lot of love in that. The dynamic between close friends, especially friends that create together, is a complex and magical partnership.

CT: I think it’s been special to exercise these practices of knowing when to move a certain way for each other. How do I explain this?

HT: You kind of adapt to each other’s space in a way that is very special and different when you create with people. There’s an element of understanding and knowing what resonates with the other person and yourself and what you contribute to the equation. And you’re so conscientious of each other’s space. We’re so hyper-aware of each other and care about each other deeply and feel very connected to each other’s personalities and the differences between us are what make the magic between us. We have such different ideas and can grapple with each of them in a way that’s special.

CT: Practicing being malleable with each other in the sense of being sensitive to each other and allowing yourself to be malleable and open to creating with another person in order to create that joint-ness.

Do you wish at all that you were in school or doing the normal thing?

CT: We’re both doing what we love which is making music and exploring. I’m enjoying this path.

HT: I’m glad I’m not in school. I’m not going to lie. I just feel like every experience feels in its right place right now.

CT: I think Harmony and I both feel we are on our purpose, which is a really powerful feeling. Imagining us doing something else isn’t right now, but could be in the future.

We’re liking the ‘right now.’ And that’s the most you can ask from life. It’s not all peaches and cream of course. We’re living and feeling everything but we are excited about it all.

Can you discuss what the L.A. music scene was like for you?

HT: L.A. was extremely special to both of us.

We both feel really grateful to have grown up in Los Angeles and gotten to experience and be inspired by so many people. It holds a special place in our heart and shaped our vision. We spent so much time going to shows. It was a huge part of our lives.

But you’ve officially moved away?

CT: For the time being we’re living in Philadelphia. We moved there four months ago to change things up and reveal a new chapter.

A more sweater- and jacket-oriented chapter of your life.

HT: Yeah, literally!

CT: It was just a cool change of pace.

The East Coast has a really different vibe.

Harmony and I both hold the concept of community close to our hearts and feel compelled to be part of a community. It’s an incredibly important and special part of being a person. We’ve done the best we can to explore Philadelphia so far. It is definitely a priority to get involved. We love it there and we’re excited about getting to experience the inspired people and creations coming out of there.

What’s integral to your existence? What do you want right now from the world?

HT: There isn’t really a formula but we both do value community. My ideal of achieving happiness is one of the most malleable things about me. I don’t know if I need anything more than I have. I feel blessed and grateful.

I need whatever is in front of me and to be aware that it’s there.

CT: Change is always happening and just creating is what makes me happy.

HT: Creating is the base emotion that doesn’t change. For me and for Cleo, to create is the thing that keeps us most satisfied in the long term.

Do you set a standard for your creative output? Do you have to make ‘a certain type’ of song?

CT: No, we really do believe in creating in a pure, organic way that has no rubric. We try to create an open space between us that is all feeling.

GIRLPOOL’S RECORD RELEASE SHOW FOR BEFORE THE WORLD WAS BIG WITH STEPHEN STEINBRINK AND MICHAEL VIDAL ON MON., JUNE 1, AT THE CENTER FOR THE ARTS EAGLE ROCK, 2225 COLORADO BLVD., EAGLE ROCK. 8 PM / $12.50 / ALL AGES. FYFPRESENTS. COM. GIRLPOOL’S BEFORE THE WORLD WAS BIG IS AVAILABLE ON TUE., JUNE 2, FROM WICHITA RECORDINGS. VISIT GIRLPOOL AT GIRLPOOLMUSIC.COM. 29

JOHN COOPER CLARKE Interview by David Cotner Illustration by Darryl Blood John Cooper Clarke has a cold. It’s the kind of thing that separates the strong from the snotnosed. Sinatra had a cold once. An entire industry hinged on his well-being. It happened in a time in which artistic relativism was almost nonexistent. The voice needed to be the voice—the trademark, the talisman of that industry—or there was nothing. Punk changed all that. Musicians stopped waiting around and hoping for the best. They took what they had at the time and cut it up to suit the tenor of that time. The choice was to either do that—or just croak. John Cooper Clarke—the Bard of Salford, the Doctor, the inspiration to Arctic Monkey Alex Turner; the boyfriend of Nico before her bicycle ride to oblivion—peripatetic punk poet who only recently visited Los Angeles to perform in live action after decades of absence, is touring now. He brings with him a voice that cuts through unnecessary atmosphere, caught between the deadpan and the Tin Pan, upbraiding those who would otherwise lay waste to your time. He brings you face-to-face with the inevitability of life with a laugh that’s as much a pillar of salt as it is a noise at the back of your throat, wielding his words in much the way sorcerers used to change the world with a simple flick of a wrist—an action which could be understandably mistaken for a motion of pen on paper. One of the most distinctive physical voices since William S. Burroughs—in croak and in content—he conducts this interview under the stress and duress of the sickness in his throat. John Cooper Clarke is nothing if not a trouper. At ease, disease.

So what’s a good sore throat remedy?

Gargling with port wine? I heard that from an opera singer. I quite like this voice—I’m thinking of hiring out a studio and doing a bunch of Louie Armstrong covers.

People are often asked about their first formative musical experience—first record, first concert, things like that. What was it like for you the first time you heard your own voice on a recording?

Oh, terrible! It was awful! Around 1962, I bought a tape recorder. My friends had records and they’d tape their records with my tape recorder, tape things off the radio. But when you first get a tape recorder, the first thing you do is bug the room, right? You don’t tell anybody. Then you play it back, hopefully with hilarious results. Now, until that point, I’d unashamedly walk around, singing. I thought I was a great singer. I was going to be bigger than Sinatra. And then when I played that tape back and I heard my speaking voice—well, it would take me another 25 years before I opened my mouth in song. I was so disappointed! I was listening to the playback and I thought, “Well, that’s his voice, and that’s his voice…so that must be my voice.” Oh, my God. I thought I had this rich baritone—but I had this nasal whine! That’s one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me. [laughs] What a disillusionment! Anyway, that was pre-puberty. After that, Nature took its course and I figured I could carry a tune.

How did you react hearing your voice after you’d matured?

I don’t know whether I’d got used to it, but at some point, I lost my inhibitions about singing again. Even now, I’ve gotta have a drink first. And I need to explain, right here, that I’m not a professional singer.

Are you a professional anything?

I’m a professional spieler. I’m a poet—anyone reading this interview might be forgiven for thinking that I’m a professional singer.

Nothing could be further from the truth. But I do enjoy singing. Speaking, though—you have the freedom to shut up.

What are your favorite words?

They’re usually 19th-century words of a medical nature like…

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… ‘dropsy’?

Sure, that’s a good one! ‘Neurasthenic,’ ‘mucilaginous’ …words like that. I take great pleasure in using medical and scientific terminology.

Words for critical conditions.

Yeah, yeah—that kind of thing.

What song is stuck in your head lately?

‘Return to Me’ by Dean Martin. The Italian title is ‘Ritorna-Me.’ You have to listen to his Greatest Hits. I had an old, worn-out copy and I just renewed it. You’re old when you’re replacing records you’ve already got! That’s an old-guy thing, isn’t it?

Sometimes it’s a lazy-guy thing.

I can tick both those boxes!

I’ve got three or four copies of Kind of Blue

by Miles Davis floating around in different parts of the collection. I don’t know where to find one that’s handy, so I just go buy another copy.

Panic buying. I do that. But you can get anything now.

People always talk about how CDs killed music, but I think it was actually the ‘repeat’ button on the CD player. It’s so easy to play a song until it’s just played out.

That’s a big problem we have over here [in England]: they use a lot of the songs that we love now in commercials—and I’m not against commercials, and they pay for the TV stuff or what-have-you—but it does put a cloud over a song that you’ve held dear for many years, doesn’t it?

You have very personal associations with a song, and now those associations are hooked into an advertisement, like a lamprey.

That’s it.

What do you believe in now that you’ve always believed in? What beliefs have been unshakable for you over time?

Oh, that’s a big question—I guess if you’re okay with people, most of the time people are okay with you. I can’t really think beyond that. The Ten Commandments! [laughs] Two tablets of stone. Can I count them as one item? After all, it’s the Ten Commandments, so it’s really one item, isn’t it. Yes, I still believe in the Ten Commandments. I can’t find an argument with any of them.

Not even in the semantics of it all? ‘Thou shalt not kill’ versus ‘Thou shalt not murder’ and all that?

They’re separate things, aren’t they? Well, they invite semantics—that’s the beauty of them: they’re rules for life, in all its complexity.

Anything that could happen in life is dealt with in the Ten Commandments. They inform our laws, even today. It’s the language of jurisprudence, isn’t it. Having said that!

Not everything that is a sin is a crime.

That’s a good thing, because if it was, it’d be a theocracy, wouldn’t it—and all that that entails. So it’s as good as it’s going to get, those Ten Commandments.

Do you notice how people—when they interact with you—use words?

Not always. Sometimes you just want some information quickly. In terms of style and vocabulary? I think I notice people’s conversational style more if they’re not actually talking to me—which means that I spend a lot of time listening in to conversations that I’m not necessarily invited to, or get involved with.

Has cadence changed, over time, in how people speak with one another?

Oh, yeah—definitely that, but also the inquisitive upswing at the end of each statement that occurs today, all over the world.

All over the English-speaking world, anyway.

That is markedly very strange, markedly different. I first heard it in Australia about ten years ago. I put it down to an Australian eccentricity [in speaking]—but somehow it caught on via California.

I understood that that was described as a feminine affectation—when there’s a question on the final word.

Yes, it sounds like a question—or that they wish something to be verified, almost as though you’re required to say something.

Actually, it’s a bold statement.

I’d heard once that the difference between men and women is that men have answers and women have questions.

Is it gender-related?

Maybe not that easily boiled down.

Do you think it sounds effeminate when men do it?

No, I think it’s a social thing. I think it’s a very social aspect—the inflection of the question at the end of the sentence means the speaker is looking for understanding and approval. I suspect I shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve noticed that as well.

I think it’s just a stylistic thing that we ain’t got no business knowing about! [laughs] What did you love most about Nico, and what did you learn from her?

I was already a big fan of hers—even before the Velvets. She became a star on this mod TV show, Ready Steady Go! and she put out a couple of records on the Immediate label— which was run by Andrew Loog Oldham, the Rolling Stones’ first manager. He put out records by the likes of Small Faces, P.P. Arnold, Chris Farlowe—some real good people—and also Nico, whose first record was a Gordon Lightfoot song called ‘I’m Not Sayin’.’ She was already seen as a kind of supermodel Euro-beatnik type. She could carry a tune in English with her surprisingly stentorian voice. Well, she had two voices.

As Warhol pointed out, when she joined the Velvets, she had this sweet voice and then the Götterdämmerung approach. I actually liked the sweet voice she started out with. So I was big fan of hers as a vocalist. It was a long time before she joined the Velvets and then it was automatically … you know how there’s some people you think you discovered? She was like that with me. I’d followed her trajectory through the New York boho art scene. So when she sort of moved in to my house— well, I knew her a bit before that; she moved into Manchester and I was living in London at the time—it conspired that she didn’t have anywhere to stay. She moved in with me in Brixton, in south London. Learned? I don’t think I learned anything from her. [laughs] I heard a few stories—but did meeting her make me a better person? Well, we never got in each other’s hair and things were cool—in the old-fashioned sense of the word cool.

Never a cross word.

VISIT JOHN COOPER CLARKE AT JOHNCOOPERCLARKE.COM. INTERVIEW

TODD RUNDGREN Interview by Jonathan Rado Illustration by Bob Kurthy

Todd Rundgren is the kind of musician who can do just about anything—a wizard just like one of his album titles explained, a technophile who seizes the chance to experiment as soon as the first pixel lights up and a songwriter with such fluency that he doesn’t so much work as effortlessly will music into being. And besides: who else has the history, vision and personality to provoke passion enough to pull off a Toddstock, a homemade festival celebration—in the truest sense of the word—of all things Todd? Rundgren is currently touring his newest album Global (with L.A. mainstay Dam-Funk playing keys in the live band) as well as enjoying the release of the fascinating Runddans project, an anything-goes-all-the-time album-length suite recorded with Norwegian producer Lindstrøm and Emil Nikolaisen of Serena-Maneesh. Here, Jonathan Rado of L.A.’s formidable Foxygen—erudite Rundgrenians for sure—talks to Todd about the collapse of the temporal barriers and the earthquake that told him to move out of L.A. I listen to your early records and there’s something so modern, so 2015 about it— like you predicted where music would go.

How does it feel to listen to music now and hear your influence reigning over a lot of it?

It feels good to survive, you know? It’s always good to feel like you’re part of something bigger. At a certain point, I felt I was outside of everything, separate from everything. Part of that is by design and part of it is me trying to fill a hole in the musical fabric rather than just repeat what somebody else is doing.

But music never stands still. It continues to evolve. I guess if you can survive long enough, whatever it is you do becomes interesting again. I’m kind of in that phase now. Enough musical generations have gone by, and the atmosphere in music now is very … I feel it’s palpably different. Everything that used to exist and everything that’s existing now that’s really brand new and coming into existence is all in the same place—it’s all on the internet.

You can’t say historically that everyone had unlimited access to everything that’s happening in music. Not only just the very old stuff—like I see video clips of musical acts from the ‘50s and I wonder why I never heard of them? Likely it was that they were really popular in the Philippines and not much anywhere else. We’re now in a generation of listeners and musicians who don’t see a temporal dividing line between music that might have been created years and years ago and music being created today. When you’re on YouTube™, it’s totally egalitarian. It’s all equally reachable, in a way. That’s finally sunk in to the audience—that music is not necessarily what you hear on terrestrial radio, not what necessarily gets recognized by the Grammys, that there’s just so much more to it. I’m just a beneficiary cuz I’ve been around long enough!

When you were making records like A Wizard, A True Star, did you feel you were INTERVIEW

doing things ahead of your time? Or like a man out of time—like ‘People aren’t ready for this yet’?

I don’t usually think of time, music-wise.

We’re still listening to music that was composed hundreds and hundreds of years ago. People will buy a concert ticket to go see an orchestra play music that’s 500 years old. Music—and a lot of art, I suppose, if it’s really art—transcends any sort of timeframe.

I wasn’t thinking, when I was making A Wizard, A True Star, ‘Oh, someday people will get this.’ I was thinking, ‘People will get this or they won’t get this … in whatever time frame they listen to this.’ They’ll get it or they won’t get it. I was just trying to be different from everything else that was happening.

And also try to represent more truly a certain kind of musical thought process—to try and grab the process before it produced what was a more standard industry-standard output, which would be a song—a song with a typical structure. Verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridgesolo-chorus-chorus-chorus. I thought, ‘You know, those are the kind of the arrangements you make cause that’s what expected.’ But when you’re writing a song, you don’t have the full structure usually mapped out in your head. It starts with a little melody line and maybe a lyric to go with it, and you essentially expound on that. Develop it. You may discover that what you thought was the verse was actually the chorus. Or you may discover you’ve got a song that in same senses has no chorus at all. A song like ‘I Saw The Light’ or ‘Hello It’s Me’ ironically have no choruses in them. They’re just big long verses and bridges!

And solos! When I was doing A Wizard, A True Star, I was thinking, ‘Get all that idea of verses and choruses out of your head, and just start writing music and figuring out how it all fit together.’ Sometimes it’ll dovetail well and sometimes it’ll be like you did it with a glue gun, just sticking stuff together that wouldn’t

naturally hang together. And just see what the effect is of all that! So the record was definitely a conscious experiment in disrupting the usual habits and ways of turning music into songs, and actively exploring other possibilities and doing it in a way that exposed a broader range of my musical sensibilities and influences. In other words, when I did Something / Anything, people started referring to me as the male Carole King. And I thought, ‘That’s just too cramped a box to be in.’ So I self-consciously started doing other kinds of music just to get out of that box.

I think people think a Carole King thing is just anything that uses a major 7 chord— that’s Carole King.

Carole King was a song craftsman essentially, and by the time I got to Something / Anything, I was at a point I could just whip these things out. I was using the same kind of forms and similar chord structures and lyrics that were always about the boy-girl relationship—a relationship I’d had in high school five years earlier than I’d completely gotten over, and I used it as lyrical fuel. I suddenly realized that’s a no-no. You’re singing about stuff that you don’t really care about.

Something / Anything is an amazing album to me. The first thing that struck me about it—that I fell in love with—was that you’re doing it all yourself and playing all the instruments. Why? A creative choice? An efficiency choice?

I was moving in that direction. My first two solo records I had at least a bass and drum player—the Sales brothers on a lot of it, and other people on some songs. It had a lot to do with the fact that I didn’t have a space that I could practice the drums in. The drums make a lot of noise! It wasn’t until I’d done several productions that I felt confident, cuz during a break in one of productions, I’d be in the studio and I could go and essentially mess around on the drums while everyone is on th

break. That was the way I learned how to play.

I didn’t have drums in my apartment and if I had, I would’ve been kicked out! I used the opportunity to get on the drums while I was in the studio and eventually develop the confidence that I could at least batter my way through my own songs. The only problem was trying to figure out what to do first. I at first tried to play piano parts to the songs and then do the drums afterward and that turned out to be impossible. I couldn’t follow my own piano playing. So essentially I learned how to sing the songs in my head while I played the drums and then put everything on afterward, which is logically the way to do it. But if you put a metronome on it, everything would be all over the place! It all smooths out in the end after you add all the other instruments.

It was a question of access, you know? Me getting enough access to the point where I thought I could play the drums as well, and the advantage of that—the continuing advantage—is you don’t have to teach anyone else the parts. You just think of the parts you want and you just play them.

You can hear that in the record. A few tracks of Something / Anything were recorded at your house. That’s written about but never elaborated on. Did you record a lot at your house? What were you doing?

There were three or four songs and they were particularly kind of odd songs. Odd songs that I was experimenting with at the time.

Like ‘Breathless,’ which was all instrumental and had a drum machine rather than regular drums. I did it in my house, so I couldn’t play the drums. Indeed, I don’t think I even had … I’m trying to figure out how I did my monitoring? I don’t quite remember, but I probably had some sort of little mixer.

Then there were songs like … I think I did ‘One More Day’ at home and ‘I Went To The Mirror.’ ‘I Went To The Mirror,’ I can’t remember whether I did the drums before or 35

after the rest of the recording, but I essentially married drums I’d done in the studio with piano and other instruments and voice I’d done in my house. It essentially became part of my routine. I’d record all day long, songs I’d already written in my head, and I’d come home at night and have a little something to eat and go to work recording again—this time with things that were being developed as I went along. That part of the recording actually became more the template for future recordings than the idea of me going to the studio and playing a drum part and layering all the instruments over top. As a matter of fact, I didn’t do much of that again until I got to A Wizard, A True Star, which was me playing all the instruments again.

You moved from L.A. to New York for A Wizard, A True Star— I only lived in L.A. for a year. I was living on the East Coast and thought I wanted to try living in L.A. I still had my floor-through in a brownstone in New York, and was I guess commuting to get Something / Anything completed. By the time I got to A Wizard, A True Star, I was firmly back in New York. I didn’t—in the long run—enjoy my time in L.A. as much as I’d thought I would. I got fed up with the fact you had to drive everywhere.

You couldn’t walk anywhere. Right near the end of the recording, there was a major earthquake in L.A.—as a matter of fact, the inside picture on Something / Anything of me with a microphone on a broomstick and the light coming from behind it, that was in the house I had rented in L.A. and was taken the night before the major earthquake happened. That was the first time I was ever in an earthquake and I thought, ‘This I don’t like. I’m not gonna put up with this.’ That was another reason I decided to move out of L.A. I had fun there, I met a lot of girls there, did a few productive things and met some musicians and got to see a lot of live music … but L.A. evolved as the years went by into a place where most everybody was not from L.A. Almost everybody you met in L.A. was coming to L.A. with a personal agenda. This evolved to the point where people … for instance, people who work in the movies, they call you up and say, ‘We need a song for this movie, for the credits or the opening … we tried to hire some people and it’s not working out. We need it right away, we’re in production, please help us right away cuz we really need it!’ So you’ll burn a weekend coming up with a demo for a song for their film and deliver it, and you won’t hear from them for three weeks. Then you’ll track them down and say, ‘Whatever happened to that?’ ‘Oh, we, uh, went with something else about two weeks ago.’ ‘Were you never gonna call me? You were gonna demand I help you out, and once you get what you want, you never even bother to acknowledge it?’ That’s kind of the way people think in L.A. and one of the reasons I don’t really enjoy myself when I’m there. I could go on! I moved back to New York, built the studio and that’s when the era of A Wizard, A True Star and the Todd record and all the aggressive experimentation started.

In the liner notes on Something / Anything, for ‘Little Red Lights’ you say it’s a ‘youknow-what for you-know-who.’ Is that about James Dean?

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No—it was actually a tribute to Jimi Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix had this totally different approach to guitar from anybody I’d seen before that. It was a magical soundcreating device as opposed to a guitar, in Jimi Hendrix’s hand, through the combination of treatments he did to the sound and his totally liberated way of playing the guitar. He gets all kinds of sounds out of the instrument that were imitative of other things—seabirds and sirens and engines revving, motorcycles, ‘Crosstown Traffic.’ I kinda copped it from him, that whole making-motorcycle-soundswith-your-guitar. It came in especially handy when the production of [Meatloaf’s] Bat Out Of Hell came around. The end part, where he kinda hops on his motorcycles and drives off and crashes … we were in the studio and I think [composer Jim] Steinman was asking, ‘Can we get a sample of a motorcycle?’ And he somehow dropped a sample of a motorcycle in there, like ‘Leader of the Pack’ or whatever.

I thought, ‘Why don’t we try this? It’ll be more seamlessly musical, since I’m playing guitar anyway. See how you like this—see if this reminds you of a motorcycle?’ So I did the Jimi Hendrix trick. You need a certain guitar equipped in a certain way—with a vibrato tailpiece, and you crush the tailpiece.

You push it down all the way. I was playing at the time a Fender Mustang, which is a shorter scale guitar—what they’d call a ‘student guitar.’ I played it for specific reasons, even though my fingers were a little bit too fat for it. It had the full 22 frets. A Stratocaster has 21 frets, which means it’s hard to choke up or pull two octaves on the E string. I preferred it cuz it had the extra fret. Due to the fact that it had the weird tailpiece on it, and due to the fact that it was a shorter scale guitar, when you push that tailpiece down all the way, the strings would go completely limp. They’d just hang. That’s how you get those rumbling low frequencies, as if you’d tuned the guitar down until the strings were just flopping all over the pickups. You’d eventually keep pulling up on that tailpiece until at the opposite end, the unique aspect of the tailpiece on the Mustang was that it could get you these incredibly high squealing notes as well. So that was me doing the Jimi Hendrix on the Fender Mustang.

Are you still always trying to search for new sounds?

It’s harder and harder to find what you’d call ‘new sounds.’ Since we’ve developed digital technology and digital samplers and that kind of thing, the world of sound has been sampled.

Maybe not necessarily always used in a musical context, but it’s pretty much out there and available. And the audience has become more liberal in terms of what kind of sound they’ve become accustomed to hearing. So the idea of finding a new sound like a particular noise or something like that … or a new use for a sound is kind of less challenging than it is trying to figure out how to put those sounds together in an interesting way that’s still musical. That happens all the time. Probably the most innovative sound experimentalist now is like Skrillex and his ilk. It’s not as important to write a song so much as it is to create a sonic atmosphere and effects and excitement and emotion within that atmosphere. I mean— what does ‘Bangarang’ mean? It doesn’t mean

anything. What it means is a giant hit record for one guy! But the problem is things change so fast that you mention Skrillex and you’re talking about an artist who’s probably peaked in a way already. When his record came out, it didn’t create hardly any kind of a stir. He’d already made his mark. I can see him moving on to doing film work, more than I can see him working in pop music, as it were. His career is still doing really well. But making those kind of records has certain limitations, put it that way. He’ll be really hot for a while, but they won’t last cuz they don’t have the kind of hooks people remember. If the content of your music is all really hyperbolic sound and little fragments of words here and there and little fragments of lyrics that may or may not make any particular sense, years from now people won’t have anything to hang on to cuz they can’t describe sound. People say, ‘Remember that song that …’ But unless you went with a lyric, it’s impossible to make the sound of the record with their mouth. They wanna say, ‘Did you ever hear that song that goes REEEEEEEEE-ERNNNNNNNOooowowoooo-wowowowo? You know?’ It’s not how people describe music. They’ll try and remember a melodic fragment with a memorable lyric. You’re gonna have to constantly produce new sound for your name to remain familiar to people. It’s just a bind in doing that kind of music. I imagine he’ll use those talents to either go into writing scores for movies, which I believe he’s already done, or two collaborate with other people and create more traditional song structures cuz that’s what people remember.

This new album with Lindstrøm is very aware of your career. It’s like a self-aware record. It’s modern and also a throwback than I think you’ve ever made. What did it feel like to have these young dudes know your sound so well? And to put this together so it’s like four of your records playing at once?

The internet plays a pivotal role in these kind of things. As I mentioned before, it flattens everything out. You can find everything.

It’s all there somewhere. Modern musicians … you get jaded with the music of your contemporaries. There’s always musicians who wanna do something different and personal and unique and it’s hard to do it in a world where everyone’s trying to find a formula for success—where all the artists around you seem to be baking the same thing. The internet enables you to do research and find music that appeals to you but may not co-exist in your particular timeframe. It may be something from the past. That happens to me all the time. In the mid-90s, I got approached to do a record that was essentially covers of my old songs as part of a series Angel Records was doing. They got I think James Taylor to do it … as it turned out, most artists were just doing acoustic versions of their old songs that had more elaborate arrangements. Just really simplifying them. But when they came to me, I’d been spending a lot of time in Japan where they were way ahead of the game in rereleasing old records on CD. I started finding all this music I thought had disappeared after the 50s and 60s—in particular a lot of lounge music and bossa nova. I suddenly realized I

really enjoyed listening to bossa nova. So I said, ‘OK, I’m gonna make a bossa nova record.’

That’s kind of the same thing that happened with this Lindstrøm thing. You get it into your head that everybody’s making the same kind of record—so I’m gonna find some kind of music that is more fun or out of the ordinary and try and build something on that. That’s my only explanation for it! I can’t really answer for everybody who has suddenly discovered music from the past and the reason why they respond to it. But Lindstrøm asked me to do a remix before I ever knew who Lindstrøm is.

The EDM scene in Europe is way healthier than it is the US. I was kind of flattered to have this opportunity to work with a younger artist, and I did a remix of a song called ‘Quiet Place To Live.’ I was over in Oslo to speak at a music conference and Lindstrøm was in the studio working on this new project with Emil Nokolaisen. We thought wouldn’t it be interesting if I dropped by and maybe made a few contributions to this project? Which I did over the course of two days—came in, did a little singing, little guitar playing, and on the second session, I had them do some playing and singing of what I thought would work. And then we decided that we would all three collaborate on this project cuz neither of those guys did a lot of singing—they weren’t comfortable doing a lot of singing—and the project might need some voice on it. So we collaborated remotely for about three years and finally wrapped it up and got it released [last month].

If you could go to one artist’s ToddStock, who would it be?

Who would I like to hang out with? I always enjoyed Elvis Costello and his approach to songwriting and the way he … he’s never gone electronic as far as I know, but he likes to incorporate various styles. Sometimes he’ll do a country thing or an American roots music thing or something with a string quartet, and then he’ll put the Attractions back together and do an old-fashioned Elvis Costello record.

So I think going to Elvis Costello camp would be a lot of fun cuz there’s so many things you could talk about, that you could ask him questions about how these things came about … you might get to meet Diana Krall in the process, too!

It takes a certain type of artist to have a three-day festival in their honor. It has to be interesting.

There have to be stories to tell—it may be more interesting to go to a Motorhead band camp, cuz I imagine there are a lot of nonmusical tales that go on there!

GOLDENVOICE PRESENTS TODD RUNDGREN ON WED., JUNE 3, AND THURS., JUNE 4, AT THE ROXY, 9009 W. SUNSET BLVD., WEST HOLLYWOOD. 7 PM / $45 / ALL AGES. THEROXY. COM. TODD RUNDGREN’S GLOBAL IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM ESOTERIC ANTENNA. TODD RUNDGREN’S RUNDDANS WITH LINDSTRØM AND EMIL NIKOLAISEN IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND. VISIT TODD RUNDGREN AT TR-I. COM. VISIT FOXYGEN AT TWITTER. COM/FOXYGENTHEBAND. INTERVIEW

DRUG CABIN Interview by Chris Ziegler Photography by Debi Del Grande Poster by Ward Robinson and Jun Ohnuki

Drug Cabin have their own special California sound, matching the clean and pristine guitar—and pedal steel, too!—of the “Wasn’t Born To Follow” Byrds to the subtle wit and less-is-more rhythm of someone like Ned Doheny. Really, that’s a road trip from the high desert to the beaches, and that’s the way to get into Drug Cabin, who put heavy ideas in light-as-air songs and sometimes come up with lyrics just to make each other laugh. Founder Nathan Thelen met Marcus Congleton after an informal invite to play a little guitar together and discovered him to be just the partner he needed; as Drug Cabin, they would be explosively prolific enough to put out two full albums earlier this year, with another taking form right now. They meet us on the side of a hill (in what must be one of Echo Park’s most secret neighborhoods) to talk about what they need, what they want and what the doctor tells you when you have to fake a seizure to get emergency brain surgery.

What’s the least infrastructure that’s ever been available at one of your shows? How little do you need to perform?

Nathan Thelen (vocals / guitar): We run the gamut!

Marcus Congleton (vocals / guitar): We went to play this house party that didn’t have a PA system. We got on stage and realized they had mics but no PA. Just mics laying on the ground?

NT: Like little Bob Barker microphones!

MC: We eventually got it together and plugged into some amps.

NT: ‘You guys didn’t bring your own PA?’ MC: And they had backstage passes. For a house party. They made laminates. We didn’t get any. And to take it further, they passed the donation bucket around and didn’t give any of it to us. And we lost a guitar at that show.

We left some infrastructure there.

NT: And I had the flu, too!

MC: But it came out pretty well. The mics going through the guitar amps sounded cool.

Has more ever gone wrong at once for you?

NT: People don’t show up. But if you go with the basic expectation of making it work with whoever is there and whatever instruments they have, you can get the point across.

MC: That’s how the Chuck Berry band played!

No setlist! Just show up and follow him—go!

NT: That’s the Holy Grail.

And you can refuse to play til you get your briefcase of cash.

MC: That’s the dream.

NT: A crocodile skin one.

MC: Or titanium.

NT: Like Jason Stratham.

MC: Or just something with a lock.

INTERVIEW

You have songs called ‘Baywatch,’ ‘California,’ ‘Hollywood,’ ‘Beverly Glen’— it’s very explicitly California. But how do you both actually experience California?

For me, I realized most of the time I spend where I actually feel I’m in California involves being in the car. When you write about California, what are you actually writing about?

MC: For the song ‘California,’ it’s just the word. I was talking to my girlfriend about how many songs use the word ‘California,’ and wondering why? Maybe it’s just nice to say.

NT: The other ones are just adjacent details for words. I’m crazy about California, though. It’s like how John Denver sings about Colorado or West Virginia. Like ‘what’s around you?’ Sometimes I feel that the most important thing about writing something is to relax enough to notice what’s around me.

Like the song ‘Handsome’ is vaguely lyrically about this time I was at Hanson Dam in Sun Valley. It got morphed into ‘handsome.’ And while I was swimming in the dam, some kid dooked in it, and they had to clear the pool. So off the loudspeaker you hear like the teenagers working there like, ‘PUMP THE CHLORINE!’ It was a humongous poo.

How did you get from a kid shitting at a dam to the actual song? Is that the line, ‘I’m asking for a second chance / even though it’s not in your careful hands’?

NT: I’m not sure there’s a literal line! That was just the day I went to Hanson Dam. And also the day I wrote that song. That’s how I write—taking an experience and breaking it down to the abstract. It’s like if you’re making a secret message for somebody, even if they might not get it.

What makes you work that way instead of just writing more directly? Like the ‘Reagan sucks’ school of songwriting?

NT: I’ve never had any success writing that way. I don’t think I’m that out there, but I’ve never been able to be like, ‘OK, I need to work on this topic.’ What works for me is just writing a song really quickly, trying to tap into unconscious thoughts and not worry if they make any sense. Usually the first thing that comes into your mind is the thing that works with the rhythm and the melody. I try and get it done in one sitting, even if it’s like, ‘Oh shit, I got ten minutes and I gotta go to work!’ And if it sucks, it sucks, and if it’s good, it’s good. It’s probably truest to the way my brain works.

Are you songs autobiographical? Short stories? Reportage? Impressions?

MC: It’s different depending on the song.

They go more toward comedy when we’re doing co-writes.

NT: If we’re writing together, we’re having more fun with wordplay.

MC: We’ll choose the funniest line of all the options. We like to make it so there’s open possibilities to it, too. Lyrics that could have different meanings.

NT: And if someone wanted to think it was funny, they could get a kick out of it.

What’s a word you could say but never sing because it’d be too awkward?

NT: ‘Awkward.’ That’s a weird word.

MC: That’d be hard. The ‘W’ and the ‘K.’ NT: Probably country music songs say that.

In Morongo Valley, I went line-dancing last night. They have it every Sunday. It’s like four older ladies, maybe one really hot farmer girl and like a DJ. They do a mix, where every other song is hip-hop and then country. I

didn’t know there was such a connection— but they’ve got the same beat, the same sort of things going on. And they say ‘awkward.’ Plus they show the videos at the same time, and the videos are all partying on the beach with jetskis either way. Everyone sings along—like an old lady singing, ‘Back dat ass up!’ Both at the same time.

If you could have one person in your record collection magically appear and edit your lyrics, who would it be? Who would you trust enough to mess with your work?

MC: I like to think of the farthest craziest parameters of writing lyrics. For me, that’s Queen, Slayer and Kraftwerk. The coolest, craziest most creative things you can do. I’d be comfortable with them editing anything.

[What they do] feels like unlimited creativity.

The harmonies Queen do, the crazy-ass things Slayer say right off the bat and Kraftwerk’s perfect melodies and rhythms and the way they put songs together—and they’re all perfect pop bands. No matter what you like, those three bands have amazing shit going on. I like to think about them all the time.

We have some new songs we’re working on with crazy huge harmonies that we’re calling ‘Queen harmonies.’ Bee-Gees, kind of, too.

Those are also bands that were really about like … craft. Not just happy accidents.

MC: But we rely on that, too. It takes some of both to get good ones. We’re doing it now, writing songs and combing through old ones to make a new roster. Nathan’s written some amazing ones. It’s songwriting and details but also spontaneity and personality but not overdoing it, if you can help it. There’s a thin line. We gotta have the songs really well sketched-out so we’re not paying for studio time trying to think of lyrics or how chord 41

parts go, but we also wanna allow something spontaneous to happen cuz sometime that’s the best stuff.

Are you able to apply this finely honed sense of balance elsewhere in your life?

MC: No! Not at all. That’s why I like music, you know? It has its own rules and logic you can bend and break and appreciate.

Is ‘Jesus’ your most Slayer-like lyric?

MC: Yeah, but they don’t party to Jesus.

I’d say our satanic references are way more underplayed.

NT: Or yet to come!

Nathan, you’ve got a spot out in the desert you can visit when you want to get out of L.A. How would these albums be different if you couldn’t switch environments like that?

NT: Whenever I travel, I always take photos.

I’m more curious about my surroundings. At home, I’m in a different mode. I rarely want to take photos! Being at home in L.A. is a lot of work, logistical stuff …

Like you don’t need to remember any of that? The routine deadens you?

MC: That happens to me. And is happening to me!

That’s a confusing part of being creative. To do the work, sometimes you need to not do the work.

NT: I think about that all the time. I think how good it feels to quit things. It’s the best feeling. Every time I quit something taking over my life and I finally feel like I’m not gonna do it any more, I walk out and the birds are chirping and it’s a huge relief! I feel great! Like—why did I waste so much time?

What was your first best quit?

NT: Easy. I was raised Catholic and was an altar boy for years, going to church ten times a week and I finally had to become confirmed at a Catholic—I was like, ‘Ah, this is so much fucking bullshit and I hate this. So fuck it—I quit.’ I quit altogether. And that was a huge relief. Before I had all this … Catholic guilt!

And fear of my mom being upset, and she was [but] it was fine. Living in somebody else’s idea of how you should think is much worse than just disappointing people.

You’ve both come from other bands with complicated histories. When you got together, what kind of things did you not want to make a part of Drug Cabin? What were your ideas for leaving things out?

NT: When we got together, we already had enough experience with what didn’t feel good.

Stuff that wasn’t fun, that wasn’t inspiring— there’s so much bullshit. Like I really didn’t like this aspect or that aspect of playing with people—I couldn’t be in a band where everyone is arguing and takes themselves seriously. It drives me bananas. I always wanted to be in a band capable of doing all the songs in any situation and any arrangement musically, and not be super-dependent on the details. I’ve never been in that band before. It’s been like, ‘I don’t have the sampler, so I can’t play that song.’ I wanted to simplify it! It’s more about the simple songs you can do.

MC: And that don’t depend on an instrument or pedal to make a song work. So if you don’t have a spare battery, you have to change the set list. Those songs aren’t even worth it a lot of the time.

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Like we touched on before, though—having all those effects going can sometimes offer some security. When you’re out there with just guitar and voice, you can’t hide. There’s no protection.

MC: We have the protection in numbers of people. There’s six of us. We have this great keyboard player, our pedal-steel player … it’s not the pedals or samplers, but we do have a security blanket with just … music. That’s what makes it fun live, too—the choices they make and the way they play.

NT: The extra details aren’t the most important thing. They can be, and I know bands that sound so good and they have like a light show going on and that adds a lot for people. But for us, it wouldn’t work. I’m not trying to fool anybody. I guess I’ve humiliated myself on stage before. It totally sucks but it makes me know what I’m doing better.

How do musicians fool people?

NT: It’s classic case of polishing a turd. It’s all about the song, you know? I don’t know if I’ve accomplished it as a musical goal yet, but I like the idea of writing music that other people could play. I’ve been in bands before and it’s not something someone could pick up a guitar and easily do like a rendition of it. Or piano or whatever. So I like it more about the song, and cutting out all the extra stuff—having a structure and skeleton simple enough to be easily reproduced.

So not just accessible to listen to, but accessible to reproduce as well? Did you learn to play like that?

NT: I didn’t learn how to play like that at all. I was in bands and writing parts. But in the last six or so years I started learning other people’s songs and it was really enjoyable. Some of them are too complicated—for me—not that anybody else couldn’t do it! But for me it’s nice to play along with them. It’s easy to be in our band and have a rotating cast of characters.

I’ve been in bands where it’s like, ‘You play this part three times, and this four times,’ and I’ve never ever done that in our band. It’s like, ‘The verse is in E.’ It’s loose and simple enough that that’s enough for anyone to play along.

I like that. Micromanaging doesn’t work for any part of my life. If that was in the music, it’d make it tedious.

Where do you never overlap as writers?

What’s something Nathan does that Marcus never touches?

MC: I don’t think there’s anything I wouldn’t use in Drug Cabin that I really like—I wouldn’t want to play it anywhere else. I don’t think it would do us any good to set any kind of limits. I don’t know why anyone would do that. Why even be making art, if you’re trying to make it a certain way?

Sometimes people set limits for security, so they know they’re in a place they’re safe.

And sometimes it’s a challenge—how much can be done with how little?

MC: That can work for some people. We made two albums on 8-track tape, and that limit was good for us. We didn’t spend a lot of time trying to overdub. We had to know all the parts and commit to what we were playing. Having that limit helped us focus.

The studio you recorded at is Gaucho Electronics—home of Bleached, No Age, Hunx and his Punx, Feels … Drug Cabin

is possibly the most understated band to come out of there. What happens when you play a studio against type?

NT: I thought it played into type. It was stripped-down and bare, and that’s how we approach stuff too. The song is what it is, with the parts all written and not a lot of extra overdub stuff or a lot of extra engineering.

We’re not a perfectionist sort of band. We let the songs play themselves, and that lent itself really well to this studio, cuz there’s nothing else to do there! And he’s like that, too. Back to basics. Which is exactly what we wanted out of recording.

MC: We were recording some songs with ProTools and layering them and we didn’t like how they came out. Then when we needed to go into the studio, I had a medical emergency.

Is this going to explain that interview you did where the person is like, ‘So how are you?’ and you say, ‘I’m in surgery for a brain tumor,’ and the interview just moves on with no further acknowledgement? I was like, this is either a fearlessly morbid joke or an email interview.

MC: I was typing that interview from the hospital radiology unit. I was going to send a picture with the IV coming out of me. But that’d be so dark. I didn’t do it.

NT: But it’d be honest. That’s what I would do.

MC: So I have a brain tumor, and I got diagnosed in September 2013. I had headaches, and I didn’t think they could be tumor-related. Then I had a seizure and I went to the hospital and they scanned me and said I had a tumor. I didn’t have insurance and I woke up and I didn’t know what happened, and they were like, ‘You have a lesion or a tumor on your brain and we recommend immediate surgery. If you don’t have at least $100,000 in insurance you need to get out of here right now and go to [County Hospital].’

And it was a two-day wait at the county ER, so the doctor told me to go and pretend to have a seizure. He said, ‘You look like an actor,’ and he told me exactly how to do it.

I didn’t know I’d had a seizure—I didn’t even know what was going on. So I didn’t do that.

I called some people and went to County for treatment and I had the surgery but I still have the tumor. I do have medication for it. This is the backdrop for doing the record. I had the surgery coming up and we felt like we had to do it fast, and Gaucho was pretty much the only thing we tried and it worked. So we went back and did the other album a month later.

From February to April.

Were you ever like, ‘You know, though … I really do look like an actor!’

MC: No. How did this confrontation with death and the fucked up health care system affect your songwriting?

MC: That stuff was really terrifying, and it still is. But it really helped me put songs together cuz I had all these pieces and little things I’d been working on for the past few years, and when this all happened to me, I had to stop drinking, stop doing a lot of things I was doing … and even thought it was horrible in a lot of ways, I wanted to focus on music and it became a lot easier for me to do that. Even

though these things were going on, I wanted to play music more and have fun with it. It kind of unclogged the creativity for me. It made it easier to focus on what I wanted to do and do the songs how I wanted them to be.

It’s like if someone told you the world was gonna end in a week—would you spend that time making a record?

MC: That’s just what happened. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I still have the tumor. I can’t get it removed. Even though I’m healthy and stable now, that’s how it felt at the time. And still a little of what it feels like— that’s the equation for me now, permanently.

Nathan, did you bring Marcus in because things he did do, or something he didn’t do?

NT: Both and neither. When we first started, it was like, ‘Hey, wanna come over and play?’

We didn’t have a purpose at first. Then ‘Let’s go try and play shows, just acoustic.’ We did a bunch of shows like that, and then, ‘Let’s get a band together.’ We kept the name because it was the easiest thing to do.

MC: It’s just a club of whoever can do it— whoever wants to do it.

And it’s a different live band now, isn’t it?

MC: Different from the record except Frankie [Palmer, pedal steel.] I know him from high school in Eugene, Oregon. We played in a band and he started playing pedal steel a few years ago. We played in Venice at the Del Monte and that was Frankie’s first time doing a show with us, and that club has a really great sound system. It was a new level of awesome. We’d done shows as just a fourpiece and having pedal steel kicked it to a new dimension. We just wanted him to play on everything!

NT: When I listen to the records now, I almost always listen to the pedal steel.

MC: We don’t really play lead guitar. It’s 90% clean rhythm guitar, and Frankie does everything a lead guitar might be doing. All the sliding Pink Floyd Grateful Dead stuff— he can do all of that.

You seem to both have a lot of nuanced perspective on small-group relationships— if we took away your guitars, where would you fit best in society?

MC: Music is not a business anymore, so a lot of musicians are asking, ‘What do I do now? Where do I fit?’ There’s lots of jokes about unemployed musicians. Teaching is OK but I don’t really love it. I’d rather play music whether or not anyone pays for it.

That’s one of the philosophies of Drug Cabin.

We’re just guys who wanna play whether or not it’s gonna do something for us or make a buck—it’s for ourselves and whoever’s paying attention, and that makes it fun.

So maybe if society collapses, you could be wandering hobo troubadours—going from encampment to encampment singing it like it is?

MC: Nathan’s there, man! He’s got a place in the desert—a compound. He’s ready. I’m not sure if I am. I gotta get some canned food and a shotgun.

DRUG CABIN’S YARD WORK AND WIGGLE ROOM ARE AVAILABLE NOW FROM 401K MUSIC. VISIT DRUG CABIN AT DRUGCABIN.COM. INTERVIEW

OLIVER JONES by WARD ROBINSON

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WHERE TO FIND L.A. RECORD

CRAFT/WORKS 70

THE CUT-RATE Curated by Ward Robinson and Frankie Alvaro

71 COMICS

Curated by Tom Child

ALBUMS

72 LIVE PHOTOS

Edited by Debi Del Grande

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ALBUM REVIEWS

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gaslamp killer experience Kristina Benson

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ONE REPORTER’S OPINION Chris Ziegler

DEAL: MY THREE DECADES WITH THE GRATEFUL DEAD Kristina Benson

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THE interpreter: The Southern Soul Spinners Curated by Chris Ziegler

A WAILING OF A TOWN: AN ORAL HISTORY OF EARLY SAN PEDRO PUNK Chris Ziegler

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cherie currie Kristina Benson

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BOOKS

WAYBACK MACHINE Ron Garmon

THE HOLLOWAY FILES ARTHUR LEE (L.A., 1971) DAVID BOWIE (LONDON, 1972)

FILM AMAZING NINA SIMONE 80 THE Rin Kelly DECLINE OF 84 THE WESTERN CIVILIZATION Chris Ziegler

ALBUM REVIEWS

ALABAMA SHAKES

AHNNU

Perception Leaving Records Leeland Jackson is fearless. The Virgina native relocated to Los Angeles a few years ago and has been quietly creating sublime art on various fronts. As a visual artist he creates pieces that feel warm and ancient. His footwork tunes as Cakedog carefully tread the line between homage and innovation while being certified bangers.

But it’s his work as Ahnnu, sound scientist from another realm, that orbits the furthest. Perception is his second cassette release with Leaving Records. Minimal and ambient with very little traditional structure, you’ll easily wander into different feelings and sensations on this trip. The taste of metal, the meditation in a slow drip of water, I love how repeated listens create whole scenes for me within songs. Next week I might be transported to the grey-blue swamp land in the new Mad Max flick. Point being: Ahnnu’s latest audio canvas is carefully arranged with enough room to allow you to step inside and find your own place within it.

—sweeney kovar

Sound & Color ATO Records

All it takes is a single dumb New York Times story depicting L.A. as a cheap rent paradise for Angelenos to feel persecution’s cruel lash but in truth, ol’ Dixie is the most abused region in North America and that’s how it always was. The late Confederacy’s mind-bending contradictions play themselves out in regional culture generally and not least in Southern rock music, by which I certainly don’t mean the boring half-assed redneck cosplay that is generic “Southern rock.” That commercial bullshit is getting another weary revival as bro-country heehaw acts like Florida Georgia Line but that’s nothing compared to the noise Alabama Shakes is making these days. Mainstream reporters are fetched by the scrappy story of four weird kids from a tiny town in ole Bamy but what convinces are Brittany Howard’s eloquent, nerveshredding vocals and the band’s obvious mission to redeem rock’s once-radical idioms and promise.

This sophomore collection shows the band excelling at the demand-

ALBUM REVIEW SUBMISSIONS

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

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

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ing business of crafting a complete momentum-driven whole that can spin off components as singles, a trick many classic rock bands never managed their entire careers. Phantom traces of ‘70s Britrock surface here and there; clever ransackings of conceits European sophistos expropriated from Southern folks in the first place but Howard’s vocals dissolve even that context. Donovan would break his tonsils on the title track alone and Robert Plant has nothing but plagiarism to teach her. The lyrics are direct and personal, communicating experience with immense force and integrity with a minimum of posturing and applesauce. The finale, “Over My Head,” is about Miss Brittany’s covert meditation on stardom and it sounds like she may actually survive it. Rejoice.

—Ron Garmon

the Beatles and their “yeah, yeah, yeahs”, and no one should besmirch Best Coast and their sugar-coated heartbreak. Their first album, Crazy For You, with its serious lo-fi action and teenage-diary lyrics (complete with an obsessive love of cats, weed and boyfriends) may be beloved for its stripped-down sound, but California Nights is like a real adult now, and ready for some stadium rocksized love. Basically, Best Coast are the contemporary version of Cheap Trick, a primed for mass consumption and adoration. And really, what’s the fault in having or wanting that? “Feeling Ok,” which opens the album, has Cosentino earnestly singing, “I know it’s love that’s got me feeling OK,” so it’s no surprise then that every song here wants, needs, loves, and has the power to shimmer and dazzle. And with their soaring harmonies and stacked layers of Wall of Sound-esque guitars, they’re sing-a-long catchy, as well.

Maybe just give California Nights a hug and embrace it for what it is: the perfect soundtrack for your endless summer nights.

—Kat Jetson

CODY CRUMP

BEST COAST

Death EP self-released

California Nights Harvest

So hey, look “important” music lovers, this is Best Coast—don’t go getting yourself into a tizzy because the lyrics are simple, and the music is poppy. It’s like being mad at a chocolate chip cookie for being sweet. The real issue here is that you’re probably a drag at parties and don’t like fun. (Or apparently cookies.) Besides, if Best Coast sat down and wrote a catchy album about the injustices of the world, they’d be called Bad Religion, and that real estate has already been bought and that name has already been taken. Maybe cut Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno a little slack because California Nights, the duo’s third full-length album, is far too good to be dismissed based on the depth of its lyrical content. Or lack thereof, depending on which side of the Best Coast love fence you’re sitting. I mean, no one besmirched

EP include catchy, unforgettable hooks (I dare you to not spend the whole day singing the chorus from listen to ‘Will Ya Willyam’ and not spend the whole day singing it), and unforgettable lyrics (particularly in Sky Ferreira, wherein the narrator ‘answered an ad to drive a man in a wheelchair to have sex with a prostitute’ in order to ‘make money in 2008.’ The listener is left with the impression that this band can and will definitely do something rad in the near future, as well as the knowledge that what they are doing now ain’t half bad either! Featuring strong precise drumming, creative percussion (including but not limited to boxes of candy) and pointed guitar work, this is a band on out because they will be on their way to something great!

—Daniel Sweetland

BLOODY DEATH SKULL

Space Age Sock Hop EP self-released Following the surf pop sound of successful female fronted SoCal bands of late, Bloody Death Skull [full disclosure: with L.A. RECORD’s Daiana Feuer on vocals—ed.] has completed a great little threeround bout with the genre that surpasses the typical overused beats and chord progressions that have come to characterise this sound and progressions and giving us something new (and clearly more punk-influenced, edgy, and angry than anything heard from Best Coast or their contemporaries). The short and sweet three songs on the

Cody Crump has successfully laid his pop-acoustic roots to rest with the May 5 release of a new EP, ironically titled Death. The 5-track synth-heavy, indie rock anthem is undoubtedly Crump’s darkest collections of material ever released, and a far cry from the likes of “Good Luck,” and his pop-acoustic past. Haunting lyrics, and subtle infusions of condemning sarcasm considered, Death is what would happen if The Killers and Nine Inch Nails had a troubled lovechild.

With its deeper themes and doleful melodies, it is evident Crump is diving headfirst into heavier musical and emotional territory, but no matter, tracks like “1989” and first single “Just Another Day,” keep the electro-vibes high, sufficiently delivering audiences from a potential case of incurable melancholia.

Crump’s fascination and fear of the departure from the natural world ALBUM REVIEWS

is flawlessly communicated, and though he himself would admit that Death is indeed dark, Crump seamlessly blends bleak uncertainties with renewed hopefulness in a way that is almost uplifting: think less dismal funeral, more sanguine celebration of life. With all things folk now dearly departed, here lies an impressive electro-rock work of an artist matured, perhaps providing proof that Cody Crump is anything but dead. ­—Audra Heinrichs

EAGLE NEBULA Space Goddess EP 2 22 PM Music

When I say that Eagle Nebula’s Space Goddess EP is the type of record that if it were released 30 years ago, may have perhaps sat in a few record bins undiscovered for a while, aging like wine, I don’t mean to be dismissive.

I’m speaking to a sense of creativity earnest enough to feel like a personal mixtape. This could almost have been a tape from 1985, borrowing from Rammellzee and Roxanne Shante through a West Coast lens.

The Inglewood MC finds a like mind in P.U.D.G.E.’s production, a steady boom-bap coloured in an electronic wash. Joints like the other-worldly “The Nebulizer” and the tough-as-nails “Gangsta Like Harriet Tubman” are the obvious lighting rods of attention on the EP but even the slow burning interludes burrow into your ears. Pop in the tape, and let the light baptize ya!

—sweeney kovar

Earl Sweatshirt’s sophomore album I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside… sounds like a Xanax hangover. Dark, jarring, jerky and aggressive, it is essentially a more succinct and affecting articulation of the feeling he seemed to be shooting for on his first LP Doris.

Entirely self-produced (you might not know the young man has beats), it’s an unsettling ride. He has a singular handle on his craft.

Various moments of the album are a clinic on penmanship as well as production. Earl finds the appropriate tone and voice for every moment. It’s a short ride. You may feel overwhelmed or perplexed after the first go round but you’ll probably be fishing for a quarter to give it another go. I can’t help but think of this album in conversation with Kendrick’s. While K. Dot gives us a cinematic narrative with a moral core and purpose in reaction to the moment, Earl’s work is an escape into self-loathing. Extremely personal, everything from the vocal performance to the production, sequencing and guests create a bizarre house of mirrors, each song contorting and morphing into something in some way misshapen. The result can be read as very dope rap music that is also a personal/political response to the young Black American experience. ­—sweeney kovar

IDLSIDGO Tan Cressida ALBUM REVIEWS

song ends, the next track picks up the pace and keeps the train running, but that first track sticks with you till the very end. Quite frankly though, every song on the entire album can do that to you. There is a self-assured quality to this recording and the musicianship that this band displays, easily fooling you into thinking they have been at it for much longer than they have.

Another great track on the album is the ballad “Nothing Baby” that has a very Jesus and Mary Chain “Just Like Honey”-quality to it. The song is more like an ode to those great overly saturated dreamy love songs rather than a direct reference. While the previously mentioned songs have a more laid-back tone to them, many of the songs have a faster, more upbeat kick that is just as, if not more, enjoyable to listen to. The single “Turn It Off” is a highlight, with its infectiously simple guitar verse and steady drums laying the groundwork for the raspy vocals and the crazy surf-inspired guitar bridge that really hits. Overall one of the best albums to come out so far this year.

—Zachary Jensen

tiful rendition of the Gaylads song “Let’s Fall in Love,” Basil Daley & the Conquerors’ “Nice Like Rice,” Roy Panton’s “Endless Memory” as well as a few more. These tracks serve to highlight Jackie’s ability to re-envision some of the hits. Not purely as an album of covers, she also performs three originals, one of the best of which is “I Thought You Should Know”. The song has a classic sound, a catchy melody and a hook with a backing vocals that hit you like a ton of bricks. The only caveat to Introducing Jackie... is the fact that her singing at this point seems to be heavily influenced by early Gwen Stefani. Not that it does not sound beautiful—it just has room to grow into a sound that’s more her own, and the there is no doubt that Jackie will go far.

—Zachary Jensen

KNXWLEDGE HUD.DREEMS Stones Throw

FROTH

Bleak Burger Records

THE ECHO AND THE SOUND Buffalo Mouth EP self-released

EARL SWEATSHIRT

anthem “Who Says” to the guitarjangling “Virginia Law” and the pissed-off punk rock pile driver “Louder Now,” with its opening scream and fervent refrain of “Fuck you!” To keep things interesting, guitarist/vocalist Brian Rich and drummer Douglas Jewell toss in numbers like the slow-strollin’ organ-underscored “Alice,” which features half-spoken vocals and gentle, understated drumming with a twist of European folk balladry. Another highlight is the evocative, moody “Under the Sun,” which showcases Rich grumbling his vocals in a distinctly gothic delivery, and emphasizes guitar work that sparkles like desert sand under a glaring sun.

“Buffalo Mouth” winds down with the slow and gloomy “One Last Midnight,” a dirgelike trip through the underbelly of blues-rock, and then kicks things up a notch with the finale, “Black & Gold,” a twisted marriage of blues and rockabilly—with a shouted refrain and an ever-escalating tempo that takes the album out with just the right amount of sizzle and kick.

—Jason Gelt

Crash and bash rock ‘n’ roll duos who mine the fertile territory of punk, blues and folk are in no short supply these days, the most popular, of course, being indie crossover darlings the Black Keys. But there’s always room for more two-piece talent. After all, the rock universe loves a spare approach and a strippeddown sound. Buffalo Mouth is the Los Angeles band’s third official release, and it’s a pretty good addition to the pantheon of guitar-and-drum rock. The eight songs on the album range from the cymbal-smashing

There is a moment during some songs, before they have really began to present themselves, when the low rumblings of something is just starting to make its way quietly through the speakers and it could easily be just another song. But suddenly that first real note hits you and it is clear you are listening to something special. This is the experience I had upon first listen of the opening track “Afternoon” on Froth’s latest album Bleak. The guitar melody drones and melds blissfully as the levels are slowly turned up and the song fully kicks in with the heavy drum beat, guitar harmonics, and smooth bass.

The song keeps you going from the bridge that has a heavy kick to it and the chorus with the overlapping chants that really set a dark and heavy mood. The track has a very shoegaze yet lo-fi garage quality to it that makes this song a great introduction to the group. Once the

JACKIE MENDEZ Introducing Jackie Mendez... EP Angel City Records Most people have had a love affair with dancehall or ska, due to the various genres’ strong nostalgic qualities. You just can’t deny the pull from a song that swings so smoothly with slightly jazzy bass lines, a signature wah wah of a guitar, a strong horn section, and the croon of a singer who hits all the right notes. All of these qualities and more are quite evident on the debut EP by Jackie Mendez.

Her own love affair with dancehall and ska is clear from the first note she bellows so sweetly as the backing band Thee Hurricanes play solid melodies behind her.

The album is comprised heavily of covers where Jackie is taking cues from some of the heavy hitters in the genres. There is a beau-

You know the joy that exists when the sample on your favorite rap record plays out for an extra bar towards the end? Or that section when everything but the snare and kick drop out for a few measures? Knxwledge has built a sound that permanently lives in the sweet spots on your favorite joints. Since the days of MySpace, Knx has been building his discography beat by beat. After dozens of digital releases, a few tapes and records to his name and a handful of placements with the new guard of rap music, HUD.DREEMS sounds like an emerging contender’s victory lap after his first major victory. The Stones Throw release features 26 compositions that are not quiet songs but more than beats, stitched together in something that sounds more like a personal mixtape than a full length LP. There’s emotional crescendos contrasted with quotes the ghosts of Juelz Santana and Phil Tha Agony. One moment sounds like church on shrooms and the next is the score for a thriller. You can hear whole worlds built in less than a minute.

—sweeney kovar 49

INTRODUCING ... THE HOLLOWAY FILES

ARTHUR LEE of LOVE (L.A., 1971) VINTAGE INTERVIEWS BY JOURNALIST, PRODUCER AND DJ DANNY HOLLOWAY When did you pick up playing?

Well, it says in the A&M autobiography.

I started on the washtub. My mother was a schoolteacher. Manassas High School. In Memphis, Tennessee. There used to be this marching band. They had this big bass drum that the cat would carry on his shoulder. And he’s playing this thing, like, BOOM BOOM BA DA BOOM BOOM, you know? So I got these big washtubs, man. I was only three or four years old and I was trying to answer the cat back. CLANK CLACK CLACK CLANK CLACK CLACK. So that’s when I first started. My father was a trumpet player, so it was a gas looking at his horn. My aunt used to take me to a so-called beer garden, and you know, it was a gas, man. ‘Put Another Nickel in the Nickelodeon’ or something.

That’s how I started but that ain’t got nothing to do with what I’m doing now.

I started out playing the tubs but then this dude would swing by renting these accordion lessons so I started on the accordion and then because I’d had a little practice on the tubs, drums were pretty easy to come by. Then I started fooling around with the organ and piano and then the guitar.

When did you begin writing?

I don’t know, fourteen years old? Fifteen years old? Something like that.

What kinds of things did you write?

Things that had to do with the immediate present at that time. Songs and things that came in my ear and stuck in my head. Melodies. The times. I was interested in what was going on then, as far as other artists were concerned, you know what I mean? I didn’t have too much creative ability. I was just kind of stuck on checking these cats out and seeing what this sound was compared to the times. Now I’m back to the times, you know? You hear something in a song and you say to yourself, ‘Well, I’ve heard that song before.’ But anything that comes in has got to go out and when I write things come in and they go out and it’s particles of other people’s arrangements, you know what I mean?

Did you have any goal in mind? To become a big group?

In that time period, as far as my opinion of the trip, it was like we wanted to be recognized as doing what we were doing on a large scale. The way I look at it, before I even started Love, I had in mind a goal and that was to not get hung up in any specific type of music.

To put so-called symphony orchestrated riffs in a hard rock blues funky spunky boogie, you know what I mean? So I don’t have any favorite type of music.

I think I’m capable of doing just about 50

“Enfant terrible Arthur Lee emerged as leader/vocalist of Love in the mid-60s Sunset Strip scene.

Behind the Byrds and Doors, Love was L.A.’s most popular local band. The Byrds and Doors had international careers, but Love didn’t tour, so they were more regarded as hometown heroes. Love turned their label Elektra on to the Doors and as Arthur Lee was temperamental and refused to tour, Elektra plowed their funds into the Doors. Arthur felt Love had all the success they needed in L.A., so why tour? They had plenty of girls, money, fast cars, fame and high living right here. (Check Love’s first three albums: Love, Da Capo and Forever Changes to see why they are one of the most banging bands of all time.) This interview took place in 1971 on the A&M records lot, in the office of Scotsman Allen McDougal who had signed Arthur to the label. Through constant lineup changes, the Love brand had slipped some and Arthur attempted to go solo with a patchy solo album called Vindicator. He arrived late for the interview, seemed high and had recently dyed his hair orange. Just another day in the chaotic life of Arthur Lee. Sadly, Lee passed away in 2006.” everything I’ve heard. That’s just about all I’m doing: what I’ve heard. And what I think is what I’ve heard. When I create something, it’s weird. I don’t have any specific type of music or I never did. I just wanted to blend everything.

You were the leader of Love— I was a part of it, man.

You sort of got a reputation for being a Svengali type figure.

What do you mean by that?

People just said that you sort of ran the group in a strict sort of manner.

Well, you know—I admire a person

who thinks for themselves. I admire a person who takes on a task doing a specific thing or, if he can, two things or three things equally as well as he put his energies into the first thing. I admire that. I write, produce, sing, play guitar, drums and that’s a trip.

I wouldn’t attempt to play or make a move toward doing anything that I didn’t think I could cut. Like, you get guys that are rhythm guitar players and their vocabulary is great and their personality is out of sight, but when it comes to instrumentation, they can

only play the rhythm guitar. Now, they have this thing in the back of their head ... because if you do two, three, four, or five things, then they should be able to do something more than just that rhythm guitar thing. So when you contend with a person like ... you kick him in the fucking mouth, man. Nah, it’s a weird thing because you’re aware, because you play rhythm guitar also ... and I’m speaking of myself more in general than specifically. That’s why I change people so much. I try and get cats that want to participate in things HOLLOWAY FILES

I’ve written. If you’re not a writer and you’re just a rhythm guitar player, don’t tell me what to put in my songs, you know? I have it all planned out as to what you should play. I have the whole thing drawn out although I refuse to learn how to read or write music. I tape it and I play it for them on guitar and I sing it for them and I tell them what part I’d like them to play. Now some people disagree with the things that I like.

Because I disagree then I’m so-called strict. Because I want what I wrote.

Love also got a reputation for being an inconsistent band as far as gigs go.

Well, there’s no time. Like all these times ... twelve o’ clock, quarter-tothree. There’s no time. There’s just an ever present now trip to me. I mean, I wake up, go to sleep, wake up, go to sleep and there’s no six-o-clock, fouro-clock thing in my life. I don’t know. I sing about it and talk about it.

Isn’t it different if someone’s paying their money and waiting to see you?

And you don’t show? I have never made that statement. You have never heard me say that. I have been famous for not saying that. I never ever—and I say this from the bottom of my heart—wanted to miss a gig. Never. I never purposely missed a gig.

What did you think of your Blue Thumb albums?

I thought they were great.

The direction seemed to change.

The Love albums … the songs were different types of music but they had stronger melodies than Blue Thumb.

Those albums seemed a little bit in a completely different style.

I already told you. I don’t want to get hung up on one thing. I did that and now I want to do this different style.

You know, seasons change. Everything changes. I’d rather flow with the wind than pay my gas bill consistently. Who owns the gas and who owns the wind?

A bunch of people got together and created something that was helpful to the reflection, which would be man and every animal that creeps or crawled or flew or swim upon the earth. It should be over, man, and it should be electronically ran if you’re into electronics and all this horse shit should be eliminated. You’re talking about songs. That’s what I’m talking about in most of my songs.

What’s your relationship been like with record companies as you go along?

How did you get along with Elektra?

I got along great with everybody I’ve ever worked with. The only problems I ever had with record companies is when it was time to get paid. In L.A., the bank closes at three o’ clock. They’re usually a month to a year late in paying. You know, that so-called whatever you need to live by. I mean, you can’t drink the ocean dry. Ain’t enough people on Earth to drink the ocean dry. But you have a water bill. It’s a bunch of horseshit, man.

The record companies were hung up on HOLLOWAY FILES

the system of the hula-hoop. They were stagnant and stuck in a rut that tells you that you don’t give a man what he wants when he wants it because you’ll spoil the child. So they wait two weeks to pay you. At three o’ clock, the chick will call you and tell you your check will be ready at 3:30 or at 2:30 she’ll call you and tell you your check will be ready by quarter to three and of course you live six, seven miles away. By the time you get there to pay those so-called bills ... you get your check at 3:30 and the banks closed. That’s happened since 1965 in my career. It doesn’t mean much to me. If a person wants to hide something from me and not let me know where they’re really at ... If you’re intelligent, man, then you’re intelligent enough to recognize your reflection’s intelligence, you know? You don’t tell a person that his check will be ready at a quarter to three when the bank closes at three and you’re already a month and a half overdue on paying the so-called artists. That’s my objection in working with these record companies.

Other than that, I’ve pretty much had a chance to do what I love and what I really wanted to do and express as best that I can what I’ve wanted to do on this musical trip.

What happened with your nine months with Columbia?

Bob Dylan flew through there or something. Those guys are so headstrong. Everyone over there is a star. Like the Sly Stone thing.

Goddamn. It went so far as to me recording there. When I went I tested out six or seven of the engineers there.

I’d never done that before. I just work with what I’ve got. If I can’t work with what I’ve got, then I go on but I asked for a choice of engineers. They gave me about five or six. Of course, each time I tried out an engineer, it came out of my pocket. I tried out these cats and they all had a groovy front but when it came down to doing their thing, the last guy I chose that I thought was the best person to work there went so far as to deliberately ... like, I have earphones on and I’m playing piano on a song called ‘Everybody’s Gotta Live,’ and the engineers there all seem to have wanted to have been musicians but they didn’t have enough guts so they couldn’t cut it and if you’re doing really good and they didn’t like your attitude or your personality, they deliberately turned up the music in the earphones until it was at the point of distortion and I couldn’t continue playing piano like I wanted to, you know? I couldn’t believe that happened. I asked to take it over again and I got to that same part and he did it again. It was frustrating, man.

I heard somewhere that you ran a big bill up while you were there.

I didn’t run up any bill at all. I did seven, maybe nine songs there that were unacceptable. They didn’t accept my

music at Columbia. They dismissed me. I didn’t quit.

Why did they sign you?

Why did they sign me? That’s a good one. I don’t know what they expected.

If they were expecting something then they should have told me what they expected and everyone would have gotten along better. Expecting me to be this way or that way. Having to have engineers there that were an hour late to sessions. And at nine ‘o clock, if it’s time to take a lunch break, they’ll break even if you’re in the middle of a song.

I can’t go against the system. I ain’t going to talk about that, man.

How did you get signed with A&M? Alan MacDougal came and saw Love at the Whisky and we rapped. He had a meeting set up to hear my group. I was free of record contracts and I wanted to sign a record contract and he was the first one who approached me. I can’t say we had a more cooperative engineer. If you don’t have nothing, ain’t no one gonna give you nothing.

I came down here the first night and the microphones were turned around backwards. I’m speaking about A&M now. They had the microphones socalled tuned to acoustic instruments.

They’re stuck on that Forever Changes thing. That’s just my opinion. So they had to go rearrange all the microphones.

The engineer could only get so much out of the bass but he’s got a million opinions. A million buttons to push but he can only get this much out of the bass. After they rearranged the mics and the board or whatever they did, we got it on and it’s been really, really groovy working with these cats.

How did you get along with your producer?

I’m the producer.

Were you happy with the interpretation of your idea for the cover?

Yeah, it’s where I’m at. It’s not exactly what I wanted but no one gets what they want unless they do it themselves. I think it’s real good, man. I like it a lot.

Do you have a steady band now?

No. I have different individuals who I call that I’ve worked with in the past.

Sometimes they’re willing to play. If they are, it’s great. A steady band?

Jesus Christ, the Beatles broke up, you know? Everybody’s an individual and it’s great. Some cats are studio musicians and they know it so that’s all they do, you know? If they did what they wanted to do, they could have done it.

This is not belittling anyone for their position in life. That’s ridiculous.

You’re a vegetarian—why?

Like I said, everything is a reflection.

Everything that you look at that creeps, crawls, flies, swims and breathes on the earth is your reflection so I can’t see myself eating my own reflection, nor can I see myself wearing my reflection. If I admire somebody, I admire them while they’re alive. Ain’t

much to admire in a dead man—in a corpse. The least that you can do for a corpse is return it to where it came from. The earth. To bury it. But when you make belt buckles out of it and you make vests out of the creatures’ flesh and skin, it’s just lingering on. I don’t think it’s cool, man.

There’s a hardcore group of loyalists of Love that exist—do you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing? People who are hung up on the legend or myth of Love.

They’re hung up on the reflection that they heard or saw or felt in whatever they thought the group Love broadcasted, so they’re hung up on themselves but they can’t quite pinpoint it. So they need this thing to lean on, which is great because everybody needs something to lean on at one time or another. I understand it.

Do you have plans for the next album?

I’m going to do a Love album. I might put the original group on if the musicians are willing to cooperate. I tried to sign a Love group to A&M but they weren’t ready for it but I’m going to sign a Love group somewhere. You groove with what you can groove with. There’s been a billboard out with Jim Morrison and this group called the Doors with these three cats standing there and I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not. I don’t necessarily plan it that way because I’m still not dead. I don’t understand why I can’t participate in something that I’ve been participating in and has nothing to do with this record company, but they say I can’t participate—but if I sign Love with another record company, then I can direct, produce and write.

Has your music changed?

I’m playing a million strings and horns and into the future again but with a different perspective.

Will the next album you do be an Arthur Lee album?

For A&M, yeah. I talked to one of the so-called heads of A&M and they were interested in the part of Arthur Lee connected to a group called Love so they’re not interested in speaking about that kind of a trip. I don’t know what I’m going to do but I’m going to sign the group called Love. I’ve got seven or eight years out of a group called Love and I can’t see it going by the wayside because of a change of a name or whatever. It’d be groovy to get the original group. The old timers would get a kick out of that trip. It would be a fun thing to do but it’s pretty hard.

Those guys were my first group, man.

They’re a gas, man. Everybody in the group is on a different trip, man. And pulling that whole thing together ... I mean, what can you do? This cat here hates the other guy’s guts. The other guy doesn’t care whether he hates his guts or not, he just doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. So, I’m the so-called leader and I’m trying to pull this unit together, man?

51

LITTLE WINGS Explains Woodsist

Little Wings’ Explains is Kyle Field’s first album on the Woodsist label, but it’s a natural fit with the dreamy, hazy musical vibe of the label’s best releases and definitely at peace with the rest of his work, which has maintained a comforting consistency in both theme and sound over his 15year career. This is not to say that his music hasn’t evolved or changed; rather, that the evolution has been gradual and organic and committed to Field’s creative vision, regardless of label changes. If you were a Little Wings fan in 2003, you’ll probably still be a fan after hearing Explains.

Less lyrically direct than earlier material and with more complex musical arrangements, ultimately there is no mistaking a Little Wings album thanks to Field’s distinctive voice and intimate delivery, his love of words and rhymes both silly and profound (couplets like “Stella got that groove back/Turtle’s got that smooth back” share space with lyrics about hiding in bed from the darkness) and his relaxed, melodic acoustic guitar playing. Little Wings’ music provokes a synesthetic response as his voice becomes the wind blowing through a coastal canyon and his music becomes the sunlight shimmering on the ocean.

Explains is another solid entry in Field’s prolific career, a Little Wings album through and through, an old friend coming through the speakers, which is incredibly comforting these days.

—Tom Child

Lord Huron’s first album, Lonesome Dreams, released in 2012, was a musical gem filled with soaring sounds, crooning vocals, and an echoing yet ethereal campfire sound that garnered the group some important attention.

Three years and a few tours later, we are being presented with their follow-up, Strange Trails. The band has made use of the time between albums to hone their craft even more and play with some concepts of genre melding.

Every track on the album, while not playing to the exact same styling, is very beautifully composed. The opening track, “Love Like Ghosts,” is an ominous and weighty ballad that builds and builds to a crescendo that is a strong opening statement for the album. The song plays on a version of dark Americana with twangy vocals that are heavily reverbed and echoed alongside deep guitar harmonics that get built upon with additional layers including violin (or fiddle if we are being technical) that is very moving. “Dead Man’s Hands,” another great track, is an amalgam of county and a very aggressive version of psych rock whose intro and bridges play in the vein of Brian Jonestown. The track “The World Ender” takes reference from Tom Waits, with very ominous sounding guitar hooks and a vocal timbre that has a certain raspy vibrato to it, signature to that darker rock and blues styling. Many of the other songs play into a quieter and more somber version of the genre. As opposed to making the album have issues with cohesion, the subtle shifts take the listener on a journey full of ups and downs that is quite enjoyable to experience.

—Zachary Jensen

MILK CARTON KIDS Monterey ANTI-Records

LORD HURON Strange Trails IAMSOUND 52

With a breakthrough Grammynominated album (2013’s The Ash & Clay) under their belts, The

Milk Carton Kids (Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale) decided to make an album that had the sound and feel of a live show during their lengthy tour last spring. The folk duo recorded their new collection, Monterey, in empty venues along the way, including Nashville’s historic Downtown Presbyterian Church (the spot where Patty Griffin recorded 2009’s Downtown Church). Monterey delves into the highs and lows of life on the road.

Blanketed in melancholy, lullabylike acoustic guitar strumming and haunting harmonies, the entire recording aches with loneliness and longing. Sometimes that longing is for freedom, as in the case of the title track. Here, Ryan and Pattengale pose a question in catchy rhyme, “Monterey, how can I say I’ll always stay when I always slip away?” But things are not always light and breezy. In “City of Our Lady” the Kids remind us that we carry the weight of everywhere we’ve been with the clever refrain, “Everywhere we go, we are the child of where we came.” All in all, Monterey is a subtle, thoughtful, and elegantly put together collection.

—Emily Nimptsch

vulnerable minimalism in Nosaj Thing’s work—one that is akin to the rawness of Dilla’s Donuts.

A cosmic blend of soulful vocal chops becomes haunting as it is woven through the space of Nosaj Thing’s command of the controls.

The opening track, “Sci,” is a dynamic composition that oscillates between experiencing the beatdown and the beatific, a fluctuation that is characteristic of the album. “Sci” sets the stage for the haunting, blissful, and chilling movements that are skillfully entangled in later tracks. The collaboration tracks with Whoarei and Chance the Rapper add to the dark kaleidoscopic layers of the album—hazy melodies and drumbeats come through so refreshingly. The brevity of the tracks is transformed into something poignant— evoking a desire to press repeat until feelings fade into focus. Playing connect the dots between your thoughts and its musical movements. Suggested tracks: “UV3,” “Medic,” “Don’t Mind Me,” and “Cold Stares.”

—Stephen Jason Esguerra-Jungco

world than it was in 1968. Say hello to Talk in Tongues, an L.A. four-piece that describes itself as psychedelic, counts ‘60s-era Pink Floyd and the 13th Floor Elevators as influences, but isn’t afraid to mix the druggy, experimental sounds of those bands’ era with a distinct modern flair. “Time’s Still (For No One Yet)” is a straight-up psych rock classic, while the lilting “While Everyone Was Waiting” sizzles with modern keyboard flair and twinkling guitars. The band’s debut longplayer mixes woozy rhythms that are unquestionably psychedelic with a tight-edged pop sensibility that conjures up comparisons with 80s pop rock to create a sound that is original and fresh, planting one foot comfortably in the past and one confidently in the now.

—Jason Gelt

THEE OH SEES Mutilator Defeated at Last Castle Face

NOSAJ THING Fated Innovative Leisure/ Timetable

Nosaj Thing’s Fated envelops you with its collage of ethereal and visceral vignettes of sounds and sensations. The album’s artistry is evident. Its refreshing array of moods and musical arrangements reveal the sincerity of its creator and his evolution. Nosaj Thing establishes an ambience that radiates the vibrations/inspirations of his Los Angeles home space. An organic restructuring of his style, fading between the experimental undertones and synthetic overtones of the “beat music” scene. With this third release, Nosaj Thing expands his discography with potent variations of his musical craftwork. In relation to his first two albums, Drift and Home, Fated exposes a

TALK IN TONGUES

Alone With a Friend Fairfax Recordings Neo-psychedelic rock is a tricky business. It’s easy for a band to wax nostalgic for an aesthetic that vanished with the Age of Aquarius, and plenty of them do it nowadays with varying degrees of success. The Paperhead, the Night Beats and Allah-Las are just three bands that spring to mind. Hell, there are even two annual Psych Fests—in Austin and Milwaukee—which spotlight bands who’ve revived the groovy, free-form sounds of the ‘60s in one form or another.

Sadly, all too often neo-psych acts fall into the nostalgia trap, enthusiastically aping the styles of a bygone era without letting any of their own personality shine through or acknowledging that this is a very different

Disclaimer: The only way to listen to Thee Oh Sees’ new full-length, Mutilator Defeated At Last, is with copious amounts of volume. Eardrums should ring, the neighbors will get mad. It needs to be this loud. In stark contrast to their last studio record, Drop, Thee Oh Sees’ latest LP stampedes through the speakers right from the get-go.

While Drop starts off with a more of a dreamy, synth-laden hum, Mutilator enters a battlefield of noise. Drummer Nick Murray’s snare/cymbal crash introduction to “Web” is alerting, almost jolting, as if to warn you that you are entering a dark world of turmoil.

John Dwyer’s vocal then lays a path that drops into an explosion of electric guitar and thunderous drums. The same energy continues in tracks like “Poor Queen” and “Turned Out Light,” a song that boasts heavy 70s-influenced guitar licks and also brings back Brigid Dawson’s honey-like voALBUM REVIEWS

cals.That’s not to say that there’s not a softer side to this album.

“Sticky Hulks” offers hazy keyboard riffs and soft, looming vocals from Dwyer. The song is more soothing in its flow, but not comforting in the slightest. It almost feels like traveling through a romantic nightmare. Beautiful, but tense at the same time. An instrumental, “Holy Smoke,” maintains that dark flow. It starts off with an entrancing acoustic guitar fingerpick, which is backed up by soft, brush-stroked drums and a droned synth in the background.

The album kicks back into fight mode with “Rogue Planet,” but this time around it has more of a triumphant feeling compared to the torn-up world in the beginning of the record. In addition to the carefully plotted out song structures, the amount of effort that went into song order is apparent; it’s an album that is meant to be played from start to finish. Preferably three times in a row.

—Angela Ratzlaff

Various Artists Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll Dust-to-Digital Before you come off with that “I didn’t know they had a scene” shit, you ought to realize by the late 60s a good many distant locations on planet Earth adopted pieces of rock and rock culture for their own. In John Pirozzi’s documentary of the same title, we find out how it happened in Cambodia as well as measures taken to stop it. From this already amazing premise, what’s truly astounding about this collection of soundtrack tunes taken from the era is how brilliantly Cambodian musicians could whip off variations on every style of the trendiest era in pop history, from surf rock to Hendrix guitar freakouts to choral kiddie pop. Omnipresent U.S. Armed Forces radio laid the basis for this frantic subculture but the Khmer Rouge definitely pulled the plug and nearly erased it from history. This parcel of traumatized, psychotic middle-class intellectuals seized power in the Armageddon created by nearly three million tons of American bombs dropped on Cambodia and whiled away the last half of the seventies murdering as many street kids, rock fans, book-readers, song-singers, glasses-wearers, and havers of sex as it could catch. If you knew about rock ‘n roll, you were dead; a fate shared by those knowing very much about anything else. Of special interest among these victims is Sinn Sisamouth, a dapper, charismatic singer whose five desolate tracks collected here come to us from the ruins of this obliterated culture as a distant soulful whirlwind the approximate fury of a Jackie Wilson or Lou Christie.

He is thought to have been murdered by the government in 1976.

Thin Lizzy Vagabonds of the Western World Light in the Attic

TY SEGALL/ KING TUFF

“Live At Pickathon” split 12” Easy Sound Recording Co. The second in a series of live recordings made during the annual Pickathon Festival in Happy Valley, Oregon, sees two garage rock luminaries strutting their stuff in top form. The limited edition vinyl-only split 12”, recorded at Pendarvis Farm’s music festival in 2013, showcases six stellar cuts from the extremely prolific Ty Segall and four from the equally legendary King Tuff. Segall’s numbers are uniformly mellow, stemming from his sitting-ona-stool-and-playing phase that must have come as a bummer to fans of his wildly thrashing earlier persona. Even the live version of “Girlfriend,” which was pretty rockin’ on his 2010 Melted LP, is

ALBUM REVIEWS

This 1973 third album sees the Dublin lads go all-in for the harder stuff, with frontman Phil Lynott sliding nimbly into his evolving role as streetwise bard of the endless night. He really comes into his own here as emotive charismatic vocalist, especially in “The Rocker,” a blistering and magniloquent early pass at the tough-guy cool that would dominate Jailbreak and Johnny the Fox later in the decade. Founding guitarist Eric Bell exited the band at this point but not before contributing some elegant leads, especially on “Little Girl in Bloom.” “Slow Blues” and “The Hero and the Madman” are sometimes dismissed as overripe or pompous, but critics said as much about every hard rock act in the seventies, just as they did of every psychedelic act in the 60s and every metal band of the 80s—but somehow never of Bruce Springsteen, whose operatic sense is every bit as melodramatic as Lynott’s, only not as much fun. This is the last and best of Light in the Attic’s vinyl reissues of Lizzy’s first three LPs and what you bought that turntable for.

The Kingbees self-titled Omnivore That the American late 70s practically ached with 50s nostalgia is a fact now attested to only by the era’s survivors and not too many of those. If all you can conjure from memory’s vaults are disco, Iggy Pop and Jimmy Carter, you likely paid someone else to remember the era for you wholesale. Unlearn all that poison nonsense and come

with me to a time when acts like Jonathan Richman, the Misfits, the Stray Cats, Norman Whitfield and many, many more appropriated one or more aspects of duckass early rock ‘n’ roll, usually dubbed “rockabilly” by those who can’t tell the difference. Back then, everybody from Billy Joel to Pere Ubu wanted to be known as rightful heir to that primal credibility, but few were as serious about it as Jamie James, journeyman musician who landed up in L.A. and founded the Kingbees, a trio that rode this subcultural wave to two LPs, an appearance on TV’s American Bandstand and undeserved obscurity. The self-titled debut dropped in 1980 on RSO Records, which promptly failed to take advantage of “My Mistake,” bounding into the back reaches of the Top 100 through heavy Detroit airplay. It’s obvious from the four-on-the-floor opening of “Sweet, Sweet Girl” these guys absorbed the lessons of Eddie Cochran, Ricky Nelson, Commander Cody and a dozen other rockers and revisionists. The snaky arena rock opening to “Man Made for Love” cranks into the kind of rootsy slammer that would win reputations for X and Lone Justice just a few years later, and “No Respect” splits a similar difference between the Count Five and the Blasters. Epochal shit that would’ve steered the coming craze for heartland rock in an artier, punkier direction had anybody outside of Detroit and James’ magpie peers actually heard it, the debut made little impact and The Big Rock (1981) even less. You need to hear this.

East River Pipe The Gasoline Age Merge Records A New Jersey transplant adrift in New York, the redoubtable F. M. Cornog began making home recordings in the mid-90s and soon wound up on Merge, which understood his inherent sweetness enough to release some of the most eccentrically tuneful introspection since Ray Davies and Alex Chilton under the bleakly evocative name East River Pipe. The 13 sad hypnotic songs that comprise Cornog’s fourth full-length are generally conceded to be his metamorphosis from genial amateur to man of vision, even if that vision is fogged by endless rows of drizzled-out streetlights. This mood music for urbanites with only one mood finds breathless expression in “Hell Is an Open Door” and the shimmering “Party Drive,” the latter going on and gloriously on like a Saturday night raga out of some godless George Harrison. Most of these joints are under three minutes, except for “Atlantic City (Gonna Make a Million Tonight),” a post-rock opera that Cornog keeps airily aloft for every bit of 9:43. Named 1999’s Album of the Year by the New York Times, this is something for the homesick Gothamites to cherish while driving in DTLA on a lonely weeknight.

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calm and relaxed, but Segall pulls it off. But there’s a nice-andeasy, folksy quality to the songs that evokes a sunshiny, summery mood. The King Tuff side is much more electrified and energetic, kicking off with a rousing rendition of “Keep on Movin’” that showcases Tuff’s drawling, snotty vocals and classic rock guitar stylings to full effect. All four songs shimmy and shake, especially the grand “Dancing on You,” with its warbly mid-song guitar breakdown and driving rhythm section, and the straight-ahead dirty boogie beat of “Stranger,” which starts off with a reverb blast and moves relentlessly forward toward its conclusion. Tuff’s side concludes with a righteous punky rendition of “She’s On Fire,” a slow-moving, grungy way to wind the record down to its conclusion. A stellar effort from both bands makes this record a springtime treat.

—Jason Gelt

WINTER

Supreme Blue Dream Lolipop Records You might think a band that originally hails from from the East Coast (Boston, to be exact!) and dishes out densely layered, sparkly dream pop took its name from the frosty season, but it’s actually named for the band’s songstress and lead guitarist, Samira Winter. Now relocated to L.A.’s sunny climes, Winter and her cohorts have released their debut

BLACK MOUNTAIN Black Mountain (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) Jagjaguwar Ten years after its self-titled debut album introduced Black Mountain to the world beyond its home of Vancouver, B.C.—and probably almost ten years since founder Stephen McBean relocated to L.A.—the group has re-mastered, repackaged and re-released Black Mountain, along with eight obligatory bonus tracks. As with every such rerelease, this begs at least two questions: Should the uninitiated make the purchase? Should the die-hard fan? First, to address the uninitiated: 54

long-player on L.A.’s very own Lolipop Records. Rife with ethereal, layered vocals and melodic instrumentation, the record is an assured entry into its genre of choice—shoegaze. Wispy guitar lines, Winter’s breathy vocals, and crisp keyboard work thread their way through Supreme Blue Dream’s ten songs, creating an airy tapestry of sound that brings to mind forebearers like My Bloody Valentine, while still managing to offer something fresh and new at the same time. From the crunchy guitar riff of album opener “Crazy” to the electro-drums and soaring vocals of “Don’t Stay Away,” the record isn’t afraid to liven things up with a healthy dose of variation.

The catchy “Expectations,” with its swirling keyboard refrain, has a warm tropical feel to it, while the sunny “Flower Tattoo” sounds like a swimming session under warm blue Pacific waters. Then there’s the slow-building “Like I Do,” which kicks off with melancholy keys before moving ahead with a

sad guitar riff and muted vocals that make you think of a cold, gray November sky. Winter is off to a strong start with their debut—a record with depth and feeling that would be equally suited to a warm afternoon hanging out on a porch swing or a dark night with the windows open.

—Jason Gelt

WORDS

Earwig Lolipop Records

With the release of the Earwig cassette, writer / musician / artist

This deluxe edition features all the tracks from the original release, but for the original’s bonus track “Jonny Svenson Lives”, plus the four tracks from the band’s Druganaut EP, as well as four unreleased tracks, for a total of 16. As with almost all modern rock, the music finds its originality in commingling several well-trod rock territories.

Writ in broad strokes, it encompasses a variety of motifs related by virtue of being preferred by, for lack of a better word, “stoners.” The just-barelyhinged rock of the first track, “Modern Music,” the heavy, octaved guitar rawk on “Don’t Run Our Hearts Around,” the pensive duet between leader Stephen McBean and vocalist Amber Webber on “Set Us Free,” the prog rave-up, “No Hits,” the smoldering final track of the original album, “Faulty Times,” and the bonus tracks, all share that quality of inescapable heaviness experienced by anyone whose back has ever been melted into a dorm-mate’s futon by too much indica. That person should seriously consider foregoing a few latenight bags of Funyuns for funds to purchase Black Mountain. Second, should a Black Mountain fan, who may already own “Modern Music,” pony up the presumably substantial sum Jagjaguwar will be asking for this deluxe edition? An examination of the “extras” is in order: first, the promotional materials make the packaging sound pretty fantastic: “The 10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition is a double-LP including 8 bonus tracks on limited edition colored vinyl, using foil-print on the first pressing of the litho-wrap gatefold packaging....”

However, as has become standard for the understandably frugal independent record companies putting out this sort of product, reviewers generally only get digital downloads, so who knows!

Second, as previously noted, four of the extra tracks comprise the Druganaut EP, which the avid fan will presumably have. So the four unreleased tracks remain. The first is a demo of “Set Us Free” which, while supported by a spirited vocal take, remains the type of demo that could never

/ perpetual scenester D.M. Collins [full disclosure: of L.A. RECORD and more—ed.] and compatriot Sally Boozar channel the visceral imagery of Steven Jesse Bernstein, the unselfconsciousness of Dark Matter, and the psychedelic expressionism of Mick Farren on this three-song tribute to love, sex, and loneliness in L.A. With cello, violin, and his own reverby vocals, Collins is disarmingly vulnerable: the title track begins with the low thrumming of a strummed guitar and the declarative statement-slash-question “You didn’t break my heart!?” Then on “Sex,” the atonal droning ratchets up the tension until the lyrics begin: “Sex commodity! Sex measuring stick!

Sex self-worth, value of manhood!” (Unexpectedly, I found myself thinking of the Minutemen at their most abstract.) This is a fearlessly, nakedly emotional release, best experienced by those who are neither prudes nor faint of heart.

—Kristina Benson

be transformed into an album take, limited as it is by clipping on the occasionally out-of-tune vocals, beatbox drums and a simpler variation on the core guitar riff. It’s listenable, but by no means essential, nor does it provide any additional insight into the band. The second, a demo titled “Black Mountain,” is a Damien Jurado–esque dirge in ¾ time signature with heaps of reverb on the solo acoustic guitar and vocal by leader Stephen McBean.

The third, a UK radio version of “No Satisfaction,” is an entirely more aggressive version of the song, including much heavier guitars, vocals that sound as if McBean and Webber were swallowing their mics, and additional jamming. Not better, necessarily, but interestingly different. The final track, “It Wasn’t Arson,” is a fitting epilogue: keyboardist Jeremy Schmidt’s Echoplexed synth excursion comes before and then beneath McBean’s slightly strained, baritone vocal, a languidly strummed acoustic guitar, and fuzzed lead. The track contains more of what was on the original album. In the end, the value added to the original release by all of the extras depends on one’s avidity and purchasing power. It would be nice to replace that scratched-up CD in its broken jewel case with a shiny new foil-print colored vinyl, though, wouldn’t it? Of course, for both classes of person, the foregoing analyses assume the absence of intervening releases by the band. For the inexperienced, the question of whether to buy this release is complicated by the alternative question, whether to instead start one’s encounter with the band by way of the purchase one of the band’s following two albums, Wilderness Heart or In the Future. For the fan, could familiarity with those other releases have led to subsequently overlooking Black Mountain, such that a refresher is in order? The answers to either question might affect the analyses in ways that are beyond the scope of a review of the album at issue, so they must be left as points to ponder...

-­—Josh Solberg ALBUM REVIEWS

PHOTO BY Theo jemison

THE GASLAMP KILLER EXPERIENCE The Gaslamp Killer is always an experience, hair thrashing and body writhing to weird, musical life. But this is different. Back in 2013, GLK assembled an L.A. all-star band (with Andres Renteria and Kamasi Washington among many others) and put on what amounted to an orchestral live show at the Mayan Theatre. That Gaslamp Killer Experience is what’s captured here, a fully-fledged vision of GLK’s worldly desert-baked psych with percussion, string and horn sections. This is GLK in a meditative state, a sound far removed from those that come gushing through every crack in the Airliner. Tracks like “Apparitions” and “Nissim” (adapted from Breakthrough) swirl about as if they were caught in a sandstorm, a sort of psych-jazz like something off of Lloyd Miller’s A Lifetime In Oriental Jazz. “Shattering Inner Journeys” is right off of Death Gate, reprised here in full force with the backing of his arkestra and a few GLK expletives. (It wouldn’t be a GLK record, after all, without at least one “motherfucker.”) “In The Dark” is the probably the record’s best, a spiraling descent into GLK’s own darkness that eventually transforms into devilish triumph, as if Michael White’s “The Land of Spirit and Light” had turned to the dark side instead. This introduction

by Miles Clements; this interiew by Kristina Benson.

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How did this music go from Ableton to an arrangement for a chamber orchestra?

That’s the fun part about my music. I don’t use Ableton. The Breakthrough album was a lot of one-take stuff that was actually recorded live. I make the rhythm tracks out of my own drumming, and I bring over musicians to play stuff.

Then once I’ve reached my limit of creative abilities—or once I’m entirely fed up with what I’ve done and don’t think it could get any better, I bring people over to jam. With Breakthrough, I had a ton of rhythm tracks—I guess you’d say ‘beats.’ But none of them felt like songs, and I needed help. This has been a thing since My Troubled Mind and Death Gate—I would go over to Computer Jay’s studio and he’d lay live synths on it and I’d realize, ‘This is so freaking magical! I can’t believe that all it takes is a little outside perspective to turn this beat into a song.’ That inspired me. So with this, I got the best musicians I could get together in a room, and they helped me. I just tell musicians I can whistle and sing pretty fucking well. When I get with musicians in a room, I’m the same way that I am when I’m performing. I’m a spazz full of energy, trying to get my point across t, and I think I nailed it because everybody was super-inspired to play—and they played the way I wanted them to play. I ended up just chopping up a few takes.

That’s how I did Breakthrough—I was taking live takes and chopping it up and rearranging it a little bit.

You just mentioned that you can be a spazz when you perform. But this is very understated—even very restrained—in comparison to the live performances I’ve seen.

I’m around a lot of session players who are extremely focused and even though I’m a spazz in the studio—I think all of us producers, when we get into the studio, we know that when you hit record, it’s another level of seriousness. You have to calm down so you can focus on getting the sound.

Thankfully a lot of my stuff was recorded at home, but still—when you’re inviting people over, you only have a couple of hours with each musician. It pushes you towards the serious side—less fun and free, more like, ‘I have an idea that I want to execute.’ That’s the amazing part of working with these incredible L.A. session players—they’re used to people barking orders at them.

‘Here’s the music! Read it! Play it!’ I don’t do that. I leave it a lot more loose and I think that what they’re doing is so incredible. I’m giving them tons of positive feedback—a shitty take to them is an amazing take to me cuz I don’t shred on my instrument the way they do. For me, everything we get is gold. I’m like, ‘Hey, I’ll save that—let’s do another!’ I save every single take.

Hard drive space is cheap so why get rid of something that could work?

ALBUMS

Exactly, and you end up getting a few things that are lost in the sessions.

Then when I get with an engineer, they go, ‘What is this session down here?’

‘I don’t know—let’s listen to it.’ Maybe I’ll get three seconds I didn’t even know was there, and that’s what I name the song after because there’s a moment with a weird flutter and I’m like ‘That’s the song! That made the song!’

You could have released a studio version—why record and perform this music live?

I had a lot of friends pushing me in that direction. What I mean is I get together in the studio with all these players and I realized … if I’m directing them in the studio when we hardly have any time and we’re recording and it’s all thinking, ‘What is this for? Why am I doing this?

Is this coming out on a record?’ That’s so much stress. But with a live show, it’s like, ‘OK, we’re doing this live, so let’s have rehearsals where we spend all day jamming until we feel so good about what we’ve done that we’re ready to give it to the world.’ It just made sense to me. I’m already working with all these live players who are used to reading music and playing shows. And OK, I almost died on my fucking scooter and I never did this live. A bunch of my friends have live bands and I’ve always wanted to do stuff with live bands, but I said it was too much trouble. Then my friend said, ‘Dude, you need to do this shit. This is your opportunity to put together a band and show people the dynamic range of GLK. You almost lost your chance.’ I got everybody in the room and realized, ‘Holy shit, this is huge.’ I have to make sense. I can’t speak in musical terms the way that people read and notate music could.

I have to push myself here so I don’t waste these guys’ time, and really get the message across. So it pushed me to do that and I’m really glad I did.

How did it change from what you expected? The arrangement isn’t just a copy of the original release.

No way. I told the musicians, ‘You guys are incredible and I want you to lend your vibe to my songs. They do not need to be exact. I want you to play them the way you feel them.’ I gave everybody room to breathe! These are live versions so there are things we can do that are way crazier than what we were doing before. With a live show, everybody wants to strut their stuff— everybody wants to kick some ass.

I’m giving them the opportunity to let themselves fly as high as they want to fly, and that makes my music that much better when they get to be themselves.

These players have been training for so many years. They know what the fuck they’re doing. As long as they get the rhythm—the rhythm section has to be right cuz otherwise you won’t recognize the song as being mine in the first place.

The rhythm section is what they’re all about—the drums and the bass hitting ALBUMS

hard and heavy. Ever since I started making music, the first eight bars of the record is what I sample. You want that beat that gets stuck in your head. Full arrangements don’t get stuck in your head the way that an eight-bar loop does.

That’s what the essence of hip-hop is.

These guys are sampling incredible records, and instead of sampling the sax solo in the middle, they’re sampling the first moments of the record and that creates the foundation of their beat. I try to do the same thing. Then once we’ve got the foundation, you’re free to elaborate and accentuate and experience something new. It’s so fun when you do it that way.

You almost died on your scooter— that’s part of why you did this. Did that experience help you decide you needed to do anything else?

I decided I needed to enjoy my life and not work as hard. It didn’t push me in this direction of ‘I gotta make more music! I gotta leave my mark!’ No—it made me realize that life is fucking long. You can be on this earth really a long time fucking twiddling your thumbs with nothing to do, or you could live your life trying to be better, or you can try to be in the middle. I’ve been struggling for a long time because the older people in my life told me, ‘OK, get it while the getting is good! You have one chance—strike while the iron is hot! People think you’re dope right now! This is your moment.’ And all that shit—it stayed with me and I appreciate how they’re trying to motivate me but in reality, there’s no rush. The industry sets standards that are being shattered by the new generation of internet warriors. The standards that have been set in this industry are really old and don’t have legs to stand on any more. I don’t think I need to beat myself within an inch of my life cuz right now is my moment. I think we can have multiple moments in life. Some of the greatest artists in the world take their time and come out with stuff when they want and they don’t break themselves for the people. The people don’t want you to be sick and tired and burnt out—they want you to be enthusiastic and alive and happy to work. The people want you to be authentic. And if you’re miserable and having to fake that you’re enjoying yourself, then people are going to notice. I’ve seen a lot of great artists crash and burn. I definitely don’t think there’s any rush.

THE GASLAMP KILLER EXPERIENCE PERFORMS ON FRI., JUNE 19, AT CALIFORNIA PLAZA, 350 S. GRAND AVE., DOWNTOWN. 8 PM / FREE / ALL AGES. GRANDPERFORMANCES.ORG. THE GASLAMP KILLER EXPERIENCE LIVE IN LOS ANGELES IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM LOW END THEORY / GASLAMP KILLER RECORDS. VISIT THE GASLAMP KILLER AT THEGASLAMPKILLER.COM.

INTRODUCING ... THE HOLLOWAY FILES

DAVID BOWIE (LONDON, 1972) VINTAGE INTERVIEWS BY JOURNALIST, PRODUCER AND DJ DANNY HOLLOWAY Michael Watts said in his review the same thing I thought about ‘Queen Bitch’: it reminds me very much of the Velvet Underground.

What do you mean when you say it sounds like the Velvet Underground?

Did you see the sleeve at all? I did kind of credit the Velvet Underground.

There’s a note next to the title that says, ‘Thanks to the Velvet Underground.’

Sure, I’m a very big fan of Lou Reed’s.

He’s a friend of mine as well, I’m honored to say. He’s here now, secretly recording at Morgan Studios. He’s just finished the album. He’s mixing. [This would become the self-titled Lou Reed album on RCA—ed.] He won’t let you in the studio, I can tell you that. He’s an ace keeper-outer-of people. Nobody’s been in there. He’s really very shy.

But I’ll tell you what the album sounds like, there will be four pretty solid rock numbers on it, two sweet story songs that are very strange, one about the sea. And the other four are kind of rock ballads.

What kind of direction do you see for yourself?

A musical direction, I can’t tell you. I never plan a musical direction. I play what seems right at the time. As far as stage direction, we’d like to consider ourselves in the same sphere as the Who in as much as we’re going to present ourselves, our music, and a very solid routined and rehearsed basis. We’re not just going to go out on stage and play. We’ve really put a lot of effort into this. I’ve been rehearsing—apart from the flu I had for the last days—non-stop for the past few weeks, every day, six or seven hours per day. And tomorrow we go to the Tottenham Royal, and we take that over for three weeks and we’re doing dress rehearsals with clothes, lights, and all that.

Any surprises up your sleeve?

No surprises—not going to pull any big prima donna things. I don’t think we need to. The sound is good. Everybody was expecting me to turn out to do an Alice Cooper type thing at one time because they knew my connections with the theater, but when Alice came out and I saw what he was doing, I decided to veer away from that angle because I didn’t want to go out and ask people to compare me and say … well, that I do it ‘better’ than Alice. Because I would indeed have wanted to put on a theatrical show like that. But I didn’t want to fall into a category. I do have plans for a theatrical experience when the money and funds are available, cuz I do nothing unless it’s well-

After hearing Hunky Dory I was floored by how good Bowie had become. An interview was arranged and I took a mini-cab to David’s large ground floor flat just outside London in Beckenham, Kent. He greeted me with a big toothy grin and we adjourned to his sparsely furnished living room. He was very articulate, well-mannered and perky, even. He fixed tea, followed by the usual brief small talk, then I turned on the tape recorder. We banged out the interview and I asked if I could browse the 50 or so LPs that littered the floor. The Pretty Things, Yardbirds, Merseys, etc., represented the same type of music I had in my collection. The albums were all mid-60s British pop from an era when Bowie launched his singing career but was largely ignored. He talked enthusiastically about the music on those records. Then Bowie revealed the reason for his perkiness: he was eager to play new tracks he’d been recording. He played “Five Years” and several others on a 7-and-a-half-inch reel. Again, I was blown away. I soon left, but we kept in touch for several months because he was hunting down 60s songs and I helped him with a list of record shops.In the ensuing years, the dots were connected. At the time of Hunky Dory, Bowie was three albums ahead. The songs he played me ended up on Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane and the albums on his floor—and general pursuit of oldies—became Pin-Ups. supported. So that means it needs money, and the one thing I haven’t got—unfortunately—is money.

What kind of deal did you do with RCA? Did you get full control?

Yes we did. Even down to MainMan, the management company. Because it’s got to the point that the music isn’t the deal anymore—everything goes into it. I’ve seen some terrible adverts for artists that are really very good, and it could have helped them so much. Not necessarily sales, you see. Sales are important but if they’re going to be there, they’re going to be there, in a sense. But the presenting of the artist and his music—because image … I consider that we all live in image. And [adverts] are the full

use of my image. I’m certainly not ashamed of it, or alarmed or whatever.

Because it’s all very much me. But unfortunately it all deflected on the fact that I was also a songwriter, and I wanted to rectify this.

What about the bit with the dresses?

They were dresses I had made, yeah!

I have them in the other room—they are man’s dresses. They didn’t have big boobs in them or anything; they were flat, tight, and they just happened to skirt at the bottom. They were medieval-looking things. I think they’re great.

Do you think that people got the wrong impression of you after that?

It doesn’t matter cuz their wrong

impression about me is right. Things like that don’t bother me. Since I was 15 it’s never bothered me. The only thing that saddened me is that less attention was paid to the music I was producing. I’m an outrageous dresser—always have been. I adore clothes. I like designing clothes. I design them—I don’t buy everything all the time. There’s a friend of mine who’s a designer and clothes maker. I usually give him the job.

You were quoted somewhere saying ‘music didn’t mean much’ to you.

It’s true. My life doesn’t revolve around music. And by that, I mean that it doesn’t revolve around my music.

My music is my mode of transport. I write melody to the best of my ability, and the melodies that I do write please me temporarily and have a very singular and short [lifespan] and I get bored very quickly with my own stuff and really want to move on. I’m a grasshopper. I don’t stay with one thing for very long.

Including things outside of music?

Yeah, everything! It comes from being involved in images, cuz you can’t hang on to an image forever and I’m forever changing images around. The ZIP codes of life are permanently being changed. I’m still a teenager, very much. I’m sure that I’ll be using all that lingo in a few songs. Incredible words! ‘Did you bit this, did you bit that.’ And ‘me and the droogs’ and all that stuff. I think it’s great—I love it! It’s no less serious than the actual language we use or the actual terms of communication we use. They’re just internationally in use and universally adopted, in language and clothes. Not clothes so much because they don’t have as strong a foundation, but the language thing—I like changing the language because of the inadequacy of words. I think there’s a great point and a great need to play around with it to find better alternatives. And I think in some cases that words—any new phrase that comes in at the time works better than the accepted word for whatever it replaces. ‘Groovy,’ at the time, worked incredibly well. It felt right, and descriptive of the thing.

Therefore it was right. It was much better than ‘damn good’ or whatever.

The language that we are using right now has been around for quite a long time, and things are different now … but of course the language isn’t.

I feel that about everything—things should change. I believe in change. I don’t think that we necessarily make it change consciously—change just

happens. It’s exciting being involved in change is what I’m trying to say. It is exciting to recognize that change exists, and being involved in that change—whether it’s on a superficial level, which mine is the majority of the time. I’m involved in the change of superficial items, like language and clothes and music. And rock music, again on a low level, because music isn’t a flippant subject. It can get to incredible heights, incredible levels.

You don’t seem to want people to follow you. If you were to become like a cult figure, you don’t seem like you want to be there very long.

Rubbish! Who doesn’t want to be a cult figure when he’s in this business for a bit? It would be farcical! What kind of cult would I develop? Ha! Space people.

Queens. Spaced-out queens. That would be my following!

Do you want to influence people?

No because one half of me … we’re in such an ambiguous position. We writerartists. Because one moment we’re spouting and telling where it’s at, how to deal with it—well, we’re rarely telling how to deal with it. What’s wrong, and the next moment we don’t want the responsibility of having people look up and saying, ‘Oh, is that what’s wrong?

What do we do now, then?’ We haven’t got a clue. But they know what’s wrong anyway—all we do is that we don’t really … we have a link-chain philosophy.

It’s a collective philosophy of just the time and place and what we actually do is just put our finger, hopefully, on what other people like us feel.

We don’t point out anything; we just substantiate what other people feel.

And I think that’s what art is anyway: it doesn’t preach. Because 2,000 years of talking, writing, and painting about war certainly hasn’t eradicated war. I don’t think art actually does anything but it certainly convinces people that they exist.

Do you want to reach out to as many people as will listen?

There are two ways of looking at it.

I could play to … strictly to my old circuit, which was freaks, perverts, and students. Or I could try and relate to some kind of young audience as well.

I’m just posing the question to myself again, cuz that’s what it means, if I’m going to get into the charts and I’m faced with a 13 year old … in England I suppose, 13 to 17, and in America they start at about 7 now, don’t they?

Well, somebody’s got to play for them.

I know how I felt when I was nine— You and Mark Bolan— Bolan? Yeah! I’m the world’s biggest Bolan fan.

Should I write ‘David Bowie thinks Mark Bolan sold out?’

I’d be furious if you didn’t! Nothing like that for keeping your name on the front page for a few weeks, is it?

I don’t mean Mark sold out when he

was playing the original T. Rex stuff, because before T. Rex he was playing what he’s playing now, that’s the point.

Mark Bolan is doing what he’s really good at doing and that’s why he’s succeeding, cuz he’s playing what he was originally built for cuz he was a mod and he looks like a mod and he’s still is a fucking mod, and he can’t get away from it. And when he tried to be a hippie he wasn’t able. He’s always up there raving! I’m sure he is a lot more happy now, artistically. He must be enjoying what he’s playing, cuz I enjoy listening to it. So he must enjoy playing it. I don’t know whether I want to play his kind of music— But you do on a couple of tracks, don’t you?

To that extent, yes, I think yes. If it’s inclusive, I’m going to fucking include those things, yes.

What instruments do you play besides guitar?

I don’t play guitar but I do play saxophone. A bit. I’m not a guitarist.

I’m a composer’s guitarist; I play composer’s guitar. Enough chords to get me by to write the things I want to write. I know all the chords; I don’t play them all together very fast. I know where they all are. I can move from one to another at the right speed to get me going, and the same on the piano. Saxophone I can play quite good though. I just brought it back into life. I hadn’t played for a very long time. It took weeks—my lip was splitting, having not played for so long.

I’ve played since I was about twelve.

I played in a modern jazz group that played kind of a cross between blues and jazz, and it was pretty bloody awful.

Then I dropped it, I suppose, when I was about seventeen or eighteen.

Was that you on the end of ‘Changes,’ that very end time bit, playing the sax?

Yeah. A nice sound isn’t it? A little alto.

It’s made of plastic.

Did you play with Humble Pie at the Roundhouse about a year ago?

Yes. I’d seen you play then.

Just on my own, with about a thousand microphones?

And a gold suit.

I was very proud of that suit! I had my hair all curly.

What’s your voice going to be like on stage? It seems like a studio voice.

It is very much a studio voice. I’ll get by on stage. I’ve got a loud voice but it’s not a strong voice. You really have some volume then when I open up, but it hasn’t got a lot of depth. It’s a skinny little metallic voice but it’s not a skinny little metallic band, so they’ll complement it. I’m not going to ride along on them, don’t get me wrong— but it will just be my style, the skinny voice.

Are you going to rock?

Absolutely!

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BLACK LOVE Unlust EP Hertz-Lion Heavy sounds and high-pressure concepts from Black Love, a bass-drums-torment power trio with writer David Cotner—for L.A. RECORD sometimes!—writing and singing and handling the motors and weapons, Sergio Segovia on bass and electronic warfare and the dominating Tony Cicero on drums. (See also: Saccharine Trust’s Surviving You Always.) The annihilating nothingness of Public Image’s metal box surrounds this release, and engineering by estimable ex-Screamer Paul Roessler surely helps make the drums sound bottomless and the bass seem less an instrument than a subterranean river. At the heart of the void is Cotner, who—like John Lydon and David Thomas—speak-sings his way to declamation, declaration or desolation.

There’s some of the poison sarcasm of Big Black at work here, but Black Love has their use of contrast dialed: anything loud or smartly-slash-darkly hilarious (a la Nick Cave) is there to make the empty parts feel emptier, and the honest parts hurt even more. Centerpiece is break-up song “Being Stabbed,” with the chillingly foreboding lyric “You were sitting on the toilet bowl and you looked into my peaceful soul …” but closer “Had A Bad Dream” offers a misanthropically resonant thesis for the ages: “Would you like to know about one of my bad dreams?” asks Cotner, and his band shouts “NO!” “I’m gonna tell ya anyway,” he smirks, and the song bursts apart. Put it this way: when he asks them to “break … down,” they do. (Bonus: great packaging, including actual typed lyrics where you can feel the indentations and of course Cooper Black for the font.)

FLYING HAIR Haunted Hangout II CS self-released Let’s crack open this tape, stretch it between Black Sabbath and Black Angels, and then let the sun get to work on it so it gets all gooey and bubbly and boils off in shreds.

That’s the last chunk of last song “Tiny Little Man,” where synthesizer pushes its wormy fingers between the cracks a la every zombie movie that had an unhappy ending. Isn’t it nice to check out a band that believes in “shreds” not just as a verb, but as a noun and eventually a destination?

Flying Hair is immersed in the queasy62

uneasy tension between blast-damaged nuthin-fancy stoner rock and that span of the 70s when heavy psych and creepy prog overlapped cuz they were all watching the same horror movies on the same downers, with the genre distinction coming down to whether the guitarist, the organist or the vocalist would flip out first and best. Here, they take turns. Guitar: “The Captain,” in one of the final suites. Organ: the pleasantly barren second half of “LSD Dracula.” And the vocals? Ex-Zig Zag Bobby peaks on the Harlan-Elllison-via-Kim-Fowley climax of “I wonder what the clock-keeper’s keeping … KEEPING … KEEpprojngngng…” in “Tiny Little Man.” Sometimes people release albums, sometimes they release wild things back into nature cuz they’re getting too big to control anymore—this tape is just a little more of second than the first.

THE TURNS “Gone” EP Shelf Life / Lolipop Records Spot-on shoegaze from an L.A. band with welcome roots in 60s psych as well—the Turns are as much about Creation Records as they are about the Creation, and they used to be named after the 60s psych obscurity plus ultra “No Silver Bird,” which should ring an eBay Search bell or two out there. As ably revealed on A-side “Gone,” the result is immersive waves of guitar and vocals, but also some nicely nasty leads and plenty of disorienting fifth-dimensional Byrdsian atmosphere. B-side starts with “Taken Over,” a Telescopes-circa-High On Fire viber with choirboy backups and a zig-zag guitar break, and finishes with “You’ll See,” a stretched-out two-chord pulsebeat song that slides toward Jesus And Mary Chain as they actually were—honey harmonies and tinkertoy melodies above the distortion— and then lights up a Spacemen 3-style guitar lead before a surprise take-off in the last few seconds. Perfect match for the stand-out new Froth LP reviewed elsewhere and lucky for all parties concerned, they’re labelmates.

JESSIE JONES self-titled Burger Records Feeding People and Death Valley Girls’ Jessie Jones materializes her full-length solo debut, which is just as unpredictable and wild as the woman herself. There are a few silhouettes of Feeding People still present, but there’s a lot more free spirit at

play, and the biggest and best surprise are songs like “Twelve Hour Man,” a studied valentine to the lush motorik production of Stereolab with Jones’ elastic vocals on top.

It’s a strange concept—like sending Neu! on I-10 through East Texas, and demanding an album upon arrival in New Orleans—but it gets us to an unexpected and unexpectedly satisfying place. Jessie’s songs are always little journeys, and that’s what the autobahn sound is all about. (Plus sharp paranoid-pop lyrics, probably completely true: “The CIA knows where I’ve been…”) “Make It Spin” points this sound toward Syd Barrett, whose psychedelic nursery rhyme cadence sets the vocals on here in motion, and then producer Bobby Harlow and co.’s arrangements start pulling things apart and putting them back together upside down. “Lady La-De-Da” snaps out of a trance-y Velvet Underground-Raincoats death song into some extravagant experimentalism, while mid-point “La Loba” switches Mazzy Star ghost blues into cabaret psych and a surprise rave-up at the five minute mark. The ones that haunt me hardest have the least things happening, however—and the most space for Jessie’s voice to play tricks on you. Really, the most meaningful match here happens on “Nightingale,” where Jones’ and lonely vocals meet Loog-Oldham-y strings and harpsichord for the kind of song Marianne Faithfull might have made at midnight in Memphis.

SMOKEY How Far Will You Go? Chapter Music From out of the lostest of vaults comes this retrospective of L.A.’s Smokey, a band too good and too openly gay for the labels of the 70s—so they took their songs to their own S&M Records, where they marinated in collectible obscurity until now. Smokey had charisma, chops, wit and style, and depending on which tracks got out when ... well, let’s see. They could’ve been cultfamous dramatical/theatrical Bowie/Alice Cooper-style rockers—like first single “Leather,” about the cowboys on the outskirts of Suffragette City. Or could’ve been Iggycirca-The Idiot synthesizer vampires—like on the monster single “Strong Love,” which makes “Nightclubbing” seem a little timid Or could’ve been quaalude-disco sleaze kings—like the title track, with James Williamson doing effective and understated at once. Or who knows? Smokey could’ve kicked the straight world in the dick with “Piss Slave,” faking radio-friendly til 2:23 and the lyrics start: “I wanna / I wanna / I wanna be your toilet!” Smokey’s got the urban-wasteland feel of Kill City, the darkfuture sound of The Idiot and the calculatedfor-maximum-potency presence of two or three Bowie incarnations. Like Annette Peacock’s semi-contemporary I’m The One, this collection is a fascinating document of an pre-punk universe where the rules of rock ‘n’ roll physics were somehow slightly different and art and personality were the same thing.

VUG ARAKAS “Strange Way” CS self-released “Strange Way” is like the hurting songs from the Replacements’ Let It Be and the hopeful ones from the Feelies’ neglected Time For A Witness (crushingly appropriate nerd joke: sooner or later, I will dare?) and the againstthe-world rock ‘n’ rollers the Mice’s Bill Fox made with his brother on drums, too: Midwestern guitar rock, I think they call it, which is just shorthand for “unsatisfied and a guitar,” and that brings us to Vug and his guitar. Everything here sounds like its barely holding together, especially Vug himself, who writes and sings within the few inches between desperate, desolate and determined. These really are artful, crafted, heartfelt songs, but he doesn’t treat them gently. Instead, he gives them more than he probably thought he had to give: “Honest, like I promised / nobody wants this, nobody knows … for sure,” he sings on “Strange Way.” Side 2’s “Your Appeal” is like pre-major-label Shoes (thanks for the insight, Ale of dublab) via Paul Collins or a de-glossed Elvis Costello that starts with, “How could I trust her?” Turns out, that’s half of the appeal. (Or as a young Paul W. wrote, “The way I used to love you is the way I hate you now.”) Credit production as well to Luther Russell, by the way, who turns these songs into exactly what they needed to be. Highest recommendation if you like a song that isn’t lying to you.

SHOCK Shock Proof 1976-1979 Artifix Until now, Shock were one of the few L.A. punk bands on that famous Feb. 78 SAVE THE MASQUE flyer—which their singer made!—that didn’t have a comprehensive retrospective. Yes, they did a Rave Up reissue a while back, and their classic “This Generation’s On Vacation” got a bootleg EP release of its own, surely one of the most irritating forms of flattery. But now Artifix (home of Bags, Eyes, Deadbeats and more) has given the Shock the treatment they deserve with this almost-everything comp covering 1976 rehearsal to 2013 reunion.

All that’s missing is B-side of 2nd single, but that’s more than made up for. Best revelation is the never-released first single, with the under-recorded ’77 line-up in Advertsmeets-Ramones mode on a raw version of “This Generation” and “New Wave Rock,” which would’ve been a formidable A-side.

Shock Proof also adds outtake “Back At You” (uptempo rocker with a Dickies-style hook) and ’78 demos with a lot of Pistols influence and more than a little Stooges, too. (Ex.: the first riff on “All Our Friends.”) Actually, though best known for the hook-y “This Generation,” it turns out Shock excelled on meaner tracks: rehearsal “There’s Danger” isn’t far off from La Peste, and is one of the best discoveries here. And don’t get worried on the closer “I Am Just”—it’s a 2013 reunion recording, but it’s clear, fast, funny and catchy, just like Shock should be.

ONE REPORTER

THE INTERPRETER

THE SOUTHERN SOUL SPINNERS Curated by Chris Ziegler Photography by Alex the Brown

The Southern Soul Spinners are local heroes and national treasures—experienced and determined collectors with not just unbelievable taste but tons of heart and as much soul as the records they play, and if you’ve ever been to one of their nights at the VFW post in the City of Industry, you’ll agree completely. They’re known for their comprehensive command of that sweet-soul sound, but really what ties their selections together is the fearless emotional expression of the musicians. These are real heartbreakers, no matter the tempo. Spinners Ruben Molina and Arlene “Soulera 5150” Sepulveda—two of a strong crew—share with us a few of their hits.

DREAM TEAM “THERE HE IS” (GREGORY, 197X)

step by step “time after time” (cuca, 1972)

“Awesome mid-tempo Northern Soul floater sung by the all-girl high school group Dream Team from Portsmouth, Virginia. Loaded with strong vocals and a nice arrangement of the 1970 recording of “There He Is.” It’s a great dance tune that rarely pops up at record shops or record conventions. It’s really rare. It’s got a nice dance beat and people really like it, but it’s really hard to get your hands on. (RM)

“This record—just hearing it, I was amazed by how a 13-year-old kid could hold a note like that. If you listen to how this young 13year-old did this love song … that was phenomenal. Just his little whiny voice and the harmony. I go for harmony. The lyrics—it just touched my soul. It’s a really deep song, coming from a 13-year-old.

How does a 13-year-old sing something so deep?” (AS)

dimas iii “You’ve succeeded” (Clown, 196x) “Upon listening to ‘You’ve Succeeded’ for the first time. I thought the singer was black. After doing some research, I learned that it was Dimas Garza from San Antonio, Texas. When I finally met him, I was surprised that this humble carpet layer was the owner of such a beautiful voice. Our friendship was short-lived as his passing came way too soon. But for the last two years of his life we had him back on stage where he belonged. Such a beautiful voice. I went to the Austin record show, and then from there to San Antonio, and I started asking around and it was such a small place that people knew! I was ready to go at the airport, and someone called me and said ‘Come on back—we’ll get him to get singers together!’ I flew back the next week and next week and he was just such a beautiful person. His dream was to come to L.A.! I came back, put together the group, raised money, and they performed for free at the UCR Chicano Studies program.

For about two years we were always doing things together and then he passed away.” (RM)

billy stewart “Cross my heart”chess, 1967) “I always tell people that I am never too far from Billy Stewart. Been that way since the mid-60s. The Motormouth produced some of the finest soul tunes ever put on wax and ‘Cross My Heart’ is at the top of the heap. Billy Stewart us—in the Chicano corner, we could say—is the top! The records aren’t that expensive but his songs were so emotional. I could have put five Billy Stewart songs and people would understand! He kind of makes fun of himself too—he has this approach like ‘Fat Boy,’ like he’s the guy nobody wants. Tip for collectors: when you are out diggin’ and you come across a Billy Stewart record on Chess, don’t leave it behind. Chances are you’ll fall in love with it.” (RM) INTERPRETER

THEE MIDNITERS UNLIMITED (WHITTIER, 1966) “‘The Town I Live In’ from Thee Midniters’ 1966 LP Unlimited is possibly the group’s most popular recording among their Los Angeles fan base, who have made ‘The Town I Live In’ a bit of an anthem. Willie Garcia does a fine rendition of the McKinley Mitchell original from 1962. If you ask me next week, ‘give me your six favorite records,’ it’d be different—the one that comes in the mail is all of a sudden your favorite. But I’ve had Midniters records since the 70s and they just do not fade away. They continue to be popular. Even though the lead singer isn’t the same, people go out and they just want to hear those songs. ‘The Town I Live In’ is not their original song but they just brought it out! The city of L.A. is divided into these invisible lines of neighborhoods. I’m from Frogtown and there’s also Dogtown and there’s all these towns—so when people hear it, it just means a lot.” (RM)

THE EMULATIONS “THESE ARE THE THINGS” (EMULATE RECORDS, 1970)

“This came out of Oakland in 1970. When I very first started collecting records, I couldn’t find this one for the life of me. I looked for it for a good year—he sings it all with falsetto. That’s what catches me, any record with the falsetto and the backup singers. This one, I heard it on YouTube, and I was like, ‘Oh hell, I gotta have this record!’ It’s beautiful! I went to go see a record dealer up north and he played it and I was in tears cuz I didn’t think I could ever find it. You have to really listen—that’s what I tell people. You have to listen to what we’re feeling, what we’re talking about, and this one is my number one. I always play it at shows—this record is like my signature record. But this record is on styrene, which wasn’t made at the time to last. Styrene records were almost like disposable records.

I know it’s going to wear out soon so I’m trying to find another copy just to have a back-up.” (AS) 65

THE CHARMELS “AS LONG AS I’VE GOT YOU” (VOLT, 1967) “This one cost me $300, but to me, when you buy a record the price is no object because I gotta have it. What makes this record special is the Wu Tang Clan sampled it, and that song became really famous. When I heard Wu Tang do it, I was like, ‘Oh my God, that beat!’ I had to have the record.

That was a really hard find—I found it on eBay but I asked the guy if he could meet me at a coffee shop in Norwalk so I could get it right away.

I couldn’t wait for the mail! I’ve done crazy shit for records! But when it means a lot to you—it’s like it’s based on a story that’s part of my life. My family thinks I’m crazy. They don’t call me ‘51-50’ for nothing.” (AS)

LITTLE HANK “TRY TO UNDERSTAND” (SOUND STAGE 7, 1965) “Fantastic and a bit obscure Tennessee dancer from soul man Little Hank.

If you are spinning records in hopes of filling the dance floor, ‘Try To Understand’ from 1965 is a great record to go with. Currently not too expensive and if you find one, it’s worth every penny. When we got together and we sat around, we said ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to do a dance with these records?’ See, in low rider culture, you listen to them in your car, and when you’re working on your car. We said, ‘Let’s do them in a dance setting!’ And we did and it was packed!” (RM)

WENDY RENE“AFTER LAUGHTER” (STAX, 1964) “Her real name isn’t Wendy Rene—and she recently passed away, which was really sad for the soul community. We try to find whoever is left, and talk to them, and they’re so appreciative. They didn’t make it back in those days, and to know that people still listen to their music, they’re just really amazed by that. Tthis one I bought because of the lyrics. It’s about love, like when you’re with somebody and it’s all about laughter at the beginning but after that, like the song says, comes tears. It’s true when you don’t find that right relationship—all it turns out to be is tears. It’s a very soulful love song. You listen to these songs, and you feel it inside. It’s like, ‘Wow, I’ve been through that! I’ve felt that!’ Everybody has been through these feelings and emotions.” (AS)

jimmy conwell “second hand happiness” (MIRWOOD, 1966) “‘Second Hand Happiness’ was already one of my favorite records. The beautiful sadness in the lyrics had a profound effect on me. Then I met James Conwell and he explained the lyrics to me and the response he got from the ladies and hustlers at the player’s clubs he was performing at in the late 60s. He’d get up on stage and do all these song—all of them were emotional songs. But this song is about how this guy will take a brokenhearted women—he’ll take anything! He’d get up and sing these songs and then walk into a row of people and get on his knees and sing straight to a lady. He was doing that and one of the guys pulled out a gun! And the guy started pistol whipping the girl because he attracted Jimmy and got his attention!” (RM)

the satagans “lovers to friends”(yambo, 197x) “There’s really not too much information on this—it’s not like you can plug it in and you have the information. Many of these are bottom of the basement records. Often, people from the U.K. would come out on vacation and take them back home so we had to buy them all back. The British loved the flip side, the Northern Soul. I don’t even know where this label is based out of—I’d say that it’s from the mid 1970s, and some of these guys would eventually be in Earth, Wind, and Fire. This has a really eerie sound to it. Every time I play it, a lot of big top-notch record collectors come up to me and say, ‘Wow, what the hell was that?!” It’s just an eerie song about what the title says—lovers to friends. I think I bought it in 2009, and nobody even had it. I was probably the only one in our circuit that had it. These records—they move your soul. These records tell my story basically.” (AS)

The chocolate glass “for i love you” (judnell, 197x) “We don’t have that much information on some of these records. It’s just not out there on the Internet or in any book. They were dug out and found and nobody knows what’s what or who’s who or where it came from. It’s a hard to find record. It’s from sometime in the mid-70s. You can tell from the sound, and this is most definitely a 70s sound. The flip side is more funk. The song is about this dude who says he loves this girl so much, and there’s one part in it that says he has to pull out his little black book cuz it’s time to move on. A lot of women relate to it! That’s they’re favorite part: ‘Gotta pull out my little black book.’ It’s just the emotions of life, put into lyrics and with music coordinated for it—it hits the spot!” (AS) INTERPRETER

INTERVIEW

JASON ANDREW WILLFORD

Before you joined the Runaways, what would a great weekend have been like in 1975?

Jumping in the van with my … they used to call themselves ‘young ruffians.’ Guys who lived in our neighborhood. We’d go out and drink Mickey’s big-mouth beers and listen to Led Zeppelin. My dear friend Paul L’Esperance, who is now an interior designer—very successful guy—is the one who turned me on to Bowie and the Odyssey and Rodney’s English Disco. He could drive, so he would take us to clubs on the weekends.

That was what we looked forward to all week long—to go to the clubs at night and kick up our heels a bit.

In the late 70s there was also this undercurrent of violence. Randy Kraft, that hitchhiker that would pick up women and mutilate them— At seventeen I was kidnapped. I had the Hillside Strangler task force come to my house because they thought maybe this guy could have been the Hillside Strangler. You’re right—there was a lot of insanity going on, but it’s still going on, and it’s going on probably far worse. I think [violent people] would come to Los Angeles simply because it was easy pickings.

I lived in Encino, in a very nice middle class neighborhood—me and my girlfriend were walking, and [this guy] pulled up next to us and had no pants on. We were probably ten years old, and these wonderful policemen came. My friend was crying and they were saying, ‘Can you tell us anything about him that stands out?’ She turns around and through her tears, said, ‘He had no pee-pee hole.’ It’s so sad, but these cops stood there— handsome men, too—they tried so hard not to laugh. Because the guy obviously wasn’t circumcised.

In your book you talk openly about being a rape survivor. Why did you feel it was important to talk about it?

Well, because ... after my abduction he only got a plea deal. Back then, they blamed the victim more. Usually the parents would take care of it.

There was the sense of pride that they took care of business if it wasn’t going to be taken care of.

Did you want to talk about it in your book to set an example of how you can move past this horrible thing?

Of course. There’s no other reason.

You can survive it emotionally. It doesn’t mean that you ever completely get over it. You don’t. It always is with you—it always will be with you. But to me, it is my past. It helped me when I was raising my son. From a very early age, I put the fear of God into him. A lot of mothers thought that I was a terrible mother for this, but he actually thanks me today because he grew up aware of his surroundings at all times. It made him a very calm

CHERIE CURRIE Cherie Currie—Runaways singer, L.A. mainstay and chainsaw sculptor—recently self-released Reverie, her first full-length album in 35 years. She speaks now to Kristina Benson. human being. When you’ve grown up in this blissful bubble, and then all of a sudden something horrific happens—which it does, to many, many people—it’s too traumatic.

So he learned to cope. I’d tell him, ‘There’s bad people out there. They want to take you, and you will never ever see mom and dad again, and then I’ll have to go to heaven to find you because I can’t live without you.’

That kind of thing. He knows that really bad stuff happens to good people, and he says it’s helped him a lot. So there you go.

You made this album with your son— what was it like to take direction from him?

He produces six of the songs out of the ten, and he co-produced with Kim [Fowley] four of the songs. First of all, I listen to classic rock. I don’t listen to anything that’s on the radio these days, and I haven’t in many years. There were a couple times that we butted heads, especially on ‘Believe,’ which is a song that I wrote 18 years ago. I wanted it to be a Glen Campbell type of thing. In the 70s, I loved that type of music. And a lot of people do. You know, French horns and all that stuff. My son was like ‘Uggggh, I can’t let this happen.’

I said, ‘This is my album, and please let me have one song with the crazy

French horn at least.’ I loved it—now he loves it!

I can imagine part of you is like, ‘Kid, I’ve been doing this longer than you’ve been alive.’

That happened a couple times. But Jake and I do have very similar likes, and the fact he plays almost every instrument you can think of except for violins and cellos and things like that ... I would write something and bring it to him and within thirty minutes, we were recording it. He just sits down and starts writing all this stuff. He’s got more talent in his little finger than I think my wonderful ex-husband, Robert Hays, and I have in our entire bodies. But yeah, this was a huge endeavor. This took a year after we had left the studio with Kim to get it finished.

It’s the first album you’ve done in over 35 years. Why? This is the first album that will be released within 35 years. In 2010, after I opened for Joan [Jett] at the Pacific Amphitheater, I got a record deal opportunity. I made this great record with Matt Sorum. I got Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins—he wrote a duet for he and I to do—I got the Veronicas, Brody Dale—Juliette Lewis even comes in and sings on a song, and Matt, Slash and Duff, and also my wonderful band-mates, Nick

Mayberry and the band that I took on tour with me—and Jake as well.

And Grant Fitzpatrick on bass. So for some reason, it’s been five years now, and they’ve never released that record. I didn’t understand what the deal was and why I wasn’t allowed to perform. I would ask and there was just no real answer. When my management contract was up, I refused to re-sign, and I have not had a manager since. I did four tours on my own without management, and it was great to see the fans. Anyway, this is the first record that will be released by me because nowadays you really don’t need record labels.

You do need distribution, but I paid for all this myself, and Kim kicked in some money as well in the very beginning. But considering all the blood, sweat and tears, I just want to control this myself until I find a deal I’m comfortable with. I’ve been ripped off all my life. By people I trusted. Now at 55, I just don’t want it to happen again.

How did things change with you and Kim and Lita? You recorded with them both for this album.

Let’s talk about Kim. Not much had changed. He wasn’t calling me bad names, but the guy likes to get in and get it done. This was the very last studio album that he participated in, with those four songs. It was great to be there with him. I never really realized, until Jake and I went to his apartment and Lita came as well— the man is just a lyrical genius. Was a lyrical genius. It would just come out of him. You had to have a tape recorder. You never had to change anything, really. He was brilliant, and I wanted Jake to be able to see this.

It was the same guy as he was as a young man, just trying to get it done, without the name calling [laughs].

Just a few months ago, I moved him into my house. For eight days, he was here. And then unfortunately, we had to rush him to the hospital.

He did his radio shows basically from bed. He’d written a couple of songs and wanted me to do the vocal on it.

Kim basically orchestrated me, from his bed, telling me when to sing harmonies—and the look on his face was just kind and calm. I’m so glad I hit the notes right, because the smile on his face—I’ll never forget it. That is the way I remember Kim now. I don’t remember him as the tyrant. I remember him as the guy in my back bedroom, orchestrating me to sing a beautiful song that he had written with Cliff [Retallick]—and I mean a beautiful song. And that is the way that I will always remember Kim. CHERIE CURRIE’S REVERIE AVAILABLE NOW ON ITUNES.

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OLIVER JONES of THE CUT-RATE Interview by Frankie Alvaro Photography by Ward Robinson

Oliver Jones of The Cut-Rate is quite the interesting fellow. He built insane imports. Then he bought a motorcycle, and never built a car again. His first motorcycle—he brought it home, rode it around for a few hours, then stripped it all the way down to the frame to build an incredible custom. He’s a Born Free invited builder with an incredible eye for detail and a style all his own. Saying he isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty is an understatement. Let’s see what our friend has up his sleeve for this year!

When did you get your first motorcycle?

Oliver Jones: I guess I got my first motorcycle in 2007 or 2008? Not that long ago. It was actually the first bike I ever got or built. I didn’t get into riding bikes as a kid or have a dad that rode bikes or any of that. I lived in Japan for quite a while, and saw a lot of the bike stuff going on there, and I fully wanted to build a bike when I got back to the states when I had the means and the space to do it. I had always done car stuff as well, so I was mechanically inclined but had never owned a bike. When I finally moved back to the states and got a garage and was more settled, I figured it was time. I went out and bought a bike—having never even ridden one before. I went out that night, bought it, and rode it home. I winged it! Rode it around all night, then came home and stripped it all the way down to the frame.

It just started from there.

What kind of bike was it?

It was a Yamaha TW-200, a lame trail bike almost. At the time when I lived in Japan, there were a million of those things— custom—everywhere. The way licensing works there, you start out on a 50cc, then up to a 200, then a 500 and so on. So 200s were just everywhere. People built them kind of like street trackers, or extended swing arms—almost hill climb-looking bikes, and they came with fat knobby tires. They’re aesthetically … not Mad Max, but very crazy looking. And the ones I saw there at the time, I thought they were just the coolest things. I ended up building mine almost from scratch.

I literally did everything on it—frame, tank, you name it. The only thing that was stock were the tires and the motor. I think I went way over board on the first build.

Was that from being inspired by everything you saw in Japan?

Yeah—I always had a thing for cars. I liked bikes but from like 16 to 20 I was so immersed in the car thing I didn’t have any money to buy a bike. It was just cars-cars-cars. Then I moved to Japan when I was 21 and sold my car—I sold everything—then it was back to skateboards and BMX bikes. I reverted back to that. So having seen all those bikes there, and wanting one naturally anyway … they were just weird. I’d never seen one before. The style they have doesn’t exist here. I’m used to seeing Harleys or sport bikes. So that really blew my mind. And given this weirdly aggressive but 200cc stance, stretched out with knobby tires, looks like you can climb up a mountain with it or something … it just looked so gnarly.

And I thought, ‘I want to build that.’

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So it’s a Japanese hill climber?

It looks very hill climb-y. I have pictures I can show you! It looks like … not a chopper but it’s chopped. I used a Frisco Sporty tank, and parts off an SR400, and parts off of this ‘n’ that, and just mashed it all together. There’s a salvage place back home I used to always go to—Baltimore Cycle Salvage—and I became friendly with the guy and he would say, ‘Go ahead, take whatever you want.’ I wouldn’t know where parts came from—they were just cool-looking! I didn’t know anything about any of this shit. I had friends who were into bikes or getting into building bikes, so we all just winged it. I hadn’t even finished building this bike before I was thinking of starting another bike. It all just snow balled.

With 200ccs, you must have not been able to keep up with the Sportsters and other American bikes Oh no—not at all. Before I even finished building that, I realized I almost wanted to build that as an art project. I had that in mind for the last seven or eight years before I even had one. I built it because it was something I had always wanted to do. Before I had even finished it, I went out and got another XS650—that was a street tracker kind of a deal. It was almost halfway there when I went out and got it. I did a bunch of stuff to that to get it rideable, then I went out and got something else. You know how it goes. It never ends.

How did you end up in Japan?

I was in college for graphic design—graphics were my major. I was also doing the car thing full time. I had my own side business. I would do car stuff for people. I went to Japan for a car show to begin with. I figured I’m getting all these car parts from Japan—I want to go there to see it. And this car show is the biggest thing there is. I went and two days later I thought, ‘Well, I have to move here now.’ It was just too crazy. I went there for this show, it blew my mind, and everything else blew my mind, too. I hated school and wanted to get out of Baltimore, so I said, ‘Fuck it, I’m just going to sell my shit and move.’ I was there for about 3 years.

That’s a long time. At least a significant amount of time.

The first time I went was January ‘99. I was living there by June. I dropped out of college, sold everything and just moved. And through a series of odd twists and turns, I was able to get a job, a place to stay, was able to design for people. I just made it happen. I think about it now and I’m amazed that it worked.

Were people welcoming?

Yeah—I think in the past 15 years, things have changed a bit. It’s way more open than it used to be, in terms of being an international tourist destination. Since then everyone I know has been there—but before no one I knew had ever been there. It was a different vibe. When I go back now there’s wifi and internet and all of these things that make life so much easier. Especially when you don’t know the language or culture. When I think back on it now, when I went there, you were just thrown into this mix of craziness.

Were they open to American culture then as much as they are now?

Absolutely—I don’t think that will ever be any different.

They do always step it up a notch.

Absolutely. I think part of my move was I was doing this car thing, and … granted Baltimore isn’t New York or L.A., but I was frustrated with the level the people I was dealing with wanted to do things. ‘I kind of want to do it, but not really …’ I’ve always been, ‘If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it—full commitment, to the utmost best I can do.’ I want to go beyond that. So everyone I was dealing with was lazy, and going there and seeing the level they commit at, I thought, ‘Yeah, this is a good fit for me.’ How over the top, and how crazy everything is there.

What were you doing for work in Japan?

When I first moved there, I was doing nothing.

I was living off savings I had generated with selling my stuff, which lasted me about three weeks, and I had a three month ticket! So I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’ Long story short, I didn’t have a place to stay for about a month and a half. I crashed random places, I stayed out until the morning every day then found a place to crash, or went to a buddy’s place and took a shower or cleaned myself up—did whatever I had to do. Eventually I was able to get an apartment, and again through a series of ridiculous circumstances—which when I look back now would never happen again—I was able to pull that off. After three months I was able to pull off a job at a Navy base in Tokyo as a gas station attendant. I worked at this place, stocked shelves, pumped gas, rented videos.

A Japanese base?

It was American in Japan. The irony is I was hired as a civilian through the military, and they have this thing were they have to hire a certain amount of Japanese employees as well to offset it and make it fair I guess. So my pay was 700 a month, and my rent was

690 a month, and these other people that were hired by the Japanese government made 15 bucks an hour or something like that. At the same time I had met a lot of people via skateboarding or whatever that were in the clothing industry. They worked at a shop, and that shop had their own line and I was able to get some freelance work. Keep in mind this is on a Japanese keyboard—a Mac where I couldn’t read designs. I was able to get enough work to limp along. So I was able to quit my job and do odd jobs, extra work in commercials, whatever I could do.

What kind of cars were you into?

I was doing import stuff, Hondas, Acuras.

VTech!

‘VTech is kickin’ in, bro!’ A lot of my friends were into European cars: VW, Audis, that kind of stuff. Its weird—I know that was big in California, but I guess we didn’t have that much of a hot rod scene. I mean—it’s there and always has been, but it’s not as ingrained as it is into the So Cal lifestyle. Everything with me snowballs out of control. It went from, ‘Hey, I’m going to tint my windows!’ to ‘I’m going to be the sole importer of this engine and do everyone’s engine swaps and have my own line of mufflers.’

How did you figure out how to do all of that? Swapping out an engine in a Honda isn’t like swapping out a Chevy 350.

I don’t really know, to be honest with you. I guess I just jumped in. It was all happening at the time. There were resources that there aren’t today. Not to mention that was very early stages of that. Its not like you just call Jegs and you order the swap harness and you get the motor mount kit. That stuff was just starting to become available and there was a lot of trial and error. Information was vague at best. You just did it and tried it. I had a friend who was better at wiring than I was, so we traded, and you did as much research as you could with what was available at the time.

I’ve been through that pre-internet—calling Germany for parts when I don’t speak German and they don’t speak English.

Totally! But then I was peaking, making all of these contacts and getting everything in line and boom—I moved to Japan and it’s over.

Like … I am still into cars, but going there, there’s no way I can have a car there. Couldn’t afford it. So it went from the peak to nothing to do with cars whatsoever: ‘What’s a car? I take the train, I ride a skateboard …’

So when you built that first motorcycle, after that there were no more cars—just straight into motorcycles.

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Yeah—I still like cars. I’ve had several cars since then. Not import type tuner cars.

You just had those Kimtab wheels made for your cop car!

Ha—yeah! I’m still very much into car stuff and doing car stuff. And I’ve customized some cars since then—not in a ground-up build kind of way. Just tinkering. But I still have a total interest in it. When I find some free time I’d love to get back into it. But after all of these years working on bikes, I’ve developed a whole different skill set. Now I can weld, fabricate … imagine if I tried to build a car from the ground up? Imagine what I could do.

What was the first year you were invited to build for Born Free?

Just this past year. The first year I went to Born Free was number four. I already knew Grant and Harpoon from Japan and different shows and going to California several times before for vacation and bike stuff and business. I’d heard about Born Free in Long Beach but didn’t go—it was far or out of my way— and as it got bigger and bigger I thought, ‘I should go.’ It was awesome as a spectator— Born Free 5, I had just moved here and I didn’t really have a bike that was ready. I had a panhead as a roller in my booth, just as an ‘I’m here—this bike is coming soon!’ Three years later, it’s still sitting untouched. The bike I built for Born Free 6 ironically came with me from Baltimore. I had it as a roller halfway built. I planned on having it in my booth, but I didn’t bring it with me cuz the gas tank didn’t get finished and some other stuff. So I thought … whatever, I won’t bring it unfinished. You can’t have a bike without a

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gas tank. Then Grant saw the bike and said, ‘I want you to finish this for next Born Free as an invited builder.’

So the black bike you built—no name, just ‘the black bike.’ The motor on it is just a fucking monster, and that goes back to what you were saying earlier: you doing design and you doing these art projects seems to be leaking into your motorcycles.

Was the black bike built to ride or built as an art piece?

I was originally building it to ride for myself, and as it became a Born Free deal, I went back and started thinking, ‘Well, this isn’t good enough, and I have to change this … It’s good enough for me to ride but it’s not good enough for the show.’ I went back and started rebuilding and redoing the parts. I don’t know if I got caught up in it being a crazy show bike or something … I mean, it’s rideable. I’ve ridden it! I wouldn’t want to ride it every day, but it’s for sure rideable!

Why wouldn’t you ride it every day?

The way the suspension is set up. It’s ultra-stiff and pretty tight. Everything is pretty tight. It’s a kick-only high compression bike. If I was going to build a bike that was my daily rider, that’s not the bike I would build, but—that is the bike I love! You know what I mean? I was going to build a bike with a no-holds-barred attitude. I went into the build thinking, ‘I don’t want to limit on this thing.’ I knew I’d get to the show and wish I had done this or that. So I just did it to the extent that I thought it should be done.

Can you tell me what you did to that motor—for people who haven’t seen it?

The motor visually is crazier looking than it really is. In my eyes, anyway. I think the one I’m building this year is way crazier.

But to the black bike I added a dual Karata magneto set up, which is pretty in your face.

The motor is completely black, which is a big no-no to a lot of people. The rocker boxes are one of the most striking parts. They’re from Japan—a company called Hot Dock. I’ve always wanted a set. I just couldn’t justify the cost and the craziness of them for something that wasn’t a show bike. So as soon as I got invited, I knew what I was gonna get. They don’t fit in the stock frame—you have to do a lot of modification just to be able to use those.

And on top of that they’re all black. The carb is black—everything is black. I didn’t want to go over the top, but I wanted to do something most people wouldn’t do.

So it’s more of an art piece?

Kind of—I know what the norm was, and I just wanted to go past that. In a sea of a million bikes, it’s very easy for a bike to get lost.

It for sure was very eye catching. Not to mention there’s 10,000 of the coolest bikes you’ve ever seen, so pretty quickly you get overwhelmed.

Exactly—there’s a lot of glitter paint jobs and chrome, and I wanted this to be a black void in a sea of shine. I primarily build all of my bikes black but I wanted this one extra black. It’s going to be next to a thirteen-color lowrider paint job. I wanted something opposite that would stick out so hard next to it.

What are you building this year?

I realized last year that bike was built purely with parts that I wanted to use, and I knew

what I wanted it to look like. I didn’t care how it competed or how it looked with other bikes in the show. I knew I was going to be the odd man out. I’m going to have some weird monstrosity that most people aren’t going to get. Surprisingly, it was way better received than I had planned. Even people who I thought wouldn’t like it at all received it well.

The only thing—and it’s not a bad thing—is that it was unclassifiable. It’s not a chopper, it’s not a real race bike, it’s not a tracker.

It’s got aspects of all three, which makes it harder for most people to digest. They like it but compared to a chopper at the Born Free chopper show, it was just a format most people are unfamiliar with. So this year what I want to do is take the same idea— parts I absolutely want to use, a style that I absolutely like, familiar colors and contrasts that I like to do—but do it in a chopper silhouette. I want this thing to be very undeniably chopper. It’s a chopper, you know what I mean? It has the tell-tale body lines of a chopper. But within that, it’s super high performance. More than last year. Crazier parts than last year. Way more involved and way more over the top than last year—in terms of the actual motor and performance. But all in a chopper shell.

From twenty feet away, ‘Oh, hey, that thing sits really well. It’s a traditonal skinny 70s chopper.’ But when you get up to it, it’s all high-tech drag-race shit. This is ultra-new high-tech modern stuff. That’s the concept for this year.

VISIT OLIVER JONES AND THE CUTRATE AT THECUTRATE.COM.

CRAFT / WORKS

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JOHN TOTTENHAM

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BILL KREUTZMANN

AND DEAL: MY THREE DECADES OF DRUMMING, DREAMS, AND DRUGS WITH THE GRATEFUL DEAD Interview by Kristina Benson Illustration by Cahill Wessel When Bill Kreutzmann learned how to play the drums as a kid he immediately realized that he was hooked; he did not, however, know that he’d go on to play over 2,300 shows as a drummer in one of the longest-running, hardest-partying bands in the U.S. (if not the entire world!). Nearly twenty years to the day from the very last concert the Dead ever played, and close to fifty years since the band’s beginnings in the Bay Area, Kreutzmann has written an unfaltering account of what it was like to spend nearly three decades touring non-stop in a band that broke nearly every unwritten rule in the business (such as encouraging audiences to make and trade their own recordings of live shows, and routinely dragging a grand piano along with them on tour). Bill joined us from a hotel lobby in New Orleans and talked about the CIA, what it means to be a hippie, and his bandmate Bob Weir’s short shorts.

In the beginning of the book, you talk about the fact that CIA is what led Kesey to acid, and acid is what made the Dead the Dead. Is it fair to say then that the CIA created the Dead, in a way?

The way it got to us is Ken Kesey used to go to the VA hospital and be a volunteer for LSD experiments. That was the only way he could get his hands on LSD! And after a few times sitting in this clinic in a white room with a doctor wearing a white coat saying, ‘Do you feel anything now? How are you feeling? You OK?’ After the fifth time, Ken just said, ‘Nah, nothing’s happening.’ Lying through his teeth!

The walls were melting, the doctor’s face was changing into a bunch of horror images. And he walks outside and goes, ‘Ah! This is what LSD is really about—not about being in this white cage! It’s about being outside and it’s about experiencing all of life!’ Isn’t that far out? That someone would be brave enough to be whacked out of their mind on acid and tell a doctor with a straight face, ‘No I don’t feel anything!’ That’s how we got our hands on it.

You talk about how you guys weren’t political hippies—you were more dangerous, the ‘fun-loving, peace-seeking, do what you want’ kind. Why is that more dangerous than the political kind?

It’s kind of a joke—like herding cats! Herding cats could be dangerous, but we weren’t dangerous, cuz we weren’t really rebels. We were the kind that you can’t put your finger on, and that’s why we were more dangerous.

But people would follow you around— all across the country. There are rumors people sold their houses to follow you to Egypt and see you play. Isn’t that kind of political, given that you inspired people to just stop participating in the system—for lack of a better way to put it? And kind of a dangerous in its own way?

You know people that are real locked in their ways—I’m going to use this word ‘straight’— they have a very linear type of thinking, and would find those kinds of people dangerous.

And the irony is that there’s nothing dangerous about us! We’re the most open, loving people! It’s not about being anarchist, or throwing rocks or stones or anything like that. It’s really about loving people through BOOKS

music. That’s why I play music—I get to make people happy. I’m in my sixties now but I don’t feel that old—I don’t even know what that means.

Do you still consider yourself a hippie?

I do! What is a hippie? A hippie is a person that has a very open mind, isn’t restrained by thoughts, by society, by what their parents said, by what college taught them. I don’t think of a hippie as a person with long hair.

I think it’s more an attitude of the mind—it’s more than just someone who has dreads and is dirty. That’s just one kind of hippie!

Speaking of people who have dreads and are dirty, one of the things that’s so interesting to me is that when you look at what the Dead looked like, and what the audience looked like—especially in the mid to late 80s and the 90s—you guys don’t look the same. Often bands will look kind of like their fans, but you guys dressed nothing like your fans. Jerry would have on his purple sweatpants, and Bobby would wear his little shorts or whatever, and you look out into the audience and no one is really wearing purple sweat pants or little shorts.

And on stage no one has dreads or tie dye.

[Laughs] You’re great! You’re making me laugh! We were not fashion conscious at all, and it’s so obvious. I’d put on jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes and then play. It was just about playing the music! We were definitely not fashion statements! And we’d go to some town that’s kind of like … Minneapolis, Minnesota. Not Chicago, so much, and definitely not San Francisco or New York or L.A.. But some of these Midwestern cities you go to, they were just drab—drab! And as you’d be in the car or the limo on the way up to the gig, the closer you got, there would be this wave of color. And it would be Deadheads in their tie-dyes and stuff, and the closer you got, the better the city looked! It became colorful all of a sudden—I loved that! That’s the look I remember. And they had smiles on their faces! I don’t really judge my fans for how they look. They’re just fans—they’re Deadheads. Sometimes they’d copy what Jerry was wearing, and that was very obvious. I didn’t mind the girls wearing short shorts—that was OK with me!

I was a huge fan of the Grateful Dead, but in preparing to do this interview, I found being a fan made it kind of hard: fans know so much about the Dead, and so much has been written about the Dead—was it difficult writing this book because so much is already out there?

There have been many books written about the Grateful Dead. One in-house book, and Dennis McNally wrote the tome. I didn’t struggle with that so much. I made sure that I told the truth about the things that I wrote about—to the best of my knowledge, things that really happened to me. I think it’s interesting for readers. They’re talking to one of the guys in the band. All these other people, they have all these opinions of us, right? And most of them are pretty darn true, although I have read stuff that has been falsified where they just made stuff up about me. But that’s part of the danger of being famous.

In the book, you talk about how you were playing free shows one day, and then selling expensive tickets to the Winterland Ballroom the next. How did you pull off that balancing act where people would pay for tickets even though they knew they had a chance of seeing you for free?

We didn’t think of it as balancing. That was just part of playing. When you’re a new band, that’s all you really want to do you— you just want to play, play, play. I never thought of it in any financial way: ‘This is a paid gig, and this is a free gig.’ It was just always about, ‘Hey, let’s enjoy a gig somewhere. Oh we don’t have to pay for this one? What a good deal!’

That’s how it is today—I’m still just about playing music. I walked into a bar down here the other night to have a beer with my friends, and in the back room there was a three-piece band and they were playing ‘Scarlet Begonias.’

I couldn’t help myself—I said, ‘Do you mind if I try playing that?’ They didn’t know who I was. They really didn’t know! So I sat down, I played the song great, and then the guitar player said ‘Wow, man, you really played that good!’ ‘Well, I’m Bill Kreutzmann.’ The guy’s jaw just dropped to the floor! He couldn’t believe it. We had fun, and I didn’t have to be famous or anything—they didn’t know, so it didn’t matter. I love that.

It’s wonderful that you were able to do that.

I’m sure you made their days. Their entire lives, probably. But that’s something Jerry would never ever have been able to do.

Everyone would have known who he was.

He couldn’t have done that.

You talk about how Jerry was blessed and burdened at the same time, because so many people loved him so much. What about your own interactions with fans?

It’s a different experience, I’m sure. Every day I walk down the street, someone comes up to me and says thank you. One guy walked up to me with tears in his eyes, saying, ‘Thank you Bill, you saved my life.’ He was in a motorcycle accident and he was in a coma for six weeks, or eight weeks maybe. But a darn long time.

And the doctor got really wise and said to his mom, ‘What kind of music does your son like to listen to?’ ‘The Grateful Dead.’ They put a good pair of headphones on him and put on a live concert, and he was awake in less than an hour. That’s how powerful this is. I love our audience, and I love what we’ve done. It makes people feel better—even me! It makes me feel better! It makes me feel better talking to you!

I used to listen to the Grateful Dead every day of my life at one point— You did?

There was a point where if someone put on a show, I might not be able to identify the exact show, but I could definitely tell you the year, no problem.

You’re a Deadhead! You are! I can tell!

So to prepare for this interview, I started listening again. And you’re right—the music just made me happy. I have no idea how or why. How did you do that?

I can only speak for myself. But if it comes from the heart, your music—what you’re putting out there—well, this is what it is.

How do I do it? It’s still a total get-off for me.

It gets me off.

BILL KREUTZMANN’S DEAL: MY THREE DECADES OF DRUMMING, DREAMS, AND DRUGS WITH THE GRATEFUL DEAD IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM ST. MARTIN’S PRESS. VISIT BILL KREUTZMANN AT BILLKREUTZMANN.COM 75

A WAILING OF A TOWN: AN ORAL HISTORY OF EARLY SAN PEDRO PUNK AND MORE 1977-1985 Interview by Chris Ziegler Illustration by Walt! Gorecki The first time I heard the Minutemen’s “History Lesson,” it untangled something in my head like no other song had before. There was no distortion, no hard chords, no fast drums—just a story, really, told as clear and true as it could be told. And that’s the story of Craig Ibarra’s oral history A Wailing Of A Town, too, in which Pedro punks invent themselves, over and over and over. Assembled from more than 70 interviews with not just the musicians but the people who threw shows and put out records and took photos and wrote words and most importantly were there as it happened, A Wailing Of A Town is an overwhelmingly comprehensive and inclusive document of punk as it spread through the South Bay and a crucial complement to local histories like We Got The Neutron Bomb. It’s like the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime, very arguably the definitive Pedro album: it asks a lot and offers a lot.

Really, it’s a revelation, stripping away rumor and legend and delivering focus, depth and detail on parts of history that previously existed only in long-lost zine or personal archives, if at all. (For example: the often-talked-about shift from art-y punk to hardcore— and the riots and violence that followed—is here with more nuance, depth and detail than I think I’ve ever seen.) Not to put too broad a point on it, but this book offers vital perspective and inspiration for … anyone doing anything, really. It’s a story of people who really did do it themselves, and how they did it and why and what happened next, and it’s told with clarity and truth. As Watt says somewhere north of page 300: “The idea is to touch people. Convince them that their hearts beat. Everything’s a device to get that across. It’s open for everybody. No job’s too small for the Minutemen!”

First, the mechanics – I know this book has been years in the making. What was the first interview that made the project ‘official’? And what kept you going through over four hundred pages?

Craig Ibarra (editor): I came up with the idea to do the book in January of 2007. I was inspired by two books: Please Kill Me and We Got the Neutron Bomb. I’ve always been interested in the early pioneering days of L.A. punk and beyond. I really liked the oral history format of these two books. I don’t consider myself a true writer, so the oral history format was something I felt, if I was gonna take a stab at doing a book, this was the format I might be capable of pulling off—which involves doing interviews, transcribing and mostly editing. At this time I was doing a zine called The Rise and the Fall, so I was doing a lot of editing and was getting better at it with every issue. The editing part seemed to come easy for me. Doing the zine was definitely good practice. The first interview I did for the book was with Victor Sedillo and his sister Lina, on January 27, 2007. It broke the ice and gave me a feel of what I was getting myself into. Eventually, I had to stop doing the zine in late 2009, after fourteen issues, so I could focus on the book.

The book took about eight years to complete.

I was working three part time jobs, running a record label and doing various other projects, so there were long stretches where I didn’t work on the book—weeks, sometimes months. I made sure to spread the word to all my friends that I was taking on this project. I figured since I let the cat out of the bag, there would be no turning back. In taking so long to complete, I would constantly hear people say to me, ‘How’s the book coming?’ which became annoying, but also helped push me harder to get it done. I think people were starting to have their doubts if I was gonna pull it off. The years kept going by so fast. I really pushed hard the last year and a half to get this done.

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Why is a book like this necessary? How does Pedro punk fit in beside L.A. punk and O.C. punk, and why did you feel it deserves a book of its own? Or to put it another way – what happens in this book that isn’t adequately documented in Neutron Bomb?

I feel this book is necessary cuz not a lot of people outside of the South Bay area knew that a San Pedro punk scene even existed, or that there were other bands around at that time in Pedro besides the Minutemen. I think fans of the Minutemen will find this book interesting and give them a better understanding of what really went down in Pedro during the early pioneering days. I don’t think Pedro really fit in so much with Los Angeles or Orange County punk as a whole, besides the real early Hollywood days, only because the early Pedro punk bands were so unique. Not to say that punk bands from L.A. or O.C. weren’t unique, but these early Pedro bands went out of their way not to sound like anybody else. I think a lot was left out of We Got the Neutron Bomb.

It mentions the South Bay in a couple of chapters, but these chapters are mostly about the uprising of hardcore and the violence that occurred at these gigs. I heard [co-author of We Got the Neutron Bomb] Brendan Mullen was gonna do another L.A. punk book and maybe he would have covered more of the South Bay—not sure. We Got the Neutron Bomb concentrates more so on the early Hollywood scene like a lot of other books. A lot of these Hollywood people thought the South Bay was one big town. I don’t think a lot of them realized how big the South Bay really is. There are a lot of towns and cities within the South Bay—it’s really balkanized, and a lot of them had their own little scenes that you’ll probably never read about. So this was a good chance for me to make that clear and tell Pedro’s side of the story.

One thing I feel is very strong in Pedro and the book is the idea of DIY—it’s hardcore DIY on every level. In some ways, I almost feel like Pedro bands made punk more ‘real’

than it was. Like they took the best ideals the movement had to offer and brought them to life—I love bands like the Voidoids and Television and the Clash, for example, but those were all on major labels. And in Pedro, the bands are on their own labels.

Or for another example, and much like Watt and Boon often said, to them punk REALLY meant no rules—even though a lot of punk bands out in the world were pretty committed to the same distorted guitars, scream-y vocals, 4/4 drums, etc.

Apologies for the long question—I guess to put it simply … what makes Pedro punk Pedro punk?

The Minutemen were the anchor of the early Pedro punk community, and still are in a way. They set the tone for originality.

They blazed a path of creativity that was influential on all the other Pedro bands that formed after them. The Minutemen embodied the DIY spirit to the fullest. Most of the early Pedro punk bands were inspired by the early Hollywood scene, where it was wide open and there was no template. I think the early Pedro punk bands—Minutemen, Saccharine Trust—were more inspired by the real early L.A. stuff and some of the more experimental music coming out of England, not so much by the hardcore scene that came a couple years later. A lot of the hardcore bands sounded similar, which was the exact opposite of what the Pedro bands were doing. The Pedro bands were a little more experimental—some might even say ‘artsy.’ I think the early Pedro bands were a bit alienated by the hardcore scene, to tell you the truth. Most of these cats from Pedro were geeks and misfits that didn’t fit in with the so called ‘popular kids,’ so there were a bunch of unique personalities and kids just looking to find their niche—just like the Hollywood scene, I imagine. I think Lina Sedillo [of Peer Group] worded it best: ‘Being isolated enough from the Hollywood scene, while being aware of it,

I think was a huge benefit in that no one felt a need to conform, and we were free to develop our own look and sound.’ I’m not too sure Pedro was very important to the hardcore scene, and maybe that’s why the Pedro scene was somewhat dismissed—that and the fact that it’s so remote. Not a lot of people outside of the South Bay would venture down this way. They would say, ‘All roads end in Pedro.’

Something I really liked about the book is the inclusiveness. Reading it, I found many names I didn’t recognize. At the end of the book, I discovered many of these people credited as ‘gig-goer.’ They were side by side with people who made albums, ran labels, were in bands, etc. As far as the book was concerned, they were just as important and deserved equal credit. In some oral histories, the perspectives of the people who weren’t the musicians or big movers or whatever—‘the stars’—just aren’t there.

Why did you make this decision to include gig-goers and others? Surely it meant much more work, and yet it was important enough that you did it.

From the get, I wanted the story to be told from mostly a Pedro perspective. I tried to stay away from interviewing ‘big name’ outsiders, like a lot of books and documentaries seem to go for—which I imagine is a good selling point. To be honest, I was worried at first, that readers wouldn’t be interested in hearing from people whose names they didn’t recognize, but I thought it was super important to include them and get different perspectives from everyone that was there, which includes gig-goers. After all, without gig-goers, there is no scene.

What kinds of things have been documented only in this book? I saw flyers and photos I’ve never seen before. Are you the first person to publish them? And there must have been people interviewed who’d never really done interviews before. What new ideas and information came to light while BOOKS

you put this book together, and how did they change pre-existing ideas—yours or just ‘common wisdom,’ or maybe both— about the larger story of punk in Southern California?

I tried using nothing but unpublished photos for the book, mostly by local photographers that were part of the Pedro punk community.

I would say 99.9% of the photos have never been published—most of the flyers too. I have an abundance of ephemera that I scanned from various collections of individuals that I interviewed, but wasn’t able to include everything. I’ve been showing a slideshow of all the stuff that I’ve scanned at various book events that I’ve been doing. Maybe someday I’ll figure out a way to share this stuff. That’s correct that a lot of these people in the book have never been interviewed, but everyone had something unique to add to the story.

Something that stood out to me was the fact that most people believed that the Minutemen were always a touring band in their six-year existence. Mike Watt went out of his way to clear this up, which I felt was very honest of him. The Minutemen didn’t do their first tour until their fourth year as a band in 1983.

They only did three tours on their own. Watt clears this up and talks about how some of the early punk pioneers’ history gets exaggerated in a lot of cases. Another thing that comes to mind is the fact that Watt wasn’t happy with the last two Minutemen records, Project: Mersh and Three-Way Tie (For Last) and they were gearing up to get back to the Double Nickels formula, which I think we were all waiting and hoping for. Also, the story of the tragic accident that ended D. Boon’s life is finally told, which clears up a lot of rumors and accusations that have been floating around for years. I also learned in-depth histories of various Pedro bands, hangouts, clubs, bars … there is so much that I learned.

It would take forever to talk about it. I felt like I already knew a lot going in from reading numerous Watt interviews and hearing stories throughout the years, but I was enlightened on so many levels.

The Minutemen (and Reactionaries) of course loom large in this book. Their story pulls us through the whole history—from Pedro’s first punk band to going from a Pedro band to a U.S. band and finally those last agonizing days before D. Boon’s death. What kind of echoes of the Minutemen—and Watt, Boon and Hurley themselves—do you see going through this history of Pedro punk? What ideas did they transmit, lessons did they teach (or learn) and examples did they set? This history of Pedro punk is very tightly intertwined with the history of the Minutemen—what made that the right way to write it?

For our town, the Reactionaries and Minutemen were definitely punk rock pioneers. They made it safe to write your own songs and not to be scared to get out there and play them. They gave people confidence to take chances and do things themselves. They were very original, encouraging and inspiring.

They are the focal point of the book. Michael Quercio [of Salvation Army/the Three O’Clock] says in the book, ‘The Minutemen were the band of the scene. They were like the sun, and all the other bands were the planets 78

that rotated around them.’ Dennes, Mike and George were sort of like the ambassadors of the Pedro scene, so it’s only fitting that they are intertwined throughout the book.

How did you finally draw the lines of what would be in the book and what just couldn’t fit? To me, this book seems extremely comprehensive—it’s as much an encyclopedia and even an atlas as an oral history. But as an editor, you had to stop somewhere. What had to happen for you to be able to call this a faithful document of San Pedro punk?

I went over this book hundreds of times— I’m an over thinker. I had a few people do read-throughs, and got some feedback. Some of the readers included Michael T. Fournier, who did the 33 1/3 book on Double Nickels, along with some close friends that I hold in high regard—Victor Gastelum, Christian Moreno, Todd Congelliere, Richard Bonney, KRK Dominguez and Laurie Steelink. John Tottenham, the guy I had do the final proof, gave me a good tip. He told me I should think about trimming the fat. The book was over 500 pages when I gave it to him the first time. I went back and trimmed it down to 400 pages or so. I started going overboard on the editing at that point. I was over thinking it way too much and it started wearing me down. The more I read it, the more I kept finding things I wanted to change. I felt like it would never end and I finally had to put my foot down. In my heart I knew it was complete, but it took a lot to convince myself of that. The New Alliance and Minutemen chapters were probably the toughest—I did expansive research. I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave anything out. ‘Thinking too much can ruin a good time.’—this Mike Watt lyric is so true.

I also admire your own position as editor— you seem to have made conscious efforts to not be one of those guys who’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I wrote the BOOK, man—I know it all!’ Instead, it’s deeply and humbly focused on people who were there and what they had to say. When I was reading, I was struck by a quote from Watt about why the Minutemen decided to start doing interviews: ‘At first we thought it was bourgeois and mersh. And then we figure, actually it’s more bourgeois and mersh not to do pictures or interviews.

So we said, ‘fuck that!’ People should know what they’re getting. People should hear us talk. If they see us and hear us talk, they’ll know we’re not rock stars.’ Is anything like your own idea for the book as a whole? As I read this book, I feel like I’m hearing the people talk.

Thanks for acknowledging that. Yeah, I feel kind of weird doing interviews, actually. I want the book to speak for itself, but at the same time, I understand the importance of getting the word out there and that there might be some questions that people might wanna know about how this book all came together. I just don’t wanna come off as trying to be the spokesman of early Pedro punk. I wasn’t hanging around during these early years—I was too young. But yeah, it was important to me to have people speaking for themselves. It helps broaden the whole picture and that’s why I like the oral history format so much.

What extremes of labor went into the project? How many hours of interviews did you do? Who was hardest to track down, and why did you persist in getting them?

Who do you wish you could have talked to and why? How close did you get to your original ideal idea for this book, and was there anything you had to leave undone … or maybe just undone til the next printing?

I did [over] seventy interviews—not sure how many hours. I’m not the fastest at typing, so transcribing would sometimes take an entire week or more. That was the part I disliked most. I’m not the most social person, so doing interviews was somewhat uncomfortable for me. A lot of these people I never met before.

That’s one of many reasons why it took so long to complete. I’d get in ruts where I couldn’t get myself to schedule an interview. It was like pulling teeth. I had to be in the perfect mood just to schedule one. I couldn’t get myself to pick up the phone—it was so frustrating. It was a good learning experience. I was not in my comfort zone, that’s for sure. Everyone I interviewed was super nice. Mostly everyone was easy to track down within eight years of working on this. Not everyone wanted to be interviewed, though. Two people that were monumental in helping me learn the finer points of style and copy-editing were Lauren Errea and Mark Kordich. Mark helped with a quarter of the book and Lauren helped with the rest. I would go back and forth with them and eventually I learned how to do it myself towards the end. I probably wouldn’t have been able to pull this book off without their help. Huge thanks to both of them. Also, I got permissions to use various anecdotes from different zines, which I felt was extremely important—this was a way for me to get some of D. Boon’s thoughts into the book. The two people that I wish I could have interviewed, were Greg ‘Stinky’ Hurley and Gino Pusztai.

Greg is George’s middle brother. He was very important to the early scene and was the singer for Kindled Imagination [1980 project with D. Boon] and the Slivers [1981]. Greg also came up with the record label name New Alliance. I’ve ran into Greg on a few occasions in the past. Let’s just say he’s a fireball. Gino was the singer of Peer Group [1981-1982] and also played in the Plebs [1982]. From what I hear, he was a unique character as well.

After initially talking and telling the both of them about my book project over the phone, they wouldn’t return my messages. I guess I didn’t put too much pressure on them—I didn’t wanna harass them or anybody for that matter, even though maybe I should have, for posterity. I’m sure they would have had interesting things to say. The only thing that I left out … I didn’t get a chance to get into the Minutemen’s acoustic performances like I wanted to. After eight years, I felt pretty confident that I covered everything. Also my original plan was to try and get published. I wanted to rid myself of this project in a way.

It took so long to complete, I just wanted to step back from it for a while and hand it off to someone else to promote and sell. I felt like I had nothing left in the tank to give to this project. Eventually, I met Stuart Swezey from Amok Books and he gave me some tips on the pros and cons of self-publishing and thought I might be better off putting it out myself.

After taking a brief breather, I gave it some thought, and my DIY nature kicked in and I went ahead and self-published the book under END FWY Press. So far it’s working out great.

I was able to land distribution from Last Gasp out of San Francisco and hopefully books will start hitting the stores. I’m interested in getting a publisher for the second edition, though. So, if any publishing house out there is interested, feel free to hit me up.

What did you learn from doing this book that you didn’t expect? You’ve been immersed in this history so deeply for so long. Did it change your own ideas about Pedro or punk? Or music or art or life, even? For me, once I’d finished this book, I realized that the things I thought of as the concepts and ethics of punk were really more the concepts and ethics of Pedro punk specifically—things Watt and Boon say about art being for everyone, the idea of doing it yourself because no one else will do it for you, etc. Like the song says: this is Bob Dylan to me. How were you different once you’d finished this?

I agree, the Minutemen were special—that’s a great compliment. Different? That’s a tough question. I don’t wanna pretend and come up with this big affirmation on how doing this book made things different for me. This book has been the biggest challenge for me, as far as projects go. I know it’s cliché, but I learned that anything you set your mind to is attainable, and it’s true—I had my doubts. You just have to work hard. I wouldn’t say doing this book changed my idea about Pedro punk or punk in general. I guess I’ve always known these punk ethos to be true, just from being around some of these pioneers since I was in my late teens working at SST Records. Punk rock definitely changed my life. I absorbed a lot from these cats. I am lucky to be a part of a great DIY community like San Pedro and I’m more than happy to do my part.

SAN PEDRO SHRED: FESTIVAL OF SKATE WITH A WAILING OF A TOWN SIGNING PLUS UNDERGROUND RAILROAD TO CANDYLAND, AUDACITY AND MORE ON SUN., JUNE 7, AT GAFFEY ST. LOOKOUT POINT, SAN PEDRO. 10 AM / FREE / ALL AGES. SANPEDROSHREDFEST. COM. SIGNING PLUS READING, SLIDESHOW AND ACOUSTIC SET

BY RANDY STODOLA (ALLEY CATS) ON SUN., JUNE 28, AT STORIES, 1716 W. SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 5 PM / FREE / ALL AGES. STORIESLA. COM. SIGNING PLUS READING AND SLIDESHOW PLUS BANDS ON SUN., JULY 12, AT CAFÉ NELA, 1906 CYPRESS AVE., CYPRESS PARK. 4 PM / 21+. CAFENELA.NET. A WAILING OF A TOWN: AN ORAL HISTORY OF EARLY SAN PEDRO PUNK AND MORE 1977-1985 IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM END FWY PRESS AT ENDFWY. BIGCARTEL.COM. VISIT CRAIG IBARRA AT WATERUNDERTHE BRIDGERECORDS.COM, THERISE ANDTHEFALL.BIGCARTEL.COM, P R O C R A S T I N AT I O N Y O U T H .

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LILA ASH | INSTAGRAM: SECRET_HOTGIRL

SPENCER HICKS

COMICS

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THE AMAZING NINA SIMONE Interview by Rin Kelly Illustration by Alice Rutherford “Dig her, she’s the boss,” declared the Chicago Defender in January 1963, announcing Nina Simone’s ascension with just the kind of pure, pushy truth the High Priestess of Soul deserved. No one did truth like Nina Simone, and truth was what she demanded in return—true ecstasy, true tears, true feeling from the audiences she set out every show to shake up so much that “when they leave a nightclub where I performed, I just want them to be to pieces.” Born Eunice Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina, she was one of eight children who all played the piano, but it was clear from early on that the future Nina Simone—with her perfect pitch and astounding recall—was a prodigy. She was driven, both from within and without, to become a great classical pianist, and when the establishment denied her that, she forged her own kind of classical music instead. It was raw soul and refined technique, jazz and pop and blues and classical, the invention of a brilliant Black woman who wasn’t going to wait for the world to acknowledge her power. Now, all at once, the film world can’t seem to get enough of Nina Simone, with two documentaries and a controversial biopic on deck. The Amazing Nina Simone is the independent work of the bunch, a years-in-the-making film that brought documentarian Jeff L. Lieberman into collaboration with Sam Waymon, Simone’s brother and bandmate, known to movie history for scoring 70s cult great Ganja & Hess and helping to inspire Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, Spike Lee’s 2014 remake. The two grew close as they worked together to tell the story of a great icon of black power, black self-love, and towering creativity. “Dig her,” command Waymon and Lieberman and The Amazing Nina Simone: “She’s the boss.”

Just watching footage of Nina Simone performing can be overwhelming. And that was one of her goals—she talked about going into a show with the ultimate goal of making everybody feel, leaving them ‘reelin’’ and shaken up, joyous and rattled.

Sam Waymon: That’s the job—you have to be able to read the audience, too. It’s the audience that tells you how to respond to them. Let’s face it: if you’re gonna perform, you have to be ready and willing to strip yourself naked emotionally on stage. You cannot do that haphazardly. You cannot pretend to be feeing something that you’re not. The audience could tell in a second.

She didn’t care about holding her feelings back.

She cared about the audience—about making them feel something, yeah. She wanted to make them feel what she was feeling, or make them feel themselves through her music.

That’s what we do. That is our responsibility.

If you don’t do it that way, then you have to ask yourself, ‘What is the point of going out there on stage?’ Why are you there if you’re not there to have your audience travel through your music, to feel their own pain—let them feel your pain, let them feel their own joy, let them travel emotionally and mentally through a time and space in their lives through music, through art. People would go see her because they want to feel something, they want to travel. The best way to travel is to see someone who can take you there. The audience may not know that that’s why they’re there! This is something subconscious sometimes. But why would someone want to subject themselves to being berated by Nina Simone except that you want to be berated? You want to feel the pain, because let me tell you something: we used to say to each other, ‘I like to feel pain, because that way I know I’m alive.’ Pain lets you know you are alive. Joy lets you know that you are alive. There are people in this world that are emotionally dead, you know that, right? Well, that kind of dead state is very boring to me!

She was astoundingly courageous, performing in some of the situations she did, as part of protests, as a Black woman and a Black public figure who told the truth to a white supremacist world.

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Jeff L. Lieberman: [Simone guitarist and musical director] Al Schackman shared with me that in Selma or Montgomery, all the artists basically ended up sharing the same room and sleeping on the floor, because nobody wanted to be near any windows—safety in numbers.

It was him and Bill Cosby and James Baldwin, all of these artists together, sort of amazed that you’re sleeping on the floor with these people.

But nobody wants to take a chance in that period when assassinations were so numerous.

Sam, you have scars from bats and batons, from when mobs turned on protesters. Did Nina, as the older sister, influence your joining her in the fight?

SW: Let me clarify something: I’m from North Carolina. I’m from a town that you had to walk on one side of the street because you were black or the other because you were white. We had to drink out of the separate fountains; I had to go to the balcony for colored folks only.

I knew who the members of the KKK were— under those sheets, we knew who they were.

It didn’t come from Nina! That doesn’t make any sense. Nina moved to New York when I was a kid, when I was young, but I was still in North Carolina dealing with racism. On my own. I was called the n-word. I remember clearly when I was walking from South Carolina to North Carolina. We were right on the borderline. We had to cross this little old railroad track and path that goes from one part of town to the other. This was when it got really dark, and I heard screams. I heard screams of a young girl up the track. I could see she was being held down by some figure in white. And guess what happened? She was being held down by some KKK people.

They were trying to rape this young girl, Black girl. She couldn’t have been no more than 12, 13. My father taught me something and my mother did too: they taught us if you see something, do something about it. She taught us what was right and what was wrong. And because I was brought up in this house, we had to fight for what we believed in no matter what cost—even if we stood alone in that belief. Be steadfast in your beliefs, no matter what. If you believe it, it’s real. I went into

automatic gear. I ran up the tracks and I start attacking these white figures. I was skinny as heck. They used to call me Stringbean! They called me Stringbean cuz I could run so fast.

I had these skinny legs—you had to catch me to beat me up. But I jumped on them enough to free this girl. She got free and she ran. And they grabbed me and they threw me down on the railroad tracks. It may sound like a sad story—it is, but it has a happy ending. They grabbed me, holding me down on the tracks, and I knew exactly who each member [was].

The pharmacist … I probably shouldn’t say too much! I knew who these people were, and they tried to beat me. Back in those days, the whole thing was white men castrating Black men. That’s what they tried to do, but they did not succeed because I was screaming and yelling. There’s always debris on the tracks, so I found a pipe somewhere next to me. I swung and I hit one guy so hard he fell back. That freed me a little bit. My legs were going one way, my arms were goin another, and I could hear the girl further up the tracks: she was gone. I could see the figure, she was saying, ‘Thank you, thank you!’ and bleeding all over the place. She ran. I freed her. That was the most important thing to me. But I’m fighting for my life right now. They tried to castrate me—they pulled down my pants. I don’t want to go any further with this type of story, but they tried their best to humiliate me. What they did back in those days was to kill us, hang us, or castrate us. They wanted to kill me. They had a knife, but I swung and I was free of their grip. That was my experience, which had nothing to do with Nina Simone. When she was asked to define freedom, she said freedom is living with no fear. She’s seen as so fearless, but she talked about fear a lot.

JLL: She feared her own body and her own actions and her own mind, and she feared going into dark places—that kind of thing.

But she also had fear just based on the world she lived in. And that’s largely how I believe a lot of Black people in America feel today.

There is a certain amount of fear not knowing that you will have safety on your side or law and order on your side.

SW: She disregarded her own beauty. She did not understand her own beauty in the beginning—it tormented her. Being a Black girl, being Black at that time, we were not made to feel that we were beautiful people. That was part of the indoctrination that was at the core of who we were. White people offered the blueprint of beauty. Being a Black woman, she had to come to terms with that beauty within her soul, within her heart, because everything at that point had to do with white women.

But yet here she was a rising star—she was on the cover of all these magazines—and she still had not come to grips with her own beauty.

It took a while. That coupled with the world outside of herself—trying to be a wife, mother, the fact that she was becoming a leader of sorts in the Black community through her songs and music—that’s a lot of pressure. That can tear you apart. You have to be very, very strong and you have to be very vulnerable.

JLL: One of the goals of the film was to pay tribute to Black women who were part of the Civil Rights Movement, who get sort of washed out of civil-rights history. You hear the group of five and the group of six, and you hear about Harry Belafonte and even Frank Sinatra. You hear about a lot of men. I don’t know how many people know about Fannie Lou Hamer, but her and Rosa Parks are sort of the only women given their big due—and even Rosa Parks’ history is a more sanitized version. Black women were expected to act in a very particular way, and Nina by far was someone who was not doing that at all. I think even the Black community has trouble recognizing that. It’s not something thrown into the history books. ‘Mississippi Goddam’ was an amazing piece of work that was written in 1963. She was talking about Black freedom well before Stokely Carmichael. She was talking about ideas that didn’t really come into the mass public mind other than that song until three or four years later. She was well ahead of her time.

She described writing that song as firing 10 bullets back at the Klansmen who bombed the 16 St. Baptist Church—she said she wrote it because she wanted to make a th

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weapon to go defend her people and hurt anyone she could ‘identify as being in the way of my people getting some justice for the first time in three hundred years.’

JLL: She was fearless in writing the song. She was fearless in performing at Carnegie Hall in front of a largely white audience in 1964, not knowing how they might respond. I mean, the song was profane—just in the use of the ‘goddam.’ Suddenly you have that going on plus you’re calling out the entire state of Mississippi for its racism. Then she’s going on to criticize just about everyone else in the world. She’s criticizing Southern life, she’s criticizing Northern life, she’s criticizing Black males, she’s criticizing Black women. She’s really sick and tired. It’s brilliant on multiple levels, and I think that on the surface, it’s just ‘Mississippi Goddam,’ right? She’s just angry, and she’s putting out some of the baffling things that are going on. But she’s also against this whole idea of ‘go slow.’ ‘We’re not going to go slow anymore.’ And this whole country is full of lies. Like nothing can be trusted. The idea that this country was founded on freedom and even democracy is just complete bullshit to her, and she can’t understand how no one sees this, how four young Black girls can be killed and no justice prevailed.

SW: That goes back to the responsibility she had as an artist. She used her fame, her stage, to say those things that she knew people were feeling. It’s like any leader—any leader, they say what they know reflects the hearts and minds of the people they represent. She had the stage; she had the forum….Wherever we were, we expressed our own experience through our music. She did, I did—she had to. And it gave her peace. It did! She comes off angry because she was angry, she was mad. But she was also happy and joyful. Nina Simone—and I want to clarify this for the whole world—Nina Simone was not an Angry Black Woman all the time. She was not. So whoever is reading this, it is very clear: that makes her sound like she was a mad woman. She was not mad at the world; she had issues like every Black woman had. Like every Black man had, but particularly Black women during those periods.

Did she accept the various psychiatric diagnoses she was given?

JLL: I don’t know if she accepted them or not.

I know that she was very secretive about it and kept it under wraps … I sort of suggest bipolar disorder in the film based on one of the interviews, but other people disagree and say it could have been schizophrenia. I also heard interpretations of PTSD from experiences she might have suffered in the early 60s.

SW: She lived in Hollywood, and I was staying there. I remember us going to the rooftop to go sunbathing. She loved to get brown; she loved to go to Africa; she loved the water. Up on the roof, she said to me, ‘Tell me about the family.’ She said that she wanted me there because I reminded her of her daddy. I saw that as an opportunity to ask her about herself.

I said to her, ‘Why are you so extreme in your moodiness?’ Her bedroom was cold as ice.

She kept it like that all the time. You would go in her room and you’d have to wear a coat.

That had to do with her personality, that had something to do with her health issues. I say that simply because that led to a point—this FILM

conversation about California is leading me to answer your question. Here’s what happened: we were in Paris. We were in the limousine.

She was completely going in one direction to the other, attacking—verbally another personality. She had multiple personalities. I knew them all, each and every one of them.

This particular day, a couple members of the band were with me. I was the manager. I had to dismiss them all. ‘Get out of this car, let me call the police, let me call the doctors.’ She was totally out of control. One of her personalities had taken control. It sounded like a man. It was a deeper voice than I have. The guys were frightened; the driver was terrified. I think she’d taken an overdose of some medication.

But she also had drank some Grand Marnier.

I had to call the psychiatrist. We put her in the hospital. I dismissed everybody, closed down the tour. I had to stay with her. Most of the public doesn’t know what I’m about to say to you—they don’t know that this actually happened. I didn’t say this in the movie, but I’m saying it to you now. It has a happy ending.

She knew something was wrong with her, and she kept saying, ‘I’m gonna kill you, I’m gonna kill you.’ She would curse like the devil. I said, ‘Nina, something is wrong with you.’ ‘I know, I know.’ She’d say things like, ‘What are you gonna do about it? You don’t care about me.

You don’t love me. Everybody hates me.’ She’d go into this tirade. She knew something was wrong with her, but let me tell you: she knew something else too. She knew that if anybody could help her and cared about her, it was me.

This time we had to put her in a straightjacket.

She was diagnosed with multiple personalities.

I sat beside her bed in the hospital every night, for about eight days or ten days. Multiple personalities, depression, addiction to pills, bipolar—which was not the name back then.

Everybody’s bipolar today, but it wasn’t really discussed that much at that time. But my sister Nina, something was wrong with her.

Did she communicate it to you—what she thought was happening deep down?

SW: A lot of people didn’t understand her and didn’t get to understand her. They missed a certain part of her, and what they missed comes from the song ‘Little Girl Blue.’ When we sat on that rooftop back in L.A., she said, ‘Sam, so many people misunderstand me. They don’t know that I’m just a little girl. I just want to be the little girl that I never was.’ She would say to me, ‘I didn’t have a chance to jump rope like little girls do, or have baby dolls or do the things that little girls do.’ And she didn’t.

Because she was at the piano all the time, sometimes practicing seven hours a day?

SW: Yeah—she was being pushed toward her genius as a classical pianist. But this bothered her. And I would say to her, she would look at me, and we’d be layin’ up there in a chaise lounge by the pool, she’d say, ‘Do you know what I mean?’ I’d say, ‘Actually, I do.’ Because you know she and I performed together—so when she’s on the concert stage on her grand piano and I’m sitting at a Hammond organ facing her, we’re looking into each other’s eyes performing. And whenever she went into ‘Little Girl Blue,’ I flew into her eyes. She would be looking at me and crying. I knew exactly what she was talking about. But I knew something else: I wanted to protect that little

girl. I loved my sister. I really did. I protected her ... She said to me, ‘I just want to be a little girl.’ I said, ‘Is that why you sing ‘Little Girl Blue’ like that?’ and she said, ‘Yeah.’ So what would we do? We would be silly as heck. We’d play ball, we’d play jacks. She and I did all these crazy, silly things that she never did when she was a kid. I taught her how to play basketball a little bit up on that roof; I threw a football.

She didn’t know how to throw a football. She wanted to know what it was like to do that ...That was the frivolity. It wasn’t all depressing and bipolar. I tried to have fun.

She expressed a lot of disappointment in her later years at what she thought was the trailing off of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. When she said, ‘too slow!’ she meant it, and she didn’t play diplomat with it.

JLL: I think she really was disappointed. That’s a whole other area that people don’t even think about: what happens when you’re involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and suddenly major leadership is gone or dead? All the ideals have changed, and you’ve only really achieved half or a third of what you had hoped. She was one of the few people who were left at the end of 1969 who hadn’t gone commercial. She was commercial somewhat, but she was singing ‘To Be Young, Gifted and Black.’ In 1969, that was her big song. Martin Luther King was gone, Malcolm X was gone, so many Black Panthers were jailed or killed. A lot of people had simply left America. There was a new generation of singers who were embracing disco and pop. I think she felt completely disenfranchised. She didn’t know who appreciated her or where to go or how to be.

And now she’s in the media lot, perpetually in television and commercials but also in John Legend’s Oscar speech, in people’s responses to the Black Lives Matter movement, and in the anger over the Hollywood biopic that cast Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone.

SW: You wanna get me started? Now you’re touching on something that I am angry about as her brother, as her younger brother. This is no indictment of Zoe, because she’s a great actress. But this had to do with the fact that they cast a woman who has no features of Nina Simone, not even skin tone. Fake nose, fake lips, that’s an insult to my sister. She stood for truth. And fair play! And they had to falsify the story about someone who’s supposed to be truthful. It’s absolutely absurd. If you’re going to make a story about a Black icon, a female singer of protest and civil rights and all that, Nina Simone, why not get someone who closely resembles? And if you can’t find that, don’t make her up. Don’t give her body parts that are not real. Don’t do that! Isn’t that pathetic? Please. That’s flatly wrong, because this is history for us. It’s blasphemous.

JLL: With our film, we had a screening in Tyron on Nina’s birthday a few months ago ... To be able to play the film, have a packed house, with friends and a standing ovation— with Nina’s statue across the street—it was very emotional. To go back and try to draw on and show those people their own story on the big screen and celebrate Tyron, the gift they gave the world. Nina Simone is the gift that came out of the town. That’s one of the nicest things so far to come from the film.

She wrote ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,’ and that’s a fight even now, over a decade since her death. What are other things you wish people understood about her?

SW: I covered that a little bit when I said think of her as the little girl blue. Think of her as a little girl inside a grown woman; think of her as a person who was a sponge who soaked up the energy and life and times of the world that she lived in. We used to say to each other, ‘Where do you exist? You have a life in between the keys.’ The space between the keys is where she used to exist. And that’s good enough for me—like livin’ between the moon and the sun. That’s where she lived, that’s what she understood. She knew she was a prodigy. She didn’t like that word too much, but she knew she was different. She enjoyed what she did understand about herself. That song ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,’ that I sing now also in my concerts, that was part of her legacy. She was misunderstood. But at the same time, understand that Nina Simone was not crazy, she was not mad, she was a lady who tried to understand her womanhood, she tried to understand her Blackness the best way she could, and she figured that out through her music. That’s all. She wanted to lead the world.

What she understood best was, ‘Hey, let me shake you up.’ She wanted to make people think. That’s why she would act a certain way—she would want you to walk away from her show wondering what did you just go through! ‘Damn, what just happened to me?’

She used to say, ‘I want people to feel my pain.

I want people to feel my joy. I want them to travel someplace.’ Because every song she sang was not anger. She sang a lot of beautiful songs.

Love—she wanted people to feel love and the power of love. What it is like to be loved and what is it like to love. I’d love for you to end on a happy, humble note about love. Not hate— nothing like that. Nina was about love, love of the world, love of life, love of her art. Very important. She appreciated her art, and if you really want to know how I feel about it, I have to tell you—you know I wrote that song called ‘A Brother’s Love’? In that lyric, it talks about her. It’s very important that they understand that’s where she was coming from. That’s how I saw her—that’s how the world sees her. Leave on a good note that Nina Simone was about love, life, the complexity of life, the complexity of love and all its benefits.

And honesty—you can’t get to love if you’re not honest about the pain, too.

SW: Truth, truth. You have to be honest about it—she was not a liar. About anything. She told the truth how she felt it, The one thing you knew about Nina Simone—about Eunice Waymon—is that you ask her a question, you’re gonna get a Eunice Waymon answer. Whether you like it or not, that’s your problem. That’s one of the things I loved about her. You either took it or you didn’t. Some people hated Nina, but some people loved it. One thing you can’t do—you can’t ignore her.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE AMAZING NINA SIMONE, INCLUDING DVD PRE-ORDERING, SCREENING NEWS, OR HOW TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE FILM, VISIT WWW.AMAZINGNINA.COM 83

THE DECLINE OF WESTERN

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CIVILIZATION

Interview by Chris Ziegler Illustration by Nathan Morse

Until now, The Decline Of Western Civilization series was one the great lost artifacts of American music—three full-length documentaries covering the first wave of L.A. punk in the 70s, L.A. hair metal at its decadent height in the 80s and hardcore street kids at the end of the 90s. Watching some (or all of these!) on VHS—or for the unlucky, a rotting VHS bootleg—was something between a rite of passage and a cultural touchstone for decades. Now after too many years out of print, director Penelope Spheeris (who directed Wayne’s World and more between Declines) and daughter Anna Fox have cracked open the vaults for a comprehensive DVD and Blu-Ray issue of the entire series on Shout! Factory, decked out with never-before-seen bonus footage and packaged with an exclusive mini-book by L.A. historian non pareil Domenic Priore.

(Oh, and Dave Grohl’s on the commentary track, too.) Obsessives, prepare for full interviews (with bands, ‘the lightbulb kids’ and more) and additional concert footage as well as period news reports and media ephemera; newcomers, prepare for total immersion in a series of films that introduced—or maybe inflicted—each of these Southern California subcultures on the world. Spheeris speaks now about how making Decline was the best time of her life and how putting together the re-release was the hardest job she ever had.

You said getting these on DVD was the hardest job you ever had, and I know you’ve had some hard jobs. Was rereleasing Decline worse than waitressing for twelve years?

Penelope Spheeris (director): Was I exaggerating?

No, I don’t think I was exaggerating. It’s been very, very difficult on a lot of different levels. On the deepest level it’s because I subconsciously relate it to—believe it or not—having lost my identity when I was seven years old when my father got killed. For me, The Decline is my identity. I was so afraid of putting it out there and having it be wrong. Of all the various work I’ve done, it has the potential to be the most lasting and meaningful. Like 50 years from now, I don’t think anyone’s gonna give a shit about Wayne’s World. If [Decline] helps future generations remember these people, and even me, then I think the job is done, you know? Even if they’re not remembered and I’m not remembered in the most positive light—at least we’re remembered.

These are high-stakes documentaries because you don’t have the distance of an exploitative perspective. In the news footage from the bonus features, you can tell they’re like, ‘Ha, look at these freaks.’

But you treat these people like people. That requires a personal connection.

PS: You’re right. It’s too easy to close our eyes to other people’s troubled existences. I try not to do that. I try and look at each person as they are. As special as I think I am, I like to think of everyone else that way too! These people are treated as equal human beings. I’m so thrilled you noticed that’s the way we interact. I’m not better than them and they’re not better than me, or worse than me. We’re equal. I saw a very, very significant shift in the social environment and the way people were acting and behaving and dressing and the music was so different … I felt compelled for history’s sake to document it. I didn’t have any exploitation in mind. I think my attraction to it was to the chaos because in my family situation growing up—my sister and brother both, we often talk about how there were knock-down drag-

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out fights in our family at least three nights a week. Like—bloody people, OK? The reason I was attracted to it in the first place was the chaos, and then I wanted to organize the chaos, you know? I studied human behavior in college before I went to film school. I did this from a perspective of trying to understand why humans behave the way they do and I put it in a rock ‘n’ roll environment. It’s all part of evolution. People have to try different things to decide what the right thing to do is.

There is a line in Wayne’s World—my favorite line—when Garth says, ‘We fear change.’ You know what these movies are about? They’re about the public that fears the change they see in these movies.

The trailer for the first Decline is hilarious for how exploitative it is—it’s all fighting and grotesque imagery.

PS: The trailer was an afterthought after the movie was done. It does look exploitative but people pushed me in that direction. They were like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe this. This is so violent.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, let’s make a trailer about violence. What the hell?’

And that tagline: ‘See it in the theater …

WHERE YOU WON’T GET HURT!’ PS: I know—I made that up. It was a joke. It was a total joke. Let me go back on how this actually came into being. About two and a half or three years ago, I asked Anna if she would come to work with me and do my various things. She said she would but there was one requirement and that would be that we would do the Decline DVDs. We started and it was miserable. It’s like having your life flash in front of you. She would go down to the vault and dig out old pieces of film and old VHSs and find shit on the Internet and go, ‘How about this, Mom? How about that?’

Anna Fox (producer): She hated going. It’s a cold vault. It’s creepy. You don’t want to go in there by yourself. You have to go in with somebody because if you go by yourself a horror movie will start immediately.

PS: It’s been like seriously having my life flash in front of me. I feel like I could either be reborn right now or just die.

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So everyone needs to know—did you empty the vaults on this? For years, the rumor was you had complete footage of a bunch of early L.A. punk bands.

AF: I got pretty much everything. The extra footage that we had was the Gears.

PS: And you put Fear songs and Germs songs in there, too.

Any other bands?

AF: Other bands? No. PS: When we gave all our materials over to Shout!, one of the comments we heard was, ‘Wow, this is more extras than we’ve ever had for any of our sets.’ I said, ‘Why don’t we save some out and we’ll do a re-release later?’ ‘No, no, you don’t want to piss your fans off. You want to put everything you have in there and that way they’re not going to be mad that they’ve got to buy something else.’ So I did.

Why did you shoot the bands you did? The criticisms I often see of the first Decline are about who was left out. No Weirdos, no Screamers— PS: I would have loved to have the Weirdos and the Screamers in there and plenty of other bands of the times. A lot of it just came about because during the times that we had the cameras, those bands were available. We were shooting film—it wasn’t like you could just go run a video camera that keeps going and you’re not paying for it. I was shooting music videos at the time as a way of making my living. I had a company called Rock ‘n’ Reel way before MTV. So whenever I had the equipment, I’d go, ‘OK—where can I go and shoot this band?’ It was just a matter of convenience, as opposed to ‘Oh my God, the Germs are the best of every punk band in the whole wide world.’ The Go-Go’s were supposed to be in the movie but they crapped out at the last minute and I’m glad because they turned into a bubblegum band. Margot Go-Go [a.k.a. Margot Olavarria] was in the Go-Go’s. She started it. That’s when we were talking to them about the movie and then they kicked out Margot and it sort of became taken over in a commercial way. It didn’t feel right. The funny part is, years later, they wanted to ... what did they want, Anna?

AF: They wanted to use Decline footage of the crowd shots to show that that’s where the GoGo’s came from.

PS: But they didn’t want to do the movie.

I think at the end of the day, the bands are probably thankful that they were in the movie but don’t want to give the movie credit for helping their career because they want to believe they did it themselves. That’s fine with me. I’m not asking for any credit for helping anyone’s career. I’m barely helping mine.

Do you want to take credit once and for all for destroying hair metal with Decline II? That’s something else I’ve seen out there.

PS: Ha—’destroying’ it? I don’t want to take credit for destroying anything. I will say this: I wouldn’t want to live it again but it was an enjoyable, entertaining period of my life.

My daughter was going out with Nikki Sixx, weren’t you, Anna? Were you too young to go into fucking clubs? And he made you stay in the fucking limousine? Is that right, Anna?

AF: No. PS: Yes, it is! You don’t remember that?

Anyway—point being, the whole Decline II time was a very enjoyable time. Never want to 86

live it again. It was Caligula, man. Let me tell you where I come from. When we shot the [infamous/harrowing poolside] Chris Holmes interview, I took [director of photography] Jeff Zimmerman behind a tree and said, ‘This guy was so fucked up that we didn’t get anything.’

So for all those filmmakers out there who may be reading this interview, you never know when you got it—that is the most memorable scene in the whole movie. The point is, I never sit there and go, ‘Oh my God, I’m such a fucking genius. I just got gold here.’ That’s what people say to me. They go, ‘Are you excited the DVDs are coming out?’ And I’m like, ‘Dude, there’s a really thin line between excitement and fear—I think I’m on the fear side.’

What kind of effect did these movies have on the cultures they documented once they were released?

PS: I think what you’re hitting is something I’ve thought about quite a bit—how much does our creativity affect the general public?

How much do they take their cues from that? When I was a teenager listening to Bob Dylan, man—he was fucking God! I’m doing whatever Bob Dylan said! Those of us who’ve been fortunate enough to hit a nerve and tap into being able to sway public thinking … that’s cool. But it reminds me of when I couldn’t get the first Decline distributed and I wrote Suburbia, and I never stop marveling how I look at those kids in Suburbia and I look at those kids in Decline III … and it’s almost like they watched the movie and they did that.

I don’t know if I saw it coming or if they saw the movie and did it. It’s like I saw it before it happened. There’s a flipside to that, cuz what we do as filmmakers or musicians or artists … we have a responsibility cuz we do have that power! Mine was not the only film about punk rock that did make a difference. There are certainly others. We were just fortunate to catch a moment in time and let people know about it. Sometimes I feel that I accidentally named and identified a burgeoning trend that exploded when it became distributed and integrated into the backlands, you know? I feel really thankful that I was able to do that because there were very credible elements about true and pure punk rock and if more people can think that way … meaning less commercially oriented and less selfish, more tolerant of people ... The punk ethic to me is where ultimately I think we’re going to get, but we’re not there yet. I’m glad I was able to spread the seed a little. I didn’t want to put them out for so long because I felt it went against that punk ethic—you know, it’s not about making money and making a coffee cup with The Decline on it. That’s why you don’t see that. I’m trying to respect the ethic.

Luckily I was able to make money selling out other ways with the studios and shit.

Why did this seem like a serious subject to you? At the time, the mainstream perception of these cultures—each of them—is somewhere between a novelty and a threat.

PS: I was born in a carnival. Every city we traveled to, I was an outcast. I was used to that. I knew the people who were on the carnival were all outcasts as well and I knew they had a lot of heart and soul and they banded together and they, in a way, had their own punk rock ethic going on. I felt

comfortable in that environment. As far as the cops go, yeah—they shut us down on the first screening.

Why did you make sure to get cops in every film? You always sort of check in with the ‘opposition.’

PS: I think it’s better to have a balanced perspective. My favorite filmmaker is Frederick Wiseman. His forte is to present the material, and the way that you know it’s successful is when opposing sides find it correct. Like the cops would look at their portrayal in Decline and go, ‘Yeah, that’s the way we feel.’ And the punks would say that same thing. It’s just a matter of being objective and fair and letting the viewer decide. Controversy has a certain edge to it that helps propel any movie forward—that does have an appeal. I also like to always have the underdog fighting the authorities.

Why does each film end the way it does?

Fear playing the national anthem after a violent and ugly show, and Megadeth doing a stripped-down set, and the gutter punks talking about how they’ll survive as they walk together through industrial ruins.

What are you saying in the final scenes?

PS: I think they end that way because I want people to know that you just gotta keep on fighting for what you believe in. That’s what I think all three of those endings may reflect. I want [the kids in Decline III] to be heroic and admirable: ‘We’re the cockroaches. We’re gonna survive. We’re gonna be there when everything else is gone.’ That’s kind of admirable. That’s kind of heroic. Every day, each of us feel deceit in some way or another and at the end of that day you have to say, ‘I’m going to keep going.’

That’s the essence of our troubled existence.

We have to fight that all day long.

Is survival without compromise heroic?

PS: Absolutely. My favorite of the three is Decline III—the reason being that they are superior examples of people who don’t compromise even though they end up with zilch out on the street. They’re OK with that.

They’re fucking drunk as hell but they’re making it. I just have a lot of respect for them for not selling out and being unhappy and trying to be a Kardashian or something.

You also show the price that comes when you don’t compromise, however. Everyone in these movies is paying a price in some way, even the people in Decline II—like Chris Holmes of W.A.S.P. talking about his success and gold records and coming off absolutely miserable. Are these films supposed to show us that you can do whatever you want, but you can’t do it without paying for it?

PS: Some people can. But they’re not interesting. The struggle is interesting. The people I’ve known who’ve had horrible things happen to them are far more interesting and deep people than people who’ve had that perfect existence. I don’t even know what to say to those people. I can only relate to the ones are in the struggle. I really have to stop myself to not object to people with that sweet lovely life! People think, ‘Penelope, you’ve been so successful with all these movies!’ And I’ve done well for a girl from a trailer park. But I don’t live that. I’m still a dirty punk rocker!

A dirty trashy kid from the trailer park! I didn’t make any money til I was 45 years old

and I did Wayne’s World. I identify with total struggle and poverty. And I like it there! I can’t live with power, success and money. It sucks!

Why? PS: When you reach to the outside world to find satisfaction, you’ll always be disappointed.

You have to find it in yourself. For me, it’s about having a simple life and not expecting anything, taking each moment as it happens.

That’s what I like about these punk kids in Decline III. They live moment to moment.

This is a compliment, not an insult—it’s animal survival. I really respect that. It’s so immediate. That’s my favorite movie I’ve ever done. I learned more on that movie than all the others combined.

Do you relate to the people in the films differently now that time has passed?

PS: There were slurs—anti-racial, sexist, homophobic slurs. Anna would go, ‘Mom! Come down and look at this! This really should not be in there.’ ‘Fine, take it out.’ But that’s the way they talked back then. The worst it got in Decline is when he goes, ‘I’m not gonna kill a Jew—maybe a hippie, though.’ I left that in cuz I thought killing a hippie was funny. We did do some politically correct editing and I don’t regret it. My father was murdered while he was protecting a Black man in the South.

And the guy didn’t go to jail cuz my dad was wrong for protecting a Black man! So I got this torch to bear on that one. Anna was like, ‘Mom, keep all of the stuff that’s just not right these days out.’ And we did. It wasn’t that much! But I think she did the right thing. By the time I got to Decline III, it was weighing really heavy on me. There would be times I would film and come back and have a very difficult time integrating this. It’s really heavy duty to see kids on such a destructive track.As a result, I became a foster parent so I could try to help. I’ve had five foster children. I don’t have any right now but I understand that whole scenario where these kids are so messed up by parents who were so ill-fitted to be parents.

[And] there was a lot less heart and soul, if you ask me, in the whole 80s scene. It was all about ego and how pretty am I and how much Aqua Net I need to buy. But I have to say of all the three movies. the kids in Decline III are still my family, OK? I’ll always be Eyeball’s sister, you know? I met my boyfriend when I was on Decline III. If you look at the credits that we have for all the extras on Decline III, there’s a guy giving the finger. That’s him. Underneath it says ‘Spheeris Films.’ He was my boyfriend for eighteen years—the smartest guy I ever knew. That was the best time of my life, making that movie. I wish I could go back and live that forever, you know?

PENELOPE SPHEERIS WILL APPEAR FOR A Q&A AT A SCREENING OF THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION PART 1 ON THURS., JUNE 25, AT THE ARCLIGHT HOLLYWOOD, 6360 SUNSET BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 7:30 PM / $16 / ALL AGES. ARCLIGHTCINEMAS. COM. THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 4-DISC DVD / BLU-RAY BOX SET RELEASES ON TUE., JUNE 30, ON SHOUT! FACTORY. MORE INFORMATION AT THEDECLINEOFWESTERNCIVILIZATION.COM. FILM

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