L.A. RECORD ISSUE 127

CRIMEWAVE 5150 • DRAB MAJESTY TASHAKI MIYAKI • PRIESTS THE ZOMBIES • DIAMANDA GALáS THE BUTTERTONES • TEEN ANGEL JAMES CHANCE • PINK SIIFU AND MORE

SPRING 2017 ISSUE 127 • FREE

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RACHEL MASON David Cotner

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THE BUTTERTONES Daiana Feuer

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PINK SIIFU Daiana Feuer

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CRIMEWAVE 5150 Senay Kenfe

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JAMES CHANCE David Cotner

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ARTHUR BROWN Ron Garmon

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THE ZOMBIES Danny Holloway

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MOUNT EERIE Tom Child

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XINXIN Nathan Martel

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DRAB MAJESTY Chris Kissel

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PRIESTS Emily Twombly

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TASHAKI MIYAKI Christina Gubala

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DIAMANDA GALÁS David Cotner THE BUTTERTONES

by DEBI DEL GRANDE

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RACHEL MASON Interview by David Cotner Photography by Sheva Kafai

It was the tone of her voice when she sang that was so fascinating to hear. Like mid-period Karen Carpenter mixed with late-period Johanna Went, performance artist / filmmaker / musician Rachel Mason’s voice rang out clean and clear and with as much purpose as fresh snowfall. Also: she has more costumes than there are animals in a zoo. Her first live action in Los Angeles since she moved back from New York City happened at Ye Olde Hushe Clubbe, that decade-long bastion of art and free expression that’s become the locus of all things interesting in the greater metropolitan Los Angeles area. These are good times for clear-voiced and clean-conscienced artists like Rachel Mason. She’s just released a video for “Sandstorm,” a song from her recent Das Ram LP, co-released by longtime L.A. label Cleopatra Records and artist-run cassette label Practical Records. “Sandstorm” is a saga in itself—set against a massive impassive stone background, its costumed creatures hint at voyages and silences and struggles to have the voice—always the voice—heard. Possibly understood. Possibly. If these weren’t enough, she’s also been protesting the Trump presidency lately through a persona known as FutureClown, silently mocking the man whenever he speaks. Apart from that, she’s recorded 13 albums, and her film The Lives of Hamilton Fish—which involves issues of identity and cannibalistic serial killer Albert Fish— toured globally these past few years. With the same clarity of voice, here she expounds and expands upon issues of creativity, courage, and Circus of Books, the chain of book and video stores owned by her family that was—until its closing last year—a cornerstone of queer and alternative culture in Los Angeles for several decades.

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“I’m very attracted shapeshifting and peo something else much What’s one pivotal moment in your past that made you the person you are today?

When you ask me that, it makes me wonder, ‘Well, who am I?’ So who are you?

I feel like I make perfect sense to me—but I think that I might be confusing to a lot of people. I’ve had people say, ‘Wow, you do these really fantastical things that are so outthere—but then you’re not that out-there.

You’re totally normal!’ I’m not a freak—I have to get a lot of shit together to figure out how to do a multimedia performance. I think that there’s an assumption that if you are doing things that are ‘freaky’ onstage, then you must be a total freak offstage.

I’m a hermit. I’m actually 90% not around people.

By choice?

I have to be kind of isolated to come up with what I do. If I’m working a job, I’m around people—but when I’m making my artwork, I’m totally isolated. So, yeah—by choice. I struggle with bands in general when I play with other musicians—I think, partially, the dynamics of other humans is so intense for me. Dealing with other people is really hard—so when I think of what makes me like that, that’s kind of a big question, like ‘How can you do these bold public things but not do social communication very well?’ I don’t think I socialize all that well, in a normal mode of being a human. I guess you could say that it’s upbringing; I’m the middle of three children. I have two brothers, and my mom is extremely bossy—a total force. My dad’s a total pushover. My brothers are engineers, and everyone else earns a regular living with regular jobs, and I’ve always been a really inbetween person—doing everything possible not to have a normal job-life situation. So you asked for one pivotal moment.

A man falls into a vat of chemicals and turns into something else.

That kind of thing. So I didn’t answer your question.

It doesn’t have to be chemically-induced.

Just a moment.

Those are really good when people have those. I have this super-early memory from four years old: I recently remembered being kicked out of a sandbox. It totally terrified me, and made me not want to play with the other kids. That was the only thing I did in preschool, and I remember thinking about that recently, and I totally remember these girls who were so mean: ‘You can’t play in the sandbox!’ I somehow think that might have had a profound effect on me

because I’ve always felt so much comfort and security—like I could control my world—in isolation and art. So it kind of started there.

Why do you think you’re here on the planet? What’s your purpose in life?

I was thinking about that question the minute that Donald Trump was becoming our President. I thought, ‘Fucking shit— are you kidding me?’ A truly apocalyptic moment. I was doing a performance at this gallery, and I had this flash of inspiration a few days before the inauguration. I have this internet character FutureClown—an identity that came to life based on weird political things that would make me laugh, one of which happened watching a filibuster a few years ago. I thought, ‘Oh, my God—I have to, at the moment this guy opens his mouth to take control of our fucking country, cancel him out immediately with my clown character.’ It’s the smallest possible thing, and maybe no one will see it, but I felt the sense that it was what I was here on Earth to do that moment … and I just had a moment with that particular action. I did a thing at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions—when I did that, it was immediately picked up.

The L.A. Times wrote about it. It was cool to be immediately validated, but it was more a question of what it means to be an artist right now. What I think I’m here to do … when I think of what my own strange gifts are, I have this strange thing to make art and to create music and to write songs.

I care a lot about that. So, really, the goal is to try to constantly do that; to do that as well as I can. A lot of the things, like bands … all the headache of the human stuff that you have to deal with? I have to try to almost minimize as much of that headache as possible so that I can make the best work that I can make.

What are you like if you haven’t been creative for a few days?

Do you assume that I’m always creative?

Is that something that seems likely about me—that I’m always creative? Does it seem that way for most artists? I wonder that as well.

I don’t care about ‘most artists.’ I care about you.

I wish I could see what other artists are like. I’m always trying to get into a creative place. I feel like I have so many other things I’m doing. I was sick for three days, and it was the perfect thing! Three days in bed.

It was the coolest thing that happened.

On the third day, I had this performance INTERVIEW

to lots of different myths that involved ople becoming other beings. Why not be more interesting than a human?” scheduled and I had this huge pile of stuff to do and because I was forced not to do my actual ‘creative’ work, I realized … have you ever seen the Dennis Potter series The Singing Detective? He composed all of his mysteries while he was in bed! He would close his eyes and figure out the story.

That’s what happened to me! On the third day of being so sick—the first day, I was frustrated, but on the third day, I realized that I was just going to have to get into the zone of knowing that I can’t be creative and something else is going to happen. And that’s when all the solutions came! There was total clarity—and I realized that there’s this myth of the artist constantly creating and toiling. It’s really important to stop or be sick for three days or not be creative— even though I think that creativity happens all the time. In those three days being sick, I was in a contemplative state. I think that’s a really interesting headspace. I think it’s really amazing to take time off—in a way, I think it’s just another type of solitude.

Solitude breeds creativity.

So the rest of your family is normal. What is your normal? [laughs] I notice that the only time that I feel OK is when I’m creating something or performing. The rest of time, I’m pretty uncomfortable. I don’t feel very secure in any situation outside of making art. If I’m writing songs, sometimes it’s really absolute clarity—and that’s normal for me. I’m currently working on creating the soundtrack and full score for a multimedia opera. That feels right to me because I’m always working—to me, I understand that, and that feels right.

The video for your song ‘Sandstorm’ has a lot of masks in it. What do masks represent for you?

I started making those masks when I was thinking a lot about the stars. Cosmic bodies. It’s been an obsession of mine—I’ve been working on this rock opera that’s all about stars. I wanted to imagine what it would be like if the stars had human qualities—or if a human could be a star, like a white dwarf or a red giant. So I just kind of started making these masks, and—as weird as it is—to direct dancers, which I love doing. I was kind of doing the direction that was based off astronomical properties. A white dwarf is a very ancient star, and it also is entirely encrusted in carbon—pure diamond. So how would you behave if you were like that? I feel like masks offer you a way to enter into a whole other type of character—a type of person, INTERVIEW

even—and that’s also where all songs came from as well, lyrically. I’m very attracted to lots of different myths that involved shapeshifting and people becoming other beings. Why not be something else much more interesting than a human? I have a strange relationship with beauty. I think it’s so weird, the kind of images that people think are beautiful. Magazines tell you what you should be like, and it’s really strange to me. It’s so arbitrary. If you suddenly saw humans from another planet, that would be so interesting. I’m much more interested in the totally stylized wildness from all over the world. Shamanistic symbolism and masks from all over the world are so fascinating to me. I’m more interested in the things that people create to cover their faces than actual faces.

Is your political commentary distracting you from other work or is it all the same continuum? [laughs] That was exactly my question to myself when I was doing all the FutureClown videos. I want to keep doing them because I feel driven to make some kind of statement, but at the moment we’re in, I feel like I did what I needed to do—for myself. If somebody wanted to pay me to do it some more and I got a job from it, that’d be cool. But then there’s the question of what I really need to do—which is my total unique thing, making art and music in the way that I do it. I’ve learned from every FutureClown performance, all these really weird videos—and each one teaches me something. For a long time, I was obsessed with political figures because I had this question of how I could possibly understand those people. They have so much power, and I can’t understand them. If you met Donald Trump, what would that be like? I’m never around people like that, but maybe somehow in enacting them … I did write two albums of songs about political leaders—Songs of the Ambassadors—and I imagined myself in the mind of Fidel Castro and others. I did that album as a collaborative piece as well; I asked artists to join in. Jennifer Herrema wrote one of those songs, amazingly!

Tell me the Circus of Books story.

It was my parents’ store. My entire life, they’d run that store. I’d never known a world without the Circus of Books. Part of why I came back to L.A. about a year ago is that they were in the process of closing it. I had so many different people say that I had to do a documentary about it. It’s not really something I was really planning

on doing, but a few different people put together a team, and I met a woman named Cynthia Childs who’s a great filmmaker.

She agreed to co-direct it. For the last year, it’s been my side project—directing a film about the Circus of Books. My parents got into the business really randomly: they were distributing Hustler Magazine around 1980, and the store was on their delivery route, and the previous owners went completely bankrupt. They became drug addicts and weren’t paying even the most basic bills and my parents were owed money on magazines and all the employees were quitting. My parents were very smart and very opportunistic, but they have this ridiculous kind of luck as well. So this great store happened to land in their laps!

They would have had to have been really dumb not to take the store over. They were owed money, the store was failing, and my parents though they could probably step in and figure out how to run the thing.

That’s probably what also makes them mavericks—not everyone would think to do that. They saved the store. They ran it ever since, and it brought them into the unique world of gay porn! They became central players in the L.A. hardcore gay porn scene. [laughs] They also distributed videos and produced them, too. People would come to them—very important porn stars—and they’d say, ‘We really like dealing with your bookstore—would you be willing to distribute this [porn]?’

Previous to being in that line of work, my dad Barry was inventing dialysis machines, and before that, he worked in special effects. He worked on Star Trek’s first season, and he was on the 2001: A Space Odyssey crew. He worked directly for Linwood Dunn—the man that the theatre [on Vine Street] is named after. He didn’t even realize he was involved in all this epic stuff until I pointed it out to him later. I said, ‘Dad, you were in a Star Trek book!’

He was on the cover, holding a slate. I said, ‘Dad, did you not realize what you were involved in?’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s so funny.’ He wasn’t credited, so I wrote to the author and told him my dad was on the cover, and he said, ‘Oh, I was always trying to figure out who that guy was!’

Another weird thing about my dad is that he was good friends with Jim Morrison and didn’t know he was a big deal until he saw the cover of one of my Doors albums.

He said, ‘Why is Jim on that album?’ ‘Jim Morrison?’ ‘Yeah, he used to ask me to shoot all of his films for him.’ My dad was

in a class in UCLA where Jim Morrison met Ray Manzarek. My dad knew both of them! He was just this techie. At the Star Trek convention, they called him ‘The Forrest Gump of Hollywood.’

What was the last great epiphany you had?

I went to a party—and I didn’t want to go, but I forced myself to go because I realized this thing: I’m constantly trying to avoid pain and suffering. It’s a fundamental tenet of Buddhism [Nb. the first Noble Truth of Buddhism: all life is misery, pain and suffering] but I just felt it for the first time really intensely. I thought, ‘Wow, if I eliminated all the different things that I do in my life that I can tie to that one fundamental thing where you’re avoiding talking to this person—or you are talking to this person— only because you want to avoid suffering, there’d be so many different things that I would be compelled to do.’ But I think that the ‘avoiding suffering’ mechanism that kicks in is so powerful, and I think it really dominates so much of my life—now I’m just so aware of that revelation. If I could overcome that, I should be totally aware of when I’m doing something, or reacting because I’m trying to avoid suffering.

Whether that suffering is even going to happen—who knows? But I don’t want to have a potential confrontation. That was a revelation. Is that a good revelation?

So it’s fear.

Yeah. I guess it is. Fear of suffering.

Ultimately, yes.

I guess I just kind of psychoanalyze my own understanding of fear for myself. It’s weird because people tell me all the time, ‘Oh, you’re so fearless! I can’t believe you did that!’ It’s way harder for me to talk to you right now than it is to fucking scale a building. Or do the Donald Trump thing, where millions of crazed neo-Nazis send me hate mail or the NSA might come after me or whatever. I’m not as scared about those things as I am about mundane things. I sort of have difficulty in that realm.

The realm of the normal.

The realm of figuring out the right course of action with communication with people.

I try. I really do try—but I’m not sure that I … just talking to people is very scary for me. I have to overcome a lot to go into normal conversations.

RACHEL MASON’S DAS RAM IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM CLEOPATRA/ PRACTICAL. VISIT RACHEL MASON AT RACHELANNMASON.COM. 9

PINK SIIFU Interview by Daiana Feuer Photography by Theo Jemison Pink Siifu is Ronee Sage, who came to L.A. a few years ago because music is all he cared about, after a chance to record with Syd Tha Kyd introduced him to the West Coast scene. This Alabama-born artist’s music can’t totally be pinned down, and that’s how he likes it.

If he wants to sing or rap or make some “punk shit,” then he goes for it. Last year’s album with producer Swarvy, twothousandnine, was just finally released on vinyl this past Valentine’s Day by New Math Records, and it’s some kind of neo-soul brain melter. He’s got many irons in the fire with different collaborators, each with a style unto it’s own, that will start trickling out over the course of this year. twothousandnine feels so flowy.

It was very organic. Friends kept saying I needed to work with Swarvy. Mndsgn was like, ‘Yo, you should link up with Swarvy.’ He was working with my good friend lojii on a project that’s dropping March 31, Due Rent.

I heard some beats that they were working on for that and he had some beautiful jazz and soul joints. We met at his crib in Highland Park and we made two songs in our first session. It was mad quick. And then we just kept going in that way. With Swarvy, he loves Dilla and D’Angelo and I love that shit and I never worked with someone who could make those types of beats. Working with Swarvy was me making my neo-soul album. I was raised on humming shit like that. When he gave me those beats I was like, ‘Ooh!’ Swarvy made most songs while I was there in front of him. While he was making them I was vibing and writing shit and by the time he was done with the beat I was done with the song.

That’s great—it doesn’t leave room to overthink. It’s just what’s inside your mind.

Straight up. When I do rap music I like to sit down with it and make sure each rhyme means something. But when it’s some soul or jazz, that shit just flows. In-the-moment work is my best work with producers.

Do you walk around with a notebook?

I don’t write often enough. But technology is fucking me up. I write a lot in my Notes.

But it’s called spelling for a reason. When you write you are actually writing these spells. I got that from a quote from Princess Nokia.

That’s real shit. You’re writing spells so the act of really writing is important. I don’t pencilto-pen write enough. I used to write a lot of poetry. I need to get back to that.

How is technology changing the way people express themselves?

Me and the homies was just talking about this. It’s dope but it’s weird. Like with comedy.

Back in the day, like Richard Pryor or even Bernie Mac, stand-up comedians, you had to have a whole set … versus now you’ve got dope comedians like Quinta B. She’s an Instagram comedian, she does things that are 30 seconds to a minute. I think it’s ill but it leaves the cats that write traditional long-form out of it. I just don’t want art forms to get forgotten: poetry, stand-up, plays, going to shows. Things that get people to leave the house.

Are you trying to change the way people listen to music?

Definitely—but I also want to continue tradition. With the stuff I’m working on right now I’m trying to put mad different styles together. You remember those candy bars you 10

used to get that had a question mark? You didn’t know what you were going to get but you were mad excited. I want the album to do that. With my voice in twothousandnine, I wanted to continue the expression of D’Angelo, Prince, James Brown, or Michael Jackson even—sometimes you didn’t know what they were saying. I always fucked with that as a kid, like [imitates MJ] ‘eh, eh!’ Just making sounds for a whole bridge. That shit is ill. You don’t have to say something but you can feel that shit. I’m all for feeling.

Did you grow up making music?

I was a band geek from sixth grade through high school. I wanted to play sax but they didn’t have one so I decided to play trumpet but that was boring. Then I saw Drum Line and I was like, ‘Fuck! I want to play drums!’ I’m from Birmingham, Alabama, and down south it’s all about marching band. My dad played sax in FAMU, so he was always playing me marching band shit. My grandpa used to play trumpet—used to play with Charlie Parker and those cats. Crazy shit. There’s all these crazy stories about how he moved to Nigeria to make music. So music’s in my blood. But I was a band geek. I didn’t do shit until 2012.

At 19 or 20 years old, that was the first time I touched a mic—when I went to college, and one homie’s friend did beats. I was going to poetry jazz bars and doing poetry. And niggas heard my poetry and started sending me beats to do poetry over. I didn’t want to go to school. I was up there because my family was like, ‘You’re either going to school or to the army.’ And I was like, ‘What, why can’t I just chill?’ They was like, ‘Nah, you’ve got to choose.’ So I was just there and not going to class. And the homie was sending me beats and I was just writing. Mad shit was going on for me and it was mad therapeutic writing about it. From that I kept going. When I found out about what was going in L.A., I had to come here.

How did you get hooked up with music connections in L.A.?

It was crazy shit. Technology. The internet. It was wild because I was in Cincinnati—born in Birmingham, raised in Cincinnati—and there was this song by Overdose called ‘Lauren London’ and Iman Omari produced it. The beat was crazy. The hook was crazy. It was some L.A. shit and I looked up Iman Omari and I found out he worked with Mac Miller and Kendrick and I was already fucking with Kendrick and Ab-Soul kinda and that made me want to know more about what Top Dawg was doing. From there I found out about Odd Future and Brainfeeder. Then I started tripping

acid and listening to Flying Lotus. And I was like, ‘Whoa, this shit is crazy.’ Then I saw that Syd Tha Kyd from The Internet and Teena Marie’s daughter, Alia Rose, had this studio in Hollywood. This was 2013. I caught wind of it randomly on Twitter. I wanted to work with Syd. She mixed all of Odd Future’s early shit. I hit her up and she hit me back ASAP like, ‘Yo, when are you trying to record?’ So I flew out there and I met her, recorded with her. That was my first time in L.A. I went to Low End Theory. I saw The Internet play and Anderson .Paak opened. I was like, ‘Damn! This is L.A.?’

I left and then came back again to record with Syd another time. I started meeting people, making shit, and I was like, ‘Fuck it, I got to move out here.’ I couchsurfed for a long time. But there was nothing in Cincinnati so I would rather be here couchsurfing than be there. Then I got a spot, lost it, couchsurfed…

I just a got a spot recently, but I been out here this whole time. I made family here through the music shit. Producers that I can’t find anywhere else. They understand sound on a different tip here. Cats in Richmond, Dallas, and New York are dope, but here I got mad homies that I fuck with and are actual homies.

Swarvy, Mndsgn, ahwlee, devonwho, Vex Ruffin, Ras G. It goes back to my self too— being out here is leveling me up, being on that grind. Definitely on some L.A. wild shit.

So what are you doing right now?

I’m focusing on B.Cool-Aid, my group with ahwlee. I’m also working on solo shit and other collab projects.

Are you experimenting with something different in these projects or going deeper down the rabbit hole?

Both. I’m experimenting and going deeper down the rabbit hole. Like with ahwlee, it’s definitely down the rabbit hole. It sounds like the summer. I never made a Black summer tape before. I’m trying to admire Black skin and brown skin culture. It’s what I grew up on. It sounds like old radio to me, like when Outkast was on the radio. That music for on-the-porch, getting your hair done. With devonwho, I’m making a new age G-funk record. I never done a G-funk record. And I’m supposed to work with Vex Ruffin and I want to do some loud punk shit with him.

Loud, grimy, raw shit. I want punk shit on my album too. The more diversity and technicality, it brings more to the show, too, something for everybody.

What kind of set up are you performing with now?

When I’m with Swarvy, I’m with a band. We have a couple homies on instruments, keys,

drums, guitar, bass. When I play with ahwlee, it’s just rapper-DJ shit. ahwlee is DJing the beats and I’m on the mic. When I’m solo, I’m DJing my beats off the SP and laptop, but I’m looking for band members for my solo shit. I like that.

I watched that Boiler Room you did with mndsgn playing with you. It felt more like a collage than a series of songs.

There’s definitely layers to my artistry. That Boiler Room was one. My first show here, I got booed off stage! My ex was there, lojii was there, my other homies was there. My ex was cussing off the audience. I never got booed off the stage before. I stayed off performing for a while after that. My Boiler Room was my second show in L.A. And I was like, ‘I’m going to be weird.’ That was me when I’m just like ‘fuck it.’ Recently I’ve been doing songs and beats. I still collage but I do that more-so for intro/outro. That’s why I want to get the band and why I want to make some punk shit. Shit that throws niggas off. That Boiler Room really threw niggas off. I made a lot of friends from that, a lot of niggas that I work with now because they was like, ‘Whoa, I wasn’t expecting that collage type shit and then rapping.’ I was showing all the layers and that’s what I like to do. Sometimes you can do that by yourself and sometimes you can’t. But that shit was beautiful. That was one of my favorite shows.

Why did you get booed off stage?

Honestly that show was very wack. The person who went after me … no disrespect to anyone, I’m not on some hater shit, but the person after me was on some Nicki Minaj shit. And I’m not clowning Nicki Minaj, it is just super different from what I do. Everyone else on the line-up was on a different wavelength. When that girl got on stage and started rapping and the crowd went crazy, I was like, ‘Where am I at? I just played some dope shit, I know I didn’t play some corny shit, but I definitely just got booed off because niggas just didn’t get it.’ So yeah—I learned about picking your crowd. You got to pick your shows right. You gotta be hands on with that.

Sometimes it’s cool to be the weird one on a line-up, but, yeah—that can also definitely not work.

Yeah! Sometimes that shit can work for sure.

But sometimes it’s just like, yo … and they boo, or the crowd just straight leaves.

PINK SIIFU AND SWARVY’S TWOTHOUSANDNINE IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM NEW MATH. VISIT PINK SIIFU AT RONEE.BANDCAMP.COM. INTERVIEW

JAMES CHANCE AND THE CONTORTIONS Interview by David Cotner Illustration by Abraham Jay Torres

Contort yourself. Ostensibly, that’s the title of a song on the Buy LP by James Chance & The Contortions. Theoretically, it’s a chance craze that never was. Pragmatically, it’s less a lyric drenched in nihilism than it is an ideal for living. It’s not enough to push yourself. It’s not enough to test your limits. You need to move yourself in more ways than you ever thought you could possible move. Contort yourself.

A shark keeps moving or it dies—and yet it never moves straight or in only one direction. James Chance understands this. Like that selfsame shark, he’s survived years in the dark depths of the cultural ocean, gracefully twisting though its tides and eddies. “There are no waves, only the ocean,” observed French director Claude Chabrol—and it is the totality of Chance’s vision that has maintained him for the better part of five decades. On November 11, James Chance & the Contortions released their latest album, The Flesh is Weak. Produced

by Contortions guitarist Tomás Doncker, it’s a mix of past and future classics from the Chance repertoire. He appears via the good graces of the fine folk at Part Time Punks for the first time in Los Angeles since 1982. Here, Chance talks about motivation, sentimentality, and the single-minded pursuit of individuality above all else.

Have you ever been in a fistfight that you really liked?

James Chance (vocals/sax/keyboards): [laughs] That I’ve really liked? Well, I’ve been in a couple that I didn’t remember after they happened. I was so drunk that I couldn’t remember. I had no memory of it. That whole aspect [of the Contortions] has been kind of exaggerated. I haven’t been in a fistfight since about 1979 or something. It was only a few times then. I’m actually—in my ‘real’ life—a very nonviolent person. I may have violent feelings, but I’m not into physical violence.

What was the goal with the Contortions?

To create something that appealed to a rock ’n’ roll audience, like at CBGB or Max’s.

I wanted to have a funk beat and a rock ’n’ roll attitude, and to have free jazz elements in it—and also to have some pure noise in it, like with Pat Place’s guitar playing. I didn’t think of it as something I was going for to get some kind of commercial success. It was just trying to create something … I started to see that if I stuck with jazz, I wouldn’t really be creating something new, you know? It’d all kind of been said already in jazz. I could come up with a variation on it, but the Contortions was a way that I could create a totally new thing—or at least a new combination of things.

What’s your biggest motivator? What makes you do what you want to do?

Well, I want to get paid, that’s one thing. [laughs] I want to get paid, but I don’t want to compromise. I just want to play music that has soul. I play all kinds of different stuff. I still play the piano. Sometimes I play solo piano and standards—a little jazz trio. Sometimes I sing solo, too. Ballads. But whatever I do, it’s always my way. I’m not capable of sitting down and playing like Bird, and then turning around and playing like this other guy when he played a different style. It’s always totally my style.

You have to have your own voice.

In a way, I’m lucky that way because that’s just really the only way I can function in music. I don’t really have a choice about it.

INTERVIEW

Speaking of having your own voice—you sound like you’re about 22. Really young.

Do you feel young?

Yeah! I do feel young! Young people seem to be able to relate to my music. I don’t think there are many people from the original scene from the 70s and 80s that have young fans … or the ones still doing music, I don’t think there’s too many that are actually appealing to younger people. Someone told me not too long ago that I have an immature attitude.

Maybe that’s why young people can relate to me. I’ve never thought, ‘Oh, I have to be mature now! I have to write grown-up songs about fatherhood or cutting the lawn in the suburbs!’

Isn’t that what you were trying to get away from the whole time?

A lot of people, even then, were very rebellious when they were younger—but when they get older, they think that they have to mature and mellow out and get serious or something. I was always serious! I think I still have the anger that I had in the beginning. It’s tempered with more experience, but I’ve still got the same attitude. People can feel that.

What were your goals artistically when you first started with music?

I started playing piano when I was 7. I took lessons from nuns! Nuns displaying the typical kind of childhood exercise books and things like that. The two songs I liked that they had me play were ‘Funeral March of a Marionette’

by Charles Gounod—the theme music to Alfred Hitchcock Presents—and the tarantella, a wild dance from medieval times for when people got infected with hysteria—dancing mania. A couple of years later, when I was 12, I started taking lessons from an older guy in a music store that had me playing standards, and stride piano. He tried to teach me jazz, but I didn’t really understand too much about improvisation then. I didn’t really decide to have music as a career until I was about 19. I’d just discovered free jazz. I created my own piano style and I was just playing by myself—sort of a cross between Cecil Taylor and Thelonious

Monk. I tried going to a music conservatory in Milwaukee, but you know the teachers— and most of the other students—were really conservative, and they didn’t know anything about free jazz … and didn’t want to know! [laughs] No one could play with me on piano, as far as the rhythm section. They just couldn’t relate to what I was doing—and they just acted like I couldn’t play, which wasn’t true! I just didn’t want play like Herbie Hancock or McCoy Tyner or any of those guys. I had no interest in learning all those voicings—it was a tremendous amount of work and I didn’t want to play that way. I just didn’t do it. After about a year, I started thinking that if I was playing the sax, I wouldn’t have to worry about being part of the rhythm section. I was always really drawn to the saxophone anyway. I was also in a rock band at that time called Death, doing Stooges and Velvet Underground covers, and then that evolved into doing originals. My ambition was always to be a jazz musician.

That’s what I came to New York to do. There was a big loft jazz scene happening then with all these straight players—a lot of players from Chicago, St. Louis. Really great players, but I started to feel like—I’d only been playing sax for three or four years—there were so many technically much better sax players than me … and also my whole attitude was much more of rock ’n’ roll. The jazz people found me completely bewildering. I started getting more comfortable hanging out at CBGB and Max’s, and eventually I decided I would do something that would appeal to that audience, and put all the stuff I really liked into it—but it would still have a recognizable danceable beat, and be funky to a degree, and then put all the free jazz on top of that, and some of the noise elements from these other no wave people I was hanging out with.

What was it about the saxophone that spoke to you?

Exactly what you’re saying: that it spoke to me. I figured it’s probably the closest instrument to the human voice that there is. It was just a much more direct thing than

playing the piano. My big early influences were Albert Ayler and Marshall Allen, one of the sax players with Sun Ra. I also listened to all kinds of older stuff; I really got into lateperiod Lester Young for a while and later on Art Pepper, and all the funk players like Maceo [Parker]. Fela. He was another really self-taught guy, so I can relate to that. Junior Walker. A lot of old rhythm and blues guys from the 40s and 50s.

Fela’s an interesting character because he sings like he’s a musical instrument.

His actual first instrument was trumpet.

He was actually much more technically accomplished on the trumpet! His early groups were sort of highlife and jazz combinations. He was really good, too!

Then he heard James Brown and went in the Afrobeat direction. I guess he gave up the trumpet then and switched to the sax.

What’s one reality of being a musician that you understand now but no one ever told you about when you started?

Poverty.

Poverty!

I’m kind of kidding, but the difficulty of making a living is an issue. There are very few musicians—especially now—who completely make their living through music. Most of them have some other side line. Most of the young musicians I meet say, ‘Oh, I’m a lawyer,’ or ‘Oh, I’m a paralegal’—‘I’m this, I’m that.’ There was no way anyone could predict—when I was coming up in the 70s— what would happen to the music business after digital came in and how all the money would just go out of it because people didn’t have to buy records anymore. No one could have possibly predicted that in 1976, when I came to New York—or even in the 90s! No one thought that. They should have. They should have realized what was coming, but it took everyone completely by surprise. All the record companies didn’t predict it.

But it’s a skill to navigate that kind of poverty.

True. You have to have some kind of hustle.

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Is your art where you want it to be at this point in time?

Pretty much! I’m really happy with the band I have now and the new album. I think it’s the best thing I’ve done in a long time. They’re all guys that have played with me, off and on. Let’s start with who’s played the longest: Robert Aaron on sax, he’s been with me since about 1981. He’s on the Sax Maniac album that I did in 82 that’s going to be reissued very soon. The drummer, Richard Dworkin, has been with me since about 1985 or 86.

The trumpet player and bass player started playing with me in the 90s, and Tomás Doncker, the guitarist, has also produced the album with me. It’s on his label True Groove.

He was in The Contortions in 1980, when he was about 19 or 20. He was in the band for about a year. He was in that movie Downtown 81, the one with Debbie Harry. He was on one of the live albums we did around that time, and then I was really into changing the band constantly. I went through about four completely different lineups in two years. I ran into him just about four years ago, and I needed a guitarist, so I thought I’d call him. I just feel this band interprets my music really well, and they can do anything! If I want free jazz, they can do that. Richard Dworkin is the most versatile drummer I’ve ever worked with. Most drummers have some weakness— they can be great at funk but they can’t play jazz at all, or vice-versa. But I’ve never been able to stump Richard. Anything I need him to play, he can do it right away—beautifully.

They’ve had tremendous experience, playing with all different kind of people. The trumpet player—Mac Gollehon—can play just about any kind of jazz you can think of, going back to big band; he’s played in all these big bands named after guys that have been dead for 30 years or more, but they still keep going! [laughs] I think he’s even played with some kind of Lawrence Welk thing. Same thing for Robert Aaron—he’s played with Blondie, Bowie; he was Wyclef Jean’s music director for quite a long time. They’ve all got tremendous experience. That’s the kind of people I like to work with.

Does that mean you’re going to be doing this more often?

Yeah—it’s not always possible in every part of the world I play or go to to bring a whole band from New York, financially. As long as someone comes up with the money, I’ll take these guys. When I play other parts of the world, I have a French band called Les Contortions that have been playing with me for about ten years, whenever I go to Europe.

I did an album—before this latest one— with them that was never really released in America. It didn’t get the attention it deserved; that’s a terribly good album, too. When I went to Australia last year, I played with an Australian band; a combination of guys from other bands in Australia. I can’t remember the names of them anymore! I don’t pay too much attention to contemporary music— most of the music I listen to was recorded before 1980. Almost all of what I listen to.

So if money is an issue in terms of getting the band together, are you saying that it took 35 years just to get the money together to finally bring you and the band out to Los Angeles?

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No, no, no. In 1982, I spent a year in L.A.— and that was enough for me for a while!

L.A.’s not really my kind of town, you know, it’s too … especially because I don’t drive. At that time [in L.A.] I had a band with Flea and Hillel [Slovak], the guitarist from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which happened just by chance. I had made a record with an L.A. label, which then folded, and the woman who produced it with me said, ‘Well, come out and stay with me and I’ll find another label for the record.’ So I did—but she never did find another label for the record, and I kind of got stranded in L.A. for a year.

How’d you get out?

Well, I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard and … remember that band Thelonious Monster? [Thelonious Monster singer] Bob Forrest, the guy with that big teevee show! He just came up to me and said, ‘Wow, what are you doing in L.A.!’ He offered to put a band together for me, and he introduced me to those guys from the Chili Peppers. I worked around the West Coast with him for about a year, but eventually I just felt like I had to get back to New York.

I think I was using the name James White & The Blacks then—it didn’t have a special name. It was a nice little band, though—in fact, I was also playing jazz with Flea’s stepfather [Nb. Walter Abdul Urban], who was a jazz bass player.

The connections you make over time.

I’d love to do something with Flea. We’ve talked about it over the years.

Are you a perfectionist?

Yeah, but not obsessionally so. To me, it’s the feel that’s important, not whether every single not is completely in tune. Players have their own tonality, sometimes—like me, for instance! [laughs] Or Jackie McLean—he plays out of tune, but that was just the way he played.

Are you sentimental about the records you’ve made?

You mean the past records? No, I’m not very sentimental—in fact, I find it very difficult to listen to my records. I just pick them apart and find things I don’t like about them. I find it really hard to listen to my own records.

When it comes to Chance, what’s the luckiest thing that ever happened to you?

One lucky thing was how I got my first saxophone. I was living in a ghetto in Milwaukee and my apartment was broken into. They got my stereo and a few other things, and my dad said to me, ‘Look, I will tell my insurance company that the stuff got stolen from my car—and I’ll get you some money.’ And he did! That’s how I got my first saxophone. I guess I was lucky that those junkies ripped me off.

JAMES CHANCE & THE CONTORTIONS WITH COLLAPSING SCENERY AND TRAPS P.S. ON SUN., MAR. 19, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 9 PM / $15-$18 / 18+.THEECHO. COM. JAMES CHANCE AND THE CONTORTIONS’ THE FLESH IS WEAK IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM TRUE GROOVE. VISIT JAMES CHANCE AT JAMESCHANCEOFFICIAL. BLOGSPOT.COM.

THE ZOMBIES Interview by Danny Holloway Illustration by Bijou Karman The original Zombies—a group that began as the Mustangs in St. Albans Herts UK during 1961—are currently on their final tour, performing the entirety of Odessey & Oracle. (The latest version of the Zombies, featuring only singer Colin Blunstone and keyboardist Rod Argent from the o.g. group, will continue touring into the future.) The original Zombies are all in their 70s now. Though Blunstone states he and Argent are the best of mates these days, there were times in the 60s when things got tense—like when Argent had hastily written ‘Time Of The Season’ and presented it to Colin to sing during the O&O sessions, along with very specific ideas about how it should be sung. Colin simply didn’t like the song or the melody and suggested to Argent—at the peak of a shouting match—that he sing the damn song himself. When tempers calmed, Colin’s vocal was captured and history was made. ‘Time Of The Season’ became the Zombies’ most enduring hit. More Zombies tales below from Blunstone, one of rock’s premier vocalists.

Colin Blunstone (vocals): When the group started, Rod [Argent] was the singer and I was the rhythm guitarist. One day I heard him mucking about on a piano and it sounded very good. I asked him to play it with the band but he felt a lead singer needs to be free to move around. A little while later, I was singing to myself and Rod heard it and said my voice sounded fantastic. So we made a deal: he started playing keyboards and I took over singing lead.

Our first producer was Ken Jones from Decca and he was pretty much an autocrat.

He was making suggestions on how we could improve and one of the things he mentioned was writing original songs. The very next session Rod showed up with ‘She’s Not There.’ Without warning. No one knew he could do it. He never talked about doing it. He suddenly showed up with a tune that sounded fantastic. Thing was, he’d only written the first verse and chorus, so we told him to hurry up and complete the lyrics so we could record it.

We used to record late at night. We came prepared. We took care to work out the song’s arrangement in advance. We were careful with each song’s phrasing and harmonies. Chris the bass player and Rod did back-up harmonies and occasionally I’d join them and sing the high part. Chris had to have a simple part because he was playing bass, too.

When we were recording ‘Tell Her No,’ it was another late night session and I fell asleep. They woke me up and said: ‘Time to do your vocals.’ I went in there half asleep and laid down a track that had mistakes in it and Ken Jones said ‘That’s fine.’ I begged him to let me re-do it but that’s the way he was. So the vocal to ‘Tell Her No’ is still to this day flawed.

Now we’re playing with the old original Zombies again and it brings back memories of when we were young and the crazy things that happened. When we play ‘She’s Not There’ I think how far that song took us. We went to the Philipines to play a hotel gig, we thought. Instead we played to 30,000 people two nights in a row in an indoor arena. No one told us we had six hits in the Top Ten.

Rod and I have been working together over 50 years now and we’re the best of mates these days. But we would have our set-to’s in the 60s. When we were recording Odessey, the last song Rod wrote was ‘Time Of The Season.’ We’d already recorded the rest of the album. I didn’t really like it. Rod had very specific ideas about how I should sing it. We ended up in a serious shouting match.

Him in the control room and me out in the studio. I remember telling him: ‘Why don’t you sing the bloody song?’ Eventually, we calmed down and I sang it. It’s funny—the first words out of my mouth are: ‘It’s the time of the season / for loving ...’ Ha!

As a singer, my influences were original rock ‘n’ rollers like Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. For listening, I’ve always enjoyed early 70s singer/songwriters like Joni Mitchell and James Taylor. As far as singing, I owe a lot to Rod. Since I never aspired to be a singer, I wasn’t trained. But Rod took great care with me and my vocals. We’d work on phrasing and he’d tell me when to sing on the beat and when to push for emphasis.

When I get compliments, I’m thankful I’ve had Rod helping me.

Luckily, we own our own masters.

When we first signed a contract, it was with a production company and the company signed us to Decca. We got those masters back—the first album and all the singles.

When we did Odessey & Oracle, we signed through a production company again. These days there’s a company that gets Zombies songs licensed. There was a big Chanel campaign that used ‘She’s Not There’ in a major way and they did this fantastic television commercial with Keira Knightley.

We’re very thankful there’s a place for us in the world. In fact, I don’t think the Zombies have ever been more in vogue than now!

THE ZOMBIES PERFORM ODESSY & ORACLE ON SAT., APR. 29, AT THE THEATRE AT THE ACE HOTEL, 929 S. BROADWAY, DOWNTOWN. 8:30 PM / $33-$35 / ALL AGES. GOLDENVOICE. COM. VISIT THE ZOMBIES AT THEZOMBIESMUSIC.COM.

XINXIN Interview by Nathan Martel Photography by Stefano Galli

Xinxin provides a distinct voice among a world facing musical saturation, one that affords a viewpoint that is dedicated to the DIY-er and the social outsider. They offer a unique blend of the cultural and musical, and on their forthcoming Blue Flowers EP, they strive to create a perfect encapsulation of their experiences—with a romantic sensibility as well. I sat down with guitarist/vocalist Janize and drummer Stephen—bassist Carlos was recording with another band—to explore what Xinxin is and what Xinxin means.

What does the name Xinxin mean? Where does it come from?

Janize Ablaza (vocals/guitar): It comes from my household name. It’s what my parents always called me growing up. I decided to call it the band name because I wanted the project to be about … my child self. The focus comes from thinking, ‘How would I approach this if I were six or seven? If like … I could be more free about it? And not think so much?’ In terms of even just the chord progressions I choose—it’s fantastical, from my point of view. I grew up in the Philippines until the age of ten. And I remember going on quests by myself, like all the time. My family grew up in Baco, which is a lot like

the San Francisco—wait, no, more like the Portland of the Philippines. There’s more green and nature to roam around in. I did a lot of that when I was, like, eight. When I go back to this EP—especially the song ‘Play’—it takes me back and reminds me of being a kid and having that alone time.

It’s almost a feeling of freedom and not being confined, or not even thinking of the stresses of tomorrow or the future. That’s what I want to be the focus of the band.

I don’t want us to care about what’s going to happen tomorrow. I mean, obviously … we still need to plan. We still need to be adults Stephen Reed (drums): It’s kind of being free of a burden in a way.

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JA: I just wanted to stay true to who I am completely. The heart of who I am that is kid.

So Xinxin is about your childhood, and that childhood includes your status as immigrant—does that inform the way you approach songwriting?

JA: Completely. I don’t really think about that. It just happens naturally. I don’t write like other songwriters that I know. I don’t sing like a lot of the singers that I know.

I’m just different based on how my life has been shaped.

When I hear a Xinxin song, it seems to reflect an outsider perspective.

JA: That’s completely how I’ve felt in general. Even nowadays, it’s hard for me to go out to parties and talk to people— having conversations and all that. Because everybody stays in their little circle, like, ‘So what did you do last weekend?’ I think it has to do with the fact that I spent a lot of alone time by myself when I was a kid. I wasn’t close with my parents, I wasn’t close to my siblings … I never had close friends. I mean, yeah—maybe some ‘best friends’ but there was always a lot of distance. There was a lot of me just being there and saying what I had to say, but no real connection. The only time it began to happen was when I started hanging out with this guy. [motions toward Stephen] To really connect with someone in that way was extremely hard for me because I’ve always been a complete outsider.

Now you’re a lead singer in a band—is there a disconnect with that outsider feeling? How do you convey your sense of yourself through the art you’re creating?

JA: If it’s put that way, when I create, there isn’t a disconnect—there’s just a different kind of connection. How should I put this? I see things from far away, although I can get diluted by focusing on details, but when I take a step back, and I get that bigger picture I’m able to figure out more.

For example, when I see how parents treat kids, I’m most likely to be like, ‘OK, I know what’s happening there.’ I know how each person in the situation feels. But how can I help them understand how to talk to each other? And that’s always on my mind. Because I work with kids—because I’ve grown up with kids around me all the time, and it’s helped shape me. I grew up with a family, and me and my brother, being pretty close … our lives were kinda parallel. Not close, as in best friends, but we were close kids. He’s two years old than me. I’ve two older sisters, who are six or seven years older than us, so it was always me and my brother. We had a pretty rough childhood. My parents were young. And on top of that, I was the last girl of the pack … I was treated like a princess. And my brother was the only boy—he was treated differently, more roughly. Growing up seeing him take the brunt of things and get beat down emotionally because of things he couldn’t do … that was the beginning of me realizing, like, ‘Oh fuck—something is wrong here. It’s not happening to me, but it is happening to him—somebody I care about.’ And that helped me develop some

awareness where now I see these things happening. That’s always my point of view.

And I still see it now, with my siblings and their kids. That always kind of where I stem from. So just based on my friendships with people, my boyfriend, my siblings now …

I try to see relationships as they happen. I mean, I’m wrong sometimes, but, yeah— I’m learning and figuring things out.

Xinxin, then, essentially is about vulnerability.

JA: Completely. I’m definitely not a storyteller. I’ve been told many time before—like from teachers—that songs have to be this way, you have to write stories because that’s what people cling on to … but it’s always been feeling first for me. And that’s why most of what I write, the chords come first, then feelings come out of that, then the words come vomiting out. Ha! And depending on what I’ve been experiencing in that moment, that’s what I can share. I remember in something like seventh grade, maybe eighth … we has a specific English essay or whatever assigned, and I suck at English—never gotten a good grade in any of that stuff. Anyway, I guess I wrote something pretty meaningful and the teacher was all, ‘What the fuck are you writing about right now, you little eighth grader?’ If it’s something that is real and true to me, then it’s easy for me to go hard and be honest. So really the songs are me being honest—expressing what I feel is true and right. And it seems—and I feel like—a lot of people spend a lot of time feeling wrong. Some people spend a lot of time feeling righteous. Ha! But there’s a balance and communication is key … but I feel like people really suck at doing that.

SR: It’s that observer’s perspective you brought up earlier. That’s a conduit for that view. We’re just trying to convey a perspective where we are being pure. We’re not worried about all these idiosyncrasies piling up and becoming the bullshit that— JA: Yeah! It’s just getting to the heart of the problem. Getting to the root of the feeling versus all this other bullshit surrounding it.

When you write a song, are you addressing certain issues in your life?

SR: Definitely. It’s almost like a third person perspective in that conversation.

JA: I’d say my writing can be both. Some are a more one-on-one thing.

SR: Exactly. Like an interpersonal relationship with every person that may or may not be in an audience, but it’s presented in a way that it’s vulnerable to a certain degree. Like: ‘Here’s you and me—let’s talk about this particular issue or whatever.’

Each of the songs seems to have a dynamic of catharsis that you’re addressing in a way. Is that what you’re doing with your art? Are you searching for a connection through that feeling?

JA: I’m definitely connecting. Any particular song I write could be for anybody experiencing any kind of situation. These songs are literally just how talk to people.

It’s how I talk to [Stephen], it’s how I talk to my friends. If I’m not distracted by everyday life happenings, I shift into a state of, ‘Oh, INTERVIEW

you need advice? You need some direction?

You feel lost? I got you!’ Ha! I know what it’s like to seek that and to offer that. These songs are just how I talk to people.

SR: Like the reward might come from when you spread that message.

JA: I say these things because I feel like everybody goes through them.

‘Blue Flowers,’ the first line is very very important to me: ‘Our demons put up our defenses’. We all have really lame things about ourselves that we don’t know about. That can come out when something negative happens, and then we just react.

Everybody does it. Especially when you’re in a relationship. And most people will end things then and there. Once they see a bad side of you, they run away. ‘Blue Flowers’ is about not running away from people when they have things about them you don’t like.

At the end of the day, most of these people don’t even know they are doing these things.

It just comes out when they react. Even I’ve been in relationships where the other person has a list of things they don’t like about you, and once that list is full, it’s like ‘I’m done with you.’ That hurts so much.

So I want to address those things because I’m a romantic in a way where I think we should work hard for people. I feel like people are worth giving a chance because we were born loving. We are born caring.

It’s just that life kinda fucks us up.

These romantic ideas for what is possible in a relationship—is this what you want your songs to be about?

JA: No. I feel like the songs are very past tense for me. The songs are things I’ve felt and that I’ve experienced. At that point, I’m no longer romanticizing it. At that point, it’s like, ‘I know what I want.’ It’s only romantic when it reaches people who haven’t felt these things before. But most have, I think.

SR: There is a romanticizing through … a lot of these songs have almost this idea of documentation coming through them.

That one-on-one interaction is coming from, like you were saying, your past.

Which leads to there being a kind of nostalgia. And I feel a lot of the romantic notions come from that, too. Like these are moments that have been shared with other human beings.

JA: Yeah. But it’s also romantic in the way it’s presented.

Do you have to go through these experiences in order to create your art— and specifically to create the music of Xinxin?

JA: For this set of songs that you’ve heard … I couldn’t write them if I hadn’t had these experiences. But as for Xinxin existing and being able to make some dumb shit … it would probably still happen! In one form or another, I would happen to sit down and write something anyway. I’d still sit down and still write because I would have something I care enough to write about. To allow my soul to just feel out because I have to. I have to. I’d probably lose myself if I didn’t.

Do you feel that creative pursuits like these are an important part of your identity?

INTERVIEW

JA: [long sigh] My adult self annoys me a lot!

My adult responsible side, I feel … is good? I know it means well. I’m talking to it as if it’s a different entity because I kinda feel like it is. It’s good, but it definitely takes me away from that Xinxin aspect that I mentioned earlier, where Xinxin is me being a kid, not being distracted by anything, and especially not settling into any one identity. That is the most important part of me. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy music—I wouldn’t be able to jam with people and figure new things out without that part of me. I feel like that is the biggest part of me that I want to be all the time.

When I listen to ‘Play’, I can’t help but think, ‘This is a pop version of a weather report song.’

JA: This kind of stuff makes me smile.

Around that time, the time of Play, I was really obsessed with an album by a Japanese composer, his name is Yuji Ono. I forgot the name of the album … It’s the one where it’s just an island and blue water.

[Lifetides—NM.] It was recorded in the 80s, and it’s really cinematic. The way the whole album sounds. But there are a ton of 80s beats …

SR: A lot of shower beats. Lots of 707 and that type of shit.

JA: Around the time I started writing ‘Play,’ that’s when I first started teaching music full time. I had to learn how to sight read a lot of Disney songs to teach to students.

And also just a lot of cinematic music, a lot of Japanese rock music from the 70s and the 80s. That Yuji Ono record was what I was really involved with then. And that’s what happened.

SR: And probably a healthy dose of The Sea and Cake. That stuff is always around a little bit.

Your songs do lend themselves to being cinematic—the music is layered and seems to draw on so many different influences.

The stuff that you’re playing, Stephen, is too advanced to just be labeled ‘jazz’ or ‘pop’ or even ‘rock.’ And you and Carlos create this framework for Janize to work in.

JA: I mean … they’re in my band for a reason!

Stephen, you seem like you’re a be-bop drummer who has incorporated all these diffuse influences.

S: That might be the coolest compliment I’ve ever received. I like that idea a lot, but I don’t ever really consider it. But that really resonates. But I don’t really know.

Janize comes up with a riff and she’ll just arrange where she wants to hear the accents and stuff. And I just vibe off of that for a minute. That can go off on a tangent for us. Or sometimes, she has whole songs she’s come up with and I take that formula and feel. I came up listening to Aphex Twin and Jaga Jazzist—I didn’t even appreciate acoustic music of any kind until high school. I always feel weird about that in a way. I try to listen to where the hits are and where the song’s moving and go off of that.

You’ve got a ride cymbal that is out front, as if you’ve been studying Blue Note Records, listening to tons of hard-bop and be-bop.

SR: I didn’t know about Blue Note Records until I heard the Madlib Blue Note record.

Now I’m trying to delve more into the Blue Note catalog and other forms of music.

That soul is there—I don’t need to find it, it’s there. But I’m appreciating these things more now, and I’m happy I can consume these forms of music later in life. But I think my input comes more from motifs I’ve built up over time. Probably a lot of them come from electronic music strangely.

How does sampled music influence a live drummer?

SR: It’s all I knew before I started to really explore music as an artist. It’s all I was into until I was probably seventeen.

JA: But your friend Alex has always had said that, when [Stephen] first started playing the drums, he’d always practice to electronic music. He’ll play and transcribe these electronic beats with live drums.

SR: When I first got my drum set, I was obsessed with Amon Tobin, who does a lot of jazz sample work. His first project—I think it’s called Cujo—is a lot of Brazil drums and vibes. A lot of samba stuff is on there. I took after that. I’d just listen to his tracks over and over again. Just playing along with them. Those are strong roots, Amon Tobin. I don’t really listen to him anymore because it’s too busy. At this point, I’ll take any crazy free jazz over Tobin. But that stuff really informs what we do—it’s more intuitive and built around a lot of muscle memory if anything.

Xinxin is a melting pot—of electronic music, samba, even hip-hop—and this provides the character of your band.

JA: Completely. I mean, just look at us.

[Bassist] Carlos [Elias] is Mexican, Stephen is both Black and white. I’m Asian.

SR: Ethnicity can be a marker for a lineage of something. I’m not sure what so much.

I mean, my mom listened to the soul and R&B that she did, and that shaped me a bit. Listening to the 90s music that we did.

JA: The Cardigans.

SR: Pavement. Sea and Cake. Yeah, lots of stuff.

JA: The cultural things or the ethnicities come in different ways. I mean, I came from a different country, where I was into different music. It was a different scene. But Carlos grew up in El Monte. And he plays jazz, but that guy is a metal head!

SR: Super heavy metal head.

JA: He writes and produces heavy metal music when he’s not doing this thing with us. We are all over the place. All these different influences and sounds getting into our music.

Where do you guys consider yourselves from? As a band?

SR: If I had to choose, I would just say the Inland Empire. As a home base for us.

JA: I’ve moved so many times, I don’t even consider myself to have a home base. I don’t even see myself as being from anywhere. I guess Southern California.

Can it be said that Xinxin is a uniquely Southern California band?

JA: I’d say so. I’d definitely take that.

SR: It does influence our manner and the way we approach our music. It makes our music pretty distinct.

JA: I’m pretty sure, if I ever went to a high school dance anywhere other than where I’m at now, it’d be a completely different experience. And that alone is something unique in and of itself. I mean, I was listening to this kind of hip-hop, Lil Jon… SR: Ying Yang Twins.

JA: That’s the roots of our high school time and it still has a place in what I’m doing— or we’re doing.

SR: I remember being there. And being upset at the time. Distinctly hating everybody for liking that stuff, because I was just antieverything then. But …

JA: I was completely all about it!

SR: But it still influenced us regardless. That’s the era and the time we were around.

JA: We were going for something along the lines of jazz-grunge when we first began.

SR: It comes from a similar attitude. We have this grunge attitude, where it’s very much … it feels overcast.

JA: We definitely don’t have a heavy sound.

It’s more lighter, cleaner, wispier.

Sleater Kinney meets Blue Note.

SR: I’ll take that. I like them. I dug them for a while. A lot of it is just intuitive playing.

That’s really what is making it happen. It’s a very reactionary process when we write a song. Nobody’s trying to instruct or direct otherwise.

JA: If you’ve ever seen Teen Titans on Cartoon Network, there is this character Robin, Robin from Batman, and he’s always trying to lead. But everybody is always ‘Shut up Robin. Don’t try and lead us.’ But he still tries. Most of the time when we are creating, I feel like that! Because that adult self comes out and is giving directives: ‘OK, guys, here’s what we gotta do. This is how we gotta play! Blah. Blah. Blah.’ And they are just like, ‘Alright, whatever.’ Ha! In practice mode I get a certain way. I want to give direction and all that. Then we end up jamming anyway and that’s where all the good stuff comes out! As much as I want to put structure on things, most of the time, it’s better if we just trust our guts and go with feel.

What’s the future hold for Xinxin? What are you working on now?

JA: We’re finishing up this record. It’s a six song EP. After that’s done, I’d like to release a music video. I was thinking about doing a tour after that, but instead I’ve been feeling like I want to start writing and work on a full-length. Hide away for a while and spend most of our time doing that. Maybe do a few shows, but really focus on recording. I’d like to play more together and really get into the music more—getting more into the music, instead of the outside parts. I’ve always believed if you have good music then things will just come to you. I mean, obviously, you’ve still got to do the work and put yourself out there. But I really feel … if you make damn good music that feels good to you, then that’s enough.

XINXIN’S BLUE FLOWERS EP WILL BE AVAILABLE ON SAT., APR. 1.

VISIT XINXIN AT FACEBOOK.COM/ XINXINPLANET. 21

PRIESTS Interview by Emily Twombly Illustration by Elza Burkart Priests are more than a D.C. band. Although they certainly wear their politics on their sleeves, they’re still not taking themselves too seriously. Their live performances are theatrical but still somehow poignant. And by running their own label Sister Polygon, making their own zines and helping to foster a positive inclusive scene in their own city—among other things—they embody punk in the truest sense of the word. Their new record, Nothing Feels Natural, is out on Sister Polygon now.

I know you get a lot of questions about D.C. so I’m going to try to not ask a lot of questions about D.C. … but it’s hard to avoid political questions now. Since the Trump regime took over, how do you feel the political climate has changed in your scene specifically? Is there more urgency to make art and music?

Katie Alice Greer (vocals): For us, it feels just as urgent as any other time. I think some people who weren’t hip to that in the past are more down to talk or think about it. We’ve had a lot of conversations with people since the election who were like ‘I’m not sure I want to be a musician anymore, everything is so fucked up, I feel like I should go be on the front lines.’

It’s important to remember that you’re always on the front lines with any job you’re doing.

There needs to be smart people furthering the right values in any line of work.

Daniele Daniele (drums): I’ve noticed people really want to be politically involved—they want to volunteer or go to a protest, and those things are awesome and amazing. But they’re not willing to look in their own workplaces and be like, ‘How has my own privilege helped me here?’ It’s a way of dealing with guilt to field them in other contexts. But how do you conduct your business on a day-today basis? Are you holding yourself and the people around you accountable? We always think about how we run our label and do our band—that to us feels like the most relevant and important direction to try to take things.

G.L. Jaguar (guitar): I’ve also noticed like more … I have a lot of friends who are bartenders, and one of them has been called the n-word three times in the past six weeks which is completely unheard of. So I think people are more overtly racist. Coming out of the shadows.

KAG: Can we all make a concerted effort to make racists afraid again? There’s a president in power who makes them feel bold again.

And it’s everyone’s responsibility to be like, ‘Fuck off, there’s no place for that here.’

GLJ: Especially white people!

KAG: That’s something that we’ve been trying to examine in interviews lately. We have friends who are not white—musicians—who are constantly asked, ‘What’s it like to be a musician of color?’ Why aren’t people talking about what it’s like to be a white person in America right now? There are so many things you can do with that privilege, you know?

There’s been all these benefit shows for various causes but it often seems like a bunch of straight white bands playing—not a lot of diversity in bands being featured. How do we make these shows more inclusive and 22

safe for the people they’re supposed to be benefiting? And when this fad of benefit shows dies down, how do we continue that inclusivity and creating safe spaces?

DD: One thing I’d like to point out that I think happens a lot in the DIY world is … it’s like ‘Oh, all the people doing things are white.’

Actually there are a shit ton of bands that are marginalized and out there making work, but people aren’t giving them a platform. I bet you there are a shit ton of Black people in their community making badass music and they don’t know about those shows. So maybe just go to those shows, and support those people.

KAG: Or decolonizing where we focus our interests. That can be a ‘first and foremost’ thing. When we’re in show spaces, if there are just white people there, think, ‘Why would non-white people not want to be there?’

DD: A big thing for me has been talking about how the idea of genre is obsolete—it’s a tool of the marketplace rather than like making music. One way in which that functions— and always has in popular music—is it has a history of unnecessarily dividing music along racial lines. Rock ’n’ roll, even though it’s built by stealing culture made by Black people, is considered white music, whereas R&B a lot of times meant ‘music made by Black people.’

And to sell more tickets, people book shows where the bands all sound the same—but really we need to book shows where one person is rapping and one person is playing theremin. Enough of the line-ups where the music all sounds the same!

Taylor Mulitz (bass): Also focusing the efforts of the benefit shows has an impact too. A lot of benefit shows have been working with local organizations, like Casa Ruby, an LGBTQ shelter where a dollar of every ticket we sell on our tour— DD: —it’s a shelter that’s trying to support the really large Latino and Latina and all different populations of D.C. It’s awesome the amount of benefit shows that happened after the election, but how do we continue that momentum? It shouldn’t stop with this presidency.

KAG: I hope a lot of these benefit shows were an initial meeting place for people with different organizations—no shade to Planned Parenthood but definitely a lot of shade to the ACLU for picking up Milo Yiannopolous’ legal fees. People need to stop donating to big nationwide organizations that have a lot of money and start forming relationships in the longterm with local organizations in their town, and consider ways of acting that are taking into account their communities rather than just single-time donations.

DD: —and pay people who don’t get paid normally! Pay people of color! Hire them!

Pay artists of color! Pay trans women of color!

And not just art—in every field. Incorporate those people so they can support themselves.

They’re marginalized economically because the system doesn’t support those people. So don’t just give a donation—actually change the system you’re working in so that those people are getting paid.

Do you worry about—or have you discussed amongst yourselves—your popularity in the mainstream? Does that matter to you?

DD: Popularity … fuck, getting paid would be really nice, and selling more records would be tight. But something we think about right now—all four of us are really opinionated people who try to keep up with what’s happening in the world so we’re down to talk about it with everybody, but then we’re like, ‘Damn, we’re actually musicians first and foremost and we want to talk about our record!’

KAG: It’s not necessarily about worrying about our popularity, but we do worry about our image—owning our own narrative, owning our own message, and like what’s important about it. It should be about the music. And I do think that the deprioritization of art and culture contributes to fascism existing in our culture. It’s not a direct threat. But the less we care about art and the less we want to center on music or some other kind of expression, the more we’re prioritizing systems that say creative expression isn’t important.

And you don’t want to be put in a box of being a political band— DD: No! KAG: That’s a big reason why we don’t want people to call us a political band. There’s a political dimension to almost anything you want to talk about in the world, you know?

And yes—talking about these things right now feels like the human response to what’s going on, not the political response. But yeah—I think we make music anyone could get into. I hope we sell a million records!

Let’s talk about the record. What inspired you? Art or music or something you saw walking down the street?

KAG: We’re very influenced by movies.

There’s a song that was written from the imagined perspective of a character in a John Cassavetes movie. Musically we were really drawn to Portishead’s Third. We were trying to understand how to use the studio more.

And Third is a record where the songs really grow in the production.

DD: We love movies because often with musicians, there can be a way of talking

about music that just keeps people out. None of us are professionally trained musicians or anything like that—we’ve all taught ourselves.

Often when we’re talking about a song we’re writing, we talk about like, ‘OK, this is the part in the movie where you’re like in a car, and there’s a tornado behind you, and you’re driving as fast as you can!’

KAG: We don’t read music but we love music and listen to a lot of it. Another record we listen to as a band is [60s star Del Shannon’s arguably out-of-character] The Further Adventures of Charles Westover which is a psychedelic record. So that idea too, of people taking a boxed-in identity and flipping it—that’s always been very inspiring to me.

Growing out of the dimensions that the marketplace set for you. I’m really personally inspired by Fiona Apple, Björk, Nina Simone and vocalists like that. I shouted a lot over songs in the past. I had to figure out how to write melodic parts I could sing over time on tour and not lose my voice.

You released your new record on your own label. Do you have advice for anyone who would want to start their own label?

KAG: ‘Don’t do it!’ would be my advice! We’re no experts but I would say don’t spend beyond your means, start small—a lot of our releases have been cassette and that’s a great way to kind of emotionally support music that you love. You’re giving it a release, you’re getting to hype it to people and give them something to sell, but it’s not such a crazy financial risk in case the band breaks up or something goes wrong. It’s good to start small and keep it rooted in music you love. Everything we’ve released is stuff that we are hyped about.

DD: You can’t promote something and hype it to other people if you’re not really hyped on it.

Do you have advice for young people who want to get involved in the music scene and don’t necessarily know how?

KAG: It seems like silly advice, but you’re not going to die of embarrassment. When I was younger, there were so many things I avoided because I was worried about possibly humiliating myself. Once you do a couple things where you’re like, ‘Wow, I fucked that up. That was terrible, but I’m still alive—’ …

Just follow your passion! It sounds corny but that’s what’s going to get you out of bed in the morning. Especially right now, when all of us have every reason to be chronically depressed.

PRIESTS’ NOTHING FEELS NATURAL IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM SISTER POLYGON. VISIT PRIESTS AT 666PRIESTS666.COM. INTERVIEW

THE BUTTERTONES Interview by Daiana Feuer Photography by Debi Del Grande The Buttertones began in bassist Sean Redman’s shabby Hollywood apartment. It was the year 2011 and Redman, guitarist/singer Richard Araiza and drummer Modesto ‘Cobi’ Cobiån bonded over their shared affinity for mid-20th century music. Araiza brought Dakota Boettcher into the mix around the time the band was readying their self-titled debut on Lolipop, recorded with Joel Jerome. When saxophonist London Guzman entered the picture, the band was complete. They were now fully equipped to fold in the flavors of their enthusiastically diverse musical influences and cook them into a delicious casserole. This ever-so-stylish group of guys recently signed with Innovative Leisure, and recorded their latest album, Gravedigging, with Jonny Bell at Jazzcats in Long Beach. The songs are full of romance, blood, guts, ghosts, surf, doom, and delight—like they crammed all their favorite movie plots into three minutes or less.

Why did you choose Gravedigging as the album title? Is there a symbolic meaning to it beyond the surface?

Sean Redman (bass): It was a last minute call to name the album Gravedigging. We were attracted to the imagery and mood of the title. It pulls directly from the last song on the record, which we all agreed best encompasses the Buttertones experience.

Why do you think horror or thriller themes make such good song material?

Dakota Böettcher (guitar): It keeps the listener on the edge of their seats, and helps us be less predictable.

If this album were the soundtrack to a film, what would be the movies plot?

SR: Wild at Heart meets Blazing Saddles.

Richard Araiza (guitar/vocals): A noir/western in a smoky dystopian Maui. Chizuko (Lucy Liu) is a private eye, hired by a mysterious wealthy man who identifies himself as Mr. Kimble (CGI Marlon Brando). He tells her to track down his nephew Frances (Richard Lewis) to bring him home to run the ‘family business.’ She accepts but soon finds out that Frances is working for the yellow-eyed coyote (Al Pacino), the same man that killed her lover Ann (Scar Jo).

There’s criminality in a few of your songs.

What fascinates you about crime stories?

SR: The thrill, the danger, the romance.

Have you committed an actual crime?

Everyone: We plead the 5th.

Is it important to be a rebel?

SR: It’s important to have principles you firmly believe in. If the status quo runs opposite to your convictions, it’s completely natural to rebel. It is very important to stand up for yourself and your pack as long as your beliefs aren’t forged in superstition or paranoia.

DB: It’s important to question everything and forge your own path.

What attracts you to the 50s and 60s music?

SR: For anyone trying to create popular music, it’s important to go to the source. Music from the mid-20th century still resonates today and we’ve always identified with the outsider perspective of early rock and roll.

Is there anything about current music that you really love?

RA: We all have our top picks for current artists, like Björk, Nicolas Jaar, Gorillaz, Devendra Banhart and Beach House, to name a few.

SR: It’s good to discover that there are still boundaries left to be pushed with music.

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None of us are particularly savvy with new music technology, so it is fun to hear a new song and be genuinely perplexed as to how the sounds were created. It doesn’t really matter what era a song is from, as long as the writing is thoughtful.

Do you guys have conversations about clothes as well as music?

SR: Yes. London is the reigning style guru, but we’re still trying to forgive him for the time he wore suspenders with a belt.

RA: I feel like I’m about to have my tracksuit and robe taken away from me.

What was the first song you ever learned?

And the song you play the most on your own time?

SR: ‘Smoke on the Water’ and ‘Flowers Grow Here.’

RA: ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ and ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring.’

DB: ‘Seven Nation Army’ and ‘Dueling Banjos.’

Modesto ‘Cobi’ Cobiån (drums/multiinstrumentalist): ‘Californication’ and ‘Polka Dots and Sunbeams’ London Guzman (sax): ‘Iron Man’ and ‘Comanche.’

Some of you studied music—is there any particular aspect of music theory you apply to your songs?

SR: The school Richard, Cobi and I attended is in the heart of Hollywood and provided a different type of education than most music colleges. The work ethic we learned will stick with us forever. I also learned some valuable lessons in what not to do. It was pretty rough watching some classmates prostitute themselves for attention only to become casualties of the Hollywood entertainment machine.

Are you pro-Beatles or anti-Beatles?

Everyone: Definitely pro-Beatles.

If you could go back in time, what musician would you seek out to try and change the course of history?

LG: Save Elvis from his final trip to the toilet.

RA: Stop Otis Redding from getting on that airplane to Madison.

MC: Go back in time and save Dennis Wilson from drowning.

SR: I’d stop Mama Cass from eating that ham sandwich.

DB: I would go back and save Ritchie Valens—too young.

Who would you let punch you directly in the face? Explain your choice.

RA: I’d let Morgan Freeman punch me in the face, I feel like I would grow immensely as a person.

DB: Mike Tyson, just so I can say I survived.

LG: I wouldn’t want to be punched but stunned by Stone Cold Austin.

SR: I’d like to be the only person in history to be punched by the Dalai Lama.

MC: Miles Davis. I need to be punched into place by my hero.

What do you see as the future of music?

MC: Wild Wing.

LG: I’m going in blind but I would like to see an analog comeback—that’d be a dream come true.

SR: The industry will continue to constantly evolve with new streaming platforms and sharing services. Artists will have to rely less on giant record labels and super producers.

Corporations and brands will continue to try and exploit fringe artists for cool points.

Guitar Centers everywhere will become empty ruins and stand as relics to the past.

The future is now.

What’s the most powerful thing that shaped you as an artist?

RA: Relationships and near-death experiences.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve heard or been offered from a fan at a concert?

RA: One time a group of both genders kept screaming ‘Daddy’ at me—didn’t know what to make of it.

SR: On more than one occasion we’ve been offered tiny plastic hands.

CM: A lovely young lady made me some hair pins.

DB: Two fans baked us Buttertones cupcakes that were lip-smacking good.

How collaborative is your song writing process?

SR: It’s like five cooks in a kitchen. Some days one member will bring the recipe and the others will bring the ingredients. It doesn’t always turn out like the original vision, but something tasty is bound to happen.

RA: A few examples just to give you a little more insight: I wrote ‘Matador,’ Dak wrote ‘I Ran Away’ and the band arranged them.

Whereas songs like ‘Grave Digging’ or ‘Geisha’s Gaze,’ Dakota or Cobi would come up with a riff, then I’d write a melody. All of us arrange and sometimes we’d all knock out the lyrics. I would say that this album has definitely the most collaboration out of all our works.

How would you describe the dynamic with Jonny Bell? In what ways did he push you?

What did he contribute to the record?

SR: Jonny was a positive force in making this record come together. He shared his wisdom and insight into not only rock ‘n’ roll history, but the state of the music industry today. He would call us out on our redundant habits and motivate us when we were frustrated. He’s got a knack for making bands sound like the purest versions of themselves.

And you also worked with Joel Jerome.

RA: We actually did two full-length albums and a four-song EP with Brother Joel and it was a thrill to work with him because all of us were fans of his band Babies on Acid.

He taught us to be patient but also not to overthink things—go with the flow style.

SR: He is a big brother to us all, and without his influence we wouldn’t be the same band we are today. Joel is a pretty zen guy, but he certainly taught me the importance of having strong personal ethics when approaching your art and how to be comfortable in your own skin. I doubt he even knows I feel this way. Also he’s one of the most underrated songwriters around.

Is ‘Two Headed Shark’ a metaphor?

RA: Yes, it’s about a person who over stays their welcome and the duality of man.

Do you think love and torture must always come together?

SR: They’re two sides of the same coin.

There are lots of love themes in the songs— how do you know if you’re in love?

MC: You know when can’t stop sending kiss face emoji’s to that special someone.

Which of your songs would make for the best lovemaking soundtrack?

SR: ‘Sadie’s a Sadist’ because it only lasts 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

RA: ‘Gravediggin’ because it starts off fast and rough, then slow and intimate and ends with a bang.

THE BUTTERTONES’ RECORD RELEASE WITH GUANTANAMO BAYWATCH AND WILD WING ON SAT., MAR. 25, AT THE BOOTLEG, 2220 BEVERLY BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $12-$14 / ALL AGES. THE BUTTERTONES’ GRAVEDIGGING IS OUT MARCH 31 ON INNOVATIVE LEISURE. BUTTERTONES. BANDCAMP.COM INTERVIEW

CRIMEWAVE 5150 Interview by Senay Kenfe Photography by Alex the Brown What earned Long Beach rap duo Crimewave 5150 the attention of the local police force? Few can say for sure, but there are plenty of rumors that the local Vice Squad has a special file on Dez Yusuf and Mook. Maybe it’s the rage and youthful angst in their lyrics and the hold that has on the music scene—or it could be the natural response to their regional hit “F*ck LBPD.” On the heels of their self-released debut full-length Menace, we talked with Crimewave about Long Beach, their expectations as independent artists, their effortless bridging of genres, the expression of anger in music, and what constitutes truly DIY antics in 2017.

We’re here with Dez and Mook—JSNMSK in real life. But you don’t like being called JSNMSK. Mook: It’s not that I don’t like being called JSNMSK. I just want people to acknowledge that that’s something that I am, but that’s not WHO I am. I don’t wanna be specifically defined as a character. I don’t want people to feel they got to know me because they know me as JSNMSK. It’s interesting—you’ve been operating under a few different aliases. Why? M: I don’t want people to get the wrong idea about why I do shit. I do shit specifically because I like it, so I will go out of my way to create a whole world for it to exist in. I don’t wanna just be like a one-man wrecking crew of all these things because … there’s too much of the long game to play for you to try and get it poppin’ as this world-renowned renaissance man who can do everything. I try to keep shit specific to the energy I feel at the time.

Sometimes I feel like JSNMSK, sometimes I feel like Dirty Waterz—I get to nurture all those things almost from an unbiased point of view. I don’t have to feel obligated to do those things. It’s easier to have different names for different projects.

Dez, how do you feel about your partner in crime?

Dez: That nigga crazy, man. He’s always got some new idea we gonna put a whole lot hours into it, and then he put it on the shelf!

Nah—I mean, it’s tight. He has a lot of ideas.

He inspires me when I get bored with shit. He likes to challenge me to make different types of music: ‘Go make some shit like this … if you CAN! If you can, nigga!’ It’s his form of hypnotism. He already knows I can do it. He just wants it like he wants it! Before Crimewave even existed, I was down to help him with his efforts in other types of music just to see it grow. He’s a very creative individual. When some people got it, they just got it.

What’s it like being a musician in Long Beach? Particularly as a rapper, but overall— D: It’s weird.

Pros and cons.

D: Before it was always segregated. I’ve been playing music here since I was a teenager.

So that’s interesting. A lot of segregation before—a lot of people just thinking you were corny if you were trying to rap. And now a lot of people are embracing it and it’s breaking down barriers, but also it could end up being corny if you don’t limit your access to people—or limit people’s access to you.

INTERVIEW

What do you mean?

D: People have seen Mook rap with Furcast, so now everyone’s like, ‘Oh, let’s get all the rappers!’ Because it brings a different crowd or a different aesthetic to their performances as rock bands. And I’ve done it and I’ve done it for years, and I’ve been doing it but it’s very specific. And now it’s like … we can’t be rapping with every band, you know? Now I get multiple questions a week—will you come and drop a verse?. Being a musician in Long Beach has definitely changed. I think people are finally starting to realize there is some prejudice here against the Black artists.

I see people becoming allies in a way. They’re doing what they can. Some people don’t know what the fuck to do because they just started realizing that it’s a real thing even though it’s been talked about for some years. Now that people are seeing that, they’re like, ‘Oh shit.’

It’s first of all making them point a mirror at themselves, and then making them get up and try to incorporate us. I understand us rapping with them is their way of trying to incorporate us, but there’s better ways to go about it. Or just you know—demand that their favorite spaces have Black music, Black musicians. I don’t know—it’s all interesting.

But it is definitely a hodge-podge of people, I fuck with that. People of all colors and different backgrounds.

Do you feel like the organic growth of Crimewave would have been possible in L.A. in the way it’s working for you now here in Long Beach?

D: Nah. M: It’s been really grass roots.

D: I’m not phony enough for L.A.! I don’t kiss a lot of ass, and I don’t tell people they’re hot if I don’t they’re hot. I definitely respect anybody doing their shit and working on their craft, but there’s some shit I just can’t let fly.

M: Really to consider L.A. as what type of a place it is … we could look at it as the place it is for the music culture or the music scene, or we could look at it as a real place, you know? I view L.A. as a real place. We’re part of L.A. county but I’m not from L.A.—I’m from Long Beach, and I make shit specifically for people from here to be proud of or connect with or identify with, as far as the landmarks in our music that we talk about or the experiences a lot of people know about, the shit that we reference … It’s really more about a hometown pride thing. The music scene in L.A., there’s a lot of transient people in there—there’s nobody that really builds on the culture of L.A. music. I don’t think

anybody can really tell you what an organic L.A. scene looks like or sounds like. Most of the people who go to L.A. and start scenes or cultivate it or curate it aren’t from there and they have no way to contribute to the culture.

So if anything, this is only possible because we kept it here as a home base.

D: I’ve seen a lot of rappers—musicians, rappers, whatever—leave Long Beach and claim L.A. or still live here and claim L.A. because they think that puts their broadcast out further into the world. I never agreed with that tactic. I never thought it was cool.

Represent where you’re actually from. I grew up here, I didn’t spend that much time in L.A. … I go to L.A., I have friends in L.A., but I’m not gonna go rep L.A. Yeah, this is L.A. county but Long Beach is a whole different world. A different experience. You can do everything in the world here. You don’t really have to leave Long Beach. I know people that don’t leave! People that have probably been to L.A. only once or twice in their life, which is weird. You can have a gangster experience here, you can have a punk experience, you can have all different experiences in Long Beach.

It’s diverse—even though it’s not really at the same time. I don’t know how to explain it.

You can get into as much trouble as you want to get into.

M: The universal culture of being here is maybe being presented as one universal culture, so it don’t really have too much diversity as far as what’s represented—or it’s not really done in a real respectful way.

So what’s it like— D: Growing up here or living here?

Both, I guess. You guys are both from here.

M: Me, I could really say … what it’s like to be from Long Beach—that encompasses living here and growing up here—is that one thing about Long Beach people that a lot of people don’t really understand is that it’s a really really Long Beach thing to be unimpressed by a lot of shit. [laughs] A lot of shit that we just specifically don’t fuck with because of how close we are to everything. We have so much stimulation from L.A. being right there and Orange County being right there—we got surf culture here, we got gangster culture, we got rock ‘n’ roll— D: —skate culture— M: —and there’s levels of all of it. And I think that the highest level of people are really respecting the fact that they from here and they don’t really fuck with a lot of shit if its not authentic. With so much shit being disingenuous the way it is … being from

Long Beach, we make people earn respect for shit. We’re not gonna just fuck with some shit or bandwagon on some shit. And that’s also why I think that it’s possible to make the shit happen the way we make it happen here because it don’t really take much for people to understand some real shit when this is they first introduction to it—when it happens with so many examples of shit that’s unimpressive, you know? Or shit that’s not real or authentic.

Why do you think your shows are so youth dominated? And why does your music connect with so many people from different backgrounds?

M: We do a lot of character building with people. We really are out here. People see that we aren’t really rapping about flashy cars and jewelry and living some expensive exquisite lifestyle. We really make this relatable to people because if I’m not driving no foreign car, I’m not gonna rap about it. And that’s not really to come at niggas who do. It’s just that everybody represents what they wanna see. And people wanna see real shit, we gonna rap about some real shit, and that’s all you can take away from it—real shit. There’s no bullshit in there for you to eat up—there’s no fat on it. You don’t have to chew around the fat. It’s straight to the meat.

D: I feel that keeping it relatable does a lot.

And not trying to overstep. Just because my background and his background are completely different doesn’t mean we can’t converge and create something. I don’t try to be him, I just try to be me. That goes a long way. That levels the playing field on where you can relate to us—and we both listen to so much different music and play different types of music, and that allows people to relate to us.

We’re accessible—we’re not too inaccessible.

We don’t give ourselves completely away, but we’re accessible. People can link with us and talk to us. I mean … I HAVE driven foreign cars, but I’m not gonna rap about it. I’m not trying to shit on the peasants! No, just kidding. [laughs] Within your music … it’s clearly rap music but there’s very much a relationship with the angst and anger people traditionally find within punk or hardcore. There’s this energy people connect with punk and hardcore, which is a lot of the background you come from, Dez. How do you channel that into Crimewave?

D: I was into hardcore and heavy music. And then I started going to punk shows with my friends as I got a little older because they were 27

saying, ‘This is what THIS shit stems from. If you think this shit’s tight, come check out the punk stuff.’ When I was younger, I wanted to impress my friends. I was rapping the whole time but I was like, ‘Damn, I’m gonna start rapping about this shit.’ Because only like a few people will understand it, but it’ll be funny and it’ll be cool. So I started incorporating a lot of references. It was still regular rap music … but I couldn’t connect. I felt I couldn’t rap how I felt. I was angsty and I am angsty and angry and I had all these things going on inside me but I couldn’t really channel it. For a while I tried to go doing typical rap music but after my bands broke up and everyone moved on—people went to college and whatnot—I felt like rap was the only way I could keep playing music. Being in a band and having four or five people is extremely complicated.

Even in hardcore punk—even though it’s the complete opposite philosophy—egos still get in the way. This is kinda my response to the rap game. Because I was jaded by that shit.

It’s bullshit—a lot of it. Or the people in it are bullshit. So making more of an angry authentic music is just my response.

Why are you guys so angry?

M: It’s not the only thing.

All this growling and shit—what’s up with that?

M: Look—I’ll tell you why. Why I sound the way I sound. I can’t really tell you why Dez sounds the way he sounds because he’s his own man. But I can tell you why I might sound kinda mad. Basically what you were just talking to him about—the punk shit, that wasn’t in … that was what he liked!

Everybody take what they like and do it. They find a way in, if they really fuck with it. …

The singing shit is very tight to me, for me to see the way women reacted to it and even the way niggas react to it to—it was the same!

They just recognized it, like, ‘Damn, that shit hard bro—what you doing is tight! That sounds different than the normal shit.’ And I would think to myself in the back of my head like … there’s a part of me that will really feel some type of way if I never had the ability to make people go nuts at a show. You can’t do that with the type of singing I was doing. You can’t make people go nuts. You can, but it’ll be on some whole other energy. It wouldn’t be like … warranted, maybe? But with this shit, I instantly seen a way to get as wild as possible right out the gates. That punk shit and the hardcore shit is not something I was thinking to myself that I wanted to emulate—I wasn’t thinking, ‘I wanna put some punk-sounding shit in this.’ I just really liked the fast shit we was doing—‘Bro, speed that shit up!’ I wanted it to be fast because if it was fast I could say a bunch of crazy shit in a bunch of crazy patterns. It wasn’t even about it being some punk shit. It just literally was the fact that it was fast and loud, which was … I know punk got its own reasons for sounding how it do and it’s political shit, and that’s why I was like, ‘Fuck it! I’m fucking with it!’ They really ain’t saying too much outside of what we saying when we really talk about how upset we are about shit—it sounds the same. We just talk about a whole lot of glitz and glamour shit too—about shit we don’t got. If niggas was really mad—like we are—about just shit …

Like we started talking about gentrification 28

hella early on when we started this shit cuz it was on 4 Street and it was literally at the beginning stages of being bad. We knew instantly it was only gonna get worse. And sure enough!

How do the politics of things like gentrification going on in the city impact the music?

D: The city likes to advertise themselves as this super diverse place. But usually only white people move to a place because of diversity. I’m keeping it real—you know what I’m saying? So the city advertises itself as this extremely diverse place— M: As a selling point.

D: Yeah, but it’s never catered to the actual citizens that help make this what it is. There would not be a skatepark in Bixby Park if the Black and brown kids were not showing up every fucking day and skating on that shit whether the cops came or not. So what’d they do? They made a skatepark, and they’ve been putting skateparks in all these hoods. But it’s because these kids continuously skated, you know? I tried to do many a show at Bixby Park. I tried to go through the proper avenues, I told them what genre of music it is, I stopped getting callbacks even though I’m down to pay the fees or whatever … and then a whole rock fest goes down.

M: For free!

D: For free. I watched Fucked Up play at the park, and they’re called Fucked Up. It shows you where the interest is and what they’re trying to cultivate here. Long Beach hasn’t really acknowledged its people of color. They haven’t acknowledged the jazz scene that was here, they haven’t acknowledged the rap shit—they acknowledge Snoop Dogg. They wanna keep acknowledging Snoop Dogg.

M: They just let that nigga perform here for the first time. Ever! At a real venue—first time he ever did that. And that nigga’s an icon here.

He made this city fashionable for a lot of the selling points they capitalize off of. It’s weird.

Is it true the Long Beach Police Department has a file on you?

D: I’ve heard it. I’ve heard different promoters say they tried to book us and went to the Long Beach Police Department because they had to go through them and turned in some shit and they weren’t fucking with us.

M: That’s been what I’ve heard. I don’t really know about files and that shit, but if they know about it, then they know. There’s files somewhere even if it’s just in their mind.

We got hit up to do that north side [Village] festival—Pharcyde and all this cool-ass shit—and it was tight just to see it happen, to see Pharcyde and Talib Kweli perform in Long Beach like that. We got hit up to perform and there was a lot of excitement that surrounded it on the end of the person who was promoting it, like, ‘Oh yeah, the first thought was I want you guys to do that because it’d be perfect! You guys are really putting on for Long Beach, and it’d be tight to have some legends come here and y’all do that.’ ‘Ah yeah, we into it!’ That was the first time I heard the, ‘OK, cool, I just gotta like talk to the police about the booking …’ And she just never got back. Ever. Like … damn!

We still went to the show and everything, and still see that promoter and all that shit—didn’t even acknowledge the situation at hand and th

all that. It wasn’t even about like me even knowing the police had a file about us, but I instantly knew that played a role. Then you start seeing that with the lack of venues that will even allow hip-hop to happen there.

More specifically, rap music. When you say rap, the connotation is more violent content … just for rap music to not have an outlet, what does that do for the scene? It destroys it.

Think about the type of mindset that it breeds.

That’s only gonna perpetuate that whole ‘You gotta make it out the hood, you gotta get your bread up!’ because for this reason or that reason, it perpetuates a lot of negativity. If you gotta go somewhere else to perform your art, and you represent this place … a lot of people take pride in being from Long Beach, and to not be able to have they own art represented here in a fair space and an equal way, it’s ridiculous—more so to see people from here who take the type of pride they have here and have it be spit on! People come here all the time—the gentrification shit is real! There’s no way to sugarcoat that. There’s no way to make-believe it’s not something affecting us because it is. We see people come here and buy their way into our music scene—they buy their way in to the venues around here.

And they have success from it and they don’t do anything to put back into this. They don’t do anything to make sure there continues to be a place for people like us to perform. Or people who make anything outside of what’s viewed as acceptable by a very small group of people who no connection to what’s really happening around here. People playing all this fuck-ass surf indie rock bullshit … they have their aesthetic, they— D: Not that we hate on the genre— M: No, I don’t hate on the genre. I have homies that do it very well. But there are people that have played every venue and they get … they don’t completely sustain off it but it becomes part of their livelihood from them playing this weak-ass music that’s been done before.

D: And they don’t have to go sell 50 tickets!

Why you want me to play your dive bar and go sell 100 tickets? That’s some bullshit.

Who does that?

D: It’s been asked of me before. Just go to Pine. If they even do allow rap, then they want you to sell some tickets. You want me to sell some tickets on your weak-ass night that usually has three girls that are drunk dancing in the corner on their ladies night out? So if I ask you for that night, I’m gonna bring more than three people with me. But you want me to sell 100 tickets.

Do you feel in order to make rap shows happen in Long Beach, you have had to basically become promoters? You do a very successful independent night—Grown Ass Pizza Party. How do you feel the network you built off that has helped build up the brand of Crimewave in Long Beach?

D: I used to book hardcore and punk shows in Orange County at a place called the Cabin. Actually at my house. And we had plenty of bands. Then we did an event called Bottomless Beer and that shit went up, and when I branched out on my own or left after a couple years, I had an opportunity to do a night. And I thought, ‘Man, it’d be cool to do an adult version of the pizza parties you had as a kid.’ And that’s where Grown Ass Pizza Party

came from. It was at a venue and I could book the rappers I wanted to book at Que Sera and they weren’t really tripping—it was cool. My relationship has changed with them and I’ve since had to move from there, but yeah— booking my own stuff, I don’t put myself on every show but it is a great opportunity to play. I guess it has turned me into a promoter.

It was like that when I was younger. I started doing shows in high school because I couldn’t get rap shows. We’d get punk shows—all my friends had places to play—but people didn’t really want rap shows, so I started doing them at houses and churches with people I’d find that’d be cool with it. It’s turned me into a bit of a promoter but I don’t like the term ‘promoter’ because it has a crazy stigma. I like ‘booking agent’ or ‘booker.’ I don’t know! ‘I do a night!’

The new record—what’s it like dealing with a self-release?

D: A lot less pressure! We put that shit out a day late. Actually we put it up here! I was sitting here on the wi-fi.

M: Shout out to Sura [Korean BBQ & Tofu Restaurant]!

D: I told ‘em—what’s up, I’m on your wi-fi.

M: But having a self-released project, I don’t really know any other way to release a project, you know?

You coulda went with some local indie labels.

M: Yeah but by the time of having any local indie labels making any offers to help us with anything, we had already moved past pursuing a working relationship with them just based off of what we figured we could do ourselves.

Or just without having to attach another name that don’t really suit what we believe in 100%. We learned a lot from releasing the first project we put through Crimewave—the first EP I did was Young Hell Nigga, and we did a lot of research. Understanding what we did and how people reacted to a lot of shit, and it was pretty simple. The amount of time that had passed … I honestly thought we was taking a very long time to put this project together, based off of how quickly we was able to come up with content. It didn’t translate over to how quickly we could put it out. But now seeing the way things were naturally supposed to be, everything kinda happened perfect timing—our following being what it is right now, it’s not the biggest but it definitely is a supportive one. We have people who will support through any medium, whether it’s in person they’re paying to coming to show even if they don’t know anyone else on the bill they pay to come see us just because of the music that we created.

D: Homies paid $15 to see us at 8 o’ clock the other day. $15! And left afterward. That shows … and they’ve had opportunities to see us for free plenty of times. It shows the support and importance.

I said I was you guys’ DJ. D: That’s fine. We have dueling DJs. M: That self-released shit, I’m down to keep doing it, man.

D: I’m down to do it. If anything, I wouldn’t put shit out on a label. I would let them partner with us.

M: In what way?

D: You put up some bread, you get your bread back and a percentage of the profit.

INTERVIEW

M: That’s getting a sweet deal out of a label!

Could this be the conflict that changes the trajectory …

D: Only one conflict’s ever gonna change us, and that’s what this nigga thought about getting a man bun!

M: That really is my bio on Twitter right now … thinking about getting a man bun.

What you want a man bun for?

M: It’s a joke—I don’t.

It’s for the females?

M: No! I don’t do shit for females. I mean, I’ll do something for them, but I won’t do that.

Speaking of which—you are definitely an underrated sex icon in Long Beach.

M: This nigga’s foul!

How has your time with Crimewave heightened your profile with the nice women of the city? Have you been enjoying your time as a … star?

M: You know what? [long pause] What’s different? I’m trying to help you now—before putting out music and now?

M: I got more women now, yes, now that I’m putting out music. But I think that’s something we all could figure out.

Of course, but—how’s things been since?

Not just for women but in general?

M: One thing I’m learning about myself is you have to exercise your own measures of selfcontrol. You have to first understand how far you willing to go, and I’ve been pretty far! And then you have to know what’s a comfortable space for you to like not have to exceed … not to get that far again, you know? I’ve been out here learning a lot about myself or trying to, and definitely the way my relationships with women have changed has taught me a lot about who I am as a man and what I’m willing to do. I realized I’m not really nasty, though. I’m not really a nasty man.

You thought you were.

M: I thought I was—it’s deep out here, you feel me? I never really been used to it. It’s been teaching me a lot about myself and my limits and my self-control a lot. I do like having relationships with women in the ways I have now. I always felt I wasn’t really gonna end up in a monogamous situation just because I do a lot of wild shit, and I’m really just looking for somebody to do some wild shit with me if anything. But not nasty—just wild. Because I’m not that nasty. I can get away with a lot more now for sure. I can say more shit.

The musician life—it works for you.

M: I try not to work for it. It definitely doesn’t work for me in the way people think. It’s definitely something you have to nurture. You have to actively stay aware of the way people perceive you and the way you perceive yourself, the messages you show and the images … you gotta understand that everything you present is an association someone will make to you.

Just like that women shit—I don’t got a billion women, you feel me? But it might look that way specifically because I go out of my way to not do the shit thirsty niggas will do when they want women. It’s the simple fact that I’m not thirsty that it look like I got more women than I actually do, and then I end up with more women than I actually want.

Psychology!

M: Yeah—to all you niggas, just stop being thirsty, bro! It’ll work to your advantage.

D: Just stop thirst! Slow it down! Never mind—we ain’t been sponsored by no beverages, so I ain’t gonna say no names of no beverages. We gonna drink some H2O! M: Don’t drink no lemon-lime flavored nothing!

D: Not being thirsty and seeing women as— M: —items?

D: Not seeing them as items, not seeing at items to be conquered, but just people that you’ll fuck with.

M: Seeing them as food … at the bar!

D: You don’t look at food to be conquered!

There’s a difference. Food to be enjoyed.

A less violent word! You’re gonna lose all your bitches right here.

M: They love me! They know.

So you guys about to go on your first tour— M: Hold on, before we go to that … our record Menace … I like it a lot! I been thinking about lately. I didn’t really dislike it but I didn’t really know what I liked about it.

What did you like about it?

M: It’s our first record, you feel me? It’s the first and pretty much only thing people are gonna associate to us right now as far as what they think they know about us. I felt like we did as good a job as we could have to portray ourselves in a light that we could live with ourselves in.

D: We’re proud of it.

M: It wasn’t like, ‘Oh yeah, this is the hardest shit in the world!’ or some shit. But after taking a step back, I’m acknowledging for myself personally that it’s something for me to be proud of because I don’t really see shit through! I seen my first project through but that was with a lot of help from this nigga and our DJ and producer NiceGuyxVinny and Johann [Carbajal] and a couple other people—Sef [Candido]—it was a lot of people who did a lot to help that first one come together, and a lot of people to make this one come together. But this was our first real effort and we did all this shit—we had help but we really did something we proud of!

D: The production, the art, all the creative process came straight from us. The logistics

came with help from some friends. But the creativity, the world of Crimewave we created … that came from us.

So you feel comfortable enough with your work that you can tour off it the next two or three years?

D: I feel like that. We still have stuff, but we have to talk ourselves out of putting out music all the time. In the age of content, you only have to do that shit if you’re trying to keep up with the trends and the fads. Our shit is not trendy or faddy.

How about pace? You put out the record a month ago.

M: I don’t feel any rush. This is something we do and I don’t think we moving at a bad pace. Most of the songs we perform to this day have been unreleased tracks from the album we were just building because all this shit really started from the jump. We got one song down, two songs down, all of a sudden this is turning nothing into something real quick. There’s songs on this album that we don’t perform or never performed. It’d be cool as people begin to know those songs more and wanna hear those songs … I’m looking forward to performing these songs for a while because there’s shit we haven’t performed yet, and we still got a shit ton of unreleased music too.

D: I definitely feel comfortable with the album. There’s always things I’m like, ‘Ah, this could be done better.’ But that’s what it was at the time, and there’s still room to grow.

M: This is only the beginning.

CRIMEWAVE 5150’S MENACE IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM CRIMEWAVE 5150. VISIT CRIMEWAVE 5150 AT CRIMEWAVE5150.COM.

ARTHUR BROWN Interview by Ron Garmon Illustration by Nathan Morse First of all, this fellow has an endearing wheezing laugh. One you’d expect to hear from some pub-crawler out of Dickens or one of the cheerier depictions of the Buddha. The pages of Edith Sitwell’s English Eccentrics are full of people decidedly less interesting than this seventy-four year old Godfather of Progressive Rock. Rakish, free-spirited and better educated than most of his compeers in first and second wave of the British Invasion, Arthur Brown was equal parts leader of two notable rock groups and surrealist heir to the bandleader tradition of Glenn Miller and Harry James. By jumbling these idioms and others while overlaying the whole with Arthur’s comically rendered angst and cartoony variable voice, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown and prog were born. Their Daliesque live show prefigured the theatrics of the Doors and Alice Cooper and the 1967 self-titled debut LP twists heads around to this day. Opening with Brown’s bloodcurdling shout - “I am the God of Hellfire and I bring you -,” the single “Fire” was a worldwide hit that summed the artists’ lifelong obsession with the red stuff and kicked off a long and irregular career as recording artist. Here I catch up with this Lord of Misrule at the outset of a short tour with more dates rumored later in the year.

What was your most memorable accident with the fire helmet? [loud snorting and a long pause, then rising chuckles] Well, there’s nothing like the first time. The time I remember it was the first time we did the Windsor Festival—the first big gig we were doing. The lights man in those days was inclined to drink quite a lot and he filled the pie dish so full that by some means it lit! If I moved slightly the liquid would spill out and began to burn my clothes. People in the audience poured up pint glasses of beer and as much else as they could get over me until it was out. At the time I was sitting in a metal chair that was being raised by a crane.

The first fly-in entrance at a rock concert. I was supposed to be flown in with my hair alight but my clothes were soaking, my hair dripping, water dripping off like I was some kind of drowned badger. Not so grand an entrance.

Your first album was a journey into the mind of someone retreating from reality, which would go onto become a common theme in rock music. A raw disturbing theme for a trans-Atlantic culture raised on normality and tranquilizers, wouldn’t you agree? [prolonged wheeze] Yes! Indeed. We’d have had enough with the war and much else. My family was messed up with the war and my childhood wasn’t always a happy one. One day when I was very young—I think fifteenfourteen—my father brought in this guy who said he was going to teach me to empty my mind, so I could handle all the emotional rubbish that comes out. So I did. When I started writing my first stuff, you write about what was going on for you. That led me to look beneath my normal emotional patterns and normal thinking patterns. When it came to doing to the first album, it was me—how I’d really lived. It was what I felt. I was on a journey inside asking ‘Is this who I am?’ And I’ve always loved fire! Even looking at the fire in the grate, I’d be transported into a different world altogether. It would take me into a sort of trance. So it was natural for me that I should write about fire.

I’d imagine the collective memory of the Blitz had something to do with it being a hit.

INTERVIEW

Yes-yes. Well, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. [prolonged laughter] You’re from a musical family, I understand?

My father was an Art Tatum-style pianist.

And your mother a singer?

Yes. My career started in Paris, 1965. There was a club on Rue Fontaine, right in the middle of the city. It was very wild club.

Because we were playing three sets a day and then six on Sunday, I got to feel I had to do something different, so I began incorporating skits and theatrical sketches into the act. I was staying at a rather seedy hotel where people had lots of strange parties. After one, outside my door I found a crown with candles on it. I decided I would wear it onstage and of course lit the candles. Later a woman came back into the dressing room with a seven-year-old child and the child said ‘You should black out your teeth.’ What a thing from a seven-year-old! So of course I did, using makeup. They loved it at the club, then I moved down Spain for a while and played in these clubs that had stalactites hanging from the ceiling, stalagmites coming up from the floor. Salvador Dali and Roland Kirk would come and I got the idea for a wild act. I learned how to stage dive and astound the audience and all that. I was lucky enough to meet people like the artist Mike Reynolds, with whom I had many long conversations about the occult and metaphysics—so those images became part of the act. The fire helmet became a helmet with horns. Things just grew and grew until we hit the Info Club, the underground club in 67 London. There the audiences wanted you to explore—so we did.

You went to university, which is somewhat unusual for rockers of your era. What were you studying and why? [prolonged giggle] The first thing I studied for a year—before being asked not to go back— was law at King’s College in London. It was there a young lady introduced me to Gauloise cigarettes, modern jazz, traditional jazz and taught me the facts of all those things. I went to the underground film theater where Eisenstein movies were going on. It was just being open to exploration that was taking place in the art and theater world.

You worked with Vincent Crane, who is also a cult figure now. Remember him for us.

Ah… Vincent. He was an extraordinary funny man. He could improvise beautifully and not repeat himself, just an amazing fellow. He could conduct and write classical music. He was also kind of bipolar and manic-depressive so life was a physical torment for him. The kind of things that happened while touring in those days were very upsetting to him.

Thanks to you, a large element of theatricality entered rock music—the result of which we see now at every Super Bowl and Grammy ceremony. What role do you think spectacle plays in human culture?

Spectacle is one thing … well, one thing famously used by the Romans to keep people from thinking about what was actually going on with all their money and the way the socalled Gods were behaving. Spectacle one thing, ritual another. All the old cultures were based on ritual—they’re what held societies together. They join people on a family level as well as a shared communion. It would also tie people to the universe—to whatever was visible. If you take theater from that, then it’s more stories—a way of bringing vision to a culture. It is a necessary and most wonderful way for humans to communicate. When the Church decided to change all the Biblical things into facts instead of wonderful images, everything seemed to go on hold and in the end, some people rejected it. The mind works by analogies, and images are wonderful ways of explaining things you can’t.

Your first band had an unusually jazzy turn that was not at all standard in rock music at that time. Your next band was Kingdom Come, which dropped Galactic Zoo Dossier in 1970. By this time, psychedelic rock seems to have caught up with you.

What were the genesis and concept behind the new band and this record?

I lived over here for a short while in that period and while I was here the assassination of Bobby Kennedy happened. When I was queued up at the Apollo to see the Temptations, someone behind me in the queue was shot. Apart from that, the experience was wonderful!

Before the end, Kingdom Come became very likely the first rock act to use a drum machine.

We did the drum machine thing for a year and a half and we got to open—I think in Belgium—for Duke Ellington which was kind of nice. But I wanted to go further on the journey that ‘Fire’ started and I did and the band … we just kind of broke up. I only just in the last four years got back into the kind of experimentation we had with that band in the electronics. The use of the helmet, which allows you to play music just by thinking notes. Just in real time, as if you were whistling. You get points for that because you’re not copying anyone’s existing ideas.

Once in the studio after a few minutes of playing we stopped and the producer realized something was changing the mix. Finally we realized my brain was still attached to the mix and it was doing it by itself!

Auto-pilot!

I thought raw sewage! [laughs] You seemed to slip easily into the rock legend category after Kingdom Come, working with the likes of Hawkwind, Alan Parsons Project, Bruce Dickinson and others before reforming Crazy World of Arthur Brown. What did you do in between times to feed your muse?

When it came to like about 1979, I went to live in Africa and checked out some of the rhythms and things. Then I met a lady from Austin, Texas, and we had a son and I decided I don’t want to go touring but spend time with the family. I got together a house-painting company with Jimmy Carl Black, drummer for the Mothers of Invention. In those days, there were lots and lots of musicians and there were fair audiences but you couldn’t make much money unless you were out touring so you had some other … go into construction, painting, whatever. When that ended, I went to live in a yurt on a hill in Portugal.

Splendid! I’ve spent time in yurts and they’re fine things. [prolonged cackling] Yeah. Oh, God. Unfortunately the last year I had a solid one built. I liked the meditation, that kind of journey. After a certain point, there isn’t any more inward to get—after that I decided I was going to do my music.

VISIT ARTHUR BROWN AT ARTHURBROWN.COM. 31

MOUNT EERIE Interview by Tom Child Illustration by Dave Van Patten

The name Phil Elverum looms large in the history of turn-of-the-last-century independent music. Doggedly pursuing his own musical path since the mid 90s—as the Microphones and later Mount Eerie—Elverum distinguished himself as an innovative sonic experimentalist, able to conjure up extraordinarily deep and evocative sounds from relatively modest equipment, to say nothing of his considerable talents as a songwriter. It’s not overstating things to say that the Microphones’ 2001 The Glow Pt. 2 is generally considered one of the definitive independent folk releases of the genre, and its acclaim seems only to grow with time. In recent years Elverum devoted himself to his wife, the highly accomplished visual artist and musician Geneviève Elverum, and their daughter. But in 2015, shortly after giving birth, Geneviève Elverum was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and passed away in 2016. Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked at Me, released in March, is a powerful, emotional and beautiful reckoning with this new reality. L.A. RECORD spoke to Elverum just prior to his first tour performing the songs from this new album.

I want to say right away that I know talking about pain and loss can be difficult and I also tend to feel anxious with interviews anyway … so I just want to start by apologizing if I get awkward or nervous.

Phil Elverum: No, it’s OK. I wish there was a way to ease everyone in the world’s mind about that because I’m fine talking about it. I mean, I made this record about it and it flows from me easily. Maybe too easily.

It was interesting to realize that probably when I go out in the world with these songs there’s going to be a pretty wide spectrum of degrees of awkwardness and willingness to talk about it that I’m going to have to navigate. It’s like I’m putting a big sign up that says ‘Ask me about my dead wife.’

Well, good—I’m glad I established my awkwardness right away. You’ve said you don’t like what you called the ‘pitiful attention’ you get out in public these days so you stay home mostly—how do you balance the desire to keep this experience to yourself with wanting to reach out to other people?

INTERVIEW

It’s kind of worn off now that over seven months have passed but for a long time after Geneviève died—and also when she was sick—like with those in town that knew us, there were all these extra layers of social complication and difficulty to have to navigate through … even just going to buy broccoli at the store. Which is fine. I mean, it’s all totally normal and natural. But my tendency … I don’t want to help someone else through their discomfort around me. I already have enough on my plate, traumawise, and also just single-parenting. So I don’t need to help an acquaintance through their awkwardness. But then it is true that I made this record and that’s very much opening it up. But maybe it’s different because it’s on my own terms and it’s through the lens of these songs. And it’s not an exchange. It’s my one-sided announcement rather than an interaction.

You wrote in that after Geneviève died, your internal moments felt like public property—the idea of having a self seemed absurd and self-indulgent. Did anything not seem absurd in that moment?

Just the domestic realities. That seemed like the thing I could count on. Geneviève and I were very wrapped up in our creative pursuits and for the whole time we were together—thirteen years—that’s just who we were. Our house has always been this house of production, this house of projects going on. The kitchen table is always full of different paints and … you know. So when she got sick—and it was already sort of moving in this direction because she was pregnant and we were having a baby and it felt like, well, let’s move the paint off the table and let’s get ready for a baby—and then she got sick and death was looming and the things that we used to be so wrapped up in emotionally … it just seemed, like, why?

Why did we care about that? The shift in priorities was massive and immediate. And it still is like that. I mean, I think that this record is great and I’m very proud of it and I want to do a really good job but I don’t feel like it’s my life’s work in some cosmic grand sense and that it’s going to define me for history, you know what I mean? It’s just some music.

Was it difficult creating work about this profound kind of grief?

It wasn’t difficult at all. It felt good. It felt like therapy. It was difficult to not do it. It was difficult to have these things internalized. Getting to sort of organize them and express them and kind of twist them into … there are moments of beauty on the record. That felt very good to do, even as hard as some of the songs are— particularly the song ‘Swims’ where I can’t get the image out of my head of her … the last morning. I mean, that’s not beautiful.

That sucks and I want to forget. But I have this song now that I’m going to sing, which is going to remind me of it and cement it more into my consciousness.

That line where you sing about your daughter asking if mom is swimming and you tell her that’s maybe all she does now … That was really powerful for me. A lot of your previous work seems to reckon with isolation and the uncontrollable forces of nature and on the new record you sing, ‘Conceptual emptiness was cool to talk about, before I knew my 33

way around these hospitals.’ Was the experience of this grief different than you might have imagined it would be?

I don’t know how much thought I ever put into grief, if any, before this, of course. It’s not logical. It’s not on our radar. I had nothing in my recent history where I felt, like, ‘What?

Woah! Weird! How disorienting!’ But that sharpness fades. That awareness fades. I didn’t have an expectation for what it would be like. One surprising thing is the first stuff I was talking about—all the social subtleties of having to navigate through other people’s stuff for them. I wouldn’t have expected that being such a major part. I mean, the difficulty hasn’t been that much. Primarily it’s been good. We have a really excellent support network here—friends and family and people that have been so amazing. That’s why I was able to make the album because we have a schedule of people who take my daughter probably four days a week. She’s outside the house for a few hours at least.

That’s where she is now. And my mom takes her all the time. We wouldn’t be able to do that if I was living in isolation. It’s so crucial.

I wouldn’t be able to be a person if I was living in isolation so it’s definitely worth it.

And my appreciation for that stuff has only been increased by this experience. I’m closer with my community now.

Do you feel a conflict between wanting to heal and wanting to hold on to that pain because it’s also a connection in its way?

Definitely. I feel that way still. It’s a tug of war, I guess, between those two drives.

When she first died, I was really motivated to just deal with everything: to transform the house, move the furniture around, get rid of her stuff and, you know, move forward, not be surrounded by so much, so many reminders. But then I didn’t totally finish.

Her studio is mostly cleaned out but then I just kind of stopped and now it’s this room that I go into and it’s mostly cleaned out but still her desk is there and still her plants are there and there’s something in me that’s preventing me from taking that last step and transforming it into a totally different room.

Likewise with the album. I didn’t want to finish making it really, even though I was very rushed. I wanted to get it out as soon as I could while it was still sharp in me … but also working on it felt like hanging out with her, kind of, so I wanted to keep that going. But then, I’ll just keep writing more songs if I want to do more of that feeling. It felt good to go up into that room at night when my daughter was asleep and go back into those ideas that I was writing down and organizing and erasing and noodling on the guitar. It felt right and good. I’m not sure what it all meant and why it felt good but it definitely did.

What sort of feedback have you been getting from people who have heard the album? Have people been reaching out and saying it’s been helping them?

Yes, some. I’ve gotten some nice emails from people who have told me that it was helpful. I mean, it’s not out yet so most of the talking I’ve done about it has been with interview people. I wasn’t sure if we should do a PR campaign at all. It felt sort of crass 34

or something in a way, to do the usual record industry thing with it—so we aren’t doing the usual thing. This unique situation and how to proceed … the idea is just to be a little more selective and adult about it, I guess. To not just be like, ‘Hot new track from Mount Eerie!’ The people I’ve talked to so far have been very sensitive and intelligent about it, which is surprising.

I mean, I can’t imagine someone asking, ‘How did you get that guitar sound?’

One thing I’ve heard a lot… maybe the majority of people have said something along the lines of, ‘I don’t think I can listen to it,’ or ‘I don’t think I can listen to it more than one time. It’s very powerful and beautiful but I think one time is all I can take.’ Which is surprising to me because … I mean, I guess it’s painful. I can see that. But that painful? I tried to make it pretty. I tried to make it also a pleasant experience in a way.

I do think it’s a beautiful album. But I have to admit when I heard it for the first time, I was so emotionally moved by it and it did tap into some things that maybe I don’t always acknowledge about my brother’s death. There are definitely times where I was crying but it did feel cathartic even for me so I think you achieved that and I think that—not to draw up a barrier between people who have gone through something like this and people who haven’t—but I think that maybe not going through it, it’s a little harder to…

Yeah—that’s true and that’s been my experience with the people who have emailed me and told me, like, ‘I lost my mom.’ That’s incredible and I didn’t think about that in advance at all but it has given people a way of thinking about this stuff that they didn’t allow into their mind or didn’t have a vocabulary for. It feels crazy to make something that is useful emotionally to someone. It feels beyond my ambition and I’m very happy if that ever happens.

You really hit on a lot of shared experience.

The stuff about getting mail addressed to her still. That was something I experienced because I was living with my brother so I’d get his mail. His room was still there.

I don’t think it’s something we necessarily always talk about too openly and I think it’s good to be able to put on headphones and listen to your album and have that connection but still have it be a somewhat private moment because it’s not always easy to be emotionally vulnerable in that situation. You’ve said that it’s important to zoom out and accept the bad shit because good is also coming inevitably—how do you feel about that now?

It’s probably has been my general stance always. I don’t know why but I do tend to always remind myself to zoom out and look at the long-term picture. I don’t think it’s optimistic—I don’t think I’m particularly optimistic. I’m not hung up on saying, ‘The good thing is right around the corner!’ I forget where but someone was using the term ’silver lining’ about my record or about Geneviève dying. Yeah. I hate that. But whatever. That’s just an example of one of the things that people are going to say and that I have to brace myself for.

The line that hit me the hardest was, ‘It’s dumb and I don’t want to learn anything from this.’ I mean, it feels crass to say, ‘Well, it’s a lesson.’ And I definitely had well-meaning people say things like, ‘Well, everything happens for a reason.’

God, yes. It’s the worst. One thing I heard yesterday on the radio … a woman was talking about loss and grief and stuff and she pointed out that people say really dumb stuff but beneath all of that idiocy, they’re all wellmeaning and really the worst thing is silence.

And I know that before all this, my tendency as a person would be silence. I know that I’ve done that in the past to people around me who have experienced loss. So now I know how truly shitty that feels, to be the recipient of silence because people are so afraid of saying the wrong thing. That’s a public service announcement to get out there: silence is the worst possible response. Even if you say the stupidest thing, it’s still worth it.

What sort of relationship do you want to have with your audience now? Not even speaking of your personal life?

I’m kind of dreading playing these songs live, honestly, because of that. I want to play them live but I don’t know how ready I am to do that thing of helping strangers through their discomfort … like, making people feel that whatever way they are reacting is OK. Which it is. That’s the answer. However people react or whatever they say to me is fine but knowing that people are kind of walking on ice around you … it’s a hard feeling. But I haven’t done that yet though. I just played one local show, which I didn’t really open my eyes for. I just powered through it and walked out the door so it doesn’t really count. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot because I’m going on tour in April and I’m thinking, ‘Oh wait, what about the merch table? I want to sell records but how…’ It’s also going to be sort of a meet-and-greet table and people are going to say stuff to me and I’m not really interested in doing that.

I read the review in The Stranger about that show.

I was nervous. I was really nervous because it had been a long time since I’d played a show of any kind because I was very much out of the zone. My life is not that life anymore.

And playing in Anacortes is always the hardest place to play just because people know the ‘real me’ here or whatever. It’s my friends and family. Maybe out on tour I had more leeway about saying some bullshit and people would just believe me. Here, I can’t get away with that. So it’s already kind of nerve wracking. And also I was really sick. I had a very painful voice. I was focused on singing as many of the songs as I could physically get through with my voice. I walked in the door and then I walked out the back door. I feel like it doesn’t count. It was very much like ripping the Band-Aid off. Now I’m ready to go on tour and weather the storms of all kinds of weird places and people.

Is there a way to prepare emotionally to perform these songs over and over again?

No, I haven’t been thinking about it really.

I’ve been thinking about how to travel with a two-year-old. That’s absorbing my mind.

The shows are the whole point of the thing

but I haven’t been thinking of them at all.

As someone who has been performing and touring for two decades, are you able to … adjust your vulnerability onstage as the situation dictates?

I do. I used to be at least. I don’t know who I am anymore. But I can remember being able to just jump in the car with my guitar and go play a show and it would work out and it would feel good. But I don’t think I should take that for granted anymore. I should do some preparation. I’ll probably just learn the songs really well. I mean, I already know them. But just brace myself for awkward places and people.

How has this experience affected your relationship with humanity as a whole? [laughs] That’s a cool question. My relationship to humanity? It’s probably improved it, I guess. I feel like the capacity for people helping each other… I mean, we had this very successful financial fundraiser that was really overwhelming. People have been driving from Seattle to come bring us a sandwich or whatever. The generosity and the support that’s out there has been made more apparent to me. Which, I’m kind of like… I mean, I like the idea of being a hermit. I can’t let go of the beauty of that idea of living that sort of a removed lifestyle so I’m a little annoyed that I recently learned that being supported by a loving, supportive society is good. I’m like, ‘Aw dammit … I have to live among people.’

Where do you imagine yourself going from here—creatively or just in life?

I’m not sure. I want to write some more songs along these lines. Maybe they won’t get recorded. I feel like I don’t want to play any of my older songs anymore. They seem irrelevant now. And I’m going on tour but I only have eleven songs now so I feel like maybe I need more songs. But I don’t know.

If I make another record, I feel like maybe it would be something extremely loud and instrumental. Something the polar opposite of this. I also have some writing projects that I’ve been working on. Mostly I just want to make a good domestic life and do a good job making a good childhood for this kid.

You said you don’t even necessarily want people to ask you about the album but is there anything we haven’t covered?

No…but I do want people to ask me about the album. I’m into doing interviews. It’s more that thing of saying ‘Thank you’ at the merch table on tour. People come up and say nice things but if it happens enough times in a row and I say ‘Thank you’ enough times in a row then it stops feeling real. I stop feeling it and I don’t want to stop feeling it about these songs. I want it to stay sincere.

MOUNT EERIE ON TUE., APR. 11, AND WED., APR. 12, AT THE MASONIC LODGE AT HOLLYWOOD FOREVER, 6000 SANTA MONICA BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 7:30 PM / $20 / ALL AGES. HOLLYWOODFOREVER. COM. MOUNT EERIE’S A CROW LOOKED AT ME IS OUT FRI., MAR. 24, ON P.W. ELVERUM & SUN. VISIT MOUNT EERIE AT PWELVERUMANDSUN.COM. INTERVIEW

SPRING 2017

DRAB MAJESTY Interview by Chris Kissel Photography by Alex the Brown

It is Andrew Clinco’s fascination with human relationships— between two lovers, or two family members, or even between a cult leader and their followers—that animates the steely-cold new album by L.A.’s Drab Majesty, The Demonstration. But there’s another relationship even closer to the heart of the album, which takes its major sonic cues from the somber expansiveness of bands like Echo and the Bunnymen or the Cure. That would be Clinco’s own relationship with Deb DeMure, the genderless frontperson of Drab Majesty and a persona Clinco created as the “vessel” for his songs. (Live and in these photos, DeMure is accompanied by keyboardist Mona D.) The construction of Deb, who has been the center of the act since the debut Unarian Dances EP in 2012, was a way for Clinco to become more comfortable with the songwriting process. (He feels Drab Majesty’s songs are “received” rather than written). But Deb is more than that. When Drab Majesty appears live, Deb—Clinco, in an eccentric costume that looks more like Ace Frehley-meetsAndy Warhol than a drag ensemble—is a lightning rod of meaning, inhabiting the space somewhere between a statue and an oracle.

We spoke with both DeMure and Clinco about the slippery nature of authorship, the rituals behind Drab Majesty’s performances, and why people are much more interesting when they’re weird.

How did your original development of Drab Majesty’s music evolve hand in hand with the realization of Deb DeMure?

Drab Majesty never set out to be this new wave post-punk project. It really came from me wanting to step away from being a drummer in bands—getting away from being that accompaniment—and write songs. I’d never gone about writing songs and seeing what was inside or outside. The sound palette I had kind of lent itself to this sound, and the tunings I was working in kind of became the Drab Majesty harmonic palette. As those songs took shape and this aesthetic came to be, I started to realize it was far beyond me as just Andrew Clinco, this person who wants to write music. I’m not a proficient guitarist, nor do I understand anything about harmony or chord structures or anything like that. It started to feel like there was this other animator underneath me trying to write songs, and that was really exciting. I felt that the songwriting process was an out of body experience. That turned into, ‘Well, hey, I feel so removed from this process—why not give it an entirely different persona to represent it 38

as well?’ Because it’s so far outide my normal self. And of course taking cues from Klaus Nomi and David Bowie and these aesthetics we’re all familiar with. I wanted to wrap it up in something that’s an homage, but that also spoke to this different kind of vehicle that is delivering the songs to people.

So that evolved into your live presentation.

I wanted people to see it—to have an ocular experience as well as a visual experience. For me, ‘live’ is not just about hearing a band live, it’s about seeing a band live, too. I think I’ve become pretty disenchanted with live acts coming out of L.A. right now. Sure, they sound great, but, really it’s just an extension of the recording done live. What am I looking at? There’s no spectacle. Those are the things I miss from my favorite performances. Even if I see Douglas P. hack out his classic songs as Death in June, there’s still something really mesmerizing and captivating about those masks he wears or the German sniper hats.

It’s exciting to see something so different on stage. I’ve cited Geneva Jacuzzi as one of the artists who has maintained the visuals and never half-stepped on it. I’ve always enjoyed

her performances. Lumerians as well—they’ve always had a really cool take on their whole ethos, culling from that whole mythology of the vortex and Mount Shasta. So that’s how Drab has come to be. And it’s taken a sci-fi route lately because of my interest in UFO cults and the idea of the cult leader—because of how absurd it is but how powerful it is.

Especially when the cult leader chooses to dress in this fantastical garb. For example, this woman Uriel who is the leader of this cult called Unarius in San Diego—if you’ve seen her clothing, it’s so ostentatious and loud and crazy, but it’s powerful. There’s a whole aesthetic there. That’s how it’s all forming together. It’s still definitely a work in progress.

A lot of your videos focus on statues, which you also feature in your live show, these revolving statues. And I’ve thought of your presence and delivery as statuesque, too—a figure that transmits, rather than one that creates. Is that how you think of it?

On stage, the likeness of the statues is really interesting for me because the statue holds all this potential energy. The statues are static but sometimes the gestures are kinetic. There’s something really interesting about sending a static object that is frozen in motion, and then putting that object in motion. There’s an interesting performance by Harry Belafonte.

He was a master of minimalism, and he would go out on stage and he would not move at all for the first two songs, and when he would make a gesture it would be extremely loud.

There was so much meaning because of what came before it. I think of that as a statue—or even the guy that hangs at Venice Beach and you think he’s a statue but then he moves.

I know it’s a cheesy example but I think there’s something interesting about that. I’m definitely thinking about the living sculpture, and I try to make my gestures deliberate and pointed. I find that my best shows—the ones that have impacted the audience the deepest—have been the ones where all my gestures are in accordance with the rotating bust. And the rotating bust for me is basically a pendulum on stage that I can return to and I can hypnotize myself by it, and it hypnotizes the audience as well. It’s a constant—no matter what, it will be rotating. I use it as a balance beam.

There’s also an element of ritual—crosses, priestly smocks, and I know you’ve spoken of your live shows as having a ritual aspect.

It’s to convey meaning to an audience. Certain aspects of ritual need to be accounted for.

For one, symmetry. I come from a Catholic background and that was kind of where my interest in assembly and rituals taking place in front of an assembly was first kind of piqued.

The way we set up now is very symmetrical, in that the amplifiers are placed in symmetry, with the bust dead center framed by two sphinxes that look inward, placed right and left. That balance is very important for the viewer. And, of course, ceremonial garb—it’s important for me to have that regal attire, so we know who is leading the mass. There are other instruments and devices. Like … I use the parasol; I point with it and rotate it as another means of hypnosis. A lot of it is subconscious and I don’t want to say that it’s a very calculated thing because it isn’t. But those 40

are some of the keys. Music is holy—sound is holy, vibration is holy, and it needs to be addressed on stage. I want to get as far from doing band practice on stage as I can. I want to be on the other end of the spectrum.

Were you an altar boy?

I never signed up to be an alter boy. I was a choir boy.

I was an altar boy, and what you’re saying definitely reminds me of, you know, lighting the candles in the right order and folding the chasuble the right way or whatever.

I was too nervous to be in front of crowds like that. Our congregation was so huge—I mean it was really a humongous cathedral church in the west side, near West Hollywood-Beverly Hills area. That’s where my grandmother went. I hung in the back because the choir was behind the audience. It really tripped me out before I learned that’s where all the music was coming from. It’s magical. As a young a kid, it was really psychedelic.

‘Where are all these voices coming from? Are they coming from heaven?’

You’ve talked before about your music being ‘received’ by you, rather than created by you, which sort of insinuates the existence of a higher power, or at least some kind of transcendental force.

The entire forming of these songs is way beyond my competency as a musician. I’m really just putting together pieces I’m given.

I really feel that way, very strongly. I think of it as channeling more than anything. It’s something I’ve learned to harness and hone the more I write. I do know that when it’s not on, it’s not on, and I put down the instrument and that’s that. But when it’s on … a lot of the songs on The Demonstration wrote themselves. ‘Not Just a Name’ wrote itself in like three minutes. My hand sort of becomes this divining rod. The fingers are jumping to a fret and it’s the right one or it’s the wrong one, but I’m not going to guess and check for hours and keep beating it into the ground.

You know when you play a game of pool—I play a lot—and some days there will be those games where you just keep shooting and both people keep missing, and it’s like, ‘Let’s just call this game.’ No one’s making any shots and everyone wants to be doing something else. But other times, the flow is just perfect.

The chords work themselves out. This is not my song—this is a song that was out there.

And I feel very honored that I was given this song, and I will do my best to make it pleasing to the ears.

I’ve heard many songwriters say they don’t feel like they have a lot of control over the songs they write. The interesting thing about what you’ve done is you’ve taken that feeling and turned it into part of the presentation.

Yes. Deb is the vessel. She’s also a way to get away from myself, because I don’t want the songs to say ‘written by Andrew Clinco.’ I do well at some other things—I’m a sign painter, and I have been for ten years. That’s a skill, a trade, and that’s how I’ve made my money for the last ten years. I’m pretty good at that. I’m pretty good at basketball. But when it comes to making art, I don’t want to say I’ve figured this out. Because at that point, too, it becomes less fun. I don’t want the answers.

My dad is a total theory-based guitar player,

making decagons within chord structures and all this shit. I look at that, and I’m like, ‘Why are you trying to chart the sky? Why are you trying to chart the infinite?’ There’s no mystery anymore, and that sucks. Some people take comfort in that—they like the idea of regimens within the instrument. But the instrument to me is infinite. Because, once you start tuning the guitar differently, oh my God—all sorts of dimensions come out.

Like: ‘This guitar is set up to play in standard tuning.’ Why can’t we go beyond the standard?

Knobs are meant to tune to different things.

I’m going to take advantage of that. As you can probably deduce, I don’t play in standard tuning. I don’t know what to do with a guitar if I get one in standard tuning. I mean, I can play Brian Jonestown shit, but that’s about it.

Let’s talk about the track ‘39 By Design.’

I know it’s about the Heaven’s Gate cult, the suicide cult from the 90s. I have a hard time making out the lyrics but I feel to a degree they are about taking solace in how assured these people were that there is an afterlife, as unconventional as the group’s ideas were.

I’ve taken a deep obsession with Heaven’s Gate for many years. The people who speak about them and have investigated their case have labeled them as heretics. Without really much consideration or compassion, they have kind of labeled them as insane and wackadoos. I’m not going to say that some of their claims were not pretty outrageous, but I do think they had some interesting tenets to their belief system—one being that the body was a vessel, a genderless vessel, which is an integral part of Drab Majesty. I basically wanted to write a song that sort of supports what they did, and ask, ‘How are we sure?’

Because the body is sort of a cheap suitcase, a flesh vehicle … how do we know they didn’t ascend to the evolutionary level above human?

We don’t actually know. We can judge them for their deeds on Earth, but we don’t know if they ascended. The chorus touches on that, but the chorus also touches on the futility of [Heaven’s Gate leader] Marshall Applewhite as this person who had interior conflicts going on in his life and inflicted that on his followers as a way to feel comfortable with his own sexuality. He was a closeted homosexual and didn’t want anyone having any kind of sex in the cult. He made it so most of the male members became eunuchs as a way to mitigate sex entirely. So there were some things he wove into the story, and the ethos suited his agenda. But ultimately the whole record revolves around the idea of the kind of cult of one, and the relationships we have where we throw away all our belief systems and become subsumed by someone else—another body. We relinquish all autonomy to another person, and that’s how we demonstrate our love. We lose ourselves because ultimately cults are meant to strip us of ourselves. And I think that can happen without groupthink— it can happen between one and one person.

Do you think the style of music—the cold tone—lends itself to these ideas?

I find at this stage in the game that the icier, more brooding, dour color palette—or sound palette—gets the message across more, I guess.

Again, it’s kind of what comes out. I do have control in the production techniques and the

guitar tones. But to me it just seems like the only answer at this stage. I take extra time in making sure the guitar work sits in the mix in a way that’s very, very wide—very stereo, very chorused, meant to envelop you. That’s important as a way to bring a listener in. The drum machine is machine-like and the bass has these forked basslines that are pulsing, and the guitar is supposed to be this smoke—this oscillating, moving, human element, really.

That’s very conscious. I think the guitar and the vocals are working in tandem to deliver the message.

Were there any other themes or ideas you purposefully were trying to weave into the record?

The final song is called ‘Behind the Wall,’ which brings [the album] back to something very concrete for me, which is the passing of my grandmother about a year and a half ago.

The song is literally about me visiting her in the mausoleum and that wall … and being on the other side from her, realizing her body is on the same plane as mine, the same level height as me. There she is lying down horizontally at my chest height, on the other side of this marble slab. That is a tactile and tangible way to understand life and death, to have the body not necessarily be underground—there’s something about it being on this Earth, and on eye level, and knowing that if I had some tools I could remove this plank, and there her body would be behind this grid.

It’s almost like she’s mid-ascent.

Exactly, but eternally mid-ascent, and she’s behind the wall. It’s not even a metaphorical wall, but a basic wall. The lyrics go: ‘Life is haunted / In a gridded vault / Marble slabs and placards / Of a grave gestalt.’ So that’s kind of describing the mausoleum space, where there are like 100 bodies behind a wall.

What else did you explore on the record?

‘Not Just a Name’ is kind of a way for me to go back to certain pet names or cult names that most of the members were given in Heaven’s Gate. And it also just points to pet names that one has in a relationship—you come up with these names for your significant other, and it’s not just a name. It becomes a representation.

The name given by your significant other—or by your cult leader—becomes a representation of love and experience and sacrifice. And every time you’re called that, it’s a reminder of that—of being stripped of your autonomy.

And do you have a negative view of that or positive? Or neutral? Of the idea of people possessing each other that way?

No, I take no stance. I just like to point at it and say, ‘Look at that. That’s interesting.’

I don’t find it to be negative or positive—it’s neither for me. It’s just quite interesting. A quite interesting phenomenon. I’m probably secretly celebrating it more than condemning it, but I like weird shit and I love when humans do weird things. I love human behavior so much. Ultimately, for me, at least, way more can be gleaned and exprienced from it if you laugh at it and look at it as an absurd thing, than if you really take it and say, ‘God, this is the saddest thing ever.’

DRAB MAJESTY’S THE DEMONSTRATION IS OUT NOW ON DAIS. VISIT DRAB MAJESTY AT DRABMAJESTY.BANDCAMP.COM. INTERVIEW

TASHAKI MIYAKI Interview by Christina Gubala Photography by AMMO Poster photography by Ben Rice Poster design by Jun Ohnuki The world is just about to welcome Tashaki Miyaki’s long-long-long awaited full-length The Dream, produced by band frontwoman Paige Stark and due out April 7. It’s a powerfully dreamy album, drawn from the break-of-dawn dreamstate that Mazzy Star knew so well, with waves of sound bringing both treasure and wreckage as they break against the shore. Stark and bandmate Luke Paquin are the secret link between much-loved local producer Joel Jerome (who worked on some of Tashaki Miyaki’s sweetest tracks) and top-flight multi-instrumentalist Jon Brion—not to mention ‘Uncle’ Neil Young, whose presence is never far away.

What was yout first instrument?

Paige Stark (vocals/multi-instrumentalist/ producer): I played piano as a child, so my first instrument was piano and voice, and then [guitarist] Luke [Paquin] left a guitar at my house. He was in another band and he went on tour and I started playing guitar all the time. I was really young and in the phase where I was like, ‘I don’t know what I want to do!’ I wanted to do something creative. I was making a living as an actor, and I started writing and found myself in acting class and just wanting to go make music. So that was what I ended up doing—follow your inspiration, I guess! I started working on music and it worked out! Luke was really a big supporter too. He really encouraged me and was so supportive and kind and really nurtured me as a songwriter. I feel so eternally grateful to him for that because I don’t think I ever would have publicly performed my songs without his encouragement.

How did you meet Luke? How did you click?

How did you meet the rest of the band?

I met Luke in 2004. I met him walking down the street and he told me he needed an Emmylou, and I told him ‘I’ll be your Emmylou,’ and that’s how we met! We’ve been making music together ever since. He grew up playing music. His dad was sort of a working class musician, and he’s played his whole life and played with his dad and his dad’s friend. We used to go up to Ventura where his dad lived and sit in on his gigs—it was fun. More like folk or country in the vein of John Prine or Loudon Wainwright— folk with a sense of humor. So that was how I met Luke. In the beginning, I didn’t start writing my own songs I would share with other people until like 2008. I was very shy.

I had stage fright. I can sit in with someone and sing, and I used to play lap steel with Luke—sit in and play harmonies. It just evolved. I was in an all-girl band and that’s when I met Dora, who played bass on the record. Dora and I have a mutual friend, who is the woman who did our album art, Julia Brokaw—she’s a very talented photographer.

I said I wanted to be in an all-girl band that was big in Japan. That was my dream. Like we’re only big in Japan! The rest of the world 42

doesn’t know who we are … and she was like, ‘My friend Dora has the same dream, and she plays bass!’ And so I met Dora. At that time I was playing guitar and singing and it was this all-girl folk-based band, and then that band ended and this one started. Originally it was me and Luke and then Dora joined for live gigs, and then played on the record. She is busy in her life and isn’t going to be joining us for live shows for the current time, so now we have Sandy [pictured] who has stepped in as the bassist for live shows now. Who knows what the future holds!

Did you get to Japan in your all-girl band?

We didn’t go to Japan! We did SXSW and CMJ and some shows in New York, and then the band ran its course. It wasn’t meant to be and I’m grateful for that experience.

When this band was younger, in 2011, you used to use pseudonyms. I’m curious about when and why that changed.

That’s a multi-layered question that I figured would come up. I was in a different band before, and that band ended. And it ended in a way that wasn’t fully positive. So there was sort of a … it was like a romantic breakup in a way!

With the custody battle and everything?

Well, yeah—you’re like living with these people. You go on the road with them, you share creative ideas, you’re making stuff together. That was a bit of a heartbreaking thing. I had experienced a really horrible episode of sexual harassment from a person that worked at a management company that I really wanted to be represented by. They represented one of my heroes, and it was a really sad thing that happened. I haven’t really talked about it with anybody but I think it’s important to share because I felt like I didn’t want to be exploited in any way. I felt really fragile, and I didn’t want my image to be part of my musical identity at that time. I had been hurt and I was afraid, and it was a negative place that I was in in my mind. I wish that I had been able to talk about those things and not be afraid. But at the time, that option wasn’t available to me. So I decided I wanted to be anonymous and let the music be itself.

And people were really sweet and really kind, and I feel like I’m ready to not use a moniker

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or an alias. But on a lighter hand, my thought was … I’m very inspired by hip-hop artists and they use so many names! So that was my name for this project for awhile and now I’m ready to be myself.

I’m sorry you had to go through that. One thing that I’ve found interesting—especially in the wake of Bill Cosby—is how people are starting to feel more empowered to speak. But you make a little bit of progress forward, and then things swing the other way and there’s a lot of backlash.

And it’s really tricky when those things happen when it’s someone that’s close in age to you, someone that would be in your peer group or your social group. When you’re working and you have a business relationship, you want to be friendly and you want to be kind. And unfortunately people mistake that for something else and it’s really lame and fucked up and when you’re in a business relationship—whether you’re a man or a woman—you should always have firm lines with your clients and you should never make someone uncomfortable and never mistake something. Err on the side of distance. I wasn’t harmed—it was just a bad situation that I’m glad it’s far in the past.

I’m glad for you as well! I think that you have to walk in the fire and get burned and then you learn how to get out of a situation before it gets out of hand, but I’m sorry you had to go through that, and it makes sense that you’d want to be protective about your output on The Dream, your most recent LP—making sure you’re the one most completely in control. Did that experience influenced the creation of the LP? Definitely it influenced my wanting to do everything myself. I really didn’t want any outside forces involved. I wanted to work within the framework of our extended musical family, so like Joel [Jerome] and Jon [Brion]—those people that I bounce ideas off all the time anyway and are like my crew musically—that was the inspiration. Keep it tight and not have any business people involved. There was an understanding that if it takes a while, it takes a while. We probably forfeited a couple opportunities because of that but I was committed to letting the band develop in a natural way, and I’m glad we did. Because our live show has changed and grown and strengthened—when we first started as a band, we hadn’t ever played a live show and we found our footing live and people wanted us to immediately make a record and go on a world tour. I was like, ‘Hey, we need time to develop as artists and as a unit’ and some businesspeople I spoke to and labels that wanted to sign us were not supportive of that. So I took a risk and was like ‘I don’t feel ready.’ I think it was the right decision.

So congratulations on your album! I know it’s been a long time in the making.

Very exciting to finally get it out for sure!

You’ve been working on it for years?

Yeah—that whole time wasn’t spent totally working on it. It was done in a fragmented way. I produced it myself and that was sort of a learning curve, and we mixed it ourselves too, so … it was lengthy. It would have been much faster if it had been done by someone else, but I’m really glad we did it that way.

INTERVIEW

Yes! Now it’s solely your creation! It’s not a light record either—there’s a lot of instrumentation that is on this. There’s a string quartet! You mentioned multiinstrumentalist Jon Brion as well, and I’m curious how you got to know him and how you got him involved with this record.

I’m very close with Jon. I met him over ten years ago. I was super young. I was still in school, and at this time, I think I was a model.

I was in a music video that Roman Coppola directed for Phantom Planet, and I met that band and met all these people through them—people in the L.A. music scene. I wanted to make music but I was still a kid.

I played instruments but I wasn’t doing it in a public way, except for singing in choir at school. But I met people through them, and one of them was [producer] Jason Lader, and Jason introduced me to Jon, and Jon and I have stayed very close. And he has been one of my mentors musically for a long time.

That’s quite a mentor to have! As an Elliot Smith fan, I used to see Jon Brion do his thing at the Largo. And you’ve spent lots of time with Benmont Tench as well?

Ben is another of my mentors. I met him through Jonathan Wilson. When he moved here from New York he’d have these parties in Laurel Canyon, and everyone would go have a jam session and I originally met Ben at one of those. At that moment, I had like no female friends and I was complaining to him about that, and he set me up with this girl Julia Wick, who became one of my best friends—she does the video visuals for us for our live shows. She’s a writer by trade but she’s a very creative person and became one of my best friends through Benmont. Benmont has been a very supportive force as well!

And a living legend! Member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers!

I know—that too! Living legend!

You’ve crossed paths with a few legends. I’ve noticed mention of ‘Uncle Neil.’

I’ve never met him—I’ve just stood near him!

I refer to him as Uncle Neil because he’s my number one hero. I admire him as an artist and a human being, and for the way he creates music. He is very political, and he’s a very beautiful human being!

Ever since the inauguration I’ve had ‘Ohio’ stuck in my head. I can’t stop listening to it.

I can’t stop thinking about Neil Young—the political climate is so emotionally charged right now, and I’m craving an artist to express things the way he did.

He has a new record out! Neil is a special guy.

He’s not afraid to say what he means and he’s not afraid to stand up for things. I saw him speak last year—I heard on the radio that Neil Young was speaking at a screening of Human Highway which is a film he made in the 80s. I immediately bought tickets on my phone and called Joel Jerome. He’s like my soul brother!

I was like, ‘Dude! Neil Young! He’s speaking tonight! We have to go!’ But there was no one there—it was crazy. Kim Gordon was there … some celebrity sightings. But not many people. It seemed kind of industry. And it was a shame. He did a Q&A and talked about why he started making film in the 80s. I could have touched his leg! I almost started crying, I could have asked him questions but I was too nervous!

I read the lyrics for this album and there’s a lot about the plight of being a female and navigating the terrain of love—do you feel that your own music will become more politically charged in the future?

I’m sure it will with this administration. I wrote a song with Clementine Creevy [of Cherry Glazerr] a few weeks ago before she went on tour—it was a 100% political song.

As far as the next record, I’m sure. My band is very politically minded as a group, and we all feel pretty strongly about this. I didn’t sleep for two weeks after the election. On a weekly basis, something happens and I’m just shocked and speechless and terrified, so I definitely think there will be more political music to come.

I’ve seen you compared to John Lennon, and I think that you’re ripe to carry that torch!

That’s so nice! I’m going to get weepy! John Lennon is a magical songwriter—and Neil Young and Bob Dylan too! Good songs are so universal that it doesn’t matter when they were written. These things are not new that we’re dealing with. I was rereading The Republic recently because of everything that’s going on—the part of The Republic where they’re discussing how if a democracy lasts long enough it becomes a tyranny. It describes exactly Donald Trump and how this administration happens in a way that’s so eerie you can’t believe that something written in— I think four hundred years B.C.E.?

Yes, around there! So it’s not really a new thing that’s happening. It’s a very very old idea. It’s more about the corruption of human nature.

Greed and corruption.

And a constant trajectory! I feel like in some ways it’s an exciting time to be an artist like yourself—you have an opportunity to seize the moment, and you literally make your voice heard by singing.

And we’re awakening—people are awakening from the state they’ve been in, where everyone thought they were protected. In America we really take that for granted. Only half the country voted and it’s like, ‘Well, that’s what happens when only half the country votes.’

Everyone needs to vote, everyone needs to be active, everyone needs to be aware of what’s going on. I have people I know that I speak to and they don’t want to know what’s going on. They just don’t want to participate.

Everyone says, ‘We’ll always be OK because we’re in California,’ but it’s not just about me or you. I think there’s a breakdown of society in general—I don’t know if it’s from the internet or what, but I don’t like it. But I like that it’s waking people up, and that people are getting involved and realizing that they need to participate in their community. That’s all really positive.

I noticed whenever I’d actually speak with people—whenever we were able to hear the intonation in each other’s voice—it would get easier to exchange ideas, instead of being reaffirmed on Instagram or whatever in a way that aligns with your view. You’re able to talk to another person who may not feel the same way, but you’re not automatically defaulting to find the one word in their sentence that you disagree with.

Yeah, we need to listen to people who feel differently! I think the reason why this got so out of hand is people felt like they weren’t being heard.

Talk to me about any plans you have for world travel and touring .

Right now there are not any plans. We are doing an Echo residency in March, so it’s all the Mondays in March. That’s going to be really exciting! We’re going to play the record live and have a string quartet and additional players so we can actually play the record as it is live. I’m really excited. My dream of all dreams is always to have strings so this is—I mean, I would love to sing with the L.A. Philharmonic, that’s a great dream of mine!—so having a quartet is incredible and I’m very excited. It’s such a moving sound!

It’s very magical. And then we’re releasing singles. Things are coming out! We’ll see what happens with the touring—I have dogs that I really love! We’re going to go on the road, but it has to be the right opportunity.

What have you been listening to lately and what has been inspiring you?

I actually listen to—in my daily life—a lot of instrumental music. I listen to a lot of jazz. I’ve been listening to Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker. I like the records that have strings on them—like Charlie Parker With Strings. Chet Baker & Strings. I really like instrumental music. I went through a period where I was super into listening to Tchaikovsky, specifically Peter and the Wolf.

I was really into it. I really love Satie—stuff like that. As far as new music—I love Frank Ocean’s record. I thought it was just gorgeous, I really like the Weyes Blood record. I played a show with Natalie in New York and she was playing solo but I was really taken with her and her voice—it’s so beautiful, and what a gorgeous record she made. She seems like a cool person, too, I don’t know her well but I like her music. And I really like the music of a local girl who calls herself Charlie Charles—I’m a fan of her work. She’s really a special one,! And she’s just gorgeous too. I’m a big fan! I’m also producing an artist that’s yet to be heard by the public—his name is Malcolm McRae, so those are the things I’m listening to. I do really love hip-hop. I haven’t been listening to new stuff because I’ve been working and it’s hard for me—I listened to the Tribe record when it came out. When I’m working on stuff, I really just listen to instrumental music. I’ve been listening to a lot of Harry Belafonte because he’s a personal hero of mine. Like Neil Young—an activist, a civil rights leader. What an amazing person!

And his voice has so much joy in it. When I feel sad, I put on Harry Belafonte and my mood goes up at least four to five notches!

I recommend it as a remedy to the Trump administration.

TASHAKI MIYAKI IN RESIDENCY EVERY MONDAY IN MARCH AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / FREE / 21+. THEECHO.COM FOR MORE INFORMATION. TASHAKI MIYAKI’S THE DREAM IS OUT FRI., APR. 7, ON METROPOLIS. VISIT TASHAKI MIYAKI AT TASHAKIMIYAKI. BANDCAMP.COM. 45

DIAMANDA GALÁS Interview by David Cotner Illustration by Alice Rutherford

Diamanda Galás saved me from grunge. Back in the 90s, when everyone was jumping up-and-down about guitar tone/flannel/ misery (circle one or more) and most of popular culture seemed violently dull and satanically boring, shining out of this morass was a brilliant light of limitless voice and singular vision. Striking record stores in autumn 1993, her double CD Masque of the Red Death collected three previous releases—The Divine Punishment, Saint of the Pit and You Must Be Certain Of The Devil—and even now, I haven’t got the faintest clue what compelled me to buy it. As a cover star, her face was hidden beneath a black leather mask. I didn’t know her work. I didn’t know she was Greek—she looked and sounded like she was from another galaxy, let alone this planet. Her voice worked like a death ray, annihilating all that was inconsequential and tacky. All I know is that my life is inescapably and forever improved for the fact that that voice exists and has continually challenged me almost 25 years later. She has two new albums out—All The Way, a collection of her interpretations of jazz and standards, and At Saint Thomas The Apostle Harlem, a recording of her May 2016 live action at the shuttered St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Harlem. “Death songs,” she calls them. So I called her.

How are you?

Well, I’ve been doing what I do so often —which is get into fights with different members of the artistic community; the business community of the arts that I have to deal with, and that’s not very pleasant. At all.

There’s a lot more of that than people would ever imagine. They think about the art world as a pleasurable part of the world, and they could not be further from the truth.

But you have to stand up for what you believe in.

Correct—but that price is higher than most people would ever believe. It’s extremely high!

Because what you believe in is also capable of making you very ill. If you cannot do that what you believe, you can become deathly ill.

I’m not kidding when I say that. I’m really not kidding.

I trust that the questions I ask won’t make you sick.

If they make me nauseous, I’ll let you know.

Very good! How important is quiet and silence to you and your art?

Oh, what a beautiful question! Absolutely the most important. More than anything except for my mother. I don’t really like sound. I don’t like to hear sound very much unless I’m creating it myself. I don’t really like to hear it.

I like to be alone. I don’t like to be around people very much. I like to be … I have so 46

many thoughts. Too many thoughts! I’m not pushing that on anyone. You know what? I’m so not alone in this—there are so many people I know who have the same … well, they don’t have the same issues, but they have enough thoughts that they need to be alone for some time during the day. In my case, I need to be alone most of the day—practically all of it.

These days, we have computers, so we already have this gigantic obligation of getting back to everyone. People used to write letters. At least when you wrote a letter, you thought, ‘Well, great! I don’t have to talk to that person for two weeks!’ And when they write me back, they’re going to give it a little thought. They’re going to think about what they write me. But now, we have cellphones—so people write stupid fucking shit on a cellphone instantly as it occurs to them, and then they expect a response. That kind of nonsense, I won’t tolerate that nonsense at all. I will not tolerate it. The people that I do business with on the cellphone—it’s all business, really. It’s not for pleasure.

Can you tell what kind of a singer someone is just by looking at them?

No. No, you can’t. I’m sure there are people that tell you that they can, but I would never say such a thing.

Not even you, with all your years of expertise?

Not at all. There are certain faces, or certain bone structures, you would think the person has no voice at all—and suddenly there’s this huge instrument. And then you see somebody else and that person you would think would make a gigantic sound, and can’t make a sound at all. Those things are completely impossible.

There may be some magician who’s figured out a way to make those discernments, but I don’t know anyone who has.

Some people are leg people, or arm people.

Are you a larynx person? [laughs] Why don’t you ask me if I’m a deepthroat person!

No, it’s a different thing! Maybe you would look at a person’s voice-box and think they’ve got something going on. Maybe they’ve got a graceful neck— —why would I ever want to look down somebody’s bloody throat!

No, I mean you look at someone and admire that they’ve got a very interesting voice-box— You mean you look down their throat?

I mean like if you look at someone’s neck— —the neck is not their voice-box, darling! [laughs] You know what? You were meant for me today. Today has been such a bloody pain in the ass. You were meant for me today. So continue talking.

I’m honored.

Yes, you are!

There’s a saying—some credit Aristotle, some say it was St. Francis Xavier of the Jesuits who said it—‘Show me the boy until he is 7 and I will show you the man.’

How does that apply to you, person-wise?

Do you think you were fully-formed by the age of 7?

I should hope not. I’ve read interviews that I did in my 30s, and I find some of them to be so appalling and so imbecilic that I would hope to have learned something in the meantime. I do find it a very amusing question, though!

What did you love most about the San Diego years?

San Diego! Well, where I was raised was closer to Baja California. I like to say ‘Baja California’ more than ‘San Diego’ because it’s ten minutes from TJ, you know? In San Diego, at least when I was there, it was not a marketplace at all for the arts or music.

It is not a marketplace for any of that. So I didn’t grow up with any sense of wanting to please anyone with what I did. I only grew up with a sense of wanting to please myself with what I did. I did a lot of that, as far as music is concerned, and as far as any type of research I did. I wouldn’t say I like to think that—I don’t like to think that—but I am continuing, no matter what city I’m in, to INTERVIEW

“It has to take me by surprise. It has to go to Mars! It has to go to a place I never thought I’d go. Otherwise, why bother?” behave as if I’m from a small town. It’s a big Navy town. If you look at San Diego, what is it? It’s a bunch of beaches. It’s the Navy.

It’s the military home—the place where all these guys come back from the wars and they have no place to stay and they’re sleeping on the street, or they’re sleeping in people’s garages. It’s a pretty diverse town —you can’t describe New York like that, either, and you can’t describe San Diego as just one kind of town. It’s very diverse; if you go downtown, you can see … it’s much more decentralized and frightening, for me, to be downtown in San Diego than it is in New York. What is downtown New York, for chrissake? There are a lot of very rich people out here, and depending on where you are it’s a different vibe. When you live in downtown San Diego, you see some of the horror show because you see so many of the military guys who have no place to go at all. You see a lot of that, and it’s very scary. That’s what I see now, when I go down there.

Do you think people get in trouble like that because they have nothing going on in their lives?

Are you talking military?

No, just in general.

If you’re talking to the military, no. If you’re talking to the military, you’re talking to a bunch of people who were promised, lied to, given a lot of false expectations, and gone over to a place where they were forced to remain for many, many years—and then came back and were given nothing, and saw and experienced things that no one can even discuss … I will discuss them, but most people won’t. I will discuss them because I’ve heard about them, and because military men have discussed them with me. I don’t know what you’re talking about if you’re not talking about them. Who are you talking about?

The human experience of people casting about not having anything going on in their lives, and having no focus, no mountains to climb. Things like that.

I don’t think we can make these generalizations because if you look about, you’re going to see a lot of people that include mental patients that have no place to stay since we’ve taken mental patients and thrown them out in the street.

They have no place where they can be invisible anymore. You’ll see them on the street and say, What’s that guy doing, sitting on that fire hydrant?’ He’s doing nothing—just having a drink and looking about, as if he has nothing to do. Well, he has nothing to do because he can’t even think. He can’t think. All he wants to do is kill himself. If you look at a man who wants to kill himself ... well, it takes many years, over one’s life, to know what that feels like. You don’t know when you’re young. You just look, and you say, ‘Oh, it’s a bum.’ When INTERVIEW

you get older, and you’ve experienced enough things, then you say, ‘Poor soul. There but for the grace of whomever go I. How lucky I am!’

When was the last time your voice surprised you?

Only two days ago!

What happened?

Well, I was singing something I thought I would never be able to sing. It was monstrous.

It was fantastic. If I didn’t have that ability, I wouldn’t continue singing. It always has to be fresh; it has to be new. It has to take me by surprise. It has to go to Mars! It has to go to a place I never thought I’d go. Otherwise, why bother?

What were you singing?

I was singing a song by Bobby Bradford, and the name of the song is ‘She’ (Nb. also known as ‘Woman,’ off Bradford’s 1975 Emanem album Love’s Dream) and he is a terrific cornet player, but he’s also a composer. He lives in Pasadena.

He’s worked with many musicians—John Carter, Ornette Coleman—but he is one of my first teachers, and a truly great musicians.

So I was working on that in the studio the other day, and was very, very surprised.

That’s encouraging—that you, of all people, would be surprised.

Good God, why wouldn’t I—of all people— still be surprised?!

You just seem so worldly! [laughs] Ha! You think a person could be worldly without being surprised? Talk to me.

What is it that you’re thinking about ‘worldly’?

We have a different definition of the word.

I think—in this moment—that ‘worldly’ means ‘somewhat jaundiced.’

Oh, no! Oh, if that’s what you mean … ‘jaundiced’ is a different word. It’s a different word. ‘Jaundiced’ is a word I would know nothing about because, when I decided to do art, I decided not to subject myself to the receptacles of smaller people; smaller minds.

To idiots and ‘jaundiced’ people. People who think they’ve seen it all, know it all, have been everywhere, and have done everything.

Anybody like that is a bloody imbecile. An idiot! Just an idiot! I don’t spend time with people like that. I don’t know anything about them. One thing that happens, whenever I go to L.A., is I see billboards advertising people like that—and it makes me immediately leave.

I hang out in certain parts of Hollywood with friends of mine, and I try to stay away from the central L.A. area. If you see that, it’s kind of seedy. I can’t stand the more upscale parts of it. That kind of thing is kind of repulsive to me. Actually, the truth is, if you’re there, you stop seeing it.

There comes a point at which you either let it wash over you—or you stop looking in that direction. Two different things.

I suppose you’re right. I haven’t been there very much. When I go there, I go there exclusively to work—and get out.

What do you remember about making your cassette on the Ionizations label?

The same one with ‘Eyes Without Blood’ on it? I heard it again a few years ago, and I thought, ‘Hmmm.’ Well, I was beginning to work with certain types of modulations —square wave modulations—that I would do much better now, and other things. Some of it’s interesting to me. Other parts of it, I feel, I would develop much better now. Again, I don’t listen to my own music, either. When I listen to it, I become very, very critical. The first time I listen to it, I’ll be very proud of it … and then the second time I listen to it, I’ll say, ‘Why the fuck did you do that?!’

Is that all part of the process, though?

Well, yes but what kind of process is that!

It’s very punishing. It’s very, very punishing.

Really, the truth is that I feel very much more comfortable listening to bluegrass music—a lot of bluegrass gospel music, which is music I know nothing about. And then, I feel very comfortable because I can’t judge myself; I’m not pretending to be them. We’re not common folk. They’re different folk than me—they’re people that know things that I don’t know anything about. I find them fascinating.

How do you take care of your voice?

The best way to take care of your voice is to use it. To use it the right way.

What’s the right way?

The right way is the way that only good singers are going to tell you—and you’re not going to hear that for me in ten seconds or less.

I’ve got more than ten seconds!

I know! You’ve probably got 35! If you want a voice lesson, I’ll send you to my voice teacher.

She’ll tell you the best way to use your voice.

I’m going to take you up on that at some point in the future. Hey, you’re Greek— what do you think of that new Wonder Woman movie?

I have no idea. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. May I say something? Any time there’s a movie and they say it’s a movie about Greeks I go in the opposite direction.

Even if it’s just mythology?

Well, they don’t make movies very much about Greek mythology—if they do, they’re generally really stupid. The ones are made that have been any good were made many, many years ago—and even they aren’t very good. There’s maybe a couple. If you want to see great films that deal with a lot of the mythology, you should see the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini. You know him?

Absolutely! I sat and watched the Willem Dafoe biography, where he played Pasolini—and he was sensational! Holy cow.

Are you telling me that Willem Dafoe played Pasolini?

He did. It was a movie that came out in 2014. He was sensational.

I’m delighted to hear it. Where were you born?

I was born in deepest darkest Redondo Beach.

You were not!

Yeah, I was.

You’ve got a fucking weird way of talking sometimes. When you’re talking, you sound like you’re trying to pull my leg!

I would never!

I’m just telling you—and then other times, when you’re talking, it sounds like you’re being very, very serious.

Because I am! But if you are making observations about my voice, I will take that. [laughs] You’re making me laugh!

That’s a good thing! This is a good interview, huh!

Yes, it’s a good interview because I need to laugh. It’s a very difficult day. Thank you.

Because you’ve got to laugh. Which things are you happy that you don’t have to suffer through that you used to, but don’t have to anymore?

I can tell you very easily. I don’t have to suffer through idiots at record companies anymore. I have my own record company now [Intravenal Sound Operations] that I’m starting right now.

So you’re done with Mute.

Oh, yes. I have no disregard for Mute. No bad words to say from me. It was a very important part of my life. I’m very, very happy that I work for myself now. I like to work for myself.

What’s a good sore throat remedy? [laughs] I don’t know why you’re making me laugh so much! Hot water, lemon and honey—that’s the first one I can tell you. It’s the oldest one. And then: to be quiet.

I feel like I should ask you some questions about your new albums—because I’ve heard them and they’re just plain balls-out amazing… … no, I don’t want you to ask me those stupid questions. I like your questions better!

DIAMANDA GALáS PERFORMS MON., APR 3, AND WED., APR 5, AT THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. VIBIANA, 214 S. MAIN ST., LOS ANGELES 7 PM / $35$52/ 21+.THEECHO.COM. DIAMANDA GALáS’ All The Way AND At Saint Thomas the Apostle Harlem WILL BE RELEASED ON FRI., MAR. 24, ON Intravenal Sound Operations. VISIT DIAMANDA GALáS AT DIAMANDAGALAS.COM 49

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★ NEW THIS ISSUE!

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LIVE PHOTOS Edited by Debi Del Grande

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THE INTERPRETER Hector Waluyo Curated by Chris Ziegler

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ALBUM REVIEWS

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WAYBACK MACHINE Reissues by Ron Garmon

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COMICS Curated by Tom Child

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ONWARD AND INWARD Book Reviews by David Cotner

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TEEN ANGEL’S Vanessa Gonzalez

THE KOREATOWN ODDITY

by THEO JEMISON

LIVE PHOTOS WINTER 2016 Hanni El Khatib February 2017 Teragram Ballroom

ONLINE PHOTO EDITOR DEBI DEL GRANDE

Deafheaven February 2017 The Echoplex

DEBI DEL GRANDE

The Garden February 2017 The Echoplex

LEX VOIGHT

Ty Segall February 2017 Teragram Ballroom

EDUARDO LUIS STEPHANIE PORT Surf Curse February 2017 The Smell

Best Coast January 2017 The Belasco

EDUARDO LUIS

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DEBI DEL GRANDE

LIVE PHOTOS

Kuromi January 2017 The Smell

Go Dreamer February 2017 The Echo

EDUARDO LUIS

Bloodboy January 2017 Bootleg Theater

EDUARDO LUIS

Cumstain December 2016 Packard Building

MAXIMILIAN HO

SHEVA KAFAI

Lord Huron January 2017 Teragram Ballroom

Young Jesus January 2017 The Echo

EDUARDO LUIS

LIVE PHOTOS

SHEVA KAFAI

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ALBUM REVIEWS Batman are more important than ever. Freedom Is Free continues the band’s trajectory of knocking down the walls that separate genres, but also challenges us to bring down the ideas and institutions that separate us from one another.

— Simon Weedn

THE CHERRY BUTTERTONES GLAZERR Gravedigging Innovative Leisure

Apocalipstick Secretly Canadian

CHICANO BATMAN

Gravedigging picks up right where last year’s American Brunch left off: the intersection of surf, rockabilly, punk, and a little something extra that pushes their sound past “pyschobilly”, “surfabilly”, or any other “billys” you might throw at it.

This is nighttime music, the sonic equivalent of switchblades, speeding through Dead Man’s Curve and trashy ‘50s B-movies like So Young So Bad. Even the song names (“Pistol Whip,” “Geisha’s Gaze”) read like titles ripped from dime store pulp novels--the kind with busty half-naked women and pompadoured hoods on their covers.

These 11 tracks alternate between pre-street-gang-rumble rev-youup songs—like “Neon Cowboy,” where Richard Araiza rallies his comrades with lyrics like, “Use that fire you carry around/Don’t back down” over a frantic galloping beat—and songs that could soundtrack a ‘60s secret-agent movie. “Two-Headed Shark” manages to make the Peter Gunn theme sound even cooler, and “Matador” makes you feel like you’ve acquired a license to kill—and a taste for shaken martinis. Either way, there are heavy helpings of mutant Dick Dale guitars, Araiza’s unhinged vocals, and London Guzmån’s Plas Johnson-esque strip-club sax. With the exception of the down-tempo “I Ran Away,” these are lightningfast burners alive with lean, mean energy. There’s always something happening—a tension that makes you fight the urge to look over your shoulder. “If you turn around now/ You’ll be hunted down,” Araiza sings on “Ghost Safari.” I’d heed the warning.

—Madison Desler

Clementine Creevy, the woman behind the gracefully phrased vocals and angular guitar tones of Cherry Glazerr, has managed to straddle a crucially zeitgeist-pertinent line between ‘90s nostalgia and elementally millennial subject matter on Apocalipstick. The album is the second full-length from the young trio, and Creevy remains the only presence from 2014’s Haxel Princess. She sounds like a survivor. As the western world grapples with a precarious shift in societal paradigm, the apocalyptic world she describes—from underwear worn three days straight to the land that’s supposed to be free— sounds achingly current. Hell is now. Fuzz bass and heavy drums (over which one can picture Killer Bob sprinting) lay a foundation for her Dolores O’Riorden-esque urgency, and even as she laments and snarls, everything sounds so perfectly articulated. She sings teasingly of trash people and of those who know they are hypocrites on the internet, surfs her way through Tapatío baked into the pizza and steak fajitas on “Humble Pro”, and bears her raw heart on the mournful “Nuclear Bomb”, a particular high water mark for its melodrama, with the lyric “All the souls are swimming in a bathtub” particularly soothing for any soft heart pining for the days when MTV played music videos. The title track nails the coffin shut without any vocals but rather a metalloid sludge through the end-times detritus we recognize from our newsfeeds. The end of times are upon us, or so it feels, and Clementine has captured them for us.

— Christina Gubala

The term “melting pot” gets thrown around liberally these days, but few bands embody that term so truly as Los Angeles’s own Chicano Batman. For nine years the band has been building a reputation not just as one of the hardest working groups in town, but also for creating one of the most sonically rich, diverse, and distinct styles going.

Freedom Is Free is Chicano Batman’s third full-length and captures the band’s genre-bending sound as it hits its greatest peaks yet. Picking up where they left off on 2014’s Cycles Of Existential Rhyme, Chicano Batman’s songs wash over listeners like waves from the Pacific Ocean. The group continues to deliver tunes with elements of reverb-soaked psychedelia, classic soul and vintage South American and Mexican pop. Though their influences are highly varied, the music that they make never sounds unfocused or uncoordinated. In fact, it might be difficult to find a band who blends these styles so seamlessly. In a time where the world can seem so divisive and cruel, bands like Chicano

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Freedom Is Free ATO

an immediately captivating vibrancy. Even when the band is delivering the types of heartfelt ballads Buddy Holly would have loved, they never drag or spoil the flow of the record.

Instead, the trio have mastered timing and placement; whether they’re going fast or setting up a slowdance, they’re always in control. It’s not easy to take vintage styles and make them fresh again, but Cutty Flam manages to do it. Given how far they’ve come in just five years, there should be little doubt that this band is just getting started.

— Simon Weedn

CUTTY FLAM Shapes of Sound Burger

The worlds of contemporary oldstyle rock ‘n’ roll and rockabilly can be pretty niche and exclusive, sometimes tending to value accurate reproduction more than artistic expression. So it’s exciting to see a band pulling from those styles that is also unafraid to move beyond the confines of traditionalism. Cutty Flam is one of those bands, ready to take their sound new places. Continuing to draw heavily on the influence of legends like Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, and Ritchie Valens— with a bit of punk flourish—Cutty Flam arrive with their second fulllength Shapes Of Sound sounding stronger and more confident than ever. Where Cutty Flam’s debut Robot Heart didn’t quite capture the spirit and fireworks of their live sets, Shapes Of Sound gets that energy and more, giving these recordings

ALBUM REVIEW SUBMISSIONS

L.A. RECORD invites all local musicians to send music for review­—anything from unreleased MP3s and demos to finished full albums.

Send digital to fortherecord@larecord.com and physical to:

P.O. Box 21729 Long Beach, CA 90801

DRAB MAJESTY

The Demonstration DAIS

Drab Majesty is Deb Demure, the androgynous alter ego of Andrew Clinco of Marriages, The Black Mare, etc.—or was, until the addition of keyboardist Mona D last year turned DM into a full-fledged band. Their first LP with this new lineup is The Demonstration, which takes the project’s self-described “tragic wave” to, well, majestic new extremes. Like 2012’s Unarian Dances, its title pertains to cults; specifically, the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide, topic of sympathetic lead single “39 By Design.” But DM’s esoteric aesthetic never overwhelms the music itself—the cascades of Chameleons-esque guitar, the punchy drum machines, reversed reverb trails, Mona’s ethereal synths and Deb’s yearning baritone. That they manage to cram a memorable hook or two into every song is icing on the cake, though if you tie DM’s obsession with cults to cultishly adored 4AD vets Clan of Xymox or This Mortal Coil, wanting to rein in a captive audience seems par for the course. “Devotion is not a word I fear,” Deb murmurs on “Too Soon ALBUM REVIEWS

To Tell,” and looking at The Demonstration’s beyond-romantic lyrics and saintly cover art, you get the feeling that devotion is what Drab Majesty is all about.

— Zach Bilson

ENTRANCE Book of Changes Thrill Jockey

Before becoming a butterfly, the caterpillar first must eat itself.

The same could be said for Guy Blakeslee and his musical nom de plume, Entrance, née Entrance Band. From his larval stage funneling electric blues boogie and psychedelia throughout Chicago in the mid-2000s, to chasing specters around Hollywoodland over the past decade, Book of Changes sees Guy spinning his chrysalis. “I’d Be A Fool” and “Molly” are ancestral totems carved equally from Love’s Forever Changes and Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. The melody of “Always The Right Time” tips its bolero brim to another classic damaged L.A. album, Beck’s Sea Change. Steered by Guy’s lilting vibrato, “The Avenue” delivers a modern verse to the narrator in Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone”: to be young, dumb, broke, and sad in the city, wanting to be loved and desperate to love. But ultimately, “everybody falls on hard luck sometimes/and until we meet again I’ll be thinking of you/and then I’ll see you when your trouble gets like mine.” How does it feel?

—Kegan Pierce Simons

postmodern rock duo—singer Sam France and multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Rado—lead a 40-piece orchestra featuring the Flaming Lips’ Steven Drozd through E Street Band boogie, Bolan-esque power pop, ragtime schmaltz, and everything in between. Its lyrics, written and sung completely—background vocals and all—by France, detail the desperate sorta-has-beens of Los Angeles nightlife. As its creators are a couple of wunderkinds two albums past their breakthrough, Hang may come off as self-deprecating, but that seems to be the point here.

Single “America” caps its prog-rock bombast with a fourth-wall break: a film worker tells France that “you walked in on set but you only play yourself—you’re Hollywood!” And the “On Lankershim”’s barstool argument of “You spent your money getting high!”/ ”Well I know I can make it back, ‘cuz I’m only 25!” feels uncomfortably close to home.

(Wia Wikipedia, Rado and France are 26.) But if you need proof that they’re still smiling and high-fiving like the Foxygen of yesteryear, check out the record’s tongue-in-cheek Bandcamp description, which offers a surreal, heroic portrait of the artists as “West Coast Vampires,” and their newest document as a “splayed Galaxy of polar geniuses.”

(All capitalization intended—it’s a real doozy, highly recommended.)

Even the self-proclaimed “21st century ambassadors of peace and magic” aren’t immune to L.A.’s pitfalls, but their masterful articulation of its ups and downs might be their way out.

—Zach Bilson

FROTH

Outside (Briefly) Wichita

FOXYGEN Hang Jagjaguwar

Foxygen’s fifth LP, Hang, feels less like an album and more like a minimusical. In just 32 minutes, the ALBUM REVIEWS

The moment I heard the opening track on Froth’s previous album “Bleak,” I knew I’d be a fan. Their music hits you with a rare kind of weight and intensity, and the songs eloquently capture the emotional states of nostalgia, love, sorrow, and at times happiness—all the while still remaining very much in the moment. The band loves droned-out guitar riffs and shoegaze-y melodies that carry you off to elevated planes, and while their previous album was

a bit heavier—a few songs even had thrashier moments—Outside (Briefly) plays with subtlety, as well as a few more electronic synth sounds that weren’t as present before. Standouts include “Shut the Windows,” an understated lo-fi song with fuzzed-out vocals that carries the listener away in a daze. “Petals” starts off with a simple and slow melodic guitar riff and distorted vocals, adding in drums and other instruments until the song breaks through and becomes a great ballad. The album goes uptempo about halfway through with poppy elements as well as some surf and psych rock riffs before it comes down to end with the Elliott Smith esque track “Briefly.” This is another great album from the band and I look forward to seeing it live.

— Zachary Jensen

a brave, unorthodox suite of music, one with as much hip-hop in its blood as there is prog, movie scores, and ‘80s New Age. It’s a record that distorts Giurar’s pain into all sorts of shapes, while giving it plenty of space in which to echo.

—Chris Kissel

JOE GORGEOUS/ HOOVERIII

HANNI EL KHATIB

Splitter Mock

Savage Times Innovative Leisure

GYPSY MAMBA Magnetic Syndromes Alpha Pup

Magnetic Syndromes, the new fulllength from Gypsy Mamba (Rancho Cucamonga-based producer Darius Giurar) is lousy with feels.

Giurar, a first-generation Romanian American who describes himself as a “real gypsy,” says the recording process was largely a therapeutic act—a creative effort meant to synthesize his depression into sound and distract him from himself. The product is a journey, sometimes somber and cold but also quite melodic and full of twists and turns. Dull, monotone ambience underlies most of the tracks, but Giurar takes plenty of detours: “Like Chill” introduces proggy synths and sinister El-Pinspired passages and “Choker,” like several other tracks here, teases a big dance floor beat drop and then swerves into something glitchier like an uneven heartbeat. Magnetic Syndromes is not for the agoraphobic; if there’s any common theme here, it’s the profundity of empty space, whether that’s the emptiness of a club after the staff has closed up and gone home (“Stale Crumbs”) or the distorted, psychedelic nothingness of outer space (“Lingering Feenux”). Giurar, a regular Low End Theory attendee-turned-frequent LET feature, may have plenty of beat scene credentials, but Magnetic Syndromes ain’t a beat tape: it’s

things like the Muslim ban, border wall, and gentrification of every last cultural enclave, perhaps this album can work as a sort of call to arms.

— Zachary Jensen

Over the course of 2016 Hanni El Khatib released a number of EPs under the name Savage Times. Every few months resulted in a different gift, each as unexpected as the last. Having had the opportunity to experience all of the volumes— as well as cover some as they were released—I can say they’re just as powerful now as they were originally separately. These are indeed savage times, and El Khatib captures the issues we as a nation have been facing and continue to face in the current administration. These songs tackle issues of identity, race, class, as well as the hopelessness and frustration many people feel in the face of a corrupt political system and social climate that favors no one but the wealthy and white. Musically the album is just as powerful—El Khatib has a masterful ability to blend and twist genre to his desires.

Elements of hip-hop, blues, rock, punk, soul, jazz, disco, and dance flow together into a sound entirely his own. He moves from a soulful and heartbreaking track to dance-y disco and then a hard-hitting-blues and rock anthem, but it never feels out of place. “Born Brown” and “Mangos and Rice” speak to the hardships of growing up in America to immigrant parents while also still retaining the pride of the culture he came from. Many of these songs call out the rampant xenophobia and racism people of color face in America with a furious roar and resilience that says, “We will not put up with this anymore.” “No Way” criticizes the gentrification of lower income neighborhoods and the resulting displacement. Previously, I noted a necessity for songs like these; now that people are beginning to wake up in the light of 57

The drive to establish one’s voice in a time of commerce and late capitalism is a matter of urgency in these strange days. HooverIII—rather Bert Hoover of Jesus Sons and Mind Meld—has with one side of this cassette created something akin to a sunshined Theoretical Girls record. It’s a departure for Bert, but it seems to encapsulate the creative identity that drives such artists, and it’s refreshing that an artist can take risks today and still find rewards this rich. Resist the notion to try and define this record, as definitions do no service to the musical exploration found therein. Joe Gorgeous (formerly of The Longshots) and his part of the cassette relies more on a singer/songwriter perspective.

Although it reflects an 80s pop sensibility, it does so with charm lacking in other attempts at tackling this sound. There is a lo-fi quality that gives the songs an edge that might be missing had this been a more polished recording. It suggests an undercurrent of rage and discontent that lends itself to a punk aesthetic.

Good listening through both sides of this Splitter—projects like these make being a music fan completely worth it.

— Nathan Martel

THE KNITTS Retreat Knitting Factory

According to the Times, L.A.’s San Fernando Valley has one of the most diverse populations in the entire country. Perhaps that explains the Knitts—a Valley band through and through—and their debut LP, a hard-to-pin down release just as eclectic as the neighborhood they hail from. “She Likes The Idea Of Gold” spins from somber piano to big anthemic chorus to instrumental break to double-time coda, and before you can get your bearings “Hold Steady Pretty Lady” switches things up with a ferocious punk energy. Before the album is over, there’s elements of folk-rock, Brit-pop, math-rock, dance music, and stuff that probably doesn’t even have a name. They’re not following anyone’s rules or being held down by anyone’s expectations—another inherited trait from their Valley home, which presents itself not only in the genre blending, but in their inventive song structures that place instrumental breaks, time changes, and choruses—or no choruses!— wherever the hell they feel like it.

It shouldn’t work, but it somehow does. From the power-pop guitar and infectious, spelling bee verses of “Erotic Aquatic,” to the desert-y sidewinder feel of “Simple Folk,” there’s a punk energy and alternative heart that hold the album together, creating a cohesive and individual work that can only fit comfortably under one label: The Knitts.

— Madison Desler

THEKOREATOWN ODDITY Finna Be Past Tense Stones Throw

K-town rap outsider The Koreatown Oddity is Dominique Purdy, known as much for head-spinning rhymes and beats as his work in stand-up comedy and screenwriting. His Stones Throw debut Finna Be Past Tense is as fitting as the artist’s name: a series of ruminations on the finite nature of existence, assisted by Vex Ruffin’s hazy yet hardhitting production. Lead single “Yesterday’s News” is the mission statement, a welcome-to-the-realworld pep talk with a head-bobbing bed of sampledelia underneath.

Lines like “My pops said we’re 58

gonna die two deaths / he said ‘I ain’t tryna scare you, just want you to be prepared’” are illustrations of Purdy’s approach: dour and fatalistic, but with enough wit and brevity to get you reading back over his lyrics long after you wear out your tape. Ruffin’s beatmaking is a wonder in itself, sampling everything from Eddie Murphy on prehistoric opener “Land Before Time” to My Bloody Valentine on the blown-out “Meditative Thought”. Aside from collaborations with L.A. mainstays Ras G and MNDSGN, Purdy’s work has been largely self-produced and self-released, making Finna Be Past Tense something of a sea change for him. As his highest-profile and perhaps best record, it succeeds in introducing a new crowd to a true oddity—and a true original.

— Zach Bilson

with strings swirling around Lopez’s voice and harp as she weaves together soothing mantras. It’s a thoroughly relaxing and rejuvenating experience, not unlike the artist’s group sound baths, which she runs from her Highland Park home.

Enter consciously and respectfully, trust her with your time, and let the music carry you far away—or somewhere deep within.

— Zach Bilson

MEATBODIES Alice In the Red

LOW LEAF

Palm Psalms: A Light to Resolve All Darkness Creator DIY If you follow L.A.’s eclectic jazz/ beat scene, you’ve likely heard Low Leaf. The Los Angeles native (born Angelica-Marie Lopez) has lent her harpistry to artists like Robert Glasper and Flying Lotus, as well as built up a sizeable catalog of experimental vocal electronica. Palm Psalms is her first record on her Creator DIY label, and from a glance at its website—which contains sustainable farming instructions alongside Lopez’s own musings—it’s easy to infer how the record fits into a much larger vision of artistry and spirituality. An acolyte of the late Alice Coltrane and sometime collaborator with her grand-nephew Lotus, Lopez’s music has always had an astral flavor. But Palm Psalms puts Coltrane’s powerful influence front and center: many songs dissolve into spiraling free jazz, luxuriating in the ether before snapping back into woozy rhythms. “Dreaming Awake” builds upon wordless breaths, vibraphones and field recordings, coalescing to form a bossa nova groove fit for a futuristic weed dispensary. And centerpiece “Sun Psalm” turns a prayer “for the new dawn to rise and clean the hearts of all humanity” into a lush epic,

Meatbodies have always been a band dense with rage and anger, and though this album continues on the journey they have been on for awhile, those emotions seem to have dissipated. Now through the remaining haze, something strange and magnificent has come into view. This newest album—with its almost prog rock undertones—has propelled the band forward from relatively simple (but amazing) punk into what I can describe as the sound of a band on a quest to find who they are. Call it classic but daring and new at the same time, with lots of keyboards and 12 string acoustic guitars, sweetly arranged vocals and captivating drums. Meatbodies had already created a solid foundation for themselves, but now with Alice, they’re using that foundation to bravely launch themselves into the unknown.

—Daniel Sweetland

MIND MELD self-titled Permanent

I think it’s safe to say we are in a golden age of garage rock in Southern California, and Mind Meld carries

on that tradition. Make no mistake: this self-titled album is a scorcher all the way through. The accelerator is down the entire time on this record, and the asphalt is left shattered in its wake. Liz Tooley’s (formerly of Endless Bummer) drumming craters any stage she happens to be on, and Erik Lake’s (of Jesus Sons) bass playing enters into seamless dialogue with Bert Hoover’s (also of Jesus Sons) guitar playing, creating a dynamic that openly pushes to transcend the psych-garage genre. Labeling Mind Meld as a psych or garage band does a disservice to what is taking place here—it’d be lazy to assert that it sounds like this or that band, regardless of the service it might do to the reader of this piece. Mind Meld has a character that defies easy description, but is nonetheless felt on each of these songs. There is a yearning on this record that drives … no, more like powers the sheer locomotive force of this record. The need to be heard and felt is apparent in the playing here, which coalesces into a fury that expresses the sheer joy of the process of creation. Do yourself a favor—just once!—and get this record.

— Nathan Martel

THE MOLOCHS America’s Velvet Glory Innovatice Leisure

It can be difficult to pull from an iconic era of music like the 60s without sounding like a straight copy/paste of the Byrds or the Kinks. On their latest release, America’s Velvet Glory, The Molochs manage to achieve a garage revival sound that still feels fresh and current. The tunes are solid in their simplicity, a tried-and-true combination of jangly guitar and driving drumbeats; the organ on “You and Me” and harmonica on “Cryin” add authenticity, and there’s an undercurrent of anxiety flowing beneath this seemingly upbeat sounding album.

Lucas Fitzsimons’ lyrics deal with themes of lovesickness, longing, and lack of control, and are delivered in a no-frills style recalling the poets and literature of the Beat generation. Self-doubt and dread reign supreme, especially on “No Control,” in which Fitzsimons sings: “I

sit inside my room and think of all the things I lack.” There’s no reason to anguish over the creative success of America’s Velvet Glory, though: it’s clear that The Molochs have given us something great.

— Julia Gibson

MR. ELEVATOR When The Morning Greets You Rad Cat

Mr. Elevator (having left behind the Brain Hotel) are favorites in the SoCal art rock scene as well as psychedelic heroes to countless young music lovers looking for an escape from the modern sound. With this new release the band forges on towards absolute understanding of the cosmic unique: on the opening track, “When The Morning Greets You With A Smile,” you find yourself engulfed in huge harmonic vocals and sing-along hippie melodies, with huge analog keyboard sounds straight from the 70s. Tracks like “Sunshine Daydream” and “Are You Hypnotized” power this virtual time machine, making this album an incredible assortment of things from the past with just a little hint of what’s to come, too.

— Daniel Sweetland

THE REGRETTES Feel Your Feelings Fool!

Warner Brothers

It’s no secret that a lot of ladies are pissed off. January’s Women’s Marches saw millions of gals flipping the big one to misogyny and His Royal Orangeness. With its visceral punk energy and feminist anthems, the Regrettes’ debut album fits the mood of the moment, and should put lead vocalist Lydia Night ALBUM REVIEWS

and her bandmates—who are all still teenagers by the way—on the map. They’re young, brash, and armed to the teeth with lyrical barbs and sharp riffs to slice and dice the patriarchy. Right off the bat, you’re assaulted with “I Don’t Like You,” which claps back at “nice guys” everywhere. Then comes “A Living Human Girl,” where Night lists off stretch marks, pimples, prickly legs, and other things generally considered unattractive to men, and turns them into a fist-pumping affirmation of women getting to be actual human beings. Night’s songwriting style is reminiscent of Courtney Barnett—i.e. many songs read like diary entries of her everyday life— but there are also jolts of Bratmobile and other lady-punk legends.

Musically, it’s classic punk, with astringent takes on 50s/60s rock riffs and melodies, with dashes of honeyed backing vocals to add just that perfect drop of sweetness. Night still has crushes (“Hey Now” and “You Won’t Do”) and feels inferior to the hot girl (“Picture Perfect”), but ultimately triumphs and knows she doesn’t need a boy to make her complete (“How It Should Be”).

“Ladylike/Whatta Bitch” which begins with hymn-like, somber commandments of I-Like-Ike-era femininity, then erupts into the vicious delivery of on-the-nose lines like “I heard she is a feminist/So she must not shave her pits,” feels like the thesis statement of the album. Feel Your Feelings constantly attacks the idea that women have to fit inside some kind of a box, all while rocking— hard.

— Madison Desler

S. CANDLE

Conditioned Reflex Leaving Destruction, subversion, espionage, paranoia: the throbbing urgency behind Barrett Avner’s latest output is informed by a swirling sense of seemingly omnipresent digital dread. His guitar work is always reliably rich in its expressiveness, but unlike his previous outings as Sadistic Candle or his time spent as part of the Sun Araw Band, Conditioned Reflex positions Avner’s guitar contrasted against the stark matrix ALBUM REVIEWS

of pulsing and panicked drum machines—it’s like a human voice, or perhaps a flashlight clutched in the fist of someone sprinting through the darkness. On tracks like “Red Bones, Black Grass,” it sounds downright Princely as it twists through a grim forest of industrial pumping and ominous chants. It’s the organic tendril through an otherwise synthetic universe peppered with distant sound bites of BBC talking heads chattering about daggers and assassinations, handheld radio dispatches, and anguished screams. The album is relentless in its momentum, culminating in the punishing 7-minute single “I Saw The Light.” As its final bar throbs to a close, a sense of shared experience lingers, as though Avner and the listener have traversed the shadows of the digital jungle and have emerged and collapsed, pantin—and not a moment too soon.

— Christina Gubala

SANTOROS El Perdedor Burger

If you’re looking for good vibes, you’ve come to the right place. El Perdedor is filled with bright riffs, psych-surf grooves, and a loose, unrefined approach exemplified by the line, “It’s alright with me babe / If it’s alright with you” from the opening track “Wasting Time.” That track and “Rabbits” so obviously sound like the Growlers—with their spooky organ and drugged vocal delivery—that fans of Brooks Nielsen and Co. will either love them or despise them. Luckily, Santoros spend most of the album treading less-traveled terrain, like the Modern Lovers-esque nostalgia of the title track and “I’m Crazy,” or—even better— creating their own signature sound with bilingual efforts like “Mi Negrita” and the irresistible “Love You More.” It’s when they bring they bring this piece of themselves forward that they’re the most successful, and feel the most credible. This is music you can dance to and drink to: fun, laid-back, and totally inoffensive. (The giggles and Cheech & Chong-sized smoke cloud you can hear floating around a shout of

“Fuck that, no more weed!” at the beginning of “Love You More” tells you everything you need to know.)

“We’ll stay up all night / Drinking and singing silly songs,” they sing over the sunny 60s pop of “It’s You,” and if you throw this album on, my guess is that’s exactly what you’ll be doing.

— Madison Desler

SHANNON LAY All This Life Going Down Do Not Disturb

Over the last several years, Shannon Lay has become synonymous with fiery performances, frenetic guitar playing, and powerful vocals as one quarter of L.A. indie rockers FEELS (previously known as Raw Geronimo). However, for her solo vinyl debut All This Life Going Down, Lay takes a markedly different direction from the fierce intensity of FEELS and delivers one of the most beautifully delicate bedroom-pop albums one might hope to hear. The record finds Lay at her most stripped down and raw so far in her recorded career, but the record never at any point sounds bare or empty. Instead, the space is filled with the lush qualities of Lay’s voice and acoustic guitar which seems to trail off in the air like wisps of cigarette smoke. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of these recordings is how intimate they feel. There is never a moment that passes where it doesn’t feel like Lay is in the room, performing these songs by herself. There is strength in presenting yourself with nothing to hide behind, and that is exactly what Shannon Lay does on All This Life Going Down. Here she can speak simply, directly, and honestly, drawing listeners in just as closely as Jackson C. Frank or Judee Sill ever did.

— Simon Weedn

TASHAKI MIYAKI The Dream Metropolis

After much anticipation, LA-based duo Tashaki Miyaki has graced us all with an ethereal new album.

The appropriately titled The Dream immediately invites you to close your eyes and slip into the haze.

Paige Stark’s silvery voice is a delicate thread woven through Luke Paquin’s fuzzy guitar tones, punctuated by crisp tambourine hits.

“Girls on TV” is a standout, with the band’s signature swirling reverb and sweet vocal harmonies reaching peak dreaminess. “Anyone But You” and “Keep Me In Mind” bring moments of romantic reminiscence, and “Get It Right” and “Out Of My Head” evoke starry-eyed longing. Listening to these velvety songs feels like going on a trip to the coast on an overcast day, which is arguably the best time to go. If you are a fan of Young Prisms, Hope Sandoval, or the Jesus and Mary Chain’s more subdued material, you will fall in love with Tashaki Miyaki.

— Julia Gibson

cals and gentle beat, while “Kindred One” plays like a rhyme that would accompany a children’s hand-clap game, all with the lightest, most perfect production flourishes. Carr’s voice goes down like honey. It’s gentle, completely inviting, endearingly earnest, a bit like Rufus Wainwright but less theatrical. He produced and recorded the album himself, as well as playing all of the instruments, and his life spent in the study of music comes through in the precise choices he makes, with complex chord changes, unexpected song structures and a quiet confidence that’s somehow hard to miss. Last Day accomplishes the challenging feat of being accessible without being obvious or boring: you never know what’s coming next, from track to track or even measure to measure, but you know it’s going to be beautiful.

— Madison Desler

WALTER

Get Well Soon Mock

tim carr

The Last Day of Fighting Dog Legs Music What do you get when you mix an idyllic childhood learning Beatles songs in the rolling hills of Marin County, teenage years spent studying jazz drumming and polyrhythms with Peter Magadini, and a foray into the music of West Africa at Cal Arts? Throw in some massive musical talent and you get Tim Carr (Fell Runner, The Americans), whose debut solo effort is a must listen for anyone who likes timeless, beautifully produced, singer-songwriter goodness—which, let’s be honest, should be everybody. Eight gorgeous tracks effortlessly blend Carr’s unique influences, from the rhythmic fingerpicking and African spirit of “Easy For Me,” to the timeless, arcadian trad-folk lilt of the title track. “I Looked Up,” another standout, sounds cozy enough to curl up inside of, with its sleepy vo-

When Southern California is laid to waste, Get Well Soon will be the score. This is the music of a postdystopian world—the soundtrack to the apocalyps, the sound of being vaporized and becoming ash seared against the nearest wall. Similarly, Walter will be seared into your being upon the first listen. This is music you carry with you long after you’ve listened to it. It’s rearranging the listener’s atomic structure from the first needle drop. Consisting of Patrick Nolan (Meatbodies), Ross Chait (Ducktails) and Misha Lindes (Sad Girl), Walter is here to annihilate your countenance, demolish your soul, all the while making you better for it. These are the compositions of one’s demise: the sound of getting jaw broken or better yet the metallic taste in your mouth after an internal decapitation. Is there no higher praise? Please, when I reach life’s crescendo and the end is nigh for me, let Walter be on the turntable, just so I remember what it’s like to have lived. Let that pool of blood gather beneath my eardrums as I listen again one more time on my way out. Thank you, Walter.

Thank you.

— Nathan Martel 59

SPENCER HICKS

CARA DOLIM

DAVE VAN PATTEN

OHARA HALE

COMICS SONIA HAYDEN

Curated by Tom Child

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COMICS

LILA ASH | INSTAGRAM: LILA__ASH

JOHN TOTTENHAM

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COMICS

THE INTERPRETER

HECTOR WALUYO Curated by Chris Ziegler Photography by Jeff Fribourg

Hector Waluyo is a DJ, collector and dealer with tastes that tend toward the rare, the raw and the unpredictable—his Cosmic Slop Radio podcast is a precisely curated trip through the choicest of obscurities, and his regular DJ sets at local bars and nightlife spots like Oddfellows, Mezcalero and Padre offer the exact kind of zig-zag selections he details below. Listen in at mixcloud.com/cosmicslopradio.

OTIS RUSH “ALL YOUR LOVE (I MISS LOVING)” / “MY BABY’S A GOOD’UN” (CHICAGO, 1959)

Paco Zambrano y so combo “Meshkalina”/ “De Medio Lao” (dinsa, 196X)

“My blues collection is pretty much non-existent, aside from some rhythm & blues 45s. But if I were to choose to have one blues record only, it would be this one. This has the best guitar work and sound I’ve heard, hands down. I owe this tune to Troy of Death Hymn No. 9 for turning me on to this one years ago.”

“One side is a so-called ‘boogaloo’ track on one side and a Cumbia track on the flip. This ‘boogaloo’ track is a cover of Traffic Sound’s ‘Meshkalina,’ and to me this version completely floors the original.”

CISNEROS & GARZA GROUP “FUNKY NASSAU” / “I’M A MAN” (L-Z-E, 196X) “Even though I was born in Texas, I didn’t spend much time out there growing up—but I do have this thing where I’ll go chase certain records if I know they’re from Texas. Anyways, this one took too many years for me to get a hold of a copy. Both sides are covers by a so-called Cisneros & Garza Group from Texas, with the A-side being a cover of ‘Funky Nassau’ and the B-side being the best version of Spencer Davis Group’s ‘I’m A Man’ that you’ll ever hear. Full-on pounding drums, fuzzed out guitars, all topped off with a random flute player that makes it all work out somehow.”

Samuel belay “Aynochish yirefu”/ “lebene Shiwshiw” (Alma, 1973) “Moving on down the list with this Ethiopian favorite by Samuel Belay. Both sides are a treat, but ‘Aynochish Yirefu’ will keep you on your feet. Full on Ethiopian funk à la James Brown.”

valeria faisal “E o meu papai” / “De Mentirinha” (equipe, 1968) “I don’t know what this. Garage? Freakbeat? No info on this great tune by a gal named Valeria Faisal, from Rio(?). Wish I could say more about this one, but a top favorite nonetheless.”

THE OUTCASTS “LOVING YOU SOMETIMES”/ “SHA-LA-LA” (PLATO, 1968) “Here’s a semi lo-fi midtempo garage record from Kentucky on Plato Records. Story goes that Plato Records was hesitant on signing the Outcasts to their label, as the label primarily dealt with funk & soul artists. The Outcasts ended up paying for their own studio time and Plato pressed the record. They recorded over at Queen City Studios in Cincinnati the same day the Mustangs recorded ‘Kickin.’’ A top favorite of mine that I try to keep in the box to play out at all times.”

INTERPRETER

DAVID McCallum “house of mirrors” / “a man and a woman” (CAPITOL, 1967) “Sadly, we lost David Axelrod earlier this year, and this is record that introduced me to his production work along with his work with Capitol Records—Song of Innocence, Songs of Experience and Earth Rot, which I highly recommend to anyone. He also produced my favorite Electric Prunes album, Release of An Oath, too. R.I.P. David!”

NANCY “TRYING TO KEEP FROM CRYING”/ “WALKING ON A CLOUD” (MERCEDE, 1971) “A nice slab out of Florida from a girl named Nancy. I rarely buy funk 45s nowadays, but the combination of the odd nonchalant vocals and the psychedelic tip on this one is something that I can dig.”

JOHN FITCH & ASSOCIATES “ROMANTIC ATTITUDE”/ “STONED OUT OF IT” (BEACON, 1969) “This one always stays in the box for me. A nice double-sider out of Philadelphia, which oddly enough never got released in the U.S. ‘Stoned Out of It’ is a heavy fuzzed-out rocker that a lot of people really like, but the A-side ‘Romantic Attitude’ always gets me. Psyched-out slow burner with not one second of dullness.”

dee edwards “why can’t there be love”/ “hurts a little every day” “ (vogue, 1971) “I tend to binge on certain genres when I’m shopping for records.

After I’ve exhausted myself from one thing, I go on to the next. This is the sound that I’ve been after for the past few years and will buy any 45 that resembles this one. This 45 is one part soul and one part heavy fuzz, while holding down that Detroit sound all the way.

Originally released on the Bump Shop label from Detroit. I was really blown away when I first heard this about five years ago, and tracked down the first copy I ran into, which ended up being this German press with this nice picture sleeve.”

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BUCK OWENS Complete Capitol Singles: 1957-1966 Omnivore Ol’ Buck went on to stay at Capitol for almost two decades but, upon arrival, the onetime Alvis E. Owens of Bakersfield was just one more rural act the Vine Street nabobs had little notion what to do with. His first three platters were the same old pop cowflop as all the post-Hank Williams Nashville acts were shoveling up in the late 1950s with but for a few touches of the plainspoken cowboy charm that got him the gig. The best among them, “Sweet Thing,” is something Elvis or Buddy Holly might’ve knocked out of the park but instead trawls on the Jim Reeves country gentleman marzipan. “Second Fiddle” is where the real Buck emerges—a sadsack lament of a man who didn’t come in first in love’s race. “Under Your Spell Again” is even better and after that it’s one long sweet ride into California cowboy country—a soundscape evoking good old times, open heartedness, and the soft sawdust on a honkytonk floor that stretches into infinity, along with the bar. The duets with the great Rose Maddox are special delights, as is the cover of “Save the Last Dance for Me.” The second disc opener, “Act Naturally,” was covered by the Beatles and remains Buck’s signature tune.

“Together Again,” “I Don’t Care As Long As You Love Me,” and “Tiger by the Tail” all went on to become fixed parts of his live repertoire, “Crying Time” is an oft-covered classic and “Waiting in Your Welfare Line” speaks to the emotional hobo in all of us. Don Rich’s clean, masterly guitar figures were Buck’s second voice and shine on “Buckaroo” and “In the Palm of Your Hand.” I await the next volume with some impatience.

YOKO ONO Plastic Ono Band Secretly Canadian Little-regarded companion to the 1970 John Lennon LP of the same name, Yoko’s pass with the same musicians and producers tickles my ears as better than her late husband’s ultimately boring misery cycle. Lennon’s peak as a solo Beatle was short and not long coming, but the joint under consideration here quickly took its place as Yoko’s signature slab, a rollicking thrasher of proto-punk lunacy about twenty years ahead of its time. The opening track “Why?” shows John plus fellow Apple 70 64

Records inmates Ringo Starr and Klaus Voorman pounding away at a big sweathog Detroit riff as Yoko shrieks, snarls, ululates, expectorates, and glossolalicizes this oldest of existential interrogatives. Lennon’s guitar-strangling sounds every bit as advanced as Yoko’s giddy vocals and the snide laughter at the very end is quite Lennonesque of her. “Why Not” is slower, groovier and the vocalist leaps over this swampscape scatting an assortment of pretty feline purrs and yowls. “Greenfield Morning I Pushed An Empty Baby Carriage All Over the City” is cobbled out of an abandoned George Harrison sitar track and an old Beat-era poem of Yoko’s and damned if it doesn’t sound like an early pass at much of what Laurie Anderson would later do before ending in a rusticated Pet Sounds flourish. “AOS” is a 1968 performance with jazz great Ornette Coleman and his combo. The ferocious Velvet-y “Touch Me” was the U.S. B-side of John’s “Power to the People” and probably confused the fuck out of respectable Beatles fans.

“Paper Shoes” is another evocative collage, this time beginning with train sounds before settling into a proggy groove. Though it appalled Capitol Records and the BBC, “Open Your Box” is easily the album’s highlight, a masterpiece of Yoko vocal exultation done over a raggedly hacked blues riff much in the manner of every punk rock diva to come. Bonuses include an extended blues-rock-jazz pass at “Why” which Lennon fanboys will want to savor as much as avant cratediggers already do.

GAME THEORY The Big Shot Chronicles Omnivore Continuing the stellar Game Theory reissue series is this mid-80s pop masterpiece. Probably the sunniest album in Game Theory’s angsty discography, BSC is also where mainmain Scott Miller’s ambitions began to stretch. The opener “Here it is Tomorrow” is like a great lost Monkees song and “Book of Millionaires” a minor classic of Lennonesque snark. “Never Mind” and “Like a Girl Jesus” show less a musician in thrall to psychedelic pop but one already an accomplished hand at manufacturing the stuff. “Linus and Lucy” is a rousing instrumental pass at Vince Guaraldi’s deathless Peanuts theme and “Couldn’t I Just Tell You” is something Big Star’s Alex Chilton would’ve been proud to sing and prouder to sign. “Seattle” winds the album’s occasionally gale-force attack town to the tenderest of zephyrs before playing us out of yet another lost Reagan Age reverie. To this already fantastic haul comes a bonus of several jaw-dropping live tracks, including a pass at the Velvets’ “Sweet Jane” in which Miller declaims those smartass lyrics with more passion than Lou Reed ever summoned. Since this LP has only four Facebook likes (one of them mine), don’t talk to me about Donald Trump.

ONWARD AND INWARD

BY DAVID COTNER I’ve spent a fair portion of the past ten years keeping track of all the bookstores between Morro Bay and San Clemente.

That includes comic book stores, too.

I even visit the dead ones to see what’s in them now. I have my reasons. Mostly it’s that I like to know. I’ve seen more bookstores than I can count on both hands, feet and brain cells shudder and fade into oblivion—most barely remembered by an increasingly aging readership that leaves behind in its wake a peacock’s cloak of old bookmarks from bookstores that live—like the Road Warrior—only in our memories. This is neither good nor bad. It is just is. But while it is what it is, it’s also a worthwhile epiphany to realize that books—like bookstores—are good places to hide out for a while. Polish your bearings. Be watchful. Listen to the pages turn. Did you know that there are two bookstores in southern California that have basements?

You get to go down there, smell the sweet rot of books yellowing before your nose; sneeze a little. The point of all this is that you’ve got to make as much time all your own as you possibly can. These books are as good a doorway into your inner self as I can think of in 3000 words or less.

Hey Joe: The Unauthorized Biography of a Rock Classic by Marc Shapiro ($20, Riverdale Avenue) is a story of a song that, like songs such as “Gloomy Sunday” or “Louie Louie,” has taken on a life and an aura all its own by now. These are the perennials in rock’s garden of songs, constantly recurring and capturing the public’s ear even as countless other songs fade into the weeds of disuse. It’s up to the pop culture addicts—actually cultural saviors—like Marc Shapiro to take the godlike view of hindsight and examine the culture in works like this. Shapiro puts the “fan” into “fanatic” with this history of the song that everyone knows Jimi Hendrix sang but, as with every stately oak, there’s always more beneath the surface than just the roots. It is the heads and the bugs like Shapiro, going on jags and benders and coming up with books like these that will ever make any sense out of an increasingly fractured culture that is deceptively omnipresent. Like the caves at Lascaux or the rebuilt Cathedral at Notre Dame, “Hey Joe” is a work of art the original authorship of which remains uncertain and apocryphal—and that’s one of the cornerstones of popular music that makes it such a strong phenomenon. The mystery. They never tell you when you start playing music that you should leave things out; that you should be a shadowy figure. Try it. The origins of “Hey Joe” could be from anywhere in Appalachia, might be from prison work gang songs, may be somewhere at the dawn of the

blues. Folksinger Billy Roberts—who is 80 as of this writing—is the man on the 1962 copyright. Apparently the mailbox money from “Hey Joe” still flows to Mr. Roberts in a healthy stream. Through this exhaustive yet slender volume, Shapiro charts the rise and fall of the song’s popularity; just like ague or measles, songs have their rise and fall. “Exhaustive” is rather an understatement—even though there are websites devoted entirely to chronicling the “Hey Joe” covers out there, the narrative here at times becomes one of “And then… and then… and then…” which can get a bit beige after a while. He traces the lineage of the song—no slouch in the due diligence department, he— giving credit to Southern California garage band the Leaves getting the ball rolling that turned into the avalanche which carried the song everywhere from the live sets of the bands of the 60s Sunset Strip to buskers on streets the world over, hungry for connection and an honest buck. The Leaves’ version starts out like “Needles and Pins” by the Searchers, but then goes completely sideways with frenetic guitar stranglings and childlike yawp. Of course there’s the saga of Jimi Hendrix and how he almost didn’t record the song that was his first big hit—the song with which he closed out Woodstock. Even Patti Smith, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Seal make an appearance here. The great gift to music that books like these possess is that after you’ve read the entire story, you hear the song differently. In this way, the song becomes multidimensional, opening up pathways through its many interpretations that you didn’t even know you could tread. It’s only 150 pages long.

You know how you’re always saying you want to start reading again? It’ll take you an afternoon, maybe less. You should read this. It’ll make you feel better about yourself. On a scale from 1 to 10: The smoke of the first cigarette of the morning, caught in that precise moment where it will only ever be everything that it was meant to become.

As for Steve Jones’ memoir Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol, ($27, Da Capo), the authorship of the work of art known as Steve Jones is never in question. He writes like he speaks, and if you’ve ever heard him do his show on KLOS, you’ll hear his voice in your head speaking the words while you read the book. It’s cheaper than the audiobook, anyway. If you’re looking for a book about what it’s like to actually be a musician, this isn’t it. His is a story about being self-aware much later than might be useful—a sort of l’esprit de l’escalier, but in hardcover. Creatures of the moment—like many artists seem to be—tend not to overanalyze what’s happening in front of them the minute BOOKS

it’s happening. The implications and complications weren’t aspects of those great misadventures—and so it’s fascinating to read this history of Steve Jones reexperiencing those times with the benefit of 20/20 backwards vision. One of the things that really shine throughout his memoirs is the deep affection he has for his friend, Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook. Steve Jones is a sensitive man. That he’s had a friend like Paul Cook for decades—through all the craziness and the scrapes with greatness and death—is likely what’s kept him safe and sane, ultimately. Friendship is an incredibly underrated thing—you sure do miss it when it’s gone, though. Never one to shy away from calling a twat a twat—he does have a talent for putting the “war” into “memoir”—Jones keeps the 300 pages loping along at a respectable clip, cackling all the way. There’s the nice brace of photographs midway through the book, which helps if you don’t have a bookmark, and “everyone looks so young,” which is generally how you look when you’re a kid.

His relationship with his parents turns out to be somewhat strained, but, in one of the great marriages—so to speak—of punk rock insouciance and post-war stoicism, he bears that particular burden as well as can be expected. But stoicism can only take you so far when you see those around you dying at an increasingly distressing pace. Jones admits how inescapably Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren’s death affected him, and it’s a sincere and heartfelt moment that surfaces amidst a sargasso of excess. You get the impression that Jones has learned something about himself in the past few years, which is encouraging.

On a scale from 1 to 10: The drop of sweat hanging suspended on an ironworker’s forehead, keeping you in suspense until you realize you’re late and by the time you turn around, you’ve missed it falling.

Reading the stories behind Martin Torgoff’s Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, and Drugs ($26, Da Capo) should do nothing less than make you want to run out and change your species. A cautionary tale of the highest order for artists, it chronicles the beginning of jazz, bebop and swing in Chicago, New Orleans, and Kansas City—and the musicians whose art was constantly bedeviled by addiction and the draconian lawmen who became one of the many demons they couldn’t fight. In an interesting angle, Torgoff interweaves the stories of Burroughs, Cassady, Ginsberg and Kerouac, laying the culture of the Beats right alongside forward-thinking high evolutionaries of jazz like Billie Holiday and John Coltrane—both groups being vilified by the authorities as threats to God, country, productivity, whatever.

Torgoff is exceptionally deft when it comes to painting a portrait of the artist in freefall; Coltrane’s downward spiral into addiction and liver cancer are drawn with singularly heartbreaking skill. Like a white-hot star consuming itself from the inside, the atmosphere of finality that BOOKS

Torgoff imparts with his writing is truly something to behold. Additionally, with the new Attorney General keen to return America to the philosophies of Harry J. Anslinger’s Depression-era Bureau of Narcotics, it’s compelling, topical reading that asks how we’ve changed as a nation, if at all, when it comes to how the arts and altered states of consciousness are treated.

Also put squarely into perspective are how all those shitty pharma panic movies like “Reefer Madness” that everyone thinks are so funny now were actually thought as educational and frightening to more fearful and conservative types. You know, when you’re really stoned, the first thing you want to do is go out and kill. An essential—nay, necessary—chronicle of a time in America’s history that still, for better or ill, keeps teaching us boring, crummy lessons we should be completely over by now. On a scale from 1 to 10: A black balloon in perfect equilibrium so that it neither rises or falls but confronts you with an enigma that you just know is going to pop right in your face.

In comedy, is a nervous laugh still a laugh?

Comedian Doug Stanhope’s memoir Digging Up Mother: A Love Story ($26, Da Capo) is fraught with nervous laughter, riddled with it, absolutely wretched with it—because Doug Stanhope is a comic where the truth hurts, all the time, and if you coincidentally get a laugh out of it, you’re probably not laughing at him, you’re laughing at the fact that you lived through the same thing or something similar, and you have to laugh so that people don’t accidentally glance over and see your semi-smile melt into the frozen rictus that is an essential expression of half-pain / half-human shared misery.

Doug Stanhope is the human condition personified. All his funny—and not funny ha-ha—loud clothing, all the pauses held for comedic effect, all the pantomime of a man onstage in front of a microphone peering out into the lights that blind him from doing anything other than baring his soul? Those are all just different husks arranged like Russian nesting dolls, an infinite onion that he peels and makes you cry. Why does he bare his soul? Because he’d probably implode from the weight of what’s going on inside him. Incidentally, the better comedians amongst us—stars, really—bare their souls so that they outshine those false and foolish spotlights; so that the brilliance inside of them burns out those bulbs and leaves you bathed in the truest light humanity has the capacity to create. Doug Stanhope is one of the rare human beings that were born to do what he does. Without it, he has no purpose in life. He’s like one of those kids born at a school for assassins. He was born to kill. Don’t read this book thinking that the shovel he uses to dig up his mother is bringing with it the kind of dirt you’re looking for. He has to bury her, too. On a scale from 1 to 10: They don’t make numbers that go that fucking high.

Keith Morris’ memoir My Damage: The Story of a Punk Rock Survivor ($25, Da Capo, yeah, they send me a lot of books, I get it) is proof positive that if you stick around making art long enough, good things will happen and come your way. That doesn’t guarantee you’ll be in the best of shape when that does happen, though—but think of all the great stories you’ll have to tell about all the adventures you went on in the meanwhile. My Damage is Morris’ saga about the early punker days—from his time in Black Flag, Circle Jerks and lately in hardcore revivalist combos Off! and FLAG—the years of addiction to various substances, the long slog back to sobriety and all the humility that that implies. Throughout his various adventures—whether transforming into a raving lunatic to escape a bus-ride beat-down, narrowly escaping various diabetic comas and pilfering money from his old man’s bait shop in Hermosa so he could get high— he cultivates an outlook that’s equal parts awestruck, inscrutable and blah-zey. If there’s anything to take away from his time in the punk rock trenches—many of which were dug originally by him—is that one of the least-heralded aspects that makes punk possible is the necessity of pure will. Black Flag was pure will. The guys with autism and Down Syndrome in Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivä—that’s pure will. The Goddess Bunny—that’s pure will. Pure will is a magical thing.

It’s magical because it makes so many things happen—and none of it is actively planned. How else would a guy like Keith Morris wind up doing major-label A&R in the ‘90s? Nothing was part of any plan, but the pure will that he talks about throughout My Damage also led to the point where he got sober and made the rounds of that AA step where you have to make amends to people that you have wronged while you were high, regardless if they forgive you or not. This led to a brilliant realization the day he came to his dad and talked it out—the emotional impact of which I shall not spoil for you here. On a scale from 1 to 10: A shitless fan spinning not because it’s plugged in, but because it wants to spin.

Cult Cinema: An Arrow Video Companion ($70, Arrow Films) is a massive, envious tome collecting 30 essays that have appeared in the alwaysenthralling cult film DVD and Blu-ray packages that British releasing company Arrow Video produces. The cream— cream, I say!—of today’s genre writers are all represented here in one heavy lapbreaking monster of a genre study: Tim Lucas, late of the late Video Watchdog, holding forth on Corman’s The Fall of the House of Usher; noted British journalist and film festival helmsman Alan Jones on the joys of Argento’s Deep Red; Canadian sultan of smut Robin “Cinema Sewer” Bougie offering his thoughts on the early days of exploitation cinema, a

time during which marihuana (sic) and moonshine (hic) caused multiple moral panics throughout the more God-fearing sections of the American experience; critic Mike Sutton on civilization versus backwoods in the cinema of the late Wes Craven; Coil member Stephen Thrower on the rare delights of Lucio Fulci’s splatter smash Zombie; and John Kenneth Muir on the sociological implications of the films of George A. Romero. In light of the shuttering of Fangoria magazine and Video Watchdog, books like Cult Cinema are a revelation and an education. They’re the logical continuation of a process of cinematic discovery that begins with word-of-mouth recommendations from friends, consultation with maniacs on the internet, renting films or buying copies from the grey market dealers, or going through downloads and torrents. It’s a book that also transcends that order of discovery; the writers all have something to say—they have points to make—about films that for years were written off as trash at best and at worst—to paraphrase the critic at the Daily Worker writing about the now-respected 1960 film Peeping Tom—“From its slumbering, mildly salacious beginning to its appallingly masochistic and depraved climax, it is wholly evil.” The best genre surveys also pull from the more obscure farflung reaches of cinematic inquiry; Cult Cinema, to its inestimable credit, has essays on everything from Hervé Villechaize to the erotic films of Tinto Brass; from empty cities as an integral part of science-fiction films to Christmas-themed horror films; from Brazilian pornochanchada to the movies where the food eats you. It’s a book that easily finds itself on the shelf next to previous multisubjectival genre studies like Fleshpot: Cinema’s Myth Makers & Taboo Breakers Paperback by Jack Stevenson or Michael Weldon’s Psychotronic Video Guide to Film. In its presentation, it’s a lot like a photo album or a yearbook—critique and fascinating images caught in time. What will future writers make of the criticism captured in this volume? Will they be kinder than these writers are—a heady batch with an already exponentially kinder response to cult films than the scornful repulsion of licensed snit-thrower Michael Medved, the savage indignation of professional scolds Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert, or the desperate disgust of poor Linda Gross at the Los Angeles Times—a film critic who seemed to get stuck doing more reviews of the most violent films of the slasher films cycle of the ‘80s than any other critic working at the Times at that time?

If those future chroniclers of the cult film experience have even a fraction of the patience and perspective and curiosity as do the writers gathered in this volume, then our understanding of cult cinema as it illuminates society as a whole becomes a vital, healthy comment on the human condition itself. On a scale from 1 to 10: BOMB. 65

TEEN ANGEL’S Interview by Vanessa Gonzalez Art courtesy Bryan Ray Turcotte

Teen Angel’s magazine was known as ‘the voice of the Varrio’: with unfiltered submissions of pictures, poems, art, and dedications, it was like a primitive form of social media, developed by and documenting the true nature of those who followed it. And behind the publication was the man and the artist Teen Angel. He passed away a few years ago, leaving a hole in the heart of his massive cult following. His best friend David De Baca and the publisher Bryan Ray Turcotte (of Fucked Up And Photocopied fame) teamed up to create a comprehensive book of Teen Angel’s covers, which was released—and quickly sold out—at the L.A. Art Book Fair 2017.

This conversation with David and Bryan examines the life of Teen Angel, but it’s also a glimpse into the Pandora’s box of pursuing your passions, and the beautiful kinds of friendships that grow along the way.

Can you explain why Teen Angel’s was so controversial for its time?

David De Baca: At the time, law enforcement saw Teen Angel’s magazine as a vehicle for gangs to spread their word, so it wasn’t accepted among the law enforcement community and the larger chain stores wouldn’t carry it. The only place to find Teen Angel’s magazine was in the mom-and-pop markets and liquor stores because they were the only ones who would carry it. So when you open the magazine and you saw some gangsters in there standing in front of a wall throwing their hand signs— representing their gang—people saw that as a threat. And it’s not that Teen Angel embraced it or encouraged it, but he did give them a vehicle to show who they were, whether it was in a negative light or not—because me, as a homeboy growing up, if someone took a picture of me and four or five of my homies posing up against a wall, and we’re throwing up gang signs, we didn’t see that as negative.

We just saw that as, ‘Hey, look at us—this is who we are, check us out.’ So it wasn’t intended to be a threat to anybody. It was just our way of showing pride. But, if you weren’t part of that culture, it felt threatening to you from the outside.

What about conflicting gangs? Did Teen Angel’s ever experience problems involving turf representation?

DDB: Teen Angel’s was always open to everyone, and the magazine was accepted for what it was. You knew you were going to open the magazine and see people from other gangs in BOOKS

there, and that’s why you bought it. If I was a kid growing up in the Imperial Valley in some little town and my parents didn’t have a lot of money, I might not have ever travelled out of that little town—but if I bought Teen Angel’s magazine, I could see what was happening in Los Angeles and Bakersfield and Arizona.

I could look at all the other neighborhoods and cities and say, ‘Oh, look how these dudes dress, or look how they write on the walls, or look at the art they draw.’ It was also used for dedications. Girls would send in dedications and they would let all the other girls know, ‘Ay, I’m sending this from Giggles to Smiley, I do love you.’ So it was this vehicle for all these people to showcase their neighborhood and themselves—and negative as it might have appeared to an outsider, there was no intention for it to be negative. It was just people showcasing their lifestyle and being proud of it.

Do you know why David Holland adopted the moniker Teen Angel?

DDB: I’ll be straight with you ... I mostly refer to him as Teen Angel. When we write about him or we talk about him as Teen Angel, it’s kind of like a different person than David Holland, you know what I mean? As an artist he signed his name as Teen Angel when it comes to Teen Angel’s magazine. When he signed ‘Dave Holland’ on a piece of art it was a totally different style of art—it wasn’t even Chicano related. So there’s kind of two different stories there. He was born David Holland—born in 1939 in Lawrenceburg,

Indiana. He was really drawn to art. His mother was an art teacher and his dad was in the navy. But by the time he was about 16, he said, all the cool guys would wear jackets, you know—with like their names embroidered on the breast—and everybody had nicknames.

And he liked Teen Angel. He liked the way it sounded, and he gave himself that name. It was something that he started calling himself as a teenager and it was something that just stuck with him.

It’s been said David’s reluctance to be personally identified with his work is in part because he himself was not Mexican.

Do you think there’s truth to that?

DDB: No, he was not seeking personal limelight. He didn’t want personal attention because he wasn’t that kind of person. He was more low key. And he kind of liked the mystery about it. You know for me … until I met him, I thought Teen Angel was this Pachuco-ed out guy who did time in prison, you know—real hardcore, wore a Pendleton everyday and a brim everyday, wore a zoot suit when he went out at night with his girlfriend. He liked that mystery. When I told him, ‘Hey, this is what I thought [of you],’ he says, ‘Well, I always wanted people to have whatever picture came to mind—I wanted them to have that picture, whatever they felt.’ He wanted his art to evoke feelings in people and when you saw his own personal drawings, you might see ten gangsters posted up against the wall and the graffiti everywhere and throwing up gang signs, but they were kind of these bobblehead

figures—kind of whimsical. He wanted his art to evoke happiness in people, even though the subject matter might be a little scary or negative. He never wanted it to feel that way.

He wanted it to be happy or whimsical.

Was he formally trained? Did he go to art school?

DDB: No, he didn’t. He took art classes, but he joined the service in the late 50s and was an artist for the army. He did murals and billboards and he would design certificates.

He went to Korea, and when he returned— probably starting in the early 60s—he was buying and selling cars. He was really into cars—old cars. He lived in a variety of places.

He lived in Washington before settling in California in the early 70s. His dream was always to come to California, so that’s where he came in the early 70s.

Is that when he started working for Lowrider magazine?

DDB: He was actually working as an artist in San Bernardino, and he would send artwork to different magazines—different car-affiliated magazines. He would get his work published, but when he sent his artwork to Lowrider magazine in 1977, and I guess he sent several pieces, they reached out to him and said, ‘Hey, would you like to work full time for us?’ So in 1977 he moved up to San Jose— and that was right when Lowrider magazine started. He started Teen Angel’s in 1981. He was still working for Lowrider magazine. The thing about Teen Angel is there’s different car cultures. There’s the hot rodders and 67

they had Ed Roth, the godfather of hot rod art, and the bikers had David Mann. David Mann was like the godfather of biker art for Easy Rider. Well … the lowriders, we had Teen Angel. He was the godfather of lowrider art, and I was drawn to him because in 1977 lowriders weren’t accepted—they weren’t even considered to be a respected car culture. At that time, hot rodders didn’t like lowriders.

They were a culture of their own, and they were looked down upon. So as a 12-year-old boy growing up, I embraced that lowrider culture. I was this little Chicano kid trying to find publications where I could actually see a lowrider in them. So when Lowrider Magazine came out, it was a big deal to me. But not only that, I was into art and I was into drawing, and [Lowrider] had this artist Teen Angel, and in every issue you would see his drawings. But not only was he an artist, he was a lowrider historian as well. He had a column called ‘Cruising Into The Past,’ and he would give history on where lowriding came from. So it was at a time where nobody saw any value in lowriding—nobody gave it any credit—and here was this artist that was not only drawing it but he was talking about the history of it and where it came from—he was educating the people as well.

What would a ‘Cruising Into The Past’ column look like?

DDB: They were usually focused on like a certain kind of car—like there was one article focused on the 32 Chevrolet, and so he talked about the different styles you could do a 32 Chevrolet. But then he would write little tidbits, like there was this story about how a 32 Chevrolet was used in a gang fight in East L.A. back in the 1940s, and how the guys rode on the ... they had step sides, so these guys would stand on them, and he drew a picture of all these guys cruising and holding on to the side of it. The stories would always be accompanied with drawings. He would talk about the hairstyles of Chicanos starting in the 40s going all the way through the 70s, and he would draw pictures of it. And he would talk about car customizers and how these custom cars evolved into lowriders. He’d talk about, ‘Hey, the first guys that started it were back in Sacramento, back in the 40s and this was their name…’ So to me it was interesting as a kid— he was giving background talking about these things that evolved into lowriding and into the culture. Then in 1981 he decided to start his own magazine. He was still working for Lowrider Magazine, but Teen Angel’s magazine was more focused on the community—the youth that were living in the varrios and that included gang members and young chicanas falling in love. So the premise of Teen Angel’s magazine was more focused on the lifestyle of living in a Chicano neighborhood.

Was this was something he tried to explore at Lowrider? Or did he view this as his own voice—something he had to publish separately?

DDB: I feel like he viewed it as his own voice, whereas Lowrider Magazine … the title is Lowrider, it’s focused on the car. Lowrider Magazine sometimes touched upon political issues or touched upon the neighborhood, but the main focus was the cars: car shows, car cruises, car features. Teen Angel created this magazine for the people in the varrios, for the

young people of the varrios, for the teenagers and the young adults because they had no voice. There was no Instagram, there was no Facebook, and you know the authorities ... nobody respected a cholo in a Pendleton and a brim and khakis, or a beautiful chola with her hair up, the graffiti on the walls, the lowriders that they drove. Nobody had any respect for that, and nobody saw any reason to give them any attention. So Teen Angel felt that … where others saw blight, Teen Angel saw beauty. When he saw a cholo and a chola together, all dressed in their cholo homeboy garb, or he saw a group of dudes walking or he saw graffiti on a wall, he saw beauty in that, and he wanted to give those people a voice and let them know that they were important.

Whether nobody felt that way or not, he wanted them to feel like there was substance to what they were doing, and that they were somebody.

How did you come to know Teen Angel personally?

DDB: I’m into Chicano art and lowrider art, and I started curating exhibits back in 2005. I always had an idea that I wanted to do an exhibit focusing on the artists that had impacted lowriding from the beginning.

Nowadays there are thousands of artists that consider themselves lowrider artists, but back in the 70s there was only a handful so it was important for me to showcase these guys. They were laying the foundation for the guys who do it now and get paid and make big bucks.

But there were guys like Teen Angel who had to struggle before it was socially accepted. I thought it was important to showcase them and find Teen Angel. There were all these urban legends when I would talk to people.

Some people said he lived in San Jose, other people said he moved to Mexico, others said he was locked up. Nobody ever had a straight story about who this guy was. But I was at this show that was focused on train art and locomotives … I was walking by one of the vendor tables and this guy was selling prints and I stopped dead in my tracks. I looked at the art—I was such a fan of Teen Angel that I was very familiar of his style—and it looked just like Teen Angel art, but it was this kind of … Americana art. It was kind of wholesome and there were American flags…

Like Teen Angel meets Norman Rockwell?

DDB: Exactly! So I picked it up, and the guy was just looking at me that was selling it. I turned the piece towards him said, ‘You know, if it didn’t have a white guy’s name here, I’d swear this was Teen Angel.’ The guy selling the stuff was a Mexican guy, and he said, ‘That is Teen Angel. Teen Angel’s my step dad.’

‘Whaaat? But there’s a white name here—this is a white dude.’ ‘Teen Angel’s white.’ I said, ‘Whoooaaa.’ I proceeded to tell this guy all these stories about Teen Angel art that I remembered as a kid, and how it influenced me and how I curated exhibits, and how I’d been looking for him for years. The guy was amazed I knew so much about him. He said, ‘Man, you really studied this guy. You know what? Lemme give you his phone number, and in case he doesn’t answer the phone, I’m going to give you his address too. Write him a letter or give him a call. He might be interested in hearing from you.’ Long story short, I called him about a week later, BOOKS

and he was madder than a wet hornet. He said his stepson should’ve never gave me his phone number—he said, ‘Lose my number!’

He wasn’t polite at all. He was very direct.

He wasn’t using nice language. He basically told me to jump in a lake, in not so nice of terms. I apologized. I said, ‘Hey, I had no bad intentions. I’ll never call you again—that’s not my style. I was a fan of yours, but I won’t call anymore. I was just hoping to do a display of some of your artwork, an exhibit.’ He says, ‘No, I don’t even have any artwork anymore.’

He told me he hadn’t left his house in years and he just doesn’t like dealing with anyone from the outside world. I said, ‘OK, I respect that.’

Before he hung up he said, ‘I build model cars ... I would love to build myself a ‘37 Chevy, but I won’t even leave my house to go to the store to do that. That’s how much I don’t like leaving the house.’ So we hung up and I went to my garage because I collect model cars. I pulled out a ‘37 Chevy, an unbuilt model kit, and I put it in a box, and I just wrote a heartfelt letter. I said, ‘Hey, I’ll never bug you again, but I just wanted to send you this as a token of my appreciation of the impact that you had on my life, and the impact that you had on our culture and on the lowrider culture. You’ll never hear from me again.’ A week later I come home, and there’s a letter from him. He told me he was so touched by my letter that I could call him anytime. So that started a friendship between him and I. We would talk once or twice a week over the phone for probably about a year before he ever invited me to his home. I would go once a month to his house to visit—go early in the morning and stay till night. I was in San Diego, he was in San Bernardino. He stopped working for Lowrider Magazine around 82 or 83 to pursue Teen Angel’s full time, and he moved back down to Southern California to San Bernardino. Our friendship just evolved.

That’s how he came to call me his best friend.

He said he’d never called anyone his best friend until he met me, so that was pretty powerful. Here to think … this man I had admired since I was 12 years old now called me his best friend. The story of our friendship is a powerful story in and of itself. But that’s a whole other story. The exhibit that we did at MOCA—that’s focused on the magazine. The book we did is focused on the magazine and the cover art. The story I’m working on now is the story about his life. But when it comes to the exhibit, the art that was featured in the exhibit was from my personal collection and the collection of Bryan Ray Turcotte.

Bryan, how’d you go from decades of punk publishing—Fucked Up and Photocopied, It All Dies Away—to working on this Teen Angel book?

BRT: I grew up in the southside of San Jose, and the culture there in my neighborhood was like … my father’s crowd was more the biker crowd, and me and all my friends were the skate-rat-punk rock crowd, and then my older brother had a lot of friends that were into lowriding. So we would go to car shows and we would ride lowrider bikes and we played in punk rock bands and I grew up on motorcycles. I grew up seeing Teen Angel’s, but then I kind of forgot about them for a long time. Then randomly I was in San Francisco visiting a friend’s zine shop in the Mission and BOOKS

he was like, ‘Dude, you gotta check this out.’

He showed me a bunch of Teen Angel’s original art that he had acquired, and I just flipped out!

‘Oh my God, this is insane! Where did you get all this stuff?’ They were on paper, sort of like ... what do you call them? Like the mechanicals for the magazine covers. So it’s just paper, ink drawings and then color shading, literally cutand-paste, glued together, really fragile ... the exact same size as the magazine, 8.5” x 11”.

You could see he used Wite-Out here and pen here and Sharpie there and then glued a thing on top, all the mechanicals that made the cover. I spent the better part of a couple years talking to him about it and reassuring him that what I wanted to do with it—if he were to allow me to purchase it—and eventually he sold it to me. That’s what started me going down a bigger path of trying to find as much as I could—whether it be original artwork or magazines, to amass the entire magazine collection. I was a fan of Teen Angel, but less interested in the other types of work he might have created—like the stuff David has, which is like childhood artwork and other pieces.

DDB: I have over 200 pieces he did as a kid.

BRT: I was primarily interested in the magazine itself and any artwork related to the magazine, especially the covers. I spent another year or so reaching out to different collectors and different people and looking around anywhere I could to try and find anything I could. Now I have about 90 original covers and every magazine. So in doing so, that led me to David because a mutual friend of ours—Estevan Oriol—was talking to David and saying, ‘Man, you have all this stuff and I know a guy who is just as passionate about it and he has all this other crazy stuff!’ He introduced us and at that point we struck a really good friendship and started collaborating on stuff. I got knowledge from him—he was friends with Teen Angel—and I showed him stuff he had never seen before.

At what point did you decide this has to be a book or exhibit?

BRT: I think early on. When I first met David, I’d always said I wanted to do a book that at least had every cover so that people could see it—often times people would want to come see the collection just to make sense of it because there are very few people that have that many, and there are so many. Last year at the Book Fair I invited David to come up because I wanted him to see what was going on there. In the back of my mind, I had this idea that if he was down, that might be a place where we could launch a book—the L.A. Book Fair. So he came up and was like, ‘Oh my God, bro, this is insane.’ I said, ‘We should do something here to sort of unveil … to introduce what we have to the world in a small atmosphere like this where we can kind of go crazy and then see what goes beyond that, whether it goes to a bigger museum show or whatever.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I’m down to do that.’ That’s where it started. We spent a whole year planning it. I had no idea it was going to be as big as it ended up, but it was a lot of coordination with Printed Matter and with David and with my team here in L.A., discussing building sets and what we were going to actually produce … and all of a sudden time had escaped us, and it was a marathon to get everything done in time.

What are the plans now?

BRT: David and I talk like almost every other day. I think there always comes that little bit of depression after a show like that—it takes the wind out of you. We for sure are planning to do at least one if not two more events similar to that one—that collection with the Teen Angel’s office and all the elements inside, sort of like a micro museum. In the bigger picture we have plans to take it to a LACMA or a Broad or a MOCA and have a much bigger show because there’s the art to support it. We have three times more that we couldn’t even show.

I think a proper museum installation that’s gonna sit for six months and travel and a proper book that’s gonna show the breadth of work he created. That’s always been in the back of our mind, and this was just the first step. And I think we always did have in mind that we would do a bigger book or a more comprehensive book—perhaps more text and explanation? But we decided that at the Fair it would make more sense to do something limited and just show people all the covers so that people could once and for all see all the magazines. It would just need to be a 1,000 page book if we were going to reproduce the interiors or if we were going to be ultra comprehensive. And then with David’s collection combined, I think there’s an opportunity to do a bigger book on the artist himself that doesn’t even primarily focus on the magazine. Considering that it was Printed Matter, we felt that we should focus more on the magazine than the person.

What has it been like for you—as a fan of the magazine—to go from collecting covers to now being fully immersed in the world of Teen Angel the artist?

BRT: It gives me a tremendous amount of pride in learning more about the person and how dedicated he was to what he did. It’s emotional. I feel like it’s family. I don’t really have a choice in it. I get drawn in more, and I take it very seriously. It was emotional for me at the show when Teen Angel’s wife was there—she’s like, ‘He’d be proud.’ It was beautiful, it was amazing. It’s a heavy burden sometimes to carry that stuff but you just feel like ... it wasn’t a choice for me, it was sort of just given to me in some weird way. Now David and I—and everyone involved in Teen Angel’s family—it’s a group effort, which is something that’s always worked for me well.

I don’t necessarily want to sit and do a thing by myself. With Fucked Up And Photocopied, I couldn’t have done that without my partner Chris Miller at the time. We tag-teamed to make that book and to keep each other in check. That’s often the way it is with Teen Angel. I’ll come up with something and say, ‘How about this?’ and I’ll revert to David to see is that cool? Is it not cool? Then we sort of come together. I can sort of represent the art community or the book community or whatever, and he’s coming straight up from what Teen Angel would want. I’m even more inspired to keep going because I learn more everyday. It’s hard to explain, but I feel like I was handed something that I need to be responsible for. There are still some unlocked secrets in his world. I’m still searching for certain things he did that he definitely had

no—from my perception—no desire to be consistent. It was just whatever he wanted to do. Which is amazing—to discover like all these side things and secret gems.

Do you have any favorites?

BRT: I love all the weird stuff that he did like Green Angels and Teenagers, and there’s all these off-shoot magazines that had different titles even though they looked exactly the same, like Gangas and La Bandera. I’m still piecing the puzzle together. Like I can say, ‘Here’s all the magazines,’ but I can’t tell you when they were made in any order. Again, to go backwards and think metaphorically … with Fucked Up And Photocopied, my goal was to create a book that felt like the way it felt if you were there. I designed that book very chaotically, the way I would a punk flyer. Like the more you put in the better. I designed it for my skate rat friends from San Jose to go, ‘Oh my God, that’s awesome!’ I could care less about what the publishing world or what the academic world would think about it. With the Teen Angel’s book, my thoughts were: this is celebrating a person who has a huge body of work and I am not going to sit and graphic design this to death.

I want this to feel as cool and authentic as the magazine felt, even though there’s no way we could publish something that has as much information as the magazine did. My first thought was … here’s the one and only chance you’re going to get. I don’t want to cloud it with anything other than the covers and a few little nuggets of paper that would give you a clue as to what might be coming.

I wanted to keep it clean. I didn’t want to step on what he did. Those magazine covers are so beautiful as they are—I can’t imagine wrapping a frame around them. The goal was to try and make it as pure and as authentic as holding the magazine itself. You wanna just sit and go, ‘That belongs with these things— it’s not a book that talks about these things, it is one of these things.’

DDB: What we were doing [at the LA Book Fair] is introducing Teen Angel to a whole new culture of people—these people that are into the art scene. I wanted them to see that these things they do, these zines …

I wanted them to see how Teen Angel was doing these back in the 70s and 80s. He was this underground magazine creator. I mean basically … the magazine, he did it himself.

His living room was like a production line where him and his wife and his two young boys would put together the magazine once a month. They’d staple it and fold ‘em and box ‘em and Teen Angel was the distributor also. He’d take a week driving up and down the coast of California to the different little cities and towns throughout California delivering the magazine. He was doing this underground thing back in the 70s and 80s that these people are doing now with these zines, and I wanted to showcase him. This guy was doing this underground zine thing back when nobody else was doing it. And he’s going against the grain by focusing on the Chicano culture when nobody else was doing that.

MORE INFO AT KILLYOURIDOLS. COM AND AT WWW.INSTAGRAM. COM/OFFICIALTEENANGEL 69

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