GARAGE ZINE SCIONAV.COM VOL. 3
COVER PHOTOGRAPHY: CLAYTON HAUCK
STAFF Scion Project Manager: Jeri Yoshizu, Sciontist Editor: Eric Ducker Creative Direction: Scion Art Director: malbon Production Director: Anton Schlesinger Contributing Editor: David Bevan Assistant Editor: Maud Deitch Graphic Designers: Nicholas Acemoglu, Cameron Charles, Kate Merritt, Gabriella Spartos Sheriff: Stephen Gisondi
CONTRIBUTORS Writer: Jeremy CARGILL Photographers: Derek Beals, William Hacker, Jeremy M. Lang, Bryan Sheffield, REBECCA SMEYNE
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SCION A/V SCHEDULE JUNE
Scion Garage 7”: Cola Freaks/Digital Leather (June 7)
Scion Presents: Black Lips North American Tour The Casbah in San Diego, CA (June 9) Velvet Jones in Santa Barbara, CA (June 10) Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, CA (June 11) Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, CA (June 12) Wonder Ballroom in Portland, OR (June 14) Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver, BC (June 15) Neumos in Seattle, WA (June 16) Knitting Factory Concert House in Boise, ID (June 17) Urban Lounge in Salt Lake City, UT (June 18) Bluebird Theater in Denver, CO (June 19) Plush in Tuscon, AZ (June 21) Rhythm Room in Phoenix, AZ (June 22) The Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa, CA (June 23) The Music Box in Los Angeles, CA (June 24) The Glass House in Pomona, CA (June 25) Scion Art Tour: Installation 7: Video CO Exhibitions in Minneapolis, MN (June 4-June 25) Scion Presents: The Big Idea, curated by Monsieur L’Agent, at Installation LA (June 25)
JULY
Scion Garage 7”: Reigning Sound/Last Year’s Men (July 5) Scion Art Tour: Installation 7: Video Pump Project in Austin, TX (July 9-July 30)
Locations, cities and dates subject to change
CURRENTLY AVAILABLE
Scion Garage 7”: King Tuff/Hex Dispensers
MUSIC VIDEOS Davila 666 “Esa Nena Nunca Regreso”
Tyvek “4312”
Hussle Club “Quaranteenagers”
ASK SCION Garage bands often put out music through many different independent record labels rather just sticking with one. What do you think that says about the garage rock community? Many bands and enthusiasts in the community hold the practices of the past dear. Prior to the mid-1960s, music in general was a singles market, which helped instill an insistent quality to what hit wax. The ability to have something tangible of your creation, even if it only lasts five minutes, is a monumental concept. In modern times labels are run by enthusiasts, no matter how limited a budget, and I believe that truly proves how supportive of a community we have.
—Jeremy Cargill, writer for zines Ugly Things and Galactic Zoo Dossier If you have a question, email us through the Contact page on scionav.com
original videos & performances BY
plUs eXclUsive & free mUsic doWnloads, event info, streaming mUsic on scion radio 17 & mUch more
scionav.com
Bad
Photography: Rebecca Smeyne
Sports
Growing up in Texas, there was no shortage of garage rock heroes for the three members of Bad Sports to worship. And though their sonic DNA can be traced back to sources far outside the borders of the Lone Star State, the Denton/Austin trio’s hooky assault has undeniably deep local roots. Guitarist Daniel Fried runs through a list of his four favorite Texas bands and musicians, some of whom we expected and some we’re psyched he told us about. Roky Erickson & The 13th Floor Elevators The 13th Floor Elevators were always on commercials here in Texas. You’d hear them here and there, but the first time I heard one of their full albums I was like, “What the hell is this?! There’s a guy playing electric jug right now. I don’t know what this is, but it’s awesome.” Pretty recently, I’ve gotten reeeally into Roky’s solo stuff as well, mostly through that documentary You’re Gonna Miss Me. Actually, there was this time we were on our way to New York and we were on the same flight as Roky. He was really nice.
Bobby Soxx I’m actually working on a documentary about Bobby Soxx’s life and music. He was a guy who always had a sense of humor about his lyrics and wrote really offensive stuff at the same time, too. Between songs he was constantly saying funny things, but then they would play and it was just this barrage of really, really heavy riffs and droning drums. He also had this really great band Stick Men With Ray Guns. OBN III Probably the best band in Texas right now, outside of anything I’m involved in, is OBN III. It’s our bassist Orville’s other band. They played on a patio at SXSW this year and it was the best show of the fest. They absolutely killed it. They’re actually named after Orville’s initials: Orville Bateman Neeley III. It’s a weird solo band sort of thing and they’ve put out two seven-inches so far and they’re going to put out more, I think. But during that [SXSW] show, Orville was climbing on top of ATM machines and jumping over the fences and he cut his hand sometime during the second song of the set. It was spurting blood all over the crowd. It was really cool. They really took the ball and ran with it. The Marked Men Our drummer Greg and I both went to the University of North Texas in Denton, but neither of us was good enough for the music school there. I think Greg was a Behavioral Analysis major and I was an English major. There’s only one person I know who’s gone to that school and is in a band and does anything at all musically: Jeff Burke of the Marked Men. He studied guitar there for two years and realized that he hated it, so he quit. It’s such an intensive program that it sort of saps all the fun out of playing music. You’re practicing all day every day, going to school with people who are into Dream Theater. But his band, the Marked Men, they’re like our “Denton Dads,” I guess you could say. They’re the ones who came before and paved the way for us. They’re a great band that built up a following over the years, and when we started out they booked us on shows and helped us out. In fact, our next album is coming out on Dirtnap, who did all of the Marked Men records as well. They blend punk and power pop and garage all at the same time. And we do that, too. As told to David Bevan myspace.com/badsportsband Watch an interview and live performances from Bad Sports at Scion Garage Fest at scionav.com/garagefest. Hear “Would You Wait For Me Too,” their contribution to the Scion Garage 7” series, at scionav.com/garage
DAVILA 666
ESA NENA NUNCA REGRESO WATCH THIS VIDEO, PLUS OTHERS FROM TYVEK, THE SPITS, THE DIRTBOMBS AND MORE
SCION A/V MUSIC VIDEO SERIES
SCIONAV.COM/MUSIC/SCIONAVVIDEO
Story: Jeremy Cargill
Rock & roll fanzine culture bubbled up from the musical underground in the late 1960s and exploded over the next two decades, but tech-obsessed inter-nerds have nearly steamrolled independent printing. Some fanzines still survive via the few rabid practitioners putting their money where their minds are, fringe-sitting to create a tangible artifact. Here, light is shed on a couple.
Bananas Magazine
Headed up by visual artists/enthusiasts Charles Gaskins and Christophe Lopez-Huici, Bananas Magazine is one of the most active, informative and well-written zines around, with a third issue just hitting the stands. This young and deadly zine revives grimy New York City’s corpse and presses its bones into ink for posterity. But Bananas’ breadth is what makes it shine: lengthy interviews with future-past champs like J.D. Martignon of Midnight Records, an overview of Russia’s garage revival scene, the ongoing state of NYC rock & roll and its champions, a report on Portugal’s Barreiro Rocks garage fest and Swamp Rats guitar tabs. And all of this is delivered with a wry sense of humor that makes it impossible to put down. Available for free in New York City, or just pay shipping for your own sterling copy! bananasmag.com
Galactic Zoo Dossier
Published roughly every two years since 1995, Galactic Zoo Dossier is the outgrowth of psychedelic renaissance man Steve Krakow (aka Plastic Crimewave) and a host of contributors, including genre stalwart Byron Coley. Galactic Zoo Dossier brings together Krakow’s love of psychedelic rock, garage, space rock, folk, noise damage and the seedier side of 1960s and1970s comics in a fully hand-drawn package that evokes the prime late-’60s rock zines. It also includes trading cards and CD comps. When not occupied with GZD, Krakow runs Drag City’s reissue imprint (Galactic Zoo Disk), writes the Chicago Reader’s “Secret History of Chicago Music” column and fronts his own psychedelic-spacepunk band, Plastic Crimewave Sound. Packages don’t come more complete than Sir Krakow. plasticcrimewave.com
Mongrel Zine
Rounding the corner at issue #9, Mongrel ’s got the good word on what’s happenin’ Northward. Seemingly all rocks are over-turned by our Canadian neighbors, from garage, trash and pop to more blues-drenched and blownout varieties. Janelle Hollyrock, Bob Scott and the whole cast of characters are true fanatics, with enthusiasm and passion that’s brilliantly transparent. Mongrel Zine’s an entertaining read throughout, with interviews masquerading as comic strips, a LENGTHY reviews section (watch for the highly opinionated and humorous Steve Ferreira) and the ongoing saga of roots-punks Demon’s Claws in their various forms (Jeff Clarke’s interview in #9 is pricelessly hilarious). None shall pass without the Mongrel clan laying their piece down, and it’s a worthy and informed piece indeed. mongrelzine.ca
Humanbeing Lawnmower
At a rate of one issue every other year, Humanbeing Lawnmower has thus far cranked out two issues of digest-sized depravity, with the next one scheduled for sometime this year. But these well-constructed tomes are fully worth the wait. Avi Spivak (cartoonist/editor/ partisan) is the ringleader of this rock & roll circus filled with Mad-style comic irreverence and articles covering overlooked stars of the big beat, past and present. Humanbeing Lawnmower covers everything from modern power pop and garage bands to features like William Penoyar’s diatribe “My Revolution: The Thug Rock Story.” avispivak.blogspot.com
Ugly Things
Broadcasting “the wild sounds of past dimensions” since 1983, Ugly Things may stand as the longestrunning rock & roll fanzine. Mike Stax and a cavalcade of fanatics worldwide (including this writer) prove time and again that people want what’s timeless and that the music of the ’60s (and the ’50s and ’70s) will forever be brimming with untold tales. Begun in the glueand-scissors format before evolving into the current biannual bible/encyclopedia, Ugly Things continues to ripen. Stax also leads a rock-solid garage-psych combo, the Loons, and contributes liner notes to ’60s reissues. ugly-things.com
Story: David Bevan Photography: Derek Beals
Digital Leather Digital Leather’s synth-punk was first born in a bedroom. Actually it was a dorm room. Mastermind Shawn Foree had just enrolled at the University of Arizona, Tucson and to help “cure“ his boredowm, he took to recording hallucinogenic guitar sounds on a four-track recorder. Addictively. As he progressed through school, Foree amassed a mighty collection of his own cassette-bound recordings, the Casiospiked contents of which grabbed the ear of a friend so aggressively that said friend sent a hand-picked collection of songs to King of the Monsters, a tiny hardcore label in San Diego.
That was in 2004, the year Digital Leather’s selftitled debut arrived. “I never really thought about putting out records, to tell you the truth,” Foree says. “I didn’t really have anything to do with that record coming out. But after that I thought I might as well put out another. And after that second one came out, I was hooked.” In the years that followed, Foree recorded and toured at a feverish pace, attracting the attention of both Fat Possum, the increasingly influential Mississippi
label that released his Warm Brother in 2009, and close friend, former manager and recently deceased Memphis garage rock hero Jay Reatard. “We wrote songs for one another,” Foree says of Reatard, who he toured with during the writing and recording of Reatard’s synth-driven Lost Sounds project. “It was a lot like a competition, where we would show each other stuff after it was written. But we played off one another here and there. Our songwriting was very call-and-response. Like an argument.” It’s a manic influence that you can hear right away in Foree’s energy, both on stage and on tape. Digital Leather’s gut-punch sensibility translates to just about any sonic palette he chooses to apply it to— be it a simple acoustic pop song or keyboard-driven kablooms, a dormitory bunk bed or a stained rock club. Watch an interview and live performances from Digital Leather at Scion Garage Fest at scionav.com/garagefest. Hear Digital Leather’s contribution to the Scion Garage 7” series at scionav.com/garage
Searching for Kicks
Story: Jeremy Cargill
These days you can buy a thrill, and searching for kicks isn’t so hard. Online shopping carts are battered by a devoted few who sift through the muck for rough diamonds to present to vinyl hounds and vintage gear junkies in the physical realm. Visit these spots when on their block. Burger Records Burger began with fellas from Thee Makeout Party! itchy to release their own vinyl and that of local teen punks Audacity. After being denied a vacation for touring, Sean Bohrman left cubicle monotony behind and went all in, opening a storefront in Fullerton, California with Brian Flores (ex-Third Eye Records) and Lee Noise. Home to today’s finest craves and past fave-raves on cassette, with occasional forays into CDs and LPs, they’ve crunched out 90 releases, with more to come soon. And for past finds, the boys rise at 5AM every weekend to scour swap meets for the treats collectors need. When in SoCal, make time for Burger. 645 S. State College Boulevard, Fullerton, California 92831 burgerrecords.com
Goner Records The venerable Goner Records, founded by Eric Friedl, is a garage rock institution, going from a humble Memphis start to current worldwide adulation. Springing up in 1993 as an outlet for Guitar Wolf’s U.S. invasion and material from Eric’s own band, Oblivians, they’ve since amassed more than 40 releases. Then in 2004 Friedl united with friend Zac Ives to bring the Goner mission to a storefront. But Goner’s done more than release rekkids. They’re approaching year seven of Gonerfest, a showcase for worldwide garage punk bands. Add regular in-store performances and an Elvis impersonator shrine on premises and you’ve got a Memphis must-stop. 2152 Young Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee 38104 goner-records.com
OMNIBUS In one year OMNIBUS has made a name for itself as an extension of bar/live music venue East End. Housed in the bottom floor and run by friends with a
passion for all things classic and vintage, OMNIBUS specializes in affordable clothing by small designers, vintage goods (clothes, records, etc.) and short-run releases by touring bands. Inspired by late-1970s Brit record stalls and vintage suppliers, and with aims to mutate into a record label, collectors can save time at OMNIBUS by browsing sub-categories geared towards obsessives (e.g. “Stonesy stuff”). 203 SE Grand Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97214 eastendpdx.com
Vinyl Richie’s Wiggly World of Records After becoming the mail-order center for record label Florida’s Dying six years ago, Rich Evans’ home eventually became overgrown with records and Wiggly World was born. Walls bedecked with whacked art, mostly courtesy of Ben Lyon, share space with a spate of releases by every modern label making worthwhile noise in the garage scene. But that ain’t all. Evans digs back to keep the racks packed with punk reissues, space rock and other toxic sounds. Its secluded location also makes the space ideal for shows in the parking lot. 2436 E. Robinson Street, Orlando, Florida 32803 floridaisdying.com
...debut LP coming soon. OUT NOW...
Kid Congo... Gorilla Rose LP/CD
Thee Oh Sees Castlemania LP/CD
TV Ghost Mass Dream LP/CD
Dirtbombs Party Store LP/CD
Davila 666 Tan Bajo LP/CD
www.intheredrecords.com
Story: Maud Deitch Photography: William Hacker
Ask musicians who know their stuff what they think of Gino Washington and you’ll hear a sweetness come to their voice and see stars appear in eyes. An R&B and rock & roll singer who made his name in Detroit in the early 1960s, Washington’s recorded output is brief but masterful. King Khan, a beloved soul-tinged garage rock figure in his own right, speaks of Washington in a tone that is a mixture of a son-to-father respect and all-out fandom. At Scion’s Garage Fest in Lawrence, Kansas last year, King Khan & the Shrines had the rare opportunity to back Washington in one of the festival’s closing performances. The collaboration was orchestrated after a few phone calls and one pre-show meeting in Kansas. “I felt really shy to meet him, but he was joking around with the band, doing his Johnny Mathis impersonation,” says Khan. “I didn’t know if we were going to get a tyrant or what.” Instead Washington was nothing but a gentleman, with, as Khan puts it, “none of the ego you might expect” and all of the punctuality you wouldn’t. At the festival, Khan & the Shrines commanded the sweaty Bottleneck, one of the four venues, with gyrating dancers, flying tambourines and horns playing in all directions. “I could see Gino on the side of the stage and I could tell from the look on his face that he was really excited,” says Khan. “We warmed up the room to the right temperature, and then when he did go on, I just stepped back and thought, ‘My band is backing up Gino Washington.’” Months later, Khan still laughs giddily when recalling this moment. “Jared [Swilley] from the Black Lips, you know he’s my little bro, and he was right there and we were hugging watching it and freaking out,” Khan continues. The crowd had the same reaction, whipping itself into an even greater frenzy. And onstage Washington stood calmly and smiled, holding the mic like an extension of his body and pulling the audience through fifty years of soul history.
myspace.com/ginowashington myspace.com/kingkhantheshrines Watch an interview with Gino Washington and live performances of him with the Shrines at Scion Garage Fest at scionav.com/garagefest
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Interview: David Bevan Photography: William Hacker
tyvek
Tyvek take their name from a fibrous, industrial grade, water-resistant brand of insulation so insanely dense that it’s used to protect the insides of homes and cars. The Detrort band’s wall-of-fuzz garage rock is the perfect analog to their namesake. We caught up with frontman Kevin Boyer over the phone just a few hours after the band returned home from a five-week trip through the rock clubs of Europe. You guys just got back from Europe. Forty shows in 40 days is a haul. Yeah, I think it was actually like 37 shows in 39 days, but close. We were driving ourselves, too, so we didn’t really have much downtime. You just have to try to eat really good, you know? Europeans really take the feeding bands thing to a higher level. We got good meals and good spots to sleep everywhere we went. In the US, you kind of have to find your own way. Do you think there’s a European equivalent to Detroit? Probably Helsinki. It felt like it had a similar vibe. We played in the Basque country in Spain, too. That had a really Midwestern feel to it. But in Helsinki, it seemed like everyone was trying to alleviate the boredom and depression of the super long winter there. They cut loose. Detroit’s a weird place, it’s not really like anywhere else, that’s for sure. The music scene is really good but there aren’t that many places to play. Everybody just heads to the same three or four bars.
Nothing Fits was definitely your cleanest record to date, but it was still pretty noisy. With so many bands who could also be considered lo-fi shifting toward way tidier sounds, do you plan on continuing down that path? I think Nothing Fits turned out a lot cleaner because we were in a real studio for the first time and got to do it right. So it just came out that way naturally. I definitely want to go back to a studio—if not the same studio we recorded that album in—but I try to think from record to record. I don’t know what the next Tyvek album will sound like. It might seem like a continuation or it might seem like a left turn. We’ll have to wait until we actually start recording it and then see what happens. Where did your idea for naming Tyvek’s sound “crocodile rock” come from then? Crocodile rock, more than anything else, is a commentary on the idea of genres or groupings. It’s just a joke! Watch an interview and live performances from Tyvek at Scion Garage Fest at scionav.com/garagefest
Inter v ie
w: Dav
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reigningsound
Greg Cartwright has been forming influential, true blue garage rock bands for nearly two decades, including Oblivians. Most recently, the Memphis native has written and recorded with Reigning Sound, a band that’s gained cultish renown for bringing their road-worn sensibility and all-inclusive songwriting to stages big, small and grimy. Just minutes after he put his daughter to bed at 7:30PM sharp, Cartwright filled us in on what he’s been up to and what he’s been thinking about.
You were just at a record convention in Allentown, Pennsylvania, right? Yeah. It’s this 45s-only record show that happens twice a year. The funny thing is that the show is on a Saturday, but everyone shows up the Tuesday before and we all stay at the same hotel. So everybody is just walking from room to room, listening to records, hanging out. People have their records laid out all over their rooms, on their beds and dressers so everyone can look. And for four days, before anything even happens, people are hanging out and trading. By Saturday I’m already gone. I’ve already got everything I want and everything I needed to see.
What kind of 45s did you set out looking for? Did you have a wish list? I don’t have a wish list, but I know what I like. There are things out there that I’d love to own copies of, but I’m also just looking for local releases from different cities that have an interesting, homemade-looking label. Or a band you’ve never heard of with a cool sounding song. Everybody’s got a portable record player that they carry with them and you can go through people’s boxes and dig out five or six things you want to listen to. The end all/be all is to find a song that is awesome that you’ve never heard before. That’s what you really want. The known records that are really pricey and rare are great because you can
flip them or keep them or do whatever you want with them, but when you find that real jewel in the pile that nobody’s ever really heard before, well, that’s exciting. Did you find anything like that this time around? I did. I found at least three that were really, really great. Sammy Johns & the DeVilles’ “Words Won’t Come My Way” has a sound I like: 1960s teen garage with a really Southern vocal. You can hear that the guy is about 17 years old and maybe from Mississippi or Arkansas. Being from Memphis and being really into local ’60s records from Memphis, that sound really resonates for me. I also picked up a couple rockabilly things, some R&B records, some garage stuff. I DJ a couple nights a week. What’s at the fore in my mind when I’m looking at a box of records is, “Is this something I can play on a Saturday night and people will dance to it?” That’s why I’m always looking for a good R&B 45. You grew up listening to oldies radio, didn’t you? Does your feel for DJing have a lot to do with that? I did, and when I was a kid listening to oldies radio stations in Memphis you would hear Pop 100 things, but you would also hear local hits, like the Hombres’ “It’s A Gas” or the Guillotines’ “I Don’t Believe.” Those kinds of songs were really cool and really local. But the way charts worked back then was so different. Local radio really could be local. Things were different back then. I remember when I had my very first car, I was driving to high school and I turned on the oldies station I would listen to every morning and they said, “Oldies 98! No more boring doo-wop. Now, hits of the ’70s and early ’80s!” Just like a switch, they turned it off. I’m sure it was sad for people who were nostalgic for the music of their era, but it bummed me out as well. It’s interesting how the definition of what’s “classic” tends to evolve. To me, your work in Reigning Sound veers that way, towards rock & roll traditionalism rather than purism. I think so. When I think of somebody as a purist, I think of someone who walks around in Beatle boots and perfectly coifed hair and everything about their lifestyle must be, look, seem and sound like it came from 1966, or whatever era they’re trying to evoke purely. To me, it’s all about mixing it up. I do like the old traditions, the old ways of writing songs and the classic song structures. I’m into preserving what I feel rock & roll is all about.
u t m ix in g o b a l l a ’s “ T o m e , it ik e t h e o l d it u p. I d o l s h e o l d w ay t , s n io it d tra e ongs and th s g in it r w of t u r e s . I’ m c u r t s g n o c l a s s ic s h at I f e e l w g in v r e s in t o p r e t.” is a l l a b o u l l o r & k c ro How do you think the idea of garage rock specifically has shifted? In the late ’70s and early ’80s, all these bands were being influenced by underground ’60s records, local records and edgy rock & roll records by bands like the Seeds. But people were turning onto that sound and trying to find a way to work that into what they were doing, like Television and the New York Dolls. And they did, they found a way to integrate that sound. That’s when “garage rock” first started being tossed around to define that kind of music. It’s really changed since then. It’s come to encompass bands that look like they’re from the ’60s, bands that are totally aggressive punk bands or surf bands. Even singer-songwriters are being identified with the garage movement. I think that’s because “garage” has come to be what describes rock & roll at its most basic level. Start a band, learn some chords, play some gigs, have some fun. That’s it. “Garage” seems to personify people who play for their own pleasure, when you’re playing in your garage or your living room or your carport or whatever. You’re not playing in a stadium. Chances are you never will, though you might make it to a bar. But you’re playing for your friends. That’s what garage means and that’s true to Reigning Sound. I’ve basically been playing the same circuit of bars for the past 15 years.
facebook.com/reigningsound Watch an interview and live performances from Reigning Sound at the Scion Garage Show series at scionav.com/garage
LAST YEAR’S MEN Story: David Bevan Photography: Jeremy M. Lang
Last Year’s Men are in a van somewhere around Rochester, New York, about 18 hours since their first set in New York City. Strangely, it wasn’t a typically frosty New York audience that irked the Chapel Hill-based upstarts, but the other bands that they shared the bill with. “Not a ton of people came out, but that wasn’t our scene at all, man,” says 19 year-old frontman Ben Carr with a laugh. “It was all indie electronica, like Justin Bieber meets Nine Inch Nails. So weird.” While you can hear Last Year’s Men’s youth in both the verve of their pop noise and the teenage thrashing of Carr’s lyrics, their age hasn’t kept them from sharing hometown stages with incoming guests like King Khan & The BBQ Show and Reigning Sound, the long-running outfit that actually inspired Carr to start writing songs on his own. In fact, you might say Last Year’s Men are more old souls than young punks. They not only took their name from a Leonard Cohen lyric, but
also filled out their first few practices by dusting off Sam Cooke covers. “We were originally going for that kind of sound, but then we transitioned somehow to garage-y power pop,” says Carr. “I think the residual effects from whatever punk bands we were in kept lingering and just came out naturally.” It seems like they’ve found a healthy medium, one that their neighbors seem to totally appreciate when Last Year’s Men practice (LOUDLY) in drummer Ian Rose’s basement most nights of the week. “It’s in a suburban neighborhood so we figured a couple of cops would have been called,” Carr says. “But, nope! No complaints to date!”
Watch an interview and live performances from Last Year’s Men at the Scion Garage Show series at scionav.com/garage
SCION RADIO 17 FEATURES NEW MUSIC, EXCLUSIVE MIXES AND INTERVIEWS ON 17 DIFFERENT CHANNELS
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Photography: Bryan Sheffield
As they get older and release more music, Black Lips have become more recognized for the craftsmanship in their ratty psychedelia than for their on- and off-stage shenanigans. And they continue to expand outwards, as evidenced by Cole Alexander’s growing interest in remix work. Here, the band’s guitarist/vocalist explains which old and new sounds have influenced how he tackles a remix.
It completely changed the music industry once somebody realized you could take pre-recorded elements and make music out of them. That’s the art of sampling. Schaeffer would slow it down and loop it so it would keep going on forever. They would do all kinds of stuff. Then in the 1950s, people started to get into more of what we know as electronic music: computers making drumbeats.
My approach to remixing is to try and make things more psychedelic and ethereal, more ambient. I’m still learning, but I’m getting into it and I think even a good remixer is always learning.
I have a much more avant-garde sensibility when it comes to remixing. It’s not so much about getting people to dance at the club. It’s a way to deconstruct music. That’s what I really like about DJ Screw: slowing stuff down, taking sounds apart and manipulating them. I do like dancing, but my approach is more about giving people a psychedelic soundscape.
I’ve learned the basis of what I’m doing now from recording music myself. I have a sampler with Black Lips, and I run pre-recorded pieces through effects all the time when we’re recording or playing live. We work with analog a lot, so I’m trying to figure out computer programs that can help me do stuff digitally. All the stuff I used to do was with tape cassettes. For my own pleasure I would take spikes in songs and run them through effects and back onto cassette. The first time I did that was when I was 13. We would record little blips and scratches from tapes and mix them. I’m really into musique concrète. It’s a form of a music they came up with it in France in the early 1900s, the first electronic manipulation of music. Everybody made classical music, but by the 1900s they figured out how to record music, so they started recording symphonies. There was this guy, Pierre Schaeffer, from France in the 1920s. He was the first guy who took the playback of the recorded music and manipulated that. He called it musique concrète, and he would take concrete sounds like, say, something in nature or train sounds, and then he would manipulate it.
I’m actually working on a remix right now for a song on our new record called “You Keep On Running.” I’m trying to get Tyler from Odd Future on there and Waka Flocka Flame, but I guess I need to send them the song and see if they like it. Mark Ronson was actually encouraging me to make a mixtape for the new record as a promotional tool. He made a lot of alternate remixes in the studio, like live analog remixes while we were working. I really liked those. He’d make our mix and then make another one real quick. He’d honestly deconstruct everything, take it all out except for bass and drums and then ride up the volume from other tracks really minimally. I learned that from him, riding a mixer. It’s turntables as a style of remixing. I like all the early forms of remixing, before computers. As told to David Bevan Hear Black Lips’ remix of Win Win from Scion A/V Remix: Win Win — Victim f. Blaqstarr at scionav.com/winwin
t o i detr Scene Report PJ’s Lager House
A venue that I definitely like a lot is the Lager House. It’s run by this guy PJ who actually used to run a record shop in Ann Arbor that I used to go to when I was young. They book everything—Detroit has a rich garage rock history and there are a lot of garage rock bands now, but there are a lot of other kinds of music. And there are national acts that play there. It’s probably a 150 to 200 capacity venue, so it’s pretty small. So if you play there on a Tuesday night and 50 people show up, you still feel good about yourself. High Bias Recordings
Photography: Bryan Sheffield Ko Melina, member of the Dirtbombs and all around Motor City womanabout-town, says that Detroit’s the kind of city where “you definitely need a tour guide,” so we figured we’d ask her to be ours. Melina came back with some awesome recommendations of places to go and people to meet. Peoples Records
I’m sort of biased because I just started working at a record store in Detroit. The best place is Peoples Records. It’s all secondhand, so if you’re going to buy a brand new record it’s not going to be there, but it’s got a great selection of everything’s that’s basically Detroit’s history. There’s one owner, his name is Brad, and he’s actually the bass player for Human Eye. Detroit’s like a big little town, so everybody knows everybody.
High Bias Recordings is run by my friend Chris Koltay. Chris Koltay is one of those people who’s definitely a character. He’d be so mad at me for saying this, but you either like him or you don’t like him. But when you record there, he takes really good care of you. He’ll cook you dinner and cook you breakfast, so you kind of feel like you’re at home. He has a room with bunk beds set up, so if you’re not from Detroit and you come to record, you can stay with him at his place. He also has a good selection of reading materials for when you have downtime, like when somebody’s doing an overdub and you have nothing to do. He’s mostly analog, but he does have digital capabilities. Johnny Ill Band
There’s tons and tons of good new Detroit bands. There’s this guy who has a band called the Johnny Ill Band that I like a lot. For lack of a better description, it’s kind of adolescent punk. It’s humorous to me. Like, he’s got a song about winter and how winter sucks because it’s cold. There’s a certain charm he’s got about him that I enjoy. thedirtbombs.net Watch an interview and live performances from the Dirtbombs at Scion Garage Fest at scionav.com/garagefest. Hear “Secret Code,” their contribution to the Scion Garage 7” series, at scionav.com/garage
L L O R G O BL aquarium dr Aquarium Dru unkard.com nkard featu res a truly e Los Angeles clectic mix -focused len of genres, s s . With a rad of download een through io show on S s, videos an a irius XM an d interviews more about d daily offeri , Aquarium D your favorite ngs runkard is th independen e spot to lea t artists tha rn t you haven ’t heard of y et. buddyhea d.c Never afraid to om say what they really think, the folks at B uddyhead offe r hilarious— and occasiona lly brutal—blo g posts, reviews and inte rviews coveri n g the legends and failures o f the music w orld.
.com gonerblog.blogspot presence of iconic The Gonerblog is the online . The folks at Memphis label Goner Records ssion to keep you Goner have made it their mi ws and tunes up to date with the latest ne his and beyond. from garage acts from Memp They don’t miss a beat.
Radio 17 To P Picks CH RIS MO RR IS Chris Morris, journalist and host of Scion Radio 17’s Watusi Rodeo, is basically an encyclopedia of garage rock. We caught up with him to tell us some of the choicest cuts he’s been listening to off the air. Black Lips, Arabia Mountain (Vice) The new Black Lips record was recorded with Mark Ronson, who also recorded Amy Winehouse. They haven’t lost anything in trying to make a more “professional sounding” record. The tracks are as tough and uncompromising and funny as anything they’ve done in the past, and there are a bunch of standout tracks on the record. For a band in the garage vein, you can say this is a very mature record. The People’s Temple, Sons of Stone (HoZac) The People’s Temple are two sets of brothers from Lansing, Michigan: Spencer and William Young, and Alex and George Szegedy. It’s a straight-up garage rock thing, very traditional, very Nuggets-y, but with a kind of Rolling Stones influence. And at least on this album they throw on the psychedelia really heavy. They’re thrilling live, really up in your face. It’s not just working from the old template, they bring something new and unique to everything they do. But really, the proof is in the pudding—the record is straight out of the garage and it’s not manicured, it isn’t real pretty. There’s always something interesting going on. They’re all kids, but they know their stuff and come firing on all cylinders. The Fleshtones, Roman Gods/Up-Front EP…Plus (Raven Records) The Fleshtones are still standing on tables, diving into the crowd, jumping around and creating havoc everywhere they go. They’re one of the great garage bands from New York City. The Australian label Raven has put out a collection of some of their early material on I.R.S. from when they were doing what they called “super rock” back in the 1980s. They’ve reissued a package of one of their early albums, Roman Gods, material from their Up-Front EP, as well as [songs] from one of their live albums, Speed Connection II. The Fleshtones
are heroes of mine. They’ve been doing this for 30-some years, and there still isn’t a better garage band working out there. This package gives people who weren’t around for the early part of their career a chance to go back and see where they came from.
The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project, We Are Only Riders (101 Distribution) This is a record Kid Congo told me about back when we did the Scion Garage Fest in Portland in 2009, and I finally got my hands on a copy of it. It’s a tribute record called We Are Only Riders and it’s by the Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project. Jeffrey Lee Pierce was the frontman and songwriter for the Gun Club, the great LA garage punk band. A cassette was found of a bunch of uncompleted songs Jeffrey Lee was working on when he died, and an all-star cast has come to the microphone to work on some of them. You’ve got people like Nick Cave, Debbie Harry, Lydia Lunch, Dave Alvin, Johnny Dowd, you’ve got Cypress Grove, who actually recorded with Jeffrey Lee back in the day. It’s an incredible group of people interpreting the legacy of Jeffrey Lee Pierce. Jeffrey Lee was a guy who never got a lot of credit when he was alive, but he was one of the first guys to bring together punk rock and blues and garage rock and mix them up and turn them into something new. So this is a really unique opportunity to see what the next stage in Jeffrey Lee’s musical evolution might have become. And obviously the people on the album are incredible. It’s worth hunting for. Listen to Watusi Rodeo, Chris Morris’ monthly Scion Radio 17 show at scionav.com/radio/channel12
LAST YEAR’S MEN at scion garage show in austin, tx.
HEX DISPENSERS at scion garage show in chicago, IL.
GUESTs at scion garage show in austin, tx.
CHERYL DUNN AT INSTALLATION 7 : Video IN BROOKLYN, NY.
Gluekit at installation 7: video at installation LA.
scott musgrove at 11:11 opening at installation LA.
GUESTs at scion garage show in austin, tx.
ABOUT TOWN REIGNING SOUND at scion garage show in austin, tx.
A GUEST at scion garage show IN Austin, TX.
LAST YEAR’S MEN at scion garage show in austin, tx.
REIGNING SOUND at scion garage show in austin, tx.
The london police at installation 7: video at installation la.
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