VOL. 8 NO.

4 ISSUE 115
SUMMER 2014

LOW LEAF • THE MUFFS

JOYCE MANOR • NED DOHENY
RUTHANN FRIEDMAN • BLU
DJ HARVEY’S WILDEST DREAMS
CRAIG LEON • MILK ’N’ COOKIES
CURTIS HARDING • JOEL JEROME
PUNK IN AFRICA • ALEXANDER HEIR
BRIAN REITZELL • BLACKBOARD CAFE
ALBUM REVIEWS • COMICS • AND MORE
6 CURTIS HARDING
Chris Ziegler
28 DJ HARVEY’S
8 LOW LEAF
sweeney kovar
WILDEST DREAMS
Kristina Benson

12 NED DOHENY 32 THE MUFFS

Chris Ziegler D.M. Collins

16 RUTHANN FRIEDMAN 36 JOYCE MANOR

Daiana Feuer Chris Ziegler

20 CRAIG LEON 44 BLU

Ron Garmon sweeney kovar

26 JOEL JEROME 48 MILK ‘N’ COOKIES

Jacquelinne Cingolani Ian Marshall

RUTHANN FRIEDMAN by AARON GIESEL


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Kristina Benson, Jun Ohnuki THE MUFFS POSTER — Ward Robinson and Jun Ohnuki

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4
CURTIS HARDING
Interview by Chris Ziegler
Photography by Ward Robinson
Curtis Harding came out of Atlanta with some Cee Lo tours behind him, a ferocious Velvet Underground cover and a band called
Night Sun that was born from the same swampland that birthed the Scientists. But then Burger put out his first solo 45—a real-
deal soul stormer called ‘Keep On Shinin’—and quickly followed with full-length Soul Power, Harding’s true debut. Here he takes
twelve songs to pass through three decades and the smoke left behind by a long line of blazing 45s, revealing himself as the sort
of charismatic iconoclast—a la Arthur Lee, Kid Congo Powers or Andre Williams—who bends genre to his will and who doesn’t stop
rolling tape til he gets exactly what he wants. Get the record and go where it tells you.
Tell me about your family—your mom was
a gospel singer and you grew up touring?
My dad is a blue-collar dude. A master me-
chanic, been in the Army—he’s 84 years old.
He was in the Korean conflict, man. My
mom, she’s a gospel singer and evangelist—
still. In my house we were not really allowed
to listen to what was called secular music,
but I would find it and still listen. Just go to
a friend’s house. As I got older, my mother
got a little more relaxed with it. She real-
ized I wasn’t gonna bend my ideas and my
thoughts about life in general. I dunno how
it is on the other side, but for me, that was
just normal—how life was. Until I started
meeting other people who grew up differ-
ently—that’s when I realized there’s another
perspective on being a kid growing up. Like
not traveling and not growing up that way.
But for me, that’s what it was.
Was there any kind of culture shock once
you left the world of the church?
I didn’t have that cuz my mother would have
us out on the streets of New York City at 3
AM—seeing homeless people, having home-
less people staying with us, gang members
staying with us. I was not sheltered! My moth-
er was tough about what we inputted in our
ears, our audio listening. That was one thing
she was always adamant about. But sheltering?
No. I lived in South Central L.A., all over the
place. But I could see how coming from that
culture of churchgoing people how that hap-
pens. I have friends that happened to. Musi-
cally, we were a little sheltered. I had to sneak
things out.
Who did you meet as a teenager that you
still remember?
Homeless people, man. People we’d stay with
or who’d come stay with us. Different people
at different times, depending on what side of
the world we were at. Sometimes it was heavy,
sometimes it was easy, just like anybody else.
Homeless people are just like anybody else,
down and out but just like anybody else. Gang
members are just like anybody else. It’s just dif-
ferent circumstances.
Are you good at starting up conversations
with total strangers now?
I learned not to talk to strangers! However—
if you do, you learn what to talk about. And
6
learn to be comfortable in your own skin. You
learn shit is not as hard as you think it is. You
might have some problems, but some other
guy has it way worse. Learning those lessons,
being exposed to different things like that—it’s
definitely gonna stick with you. That’s why I
don’t throw a hissy fit if I sleep on the floor.
As long as I have somewhere to sleep! When
I came to L.A. for two weeks, I had a book
bag with a pair of jeans, a couple T-shirts,
my computer—one carry-on bag and that’s
it. You don’t need a lot. If I need it, I can go
to Walgreens. You might have to get the fuck
out of wherever you at! You don’t know! And
someone will have some toothpaste, dude. Or
baking soda and peroxide. You can use that. If
there’s a will, there’s a way.
There’s such a clarity to your record—I hear
a lot of people try this sound and they just
step all over it.
Like trying too hard?
Like not even remembering what they were
trying. How did you not do that?
How did I not make the songs sound shitty?
Exactly—if we can answer this now you’re
going to change the world!
I wasn’t trying to do anything. I wasn’t trying
to make it sound like it was old—I was using
elements of shit that I like. That’s my version of
pop music. I like that era of music, that’s what
I call hip pop—good song writing, recording
to an analog tape. I’m not trying to make shit
sound old. I’m not a throwback. This is 2014.
I’ll definitely use elements—like whatever gui-
tar or amp they used—but I’m not going to try
to make it sound like shit. If they were record-
ing today, they would try to make it sound as
clean and as crisp as possible.
It’s not the tape hiss that people like—they
like the actual music.
Exactly. Just leave it alone, keep it simple. You
know who’s good at doing that—making ele-
ments of old songs plus new stuff? Daptone.
They got it down to a science! They love soul
music and they’re making it and you can tell. It
also helps to have a team of people who know
their gear, and having the right engineers, the
right studio, the right team of people. That’s a
huge part of it.
You named your album Soul Power—what’s
soul power? Is it different from soul music?
‘Soul Power’ is a song that was going to be
on the record and I took it off, but the name
stuck. The name is fitting. Soul to me is like
no respect to genre or a person or anything—
you either have it or you don’t, and it’s experi-
ence, it’s a love of music, a love of life, a love of
all that shit. Ol’ Dirty Bastard had soul. Most
people have soul. DeeDee Ramone had soul.
I don’t think there’s any one way of like …
there’s no school for soul. I guess the school
of hard knocks maybe? Just hanging out with
people, hanging out with your uncle that lis-
tens to blues, and drinking moonshine, and
going to the bar, and writing songs, and get-
ting your ass kicked sometimes, and hanging
out with homeless people, and going to shows.
It’s a lifestyle—it’s not nothing you can teach
somebody. It’s something you have to live, you
have to go through. And then it’s something
that comes out in your personality and extends
into your music if you’re a musician. And you
don’t even have to be a musician to have soul—
you can just be like a regular motherfucker,
know what I’m saying? To me, that’s it. I know
a lot of people who aren’t even musicians, like
my uncle for one, who has a whole lot of soul!
Just hang out with his ass and you’ll see!
Who are the people in your life that you still
look up to? And want to learn from?
I don’t have a mentor so to speak, but my un-
cle—I talk to him. My dad, he’s been through
a lot in his life. He’s seen a lot of shit and been
through a lot of shit. My mom, she definitely
has soul. There’s no one person. I definitely
have friends who are like-minded and who also
have been through things and musicians who
have lived lives of their own. It’s a community
of people, and it’s almost like rock ‘n’ roll high
school when we get together and we play mu-
sic. That’s another thing Burger is good at—
bringing like-minded people together.
I feel I’m catching you on the part of the
roller coaster where you’re about to roll
through the craziest part.
I’m 34 years old, I’ve been through it, I’ve seen
it—it’s like I know what I want to do and when
you get to that point, you’re okay. It’s almost
like a basketball player leaving high school
and going straight to the NBA—it’s better to
go through college and hone your skills. Take
your time, then you’ll know how to handle
certain things, That’s the only thing I can
compare it to at this point. You just gotta grow
into it, take your time. That’s part of having
soul—you don’t have to rush anything. When
you’re young, you want to conquer the world,
you want to make a million dollars off of five
songs and you think you got the hot shit. But
that’s not reality. Usually if something happens
really fast, there’s something wrong with it and
you need to sit back and look at it.
That’s like the company just trying to hustle
fresh product out. Which is great for the re-
lease schedule but maybe not for the artist.
And it’s not good for the music. That’s one
thing I appreciate about Burger—they re-
ally like music. And that’s what makes a great
producer too! I mean, I can play drums, play
guitar. But when I was recording the record I
was like ‘OK, I can play this riff, but I know
someone who can play it better.’ And that’s
what makes a good producer as well. As a
musician I want to play everything. However,
to make this song better, I’m going to ask my
friend who can play his shit the way I hear it
in my head. You do what’s best for the song,
best for the record, best for music in general.
If more people had that mentality then we
wouldn’t have this fucking influx of bullshit
that’s been going on for so long. That’s people
being tricked by their egos: ‘I’m awesome
all the time!’
There’s a time and a place to you to feel like
you’re fucking awesome but when you actu-
ally record the record, take a step back and be
like, ‘What is actually going to make this song
sound good to people?’ If people did that shit
more often, shit would be a whole lot better.
How do you de-fuse the ego?
I don’t know how to explain that shit, I think
it’s another thing like fucking soul: you either
have it or you don’t.
When was the last time you were like, ‘I’m
fucking awesome!’?
Last time I had sex, man.
Before, during or after?
All three.
CURTIS HARDING’S SOUL POWER IS
AVAILABLE NOW FROM BURGER RE-
CORDS. TWITTER.COM/KIRK_UN-
DERWATER.
LOW LEAF
Interview by sweeney kovar
Photography by Alexandra A. Brown

Low Leaf is an alchemist. By synthesizing analog instruments and

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

Tell me about the new album. Is it supposed
to play out like a story?
‘Akasha’ in Sanskrit means ‘ether.’ ‘Pag-alay’ in
Tagalog means ‘offering.’ The album is a spiri-
tual offering to the Philippines. The first song,
‘Umaga,’ translates into ‘morning.’ The story, I
suppose, is the awakening of the people. All of
the songs are messages to the Filipino psyche
of today as well as me trying to call upon my
ancestors as a vessel. Not having access to the
ancient traditional folk songs that have long
been forgotten—I wanted to know what the
unheard songs were. We’re all alive because of
our ancestors and I wanted their frequencies
to pass through my filter so people could wake
up and realize that we’re creating the culture
today. Even though the wounds of so many
years of colonization are still very much ap-
parent in today’s society, they can be healed
through music and creation. It’s up to us to
reawaken that which they could have never
taken from us—our spirit. Once we alkalize
the spirit, then we can let it show through our
art and music.
I think it’s really interesting that you bring
up resisting against the heritage of colonialism
but you acknowledge that some part of it is
8
in us—especially living as people of color
in America. Before you reconnected to your
heritage, did you feel like you had a double
consciousness growing up?
Oh yeah! Growing up I had such a confused
identity. My parents migrated to America to
pursue the American dream, I guess. My dad
is a doctor and within our household we had
all the Filipino traditions. But when I stepped
out of the house I had no idea what Filipinos
were in American society. There were no Fili-
pinos in music or in the media at all. I didn’t
have anyone to identify with. In many ways
I was resentful and I didn’t understand why I
was born Filipino. In searching for an iden-
tity I found myself gravitating to different
genres of music because that made sense to
me. As I was trying to find myself, the music
drew out these heavy questions: ‘What is my
sound?’ ‘Where do I come from?’ ‘What is
my ultimate heritage?’ So I just started look-
ing up the history and trying to find songs
on YouTube. I found this instrument with
gongs in different tones and the sound im-
mediately resonated with me. I started re-
searching Filipino myths that made so much
sense to me—more sense than Catholicism,
 XJUI
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“If you can conceive of a sound, it exists.
It’s up to you to pull it out and manifest it.”
which was brought to the Philippines from
the Spanish. I was like, ‘OK, before Catholi-
cism the Philippines had their own gods!’
They were almost like pagans in a way. I got
all these books like The Way of the Ancient
Healer, which talks about healing and sacred
teachings of the Filipino ancestral traditions.
I found that Filipino shamans did healing
rituals with music and nature for ages, which
inspired me so much. When I make music,
I have my own rituals with lighting sage and
candles and always making sure that before I
enter the music-making process, I acknowl-
edge that these are not my songs. I try to
make it as sacred and honest of a process as
possible. I also realized that this whole time I
had been tapping into my ancestors without
even knowing it, for I am a living ancestor
too and my intentions with music are to—
ultimately—try to heal and uplift the con-
sciousness of people. It’s very exciting to be
alive in this point and time because we have
access to all this information from the past as
well as the technology to create anything that
we want. If you can conceive of a sound, it ex-
ists. It’s up to you to pull it out and manifest
it. I think in a lot of ways it works to my ad-
vantage having grown up without an identity.
My entire life has been a journey to discover
what that identity is and it inevitably affects
the music. The music is just a documentation
of where I am in my spiritual evolution.
How have you strengthened that connec-
tion to your heritage?
For the album, I was sampling a lot of sounds
from traditional Filipino instruments. I was
really musing my return to the Philippines.
I hadn’t been there since 2012, when I had
this really beautiful experience in this mysti-
cal mountain where I actually saw spirits. It
really validated a lot of the feelings I’ve had
my entire life. I was never the same after that.
Every single song I made after that was for
the Philippines in a way and these are ten
songs that made most sense together. The al-
bum’s done and now when I’m writing things
I feel that ultimately, no matter what, me be-
ing Filipino will always give its own flavor to
the music. But now, I’m really interested in
the tribespeople of the entire world, because
we all have a shared heritage, which is of the
cosmos.
What you’re saying reminds me of some-
thing I’ve heard recurring in your music.
You make reference to ‘hearts becoming
one’ several times.
INTERVIEW
I feel that the only way we are going to col-
lectively shift our consciousness is if we truly
become one with compassion. Once you see
yourself in the other—that is when we will
be able to really come together and create the
world that is meant to be. We are moving in
that direction already, and it’s been written
that we are going to wake up as we are in this
transition phase. Compassion is so important
to me because once I felt that for myself I be-
gan to see my face in every single human that
I met. Growing up in American society you
are conditioned at an early age to see separa-
tion by clothing or by class. You want to be
an individual and make your own identity.
I’ve always felt like such a fuckin’ outcast. I
couldn’t fit in with anyone and I tried to for
so long and really compromised who I was so
I could have a group of friends. It wasn’t until
I woke up and was like, ‘Fuck it, I don’t care
anymore if I don’t fit in. I gotta be true to who
I am even if I stand alone.’ It was then that I
started to gravitate towards like-minds and I
realized that what we had in common wasn’t
on the surface—it was this particular vibration
that I found in all sorts of people no matter
the race or type of person. I could find it in
someone at the bus stop in San Francisco. I
could find it in someone at the grocery store.
It was a vibration. I realized that that vibration
is in everyone, although sometimes it is harder
to find because some people haven’t accessed it
within themselves yet. I found that if you im-
mediately address your highest self, then all the
illusory bullshit you may be hiding behind dis-
solves and you can meet each other on a higher
plane. That happens when you see the unity,
but it has to light up within yourself first.
In the song ‘Slaveless Master’ you men-
tion purifying your body as a way to help
you connect or transcend. Can you talk
about that?
Well, the body is ultimately your vessel and
your spaceship through which you can access
higher realms and have that higher conver-
sation. The purification process takes such
a long time because there is so much repro-
gramming of thoughts—it begins with your
thoughts and your belief system of yourself
and who you are in relation to the entire uni-
verse. I found myself having these recurring
thoughts that would send me down these
negative cycles and I started paying attention
to these indicators. I’d find myself maybe
feeling like shit one day and I’d have to reach
into my mind and look into my thoughts
objectively and see what was the seed and
pattern so that I could purify my thoughts
and have a healthier state of mind in gen-
eral. It took a lot of meditation. Meditation
is so difficult at first because you have to sit
there with yourself. That’s the hardest fuck-
ing thing! Thoughts can be so fucking heavy
but you have to sit through that because you
want to see behind the veil and learn what’s
really there. That was a big part of the purifi-
cation process and it’s still happening. I think
when I actually wrote that song I was in one
of my higher states. It fluctuates. Sometimes
I even come back to that song to remind my-
self. Anyway, there is also purification of your
physical body with the things that you eat. I
started to take notice of—holy shit. I’m sorry
I just got a text from my friend about puri-
fication. This is crazy! My friend is a fucking
visionary. We’ll have these crazy-ass dreams
where we will meet each other in the dream
world, she’ll give me a scroll and then I’ll read
it and I’ll wake up and be like, ‘Yo, Ivey, I
dreamt that this and this and this happened.’
She’ll tell me, ‘Yeah, it happened. I gave you
the scroll and it was written in blue ink.’
Wow—
She’s on a soul fast so she is telling me about
purification and its power. Anyway, so the
food that you eat is either highly alkaline or
acidic. Alkaline food is alive like vegetables,
leafy greens, fruits and anything that grows
from the earth. The further down you go to-
wards acidity you go down to food that is not
made of natural grains, meat, alcohol and all
that shit. I went on this alkaline fast for a long
time and I was vegan for a long time too. It
shifted the way I saw nutrition and saw the
process of eating food as actually eating en-
ergy. I would eat food and acknowledge that
it came from the ground and all the processes
that went into the food before I ingested it.
It became a sacred thing. I have to take from
the earth so I can give back. I’m no longer
vegan because I started getting kind of sick.
I’m a small girl, I realized that even though
I would prefer to be vegan and have this cer-
tain lifestyle I need to pay attention to my
body and what it wants. I’ve found my own
balance with eating a little bit from the en-
tire spectrum but just being aware of what I
am eating so I am consciously making deci-
sions. Every single choice you make is going
to affect the earth, and reflect your internal
person, the things you buy, the things you eat
and the things you think.
Food and food access as a global issue is re-
ally receiving more and more attention late-
ly. Is this an integral part of the collective
consciousness you were talking about?
Oh my god, yes! Yeah, man—I mean you
are what you eat and I think once we get the
food on point—to even get to that point there
needs to be a respect for the earth, we will
evolve. The ways in which we get our food
through agriculture and spraying it with pes-
ticides and chemicals … it’s all about money.
It’s not about truly nourishing and feeding the
people. I think once we are able to fix these
issues slowly and gear them more towards
sustainable farming and living, that’s going to
drastically change the lifestyle of the people as
a whole family. The U.S. has enough money
to feed the entire world. It’s going to take a re-
ally long time. It’s already happening though,
on a smaller level with people that have their
own farms and grow their own food. When-
ever you meet these people, they’re always
fucking happy. It’s like they know something
you don’t—it’s that connection. We are on
this planet borrowing resources so we might
as well build that relationship with the earth,
that’s the way it was meant to be. More and
more people are waking up and people need
to continue talking about it so it can spread.
Maybe it will have to become a fad before
people think it’s cool but shit—as long as the
outcome’s positive, then that’s fine.
Can you tell me about the song ‘Bahay
Kubo’? It’s a Filipino folk song.
That song is about vegetables. It’s a children’s
folk song that you learn growing up as a Fili-
pino child. It describes their simple way of
life—living in a nipa hut and eating vegeta-
bles. I chose that song because I thought that
maybe subconsciously I could plant that seed
in there, you know? I’ve never done a cover
song before and Filipinos are known for do-
ing covers of American songs in English, so
I thought I would cover a Filipino song in
Tagalog. ‘Bahay Kubo’ was cute, so I made
it really silly and electronic. Whenever I per-
form it in the Philippines, all the grandmas
and grandpas all of a sudden start paying at-
tention. Looking at it now it kind of ties into
everything.
LOW LEAF’S ALBUM AKASHAALAY IS
AVAILABLE NOW FROM FRESH SE-
LECTS AT FRESHSELECTS.BAND-
CAMP.COM. VISIT LOW LEAF AT
CREATORDIY.COM.
11
 NED
12 INTERVIEW
 L.A. guitarist/singer/songwriter Ned Doheny—surely you know
his family’s beach or famous drive?—sailed through the steamiest
part of the big-label AOR 70s alongside friends and coworkers
like Jackson Browne and the Eagles, but his was a discography
of almost hits, not greatest hits. (Although he did get banned
in Boston and big in Japan—two things you don’t think really
happen until they happen to you!) Now Numero Group has put
together the ‘Best Of’ that Doheny deserves on Separate Oceans,
a comprehensive reissue that starts with his signature ‘Get It Up
For Love’ and zig-zags through the twilight world of mid-70s Los
Angeles. Wise, wry and articulate at a Van Dyke Parks-ian level,
Ned speaks now not so much about being lost but being found.

You were one of the musicians in residence
at the notorious Paxton Lodge studio,
where Elektra Records spent tons of money
to make this rustic recording studio way out
in the woods. There’s a story that after weeks
of just hanging out and partying, the presi-
dent of Elektra, Jac Holzman, comes out to
see just what he’s been paying for, and all
the Paxton Lodge people have this, ‘Oh,
shit—dad’s home early!’ moment where
they had to clean up and make like they’d
been working the whole time. So how’d that
day play out?
I had the bedroom at the very top of this old
lodge. At one point it was a whorehouse and at
another point a rehab center for alcoholics—
—consecutively?
That’s what I was thinking! Talk about confer-
ring some extraordinary energy on a building!
There was a bathroom upstairs, and there were
two boards in my floor and if you took the
boards out, you could look into the bathroom
below.
That was an architectural feature left over
from the whorehouse days?
I’d like to think so. We were there and we were
whores, so why not? I had one of the only bath-
tubs in the place, and I’d lugged it up there.
And so Jac came out and we served a lavish re-
past. It was intense. I think he got pretty high
at that point, and there were some women in
attendance who were drawn to the novelty of
the situation, shall we say, and they spirited Jac
away. Sort of dragged him into the bathroom
where they all had a nice bath together. And
there were about three of us upstairs at the hole
in the floor with our hands over our noses and
mouths so we wouldn’t make snorting sounds
and give ourselves away. It was absolutely hys-
terical. One girl was kind of looking up, like,
‘Hey!’ And the next morning when we got up,
we were all pretty rumpled from the night be-
It was dark and deep and all at the same time
we’re like … [terrified inhalation]. One of those
terrible accidents you can see but can’t stop. So
it gets to his face, his face bursts into flame,
and some people jump over the couch and put
him out with great vigor. We had some axes to
grind with him, so people really put him out.
A lot. I didn’t move, I was in my chair look-
ing, and first I see one of his hands come over
the back of the couch and then the other and
then the face. And I’d been to a thousand hor-
ror movies and I was like, ‘OK, it’s gonna be
dripping pizza with eyeballs,’ and instead his
once majestic handlebar mustache had been
trimmed to a little triangle and it just looked
like he’d been in the sun for twenty minutes.
And Jac Holzman is sitting there like, ‘OK. I
just gave this guy a check for $70,000.’ Which
in those days was serious money. And Jac went
outside and there was a rocking chair on the
porch, and he sat down in it with that 100-
mile stare and was just rocking back and forth,
squeaking and trying to process all this. Ah,
god, it was so good.
So as a guy who lived through the very heart
of the 70s—you were sauna pals with Jack-
son Browne, the Eagles and more—what of
value has been lost to history? What does
no one remember that was worth remem-
bering?
The 70s, for people who know nothing about
it, were just an exercise in hedonism. But a lot
of serious inquiries were made into what made
us tick, what made life tick, how we were a
part of it. Even when we’d go out in the desert
and take peyote, it was always to dig a little
deeper, go a little further, understand a little bit
more. It wasn’t all an exercise in escapism and
futility. It had value. It probably sounds silly to
someone who’s never been there or done that,
but that’s the truth.
So if we wanted to philosophically rehabili-

D DOHENY
Interview by Chris Ziegler
Photography by Ward Robinson
fore. Our producer, Barry Friedman, had been
a clown in the circus—Ducky the Clown. So
everyone is hungover and kinda weedy and
Barry comes out and he’s gonna reprise his
Ducky the Clown routine and eat some fire
for us. So he dips his baton in white gasoline,
which of all the flammable substances appar-
ently burns the coolest—at the lowest tem-
perature. He puts it in his mouth and we’re
like primitive people, like the monkeys in
2001. We can’t believe what we’re seeing! He
takes a mouthful, blows a fireball and we’re all
just agog. And we realize simultaneously that
Barry had taken a little too much, and what
this means is it’s gonna walk down the stream
before he can get rid of it all.
Basic physics never sounded so menacing.
tate the 70s—
It can’t be done! But basically we’re talking
about a generation escaping the structure of
postwar formality. People who went through
WWII were a club to which we’d never be-
long, and that was it. That was the alpha and
omega. So when you begin to question that
one thing, you begin to question everything,
and of course the merry pranksters that
opened up that door for a lot of people were
the Beatles. You’d be hard-pressed to find a
single artist that does not refer to their view-
ing of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show or
in a movie theater or whatever that didn’t go,
‘Holy shit—I can do this.’ Of course they
couldn’t do it quite as well, but they could
definitely do it. And a lot of people just

INTERVIEW 13
marched into that hole and started asking
questions and really doing dangerous things.
I don’t mean physically dangerous, but when
you break covenant with your culture …
when you alter your relationship to your
timeline or try and start a different zeitgeist,
you’re gonna get punished on some level for
it. I don’t mean necessarily literally, but figu-
ratively. An area you felt you used to belong
to won’t have you anymore. The I Ching says
it really well. Knowledge partly gives, partly
takes away. Consider this—Carlos Castane-
da was a friend of mine, and we were tak-
ing martial arts from an incredible Chinese
gentleman called Howard Lee—
Between your martial arts training and your
classical guitar training, do you have the
most crushing handshake ever?
Actually it’s fairly light, but a bolt of energy
proceeds down my arm like water going
through a hose. No, I’m kidding. But wear a
first baseman’s mitt! So Carlos would say the
point at which you assemble reality, which he
referred to as a geographic location on your
body, which is novel and miraculous … if you
begin to move that point at which reality is as-
sembled, different realities will be assembled.
We only see as much as our agreement to the
reality we grew up in is still in effect. If you
were to really change your perception, who
knows what you’d be looking at? We all have
this vision of ourselves in rare moments of in-
habiting a sphere whistling through a space
that’s continually expanding—that’s a pretty
good definition of the miraculous! Not even
Xenu and all his scribes could come up with
something that far-fetched! So we live in the
midst of a miracle but are completely unaware
and prefer to beat each other senseless over
revenue and race and perception of equality,
and that tells me we are clinging desperately to
a paradigm slipping from under our feet. It’s
really difficult to predict where the next incur-
sion will come from. Like: I’ve been healthy
all my life. Never had an operation, nothing.
Until I got valley fever. So I’m convinced that
whatever will destroy or save mankind, it’ll be
both simultaneously, and it’ll come from a cor-
ner none of us can imagine. Who in their right
mind could ever imagine the digital revolution
annihilating the music business? And taking
people’s jobs away? And completely confound-
ing their creative process? The French didn’t
finish the Maginot Line, and all the Germans
did is go down to the end—they went where
they’d stopped building. All the time, labor,
thinking, planning, plotting, and nobody
went, ‘Hey, guys … what if THIS happens?’
So whatever it is that’s gonna wipe us out or
save us, it’ll be something that leaves us all
speechless—something we’d never imagine in
a million years. It’s the idea that as we accost
each other in a burning house, are we really
looking at what is really true out here? Ac-
cording to Carlos, sorcerers are simply people
who altered their perception by shifting their
assemblage point. And even they can’t see ev-
erything. They’re just no longer married to a
specific reality.
I always thought music was good for this.
It’ll transmit the new reality right to you—
like when you were talking about everyone
hearing the Beatles and then wanting to do
it themselves.
14
Anything that engages your mind and body
simultaneously, I’m down with. Even if you’re
not enlightened, if there’s a piece of music
that can put you there, you’ll be enlightened
for three and a half minutes. To me, the thing
that’s so great about the sophistication of mu-
sic is the emotional … the intervals between
notes. Depending on how you arrange them,
they have an emotional value. Some chords
are happier, some scary. Why not use that?
You may have to actually work at it before you
know it well enough to call forth those feel-
ings. I mean, you practice on yourself. We all
did. I’m not a really quick writer, but to me I
always wrote something cuz it was something
I’d enjoy listening to if someone else did it. I’m
also part audience, and I think, ‘Oh boy, wait
til they get a load of this!’ A huge portion of
my life is essentially in a minor 9th. It’s very
beautiful, but it’s very melancholy. I lived in
that incarnation for twenty years? Thirty?
How did you figure that out? I’ve never ask
someone what chord defined their life be-
cause no one would ever have that answer.
On one level, I’m musically illiterate, but on
another I understand it intuitively. And escap-
ing the great minor 9th … I still work at that.
There’s something so poignant and temporary
about life, and that chord really captures it. It’s
a very difficult chord to walk away from. In
a way, it’s kind of cheating. ‘OK, chord, take
over cuz I can’t think what I want to say but at
least I can make everyone all moody and mel-
ancholy.’ I’d like to go a little further. I’m at a
point now where I’d like to study a little bit
more. This famous bass player Carol Kaye, she
played guitar before she played bass and one of
the things she was saying was, ‘Well, in most
rock ‘n’ roll, the tonic is king.’ That’s certainly
arguable. You move the bass note around and
you’re talking about a different chord. Get a
bunch of musicians in a room and an argu-
ment breaks out whether it’s an 11th or a 13th.
Her point was that in those areas—exploring
those chords without being as devoted to the
tonic—you can really find the potency of
those intervals. I find that intriguing. You can
only beat people up for so long! Look, my wife
likes to cook, I like to cook, everyone loves
a great meal—but musically there’s very few
great meals to have right now. I like In-N-Out
same as everyone else … but what else is there?
I got to a point in my age where I’ve been writ-
ing, ‘I want it, I have it, I lost it’ my whole life.
So … now what?
I think Nick Tosches said that was the bed-
rock story of rock ‘n’ roll—he got what he
wanted, but he lost what he had. So what
starts where that ends?
To me one of the most interesting marriages of
all is the musicality of R&B and the storytell-
ing capacity of country music. That’s the inter-
section. If you can build something evocative
and provocative and just kinda get at it in a
way you can’t readily explain … you’re good
to go! What’s interesting now is Numero is
pumping a lot of energy into me—in the sense
that there’s apparently a number of people that
are interested in what I’ve done. When that
energy enters your life, when what you put out
eventually returns to you, it changes you. Prob-
ably any future work coming will reflect that. I
never really had what Jackson Browne and the
Eagles and my other friends had, which was a
certain level of public acclaim that gave them
the fuel to be maybe a little less self-conscious.
A little more relaxed.
Relaxation is an underrated part of the cre-
ative process.
Truly. And if you haven’t straightened out your
internal working, parts of it will never let you
write anything. It’s absurd, in a way, that you
can create something out of nothing and peo-
ple will find it interesting.
I know you just said that you’ve always tried
to get past that ‘I want it, I have it, I lost
it’ story, but listening to your songs, I feel
there’s this almost instructional feel—or
they’re conversations with the listeners, tell-
ing them how do to things. ‘Get it up for
love,’ ‘If you should fall / give it your all,’
lines like that—like your songs are little
philosophical lessons for people.
When I was in my twenties, I was more in my
bleak but hopeful period—
What’s next? Pure bleakness or pure hope?
There’s a record I did in 2011 or so called The
Darkness Beyond the Fire, and it has a song
called ‘Too Late for Love.’ And there’s a line
in it that goes, ‘Another joyride to God knows
where / was it worth the trip?’ and the re-
sponse is, ‘Oh, yeah!’ regardless of what I talk
about, I always try and include some element
of hope at the end. And I still do that. Owing
to the unpredictability of life, which to me is
probably one of the greatest mechanisms for
avoiding suicide. You may not be feeling par-
ticularly good at the moment, but life could
change in an hour—and wouldn’t it be terrible
if you committed yourself to eternity before
your ship came in?
There’s a lot to wallow in right now.
A lot of wallowing—it’s like, ‘Write what you
know!’ ‘I know how to feel like shit—let’s work
with that!’ But at some point if we’re all sort of
moving to some level of resolution—and I do
truly believe that consciousness change has the
power to save the world and at the very least
humanity—that’s a life’s work. And people
should be encouraged to follow that particular
path, even though it’s wildly uncomfortable.
It’s the only thing that makes any sense!
Have you ever willfully attached your most
downer lyrics to your most dance-y song?
Like Sting? ‘Every Breath You Take’ is about a
stalker, but they play it at weddings? No, I’ve
never done that consciously. I’m not one of
those guys that writes when they feel terrible.
I usually write when I’m feeling great! I try to
find something that reflects all that. You spoke
about the conversational aspect, and one thing
that’s so interesting about the process of writ-
ing songs, at least in my case … in the past,
I’ve tended to be very top-heavy. More noetic
than somatic, if that makes any sense? It’s tak-
en a lifetime to push my energy down into my
chest and stomach to come from that place—
getting that window to open and talk. Your
brain can drown that shit out every time! An
idea comes to you and your brain rushes over
and stomps it out before it bursts into flames!
The harder you try to do it, the harder it
becomes.
At one point I studied biofeedback with this
guy David Velkoff, who founded the Drake
Institute in Santa Monica. And David was
a student of the martial arts teacher Jimmy
Woo, and I studied Chinese boxing with this
guy Howard Lee, so we had a sort of point of
convergence. His description of how to medi-
tate was ‘Think where you want to go, and
then take your foot off the accelerator.’ In a
way, that’s what we’re talking about. The thing
with writing, at least from my perspective, is
you wanna do something you’d wanna hear
somebody else do. Not like, ‘I wanna hear
someone cover this song!’ but like, ‘Wow, isn’t
that fucking great? I really love that!’
Put what you want to hear into the world?
Something YOU would listen to! There’s not
so much difference between audience and
performer. A slightly different choice in high-
ways.
I’ve always thought it’s important to re-
member what it’s like to be a fan.
I was talking to a guy from Forbes magazine—
About music? Or like hog futures?
No, about music—and I said one of the most
fun things to ever possibly have happen is to
go to a nightclub and feel threatened by the
level of skill you’re seeing.
Like the merciless new young gunslinger?
Or old gunslinger! Anybody who may be bet-
ter than you! That’s the best thing. Who wants
to see somebody that isn’t playing at that level?
It’s thrilling to have someone throw down
the gauntlet, cuz they don’t do it consciously.
They’re just doing their best. Which may be
better than your best!
What martial art would be of best practical
use to a songwriter?
To get out of your head and into your chest?
I tend to gravitate to the Chinese cuz I’m a
closet Daoist—I like everything that sorta
lays along those lines. You have to differenti-
ate between a hard form and a soft form. Tai
chi would be more of a soft form. And like
some form of gung fu would be a harder form.
The interesting part of harder forms—they’re
kind of self-regulatory. You get your horse
stance and the harder you swing, the harder
your stance gets—everything about it regu-
lates itself. The horse stance and the parries are
the essence, and they keep deepening. With
tai chi, for instance, you have the benefit of
movement, and that you can do at any age. It’s
really about quieting your mind, and if that’s
what we’re talking about, either form is fine. If
you’re a youngster and you need superficially
… well, that’s dangerous. If you need a physi-
cal challenge to it … the thing is, tai chi has
that, but it takes a long time to realize. Any
dancer can go to tai chi and look at the moves
and do them, but it’s not about the moves. It’s
the power behind the moves, and until you
get your hands on that … and finding a really
great teacher. That’s no small feat.
That’s true with music, too.
Absolutely right. My teacher taught a form of
southern Chinese style martial arts, Choy Li
Fut, and he was just about outrageous at that.
For the tai chi contingent, I gravitate to Chi-
nese nationals—maybe it’s a conceit on my
part, but I just think they’re closer to the origin
and maybe a bit purer. And also there’s benefits
in both martial arts in the healing aspects of
acupuncture and herbs, which are both ubiq-
uitous and taught back to back. Destruction
and healing wrapped in the same force—kind
of a great thing. And painful—they’re all pain-
ful! They ask a lot of your legs. But a lot of
breakthroughs are possible. It’s quite valuable.
INTERVIEW
Nick Waterhouse was telling me about pro-
ducing a band and trying to get them to un-
derstand that it needed to be simpler—that
everyone was stepping all over themselves
trying to be ‘good.’
The ‘dig me’ phenomenon. That’s why I’ve
never been particularly interested in solo-
ists. The rhythm guys always interested me.
Rhythm guitar players. I love that—to me,
that’s the whole shooting match. Most of my
favorite guitarists are really, really competent
rhythm players. Steve Cropper was especially
good at that. For example, I don’t think Chuck
Berry is particularly well-educated—I could
be wrong, maybe he’s been to college? But
he probably just got in the game and stayed
in from the jump. And here’s a guy to whom
the rhythm of the sung word just comes natu-
rally. If you look at his lyrics, they just fall so
easily and they’re these wonderful narratives,
great stories, and they’re not particularly over-
wrought or convoluted. I’m probably one of
the only guys you know who’d use ‘collusion’
and ‘subterfuge’ in a rhythm and blues tune.
Or ‘flee in terror.’ I never heard that phrase
in a song before.
Excellent! When Hamish [Stuart] and I were
writing ‘What Cha Gonna Do for Me,’ there’s
a line in the first verse that says, ‘The ground
you lose exploiting the blues won’t get the
job done.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s great.’
People exploit the blues all the time. They’re
the gateway to self-pity, and as we all know,
self-pity gives you permission to do anything.
And Hamish said, ‘I don’t know, man, I don’t
know …’ He was going out with a model at
the time, Tara Shannon, who was like most
women a seeker of sorts, and she said, ‘Oh,
no—that’s the greatest thing ever.’ And we left
it in! But if you look at a pop song, it’s like …
exploit? EXPLOIT!?
How close did you ever get to Warren
Zevon? You were on the same label, but not
at the same time—but I feel like two hyper-
literate smartasses like yourselves must have
crossed paths.
Warren was kind of a juggernaut. He had an
appetite for self-destruction, paired with a re-
ally good brain, and that almost made him
toxic. This is a guy who was discharging fire-
arms into pillows at his house. It’s crazy shit.
And I never had much appetite for crazy shit.
At one point I met Gram Parsons at the Cha-
teau Marmont—
What an L.A. sentence.
I know—hysterical! People dragged me up
there and thought maybe we’d write some-
thing, and he’s sitting there nodding out. And
I just looked at him and thought, ‘You’re not
in the game. You’re not taking this seriously.’
I’m not saying that about Warren in anyway.
Obviously he made quite a name for himself.
But he had a big craziness, and it made him
kind of difficult to work with. I think I played
guitar on his first record? The one Jackson
produced? At least people tell me I did. I don’t
really remember. A lot of that period went by
like debris in the river.
Numero Group has reissued a sort of Great-
est Neds album and your song ‘Get It Up for
Love’ is getting a second life—it seems to be
the song that’s the gateway to getting new
people into Ned. Do you remember where
that one came from?
INTERVIEW
There was an engineer working on the first
album—John Haeny—and John Haeny was
gay. And at one point he said to me, ‘God, I’m
not sure if I can get it up for this!’ about a mix
he had to do. In those days, you couldn’t re-
call all the settings digitally. You had to go in
and turn every freakin’ knob for all your cross
patches. All that stuff had to be redone. And I
remember hearing that phrase and thinking,
‘Hmm, that’s interesting.’ And I came up with
that particular groove which strangely enough
was inspired by a guitar part from a Dr. John
tune. [Sings] ‘I was in the right place…’ If you
were actually to put them side by side, they’d be
nothing alike. But the guitar player was playing
this thing when I saw them at the Troubadour
and he played this part, and I thought, ‘Fuck
yeah.’ And I’d be lying if there wasn’t a little
James Brown in there, too. Originally, when
Glenn Frey heard that song, he was like, ‘Oh,
gosh, let’s work on that!’ Chances are it would
have been a completely different song—that
probably would have made a lot more money!
I kind of wrote it from the standpoint not so
much as a sexual song, but more of a question
of summoning your resources. Like pulling
yourself together. That’s what it meant more
to me—Haeny’s meaning without the over-
tones.
You told Wax Poetics that music for you is a
dialogue with your internal life—that’s in-
teresting cuz it suggests that the more you
go into yourself, the more other people can
relate to what you come back with.
Absolutely. If you try to do something au-
thentic—of course, what’s authentic? And if
you’re on a personal level: ‘What is it about me
that’s authentic?’ Cuz this is gonna have to be
something you stand up and sing to people. So
in the search for authenticity, you’re trying to
find out what aspects of you are perhaps time-
less. That’s really at the core of what happened
in the 70s. There were a lot of Tin Pan Alley
people who wrote great songs that I’m sure
didn’t feel that way. I’m sort of best categorized
… when I went to have drums put on these
tunes, this guy Michael White who’s played
with, among others, Steely Dan. He can play.
And I’m playing him these songs and the first
thing he says is, ‘ Who ARE you?’ And the sec-
ond thing he says is, ‘Where have you BEEN?
I just love this stuff. You’re such a smartass.’
And I thought, ‘Yup—correcto.’ That’s always
been my relationship to it.
Was there a breakthrough when you found
your inner smartass? And does that have
anything to do with ‘Get It Up for Love’ be-
ing banned in Boston? If that’s true?
That’s absolutely true! They tried to release it
in Boston and Boston wasn’t having it. When
I was a kid, ‘banned in Boston’ was legend-
ary! A cliché! It was so great. I was honored.
But on the other hand, they didn’t play my
tune.
What unlocks a song for you? I’m sure you
have lyrics and melodies in your head all the
time. But what’s it take to realize it’s finally
time to put the song together?
I have pages of potential lyrics I write down.
But in my particular case, my playing skills
have always provided me with an almost lim-
itless supply of grooves and chord structures.
So I usually hook myself by hearing some-
thing really lyrical and compelling, and try-
ing to figure out what I’m supposed to say. I
don’t usually work backward from lyrics—it’s
forward from melody. When something gets
under your skin, it’s a non-verbal thing. And
to come up with another form that fits that is
really kind of exotic! Most songwriters will tell
you that you can’t count on it. If someone calls
you and you’re in the middle of something …
a phone call can end your songwriting for that
particular tune.
Like the traveler who interrupts Coleridge,
so ‘Kubla Khan’ is never finished?
Yeah—or someone called Paul Simon in the
middle of a song and that was that! I think
songwriting is a lot like lucid dreaming.
If you push it too hard, you wake up?
And you have access to a part of yourself that’s
often off limits. It’s really hard to keep that gate
open until you find what you’re looking for.
You’re giving out a lot of practical advice
here—instructional, like I said!
I like people to just hike up their pants and
learn to do stuff! Yeah, everyone’s upset about
the world—I’m watching refugees flood over
the border and I’m thinking, ‘Jesus, it’s cin-
ematic!’ The world is threatening to become
unhinged and we’re all confronting some ma-
jor turning point in our lives, individually and
collectively, and isn’t there some way to deal
that acknowledges the problem but implies
there might be a solution?
That’s hard for me—recognize a problem,
but recognize a way to get through, too.
I know this sounds kinda … egocentric. May-
be the idea of somehow having the certainty
you can create something that doesn’t exist and
that people will want it implies a certain ar-
rogance. But if you were to talk to all of us as
kids—I know the Eagles and Jackson and all
those people had a lot of success, but we were
all in our early twenties together—
And a sauna together!
Or the desert—that’s a more interesting epi-
sode! But if you were to ask them—well, this
is the way I felt, and I suspect it was more
than just me—we thought not only were we
doing something for ourselves but doing it
for everyone else. Maybe our observations
would prove to be of use to somebody who
was struggling with an equation they couldn’t
quite balance. Then it becomes for the greater
good, and once it’s for the greater good, it be-
comes holy.
What was the first inkling you had that you
had actually become big in Japan?
It was one of the greatest things. I was see-
ing this girl—actually the first girl I ever lived
with—and I’d just got captured by the whole
thing, flat-out. Hook, line and sinker. Except
part of me knew this was a crazy person and
great harm would come to me if I persisted
in my folly, which it did—greater harm than
I could ever have imagined. Like your feet
are stapled to the crosswalk and the truck
coming at you has no brakes. This all sort of
culminated at the end of 1976. She moved
out and a really good friend of mine got in
a terrible auto accident and lost his left leg
four inches above the knee, and he came and
stayed in the house. I was emptying bedpans,
chain smoking Camels—and it rained for
three months straight. The most rain I ever
saw in Los Angeles.
That’s verging on biblical.
Very much so—that’s what it felt like. My par-
ents were leaving town, and in those days we
had a beach house down in Oceanside. And
they said, ‘Would you mind terribly moving
down there and keeping an eye on the house?’
I thought, ‘Fuck yes.’ I learned to surf there—
to me it was like mother’s milk. And before I
left, I got a call—‘Would you like to go play
in Japan?’ I thought about it like … ‘Really?’
Kind of the last thing I imagined happening
but I figured why not? So I threw some peo-
ple together. I didn’t have any idea what kind
of heat there was over there. My first album
was being taped and sold and taped and sold
and taped and sold. You could pay $300 for
an album that had already been listened to by
fifteen people.
An early beneficiary of music piracy?
A beneficiary of piracy? I’d have to think
about that! So I pulled together my folks and
went over, and lo and behold almost every-
thing that had eluded me in the U.S. was sort
of there in triplicate in Japan! We played in
various places and it was all really wonderful.
There was a little mini-riot in Osaka. They
all rushed the stage, and we went back to the
hotel and there were a bunch of kids in front
and I thought, ‘Oh, there must be someone
famous here—I wonder who it is?’ I got out
of the bus and I was mobbed by all these kids,
and someone grabbed me and tossed me in
the lobby of the motel! We went to a wonder-
ful place, the Kiyomizu shrine, which is now
basically a tourist attraction but in those days
looked like a hardworking temple without the
railings and walkways. The guitar player with
me was standing on the upper balcony, kind
of looking over the trees as the storm moved
in—this tough kid from the streets of Buffa-
lo—and he just started crying! It rolled over
him! Too much to contain in his melon—it
crushed him.
What happens to your further personal de-
velopment when you know for a fact people
will actually riot for you?
Well, then you get back to the U.S. and you
realize of course that that was a wonderful little
dream in another part of the universe, and now
you’ve come back to the somewhat less sympa-
thetic aspects of your own culture who—as it
turns out—doesn’t give a rat’s ass about you!
How do you feel now that Numero is reis-
suing you? This isn’t the usual ‘lost genius
rediscovered’ story cuz you were never lost.
But do you feel … rediscovered?
There’s been stuff happening spontaneously
in different areas. I’m seeing symptoms in
more than one place simultaneously, and
that’s led me to believe something organic is
happening. And I’m really quite amused by
it. I’d just like an opportunity to play, cuz I
could put together a unit that could cook
eggs! It’s still amazing to me. Groove is like a
train that’s constantly running, and if you got
the perception to see it, you can get on board
any fucking time.
Where’s that train go?
Doesn’t matter if it gets you to stop thinking.
You’re full of universal truth today!
Kind of! Usually I’m a little funnier.
NED DOHENY’S SEPARATE OCEANS IS
OUT NOW ON NUMERO GROUP. VISIT
NED DOHENY AT NEDDOHENY.COM.
15
RUTHANN FRIEDMAN
Interview by Daiana Feuer
Photography by Aaron Giesel

In 1967, Ruthann Friedman became the third-ever female songwriter to write a song that reached
number one on the American charts, when her pals the Association recorded her song “Windy.”
While that little tune went on to become one of the most beloved songs of the 20th century,
Friedman’s music career hit some personal roadblocks and abruptly came to a halt in the early
1970s. That’s not to say she didn’t live the rock ‘n’ roll life. This woman has had adventures: drugs,
sex, love, wind, sun, sea, desert, heartache and the California dream. Then she settled down and
raised a family. Almost forty years went by when suddenly the world called and Friedman shook the
dust off her guitar and dove back into music. After the reissue of Constant Companion, she began
writing songs again and immersed herself in the new folk music scene of Los Angeles, spreading
joy and magic cookies amongst her new friends. This year sees the release of two collections
of songs from her heyday: Windy: The Ruthann Friedman Songbook and The Complete Constant
Companion Sessions, as well as an album of new material, Chinatown. We could fill a book with her
stories, but here’s a glimpse into the personality and times of Ruthann Friedman.

Have you had a time in your life when you
didn’t want to be part of what we would call
normal life?
At least once a week, still. I would like to be
out in the woods somewhere. I lived in Big Sur
for a year and that was quite amazing. Some
people said, ‘There’s a cabin that no one is liv-
ing in and they never come up.’ So we moved
in and squatted. There was nothing much
there. There was a bed. It was across from a
stream and under the redwoods. It was amaz-
ing. That was as close to living off the grid as
I’ve ever been, eating macrobiotic and all that.
I ended up getting a job at Nepenthe, at the
gift shop, because eventually you want to eat
something other than brown rice. An egg once
in a while is nice.
When was this?
Shit, I was about 21. Maybe 1964?
Are we right to glorify the 60s?
Well, yeah. I can appreciate that because I
love the music from the 60s. Though I never
liked the fashion. All of a sudden we had
polyester and paisleys. That’s not what it was
really about. The fashionista’s idea of what
having a hallucination was like is NOT what
having a hallucination was like. I can under-
stand glorifying the time but everybody has
to understand that we were just people and
we were just as fucked up as people are now.
After being in Big Sur a while, I realized it
was just like being in any subdivision. People
are screwing around on each other, husbands
and wives—it was like hippie suburbia. Peo-
ple behave the same way. they are just in a
different milieu.
Those are the real consistent parts of being
human.
Most of my songs are about my relationship to
the world in general. Some of them are about
my perceptions of the world, which certainly I
would never say is absolutely true—but it’s my
perception. And most of my songs are based in
reality, I’d say, although we have poetic license
don’t we?
You’ve got two new releases of old songs and
a release of new songs, both out now—do
you see an arc from what you thought about
things then to what you reflect on now?
What I thought about the world when I was
20 and what I think now that I’m older is a
lot different in terms of what is important to
me. A lot of my lyrics were naïve—they’re still
nice, because naïve is nice—but they weren’t
real. Twinkling sparkly silver things, lots of sil-
ver things.
Maybe everything was shiny and new then.
Are you darker or lighter about the world
now?
Darker, definitely. Things have gotten a lot
darker. I’ve lived here in Venice 40 years. Where
there were stop signs there are now mini malls
on all four corners and lights with left and right
turn arrows and where there were a few cars on
the freeway at 2 in the morning, there are now
lots of cars on the freeway at 2 in the morning.
And billboards everywhere. I really hate them.
Shit, we were all worried about nuclear war in
the 1950s—we had the stop, drop, and cover
your head under your desk, and a lot of good
that would do as you got vaporized—but now
it’s really more a threat. The nuclear weapons
are in the hands of people who are unpredict-
able and rash. If North Korea or Iran get mad
enough, or if terrorists get angry enough …
they believe in their myths so stringently, they
would do anything to get rid of the infidels.
I think a lot about having an apocalypse
plan. What to do on the last day on Earth?
This song I wrote is about that: ‘Imagine this is
the last day on Earth / would you sit at home
and cry / or wander around with a smile on
your face and hug your friends goodbye …’ I
think I would probably get together with the
people I love and give them a hug goodbye—
maybe attend a party.
I wonder if there’d be much looting?
Yeah, cuz what are you going to do with it?
But maybe someone waited all their life to
steal a Corvette and wear a fur coat and go up
in style.
What’s the song ‘Chinatown’ about?
Opium. And also it was sparked by my grand-
parents’ bakery sign. Red neon that would
flash on and off. On rainy nights when I was a
little kid I would see this … what my mother
called Chinese writing, when the light would
get all distorted in the puddles. The image
came to me of that red neon being scattered in
the water. Opium—‘Curls of smoke through a
crimson door’—and maybe it’s also about tak-
ing to drugs to assuage the guilt, family guilt,
which was laid upon me. Jewish guilt.
Why do they lay the guilt on?
As a way to control. It’s like Catholics—you
tell them they’re going to go to hell and make
them feel guilty about being sinners and then
you can control them.

17
“Here is an answer for you that is true:
assistance I remember that all I have is
But you still sinned a bit, huh?
I was a bad girl. My dad died when I was 15
and my mother was useless and I just did
whatever I wanted. Can we leave it at that? I
was a loner in school, one of only two Jews,
and I spent a lot of my time playing guitar.
When I was 18 I just took off—threw my dog
in the car and left the Valley. First I went to
Denver with my boyfriend, ‘El Niño Dorado,’
Bruce Patterson, who was a flamenco guitarist.
I still have a picture of him. We went to San
Francisco next, then came back to Los Angeles
and got an apartment, and then his mother
came from Kansas and took him home. I was
an older woman. I think he was 18 and I was
19. Ha! But I did what I wanted to do. I didn’t
have any guidance particularly. I made a lot of
mistakes.
But by mistakes, one lives. I don’t think peo-
ple learn too much about life when they’re
not making mistakes.
Maybe. That could be. But when people
keep making the same mistakes over and over
again then you have to wonder. Like when
you keep going out with the same guy. You
think he’s different but really you’ve picked
up on something about him that is like your
dad and he’s going to end up being the same
guy—abusive, controlling, whatever it is you
are drawn to.
Was there a point when you were like, ‘OK,
I finally grew up’?
No. Somebody wrote on Facebook that the
first 40 years of growing up are the hardest.
And I added that the next 40 ain’t no picnic
either. Life is hard. You have to force your-
self, like a blade of grass poking through the
sidewalk crack that has to force itself by law of
nature—force itself to grow, force yourself to
move forward, to work, to do the right thing
sometimes. My sister, that was her line. She
also said, ‘With the Bible, with all the rules,
all you really need to know is row, row, row
your boat gently down the stream.’ We make
it complicated.
Do you ever lose thoughts or are you good
at catching them?
I’ve been lazy lately. I took a poetry class and
this poet said she thinks of ideas as ticker tape
coming out of her ear and she has to keeping
pulling it or else she’ll lose it. You always think,
‘Oh, I will remember that tomorrow.’ But
you don’t. You lose the context, you lose what
could’ve been. Do you have dreams that you
will always remember? I have had some really
weird dreams that stuck with me. If you try to
analyze your dreams, it can be very helpful. I
had this one dream about walking down a dirt
road, through Owens Valley or something—
desert on all sides and mountains. Across the
18
road there is a big spider web with a spider sit-
ting in the middle and I had this feeling that
there was someone standing next to me but I
couldn’t really see them, this shadow person.
I just stopped. I said, ‘I can’t do this, this is
just too scary.’ But then the shadow person
said, ‘Come on, let’s do it. You can do it.’ We
snapped the spider web and walked through.
What it told me is that I have it within myself
to conquer my fears, if I just do it. I can still
picture it so clearly. It was scary.
What if dreams are when we are awake and
this is us sleeping right now?
Well, you could think that way. I am my own
dream, my real self is somewhere else dream-
ing me. Well, wake up! Or what if the whole
universe is a grain of sand on someone else’s
beach. Or, how about infinity? The sky has to
end somewhere, doesn’t it? Where does it end?
Is it endless? I think it has to not end. It has to
go on forever but we can’t conceive of it. It’s
not within our brains to really conceive of it
going on forever. Does it fade off at the edges?
It just goes on forever. You know how we were
talking about molecule soup? Consider being
a combination of specialized cells, because
that is what we are. Right? The eye cells de-
veloped seeing, etc. One of the first colonies
of specialized cells were jellyfish. That is not
an organism—it is a colony of specialized
cells. That got me thinking about us. These
sensory things are cells, they got together cuz
they functioned well together so they kept on
getting together. Something happens and it
works so it keeps on doing it, like finding a
niche and living in it. Like a plant that grows
in a certain place. Like the wolves, they got
rid of the wolves in the forest so they have too
many deer. You get rid of the lead predator and
everything else goes crazy. You have to have a
predator so things can stay in balance. Sharks
keep the oceans clean. Sharks are the garbage
disposal of the ocean.
If you had to choose between staying on a
boat that might sink or swimming towards
an island miles away, which would it be?
Am I with Leonardo DiCaprio? That’s freaky.
I would find something in the boat that would
float and take my chances. If I were still in my
twenties or thirties I would swim. Although
I wouldn’t have a choice if the boat sank. I’d
have to swim the four miles anyway. I don’t
like swimming in the ocean anymore. I used
to body surf a lot as a kid. I loved churning
around in the waves. We didn’t have boards at
the time. Boards came around in the 1950s,
right? When I was little, no boards. We didn’t
have plastic when I was a kid. We had Bakelite.
It looks like plastic but it isn’t, or it was an early
form of plastic.
You’ve seen a lot of interesting history then.
My mother saw it all. She was born in 1911.
She saw the first radios, which were crystal sets.
You could get one and put it together. She saw
the first airplanes. When she was born there
were still horses drawing wagons down the
streets of New York. And then computers! If
you went back in time and showed a comput-
er to someone from 1911 they would think it
was sorcery and string you up as a witch.
Tell me more about what L.A. was like
when you were a teenager?
I hung out at the Troubadour and Barney’s
Beanery. I was a sad teenager. My music was
where I retreated. When we moved here from
New York I was 10, and I had no friends. I
had lived in a Jewish neighborhood in the
Bronx and suddenly I was in a classroom
where the only other Jew was my cousin Joel.
The teacher was from Texas and I could barely
understand what she was saying cuz her ac-
cent was so thick and I just felt very isolated.
They took me out of my place, my school, my
friends. I ended up spending a lot of time in
my room, playing guitar. It really inspired me
to do a lot of music. When my father died it
was a good thing and a bad thing. But all in
all my family was not fun. Music was a great
escape. And books. A lot of reading. At first
I would mostly play other people’s songs. I
wrote one song when I was 12 which I still
have. It’s so funny. ‘I’ll never, never, fall in love
again…’—I was 12 years old! I played a lot
of Bob Dylan. But it was Buffy St. Marie—
when I heard her, I was like, ‘I could do that.’
That’s when I started writing songs. I could
write and I could play music, so I put them
together. I went to open mic, what we called
a hootenanny—I was playing hootenannies
at the Troubadour and a coffee gallery called
Coffee Confusion and another one called
Fifth and State and playing my songs and
singing. And I got to know a lot of people in
the music business. I got a contract with a guy
called Steve Clark from Atlanta, and recorded
a lot of stuff with him. A lot of the stuff is
on the new Ruthann Friedman Songbook—it’s
full of names you might recognize. So I left
and went to Big Sur, came back from Big Sur
… and I don’t know how I ended up living at
David Crosby’s house but that’s when I wrote
‘Windy.’ I was 24, 25. Jim Yester’s wife, Jo-
Ellen, asked me for a song for the Association,
and I offered up ‘Windy.’ When ‘Windy’
came out, I also had a song on the radio at
the same time, ‘Little Girl Lost and Found.’
When they were both playing on the radio,
it was just amazing. I was ecstatic. I couldn’t
believe it.
How did ‘Windy’ come to you?
It just came! It was a twenty-minute song. I
wrote it in twenty minutes. I had remembered
my high school English teacher saying that if
you wanted to catch people’s attention in your
writing, ask a question right away, and then
people want to stick around to see the answer.
So: ‘Who’s peeking out from under the stair-
way? ... Everyone knows it’s Windy!’
Chinatown has been a while in the coming.
Are you happy?
For the most part I’m very happy. There are
things I would change but that’s how it goes.
Everyone that worked on that album did it
cuz they wanted to. It was a labor of love. I
couldn’t pay anybody. I kept going back and
forth to San Jose to record with John Mueller
to record it at his place. The final additions and
mixing took place at Jackson Browne’s studio.
It was so much fun. I’ll never get to do that
again in my lifetime. People would listen to it
and want to play on it and it was the great-
est. Van Dyke Parks came and played on three
songs. It was so nice.
Is this album something you needed to do?
Yes. There is one old song on there, ‘Southern
Comfortable,’ cuz everyone demanded that be
on there cuz they liked it. But all these songs
are songs that I wanted out there. They are
songs I am proud of. You know, I understand
I made a contribution to folk music with Con-
stant Companion, but for what it’s worth, these
new songs are me, now, and I wanted them
out there. Other people may or may not be
into it, but screw them. It’s a picture of time.
It took about three years to get it done, which
is a long time.
I remember when you started playing
these songs. They’re part of a soundtrack
to a period of my own time. I can’t see
the word ‘Chinatown’ without hearing
you in my head, ‘Chinatowwwn, in the
RAAAIN.’
I’m just glad that it’s out. And now I’m writ-
ing more songs. I’ve got six new songs. I worry
over them. The songs that I write take me a
long time. Every word has to be right. I have
to wait a month sometimes just to be satisfied
with another word. I’ve become much more
critical. The words are important. I wrote a
love song for the first time in a long time.
What’s important to you now?
I want to make another record. I want to keep
playing. I write alone so that’s the lonely part.
I very seldom write with others. I want to get
them out there cuz I write them to share them.
If I don’t get to share them, it stops me. It’s
like, why bother. I’m not driven. I don’t have
graphitis where I have to constantly be writ-
ing. I need to have a reason. Playing and sing-
ing are a reason.
INTERVIEW
: when I need some sort of spiritual
this moment in time.”
How do keep your creativity in shape?
I think my brain is constantly thinking cre-
atively, bouncing from one thing to another,
thinking about things in a different way. When
something clicks, then I sit down and write it.
I also do a lot of automatic writing because
that keeps it flowing. A lot of time you do au-
tomatic writing, then look at it in a month and
you see these thoughts in their development.
Best time to do it is first thing in the morning.
And then a lot of it comes from playing the
guitar. Lyrics come second for me. That song
‘Sideshow’ took me three years to write. I have
a new one called ‘Monster Love’ that also took
me three years. I’ve been playing the same riff
for three years! And I tried a bunch of different
lyrics until finally it came together. And it’s a
weird song.
Right here on this couch?
Right here on this couch is where the magic
happens. See that pile of legal pads? Those are
all my notes that I’m working on. I love the
music. When I get into it. When I get high
and I’m playing, it’s just … oh my, great. I can’t
play high in front of people because I get lost.
I did it at Taix when it was just my friends left
in the audience, and the song just turns into
something else and they don’t care. In middle
of the song I will forget what I’m playing and
just start playing something else.
Are the songs on the Ruthann Friedman
Songbook the ones you recorded for A&M
in 67-68?
Not just for A&M—there are things I re-
corded for Steve Clark in my early twenties.
It’s from all over. Things I recorded for A&M,
things I recorded for Warner Reprise, things I
recorded on my own. It’s a whole time capsule
of different recordings.
What was happening in the late 60s for
you? You were caught up in your romance
with Peter Kaukonen? Why did that dis-
tract your from your music?
Funny thing is we were together for a year,
that’s all—but I lost A&M because of Peter.
Instead of concentrating on my recording, I
was sitting in the booth calling him and not
getting an answer, thinking he was fooling
around on me, which was true. But what are
you going to do? Live and learn.
But you bounced back cuz right after that
you jumped into Constant Companion?
Yes, I was living in the desert with my
next man, Alan Wayne, who I lived with
for five years. He was an artist. I still have
many of his paintings in my house. That’s
where I did Constant Companion and some
other things for Warner. With Van Dyke
Parks we did ‘Glittering Dancer,’ which is
a bonus track on one of my albums … I
INTERVIEW
really don’t know, maybe on Hurried Life?
I honestly can’t keep all the facts straight
at this point in my life.
Did you go out to the desert on a spiritual
quest to find answers or just cuz you wanted
to get out of town?
I wasn’t out there meditating or anything. I
just went down there one weekend and I was
playing my guitar at Jilly’s, who was a friend
of Sinatra’s [ahem, as in Frank…]. And this
young man came up to me and started talk-
ing and I ended up staying with him, Alan,
for five years. We stayed in the desert for a
little more than a year. We had a great house
near Palm Springs. There were no other
houses around us. It was different 40 years
ago. There were still hotels, but not as many.
It was the Rat Pack hangout. They’re all
mostly dead now. The reason Alan was there
was because his mentor, Victor Thall, was
there. Victor was an amazing character and
brilliant abstract expressionist who had been
in Paris in the 20s at the height of the arts
movement. I was typing his endless memoirs
for him. He was a crusty New Yorker about
whom I have many tales to tell … another
story for another time.
Do you have regrets about how your music
career went?
My music career never went. When I was
on the road pushing Constant Compan-
ion, I called Warner to find out where my
next show was, and they told me to call my
mother’s house and my stepfather picked
up the phone and told me my sister killed
herself. So I packed up and went home and
everything went downhill from there. And
I was like … enough. That was the end of
that and then I just didn’t want to do it any-
more so I raised a family instead. I found
my husband, Jeffrey, and we raised a family.
The years went by and then suddenly people
wanted to hear my songs again. So I picked
up the guitar and started doing it again, and
I realized that I just loved doing it. I love
writing songs. And I think my songs are bet-
ter now than they were then. I went to col-
lege. I got an education. I stopped recording
music entirely in 72, 73.
What got you through that period in your
life?
Well, it wasn’t drugs. I had given that up.
I don’t know. Probably just the belief that it
would turn out okay. That it would end. No
matter how bad it gets, there’s always light
at the end of the tunnel. There’s more good
times, more productive times.
Since you felt let down by your parents,
were you worried about being a good moth-
er when you decided to make a family?
You’ll find that what we do is the actual oppo-
site of what our parents did. I didn’t set bound-
aries for my kids like I should have. That song
‘What a Joy It Is to See You’: ‘We didn’t know
how to make you strong, but you found out
on your own / we’re so proud of how you’ve
grown …’ That’s the story right there. I was
worried about being a good parent. I loved my
kids. I loved them, I love them! It all works
out though.
What brought you back to music?
About seven years ago, I got a call from Pat
Thomas of Water Records and they wanted to
reissue Constant Companion. And I got a call
from Devendra Banhart, who wanted me to
play at a festival he was doing. So I dug out
my guitar. And then I found a guy who could
listen to my old recordings and start me off on
how I used to play them. I didn’t remember!
Then I realized I could still do it.
One lesson to take from this is that things
are never really over.
No, it continues. Unless you decide ‘I’m never
gonna …’ If it’s in you, it’s never over.
Are you happy music is back in your life?
Absolutely. Oh yeah! And I’ve made so many
great friends in the last few years, so many
people when I walk into a room and see them,
I really feel happy and they feel the same. I
love singing. I love performing. I love sharing
my songs. Otherwise I wouldn’t do it. Meet-
ing people and having these great friendships
keeps me going absolutely. I’m going to be 70,
you know.
You’re looking good for 70!
Well, thanks, dear. I spent a lot of time wait-
ing. I wasted a lot of time. Thinking. You
know that Eagles song, ‘I would’ve done so
many things if I could only stop my mind …’
I think too much. I procrastinate. I have to get
the whole thing worked out in my head before
I actually go and do it.
Why is it so hard to do the things we want
to do the most?
Maybe we’re afraid to fail. Or afraid we can’t do
it. Also the way I was raised; I was not raised
by nice people. They were crazy. My father es-
pecially made me feel very bad about myself.
That seemed to be his goal in life from when I
was 5 years old. It’s hard to keep positive and
it’s hard to believe in yourself. In my songs,
you can see, they’re not exactly all joyous.
That also makes me think of your spider
dream. You just had to go for it.
That’s true. Not being afraid. Just plunging
forward. It’s like that Alice in Wonderland song:
‘I give myself very good advice, but I very sel-
dom follow it. That explains the trouble that
I’m always in.’ I love music. I’ve always loved
music. Music makes the world go round.
It does. It brings people together, it sets
them apart. People find themselves, either
by making or listening.
I’m thinking about what you said about
being spiritual. I think that I thought that
people ‘knew’ when I was young and that
I didn’t get it and they all knew something
that I didn’t know. And now I know they
didn’t know anything. They would make
you believe they knew something to make
themselves feel really cool. It’s all bullshit—I
mean, basically. Anyone who tells you they
know, especially about spiritual things,
doesn’t know. I don’t go for the mythology
that tears the world apart. Religion is tearing
the world apart.
What should spirituality be?
You try to love yourself. Love your friends.
Make nice. Do what you know is the right
thing to do. Try to always do that. It doesn’t
necessarily mean you should be majorly suc-
cessful and make a lot of money. Live off the
grid if you think that’s what’s important. Be
true to yourself.
Which is harder than it seems.
It is. That’s why life is a trial. For some maybe
it isn’t. But I don’t know anyone who doesn’t
suffer and struggle. People with money aren’t
necessarily happy. They can afford expensive
psychiatry. Here is an answer for you that
is true: when I need some sort of spiritual
assistance I remember that all I have is this
moment in time. Past and future, all else is
illusion and at the most quarky, subatomic
level we are all connected to everything. I
don’t consider myself necessarily a wise per-
son but I like to inspect things and think
about what makes things go and why they
are the way they are. That’s usually what my
songs are about. My songs are it. If you want
to glean what’s going on in my head or what
I’ve learned, that’s where it is. In my songs.
That’s where I’ve worked it out. But other-
wise, the second 40 years of being a kid is
just as hard as the first 40.
As long as I get to keep being a kid.
It’s good, I think. Being able to see the world
and have fun and see things as new. And not
wear polyester pants.
RUTHANN FRIEDMAN’S CHINA-
TOWN IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM
WOLFGANG RECORDS. WINDY: THE
RUTHANN FRIEDMAN SONGBOOK
AND THE COMPLETE CONSTANT
COMPANION SESSIONS ARE AVAIL-
ABLE NOW FROM CHERRY RED/
NOW SOUNDS. VISIT RUTHANN
FRIEDMAN AT RUTHANNFRIED-
MAN.COM.
19
CRAIG LEON
Interview by Ron Garmon
Illustration by Emanuel Farias

Producer and arranger Craig Leon is best known in the United States for being present at the creation of new wave music, helming
classic albums by Blondie, Ramones and Richard Hell. But to progressive rock aesthetes and followers of allegedly serious music,
the effervescent and scholarly Mr. Leon is the man who in the early 80s created two LPs worth of gorgeously warped, drastically
advanced, generically unclassifiable music based on the idea of interplanetary Top 40 radio. Stupendous twin feats of purely
tonal reasoning, as multilayered in concept as some deep-dish SF classic yet as eerily cozy as your last late-night bout with Can
or Ash Ra Tempel, Nommos and Visiting are now re-released as the whimsically titled Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol.
1. The Facebook chat interview came with an unusual amount of transatlantic static, our faces flickering in and out of a blizzard
of stunted bandwidth.
I wanted to ask about early influences. to bring in Can, Kraftwerk, Neu! and others, was kind of the alternative Brill Building. Beatles-like stereo. Their name comes from
Oh, gosh. As a musician? I had a pretty and I got rejected on all of them. They nev- He wrote a lot of those early 60s pop songs the Beatles—‘Paul Ramone’ was the hotel
schizoid upbringing. I was trained and loved er sold any records—with the exception of and Seymour was a promotion guy. check-in name for Paul McCartney. They
from a very early age—we’re talking young Kraftwerk and them they did want, but they What was producing the first Ramones really thought they were going to be one
childhood—playing what’s called classical ended up being signed by their American af- album like? Did they have clue one about of the biggest bands on the planet and in
music on the piano. I hate that the term clas- filiate. I wasn’t trying to consciously create recording anything? a weird way, they did it. Thirty-eight years
sical, but that’s what it was, the old masters. Krautrock or anything industrial and it turns Well, a little knowledge is sometimes dan- later and we just went gold on the first al-
The very first record my dad ever gave me out the main inspiration for the records was gerous! Tom Erdelyi [aka Tommy Ramone] bum a week ago!
was Beethoven’s Sixth. We lived down South something entirely different— was the manager of the band and had the What did most of the corporate people
in the middle of nowhere and, late at night, I We’ll get to that! You’re famous for pro- concept of the band which to me was very, you dealt with think of the turn in mid-
loved listening to early rock ‘n’ roll radio and ducing and playing on new wave rock very important, which is why I credited 70s rock?
the greatest stuff was the Grand Ole Opry LPs. But your first gig was on a Climax him as associate producer on the album It has to be either the first Ramones or the
out of Nashville and Howlin’ Wolf out of Ar- Blues Band record. because he actually came up with the con- first Suicide album. I write and compose
kansas. Another early record my father got Yeah, not a so-called punk record. It was the cept for the band. In terms of recording, and my wife and I make our own records,
me was Smokestack Lightnin’ and I loved first production job I ever had. They were he’d engineered a little bit but didn’t know but when you’re producing a record for
that! They helped define what I did after- working on an album in England and the a lot about it. The rest of them didn’t know somebody else, it’s another thing altogether.
wards. Specifically for Nommos and Visiting, band didn’t like it and their producer want- much about it. But they had the songs and a You’re trying to create a sonic environment
the influences came from the avant-garde ed to hang out in Florida so he picked my distinct concept of what they wanted to do. unique to that particular artist and to help
and classical side—”Ballet Mécanique” was little studio. I did a bunch of arrangements Contrary to popular belief, we didn’t play them get their point across. Nowadays it’s
written by an American named George An- that everybody liked so Richard Gottehrer it live—there were overdubs and odd con- how many people it takes to cobble together
theil in the 20s. I have the poster for the pre- asked me to come work for him at Sire. I cepts I kind of put in there because I want- a viral hit on YouTube. Back then, it was to
miere right here over my shoulder and I’m sold the studio and went to work there. ed their album to sound radically different trying to establish the identity of a band.
sorry Facebook can’t let you see it. He was Climax Blues Band couldn’t get it right from everyone else’s because everybody’s It’s one of the reasons the music of that
a student of Stravinsky. Seven player pianos so that was your start in the biz? albums sounded the same. Nobody had era is still present in the culture.
hooked up to a sync mechanism and piano Exactly, but they did get it right! quite figured out how to record the louder Before Warners got involved, we were a tiny
rolls with holes cut in them that had them You worked at Sire during the 70s. This bands. The Stooges’ albums didn’t sound all label with five people working for it, like
play pounding rhythms. Musically, that had was your Brill Building experience— that good and neither did the MC5’s, so we an indie label today. All that stuff was com-
a lot to do with the rhythms of Nommos. Yeah, well, Seymour [Stein] and Richie, the couldn’t really record them conventionally pletely under the radar for the people at the
Then, of course, I was big fan of the German owners, came right from the Brill Building. like those records. It’s been written about big labels and if they noticed it at all it was
synth bands. When I worked at Sire, I tried Richie was out of 1650 Broadway, which a lot—the exaggeration-as-a-joke early to say it wasn’t very good.

20 INTERVIEW
When did you take up the synthesizer?
I played classical piano. At Sire we had a
sister label called Passport and there was
a very long project going over there with
Larry Fast, who was a keyboard player who
went on to play with Peter Gabriel. He was
doing one of those things where they take
written orchestral music and recreate it one
note at a time. He didn’t read music very
well so I got drafted to go help him out on
a semi-classical piece he was working on. I
read all the notes and I learned from there.
Did you ever hear Beaver & Krause? Parts
of their early 70s records come close to
what you did on Nommos.
Of course! Paul Beaver had a synth record
out on Takoma before I did.
Tell me about the Brooklyn Museum ex-
hibit that inspired Nommos and the other
recordings.
There was a book that accompanied it and
my wife and I were fascinated by this par-
ticular tribe the Dogon, whose art was be-
ing exhibited. They had a cultural tradition
involving aliens visiting from space—they
were very specific about what planet it
was— who taught them the basics of civili-
zation, kind of like our stories of angels in
Western religion and mythology. They had
pictures of these beings, which were kind of
amphibious. They actually described where
these creatures said they came from—a
star system very far from ours, with attri-
butes something like the Dog Star Sirius.
This is in terms of speculative fiction—I’m
not saying it’s true, but when I thought of
this, I began to wonder, ‘Surely they had
some kind of music.’ So I created from the
legends an alternative musical system that
these beings would’ve used.
Wow.
I don’t wanna bore you.
Don’t worry about that! What were the
parameters you set for yourself in execut-
ing this concept?
I used a system of very repetitive short drum
loops, which is pretty much what African
drum loops are, only mine were a bit more
in 4 and some of theirs are in 6. Depends
upon what tribe it is and everything. And
then I created very specific small-scales to-
nality—like five-tone pentatonic scales but
not the same ones we normally use and put
those two things together. Also some parts
of ancient Egyptian, Greek and Phoenician
music had these very simple melodic lines.
On top of that, I thought if they came from
an aquatic planet, they obviously—
—heard things underwater!
So in painting a science-fiction picture of
what these guys were listening to, that’s
kind of what interested me. Of course it’s
not done as an intellectual exercise but as
a kind of a supernatural fictional, kind of
tongue-in-cheek thing … not as if present-
ing a paper on this music.
No, it seemed rather more instinctual
than that. Don’t be surprised if one day a
religious cult comes out of these records.
Well, they might—the original concept of
the Dogon religion is quite complex. I just
wanted to show what was on the transistor
radio, so to speak. What they were listen-
ing to as they were flying through space,
22
perhaps in suspended animation for years.
There are books and books and books on
the psychology and religion of these crea-
tures, especially in France. It would take a
lot to attempt the Dogon religion, I think.
How many other musicians were involved
on the record?
Nommos? Pretty much me and Cassell
Webb, who still plays with me live.
Why did you re-record the album?
I wanted to add some things to it and tie
it together with the second record, Visit-
ing, which is a more earthly version of the
idea. Same principles, but fast-forwarded
a thousand years in technology. We didn’t
have enough room in those days on two
vinyl records. I started tinkering with it
around 1995 and finally wanted to see it
through. Nommos and Visiting, if you play
those records orchestrally, they sound like
my other orchestral records, which is why
I’m gonna start performing them live or-
chestrally. We will be doing that in London
with an orchestra next year. Nommos and
Visiting together had a smaller budget than
the first Ramones record, which was one of
the smallest budgets of all time. I couldn’t
afford an orchestra at the time.
Visiting is very comparable to a whole
fistful of prog rock classics in my opin-
ion. How long did recording it take?
About a week. Nommos may have taken a
slight bit longer. I’m old-fashioned about
my stuff, I actually write it out, sketch it
out and then play it, so the writing took
much longer.
Little could be further removed from
Blondie or Richard Hell. What was the
reaction to these albums upon release?
Probably no reaction. [Laughs]
Dead on arrival, eh?
Pretty much. A few avant-garde publica-
tions noticed it and it got airplay on clas-
sical stations late at night with the other
twentieth-century stuff. As far as the audi-
ence for Richard Hell and Blondie goes,
there was a whole thing with a lot of the
New York bands of that era being into the
avant-garde scene, particularly the Velvet
Underground and Suicide, but that’s an-
other conversation. They weren’t big sellers
and still aren’t.
What made you decide these two records
are worth retrieving?
When Nommos came out it was terrible
sounding, and I didn’t want that to be what
they remembered. I didn’t realize original
copies now go for all kinds of crazy money.
Same with Visiting. I wanted to do these
before a whole bunch of crappy bootlegs
came out. I wanted to use it to get some of
my ideas about sequential music and more
‘difficult’ music into the mindset of some of
my classical music partners so they can help
me make more records like these.
CRAIG LEON’S ALBUMS NOMMOS
AND VISITING ARE AVAILABLE AS
Anthology of Interplanetary
Folk Music Vol. 1 FROM RVNG
INTL. AND CRAIG LEON’S NOM-
MOS IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM
SUPERIOR VIADUCT. VISIT CRAIG
LEON AT CRAIGLEON.COM.
JOEL JEROME
Interview by Jacquelinne Cingolani
Illustration by Joel Jerome

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

Are you watching TV while I interview you,
Joel? What if you aren’t paying attention
and you accidentally say, ‘Fuck that band!’
or ‘So and so sucks!’?
Oh, cool! Then I will DEFINITELY make
sure to mention some band I don’t like!
Do you think the danger in rock music has
been lost? I ask the same question to all the
artists I interview because I love to hear ev-
eryone’s perspective on where the mystery
has gone. When was the last time you’ve
seen a band in the mainstream possess the
same kind of frenetic energy like—
You mean like Nirvana? Yeah, that’s a good
question. I mean, the thing about Nirvana
is even when they weren’t big they were still
signed to a pretty big label and they had those
resources to really push them. I think nowa-
days people don’t really sign acts like Nirvana,
at least not in the mainstream. I mean, think
about a band like the Black Lips. They have
this reputation for playing crazy live shows,
partying, being kind of out there, blowing au-
diences away with these high-intensity shows,
and touring in the Middle East. If they were
being pushed as a mainstream band, they
would be selling millions of records, but the
point is they don’t sell a million records cuz
they don’t have that kind of support and aren’t
capable of making the same footprint a band
like Nirvana did.
Why isn’t anyone pushing them? Where are
the balls?
That’s a good question. I don’t know. Nirvana
hit because they genuinely touched something
universal. They had that one ‘je ne sais quoi’
quality about them. ... At the same time, the
resources were different. Once they started hit-
ting, the labels started pushing them out even
more because a shit ton of money was flowing
in. Labels just don’t really do that anymore.
26
The industry takes fewer risks cuz it’s easier
to invest in and make money off of pop stars
or ‘safe’ rock bands cuz they’ll do what they’re
told. They’ll play the game and they won’t try
and sabotage themselves or the formula that’s
been laid out for them.
What would you like to see happen in
L.A.?
I would love to see a bunch of bands that
were playing backyard parties and record store
shows a few years ago get bigger and really get
something going. I talk to a lot of bands—es-
pecially Lolipop bands—that all seem to have
this thing … and I have it, too. It’s the idea
things are going to explode. No one knows
who it will be, but it’s gaining momentum cuz
it’s this growing community of young people
who are in bands and each band has some-
thing unique to offer. It just feels like at some
point people are really going to catch on and
it’s going to burst.
Do you think it’s ageist?
No, not necessarily, but fresh out of high
school and not having the responsibilities that
come with shit that starts to come up in later
life is for sure an advantage. It’s really about the
time and the energy you are willing to commit
over anything to do with age.
Do you think younger bands have ‘staying
power’? What did Oscar Wilde say? ‘Youth
is wasted on the young.’
As far as the ‘staying power,’ it means you are a
band that likes each other enough to be a band
for more than ten years. That’s a part of the
whole dios thing. It’s been ten years since our
first record came out—that’s insane! I mean,
the Beatles weren’t together for more than
seven years. I’ve seen bands get big and then
fizzle out because members were over touring
and crashing on floors and wanted an actual
career.
Did that happen with dios?
dios started off with my own 4-track bedroom
recordings and then took a while due to line-
up changes to really get it going. The first re-
cord came out and it did really well. We started
touring and that led to more records and more
tours. … It was a cycle that fizzled. I guess I
realized it was difficult to be in a band with a
certain group of people, especially when some
of them are longtime friends. I realized I was
better off being a solo artist. Then the real pain
in my ass was the whole name-change thing.
I really wish we had fought back. Kevin and I
were really pushing to keep the name dios and
with all of the legalities, it started to shift in an-
other direction. ... We were playing Coachella
that year and the name was on people’s radar,
so it was a perfect opportunity for this dude
Ronnie James Dio to try and sue us for stealing
his name. I thought it was a joke! At the time,
managers and agents were urging us to change
the name and even though I was against it, I
went along with changing the name. It was re-
ally a pivotal moment where things started to
change and dissolve.
But how can you own the name ‘dios’—
‘God’ in Spanish? That’s INSANE!
He was a metal singer and cuz we were in the
same business, it was like we were stealing his
branding and it was confusing to the general
public. I still don’t know how he got away with
it. The whole thing took a lot of wind out of
my sails, that’s for sure.
That brings us to your new solo record, Psy-
chedelic Thriftstore Folk. Will it feature a
rotating cast of players?
I recorded the record with Kevin and Jason
[from Hanakeawe and Babies on Acid] and it
worked out really well. I keep it under Joel
Jerome to have it all under one umbrella so I
don’t constantly get, ‘What happened to dios?’
‘What happened to Babies on Acid?’ For the
most part, dios was me and so is Babies on
Acid, so I guess I realized I like to do everything
alone because when I hear that voice, I have to
answer to it immediately—that way I’m not
waiting or relying on anyone. It’s like painting.
I don’t like to paint with people around. I like
to create for the most part alone.
You have become a local hero when it comes
to recording bands, using the Albini ap-
proach of offering a sliding payscale. Does
it get weird to be approached by bands and
you hear their songs and think, ‘Man, there
is no way I can get into this!’?
Yeah, every single band I have ever recorded
sucks. I wish I could sit around and record
myself all day. I really do it for the paycheck.
JOKE! JOKE!! No—really, I have never had
a horrible experience or anyone I didn’t like. I
generally don’t like to advertise my studio cuz
I want to focus on passion projects or projects
I can connect to.
You’ve recorded a lot of women.
Whoever makes good music makes good mu-
sic, but it’s pretty cool to see women coming
out and making really good music. I like to
empower women and people in general to ful-
fill the ideas they have and be able to execute
their vision.
Attention females! Call Papa Joel for your
next studio experience—he can help you
execute your vision!
Don’t say it like that! It’s creepy! People will
think I’m some big creep. Call me Brother Joel
instead.
JOEL JEROME’S PSYCHEDELIC
THRIFTSTORE FOLK WILL BE RE-
LEASED LATER THIS SUMMER ON
MANIMAL. VISIT JOEL JEROME AT JO-
ELJEROMEMUSIC.BANDCAMP.COM.
INTERVIEW
DJ HARVEY’S
WILDEST DREAMS
Interview by Kristina Benson
Photography by Olivia Jaffe
DJ Harvey is perhaps best-known for being a famous dance/electronic DJ who contributed cheerfully to many a person losing
their mind in public, but the Englishman-turned-California-surfer-dude also has a soft spot for what he refers to as ‘California folk
music’-—which to him is psychedelic rock, some adroitly funky beats, and songs that start with ‘Move over honey / I think I want
to drive.” His Wildest Dreams outfit is him and an as-of-press-time-nameless band, and Harvey himself joined us while recovering
from the effects of a bad kale smoothie.
If you were trapped in a lifeboat from the
whale ship Essex with three other musi-
cians of your choice, who would you can-
nibalize first?
I’d say the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and I
would eat Mitch Mitchell so I could do all the
drumming.
Why so into the story of the Essex?
It’s just a wonderful story. I’ve attempted to
read Moby Dick on numerous occasions, and
it’s just a difficult book to read. I like the idea
of these wild men of years gone by who went
through unbelievably tough situations and
rose above and survived—and they’re awfully
eccentric and wacky people, too—when the
world wasn’t completely mapped out. I mean,
it was probably a much worse place than now.
You got a toothache and you died! But it’s
just a fantastic story. It puts the whole thing
in perspective. The Japanese didn’t eat all the
whales, the Americans burnt them all. The
Essex had to go to the Pacific cuz they killed
all the whales in the Atlantic. The Japanese
weren’t traveling to the Atlantic to eat whales.
The Americans had burned them all cuz before
oil was discovered in Texas, the oil that fueled
America was whale oil. And baleen was used
for French corsets—hence whalebone corsets.
And the fat, the good stuff, was used to make
lipstick. We rub whales all over our faces and
then set fire to them—but we blame it on the
poor Japanese fishermen! Poor old whaley! It’s
pretty sad stuff … but whales still taste good!
I’ve eaten a lot in Japan. I don’t seek it out but
it’s like a cross between tuna and beef. It has
a long grain. Lots of different cuts. It’s a big
fish! They should farm the whales and then
it’s all good. I think whales are actually bet-
ter off now than they have been in the last
400 years—I read a book about Greenpeace
needing a figurehead for people to associate
with them—
They needed an adorable animal cuz no
one would care about saving some bug?
Exactly—no one cares about codfish. Which
are dying off cuz no one cares. They renamed
another fish cod. When I was a kid, you did
not eat tilapia. Tilapia was thrown away. I
INTERVIEW
think Alaskan cod and black cod aren’t cod.
They’re something else. What can you do? Eat
it while there’s some left.
Speaking of the Old World—you are in
England right now to play a gig. Did you
do anything fun or was it all work?
I did go to the British Museum to check
out the sarcophagi—the British stole all the
best stuff around the world and put it in
their museums. Most people who had an
empire stole cool shit. But we have the Ro-
setta Stone, all these mummies—they must
have desecrated so many burial sites! But I
really love the stone sarcophagi. The Egyp-
tians really seem like … sorta stone Cadil-
lacs in which to reach the afterlife. Some are
sports versions, some are SUVs. It’s mind-
blowingly cosmic stuff.
How did you make this Wildest Dreams
album? Did you mind-control some band
into doing what you wanted?
I kind of put this band together—they were a
funk band who were nameless at the moment,
and I told them they should play rock ‘n’ roll
instead of funk. I had a little bit of a concept
and they were a ready-made band. We listened
to some records and we’d come up with some
simple chord structures, and then we’d jam
around those, and I’d sorta write some poetry
and make verses and the chorus and then dub
some solos and … like that!
What were those records?
Probably something by Captain Beefheart,
something by Can?
You’re kind of a shredder—why were you
hiding that? Shouldn’t the world know
Harvey can knock out some amazing psy-
chedelic guitar?
There’s two of us who play on Wildest
Dreams—maybe the more accomplished
stuff isn’t me! It’s funny—if you asked me
to play that stuff I couldn’t do it. But some-
times it just comes out of my hands. It’s a
thing that happens with drums all the time.
You kinda go beyond what is humanly pos-
sible. And when you lock into that force, it
takes over and you can do things that aren’t
possible! I played guitar for many years,
since I was a kid at school, but I was never
any good at it. I always wanted to be, but I
was never any good. But with the modern
age and computers, you only have to get it
right once. I dunno if I could sing and play
on stage. I could sing and drum, do the ol’
Phil Collins thing, but when I play guitar,
I’m hunched over like Robert Fripp, sitting
in a chair with a little prop for my foot and
it’s all up high and not very glamorous at all.
But it sounds okay.
Why did you end up making this specific
kind of music? You must have some of ev-
ery type of record ever made in your collec-
tion. How come Wildest Dreams ended up
sounding like a 60s or 70s psych band?
It’s definitely what I grew up with. The first-
ever music I got into was my mother’s collec-
tion of what I call ‘real rock ‘n’ roll and jazz.’
By ‘real’ rock ‘n’ roll I mean Jerry Lewis, Bill
Haley, Gene Vincent, Johnny Cash, that stuff
on Sun Records. Basic real 50s rock ‘n’ roll.
My mum had nice jazz music, too, and I re-
member my babysitter playing me some Jimi
Hendrix and saying, ‘This’ll be too heavy for
you.’ But I didn’t know what heavy meant!
And when I heard it, I was like, ‘I dunno
what this HEAVY is, but it’s amazing!’ Then
I got into what I suppose now is traditional
rock ‘n’ roll in many respects—the English
blues-based rock ‘n’ roll, Cream and the Yard-
birds and Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple,
Peter Green and Fleetwood Mac, all that
stuff. And psychedelia at the same time. Then
punk rock came and that was a real teenage
revolution—a real hark back to original rock
‘n’ roll with attitude and everything, and I felt
that was more ‘mine.’ I was 13 or 14 at the
time and thought, ‘This is the first time this
has ever happened!’ Then I started listening
to the Stooges and the MC5 and California
psych and all that … I dunno, it’s a massive
story! And then hip-hop is the next thing af-
ter punk, and in the 70s disco was all around.
And to be a real punk, you listened to disco
cuz you weren’t supposed to! Like being a real
satanist—you do things you’re not supposed
to! You contradict yourself.
What do you think is next in the great pop
culture recycle cycle?
Who knows? There’s an early 90s revival
happening at the moment far as I can see
with dance music. Kids making this almost
proto-house sound. The next way to go as far
as dance music is … gospel house? Overpro-
duced gospel house meets late-90s dance? As
far as techno, gabber and overtempo—maybe
a drum ‘n’ bass revival? You never know what
kids dig up. As far as rock ‘n’ roll, it seems like
it’s all been done two or three times. You just
get a new injection of energy, and then tal-
ented people come add a little flavor and you
have a leap forward in technology and then
a step back—now everybody’s all about tape!
It’s difficult to really predict the future. Hope-
fully someone will find the 13th bar of the
12-bar blues and we’ll have a complete rock
‘n’ roll revolution. It’d be great!
Was 68 to 74 the peak of psychedelic dude
music?
There’s incredible music being made right
now. It’s probably at its peak somewhere with
some kids who threw their computers away
and are living in a hole in the desert and we
know nothing about it, and it’ll be discov-
ered in years to come. And it’ll be an amaz-
ing thing cuz they went off the grid and it
was allowed to mature and develop. If I was
a younger man, I’d jump up and down on
my computer and go live in a hole in the des-
ert with a bunch of crazy, young, disaffected
middle-class chicks and make the best music
since the Beach Boys.
When you made these songs, were you
accessing your internal encyclopedia of
music? Like, ‘Oh, this would be cool if
it was like Twink but more of an Easter
Everywhere sound, and then put out on
Harvest’?
I describe the album as California folk mu-
sic—very traditional and simple.
When you say California folk music, do
you mean like the Mamas and the Papas?
It is like the Mamas and the Papas, just the
singing’s not as good! Maybe I shoulda spent
more than four days on this?
29
“Three or four chords, played with feeling and
heart, and that’s where the magic comes.”
That’s it? You’re so lucky to just go so fast. I
get nervous if what I’m making is good.
It doesn’t matter what you think, it’s what
other people think—you just have to put
it out there and somebody will like it. Do
something—maybe lots of people like it? I
don’t worry about that now. Lots of people
like things I don’t like. So if I don’t like it, it’s
got nothing to do with whether lots of people
like it or not.
So … do you like this record?
It’s not too painful! I’m more about the ini-
tial spark of creation, rather than wallowing
in how fantastic it is afterward. There’s noth-
ing too complicated to blues and psychedelic
chord progressions. Usually three or four
chords, played with feeling and heart, and
that’s where the magic comes.
How scared were you that first time you
DJed in front of a lot of people?
I’m happy on stage—I’m an entertainer.
That’s my realm. I’m always nervous before I
go on, no matter what. But within a few min-
utes that turns into power when I’m on stage,
and I quite enjoy it. I’m nervous cuz I want to
do well, and I care what people think! I’m not
one of those people who doesn’t give a fuck. I
think anyone who says they don’t give a fuck,
they actually really do an awful lot.
You said earlier that you don’t care if people
like your record—you don’t feel the same
when you go DJ a party?
No—interesting you should say that. It’s a dif-
ferent form of performance. I don’t approach
DJing like that. When I’m DJing, I do con-
sider the people and try to make them happy,
cuz they’re right there in your face! When I
produce music, I dunno … it’s not like there’s
an audience right there instantly … that could
walk away! Although with a record, they have
a chance to listen to it before they pay for it.
With a DJ performance, they paid for it be-
fore they get it.
You said having a band is like having four
girlfriends—is Wildest Dreams like that?
I haven’t spent enough time with them! That
was from when I joined my first band at 15
or 16. You all go to school together and hang
out or live in the same apartment and travel
around in the van, and you have very close
love-hate relationships. And then your girl-
friends get girlfriends who start to determine
they don’t like you being heavy metal and
want you to be a hair metal band! The state
I’m in, we’re a little more mature. We’ve got
wives and children and mothers-in-law and
mortgages—a slightly different take!
What’s it like partying when you’re sober?
I don’t go to bars—bars are somewhere you
go to drink and I don’t drink so there’s no
reason for me to go there. I’m lucky cuz my
profession puts me in a social zone, which I
30
like. So I party for a living, not for recreation.
Whereas most people do some job for a living
and party for recreation—I’m the other way
around! Although I actually do absolutely
nothing for recreation and party for a living!
Do you still surf?
Yeah, and ride my skateboard and eat nice
food and listen to music. It’s changed, but
for the better. I found that 35 years of doing
this—when I was a drunk—that every sort of
three or four months, I’d do something really
mentally stupid and it was only a matter of
time before I woke up next to a dead girl.
That didn’t happen, did it?
That didn’t happen … but it almost did, or I
could have woke up and I was dead! So you
get that out of the equation. And owning fire-
arms isn’t quite as dangerous as it was.
You’ve really assimilated if you own fire-
arms. Are you into guns?
Yeah! I suppose it’s a little bit wrong, but I see
them as sexy and glamorous, which I think
few people would admit to. Apart from that,
they’re fucking useless. Apart from being a
fantasy item for sex and fantasy violence. If
you take them into the real world and use
them for what they’re meant for, which is …
what’s the word? Attack. I don’t think they’re
very good for defense, which is an excuse for
a lot of people. I don’t think they’re very good
for that at all. If someone’s shooting at you,
most people are bigger than guns, so they’re
hard to hide behind. In the real world, guns
are horrible things. But in the fantasy world,
they’re sexy and glamorous.
Do you shoot or just collect? Have you been
taught to use a weapon correctly?
I have—I was trained as a child soldier by
the British government back in the mid-70s.
They called it the Air Cadets. I was an 11-
year-old kid … people get all upset about
10-year-old children in Africa taught to
murder people, but I was that and so were
many other people. They probably do that
in America, too. That’s child soldiers, right?
So I know how to use firearms. And I also
grew up in the English countryside, where
firearms were just lying around—you’d walk
into your friend’s house and there’s a shotgun
and a few dead rabbits, and we had access
to that stuff. My dad enjoyed target shoot-
ing and we had a gun cabinet in the house.
And I have a very, very healthy respect for
them! I know what they’re capable of. If you
watch what I call the Hitler Channel … it’s
now called the American Heroes channel,
changed from I think the Military Channel,
and now they just show nothing but stories
about Hitler, which I find quite interesting,
too. But anyway—they very rarely show the
result of these weapons. ‘Here’s a liquidized
family!’
When you went shooting, did you dress up
in those Downton Abbey tweeds?
Not really—as an Air Cadet, I’d wear a uni-
form, and if it was muddy, you’d wear Wel-
lington boots. But I never got into English
shooting fashion, which is quite hilarious,
—deerstalker hats and tweed leather-elbowed
jackets. It’s almost as bad as golfing fashion!
English people seem like they love chang-
ing clothes. They have different outfits for
everything.
I had sort of an idea of wearing extreme sports
clothing rather than actually engaging in the
sport. Like mountaineering, you get all sorts
of carbiners and ropes and belts and tight
shorts and strange rubber shoes and all this
chalk to play with and fun stuff like that.
It’d be fun to wander down to CVS in that
gear—hanging out in the footcare depart-
ment dressed in mountaineering gear. It’d be
quite entertaining.
Which is more of a challenge to make en-
tertaining—a band or a DJ set?
Unless you come from the shoe-stare school
of indie, [a band is] probably more interesting
than a DJ to look at. Maybe you got funny
clothes, a blond wig, glittery pants? The more
entertaining you make it, the better, right?
People come to be entertained. I went to see
a KISS show some years ago and the guitar
turned into a rocket and flew across the stage,
and Gene Simmons flew into the air and
there were all these flames going. I can’t say
I ever liked any of their music, apart from ‘I
Was Made for Lovin’ You,’ but for pure enter-
tainment, they’re fantastic!
Does every band, no matter how big or bad,
have one secret good song? The Osmonds
have a psychedelic song I love.
Every band has made a good song at some
point. The Osmonds made a really good re-
cord called ‘I, I, I’ which is a cosmic disco clas-
sic. Which is hugely unknown outside that
circle. I’m an Osmonds fan, actually—they’re
creepy and preppy and deranged. When you
perform, your job is to entertain—not to edu-
cate or teach. You’re there to put on a show
and make people happy or whatever. I just re-
cently watched some GG Allin YouTubes and
he’s a WONDERFUL entertainer! He’s incit-
ing the audience to kick his ass. I don’t think
I’m gonna shit in my hand and throw it in the
crowd, but there’s a lot to be said for getting
naked and running around and shouting and
hitting yourself in the head with a bottle.
That’s kind of a credit to him—people still
remember him.
He could walk the walk but couldn’t really talk
the talk, bless him. He was never like Johnny
Rotten. Johnny was an intellectual who’d
speak the truth, and GG just sorta shouted a
bit too much.
Are you friends with Johnny Rotten? Isn’t
he your neighbor?
No, but I’m sure he is. The girl who took the
photos was like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna move to
London,’ and I said if you wait long enough,
all the great Englishmen move to California.
The English are great Americaphiles. So many
things English people look up to come from
America. For me, whether it was William S.
Burroughs or Charles Manson or the Beach
Boys or hot rods or dragsters or skateboarding
or porno history—all the things I like! Hol-
lywood Babylon, all the really fun things that
are so right and so wrong at the same time.
America is a very attractive proposition to the
English, so when people have the opportu-
nity, they move here. I’m sure East Coasters
would beg to differ, but I think L.A. is much
darker. Paradise lost, you know? The plastic
people. It’s not supposed to be, but it is and it
isn’t at the same time. New York is too cool for
school. L.A. is shit and we love it!
What exactly do you look up to about
Manson? I guess he was pretty good at mo-
tivating people.
He speaks the truth! Charlie is pretty good
with lyrics. He talks pretty sensibly. I’ve nev-
er really had anything wrong with anything
he’s had to say. As far as I’m concerned,
Helter Skelter was just a prosecution case by
Bugliosi. People take it as the truth, but it’s
just how he managed to get his conviction.
There’s so so many things that are left un-
known, untold and doubtful whether this
or that went on. The Family is a little more
close to the truth, and it doesn’t attempt
to answer many of the unanswered ques-
tions. I don’t think Charlie is a particularly
nice guy, you know? But that’s okay. James
Brown made good music but he wasn’t a
very nice guy either.
I struggle with that. I try and buy ethically,
but what if I like an artist who turns out to
be a shitbag? Does it matter?
That’s a big subject. I wouldn’t like to have to
answer that in a moment. Generally, art and
religion and politics are monster subjects.
I’d have to think, including whether or not
Charles Manson’s actually cool—he’s a pop
icon, and a lot of people have done an awful
lot worse. If you kill one person, you’re a mur-
derer. If you kill 25 people, you’re a star. And
if you kill a couple hundred thousand, you’re
a president. It’s all pretty odd stuff.
DJ HARVEY’S WILDEST DREAMS
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ARE COMING LATER THIS YEAR.
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INTERVIEW
THE
 Music journalists and musicians have some big things in

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

How long has it been since the last Muffs
album?
Kim Shattuck (vocals / guitar): Exactly ten years!
A super long time.
Why so long? And why start up again now?
Ronnie Barnett (bass): We’ve actually been
working on it for like four years … at least?
After we put out the last record and toured
the last record we ended up taking about
three years off. But I think we’re 23 now—
over the course of a long career you just have
some breaks. We didn’t stop being friends or
anything. It just ended up being a three-year
break.
KS: We did the last album on Five Foot Two
Records. It was a label that Charlotte Caffey
from the Go-Go’s and Anna Waronker from
That Dog. started.
Is that a reference to Iggy Pop’s song ‘Five
Foot One’?
KS: No, it’s cuz they’re both really short! They
have complexes, like, ‘Oh, I’m soooo short!’
Ha! We did a bunch of local shows and did
a bunch of shows around the world—like,
we went to Japan—and then, you know how
things die off. … Right around that time it
didn’t seem like rock music was easy music
to promote. People were like, ‘Whatever.’ I
think our record got good reviews and stuff
like that—I don’t read reviews—but even if
we’re good, fans were like, ‘Whatever.’ [But]
it’s good for your ego to go to Japan. They treat
us like the Beatles there. They run after you! I
mean, you have to run, too. … But you get to
know what it’s like to be one of the Fab Four.
People will come up, crying and shaking, and
you hug them and you hug them tighter and
they shake more and you try to comfort them
and they cry more, like ‘Muuuuuuughh!!’ I
don’t get it! It’s like, too weird. It only happens
there.
I feel like they’re not that way about Japa-
nese bands.
KS: People don’t appreciate their local bands.
I mean, everyone’s a local band somewhere.
We’re a local band here in L.A. but in Japan,
we’re a band that came from across the world.
And you’ve now traveled all the way to Ful-
lerton to join up with Burger Records.
KS: They’re really nice! How I found out about
Burger was … well, I just live under a rock. I
don’t pay attention to anything except for my
own thoughts, I guess. I’m just a homebody
or whatever. But Roy had toured with Redd
Kross a bunch, and Steve McDonald is all
plugged in to knowing everything about ev-
erything, and I guess Burger had something to
do with the tour. So they were going around in
the van … like the Scooby Doo van basically.
And Roy got to know Lee [Rickard] really well.
So when we were looking for a label, Roy said,
‘You gotta try Burger out, cuz Burger is really
cool right now.’ And I was like, ‘I like burg-
ers!’ We have a record called Hamburger, so it’s
kind of perfect.
Roy McDonald (drums): Before this album,
we were all a little burned out. We were just
spinning our wheels at this point. We had put
out Really Really Happy, and the touring cycle
was over and we were doing some local shows,
and we did a show at Safari Sam’s. That show
almost crystallized what we were feeling—we
were burned out, we felt no energy, there was
a weird vibe—that place had a weird vibe any-
way! That place was doomed!
KS: I went back to school for photography, just
to take some brush-up courses. And I started
doing photography more: portraits and wed-
dings and stuff like that.
You took some of me dressed as DEVO.
KS: The ones of you wearing the strap-on key-
board? That’s one of my favorite photos! It’s
for fun. It’s not like a paying gig. I’ve realized
I don’t like to do professional photography—I
like to do whatever the hell I want, and that’s
what I’m going to do. Making money off of
photography makes me not like photography
after a while.
My favorite song you guys ever recorded is
probably your cover of ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Girl’
by Paul Collins’ Beat.
KS: Oh, thank you! Did you know we tried to
change the lyrics a little bit: ‘I want to beat up
a rock ‘n’ roll girl’? ... I did the chorus like, ‘I
want to beat up a rock ‘n’ roll girrr-rrrr-rrrlll.’
And I got a letter saying they wouldn’t use the
song unless I re-sung it just like the original
words: ‘I want to be with a rock ‘n’ roll girl.’
They said that it wasn’t good for women. And
I was like, ‘Wow, THIS woman has a funny
sense of humor!’ Not that it’s funny to beat up
women, but another woman singing it, I guess
it should be okay, right? When we do it live,
we redo the choruses. It’s stupid.
Is the original Paul Collins lyric about an
empowered woman? Or more like a rock
groupie type?
KS: When you hear the original lyric, you
think it’s like a groupie kind of thing, and to
me that’s more insulting than beating them
up—ha! But I guess they had a point. I was
morally shunned for my violent nature.
Remember when I interviewed Paul Col-
lins? You had me ask him if being two milli-
meters away from your mouth gave him any
ideas.’ He said, ‘I wanted to kiss her!’

33
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KS: Oh my god—he had the absolute worst
breath of anyone on the planet. He’s totally
nice and stuff, he’s kind of curmudgeonly …
and it was fun singing with him! Smokers have
the worst breath of all time, and he’s a heavy
smoker, and I guess he’d just chugged a bunch
of cheap beer. So it was just this collection of
disgustingness in my face!
It’s been kind of a disgusting year! A lot of
what’s going on is just dark and evil, and a
lot of people have fallen into depression. In
times like these, does the band respond with
darker material or lighter material?
KS: The things that inspire me to write are
usually a little bit dark and a little bit angry.
If I can’t write music, it’s usually cuz I’m really
happy and I’m just doing my thing. But when
I’m a little bit weirded out about something,
and I kind of get over the hump of the weird-
ness where I’m not mad anymore, I’m just
like, ‘Wow, that was weird, I’m glad that was
yesterday or the day before!’ I’m usually really
good about writing lyrics at those times, cuz
I’m processing it. But the way I write lyrics also
is that I’m not thinking about what I’m writ-
ing at all. I just go to a weird automatic place.
When the lyrics come out, whatever they’re
about is what I’ve been grousing about days
before. It’s super weird. If I try to write lyrics,
if I try really hard, they just come out sound-
ing stupid. All my best lyrics are done kind of
subconsciously.
On this newest album, what have you been
grousing about?
KS: The first song on the record is called ‘Rude
Boy Next Door.’ I wrote it in about two min-
utes—whatever the run time is for that song,
I wrote it in that amount of time. I thought
it would be really easy to write the lyrics if I
could just go to that little automatic place.
And all of a sudden I heard banging next door,
and yelling, and screaming, and I’m like, ‘Holy
shit, what’s going on?’ I peeked over next door,
and I see the kid over there who lives there
literally taking a baseball bat and hitting the
garage with it. And screaming! Acting out in
this weird, angry way. And I was so pissed cuz
I was trying to write songs, and I was scared
cuz it was violent! I didn’t want to call the
police cuz I live right next door to him … he
would know it was me! So I felt really trapped.
I ended up writing the lyrics to this song about
this guy—scribble scribble scribble scribble
scribble. And when I read it, I was laughing
cuz it was really intense about him. Kind of
jokey lyrics, but perfect for that song.
What’s the theme of this album overall?
KS: More of the lyrics are really complaining
about people that I know. There’s a couple
songs about me—pretty much about how
weird I am! And there’s a fictional song I prob-
ably thought about a little too hard, but it
came out good anyways.
What is so weird about yourself that you
have to chronicle it in song? Do other peo-
ple perceive those things?
KS: I was going through some ups and downs, I
guess—a lot of mood swings. I was like, ‘Shit, I
should just write this.’ When I was writing my
one song about me [“Up and Down Around”],
I didn’t know what to write about, so it just
started coming out. The first verse came out
about how it feels to be depressed, and then a
whole chorus is about going up and down and
INTERVIEW
around. … I thought, ‘OK, what’s the oppo-
site?’ The second verse is about what it’s like to
be waaaay too up and animated and not being
able to sleep. So it’s just one of those mood-
swingy kind of songs. And then another song I
wrote is about angst about relationship stuff.
Angst and relationship stuff? Your husband
seems so nice! Do you ever have to use other
couples as references?
RB: Every couple has their differences. [Kim’s
husband] Kevin’s so easygoing and mellow it’s
hard to think of him as being difficult. Deal-
ing with Kim, sometimes you’re going to have
your difficulties—I don’t mean it like that!
Kim is set in her ways and she has her opin-
ions …
KS: Last time I was super happy, so the whole
album was a happy album. This one, I’m kin-
da mad again, and just bitching about stuff
and complaining! If I get into a fight, and I’m
all frustrated, my feelings come out that way
sometimes. ... If I figured out why I am the
way I am and why people react to me the way
they do, songs come out of that. ‘Oh, now I
realize why people are mad at me!’
Sounds like a healthy way to deal with other
people’s reactions. Have you ever responded
with physical violence instead?
KS: Well, yeah! I’ve gotten in fights before.
One time some girl was slam-dancing into ev-
erybody … she was really super drunk. And I
got really sick of it! And instead of being the
person who just walks away from it, I decided
to just push her down and smack her and take
her clothes off—or more like take her jacket
off her. So I stole her jacket and I hid it in my
garage cuz I was still living at my mom’s house.
My mom saw it and was like, ‘Where’d you get
that jacket?’ ‘I stole it off a drunk girl.’
Stealing clothes reminds me of a story I
heard about the Pandoras in the 80s, your
band right before the Muffs—that one time
Gwynne Kahn showed up at an event after
beating up Paula Pierce, clutching her love
beads in one hand and a big lock of her
hair in the other and was like, ‘I kicked the
bitch’s ASS!’
KS: I was there! I think it was the Café du
Grande, like 1985. I had just gotten into the
Pandoras, and we were hanging out outside,
and Paula was still inside. And I think that was
when Gwynne came up to her with a Perrier
bottle—it later got reported as a ‘beer bottle’
but really it was a Perrier bottle, which is thick-
er and harder—and she hit her over the head
with it. And then Paula died of an aneurysm
later … hmm, I wonder? Ha! I don’t remem-
ber the hair-pulling part, but I remember kick-
ing and fists and stuff. But that was so long
ago …
Tell us the story of the Pixies!
KS: It was in September that I heard from
Charles [aka Frank Black], just from ran-
dom messages from Twitter and Facebook,
and he was asking if I wanted to listen to
some music. And I was like, ‘Yeah sure,’ if
he wrote it, cuz I didn’t want to listen to
random music that he likes. I hadn’t heard
from him in years—it seemed like a whim.
Then all of a sudden he asked, ‘I was won-
dering how you’d feel about being a bass
player for the Pixies?’ ‘Yeah. That’d be great.’
Kind of casually. He’s a flamboyant charac-
ter, so I had a feeling he was maybe saying
this to everybody. After a really long time,
he got hold of me again and said that they
were recording and they had somebody for
the album, but still needed me for the tour.
Then he told me they were holding audi-
tions. They gave us a variety of songs, so I
learned all of those, then learned a few more.
They’re not easy, so every second I was self-
conscious. Charles liked me, but the other
guys weren’t so sure. He convinced them,
and then it was just practice, practice, prac-
tice. All the time. It was more work than a
job, but I wasn’t getting paid. The manager
even said to me, ‘There’s plenty of people
who’d do this for free.’ I had to deal with a
lot of shit from that guy. So that’s the story
of how I got to be a part of the Pixies line-
up, temporarily.
How did it end?
KS: We started to go on the road and do a
bunch of shows. I got a little carried away at
one show and I jumped into the pit and ba-
sically went up and down the pit being cute,
jumping up and hugging people, high-fiving
them, kissing people, just being really gregari-
ous. After that I got yelled at by the manager,
who was like, ‘Don’t do that. The Pixies just
don’t do that.’
RB: A lot of people point it out as why she
got kicked out. That wasn’t really the rea-
son she got kicked out—there were a lot of
things. It’s basically clear now that the bass-
ist in the Pixies is a hired gun. You don’t see
the new girl in the pictures. I think Charles
kind of wanted it to be a band, and the oth-
er two didn’t see it that way. They’ve been in
the band for 26 years, and Kim was getting
some attention …
KS: And then after that, the drummer, Dave
[Lovering], would not talk to me. He was a
good guy in rehearsals, but after that he just
would not talk to me unless he had a criticism
of how I played. After that leg was over, Dave
started talking to me again and he was super
nice so I figured something happened. Turns
out Charles had a talk with him and said it was
unprofessional to not talk to me.
And just not practical!
KS: It turns out he didn’t like that I had a
stage persona. He felt like I was getting too
much attention. And then they did things
like … any show where you hear a recording
of the show, they bury my bass completely.
On the BBC and the Jimmy Fallon show,
you can totally hear the bass. Anything from
our shows, they kept my bass down just to
placate Dave. He said he didn’t like the way
I played, but he didn’t even keep me on in
his in-ear monitor. He just decided he hated
me after I jumped in the pit and didn’t want
to be in a band with me anymore. I was in
all the pictures, but none of the interviews.
Now Paz [Lenchantin] is in all of the in-
terviews and they are like, ‘We love her so
much.’ Which is cool with me. She’s a much
better bass player than I am. I’m more of a
plunker. I don’t have any problem with her
cuz she just took an opportunity. But for a
while I would look to see if they said any-
thing fucked-up about me cuz they would.
I would show it to Kevin and we’d laugh
cuz it was old dudes curmudgeonly saying
things about how I wasn’t right for the band.
They take it super seriously.
What about the Pandoras? Did they not in-
vite you to be in the second iteration?
KS: I don’t really like what those girls do. I’m
not being petty, but the girl who started that
whole second generation was only in the band
for a month. It’s a different line-up and I am
not a big fan of what they put out. I think
Paula would flip over in her grave. She was
very dictatorial about being the only person
who wrote the songs. It’s weird that they’d
keep writing and putting out songs and calling
themselves the Pandoras.
Kim, you have this raw voice—it’s never go-
ing to be that ‘sweet’ sound. But you guys
have a pop sensibility, and you had it even
during the grunge era. What is it about your
band that gives you one toe in song struc-
ture that other bands lack?
RB: It’s all about that with us! It all goes back
to Kim. Kim is a fan of very little music. She
still listens to Freddie and the Dreamers and
stuff. It’s all about melodic pop songs. We kind
of rev them up. But underneath the screaming
and stuff, there’s always a melody going on. I
think that’s why we’ve endured so long, too.
Even though there’s some grungy stuff on that
first record that hasn’t held up so good, there’s
stuff that’s kind of timeless. In those Warner
Bros. records, we never once used a trendy pro-
ducer, so aside from some of the stuff on that
first record, it doesn’t really sound of the time.
Blonder and Blonder still sounds fresh. And the
songwriting, too! We have precise pop songs.
There’s no drop-down E tuning in this band.
There’s another evil of the 90s you avoid-
ed—mid-late 90s melodic punk-pop like
Green Day, who had a kind of Lookout!
Records sound. No offense to Green Day,
but there was a shtickiness to the bands
of that time. How do play what you play
without sounding trite?
RB: That kind of music that you’re describing
is probably my least favorite kind of music in
the world—all that pop-punk stuff from the
90s. It’s weird. In our band, we appeal to all
these different crowds. We appeal to fans of
that music. We appeal to power-pop people.
We appeal to garage rock people. We can open
for virtually anybody. We could open for Great
White and be okay. But we’re not influenced
by NOFX.
Do you tell yourselves certain things NOT
to do to make sure your melodic pop rock
doesn’t turn to the dark side?
RB: No! It’s just all very natural for us. None
of this has ever been thought out. The only
things that might have become dated is our
early grungy stuff. And you know, we wore
big shorts, we used to throw our instruments
around … that makes me cringe now.
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35
JOYCE
MANOR
Interview by Chris Ziegler
Photography by AMMO

Joyce Manor’s newest album Never Hungover Again (also their

first for L.A.’s Epitaph) has a cover design winking at Big Star’s
Radio City and a quick 20 minutes of songs about those nowhere
nights where it seems like you’re the last person awake (or alive?)
on the surface streets. By now, they’ve spent almost five years
refining—as singer/guitarist Barry Johnson puts it—their not-as-
pop-as-it-used-to-be Jawbreaker-vs-Lifetime punk sound toward
some kind of highly personal document of life as it was lived by
another four South Bay kids who didn’t feel like they fit in. And
so, here and on record, they tell it like it happened to them.
What was the first book you ever read twice? intentional. He was so obsessed that he’d cre-
Or the first movie you saw twice? The first ate things that maybe would never get noticed,
thing that you had to go back to for more? but the fact he put them in there is why they’d
Barry Johnson (guitar/vocals): I got really ob- get noticed. I think he was a guy who was just
sessed with Terminator 2 and Terminator. into things people would freak out over—not
Insanely fixated. My parents let me watch or like, ‘I want people to obsess over this later!’
take in anything I wanted, so when I was 5 Like he had no choice. I like the idea of some-
in 1992 and my dad took me to T2 in the one being guided by something they don’t un-
theater … that was it. That was all I was into derstand. A compulsion—and watching what
for years. Just that! At that age, where do you someone else with a compulsion created.
go from there? Your friends weren’t allowed to What happens to something when it’s pow-
watch that. I didn’t have anyone I could talk ered by compulsion, instead of technique or
to about it. So I’d have my friends come over just an idea? Is that what it’s like for you?
and watch. The frustrating part about being the guy who
But they weren’t allowed. obsesses over things and is just compelled to
No, I was that friend. ‘Come watch bad stuff do it and can’t get a decent night’s sleep till it’s
at my house!’ Every neighborhood needs that right ... it’s like either A) other people’s work
kid. And then it was The Shining. At 7 or comes across as lazy and shitty. Like I think
8—that was just huge. There’s a lot of nuance, my own work is bad and then I listen to other
and a lot of that was lost on me. But I still people’s stuff, and I’m like, ‘This is horrible!’
enjoyed it. It was super, super scary. I had to go Or B) it’s completely effortless and I’m jealous!
back a lot to it as an adult. I’ve been watching Like they just did it and it’s perfect! It doesn’t
it at least once a year since I first saw it. sound like they were obsessed. It’s like they
Are you able to mark your personal devel- woke up, stretched, yawned and the first thing
opment by your changing opinions of The they played was perfect. Both are maddening,
Shining? frustrating. ‘Why didn’t they work on this?’ or
Definitely. The Clash are a huge band like that ‘Why didn’t they HAVE to work on this?’ I
for me. I’ve listened to them since I was really have to put a ton of work in. I take pride in
young. I like them more every year, for differ- that, but I don’t have a choice to not do it. I
ent reasons. It’s just great to marvel at some- can just never relax again.
thing like that. Like I love how stressful The That’s like Jonathan Richman sings: ‘I never
Shining is. Do you know the impossible loop? can relax.’
You know how Danny is on his tricycle going I really like Jonathan Richman! He’s fucked,
in circles? A lot of the loops he does are not though. His whole shit is super-fake—his ‘act’!
possible. The movie is laid out so you can plot The grandma shit he manages to make tight! I
the floor plan, and the loops end up in places remember hearing him and thinking, ‘I can’t
you can’t go. Or when Jack goes to the inter- believe how much this is up my alley.’ Like it
view and there’s a window behind the desk. felt … perverse. Like weird porn I’d tapped
That window can’t exist either. Kubrick would into. I was almost afraid of it. Like, ‘I might
never have let a thing like that slide. It’s very join this guy’s cult.’

36 INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW 37
What would that cult be like?
You know the people in high school you
couldn’t relate to even though you thought
they were cool and really attractive, maybe
people you wanted to even be like? This is the
thing they’d find so offensive—‘This is the gay-
est, lamest shit I ever heard in my life!’ But I
like it, and that’s what makes me different from
those people. That’s what’s weird about it. You
can see the thing that makes you different.
What was your favorite album ten years
ago? What do you think your favorite will
be ten years from now?
I was 17. I had a personality problem where
every few months I’d decide I was gonna be
into something different. I was one of those
guys! The year previously I was really into in-
die rock—Weakerthans, Death Cab, Radio-
head. Then next year I was so burnt out, so
I was really into Rancid, Cocksparrer, and I
didn’t listen to any indie rock shit. I was em-
barrassed. ‘I listen to punk, man!’ I had my
nose up in the air at the stuff from the year
before. Did anything stay with me? Not really.
I’ll put something on every now and then. I
remember once I turned 24, I started honing
in on what I was actually into. Beach Boys,
Guided by Voices … drunk dad shit? No, cuz
that’s Wilco. But GBV, Beach Boys, Smiths,
Toys That Kill. Stuff with punk leanings but
a little more than that. I started fucking with
things I thought were special. It’s gratifying cuz
once you see it, you realize it’s possible. Once
I saw how those bands did things, it was like,
‘Oh, I can do this!’ Not like ripping it off, but
knowing you could be a punk band that did
something a little more personal. I tried to un-
derstand it more so I could do it myself.
What’s it like when people come up to you
and are like, ‘You did that for me, man!’?
I’ve tried to tell people how their band is to
me, and then kids have the exact same con-
versation with me! I’m trying to reassure them
like, ‘Yeah, I know how you feel, I’ve done ex-
actly what you’re doing.’
Do they believe you?
No, not really. I can tell they’re all sweaty-
palmed.
What got you into music in the first place?
Punk-O-Rama 2! In fourth grade! Before there
was kinda shit on the radio. Reel Big Fish and
Goldfinger? But that comp had Poison Idea
and stuff. My friend’s older brother made me
tapes with AFI, Union 13, and I started go-
ing to shows in sixth grade. Like a treat—my
stepdad would take me to two shows a year!
Like AFI, Sick of It All, Hot Water Music …
And then I started going to local shows like
Rock Goggle Fantasy, Le Joshua … that was
in my friend’s backyard. There’s a point where
music and video games and movies are all just
part of the same media entertainment thing,
and then you find something you can be part
of. It becomes more attainable and doable. I
literally thought some people could play guitar
and some people couldn’t. And I was just one
who couldn’t. I didn’t look at it as something
I could do.
What’s the positive part about being some-
one who takes a long time to decide what
they’re into? How does going buffet-style
help you out as a person?
I always wanted to play guitar and be in a
band. And I always projected onto people in
38
bands I was obsessed with, and went back and
forth between a wannabe pop-punk band and
a wannabe hardcore band. Pop-punk being
like Beach Boys, Weezer, all the pop side of the
brain.
You’d think those two things are opposite—
but tons of people are super into pop and
hardcore.
Yeah, that’s really common! Tony Molina has
that exact thing—hardcore and pop-punk. I
always go back and forth. Pop-punk band for
three months, hardcore for three months. I
was just more gifted on the pop side. I didn’t
shine in the hardcore world. Early Joyce Man-
or is a pop-punk band that deep down wants
to be a hardcore band. That’s why you say
people wanna sing along. Cuz they’re hardcore
songs. And our shows are full of hardcore kids.
I was like, ‘Why do people I have nothing in
common with respond so well to our songs?’
And it’s cuz deep down I was a hardcore kid.
I think we lost some of that, and maybe not
for the better. Especially on the second record!
The first thing we did was pop-punk wanting
to be hardcore, and we succeeded. That gave
us the confidence to focus on more pop stuff,
which we wouldn’t have had the confidence to
do before—to really wanna write actual pop
songs, for better or worse.
How did you learn to put more personal
ideas in songs? When you aren’t in a hard-
core band, you don’t get to hide behind fast-
loud-can’t-understand-the-lyrics.
Absolutely. That’s where the hardcore side was.
It felt more comfortable, more doable. We
couldn’t be held accountable for what we made.
We were just going for it. ‘Hardcore band’ shit!
The point of a good song is to communicate
something, and hardcore is not a typical …
well, it can communicate something very sim-
ple. Maybe kinda adolescent? The same way a
tantrum is a good way to communicate. But
you just need something that communicates
more complicated emotion, and melody can
do that. If you combine melody with that tan-
trum, it’s satisfying in two ways at once.
Every song on this record is also about a
‘me’ and a ‘you’—it’s one person talking to
another person. Why?
I hadn’t noticed a dialogue happening. My
girlfriend and I broke up before this record,
and I didn’t wanna mention that—‘This is a
break-up record!’ We ended up getting back
together before this came out—
Is that when you got super into Big Star?
Totally did. But yeah, it’s corny and played-
out. Everyone’s been through a break-up. But
maybe that’s what it is? Trying to understand
how someone else feels—they tell me how
they feel?
Is this two opposite things at once again?
Anything that has momentum needs two
things at once. The conflicting ideas create the
spark. If one thing sits idly, you need the other
to create the heat. I took something from Kurt
Vonnegut—writing a book is like building a
car, and if the things aren’t in the right spot, it
won’t go. And until it goes, it needs work! You
can’t explain it to yourself: ‘Oh, no, it’s good
cuz of this!’ You feel it—you feel it, like the
track goes now. It’s horrible when it won’t go.
You move shit around and it never happens.
Do you have a junkyard of broken songs?
Yeah—friends tell me those are the best parts.
‘I can’t believe that didn’t make the record.’
I dunno what to tell you. It didn’t go. Some
people make everything go and it’s effortlessly
good. But fuck those people!
What have you learned about making songs
by making your songs? What are the blue-
prints for Joyce Manor?
The songs have to be driving. It has to all be
going toward the end of the song. That’s why a
lot of them end up being so short. You can’t do
that for too long before you lose that momen-
tum. When we tried to do stuff that doesn’t
have that momentum, it doesn’t work. Which
is maybe why we end up using the same kind
of drumbeats and similar chord shapes or
something.
Are you working toward the ultimate per-
fect Joyce Manor song?
Completely. I hear that in other bands, too.
Tony Molina, same thing. People say it all
sounds the same, but it doesn’t. Well, they do,
but it’s not negative. It’s someone perfecting
their craft. That’s why it took us two and a half
years to write eighteen minutes.
You said you’re a little mean on some of the
new songs—like ‘Christmas Card.’ Is it eas-
ier to write meaner?
The people you’re writing about are gonna
hear it! I’ve had people I know ask if it’s them?
And I say no … but it totally is. It’s too un-
comfortable to talk about—no one wants to
fess up to that. I don’t wanna fess up to that!
But any good artist is gonna face that. When
you do it in a way that’s not cryptic, it’s not as
effective. Or cathartic.
What’s this record say about where you are
in life?
Especially on the first record, I had this really
weird complex where I felt I was owed more
than I had, whether it was relationships with
women or jealous of the success of my friends.
It felt like I had been shortchanged in some
way. I was kind of entitled. Listening to it now,
I feel like, ‘Man, I was such a jerk.’ An entitled
crybaby jerk.
That’s the foundation of a lot of music.
I don’t think I’m like that all the time! I think I
allowed myself to be that for writing songs, cuz
it felt good. I think there’s less of that on the
record now—I hope that says something posi-
tive! I hope airing it out helps me be less like
that? Maybe I’ll listen to this in a few years and
think, ‘Nope, still an entitled dick who feels he
deserves everything!’
What changed? A lot of people love living
like that.
People say I’m so angsty. It’s just trying to deal
with that and become a better person! And
not live my whole life selfish and entitled and
being okay with that. That creates that frus-
tration with yourself, that desire to not be so
much like that. Which is hard! And it’s one
thing to want that, and another thing to ac-
tually do something about it. Which I almost
never do, but at least I feel bad about it! Hope-
fully it leads to proactive measures.
Self-improvement through self-loathing?
And what’ll I do once I improve myself? No
more tunes! Maybe part of me doesn’t wanna
improve. ‘People seem to love this, I’m paying
my rent!’ Reap the benefits!
‘Heart Tattoo’ seems to be one of the most
positive songs—‘I know it looks bad, it’s the
only one I have.’
I love that song cuz it’s about one thing only.
It doesn’t ever stray lyrically from that exact
thing. That’s the first time I’ve ever successfully
done that. I had that first line: ‘I want a heart
tattoo, I want it to hurt really bad …’ and it
just kinda started. It wasn’t all one go, but I
wrote that in about twenty minutes.
What’s the landscape of this record? You
sing about these empty homes, climbing
over backyard walls, parties you don’t wan-
na be at—it kind of reminds me of ‘Bikeage’
South Bay suburban desolation.
It’s taking a bus home from practice. From Del
Amo Mall in Torrance, goes through Carson
and then Wilmington, the crazy industrial
part of Harbor City and into Long Beach. The
232 bus. There’s these weird blue lights on the
232 at night, and I’d come home from practice
after a few beers. I’ve taken that bus a billion
times. The song ‘Schley,’ that’s a stop on that
bus—Anaheim and Schley.
What’s there?
Nothing, literally nothing. It’s completely des-
olate. I grew up in Harbor City and Lomita,
went to school in Torrance. I read interviews
with the Descendents or Black Flag and it’s
exactly the same.
Is that comforting or disturbing?
Comforting! Cuz I love it too! It’s a weird
source of pride that I shouldn’t be proud of.
There’s nothing to be proud of!
What was going on the night your album
cover was taken?
The lady in the picture is Frances from the
band Hop Along. We were hanging out in
Philly after a show—it’s a green room. We’re
all partying, having a great time and my friend
snapped that photo. I love that it’s posed but
it also feels candid—really natural. We’d done
our first attempt at tracking the album then,
but it was different songs. Only ‘Heart Tat-
too’ and ‘Schley’ are the same. And we hadn’t
written ‘The Jerk’ yet. That’s the one that set
the bar. ‘This is what we need to strive for.’ I
came to practice and Chase [Knobbe, guitarist]
had been visiting his girlfriend in Santa Cruz
and was like, ‘I wrote a riff!’ ‘Oh, cool, I got
one too! Wanna try and play ’em together?’
So 1, 2, 3, go—we play at the same time, and
it’s ‘The Jerk.’ Same key, different notes, and
they sound totally different independently
but together create this emotion we want cap-
tured. The rhythm guitar is mean, or sad and
angry-sounding, and his guitar is really pretty.
Together the two things at once create a totally
different feeling that I can’t pin down. It’s not
‘happy’ or ‘sad’ or ‘whimsical.’ It’s a weird feel-
ing hanging over my life that I can’t really say.
It’s like the ending of The Graduate—where
the shot just lingers a little too long.
Too long—a perfect example. I love that
movie. You feel like you’re in their life at the
very end. Like, ‘Oh shit—now life just keeps
going.’
GOLDENVOICE AND FYF FEST PRES-
ENT JOYCE MANOR ON FRI., JULY
25, AT THE EL REY THEATRE, 5515
WILSHIRE BLVD., LOS ANGELES. 8
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COM. JOYCE MANOR’S NEVER HUN-
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INTERVIEW
 Gilberto Gil:
Gilbertos Samba

Rosanne Cash:
The River and the Thread

ALL NEW SEASON

explore, engage, experience Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer

Exposed: Songs for Unseen Warhol Films

Dr. John & The Nite Trippers

John Zorn Marathon

Toumani & Sidiki Diabaté and Rokia Traoré

single tickets on sale wed, aug 13

BLU
Interview by sweeney kovar
Photography by Anthony Williams

Several years back, John Barnes was set up by many to be the great West Coast hope for hip-hop. By now, his Below the Heavens is
the stuff of fables, and if you’re under 25 and from the left coast, you probably have some personal story about how Blu’s first album
made you love hip-hop again. Instead of ascending to the mainstream however, Blu took a series of head-scratching left turns. The
C.R.A.C. Knuckles project was a new-age De La Soul Is Dead. Her Favorite Colo(u)r was a cinematic heartbroken love note. NoYork!
encapsulated the beat-scene movement in a way no MC has been able to do. Jesus sounded like a lo-fi Sunday morning. Along the
way, Blu ditched a Warner Bros. deal, produced for other rappers, and revisited his musical bond with Exile on the Give Me My Flowers
While I Can Still Smell Them LP. Still, Blu seemed more interested in pushing himself into new territory than in looking back towards
the past. Young Azul is one of the only MCs on the planet that can switch his style up consistently and not miss a beat technically.
And now, while TDE and YG are shifting the mainstream focus back on the sound of the cul de sac in the age of molly water, Blu
has hooked up with Bombay to produce a “G-Soul” record, Good to Be Home. Hood in the way a Charles Burnett film is hood, Blzzo’s
newest effort sidesteps ghetto sensationalism for a sound that strikes a balance between the cerebral and the intuitive. He speaks
here about the creation of the album, why Bombay was the perfect producer to bring it to life, and if he’d ever revisit a major label
situation again. And make sure to visit larecord.com for an exclusive interview with Bombay.

You’ve said Good to Be Home is your most
definitive record. Can you explain?
It’s my most defining and definitive album in
that it was a must for me to create this album.
Being from the West Coast, I owe so much
to the coast for the love they’ve given me
throughout the years that has allowed me to
be me—a humble, backpack-conscious MC
coming out of Cali. What was prevalent was
always gangster rap, so to be accepted into the
underground it was only right I take the time
to turn around and give love back to the city.
If you go through all your older albums—
from the Blu and Ex shit, C.R.A.C.,
Johnson&Jonson, NoYork!—each one has
its own distinct sound. This one sounds
like its own sound too; it sounds much
more like the neighborhood.
It’s not too conscious, it’s not too street, it’s
not too lyrical and it’s not too dumbed-
down—meaning it isn’t too simplified, like a
4-year-old can go pick up a pistol after they
hear it. Or dumbed down to the point where
we have been lowered in society—we are still
there cleaning up, pulling heads up, yo. It’s a
nice, warm, chill record. It’s a double CD, so
it’s enough music to satisfy a person. When
I decided to do the record with Bombay, I
knew he had the sound I was looking for. I
was looking for a sound to lay down what I
wanted to speak about. I wanted to do the
Good to Be Home record before I had the
producer to do it. I knew I wanted to do a
West Coast record. I had a bunch of beats
from producers in mind but it wasn’t until I
got Bombay’s beats that I knew his were the
beats for the project. I’ve always been a big
soul fan—soul music, jazz, blues, all that—
but I wanted to do some G shit, you know
what I mean? I wanted to bring back some
G shit but I was like, ‘How am I going to do
some G shit when I’ve done like future-wave
shit and very conscious music?’ Then I heard
Bombay’s beats and it was like the illest G
shit but still very soulful. I don’t think any-
one has beats that are drenched with as much
soul as Bombay’s. It was a must. Those fat-ass
basslines? So West Coast, bro.
How did you first meet Bombay?
I first met Bombay in high school. He was
actually the third person I met to play me his
beats. I got this beat CD in high school and
my homeboy was in a crew that had worked
with Daz, RBX, Ras Kass and different MCs
out of Long Beach. He swore up and down
they were DJ Quik beats: ‘There’s no one in
Los Angeles who could make these! These are
DJ Quik’s beats.’ We thought they was for a
while because the CD had that song ‘Addic-
tive’ with Truth Hurts and they were on that
vibe. It was a crazy beat CD—the best beat
CD I had ever gotten at that point. I talked
to the homie that I had got it from and he
hooked me up with a dude and the dude
ended up telling us they wasn’t his beats, so he
hooked us up with some other guy. I started
paying him like $75 a beat and I’m in high
school. I go to pay for like my fifth beat and
the homie calls like, ‘That’s not even Bombay.
That’s not even the real dude—that’s his cous-
in.’ This is the third person we’ve met claim-
ing this dude’s beats! So we finally set up a
meeting with Bombay. We go out to the 909,
the I.E., and meet Bombay. I didn’t believe
him. He was playing these jazz loops and had
fat keyboard skills and crazy sound-chops. He
was doing these weird jazz loops, almost like
some Madlib shit. He said those [beats on the
CD] were his but then he was like, ‘Lemme
play this other beat CD.’ He played another
beat CD that was exactly what the fuck we
were looking for. We knew it was him.
So when did you finally meet him?
I was probably 19, a year after high school. I
put out my first album and Bombay did about
three beats on there. Miguel was singing on
one of his beats too. That was my first under-
ground album. I only pressed 1,000 and sold
them all myself. That was called California
Soul—that was my first album. It wasn’t until
shortly after I did that album that I hooked
up with Exile and we started working on
what would become my official debut, Below
the Heavens. It wasn’t till years down the line
that Aloe Blacc asked me, ‘Did you ever start
working with Bombay again?’ We hooked up
with him [again] and dude had so many beats
I couldn’t believe it. They was so dope—I was
shocked. I got this fat beat CD from him and
by the time I got halfway through it I knew I
had to do an album with him. It was time. We
did it. It’s coming out, two years in the mak-
ing [Out now!—ed.]. We’ve known each other
for like twelve years, you know what I mean?
Good to be home...
Why do you think it took so long for the
musical relationship to come full-circle like
that?
I think we were busy at the time. Even after I
did my first album, Bombay was doing a lot
of work with other people and I was doing a
lot of work with other people. We were hook-
ing up every now and then but we respected
each other highly and we always had plans to
do big things.
The sound on this album, it definitely has
that bass, a little of that G-funk that—
It’s not the G-funk era, Bombay is the G-soul
era. This is my G-soul album.
You also still have that lo-fi grit that’s pres-
ent on the Jesus LP and other projects.
Even my first album, Below the Heavens, we
didn’t do a commercial album. We did an al-
bum that was pretty digestible but it wasn’t
a commercial record. It had warm samples,
soul sample chops—we weren’t doing any
electronic bounce-house hits. We both come
from an underground scene. We both listened
to underground music coming up. We have
a similar ear. We love Dilla, Hi-Tek, Premier,
Pete Rock, you know what I’m saying? My
man is just as deep as I am into the music. He
knows what’s hot as well as I know what’s hot.
We both like Roc Marciano, Lootpack, Slum
Village. It wasn’t like I was trying to make a
Jay-Z record and he was trying to make a Ju-
rassic 5 record. We wanted to make a Bombay
and Blu record. I knew he had the heat and I
knew whatever I needed he’d be able to de-
liver. He knew I wasn’t going to give him any
bullshit cuz of all the albums I’ve put out.
You’ve always been a skilled MC. On this
album, it seems like the lyricism is so
dense—every bar is maximized. The rap-
ping is gritty and abstract but still very
soulful.
Definitely man. The fans know what to look
for when they get a Blu record. They’re not
going to get anything commercial, they’re not
going to get anything cookie cutter. They’re
going to get some good soul records. They’re
going to get a good vibe listening to our shit.
We’re just trying to make you feel good.
Did you feel as an MC you had anything to
prove with this record?
Not really. I wanted to carve out my spot in
L.A. and let it be known that I am an L.A.
artist. I’ve never capitalized on that or over-
pronounced that. It was always a part of who
I was. I was heading out to wreck everybody, I
wasn’t just trying to wreck the West like that.
I wanted to eat up everybody on every coast,
overseas, down South, wherever you’re pop-
ping up at I was trying to eat you up. I did
a lot of records not really looking back. After
touring and trying to break new sounds, go-
ing from independent to major and back, we
finally found time to be back home. Right off
the bat, we were just chilling at the crib. We
turned down shows, just chilled in the studio
and vibed out. It was good to be home and it
was good to just relax and do an album with-
out any label pressure, any fan pressure, try-
ing to top this record or do that. ‘Let’s cut it,
let’s do it.’ What happens when people pres-
sure the artist is a Detox or a Soulquarians al-

44 INTERVIEW
bum, or the Nas and Premier album, or a new
D’Angelo album. We hardheads, yo—if you
tryna pressure me for something, nine times
out of ten you ain’t gonna get it.
Did you purposefully keep it close to home?
Besides a few records you leaked there
wasn’t too much information about this al-
bum till a few weeks before its release.
It was kind of on purpose. You know me—
this wasn’t all that was in the can. I was work-
ing with Nottz at the time, I started working
a lot more with Madlib and Alchemist. I’m
walking into different climates and plant-
ing seeds everywhere. Bombay would come
through and we’d knock out three or four
songs in Long Beach then I would go spend
two days at Al’s spot, fucking with Al and
Ev. Fuck around and come back and holler
at MED and fuck with some Oxnard heads,
mess with some Madlib. With Bombay, it was
more of making a solo album. With Nottz
and Madlib, the things we were creating were
more like group projects. With Bombay I felt
like I was doing a solo record.
The album feels very cinematic. You even
have a cinematic intro at the very begin-
ning. You tell a story without a clear linear
narrative—it’s more like snapshots.
We wanted to make a day in the life of L.A. in
an album. Being as true to who we are. Keep-
ing it real to shit we play and the vibes we give
off, what we’re looking for and what we put
into life. We wanted to put all that into the
record and we wanted to hear all of that come
out of the record. The theme of it was just a
day in the life. It was so easy for everyone to
fall into character. Just do what you do natu-
rally. It wasn’t hard to get it crackin’ in the stu-
dio. We were working with everybody, folks
like U-N-I, who I’ve known for years. I hit up
Thurz and he’d come down and cut his shit.
I hit up my cousin Casey [Veggies]: ‘We need
a verse!’ A week later he’s sending me a verse
and he’s getting hollered at by Roc-A-Fella
and everybody. One of the hardest verses on
the album is Casey Veggies’ ‘Well Fare’ verse.
That plays into the cinematic aspect of the
album for me. It sounds like it starts with
you coming home and then you start ven-
turing out into the neighborhood and you
start interacting with the people there.
The story doesn’t really start and end. The
more you play the record over and over the
more you realize it’s just like a day, over and
over. You just start another day. You play the
record again and it’s like, ‘I’m waking up, do-
ing the same shit over again.’ It doesn’t stop.
The last song is ‘Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop.’
How did you pick the features? You have
cats like Prodigy, who are very known, and
cats like Sweet Pea, who are much more un-
derground.
I definitely needed to keep the homies in-
volved because we got so much heat. I hate
not being able to just cut mad shit with the
homies. Soon as we got this rolling, I called ev-
erybody up like, ‘Everybody gotta get a piece
of the record.’ Everybody contributed and it
was fun picking out the heat. It was fun doing
mad tracks with mad heads. Home is the real-
est place you can be, so let’s be real—as much
as I wanted a feature from Ice Cube and DJ
Quik, it is ‘good to be home’ and the homies
got bars and work! Hardheads deserve shine,
G—I got mad homies who ready to eat up yo’
46
spot right now, na mink! Y’all not ready for
the crew albums—Dirty Science, the John-
son Family, BRIDGETOWN! ‘Whip Crème’
Part Two coming soon! Sweet Pea is my OG,
super OG. He wrote my first rap. Prodigy is
the only MC that’s not from the West on the
album. Prodigy is the prodigal son, so Prodigy
being on the album is a gem, an ultra gem. It’s
one of his most classic verses I think. He came
through and blazed it. Being in the studio
with him was crazy. I pulled up some verses
like, ‘Bro, we got some heat.’ He walked into
the session and I started playing him some-
thing. He wanted to get down and I played
him two beats. He picked ‘Red & Gold’ and
we went in right there. Getting people like
Phil [Da Agony], MED and Oh No was like
a no-brainer because we’re just around each
other so much. It was being back home with
so much talent around you, you can’t really
hide it. It was a must for us to collaborate. I
definitely was trying to paint my picture and
pick my piece out of that L.A. also. Getting
certain people like Imani from Pharcyde and
[2Mex and LMNO from] the Visionaries on
there—that’s some ultra-backpack shit for me.
We didn’t have $5 million to do the album,
we had like $500. $500 and a lot of love, you
know what I’m sayin’?
This album comes at a very interesting time
for L.A. hip-hop. The focus has come back
to L.A. hood stories, the block. That’s the
face of L.A. rap on a mainstream level
It’s definitely there. Nipsey Hussle’s always
been there. TDE’s doing their thing crazy
with Dre’s camp. The Game’s always been
holding it down. Dom Kennedy as well,
Krondon. For us it was more like Compton’s
Most Wanted. We wanted to paint the hood
with soul samples. Today, it’s more bigger
produced shit. Back in the day, it was fat
loops and we wanted to let that vibe paint the
picture. All the beats feel like they’re holding
hands. It sounds like one long-ass beat. I love
that, bro. We have a couple of instrumentals
in there. I’ve done a lot of short songs, with
Johnson&Jonson, Jesus and some of the older
joints—two-and-a-half-minute, three-minute
songs. On this we were trying to do full songs
again. With this record it felt like if we put all
these songs together fools would drown, you
know what I’m sayin? The instrumentals help
the record breathe. It helps the listener breeze
through the album.
Why did you make it a double album?
We just had so many songs. We were ready to
do an album, we were etching it out and it was
almost a last-minute decision. ‘Let’s just make
it a double album.’ I think we did a good 50
songs. Below the Heavens we did like 75 songs,
Johnson&Jonson we did like 50 songs. The
Flowers joint, I think I cut like 25 Exile songs
in two weeks. NoYork! we probably almost hit
the 50 mark there. I think we hit the 50 mark
again on this one. It was good to do that again,
to not be pressured to do just ten songs. Back
to getting E&J instead of bottles of Grand
Marnier. Let it simmer slow. We can’t do two
blunts. We have the euros rolled up, the euro
spliffs, zig-zagging through Long Beach.
What does L.A. sound like to you today?
Today L.A. sounds like it’s coming together,
almost forming a huge union. The West is
one. It almost feels like we can all get on the
same song one day. The South is huge. The
South is its own planet. New York is ghost
town, you know. They’re getting hard out-
side of the hip-hop realm, expanding music
into more experimental realms and smashing
it. On the rap shit our underground scene is
nice. We got somebody like Dom Kennedy
who has put out mad product in L.A. and is
just now getting MTV love. Or like a Nipsey
Hussle who I don’t think has ever released an
official debut album but he put out a mixtape
for $100 a bop. I think he made $100,000
in a day with his mixtape. We’re at a fruit-
ful stage where creativity is king. Kendrick
Lamar being at the top of the list is show-
ing how much our ears are open to lyricism
or conscious trains of thought as opposed to
only some G shit or a fat beat out of a sample
my mom used to bump. The kid who can
rap circles around everybody got the crown. I
think that’s beautiful in the West. The Vision-
aries never stopped rapping. They are like my
inspiration. LMNO put out like fourteen al-
bums in 2011. I just found that out last year. I
think the following year Madlib put out what,
fourteen albums? Work ethic is crazy out here.
Record sales are at an all-time high—that says
a lot for the return of vinyl. It’s huge right
now. The ball is in our court. It’s beautiful. In-
dependent music is rising. The creator shit is
popping. We just kicked back and did a cool
ass G-soul album on them, though. Just sat
back, sparked the J and let the beats play.
You had that foray with the majors but it
sounds like you’re much more comfortable
where you are now.
I was in a beautiful situation with Warner
Bros., but Warner got turned inside out while
I was there. The company was bought out—
all the presidents, vice presidents, A&Rs were
fired. Artists left. I would fuck with a major
again. I had a great situation there but you
can’t stop a person. You can’t expect a person
to stop. We got out of that situation with
four projects already in the air. Most of them
are out now. It wasn’t like we got off the la-
bel and we were going to sit around until we
got another offer. We have music we want to
put out. We made sure that came out. If the
majors are ever ready to go another round, I’ll
be ready. Until then, we’ll see you in the un-
derground. We make music the way we make
music—we are free to create freely. Our music
sounds the way it does because our creativity
isn’t put in a box. We’re not cutting cookies or
being expected to do anything. We’re free to
create, bro. We drop three verses back-to-back
but there’s no major label trying to put out
three hardcore rap verses back-to-back with
no hook. Is the song called ‘No Hook?’ Nah,
the song is called ‘The Evolution of the Mind’s
Axis,’ you know what I’m saying? We’re trying
to Wu Tang the majors. All the majors have
moved down South—what the fuck, man? Go
down South, make all your money and when
you’re ready to come back and do some ill shit,
we’ll be right here.
What keeps you hungry as an MC?
I’m not even trying to eat heads right now.
I’m full eating beats. We find hot beats and
eat ’em up bro. Heads don’t want to get ate
up. We’re happy and full from eating beats,
we’re content. Niggas is well-fed. We got the
best producers in the underground. Bombay
right there just stepped into the realm. He’s
about to let out that arsenal and it’s about to
get crucial. For me, rapping is turning into
songwriting. I’m not trying to progressively
push my pen to be the best lyricst or have the
most brand-new patterns—it’s more so pen-
ning down bars that compliment the beat
than the beat complimenting what I’m say-
ing. I’m trying to incorporate more rhythms
in my patterns. I think my biggest attribute is
the creativity. I think that’s what I strive to do
with all my records and it definitely keeps my
pen in a great place.
What inspires your creativity?
My imagination. My dreams inspire my cre-
ativity. It makes me want to create something
that isn’t here. You hear the most amazing
beat and the more you listen to beats, you
start to hear amazing songs right on top of
those beats: ‘I have to capture that song out of
the ethers before it’s gone or before somebody
takes this beat.’ It’s also being around other
MCs like being in the studio with Alchemist.
You step into Al’s studio and there’s going to
be five other MCs there and it’s not going to
be the same five MCs that were there two days
ago. You got Roc Marc in the studio, you got
Oh No in the studio, you got Action Bron-
son in the studio, you got Odd Future in the
studio—your pen has gotta be sharp! Also do-
ing an album with MED. MED is one of the
most slept-on lyricists. We’re doing an album
and that is an incredible record. That’s com-
ing up. That should be dropping around the
end of the year. Right now though, Good to Be
Home. Bombay. Shout out to Pac Div, shout
out to Fashawn, shout out to Bridgetown.
New World Color. Prodigy. Alchemist. Evi-
dence. Krondon. That nigga Phil Da Agony.
Mitchy Slick. PA, Planet Asia. Killa Ben. Big
Twin. We goin’ platinum. Pick up the album,
it’s crazy.
I remember reading two things in previous
interviews of yours. One is that you weren’t
sure if you saw yourself rapping long-term.
Is that still the case?
I got one way I can answer that question: the
last song on the album is called ‘Can’t Stop,
Won’t Stop.’ We did that song just cuz I said
I was about to retire from rap and I turned
around and we did this album. At the end we
did ‘Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop’ just to let heads
know. Forever, yo. Wu Tang is forever.
The second thing is when you told an in-
terviewer you wanted your career to be like
Thelonious Monk.
The way a jazz player will have different play-
ers play on different albums as opposed to a
band in the 80s who have been the same band
through the 2000s. A jazz cat will change up
the players every two records. Me changing
my producers, working with a new team is the
same approach. Exile, Mainframe, Ta’Raach,
Flying Lotus, Alchemist, Knxwledge, Nottz,
now Bombay.
Is there any sound you haven’t done yet that
you want to?
Yes, but that is a secret. Can’t expose the next
step. I have to let Kanye drop his record. I al-
ways let people know about my record after
Kanye drops.
BLU’S GOOD TO BE HOME IS OUT
NOW ON NEW WORLD COLOR / NA-
TURE SOUNDS. VISIT BLU AT NOY-
ORK.TUMBLR.COM AND THENEW-
COLORBLU.BANDCAMP.COM.
INTERVIEW
MILK ’N’ COOKIES
Interview by Ian Marshall
Illustration by Seth Bogart

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

You’re from just outside of what would be
considered Brooklyn, right?
I grew up in Brooklyn till I was about 8 or
9, and then we moved to Long Island to a
suburb. And that’s where Milk ’n’ Cookies
was born. Long Island is a bit more yards, and
more greens—it’s got a suburb kind of vibe.
It’s kind of fancy. The area I grew up in is a
nice area. We moved there because they had
good schools. It was nice. And I hated it! I was
a kid that got into music from the Beatles and
was totally an Anglophile and the glam stuff
started coming—Bowie and T. Rex. I was
into the Buddah Records stuff, the Zombies,
all those things. And I was in high school and
kind of a loner. They were all into sports and
I was a freak that was into this kind of music,
and I met this girl in high school and she knew
Ian and our original bass player, Jay. We started
going out and she told Ian about me, and he
was starting this band and she said, ‘Oh, you
should have Justin be the lead singer!’ Not that
I’d ever sung in a band before, but I guess I
‘looked like a lead singer.’ I mean—I had been
in a little band when I was in sixth, seventh,
eighth grade with friends. But I was more col-
lecting records. That was my life. I spent all my
time in record stores. And my dad had taken
me to see the Beatles and the Stones and the
Dave Clark Five. I met Ian and Jay and Mike,
and my dad was an audio fanatic so we had
a lot of tape recorders and audio equipment,
so I started recording them in my basement
as a kind of an instrumental group. Then it
turned into me wanting to sing. That’s how it
happened—gradually.
You mentioned the British invasion influ-
ence—is that what inspired you?
It was a combination of my father, who always
had records around, and seeing the Beatles on
The Ed Sullivan Show. After that, I was like,
‘This is the only thing I ever want to do for my
entire life.’ I was a Beatles freak. So it was my
dad’s love of music and my parents taking me
everywhere to see shows—I was lucky.
So you’ve been recording demos in your
basement and then ...
The band wasn’t even named Milk ’n’ Cookies
yet. We all bonded over a love of glam and all
the British stuff and bubblegum. It was hard
to meet like-minded people, especially in Long
Island. We found Sparks, and the New York
Dolls—that was a huge huge thing for Milk
’n’ Cookies. ‘Oh, we can do it too!’ These Eng-
lish bands—we’re far removed from that. But
here is a band that we could go see, and this
was before CBGB or the New York scene—
we were going to Max’s to see Sparks and Iggy
and it was all inspirational to Milk ’n’ Cookies.
We got to become friends with them and it
made it seem real. The New York Dolls got a
record deal—‘They’re no different than us, so
this is obtainable.’ Before CBGB, there were
all these little places to play, like the Coventry,
where Kiss played. And we met this band the
Fast, who were playing around and renting
little theaters and playing. They were the first
band who asked us to play with them, so we
would open for them. They were much more
mod. It’s pretty safe to say that Kiss were to-
tally inspired, make-up wise, by the Fast. They
were doing stars on their faces before Kiss. The
singer from the Fast, Paul [Zone], has a book
called Playground, which is a fascinating ac-
count of New York at the time. And Paul was
taking pictures. There are pictures of me and
Ian and everyone. It’s a great read and captures
what happened in New York at the time.
As grubby as people make it sound in New
York at that time, it was where everything
started.
It was really what I would call the center of
the universe at that point cuz you have punk
stuff, disco stuff, rap, all being born together.
I don’t know that we’ll ever see something like
that again. It was quite the time to be alive. It
was insane, like a dream. New York was dirty,
gritty; it wasn’t Disney World like it is now,
and I think that spurs a lot of creativity. People
could come here and get a cheap apartment—
all these great people who came to be could
come to New York and express themselves.
And unfortunately that’s not really possible
anymore. It was a creative time of cultural ex-
plosion here that changed the world forever.
Tell me about some of your early gigs.
One of our first gigs was a sweet 16 party.
And we got a bunch of baseball uniforms and
dyed them pink—pink baseball uniforms at
the Coventry. We also had pink pajamas with
feet. We were cultivating the idea of a uniform
but that didn’t last very long, so we just started
wearing different clothes.
When you guys were in that basement cut-
ting demos and you’re about to open your
mouth to sing to it ... at the time there
weren’t a lot of people that sounded like
you. Where did that sound come from?
It wasn’t anything I did on purpose. I just had
this sound to my voice. The music was pretty
hard—it was garage-y sounding and contrast-
ed with my voice. A lot of people didn’t get
it, and even after we got signed, people were
like, ‘You sound like a girl.’ When I heard the
Only Ones, it’s like, ‘Wow, these guys must
have heard us.’ The guy who produced their
record was one of the engineers on the Milk
’n’ Cookies album, and the cover even had
letters like we had our letters. It was a lot of
coincidences. As the years go on, I meet more
and more people who are like, ‘Yeah, we were
big Milk ’n’ Cookies fans!’ Which is great and
flattering and cool!
But where were they with their money in
1975?
Looking back on it, it just makes more sense
now. The whole glam thing was going on in
the U.K. and we were disciples. When I was
a kid, I was dying for these records and it was
hard to find them. You didn’t go in a record
store and find the newest RAK single or the
newest thing on Bell. I would write letters to
all these record labels and told them I was a
writer for some magazine and I got on their
mailing list. I would be getting all these records
in the mail every other day. I got on the T. Rex
promo list, so it was like Christmas every day
and everyone would hang out at my house
because we rehearsed in my basement. But
anyway a lot of people didn’t get the vocals
at the time—they thought they were fey and
girly. When I sang, that’s what came out, and
it got us a record deal before basically any one
else in New York. We were just making these
demos with vocals in the basement, and sent
the tape to David Bowie’s Main Man man-
agement and to Sparks’ management cuz we
felt that those people might get what we do.
We got a letter from Main Man saying, ‘Keep
up the good work and keep us posted’ and,
you know, ‘we’re not going to manage you.’
And we got a reply from Sparks’ managers
saying, ‘We love this, we want to work with
you guys.’ Sparks had moved to England and
were doing stuff on Island, and they said, ‘We
played your tape for the head of A&R on Is-
land and he wants to come to New York and
meet you guys and see you play.’ I was still in
high school! And they said, ‘We really like you
but we don’t like your bass player. We don’t
like the way he looks and we would like you
to consider another bass player. We know this
guy Sal Maida, who just got off the road with
Roxy Music, and we think he’d be a great fit
for Milk ’n’ Cookies.’ We were willing to give
it a shot, so we met Sal and unbeknownst to
our bass player had an audition with him and
we loved him. He was a total Anglophile re-
cord collector. We threw out Jay and got Sal.
At that point it was like, ‘OK, we’re coming
over and we want to see you guys play.’ We
ended up playing for Muff Winwood and
Sparks’ managers in my basement near Long
Island and got signed that night! It was like a
fairy tale. After it was over we went upstairs,
and my parents were there—I quit school and
I was like, ‘I’m going, that’s it.’ I’d never been
to England and here I am, going to England
to record an album with my band and Muff
Winwood is producing it—the guy who pro-
duced one of my favorite records. Everything
seemed to fall into place.
Did you go back to school and brag?
I was always kind of an outcast at school and
word started getting out: ‘Oh, your band has
been signed, and you’re gonna be famous.’
Then everybody wants to be your friend.
Back then, getting signed was like you’d
made it!
We went over there and we were put up in
this amazing little townhouse in South Kens-
ington, and we would go to the studio every
day and record and go record shopping in be-
tween. And go to clubs. We recorded at Island
Studios and Muff Winwood produced it, the
engineers ended up working with Roxy Music
a lot and produced the B-52’s. It was a mind-
blowing experience.
For me, if I could get off a time machine
plane and be in England in 1974 in the mid-
dle of that scene, I couldn’t think of a better
place. Did you get a buzz going where you
got to be surrounded by fabulous people?
Obviously we got to get friendly with Sparks
because we had the same management. Roxy
Music, Robert Palmer, and the Wailers were re-
cording one of their first albums while we were
in the studio. We walked in and I couldn’t see
my hand in front of my face cuz of the smoke!
I didn’t even know what I was hearing—reggae
was kind of a new thing.
Bob Marley wasn’t a god yet?

INTERVIEW 49
 FREE
SUMMER
CONCERTS

JULY 5

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AUG 16

SEP 6 JUNE 21

Saturday, June 21 @ 7:30pm

FEDERICO AUBELE
Saturday, July 5 @ 7:00pm
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Pre-show activities start @ 5:00pm

Saturday, July 12@ 8:00pm

ADVENTURES FROM PARADISE:
A TRIBUTE TO MINNIE RIPERTON
The Decoders (feat. a 20-piece ensemble + special guests; DJs Aaron Byrd and
Anthony Valadez host)

Saturday, August 2 @ 8:00pm

PEOPLE GET READY
A Soundtrack of the Civil Rights Movement
Feat. Les Nubians, Dwight Trible, Dexter Story and other special guests

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LOS DOS MARKS
DJ Nu-Mark and Mark de Clive-Lowe

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VIKESH KAPOOR
Saturday, August 16 @ 8:00pm
MINER
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Yeah! It was pretty insane! We’d go to this place
called Speakeasy and all these fantastic stars
were in there, and every Thursday we’d watch
Top of the Pops. The music was so ingrained in
the culture there—that music and magazines
and fashion and clothes. I still have the list I
made of the ‘wants’ that I found. Stuff like
Troggs, Blossom Toes, all these records, and I
found a lot of them for next to nothing. There
was no eBay, no Discogs, just kind of going
in record stores and digging. Sal took me to a
place called Vintage Records. It was this dirty
store lined wall-to-wall with 45s. I spent the
whole day in there with him, and we’d come
out with piles and piles of records and they
were dirt cheap, like 55p, it was nuts—the
Eyes EP for next to nothing. We were there al-
most two months. Then we came back to New
York and this New York scene was starting to
explore. CBGB came into the picture. We shot
the cover and the whole promotion machine
was going. They asked us to come back in Feb-
ruary of 75. They were going to release the first
single and they wanted us to do promotion.
They picked ‘Little, Lost, and Innocent’ as the
first single, and we were like, ‘Really? When
you have a song like “Not Enough Girls (in
the World)”? What do we know? We’re not
a record company. They must know better.’
And while we were in New York we shot two
films—one for ‘Little, Lost and Innocent’ and
one for ‘Rabbits Make Love.’ I have not been
able to find them cuz they weren’t on video
at that point. They got shown on British TV
shows. And we began gigging heavily, at like
CBGB, playing every other weekend with the
Ramones or Blondie, Talking Heads, the Run-
aways ... we were playing a lot.
How did Ian North get control of the song-
writing?
It was Ian’s vision, song-wise. He was the song-
writer. He was not sharing that, nor was there
really much pressure cuz we really loved his
songs. He’d make a little demo of the songs,
and we’d work it out and come up with the
arrangement. And he was very prolific at that
time. There are a lot of songs that were never
even recorded.
After you came back from London to New
York, a new scene erupts, but you’re called
back to England to do PR—what happened
when you returned?
The album hadn’t been released, and when we
got back to New York, there was a bit of jealou-
sy—‘Oh, why was it that Milk ’n’ Cookies got
a record deal?’ Then we found out that Island
had got cold feet about releasing the album.
We got a call from our manager saying, ‘We
have good news and bad news. The bad news
is Island is not putting out the album. Yeah,
you know, the single didn’t do that well—they
don’t know if they want this poppy band on the
label. It’s not really their image. But the good
news is we’ve got Bell Records interested! And
[Island] gave us back the album and we can do
whatever we want with it.’ We were obviously
very disappointed and kind of in shock. The
fairy tale wasn’t the fairy tale it turned out to
be. We were counting on our English manag-
ers to do it. We believed in them, but nothing
was happening. We started doing all these gigs
in New York and Sire records become inter-
ested and gave us a contract. Not even to re-
release that album, but to record the Girls in
INTERVIEW
Gangs album. At that point, the whole punk
scene started exploding in England and Island
Records goes, ‘Oh wait! We have this New
York band, don’t we? Yeah, we do—Milk ’n’
Cookies.’ So they decided to release the album
right when all this punk was happening, and
we’re their New York punk band even though
we’re really not a punk band. We get this call
from [our manager John] saying Island wants
to reissue the album, and we want Ian to come
over and talk to them about it. Meanwhile
we’re negotiating a deal with Sire. So when Ian
gets over to England, it turns into not really—
they’re going to release the Milk ’n’ Cookies
album but they don’t want Milk ’n’ Cookies
anymore. ‘We want to sign Ian North to a solo
deal.’ We were like, ‘Whoa.’
Was that true or did Ian spin it that way?
Ian might have pushed that, let’s say. Ian was
disillusioned with the band, at this point, to
have gone through the fairy tale and the night-
mare, and wanted to maybe pursue a solo
thing. Which is what it turned into. Although
it never happened. And Ian being Ian, at the
time pissed it a bunch of people off there and
they said, ‘We’re not dealing with this.’ Then
he went on to get involved in the punk scene
and got a record deal. And we were just left in
New York. Sal had already left the band to join
Sparks and record Big Beat. Ian had moved to
England, and me and Mike were stuck in New
York. I was devastated. I get a call from Sal,
who says, ‘You gotta come out here [to L.A.]
and start the band. Everyone asks me about
Milk ’n’ Cookies! Milk ’n’ Cookies are leg-
endary out here!’ I’d never been to L.A. but
I talked to Mike and convinced him and we
went out to L.A. and put a new band togeth-
er and started playing shows and after a few
months, Sal rejoined the band. We did stuff
from the first album, and stuff that would be
on the second album. It was a really incredible
time to be in L.A., cuz it was the beginning
of the whole thing there. We became friends
with Rodney [Bingenheimer], and he was very
supportive. Elton John’s label was interested in
us, and a few other things were going on, but
nothing happened. After a year and a half, two
years—1978—I started to miss New York. So
that was the end of Milk ’n’ Cookies. That’s
the basic timeline of the whole mess. My old
girlfriend who had got me into Milk ’n’ Cook-
ies calls me and was like, ‘You have to come
back to New York. There’s this great club called
the Mudd Club, and I became friends with the
DJ there and I think you could DJ there—you
have so many great records.’ So I get this gig
at the Mudd Club. But when I first got back,
one of the managers from Milk ’n’ Cookies
was like, ‘I want to manage you as a solo art-
ist.’ I loved James Brown and I had this idea to
cover this Bootsy Collins record. I had a little
demo of it. I met the guys from Stiff who were
opening a New York office, and they were like,
‘We love this, we want to put it out.’ And that’s
how that happened. Before I did that I actu-
ally recorded a couple of tracks that Ron and
Russell [Mael] wrote for me, right after they
did the Giorgio Moroder, disco-y stuff. Kinda
cool, but never came out.
Prior to arriving at the Mudd Club, were
you paying much attention to this dance-y
vibe that became a part of your life? When
did you get the bug for clubby music?
I was always into soul music as well, and collect-
ed all that stuff. When Studio 54 was around,
me and my girlfriend—we were young, like
17—would sneak in there, and I started buy-
ing disco records, too. A lot of people that are
into Milk ’n’ Cookies and that kind of stuff
are very close-minded when it comes to other
types of music. For me, it all makes sense. I
love that—I also love disco and house.
It’s hard to imagine other people out of the
scene—like Johnny Ramone—being com-
fortable at Studio 54.
I have always been like, ‘If it’s good, it’s good.’
There’s a lot of crappy punk and glam records
and there’s a lot of bad disco records, but some
are incredible. Obviously, I really love that
stuff, and I recorded it. I always managed to
be in the right place at the right time. I was
lucky to be around New York in the 70s—the
Paradise Garage, the Mudd Club, all these fa-
bled places. Being in L.A. for the whole punk
thing—the Screamers, the Go-Go’s. All these
things have influenced my musical sensibili-
ties, from punk to disco to house. After DJing
all these clubs, I started wanting to get in-
volved in remixing and I’ve been lucky enough
to remix hundreds of records. Back then, you
weren’t breaking records on the internet—you
were breaking records at the clubs. Labels were
bringing acetates and reel-to-reel tapes to DJ
at the clubs. I became friends with all these la-
bels and I’d be like, ‘Hey, why don’t you let me
try something in the studio?’ One thing led to
another—one thing becomes a hit and all of a
sudden everybody wants you.
Do you think not getting famous with Milk
’n’ Cookies ultimately helped you find your-
self and your career?
It forced me to re-think it. It was a very natural
process: ‘Why don’t you come back to New
York and maybe you can DJ?’ I knew music
was something I always wanted to do—as my
job or my life and I could never see myself
doing anything else. I was obsessed. Things
just kind of fell into place. I’m in the unique
position of having done all of [these success-
ful remixes] and having done something
like Milk ’n’ Cookies, which has now kind
of come around. I never thought that I’d be
playing with Milk ’n’ Cookies at this point in
my life, or that anyone would care. When I
started DJing and stuff, I thought that Milk ’n’
Cookies was forgotten about. But somehow or
other, I still love this stuff, and I’m still inspired
by it. I don’t take it for granted. A lot of people
say, ‘Oh, this isn’t what it was ... ’ If you just
sit around and bitch about that all the time,
you’re not gonna do anything creative—you’re
not gonna try and push the envelope a little
further. For whatever reason, I still have that in
me. I still love making records, and being on
stage with Milk ’n’ Cookies. Y’know, Ian has a
lot of trouble with Milk ’n’ Cookies …
Why isn’t he involved?
Ian’s a difficult guy sometimes. I guess he feels
a bit bitter about what happened. He sort of
broke up the band when he left for England
that time, and probably pushed his solo thing
more than the band. And now that he sees that
Milk ’n’ Cookies have gotten all this love years
later, he has a hard time with it. Ian’s whole
thing is that he wanted to be taken seriously
as a serious songwriter, and he feels somewhat
embarrassed, I’d say, by the lyrics of Milk ’n’
Cookies and the adolescent innocence of it
maybe. I said, ‘Ian, Milk ’n’ Cookies is the
most important thing you’ve ever done and
ever will do—you really need to embrace it
and you really need to understand what it
means to people.’ There’s a lot of people, espe-
cially because of the re-releases, that are finding
out about this band, and somehow or other, it
still resonates with kids. I am so proud of it. I
wish Ian could enjoy it. He is becoming better
about it. He came to New York—he lives in
Florida now—and I made him go to a party.
Somebody played a Milk ’n’ Cookies song,
and the place went nuts. Everybody was sing-
ing along and Ian was like, ‘Wow.’ He didn’t
wanna know about it for years. I asked him
to come play with us and everything, but he
just can’t seem to ... He’s like, ‘I haven’t played
a guitar in years.’ And I’m like, ‘You don’t have
to. Just show up on stage with us for a couple
of songs during the encore, and people will
lose their minds.’
You have a different life now that’s not a
hundred percent Milk ’n’ Cookies—it must
be a little odd for you, to be going back.
The whole pain of the end of Milk ’n’ Cook-
ies was something I didn’t want to think about
cuz I always thought it was such a great band
and could have been so huge. It was painful
that it never seemed to reach its potential.
Years later some Japanese label re-released the
CD without anyone’s knowledge and I was
at a record store one day and saw it. ‘Whoa!
What is this?’ All of a sudden all these weird
things started happening. I’d see people online
talking about Milk ’n’ Cookies and trying to
get in touch with me about it. We got asked
to do this power pop festival in Brooklyn and
so we did that.
Were people surprised you were right under
their noses?
What blew me away about the whole thing
was that it was all these kids who had discov-
ered the band through the internet or what-
ever, and who were just totally into Milk ’n’
Cookies. When we stepped out on the stage
I was blown away! The kids who knew every
song and were singing along!
It’s got a more solid cult following than a lot
of things that had some sales at the time.
It’s funny–when we were going to reissue [the
record] people were scared to hear some of the
unreleased songs. We’d done some demos for
Warner Bros. and we were like, ‘We don’t want
it to mess with our stuff!’ But it was good and
everyone was happy! [The record] was an elu-
sive record for a long time—people were look-
ing for it. Now more people know about it
because of the reissue, but before people were
really coveting it. The people who are into
Milk ’n’ Cookies are like a cult. If you meet
someone who’s into Milk ’n’ Cookies, it’s like,
‘Whoa, you know Milk ’n’ Cookies?’
MILK ’N’ COOKIES WITH RONNIE
SPECTOR, SHANNON AND THE
CLAMS, THEE OH SEES AND MORE
ON SAT. AND SUN., JULY 5 AND 6, AT
MOSSWOOD PARK, OAKLAND. $35
/ 12:30 PM BOTH DAYS / ALL AGES.
BURGERBOOGALOO.COM. MILK
’N’ COOKIES’ ‘SELF-TITLED ALBUM
WILL BE REISSUED THIS FALL ON
CAPTURED TRACKS.
51
FYF PRESENTS
Cloud Nothings
Metz
The Wytches
July 8th and July 9th / The Roxy / $20 / 8 PM
FYF, Goldenvoice, and Origami Vinyl Present

Mac Demarco
July 11 / The Fonda / $18 / 8 PM
Nick Cave
July 12 / Theatre at THE Ace / $65.50 - $85.50 / 8 PM
Planes Mistaken for Stars
All Eyes West • End on End • Girl Tears
July 16 / The Echo / $12 / 8 PM
The Field
Special Guest
July 17 / The Echoplex / $16/ 8 PM
Presented by FYF and Goldenvoice

Joyce Manor
July 25 / El Rey / $15 / 8 PM
Presented by FYF and Goldenvoice

Hundred Waters
Pure Bathing Culture
July 31 / CFAER / $12.50 - $15 / 8 PM
Presented by FYF and CENTER FOR THE ARTS EAGLE ROCK

Ceremony
Nothing • Dangers • Upset
August 1 / The Roxy / $15 / 8 PM
Presented by FYF and Goldenvoice

Superchunk
Mike Krol
August 15 / CFAER / $18 - $20 / 8 PM
Presented by FYF and CENTER FOR THE ARTS EAGLE ROCK

UPCOMING SHOWS
8/21 - Blood Orange, Kindness / Theatre at Ace
8/21 - Future Islands, Operators / THE FONDA
8/21 - Benjamin Booker, Junk / The Echo
8/21 - Fucked Up, Tijuana Panthers, special guest / the El Rey
8/22 - How to Dress Well / First Unitarian Church
8/22 - Built to Spill with special guest / THE ROXY
8/22 - Joanna Gruesome, Dunes, Michael Vidal, DEBT / The Smell
8/22 - Fucked Up. Tijuana Panthers, special guest / the Glasshouse
8/22 - Slint with special guest / the El Rey
8/23 - 8/24 - FYF FEST / L.A. Sports Arena and Exposition park
8/26 - Murder City Devils with special guest / the Glasshouse
8/27 - Murder City Devils with special guest / Pappy & Harriet’s
8/28 - 8/31 - Ty Segall plus more / The Echo
8/30 - Sleep, Helen Money / Pappy & Harriet’s
10/2 - 10/3 - War on Drugs / The Fonda
10/6 - 10/7 - Belle & Sebastian, Kevin Drew / Theatre at Ace Hotel
10/7 - OUGHT plus more / CENTER FOR THE ARTS EAGLE ROCK
10/24 - 10/25 - Mineral / The Roxy

For more information

www.fyfpresents.com
Twitter.com/fyffest
 ALBUMS
EDITED BY D.M. COLLINS

54 ALBUM REVIEWS

56 THE INTERPRETER:
BRIAN REITZELL
Kristina Benson

60 THE ONCE OVER, TWICE

D.M. Collins

67 ONE REPORTER’S OPINION

Chris Ziegler

BOOKS
EDITED BY NIKKI B.

68 ALEXANDER HEIR
Stephen Sigl

71 WEIRD SCENES
INSIDE THE CANYON
Heru Avenger John Basil

72 COMICS
EDITED BY TOM CHILD

CRAFT/WORK
CURATED BY WARD ROBINSON

74 BLACKBOARD CAFÉ
Frankie Alvaro

FILM
EDITED BY RIN KELLY

PUNK IN AFRICA
76 Justin Maurer
BRIAN REITZELL by OLIVIA JAFFE

DAVE VAN PATTEN
AMON DÜÜL II BABES
Düülerium
Cleopatra
Now with Can, Faust and Tanger-
ine Dream safely ensconced with
the immortals of 70s rock, atten-
tion may be paid at last to the
Amon Düül II situation. While
it’s now relatively safe for fans to
openly admire such second-rank-
ers as Magma (a band once leg-
endary among North American
rock fans for volcanically noodling
excess), there’s still a sizable fac-
tion of Amon Düül II haters out
there. Early LP titles like Phallus
Dei (1969) and Tanz der Lem-
minge (1971) seldom roll without
injury or embarrassment from
Anglophone tongues, but within
the grooves of both records are
the very brain-freezing essences of
kosmische Musik and every post-
rock exercise to come. News this
45-year-old Munich collective’s
first new music in twenty years
is unsurprisingly grizzled and
atypically longwinded. “On the
Highway (Mambo La Liberta)”
is close in composition and spirit
to more commercial parts of their
catalog—especially Wolf City—
and “Du Kommst Ins Heim” is
a boldly loony series of bilingual
chants and nonsense howling.
“Standing in the Shadow” is a glo-
riously elongated groove any ad-
mirer of Captain Beefheart’s later
albums can click cloven hooves
to. The shortest of the four tracks
clocks in at over eight minutes
and “Back to the Rules/Walking
to the Park,” a universe of vagrant
feeling and heart-stopping retro-
hippie pyrotechnics, comes to a
shimmying, shambolic halt at the
monstrous span of 26:01. This
hulk of a record is perhaps one of
the very last times a rock band of
this era will return to greatness.
Düül rüüles!
—Ron Garmon
54
ALBUM
REVIEWS
BROCK POTUCEK
self-titled
Harvest
There’s a lot of talent in this charm-
ing little EP of four songs. Clearly
the band has both guys and gals in
it who can sing, and the gal, Sarah
Rayne, has a great kind of whispery
longing to her voice, which she
can use to do a Claudine Longet/
Margo Guryan thing. or something
deeper, dreamier … I wouldn’t be
surprised if Babes were inspired to
start the group over a mutual love of
Julee Cruise’s songs in Twin Peaks—
ohhhh, just think about pop music
that uses the early 60s “Teen Angel”
ballad as a springboard to something
between a sunrise and a visit from
a ghost. By comparison, the male
vocalists of the band are kind of less
pleasant, but luckily they don’t really
get songs of their own; both “You &
Me” and “Hey My Man” are duets
with a lot of interesting synthy pro-
duction; in the case of the former,
you can even hear the sawing of a
viola or cello somewhere in there,
before the crazy keyboard starts per-
colating! Despite the variety, some
parts of their sound are a little famil-
iar: vintage-y, echo-ey, in ways that
bands like Dum Dum Girls already
covered to great effect in 2008. But
ALBUM REVIEW
SUBMISSIONS
L.A. RECORD invites all local musicians to send music
for review­—anything from unreleased MP3s and demos
to finished full albums. Send digital to digital@larecord.
com and physical to:
P.O. Box 21729
Long Beach, CA 90801
If you are in a band and would like to advertise your
release in L.A. RECORD, email advertise@larecord.com
Babes takes those sounds to places no
band has yet covered. Really, it’s not a
problem if there’s another band that
likes the 60s. It’s like Homer Simp-
son once said about Calvin Klein
and “Antoine Bugleboy”: these are
the people who saw an overcrowded
marketplace and said, “Me too.”
—D.M. Collins
CARA BYRD
GUY
BLAKESLEE
Ophelia Slowly
Everloving
When I reviewed the Entrance Band
album of only a few months ago,
Face the Sun, I was surprised at band
leader Guy Blakeslee’s calm, intro-
spective approach to his newfound
sobriety; reformed rockers usually
prefer their first clear-headed disc
to be loud and rockin’, lest anyone
call them pussies for not wanting to
kill themselves slowly with expensive
poisons. Now I see that Blakeslee was
holding back the aural floodgates for
this, his first solo album in a decade
and his first ever under his own
name. Unlike Face the Sun’s vocals,
which were moody and lonely and a
little bit creepy, here he uses a simple
drum machine and open chords
so that his voice, by comparison,
sounds loud as fuck. I love how he
plays with that spotlight; the narra-
tor’s voice on “Ophelia Floats Away”
is almost Berlin-era Iggy Pop, and
there’s a wordy, folk-rap approach on
“Kneel and Pray.” Sometimes things
might still be too wordy, or too pro-
saic. Face the Sun’s lyrics were a little
obvious in some places, especially on
“Year of the Dragon,” which reap-
pears here. But god, why split hairs
on what he’s saying, when he says
it with such an amazing voice? On
“Told Myself,” Blakeslee almost be-
comes Sal Valentino from the Beau
Brummels, but an octave higher!
His lilting falsetto is so smooth, sur-
rounded in a perfect bed of banjo
and glockenspiel, that when he talks
of being “clean and a junkie, too,” he
absolutely sells me on the beauty of a
good paradox.
—D.M. Collins
JARED PITTACK
BLU & BOMBAY
Good to Be Home
Nature Sounds/New
World Color
Blu is the West Coast’s prodigal son
that went off the beaten path, but
on his latest solo project, Good to Be
Home, he’s found his way back. This
project serves as Blu’s retort to the
resurgence of West Coast gangster
rap. While we’re falling back into an
enamored haze with ultra-violence
and sensationalized depictions of
brown and black lives, Blu challeng-
es the listener to find the meaning in
the mundane. A self-described “G-
Soul” record, there is an intentional
parallel running throughout Bom-
bay’s beats. The fat basslines, warm
samples and garnishes of distortion
feel like hazy sun setting behind a
row of palm trees. Blu’s performance
is immaculate; there is no question
that our author’s technical ability is
top-tier. But the focus is not on the
acrobatics of his language but the
comprehensive marriage between
the feel of the music and the imag-
ery of the bars. When rap’s top dogs
are continuously emphasizing and
expanding on the gap between the
artist and the listener, young Blzzo
makes an album reaching for the
mood of the everyman. There’s con-
cept behind the bevy of guest spots
on the record as well. Side-stepping
convention that would dictate the
largest marquee names possible, Blu
reaches to a diverse crew of homies
for assistance. From underground
superstars like Alchemist and Phil
Da Agony to hyper-local talents like
Sweet Pea and Co$$, the features
further add color to the homegrown
mood of the record. There are traces
of the introspective sentimentalist
Blu that many folks love and there
are plenty moments of microphone
swashbuckling, but the biggest vic-
tory the LP can claim is creating
an experience for the listener that is
greater than the sum of its parts.
—sweeney kovar
JARED PITTACK
DANNY BROWN
Hot Soup
Street Corner Music
Hot Soup is a snapshot of a spark
that lit a fire. In the summer of
2007, Danny Brown was fresh off
a yearlong county bid and hungrier
than ever. Making the most out of
a budding relationship with local
hitmaker Nick Speed, Danny fun-
neled his remaining energy and
resources into a recording extrava-
ganza over 4th of July weekend. The
product of that became the core of
Danny’s Hot Soup, his first album
and first bold leap into becoming
the unparalleled artist he is today.
And man, does this still bang.
“What Up Doe” will make you Er-
rol Flynn, “Gun in Yo Mouf” has
a lurching, deformed monster of a
beat, and Danny is as poignant as
ever on tracks like “Work Song,”
and “Two Steps Back.” There are
random guest spots like Rapper Big
Pooh and one misstep in the ghet-
ALBUM REVIEWS
totech ‘club banger’ attempt “She
Love It,” but even those points add
color to the canvas. Initially the
album lived as 1s and 0s on the
internet and a very limited mix-
tape-quality CD pressing in real
life. Now it’s available pressed onto
vinyl in gatefold jackets and double
CD. Detroit’s DJ House Shoes and
his Street Corner Music label are to
thank for this rare instance of ret-
roactive appreciation. As an added
bonus, Shoes tacked on some bo-
nus cuts and a bonus bonus 45 for
the vinyl version. The extra donut
contains two of Danny’s most sear-
ing but slept-on cuts to date. First
it’s his cold-blooded murder of
Apollo Brown’s bare-bones beat for
“Contra” and the B-side presents
a classic display of Danny’s wild
and perverted imagination on the
Samiyam-helmed “Radiohead.”
—sweeney kovar
SIERRA JOY
CHARIZMA
AND PEANUT
BUTTER WOLF
Circa 1990-1993
Stones Throw
Stage name for Milpitas-born
Charles Hicks, Charizma was a
supple-voiced MC who fell in with
DJ and producer Peanut Butter
Wolf (aka Chris Ganak) and began
to shop the pair’s homemade demo
tapes around the powerhouse San
Jose scene of the early 90s. Signed
by Disney subsidiary Hollywood
Basic toward the end of the Golden
Age of hip-hop, the pair recorded
material for over a year, very little of
which saw release before Charizma
was found in his car shot to death in
1993. Here, twenty-one years later,
is the bulk of that collaboration: a
four-disc, 40-track set that takes in
some half-finished experiments and
tuneful fragments along with more
realized tracks, though nuggets like
“Apple Juice Break” and “Wikki
Wikki” are a big part of the fun. As
a rapper, Charizma was influenced
by Kool Moe Dee, and PB Wolf’s
production finds oddball uses for
notions from Paul’s Boutique-era
Beasties, though both were instinc-
tively funkier than their influences.
Of the set-pieces, “Scratch ‘n’ Sniff”
is fussily funny, “On & On/Here’s a
ALBUM REVIEWS
Smirk” is a kind of hip-hop “Uncle
Albert/Admiral Halsey” and “Keep
on Rockin It” is the collection’s lost
anthem. AIDS morality fables and
verbs like “conversating” abound.
This is a danceable time capsule that
hits like one of those gigantic Bear
Family retrospectives of traditional
Americana. Stupendous.
—Ron Garmon
courtesy band
DAHGA
BLOOM
No Curtains
Captcha
With pulsating synths and ridicu-
lously heavy bass, coupled with the
echo and reverb-drenched vocals of
Lucas Drake, Dahga Bloom have
carved out a niche for themselves
in the current Southern California
musical scene. Known for their
great live performances, the band
has also been hard at work in the
studio creating amazing tunes that
work just as well pressed to vinyl.
With some excellently executed
production and engineering by
Drake and Manny Lopez, songs
like “Space is the Place” or “Put It
on the Table” are enhanced by re-
ally strong vocal lines, which in the
modern psych scene is strangely
hard to find. Big, hard beats and
fuzztastic bass litter the album.
That the band cares about how
the music feels is evident from the
strange and mind-numbing intro-
ductory track, “Supa,” all the way
through the last notes of “Born to
Be Brown.” This band deserves all
the hype they receive and they back
it up on this new record.
—Daniel Sweetland
DAVE VAN PATTEN
DJ HARVEY
Wildest Dreams
Smalltown Supersound
Object of the bigger cults in the
international DJ set, Harvey Bas-
sett is renowned for eclectic tastes,
famously perverse underground
parties and cultivating a persona
Rolling Stone is pleased to call
a “libertine Englishman turned
California surfer dude.” This full-
length is a useful corrective for
the idiots in your life who think
DJ music isn’t music because DJs
aren’t musicians. Here, the famed
dance-floor monster does a sharp
left turn on us, uncorking a shim-
mering concept album based on
Los Angeles. Onetime king of the
city’s know-somebody late-night
scene, Harvey unsurprisingly
hears L.A. as a funky, proggy,
hard-driving score for a purely
imaginary movie. “Last Ride” and
“405” are evocative enough to
stick around in the general cul-
ture a while and the whole album
has the compressed ambience of a
downtown warehouse rager, right
down to that vague feeling you
knew the tunes before you paid
the cover charge. Your midnight
summertime Harbor Freeway of
the ears.
—Ron Garmon
AMY HAGEMEIER
NED DOHENY
Separate Oceans
Numero Group
About this time last year, I was
interviewing the legendary recluse
Shuggie Otis, the broodingly
handsome almost-ran who palled
around with the Stones in the 70s
but whose famous father (Johnny
Otis of “Hand Jive” fame) over-
shadowed the son’s more nuanced,
sexy, delicate, and sometimes syn-
thy recordings, which would only
eventually become appreciated in
their own right years after their
release. Pretty hip? Well… leave
it to L.A. RECORD to find a re-
cluse even MORE reclusive, with
a name even MORE famous (like,
streets and villages and beaches
and the lead in fucking There Will
Be Blood famous), who hung out
with even MORE famous 70s
musicians (Jackson Browne and
Cass Elliot and fucking Chaka
Khan!), who incorporated perhaps
even MORE 70 synths, and who
was, maybe, MORE handsome, if
you go in for that white boy long-
haired surfer rich-kid look. And
you’ll see a LOT of his looks—the
booklet lays out Doheny’s entire
history of great music and frus-
trating obscurity everywhere but
Japan, a historian’s delight. But
the tunes… if you like Shuggie
Otis and Todd Rundgren-esque
blue-eyed 70s soul, this might just
become your favorite kick-off-
your-shoes collection! Or should I
say “boot-knockin’”? If Doheny’s
respectfully insistent voice inflec-
tion and jazzy electric piano riffs
don’t make yer knickers hit the
floor, just turn to the page of the
booklet where David Geffen gives
him the shaft in 1974 … believe
me, you’ll be able to “Get It Up
for Love.”
—D.M. Collins
BROCK POTUCEK
DRAAG
self-titled
self-released
With former members of the
Shoegaze band Tremellow as
well as members of other bands,
this San Fernando Valley group
has an established creative base
to draw from. The opening track
hits you like a freight train in the
form of a thrashed-out 45 sec-
onds of screaming and banging
on every distorted instrument at
hand that leaves just as quickly
as it came. This harsh introduc-
tion is replaced by the minimal-
ist dream pop track “Tragic,”
which sets the stage for the rest
of the music to come. The re-
mainder of the album is a blend
of dreamy sounds and similarly
ethereal yet heavier shoegaze
tracks that work well together.
There are a few ambient noise
songs that serve as transitional
pathways, in the form of mood
stabilizers, which move you from
the softer songs to the more in-
tense ones. One such track is
the song “Slymar,” running at a
blissful two and a half minutes.
Think Kevin Shields for Lost in
Translation and you will get a
solid picture. Draag’s debut al-
bum is self-released, but from
this strong showing, there is no
doubt the band’s second album
will find a home on a label.
—Zachary Jensen
BRIAN BROOKS
FAR WEST
Any Day Now
Medina River
It’s hard to find fault with a band
that formed over a mutual apprecia-
tion of Waylon Jennings (according
to legend, the Craigslist ad that drew
the members of Far West together
featured nothing but a video of “A
Couple More Years”). That kind of
understated explication is a driving
force behind the band’s sophomore
platter, Any Day Now, which dishes
up thirteen well-crafted, no-frills
country songs—not Nashville glitter
country, but real country, the kind
with dust on its boots. Far West also
draws inspiration from alt-country
heavyweights like Uncle Tupelo and
Sun Volt, creating a vibe that is rich,
textured and steeped in tradition,
although not a slave to it. Any Day
Now is concerned with atmosphere
and ambience, and the varied selec-
tion of both mournful and jubilant
songs shows it. The band’s desire
for authentic mood is underscored
by the fact that Any Day Now was
recorded in a vintage hot rod repair
shop. The record opens with “On
the Road,” a lonesome and mourn-
ful ode to the tribulations of trying to
make it in Hollywood. Underscored
by shimmering keyboards, the cut
kicks the album off to a vivid start.
The strollin’, struttin’ “The Bright
Side,” with its joyful mid-song honky
guitar solo, is another highlight, as is
the stripped-down “Leonard,” which
flexes its creativity in the form of a
warbly, New Orleans–tinged trum-
pet solo. On the opposite end of
the spectrum is the soothing, elegiac
“Post and Beam,” a pretty farewell
song to youth. Recommended.
—Jason Gelt
AMY HAGEMEIER
FATIMA
Yellow Memories
Eglo
55
THE INTERPRETER
BRIAN REITZELL
As a longtime collaborator with Sofia Coppola, Brian Reitzell is responsible for composing and supervising the soundtracks for The Virgin
Suicides, Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette and The Bling Ring, and was also a drummer for Redd Kross and toured with the French band
Air. Now he’s releasing his own record on Small Town Supersound, Auto Music, which was recorded in his home studio over a period of
around a decade. He joined me over Skype to talk about his favorite records, when he plays them, and why he loves them.
STAN GETZ & CHARLIE BYRD JAZZ SAMBA
(VERVE, 1962)
“
“It’s always in front of my turntable cuz it just transforms my entire
house into a Brazilian Copacabana. It’s mellow with a West Coast jazzy
feel, and it’s also the record before ‘Girl From Ipanema.’ It’s classic,
beautifully recorded, sounds like the band is in my living room. If I’m
having people over, it’s such great background music—or even if it’s
just me and my puppy having a beer.”
DAVID CROSBY IF I COULD ONLY REMEMBER
MY NAME (Atlantic, 1971)
“For a time, when I was between 5 and 7, I lived on a commune. My
parents got divorced and we moved from the suburbs to Redwood City,
not far from Neil Young’s place. And we lived on this commune, where
music was always playing. I remember the Stones’ Goats Head Soup the
most—it must’ve been new at the time. I used to play with my Tonka
trucks around a garden of pot plants and blackberries! There was a guy
who lived in the garage who fixed motorcycles for the Hell’s Angels, and
there were always records. This one takes me back. It’s one of Crosby’s
finest moments. It’s so Pacific Ocean, Northern California, Santana,
Joni Mitchell—all of it is in there.”
The Specials the specials (Chrysalis/two-
tone, 1979)
“Everyone should have this record! 1979, pissed-off British youth, one
of my favorite party records. Elvis Costello produced and it sounds so
raw. This is probably my third copy. It’s the ultimate make you feel
good, get you up record. I played it backstage a lot when I toured with
Air. I’d put this on and everyone would be jumping up and down!”
Sandy Bull Inventions (VANGUARD, 1964)
“A friend of mine in Japan turned me on to this. Sandy Bull was a
tragic guy who died far too young. I think he was the original Ry
Cooder—more adventurous even. He had crazy jazz and classical
chops. This has one of his own songs, a couple Bach pieces, ‘Mem-
phis, Tennessee’ by Chuck Berry. It’s just Bull and Billy Higgins, a
great L.A. jazz drummer. It’s got some of the best guitar-jazz. I dun-
no what you’d call this! He’d play anything with strings. Oud, bass,
acoustic guitar, banjo. He was a genius!”
augustus pablo east of the river nile
(Message, 1977)
“If I had to pick just one record of all of these, it’d be this one—it’s a dub
record with no singing. Augustus Pablo plays melodica. It’s just ridicu-
lously groovy. All instrumental. I can flip it over and over and over.”
The replacements Tim (Sire, 1985)
“I got this when it came out cuz the woman who ran the record store
I worked at worshipped the Replacements. And I became such a big
Replacements fan. Then I kinda stopped for ten or fifteen years, but I
pulled Tim out not long ago and it’s such a perfect rock ‘n’ roll record.
These records are like little memories—they transport me back to
when I was young and carefree!”
THE INTERPRETER
Curated by Kristina Benson
Photography by Olivia Jaffe
krzysztof penderecki “capriccio for
violin & orchestra” AND “de natura so-
noris” (Nonesuch, 1969)
“This is a mindblower. To me, these pieces are the most inspirational
things. The work I’m doing on Hannibal is horror music, but I’m also
doing Japanese music and percussive-based musique concrète, and re-
ally trying to go back to how it started in the 40s, when Pierre Schaeffer
invented musique concrète. He got money from his friends’ TV studio
to do experiments, and from there you get Pierre Henry, BBC Radio-
phonic … it all came from Schaeffer. And he got money from TV. And if
I get my money from TV studios, I’m looking backward to go forward,
so I listen to Penderecki. This sounds like the most modern music I’ve
ever heard, and they’re not using anything new—nothing is plugged in!
The first time I listened to this, I had a really high fever and was rolled
up in blankets trying to get the sweat out of me, and the music was tak-
ing my pain away cuz I was listening so intently. I forgot I was so ill!”
ART BLAKEY AND THE AFRO-DRUM ENSEMBLE
THE AFRICAN BEAT (BLUE NOTE, 1962)
“The last great percussion record Art Blakey made, and this is the most
African of any of them. Art is really the only trap drummer, and then
there’s an incredible Spanish Harlem African percussion ensemble. It’s a
fantastic recording by Rudy Van Gelder. Everything starts with a motif
that goes away and then the rhythm section just goes off. Late 50s, early
60s be-bop records are some of the best drum records ever made, and the
way they captured this—really good stuff.”
Sumire yoshihara percussions in
colors (rca, 1978)
“This might be the rarest on here. It’s Japanese, direct mastered—straight
to press with no mixing. Serious audiophile stuff. Side one is ‘Munari
by Munari,’ by one of my all-time heroes, Toru Takemitsu, a Japanese
film composer. This record is so minimal, it’s like you open a window in
the house and hear the birds a little better or a clomp! down the street or
an airplane flies over —it’s the most ambient record I ever heard in my
life! Yet it’s such a beautiful, flowing work, and the space between beats
and sounds … it’s nature is what it is! As recreated in this case by one
percussionist—Sumire Yoshihara. There’s a picture on the back showing
them in their 70s Japanese garb, just listening—great!”
The chet baker quartet with russ
freeman the complete pacific jazz live
recordings (mosaic, 1989)
“It’s kinda cheating cuz it’s a box set. Chet doesn’t sing on this, but his
flugelhorn-playing is the epitome for me of West Coast 60s jazz. I grew
up a bit of a jazz snob, way more into New York jazz and Coltrane and
Art Blakey. But that only lasted a few years—maybe it was my relation-
ship with the Pacific Ocean? I dunno? But this just sounds like you’re
near the ocean in Southern California in the 60s. People aren’t aware
Chet Baker replaced Coltrane in Miles Davis’ group. He had the same
beautiful, elongated, pastoral breeziness Miles had. Everybody thinks
of him as a singer, and he was amazing, and as a personality cuz he was
kinda tragic. But anything by him on Mosaic is worth buying. I used
to be a chef, and I’d be cooking and listening to records, and with the
possible exception of the Replacements, this is all great cooking music!
Also great drinking music!”
57
There’s a sense of nostalgia
throughout this debut album from
London-based Swedish-Senegalese
soul vocalist Fatima Bramme Sey,
and not just because many of its
tracks find her in bittersweet remi-
niscence about love turned compli-
cated. With a cadre of a half-dozen
beatmakers in tow, Yellow Memo-
ries offers an eclectic yet classicist
mix of soul jazz that recalls a time
when Lauryn Hill was command-
ing prime airtime on “MTV Jams.”
And set against the current back-
drop of marquee R&B and pop
music that feels more semiotic than
erotic, this is something of a small
coup. On its own modest scale,
Yellow Memories resembles the
stuff of real life: the opener com-
bines brazen confidence with the
a refrain of “I can do better,” the
relationships oscillate between joy
and doubt, and the finale about an
absent father says a lot about what
pride and despair have to do with
each other. But as much as ambiva-
lence tints these yellow memories
blue, Fatima arrives fully formed
as a vocalist, elevating plainspoken
lover’s laments like “Biggest Joke of
All” with an effortlessly lyrical lev-
ity over producer Floating Points’
tightly wrapped hip-hop groove.
It’s the downbeat moments that
reveal the subtleties of expression
the most, where the fine details of
these lovingly crafted beats emerge
and where Fatima’s thoughtfulness
as a performer is most evident. And
with that introspective sense of im-
pressionism locked down, you’ll
start to wonder what it’ll sound
like when she can do even better.
—Sean Manning
courtesy band
FRENCH
STYLE FURS
Is Exotic Bait
Frenchkiss
Make no mistake, Is Exotic Bait is
not a Cold War Kids album, even
though French Style Furs features
both CWK vocalist Nathan Willett
and CWK bassist Matt Maust. No,
this is an album of dirty-sounding
exploration. It’s raw and daring.
With some strong beats, courtesy
of We Barbarians’ Nathan Warken-
tin, and Maust’s signature basslines,
58
Is Exotic Bait takes the listener
to strange and wonderful places,
whether it’s the rhythmic lines of
“Solitary Life” or the aggressive
pounding and gothic keyboards of
“All the Way Down.” Super-groups
can be tricky to present as new and
discrete from the artists’ other proj-
ects, but French Style Furs sound
like themselves, a band formed
from longtime friendship and a
mutual desire to explore new and
exciting terrain.
—Daniel Sweetland
WALT! GORECKI
THE FRESH &
ONLYS
House of Spirits
Mexican Summer
The Fresh & Onlys have been a
staple in the San Francisco ga-
rage rock scene ever since put-
ting out their first album back in
2008. The band is fairly consis-
tent with releases too, with their
latest album, House of Spirits,
being the fifth full-length in the
band’s relatively young career.
Made partly while Tim Cohen
was living on an isolated horse
ranch in Arizona, House of Spirits
was intentionally meant to have
a distinct A-side, B-side feel. The
first half of the album has sim-
plistic and basic song structures;
the instrumentation is minimal
and sparse with Cohen’s vocals
driving all of the songs. “Bells
of Paonia“ is a great example,
featuring a droned-out guitar
riff that drifts through the en-
tire track, while Cohen gives the
song shape with his strong sing-
ing style. “Animal of One” has a
strong western feel to it—deep,
echoing vocals backed by Ennio
Morricone–style guitar. Inverse-
ly, the B-side features “heavier”
songs, replete with fast-paced
drums and in-your-face guitar
riffs—a bit more of the tradition-
al Fresh & Onlys style. Regard-
less, all the songs on this album
seem to be a pretty big departure
from each other. Although each
song is extremely good, they
don’t necessarily work cohesively
as a collective release.
—Zachary Jensen
BROCK POTUCEK
CURTIS
HARDING
Soul Power
Burger
Curtis Harding plays a style of music
that he has coined “sloppin’-soul.”
Combining elements of everything
he has encountered musically, and
mixing it with his true love—soul
music—Harding makes a sound all
his own. This by itself can give you
a fairly good idea of what his music
is like, but it would not do the man
nearly enough justice. His debut re-
lease, Soul Power, is an experience.
From the album cover alone you can
see that the man exudes cool. The
feeling doesn’t stop there though. As
the first track opens up with acous-
tic guitar riffs, steady drumbeats,
and a smooth bassline, the listener is
eagerly set up in anticipation. Then
Harding sings and knocks you right
back down. There is so much emo-
tion and strength in his voice that he
could drive a song with vocals alone.
The instrumentation on the songs
only adds to the experience that he
creates. The opening track gives you a
small taste of what is to come. While
always staying deeply rooted in soul,
the entire album runs the gamut
with its secondary influences. Some
songs have a garage rock feel, while
others have an R&B, funk, surf rock,
or even a heavy blues tone. Each sub-
tle change in style brings the energy,
but in a whole new way. There are no
fillers on this album. If Soul Power is
any indication of what Curtis Hard-
ing has in store for us, then he has a
long career ahead of him.
—Zachary Jensen
courtesy band
HUNTER & THE
DIRTY JACKS
Single Barrel
self-released
It’s nice this glossy blues-rock five-
piece doesn’t sound like a wimpy,
lilting indie band, but their hard rock
posturing travels to the outer limits
of the opposite end of the spectrum.
If Single Barrel had been recorded
and released twenty-five years ago,
Hunter and the boys would have
been wearing liberal applications of
lipstick and powder, sporting copious
perms and shaking the floorboards at
Gazzarri’s nightclub. “I can take you
higher and higher,” Hunter belts out
in the amusingly titled “Doctor Din-
go.” “I’ll hold your hand while you
walk through the fire/I wanna be
your sole survivor.” Those are pretty
representative lyrics: a little silly, a
lot dramatic. Lyrical themes such
as hard liquor (“Break Me Down”),
mean-hearted women (“Lorraine”),
and headin’ on down the highway
(“Gotta Keep Movin’ On”) mix with
shredtastic guitar solos, arena-friend-
ly riffs and balls-forward balladry
courtesy of Hunter’s rough-edged,
often soaring vocals, which every
so often develop a little hitch at the
tail-end of a line. Hunter and the
Dirty Jacks are trying hard to sound
authentic; every note comes off like
it’s based on something better and
older. The album’s title, Single Barrel,
seems apt—that’s how Hunter and
the Dirty Jacks loaded their musical
shotgun; one barrel just wasn’t work-
ing, and it shows.
—Jason Gelt
WALT! GORECKI
IKEBE
SHAKEDOWN
Stone by Stone
Ubiquity
Soul and funk in their various in-
carnations have been coming back
in a very big way for the past few
years (not that it ever really left). The
sound of a tight horn section blaring
out raspy melodies in conjunction
with a solid bassline seems to get just
about anyone going. And when it
comes to getting people going, Ikebe
Shakedown has the formula down.
Like the title suggests, the group built
this album Stone by Stone. Each track
is carefully and meticulously con-
structed to build an experience that
will take the listener to the greatest
heights. Every song is a hit. Although
the album is heavily rooted in 70s
soul and funk, Ikebe Shakedown is
not unwilling to take risks. Songs like
“The Offering” and “The Illusion”
have a Fela Kuti or Mulatu tinge
to them, while “Rio Grande” has a
spaghetti western feel that sits on top
of the soulful sounds of the horns.
All the songs have an air of attitude
and confidence while still remaining
unpretentious, a quality lost among
most musicians these days. There is
a cinematic quality that creates an
entire world as the music envelops
the listener. It wouldn’t be surpris-
ing if these guys ended up scoring a
Tarantino film.
—Zachary Jensen
MOOMAW
JJAAXXNN
Space Case
self-released
I’m glad that crazed retro teen punk-
ers in the 90s refused to let cassette
tapes die their rightful death, be-
cause there is something about a
cheap analog rhythm box sound
that comes across as innocent and
beautiful on tape, even if it’s tinny,
and even if your tape player spools
just a tad unevenly. It’s like the beats
have been left out in the sun to melt
a little bit—and for a band like JJ-
AAXXNN, the subtle tape effect
just adds another layer of psychede-
lia to an already packed fun house.
Of course, the “band” here is one
Josh Bruner, the former Blank Tapes
ne’er-do-well who also founded the
in-your-face stoner guitar trio Magic
Leaves a few years back in San Fran-
cisco. You couldn’t ask for a greater
disparity in bands between Magic
Leaves and JJAAXXNN—whereas
Magic Leaves usually has vocals and
a drummer and riffs for miles (clear-
ly the “leaves” here must be the kind
of kush Sativa that keeps your girl-
friend awake at night), JJAAXXNN
is like what would happen if ambi-
ent Kraut constructionist Cluster
had a 6-year-old kid who banged on
the drum machine in lieu of a toy
drum kit. Space Case is completely
vibrant yet totally dreamy—it’s like
a crazy koan, trashily transcendent.
And with enough listens, it perhaps
can make us step out of our everyday
selves as much as JJAAXXNN allows
Bruner to step outside of himself.
—D.M. Collins
ALBUM REVIEWS

DAVE VAN PATTEN
MATT KIVEL
Days of Being Wild
Woodsist
Matt Kivel’s debut release, Double
Exposure, was a sleeper hit for many
who came upon it last year. The
album had an intimacy that reeled
you right in—a carefully curated
collection of songs that were perfect
examples of how subtlety, calm and
fragility can make for a beautiful re-
cord. Kivel’s follow-up, Days of Be-
ing Wild, (title taken from a Wong
Kar-wai film)—released less than
a year from its predecessor—takes
everything that was working on
Double Exposure and expands upon
it. The new songs have an even fuller
feel to them. Kivel steers clear of
the acoustic guitar on many of the
tracks in favor of an electric one.
Artfully looped melodies, effects
pedals and simple drum rhythms
provide the backdrop for his dreamy,
pop-drenched style. Carrying the
powerfully atmospheric music is
Kivel’s voice—at some moments a
confident, sun-drenched tone, and
at others a high-pitched falsetto
that reminds you of the frailty that
dwells beneath the surface. There is
a longing quality to many of these
songs that pull at your chest. You
can feel the emotion, a romantic air
that wants to be shared. If Double
Exposure was about the intimacy of
a moment, then Days of Being Wild
is about putting all those feelings on
the table for everyone to see.
—Zachary Jensen
courtesy artist
KOREATOWN
ODDITY
200 Tree Rings
New Los Angeles
The Koreatown Oddity is an acute-
ALBUM REVIEWS
ly intelligent and observant beast of
a rapper living in the Los Angeles
enclave he’s named after. 200 Tree
Rings is the tale of his auspicious rise
out of his cultural cross-breeding
metropolis of a home as well as of
his dubious death, seemingly from
the excess and hyper-stimulation
that comes with living off Mexican
food, stand-up comedy, rap and
shrooms. With a style as unhinged as
his look, The Odd walks a fine line
between self-aware and feral, bring-
ing together influences from Proj-
ect Blowed and Low End Theory.
KTO doesn’t shoot for mass appeal,
he keeps it hyper-local. The credited
crew is made up of all Angelenos or
current residents and the lyrics are
a peek into the chaotic mind of a
rap nerd having the petri dish L.A.
life. He details the best spot to get
a falafel in K-Town (7th and Irolo);
describes a childhood memory of
playing Sega with Afrika Islam, the
N.Y. DJ who helped create Ice-T’s
sound; and mourns two of our era’s
funniest comics (Mitch Hedberg
and Patrice O’Neal), who he grew
up seeing at The Laugh Factory.
Yet somehow the chaos aligns in
this savage affair of an album. Los
Angeles may be the only city in the
world that could raise a wolf-man
MC who is just another face on the
Red Line.
—sweeney kovar
GNUCCA
LA SERA
Hour of the Dawn
Hardly Art
It feels like there are a lot of bands
similar to La Sera. But what is their
brand of rock exactly? It seems
comical to call them a “formerly
vintage girl-group rock band that
once sounded surfy and 60s and
now mostly doesn’t,” but isn’t that
what they and Dum Dum Girls
and Best Coast and Tennis and
(just to throw some boys in) Girls
and Tijuana Panthers and the
Moonhearts, etc. all have roughly
in common, that they used to have
something in common? Now that
we can tell everybody apart, some
might want to reappraise whether
La Sera deserves their moment in
the spotlight more than the rest.
Though maybe it’s a moot point:
clearly, bandleader Katy Good-
Morgen
Morgen
Sunbeam
Touted by some as last of the great 60s
psychedelic obscurities, Morgen is the sole
album by a quartet of Long Island longhairs
remembered chiefly by collectors of NYC rock
posters. “Welcome to the Void” is a start as
wobbly as frontman Steve Morgen’s vocals,
but the moment the whacked-out interplay
between bass, drums and Morgen’s prickly
virtuoso lead guitar ignites, you’re past caring
about the vocal track. The serious buzz starts
with the jangle kicking off “Of Dreams” and
stays there throughout. This group was clearly
influenced by the Who, but owned a kind of
stuttering momentum that prefigured the Pix-
ies and brought Heavy Messaging with the as-
surance of many a Hendrix or Burdon-struck
Midwestern garage band. The set rings down
with “Love,” a 10:50 minute tribal stomp that
must’ve blown teeth out of the backs of heads
at venues like the Electric Circus. Recorded a
full year before its 1969 release on Probe, an
ephemeral freak-rock subsidiary of mega-con-
glomerate ABC Records, Morgen got a fine
send-off on local rock radio before promptly
sinking without trace and taking the band
with it. Including single versions and enough
unheard bonus tracks (like the worthy protest
tune “Too Many Americas”) for a whole other
album, this is the definitive reissue of a fabled
slab.
Mike Cooper
Trout Steel
Paradise of Bachelors
Though known mainly to post-Canterbury U.K.
avant-folk specialists, Mike Cooper started
his career as an acoustic bluesman who (as
the story goes) turned down Brian Jones’
slot in the Rolling Stones to wind his own ec-
centric path through the Love Decade. His-
torically, Trout Steel is an entry into the post-
psychedelic, pre-country rock sweepstakes
dominated by Donovan at his most mystic and
Van Morrison at his least sober. As verbally
grandiloquent as neither fellow, Cooper here
relies on exquisite taste, fussy countrified ar-
rangements and a nasally Americanized carny
barker twang for his effects. Ghostly touches
of Pharaoh Sanders glide along the surface
of these sessions but within this hallucina-
tory Dixie of the ears, all is possible, including
skronky jazzbo meditations like “Pharaoh’s
March” and “I’ve Got Mine,” the latter fanta-
sia clocking in at 11:25. Not so much fusion
and nowhere near prog, the songs sound like
what American rock music might’ve sounded
like had there been no British Invasion, which
is a handsome conjuring feat for a hotshot
slide guitarist from Reading, Berkshire. Drop
the needle on this and hear the years between
the Byrds and Wilco dissolve.
The Clean
Anthology
Merge
Mighty in their native New Zealand, the Clean
specialized in punchy, meandering ditties said
to have influenced Yo La Tengo and Superc-
hunk. Early tracks from “Tally Ho” to “Point
That Thing Somewhere Else” mark a familiar
evolution from simple Ramones-y cutesiness
to five-minute ionospheric head trip that would
take any normal band three albums to trace,
but the Clean makes on one early cassette-
only release. Wry and razor-sharp by Vehicle,
their 1990 full-length debut, the group refined
their basic approach into an engagingly rattle-
trap garage rock with jokey proclivities and
heavy noise pop influences. Their Flying Nun/
Rough Trade releases sound commercial with-
out filing away too many edges of a singular
personality. Available on two CDs or four LPs,
the first half of this set collects their early
singles and obscurities, with the second mak-
ing a two-dozen track plunge into their 90s
heyday.
Wyrd Visions
Half-Eaten Guitar
P.W. Elverum & Sun
This spare soundtrack to a Druid acidhead west-
ern of the mind quickly sold out its original is-
sue, but Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie thought a
series of acoustic campfire incantations worth
retrieval from the 2006 memory hole. The stand-
out track is “Sigill,” opening the record with a
loping, gently disorienting waltz that fades by un-
noticed degrees into a multisyllabic chant that
cuts off mid-bar, like a cosmic revelation whose
batteries abruptly quit eleven minutes into en-
lightenment. Colin Bergh picks lucidly and sings
tremblingly while a few drumbeats and organ
notes occasionally bob into the mix as the five-
song set runs the listener through everyday life
as a disembodied specter in a blighted wind-
swept plain. Insufficient time has passed for this
album to be hailed as a lost classic, but this is
about as post-rock as music gets.
59

Jon Wahl and the
Amadans
The Angst Blues of Jon Wahl
and the Amadans
Elastic
Singer and guitarist Jon Wahl, formerly of
Claw Hammer, has lost none of his voice in
the past 25 or so years he’s been in the pub-
lic eye. In fact, this might be one of his best
singing performances yet; sometimes going
crooner, sometimes warbling like a melodi-
ous yodeling country western star, and at
other times evoking the best of Pere Ubu’s
Dave Thomas—or better still, Captain Beef-
heart (whose song “Orange Claw Hammer”
gave Wahl’s old band its name). That’s why
I think he needs to have a stern talking-to
with his band: with all the power and vari-
ety he’s mustering, he deserves a little back
in return from his buddies here. While the
rhythm section is definitely locked in, and
bassist William Tutton even plays a little
counterpoint melody during some of the
guitar solos, he and drummer, Bob Lee, stay
predictable throughout, maybe a little jazzy
in a Firehose/Sublime kind of way, but dull
as dishwater. Part of the blame goes to the
engineering. The snare is way hot in the mix
on some songs, and the drums altogether
sound uncomfortably live, like when you’re
walking past a bar and can hear the thock of
the drum kit every time someone opens the
door. But when the album works, it really
works, like in their cover of Nick Drake’s
“Pink Moon,” or the extended jams on the
long songs, which probably sound just as
good as they will at Alex’s Bar some lucky
month in the near future.
Feral Future
Haematic
Western Medical
Hearkening very, very much back to the Riot
Grrrl era of punk (they’ve even opened for
screenings of the Kathleen Hanna documen-
tary going round), Feral Future are loud, vi-
cious, Texan, and very personal-is-political,
right down to the trigger-warning thought-
fully included with their liner notes about
which songs might be particularly disturb-
ing for victims of PTSD. Really, almost any
of these songs could trigger terror in the faint
of heart, full as they are of pummeling beats
and screaming vocals and crushing distor-
tion—the first song had such a gnarly hiss
that my dog, Valerie Solanas Collins, came
running out from the bed to bark at me
that SOMETHING WAS VERY WRONG
HERE. Those who’ve read me know I am a
60
staunch feminist, but I’m wary of any punk
that claims to be primarily political, since it
often can be a smokescreen to hide a lack of
musical ideas. And not every note is radical
on Haematic. But the execution, especially
the singer’s Kathleen Hanna/Mia Zapata-
esque ability to jump from clean melodicism
to blood-curdling screams within the same
sentence, is good enough that you’ll forgive
them, even if they haven’t reinvented the
three-minute punk song.
Derrick Knight
Mayan Rain Dance
Wiener
Sure, I’m upset, even horrified, at this young
man’s rather thoughtless appropriation of
Native American culture for a pop song
(dude, I’m pretty sure the Mayans would
never even need a raindance, what with their
living in the rainforests of the Yucatan and
having access to fresh water in underground
cenotes). But Knight is merely following a
trend that stretches from the Village People
to the VIP tent at Coachella. And anyway,
I’m pretty sure Knight is only conjuring the
“Mayan Indians” in an attempt to access their
alien connection. Knight is also the founder
of the MoonPad hostel in downtown L.A.,
whose very open goal is to eventually plant a
hostel on the moon! As the founder of a new
business, he doesn’t seem to have had much
time to practice his vocals, or to create any
complex rhymes for these pop songs that
seem to be attempts at hip-hop. But luckily
he has enough pitch correction to hit those
notes like the aliens he admires, and damnit,
the tunes are catchy, even if they do lack all
of the things that normally make a catchy
pop tune catchy. Derrick, I’m raising a toast
to your enthusiasm, and hoping it doesn’t
wane as you continue to practice, get better,
and start writing good music.
Sashcloth & Axes/
Terminal A
“Oedipus Kiss”/“Girls in Black” split 7”
Kiss Kiss
What a lovely little piece of darkness to
shove into your nighttime turntable ritu-
als! Both bands here evoke early 80s post-
punk, pre-industrial electronic madness.
Sashcloth and Axes (really just one guy) go
for full Soft Cell immersion by way of the
Normal’s “Warm Leatherette.” Terminal A
takes a more goth rock approach, blending
noir futurism beats with an angry distorted
guitar and the screams of the damned. Both
sound quite a bit inspired by San Franciscan
80s madman Minimal Man, and both, by
devoting so much time to reviving music
like this, secretly reveal themselves to be
wide-eyed optimists.
The Cthulhus
Lethargy: A Novel
Russian Winter
Someday I’m going to write an article about
the slippery slope between character and
costume, and how, like Venom and Spider-
man, too much of the latter can eventually
consume the former—just think of DEVO,
and how, after they appeared in awesome
red Energy Domes on the cover of Freedom
of Choice, the truth about de-evolution soon
took a backseat to what kinds of headgear
they’d be wearing next. The reason I haven’t
written the article yet is because, honestly,
I’m still not sure why the same indignant
fate never befell Sun Ra or Ziggy Stardust
or even the Mummies—and that’s why
I’ve worried, in the past, about my buddy
Travis Cthulhu, because I wasn’t quite sure
he’d figured it out yet either. For those who
have seen the Cthulhus play live, “they” are
a one-man band featuring Travis in green
or silver monster make-up with tentacles,
rhythm boxes, and a whole lot of sci-fi she-
nanigans going on. If I wasn’t certain that
the Cthulhus are Elder Gods, I might as-
sume Travis was about my own age and had
lived through the same mid-late 90s epoch
of Aquabats, Man… or Astro-man?, Cap-
tured by Robots, Ape Has Killed Ape, Gwar,
even the re-reboot of Kiss—becostumed
bands that all had great music and some real
lyrical messages (well, except the Aquabats,
though they did start Yo! Gabba Gabba!)
but who had a hard time being taken seri-
ously, or moving to darker, more nuanced
music once everyone had already associated
them with guys in rubber masks throw-
ing stuffed animals at themselves. And if it
seems like I’m going off on a tangent and
have gotten distracted from the Cthulhus’
actual music, well, I think that’s exactly my
point: a point that the Cthulhus seem to be
learning on this disc. The Cthulhus have al-
ways been able to make raw, ethereal music
with poignant lyrics sprinkled with dysto-
pian sci-fi philosophy, like distant transmis-
sions from a doomed species picked up too
late by humans in a scorched solar system.
But this one has more mystery than monster
movie about it. The name “Lethargy” is a
misnomer, because clearly he’s put a lot of
thought into getting this one right, from the
tone of the lyrics to the tone of the master-
ing. The more I listen to this, the more it
scares the shit out of me, especially at 3:59
a.m., when I can’t turn it off even when I
want to. This isn’t a new formula for him—
there’s still a lot of echo and simple guitar
scratches and delay and noise and bent key-
board notes—but they seem to be there to
hit home a feeling rather than because they
evoke sci-fi elements. I think this is inten-
tional on the Cthulhus’ part, and I think he/
they just might be getting closer to crack-
ing the character versus costume code, and I
think it’s helping me to figure out a little bit
of the secret too. Is it concept versus conceit?
Or motivation versus concept? Or emotion
versus motive? I think the secret is in here,
somewhere in the songs with names like
“Thoerem 3.6 (Version 2)” and “Subduction
Zone” and “A Pockmarked Tomorrow.” I’m
going to find it. Even Ziggy Stardust even-
tually needed to find one damn song that
would make him break down and cry.
Rainman
Digiphrenia
Porch Party Records
Be careful listening to this album at home
alone, late at night, or even when driving af-
ter dark—there’s a tragic melancholy to Ra-
chel Rufrano’s voice that can make you feel
desperately empty, more alone than actually
being alone. Not that this is a collection of
pining ballads. The majority of the tempos
here are at least at “saunter” speed, if not ex-
actly a gallop. Yet despite the more or less
standard rock combo of drums, bass, and
a couple guitars (take or leave the upright
bass and piano), not to mention an almost
Beatles-esque sense of harmony when they
want it, Rainman resist every opportunity
to fully commit to a compressed pop gem
the way, say, the Blank Tapes might. There’s
always something so live about these record-
ings, whether it’s the decay of a snare drum,
or a bright trembling guitar tone that sounds
like an Everly Brother might be playing it, or
simply the echo on Rufrano’s voice, which
makes her sound like she’s in the room with
you… but maybe she’s backing away. It all
adds up to a sound that feels folky, despite the
omnipresence of electric six-strings, and with
a pit of loneliness at its core. It makes you
suspect that seemingly triumphant charac-
ters are fooling themselves: is the trans-child
announcing his gender change in “Same Old
Me” really so secure in his new identity? In
fact, I suspect that the cold, quiet storyteller
in the album’s final cut, “Downtown Long
Beach,” with its gripping depiction of home-
lessness and sad bars, is the real identity of
Rainman once the saunter and effects pedals
are stripped away.
Peg/Hand Habits
Living With Abbreviation/Small Shifts
split 10”
Eschatone
A half a decade ago, a band of high-schoolers
called Avi Buffalo showed up on the scene
and charmed everybody with their mature
songwriting and the seemingly limitless gui-
tar genius of singer Avi Zahner-Isenberg—
but drummer Sheridan Riley has proven her-
self to be just as much a prodigy, going on
to lay down drums for difficult adult groups
like the psychedelic wunderkind 5-Track
and generally keeping herself busy. This EP
shows her returning to some Buffalo-esque
material, this time built around her own
guitar work. While the layers of indie gui-
tar are pretty impressive, “Abbreviation” is
an apt description: I’d like to hear more! I
like the punk distortion and Meddle-esque
folk atmospherics and even what sounds like
Richard Hell ballad-type stuff. But she’s not
yet as good at hiding her vocal limitations as
was Avi, and the first and last tracks take a
while to get going. But it’s a great freshman
effort. The B-side is by Hand Habits, who
ALBUM REVIEWS
continue the Meddle theme but with a little
less chutzpah. If I were them, I wouldn’t get
in the habit of pitting myself against Riley:
their pining, sad, folky songs come off a little
dull by comparison. But taken alone, they’ve
got enough chill in them to dunk your heart
in ice on a hot day.
Christian Lee Hutson
The Hurt and the Natural Charm
Daytrotter
For nearly a decade, Horseshack Studio and
its related website, Daytrotter, have been vy-
ing to be the Peel Sessions of Illinois. Mak-
ing new, one-of-a-kind recordings of exist-
ing songs by every artist who comes by, they
take their recording methods to the extreme,
bested only by NPR’s Tiny Desk Series for
minimalism and lack of pretense. Hutson,
no stranger to playing without pretense (he
was in the Driftwood Singers, by god!) nails
it here with a couple songs from his album
Yeah Okay I Know, which he’s been slowly re-
vealing song by song on Bandcamp, etc. each
month for the duration of 2014. Fans of Hut-
son will recognize that a few songs here are
sneak previews of yet-to-be-released ditties
from that album. My favorite is “Dirty Little
Cheat,” a song so fragile and haunting it
could be from the Bert Jansch or Roy Harper
catalog. Hutson somehow makes the cheater
not to be evil, but a doomed sinner, one to
be pitied for her inability to love. Even the
song’s structure gets lonely, the guitar pick-
ing eventually reduced to just idle, almost
inaudible strumming, before Hutson comes
back strong with the kind of woe that sounds
almost indistinguishable from tired frustra-
tion, the kind a man who tours as much as
Hutson does must truly understand.
Ssleaze
SS Daddy (cassette)
self-released
Inspired, in part, by Justin Pearson’s All
Leather project, and in part by the fact that
every electro disco dance band of note ever
ever ever has been pretty gay, Ssleaze exist
to make sure the world keeps dancing ner-
vously to gay men shouting lyrics about
sex fetishes over square, mean, minimal
beats. There’s something angrier on this cas-
sette than you might expect from the live
shows, where singer Andrew Sean Flores
usually revs up the crowd with sexy/slutty
outfits and a whole lotta smiles. I guess the
live show NEEDS that to keep it human;
without the visual sexiness, songs with titles
like “Gash” and “No Shame” sound less like
enthusiastic consent and more like brutal
assault. Kyle Souza, of Narwhal Party/Stab
City/the Icarus Line, no doubt helps in that
regard—he, too, usually tempers his, well,
temper onstage with boas and fey facial ex-
pressions. But here, his vocals (and he sings
a fair amount on this cassette) have the same
crushing noise-punk energy we’ve come to
love in his guitar bands.
SoftSpot
MASS
self-released
This band kind of lives up to its name, at least
vocally—though she can chew the words
ALBUM REVIEWS
when she wants to, singer Sarah Kinlaw’s fa-
vorite style is the ethereal soprano, a voice
you’ll recognize from your nearest 80s goth
chanteuse (in my case, I’m going towards
Gitane Dimone). Musically, this is definitely
a guitar band, with sheens of shoegaze ac-
cented but never dueling with the orchestral
keyboard synths beneath. All the players are
good, and the time signatures are a little
more jazzy/complex than you’d expect from
the typical chillwave/neo-darkwave/beach
goth thing the kids of 2009 might be listen-
ing to. But that’s because beneath all the stuff
you’ll find familiar here is something unique,
something visceral and driving, even if it
never stops trying to BUM YOU OUT.
Hillstomp
Portland, Ore
Fluff & Gravy Records
Something akin to our own Restavrant,
Hillstomp have been doing the bombas-
tic just-drums-and-guitar blues thing for
well over a decade. So why have you never
heard of them? Not as versatile as the White
Stripes, nor as full-throttle riveting as origi-
nal blues duos like Doo Rag (and too young
to claim either as their descendants), these
guys have generally moved crowds live, but
maybe they needed a hook to stand out in
the same way that, say, Bob Log III or their
hero RL Burnside used to do. After a four-
year hiatus to think about it, Hillstomp
have come up with this: an adult album that
strays from the template by injecting banjo
elements that strive for pathos rather than
power. On previous releases, they’d almost
used the banjo as a novelty, not even bother-
ing to write a script for songs like “Banjo
Song #1.” Guitarist Henry Kammerer still
hasn’t turned into Earl Scruggs, but he’s re-
placed some of the stompers with songs like
“Undertow” that chill rather than kill. There
are a few tunes on here with ill-advised gui-
tar distortion and other Hank Williams III
type mistakes. But when the boys stick to
murder ballad/bluegrass style/2 a.m. hon-
kytonk numbers, playing open chords and
slowing down so we can hear the tears—in
other words, when they cease to be bluesy—
they bring something to the table that even
bands with full handfuls of members often
can’t.
Chrome
Feel It Like a Scientist
King of Spades
A lot of old-timers will put out an album
late in their careers completely devoid of
the songwriting and tastefulness of their
glory days, but which they think we’ll like
MORE because they now have the freedom
to indulge in their excesses. “Finally! [NEW
ALBUM] is how I’ve always wanted [OLD
BAND] to sound!” But spacey proto-punk-
ers Chrome have always let indulgent melo-
dies and mayhem seep out from the edges
of their minimalist guitar riffs (and vice
versa). Perhaps that’s why this new album
actually succeeds at being, if not the best
thing Chrome has ever done, certainly one
of the best albums to come out this year,
more manic and psychedelic and spacey
and thoughtful than many of the bands I
saw at Austin Psych Fest this year who have
followed in Chrome’s wake. Chrome now
features only Helios Creed from the band’s
heyday, but since the death of founder Da-
mon Edge in 1995, Creed has been col-
lecting a “stellar” line-up of space cadets,
with names like “Aleph Omega” and “Anne
Dromeda,” who play with instruments and
ideas with equal precision. These guys have
some potent musique concrète powers, us-
ing field recordings and random voice shit
and bizarre electronic elements in ways that
feel frenetic rather than goofy. And oh, the
tunes! Some songs sound industrial, in a
guitar-based way. Some sound like 80s Iggy
Pop, too cool in their growl to allow any
howl. Some are pure noise strung over drum
beats. Some are played backwards from how
recorded, some sound like spaceships turn-
ing on, and some sound like the Purple
People Eater hosting a party for the cast
of Earth Girls Are Easy. Quite a few sound
like Ian Curtis replacing Johnny Rotten in
a version of Public Image Limited that does
only Hawkwind covers... actually if there’s
one big take-away you’ll have from this al-
bum, it’s that Lux Vibratus is a killer bassist
who could rumble with Jah Wobble at any
time. Whether or not you’re already a fan of
Chrome, if you play this once, you’ll repeat
the experiment.
The Bongoloids Ft.
The Xanadu Sound
Fig. 10
ShanGORIL la Records
What a cryptic release! I listened to this for
days, thinking, falsely, that it was the Bon-
goloidz project by Fredo Ortiz, who plays
percussion with the Julie Ruin and is an
all-around awesome weirdo in the vein of
Bobb Bruno. Turns out there is a SECOND
Bongoloids, this time from New Orleans,
but they might really be another project
called Earl Long, or something (even the
album title varies depending on who you
ask). Like Ortiz, these are some weirdo jazz-
bos, though here it manifests itself more
with strange, monotonous Firehose-esque
jazz guitar chords chiming in endlessly over
ambient strangeness and musique concrète.
Somehow it all works, though Side A, with
tracks like “Germs Again Again” and “Pick-
led Okra (Is Cool)” might be better for rev-
ving you up, whereas Side B is definitely
the cool-down side, more found sound and
softness. I think this would enhance any
drug experience, and vice versa, though
I’m looking forward to using this as a “con-
trolled challenge” during my next attempted
one-night-stand. I definitely recommend
the vinyl, but I think you can only get it at
their bandcamp page: http://shangorillare-
cords.bandcamp.com/album/fig-10 (P.S.
Am I a fuddy-duddy for getting annoyed
when bands have no Facebook presence?
Answer: Fuck you.) (P.P.S. Sorry, Fredo, if I
missed my shot at a review of you! Blame it
on voodoo.)
The Morning Birds
BLOOM
self-released
This folky duo has all the right stuff lined
up for international fame … and the sheer
talent doesn’t hurt, neither. My favorite
track on this remix EP might actually be the
original: track one is jazzy in an almost 60s
pop way, like something Sade would have
kept under her pillow as a little girl. But
the remixes are pretty cool, especially the
Dimond Saints version, which adds futur-
istic spy mystery via some insistent electro
beats, and Knife & Fork adds some almost
Pizzicato 5 flavor, like if jungle was based on
calypso beats and slowed down to the speed
of bossa nova.
Extra Classic
Showcase
Burger/Nopal
Yes, I feel white guilt for loving this blue-
eyed soul dub reggae band more than most
current Jamaican artists. But this album
continues the sheer quality of their last. It’s a
little less vinyl-groove skuffy and maybe not
as psychedelic, but the concept—recreating
the 7” dub B-side for each track on the al-
bum—is a great one, and works even when
you play the album straight through.
Piss Test
self-titled
Jonny Cat Records
This is fun, fast, frenetic punk, so bombastic
that the disc plays at 45 RPM despite be-
ing a 12”. Singer Zach Brooks has paid his
dues in some of Portland’s best bands, like
the Red Dons and the Soda Pop Kids—it’s
hard to top a resumé like that, but this is
definitely a wake-ya-up LP of pure punk
pleasure, with songs about suicidal 12 year
olds and Mussolini that will make your glad
they recorded this clean enough to hear the
vocals (but dirty enough to, you know, be
righteous). I love the clear, thick vinyl, and
the tough silkscreened cover, which survived
being shoved back and forth in the fucking
overhead baggage on my goddamn U.S.
Airways flight back from fucking Portland.
Fuck U.S. Airways.
Sex Scheme
Thruster
Stale Heat
For someone who once carved the word “Cli-
ché” into my chest as an homage to X-Ray
Spex, I’m pretty jaded about modern punk
rock bands. As a style, it often bores me, and
as an ethos, well, didn’t that die out with Sid
Vicious and Darby Crash? But fuck, there is
something to Sex Scheme that is as compel-
ling as all those old bands. It’s not just the
rebellion of songs with titles like “Amputee”
or “Cocaine,” and it’s not just the speed or
volume; actually, this is kinda slow. There is
a nihilism to this third-generation Robert
Quine string-ringin’ that can not be denied,
and the singer (Ben? Rusty? Jason? Tell us
who sings, you FUCKS) has a snarling pain
in his voice so sour and just emotionally aw-
ful, it sounds like he’s about to stick a knife
through his arm. I’m scared of these guys as
much as I am scared for them. Like a Bi-
zarro-world version of the Fastbacks, I think
the drummer writes all the songs but doesn’t
sing on them. P.S. Someone(s) in this band
was in Mountain Cult.
61
man is moved more by the need
for catharsis than by the desire to
“show up” her competitors. And
perhaps that’s a good thing. This
new album does show her at-
tempting to evolve musically from
where La Sera were a few years
ago. But it does so in small stylis-
tic flourishes rather than in true
leaps and bounds, something like
a latter-day Ramones album—she
and her bandmates have added
some extra solos and faster drums,
but they’re superimposed right
over the same song structures. At
the end of the day, most of this al-
bum still seems to be about bad
relationships and navigating gen-
eralized life obstacles. Sure, Good-
man can still make these stories
very compelling! But a part of me
wishes that La Sera was attempt-
ing to evolve as a band in the ways
the people she’s not competing
with have done in recent years.
—D.M. Collins
AMY HAGEMEIER
LE
BUTCHERETTES
Cry Is for the Flies
Nadie Sound
In the 90s, Le Butcherettes would
have been categorized as “alterna-
tive,” that odd, uncomfortable
amalgamation of art rock, punk
rock and prog rock that publicists
dreamed up to supplant the pre-
viously dominant term for non-
Top-40 music: college rock. Le
Butcherettes don’t fit comfortably
into today’s wilting indie rock
climate—the new album is a little
too rocking for that. But neither
is their sophomore platter gritty
enough to be called punk. Cry Is
for the Flies inhabits its own cre-
ative space, which is a good thing;
things that are tough to fit into
boxes are often more exciting.
That’s not to say Le Butcherettes
don’t have their influences. At
times, lead singer, Teri Gender
Bender, evokes the alternately
high-pitched and husky wail of
P.J. Harvey or Karen Oh of the
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and occasion-
ally the brazen vocal stylings of an
early Siouxsie Sioux. The ominous
instrumentation lurks and slithers
along behind her, a dark stew of
62
keyboards, electronic sound ef-
fects and downbeat guitars. Cry
Is for the Flies has a punk-rock
crust and an art-rock heart. “The
Gold Chair Ate the Fire Man”
grapples with the question of
God’s existence, and the psycho-
keyboard-driven “Boulders Love
Over Layers of Rock” makes ref-
erence to “self-proclaiming vul-
tures.” There’s even a guest cameo
from the elder statesman of punk,
Henry Rollins, who delivers an
unnerving monologue titled “Mo-
ment of Guilt.” The overall effect
is uneven, but it’s certainly engag-
ing and surprising.
—Jason Gelt
courtesy artist
LOW LEAF
AKASHAALAY
Fresh Selects
Through the marriage of Sanskrit
and Tagalog, Low Leaf uses her lat-
est album’s title to message a spiritu-
al offering to her native Philippines.
AKASHAALAY also represents a
creative peak for Low Leaf after
several years of intriguing listeners
with amazingly intricate beats that
have often utilized her expertise as a
piano player, guitarist and harpist.
The Fresh Selects release is available
on cassette and digital, two dispa-
rate formats that also reflect the an-
alog and digital alchemy Low Leaf
often employs to get her message
into sound. “Bahay Kubo” is a re-
interpreted Filipino folk song about
eating your vegetables. “Ascension”
sounds most like Low Leaf’s earlier
instrumental beat work. But the
moments that shine hardest and
resonate strongest are original vo-
cal songs like “Rise Up” and “Set
Me Free.” Both those joints fill my
head with colors. They’re the most
modern incarnation of the Ameri-
can singer-songwriter archetype—a
classically trained and self-taught
daughter of immigrants singing
songs about a quest for liberty that
is spiritual, historical and personal.
AKASHAALAY is ambitious and
intentional, drawing the audience
into a world that honors the past
and aspires to a future that’s sus-
tainable through music steps into
power.
—sweeney kovar
TOM CHILD
MARC MARON
Thinky Pain
Comedy Central Records
One might be forgiven for not being
aware of comedian Marc Maron pri-
or to his pioneering podcast “WTF”
rising to iTunes chart dominance.
By Maron’s own admission, his suc-
cess as a stand-up was frequently
hampered by his seeming pathologi-
cal tendencies to burn bridges, hold
grudges and indulge in crippling
resentment towards the success of
those he deemed undeserving. Con-
sequently, his album Thinky Pain, a
recording of his stand-up set at New
York’s Village Gate, is necessary lis-
tening for anyone more familiar with
Maron the podcaster than Maron the
comedian. While undeniably funny
in his podcast, the stage is where
Maron’s skills as a stand-up become
most apparent. His set feels intimate
in a way that few other comedians
are able to achieve, coming across
more like a conversation with a good
friend over dinner than a theatrical
performance, and it’s this accessibil-
ity that encourages an audience to
empathize with him as he analyzes
his more difficult emotional jour-
neys. This honesty becomes particu-
larly moving during the emotional
core of the album, “Why I Don’t
Like Sports,” in which he recounts
being a non-athletic, overweight
child forced into Little League by his
mother. It’s simultaneously moving,
relatable and hilarious—all of the
qualities that have allowed Maron to
cultivate a highly devoted audience
after decades of career uncertainty.
—Tom Child
ANNA B
THE MUFFS
Whoop Dee Doo
Burger/Cherry Red
Along with some notable oth-
ers, L.A. punk legends the Muffs
spent the 90s making the rock
establishment eat the archaically
stupid idea of a “girl band.” This
fifth full-length comes a decade
after Really Really Happy and 23
years after the group’s formation
in another America entirely. With
canny self-awareness, the Muffs
opted for “fun museum piece” in-
stead of retooling their sound, as
lesser bands sometimes attempt
with disastrous results. “Weird Boy
Next Door” is a nastily funny dia-
tribe about that smelly specimen
found surfing every third couch
in what’s left of suburbia. “Take a
Take a Me” is Slade-like romantic
maneuvering and “Cheezy” a put-
down of the kind of semi-loveable
egomaniac that’s peopled the
earth since well before invention
of jangle pop. Much of the record
drips with a kind of late-twenti-
eth-century post-teen venom that
might jar sensitive listeners in this
age of proudly YouTubed death
threats. Kim Shattuck’s vocals are
as winsomely scabrous as ever and
not a bit curdled from last year’s
brief residency as Kim Deal’s re-
placement in the Pixies. Rude,
crude and adept, the Muffs will
probably pick up fans from this
record.
—Ron Garmon
courtesy artist
OPEN MIKE
EAGLE
Dark Comedy
Mello Music Group
Confession time (and I’m ashamed
of this): despite reviewing albums
in the past that Open Mike Eagle
was on, I kind of had no idea
who he was until last year, when
he appeared on the Hellfyre Club
Dorner vs. Tookie collaboration,
and his complaints about rappers
saying “bitch” too often impressed
me. He was both moral and awk-
ward, two qualities not normally
boasted about in rap lyrics, but
which are prominent themes in
Dark Comedy, Mike’s seventh al-
bum. So too is nerdiness—Mike
gleefully references comic books,
Seinfeld jokes, and even They
Might Be Giants! And he doesn’t
shy away from calling out people
for their idiocy and greed. Take
the track “Doug Stamper (Advice
Raps)” in which he tells white
rappers not to use their stupid
“hood voice,” tells LeBron to quit
steroids, and even tells paid porn
site subscribers to try YouPorn
for free… though, of course, they
should “pay the fee” for his own
tunes! Hypocrisy? Nay … Mike’s
narrator may be unreliable, but
purposefully so, just one more
tool to help us glean insights about
our media-driven culture and the
devices we use to propagate our
tomfoolery. Despite what at times
might seem like almost whimsical
production choices, like cute little
acoustic guitars, it all ties in to an
overarching theme. I’m still not
quite sure what that is! But when
a rapper chooses to have his beats
get out of sync, you know he’s do-
ing some serious artsy ninja stuff.
And you should pay attention.
—D.M. Collins
AMY HAGEMEIER
BUZZ
OSBORNE
This Machine Kills Artists
Ipecac
Those with only a passing knowl-
edge of the Melvins and King
Buzzo might associate him strict-
ly with heavy music—but the
deep-dish fans know that this guy
has been pretty prolific in the last
three decades both within and
without the Melvins, filling in in-
formation in many of the niches
along the x/y axis of rock and roll.
Here Buzzo goes for a folk thing—
for those few of our readers who
didn’t already figure it out, “This
Machine Kills Artists” is in fact
a reference to Woody Guthrie’s
guitar, which said “This Machine
Kills Fascists,” and which he car-
ried with him until the day he
died in a hospital, hooked up to
machines. What’s odd about this
album is that it’s actually NOT so
much a folk album, but a rock/
country album without accom-
paniment, and not with open
chords or other call-and-response
finger-pickery that you’d typi-
cally expect to hear from a solo
artist playing acoustic. Nope!
ALBUM REVIEWS
Buzzo is playing chords, some of
which are kinda metal-ly, even
Metallica’s Load-esque. And that
sounds terrible on paper. So why
am I enjoying it so much? Maybe
it’s because he’s picked JUST the
right chords, and that the sweet
swish of his fingers over the frets
somehow just feels right? Or may-
be it’s the political (and personal-
is-political) nature of songs like
“Rough Democracy.” But this has
the feel of something naked but
at the same time completely un-
ashamed, even bold—something
like PJ Harvey’s Dry demos of
two decades ago. This album kills
preconceived notions.
—D.M. Collins
ANNA B
THE PAINS OF
BEING PURE
AT HEART
Days of Abandon
Yebo Music
Indie pop, the eternal now-
sound of L.A.’s near-eastside,
may conjure a Silver Lake of the
mind just about anywhere, but
this New York–based collective
shows more heart than anything
heard along that end of Sunset
Boulevard. Belong, the band’s
2011 sophomore full-length,
grazed the middle reaches of
Billboard’s Top 200 album chart,
and this follow-up is an ultra-
melodic steeping in the Cat Ste-
vens tune barrel. I kid, but Days
of Abandon is as keen and ulti-
mately cleansing a listen as Teas-
er and the Firecat and the kind
you’ll want to press on friends
without having to explain the
whole Salman Rushdie business.
It’s simply impossible to sustain
heaviness of mood after hearing
“Kelly” (featuring Jen Goma of
A Sunny Day in Glasgow sing-
ing ravishing lead) or fail to
withdraw in to romantic reverie
during “Beautiful You.” The al-
bum closes out with “The Asp at
My Chest,” as frontman Kip Ber-
man leads us all into the bright
sunshine of a better today amid
tastefully arranged bombast and
near-manic cheer.
—Ron Garmon
ALBUM REVIEWS
courtesy artist
PINK
MOUNTAINTOPS
Get Back
Jagjaguwar
With his semi-solo project, Pink
Mountaintops, Stephen McBean
(from Black Mountain) guides us
through the rock ‘n’ roll landscape.
On Get Back, it’s to the late 70s
and back again: the Bruce Spring-
steen–esque feel of “New Teenage
Mutilation,” the early punk-like
pounding of “The Second Summer
of Love,” the strange and filthy
female rap verse on “North Hol-
lywood Microwaves”... But mostly
what Pink Mountaintops is doing
is not settling for a stifled and easy
modern sound. On a whole, the al-
bum is very strong—a ton of hooks
and potent melodies. McBean has
always seemed to be in the driver’s
seat, but on this album it also feels
like he is trying to find something
for himself.
—Daniel Sweetland
courtesy artist
QUEENS
D.LIGHT
California Wildflower
self-released
There’s something refreshing about
putting “psychedelic” and “spiri-
tual” next to “homegrown” and
“hood” when talking about Oak-
land’s Queens D.Light and her de-
but LP, California Wildflower. This
daughter of a Queen and an L.A.
Crip brings Ma’at to the block with
intelligent, vulnerable, unapologet-
ic and aspirational music. Not too
many other rap albums can pull off
a journey that goes from hood sto-
ries to shroom trips, love lullabies,
posse cuts and back. Supported by
her Them Hellas crew and close af-
filiates like Ras_G, sonically the al-
bum’s in the spirit of 90s heirlooms
like Digable Planets and Souls of
Mischief. Queen meets her blunted
production like an East Bay–bred
Roxanne Shanté who did a thesis
on X-Clan. She’s raw and earnest in
a way that belies the vivid Town im-
agery and charm that exudes stron-
gest after repeated listens. This is
pro-Black positive rap, not as kitsch
but as conviction. Trite but true, it’s
a breath of fresh air. Have you seen
her videos? She’s fly as hell. What
you gonna do when the Queen
comes for you?
—sweeney kovar
GNUCCA
EMMA RUTH
RUNDLE
Some Heavy Ocean
Sargent House
Thought you could just sneak off
to the beach this summer, eh? Here
comes Emma Ruth Rundle, the res-
ident spell-caster from Nocturnes,
Red Sparowes, and Marriages, with
a solo album dedicated to creating
more dread about the ocean than
Jaws in 1975. She does it not by
scaring you away, but by luring you
in. Everything from the mysterious
woman in the sand on the album’s
cover to the songs’ echoey vocals that
nearly lose coherency as words to the
aphorisms that cling to the sentences
in her stories, will make you want to
wade deeper and deeper into this
album—but you’ll soon realize that
this undertow is not a fucking game,
and Rundle has no qualms about
scraping you along the jagged hor-
rors at the bottom of her soul. You
might expect an album with songs
like “Haunted Houses” and “Sav-
age Saint” to pull from the atmo-
spheric paganism of post-metal Red
Sparowes. But Rundle keeps things
calm, using pretty much an acoustic
guitar, with a lone synth note here or
a distorted e-string bounce there—
imagine her work with Nocturnes,
but even more alone and more hope-
less and long, long gone, like if one
day the tide pulled away and never
came back. Forget that old Growlers
album title; Beach Goth starts right
here.
—D.M. Collins
Echo Curio, dormant since a 2010 dispute with the city
over ordinances, permits and general nonsense, is being re-
invented. Four summers ago, this vibrant spot on Sunset
was the center of our scene. Curated by Justin McInteer
and Grant Capes, the Curio was a magnet for underground
artists and musicians who valued participation and commu-
nity over merely showing their work or playing their songs.
It was “the living room of Echo Park,” in the words of L.A.
RECORD’s own Charles Mallison, and its closure was la-
mented as a harbinger of future disappointments. Indeed,
the ensuing years have seen the demise of other important
DIY institutions without replacement.
So when I heard that Rhea Tepp and Sarah Cisco were
planning Echo Chamber, a three-month residency in the old
Echo Curio location, I was filled with nostalgic joy! July, the
first month of the residency, will tap into that nostalgia.
Events include retrospective storytelling from Capes, FM-
LY’s Cameron Rath, and documentarian Amy Darling. I hap-
pen to be hosting a July 27 show highlighting “Early Works,”
featuring visual artists like Sean Solomon and Colin Ambu-
lance alongside musicians including Emily Lacy, So Many
Wizards’ Nima Kazerouni, and Post-Life’s Brianna Meli.
Nostalgia, however, is not Echo Chamber’s mission. While
July’s theme is “the past,” August is focused on “the pres-
ent” and September is “the future.” Most events are orga-
nized around making new things, not looking back. Accord-
ing to Cisco, Echo Chamber aims to be “a pop-up co-op
... a fully collaborative headquarters for L.A.’s independent
art and music community.” Through events like a WOMEN
group poetry reading, a series of installations by (L.A. RE-
CORD contributor) Walt! Gorecki, and a month-long series
of live Wednesday morning broadcasts on KXLU, the aim is
to inspire creators to be creative together.
To that end, Big Joy will be hosting a twelve-hour zine
challenge accompanied by a twelve-hour band challenge in
which a group writes and records an entire album. DUM
DUM zine will use the space to construct its next issue,
L.A. Zine Fest will be making its next “Guide to L.A.” there,
the Women’s Center for Creative Work is hosting craft work-
shops, and Tiny Splendor will be teaching people how to use
a RISOgraph screen printing copy machine.
And though there will be an opening celebration with
bands at neighboring Lot 1, Echo Chamber won’t be a place
for traditional live music but rather a re-imagination of what
a space for the arts community can offer. “I value the con-
nections I make with people at a live music show,” Tepp
told me, “but those moments are often lacking the envi-
ronment to create and share ideas together. The desire for
these connections exists and is incredibly powerful. I want
people to put down their smartphones for a moment, to
share stories of what the creative process is like and take
time to connect.”
Fortunately for all of us, that creative spirit will be alive
again from July to September at 1519 Sunset Blvd. in Echo
Park.
63

TOM CHILD
SPARE PARTS
FOR BROKEN
HEARTS
I Love You
self-released
Long Beach’s Spare Parts for Broken
Hearts’ second EP, I Love You, is in-
formed by 90s alt-rock—and listen-
ing to I Love You is a reminder that
for each of that era’s musical missteps,
there were bands making music that
was vital and exciting. Sure, Candle-
box, but there was also Nirvana,
and it’s the more dynamic bands
that Spare Parts for Broken Hearts
recall. The band leans more toward
the Breeders (particularly on the
revved-up “Born Again”) than Bush,
not to say I Love You doesn’t have its
share of head-rocking anthems (see
the plaintive “Say When”) but rather
that the trio has the taste to deploy
those missiles discriminately. Single,
“In the Glow of Ashes,” encapsu-
lates the band’s strengths: the inter-
play between the confident, haunt-
66
ing vocal harmonies and crunchy
guitars of Sarah Green and Laurita
Guaico, the wild yet rhythmically
precise drumming of Tosha Jones,
channelling Nevermind-era Dave
Grohl, enhancing the emotional
sincerity of Green’s songwriting. In
an era of music characterized so fre-
quently by pastiche delivered with
a sly wink, it’s refreshing to hear a
band utilize and own their influ-
ences this sincerely.
—Tom Child
DAVE VAN PATTEN
TA’RAACH
One Two EP
LOVETURL
Like a glitch in the matrix, Ta’Raach
re-emerges with the disruptive One
Two EP. The Detroit producer and
MC has had a long career that be-
gan in the same scene that birthed
Jay Dee and Slum Village. Along
the way, however, he has evolved
from a boom-bap master to a force
that looms over hip-hop and ma-
terializes when most needed. And
we need Raach now. The EP begins
very much as an interruption with
static and frequency modulation. The
twelve-minute project has eight parts
presented as one track and Raach’s
rhymes are anything but linear. The
bars are almost code—modern sonic
hieroglyphs activated when they reach
proper receptors. “Xhriller” sounds
straight supernatural; Raach raps like
poltergeist. When old classic “The
Big Bang Theory” gets electronic
refurbishing, it’s clear Raach has al-
ways been a step ahead. The crown
jewel is his bizarro-world remake of
“T.R.O.Y.,” presented here as “Remi-
nisce.” Raach flips the concept of Pete
and CL’s classic to pay tribute to two
of Detroit’s fallen grassroots heroes.
The way he programs the strings on
the beat sounds like the energy of
MOP channeled through an orches-
tra. This is the music that Morpheus
would ride to in the Nebuchadnezzar.
Don’t step in if you can’t handle life
outside the machine.
—sweeney kovar
AMY HAGEMEIER
WHITE FENCE
For the Recently
Found Innocent
Drag City
Tim Presley has come a long way
since his days as a member of the in-
die-psychedelic act Darker My Love.
As a solo artist, his sound has sharp-
ened into a diamond-edged take on
60s rock ‘n’ roll. He collaborated with
Ty Segall on Hair in 2012, resulting
in a righteous melding of psychedelic
and garage rock interests. The two
collude once more for White Fence’s
latest LP, with Segall twiddling the
knobs at his famous backyard studio,
lending his talents to some of the
drum tracks, and even assembling
the final mixes. Presley also moved
from John Dwyer’s Castle Face Re-
cords to big-time Drag City, which
lets you know he’s poised to blow up
just like Ty did. What really counts is
that For the Recently Found Innocent
is a catchy, ambitious and energetic
album. Presley serves up echoing fal-
setto, jangly and fuzzy guitars, and
lyrical concerns straight off a Choco-
late Soup for Diabetics comp. Songs
move from dreamy “The Recently
Found” to the folk-rock anthem
“Anger! Who Keeps You Under?” to
the mellow stroll of “Sandra (When
the Earth Dies).” It’s charmingly au-
thentic in its vintage sensibilities, but
unmistakably the product of its own
time.
—Jason Gelt
DEVON
BRIAN BROOKS
WILLIAMS
Gilding the Lily
Slumberland
Williams has always been a man
with a singular pop vision; it’s to his
credit that he’s been able to achieve
it. The problem is people expect him
to grow into a new vision when he
hasn’t fully explored this one. I’m
shocked no one has picked up that
this is a concept album taking Alice
in Wonderland as its source. EVERY
song—“Rabbit Hole” to “Pendu-
lum” to “Puzzle”—is a reference.
“Gilding the Lily” means forcing
beauty when what’s beneath is wilt-
ing. Perhaps Williams is confessing
that his album’s echoey pop is itself
ornamentation? Or maybe the lily in
question, and this album, is purity
itself. There’s something childlike in
Williams’ approach. But look closely
at his wide eyes—he might just be
three moves ahead of us.
—D.M. Collins
ALBUM REVIEWS

zig zags
self-titled LP (In the Red)
You know how it goes with a band like Zig
Zags—too weird for the punks, too punk for
the weirdos and far too unwilling to cut their
hair or wear a shirt with sleeves to even inter-
face with the rest of society. So welcome home
to my column, dudes—my garbage is your
garbage. This is Zig Zags’ monster debut LP,
recorded (perfectly) with Ty Segall and sent to
crash land on a strange and hostile alien world
… that just happens to be called EARTH!
This is punk, thrash and hard rock as banned
by the PMRC with lyrics as (or even about)
horror movies—like line-by-line retellings of
(I think) John Carpenter’s The Fog and the
cult mess Psychomania, which provokes lines
like, “So you think I’m alive / cuz you heard
it on the radio / I was buried / I was buried
with my motorcycle! / … / don’t give a shit /
I killed myself to be born again!” I’m not so-
ciologically qualified to explain why, but they
make serious magic out of half-mangled re-
telling-slash-reactions to trash media—it’s like
your playground friend trying to explain some
forbidden R-rated movie to you, and mak-
ing it even better through misunderstanding.
Spiritually, Zig Zags are somewhere between
bands like the Gizmos and the Weirdos, true
freaks that saw society crack a bit around ’77
and clawed their way through—every song
on here could easily start with, “Attention,
all you humans!” Actually, that’s the whole
vibe of Zig Zags—everything that crept in
through the cracks and did all the damage it
could, before the teachers and parents could
grab it away. Musically—besides “Down The
Drain,” which is very Wipers circa Youth
Of America—Zig Zags are like early Metal-
lica convinced they’re the early Misfits, when
they’re really dudes in detention rehearsing
in their heads for Bonehead Crunchers Vol. 6
sometime in the future. Ultimate rippers, if
you wanna cheat: “Magic,” which should be a
45, “I Am The Weekend,” which is like Dic-
tators via Testors, and “Voices Of The Para-
noid,” which is a bugged-out Sabbath-ized
finale. Up there with Jack Name for get-me-
off-this-planet rocker of the year so far.
m. Geddes gengras
Ishi (Leaving)
Gengras’ previous album Test Leads split itself
down the middle with two Terry Riley-esque
cascades of iterative euphoria and then two
more discordant, maybe even insectile pieces.
But newest Ishi is less two sides of his synthe-
sizer’s story and more of a story in itself—a
thesis, conflict, and epilogue, as he told one
interviewer. And it’s named for California’s
famous Ishi, the last of the quote/unquote
ALBUM REVIEWS
“wild Indians,” who was captured starving in
the woods in 1911. So there are deep things
generating the power in these generated ambi-
ent pieces, which all share a certain Gas-eous
atmosphere while dealing with momentum
and tension in connected and unexpected
ways. Second track “Passage” (the conflict, or
“Poppy Nogoodcancomeofthis,” maybe?) is
where the ocean rolls in at night and stated
epilogue “Threshold” feels more to me like
actual passage. There’s a tidal relentlessness as
“Threshold” and Ishi end—by 11:55, pres-
ence and absence are slipping past each other
at a tectonic, subsonic level. It’s bottomless
from its very beginning and anxious and eu-
phoric by turns at waveforms break and dis-
solve into each other.
MATTHEWDAVID
In My World (Brainfeeder)
In My World starts with couple turntable
swipes at Zappa-style lowrider sweet soul, and
then the future beams on in, materialing pixel
by distorted pixel. The production here (as ev-
erywhere in In My World) is maximal, versatile
and absolutely confident, and it’s all dedicated
to making the kind of love song where there’s
no such thing as too much. Matthewdavid is
fully committed here, and when he goes over
the top—which he loves to do, probably with
a big ol’ grin—you’re going with him: “In my
world we’re rockin’ / in my world non-stop /
… / don’t try to fight the enlightenment!” Or
maybe let’s examine the exactly appropriate
reverb on: “OUTER SPACE IS WHERE I
WANT TO KNOW YOU!” World is future-
past funk-soul that fits as well on Brainfeeder
as it would on a shockingly ambitious Beck
remix or a lost Animal Collective session, with
direct ties to every electronically inclined icon-
oclast currently awaiting deluxe import reis-
sue. (This Heat, thinking of you!) Part of the
reason you (or I) will love this record is that
this record loves itself, which doesn’t always
work in music or real life but man—this is
personality as art so just embrace it. “Singing
Flats” and “West Coast Jungle Juke” would be
killer singles; “Flats” is a space-bass Low End-
friendly song with tuned drums and a synthe-
sizer riff that Egyptian Lover would love, and
“Jungle Juke” is the unabashed smasher/keytar
shredout. Sometimes he sings—at his best, in
a Lifetones-like robo-deadpan that comes out
like sunlight through clouds—and sometimes
he raps but all of this comes from a pure and
personal place. Get this—it’ll secretly teach
your other records to be cooler.
habibi
self-titled (Burger)
DENNEY Y LOS JETS
Mexican Coke (Burger)
Habibi is like Girls In The Garage plus Girls
At Our Best, produced by Joe Meek in one
of those little closets under the stairs. Closer
“Tomboy” has got the charm here—I can’t
tell if the tomboy is just good-bad or truly
evil, but these are clever, precise lyrics and
the song is as minimal (and therefore power-
ful) as it can get while keeping all the catchy
parts alive. There’s a Vaselines-style wit—they
sing sweetly but they’re sharp. Like: “Gone
Like Yesterday:” “She’s wrong … to the right
people.” Truly heavy. “Far From Right” is an-
other winner, a kiss-off song delivered with
hesitation and flattened affect that somehow
makes it even stronger. I’m intrigued, which I
never get to say. Denney and pals are for sure
a circa-Let It Bleed Stones-alike—especially as
regards “Live With Me” and nasty habits, dis-
cussed here as, “I’m gonna smoooooke dope,
everyday!”—but the Stones and a few more
drinks get us right into the Dolls et al, so here
we go! “Broke” is the best of the rockers, close
cousin to L.A.’s crucial gutter-trashers the Jon-
eses, and next up are “Mama’s Got The Blues”
and “Hooked,” which sounds like it fell off
the back of Too Much To Soon and woke up
handcuffed to a Decca Stones B-side. When
they get country, it’s in the spirit of jailbird
Jerry Jeff Walker, possibly the most criminally
demonstrative of that wave of outlaws, but
with more of a reedy John Prine voice—espe-
cially “Pain Pills,” a “Sam Stone”-y mea culpa
about the hole in daddy’s head where all the
oxys go. (Also keep in mind that you could
take this album as a partied-out Reigning
Sound circa Time Bomb High School, and still
stagger home happy from the record store.)
Solid record and born for a dive bar jukebox,
if any exist anymore.
MASSENGER table, I love that chair / I punch myself, I don’t
Girl Glass EP (Porchcore)
This is a punk band who’ve heard a lot more
than just punk records, and who took the
Avengers cover of “Paint It Black” and decid-
ed to find out how much farther into the dark
they could get. Sometimes, especially when
the guitar leads keep on going and the chant-
ing starts, this gets into Destroy All Monsters
territory—a good place to be, as long as you
survive. Title track is the instant winner, three-
ish chords that don’t stop for a song that’s ba-
sically nothing but sing-along chorus, even
on the outta-nowhere B-52’s-style skyrocket
vocal on the bridge. M&Ms, Muffs, Teen-
age Head—play it over and over, as designed.
B-side starter has garage-y Elevators guitar
and lyrics that make me think of the Monks:
“Ah, you think like I think!” Maybe I’m a
Massenger too? (Associate publisher Kristina
chimes in here to shout out early Hole, too.)
Adept, ferocious and political in a way that
makes instant sense. Production (by Joel Je-
rome? He did their LP—which you should
get!) recalls Nick ‘Basher’ Lowe’s job on Pure
Pop and the Damned LP, which means noisy
in an immortal way. Closer “Volcano” hits a
spot between VKTMS and Wipers a la “Po-
tential Suicide”—propulsive, deep and a little
surreal.
Beach Rats
“It’s Impossible” EP (Rehab)
Three high school kids from Long Beach and
their best song is first song “It’s Impossible”—
punky hardcore like Negative Trend or Rhino
39, with some of the delivery of the very early
(pre-Pink Flag) Wire. Which means: anxious,
unpredictable, simple and brief. And legit!
The other songs are twice as fast and mostly
too blurry for it—TSOL bass, a little post-Ad-
olescents OC-punk melody and similarly dis-
solute teenage vibe, but they never slide into
the joyful (if that’s the word) chaos of bands
like the Neos. (Cuz if you’re like me you like
your hardcore as close to sticking your face in
a jet engine as you can get.) Funny shout-out
to Taco Bell and promising guitar lead in “Hit
The Deck,” tho. If they chase more songs like
“It’s Impossible” (and listen to the first two
Urinals EPs, the Deadbeats on Dangerhouse
and that Outsiders Vital Years reissue) then
next EP will come prepped for combat.
THE MOLOCHS
Forgetter Blues (Fourth and Orange)
Long Beach’s Molochs do 60s garage as reinter-
preted on those first Modern Lovers demos—
with all the tinny guitar and righteous outsider
alienation that demands—plus Peter Perrett/
Only Ones-style vocals and the bedroom-
dude version of the Loaded-era subway-sound
guitar. Recorded just how it should be by Tony
Matarazzo formerly of Jail Weddings and the
happily disturbing Some Days, Forgetter Blues
(now finally on vinyl) plays like an album’s
worth of “I’m Straight” for 2014: “I go out
with a girl / she buys me drinks / but I can’t
buy her anything,” sings Lucas, who has plenty
more to say about how tough it is when you
just wanna do your own thing. The hit is “Cut
The Red Dust,” a particularly desperate rocker
with nice sharp Telecaster guitar and shout-
along choruses that’s pointing at the extra clat-
tery UK post-punk bands and includes the
fuck-you-if-you-can’t-hang lyric: “I love that
care.” And it’s followed by charmer “Crawl
Around,” a bummer reincarnation of “Little
Black Egg” and a Lou Reed-ified cover of Syd
Barrett’s “Wined And Dined” that came out
faithful and even great.
THE NATIVES
Last of the Natives (Porch Party)
GREATER CALIFORNIA
Long Shadows 7” (Porch Party)
Porch Party is working on becoming a golden-
age SST—a homegrown down-for-the-people
label putting out music by neighbors they
believe in. That means I got a huge package
of releases of ambitously different types, and
that I owe Joel Jasper and Pregnant their own
reviews ASAP! First up—the Natives, whose
debut LP is meticulous hip-hop a la Diamond
D’s Stunts, Blunts and Hip-Hop. MC Nativ-
ethoughts has a perfect sense of balance and
makes-it-seem-easy flow, and DJ (and I think
producer?) Gerrath McDaniels displays re-
ally careful and ambitious production on here,
flowing from classic to daring to KMD-style
unexpectedness as one verse melts into an-
other and perforated with samples political
and personal—I’d classify the famous Kool
Keith “people don’t steal seltzer water” speech
as both. After A-side’s “Native I,” the produc-
tion opens up and they’re ready to roll. Then
Long Beach stalwarts Greater California do a
Zombies-via-Smile piano heartbreaker and a
gentle Millennium-meets-Spiritualized psych
track with brass and full choir—a wall of
sound with flowers growing across it.
67
ALEXANDER HEIR
Interview by Stephen Sigl
Illustration by Alexander Heir

Filled with smirking skulls, severed heads and dislodged eyeballs, the demented work of illustrator and clothing designer Alexander
Heir continues a longstanding punk art tradition of mining the dark side in pursuit of the truth. Comical, thought-provoking, and
sometimes purposefully confounding, Heir’s art betrays influences from Gojin Ishihara to Raymond Pettibon, but has an unhinged
vibe of its own. From xeroxed flyers to record jackets to graphic (in both senses of the word) illustrations, Death Is Not the End
(Sacred Bones Books 001) collects a mass of Heir’s debrained, disemboweled and disenchanted characters into one disgustingly
gooey and virulent volume for all to enjoy. We speak to Heir here about—what else?—commercialism, capitalism and culture.

You hone in on death a lot by combining
skeletons and similar imagery with different
sorts of cultural iconography—are you say-
ing that death itself is ubiquitous through-
out these cultures? That all cultures have a
particular fascination with death?
The first thing you said seems to resonate
more with me. Death is a great unknown and
it represents all the unknowable things in this
world. The skeleton that is inside you is like
the spirit that’s also inside of you and it has
occult—though I don’t really want to use that
word—associations. It involves the unknow-
able, whatever that is, and how a piece of mu-
sic or art can stir this thing in you that daily
life doesn’t necessarily do. I’ve always been
interested in medieval culture, Japanese and
Tibetan culture, almost all the different cul-
tural representations of good and bad. When
I’m working on a piece I often wonder what
I have to add to it that would make me want
to look at it as an observer, and so many times
it comes back to the macabre. I don’t know if
that’s just me or if it’s something about soci-
ety. My work can be commercial, especially in
terms of fashion, and it’s interesting to provide
a counterpoint to this feel-good advertising
bullshit. And to explicitly say that the world is
pretty fucked-up and full of terrible things.
There’s a very stark and severe morality in
your work that transcends the typical ‘cool’
notions people have of transgressive art. The
pieces that seem the most moral also seem
to make special use of symmetry.
I feel like those very symmetrical or balanced
works can be a good metaphor for what I be-
lieve: there’s always two halves to everything
68
and the truth exists somewhere between them.
I was having an interesting discussion about
empathy this morning with an acquaintance.
It seems so obvious that it should be a guid-
ing force for everything, but it’s thrown out
the window, even by people who claim to be
Christian or radical or whatever. They still lack
empathy for the other or so-called enemy. I
don’t really believe in enemies, which is funny
cuz so much of my work is like ‘fuck cops,’ but
a lot of that is just rage and frustration. Living
in a police state where people are being priced
out of their homes or being targeted for the
color of their skin … sure, that’s not happen-
ing to me, but it’s an important thing to bring
up. If I can make morality or empathy be cool,
that’s my goal.
Morality and empathy aren’t ‘cool’ now?
I think they are considered ‘cool,’ at least in the
underground. DIY mentality and the punk
philosophy are rooted in a pretty high set of
moral standards. Nobody wants to be told
what to do, but if you can make your ideals
look sexy, people gravitate towards that.
How does your awareness of realities like
police power or systemic inequality affect
your ideas and position as an artist?
I strongly believe it is an artist’s job to speak the
truth—that doesn’t necessarily mean discuss-
ing these issues. There are lots of artists whose
work I respect that talk about more personal
issues.
In another interview, you said you’d have
done just as well buying and reading a
bunch of books as you did going to art
school. Were you referring to technique or
to the tradition and theory behind art?
I meant that in regards to the actual mechan-
ics. Art is a combination of having a skill and
then having a thought behind your skill—
that’s what separates you from being just a
craftsman. I felt there was a big push about
the theory and very little about the skill, and
that wasn’t the education I was going for at
the time. I feel that I learned way more sit-
ting in my studio the four years after school
just cranking away making work than actu-
ally being in school. That’s not necessarily the
fault of institutions, that’s maybe just how
I work. The way art schools work is that
they push an outdated hip, Chelsea-gallery-
abstract-painter mentality when the world
has changed since then. I was a printmaker
at Pratt and the printmaking department
was cool at that time because the people in-
volved actually wanted to learn how to cut
wood, make a lithograph and be a craftsman,
and the combination of those people was re-
ally interesting. I think it’s a shame that the
school let go of some of the teachers that were
involved with that and is going more towards
an abstract or academic approach, which is
the opposite of the way the world is going
now. The only people I know that are success-
ful are the ones that are slugging it out in the
studio and working.
You have to conform to a DIY ethic, as op-
posed to an ivory tower one.
Exactly—I already came to Pratt with that
DIY ethic from punk. Basically, it’s just a re-
quirement now to be a practicing artist in
New York, unless you’re already independently
wealthy or your parents are. Between the price
of rent and living expenses you have to find a
way to support yourself and be a little crafty.
It’s hard to listen to people talk about mini-
malism when all you can think about is, ‘How
am I going to pay my bills when I get out of
school?’ I don’t want to discount the whole
school experience or the concept of concepts
themselves, because that’s really important too.
If I was just drawing skulls and monsters with-
out any thought behind it, it wouldn’t really
matter what I was doing.
How do you think art will change as it
becomes harder and harder for people to
make a living—not even as artists but just
as people?
It’s so expensive to live in NYC, let alone rent
extra space for a studio. I had my silkscreen
press set up in my apartment for seven years
before I was able to find an affordable studio
share. With the influx of young and wealthy
people here, you wind up having a microcosm
of what’s happening in the country and the
world—the wealthy are able to flourish, both
artists and non artists, and those with limited
resources have a harder and harder time even
competing. Those in the middle, like myself,
are able to get by, but it becomes very hard
to grow when the rent and cost of living and
space is so high. I am lucky enough to have
been able to attend college and have been able
to support myself from my art, clothing label,
and screen-printing business, but there are
a lot of voices out there that don’t get heard
because they have to focus more on surviving
than creating.
How much of your interest in making
clothes has been dictated by the fact that
you just have to generate some income?
BOOKS
I had graduated from school and me and a
friend invested in a shirt-printing press and we
took on freelance printing for bands and artists
and I was able to support myself just by do-
ing that. Lately I’ve been able to focus on my
own brand, but to make a painting requires
so much time and focus and you have to take
yourself out of the world; then, that piece
might never sell, or only certain people will see
it. Versus a shirt that takes much less time to
do and people are going to wear it out for the
whole world to see. I know if I make a T-shirt,
an x amount of people are going to want to
buy it, whereas if I make a print I guarantee
a lot less people are interested in that. On the
one hand I don’t think there’s anything wrong
with selling a painting for a lot of money if
someone’s willing to pay. That’s your life—or
your tombstone, since it’s what’s going to be
sitting there after you’re gone—so it should
be valued. But at the same time, who actually
has the resources to buy that stuff? Usually it’s
some asshole stockbroker that’s just buying it
so it can go up in value. My conundrum is the
same problem that everyone has in this coun-
try: how do you make money and try to make
a better life for yourself while reconciling how
fucked everything is? Even for me—trying to
grow my brand and leave my punk bubble
and do interviews with more mainstream
blogs and publications, which I was really hesi-
tant to do, and worrying that I might alienate
myself, my message and the people that have
supported me.
Baudrillard was really interested in the in-
effectiveness of terrorist opposition to the
capitalist system—he thought it operated
in complicity with the power of the state.
In a piece called Our Theatre of Cruelty he
wrote: ‘The secret is to oppose to the order
of the real an absolutely imaginary realm,
completely ineffectual at the level of reality,
but whose implosive energy absorbs every-
thing real and all the violence of real power
which founders there.’
I was talking with a friend of mine about this
just the other day. However revolutionary or
radical you might think you are, you can never
actually achieve that ideal because you still ex-
ist within the context of capitalism. You’re still
buying food and wearing clothes in a world
that has been created for you. Even if you
stand in opposition, you are standing in oppo-
sition within the framework of the thing you
are against.
How do you reconcile this for yourself?
I don’t think making ‘oppositional’ art is nec-
essarily a bad thing, I think it’s pretty crucial,
in fact. If you can inspire or engage someone
with your work it’s all worth it.
I was looking through your book and won-
dering if your work could be considered
‘figurative.’ If the language that you use is
something that a large part of your audi-
ence can’t immediately comprehend—like
Japanese letters, for instance—then isn’t it
almost purposefully abstract?
That’s really why I started using the Japanese
kanji in the first place. I was really interested
in this idea of putting words directly on
something that, to most Americans, wasn’t
obvious—but to a whole other country/cul-
ture was. I could say something like, ‘Destroy
the Government’ or ‘Fuck the Pigs’ in Japa-
nese, and it was almost like a coded message.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that
without actual text, be it Japanese or in Eng-
lish, and incorporating more symbols that can
be deciphered but which aren’t immediately
obvious or recognizable. One of the reasons
I started using Japanese in particular was be-
cause the strength of the characters—they’re
gorgeous, but it also complicates things. I took
about four years of Japanese in high school
and started using it in my work, but I’m not
Japanese, and I didn’t want to cross the line
into inappropriate cultural appropriation. So
I’ve not been using kanji in any of my new
work, save a few commissioned pieces where
it’s appropriate, like a Japanese tour shirt.
Why are you deliberately complicating
parts of your work?
I suppose this purposeful obfuscation is to
force the reader to delve a little more deeply
into the meaning of the words or symbols to
find out the meaning. The same way a poem
or song can be more interesting when not ev-
erything is spelled out for you—part of the ex-
perience is in the discovery of the meaning.
You often juxtapose the kanji against Mo-
roccan-style buildings.
It’s weird being in America, and especially
New York, because you’re exposed to hundreds
of different cultures every day, and it all kind
of seeps into your psyche. I feel like I’m very
much a product of that—I have all these visual
ends inspired from different cultures.
Is there something that you want to capture
in your work that is particular to the culture
itself and transcends visual appropriation?
That’s a really hard thing to do, especially in
the age of the internet where you have access
to every image that’s ever been recorded. How
do you move past your influences and inspira-
tions to actually create your own thing? This
is something that I talk about a lot with my
fellow artists. At some point you have to in-
ternalize your influences without directly ref-
erencing. This book is the last few years of my
work—and I just turned 30—so for most “real
artists” this is like their baby-phase. I’m really
proud of it, but I also recognize that these are
the building blocks and it’s nice to look back
on everything and know what I was trying to
attempt and to gauge how it might’ve come off
to other people.
One last question: the name of your book is
Death Is Not the End. Were you consciously
using the Dylan title or was it the Nick Cave
appropriation?
I had no idea that was a Dylan song. I’m defi-
nitely a Nick Cave fan, but I thought it was a
cool reference to the company ‘Death/Traitors’
and that it’s not the end but the beginning of
my career. One of the first shirts I ever de-
signed, when I was 17 or 18, was just this door
that said ‘Death is not the end.’ So when I was
trying to come up with a name for a book I
thought it would be good to go back to the
beginning. It’s actually been kind of conten-
tious because some people are like, ‘What are
you talking about? There is no God. Death is
the end!’
ALEXANDER HEIR’S DEATH IS NOT
THE END IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM
SACRED BONES. VISIT ALEXANDER
HEIR AT DEATHTRAITORS.COM.
BOOKS

Dave McGowan’s new book, Weird
Scenes Inside the Canyon is showing an
insane pattern of manufacture of ‘rock
‘n’ roll’ on the West Coast. It’s a pattern
of military intelligence and old money,
and that will bring in the ‘occult,’ which
under my research IS the intelligence
community. Who originally moved to
Laurel Canyon? The first eight resi-
dents were military intelligence. There
was a high clearance propaganda base
at Lookout Mountain, which doesn’t get
into play til the 50s.
The whole idea is making things be
spiritual and divisional. Shaping the
idyllic to control the tangible. In a con-
trol game, you must control the left and
the right. And if you follow the money
trail, why has the Man always financed
the counterculture? It wasn’t the fellow
flower children. People don’t get that.
People need to hold on to their idols.
So it took the young Hollywood. Pe-
ter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern.
Their backgrounds are real scary.
Let’s just say the Brandos and Fondas
and Van Cortlandts, Crosby’s insane
family—Crosby gave ‘em a lift to New
Amsterdam on his ship, that’s how far
back those families go. I can show you
Zappa in 1968 talking and they’re ask-
ing him about revolution and he’s laugh-
ing, pissing his pants. ‘If there’s gonna
be a revolution, it’s certainly gonna be
a sloppy one!’ Frank was a military kid.
His dad was a chemical warfare spe-
cialist. Jim Morrison’s dad, Admiral Ste-
phen Morrison, got the Gulf of Tonkin
rolling—he started Vietnam. If I’m the
Lizard King, am I gonna wanna let you
BOOK REVIEW
WEIRD SCENES
INSIDE THE CANYON
Dave McGowan, Headpress
know my dad is Admiral Stephen Mor-
rison?
There’s always the argument like
why all the military connections?
Yeah, it was baby boomer times, so
most people were in. But this isn’t
like ‘Oh, my dad’s in the infantry.’ Ev-
eryone was an officer or in intelligence
and there was money on top. Bruce
Dern’s grandfather George Dern was
the secretary of war under Roosevelt.
His godparents were Adlai Stevenson
and Eleanor Roosevelt. Bruce Dern,
Mr. Counterculture Guy! ‘Rock ‘n’ roll’
is a military word—rock ‘n’ roll, light
‘em up!
This is all about the theory of ‘true
rumor,’ which Morrison was obsessed
with. Like here’s tangible facts, and then
I start saying stuff and keep on saying it
and it gains more spin. It doesn’t mat-
ter what the true stuff means anymore
cuz this other stuff has taken over.
This is the machine. And they were the
freaks—and dancing in the flames at
the top was Vito, master of masters. It
took freaks and young Hollywood. They
started clubs with both of those, and
then they put the bands in. The bands
were the last things to come. People
went to the clubs to watch the freaks
dance.
Let’s go right to the manufacture of
the Byrds. Or the Wrecking Crew! There
were no musicians in these bands!
Where did they all come from? Jim
wrote everything on the beach, and just
randomly met Ray Manzarek? Or Neil
Young and Richie Furay drive a hearse
from Canada to go look for Stephen
Stills, and by chance in traffic on Sunset
Blvd., they pull a u-turn—in a hearse!—
to catch this guy they heard on a whim
in Canada? It makes no sense. It’s all
serendipity. That’s the word that makes
me cringe. ‘It was magic! It just hap-
pened!’
Look how Hollywood created a god
and goddess system. A star system,
it’s a religion. A new 20th-century re-
ligion to homogenize. The one goal is
control. They manufacture it cuz you
want it to look derelict. If I’m gonna roll
in and get things done, I want it to be
freaky, to be weird. You want divisionals.
That’s a must. Divide and conquer. And
confuse. And then you control. Dave is
really cool about not trying to come up
with a conclusion. He just presents all
these things. I like how he says that.
I’m a little more brave than Dave. He’s
really good.
ART by NATHAN MORSE
He starts with all the major biogra-
phies, all the Crosby biographies—
he cracks up, ‘Why do you need four
biographies?’—and Buffalo Springfield
… it’s all straight from things like that
and then a little extra. Follow the money
a little further. I could really do the LSD
thing, but he doesn’t go into it.
Once they start a game it runs. And
that’s an easy game to keep going.
The new wave thing recycled the 50s-
60s cycle. Useless commodities—
back to Bernaysian methods. Shit
Dave doesn’t begin to talk about. But
he does get a little new wave. He high-
lights the Copeland family—the dad
pretty much helped start the CIA, his
son Miles starts IRS, and Ian is Fron-
tier Booking controlling every band, and
Stewart jumps into the Police—the new
wave band shoved down the world’s
throat.
And he doesn’t even mention Iggy.
Iggy was always handled. And what is
punk? It’s nothing—a myth? A mag in
New York City, by kids who like Iggy?
Malcolm McLaren saw Richard Hell
and thought, ‘Here’s my look. Here ya
go, Sid, be a fucked up Ziggy Stardust.’
It’s all connected to Bowie—Bowie was
a handler, almost. You’re either a pup-
pet, patsy or handler. That’s what I’ve
figured out. If you make it past the pup-
pet stage, you might live. And we know
what patsy means. What’s interesting
about Laurel Canyon is how many sui-
cides there are. And how many houses
burned down.
—Heru Avenger John Basil
71
 COMICS
Curated by Tom Child

CHAMPOYHATE
BRIAN BROOKS

JOHN TOTTENHAM DAVE VAN PATTEN

72 COMICS
 CARA BYRD

LILA ASH ELANA PRITCHARD

COMICS 73
BLACKBOARDCAFE
Interview by Frankie Alvaro
Photography by Ward Robinson
Al “Alboy” Korff and Brittney Tharaldson started Blackboard Cafe two years ago in their Echo Park home, cutting and sewing their
trademark striped sweaters—which are all truly made in America—from the fabric to the buttons. Now they’ve opened a shop on the
southern end of Sunset Blvd., named after one of the most famous places in California biker culture. Here, Alboy tells us the history
of his own—and the original—Blackboard Cafe.
From my understanding, you and Brittney
had a whirlwind romance. After a month
you moved in together and started Black-
board Café?
Al “Alboy” Korff: Pretty much, actually—I was
already doing Blackboard in a black market
way. I was just selling bootleg shirts and hats
at the swap meet. Blackboard just seemed fit-
ting to me because of the history of the name.
When Brittney and I got together, she had
experience in the fashion industry, and I had
retail and vintage clothes experience. And
I wanted to make something, and Brittney
was just laughing at me—like, ‘That would
be so easy to make!’ I didn’t believe her. I was
like, ‘Make me a shirt and I’ll believe you. I
don’t even know you!’ She made a shirt and
I couldn’t even believe it! ‘I can’t believe you
made this!’ It was so perfect. I made her make
a second one cuz I didn’t think she could do
it again! And it started from there. I found a
knitter in Los Angeles cuz it was really impor-
tant for us to have everything made here. We
made these super heavy-duty sweaters that you
could wear while you rode your motorcycle.
Just an ultra classic item that anyone from a
gay sailor to a tough biker could wear. Anyone
in the spectrum of fashion has worn a striped
top at some point. So that was our simple for-
mula, really—‘Let’s make these sweaters and
shirts and short-sleeved shirts with graphics.’
And you know … we made some hats then
we had a full clothing line.
I have one of your sweaters and it fits ex-
tremely well and it’s super warm. Do you
have plans for making a thinner sweater—
something a little more for the Southern
California climate?
It’s funny—that’s what everyone says. ‘I love
this stuff but it’s so warm I can’t wear it all the
time.’ We have a lot of customers in Canada,
back East, Japan, Sweden, and places where it’s
a bit colder than here. But if you ride a motor-
cycle—which I know you do, Frankie—you
know that a sweater is not enough. You still
need a jacket. The wind is so cold.
That’s the main reason I wear a denim vest—
protects your chest from wind.
Yeah—you know the sweater and the denim
vest is really the SoCal set up now. You can
have your sweater with you and just pop it on
when you’re cruising PCH.
What’s in your line right now? I know you
have the heavy sweaters and the shirts.
Right now, we have shirts—we made striped
shirts, but it seemed like you could get a simi-
lar shirt at Target or wherever. A shirt made
in China. It just seemed too basic to us. We
just had a new fabric made for us that’s kind
CRAFT/WORK
of like what you were just saying. It’s a heavy-
weight T-shirt. Not as hot as the sweater, but
a good shirt you can wear while you’re riding
instead of wearing our super thick sweater.
And they’re kind of made in the same style as
shirts from the 30s or 40s that were just re-
ally hard knit fabrics. Not a wimpy, stretched
out, see-through shirt from American Apparel
that everyone has. A good substantial shirt that
you can live in for a while. There’s all differ-
ent kinds of patterns. We have the stripes, and
I’ve been buying vintage striped shirts and cool
vintage shirts anytime we can find them. We
have a ton of vintage clothes we pull inspira-
tion from. It’s kind of the name of the game.
Everything we make has been made before—
they just don’t make it anymore, or it’s being
made terribly now. We’re just trying to make a
newer version of something that’s been made
before in the same way.
Where did you get the name?
It’s named Blackboard Cafe after this actual
place—a pretty famous honky tonk bar in
Bakersfield. It was a major stop for bands on
the road. Everyone played there. Buck Owens
played there—he was actually in the house
band, played there for years. It was a cool
place. There was pool and dancing seven days
a week. You could go in there and see a live
band every night of the week. By the time the
60s rolled around, L.A. was a pretty wild place.
You know, choppers and vintage motorcycles,
which are a pretty big hobby of mine. That’s
where the name comes from. Those guys that
would go to Blackboard made it a popular
spot to ride to. You could go there, get a beer,
meet a chick, whatever. They made paintings
of the place. It’s got a little history, just within
the chopper thing and the vintage motorcycle
scene at the time. Besides the whole music
side. It’s famous for a lot of different things.
The photos from the late 60s of all these old
biker dudes going there and partying—their
bikes were incredible. Their clothes were in-
credible. And being vintage clothing nutcases,
we would just drool over these pictures. And
that’s our main inspiration for the line. These
old photos. The denim jackets, the jeans,
the boots, the shirts—we sell all of that. Old
deck jackets. Mexican party vests—you know.
These crazy shirt graphics. So it was a bar, and
we modeled our shop after that. We recreated
the original Blackboard sign that we have out
front.
Do you have any artifacts from the original
Blackboard?
It burnt down from what I’ve read. It’s not
there anymore, just an empty vacant lot.
But you can go to the spot in Bakersfield.
There’s so many photos of it that we were
able to recreate a lot of the same stuff. The
logos, and we have pictures of the original
barmaid uniforms—we were able to make
graphic tees with the same logos. We were
able to recreate the sign that hangs in front
of the shop. One of the things that was cool
… the real Blackboard had live music every
night, and Brittney and I grew up going to
shows all of the time. And we don’t get to do
that anymore cuz we are so busy. Now that
we have a place we decided to start having
shows here. Every month so far that we’ve
been open we’ve had a band play. We have a
big party and feed everyone. The first month
we had Jesus Sons play—those guys are awe-
some. They played a great show. And last
month we had Michael Rey and the Woe-
begones play. And coming up we are having
a stoner metal show—a couple of bands are
playing that night. Right in the shop. We
clear out the sewing machines and make a
space and have a party. The sidewalk is all
lined up with choppers. It’s a great time.
Is that a goal for you? To have your shop be a
destination for motorcyclists or for anyone
who wants to see live music?
For us it’s somewhat paying a bit of a tribute to
the real Blackboard Café, which is a great his-
torical thing that just vanished one day and is
gone forever. And we’ve taken that name, but
at least we’re somewhat able to live up to it by
having a good party once a month.
Have you been able to contact anyone from
the original Blackboard Café?
No, not at all. In fact I meet so many old peo-
ple—just at the swaps and who are bikers. And
I ask everyone that could have possibly been
there, and a lot of people say, ‘Oh, from the
old Ed Roth paintings? Nah, I’ve never been
there.’ I don’t know … if you were twenty in
the 60s taking acid, I don’t know if you can
remember too much today. [Laughs]
When did your shop open?
We actually just opened in April! It’s 1286
Sunset Blvd.—down on the southern end of
Echo Park. It’s kind of grimy down there. Not
a super happening area, but there are some
cool restaurants that have opened down there.
We can get away with a little more over there.
Like I ride my chopper to work and park on
the sidewalk. My buddies will all show up on
their bikes and just fill the sidewalk up, and
everyone’s just hanging out in front of the
shop like it’s a different era and no one seems
to give a fuck. I mean—I wouldn’t want to be
on Melrose anyway. No offense to anyone but
it just seems kind of wimpy to be over there,
like in the trendy area. We’re just trying to be
a shop. A destination spot, where we’re going
to be there. We sell vintage clothes, we sell our
line. You can come in and have a beer. You
know it’s a cool place. Its not a flash-in-the-
pan kind of a place. Brittney and I have been
working on this for a long time. We get up and
get ready and the store opens at 12. We’re at the
shop and working and it’s also a store.
You’re actually sewing in the shop now?
Yeah! There’s five sewing machines and a cut-
ting table, and we’re sewing right in the shop.
Our shop is a storefront and a work room. It’s
open air—we’re cutting and sewing and every-
one can see what were doing. You can come in
and see everything being made right in front
of you.
I think people really appreciate the romance
of that. I know I do. I love the grassroots
thing you’re doing.
Yeah—I hear a lot of different people boasting
that their things are made in the USA. Like, ‘Is
your hat made in the USA? Your fabric comes
from China and your buttons do and all of
your accoutrements, you know? And your la-
bels and all of that shit. It’s not actually made
in the USA.’ We actually cut our labels from
fabric. And we have custom rubber stamps
made by this rubber stamp company that’s
been in L.A. since the 20s, and we stamp every
single label with our name and we sew it onto
every goddamn shirt, you know? It’s the real
thing. It’s not part made in the USA with a gi-
ant tag saying MADE IN THE USA. I think
you could spend a hundred bucks on one of
my sweaters and feel good about it, rather than
spending 275 on one from some Melrose joint
and you go home and it falls apart.
What’s in store for the future?
We make sweaters and shirts, and we make
hats. And we do a lot of modified vintage. We
buy vintage clothes and retailor them to fit bet-
ter. Add an inch or two there, make them more
unique. And we sell both men’s and women’s
vintage. We have some great women’s leather
jackets right now. Cool bags. Brittney is very
creative—she’s always making new things. Es-
pecially on the women’s side. We have a lot of
summer stuff in there right now. And in the
future we definitely have some new products
that we are trying to release right now. A few
new items, like a jacket we’ve been kicking
around for a while. Hopefully by fall it’ll be
done. There’s a lot of stuff, but since we do
pretty much everything one at a time by hand,
it’s like a factory.
VISIT BLACKBOARD CAFÉ AT 1286
SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. BLACK-
BOARDLOSANGELES.COM.
75
PUNK IN AFRICA
Interview by Justin Maurer
Illustration by Walt! Gorecki

Punk In Africa is a new documentary covering the history of the punk scene in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. In 1979, with
Apartheid in full swing in South Africa, this made being in a punk band more or less illegal. Many punk bands were not only commenting
on the political situation, but some also had both black and white members, which was not only taboo but against Apartheid law. Being in
a punk band could not only get one beaten, detained or arrested, but anyone who was considered big enough of a threat was under a very
real risk of kidnapping or death. Bands like Suck, Wild Youth and National Wake defied authorities and cranked out some excellent, balls-
out punk rock. Punk In Africa—by directors Keith Jones and Deon Maas and producer Jeffrey Brown—is the only film covering African punk
rock. It was a difficult project to undertake, as both Jones and Brown were living in Prague and using Maas as their South African diplomat.
After multiple trips to Africa, hundreds of hours of interview footage and material from historic archives was compiled and edited, and Brown
managed to secure enough financing to give this grassroots film a worldwide circuit. An expanded interview will post on larecord.com.

Why did Punk in Africa need to be made?
Keith Jones (director): Punk in Africa just natu-
rally suggested itself to be made, as the story
was virtually unknown. It had not even been
researched, and the music was completely un-
attainable. Today, after the success of the film,
there are numerous articles about the proj-
ect but also the bands and the African punk
history—it has been covered in Rolling Stone,
the music has been reissued both in South
Africa and internationally, and the context is
completely different. This feels like the most
valid reason for making the film—simply to
give exposure to an untold story and challenge
people’s perceptions and preconceived no-
tions, which seems to be the point of any good
documentary. Not just to educate but to be a
little provocative and challenging.
Jeffrey Brown (producer): There was a great
story that hadn’t been told. Having seen a lot
of other punk films, we realized many bands
went unremembered and unnoticed, even in
Africa. As a filmmaker you want to tell an
untold story, and this was a diamond in the
rough.
How did punk initially arrive in South Afri-
ca, Mozambique and Zimbabwe? How did
folks there catch wind of what was going on
in the U.S. and the U.K. at the time?
JB: It depends on who you ask. People were
aware of the Clash. People, especially whites,
were able to travel and bring music back to
South Africa. NME and other U.K. music
magazines were available there. But it also had
its own origin and organically grew up there.
Most filmmakers would have interviewed
Mick Jones, Don Letts or Henry Rollins, and
had them say something about it, but to us
it seemed cheap—we could have had any of
those but decided just to let African punk
speak for itself.
KJ: The general feeling we had in making the
film was that, outside of the First World, punk
happens when and how it needs to depend-
ing on the local conditions. Not only in Africa
in the past, but in the late period of the So-
viet Union in Russia or today in Burma and
Indonesia. Alternative music and subcultures
can have a small but profound impact in so-
cieties like that, and that is something we
tried to present in the film—that it really did
matter as something more than simply a fash-
ion choice. It was legitimately political in the
Southern African context, and to some extent
still is. The first thing is that the ‘60s’ never re-
ally happened in those three countries—they
were the last bastions of European colonial-
ism so they missed the African independence
movement of the 60s and all of the great ex-
pressions of identity through music which that
era spawned. But due to censorship and social
conservatism, they missed out on the Western
counterculture and youth movements also. So
when punk arrived via U.K. music newspapers
and so on in the mid-70s, there was really a
pent-up need for that. And in South Africa,
the DIY aspect and being able to sing in one’s
own accent about local concerns was incred-
ibly liberating under the circumstances. In
Mozambique in the 80s, rock music was an
escape from the endless civil war that went on
for decades, and allowed for a very local ex-
pression of identity that was completely alter-
native. In Zimbabwe, politics and music have
always gone together, and it’s really a country
in which art and opinions remain dangerous
and even taboo, so the punk attitude can obvi-
ously find a space to occupy within that. To-
day, the internet makes access to information
incredibly easy but even that is difficult and to
some extent controlled there.
Punk arrived in South Africa simultaneous
to the Soweto Uprising. What role did mu-
sic—punk specifically—have in the various
revolutions and upheavals?
KJ: Punk was the first form of alternative mu-
sic to arrive in South Africa that really also
challenged people to think and ask questions,
so it had a small but genuine impact on how
young people at the time felt about their real-
ity. At the same time, the Soweto Uprising—
which occurred totally outside of traditional
liberation movements or any ideological back-
ground—had a similar impulse within society.
And there was also huge awareness of reggae
in Southern Africa, which is also a form of
music that merges a philosophy of liberation
and struggle with a DIY aesthetic, and which
had connections to the international punk
scene anyway. All of those things had special
and specific reverberations in South Africa in
the 70s and later also in Mozambique. The
main thing was to cause people to think dif-
ferently, and those societies were so closed and
conformist at that time that even this simple
thing had a truly radical impact. At the end of
the day, a real revolution isn’t caused by music.
However, music and alternative lifestyles can
play a huge role in helping create the condi-
tions for people to start thinking as an outsider
about how to approach things and how to
conceive of society in a different manner, and
that should not be underestimated even if it is
not strictly ‘political’ in the larger sense.
What kind of challenges did early punks in
Africa face?
KJ: Communal living was extremely difficult
to do in South Africa at that time, especially if
it involved mixing of the races against the laws
of that regime, as was the case with bands like
National Wake and KOOS. Many of the ven-
ues also fell foul of this and it really marginal-
ized that whole scene, even in Johannesburg.
There was also a certain degree of political
harassment from the authorities, especially in
the 80s when some of the bands specifically
mentioned in the film, like the Genuines and
Kalahari Surfers, crossed over into the actual
political arena. The first punk tour of South
Africa in 1979 fell apart in Cape Town due to
racial laws. The Durban hardcore scene was
better known in Europe than at home due
to press censorship and police repression of
gigs. And on top of that, life was difficult and
strange and highly politicized in that context
to begin with—and involved making a lot of
moral choices as soon as you stopped turning
a blind eye to things around you. South Africa
was also involved in illegal border wars at that
time and so military conscription was a serious
issue, and was the turning point for a lot of
young South Africans to openly question their
role in society. Punk did help this process.
In another interview, Keith and Deon
[Maas, co-director] say that ‘nobody got tear
gassed or detained in the Western world’s
punk scene.’ Here in Los Angeles in the ear-
ly 1980s, the LAPD was notorious for beat-
ing, tear gassing and detaining attendees of
punk rock shows. How did participants in
Africa’s punk scene face even more danger
than an L.A. punk in 1980?
JB: You were going to get harassed in Africa.
The house that National Wake lived in, the
cops showed up whenever they wanted. Even
if you were a punk in L.A. at the time, you
wouldn’t have cops showing up at your house
just for white guys living with black guys, or
black guys living with white guys. I’m not say-
ing L.A. punks in the 80s weren’t harassed, but
it was nothing near the level that people went
through with the regimes in Africa at the time.
Punks as a whole were under a risk of being
harassed by cops, that’s just a given.
KJ: The harassment of the early 80s hard-
core scene in Los Angeles is well-known and
of course worthy of enormous respect, but I
think the context is different. In Los Angeles
the heavy-handed repression of the early 80s
punk scene seems to have really stemmed
from the lawlessness of the police force, and
therefore can be placed in a local context of
police brutality against youth movements and
subcultures dating back to the zoot suit riots,
if not even before—and certainly at that time
the local folklore would still have remembered
Watts and the role of the police in suppress-
ing local manifestations of the counterculture,
whether it was Beats and the Central Avenue
jazz scene, the L.A. Black Panthers or the anti-
war movement. And while there is definitely a
political subtext to any and all of those things,
most of the excessive attitudes seem to have
stemmed from the behavior of the local po-
lice. In Southern Africa, the police repression
was just one means of enforcing actual state
policy—the beating and tear gassing was not
unique to the punk scene but was a fact of
daily life in those days. This was also just the
most openly violent aspect of a general security
apparatus that was run by the state rather than
local authorities, and so also involved suppres-
sion of the mail, tapping people’s telephones,
press censorship and even segregation on the
state-controlled media on the radio and televi-
sion. So the entire way in which the oppres-
sion operated was much broader and deeper.
But a riot is still a riot no matter where it hap-
pens and police brutality is exactly that—and
should be resisted, full-stop.
Many of the musicians in your film could
have been jailed or even killed for playing
in a subversive or mixed-race band during
various repressive regimes. How did this
make the music even more powerful?
KJ: Many of the bands featured in the film
involved subversive ideas or mixed-race mem-
bers, and virtually all of them embody some

76 FILM
form of multi-culturalism either in terms of
mixing languages, styles of music or musicians
from different cultural backgrounds, even
apart from race. All of these things made those
bands a very dangerous proposition in the old
days. And so the music reflected that, but not
always as pure protest or anger—a lot of the
music is actually quite positive about those
identity issues rather than simply taking up
positions against specific issues. Even relatively
non-political bands like Wild Youth reflected
that in their lyrics and the locations they chose
to perform in. A lot of the explicitly political
bands may have gone so far as to embrace the
imagery of actual terrorism and militant resis-
tance, but even bands like National Wake or
Power Age also stressed mostly positive ideas
about identity, self-awareness, educating one-
self, and the desire for a non-racial society. So
that combined with the energy and intensity
of punk and the spirit of the times made a lot
of that music incredibly powerful—those guys
really walked the walk even though it could be
dangerous.
How did indigenous music in Africa impact
and influence African punk musicians?
KJ: Growing up in Africa it is impossible not
to absorb some influence and awareness of
local indigenous music no matter what your
background is. Rock music in Southern Af-
rica has incorporated elements of local African
music dating back to the late 1950s, and also
expressed itself in local languages like Afri-
kaans and Zulu as well as English. In terms of
the punk scene specifically, in the film you see
actual demonstrations of how these things fit
together by several diverse musicians—Ivan
Kadey from National Wake, Warrick Sony
from Kalahari Surfers and Mac McKenzie
from the Genuines. All of those guys come
from different and very divergent backgrounds
but they all picked up on various ways of how
local indigenous sounds can be incorporated
into rock forms. And of course at that time all
of that had a strongly political dimension, and
was itself a strong statement. But incorporat-
ing the different local rhythms of music like
goema (the Genuines, Hog Hoggidy Hog),
marrabenta (340ml) or chimurenga (the Zim-
babwean bands) is also a way of expressing lo-
cal identity, which is hugely important within
the African punk scenes. A lot of this also fits
very easily with ska and reggae, which are
probably even more prominent in the punk
scenes in Southern Africa than elsewhere, so
all of that plays a part. Punk bands have shared
stages with local indigenous music in Africa
dating back to the Free People’s Concerts in
the 1970s, and there was always a mutual in-
fluence. At some periods—like the mid-80s in
South Africa, or the mid-90s in South Africa
and Mozambique, or today in Zimbabwe—
that surfaced even more strongly due to what
was happening around in society, whether as
protest or celebration, or even just local patrio-
tism. All of these ideas are also expressed on-
screen by numerous musicians in the film.
Do the newer bands around today know
and respect the struggle and history of their
punk forefathers in Africa?
KJ: For the most part, there was virtually no
awareness of the prior bands and scenes before
the film came out, but there has been this in-
credible opening up from both sides to each
78
other as a result—we see this at virtually every
screening, even abroad. And this works both
ways—there is much more respect from the
elders towards what is happening now as well.
That has been one of the most satisfying as-
pects of the great response to the film. In gen-
eral though, there is a lack of awareness of the
recent past among young people in all three of
the countries.
The first hour of your documentary was
dedicated to the history of the South Afri-
can punk scene, and the remaining twenty
minutes to Mozambique and Zimbabwe—
with a brief overview of bands in a few other
countries. Why not call the film ‘Punk In
South Africa’ and focus on one country?
KJ: The political histories of those three coun-
tries between 1970 and today are incredibly
interwoven with each other due to the fact
that they really were the last colonized nations
in Africa—along with neighboring Angola,
which has a slightly different cultural back-
ground but is nonetheless also connected. Our
original idea was to focus more on just South
Africa, but it became apparent early on in the
process that the story moved across borders as
well as time, and that it would be unfair to not
address that. South Africa is of course the re-
gional power and a much bigger country, and
exerts tremendous influence on the other two
countries, but many people from Zimbabwe
and Mozambique also live in South Africa,
and as a result form part of the local punk
scene, as well as most art scenes in general—
they are a minority but are always present. The
story just naturally follows that direction. Also,
these three countries are the most multi-racial
and multi-cultural societies in Africa, and as a
result they share a lot of features in common.
Perhaps the most controversial line in the
film is when a member of Hog Hoggidy
Hog, a white South African of Dutch de-
scent says, ‘I’m not gonna, like, say it’s my
fault and have all of this guilt and say, “‘I’m
not really African,” because you know what,
like I actually am.’ As a native-born Ameri-
can I would call myself American, but as
I am of European descent, I’d consider
the only ‘real’ Americans the indigenous
ones—the Native American Indians. Obvi-
ously, a filmmaker tries to be impartial, but
do you think a Dutch South African has the
right to claim himself just as African as in-
digenous Africans?
JB: The point is that there are white people in
Africa. That’s just a fact. To take your compari-
son a step further, would white Americans not
call themselves Americans? Give me a break.
White people live in Africa just like the blacks
and I think that’s his whole point. I think peo-
ple assume that they are open-minded to the
world, but certain African film festivals reject-
ed our film more or less for having ‘too many
white guys.’ But there are white Africans! That
is his whole point. He feels African.
KJ: First of all, that musician, trumpet player
Lee Thomson, is actually of directly Scottish
ancestry—his parents were born in Glasgow
and he speaks Scottish dialect with his mother
to this day. However, he was born in South
Africa and also has family connections in Bo-
tswana. That statement is for me not contro-
versial at all because he immediately follows it
up with an explanation of how he was raised by
his stepmother, who is a famous black South
African jazz musician, and he mentions how
township jazz played a big role in his upbring-
ing and his sense of where he fits in society. I
think this is also a key to understanding the
jazz element in the horn section of Hog Hog-
gidy Hog, as that directly complements all the
pondering of African identity and multi-racial
themes in South African society in their lyrics.
That band is really of the Mandela generation
and fully embrace ‘Africanness’ as something
different from just race, which is why that
is so prominent in the film. I don’t think he
would have any issue with your statement
about ‘real’ Americans and would clearly feel
the same way about his local culture. These
things are never very far from the surface in
South African music—that band also works
pretty extensively with goema, which is a form
of Cape Malay carnival music that also reflects
the partial roots of Southern African multi-
culturalism in Asia. Personally, I am down
with the Freedom Charter of 1955, which
states from the very outset that South Africa is
made up of and belongs to all those who live
in it, regardless of race or language. Virtually
everyone in Mozambique is of mixed ancestry,
and more or less every white Zimbabwean I
have met, including those in the film, is fluent
in at least one indigenous language. From my
European perspective, it is difficult to see these
people as belonging to any other society than
Southern Africa, and certainly European au-
diences don’t perceive any of the cultures pre-
sented in the film as being European, much as
how they similarly perceive Americans or Aus-
tralians—these are just places that have their
own culture and identity regardless of where
somebody’s ancestors may have come from. A
side note to this: nobody in Africa—not even
in West Africa where a lot of Afrikaners work
these days—would refer to Afrikaans culture
as being ‘Dutch’ apart from some very vague
staring point, much as nobody feels the need
to trace the Zulus back to their time lving next
to the Swahili culture in East Africa before
their migration. The whole point of Afrikaans
identity—for an Afrikaner—is that they delib-
erately broke off from the Dutch [i.e. the Cape
Colony] and moved into Africa to form their
own tribal identity in the wild. As a result,
their culture today shares more in common
with the Zulu culture than it does with the
ancestral Netherlands, especially in terms of
family structure, ties to land, role of religion,
social conservatism and so on—it really is a
‘tribal’ identity which only makes real sense in
its local context. All of this is explored to some
degree in the film but in a very minor way—it
seemed important to include it, but it was also
something we didn’t feel the need to dwell on
as there are numerous excellent documentaries
that already deal with that, and it is also some-
thing that is complicated to go into.
It seems that people in Africa are more
prone to identifying with reggae and ska as
opposed to punk—a white-centric musical
form of expression and rebellion that came
from the U.S. and U.K. There were very
few black punk bands—Bad Brains and
DEATH being two notable exceptions and
a few punk bands—Scream, Dead Kenne-
dys, the Chiefs—had black members. Most
of the people in your film interviewed and
participating in African punk bands seemed
to be from European descent, and the bands
who had more of a reggae and ska influence
had more black African members. Is this
true?
KJ: This is perhaps partly skewed because
of who we feature onscreen—we simply
chose to interview the most compelling and
well-spoken member of most of the bands,
or in some cases the surviving ones. So sev-
eral bands may be represented by a white
spokesperson in the film for various reasons,
but still been a pretty multi-racial band in
terms of their music as well as the individu-
als in the band. We also mostly were inter-
ested in bands that explored a specifically
African identity in their music but through
punk, rather than bands closer to U.S. or
U.K. models. That was the main criterion
that we focused on—how punk subculture
and African identity could meet in this al-
ternative space. The racial dynamic in the
punk scene is also a little different than in
mainstream society in these countries, even
now. But certainly someone like Ivan Kadey
or Warrick Sony or George Bacon from
Hog Hoggidy Hog are all just as close to
reggae as a source of inspiration. The reggae
and ska influence is just more pervasive and
suitable to the local scene, something com-
mented on by many musicians in the film,
black and white. Even the straight hardcore
bands, like Power Age or Screaming Foetus,
often played with reggae DJs, which can be
glimpsed even on the flyers we scanned for
the film—it has always been there, and the
ideas expressed are similar to begin with.
Reggae explicitly focuses on the notion of
Africa as a kind of spiritual yearning but also
defiance, so it of course has different rever-
berations there than in the U.S., or even im-
migrant communities in the U.K.
What advice would you give to other film-
makers hoping to reveal buried treasure in
another part of the world?
KJ: The same advice Don Letts gave me—a
good idea attempted is better than a bad idea
perfected. The success of Searching for Sugar-
man shows how far a dream and a good story
can take you, even with limited resources. The
main thing for me is always research—good
and thorough research is not only about get-
ting the facts straight but also getting to know
people and how a society functions, how
people enjoy themselves, what themes stand
out in their local literature. This applies to ar-
chive footage and music as well as just simple
historical chronology. From this point of view
Africa is a gold mine—which it literally is any-
way, but also another story—and the amount
of undiscovered treasures are virtually limitless.
This is no doubt true in many if not all parts
of the world—the story is never only in the
telling, but in the discovery itself. I would tell
anyone to go for it—and I would buy their
film or go to see it just on principle. I support
documentaries anyway but I will always have
time for anyone with an approach like that.
Just go and do it, and enjoy every moment
even through all the difficulties. It is worth it.
THE PUNK IN AFRICA DVD IS AVAIL-
ABLE NOW FROM PUNKINAFRICA.
COM.
FILM