haze xxl

Tom Hazelmyer is HAZE-XXL, the printmaker who finds the high-contrast overlap between Otto Dix and Jack Kirby, but he’s also the founder of Amphetamine Reptile, the Midwest label that defined more a mentality than a sound with bands like the Melvins, Helmet and Hammerhead each burning their silhouette into the American landscape. (He’s also a coma survivor who can write backwards as naturally as he writes forwards.) On June 8, he’ll be helming the ‘Post-Moral Neanderthal Retardist Pornography’ show at Subliminal Projects, to be followed by a total-blowout show at the Echoplex. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

What’s the best thing you traded one of your own AmRep rarities for?
I did that at the beginning of the label. There were a handful of Dangerhouse things I could never lay my hands on. Back then, if you found ’em, they were never collector price. But you just couldn’t find ’em! In Seattle, I scored some of it. I traded for that and one or two Misfits singles. I could never score that ‘Halloween’ single! The one I had the hugest hard-on for was the Weirdos. I had a stick up my ass about the West Coast in general when I was a kid. I got turned on to the whole punk rock thing in ’78 and it was all East Coast and England. When I heard of punk rock in L.A.—literally as a pre-teen—it was like, ‘How good could it be? They got palm trees and beaches. Fuck you. Blow me.’ It’s gotta be New York or that grimy London thing. Finally a friend of mine in Minneapolis—when the Germs came out—was like, ‘Listen to this. No, really—listen to this.’ And then it was like … ‘Holy fuck.’ When I first got to Seattle, one of the U-Men really schooled me on all the West Coast stuff I blew by.
I feel like so much awesome West Coast punk never got recorded—people were waiting for another Dickies-style major-label deal that wasn’t gonna come.
That’s why I quit doing my label the first time! During the whole Nirvana-Helmet thing, I’d be like, ‘Have you listened to yourself? I love what you’re doing but you’re not fucking Nirvana,’ I remember commenting at the time—talking with the Cows, the old farts at 29. At the beginning, there was no brass ring. Fucking period. Maybe you’d be the Replacements or Hüsker Dü in your wildest dreams. You’d quit your day job, but maybe still work weekends at the record store. You could leave town, do shows, put out records. The fucking zenith. That’s why I quit in ’98. The writing was on the wall. The overall average sales … like 2,500 copies for an unknown band, and you’re watching it go down and down and everyone’s facing the same thing. So … ‘Fuck this. This is bullshit, I’m gone.’
Now everything is an art object—the Melvins and you are both really good at that.
Me and Buzz have been working on that for a long time together, and it really solidified when I shut down the label for all intents and purposes. ‘This has become a job—I’m quitting this job.’ He can sum it up far better than anyone. But just recently, they’d done a vinyl version of Nude With Boots—unlimited, no big deal, 10 bucks. And they’d sell three or four a night. But first time they did The Bride Screamed Murder with the letterpress and this that and the other, he was like, ‘I sold 75 in one night.’ That proves the crybabies wrong. What people want is something super-specialized and handmade and touched by the band, not something cranked out in a plant in Korea. That’s the future. And I don’t have a problem with it. The music’s fucking free. When a record leaves this office, within 48 hours it’s online for free. So we’ll put it out ourselves for free—
—along with something people can’t download?
It’s an object, and all the objects I remember from music … the Weirdos being masters! It was a fucking piece of art. Or the Replacements’ Stink. Even at the moment watching it, I was like … fucking genius. You saved a shitload of money shipping them in white sleeves and now you’re sitting around drunk stamping the shit out of them, and it looks cool as fuck.
You’ve said that the early years of AmRep were a crash-course in the ‘Fifteen Minute’ school of design. Do you miss that?
It’s the yin/yang. Some of it, you look back and get the shivers at how bad it was. Others, ‘Man, I fucking nailed it!’ Most of us were schooling ourselves, too. I had to learn the printing process. I’ve been using Photoshop for twenty years and I don’t think I ever added an external filter! I don’t have a problem with them, but I’ve never just exhausted the internal options. I never hit the wall. Always back in the day, I resented when people would have to put certain frills on a package—‘Man, just use the palette you’re given and make that look fucking cool.’ Versus a CD with like a fuzzy cover … Jesus Christ! But now I’m getting off on the furry covered jacket!
When you started AmRep, what did you want everything to look like?
I’d never wanna intellectualize it to begin with, but at the end of the day, all art or graphics is … ‘Do you like it? Or do you not?’ Lord knows museums are packed with shit where people talked themselves into liking it. ’77 punk and hardcore and post-punk, there was never a graphic stereotype—well, I guess hardcore had the xerox action cuz that’s what was available. Ten years ago, I saw one of the most hilarious things I’d seen in a long time—this DJ guy specialized in kinda recent hardcore and I was going through his stack and I didn’t recognize a single fucking band, and I pulled five or six singles and I was laughing! ‘Look at this—they went through all the trouble to make this look like rub-off lettering!’ Slightly cockeyed but not extremely cockeyed. If any one of us had access to a computer back then, we woulda fucking used that shit! It was necessity. Sitting down to make a flyer—‘Ah, fuck! I gotta make more Es!’ So flip the F over and double it up. ‘SHIT! I need another sheet for more As!’ Now it’s like, ‘I gotta find my punk rock flyer font.’ If you have a copy of Halo of Flies’ Headburn, look at the back—that’s all rub-off. That’s right before computers and I wanted shit to look CLEAN. I’m sitting there for five days. Right now you’d assume ‘BADA BING BADA BOOM!’ On a computer! DONE! All rub-off. When the computer came out within a year or two of that, I was beside myself. When I got the first Mac—that cost me $3000 with a 4-inch screen—I was so stoked. Seven or eight fonts! Type it out, print it! I shared an office with Twin/Tone and they had this really sweet printer with no matrix dots, so I’d print out ‘HALO OF FLIES’ and cut it out and paste it into my hand-laid-out two-color sets. During AmRep’s early days, there were all the crusty punks who were like, ‘Those guys are a bunch of rich fuckers.’ Cuz the shit looked good! ‘You guys are all loaded!’ ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘Oh, it looks good, and you couldn’t make it look good unless you hired someone.’ ‘Fuck you!’
This show is all about Retardism—is there any connection to Billy Childish and the art movement Stuckism?
Retardism is more of a good cover. Everyone buys into it if it’s a movement, and it’s more ‘God, this shit’s fucking retarded.’ It’s not quite outsider cuz we’re not that naïve, but it’s kind of stunted. It was more a playful thing than any serious thing. People love fucking labels. And with the woodcut stuff of late, there’s no mistakes. Like two things got chucked. I’d be against the deadline—‘THIS HAS TO BE DONE. I HAVE TO USE IT. I DON’T CARE HOW IT CAME OUT.’ Well … that’s retardism!
What’s your favorite piece of art that isn’t officially regarded as art?
For years, if I was arguing with somebody who’d try and overintellectualize art … I smoked Lucky Strikes for years and I’d hold up the pack and go, ‘That’s fucking art!’ And then I found out Raymond Loewy had designed it—this world-famous fucking genius. ‘Oh, that actually makes sense.’ But with music, that was it: Jamie Reid and a lot of the English stuff looks so good. Buzzcocks sleeves. It’d give me as big a rush as the tunes would. When the Cows brought that Kozik poster from Texas—I still have it. Kevin the bassist ripped it off a telephone pole, which makes it way better to me. Fred Flintstone shooting up! ‘Holy fuck, this is amazing!’ I instantly tracked him down—lovefest. We had a guy in AmRep who did silkscreen printing in-house, and we made posters as a side thing. It wasn’t really about ‘the history of silkscreening’ or whatever. But talking to Kozik, he was like, ‘Man, I was just doing xerox and then I got your posters.’ And he took it miles past what we were doing.
Why were you in the same place with music where all these artists were with their art? Why were you guys all so naturally ready to work with each other?
The whole word ‘art’ … I’d punch it in the face for years. All it meant to me was a rock hanging off a string in a museum, and a one-colored monotone canvas. To my mind, that was art, and that was bullshit. The whole art world had completely shut itself to fucktons of talent. Like guys in the comic book world—guys that woulda been fine artists but they didn’t have that option. ‘So I’m gonna be an illustrator. Or I’ll make punk rock record covers.’ If the art world hadn’t been hijacked by these bullshit closed-door policies … and then there were all these people on the same trip of, ‘We’re not making art—we’re just making shit look good.’ And we all had warped senses of humor. That’s why Coop and Kozik were all in line with AmRep. But it wasn’t until Billy Shire put on the first Kozik show … I literally went to L.A. just to see this. ‘Wait, we can actually call this art? No shit? Art can be fucking good?’ Chris Mars, his shit was amazing and he couldn’t get a show to save his life. A guy like Coop wasn’t gonna get a fucking break.
What made you able to instantly recognize this as something special when other people just blew it off?
I’m a narcissistic sociopath who doesn’t give a fuck if anyone doesn’t like me?
I also would have taken ‘self-confidence.’
‘I like it, it’s fucking good, I’ll shove it down your throat. Fuck off, get out of my way.’
Now there’s not just an ‘AmRep sound’ but an ‘AmRep’ look. Does that make sense to you?
No, that never did. At its peak, it really rubbed me the wrong way. In my mind, there was no difference between Slayer, the Birthday Party and Hüsker Dü. Good music that kicks you in the balls, which is what I wanted. I was a hardcore kid for certain. But the moment it got cookie cutter … at first, I thought it was genius. Like the Meat Puppets—the Meat Puppets were a hardcore band!
What do you see now as the ‘children’ of AmRep? What’s out there that you know traces back to you?
That’s another yin/yang. Sometimes it’s a point of pride. Sometimes the flipside … think about all the neo-Helmet bands that were just fucking foul. The Limp Bizkit syndrome. ‘You gotta answer for that.’ ‘No, I don’t!’
What drew you to printmaking? These remind me of the German Expressionists—Otto Dix, Max Pechstein …
Jon Spencer was out here and saw the first couple posters and was like, ‘You gotta go to MOMA!’ And—aw, Jesus, this is fucking great! Otto Dix, that whole school. Käthe Kollwitz—her shit blows me away. The print stuff came more from the post-coma. It was a double whammy. One part was right before the coma. I was making shit look really dirty and fucked-up on the computer and I was like, ‘What the fuck am I doing? It’d be easier to make it by hand—kick it across the floor, smear some shit on it and scan it.’ I was burning out on the same computer I’d been so stoked on in the first place—twenty years later, sterility was taking its toll. I wanted to get my hands on something. After I was sick, I had a bunch of brain damage because I was in a coma for a month. They were saying, ‘You need to do Sudoku puzzles.’ ‘Fuck you.’ My daughter had carving stuff she had to do, and I started to fuck around with it. To me it’s not really art unless you actually made something. I wanted to prove I could draw something if I had to, and I did the first couple carves and took to it like a fish to water. And I’ve been going nuts with it ever since!
How do you start the carves?
I just sit down and work. On early ones I learned heavily on Jack Kirby—riffing. Versus complete rip! It got so insane before he died—he got more and more out there the older he got. I love that. When I was a little kid, I hated Kirby with a passion. I wanted to see the Spectre kill people and I’d pick up Kirby’s stuff like, ‘Goddammit, he’s doing Captain America and it’s gonna get all weird—the guy can’t draw a normal gun!’ I’d literally say, ‘It’s like fucking art!’ Now I love it … because it’s fucking art.
How did the coma affect being creative?
My brain was so scrambled that when I started thinking in reverse to do the carves … the alphabet had gotten loosened in my head and it really came natural to do it all backwards. I could write a note backwards as fast as I could forwards. It’d all been shaken up. My wife gives me shit because I’d write her a note and it’d be backwards. See, when you haven’t gone through it, you think in terms like going blind or deaf—‘Oh, I notice I’m blind!’ The thing that’s fucked up is when you have brain damage, you don’t KNOW you’re fucked up! You don’t have the capacity to know. It’s like trying to explain to someone with an IQ of 85 what they’re missing. For two years I thought I was fine. Then I’d look back like, ‘HOLY SHIT! I was a mess then!’
What did the doctors say about all these HAZE-XXL prints?
I never went back! I went to one therapy session and was like, ‘Fuck this shit—I’ll do it myself.’ Being a stubborn prick paid off.
How much of the show is post-coma?
All of it. There’s stuff that goes back a previous couple shows. About making it therapeutic—I’d set up a show every six months to push it so hard. It totally helped me out. A different doctor said a majority of people … see, the atrophy, people don’t know what that entails. Not only was I in a coma for a month, but the lung infection and the pulmonary embolisms and shit … so they had to keep me down, and all my muscles were 100 percent flaccid. There was no tension whatsoever. It felt like the morning after your worst workout ever—24/7. Squared. Even your fingers hurt. It happens a hell of a lot faster than anyone thinks. Your body just falls apart. I was constantly pushing to get past that. The doctor said most people hit that wall and are like, ‘Fuck it.’ They’ll sit on the couch with a speech impediment and a funny walk and never recover.
Have you earned access to any super-potent coma jokes?
The only joke ever: ‘That musta been really tough.’ ‘Wasn’t tough for me, man—I wasn’t there.’ It was tough for my wife, when they told her every three days I was dead. For me, I just went to bed one night and woke up a month later going, ‘What the fuck?’ Don’t get meningitis and encephalitis.

L.A. RECORD AND BLUNDERTOWN PRESENT ‘POST-MORAL NEANDERTHAL RETARDIST PORNOGRAPHY’ WITH ART BY HAZE-XXL, GRANT HART, SHEPARD FAIREY, CAMILLE ROSE GARCIA, MATH.I AND MORE, PLUS PERFORMANCES BY MEMBERS OF THE MELVINS, HAMMERHEAD, HALO OF FLIES AND MORE ON FRI., JUN. 8, AT SUBLIMINAL PROJECTS, 1331 W. SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 7 PM / FREE / ALL AGES. SUBLIMINALPROJECTS.COM. AND L.A. RECORD AND BLUNDERTOWN PRESENT THE POST-POST-BASH WITH HAMMERHEAD, HELIOS CREED, GAY WITCH ABORTION, SEAWHORES AND HEPA/TITUS ON FRI., JUN. 8, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8 PM / $12-$16 / 21+. ATTHEECHO.COM. VISIT HAZE-XXL AT HAZEXXL.COM.