George Harrison – Brainwashed
Bob Dylan – Modern Times
Beck – Sea Change
Dramarama – Everybody Dies
The Stooges – The Weirdness
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Jorma Kaukonen – Blue Country Heart
The Dandy Warhols – Welcome to the Monkey House
Neil Young – Prairie Wind
Foo Fighters – Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace

-Mark Englert

(from When The Devil’s Loose out now on Fat Possum)

On the way from his old band, Verbena, to playing solo under his birth name, A.A. Bondy watched a lot of movies and a few meteor showers in between watching movies, and finally in 2007 he recorded his first album in a barn near his house. His newest, When the Devil’s Loose, is out now on Fat Possum. This interview by Dan Collins.

Your songs seem to be a little on the dark side. You sing about vampires and the Devil. Where does that come from?
A.A. Bondy: Those can be as literal or not literal as one wants them to be, you know what I mean? That’s the way I look at that stuff. It’s just like if you slam your finger in the door and say ‘Jesus Christ,’ are you actually talking about Jesus? Or could you just as easily have said ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’?
Are these happy songs at all for you?
A.A. Bondy: The listener’s on the other side of the fence than I am. I don’t get to hear it like that. I don’t know what kind of things people get from listening to that stuff. I mean, I like music to be joy—pure expressions of joy—but at the same time, there’s also something about expressions of whatever … hardship or pain or whatever! I don’t think about any of those things before they start. They just come out the way they come out. It’s impossible for me to know what anybody’s ever going to make of it on the other end. The most I can hope for is that it did something to me in a way, and that maybe it will do something to somebody else in a similar way. But then again—how many songs are there out there that you don’t realize how dark the lyrics are because the music situation is something else?
Do you consider yourself a folk artist or an artist who brings things from folk to your music?
A.A. Bondy: I don’t know what ‘folk’ means. Maybe ‘folk’ implies some kind of ‘regular people’ connotation to it. I guess all people are regular people. I don’t know how to deal with all that stuff. I’m kind of against branding myself. I mean, I hang a guitar around my neck and have a harmonica on a rack like a folk musician. But Neil Young does that. Jeff Tweedy does that. I guess probably both of them could be called folk acts at some point. I don’t know. More than anything, I like to leave myself some room in case I feel like doing something else.
Todd Gitlin once said that indigenous folk culture separated regions, but it united the generations within each town or holler or neck-of-the-woods. Whereas pop culture, especially pop music, does the opposite—it can unite a generation across the world, but it stratifies the generations so that the parents don’t understand what their kids are listening to and vice versa.
A.A. Bondy: That’s true for everything, culturally. The world was smaller—I’m not being naive about that—but there’s probably a lot of those people who never left those hollers or whatever even up to the ’20s or ’30s. Whereas somebody like Bob Dylan, who’s twenty years after that, was able to move to New York and affect people who lived in the Dust Bowl, you know what I mean? There’s an upside and a downside to all that stuff. An 11-year-old kid can find a Skip James record on iTunes right now. Twenty years ago it’d be a little bit harder. I don’t know how all that stuff works. Basically what you’re saying is that there aren’t any movements developing independently of each other anywhere?
There are. But I guess my question would be—do you see yourself in the legacy more of that type of folk, where you’re learning from your peers who are older than you, not necessarily geographically but …
A.A. Bondy: I mean, I’ll eat whatever’s in front of me that looks like it tastes good. The folk thing—there’s many parts of it that I like, but there are songs on this record I feel are more like Otis Redding or something. It’s similar to like a complete omnivore, like Prince. To say what Prince sounds like … Prince sounds like Prince, but Prince is just like an amalgamation—a brilliant one—of James Brown, the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. And Parliament. And all this other stuff. Some people are content, like Chuck Berry, to play the same songs the same way their whole lives, and then there’s people like Radiohead or whatever who loathe staying in one spot and doing the same thing twice. I don’t play guitar like I did five years ago cuz I don’t find that interesting anymore. I don’t know if I’m answering your question or not.
I don’t know, but keep talking!
A.A. Bondy: It’s hard to say. We don’t know how any of this shit’s really going to turn out as far as people’s access to information, especially from a musical standpoint. To my ears, those people are a lot more proficient musically: better singers, better players. It’s a less varied thing that they were working on, but they had way less distractions to pull them away from getting good.
Choosing to write a song within a specific genre—and sticking to those conventions—can actually free you up to get creative.
A.A. Bondy: That’s the thing about the last record. A lot of those songs—especially the ones that are just guitar and vocals—are taken from very worn-in templates of other things. I was learning at the time, and it was exciting to do something that had been done, but it was new to me. I don’t know if anybody ever comes up with anything completely new that’s not built on the back of something else, but the best things start out on a point and carry that thing to a new or interesting place.
Your old band, Verbena, was definitely doing something different than what you’re doing now as A.A. Bondy. Was it an immediate night-and-day change? Or was it a more subtle change for you?
A.A. Bondy: It wasn’t really like day into night, because the day took three years to turn into night, or vice versa. To anybody else, if you put those records up back to back, you could think that. But I think there’s examples on all three of those Verbena records that you could trace from what I am now to what I was doing then. The majority of it you couldn’t, but I think there’s still like a little kernel of it in there somewhere.
What were you doing during that three-year sunset or sunrise?
A.A. Bondy: Living in the woods, watching movies, digging holes, stuff like that. Watching meteor showers.
Why the name change? Your first name used to be listed as ‘Scott.’
A.A. Bondy: My legal name is Auguste Arthur Bondy. And ‘Scott’ is just kind of like a nickname I was called since I was a child. I don’t know … that’s my name and I liked it. I didn’t think ‘Scott’ had a very good ring to it. It’s the same thing with songs. I just like to do things until they feel right, and that felt like the right thing to do at the time. I don’t think I attached any great weight to it or anything like that.
You also use it as the handle for your music now, even though you seem to have a stable lineup of musicians that you play and record with. Was there a reason you decided to call the project ‘A.A. Bondy’ instead of having a band name and advertising the thing as a band?
A.A. Bondy: I just didn’t really feel like getting involved in situations that come with most bands, which is having to be somewhat responsible for each other. Being on your own affords you a lot of room to change directions. I didn’t want to be in a band anymore. It just seemed like over time—I was at fault for a lot of the downside of that—I just didn’t like it anymore. I like playing with people a whole lot! All the players on this record are pretty amazing in the way they just kind of throw themselves in there and go along for the ride and don’t phone it in. As far as the guys around me now, Ben Lester and Macey Taylor and Ian Felice are probably playing with me for the rest of the year. All the Felice Brothers guys are great. The Elvis Perkins guys helped me out. I know a lot of people, somehow, who know how to talk to their instruments. And I like ’em all as people, which is probably more important than what their abilities are.
Which songs on When the Devil’s Loose did the other musicians help you the most with?
A.A. Bondy: Probably the ones in which there’s like a full band because of everybody being in the room—and we just worked it out, as opposed to taking a razor blade and going back and cutting things up until they worked. I’d just gotten to a place where, you know, a lot of times—first idea, best idea. At least half of them. Three or four of them were cut totally live, including the vocals. Nothing really done one thing at a time.
What was a song where you intended it to mean one thing and people’s reaction to it was surprisingly different from what you’d intended?
A.A. Bondy: I don’t know. I don’t talk about it with people all that much! You hear a lot of things where people say, like, apocalyptic stuff or whatever—Revelations-type stuff. I don’t know that I think in terms of stuff like that. Words come, and I arrange them so they feel right and a lot of times without a really stark sense of what they mean. I just like loose things. The idea’s not to be intentionally vague, it’s just to move things around until they feel right and then hopefully there’s something there. I mean, there’s a few songs that are really literal. There’s really literal stuff, you know, references to specific things, on this record…
Can you give us an example?
A.A. Bondy: No … ha ha! You know what I mean? This record is kind of born out of a relatively sad, kind of intense time, and I didn’t really want to put it out there in a way that made it very obvious what was going on because I didn’t want it to be about that. If you see someone happy on the street or crying on the street, it’s enough to get the gist from how they’re acting—and depending on what kind of mood you’re in, to be affected by however it is they’re feeling at the time without knowing what it was that caused it.

A.A. BONDY WITH WILLY MASON AND NIK FREITAS ON SAT., JAN. 16, AT EAGLE ROCK CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 2225 COLORADO BLVD., EAGLE ROCK. 8 PM / CONTACT VENUE FOR COVER / ALL AGES. CENTERARTSEAGLEROCK.ORG. A.A. BONDY’S WHEN THE DEVIL’S LOOSE IS OUT NOW ON FAT POSSUM. VISIT A.A. BONDY AT MYSPACE.COM/AABONDY.

The mass email from Andrew W.K. came into my best friend’s inbox and even though I only knew the simplistic, punch-along lyrics to “Party Hard,” we were one of the first 100 people to reply, earning us tickets to watch the man in dirty-white pound a few out on Liberace’s mirrored piano. How the famed, reflective Baldwin grand got to the Gibson Guitar showroom (two blocks off Rodeo Drive) from its permanent perch at Kitsch HQ in Vegas, I’ll never know, but there it was, missing its see-through Lucite top and some mirrored squares on the legs, but it was THERE with 100 lucky emailers surrounding it.

Andrew W.K. emerged from a black velvet box and stumbled over a nonsensical speech (about how we should make sure to bring extra quarters to the store when we’re buying water to tip the cashier. WTF?) before sitting at the mirrored beast and improvising simplistic songs about food, being a boy and dog ownership. Clearly hanging out in another dimension where he wasn’t expected to play the instrument in front of fans, Andrew (despite being classically trained since age 4) banged out staccato couplets until they bled into a garbled Nordstrom piano-player audition over which he sang, “You gotta eat food/You gotta eat to live.” His voice was not of Andrew W.K. but instead wandered lost between Bob Dylan’s hiccupping and Randy Newman’s laziness. And even though Andrew’s just-released album is comprised entirely of made-up-on-the-spot piano songs, this was just weird. Not party-‘til-you-puke, force-your-nose-to-bleed-because-it-looks-badass weird (which I was half-expecting), but more upside-own-sunglasses-at-night, I’m-mad-at-my-label-so-I’m-going-to-dick-around-on-Liberace’s-piano weird.

Eventually, he pulled it together enough to play keg-worthy anthems like “Party Hard” and “Get Wet,” which, surprisingly, translated well to the piano. And with his signature tunes coming out of Liberace’s piano, Andrew finally flourished. The pre-written lyrics allowed him to focus on unique re-harmonizations and the audience screamed the songs’ namesake choruses, stoked to be only arms-distance away from the headbanging man dressed like a Heartland mechanic.

I might have been puzzled when he got the crowd to alternately chant “Mrs. Washington” and “asshole Tuesdays” for a whole minute (and again when I realized that his improv songs are only as dry as his humor), but Andrew W.K.’s numerous erratic moments were overshadowed by the epic Beethoven-ness of his rare coherent ones. Oh, yeah. The glittery piano helped, too.

—Sarah Bennett

Stream: Devo “Planet Earth”

(from Freedom of Choice reissued now on Warner)

The world is now a DEVO song, and so Warner has just reissued two vital early DEVO albums barely containing some of the most annihilating reality ever twined into vinyl. And so L.A. RECORD’s Dan Collins reissues this vintage interview with Mark Mothersbaugh from the archives of the defunct Ostrich Ink. DEVO will perform Freedom Of Choice at the Fonda tonight.

You and the Residents were making videos so early—where do you think the idea came from?
Mark Mothersbaugh (vocals/synthesizers/etc.): A lot of that was owed to the time we grew up. Artists that we were interested in were people like Andy Warhol, who was a multimedia guy. He designed clothes and he silk-screened and he painted and he photographed and he produced bands, and he made movies and put out a magazine—you know, that guy’s so cool. That’s what I want to do. I like it because he’s about ideas rather than just being about an instrument or a technique—rather than an old-time craftsman. We really liked what he was doing. And other people like him that were multimedia artists. Chuck Statler, who Jerry and I had gone to school with at Kent State, had gone to Minneapolis while we were still kinda struggling in Akron. He came back and he had this Popular Science and it said, ‘Laserdiscs: The Wave of the Future.’ It’s 1974. We’re like, ‘Laserdiscs? What are those?’ ‘Well, it looks like a record, but it holds visual and audio information.’ And we thought, ‘Whoa—sound and vision! That’s great! That’s what the future is going to be. And rock ‘n’ roll—we can bury it once and for all!’ We were certain that sound and vision was going to kill rock ‘n’ roll and create a new art form. And the artists that would carry weight in the populace would be artists that thought visually. So he came back and said, ‘Let’s make a film.’ And we said, ‘We don’t have any money—how are we going to handle that?’ ‘I’m working in this company. I’m trying to do commercials now. I can get us free editing time and I can borrow a camera and all we have to do is come up with money for film.’ Our first seven-and-a-half-minute movie took about four months to do because we didn’t have money. But we made it for like three thousand dollars. General Boy was a lucky accident. What happened there was there was this lawyer that was a friend of ours—this young guy that was kind of an asshole yuppie guy.
Is he the one parodied in the in the later videos?
Mark Mothersbaugh: No—that’s other people that we liked much less. But this guy did us a favor because he said, ‘You know, I don’t think it’d be good for my reputation to be in this film you guys are making.’ Oh no—who’s gonna play General Boy? Because we’d written the script. And Jerry goes, ‘Mark, would your dad do it?’ ‘I don’t know. Let’s ask him.’ So we went and asked him, and he was like [in bold announcer voice] ‘WHY YEEES!’ At first he didn’t get the idea. But once he saw himself on screen, he like totally got the acting bug.
He’s a magnetic actor. He really is good.
Mark Mothersbaugh: Yeah—some latent desire to be an artist that was thwarted by World War II and the Depression. He painted a bit and played music a bit, but he never really pursued it because he came from a family of coal miners. The idea of being an artist was like if he would have said, ‘Hey Mom! Dad! I’m gonna be a man from the moon!’ You know—they’d go, ‘Whut? Whut tha fuck yew tawkin’ about?’ He didn’t really pursue that at all. He wasn’t driven enough or obsessed enough to do it and just instead opted for survival. But he did good on his General Boy. Actually I remember on our first tour, we opened at a show in Minneapolis. We were playing at the Walker Arts Center. And one of the roadies—one of the security guards says, ‘There’s an old guy at the back door with an army outfit on and says he’s General Boy, and he wants to talk to you.’ And we’re like—he drove from Akron, Ohio, to Minneapolis? So my dad comes in and he goes, ‘Mark, I’ve got this opening speech I’ve written so I can introduce you boys.’ He was more DEVO than we could ever have been. He had his whole own perception of what DEVO meant—what devolution meant. And it was filtered through the eyes of a guy who’d been in World War II and who was a salesman who sold fire alarms and and vibrating pads and stuff like that. His schooling stopped with the Dale Carnegie book. You know—‘Look ‘em in the eyes! Give ‘em a handshake!’ ‘Make a friend and a sale at the same time.’ He was that kind of guy. So his take on it was kind of interesting. It kind of freaked us out a little bit, but at the same time we kept encouraging him, and he ended up writing lyrics for songs and stuff.
[Mark leaves, and comes back holding a banjo as the interview continues. Imagine the rest of the interview as if it were being accompanied by the strumming of an Appalachian mountain boy.]
Let’s talk about the whole DEVO ethos.
Mark Mothersbaugh: We were living in Ohio. From our vantage point, it was like being on a cultural wasteland. We heard about the Village in Manhattan. And we heard about Carnaby Street in London, or things in England and San Francisco and the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. We heard about all these places. And there was nothing happening in Ohio. It was the Summer of Hate while everyone else was having the Summer of Love. And we were just watching everything. Also at the time, the economy in Ohio had collapsed. It was one of those areas that got hit really hard during that depression that happened in the seventies and eighties. It was a factory town for the first sixty or seventy years. And then all those factories pulled out and went to Malaysia and South America, so there were these big draconian factories that weren’t employing very many people. Everybody was out of work. Nobody knew what to do. None of them were educated. They made tires, you know? It was a city full of blue-collar tire makers, and it was really a dark time. But yet there was all this promise. I remember going to the Akron Art Institute and I saw laser projected holograms where—for instance—there was a shark that was six feet long in one of the rooms, and you could walk around it. It was like five feet in the air. You could walk around it and look underneath it and look down its mouth and look at it from the back of the tail and look inside the gills. It was totally 3-D, but it was a ghost. You could put your hands through it. And at the time, I said, ‘You know what? I want whatever’s going on in technology. That’s where things are happening.’ And also at the time, there was no voice in music. There wasn’t a Bob Dylan, and there wasn’t a Woody Guthrie or anybody that was a conscience for youth. After they shot kids on different campuses in ’70, it’s like the country went into a big sleep. And all the really politically active people—who were protesting globalization, and America and fucking around with the politics of Southeast Asia, and the Cold War and things—they all stopped. They all just became quiet. And by ’73 or ’74, the, the music that you were hearing was disco and concert rock. The Eagles. Styx. There was nobody talking about the issues. And this was a time when things like the Cuyahoga River, which we lived on—there was all this white foam I remember always floating down. When I was I kid, we’d be swimming around. In the early seventies, the river caught on fire and stayed on fire for days—weeks!—before they got it put out. Because there were so many chemicals that companies all along the Cuyahoga River had been dumping into the river that were going into Lake Erie. And that’s when all the early alarmists were saying, ‘Wait a minute, you know—our ozone’s been fucked up, there’s global warming, you know? We’re drinking and eating chemicals that are poisonous, and nobody’s paying attention to all that.’ There were a few scientists and people that were trying to speak and they were getting shouted down by the same people that are right now building roads through pristine timberland and drilling for oil. We were mesmerized by the choices that humans were making at the time. By what people thought was important or precious. And it was before having a conscience was made almost embarrassing by people like Sting—jumping in a Lear Jet and flying down to the Amazon to tell pygmies that he was there to protect them or something, you know? They’re like, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ So that’s part of this whole thing about where DEVO came from—it came from a lot of different sources. We were just looking for a way to describe what we saw going on. We saw this incredible technology fucking everything up. But we saw this stuff that looked and seemed amazing. And it should be doing great things. But the quality of life was deteriorating. So there was like a bunch of things that came together at once. The movie Island of Lost Souls, with the House of Pain—‘What is the Law? Not to walk on all fours, not to spill blood!’ And this Superwoman comic book, where this mad scientist had an evolution-devolution machine. He’d push the lever forward, and there was like this vacuum capsule. And there’d be a guy that was in there. When he pushed it forward, the guy’s head would blow up like a light bulb, and his hair would fall out, and he’d look like a progeria kid. And he’d pull it backwards, and then his brow would drop, and he’d get covered with hair, and he’d be like a caveman.
[Mark gets up out of his seat and grabs a black guitar amplifier nearby. He swings it around to reveal in white letters: ‘DEVOLUTIONARY ARMY.’]
Mark Mothersbaugh: This is an old amp from way back when. We called ourselves ‘The De-evolution Band’ for a while. And then we were the Devolutionary Army, and then we trimmed it down to DEVO. It was just easier to say and it was kind of like ‘Smart Patrol’—the song was originally ‘Smart Proletariats,’ but it just didn’t roll off your tongue. ‘Smart proletariats, nowhere to go!’
You also have a lot of sex imagery—it’s kind of novel in the Hardcore DEVO collections how many of the songs are devoted to really making sex look silly or gooey or messy, and it seems quite the opposite of what was going on in the seventies.
Mark Mothersbaugh: We just felt sex in America was still so Victorian, you know? A Planet of the Apes funky show-your-butt-party is much more interesting than the porno that was around at the time where two people meet on the tennis court. I think porno is like a weathervane for a culture, you know? The more interesting the porno, the more interesting the culture.
What about the covers of the Hardcore DEVO albums? You have some woman with fake breasts over her real breasts, and then they’ve got a picture of you guys.
Mark Mothersbaugh: And we all had fake breasts on, too. We couldn’t afford the real surgery at the time. There was this one photographer out here named Moshe Brakha who really played devil’s advocate—we got some of the best photos of DEVO ever during this photo session. There’s some shots from those photo shoots that nobody’s ever seen. Somewhere near the end of the photo shoot he pulled out this gigantic Nazi flag—I don’t even know where he got it—and he’s got us holding this Nazi flag for a few photos, and we’re like, ‘Whoa, what’s that about?’
How did you meet Brian Eno?
Mark Mothersbaugh: We were playing in New York that summer, and started to get kind of a following and we never got paid. But the shows would be crammed. They’d be totally filled with people. Our guest list would be like sixty or seventy people and they’d have everybody; there’d be like Jack Nicholson and all the Rolling Stones and Frank Zappa’s band. ‘It’s alright with you if Frank Zappa listens to you play?’ ‘Sure!’ ‘Alright with you if Candy Clark is on your guest list?’ So Bowie came and saw us one night. We’d done some interviews and people said, ‘Who’d you like to have produce you guys?’ Of all the people I could think of, I thought it would either be David Bowie or Brian Eno. I liked their music, and I thought maybe they would understand what we were trying to do. David Bowie showed up one night and on the second set before we came out, he introduced us,and he goes [in a canned carny voice] ‘This is the band of the future! I am producing them in Tokyo this winter!’ And we’re like, ‘Okay, we’re sleeping in a car tonight—that sounds good to us!’ Then afterwards, he said, ‘Yeah, I really want to produce you guys. The only thing is, I’m up for this movie called Just a Gigolo. If I get it, I have to go to Berlin for a couple months. So that would push it off.’ And we go, ‘Well, we don’t even have anywhere to go when we leave here.’ We’re homeless, you know—we don’t know what we’re gonna be doing for those two months. The next week, we played again, and Robert Fripp and Brian Eno came. And they invited us over to Robert Fripp’s house. And he fed us. And they both said, ‘We would want to produce you guys if you were up for it.’ And we said, ‘Well, Brian, David Bowie last week said he was producing us in Tokyo!’ And Brian Eno starts going, ‘He’s full of shit.’ At the time I didn’t know that Brian Eno was kinda pissed at Bowie because he felt he didn’t get credited properly on Heroes. And Low. Brian Eno said, ‘Let’s just go right now. Don’t even worry about a record company. I’ll loan you the money. We’ll go over to Germany, at this studio I work at all the time—Conny Plank Studio.’ It’s the place where bands like Birth Control and Guru Guru and Kraftwerk and you know—Can, Moebius, Roedelius, they all recorded at that studio. ‘Sure, that’s great—you’re gonna pay for us to go to this?’ So he flew us over to Germany. David Bowie of course still wanted to be involved and showed up every day on the weekends and hung out with us, and then bickered with Eno.
What did all the German bands think of you?
Mark Mothersbaugh: While we were in Germany, I got a call from the band Kraftwerk and they said, ‘We’re gonna go on our first tour, and we would like to play your film.’ We only had one film at the time. The Truth About Deevolution. So in the spring of ’78, they took the DEVO movie as their opening act.
When did DEVO officially start?
Mark Mothersbaugh: Jerry and I first started writing music together in 1970. There wasn’t another band we were ever in together. We were only ever in DEVO. And in 1970 we were both Students for a Democratic Society. And my brother Bob, he used to come up to Kenton. At the time Bob and I were in this kind of acid-blues band and Jerry was in kind of a more of a straight-ahead blues band. They shot students at Kent State—we were protestors then—and they shot people. They closed down the school that spring. We were there. Jerry was standing right about ten feet away from one of the girls that got her—got blasted.
Did that change your perspective on what you should do with music?
Mark Mothersbaugh: Yeah, quite a bit.

DEVO PERFORMING FREEDOM OF CHOICE ON WED., NOV. 4, AT THE HENRY FONDA THEATER, 6126 HOLLYWOOD BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 8 PM / $43-$103 / ALL AGES. HENRYFONDATHEATER.COM. DELUXE REISSUES OF Q: ARE WE NOT MEN? AND FREEDOM OF CHOICE ARE AVAILABLE NOW ON RHINO. VISIT DEVO AT CLUBDEVO.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/DEVO.

Download: Jack Oblivian “Ditch Road”

(from Disco Outlaw out now on Goner)

Jack Oblivian got his last name with Eric and Greg and their Popular Favorites but—like Cartwright and Reigning Sound—he found new greatness with his solo work. His Disco Outlaw is rock ‘n’ roll as natural as Charlie Feathers and Johnny Thunders and he’ll play his first show in Los Angeles in ten years tonight at the Echoplex. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

What’s your best blind pick-up line? To someone you’ve never met before?
Jack Oblivian (guitar/vocals): I always have a problem remembering names so I just say, ‘Hey, good-lookin’.’ Even if she’s drunk and puking you just say, ‘Are you gonna be okay, good-lookin’?’
How often are you laying lines on some girl who’s puking?
Jack Oblivian: I don’t know. It’s your responsibility to try to take care of them before you get them out of your house.
What were you like when you first got to Memphis? Like the day you got off the bus?
Jack Oblivian: I’d been there a few times when I was a kid. Since I was 12, I would come see these big shows—I think my first one was Rush. My mom was always afraid of me coming to these concerts and it was no big deal but I think when I saw Van Halen—the early version of Van Halen—that’s when I felt like I was at a concert that I was like, ‘Oh, this is what my mom is talking about.’ You could see whiskey bottles flying in the air—a really rowdy crowd. I really miss the golden age. By the time I was doing that, it was like the early ‘80s. I really wanted to see Kiss and AC/DC—Kiss was the thing I got into when I was like ten years old. I started out with comic books and then I moved over to the shelf on the right—so instead of becoming a comic geek I was a music fan. By the time the early ‘80s got here, music—as far as the big arena music—I didn’t like it that much. Going to places like this punk club called Antenna, I’d see the bands right up close and that was really exciting. That’s what drew me here. I think it was after I got out of high school that I moved here but I was always making trips.
What was the point of no return? Where you decided your life was going to be about music?
Jack Oblivian: I think it was since I was a little kid, even before I knew how to play. But as I got older and I moved here and actually tried—after a few years I realized I was working a crappy job and it wasn’t going anywhere and that’s when I figured out, ‘Well, am I going to keep doing this?’ So many years gone by and I realize, ‘Shit, this is what I’ve been doing.’ I think even if I wasn’t playing, I would be in it in some form or fashion.
Like producing?
Yeah, if I knew how. Or writing like you. That’s kind of my whole thing into music. At my impressionable age of 11 or 12 I would get these—like in Mississippi you could get Creem or Hit Parade—so I’d read about all these bands. The only ones you would hear about in Corinth were like Journey. I didn’t really hear the Ramones and those new wave type bands—the New York Dolls or whatever—until a few years later when I had a friend in high school who had an uncle who had all those records. So I went over to his house and all those records that I read about for years, he had ‘em all. I’d read about the bands—breaking up or making music—but I never actually heard them.
What was that weekend like? ‘Play me this! Play me that!’
Jack Oblivian: Yeah—we ended up being in a band together and that guy is Jimbo Mathus who was in the Squirrel Nut Zippers. That was Jimbo. Now when he talks about his music impressionable age, he doesn’t mention New York Dolls and all that stuff. And I’m still a friend of his—he’d say just blues and bluegrass and he leaves out all that. But he was like the biggest rocker at school.
Did he have a nickname?
Jack Oblivian: We had a nickname we called him that he didn’t like! I don’t know if I should say it—he might get mad.
Did you have a nickname?
Jack Oblivian: I had one when I was a little kid. Not when I was a teenager, but I had one. We had older cousins. Me and the younger cousin played music together and all these older cousins would pick on us. My cousins name was ‘Rut’ and mine was ‘Squoosh-head.’
‘Squoosh-head’?
Jack Oblivian: And then it later changed to ‘Squoosh.’ I’d say, ‘Why do you call me Squoosh-head?’ ‘Because your head looks like it’s been squooshed.’ Luckily by the time I got to junior high they had graduated so the name kinda went away. It was frightening just to walk across the yard if you see them—if it was one, it was okay but if you see two or three of them together, you immediately have to start running ‘cause they’re going to chase you. ‘There goes Squoosh-head! Catch him!’
Did you ever think of knocking out a song called ‘Squoosh-head Blues’?
Jack Oblivian: I thought about it, but I don’t want to bring the name back.
What three things do you think you have to happen in your life in order to write good songs?
Jack Oblivian: I don’t know—that’s a good question though. I think a lot of times when you want to write a song, you can’t. And then other times it’s just begging to come out and you pick up a guitar and it seems like it ain’t really nothing—just two or three chords—but then you find out later it is something. It’s just like going through something where you’ve had some things happen around you or with you—you’ve just been affected by it. Something’s gotta mark on you.
The very first song you ever wrote was for your cat—what came next? Songs about girls? Cars?
Jack Oblivian: I think girls followed next. I think the cat song was kind of forced. I was up in the attic and I was reading the Hit Parader where it has the song lyrics in the back to the hit songs of the day. I thought, ‘There’s not too much to this stuff.’ Without the music it just looks like ‘Baby, baby, oh yeah!’ So the cat walks by and I thought, ‘I’m gonna write a song called “Alley Cat.”’ I can’t remember how it went but I just did it the same way: ‘Alley cat, oh yeah!’ and shit like that.
What’s the easiest thing to write about?
Jack Oblivian: I think if I try to write too much about my real self, I get stumped. It’s like there’s not enough paper to get it all down, and I’ve done that before too—where I’ve had like three sheets of lyrics and I think, ‘I can’t put all this in a song.’ But you gotta step outside yourself and take a look. You know who you are, but somebody listening on the radio, they don’t really know. If you’re thinking too hard, you can’t do anything at all. A lot of times—sorta similar to a ‘Tenacious D’ episode—a lot of times I get the guitar and a tape recorder and push record to start writing a song but there’s just nothing there. It just don’t happen that way. You can’t just say, ‘Tomorrow I get off work at 5 and I’m gonna write a song!’ You can but it’s probably not that good.
Do you ever run out of a bar bathroom and call your voicemail and sing a riff into it?
Jack Oblivian: That’s a good idea. I never thought of that. A lot of times when something works out, it kinda comes from somebody else’s idea. I was trying to learn a Chuck Berry song to sit in with these guys. I was always playing the same two songs and I wanted to learn a Chuck Berry song and I could see the chords and I was thinking, ‘I can probably play it but it might not be very well.’ Then all of a sudden I started playing something that became my own song. I had to go back to the Chuck Berry song and to see if I ripped it off. But no—there’s two of the same chords but it’s a totally different song. So that kinda got the wheel turning. If you’re a songwriter who can’t get it going, I think the best way is to check out songs by people you like and see how they work and maybe get something started. But just make sure you aren’t aping their exact song.
They asked Sam Phillips how to produce a good record and he said, ‘Well, I don’t know anything about producing—but if you want rock ‘n’ roll, I can reach down and pull it out of your asshole.’
Jack Oblivian: Yeah—he had some attitude.
Is that the secret?
Jack Oblivian: I think that’s maybe his approach, so to speak.
Was Sun an eerie place when you worked there? Knowing all the history?
Jack Oblivian: Yeah—sometimes you forget about it. The first couple days it’s overwhelming. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about how it’s the greatest job because when you work in the kitchen it doesn’t get busy til—well, busloads of people come through on tours, so occasionally it gets busy—but most of the time you clock in, get some coffee, and sit down and listen to music. I was thinking about it—why did I ever quit that job?
What job were you happiest to quit?
Jack Oblivian: There’s been a bunch of ‘em. There was a construction job. It was mutual—I quit and they were firing me. I worked there for like a week. These guys were kinda fucked up. My job was driving a truck around delivering tools to these welding worksites and after the second week I came in and they had a brand new truck. ‘This is the truck you’re going to drive—take care of it.’ The very first run I go all the way down the interstate to pick up some tools and then all they way back—and I forgot to take the emergency brake off. I just kept punching the gas, like, ‘Why wont this fucking thing go? This truck drives like shit!’ By the time I got back—like 25 miles—to the shop and started slowing down, I could smell something burning. ‘What is that burning? Smells like something’s on fire in the neighborhood!’ I pulled up in the driveway and smoke was shooting out of the wheels and I thought they were gonna kill me. One of the guys came out and he was like, ‘You’re coming with me!’ He got in a car and we’re doing like 80 mph down the street and I’m freaking out. Then he stopped and he turns around back to the shop and at that point I just wanted to get out of the car because I thought he might run off the road. But he was trying to keep me away from the big boss—the real boss who was probably going to shoot me. I said, ‘I think it’s better if I just leave.’ ‘Yeah, I think that’s a good idea—you better get out of here.’ But those guys—I didn’t feel bad about messing the truck up ‘cause they weren’t too cool. They kept referring to me as a drug dealer ‘cause I had sideburns. They’d keep saying, ‘Jack, we’re paying you more money than you’d make selling drugs in the street!’ ‘I don’t sell drugs. ‘Whatever, Jack!’
You’re lucky you didn’t have a mustache, too.
Jack Oblivian: Yeah, these guys were really fucking redneck.
Is that the most expensive thing you ever broke? Or the closest you’ve ever been to getting shot?
Jack Oblivian: The closest I ever got to being beat up, I think. I had a gun pulled on me when I was delivering pizzas, which was scary. I always tip the pizza guy good.
How much of this stuff ever turned into songs? Like ‘Ditch Road’—is that the song you wrote after you broke the truck?
Jack Oblivian: I think that was inspired by someone I knew who had an alcohol problem and everything was falling apart. But there’s a lot of Ditch Roads. When I was a kid there was a little dirt path near our house that people used for a shortcut. My family lived by this factory that makes pantyhose that my mother’s side of the family owns. My granddad started the business in the ‘50s with my five uncles and a couple of them took it over. But there was this beaten path along the side of the road—a ditch and it had a name called ‘Ditch Road.’ ‘Why is it called Ditch Road?’ Well, it’s because there’s a ditch by a road.
Have you ever seen a human body part in a pawn shop?
Jack Oblivian: No. Have you?
No but I heard about it. Like somebody pawns their prosthetic leg.
They’re hard up for money then. The few times I’ve actually tried to sell something to a pawn shop, they never offered enough money. Like one time it was a Silvertone amp and I think they wanted like five bucks. Another time, my high school class ring—and they didn’t even want it. Not even five dollars and I was like, ‘Fuckin’ shit!’
When was the last time you closed down a bar that wasn’t in Memphis?
Jack Oblivian: That happens a lot. When you’re in the band you get a little bit of privilege. But a lot of bars around here, if people are still partying they just lock the doors and make it look like it’s closed and let people stay.
Are they any places with a special stool they don’t let anybody else sit on?
Jack Oblivian: No, I don’t have an Elvis booth or anything like that. I may get a break on the bar tab every once in a while—or maybe I think it’s a break.
You said with your music you wanted to try and do something that was like a Salvador Dali painting but with one chord. What exactly are you talking about there?
I don’t know—I think I was just saying something. Maybe what I meant was dumbing it down. I got this new tune I’m working on called ‘Mass Confusion.’ I did it for the Oblivians when I thought we were gonna record.
The Oblivians were going to record?
Jack Oblivian: We were talking about recording a 7” before this tour but it never happened. I ended up doing the song with my band. When we tried to practice it with the Oblivians, we couldn’t do it. I thought I had dumbed it down enough because the Oblivians are really primitive. Kind of like we said earlier, when I’m inspired by someone else’s song—this would be compared to the Temptations’ ‘Ball of Confusion.’ It’s real simple but once the vocals get going it’s not the same—but you can tell it’s the red-headed stepchild of ‘Ball of Confusion.’ I think Tempations’ ‘Ball of Confusion’ is an epic masterpiece with all the strings and everything, and this is down to a five-piece and just really simple. But it still gets the same message of a world gone crazy.
An undying message.
Jack Oblivian: That song will never go out of style.
What do you think about this Oblivians renaissance?
Jack Oblivian: I don’t know, man. I can’t understand it myself. I think it’s just so simple that people just connect with it. It’s pretty weird that some little band years ago, people wont let it go away.
Do you want them to?
Jack Oblivian: No, I think it’s good. Naturally you would like for everything to be still in print and people still digging it. And if it happens with one of your things, I guess you’re lucky.
You were talking about the New York Dolls before—do you feel like a New York Doll yourself? A couple years too early with something everybody loves now?
Jack Oblivian: I don’t know. It’s maybe a little bit different from the New York Dolls situation. Shorter heels.
You said you toured Europe and people were flipping out with cameras like you were Bob Dylan.
Jack Oblivian: This was on the solo tour. We went to Serbia. There would be 2 or 3 people taking photos and then like 2 or 3 feet away there were people taking photos of you getting your photo taken—you don’t really know which way to look. We had such a hard time getting in the place at the border—it was actually kind of scary. We were trying to tell them we didn’t want to go—just let us go back! They had their automatic rifles out. I think they just wanted money. The booking agent just said, ‘Put 300 Euros on the dash and they’ll know that’s for them.’ We’re like, ‘We’re not gonna do that!’
Are the Oblivians ever coming to L.A.?
Jack Oblivian: We played a few months ago and we haven’t really talked about doing anything again. I’m not sure.
What would help convince everybody?
Jack Oblivian: I think if it was a bill with a couple bands that we really wanted to see—which would probably be bands that aren’t together anymore. That’s kind of what happened when the Gories said they would get together and we thought, ‘Well, we could stand playing a couple weeks and seeing the Gories every night.’
Have you heard that story about Alex Chilton dropping acid with Dennis Wilson and Charles Manson?
Jack Oblivian: Somebody told me that the other day. King Louie, he’s friends with Alex and we were talking about the Beach Boys—that he was still friends with them or at least was in the ‘90s when he was dating Peggy from the Gories and they were at Brian Wilson’s birthday party. That’s gotta be a trip hanging out with the Mansons doing acid.
What’s your own Beach Boys-meet-Manson moment?
Jack Oblivian: The Manson-Beach Boys sandwich? I don’t know—if I did, I probably shouldn’t say. I don’t think anything can top Manson. William Eggleston was up here one time playing the piano. ‘Course he could hardly play it. He just kind of hits it. He was really drunk, but everybody gathered around the piano. I haven’t seen him in a while. Somebody saw him the other day in an airport just sitting there. They didn’t talk to him. They said he was just sitting there like he was ready to go or maybe he was just lost.
Perfect Sound Forever did an Oblivians interview and asked Eric if he’d ever been arrested, psychotic, near death or bored—how about you?
Jack Oblivian: I’ve been bored. That happens a lot. I’m bored most of the time.
Are you bored more now that you’re older?
Jack Oblivian: Sometimes I get bored with the things I used to occupy myself with. My most boring times—probably with any kid—is when you’re too old for toys and too young for girls or to get a day job. When you’re 12 and 13—that’s when you start throwing rocks at windows to hear the crash. That’s when I started getting into rock because I was so bored. That was my cure for boredom. I’m still bored with life.
When was the last time you were lit only by candlelight?
In candlelight? It’s been a while. This apartment I have now, we’re on the same block as a TV station and a police precinct is right at the end of the street. A couple years ago there was a giant windstorm that came through town—people called it Hurricane Elvis. Usually when a tornado hits, it’s usually across the river in West Memphis or it’s out east and it doesn’t really hit midtown. But this wasn’t a tornado so there was no warning. It was just in the middle of the night. The wind came through and ripped up trees and tore up houses—messed up a lot of shit and so the power was out for like 2 months. But we never lost our power. And my friends would come over—nobody could work ‘cause the power was out everywhere. They’d get on their bikes and come over because we had power and we were watching TV with the air on. The first day after it happened, people were kind of excited. ‘Wow, everything’s wiped out!’ And the weather was still breezy after the storm. Then a couple days later the sun came out and it started getting hot and everybody started getting really mad. They’d stop by our house like, ‘You’re the only motherfuckers in town with power.’ ‘Yeah, we’ve been watching the news—oh, that’s right, you don’t get the news.’ They would eventually warm up to us ‘cause it was the only place they could go and chill out and watch TV.
That’s a pretty good window into human nature.
Jack Oblivian: It’s been a few years but I’ve learned the lesson after not paying the electrical bill and having the power go out and having to go a little while with the candle. That really changes your lifestyle for the evening. I’m usually not prepared with a big candles. I just have a few birthday candles. And if I can’t afford the power bill, usually you cant afford much more than just a beer. Theres this young guy down the street—have you ever heard of the bar called the Lamplighter? It’s a small neighborhood bar. For years there’s been the same bartender but recently this guy in his early 30s—he’s like a Goner kid—he somehow got his foot in the door and he’s a bartender there. He has this drink he made up—I haven’t had it and I probably never will, but I guess he likes Vienna sausage and he’s got this drink called a Mozart and its got the juice from the sausage with Pabst. And he actually drinks it. He loves Vienna sausage.
I have a friend who’s a bartender and he made this drink called the Abandoned Couch where there’s whiskey and the juices from the bottom of the tray of limes and then he would take change out of his pocket, put it in the glass, pour Everclear over it and light it to sterilize the coins. When you finished, there was like 18 cents in the bottom.
Jack Oblivian: Oh, God. Try not to swallow the money.
I heard you used pocket change for drum tracks on one of your records.
Jack Oblivian: That’s on the American Slang record I did a few years ago. I was just trying to find a drum sound. I lived in a place at that time where I couldn’t really set up a full drum set and get loud. I wrapped a mic around my neck and I’d tap for the bass drum and hit my hand on my pocket for the snare drum and it had change in it to make a tambourine-like sound. It was easier to play a drum beat doing that than it is sitting behind a drum set. The microphone doesn’t know where it’s coming from as long as it sounds good.
Jim Dickinson said Memphis was about individuals—you couldn’t organize it and that’s why it worked. Do you think that’s true?
Jack Oblivian: I think he’s got something there. I don’t think there’s a machine kind of thing going on. I have a lot of friends who play music and we play together but our music doesn’t really sound alike or anything. A guitar player in my band has his own band—it’s still rock ‘n’ roll but it’s totally different.
Who’s in your band right now?
Jack Oblivian: The guitar player—his band is John Paul Keith and the 1-4-5s and it’s his rhythm section. I had Harlan and Harlan’s drummer play with me for a while but Harlan’s out of the country right now and he’s got a baby. He was in the band. He’s another one—he can play with me and it’s skuzzy rock or whatever,but then in his music it sounds like something that’ll make the ladies take their panties off.
Have you ever actually seen that happen?
Jack Oblivian: I think it’d be Tom Jones or something. I remember my first gig—I was 13 and I played in this parking-lot Southern-rock fest thing in a small town in Tennessee. We did instrumental ‘Paranoid.’ Stuff like that. We weren’t ready for a gig at all but there were these ladies. My cousin said, ‘See those ladies? They’re biker chicks and they’ll show you their tits—just give them the thumbs-up.’ So I gave them the thumbs-up a couple times and all these ladies started pulling their shirts up and jiggling their tits around like big mamas and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ Our parents didn’t know we were there. We’d snuck away and we got in trouble when we got back. The police shut the show down because once those rednecks started drinking it got out of hand. But it was pretty exciting.

JACK OBLIVIAN WITH LUCERO AND JOHN PAUL KEITH AND THE 1-4-5S ON TUE., NOV. 3, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8 PM / $15-$17 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. JACK OBLIVIAN’S DISCO OUTLAW IS OUT NOW ON GONER. VISIT JACK OBLIVIAN AT MYSPACE.COM/OFFICIALJACKOBLIVIAN.

—Erik Ehlert

Blitzen Trapper consists of five Oregon lumberjacks playing instruments behind frontman Eric Earley, the love child of Bob Dylan and Maroon 5′s Adam Levine. While not every member sported a beard or flannel shirt, if you average it out, each person had at least one of those things.

It wasn’t just the appearance of this husky crew that made them seem out of place in the chandeliered El Rey—the nature of their music simply belongs in the backwoods of Oregon. The state was mentioned as the inspiration behind several of their songs (“This one’s about a river in Oregon;” “We found this song in an Oregon forest;” “We were thinking about the roller skating rink back home”). They certainly managed to fill the venue with rousing renditions of songs like “Furr” and “Big Black Bird,” but almost every one would’ve sounded better around a campfire, tin cup of whiskey in hand.

I know they are an actual touring band, but it was if they had become Blitzen Trapped In A Cage To Perform For Spectators. They pulled it off, playing to our fancy city theatre spelled with “re” at the end, but you could see that their souls longed for the moonlit stage. At one point Earley exchanged his guitar for a keyboard and half the lumberjacks exited the stage for a couple classy numbers including “Not Your Lover,” and that was the closest the band came to fitting into their surroundings. But, like with animals at the zoo, you don’t really want them to fit in. You want them to stay themselves. You can appreciate them for entertaining us city folk while they’re here, but the real joy is imagining what it would be like to see them in the wild.

—Amber Hollingsworth

The initial opening act Amanda Jo Williams sings soft and easy but the energy of her players contrasts in such a harmonious way that it takes the collective performance to another sonic plane. Guitarist 5-track plays licks not necessarily on the groove yet in it yielding syncopation in coordination with the fat bass pedal underneath singer Amanda’s foot that pounds the kick drum away into the night. Furthermore, bongo player “Little Feather” Lauren is a human percussion instrument who stomps and hollers on stage with tiny cymbals chiming and ringing as they dangle around the ankles of her boots.

Following the opening band, our neighbor from the north Doug Paisley wears pants because, as he puts it, “In Canada, we don’t wear shorts.” Despite the geographical climate difference, Doug sings what he calls “post-apocalyptic” songs of a dependant kind of love in a very cool, low tenor-ed voice. Doug did not play with a band like the other acts that night, which says a lot for a person in this town; being a lone man on the stage in front of a full house only highlighted the specialty of this musician. In fact, I had never seen a fish out of water look so comfortable.  Paisley doesn’t miss a beat as he doesn’t necessarily finger pick but rather effortlessly strums his bass and treble in a way reminiscent of early Bob Dylan’s idiosyncratic yet melodic guitar lines.

And finally, seasoned as the weather itself, September residents Leslie and the Badgers play in a style more retro than vintage country but nevertheless unique. With their multi-talented instrumentalist stage show, like a gypsy caravan picking up musicians and fans along the way (at least more since I had last seen the group), the band plays its well crafted melodic lines in particular with sweeping violin, slide pedal steel guitar and lyrics such as “When you say I miss you day and night / with love brighter than the ballpark lights / I’m a boat lost at sea siding on the shore / say you miss me once more” which are real enough to steal one’s heart away. Moreover, the band’s rendition of Mormon Organ player Buffy Visick’s “It’s Okay to Trip” rouses the whole audience into singing along if not getting up on the stage to join the band.

Make sure not to miss the band at the Echo this Monday for their final night of residency brought to you by When You Awake with L.A. Record. Leslie and her group of amazing Badgers will play with Best Coast, Paperplanes, and Sean Ellis.

—Steven Carrer

Stream: Happy Mondays “24 Hour Party People”

(from Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out) on Factory)

Happy Mondays were the actual 24 hour party people and legendarily—but perhaps not actually, says drummer Gaz here—helped bankrupt Factory Records during the recording in Barbados. They have been banned from Disneyland and the BBC (but will still appear at both) and speak now despite a million mea culpas about being boring. This interview by Dan Collins.

I’m recording you on side two of the tape I interviewed Billy Bragg on.
Gary “Gaz” Whelan (drums): Okay! Just don’t ask any political questions. He knows a lot more than me about that.
Shaun Ryder flaked on the interview today. Is he out doing something he shouldn’t?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: He’s probably at home. We’re all really boring these days! I’m really boring. I’d lived in Australia for a few years, but that’s just too far.
You should try L.A.! It’s burning hot. I came home and poured myself a glass of Scotch and realized the Scotch is HOT!
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Ha ha! It’s warm here. It’s fantastic! I’ve been walking about in the briefest of shorts!
What were things like when you joined the Happy Mondays?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: From the very start of the band—from the very first song, it’s only been me and Shaun from the start to the very end. I was fifteen, back in the early eighties, and Shaun was about 19 or 20.
And you’ve always been a principal song writer.
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Yeah! Shaun did the lyrics mainly.
I was listening to the ‘Delightful / This Feeling / Oasis’ EP from your early years. It sounds SO MUCH like Joy Division! Was that conscious?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: That’s just because we were fucking rubbish! Maybe. We tried not to sound like Joy Division, but the first couple songs when we first started… the thing when you start a band, you start a band and learn your instruments later. And so we tended to do Joy Division songs early on, and we did a Depeche Mode song. But we made a point of not sounding like that band. Can—I thought we sounded more like them than anything. But yeah, it’s probably inevitable. We’re all miserable fuckers in Manchester. It just fucking rains and it’s grey so you just end up being miserable. So you come up with good lyrics because there’s nothing else to do.
Your first album was produced by John Cale. I heard it didn’t go down quite like you’d expected.
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: How he was then is how we are now. And he’d given up smoking the day before we started the album, which is probably bad timing. And he just ate oranges and tangerines all day. We got on quite well, but it wasn’t the session we expected it to be. I don’t think he really got us.
I was thinking about what you guys were doing in terms of the rave culture. It seems like you guys were part of the rave ‘culture’ without playing what I would consider ‘rave music.’
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Shaun only listens—as far as I can remember—to hip-hop, and I mainly listen to electronic and soul and Felix da Housecat. There’s lots of stuff I like. So when we get in the room with guitars and live drum kit, that’s the only way we know. We tried to do electronic music organically and sometimes make a mess of it. We were big fans of A Certain Ratio, who were kind of like Joy Division but with funk and a horn section—with the great Don Johnson, a great drummer who taught me how to play. They started on Factory, but like if Joy Division had a DJ in the band and a funk drummer.
It’s funny you mentioning Shaun’s love of hip-hop. I interviewed Chuck D a few months back, and he mentioned Public Enemy being sort of the Rolling Stones of rap. Do you think with the dynamic between Shaun and Bez, you guys are like the Public Enemy of rock?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: You know what? We’ve been likened to two U.S. acts—Public Enemy and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. That’s absolutely spot on!
Is Shaun the Chuck D, or is that you?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: No, I’m more kind of the studio, um, who is that? Shocklee! Absolutely spot on!
It’s getting to surreal levels, with Flavor Flav becoming a reality show star in the U.S. and Bez being a reality star in the U.K. and winning Celebrity Big Brother.
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Yeah, that’s exactly a similarity as well. Bez is good at it! He jumped off a cable car with Jack Osbourne! He’ll do anything. He always wins them all!
Bez was going to play with you guys in the States recently—at Coachella. But he couldn’t get in.
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: He couldn’t get a visa. Because he’s a very naughty boy! He’s always going bankrupt.
How did he join the band?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: We’d been together probably four years, and we’d been doing gig shows for about two years, and Shaun was a bit embarrassed about not wanting to be seen as the front man, and so we had different friends of ours and buddies getting up and dancing with us. And he just did it once, and he’s never… we never actually asked him to join the band! He’s just never left. He just decided he’s in the band and that’s it. But it took the pressure off Shaun a little bit. He kind of took the pressure off all of us. He could just do his Flavor Flav thing! That’s all part of rock ‘n’ roll, innit? That’s what it’s all about. To me, anyway. You got to play the part.
Has his recent turn on reality TV helped or hurt the Happy Mondays?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Both! When he does these TV shows, people like him because he’s very genuine. He’s who he is. He’s actually quite a likable person. And he is hilarious—he says lots of ridiculous things. One of the first tours we did of the States—about 1990—we arrived in New York and we did a bit of a press conference. And there were journalists from different newspapers, and they spoke up and said what newspaper they were from. And one woman said she was from the Pennsylvania Tribune, or something and Bez said, ‘Pennsylvania? Perfect! Where Dracula’s from!’ He takes away the credibility, I suppose—but he’s funny.
Bez has been popular on TV, but Shaun was actually banned from the BBC’s Channel Four.
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Yeah, he was actually named in the law. It’s the ‘Shaun Ryder’ something…
The ‘Shaun Ryder Rider!’ He’s literally the only person ever specifically mentioned in the Channel Four BBC Reference Guide as someone who’s not allowed to appear! But despite that, you guys appeared on there last year, right?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Yeah, we did a live gig. It’s all delayed. See, we’re groundbreaking! The problem, to be honest, is that we all swear when we speak to each other, and when we come do TV we find it hard not to! We’re just rubbish at playing the game! That’s been our downfall as well.
Steve Jones swore on TV in England, but they gave him a radio show here in L.A.
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Me and Shaun did it last year. We got taken there really late and got lost. We were supposed to be there for two hours, and we only ended up doing ten minutes.
I’ve been talking with you eighteen minutes! So L.A. RECORD beats Steve Jones. Did you get to see him play with Hollywood United’s football team when you were in L.A.?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: No! I used to play professionally for six months for Everton in Liverpool, just down the road. I was just a rookie, and had to leave it because of the band.
Do you ever wonder what could have been?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Every fucking day! Every fucking day.
I think you did okay.
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: I got lucky! I can’t complain. I complain all the time because I’m British—that’s what we do.
A lot of us in L.A. really like Black Grape a lot. Which band was better, Black Grape or the Happy Mondays?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: I prefer Black Grape! Shaun’s answer would be that they’re the same band, and they kind of were almost. We were veering towards what Black Grape were, anyway. We do a couple Black Grape songs when we play live.
I know you’ve been interviewed to death about 24 Hour Party People, but what percentage of the movie was actually true?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: I’ve not seen it properly! I’ve only seen bits of it but it’s poetic license, you know. A lot of their stories are mixed up.
There were lots of scenes of tour buses and snorting cocaine off naked women, and things like that.
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: No! We used to play a lot. We used to play Scrabble.
You never snorted cocaine off the Scrabble table?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: No, ha ha! Absolutely not!
I have read interviews with Shaun—and maybe you—saying that in the early days of the band, he would walk around on ecstasy like every day. Just take a quarter tab or a half tab and walk through record stores.
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: That’s back in the old days! I can’t remember when I was younger! Them days were pretty bad days. It’s like asking someone about the sixties. There were days in the eighties… I was teenaged and in my early twenties. I was out partying. I can’t remember!
Was ecstasy as important in your scene as LSD was in San Francisco in the Sixties?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Absolutely—without a doubt!
What do you tell your kids about your drug use?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: The funny thing is, they’re not old enough yet. But that’s my biggest fear! My parent instincts kick in.
Most parents can just lie, but you guys are on the public record. Like right now!
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Not me personally, so I’m okay! But I’m sure they’re going to come to me one day, and say, ‘Dad, you know your band, this and that.’ I’m sure that’s what Mick Jagger had to do.
At least your kids won’t ask if you had sex with David Bowie. But didn’t Shaun get kicked off a plane once for threatening a flight attendant with a plastic fork?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: No, that didn’t happen.
I looked it up on Wikipedia!
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: No way! Absolutely not. That never happened. Ian Brown from the Stone Roses got sent to jail for something on a plane, but it certainly wasn’t us!
Were the Stone Roses a band you felt pressure from—like competition? Were there other bands at the time you felt pressure from?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: We never felt pressure to do better.
Maybe it was the opposite? A rising tide hoists up all the boats?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Maybe. But we never thought about it. That was our problem. We never thought about things. We’d just do them!
Was there a particular show where you guys looked out in the audience, and you realized, ‘Wow, we’ve really done something. We’ve crossed a threshold?’
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: There was a gig at the Free Trade Hall, which is a famous building in Manchester where the Sex Pistols played and Bob Dylan played with his electric band. That was probably the one. Definitely. I think it could be ‘89. I could be way off.
Were you surprised when in the U.S., news about the Madchester scene became totally eclipsed by grunge band coverage?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Not surprised. I think punk rock was a very English thing, and grunge was a very American thing. I think it was great. I was never a huge fan, and then I saw Nirvana do MTV Unplugged, and they did ‘All Apologies,’ and I thought that was absolutely mind-blowing. Dinosaur Jr. I thought were great as well!
Were there some American bands in the late eighties that you were influenced by?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Talking Heads were a big influence early on. We were massive Talking Heads fans. We liked the Breeders; we liked the Pixies. We did our first U.S. tour with the Pixies, and became great friends. They were a massive influence. American music is the greatest music of all time!
I listen to it a lot.
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: The Rolling Stones were the biggest influence though. Charlie Watts’s killer drumming—Mick Jagger was one of the greatest frontmen ever, along with Jim Morrison.
Those guys had a bad-boy image, which definitely you guys had as well. Was there a conscious decision to play up that side of yourselves?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: I don’t think so. That’s just who we listened to. It just found our way to our conscious soul, but it wasn’t a conscious decision. Early hip-hop was a massive massive influence, but we all read the Stones books and the Doors books.
Now that you guys are all friends again, what are some of the bad things that made you break up in the first place?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: We did years and years of touring—the usual one in the back of the small fucking van—and then all of a sudden we’re getting all these luxuries, and people are going off getting their own friends, and there’d be five or six different parties on the bus. We weren’t hanging round together. There’d be whispering—the he-say-she-says—and because they’re old friends, you don’t want to bring anything up. And then things fester. And then Factory went bankrupt.
Some blame has been thrown your way about that.
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Someone said we spent too much money in Barbados. When actually we didn’t spend that much money. We were forced to do an album quickly because there hadn’t been an album out for a few years—an album we hadn’t finished writing. And then everyone thinks that because Factory went bankrupt, it was due to us. I think the film kind of portrayed that…
Giant booze and drug bills?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: I think we probably had a large bill, but I don’t think it was us at all. In fact, I think they probably owed us cash. It was just badly run financially. They were a great label—I would never have wanted another label. Tony Wilson was a great champion of us. One of my heroes—he was fantastic. At the time, a lot of major labels in the UK were interested in us, but they were trying to mold us into an image and have these haircuts and wear these silly clothes. And we went to Factory, and he said, ‘You’ve got no image—that’s your image!’ So we loved Factory, and were big fans. If we could go back to the beginning and knew what would happen, we would still go through them again because they were just fantastic. Financially, they just weren’t great. But that’s what was great about them! They just did things. A great idea—just go for it!
Tony Wilson actually introduced you at Coachella last year, right?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: That was the biggest disappointment—that that was the last time I saw him. He gave us this massive introduction, and we went on stage. And the guy who runs our computer with stuff on it, he hadn’t configured the power supply, and something didn’t happen, and a lot of stuff wasn’t working, and all the guys were playing different tempos. And the gig wasn’t very good. I thought we let Tony down. I was ashamed. It was beyond our power—the computer went just completely fucking barmy, but I just felt we let him down a little bit.
What’s the craziest time you’ve had in your most recent reformation?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: We’re all very boring these days. Seriously, we do the shows—and Bez is his own person—but as soon as we do the show, we’re back to the hotel, have a couple drinks, and that’s it. I never thought I’d say that, but we’re boring! I just can’t do it anymore. Shaun’s doing his own thing, I have this kind of electronic, guitar/hip hop band called the Hippie Mafia…
The ‘Hippie Mafia?’
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: It’s like Sweethearts of the Rodeo crossed with Public Enemy. I can’t party and be in two bands. I just can’t do it! How fucking sensible do I sound? That’s what happens when you grow up.
I’m in my early thirties. When can I expect that to kick in?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: When I had kids, it kicked in. The last two years. But I don’t like flying, so I always drink when I get on a plane.
Otherwise, you might threaten a flight attendant with a plastic fork! What are you guys doing next?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: We just got back from Australia. It was a long flight, so I had a lot of drinking to do.
Which airline has the best complimentary booze?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: We like Virgin! Virgin business class is the way to go.
Would you let them use one of your songs in a commercial?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: Anyone can use one of our songs in a commercial! Please do!
Where are you playing in L.A.?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: We’re playing Club Nokia in September, and in Anaheim at the House of Blues…
That’s next to Disneyland. Have you ever been?
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: I haven’t been. But we did our second or third album in the Capitol records studio where the Beach Boys did Pet Sounds, which we didn’t realize until later. Someone went to Disneyland—I can’t remember which one, but they called the studio and had got caught for pinching something from one of the shops and thrown out. So I think we’re banned from Disneyland! Is it good?
Space Mountain is pretty good.
Gary “Gaz” Whelan: I don’t like rides. I don’t like heights. I don’t even like being as tall as I am!

HAPPY MONDAYS WITH THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS ON FRI., SEPT. 18, AT CLUB NOKIA, 800 W. OLYMPIC BLVD., DOWNTOWN. 7 PM / $27.50-$35 / ALL AGES. CLUBNOKIA.COM. VISIT HAPPY MONDAYS AT HAPPYMONDAYSONLINE.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/HAPPYMONDAYSONLINE.

Stream: Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears “I’m Broke”

(from Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is out now on Lost Highway)

Black Joe Lewis is a Texas soul shouter who would have been at home on Sue in 1966 but finds himself instead on Lost Horizon with his band the Honeybears. He’s opened for Little Richard but his favorite rock ‘n’ roll band is Rocket From The Tombs and he loved Star Trek right up to the point J.J. Abrams got hold of it. He speaks now from a parking lot in Tennessee. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

What was the number one pawned item you saw when you worked at the pawn shop?
Black Joe Lewis (vocals): Probably guns or tools. It was an interesting job. I kinda walked out on my boss at the one that I worked at most of the time. He was—do you watch The Simpsons? The guy who made up the Simpsons characters saw him and made up the comic book store character.
You worked for the actual Comic Book Guy?
I swear to God, dude. Red pony tail, bald on top, beard—his butt crack always stuck out. He was a total asshole but he wasn’t a comic book nerd—he was a gun freak. He was like in his forties and he lived with his parents still because he was in debt because he had so many guns. I was like, ‘How many guns do you have?’ ‘Last time I checked, over 80.’
Did he have a special gun that he was uncomfortably in love with?
Yeah—he had this old Smith and Wesson revolver. Like a fucking Old Western six shooter. And he did this thing every weekend where he dressed up—like a Renaissance fair—dressed up like Civil War and cowboy characters and they’d go and show off their shooting skills. He was a fucking dork—such an asshole. We hated each other. It was just me and him and we worked there all day long together. It was at the same time as the first Bush and Gore election was going on. I was like 18 and it was the first time I was going to be able to vote. And he was a hardcore Republican and I wasn’t and we’d sit there and argue all fucking day. We just didn’t like each other—he was so conservative, man. He would sit there and argue about every little thing—like race, politics, everything. He was a dick.
Did he have a single redeeming characteristic?
Uh.
He was kind to small animals?
Nah, he got shot in his hand. That was kinda stupid too. He was a dick, dude—a total Texan Republican. I walked out on him one day. I just couldn’t stand him and I told him I was gonna put gas in my car and I got in my car and never went back.
Is that what led to the song ‘I’m Broke’?
No. ‘I’m Broke’ is just about your average person who is having a tough time.
I noticed in that picture where the band is in Star Trek uniforms, you’re wearing the blue of the science-medical officer. Why not gold or red?
Why I went to blue? In the last picture? The last one is because we lost all the shirts. I had the original yellow and I’m just a big Star Trek fan from childhood.
What’s your favorite episode of the original series?
Probably the ones with Khan. He was insane. The guy that played him, Ricardo Montalban—I just thought he was a really good actor. Him and Shatner together—Shatner would just drive him nuts, like in the movie too.
Do you think that you have to have a nemesis in your life to really attain your full potential as a creative person?
It’s hard to say because I’ve had people that I couldn’t stand and I tried to catch them. But now I don’t really try to hate on people too much. Well—since you’re talking about the Star Trek thing, my ultimate nemesis is J.J. Abrams. He straight up ruined the story of Star Trek. I wanted to throw my drink at the screen. I was pissed. There’s never gonna be a continuation of what it should be—Star Trek’s dead, man. When I saw previews for the movie, I was really excited. I was thinking it was gonna be awesome and everybody was saying J.J. Abrams wrote Lost. I went in there and I was fucking pumped and then it was like Melrose Place—a bunch of teenagers.
What is the essential thing about Star Trek that he missed?
The biggest thing is he blew up the planet Vulcan. You can’t have Star Trek without Vulcan. And Spock and Uhura were hooking up—that would never happen. In the older series, the characters were so much more professional—like military. Like hardcore guys. In this one they’re making jokes and running around.
Do you run the Honeybears with that Starfleet discipline?
Not really. I tried.
It seems like every chance you get you wanna say something about 8-Ball and MJG. Per their album Comin Out Hard, what’s the hardest you ever came out?
We did this thing at our last show in Austin where the bass player played in a wheelchair the whole time. And at the end of the show, I healed him—like the dudes on the Christian channel. The preachers. And he jumped up and spun around—everybody loved it. And then this guy back home—one of the writers—he didn’t want to write about it and so he wrote about every band but us. I was like, ‘Man, you couldn’t write about the wheelchair thing?’
But you got Barack Obama talking about you.
Exactly. I want to try to meet him one day. Isn’t he a Bob Dylan fan? I didn’t catch all the bands he liked—I remember they were talking about the iPods.
If you guys covered a Rocket From the Tombs song, which would it be?
In my old band, we did ‘(I Want You To Know) What Love Is.’ We never really started doing that in this band—I don’t know why. I love that band a lot. It’d probably be that one again because I already know it and then—‘Ain’t It Fun’ is always good.
So you’re a Peter Laughner fan?
Oh yeah. Rocket From the Tombs and the Dead Boys is my favorite rock ‘n’ roll ever. The greatest rock ‘n’ roll.
What screamers are closest to your heart?
Definitely James Brown. Bunker Hill—he’s bad ass. I guess you’ve got Little Richard, too.
Did you meet him when you played with him?
No, he was in a really, really bad mood. I didn’t get anywhere near him. He was complaining about everything on the stage. It was almost like a comedy show. He started bitching about Pat Boone stuff from the fifties.
The great ‘Tutti Frutti betrayal?
He made everybody but their camera’s away in the crowd and then he kept saying how Asian people have pretty skin. And he was like, ‘Y’all like my boots?’ I wanted him to play ‘Rip It Up’ but he never did.
What’s the nastiest thing you can say in a foreign language if you have to?
When I was in Holland they taught me how to say, ‘Bitch, I love you.’
What’s the dirtiest record in your collection?
The dirtiest record I’ve got is probably one of Eazy E’s.
How soon do you think you’ll get around to naming that record after Nat Turner?
Hopefully next one.
Any other revolutionaries you’d like to mention?
Karl Marx is always cool. Che Guevara. I’ve been reading a lot of that Howard Zinn book—I’ve been learning about it a lot. They were all like the guys who were early in the movement before it had corruption. Like Karl Marx wrote it from his prison cell or whatever. Later on when people got power, they start getting crazy.
What kind of song would you write if you found out you only had a year to live?
I would write a song about Canada. No one cares about Canada.
You once said you wanna be the black Elvis—are you still working on that?
Yeah, I’m still working.
How close are you? Are you the black Carl Perkins?
No—I don’t have any money yet!
If you end up coming into a million dollars, what shape do you want your swimming pool to be?
The shape of a butt.

BLACK JOE LEWIS AND THE HONEYBEARS WITH EXTRA GOLDEN ON MON., AUG 31, AT THE TROUBADOUR, 9081 SANTA MONICA BLVD., WEST HOLLYWOOD. 8PM / $15 / ALL AGES. TROUBADOUR.COM. BLACK JOE LEWIS AND THE HONEYBEARS’ TELL ‘EM WHAT YOUR NAME IS IS OUT NOW ON LOST HIGHWAY. VISIT BLACK JOE LEWIS AND THE HONEY BEARS AT BLACKJOELEWIS.COM OR ON MYSPACE AT MYSPACE.COM/BLACKJOELEWIS.