Yesterday  in Santa Ana, I relived a bit of my youth at the homeland-security-threatening Cacophony Society documentary extravaganza that included a preview screening of Jon Alloway’s Cacophony Society documentary Into the Zone: the Story of the Cacophony Society followed by the grand opening of the Cacophony Society Zone Show “art” retrospective at Santa Ana’s Grand Central Art Center.

There were also some musical acts, like Creekbird and Fancy Space People, as well as performances by the Art of Bleeding folks and assorted Cacophony-related ne’er-do-wells. It was too crazy and oddly sentimental to review (would you review a high school reunion?), so I’m just going to post the top thoughts off of my head.

1. Back in the day I was one of the youngest people at any Cacophony event. And it’s still true today. I think I loved it.

2. I am so proud of Jon Alloway for finishing this movie! This must have been culled from thousands of hours of footage, and tons of where-are-they-now interviews, and it’s all edited together with aplomb! Loved in particular the huge montage of explosions, gross food products, and pillow feathers at the beginning.

3. I expected to see a young version of myself in a jumpsuit at the “Yard Sale of the Damned” I helped with in 2000 or so. I did NOT expect to see myself naked, 24 feet high, on a huge screen in Santa Ana, playing “strip dreidel” (which like so many of Cacophony’s great ideas has now entered the mainstream) at Jew Night 2000.

4. I’m kind of shocked at how young and lithe and attractive my naked body was at age 23. I looked good!

5. Hmm … maybe that wasn’t me.

6. Peter Geiberger (the young man who sold me the Farfisa I still play now) is dead. I learned from watching the movie, when they put “RIP” next to his name. Probably somebody told me in the past that he died, and I was all “no, that was just a hoax.”

7. I didn’t quite know that Peter was REALLY dead until I saw his placard at the exhibit later. And then I had to confirm it with Kevin Lee. There’s still a 3% chance that it’s all an elaborate hoax.

8. I was actually thinking I might run into Peter yesterday and be able to talk to him and see if life is treating him well. He was a very smart guy, so I’d hoped he was doing something fascinating that he could brag about to me (even more fascinating than using a remote control robot to play drums in a band with DJ Lance Rock)—and that he’d ask me how the Farfisa was doing. Not happy to learn he’s no longer with us.

9. Though no surprise, it was sad to see Bruce Elliott (who I didn’t know that well, but was a great author and a huge influence on how I eat food to this day) and Tracy Thielen (who had so much love and light for the world) dead on the big screen as well. They were wonderful people. Death is really not conducive to helping me enjoy life with my friends.

10. I still think the “Zombies for Gore” event at the 2000 DNC was cheap, even stupid (and not delightfully so). So many terrible things happened in the past decade as a result of Bush winning the election, and I would have been ashamed to have taken part in an apolitical prank during a time when the fate of our nation was so precarious—and teetered the wrong way. But then again, California was basically tied up for Gore already, and Bush really hadn’t revealed how terrible and right-wing he was yet (he’d ran on “reaching across the aisle”), so I see why perhaps it seemed safe to have a little fun. But it wasn’t.

11. The thought of Chuckles dressed with oozing pustules, playing a leper in the mud, at the Renaissance Faire is just too charming for words. I wish I had been less agoraphobic, and bolder, in those days. I don’t think I did any pranks at all… too chickenshit.

12. I’d forgotten about the amazing “We will kill our pets to protest the war” posters in Silver Lake in 2003! Oh my god, I need to start doing that kind of stuff again. Making posters and pissing people off sounds like a much-needed stress reliever.

13. I didn’t know Keri French would make me a psychedelic poster using her vagina.

14. The people of Santa Ana loooooved Fancy Space People. I think psychedelic glam rock has just crossed into the mainstream.

-Dan Collins

Sure, the Aggrolites have recently been Tim Armstrong’s backing band. The Aggrolites have played the fucking Warped Tour, repeatedly. I would never even have given this band the time of day had they not sent us a really beautiful red vinyl 12”. And that would have been a shame, because during those moments when I’ve had a glass of scotch and am at my most receptive, I feel like Rugged Road by the Aggrolites is the finest modern piece of classic reggae I’ve heard in a quarter century.

And the scotch helps, because there’s an enraged musical purist at the forefront of my brain that knows this is an extension of the nineties ska revival and that still feels betrayed by how shameful I felt at being a ska fan in the early 90s, only to see the genre bloat on its own gas into ska-punk and devolve into terrible bands as far-flung as Sublime, Gogol Bordello, and (early) No Doubt. Somehow the Aggrolites are of that Warped world, and yet they have successfully fought its worst urges and drained all the suck out, leaving behind a “dirty reggae” sound that is highly pure, largely instrumental, organ-driven, and at times even beautiful. Listening to this album is like watching the female skinheads of This Is England walking down the street in their braces and boots. It’s late 60s reggae, just without the pops and scratches, and it might even make you like Tim Armstrong, just a little bit.

-Dan Collins

DF: When you go to a strip bar do you put the money in a woman’s underwear or do you just watch?
I just throw it onstage.
DC: Is that disrespectful?
People have different terms for what’s respectful strip club etiquette. I don’t really want to touch anyone unless it’s extremely necessary. Maybe it’s disrespectful to throw money at someone’s feet, but I also don’t feel comfortable just sticking money in a stranger’s underwear.
DF: Which one is more disrespectful?
It’s a question for the ages and I’m definitely not the right person to try to answer. If I could, I would steam it flat and gently place it down on a little pillow but I don’t have that kind of time.
DC: Which of your songs would be best for someone to strip to?
I guess it depends if you’re doing some kind of intense power dance or if you’re trying to do some graceful pole-sliding.
DF: Which one do you like better?
I find pole-sliding impressive. ‘C.I.T.M.’ on my new record is a kind of piano industrial ballad. That would be a good one to get down with but also be very graceful with.
DC: The first Corridor record was very clean but it had lot of ferocious technical activity. Is that different on the new record, Real Late?
As far as ferocious technical approach, it’s definitely been pulled back a bit. The first record was more my own self-discovery of what I was capable of doing. It turned into what it turned into and was released. As the virgin release for Corridor—I mean, this is the only project that I’ve written, sang and played everything for. My history as a musician until this was as a drummer for ten years. I never did anything outside of that. I wanted to write a record where I played all the instruments I could play to the best of my ability. I wasn’t trying to be grandiose or over-the-top, but I wanted to make something with every ounce of my being. I’m not showing off or being pompous.
DF: No one is calling you pompous!
DC: I think there’s a place for music like that. Is this album more song-based?
I wanted to make it a little more accessible than alienating. We all make art to have people enjoy it, look at it, listen to it, watch it, whatever. I don’t want to push anyone away with what I’m doing. The first record was good but it wasn’t the most easy listen. It wasn’t pop-structured. It wasn’t made for people to enjoy. It was just made to exist, in my opinion. After playing in so many different kinds of bands since then, I learned more about the structure of writing music.
DF: When did you learn all these instruments?
I’ve been playing guitar as long as I’ve been drumming—sixteen years. Cello has only been five or six years. I’m not classically trained.
DF: I imagined you playing in a school band.
Not at all. I bought that off a roommate who was moving and taught myself.
DC: Do you listen to classical cello music?
Some I do. I’m not authority on it. I have a lot of friends who are so I don’t even bother trying to assume I know anything.
DF: You have a lot of friends that are authorities on cello music?
Let’s put it this way: I have more than four, which is a lot. I’ve played with people who are classically trained. I honestly feel like I’m insulting them. I can see in their eyes, them judging my technique.
DF: Sounds like it’s their problem.
It’s definitely their problem. But I respect where they’re coming from. It is an art form. But some of my favorite musicians aren’t schooled but just made sense of the instrument and made it what they want it to be.
DC: Isn’t that what rock ‘n’ roll is at its best—a bastardization?
Absolutely. I just happen to make music with classical elements so I get lumped in with the genre. It’s cello, but it’s not ‘classical.’ It’s ‘avant-garde.’
DC: It would be hard for me to believe there’s not a classical influence on your guitar
playing.
DF: I’d say an early heavy metal influence might sound like a classical influence.
Since you brought it up, if there is any influence I can say I’ve taken things from, it’s definitely old metal. Initially when I started on music, I listened to punk and metal and thrash and those were the bands I played in. When I was a kid, the first records I got were from my brother. Slayer, Metallica, Judas Priest.
DF: What was the first song you learned to play?
I got a guitar in seventh grade and I would learn everything from Minor Threat to all the songs on Ride the Lightning on guitar and same with drums. It all stemmed off this adolescent shit. I grew up in a rural city, a kind of shitty area in Massachusetts called Brockton. It’s an old industrial city that got everything taken away from it and it just became sort of like Detroit, though not as bad. The businesses were gone, there was a lot of poverty and crime. It wasn’t the greatest place to grow up. It wasn’t in touch with ‘the now.’ It was very suburban. The music I could access was very technical, intense stuff—very hard and fast. I didn’t grow up listening to the Beatles or Rolling Stones. It wasn’t in my house. My brother and sister liked 80s hair bands. Everything I heard had a face-melting solo, from any room in the house. So that’s what I came to know as music. It wasn’t until later in life I realized this represented only a small percentage of music. But it’s how I learned to play, and the records I heard as a kid turned into what I do now. Once you push yourself that hard, it’s hard to regress. I try to hold back.
DF: You hold back the impulse to shred.
I don’t sit around in my room anymore trying to melt people’s faces off. But I’m interested in time and space in music. The space that is in music to be filled. When I’m writing, I listen to all the empty space where things can go and I think, ‘Well, if I have the possibility to put something there rather than not, I will try to do that tastefully.’ Or un-tastefully sometimes.
DC: Are you leaving more space unfilled?
There’s more silence and room to hear things. It’s not empty, but different things fill in the space now.
DC: You’ve managed to make an extreme form of music that is not reliant upon the way metal went—where it’s all demon voices and fast and loud as possible.
I come from that format of music. There’s so many kinds of heavy music in the Northeast that weren’t metal or hardcore. Lightning Bolt is a good example. I grew up hearing that band. They’re heavy technically and crazy but they’re not really metal. They don’t sound like Slayer. I grew up in an artistic time with heavy music. There weren’t really boundaries. You could still be heavy and crazy and mosh and trash the place. The music I make now comes from that. I was molded a certain way to begin with. I would like to pretend to fight that stuff but I don’t have the ability to fake it. The honest truth about my music is that this is what comes out of me without any premeditation or boundary. But, of course, the music is definitely orchestrated. I have to compile and do it piece by piece.
DF: You created this music entirely yourself in order to play it by yourself, so what’s brought you now to playing it live with a band?
There was a sort of romanticism to starting Corridor as the anti-band. It was like flying a space ship—one false move and the whole thing collapses and crashes. I learned to do it from playing awful shows. It wasn’t even trial-and-error. I was just learning from error, and then eventually it got good. But after six years of it, I feel like I’ve hit the ceiling with that. I’ve conquered that aspect of this project.
DC: One of your new songs is called ‘Rebuilding My Internal World.’ Is this album more personal?
It’s definitely more introspective. I wanted to make the album more accessible and to do that, I had to focus more internally on what I thought accessible meant. These songs are actually influenced by experience. The first one was more for everyone and this one is more for me. There’s a paradox, I know. I wasn’t up there shaking my ass, just a guy sitting onstage. It was bare bones: ‘I’m here for you to listen to, not to be entertained by.’ Now that I’m trying to entertain people by giving them something they can relate to, I have to reverse everything. I have to dig into a place that’s more personal, like a diary.
DC: Isn’t it weird that the personal is more universal?
DF: Whoa, Dan!
DC: I know.
DF: In the spectrum of weird music there’s the light side and the dark side, and you would
have to be on the dark side.
DC: Ha! Every silver lining has a touch of gray and you’re that touch of gray. How does it feel?
If someone in a dark place, darker than I’ve ever been, gets a moment of relief from listening to my record … There are plenty of records that I listen to because they relate to how I’m feeling when I don’t want to feel better. If don’t want to get out of the dark place, I just want that misery loves company feeling.
DF: Why do you feel this way about stuff? Why does your dark side come out in music?
The easiest answer is that I have to go out in the world and be an approachable person and I have to do the things I have to do for basic functioning in life. The one time I can be at ease and feel how I want to feel without judgment is when I create music. When I sit down to write music, I’m not trying to get people on a dance floor. It’s not happy or sad but it’s this tonality. It’s not to bring anyone down.
DC: What does “C.I.T.M.” stand for?
‘Caught in the moment.’ It’s about a friend that I had an intimate relationship with that spearheaded my seriousness about playing music to get me where I am today. It’s about an intense violent experience we had. It’s not an apology but it’s an explanation why. We’ve reconciled, but it was something that I felt I need to always remember so I put it in a song. I know that sounds like bullshit.
DC: That is heavy and personal and a lot of people can relate to that.
I know the both of you, and we’re sitting in my house, and we’re fucking around a little bit, but to truly answer your questions I have to step outside of myself. This isn’t an artist rant but it’s more like an alter ego. This [points to himself] is all the performance and this [points to CD] is all that’s real. This is my attempt to exist the way I would like to exist. I would rather exist on record than in real life.
DC: I do feel that your music is very real but the ability to be purely on record is an illusion.
It is an illusion but it’s no more an illusion than reality, I’d say. We’re all an illusion. I don’t think anyone’s really real unless they’re alone.
DF: There’s six songs on this record. Why not make music all year long and put out tons of records? Wouldn’t that be closer to shifting your existence to a recorded form? By existing to record?
People do that. Rather than leave a footprint by putting out twenty records a year, I’d rather leave a miniscule existence with stuff that I think is relevant to me and an exploration of my meaning. I stand by every song I’ve written and put out. I’m not trying to sound spiritual or melodramatic. I’m really not. I’m really boring and normal.
DC: I really don’t think that’s true.
DF: I don’t think you have enough shirts and shoes to be normal. But you do like to watch News Radio, which is very normal.
DC: You’re getting all dark on us but I feel you’re moving in very human directions.
I can only look at myself in the mirror and think I’m normal. But I’m sure most people think I’m somewhat different. I’m not saying I’m not human. I’m as human as you or her. Music can be taken too seriously and literally. I take it too seriously and I take myself too seriously. But I have to find a balance between being serious with what I do and not being arrogant about it. I love what I do. I truly enjoy making music, as dark as it may be to other people or off-putting because you can’t shake your ass to it. I think it feels good to write sad songs, not that these are all sad. I wouldn’t even say they’re sad, they’re just intense.
DC: Do you feel like how the Sales Brothers must have felt in Tin Machine?
DF: Or do you feel like Clint Eastwood?
Definitely more like Fistful of Dollars.
DC: Do you have any ponchos that you wear?
DF: No, he has like four T-shirts.
I have four T-shirts and two cardigans, and one pair of shoes.
DF: You have your little moccasins, too.

CORRIDOR’S REAL LATE IS OUT NOW ON MANIMAL. VISIT CORRIDOR AT MYSPACE.COM/EASTCORRIDOR.

Have you ever had someone from the periphery of your experience suddenly come into full focus, like the goofy kid who rises up to become the songwriter of your band, or your friend’s mousy sister who turns out to be the hottest fuck of your life (and then your soul mate)? This is how I feel in the afterglow of seeing Jimmy Cliff at Friday night’s secret show.

I admit, I’d always kind of tucked Jimmy Cliff away into the background of my Jamaican music appreciation. I saw him as the cool older brother of Bob Marley, less tainted by frat boys singing his greatest hits but still suffering from 80s cheese and his appearance in a Robin Williams vehicle. But after seeing Jimmy Cliff play at a private party Friday night, at a huge practice space tucked away in the shadows of Burbank Airport (I had to call someone’s intern to get my name on a list), I quite honestly believe Cliff may be the hottest soul singer I’ve ever seen perform. He has a spirit and enthusiasm NOW, at my dad’s age, that can humble anyone this side of Prince, and his current lineup has the spirit of a forgotten time, a time far richer musically than many of the things Cliff has done in the past 40 years.

I didn’t quite have the same epiphany about Rancid’s Tim Armstrong, though he impressed me too. Turns out, he’s the man who’s single-handedly spearheaded Cliff’s triumphant return to hipdom. Friday night, nearly all of the gear had “RANCID” stenciled onto it, and what gear! Vintage amps, a Hammond AND a Vox organ, and a bunch of great horn and geetar players made the sound glow with the warm familiarity of solid late 60’s production. Even the players dressed classy, in suits, though Armstrong himself in his tats, untucked shirt, and wicked eyebrows wilder than the rats of NIMH, never really escaped looking like the culmination of a more “checkered” ska-punk past.

The audience wasn’t dressed like you’d expect for a Jimmy Cliff show, either. In fact, this guy was the ONLY PERSON WITH DREADLOCKS!

Instead, much of the audience members were friends of the band, or were hotshots in the music industry, or were photographers, or had sang in Fishbone, or were aged beatific-looking boomers in woven berets, or were the children of one of the above. Cliff loved this last component of the audience, inviting the children with his words and friendliness to linger in the front of the crowd cross-legged and agape at what we all agreed would be the memory of a lifetime.

And I was right there with them. Cliff started with “You Can Get It,” his hit from The Harder They Come, and almost immediately he started twirling, jumping, and in the tradition of Chuck Berry, even duck walking. I couldn’t even get a photo that wasn’t blurry as hell!

That got my attention, but what melted my heart was that voice. Oh my god. I pride myself on being able to capture the sound of music in words, but there really is no way to convey what came out of that man’s throat and into our hearts Friday night. The closest I can get is to say that he sounded effortless and full of love, like butter melting slowly over Mom’s pancakes. He sounded awake and alert, classy, not cluttered in Rastafarian claptrap but “transcendent” in as close to a literal meaning as an atheist like me can believe in.

It was an updated sound, too, as much as it was a celebration of the 60s sound he came out of. He changed his song “Viet Nam” to be about Afghanistan, he paid tribute to Joe Strummer and the Clash with his cover of their “Guns of Brixton” (the lyrics of which referenced his character from The Harder They Come, so this was a bit like when Kraftwerk covered Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock”) and he introduced every song with a little mention of the audience, as if his lyrics were concepts applicable to us in the room, right now, as opposed to sentiments meant for our parents’ world of cheap oil, boiling-hot Cold Wars and unabashed, institutionalized racism.  Even his cover of “I Can See Clearly Now” seemed like he decided to cover it today, for us, giving it his melodious all, and dancing up a storm, as though he’d never crooned it 20 years ago in a field of grass between montages from the movie Cool Runnings.

Does it seem like I’m being a little flippant? Maybe so, but it’s a coping mechanism. It’s hard to convey just how wonderful this evening was. I was moved and entertained, wowed by the vocal mastery and by the lyricism.

As we headed out into the streets, still very early in the night, I wanted to clasp hands with my friends, to smile, to encourage love by being love—a shockingly spiritual, nearly Christian sentiment! Was Cliff’s history of “graduating” from religions affecting me? I sauntered to the car, beaming, completely sober, and still a sinner. But now I had a lot of warmth to bring with me into the cold night air.

-Dan Collins

And yep, sure enough, her simple setup of an acoustic geetar and microphone was too much for the dedicated but ill-equipped Harvard and Stone sound crew, and a peal of feedback toyed with her like a catty ghost intermittently throughout the set. No matter—she was mesmerizing, and not just because she’s the most adorable thing ever, yet more obscure than she deserves, praised by websites as diverse as Curve Magazine and fuckyeahjadecastrinos.com yet oddly difficult to pin down via a formal press release. Since I know little more about her than that Alex Ebert apparently “discovered” her sitting at a coffee shop because he liked the cut of her jib and that magically, poof, she was as talented as all hell and helped make his band famous, it’s hard to say how she got so good. But I really am torn between who’s better, Jade or June Carter, and not just because Jade is alive and can still perform. Both have a penchant for solid, dirt-honest female vocals and for bringing mirth and merriment everywhere they go, with Carter perhaps slightly wittier and Jade with perhaps slightly better pipes.

In case you’re wondering, Jade solo is the same Jade you think you know, just as smiley and happy from two feet away as in every photo of her in Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros on a festival stage you’ve ever seen. As she tuned and tried to adjust to the crappy sound system by leaving her elevated stool and sitting cross-legged on the low stage, even her eyes smiled, and her eyebrows too. And if I’d had a magnifying glass, I would suspect that her dimples are smile-shaped.

But her songs were not so shiny and happy. Tragic songs poured out of her about loneliness and unimportance: “There is no sailor, there is no sea. There is no you nor even me.” The painful delicacy of the whole thing threatened to be shattered by the Hollywood douche bags in the back of the crowd, who were talking to each other so loudly, my friends and I just barely resisted shooshing them (we should have!). But Jade took it all in stride, dropping songs like little packages of special pain into the laps of the front-row favorites, my favorite being a ditty about angel choirs that could have scored a David Lynch film ten years ago.

It was beautiful, and so of course it was a letdown to see Jade make way for Grace Woodroofe and her more rockin’ band. Nothing wrong with Grace Woodroofe per se—in fact, she too has a beautiful voice, a strong, somber thing that’s put her in the public eye since about age 16. And she’s a major looker, and could be/probably is a model. Maybe there I’m showing my prejudice, but aren’t rock and roll stars supposed to be a little ugly? Rock is supposed to transform plain-janes like Joan Jett and Roger Daltrey into steaming piles of sex, and if you start off already looking like a smoking-hot damsel with alabaster skin, well, where’s the charm?

But my puttering inability to engage with the band wasn’t all Olivia Munn-ery and the backwards prejudice in beauty—there was something lacking in this band. Not so much a salad of sounds as a sludge in between, Woodroofe’s act couldn’t quite seem to make up its mind about whether it was hard rock or poignant songcraft, and if it was supposed to be the latter, well, songs rhyming “lover,” “father,” and “mother” might as well just go into “I’m a servant/I’m a saint” and become Alanis Morissette. Actually, the template for Woodroofe’s act seems to be that more respectable 90’s icon, PJ Harvey (and I don’t just say that because they’re both Aussies). But Harvey in her youth always had a hard, dark, crazy, jealous edge, and I can’t say that I felt a whole lot of danger in Woodroofe’s performance—certainly not enough danger to scare away the aforementioned douches.

Though that too is prejudice: maybe the douche bags just show up every night, like roaches, for the architecture. I also saw a ton of chill, happy-as-hell fans in the front cheering Woodroofe on, clearly loving it, Mia Doi Todd herself among them, and me! So maybe what I was seeing was a lackluster performance by an otherwise respectable artist. But really, Woodroofe’s was not an inspiring show. Even closing with a cover of the Stooges’ “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog” couldn’t redeem things, as Woodroofe bounced around in her designer-looking white dress that has never seen a stain in its life, much less a jar of peanut butter.

But then the stage filled up with the main course in our aural dinner: Adanowsky, with a new band that looked like it was made up of the Bizarro world Village People: a mixed martial arts villain on guitar, a white nerdy thing on keyboards who could have been in the Zombies, and a bassist with hair like a Brazilian Chris Ziegler!

Adanowsky himself, AKA Adan Jodorowsky, might at first seem to have a pretty boy pedigree. An actor cum musician who likes to unbutton his shirt a little during the show, and the child of director Alejandro Jodorowsky, clearly many ladies find him gorgeous as well—and even if the gals don’t respond immediately, he’ll strike first by staging videos with Devendra Banhart and a bunch of naked ladies covered in makeup having an orgy around him. But as an actor, his films have been insane and bloody, and as a musician, he’s punk enough to actually engage with the crowd. When the set started, a drunken couple was actively making out right on the stage, and as the band began to play, Adanowsky pried them off the stage with a mic stand poke, then gracefully avoided a full-on brawl when the man of the pair tried to pick a fight: “Don’t worry, I won’t sleep with your wife!”

When I saw Adanowsky at SXSW earlier this year, it was in a lineup that included some great bands such as Shannon and the Clams and the Growlers. But Adanowsky in particular impressed me, skirting the line somehow between smooth country rock and Murph and the Magic Tones but, you know, with a more international intrigue flair, singing in Spanish and French as often as English.

This new line-up had even more zing, and more swing, and more sex appeal, possibly because he was less jet-lagged and better dressed than he’d been in Austin in the spring. His press people have been pushing the legend of little Adan Jodorowsky learning to dance from James Brown—it sounds more to me like he just got to meet James Brown as a kid, like once, but hey, he certainly busted a move Wednesday night, twirling and dipping and bringing a kind of coy macho sexiness that we haven’t really seen since 80’s Prince. At one point, he stopped singing and literally said “I want to give you a little bit of kisses,” then leaned into the audience as a smorgasbord of women jumped out of their boyfriends’ arms and up to the front of the stage to get a big wet peck on the cheek or three. The songs were a mix of Spanish, French, and English, some of which he dedicated to Devendra, who was holding court behind the turntables in his shocking short black locks.

Not being a polyglot, or even bilingual like seemingly most of the audience, I missed out on some of the lyrics that weren’t en Inglés. But on the rare acoustic numbers, I could make out the sentiments just fine, and on the rock numbers—well, what more do you need to understand when a beautiful young man coos “Jam du Jour” while wiggling his hips, and when the need to dance propels my feet anywhere but out to my car?

Intending only to stay until a safe bedtime, I stuck around for the entire thing, wondering when late November would approach so I could get the new Adanowsky disk coming out with some of these tunes on it. It’s both shallow and deep, the way post-war guitar-based music sounds best. With his hairstyle and approach to music, clearly he’s got one foot in the Serge Gainsbourg legacy and another in the world of smooth soul, and from that, he’s able to strut like a shaman.

-Dan Collins

Shannon and the Clams are NOT a girl group: they glean insights from Danzig as well as from Patsy Cline, and they sneak messages about loving dogs and blinding Prince Charming into songs inspired by the soundtrack to Indiana Jones. They speak to us now from the road as electronic children’s records about botanical delights blast from the van’s speakers, somewhere between god-knows-where and Vegas. This interview by Dan Collins.

Why even make music in an era when the American Dream has clearly turned into a joke and a lie?

Cody Blanchard (guitar, vocals): It’s kind of just an impulse. I can’t really help it.

Shannon Shaw (bass, vocals): I just can’t help myself. I’m not quite the ‘American Dream’ kinda girl, so that doesn’t matter to me. I write about stuff that’s affecting me, despite what’s going elsewhere. Is that selfish?

Cody Blanchard: It feels good to do something pure and inspired and fun and to try to make that your living, when so many other people’s livings are so empty and crummy.

You guys are not a band that is inspired by old rock ‘n’ roll—you ARE late fifties-early sixties rock ‘n’ roll. Like, especially with your first album, we could stick you in a movie set in 1961 and it would more or less feel normal. Do you disagree?

Shannon Shaw:I disagree a bit but appreciate the comment!

Cody Blanchard: I agree! I like to hope we are as weird and inspired as those original rock ‘n’ roll weirdos. Also I would love to be in a movie, just in the background or something. Although, I’m not crazy about that first album!

Shannon Shaw: That would be incredible to actually use that recording equipment … I feel like we have influences from across the weirdo board! I do acknowledge in full a heavy 50s and 60s flavor on our first album, but believe it or not, I’m not always trying to sounds that way. Oldies are definitely what I was raised on so they are pretty ingrained in me.

Yet even on the first album, there are moments, like the screaming in “Take It Back,” that feel like they’re overtaking the confines of the rock nostalgia you guys are playing with.

Cody Blanchard: We all like lots of wild scary psychedelic stuff and crumby 80s punk. Although I think you’d be surprised by what stuff did fly in the 50s and 60s. There’s tons of weird freaky off-the-radar stuff out there, and that old weird stuff is even WEIRDER than modern freaky stuff!

Shannon Shaw: I mean, a girl screaming and losing control and playing bass very shittily (first album) I’m sure would not have flown if you are placing us in the 50s or 60s.

The new album is a little more ragged and modern—like “Toxic Revenge” which is so punk, it’s almost hardcore. Was this a natural progression that you never talked about, or did you have a talk and were like, “Guys, we need a change and we need to GROW!”

Shannon Shaw: Our first album certainly has some punk elements so that’s not new to us, but I would say Sleep Talk has a little more finesse.

Cody Blanchard: It [Sleep Talk] doesn’t feel more modern to me. It feels free-er and wilder. It actually feels older to me, like Disney music and Ennio Morricone or something.

Shannon Shaw: We didn’t have any official discussion about growing, I think Cody and I just got a little more creative and odd.

Cody Blanchard: We never talked about it, but we often complained about our songs being too simple and straightforward and not weird and crazy enough. We hibernated for two weeks last January and wrote and recorded all that stuff. It was cool.

Shannon Shaw: I wouldn’t call the new album girl group, or strictly oldies, or strictly punk. I do think we grew a lot.

These seem to be songs are about real things, real moments that affected you! Do you get bummed when you’re belting out your heart on issues like loss and love that are personal to you, and people are just like “You guys are so cute!” Like, they can’t see past the packaging?

Shannon Shaw: Sometimes I do relive the moment I’m singing about. I have a little more control than I used to, ha ha. I just wrote a new song called Ozma about my dog that just died a super tragic death. The song isn’t about her tragic death, it’s about the stuff she liked to do, like sleep in my mom’s bed when she gone, sniffing flowers, laying in the sun … There’s a line where I mention her regrowing all her teeth (which she wore down to nubs from her love of chewing rocks) and that line always makes me and Cody really teary-eyed … I don’t know anyone that just focuses on our packaging and ‘cute’ image. If they do then they are bad at listening to bands and should stop. I write songs often to bond with people, not to present them with some novelty item. That makes me feel weird.

Cody Blanchard: My songs aren’t usually about real things, they are pure fantasy! I like the storytelling aspect of music more than the emotional aspect. I love when people are really curious about the made-up stories and ask me questions, like as if they want to read a whole book about those characters!

Is there one of your songs that is about something we wouldn’t expect? Like a happy song that’s about babies dying?  Maybe “Old Man Winter” is really about Hitler or something?

Shannon Shaw: Many of our songs are basically in secret code, where it might seem like a guy that broke my heart, but it’s really a close friendship dissipating or an allegory or metaphor for some of our secret stories. Me and Cody are sneaky!

Cody Blanchard:  “The Woodsman” sounds kind of sweet, but it’s about the Woodsman from Snow White who is hired to kill Snow White, but instead he confesses his love to her in the forest and she gets scared and runs off. While chasing her down he accidentally kills her and decides to cut out her heart and keep it for himself and hide in the woods forever. Forty years later, the queen comes through a time portal and cuts his eyes out!

I had no idea your plots were so deep! Any concept albums in the near future? Or have these already BEEN concept albums?

Cody Blanchard: I dislike concept albums.

Shannon Shaw: Wait Forty years and then wait for a proper answer.

Shannon, you also play for Hunx and his Punx. In a review for Hunx and his Punx, Pitchfork said that Shannon “operates as the band’s charismatic secret weapon, stealing the scene on a handful of songs.” Shannon, are the other Punx jealous of your skills?

Shannon Shaw: No way! Maybe Pitchfork was trying to start some drama! I am basically playing with my idols. Everyone who has ever gotten to be a Punx is or was in an amazing legendary band. Prettty sure we all love each other.

Then why form your own band? Were you not getting your needs met in the Punx? Or did you start this band first and the Punx co-opted you?

Shannon Shaw: Clams were around a tiny minute before Hunx. We were playing super fun and crubby house shows while Hunx was being born. He asked me to sing backups on a solo show he played at the Gilman, and eventually asked me to fill in playing bass for his old bassist, and eventually I just stuck. Now he will never be rid of me … never.

There seem to be a lot of “girl bands” nowadays, and the press has gone nuts for them, be they Dum Dum Girls or Best Coast or Tennis or Vivian Girls. Do you feel honored or upset to be referred to in the same category?

Shannon Shaw: We are not a ‘girl band.’ I think it’s stupid that people consider us a ‘girl band’ just because there happens to be a girl in the band. Cody and Ian are an integral part of the band, and I’m pretty sure they both have a set of twig and berries. I always wonder if the above bands like being called a ‘girl band’ (and p.s., there is a guy in Best Coast, duh). They are all so talented and creative and awesome, it seems to take away some of their power when people reduce them to a ‘girl band.’

Cody Blanchard: I think it’s totally offensive and counter-productive to womens’ social progress to lump these bands together and categorize them based on their gender rather than on their aesthetic and artistic merit. Seems like musical genres should have more to do with music and less to do with gender. Same with lumping together artists based on their sexuality, I think that’s totally backwards. Presenting a group of artists of the same gender or sexuality seems so demeaning to me.

Shannon Shaw: They earned their sucess through good song writing and hard work, not because of their boobs and gennies, methinks. However, I do love to see more ladies and gender benders and all varieties of people in the rock ‘n’ roll world. Like Uzi Rash says, “That’s what makes this gumbo so delicious.”

Cody Blanchard: And I’m so glad that they are out there doin’ it, but I don’t think we really sound anything like those bands.

How do you transcend those bands?

Cody Blanchard: Ummm, I dunno if we ‘transcend’ them. I think we’re just different. I think we’re sillier and more fun and wild and less reserved and self-conscious. It’s just a different aesthetic. I think our sound is probably broader, more wide-reaching.

“Surrounded by Ghosts” makes reference to the New York Dolls’ “Lonely Planet Boy.” Do you feel a kinship with bands like the Dolls or early Blondie that came out of New York with a mean Shadow Morton streak?

Shannon Shaw: Uf, good question! I think I feel a kinship. I also feel like every song and every band I have ever listened to has wiggled its way into my subconscious and affected certain songs. First song I ever wrote I eventually realized I accidentally ripped off of the scary Halloween song from Garfield’s Halloween special.

I feel like your vocals are more Chrissie Hynde than Bill Murray, but with a dry streak that recalls Wanda Jackson. Are there some vocalists who really inspire you?

Shannon Shaw: Wanda Jackson rules! Roy Orbison is my favorite of all time. I think I taught myself to sing just by singing his songs my whole life, and eventually singing them out loud. Also, Patsy Cline, Etta James, Gene Pitney, Timi Yuro, and especially Danzig. He is my dream duet partner. I hope he reads this and accepts my official invite to duet with me. I will write him the most beautiful song if he will sing with me.

Cody, what about you? They (the music press) keeps calling you “rockabilly,” but I hear a lot of Buddy Holly hiccups in your delivery. What’s going on?

Cody Blanchard: I kind of hate rockabilly, but only because it’s been spoiled in the last 20 years or so. The really early country/rockabilly stuff it great! I love Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers and Lou Christie and Marc Bolan and Frankie Valli. I like that weird squeaky raspy uncontrolled thing, that wild un-self-conscious thing. I like to sound like the syllables and melody are all uncontrolled, like a sudden impulse or something.

When you guys are in the car, do you listen to music that’s totally anathema to your whole sound? Like, I envision you guys jamming out to Kraftwerk in the van a lot.  Running down the road with “Autobahn” blaring from the speakers, and an icy Germanic sheen permeating the air.

Cody Blanchard: Fuck yes. We just bought a Kraftwerk CD in Alabama and listened to it last week! We love to listen to Mort Garson and Bruce Haack and weird old synthesizer stuff. It’s gets exhausting listening to rock ‘n’ rollall the time. Plantasia is a favorite. Also CCR. Also Patton Oswalt standup.

Shannon Shaw: You must not know that we Clams are mega-dorks and play things like the Indiana Jones soundtrack more than you would expect. It’s very inspirational, you know.

What inspires your outfits? Cody, you look like you could be as home at a carnival as you would be at a Question Mark & the Mysterians show as at some kind of anarchist bike co-op. How did you create such a seemingly effortless look?

Cody Blanchard: Thanks! I like to dress up! I like costumes and disguises. If you’re performing for people it’s a rare excuse to wear a costume and really present yourself. Also then you can feel like you’re playing a character or something and act not like yourself. I love the 80s hesher look, I love a 70s Country & Western look, I love a classic 50s American boy look, I love the costumes of the performers on things like the Laurence Welk show. I love 40s cartoon villains and weird 40s and 50s TV show musician costumes. I think I just love too many things and don’t want to pick one so I do them all in rotation.

Want to give me a makeover?

Cody Blanchard: Oh boy, I think I’m terrible at dressing other people up. I’ve tried it a few times. I think I just can’t make myself care enough about how anybody else looks to really invest the proper amount of energy and time into someone else’s look. I’m a mean jerk.

Or how about the Flamin’ Groovies? Are you excited to be in the same festival as them for the Las Vegas Shakedown? Does their approach to taking classic rock ‘n’ roll and making it even more raw kind of inspire you?

Cody Blanchard: YES! WOW! I love raw and simple stuff the most. I love being able to hear the evidence of the human hand in music. I like when it’s stripped down and imperfect. That is greatly inspiring to me.

Cyril Jordan of the Groovies just told us that he’d smoked weed with Bobby Kennedy right before his assassination. Have you had an occasion to get into hijinks with anyone famous through this band?

Shannon Shaw: WOAH!!!!

Cody Blanchard: We got high several times in San Diego this summer with the Reigning Sound!

Shannon Shaw: I tried to smoke weed with Drew Barrymore, but I’m bad at weed because I have bad asthma so I just stood nearby. She was very nice and put up with my boozed buns trying to talk to her about E.T.

What is the worst band that you’ve been billed with? Name NAMES!

Cody Blanchard: There’s too many to name. Lots of awful bands at Oakland house parties in 2007 and 2008 that I can’t remember and wouldn’t be worth mentioning because no ones ever heard of them. Weird nu metal stuff and stoney reggae jam bands. Pee eww.

What’s a band you really love and try to emulate that no one ever talks about?

Cody Blanchard: Walt Disney?

Shannon Shaw: Dr. Teeth and the Muppet band, they don’t get much attention these days.

Who else is playing with you right now?

Cody Blanchard: No one has ever played on any of the albums except for us three, Ian, Shannon, Cody! Sometime I play drums if we’re in a hurry and Ian’s not around.

Shannon Shaw: For this tour our friend Mick Crosby is drumming. He’s from a band called Prison Library, and Uzi Rash, and Knifey Spooney. Last sub drummer we had was the incredible Daniel Pitout from Hunx and his Punx and Nu Sensae. We love both these boys!

I saw you at one of your shows at SXSW this year. What was it like to play on the same stage as the little kid who got a tattoo in Santa Sangre?

Cody Blanchard: WHAT?? What band is that kid in??! I LOVE that movie!!

He’s Jodorowsky’s son. His name is Adan Jodorowsky and he’s in a band called Adanowsky. They opened for you.

WHAAAA? Which show was this? I didn’t know he was there!

They opened for you at a furniture store! I had no idea who he was until later. Do you have any surprises like that planned for Vegas?

Cody Blanchard: We’re gonna bet double or nothing all of our internal organs on a single hand of blackjack, and win it all back, because we’ve seen the future in a crystal ball. Then we’ll all have double organs, twice as strong!

If you guys had to describe yourselves in terms of a legal or illegal drug, what would be that be? My guess would be “pepper-flavored Robitussin” or “heroin-flaked ecstasy.”

Cody Blanchard: Psilocybin mushroom chocolate fondue!

Shannon Shaw: Goldschläger dipped mushrooms. Ew, I just gagged.

Who else are you excited to see at the Shakedown?

Shannon Shaw: The Flamin’ Groovies!

Some of the other bands playing the Shakedown aren’t quite as classic as that, but they’ve been around for a few decades. Are you familiar with all the bands who loved old rock ‘n’ rollthat played in the eighties and nineties? I feel like a lot of them were from San Fran and Oakland, yet there’s a disconnect between, say, the Trashwomen and Best Coast.

Shannon Shaw: HUGE disconnect. Trashwomen are punks and Best Coast are beautiful songwriters.

Cody Blanchard: We know a lot of those people because they all still live in Oakland and San Francisco! When you start playing oldies-inspired stuff and you do a good job, you start to meet all those amazing people that did it back in the 80s and 90s. They just wanna talk to you because they are awesome and excited about old music. A lot of the more popular oldies-inspired stuff like Best Coast that I hear sounds more like a mix of oldies and 80s pop or oldies and 90s pop. It’s a lot more serious and gloomy.

When I interviewed Bethany and Bobb from Best Coast, they complained about people always bringing up cats in interviews, but then they proceeded to talk all about cats! Do you have an animal you’d like to go apeshit about in print?

Cody Blanchard: Yes. We all love animals deeply, creepily, especially Shannon.

Shannon Shaw: Ozma my American Bulldog was very hilarious and classy. She looked a bit like unicorn too. I also have an affinity for squirrels. My nickname my dad has always called me is Squirreletta.

Cody Blanchard: I love weird big shaggy fantasy animals, like Bluto from Labrynth. And sloths and alpacas. Hairy prize roosters and hares. Bunnies and squirrels! Apes!

What is something you really wanted to play in the band, but that you had to give up because it was impossible to tour with or it kept breaking down?

Cody Blanchard: Never had that problem! We’re too simple. We never even think about doing that. It’d be cool to have two guitars and an organ and an electric piano and two more female singers.

What do you think of the people occupying the streets in New York? Would you be willing to make a song about how much Wall Street sucks and play it off the back of a truck for the protesters? It could be in Oakland.

Cody Blanchard: I would do that. I wouldn’t let myself make the song too serious though.

Shannon Shaw: I don’t think I have a very good brain for processing and acting accordingly to most politics. If I wrote a song for them, I’m sure it would make no sense and everyone would get mad at me and occupy the truck I’m singing in until I stop.

Cody Blanchard: It’s interesting to me that the story has become more about the media’s willful ignorance/non-coverage of the event and less about the purpose of the protest.

I’m sure living near San Francisco, you see protests all the time. What is life like in Oakland? Why is it superior to San Francisco?

Cody Blanchard: It’s simpler and quieter! There’s slightly less stuff going on. It’s easier to park and there are public restrooms! The parks are weirder and cooler. Stuff is a little more rundown and weirder. I like it.

Shannon Shaw: I’m a country bumpkin hillbilly and Oakland is as city as I can get. SF is amazing but too expensive and crowded and flooded with cool people and cool stuff. Oakland is a little wild and creepy and limited entertainment wise. The limits make me more creative with my time. I love both though.

These are kind of stupid questions. Is there anything I did NOT cover that I should have?

Shannon Shaw: These are great questions. I can’t believe you asked me to give one word answers. You are crazy.

TIGERMASK EVENTS PRESENTS THE LAS VEGAS SHAKEDOWN FEATURING PERFORMANCES BY SHANNON AND THE CLAMS, PAT TODD AND THE RANKOUTSIDERS, THE HOOKERS, THE WOOLLY BANDITS, THE CRAZY SQUEEZE, BARRIO TIGER, PLAINFIELD BUTCHERS, THE LUCKY CHEATS, AND MORE! IT’S A 3-DAY FESTIVAL AT MULTIPLE VENUES IN AND AROUND DOWNTOWN VEGAS—SEE SHANNON AND THE CLAMS HEADLINE ON SAT., OCTOBER 15, AT THE BEAUTY BAR, 517 FREMONT STREET, LAS VEGAS, NV 89101. 5PM/$13 PER INDIVIDUAL SHOW TICKETS/21+, OR BE SMART ABOUT IT AND ATTEND THE WHOLE FESTIVAL, WHICH INCLUDES THE FLAMIN’ GROOVIES, THE UNTAMED YOUTH, LUIS & THE WILDFIRES AND TONS OF OTHER GREAT BANDS ALL FOR ONE PRICE: VISIT WWW.LASVEGASSHAKEDOWN.COM FOR MORE DETAILS.

Now-Again, the Stones Throw subsidiary so wonderful at compiling funk music from around the world, has turned their well-honed ears back to the direction of America’s heartland and to the True Soul label of Little Rock, Arkansas, a funky indie whose heyday spanned the late 60s through the mid-70s.  Listening to each of these CD compilations (which may possibly be available together as a 4-disc vinyl box-set, though the Stones Throw website is vague on whether all tracks overlap on all formats), you’ll almost want to cry at the great indie-label talents that went fallow due to the shoddy distribution issues of the pre-digital world.  But you’ll also revel in the funkiness and creativity on display—from the synth-sax growl of York Wilborn’s Psychedelic Six to the early party rap of Le’Chance.  Most of all, though, you will shake your fucking tail-feather to these grooves, everything from JB-style sax jams to blaxploitation-score soul to utterly unique songs like the Leaders’ “(It’s a) Rat Race,” a tight poppin’ soul ditty with a flute lead and a little window for psychedelic guitar licks near the end.  Each CD comes with a thick (though virtually identical) booklet that includes interviews with label head Lee Anthony and a lot of great regional history.  And don’t skip watching the DVDs that come with each collection—culled from Anthony’s local access “True Soul Review” television show, they contain live performances by acts such as Miss Mabel, whose licentious exuberance in hot pants deserves a tongue-lolling review all its own.

-Dan Collins

I have a thing about sticking up for the over/underdogs–the highly successful musicians that people just can’t wait to hate on.

Whether it’s journalists in the 70s turning their noses up at the Archies while praising Toto and Chicago, or oddly spiteful faux-journalists who hate Kreayshawn to the point where they’re taking solitary, reasonable quotes out of context and then linking them to Wikipedia entries about black youth being shot in Oakland two years prior to somehow make it seem that Kreayshawn is a whiny entitled race exploiter, too often my fellow music journalists take the easy way out: they find a target to hate that they know a lot of “hip” people would be eager to take issue with, and they hate on ‘em good. “Ooooh, look at me, with the balls to call pop music ‘vapid!’” How clever. How brave. And for anyone who likes the rawness of rock, country, and hip hop, how hypocritically selective. Compared to the dexterity of jazz or the sober precision of classical, we’re all retarded perverts flinging blocky chunks of musical clay into a three minute sludge. We’re cavemen, and I thought we were proud of that!

But there’s one musician whose works I am slowly coming to love who indisputably is kind of lame: Hank Williams Jr. In fact, he’s kind of a monster. Yesterday’s quote about Obama being like Hitler that got him kicked off ESPN was actually relatively rational compared to some of the things he’s done, if you’ve been paying attention to his PR ouevre. His advocacy for Sarah Palin a couple years ago was outright weird, as was his ridiculous version of “Family Tradition” that he made for the McCain/Palin ticket, which blamed the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout on Clinton and said that Obama had friends linked with terrorism (as though Sarah Palin’s husband wasn’t an anti-American separatist). And of course, his creepy fantasy song from 1988 about how good things would be if the South had won the Civil War gave a boner to thousands of rednecks while sidestepping the fact that millions of black people wouldn’t find that scenario quite so wonderful.

And yet, and yet… if you, dear reader, are building up your country music fandom, can I just strongly recommend that you please don’t pass up this man’s stuff?  Despite the annoyance of his Monday Night Football anthem, ol’ Bocephus was once a solid country musician. Even Little Richard thinks so.

Look, love is an emotion that infects both the smart and the dumb, and it’s not necessarily the politically savvy who can sing with the most conviction about the joy of living or the pain of longing. Hank Williams, Jr. has had a lot to long for–a dead famous father, an accident that left him scarred and forced to wear his trademark beard, hat, and sunglasses at all times, and he must be upset that all his “rowdy friends” in country music are actually liberal pinkos who love prisoners, government programs, and true American freedoms, i.e. Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, the late Johnny Cash, you name it. While I agree with folks like Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon that rich millionaires who pretend to be down-home are scum, I disagree that Hank Jr’s wealth alone makes him inauthentic. Whatever his crimes against human decency, it hasn’t prevented the man from occasionally making BLISTERING country that can pull at your fucking heartstrings:

Even a song like “Dinosaur,” which has a mean anti-gay streak, also paints a picture of a time that to me is fascinating–blue collar workers being shoved out of their own clubs by corporate disco. Despite how I might feel about disco (Giorgio Moroder is my boy, and I love muted hi-hats), this character sure hates it, and you can feel the pain of this dude who just wants to go drink whiskey and listen to some old “country and rhythm and blues” but is being force-fed this alienating music that has no place at his saloon. Do I have to agree with his politics or even his mores to feel this character’s pathos?

I guess what I’m saying is, I acknowledge that Hank is far from perfect, but sometimes I’d rather cry with the sinners than laugh with the saints. When I listen to Hank Williams, Jr., I’m going to focus on the young man he once was, the poor little boy whose mother made him dress like his dead father, the figure he had to struggle to overcome. And when I listen to the modern Hank Williams, Jr. (and remember, he’s like a senile senior now) opine about politics, I’m going to pretend I’m watching C.S. Lewis, Jr:

-Dan Collins

A year and a half ago, I wrote that the first Dada Man album, Notes Toward a Mental Breakdown, was “start to finish enjoyable”—that’s not how I would describe the second installment in the planned Dada Man trilogy, but then again, Part II of a trilogy is always a downer. Not that this is bad art, but it’s far more insular and claustrophobic, with angry post-apocalyptic beats that box you in, something like the soundtrack music ADULT. takes from Lucio Fulci horror films and makes their own. Stylistically, things have gotten a lot less broad than we’ve heard before. The actual formula reveals itself a little less discreetly, with every song comprised of a rhythm box beat and some film samples from old sci-fi movies and J.G. Ballard clips. I wonder if the mysterious Dada Man is my own age, because his approach is similar to Man or Astro-man? spinoffs I remember from the late 90s (Servotron, Operation Re-Information), though he strips them of all humor and levity and takes them to their logical sci-fi sampling conclusion, leaving just enough “music” for this to be a CD and not an artifact. This is not electronica, this is post-punk noise with a drum machine. Squeals and squiggles of oscillating analog synth (not notes, but noises) are the only things I can envision him “playing” in a live setting, but as the original lyrics to his Liquid Sky cover proclaim (and hey, ADULT. covered it too!), “It’s pre-programmed—so what?”

—Dan Collins

Whether it’s Bloops and Bleeps, Turd & Main, the OK Corral, the Wayback Machine, These Are the Breaks, Eat Your Paisley, or any of our many other review sections, giving us a suggested section lets us know that:

1. You have an opinion on where your music might be a good fit.
2. You actually read our magazine, and aren’t some random PR intern in an office in Santa Monica who sends out 50 demos a day, and…
3. You care about giving us poor, overworked, underpaid music types a hand with the literally thousands of music submissions we get every year!

Really, by giving us a section name, you’re saving us time and making sure our one musical expert who knows the most about your type of music will be able to give you the fairest of shakes. Album reviewing isn’t that glamorous: we get so many submissions that literally, all we want to do is curl up in the shower naked like Glenn Close in the beginning of The Big Chill because we just feel so defeated and confused, without answers to the meaning of it all! By providing us with those answers, you also provide yourself with a big leg up against the competition.

And we know what some of you (the piss-ants) are saying: “Oh, L.A. RECORD, my forward-thinking opus about man’s insignificance in the face of technology is beyond categorization!” Waaaah! First of all, you’re kidding yourself, because if you have any fans at all,  they are going to describe you to their friends by whatever genre they think you belong in. “Have you heard this psychedelic glitch hop take on Stevie Nicks?”

But secondly, you can always list multiple categories you might think apply: Suicidal Tendencies might fit well in either Ties & Flies or Satan’s Hoary Maw; Arabian Prince would be at home in both Bloops and Bleeps or These Are the Breaks. You get the idea! The categories are intentionally loose, because we too share your distrust of one-size-fits-all genre fascism.

So, send us your albums, send us your suggested category names, and hey, here’s another great idea: send it to us on vinyl! That way, we can list it in our Spin to Win section!

-Dan Collins

P.S. Please, don’t be distraught if you submit something and it doesn’t get reviewed. Math alone dictates that we can’t publish all the things we love from all of you. It’s probably not that you suck, but more like we had too many banjo-based folk albums to put in print this season and had to turn our focus to CD-Rs burned by teenagers wearing hockey masks who play in West Covina. Keep sending in your submissions, and if you’re good, we will take notice. For more info on sending us your shit, click here.