Cops and Unpaid Bills: Though his likeness still haunts everywhere you look, the King of Pop was finally laid away. Meanwhile, Los Angeles has spent the rest of the month looking for someone to slap with the bill for the king’s Nebuchadnezzarian sendoff. Though unattended by me, his funeral orgies fetched hundreds of thousands and that the LAPD was out in massive force didn’t need my eyeball confirmation since there was scarcely a cop to be seen anywhere else. All Jackson’s shove into Eternity meant to rockers and the party set downtown was that J.Q. Law was occupied in heroically overpolicing one event instead of the usual twenty. That the city attempted to hand fans and the (sore-bereaved) Jackson family a $1.4 million bill for its twitchy, long-running, and surreal policy of cop-overkill at every public gathering is bad enough. Add the fact that more police were around Staples Center for Jacko’s last appearance than for the entire 1984 Olympics and the public gets a broad hint of what underground parties and live music now face on a weekly basis. Thin blue line or no, there was little change in Angelenos’ customary sheeplike behavior after dark—even the very muggers did as told when directed to fuck off, I’m happy to report. Perhaps the city will know similar rebuffs while rattling its tin cup.

The Great Kim F.’s Lesbian Hunt and the Silver Lining on Mateo Street: Straight and Frankenstein tall stood Kim Fowley in the low-roofed Redwood Lounge last weekend. Presiding over another installment of “Hollywood Sexual Underground”, the legendary songwriter-producer-impresario was haranguing a roomful of sweating freaks and lovelies when I clambered in off the street on another boiling hot Friday night. “Are there any lesbians or drunks in the house tonight?” he intoned from somewhere near the ceiling, glowering about the narrow room like a rock ‘n’ roll Vincent Price. There were no confessed Sapphics, but that the place was packed with lushers was discernible by the naked nose, yet nary had a peep arose from the bar. Amateurs, I snorted. Just wait ‘til L.A. Decom. Impossible to rattle, Fowley breezed through the intro to Trophy Wives, who let out as deafening a caterwaul as I’ve ever heard loosed in the place. The lead singer’s mic died, but the drummer went off like a long string of M-80s and the narrow bar began to suitably rock. Grinning, I left, loping south through Little Tokyo and the Arts District as the floating parties and nuzzling lovers heralding the start of another off-the-hook weekend. I toked a buzz all the way down a dark slit of Mateo Street to Silver Factory Studios. This (literally underground) rock venue likewise surged, only this time with friendly indie rockers and the bent-neon psychedelia of 60 Watt Kid. This local trio went on at senatorial length, sculpting a too-big-for-the-room groove out of reverb and pleasantly unnerving electronic soundscapes. Their Women rez ends on the 27th, and I urge you to buy the ticket and take the inner-space ride.

Rock Around the Block: My run the following Saturday night was more of a downtown dogtrot, begun at the Smell with a fusillade of heavy noise from Christmas Island. This San Diego three-piece served up the blare with minimalist brio, as a double handful of spritzing kids capered crazily. Around the corner at the Five Star Bar, Anaheim’s Thee Makeout Party was doing the same to an older crowd, far gone in beer. TMP is power pop done the populist way, their raveups eschewing all Alex Chiltonian subtlety in favor of Cheap Trick-style detonation gratification. Out in the street, gaudy rockers mixed easily with the tranny ladies and street vendors, the whole gladsome magilla distancing themselves from the overflow crowd at the Edison just up the block. Smiling miniskirted ladies and glowering beaux greeted me at the Ed’s alleyway entrance, their attentions further warming an already sweltering night all the way back to the Smell. Bipolar Bear was just then going off inside, their horror-movie hodad rock blistering away as stylishly as ever. Anyone who can imagine mutant descendants of the Trashmen shooting the curves eleven toes over off a post-apocalyptic San Onofre already loves these guys whether they’ve heard them or not. I faded into the heat-glazed night with ears blistered by more better rockin’ than any half-block in Los Angeles.

The Glazed Daisies of Alex Chilton: The long bake of last week made grim my writerly slog through speculative fiction and reportorial fact. One of the consolations of a rock writer’s life is the vast haul of incoming schwag suited to every facet of one’s weirdo tastes. My latest audio bauble is Fantasy Records’ single-CD remaster of two longtime power-pop cult artifacts —#1 Record and Radio City by wildly influential Memphis maudits Big Star, an act blessed with far more talent than luck. Alex Chilton’s post-Box Tops comeback attempt zigged when the rest of rock zagged, despite first-rate collaborators like Chris Bell and Andy Hummel, but their sound lingers on in pretty much every four-piece Beatle-inflected rock band since. The sound is fully up to the standard set on Fantasy’s Isaac Hayes reissues earlier this year, with classics like “Don’t Lie to Me” and “September Gurls” packing an intensified wallop and lending a gorgeous Southern context to SoCal’s yearly spate of Dixie-like heat.

—Ron Garmon

Keep on Rockin’ in the Unfree World: The upside of houseboundedness is finally getting to hear some of the vast sonic haul that accumulated for months on my desk at CityBeat. One, American Beat Records’ reissue of Blue Öyster Cult’s 1985 “comeback” Club Ninja, a release that directly addresses one of rock’s Great Imponderables- when do great acts begin to suck? One provisional answer is when a band starts phoning in by-the-numbers knockoffs of the same glory-daze platter to the point where you can’t remember if you’ve ever heard an album or not after you’ve just finished it. Except for “Shadow Warrior” and “Dancin’ in the Ruins” (the latter their last hit of any heft), it sounds as if a gang of clever extra-dimensional lizards thought they could pull off a BÖC forgery after repeated hearings of Cultosaurus Erectus. Fans will want it- indeed, I want it -but any non-Cultists who hasn’t should bend an ear to Oh No Not Stereo’s 003, a mean little DIY buzzbomb of an album that’s a likely candidate for my year end Top Ten already. Best yet is Collectors Choice Music’s CD reissue of the 1966 self-titled collection of singles the Dynamic Duo released on Roulette, before the Stax-based songwriting team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter made them immortal. Mr. Moore and Mr. Prater are, of course, stupendous even with lesser material.

Clubbed: I eventually did get out of the house by Thursday night, touring both floors of Amoeba Music prior to fading down Vine St. to 3 Clubs. Briefly fashionable after the 1997 movie Swingers, this venue I’ve long associated with dreadful music and gave the place up entirely after I quit martinis. Still, the Rumble’s night of indie-squawk sounded promising enough outside muffled through the walls. Both light and prospects were considerable dimmer inside, as French Miami- a trio of Bay Area collegians beloved of NME -was onstage thrashing around inside a math rock that was obviously failing to carry its twos and decimal points. I bore it as long as possible before slipping out, past a street lunatic who glared at me and emphatically maintained, “Every day, you see the same behavior. Nothing ever changes.” There was a time when such fellows cried up the end of the world, instead of going the safe route of prophesying boredom.

—Ron Garmon

Download: The Polyamorous Affair “Eastern”

(from Bolshevik Disco out this summer on Manimal Vinyl)

The Polyamorous Affair make bolshevik disco-pop in a mossy compound in Los Feliz and emerge only to teach kindergarten, play shows or get snowed on. They have an album due on Manimal and co-founder Eddie Chacon used to be in a band with Cliff Burton. This interview by Dan Collins.

It’s nice to interview people at 8:30 PM and not AM! Are you guys night owls? You’re probably jetlagged from your tour of England.
Eddie Chacon (production/vocals): We’re definitely jetlagged, man!
Sissy Sainte-Marie (vocals): And I think I caught swine flu today, too.
Did you eat some infected swine? Or get it from the air blowing around airports?
Sissy: I think I just got it from the 24-hour news.
There’s a rumor going round that you are married.
Eddie: It’s actually amazing being in a band with your wife because we just work on it 24/7. We don’t really have to go to a rehearsal space. Even though we try to take a break from it, it’s almost impossible. We always somehow wind up coming back to what we’re trying to achieve with the band.
Sissy: And we can always work in the studio. It’s right here at our fingertips, at any moment when we get inspired. We don’t have to wait for other band members show up or not show up.
When you guys play live, though, do you have people backing you?
Sissy: We have a DJ and a live visualist.
Eddie: De Ja Francois is the DJ and Mr. Cocoon is the visual artist.
You guys are very visual! I love the video for ‘Babayaga.’ It’s really witchy and disturbing. Sissy was doing such a creepy dance! Do you have a background in dance?
Sissy: No, not at all. This really great choreographer named Dola Baroni—she choreographed that for me. She was very patient. She was a very good teacher, because I have no rhythm—no coordination. And I had to do that dance in 33 degree weather, and I was wearing close to nothing in the middle of the night, and I had to replicate the dance three times perfectly to get the triplicate shot. And I think I had to do it about a hundred times.
Eddie: And then it started snowing! It was in the Angeles Crest Forest, and then it turned out to be the coldest day of winter. We totally got rained out, and it was a low-budget video, and that was like a really big deal.
Sissy: We had to schedule a second night, but it turned out great! All’s well that ends well.
Who wrote that song?
Eddie: Everything we do is 50/50. We work around the house and toss ideas around. Often things come together by osmosis. I’ll be in the studio, and Sissy will be in another room, and she’ll come in and throw something down. We’ll just get inspired by each other.
Sissy: I was inspired by the Grimm fairytale ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ In Russian, ‘babayaga’ means ‘witch.’ I liked the way that word sounded in that song. Lovers go on vacation, and they were living a life of decadence, and I think they both died. And the ghost of the little girl doesn’t know that she’s dead, and she thinks that she’s still alive and he’s dead.
The same thing happened to me! How did you guys decide to make this kind of music?
Eddie: The initial brainstorming happened when we were staying in Denmark a couple years ago with some friends of mine. At the time, we were really getting into John Lennon and Yoko Ono and reading about David and Angie Bowie, and we were getting into the mixed media idea—of how Yoko Ono brought this whole different artistic direction to John Lennon when they got together because she was already sort of a famous underground artist.
Sissy: We were inspired by this book called Still Lovers about people and their Real Dolls. We originally wanted to make a doll the artist. But they’re really expensive! When we first started performing live, and I was so nervous and stiff, so many people would tell me, ‘Aw, you’re just like a little doll on stage!’ I can be this icy robot puppet vampire love doll. Like a replicant from Blade Runner.
What was your career before you guys met?
Sissy: I was a school teacher, and I still am. I was teaching third grade, and now I just substitute—so it’s a different grade every day. Today I taught kinder.
There was a band in L.A. called Third Grade Teacher, where the singer really was a third grade teacher. So you’re not the only one.
Sissy: No, no! We all have our double lives, I guess.
I feel like in 1975 or something, or even ten years ago, somebody could have a career and be sort of a middle-class musician. Not everybody was rich, but some people could do okay. Now either you’re totally rich or you have a day job. Is this something new?
Eddie: I absolutely think this is something new, but there’s also something great that comes from it—that you don’t really need a big fat record company anymore to reach the public. You can put out your own material and distribute yourself.
Are you saying that Manimal Records isn’t a big fat record company?
Sissy: Ha ha—they’re well on their way!
Eddie, your career has been wildly eclectic. You started off in a metal band with Mike Borden from Faith No More and Cliff Burton, then you worked with 2 Live Crew, then had sort of a soul band in the early nineties with Charles & Eddie, then worked behind the scenes with acts like the Neville Brothers. And now you’re doing this. It kind of boggles the mind!
Sissy: His talents know no end.
Eddie: I just do music. It sounds kind of trivial, but I just have a passion for music and just continue doing it no matter what. I just kind of follow whatever I’m obsessed and into at the time.
What do you think Cliff Burton would say if he could see the Polyamorous Affair?
Eddie: We’re doing a sort of electronic disco thing, so he probably would want to beat me up.
Have you ever considered going back and sampling your own back catalogue since you have the rights to it?
Eddie: You know, I haven’t! Paul, the owner of Manimal, was asking me if I’d be interested in doing a version of ‘Would I Lie to You’ with Alexandra Hope. That was the first that I’d really thought of that. A few years ago, a friend of mine was making an indie film, and he wanted to use seven of my songs, but at that time I was a Universal Music Publishing songwriter. And I couldn’t even let my best friend use seven of my songs for his movie, and I thought that was very frustrating! In the olden days you were kind of a corporate entity, and you didn’t even really own yourself—and now you might be like more of a mom-and-pop business where you’re kind of a smaller entity, but at least you own the rights to yourself and everything you’re doing—which gives you a lot more freedom in the long run.
You have a song called ‘Whoever Controls the Groove Controls the World.’ Is the inverse true? Does the Skull and Bones fraternity at Yale have a lot of groove?
Eddie: Ha ha—no, it’s about Clear Channel!
They have the groove when it comes to billboards.
Eddie: My God—we were just in England, and we were meeting with a PR company, and she was talking about Clear Channel owning everything over there, and I was like ‘My God, I had no idea it was a worldwide thing.’
Speaking of which, Eddie, I wanted to ask you about Scientology! You dabbled in it eight or nine years ago—do you have any deep dark secrets that could get L.A. RECORD in trouble?
Eddie: I didn’t get to the point where I found out about the space ship! I was actually studying with a legendary acting coach—Milton Katselas—who has since passed on. He taught a lot of really big movie stars, and there were a lot of Scientologists in that class—like Giovanni Ribisi and Jenna Elfman—and I just got to be friends with them. And I was like, ‘What the hell, I’ll take a couple of introductory courses and see what it’s about.’ But like with all religion, what you get for free is the essence of what it’s really all about.
Was there a part of you that was like ‘Isaac Hayes is in this religion!’?
Eddie: That was probably the coolest thing about taking my two little introductory courses! I was just coming down from the fourth floor of the little celebrity tower and the elevator door opened, and he was in the elevator, and I walked in and I got to have a little chat with him! He’s been my hero ever since I was a little boy. I went to see him at the Circle Star Theater as a child when he was Black Moses, wearing the full-on gold chain vest!
Don’t you guys have a song that’s all heroic quotes about stars and circles and space time?
Eddie: ‘Like Animal.’ The wormhole video.
Sissy: That’s just a dialogue for the video—that’s not in the song.
Eddie: We always make fun of each other that we’re a bit like Grey Gardens, because we live in a compound in Los Feliz hills, and we really just work in a bubble. We were kind of making fun of that when we made the ‘Like Animal’ video.
Sissy: Crazy hermits living in a state of decay!

L.A. RECORD AND MANIMAL VINYL PRESENT THE POLYAMOROUS AFFAIR WITH BLUE JUNGLE, ALL LEATHER, HALLOWEEN SWIM TEAM AND MAGICK DAGGERS ON THU., MAY 14, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8 PM / $10 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. THE POLYAMOROUS AFFAIR’S BOLSHEVIK DISCO RELEASES THIS SUMMER ON MANIMAL. VISIT THE POLYAMOROUS AFFAIR AT THEPOLYAMOROUSAFFAIR.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/THEPOLYAMOROUSAFFAIR.

Isaac was a one-man messianic movement who spoke the gospel of groove and spread the sermon of soul throughout American culture. He served to liberate and advocate American funk and human sexuality the way Timothy Leary articulated acid, the way Hunter S. Thompson obliterated objectivism. I was asked frequently after the interview if I had questioned Isaac about South Park or Scientology, and the answer was ‘No.’ Not because I was afraid or felt he would be uncomfortable, but because what was most significant in Isaac’s life—what was most groundbreaking—was his music. For the few moments I had him, that’s what I wanted to stick to.

Isaac was self-taught. He was a visionary. He went to the recording studio dressed in gold chains and bright green suits when everyone else was wearing black turtlenecks and gray trouser socks. Isaac worked his way up from being a poor meat packer—even his obituary includes some innuendo!—in rural Tennessee to being the driving creative force behind Stax, which, alongside Motown and Sun, has been one of American music’s most critical labels.

His 1969 album Hot Buttered Soul changed how music was produced, opening soul and pop recordings to more interpretation and spoken interludes, and paving the way for Barry White’s and Millie Jackson’s silky mid-song eroticisms—now a staple, and indeed nearly a cliché, of R&B music. But even before Isaac’s throaty classics made it to the turntable, he was heard on the airwaves through the voices of Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, and Carla Thomas. Isaac, mainly with his creative partner David Porter, wrote the hits “Soul Man,” “Hold On, I’m Comin’,” “When Something is Wrong with My Baby”, and “Soul Sister Brown Sugar,” among others, and his orchestral, horn, organ, and bass scores inspired the soundtracks for countless films, blaxploitation and otherwise.

What struck me most during our interview, despite the clear struggles he was working through due to his 2006 stroke, was his exaltation. He was excited about playing the Sunset Junction, excited about his new album, and gracious with his laughter, time, and his unmatched ability to serenade. Even through a cell phone headset, hearing him sing made me swoon.

We have lost our Soul Man, our Black Moses, and his deep voice and deeper vitality will surely be missed.

—Rena Kosnett

Rolling Stone named ‘Soul Man’ as one of the 500 greatest songs of all time. Do you think most people realize you and David Porter wrote that song?
Maybe, maybe not. Some people, they don’t connect it—they think it was Sam and Dave, because they made it well known.
You said previously that you wrote it in response to the the 12th Street Riots in Detroit—about ‘man’s struggle to rise above his present conditions’?
Yeah because, you know, the riots were going on and we were watching it happen on TV, and we saw that they had written on the walls of the black-owned stores ‘Soul Man.’ And I said, ‘“Soul Man,” that’s a good title.’ At that time in the ‘60s, there was all kindsa crazy stuff goin’ on. That’s why I wrote it, you know.
The Sunset Junction festival started as a way to bring the Latino community and gay community together in East L.A. after several instances of violence. Would you consider writing a ‘Soul Man’ type of song for the gay and Latino struggles?
Oh, um, I’m workin’ on that one. [laughing] I’ve been working on my new album. I’ll just tell you what, though—this new album that’s coming out, it’s good. It’s probably coming out next year.
Is it all new material?
Maybe some, and some is redone.
Any classics?
Lemme see. Maybe a song by the name of [breaking into a serenade] ‘Tonight’s the night, the tiiiime is right, the things I’ve waited for so long…’
Mmmm.
That tune is good.
Many credit the musical influence you and David Porter had on Stax with saving the label, but some think your leaving almost killed them. Do you think these are fair judgments?
At that time, maybe so. At Stax, there were many things happening then—many struggles and complications. But my new album is coming out on Stax, so I’m still working good with them.
I read in Peter Guralnick’s book Sweet Soul Music that David Porter tried to sell you life insurance when you first met him. Did you buy any?
I didn’t buy any insurance, but he did try to sell me some. He gave me a good deal. I met David long before I started at Stax. I was singing with a group called the Del Reels, and he sang with the King Tones. And we both played for a talent contest in Memphis.
Who won?
I won it one week and then he won it the next week, and we started working together after that.
Do you remember what song you sang in the talent contest?
I think it was ‘Looking Back,’ by Nat King Cole.
Your first Stax session was playing keyboard for Otis Redding. Was it an easy process to develop songs with him?
Well, Otis had a way of doing things—he would write the songs at the same time he was singing them. He would start going [breaking into song and imitating Otis Redding] ‘Na na na na, you got to, got to got to…’ and he was writing the songs at the same time. With me and David… there was an understanding we had between us. With ‘Soul Man,’ he said, ‘Look, man, let’s just do it.’ He said, ‘Let’s write something.’ And we did. That’s just how it worked.
Do you have a favorite Burt Bacharach tune?
I did a lot of songs by Bacharach and Hal David. ‘Walk On By’ was a good one. And ‘The Windows of the World.’
Most of the early Stax records were produced communally. Was it a big transition at the label to start thinking about music as a product?
When we started getting credit for the things we did, I thought that was good, because the songs had a lot of personal meaning. Now, they’re just rapping and all that stuff…
You don’t like current hip-hop music?
I like Alicia Keyes. Mary J. Blige.
You like the ladies.
Well, yeeeah. Anthony Hamilton is also good. I like him too.
Who should really be called ‘Black Moses’: you, Harriet Tubman, or Marcus Garvey? There can’t be three, can there?
I got my name as ‘Black Moses’ from Dino Woodward, a pastor at Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York [and one-time Stax executive]. He called me Moses, and I said, ‘Hey, that’s sacrilegious, baby!’ But he just kept up with it, so I was like, ‘OK, I get it.’ I finally gave in.
For the cover photo of Juicy Fruit, did you and the six ladies go home after the shoot or did you stay in the pool and make fruit salad?
Those ladies split.
They didn’t stay and hang with you?
You know… [starts singing lines from ‘Juicy Fruit’] ‘Watching girls come and go, juicy fruit, jump suit…’ It was cool, but you know, they went home.
Did Barry White, may he rest in peace, ever thank you for giving him a career?
No. No, he didn’t thank me. We did an album together, though, because they wanted to call us the ‘Deep Throat Brothers.’
Does anyone understand you ‘cept your woman?
Just my woman. My fourth wife, Adjowa. The kids are something else—that’s a different kind of understanding.
What kind of special treatment do you receive when you visit Ghana?
In Ghana, I’m an honorary king there. They have a big parade. They feed me all kinds of good stuff. They gave me my own island! It takes about an hour to circumnavigate it. Don’t know what I want to call it yet. I was last there about two years ago.
Have you ever dated a Jewish girl?
Yeah, I’ve dated all kinds of girls.
Of course you have. I’m a Jewish girl.
Oh yeah?
Do you think if I went black I’d ever go back?
There were no complaints from my Jewish girls. So from my perspective, you wouldn’t be goin’ back. No way.