The 1964 concert known as The T.A.M.I. Show featured performances by future Rock and Roll Hall of Famers the Rolling Stones, James Brown, Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, the Supremes, and many others. The T.A.M.I. Show: Collector’s Edition will be officially released for the first time by Shout! Factory on March 23, 2010.

The T.A.M.I. Show was filmed live at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1964. This legendary film has never been available on DVD and hasn’t been seen in its entirety since it originally appeared in theaters later that year.

The T.A.M.I. Show contains James Brown’s legendary performance, which Rick Rubin calls “the single greatest rock & roll performance ever captured on film.”

SHOUTFACTORY.COM

Download: Marco Paul “The Heavenly Music Corporation”

(for a complete play list please visit dublab.com)

For ten years, since the days when ‘Internet radio’ was as futuristic a concept as the electric car, dublab has been adding color, texture and depth to music in Los Angeles and the world beyond. Hip-hop and soul and jazz and psych and punk and folk and cosmic genius and more—whether from L.A., from deep history or from someplace no one’s even sure about—all find a permanent home at dublab.com as well as in the work of an army of DJs and artists and musicians and listeners who constantly prove that there is always something new and beautiful to listen to and learn about. Labrats Frosty and Ale meet at Girl House to talk about their anniversary. This interview by Chris Ziegler and Drew Denny.

Daedelus said dublab started when a bunch of super-nerds at USC found each other—true?
Mark “Frosty” McNeill (co-founder and president): Lies! Where is that guy? The ‘nerds’ part is very very accurate. Intense record geeks is probably a good description. The whole idea—we don’t know everything and we always wanted to stay open. We always wanted to discover, get turned on to something new. We were trying to share something with our listeners and we discover things along the way, so it always remains fresh. You learn more and more. You never know what direction it will take you.
Brad from Wounded Lion was saying that as a kid he learned from Rodney on the ROQ that all eras of rock ‘n’ roll are friends. I’d even say all genres of music are friends.
Mark McNeill: They’re all connected. There is a lineage. Everything is derivative and that’s not a negative term. Everything influences everything. That’s the whole idea: keep it open and broad. When we started on Real Media Player or Windows Media Player, it was in the midst of all that Internet stuff. We got a lot of free lunches and heard the word ‘synergy’ a lot.
Didn’t you almost have a million-dollar investment?
Mark McNeill: We were offered money before we even launched. I was fresh out of college and I’d sit in meetings with these people and think, ‘If you’re dumb enough to want to give us money, there’s something wrong with your company and you’re not gonna last.’ Everything was very shaky. We had one investor—the only one who seemed good. He was basically the guy who came up with the banner ad. He had tons of money. We were days away from signing papers and everybody was ready to do it. He was giving us money and then the morning the NASDAQ crashed, we got a phone call and my partner Jon’s face just fell. The conversation was basically, ‘I think we need to re-think the nature of our investment.’
Shoulda got the guy who invented the Viagra ad.
Mark McNeill: We do! He’s here—Ale, pull down your pants!
Alejandro Cohen (general manager and treasurer): In the long run, maybe it was a blessing in disguise.
Mark McNeill: We said no to everything for so long. There was such hucksterism in it. Very in the moment. It’s like a pop trend that’s on the radio. You see it from the start—it’s a flavor of the moment. If you take it as that and have fun, it’s cool. But don’t imagine it’s gonna be around for twenty years. All that stuff was a fly-by-night vibe. We probably would have been done nine years ago if we’d taken some of that money.
You’ve DJed at places like LACMA—do you think big institutions fetishize the DJ as a symbol of what’s cool?
Alejandro Cohen: Yeah. They ask, ‘What’s your DJ name? Just, uh, Ale?’
Mark McNeill: For the past three years we’ve done a lot of ‘cultural institution’ gigs. They’re cool because they’re not at places where people wanna go crazy and slide across the bar. It’s kids, families, all ages—people that are not gonna be at Part Time Punks. They trip out on seeing records. It’s weird.
How were you able to make dublab a place where Damo Suzuki, Linda Perhacs and Neil Hamburger can all feel equally at home?
Mark McNeill: We have really good incense!
Alejandro Cohen: You lose perspective on the variety of music because it all mixes. I’ll be visiting friends back home and play dublab for them to give them an idea of where I work. For them, it’s extreme worlds mixing in one place, but to me it sounds kind of like the same place. Latin to the other guy doing Middle Eastern . . .
Mark McNeill: Maybe it makes them nauseous.
What are the extreme limits of dublab’s programming?
Mark McNeill: The oldest music comes from Jonathan of Excavated Shellac—a lot of international 78s from the ’20s.
Alejandro Cohen: Some of the stuff Danny Holloway plays, it’s the only copy maybe existing. He did an all-Beatles covers set and was telling me about it. Stuff from Cambodia and weird things he knows. He’s certain they’re pretty much gone forever. Like ‘Hey Jude’ with steel drums—versions where you’re like, ‘What the hell?’
Mark McNeill: Or a lot of those $1,000 45s—B+ will come back from traveling and he’ll bring stuff from Addis Ababa. Original Ethiopian 45s. The idea is to bring it back to the old soul days when people would cut a record and then immediately go play it on the radio. Stuff like that. We play versions that never come out. Weird studio things.
What’s it like to hold the last-ever copy of something in your hands?
Mark McNeill: You should just eat it so it’s part of you! Cats like Jonathan—the records he specializes in are international. It wasn’t for export, it was for those locales. Cambodian records sold in villages but on RCA Victor. They survived in these places that were a pretty harsh atmosphere since the ’20s. They aren’t collector cultures. You get something new and throw the record away.
What kind of people would you have never met except for dublab?
Mark McNeill: We wouldn’t even have met each other if it wasn’t for music. That camaraderie of geeks!
Alejandro Cohen: When I was a kid, I was a very scared kind of guy. I’d look at people who play instruments and be like, ‘Oh, you must be so serious! I don’t deserve any of your time—you must have such important ideas.’ And at the end, most turn out not to! But in music you DO meet people with great ideas, and you feel honored to give them a ride somewhere!
Mark McNeill: The guys from Cluster were a treat.
Alejandro Cohen: They were joking about Brian Eno not being a strong boy.
Mark McNeill: They were living in the countryside of Germany and Eno was coming in from England—kind of a glammy boy. They’d be out chopping wood and all this stuff to warm the house—Roedelius is like a big lumberjack grandpa!—and Eno would be like, ‘I wanna chop wood!’ ‘Go back inside, sissy boy—we’ll make music later!’
When you interviewed James Brown, was it before or after his wife got ass implants?
Mark McNeill: Before she did but after I did. We had the same doctor. One of them fell out and now I have to wear a thick wallet. Have you ever been to the Experience Music Project? I don’t know if they still have it, but they had a ride like ‘DISCOVER FUNK MUSIC,’ like an EPCOT Center total after-school special thing. There were two kids and they turn into an alley and Bootsy Collins and James Brown spin around with sparkles coming off and the screen goes, ‘And now—INTO THE FUNK!’ And you go through James Brown’s legs. It’s nuts. It’s probably from the mid-’90s and really fucking bad. Or did you ever see the Miles Davis scooter ads? Lou Reed and Miles Davis—both at fucked-up points in their life. Miles Davis in a parachute pantsuit and stuff. Weird.
Alejandro Cohen: I’d love to have seen them shooting that. ‘Just give me the check!’
What would a horrible dublab commercial be like?
Mark McNeill: Nick Harcourt-y. ‘It’s 2012 and the city is bumping—the spirit of the night!’ We were thinking we should make one for Cinefamily with robots and stuff. ‘Morning becomes … erotic!’
Do you have the same relationship with KCRW that we do with L.A. WEEKLY?
Alejandro Cohen: KXLU has that relationship.
Mark McNeill: There are people there that are true music fans, but when you build a machine depending on that money, then they’re not any different than commercial radio as far as money and power. They rely on their fund drive so much they can’t take chances. The DJs there are great people and music fans but they tread so lightly. It’s like when I was at KUSC. It’s elevator music—classical music. They found their subscriber base and they keep them happy and that’s it. So it’s not such a service. When you have power like that and you can’t take chances, you should.
Anytime anything declares itself ‘independent,’ it’s sort of a political act. Why is it important for dublab to be independent?
Alejandro Cohen: In a good sense of the word, I’m ‘stuck’ with what I am. That’s what we do. I couldn’t do a conscious commercial thing.
Mark McNeill: All that stuff has a purpose. Certain people do certain things. Maybe they’re just happy with it. We try not to judge what people are up to; we try to give them an opportunity to get something different.
How important to a healthy music community is the sort of infrastructure dublab provides?
Mark McNeill: When we started, the idea was we’d be a for-profit business that did good things with the profits, that was grassroots/community-based. But there was never a profit! You look at Ben & Jerry’s—‘Cool, we’ll make money and support farmers!’ Not that we wanna make ice cream, but nonprofit is in line with the original idea. It fits in with the ethos of why we started dublab. If you go nonprofit, the public owns it. It’s the idea of the listeners being part of it.
Alejandro Cohen: It almost makes the mission of dublab more genuine. There’s not a guy behind it getting rich or hoping to get rich. Even the live sessions are all through a Creative Commons license. So in a sense it really is doing it for the music. Through the years, dublab found itself operating more on a nonprofit model. We were an LLC, but we were doing fundraisers and projects mostly with museums and cultural institutions—we had to do the switch! When we were applying, I was a bit afraid. But a friend of mine who’s worked for many nonprofits said this is very very common—organizations operating for ten or fifteen years with no status at all and then they switch.
Mark McNeill: It’s all very fragile. I remember my grandfather, the last thing he ever said was, ‘You know what? Do what you wanna do. You’ll be much happier. Do what you wanna do. I went through my whole life worrying.’ When I was at USC, most of my friends were film students and some make really good money. Some have Mercedes and houses they bought. I’m somewhat envious. I wish I had a car that wouldn’t break down! But they’re envious of me doing something I dig. I spend my day around good people. I put a little time into the world of bullshit and it’s much more fulfilling to be around intelligent people who are creative. That’s part of the reason for being nonprofit. We don’t wanna bow to the wishes of someone selling the flavor of the moment. We think of a more timeless aesthetic, something that isn’t commercially viable. That’s a major reason to go nonprofit. You can be timeless.

DUBLAB’s TENTH ANNIVERSARY EXPLORATION RUNS FROM THUR., OCT. 1, THROUGH SAT., OCT. 10, AT MULTIPLE LOS ANGELES VENUES INCLUDING THE ‘VIBRANT VISIONS’ RETROSPECTIVE AT THE CONTINENTAL GALLERY ON THUR., OCT. 1; A LABRAT MATINEE FILM SCREENING WITH LIVE PERFORMANCE BY DAEDELUS AT THE DOWNTOWN INDEPENDENT ON FRI., OCT. 2; THE FUTURE ROOTS STAGE CURATED BY DUBLAB AT THE EAGLE ROCK MUSIC FEST ON COLORADO BLVD. IN EAGLE ROCK ON SAT., OCT. 3; DUBLAB MEETS PART TIME PUNKS AT THE ECHO ON SUN., OCT. 4; GIVE UP: SAD FILM SCREENINGS WITH SORROWFUL LIVE SCORES AT CINEFAMILY ON MON., OCT. 5; DECKADES AT THE VERDUGO BAR ON TUE., OCT. 6; A LIVE PERFORMANCE BY LINDA PERHACS AND FRIENDS (INCLUDING HECUBA, CRYSTAL ANTLERS AND MORE) AT REDCAT ON WED., OCT. 7; DUBLAB AT THE DOWNTOWN ARTWALK AT THE CONTINENTAL GALLERY ON THUR., OCT. 8; A JOHN LENNON BIRTHDAY BED-IN RADIO BROADCAST LIVE ON KPFK 90.7-FM ON FRI., OCT. 9; AND A FINALE BASH WITH REPRESENTATIVES FROM INTERNATIONAL MUSIC ROOM, MAS EXITOS, SKETCHBOOK, TONALISM AND MORE AT A VENUE TBA ON SAT., OCT. 10. MORE INFORMATION AT DUBLAB.COM/EVENTS. LISTEN TO DUBLAB AT DUBLAB.COM.

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.

Download: Femi Kuti “Eh Oh”

(from Day By Day out now on Mercer Street)

Femi Kuti is the son of Fela and the righteous leader of his own Positive Force. He speaks now just days after the Nigerian government shut down the Shrine, the historic venue that was the birthplace of Afrobeat. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

What’s the current status of the Shrine right now? The Nigerian government shut it down?
It was shut down for a week. They finally opened it today, about two or three hours ago. A lot of pressure has been coming on the state government to reopen it. We are going to start a very big international campaign. The excuses why they closed the place—that’s not our business. They said it was these people who are sitting on the streets in front of the Shrine. It is not our duty to clear the streets.
Did they wait until you left for tour to shut it down?
It looks like that. They say no, but I mean, I’m leaving for tour and then they close the place. And I can’t do anything—I can’t cancel the tour. So I have to go on tour. I think we’re going to direct people to sign a petition to make sure they never close the Shrine again. It has been going for so many years—it was my father’s thing.
Is it true that in addition to trying to suppress the music that you are making, the Nigerian government is actually funding musicians who make poor quality pro-government pop music?
Yeah. There is a lot of money pumped into that kind of music. These boys can’t afford it so somebody must be funding them.
Do you think any of that is ultimately coming from the American government?
I don’t think the American government would be involved. I don’t think your government is that kind of government. The Nigerian government is wise enough to know how to do this kind of campaign on their own.
What makes you so optimistic about the Obama administration?
I think he’s genuine. I mean, he’s definitely going to face a lot of difficulties, but I think he’s genuine about world peace, about rectifying America’s image and all those things. So I believe if he really has the opportunity to change many things, he will.
Does America seem different now as opposed to when you were here during the Bush administration?
A lot of people I’ve spoken to have complained about the recession, no jobs, things are slow. But this is not Obama’s fault. This started long before Obama became president. He’s already coming into pain. America, if you had given Bush four more years, you all would be dead probably! Obama can rectify the bad positions of a bad government, probably. Not probably—definitely. Toppling Saddam was not the issue, but the Bush administration could not see that. Even when the world kept saying he didn’t have chemical weapons. But America went into Iraq. The world could not understand that. A war like that… just pumping money, money, money into that war and it might be never ending. So Obama just took over in bad times. If he had come in in the Clinton era, things would probably be much easier for him. So I understand the times of which I am in America. Which is not just America, but the world probably. Even in Lagos, for somebody like me, in Lagos where we have had a difficult life… we have always had a hard life all our life. So when we come here and Americans complain that it is difficult, it is kind of funny. At least you still have electricity and hot water—running water. We don’t have electricity or running water. We have bad roads. It’s not too bad here—it’s not as bad as anywhere in Africa.
How do you feel when you meet musicians here that have never had to face the kinds of threats or struggles you’ve had to deal with? What are the conversations like when you’re talking about music?
It depends on the artist, really. Most of them just want to know what’s going on in Nigeria and I just let them know what is going on and that’s all, really. When I met people during my album Fight to Win, I was meeting with a lot of people and even if they didn’t start the conversation, I would let them know what was going on in Africa. They had to want to know what is going on in Africa because it is part of their heritage. And they were very interested. They wanted to know more and they were happy it was coming from me because knew a lot about my father and had heard about me, so we got along very well.
You’ve said a few times that music is the voice of truth. Is that connected to what we’re talking about here?
Yes—I think because music has a major role to play in anything. It moves you. Like if the Shrine was not opened immediately, I’m sure the outburst coming from the music world would put so much pressure on the Nigerian government to open the Shrine. Those people, those big artists… I wouldn’t be surprised if someone like Stevie Wonder campaigned. He knew my father very much. If he got wind that my father’s shrine was closed, he would sign the petition as well. I mean, big artists like that would be signing the petition against the government. All my friends in the hip-hop world—Mos Def, Common, Alicia Keys—everybody would be signing this, and these are people who are very very well known in the Nigerian scene.
You said once that we have to take beauty seriously, and that’s how the human race will get better. What did you mean by that?
Because the artist sings from within. If someone like Bessie Smith or Billie Holiday are taken seriously and people really followed the words of the songs, people would live those words. And if people lived those words, the world would become a better place. Even a lot of artists sing these words, but they don’t practice the words they sing. We sing but we don’t practice what we sing. If people did follow the words, the world would become a better place.
If a musician is a hypocrite, does that ruin their music?
Yes.
What’s an example of that?
Oh, I can’t give you an example. That would be wrong of me. When you want to capitalize… a lot of artists find that this is the fashion and they go into it because they want to make money or even a lot of people are going to sing politics because they believe it is the in thing now, but they don’t really believe what they’re saying. It’s just to cash in on it. Because one day you will be found out. The audience will find you out one day and then you will pay a very high price for it.
Do you think still want artists to be honest?
Definitely, yes. The world is always ready to bring the artist that is not sincere down quickly.
Would you say a song like “Tell Me” is a hopeful song?
Yes, because it’s really inspired people to understand where I’m coming from and it’s made people want to know more about issues. Like, why are they criticizing me? Don’t they see what I’m talking about? They are complaining about me. I’m not the problem. ‘Femi, what you mean?’ You don’t understand me. How can you not understand what I am talking about?
What do you most hope to do with your music?
I hope I can inspire a very energetic generation that will change things in the future.
Do you think you will see that in your lifetime? Is it coming?
Well, that is a very difficult question, but I know that I have influenced a lot of artists today and that is already a very major point. If people are not listening, then that would be sad. If I am even touring America today, it means people want to listen, people still love the music, so that is already a very major point. But it might take years. I believe sincerely if I live to my seventies or eighties, I will see that kind of change.
What exactly is a shoki shoki master?
It’s like a sex master. Is that a hard thing to become? It is, it is. It’s a subject of its own. If you are not educated properly about sex, you will not have a good sex life. You will never satisfy your partner. I think sex education has to be given, in a way. People need to understand what to do when they get married, when they meet their partner, what to do in bed. This was a discussion that the African culture had… it was always discussed. It’s only in this era that it has become taboo, that people are ashamed to discuss openly. America talks about a lot of other things, like HIV… Americans talk about that easily. I think it’s just the stage where we are. The world has passed through so many stages to get to where we are right now. Nobody believed that Obama could become president in America because everyone believed that America was full of a lot of racism. Now America seems to have overcome that. The majority of Americans, of young people, are not thinking along those lines. So that shows that America does have a bright future in that sense.
Do you think educating the young is the key to getting everything moving in the right direction?
Yes, because if I didn’t know about people like Malcolm X or my father, I would have a very stupid, uneducated life. We need to know history. We need to know about contributions, about how Columbus discovered America. And people need the truth. We need the truth to forge ahead.
I know you stopped school, but where do you think your best education came from?
From my father because he made me read a lot of books which opened my mind. I had to read books like Black Man of the Nile, Stolen Legacy, Malcolm X… I was reading books about the history of Africa and all these things. So that enlightened me. And then listening to his songs, listening to his lectures when he gave lectures, or his press conferences, I always wanted to hear what he had to say.
If someone just listened to his music and your music, would they be getting an accurate picture of what life is like?
Yes, definitely, definitely.
Do you think of yourself as a documentarian or journalist with the kind of music you’re making?
I know that definitely my father’s music is. I don’t want to sound too arrogant about myself. But if you listen to my father from his beginning to his end, you have a very very good picture of aspects of Nigerian politics, our way of life and Africa in general. And then the world too. You can picture your environments in the ’80s, what was going on in Nigeria at the time, with this music. And you can travel with this music in your mind.
Are there any American musicians who you think are doing the same thing?
I think all the great American jazz musicians did it. Stevie Wonder. I want to put so many names right now, but I can’t think of many names. A lot of them even listened to my father… James Brown, he was listening to my father as well. Miles Davis, definitely. It’s people like this who are doing it.
Out of all the books you read growing up, what is one you think everyone should read?
Wow, that is very difficult. I would probably choose two books. Stolen Legacy and Black Man of the Nile.
What’s one record everyone should listen to?
One record? My new album. It has everything for you. It has the ’70s, it has so much in it, it has a great future and gives you room to think about what it is going to do next.

FEMI KUTI AND THE POSITIVE FORCE WITH SANTIGOLD AND RAPHAEL SAADIQ ON SUN., JUNE 21, AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL, 2301 NORTH HIGHLAND AVE., HOLLYWOOD. 7PM / $10-$98 / ALL AGES. LAPHIL.COM. FEMI KUTI’S DAY BY DAY IS OUT NOW ON DOWNTOWN. VISIT FEMI KUTI AT SHRINETV.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/FEMIKUTI.

Download: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings “100 Days, 100 Nights”

(from 100 Days, 100 Nights out now on Daptone)

Sharon Jones is the sparking turbine powering most of the best new funk records from the Daptone camp. She speaks now moments after returning from the hospital to comfort a sick relative, but wouldn’t consider postponing the interview even for a few minutes. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

When you were in a wedding band, you used to come out with the same energy you have with the Dap-Kings—how did people handle it?
They wouldn’t. People would be sitting there and I’d be like, ‘Come on! Get up!’ This was years ago—I started singing in this band in the ‘80s. Believe it or not, in the ‘80s they didn’t even have women singing in wedding bands. And then for me to be in an Italian band—I was really one of the first black women to start doing wedding bands. My band leader took a chance on me—in ’86 or ’87 he took a chance. We had one couple who told my band leader she didn’t want any blacks—she said, ‘I don’t want any blacks at my affair.’ And he said, ‘You know what? You’d best get another band.’ That was the only incident and you’re the first one I ever told that to. I was born in ‘56 in the South and in the late ‘70s when I was in my early twenties singing, me and this girl were singing and the producer from Sony came out and said I was too dark—I should bleach my skin and all that. So I was used to that. Being born in the south in the ‘60s, I was there when they did segregation so I had been through it. And people go, ‘Oh no, that’s not still…’ but yes, it is. Don’t you even worry about that. That’s just the way it goes. Look at Obama, what they were saying before he got elected. And then look at this Spanish lady for the judge—they’ve gone crazy. Why? Why? They’re still showing their true colors. People can say what they want—racism is here. It’s breaking down but it’s here. And you expect that. I don’t get mad at people when that happens—you just look at them and feel sorry for them. You feel bad for their ignorance because it don’t make any sense. That’s all. As long as they don’t insult me or physically—you know what I mean? I can deal with it and keep on going.
You’ve said before that people are learning that it’s just your voice that matters.
Yeah—it’s the voice. That’s all that matters and I always said that. A lot of people asked, ‘What made you stay in it?’ and I said, ‘God, it’s a gift and I always felt that one day people would accept me for that gift, not how I look. That doesn’t have anything to do with it.’
Tell me about the day you looked out the window and saw the Queen of England.
Oh my God! That was so long ago. We weren’t even in England—we were in Wales and that’s the first time she had been to Wales in 25 years or something. And the people in Wales weren’t too fond of her. And then the hotel—I can’t even lie to you—it was just ragged. I would call it the crack hotel. I didn’t sleep that night because we were over a club and they had this rock band going, ‘DUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH—DO ME IN THE ASS!’ and I really did not believe what he was saying. It was so funny. And then the next morning—I don’t even think it was 8 o’clock and I saw this colorful parade and this Rolls-Royce and stupid me, I started screaming, ‘Oh my God, the fucking Queen of England!’ I’m screaming out the window —‘See! Even the Queen came to see the Queen of Funk!’
When did people start calling you the Queen of Funk?
The first time I ever went to France. The first time I think I got that title—you ever heard of that magazine Big Daddy? They no longer exist now but they had like two pages—you open up the cover and it was me and they got ‘Queen of Funk’ and I was like, ‘Who’s the Queen of Funk? They called me the Queen of Funk.’ They never called anybody the Queen of Funk before! The Queen of Soul—that’s Aretha of course. But never Queen of Funk. Queen of Pop, all that—
And that’s a lifetime title.
Oh my God—I know, I know.
Is it true you do your best shows when you’re a little bit pissed off?
They just wrote that for a little bit of publicity! But I think I do my shows under pressure people would never know. When 2007 came in, I had just lost my brother on the 29th and I had to do three shows—I had to play New Year’s and play that night. I’ve been on stage plenty of times through deaths—but in 2006 I lost like 24 friends, girlfriends and families. 24 people died in one year that I knew that were close to me. I’d be on the road and I’d check my message and it’d say, ‘So and so’s son died’ Oh my God! But I couldn’t get to the funeral. Then I come home and have to go to a bunch of other funerals. And I had to do shows. I had to go in there and do these shows. I think I’d take all of that, whether it’s positive energy or negative energy and it goes into the performance. When I’m feeling it and the guys are feeling me, we feed off of each other. And I think that’s what makes us unique from the other bands. Other bands put all kinds of artificial stuff up there—like fifteen dancers or twenty dancers and people don’t know who they’re looking at. I think we just get up there on stage with the make-up running under your eyes or a shoe comes off and I pick it up and put it back on—that’s just it. That’s a show. Let me tell you this. If you ever see me come off the stage and I didn’t bust a sweat—you didn’t see me perspire anywhere—then you can be like, ‘She didn’t feel it.’ When you see me come off stage and I’m not like—[pants breathlessly]— then it wasn’t a good show.
When you were a little girl were you a better shot with a bow or with a slingshot?
Slingshot. My father made me a bow and arrow, too—a little one, but you know I can do the most damage with that. We would bend the top of a Coca-Cola bottle and put it on a stick and that made it go straight. But he also made me a slingshot—I had a front pocket full of marbles and the other pocket full of rocks for the slingshot.
You were a warrior.
I was a little tomboy. I used to always try to compete with my brother and he used to go out and dance and do James Brown and I used to be like, ‘I can do that, too!’ I could do the splits when I was a kid—I can’t do that now. I could if I wanted to but I might get down there and break something—I am 53 years old now. I don’t think James Brown did too many splits in his fifties and sixties.
James Brown said ‘Soul makes you fear God more.’
Oh, you know—that’s James Brown. He can say what he wants to say. Me? Soul is comfort inside. Because soul ain’t got nothing to do with color. To me it’s a gift. When you’ve got somebody that can come and they’re singing from their heart—when you get the goose bumps, that’s some soul. It ain’t something you can learn or pick up and read off a paper. You have to feel it—it comes from inside the heart. To me the heart is the soul.

SHARON JONES AND THE DAP-KINGS WITH MANY MORE ON SAT., JUNE 13, AT THE PLAYBOY JAZZ FESTIVAL AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL. 2301 N. HIGHLAND AVE., HOLLYWOOD. 2:30 PM / $20-$40 / ALL AGES. HOLLYWOODBOWL.COM. SHARON JONES AND THE DAP-KINGS’ 100 DAYS, 100 NIGHTS IS OUT NOW ON DAPTONE. VISIT SHARON JONES AT DAPTONE.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/SHARONJONESANDTHEDAPKINGS.

Download: Abstract Rude “Rejuvenation”

(from Rejuvenation out now on Rhymesayers)

Abstract Rude is the independent Los Angeles hip-hop mainstay who co-founded Project Blowed and stood next to Aceyalone and Myka 9 in Haiku D’Etat—all currently touring together—and much more. His newest Rejuvenation (produced by Vitamin D) is out now on Rhymesayers and he is also working on RudeNation TV online. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

Is it true that when you were getting Project Blowed started, you and Aceyalone were paying for the first tape by pawning Nintendos and cameras?
Abstract Rude: It started literally with us having no money. It was post-Freestyle Fellowship—Fellowship had briefly disbanded and gone their separate ways. Acey was in L.A. struggling and we were keeping up on fries and chicken strips and keeping up on blunts. And Acey knew because of the success of To Whom It May Concern that there was power in that—there was value in that. So he started getting with CVE and me and Fat Jack—we put together the idea to do the album and it was like whatever we had laying around. Acey had one of those dinosaur big Motorola cell phones, I had a Nintendo, a camera—he pawned a video camera that he had. The funny thing was that we only needed like $300, looking back on it—but I guess for us at that moment, $300 was a lot of money. Me and him came up with $150 of it and we got the other half from some cats out of San Bernardino that were down to support us. They were the silent partners—Point Blank magazine and they got credit on the initial tape. We got tapes and they got tapes and we just started out slinging tapes. Somewhere I do have a copy of the tape—and it’s funny, that reminded me that there was no Internet so we had a P.O. box on the back of that. I remember that four or six months after us having the tape out, Acey came over to Fat Jack’s house and dropped off like two grocery bags worth of mail that we had. You wouldn’t have believed it—it was people from all over. It was so overwhelming—we couldn’t even read it all. We started opening it up but there were long letters—like long heart-pouring-out letters and I tried to read through all of it and I may have read through the first two bags, and then he came back with two more bags and his sister—who loaned us the P.O. box—would complain to get this mail. And every time we got it there was bags and bags and that’s when me and him kind of went ‘Hmm’ with the hands on the chin. ‘Hmm, something’s going on here.’ There were letters from South America, everywhere in Europe, everywhere in Canada and that’s when we knew we got something here—there’s a lot of kids feeling what we were doing.
What was the nerve that you guys hit? Why were people connecting so hard and so fast?
The nerve we hit was the do-it-yourself nerve. It was all the hip-hop—not singing. You know they make singers out of people who can’t sing but it’s still different—no matter how much a person tries to autotune or whatever, you’re sucking at the Super Bowl and the world is going to hear and you’ll be all over YouTube as the laughing stock. But with rapping, I think the average person can rap—rapping is talking rhythmically and we all talk rhythmically in some way. So rapping empowers way more people to feel like they can do it and to want to chime in on it and to want to be a part of it. Records have always been put out by companies—and sure there were mixtapes and things like that—but I think from us getting signed and our brief ventures with the labels, we kind of had a sense about quality. We knew you want to design the cover and at least look like you’re competing with the big boys, so maybe that’s what we did because we designed our cover and it was a collage. Of course collages exploded after that—I’m not saying we were the first to do a collage but definitely on the underground level we had the whole collage. You’re showing your whole crew all around and we didn’t know it but we were showing L.A. So know you know these things and you set it up and you market it, right? But back then we were just doing what we were and we weren’t on the outside looking in—we were just doing us and we struck the nerve. When they saw us repping our little town—21310, we put that on there. People went, ‘Wow, you rep your area code?’ Nobody was ever repping their area code—I felt like to a large degree we started that. Of course we had gangbanger stuff repping in jail. But on the DIY approach, I know we struck that nerve with most American kids because you sat back and you watched MTV and they took KDAY off the radio so there was really a thirst for hip-hop and for stuff that really had a good intention and was coming from a good place of just youthful creative expression in the streets.
I read an interview by your producer Vitamin D and he said when he was growing up he said there was consequences for ‘wackness.’ How do you feel about the idea of trial by fire when you’re an up-and-coming artist?
It’s sort of like believing that it’s only at the precipice that we change. Only when you’re up against it the most—when you’re facing the most fire—does it motivate you to save your ass. Either you’re gonna step up to the plate or you’re gonna burn and wither away and you’re gonna realize that you couldn’t do that. Like me wanting to go into the NBA. Me and a couple of guys who were on my high school team, we thought we were good until we jumped up a division. We got this coach that they drafted from the inner city that worked at John Muir so he was used to the raw talent and came in working with us and said, ‘OK, I’m going to put you in the L.A. Watts tournament.’ We got in that and soon as we played Banning, we got crushed. We played Manual Arts and just got slaughtered by like 60 or something—they were dunking all over the place. It was like watching the Lakers play a junior high school. I was like 15 or 16. I went to the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies right here on Fairfax and 18th Street. So anyways we found out, ‘Oh, maybe we’re not ready for the NBA… so I better chase my dreams rhyming.’ But I’ll tell you—from me playing basketball and the whole locker-room competitiveness was why I was primed for the Good Life atmosphere because I saw it as that. I saw it as good old locker-room competing and good old locker-room rites of passage. There were people who would come into the Good Life and Project Blowed and always catch feelings about that, but I just always thought they were being too sensitive. A lot of times when you get that sensitive, it’s because you can’t stand the heat—if you can’t step up to the plate then you should be one of the spectators.
With the recent Good Life documentary and new albums from you, Aceyalone and Myka 9 out—what are you most proud of now?
Honestly—what I’m the proudest about is that we’re still here. I’m proudest that we still push ourselves to be creative and I’m the proudest that there’s world wide recognition for it and the story is getting out there and we’re still here—kind of like standing strong, not bitter. I think we went through out bitter phase because that’s just normal, that’s just human. How you come out of it constructively is to still be here—and you know when they don’t because you don’t hear their name no more. For me, I never was that bitter but as a collective—it was more like things caught us off guard. It caught us off guard that we were getting bags of mail to the P.O. box. It caught us off guard when we started hearing other groups coming out sounding like us. Because before it was always like we had to fight to get people to like it, it seemed like.
What was the first time you heard somebody obviously riding what you were doing?
Well—imitation is flattery, you know what I mean? It makes you realize that you have been in it long enough now where you brought something to it. And what, you gonna forget the times that you were biting? You forget the times you took a rapper’s rhyme and broke down every rhyme he said and switched up only a couple of words and went around your friends acting like it was your rap?
Did you ever do that?
Of course. Everybody does that. If you really study—just like people that make beats or DJs, they will listen to the beat that the producer made and they will try to find that same break the producer used. They know what sample it is if they’re diggers—if their fingers are dusty, they know what sample it is. But you’re supposed to kind of remake the beat and be like, ‘Oh, that’s how he did it—OK, now I get how I can bring my thing to that.’ That’s what this is—give and take. If all you ever do is take though, you’ll never give back. When you listen to stuff like that, it kind of sticks with you as something that’s like violating a code—a G code or something.
In an interview with Slug, he was saying that once you got on Rhymesayers people would come up to you like, ‘Teach me something.’ Do you feel like a teacher?
In some ways I always did have that—that’s just my normal personality. I seem to remember being one of the kids who could help out the other kids with their school work. One of the teammates who the coach could be like, ‘OK, watch how Aaron’s doing it.’ That’s just moms instilling in me to lead by example early on. It was no different than when I first got down with the Blowed. When I first got down with the Good Life and Blowed I was real young, but I had older cats around me and I was humble enough to know to listen to them so just on that alone—for me having the wisdom of them—I came in as somewhat of—at least an under-leader under Acey, and I was able to gain his trust at a very young age and in and of itself that was something. I’ve always been the go-getter—to go plant a flag and be an ambassador for us as someone who talks to the leaders of other crews and try to make it like I’m an open book—‘All my cards on the table—you could ask whatever—let’s chop it up, let’s build!’
Is that the same reason you still give change to guys on the street?
The reason I still give change to people on the street is because I know they wouldn’t be asking for it if they didn’t need it, and I’ve been in a position before where I’ve needed change. I can remember being in high school sometimes and the kids at the school would help me eat—it’s not like I was dirt poor but maybe I wasn’t eating as good as they were right on that day and they helped me. So when you needed help in your life, it’s a lot easier to give it.
I read an interview where they asked you how you got into hip-hop in the first place and you just said, ‘I was born in the ‘70s.’ What happened?
I’ll tell you straight up. It starts with gospel music at the church—my mom raised me in the Baptist church. That and most of the rhythm and blues and soul artists back then came from the church—they grew up in church, too. But for me at that age, I’d have to say the Jackson 5. The Jackson 5 family reunion at Dodger Stadium was my first concert that my uncle took me to. I remember when ‘Billie Jean’ came on, I had to be on my uncle’s shoulders and we went to the front and I saw him throw the hat and I watched the hat and where it went in the crowd and watched people fight over it—it was like, ‘Wow.’ So the Jackson 5 and all that stuff that your parents would play like that when you’d clean the house on Saturdays. Earth Wind & Fire, the Temptations, James Brown, you know what I mean—from there as far as urban music as it starts getting a little more rap-hip-hop. I’d have to say Chaka Khan—‘I’ll Feel For You.’ My cousin went to school with her daughter so that was the thing—we were into Chaka Khan and then I started with the first rap stuff like Dream Team, Kurtis Blow ‘Basketball.’ The earliest memories I have of listening to music on the radio—my uncle bought me that first Sony Walkman and there were songs like that, that I could remember recording off tape onto a cassette. Then of course Fat Boys intrigued me and then I really started getting into all the stuff on Def Jam. To me that’s when rap just came alive—before that it seemed to me kind of old.
How do you mean?
Because I was so young and the rappers like Sugar Hill Gang and Kurtis Blow—I don’t know how old they were back then but I think they were in their 30s already, right? And like I said, we knew Chaka Khan’s daughter so we knew she wasn’t young. So when L.L. hit and when you got Run DMC wearing no shoe strings and Fat Boys coming out eating a bunch of pizza, this is speaking to a kid now. And I got into anything that ever came out on Def Jam. On The Good Life DVD I remember a great moment is when Chuck D comes into Project Blowed. It was pretty early, like ’96, so we’d only been doing it for a couple years. And on the This Is The Life DVD there’s a quote from him saying ‘this is about one of the most important times in hip-hop.’ That just makes me feel really good—a hip-hop euphoria right there. I remember watching Yo! MTV Raps and Fab Five Freddy asked Run DMC, ‘What’s your favorite new stuff?’ And Run says, ‘What’s that one group? Oh, yeah—Freestyle Fellowship, best rap group around!’ All of us back in L.A. were going, ‘Yeah!’ We were all jumping up giving each other high fives.
We did an interview with Acey and he said, ‘Whatever I’m doing, I don’t make my fans comfortable—I always give them something that can kind of shake them a little bit.’ What do you think you do?
You know what? I probably do the exact opposite—I probably make them feel comfortable. I’ll tell you what I do in each forum. I think listening to me on record, I’ll soothe you and definitely give you that motivation of like, ‘Yeah, I needed to hear that based on what I was going through.’ I have a line on one of my songs where I go, ‘Give ‘em the same feeling as our first LP.’ If it ain’t broke don’t fix it—for me. Even though I always experiment, but I always experimented when I was young, so to a certain degree it’s that healing thing when you get to hear it in your own personal space. Then as the perspective of what I represent, I think I am able to make people feel proud that I am always representing that same shit they always knew. The comment I get a lot is, ‘Man, glad to see you’re still doing your thing.’ And I think in a live forum, when people see me live, I’m actually able to sometimes get them to forget about me on stage. I see couples dancing with each other—getting lost in each other’s eyes while one of my songs is playing. Whereas you see some cats that just the crowd goes out there and looks at them—even if they’re nodding, it’s just about watching them. Not really like ‘we’re enjoying the music, getting lost in the feeling, just dancing around as if we were at a high school dance…’
Some people have called you a healer—how do you feel about that?
Well, it’s humbling. I made a song on my old album Think Tank called ‘Front Row’ and it was a take on an old gospel song ‘Give Me My Flowers,’ and it’s about giving your mom a bouquet of flowers now, instead of on a casket when she’s dead and gone. It’s just about appreciating people and appreciating times and the moment you’re in now. That has definitely been a song I’ve been told where people will have their grandmother or mother or whoever pass and it helped get them through. For me, stuff like that makes music worth it—it makes it all worth it for me. That regardless of what it sells it has an application—it has a place in this world and it kind of validates that this is what I was born to do.

ABSTRACT RUDE WITH MYKA 9, ACEYALONE AND MORE ON FRI., MAY 22, AT THE AIRLINER, 2419 N. BROADWAY, LOS ANGELES. 8PM / $15 / 18+. MYSPACE.COM/URBANUNDERGROUNDWEEKLY. ABSTRACT RUDE’S REJUVENATION IS OUT NOW ON RHYMESAYERS. VISIT ABSTRACT RUDE AT MYSPACE.COM/ABSTRACTRUDE.

A perfect night to go with our Johnson and Jonson release party tonight—courtesy the folks at Cinefamily just down the street. This is early L.A. hip-hop footage so rare the government is after it. Miss this and a part of your brain will starve to death slowly. Starts at 8 PM and $12. More info here and below. Peanut Butter Wolf will also be VJing.


Download: Arabian Prince “Strange Life”

(from Innovative Life out now on Stones Throw)

Get ready to “set it off” Strafe-style with some rare footage from the Delicious Vinyl Vaults, giving you a tour of early hip-hop in Los Angeles. You’ll catch ultra-rare footage of Ramellzee and graffiti artist Jean Michel Basquiat at the Rhythm Lounge on Melrose–a rare pocket in the advent of L.A. hip hop culture. Also, Soul Brother “Legendary” will present highlights from 1982-1989 (from the Freak Beat to the Golden Era), from his upcoming Suns of James Brown documentary, which features footage of Uncle Jam’s Army, Jam City, Ultrawave, and underground dance crews including early moves from members of The Pharcyde. Next, Delicious Vinyl artists (Tone Loc, Young MC, Def Jef, and Body And Soul) appear in a 1988 Electronic Press Kit made for the label by director Tamra Davis. Plus music videos, a live dance performance by the Soul Brothers, DJ set by KDAY Grand Mixer M-Walk, and some other very special guests! To top it all off, Peanut Butter Wolf will be in the house to VJ a set of visuals to cap off the night.
Tickets – $12

Bodies of Water “Under the Pines”

Bodies of Water are from Highland Park and are hoping to get a pet goat someday. Their newest A Certain Feeling is out next week on Secretly Canadian.

What was the band name that was second-choice to Hitler’s Gay Son?
David Metcalf (singing/guitar): Once somebody comes up with Hitler’s Gay Son, there’s no need to really discuss further. You know a winner when you hear it. I was probably seventeen.
Meredith Metcalf (organ/singing): We had a reprise when we first met—we did one free jam of Hitler’s Gay Son right after we were married.
How do your changing band names reflect your development as human beings?
M: When we very very first started, before we were even really a band, David and I played music together in the house, and [drummer] Jessie [Conklin] and [bassist] Kyle [Gladden] were with us but not playing shows. So we just used David’s email address, which was Unicorn of Death. I’m glad we ditched it before the unicorn craze! You realize anything that’s pretty funny and that you really latch on to—that kind of humor? Snark-core? So weird and lame that it’s cool—I really like that kind of thing. But I know now to avoid those things because it’s in a three-year cycle. If you think something is the most original thing you ever thought, in three years Urban Outfitters is gonna have a shirt with that logo. You have to restrain yourself. It takes a lot of willpower. And ‘Bodies of Water’—I don’t think anything about it. It doesn’t bug me. ‘Oh, there it is.’
That’s the kind of enthusiasm we love.
M: I’d rather be indifferent than embarrassed.
D: In the long run, people who don’t care come out on top.
M: Sometimes I really wish I could be one of those people who don’t care. Historically people who care too much are people who go crazy. Sometimes I sense this in myself. I have friends who are wired totally differently. They don’t have that sense of urgency. I’m like that in everything. Whatever I do, I’m really invested in it. I can’t just kind of halfass something.
Which Os Mutantes album is most like A Certain Feeling?
D: I like the first one so much—I like all of them and I don’t like anything beyond the first three. I bet I would probably get into it now, though. At the time, I was like, ‘Prog blows!’ Now I’d sit down and enjoy it. When I first went to college, I had a drawing teacher, and drawing labs are like free hours. He’d play that later-era Leonard Cohen stuff, and I’d never even heard Leonard Cohen then, and I was like, ‘This is the lamest thing I ever heard in my life.’ Cohen and Dead Can Dance for three hours repeating—pretty relentless. ‘This DOES NOT ROCK!’ But every record I really like now, I actually disliked when I first listened to it.
Which was your biggest reversal?
D: Ziggy Stardust I really didn’t like. And my friend’s older brother had Aladdin Sane. ‘This is sick!’ I was like twelve or something. And the first Os Mutantes record—I didn’t hate it but the mix is all weird and the guitar is the only thing you hear when it comes in, and then you kind of get it.
M: It’s a real inspiration to listen to that, especially when you’re recording. If Os Mutantes cranks that totally weird line-in guitar to be the loudest thing and it’s awesome, you’re like, ‘Oh, you can totally do that kind of thing.’ Because it just seems so wrong.
How many auxiliaries can Bodies Of Water muster up?
D: Joe and David both play trombone—Joe plays bass trombone and David plays tenor—and Andrew plays trumpet, Heather plays viola and she’s on the first record, and Laura is also on the first record. But they don’t play live with us anymore.
M: Noah plays drums and Adam plays guitar sometimes. For a while—last December—we did our first show with horns and strings and thought, ‘Oh, that’s the way to go!’ But then we pared down again for tours, and we just tour as a four-piece. Most of the bands I really like aren’t more than four people. It’s a really different thing. With more people, you don’t have to work as hard to bring the energy on stage, which I kind of really like sometimes! Everyone feeds off each other. But there’s something more raw with four people, and I like watching smaller bands better. You can focus on the members rather than the big experience. It’s more compelling for me. Audience members are like, ‘It’s so epic with all these people!’ But I think it’s more epic when it’s fewer people totally going for it.
How do you maximize your bombasticism?
M: I think of horn trills and extra drums. It’s more raw-rocking with fewer people. Our sound is different. It’s the same songs, but people walk away thinking, ‘Orchestral indie pop!’ And when it’s just us, they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s like the B-52’s! You’re like a really raw B-52’s!’
Can you describe what you were doing when you wrote the line ‘the love I have for my axe is weak’?
D: When did I write that?
With your shirt off and a lightning storm outside?
D: I have no idea. I think I pulled it out of my book of writing. Usually I write all the lyrics before the music, and change pre-existing lyrics to get the meter right. Make them rhyme if I have to, but that’s not always that case. Usually I’ll have the skeleton of a song and a melody, and I’ll kind of show everybody the way it goes. More so on this record, I’d have a couple sort of movements and we’d link them together.
Did you fit the songs on the album together in a particular way?
M: It just felt very good—it felt like it had an ending like a movie I would like. Kind of left you going, ‘Huh. OK.’ You put song order together the same way you put a song together—especially our songs, with so many different parts. Just fitting more fully formed pieces into a bigger structure. My favorite is when it goes into ‘Darling, Be Here!’ It strikes me as funny—it lulls you down and then it’s like, ‘Alright! Come on!’
What do you think of the quote ‘soul makes you fear God more’?
M: This would be a really amazing game show. I would like it and nobody else in America would like it.
It’s from James Brown.
M: I bet he totally pulled that out his ass. ‘I gotta say soul and God in the same sentence—people love that shit!’ It’s hard with transcribed things. That’s why I’m afraid to do interviews. When I read things I say, they’re totally different. I’m afraid I’m horrible! I say the most horrible things, and if you didn’t know me, you’d think I was horribly racist or really stupid.
Is your label concerned about this at all?
M: It’s kind of our edge in this market—the stupid and racist market we’re cornering.
D: Toby Keith has cornered it too long.
M: I’m still thinking about that quote. I can’t shake the idea that he just said that and didn’t know what it means. It sounds powerful, but maybe… my idea of soul music is a pretty strong feeling you get.
He was the Godfather of Soul.
D: He wasn’t actually related to soul.
M: If soul’s parents die, would he take care of it?
D: You shouldn’t pay so much attention because he hasn’t been involved in it for a while.
Well, he died.
M: I never understood the godfather-godmother thing—does that really happen? Do they really take the kids?
How come you picked Lefty Frizzell’s ‘I Want To Be With You Always’ and not Webb Pierce’s ‘I Don’t Care’ as your favorite love song?
M: Because that’s the song David and I danced to at our wedding. And I just love that song. When we first met, David made me a mix CD of old country music and that won my heart over. Whenever I hear it, I’m like, ‘Ohhhhhh, the salad days!’ That’s what country is genetically engineered to do—for when you’re bummed out or when you fall in love.
D: There’s something almost biological about the appeal of that kind of stuff. That show Radio Lab was saying country music is popular all over the world. Australian aborigines are really into older country music, and it’s really popular in sub-Saharan Africa. People I’ve never heard of will sell out stadiums in Kinshasa. Some Texas crooner that isn’t popular in America.
Which is your most tear-in-your-beer heartbreak song?
M: ‘Love Will Call You By Name.’ It has steel guitar—totally like an old country song.
D: On the first EP we put out.
Is that the one available only with a special cash offer?
M: Yeah, someone emailed me and said, ‘I’m willing to pay upwards of twenty dollars!’ And I’m like, ‘Hmm, I could really use that money…’ I’m so sentimentally attached. We made them all by hand, and I always think, ‘Well, nobody wanted them then—they can’t have them now!’ But if I can tell someone is a superfan—well, paypal me five dollars.
Why is the new record more passive-aggressive than the old one?
M: That’s such an off-handed thing! It didn’t mean anything!
D: I meant every word of it. The first one is more in-your-face. And this one is not like that.
M: It’s not aggressive—it’s assertive!
D: ‘Assertive’ is a euphemism for ‘aggressive.’ The emotional tone is just different. It doesn’t run up into your face. It’s kind of doing its own thing. This crept up toward your face. The other one ran at your face.
M: This doesn’t make any sense—I don’t think you should put that in the interview!
We always put in what people say not to put in.
M: Good to know—goodbye!

—Chris Ziegler

BODIES OF WATER WITH THE HENRY CLAY PEOPLE FOR RELEASE PARTY FOR A CERTAIN FEELING ON THUR., JULY 17, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $8-$10 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. BODIES OF WATER’S A CERTAIN FEELING RELEASES TUE., JULY 22, ON SECRETLY CANADIAN. VISIT BODIES OF WATER AT BODIESOFWATER.NET OR MYSPACE.COM/BODIESOFWATER.

LIVE KING KHAN SHOW PHOTOS @ THE ECHO

King Khan and the Shrines “Torture”

Before touring with his electric-magnetic-frenetic 10-piece soul revue orchestra for the new Vice release, The Supreme Genius of King Khan and the Shrines, the soul man cosmonaut brother-from-an-Indian-mother of the King Khan & BBQ Show talks with Rena Kosnett about painting babies, knife fights, Arthur Lee crying over his steak, and funkifying Larry Hardy’s house, all while cooking paella. And the good king poppa patriarch throws some dental hygiene advice in at the close for kicks.

You do paintings of rock icons as babies. The Little Richard one is very cute.
King Khan: Thank you very much. ‘Baby: of Richard.’ When I first came to Germany I saw those paintings—actually it was in France when I saw the first one—I guess in the ‘60s there was an artist who made a lot of those baby-faced paintings. Often you find them hanging in kid’s rooms and stuff. I used to find them in the flea markets, so I had this idea—why not make baby musicians that I loved? And then what was really cool was when Saba Lou, my youngest daughter, before she was even talking she would play with them like they were dolls, and she would walk around with them—
There’re sharp corners on those things, no?
No, no. I mean, it’s wood, but it’s not super sharp. Anyways, she would play around with them and then when she got older she totally knew who they were and which songs matched which paintings. It was a great way for her to learn. I actually got an offer to do a children’s book with them. I want to do like a CD with one song from every musician.
What are dream dogs? They show up in your paintings often.
Dream dogs are the dogs in my dreams. I basically wanted to paint them and make them known to everyone.
You dream about little fluffy poodles?
Yeah. On tour it would happen often that I would wake up and I just had these dogs in my head, so I put them down. I have a bunch that I didn’t finish. There’s a dog made of spaghetti, and a dog made of circles. I have to keep doing it. It’s hard to find time when you’re touring
Did you intentionally set out to become the first Indian-French-Canadian to front a soul revue orchestra?
Yes. Actually, I killed the rest of them. We were all Siamese twins at one point, and I managed to keep the brains for myself. No, I mean, coming from Montreal, it’s such an international place, so I never really thought of myself in that way. But I guess that is true. I’m a French. Canadian. Indian.
Well, yes. Among other things.
I’m really excited to bring the whole orchestra here. The freak show. It’s crazy because I feel like rock n’ roll has renewed itself again, with the new wave of musicians. I’m really proud to be living right now, in this time. The quality of music that’s coming out from my peers and my buddies, I’m very proud of it. I think that growing up today is not as dismal and shitty as I thought it was gonna be.
Speaking of dismal and shitty, you know how we hear stories about Arthur Lee yelling at members of Love and how James Brown was tyrannical over the people in his band—
I met Arthur Lee! I had dinner like right in front of him. I mean, we hung out. That was really crazy. I was playing a blues festival in Norway and Love was playing also. So I asked the organizer if it was possible for me to meet Arthur Lee, but he said ‘Oh, he’s kind of strange about meeting anyone.’ He said Arthur Lee usually plays the show and then goes directly to the hotel—he doesn’t socialize at all. So I said, ‘If you could give him a CD that would be great,’ and he said no problem, and that he would pass the CD on. So then at dinnertime I went to the hotel to eat, and I got a plate of food and went in to the dining room and Arthur Lee was right there! And I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ So I sat at the table next door to his table and one of the guys from his band was like ‘Hey, King Khan, what are you doin’ here?’ So I felt more like one of them. Then they asked me, ‘Where you from?’ and asked me about my life. I told them I left home when I was 17, so then Arthur Lee was like [lowering and gruffing up voice considerably to do the Arthur Lee parts], ‘I left home when I was 17 too. My daddy bought me a car, and I drooove away.’ So I was like, ‘Oh, that’s cool, my dad was a bit of a jerk.’ I told him my dad was addicted to cocaine, that he had a problem when he was young. And then Arthur Lee was like, ‘Really? Where’s your dad right now? I could use some of that stuff right now.’ I didn’t really laugh out loud at that, so he got kinda nervous, so I was like, ‘Oh yeah, haha.’ So then he said ‘Why don’t you come eat dinner over here?’ So I sat next to him and I was eating steak with him. We ate steak together. And then it was really kinda sad, because he asked me what I do, so I told him about the projects with my kids, and he was like ‘Ya know, I don’t have a momma. I don’t have a poppa. I don’t have any kids. I don’t even have a wife. I dance alone.’
Oh, Jesus.
And then, I swear to God, it looked like he had a tear come out of his eye. I was really shocked. In my head, I was like ‘Oh my God.’ We were sitting there eating, and he was almost crying. I was pretty shocked.
I’ve heard he was a tyrannical, crazy man to the members of his band.
Yeah, but he went through a really rough life, I think. Obviously, that kind of tyranny comes out of how happy you are at home. I’m, well—I love cooking for my band, I love being a poppa.
So we’re not going to hear any horror stories about you yelling at the Shrines?
No, not at all. The thing with the Shrines is—it’s really like a dysfunctional family. Everyone has their annoying little behavioral things or smelly body parts.
What’s the smelliest body part on the smelliest person?
If anyone can find out, I’ll give them a free record. If anyone is brave enough to test the waters. I’ll just line up the Shrines and we can blindfold people and have their noses lead them.
Is the video for ‘Why Don’t You Lie’ based in reality? About BBQ going with you to Berlin and getting jealous and insecure?
The video is actually supposed to be a fake gay romantic art movie.
I didn’t get gay—I just got like, really good friends.
It was supposed to be two gay lovers.
You should’ve kissed!
We made the mistake of doing that like twice in public, and it was really, uh, strange. Especially the second time because we thought it would be really shocking but then we realized that no one was even looking! That video was actually made by the director of the movie I did the soundtrack for—Oliver Rihs—called Schwarze Schafe. The video was the director’s idea. He thought that was really hilarious, to do that.
Does BBQ get jealous when you tour without him?
No. We share. It’s better that way.
What was the one deciding factor that made you want to stay in Berlin in the middle of your Spaceshits tour?
The Spaceshits had been together for five years at that point, and I think all of us were really itching to try something else, do something different. And out of the Spaceshits came a number of bands that were great. My sister started playing with the guitar player, and they got married and had babies. And Les Sexareenos came out of that too, so there were all these offshoots and I think it was a wise decision. I personally wanted to live in Europe because after the tour I was so happy being there, and amazed at how people are treated in general there, especially musicians. All the freaks of rock n’ roll music seem to survive in Europe. It’s been like that for a long time. People who are forgotten and disappear in America are really celebrated in Europe somehow. They might be small circles of people, but in every city you’ll find a couple hundred people who really have a passion for finding rare, odd, crazy rock n’ roll.
Do you ever see Jessie Evans and Toby Dammit around Berlin?
I didn’t know they lived in Berlin. I have a home studio in my house, Moon Studios, and I record there. I rarely go out. Just when friends come out to play shows, or something like that. I’m actually going to be putting out a compilation of the Moon material on In The Red. It’s recordings from the past eight years. I want to have volume one come out hopefully at the end of this year. It’s got Deerhunter on it, and Black Lips, and Saba Lou, and Demon’s Claws. Some solo stuff too. It’s like the family exposing itself. What I like to do mostly when people visit is just record songs. I do that with my family, my brother and sister too. I’ve been recording with them for ten years. I’ve been waiting to put it all together. But this year went really well. Deerhunter came out, and Demon’s Claws, and it all sounded so good. I can’t wait. I think it’s going to be great. And it’s on In The Red Records—L.A.’s finest.
I really like the duet you do with Saba Lou on ‘Passed and Gone.’ It’s very sweet.
Thanks, I just recorded that a couple weeks ago. I was working on that song for the Shrines, and Saba Lou was just sitting and watching, and quietly came up to me and was like [in a little girl voice] ‘I want to sing the song, too.’ It’s amazing because now that she can read, it makes things a lot easier. She’s turning eight on the 19th of July! And Bella is five.
You had kids at a fairly young age.
Yeah, I was twenty-two. I had a baby, me and my wife got married, and we moved into our new apartment, all in the same week. I have it all on the same roll of film. Our wedding, our moving in, and our baby’s birth. It was pretty crazy.
Did your decision to stay in Berlin have anything to do with their general acceptance of sexual deviancy?
Yes, definitely. It’s common for girls here to woo men with hashish and lure them into their dungeons and do wonderful things to them. I think in general Europeans don’t make their kids feel ashamed about sexuality. Growing up, kids are introduced to it in a really nice way, rather than in a way that makes it seem evil and horrible. I can tell just in the way my wife was raised. It’s a completely natural way of discovering things.
Are Berlin sex shops different than Montreal sex shops?
There’s probably a lot more leather in Berlin. Actually, Montreal is kind of kinky in that way too. But I don’t really go into sex shops. I like to be creative on my own.
The Black Lips list you as a member of the band in the Good Bad Not Evil notes, but it says that you caused major ruckus and distractions for them. What did you do?
Well, I’ve known them for a long time and sometimes I write songs for them. It’s like family antics. Like when a drunk uncle does funny things at your birthday party. Or I guess not a drunk uncle—maybe when your cousin pukes on something. It’s like blood family. I go kinda crazy when I see them. I get excited, and like a kid—we all do. I jump on stage sometimes. That’s how I am with music that I love. I wish more people were like that too. There’s been some funny instances. One really funny one was when they played in L.A. recently. Larry Hardy was out of town and he let me stay at his house for a week, and the Black Lips and the Spits were playing in L.A. that week. So he knew that I was gonna have them over, I told him I was going to have them over. But we made a mess. I mean, I didn’t make the mess.
No, of course not.
Cole let a fart bomb off in his house and we had to open all the windows. So they equally make a ruckus when they’re around me too. I’m not always the troublemaker.
So they can’t blame you.
It’s fun to say, but they’re pretty trouble-making themselves.
I want to talk about Hombre Fatal.
Oh, God. That film was made by a really hardcore ex-skinhead punk girl. She’s the girl that’s in the movie with the tattoos all over.
It’s really hot.
It was pretty much her idea. I think maybe she had a thing for me or something, and I guess it manifested itself in the movie. She’s pretty hardcore. Her name is Iris Cuntze. And she was a really hardcore nasty skinhead. And she was notorious for beating people up and stuff. But then she went through this reform and I happened to be there for that.
You were totally cold to that Asian chick who shot Iris for licking your chest.
I know, I know. It’s because my wife was pregnant while that was being filmed. I was going through some shit.
The only part I was able to see was when you were dancing in your little bikini and then the Asian chick shoots Iris.
It’s a short film!
That’s the whole thing?
Well, there are the credits at the end where I’m signing autographs outside my dressing room. That’s kinda funny.
Have you ever met King Khan the Bollywood star?
No! But I really want to play a villain against him. I have this dream of doing this Bollywood film where it would just be villains, where every character gets introduced separately. Like a Sergio Leone movie. Or like El Topo with Indians. I’d want evil people, one after another. But I don’t know about that actor, actually. I’d like to meet him, I guess, but I heard recently that he did commercials for this cream called ‘Fair and Lovely,’ which is a skin cream in India for dark people to become light skinned. I was very upset when I heard that. That’s really horrible to put anything like that on the market. It’s sad. You see that a lot in India—it can be a pretty racist place. There’s still a lot of racism against dark people.
Do you think he’d have a problem with you using his nickname, now that you’ve publicly spurned his product endorsement?
I didn’t know about him when I came up with the name. I began using that name ten years ago because it’s very anonymous. Khan is my real last name, but the name ‘King Khan’ is common—like, if an Indian person moves to, you know, Idaho, and opens up a chicken place, he’ll name it ‘King Khan Chicken.’ Also, when I first moved to Germany I got a German WWI helmet as a present—well, it was made of plastic, it wasn’t a real one—and I would wear it everywhere. I would go grocery shopping with that thing on, and it would freak German people out—an Indian guy wearing a Kaiser helmet. The first time I went to Hamburg I was walking down the street drinking a beer with my girlfriend, and all these street bums were coming up to me and screaming ‘Kaiser!’ And ‘kaiser’ is like ‘king,’ so I thought, ‘Man, I’m a king in Germany!’ So that’s where the name came from.
Did you respond to the bums that were yelling at you?
Yeah, I was drinking a beer and giving them a salute—
Wait, wait, what kind of salute?
What? Oh… no, like a cheer! We don’t have those kind of bums anymore.
If George Clinton and James Brown were in a knife fight, who would win?
Definitely James Brown. James Brown was a boxer, a fighter. I think George Clinton would be trying to distract him by doing some kind of funky dance, and then James Brown would just cold-cock him. And I mean a punch.
How about Long Gone John versus Larry Hardy in a knife fight?
I don’t know if I can answer that. Well, I would say Long Gone. But maybe Larry has some kind of mysterious Tai Chi training or something.
Larry does have youth on his side.
Yeah, but Long Gone’s kind of Larry’s poppa in a way. Long Gone John is Darth Vader and Larry Hardy is Luke Skywalker.
You’ve worked with Goner Records in the past, and Sympathy For The Record Industry, and In The Red Records. So why Vice now? Why not find a comparably independent record label based in Berlin, or somewhere else close to your home?
I just wanted to get the music out to the masses. It’s great to work with underground labels, and I’ll continue doing that. But Vice has a whole strategy to get it out there and push their shit onto normal people, not just music fans. And I think that it’s time this music gets out of the whole underground thing, and gets to younger kids. It’s done that a bit naturally, already. You’ve got Thrasher magazine writing about us and Jay Reatard and stuff. But I guess with Vice, I’m down with them really pushing it all over the place.
Was it Vice’s idea to release a compilation record or was that you wanted?
That was what I wanted, to test the waters. Also that Shrines material was pretty much an exclusively European thing. I didn’t really tour all over America with the Shrines like I did with King Khan & BBQ.
It wasn’t due to a lack of new material to run with?
No, I thought it would be good for the older stuff to get more exposure. We have a new album—we’re working on it now. But I think that the songs on Supreme Genius still hold up. For example, songs like ‘Torture.’ It’s ten years old. And it’s about time people took notice of those songs. I think a lot of people, especially in the States, didn’t get a chance to hear them. Another thing about Vice, we’ve got this great booking agency working with us, and it’s little things like that—I mean, King Khan & BBQ do really well in America, and I think it’s because of that, that I finally got to bring the whole band—Oh shit, I forgot the rice!
Are you burning your dinner?
I’m checking—I don’t think it’s burned. Okay, it’s good. So the success of King Khan & BBQ enabled me to bring the Shrines over.
Considering that you’re barely out of your twenties, do you think declaring your ‘Supreme Genius’ at this point in time is selling the rest of your seventy or so years a bit short?
No, I mean, that title’s a kind of tongue-in-cheek joke. My dad had a big collection of Indian classical music, and it’s common for sitar players to have the phrase ‘supreme genius’ in the titles of their records. It’s similar to the phrase ‘Popular Favorites’ in the U.S.—like those records that say [making his voice like a 50s radio DJ] ‘Rock n’ roll: Popular Favorites’ from the ‘50s and ‘60s. So that’s where the ‘Supreme Genius’ came from. It didn’t come from an ego problem. Which I don’t have.
It reminds of Korla Pandit—his records.
Did Korla Pandit have a ‘supreme genius’ album too? He looks crazy.
He’s not really Indian! He was a light-skinned black guy.
Yeah, he was from L.A. right? I’m really Indian, though.
I believe you. I want to know about your fashion choices. I really like your bone wear and your grass skirts—and the sparkly gold onesy you were wearing while you were giving your friend a hair cut in New Orleans to make him look like Ghandi.
My wife designs all that stuff for me. We should sell that stuff. It would be great to start a fashion line of my dresses.
Do you pick out outfits for the Shrines like James Brown used to do for his band?
My wife picks out and makes all the costumes, and I help here and there. I’ll wear them and she’ll stick pins in me. It can be quite scary and erotic.
Do you already know what you’re going to wear at your show in L.A.?
I’ve had the same suit that I’ve worn for the Shrines, the white one, for years now. I’ve taken that suit on tour for two months and it doesn’t smell bad. I could wear it every night. But I have to dry it. I’m not really one to bring too much luggage when I go places. That’s actually why I prefer to wear hula dresses with King Khan and BBQ—they’re a lot easier to pack.
So in the smell challenge, you’re not going to be the smelliest one?
No, no no no. Ah, well, maybe. It depends on what time of day it is. I have this musk that comes out, like a beaver. Or a raccoon.
Is it in response to external stimulus? Like a skunk?
I always keep a little pouch of beaver musk wherever I go. Most Canadians do.
Can you explain why you like Sun Ra to me? I ask because he’s someone I’ve always admired, but I have trouble getting to the root of it, since I don’t go for all the extraterrestrial cosmic awareness stuff.
What I always loved about Sun Ra was the way he created his own myth. And then that myth became reality. When I think of Sun Ra, I think, ‘Well, now he’s back in space.’ I really believe that. What he did was musical alchemy in a way. He brought people together in Philadelphia would probably would’ve never played instruments, and told them what they should play, like a pharaoh. He would look at someone and say ‘You should play drums!’ And we don’t know if they would’ve found that without him. He was a catalyst for a lot of people.
He had that one quote: ‘We’re all instruments, and everyone is supposed to be playing their part.’
It was kind of like being a magician, his ability to influence people. Like Anton LaVey—a much kinder, gentler Anton LaVey. LaVey was kind of scary—not scary, evil. What’s beautiful and unique, what I love about Sun Ra was that he preached for people to listen to the music inside themselves, and not the programmed music that was shouted at them to numb their brains. And that whole idea is still applicable now. I especially love the Sun Ra doo-wop stuff that he did—the space doo-wop stuff. I think that music is so psychedelic and wonderful and pure. It’s unbelievable. Like Henry Darger’s paintings.
But, again—kind of scary. Those paintings can be really scary. But some of Sun Ra’s later electronic keyboard compositions are really frightening.
People like that, Henry Darger and Sun Ra, they don’t create for the masses—they create for themselves and their own healing process or whatever it is. They don’t even necessarily want it to be shown to everyone. It’s just beautiful and uninfluenced by stupidity. The first time I really had a religious experience with music was when I was 22 and first moved to Germany. I met this painter and sax player, who was actually going back to America—he gave me a stack of video tapes of Sun Ra. And I flipped out. I had known a little bit about Sun Ra, but I didn’t know the whole philosophy behind it. And after that I found my way. I wanted to do that same kind of joyful noise.
Last question. Do you think your wife would mind if you and I reenacted Hombre Fatal with me playing the part of the tattooed lady that licks your chest?
I think because we had this interview and everything, it’s part of the job, and it would be disappointing if it didn’t happen—so no, she wouldn’t mind. Please brush your teeth before we do that. And don’t forget to floss.

KING KHAN AND THE SHRINES WITH THE JACUZZI BOYS ON THUR., JULY 10, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $12 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. THE SUPREME GENIUS OF KING KHAN AND THE SHRINES IS OUT NOW ON VICE. VISIT KING KHAN AT HAZELWOOD.DE/KINGKHAN/ OR MYSPACE.COM/KINGKHANANDTHESHRINES.

Blowfly “Sesame Street”

Blowfly is one of the original shit-talking recordings artists with an X-rated career dating back almost forty years. Blowfly’s tour manager explained before this interview: “Ask him specific questions. He will interview himself if he can.” He speaks now to Rebecca Balin about her mother.

Blowfly’s Voice Mail: It’s a weird world robotic and I’m your one-way ticket straight to pussy hell. Go ahead leave a message if you dare…
Blowfly: Hi, baby.
Do you mind giving me a visual of your surroundings?
I’m at the Highlight. That’s a game that they’ve been playing for years since the ’20s and you bet on it. It’s kinda weird. If you come down here, I’ll show it to you.
Do you constantly wear your costume? Are you wearing your mask right now?
It started way back… Well, first of all, I was born in Cochran, Georgia, in a house where thirteen babies had been born in it, black and white. My mother was married when she was 16 and I was born when she was 18. So they were telling her that this baby may not survive. So after four months old most babies say their first word, and I said my first word which was “nasty,” because I liked fried okra and they gave me boiled okra. And my grandmother spanked me.
What?
Okra. Girl, you know I don’t like boiled okra. White women smelt like billy goats and black women smelled like fish, and I hated fish. I never eat fish, seafood, or chicken. I thought it was weird. So at four months I said my first word which was “nasty” and I was walking at six months…
I’m just confused as to how all the pussy and fish and the okra relates to your Blowfly costume.
Oh, I was just sayin’ as a baby they give you milk which means I was skinny cause I never liked milk, and it was kind of weird that my mother… (mumbles something)… But yeah most babies at four months they just go “wah wah wah” and I said “nasty” cause I don’t like boiled okra cause it’s stringing and slimy.
So okra was your first word?
No, “assty.” My grandmother tried to correct me and said, “No, baby, not ‘assty’—‘nasty.’” Because the okra looks like something that came out the ass. Of course she spanked me at four months and at six months or seven months I was walkin’, and I was talkin’ all kinds of shit then.
My first word was “Hello”.
Ha, ha—that’s nice. I went to school—I was a little kid and white girls loved me because I keep them laughin’. I would sing ‘Walkin’ The Floor Over You’ and of course I would change it to ‘I’m Jerkin My Dick Over You.’ And the white people would crack up. ‘Yes, Minnie Pearl?’ ‘Do you love me?’
‘Minnie, if you knew what I was doin’ now, you’d know I love you.’ ‘Well, what are you doin?’ ‘I’m lookin’ at your picture and I’m jerkin my dick over you—I jerk it until it’s black and blue—I’m jerkin my dick over you.’ White people just crack up—they love that. And I was five years old.
That whole story took place while you were five?
Yeah.
Do you think one of the main reasons that you are such a sensual being is because you were born on St. Valentine’s Day?
I think so. My mother was only 18 and the black and white people ring the bell at 12 o’clock for all the workers, black and white, to come out of the field and eat. And the bell was ringing when I came out my mother’s womb and they said I was laughin’. This granny lady came out and said, “Oh lord, he’s laughin? He’s from Satan.” Movin’ on up at seven years old my granddaddy passed. My mother had moved to Miami and I was in Georgia and I’m seven years old and my granddaddy died of cancer and the white people said, ‘We gonna have to throw you off the field, and give you six months to find another place to live cause there’s nobody that can work.’ I said, ‘Sir, I can work.’ And he said, ‘Now get yo’ lil’ nigga ass over there and sit down.’ So I started and they let us stay on the field… And the blacks ain’t making more than a dollar a day and if you’re a good worker you’re making $2 a day. I would go home with about $18 or $19 and my grandmother thought I was stealin’ and the white people came down and said, ‘Cindy, Clarence is not stealing the money.’ ‘Well how is he getting all this money?’ ‘Because he sings us these songs.’ And one day my grandmother found out what I was singing and she said, ‘You’re the most disgusting thing ever—look at you. You’re a disgrace to the black race and you’re no better than a blowfly.’
I don’t mean to cut you short but you’re telling me stuff that I already read. I am seeking the Exclusive Blowfly Interview.
I didn’t know what a blowfly was. Since some nice girl—my favorite one was Nelma Cross. She was born Valentine’s Day at twelve noon like me. She was about six years older than me, and she said ‘Junior?’ and I said ‘Yes?’ ‘You know what a blowfly is?’ I said ‘No.’ ‘Promise me you won’t get mad?’ I said, ‘I won’t get mad—I’m the world’s baddest nigga.’ She said, ‘A blowfly is a black and white and green and yella insect that lays on dead things and turns into maggots.’ Now I started to cry. She said, ‘I’m sorry I told you, but there’s a good side.’ And I said, “’How could there be a good side?’ She said ‘When the comets fall out of the sky and struck the earth, and killed all the dinosaurs,’ which they did, ‘life would never evolve, except blowflys came and laid eggs on the dead things that turn into maggots, and those maggots ate the germs up.’ And I start laughin’ and she says, ‘Oh my God, you ain’t gonna call yourself Blowfly, are you?’ And I said, ‘Yes. I am gonna call myself Blowfly.’ Do you remember a group called Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys?
No, I’m not familiar with them.
Yo’ mama or your dad would. I could yodel back then. The white boys—they’d be the one to go see Bob Wills. And they took me and Bob said ‘What do we have here?’ And they said, ‘This is Junior.’ ‘Well, hi Junior.’ And then I said, ‘Your name isn’t Bob Wills—it’s Bob Jill and those are the Texas Gay Boys.’ I call them gay because they could be broke, hungry, and cold, and they just be happy. So that’s how I got started. He must have given me like $40 or $50 ‘cause I kept him laughin’. By now my Grandma was got use to it. Now all of this is true. It can be checked.
Wait, I have some questions for you. I’m sure you’ve partied till the sun came up. You want to share a story about one of your crazy all nighters?
I’ve had some parties but I never drink or use drugs. So they’d be at those parties and I never drank or nothin’ like that. My friend Mike told me if I cleaned up after his parties for three months he’d let me do a free recording session. When I recorded ‘Rap Dirty’ it came out in Germany and I noticed if a guy has five girlfriends they call him a lover. A Casanova. And if you dated two men at once you were called a whore. I couldn’t understand it. So I came up with ‘Girls, You Can’t Do What The Guys Do’ and that’s how Blowfly got started. And then I still got a whole bunch of stuff you’re missing with 2 Live Crew. I was on the road and he was at this place and there was this song called ‘Rhinestone Cowboy.’ It’s not ‘Rhinestone Cowboy.’ Well, what is it? It’s ‘Rhinestone Black Dick.’
Are you serenading me, Blowfly?
They said ‘Why is Blowfly getting stuff from Wille Nelson?’ I was this redneck boy getting stuff to Fishbone and Red Hot Chili Peppers. And they say, ‘Clarence, Wille don’t like it…’ I said, ‘I ain’t recording this if Wille is gonna get pissed off.’ I said, ‘Give me a picture of Wille.’ And the picture they got was a picture of him on stage playing his guitar pointing at some white girls. I said, ‘You’re pointing at her butt.’ ‘I’m not but what if I was?’ I said, ‘I betcha singing “On The Road Again.”’ I just lucked out—that’s what he was singing. ‘What the fuck are you talkin’ about?’ I said, ‘You’re pointing at some white girl’s butt and singing “On the road again—I can’t wait to get on that road again, back on that highway with all the turns I’ve ever been…’ He just started cracking up. So how long have you been doing this dirty shit? Well, the first rap record I recorded was in the 50s and it was a record called…
Wait? Did you just ask yourself a question? You’re making my job easy.
Yeah?
Have you ever partied with Rick James?
Yeah. I knew him personally. I got this thing I got to explain this to you about. I’m religious. But I got this thing against ordained ministers having a record worse than the people they prayin’ for… Rick James didn’t steal from MC Hammer. Sampling is like raping somebody. I take your body and do whatever the fuck I want with it. [tape gap] And I said to her ‘Terrorists are bad, right?’ ‘Oh, they’re horrible. They beat up people.’ I said ‘That ain’t shit—they copy cats.’ ‘Whatcha mean?’ ‘John The Baptist in the Bible got his head cut off and served on a silver platter cause he wouldn’t fuck a dancer mothafucka!’
How is your music received in Europe?
I had a record I had out in 1980—When I Become President—and I had this song ‘First Black President’ and I ended up doing shit with my secretary, Miss Clit—what I called her. After that it was a coincidence that President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky did the same shit that I had on my record. It’s a coincidence, but the Germans thought that they copied me. And they don’t like nigger presidents and I was a nigger president and all that kind of shit. They loved that song. That’s why I’m so big in Germany. And they tell me, ‘What about Obama?’ And I say, ‘Well, he lives up to his name. He’s a fucking bomb.’ They want us to be comfortable with black and white, young and old, straight, gay and bi—Hillary’s the one to do it. He has ties to outside terrorists and if he becomes presidents a lot of scumbags ain’t gonna have no problem getting into America.
Did you ever take your mother or grandmother to Europe?
Well, my grandmother passed a few years ago, and I told my mother I wanted to take her but she’s kind of religious and she’d miss doing a lot of her praying out here. That reminds me of something. The preacher comes around and says to my mother, ‘Why don’t you do something about your scumbag son?’ My mother said, ‘I presume you’re talking about Blowfly?’ ‘Yes.’ My mother said, ‘Now let me see if I got this right. I got six sons. Who finished school, finished college, and played professional football.’ The preacher said, ‘Well, that’s great.’ Mother said, ‘No, it ain’t. They either dead or in prison because of drugs. Blowfly never drank, or smoked, or used drugs in his life. And you all want me to pray for him?’
I was doing some research and I noticed you also have some recordings under your birth name Clarence Reid. I feel it’s still very provocative but a little more wordy and clever.
A lot of people still don’t know of Clarence Reid and The Blowflys. In 1969 I had one of the biggest records in the country under Clarence Reid—‘I’m Doing My Thing For Nobody But You Babe.’ We were gonna get sued from the song ‘It’s Your Thing (Do What You Want To Do.)” That came out in about ’68, and mine… How could they sue me for stealing ‘Nobody But You’ for ‘It’s Your Thing’ in 1968 when I recorded mine on a two track in 1964? So I played the tape for them. In the early 60s Jackie Wilson—we called him ‘Pretty Boy.’ Women went crazy for him. He was on the James Brown show in Tampa, Florida—this is the truth—and for the first time he didn’t make any money. And he said ‘I can’t make the money you’re making if I’m a guest on your show.’ So he was a guest, and he got into it with James Brown. James said, ‘Hold up, I’m not talking to you, little punk.’ James Brown made some pretty good music. But yea—the 60s here, that was the key. He was big on blacks but he needed just to catch on the whites. He was on The Ed Sullivan Show. The first time James wasn’t the star. Some of your friends were. Mick Jagger, Keith Richard, and the Rolling Stones. And it was the first time I heard the words old school. James said, ‘Nobody wants to hear this old school shit—“Please, Please, Please”’
Here we have modern top-40 rap music today and here you are, the king of explicit content. What’s your take on rap music today?
I love you for asking this. You won’t believe the interviews I do. Millions of them and I’m not lying. You’re the first one that asked me that. And it’s because all rap music today is not rap. And they say ‘Well, Blowfly you started rap.’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t start rap. Rap goes back to 1943. Those hillbilly records—they didn’t call it rap then. They called it close-talkin’.’ These days what rappers call rap is not rap. It goes back to Africa—the Swahili tribe, and that’s not rap. That’s chanting. Gun fire, that’s rapping fire. They ain’t rappin’—they’re chantin’.
Do you want to tell us a bit about your upcoming records?
We got about two or three of them. Talking Dirty, Hard Rock and two live albums. One from Australia and one from Germany and some of those are burnin’ pussy. Before we leave I’m gonna put a curse on you.
Don’t you dare!
Heepers, jeepers—
Wait! Wait! Wait! No curses allowed. No curses.
—You’ll have a little baby before this time next year. Over the mountains and over the sea, it will be pretty like you, but talk shit like me. When it come out of your womb it will leave the doctor’s hands bloody. When it looks at you it will say, ‘What the fuck is up, Mommay!’
Don’t put a curse on me and tell me I’m going to have a baby. If I end up having a baby next year because of your curse, I’m naming him Clarence. I’m naming after you, Blowfly, and I’m telling everyone you’re the daddy!
I’ll be the only one who will ever be able to get along with him.
You better take him fishing and pay your dues.
I’d glad to be his god dad. Whoever he is, whenever you have a kid. Don’t worry. Since you don’t want the curse I got to do it like this. ‘Witches sneeze and they cough, your beautiful womanhood is back on, the Blowfly having a baby curse is off… even though I wanted it to stay on.’
Thank you so much for the interview.
Hey, yo’ momma still around?
Yes, she is.
What’s her name?
Her name is Rochelle.
What horoscope sign is she?
She’s a Taurus.
To Rochelle—you are Taurus the bull, as evil as a bull, as strong as a bull, and between your legs you smell like a bull… your daughter made me and said it was, Rochelle! Ha ha ha!

BLOWFLY (WITH NORWOOD FROM FISHBONE) WITH ANTISEEN, ANGUS KHAN AND SUCKER STAR ON THUR., MAY 15, AT THE KNITTING FACTORY, 7021 HOLLYWOOD BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 8 PM / $15 / ALL AGES. KNITTINGFACTORY.COM. VISIT BLOWFLY AT BLOWFLYMUSIC.COM.