Stream: Teenage Jesus and the Jerks “I Woke Up Dreaming”

(from the No New York compilation available now from Lilith)

Teenage Jesus and the Jerks were arguably one of the most feralized bands on the No New York compilation and Lydia Lunch would only penetrate deeper and deeper from there. A one-shot reunion show in New York last year has become a mini-tour that will visit L.A., but after that, says Lunch, it’s done and buried. Brutalization follows. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

When Teenage Jesus and the Jerks played in New York City last year, it was always set up as a one-shot deal. Yet here we are.
Lydia Lunch (vocals/guitar): I never thought I would have done reunions—it’s ridiculous to me. It’s Thurston Moore that’s to be blamed with his no wave book that he put out last year. A few months before it was coming out he was actually in Barcelona on my couch and he turned to me and said, ‘Well, what about a Teenage Jesus reunion?’ I said, ‘What about the fact that they’re all dead except for Sclavunos? Are you ready to take the wrath of the wire coat hanger and play bass?’ And he jumped up and down and said, ‘Yes!’ So that’s how Teenage Jesus got together in the beginning. He decided he’d go under the coat hanger so we did the New York show and then we developed All Tomorrow’s Parties. I guess the final nail in the coffin for the next couple of shows was based in the fact that in Montreal there’s something called a Pop Symposium—they invited me last year with my multimedia thing and then they got the snifter of Teenage Jesus and they were so kind and I said, ‘Well, I’m not going all the way to the States for one fucking show—I don’t even want to come there for five shows!’ Also the fact that I knew Thurston couldn’t do it and so my favorite bass player in the world must be Algis Kizys from the Swans and he’s doing it. This is what you get in L.A.—Jim Sclavunos, the original bass player, now on drums and Algis Kizys from Swans on bass—how could I say no? Mostly to me, it’s kind of ridiculous. It’s absurdist and I’ve always been absurd anyway. I’ve always considered myself a Dadaist and it’s the most Dada fucking music, and it must be the most Dada idea that 30 years later we’re doing this. One of the reasons is there is still not enough women playing ugly fucking music as a counter to all these pop princesses.
Who litter the streets of Los Angeles?
Lydia Lunch: Exactly. Somebody’s got to be bold enough to go, ‘This is fucking ugly. Deal. Deal.’ And it feels good. So that’s it—there’s five more shows and it’s buried. It’s done.
What is that ugliness in music? How do you identify it and how do you respond to it?
Lydia Lunch: With Teenage Jesus it’s just brutality. The music is brutal. The lyrics are brutal. It makes me feel very brutal. When I did the first shows at the Knitting Factory with Thurston I was amazed that I felt so fucking angry—‘Hang on a second, haven’t I had half a century to deal with my fucking anger issues?’ But the music just inspired … maybe it’s because people were so happy to see it.
Happy to be brutalized?
Lydia Lunch: Yeah, and that kind of grated on me. But then when we did All Tomorrow’s Parties I was a little bit gentler. I guess I was used to the bobblehead effect of people bouncing to the beat. I don’t know. To me, it’s personally mandatory to play music that’s this minimal and so uncompromising and to pick up the fucking guitar which is a grand assaultive weapon and then it’s done. Get it out of my system—it’s done.
The Beefheart guitar commandments say don’t point a guitar at someone unless you’re willing to use it.
Lydia Lunch: Oh baby, please! Bend over, I’ll drive it home! [Grunts brutally]
What’s been your most energizing interaction with the crowd at one of these shows?
Lydia Lunch: When they started singing along with the lyrics I just started changing them. I don’t even remember the fucking lyrics. Stop it. Whatever, it’s just hilarious and it’s hilarious that it riles me up.
You said that when you watched the old footage of yourself on Video Hysterie, it was like watching your daughter. So what’s it like to perform this?
Lydia Lunch: Oh God, it’s so primal. It’s almost like watching a bacterial version of myself. That’s why I call it the retrovirus—when people want to talk, I call it the retrovirus. ‘One more dose of the retrovirus.’
So this is your new infection vector?
Lydia Lunch: Exactly. Great title for the article. There is no inoculation against the retrovirus. The disease is the cure because it fucking kills you. Oh, if only …
You’ve talked about how you try and reverse the anarchist saying that ‘Whoever creates, demands destruction.’ So whoever destroys demands creation?
Lydia Lunch: I think whoever’s been destroyed demands a self-mandatory survival—it’s a need to create. A lot of the stuff that I do now—multimedia psycho-ambient soundscapes which I create myself with one or two other live improv collaborators—a lot of the montage stuff that I’m doing is taking a small close-up of a piece of destroyed building, especially this one from the Spanish Civil War time which was destroyed in 1933.
The first city bombed by its own country, right?
Lydia Lunch: Right—Belchite. Taking just a corner of that and montaging it and mirroring it so it becomes almost like this beautiful jewel box—this piece of jewelry. That’s just how I maintain my sanity at this point. I go back and look at all the shit I started saying under Reagan when I first got really political—dot fucking dot dot, man. I could go back and hear those speeches and go, ‘We’re right back to where we fucking were.’ And if I don’t take another route to express that, I would just be literally in the rubber room by now pounding my head against my own .357.
Do you still have that .357?
Lydia Lunch: In Spain we don’t need a .357. It is a credit to the country, it’s so safe. You have to have your guns at the shooting range here because everybody else does—it’s kind of a letdown. But I would just be completely insane at this point because of the round circle of hypocrisy that America has become. It’s so outrageous to me what’s going on with this false prophet of false hope who’s so entrenched in the network of grand corporate thieves creating a more advanced planet of slaves. That’s why I have to fucking rock. That’s why I have a rock band called Big Sexy Noise—we just finished an album. I was literally just listening to the master. The entire thing was just mastered and the album comes out November 2 and I’ll be touring Europe with that band but it’s like—I just can’t say anymore because it’s all the same fucking thing so now I’m just gonna fucking rock. Fuck off!
You’ve said that your moral imperative was to ‘tell the truth about injustices to the individual and scream into the void.’
Lydia Lunch: At the time it was just natural. It wasn’t even really that politically aware because there wasn’t that much information out about the truth that we knew which was only assumed. The truth was the opposite of everything they told us and instinctively a lot of us knew that. And I go back and it’s like, ‘Yeah, duh, of course!’ And how far back do you want to go? Because I can only go as far back as my own lifetime because otherwise I just get completely insane because we could go back to the cave—it’s the same fucking story.
What’s your favorite tomb, crypt or cave?
Lydia Lunch: It’s probably the caves that I have yet to visit, like the caves in Libya that I would love to go to. They just have these incredible mile-long caves that you can take a boat down. Gaddafi’s opening [them] up, let’s hope.
Is it easier for you to travel into Libya than America?
Lydia Lunch: America does kind of scare me. The direction it’s going in and—you’re there, you know it. England is much worse although since I don’t live there I don’t feel it as much. But in England now they’re going to shut off your Internet if you download. It’s so 1984 and that’s where America is going and it’s pretty much there. They just don’t advertise it as much. It’s worrisome.
Why do you think this is all happening?
Lydia Lunch: I think that so much has gotten done in the decades covertly and it’s so widespread. The conspiracies are all true. The corporate global slave traders are fucking the planet and charging you for the inconvenience and to me one of the reasons I live in Spain is because—and no place is perfect—but the quality of life is so much different. People are not in fear of either violence or living on the streets or losing their fucking mind. They’re only 30 years out from fascism and it’s really a big difference. It’s a big difference in the day-to-day quality of your life when you don’t feel the rent or the government or censorship or any of that shit from oppression breathing down your neck. I’ve been living here for almost five years and I have to live in Europe to perform—I can’t support myself in the States. I just can’t. I can do so many other things here. Spain to me at this moment, it’s not perfect but it feels the sanest because people are not fucking miserable. They’re not neurotic, they’re not psychotic, and that’s a recent thing.
So what’s it like visiting America? Stepping into the blast furnace?
Lydia Lunch: I’ll have to tell you in October. I’m just gonna be there for a hit-and-run, but the thing is America has so many great people—so much great music, so many great artists, so many great fucking cities and what are we gonna do? You think you see change in your life? We thought there was change under Clinton, but he was just a bit more sneaky than everyone else. He was still a corporate whore-lord and basically got America into a lot of the problems that it’s in now. They’re Clinton policies. To me, it’s strange because Ted Kennedy dies and I’m like, ‘Ted Kennedy was at least fighting.’ I mean I love the controversy of his whole personal life anyway, but he was the last man really fighting for the right things.
What are the right things?
Lydia Lunch: Education first and foremost. America is fucking stupid. Education is terrible and they’re instituting all these charter schools which is just another way to make people pay to be elite and fuck all the others. Education is the most important thing. The criminalization of a lot of crap—America still leads by now a half a million more prisoners than when I stopped speaking about prison. Decriminalize a lot of shit. The three strikes, you’re out bullshit, man. You’re setting up a prison planet by not educating people, by having minimum wage so low and then by forcing people for petty crimes into a prison environment where once you’re flagged as that, what’s the fucking choice? Start there. Pretend you fucking care. Obama pretends he cares—work on that shit. That’s it right there—raise the minimum wage, improve schools and decriminalize a lot of this bullshit.
Those three sentences are going to terrify half the people who read this.
Lydia Lunch: It’s so basic.
You said something once like, ‘I don’t do fiction—I don’t know why people fictionalize when there’s plenty in reality.’
Lydia Lunch: Well, yeah—how much more outrageous does it get than the reality we’re living in right now? This is Philip K. Dick territory. This is George Orwell. We’re there. The bottom line of all of this is to find whatever it is that can give you the energy, the strength and the stamina to not fall victim to the chronic depression that this leads to if you get buried under the bullshit. That’s the most difficult and the most interesting thing that anybody has to do. No wonder so many Americans are addicted to prescription drugs. First of all they want to call you sick and claim that any of your problems need immediate pill recourse. They want to make sure you’re sick—either mentally or physically. They’ve done everything to ensure that by driving you crazy and making you unhealthy so that they can incarcerate you in hospitals that you can’t afford and bankrupt you. So what are you gonna do? It is truly a fight to find what it is that can give you the energy, the stamina and not only that because that’s just survival. The ability to fucking laugh in the face of it and on top of that have some fucking fun—that’s where I want to win. That’s the game I want to play and I want to win. I’m so compartmentalized anyway, it’s just a matter of not letting the more negative aspects dominate. The more negative aspects of personality have so many more vehicles in which to musically express themselves. It’s like, ‘Shut up and go away—go back into the closet. Let’s bring out the fucking clowns because what are you gonna do?’
Joan Miró said if he didn’t paint he got ‘black thoughts.’ Are you the same way?
Lydia Lunch: I really enjoy having an empty head. That’s the difference between me and a lot of people is they always have to fill up the silence. I love being alone and silent staring into nowhere, emptying out the hard drive. That gives me great balance because when I have to work that gives me a lot of energy that I can muster because I got a lot of shit that I have to do. So I think a place like Barcelona—because the architecture, the atmosphere, walking around—you don’t have to talk to anybody. You can just look at the buildings and leave me alone. It’s not like you have to fill your brain with ceaseless sound waves and cathode rays or the fucking computer. Go outside. Go outside.
Have you been to the Sagrada Familia?
Lydia Lunch: Yeah. I live one block from the Sagrada Familia. I’ve been to the very top of some of the towers. They’re still building it—they’re never finished. I don’t go out of my house every day if I can avoid it, but when I go out of my house I see it.
You’ve mentioned ‘the devastating effect architecture has on me when its murdered ghosts leak into my bloodstream.’ What is the relationship between architecture and the human soul?
Lydia Lunch: I remember when I first decided to move here. I had been coming to Spain since the late ’80s. I was here five summers ago and I was standing on the balcony just looking into this empty window across the street and stories started to write themselves in my head. I couldn’t see anything inside—I could just see the black window—but it was like how many souls and how much emotion has gone through that portal? And how much remains behind? And how much does the stone, the brick, the terracotta, absorb? It’s just part of my sensitivity. I just published a bilingual book called Amnesia and it’s about abandoned space. It’s about amnesia in love and in war. Spain has great amnesia about their own civil war. It’s called ‘the condition’ here because they still haven’t dug up all the graves from the civil war. And when they got rid of Franco they said they had an amnesia now. It’s part of the reason why the people are happy too, but I’m here to remind them—I haven’t forgotten the dead. Even if they aren’t related to me, I haven’t forgotten those who died. I can’t forget and that’s part of why architecture haunts me because it’s part of a hundred different stories in every window and if you wanted to you could listen to them and they would write themselves. That’s just how it affects me. America doesn’t really have that because it’s not old enough. Some towns do. Look at Los Angeles—Hollywood Boulevard at night and Santa Monica Boulevard at night. The strips between La Brea and Vine after dark are some of the most haunted boulevards in the world to me.
Have you ever walked there at midnight?
Lydia Lunch: Of course. And it just screams of wounded ghosts.
What’s the other side of that? When you’re driving through the American West and you find a place where nobody’s ever been before?
Lydia Lunch: That’s why people have more psychedelic and spiritual experiences in those places because they’re tapping into a different type of energy force field. I just saw something last night about the electromagnetic force field of the earth, that it’s changed about 18,000 times. A lava specialist decoded this because all the top lava, the elements of it are all pointing north, but we’ve dug under to more ancient lava and all the elements in it are pointing in another direction. The lava when it’s hardening is going in the same direction of the electromagnetic field in the same way that whales do. When there was a solar flare-up from the sun, it caused blackouts in the Northeast like a couple years ago. So 2012—they said that 2012 is the next time for solar flare-ups and storms, so maybe the Mayans did know more than we know. But when whales suddenly beach themselves for no obvious reason it could be because of a solar flare-up—the electromagnetic pulse of the earth is off for a short while. I think there’s a lot more out there that we can’t see than what we do see.
What do you think is something that people are just completely willfully ignorant about?
Lydia Lunch: I think all of the electromagnetic poisoning that we have going on. From the cell phone, from the computer, from trains, from everything that we get bombarded with. I think it’s what causes cancer.
What do you think is the next big revelation that people are going to be officially surprised about in the next five years even though it’s basically common knowledge?
Lydia Lunch: I don’t know if anything happens that quickly because if you look at the history of the world, I mean, things happen. If you drop a bomb, it happens immediately. But I just think that it’s gonna dawn a bit slower than that. But time is going much faster now than it used to, so I don’t know what’s finally going to make a universal awareness. There was just a great article in Newsweek saying that people can convince themselves with lies even when presented with the actual truth.
Confirmation bias?
Lydia Lunch: They are so ingrained and frightened that even when confronted with the truth they are going to choose the lie if it’s embedded. That’s most of the population, so who knows? Who knows?
Is there a way to combat that?
Lydia Lunch: You just try to not associate with the fucking liars. They know who we are, we know who they are.
I have another Miró quote for you. He said that what he wanted to do was assassinate painting. Is that what you do with your work?
Lydia Lunch: Absolutely—I mean, in a sense. It’s not even assassinating. It’s just carving out a completely separate channel of my space. It’s not even a niche, it’s my own pulse. So that’s what I continue to carry. It’s my own electricity. I have a lot of electricity and it’s not dimming by any means.
Do you walk under streetlights and they flicker?
Lydia Lunch: Oh yeah, of course.
You said before that the word poetry disgusts you. What else disgusts you?
Lydia Lunch: Oh, Christ—you got a lifetime, kid?
Hopefully I do.
Lydia Lunch: At this moment with the window open and I wish I could say a cool but it’s quite a hot and clammy breeze blowing over my sweaty skin, sitting in a black slip with rhinestone stilettos, nothing could possibly disgust me at this moment. Because fuck it, I’m not going there. I know what disgusts me—it’s so huge. It’s a lexicon that I can’t begin.
A vocabulary of disgust?
Lydia Lunch: Exactly. Let’s focus on the positive.
What can you identify as components of the true vocabulary of reality?
Lydia Lunch: It’s very interesting to me because I don’t think it’s so much of a shared vocabulary as it is again some kind of magnetic channel. When people are hooked into that same level, on some intellectual or emotional level it doesn’t really matter what words you are using because they get you and that’s what’s important to me. And this is a strange example, but some of the people who have ‘gotten’ me the most have a lot less in common with me and my range of experience than you would think.
Who’s an example of that?
Lydia Lunch: It’s not anyone I can point out and name directly because you wouldn’t know who they fucking were, but it’s like sometimes it’s just people who are on your wave and locked into your groove and they just fucking get it. It’s just that way. It’s astonishing on another level that some people who should be in tune with what you do just have no fucking clue.
More Miró—he said that the more of an individual an artist can be, the more universal their appeal.
Lydia Lunch: Well, there you go I guess. I’m very happy appealing to the individual—one at a time is fine for me. I like to be able to look everyone in the eyes while I’m performing; that’s how I like to communicate.
What happens when you look somebody in the eyes?
Lydia Lunch: They freeze because it’s like a jolt of electricity. I want to go in there and I want to try to kill off some of their cancer or their insecurity or whatever. I want to go in there and make direct contact.
Have you ever been hit by lightning?
Lydia Lunch: No, but I have been thrown against the wall by invisible forces. I had a migraine and I went to get up and I thought I was gonna vomit and suddenly I was thrown from one wall to the other and thrown onto the ground in my house in Spain. And I got up off the floor and my headache was gone but both shoulders were bruised.
Was that a fair trade-off?
Lydia Lunch: Eh, I guess so.
So it was a therapeutic poltergeist?
Lydia Lunch: Oh yeah, of course. I’m friends with all the poltergeists now. I used to be haunted and now I’m the haunter.
How do you make that transition?
Lydia Lunch: You really have to protect yourself because you can really allow—back to force fields—you can be too open and too magnetizing to negative forces, negative thoughts, negative energies. You just have to learn, you have to find your own way. You have to find the way to delouse yourself and surround yourself with protective force fields.
Do you think music can do that—psychically delouse you?
Lydia Lunch: Of course. De-Loused in the Comatorium—one of my favorite groups, Mars Volta. I love Mars Volta.
A friend of mine is about to have a kid. What is your advice for a new mother in 2009 in America?
Lydia Lunch: Move as far away as possible. Raise them with wolves!
When’s the last time you bent down and picked a wildflower?
Lydia Lunch: Oh, I do it all the time. I steal flowers—bits of plants—all the time.
What were you doing when you lived in L.A.?
Lydia Lunch: I lived there twice: once in the early ’80s and I lived in Glendale for four years which I really liked at the time. I came back out there to spend a little time with Hubert Selby before he died and Jerry Stahl. Jerry Stahl is just fantastic. It was fine while I was there but it was enough. Pico Boulevard is one of my favorite streets in the world. Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles—honey, I’ll be there. Just channeling my inner Biggie Smalls. And believe me, he’s in there.
Who else is alive and active in your psyche?
Lydia Lunch: That’s a damn good question. There’s always a little Buñuel back there probably because I’m in Spain and there’s always a little bit of Genet because I’m always entertaining criminal thoughts and my whole career has a been a criminal activity.
What’s your favorite criminal act?
Lydia Lunch: My existence.

LYDIA LUNCH READS FROM WILL WORK FOR DRUGS ON TUE., OCT. 6, AT STORIES, 1716 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8 PM / FREE / ALL AGES. STORIESLA.COM. TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS WITH MIKA MIKO, THE URINALS AND THE LAMPS ON WED., OCT. 7, AT THE EL REY THEATRE, 5515 WILSHIRE BLVD., LOS ANGELES. 7 PM / $20 / ALL AGES. THEELREY.COM. VISIT LYDIA LUNCH AT LYDIA-LUNCH.ORG OR AT MYSPACE.COM/LYDIALUNCH.

Download: Mary Anne Hobbs vs. Gaslamp Killer – Low End Theory Podcast No. 7

(from the Low End Theory Podcast Series from Low End Theory)

Mary Anne Hobbs does for electronica on her BBC Radio 1 show what John Peel did for everything, and for years now she has been delivering L.A.’s best beatmakers to the world. When she first came to L.A. as a girl, she wore a glitter bikini and drove a motorcycle to Hollywood bars to drink with Megadeth, but tonight she’ll be doing a special DJ set at Low End Theory. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

You’ve been such a good friend to Los Angeles music on the BBC.
Mary Anne Hobbs: Well, your city—you’ve got it going on in such a big and serious fashion right now. Los Angeles is without question the most exciting city on the planet. I could feel this incredible sense of momentum building—even an ocean away. I kept hearing about this club, Low End Theory—it was echoing in every corner of my brain. I thought, ‘This club is calling my name right now, so I’m going to have to check it out.’ And that’s where I hatched the plan—in a filthy dirty northern rain in Manchester in an underground car park with Gaslamp Killer, just before Christmas last year. It was without question the most inspiriational trip that I’ve made in years. Those types of clubs are absolutely crucial in terms of providing a home and providing a space that people can gravitate towards and share their ideas and share their dreams. It’s been very important in terms of the whole dub step scene expanding. I think from the second I met Daddy Kev, you can tell he’s a godfather beyond a shadow of a doubt.
You said you can’t categorize an artist like Flying Lotus musically—do you think you can categorize any of the L.A. beatmakers philosophically?
Mary Anne Hobbs: I think for me Lotus is absolutely key. He’s right at the forefront and he is literally building a new sonic causeway brick by brick every day out into the ether. I think in a way you need those types of figureheads—people like Lotus, people who are so brave creatively and fearless in the way they forge these new pathways. Because they lead by example. I always look at Lotus and I think he is like the Hendrix of his generation. What Hendrix did with a guitar, Lotus is doing with electronic instruments. I’ll tell you a good story. The first time I ever saw him he played at a little club on the east end of London called Cargo. I was hanging out with people at Warp and they said, ‘You’re gonna love Steve—you’ve got to meet him after the show.’ He blew my mind so completely when I saw him perform that I literally could not form a sentence at the end of the night and I had to leave the building.
Do you remember what you said to him was when you finally recovered?
Mary Anne Hobbs: I didn’t meet him face to face until Sonar Festival 2008. The first exchange was this incredible bear hug between us because we had so much dialogue online. We developed this incredible friendship. In the aftermath of the Cargo show he asked for an email address and we began to chat backwards and forwards—we did a whole heap more work on the BBC show and then I asked if he would come and play Sonar in 2008. It’s a strange scenario with these virtual relationships that you have because you build incredible bonds that blossom creatively and yet often you might not meet people for years. It’s freaky because you think, ‘I know this person intimately and yet I’ve never shook his hand.’ That’s another reason why clubs like Low End Theory are so crucially important. In my case—and I’m sure it applies to many people—you spend almost your entire life in a virtual world. You live online. Almost every interaction is an electronic exchange. In spite of the fact that I have thousands of friends all over the world, in human terms you are extremely isolated because you do so much in a virtual environment. Even a show is virtual—it pops up in the ether and then it’s gone. So these places that you gravitate towards as kindred spirits—as human souls—to exchange energy and ideas and feel the frequencies of the music in a real tangible physical environment—it’s so important that these places exist! Even more so in 2009! So for me places like Low End Theory and Forward and Sonar in London where everybody gravitates toward each other to exchange those human emotions and to dance and sweat and sing and shout and explore their dreams—they are such important places.
Your new Wild Angels comp is named after an Alice Coltrane reference—do you think there’s a connection between her music or the music of someone like Pharoah Sanders and what’s happening in L.A. now?
Mary Anne Hobbs: That came from an expression that I used in the West Coast Rocks radio documentary that I did as a consequence of that trip I took in January to L.A. and San Francisco. I went to play Alice Coltrane and then I played a Lotus track afterwards which was called ‘Auntie’s Harp.’ It’s a tribute to his aunt. He’s got the beautiful arpeggios in it. I guess Lotus is a product of many different influences but Alice Coltrane—his great aunt—is a significant influence, I feel. A lot of the younger artists he nurtured are now featured on Wild Angels—people like Teebs and Take and Mono/Poly are all his boys and he nurtures them like his great aunt nurtured him, and you hear them traveling the generations. She is a seminal musician. It’s interesting how everyone talks about John Coltrane but actually Alice is absolutely mindblowing. I wanted to work backwards and show that particular reference point. Obviously so much of the new West Coast sound is represented on the record, but you can hear it echoing down the generations. I wish I would have had an opportunity to meet her—it would have been such an honor.
You’ve said that you want to make sure your own radio show exists without prejudice and boundaries.
Mary Anne Hobbs: The way that I see the show in my mind’s eye is like a bridge—it’s like a crazy old rope bridge that hangs across a crevasse in the jungle, and on one side are the world’s most fearless producers and on the other side are the hungriest audience that you could possibly imagine. And what the show does is bring those two groups of people together. There are no prejudices and everybody is welcome. I think at this point in the history of the whole of humanity it seems crazy to be setting up boundaries. That’s how I want it to be—as simple as that. There is now so much online that your choice is infinite. You can listen for the rest of time. I think there is more of a demand for somebody who will do what I do, which is sit there for ten hours a day everyday listening to every conceivable music that comes in and also seeking all the time—at some time you have to draw a line in that sand and say, ‘OK, this is a show—this is what we are going to do this week.’ But I think hopefully people trust me now. They know that I’ll do the work and I’ll do it consistently and they come back to me.
Do you think the artists you play feel the same way about music?
Mary Anne Hobbs: I guess my greatest hero in radio terms was always John Peel. His show would endlessly surprise and delight. Every week was like a Pandora’s box of chaos. You never knew what was around the next corner with Peel. And I think to a degree what was interesting when you listened to Peel was that you would probably only really love about one in three or four records, but you knew that everybody else who was listening would have the same ratio but the records would be different. So I might like record number one and number four and somebody else will love three and seven and everybody would have a different one they thought was incredible. But also with Peel as well you would think, ‘This isn’t necessarily something I would seek out and buy for my record collection but just to hear it—what the hell is this?’ From extreme European death metal to the craziest scratchy old 78 from one of the original blues men to something that he picked up from a tribe in Africa—it could be anything with Peel. Whether or not it was to your own personal taste was almost irrelevant. It was one of those shows that you wanted to hear because you wanted to experience the sounds. It wasn’t a question of him informing a perfect record collection but it was more like an adventure in sound. He was a broad person who knew no boundaries whatsoever and he responded in the same way. He was one of my teachers. I think everybody responds to music emotionally, ultimately. It doesn’t really matter what genre or tempo a piece of music is—it’s twisted into the DNA somehow and it either touches you at the very core or it may be an interesting artifact but it doesn’t move you in the same way. It was Peel’s spirit of adventure in sound that always informed me as a child. I loved it because you would just ride the rapids with him every single week and you had no idea what he was going to do next. He would go to Fabric which is one of the biggest dance clubs and play death metal records just for a laugh. I don’t think there’ll be another John Peel in this life or the next, but that sense of adventure and ambition and that quest that he was on just inspired me so much. And that’s how I feel about music.
You once said one of the most dangerous mistakes you could make would be to underestimate the intelligence of your audience. Do you think that’s why big labels and old media are dying?
Mary Anne Hobbs: That’s a really interesting question. It’s up to every generation to decide their own fate and this is why I do what I do. There’s no point sitting around moaning with your thumb up your ass. If you don’t enjoy what’s out there, go there yourself and try to make a difference. That’s what I’m trying to do with the show. What’s interesting in terms of what’s happening in the UK is that TV used to be the most powerful of all mediums, and now an entire generation of people almost completely disregard it. They are reverting back to listening to pirate radio and they are reverting back to watching YouTube and filming their own films and getting involved—the dubstep scene is a fantastic example of that. An entire scene has become a global thing without any patronage from the broader music industry because nobody wants to go with that shit anymore and everybody wants to be the master of their own destiny. It’s been proven now that it can happen. It’s a really exciting time. This is another thing with Peel—he was part of a different generation but he was an amazing example of how to tread a different pathway. He showed you that there is another way—you don’t have to follow the rest of the sheep, you can build your own pathway. I think what you’re saying is absolutely true. The dumbing down of the media giants’ output will be the death of them because they massively underestimate the audience. You can see now how the drift is happening with this generation. They are just completely disinterested with old school media establishments and they want to do it for themselves.
Is part of this because old big labels stopped caring about the long term and only wanted to get quick next-big-things?
Mary Anne Hobbs: I think that’s really true. In terms of most artists’ lifespans—when they signed a record deal with an old school traditional company—it was only ever meant to be a few years, wasn’t it? Like three albums tops, and beyond that people were always searching for something new. I think now longevity is the key. People want an entire career—they want to be in this game for a lifetime. Record companies in the U.K. are just like loan sharks, really—they hand you a few thousand bucks in advance but 24 hours later they are banging your door down saying, ‘Where is my hit single? I need this money back tenfold!’ They interfere with the tracklisting of the album—they say, ‘There aren’t enough singles on there and we’re gonna call in a whole heap of remixes that you don’t like to make sure we can spin records in the direction of the big DJs!’ You don’t have any control over the artwork or marketing. But if you define yourself online—say who you are and what you stand for—that’s really valuable. The days of Mercedes Benzes and Rolex watches and all that—I think they realize those days are long gone, or certainly you are not going to get them over night. But something like dubstep is like a new blueprint to how a scene can operate globally without any patronage at all from the music industry and continue to grow at an incredible pace. This is what I’m experiencing more and more. People aren’t thinking, ‘This is a teenage crush that I have on music—I’m going to do it for a few years and then I’m gonna become a doctor.’ People want to do this for life—it’s their calling and they want to make it work. But it’s like Darwinism—you have to adapt to survive.
Do you know the painter Joan Miro at all? He said the more true you are to yourself as an individual, the more universal your appeal will be.
Mary Anne Hobbs: I completely agree. For me, the artists that will really make it in the long term are people who come with a completely unique sound. We’re all a product of our influences—that’s what it is to be human. We absorb and process the things that we love. But the idea is to put a unique spin on that. John Peel taught me a number of very valuable lessons but my show does not sound anything like his. The principles that underlay are from him but the show is unique and individual. It’s a really valid point in terms of what I look for on my show—totally elemental pieces of music with their own identity that you would gravitate towards over and above everything else. What’s interesting is that people build up a body of work you can identify without knowing the artist. You can say ‘that’s Lotus’ and the music actually has a direct correlation with that person’s character.
What do you think is most special about what is happening in L.A. right now?
Mary Anne Hobbs: If I had to sum it up in word, it would be freedom. When I attend a club like Low End Theory or I watch an artist like Lotus play, I just see people tearing up the rules and it’s so liberating for me to watch this. I see Lotus play live and I watch that boy screw every conceivable sound into a live set—it doesn’t matter what genre it is! If he thinks that sound belongs in his set on a particular night and the stars are in the right formation, he’s going to find a way to screw it in there. In the U.K., it’s very interesting because we come from a culture where beat matching is very important, other than old school Jamaican dancehall DJs who are pretty much the only people who get away with stopping and starting records. In the U.K. you need a seamless flow of music and you’re not considered a DJ until you can do that. It’s so liberating for me to watch the way that Lotus and Gaslamp and all these people actually construct what they do on the stage. To watch artists play and deliver a set with that degree of freedom in their soul is absolutely incredible—it’s just a complete revelation for me and culturally its totally separate from what you can do in the U.K. It is so liberating because it means that your boundaries are limitless. I’m trying to absorb something of that freedom and distill it and reapply it to what I do because I love that energy and spirit—I haven’t quite figured out how to do it yet.
What were your own years in L.A like?
Mary Anne Hobbs: Oh, it was absolutely incredible. I was 21 years old and I lived in West Hollywood about a block and a half away from Barney’s Beanery and I had a lovely Yamaha motorcycle and I used to ride around in my bikini—I used to hang out at the Rainbow all the time.
Did you have an American flag bikini?
Mary Anne Hobbs: No—it was kind of a navy blue glittery one. These were the days when I would go see Guns ‘n’ Roses play at the Troubadour before they were signed. I was a fully paid up rock chick. Jane’s Addiction used to—before they were signed—play shows in downtown in these really sweaty warehouse raves and I rememer Perry Farrell coming out on stage in all his crazy dreadlocks. He used to wear this red rubber corset back in the day—it was fantastic. I used to hang out on Venice Beach when it was ghetto. I was writing for a music paper in the U.K. called Sounds and so I was interviewing everyone from Guns ‘n’ Roses to David Lee Roth.
Was he as David Lee Roth as you hoped he would be?
Mary Anne Hobbs: Absolutely. Motley Crue—I went on the ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ tour with Motley Crue and Tommy Lee had a very serious conversation with me about the possibility of building a roller coaster around the edge of every venue so he could do his drum solo on a roller coaster. He would tool around in a little roller coaster doing his drum solo. At that point Motley Crue—I’ve never seen so many groupies in my entire life. Their manager used to grade them in what he called ‘dog kennels.’ There was probably something like 300 groupies backstage every night and they would grade them into the amazingly pretty girls and there would be a room of sexual freaks and mother-daughter combos who would do whatever. I’d never seen so many women all sitting on six different passes, five of which were the wrong pass—I don’t know how they went about acquiring those passes. I would dread to think! The tour manager said to me, ‘Do you have any idea the number of road crew that we’ve got working on this tour? These girls are just for the crew—they’ve got absolutely no idea that they will never ever meet the band.’ The shed that I lived in was what they called in L.A. a pool house, so it was a room with a shower in it. I remember every time it rained I had to get all the pans out because the water would just pour through the roof. I used to hang out at a bar called the Firefly which doesn’t exist anymore—it was on Hollywood and Vine. They used to light the bar every night with lighter fuel. Lots of the metal bands like Megadeth and stuff used to hang out in there. You would hop up on the bar and you would talk to some incredible character—it was like being in Pulp Fiction, so yeah—I loved it. Have you seen that movie The Decline of Western Civilization?
Part 2? Is that what it was like?
Mary Anne Hobbs: Slightly earlier than that was made, but I liked a lot of the thrash—it was thrash metal and hair metal in L.A. back then, so David Lee Roth, Jane’s Addiction, Motley Crue, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Megadeth. Metallica could play to a thousand people and them and Megadeth were considered completely avant garde at that point. And Jane’s Addiction too. I just had heard so much about L.A. and on a whim I sold everything that I owned and I bought a one way ticket and I had 600 dollars in my back pocket and I thought, ‘Let me just see how far I can get.’
What’s the most profound thing David Lee Roth ever said to you?
Mary Anne Hobbs: Let me see if I can think of some advice. I remember the best story about David Lee Roth. When he first released Eat ‘Em and Smile, another member of his entourage that I knew very well said to me that every morning the first thing that Dave would ever do before he left his bedroom was see his accountant. This guy would show up at Dave’s house—full suit on, everything—and he would visit Dave in his bedroom. For years and years everybody thought this suited briefcased-up guy was the accountant. Many years later it came out that David Lee Roth was all but bald and this guy was actually his hairdresser—he’d come in every morning and sew in some fresh extensions so that Dave could come out with his hand grenade blond bomb of hair and nobody would ever know any different. So that is probably the best life advice there—whatever you’re lacking, first thing in the morning have a guy with a suitcase come and bring him in as your accountant.

MARY ANNE HOBBS WITH FLYING LOTUS AND NOSAJ THING PLUS ALL LOW END THEORY RESIDENTS ON WED., SEPT. 23, AT LOW END THEORY AT THE AIRLINER, 2419 N. BROADWAY, LOS ANGELES. 10PM / $10 / 18+. LOWENDTHEORYCLUB.COM. MARY ANNE HOBBS’ WILD ANGELS IS OUT NOW ON PLANET MU. VISIT MARY ANNE HOBBS AT BBC.CO.UK/RADIO1/MARYANNEHOBBS OR AT MYSPACE.COM/MARYANNEHOBBS.