$1,202,500 to be precise.

The description from Sotheby’s must have turned someone on:

Autograph manuscript of John Lennon’s lyrics for the “A Day in the Life,” the final track on the Beatles’ 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 2 pages (10 1/2 x 7 5/8 in.; 267 x 194 mm) on a single sheet of unruled writing paper, [London, 17 January 1967], comprising 2 complete sets of the lyrics written in black felt marker and blue ballpoint pen, several autograph emendations and corrections (a few of these in red ballpoint pen): (1) the recto bears Lennon’s original first draft, written in a hurried but fully legible cursive script; (2) the verso bears an autograph fair copy written almost entirely in capital letters and evidently prepared for use in the recording studio, incorporating the emendations from the first draft and adding three further ones, numbering the verses 1-4, and indicating the insertion of the phrase “I love to turn you on” after the third verse. A short mended tear at center top margin and tiny hole in center lower margin, neither affecting text, some light marginal stains. Matted, framed, and double-glazed.

…Stained, matted, framed, and double-glazed, but they didn’t want the life-like blow up doll for just $9.95 more.

Sotheby’s Catalogue Note means to justify the value of this relic, reminding us that John Lennon’s contribution to American history sits right up there with Abraham Lincoln’s.

—Daiana Feuer

Since I did pretty good on exclusives last year—Dengue Fever/Chicha Libre split, Sonic Youth/Beck split and This LP Crashes Hard Drives, among others—I thought I would post my shortlist of 2010 Record Store Day exclusives that I’ll be looking for early Saturday morning. The full list is here if you wanna look, and if I actually get some of these, maybe I will splat ‘em down at Big Freak and try them out.

—Chris Ziegler

Budos Band/Sharon Jones & The Dapkings “Day Tripper”/”Money” 7” (Daptone, pressing details unknown)
I already have a few soul 45s that do Beatles songs—actually, “Daytripper” but by the Vontastics—and that’s how I know this will at least be good, and since it’s Sharon, the Dap-Kings and the Budos Band, I know it will actually be great.

Daedelus Righteous Fists of Harmony LP (Brainfeeder, pressing details unknown)
If I do nothing else, I will get everything Brainfeeder puts out on vinyl.

dios “we are dios” 7” (Buddyhead, pressing details unknown)
Been waiting so long! The new dios album is one of the best records I’ve heard for a long long time. Until the whole thing hits vinyl, this will heroically hold the line.

Fela Kuti 10” EP (Knitting Factory/MRI)
Four early Fela tracks—“My Lady Frustration” / “Wayo” / “Lover” / “Eko”—recorded in L.A. in 1969. Good from every possible angle and for every possible situation.

Happy Birthday “Shampoo” b/w “Alien” (Sub Pop, 750 made)
Wild Kyle from King Tuff’s new band. Saw ‘em break amps in Texas and wanna hear more! Sparks / Milk ‘n’ Cookies / Only Ones goof-glam with ambitious falsetto.

John Fahey The Yellow Princess LP (Vanguard)
I need some nice new Fahey, even though he translates pretty well on furry bottom-of-the-new-arrivals-box rescue LPs. But this one will never be left to suffer like that. Guitar how a guitar wants to be played, if you haven’t heard this.

John Lennon 3 x 7” box set (individually numbered, w/3 7” singles, 3 postcards, 24 X 36 poster, and custom 45 adaptor hub; Capitol, 5000 made)
“Mother” b/w Yoko Ono “Why” and “Imagine” b/w “It’s So Hard” and “Watching The Wheels” b/w Yoko Ono “Yes, I’m Your Angel.” Only if this is kinda gently priced, but it’s a nice thing to have hanging around the house.

Mississippi John Hurt Today LP (Vanguard)
Another in the fancy Vanguard reissues series. It’ll be hazed by all the thick scratchy Folkways records filed alongside it.

The Rationals Rationalism 7” (Ace Records, 1000 mades)
Cool early Detroit soul ‘n’ roll. You can play Bob Seger System next to Stax stuff and you can probably work that with the Rationals, too.

Rodriguez “Inner City Blues” (recorded live in the streets of Paris) b/w “I’m Gonna Live Til I Die” (live cover of Frank Sinatra song) 7” (Light In the Attic)
Got into Rodriguez long after he’d had his first moment but before Light In The Attic did the good work of reissuing him, which is why my pre-authorized Rodriguez LP is on vinyl that flops around like a tortilla. Tuff folk from a real sweetheart.

V/A Fragments From A Work In Progress (4AD)
Live Ariel Pink and Haunted Graffiti (“Menopause Man”) plus Gang Gang Dance, Blonde Redhead and unreleased Big Pink and tUnE-yArDs who I should check out, I think.

V/A Radio Galaxia (B-Music / Finders Keepers)
My psychic suspicion to be this year’s This LP Crashes Hard Drives, which was last year’s one-stop for revelatory rippers. (Worth it for Monks and Pisces alone.) Also has the words GASLAMP KILLER on the cover, which in English means BUY THIS RECORD.

Download: The Cave Singers “At The Cut”

(from Welcome Joy out now on Matador)

Pete Quirk and the Cave Singers are touring with Lightning Dust—whose Amber and Ashley Webber contributed to the Cave Singers’ new Welcome Joy—and recovering half-written songs from dim memories og singing into phones in 7-11 parking lots. Quirk speaks now about riding bikes into rivers and Kid Rock’s lackluster Myspace discipline. This interview by Rachel Rufrano.

I’ve heard that your new LP, Welcome Joy, is named from the Keats poem ‘A Song of Opposites,’ about loving both the good and the bad, especially when they juxtapose each other. Is that sentiment something you try to achieve with The Cave Singers?
Pete Quirk (vocals/guitar): I guess that’d be appropriate. I mean, I think that it’s kind of inevitable that you address both and I think we try to do that.
Welcome Joy seems to be a lot more optimistic, whereas in Invitation Songs—even where the songs were upbeat—there was something darker laying just beneath the surface.
Pete Quirk: I think we were in a brighter and more positive place while writing Welcome Joy. A lot of the songs were written in the summertime as opposed to the winter—we did write outside a lot more instead [of being] stuck inside the house because of the rain.
The song ‘At the Cut’ sounds so influenced by Lindsey Buckingham, even the way you project your voice. Who do you hope people will hear in your music?
Pete Quirk: Well, I don’t know. I’ve always listened to Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac and stuff like that. It’s funny because I never thought my voice sounded much like his, but I get that a lot, which is definitely a compliment because he’s got a great voice. But he’s an influence for sure. That’s just what I sound like.
Even the little ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ on that song though…
Pete Quirk: The little yelps and everything—it’s just something to do instead of singing words or sitting through breaks, using your voice more for rhythm than carrying a message. I don’t really try to sound like anybody because I think if you try you just end up sounding bad, you know? I think in other bands it was different because I was trying to sound like someone else, whereas now I’m just trying to sing as honestly as possible.
On ‘VV’ there’s a really simple and sweet chord progression but your voice is so gritty that you’re able to hint at something more. Do you think you utilize your voice as an instrument?
Pete Quirk: I try to! For me, the writing process is a lot of me and Derek just kind of riffing. He’ll start a guitar melody and basically I’ll just try to figure out another line where my voice can be an additional melody instead of singing exactly what he’s playing. I want to somehow carry a message, but I also want it to sound good so it can be its own line without words—it can sound like an instrument. It’d be nice to just read some amazing poem, but it’s got to sound good, too. It’s hard to fit a lot of words in there, but that’s the fun of it. Trying to figure out something that’s half comprehensible.
Your songs seem to build as they go along and it’s almost as if they’re becoming complete as you listen to them. I was wondering what the songwriting process is like for you guys.
Pete Quirk: On Welcome Joy there’s a lot of different approaches. Usually Derek and I or Marty and I will go downstairs to one of our bedrooms and Derek will play something. I’ll just basically scat over it, for lack of a better word, and just kind of make up a melody which is usually half-English, half-gibberish and then I’ll go back later and write out lyrics that kind of go along with the melody I found.
Is it important for you to have the melody before you write the lyrics?
Pete Quirk: Yeah, usually. Maybe I’ll have a couple lines written, but I find that when the whole thing is written out it just sounds like it’s being read. I like to find different words or settings when we’re just kind of jamming.
I’ve read that growing up in New Jersey has really influenced your songwriting, but how do you think Seattle has influenced you?
Pete Quirk: Seattle has changed me a lot in terms of songwriting. I’ve lived here for way longer than I thought I was going to. I met Derek here. Seattle is a cool place because it feels free and mellow and you can kind of just do what … do what you feel like. That doesn’t sound right …
You can do whatever you want in Seattle!
Pete Quirk: [Laughs] I don’t know, yeah. Some people do! I just like it here. I feel comfortable here. I lived in Philadelphia before I lived here and that was rad, but I was in my twenties—total mayhem, you know? Jumping into garbage cans and riding our bikes into the river. Which I guess we still do here but, I don’t know, I just like it here.
When I saw you guys at the Echo in December 2007, Derek was playing bass pedals. Why did you guys choose the pedals over a bass?
Pete Quirk: It fits better in the van! No, Derek just found them on Craigslist and one day he just had them on the table and I came home from work and was like, ‘Whoa, we should try and use those.’ I like them because I like droning sounds and it adds a sort of big bass pulse. For me, it’s nicer than just a bass.
It’s been two years since Invitation Songs. Did you spend a lot of that time writing the new songs or did they just kind of come to you over time?
Pete Quirk: We just always write because that’s what we like to do. It’s not like a chore. We really enjoy writing songs because we’ll just hang out and play music, but then we’ll go outside and drink beer, go to the bar and have a shot and bullshit, and then go back and keep playing. But over the two years we wrote about 80 different things. Not all those were songs, but they were ideas like, ‘Oh, remember when we recorded that thing in the 7-Eleven parking lot on your phone?’ and stuff like that. But we’ll go record and narrow those things down to an album’s worth.
You guys have been ‘up-and-coming’ for a while now. I think I even saw ‘Elephant Clouds’ on a Starbucks mix.
Pete Quirk: Really? That’s cool. As long as we’re not on some U.S. Army compilation.
You mean you guys don’t want to be in those recruiting commercials with Kid Rock and Three Doors Down?
Pete Quirk: [Laughs] We’re trying to get some kind of thing going with Kid Rock, but I don’t think he answers his own MySpace messages, which is a problem. So we’ve been having a hard time.
Are you happy being the ‘buzz band,’ or do you look forward to playing bigger venues in L.A. at some point?
Pete Quirk: Well, I’m happy and I try not to think about it too much. In terms of ‘buzz bands,’ I don’t feel like we’re very buzzed—not that I can tell—but it seems like people are slowly [catching on]. Hopefully the people that come to our show want to come because they have a connection with our music and that way we can connect back and forth. That’s the way I am with music—I like to go see a band because I know and like their music and not because they’re some huge band I’ve been hearing about. It’s fun to play in front of a lot of people and I’m not against that, for sure.
What are you listening to right now?
Pete Quirk: I’m listening to that Fever Ray album, which I think is really good. Her lyrics are really amazing. And it’s really creepy. I’ve been listening to that at nighttime a lot. I’ve been listening to Tinariwen, which I guess came out a couple years ago. And I’ve been listening to John Lennon’s Mind Games, which is one of my favorite records.
Are you where you want to be as an artist? I know all three of you seemed to move on to the Cave Singers for something more acoustic, so are you looking to do anything different now?
Pete Quirk: I just want to keep making albums and find out how they differ from one another. As far as playing music and being an artist, I couldn’t be happier where I’m at. I never thought I would be at this point. Starting in the bedroom with Derek and one guitar I bought at Salvation Army on a whim to now where we’re going on tour and we have two albums out. It’s pretty crazy to me.

THE CAVE SINGERS WITH LIGHTNING DUST AND BIG SEARCH ON THURS., OCT. 1, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $12 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. THE CAVE SINGERS’ WELCOME JOY IS OUT NOW ON MATADOR. VISIT THE CAVE SINGERS AT THECAVESINGERS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/THECAVESINGERS.

Download: Monotonix “Set Me Free”

(from Where Were You When It Happened? out now on Drag City)

Israel’s Monotonix are known and respected and perhaps even secretly coveted here in L.A. because of their world-wrecking live set and super-charged rock ‘n’ roll. Singer Ami Shalev speaks now while presumably fully clothed. This interview by Rena Kosnett.

Hello, Ami—ma shlomech?
Ami Shalev (vocals): Ani beseder. At yodaat eich ledaber ivrit?
No, no—I don’t speak Hebrew really.
Ami Shalev: Ohhh—because I prefer to do it in Hebrew!
The music trend in Israel is much more about the club scene, rather than live music. Do you think this is a positive or a negative thing?
Ami Shalev: I have to say that the rock n’ roll scene in Israel, it is almost not exist because it’s too small. You can’t tour in Israel. It’s not like to live in the real world of rock ‘n’ roll. Most of the music in Israel is a mix between Arab music and Greek music, as you know, and there’s a club scene in Israel. There are more people going to clubs than to shows. There are underground shows of course. Madonna is playing here next week so she’s going to have a lot of crowd. But it’s not something that happen every day. But I have nothing against it. I’m not angry about it because I love this country, and If I wanna tour I am going to Europe or Australia or the U.S., Canada, whatever. And it’s perfect because I come back to Israel, chill out a little bit and then going for another tour.
My mother is from Ramat Gan, and she left Israel for a lot of reasons. One of them is that her good friend was killed while she was in the army. But another reason was because as a young painter, she didn’t feel like she had the creative freedom to develop. Have you felt stifled like that?
Ami Shalev: Yeah, because in Israel… the thing is… It’s not that people don’t let you do whatever you want to do with art. People let you do whatever you want to. But there’s no really big art scene in painting, and in music, and you don’t have the opportunity to talk with other people about it—to see other people doing it. In Israel, if you are not in the mainstream and success, you can’t make a living for it. You don’t have a real market for it, so you’re just doing it for yourself. In the U.S., everything that you do got a huge market. Everything that people can go with their heart—with the freedom of their mind to do whatever they want. At this point, it’s not that people tell you ‘don’t do this,’ and ‘don’t do this.’ But there’s not a lot of people doing it and there’s not a lot of ideas in the air, so that’s the situation here. So I understand your mother.
Now she wants to move back—she’s longing for Israel.
Ami Shalev: That I can understand too. For people that born in Israel and raised in Israel, it’s home. America is not the place that I born in—it’s not my real home. My real home is here, my culture is from here, and the food, the language, the way people act, everything. So maybe that’s what she feels—that after she finishes her mission about painting and doing her art, she kind of miss the little things that make different—the food, the other part of the family, the culture, the language.
How were you exposed to rock ‘n’ roll music when you were growing up?
Ami Shalev: Ehh—for my age because I am 44, there was no Internet at all, there was no such a thing like MTV or music videos—I mean, music videos you could see, ppppfffffff, something like an hour per week. And of course records—as a rock ‘n’ roll record collector, you could search in the music store for something that you want. But actually it was very hard to follow all the things that happened in rock ‘n’ roll music in Israel. You can’t expose to all the underground scenes that happen—even in the ’60s and ’70s you can’t expose to it because you’re in Israel. So a lot of the bands that I growing up with—the classic ones, you know, Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, things like that, I found in the record stores. Now most of the bands from U.K. and America that come to Israel, it’s huge mainstream bands. Because to fly, there’s no chance that if you are a small band that you can cover the cost coming from the US, or even Europe—especially if you need to fly something like 3 or 4 people. That’s a real problem because it’s a kind of isolation. If you can drive with your car around Europe you can put it on your tour plan. But you need to fly to Israel, so it make it very difficult. It’s a shame because people don’t get the opportunity to expose to really new music. Or the chance that they got to expose is only by record or Internet or huge mainstream bands. It’s a shame. But ahh, you know, that’s what we got.
It’s funny because Monotonix have an amazing reputation developing in the States. In Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Portland, Seattle—reporters are writing about Monotonix being their favorite live band and one of the best shows at SXSW, but all the Israelis I spoke with, even the ones in Tel Aviv—
Ami Shalev: They don’t know us! Because we are not playing here. We are not playing shows in Israel.
I read that you saw Fatal Flying Guilloteens a few years ago, and that show made you want to form a new and more extreme band.
Ami Shalev: The first time that I saw them it was, I think 5 years ago. And this was the first time I saw a band that take the musical act as physically as they took it. And it makes a real impression because when you come from a place like Israel that you can’t be expose to things like that—I mean, you see something like that and it really impress you, and you say, ‘Whoa, that’s another way to do a live show!’ So I must say yes.
About your very physical live show—It seems like Israel is a country that is inherently all about the negotiation of borders. Do you think that shoving the microphone up your ass, groping women in the audience, pouring beer down your pants, etc., is your response to an environment of limits?
Ami Shalev: No, I don’t think so. I mean, I’m doing whatever I feel during the shows, and everything is kind of improvised. We don’t plan it before. That’s what everybody in the band feels very nature and comfortable with. But still, I must say, that I feel we are VERY Israeli. I think that we got—how you call it? Chutzpah! It’s the chutzpah and the bad accent and the bad English. Our show, in a way it’s kind of different from other shows because I’m aware that we are not the only or the first band that are playing on the floor and being physical with the audience. But I think we are taking it for another place. There was a lot of hardcore bands back in the ‘80s that the singer get into the crowd. Jello Biafra, David Yow, people like that. But our show is kind of different because we don’t take it from the anger side. We take it from the fun side. That is what people really want—is to have fun. So I think we got kind of a formula that work for us. A kind of point of view so that people relax about the show. And it’s amazing, because you can spill on people beer! If I spill beer on people on the street they will beat me! But, we got the vibe and during the show people kind of going with it. They see the band and the band not afraid to get dirty. To be in the crowd and everybody together in this party. So this is the magic.
Are you secretly self-conscious about your body when you take your clothes off?
Ami Shalev: Yeah, I’m working out. When I’m not touring I’m working out. I mean, I’m 44 years old.
You look great. And I’ve practically seen you naked.
Ami Shalev: Thank you. I’m working out back home when I’m not touring, and I’m not kidding about it, because at my age you need to keep working all the time if you don’t want to lose your shape. I remember when I was 20 or 25 I can eat whatever I want, do whatever I want, and nothing affected my body. I’m not saying that I’m eating only health food, but I need to work out when I’m not touring to keep in shape. I’m biking, doing a little bit push-ups, things like that. Not so much, but yeah—I’m aware that I need to maintain my body because the nature of this show.
I’m sure it didn’t hurt to be a looker when you got your record deal. That’s all they’re looking for at Drag City—a good physique.
Ami Shalev: If Hollywood want it like this, I will give it!
What do you think about the separation barrier being built along the West Bank? I’m interested in an Israeli artist’s opinion about this.
Ami Shalev: I’m not speaking about politics. We are coming from a very sensitive place, politics-wise. You know what I mean. And it will sound a little bit hippie, but that’s my point of view that people should relax. Take it easy. Wars are not good for anybody. And if people would just stop and think with logic, things would be much much much better and easy to settle up between countries and people. The situation that the world gets into…it is all the time like that, and I’m aware that this is human nature. But I think that people should make decisions by their sense, not by the instinct. Be aware that violence and war and all these things are not acceptable. It’s bad. It’s bad. So everyone should be act positive. I am aware that there is a lot of interest about this war, but that’s my point of view about it.
It’s specifically a feeling of not wanting to talk about the Middle East?
Ami Shalev: I can talk to people about my point of view, but I will take the position that John Lennon took, and say ‘Give peace a chance.’ That’s what I think. We should take this chance. About Israel. Here it is. About the Israeli politics, I think that’s what we need, what we must do.
What about trying to change things yourself inside Israel?
In Israel, I don’t know if it’s not going to change for the next 100 years, but for the near future you can’t change—I mean, I can’t change—I’m not a guy that’s gonna lead a revolution or something like that. I live with it in peace. I’m feeling very comfortable in Israel right now because I don’t have any expectation from Israel to be something that it can’t be.
Do you really think it can’t be, or do you just think it’s not going to happen any time soon?
Ami Shalev: I think that to be the country that I want Israel to be, we should solve a lot of problems before. We got a really long way to do, and it’s OK by me because we are a very young country. Even compared to the U.S., where it is a young culture and a young country, we are still very young. And still a long way to do. Really really really really important things we need to deal with before we start dealing with whether you can do your rock ‘n’ roll. There’s a lot of things we need to deal with.
If you look at social evolution historically, though, there’s an inextricable connection between creative change and political change. For example, if you think of the Dadaists in Zurich and Berlin, it was all about a political and cultural shift.
Ami Shalev: I agree with you, I agree with you. But it’s very difficult to do, because we are still fighting on our living here. It’s very hard. And we need a very strong leader who will take us to the next level of this kind of thinking. It’s very hard. I don’t know, I pray for this kind of day every day. I hope it will come soon.
You toured around on the F Yeah Bus, ‘Greased Lightning,’ in July of ’08 with some of my favorite people.
Ami Shalev: It was really interesting to get into a bus with 15 or 20 people and tour with them, and to do it with an American people. It almost felt like it was to—to get into bed with people that came from another culture!
Would you do it again?
Ami Shalev: No. I’m too old for it.
Too old to spend time in a bus full of young smelly Americans?
Ami Shalev: And the bus with no air condition? It’s too much for me!

MONOTONIX WITH SIGNALS, THE PRESS FIRE! AND PROTECT ME ON WED., SEPT. 16, AT THE SMELL, 247 S. MAIN ST., DOWNTOWN. 8 PM / $10 / ALL AGES. THESMELL.ORG. MONOTONIX’S WHERE WERE YOU WHEN IT HAPPENED? IS OUT NOW ON DRAG CITY. VISIT MONOTONIX AT MONOTONIX.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/MONOTONIX.

Stream: The Dream Syndicate “Merrittville”

(from Medicine Show on A&M)

The Dream Syndicate found whatever was in Sister Lovers and Tonight’s The Night still breathing in L.A. in 1984 and used it to make Medicine Show, still a nervous and wild local classic. Guitarist-singer Steve Wynn will perform the album in its entirety tonight with his band the Miracle 3. He speaks now from a quiet park in New York. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

What’s an easier cover song for you to do at an instant’s notice? Flamin’ Groovies, Roxy Music, Modern Lovers or the Ghostbusters theme song?
Every one of those. Every single one. They’re all fair game. I’d play any of those right now. I could do a medley of ‘Roadrunner,’ ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Shake Some Action.’ That would work out pretty well.
What was it like growing up in the Hollywood Hills while Manson and friends were on the prowl?
I was nine years old at the time and that was a nice introduction to the more sinister side of life. I remember being absolutely certain that they were coming for me, that they were going to be knocking on my window. Because if you remember, they weren’t caught right away. I think there were several months between the Tate-LaBianca murders and when they were arrested. During that time, I’m sure a lot of people thought this way. Definitely being a nine-year-old kid living up in the hills where you hear all kinds of sounds all the time-you’re sure it’s Susan Atkins and Tex Watson knocking on your window. It was a scary time. I’ve written a lot about these kinds of things and maybe that was my earliest influence. The Beatles, Creedence and Charles Manson.
Was that the first time you encountered the concept of evil?
Well, it’s funny. When I was growing up Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were killed and I was just barely old enough to grasp that-but something about that was more abstract. I didn’t quite understand their importance and impact and what they represented. Then you hear something like the Manson killings and you think, ‘Well, that seems like something that could happen right here.’ The Robert Kennedy assassination didn’t seem quite as immediate. It seemed terrible and I had the sense that something very bad had happened and I kind of understood the overview-but at that age you don’t fully grasp that. But you can completely understand the concept of someone coming into your house and killing everyone savagely. That was definitely my first sign that there were people out there who would do very bad things for almost no reason.
You said once the best serial killers all came from L.A.
It’s a little glib to say the ‘best’ ones because they’re all pretty awful. That’s something I said a long time ago but yeah, it’s interesting. Most of the well known serial killers seem to be in L.A. or Florida. What does that say? Beautiful, full of sunshine and full of open spaces-well, not L.A. but California anyway. You’d figure they’d all be in Detroit where they’re miserable. Maybe people get bored in California and Florida.
Maybe they really are cold blooded. They need that nice warm weather or they get sluggish.
Maybe that’s it. I lived in L.A. for years. I feel like I know L.A. probably better than any other city I’ll ever know in my life and L.A.’s got a lot of secret places. As anyone who lives there knows, it’s got the shiny, slick veneer and when you flip on the lights all the cockroaches start running around. There are a lot of very seamy things hidden by a very shiny exterior. Living in New York, the grit’s right there staring you in the face the whole time and nothing really surprises you. I think maybe that really shines a light on the difference between the beautiful and the horrible. Maybe when there’s that kind of a contrast, there’s no limit to how horrible you can get.
Is that uneasy coexistence between the beautiful and the horrible sort of the same thing we get on Medicine Show?
I think it’s definitely on Medicine Show. When the Dream Syndicate started the thing that we were all intrigued by in the band was taking very essentially straightforward hooky pop songs and just destroying them-having no reverence for them. At the time, most bands either played pop music or punk music or roots music and there was no mixing it up too much and our obvious reference point was the Velvets-but a lot of other bands as well-who would do that sort of thing, who would take a beautiful thing and then just trash it. That’s what we were doing on Days of Wine and Roses. I think on Medicine Show we kind of took away a lot of the beauty and went into the ugliness. It’s a very, very dark record but still catchy songs, still hooks, a lot of moments of beauty and elegance. It’s a much darker, disturbed record than Days of Wine and Roses.
You described it as the most ‘emotional, frightening and unique’ of the Dream Syndicate records. Why?
Well, I love that record. It is my favorite Dream Syndicate album and, you know, among other reasons it’s because there is no other record like it. When I hear the other three Dream Syndicate albums, I like them, but I can hear things that came before and things that went after but I can’t think of any other record either before or after that was quite like what we were doing on Medicine Show and it’s a pretty unique little thumbprint of where we were at the time and all the good things and the bad things about being in that band at that moment in time. Having said that, I spent every day for six months making that album and it was not the happiest times for me and Karl. On the one hand, we were at a peak as far as what people thought of us and the interest in us and at the same time kind of a downslide in the way that we were getting along with each other. So it wasn’t a record I wanted to go right back to right away. As much as I liked it, it brought back a lot of bad memories. But especially in recent months when I hear that record I’m really proud of it. I don’t listen to my stuff that much. I usually only listen to my records when it’s time to rehearse for tour but I started playing that record in the last few months and I was very happy with what I heard. It holds up really well.
What was the cost or price of making this record happen? You said you were losing your mind when you were making it.
A lot. First of all, it’s not the way I liked to work then or since then. I don’t like spending that much time on a record. I think that once you spend that much time you start second guessing yourself too much-you start making decisions because you’re bored, you start not getting along with each other. That’s a hard process so I wouldn’t recommend that for anybody unless you’re making some mass-market pop hit record-maybe you need to do that sort of thing but it’s not the way I would choose to work. But the cost beyond that? Look, we made Days of Wine and Roses in three days and that’s amazingly quick-that’s beyond belief. And we made Medicine Show in six months, which was too long. Probably somewhere in between would have been good. I mean, Karl and I were both twenty-three at the time. A year before that we’d been working minimum wage jobs and hoping we could get a gig third billed at Madame Wong’s. It was a lot of stuff coming in very quickly and we reacted in very different ways. If that kind of thing happened now, or ten years ago, I would know how to deal with it but at the time we were just confused. It was pretty, pretty heavy stuff.
How did making Medicine Show change the way you made the rest of your music afterward?
Well, I wouldn’t change a thing about that record. I’ll say that right away. But at the same time, I think we could have made the exact same record in one month. I think all that push and pull and the doubt… and maybe there were reasons certain people had for having it take that long and that’s all I’ll say about that. But I guess the main thing I learned is that I won’t take that long to make a record again. I’d rather make a record in a month or less and knock it out and it is what it is and it’s a moment and then you make another one a year later. That’s one thing I took away. On the other hand, another thing I took away from that record is that it’s good to dig deep and go to some very ugly places either to get something you’re looking for or to put you on a path to get to something else. If you’re making music or art or writing books or whatever, you sometimes have to go someplace where you’re not comfortable going and we definitely did that making that record.
You had a quote where you said, ‘If I was one of my own subjects, I’d be dead.’ Is that what’s happening on Medicine Show?
Yeah, the people in those songs and in a lot of my songs, they push themselves to a limit with no regard for themselves and no regard for people around them-they maybe make a lot of bad choices and then they regret them and then they make more bad choices. That’s a common theme in my stuff. Like anybody, I’ve got elements of that in myself and I enjoy going there when I’m writing or recording but I’m not living that all the time. Having said that, when I was making that record I was a wreck. I was drinking a lot. I was drinking a fifth of whiskey every day.
What brand?
Jim Beam. I was a big fan of Jim Beam and I knew every liquor store in San Francisco that stayed open until two in the morning where I could go and get a bottle right before closing time. I was definitely a drunk and I was not happy because I felt out of control of the record we were making and I was afraid that something that was very, very exciting and meaningful to me-the Dream Syndicate and the music we were making-was being hijacked. Turns out in a way it was-because it wasn’t necessarily how we would have gone about doing things. But again, like I say, the end results were fantastic. When you’re twenty-three, you’ve only made one record in your entire life and that record took three days and now you’re working on a record every day for five months, you’re going to go through all kinds of emotional places. And when you add a lot of whiskey to that… and also on top of that I think that one thing with making that record that had a lot of impact is that we did it in San Francisco, away from home. We were away from all our friends and away from our families and away from the places we hung out and the clubs we liked and the bands we liked and we were kind of isolated. That was in a way a good thing because it maybe freed us up to go further but it also took away a little bit of the compass, a little bit of a reference point that we might have needed at the time.
It sounds like an echo-chamber effect.
Exactly. And beyond that, it wasn’t just with each other because Dennis Duck and Dave Provost, the rhythm section, they were gone after two weeks. They spent two, maybe three weeks and then they were gone and then it was just me and Karl for about two months and then he was gone and then for the last two months I was pretty much there by myself with [producer] Sandy Pearlman. It was definitely some sort of Patty Hearst Stockholm Syndrome-esque experience.
Are you saying that you and Sandy Pearlman had a Stockholm Syndrome relationship?
In a way. In a way. I still see Sandy now and then. He’s a great producer, did a great job on the record, but there was definitely a lot of… I wouldn’t say intentional. It wasn’t malicious, but a lot of definite mental manipulation being that close together for that long a period of time.
Was it sort of like a Phil Spector waving a gun vibe?
There were no guns. It was more psychological, but at one point I threw a whiskey bottle at him and he said, ‘You can’t throw a whiskey bottle at me. Mick Jones didn’t even throw a whiskey bottle at me.’ I took that as high praise.
When you were going through that kind of thing, what did you do to escape?
I was reading a lot. I think the same thing that influenced me on the songs added more paranoia. I was reading a lot of Faulkner, a lot of Flannery O’Connor, a lot of Harry Crews, a lot of Southern Gothic dark writers so that just compounded everything. And then on top of it I was in a zone where each day I would play Funhouse by the Stooges at least two or three times. I think at the time I was a lot older at twenty-three than I am now at forty-nine. I pictured myself sort of a vagrant gypsy type, just wandering the streets of San Francisco at all hours, looking for trouble, looking for bars, looking for people I could get into confrontational discussions with-just kind of looking for the darker side of things. I was living the record. I was living the songs and there was also some self-flagellation going on there. It was an interesting time. I was also watching the television preacher Gene Scott. I was obsessed with Gene Scott. There was a channel at the time in San Francisco that had him on TV twenty-four hours a day. I watched Gene Scott when I woke up. I wasn’t converting. I wasn’t sending any money. He just became sort of my alter ego. I think I sort of looked at him and thought that’s who I was. I was Gene Scott. I wanted to get a full-length fur coat and dark glasses and wander around the streets. I wanted to be Gene Scott. Since that time, I’ve seen that kind of early success followed by self-flagellation. You see it in a lot of people. You saw it in Kurt Cobain, you saw it in Eddie Vedder, you see it in a lot of people. It happens over and over. There’s a pattern there and who’s to say why it happens? But I think when you’re young and doing something that means a lot to you and maybe the same kind of vulnerability that makes you do the stuff in the first place-when you get that kind of thing where suddenly you’re successful and everyone’s watching you, you might not react in the most stable, sane way as you would if you were older and had perspective.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said when you get success really early, it really wrecks you.
Well, it’s why I’m really grateful that twenty-five years later I’m still touring and making records and doing better than ever so fortunately I’ve had both sides of it. I had that whole experience that was enlightening and horrific and now I’m able to kind of enjoy the good things that happen so I’ve had both ends of it. I’ve always said the one regret I have about Dream Syndicate is that I wish there had been one more album. I think Medicine Show should have been our third album. I wish we would have made one more record with Kendra and a couple more tours. Just because what we were doing on Days of Wine and Roses and on those first few tours was really exciting, a really great thing and I think we could have had a little more of that and then made the grand epic.
Was there anything that came between the two records that never made it out?
Nothing, nothing. It was really quick. Days of Wine and Roses came out in November of ’82 and by March Kendra had left the band and by the summer we were in the studio. It was all happening very quickly. I wasn’t writing as much at the time. Now I write a lot, but at the time, getting those eight songs on the record, that’s all there was. There were no other songs, there were no outtakes. That was it. Again, the pressure you put on yourself… Those are songs I still play all the time, songs I still love.
Did you feel pressure coming off Days of Wine and Roses and going right into Medicine Show?
Yes, but we handled it in different ways. You know, I was a very big music fan and I had my heroes and they were all people like Lou Reed and Big Star Sister Lovers. All the people I was into-also Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Neil Young, John Lennon on his first solo album-all people at their darkest, most confused, fucked up, plumbing the depths period-this is what I thought was cool. I didn’t like Radio City or #1 Record, I liked Third. I didn’t like Imagine, I liked Plastic Ono Band. I didn’t like Harvest, I liked Tonight’s the Night. I was going for that dark place, so I felt that I was carrying the torch to take us darker and weirder and make something very disturbing and that was an extreme reaction. Karl, on the other hand, saw it as our chance to be a stadium rock band and he said we’re on a major label now-we’re playing with the big boys and he wanted to take it to a more slick, professional, let’s be a big rock band kind of thing. And both reactions were completely heartfelt and noble but they don’t work too well together so we drove each other nuts. That’s why we drove each other absolutely nuts and you can hear it on the record. And what drove us nuts on a personal level, musically is interesting. I think the nice thing about Medicine Show is it is very disturbing, very dark and it’s also very big and regal and epic. It’s not a trashy little record. It’s a very grand record. There was sort of a push and pull between my record collection, my record label, my reality and my band mates that maybe added pressure. The thing I learned at the time, and I’ve seen this in a lot of bands since then, is that it’s just as much of a sell-out to make yourself more repellent than you need to be as it is to try and make yourself more glamorous than you need to be. They’re both somethings that may not be true to what you really are. So, self sabotage and selling out are sort of two sides of the same coin.
Do you think you would have agreed with that at the time?
Of course not. That’s the thing, you get perspective and that’s why I say I don’t have any problem with any of that, but it’s something that I’ve learned since then. It’s natural to go there. And it’s something I’ve always admired about R.E.M. Maybe it’s because they were all such good friends, maybe it’s that they all lived in Athens, whatever it was-they really managed to kind of keep a pretty even keel in a way that a lot of other bands didn’t. If I look at most bands from that period of time, whether it’s the Replacements or us or Hüsker Dü or the Long Ryders, they all had a lot of inner turmoil, a lot of mercurial moves musically, career wise… and R.E.M. didn’t seem to do that and that’s probably why they’ve had such long term success. Then there was no road map. Now you come along and Pitchfork writes about you and you can look back and see a lot of bands around you or that came ten years before and see how they handled it. There was really no road map for us. There was no such thing as indie rock. Yeah, there had been punk rock, but that was kind of a very isolated thing and kind of imploded very quickly. We were the first band of our ilk to sign to a major label-before R.E.M., before Replacements, before kind of anybody we were the first ones to kind of go that route and it was ‘What now? What do we do now? Are we the Scorpions now? What can we base this whole thing on?’ And then you would tour around and if you were any of the bands that I mentioned you were going cross-country playing in cities where they didn’t really get what you were doing. Even when we toured with R.E.M. a few months after Medicine Show we would play cities like Boisie, Idaho and the headline in the paper the next day was ‘New Wave Comes to Boise.’ Are you kidding? New wave? I wish I would have saved it because it was the most amazing thing. We saw it and our jaws dropped. But as much as New York and L.A. got it, it was still this mostly completely mysterious thing. Are you a punk or are you new wave? We were still getting that then. And the other thing we’d get then was, ‘Now why are you playing guitars? Is that some kind of statement? Because guitars are dead.’ And it was mystifying. Also it was kind of the era of the producer. We just hit a point where bands just didn’t go in and make their music and have it documented. Producers were meant to manipulate bands to make them ‘better.’ And so the producer became the star. Like, ‘I can take ten seconds of what you’re doing, mess it around and make you a much better band.’
The producer as alchemist, kind of?
Kind of, and the band was the tools. Of course I’m sure that Grizzly Bear and other bands now and Animal Collective have their own problems now and things they have to face, but they can at least say, well, here’s what the hot indie band did two years ago. Here’s how Arcade Fire handled it two years ago. So there’s a little more of a rudder to the whole thing.
It’s like everybody’s got somebody working for them now.
I’ve gone the exact opposite way. I’ve found a real freedom beginning about fifteen years ago when I started managing myself. I stopped caring about making it, which I did or didn’t care about at different times. And all I really want to do is make records I like and then go out in front of people and play them. And if the arc takes me one tour in front of three thousand people, another tour in front of thirty, it doesn’t matter. After this many years, it’s just kind of a continuous thing and when I’m ninety I’ll have made a handful of records and some will be my favorites and some will be ones where I kind of missed it by a few marks here and there and that’s great. That’s a good life. It’s a lot easier to do it when you’ve been around for twenty-five years and a lot easier when you’ve made a lot of records that people like. The thing I always liked about the ’70s for example, as opposed to right now, is that really good artists made some really bad records and I think that’s great. I think that’s a great thing. I don’t think people give themselves as much freedom now to make really shitty records. I’m not sure if it’s because people aren’t making as many or that there’s so much importance on it, but I love that there are some really bad Neil Young records and some really bad Bob Dylan records and some really bad Lou Reed records and it’s great because I think sometimes you have to get through a really huge misstep to get to something really good.
There’s not the freedom to make those kinds of mistakes anymore?
Or maybe they just don’t allow themselves to. I mean, they have the freedom to because these days you could make a record in your living room and have it out a couple weeks later but maybe people are more savvy now. People are a little more self-conscious, a little more aware. And everything that’s good about having the road map, everything that makes it easier also makes it a little bit harder to completely go off the deep end. And on Medicine Show, that’s a record where we went way off the deep end. We went to this crazy, extreme place that no one had gone to before. I keep going back to this but when I hear Days of Wine and Roses I can hear a lot of bands in that record, before and after. Medicine Show? You tell me. I mean, I hear certain Nick Cave things that came after, but there’s this kind of weird mixture of things, very dark, very big at the same time and I think it’s pretty unique.
What do you think about the fact that that much of your personality and mind state came come through in Medicine Show?
Well, I think that the people who were really affected by Medicine Show-and it’s important to remember that in the U.S. there was really a backlash because people wanted Days of Wine and Roses, but in Europe it was taken to be the best record of those couple years. People freaked out over it and still do. So on one side of the Atlantic people were saying we dropped the ball and on the other side they were rolling out the red carpet, so I think I found it more amusing than upsetting. But the people that that record touched, over here especially, were people who really enjoy that dark ride. One thing I heard that really flattered me was I saw an interview with Greg Dulli where he said he moved to L.A. because he heard Medicine Show and that’s great. And he’s a pretty fucked up, disturbed guy too, so it was definitely a little mating call-a little radar signal to the malcontents and the wackos out there. It goes back to what I said about loving Tonight’s the Night, and Plastic Ono Band and Big Star Third. I think those kinds of records aren’t for everybody but the people who are touched by those records, those are their favorite records. They think, ‘That was made for me.’ There’s no grey about it. It’s black and white. You either get it or you don’t.
You know that famous story about some kid coming up to Lou Reed and saying, ‘Man, I started using because of you. You were the guy who turned me on to it.’ Have you had that ‘what have we really made here?’ feeling?
Fortunately no one ever came up to me and said they set fire to a field because of me, so I guess I’m ok on that front. I’ve never incited arson or any of the things that happen in ‘Merrittville’ so I think I’m ok on that front. Look, I think the Dream Syndicate has the same very flattering legacy that a lot of bands like the Velvets have where people started bands because they were influenced by us and I think that’s great. That means a lot to me. I didn’t plan out everything to the letter, the way it all worked out, and I don’t think I ever would have imagined I’d be where I am right now doing things the way I am right now, but it is interesting that the career we had kind of mirrored the bands I was in to. I wasn’t looking to be the next Beatles. I was looking to make those records that really were challenging and difficult and would mean a lot to the people who liked them. The thing I used to say at the beginning of the Dream Syndicate, and I think we all felt, was that it’s most important to make a record that could be at least one person’s favorite record of all time. It’s better to do that than to make a record that a lot of people will say, ‘yeah, that’s ok. I’m fine with that. That’s good background music.’ If one person in the world could say that’s the best thing that I’ve ever heard in my life and it changed my life, then you’ve done something right.
How often do you think to yourself, ‘I must have been crazy because I did this or didn’t do that’?
All the time, man. Like anybody, all the time. I try not to get bogged down in it too much because it’s much better to just do something new, do a new record or a new tour. But again, and I think a lot of people in that situation would say the same thing, is that I wish I would have enjoyed it a little more.
That’s youth.
Yeah, why is youth wasted on the young? Blah blah blah. But being twenty-three and opening for R.E.M. and U2 and making a record with that much money at your disposal, I think that the forty-nine year old Steve would think, oh, I can have fun with this. And I did have fun. On the R.E.M. tour I made friends with Peter and Mike especially, who are still great friends to this day. And I have great stories to tell of the debauchery.
Can you give me a few tales of R.E.M. debauchery for the readers?
Absolutely, absolutely not.
Is there still a room in L.A. that you know you could walk into that you know hasn’t changed a bit since you were last here?
You know, that’s a good question. A lot of my favorite clubs and bars I used to love are gone. There were so many great ones. I miss Raji’s. I miss Al’s Bar. I miss what the Whisky was. I miss Moby’s Dock, a great bar at the end of the Santa Monica pier. I miss the Tap ‘n’ Cap on Sawtelle. I miss the Firefly on Vine. And there are a whole new generation of those things that are probably amazing that I don’t go to that often. I love Chez Jay. It’s a great bar by the beach that will probably never change. That’s my favorite haunt. It’s been there since before I was born and it’s still the same as it was back then. That’s a great hangout. It’s the first thing I could think of as far as an L.A. constant.
You never ended up at a bar with Warren Zevon, did you?
No, and I really wish I would have known him. I met him once backstage at McCabe’s and I’m a huge fan. I know people who have hung out with him and have a couple stories about him, but no. I wish I would have known him either when we were both at our worst or when we’d recovered from that. Both would have been interesting. Kind of on that level, I remember I used to DJ at the Cathay de Grande. That’s another place I miss a lot. I was a Monday night kind of blues/soul/garage DJ there and they used to pay me in alcohol. I didn’t get any money but I used to drink as much as I could stand and I remember DJing and drinking my screwdrivers up in the booth and watching a very drunken Tom Waits come stumbling in with Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs and that was kind of a very L.A. thing.
How do you feel reminiscing about this stuff? Do you recognize yourself as the same person in the songs or is it like coming back to a country you haven’t been to in awhile?
That’s interesting. We toured a couple years ago and did The Days of Wine and Roses, the same as we’re doing with this record. It was very easy to fall into that mode for some reason, the sort of wise-ass, cocky confrontational guy that made that record and did those tours and I was actually having fun method acting it. I don’t think I can go to where I was during Medicine Show. I can play those songs and it’s going to be a really good tribute and update at the same time, but man, I don’t know if I could be that person or want to be that person. We’ve been rehearsing the record a lot this week for the New York show and we’ll be getting into shape for the L.A. show and it’s going to be great, but I said really if I wanted to do it the right way I would just spend the next two weeks drinking whiskey nonstop and that would put me in the right mode but I don’t think I’m going to do that.

STEVE WYNN AND THE MIRACLE THREE PERFORM MEDICINE SHOW PLUS THE URINALS THUR., JULY 9, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $10 / 18+. VISIT STEVE WYNN AT STEVEWYNN.NET.

Charlyne Yi is a comedienne and musician who has opened for Akron/Family, has had members of Man Man and the Vandals cover her songs, and pees while being interviewed. She does not know who Spike Jones is, has never been high, and is not dating Michael Cera. This interview by Dan Collins.

Tell us about your latest band, Old Lumps.
It’s scary! I feel like that’s one of the more serious bands I’ve been doing, just because we’ve been practicing, and it’s five of us… sorry, I’m out of breath! I’m running upstairs.
Do you work out often?
Lots of weights! Big ones! And now I’m going to pee with you on the phone, because I’m disgusting.
Wow! Okay… so, how would you describe the Old Lumps sound?
Pain! Emotional pain! I’m realizing that most of my songs sound the same now. I’m trying to define each song so they don’t sound like a mass of songs.
You’re also in Chandelier Teeth, and the Glass Beef, and Helen Hunt and the Twisters. How many bands are you in?
Ha ha, I think it’s only five, but the Helen Hunt thing is just random, whenever me and Kate [Micucci] happen to be free. We don’t practice really. They’re bands, but they’re not that serious. These are just like, ‘You want to play music? Okay, let’s do it!’ Helen Hunt and the Twisters haven’t performed in over a year. I think we’ve only performed four times.
Now that your movie career is taking off, do you think you could get Helen Hunt on stage to sing with you guys?
We have an idea that we would have, you know, one of those cardboard cutouts of her? And we thought it would be funny if that was our thing, and then one day when we were playing, she’d be hiding behind the cutout of her and she’d pop out!
You have a project called the Music Scientist, where you record demos at home, and fairly talented bands you hardly know record their own, more fleshed-out versions of those songs and post them on YouTube and whatnot. How did you get that project off the ground?
I don’t know! I wrote a lot of songs, but I don’t actually like singing. I was like, oh, this song would sound so much better if I was a man with a burly voice, or I wish I had more range, like an opera singer. I can’t hit any of these notes that I hear in my head. I can play them out on a piano, but never give the song justice. And so I wrote a song. And this band I listened to on MySpace, Twain, this guy had a really great voice. We didn’t even really know each other, but he had seen me perform, and I liked his music. And so I asked him, and he did it. And after I got one person to agree, I was like, ‘I’m going to ask everyone!’ It’s been pretty cool, to see what people come up with.
Shel Silverstein wrote ‘A Boy Named Sue’ and a bunch of other songs for Johnny Cash. Is there a really famous singer you’d want to write for?
Celine Dion! She has such a good range. I used to sincerely love her as a kid. She goes like ‘whooooooaaa’ a lot! I’d be funny to make her do that too much, where it’s overboard, and people are uncomfortable. I think it’d be really fun to make her sing something really sincere, but something really ridiculous coming out of her mouth. Maybe something really redundant, like ‘I LOOOOVE him! I LOOOOVE him!’ Like twenty times, singing the same thing! Besides that, I just want to hear her say really cheesy stuff, like complimenting a boy. ‘Your skin is so soft and silky, and I want to kiss it! I want to kiss it bad!’
You haven’t snagged Celene Dion yet, but you did have David Quackenbush and Warren Fitzgerald from the Vandals cover one of your songs. Did you know who they were when you got in contact?
No! But David came to a Glass Beef show, and I met him. I was like ‘Oh, I really like their music!’ And I just wrote him. ‘Hey, we’re doing this project, for fun. And there’s no money, and we just give away the song for free. If you have time and you’re into this idea—it shouldn’t feel like homework, it should feel like something you’re actually passionate about—then I want you to do a song.’ And he did it, hee hee! But no, I live in a bubble. I didn’t know who the Vandals were.
Do you identify with John Travolta’s character in The Boy in the Bubble?
I’ve never even heard of it, really.
That’s too bad! We’re all Scientologists at L.A. RECORD. If you had a child with undiagnosed autism who died, what kind of song would you write for his funeral?
I would burn his body, and then I would use it in my coffee and drink it, so we could be one. And I would play ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon, and I’d imagine that he was here with me.
When you were a child, what music did you listen to? What are your primal influences?
I listened to K-Earth 101 a lot! And Elvis. And Queen. But I don’t think I sound like any of that stuff at all. I wish that I could, but I think it’s impossible for me.
Do you get inspiration from other musical comedians, like Spike Jones and Eric Idle?
I didn’t even know Spike Jonze did music! That’s really funny, ha ha!
No, not the director guy! Spike Jones from the thirties. He did ‘Der Fuhrer’s Face.’
Oh, ha ha, I’m way off! I’ve never heard of Spike Jones! I like Loudon Wainwright III. His stuff is a mixture of sincere stuff and comedy, too! And someone else just introduced me to Jonathan Richman, which I think is the same thing. It hits you instantly, and it’s funny, but there’s this undertone of sadness in what he’s singing. I found that really interesting, because when I do music, I like to throw people off by doing something silly and then doing something serious. People are like, ‘Whoa, should I not laugh at this?’
There does seem to be tenderness at the heart of your tunes. You and Kate Micucci might be singing about a booger trying to find its way back to the nose, but it’s sad at the same time.
We did do a weird booger song! I think sometimes me and Kate hide a true song with comedy, because we’re embarrassed of talking about something. That was like a mix of, ‘Oh, let’s sing about this lonely person!’ And we were like, ‘What if it’s a lonely booger?’ And we start laughing, because we were kind of getting depressed about what we’re singing about! It’s sad, but it’s also kind of gross and stupid. It’s fun to not take music too seriously. I think music is a great way to do comedy and still do sincere stuff. And I think comedy can be really sincere, too. It’s fun mixing with that kind of stuff. I have been reading Harpo Speaks, a book that Harpo Marx wrote, and I find him the most interesting guy ever. I starting taking up harp because I was reading that book! Something I related to is that he liked to play music, and back in those days, it didn’t have to always be funny. Like Steve Martin would tap dance, and play banjo, and some of the stuff he was doing wasn’t necessarily hilarious. But I was like, ‘I love to watch this! It’s kind of funny, but I love this song!’
Steve Martin’s Wild and Crazy Guy was one of the funniest comedy albums ever, but the song ‘King Tut’ sucked ass. What’s the secret to making a funny song funny?
I have no idea! My songs I think are kind of funny, but I don’t even know if they are funny. I did this one song where I almost cry in the middle of the song, but I’m not really crying, but I try to trick people into thinking I am, and people start laughing! Nothing about the words is funny—it’s just about the way the song is delivered, and how uncomfortable it is to see someone almost break down in the middle of the song. I’m not sure if my songs are funny, and I don’t understand why people laugh at them! I have no idea.
Steve Martin would open for bands when he was getting his start, like the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Earl Scruggs. Have you opened for any acts that L.A. RECORD readers might know?
I have. It’s really scary! I’ve opened for Akron/Family, and I’ve opened for Sasha Smith. One time I opened for Man Man, and my set was broken up into two chunks of fifteen minutes. So I opened at the very beginning, and a band played, and it was supposed to be me again, and then Man Man. And when the band went off, they were like, ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, Man Man!’ And it was supposed to be me next! And my friend from Man Man, Honus, carried me out, and I was like ‘I don’t want to go! People are going to boo me! Last time I went up, there was like 30 people there. Right now there’s hundreds of people who don’t know who I am from the last performance!’ And I go up there, and people are like, ‘Go back to Jersey! Get off the stage!’ And there was this guy who was like ‘I’m going to fuck you up! I’m going to go up there on stage and fuck you up!’ Thank god he didn’t go up there, but they booed me so I couldn’t talk at all! It’s rough sometimes.
Have you ever considered getting revenge by getting a band to open for your stand-up act, and having the audience boo that band?
I’ve thought of other ways to mess with them, in a non-malicious way. I opened for the Akron/Family in New York at the same place, and I thought, ‘I’m at the same place—I’m going to get booed again!’ And I thought if they boo me, I’ll be like, ‘Uh, the Akron/Family didn’t show up today, and so they asked me to fill in for them, and I’ll have to play each instrument alone, but just pretend they’re all playing at the same time. So it might take awhile.’ And so I’d just go do guitar, then go do drums… That was my back-up plan. But I didn’t get booed. So that’s nice!
Who do you think works harder, musicians or comedians?
I think both equally work as hard, just in different ways. Most comedians don’t get paid for 95% of their gigs, if not more! I’ve only been paid like twice in my life. It’s kind of disgusting, the realization that oh, I perform comedy for free—I’m like a big nerd! I just do this out of a hobby! I really like performing, and don’t get paid really! The way the venues work, most musicians get paid for their gigs, even if it’s a couple bucks. They get a cut of the door and stuff usually. But with comedy, you get a reaction with the laughter, and know immediately how you’re doing. With music, at a bar, people will talk over your music, and that kind of shocks! But then there’s the energy of the room. You’re like, ‘I think this is going well, but I have no idea why!’
There’s a lot of press recently about the renaissance in L.A.’s music scene, and we also have a bumper crop of funny comedians nowadays. But those scenes don’t connect nearly enough. How can we bridge that gap?
It’s weird. A lot of musicians I’ve met want to be comedy writers and perform comedy, and a lot of comedians want to perform music. Like my friend Paul Rust, he wanted to be in a band and stuff, and somehow we got mixed into comedy. And my friend from Man Man, he studied script-writing and stuff.
You not only co-wrote the script for Paper Heart, but you co-wrote the score! How did that happen?
Me and Michael Cera had never scored anything, had been writing music just in general, and sending these songs to Nick, the director. And he was like, ‘Why don’t you guys score the movie?’ And we were like, ‘That sounds awesome. But we have no idea how to do that.’ And so through the whole process of filming the movie and editing, me and Michael had separately been writing songs, and we would place them into the editing thing and see how the song would change the scene. And from that we ended up with this guy named Alden Penner from the Unicorns. I had never heard of them, but Michael was a really big fan of them, and sent me a CD of his solo stuff, which is music that Alden had just written in his bedroom. And I was really into that stuff, and so we contacted him and told him what we were doing, and showed him clips. And he was into producing it, and he had never produced a movie score either! So we were all new to this idea, and he flew up from Canada, and we all kind of experimented with the songs and tried to get them in different variations. It was fun!
You seem to have incurred the wrath of thousands of female Michael Cera fans by having a relationship with him.
It’s so strange! I have crushes on characters in movies, but I wouldn’t understand actually hating someone because of that. I don’t think that hate is true, because you can’t hate someone unless you actually know them. These people are crazy! How can you not like someone based on some weird form of jealousy that doesn’t even make sense? And me and Michael aren’t dating, actually, which is stranger. I’ve had people come up to me after shows who are like ‘Oh my gawd! That’s that girl that’s dating Michael!’ And one of them will come up to me and be like, ‘How old are yeeew?’ And I’ll lie to them and say I’m really old, and they’ll be like, ‘Ew, that’s so gross!’ Ha ha, okay!?! And how can they know and like someone if they don’t actually know them, if they only ever see glimpses of characters, or interviews. I’ve gotten weird hate mail regarding Michael. And I wrote them like, ‘Hey, we’re not even dating! I don’t know why you hate me; if it’s because of Michael, we’re not dating, so I guess you don’t hate me anymore?’ And they’ll just write, ‘Fuck you, you fucking bitch!’ I don’t take it personally. They don’t really know me.
You and Michael aren’t dating anymore?
No! How did you know that we were dating, if we were dating? People will say a lot of things! People said that I’m 33, and that was like a big issue, because people were like, ‘Why would a 33-year-old not believe in love in this documentary?’ It’s not even like a true documentary! There’s a lot of misconceptions about who I am and how old I am and who I’m dating. Two people came up to me and said, ‘Oh, where’s your husband?’ I don’t have a husband!
It sucks that people are judging you based on characters you portray! I mean, your breakout role was a stoner in Knocked Up, which isn’t you at all.
I enjoy acting, but I think it’s hard for people to cast me in things, because I don’t really fit a lot of things, and I don’t have much range. I’m not really a great actor. And after that movie, a lot of people wanted me to play a stoner, too. I didn’t know how I played a stoner! I think I did a really bad job, actually. I think I was just tired that day, and I sound like I’m stoned when I’m tired, and I was laughing at nothing! And I’ve never actually even been high.
Paul Reubens had to create a whole stage show for his Pee Wee Herman character before he could evolve past doing little roles in Cheech and Chong films and make his own mark. Do you think Paper Heart is a good way for you to present your best self to the public?
I think our movie has a lot of things I do in normal stage performances. I like mixing reality with fiction—whenever I bring an audience member up and make them do a half-hour show with me, that’s like them playing with me and taking them for this ride. It isn’t real, but it is real, because it’s a real person and they’re really interacting with me. In Paper Heart, I tried to play myself as much as possible, since I am playing a character named Charlyne Yi, and I am interviewing real people. But sometimes I am weird and I don’t come off natural, even when I am being myself. I think this is a good representation of me trying to be myself, ha ha! I don’t know if I always want to be myself in other roles, but I don’t know if I have a choice, because I don’t have range. I wish I had more range. That’d be awesome!

CHARLYNE YI’S PAPER HEART ON FRI., JUNE 25, AT THE L.A. FILM FESTIVAL AT THE LANDMARK 8, 10850 W. PICO BLVD., LOS ANGELES. 5 PM / $12 / ALL AGES. LAFILMFEST.COM. VISIT CHARLYNE YI AT MYSPACE.COM/CHARLYNEYI.

Download: Ya Ho Wha 13 “Treat You So Right”

(from Magnificence in the Memory out June 23 on Drag City)

Ya Ho Wha 13 were the band formed out of the pre-dawn practice sessions that served also as morning meditation for the Source Family, the L.A.-area religious sect that ran their own health food restaurant during the ‘70s. They released nine albums but recorded hours of material. Drag City has collected nine unreleased songs for this month’s Magnificence in the Memory. This interview by Dan Collins.

How did you get your name, Isis?
Isis Aquarian (Source Family historian): It was the family name given to me. Father said that the names we were given were for several reasons—either because that’s the name that we needed to learn from, or that’s the name of who we were, or that’s the name we needed to get qualities from. In other words, whatever name we had, nobody could go on an ego trip about because you never knew why you had that name.
You never had an ego trip about being named after an Egyptian goddess?
No, not really! I always related to her, though. Manly P. Hall from the Philosophical Research Society—who did Secret Teachings of All Ages—was a mentor to Father when he was Jim Baker, before he became Father and started the Source. And we had gone over to see Manly P. Hall in the early days, and he handed Father a list of names, and he said ‘These names are the names to give the people in the Family.’ And we went back and people either picked what name they liked, or Father gave them a name. And somebody gave me the name Isis, and I didn’t relate to it. I said, ‘No, I’m not going to take that name!’ And Father was standing there and he said, ‘No, that’s your name.’
What was your original role in the Family and in the Source?
I had known Father as Jim Baker, when he had his other restaurant called the Old World. He had three restaurants—the Aware Inn, the Old World, and he opened up the Source. And they were all within, I would say, four or five blocks of each other on Sunset Boulevard. And they were all very famous. And he had his first two as Jim Baker. I met him, he had the Old World, and he was living with his wife of the time, Dora, a French girl. And I became friends with Dora, and I hung out at the Old World. And I knew Jim, but we never seemed to really connect, which was very strange, because he was very good looking, and he was the kind that would flirt with everybody. But there just seemed to be a hold on us at the time. But then I went my way, and he went his way, and I ended up living with Ron Raffaelli. He was a famous rock photographer—he was known as Jimi Hendrix’s photographer. That’s how I met him. I was asked to go on a shoot with Jimi Hendrix, and we became engaged. And I had my life at the studio with him for a couple years. And I had heard that Jim had opened up the Source, and was being known as Father, and was starting a spiritual family. We were looking for a group of people with long hair that looked like Jesus, because we were doing a poster for Jesus Christ Superstar. And I said to Ron, ‘I know where there’s a bunch of people running around looking like Jesus. They’re at this place called the Source! I’m going to go down there—I’ll get us some models.’ So I drove down to the Source, and oh my god, the place was incredible. As soon as you stepped near it, you knew something was happening. And I stepped onto the patio, and I asked for Jim Baker and somebody said ‘Oh, you mean Father.’ And he came walking out, and he was like 6’3’, and he looked like Moses. He had long hair and a beard, and he was no longer the Jim Baker I knew. And I was immediately smitten, as they say, and he just embraced me and said ‘I was wondering how long it was going to take you to come home—to come back.’ And I basically forgot what I was even doing there. And he invited me to come to morning meditation the next day, and then I basically never left. So I just walked out of my home life and became a full time part of the Source family.
How old were you?
I was in my late twenties. A lot of the kids were sixteen, seventeen, and in their early twenties. I’m not saying I was the oldest one there, but I had also known Jim Baker so I wasn’t intimidated by him. Most people were finding their guru and their masters, and I found him as my earthly spiritual father, for sure. But I knew that I had a destiny with him. I basically became his right hand—that’s what he called me. The Family had other names for me. ‘Bulldog’—you know there’s a bulldog in every family. And ‘hatchet lady,’ ‘dragon lady’…
Did you like those nicknames?
It didn’t bother me, no. In fact, ‘Dragon Lady’ was kind of endearing! You had your role, and you played it out, and Father always had my back.
When did the band Ya Ho Wa 13 start?
We had musicians in the Family that would always gather and play. We weren’t doing anything ‘musically,’ but we did realize we had some very talented musicians. Music seemed to be playing all around the house. And that was the thing to do back then. Everybody carried a guitar. It was like music was the new language. And one day I think Octavius came in and was talking about being a drummer, and a lot of people had been musicians, and just gave it up when they came in—whatever any of us were, we gave up when we came in. It was of no necessity at that point. And I just remember Father one day saying, ‘Wait a minute. I have a drummer. I have a guitar player. I have a bass player. We have singers. We have a band. Let’s do some music!’ So, bands started being formed to see what we wanted to do with them. And at this point, Father wasn’t really in them—he was just having fun seeing what we could do. And because we were very famous, and everybody came to the Source, all the movie producers, directors, musicians—John Lennon was there all the time—they all came there. So we figured, ‘Well jeez, we can just start letting people hear it and see if we can do something with it.’
I heard you would play every day from 3 to 6 in the morning! When did you sleep?
Right! That was when we gathered for morning meditation. Father would be so full of energy and so excited, and he would say, ‘Let’s go to the band room!’ And the band room was just a converted garage off the meditation room, and speakers had been hooked up, so no matter what was happening, we could all hear it. Because we all couldn’t fit in the band room.
A lot of your movement’s spiritual beginnings and influences have been chronicled. But what seem less well known are the specifics of the musical side of things.
He formed Ya Ho Wa 13 and started playing with it, and that was like his signature when he started playing with the Family. It’s not like he could play or sing. It was another way of morning meditation. It was another way of his talking about the wisdom teachings. He often said, ‘Long after I’m gone, my teachings will continue because of the music we’re doing now. Music has no barriers. Everyone understands music because it’s a soul thing.’
One of the interesting things about your band is that, given your spiritual and cosmological underpinnings and your emphasis on improvisation and spontaneity, I was expecting you to sound like Sun Ra or something jazzy. But you guys are a rock ‘n’ roll combo.
Very much so. When the band first now started getting back together, I was wondering how it was going to work. Because when you have the head guy no longer there, how does that work? And I know the public’s been going on the albums that had Father in it, like Penetration. So when the three Brothers got together and decided to continue playing as Ya Ho Wa 13, it was interesting to see how that was going to play out: Octavius, drummer, Djin, guitar, and Sunflower, bass.
Was there ever fighting about the music?
There were disagreements, but we never got into bickering or arguing. The short time we lived together was so incredible because we lived in a space and time out of this reality. Certain things didn’t exist that exist for us now that we’re back. We lived in a kind of free zone where certain rules and regulations didn’t exist. We related to people’s souls, not their personalities. When the Family dispersed—and now we’re trying to deal with each other again thirty years later—we’re just starting to relearn those techniques. In 2001, we had our first big reunion, and the last ten years we’ve just been dealing on a social level with each other and trying to be nice. A lot of stuff has come up that we never got to work on, because we all just left. It was like The Day the Earth Stood Still. We looked around and nobody was there.
I remember reading that the Beatles were a big influence on the band.
I think definitely because that’s what the band grew up with. The Beatles were very cosmic. They had stepped over into spirituality, and they were given incredible messages.
Were there specific Beatles songs that you wanted to emulate?
No, once the Family was formed we didn’t listen to other people’s music.
You never stepped into a discotheque or club and heard another band?
The only time that happened was in the early days when we did try stuff like that. We got booked at the Whisky a Go Go, and we walked into the Whisky a Go Go in our robes and our long hair—and we did get laughed at! But when they got up on the stage, everybody was quiet because they could sing. They had some good music happening.
But you must have noticed that at the same time you were making this music, bands such as Pink Floyd, they were doing the same…
Oh, yes, absolutely! I do know that we opened the Crater Festival in 1976, sunrise, here in Hawaii for the 200th anniversary of America, and we opened for Sly and the Family Stone. We asked for that slot, and we led the thousands of people in Diamondhead Crater in star exercise, and we got them chanting.
Do you think if any band forms, even if it’s just four or five people, that something spiritual forms?
Music seems to touch the largest amount of people at one time than anything I know about all over the world. It has no barriers, it has no race, it doesn’t distinguish between color, religion, and nationality. You can put a song on and put it out over the airwaves, and thousands of people, their soul can get out of it whatever it gets out of it.
Contemporaries of yours in the avant-garde, such as La Monte Young and Angus Maclise, have kind of said that there is a spiritual plane you can achieve with pure musical tones. Was there a certain way of playing for you that was more in tune with your spiritual quest?
We were into frequencies. Like—the F note is the sound of nature. And the fact that vibration, if you tune into like a F note and another F note comes before, then you vibrate. Like a tuning fork. He tried that with the gong and the kettle drum. We had the gong from Dr. Zhivago—the movie! He bought it and we still have it, and it’s huge! Often in morning meditation, when we weren’t even doing anything with the music, he would have us all go into meditation, and he would do the gong throughout chakras because the gong had the frequencies—all the frequencies of the chakras.
There was kind of a no-drug policy, wasn’t there? Despite your band being considered psychedelic?
I think marijuana, since we don’t consider it a drug—that is probably being used.
But psychedelics like mushrooms or LSD?
No, no, we didn’t do it in the Family, and as far as I know, it’s not being done now. The family dispersed and we all went our ways and created a new life with new members, and so some thirty years later, we all are not on the same page and we are not responsible for what anyone does or does not. As human beings now out here on our own, it has made it somewhat harder to ‘ante up’ as they say.
Sky Saxon, who joined the band later, has been known to have some drug issues. Did he have those when he was in the band?
Sky Saxon was an entity unto himself. He does his thing. I’m talking about Ya Ho Wa 13.
Whoa! Are you saying the album he recorded with Ya Ho Wa 13 was outside the realm of what you consider their music?
Um… well, during the Family days, after Father left and said he was no longer going to be in the band, he invited Sky—‘Arelick’ was his family name—into the band. And they renamed the band Fire Water Air. And it either didn’t do anything, or we moved. We didn’t accomplish or finish a lot of what we did because we would move and go on to something else, and it was disruptive of what we were doing.
Was Sky part of the Source?
He was. He would kind of come and go, though. Father loved him, but he was always just Sky! The way he is now is the way he was back then. And I think Sky does a lot of things that the rest of us don’t do.
Was there a conscious decision about which instruments to use in the band?
No, that’s just the instrumentation that the band played. And I think it’s the basic formation of a band that you have drum, guitar, and bass, right?
Definitely in rock ‘n’ roll. But did you ever introduce any other instruments?
I think they brought in Pythias for a while on guitar, and Lovely with a violin. Lovely was Andre Previn’s daughter. That was one of the forms of Ya Ho Wa 13 that Father was trying to put together. And they brought in a couple other brothers—Home, who sang and played guitar, and Rhythm, who played piano. After we left L.A., we tried different forms of the band, when we moved to San Francisco and moved to Hawaii.
Brian Wilson considered himself a very spiritual songwriter, and made many songs about Hawaii. You still live there now! Is there a spiritual purity there?
There was to us. Hawaii is very clean. The air is clean. We don’t have pollution. We have nice weather all year. It’s called paradise for a reason!
Were you happy with the Obama presidency being that he was a resident of Hawaii?
I don’t really ‘do’ politics, but as far as being a local Hawaii boy, he’s right here where I live—Kahlua. When he stayed here, he was just like three blocks down the street. We saw him on the beach all the time.
Did he go surfing?
He tried to, but the Secret Service wouldn’t let him surf anymore!

YA HO WHA 13’S MAGNIFICENCE IN THE MEMORY RELEASES TUE., JUNE 23, ON DRAG CITY. VISIT YA HO WHA 13 AT YAHOWHA13.COM. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON YA HO WHA 13 AND THE SOURCE FAMILY, SEE THE SOURCE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF FATHER YOD, YA HO WHA 13 AND THE SOURCE FAMILY BY ISIS AND ELECTRICITY AQUARIAN AVAILABLE NOW FROM PROCESS MEDIA. PROCESSMEDIAINC.COM.

Download: Chairlift “Bruises”

(from Does You Inspire You out now on Columbia)

Chairlift are from a haunted hotel in Colorado but moved to Brooklyn to pursue music more intensely and to be intensely pursued by people who recognize them from an iPod commercial. They speak from Paris in between kissing graves and delivering DJ sets. Their album Does You Inspire You has been re-released on Columbia. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

Have you visited the Paris catacombs yet?
Aaron Pfenning (vocals/electronics/guitar): No. I went to Père Lachaise, the big cemetery where Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde are buried.
Whose grave did you kiss first?
Randomly, Oscar Wilde’s because I got to it first, but it’s a great place to explore and get totally lost in. I was there at 6:30 AM and there was definitely a group of four teenagers at Jim Morrison’s grave. I can’t imagine what it’s like later in the day.
What is the most ostentatious grave you’ve ever visited?
Well, I think probably Hunter Thompson’s. I wasn’t really that close to it. I was going to school in Boulder—right when we started the band—and my friend Kyle was also in Chairlift before Patrick was and we drove up for the celebration where they shot him out of a cannon. We weren’t there—we were on the outside. You could definitely hear it. There were fireworks and everything.
What was it like when Hunter S. Thompson was blasted into eternity right before your very eyes?
It’s like hearing the new Grizzly Bear album. It punches you in the stomach.
I heard you’re handy with a Ouija board.
Yes, but only in the wintertime. We don’t play in the summer months. It’s not really appropriate. Spirits come out more in cold weather. There’s more electricity in the air when the weather is colder. And it’s easier for spirits to travel when there’s more electricity in the air so they just naturally come out more in the winter.
What’s the most profound thing you’ve learned about yourself from a Ouija board?
Probably just how true a Scorpio I really am.
Like in the story about the scorpion stinging the frog who carries him across the river? That was one of Philip K. Dick’s favorites.
I should know that because I love Phillip K. Dick. Well, actually the only one I have is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? We’re really into sci-fi—the whole band is into sci-fi, Western and goth things. Dune by Frank Herbert and the Phillip K. Dick one are my top two. Caroline’s reading Necromancer so I get that after her. I have friends with library cards.
But you don’t have library cards? How easily could you disappear from society?
Oh, I think we could disappear pretty easily. We’ve traveled so many places that we’ve actually scouted towns and said ‘This is the place we would come if we needed to disappear.’ It’s gotta be a place where you can stay healthy so it at least has to have some organic source of food. Clean water and a place to buy records. There’s about seven places.
Would the same things that make you work as a band make you work as criminals, too?
Yes, I think so. It’s possible that we are criminals. Just in a basic pop music level. My new favorite pop criminal is this guy called the Dream. He produced songs like Beyonce’s “Single Ladies,” but just came out with his own album a few months ago. We’re DJing tonight in Paris and basically, we put his record on and have a dance party. You can play any track from his record and it would work.
Can you imagine a situation where you would have to say, ‘No, Kate Bush—no, absolutely not!’?
I almost could never say no to Kate Bush. I would trust Kate Bush with almost anything.
Describe the bond you guys have with the Crystal Antlers.
The last time we were in Paris, we had a really great DJ dance party with them and I think they were filming part of their movie. We’re in it somewhere but we don’t know what roles we play but I can’t wait to see it. We vibe well together. We can be in a room and dance or we can be in a room and nod our heads. I love them; they’re one of my favorite bands to see live. We were in a coffeeshop in Stockholm a while ago and they had their record up on the wall and nobody there knew what it was. For some reason they had Crystal Antlers vinyl framed on the wall and no one knew why. It was so weird.
What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever come across your record?
I heard ‘Evident Utensil’ in the JFK airport. I think I mentioned it to the waitress and she gave me a free coffee.
What kind of things are you going to take advantage of with this new record on Columbia?
We were actually just talking about making the new record tonight and I think it’s going to happen sooner rather than later, hopefully this winter. We’re talking about going to one of the seven disappearing towns and recording it there. We’ll be bringing along a special guest to help engineer with us but I can’t say.
Is it Steve Albini? Did you refresh yourself with his essay about not signing to a major?
We were approached by a lot of labels and we signed to Columbia because we met with the head people and we told them exactly what our plans were. And they said they would not interfere with anything we wanted to do and the reason they liked us is because we generate our own ideas and carry them out on our own. They said ‘Keep having the ideas that you have and we’ll give you the resources to do it.’ And they haven’t at all tried to force us to do anything.
Do you think the independent vs. major distinction is still relevant?
It’s hard to say because the way Columbia’s working—in the U.S. at least—is that they’ve totally restructured. I think it’s a survival mechanism and record labels like Columbia are working with smaller PR and radio promotion companies so we’re still sort of trying to do our own thing.
What’s your favorite Columbia record?
I think when it comes down to it, probably Jeff Buckley’s Grace.
How do you want history to remember Chairlfit?
I’m worried history will remember Chairlift as either a joke or an iPod band because we have some silly aspects that we embrace but personally, that’s not what I like about us. I want us to be remembered for putting on a good live show and having some sort of powerful presence in a live setting. And being able to tie album themes together, visually and fashion-wise and musically.
How do you rehearse for interviews?
We don’t rehearse. We had to do four interviews in the hotel today and we rehearsed by taking showers and we all wore our bathrobes in the lobby.
What is your favorite album of all time that is not Air’s Talkie Walkie?
I would say John Lennon Imagine.
What is your personal vision of the end of the world?
I personally think that it’s going to be a massive planet quake and severe electrical storms and we all fall into the ocean and become orcas.
When you were living in Boulder, did you ever go to Casa Bonita? Even though it was in Denver?
I did and I left within ten minutes because I was born in Oklahoma and there was a Casa Bonita there. I always went and they had these puppet shows. I loved those puppet shows. It was way smaller than the one in Denver and there’s no cliff diving. It was really creepy. It’s a creepy place to go. What I loved was the music they played during the puppet shows. I still think about it. It’s like dulcimers—it’s like the Fiery Furnaces composing for a puppet show in Oklahoma. The one in Denver was lame and it was just kind of sad for me to walk into a place that had such a profound affect on me and feel nothing.
Is that the moment you realized you were a grown man?
I have not realized that yet.

CHAIRLIFT WITH LUKE TOP ON THUR., JUNE 18, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30PM / $10 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. CHAIRLIFT’S DOES YOU INSPIRE YOU IS OUT NOW ON COLUMBIA. VISIT CHAIRLIFT AT CHAIRLIFTMUSIC.COM OR ON MYSPACE AT MYSPACE.COM/CHAIRLIFT.

Download: The Polyamorous Affair “Eastern”

(from Bolshevik Disco out this summer on Manimal Vinyl)

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

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

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

Eminence Front and Hula Hoops: Having no choice, I’ll own being the guy who looks like Sting standing in the back of L.A. rock venues scribbling on fragments of actual paper. I don’t mind the work and only tourists take the actual cat before their faces as the for-reals-dawg Gordon Sumner of two decades ago. Thus does my faith in human intelligence dim a little every year at Coachella, the giant music and art festival held annually in remote and dusty Indio. It was my fourth time covering the event and first for L.A. RECORD, a publication I’m happy to report needs zero introduction among the rock cognoscenti swamped inside the variegated mass of bikers, geezers, ravekids, hucksters, b-boyz, flygirls, mainstream families and, yes, tourists; with every twentieth of the latter pointing a tentative digit at my face and mouthing “Aren’t you…” under the all-obliterating sonic uproar. Such hopeful gawkerati also spotted Paris Hilton in the crowd this year, along with Jared Leto, Alicia Silverstone, David Hasselhoff, Reese Witherspoon, Keenan Ivory Wayans and more sweating with the commonality at this Great American Rockshow. Bitsy, my driver and plus-one, has a pleasant form of celebrity as the bomb-ass chick whose hula-hoop workout on the roof of her building in the Hollywood flats draws hundreds of daily spectators, with necks craning from as far as the Roosevelt Hotel. Her hips and hoop carved us a path this past weekend through a mob made agreeable, even buttery, by some of the best music likely ever played in Riverside County.

Time Waits For One Man: The weather on Friday was excellent, so Felix Da Housecat’s set at the Sahara was packed to overflow with ravers and my driver drew the first of many crowds with her hooping. At the big stage, the Airborne Toxic Event disappointed, seeming to wilt a bit in their dark clothes, but the Black Keys turned in a rousing gutbucket-rock set done in the grand manner, channeling the first-wave festival eminences like Deep Purple and the Who. Going next, Franz Ferdinand hit the mark completely, turning in a polished and ferocious performance that rocked many a skeptical veteran of the Glaswegians’ mainstage outings in previous years. The crowd at mainstage next came to grips with Morrissey, with the celebrated (if tubby) romantic opening for headliner Paul McCartney. Alas, we were far away at the Gobi (throwing down to heroic dancefloor sets by Bug and Peanut Butter Wolf) when Moz threw his celebrated bitchfit, storming offstage in the middle of his performance, his still-fetching nose sickened by the smell of frying burgers. Leaving a whirling Bitsy with our cool-as-fuck campmates, I met my friend Kirsten at the Do Lab’s rocking misting station, and we dallied at Silversun Pickups’ triumphant star turn on the Outdoor Stage. I’ve followed these local prodigies from their earliest appearences and they laid into the audience with new songs off Swoon, a long-awaited sophomore album fitting punky rhythms, sheets of decorative noise and an adroit four-fingered salute to Iron Butterfly into the band’s established sound. Guitarist Brian Auber bitched wittily about the Cute Beatle, as the rest of Friday night began shutting down and we drifted to the mainstage for the Act We’ve Known For All These Years.

Anon roared the profound nonsense of “Jet” and a spry and slender sexagenarian named Sir Paul McCartney went on a 33-song stomp though one of the premier music catalogs of the twentieth century. The set incorporated songs by John and George along with a few surprises and a long trawl through his 1970s and ‘80s Wings albums. From the square of way upfront where we stood, it looked like a big chunk of Macca’s present-day fanbase is composed of tender-looking indie-pop kids and these imps were as blown away as any of the hard-bitten journos who raved of Friday’s finale. Like the peachfuzztone young ‘uns prostrate before Roger Waters at last year’s festival, they’d come to see someone (correctly) regarded as one of the Immortals and a still-vibrant presence in their own rock ‘n’ roll lives. Sir Paul outlasted everything else on the lot, going on almost an hour past the 1 AM closing. Looking at beginnings of the second-highest take in festival history, organizers wisely decided the $1000-a-minute the city of Indio charges for after-curfew music was the merest bagatelle.

We Are the Night: The hour was well advanced by the time we made it out to the Polo Grounds on for Saturday’s bop-til-you-drop. Drive-By Truckers were shivering to a bravura conclusion with a cover of Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died” at the Outdoor as Michael Franti & Spearhead (who were playing late-night desert gatherings of Burners just a few years back) were vibing tribally from the big stage. Passing the Mojave stage on our way to dance to the Bloody Beetroots DJ set at the Sahara, I saw a tiny Henry Rollins deep within, belaboring a milling fringe of onlookers like the village atheist. As the sun went down, longtime Coachella vets Thievery Corporation did a rousing beat-heavy set on the mainstage, heavy with their patented thundering harmonics and bracing agitprop. I left the din with a lovely campmate named Kat to check out Booker T. & the DBTs, with members of Drive-By Truckers backing organist Booker T. Jones, venerable anchor of 1960s soul giant Stax Records, in a welter of raw Dixie funk. Our by-then swollen party skipped Turbonegro and passed on M.I.A. for the dance-dance immolation incinerating the Sahara for the rest of the night. I heard about the Killers’ less-than-adequate mainstage turn at soured secondhand and felt glad to have trusted my social instincts, as first mash-up kings Crookers then a DJ set by the Chemical Brothers then a balls-out performance by MSTRKRFT slammed beats into a writhing mob of friendlies, with Chem Bros. lifting an already bliss-dosed, e-sodden, candy-flipped-out mob into the stratosphere with a robot-chant of “Some chemicals are good/Some chemicals are bad.” True dat, but the bad were mainly rotten vibes emitted by a pushy wedge of aristos pitching random helots out of the way a few feet from my group. Online sources credit Paris Hilton and her entourage with the brief disturbance, but from what I saw, the culprits could’ve been any clutch of overdressed Hollywood Boulevard shitheels. It was just like a night in the L.A. underground, minus the sketchy nabes and a chance of being mugged.

Feedback Apocalypse: We’d raged hard the night before and the sun was well along its path before Bitsy and I struck camp Sunday afternoon and loaded out for the festival. Staying since Thursday night at a campground by the Salton Sea with a group of sexy party-hardy Burners had the great advantage of dead calm at night, broken every few hours by the symphonic Doppler roar of a Union Pacific freight train high-balling by. Jointly feeling heat exhaustion and sleep deprivation while singly spacing out from individualized drug intake, we tootled the three-dozen miles to Indio on an overheated engine, arriving just in time to miss Perry Ferrell’s now-traditional Sunday DJ slot at the Sahara. We got our groove on briefly with Plump DJs, before gliding past hundreds of exhausted attendees for whom a hooping hottie and some mutant looking like Sting held no interest. We flopped happily far up front at mainstage as lengthening shadows set the mood for My Bloody Valentine. Management was handing out earplugs at the gate and small wonder, since toward the end of “You Made Me Realise,” guitarists Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher (the latter impassive as a Xanax-bombed soccer mom) loosed a gorgeous fifteen-minute-plus feedback annihilation that was easily the loudest thing I’ve ever heard in decades of doting on amplified music. I can’t imagine how the Horrors could hear even themselves going off at the Gobi many hundreds of yards away. It was less a solo than a hideous (and hideously effective) evocation of nightmare; a compressed and aestheticized variation on the opening bombardment at the Somme, another historic din that produced few actual causalties. The crowd, thus blitzed and shit-hammered, was easy mop-up for the Cure, since even the dirgiest of their album tracks sound like 1910 Fruitgum Company by comparison. Bitsy was limp with exhaustion, but these Byronic proto-goths are her favorite-ever band and she was soon slicing circles through the audience with her hoop. I let her decide when she’d had enough and escorted her out when she did, leaving the headliners to what observers described as a power-trawl through B-sides and obscurities that went on until approximately 1:30 a.m. when organizers pulled the plug and the band did two more numbers in the dark. About 70 minutes later, I was standing in front of my crib in Boyle Heights, watching Bitsy’s taillights fade up the street. On my desk was a notice that the cheerful folks at the Lugo Station post office had my ticket to Burning Man 2009. Bon temps roulez, motherfuckos.

—Ron Garmon