Last month, Tom Tom Magazine celebrated its 5th issue with a release party at the Alexandria Hotel in Los Angeles. See photos from the party, here.

Tom Tom Magazine, for those who don’t know, is dedicated to female drummers and beat makers, which is very cool. Since it’s based in New York, founder Mindy Abovitz enlisted Swahili Blonde’s Nicole Turley to give them the lowdown on L.A. women who beat things well, so issue #5 featured Tearist’s Yasmine Kittles, Voices Voices’ Nico Turner & Janean Farris, Danielle Devincenzo of Jeffertitti’s Nile, Laena Myers-Ionita of Swahili Blonde, The Like, & Dante Vs Zombies, Rainbow Arabia’s Tiffany Preston, Cheryl Caddick of Silver Phial, Erica Garcia, formerly of Fool’s Gold, and Amanda Jo Williams.

Amanda Jo Williams, Swahili Blonde, and Crooked Cowboy & The Freshwater Indians played the release party in town. And though technically Crooked Cowboy doesn’t have female percussionists, he has those amazing singers that take “ooh ooh ooh” to a whole ‘nother level. Incredible. I guess that’s vocal percussion—Michael Jackson might say so. He’s the king of that. Anyway, today, a video of Amanda Jo Williams performing “Sunlight” at the party  appeared on a literary magazine’s website. Perhaps it was Tarpaulin Sky Press’s way of celebrating St. Paddy’s? We agree that “Sunlight” is a great song, uplifting, starting at the toes, and reaching up, up, up, until our fingertips sway high above our heads like blades of grass at dawn. And it only takes a minute or so.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q--ynA-Klpc

But it just so happens that Williams helped us celebrate St. Paddy’s on last year’s mixtape, and she did a fine job of that as well. Here is a drinking song by Amanda Jo Williams, “All Is Love In Oral Things We Do.”

MP3: Amanda Jo Williams “All Is Love In Oral Things We Do”

Amanda Jo Williams has got an album coming out at the end of April, called Mary’s Big Feet, on a new local label called Nocturnal Sol. It features many of her great home recordings, including some guest appearances by her son, Jack, who turned 4 years old today! Gosh, we’ve got a lot of celebrating going on! You’ll hear Jack on the song “Blue Toy Airplane,” which you can check out in advance because it kicks in at 1:54 during one of Amanda’s playdate videos, Playdate World Cup DNA Activation.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqBKXLlMsJg

Last but not least, we’re excited to co-present AJW’s Monday night residency at the Echo all April. Have a nice day.

Download: Billy Bragg “O Freedom”

(from Mr. Love And Justice out now on Anti)

Billy Bragg has been mixing pop and politics and hoping to save the youth of America since he started out as ‘one-man Clash’ in 1977. After projects with Wilco and Woody Guthrie, he will present the U.S. premiere of his vocal version of Beethoven’s ‘Ode To Joy’ in Santa Monica. This interview by Dan Collins.

You were one of the first musicians I remember being outspoken about gay rights. The first time I heard your music was 1991—I was really young and I turned on MTV in Oklahoma and saw the video for ‘Sexuality,’ where you had that lyric ‘If you’re gay, I won’t turn you away.’ At the time I thought it was totally icky and gross…
Ha ha—it kind of is icky and gross, but in a nice way! You have to talk about these things, particularly back then when the first notions people had about HIV and AIDS was that you get it from talking to gay people. And it was an awful time when the disease first came to prominence. So that was a message I thought very strongly that I had to put out.
Do you think songs like that actually change people’s minds?
You’ve got to hope. What I’m basically trying to do is give people a different perspective, whether I’m writing a love song or a political song or a song that’s a bit of both. And you’ve got to hope that they will build on that perspective—that the perspective will challenge their own worldview enough to explore a little bit about what you’re talking about. Things that may initially sound a bit icky may years later make sense to them. That’s the way music has affected my life. The music hasn’t itself changed my life, but the ideas it’s given to me have led me to form my own opinions about things.
You seem equally at home writing about the personal and the political. Are there songs where you think you achieved both?
Yeah! There’s a song on my most recent album called ‘I Keep Faith.’ When I perform in front of an audience, I talk to the audience about my faith in their ability to change the world. I feel very strongly that singer/songwriters CAN’T change the world, and that ultimately the responsibility lies with the audience. And ‘I Keep Faith’ allows me to put that idea in front of the audience. But if my son comes to the concert, and while I’m saying this to the audience, he says to my wife—his mum—‘Mum, why doesn’t Dad just tell everybody this is about you?’ Then she has to say to him, ‘Well, it is about me, but it is also about what Dad is talking about. It’s about both of these things.’ I think the best political songs are also love songs, and the best love songs also have that urge to make a difference.
I was thinking about that after the death of Michael Jackson. The Minutemen had a song in the ’80s called ‘Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing.’
A great band! A great band! Much much missed!
Agreed! But in Michael Jackson’s mind, he probably thought of himself as a political songwriter. After all, he did ‘We Are the World’ and ‘Black or White.’
I have no problem with someone like Michael Jackson writing a political song, but they need to then come up with the actions to match that. People have to walk it like they talk it, and that’s the bottom line. Otherwise you’re just exploiting that situation for your own material gain. When I hear a political song, I always look for the actions that go along with that.
Your 2002 album, England, Half-English, is very powerful and one of my favorites. There is that sense of nationalism. But I wonder, isn’t there a danger in nationalism as well? Doesn’t it lead to tariffs and wars and hate?
The reason I made that album is because the far-right were beginning to pick up seats. And for all the worry that we have talking about nationalism, if we don’t talk about it, then we leave it to the fascists and the racists to define who does and who doesn’t belong. For better or for worse, the country I live in is called England. I was born here. I speak English. Why should I have to deny that just because a bunch of racist thugs have abused the name of the country? We need to take these things back, although as you said before, some people may—when they first hear it—find it a bit icky. I’m not joking! Some of my own fans initially didn’t feel comfortable with me talking about these things. But I spent time explaining where I was coming from—in fact, I wrote a book about it, ultimately.
In the United States, a lot of lefties like myself have big problems with the way we have treated African Americans and Native Americans and immigrants in the past. But we do have reverence for our founding fathers, despite their faults. Is there an era of English history where you look back like that?
Same era, really. It’s around that time that we chopped off the king’s head and began to have a different kind of idea about how our country should be governed. The period we refer to as the Civil War in the 1640s was actually a period of revolution. The sort of country the founding fathers were trying to live in, we were trying to create then—but it didn’t quite come off. There was a time when we were getting really near to having a proper democracy—200 years before we really achieved it. And that would be a good time to look back to be inspired. The army in the Civil War actually had a rank that was called ‘Agitator,’ which was someone who went out and agitated for change—for more democracy. That idea of the English Commonwealth—our Civil War was fought about the principal of bringing the King to account. Was the King above the law, or was the King within the law? And that idea of accountability is still a very important concept both in your country and my country.
Is there a way in the U.S. to embrace a leftist nationalism like that?
If you care about your country and want it to be a fairer country, if you share in Martin Luther King’s dream, if you want universal healthcare—you’re a patriot, as far as I’m concerned. Patriotism comes in many types. They’re not all defined by Pat Buchanan. I thought George Bush represented a small clique of people in the United States of America—I think Barack Obama represents a much wider slice of the American people. And there’s a nationalism in that.
Perhaps the problem in America is that we’ve watered down our folk-heroes. We’ve watered down Martin Luther King, we’ve watered down Helen Keller…
Woody Guthrie, we’ve watered down! There are extra verses to ‘This Land Is Your Land’ that they don’t teach you in school.
Have country, folk, and bluegrass musicians pushed aside their rebellious, progressive roots? I interviewed Earl Scruggs a few months back, and he really shied away from talking about his anti-war stance during the sixties.
Well, he wasn’t someone who chose playing bluegrass as a career option out of a career portfolio of things he could do. He was an ordinary working man who happened to play bluegrass, and it worked for him. He was trying to reflect his own experiences, and I have a lot of respect for people who try and do that.
Do you say that because the same thing is not true for you? You do seem to have a large portfolio of things you can do. I was pretty impressed that you’re doing this Beethoven thing in August.
Well, whether collaborating with Woody Guthrie, Wilco, or Beethoven and a symphony orchestra, it’s all the same sort of deal, really. It’s all about doing something that’s more interesting than just working the way you normally work.
You were lucky enough to record some of Woody Guthrie’s unreleased songs a decade ago with Wilco.
To write new music to some songs that he wrote. Because he—like me—doesn’t read music. He’s not musically trained. When he writes a song, he just writes the words and keeps the tune in his head. Which I do. If I died tomorrow, those tunes would be lost forever, but the words would still be there. And that’s what we got from Woody. We got complete lyrics to work with. I did a gig in 1992 in Central Park—an 80th birthday celebration for Woody Guthrie. His daughter Nora was there, and she saw something in the songs I sang and the way I performed them that reminded her of her father. And she began writing to me and sending me lyrics and asking me if I was interested in this project. And eventually, in the late nineties, it all came together rather wonderfully with Wilco.
Supposedly you guys had some creative friction during the making of that album.
We made a film of the whole process called Man in the Sand. And there is part of that film that reflects how Jeff Tweedy and I had differences of opinion about the production of the record. The basic deal was that whoever wrote the song would produce that song. And that was a pretty good deal, I thought. And that’s how we worked. But in the middle of the process, after we’d been in the studio working together really, really well, Wilco sent some mixes of my stuff that they suggested, and I just had to say, ‘Look guys, we have a deal. I’m not going to mix your stuff. I’d rather you didn’t mix my stuff.’ And that’s how we left it. The real proof of our working relationship is that when it came time to release Volume 2, they went back and recorded half a dozen new songs—at their own expense—which made that second album a much more Wilco-like album. If they really had a falling out with me or I had a falling out with them, they wouldn’t have made a contribution. I would work together with them tomorrow at the drop of the hat.
Maybe you can play both albums together at Coachella sometime.
It’s Woody’s Centenary in 2012, and if Nora Guthrie doesn’t manage to get us to play together, I think she’ll be very angry! Both me and Jeff, we do what Nora tells us to do because we’re part of the family now. I hope we can come together to do some shows.
Did you ever write ‘This Machine Kills Fascists’ on your guitar like Woody did?
When I was in a punk band, I wrote ‘This Guitar Says ‘Sorry.’’
What was it like playing folk to punk audiences?
When I started, it was still punk. It was just one guy with an electric guitar playing punk. It was only when I started coming to America that people compared me to Woody Guthrie. In England, everyone said I was a ‘one man Clash!’ I would still try to live up to that today!
When I created a Billy Bragg Pandora station, it came back and played a lot of Elvis Costello.
Elvis to me was the ultimate singer-songwriter, because it had a backbone to it. It had an edge to it. It wasn’t apologetic like so many of the others. It was hard-edged punk rock singer-songwriter. Elvis kind of makes it okay to get on stage with a symphony orchestra.
Or to play with Burt Bacharach! Or to grow a long beard!
I’m not sure I’ll be singing Burt anytime soon, but I will be singing Beethoven.
I’m looking forward to it. But why the Ninth Symphony?
Well, I was involved in an event to celebrate the reopening of a London concert venue called the Royal Festival Hall. It had been built in the fifties and they refurbished it. And as part of the reopening ceremonies, they were having a weekend of events which culminated in a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth—the fourth movement, the final bit. ‘Ode to Joy.’ They asked me to write some lyrics for it. Fortunately, it happens to be one of my favorite pieces of classical music. So I duly wrote a new English-language lyric.
Can you give our audience just a little taste of one of the lyrics to your libretto to ‘Ode to Joy’?
The chorus is ‘Brother, Sister, stand together! Raise your voices now as one—though, by history divided, reconcile in unison.’
Do you think you have a unique gift for delivering lyrics like that un-ironically and unapologetically?
I really took my queue from the line in Beethoven’s original, which is ‘Alle menschen werden brüder…’ ‘All men become brothers.’’ When you see that that was the original intent of the lyrics, that verse to me is a very strong. My lyric is not a translation at all, but I took the original sentiment from Beethoven and Friedrich Schiller.
When you played Beethoven for the first time, you played for the Queen of England!
She came to the gig. I wasn’t playing for her. It was being performed, and she kind of came to the gig and sat in the royal box. And it was very funny, because when we were in a higher box on the other side of the theater, you could kind of see what she was doing. And when they were singing my lyrics, she was kind of following them with her finger in the program! And afterwards, she sent a footman down to ask if she could have a copy of the score signed by Mr. Bragg.
You weren’t tempted to yell at her? ‘Off with her head! Another revolution! I’m an agitator!’
No, I wasn’t really. To be perfectly honest with you, my mum was there! It’s not often you get to do something that impresses your mum in rock ‘n’ roll!

BILLY BRAGG PERFORMING BEETHOVEN’S NINTH WITH DWIGHT TRIBLE, BANDA PHILHARMONICA, SUZIE GLAZE, ERNEST TROOST, JUSTIN BISCHOF, THE BAKER + TARPAGA DANCE PROJECT AND MORE ON SAT., AUG. 29, AT THE BROAD STAGE, 1310 11TH ST., SANTA MONICA. 7 PM / $55-$100 / ALL AGES. BEETHOVENBRAGG.COM. BILLY BRAGG’S MR. LOVE AND JUSTICE IS OUT NOW ON ANTI-. VISIT BILLY BRAGG AT BILLYBRAGG.CO.UK OR MYSPACE.COM/BILLYBRAGG.

Stream: The Minutemen “History Lesson Part 2″

(from Double Nickels on the Dime available on SST)

The Minutemen’s Double Nickels On The Dime is one of the several weathered foundations of L.A. RECORD and one of the few albums still alive with the weird outside-inside energy of punk as it was once in California and the world. Exactly twenty-five years later, it still starts bands and makes friends. Minutemen bassist Mike Watt meets for pizza at San Pedro’s excellent Pavich’s Pizza for remembering D. Boon and George Hurley and that guy Mike Watt in the summer of 1984. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

You turned fifty in December and now Double Nickels is having its 25th anniversary.
I was 25 or 26 when I recorded this? Half of my life. The biggest thing about that guy Mike Watt in those days of 25-year-olds was really getting my mind blown by Ulysses. That was the big thing in my mind right then. It had a big impact on me. It made me wonder so much about the world. It’s funny how things come around. That record was a trippy time in the Minutemen’s life. In the punk era. Going back 25 years—it’s part of the past now! It’s a signifier in some ways—my life and other peoples’ lives. Like people knowing us and the punk movement—people who got the record, never saw us live. Keith and Tim did the We Jam Econo documentary. A lot of bands from the older times don’t have things done on them like that. They didn’t know a lot about the band—they knew from the record, but they wanted to find out about us. It became a thing unto itself—a touchstone. Not unto itself because it was obviously a scene—without a scene, there woulda been no Nickels, no Minutemen, no Econo. I don’t wanna get carried away—conceited! It’s just how it works out. We never thought we were a better band than anybody. We were happy as hell to be along with the team. We didn’t wanna be on top of the pile. I think every band had its own trip. There’s enough people to tell what’s right and wrong with music in books and shit. I don’t get into that. One good thing I like about it—is for D. Boon. A lot of times you get killed in your younger days, you get forgotten. I know the reason in my case—I liked him a lot and the fella could pay really good. For other cats to be aware of him—keeping the Minutemen in mind like that—in a weird way, his art is living. Some of his spirit is out there. For me, I owe him everything.
Where can you hear Boon the most on Nickels?
Maybe ‘Anxious Mofo’—that solo he does! Hardly any notes! It’s just great. And he does a great one in the instrumental—‘June 16.’ A lot of the words were influenced by Jim Joyce. The glory of man and all this. On ‘June ’16,’ Boon does a really good guitar solo, too. Hurley plays smoking drums on almost all of it. There’s a lot of dynamics with those two guys. Little tiny song settings. I’m trying to glue things together. I don’t do much bass solo on that record. I don’t think any.
Who drew the anchor on the label?
D. Boon. Punk records only had the writing on one side. With the way the lyrics are on the sleeve, we got the idea from Wire. Just put it out like prose instead of poetry.
Who wrote ‘Arena rock is new wave’ in the dead wax?
Joe Carducci came up with all those. I don’t know his commentary. [Looking at the photos in the gatefold] These pictures—this is Richard Meltzer, this is Joe Baiza. I just cut these pictures out. I had a posterboard. This is our first paid gig at Starwood. These two school buses—we rented these and played in them in Mojave on a dry lakebed. We had to wear sunglasses because the dust was blowing so hard. This is the Federal Building in west L.A.—I think it’s Rock Against Racism or Reagan. Maybe both. The camera people were taking pictures of a girl with a mohawk—they were way more into that than filming bands, so I’m turning it up. You can see how the scissors I used—pinking shears! I like these pictures. I don’t know—so casual. Boon’s got his fist up! And Georgie…
I know you did the record like Ummagumma—everyone got a solo song. ‘Cohesion,’ ‘Take 5, D’…
Georgie’s is ‘You Need The Glory.’ D. Boon never wrote a song with my words. I would write with his words all the time, but they weren’t words he wrote for me. They were little thoughts he put on paper and left around. That shit didn’t have rhymes—it was just thoughts, observations. He would use his words if he had rhymes—‘This Ain’t No Picnic.’ There were some misfires on this, I think. We did another version of ‘Little Man With A Gun In His Hand’—this came out such a lame version!
You said before you gotta spread a lot of manure to be a farmer.
Well, we wanted to match up to the Huskers because they had a double album. Kind of a challenge. I thought the band always did better when we were challenged. And it caught the band at a great time when Georgie was still writing us words.
At work, right?
He’d have to go in and work a lathe, so they’re kind of abstract. And the band had played enough that we could bring songs together really quick. Me and D. Boon were always quick because we grew up together but it always took time to show Georgie. We never wanted him in back—we wanted him just as involved. We’d spend a lot of time working out. This time, he could learn to feel it. He knew when he’d have a break or pause. The songs were coming real quick. The big problem was how were we gonna put 45 songs in order? We knew it was gonna be four sides. The way a record works, the needle works its way to the label. I kinda figured we’d have the shitty ones on the label and the good ones outside. How is this gonna happen? If we draw straws to find an order—first second third, pick one at a time. And good songs go first and lame ones get left, and the fourth side is nobody. I think Georgie got first pick and what’s he pick? His solo song! If you look at his side—all Hurley! I got second pick—I picked ‘Mike Jackson’ first, and Boon got third and picked ‘Anxious Mofo.’ Here’s a weird one—Hurley/Boon. Not a lot of Hurley/Boon. ‘Two Beads At The End,’ which we used to always crack up. It was always hard to know what Georgie was singing about. Private meanings. So we thought two butt beads hanging out—start you up like a lawnmower! I haven’t looked at this in a long time. D. Boon’s side is a lot of his stuff. And mine—a lot of Watt ones! Maybe we were picking songs from our own stuff—I thought I was picking for good! And it turns out the good ones are kinda on the outside. We didn’t want no favoritism. All divided even. A democratic thing. D. Boon would like that political idea.
How did ‘History Lesson’ end up on the label? That’s one of the very best songs.
Nobody wanted it! Second to last pick. D. Boon’s last pick was ‘One Reporter’s Opinion.’ Liked the guitar, a lotta guitar solo—hated the idea of my name in the song. I did that a lot. And ‘History Lesson’ had my name in it, too. The last two songs picked. The fourth side all unpicked. The Henry song, D. Boon’s ‘Song for Latin America,’ Martin the Reactionaries singer—no one wanted them!
Where did ‘History Lesson’ come from?
I wrote it and I kinda got the lick from Velvet Underground ‘Here She Comes Now.’ Mugger kept playing it over and over. I wrote it kind of for hardcore kids. Velvet music is kind of slow, but I thought everybody should be able to relate to playing with your buddy in a band. I guess some dudes real young think of being a rock star, but a lot of dudes start just to be with their friend. A lot of the idea—we didn’t seem like guys in a band. Kind of strange in a way. But personable! People could know us. They like a song where we talk about each other. A lot of times, D. Boon would be pulled off stage by bouncers thinking he was just some dude in the crowd! Me sometimes but D. Boon a lot—they just couldn’t believe he was in a band!
‘And Mr. Narrator, this is like Bob Dylan to me?’
We didn’t know what words were for in songs when we were boys. We thought it was like lead guitar. We didn’t know meanings and shit. But Dylan seemed like a weird uncle at Thanksgiving, muttering and no one paying attention but here’s these weird kind of words. When we were making music as boys, we never thought of music as being expression. Used to get feelings. We thought it was to copy records. Never had the idea you try to get your own thoughts out! As we got older, it seemed maybe Dylan wasn’t so afraid. And if he wasn’t, maybe we shouldn’t be scared. It was kind of confidence for us. The narrator—like a voice in a movie explaining things. That’s who he was in our life. We were learning by doing. Now cats write tunes all the time! I gave a talk to my sister’s 6th grade—these kids, they’re in bands! Last year I did one here for 3rd graders—nine-year-olds!—and some girls had bands! But it was different in those days—you didn’t do it. Not like lemmings or sheep—though people are like lemmings a little bit. The best guy in town was the guy who could play ‘Black Dog’ the best. It was building models—‘Hey, kind of like the real thing.’ We don’t think soapbox derby—where you can roll around in the thing. Roll, not just look! So Dylan kind of helped us. We didn’t know what his words meant but we knew they meant something. Now we’re gonna write songs—what are words for? By Double Nickels, I’d been doing—I’d written my first ones—terrible ones—in the Reactionaries. That’s thirty years—1979! I made two cassettes. Ten songs. None made it to Minutemen. One I gave to Brendan Mullen—the only time I tried to get a gig. But by Double Nickels, I’d already written like 50 or 60 Minutemen songs. I was kinda havin’ fun. I’d write words sometimes just to hear D. Boon say them. In ‘It’s Expected I’m Gone’—let’s have D. Boon say ‘big fucking shit!’ right now! I just wanted to hear him say ‘big fucking shit!’ really loud like he did! Nothing to do with the song. Something to do with the James Joyce book.
‘I must look like a dork?’
No—I wanted Michael Jackson. If Michael Jackson sang our song, a lot of people would get the message of Minutemen. He had a big audience. A good singer. I sent him a cassette of it—to the management on the record cover. I wrote him a note. ‘This is a political song I think Michael Jackson should sing.’ I never got written back. ‘I must look like a dork’ I got from an interview with Iggy in Creem. They’d have spiel with questions and answers and they’d bold out a quote—‘I MUST LOOK LIKE A DORK.’ That magazine was very cool. Not like Rolling Stone and shit—good sense of humor. So I just lifted from Iggy. I thought Iggy was a balls-out dude—the Stooges a balls-out band. To be in that legacy—be part of a movement inspired by that band—so what if you look like a fucking dork! You tell people you are and you still go for it.
Is Double Nickels your Ulysses?
I try to be black-and-white about what Minutemen were trying to do with political songs. ‘Organizing the Boy Scouts for murder is wrong!’ It wasn’t supposed to be satire. We’re an anti-war band! A working people band! Kind of a weird-kind-of-people band! Dudes who didn’t fit in so much. To us, the message of our band and a little bit of punk, too—start your own band! Say what’s on your mind! Sometimes it was scary—there were skinhead bands and shit who were terribly enthusiastic in their message. But that’s the way the scene was. No rules. People went for it. I talk about Minutemen in two songs on that album—the one I actually mailed to Michael Jackson and ‘Politics of Time.’ I didn’t really sing about the band in ‘History Lesson’—because it was Hurley, too. On Punchline, the song ‘History Lesson’ is very hard-hitting. The story of most human civilization is killing each other. And I thought maybe there might be a part two—we don’t have to kill each other? So I’m gonna take it relaxed—talk about heroes like Richard Hell, Joe Strummer, John Doe. Those are my three songs that ain’t about Ulysses. About the band and my friend. Georgie’s? I don’t know what his are about—a working guy writing them at work. Boon—his tunes are usually about his beliefs. The outside writers—we never asked ‘em. It wasn’t important to us. It might have been like censorship. Just 100% used their words. And some of them were pretty cryptic. Like Dirk’s ‘The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts.’ And Jack Brewer’s cousin Joe—we didn’t even know the guy!—writes a weird one—‘Please Don’t Be Gentle With Me.’ I don’t know what the fuck—that’s a love song?
How many love songs are on Double Nickels?
‘Just wake me up and tug my hair!’ We took these at face value—we didn’t care! We made songs! A love song I got from Ulysses—‘My Heart In The Real World.’ Ulysses was bent a lot on language, so it was actually about language, but it has love song imagery. And war imagery. ‘Do You Want New Wave’ is about language too. ‘The World According To Nouns.’ All inspired by James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Have you re-read Ulysses?
I did in my forties. It seems a lot sadder book. Those days, when I wrote songs from that book, it was a big celebration! The glory of man! Now it’s more like—the glory hole of man! It seems like I could hear Joyce’s voice stronger. It seems like a lot of sadness with his mother and just the general condition of humans sometimes. So much failure. The only victories are tiny things between people in everyday stuff. The big joy is in the small middle things, because the big things are all fucking nightmare. ‘One Reporter’s Opinion’ seems like love, but it’s not. What struck me as trippy about Joyce was the technique in Ulysses changing the style with each episode—very scientific, dry, baby talk, opera, all these different trips. A lot of our shit was so… inside. It never got out to people. But it was very clear to us. Like the title. And the meaning of our lyrics. During this time, Boon worked in the van pool—one time the police were called on him—they said there was an insane man attacking the weeds! He was just a utility guy using the weed-whacker! But he had a mohawk! ‘The guy’s attacking the building!’ He’d write stuff while working and driving on little papers—this is what he would write and why there are no rhymes in them. And I’d find ‘em and make songs.
Did you ever talk to him about that?
No—I’d wonder if he would leave ‘em for me! I’d just find these things. Find ‘em in the van, in the car, all over the place. Just thinking about stuff.
How do you feel when you listen to Double Nickels now?
I didn’t listen for a long time. I listened around We Jam Econo. It was amazing! George said the same thing—‘How could I play that shit?’ It holds up, I think, for the most part. It doesn’t sound like, ‘Here’s my lame young days.’ It sounds like maybe the best thing about it!
Why?
I don’t know! Just listen! Goddamn! The way we played together—the way we were in our history. A lot of things happening at the right time. The way we were with other peoples’ lyrics and our own. We didn’t try to refine it or water it down. We just grabbed it by the bull horns and went for it, and the spirit shows through! It doesn’t sound forced—doesn’t sound fake. It’s very un-self-conscious. We did it without thinking—we wanted one because the Huskers had one! ‘We should, too!’ We just let it be it—we never thought in bigger terms. Now look—if you wanna know what was good about Minutemen, a lot of it’s in that record. We didn’t know at the time. But you ask perspective—like when I re-read Ulysses—that’s what I see. When I read it, I heard a different voice. The words were the same but I had changed. And maybe I identify more with the man. It seemed sadder. A lot of books from my 20s I’m re-reading seem a lot sadder. Kerouac—On The Road—very sad! These days it’s not a total ‘Yeah! Yeah, go for it!’ celebration firecracker. Dean Moriarty leaves him in the hospital with dysentery—that’s lame! It’s beat like ‘beat down.’ Minutemen—that is a young man’s record. And the spirit of young men is in that. It’s like—‘Wow, we got a chance to make a record! A chance to play together! To play a gig with Flag and Huskers! A chance to write music to Jack Brewer’s cousin Joe’s song about whatever the fuck tug my hair in the morning!’ We were just fucking lit about everything—all lit! Sometimes a young person is like that because they don’t have the worries of an older thing or a bad experience to keep them all wallowing or too safe. It has that spirit in it. And I can identify it because I was there. And I think about George and Boon and myself—man! That more than probably any other—we were all there with everything we had! More than any other of the Minutemen records. Buzz or Howl was actually two different things. I don’t think any Georgie songs are on it. One side Spot, one Ethan. No Georgie songs on 3 Way Tie or Project Mersh. What Makes A Man Start Fires, I had to write all the music—the only time D. Boon didn’t live in Pedro. Paranoid Time, Georgie wasn’t there with the songs. He came in later. Punchline was kind of Double Nickels. A little bit. An early version. Built on almost the same template except one or two outside writers. When we had the one album, most of the outside writers came on the second album of Double Nickels. The first was almost Punchline part 2—it actually was! And Punchline—goddamn! We make that—in the first year—December of ’80! Before we’d even been a year old. It’s not like Nickels—that’s why it holds up. It’s our signature. If you wanna know about the band and you only hear one record—that’s the one.

THE MINUTEMEN’S DOUBLE NICKELS ON THE DIME IS AVAILABLE FROM SST. VISIT MIKE WATT AT HOOTPAGE.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/WATTFROMPEDRO.

Download: Nino Moschella “What U Do 2 Me”

(off Boom Shadow out now on Ubiquity Records)

Nino Moschella started out four-tracking funk-soul that sounded like Sly and Shuggie and Stevie in a mountain shack at midnight and exploded into fidelity once he visited the wider world. His newest Boomshadow is out now on Ubiquity. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

If you were to make a soundtrack for a ’70s crime movie like Superfly or Jackie Brown, who do you want cast in it?
I would make a crime movie that has the Muppets in it. That would be cool. Maybe not Kermit and Miss Piggy but I want to make a gangster crime movie with all Jim Henson-type muppets. That would be silly.
You sort of have an accent from the East Coast.
My dad is from the Bronx. I’m born and raised in California. A lot of people say my accent sounds East Coast. It’s my dad for sure. And my mom’s from Minnesota. My dad’s overbearing. Not really, but he’s very influential, and I guess it comes out. I’m from Cali though. I love it here. I don’t think I’ll ever move. Are you from California?
Florida!
Oh, my grandfolks moved there when they got old. It’s hot and humid. I mean, it’s hot in Fresno—gets 110. But it’s dry heat. When we go to Florida in the middle of the summer, it’s humid and terrible. Man, and big old cockroaches. They’re humongous. Tropical bugs. I couldn’t stand the humidity. You’re always wet.
What kind of bugs are common in Oakland?
No cockroaches. We have mice and flies. I haven’t seen a cockroach. We had mice for a minute but they’re gone now—luckily. I put out some traps. We were expecting our two mice to multiply but they are gone.
It only takes mice two or three weeks to spring babies. In fact, rodents are the most successful mammal on the planet. I guess they didn’t like our house.
Who is the baby chanting on your song ‘I Love Myself?’
That’s my daughter, Stella. Me and my wife and her were in my home studio where I finished the album. Stella was playing the drums. She likes to have a microphone and hear her voice through the speakers. We were asking her questions: ‘What’s your dog’s name? Who are your friends? What do you love?’ That was how the vocals came about. She was like, ‘I love myself! I love the people!’ It was one of those happy accidents that came out. It’s a spoken-word Stella piece. She’s super musical. She’s going to be four in August.
You seem interested in doing things a little bit out of the box. ‘Ok, I am going to stick a song with my baby in between all these funky tracks…’
I am not trying to do anything that is status quo. There’s no point. If I don’t feel like it’s moving things forward, then it’s not worthwhile. Mainstream music might be satisfied with mediocrity and stuff, but for me, if it doesn’t challenge me, then naturally by extension it’s not a challenge. It’s got to perk my ears. But at the same time, I’m not doing it to be like, ‘This song is this type of song and it fits in this type of category and so on.’ When I put a collection of music together, one of my goals is to personally express something I think is fresh. That also lends itself to a flow. The stuff that comes naturally and easily most times is the stuff that is exciting and fresh and new and unexpected. It doesn’t come from a lot of struggle and laboring over it. The stuff you over-think and deliberate is the stuff that can fit into a box—because you have those constraints. Freedom allows you to do things that are fresh as opposed to doing things that have already been done.
Your stuff isn’t hard to take in. It’s digestible but I can pick out the little details happening at once.
I don’t want to create music that’s just heady. ‘Oh my gosh, this is so complicated and out there that it’s inaccessible.’ One of the goals is to make music that you can listen to easily and you don’t have to go to that place where you’re totally listening to every little thing. But if you want to delve into it, it’s there. That’s the challenge as a music maker. Off the bat you don’t have to get theoretical about it to dig, but you want to create something long-lasting so people can come back and hear something new. The music that I love the most is the stuff that originally just struck me and made me feel good. It gives me an emotion or something I can relate to. What I come back to are the intricacies and that brings up feelings too. That’s the beauty of art in general. It’s not a one-shot thing. It’s not just, ‘Alright, listen to this, put it down, you’re done with it.’ I think as a culture in time, that’s naturally what we’re doing. We get something, put it down, and it’s disposable. Good music isn’t supposed to be disposable.
What’s a record you’ve held onto since forever?
There’s so many! That’s a beautiful thing. There’s so much good music and it continues being created. The first record my mom bought me was Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis. She bought it for me when I was ten. I listen to that weekly to this day. That’s the best selling jazz record of all time. Thriller, you know—speaking of which, Michael Jackson was the first musician and entertainer that I consciously said, ‘Oh man, I want to do this. I want to dance.’ I was in grade school, and popping and breaking was huge. I heard Michael and I was like, ‘I wanna pop. I want to sing.’ He was an icon. David Bowie, later, Prince. My mom got me the red Thriller jacket. It wasn’t actual leather—that shit ended up falling apart.
Your mom seems pretty cool.
She was totally cool. When I was maybe eleven or twelve, my mom took me—a kid—to Purple Rain, which was very controversial when it came out. It was like, ‘Do you know what this movie is about?’ Prince and Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder—and Etta James was a huge influence. This was just the music that was in my house. Along with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and Jimi Hendrix and Coltrane and Miles and Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Mingus. My folks were into this stuff. My dad is a musician. They met in Greenwich Village. My dad was a performer at the same time when bop was in the Village. They were seeing Coltrane and Miles. Coltrane kissed my mother’s hand. Bop was huge and folk was huge in their world. That’s what they were digging. It was all going down in the same places. There was a club called the Bitter End that my dad was playing at, and Nina Simone was playing there, and at the same time Bob Dylan was playing there. Music wasn’t, ‘This is folk and this is jazz, and that’s where this goes and that goes there.’ It was all in the same club and area and thriving. Luckily that influence of my folks was accessible to me growing up. I feel blessed for that.
Did your parents give you any advice on what music is all about?
What I’ve learned is that music is about communication. Music is about expressing yourself. My dad didn’t want me to be in the music business. It wasn’t until I started making my own records and putting my stuff on the forefront and him being able to hear it, and that was just a handful of years ago. This was after I became a man—he was like, ‘Alright, you really want to do this? OK, I’m proud of you.’ He always supported me playing music for the sake of playing music but it was clear he didn’t want me to make a living at it because it’s such a hard thing. Very few people actually make it and many of them at the end of it lose everything. It’s not something you get into because you want to make money and be successful. You get into it because you have to. You will do this regardless of what’s happening around you. He knew it was a hard life because he went through it. I mean—now he is a school teacher. He still gigs but he was doing music as a living for twenty years and it was really hard to feed his family. He didn’t want me to live that life. But he realizes I understand that it’s up and down and it’s for the love of it.
Not everyone can articulate their life’s meaning that way.
It’s taken time. When I was a teenager, my idea was, ‘I wanna be famous.’ The important things with time become clear. I know for sure regardless of all the other stuff that exists in this business, I do my thing. I know it’s crucial to my existence to write songs, record them, perform them. That is the stability in it all. Nobody has control of that except for me. Nobody can tell me whether I can do that or not. Regardless of success—and maybe I am not a huge success. This is an underground thing after all. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is you stay focused on the point of it and the point of it is to express it and get it out, and if that’s to 100 people in your immediate community or to a million people globally—the point is that it has to be created for me to feel good about myself and to feel like I’m contributing to the world. I got to make music and that’s how it is. It’s still hard and all that other shit and you can’t ignore that, but when it’s all said and done, I know why I’m doing this. Sorry—this has gotten heavy.

L.A. RECORD PRESENTS NINO MOSCHELLA WITH CHIN CHIN AND ARMEN NALBANDIAN PLUS DJs ON FRI., JULY 31, AT THE DAKOTA LOUNGE, 1026 WILSHIRE BLVD., SANTA MONICA. 7 PM / $10 / 21+. DAKOTALOUNGE.COM. NINO MOSCHELLA’S BOOMSHADOW IS OUT NOW ON UBIQUITY. VISIT NINO MOSCHELLA AT NINOMOSCHELLA.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/NINOMOSCHELLA.

Download: Georgia Anne Muldrow “Roses Pt. 2″

(from Umsindo out now on SomeOthaShip)

Download: Dudley Perkins “Fonky Soul”

(from Holy Smokes out now on SomeOthaShip)

Georgia Anne Muldrow and Dudley Perkins left Stones Throw to do their own work and to teach and meditate in the mountains. They prepare now to release a solo album each—both produced by Georgia—on the same day this month on SomeOthaShip, and they speak from their home in Inglewood about war, love, power and Michael Jackson. These extended interviews by Chris Ziegler.

GEORGIA ANNE MULDROW: WE’RE IN A WAR RIGHT NOW

DUDLEY PERKINS: MY HEART IS BROKEN ON A REAL LEVEL

—Linda Rapka

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

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

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

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

—Ron Garmon

Download: Georgia Anne Muldrow “King’s Ballad”

(Michael Jackson tribute track from Ubiquity Records)

Stream: Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey “Here And Now”

(from hERE aND nOW out now on Bar/None)

Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple were (legendarily) the only people in North Carolina who bought Big Star albums the very first time around, and they’d team up most famously for the power-pop band the dB’s. (Stamey would also release Chris Bell’s ‘I Am The Cosmos’ 45 and Holsapple would go on to play with R.E.M. and Hootie and the Blowfish!) They are now teamed up and touring as a band with no official name. This interview by Dan Collins.

Peter, you joined a band when you were eight?
Peter Holsapple (guitar/vocals): What?
Admittedly, this is from Wikipedia. But it says you were born in ’56 and joined a band in 1964.
Peter: That is true. I played in combos. But they weren’t professional. The first professional band I played in was when I was 12—when I earned money. We lived in a city with a lot of very active places for young people to play. They were the assembly halls for churches. On the weekends they’d get a PA and bands would play. That was kind of fun.
Did you ever cut a single?
Peter: No. Chris and Mitch [Easter] and I had a band that had an album in 1973 called Rittenhouse Square. It was not very good! It was what you’d expect out of 14- or 15-year-olds. We certainly listened to a lot of Yes, a lot of the Move. Things were funny and grind-y, but in retrospect it’s pretty naïve stuff.
Sounds like you met each other early in life.
Peter: Chris and Mitch were ahead of me in school. I do remember him standing in the parking lot of the school with an instrument case waiting for his parents to pick him up. His dad was a pediatrician in town—a lot of people went to Dr. Stamey! I saw him as a sort of inroads in a lot of ways. When I met him, he wasn’t playing music at all. He was learning to record, which I thought was very cool.
Yeah! And Chris, you produced Peter’s band Little Diesel in ’74.
Chris Stamey (guitar/vocals): We made it in an afternoon in my bedroom at my parents’ house. I’d moved the bed a little bit, and I had little tweed Fender amps nailed up to the wall and we made it on a four-track tape recorder. At the time I think they made 10 copies. They recorded it on an eight-track recorder, and by that I mean a little recorder that made 8-track cartridges. There were only literally a few copies made.
Do you have an 8-track you can send to me in the mail?
Peter: No! But a vinyl edition did come out a few years ago. It came out on Telstar records.
Chris: I was talking to Mitch about how we should find that, and he was like, ‘Oh, I’ve got the master tape still!’ So we dug it out and I mixed it up a little better than I had back then, and it’s a really cool energetic record! Anybody who’s heard it loves it.
Peter: There were a breadth of covers that we were trying to tackle. We were doing Free and Spirit and Status Quo. We didn’t really ascribe to the Allman Brothers/Marshall Tucker stuff that was popular there at the time. We sort of rooted for the underdog. That’s probably why we were such huge Move fans. That’s probably why the first song off our new album is by a band called ‘Family,’ who we love very dearly. That’s a band that had really meant an awful lot to us.
Chris: The MC5 had just come to town and just really transformed the Winston rock scene.
Peter: I was in school in New Hampshire at prep school for a year, during which time I did get to play in bands with Bob Tench, who went on to be Tom Petty’s keyboard player. He was one of those guys who was very deeply into the MC5 and the Stooges. The first Mott the Hoople album came out, and we really absorbed that.
Did you see the revival tour the MC5 did a few years ago? Evan Dando and Mark Arm from Mudhoney were singing with them.
Chris: And Marshall Crenshaw playing with them too—I have to say, the night I saw them in Chapel Hill, it was not a huge success, but it was only one night on a tour. It was kind of dark, I guess you’d say—the energy. The singers were reading all the lyrics—it wasn’t totally all together.
Well, enough about the past—tell me about the sound on your new album.
Chris: Well, what’s refreshing about talking with you is that it does remind me of a sixties interview. It’s not the usual questions. But Peter and I think about this as a band that we have together that has its own identity, and we just don’t have a band name for it. We recorded Mavericks in 1992, and in some ways we see this as a continuation of that.
Why is that?
Chris: It makes a connection to I guess what used to be called ‘good guy’ radio, almost like sixties AM radio. My experience with Big Star, for example, was hearing them—they were a hit band in Winston/Salem, and they were on the radio with bands like the Grass Roots and the Seeds. It’s just that they weren’t anywhere else but my hometown. It just isn’t a Porsche—more of a Woody! A family station wagon.
If somebody was a dB’s fan who had never heard this album, what differences would they see between this album and your old stuff?
Peter: dB’s records and the duet records are such that they both have as their main contributors myself and Chris. But if they’re dB’s records, they’ve got Will on drums and Gene on bass and it’s a harder rocking and slightly more frenzied thing.
Chris: The way the dB’s bass player and drummer play together is kind of like you drop an electric blender in a bathtub, and yet it keeps running. It’s a very explosive combustible combination. And we use really good players and we have more drums on this record than we thought we would, but this is more about our guitars and our voices.
Peter: It is two different voices! Even though Chris and I are the main guys writing for both groups. You know, there’s only been one saxophone on a dB’s record—on a single maybe. And here we’ve got Branford Marsalis who played on a couple cuts on this album.
That’s a score!
Peter: Yeah, Bran is a great guy. For years I was the keyboard guy and utility guy for Hootie and the Blowfish, and Branford always came down for their charity golf tournament every year and played. A couple years ago I said, ‘Well, I’ve got these songs that would be really well served if you could find some time to come and play on it. It’s about New Orleans.’ He was like, ‘I’m busy, but let me know! We’ll make it happen.’ Both tracks were lifted incredibly by his presence.
Lou Reed, before he was in the Velvet Underground, cut a single with King Curtis as the session horn guy! But I think you just beat that. Do you want to gloat at Lou Reed for besting him?
Peter: Lou’s contribution is sacred! Even his bad records aren’t that bad. I have no opportunity to diss him, frankly.
A few years back you recorded an album called A Question of Temperature.
Chris: Peter and I just came up with that title, I recall. On a record with a lot of covers, to name it after a cover that we weren’t doing seemed, you know… it was originally called Vote, and it was done as an EP. We did too many things… it became the world’s longest EP! We put it out right before the election that John Kerry lost to try to encourage people to vote. It seems crazy in retrospect. It was then released as a regular record in January. It was never intended to be an album-album.
What songs did you cover?
Chris: We covered a song of mine called ‘Summer Sun.’ The Yardbirds, we did. We covered ‘Venus’ by Television.
Can I get a statement from you about the death of Sky Saxon?
Chris: He was a friend of Chilton’s. I never really met him. When I played with Alex, we used to do ‘I Can’t Seem to Make You Mine’ almost every night. Alex was a really big fan.
How did you meet Alex Chilton?
Chris: I was making a record with Terry Ork. He’d put out the first Television 45, and I’d just moved to New York. And he said that they were putting out a record by Alex Chilton, and he needed a band because he was going to come up for one day—to play Valentine’s Day in New York. And Alex called me up, and we talked, and he asked me what my sign was, and everything seemed to be okay. I was playing bass—I think Tina Weymouth almost got the call, but I ended up getting it. And Alex stayed for over a year, and we kept playing. He’d stay on my couch a lot, and we went up and recorded a lot, most of which never came out.
There was another celebrity death this month as well. You guys once had a song called ‘Neverland.’ Do you think Michael Jackson named his ranch after you?
Chris: I think that would be a stretch.
The dance music movement that came along in the mid-early eighties, with Michael and Prince and Sheila E.—did that eclipse the fame that bands like the dB’s might have earned?
Peter: It certainly didn’t help it get on the radio! But… the music was great. All the music was great. We felt that we weren’t particularly in competition with that.
Chris: I think that for most bands, the whole idea of making it big wasn’t around. Once MTV came along, and it went out into the world, people got the idea, ‘Yeah, let’s make it big!’ But that wasn’t why we were making music. We weren’t trying to win the lottery.
Peter: Even as well known as we are for our contributions to sort of ‘new wave’ with the dB’s, we had already been writing and recording well before that. We just happened to come along at the time. The dB’s didn’t even have an American label for many years.
Of the people who were your contemporaries, who would you say sounded like you?
Chris: I think the Soft Boys! I clearly thought Television had the right idea, but I think the Soft Boys would be the closest.
Peter: Without meaning to be left of center, it appears that we were left of center. My dear friend Mark Brian from Hootie & the Blowfish says things to me like, ‘You’re my favorite eccentric weird songwriter.’ And I listen to my songs, and I don’t think they’re all that eccentric and weird. They’re simple, they’re rock ‘n’ roll, they have verses, they have choruses and bridges. What’s so different? Same thing with a Michael Jackson record. They’re still set up approximately the same way. Yet there’s a world of difference between them. The thing that we’ve all had to learn over the years is that this is not about huge success. That would be wonderful! I’d love it if a song got used in a commercial that would take the load off of being an unemployed musician. If I could ever get my publishing straightened out, maybe I could do something! The great thing is that I’ve got a job that I love. I love to be a musician. I love the reaction of people when they like my songs. Maybe I’m just a ham, but I really do dig it a lot. It feels really good. I’m not really comfortable in the rest of the world. I am on stage, though. Music was just about the most important thing to me until my kids came along.
Can you get your kids involved in music?
Peter: I play at my son’s school. I was the kids’ entertainer at Borders in New Orleans for about five years. I started working on a kids record, but then I realized that practically every old semi-failed new waver had done a kids record! I don’t want to be in that number until I can do something really good. Dan Zanes does a great job! Robert Warren is great! Disney’s got the Imagination Movers—that’s just the shit! I love it! The kids love it! You want to make kids music so that parents don’t jump out the window.
Chris, you haven’t released any kids albums to my knowledge—but you released Chris Bell’s first single on your label, right?
Chris: Right! Again, that was through Alex. Alex told me about it. I was very proud to have done that, but it wasn’t anything very creative except to the extent that A&R is creative. He’d made it a while back. He’d done in a guy’s garage, in a shoe box in Memphis, and then moved to London and mixed it with Geoff Emerick at George Martin’s Air studios.
In the last couple decades, we haven’t heard a whole lot from you! Have you been recording and producing bands or selling crystal meth, or what?
Chris: I do an album or two a month—some mixing, some producing. I probably work on about fifteen records a year. I just did a band called Megafaun. I did Rosebuds, on Merge. The Old Ceremony. Luego, which hasn’t come out yet…
How about some L.A. bands?
Chris: I did a whole bunch of recordings with Patrick Park! I don’t think he qualifies as a ‘band,’ but if anybody qualifies as a one-man band, he can really do it. That would be the most recent thing. I lived there, working there with Scott Litt on a Flat Duo Jets record for a while at Ocean Way, which became Cello. I definitely put in time in California. In a lot of ways, I consider the span I spent with Peter Holsapple to be a California band. We really started in L.A. We live in North Carolina, but the spirit of our birth was really in the Santa Monica kind of thing.
I have the Sharp Cuts compilation you came out on in 1980 on Planet Records with ‘Soul Kiss.’ You’re on there with a lot of other L.A. bands. Did that record come about because of your association with people out here?
Chris: No, I think that would be prior to it. I think we just got a call about it. I do remember they accidentally put the wrong tape on there, which always bugged me. That was a joke mix! It never was supposed to be out like that.
If it makes you feel better, on the album sticker, they list Suburban Lawns twice and forgot to list the Alleycats.
Chris: It figures.
Besides just songs, did people constantly misspell the ‘dB’s’ name on albums and flyers and such?
Chris: I think we knew we were in for trouble. It was interesting to see how things change in translation. I kind of liked that it did change all the time, but I guess it was an uphill struggle.
Did people ever spell it ‘D-e-e-B-e-e-s’ like the Bee Gees?
Chris: I think we’ve had every kind of possible ramification. The embarrassing thing is that we never should have put the apostrophe in there to begin with. It was archaic even then. It’s pretty incorrect.
I was listening to your early discography, Chris, and I feel like you were playing a brand of power-pop that even now sounds a bit more youthful. I feel like other power-pop sounded a bit mannish, and yours sounds more teenaged—even maybe had a bit of a bubblegum feel.
Peter:We listened to everything—depending on what you feel is bubblegum. I was married to Susan Cowsill of the Cowsills, so I love the Partridge Family. I love the stuff that was on Buddah, the Kasenetz-Katz Orchestra and things like that. But I don’t love it anymore than I love Otis Redding or the Dave Clark Five or Big Star. I will admit to having listened to more than the lion’s share of AM radio. Anything that goes from about 1964-1974.
Did you have a hard time convincing your peers to appreciate something more gentle and delicate?
Chris: I always played with good musicians, and we just talk about how to play music. You know on iTunes, they have a little pull-down things for genre when you want to make an MP3? I actually think I do more ‘folk rock’ over ‘power pop.’
What folk rock bands inspired you?
Chris: I would say the Byrds would be the biggest.
Speaking of 8-tracks, you guys did a lot of cassette releases as the dB’s. You did one that came in an actual can! Wasn’t that expensive?
Chris: We didn’t get the bill, but I don’t think it was that expensive. Probably a big waste of chow mein noodles or something! Cans can’t really cost that much—otherwise, they wouldn’t put cheap food in them.
Did the people who bought them actually have to use a can opener to get the tape out?
Chris: Oh yeah!
Why did things end? Why did you shelve the dB’s?
Chris: I think it’s more of a mystery why things continue. I look at bands I like like Blind Faith where they last for five months and a few gigs. It seemed like it went on a long time.
And you guys are still working together as a duo, so it’s like this working relationship that was in the dB’s is still going.
Chris: It had started 11 years before that, really. It’s just that the dB’s got more press because there were press agents involved.
Peter, you had a huge bunch of press when you played with R.E.M.
Peter: I did play with R.E.M. We did a tour for Green, the first album they did on Warner Brothers, and we recorded Out of Time—I played the acoustic guitar on ‘Losing My Religion.’ And then we went to England, and we reached a point where it was ‘untenable’ to work together. Much as I love those guys and respect what they’ve done, it was time for me to move on. I joined the Continental Drifters for ten years, and was serving in the same capacity I had with R.E.M. in Hootie & the Blowfish, which was a great gig I had for thirteen years.
You were saying that the dude from the Blowfish thinks you write weird songs. For our readership the weirdest thing you’ve EVER done is play in Hootie & the Blowfish!
Peter: The guys in the band are remarkable people. They truly are! They worked very, very hard for their success. They did some things that were probably ill-advised—they rushed out a second record out because they were afraid their fans were sick of the first record! They were thinking of their fans, which I thought was really cool.
Yeah, but… Hootie and the Blowfish! Chris, were ever moments where you were like, ‘Peter is killing the brand?’
Chris: I can’t even think in that way! He had been doing flower deliveries in New Orleans before that happened. I can’t think of how many times he went to Vietnam with them. I think it was kind of fun!
Peter: I would certainly rather do this than not work! That’s probably the best job I ever had. I enjoyed playing the music—it was really comfortable music, and really comforting music. It was not like playing with Yes. But to get to back up a world-class singer like Darius Rucker for 13 years was a serious honor. I was able to rope him into a tribute to Sandy Denny—I was the music director for a show that was celebrating the work of Sandy Denny, in Brooklyn, and I asked him to sing ‘Black Waterside,’ and he just tore it up! We got him on the R.E.M. tribute show at Carnegie Hall, and he did ‘I Believe’ with Calexico. People are more inclined to hate Hootie & the Blowfish because they think they’ve heard Hootie & the Blowfish. But Hootie did five really good studio records. Every one of those records had songs that could have been hits on them. The shape of radio changed, and the band stuck with their style. It was tough to go from being nobody, to being a huge hit, to being a punch line. People just think it’s ‘Hold My Hand’ and Darius in a cowboy hat hawking Burger King.
What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever played?
Chris: They all seem so normal! With the Golden Palominos, we played the Montrose Jazz Festival. We were playing after the Herbie Hancock Quartet, with Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock. I think we played after Miles Davis, too.
Have you had any crazy stories recently where you two put out an album or did a show, and some rabid fans did something… rabid?
Chris: I usually hide after shows! You seem to be looking for fun, tabloid stuff, and you’re probably looking in the wrong direction. We come from a very Southern, polite tradition.
I was actually at the 99 Cent Store on York in Highland Park, and ran across the Chris Stamey and Friends’ Christmas album— for a buck! It wasn’t bad! Can you tell me how that came about?
Peter: I did ‘O Holy Night’ on the very first version of the Christmas album years ago. I love that stuff! I grew up in the Episcopal Church, singing in the choir. I love the popular stuff! The Beach Boys’ Christmas record, the Ventures Christmas record, the Phil Spector Christmas Gift for You, the Beatles 45. Love ‘em, love ‘em, love ‘em! And the best part of Christmas albums is that they sell every year.
Chris: Gene Holder, who plays bass in the dB’s, always wanted to make a Christmas record, always thought that would be a fun thing to do. We were so impressed that even after I was no longer playing with the band, I wrote a song called ‘Christmas Time’ kinda with him in mind and got the other guys who had been in the dB’s to record it with me. And we put together other tracks based around that one song.
Who sings ‘Silver Bells?’ That was my favorite tune off the album.
That was Kirsten Lambert. She’s a friend of ours who lives here. That may be her only recorded effort, as far as I know.
That’s a tragedy! Tell her! If she ever goes on tour, I’ll give her an interview.
Chris: Okay—haha!

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