NEW SHOP ARRIVALS: FEB 1ST, 2010

-New Arrivals

Nocando – Jimmy The Lock (MP3)

Bobb Bruno – Dreamt On (CD)

Mikki & The Mauses – The Problem With Male Sexualty (MP3)

VUM – Strange Attractor (CD)

Blue Jungle – Baby Don’t Cry (MP3)

Jail Weddings – Inconvenient Dreams (MP3)

Witch – Paralyzed (LP)

Valient Thorr – Immortalizer (2xLP)

Night Horse – The Dark Won’t Hide You (LP)

Rainbow Arabia – Kabukimono (LP)

Warpaint – Exquisite Corpse (CD)

Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest (LP)

-Top Sellers

Audacity – Power Drowning (MP3)

Gangi – A (LP)

Sun Araw – In Orbit (CS)

Arthur Verocai – Arthur Verocai (LP)

Voices Voices – Origins (12″)

-Pre Order

We Are The World – Clay Stones (LP)

Download: Mikki and the Mauses “What To Say”

(from The Problem With Male Sexuality VHS out now on White Noise)

Anthony Anzalone—the big cheese in Mikki and the Mauses—is the kind of guy that finds pleasure through lived experience, like going to Disneyland on his birthday just to people watch. Having just finished their first West Coast tour, Anzalone gladly finds time unwind the mind behind the Maus-ian madness. This interview by Britt Witt.

Anthony Anzalone (vocals/songwriter): There is tons of retarded teenage history with the name—not to mention Walt Disney is one of my biggest heroes. He was really crazy and he lived in his uncle’s garage when he was 26 and I find that really inspiring. I’ve read five biographies about him. He was crazy and didn’t give a fuck. By the time he was 24 he had gone bankrupt four times and lived in his work studio and didn’t have a bed or anything. He barely ate and didn’t want to do anything but draw cartoons and I think that’s crazy and awesome. If you want to do something, you have to do it like that. So he kept trying to start an animation business and kept running out of money and getting fucked or getting his characters stolen from him. And then he moved to L.A. into his uncle’s garage and just kept doing the same thing and I think that’s really rad. The whole idea of Disneyland was he had a really hard time getting sponsorship because everyone was like, ‘You’re crazy! This is a waste of money! This is fucking nuts!’ And he was just like, ‘I don’t care!’ And he went and did it anyway and took out a mortgage on his house and spent all the money in his company so that if it went bad, he’d be totally broke again forever. The whole concept of Disneyland is basically he just wanted to make a place that did nothing but make people happy. And I think that there’s kinda no more nobler cause that you could have. Life totally sucks a lot of the time, and so for someone to put everything they had out on a limb so that other people could be stoked on life—or just get away from the shitty parts of life for a little while—I just find all of that really rad.
Is he your idol?
Anthony Anzalone: Yeah—I mean, he made a place specifically to make people happy! Disneyland sucks now—it’s all fucked up, but his original idea was really amazing and Mickey Mouse was like an altar ego for him so I just stole it. It’s really Walt Disney’s spirit that I think is rad. Disneyland gets grimier every year. Walt Disney had such integrity. He could have made millions of dollars making sequels to shit like Snow White, but he would never allow sequels or anything because he always wanted to push forward with new ideas and techniques. And now you have like Little Mermaid 7 And A Half: The Witch Trials and it sucks. They just took his name—‘Let’s take it for all the money we can get.’ Which was never his idea. I was just at Disneyland the other day and one of the biggest bummers that I saw there—and this is the kinda shit that pisses me off—they changed Tom Sawyer’s Island to The Pirates’ Lair Island and that’s so fucked. Just following this trend to sell more Chinese plastic swords with lead in them when Walt Disney had named that island after one of his favorite characters that is important to all of American culture with the first great novel and a real depiction of growing up like a boy in America. And it’s totally fucked now. They don’t need to do that shit. Walt Disney actually did want it always changing—that was part of his vision. But I don’t think he just wanted things to change to follow trends—in three years everyone’s gonna be really sick of Pirates of the Caribbean Part 18.
What other meanings are part of the name?
Anthony Anzalone: A weird aspect of it for me is that I’m really into physics and the physical world that we live in. I think at some point we will be able to really do anything we think of except turn into cartoon characters—like, that will never be able to happen. And I’m really into the idea that life is an ultimate failure, always, of never conquering your desires—that will never happen. I’m heavy into evolutionary psychology. It’s basically this idea that the reason that we find things beautiful or moral or scary—the reason that we smell things! That evolutionary sense that we have that’s like ‘just don’t die’ is our brain is constantly telling us and causing all these reactions to everything but it essentially has no purpose because that’s all it is—‘Just don’t die.’ There’s no goal, there’s no winning or losing, there’s no right or wrong—all these concepts that we grew up with, like Christian-based Western philosophy, are kind of retarded and outdated. I don’t mean that in a super negative way—I don’t mean that life is an ultimate failure in a negative way! It kind of represents that in a way—that I will never be a cartoon character. Which isn’t even something that I necessarily I want to do—it’s just the idea of never getting what you want.
What do you think of the Twilight Zone-style idea that the best way to punish someone is to give them exactly what they’ve always wanted?
Anthony Anzalone: Essentially you’re never going to be fully satisfied and that makes total sense to me. One thing I think about a lot is that people work really hard to climb Mount Everest and they get to the top and then they’re alone and cold and miserable and they stay for five minutes and they’re like, ‘I want to fucking get out of here—this sucks.’ It takes ten years and hundreds of people have died trying to climb that stupid mountain and you get to the top and you just feel shitty about it. And I think that essentially sums up the theory of happiness where you’re never going to be satisfied by getting what you want.
You grew up in Arizona—what made you move to L.A.?
Anthony Anzalone: Cali DeWitt. I met Cali—he runs Teenage Teardrops records. I was on the verge of having no friends and then we met and came to Los Angeles and I learned that the world is not a small suburban town anymore. Then I moved to Tokyo because I didn’t have a band and I wanted to do something exciting and not go to school. I was there for a year illegally. I had a band over there called Gokon and I taught English illegally and I was a bartender.
What made you come back?
Anthony Anzalone: The fact that I can’t live there without work permits. Legal bullshit.
Can you speak Japanese?
Anthony Anzalone: Like a retarded 5th grader.
How did you manage living in Tokyo for a year just speaking English?
Anthony Anzalone: My friend that I lived with didn’t speak any English so we taught each other our language. Like he would hold up a beer and I would say ‘drink’ and he would say ‘nomu’ which is Japanese for drink. It was a long series of conversations like that. So my Japanese is mostly slang and basic needs.
Then you came back to L.A. and started Mikki and the Mauses?
Anthony Anzalone: Yes. With Josh Savin who plays guitar, Jeff Lynne who used to be in Wires on Fire and is a friend of mine, and Chris Collins who is the drummer. We get along really well. We all met through the Internet which is really weird. It started out as a solo thing that I was doing in Tokyo and then when I moved to L.A., I turned it into Mikki and the Mauses because I wanted to play with other people.
And you just did your first tour.
Anthony Anzalone: It was great—it was really weird. We did it with my buddies from Japan, Moment Trigger. A lot of fun. We played at this place—Apgar House—which was basically Lost Boys in the middle of an abandoned city. It was total debauchery and right next door was a crack house that got raided the next day. It was a pretty amazing post-apocalyptic world that we went into.
Does something need to be weird before it can be ‘great’?
Anthony Anzalone: I don’t really believe in something being good or bad. I think it’s a very noble cause that all you can do is constantly find new ways to do things. I can see that as being weird at the start because its foreign. In that sense, I do think that things have to be ‘weird’ to start because you’re dealing with something new—which is more interesting than the shit that you already know.
How and why did you release an album on VHS tape?
Anthony Anzalone: We recorded pretty standardly and I decided to edit a bunch of really terrible animation that I learned to make in high school on it. It made sense for the songs in my head. I spend a lot of time alone and in my own head, which makes things very confusing.
Do you spend a lot of outside time with the band?
Anthony Anzalone: I live with Josh but we don’t hang out that much—I mean, we go to shows sometimes but we don’t go to bars. We’re all antisocial weirdos that like to learn retarded obscure knowledge constantly. Basically I feel like I play music for 14-year-old boys who are really confused about their sexuality. I basically just want a bunch of 14-year-old male friends to tell them that it’s going to be OK because I think that time of life is shitty. It’s a mission to have someone to hold hands with.
Was that period of your life really confusing for you?
Anthony Anzalone: Yeah—totally retarded. I was raised Catholic and it was gnarly. I was this really really fucked up kid that didn’t know shit and kinda was fed whatever was on TV as lik, ‘Oh, well, this is not the same thing that I already have’ but it totally was. Then I finally started to see bands and music and hear other shit…basically I was a 14-year-old that was a transvestite and liked Marilyn Manson. And then I started finding out about Iggy Pop and shit like that and was like, ‘Oh, whoa—I don’t have to be stupid, there’s good shit out there!’ I kind of hope that if some kids out there feel like that, they’ll see my band and be like, ‘Oh, OK—cool! I don’t have to wear these fucking rainbow socks or paint my nails anymore.’
Are you still making your poetry zine?
Anthony Anzalone: Yeah, and I have an anthology coming out that I co-wrote with Spencer Moody that is coming out on Teardrops. I really hate poetry though—I think it’s the lowest form of art. I hate the Beats and the whole Beatnik culture and hippies. There is some good stuff but the majority of it is just this self-centered crap that just wastes all these words and then people take that and they copy that and they take even more meaning away from the idea of poetry. And then eventually you just end up with these whiney self-centered complaining people who don’t even know why they’re writing poetry or what the purpose is. And so whenever I try to write it, I try to rescue it from the crap that it is—it’s pretty egotistical.
What are you doing to change it?
Anthony Anzalone: The poetry that I write, it’s not at all recognizable in that sense. They’re never longer than two sentences and they’re very structured and they’re very self-deprecating to themselves which I feel like points out the elephant in the room: ‘Yep, poetry is terrible! We all know it! Let’s work on this.’ I always have the zines with me and give them away for free. Cali is going to put out a 12-inch split with us and Deracine and he’s going to put out the book as well. I think when the record comes out we’re going to tour in Japan as well.
What are your plans from here on?
Anthony Anzalone: We have the 12” split coming out, I think we are going to do another 7” with White Noise and then we might do a Valentine’s Day tape with love songs. There’s no real goal when it comes to playing music like we do—it’s not like we’re going to make money or that it’s a goal that we have.
So what do you do to make money?
Anthony Anzalone: I work like four jobs. I figured out that if I stay really busy then I tend to have less time to be self-centered.
What are you most proud of about yourself?
Anthony Anzalone: Pride is a weird word for me. I don’t feel particularly proud of anything and I don’t really feel ashamed of anything anymore. I’m going to do what seems to be most efficient for any kind of goal that I can see. Any time I follow that I’ve been okay with myself.
You described your music as ‘if Brian Eno didn’t know how to write songs’—what did you mean?
Anthony Anzalone: I am just heavily influenced by the idea of trying to mix stuff that hasn’t been done. But I also don’t know shit about music and never knew how to play an instrument. Like I had a guitar and then just did it, so I don’t know anything about technique or music theory or any of that stuff.
Why did you make Mikki and the Mauses t-shirts with copies of other band t-shirts?
Anthony Anzalone: I just silk-screened over used T-shirts because the idea of making new T-shirts is like… disgusting to me and wasteful when there are things like thrift stores with money that goes to helping homeless people instead of some—I don’t know, some guy getting money who I picture having a monocle and a cigar. So we took only used T-shirts. Some of the ones we went over were other bands that we like. We put our logo on their shirt so we’re basically like some weird Chinese bootleg company.
How do your fans like this?
Anthony Anzalone: People always like something they already know. So it’s an easy thing to do.

MIKKI AND THE MAUSES WITH RAPTOR, CANDYFLIP, RELIGION, THE TREES AND SHINES LIKE GOLD (DJ SET) ON TUE., JAN 5., AT THE AIRLINER, 2419 N. BROADWAY, LINCOLN HEIGHTS. 8 PM / CONTACT VENUE FOR FURTHER INFORMATION. MYSPACE.COM/THEAIRLINERCLUB. MIKKI AND THE MAUSES’ THE PROBLEM WITH MALE SEXUALITY IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM WHITE NOISE. VISIT MIKKI AND THE MAUSES AT MYSPACE.COM/MIKKIMAUSMUSIC.

Download: Sean Carnage’s Mondays mega-mix

(full tracklist with liner notes here!)

Sean Carnage has done so much for L.A. music that there had to be a movie made to help document it—40 Bands 80 Minutes!, now recognizable as early home to much of the most vital actives still performing in the city. He’ll be celebrating four years of DIY shows (across six venues!) all this month at Women during his traditional Monday night residencies, and he’ll have the official Sean Carnage birthdayversary spectacular on July 27. This interview by Drew Denny.

The first time I attended a Sean Carnage night was at Il Corral—Is that where it all began?
That’s cool that you were there! Il Corral was really special, and that’s where Monday Nights began—on August 1st, 2005. I covered the back story of the Il Corral and the atmosphere of the times in my movie 40 Bands 80 Minutes!, so I’d recommend checking that out. Il Corral was everything a Rust Belt kid like me hoped California would be—wild (but still innocent) punk rock fun. Stane (Il Corral co-founder) installed a rope swing in the music area, so that gives you an idea of the venue’s play zone atmosphere. I was really lucky to be able to host shows there. A high proportion of the performers who played there were bona fide geniuses, and for once in my life, I realized what was going down as it was happening and turned on the video camera. People doubted my selection of performers for 40 Bands 80 Minutes! when it came out over two years ago. (Including L.A. RECORD—LOL!) [LOL @ us—ed.] But damn near every person who appears on the screen in my movie has gone on to do important stuff. The Los Angeles artistic and musical community is something to be proud of.
How did you get started?
I love underground music as a style and as a craft, and I had been involved as a musician, promoter, writer and fan for about thirteen years in Cleveland, Ohio. I moved to L.A. to retire, but couldn’t shake the music. So I started booking again after taking about three years off.
Did you know when you began that it would last this long and be so loved?
Derek Hess did Mondays at the Euclid Tavern for 8 years. Speak In Tongues also lasted 8 years. I knew if I could bring regularly scheduled music into the D.I.Y. and all-ages realm, it would work.
What was Speak in Tongues? I’m researching Pentecostalism and speaking in tongues for my thesis right now, so I have to ask…
Speak In Tongues—and the guys who lived there—changed my life. It was all-ages D.I.Y. for eight years—an amazing run. I learned that you don’t need to do shows in bars. You can strip away another layer of mediation and do it yourself. Not an original concept, but it was new for me in the mid and late 1990s, and it informs everything I’ve aspired to since. (SIT hibernates at speakintongues.com)
It seems that at any location—Il Corral, Pehrspace, the Smell—you create a space that fosters a family of bands that might not have otherwise had any place to play, or at least not any other place where they’d feel quite so at home. Was this always a goal of yours?
I was seeing a ton of excellent shows around L.A. in the early 2000s and that was tremendously inspiring. So I just started asking bands if they wanted to play my night. All the attendees of those initial Mondays were way turned on by the energy of it all. When we moved to Pehrspace in 2007, it only got better.
Which bands did you start out with?
The first show was Haircut Mountain Transit, FM Bats, Buko, Ugly Shyla, Szandora… and Jell-O shots. Jon San Nicolas and my boyfriend at that time, Richmond Tan, helped me so much. We were noisy and gay right from the start! Now Mikhai Tran helps me tons with the shows—taking photos and weaving our distinctive bracelets, which are unique for every show.
How political is your programming process? By that I mean, how much—if at all—do you concern yourself with representing or attracting a certain group?
A lot of the people behind Mondays’ success are gay, and I’m proud of that. It’s emblematic of a new non-political phase of the gay rights movement. Young people can now be themselves and not worry what people think about their sexuality. That said, I bring up sexual orientation because with the passing of Prop 8, we still have so far to go. I suppose this is preaching to the choir—musicians are usually pretty progressive—but Mondays have been my modest way of saying ‘we’re here, we’re queer,’ and building something positive and constructive that every music fan can enjoy.
Is there is a unifying factor among the Sean Carnage bands—in terms of genre, style, or scene? If not, what is it that you consider when choosing bands to book?
I’m looking for the best music. I don’t pay particular attention to style. I listen more for general musicality. And the execution is important. I really cherish the Monday audiences so I am always trying to find new ways to thrill them. What’s nice is that most of the bands are already friends, but because they operate in different areas of the music scene, my shows bring them together—often for the first time. The other unifying factor is the between-sets music of Kyle H. Mabson. Kyle’s become my partner in the shows since I met him fall of 2005. I feel like Kyle’s really changed how underground music is experienced. He brings the dance party and that amps everything up.
Who are some of your favorites right now?
I love the new Amazements album. I like American Gil and the Major Dudes a lot. Certain performers like Billygoat, Birth!, D. Bene Tleilax, I.E., Whitman, Nicole Kidman, Moment Trigger… they’re all Monday superstars.
My best friend and band-mate, Geoff—Pizza! and Big Whup—and I just made a compilation that includes tracks from both American Gil and Nicole Kidman. We love them! What is it about those Inland Empire kids that makes them so amazing?
Haha—good question! It astounds and humbles me the people from the I.E. drive so far to attend shows like mine. I don’t 100% understand the local culture there, but I’ve always gotten a good feeling from both the music and the personalities of the Inland Empire folks. Maybe there’s something about living in the 909 that is similar to living along Lake Erie? I’ve always related to people with backgrounds that are similar to mine, but for lack of scientific evidence, I can’t really say much else except: I like what I hear.
Tell me the craziest-best-worst-funniest-most-miraculous-most-tragic Sean Carnage night story. Please?
This past Monday, people were freaking and beating each other with pool noodles on Women’s front lawn for 20 minutes after the music ended—that was pretty crazy!
I heard the police came a few weeks back and threatened to shut down Pehrspace—have there been any recent developments in that story?
I don’t have anything new to report, but Pehr is continuing to host a small number of weekend shows, so please support them every chance you get.
How are you getting by in the meantime?
I’m proud to be hosting at Women. They’ve given me the space to do some really ambitious programming, like the four-week 60 Watt Kid residency in July which features a ton of new bands.
Is there anything we—as Sean Carnage and Pehrspace fans—can do to help in this struggle?
No matter what venue you see live music at, be mindful of the neighbors when you are outside the space. It’s hard—I’m trying to inspire people to be free, but on the street you have to be low key.
What will you do if you can’t continue booking there?
I’ve been lucky to have done Mondays at Il Corral, Pehrspace, the Smell, Zamakibo, House of Vermont and Women, so if I have to find a new home I will. I figure that after 200+ shows in a row, I’ve earned some vacation. So I’m taking this August off to prepare the new Monday home and I’ll be back the first Monday in September.
Sounds like a good plan… And finally, I’d like to say CONGRATULATIONS! What are you doing to celebrate your anniversary?!
On Monday, July 27th I am hosting some truly amazing bands—60 Watt Kid, Shirley Rolls, the Seizure, Mikki and the Mauses and Single Mothers. Then I’m going to take August off and figure out where the heck Mondays are gonna live in the fall. Then I’ll be back on Monday, September 7th with… I.E.! I will be keeping everyone updated through facebook.com/seancarnage and seancarnage.com.

SEAN CARNAGE’S ANNIVERSARY MONTH BEGINS WITH 60 WATT KID, HIGH CASTLE, ITALIC INDIAN, SKULL KISS AND GARRETT PIERCE ON MON., JULY 6, AT WOMEN, 1852 CRENSHAW BLVD., LOS ANGELES. 9:30 PM / $5 / ALL AGES. SEANCARNAGE.COM. 60 WATT KID WILL BE IN RESIDENCY EVERY MONDAY IN JULY. FOR COMPLETE LINE-UP AND MORE INFORMATION VISIT SEANCARNAGE.COM.

Download: Sean Carnage’s Mondays mega-mix

We asked Sean Carnage—interviewed to mark his four years of D.I.Y. all-ages shows here—to make a mixtape that captures a bit of what he loves about music in L.A. Download and listen above and annotated tracklist by Sean below:

Realicide “Resisting The Viral Self”
Just a brief sample from Robert Inhuman, whose music on “Resisting the Viral Self”—despite it’s audiophonic brutality—is all too human and affecting.

Winners “Mega Dik”
Andrew, the singer of “Mega Dik,” was something of a Monday Night super fan for years. When he later started making music with Eva (aka Kevin Shields), I was pleasantly surprised. These two are up north now, and I’m crossing my fingers they continue with their joyfully confrontational band.

The Amazements “Tutti Frutti”
“Tutti Fruit” is a song off the Amazements’ new Peter’s Poolboys’ LP Sticky Rubies. They’re kinda like Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band wrestling U.S. Maple in a hot tub full of beer: avant garde and loose.

I.E. “You Think You’re Punk”
“You Think You’re Punk” could only have been written by Margot Padilla. Margot’s Totally Mag! magazine is a sick send-up of celebrity pop culture and perfectly compliments her music.

Mikki & the Mauses
Here’s a new band with a devastatingly catchy track. They’re playing my four year anniversary show on July 27th, and I’m really excited about that after all this time, there’s so many new bands to discover.

NASA Space Universe
NASA Space Universe apparently broke up recently, but I’m holding out hope for new music from these OC bros because, even a year after I got this track, I am still listening to it all the freaking time! Perfect for after work/school venting.

John Thill
Thill’s also moved up north, but he was just back for a Monday night appearance to remind us all what genius creations his acoustic jams are.

Foot Village “Crow Call (Anavan remix)”
The members of Foot Village and Anavan have been big Monday supporters, and if there was any justice in the world, this remix would be burning up dance floors around the planet

Kyle H. Mabson “Don’t Stop Believin”
“Don’t Stop Believin’” sums the Sean Carnage Mondays story very nicely I think. My Monday partner Kyle created this…I only included a short excerpt—if you are brave there’s a twenty minute version that will take the top of your head off. Enjoy!