1. R. Kelly -- Echo (2009)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=95ZkLIluh1M

2. Kuku Sebsebe -- Bleby Gwadana (1985, dug up in 2007)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xigxnUoMXo

3. Cass McCombs -- Meet Me Here at Dawn (2003)
this video is Andrew Bird’s cover of the song:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn9jMjHqiyo

4. Dirty Projectors -- Two Doves (2009)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmmy9Q0bMGo

5. Elsa Kidane -- Belo (2002)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=29XiiCQu4aY

6. The Very Best -- Julia (2009)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-C2P5zHU68

7. Morrissey -- America Is Not The World (2004)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QON6SSMLcC8

8. Big Search -- You’ll Often Change (2006)
click image to hear song:

This song is a wonderfully bare yet lyrically luscious moment from this folky singer/songwriter who is most known for his work with the band Foreign Born.

9. Josephine Foster and the Supposed -- The Most Loved One (2004)
click image to hear song:

Stunning and chaotic.

10. Alicia Keyes -- Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart (2009)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=srMBZiqNMaM

Download: Mere Mortals “Sunspots”

(from Rebel Radio out now on Zeami Stars)

Mere Mortals are a classic L.A convergence of musicians from all across the world. When taken in high doses, their autobahn guitar pop may unsettle a stomach full of exotic sushi. Steve Jones told someone to sign them and in Japan someone listened, and they are in residency at Spaceland every monday this month. This interview by Erik Ehlert.

You’re a band that’s been playing L.A. for years—how does it feel to finally get a Spaceland Monday Night Residency?
Axel Steuerwald (guitar/vocals): Feels great. It’s about time! [laughs] No, but it is great synchronicity that it happened right after our Japanese tour.
Will you miss the festival crowds?
Axel Steuerwald: We played clubs and in-stores and we played big crowds. It was a mixed bag. One night we would play our own show at a Spaceland-sized club and the next play to thousands as a support band for a Japanese act. But it will be different—we won’t have our road crew of five people. That was nice.
When Steve Jones had his radio show and told record execs to get smart, open their checkbooks, and sign you, did you expect the phone to ring?
Axel Steuerwald: It did actually ring. A few majors showed interest, Atlantic and Rick Rubin’s label American came to see us, but they’re all so fickle and wanted a chart band. I wanted some cool indie label to sign us… but it didn’t pan out.
So you went to Japan to get a deal?
Axel Steuerwald: The wheels had been in motion since the CEO of the label Zeami Stars came over in April and went on the road with us to Vegas and San Diego. He already made his mind up. So we went to Japan to support the Rebel Radio album release.
Bassist Mimi Star is from Japan—did she help you navigate everything?
Axel Steuerwald: Yes, and we were made aware of how important that was. I thought it would be like Europe where you could get through with bit of English—that I could use the words of Japanese I had learned. But no—it was very impenetrable, and I’m alright with languages and open to learning other people’s languages and make an effort to make myself understood. It was so hard. Without Mimi we couldn’t have done it—you need a permanent translator. They’re very polite and sometimes shy as a people. Maybe reluctant to practice the English they know. For example, a radio DJ did a whole interview with us at one of those karaoke rooms—total Lost in Translation moment. Mimi translated every single word and after the show he comes up to us and in fluent English says, ‘That was a great show, guys!’
Did you eat horse sushi in Japan?
Axel Steuerwald: No. But I had raw cow liver sushi—does that count? That’s where I drew the line.
Favorite line of broken English you came across?
Axel Steuerwald: Well, we played with a band called ‘Base Ball Bear.’ And on the road we would stop at ‘Highway Style of Mini Stop.’ Oh, and on a beer can it said, ‘Stylish Beer With Fiber For Happiness And Well Being Of Younger Generation.’
On one can?
Axel Steuerwald: On one can—it’s beer. It’s for your happiness and well-being. We always knew that in Germany.
You’re from Germany originally and lived in England so maybe a German label next? Then you can tour your homeland.
Axel Steuerwald: Some English labels are interested and having a listen. That would be great. A couple years ago we came close with a German one but again didn’t pan out.
Is L.A. unsustainable for you?
Axel Steuerwald: No L.A. will come around. The music infrastructure is so weak. Bands in this town you think have made it get signed and in three months the ball drops. It’s just such a commitment to sign a band.
How did the demise of Indie 103 hurt local music?
Axel Steuerwald: I think it hurt the L.A. music scene a lot. I really miss it everyday. It had a healthy influence on L.A—just made the music scene more diverse. There were more strains of new music around when Indie was our forum and platform.
You’ve placed a lot of songs on TV. That helps.
Axel Steuerwald: L.A. is really good for that. We’re in the middle of that capital. We’ve had luck with placements on TV and on some smaller movies. I haven’t seen this new shlocky horror movie we’re on. That may be it. But the strangest use so far is on the ‘Bad Girls Club.’ Have you seen that? A bunch of bad women. Definitely troubled individuals. Soap opera reality style show and they can be really bad to each other. Almost beat each other up. And they picked our only acoustic song—‘All the Rumors are True.’ I even got to see it again in Germany. ‘Club der Bösen Mädchen’.
How long you been in Los Angeles?
Axel Steuerwald: Nine years.
But you go to Germany to get your teeth worked on?
Axel Steuerwald: Yes. A side-effect of going home—I’m able to get fixed-up. It’s—almost—free.
Your early songs seem to have more structure and newer stuff like ‘Sunspots’ is really playing with atmospherics.
Axel Steuerwald: I have a lot more faith in the band now. The first songs were written practically without a band and then I recruited people to record. It wasn’t bad—just more pop structure. We have more mind-melt connection in the band now. Todd Demma on drums. A great new guitar player that I really vibe with—Jason O—who has been a godsend. Great addition.
But you still have some roots-y stuff too.
Axel Steuerwald: There will always be a pop song in-between. Something tight structured. There’s ‘Kites’ on the new album—pretty Kinks-y with a bop to it. I’ve always had a big love for the psyhedelica as well, but the thing is if you want to do that, you need to be a well-oiled band. Otherwise you will bore people. But now we can do that without seeming directionless.
Does krautrock really mean you sample accordions and band members sport lederhosen?
Axel Steuerwald: Kraftwerk did sport knickerbockers at least.
More accordion—more accordion!
Axel Steuerwald: Yeah, more accordion—we used one in the studio recently but it didn’t make it on there. But the krautrock thing is fun to come back to. There is so much stuff that’s not as discovered or stripped-mined as much as other influence—autobahn guitar music. That relentless beat.
You’ve been a guitar tech for Morrissey and opened for Frank Black. Who would you rather karaoke one of your songs?
Axel Steuerwald: Those two should have a weekly phone call session. Like the Queen of England calling Bill Clinton ranting about the state of music. But I think Morrissey. Frank Black would be amazing but Morrissey would be funnier.

MERE MORTALS IN RESIDENCY EVERY MONDAY IN DECEMBER AT SPACELAND, 1717 SILVERLAKE BLVD., SILVERLAKE. 9 PM / FREE / 21+. CLUBSPACELAND.COM. TONIGHT’S RESIDENCY WITH HELEN STELLAR, HEALAMONSTER AND TARSIER AND SILVERPHIAL. MERE MORTALS’ REBEL RADIO IS OUT NOW ON ZEAMI STARS. VISIT MERE MORTALS AT MEREMORTALS.JP OR MYSPACE.COM/MEREMORTALS.

Indie rock doesn’t produce much in the way of anthems, but, then again, Glasvegas is ‘indie’ only by D.I.Y. courtesy, started as it was by four Glaswegians with more confessed ambition than self-admitted skill. A series of happy accidents (along with more than a few holy-fucking-shit reactions among fans and bloggers) led to the band selling out venues all over Great Britain. A contract with Columbia segued into a late-2008 debut the oft-hyperbolic NME dubbed ‘Album of the Year.’ In the case of ‘Daddy’s Gone,’ this sounds just about right, given the durability of noise-pop pyrotechnics and the U.K.’s late paucity of epical tunes. Not since Oasis or the Smiths has Britrock seen a band with this kind of emotional depth and crowd-pleasing heart-on-the-sleeve heroics. We catch up here with guitarist Rab Allen at the 2009 Benicassim Festival before his band is about to go on. Crowd and feedback noise from Oasis’ rattletrap set punctuated a conversation already fraught with slippage between the musician’s Glaswegian accent and the interviewer’s equally impenetrable Appalachian drawl. This interview by Ron Garmon.

[An opening feedback howl is followed by distant applause, as the publicist says ‘Fifteen minutes’.]

What thunderation! Who’s on now?
Rab Allen (guitar): Oasis is on just now and we’re on just after them.
Nice! The climb to the top for you guys has been fast and perhaps dizzying. What’s the view like from up there?
It seems quite natural. It seems like things have gone very fast for us. Once it slows down, we’ll be better able to reflect on it, but right now it’s the most normal thing in the world—traveling every day and playing with Oasis, U2 and all these other bands. It just seems natural.
It’s like you just stepped into something most rock musicians experience only in their heads.
Yeah. I just think some people get a little bit kind of shocked by it, y’know—it made me think about a lot about how it might be, but we wanted it that much. That’s what we wanted to do for two or three years. So when we got it, we did what Scottish people do and grabbed it with both hands.
[Frontman] James Allen described your sound as having much to do with the unique dynamics of the band.
I dunno if that’s true. I guess the sound of the band came about my accident. Since Caroline [McKay] played only two drums, we had to fill in the gap with the guitars—make the guitar sound really colorful, like an orchestra. It started as an experiment—it really wasn’t meant to be that way, but that’s how it came out. Maybe with the next record, we’ll have a bit more time to focus and develop something. I think within a month of playing together we had that sound.
‘Flowers and Football Tops’ sets the tone for the whole album. You’ve described Glasvegas as ‘people who’ve never played before who are too stupid to understand limitations.’ Since you’ve learned so much, are there any limitations left you all are too dumb to get?
Really, we’re still so dumb we don’t know about limitations. I think that’s one of our charms. Caroline, y‘know, didn’t play drums before we started the band. Paul [Donoghue] never played bass. It was just one of those things. Individually, as musicians, we’re all terrible, but you put the four of us in a room together and there’s that spark. It’s one of those things you can’t make happen—either it does or it doesn’t. Even live, with us there’s that excitement—probably because the whole thing’s hanging together by a thread and we could fall apart to anything. To me that’s the exciting part. We’ve all matured, but since James is the songwriter, he’s probably learned the most. His songwritin’ has gotten so much better, especially with the new stuff you’ve yet to hear.
Well, you know you’ve arrived when you’re praised by the likes of Morrissey—from whom praise comes most difficult.
I only heard about that two days ago. I don’t know if Morrissey likes us or not, but he’s heard of us. A lot of musicians tend to respect us, which is really sweet.
Tell us about opening for U2.
Well, the show we’re doing is in five days [July 24th] in Dublin. I expect that to be absolutely crazy. We’ve already played with Oasis, so to open for U2 in their home city I think—well, there’s not many bands that we favor, so I get kinda nervous, but I think U2 will probably embarrass us and I wouldn’t say that’s unlikely. I like that a lot of U2 fans are actually fans of music. In Britain, quite a lot of people go to these shows to get drunk and throw their shoes on stage. They may be a lot more civilized than that in Dublin.
There’s no accounting for one’s reception among the vulgar herd.
Exactly.
You guys have the epic tracks opening and closing the album which gives it a classic Britrock feel. Was that a conscious choice?
James came with a full album when we went to New York, so we had it all laid out, one to ten. When [producer] Rich [Costey] got ahold of it, he sonically made it travel. Again, I should say we were a naïve band who went in thinking they can have it all done in five day. We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into. He actually got in touch with us before any record company. We were doing a small tour of Britain and he called our manager and aid he wanted to work with our band. We didn’t know who he was. What happened is someone gave him a copy of our demo. We didn’t have a label or any money or a record deal and he said he’d do it very cheap or for free because he loved our music that much. When it came to doing the album, the record company had several people in mind, but we said we wanted Rich. He’s one of the top two or three in the world who does what he does, so straightaway we felt very good about working with him.
What did he bring to the record?
Rich made it sound the way we wanted. Funny, when we go back to the demos, we see he didn’t mess with them very much in that sense. It was all in the mixing switch and that’s his genius. One of the favorite parts of the album for me is at the end when he goes into those, like, landscape sounds. That was one of those songs we gave him that he really, really liked and I think he knew that was the end of the album. He was the right guy to do it. He wants to do the second album and we’ve asked for him to do it, so here’s hoping.
Tell we Angelenos about the local incident—a teen murder in Glasgow that’s since inspired much racial and gang violence—that inspired ‘Flowers and Football Tops’?
It was like reading the newspaper and putting yourself in someone else’s position, like what if you won the lottery? In Glasgow, a few people mobbed up and you ask ‘What if I was in that position?’ Obviously, the ‘You Are My Sunshine’ part at the end…
[Deafening feedback squelch]
Wow. Long live rock.
It’s been going on and off. There. It’s gone again.
(shouting) Some rock critics have questioned the very largeness of feeling and expression on your album. What does this say about rock critics these days?
Our album was received so well—in Britain, for example—that some of it shocked us, comparing James to Morrissey and all that. You never can prepare yourself for what the critics will say. They’re obviously more than welcome to their opinion, but we sold out our first British tour before we had a record deal and that was largely due to online reviewers. In America, we haven’t seen a lot of the press. I dunno if it means it’s that bad and they don’t wanna show us! I’ve noticed in America, people travel quite a lot, but in Britain, if you don’t go to their city, people won’t see you. There’s a crowd and the people who love music, really love music.
Do you think this generation needs any more rock stars?
I think so, because you can learn from other people’s mistakes. It’s good to see how others have achieved and others fallen down. Throughout history, people have always made the same mistakes in rock ‘n’ roll.
What next?
After U2, we go to America, then do some more shows in Britain, then we go away and do the second album, which we’re actually recording in Los Angeles. James is buying a house in Los Angeles and wants to move there for a few months.
That will certainly be welcome, given the real estate market around here.
We fell in love with Los Angeles. It felt like home, which is strange. (laughs) So, it’s L.A. for us next year.

GLASVEGAS WITH IDA MARIA ON TUE., JULY 28, AT THE HENRY FONDA THEATRE, 6126 HOLLYWOOD BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 9 PM / $22 / ALL AGES. GOLDENVOICE.COM. GLASVEGAS’ SELF-TITLED ALBUM IS OUT NOW ON SONY. VISIT GLASVEGAS AT GLASVEGAS.NET OR MYSPACE.COM/GLASVEGAS.

L.A. RECORD photographer Paul Rodriguez sends this behind-the-scenes video documenting the Bruce LaBruce photo shoot for our July 2009 issue. Read the interview here.

Bruce LaBruce is ready to leave the blood behind but not without one final splatter. A self-described “reluctant pornographer,” Bruce’s films feature as many heart-wrenchingly romantic moments as they do scenes of explicit and extreme sex. For every gut- or stump-fuck, there is a glance or a line so scathingly heartfelt I can’t help but think Bruce LaBruce’s sincerity is his most dangerous weapon. This interview by Drew Denny and video of the shoot by Paul Rodriguez here.

I just read an interview with you in Butt magazine!
Oh yeah—I’ve worked with them a lot. I photographed Ryan McGinley for the cover, and then I wrote the intro to the Butt Book, which is a big thick compilation of the first 15 issues.
I’d love to read that! But we should talk about your show—
It’s completely out of control at this point—
You still have a whole day!
It’s called Untitled Hardcore Zombie Project. It was time for me to have a solo show, and I’d been doing a lot of stuff with zombies and blood over the past—well, since 2002, I guess. I think I’m going to leave behind all the blood and gore after this, but I thought I’d go out in a big explosion. The idea was to make—as an art project—a hardcore zombie splatter porn film. Because splatter and porn—it’s been done, though I’m not sure if there’s been a gay splatter porn. This idea of intersecting the gore and splatter genre—and horror—with porn really intrigues me because of these new ‘torture porn’ movies as they call them, which aren’t really porn but they operate similarly to porn in many ways. And they’re constructed the same way in terms of these narratives which build to orgasmic moments in which people either have sex or get murdered or end up emitting large quantities of fluid. The original idea was to make an actual gay splatter porn for the opening, but we realized we wouldn’t have time to pull it off, so I decided to make it more like a work in progress, and I’m actually shooting it here in August. The star of the show is Francois Sagat, the famous porn star and model. He’s in town, and I’ve been meeting with him and he’s going to be doing a live performance tomorrow with the guy who’s doing the special effects—Joe Castro. We’re experimenting with Francois’ look so we made a prototype for canine teeth and Joe’s going to airbrush him live. I also have five or six photographs that are examples of the bloody work I’ve done over the past few years with models and in movies.
A few of your photos remind me of the Abu Ghraib images.
That was a big inspiration for a lot of people. They were such strong, horrible images. Abu Ghraib was like a horror movie come to life, and that’s what a lot of my work has been lately in terms of the horror stuff—I do these Polaroid performances in which I do an installation then make it look like it’s some sort of abduction scenario or terrorist scenario where someone’s being tortured. Especially when Al Qaeda was at it’s height in terms of visibility, you’d see these videos where they were about to decapitate someone. It was all over the news, and we got accustomed to these scenarios. So I re-enact them but in a kind of gay way. There’s always an undercurrent of homosexuality in these things—like ‘mujahadeen’ has become slang for ‘gay’ or ‘faggot’ in Iraq, and they actually had this TV show where they would find terrorists—it was like a terrorist of the week show—they’d find a terrorist and put him on TV and humiliate him. They’d call him a faggot and say he was homosexual. It’s the idea that people are so used to passively accepting these violent images, so I like to give the public a chance to participate in these kinds of set ups—like one of those violent videos. It’s very cathartic. There’s always a vibe—it surprises me—the vibe is always more therapeutic then negative.
I was definitely surprised by that—Otto is the most recent work of yours that I’ve seen, but Hustler White is still my favorite.
I just saw Tony Ward last night at Diamond Dogs—Brian Rabin’s club—and I hadn’t seen him since we toured with the film in ‘96. He looked exactly the same—he’s so beautiful.
One of the most wonderful things about Hustler White, for me, was how it blurred the line between narrative filmmaking and documentary—you used non-actors and the sex was real. Now you’re re-creating in the public world situations from the media and the war. What’s the idea behind your combination of fiction and documentary?
My films have always—even from my short experimental films that I made in the late ‘80s when I was in the punk scene—they’ve always had a documentary element to them, and I did fanzines and stuff. It was all just taking pictures of friends or Super 8 movies of friends and incorporating them into a narrative or inventing stuff that’s fictionalized. But there’s always a core concept of documenting the scene that I was in. I think I’ve kept that process. Although with Otto, it’s obviously the biggest budget that I’ve had and the most ambitious film I’ve made. I think it’s almost completely fictionalized, although I still found the actor who played Otto on Myspace, and I used Katharina who played Medea—Katharina was a friend I met in Berlin who happened to be a woman filmmaker who made a documentary about horror film. So I still base characters on people I know.
As I watched Otto, I was surprised by how different it was from your other work—until the love scene. When Otto’s remembering his lover, he says he smelled of chlorine then you cut to that shot of them falling into the pool. You do love really well! That moment recalled the sincerity and realism I appreciated in your earlier work.
I always throw in the romance, especially when dealing with a lot of extreme subject matter. Like in Hustler White there’s a lot of sexual torture—or sexual fetish and amputee sex and that kind of stuff. First of all, I think that stuff is really corny if you’re too serious about it. Secondly, I think it’s important for people to know that there are real people with normal emotions participating in a lot of these extreme sexual fetishes all the time—so they’re just really average people. Thirdly, it’s just an unexpected representation. You don’t expect to see these kinds of people in a romantic way or with romantic impulses. In Otto, part of the whole point was a reaction to this new wave of torture porn which is so brutal and non-romantic and really cynical.
I appreciate that you take what is considered ‘subversive’ or ‘extreme’—people and behaviors that are either not represented at all or are exploited to create spectacle—and depict it casually, with a certain amount of respect and even grace. Hustler White exemplifies that sort of representation for me, which is impressive because at that time in the ‘90s, there were all those filmmakers—like Tarantino and his ‘gimp’—exploiting such people and behaviors, using them as a gimmick—
Unfortunately at that time, Tarantino represented the zeitgeist—it happened some time in the ‘90s—where it became a politically incorrect posture… this kind of irony through which you could be misogynistic or you could be homophobic but you were laughing—like it’s an inside joke—but you still do it. You get away with it. It’s still nasty. Those things became acceptable again in a weird way. That’s why I think being sincere almost became politically incorrect. My films—despite the extreme subject matter—there’s always a sincerity behind them.
That’s what shocks people.
A lot of people don’t get it. They think, ‘Oh, he made a movie where one guy fucks the other guy in a hole in his stomach, so he can’t possibly have any kind of romantic ideas.’ Actually, the gut-fucking scene is in a film within the film—which is very romantic. It’s about these two rebel zombies who are on a crusade together, and they’re boyfriends. It’s very romantic.
You mentioned your involvement with the punk scene in the late ‘80s—I’ve always really enjoyed your soundtracks, and I was wondering what your relationship is with these musicians. How do you curate your soundtracks?
For the early ones, I either used music by people I knew, or I would use obscure soundtrack music from the ‘60s and ‘70s and mix it up with really obscure punk music. For my first couple of films, I don’t have a lot of music clearances which is why they’re so hard to get a hold of—people are really reluctant to release them. I’ve done that with all my films. My last two—Raspberry Reich and Otto—I got a lot of music through people I know or friends of friends. With Otto in particular—that was sort of at the height of the popularity of Myspace—I sent out word that I was looking for music for a melancholy gay zombie movie, and I got flooded with so many people saying they’d donate the music for free just in exchange for credit. I ended up with 23 hours of material, and I tried to use as much as I could. We ended up using 55 tracks by 27 different artists. Most of it was for free. I got Antony and the Johnsons and Cocorosie because of my friend Kembra Pfahler who has a cameo in the film—
Who does she play?
She’s in the dance scene. In the DVD extras, there’s a short film of Medea’s that got cut out of the film—it’s called Messy in the Afternoon… it’s a take off Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, and Kembra features very prominently in that.
You mentioned Raspberry Reich, and I’d like to talk about that—it seems to be your most overtly political film. I’ve read a few interviews in which you discuss how subversive political movements become co-opted by capitalist society then turned into empty signifiers which can be filled by whatever content the market provides—Che Guevara t-shirts and the like.
That certainly came back to bite us in the ass because we got sued by the estate of Korda, the photographer who shot the famous image of Che Guevara—
Everybody else uses that image!
I know! Korda was Che’s personal photographer for ten years. He sued us for a million dollars Canadian for using the image without permission. It was a long protracted thing—we had to go to court, and the suit was launched in France. We had a lawyer in France to deal with it. We ended up having the damages reduced to eight or ten thousand but we had to pay court costs. Technically, we’re not even supposed to show the film anymore. We basically lost. But my American distributor wasn’t named in the suit so I think we’re still distributing it here. The European version had the image right on the box. But they definitely watched the whole thing. The subpoena was fifty pages long—they thought the film defiled the image. There’s so much irony involved because the film is anti-capitalist. It’s about the way capitalism exploits not only Che Guevara but radicalism and terrorism and the Baader-Meinhof Gang. You can read about it—I just posted an article I wrote about it for Black Book. That’s what the film is about—the commodification of radical imagery and the way it’s made fashionable. It’s also about left-wing idealism—how it can turn into dogmatism, and it can also quickly switch into becoming the very thing to which it stands opposed. These left-wing radical groups like the Baader-Meinhof gang start out with lofty ideals about improving the world and equality and class and fighting corporate control, but then they become completely ethically and morally bankrupt when they start killing people. Of course it’s more complicated than that because they consider themselves at war, and the rules of war are different from normal law. But one of the themes that runs through my films is the idea of the oppressed becoming the oppressor and about not practicing what you preach. When I went to university and graduate school, I had a lot of professors who spouted a lot of extreme anti-patriarchal and anti-capitalist rhetoric yet they were in monogamous marriages—
Working in institutions—
And living in nice houses!
What did you study?
I was a film undergrad and then I got an MFA in basically film theory and social and political theory.
I wanted to ask you who you’re reading—in terms of philosophy—because your dialogue and those t-shirts from Raspberry Reich—
Put your Marxism where your mouth is! For Raspberry Reich, I went through all my old notes from university. I steal a lot from Marcuse, and I was always into the Frankfurt School. In Raspberry Reich I also steal from Raoul Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life and the Situationists. I’m much more into that practical enterprise of dealing with realpolitik rather than the French Post-Structuralists—
I’m reading Deleuze now—
I should’ve read more of that actually. I took a course called Psychoanalysis in Feminism, and I had to read all of Lacan translated into English—that was what almost killed me.
Let’s get back to your show—if I’m picturing the image right, there’s a flag in the background of one of the photos. Since 9-11, there’s been a void in art that uses that kind of imagery for critical purposes—
Raspberry Reich was a response to what happened to the left in America after 9-11 because the left was silenced. Castrated really. It was amazing—even now people are so quick to call someone a socialist or a communist —like Obama—that’s why in Raspberry Reich people are constantly spouting leftist rhetoric, and the text is flashing across the screen. I wanted to bombard the audience with that imagery and ideology. In terms of the flag, that was from a performance piece that I did in London a few weeks ago—Ron Athey and Lee Adams curated a performance spectacle called ‘Visions of Excess.’ They curated a bunch of international performance artists and it was in the Shunt Vaults under the London Bridge—it’s like a dungeon. It’s a huge space. My piece was an IRA zombie concept—it’s the Irish flag and the British flag. An IRA zombie being tortured by British zombies—you know, the IRA coming back from the dead. It was also this idea of the war going on in Northern Ireland. It seems to have gone away but there were a couple incidents when it was coming back. The idea that war and violence become fetishized not only by the media but by the participants and the whole military aspect becoming very aesthetic and sexy—even for the participants—so there is a certain romance to it as well. There were a couple people who were shocked because it was so directly political. He’s standing in front of the Irish flag. A zombie. Covered in blood. Licking his gun. Also, he’s got a hard-on. So it’s basically terrorist porn!
When you discuss the politics of your films, how much do you concern yourself with gender politics and the politics of sexuality—the decision to work almost exclusively with male homosexuals, for example?
After my first feature—I had been politically correct in terms of my representation of sexuality. It’s partly because of my academic training. I had a couple friends who de-programmed me. They said, ‘You’re policing your imagery. It’s politically correct.’ So I started trying to deal with gender in a much looser way—in Super 8 1/2, Richard Kern, the famous photographer, was in a wig with a strap-on dildo fucking a woman—which was kind of an inside joke because people consider him misogynist. So it was kind of a mind fuck. With Hustler White, we decided to have not a single woman in the movie—partly as an expressionistic thing wherein this fantasy world of johns and hustlers, they are living in this utopian world where they don’t have to deal with women. Then I often have lesbian characters like in Super 8 1/2 and in Otto. I haven’t done as much with the transgendered as I would like. I did a photo series with a pre-op transsexual in Toronto named Nina Arsenault. I don’t know if you’ve seen the photos, but they’re quite extreme because she actually allowed me to photograph her penis which had never been photographed before. She just had one of her breast implants taken out because there was a problem, so there was a scar and just one big breast—and she was covered in blood and carrying a gun. So it was a take on gender terrorism. I’m totally into that. In terms of politics and the gay thing, I always try to carry on that tradition of the gay avant-garde which is going back to Warhol and Morrissey, Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, Curt McDowell, and John Waters—because I think it’s necessary and I think it’s what sets homosexuals apart—that kind of experimentation and celebration of difference. In terms of more straightforward politics, my husband is Cuban. He grew up in Cuba and didn’t leave until he was in his early 30s—so he makes fun of me for my political posturing. I’m kind of a Marxist sympathizer, and I’m anti-capitalist and anti-corporate which came from my punk training… I did grow up below the poverty line on a small farm, but compared to what was going on in Cuba or in a third world country, I was living an incredibly privileged life. He’s lived the revolution and seen how the revolution went sour, so he’s a good reality check for me.
How long have you two been together?
We’ve been together for four years, married for two years.
Considering the work that you do, isn’t it difficult to be married?
It’s not a monogamous relationship—it’s an open relationship.
Oh, much better—I was shocked!
I’m not into the institution of marriage but he’s Cuban, and I’ve sponsored him for citizenship—so it was done for those reasons. Strangely, it actually made our relationship stronger. But I never would have done it without the immigration angle.
A friend of mine shot porn for a while and says it ruined her sex life—does it affect your sex life?
I make it so rarely. I’m more like an artist who works in porn. I’ve really only made two movies for actual porn companies. Most of my films do have sexually explicit content but I certainly don’t work in the industry so it’s not-—like I know people, friends who are porn stars and directors, who make forty to fifty films a year so they’re constantly saturated with it. It’s like a fatigue—sexual fatigue. Also, it’s not glamorous shooting porn. That’s what I gathered when I made my first industry porn which is Skin Gang. It’s not glamorous—it’s very contrived. The guys are certainly hot and sexy, but they are professionals and they’re doing their job. They take their Viagra, and they have to insert the cock when they’re told to and have to hold it there and keep it hard and turn cheek towards the camera and hold in an awkward position for a long period of time. And then they’ll have anal leakage and someone has to come wipe it up. So it’s not that sexy to shoot—to make. The whole idea is to present this illusion of this seamless fantasy of sexual perfection that climaxes in a fountain of ejaculation. We all know that real sex doesn’t often happen that way.
Does that label bother you—’pornographer’? Hustler White, for me, is an art film in which the sex is real rather than simulated.
Right, but then I did actually make films for porn companies. Skin Gang was nominated for nine Gay Adult Video Awards. Also I wrote a memoir in the late ‘90s called The Reluctant Pornographer. But, yeah, I was just talking to somebody about that the other day. There is a glass ceiling for pornographers. There’s a lot of hypocrisy where people kind of look down—even if they are an avid consumer of porn—when they meet someone who works in porn. I was out with a porn star last night, and he was saying how tired he is of people coming up to him and asking him how big his cock is and taking these kinds of liberties. I experienced that after I made my first two films, and I was having sex in the film. There’s a certain line that you cross which I call the ‘corn-hole line’—once you’ve been penetrated, people look at you differently. They assume you’re immoral, amoral or unethical. I always say—you actually need a very strong moral compass to navigate the porn world because there’s a lot of exploitation that does go on, and there are a lot of damaged people and sexually abused people. So you have to be careful not to be exploitative and to be really responsible for what you’re doing.
Considering the amount of exploitation involved in mainstream filmmaking, this all seems very hypocritical.
The hypocrisy of it is really sad. That’s why I’m making this hardcore splatter zombie movie. The hypocrisy that you can show the most disgusting, over-the-top, gory torture—women being tortured and mutilated—and yet you can’t show two people having sex? If an alien came down from another planet and saw that phenomenon, they would be so disgusted.
Violence—OK. Naked people—not OK?
Right.
I’ve heard you say you incorporate all types of sex in order to depict all types of fantasies that real people have—is there a limit to what you’ll represent?
For one thing, I think porn in general is—it’s the collective unconscious. It allows people to work out their most extreme and most politically incorrect fantasies, which is what I really explored in Skin Flick—which was racially based fantasies of domination and submission and rape. It was kind of a heavy movie. I had a lot of gay black guys contact me on the internet—even though there’s a black man raped by white power skin heads—who were totally turned on by that scene. Then in Hustler White, the white character is gang banged by the black gang. I think anything is fair game. That’s what the function of art should be—to explore those kinds of things. In terms of where else there is to go? Well, I’m not really talking about my next film. I’m working on the script for a larger movie—the title is Gerontophilia—so you can draw your own conclusions.

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—Greg Garabedian

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

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

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

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

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

—Ron Garmon

All I’ve got to show from Coachella is a sunburn, a pimple, and a busted bottom lip. While there, I enjoyed: half-assed ass shaking to Crystal Castles, Ting Tings, and Girl Talk; Morrissey looking bloated but still croonin’ like a pro; Paul McCartney singing me to sleep as I lay in my tent; worrying that Ariel Pink was either going to melt or collapse into a pile of dust when exposed to daylight; watching Liars (featuring Alex Myrvold of Pizza!) squirm through my favorite songs while I wondered whether their presence signified a new direction for Coachella (towards an aesthetic I find much more attractive and interesting than that of, say, the stupid Killers) or simply reaffirmed my aforementioned belief that some music is best kept in dark places where sweat is produced via dancing hard as fuck rather than by standing in the fucking sun thinking, “I would be dancing right now if I weren’t sweating my balls off!”

And: I guess I do like that one TV on the Radio song; how gross but totally radical it is that M.I.A. can hop and squat and shimmy and slam like that so soon after popping a baby human out of her vagina? I mean, I hate it when people talk about their babies and how their babies are waiting for them so they can only sing seven songs but I’ll take seven songs and some dumb-ass baby banter if it means I also get amazing glow in the dark costumes and hammer-dancing in front of footage of impoverished Sri Lankan militia men while M.I.A performs effortlessly, barely breaking a sweat—unlike Gwen Stefani who looked like a sweaty bag of shit for several performances after birthing Kingston.

And: the Vivian Girls looking too shampooed to have all that hair in their face and doing absolutely nothing new but making me like them anyway—also a case of No One Dancing until my buddy Jack and I started a water-spitting war and got at least 12 too-skinny kids in short shorts to move, although they were mostly just scurrying away from us but really where’s the line between that and the way hipsters dance, anyway? Plus the Vivian Girls really know how to harmonize and they swapped instruments during a coda without any awkwardness at all, a well-choreographed gimmick that reminded me of how cool I felt the first time I switched drivers going 80 on the freeway but then also how I wondered immediately after, “Why did we just do that?” But then I thought immediately after that: “Sometimes it’s good to do something just for fun, even if it could kill you.” Not that the Vivian Girls switching instruments during a song could kill anyone—the analogy really lies in the doing something just for fun part, because you are young so maybe it’s enough that you are new even if what you’re doing is not.

Also—how No Age has really gotten their shit together. They are now a professional act complete with Scott their very own sound guy (ex-drummer for the Soft Boiled Eggies) and Jim Smith who coolly orchestrated the tech guys to get it all just right so that this show actually did get people bouncing up and down and shoving each other a bit. Plus Chloe Sevigny, one of my first female crushes, was there looking like a fancy rancher’s daughter wearing a white dress that was sort of see through if you stared at it long enough and with her golden locks in a tidy French twist. And: how I can’t help but hum along to that goddamned whistly song by Peter, Bjorn and John.

Finally: how watching X and My Bloody Valentine put into perspective all these kids making noisy pop music by recalling the rich and fabled genealogy of this newfangled uprising and putting a sincere (albeit wrinkled) face on sounds that were once something controversial and that today’s babies take for granted… it must be oddly pleasant to play a show you never would’ve been asked to play in your own heyday, knowing that tropes you helped invent are propelling smooth-skinned foals into stardom from what middle-aged critics are carelessly referring to as the “outside” or the “fringes” while you wonder where the hell that leaves you? But I guess that’s how culture propagates itself and blah-blah-blah babies are gross, even when they are not babies but musical movements.

I didn’t get to see Public Enemy because I was busy almost getting arrested. Then I was not allowed back in so I didn’t get to see the Cure either. Lame.

—Drew Denny

L.A. RECORD put photographer Lindsey Best through three dessicating days at the Coachella fun factory and she returned with this giant pile of beautiful photos and without any evidence whatsoever of sun damage to herself. Captured in full glory here are TV On The Radio, Leonard Cohen, M.I.A., No Age, Antony and the Johnsons, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Morrissey, Lykke Li, Public Enemy and many more! Check out albums for Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

Coachella 2009 - Friday

23 Photos

Coachella 2009 - Saturday

25 Photos

Coachella 2009 - Sunday

64 Photos