Bummer city: After two televison seasons and two albums of quirky musical comedy, the Flight of the Conchords guys are calling it quits. “We won’t be returning for a 3rd season,” wrote the duo on their official site. “While the characters Bret and Jemaine will no longer be around, the real Bret and Jemaine will continue to exist.” [Read More]

Download: Os Mutantes “Anagrama”

(from Haih out Sept. 8 on Anti-)

Os Mutantes decided everything was possible and tried to prove it across a set of albums that were national classics at home in Brazil but which never even made it to the States until a foreign exchange student accidentally left her copies with the boys in Redd Kross. Low End Theory resident and Blank Blue guitarist Nobody (Elvin Estela) speaks with Mutantes co-founder Sérgio Baptista about helicopters, honesty and the brand-new Mutantes album Haih.

What I love about your new record is that it doesn’t sound like you guys are trying to recreate your old sound—it just sounds like you picked up where you left off.
Sérgio Baptista (guitar/vocals): That’s definitely what I was really wanting to do and I was very happy that I could do it in terms of being able to be faithful and honest to our legacy and not looking back in any way—no way. We are in the 21st century and we are different people now and it’s very important for us to be honest and play what we feel. I think we were very blessed in being able to do something I consider is honorable to our legacy.
That’s an incredible approach to recording, especially for a band that hasn’t put out anything in a while. This is a perfect addition to your discography—it doesn’t stand out as ‘the modern record.’ It’s definitely just a timeless record.
If you don’t put yourself in danger of being spit upon, then you are not really alive. Then it’s just going to be a mock. And we owe so much to the people and the kids and everybody that we have to at least open up our hearts and souls the best way that we can to be naked in front of them and let them look at us. Now we are different—we are fatter, we are older—but that’s who we are. That’s how Mutantes would sound now and I think with all the flaws and wisdoms that came with age—I think that’s the most important thing that you have to do as a producer or artist is basically to just assume all of it and be ready to expose yourself. That’s basically what an artist has to do.
Put their balls on the line.
For sure. That’s what we always did and it’s what we’re doing.
What’s the point of art if there’s no risk involved?
Exactly—it would be sad. I think it would be like spitting in the place where we eat. We are able to see how important these people are and how much we owe them. What we can do is be as completely honest as we could and put our hearts the way they are.
You talk about being a lot older but your voice hasn’t aged a bit—what’s your secret to eternal youth and voice?
I’m not older; I’m younger for a longer time. You cannot lose your child inside. If you let your child die then you are in trouble.
I wanted to ask about this urban myth about your guitars—you had a fuzz guitar with each individual string going to its own fuzz pedal?
Yes. All the electronics are inside of it.
Each string had its own processor?
Yes. When I was with my brother and Rita only, all the job of texture and solos came down to myself. I had to fill in all the sounds and I had a need for sound. We lacked harmonies and I wanted to be able to play chords with fuzz, but if you play a chord with just one fuzz you have intermodulation and you have a bad sound and you cannot get the chord clean. So I spoke to my brother who was building the stuff, and he said the only way I can do this is to do one pickup per string and then through a fuzz individually and mix all of them together and I said, ‘OK, let’s do it.’ So we did it and it sounded great.
I saw Mutantes in L.A. in July 2007 and my favorite part of the show was when you were pretending there was a helicopter above the audience with the guitar.
All improvisation. It was basically the sewing machine pedal that I used on ‘Bat Macumba’ but in a different manner. It normally was mechanical but then we made it possible to use digitally. It was impossible to use that thing more than five minutes because it was connected to the engine of the sewing machine.
It was actually running through a real sewing machine?
Oh yeah. The guitar was coming in and out of it. With the axis of the engine and how you could vary the speed, he would cut open the sound of the guitar extremely fast and this would create several different harmonics and things that make that crazy sound. It was something that was not practical, so now in the digital era we were able to produce this in a way that it is possible to play with it. So I’m using a lot of it in the record.
Did you ever think of manufacturing and making it widely available to the world?
Yes, definitely. The name is Green Devil. Because the sewing machine was green.
I would definitely use a Green Devil pedal if you ever put one out.
I’ll do my best—definitely. So you think I should go for a helicopter again?
You haven’t done it since that show?
No. Ok—I’ll do it again.
I thought it was hilarious. I kept looking back, I was like, ‘Man, this is the greatest showmanship right there.’ You should have been the guy making guitars for kids in the ‘60s—we’d have a lot cooler stuff like sewing machine effects pedals.
Yeah—twenty years before Ovation we were using a piezo on the bridge. If you hear any of those songs like ‘Dia 36,’ that crazy sound of guitar that sounds a bit like an acoustic—it is a piezo electric.
‘Dia 36’ is one of my favorite songs by you guys.
I think it was one of my best lyrics. It was from an American guy who came here and I made the lyrics.
Who was the American guy?
It was John something—God, I don’t remember. He was a crazy guy—like albino, like the brothers Edgar and Johnny Winter.
And he was the original writer of the song?
He was—when we played, he just entered the stage and he was totally out of his mind and he was screaming and it was great. It was really amazing. I think he wrote the song on a dulcimer and I really loved his song. I got it and I wrote the lyrics for it and it was great.
To me you guys are one of the premier psychedelic bands that ever existed—I really think that it’s amazing that thousands of people today can relate to a psychedelic band from back then. What do you think that says about psychedelic music from that era? In history, it might be seen as a flash in the pan because it was only five years of music. But so much came out.
It’s amazing for us because we didn’t know that we were psychedelic or anything like that. There was no psychedelia at the time, at least not in Brazil. The first album came out in ’68 and there was no drugs involved in any of the albums.
So to you guys, you weren’t making psychedelic rock—you were just making whatever you wanted to make?
Yes. It is amazing that it fell on the slot. The way that we used to gather information was like a kaleidoscope in pieces and then from the flower power, we just got the flower not the power. We didn’t even care about the power—we just loved the flower. You know the girls and the free love and all the beauty and the colors and the music—we didn’t realize it was Vietnam behind it.
In America it was definitely about the protest, but for English bands it was more about the girls and the flowers. What bands from across the world were influencing you guys down in Brazil?
Everybody. Sly and the Family Stone for sure. Beach Boys, Mary Ford and Les Paul, Jimmy Smith, all the operas. We had a huge and very big spectrum of music which we drank from. Like Sarita Montiel from Spain and all the mariachis from Mexico. We were into everything—all the cats, Barney Kessel, the Ventures, the Shadows, all of them.
And it all combined to create what you wanted?
Oh yeah—take my solos. They were very Ventures-oriented at the beginning. I think the great thing about it is that all the record companies and all those people were into the music. The money came much later. Nobody was worried about being a star or selling a billion dollars in records. I think people were just making music from the heart and the honesty that we had in doing this—I think that’s maybe what draws people to listen to us.
Do you think that people can make music from the heart again today?
Oh, for sure. We’re doing it. I think this new album definitely. There is no thought behind it—this is just the music playing the way it came to us in terms of inspiration and everything. There is no gimmick behind it.
You said you always had a need for sound—where did that come from? If you guys weren’t doing psychedelics like the English bands, what drove you?
I think it probably came from NASA. I was raised with like the X-15 and the X-2 and knowing all the names of the cats—like the guy who broke the sound barrier. All those things were so important for us. I heard the Sputnik—we put on the shortwave and listened to the ‘bleep, bleep, bleep’ and it was an amazing era. All of this—the technology were so much in our veins, and all these things were happening so we always were connected to it. Especially because my brother was such a genius and proud of making all this stuff.
So it was space and the technology of the time?
All the science and technology and all the avant-garde things that were going on at the time. There was Picasso and all of this was influencing us a lot. Modern art and all this was a must for us. I think that was translating to sounds.
How long did it take to record this album?
It took about a year. We took our time—we didn’t want to rush everything. Especially because of everybody’s schedule and the bunch of things that everybody was doing and of course the beginning of the year was very had because Arnaldo left the band and we took our time.
What does the name mean?
It’s a Shoshone language. It means ‘raven.’ I was passing this crow in France and trying to get its picture and I got his picture of him looking at me looking like he was saying, ‘Get ready ‘cause you’re next.’ He was pissed with me. And I got the crow photograph and I was watching a movie about the Clark expedition and the Shoshone thing—I’m very involved with this area because it was such a magical place in America. I started to know of Nevada as such a great state. You go to Las Vegas and you forget the Strip and all the mountains are so magical and you have the fantastic lake and you go thirty miles to the other side and there’s snow—then you’re in the desert. You can feel the Indians there. You can feel the energy of America—which was great. I saw the documentary about the Clark expedition and there was this girl who I don’t remember her name—Sacajawea? She was very important symbol for women as an endeavor or entity and she saved the journals of the expedition and she was the one who guided the expedition—which was great. And so I started fooling around trying to get a name in Shoshone and I found a dictionary on the internet of Shoshone. I wanted to do like ‘Lightning Crow’ but the lightning word was like ten words together—it was huge. I couldn’t even pronounce it, so I just had ‘crow.’
You would have had the longest album title ever if you used the whole thing. Almost longer than Devendra Banhart’s first record.
Yeah—probably.
The most amazing thing about your show last year was that it was completely sold out—but your records were never released in America when they came out.
It was something that was really amazing to me, too. When we played in 2006 at the Barbican and one month after playing there we booked about 8 shows in America in the most brilliant places like the Hollywood Bowl and Fillmore and the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago—and we hadn’t played one note. That was really amazing. Now having all these things happening and playing in America and having so many people that are involved with us, it is something that makes you very happy and humble about it because you know that it was so spontaneous—it’s a beautiful thing to see.

OS MUTANTES WITH DJ NOBODY AND BUYEPONGO ON FRI., AUG 28, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD, ECHO PARK. 8PM / $28-$30 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. OS MUTANTES’ HAIH RELEASES TUE., SEPT. 8, ON ANTI-. VISIT OS MUTANTES AT MUTANTES.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/OSMUTANTES.

Stream: The Dream Syndicate “Merrittville”

(from Medicine Show on A&M)

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

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

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

Dear Ian,

Thanks for your review of our record. It’s clear that you are a good writer and it’s clear that you took a lot of time giving us a thorough slagging on the site. We are fans of Pitchfork. And it’s fun to slag off bands. It’s like a sport — kind of part of the deal when you decide to be in a rock band. (That review of Jet where the monkey pees in his own mouth was about the funniest piece of band-slagging we’ve ever seen.)

We decided a long time ago not to take reviews too seriously. For one, they tend to involve a whole lot of projection, generally saying more about the writer than the band. Sort of a musical Rorschach test. And for another, reading them makes you too damned self-conscious, like the world is looking over your shoulder when the truth is you’re not a genius or a moron. You’re just a person in a band.

Plus, the variation of opinions on our record has bordered on absurd. 80 percent of what’s been said has been positive, a few reviews have remained on the fence and a few (such as yours) have been aggressively harsh. We tend not to put a lot of stock in this stuff, but the sheer disagreement of opinion makes for fascinating (if not a bit narcissistic) reading.

And anyway we have to admit that we found ourselves oddly flattered by your review. I mean, 1.6? That is not faint praise. That is not a humdrum slagging. That is serious fist-pounding, shoe-stomping anger. Many publications said this was among the best records of the year. You seem to think it’s among the worst. That is so much better than faint praise.

You compare us to a lot of really great bands (Arcade Fire, the National, Bright Eyes, Bruce Springsteen) and even if your intention was to cut us down, you end up describing us as: “lyrically moody, musically sumptuous and dramatic.” One is left only to conclude that you must think those things are bad.

We love indie rock and we know full well that Pitchfork doesn’t so much critique bands as critique a band’s ability to match a certain indie rock aesthetic. We don’t match it. It’s true that the events described in these songs really happened. It’s true we wrote about them in ways that make us look bad. (Sometimes in life you are the hero, and sometimes, you are the limp-dicked cuckold. Sometimes you’re screaming about your worst fears, your most vicious jealousies and failures. Such is life.) It’s also true that the record isn’t ironic or quirky or fey or disinterested or buried beneath mountains of guitar noodling.

As writers, we admire your tenacity and commitment to your tone (even though you do go too far with your assumptions about us). You’re wrong about our intentions, you’re wrong about how this band came together, you don’t seem to get the storytelling or the catharsis or the humor in the songs, and you clearly have some misconceptions about who we are as a band and who we are as people.

But it also seems to have very little to do with us. Much of your piece reads less like a record review and more like a diatribe against a set of ill-considered and borderline offensive preconceptions about Los Angeles. Los Angeles has an extremely vibrant blogging community, Silver Lake is a very close-knit rock scene. We are just one band among many. (And by the way, L.A. does have a flagship indie rock band: they’re called Silversun Pickups). We cut our teeth at Spaceland and the Echo and have nothing to do with whatever wayward ideas you have about the Sunset Strip. That’s just bad journalism.

But that is the nature of this sort of thing. It’s always based on incomplete information. Pitchfork has slagged many, many bands we admire (Dr. Dog, the Flaming Lips, Silversun Pickups, Cold War Kids, Black Kids, Bright Eyes [ironic, no?] just to name a few), so now we’re among them. Great.

This band was borne of some very very dark days and the truth is that there is something exciting about just being part of this kind of thing. There’s this long history of dialogue between bands and writers so it’s a bit of a thrill that you have such a strong opinion about us.

We hear you live in Los Angeles. We’d love for you to come to a show sometime and see what we’re doing with these lyrically moody and dramatic songs. You seem like a true believer when it comes to music and writing so we honestly think we can’t be too far apart. In any case, it would make for a good story.

all our best–

Mikel, Steven, Anna, Daren, Noah
the Airborne Toxic Event

Crystal Antlers
EP
[self-released; 2008]
Rating: 8.5

There aren’t many bands I’ve listened to more than Crystal Antlers this year, but I still don’t think there’s an optimum way to hear them yet. If the buzz sends you to MySpace, you’ll get their impact but not their dynamics. Catch one of their cramped live shows and you’ll get their in-it-to-win-it intensity but not their expansiveness. Hear their self-released EP, and you’re getting closer– besides existing at the cross-section of so many styles, the disc finds the band at a more important nexus of potential and realization. In person, Crystal Antlers look like outcasts from six different bands, and at various points on this record, they sound like it, too: Merging psych, garage, lo-fi, prog, and countless other influences, the group easily maintains consistency despite a complete inability to be pinned to any specific movement or trend (so long as you’re not counting the increasingly frustrating trend of unimaginative bandnames).

You might come across comparisons to Les Savy Fav, an appropriate call if you consider it shorthand for “relentlessly energetic band with crowd-pleasing stage antics.” EP’s opener “A Thousand Eyes” is evidence enough of that: Beginning with doomy, lo-fi minor arpeggios, it soon explodes into a Latin-influenced rumble before the band piledrives into a swaggering psych hook, the track sounds something like if Comets on Fire inverted their ratio of chaos-to-craft. Beneath the squall, “Vexation”‘s headsnapping pace and flesh-searing bass riff could be a Stooges-style punk shoutalong. The organ riff that “Owl” pogos on is a found relic from late-1960s Venice Beach with a monolithic vocal melody. And like any long-haired throwback worth its bongos, EP ends with the loosest and longest number, the seven-minute swamp lurch of “Parting Song for the Torn Sky”.

As much as it diverges from the brain-frying aim of typical psych-rock outings, EP is an unorthodox summer record– not so much for driving to the beach as actually being in its sweltering grasp, equal parts scorched earth and wide open spaces. Credit to producer Ikey Owens (aka Mars Volta’s keyboardist– there’s hope!) for finding enough room for every instrument, few of which act in their traditional scope. If you find yourself humming any of the riffs, odds are they’ll come from singer Jonny Bell, who treats his bass like a six-string while guitar (check the appropriate titanic “Arcturus”) and organ provide shading under an ozone of reverb that, like early My Morning Jacket, gives an impression of an expansive soundworld the band can grow into.

It’s tempting to be patient and call this disc a stopgap on the way to a triumphant debut full-length. But EP is plenty substantial as is; at 25 minutes, it’s only a few shy of Nouns or, more to the point, any number of psych-rock classics from decades past. Of course, if you’re still waiting on further evidence of how much there is to like about these guys, consider that I waited until the end of this review to mention that their percussionist is named Sexual Chocolate.