Shellac of North America record when they want and tour when they want and defuse all hecklers with the confidence and acumen of thirty-year bomb squad vets. Guitarist/vocalist (and engineer) Steve Albini speaks now 36 hours after returning to America. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

In an interview you had with the Boston Phoenix, you explained how Shellac gets caught in these conversational ‘loops,’ like fake Italian or ventriloquism—what’s the current loop?
Steve Albini (guitar/vocals): Just recently I discovered that a Canadian hockey fan used the word ‘pylon’ as an insult. It’s a derogatory term for a bad defenseman—‘He’s a pylon,’ meaning you just have to skate around him. I’ve taken to calling just about any idiot a pylon. I think that might develop into other traffic control devices that show up in the lexicon before long.
What was your former go-to term for ‘idiot’?
Wow, there have been so many. In Chicago there’s a particular kind of asshole wearing cargo shorts and generally a white baseball cap and those guys are just called ‘white caps.’ But the thing is that when you run into one of those you really can’t call them anything else.
The trick those guys have is that when they buy the white hats, they run it over a few times with their raised pick-up truck so it looks respectably old and legitimate.
I did not know that. I believe you.
You also said in that interview that you hoped Shellac would be able to insert an insult into the American language—do you think you’ve come close?
Probably not. Those things take so much popular momentum that we don’t really have. We don’t really have that kind of juice in the culture.
But the Internet is designed to propagate this exact kind of thing.
Right, but you need an adorable kitten video to go along with it and we don’t really have that.
What baby animal do you find the most cute?
Oh, there’s just so many—basically any baby animal is adorable.
How about baby humans?
Ah, not so much, but whatever. Whenever one of your friends has a baby, they are always so in awe of this thing that they made that they think it’s adorable and you have to go along because it’s kind of a big deal to make another person. But objectively, all babies look the same.
Is there such thing as an ugly baby?
The ‘baby’ aspect sort of overwhelms anything else.
What’s something that instantly turns you off about a band?
It’s hard to say—there’s so many little intricacies to it. There’s some YouTube clips of a band called Brokencyde and they’re kind of a compendium of all the things that instantly make me hate someone or a band. So basically if you share any trait—apart from something like cell mitosis—if you share any similarity with a band like Brokencyde you’re almost guaranteed to have me not like your band.
What has disappeared from the world in your lifetime that you’re glad to see gone?
There’s currently a kind of nostalgia for a kind of corporate disco music which I thought we were finally done with, but I guess the kitsch engine has to run on something. So a few year ago you might have been able to say that. That kind of bouncy European music they called house—that music disappeared finally. It lasted for a while in a kind of bastardized version in things like NBA trailers and perfume commercials, but it kind of disappeared. That was the only music that was capable of annoying me in the last twenty years. You know how a guy that works in a kitchen develops really leathery hands from handling hot pans and sharp knives? Or carpenters have really calloused hands?
Are you saying you have really leathery taste?
Yeah—my attention span and my hearing. I have developed callouses on my hearing and my sensibilities. A lot of stuff that would have driven me absolutely crazy when I was a teenager, I don’t even hear it. It doesn’t even register. The scar tissue that forms is infinitely tougher than the original mind.
How would you rate your ability to judge a stranger’s character on first meeting?
I’ve gotten a lot better at it since I started doing it every day. Meeting someone in person—it’s a little bit easier than speaking to them over the phone or corresponding with them but there are always some clues in any kind of interaction about whether or not somebody is reliable, honorable or on the level.
What are some of the universal indicators of trouble in the human character?
When you ask someone a direct question and they look upward and to the left or upward and to the right before they formulate their answer, that indicates that they are inventing part of the answer. That means that the answer is not something they know but rather something that they are having to create.
Is this something that you apply at poker games?
Only in the conversational parts—what’s called ‘the meta game.’ The great majority of poker is not the daring psychological battle it’s sometimes presented to be. Most of poker is just counting, simple math, and knowing probabilities of certain situations. But there is a psychological aspect to it. That’s a pretty good example. Another one is when someone is overly specific about trivial details and then unnecessarily general about fundamental elements of a deal. When a promoter tells you that you will be given a certain hotel room and certain kind of catering and that you’ll have this many towels backstage, but then can’t tell you the capacity of the venue or can’t tell you the size of the PA or how many stage hands he’s hired, then you can tell that someone is not speaking from a base of knowledge but is inventing a story that he wants you to go along with.
Has there ever been a show when Shellac was caught at a loss for words by a heckle?
I’m sure there has been. But I’m not super good at everything. That might be one thing that I’m not that good at sometimes. Don’t get me wrong—I’m super good at most things. I tend to not to embark on things where I’m an underdog to be competent. A friend of mine put it much more simply—he said, ‘He’s only interested in doing things that he’s instantly great at.’ I don’t know if this qualifies as great but I’ve hit golf balls three times in my life and the guy that I was walking along with on the golf course—I can’t really say that I was playing golf, but the three times that I’ve hit golf balls, the person that I was with said that I had a good natural swing. So there’s that. And snorkeling.
How does one become super good at snorkeling?
You enjoy it. My girlfriend was born in Honolulu and we go back to Hawaii pretty regularly—I want to say at least once a year. Well, that’s not true. We go there often—I don’t know how many times. A lot of places in Hawaii, you can rent snorkeling gear and the first couple times we went I didn’t rent snorkeling gear because I assumed that you had to learn how to do it and you could drown and die and that sort of stuff. It turns out that no, you don’t. You just stick the thing in your mouth and you’re fine. And also swim around for a while and you’ll realize that fish in their natural environment are fucking amazing.
How so?
They’re just super great. They look like they’re having the best fucking time. I’m really captivated by the notion that I’m looking at the fish and he’s hanging out by his house—this is his normal fish environment. And if he wanted to he could just fuck off to China. Start that way and if he didn’t wear out, he would end up in China—how cool would that be?
Does this ruin the experience of going to the aquarium for you—fish prison?
Yeah—I don’t really enjoy aquariums or zoos.
You’ve got kind of a soft spot for animals.
Who doesn’t? Come on. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t have any problem eating them or having them enslaved for farm labor. None of that stuff bothers me in the slightest.
What’s the cutest animal you ever ate?
Squirrels.
Did you shoot them yourself?
Yeah.
Are you a good shot? Deadeye Albini?
Not so great. My dad is a fantastic shot.
And he’s a rocket scientist?
Well, he worked in the aerospace industry for years and in that regard you could call him a rocket scientist, but his major contribution in the last third of his life—he worked in the science of forest fires. He and a very small number of people developed the science out of nothing and he’s the most published scientist in the field. He died a few years ago and there was an award named after him. He was the first recipient of this award called the Ember Award which was for contributions to the science of forest fires, and that award was then named after him. That’s probably what he’s most known for in the scientific community—his work on the incredibly and almost impossibly complex paradigm of forest fires.
What is the crucial conundrum of forest fire behavior?
Well, it was described to me once as a house fire on a freight train in a hurricane. There are so many things going on. There are things happening in forest fires that occur literally nowhere else on Earth. Imagine a fire so big that it creates its own weather and that’s what we’re talking about. And as a result of creating its own weather it can prolong itself or it can germinate by hurling pieces of itself into the rest of the world. It’s incredible. And when you take into consideration all the complexities of just the fuel matter—all the different things, what different things is it burning, how wet are they, what’s the ambient temperature—the forest fire changes all of that as well. It’s almost like a living thing, a forest fire.
Have you ever planned to incorporate or maybe already incorporated the science of forest fires into Shellac’s music?
Well, there’s a book by Norman Maclean called Young Men and Fire which is about the Mann Gulch fire in Montana, which he witnessed when he was a teenager. There was an incident that happened in the Mann Gulch fire where some expert smoke jumpers—outdoor fire fighters who parachute into the middle of a fire to put it out—some smoke jumpers burned to death on a ridge and one of the party survived. The way he survived was that they were part way up a hill in the middle of a draw—a shallow one-ended valley—and they saw the fire break around the base of the hill and they could see the fire coming up the hill at them. All but one of the firefighters tore ass up the hill and tried to outrun the fire and crest the hill. One of the guys stopped, opened his pack, pulled out some matches and set fire to the grass in front of him, creating a large fire which he then jumped into so he was in the middle of this grass fire as the grass fire was burning around him. He just curled up into a ball in the middle of this fire that he just started. His intuition was that if he burned out the fuel in the immediate area, then the big fire would go around that area because it would already be burned. He survived the fire and the guys who tried to outrun the fire didn’t—they all got burned to death. And when somebody burns to death it isn’t like, ‘Boom! You’re dead.’ What happens is your flesh cooks and your blood curdles and the fat in your body renders and your skin breaks and all these things happen and it takes a very long time to die.
Do you think that’s one of the worst ways to go?
Oh hell yeah. That would be number one of how not to die.
What do you think is number two?
I don’t know—maybe being thrown into a very slow woodchipper. Anyway, the long and the short of it was—this fire and this single event made a very deep impression on Norman Maclean and he wrote a book about it called Young Men and Fire and there’s a line in a Shellac song called ‘The Guy Who Invented Fire’ that says, ‘I’m going to invent a fire / I’m going to lay down in it’ and that’s directly stolen from Norman Maclean’s book. The reason that I mention that book and Norman Maclean is that he was a friend of my father and he was a scientific consultant on that book and he actually is mentioned in the book because the book is about Norman Maclean as an old man, revisiting this fire and his memory. He goes back to the location of the Mann Gulch fire and he retraces his steps of these guys that went up the hill and burned to death and he actually finds little artifacts. There’s kind of a touching scene where one of the guys is really badly roasted. One of the things that happens when you’re roasted is you get an insatiable thirst. They had packed their provisions with them and one of the things that they packed in their provisions were cans of potatoes that were packed in brine. At one point this guy is doomed and dying and cooked but he’s beseeching the other guys that he is with to give him something to drink because he just can’t take it anymore. So this guy opens a can of potatoes and lets him drink the brine out of the can of potatoes. And Norman Maclean finds this fucking rusted can in precisely the spot where that must have happened and it’s a really chilling moment in the book. So anyway—I don’t know what we were just talking about to bring me to the potatoes but it’s an incredible book and Norman Maclean was an old man trying to make some sense of this thing that’s been haunting him his whole life. My dad kind of helped out with his understanding the general behavior of forest fires. I came to Chicago at the same time that came out—to go to school at Northwestern and at the time Norman Maclean was the head of the English Department a the University of Chicago.
What’s the most affecting historical site you’ve ever visited?
Maybe Wounded Knee. I’m trying to remember if I’ve actually been to Wounded Knee. I want to say Wounded Knee.
Nothing in Eastern Europe?
I have to say, it’s weird driving through some place like Zagreb and seeing buildings with the corners blown off. Or like you realize that you’re at this nightclub in Serbia and that big burly motherfucker at the door probably did some shit during the war. Shit like that. I think that has more of an effect on me than the location. Yeah, like you see somebody and you’re like… you know? Or for example—being somewhere inland in Germany—and this was more true in the ‘80s when the Wall was still up—and you’d see a guy old enough that he must have been of fighting age during World War II. So then you have to wonder, ‘All right—were you a Nazi? Were you a soldier? Were you some kind of apparatchik? During the most important period in history, what was your role? What did you do? What did you see?’ That kind of shit.
If you ever got time to write a book, what would be worth exploring at length?
I don’t think I have a novel in me. I have written short fiction for my whole life, as a diversion. I have a feeling I would probably just carry on doing that. I have written some technical articles about the recording scene and I write pretty regularly on the forum for the studio and I think that satisfies my writing impulse. I’m a terrible correspondent otherwise so I guess that must satisfy me. At any rate, I don’t subscribe to the David Bowie school of creativity where because I’ve made records I am therefore also an actor and a poet and a painter. I think that’s hubristic, if I may use a word that I may have invented. But I really don’t feel like that’s necessary. I have a perfectly satisfying outlet for my creative impulse—the band is perfectly satisfying to me. So I don’t feel like I need to do anything else. And also—I don’t like admitting this because I think all musicians are generally intelligent people and well-spoken and in coversation are even articulate—but I think almost all of the books that I’ve read by musicians and all of those that I’ve even flipped through at the book store, whether it be one of Jimmy Buffett’s novels or one of Nick Cave’s or Lydia Lunch’s or Henry Rollins’—virtually all of them have been atrocious. Just embarrassing writing. I think the one exception is the stuff I’ve read that Eugene Robinson has written. He’s writing about fighting—I’m not a fighter. I don’t have any interest in fighting. I don’t think that it’s a noble or worthwhile or rewarding pursuit. I’m not entertained by it. I think it’s in every sense barbaric and I’m not interested in it, whether it’s dogs fighting or people fighting—I’m not interested in it. But his writing about fighting is so matter-of-fact and so self-aware that you can’t help but be completely charmed by it and I think he’s great. I also think his sensibilities and sense of humor are akin to mine and I enjoy reading stuff like that. He’s written a bunch of articles, some of which have been collected and expanded in a book called Fight. The hardcover of it is kind of hard to read because it was made as sort of a coffee-table item rather than a piece of literature, but it’s a great book—a great read. And also his band blog for Oxbow is great reading because he gets into some stuff on tour. It’s kind of weird that he does inspire this kind of challenge-match mentality with the bigger lunkheads in his audience.
What do you think is your great topic—something you’re endlessly fascinated by?
There’s like a half a dozen things. Generally my areas of interest outside of being in a band are probably cooking, billiards, poker, general superficial scientific interest—nothing academic but at the speed of the Discovery Channel.
Have you ever been to El Bulli?
No, although I have to say—intuitively I’m kind of grossed out by molecular gastronomy. There’s something about the industrial-process element of it that I have a hard time embracing. A lot of the sensations and a lot of the things that happen in molecular gastronomy are inevitably unique because it’s never occurred to anybody to put sea urchin pureé inside of a caramel shell. So of course they’re going to be unique experiences and as an eater, I enjoy unique experiences—I have a very expansive palate. But something about the amount of effort and convolution of the processes that need to occur in order to get to the finished product makes it seem unsatisfying. It makes it seem like that one bite of frozen carrot foam can’t possibly have been worth the three days of preparation and the team of assistants. There is something about that fundamental inefficiency that galls me. It makes it seem grotesque and indulgent and like a gilded toilet or something. I’m in this weird quandary. I would very much like to have that experience—I would very much like to respect it, but it is so indulgent and so reserved for the truly decadent that it’s like boutique heroin. It makes me hate the people who are into it. If there was like a DIY version where people could do it without wasting 90% of the ingredient to get the two drops of salmon essence—if there was a way that it could be made more like normal eating, but still have these unique sensational experiences… If there was a way that it could be made more normal so that it wouldn’t seem so indulgent and pampered and fucking Monopoly money, then I would be into it.
How much of that is what exactly people are paying for?
I don’t know. There are a couple of restaurants like that in Chicago that have these things like laser-grilled packing peanuts, but I’ve never eaten at any of them. I have friends who have and they truly enjoy the experience and say that they were breathtaking, memorable, life-changing meals. I believe them, but there’s something grotesque about it that makes me—in the weakest part of my personality, the reactionary part of my personality—makes me hate my friends a little bit for that. It makes me think that they’re creepy and I don’t like feeling that way about my friends. Because these are the same friends that can go to the ballpark with me and have some churros and a hot dog and enjoy that. They’re the same friends that appreciate the things that I do, like a fresh peach. What the hell is wrong with a fresh peach? It’s thirty cents and it’s awesome. So I don’t like feeling that way about them, but I can’t help myself.
Is this because you’re worried that there’s some tiny chance that you could become some totally decadent hedonist?
You know what? I thank Christ—assuming that He existed and was not a historical metaphor—that I have never had money. Because if I ever had money I would do stupid shit like that. I would come to think of private jet travel as normal. I’m that lazy and that weak. I’m pretty sure that it’s a normal human failing that I would fall victim to.
So you’ve been forced into principle by financial circumstance?
Exactly. When you’re dead broke, you can’t help but be honorable.

SHELLAC WITH ARCWELDER ON SAT., JUNE 20, AND SUN., JUNE 21, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 4 PM SAT. / 8 PM SUN. / $13-$15 / ALL AGES. ATTHEECHO.COM. SHELLAC’S EXCELLENT ITALIAN GREYHOUND IS OUT NOW ON TOUCH AND GO. VISIT SHELLAC AT TOUCHANDGORECORDS.COM.

We caught Factory Records’ funk-punk-jazz originator band A Certain Ratio’s guitarist/trumpeter Martin Moscrop in the throes of decorating. A wet cold English day passed by his window, but he spent it inside painting walls. Their performance at the Part Time Punks’ fest will be their first U.S. show in over twenty years. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

Do you have a new home?
No, but I’m making it new again.
You seem to wear many hats—interior decorator, musician, producer, head of a label—and you teach?
Yes, I’m head of the music department at Manchester College. Being a professional musician for years, there are periods when you’re not making a living out of it. And there was one particular period where I wasn’t making a living out of the band—I just fell into the job basically and took to it very well, and the people I was working with took to me well and the offer just stuck.
How much of your time do you spend making music?
We recorded the new album last year. Because we all have full-time jobs, it was like doing it as a hobby, you know. One of the reasons we stopped making music and stopped touring was it gets to be a bit too much like a circus. Like a traveling circus where you’re just gigging all the time—making records, gigging, promoting the record. When you’ve got kids and stuff sometimes you want to be at home and be with your family. So it’s good now because it’s like a total hobby. There’s no pressure that way. If it’s a hobby, there’s no pressure on when you’re going to get your album ready, is it going to sell, that sort of thing. Because it doesn’t really matter if it sells, and it never has to for A Certain Ratio. We always made records for ourselves first and foremost. If the public like it then that’s an added bonus, but if they don’t, it doesn’t really matter.
But it seems like people appreciate it more now than when you originally conceived the band.
Yeah. When the albums got reissued on Soul Jazz, they all got fantastic reviews in the U.K., saying we were way ahead of our time—that sort of thing. Whereas when the albums originally came out, they got slated by the press because they didn’t really understand them. In particular, mixing jazz with funk and stuff like that with punk—they didn’t like the jazz bit of it. They didn’t mind the funk, but they didn’t like the jazzy aspects. Whereas when journalists reviewed them for the re-release, they said that was really innovative and a lot of people copied us with what we did. What goes around comes around. There’s an interview with David Byrne of Talking Heads and the journalist said to him, ‘A Certain Ratio were your support act on your second tour of the U.K. before you started playing funk music—when you were a rock band. Did they influence you at all?’ And David Byrne said, ‘Yeah, it’d be a lie to say they didn’t. They did influence us and after that tour that’s when we started getting into funk music and world music.’ Some people saw it then and others didn’t. It’s really good at the moment and it has been for the last few years. Since the advent of bands like the Rapture, and stuff from the DFA label, a lot of young people are getting into A Certain Ratio. We have quite an audience when we do gigs. We have a really weird mix actually. You have older people—middle aged, 40s, early 50s—and then you get 17- and 18-year-olds as well. So it’s a good mixture.
Do people nod or dance?
Our set’s quite difficult to dance to. There’s quite a few dance-y tunes in there, but then there’s quite a few moody tunes as well. So they might just get into a dance-y mood and then we throw them with a moody track. We’re not trying to build them up into a dancing frenzy. We like to try and confuse them a little bit.
Who are some of the bands you rolled with back in the day?
In the early days of Factory, all the Factory bands used to play together. And it was almost like a Factory package if you like. We toured the U.K. and Europe and sometimes it would be A Certain Ratio, Section 25 and Durutti Column—sometimes it would be A Certain Ratio, Joy Division, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, and it would be different Factory acts, but when Joy Division turned into New Order, New Order got pretty big. We toured with New Order in the States because it allowed us to get over to a bigger audience really. But we actually went to the States before New Order and before Joy Division. We recorded our first album in East Orange—in New Jersey.
And Madonna opened for you once?
That was at the Danceteria in New York. I think it was ‘81 or ‘82—it was our end-of-tour party and she needed a gig so some A&R men could come and see. So her manager got her to open for A Certain Ratio. And she was signed after that.
Three of the originals remain, but how many other people are in the band now?
There’s actually six people in the band at the moment. We’ve got Denise—she’s an additional member but we see her as a member. She sings together with Jez. On the moodier songs, Jez sings because the nature of his voice is very moody and his lyrics are moody. And on the more up funky things, Denise sings. So you’ve got that mixture—like in shades really, which is how we want to keep it. The set that we choose is the set that we think we’ll enjoy playing. Because we’ve got new material in the set we would play, we wouldn’t want to alienate the audience too much because they’re not on to the new tunes. But the proper A Certain Ratio fans, they’re going to want to hear new tunes as well as old ones. So we mix it up a bit. The set actually spans four decades. Nearly as much as the Rolling Stones! We’ve got one song on the new album—it’s called ‘Teri’ and that was the first song A Certain Ratio ever wrote and it’s never been released. It was written in 1978, so we put a modern slant on that. And obviously the most recent tunes we did last year so it’s been four decades, really.
How would you compare the music now to the old material?
To be honest, the album that we’ve just done is pretty much like the old stuff because the way we did the album was we decided to make a conscious effort to record it quickly. We wrote the songs one weekend in the rehearsal room, then went to the recording studio the following weekend and record the songs we’d just written. We’d only written them and played them about twice. Which gives it that raw edge. That’s how we recorded the new album, which went really, really well. So, the relationship we have with the new stuff is exactly the same as the old stuff because it’s got a similar vibe. We didn’t do that on purpose but the first couple of tunes we recorded like that was like—‘Wow, this is just like the old stuff.’ And we realized why it was like the old stuff and it was because of the speed at which we were working.
If you could stock your own shelf at a record store, what records would you want next to yours?
As far as old stuff that influenced us, anything by James Brown, anything by Miles Davis or John Coltrane, anything by Brian Eno, anything by the Velvet Underground, anything by Kraftwerk—so quite an eclectic mix of funk, jazz, electronica and weirdness because that’s what we were into. We were into quite the eclectic mix of stuff. That’s why we came out the other end like we did.

A CERTAIN RATIO WITH PYLON, LOVE IS ALL AND MANY MORE AT THE PART TIME PUNKS FEST ON SUN., NOV. 16, AT THE ECHO AND ECHOPLEX, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 2 PM / $20 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/PARTTIMEPUNKS. VISIT A CERTAIN RATIO AT ACRMCR.COM.

Download: A Certain Ratio “Shack Up”

Part Time Punks‘ Mike Stock texts us that A Certain Ratio have confirmed to headline the Part Time Punks fest on Sun., Nov. 16! They will be joining an already really impressive line-up and pushing it toward the legendary! If you don’t know them, they were one of Manchester’s best and are a perfect embodiment of the Part Time Punks playlist! Tickets are still on sale for only $13 here and full line-up is below!

PART TIME PUNKS FEST
SUNDAY, NOV. 16
THE ECHO AND THE ECHOPLEX

A CERTAIN RATIO

with

PYLON
THE SLITS
LOVE IS ALL
VIVIAN GIRLS—[INTERVIEW]
THE NIGHTENGALES
NERVOUS GENDER
SAVAGE REPUBLIC
THE URINALS
THE WILD STARES
ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI
TUSSLE
MAGIC BULLETS
THE MUSLIMS—[INTERVIEW]
GRIMBLE GRUMBLE
THE SOFTBOILED EGGIES
WARPAINT
WEAVE
NODZZZ

GUEST DJs
CHUCK WARNER (of the excellent HYPED 2 DEATH and MESSTHETICS comps!)
DAN SELZER (Acute Records!)

AND SCREENINGS OF RARE VIDEOS INCLUDING PERFORMANCES BY…

THROBBING GRISTLE, EINSTURZENDE NEUBATEN, SAVAGE REPUBLIC, SUBURBAN LAWNS, WILLIAM BURROUGHS, TALK TALK, SOFT CELL, GENESIS P-ORRIDGE and MORE!

Tickets are now on sale—link here! Only $13 for the whole show on Sunday, Nov. 16, presented by L.A. RECORD and KXLU and featuring the bands below and more!

PART TIME PUNKS FEST
SUNDAY, NOV. 16
THE ECHO AND THE ECHOPLEX

with

PYLON
THE SLITS
LOVE IS ALL
VIVIAN GIRLS—[INTERVIEW]
THE NIGHTENGALES
NERVOUS GENDER
SAVAGE REPUBLIC
THE URINALS
THE WILD STARES
ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI
TUSSLE
MAGIC BULLETS
THE MUSLIMS—[INTERVIEW]
GRIMBLE GRUMBLE
THE SOFTBOILED EGGIES
WARPAINT
WEAVE
NODZZZ

GUEST DJs
CHUCK WARNER (of the excellent HYPED 2 DEATH and MESSTHETICS comps!)
DAN SELZER (Acute Records!)

AND SCREENINGS OF RARE VIDEOS INCLUDING PERFORMANCES BY…

THROBBING GRISTLE, EINSTURZENDE NEUBATEN, SAVAGE REPUBLIC, SUBURBAN LAWNS, WILLIAM BURROUGHS, TALK TALK, SOFT CELL, GENESIS P-ORRIDGE and MORE!

L.A. RECORD is beyond excited to team up with KXLU to co-present the Part Time Punks Fest on Sunday, Nov. 16, at the Echo and Echoplex! Mike Stock and Benny Shambles have arranged a top-notch line-up of bands from all over the planet, currently headlined by Athens’ classic Pylon! Full line-up—with more revelations to come in the next weeks—below!

PART TIME PUNKS FEST
SUNDAY, NOV. 16
THE ECHO AND THE ECHOPLEX

with

PYLON
THE SLITS
LOVE IS ALL
VIVIAN GIRLS—[INTERVIEW]
THE NIGHTENGALES
NERVOUS GENDER
SAVAGE REPUBLIC
THE URINALS
THE WILD STARES
ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI
TUSSLE
MAGIC BULLETS
THE MUSLIMS—[INTERVIEW]
GRIMBLE GRUMBLE
THE SOFTBOILED EGGIES
WARPAINT
WEAVE
NODZZZ

GUEST DJs
CHUCK WARNER (of the excellent HYPED 2 DEATH and MESSTHETICS comps!)
DAN SELZER (Acute Records!)

AND SCREENINGS OF RARE VIDEOS INCLUDING PERFORMANCES BY…

THROBBING GRISTLE, EINSTURZENDE NEUBATEN, SAVAGE REPUBLIC, SUBURBAN LAWNS, WILLIAM BURROUGHS, TALK TALK, SOFT CELL, GENESIS P-ORRIDGE and MORE!

ADVANCE TICKETS ON TICKETWEB.COM NOW!

Fourteen songs of shirtless sleaze rock by a bunch of swaggering ’70s guitar degenerates. We will probably DJ about half of this tonight. Note: podcast does not include the actual Pylon song “Feast On My Heart,” but we did add that separately at the bottom of this post!

Download direct here!

SWEET “SOMEONE ELSE WILL”
B-side of the “Turn It Down” single from Desolation Boulevard. No one ever believes this is the “Ballroom Blitz” Sweet but it surely is.

HIGHWAY ROBBERY “LAZY WOMAN”
Midwest hard-rock from a band that disappeared after one hard-ass LP on RCA, which is yet to be re-issued on vinyl as far as we know. Except for one soft track the label supposedly made them include, For Love Or Money is a must-have for heavyists.

EUCLID “GIMME SOME LOVIN””
Spencer Davis Group cover from the Heavy Equipment LP, another heavy rock album with little filler. One of the guys from psych-pop trainspotter band Lazy Smoke is playing on this with the same producer as the Shaggs!

SIR LORD BALTIMORE “MASTER HEARTACHE”
This song is for Short Shorts because she has this record. No band ever said the word ‘woman’ better.

DUST “LOVE ME HARD”
Marky Ramone in his teen drum-prodigy years. Their first and best LP.

BANG “THE QUEEN”
From these Florida Sabbath fans’ first LP, which features equally endearing cover art of a gun shooting rainbows into some wizards or maybe policemen. (Album is buried in pile; will go look at it later.)

PENTAGRAM “FOREVER MY QUEEN”
True brutality from the band that lived so hard they almost had to amputate singer Bobby’s arms. Many quality reissues available.

SOUND MACHINE “WOMAN”
Competitive delivery of the word ‘woman’ from the very raw Psychedelic Minds Vol. 1 comp, which is full of bug-out stuff like this.

RANDY HOLDEN “SCARLET ROSE”
Solo track from ex-Blue Cheer/Other Half/Population II guitarist. Think this is a ’90s recording of a song he saved since the 60s, and has original Blue Cheer drummer Paul Whaley on it.

CLEAR BLUE SKY “VEIL OF THE VIXEN”
By far the most cheerful song on the Downer Rock Genocide compilation. Pretty long but they try about four kinds of downer moods so we put it in.

SIMPLY SAUCER “INSTANT PLEASURE”
Canadian Stooge-rock band that recorded live on top of a shopping mall. This track recorded by Daniel Lanois!

CACTUS “LET ME SWIM”
…in a sea of sleaze!

BLUE CHEER “THE HUNTER”
The most famous Blue Cheer love song.

BLACK SABBATH “EVIL WOMAN”
Seems like it was really hard to meet nice people during the ’70s. Even Jonathan Richman had the same problem.

BONUS TRACK: PYLON “FEAST ON MY HEART”
Not in the podcast and not scum rock but will still get your blood rushing.