“Let Us Sit Upon the Ground and Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Kings”: I hadn’t been back in L.A. more than a couple of days when the King of Pop exceeded all expectations of his upcoming tour by dying in advance of it. The Vine Street star of the Other Michael Jackson, legendary local DJ (now on KGIL), was the scene of a tastefully-done spillover memorial I viewed mid-afternoon Thursday, a few hours after the K of P keeled over. Leaflets reading “STOOPID! His star is in front of Graumann’s! Do you think the real Michael Jackson would have such a shitty location?” added just the right soupcon of ratwit Boulevard irony. A onetime rock hater, the (still-living) OMJ graciously gave the gaffe his blessing, adding “[I]f it would bring him back, he can have it. He was a real star. Sinatra, Presley, The Beatles and Michael Jackson.” The LAPD chopper buzzing overhead mooted any other directions and the propwash echoing off buildings gave a nice tension as I walked hillbilly-slow down the Avenue of the Stars toward Highland. It was like Day of the Locust as performed by C.W. McCall- a sullen mob scene presided over by more cops than Dog Day Afternoon. Swamped amid this flashmob of mourners was detritus from some upcoming TV-op for Bruno, a new comedy which may well go down in history as Sacha Baron Cohen’s karmic blowback. A disheveled, starveling street preacher climbed up on some rigging near me and set to bellowing about death, damnation and Jesus. It was a poorly-done crackhead busker’s version of a tune I know very well indeed, so, at his peroration, I loudly offered “O death, where is thy sting?” The fellow blinked in surprise, peering owlishly down at me as a distant voice intoned, “Grave, where is thy victory?” There was laughter and the brother went back into his spiel, plainly a broken man.

EDC = TKO: A miss-the-memo blunder of the kind fatigue inevitably brings got me no closer to the Saturday night closing of Electric Daisy Carnival than nearly the entire circumference of the Coliseum. Shunted in a left-landed circle around the place in search of a presslist event staff swore was at just the next gate got me a jogger’s-eye view of another overpoliced pop-clusterfuck. The atmosphere was much more alluring, as acres of friendly girls in boy-shorts and angel wings crammed every egress, even the mid-evening shuttle management graciously offered to take me to Staples Center (some miles away) to get accredited. A sightly mother-daughter kitty-kat team made the ride diverting and I was beginning to feel the event when I learned the presslist had already departed. Bloodied by fortune, I bowed to the ladies and padded downtown in my velvet clothes (past the spot on Sixth Street where, about twenty-four hours before, I nearly had to pepper-spray some strapping asshole trying to muscle a woman in a minidress) and caught the 18 Metro to the Warehouse District. Walking into the monthly Plump party on S. Santa Fe was like attaining the very bower of Underground Paradise. DJs Patrico, Jacques the Ripper, Todd Spero and FatFinger vied for beaty honors as a delightful lady of mystic bent drew the big-city pizen from me, one nuzzle at a time. Sweet home L.A., at last.

“Will The Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down?”: By three the next afternoon, I was slumped exhausted in the back row of the Silent Movie Theater, as the last night of L.A.’s first-ever Jerry Lewis retrospective flickered to giddy life. The three hours of clips shown before the main feature were like a curated tour through a vast and quirky comic universe roughly the scope of those of James Joyce or Flann O’Brien, and (in America at least), about as little understood. The last living heir to the great line of Buster Keaton and Stan Laurel, Lewis remains problematic to American critics and I think I know why. Those clips showed he has the founding shuck of American masculinity down cold, with his smooth ciggie-chuffing characters pointing up the fraud even as his geeky dolts tear it down one squeal and triple-take at a time. This is caricature the Roger Eberts and Rex Reeds of filmchat might find more than a little discomfiting. Even Cracking Up (Jerry’s 1983 directorial swansong, which had trouble getting released in the U.S.) shows lightning flashes of surreal brilliance, as Lewis does his own Brechtian variation on theAirplane! movies. The result is a W.C. Fields-peculiar opus at once too vulgar and too highbrow-brilliant for anyone outside his (gigantic) fanbase to get. The crowd was overwhelmingly young film buffs roaring in unironic glee at the temporary shrine of a neglected master. A few questions from the audience about Lewis’ unreleased The Day the Clown Cried made me keen to actually see it, instead of relying on the oft-cited displeasure of some few who actually have. These include the screenwriter –a breed of artist familiar with discontent- and Spinal Tap’s own Harry Shearer, whose last comedy album ought to disqualify him from criticism, even helpful hints.

Choke Point: The Women is housed at an elegant old house on Crenshaw and kicks up the occasional stylish indie-rock rumpus right under the snouts of the LAPD. The last Monday in June was yet another installment of Sean Carnage’s traveling rock medicine show and NYC punks the Choke were about to wreak fury in the front parlor when I walked in. Fronted by blonde whirlwind Cameron Eve, this quartet claims inspiration from the Kinks, the Buzzcocks and the Shangri-Las, but none of these worthies ever flung their pretty selves into a houseparty moshpit, at least not at me. The Choke’s set is tight and lithe, with most of the power held pragmatically in reserve, as a contrast to the sloe-eyed dreaminess of Dalmachio Von Diamond & the Enochian Keys, a six-man karass of Echo Park aesthetes with a moody streak. Von D.’s vocals come on like one of those mood-drenched charisma-rock acts Elektra signed in the wake of the Doors. Imagine a whimsical Scott Walker fronting the Electric Prunes and you get the general idea. I left as the house began to fill with seemingly every rocker south of Hancock Park and east of Koreatown, with most arriving on foot. While it lasts, this is a cozy and first-rate quasi-underground encampment without a MySpace page and without a lot of hassles either.

Download: The Sonics “Strychnine”

(from Here Are The Sonics! available now on Norton)

The Sonics weren’t pioneers so much as cavemen—the first humans to discover tools, fire and the absolute rudiments of chemistry. Their original ‘60s songs still sound wild and feral today, and their debut Here Are The Sonics! devours most of the million punk rock records that timidly followed it. This will be their first Los Angeles-area show ever. This interview by Dan Collins.

When was the last time you guys played the Los Angeles area?
Larry Parypa (guitar/vocals): I don’t think we ever did. We recorded down there a bunch. We went to the Whisky a Go Go and the Turtles and the Doors were there, before they got really popular.
Gerry Roslie (vocals/organ): We saw Ike and Tina Turner! It was extremely happening down there. We were like wide-eyed country boys.
A lot of L.A. bands really emulated the Beatles. But you guys didn’t seem to be Anglophiles.
LP: We loved the Beatles, and we even played some of their songs, but in no way did we try to emulate the Beatles. We were a very minor, dark sounding group for those days.
GR: We’d try to do a pretty song, and it’d just end up getting ‘nice and rough!’
Rob Lind (sax/harmonica/vocals): We loved the Kinks. We actually traveled with them and opened a number of shows for them.
LP: We played the way that we played, which was without a whole lot of technique, and real hard. A live performance—I mean, the room would almost breathe because it was so powerful. Knowing that we weren’t masterful musicians or anything, knowing that we weren’t a vocal group, we were there to pound it out. It was our style. Nobody was doing 1-3-4 progressions, real minor progressions. And they weren’t singing about the topics we sang about. And nobody was screaming!
You both had brothers in the band. Did Larry and Andy ever fight like Ray and Dave Davies did?
GR: When didn’t they? They had some real sessions. We were heading down around the Portland area, and Larry had a brand new Buick, and had his radio on real loud, and me and Andy were in the back seat. Andy was like, ‘Turn that volume down back here at least!’ And finally Andy had enough getting Larry to do it, and he was drinking a bottle of grape pop, and he poured it down Larry’s speakers while the car was going down the freeway, and the speakers go ‘bloooblublublublublublublu!’ And he pulled over, and I think they were just about ready to go to blows right there on the side of the freeway. Andy was always on Larry’s case for playing too loud.
Why did you decide to scream about things like drinking strychnine? It seems like that would kill you.
GR: Well, I’m kind of crazy by nature. I do crazy things and think of crazy things. But I’m not dangerous—heh heh. Honest, judge!
RL: The PA systems were normally pretty bad. Sometimes we just had metal horns. And so Gerry started screaming so he could hear himself.
GR: It’s a wonder I’ve got a voice left! I screamed myself silly. I was inspired by the voices of Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis of course. I liked their energy, but I don’t remember anybody doing witchy stuff. It’s just a crazy, psychotic thing. After we got going, there did start to be crazy, witchy things, like Ozzy. Everything was kind of like, ‘love and marriage, la la la la la,’ and I went ‘Nah! That’s not dirty enough! That’s not the way I feel!’
A lot of your songs seem to be about revenge—particularly upon some girl! Was there a particular relationship in your life where you’re like ‘I’m going to get even with her and write a song about it?’
GR: Do you have a couple hours, my friend? Who hasn’t been screwed over—guys or girls?
Do you secretly hope to yourself that some day, that girl is going to walk into a record store and see a Sonics poster and think to herself, ‘I blew it!’?
GR: Oh, yeah, I do hope that happens! That would be sweet!
You guys are often cited as the original punk band. Did you feel a kinship with bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols?
RL: The Clash, I thought they were hard-rocking gods. The Sex Pistols, I didn’t like a whole lot of the stuff they did, but I liked their attitude, and every once in a while I’d hear one of their songs and go ‘Whoa, that’s good. Way to go, guys!’
LP: After the late ‘60s, I didn’t listen to music much. If I did, it was probably more country.
RL: Yeah, more the Seattle guys—that’s really where garage rock started with us, and it was like Nirvana, and Pearl Jam, and Mudhoney, and Screaming Trees, and Alice and Chains—it was kind of like those guys were our sons! We were real proud of them.
Let’s talk about the earlier Northwest scene. It seems like the first breakout bands were instrumental combos like the Ventures and the Frantics.
RL: The Frantics and the Ventures and Paul Revere kind of predated us. I think one of the first rock songs I ever heard was ‘Walk, Don’t Run,’ and I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
LP: God, the Frantics were just a fantastic group! Even today, they really stand up. The first interest I ever had in guitar was Duane Eddy—actually it was ‘Rumble’ by Link Wray, but then Duane Eddy had a song out that was all instrumental, and just really got me stimulated to want to play guitar. Not long after that, the Ventures came out with their stuff, and I tried to learn every song on the Ventures album. Another band that was more regional was the Wailers. They came out with instrumentals that had much harder rhythms than what the Ventures were doing, but then they got Rockin’ Roberts, and Gail Harris, and they would do vocals.
I used to have their album Live at the Castle. Did you ever play at the Castle in Tacoma?
LP: Yeah! In fact, we turned down Jimi Hendrix there, before he was the Jimi Hendix. He came and wanted to sit in, and we told him to get lost! It was a big club—a big dance spot for the Seattle area. You’d maybe get a thousand kids in there. There was a place called the Crescent Ballroom in Tacoma, where the Wailers played a lot. It’s like the first time I ever played there—I was 14 or 15, and probably didn’t have a clue about what I was doing. Lesley Gore came through town and for some reason, my brother [Andy] and I were part of the backup group for her. We did that with the Shangri-Las also, and we just ruined them! We knew we were going to back them up, but we didn’t learn their songs! Their songs had a lot of breaks in them, and we’d play right through them.
RL: The lead singer of the Shangri-Las said something snarky about us. So next time we played with them, we made fun of them. They were doing ‘Leader of the Pack,’ and Gerry was riding his piano like a motorcycle, and I was down on my knees, being like, ‘No, Danny, please please don’t go!’ We just humiliated them. You don’t come to Seattle and trash the Sonics! So they said they’d never play with us again.
We interviewed Mary Weiss last year. Do you want to tell her publicly that you’re sorry?
LP: We’re sorry! We played in Barcelona last year, and she was also on the bill. And she remembered! Oh, yeah!
RL: We smoothed things over. She’s playing with the guy from the Smithereens, Dennis, and we drank a lot of Scotch in the hotel in Barcelona, and we sat and chatted with Mary and her husband. Things are fine now.
How about Paul Revere and the Raiders? Any bad grudges there you want to settle? Like, who played ‘Louie Louie’ better?
RL: Oh, I think we did! I don’t think there’s any question!
Did you get just a little pissed off when the Raiders got to be on TV and in Teen Beat and you guys didn’t?
RL: Not at the time. I used to know Paul Revere, and Paul is the epitome of a businessman. The problem with Northwest rock ‘n’ roll bands—with the exception of the Ventures who broke out and became worldwide—was that us and the Wailers got trapped in the Northwest.
LP: We didn’t even think too much about what we were doing musically or where we were going. We’d hardly ever practice or anything. We would throw our instruments in the van maybe Sunday night after doing some weekend stuff, and wouldn’t pull them out again until we’d play again. We were more interested in whether we could get girls into the motel rooms that night.
It was kind of the cusp of the Summer of Love! Did you guys get to have drug orgies?
LP: We’d have the bathtub full of beer and stuff—to try to ply them with liquor. That really was a key objective. The music was just a vehicle to get us in some parties! You’d hit the road in summers, just playing one-night-stands all over the place. That was an exciting way to spend your teenage life!
The Meters recorded a live album on the Queen Mary—are you guys planning on recording one there too?
RL: No, we’re not doing that. We’re actually planning on going back into the studio in July. All new material. We need to get new stuff out.
LP: We don’t know what’s going to happen because we don’t practice. We go months and don’t touch our instruments. For this show we’re going to get together for an hour and a half at my house before going to L.A. and run through the songs again just so we can make sure we remember them. And sometimes we don’t!
I’ve heard a couple cuts from your previous 1972 reunion, which Norton added as a bonus on the Sonics Boom album. It sounds even more hard than your sixties recordings. How did you guys resist the urge to get all bluesy like Foghat?
RL: We never sat there and scratched our heads and said ‘What could our gimmick be?’ We always played real hard. Larry played guitar as hard as he could. Bob Bennett played drums as hard as he could. Jerry screamed and banged on the piano. I tried to play sax the way Larry played guitar. I tried to play as hard-dirty-nasty as I could. We used to play dances in armories or big roller rinks, where we’d have three-four-five thousand people. And we didn’t want people standing around with their arms folded staring at us. We wanted people to start dancing immediately. What a lot of bands would do is blow two or three songs and get the level right and then get into it. We wanted to get into it as soon as we hit the stage, so we came out blasting from the get-go! And that’s exactly what we do now. We are going to come out blastin’ and attempt to blow the place up.
GR: We don’t tone it down! We don’t try to blow people’s heads off, but… well, yeah, we might try to blow people’s heads off. What the heck?
Ar the end of your career, suddenly a basketball team starts up in your own town and calls itself the ‘Supersonics.’ Did you feel your name had been usurped?
LP: We thought it would be good publicity to sue them, even though we’d lose—just to say, ‘Hey, the Sonics are suing the Sonics!’
GR: It was kind of a shock! But we were out of the business. But now they’re gone, and we’re back!

THE SONICS WITH THE FUZZTONES, THE WOGGLES, THE VOODUO, GIZELLE, THE NEW FIDELITY AND MANY MORE ON SAT., JUNE 6, AT THE INK-N-IRON FESTIVAL AT THE QUEEN MARY, 1126 QUEENS HWY., LONG BEACH. DOORS AT 11 AM / BANDS AT NOON / SONICS AT 10 PM / $35-$70 / 7+. COMPLETE FESTIVAL LINE-UP AND MORE INFO AT INK-N-IRON.COM. THE SONICS’ RECORDS ARE AVAILABLE NOW ON NORTON. VISIT THE SONICS AT MYSPACE.COM/THESONICSBOOM.

Download: Alela Diane “Age Old Blue”

(from To Be Still out now on Rough Trade)

Alela Diane comes from a town that was famous first for a gold rush and is famous now for its music, which tends toward the kind of thing that would show up on a brand new anthology of American folk. She shares a song on her new album To Be Still with Michael Hurley and speaks now before a show at Hollywood Forever. This interview by Thomas McMahon.

So your brother named you?
Yeah. My brother is three years older than me. So just before I was born, my parents and my brother were on a walk, and my dad was carrying my brother on his shoulders and said, ‘Hey, Ryan, what’s the horse’s name?’—referring to himself. And my brother was like, ‘Alela.’ And then both of my parents kind of listened to that name and were like, ‘Whoa, that’s a cool name.’ Then I was born, and they ended up calling me that, because a three-year-old invented it.
And you had a run-in with a bear not too long ago?
I did. I was driving home to Nevada City late at night, and I hit a bear. It totaled my Volvo, which was really tragic. Everybody who was in the car was all right. It was just one of those really surreal, bizarre experiences. After it happened, I stopped the car like—‘That was a bear. Did we just hit a bear? What the hell?’ It was not what you would expect to happen.
Did the bear pull through?
I don’t know. It did run off. If it totaled my car, I don’t think the bear could be doing very well, because Volvos are very sturdy, strong cars.
I’m told you have a pretty big following in France.
It’s the weirdest thing. It’s one of those mysteries. I’m on a record label over there, and they just—I think—promoted me in the right ways and for whatever reason, the folks over in France, they really latched onto it. I don’t know. It’s completely bizarre. I’ve done a number of tours over there and done all sorts of weird stuff in France. Before I wrote The Pirate’s Gospel, I went on this trip by myself. I went traveling to England and France. I had taken my guitar with me and was just kind of wandering around and staying at hostels and doing that sort of thing. And I kept having these weird déjà vus and strange dreams, and a lot of that was translated into most of the songs on The Pirate’s Gospel. So I wrote a lot of them while I was traveling around over there.
The new album, To Be Still, has considerably more instrumentation than The Pirate’s Gospel. Why did you decide to take that approach? Did it seem more appropriate for these songs?
I think it did, yeah. It was a number of years between my first record and this one. And during that time, I continued writing songs, and I ended up with this handful which became the new record. And they were just kind of requesting more instrumentation, and I had never tried anything like that. So it just seemed like the right thing to do, and it was something that I wanted to try, so I did.
The song ‘Age Old Blue’ has to do with your ancestors?
It does. I wrote that after I was hanging out with my grandma, and she started telling me about kind of the history of her side of the family. And specifically her father, who was a soldier. He was Canadian, actually. Anyway, it’s all about that. It was all these things that she told me, and I ended up putting them into that song.
What was it like working with Michael Hurley on that song?
It was really awesome. I met him before when I was living in Portland—then I moved back to Nevada City, and I just moved back to Portland again. It was really cool to be able to invite him to come and sing with me. It turned out that the drummer I worked with—Otto Hauser—he’s a friend of Michael’s as well. So before we started recording, we went out to visit him in Astoria because he lives there on the Oregon coast. So he came out, and I invited him to come sing on the record that next week. And it was really special.
How have your parents influenced your music?
My parents are both musicians, and they were always playing music around the house when I was a kid—playing old traditional songs. And I think that just impacted me a lot, having that much music around the house all the time. And it also made music a really comfortable thing. It was just something that was normal in my household. My parents were always singing, so for me, it was never something to be freaked out by or nervous about.
Can you remember one of the first songs you ever liked?
Well, I remember listening to Patsy Cline with my mom. And I remember I had this old tape of the Shangri-Las. My friend and I would always put that in my little tape deck and listen to that and sing along.
How does nature influence your music?
I think that it tends to play a big role in what I do, just because of where I’m coming from—growing up in a place like Nevada City, and we had a big yard. So I think it tends to creep into my lyrics a lot.
How do you like living in Portland now?
I really like it. It’s a beautiful place, and it’s a comfortable size of city for me. Because coming from Nevada City—which is a small town—Portland’s got all the stuff that for me is kind of neat to have in a city, but it doesn’t stress me out. It’s nice.
With you and Mariee Sioux and Joanna Newsom, there seems to be so much talent coming out of Nevada City, but it’s such a small place. What’s happening there?
It’s just one of those mysterious things. I mean, I think that Nevada City is a good place to place to grow up, and the schools are good there, and a lot of hippie-type people moved there and then had kids. The community—it’s just supportive of the arts. So all these kids that grew up there were just kind of encouraged to keep doing what they were good at doing, and a lot of that was creative things, whether it was painting or photography or making music. Mariee’s and my parents used to be in a bluegrass band together. I was listening to tapes of it the other night. I’ve always known that, but actually hearing the recordings of it—hearing my dad and Mariee’s dad talking on stage together is pretty cool. I have handfuls of tapes that I have to check out. I just started this exploration.
What was the name of the band?
They were called Flash in the Pan, like as a reference to gold mining.
Gold mining is a big part of the history of Nevada City, right?
It is, yeah. It was originally established as a gold-mining town, and it was the biggest town in California back then. Not the case anymore, obviously, but it was more of an established town than San Francisco during the gold rush.
So you’re going back for a visit?
Yeah, just for a couple of days. I’m gonna record a song at my dad’s studio. It’s for this very groovy project. It’s different artists recreating Songs for Beginners by Graham Nash. I was invited to do one of the songs for that, so I’m excited about it. It seems like a pretty cool thing to be a part of. I’m doing ‘There’s Only One.’
Is the song ‘My Brambles’ about your cat?
Not about my cat, no. I wrote that song, and then a short while later, I got my cat, and then I named my cat Bramble. So I do have a cat named Bramble, but the song is not about the cat.

ALELA DIANE’S TO BE STILL IS OUT NOW ON ROUGH TRADE. VISIT ALELA DIANE AT ALELADIANE.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/ALELAMUSIC.

So it’s been a year since your ‘comeback’ album came out.
Actually I was surprised that I even got reviewed. I wasn’t really sure if anyone would remember me. I’m being honest. Then I got a bunch of reviews and they were all really good so that was cool. I liked that. It surprised me. Who walks away for 40 years and walks back in and makes an album?
And you really walked away.
I hid for a long time. It took me twelve years to get lost in the street. And that’s a long time to be playing Joe Blow, private citizen.
Did you feel you had to become someone else?
Well, you have to work at ‘who are you?’ Who are you really? That’s what really matters anyway.
In terms of being defined by the things you do?
Exactly. You see how a lot of artists buy into their own PR, and they don’t know how to act when they’re not on stage. I never wanted that for myself.
And you were so young!
I was a puppy. I used to make demos when I was 14. That’s why most people think, wow, she’s got to be really up there. When I met Bruce Springsteen, that was the first thing he said to me. He goes, ‘My God, you musta been young.’ It made me laugh so hard.
I saw a picture of you two. You’re wearing a tie. Do you like ties?
I love ties. I don’t know why. I’ve always worn ties.
And men’s pants in the ‘60s. Everybody likes to talk about that.
You know what it is? People like to talk about it because it shows you how rigid the environment was back then. I had to go to 8th Street. I don’t have any hips. And I like low-rise pants. They were always comfortable to me. And girls didn’t wear that back then. So I would go to 8th Street and have them made and people would look at me like I was gay. They’re looking at me and I’m looking at them and we’re all laughing. It was so absurd to me. That Ozzy And Harriet thing just doesn’t fit. Or chiffon and high heels. I just couldn’t bear it.
How can you say people wouldn’t remember you? Everybody knows the history and you, whether you meant to or not, made some resounding dents in that narrative.
It’s remarkable to me all the bands I hear from on Myspace. I remember when I was in CBGB’s one night in the ‘70s and Joey Ramone came up to me and told me, you know, how much we influenced his music and what have you. That’s one of the reasons I did that Ramones benefit recently. I hear that periodically. That’s really nice. You know, everybody pulls from something so it’s just nice to hear. We just did a Spain tour that blew me out of my box. We were in Madrid and the audience was like twenty-something. They knew every word to my old songs and every word to my new CD. And they loooove rock and roll. Adore it.
Do they dance around?
It depends what part of Spain you go to. We were in Leon and I was like, ‘What, does this audience hate us?’ And I found out afterwards that it’s a very reserved part where they’re respectful. And then we did Casion. They sat there with their hands folded in their laps. There were two kids jumping up and down and everybody else—it was like they were in a library. I couldn’t tell if they liked us! But that’s the way they act in that town. Then you go to Madrid and they’re pogo-ing all over the room. That was great. I had to speak to people that understood it—club owners that do venues in various cities and that understand the culture. Because the band looked at me and I looked at them and I said, ‘I don’t know—do they hate us?’ It was funny. I loved it.
And you’re coming to L.A. now.
I can’t wait. It’s going to be so much fun. I don’t remember the last time I was in L.A., frankly. And I invited some really cool old friends I haven’t seen in years. Shadow Morton. And Brooks Arthur, who used to be my engineer—believe it or not. And Jeff Barry.
Wow, those names.
It’s funny because people don’t realize—the way they grouped shows back then, I worked with everybody. Like there’d be three or four or five artists on a show. So I worked with every artist of the time. Including Tina Turner, the Beatles, the Stones, you name it, I worked with them. The Zombies—everybody. It’s just the way it was. It was fun when you traveled because you’re always meeting people. The Mamas and the Papas, the Righteous Brothers—all of them.
What do you listen to now?
I listen to old stuff but I listen to a lot of new stuff. I love Amy Winehouse. She’s an incredible artist and I wish her the very best. She writes some amazing songs. You can’t take that away from her. I’m also constantly listening to unknown artists. I find that fascinating. I have a pile inside of twenty CDs to listen to. Whenever someone sends me something I always listen to it. Sometimes when people come to a signing and buy merch, they’ll slide me their CD and you end up with piles of them. So I’ll sit down and leave a block of time and just listen. It’s cool.
What do you want to record next?
We haven’t gotten started yet. I’m still looking for material. I have piles of it to go through. That’s the longest process. Because I’ll listen to anybody’s stuff. When I hear it, I will know—one of those deals.
Is it fun to have this on your brain all the time? Is it a full-time job?
When I did commercial interiors, I was working like 80 hours a week and it wasn’t my company so what was I doing? Those are the hours of a brain surgeon. It’s insane. I’d turn around on Christmas or New Years Eve and I’d be the only one in the office. Now it’s time to have some fun.
How are your hours now?
My hours are great!
What’s a work week like?
We’ve been having a lot of rehearsals. Sometimes when we’re going to hit the road, the Smithereens are playing somewhere and that will take out my drummer. So you constantly need subs. And every time you get a sub you need a rehearsal. We’re using a sub drummer in L.A. But I’m using Cracker’s drummer so that’s perfect. I have a really good band and I really enjoy them as musicians and people so we have a great time.
They’re all from different bands?
Dennis, my drummer, is from the Smithereens. My bass player, Sal, is originally from Roxy Music—now he’s in Cracker. I have Gary Thomas on guitar—he’s from London. He used to be in a band called the Stepford Husbands. I love that name! It’s a great name! And then I have Dave on keyboards, who’s also my music director and also a member of Reigning Sound and a gazillion other bands. So it’s a cool group of musicians. We’re all crazy and we’re all perfectionists. It’s wonderful working with people you really like too. No egos and no nonsense.
Do you feel any pressure or is it about having fun?
It’s about having fun. The only thing I feel pressure with is finding the right material. That’s it for me. That says it all. And you always want the next CD to be better. But I don’t feel the pressure like I used to have on me. I mean, my God. ‘Where’s the next? Where’s the next?’ And I’m not twenty years old climbing that ladder anymore. So when you take all that away it really does turn into fun. Most of my litigations are done. I have a good music business attorney so they can’t do any of that stuff they used to do. I was in litigation for 30 years. It’s crazy. I have another one next year.
What do you look for in a song?
The first time out a lot of people submitted death records, which was kind of funny, but why somebody would think I’d want to do that is totally beyond me at this point. I just want to do straight up rock ‘n’ roll.
Because ‘Leader of the Pack’ is on every karaoke machine I’ve ever seen. People are like, ‘Can you make another one so I can sing along to it when I’m drunk?’
Music is for me. It always was. And I went running so hard away from it. Now it’s time to reclaim and have some fun. I’m a firm believer that life is cyclical. Like every seven years you’re a different human being. And I’ve had so many offers over the years to do things and none of them seemed right and I wasn’t about to do something I didn’t want to do, even if I knew it was a huge moneymaker, and I knew it was. I guess I’ll never be rich. But you have to do what’s right for you. When this came up, it was the right timing in my life and it was what I wanted to do. We’ll see how we do with the next one.
This seven-year theory is intriguing.
If you think about it, it’s kind of true. 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42…I mean, it’s all about that. You are totally renewed. Your thoughts are different. You process things differently. You keep growing. Some people stagnate and never get past 19 or whatever. If you keep going, you do change and you do grow. How old are you?
25.
In a few years the things you think about will just go right out the window and you’ll laugh at yourself. It’s just the way it is. It’s a growing process. I just think in youth—well, some people never get over it—but in youth we create our own drama and most of the time our own disasters and people are their own worst enemies in that—oh, this is getting too philosophical! But I don’t know—if you learn, along the way, you kind of dismiss things. I used to talk about my baggage like it was a steamer trunk. Over the years, I like to think that it’s a weekender. Like when you grow up you dump all your garbage on your first relationships, and then hopefully you learn. Because we all carry baggage from the way we were raised and from the way we grew up and stuff. And we don’t even know, but that explodes into your grown-up relationships until it’s already there in your face. And then you learn and then you stop repeating certain behaviors and you grow. With any luck and maybe a little guidance. It’s just my observation of life, that’s all.
But that’s why anyone would want to talk to anybody else—to pass one thing from one to the other. Music jumps that process and spreads some general thing…
I find it amazing how much all of the kids—in Williamsburg, there are so many vinyl stores. The kids are buying vinyl. They’re hip and they understand what got lost in the reprocessing. The homogenizing versions of what’s spit out today. Half of the people you can’t even tell if they know how to sing when it goes through ProTools and gets cleaned up and what have you. But the kids are so in tune and they’re so much more open-minded. I come from a generation of don’t trust anyone over thirty. And that was the M.O. of everybody back then. But the kids are just reaching from every decade and putting all that stuff down and just listening to what they think is good and I really admire that.
That’s really cool. We, the kids, are hip.
You’re smart. You wanna learn and you’re all becoming little historians—it’s fascinating. When I can sit down and have a conversation about music with a twenty-something-year-old person and we’re both into the same thing, I love it.
And for us, it’s like talking to a jukebox.
[laughs] I feel fortunate to be in that period, in that point in my life. We’re going to have a good time in L.A.

MARY WEISS WITH JAIL WEDDINGS, THE GUANA BATZ, THE LORDS OF ALTAMONT, LUIS AND THE WILDFIRES AND MANY MORE ON SAT., AUG. 9, AT MONDO HOLLYWOOD AT THE KNITTING FACTORY, 7021 HOLLYWOOD BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 2 PM / $30-$65 / 18+. KNITTINGFACTORY.COM. MONDO HOLLYWOOD CONTINUES ON SUN., AUG. 10. FOR COMPLETE LINE-UP AND MORE INFO VISIT MYSPACE.COM/TIGERMASKCLUB. MARY WEISS’ DANGEROUS GAME IS OUT NOW ON NORTON. VISIT MARY WEISS AT MARYWEISS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/MARYWEISS.