Avi Buffalo “What’s In It For”
(From the self-titled LP out now on Sub Pop)

Avi Buffalo gets hated on by a lot of L.A. bands. I couldn’t believe the catty whispers from the musicians around me when I saw these kids—who really are just kids, fresh out of high school— play the KXLU/Smell showcase in Austin. Part of it was jealousy at the raw skill on display—in a pretty Surfer Rosa, almost-Joe-Satriani kind of way, band leader Avigdor Zahner Isenberg shreds the fuck out of his guitar. But I think what freaks people out most is that at Avi Buffalo’s emotional core, there’s a frustration that’s remarkably pitiful and world-weary. For some people, it must feel like a put-on—how dare four little kids play dress-up! But the blues is about feeling good, and each song on Avi Buffalo is like a Lucian Freud painting or a Raymond Carver short story. These are portraits of misunderstood, unloved, ugly things yawping into the void about their lusts and losses. And they are beautiful. You feel affection for these first-person characters, and maybe even a little mirth at their self-pity. Hell, on those rare occasions when Mr. Zahner-Isenberg allows himself to write like an actual teenager—such as on the literally sophomoric “Summer Cum”—there’s a downright J Mascis laziness to his vocals that matches the characters’ inability to clear up their confusions. The girl protagonist of “Summer Cum” makes dessert out of a pre-made pie crust, and the male narrator can taste a “robot’s fist.” The yawp drawls into a laid-back final “yep!” So what if, say, Flaming Lips mastered some of these sounds a decade ago? Avi Buffalo has the same guitar/bass/Nord/drum line-up we’ve heard for years, but have we ever really heard a song like “Where’s Your Dirty Mind” in which a frail boy and frail girl recite verses over a plinking piano and dixie-doodle Southern-fried guitar, using pervy middle-school urges as an ineffective shield against mortality? And that’s only the last in Avi Buffalo’s string of familiar yet highly original hard-luck songs about broken, bad-mannered losers. Like J Mascis, Zahner-Isenberg’s reedy voice contrasts sharply with the virtuosity of his band’s instruments. With Avi Buffalo, the brightness of intricately plucked guitars and occasional keys sweeps the darkness hither and yon—never dissipating it, but never letting it overwhelming you. (Only 60-Watt Kid has channeled this kind of sunny, wave-lapping beauty in recent times.) In fact, the only bad feeling I get after listening to Avi Buffalo is that it makes me want to go back in time to slap the shit out of myself at age 19 for not also being able to squeeze poignancy out of phrases like “summer cum” or craft Arthur Lee-ish song titles like “What’s In It For?” Technically, this band is a solo-project and the other members brought in later, but my favorite part of the album is when keyboardist/vocalist Rebecca Coleman takes the reins in “One Last”—a fantastic call-and-response ditty, almost like a Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra song, but replace Lee with Neil Young and Nancy Sinatra with a good vocalist. Zahner-Isenberg is great, but Coleman’s voice is emotive in a bolder, almost-country way. I wish she got mixed louder on some of the other songs. Or maybe it was a genius choice to haul her out as a secret weapon—a Bizarro-world Dee Dee Ramone who actually bests her lead singer. Taste is the hallmark of this record, even more so than in the band’s live set. At one point, Mr. Zahner-Isenberg reminds us that “no one could make you lose your faith, except for someone who you love.” Somehow, Avi Buffalo takes a sound I thought I had no love for and makes it rekindle my faith in guitar rock. Not since the Smiths has a band taken recent tradition to such new heights, and I suspect this won’t be Avi Buffalo’s last great album.

—Dan Collins

(From “Showstopper” 7” out now on Not Not Fun)

Oh, let the grooves burn, let the grooves burn. Long Beach’s Magic Lantern just released a 7” called “Showstopper“. Both sides are long and winding and fun to get lost in. The group plays in a sordid psych style delivered with plenty of bam-bam and woo-woo. They claim Can influences, but something else is going on—maybe a steady white man funk, akin to Motown’s Rare Earth. With sudsy breakdowns and distorted or phased vocal lines (similar to labelmates Vibes or Brooklyn-based Blank Dogs), this album is a delight on a hot summer night. Magic Lantern also just released a new album called Platoon to accompany this single and I highly suggest you pick it up if you’re into sweat-outs and bong rips.

—Brock Potucek

Download: Billy Bragg “O Freedom”

(from Mr. Love And Justice out now on Anti)

Billy Bragg has been mixing pop and politics and hoping to save the youth of America since he started out as ‘one-man Clash’ in 1977. After projects with Wilco and Woody Guthrie, he will present the U.S. premiere of his vocal version of Beethoven’s ‘Ode To Joy’ in Santa Monica. This interview by Dan Collins.

You were one of the first musicians I remember being outspoken about gay rights. The first time I heard your music was 1991—I was really young and I turned on MTV in Oklahoma and saw the video for ‘Sexuality,’ where you had that lyric ‘If you’re gay, I won’t turn you away.’ At the time I thought it was totally icky and gross…
Ha ha—it kind of is icky and gross, but in a nice way! You have to talk about these things, particularly back then when the first notions people had about HIV and AIDS was that you get it from talking to gay people. And it was an awful time when the disease first came to prominence. So that was a message I thought very strongly that I had to put out.
Do you think songs like that actually change people’s minds?
You’ve got to hope. What I’m basically trying to do is give people a different perspective, whether I’m writing a love song or a political song or a song that’s a bit of both. And you’ve got to hope that they will build on that perspective—that the perspective will challenge their own worldview enough to explore a little bit about what you’re talking about. Things that may initially sound a bit icky may years later make sense to them. That’s the way music has affected my life. The music hasn’t itself changed my life, but the ideas it’s given to me have led me to form my own opinions about things.
You seem equally at home writing about the personal and the political. Are there songs where you think you achieved both?
Yeah! There’s a song on my most recent album called ‘I Keep Faith.’ When I perform in front of an audience, I talk to the audience about my faith in their ability to change the world. I feel very strongly that singer/songwriters CAN’T change the world, and that ultimately the responsibility lies with the audience. And ‘I Keep Faith’ allows me to put that idea in front of the audience. But if my son comes to the concert, and while I’m saying this to the audience, he says to my wife—his mum—‘Mum, why doesn’t Dad just tell everybody this is about you?’ Then she has to say to him, ‘Well, it is about me, but it is also about what Dad is talking about. It’s about both of these things.’ I think the best political songs are also love songs, and the best love songs also have that urge to make a difference.
I was thinking about that after the death of Michael Jackson. The Minutemen had a song in the ’80s called ‘Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing.’
A great band! A great band! Much much missed!
Agreed! But in Michael Jackson’s mind, he probably thought of himself as a political songwriter. After all, he did ‘We Are the World’ and ‘Black or White.’
I have no problem with someone like Michael Jackson writing a political song, but they need to then come up with the actions to match that. People have to walk it like they talk it, and that’s the bottom line. Otherwise you’re just exploiting that situation for your own material gain. When I hear a political song, I always look for the actions that go along with that.
Your 2002 album, England, Half-English, is very powerful and one of my favorites. There is that sense of nationalism. But I wonder, isn’t there a danger in nationalism as well? Doesn’t it lead to tariffs and wars and hate?
The reason I made that album is because the far-right were beginning to pick up seats. And for all the worry that we have talking about nationalism, if we don’t talk about it, then we leave it to the fascists and the racists to define who does and who doesn’t belong. For better or for worse, the country I live in is called England. I was born here. I speak English. Why should I have to deny that just because a bunch of racist thugs have abused the name of the country? We need to take these things back, although as you said before, some people may—when they first hear it—find it a bit icky. I’m not joking! Some of my own fans initially didn’t feel comfortable with me talking about these things. But I spent time explaining where I was coming from—in fact, I wrote a book about it, ultimately.
In the United States, a lot of lefties like myself have big problems with the way we have treated African Americans and Native Americans and immigrants in the past. But we do have reverence for our founding fathers, despite their faults. Is there an era of English history where you look back like that?
Same era, really. It’s around that time that we chopped off the king’s head and began to have a different kind of idea about how our country should be governed. The period we refer to as the Civil War in the 1640s was actually a period of revolution. The sort of country the founding fathers were trying to live in, we were trying to create then—but it didn’t quite come off. There was a time when we were getting really near to having a proper democracy—200 years before we really achieved it. And that would be a good time to look back to be inspired. The army in the Civil War actually had a rank that was called ‘Agitator,’ which was someone who went out and agitated for change—for more democracy. That idea of the English Commonwealth—our Civil War was fought about the principal of bringing the King to account. Was the King above the law, or was the King within the law? And that idea of accountability is still a very important concept both in your country and my country.
Is there a way in the U.S. to embrace a leftist nationalism like that?
If you care about your country and want it to be a fairer country, if you share in Martin Luther King’s dream, if you want universal healthcare—you’re a patriot, as far as I’m concerned. Patriotism comes in many types. They’re not all defined by Pat Buchanan. I thought George Bush represented a small clique of people in the United States of America—I think Barack Obama represents a much wider slice of the American people. And there’s a nationalism in that.
Perhaps the problem in America is that we’ve watered down our folk-heroes. We’ve watered down Martin Luther King, we’ve watered down Helen Keller…
Woody Guthrie, we’ve watered down! There are extra verses to ‘This Land Is Your Land’ that they don’t teach you in school.
Have country, folk, and bluegrass musicians pushed aside their rebellious, progressive roots? I interviewed Earl Scruggs a few months back, and he really shied away from talking about his anti-war stance during the sixties.
Well, he wasn’t someone who chose playing bluegrass as a career option out of a career portfolio of things he could do. He was an ordinary working man who happened to play bluegrass, and it worked for him. He was trying to reflect his own experiences, and I have a lot of respect for people who try and do that.
Do you say that because the same thing is not true for you? You do seem to have a large portfolio of things you can do. I was pretty impressed that you’re doing this Beethoven thing in August.
Well, whether collaborating with Woody Guthrie, Wilco, or Beethoven and a symphony orchestra, it’s all the same sort of deal, really. It’s all about doing something that’s more interesting than just working the way you normally work.
You were lucky enough to record some of Woody Guthrie’s unreleased songs a decade ago with Wilco.
To write new music to some songs that he wrote. Because he—like me—doesn’t read music. He’s not musically trained. When he writes a song, he just writes the words and keeps the tune in his head. Which I do. If I died tomorrow, those tunes would be lost forever, but the words would still be there. And that’s what we got from Woody. We got complete lyrics to work with. I did a gig in 1992 in Central Park—an 80th birthday celebration for Woody Guthrie. His daughter Nora was there, and she saw something in the songs I sang and the way I performed them that reminded her of her father. And she began writing to me and sending me lyrics and asking me if I was interested in this project. And eventually, in the late nineties, it all came together rather wonderfully with Wilco.
Supposedly you guys had some creative friction during the making of that album.
We made a film of the whole process called Man in the Sand. And there is part of that film that reflects how Jeff Tweedy and I had differences of opinion about the production of the record. The basic deal was that whoever wrote the song would produce that song. And that was a pretty good deal, I thought. And that’s how we worked. But in the middle of the process, after we’d been in the studio working together really, really well, Wilco sent some mixes of my stuff that they suggested, and I just had to say, ‘Look guys, we have a deal. I’m not going to mix your stuff. I’d rather you didn’t mix my stuff.’ And that’s how we left it. The real proof of our working relationship is that when it came time to release Volume 2, they went back and recorded half a dozen new songs—at their own expense—which made that second album a much more Wilco-like album. If they really had a falling out with me or I had a falling out with them, they wouldn’t have made a contribution. I would work together with them tomorrow at the drop of the hat.
Maybe you can play both albums together at Coachella sometime.
It’s Woody’s Centenary in 2012, and if Nora Guthrie doesn’t manage to get us to play together, I think she’ll be very angry! Both me and Jeff, we do what Nora tells us to do because we’re part of the family now. I hope we can come together to do some shows.
Did you ever write ‘This Machine Kills Fascists’ on your guitar like Woody did?
When I was in a punk band, I wrote ‘This Guitar Says ‘Sorry.’’
What was it like playing folk to punk audiences?
When I started, it was still punk. It was just one guy with an electric guitar playing punk. It was only when I started coming to America that people compared me to Woody Guthrie. In England, everyone said I was a ‘one man Clash!’ I would still try to live up to that today!
When I created a Billy Bragg Pandora station, it came back and played a lot of Elvis Costello.
Elvis to me was the ultimate singer-songwriter, because it had a backbone to it. It had an edge to it. It wasn’t apologetic like so many of the others. It was hard-edged punk rock singer-songwriter. Elvis kind of makes it okay to get on stage with a symphony orchestra.
Or to play with Burt Bacharach! Or to grow a long beard!
I’m not sure I’ll be singing Burt anytime soon, but I will be singing Beethoven.
I’m looking forward to it. But why the Ninth Symphony?
Well, I was involved in an event to celebrate the reopening of a London concert venue called the Royal Festival Hall. It had been built in the fifties and they refurbished it. And as part of the reopening ceremonies, they were having a weekend of events which culminated in a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth—the fourth movement, the final bit. ‘Ode to Joy.’ They asked me to write some lyrics for it. Fortunately, it happens to be one of my favorite pieces of classical music. So I duly wrote a new English-language lyric.
Can you give our audience just a little taste of one of the lyrics to your libretto to ‘Ode to Joy’?
The chorus is ‘Brother, Sister, stand together! Raise your voices now as one—though, by history divided, reconcile in unison.’
Do you think you have a unique gift for delivering lyrics like that un-ironically and unapologetically?
I really took my queue from the line in Beethoven’s original, which is ‘Alle menschen werden brüder…’ ‘All men become brothers.’’ When you see that that was the original intent of the lyrics, that verse to me is a very strong. My lyric is not a translation at all, but I took the original sentiment from Beethoven and Friedrich Schiller.
When you played Beethoven for the first time, you played for the Queen of England!
She came to the gig. I wasn’t playing for her. It was being performed, and she kind of came to the gig and sat in the royal box. And it was very funny, because when we were in a higher box on the other side of the theater, you could kind of see what she was doing. And when they were singing my lyrics, she was kind of following them with her finger in the program! And afterwards, she sent a footman down to ask if she could have a copy of the score signed by Mr. Bragg.
You weren’t tempted to yell at her? ‘Off with her head! Another revolution! I’m an agitator!’
No, I wasn’t really. To be perfectly honest with you, my mum was there! It’s not often you get to do something that impresses your mum in rock ‘n’ roll!

BILLY BRAGG PERFORMING BEETHOVEN’S NINTH WITH DWIGHT TRIBLE, BANDA PHILHARMONICA, SUZIE GLAZE, ERNEST TROOST, JUSTIN BISCHOF, THE BAKER + TARPAGA DANCE PROJECT AND MORE ON SAT., AUG. 29, AT THE BROAD STAGE, 1310 11TH ST., SANTA MONICA. 7 PM / $55-$100 / ALL AGES. BEETHOVENBRAGG.COM. BILLY BRAGG’S MR. LOVE AND JUSTICE IS OUT NOW ON ANTI-. VISIT BILLY BRAGG AT BILLYBRAGG.CO.UK OR MYSPACE.COM/BILLYBRAGG.

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.

Download: Animal Collective “My Girls”

(from Merriweather Post Pavilion out now on Domino)

Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion was called the best record of 2009 even back in 2008, and as usual the band penetrated that sort of cloudiness to shine light down on everyone who was looking for it. They speak now over free french fries (and later via email) after their last Los Angeles show. Deakin (Josh Dibb) was not present on this tour. This interview by Chris Ziegler. And read our first interview with Animal Collective—they were in Sweden and we were at Togo’s—here.

People have said Strawberry Jam was your breakthrough, Merriweather was your breakthrough, Feels—everything is a breakthrough. What do they think you’re trying to break through?
Noah Lennox (Panda Bear, effects/vocals): That’s a good question.
Brian Weitz (Geologist, effects/vocals): I don’t know.
Dave Portner (Avey Tare, guitar/vocals): The progression has definitely allowed us to be able to do stuff more practically—hire someone like [producer] Ben Allen, go to a place like Sweet Tea, be able to rent a house to stay in and also be able to maintain our own set-up on tour and take our friends on tour with us. And be in a bus if we choose to be in a bus.
N: Even once we really kind of got in gear as musicians and began playing and recording and touring a lot, the idea of it being a money thing was very far from my mind. I suppose I just assumed that by design we’d never be able to be commercially successful. I have no problem with success and I would have no problem with being a popular band, but I’d say were pretty stubborn about it. And we’d rather what’s popular come towards us rather than the other way around, if you know what I mean. At the same time I feel like I’m wary of thinking about things on these terms—what’s most important to me is to feel excited about what we’re doing in the moment when we’re doing it. What happens with it after that isn’t in my hands really so much, I don’t think. I do feel like there’s an entirely separate part of being a band and it has nothing at all to do with music. A band can choose not to do interviews or tour or do photo shoots or have a website or make videos or anything like this, and I think that’s just fine. But I feel like that’s erasing—barring special circumstances—any possibility for greater success or having your music heard and—hopefully—enjoyed by larger amounts of people. I don’t mean to pass judgment on those who aren’t interested at all in this kind of thing. But I feel like we work very hard on the musical side of things and it’s my job and it’s what I do. So even though I have no interest in chasing success to the point of tailoring things on the musical side, I feel justified in working hard to ensure that I’ve kept the lights on.
I notice some writers making cracks about glowsticks and jam bands—what do you think makes people use that for cheap jokes?
N: I’d say that the music just isn’t those people’s thing and I think that’s fine and as it should be. They’re just putting it down because they aren’t into it and they think it’s lame. If you want to be a creative person and you want to share your things with other people then you better be prepared to be told you suck.
The New York Times said Merriweather is your least obfuscated record.
N: What’s that mean?
B: SAT word. I don’t think—it’s weird to say deliberately confusing.
N: Personally I like music that confuses me. Something I can’t wrap my head around.
B: We often have sections in songs where we leave certain boundaries—a part where we start here and come back here after a length of time, and A-to-B isn’t totally scripted. It’s like ‘Interstellar Overdrive,’ but not as cyclical. Our music is pretty structured.
Do you ever feel you go too far? Are you confusing the press and the fans?
D: With all our records—one thing comes up constantly when I talk to promoters or people that have maybe gotten into us more recently. I talked to a girl in Brazil who was a promoter and took us around—‘I work for this label and this girl got Strawberry Jam and was like “Listen to this!” I put it on and I was like, “What? I don’t get it.” I put it on my shelf and saw it one day and that girl was STILL talking about that record—and I was still like, “What?” And then just recently—it must’ve been the right time. I get this now.’ I think that happens now. I remember one journalist friend——when we put out Here Comes The Indian, he didn’t get it. And he finally sent me an email—‘Hey, man, this is the day I finally got the Indian.’ It’s all time and place. And it’s definitely weird to me to think about critically listening to music. Putting it on in the office?
How do you feel the things you sing about translate to the press? And to your fans?
N: I think the messages and meanings get mistranslated and subverted and get tweaked by a given person to suit their experiences. I’d say this happens to an extent with any band—and I like it, I should say. I don’t mean to say that the meanings always get mutated in this way, and I’d hope that despite it being difficult sometimes to fully understand what we’re singing that through the music and the sounds and the attitude the true intent somehow comes across. Even though it’s a lofty idea I’d like to think that we’re channeling the feelings of the songs with our performances—I’d like to think that the emotional souls of the songs translate on that level.
How do you talk about your own songs? The story about the song supposed to feel like a guy on a beach by a lagoon—is that how it works?
D: What you were saying about the guy in the lagoon—a lot of it’s like that. We’d talk about the new record and the new sound—throw around words or moods.
N: Colors. Basic language—nothing too lofty.
B: There are musical things. We were discussing things in frequency ranges. On Merriweather—‘Let’s try not to make our parts be in the same frequency ranges. If someone is one place, when it’s on your part, go somewhere else.’ Make the song a bit taller. More space in the middle. Our past records, especially with a lot of guitars—they were kind of fogged up.
Why do you try to make the source of your sounds unrecognizable? There’s nothing that sounds like ‘bass’ or ‘guitar’ on the records now.
D: To me what those sounds bring to mind—if I hear a bass, I immediately think of a certain time period. A certain sound—‘That’s so ‘90s.’ ‘That drum sound is so Steve Albini.’
N: ‘So Jamaica.’
D: ‘So ‘60s.’ We try our best to get away from that.
B: It’s kind of decontextualizing. A spring reverb or a space echo are things used on all dub records—stuff we like. We’re not using that sound—just in the way it puts your mind with dub music.
N: The excitement is taking something familiar and trying to go to an unfamiliar place.
What environment do you need to do that?
N: You always gotta be comfortable—first and foremost.
How did that work for Merriweather? Why did you record at Sweet Tea?
N: Because the mood in pictures was really nice. And we could record and track in the same room as the control room. We set up the speakers so we could hear exactly what we put to tape better in the live room. I feel that informed the way the record sounds.
What did you learn from your producer Ben?
N: He was really detailed about the way we laid things down. We’d never done that before. Really intense separation.
B: How he dealt with the low end was really eye-opening. We had really sub frequencies that unless your speaker can reproduce them, you don’t hear the bass. He said the bass should be full, even if the focus is sub bass—put high end on it so it works no matter what system it’s on. The high end puts a ghost note. Melodically it won’t change the song—it changes it sonically.
N: The goal is to get it to sound as similar as it can on different system.
Jonathan Richman said best thing about the Velvet Underground wasn’t that they made music but that they made atmosphere—does Animal Collective make atmosphere? What does Animal Collective make besides music?
N: I think I can speak for all of us when I say the transportive qualities of music get us psyched. And I’d say we try and inject our music with those qualities if we can. I suppose it’s a little difficult for me to separate atmosphere from what might be considered more traditional elements of music in that my favorite music—and the music I feel is most powerful and most affecting kidnaps me into its world. There are certainly lots of field recordings and doctored field recordings and tweaked sources in the songs. I feel like the non-melodic sounds tend to provide the atmosphere and to glue certain qualities of other instruments together sonically. Hopefully the sounds and more abstract elements of the songs help to support whatever the atmosphere and mood of the original song is. It sounds technical and lame to say it like that, and I should say we almost never talk about the songs on these terms.
When we talked in 2005, you mentioned that you’d been feeling more responsibility to your audience as you grew—more pressure to deliver and not be self-indulgent.
D: It’s just kind of like—recontexualize my definition of self-indulgent. In the past, anything goes—I never even think—this is totally for ourselves. I’d take criticism from people and be like, ‘Oh, whatever.’ But it definitely made me look back—‘Ok, alright, I can see what people have meant.’ I feel we always wanted people to be into what we were doing. We never wanted to antagonize and we never thought we were self-indulgent. We always tried to offer people the kind of music we’d wanna listen to and they’d wanna listen to. Having a larger audience now that’s very familiar with our music kind of changes it a little—just what people wanna get out of the performance. It definitely doesn’t change the way I feel when we’re making a record. It might be we decide to do a record and the label would be like, ‘We’re not putting this record out—it’s not something we feel would be good for the label.’ Then we’d just put it out somewhere. It doesn’t change our decisions. I speak mostly in terms of live sets, which have changed the most in a short span of time. But for a lot of reasons. We play for a lot longer now than we ever had, especially when we started—when we got really enthusiastic about always doing something new live. It’s different to play twenty minutes for friends and play for an hour and a half to two thousand people, some of which are completely new fans who might not know what to expect at all. I’m into giving everyone a whole run of what we’re into. We are into some sense playing old songs—I can relate to going to see a band and wanting them to play specific songs. It woulda been better if they’d done that song!’ But you’re still getting something out of it. But I appreciate the band. I’ve seen amazing shows where the band has done something totally unexpected.
B: We’ve done both. Now is a time when we’re playing already released stuff. I used to think I was so against it, but we started adding old stuff in the set. It’s almost like if you’ve already seen a movie and you think your friends are gonna like it—‘Yeah, I’ll go with you again.’
What sort of positive things have you taken from criticism of the band?
N: I feel like I’ve learned lots about people and the way people interact, and I’ve learned a lot about what people care about and what drives people from reading reviews or having discussions with people about what we do or what we’ve done. I can’t say that I feel like I’ve learned a whole lot or discovered a whole lot about our own music from reading things about our band or our music. And I don’t mean to put anyone down—I guess I just feel like I’m so close to the thing. I find it revealing sometimes to be forced to talk in a sort of analytical or purely objective way about what we’re doing in interviews. To be honest, though, I’d prefer to leave the things as unanalyzed and virgin—in a way—as possible. I’m trying these days to completely stay away from reviews of shows or recordings of ours just because I feel like its gotten to the point where I can tell the comments and opinions are affecting me in negative ways. It’s not that I don’t value them and I think it’s totally right that someone be able to say this or that or whatever—I just feel like maybe it’s best for me to stay away.
B: I can’t think of anything specific. We care a lot about music being pretty individually from us—to make it a personal thing. Fans used to ask—‘We’re your biggest fans! Would you ever consider letting us have input in your record?’ Like playing it for fans while we’re working—that’s almost the same as playing it for the label. Which we don’t do either. It’s not like rejecting ideas.
D: We wanna be confident for ourselves. We wanna make the record we wanna make.
N: For the self-indulgent thing—what’s most important to me is making sure we’re psyched about what we’re doing. If we’re not doing that, why would anyone else get excited?
D: Sometimes we make a certain style of music because that’s the kind of mood we’re in—going back lately, we’re reissuing some of our records on vinyl. We’re doing the box set with a lotta live material and practice stuff—up through Sung Tongs. I listened to the test pressings and sometimes I’ll be like, ‘It’s so weird that Noah back then was part of this kind of music—it’s not something he’d listen to at all!’
B: I think we said that even back then!
D: But we felt like—crazy, in a way. There were elements we all liked. But ultimately it was just expression.
B: Usually our craziness is triggered by surroundings or events.
D: That’s negative craziness. In our personal lives. But right now we’re kind of beyond that. But I think positive craziness is still involved.
What do you think of your suddenly higher profile?
D: An idea that’s come up a lot—there’s been a lot of writing and talk on the Internet now about the cultural importance of the band.
B: It’s not for us to decide. They do it with every band, not just us. The Internet is so immediate—so many voices rushed to decide what’s classic the minute it’s released. Whether something has staying power is a big topic of conversation, but I don’t think you can make those decisions when the record comes out. There are records I listened to once a week between 1994 and 1998—‘This record is so amazing!’—and now I don’t really need to hear it again.
Did it affect you when people were calling Merriweather the best album of 2009 before it even came out?
D: I don’t think so. But at a certain point it is intense. We are psyched—so psyched—on the record. It makes us feel good people are into it. If you’re a music person and somebody into music, there’s something music offers that nothing else does. I can’t put it into words but nothing else can do it.
B: My friend talks about going on tour or being a stage actor—the only art forms where you have to create or perform on command.
What has music given you that you’d never have had otherwise?
B: Friends—we wouldn’t see each other. I really like our music—I like it a lot.
N: I don’t like our music.
B: I don’t listen to it so much after we finish, but when we’re working it becomes my favorite thing to listen to.
Is there any kind of coherent ‘philosophy’ of the band?
D: Have a good time.
B: Eat well.
Sometimes your songs make me want to cook.
B: Burn calories! It takes effort to listen to our records.
With regards to the idea of the ‘philosophy’ of the band—how have you most clearly discovered who you are and what you need to do? What kind of experiences helped? What kinds were distracting? How did both affect your music?
N: We most certainly have never discussed any philosophy as far as the band goes—at least not in any way thats really worth discussing or relating. I’d like to stay as far away from that kind of academic zone of music and sound as I can. Perhaps it’s best to say our philosophy is not only to not have a philosophy but to not even entertain the idea that a band has a philosophy, if you know what I mean. As far as discovering who we are and what we need to do, I feel that’s something we are figuring out on a daily basis—I’m sure that process wont end until we’re dead and perhaps not even then. And I should say that process has very very little to do with music. The music is really only some kind of reflection of that process. Even though I find the process of interviews and the whole non-musical side of my profession interesting and revealing most of the time, I do feel like it’s the most distractive force as far as feeling like I’m on a direct and pure path creatively. Again that’s part of the reason I’m trying to distance myself from reviews and that sort of thing.
The last time we talked, you wanted to work with Madlib and RZA—think that could happen now?
B: We still can’t get Madlib to respond to our emails! But Dam Funk is hard at work on a remix for us. Just in the last 48 hours—I got the rough mix.
D: It was interesting to hear Noah and I sing in the context of this kind of song. Pretty danceable funk!
And last—after the tour and all the press cycle fade out, what do you do together before you each split up back to your homes? What is the last day of Animal Collective being together like?
N: We’re usually kind of broken mentally and physically by the end of tour and are really just ready to be at home again. For me though I should say the whole thing just kind of keeps rolling like a ball down the hill. After the tour it’s on to preparing for the next tour or getting a studio space ready for the next recording or something like that. I would hope someday perhaps we’ll just hang out for a bit and think back on old times—but we’ll probably be old guys like seventy or something. And that’s OK.

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE WITH GROUPER ON FRI., MAy 29, AT THE WILTERN, 3790 WILSHIRE BLVD., LOS ANGELES. 9 PM / SOLD OUT / ALL AGES. LIVENATION.COM. ANIMAL COLLECTIVE’S MERRIWEATHER POST PAVILION IS OUT NOW ON DOMINO. VISIT ANIMAL COLLECTIVE AT MYANIMALHOME.NET OR MYSPACE.COM/ANIMALCOLLECTIVETHEBAND.

Download: The Monks “Love Came Tumblin’ Down” (demo)

(from The Early Years 1964-1965 out now on Light In The Attic)

The Monks were one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll bands ever. They came from nowhere—five G.I.s stationed in Germany about to muster out of the U.S. Army when Vietnam and the Beatles were both heating up—and they sounded like nobody else on their single album Black Monk Time and they faded away after only a few years, so shell-shocked that they had to struggle to remember how to be Americans again. Light In The Attic has just reissued Black Monk Time (with vital outtakes like “Pretty Suzanne”) and the pre-Monk Time demos. Founders Eddie Shaw and Gary Burger (who reveals the location of the lost last Monks session!) speak now about the Monk times. These interviews by Chris Ziegler. Read Part Two of the interview (with Monks singer Gary Burger) here.

Eddie Shaw (bass): I was a musician when I was 15 years old and I played in a casino in Carson City, Nevada, and Wayne Newton was 12 years old—he was on the front stage, and I was 15 and I was on the back stage. So, you know, I come from a musical family. My aunt Sue almost married Will Wills, who’s Bob Wills’ brother. I was a musician all my life and actually I was assigned to the 6th Army band when I went in the Army. They were gonna station me in San Francisco. I had a plush job and I went and screwed it up and said, ‘Well, I’m gonna be so close to home—can I see some place else?’ and they said sure and sent me to Germany. When I got to Germany all of a sudden I was in an artillery outfit.
Do you feel like you’ve always chosen the path of most resistance?
Well, yeah—I did. My new book is about birds hitting windows and this trumpet player keeps hitting windows and I’ve spent my life hitting windows but that’s the thing. I don’t like playing or doing the conventional sort of stuff. Usually its about discovery for me, and that’s what the Monks was. It was about discovery.
What did you discover through the Monks?
The minimalist thing. The idea of tension.
Do you still feel what you wrote in your book Black Monk Time—that all Monks songs are love songs?
They are in a sense. If you listen to ‘I Hate You, But Call Me,’ how many of us hate the person that we love at any given minute because we’re so frustrated and so in love? The very heart of love in some ways, right?
Did you ever feel that you were turning into your own songs?
We got tired at the end. I don’t know if you saw that Monks documentary Transatlantic Feedback—the documentary was about a list and really there was no list. In the documentary it sounded like we broke up or we didn’t make it because we didn’t follow the list. It’s a myth—just like the Lunachicks in New York City were the first to play Monk music in the states. They had an interview in People magazine and they said, ‘Where’d you get those songs?’ and they said, ‘Well, we discovered this old obscure recording.’ They said it was a bunch of GIs in Germany who went AWOL and the police were looking for them and they showed up on German TV singing ‘I Hate You, But Call Me’ and the police closed in on them and they disappeared and nobody’s seen them since. I’ve always liked that story the best—I wish that one was true. But getting back to whether we were that thing—when you wear that image everyday, people treat you differently and you get used to it and you get the feeling of how it must feel to be a monk. Or a figure of religious authority, so to speak. Until you say, ‘fuck you’ and you have a shot of whiskey and ogle the girls standing over there and they figure it out—‘Wait a minute!’
In the book, you say everybody’s personality was defined by the instrument they play. So who were the Monks?
Gary was a country-western player. I think his roots were probably in folk music. [Banjo player] Dave [Day] played three chords. [Organist] Larry [Clark] took piano lessons and he played Chopin and he also got a $90 organ and could play ‘Green Onions.’ [Drummer] Roger [Johnston] was from Texas and he played Texas swing. He might have been influenced by the Bob Wills swing group. I never discussed my musical past with them. We were all from different environments—for the most part, that’s what made the Monks. The music is a hybrid of sort of a conversation between all of us to get rid of what all of us had that the other ones couldn’t work with. I come from Miles Davis and Chet Baker and all that. My music culture has nothing to do with the Monk music culture and I know that Gary’s music culture has nothing to do with the Monk music culture. Neither do any of them. Basically what the Monk music culture became was what we could do that would work together that nobody else had ever done.
You guys said in the book how you wanted to be truthful as a band and just communicate the simple truth. Is that why people thought Monk music was so ugly?
I don’t think people like to be hit in the head with the straight-on idea that everybody lies. I tell everybody that I lie three times a day and I try to do them as early in the morning as possible so I get them out of the way. So you know—‘Shut up, be a liar.’ We still have that today. Just look at politicians. I’m not a political person. I didn’t really like the political content that we were doing because I don’t really like that. To me it dates the songs. ‘Monk Time’ is dated because of the reference to Vietnam. If it wouldn’t have been the reference to Vietnam, it could have been like ‘Shut up, don’t cry!’—it could be good now. But there is a way to talk about politics in a song that doesn’t date it and we had a big argument about that one. I was against it. But I compromised. If it’s our kid then I’ll do it. But when you use a song to attack the headlines, you are basically dating yourself. It’s not that you shouldn’t have the honor or the courage to say, ‘I’ll speak my mind.’ Because I will. But if you’re going to make a piece of art you want the message to last. I don’t want it to die as soon as the problem died.
I read about someone who’d seen you play in Germany and said, ‘What the hell were you guys doing? I didn’t understand what it was but I got pissed off as soon as I heard it.’ Does that count as success?
Yes, it does. I was in a bar five years ago and I was sitting there drinking a beer and this guy about my age was sitting there we were talking and he said, ‘I was in Vietnam.’ I told him I was in Germany and he said, ‘Yeah, I went to Germany from Vietnam and I had a girlfriend and went to Hamburg and saw this group playing and I hated them—I wanted to kill ‘em.’ I drank my beer and I didn’t say anything but after a while I said, ‘I was in that group.’ He says, ‘I absolutely hate you.’ He said it, but we were drinking a beer real friendly and I say, ‘What did you hate about it?’ He said, ‘That whole bullshit about Vietnam and crap—I just got back from Vietnam.’ I said, ‘Yeah I didn’t like that myself. But as you turn around and look at it thirty years later when Robert McNamara came on TV and apologized about it—I felt then at least maybe we weren’t wrong. Not that that’s the important thing—the sad thing is that 58,000 American kids died along with all the Vietnamese kids.’ And he says, ‘I know that and I thought about it and you’re absolutely right.’ ‘After all these years,’ he says, ‘you’re right. But I still hate you.’ So I said, ‘OK.’
You seemed so shell-shocked coming out of the Monks experience. What did the Monks do to you?
You get conditioned to knowing that you’re going to piss people off. When I went home—my mother is a hell of a piano player, and when I played the Monks stuff for her, she didn’t say anything against it but she just ignored it and went on to something else. But normally before, when I played drums and trumpet, all the jazz stuff—she’d say, ‘Great! Do that again!’ My uncle who also played just turned it off—‘God, you used to be a better musician than that! Why are you doing that?’ So you just lock it away and say, ‘Well, that didn’t work.’ After I wrote the book, these two guys showed up at my house and asked if I was Eddie the Monk and I about fell over. I called Gary Burger in Minnesota just because he would like to know that and I said, ‘You wouldn’t believe this but two guys showed up at my door and wanted to do an article because they’d read the book and they loved our music—the Monks have people who like them.’ And Gary said, ‘fuck you,’ and he hung up.
Was that an affectionate fuck you?
No—it was a pissed-off fuck you. He thought I was fucking with his head. It’s the idea that if you go out and you’re going to be an artist and if you’re just up there to please everybody and you want everybody to love you, you’re really wasting your time. Dave always sought love—I’m not using that against him but people want to be loved and Dave was one of those. You never test the limits of anybody—you just want to please them. If you want to be an artist you need to feel the ripples of tension throughout the audience. I want to see if something is causing a little pushback, because if I get a little pushback then I know that there might lie a key to some hidden truth right there.
The path of most resistance?
You get the pushback and it says you’re raising a reaction. If you’re getting a reaction, then you’re doing something.
Isn’t this basic chemistry? A reaction producing results?
Yeah—that’s it right there! Holy Christ, we are gonna talk about the universe here shortly. Holy Christ, this telephone is getting hot!
So what discoveries do you have that you need to share?
I don’t have any discoveries. I think the idea is the idea of living to discover or learn something. I can’t imagine the idea of retiring and then sitting in my RV in an RV park to watch the sun go down and say, ‘Oh, this is a great life—I don’t have to go to work.’ I enjoy my work, so I live for my work because my work is the process of discovery.
What are the biggest revelations you’ve had in your life?
The idea of being in love is a revelation because you become more than just yourself. The idea of one person standing alone against the world is totally non-existent.
Isn’t that supposed to be the whole romantic rock n’ roll rebel thing?
Well, that’s the outlaw. We all want the outlaws. We all wanna die in a hail of bullets.
But that’s not a realistic expectation.
I don’t think so. If it is, go join the Army.
So the Monks really were all about love then?
In a sense, don’t we all strive for love? If you discover something, isn’t that illumination sort of freeing? It’s like—yeah, this feels good.
Why do you guys think you got so many letters from East Germany? What were they responding to?
One of the things I think was the idea that we would speak our mind—to say, ‘I’m an American, I have free speech, I can say what I wanna say whether you like it or not.’ They go, ‘You can’t say that—you can tell me that in private but don’t say it out loud like that!’ That is what the East Germans picked up on. These Americans are saying this stuff and it doesn’t even sound like they’re supporting their country but the thing is we are. We’re proving that in our country we’re free.
Who were the Monks fans?
What kind of people? I would say people who are more free-thinking. That could be anybody from a stripteaser to a painter or a jazz musician who doesn’t like rock. One of my friends used to hang out and he liked Monk music because he said it doesn’t sound like all that other crap. And it was always amazing that this Monk music was being played by guys who, much of the time, didn’t know more than three or four chords.
Do you feel like that laid the groundwork for punk?
I don’t think it laid the ground but I think that there’s an evolution going on all the time and we’re just part of it. We were the first ones that got the little fins that we crawled out of the water two inches.
Do you still feel like you failed?
No, I don’t. It takes a while to see that the idea of failure is good—if you have no failures then you’ve never tried anything. My grandmother wanted me to be a preacher. I didn’t dare tell her what kind of Monk I was. She said, ‘Are you with the Lord, Eddie?’ I said, ‘I think so.’

Read Chris Ziegler’s interview with Monks singer Gary Burger here.

Download: The Monks “Love Came Tumblin’ Down” (demo)

(from The Early Years 1964-1965 out now on Light In The Attic)

The Monks were one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll bands ever. They came from nowhere—five G.I.s stationed in Germany about to muster out of the U.S. Army when Vietnam and the Beatles were both heating up—and they sounded like nobody else on their single album Black Monk Time and they faded away after only a few years, so shell-shocked that they had to struggle to remember how to be Americans again. Light In The Attic has just reissued Black Monk Time (with vital outtakes like “Pretty Suzanne”) and the pre-Monk Time demos. Founders Eddie Shaw and Gary Burger (who reveals the location of the lost last Monks session!) speak now about the Monk times. These interviews by Chris Ziegler. Read Part One of the interview (with Monks bassist Eddie Shaw) here.

Are you still the mayor of your town?
Gary Burger (vocals/guitar): I’m the mayor. I’ve been the mayor fifteen years in this fine little city of Turtle River and I originally ran on the ‘no progress’ platform and that’s still sucking ‘em in. No change at all. We don’t want new people moving in—we don’t want progress.
Do people call you up? ‘Gary, come over and fix my pipes!’
No, the mayor don’t do that kind of work. I’ve got a recording studio. I’m about to bring some boys in—I got a great drummer Len Curio from L.A. I got a terrific bassist from Minneapolis and a local keyboard player and myself and we’re gonna produce a Gary Burger album. Some of them are protest songs. Some are damn near a love song. It’s sort of eclectic and it worries me because I’m going to be yelling at money mongers and bankers. I wrote that damn song ten years ago!
Are you still yelling like you used to? Do you still have the voice?
Oh, man, that’s all I can do. I’ve always thought, ‘Hey, I should be a crooner,’ but no—that’s a mistake. I need to yell, I guess, before people will listen to me. And sometimes they turn me off even then. It’s a good way to get your frustrations out. Just go yell in a recording studio where nobody is hearing you but yourself—at least that day. And later on they can listen if they want. But I’m pretty excited about this new recording I’ve got 18 songs that are all original. I’m playing guitar on it too. 18 wont make the cut but we’ll see what happens. I’ve got my players here for five days. We don’t believe in taking two years or six months to do an album. It’s basically set the band up, get good sound and let ‘er rip.
Your German managers wanted you to be the hardest band in the world—do you think that actually came true?
At that time? Yeah. The audiences didn’t appreciate it very much and the bar owners hated it. They used to say, ‘What happened to my nice little band the Torquays? Now you guys are playing this crap and you’re running my customers out of the place. I loved you before and I hate you now.’ Pretty strong stuff for a band that’s counting on these businesses to make our living. We managed it for quite a while and it eventually petered out.
What kind of people were really connecting with you guys?
We had some people who would actually shave their heads and wear black. There were a few of those. They were dedicated and became our friends—they just saw something in the music and in us that struck a chord with them. We were probably the only band on the continent at the time that would shout, ‘Why’d you kill all those kids over there in Vietnam?’ I don’t think the English groups were doing that and the German groups certainly were not and there were people in the States that were doing it with the anti-war movement growing in the states. Dylan had some pretty damn pointed songs about it all. And Barry McGuire.
How much did your Army training influence the Monks?
The band was a pretty loose show. The Army didn’t have much to do with that, and as far as the look, it was the manager’s creation. It was still a rock ‘n roll band. People say what kind of music is it—punk? Naw, hell—I thought it was rock ‘n roll. Punk? What was that in ’66? If you called somebody punk that meant they were a shithead or a young dummy or something.
Do you feel like you laid the groundwork for the punk music that would happen later?
I don’t want to go that far, my friend. There’s a lot of people out there in the history of music who have made little steps in this direction or that direction and the Monks were just another step. I think what we did with our anti-war songs—we were one of the first ones, in Europe for sure, to do that. I’m very proud of that. When we went out to play or when we regrouped for these reunion concerts in the last few years, I couldn’t bring myself to sing or yell, ‘Why’d you kill all those kids over there in Vietnam?’ That’s ancient history. So I put in words like, ‘Why’d you kill all those kids in Iraq?’ Or Afghanistan? That makes sense. There’s always going to be a war—it just pisses me off that there’s always going to be a war. If there’s not one going on, just wait a week.
I know there’s a little tension about those lyrics.
Who said that? I don’t think I was ever uncomfortable with it—I think Eddie was. I always felt good about it. Even though I was an Army guy and I had connections with friends who were in the Army after we became the Monks, they didn’t want to go to Vietnam. They heard the stories. The Army is one big rumor pipeline inside it. You hear the stories of people who have been there and they didn’t want to go. But on the other hand I can relate to Eddie’s spookiness about doing those songs—he never did want to do that sort of thing. But I was pleased about it. I think it’s what the Monks had to do. If the Monks were truly going to have any impact in 1966, we better be saying something about the Vietnam War. When we go out now, we don’t do that. I’m talking about new wars and that still makes Eddie uncomfortable. Eddie is just not comfortable with any of this protest stuff. I guess I’m not afraid of repercussions. I’m not spooked by what the world might say about me. I’m an individual. I’m a leader, not a follower.
Eddie said in the book all the Monks songs were love songs—what do you think? Were the protest songs love songs?
Not the protest songs. But we get asked about ‘I Hate You’ which happens to be one of my favorites—I love to sing that song today. That’s a love song—‘I hate you but call me?’ Come on. How many relationships have we had in our lives where we’re like, ‘I don’t know if I like this person but I’d sure like to hear from them’?
What was the most romantic Monks moment?
That’s almost X-rated! Eddie said something that I always liked, and I don’t like too much of what he says, but I liked this—he said that when we were the Torquays we got the nice girls and after we became the Monks we got the bad girls.
Is that a step in the right direction?
Well, it was for the Monks—at least we were still getting girls!
What do you think the Monks’ message was?
I think if anything, songs like ‘Complication’ and ‘Monk Time’ raise the awareness to stand up and say something about the inequities going on in the world. War is number one. There’s so many areas—it would be about impossible to cover all the bases. Starvation, poverty—it just goes on and on. I think putting that message out with the original Monks was a good thing to do. And I think I’ve said it twice that I’m very proud of the Monks for having those two particular cuts on our albums these days. Without those two cuts, I think the Monks would have been a bubblegum punk band. ‘Shut Up,’ too—that’s another possible anti-war song. ‘The world is worried, the world is always worried’—let’s find a damn world where we’re not so damn worried about everything and we can just live our lives in peace and accomplish our personal goals. Not whether you do or not but at least have the chance to accomplish your personal goals.
Was it true that you guys got bags of fan mail?
Yeah, we would get fan mail. ‘Hey, we love you and we’re coming to see you and my name is Brigitte.’
What do you think the Monks experience did to you as a person?
I went in enthusiastic and came out sobered. I didn’t want to hear any more about the Monks after I came back to the States. I didn’t feel like an American. I missed Europe and I missed my friends and I missed the life. It took me years to really settle down again and become an American again. We weren’t German, we weren’t French, we weren’t Italian, we weren’t Swedish, we were Americans that became something else and we became something else because we lived there, spoke the language, ate that food, heard their newscasts—didn’t hear CNN, didn’t hear NBC, didn’t hear CBS news. We eventually lost a good share of our American identity because we were relating to people who were non-American. I don’t want to say we became German because that isn’t so. We just became more international in attitude. When I got back to the States I didn’t like it here. I got back here in ‘68 and around 1974 I sold everything that I had and I was single again and I did it to finance a trip to Germany and I went over that with the idea that I might stay here—but Germany had marched on without me for four or five years and it was already too late. It was a sobering experience but I came back and eventually ended up where I am now and built a new life, new career, new happiness and what’s kept me interested and excited during these times is to continue writing songs. I haven’t pressed anybody to try to shop them or go that direction but I’m about to change that that. I’m gonna move that next little album around, assuming it comes out good.
I found a quote where you’re talking about how in some ways you feel there is no place for people in the world who wanna be different and so they just get crushed. Do you still feel that way?
Sometimes, yeah. People who want to be different—well, who are different, who speak out or do things that are not part of the normal grain can be penalized. I’m not saying I am—I don’t believe that any more from my point of view. And I do believe that anybody who wants to make a statement through music or however—who are we to penalize anybody? We should be encouraging people to have discussion and have new ideas and be allowed to experiment and try them.
Is there any Monks music you’d like to still see come out? Any unreleased recordings?
There’s a couple more recordings that haven’t been released and probably never will be. We recorded them in the Top Ten Club in Hamburg. They’re sitting here on a shelf about ten feet away from me.
Are you kidding? Everybody is going to come after you for those!
Tell them I’ve got three big dogs and they’re all mean! I think the Monks have mutually agreed that it will just stay where it is—the world doesn’t need it. They’ll stay there.
Do you feel a sense of vindication now with these reissues?
Amazement was the first reaction—the second was that this was okay. The third is some satisfaction that the Monks still leave a wake and that’s pretty damn cool. There’s been thousands of groups that have worked just as hard as the Monks did or harder and haven’t managed to have that wake behind them. And the ship’s still moving. It is still satisfying, I’m just hoping to hell nobody wants to shoot me for being a Monk! The only time that I felt physically at potential risk was once in south Germany, a fella jumped on stage and started to choke the life out of me for being a Monk. But that was kind of a Nazi zone down there at the time and that was the only time.
What pushed him over the edge?
I don’t have a clue. It was just the way we looked, just the way we sounded. I don’t think he even understood what we were singing.
He was just inspired to engage with you?
Yes, he was. I hit him in the side of the face with my guitar neckpiece with all those little strings sticking out and he let go right quick and security got to him right quick. I was glad to be done with that show though—I can remember that!

Read Chris Ziegler’s interview with Monks bassist Eddie Shaw here.

Download: Greater California “It’s Great” (shea M gauer remix)

(from Trust Us on Fidotrust)

Long Beach’s Greater California release their long-awaited All The Colors album tonight at Fingerprints, so we are reviving this interview from the ancient L.A. RECORD volume 1 archives in their honor. They remain Long Beach’s closest thing yet to S.F. Sorrow or Odessey and Oracle and its farthest thing yet from Sublime. Pianist/keyboardist Kari Prine could not be present for zucchini sticks and scrambles at Hof’s Hut. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

Your last album was recorded exclusively between midnight and five in the morning, but what were you doing for the other nineteen hours each day?
Terry Prine (vocals/guitar): Sleeping or driving there.
Nick Benich (bass/guitar): Because the studio was in fucking El Cajon.
What is there to do in El Cajon when you aren’t sleeping or driving?
Greg Brown (drums): One of my favorites was going to eat at the restaurant on the corner and watching the prostitution.
N: Turning tricks into meth, just like that.
Chris Berens (guitar/vocals): An Iraqi restaurant, right?
T: Allegedly El Cajon has the largest Iraqi population east of Michigan.
I don’t hear a lot of Iraqi or prostitution influences in your music.
T: Maybe you haven’t listened to it enough.
What do you think of the imagery people always attach to your band—are you really that into long night drives?
C: Terry loves driving.
T: The idea about forming the band was kind of about that—if people pick up on it in that way, that’s great. One of my big heroes is Jack Kerouac, and if that comes out in any way, so be it.
That’s how half of rock ‘n’ roll probably started.
C: ‘Don’t fuck with the formula, Brian.’
How does Long Beach show up in your songs?
T: It doesn’t at all—I think outside people’s perception of what goes on here is really different, and we can thank all the drunken-reggae types for that. I think we’re trying to live that reputation down. And I think Long Beach is one venue away from being a really great music town—you go to other cities and there’s a really great venue for music that’s not only a place for music but kind of more like a centerpoint and catalyst for all these different bands and musicians and artists in general. There’s such a great amount of artists that are incredible on all these different facets that don’t have a common place to express themselves, and that’s why I think {open} books is gonna be fantastic—the new City Lights.
G: We are influenced by Long Beach—influenced by the unknown. By the stuff people don’t know about.
C: Like the stretch of Ocean Blvd. that’s actually on the beach—not by the cliffs but on the beach.
N: Oh, horny corner.
G: I tell people from L.A. that I’m from Long Beach and they give me that face—the nostril goes up and the eyebrow goes up on the opposite side, and you have to be like, ‘No, no, really it’s pretty cool.’ You kind of have to have a guide.
T: Signal Hill—the backside of Signal Hill! The myth of tunnels under Pine Street.
N: Midgettown! We turned down a road once, and we thought it was Midgettown because there was a guard shack, but it was just the posh backside of the country club.
Do you ever put on your own records when you feel like driving around late at night?
T: This is the first band I’ve ever been in where I can go back and listen and feel pretty good about what we did. Especially Little Pacific—listening to it as a whole, it feels pretty good. We did what we wanted to do. I think we’re past the point of picking stuff apart. We can sit back and listen and feel like we’ve accomplished a good piece of work.
What’s the next accomplishment going to be?
N: We don’t wanna write the same album again.
G: Before Chris and I, it was Terry and Nick writing the songs. And now we have four people writing because Chris and I are extremely into that aspect of it. But there’s more struggle now, too.
C: We come to blows more often.
T: But in the end, it’s all for the greater… California.
N: Don’t put that in.
What is Greater California able to do now that it’s never been able to do before?
G: One of my favorite bands out there is Wilco—not like I necessarily wanna sound like them, but I truly love the way they write and compose songs. They make songs for the sake of songs—it’s not about jamming things in, it’s about what’s gonna work for this song. My whole thing is really about arranging—I hate to break it down to math, but there is an equation to every song. What fits where and more importantly, what can be left out—for me, Wilco does that amazingly and beautifully.
T: I think in the past, we’ve played everything very safe—everything was very calculated and mathematical. The way we played over and over was exactly the same, and the record was very planned out and safe. People say ‘they sound just like the CD!’ but there isn’t the element of danger and chaos, and that’s what’s coming in—a little darker element without being heavy. Which is us saying, ‘Fuck it, we’re not gonna be nice about it anymore—we’re not gonna play everybody’s best pal.’ We kind of wanna come out and punch people in the face a little bit.
Have you ever punched someone in the face?
T: I have. I’m not the aggressive type, but I had to stand up for chivalry. Chivalry was on trial that night.
Does your new face-punching attitude fit with your pre-face-punching songs?
G: We’re not losing the old sound, but we’re pushing the floor down and raising the ceiling really high.
What are your favorite California pop records?
C: Fifth Dimension. Pet Sounds. And now Smile.
T: Forever Changes.
N: Rain Parade.
C: Emergency Third Rail Power Trip. And the first Bangles EP.
T: The Bangs?
C: I’m thinking the Bangles EP—the twelve-inch.
That’s an era begging for reissue.
C: All the ‘80s psych—that stuff really influenced us because we were that age at that time.
T: Something that doesn’t get too much play is the first Doors album—it’s fantastic. That’s an album I was listening to a lot when I was younger, and that’s criminally overlooked a lot.
Morrison sort of overshadows the other people in the band.
T: We’ve drawn comparisons like, ‘If Jim Morrison wasn’t in the Doors, this is how they might sound.’ Which is pretty honorable.
C: I think we’re more like Love—I always thought that Love did the Doors better than the Doors.
Is there more Arthur Lee or more Jim Morrison in Greater California?
T: Arthur Lee, absolutely.
G: Though sometimes Terry gets drunk and he’s a real fucking asshole!

GREATER CALIFORNIA RELEASE THEIR ALL THE COLORS ALBUM TUE., APR. 7, AT FINGERPRINTS, 4612-B E. 2ND ST., LONG BEACH. 7 PM / FREE / ALL AGES. INDIERECORDSHOP.COM. VISIT GREATER CALIFORNIA AT GREATERCA.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/GREATERCALIFORNIA.

(from Dirt Don’t Hurt out now on Damaged Goods)

Holly Golightly is Britain’s overdue echo of Wanda Jackson or Ella Mae Morse and from her seaborne homestead in Kent she released years worth of restorative rock ‘n’ roll. She has a new record called Dirt Don’t Hurt with her Brokeoffs out now and she speaks from a bar at 3:30 PM to Daiana Feuer.

You’re just moved to Georgia, right?
Down in Georgia? I haven’t really moved in yet. All my stuff is in a container at seas somewhere. We took off on tour straightaway. I haven’t even unpacked anything yet or planted a flower.
How long is the tour?
It’s five weeks—just over five weeks.
How many years of touring?
Probably about fifteen years. That’s not all always long tours but I’ve been traveling playing music for about that long.
What do you think you would do if you hadn’t done this?
I know what I’d be doing. The only other thing I’m qualified to do, which is training horses.
How many horses do you have?
Now I have three in England. I haven’t got any here. I haven’t put fencing up. The property’s just pretty much wild at the moment. So the idea is I can have some horses when I get around to being there.
Could you tell me any good horse-related anecdotes? How about something startling that happened?
Something startling that happened? I had my elbow joint come through the skin once from an accident and I had to walk home leading a horse for three miles with my arm broken in half. That’s pretty startling. More recently, I got jumped on when I was unloading a horse and had my foot broken and it’s never healed. So I still have a broken foot from a horse related accident. I’ve got pins and plates—there’s a lot of startling accidents. That’s the nature of the business really. I’m in the same shape as most rodeo riders.
Do you have all your teeth?
I’ve got all my teeth. I’ve had a broken nose. I have lost a tooth actually. I did lose lone years ago. And various concussions and broken legs, ankles, shoulders, cracked nerve. I’ve done tours on crutches. Many tours on crutches.
And now you’re at a bar at 3:30 in the afternoon?
Well, I’m not drinking. I’m drinking a cup of tea. I try not to drink until the sun’s gone down if I can help it.
What’s the most disastrous tour disaster you’ve had?
My drummer got mugged with all the tour money once in New York. About 13,000 dollars. There’s been others but that’s probably the one that’s had the most impact. He got mugged in Brooklyn and was not hurt but we did lose all our tour money. When you’re on tour, you get paid in cash and it was at the end of the tour. And he was just walking from the restaurant to the club. Had it on him—I don’t know why. He shouldn’t have had it on him. I should have had it on me because every other time I’ve had it on me. They’d have to cut my arm off to get it off me. It was four guys—he had to give it to them.
How about a shiny memory? Something great—a dazzling moment?
I think seeing friends. Being able to travel around and meet new ones but also see the old ones. Because that’s the only time I get to see a lot of people. And that’s something I relish. It’s not a journey you would do unless you had a purpose. I wouldn’t travel around the country in a van just visiting friends. So I get to do that—that’s the highlight for me. I’ve been doing it for a long time so I’ve got a big dysfunctional extended family at this point. And you see people—they move around, they go from one city to another and you stay with friends houses and you get to have breakfast with them. Socially, that’s the only time I see them. Other than at a show.
Have you visited places that resemble the music you make? Honky-tonky small towns?
We live in Georgia and I guess home is the biggest influence or it ought to be But that’s a relatively new development. We’ll see how we get on. I picked Georgia because we could get the most land for the money. We were looking at Kentucky and we were looking a Tennessee and the right house came up in Georgia. I have a good British girl friend there so I’ve spent a bit of time in Georgia.
Maybe a safer weather choice?
Well, we’ll get the tornadoes in the spring but for the most part you get pretty good weather. We both lived in San Francisco for years a long time ago. And we don’t like the cold very much.
If you could fly all over the place, as high as you wanted, for one day or swim to the deepest part of the ocean for one day, which would you choose and why?
I’d dive for sure. I’d dive. Dave’s a diver. Dave’s a commercial diver so I know he would dive, for sure. I would dive because I think that’s where the treasure is. That’s probably where all my fucking treasure is because it’s coming over in a container on a boat. So I’d dive and find the stuff that fell off the boat. I’m not very good at flying. I don’t like it. I lived on a boat for a very long time. I’m much more of a water person than air person.
How long did you live on a boat?
Twelve years. On the River Medway in Kent. I had a Dutch barge.
What’s a Dutch barge?
It’s a commercial boat. It was 80 foot long and 20 foot wide—a big boat, big iron boat. The engine had been taken out when the boat was converted into a house boat so the boat had to be tugged whenever I moved. I did move around quite a bit. But I always organized it so I would be tugged up the river and dropped off wherever I needed to be dropped off. I only sold it in the last ten years. I kept it for a quite a while—rented it out— and then I couldn’t do the work that needed to be done on it. And it needed someone to love it more than I could. But I gave it up very begrudgingly.
Sounds like a dream.
We like the water.
If you had to take three foods for an indefinite period of time on a boat, what would you take?
What I would never get tired of… I would take unsalted butter, Marmite, which is yeast extract spread that’s a very British thing to have on toast, and I would take garlic.
What would you put them on?
Anything I eat I would crush garlic and put butter on it. And I would have toast and put Marmite on it. We carry a load of sauces in France so we can make the food taste like something. We have everything from the hot sauces to the peach pea sauce and we say that’s how you make food taste the way you want it. It’s a very sparse food landscape out there on the road in America. Everything’s golden brown. Between each state everything’s deep-fried. So the only place we can eat when we’re on tour is Cracker Barrel. That’s the one place everybody goes I know because that’s the only place that you can go get food that isn’t deep-fried.
Do you believe in ghosts?
Yeah, we were talking about this the other day. I do. Actually, I’d like to see one to confirm it entirely. I like the idea that they exist.
What’s the last thing you heard a stranger say that you remember?
In a hotel the other night, about four o clock in the morning. In Boise, Idaho. We had just got to sleep after the show. And this party came in. It was Saturday night, and they were on a big night out, and they came in yelling, if you can sort of understand—Mormons don’t swear, but they cuss in their own way, so they say ‘Heck.’ And there were people yelling that stuff at the top of their voices. ‘Oh ship! We’ve got to get up at eight in the morning!’ It woke us all up. They were high on life in Boise, Idaho, in the hotel at about 4 in the morning.
I read that every town can be the most exciting town if you just look or something.
I like Fargo. We played there last year. It’s a very well kept secret. I don’t think many bands play there. But we really had a good night. It was one of the highlights of the last tour, actually. We arrived at about 6 in the evening in the main strip. There’s only one of those. And all the bars are jam-packed. At six in the evening, everything was heaving. People are just off work and they’re going straight to the bar. And then we went to the club to soundcheck and it didn’t look like anyone was going to come. It just seemed unlikely on a Wednesday night in Fargo, that anyone would come out. And the promoter said, ‘Oh, everyone will come out—they just won’t show up until midnight.’ And he was right. They all turned up at midnight. Hundreds!
What were the people like?
They were great. There’s no scene. It’s just people go and see what’s going on ‘in town.’ Because that is all that was going on in town that night. So a lot of people were very curious and they came along and had a really good time. And they bought all our shit. Write to us now. We made ourselves friends.
What would be the ideal environment you’d picture yourself playing in? Is it a one-strip main street town?
I think probably it would be a little country bar somewhere, where three generations of the same family come and everybody dances.
What attracted you to this kind of music?
I have always collected records and I started when I was 15, collecting soul stuff and collecting R&B stuff. In those days I was a punk rocker and it was sort of unusual for me to be seeking out this stuff. And I’d buy in bulk and it was this very underground thing in London. I loathed dancing but I was into playing music. So I had a huge collection to draw from. And the essence of that record collection is church music—is gospel. I got into it from finding out about it and regressing rather than looking for new music. I immersed myself from when I first heard the first bar of a Stax single.
If you could have an afternoon boat ride with three people from history, who would you choose?
I think I’d have Queen Elizabeth I, Emmeline Pankhurst, and probably my granddad.
If you had to tell them what to wear?
Something warm and waterproof.

HOLLY GOLIGHTLY AND THE BROKEOFFS WITH FRANK FAIRFIELD AND DELANEY DAVIDSON ON SAT., NOV. 29, AT SPACELAND, 1717 SILVERLAKE BLVD., SILVERLAKE. 9 PM / $10-$12 / 21+. CLUBSPACELAND.COM. HOLLY GOLIGHTLY AND THE BROKE-OFF’S DIRT DON’T HURT IS OUT NOW ON DAMAGED GOODS. VISIT HOLLY GOLIGHTLY AT HOLLYGOLIGHTLY.COM, HOLLYGOLIGHTLYANDTHEBROKEOFFS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/HOLLYGOLIGHTLYANDTHEBROKEOFFS.