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

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

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

Hello to all! Tonight we celebrate the release of Vol. 4 Issue 4—Pasadena country singer DAVID SERBY on the cover and the much-touted NOSAJ THING decked out on the poster, and then inside you’ll find BRUCE LaBRUCE discussing love and romance and STEVE ALBINI of SHELLAC discussing fish, food and forest fires! Plus the mighty SONICS, the almost-Angeleno ART BRUT, the formidable FEMI KUTI, the unstoppable SHARON JONES (who did her interview immediately after returning from the hospital!) and the legendary LEROY SIBBLES of Studio One’s HEPTONES and much more than we could courteously insert in just one simple email! (THE SHINS, CHAIRLIFT, BUSDRIVER, HANDSOME FURS, YA HO WHA 13, THE HUNCHES discussing their last show ever, Grandaddy’s JASON LYTLE and still yet more…) Issues available at the Cha Cha tonight—free to visit and copies of the new L.A. RECORD free as always! Hope to see you there and many thanks for all support!

Download: Bob Mould “I’m Sorry, Baby, But You Can’t Stand In My Light Any More”

(from Nouns out now on Sub Pop)

Bob Mould was the guitarist and singer of Hüsker Dü and Sugar before striking out on his own solo career and Dean Spunt and Randy Randall are the L.A. duo No Age. We asked them to interview each other after they played NoisePop together and before they both played Coachella. This is the complete version of this interview.

Bob Mould : How do you guys make your records? How did you make Nouns?
Dean Spunt (drums/vocals in No Age): We recorded some of at Southern Studios in London. I guess we did five songs.
Randy Randall (guitar in No Age): Only three or four made it on there.
DS: And then we did everything without vocals. This is before we even had a label or anything, so we were doing a tour out there already and our friend was like, ‘Hey, his label goes through Southern for distribution—I can get you guys to record at basically Southern Studios.’ And we were like, ‘OK, lets do it.’ Psychocandy was recorded there, you know, so we went there, did a few songs, and we when we got home we have those and that’s kind of when we decided what label we were gonna be on and then we recorded stuff on our own and went to a studio out here in the East L.A. area. That’s where we did more recording and all the vocals.
BM: So when you record you go instrumental and then sing later? Or sometimes you sing with?
DS: Like always later. When we write stuff—we were talking about this the other day—usually the first kind of stuff we’re writing we just kind of come up with samples or guitar stuff and I would just sit there and hear it played over and over and I just sing. That’s when I come up with a melody, and it’s rare that I come up with a vocal melody. Actually, I do it a lot but I never remember it. Like I’ll come up with it while I’m driving and I’ll try to write notes down, but it’s rare that I’ll remember it.
BM: I was doing a gig last July at Maxwell’s—a solo gig in a sound check—and I started coming up with this idea and I freaked because I didn’t have anything. So I went on the app store and bought a little audio recorder on the spot and two minutes later I was recording it into the phone. I was just like, ‘Phew!’
DS: That’s awesome.
RR: On tour I’ll just use my Garage Band. Just for when I wake up in the morning and I’ll just try and catch that little something.
BM: When I’m home, that’s how I make records now. Like the newer record—so much of that stuff—everything—is just composition stuff. Like I’m not recording anymore. I just turn it on and I’ve got a click and I just start recording and singing and I try to keep as much of the first time as possible.
DS: Then you kind of listen to it and you’re like, ‘Oh, that part’s good.’
BM: Yeah, and I’ve got it all at home on the computer and it’s in time, so I just snip it out and then cross fade the thing back together and then I start to make this arrangement—if I wanted a double at the end, I just clip that one and put it there as a placeholder until I get ready.
DS: I think that’s where we wanna kind of be, but we’re sort of like, ‘We have a practice place…’ But its shared and nothing can be set up all the time.
RR: We have to break down after everything so I leave the computers and recording stuff at home and then try to bring it in—try to make it mobile—but I think what we’re gonna try to do is have a set space where we can go and its mic’d up and we can play.
BM: Yeah, all you have to do is just reach over and go ‘boink’ and it’s ready—that’s so important.
RR: We’ve done some songs—like the instrumental songs, we’d be at home with practice amps and its kind of like layer, layer, layer, remove, go back and take it out, kind of much more like a collage idea. But the more structured songs we have to do the live take with it.
BM: You guys have such a visceral thing, too, you know—the process you got going right now is really good.
RR: Yeah, but over time it would be nice to shift into many different places.
BM: For me everything is about composition right now, so performance is touring and that’s just like giving people a song to learn—so for me to just have it at home to hit record and keep it is great.
RR: Do you still find that there are still things that are inspiring?
BM: The things that really dictate the writing process is if I have a DJ gig on Saturday and it’s Tuesday, and I haven’t got any new music and I have to spend days listening to stuff, I’ll get up in the morning and listen for hours to other peoples stuff. And if it’s dance stuff, then I’m in beat mode. So when I sit down and I wanna write something I go for Reason—I try to make a mangled-up loop and then I start putting something on that. But on days when I don’t need to do that, I’ll pick up the guitar and just start with an idea. So it’s really environmental. It’s what I’m listening to that gets me there. The good days are the ones that I just wake up and I got something buzzing in my head when I’m in the shower or I hear a sound or a ringing and it gets me thinking about stuff. So that’s at least in music terms. The words are always coming.
DS: You’re constantly writing words and stuff?
BM: Yeah, either that or just going through old emails. You know, I have a life and my life is filled with all these people and I’m juggling these things. I try to take care of people and have people take care of me and those are the best stories because those are the ones that are happening as we speak.
DS: I think for us this is really a new process of us recording and then touring and that sort of cycles. Now we’re expected to write and record again and its this new sort of space where we’re like, ‘Well, usually we would work our jobs and then after the jobs come to the practice space and just get everything out and off our chests and that would be the next record.’ At least that’s how it had always been. But now we’re in a position that is insulated when it’s not those other jobs. We have a job now—it’s the band—but we’re trying to figure out how to do it. In your writing cycle, do you experience that sort of thing? Or is it linear from one record to the other?
BM: Well, I mean—I remember when I was more where you guys are at—I sent you an email about that. Just don’t listen to what people are saying and don’t stop writing. All that stuff people say—just forget about it. You know—‘It’s good, it’s bad, you’re the best, you’re the worst.’ You know who your friends are—your friends are the ones who are gonna be there no matter what. But like everybody else—it’s great, but the more you listen the harder it gets.
DS: Yeah, I’ve tried to stop reading reviews and stuff because it’s like—I don’t care either way. Interviews are just like generally—it’s what we said most of the time or you feel like, ‘Oh, I wanna see how it came out, if it came out correctly.’ But reviews—it’s like there’s no point in reading that shit.
BM: When you guys played on Sunday and about three from the end you rolled out a new song, it was amazing. I was just like, ‘Oh my God, wow.’ It really upped the game. And you’ll be able to look out and see when you’re playing a new song you probably gotta think about it a little bit, you can feel it. If you get done and you’re getting a golf clap, you sorta know.
DS: I remember that song—we actually played two new ones. After the second new one, people were like… [claps] ‘Yeah.’
RR: That’s always how it was, though—in the beginning when we were writing songs before anyone knew any of our records, that would always be how you could tell if the song was good or not. No one knew the names or anything and that was the best thing because everything was fresh and we really got to read it.
DS: We play ‘Everybody’s Down’ and that was a good song—everybody went nuts.
BM: That was the thing with Hüsker—we were always an album ahead. We were trying new stuff when were touring a record. When we toured New Day Rising, we were already playing Flip Your Wig.
DS: That was the thing I wanted to ask you about Hüsker because bands generally don’t do that anymore—except Animal Collective. The last time we saw them they were playing—except for like one new song—their Merriweather Post Pavillion stuff. But they’ve been known for like putting out a record and then tour just playing all new stuff and people are like, ‘Oh, this is so weird.’ But I remember reading that and you guys would always do that just play the new stuff and when you’re done, you’d go record with Spot.
BM: Yeah, or we’d do whatever. We’d always work the stuff out live so that by the time we got ready to record it was first take. We already knew what we wanted it to be. And you know, Spot was an engineer—he wasn’t producing anything. He wasn’t making executive decisions like, ‘Let’s go back and do that.’ It was like, ‘No, that’s already done.’
DS: That was you and Grant.
RR: What about in terms of overdubs and studio work?
BM: I sort of laid out all the stuff in my head. I was like, ‘OK, this is the part I’m gonna play first, and this is what I was gonna play second, and this is the solo.’ So it was just like playing the thing that would keep the bass and drums in place, and then play like the fun stuff and do the solo and vocals and we’d be done. Grant would play keyboards, I’d play keyboards.
DS: You try stuff and maybe not use it. Like keyboards—‘Oh, keyboards didn’t work.’
BM: Yeah, that stuff is a little bit more—I have this thing with overdubs being like a house of cards. You put one card too many and the whole thing falls and you’re looking at it going, ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’ Or you start over, or you just have to leave the pile there.
RR: And in terms of that stuff translating live would there be…
BM: That was the hard part because then we started to dig ourselves into a hole.
DS: Because you never had a second guitar player.
BM: Or a keyboard player, which I found out is the right answer.
DS: Right—like in your band now.
BM: Yeah—nobody wants to see another guy playing guitar with me. [laughs] Every time I’ve tried it they’re like, ‘What’s that other thing over there making noise?’ With keys it’s awesome because it’s all the strings and it’s like dirty Hammond—it really fills that space and it eases it back for me. So when Rich is doing that stuff—adding all that thick mid—I can just play what I’m feeling. I don’t have to play three chords at once anymore.
DS: Was there a second guitar player in Sugar?
BM: Nope. Three-piece. The stuff went across well that way.
DS: It’s weird because I feel since there’s only two of us playing live there’s a lot of tightening in the stomach whenever we play live because there’s so much shit to do. Like—I have pedals and Randy has pedals and samplers and stuff.
BM: Yeah, you guys are doing a lot up there. I see what’s going on.
DS: There’s something really awesome about it that I really enjoy, but there’s another part that I wonder if… Like we played a show in Australia recently where I didn’t bring a sampler. I just had a mic and played drums and I was like, ‘Fucking easy. Wow, I’m just sitting here playing.’ But in relation to just—bringing it back to overdubbing and playing guitar only and playing live and then feeling like it doesn’t sound right, or something.
BM: But that’s part of the ride. That’s what the ride is when you’re on it. That’s what you’re used to. You do it live and you know that’s what your job is and you gotta get it across.
RR: Was there that sense of urgency in Hüsker Dü? Because sometimes there’d be like two records a year.
BM: Well with two guys writing non-stop…
RR: So the material was there—it wasn’t like you felt like you had to have it there. It was just coming.
BM: We didn’t have jobs—it’s all we did. We toured, we made records on all the tour, and we went home and wrote more records.
RR: That’s amazing.
BM: It just didn’t stop.
RR: Was it a different time then? Did if feel like it was isolated? When you were touring the world with Hüsker Dü, it was still the same stuff?
BM: Yeah, when we started adding Europe into the loop because we always used to go west, then we added east and then we added Europe.
RR: It never became too much?
BM: No, I mean we had one big break towards the end. Like after we toured Candy Apple Grey for Warner just as it was coming out and we got ahead on the touring so then after we got done with that, there was this big stretch for the last six months of ’86 that was down time.
RR: And you wrote a lot of Warehouse?
BM: That was Warehouse plus the slow dissolve started.
RR: Now Dean’s said this in interviews and I know we’ve talked about this a lot but I think Warehouse—you go between different songs, but Warehouse always comes back as your favorite record. As the artist writing it, did you know it was going to be the last record? How do you feel the songs went into that? Or when you look back on the catalogue and hear somebody say that’s their favorite record how does that…
BM: No, it’s great—everybody’s got a different place. I think a lot of people get on their first and then go backwards and I’m always curious to see how far back they can go.
DS: Well, actually I’ve kind of done the opposite—started with Zen Arcade and even Land Speed and then kind of went like, pop—like, ‘Whoa pop.’
BM: It’s funny, if you think about it like refinishing furniture or something. Warehouse is like the finest grit and then you get back to Land Speed and its like there’s a chainsaw on the table. It’s like reverse finessing—it’s more destructive. So I know Zen is, you know, the one people always hold up. It was cool, everything was fucked right then so it was good. That was when everybody had these really crazy ideas in their head. I think Flip Your Wig was the best because that’s when we got rid of Spot. And Spot did a great job but Grant and I did it—that’s when we took charge of everything.
RR: You engineered it?
BM: Yeah, we mixed it. We had an engineer in there with us but we mixed it.
RR: Where did you record?
BM: We had our own studio. We had built our own.
RR: Wow, that’s amazing. ‘Baby Song.’
BM: Yeah, ‘Baby Song.’
DS: What is that instrument in there, by the way?
BM: It’s a kazoo.
DS: That’s also in another part in Candy Apple Grey.
BM: Yeah, it reappears—I think Grant may have brought it back on one of his songs.
DS: So that’s when you guys got rid of Spot?
BM: Yeah, I mean—the Spot era was great, but we had an idea what we wanted and we knew we were a pop band by that point, so that’s what we wanted to focus on and not so much the punk rock. And we really spent time on that record and really tried some different things. So that to me was like the peak cause after that everything got funky. Yea—Warehouse, that was a tough stretch. But it’s a good record. Had it been pared back to a single record it might have had more impact, but we were already loggerheads at that point.
DS: Were you trying to redo Zen Arcade in that concept?
BM: If we did, we failed. There was no grand scheme there. It was just a battle of the writers.
DS: I think that’s why—being a musician and listening to all your records and listening to Warehouse—I think that’s why it hits me the hardest because it seems like the darkest and it seems heavy and I think it comes through and it’s kind of an incredible moment.
BM: Yeah, you see the last side—you can see people saying goodbye and I think that’s where…
DS: I think that’s why I’ve really come to like it because it’s really dark and heavy and cool and awesome. But the songs are incredible, too.
BM: Yeah, there’s fun tunes on there—there’s a few real shining moments.
DS: Did you guys produce that, too?
BM: Yeah, Grant and I did the last three.
DS: Was that hard going from SST to Warner Brothers world?
BM: No. I mean, there was stuff, but no.
DS: Back then it seems like the expectations were maybe lower even.
BM: You gotta remember that’s when 120 was really on fire and MTV and that was the ramp-up for everything that happened in ’91. That’s really the groundwork for everything. So there wasn’t much pressure cause we sold enough records to recoup a way, so it wasn’t like we were fighting from underneath to do things. We set up a deal where we knew we would keep charge of it.
DS: Being able to produce your own record seems kind of uncommon today. In the major label world if you said, ‘We’re gonna produce it,’ they’d be like…
BM: Not unless you’re like Radiohead or Beck or something—somebody that’s really earned that spot. And maybe look at it that way. Radiohead spent how many years to get to that spot? That’s like Husker, that’s like Beck, you know.
RR: I did a little Internet research and you also ran a label as well.
BM: Singles Only Label—that was after Hüsker when I was living up on the farm in Minnesota. We had a generic cutout sleeve that sort of looked like the old Sun Records sleeve so we tried not to do picture sleeves. We tried to do it where everything looked the same. That was fun—that was me and Steve Fallon and Nick Hill who was a DJ at FMU who more or less laid the groundwork for Brooklyn to be what it is. You know we all lived in Williamsburg together in the early ‘90s and it was like They Might Be Giants was getting started, too, and Jeff Buckley. We were just hanging out doing stuff, too.
RR: That was your second label though, right?
BM: Yeah, Reflex was the first. SOL and then Granary Music is my imprint for stuff since.
DS: The first Reflex thing was Hüsker right?
BM: Yup.
DS: You started it basically to put out stuff because no one else would. I mean, the first 7” I ever put out was this band from Portland and then I put out a 7” and I was like I don’t want to do a label anymore. And then when we started our old band, Wives, we were recording and I was like, “I have a label—I could do a 7”.” You know, nobody else wanted to—sort of that necessity.
BM: And now you see the value of it, probably. It really means people look forward to 7”s—they look forward to releases because the label is a brand and it’s a thing where they know what to expect. Or at least they know that it’s being vetted properly.
RR: Is that something you’re still involved in?
BM: Labels? Not so much. That would be a stretch right now. It’s a full-time gig and people are dependent on you. I’d like to do something like that but not another label specifically.
RR: I love the story of the making of the Warehouse cover.
BM: Yeah, we built that set in the big live room in the recording studio in Minneapolis and it was going out and gathering all the debris and stuff and setting up that—staging it like that, painting things in Day-Glo, and going in and using a multi-minute exposure but we were walking through this staged area with black lights and painting stuff with light by hand and moving so we didn’t show up in the shot.
RR: We talked with Todd Trainer from Shellac and he was going on about Minneapolis and Mats versus the Du and what was really happening. But the idea of a scene or a city being built around a band—how did that feel? Because we sometimes get that like, ‘You’re the L.A. band.’ It’s a big city but I’m proud of where we’re from. Was it your purpose?
BM: We were just trying to be the best band in the world—that’s pretty much it. I think the difference between the Replacements and Hüsker Dü is the Replacements never started a label to help out the other bands. So let’s boil it down to what it is—the Replacements were good at being the Replacements, but we saw the value of giving back. So there’s your difference. No disrespect to them but they were about the Replacements and we were about making a scene.
RR: What about Prince?
BM: Northside, southside. It was like Detroit in the ‘60s—Motown and MC5 and Stooges. It was not a racially divided town but you know—Prince and Terry and Jimmy, that was northside Minneapolis. Hüskers, Replacements and Soul Asylum was in south Minneapolis and everybody played at First Avenue, which was right in the middle of town. It was the old Greyhound Bus depot.
RR: So you would see them play?
BM: Yeah, I’ve seen Prince plenty of times.
DS: But you guys wouldn’t play together?
BM: No, not a terrible amount. I mean, you’d see people in the studio, like the Jets would be working in the front room of our place—but does that count?
DS: Here’s a funny story. The last Wives tour, we played First Avenue. We played Seventh Street Entry. We played and then after the show we were looking out and Prince came in. He walked in with one big bodyguard and two little women. We’re like, ‘Dude, Prince just came in!’ We were like, ‘Gimme a CD, gimme a CD!’ ‘Hello, Mr. Prince, we want to give you a CD.’ And the bodyguard takes it and just goes, ‘Mmm-hmm.’
BM: Yeah, you don’t get to him.
RR: But it was nice. We were literally there but he wasn’t talking to us. He didn’t acknowledge our existence. But it was just rad that he even came to the show or came to the place. Does he own it?
BM: No, no, he has a little private area on the side.
DS: Right next to your private area?
BM: Not so much. I can do pretty much what I want there but not like Prince. But, yeah I mean it was a great time and there was a lot of stuff happening—it was a great music town. There were a lot of people there that had to do with it. It’s like building things. Seriously, with the Replacements, that’s really the difference. They’re great guys, and they were a great band, sometimes—like one in ten they were brilliant, and the other nine it was Faces covers or whatever. You never knew what you were gonna get because they drank so much. Those shows when they were on, it was the best thing in the world—but all the rest it was like if Paul gave up halfway with the set, then it was just like, ‘Fuck, not another one of these.’
DS: Did you guys play together quite a bit?
BM: We played enough together. We took them out of town on their first shows. We took them to Chicago to play punk rock shows. But yeah—it would be so frustrating.

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