THE MONOLATORS, DOWNTOWN/ UNION, AND SHIRLEY ROLLS ON TUESDAY JAN. 4TH AT LABRIE’S, 8806 EAST COLORADO STREET, GLENDALE. 8:30PM/ FREE/ 21+.

Download: Sean Carnage’s Mondays mega-mix

(full tracklist with liner notes here!)

Sean Carnage has done so much for L.A. music that there had to be a movie made to help document it—40 Bands 80 Minutes!, now recognizable as early home to much of the most vital actives still performing in the city. He’ll be celebrating four years of DIY shows (across six venues!) all this month at Women during his traditional Monday night residencies, and he’ll have the official Sean Carnage birthdayversary spectacular on July 27. This interview by Drew Denny.

The first time I attended a Sean Carnage night was at Il Corral—Is that where it all began?
That’s cool that you were there! Il Corral was really special, and that’s where Monday Nights began—on August 1st, 2005. I covered the back story of the Il Corral and the atmosphere of the times in my movie 40 Bands 80 Minutes!, so I’d recommend checking that out. Il Corral was everything a Rust Belt kid like me hoped California would be—wild (but still innocent) punk rock fun. Stane (Il Corral co-founder) installed a rope swing in the music area, so that gives you an idea of the venue’s play zone atmosphere. I was really lucky to be able to host shows there. A high proportion of the performers who played there were bona fide geniuses, and for once in my life, I realized what was going down as it was happening and turned on the video camera. People doubted my selection of performers for 40 Bands 80 Minutes! when it came out over two years ago. (Including L.A. RECORD—LOL!) [LOL @ us—ed.] But damn near every person who appears on the screen in my movie has gone on to do important stuff. The Los Angeles artistic and musical community is something to be proud of.
How did you get started?
I love underground music as a style and as a craft, and I had been involved as a musician, promoter, writer and fan for about thirteen years in Cleveland, Ohio. I moved to L.A. to retire, but couldn’t shake the music. So I started booking again after taking about three years off.
Did you know when you began that it would last this long and be so loved?
Derek Hess did Mondays at the Euclid Tavern for 8 years. Speak In Tongues also lasted 8 years. I knew if I could bring regularly scheduled music into the D.I.Y. and all-ages realm, it would work.
What was Speak in Tongues? I’m researching Pentecostalism and speaking in tongues for my thesis right now, so I have to ask…
Speak In Tongues—and the guys who lived there—changed my life. It was all-ages D.I.Y. for eight years—an amazing run. I learned that you don’t need to do shows in bars. You can strip away another layer of mediation and do it yourself. Not an original concept, but it was new for me in the mid and late 1990s, and it informs everything I’ve aspired to since. (SIT hibernates at speakintongues.com)
It seems that at any location—Il Corral, Pehrspace, the Smell—you create a space that fosters a family of bands that might not have otherwise had any place to play, or at least not any other place where they’d feel quite so at home. Was this always a goal of yours?
I was seeing a ton of excellent shows around L.A. in the early 2000s and that was tremendously inspiring. So I just started asking bands if they wanted to play my night. All the attendees of those initial Mondays were way turned on by the energy of it all. When we moved to Pehrspace in 2007, it only got better.
Which bands did you start out with?
The first show was Haircut Mountain Transit, FM Bats, Buko, Ugly Shyla, Szandora… and Jell-O shots. Jon San Nicolas and my boyfriend at that time, Richmond Tan, helped me so much. We were noisy and gay right from the start! Now Mikhai Tran helps me tons with the shows—taking photos and weaving our distinctive bracelets, which are unique for every show.
How political is your programming process? By that I mean, how much—if at all—do you concern yourself with representing or attracting a certain group?
A lot of the people behind Mondays’ success are gay, and I’m proud of that. It’s emblematic of a new non-political phase of the gay rights movement. Young people can now be themselves and not worry what people think about their sexuality. That said, I bring up sexual orientation because with the passing of Prop 8, we still have so far to go. I suppose this is preaching to the choir—musicians are usually pretty progressive—but Mondays have been my modest way of saying ‘we’re here, we’re queer,’ and building something positive and constructive that every music fan can enjoy.
Is there is a unifying factor among the Sean Carnage bands—in terms of genre, style, or scene? If not, what is it that you consider when choosing bands to book?
I’m looking for the best music. I don’t pay particular attention to style. I listen more for general musicality. And the execution is important. I really cherish the Monday audiences so I am always trying to find new ways to thrill them. What’s nice is that most of the bands are already friends, but because they operate in different areas of the music scene, my shows bring them together—often for the first time. The other unifying factor is the between-sets music of Kyle H. Mabson. Kyle’s become my partner in the shows since I met him fall of 2005. I feel like Kyle’s really changed how underground music is experienced. He brings the dance party and that amps everything up.
Who are some of your favorites right now?
I love the new Amazements album. I like American Gil and the Major Dudes a lot. Certain performers like Billygoat, Birth!, D. Bene Tleilax, I.E., Whitman, Nicole Kidman, Moment Trigger… they’re all Monday superstars.
My best friend and band-mate, Geoff—Pizza! and Big Whup—and I just made a compilation that includes tracks from both American Gil and Nicole Kidman. We love them! What is it about those Inland Empire kids that makes them so amazing?
Haha—good question! It astounds and humbles me the people from the I.E. drive so far to attend shows like mine. I don’t 100% understand the local culture there, but I’ve always gotten a good feeling from both the music and the personalities of the Inland Empire folks. Maybe there’s something about living in the 909 that is similar to living along Lake Erie? I’ve always related to people with backgrounds that are similar to mine, but for lack of scientific evidence, I can’t really say much else except: I like what I hear.
Tell me the craziest-best-worst-funniest-most-miraculous-most-tragic Sean Carnage night story. Please?
This past Monday, people were freaking and beating each other with pool noodles on Women’s front lawn for 20 minutes after the music ended—that was pretty crazy!
I heard the police came a few weeks back and threatened to shut down Pehrspace—have there been any recent developments in that story?
I don’t have anything new to report, but Pehr is continuing to host a small number of weekend shows, so please support them every chance you get.
How are you getting by in the meantime?
I’m proud to be hosting at Women. They’ve given me the space to do some really ambitious programming, like the four-week 60 Watt Kid residency in July which features a ton of new bands.
Is there anything we—as Sean Carnage and Pehrspace fans—can do to help in this struggle?
No matter what venue you see live music at, be mindful of the neighbors when you are outside the space. It’s hard—I’m trying to inspire people to be free, but on the street you have to be low key.
What will you do if you can’t continue booking there?
I’ve been lucky to have done Mondays at Il Corral, Pehrspace, the Smell, Zamakibo, House of Vermont and Women, so if I have to find a new home I will. I figure that after 200+ shows in a row, I’ve earned some vacation. So I’m taking this August off to prepare the new Monday home and I’ll be back the first Monday in September.
Sounds like a good plan… And finally, I’d like to say CONGRATULATIONS! What are you doing to celebrate your anniversary?!
On Monday, July 27th I am hosting some truly amazing bands—60 Watt Kid, Shirley Rolls, the Seizure, Mikki and the Mauses and Single Mothers. Then I’m going to take August off and figure out where the heck Mondays are gonna live in the fall. Then I’ll be back on Monday, September 7th with… I.E.! I will be keeping everyone updated through facebook.com/seancarnage and seancarnage.com.

SEAN CARNAGE’S ANNIVERSARY MONTH BEGINS WITH 60 WATT KID, HIGH CASTLE, ITALIC INDIAN, SKULL KISS AND GARRETT PIERCE ON MON., JULY 6, AT WOMEN, 1852 CRENSHAW BLVD., LOS ANGELES. 9:30 PM / $5 / ALL AGES. SEANCARNAGE.COM. 60 WATT KID WILL BE IN RESIDENCY EVERY MONDAY IN JULY. FOR COMPLETE LINE-UP AND MORE INFORMATION VISIT SEANCARNAGE.COM.

Download: The Strange Boys “To Turn a Tune or Two”

(from The Strange Boys and Girls Club on In The Red Records)

Texas made them strange and Beerland made them men and now Austin’s Strange Boys are one of the realest rock ‘n’ roll bands currently prowling the American interstate system. They play tonight at the Smell and tomorrow at the Echo and will eradicate years of listless go-nowhere-ism with only 25 minutes and access to electricity. This interview by Dan Collins.

I just read this MSN poll that said your hometown of Austin was one of the most ‘livable’ cities in the U.S.
Ryan Sambol (guitar/vocals): They haven’t been there in August, then!
And Portland got voted the worst! Do you think Austin is the polar opposite of Portland?
Ryan: That just means more people from Portland are going to move to Austin.
You’ve said in interviews that Austin was a great place musically because it was geographically in the middle of so many things. Like it was a great melting pot for blues, jazz, country and rock, and not so heavy-handed with any one thing. Can you tell me your favorite year for each of those genres?
Matt Hammer (drums): 1945 for jazz.
Ryan: It’s really hard to say! We can’t answer that question!
What’s a question you were hoping I would ask?
Ryan: ‘Do you want me to give you a million dollars?’
I was going to ask if you have crazy dreams on tour.
Ryan: Oh man, you’re asking great guys! Philip [Sambol, bass] has something called ‘night terrors.’ It’s where the person all of a sudden wakes up, out of nowhere, totally out of the blue, screaming as loud as he possibly can. Sometimes he’s just screaming, like ‘Aaaaaaaaaghgg! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaghgg!’ And sometimes he’s like, ‘Aaaaaagh, look over there, look over there, aaaaah!’ Sometimes it’s like a really quick ‘aaah.’ But once Philip has the night terror, he freaks everybody else out in the room so much where they can’t go to sleep, and their hearts are pounding! But Philip immediately goes back to sleep. Philip sleeps soundly while everyone else is at the end of their wits.
Are you excited to play in Los Angeles again?
Ryan: We’re really excited, especially to play with Mika Miko in their hometown.
What are your favorite bands in L.A. right now?
Ryan: Darker My Love, we’ve always liked a lot. Mika Miko, of course. Anasazis. There’s probably a lot… Motley Crue! Guns ‘n’ Roses!
What’s the weirdest band you’ve ever played with?
Ryan: One time we played with this guy—he’s called Captured by Robots! We started out as enemies, but now we’re friends. We saw him in Arkansas, and we didn’t get along very well at first. And then we traded off some emails discussing our viewpoints about each other’s music. And now he checks in with us every year, and he’s like, ‘How you doing?’ But he got hit by a car a few months back! He’s better now.
I’ve seen him many times back in the day. He’s like a one-man Man… or Astroman? And you guys started off as a duo yourselves, you and Matt.
Ryan: We were called ‘The Waves.’
On days like today, do you ever look around and go, ‘Fuck, this van could be so much more spacious if we kicked these other guys out?’
Ryan: Oh yeah, Matt and I think about that every day. If we were still a duo, we’d be making way more money. We’d be touring in a Civic or something, where we wouldn’t have to worry about it. We constantly talk about kicking out Philip and Greg [Enlow, guitar]!
You guys are all pretty young, but you and Greg are total total baby faces! Has that been a problem for you? Are bouncers like, ‘You’re not 21!’
Ryan: It’s not a problem now that our IDs actually say we are 21. They always say, ‘Oh, you look 14!’ I dunno. I would say most fourteen-year-olds are still cooler than the adults we meet.
Is it a problem when you meet lady folk because they think you’re jailbait?
Ryan: I think it helps!
One of things I like about your band is that despite being young, your sound has a really solid foundation in a lot of older music. Sometimes you sound a bit like something obscure from the sixties, though with a very genuine love of blues and Americana. What are your influences?
Ryan: Oh, so many. How about you ask each of us one band that has influenced us?
Okay, but don’t quote the bands you listed on your MySpace page.
Greg: I’d say Gino Washington.
Matt: I’ve been listening to a lot of Fela Kuti lately.
Philip: I’d say that the first Oh Sees record is what I was listening to the most before we went on tour. It has awesome bass on it, and just a really unique sound.
Ryan: Joe South! That guy doesn’t get a lot of props.
I think you’re just proving my point—you have a blues influence, but so much else is mixed in. And you’ve said in interviews that Texas is a great melting pot of sounds. Would you say Texas is a better state to make music in than other places?
Ryan: Being in Austin, everyone comes through, and there’s a lot of history in that sense. But it really doesn’t matter where you’re writing or recording.
Ryan, the lyrics you write are pretty intense sometimes, though I have to say I can’t always make them out on the recordings. But I pick out some stuff. Your song, ‘When,’ has parts that remind me of Woody Guthrie’s songwriting. Like, you talk about the World Trade Center bombing. Can you recite me that lyric?
Ryan: Um, let me think. It’s, uh, um…
You have to sing this somewhere tonight! You’d better know this one!
Ryan: Ha ha… it’s, um, ‘Always been proud of doing what’s right/ Always thought your government was on the same side/ And then they blew up some buildings in New York City/ And with it your trust, and what you thought was right.’ It’s about September 11th. I believe the U.S. government blew up those buildings, like a terrorist attack. But the whole song in general is not just about that, it’s about change. The first verse is about how I was looking at pictures of the band and stuff, and I never smiled. So I decided I was going to smile, and show my teeth more! And the next two verses are about being disinformed by the media, and September 11th, and the conspiracies about it, and you’re thinking about all this worldly New World Order humongous idea of conspiracies. And then suddenly you meet this girl, and she doesn’t know anything about that, and then some sort of love affair happens. And it doesn’t have anything to do with real life at all, and then the end is just, um… uh… I don’t remember what the last verse is!
It will give our readers some mystery, so they’ll go buy the album and find out!
Ryan: ‘If you’ve got three, give two to someone else/ if you’ve got two, give the other two a mouth/ if you’ve got one, give that other one away…’
Sounds kind of Biblical! Has religion played a role in your sound?
Ryan: It’s just whatever’s going on. Religion isn’t part of the music really at all. It’s broader thoughts, higher thoughts, thinking more. It’s spirituality that’s incorruptible.
In ‘No Way for a Slave to Behave,’ you have these cool ‘whoo hoos’ in the background. It’s a little more poppy than some of your other songs.
Ryan: My friend, Shane Retro, had that beginning riff. I met him two and a half years ago, and he played me this riff, and he didn’t have any lyrics to it. And I said to him at the very beginning, ‘I’m going to steal that riff, and I’m going to write a song to it.’ And I wanted more songs for the record, so I took the riff and added the lyrics to it and the other parts to it. And the poppiness just went with it, I suppose. Shane Retro isn’t really in a band or anything. He just is.
Have you given any song ideas to other bands?
Ryan: No. I think I could write an awesome song for Jarvis Cocker! Actually I have one that I don’t think I could sing right, and I think I could.
Charlyne Yi, this comedian in L.A., writes songs for other bands for that exact same reason! Would you cover a song by Charlyne Yi if you could sing it better than she can?
Ryan: Yeah, sure, if it’s good!
What about bands from the sixties? Like Back from the Grave garage bands—when you listen to those bands, are you like, ‘Oh yeah, I see where they’re coming from?’
Ryan: We dig a lot of those bands, but I don’t know. People make such a big deal about sixties music, and it was just a lot of people, and that’s what made it cool. There were so many scenes all around the world. But it’s just rock and roll, right? It’s either the real deal, or it’s some white kids trying to do it, and either way, it’s cool, you know?
But maybe people like me, unfortunately, want to be able to describe your sound, and they don’t know what else to say, so they just write ‘It’s garage-y!’
Ryan: People compare us to Nuggets. And it’s a four-disc box set! They compare one band to a four disc box set, which is 85, 90 percent filled with horrible, horrible things. Stupid, stupid lyrics that mean nothing and were written by these people just to make a quick buck, riding some sort of craze, you know? I mean, there’s some great stuff on there as well, but they’re just ridiculous. That song, ‘Sugar and Spice’—what the hell is that? That is stupid. We don’t like that.
As a bubblegum motherfucker, I beg to disagree. But you’re right—that sounds nothing like you at all.
Ryan: Just to clear up with you, we don’t care at all what other people compare us to. I don’t want it to be where someone says ,’Hey, you sound like Nuggets,’ and I say, ‘Well, I don’t want to be compared to Nuggets,’ and you write ‘Yeah, man, they’re trying to fight against labels by other people.’ If anything, just say, ‘Man, who gives a shit?’
Well, your ‘Sugar and Spice’ quote was pretty awesome, so I’m going to have to keep that in! In fact, you said something in an interview once about garage rock that I thought was really apt: someone asked if you were part of the garage rock revival, and you said, ‘There is no revival. People have been doing this kind of stuff since 1989.’ Are there some bands that are roughly in this same genre that you’ve looked up to as heroes, who formed more recently than the sixties?
Ryan: Oh, for sure! People like the Oblivians, the Reigning Sound, anything Greg Cartwright was involved with. The Cramps, the Gun Club: these were all bands that were doing awesome, awesome stuff, before it was ‘garage rock.’
Were you mortified when you heard Lux Interior had died?
Ryan: When he died, he went somewhere else. I don’t think it’s that bad of a deal. I never knew him. People gonna die.
I hear snippets of the early Rolling Stones and the early Velvet Underground in your sound, too.
Ryan: Compared to a lot of other bands, the Stones did justice to a lot of the covers they did. And then Beggars Banquet, the slide on that record, and the country aspect of that, they took it and did something else with it. The Velvet Underground for sure—you can’t even say much about it. There’s nothing cooler than being 16 and driving around listening to the Velvet Underground. I started to get guitar lessons when I was fourteen or fifteen. And one of the first times I went in to get the lessons, I brought in White Light/White Heat, and said I wanted to learn the whole record. And the teacher was like, ‘There must be alternate tunings, because I can’t figure out what they’re really playing.’ I think I quit the next lesson after that. It seemed kind of useless if he couldn’t teach me to do that.

THE STRANGE BOYS WITH MIKA MIKO, CEREBRAL BALZY AND PROTECT ME ON MON., JUNE 29, AT THE SMELL, 247 S. MAIN ST., LOS ANGELES. 9 PM / $5 / ALL AGES. THESMELL.ORG. AND WITH THE SHIRLEY ROLLS AND THE GROWLERS ON TUE., JUNE 30, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $7 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. THE STRANGE BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB IS OUT NOW ON IN THE RED. VISIT THE STRANGE BOYS AT INTHEREDRECORDS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/THESTRANGEBOYS.