Well, under normal circumstances, you can’t!  Unavailable in any distributed format for years, according to director David Markey, the film finally found a home on Vimeo not too long ago where slam-dancers of all ages could see it.  And then this happened:

Sorry! “”Reality 86′d” A film by David Markey” was deleted at 1:49:29 Mon May 23, 2011. Vimeo has removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Greg Ginn claiming that this material is infringing: “Reality 86′d” A film by David Markey. We have no more information about it on our mainframe or elsewhere.

We caught up with David Markey on Facebook this week and got his take on why he believes Ginn had the film “paralyzed”:

So… what did Greg Ginn do to your film, Reality 86’d?
He first refused to release the film when I offered it to him. He then refused to let me release the film. He then refused to let Henry release the film. 20 years pass. I post it to Vimeo for viewing purposes only and Ginn has it removed. Like clockwork.
Do you make him look bad in the movie?  Why would he do this?
The film was done with love and respect for Ginn and Black Flag, one of the world’s most important bands, still… even after all of this.  There is nothing in the film to make him look bad that we didn’t already see in Woodstock.
Isn’t this an important portrait-of-a-time film that everyone should see?
This particular era is not very under-represented, although oddly enough Greg did allow footage from this movie to be seen in American Hardcore.  I thought that was weird.
This is one of the few films with footage of Joe Cole, the famed Black Flag roadie whose death inspired songs by Sonic Youth, an album by Hole, and even two books by Henry Rollins.  Why would anyone want to diminish his legacy?
Beats me.  Joe saw the film before he was killed.  At least he got to see it.
Henry Rollins is in the film too.  Does he know what Greg’s done to the film?
Yes.  Very much so.  Henry wants it released. Dukowski wants it released. 5 other people in the film want it released. The fans want it released.
Now that I can’t see the film, it only makes me want to view it more.  What are my options?
I hear it’s all over the net already so perhaps the 20th century way of doing things is already irrelevant.
So, how are you going to make this right?  Will you shoot a third Lovedolls movie and cast Bob Moss as a villainous “Gagg Thin, head of STD Records?”
Probably not, not that it’s not a great idea…

-Dan Collins

Download: Saint Vitus “Look Behind You”

(from Heavier Than Thou available from SST)

Saint Vitus has held a special place in my heart since I first heard ‘Look Behind You’ on the eclectic and inexpensive SST compilation The Blasting Concept Vol. 2. The song is a paranoid trip through hell—an immediate stand-out. It rocked like Black Sabbath—who, thanks to my older brother, I had loved since before I got a real skateboard—and it also had a palpable DIY pulse like Black Flag, who were of increased interest to me after I got a real skateboard. They had a killer logo and made even cooler records while unknowingly creating the sound of a genre of heavy metal that had yet to be named. I spoke with Saint Vitus guitarist and founding member Dave Chandler from his home in New Orleans prior to Saint Vitus’ return to the city where they started. We talked about heavy tunes, getting stoned, punkers, an Obsessed tape I’d like to hear and two-year-old headbangers. Dave Chandler is also not only a forefather of the entire genre of doom metal, he is also one of the happiest guys having the most fun playing it—often with his teeth. This interview by Kurt Midness.

Perhaps you are familiar with the debate among blues dudes about whether or not one must have lived a hard life to play the blues. Must someone be bummed out to play doom metal?
Dave Chandler (guitar): Not necessarily. It kinda helps with lyrics to be angry or depressed. I’m happy now. When I was writing for Saint Vitus, I was more pissed and bummed or wrote songs about being fucked up. I’m writing new stuff now and I’m really happy—but people will probably still see it as being pissed off and bummed out. I do believe bands should have to pay their dues and do it yourself. Every band should have to live in a van for a year. Bands shouldn’t just get a career in music handed to them, which seems to be the way it works now.
Should one be stoned in order to play stoner rock?
Dave Chandler: Nah. Not necessarily. To me that is a vague term. ‘Stoner rock’ to me—that is just rock. I think someone thought they were clever when they coined that term. I do think all music sounds better when you’re stoned, but that’s just me. With me getting stoned helped out, but not necessarily to play doom. Some people get stoned and play jazz. Getting stoned opens your mind and you become more creative. Some people will argue that. Most people I know that play doom metal get stoned—not a lot of straight edgers.
There are a lot of different names describing a lot of different musical genres these days. What do you call Saint Vitus?
Dave Chandler: Doom metal—definitely. We played for years and never heard of that. Then I heard us referred to as ‘doom metal’ in Europe and I thought, ‘Yeah, that fits.’ My mom used to call it funeral music. I think if you didn’t know anything about Saint Vitus, but were told that we are doom metal, you’d have an idea how we sound.
Now that Saint Vitus are seen as progenitors—and masters—of an old school doom metal sound, have you ever thought that the old Saint Vitus credo of ‘born too late’ should actually be changed to ‘born too early’?
Dave Chandler: No, not really—we’re still born too late. We’ve just outlasted everybody. The few fans we had from back then grew up and had kids and now their kids are listening to Saint Vitus and listening with their friends. And there are a lot of new fans that come to the shows. I’ve literally seen a two-year-old at a show with little earplugs giving me the metal horns hand sign.
Is now a better time to be in a doom metal band?
Dave Chandler: I guess I’m not sure. Doom metal to me is an underground genre, but the underground is a lot bigger than it used to be. Here in New Orleans, doom metal is extremely popular, but you go somewhere else and people aren’t into it at all, so it depends on where you are. There is really only one band to play doom metal at an arena-sized level and that’s Black Sabbath.
Having cribbed the name Saint Vitus from the song ‘St. Vitus Dance,’ I’d think Black Sabbath was obviously an early influence. What other heavy shit were you into when you started the band?
Dave Chandler: I was really into Judas Priest, but everybody was into different stuff. [Drummer] Armando [Acosta] was really into Rush, [bassist] Mark [Adams] was really into Lynyrd Skynyrd and I was really into Judas Priest and Mahogany Rush… Alice Cooper, Blue Cheer. That’s how you would get together back then. If you were into that kind of rock, you would hang out. Mark and I have been friends since high school listening to this stuff, so we started a band. When I was real young it was different stuff that got me interested in music—stuff like the Monkees made me want to be a musician. When I started playing guitar, the first group that really inspired me was Alice Cooper. I was already listening to Black Sabbath, but it was Alice Cooper that made me really want to start a band.
Did you identify Saint Vitus as a metal band when you started?
Dave Chandler: Pretty much—back then there was just heavy metal and that was it. Otherwise you were a hard rock or blues band or a pop band or something else. When we hooked up with the punk scene in L.A., we called it hardcore metal. Back then there weren’t a lot of bands that you would call metal. Bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest were called heavy metal, but a band like Montrose or Led Zeppelin was considered hard rock or hard rock blues. There were only a couple bands you’d call heavy metal.
Would you say that Saint Vitus—like Metallica—didn’t find a lot to like or support about the L.A. metal scene back then?
Dave Chandler: As soon as we played our first show, we knew we didn’t fit in. We knew we didn’t want to do the whole Hollywood hair metal bullshit. They didn’t want anything to do with us either, so we stopped playing in L.A. You end up playing where people want you to play.
How did you get involved with Greg Ginn and SST?
Dave Chandler: Early on we would play anywhere that would book us. In those days bands did everything themselves. You would make your own flyers and pass them out at other bands’ shows to try to get people to come to your show. There was a band called Overkill that was on SST. They were one of the first metal-punk crossover bands. They were handing out flyers at one of our shows and they asked us to open one of their shows. I asked if they could get the dudes in Black Flag to check us out because I was real into Black Flag. Greg Ginn and Chuck Dukowski came to the show and they liked us. Greg asked if we wanted to do a record for SST and we were like, ‘Yeah!’ and it went from there.
How did the punk scene in L.A. respond to Saint Vitus? Did you bum out folks that came to pogo and slam dance?
Dave Chandler: At the first show they basically ignored us. They couldn’t care less. Mark did something that pissed them off and they did the typical punk thing and started trashing us. I think the punkers thought of us as a typical LA metal band. We confused them, though, when we played the really slow stuff because they were used to hearing fast music. We gained their respect eventually because we never stopped playing when they hated us. It kinda turned around and eventually we played only punk shows in L.A. Heavy metal people in L.A. never liked us.
Is Wino the new guy in the band again?
Dave Chandler: No—actually, we have a new drummer. Henry Vasquez. [Vocalist] Wino’s an old man like the rest of us.
Did you know about the Obsessed when Wino joined the band?
Dave Chandler: We had a mutual friend that gave us a tape and we thought he’d work out. We liked his voice for sure, so it was just a matter of whether or not we would get along.
Are you an L.A. native?
Dave Chandler: I grew up in Lomita which is near San Pedro. That’s where Mark still lives.
How did you end up in New Orleans?
Dave Chandler: I met a girl that was living in Los Angeles temporarily who’s from here. I’d been wanting to get out of Los Angeles, so we moved out here and got married.
What does your dentist have to say about you playing guitar with your teeth?
Dave Chandler: It was really funny when I chipped my tooth one time. He told me it files down your teeth, so after a while you have to get caps. I chipped one he had worked on and he said, ‘What happened to my tooth?’ I was like, ‘That was my tooth.’ Then I told him what happened and he was like, ‘Jeez!’
What made you want to add that to your repertoire?
Dave Chandler: I’ve never been the greatest classic guitar player. I couldn’t just play something like Steve Howe, so I started doing as many tricks as I could. It looks good and it’s fun to do. The audience really likes it when I do it. That’s the main thing—it’s fun.
Is it easier on the teeth if you tune down?
Dave Chandler: No, I didn’t notice a difference. We tune down a half step because Wino’s voice is a little deeper. It’s hard as hell to do, but it’s a lot of fun. I got to learn it all over again to play these shows—but we wouldn’t be doing this at all now if we weren’t having fun.

SAINT VITUS (WITH WINO) WITH SAVIOURS, TOTIMOSHI, ANCESTORS AND CROWNED BY FIRE ON THUR., JAN. 28, AT THE ULTRAVIOLET SOCIAL CLUB, 2684 LACY ST., LOS ANGELES. 7 PM / $29.50 / ALL AGES. ULTRAVIOLETSOCIALCLUB.COM. VISIT SAINT VITUS AT SAINTVITUSREUNION.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/STVITUS.

Stream: The Minutemen “History Lesson Part 2″

(from Double Nickels on the Dime available on SST)

The Minutemen’s Double Nickels On The Dime is one of the several weathered foundations of L.A. RECORD and one of the few albums still alive with the weird outside-inside energy of punk as it was once in California and the world. Exactly twenty-five years later, it still starts bands and makes friends. Minutemen bassist Mike Watt meets for pizza at San Pedro’s excellent Pavich’s Pizza for remembering D. Boon and George Hurley and that guy Mike Watt in the summer of 1984. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

You turned fifty in December and now Double Nickels is having its 25th anniversary.
I was 25 or 26 when I recorded this? Half of my life. The biggest thing about that guy Mike Watt in those days of 25-year-olds was really getting my mind blown by Ulysses. That was the big thing in my mind right then. It had a big impact on me. It made me wonder so much about the world. It’s funny how things come around. That record was a trippy time in the Minutemen’s life. In the punk era. Going back 25 years—it’s part of the past now! It’s a signifier in some ways—my life and other peoples’ lives. Like people knowing us and the punk movement—people who got the record, never saw us live. Keith and Tim did the We Jam Econo documentary. A lot of bands from the older times don’t have things done on them like that. They didn’t know a lot about the band—they knew from the record, but they wanted to find out about us. It became a thing unto itself—a touchstone. Not unto itself because it was obviously a scene—without a scene, there woulda been no Nickels, no Minutemen, no Econo. I don’t wanna get carried away—conceited! It’s just how it works out. We never thought we were a better band than anybody. We were happy as hell to be along with the team. We didn’t wanna be on top of the pile. I think every band had its own trip. There’s enough people to tell what’s right and wrong with music in books and shit. I don’t get into that. One good thing I like about it—is for D. Boon. A lot of times you get killed in your younger days, you get forgotten. I know the reason in my case—I liked him a lot and the fella could pay really good. For other cats to be aware of him—keeping the Minutemen in mind like that—in a weird way, his art is living. Some of his spirit is out there. For me, I owe him everything.
Where can you hear Boon the most on Nickels?
Maybe ‘Anxious Mofo’—that solo he does! Hardly any notes! It’s just great. And he does a great one in the instrumental—‘June 16.’ A lot of the words were influenced by Jim Joyce. The glory of man and all this. On ‘June ’16,’ Boon does a really good guitar solo, too. Hurley plays smoking drums on almost all of it. There’s a lot of dynamics with those two guys. Little tiny song settings. I’m trying to glue things together. I don’t do much bass solo on that record. I don’t think any.
Who drew the anchor on the label?
D. Boon. Punk records only had the writing on one side. With the way the lyrics are on the sleeve, we got the idea from Wire. Just put it out like prose instead of poetry.
Who wrote ‘Arena rock is new wave’ in the dead wax?
Joe Carducci came up with all those. I don’t know his commentary. [Looking at the photos in the gatefold] These pictures—this is Richard Meltzer, this is Joe Baiza. I just cut these pictures out. I had a posterboard. This is our first paid gig at Starwood. These two school buses—we rented these and played in them in Mojave on a dry lakebed. We had to wear sunglasses because the dust was blowing so hard. This is the Federal Building in west L.A.—I think it’s Rock Against Racism or Reagan. Maybe both. The camera people were taking pictures of a girl with a mohawk—they were way more into that than filming bands, so I’m turning it up. You can see how the scissors I used—pinking shears! I like these pictures. I don’t know—so casual. Boon’s got his fist up! And Georgie…
I know you did the record like Ummagumma—everyone got a solo song. ‘Cohesion,’ ‘Take 5, D’…
Georgie’s is ‘You Need The Glory.’ D. Boon never wrote a song with my words. I would write with his words all the time, but they weren’t words he wrote for me. They were little thoughts he put on paper and left around. That shit didn’t have rhymes—it was just thoughts, observations. He would use his words if he had rhymes—‘This Ain’t No Picnic.’ There were some misfires on this, I think. We did another version of ‘Little Man With A Gun In His Hand’—this came out such a lame version!
You said before you gotta spread a lot of manure to be a farmer.
Well, we wanted to match up to the Huskers because they had a double album. Kind of a challenge. I thought the band always did better when we were challenged. And it caught the band at a great time when Georgie was still writing us words.
At work, right?
He’d have to go in and work a lathe, so they’re kind of abstract. And the band had played enough that we could bring songs together really quick. Me and D. Boon were always quick because we grew up together but it always took time to show Georgie. We never wanted him in back—we wanted him just as involved. We’d spend a lot of time working out. This time, he could learn to feel it. He knew when he’d have a break or pause. The songs were coming real quick. The big problem was how were we gonna put 45 songs in order? We knew it was gonna be four sides. The way a record works, the needle works its way to the label. I kinda figured we’d have the shitty ones on the label and the good ones outside. How is this gonna happen? If we draw straws to find an order—first second third, pick one at a time. And good songs go first and lame ones get left, and the fourth side is nobody. I think Georgie got first pick and what’s he pick? His solo song! If you look at his side—all Hurley! I got second pick—I picked ‘Mike Jackson’ first, and Boon got third and picked ‘Anxious Mofo.’ Here’s a weird one—Hurley/Boon. Not a lot of Hurley/Boon. ‘Two Beads At The End,’ which we used to always crack up. It was always hard to know what Georgie was singing about. Private meanings. So we thought two butt beads hanging out—start you up like a lawnmower! I haven’t looked at this in a long time. D. Boon’s side is a lot of his stuff. And mine—a lot of Watt ones! Maybe we were picking songs from our own stuff—I thought I was picking for good! And it turns out the good ones are kinda on the outside. We didn’t want no favoritism. All divided even. A democratic thing. D. Boon would like that political idea.
How did ‘History Lesson’ end up on the label? That’s one of the very best songs.
Nobody wanted it! Second to last pick. D. Boon’s last pick was ‘One Reporter’s Opinion.’ Liked the guitar, a lotta guitar solo—hated the idea of my name in the song. I did that a lot. And ‘History Lesson’ had my name in it, too. The last two songs picked. The fourth side all unpicked. The Henry song, D. Boon’s ‘Song for Latin America,’ Martin the Reactionaries singer—no one wanted them!
Where did ‘History Lesson’ come from?
I wrote it and I kinda got the lick from Velvet Underground ‘Here She Comes Now.’ Mugger kept playing it over and over. I wrote it kind of for hardcore kids. Velvet music is kind of slow, but I thought everybody should be able to relate to playing with your buddy in a band. I guess some dudes real young think of being a rock star, but a lot of dudes start just to be with their friend. A lot of the idea—we didn’t seem like guys in a band. Kind of strange in a way. But personable! People could know us. They like a song where we talk about each other. A lot of times, D. Boon would be pulled off stage by bouncers thinking he was just some dude in the crowd! Me sometimes but D. Boon a lot—they just couldn’t believe he was in a band!
‘And Mr. Narrator, this is like Bob Dylan to me?’
We didn’t know what words were for in songs when we were boys. We thought it was like lead guitar. We didn’t know meanings and shit. But Dylan seemed like a weird uncle at Thanksgiving, muttering and no one paying attention but here’s these weird kind of words. When we were making music as boys, we never thought of music as being expression. Used to get feelings. We thought it was to copy records. Never had the idea you try to get your own thoughts out! As we got older, it seemed maybe Dylan wasn’t so afraid. And if he wasn’t, maybe we shouldn’t be scared. It was kind of confidence for us. The narrator—like a voice in a movie explaining things. That’s who he was in our life. We were learning by doing. Now cats write tunes all the time! I gave a talk to my sister’s 6th grade—these kids, they’re in bands! Last year I did one here for 3rd graders—nine-year-olds!—and some girls had bands! But it was different in those days—you didn’t do it. Not like lemmings or sheep—though people are like lemmings a little bit. The best guy in town was the guy who could play ‘Black Dog’ the best. It was building models—‘Hey, kind of like the real thing.’ We don’t think soapbox derby—where you can roll around in the thing. Roll, not just look! So Dylan kind of helped us. We didn’t know what his words meant but we knew they meant something. Now we’re gonna write songs—what are words for? By Double Nickels, I’d been doing—I’d written my first ones—terrible ones—in the Reactionaries. That’s thirty years—1979! I made two cassettes. Ten songs. None made it to Minutemen. One I gave to Brendan Mullen—the only time I tried to get a gig. But by Double Nickels, I’d already written like 50 or 60 Minutemen songs. I was kinda havin’ fun. I’d write words sometimes just to hear D. Boon say them. In ‘It’s Expected I’m Gone’—let’s have D. Boon say ‘big fucking shit!’ right now! I just wanted to hear him say ‘big fucking shit!’ really loud like he did! Nothing to do with the song. Something to do with the James Joyce book.
‘I must look like a dork?’
No—I wanted Michael Jackson. If Michael Jackson sang our song, a lot of people would get the message of Minutemen. He had a big audience. A good singer. I sent him a cassette of it—to the management on the record cover. I wrote him a note. ‘This is a political song I think Michael Jackson should sing.’ I never got written back. ‘I must look like a dork’ I got from an interview with Iggy in Creem. They’d have spiel with questions and answers and they’d bold out a quote—‘I MUST LOOK LIKE A DORK.’ That magazine was very cool. Not like Rolling Stone and shit—good sense of humor. So I just lifted from Iggy. I thought Iggy was a balls-out dude—the Stooges a balls-out band. To be in that legacy—be part of a movement inspired by that band—so what if you look like a fucking dork! You tell people you are and you still go for it.
Is Double Nickels your Ulysses?
I try to be black-and-white about what Minutemen were trying to do with political songs. ‘Organizing the Boy Scouts for murder is wrong!’ It wasn’t supposed to be satire. We’re an anti-war band! A working people band! Kind of a weird-kind-of-people band! Dudes who didn’t fit in so much. To us, the message of our band and a little bit of punk, too—start your own band! Say what’s on your mind! Sometimes it was scary—there were skinhead bands and shit who were terribly enthusiastic in their message. But that’s the way the scene was. No rules. People went for it. I talk about Minutemen in two songs on that album—the one I actually mailed to Michael Jackson and ‘Politics of Time.’ I didn’t really sing about the band in ‘History Lesson’—because it was Hurley, too. On Punchline, the song ‘History Lesson’ is very hard-hitting. The story of most human civilization is killing each other. And I thought maybe there might be a part two—we don’t have to kill each other? So I’m gonna take it relaxed—talk about heroes like Richard Hell, Joe Strummer, John Doe. Those are my three songs that ain’t about Ulysses. About the band and my friend. Georgie’s? I don’t know what his are about—a working guy writing them at work. Boon—his tunes are usually about his beliefs. The outside writers—we never asked ‘em. It wasn’t important to us. It might have been like censorship. Just 100% used their words. And some of them were pretty cryptic. Like Dirk’s ‘The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts.’ And Jack Brewer’s cousin Joe—we didn’t even know the guy!—writes a weird one—‘Please Don’t Be Gentle With Me.’ I don’t know what the fuck—that’s a love song?
How many love songs are on Double Nickels?
‘Just wake me up and tug my hair!’ We took these at face value—we didn’t care! We made songs! A love song I got from Ulysses—‘My Heart In The Real World.’ Ulysses was bent a lot on language, so it was actually about language, but it has love song imagery. And war imagery. ‘Do You Want New Wave’ is about language too. ‘The World According To Nouns.’ All inspired by James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Have you re-read Ulysses?
I did in my forties. It seems a lot sadder book. Those days, when I wrote songs from that book, it was a big celebration! The glory of man! Now it’s more like—the glory hole of man! It seems like I could hear Joyce’s voice stronger. It seems like a lot of sadness with his mother and just the general condition of humans sometimes. So much failure. The only victories are tiny things between people in everyday stuff. The big joy is in the small middle things, because the big things are all fucking nightmare. ‘One Reporter’s Opinion’ seems like love, but it’s not. What struck me as trippy about Joyce was the technique in Ulysses changing the style with each episode—very scientific, dry, baby talk, opera, all these different trips. A lot of our shit was so… inside. It never got out to people. But it was very clear to us. Like the title. And the meaning of our lyrics. During this time, Boon worked in the van pool—one time the police were called on him—they said there was an insane man attacking the weeds! He was just a utility guy using the weed-whacker! But he had a mohawk! ‘The guy’s attacking the building!’ He’d write stuff while working and driving on little papers—this is what he would write and why there are no rhymes in them. And I’d find ‘em and make songs.
Did you ever talk to him about that?
No—I’d wonder if he would leave ‘em for me! I’d just find these things. Find ‘em in the van, in the car, all over the place. Just thinking about stuff.
How do you feel when you listen to Double Nickels now?
I didn’t listen for a long time. I listened around We Jam Econo. It was amazing! George said the same thing—‘How could I play that shit?’ It holds up, I think, for the most part. It doesn’t sound like, ‘Here’s my lame young days.’ It sounds like maybe the best thing about it!
Why?
I don’t know! Just listen! Goddamn! The way we played together—the way we were in our history. A lot of things happening at the right time. The way we were with other peoples’ lyrics and our own. We didn’t try to refine it or water it down. We just grabbed it by the bull horns and went for it, and the spirit shows through! It doesn’t sound forced—doesn’t sound fake. It’s very un-self-conscious. We did it without thinking—we wanted one because the Huskers had one! ‘We should, too!’ We just let it be it—we never thought in bigger terms. Now look—if you wanna know what was good about Minutemen, a lot of it’s in that record. We didn’t know at the time. But you ask perspective—like when I re-read Ulysses—that’s what I see. When I read it, I heard a different voice. The words were the same but I had changed. And maybe I identify more with the man. It seemed sadder. A lot of books from my 20s I’m re-reading seem a lot sadder. Kerouac—On The Road—very sad! These days it’s not a total ‘Yeah! Yeah, go for it!’ celebration firecracker. Dean Moriarty leaves him in the hospital with dysentery—that’s lame! It’s beat like ‘beat down.’ Minutemen—that is a young man’s record. And the spirit of young men is in that. It’s like—‘Wow, we got a chance to make a record! A chance to play together! To play a gig with Flag and Huskers! A chance to write music to Jack Brewer’s cousin Joe’s song about whatever the fuck tug my hair in the morning!’ We were just fucking lit about everything—all lit! Sometimes a young person is like that because they don’t have the worries of an older thing or a bad experience to keep them all wallowing or too safe. It has that spirit in it. And I can identify it because I was there. And I think about George and Boon and myself—man! That more than probably any other—we were all there with everything we had! More than any other of the Minutemen records. Buzz or Howl was actually two different things. I don’t think any Georgie songs are on it. One side Spot, one Ethan. No Georgie songs on 3 Way Tie or Project Mersh. What Makes A Man Start Fires, I had to write all the music—the only time D. Boon didn’t live in Pedro. Paranoid Time, Georgie wasn’t there with the songs. He came in later. Punchline was kind of Double Nickels. A little bit. An early version. Built on almost the same template except one or two outside writers. When we had the one album, most of the outside writers came on the second album of Double Nickels. The first was almost Punchline part 2—it actually was! And Punchline—goddamn! We make that—in the first year—December of ’80! Before we’d even been a year old. It’s not like Nickels—that’s why it holds up. It’s our signature. If you wanna know about the band and you only hear one record—that’s the one.

THE MINUTEMEN’S DOUBLE NICKELS ON THE DIME IS AVAILABLE FROM SST. VISIT MIKE WATT AT HOOTPAGE.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/WATTFROMPEDRO.

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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