George Harrison – Brainwashed
Bob Dylan – Modern Times
Beck – Sea Change
Dramarama – Everybody Dies
The Stooges – The Weirdness
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Jorma Kaukonen – Blue Country Heart
The Dandy Warhols – Welcome to the Monkey House
Neil Young – Prairie Wind
Foo Fighters – Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace

-Mark Englert

Maud Deitch

You know how sometimes when you’re thinking back to a particularly ridiculous dream you’ve had, you have to step back for a moment and acknowledge how completely hilarious your subconscious is? Well, I had one of those moments at The Echoplex on Saturday night. I had never heard of the show’s opening band, Totally Michael, and so when a skinny kid, hardly any wider than his black, be-stickered guitar, took the stage, I had no idea what to expect. A sing along version of The Village People’s “YMCA” later, and I still had no idea what I was in for.

Totally Michael’s ridiculous, completely juvenile set seemed to be constantly toeing the line between arch satire and Blink-182 inspired idiocy, and I found myself looking around in disbelief to try and guage from other’s faces how I was supposed to be feeling about the show. Performance is about 25% content though, and if the remaining 75% is energy, Totally Michael was a complete success. Jumping around the stage like a squirrel with ADHD, Michael Dunlap was a sight to see, and I have to give him credit—he most certainly got me excited for what the rest of the night had in store.

From there, the tone was set for an outlandish, maybe even out of control, evening. The crowd—which was a mixture of teenagers (the show was 18+) in their finest sequined gear and older folks exhibiting various states of total inebriation—was all fist pumping energy as DJ Killed By Synth took the stage. She spun an energetic set of crowd pleasers, even managing to make “We Are Your Friends” seem as jammy as it did the first time around.

The crowd was nice and warmed up, therefore, when Flosstradamus took the stage. It felt, actually, more like a festival show than a Saturday night at the Echoplex. The crowd surged forward and danced the shit out of the seemingly endless (in a good way) set, getting dirty, like high school dance dirty, to mixes of such classics as “Get Low,” made famous by Lil’ John and the Eastside Boyz. Bumping and grinding against the metal barriers set up to control the madness, the crowd screamed enthusiastic at all the right places, got down as hard as they could, and generally seemed to be having a crazily good time.

When Kid Sister took the stage, you would’ve thought she was The Beatles come back for a surprise reunion. I fought my way through the glinting, sweaty sea to try and get a better look at what was happening on stage, and thought for a second I would be spat back out again. When a pretty young reveler saw me desperately trying to get a good angle for a photo, she pushed me forward, saying, “Take pictures, take pictures! Show everyone how good she is!” Kid Sister, the nom de plume of Chicago native Melisa Young, was resplendent with her long black hair streaked pink, flanked by two back up dancers in black leotards and silver masks. Clearly, I hadn’t gotten the memo about the sequins, because, like much of her insanely excited fan base, Young was decked out in black sequined leggings, making her legs look like they were made of ink, and only making her black leather jacket look tougher.

Performing tracks off her soon to drop record Ultraviolet, Young’s performance was as hard and tough as seems necessary for a female MC trying to make it in a not particularly lady-friendly hip hop world. The tracks combine club friendly, bouncy electro beats and relatively benign, although well delivered, lyrics. Perfect tracks for playing in your first car with the windows rolled down, which was probably exactly what her fans would do on their way home from the show. Maintaining the high energy of the beginning of the night would be a challenge, I thought, but Young’s set worked perfectly, bringing the crowd to their peak of hormonal dancing frenzy and leaving everyone excited when it was over.

Watching the crowd stream out of the club was like watching an advertisement for a good night. Though some were definitely a little too drunk, some sleepy, and some wondering loudly where their cell phones/cameras/boyfriends or girlfriends had gone, everyone was all smiles, which, I think, is a sign that all involved did their jobs extraordinarily well.

—Maud Deitch

Download: The Raincoats “Lola”

(from the self-titled album reissued Tuesday on Kill Rock Stars)

The girls in the Raincoats have covered the Monks, but didn’t originally know the Monks possibly because they were so much like the Monks—formed perfectly from nothing and destined to disappear too quickly and leave anyone who discovered them later wondering how they’d ever happened in the first place. (Like Kurt Cobain, who wrote about them in Incesticide and helped get their albums reissued on CD.) Johnny Rotten famously called them the only band that didn’t make him throw up and that can’t be anything but true, even today. They play their first-ever Los Angeles show on October 11 at the Part Time Punks fest. This interview by Kevin Ferguson.

I see a lot of similarities between the Monks and the Raincoats. Odyshape is such a unique record with no context. People have barely started ripping off the Monks now and how long will it be before the Raincoats? Twenty years?
Ana da Silva (guitar/vocals): It’s strange you say that because a friend of mine just said that to me, and I kind of thought, ‘Actually, I don’t really know anything like it.’ I’m not saying we’re more original than anybody else, but it was our own thing. We tried everything, so it came out sounding quite different. I think you could kind of see that they’re all Raincoats songs, but they’re also very different among each other because we always tried really hard with each song to just try something new and explore things—find room for all the ideas that we had.
Did that hurt the band dynamics later on?
Ana da Silva: They were always difficult! Everybody was always bringing in new ideas. Obviously, that’s always a bit hard to take for other people—when you come in saying ‘You know, I have this idea and it’s different from yesterday.’ The rest of the band has to kind of get around that together with you. There was no problem with writing songs, really. I always found that the most fun. You put something from here, something from there, and everybody brings their own little bit different to somebody else. We never thought you got to a point when things sounded really good, because we never thought it was really finished. Still to this day, if we have a rehearsal for two hours before a gig and we haven’t done a song in two years we’ll still change something. We felt that the music was still alive, and you can always add something else into it if you like it.
Do you think that quote about you guys breaking up because of too many influences is bullshit?
Ana da Silva: I don’t think it’s the influences that are the problem. It’s where you want to go with the band that was the problem eventually. Some members were keen on going in a more palatable way—kind of going away from where we had started—and maybe the other members didn’t like that. That’s true. Like east African music into the Raincoats—to me that didn’t seem to make too much sense. And I think some people wanted to have some kind of more mainstream success. I felt that there was sort of a will to maybe compromise with certain things and I wasn’t keen on that. It just got very difficult.
What’s the most important thing you learned on stage?
Ana da Silva: Concentrate, and don’t drink! I drank one time—just a couple of drinks—and then I couldn’t remember the lyrics. I thought, ‘I’ll never do that again!’ We didn’t really know how to play well—that’s what Gina meant when she said we learned how to play on stage. But we weren’t the only ones. It’s just that there are lots of bands—men don’t usually say that about themselves. In fact, we had a classically trained violinist in our band! Yes, Gina learned to play after we decided to have our band and only a few months after we decided to have a band, we had our first gig. I kind of knew a little bit of guitar—I knew chords but I couldn’t play solo or jam with somebody else. We were ropey, to say the least, but we concentrated on the rehearsals. Instead of learning how to play things really well and getting tight, we just kept changing and changing all the time. I think that’s why she said that we learned to play on stage, because we didn’t know—especially her! She didn’t know how to play. We rehearsed a lot, but it was more creating than getting tighter. We’re still not tight, after all these years.
Do you ever find yourself trying to sound less ‘professional’?
Ana da Silva: No. We just try to do our best all the time. We never did that much practicing at home to get really good at it. We don’t try to sound worse than we already do. That would be terrible! I don’t think tightness is a desirable thing necessarily. It’s just having a lot of ideas and making the music sound good. I think music has to have pleasant things: melodies, harmonies, rhythms, noise and silence … all those elements. To me, music is a really big thing—there’s many possibilities. And that’s the most important thing. Much more than being tight. Of course, nowadays people are used to very tight music because of computers and drum machines. I think there’s room for that kind of thing, but for us it’s more what feels right and comfortable.
What’s the weirdest noise you’ve ever made on your guitar?
Ana da Silva: I don’t know, it’s just the way it sounded. We did the first album at a studio on Barry Street. Maybe it’s the sound of Barry Street!
Do you remember that Johnny Rotten quote about how the Raincoats were the only band that didn’t make him puke?
Ana da Silva: Yes! Is it just the Raincoats or does he mention another band?
Just the Raincoats.
Ana da Silva: We were having this debate with each other: ‘Did he say just say the Raincoats or did he add Delta 5?’ We wondered if we were forgetting somebody else. We were having conscience problems!
How did it feel when he said you were the only good band left?
Ana da Silva: We were really happy. He’s always somebody I’ve respected. I also heard one time that David Bowie said that he really liked us. But I didn’t hear it myself, so I can’t really be sure of that.
Da Silva is a Portuguese name, right?
Ana da Silva: It’s where I’m from! I had been here before for a month one time and I really liked London. I had just finished university and I didn’t know what to do. I just got into a plane and came to see what it would be like, and then it went from there. I didn’t have a specific reason, I just came, worked in a restaurant, and then I decided to study art. That’s when I met Gina—we decided to form the band.
I read a quote from Gina: ‘When I came to London, I had about four albums with me. I had a Prince Buster album, I had Sgt. Pepper’s, and I had a Melanie album, I think the first one. And I had Toots and the Maytals’ Funky Kingston.’
Ana da Silva: I don’t think I brought anything with me, actually. I came with a very small suitcase. I think I brought some cassettes? They were compilation cassettes that I had made, sort of. One of the first albums that I bought after I was here was Horses by Patti Smith. I heard it at a party of a friend—I thought, ‘God, I’ve never heard anything like this before!’ I asked who it was, and they said it was this woman Patti Smith. Next thing I knew I went and bought the record at the Rough Trade shop.
What was it like the first time you played in America?
Ana da Silva: It was great! Going there was great and New York was the most amazing thing. It was a bit like a dream place—so different than anything I had ever seen. You see all that smoke come out of the street and you think, ‘God, I’m in a kind of film!’ But I’ve never been to the West Coast. I never thought I’d go with the Raincoats because we don’t really exist as a working band anymore. I’m so happy that we’re going to San Francisco and Los Angeles and Portland, and I think we’re going to New York as well.
The Raincoats are really different from your solo work—you use a sequencer for most of your solo material and the Raincoats are way more loose.
Ana da Silva: It’s a completely different way of working. You just put the notes there, press play, and then it’s done. I used a sequencer, yes, and now I’m using a computer. I’ve learned how to deal with Logic Pro—it’s a bit of a nightmare but I’m there now. But when I play with the Raincoats, I play mostly guitar and sing. It’s a very different thing. They don’t even cross over.
Just an entirely separate region in your brain?
Ana da Silva: Probably! My hands!
Do people really cry at Raincoats shows?
Ana da Silva: I haven’t personally seen that but I’ve known because people have told me. I’ve cried a couple times—certain songs more than others. I just remembered—when Kurt Cobain died we were doing a gig in New York. We didn’t know he had died because we were in the van going to New York and then we were on stage doing sound check. The person from Geffen was there and he told us. During the whole performance when I was singing my songs, I just kept relating certain lines to what had happened. He used to really like ‘The Void.’ I knew that the audience was feeling a great loss because of him dying and all that. It was a very, very emotional gig. I didn’t cry though, because I was determined not to even talk about it.
Did the Nirvana-era fans treat you any differently from those in the ’80s? What about your fans today?
Ana da Silva: We had quite a lot of respect from people of our time—like Gang of Four and the Slits. Lots of people liked what we did. We didn’t feel isolated in that way. I didn’t know Nirvana’s music when I found out that he was a fan—I heard that later. I was really, really thrilled when I heard it! I liked his stuff and what he carried on doing. We reissued everything on CD, which we wanted to do. These records haven’t been available for a long time—they should still be available. That whole generation and the riot grrrl movement as well—they seem to have been quite inspired by us. I suppose that all those bands during that era seemed to like what we did in that way. Suddenly you think it was worth doing because it’s still having some kind of impact.
Do you think the Raincoats sound feminine?
Ana da Silva: I think they do. We didn’t think of anything like that though. It was just a group of women together playing music. But then we started thinking, ‘Is there something female about this?’ And I kind of think there is. It’s very difficult for me to say and I’m not into a lot of theory and things but I think there is. It’s up to you as a listener though. Do you think we do?
I’m not sure I can say one way or another because the band is so unique. There’s nobody out there to compare the Raincoats with.
Ana da Silva: The other day, for instance, I was listening to Blur. They were playing—I don’t know—Glastonbury or something, and I was thinking, ‘This isn’t even man’s music, this is lad’s music!’ It’s boisterously masculine, a bit like people in the pub singing together or at a football match and they all go, ‘Ahhhhhhhh ruuuuuuuhhhh!’ To me that sounded really male, and our music is female. I guess because it’s by females. Our manager is female. When we recorded we had men producing. At the time I don’t know if there was a woman producer out there even. Any group is a sum of the members of that group; we were four women. There’s characteristics, you know, when we all sing together—it’s just like a bunch of girls singing in a playground!
Do you think it’s different to be a woman playing music today than before?
Ana da Silva: Not enough in my opinion. People sometimes feel very—I don’t know—scared, I think. You need to have a bit of cheek. For any art you need to have a bit of … you could call it courage or cheek, whatever. Just go for it! I think maybe women are a bit more scared with not being very good at walking into a shop and buying a guitar. But a lot of men I know feel the same way—they go into a shop and they feel completely frozen because of the way they play. I think it’s rubbish, really—it’s horrible!

THE RAINCOATS WITH SECTION 25, MEDIUM MEDIUM, KID CONGO POWERS, THE JAZZ BUTCHER, ABE VIGODA AND MANY MORE AT THE PART TIME PUNKS FESTIVAL ON SUN., OCT. 11, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 3 PM / $20-25 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. THE RAINCOATS’ SELF-TITLED LP WILL BE REISSUED ON KILL ROCK STARS ON TUES., OCT. 13. VISIT RAINCOATS AT THERAINCOATS.NET OR MYSPACE.COM/THERAINCOATS.

Download: Marco Paul “The Heavenly Music Corporation”

(for a complete play list please visit dublab.com)

For ten years, since the days when ‘Internet radio’ was as futuristic a concept as the electric car, dublab has been adding color, texture and depth to music in Los Angeles and the world beyond. Hip-hop and soul and jazz and psych and punk and folk and cosmic genius and more—whether from L.A., from deep history or from someplace no one’s even sure about—all find a permanent home at dublab.com as well as in the work of an army of DJs and artists and musicians and listeners who constantly prove that there is always something new and beautiful to listen to and learn about. Labrats Frosty and Ale meet at Girl House to talk about their anniversary. This interview by Chris Ziegler and Drew Denny.

Daedelus said dublab started when a bunch of super-nerds at USC found each other—true?
Mark “Frosty” McNeill (co-founder and president): Lies! Where is that guy? The ‘nerds’ part is very very accurate. Intense record geeks is probably a good description. The whole idea—we don’t know everything and we always wanted to stay open. We always wanted to discover, get turned on to something new. We were trying to share something with our listeners and we discover things along the way, so it always remains fresh. You learn more and more. You never know what direction it will take you.
Brad from Wounded Lion was saying that as a kid he learned from Rodney on the ROQ that all eras of rock ‘n’ roll are friends. I’d even say all genres of music are friends.
Mark McNeill: They’re all connected. There is a lineage. Everything is derivative and that’s not a negative term. Everything influences everything. That’s the whole idea: keep it open and broad. When we started on Real Media Player or Windows Media Player, it was in the midst of all that Internet stuff. We got a lot of free lunches and heard the word ‘synergy’ a lot.
Didn’t you almost have a million-dollar investment?
Mark McNeill: We were offered money before we even launched. I was fresh out of college and I’d sit in meetings with these people and think, ‘If you’re dumb enough to want to give us money, there’s something wrong with your company and you’re not gonna last.’ Everything was very shaky. We had one investor—the only one who seemed good. He was basically the guy who came up with the banner ad. He had tons of money. We were days away from signing papers and everybody was ready to do it. He was giving us money and then the morning the NASDAQ crashed, we got a phone call and my partner Jon’s face just fell. The conversation was basically, ‘I think we need to re-think the nature of our investment.’
Shoulda got the guy who invented the Viagra ad.
Mark McNeill: We do! He’s here—Ale, pull down your pants!
Alejandro Cohen (general manager and treasurer): In the long run, maybe it was a blessing in disguise.
Mark McNeill: We said no to everything for so long. There was such hucksterism in it. Very in the moment. It’s like a pop trend that’s on the radio. You see it from the start—it’s a flavor of the moment. If you take it as that and have fun, it’s cool. But don’t imagine it’s gonna be around for twenty years. All that stuff was a fly-by-night vibe. We probably would have been done nine years ago if we’d taken some of that money.
You’ve DJed at places like LACMA—do you think big institutions fetishize the DJ as a symbol of what’s cool?
Alejandro Cohen: Yeah. They ask, ‘What’s your DJ name? Just, uh, Ale?’
Mark McNeill: For the past three years we’ve done a lot of ‘cultural institution’ gigs. They’re cool because they’re not at places where people wanna go crazy and slide across the bar. It’s kids, families, all ages—people that are not gonna be at Part Time Punks. They trip out on seeing records. It’s weird.
How were you able to make dublab a place where Damo Suzuki, Linda Perhacs and Neil Hamburger can all feel equally at home?
Mark McNeill: We have really good incense!
Alejandro Cohen: You lose perspective on the variety of music because it all mixes. I’ll be visiting friends back home and play dublab for them to give them an idea of where I work. For them, it’s extreme worlds mixing in one place, but to me it sounds kind of like the same place. Latin to the other guy doing Middle Eastern . . .
Mark McNeill: Maybe it makes them nauseous.
What are the extreme limits of dublab’s programming?
Mark McNeill: The oldest music comes from Jonathan of Excavated Shellac—a lot of international 78s from the ’20s.
Alejandro Cohen: Some of the stuff Danny Holloway plays, it’s the only copy maybe existing. He did an all-Beatles covers set and was telling me about it. Stuff from Cambodia and weird things he knows. He’s certain they’re pretty much gone forever. Like ‘Hey Jude’ with steel drums—versions where you’re like, ‘What the hell?’
Mark McNeill: Or a lot of those $1,000 45s—B+ will come back from traveling and he’ll bring stuff from Addis Ababa. Original Ethiopian 45s. The idea is to bring it back to the old soul days when people would cut a record and then immediately go play it on the radio. Stuff like that. We play versions that never come out. Weird studio things.
What’s it like to hold the last-ever copy of something in your hands?
Mark McNeill: You should just eat it so it’s part of you! Cats like Jonathan—the records he specializes in are international. It wasn’t for export, it was for those locales. Cambodian records sold in villages but on RCA Victor. They survived in these places that were a pretty harsh atmosphere since the ’20s. They aren’t collector cultures. You get something new and throw the record away.
What kind of people would you have never met except for dublab?
Mark McNeill: We wouldn’t even have met each other if it wasn’t for music. That camaraderie of geeks!
Alejandro Cohen: When I was a kid, I was a very scared kind of guy. I’d look at people who play instruments and be like, ‘Oh, you must be so serious! I don’t deserve any of your time—you must have such important ideas.’ And at the end, most turn out not to! But in music you DO meet people with great ideas, and you feel honored to give them a ride somewhere!
Mark McNeill: The guys from Cluster were a treat.
Alejandro Cohen: They were joking about Brian Eno not being a strong boy.
Mark McNeill: They were living in the countryside of Germany and Eno was coming in from England—kind of a glammy boy. They’d be out chopping wood and all this stuff to warm the house—Roedelius is like a big lumberjack grandpa!—and Eno would be like, ‘I wanna chop wood!’ ‘Go back inside, sissy boy—we’ll make music later!’
When you interviewed James Brown, was it before or after his wife got ass implants?
Mark McNeill: Before she did but after I did. We had the same doctor. One of them fell out and now I have to wear a thick wallet. Have you ever been to the Experience Music Project? I don’t know if they still have it, but they had a ride like ‘DISCOVER FUNK MUSIC,’ like an EPCOT Center total after-school special thing. There were two kids and they turn into an alley and Bootsy Collins and James Brown spin around with sparkles coming off and the screen goes, ‘And now—INTO THE FUNK!’ And you go through James Brown’s legs. It’s nuts. It’s probably from the mid-’90s and really fucking bad. Or did you ever see the Miles Davis scooter ads? Lou Reed and Miles Davis—both at fucked-up points in their life. Miles Davis in a parachute pantsuit and stuff. Weird.
Alejandro Cohen: I’d love to have seen them shooting that. ‘Just give me the check!’
What would a horrible dublab commercial be like?
Mark McNeill: Nick Harcourt-y. ‘It’s 2012 and the city is bumping—the spirit of the night!’ We were thinking we should make one for Cinefamily with robots and stuff. ‘Morning becomes … erotic!’
Do you have the same relationship with KCRW that we do with L.A. WEEKLY?
Alejandro Cohen: KXLU has that relationship.
Mark McNeill: There are people there that are true music fans, but when you build a machine depending on that money, then they’re not any different than commercial radio as far as money and power. They rely on their fund drive so much they can’t take chances. The DJs there are great people and music fans but they tread so lightly. It’s like when I was at KUSC. It’s elevator music—classical music. They found their subscriber base and they keep them happy and that’s it. So it’s not such a service. When you have power like that and you can’t take chances, you should.
Anytime anything declares itself ‘independent,’ it’s sort of a political act. Why is it important for dublab to be independent?
Alejandro Cohen: In a good sense of the word, I’m ‘stuck’ with what I am. That’s what we do. I couldn’t do a conscious commercial thing.
Mark McNeill: All that stuff has a purpose. Certain people do certain things. Maybe they’re just happy with it. We try not to judge what people are up to; we try to give them an opportunity to get something different.
How important to a healthy music community is the sort of infrastructure dublab provides?
Mark McNeill: When we started, the idea was we’d be a for-profit business that did good things with the profits, that was grassroots/community-based. But there was never a profit! You look at Ben & Jerry’s—‘Cool, we’ll make money and support farmers!’ Not that we wanna make ice cream, but nonprofit is in line with the original idea. It fits in with the ethos of why we started dublab. If you go nonprofit, the public owns it. It’s the idea of the listeners being part of it.
Alejandro Cohen: It almost makes the mission of dublab more genuine. There’s not a guy behind it getting rich or hoping to get rich. Even the live sessions are all through a Creative Commons license. So in a sense it really is doing it for the music. Through the years, dublab found itself operating more on a nonprofit model. We were an LLC, but we were doing fundraisers and projects mostly with museums and cultural institutions—we had to do the switch! When we were applying, I was a bit afraid. But a friend of mine who’s worked for many nonprofits said this is very very common—organizations operating for ten or fifteen years with no status at all and then they switch.
Mark McNeill: It’s all very fragile. I remember my grandfather, the last thing he ever said was, ‘You know what? Do what you wanna do. You’ll be much happier. Do what you wanna do. I went through my whole life worrying.’ When I was at USC, most of my friends were film students and some make really good money. Some have Mercedes and houses they bought. I’m somewhat envious. I wish I had a car that wouldn’t break down! But they’re envious of me doing something I dig. I spend my day around good people. I put a little time into the world of bullshit and it’s much more fulfilling to be around intelligent people who are creative. That’s part of the reason for being nonprofit. We don’t wanna bow to the wishes of someone selling the flavor of the moment. We think of a more timeless aesthetic, something that isn’t commercially viable. That’s a major reason to go nonprofit. You can be timeless.

DUBLAB’s TENTH ANNIVERSARY EXPLORATION RUNS FROM THUR., OCT. 1, THROUGH SAT., OCT. 10, AT MULTIPLE LOS ANGELES VENUES INCLUDING THE ‘VIBRANT VISIONS’ RETROSPECTIVE AT THE CONTINENTAL GALLERY ON THUR., OCT. 1; A LABRAT MATINEE FILM SCREENING WITH LIVE PERFORMANCE BY DAEDELUS AT THE DOWNTOWN INDEPENDENT ON FRI., OCT. 2; THE FUTURE ROOTS STAGE CURATED BY DUBLAB AT THE EAGLE ROCK MUSIC FEST ON COLORADO BLVD. IN EAGLE ROCK ON SAT., OCT. 3; DUBLAB MEETS PART TIME PUNKS AT THE ECHO ON SUN., OCT. 4; GIVE UP: SAD FILM SCREENINGS WITH SORROWFUL LIVE SCORES AT CINEFAMILY ON MON., OCT. 5; DECKADES AT THE VERDUGO BAR ON TUE., OCT. 6; A LIVE PERFORMANCE BY LINDA PERHACS AND FRIENDS (INCLUDING HECUBA, CRYSTAL ANTLERS AND MORE) AT REDCAT ON WED., OCT. 7; DUBLAB AT THE DOWNTOWN ARTWALK AT THE CONTINENTAL GALLERY ON THUR., OCT. 8; A JOHN LENNON BIRTHDAY BED-IN RADIO BROADCAST LIVE ON KPFK 90.7-FM ON FRI., OCT. 9; AND A FINALE BASH WITH REPRESENTATIVES FROM INTERNATIONAL MUSIC ROOM, MAS EXITOS, SKETCHBOOK, TONALISM AND MORE AT A VENUE TBA ON SAT., OCT. 10. MORE INFORMATION AT DUBLAB.COM/EVENTS. LISTEN TO DUBLAB AT DUBLAB.COM.

Download: Monotonix “Set Me Free”

(from Where Were You When It Happened? out now on Drag City)

Israel’s Monotonix are known and respected and perhaps even secretly coveted here in L.A. because of their world-wrecking live set and super-charged rock ‘n’ roll. Singer Ami Shalev speaks now while presumably fully clothed. This interview by Rena Kosnett.

Hello, Ami—ma shlomech?
Ami Shalev (vocals): Ani beseder. At yodaat eich ledaber ivrit?
No, no—I don’t speak Hebrew really.
Ami Shalev: Ohhh—because I prefer to do it in Hebrew!
The music trend in Israel is much more about the club scene, rather than live music. Do you think this is a positive or a negative thing?
Ami Shalev: I have to say that the rock n’ roll scene in Israel, it is almost not exist because it’s too small. You can’t tour in Israel. It’s not like to live in the real world of rock ‘n’ roll. Most of the music in Israel is a mix between Arab music and Greek music, as you know, and there’s a club scene in Israel. There are more people going to clubs than to shows. There are underground shows of course. Madonna is playing here next week so she’s going to have a lot of crowd. But it’s not something that happen every day. But I have nothing against it. I’m not angry about it because I love this country, and If I wanna tour I am going to Europe or Australia or the U.S., Canada, whatever. And it’s perfect because I come back to Israel, chill out a little bit and then going for another tour.
My mother is from Ramat Gan, and she left Israel for a lot of reasons. One of them is that her good friend was killed while she was in the army. But another reason was because as a young painter, she didn’t feel like she had the creative freedom to develop. Have you felt stifled like that?
Ami Shalev: Yeah, because in Israel… the thing is… It’s not that people don’t let you do whatever you want to do with art. People let you do whatever you want to. But there’s no really big art scene in painting, and in music, and you don’t have the opportunity to talk with other people about it—to see other people doing it. In Israel, if you are not in the mainstream and success, you can’t make a living for it. You don’t have a real market for it, so you’re just doing it for yourself. In the U.S., everything that you do got a huge market. Everything that people can go with their heart—with the freedom of their mind to do whatever they want. At this point, it’s not that people tell you ‘don’t do this,’ and ‘don’t do this.’ But there’s not a lot of people doing it and there’s not a lot of ideas in the air, so that’s the situation here. So I understand your mother.
Now she wants to move back—she’s longing for Israel.
Ami Shalev: That I can understand too. For people that born in Israel and raised in Israel, it’s home. America is not the place that I born in—it’s not my real home. My real home is here, my culture is from here, and the food, the language, the way people act, everything. So maybe that’s what she feels—that after she finishes her mission about painting and doing her art, she kind of miss the little things that make different—the food, the other part of the family, the culture, the language.
How were you exposed to rock ‘n’ roll music when you were growing up?
Ami Shalev: Ehh—for my age because I am 44, there was no Internet at all, there was no such a thing like MTV or music videos—I mean, music videos you could see, ppppfffffff, something like an hour per week. And of course records—as a rock ‘n’ roll record collector, you could search in the music store for something that you want. But actually it was very hard to follow all the things that happened in rock ‘n’ roll music in Israel. You can’t expose to all the underground scenes that happen—even in the ’60s and ’70s you can’t expose to it because you’re in Israel. So a lot of the bands that I growing up with—the classic ones, you know, Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, things like that, I found in the record stores. Now most of the bands from U.K. and America that come to Israel, it’s huge mainstream bands. Because to fly, there’s no chance that if you are a small band that you can cover the cost coming from the US, or even Europe—especially if you need to fly something like 3 or 4 people. That’s a real problem because it’s a kind of isolation. If you can drive with your car around Europe you can put it on your tour plan. But you need to fly to Israel, so it make it very difficult. It’s a shame because people don’t get the opportunity to expose to really new music. Or the chance that they got to expose is only by record or Internet or huge mainstream bands. It’s a shame. But ahh, you know, that’s what we got.
It’s funny because Monotonix have an amazing reputation developing in the States. In Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Portland, Seattle—reporters are writing about Monotonix being their favorite live band and one of the best shows at SXSW, but all the Israelis I spoke with, even the ones in Tel Aviv—
Ami Shalev: They don’t know us! Because we are not playing here. We are not playing shows in Israel.
I read that you saw Fatal Flying Guilloteens a few years ago, and that show made you want to form a new and more extreme band.
Ami Shalev: The first time that I saw them it was, I think 5 years ago. And this was the first time I saw a band that take the musical act as physically as they took it. And it makes a real impression because when you come from a place like Israel that you can’t be expose to things like that—I mean, you see something like that and it really impress you, and you say, ‘Whoa, that’s another way to do a live show!’ So I must say yes.
About your very physical live show—It seems like Israel is a country that is inherently all about the negotiation of borders. Do you think that shoving the microphone up your ass, groping women in the audience, pouring beer down your pants, etc., is your response to an environment of limits?
Ami Shalev: No, I don’t think so. I mean, I’m doing whatever I feel during the shows, and everything is kind of improvised. We don’t plan it before. That’s what everybody in the band feels very nature and comfortable with. But still, I must say, that I feel we are VERY Israeli. I think that we got—how you call it? Chutzpah! It’s the chutzpah and the bad accent and the bad English. Our show, in a way it’s kind of different from other shows because I’m aware that we are not the only or the first band that are playing on the floor and being physical with the audience. But I think we are taking it for another place. There was a lot of hardcore bands back in the ‘80s that the singer get into the crowd. Jello Biafra, David Yow, people like that. But our show is kind of different because we don’t take it from the anger side. We take it from the fun side. That is what people really want—is to have fun. So I think we got kind of a formula that work for us. A kind of point of view so that people relax about the show. And it’s amazing, because you can spill on people beer! If I spill beer on people on the street they will beat me! But, we got the vibe and during the show people kind of going with it. They see the band and the band not afraid to get dirty. To be in the crowd and everybody together in this party. So this is the magic.
Are you secretly self-conscious about your body when you take your clothes off?
Ami Shalev: Yeah, I’m working out. When I’m not touring I’m working out. I mean, I’m 44 years old.
You look great. And I’ve practically seen you naked.
Ami Shalev: Thank you. I’m working out back home when I’m not touring, and I’m not kidding about it, because at my age you need to keep working all the time if you don’t want to lose your shape. I remember when I was 20 or 25 I can eat whatever I want, do whatever I want, and nothing affected my body. I’m not saying that I’m eating only health food, but I need to work out when I’m not touring to keep in shape. I’m biking, doing a little bit push-ups, things like that. Not so much, but yeah—I’m aware that I need to maintain my body because the nature of this show.
I’m sure it didn’t hurt to be a looker when you got your record deal. That’s all they’re looking for at Drag City—a good physique.
Ami Shalev: If Hollywood want it like this, I will give it!
What do you think about the separation barrier being built along the West Bank? I’m interested in an Israeli artist’s opinion about this.
Ami Shalev: I’m not speaking about politics. We are coming from a very sensitive place, politics-wise. You know what I mean. And it will sound a little bit hippie, but that’s my point of view that people should relax. Take it easy. Wars are not good for anybody. And if people would just stop and think with logic, things would be much much much better and easy to settle up between countries and people. The situation that the world gets into…it is all the time like that, and I’m aware that this is human nature. But I think that people should make decisions by their sense, not by the instinct. Be aware that violence and war and all these things are not acceptable. It’s bad. It’s bad. So everyone should be act positive. I am aware that there is a lot of interest about this war, but that’s my point of view about it.
It’s specifically a feeling of not wanting to talk about the Middle East?
Ami Shalev: I can talk to people about my point of view, but I will take the position that John Lennon took, and say ‘Give peace a chance.’ That’s what I think. We should take this chance. About Israel. Here it is. About the Israeli politics, I think that’s what we need, what we must do.
What about trying to change things yourself inside Israel?
In Israel, I don’t know if it’s not going to change for the next 100 years, but for the near future you can’t change—I mean, I can’t change—I’m not a guy that’s gonna lead a revolution or something like that. I live with it in peace. I’m feeling very comfortable in Israel right now because I don’t have any expectation from Israel to be something that it can’t be.
Do you really think it can’t be, or do you just think it’s not going to happen any time soon?
Ami Shalev: I think that to be the country that I want Israel to be, we should solve a lot of problems before. We got a really long way to do, and it’s OK by me because we are a very young country. Even compared to the U.S., where it is a young culture and a young country, we are still very young. And still a long way to do. Really really really really important things we need to deal with before we start dealing with whether you can do your rock ‘n’ roll. There’s a lot of things we need to deal with.
If you look at social evolution historically, though, there’s an inextricable connection between creative change and political change. For example, if you think of the Dadaists in Zurich and Berlin, it was all about a political and cultural shift.
Ami Shalev: I agree with you, I agree with you. But it’s very difficult to do, because we are still fighting on our living here. It’s very hard. And we need a very strong leader who will take us to the next level of this kind of thinking. It’s very hard. I don’t know, I pray for this kind of day every day. I hope it will come soon.
You toured around on the F Yeah Bus, ‘Greased Lightning,’ in July of ’08 with some of my favorite people.
Ami Shalev: It was really interesting to get into a bus with 15 or 20 people and tour with them, and to do it with an American people. It almost felt like it was to—to get into bed with people that came from another culture!
Would you do it again?
Ami Shalev: No. I’m too old for it.
Too old to spend time in a bus full of young smelly Americans?
Ami Shalev: And the bus with no air condition? It’s too much for me!

MONOTONIX WITH SIGNALS, THE PRESS FIRE! AND PROTECT ME ON WED., SEPT. 16, AT THE SMELL, 247 S. MAIN ST., DOWNTOWN. 8 PM / $10 / ALL AGES. THESMELL.ORG. MONOTONIX’S WHERE WERE YOU WHEN IT HAPPENED? IS OUT NOW ON DRAG CITY. VISIT MONOTONIX AT MONOTONIX.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/MONOTONIX.

Download: “Oh Yes, Los Angeles” mixtape by When You Awake

Jody from the fantastic blog When You Awake—your sympathetic destination if homesick, lonesome, riled, fiery or any mindstates in between—presents us with this week’s mixtape, dedicated to cosmic cowboy/cowgirl rock songs about the city of Los Angeles. (City of doom and freeways, too.) Listen to Jody’s radio show Mondays 2-4 PM on Little Radio and go see her DJ at Gold Dust at Footsie’s in Highland Park one lucky day each month! And now to the tape…

1. John Mayall “Vacations”
“Ten hours in a plane – England left behind / Back here in L.A. – Wonder what I’ll find / Summertime, my plane is coming down / I’m a wandering man and this is gonna be my town.” An ode to Los Angeles from the man that gave us Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac and more.

2. Gene Clark “Los Angeles”
Gene Clark was one of the original Byrds who ended up leaving the group because of—get ready for the irony—a fear of flying. Roger McGuinn famously (or infamously) told him, “You can’t be a Byrd, Gene,
if you can’t fly.” He went on to release a number of amazing solo records and some amazingly beautiful and haunting songs that have been covered by everyone like “Through The Morning, Through The Night” (which also happens to be one of my favorite songs ever) and “Train Leaves Here This Morning.”

3. Jim Ford “Working My Way To L.A.”
Country soul! Kentucky born Jim Ford was living in New Orleans when he decided to make the move out to L.A. I, too, moved to Los Angeles from the South (Nashville, Tennessee, to be exact), so this tune holds a
special place in my heart.

4. Flying Burrito Brothers “Sin City”
Nothing says Southern California Country quite like Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Sing it, boys.

5. Arlo Guthrie “Coming Into Los Angeles”
I’ve always loved the way he says “Los Angeleeeeze”. It’s like that Swiss Dairy ad I see all around town: you can’t say “Los Angeleeeeze” without smiling. Forced L.A. positivity!

6. New Riders of the Purple Sage “L.A. Lady”
I’m a total sucker for male/female vocals and the background vocals on this tune by Grateful Dead member Donna Jean Godchaux are no exception. She’s kind of low in the mix and only comes in for a short stint right at the end, but she straight-up sounds like a young Loretta Lynn with the way she sings “cry.”

7. Leslie and the Badgers “Los Angeles”
The only song on this mix recorded post-1980, this beautiful tune was released last week on their first full length record, Roomful of Smoke. When I truly like a song, it goes on repeat in my car, on my
computer, everywhere and well…let’s just say I’ve only had it for a week and it’s already in my Top 25 Most Played Songs in iTunes.

8. Guy Clark “L.A. Freeway”
I first heard this song in the movie Heartworn Highways, which is a must-see documentary that covers a handful of country troubadours like Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, David Allan Coe and more. All versions of this tune are great, but I much prefer Clark’s understated version that appears at the beginning of the film to his proper studio recording or Jerry Jeff Walker‘s version.

9. John Phillips “Topanga Canyon”
Papa John Phillips (of the Mamas and the Papas) wrote a number of love songs to Los Angeles, including “California Dreamin’” and “Twelve Thirty”, but I decided to choose this from his 1970 solo record John The Wolf King of L.A. which focuses on Topanga Canyon. I love how this song builds from a single guitar to a full on sing-a-long.

10. Jimmy Payne “L.A. Angels”
When I was putting this mix together, I found that a number of musicians have a love/hate relationship with L.A. There are so many songs about coming to L.A. to find fame and fortune and then failing and moving home. My experience of L.A. has been so different, however, and I really wanted to end this mix with a song that perfectly describes my feelings for this vastly underrated town. I mentioned this desire to my friend Chad Brown (of local L.A. band C.B. Brand), and he told me he had just the track to ease my troubled mind. Ease it he did with this brilliant little gem of a tune. I just want to say, I love you L.A. Thanks for all the wonderful years.

Other notable L.A. tunes:
The Beatles’ “Blue Jay Way”, the Kinks’ “Celluloid Heroes”, Joni Mitchell’s “Ladies of the Canyon”, Rosewood Thieves’ “Los Angeles”, Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land”, Neil Young’s “L.A.”, Love’s “Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark And Hilldale.”

THUR., JULY 2 at 8 PM: Chicano Rock!: The Sounds of East Los Angeles

“Let’s take a trip down Whittier Boulevard!” chant Thee Midniters, in Jon Wilkman’s beautiful love letter to the soulful sounds of So Cal. Narrated by Edward James Olmos, this lively and inspiring film explores more than fifty years in the musical history of East Los Angeles, America’s largest Mexican-American community. For decades, generations of East L.A. artists created a unique musical voice, and in the process, proudly expressed their cultural identity, from ’40s pachuco swing to ’50s teen idol Ritchie Valens, ’60s garage rock and soul, to punk and beyond. Chicano Rock! features the timeless music of these eras, including Lalo Guerrero, Ritchie Valens, Cannibal and the Headhunters, Thee Midniters, El Chicano, Tierra, Los Lobos, Ozomatli, and Alice Velasquez (The Bags, Cholita, Las Tres). Jam-packed with rare footage, photos, artifacts, Chicano Rock! treats you to an exhilarating lowrider cruise that could only happen on the streets of Los Angeles. Author Gene Aguilera (“The Golden Age of Chicano Rock ‘n Roll”) will be on-hand to spin classic 45s, and we’ve also got a post-screening live set by a very special seminal L.A. punk band!

Dir. Jon Wilkman, 2008, digital presentation, 60 min.

Tickets – $12

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THUR., JULY 9 at 8 PM: B-MUSIC & DJ ANDY VOTEL PRESENT: Hungarian Rock Night

British DJ extraordinaire Andy Votel will be in person at the Cinefamily to spin tunes and to present what is both a remarkable achievement in Hungarian pop culture and Eastern European film, starring some of the leading lights of both Communist era New Wave cinema and the forward-thinking Hungarian rock scene. Szép lányok, ne sírjatok! (aka Don’t Cry, Pretty Girls) stars Jaroslava Schallerova (fresh from her leading role in Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders) alongside Hungarian rock goddess Sarolta Zalatnay and a cast of freak-rock non-actors plucked from the disgruntled state-governed Qualiton and Pepita record label rosters to make this underhanded tribute to the ‘silenced’ pop group Illes, in disguise as a working-class drama/rock festival liberation expose. Directed by Marta Mészáros (wife of Hungarian New Wave luminary Miklós Jancsó) and featuring heavy footage of bands like Metro, Syrius and Omega (who can be heard on the recently released “Well Hung” compilation on Finders Keepers records), this buried and previously untranslated film holds serious appeal to fans of both Polish and Czech Cinema, Mod culture, Youth culture and obscure 70′s rock music.

Dir. Marta Mészáros 1970, digital presentation, 90 min

Tickets – $10

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THUR., JULY 16 at 8 PM: America’s Lost Band: The Remains

“Had these Boston bad boys stuck it out beyond their 1966 debut, we might today be calling them–and not the Stones–the World’s Greatest Rock N’ Roll band.” -Mark Kemp, Paste Magazine

They played The Ed Sullivan Show, were hand-picked by Paul McCartney to open for the Beatles, and then…gone. America’s Lost Band captures the essence of The Remains, one of the best of American rock bands you’ve never heard. The story follows guitarist Barry Tashian, keyboardist Billy Briggs, bassist Vern Miller and drummer Chip Damiani, the four young original members of The Remains, from their earliest beginnings to their all-too-early end, when they broke up on the brink of fame, right after opening for the Beatles’ last-ever tour in 1966. America’s Lost Band finds the heart of music that refuses to die, culminating in the band’s recent well-deserved rediscovery and reunion. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Michael Stich, producer Fred Cantor, Remains keyboardist Bill Briggs and Remains frontman Barry Tashian (who will also be on hand to sign copies of his book “Ticket To Ride”, as well as your Remains albums!), in addition to a live set by psych garage rockers The Living Sickness!

Dir. Michael Stich, 2008, HDCAM, 66 min.

Tickets – $12

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THUR., JULY 23 at 8 PM: It Came From Detroit

In a smashing, energetic presentation, It Came From Detroit lovingly puts on display the “Motor City”, home to an internationally renowned and influential garage rock scene. Starting with The Gories in the 1980s, the bands of the Detroit garage scene have been known for two things: an impeccable knowledge of rock history, and a raucous live show. As bands such as the White Stripes, The Von Bondies, and the Electric Six started to develop a following overseas, journalists everywhere started to hype Detroit as “the next Seattle”, and It Came From Detroit documents the evolution of this scene, from its humble underground beginnings to its ascension as a trend known the world over. And, perhaps most touchingly, the film deals as well with how the unexpected popularity of certain key bands impacts the scene’s small group of friends, as some are catapulted to global recognition, while others are barely known outside of Detroit’s crumbling confines. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director James R. Petix, plus a live set by special musical guests!

Dir. James R. Petix, 2008, digital presentation, 102 min.

Tickets – $12

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THUR., JULY 30 at 8 PM: Pardon Us For Living But The Graveyard Is Full

30+ years. 2000+ shows. No hits. No sleep. In 1976, a gang of kids from Queens stumbled upon some abandoned instruments in the basement of the house they were renting and ended up forming a band. Little did they realize that thirty years later, they’d still be struggling to play their music and pay the bills. The Fleshtones were an integral part of the ’70s NYC underground scene and, amazingly, having soldiered on as a paradox, simultaneously legendary and obscure: boasting a rabid worldwide fan base and a reputation as a white-hot live act, but barely able to keep a record label for two albums in a row and ignored in all histories of the scene they helped create. Stunning vintage footage, insight from Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Clem Burke (Blondie) and Handsome Dick Manitoba (The Dictators), and candid self-deprecating interviews with band members Peter Zaremba, Keith Streng, Bill Milhizer and Ken Fox add up to a thoroughly entertaining portrait of the real hardest-working garage band in show biz. The evening’s screening will be followed by a live set by special musical guests!

Dir. Geoffray Barbier, 2009, digital presentation, 65 min.

Tickets – $12

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SAT., AUG. 1: BMI Roundtable Panel: Music, in Film, TV and New Media ’09

Join us for an intimate discussion of the changing landscape for music rights and new media. Musicians can find out how to get their music into films, TV and new media, and filmmakers can learn how to clear the rights for music for their work. The afternoon’s event will be moderated by Michael Des Barres, and guests include Doreen Ringer-Ross (BMI), music supervisors Tracy McKnight (Julien Donkey-Boy, Human Nature, Murderball) and Howard Paar (The L-Word, Dogtown and Z-Boys, Ken Park), composer Jay Ferguson (“The Office”), DKTR founder/film director Allison Anders (Border Radio, Grace Of My Heart, Things Behind The Sun), and more!

Tickets – $7

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THUR., AUG. 6: Wesley Willis’s Joyrides and Haack…The King Of Techno

Despite impossible odds, self-proclaimed rock ‘n roll star and “Chicago City Artist” Wesley Willis became an underground rock icon, revered artist and hero to many before his untimely death in 2003. Through his force of personality, his drawing talents, his unique vocabulary and an incredibly focused and singular songwriting style, Wesley’s creativity attracted people from all walks of life, and helped him to overcome the daily torment of schizophrenia, a haunting condition which plagued him throughout his adult life. Directors Chris Bagley and Kim Shively spent five years on the road and at home with Willis (along withn his many family members, friends and collaborators) to create the definitive portrait of Wesley as prolific artist and musician, on his path from obscurity to fame–a journey which will leave you uplifted, tickled and adrenalized.

Bruce Haack was one of the most musically and lyrically inventive artists of the early electronic age, combining homemade analog synths, classical, country, pop and acid rock elements into one massive, heady stew. His craft evolved from his passion and creation of numerous kids’ records, and today his work has inspired the likes of world-renowned musicians such as Beck, the Beastie Boys and Mouse On Mars, proving he’s an almost-lost treasure ripe for rediscovery. Packed with warped visuals, wild music and far out stories, Haack follows the King of Techno as he drops in on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and golden-oldie game show host Garry Moore, playing his bizarre instruments such as the Peopleodian, a device played by touching peoples’ skin! Directed in true Haack spirit, for kids, adults and music fans alike, Philip Anagnos’ directorial debut will send you out humming “School For Robots” and scrambling for Haack’s records! Director Philip Anagnos will appear in person for a post-screening Q&A session!

Wesley Willis’s Joyrides  Dirs. Chris Bagley & Kim Shivley, 2008, DigiBeta, 78 min.

Haack: The King of Techno  Dir. Philip Anagnos, 2004, DigiBeta, 57 min.

I Need That Record! asks the simple question: why have over 3,000 independent record stores in the U.S. closed in the past decade? As much a cool history lesson on vinyl as a portrait of greedy record labels, media consolidation, homogenized radio, big box stores, e-commerce, shoddy “stars” pushed by big money and even the digital revolution, the film is, at its core, a loving tribute to the cherished nerdy record stores which for decades have nurtured our access to the music we all love. In addition to the exploration of its juicy premise, the film contains interviews with Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Ian MacKaye (Fugazi), Mike Watt (Minutemen), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group), Chris Frantz (Talking Heads), Pat Carney (The Black Keys), composer Glenn Branca, authors Noam Chomsky and Legs McNeil, rock photographer Bob Gruen–and dozens of indie record stores across the U.S. of A.! The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Brendan Toller, a panel discussion (moderated by Michael Des Barres, featuring special guests) on the fate of the indie record store today, a Danny Benair Record Club listening party (bring a record to share if you want!), and a record swap on the Cinefamily outdoor patio!

Dir. Brendan Toller, 2008, digital presentation, 77 min.

Tickets – $10

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THUR., AUG. 20 at 8 PM: ON/OFF: Mark Stewart from The Pop Group to The Maffia

This one’s a must for all post-punk junkies! The name of singer/industrial hip-hop pioneer Mark Stewart may not be instantly familiar, but his influence is felt the world over. From his early days with confrontational post-punk pioneers The Pop Group to his myriad collaborations with the likes of Trent Reznor, Massive Attack and Primal Scream, Stewart has provided ghostly beats and haunting vocals for over thirty years, and shows no signs of stopping. German filmmaker Tøni Schifer, who followed Stewart around for three years, has crafted a detailed, intimate portrait of the artist, supplemented by interviews with Stewart himself, his Pop Group co-horts Dan Catsis, Gareth Sager and John Waddington, Keith Levine (P.I.L.), Janine Rainforth (Maximum Joy), Douglas Hart (The Jesus & Mary Chain), Fritz Catlin (23 Skidoo), Daniel Miller (Mute Records), Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Massive Attack and many others, plus some terrific never-before-seen vintage performance footage. Plus, scenes of the wildly eccentric Stewart interacting with his mother are not to be missed! Straight from Berlin, director Tøni Schifer will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A!

Dir: Tøni Schifer, 2009, DigiBeta, 90 min.

Tickets – $12

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SPECIAL SATURDAY SCREENING

SAT., AUG. 22 at 5 PM: Of All The Things

The most unique comeback story of the year. Dennis Lambert was one of the most successful and diverse songwriter/producers of the ’70s and ’80s, with hits like “Ain’t No Woman (Like The One I’ve Got)”, “Rhinestone Cowboy”, “Don’t Pull Your Love”, “Baby Come Back” and “Night Shift”. He had chart-toppers in almost every genre of music–at one point, four of his songs were simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, a feat previously accomplished only by The Beatles. That was then. Today, he’s a 60-year-old family man selling real estate in Florida. But it turns out his obscure 1972 solo album is huge–in the Philippines. A Filipino concert promoter has been begging Dennis to tour for decades, and in 2007 he finally agreed. Of All The Things is a hilarious and touching pop/rock/country/R&B documentary that follows Dennis on his whirlwind tour, as he rediscovers his passion for music and thousands of fans he never knew he had. Some lives deserve an encore. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Dennis Lambert, his documentarian/son Jody Lambert, and some very special guests!

Dir. Jody Lambert, 2008, HDCAM, 83 min.

Tickets – $10

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THUR., AUG. 27 at 8 PM: Night Flight tribute night

Before infomercials took over the late-night airwaves, overnight programming was a staid line-up of reruns, talk shows, and old movies. Throughout most of the ’80s however, there was one anarchic alternative—-Night Flight. Premiering on the fledgling USA Network on June 5, 1981–two months before MTV’s arrival—-Night Flight was a glorious amalgamation of music videos, short films, cartoons, interviews, concerts, and cult movies. For many viewers, it was a video primer to the counterculture of the Reagan era, featuring artists and films that at the time could not be seen anywhere else and for seven years, Night Flight was required viewing for stoners, punkers, headbangers, and insomniacs. Now, twenty years after the final episode was aired, the show’s producers have gone back into their video vaults and emerged with this best-of program that will bring tears of joy to fans’ sleep-deprived eyes, as well as a musical feature film picked from the Night Flight programming schedule archives! Night Flight creator Stuart Shapiro will appear in-person for a Q&A after the program!

Tickets – $10

Download: Ya Ho Wha 13 “Treat You So Right”

(from Magnificence in the Memory out June 23 on Drag City)

Ya Ho Wha 13 were the band formed out of the pre-dawn practice sessions that served also as morning meditation for the Source Family, the L.A.-area religious sect that ran their own health food restaurant during the ‘70s. They released nine albums but recorded hours of material. Drag City has collected nine unreleased songs for this month’s Magnificence in the Memory. This interview by Dan Collins.

How did you get your name, Isis?
Isis Aquarian (Source Family historian): It was the family name given to me. Father said that the names we were given were for several reasons—either because that’s the name that we needed to learn from, or that’s the name of who we were, or that’s the name we needed to get qualities from. In other words, whatever name we had, nobody could go on an ego trip about because you never knew why you had that name.
You never had an ego trip about being named after an Egyptian goddess?
No, not really! I always related to her, though. Manly P. Hall from the Philosophical Research Society—who did Secret Teachings of All Ages—was a mentor to Father when he was Jim Baker, before he became Father and started the Source. And we had gone over to see Manly P. Hall in the early days, and he handed Father a list of names, and he said ‘These names are the names to give the people in the Family.’ And we went back and people either picked what name they liked, or Father gave them a name. And somebody gave me the name Isis, and I didn’t relate to it. I said, ‘No, I’m not going to take that name!’ And Father was standing there and he said, ‘No, that’s your name.’
What was your original role in the Family and in the Source?
I had known Father as Jim Baker, when he had his other restaurant called the Old World. He had three restaurants—the Aware Inn, the Old World, and he opened up the Source. And they were all within, I would say, four or five blocks of each other on Sunset Boulevard. And they were all very famous. And he had his first two as Jim Baker. I met him, he had the Old World, and he was living with his wife of the time, Dora, a French girl. And I became friends with Dora, and I hung out at the Old World. And I knew Jim, but we never seemed to really connect, which was very strange, because he was very good looking, and he was the kind that would flirt with everybody. But there just seemed to be a hold on us at the time. But then I went my way, and he went his way, and I ended up living with Ron Raffaelli. He was a famous rock photographer—he was known as Jimi Hendrix’s photographer. That’s how I met him. I was asked to go on a shoot with Jimi Hendrix, and we became engaged. And I had my life at the studio with him for a couple years. And I had heard that Jim had opened up the Source, and was being known as Father, and was starting a spiritual family. We were looking for a group of people with long hair that looked like Jesus, because we were doing a poster for Jesus Christ Superstar. And I said to Ron, ‘I know where there’s a bunch of people running around looking like Jesus. They’re at this place called the Source! I’m going to go down there—I’ll get us some models.’ So I drove down to the Source, and oh my god, the place was incredible. As soon as you stepped near it, you knew something was happening. And I stepped onto the patio, and I asked for Jim Baker and somebody said ‘Oh, you mean Father.’ And he came walking out, and he was like 6’3’, and he looked like Moses. He had long hair and a beard, and he was no longer the Jim Baker I knew. And I was immediately smitten, as they say, and he just embraced me and said ‘I was wondering how long it was going to take you to come home—to come back.’ And I basically forgot what I was even doing there. And he invited me to come to morning meditation the next day, and then I basically never left. So I just walked out of my home life and became a full time part of the Source family.
How old were you?
I was in my late twenties. A lot of the kids were sixteen, seventeen, and in their early twenties. I’m not saying I was the oldest one there, but I had also known Jim Baker so I wasn’t intimidated by him. Most people were finding their guru and their masters, and I found him as my earthly spiritual father, for sure. But I knew that I had a destiny with him. I basically became his right hand—that’s what he called me. The Family had other names for me. ‘Bulldog’—you know there’s a bulldog in every family. And ‘hatchet lady,’ ‘dragon lady’…
Did you like those nicknames?
It didn’t bother me, no. In fact, ‘Dragon Lady’ was kind of endearing! You had your role, and you played it out, and Father always had my back.
When did the band Ya Ho Wa 13 start?
We had musicians in the Family that would always gather and play. We weren’t doing anything ‘musically,’ but we did realize we had some very talented musicians. Music seemed to be playing all around the house. And that was the thing to do back then. Everybody carried a guitar. It was like music was the new language. And one day I think Octavius came in and was talking about being a drummer, and a lot of people had been musicians, and just gave it up when they came in—whatever any of us were, we gave up when we came in. It was of no necessity at that point. And I just remember Father one day saying, ‘Wait a minute. I have a drummer. I have a guitar player. I have a bass player. We have singers. We have a band. Let’s do some music!’ So, bands started being formed to see what we wanted to do with them. And at this point, Father wasn’t really in them—he was just having fun seeing what we could do. And because we were very famous, and everybody came to the Source, all the movie producers, directors, musicians—John Lennon was there all the time—they all came there. So we figured, ‘Well jeez, we can just start letting people hear it and see if we can do something with it.’
I heard you would play every day from 3 to 6 in the morning! When did you sleep?
Right! That was when we gathered for morning meditation. Father would be so full of energy and so excited, and he would say, ‘Let’s go to the band room!’ And the band room was just a converted garage off the meditation room, and speakers had been hooked up, so no matter what was happening, we could all hear it. Because we all couldn’t fit in the band room.
A lot of your movement’s spiritual beginnings and influences have been chronicled. But what seem less well known are the specifics of the musical side of things.
He formed Ya Ho Wa 13 and started playing with it, and that was like his signature when he started playing with the Family. It’s not like he could play or sing. It was another way of morning meditation. It was another way of his talking about the wisdom teachings. He often said, ‘Long after I’m gone, my teachings will continue because of the music we’re doing now. Music has no barriers. Everyone understands music because it’s a soul thing.’
One of the interesting things about your band is that, given your spiritual and cosmological underpinnings and your emphasis on improvisation and spontaneity, I was expecting you to sound like Sun Ra or something jazzy. But you guys are a rock ‘n’ roll combo.
Very much so. When the band first now started getting back together, I was wondering how it was going to work. Because when you have the head guy no longer there, how does that work? And I know the public’s been going on the albums that had Father in it, like Penetration. So when the three Brothers got together and decided to continue playing as Ya Ho Wa 13, it was interesting to see how that was going to play out: Octavius, drummer, Djin, guitar, and Sunflower, bass.
Was there ever fighting about the music?
There were disagreements, but we never got into bickering or arguing. The short time we lived together was so incredible because we lived in a space and time out of this reality. Certain things didn’t exist that exist for us now that we’re back. We lived in a kind of free zone where certain rules and regulations didn’t exist. We related to people’s souls, not their personalities. When the Family dispersed—and now we’re trying to deal with each other again thirty years later—we’re just starting to relearn those techniques. In 2001, we had our first big reunion, and the last ten years we’ve just been dealing on a social level with each other and trying to be nice. A lot of stuff has come up that we never got to work on, because we all just left. It was like The Day the Earth Stood Still. We looked around and nobody was there.
I remember reading that the Beatles were a big influence on the band.
I think definitely because that’s what the band grew up with. The Beatles were very cosmic. They had stepped over into spirituality, and they were given incredible messages.
Were there specific Beatles songs that you wanted to emulate?
No, once the Family was formed we didn’t listen to other people’s music.
You never stepped into a discotheque or club and heard another band?
The only time that happened was in the early days when we did try stuff like that. We got booked at the Whisky a Go Go, and we walked into the Whisky a Go Go in our robes and our long hair—and we did get laughed at! But when they got up on the stage, everybody was quiet because they could sing. They had some good music happening.
But you must have noticed that at the same time you were making this music, bands such as Pink Floyd, they were doing the same…
Oh, yes, absolutely! I do know that we opened the Crater Festival in 1976, sunrise, here in Hawaii for the 200th anniversary of America, and we opened for Sly and the Family Stone. We asked for that slot, and we led the thousands of people in Diamondhead Crater in star exercise, and we got them chanting.
Do you think if any band forms, even if it’s just four or five people, that something spiritual forms?
Music seems to touch the largest amount of people at one time than anything I know about all over the world. It has no barriers, it has no race, it doesn’t distinguish between color, religion, and nationality. You can put a song on and put it out over the airwaves, and thousands of people, their soul can get out of it whatever it gets out of it.
Contemporaries of yours in the avant-garde, such as La Monte Young and Angus Maclise, have kind of said that there is a spiritual plane you can achieve with pure musical tones. Was there a certain way of playing for you that was more in tune with your spiritual quest?
We were into frequencies. Like—the F note is the sound of nature. And the fact that vibration, if you tune into like a F note and another F note comes before, then you vibrate. Like a tuning fork. He tried that with the gong and the kettle drum. We had the gong from Dr. Zhivago—the movie! He bought it and we still have it, and it’s huge! Often in morning meditation, when we weren’t even doing anything with the music, he would have us all go into meditation, and he would do the gong throughout chakras because the gong had the frequencies—all the frequencies of the chakras.
There was kind of a no-drug policy, wasn’t there? Despite your band being considered psychedelic?
I think marijuana, since we don’t consider it a drug—that is probably being used.
But psychedelics like mushrooms or LSD?
No, no, we didn’t do it in the Family, and as far as I know, it’s not being done now. The family dispersed and we all went our ways and created a new life with new members, and so some thirty years later, we all are not on the same page and we are not responsible for what anyone does or does not. As human beings now out here on our own, it has made it somewhat harder to ‘ante up’ as they say.
Sky Saxon, who joined the band later, has been known to have some drug issues. Did he have those when he was in the band?
Sky Saxon was an entity unto himself. He does his thing. I’m talking about Ya Ho Wa 13.
Whoa! Are you saying the album he recorded with Ya Ho Wa 13 was outside the realm of what you consider their music?
Um… well, during the Family days, after Father left and said he was no longer going to be in the band, he invited Sky—‘Arelick’ was his family name—into the band. And they renamed the band Fire Water Air. And it either didn’t do anything, or we moved. We didn’t accomplish or finish a lot of what we did because we would move and go on to something else, and it was disruptive of what we were doing.
Was Sky part of the Source?
He was. He would kind of come and go, though. Father loved him, but he was always just Sky! The way he is now is the way he was back then. And I think Sky does a lot of things that the rest of us don’t do.
Was there a conscious decision about which instruments to use in the band?
No, that’s just the instrumentation that the band played. And I think it’s the basic formation of a band that you have drum, guitar, and bass, right?
Definitely in rock ‘n’ roll. But did you ever introduce any other instruments?
I think they brought in Pythias for a while on guitar, and Lovely with a violin. Lovely was Andre Previn’s daughter. That was one of the forms of Ya Ho Wa 13 that Father was trying to put together. And they brought in a couple other brothers—Home, who sang and played guitar, and Rhythm, who played piano. After we left L.A., we tried different forms of the band, when we moved to San Francisco and moved to Hawaii.
Brian Wilson considered himself a very spiritual songwriter, and made many songs about Hawaii. You still live there now! Is there a spiritual purity there?
There was to us. Hawaii is very clean. The air is clean. We don’t have pollution. We have nice weather all year. It’s called paradise for a reason!
Were you happy with the Obama presidency being that he was a resident of Hawaii?
I don’t really ‘do’ politics, but as far as being a local Hawaii boy, he’s right here where I live—Kahlua. When he stayed here, he was just like three blocks down the street. We saw him on the beach all the time.
Did he go surfing?
He tried to, but the Secret Service wouldn’t let him surf anymore!

YA HO WHA 13’S MAGNIFICENCE IN THE MEMORY RELEASES TUE., JUNE 23, ON DRAG CITY. VISIT YA HO WHA 13 AT YAHOWHA13.COM. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON YA HO WHA 13 AND THE SOURCE FAMILY, SEE THE SOURCE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF FATHER YOD, YA HO WHA 13 AND THE SOURCE FAMILY BY ISIS AND ELECTRICITY AQUARIAN AVAILABLE NOW FROM PROCESS MEDIA. PROCESSMEDIAINC.COM.

Download: The Sonics “Strychnine”

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

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

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

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

Dr. Dog is a band out of Philly making music like the Beatles would if they had started recording again in the new millennium. The tightknit outfit has a similarly tightknit group of friends, all of whom share special nicknames within the realm of the band. Scott McMicken (singer/songwriter/guitarist), aka ‘Taxi,’ speaks now with Linda Rapka, proud to now be known in the world of Dr. Dog as ‘Timber.’

Why does every member of Dr. Dog have a nickname starting with the letter T?
Scott McMicken (singer/songwriter/guitarist): You know how whenever you get a bunch of dudes together, everyone has a nickname? It’s kind of in the spirit of that—only it was intentionally made a little bit more obtuse. The key thing has to do with the self-referential, self-indulgent world of Dr. Dog that we involve ourselves with, which is by and large irrelevant to the outside world.
It seems quite a difficult task to limit your nickname to just Ts.
It’s with everything we do. Give yourselves some parameters to work with. That is my obsession. It becomes more a reflection with a sense of honesty and a sense of connection and a sense of purpose that needs no particular type of space to manifest itself. It’s almost easier to see the truth and that aspect of yourself with the more parameters that you give yourself.
What does your nickname ‘Taxi’ mean?
I liked it because when people are like, ‘Oh, I need a taxi’ and a taxi comes around and takes ’em where they gotta go. It’s just kind of like a quiet little helper. The other slight formula that applies to the nickname thing—this is another sort of thing that I see as very prevalent in the Dr. Dog world—you allow yourself a general spirit of openness and playfulness to things, and without being too scathing or self-critical or too full of self-doubt you can let in any kind of absurd idea and then start to add significance or meaning to it whereas it didn’t really come from a point of that. Once we started giving the first couple of people nicknames that start with ‘T,’ we ran with it. Since then I’ve taken the ‘T’ to become a very significant letter and found a lot of ways of making the letter ‘T’ seem significant within the Dr. Dog world. That’s part of the fun in being in control of some processes.
The ‘T’ is actually a tool of empowerment.
This is really the one aspect of my life—this band—that I have total control over. We all do. We can do whatever we want. We can say whatever we want, and we can apply whatever rules we like to the whole thing, and that’s something that I’m really thankful about having in my life. I think that’s why I’m a musician—to sort of give myself that context. But the ‘T’ thing—beyond starting off as an arbitrary sort of thing—the name is supposed to either sound like your name, or then you can sort of pick some word that in a more intangible way represents some aspect of your character or something you might relate with. It’s also just sort of a door prize, like ‘Oh, you like us?’ Or ‘Oh, you wanna join the band? Is this a cool thing for you? Well, we need that, so join us.’
Can I have a nickname?
Absolutely. Being Linda… ‘Tender’ kind of sounds like ‘linder.’ There’s not a whole lot of obvious ones in terms of phonetics. ‘Timber.’ It’s a word obviously used for wood, and they make paper out of wood. And as a journalist you use paper. So that works. Nice. You’re gonna take this with you to your grave.
Do you have a dog?
I think the band name stuck particularly well because we all are dog lovers and have dogs and always have had dogs and dogs are always around. And when you have that kind of respect too, it’s like, why not give a dog a doctorate? My dog—I can’t believe that kind of creature she is. She’s a legitimately inspiring living creature. She deserves a doctorate.
You are often compared to bands of the sixties—especially the Beatles.
It’s not a very conscious thing, but it’s just one layer behind consciousness. I can’t speak for other artists or anything, but I just get the feel that in my extension to other avenues of creativity that I draw from, the one major criteria that I look for in everything that I enjoy comes from some sense of honesty. Some sense of true awareness of the personality behind what I’m witnessing. That’s what brings out aspects of yourself. It’s like this mirror to look into. Fundamentally what I’m looking for is sort of the influencelessness of what I like. However, the aesthetics that go into everything in people’s choices with any parameters, especially with pop music—it’s like you’ve got that 4/4 beat, the 3/4 beat, you’ve got about three minutes and 10 instruments to choose from—obviously the influences come into large play with people’s aesthetic choices and sensibilities and of course what people choose to gravitate toward says a lot about who they are. You draw from the things you connect with most, so influences I find to be as telling and informative about a person as the honesty and originality that they put forth from their heart. So it is just kind of one layer back. Especially in this day and age everything is this stew, and any spoonful can contain any ten different ingredients and it’s all really delicious. That’s just the kind of world we live in. Specifically with this record I was definitely more conscious of trying to piece together elements in my head that I wanted to add to this—in part because going into the record there wasn’t a really strong vision. Within about a week the vision was just like—bursting. In true spirit of the way we work, we just start throwing stuff out and then start reacting to it, and then when we find what works, we inject it with as much meaning and significance as we possibly can. A lot of the inspiriation for the record for me is from us being the engineers and producers of our own record, and I wanted to challenge myself in that side of things. We’ve always recorded with very minimal means because we’ve never really had a whole lot of money or equipment. But slowly, slowly, slowly, as we started borrowing from people, we put together a studio that I felt like could do whatever it was we wanted to do—whatever that may be. I really just wanted to try to bridge the gap sonically. I wanted to try to make a record that sounded like if you go back in time and take the minds out of a studio in 1963 and bring them into a contemporary studio, so that you still had the same fundamental sensibilities and sensitivity and maturity that existed much more naturally in those days because of those limitations—and this again comes back to the value and importance of limitations—but with the technology now. It’s not so much I want to make a record that sounds like it was made in 1963, but I wanted to make a record that sounded like people who were making good records in 1963 would be making now if they were still making records.
What were you most hoping to accomplish with the record?
I wanted to make music that was dance music. But my immediate association with dance music is something that I really don’t appreciate at all. Not club scene, not like indie rock with a disco beat or anything like that, but kind of pulse… dance music not so much for the function of dancing but more as like its really reliable foundations. You get that beat going and in a few seconds you’ve established that this is the place to be and nothing is really going to change all that much. Here you are in the world of this song and there’s that reliable current about it, which is ultimately what makes good dance music. You can sort of let go for a minute, give in to the music, and turn your mind off a little bit. That’s the importance of mindlessness with certain music. It’s for the mind, but it’s for the body, and like David Byrne said, it hits the body way before it hits the mind. That’s the first experience of music, and then beyond that your mind sort of kicks in and attaches it with your emotional experiences or whatever else you associate with the sounds you’re hearing. So I wanted that really steady, steady, steady unchanging beat, but I wanted to combine that not with something that was full of the dancehall, but with something that was very organic and rural and very dissociated from any social implications of dance music. I just pictured being this band that was in the middle. A combination of something very earthbound with something very…. like plastic and dirt together or something. All my sensibilities—just trying to make a little puzzle where you can find the pieces to make a picture. That rural kind of visceral—like this-is-humanity-at-its-essence kind of pop music for me is Tom Waits. The best dance music to me to this day is still forty years old—Motown and oldies and R&B music is the most concise and intelligent and well-stated pop music that I can really find. Those two things really don’t have a ton to do with one another, but in my head I wanted to try and marry my feelings about those things to an extent. I’m not sure I necessarily did it but it was a good aesthetic palette to draw from and switch on and off depending on the moment. It’s definitely something that as a band we’ll try to pursue more.
What do you like about the new record?
Because of the intangible life that the whole thing took on—the parallels that it started to draw between what was going on in my head in the studio to what I am as a man in my life, who I am to my girlfriend, to my best friend, who I am to this neighborhood I live in, or this state or this country or to my family, all those sort of larger things that go on in life—it all just came into one. Everything seemed to be relating in the same ways, and that’s another reason why I’m really happy with the outcome of this album. Because not only do I now have an album that I’m really proud of for us as a band, but I feel as though it definitely helped me to be a better person in a way. And a smarter person. None of it’s this epic scale—like overnight shift in perspective or anything. It’s all kind of subtle things. But it’s because of the subtlety that I trust it more because I know that nothing happens overnight. Not for a band, and not for a human being. To feel those small few changes is just a good sign that you’re kind of growing up a little bit. I definitely feel like the album gave me a little kick out of that. And I didn’t expect that. I don’t expect that out of being in a band necessarily. I do expect it being a songwriter. I don’t have those kind of high standards. I don’t need it to fulfill me on this existential level or anything. It’s just super fun. So for that to happen I’m just really thankful.
One of your former band members went off to become a lawyer. Was there ever a question of whether or not music was the right pursuit for anyone else in the band?
Those are the ones that are not in the band anymore. Those of us who are still in the band—we never had a difficult time confronting that fact. The five of us that are in the band now are pretty secure and know why it is we do this and that will overshadow some of the sacrifices that you make to do it. Because ultimately it’s your dream come true.

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